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City of Remnants is a game about various humanoid races from around the galaxy whose planets have been conquered by a powerful race called the Yugai. The conquered races are gathered onto refugee planets where they inevitably form gangs in order to survive their harsh conditions.
City of Remnants plays from 2 to 4 players, where each player chooses one of four gangs to play as. Each gang consists of 10 basic cards that are specific to that gang, including a gang leader, some gang members and some ability cards. The gangs are asymmetrical, so each will play differently and require different play styles.

The Human gang (yellow cards) are able to recruit more gang members easier than other gangs and also can cycle through their deck faster.

The Nei’su gang (blue cards) allow players to get black market cards and developments easier.

The Lentree gang (green cards) allow you got get money easier.

The Iggaret gang (red cards) are mobile and the most aggressive fighters.

The game is played in over several rounds, with each round consisting of several phases. Players start out each round by having the option to reset their hand of cards. Then each player will take 1 turn each until each player has taken all 4 of their turns for that round. After the player turns have been taken, you have to determine where the Yuguai patrol tokens will be placed on the board and see if anyone has to fight or bribe them. Finally, renown is awarded to players who have their gang figures on certain spaces of the board, or from developments tiles that they control. That is a round and then starts over. The game is played until 200 renown have been collected by the players and there is no more to be collected. Renown is basically victory points received for doing or accomplishing various things during the game.

Player Turns:

Each time a player takes one of their allotted 4 turns, they can do one of several actions.

They can take a Recruit action in order to gain other gang members. This is done with an auction mechanic.

They can take a Buy action to purchase black market cards to help them in various ways, such as in battle or for gaining money or renown.

Take a produce/develop action to be able to have a development they control produce possible resources, and they also can buy new developments. Developments are buildings that can be factories, drug producing buildings, casinos or protection facilities. They are generally illicit places that you can develop in order to produce things or provide services in order to gain you money and they also provide renown as well.

Players can take a Sell action in order to sell goods produced by their developments.

They can take a Refresh action in order to get rid of cards they don’t like in their hand and get some new ones, but you can only get up to the number of cards equal to your Influence level, which starts out at 4, but can be moved up to 7 through various means.

Finally, players can take a Move action. Players will have plastic minis in their color that represent their gang members. They start out with 7 of them on their player mat and can use Move actions to move them onto the board and into their starting areas. From there, they can move to claim spaces for renown, secure spaces for future development, or move into enemy held space to start a battle. But you can only have up to 2 of your figures on any one space at the end of your move.

When players’ figures end their move in a space with an enemy figure (which includes the Yugai patrol tokens) they will battle. When in a battle, the attacker and defender will choose cards up to the Influence number they have and play them face down. You can choose cards from your hand and/or top cards from your deck. Gang member cards will have battle values, as well as some battle boosts. You count the number of your figures in and adjacent to the enemy’s space where the battle is, and roll that many battle dice. You then add the number rolled to the total of battle value on the cards you played. The higher value wins and the loser must remove one figure from that battle square and also remove one card that was played in that battle from the game, as it represents a lost gang member. If there are still enemy figures left in the same space, you repeat the battle procedure.

Yugai Patrol Phase:

After all player turns have been taken and battles resolved, players move on to the Yugai Patrol phase where the starting player reveals 2 Yugai Patrol coordinate cards that show where the Yugai tokens will be placed on the board. Then that player retrieves the appropriate number of tokens from a cloth bag and then places them on the board based on the coordinates provided by the 2 cards. If any of those tokens are placed in the same space as any player’s gang figure, then that player will do battle with the Yugai. The token will have a battle value you have to reach equal or greater to in order to defeat it, but it also has a bribe value that is a cost that it will take to bribe the patrol instead of fighting it. After defeating a patrol, you roll a die and check on a chart to see if you gained renown, money or lost renown or money. So sometimes it’s rewarding to win and sometimes it’s not, but either way, it might be better than losing gang members in a battle. Some players may choose to move into a patrol token space on their turn to purposely engage with the patrol in order to hopefully gain renown or money.

Winning The Game:

Play continues until a player would receive renown, but there are no more tokens to take from the supply . At that point, players will count up what renown they would have gotten for that round and add it to the renown value that they have in tokens, then the game is over and the player with the higher total renown is the winner.

Impressions:

The rules are pretty easy for this game, but despite that, there are a lot of things going on. Players will have lots of options during their turn. There is an economic aspect of the game with city building and production, there is an auction element used for recruiting, and there is certainly a conflict element when battling other gangs, or even just the Yugai patrols.

