Act Natural

A buddy of mine* told me about Spyfall. It sounded right up my street A traitor, filler, party game.

Ok it’s not Really a traitor game as such but it’s not far off. Each player gets handed a card from thirty possible stacks all carefully laid out so one player is always the spy.

Each mini stack corresponds to a particular Location. It might be a Starship. A Beach. A School. A Hotel and so on. Additionally each card gives a role so if the randomly selected stack was a pirate ship the roles might be captain, first mate, gunner and of course the spy…

Now here’s the rub. No one knows what the other person’s role is and the spy knows bugger all. The hapless spy doesn’t know the location that’s been picked so they’re up against it from the off.

A round shakes out like this. One random first player picks another player and asks them an insightful question to try and figure out if they’re the spy or a loyal comrade. They need to ask a question in such a way as to figure out if their target knows the location or if they’re clueless. All the player have cards in front of them with a full list of all the locations so if they don’t make it obvious they might figure it out.

Here’s an example

Player 1 : (Not a spy, Location : The Artic) : “SOoooo…. Are you going to shave the beard off or leave it?”

Player 2 : (Spy, Thinking it might be a pirate ship they’re on) : “Well I’m going to leave until this adventure is over….”

The asked player now gets to ask a question.

Player 2 : (Spy) “So…. what the hell did we drink last night?”

and so on. At any stage a player can go. HE/SHE’s the spy! and a unanimous vote sees everyone reveal their cards. Get it right the players get a point each get it wrong the spy scores four. The same can happen where the spy says, I’m the spy and I KNOW WHERE WE ARE! If they get it right they score points otherwise everyone else does

The game resets and a new location is picked and it happens again. For several round.

It’s actually quite good. Not what I thought it would be. It’s very hard to be a spy especially in a small group and I reckon you need a minimum of six to make this work but it’s so quick and so repayable you want to go again and again

We played a dozen games last night and we had to stop ourselves playing and go home (well not me I was home).

Like a lot of games I love, it’s just so simple. Truth be told it’s so simple I dispensed with the cards and wrote a quick application to do the role picking which just goes to show how lazy we are.

This will be front and centre at the next Knavecon and I highly recommend you try it out

Huzzah!

Vic

July 31, 2015 1

Spy v Spy

Ever watch a football final where it comes down to Penalties? It’s not so much about the ones that go in, it’s about the ones that are missed. I felt the same about Codenames which I got to see played out a number of times at KnaveKids last weekend with a variety of players. Missing a clue was fatal.

The games is a pretty straight forward party game with a nice theme. It was played at the con with a variety of younger and older gamers so it got a really good workout.

The game is played out on a randomly selected grid of 5×5 cards with single words on each. The Teams each elect one of their own as a spy master and they both stand at the opposite ends of the table and view a randomly picked card showing which words on the grid relate to the Blue Team and which related to the Red Team.

The first player to start has to get their team to reveal 9, the second 8.

The spymaster looks at the grid and calls out a word that related to one or more of the words on the cards they want their team to pick. So for example they might say “Transport” and hope their team are clever enough to pick “Car” and “Road” on the grid.

The spymasters can only use one word clues and use none of the words on the grid. If the team of guessers picks one of the agents correctly they get another go or can pass and it hops back and forth like so until the requisite amount are uncovered or the assasin is uncovered which ends the round early.

it’s simple fun, there’s a large variety of double sided cards so you’re unlikely to play the same list twice. I liked it. It was quick and simple and perfect for the age group at the convention.

If you’re looking for a simple team game that anyone can play with a nice theme, you won’t go far wrong with this

Huzzah!

as we Spymasters often say

Vic

July 24, 2015 0

Let it rain

July 18, 2015 0

Higher! no Lower!

Do you remember doing coding in school? Maybe you remember doing a search where you halved a value each time until you got to the number you wanted, a simple index if you will. You don’t oh? ok. Well you learnt something new. This game is like that

Agent Hunter is a cheap and cheerful two player game. Each player has a set of ten cards numbered 0-9 in blue or red each with some nice cartoon artwork of raging agents, doing all agent stuff, like wearing a vest and blazing away with machine guns. As agents do.

