Jay Atkinson

OVERVIEW
Storm the beaches of Iwo Jima in this latest army pack for Memoir ’44. Here you get to play either the U.S. Marines using base game figures or the new Japanese army figures that come in this box.

PROS
Really changes up the game play compared to base game.
Don’t need any other expansions to enhance this like the other army packs.
Captures the characteristics of the two forces.

CONS
Not enough missions!

GAMEPLAY

This expansion really alters the base game’s gameplay with new army rules for Marines and Japanese. It really makes it fresh, especially if you’ve only played the base game for a long time without any other expansions. The most interesting rules are for the Japanese Army that really reflect the fierceness and tenacity of their fighting style. The most potent is that Japanese infantry can attack with an extra die in close combat if their unit is at full strength. So the marines player may want to focus on damaging each infantry in range, before taking out a whole unit. Especially when you factor in the next rule that allows the Japanese infantry to move two and still battle if they end their second move adjacent to the enemy. That’s a one two punch if they are at full strength. Not only that, but the Japanese must ignore the first flag rolled against them which reflects their mentality that it is dishonorable to retreat in battle. So you may be thinking that the Japanese sure get a lot of cool rules, what about the Marines. Well, they do and it’s basically the ability to always order an extra marine of your choice depending on the section your command card activates. That may not seem like much, but believe me, it’s a HUGE advantage to be able to activate another unit and bring it’s power to bear on the enemy. This rule captures the mobility and adaptability of the Marine Corps.

Also, there are lot of other neat things put in this expansion that adds to flavor of the pacific theater. There are new jungle tiles that almost act like forest tiles. Then you got rice paddy tiles, trench tiles, mountain tiles, beach tiles, airfields, and hospital tiles (help recover lost figures). The cave tiles are awesome in that they let the Japanese infantry move from cave tile to cave tile with no penalty even if the cave is across the board. Marines can seal up caves to prevent that. This really captures one of the biggest
problems the Marines had in WWII against the Japanese, and that’s rooting them out of the caverns peppered across many islands. One of the scenarios has night rules that can have the Marine player
biting his nails praying that the sun will come up soon. I could go on, but this covers to bulk of what is cool about the Pacific Theater expansion.

CONCLUSION

This is by far my favorite army pack expansion for Memoir ’44. I admit, I’m slightly partial, because I have family that fought in that theater.. particularly at Iwo Jima. However, I just like how well this expansion captures the fighting spirit of both forces, that brings a unique experience to Memoir ’44 gameplay. I honestly don’t mind playing both sides when I get an opportunity to play. I also like that you can buy this expansion and play it right out of the box with the base game with no other enhancements. For example, the Eastern Front and Mediterranean Theater packs really could use the “Winter/Desert” board, so their tiles don’t look so aesthetically unpleasing against the green board of the base game. Also, the gameplay of the other army packs don’t differentiate themselves from the base game that much compared to Pacific Theater. My only disappointment is that there aren’t enough missions for this theater compared to the rest of battles covered by all the Memoir ’44 expansions (Campaign Book Vol 2 helps).

If you’ve been playing Memoir ’44 base game for a long time and are looking for an expansion that drops right into the game and freshens up the game, I couldn’t recommend this expansion enough.

OVERVIEW
Step into the shoes of the famous “Baker Street Boys” as you help out the worlds most famous sleuth. Traipse through London collecting clues as you try to match wits with Sherlock Holmes or against each other! Are you the kind of person who likes to read a mystery novel and try to figure it out before the end? Or are you just a big Sherlock fan? This is your kind of game!

PROS
Plays great in solitaire, cooperative, and competitive mode.
Really feels like you’re solving a mystery.

CONS
Replay value not so good. Requires expansions to keep fresh.
Can get long sometimes depending on how hard mystery is.
A lot of reading…

GAMEPLAY

I’m basing the gameplay on the older edition, because that’s what I have. From what I’ve read, the newest edition is pretty much the same.

