There are some games that click (or clack) easily for me. Games like Robo Rally where there’s a programming mechanic, I tend to do well at. It doesn’t necessarily mean I LIKE that sort of game but at least I don’t lose as much as I do in other games. Enter Clacks, the Terry Prachett one not the other one. It’s based on the clacks communication system from the Diskworld novels. A set of semaphore towers manned by golem operators that repeat messages over long distances. Early telegram if you will. So how do you turn that into a game? If you were to ask a few of the players who tried the game Thur night we cracked it out, they’d tell you you don’t and the designers didn’t. 

Theme wise it’s fairly strong. You’re racing to spell out all the letters of a randomly chosen word in Tetris like patterns of on and off lights. You accomplish this by moving your dude around the tower and playing cards with shapes on them which flip the light pattern. Obviously it’s a bit unwieldily getting the pattern you require easily and it needs a bit of planning, luck and ingenuity. If you pardon the pun it felt all a bit mechanical to me. While not actually solo it sort of feels like it is or maybe that was just my Borg like aloofness when I played. 
Bolted onto this mechanic are cards to throw a spanner in other player’s works and a couple of additional rules for teams we didn’t bother playing. 

In fairness it was late when we played so we didn’t see the game at it’s best. I’m kind of assuming the game has a best. It’s not a long game. The version we played was done and dusted in twenty mins. So filler material. Terry Prachett super fans will already have this and tell you it’s great. It’s only ok and there’s a lot more games more worthy of your attention. 
Graphically it’s fine. There’s only so many ways you can represent 16 lights. After a game of it we Did feel like Picard with the Cardassians. There’s a set of mechanics in here. It’s debatable if there’s a game. 
Huzzah!
Vic

I spoke with Cathal Travers a few weeks back and we shot the breeze about all things gaming, Cathal is an avid gamer and a regular at Knavecon. In case you didn’t know his online business the mighty Comic Vault is going bricks and mortar in Cork. This Wednesday see’s them opening their first shop in Cork at 15a Oliver Plunkett Street Lower.

Cathal took a few minutes out of preparations to talk to me about his plans

To start with the hours of business will be as follows with a grand opening planned in a few weeks

Sunday: closed
Monday: closed
Tuesday: 10:30 – 7
Wednesday: 10:30-8
Thursday: 10:30-8
Friday: 10:30-8
Saturday: 9-6

Comic Vault has been going strong for a number of years with it’s online business supplying Graphics Novels, T-shirts, the odd board game and all types of Merch. Now they’re going all out and plan to rev up the gaming scene in Cork with more of everything, more games, more merch, more something else that’s good. They’re going to set aside a dedicated gaming area and organise regular game evenings amongst other things and in the words of Cathal, “watch this space we’re only getting warmed up”*

I reckon this could be a trip for Knavecon on Tour in the very near future. From all the Knaves from all around, we wish you the very best in your new endeavour and having seen Comic Vault over the years we reckon you’ll make a splendid success of the whole affair.

Get down there on Wednesday if you’re anyway near!

Huzzah!

Vic

*he didn’t actually use those words but it was something like that

Indulge me. I don’t talk about video games all that often but when I do they tend to be good. So living on the edge as I do let’s begin…

Down to the last 20 I can hear shots close by. All four of our team are alive, mostly uninjured and tooled up with assault rifles and a mix of shotguns, Smgs and pistols. Ammo isn’t a problem I don’t expect to live too much longer. Windows above me break and the room is raked with fire, the teammate next to me makes a run crouching up the stairs and after a lull in shooting I follow him. I get out on the balcony and see him snapping off shots and ducking behind the stairwell wall. We huddle down when grenades explode where he was firing from seconds ago. Smoke grenades are arcing in now obscuring the attackers. Down to the last 12 

Windows are breaking and louder and more sustained fire is happening all around. I jump down onto a lower roof and through a crack in the parapet spot a shooter in a window across the street. He sees me. We exchange fire for a bit then his buddy wings me. I’m taking damage. I keep their heads down with fire but I get hit again and go down. No one is near to revive me. I’m shot and killed. It’s game over man. 

This is Player Unknown Battlegrounds and it’s battle royale with 100 participants either all solo, in groups of 2 or groups of 4. Its glorious This is the best shooter I’ve played in years.

