JediChipmunk

Blood Bowl is a game of American style football set in the Warhammer Universe. The original game box only comes with the mini’s for human and orc teams, but there are many other teams that can used if you order them from Games Workshop or cobble them together from other mini’s. (I put together two teams from Heroscape minis.) One team for every race in the Warhammer world. Each team has different strengths, weaknesses, quirks and special rules.

The Teams

Orcs are strong and slightly slower with great armor, but the stronger ones aren’t as good at actually picking up the ball. Elves have high dexterity allowing them to pull off impressive plays with passes, catches, and dodges. The Skaven rat-men are lightning fast, some with agility as good as elves, but their armor is low and they break easily. Chaos has some very strong warriors with high armor, but they start with no special skills. Dwarves are slow as mud but heavily armored. Undead can regenerate even after you kill them. Humans are an average team with no particular weaknesses that can be built up into any type of team with the right skills. Other teams are Amazons, Choas Dwarfs, Dark Elves, High Elves, Wood Elves, Goblins, Halflings, Khemri, Lizardmen, Necromantic, Norse, Nurgle, Ogre, and Vampire.

Game-play

The game is broken up into two halves, with 8 turns for each team in each half. One team kicks off to the other, rolling on a table to add some random event thrown in and give some added flavor to the match. Moving each player once per turn, the receiving team tries to pick up the ball and get it across the opposing team’s goal line. Then defense tries to get the ball away from them by smacking them down and getting it for themselves. Picking up the ball, throwing it, catching it, and dodging away from an opposing player all require an agility roll. If you fail a roll, your turn is over. Which is why a high agility can be so important for scoring. Actually hitting your opponents players requires using the special blocking dice that come with the game. This is where strength becomes important. If your strength equal to the player you are hitting, you roll one. If it is higher, you roll two and choose one. More than double and you roll three. If it is lower, however, you roll two and your opponent chooses. Giving assists by placing other teammates next to the target but not adjacent to opposing players gives a bonus of plus one strength per assist. Learning how to properly give assists is critical to playing well. As is knowing what order to move each player, because if somebody goes down, your turn is over. When a player goes down you roll against his armor and if you pass it then you roll again to see how bad it was. Results range from stunned (miss a turn), to knocked out (for the half), to injured (miss next game or a stat decrease), or even death for the unfortunate player.

Replayability

This game has lots of replayability as even two coaches with the same race will probably pick different players, starting positions, and plays. If you get bored with one team, you can try another one. And it is a lot easier to put together a Blood Bowl team of 16 miniatures than an entire army for Warhammer.

Overall

This game is great fun, with lots of chaos, strategy, theme, and carnage. It may take a bit to get all the rules down, but they all make sense in the theme. It plays best in a league where you can level up your team and add skills to your players and really make the team your own.

Two anecdotes about this game.

I entered my local game store on board game night where about 6-8 players were two hours into playing Eldritch Horror. One of the players had to bow out so I took over his character and play resumed. About two hours later we were very close to achieving the first of three objectives for the game. FOUR HOURS got us about 1/3 of the way through the game! So we decided to stop and play something that was fun instead.

Last night I played a five player game of Agricola that lasted about 3 hours with one new player learning as we went. A game of Eldritch Horror started at the same time ours did. As we finished packing up Agricola we turned to their table and asked how their game went. Their answer, “C’thulhu got bored so we decided to stop.”

Is the game pretty? Yes. The components nice? Yes. The story interesting? At first maybe. But unless your play group is the type that is fine with an 8 hour game of Twilight Imperium then I don’t see it actually getting played much. It’s just not that good to hold your attention for that long.

Check out other reviews if you want the exacts on play, this is just my thoughts on the game.

The first time I played Seasons I came away with a bad taste in my mouth. For one thing, scoring can be VERY fiddly. Every turn someone is gaining, losing, stealing, or exchanging points. (Sometimes all four.) On top of that I really didn’t know how the cards worked off each other.

But then I gave it a try on Board Game Arena and my opinion changed after a few plays. (Enough to change my rating here up a few points.) With the PC doing all the points counting it came down to just figuring out how to work the cards with each other, and which ones to draft at the beginning of the game so that they could. A previous reviewer was correct in saying it was like a CCG that didn’t need nearly the money investment because you got everything you needed in the box. (The expansions do add quite a bit but are still much cheaper than getting into a CCG or LCG.)

To sum it up, it is an elegant game with nice components, beautiful art, and a good chuck of choices to make to win. One of the people you are playing with needs to be willing to be the “banker” for the score though. Cause if nobody is willing to do that, it’s not going to hit the table very often.

Guildhall wasn’t as intuitive as we would have liked, but it was a fun play. It took my group a while to get the hang of what all the symbols meant and how many cards down gave you what. But by the end of the first game we all had a pretty good handle on it. Most of the group wasn’t that impressed. (Most thought the card worth 9 victory points was overpowered.) I really enjoyed it though.

My advice would be to play a few times before you make a final decision as to if you like it or not. It’s a fun time!