Each player at the start puts three cards of their choice face down (called safe houses) and then take it in turns to try and guess which agents are face down on the opponents side. They do this by revealing a card from their hand and pointing at one safe house and asking if it’s a match. If it is the inquiring player takes the enemy card (after a suitable expletive) and places yours on top of it on your side of the board and scoring a point at the end.

If it’s not the inquired of player (like a bad Bruce Forsyth impression) says the agent at home is either higher or lower. Thus it continues until one side loses all three agents.

To make it a little bit more complex if the other side is getting close e.g. it’s lower than 1 the defender can stick down a decoy token (of which they have five) and swap out agents in the safe house. These tokens are worth points at the end.

So it’s a guessing game, a push your luck game and a deception game. it’s quick and portable and you’ll be bored with it after a dozen or so games, however you may return to it after a break as it’s quick and portable.

I picked Agent Hunter up at Brocon for the princely sum of €6 from Black Kat games. I’ve played enough games of it now to bring the cost of each game to below 60c so not bad value.

There are plenty of two player card games out there. This isn’t bad, it’s certainly worth the cost. If you were a real miser you could do it with ordinary cards but that’s none of my business

Nice 2 player, quick and cheap

Huzzah!

Vic

July 16, 2015 0

The KnaveKids Promise

Knavekids is kicking off on next Sunday, the 19th July for the first time in what I hope will be a regular shadow convention to the regular Knavecon.

After the last Knavecon’s success with the kids corner we’re going to hold a family friendly event aimed at families and children who want take part in something that’s a win win for everyone involved

Boardgames are something that the whole family can enjoy, they’ve come a long way from Monopoly and Snakes and Ladders. The benefits are too numerous to list here.

Wether you’re a veteran gamer or someone who wandered into the event thinking it was a wedding and didn’t leave, you’re going to have a good time, your kids are going to have a good time. I promise you

Come join us

https://www.facebook.com/events/374676559384600/

Huzzah!

Vic

July 14, 2015 0

Aimin to Misbehave

I like Firefly. I’m sorry it was cancelled. It’s a great series. Granted I wasn’t sure about it at first but it grew on me very quickly and like pretty much everyone in the verse I knew it to be a classic.

Gale Force Nine make good games. The other thing Gale Force Nine makes is good expansions. Firefly is a big solid game that captures some of the spirit of the TV series. You tool up your ship with crew and gear and blast around the map completing missions whilst avoiding the Alliance and the Reavers.

The problem with the base game is like a good trailer for a bad movie that’s all you get. You zip around completing missions. The fact that other players are having this experience along side you is neither here nor there. Apart from maybe moving the reavers or Feds like mobile speedbumps you don’t really interact with other players. In fact (and you might consider this a plus) you don’t even have to make eye contact with the other players.

This is not by any means a bad game. It’s solid. Its thematic, It’s fun but for me the lack of interaction leaves me cold. From various sources I’ve heard you really need the Pirates and Bounty Hunters expansion before it becomes interactive but for me an expansion shouldn’t be essential.

I’m going to play it again and I hope I’m missing something. For a game this big (and boy does it take up a lot of space) it’s missing in its base form the most important element of any game. The ability to point at your gaming buddies and shout “Ha!” as you get one up on them.

Let’s try it again before I pass judgement

Huzzah!

Vic

July 14, 2015 2

I’m New York

If you read the bgg forum on this game you’ll see a post for a “less nasty version of the game”… So it’s extra nasty as standard… Quick. Swear me in

Tammny hall sees up to fiver players battling it out for the most prestige in the 1800s in a gangs of New York setting. More accurately it’s an area control game not a million miles from el grande but no bad thing for that.

The rules cleverly unfurl as the game progresses. You start with pretty basic options and a third of the board available. As it progresses more of the board opens up GTA style and a few additional rules are introduced. It’s a lovely, gently way of learning the game. Don’t let that fool you. This IS a nasty and unforgiving game. Twice I’ve played and twice I’ve been hammered soundly.

The game is played out over sixteen swift rounds with elections at the end of every four. The elections double as scoring rounds.

