My Recent games of Epic have made me revisit Ascension and more importantly Star Realms having not played either in a long time. The apps for both of these are really slick. Really slick and very accessible 
Star realms is an excellent game and although some argue Ascension is superior I reiterate the important point that Star Realms has space ships in it. Lots and lots of space ships which I think you’ll agree is a fairly unassailable argument

Since I left it another couple of mini expansions have been added bringing it up to a total of Five. The ones I haven’t seen so far are Heroes and Events. 
Events are just that. When a card is drawn for the trade row and it’s an event,it kicks off. Typical events would be both players draw two cards, both players lose 5 authority. Some of the events offer choices like lose x life or lose a space station and so on. There’s only eight of them btw and it costs €2 for the expansion so make your own mind up on wether it’s worth it

Heroes are a rum bunch of cheap cards that give you one off abilities, a lot like gambits. These selfless dudes and dudettes once sacrificed give you extra cards , a bit of attack some life and so on but more importantly they come in different colours so are a handy way of triggering aligned abilities

There’s an extra few campaigns in there too (that nobody plays) for your buck

At the end of the day Star Realms is still a cracking game. Multiplayer is as popular if not more popular than it was a year back. Games are fast and it’s a hell of a lot more balanced then Epic. That said I’m still really really bad at multiplayer so if anyone wants to up their win percentage I’m your huckleberry 
Huzzah!
Vic 

I’m slowly working my way through the games I picked up at Knavecon 7 (and 6 and 5) no doubt almost in time for more impulse purchases at Knavecon 8 in September. 
Next on my hit list was EPIC a game by the good people who brought us the excellent Star Realms.  
Epic reminds me of a cut down version of Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone Dialed up to 11. It sees you and any number of other players (but probably one) dealing up a random deck of thirty cards each for a game from around one hundred and attempting to knock the stuffing out of your opponent before they do onto you. There’s nothing particularly new or innovative here. Which is fine. It’s good fun while it lasts and it’s not expensive. 

Players start with thirty health and a hand of five and each turn they draw one more and can either kick off an event or two or summon champions (creatures) to do your bidding. The limiting mechanic is one gold per turn and most of the events and creatures cost one to kick off (unused gold doesn’t carry over at the end of a turn). Lesser creatures and events cost zero so you’ll be playing one or two cards at most per turn
Everything you’d expect From a Magic type card game is here. Instants, Interrupts, enchantments and a dozen effects and abilities. If you’ve ever wanted to dip a toe in the water of ccgs this is a great taster. 
Creatures and events are suitably epic. The story is about gods using earthly champions to do their bidding whilst assisting with the odd godly event. Cards come in one of four colours and various events or champions affect “allied” cards in positive or negative ways. 

The game is very intuitive if you have played any collectable card game ever. Raise a nasty army. Attack your opponent and avoid getting hammered by your opponent. It’s absolutely not collectable and everything you need is included in the stout little box of cards. Some bonus cards came with the kick starter but there’s more than enough in the base game. 
All the cards as suitably epic. Creatures are big and Nasty. Events are apocalyptic. Even the weeny creatures sorry champions come with some Nasty sting in their tail. Economy management is simple,there isn’t one. You have one gold and off to the one gold shoppe you go at the start of your turn and choose one epic card over another. 
Cards are a little unbalanced and luck plays a decent part in your game. Some of the champions are ridiculously overpowered. 18 point attack and defense sand worm for example. Equally some of the events are epic. Remove all champions from the game and so on. It’s good fun but definitely not a competitive or balanced game. If you want that there’s plenty of them out there. 
Art work and production values are excellent. The game will well outlast your desire to play it. I’m sure someone out there has put deck protectors on their copy but not me. 
If you want something generic, fun and cheap that you’ll tire of pretty quickly but not feel cheated by the entry cost, look no further, Epic is one of the better also ran card games out there. 

Huzzah!
Vic  

I remember reading some cheesy confuscious parable about a monk showing his master a handheld game and saying it had two levels of difficulty to which the master replied no it had three and demonstrated this by switching it off. 
Something doesn’t sit right with me about a board game you can’t play unless you’re running an app. Call me an old fuddy duddy but when I’m rolling I want manual controls too. 
I have some good games over twenty years old occasionally they still see the light of my table but they’re all self contained. This was one of the reasons I think I got into boardgames, everything you need in one box. Imagine if I had to run an an app twenty years old to be able to play those old games. Now chances are I could. But apps are tricksy. What if in the future the games company has gone out of business? Is the app still available to download? Will the OS I’m going go be running on my future device run a twenty year old app? Will The app be chasing licensing info on a cloud server long since replaced? I don’t like the idea of being held ransom by a virtual key when I buy a game. 

