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.

13 Days. The Cuban missile crises is very like a cut down version of the mighty Twilight Struggle.  
Unless you couldn’t guess it, it’s based on the 13 days of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 where JFK and Krushev “oh yeah’d?” each other to the brink of nuclear war. You get to do the same with a chum. 
The game is VERY similar to Twilight Struggle but plays out in 45 mins or so. It happens over three rounds on nine locations with four moves per round. (As opposed to roughly 30 odd locations, 10 rounds and 7 turns) 

At the start of the round you draw three and choose one scoring agenda card. You mark the three locations of these so your opponent has a clue what you’re up to. You then draw five strategy cards and play them out twilight struggle style either kicking off the event or using the control score to dominate battlegrounds. Strategy cards are either neutral (UN), USSR or USA. use a card with your opponent’s flag on it and they get to trigger the event while you get the control points. 
You also squirrel away one card for the end game. When the dust settles you add all of the USA and USSR points allocated to this at the end and the highest gets a bonus couple of points. 

While this is happening you need to keep an eye on your position on the defcon track. While as a rule it’s better to be ahead of your opponent you don’t want to wind up in Defcon one and the have the whole world go Alderan and you remembered as the button pusher. Adding troops to a location raises your defcon level. Removing them reduces it so choose your battles carefully and more importantly con your opponent into committing force to the wrong places. 
There’s a shit ton (a scientific measure) of strategic options here. I like that there’s no dice. It’s not required. It’s all about out guessing your opponent. The game is fast. It demands replays and that’s exactly what I plan to do
Huzzah!
Vic 

You’ve NEVER played Risk? We recently found a player who hadn’t played it and like the plants from planet of the apes there has to be more.
Risk just like Diplomacy is as old school as it gets. A lot of players started on their gaming odyssey with this very game. Bless you Parker brothers.

The first thing that strikes you about Risk is how small the map is. We’ve become so used to big boards for our games and the need for some more real estate for our own game boards and bits and pieces. Not Risk! It will fit snugly on your granny’s fold out table with lots of space for cups of tea. You start with your counters on the map, gain a few more each turn and if you’re lucky gain a card each turn. That’s it.

The game is the quintessential map based conquest game. There are multiple variants, versions, themes and house rules but the classic base game sees you drawing a secret mission like “wipe out blue” or “conquer Asia and Africa” (good luck with that) and off you go dominating the world or at least the bits that matter to you. Bonus points for paranoia from never quite knowing what your opponents mission is until the final slap down. Interestingly I believe the expression “goddammit I would have won next turn” originated from Risk and has been popular ever since.
The map of the world is made up of around two dozen locations which you can solely occupy with your armies. The more locations you occupy the more reinforcements you gain at the start of your turn. On top of that you gain bonus armies for controlling whole regions. Owning all the territories in Australia gives you two bonus armies. Controlling North America five and so on. Don’t bother with Asia for its dizzying seven bonus armies. It’s wayyy too hard to hold. If you conquer at least one territory in your turn you get a cards. Cash in three and more lovely armies for you.
Combat is simple and dice based. As a general rule bring more armies to a fight and you’ll win but not always. There are many exaggerated stories of one army holding off a dozen with lucky rolls.
The game is quick or it can be. I’ve seen games over in half and hour. I’ve seen them run for two.
Alliances rise and fall, usually extinguished after the sentence “why are you sticking so many armies next to my border?”. It’s fun it’s quick it’s simple. It’s been around longer than Adam’s apple and there’s a very high chance you’ve played it to death. If you haven’t it’s definitely worth trying. Don’t go looking for the greatest game ever designed (that’s Diplomacy). Enjoy it and move on. It’s definitely worth your time
Huzzah!
Vic

Coup is a great filler game, unfortunately like a lot of good filler games you play too much of it and you tire of it. G64 is good but it never stuck with my group. Hoax from Fantasy Flight has possibilities at least for a while until like Ming the Merciless we tire of it and blast it into space

Hoax is pretty similar to Coup. Each player gets a role card (one this time) but can CLAIM they are anyone and use their ability. An ability might be to take stuff from opponents, claim certain tokens from the central pool and so on. The goal of the game is to correctly identify a player and knock them out (last player standing) or have someone accuse you of NOT being a claimed role and prove them wrong by proudly showing the card to them.

Unlike Coup there are now three resources, the always popular Cash, Evidence and Prestige. During your turn if you have a set of all three you can directly accuse a player of being a particular role and knock them out. Equally during your turn when a player claims to be a certain role you can shout “PULL THE OTHER ONE!” or something similar and everyone votes with thumbs up or thumbs down if they agree with your surmise.

This is a dangerous gamble because if they ARE the role they claim and everyone votes they’re not they automatically win the game. After your first few games of automatic wins you’ll lose your coup instincts and take a more slow route to victory. If someone isn’t who they claim to be they get a marker on their card showing them as not being that role and blocking them from using that ability again and narrowing down whom they could be

Getting a set of three tokens together allows you to do a fuzzy check of whom they are. The target draws three cards whom they aren’t and one whom they are and shows them to the questioning player so you can narrow down who they could be.

Rinse and repeat until you win. Hopefully.

Games last anything between a minute and ten. It’s good clean fun while it lasts and there is a real urge to play again. I can see this as a worthy successor to Coup if you’ve had enough of that.

Huzzah!

Vic

Remember playing dots when you were young? Welcome to Android Mainframe! It’s a light, fairly short area control game, playable by up to four, set in the android cyberpunk universe. 

A better analogy would be the old arcade game Qix If you remember it….. No? Ok doesn’t matter. It’s like that if you do. 

