The Game is a foot (possibly black)

I’ve been accused of being too obscure with my game reference photos, the above should be easy…

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is a clever whodunnit which is damnable close to role playing without actually being role playing. I say clever so it obviously didn’t suit our group who were half asleep when the game kicked off.

The game comes with a map of London with a hundred odd locations and ten case books for a variety of murders, robberies and so on. It’s very thematic, each adventure comes with it’s own newspaper which may contain clues to the current mystery.

There’s no GM, just someone who’s going to read the mystery out and each person takes it in turn to direct the group to a location to gain clues as to what’s going on.

Now, here’s the clever bit. It’s only semi cooperative, the idea is that everyone goes along for the ride and at some stage each of them jumps ship and secretly writes down their answers to a set of questions on the back of the case when they feel they have enough clues gained.

The more places you visit the more of the mystery becomes revealed but the lower you’re score will be at the end.

That’s it. That’s the game. There’s no dice, no tokens, just you, your trusty investigator’s notepad and your brain.

It’s INTERESTING, it’s very interesting, it’s a bit like a murder mystery night but a lot more lavish. The atmosphere is very good and it plays out in an hour plus depending on how dopey your investigators are.

The only limitation I can see with it is there are only ten missions and once you complete them, that’s it. That said ten plays of any game is quite a lot and I’m sure more mysteries will come along as add ons or fan fiction.

All in all I’m not sure about this game, it’s definitely interesting, it’s definitely different it just didn’t really suit the group, but I think it requires a second outing to be sure

Until then I believe our ignorance will be as amazing as our knowledge

Huzzah!

Vic

December 14, 2014 0

Coup de’grass

I reckon I’m being a bit more obscure with this picture reference, will take people seconds to figure it out.

Coup, which I never reviewed before is the base game for the expansion I mentioned. Coup is a winner. it comes in a natty silver box and just like Love Letter it’s following the trend of low card games. There’s around 20 or so cards in Coup. all multiple copies of five possible roles

Captain – Thieving bastick
Duke – Money Machine
Assassin – Death for hire
Contessa – Blocks Assasins
Ambassador – Allows you to swap your hand

Each player up to eight (I think) starts with two random cards face down, known to their player. Each turn they SAY they have a particular dude and can take the appropriate action. e.g. on their turn a player claims they have the Duke and takes 3 coins from the bank.

NOW. other players can call them on it with statements like “I’m sorry but I find that hard to believe” or realistically something a little bit more robust. At this point the player has to reveal the role or lose a card. Lost two cards and it’s game over

So Coup is a knockout game, you have to kill off everyone elses two characters while not knowing whom they are. Some characters have reactions to others

So for example someone says they have the captain and their going to use him to steal from a target player. That target player says they have a captain themselves and they’re going to block it. Each of which can be called out by the other player. Since there’s a finite amount of roles and as players die the actual roles they had get revealed it’s possibly to make an educated guess as to what people may or may not have.

This is a SUPERB game, it’s cheap, it’s fast, it’s portable and it’s as good as the players you have. It’s a real mind game of bluff and counter bluff. If you have a gaming group THIS is one of the essential games to have. It’s the perfect warm up warm down game. I have spoken

Huzzah!

Vic

ps. the dude down the right hand side there doesn’t come with the base game.

December 2, 2014 1

Official Knifey Spooney

We’ve been playing the expansion for Coup for some months or knifey spoony as its better know in these parts. Being short of the requisite cards we used either knives or spoons to represent the two warring factions

We didn’t do too bad. We only missed one rule. The one about not being a duke to steal the bribes.

Now don’t make the mistake I made. If you already have a copy of coup and have played it for a while buy another copy of it. The new shiny reformation cards will stick out like a sore thumb at a wake (I know).

The new game plays similarly to the original accept the ambassador has replaced by the inquisitor who is like a mini ambassador (she only exchanges one card rather than two) but with the additional power to look at someone’s hand and force them to exchange it with the court deck.