The other thing I dislike and this is a big one for me is the bad guys role being removed from a dungeon crawler. Anyone who’s read my blog (and I’m pretty sure they exist) will know I do not like Co-op games. I DO like being The evil overlord in dungeon crawls and torturing players, I do like being Dracula. I do like being the spectre. Don’t take this away from me. At least give me the option of not using the app. A statement from Fantasy Flight on their new release of Mansions of Madness that the game cannot be run without the app sets alarms bells going for me. 
Playing against an AI in anything other than a story based game is not anywhere near as much fun as beating your GM or visa versa. Even with the best efforts AIs have not improved all that much over the last twenty years. Playing “against the computer” in a skirmish becomes a game of outsmarting the AI and figuring out its weaknesses, something far inferior to playing a human (well most humans). Yes there are exceptions but when I play a video game I play a video game when I play a board game I’m looking for a way different experience. I have no issue with an app enhancing the experience but I draw the line at hijacking. 
Don’t get me wrong we’ve all enjoyed some amazing gaming experiences on all manner of electronic devices. some of the best being ones you would never play a second time. I want more from my board games. I don’t want to be restricted and my gut is telling me apps are the thin edge of a wedge that will change my gaming experience. I shudder to think of what things would be like if some of the big video games companies got onboard (they won’t) and started charging for apps with deluxe and season passes. 

Mansions of Madness is something new and a little worrying. It’s a classic game that’s been reworked to operate only with an app. With all the vunrebilities outlined above. What happens if the next version of Dracula only allows you to play with an AI app? What about Descent? What about other classic games you love? And no I don’t want to buy an out of print copy of a game that’s non AI. 
It’s early days. Games companies are sticking their toes in the icy waters of nerdy opinion. I expect more of this not less and I’m sure for now it’s with the best intention they’re doing it and I for one welcome the evil overlords but be warned I’m watching you. Don’t mess with my hobby because I won’t take it sitting down. Xcom was an ok game that required the AI to operate. Fair enough. In played it once liked it but didn’t buy it but please don’t go reimagining games I love as new app only versions. 
I get it btw this is going to reduce the drudgery of setting up and playing games but in the words of Mrs Doyle from Father Ted “maybe I like the drudgery”. Time will tell how this progresses. Apps are not cheap to develop and only the big games companies will be able to deliver them. For now. Let’s see how it goes. 
Huzzah!
Vic 
Having said all that chances are it will all be grand. I’ll review mansions once someone in the group buys it….

I really like the cut of Pirate’s Cove’s jib. It’s straightforward, polished and well produced. It’s also a lot of fun to play. 
The game sees you and up to four run soaked chums setting sail as pirates in your very own jellopy pirate ship. Your ship is made up of four stats. 

Sails : initiative in a fight. 

Cannons : how many dice you roll in a fight. 

Crew : how many cannons you can operate 

Hull : how much treasure you can carry. (Also a city in the UK were the very worst of humanity comes from) 

Four of the islands each allow you to buy increases in one of these stats. They are cleverly named Sail, Cannon, Crew and Hull island. The fifth gives you a spot to bury money and treasure (guess the name) and the last one is tavern island where you can visit the brothel and pickup something nasty or more accurately buy pirate cards that give you one shot bonuses in combat, some bonus game points or something nasty to unleash on your opponents when they’re down and you feel it your piratey duty to administer a swift kick. 
Each turn treasure cards are turned over on each island which show varying amounts of gold, fame, treasure and pirate cards. Players secretly pick which of the islands they wish to sail to and they’re all revealed and pirates move there in one go. If more than one pirate lands at the same island it’s Fightin Time!