Each turn you get to place two ward bosses to gain control of wards or place one and move in one immigrant buddy who will later owe you a favor. These favor tokens are spent at election time in secret bids to gain control of wards. Win enough wards and you become mayor.

Congratulations your problems are just beginning and you’re the author of them.

After an election having the most amount of immigrants under your sway will grant you additional favor tokens. These are all critical as the game progresses

Once the first election is done the hapless mayor (having received a few bonus points) has to elect the other players as his officials and then settles in with no powers whatsoever for four more years of treachery.

The other officials now have different powers depending on their role to move around immigrants or remove them. Lock up areas of the map and gain bonus favor. The mayor gets nothing after the 3 point golden handshake for winning the election.

After each election more of the city opens up for you to win hearts and minds and the option of slander becomes available whereby you can eject rival opponent ward bosses from shared and adjoining areas.

I really like this game. It’s surprisingly fast. It’s surprisingly simple but it packs a heavyweight punch. There’s elements of several games here not least of which is twilight struggle with a the whole expanding map and sector control

So I’ve gotten to play with three and four players but I reckon five is where it’s at.

I’d been told it was good and the teller didn’t lie. This is a great little game. Far better than others in its genre. Even though it’s out of print it’s worth having a look for. It will definitely be front and centre at the next knavecon

Huzzah!

Vic

July 13, 2015 0

War is Heck

Quartermaster General appeared on my radar relatively recently and due to the combination of A) selling all my x-wing stuff at the last Knavecon and B) a lot of favorable reviews and C). A hole burning in my pocket. I invested

Let me start by saying this is a cracker of a game. It’s World War 2 in an hour plus. It’s conquest and its card driven. I’m all in

Quartermaster general is a team game. In one corner we have Russia, USA and Britain In the other corner we have Japan, Germany and Italy. Each of theses have decks of varying size, Each of these have specific personalities. Russia has a big deck of cards. It’s a slow solid beast. It’s not going to run out of resources. Italy is flighty, lots of attacks but no staying powers. USA is slow to start but powerful and so on. Just as you’d expect these nations would have behaved and as far as I can see all nicely balanced.

During your turn (of which there’s twenty) you play a card. That’s it. That’s your turn. You play a card and you take the action on it. Then you score your occupied supply centres.

You discard as many as you like and redraw back to seven. Run out of cards however due to zealous discarding and the war is over for you. In that respect its a little like small world your nation may continue to score points for what it’s conquered but it’s a very small matter of time that a more agile nation will overrun your prone position

The cards themselves come in a variety of flavors all of which are fool proof. Build an army, build a navy, attack, place an effect card, place a reaction card face down and that’s pretty much it

There’s a simplified world map with around twenty plus spots on it. (Have a look at the pic). Here’s where all the action plays out. Again it’s simple, each spot can hold one army (allies can share). The army unit numbers are small. Italy can field three of four armies and the same in navies. Germany can field a whopping seven armies. This is not Risk, it’s a lot more like Imperial (this time you DO own the nations)

Battles are simple affairs. You remove an adjacent army or navy. Actually everything is simple, once you’ve read the short rule book everything else you need is written on the cards you play.

So how does it play? Like a dream. This is a tasty game. It’s suitably different, thematic, fast, tactical and a joy to play. We fought the good fight in two hours or so. Mistakes were made the 1000 year reich lasted a mere two hours so a bit of over estimation right there. I really liked the sound of this game when I’d heard about it and I really liked it in action. I can see this hitting the table a lot over the next OH LOOK A NEW GAME! No seriously I can see this being played a nice bit over the next few months. It’s a cracker. I can also see their game system being used for any number of conflicts.

One final observation, Counter intuitively this game plays faster the more players you add. I’m not aware of ANY other games with this unique attribute.

More of this sort of thing

Huzzah

Vic

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July 6, 2015 2

It’ll be the death of em

I got to play Village last night. It’s one of those games that you’ve probably seen in every games shop and its at the “not a bad price but, is it any good” price range.

