Quartermaster General is a little bit different. It’s a card driven conquest game that ditches the classic model of moving dudes around a map and replaces it with a simpler one where you build a chain of units across the map to claim territories. The sizzle here is if any unit cannot trace an uninterrupted path back to a friendly city at the end of your turn you lose them. Cut a snake in two and the head dies. So does she tail but you get the idea.

The game is simplicity itself. You have a hand of seven cards and when it’s your turn you play an action card. An action card might muster a unit (naval or land). Attack someone next to one of your dudes. Trigger some event. Prepare a card to be used later or put in place a long lasting benefit to you.

But wait I’m jumping the gun (not that there’s any guns) the game in question is the third iteration of the series. Death or Glory is set in the ancient world around the Mediterranean and sees the Athenians and the Delian League (the Demos) going toe to toe with the Oligarchs of Sparta and Corinth. It’s the Peloponnesian War baby and players have a vague idea whom people are. Well the Spartans at any rate. It’s not as obvious as WW2 how teams will operate but it won’t take long to figure them out.

The map although not exactly smaller than the ww2 one is more focused. The Spartan and Athenian’s capitals are the equivalent of London and Berlin and a lot of action revolves around these two not so far from each other cities.

I may have been economic with the truth when I said you only play one card per turn. You can also play a facedown prepare card that can be revealed in a future turn. You have to discard a card to do this and the rub is you have a limited amount of non recycling cards in your deck. There’s fifteen turns to get through and some players have smaller decks than others. It’s all too easy to overstretch and run out of cards after which you can do NOTHING except lose a point per turn for your team you no card eejit.

There’s a variety of one shot cards that force opponents to discard cards and ones that grant you a muster of troops on some distant spot. Knowing the deck would help but interestingly everyone can see the distribution of cards for each player on a helpful player card. Studying it you can see the Spartans have very few muster ship cards but a stack of land attacks and so on.

A new feature and one that suits the setting is bribing the locals to supply your troops. During your turn you can burn one of your precious cards from your draw deck to buy a coin which can be used at any time to keep a unit in supply should they be out of reach of friendly vittles.

One of the things I really like about this series is despite being team v team it’s not 1v1 with team bolted on like so many other games. You really feel you are your own nation despite being part of a team.

Games are fun. Once the turn is figured it’s quite quick. The map and cards are fine, not inspired an the jelly baby like units are sufficient. It feels a little cheap but not Terraforming Mars cheap.

Although the game is pretty simple there’s a bit of learning to be had in the cards themselves and how each nation plays out. If you haven’t played quartermaster general WW2 and only have 4 players this is well worth a look. Likewise if you’ve played too much WW2 and need a fresh start. I’m curious now as to how the WW1 version plays. Time to investigate.

Huzzah!

Vic

I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about Formula D before. Formula D is a newer version of The old warhorse Foruma De with a different set of starters tracks and a few extra advanced rules.

Formula D is as old as Adams foreskin but it’s holds up well (unlike). I first played it a good twenty years back and enjoyed it then. It’s a good one to have when you have seven to ten players and want to keep the gaming group together. There’s not that much outside of card games to keep that sort of cohesion.

If you haven’t guessed it’s a racing game and it’s aimed purely at fun although you can get some serious serious advanced rules online if you’re hardcore. Speaking of which the games comes with simple basic rules and fully leaded advanced rules. It’s worth going the whole hog.

The game is deceptively simple, it revolves around six dice which represent the gear your car is currently in. You start out in first gear with a D4 and each turn you can up a gear to bigger and faster dice. You move a distance equal to the roll of the dice/gear you’re currently in. The catch is dice aren’t standard sized and have a range. So 1st gear goes from 1 – 2 only. Second 2-4 up to mighty sixth gear that goes from 20 – 30.

The map consists of a track with three lanes and lots of squares for you to move along and of course the all important corners. Corners are what get you. Corners consist of a number of spots that in order to safely negotiate you have to stop in at least once. (Some nasty ones more than once). Fail to stop in a corner and you spin out dropping down to first gear and have to suffer the ignominy of everyone passing you by and some particularly horrible players making musical car horn sounds as they whizz past.

To assist you in your endeavor your car comes equipped with a limited amount of points to tweak the dice rolls. Brake points allow you to reduce the dice result. Tyres points to overshoot the corner a bit. You can also drop multiple gears to get your engine to brake with you but it burns valuable engine points and gear points and can lead to your car blowing it’s engine or gearbox. Everyone else is doing the same boat as you, pushing their car and pushing their luck which categorizes the game nicely

The game comes with two tracks, simple and advanced rules and room for up to ten. It’s nicely produced with keen little pieces and easy to follow instructions.

It’s a fun game. Definitely not too serious and luck does play a part but you usually lose because your ego was writing cheques your dice rolling couldn’t cash. Depending on numbers the game could rattle on for 1 to 2 hours but there’s little down time and games are always close. The feel of being ahead and others snapping at your heels is very well realized.