Cosmic Cows is a Yahtzee-style game that I have found plays quite well with young kids. I’ve played it with my daughter when she was six and she played pretty well.

You are playing aliens in a cow-pulling contest in what I have to assume is the alien version of red-neck games. There are nine rows with one cow in each row.
Each turn you roll six dice five dice and choose which ones to keep, then re-roll the others up to two more times. For each 1 you keep, you move the cow in row one toward you one space, but you need at least one pair for this to happen. For example, if you roll four 5’s you move the cow in row five four spaces. Plus there is a row for large and small straights, a chance row for adding all the numbers up to a very small number or very large number, and a five of a kind row. One five of a kind moves the cow all the way across the board.

Once you have three cows into one of your last three red win spaces, you win!

A good game to play with one kid, and easier for them to wrap their head around than Yahtzee. Check out my house rule in the tips section for a faster game.

Players move their penguins in straight lines to other ice floes so they can collect the fish on them. The spot your bird just left is removed from the board, hopefully cutting off your opponents from getting more fish than you.

This is an easy game to play and teach. Setup isn’t to long and its a nice filler between heavier games. I’ve only played this four player, but with less players you get more figures to move around. Considering the low price, its a great addition to any gamers collection.
-Chip

Other reviews have gone into detail as to how the game is played, (I recommend the one by Jormi_Boced.) I will just give my thoughts on Loot. It’s a pretty good filler game since it doesn’t last to long. Sometimes it seems people are scoring ship cards way too easy and other times it seems nobody can get the upper hand. That’s part of the strategy though. Do you throw everything at the high gold ships, just try to score a lot of little ships, or a combo of both.

Really it depends on what cards you have in each color and their can be some real strategy to playing them at the right time. You can still get hosed when someone else plays a pirate or admiral card but that’s the risk you take on the high seas!

I have never actually gone into a bar and drunken myself into a stupor, yet despite the questionable theme, it is my favorite game. Each player is a different character in a Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy setting. The quest is over and now everybody is drinking, brawling, and gambling at the Inn.

Each player has a mat and a deck of cards for their character. There is one life bar on each player’s mat with Alcohol Content at 0 and Health at 20 plus each player starts with 10 Gold coins. Each turn a player plays an action card with a variety of effects. Helping himself, rough-housing with others, starting a round of gambling, etc. Then gives another player a drink card, then turns over a drink card in their drink pile. Damage drops Health, drinks increase Alcohol Content, and gambling costs money to everyone but the winner. If your Health or Alcohol content ever meet, you’re unconscious and thrown in a bed upstairs. If your Gold ever runs out, you’re in the stable for the night. (and thus out of the game.)

With all the current expansions, you can play up to twenty people! (In larger games, gambling is much more powerful btw.) Great fun to play as a nightcap for an evening of gaming.

I have never actually gone into a bar and drunken myself into a stupor, yet despite the questionable theme, it is my favorite game. Each player is a different character in a Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy setting. The quest is over and now everybody is drinking, brawling, and gambling at the Inn.

Each player has a mat and a deck of cards for their character. There is one life bar on each player’s mat with Alcohol Content at 0 and Health at 20 plus each player starts with 10 Gold coins. Each turn a player plays an action card with a variety of effects. Helping himself, rough-housing with others, starting a round of gambling, etc. Then gives another player a drink card, then turns over a drink card in their drink pile. Damage drops Health, drinks increase Alcohol Content, and gambling costs money to everyone but the winner. If your Health or Alcohol content ever meet, you’re unconscious and thrown in a bed upstairs. If your Gold ever runs out, you’re in the stable for the night. (and thus out of the game.)

With all the current expansions, you can play up to 20! (Which makes gambling much more deadly btw.) Great fun to play as a nightcap for an evening of gaming.

I have never actually gone into a bar and drunken myself into a stupor, yet despite the questionable theme, it is my favorite game. Each player is a different character in a Dungeons and Dragons-style fantasy setting. The quest is over and now everybody is drinking, brawling, and gambling at the Inn.

Each player has a mat and a deck of cards for their character. There is one life bar on each player’s mat with Alcohol Content at 0 and Health at 20 plus each player starts with 10 Gold coins. Each turn a player plays an action card with a variety of effects. Helping himself, rough-housing with others, starting a round of gambling, etc. Then gives another player a drink card, then turns over a drink card in their drink pile. Damage drops Health, drinks increase Alcohol Content, and gambling costs money to everyone but the winner. If your Health or Alcohol content ever meet, you’re unconscious and thrown in a bed upstairs. If your Gold ever runs out, you’re in the stable for the night. (and thus out of the game.)

In this edition it adds the special mechanisms for each player. The Troll Alchemist makes drinks and potions. The Orc Paladdin’s cards have different effects depending on her piety. The Pixie Enchanter has a wolf that has different effects depending on his mood. And the wonderfully fun Gnome Tinkerer has gadgets that sometimes work great and sometimes blow up in her face.

Great fun to play as a nightcap for an evening of gaming.