I played Blood Royale at Knavecon some years back and LOVED the family generations mechanic. The game lasted over several generations and your heirs took over the reins of power and so on. Village features something similar, simpler but no less fun

If you’re a worker placement fan you’ll be in worker hog heaven. It’s classic stuff with a few twists that make it very enjoyable.

You start the game with your own shiny farm and a family of four (first generation) on the outskirts of the eponymous village. Your four meeples can stay down on the farm and help with the harvest, go to the village and specialise in certain skills/buildings getting you an extra bite of the cherry from the actions available there or go travel the world and return trinkets and more importantly score

The village has a number of spots with a limited few colored resource cubes on them which you can pull to operate that particular building. The buildings allow you to buy economic motors like oxen, wagons, horses and scrolls. Other buildings allow you to enter some of your meeples into the church (scoring), politics (turn order), kick off a market (allow you to flog resources for points) and so on. There’s a good half dozen plus

Resources can be used for a few things like sending one of your meeples off to travel the world and bringing back resources and points. Used for getting ahead in politics and the church hierarchy and paying for some of the actions in the buildings.

So far this is all run of the mill (pardon the pun) stuff, but what makes it very interesting is the time resource

Each of your meeples starts with a big one on them (first generation). Marriage allows you to add new meeples to your pack (second gen) however on the flip side some actions or pushing the envelope uses up time and every ten or so time used will see one of your oldest generation kick the bucket and be interred (if there’s room) in the book of remembrance (scored at end of the game).

It’s a stupendous mechanic, lifting just another worker placement into something way more interesting. You find yourself agonizing over taking a good move but loosing one your older meeples in return. Like all good games it’s a case of making the best worst choices or at least hoping you have.

This game reminds me a bit of Constonapolis. There’s a lot of bang here for your buck and despite being tired from playing other games I found myself getting more and more into this game as it progressed. This is a fine fine game.

If I could find fault, I found it hard to figure out where everyone was score wise mid game. You can get an idea but no more. When the game was over there was a considerable difference in scores. In my case I sat watching the others zoom way ahead of me on the scoring track. I was ok with that. I had a lot of fun with this game and I’m eager to play it again

Nice game. Well worth a look

Huzzah

Vic

June 28, 2015 1

Bad year el Presdente ?

Junta is an old game. It’s also a classic and one of those rare games that seats seven comfortably. Truth be told it works best with the full heptagonic compliment and given the right group it’s a lot of fun

I have the old west end games version and the build quality wouldn’t make a huffing big bad wolf break a sweat. That said this isn’t a game that will come out all that often so it’s adequate. It’s also a game that can and quite often does given a vengeful group (the people I usually play with) drag on for some time. That’s fine you can adjust the wick of it easily by reducing the starting cash.

Junta is something akin to those celebrity multi bird Xmas dinners. It’s a simple please everyone round with the more than possible threat of a time sucking rebellion phase lurking just beneath the surface.

Each turn the elected el presedente draws a random face down budget from the card stack. They then announce the budget to the ministers (whom he put in office), “minister for secret police gets three million, the Air Force gets two, navy none” and so on

The ministers use a combination of face up political support cards and cards in hand to either vote it in or force a recount or possible coup. It’s sweaty stuff. You find yourself trying to please everyone or at least enough to stay in office so you can feather your nest.

If it passes ministers hide theirs stash and if possible try and make it to the bank to lodge it in their Swiss bank account. The others can hire assassins, thieves or some other threat to try and waylay them. At the end of the game whomever has the most tucked away in Switzerland wins

You’d think the president would be the best hope to win but between keeping others sweet and the very real threat of coup it’s often not the case.

Coups occur when the ministers have had enough of this corrupt government and want to elect their own better paying corrupt government and therein kicks off the second game, The coup bit which sees ministers rally their loyal forces to either defend the president’s will or try and oust him.

Like a lot of games I like the majority of the skill comes down to negotiations, lying, bribery, coercion and good old fashion back stabbery.
It’s not a difficult game to learn. It’s definitely a fun game and it’s one of those classic games you should really try and play. I recommend the game. I’ll have it at the next knavecon and probably knavekids so you can try it for yourself

Huzzah

Vic !

June 26, 2015 0