Battles are pretty simple affairs and let players hammer each others ship into submission. When it’s your shot you pick a section to target (sails, crew, cannon, hull) and blaze away hopefully reducing on of these. Bad things happen when you get hit getting hit in these sections reduce your initiative, firepower or loses you valuable treasure. Reduce any of these stats to zero and blub blub they lose the battle and wind up at the seventh island I didn’t mention before, Pirate Island a sort of pirate quick fit that patches your ship back up just enough to get you back on the sea. Coming back from Pirate island straight into another battle is painful. If you’re unlucky or the other players are vindictive (of course) you could see it several times in a game. 
Those left standing at the islands grab the aforementioned booty and (at least with my group) lord it over the other players who didn’t fare to well this turn. 

Treasure island in the middle of the map is like a highlander holy ground. Multiple ships can be there but you can’t have a fight. The central island lets you bury treasure and gold for fame points. 
In addition to running into other players you can also bump into (if you’re stupid) the Legendary pirate who moves around from island to island one at a time and at the start of the game way outclasses you. Later in the game it’s possible to have a ship good enough to beat them but it’s a close run thing that’s sometimes worth the victory points. Kill that legendary pirate and another one appears (probably worse) at the start
This is a lovely little game. It’s fairly fast maybe 90 mins or less. The production values and artwork are spot on. Game play is smooth with little downtime. Battles are quick and always fun. Games are close run and the rules are straightforward and unambiguous. I’ve had a copy of this game for the longest time and it appears every so often. It’s one of those games that is worth having in collection because you’ll play it again and again and it works well for kids as well as adults
Yargh! As we pirates never said ever 
Vic

“I’ve SEEN things you people wouldn’t believe. Level 4 gyms on fire off the shoulder of Ballina. I’ve seen Charmanders glinter in the dark near two mile gate. All these, Pokemon will be lost in time like.. tears.. in rain.”

I can’t lie, I find Manga a bit weird (and this is coming from a gamer). I liked Akira. I liked My Neighbour Totoro, I liked Final Fantasy. After that it all seemed a bit precious and pervy in equal measure. way too many tentacles and school girls. I was never really into Pokemon but I was aware of it in my peripheral vision and I admit I did get hooked once on the very first one on someone else’s black and white Gameboy. They were lean times. Flash forward to today and I’m battling a couple of school kids at traffic lights for control of the pub down the road… (I lost BTW)

Pokemon Go has exploded like skateboards, Frisbees and zogabongs as this summer’s craze and I have no doubt it will disappear in a few months but while it’s here, it’s proving to be a LOT of fun. What’s more I have no doubt whatsoever Pokemon Go is the harbinger of better and probably more fatal things to come. Sure there have been multiple attempts at GPS based games before, geocaching has been around for decades but it took a big name like Pokemon to break on through to the other side (you’re singing it aren’t you?). People and more importantly school kids are waking up to the possibilities of Augmented Reality games.

I’m not going to get into a detailed or more correctly any type of review of the game. Chances are you’ve read all about it already or you’re already playing it, maybe as we speak. There’s loads of stuff about the game out there, it’s not super complex. The main thing to think about is, it’s just so much fun and it’s making people act differently. I’ve spotted dozens of players out there playing in spots where I’ve arrived. It feels real and there’s a huge visible presence. We’ve all seen the videos of central park where mobs of people rush to get a particularly rare Pokemon. The game is fun for any number of reasons. Exploring and finding new spots with gyms or pokastops is fun. Better still if you find one that no-one else has. leveling up is fun, it doesn’t feel like you’re grinding. Attacking a gym is fun even if you lose. just checking places you’ve been to before and seeing the balance of power shifted is fun.

Niantic have done a fantastic job on this game. In case you’re interested Pokemon Go is not new per se. It’s based on another game by Niantic called Ingress and in which the developers combined goggle maps and points of interest with GPS usage data to come up with a fairly simple map with nodes of high activity used as spawn and key locations. I understand 90% of the data from Ingress was used reused for Pokemon Go so gyms appear in areas with high physical footfall and pokestops appear on points of interest on the map. I’d love to see the code behind it because so far it’s been pretty much perfect in my explorations. Ah the dark gods bless Google and their big brother data gathering ways.

Now since this is relatively new and some people don’t understand it it’s inevitable that Sun newspaper readers and their peers with embarrass themselves on Facebook saying how stupid it is before they go back to whatever it is that challenges their little intellects. I like it, it doesn’t affect you, please don’t infect me with you’re stupid.