When the game starts after a countdown you all appear together in a transport plane all 100 of you flying in from a random edge of the map. The map is a mixture of towns, hills, farms, various installations, sparcely populated areas and everything in between. You decide when to jump. Your team needs to stick together because every other team does. You freefall then pop your chute and glide in. Spotting a pile of other chutes nearby is a recipe for trouble and certain areas are more popular to get to as they’re more likely to contain better loot. 

The landscape is brutal soviet, abandoned like a zombie game.  Houses, apartments and various installations yield up a variety of weapons and supplies. Gear comes in the shape of melee weapons, handguns, shotguns, SMGs and assault rifles. You’ll also find bandages and medipacs, backpacks to carry more gear and ammo which is key to survival. You’ll also find bits and bobs like scopes and grips to enhance weapons. Silencers are like gold. 

When you touch down the very first thing you need to do is get a weapon and fast. More so if someone has landed near you. I’ve been in fights where someone came after me with a machete and I just got to and loaded a handgun in time to stop him. 
After the a few minutes things get interesting. A white circle appears on the map and you have a few minutes to get inside it’s radius or you start losing health. Then a few minutes later it shrinks, then again and again. The whole mechanic herds the survivors in towards each other. Desperate fights break out between people and a counter on the top shows how many people are still alive. The goal is to be the last person standing. I’ve never done it BTW. 
To aid you occasionally a transport plane will fly over and drop additional weapons. All of which are cool like gillie suits and silenced sniper rifles. The dropped crate has a smoke canister which guides you in but also other survivors and it’s a real conflict area. 
Dotted around too are vehicles like bikes, cars and buggies which offer fast travel but are noisy. There’s nothing like cruising along in a jeep with three passengers hanging out the windows weapons drawn just itching for a drive by shooting 
As the game continues the circle contracts and the fighting becomes more desperate as the best and better equipped players survive and make it to the end (you can scavenge equipment from bodies) The tension is stupendous. Holding a building with your team is amazing. Assaulting one more so and pulling off a sneaky kill is a fist pumping hooting event. Until that is someone one does it to you and it’s back to another match. 

The replay value is magnificent. This is an addictive game and for an early access it’s really polished. I understand the player base went to over a million the first weekend of launch.  I can see why. I’ve played a lot of shooters but this is the one that’s blown me away in the last few years. At €30 it’s worth checking out. 

You’ll find me out there playing or maybe I’ll find you….

Huzzah! 
Vic 

What an amazing weekend. Knavecon on tour was a massive success. We gamed, we ate, we drank we gamed some more. We laughed from start to finish. We met some cool people, bought some brilliant stuff and grinned like Cheshire cats. Knavecon on tour is now a thing and we’re going to do more of them. 
I had the very great pleasure of sharing the trip with a magnificent bunch of Knaves who flew the flag for what they love. Gaming. 
Roll on Knavecon 10. 
Huzzah!
Vic 

An “embarrassment of” Knaves will descend on the UK Games Expo tomorrow in the NEC in Birmingham decked out in new shiny T-shirts, unfettered by family and social constraints, gambling like little gaming lambs, happy with the world and poised to stab punks squarely in the back once gaming commences.

Huzzah!

Vic

Please note body double was used in this photographic series and actual Knaves may vary

Huzzah!

My Warhammer Fantasy Army is bigger than yours. Yes it is. It’s fully painted and it slumbers now, but always ready for the now oldhammer call to War or a new one if Games Workshop cops itself on and gets back to WHFB rather than the my little Pony Dead horse thing they’re trying to flog. How big is my army? Really big. Huge. I started painting it long before your Parents decided there was NOTHING on the Telly. My army is bigger than yours and can beat up your little army no problem. Fact. 
I don’t get to play Warhammer much these days and by much I mean at all. I still love it though. The history, the fluff, it’s all timeless, so imagine my excitement when Total War released Warhammer Total War. It was a day one purchase or it would have been if I hadn’t fallen for that trap before and I refused to wind up holding a buggy mess. EARLY purchase is what I went for once the worst bugs were patched and after an on and off amount of play the game bit hard and I was hooked. 