This game will appeal to new players as well as vets. (Not that type of vet). It’s got a certain somewhat. It’s not the greatest race game. Not the most accurate simulation but it’s definitely worth trying out. Tell you what I’ll demo it at Knavecon 11 better still I’ll pick up some more tracks for it.

Huzzah!

Vic

Ok knaves, the first league despite being a bit of an experiment was a huge success.  There’s a demand for a second one.  This time we’re going to make it very simple.  Players will play everyone else in the league three times and score 1 point for a win.  That’s it……

Now recruiting new players, noob players more than welcome

Who’s game?

Vic

All hail BDQ the winner of the first (and probably last) Star Realms League. A close run thing, but I think we can all agree Leon didn’t win.  clearly.

Huzzah!

BDQ	54
FriendlyFire	52
MurphyFella	51
YankinLK	50
Layana	49
SendMoreCops	47
rzaba	43
DreadPirateJ	40
HarryPigg	38
DogPawHat	37
Alatar	34
MrTimewalk	29

Competition is Fierce on the Star Realms League, 22 games in total and some players since Monday morning have done extremely well, extremely quickly.  Here’s the current standings.  Something to note is the % score at the right, despite being lower in score Friendly Fire has two games in hand and even two losses will bring him up to 41 when he plays his next two games.  Likewise Layana.  The dark horse here has to be MurphyFella who I reckon might come from behind to make it a real match.

YankinLK	42	17	2.47%
FriendlyFire	39	15	2.60%
Layana	38	15	2.53%
rzaba	31	14	2.21%
DogPawHat	25	17	1.47%
SendMoreCops	22	11	2.00%
BDQ	20	9	2.22%
Alatar	12	10	1.20%
HarryPigg	11	7	1.57%
MurphyFella	8	3	2.67%
MrTimewalk	4	3	1.33%
DreadPirateJ	2	2	1.00%

Star Realms League has started with a Bang!  The sheets are being updated at a furious rate as games are being played.  The current standings are, but take these as guidelines there’s quite a few updates and matches in progress and a hell of a lot more matches to play.

1	YankinLK	27
2	DogPawHat	12
3	rzaba	12
4	FriendlyFire	19
5	MurphyFella	8
6	BDQ	5
7	Layana	5
8	HarryPigg	4
9	MrTimewalk	4
10	Alatar	2
11	DreadPirateJ	0
12	SendMoreCops	4

Dominion was a bolt out of the blue, like space Invaders heralding a new genre of games. It was new. It was different and it was cloned to death. We had some good games in a similar vein like Ascension and Star Realms and some not so good like Thunderstone.

Now I need to qualify this I’ve only played the first edition of Thunderstone and there’s been multiple editions and versions since then so it has to have improved and people have to be liking and buying it.

Valeria Card Kingdoms is similar to Thunderstone. Each player is a hero wrangler recruiting warriors, mages and various brawlers, killing big scary monsters, taking over lands and castles and generally having a good old fantasy time but more accurately accumulating score.

Players start with a basic set of cards just like Star Realms and sink their money into bettering their economy and upping their offensive. The board is made up of a grid of cards that can be bought for gold, power and wildcard mana. At the top are a number of stacks of progressively tougher monsters which require a minimum level of power and possibly magic to kill. Below the board are a set of lands, castles and various yokes that you can buy to score points and boost one of your incomes.

Unlike say Star Realms all your cards are laid out in front of you and everyone can see them. Each of the cards you have show a number at the top between 2 and 12. On the turn you roll two dice and either combined or singly or both the cards with the matching numbers pay out. Everyone else gets a minor payout if they have matching numbers on their cards so every turns sees an impressive amount of resources building up. You’ll need it. It’s Dublin prices for everything.

Cards are usually multi-function and building up chains are key to winning. This card gives me mana each turn. This one doubles mana and coverts it to gold etc. keep your eyes open for combos or you’ll be left behind. It’s not a difficult game and most things are obvious but you’ll kick yourself if someone else pulls a move you could have been doing for the last six turns.

There is the normal amount of cock blockery and some in your face cards for stealing resources but it’s primarily a race

The game rattles on until a set number of stacks are exhausted (or the players) and it’s count your cards, cry me a river.

The game is a decent length. Under an hour and dependent on numbers. It scales well. The artwork is excellent. The pieces nice and sold and the card stock good. It takes as much board space as any good game but if can become a messy affair. Don’t gesticulate wildly around this game and get a wee box to hold your resources

It’s a good game. I’d never played anything in the Valeria series but I found it solid and fun and well worth a look. That’s if. That’s all I have to say. Now go. Get gaming

Huzzah!

Vic

Some people can inhale a set of rules and run a game. Some can’t. I find someone running through a game with you the only way to fly. Thus is was I found myself back in the jungles of Vietnam at Knavecon X with Charlie all around. Now It would have been super cool if one of the players WAS actually called Charlie but you can’t have everything.

It’s a long time since I spoke about Fire in the Lake. It’s a big meaty GMT game not a million miles away from a distant plain.