Pokemon Go is a first step. By the end of the summer only a few die hards will still be playing, everyone else will have figured out the economic model and moved onto something else maybe even a different AR game.

I see big things in the future for this. BIG things. Since it’s my rant Here’s what I want. I want a AR wargame. I want to ‘fly’ a bomber with my buddies shotgun and in other cars/bicycles more buddies flying fighter escort. I want to penetrate the air defences of a village someone has setup virtual Anti Air Defences in under the orders of a general who controls a whole county. I want to dump chaff when I the missile warning lights on my phone go on, I want to see missile streaking towards me. I want to time my bomb run just right, take out the primary target and escape up some back road, avoiding fire and punching the air and turning up the volume on flight of the Valkyries. (It’s possible the guard that arrests me up the road will be a classic music fan and let me go Or more likely the commander of the village and he slaps me with penalty points). I want this and more and it’s coming, Pokemon Go is just the start. The era of people living on different AR frequencies and working in gameified jobs is just beginning.

The Genie is now out of the bottle and there’s no putting him/her back in.  Welcome to the future…..

What’s this got to do with boardgames? not a lot just yet, but hey, Made you look!

Huzzah!

Vic

When I was in school there was an interesting sporting endeavor undertaken by students called “in for the boot” played on rainy days. The name is misleading as we all wore running shows in the school. Some eager player would shout out the aforementioned game title and everyone would plaster themselves to the wall staring intently at the center point whilst simultaneously avoiding pushing and general jostling. Well healed students would then start to throw coins into the center until one plucky chap would quickly make their way to retrieve the small treasure pile….. Now (and this is where it gets interesting) players attempting to take the money could be targeted with kicks from the other players and indeed kickers would now also be open to a kicking themselves as they would have to leave the sanctuary of the wall to administer their kick. It generally turned out to be quite… Kinetic. As an aside, the players being teenage kids and therefore build from kevlar and elbow rarely got seriously injured. Rarely.

Kemet is based on this game. I’m sure of it. I wouldn’t be surprised to find the designers went to my school and having taken the prize fund from the center used it to fund the design of Kemet. It makes sense.

I spoke about Kemet some months back having been lucky enough to bag a copy for xmas. It hadn’t seen the table in a while which is a pity because it’s just so much fun. It did once again grace our table last Thur after much debate on what to play. The game plays up to five and I reckon five is the perfect number for it. Odd numbers in conquest games always work well.

Kemet (from the Ancient Egyptian “Ke” meaning “in” and “met” meaning ” for the boot”) sees you and your godlike chums trying to get to either 8 points in a short game or 10 points in a long one. Truth be told you could play to anything you like, but 8 will see a good Larry, Curley and Mo style slapping around for 90 minutes or so. 10 will run to 2 hours plus depending on how you play. Add in smack talk, coffee, food and pauses to laugh at other’s misfortune and you’ve a full evenings entertainment right there

First and foremost this game is all about attacking, none of your namby pamby turtling here, attack attack attack and if it doesn’t work out well then sacrifice your surviving attackers to your god and get your money back.  Repeat again.

The map depicts an Egyptian like region with your cities and pyramids and a dozen or so desert locations on the map some of which contain temples. Temples are like King of the hill spots and give you a temporary victory point IF you control it at the end of the round. Lose or leave the temple unoccupied and you return the temporary point. Controlling a temple also gives a little bit of cash (ankhs) and controlling two at the end of the round will give you an additional more important permanent victory points. Ankhs are used to recruit troops, pay for teleports, upgrades and tech cards.

Like most games, it’s all about the points, winning a battle gives you one (oh err missus) as does controlling the temple of day and night if you sacrifice some of your men to it at the end of the round. Holding onto stuff is tough and everyone else is waiting in the wings to stomp on you when you weaken. Battles are bloody, it’s quite possible for you to win a battle but all the combatants to die. Couple this with a tight map and easy teleportation and it’s domination meets free for all. Every round will see multiple battles but they tend to be quick and simple and don’t hold the game up. Battles don’t rely on dice, a set of Game of Throne style battle cards make it a little more predictable. Divine intervention cards drip fed to you each round can be thrown in to the mix to add bonuses and buffs.

While not busy murdering everyone else you can spend ankhs on upgrading your three pyramids (cleverly depicted by big four sided dice in three colors) which grant you access to more powerful tech cards some of which grant you access to the always popular Monsters. Monsters act like a big brother and accompany your mannish armies into battle and add to you attack abilities. They also grant other boons like increased speed, negation of other monsters, better defense and so on and of course they’re monsters!