The goal of the game is not only to solve the mystery, but to beat Sherlock Holmes’ score (solve it faster). The game comes with 10 mysteries or cases and each one is very difficult to get 100% correct and in less clues then Sherlock. You can play by yourself, as a team, or against one another.

The game starts with someone reading one of the cases. Then you take turns as a team reading the next clue out of the cluebook for the case or as individuals reading each clue. You must keep track of both the number of clues and which clues you have visited, because that will turn into part of your final score. Each clue is listed in the cluebook as a location on the huge sprawling London map, so the London directory book will be vital for finding coordinates of locations on the map.

The cluebook isn’t the only resource for clues. There is the London newspaper at your disposal which contain nuggets of information that may be relevant to your case. You turn to the newspaper anytime and as many times as you want without it costing you anything.

Once you are ready to solve the case as a team you will take a quiz then look at the answer to help determine your score. If you’re playing against each other, then players will take turns taking the quiz and determining their score when they’re ready. They can no longer play or give out hints of course until everyone is done. Whoever has the better score wins.

CONCLUSION
This is the only mystery game that I have played that has made me feel like I was really trying to solve a mystery. As you track down clues and interview people across London, you can almost see the old gas lights of London as the fog rolls in over the Thames river in your mind. I like how the game gives you the freedom to pick the order of the clues you think are the best. The mysteries are really worthy of the Holmes lore.

The only downside is that once you have solved one of the mysteries, it’s solved and you can’t go back. So after the first 10 are done, it’s over. The only way to keep the game going is through more expansions, and the old edition has quite a few that are hard to find. Let’s hope Ystari reprints them and adds new ones.

I will warn players that sometimes it can kind of drag out, because of all the reading. Some players will want to re-read clues (counts towards the total number of clues) or read the newspaper over and over again.

When played as a team, I think this game would appeal to social gamers, because of the interaction going on trying to decide which clue to run down and theories explored as to who did it. it’s a fun way to spend the evening. This could also be a good game with older kids that like mysteries. This probably won’t appeal to casual gamers, because these are brain-burner cases. Strategy gamers won’t find an overall long-term “strategy” to the game either, because it’s just pure problem-solving and no formula to the game. I’m not sure how power gamers will feel without the expansions or free form of play. In fact, this is almost a “roleplaying” game in some respects.

Overall, this is a fabulous detective game and deserving of it’s “Spiel de Jahres” Award back in the ’80′s. If you love mysteries or you’re a huge Sherlock Holmes fan, you’ve got to pick this game up!

OVERVIEW
Core Worlds: Galactic Orders is the first expansion to what I thing is a “sleeper” hit of a deckbuilding game. It adds quite a bit more to the game and provides more depth and options. A sixth faction has been added that provides a new hero with a nice new ability. New sector 0 cards that makes the pre-game draft more interesting that work with the new galactic order cards.

PROS:
New Faction
More tough decisions
Better box for storage of base game and expansion
Better balance for sector one

CONS:
Still no sixth player even with new faction
More potential downtime between turns
Takes more time to setup

GAMEPLAY:

I won’t cover the complete gameplay of Core Worlds which can be found here. However, I will talk about what is added.

The most interesting addition in my opinion is the “event” cards. These are normally mixed into each corresponding sector deck that they belong except for the sector 0 event which is put into play at setup. Every time an event card is drawn, they stack on top of each other in order with the top card now “in effect”. These events add a nice twist to the game and can sometimes disrupt your plans. It adds some randomness to the game, but it usually affects everyone equally. The starting event is nice in that it gives more strategic options for invading planets in the first sector instead of the strategy of just deploying everything and drafting.

Of course, the “galactic order” cards and faction tokens are the meat of the whole expansion. The galactic order cards are placed on the table and represent six orders: science guild, merchant alliance, order of the knighthood, mystic brotherhood, mining coalition, and the galactic senate. Each of them give a player a special ability if they spend their faction tokens located on the cards. To get tokens on the cards, a player has to deploy a unit or play a tactic card with the order symbol on it. As usual there a cards that create “synergies” around these galactic orders that can enhance your strategy. Sometimes having the most tokens in a order can activate bonuses abilities on certain cards as well. At the end of the game, players with the most tokens get bonus empire points that equal a point per token or half point per token for second place.