If you’re familiar with Warhammer/Total War you’ll know this mash up would be a match made in heaven. There’s already been numerous Warhammer mods for TW but this is the real deal. 
WHTW Sees you picking one of a number of races (more if you shell out for DLC) and setting out to complete either the short or long campaign. Forget the short campaign you need to go full bore you’ll probably complete the short campaign along the way and laugh behind your hand at those satisfied with just that much. 
WHTW is epic. Epic. Epic. Epic. Epic. It’s also bloody hard even on easy. Everyone hates you. They might not start out hating you but it’s in the post. Even your own race hates you. It’s ok to be paranoid. On top of that chaos is coming and they don’t mess around. So you need to get all the squabbling factions to team up and face the existential threat. All very Lord of the Rings accept….. this is not LOTRs none of the other factions give a brass razoo about the greater good and while you’re already stretched every which way not only do Chaos arrived fully tooled up sweeping in from the north their Norsican fan buddies arrive en-masse in longships from the west. The rest of the races? They never miss an opportunity to stick the boot in when others are weak. This is a tough game. 

The game may be pretty much unscripted but it’s amazing how believable some of the events that play out are. Alliances form between likely factions, races play perfectly to their character, game changing events happen regularly, certain battles are pivotal to your campaign. As the game progresses you find yourself embroiled in desperate battles where victory hangs in the balance. It’s thrilling. 
Graphically this game is a tour de force. Seeing the characters from Warhammer coming to life is stunning. Ditto the animations and the sublime artwork. If you have the computing horsepower this game will use it all and more to serve up an extraordinary vista. 
I’ve spent quite a few months with this game. I still feel I’m scratching the surface. There’s still a stack of races to try out along with a proper lash at multiplayer. On top of that Warhammer Total War 2 is coming soon with a host of new races and the promise to stitch together the maps of the old and new world in a behemoth campaign. I can’t wait. 

If you’re a Warhammer Fantasy fan this is definitely worth checking out. More so as I’m sure it will drop in price with WHTW 2 on the horizon. Epic Epic game
Huzzah!
Vic 

Colony Wars
Star Realms is a lovely little two player card game. I’ve spoken a few time before about it. It’s a non collectable dueling game set in an epic conflict between four space faring factions. The bio hive Blobs, the robotic Machine Cult, Empirical Federation and Royalist Star Empire or green, red, blue and yellow for short. The electronic version of this game is magnificent. 

I’m not going to talk about the base game again. If you have a smart phone I recommend you just go and buy it. It’s a cracker no ifs buts or maybes. You will get so much bang for your buck. What I’m going to talk about is the latest expansion and the interface upgrade 

Colony Wars is the latest expansion to the game. It’s very much more of the same. There’s nothing new from a rules perspective just more and different cards. The cards however are all very sweet. Again nothing massively different, an evolution rather than that other thing. The Colony Wars moniker is a bit of a misnomer. The Colonies are just more space stations. As for bigger some of the ships and colonies are definitely the biggest we’ve seen to date. The Blobs get the aptly named Leviathan which deals 9 damage, destroys a target base and allows you draw a card. The Machine Cult gets the big old card chomping damage dealing wrecker. The Star Empire gets the massive Emperor’s Dreadnaught, the Fed get some big space bases and a few bigger fighting and trading ships. 43 new cards in total. 

All in all it’s like the game has been handed to a safe pair of hands that has just continued the unbroken let’s not change it too much tradition and it works. It injects a nice albeit short lived bit of life into the game. The designers are super careful with the cards they introduced. Nothing is overpowered and the chaining of cards seem to flow that bit more smoothly than before. It’s a subtle game in some ways and requires many many replays to learn how it flows. You find yourself wondering how the hell you lost when you played the same (pretty much) as your opponent. This is the street fighter of card games.  
The artwork is as ever gorgeous and I like touches like ships from previous sets featuring in the background going about their business (or being eaten or blown up)

The other new thing is changes to the app interface. It’s now even slicker (it was pretty slick to start with) with cards displayed at a jaunty angle and revealing more of themselves as a result. It’s quite a feat to get a card game like this displayed on a small screen and still make it playable without having to squint. The developers have done a sterling job. 
The thing about this expansion is people who love the game will race out and buy it and I can’t blame them. If you haven’t played it yet. Now is as good a time as any to start. There are now seven expansions in all but this doesn’t make the game in any way less accessible for new players. 
More of the same. Great game. Worth a look
Huzzah!
Vic 

Since it started out as a Kickstarter, there are several versions of Scythe knocking about. In the same way as a vegan identifies themselves in the first two minutes of meeting them. An owner of scythe will tell you how Their copy is so much better than the base game the little people would buy retail. BTW I’m not disrespecting vegans. I have a number of vegan gaming buddies I have tremendous respect for. (Granted they rarely come to games night because I live up a hill and bless, they don’t have the energy to walk up it) On with the critique. 
We played the better version of scythe with the dials and extra bits and bobs but it doesn’t matter it’s the same game no matter what. We played with four. 