What I love about the upgrades is it’s a bit of a grab fest. Each is unique so once you get a tech card it precludes everyone else from taking it. None of them are particularly overpowered, well some of them are better than others for sure but if you lose this game it wasn’t because someone had better cards than you. The tech cards are suitably themed, with three different branches open to you and enough variety in there that every game will play out a little differently.
There’s a nice level of vindictiveness in here. Battle cards picked before a tussle can see you losing but giving the attacker a sufficently bloody nose that they’re now presenting to every other grinning player

The build quality is excellent. The models and cards are on par with anything Fantasy Flight have released, mine could certainly do with a good painting (that said my car could do with a good vacumming out and the grass could do with a good cutting but only two of those are likely to happen anytime soon). The theme is perfect, you can picture the clashing armies, blood and boiling sands and the gods above directing it all and loving the specticle. Artwork is excellent. Each faction features different types of humanoid models. While not on par with say Blood Rage they’re more than sufficent for the job at hand.

What I like about this game is the offensive nature. If you’ve played a lot of map conquest games you may have developed a conservative expansionist play style. This game will shake all that up. It is possible to defend your spots and win, in fact no one path will win, but glory and more importantly points are in attacking. There’s a hard limit on units so having more than two armies in the field is risky but then again in this game what isn’t. A single round can see everyone’s armies knocked down like nine pins and one player standing tall, just to be dragged down the round after by freshly renewed enemy armies.

Games are always close, 8 points for a win leaves a lot of players losing by one point and someone just being pipped at the post is always great in games. For a conquest game there’s unusually a urge to play again straight away and at 90 minutes that’s perfectly ok.

I highly recommend Kemet. It you’ve played Cyclades there are similiarites but this has it’s own vibe going on so buy both (and eat cake) and combine them. You can do that.

Great game, great fun.

Huzzah!

Vic

Stone Age is a worker placement game with dice rolling for 2-4 players. Worker placement games are funny beasts. I’ve played many fine worker placement games all essentially the seem ingredients but all completely different experiences. Stone Age is definitely one of the better ones. 
The game sees you starting with a small group of meeples trying to gather resources and score more points than your opponents. You do this by assigning them to the limited spots on the map. 

These coveted spots allow you to increase your population, your ability to feed your guys, give you tools that add pluses to your die rolls, build point scoring huts in your village, grab point scoring civilization cards or grab one of the five different resources (food, wood, clay, stone and gold) 
Some of the spots allow space for only a single or a single pair of meeples and Jumping on these preclude others from taking that action this round. This is the primary way to cock block opponents. Early on the birthing hut, farm and tool shop is usually chockablock. Equally the scoring spots are coveted towards the end and the ever popular making out hut loses its appeal for many. 

There are multiple routes to victory and doing it before others is key. It IS dice driven and the games we played saw some epic low rolls BUT you can guard against this by investing in tools which add pluses to the role. Like any worker placement it’s a case of keeping all you plates spinning. Get more population and you need to feed them. Get dudes our hunting up food and you take them away from gathering point scorning resources. Don’t feed them and suffer hefty point fines. It’s a fine balance. 
Some people will dislike the dice rolling but I don’t, it all averages out and the last time we played it we laughed from start to finish of the game. In my book THAT’S a great game. Oh and the build quality especially the leather dice shaker (sorry vegans) is out of this world

Huzzah!
Vic 

It’s not so long ago I spoke about Survive! I’m back to talk about Survive! Space Attack which is pretty much the same thing with a different skin and a couple of extra rules and considerably more FUs
I don’t have a copy of Survive and maybe neither do you so this seemed the logical choice to go for. If you own survive already it’s not different enough to warrant a purchase IMHO. 
The new version is set in Space (the final front ear /tugs ear) onboard a disintegrating Space Station. You need to get your chaps off and into the four corners of the map for them to survive. 

The space station is made up of 30+ hexes that get removed one tile at a time by players each turn and unleash all sorts of nasties into the already fraught air space. 
The game comes nicely packaged with all the pieces bagged and tiles nicely seated in the box insert. The bits and bobs are solid and the artwork nice. It’s not quite as nice looking as survive but that’s a matter of opinion. Production values are good. The aliens are wooden meeples and don’t inspire horror but this is a family game (for evil families) and it’s more than sufficient for the gaming ahead of you. 