There’s a theme in here too but I can’t be bothered digging into it. Each hacker starts with eight control tokens, a hand of three special cards and eyeballing the other players across an empty (very nice click together) plastic grid. To score points player have to do the following, stick down their control points then surround them with little (Catan road like) blue sticks. To facilitate this players draw from a face up spread of four cards. Each card shows either a Tetris shape of blue sticks the player can place or a tricksie move sticks/move control point one. 

Once a player surrounds one of their control points it’s locked in place and cannot be changed. At the end the more space you control the more points you get. More so if you have multiple control points in it. 
It’s quite tactical. You can’t capture an area of someone else’s control point is in it with you so cutting people off, moving their guys, changing their almost complete zone, basically being a dick is all fair game. Obviously I like it 

To add a little variety each hacker starts with three unique one shot fairly powerful cards from a pool of six. The game rattles on for twenty minutes or so until all the cards run out the it’s count your points. 
Production wise it’s Fantasy Flight good. I really like the click together board with recesses for pieces. Art work is on par with the android card game. Pieces and cards are solid 
It’s a good filler game. As always I’ll have it at the next Knavecon. Well worth a look 

Huzzah!

Vic

Onwards to Venus is a fairly new game by his holiness Martin Wallace set in the Steampunk world of Doctor Grordbort. Five mustachioed nations set out to be the most points dominant amongst equals. The map consists of a half dozen planets or so each seeded each round with a number of random one use tokens. 
The game plays out over three rounds and sees players raising troops and traveling out to planets to claim tokens and execute their respective actions. These actions could be build a mine. Build a factory. Start a fight. Grab some cards. Up your score or selflessly fight an uprising. 

Building stuff increases your income and having the most presence on planets gains you victory points. It’s standard enough stuff but where it gets interesting is the uprisings. Planets don’t like your type around here and as time progresses are more likely to rebel and wipe out your great works and everyone else’s there. Going against your lifelong principles you may find yourself quelling these and helping others by helping yourself or more comfortably sitting back and letter someone else do the dirty work and gaining the benefits. Quelling uprisings is key and a real gamble. It’s a sweet mechanic. (There’s also a third option of ignoring them and having everyone on the planet burn with you when the moon men (or whomever) rise up)
Theme is strong here. It’s all daring do. Steam powered contraptions and outlandish WW1 styling, larger than life heroes and death rays. I love the vibe. Games are close run with plenty of cock blockery and the occasional rumble. It whizzes along at a jolly old pace and it scales well with more players (max 5)

There’s going to be a few copies floating abut at Knavecon 8 (Sept 17). It’s good clean jolly old fun. Perfect for ladies and gentlemen of good standing
Huzzah what what!
Vic 

I got to play Across the Rhine recently at the UK Expo. It’s a game I had a vague knowledge of and having seen it as I approached the table demo I knew I was going to like it. It was a treat to have the rules explained by the developers and to meet the designer.  Phalanx are a cool games company from Poland with some really high end offerings. I can see myself trying a few more of their games in the future (obviously not in the past)

The game is a little different and strongly thematic. It’s set during the wind down of the War in 1944 and sees three allied powers racing to be the first to cross the Rhine and claim glory for the final capitulation of Germany.

The game is not so much about fighting (although this is part of it) as getting the logistics in place to keep the thrust rolling. Each turn sees you firstly trying to supply your fighting corps and keep them pushing forward and then to swap hats and take control of the German forces and direct them to slow the other two allies down.  It’s a clever mechanic, everyone’s a good guy, everyone’s a bad guy.

The map shows the west of Europe from the coast of France to just across the Rhine in Germany. Each player starts with a supply base in the west (at the bottom of the map) where war materiel in the shape of ammo, food and gas is landed and a network of roads and villages/towns where army Corps can move to and supply must flow.

Each turn a player can take two actions such as

Send out supply on a line of trucks to a location. Move a Corp or land more supplies at the staging area. Each of the commanders in charge of the three allies have some special abilities, Montgomery is good with supplies and grants a bonus, Bard has access to more air support.  Patton can give an extra push to troops

As corps move along through the various villages they spend ammo to defeat the Germany defenders, fuel to move and as each pulse of new supplies arrive food to feed the men. Not having enough of these will slow or stop the corps advance. Likewise each village/town entered has it’s own surprises. it might contain resistance fighters that assist the allies, supply dumps or starving villagers who you can give some of your supplies to for extra points. Taking certain key points and carrying out certain actions gives the players medals which in the all too possible case that no-one gets across the Rhine are then used to determine the winner. Equally first across the Rhine is the winner straight off and medals don’t count.

The map after a little while starts to look like the title sequence of Dad’s Army in reverse and areas liberated by a player become marked with their respective flags and cannot be entered by the other two allies, so fast pushes forward can block other players and force them to take a longer route to victory. Equally undefended areas can be taken back by the Germans and it’s possible to cut and immobilise corps who can’t trace a supply route back to their base.

The game is a little like Quartermaster General but on a smaller and more complex scale. Although allies never obviously attack each other they can make it difficult for each other in a surprisingly large number of ways. Blocking paths, hogging resources and supply trucks and moving Axis units into annoying locations. The way it plays is refreshing, there are opportunities to co-operate (well maybe in other less bitter gaming groups) and opportunities to backstab and welsh on deals.

It’s very much a unique game but I can see elements of Rome v Cartage (something Phallanx are releasing a new version of), Powergrid, Twilight Struggle and a number of other great games in here.

Production qualities are great, lovely artwork, solid pieces, clear and consise rules. I’m impressed and will do another write up on it after several games have been played.

Until then, last one across the Rhine is a rotten egg!

Huzzah!

Vic