If this is all making no sense by the way have a look at my earlier review of coup. WHICH it turns out I never did so I’ll do a review on that then

Anyhoe. All in all Reformation is more of a patch to the original game than an add on. It makes the game better for sure but it’s in no way essential as the original was a cracker of a game. Would i buy it ? Yes. Would I rush out and buy it? No

The Inquisitor adds a few more tactical options. The new character I can’t say I’m fond of. Her ability is a little so so. It’s definitely better than the ambassador but I’m happier to get a couple of other roles in my hand rather than her. That said its early days yet and only two or three games with a game like coup is no measure of how good or bad it is.

It’s a cheap expansion so it’s a no brainier to pick up. If you get it let me know what you think of it. Our group doesn’t play without it now but then again you’re either knifey spooney or your little people

Huzzah

Vic

December 1, 2014 0

Introducing Ginger Games

Ginger Games are a new Online Boardgame Shop based in Northern Ireland started fairly recently by husband and wife team Alan and Lindsay. I’ve been chatting to them a little over the last while and they’re certainly big boardgame fans. I’m hoping to get them down for the next Knavecon either in a professional or playing capacity (or a bit of both like most traders that come).

In my chats with them they revealed their love for amongst other things for Worker Placement and 2 player games. Lindsay was good enough to do a guest review for me of Fields of Arle. A game I have to admit I knew nothing about. Here’s that she had to say…

Like all Uwe Rosenburg fans I was excited by the upcoming Essen release of Fields of Arle (and the upcoming Patchwork). Would there be room for yet another Uwe Rosenburg game in my collection? Would it be as good or differ enough from Agricola or Caverna? Would it be too similar? I was hoping that it would live up to my expectations.

As most of our game time is spent as a couple I was interested in picking up this 2-player only game. The rule book clearly defines this game as being autobiographical and is set in Uwe’s home region of East Frisia. The game is a very typical worker placement style game played over nine and a half rounds each representing a year with alternating summer and winter seasons. Each season allows specific actions that are relevant to the season meaning you can only fish in the summer and shear sheep after the winter. Along with the usual worker placement spots with gain you resources there is also an interesting simplified tech tree where you can increase your ability to gain specific resources. Additionally there is an element of trading to neighbouring towns and villages to gain food or convert resources needed to build or expand.

As with all first plays the game ran longer than the 120 minutes on the box cover. On first impressions the amount of available actions are overwhelming but with playtime the strategies begun to emerge. While the farming theme is a well-trodden path with Agricola and Caverna this is a vastly different game. In Agricola you are confined to one main path to victory but Arle has various paths to victory. Caverna has more flexibility in the route to victory and Arle expands on this by introducing vehicles, trading and tech trees.

It is true there are influences from Agricola, Caverna, Ora et Labora and Glass Road but Arle has refined these mechanics further. In my head it is a completely different enjoyable puzzle than its predecessors.

Those looking for high player interaction should probably avoid this one as it is pretty much zero, there is even a space to mimic blocked actions. Arle is a big physical game but it doesn’t feel that much larger than Caverna it just has a different layout.

So if you like your heavy worker placement games and play mostly two player games you will get plenty of hours of enjoyment out of Arle.

Lindsay

November 28, 2014 1

I don’t think anyone expected THAT

“What’s the last thing you’d like to see on a restaurant menu?”

Depending on your gaming group this could be quite the range.

When one of the lads whipped out say anything I was quite dubious. It looks like a cheap knock off charades game you’d pick up in TK Maxx but I was more than pleasantly surprised and wound up ordering a copy soon after

It’s a game not a million miles from cards against humanity. If you haven’t played that I heartily recommend you do. Top tip. Maybe don’t include your mother in law in the game as I did last xmas .

The idea is very simple. One player draws a question card and reads one of the six questions aloud. “What’s your favourite hobby” for example. I just made that one up btw. My copy of the game hasn’t arrived yet.