Another nice tweak to the game that addresses a deficiency in culling your hand is the capital city “advancement” cards. This card allows you to place any card in your hand underneath the card if you have at least three worlds. Also, you no longer “colonize” a world upon invasion by putting a grunt or snubfighter underneath, but you can “garrison” the world by putting any type of invading card under it.

Lastly, the home worlds are replaced with an improved ability and new name. Besides being able to gain 2 energy by discarding a card in the energy phase, a player’s home world allows you to draw an extra card if you have more worlds then units in the warzone.

CONCLUSION:

I really like the amount of depth this expansion adds. It makes for tougher decisions as you factor in both the new events that occur every round as well as when to use faction tokens for special abilities in galactic orders versus conserving tokens for extra empire points. The event cards tweak the game nicely and aren’t overbearing. There are only a few of them per sector, so you’re not as likely to see them all at the same time.

Also, I like the newer storage box that can store the base game and expansion better. It comes with deck dividers with some nice artwork that works better than fixed dividers. They work with regular cards or sleeved cards, since they can expand in the card section.

This expansion should really appeal to power gamers, avid gamers, and strategy gamers. The added play time of understanding new cards and more decisions would definitely push it out of the family, social, and casual gamer types.

More choices, more options, more storage, more events, more goodness all around.

Okay, politics and history may be a dry theme to some people, but this should not prevent you from taking a look at 1960: The Making of a President. This is a masterfully designed game for 2 players that has almost chess like qualities to some degree. The object of the game is very simple of course – win the 1960 election as players take on the role of John F. Kennedy or Richard Nixon. Will history repeat itself or will you successfully rewrite history?

PROS
Theme and history make it a richer game
Well designed
Very replayable
Rules well laid out
Great artwork

CONS
Can get kind of long sometimes
Crummy insert
Takes a few plays to really understand the game

GAMEPLAY
The gameplay at first seems a little convoluted, but the designers did a nice job of breaking it down into turns and phases that you can keep track of on the board itself. There are 7 “normal” turns that have 7 phases to them. Then, there are two extra turns that are special called the “Debates” and “Election Day”. Players will go through 5 normal turns, do a “Debates” turn, 2 normal turns, then finally “Election Day” turn.

During a normal turn, each player will be dealt 6 cards before “Debates” and 7 cards after “Debates” and start out with two momentum markers. They will take turns playing five cards and save the remaining cards to their “campaign strategy” deck to be played on “Debates” or “Election Day”. The cards themselves provide interesting decisions. A player can either play the event on their card or use the campaign points on their card. If the player uses the event, then it is resolved immediately unless it is permanent or lasts for the round.

However, if the player decides to use the campaign points on the card, then it gets more interesting. A player can use the campaign points for either adding support cubes to a state called “campaigning” or add support cubes to a campaign issue or add support cubes to advertising. The support cubes for states helps your candidate win electoral votes, the cubes for issues help the player win more momentum markers and endorsements during the momentum phase, and the cubes for advertising helps the player not have to do support checks in states that are carried by the opponent or currently occupied by the opponent as well as reorder the issues at the end of the momentum phase.

Of course if a player chooses to use their campaign points, the player leaves their opponent an opportunity to activate the event on that card using a momentum marker. The player can override their opponent by using two momentum markers.

Players who win issues by having the most support cubes during the momentum phase of a normal turn gain more momentum markers and/or endorsements. Cubes are then removed from each issue, then the leading player in advertising can rearrange the order of two issues.

At the end of a normal turn, players choose one (before Debates) or two (after Debates) card to put in their campaign strategy deck and discard any extra. Players are basically saving up cards in their campaign strategy decks to be played during those special turns. It’s like two extra mini games in the game. In the Debates, players are laying down cards in support of one of three issues: economy, civil rights, or defense. As each issue is won by a player, they get to add cubes to states increasing amounts with each win. On Election Day, players are playing cards to do support checks in states listed on the cards to possibly swing a state to your side.