Each turn sees you moving your dudes towards safety, picking another hex of the space station to destroy, kicking off a mini event on the back of the hex you picked and taking temporary control of one of the marauding aliens to frustrate someone else’s plans. 
In this game is absolutely not enough that your dudes survive it’s key that everyone else’s don’t or at least sufficiently few of them that you beat them. To aid this aside from momentary control of some of the aliens at the end of your turn you also get tiles that allow you to juxtapose two dudes, fend off aliens, bring in escape pods and fighters. 
The new bits come in the form of laser turrets and zippy one seater fighters. These allow you to zoom around like the queen in chess and ram monsters or drawn a LOS and zap them. Once zapped they get taken off the board and placed in front of you to be laid down later in the most inconvenient locations for other players

This is a good solid fun game. The extras add to it but aren’t essential. It reminds me of the Tsuro of the sea versus Tsuro. It’s not a new game it’s more a version 1.1 with the .1 being more screw your opponent options which lets be honest is always a good thing
Huzzah!
Vic 

Being an evil overlord is a thankless job. More accurately it must be viewed as a vocation and certainly not one for the faint of heart. It requires dedication, single mindedness and a deep love of others misfortunes. You must be true to yourself and always false to your enemies. i.e. Everyone, maybe even yourself if the situation calls for it.
I grant you It’s not for everyone. If watching gallant heroes crawl over piss soaked broken glass to ALMOST make it doesn’t beep your jeep than maybe you need to look elsewhere for your jollys buddy. An app will never replace an evil overlord. Never. Never. Never. Enjoy the practice but when you want a real game. I’ll be waiting…. /manic laughter /thunder and lightning

Level 7 omega protocol Is a game that demands an evil mind to run it properly. A team of tooled up marines are trying to achieve some get to the end of the tech dungeon style mission. Along the way the evil overlord (whatever they’re called) is throwing stingers in front of them trying to slow and hopefully kill them. Lose enough guys and it’s game over.
If you’ve ever played any dungeon crawler ever you’ll be in familiar territory. It plays like any other but with more ranged and explosive weapons.

What’s different and interesting with this one is the adrenaline mechanic. Marines start with a certain amount of adrenaline (action points) they can spend each turn. So moving, firing, opening doors and so on takes points. The cool bit is, at the start of the next round you hand over all the action points you spent. So if you’ve really gone for it this round old evil dude really gets to party next round. It works extremely well. It also scales very well for more or less players.
The overlord has a set of evil options he can power with adrenaline. These vary from scenario to scenario with better monsters and more screw yous opening up as the scenarios progress. Each of the evil powers have a cool down period after they get used which prevents spamming of just one option.
Another neat feature is choosing a stance at the start of each round. So you might plant your feet and increase your defence and aim or go reckless advance and reduce aim and armour for speed. Choose carefully
Classes come in the form of leaders who buff other players. Medics. Heavy weapons guys (I liked him), demolition and recon dudes. Pre mission purchases allow you to trick out your boys with grenades, extra armour, medic packs and so on. Then it’s off to certain doom (if I’m the evil overlord)
Rules are clear and concise. Production quality is good but not exceptional. Some of the minis on the version I played were warped and they’re not the most exciting models in the world. The marines models are mostly feature few swat dudes and the aliens you face are a rum bunch of pretty dull, different sized greys with scuba gear.
Setup is pretty quick. Somewhere in between Heroquest and Mansions of Madness. I particularly like the overlord control panel that clips together all your tools of torture for that scenario into one big happy kit.
There’s theme in here and a back story too but it doesn’t matter. You’re here to do a job, chew gum and kick ass.
It’s a lot of fun to play. Games can suddenly go from easy to rock and making it to the end can be a challenge.

It’s a pricey game but it comes with a lot of models and a good selection of scenarios so you’ve quite a bit of to get through if you stick with it. Which let’s be honest you won’t… Come on did you finish any other dungeon crawl? No you did not. But have fun while you play this one. It’s good

Huzzah!

Vic

Most games give you some clue as what they’re about. Diplomacy, Civilization, Merchants and Marauders.  Small World not so much.