Everyone then on their shiny answer “slates” write their answer in felt tip pen and they’re all revealed at the same time.

The inquisitor secretly picks their favourite answer (each slate is a different colour) and everyone bids their two coins on what they think the answer most likely to be picked will be.

The picked answer is revealed and people score points for picking the right one and the inquisitor gets a portion of the matching picks from people.

It’s simple and it’s gets around the classic problem of that may be the best answer but I’m not saying so because he’s winning

How’s it play? Wonderfully. For several legal reasons I cannot even hint at some of the answers people wrote down at our gaming session. Cards against humanity was mild compared to this. Yes even that card with the… Yeah that one

Super game. Super simple. Scales well with age and gutter mind levels

Highly recommend this as the game of choice for Xmas. I mean it’s that or Monopoly really so easy choice

Huzzah

Vic

—
** Email Scanned by Elive’s Virus Scanning Service – http://www.elive.net **

November 19, 2014 0

Much Dishonour

The first thing that strikes you about age of war is the size of the box. It’s small. Not micro small bit smaller than your thought when you ordered it.

It contains a simple set of rules (check), seven dice (check) and a dozen or so cards. That’s fine. I’ve worked with less and had lots of fun so let’s jump in with no pre conceived notions.

The game is all about capturing fortresses belonging to various sizes clans. Well let’s be honest (ha) this game is about scoring more points than your opponent. You just happen to do it this time via this dice based fortress capturing mechanism.

Each turn a player takes all of the dice and rolls them. It turns up a collection of archers. Horsemen. Spears, horsemen and Dyamos (best spoken with a Japanese warlord voice). Having done this you look at all of the fortress cards in the centre and nail your colours to the mast and declare your affection for assaulting one of them. Once picked it’s no takey backey. Each castle has an entry fee of a certain mix of the aforementioned dice faces. It may be that you have the right ones off the bat or you may decide to reroll in which case (and here’s the rub) you remove one dice from your pile and reroll the ones you want to.

So you may you may not liberate a castle in your turn and add to your collection. Each of the castles is worth a certain amount of points and a complete set in one colour (a clan) is worth a little more.

So far so solitaire. In addition to being able to assault the centre properties you can also attack ones that belong to other players If you have an extra dayano to spare.

So it’s an exercise in naval gazing and dice rolling. Did I mention Reiner kniza designed it.

It’s fine. The few times I played it went on and on and on but I think that was more because we played it with three players. Bump up the players and it trots along. It’ll happily seat six

It’s a simple solid filler game with the right amount of players. It only a tenner or so. So if your looking for a filler you could do a lot worse (masquerade for example)

Now excuse please much dishonor if I don’t play again

Huzzah!

Vic

November 16, 2014 0

One more Click, JUST one more

Hate is a strong word and probably a bit inaccurate. Best to say I’m Annoyed with Limerick Gaming for bringing to my attention. Civ clicker. Just like Ring Virus (the J horror movie rather than anything else that just materialized in your head) I’ve just spread it again.

Civ clicker is a clever solo game all playable on a web browser. You collect resources and try and build an empire.

Remember rogue on the PC from years gone by? It’s like that. Deceptively simple but very playable and mono sodium glutamate addictive.

You start with a couple of biddable followers and commence mining stone and chopping wood as well as raising crops by clicking on the requisite buttons. Later on as you build houses your follower numbers grow and they can take over the boring roles of farming and resource harvesting

It soon becomes an exercise in Heat and pressure as you need to keep your lads fed, housed and safe from wolves and bandits. As the game progresses more building types open up and you get to build stores for the various resources as well as raise armies to attack neighbours (AI) and steal their land (another resource)

Before long you have a dozen different professions for your minions and your spinning a dozen plus plates any of which could hold up or worse still damage parts of your hopefully exploding empire.

Later on you find yourself raising hundreds if not thousands of soldiers, feeding multitudes, raising temples to various gods and then foolishly you undertake to build a Wonder…..