Scythe is not a conquest game in the traditional sense. It’s not all about land acquisition (although it’s a help) and unlike most map games having an enemy military unit right up against you doesn’t mean war is imminent. It MIGHT mean a battle is coming but it’s by no means a sure thing. scythe is all about the medals or more accurately the milestone stars. When you’re building a economy war is a real inconvenience. 
Milestone stars are awarded for a number of events. Building all four of your mechs, upgrading everything, winning your first and second battle, gaining maximum power or popularity as well as a few other things. Once one player gets to six stars the game stops and everyone counts their points. It’s quite possible for someone to end the game by getting six stars but still lose on points. 
The game plays out on a beautifully produced map delineated by around 60 hexes or so it’s a pretty tight map. Hexes produce one of a number of different resources. oil for upgrading, metal for building mechs, wood for bolstering (upping your power and popularity) and food for recruiting. The last resource is people or more accurately worker meeples and it’s these dudes in the right spot that harvest the resource from a hex when a produce action is taken. 

As for actions, each player starts with a control board made up of two different pieces. Each board is a little different so play varies depending on whom you pick. Each faction is unique which equates more to starting resources and a special ability rather than a considerable difference. They’re certainly not asymmetrical nor are their goals. At first view the control panel looks like the controls of a steam train but it becomes all very logical half way though the game. I highly recommend you play with at least one person who’s played before or you’ll scratch your head bald first game. It’s not that’s it’s overly complex but it is a little overwhelming to start. You need to keep an eye on several resource levels to survive. That said I found the game forgiving but I was playing with relative newbies (myself more so) and a veteran would have the game won before you got your second mech on the board. Difficulty level it’s in or around the same as say Game of Thrones the board game. 
You start with a hero and two worker meeples. The starting positions are all around the edge of the map the center of which contains a factory that once accessed gives you an add on action for your control panel. Controlling the center is also worth a chunk of points at the end so it’s a bit King of the hill. Again this is not a bloody game. Combat is expensive and players only attack if they’re sure of a gain. Posturing is an excellent substitute for violence I find. 
The game progresses with you expanding out and harvesting resources. Building your mechs and upgrading your economic engine. In this respect it’s a little bit solo. It’s hard to block others from achieving their economic goals. You can step in and take hexes from others but there’s plenty of resource hexes to go around and it would be foolish to start a war to mildly inconvenience another player. Now it’s important for me to stress this is a first review. There are veterans of this game who know better than me but this is my impression of things. 

What’s novel with Scythe is the resources. When harvested they remain on the hex you plucked them from. When you spend them they disappear off the map as your workers burn them but while they’re being built up on the map for “a big shop” they can be raided by other players. Later in the game when you’re building a stockpile of resources to score bonus points you’ll need to protect them jealously from others. 
Scythe is an unusual game. It’s definitely unique. It’s neither fish nor foul/worker placement nor conquest, it’s a too simple to say it’s a bit of both. The space game eclipse is the closest I’ve seen to it but even that’s quite different to this beast.  
The game is beautifully produced. The artwork from Jakub Rozalski is stunning. The cards and pieces are excellent quality. Not QUITE up there with the homogenized style of Fantasy Flight but not far off. The minis have character (some of them are characters) Everything is lavish. More so if you went all in on Kickstarter. It can’t be faulted. 
The question I guess is, is this any bloody good? Certainly. Yes it is. It’s probably not what you would expect from the box. It’s not mechs conquering conquest. It’s more economic that ballistic. The designers have done something wonderful here. They’re created something ever so slightly different, a twist to the norm. I highly recommend trying this game out. It will be front and center at Knavecon 10. 
The game demands multiple replays to get the most out of it. There’s subtly and greatness here. I’m only scratching the surface and if Knavecon 9 was anything to go by this holds a special place in the hearts of those who have played it. I know after one game I’m thinking about how I could have played differently and I’m eager for a rematch. That’s always a good sign
Huzzah!
Vic 

Picture five people sitting around a table holding different sized squeezy bottles of poster paint in various colors. in the center of the table is a two foot square piece of carpet. In turn they squirt paint from an edge inwards. They get points for how much paint they managed to get on the carpet and annoy other participants by painting over their colours. When they run out they get fresh bottles and the process repeats for a bit. That’s It in a nutshell. 