This is not a slap out and play game. You need a hearty committed group of veterans who are willing to research the rules, do the exams and get the diplomas before you crack open the box. I spent a long time reading the rules, watching the videos, rereading the rules and absorbing everything I could download on how to play even then I had a basic understanding of how it worked but I was nowhere close to having a strategy for the faction I picked (or any faction). This is a desert island game and when they rescue you you’d still only be getting the hang of it.

Fire in the lake has four different factions. Each of them play in a different way, indeed each of them have actions different to all the others. They also have different goals to everyone else.

The Americans have mobility, firepower and resources but struggle to find their opposite number the Viet Cong. Their goal is to win popular support from the Vietnamese and get their troops out of the country. Their allies and it’s a loose term are the South Vietnamese army who want to use them to do their dirty work whilst the Americans in turn shake them down for their resources.

The Vietcong are guerrilla fighters. They hide, sneak and disrupt with acts of terror and subversion. They have a loose alliance with the North Vietnamese Army who occasionally poach some of their members into their ranks. Their goal is to stir active opposition to the Americans and establish bases.

The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) are all about prestige and patronage, they welcome the military might of the Americans and want them to help clean up their mess but are corrupt and weak.

The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) want to dominate the map. Pure conquest.

Ever do that thing with a cardboard box where you fold one flap under the other then the other under it and you do it four times to it all holds together magically? These asynchronous factions balance each other so well. Now I couldn’t tell you if they balance completely. They can’t by their very nature but any of them are most certainly a challenge to play and all of them so different in their styles. There is infinite replay value here

The game turn is a card driven affair and just like Twilight Struggle you can either take the action written on the card or ignore the card to take a specific action. Card events have a positive communist and a positive Allies Effect. Usually they’re skewed in favor of one side but there’s always some silver lining in there. Heavy bombing campaign? Wipes out enemies of you’re the allies. Turns the people against them if you’re the communists playing it.

Play happens in between drawing monsoon cards that reduce possible actions (flying, moving) and allow for certain events to happen and positions and scores to be consolidated. Minions are seeded semi randomly in the event deck. It’s a bit like a boxing match but you don’t know how long a round is going to last.

Just like Twilight Struggle some actions require a dice roll to happen but again like TS it’s always a calculated risk and there’s often a sure fire event or action open to you. Sure the game can be impacted by a random card appearing but it’s not a show stopper ever. It’s your own fault when it all goes wrong and it will for 3 of the 4 players.

Specific actions vary depending on the faction you have so the Yanks would

Have things like sweeps, air strikes and air lifts. The VC would have terror attacks and ambushes, the NVA would have bombardments and infiltration and so on. Obviously I’m only scratching the surface here. Each has a major and minor event so you could combo sweeping an area to uncover guerrilla fighters and then follow up with air strikes on their positions.

The game comes with three lengths of scenario which have to be populated on the map short, medium and long. The short with everything in place you could get done in two hours. Maybe less. I really liked this idea. There is a bit of setup before the game kicks off. Not quite War of the Ring but a bit. It didn’t help that I didn’t know any of the province or city names.

Presentation wise it’s no looker. It’s cubes on a map and despite the lovely graphics on the map and cards it won’t appeal to the foppish mini painting crowd. The game has to be played and learned to get the most from it. It’s not the graphics it’s the gameplay.

The setting and theme are excellent. This is a nasty, messy conflict. Also a really fun and intense one. It’s hard to know what to do a lot of the time. So many options are open to you, especially for some of the factions. It’s often hard to see things coming down the line although a massive build up of troops outside a city is a fair bet. This game will require multiple plays to make sense of but it’s so worth it. This is not a Thur night game this is a campaign of learning with dedicated players but, it gives and gives if you’re willing to invest time in it. I personally was and am

I love this game. It’s got so much to offer in both gameplay and depth. If this is your thing it’s another one of those cold dead hands games. It’s got pride of place right beside Twilight Struggle and I will sing it’s praises if you press play on my opinion.

Super game great to play it again

Huzzah!

Vic

OK now that Knavecon 10 is over it’s time we settled in for some good background gaming.  Myself and a certain infamous Cork man have been playing Star Realms on the phone against each other for over a year, probably two or three.  Let’s get a league going!

If you’re not familiar with the game Star Realms, it’s a two player card game of ship combat.  It’s really good, there’s been several expansions, all of them good.  It’s been available as an android, PC and IOS. Everyone who already plays or wants to start give me an  “I’M IN!” comment and we get a round robin league going.  I’m looking for maybe 8+ players to make it interesting.

Rules are as follows

1. Players will be assigned a Veteran number from 2 (complete noob) up to 4 (infamous) by well, me
2. When you play it’s 1 for a loss and your opponents veterancy number for a win, so if you beat a good player you get more points
3. You play everyone else ONCE and submit your score, play as many test games as you like but agree on THE match that counts and see it to the end
4. I’ll keep an eye on who isn’t playing and adjust the league accordingly

So…. Who’s IN ?

Vic

A big thank you to Ugo and the guys from Dublin for inviting me to their games night on Wed when I was overnighting up there. A crackin setup for gaming and some sweet games. Well apart from the last filler which quickly got categorized as a kids game. Now a big Valeria fan. Great game review to follow.

Huzzah!

Vic