Once all the support checks, endorsements, and events have been resolved for Election Day, players will see which states they have won based on whether or not they have their cubes on them. Then they’ll take the votes of each state and tally them up to see who has the most electoral votes to win the presidency.

STRATEGIC OVERVIEW

Even though the ultimate goal of the game is to win the most electoral votes, the road to victory is not so straightforward in this game. A lot of elements play into how you maximize your chance for victory, and you need to pay attention to every element or your opponent can swing an unexpected advantage. This means you can’t solely focus on adding support cubes to states or your opponent may start racking up momentum markers by leading the issues, then you’re really in trouble as they can start activating more beneficial events on your cards that you can’t cancel. Sometimes you need to play your candidate card for five campaign points, so that you can deny your opponent very powerful cards by discarding them at the end of your turn. You can’t use your candidate card that often, because it becomes exhausted and can’t be activated again without another special card. Ignoring advertising can hurt you as well, since leading advertising helps you rearrange issues each turn as well as avoid support checks in tougher areas to campaign. Then there is setting aside cards for the final election day which is easier to deny opponents events by stowing them into the campaign strategy deck. However, all the cubes and momentum markers leftover at the end of the last normal turn adds more cubes to the campaign bag which helps increase your chances of winning support checks on “Election Day”.

CONCLUSION
1960: The Making of the President is a wonderfully designed two-player game. It has almost “chess” like quality of moves with a back and forth momentum between players attacking with their cards and counter-attacking with the same or other cards. Along with that is a couple of “meta-games” on top of the game planning for the debates and election day turns. It captures the historical atmosphere of a famous election in a very elegant way. Being a card-driven games, it does take a few plays to fully understand the game given that the cards are so full of information.

This is not a game for social or casual gamers. For lighter fare, these gamers should look to Campaign Manager 2008 by the same designers. 1960 is a deep, rich, and rewarding two player game that should appeal to power gamers and strategy gamers. Even though the cards can be random which adds to the replay value, there is quite a bit of planning involved leading up to the “Debates” and “Election Day” by setting aside cards in your Campaign Strategy hand or playing permanent event cards.

Family gamers will have to wait until their kids are old enough to play, but it makes a great way to explain to your kids about our voting system and talk about a very historic election. So, it makes a pretty good educational game in that respect.

If you looking for a heady and well balanced two player game, get 1960: The Making of a President. You won’t regret it.

Boardgaming.com is a great site that is easily accessible to new users to the boardgame hobby. The graphics are gorgeous and fun to view. This site fills a niche of gamers that isn’t addressed in other gaming sites. (NOTE: This review is of the site in Beta stage, some of the comments may no longer apply as features are added)

PROS
Superb graphics
Accessible
Easy to get straight to the content
Fun quests to keep you coming back (meta-game)

CONS
Not comprehensive
Heavily slanted to newer games (a lot of side effects)
Difficult to interact with other users on the site
Can’t share gold or gems with other users

GAMEPLAY
Boardgaming.com has a meta game of many quests that drive you back to the website. You can add value to the site through reviews, tips, strategies, and house rules that rewards you with experience and titles. Other users will reward you of how good your content is by “liking” it. Also, you’re rewarded in XP for playing games on the site and exploring other parts of the website from user profiles to game pages. The reporter quests reward users for inviting their friends to participate and spreading the word about the site. You can spend gold on showing how much you like game beyond saying it’s one of your favorites and spend it on customizing your profile.

CONCLUSION
Boardaming.com is a really good complement to heavier and harder to navigate boardgaming websites like BGG. The meta game is nice, so long as they can keep providing achievements for more experienced users which is difficult to do. The graphics are great and make great eye candy with some nice customization of graphics on your profile. I do like the site a lot, but I feel like they need to improve on the level of user interaction. Especially if you have a site about quests, it seems natural to support a way to help users quest together like guilds or band of adventurers in RPG’s.

I like the streamlined interface overall, and I hope this site continues to improve.