Small World is played out on a map of twenty plus regions of mountains, swamps, plains etc. you start with a stack of creatures chosen from a limited draw each with a special ability. So it could be Commando/Wizards, Berserker/skeletons, Merchant/Giants. The mix of races and attributes keeps it fresh from a replay point. You spread your guys around the map trying to take regions in such a way as to score the max points. Some attributes like mining makes you score more points for taking mountain regions and so on. Some of the attributes give you things like defensive camps and castles to drop. Truth be told there’s a stack of combos and a number of expansions with an awful lot more. Some of them seem a little over powered. I’m looking at you Trolls but in cases like this it just means you have to put your own interests aside and cooperate to thwart leading players. So basically they’re overpowered
After you’ve done as much with your finite amount of dudes you can spend a turn going into decline like any good civilization. You pick another race next turn and go forth and conquer. The old race you had stays in place usually minus it’s bonuses and you no longer control it but they do score points for you. Declined races are usually low hanging fruit for fresh conquests (unless they’re trolls, bloody trolls). 

Repeat for eight turns and count your points. 
Small world is an old game now. It’s a rehash of a game called Vinci and it’s starting to age. Old doesn’t mean bad necessarily but for me,my gaming tastes have moved on and I want more bang for my gaming time. This will play well with kids. It’s up there with classics like ticket to ride and catan but I’ve already played those to death and I’m guessing you have too. 

I’ll have it Knavecon. It’s a good game, well presented and verging on very good but not quite getting there. Opinions vary and it’s definitely worth a look, but make up your own mind about owning it
Huzzah!
Vic 

Boss Monster has been around for a while. I’ve owed a copy of it since a few Knavecons back. I even played it once so it seems a disgrace that I’m only around getting to reviewing it now. A disgrace. 
I got to play it again recently. Owning it as I do and having a couple of willing testers at home. 

Boss monster is like a lite version of Dungeon Keeper. You probably know the premise. You control a big ol’ monster who wants to be the boss above and beyond up to three other players with a paltry five hit points and a penchant for souls.  
Just like zombies, heroes are both the primary food source and apex predators for monsters. Lured by four types of treasure they arrive in the local town and try their luck in your pointy dungeon. Did I mention the dungeon?

Boss monster is a card game. You start with a hand of room cards, one of which you can place each turn and a few spells, which either help you or hinder another boss monster. Each room contains a type of treasure and heroes March in like moths (marching moths) towards the traits that most suits them. So clerics will be attracted to the dungeon with the most ankhs, fighters love swords and so on. Part of the skill is in having more of a treasure type than your opponents so the most heroes come to you. 
Now having attracted these wild bears into your cabin you need to insure your dungeon rooms can deal sufficient damage to kill them before they get to your boss monster at the end of the corridor. Each of the rooms deplete a certain amount of hit points from the heroes. If they run out they die and become points for that player. If they don’t die along the way they twang the big nose of the boss monster and emerge more than likely with “yeahs!” and high fives to never return. Get five hits and for you the war is over. 
Things ramp up a little when rooms can be upgraded to improved more hurty ones but to balance it once all the regular heroes have run the gauntlets a set of epic heroes with more hit points appear. These guys and gals are tougher, deal two points of damage to boss monsters but are worth two souls if you knock them on the head. Towards the end of the game it becomes very touch and go with the last few epic heroes zooming in like the last 

 missiles in missile command. Top marks if you survive. A win if you get ten souls. 

This is a fun little filler. 30-40 minutes of play. The artwork is cool 8bit graphics reminiscent of an old side scroller but with some great humor in there (I particularly like the vampire bordello). 

It’s not a serious game by any means and the luck of the draw will affect you though there is some skill in here. One of the most enjoyable aspects is impeding the works of someone else’s dungeon with a freeze spell when a particularly tasty hero is striding through. As always a game where you can laugh at someone elses misfortune is a joy. Doubly so if you caused it. 
Fun game. Cheap. Portable. Kid friendly 
Huzzah!
Vic