The game box says it takes 60-90 minutes, but that must be with 2 players on the low end of that and 4 players on the high end of that, who have played it enough times to be quite familiar with it. It will take close to 3 hours +/- for players that are just starting out. The main thing that takes time is in learning all the different cards that are available. You have your own starting gang cards, but also have to learn the new gang member cards as they become available each round to recruit. You have to learn the black market cards that come up each round. You have to learn the building/development cards that are available during the game. And finally, you can have a few or a lot of battles depending on where the Yugai patrol tokens get placed, and how aggressive players play against each other.

I think it’s a pretty cool game, as long as players are prepared for the time required and allow for it. The rules are pretty straight forward, but players will have plenty of options as far as what they want to do in order to gain renown. You will need to develop buildings, but you can also try to take another player’s building that produces goods and gives renown. You can try to battle the Yugai in order to gain money and or renown, but it’s a risky venture. Likewise, you can try to occupy certain spaces on the board to gain renown.
Pretty much the only thing that can be an issue to me is the length of the game, but if you go into it as if going into a game like A Game of Thrones or similarly lengthy games of battle and area control, then it shouldn’t be an issue.

The game certainly is the type that can get expansions, with new gangs, new gang member cards, new black market cards and new development tiles. So there are possible means to get even more out of this game system.

I have played The Resistance several times and have gotten to play Avalon version recently a few times and I really like it.

Depending on the number of players there are, there can be different numbers of Minions of Mordred in the game, including the Assassin. But the forces of good at Arthur’s side have Merlyn to help out.

After role cards are passed out, everyone closes their eyes and puts their fist on the table. When cued by the narrator, the bad guys open their eyes so they all know who each other is. Then they close their eyes and they put their thumbs up and then it’s Merlyn’s turn to open his eyes so he can see who the bad guys are. Then Merlyn closes his eyes and everyone removes their fist from the table and they all open their eyes.

The starting player is the “King” and he chooses the starting party to go on a quest. Everyone has yes or no type tiles and votes to allow the party to go on the quest or not. 5 failures in a row let the bad guys win.

The good guys that are on the quest must choose the Success card of the two that is given them, while the bad guys can choose either the Success or Fail card. The players on the quest then secretly hand their vote card to the King and the other card to someone else. The King shuffles the cards and reveals. 1 Fail will lose the quest for the good guys (except on quest 4 when it takes 2 Fails).

Eventually more players are allowed/needed to go on the quests and then it becomes a matter of deduction, acting and guessing, as the good guy players try to figure out who the bad guys are and the bad guys are trying to deflect attention to others.

Merlyn will try to subtly help the good guys in ways to let them know who the bad guys are, but he has to be careful to not be too obvious because if the good guys win, the bad guy playing the Assassin will get to try to guess which player was Merlyn and assassinate Merlyn. That would lead to a victory for the bad guys. Otherwise, the winning team is the one that gets 3 successful quests for good guys or 3 failed quests for bad guys.

There are other characters that people can play as their roles that can add even more fun to the game. I’ve played with as few as 6 players and as many as 10 players and it is quite fun either way, though the last game I played was a 10 player game and it was epically great. I mean I was the good guy and one of my fellow good guys convinced the others that I was a bad guy. When I was king, I selected a good group and we could have won the game, but my accuser talked others to nay the quest and then the role of king was passed on and a couple turns later we lost. Fun seeing people interact so much.

I’ve been thinking about getting a dungeon crawler type game for awhile. Games like Castle Ravenloft had piqued my interest, but I just didn’t pull the trigger.

When I saw that Mice & Mystics was coming out, I thought that perhaps this would be the dungeon crawler I could get and know my kids would dig. Well I got it and they do dig it. I’ve also taught it to adults and they seemed to like it as well and get into it.

The game is very story orientated and that is great to help immerse yourself into the game, the kids really like this. When playing with a bunch of adults, they may opt to either have it read aloud, or bypass it and get the cliff notes from the player who already knows the story.

The game comes with a Chapter Book with 11 chapters, or missions. You can choose to play each chapter independently or you can play it in campaign mode and use the same mice and their upgrades as they level up and collect equipment. Though you can’t bring too much with you as it would ruin the fun of searching for new goodies.

Each chapter will set up the various conditions required. There is a finite number of pages you can go through on the page track before you reach the End Marker and lose. Various things can raise the page number you are on as you play, such as Surges (too much cheese on the cheese wheel) or by a mouse getting captured. Yes, the mice get captured and not killed, so that is cool and while it helps keep people from getting totally eliminated, it’s still not good as it causes the page marker to move up and that mouse can’t be rescued until it’s next turn when there are no minions in play.

There are plenty of choices to be made in the game because you can share cheese with other players so their character can use a certain ability to help the group, or even to level up and get another ability. You can also share equipment with other players for their mouse to use it. There are choices of staying together as a group in close to have certain advantages, or spread out in circumstances that are safer for the mice.