Wits and Wagers is a trivia game that puts the “fun” back into trivia for everyone. No more dreading a trivia game where you know that you’ll get stomped by some trivia buff wishing you could just get a game of “old maid” in to save your sanity.

PROS
Easily accessible to all skill levels
Quick play time
Scalable
Easy rules

CONS
Okay components

GAMEPLAY
The game revolves around 7 rounds of questions with each player writing down their answer on a secret dry erase card. Answers are put in order on the playmat with increasing odds. Players place both of their bets with poker chips on the answer they believe is closest to the right answer without going over. The banker pays out the correct answers based on the odds in chips. The person with the most chips at the end of the game wins. Really, a simple game.

CONCLUSION
When I was young, I used to be pretty good at trivia games. My mom was better than me. Not many people wanted to play me, and I didn’t always wanted to play my mom either. Not much fun when you sit around and stare at trivia game no one wants to play. Wits and Wagers addresses this problem, by giving everyone an equal chance by allowing players to bet on the right answer. There’s a skill involved in determining which answer to guess and hedging your bet on the right answer. It comes down to not necessarily how confident you are in your answer, but how confident you are in someone else’s answer. That comes with knowing the person as well and how well the know things. Of course, there can be some mind games going on if you want to try and throw off other players, but that is rare.

I personally found it a breath of fresh air after all those years of playing Trivial Pursuit. I enjoyed playing it with my family which includes my mom. I like how just about everyone in my family could play.

This game should be very fun and enjoyable for social, family, and casual gamers.

Le Havre is game designed by one of the hottest designers in the industry, Uwe Rosenberg. This is second game in his big trilogy of worker games: Agricola, Le Havre, and At the Gates of Loyang. Le Havre was designed by getting rid of some of the tenser moments in Agricola which make you feel like you’re scraping by as a medieval farmer to a more of a game about optimizing your choices as you deliver, sell, and pick up goods as shipping company in France without big penalties.

PROS
Way less fiddly than the board game
Graphics are excellent and easy to see
Awesome tutorial
Solitaire play available
Good price

CONS
Not an exciting or tense theme

OVERVIEW
Le Havre is all about collecting francs to win the game. You do this in many different ways such as picking up raw materials and converting them to goods that can be sold or picking up francs. You can also earn francs by buying buildings that other players will have to pay fees to use your buildings. You really have to balance things out by feeding your workers at the end of each round, but this isn’t near as bad as Agricola harvest time partly because you can make your loans later in the game where it’s harder to get rid of begging cards in Agricola. You can also play on the same buildings as other players on the final round of Le Havre, so you’re not blocked out of some last minute scoring opportunities.

GAMEPLAY
Each player begins with a ship and some francs. You take turns traveling down the harbor either picking up resources on the docks determined randomly (wheat, francs, fish, clay, iron, wood, cattle), visiting buildings to perform certain actions. Players can also buy buildings to allow them to perform actions for free on future turns, sell buildings at half their value, pay off loans, buy ships (helps with feeding your workers). Normally, you visit buildings to enhance or improve the resources you have collected making them more valuable to sell or helping you building more complicated items like advanced ships. The game becomes a constant back and forth between converting goods for better options, keeping track of new available resources all the while feeding your workers each round that keeps increasing and hoping your francs continue to keep pace with everyone else or above.

CONCLUSION
I liked Agricola when I first bought it, although it is not my favorite. I get a little tired of managing all the little bits during the resupply phase of the game and keeping track of everything. The design was tight, so I had Le Havre on my radar while reading a lot of rave reviews. However, I’ve never been able to pull the trigger for two reasons: it looks extremely fiddly just like it’s cousin Agricola and looked like a “nicer” version of Agricola. I figured buying the iPad version would be a compromise rather than plunking down full price for the board game. I must say that I’m glad I did, because I probably will not by the board game for myself. If you don’t like fiddly games, then just get the digital version and let the computer do all the work.