This is a mistake. Believe me. This will consume you. Building a wonder is glacially slow. The hour hand of a clock might as well have yackity saxs playing in comparison. And so it continues. You raise armies expand your lands and population. Your nation measures in the hundreds of thousands if not millions and still the wonder creeps slowly ever so slowly forward. You throw resource after resource at it morbidly wondering if you’re turning grey while its progressing (you are). Traders drop by and rob you blind so you can push it that one percent on.

Eventually you complete the wonder and… Well you can find out yourself

The game continues but at this point I was done. It’s clever it auto saves (on the device you’re on) and for a screen of effectively just numbers it is incredibly addictive. The obsessive compulsion you suffer from will feed on this. be warned

Now, I’m good, I got out I finished my wonder but you haven’t, you haven’t even clicked once yet. If you choose to go down the route of Civ Clicker considered yourself warned. It’s over

Huzzah!

Vic

November 9, 2014 0

Goat Sucker Sucks

Rock Paper Scissors given enough iterations has some skill to it and can therefore be classed as a game (as opposed to a simple method for picking the starting player in a proper game) chupacabra on the other hand has no skill and simple masquerades as a game.

I told you I wasn’t a fan of Steve Jackson games. I warned you but would you listen? Chupacabra and ( goat sucker in English)(Ho ho hilarious) is a dice “game” that comes in a similar cardboard tube just like zombie dice. That’s pretty much the high point of the game, it comes in a cardboard tube

One of the selling points of the game is the dice glow in the dark. Fantastic until you realize it’s stored in a cardboard container so the dice don’t pick up any light in there so when you take them out they glow as much as a sad emo.

Now to the game itself. You have about two dozen identical dice which have a variety of faces. Chickens, goats, cows, scary eyes and double chickens.

The dice are split between all the delighted players and everyone rolls. Groups of animals are …. Sorry was yawning there … Ok.. Put together and you wind up with herds of cattle, goats etc. For each of the eyes you rolled you can attack another farm and steal their dice.

The trick is you have to take a particular animal herd in total. So if you have three attacking dice you can only capture a heard of goats of size three or less. Chickens are easy (that sounds all wrong) and you get a two for one deal with them. Cows something else. I can’t remember but it doesn’t matter.

Anyhoe you in turn attack others and rob their stuff accumulating more dice. That’s it. I played a number of games of it and it came down to those who got lucky and got a few more dice than others got ahead and couldn’t be stopped. End of. Just to confirm the definition of madness I played a few more games and nope that was it. This is beg thy neighbor with dice and even as a kid I wasn’t s huge fan of it.

Now this will work ok for kids. For a while. Zombie dice is way better.

Maybe a different set of rules would work with this. Even if they were just “peg the dice at each other until someone loses and eye”

Chupacabra is a bad game. You’ll be a bad person if you buy it and not in a good way. I’m hoping someone can correct me, but I don’t think so.

I want the precious minutes I spent playing it back.
Huzzah!
Vic
** Email Scanned by Elive’s Virus Scanning Service –
http://www.elive.net **

November 7, 2014 2

It’s all about that Base, bout that base, No zombies

I MAY have lied earlier when I said I was done with zombie games for a bit. A week or two is a long time and not really scientifcally measureable, so chances are I actually told the truth and I’m not over my sabbatical, but seriously this is my last zombie game for a while. no takey backys

I got to play a game I’ve had my eye on for a while now and is as hard as something very hard indeed to get your hands on. (air as an e.g.) Dead of Winter.

Dead of winter is the first in a series of games by Plaid Hat, the first one is set in a colony that’s holding out against the zombies in, you guessed it a zombie apocolypse in (bonus points if you guessed it) the Dead of Winter.

It’s a semi co-operative game which with the gamers I play with means not co-operative at all. At all. Each player starts with a secret (they might be a loner, a traitor, a something else I haven’t seen, I only played one game) and to win they need to complete their objective which may not be in conflict with the overall health of the group.