The neat thing too about the game is that there are winning and losing conditions for a chapter, but within a chapter there may be optional side adventures that can gain the mice extra equipment or something else advantageous for later on, but of course these side adventures will come at a risk.

As far as being replayable, well certainly once you play through the whole chapter book, you will know the story. So that won’t be new the next time. However, you can certainly replay the game with different combinations of mice and different combinations of starting abilities to help keep it fresh. You can choose to do the side adventure one time and not the next time. There are a ton of cool equipment and item cards in the search deck for you to find, so as you move along in a second or third run through of the same chapter, you can find new things to equip with or have some bad events pop up that make that game different from the previous one.

The components are very nice too. The minis are cool and they have a great way of using the same minion minis for different types of creatures. The tiles are great and I like the realistic shapes of the stone tiles rather than just squares that are all the same size.

All in all I’d say this game is a great value and while it is great for the family, other gamers can enjoy this game as well.

I don’t own this game, but it shows up now and again at my game group’s weekly meetings or special events.

You get two tiles with paths on them at the start of the game and lay yours down at the edge of the board to enter play with your stone. You chose a path and move your stone along it to the edge of the tile. You get another card and the next player plays and so on.

Each turn you choose another tile to place and follow the path to the edge of the tile again with your stone. You must follow the path all the way until you can’t move any more because you run into the edge of a tile. If your path leads you off the board, you lose. If your path leads you into another player’s stone on a path, you both lose.

Play keeps going until their is only one player remaining.

The great thing about this game is that it is quick, though the last game I played we used just about every single tile before there was only one winner. Tsuro also accommodates up to 8 players, so this and the quick play time makes it ideal for a filler game at any point during a game day where you can have a decent variety of number of players and want to get a quick game in.

I’ve had this game for quite a while, starting with the original base sets, the new Master Set and several of the separate faction decks and reinforcement cards.

This game feels like a miniatures game but with cards. Sometimes I still catch myself saying this “figure” instead of this “card”.

There are 6 factions in the Master Set and they add a great variety to the earlier released factions if you have them like me, or if the Master Set is your first Summoner Wars purchase, it’s a great introduction to the game with a nice variety to keep the game fresh.

The rules are easy to learn, as there are basic rules that apply across the board that make them easy. However, these basic rules can be broken by special powers on a unit’s card. For example: movement is normally set at 2 spaces, but certain units can move more than that. Or normally melee units can only attack other units on 4 adjacent spaces (front, back and either side) but not diagonally, but there are units that have powers that allow them to attack diagonally.

Each faction plays differently and you can feel the theme of that faction by how they play with their special powers and event cards. Event cards are special cards that you can play that can have a variety of different game effects. Some factions have a couple of the same Event Cards and some more faction specific, while other factions have some more unique Event Cards.

Units are played onto the board by spending magic points based on the cost of the unit being summoned onto the board. You can get magic points for the most part by destroying other players’ units, but there are other ways to get them too through special powers or event cards. You can also discard cards from your hand to build magic in your magic pile.

It takes a little getting used to a faction and how to best play them, but it doesn’t take but a few turns to get the feel for them. Some units require a little more aggressive play, while others require more finesse. Regardless of which faction you play, there are plenty of tactical decisions to be made during the game. Should you save up your magic for your hero units, or bring out a lot of cheaper common units? Do you build magic from your own hand or rely on destroying opponent’s units to get your magic? Aside from that, there are many other things on the battlefield to decide.

I really love this game and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a 2 player tactical game.

I got into Heroscape around Christmas of 2005 because my nephew had seen the game advertised somewhere and wanted it for Christmas. Well that was the beginning of a lot of great times.

The variety of maps you can build is great and limited to your imagination and how many sets you own.

This is a miniatures game that doesn’t require rulers or measuring tapes as all the distances are measured in the hexes that make up the battlefield.

Using Order Markers to designate which units are going to be activated keep it easy, yet there are a lot of tactical choices to be made depending on what units you control and what units your opponent controls.

This game is just plain fun for people of all ages.

This is a nice push your luck game that anyone can learn and have fun with. It’s quick and can be a fun little filler game or a party game with non-gamers. It’s fun to try to encourage other players to push their luck and keep rolling when it might not be the best option, but it’s fun to see if you can get them to roll themselves out of any points for that turn. I think 3 to 6 players is probably the best.

The dice are great and the container doubles as the dice shaker and draw source. Other than that, all you need is a pencil and paper to keep track of the scores.

I recently got the 3 expansion dice for this game with Zombie Dice 2: Double Feature and it really adds to the game.