Also, Le Havre seems a little less exciting to me than Agricola. Agricola has me caring more about my little farm then my shipping enterprise in Le Havre. I feel like I really need to make every action count in Agricola than Le Havre or my little farm could really be in for a tough harvest. Le Havre feels a little more forgiving in some ways especially the last round by allowing other players to use the same building. Allowing only one worker per action in Agricola can be such an essential way to seal your victory sometimes by denying other people the action they need on that last round.

Overall, I’ll stick to Agricola in cardboard format for now, and play Le Havre in digital at my leisure.

The Game of Life has been around a long time, and I would be surprised if no one on this website has never played it. It’s a classic kid’s game that tries to simulate events in life; however, it doesn’t do a good job of modeling the fact that we make a lot of decisions in life, but more on that later…

PROS:
Kids just like it
Colorful

CONS:
Your kids want you to play it
Cheap plastic pieces
TONS of various pieces
Not many interesting choices
Extremely random
Takes a really long time to play with more people

GAMEPLAY:
Players start out with a car, peg, and some money. The first big decision players make is whether or not they go to college or not. This affects your salary on payday and payout on taxes, however, your occupation is random luck of the draw. From there on, players take turns spinning the spinner to determine the amount of spaces to move. Where they land dictates what they have to do whether it’s collect or pay money. This continues until all players reach the retirement space. You choices of retirement don’t really affect the game that much unless there are a lot of players where you can potentially lose life tokens. At the end of the game, the person with the most money is the “WINNER”.

CONCLUSION:
As a kid, I played this game a lot until I burned out on it. I didn’t play just so much as it was fun, maybe the first few times, but it was more something to pass the time. I didn’t have many gaming options as a kid until Nintendo and C64 came around.

As a parent, I cringe at this game especially if I’m trying to instill good values in my children. I find the randomness of this game with very few meaningful choices distasteful, and I feel like it communicates to my children that life is super random without you being able to change the outcome. I hate that it makes it seem like life is about making the most money, when there are far more rewarding things to do with one’s life then just collect a bunch of money to retire. I hate that the current edition has players sue other players to get money. I remember an earlier 90′s edition that didn’t have that, and I would prefer that edition to this one. I’m not a big fan of fiddly games, but I do have a few. But for me to play a “fiddly” game, I need to enjoy it. Life doesn’t count. I’m not excited about the gambling aspect either of “Spin the Wheel”. I could go on and on..

It’s definitely a family game by virtue of it’s design, but not really a game I would recommend to families. Life certainly doesn’t fall into any other Boardgaming.com gamer class either.

Really…if I were you, I would pass. There are way better family games out there then this one.

Neuroshima Hex is digital adaptation of a boardgame of the same namesake. Players try to destroy each other’s home base tile until the game ends. If no bases are destroyed, then the base with the least damage wins. You can play up to four players or play by yourself.

PROS:
Limited rounds
Nice graphics -> looks cool
Works good on cellphone screen.
Decent AI

CONS:
Help manual doesn’t work in Android version
Maybe too random
Theme doesn’t really matter – it could just be hexes with dots and numbers.

GAMEPLAY:
Basically, each player takes turn placing their home base tile the first round on the hexagon grid. After that, you receive 3 tiles from your deck of tiles and pick one to discard. You can then place 2 tiles on the board into strategic locations. When the grid is full or if a battle tile is placed, then the battles commence. The tiles with the highest initiative points get to strike first and do damage, then the next lower initiative points go next down to your home base tile which get to attack as well. Tiles that take maximum damage are removed after each initiative phase. You do this until the tiles run out or only one base is left remaining.

The keys to the game is in positioning your tiles at the right time. Only certain tiles can attack on certain sides, so you need to rotate your army tiles appropriately. You also need to protect your base, and not leave it wide open to be surrounded by enemy units to take a beating. This is hard to do, because you have to make good decisions on which tiles to discard and which ones to play. Definitely play a battle tile if you have the upperhand as to what has been played, so you start the battle early before the grid is filled up.

CONCLUSION:
Overall, I found NH a rather fun little tactical game that appears to be hard to master. I’m still figuring what all the pieces do for just one army, don’t mind all the others sheesh. The Moloch are just brutal with all the attack angles they get. Also, the online help didn’t work on my smartphone which made it difficult to really learn the game. This game can be tense while you try to make the right decisions.