When I played I was secretly the loner so I had to complete the overall objective which everyone else had to, but when it was complete I had to be the only one alive in my group (no followers). I didn’t win btw we were swamped by Zees mid game

Each player starts with their own little group, a leader and one follower and this may grow as time rolls on. Each of the players have their own party trick, a skill at fighting and scavenging and a number which indicates how tasty they are to zombies. if you wind up in a room with zombies and you have a higher number than your companions they get eaten first. So were dealing with zombies with a descerning palate. (if indeed they have a palate left)

Each turn your group of survivors muck in and try to help the colony survive, this could be by scavenging food, fuel, weapons, building barricades, taking out the trash (it’s true), killing zombies or contributing to a group problem (well the solution to it one hopes)

The game plays a little like Battlestar Galactica insofar as there are bad things that happen every turn and sometimes as a group you have to deal with them, keeping in mind you don’t really know what everyone’s secret agenda is, so there’s a fine level of paranoia throughout.

Also like Battlestar you have a number of resouces (weaknesses) that you have to keep an eye on. Morale being the big one. It this runs to zero it’s game over man and it’s very easy for this to happen. Losing survivors and various dilemas affect it and it’s hard and costly in resources to get it back up.

All in all it’s a BIT like BS with you and your ‘team’ juggling limited resources and rearranging the deckchairs whilst keeping a storm eye for traitors in your midst. It’s brillant.

it captures the feel (I imagine) of a desperate struggle. It starts off easily enough but within a very short time you’re making hard choices and both the time I played it and the game I observed it was rock hard. it was also hugely fun.

I can see why this game sold out so quickly. If you can lay you hands on it before xMas you’re doing well and the manufactures have a lead time of a number of months before a reprint. It’s going to sell again like hotcakes. I find a lot of zombie games, slow and repetitive, not this, this is the business. The model they have for the game is going to be reused. I understand the next themed game is going to be set in space and I can see it working perfectly.

If you can get this game, get it. If you don’t like it I’ll buy it off you

It’s a winner. Now excuse me while I some followers I need to arrange accidents for (evil chuckle)

Huzzah!

Vic

November 3, 2014 0

The Wheels on the Zombie go round and round

The zombies on the bus go round and round, round and round

Now it’s in your head isn’t ? The wheels on the bus. Going round and round. My seven year only once said “Daddy! Think of a horse…, are you thinking of it? ” “yes” “HA! Mind control!”

That’s got nothing to do with the second expansion for zombie dice but it did spring into my head so tough luck

Zombie Dice 3. The school bus is a one dice expansion did ZD but it’s a big dice. It’s a ten sided one and it represents a yellow school bus that’s gotten mixed up in the zombie dice apocalypse.

It’s the NRA dream as the kids are packing heat so it’s no McBrains on wheels.

There are a number of new dice faces besides the normal blast and brain. Actually there’s a nice mix up with these two in the shape of a face with three brains and a shotgun blast and brain together (playing hard to get)

The big old school bus dice can be substituted for the third dice after the first standard round. Did that make sense ? Doesn’t matter I’ll confuse you by saying the wheels on the bus go ……

The new faces are

Yield : all shotguns become brains
Stop : (possibly hammer time) that’s it, the ride is over and so is your turn
Tyre thread : get run over and lose a brain and you can’t use the bus again that turn
Dead end : all runners are trapped and become brains

It’s nice. I like the extra possibilities. You can at any stage jump off the bus and use the normal three dice if you like. It’s possible to score highly with the bus if you’re lucky. It’s possible to lose badly. I couldn’t tell you what the odds are if you do go bus or not. It’s fun. It adds to an already fun game

I’m not a big fan of Steve Jackson games (the games not the company) but this series is good. It’s simple. It’s fun and it’s great for a warm up

Again it’s expensive but it’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it

I’ll have it at Knavecon. Try it see what you think and remember the wheels on the bus ….

Huzzah!

Victor

November 1, 2014 2