I don’t think there is an overall deep strategy, because of the random draw of tiles and having to choose two out of three. You spend more time reacting sometimes than planning. So, I don’t think this will appeal to strategy gamers. I think avid gamers and power gamers would gravitate to this kind of game especially if they plan on purchasing the expansion armies to add lots of variety.

For a smartphone app, it makes a great little timekiller.

Be ready to take a hit on the game time when you add this expansion. I still like this expansion, but you have to factor in the added time of more players trading and analyzing their options. You can add up to two more players with this “extension”.

Some complain about the extra build step that everyone gets after a player’s turn, but that is so you’re less likely to get hit with the robber when you hand starts to pile up waiting for your turn. 5 or 6 rolls of the dice between your turns can create a lot of resources for you in the late game was you expand. I can see why they added the new build step, but that also adds to the play time. If you lose a big hand due to the robber, you more than likely didn’t take advantage of the extra build step, so shame on you.

Overall, I like this expansion, but it can take a while to finish a game.

There is no denying that Settlers of Catan has had a huge impact on the boardgaming world. Once the iPad came out, it didn’t take too long for it to find it’s way on iTunes and now on Android. Besides a few bugs early on, the game has been well adapted to the classic we all know giving you options to play multiplayer or against the computer

PROS:
Easier to setup and go then the real game
Really good graphics

CONS:
Not much variety unless you purchase the expansion.
Have to purchase expansion in game
Buggy for a while, but appears to have improved

GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay is the same as the board game, but you have the option to play by yourself against computer opponents. Again you start out with two settlements and two roads, and you place them based on who goes first. The last settlement you place allows you to collect adjacent resources. Each player takes turn rolling two dice for resources, trading for resources, buying cards, and building roads, settlements or cities. Points are awarded through number of settlements and cities along with bonuses for most roads and armies. The first person to reach the number of points for the scenario will win the game.

CONCLUSION:

This a really good game. The AI is pretty good sometimes if you’re playing by yourself. The graphics are top notch. The interface is fairly easy to figure out. This has every thing you know and love about Catan along with solitaire play if you need a Catan fix with no one around.

My only beef about the game was some early bugs that made the game lock up at weird times, but they appear to have those fixed now. I don’t like it that you have to purchase expansions in game. I would prefer deals where I can buy everything at once at a good price.

If you looking for a good Catan version on the go or just want to play by yourself, download it. Another good reason to justify your iPad purchase! It’s great.

Dixit puts a refreshing spin on the party game genre. A game of creative storytelling that is bound to make laughs, groans, and memories. Players try to be the best storyteller by winning the most points for victory.

PROS:
Simple to learn
Wonderful artwork
Stretches the imagination
Big easy to handle cards and good components

CONS:
Not sure of the replay value with multiple plays with the same game group

GAMEPLAY:
The game is super easy to learn. Each player has a hand of 6 cards of wonderful pictures, and each player takes a turn being the storyteller. The storyteller describes one of his or her cards with a word or phrase or song, then everyone pics a card from their hand to match the storyteller’s description. Everyone lays their cards down and gives them to the storyteller to shuffle, who then turns the cards over for everyone to see. Each player picks which card they think fits the description by placing their token by it. If everyone guesses wrong or guesses right, they score 2 points and the storyteller gets zero points. However, if this doesn’t happen, then the storyteller gets three points for the card being guessed as well as the correct guesser. If someone guesses another person’s card, then that other person gets one point. The game proceeds with everyone drawing back up to six until the deck is empty or thirty points are scored. Thus ending the game.

STRATEGY:
There is no clear cut strategy other than possibly knowing your players. The hardest part is finding that fine line of not giving the card totally away as the teller, yet also making sure someone can guess your card. Makes it very hard at times depending on the card. I think it would get harder the more you play with the same people, because the more each player learns each other’s style of creativity for the same card. It’s definitely a game where even some children can excel, because they have just as much chance as other people at guessing a card right.

CONCLUSION:
Dixit really makes for a memorable game that can keep you talking long after it’s played. The funny phrases and stories people come up with can make for some good laughs and good times. My family really has enjoyed playing this game, so I highly recommend it for family gamers. Social gamers and casual gamers should also get a kick out of the game based on its interaction and ease of learning. Strategy gamers and power gamers may not find this to their tastes given it’s lightness and lack of depth. Avid gamers may find it appealing just for the sheer novelty of this game’s design. If you looking for a real interesting party game, you can’t go wrong with Dixit.

OVERVIEW
Core Worlds is an interesting deckbuilder. It’s not just deckbuilder, but combines more mechanics of pre-game draft, different factions, hand management, tableau building, energy and action points. The basis of the game is that your empire is invading the galaxy from the outer sectors towards the inner sectors that are older and more advanced. As players go from sector deck to sector deck, players will add to their deck with unit and tactic cards and build their empire with planets. The big points coming at the end of the game by capturing “Core Worlds” in the last sector. The player with the most empire points at the end of the game wins.

PROS
Beautiful artwork
Tight mechanics
Limited number of rounds
Built-in replayability

CONS
Needs more options to cull and fine tune your deck
Not much player interaction
Some downtime between turns with Analysis Paralysis prone players

GAMEPLAY
Each player chooses one of the faction decks to start the game and go through a pre-game draft of cards from a special deck. The special deck contains units or tactic cards with special abilities and bonuses to enhance your starting deck. This makes your deck more customized compared to your fellow players. There are five sectors to the galaxy represented by five decks of cards, and each deck is played for two rounds before moving to the next. Players take turns drafting cards from a galactic sector deck which contains planets, units, and tactic cards. This costs action points and energy. Energy is provided by the planets you have in your tableau and some tactic cards. It should be noted that you never play alway the way through a sector deck, so you can always count on a certain card showing up. This maximizes replayability.

A player has to “invade” a planet with units that combine their fleet and ground strength that is equal to the planets strength. Once a planet is invaded, it is placed in a player’s tableau. With a successful invasion, a player can choose one of their basic infantry or starfighter cards to put under the invaded planet to help “cull” your deck of weaker cards. This is the only way in the game to remove less valuable cards. To “draft” a unit or tactic card from the sector decks, a player just pays the energy cost of the card and uses an action point. Drafted cards go to your discard piled waiting to be shuffled on the next round. To deploy a unit or tactic card, you pay a separate “deployment” cost in energy. At the end of the round players must discard down to at least one or none cards, then draw a fresh hand.

CONCLUSION
Overall, Core worlds is a fun game to play. My beef with it is that there is very little player interaction, but I guess that’s par for deckbuilders. The limited number of rounds is nice, so that the game doesn’t drag out forever. Yet, it can drag out between turns if you have opponents prone to analysis paralysis on their turn. There can be quite a bit of reading to do with those cards. However, the game does feel like it ends quickly sometimes, because you feel like you’re just getting started by the time the Galactic Core worlds show up. That feeling sort of reminds me of Catan as well. There are a lot tough decisions the further the game goes, and you really have to make every turn count.

This game probably isn’t well suited for social gamers, because there isn’t much interaction. It might be a little complicated for casual gamers and family gamers. Avid gamers should enjoy the mix of mechanics and strategic options. Strategic gamers won’t find any deep strategies, but there is strategy. Power gamers will probably want something more involved and more interactive or more expansions.

It’s a solid game and worth a shot if you’re looking for a deckbuilder with a sci-fi theme.

Gulo Gulo is a fascinating little kids game that you might find intensely nerve-wracking and fun. Kids even younger than 5 should probably have no problem playing this game, because it’s really simple and they only have to know their colors.

PROS:
Solid and great components overall
Little eggs give kids with little fingers an advantage over fat-fingered adults

CONS:
Not a deep game at all
Not in print and expensive now

Gameplay
The premise is quite simple. The players play the role of wolverines (gulos) trying to find their kid brother who was captured by the vulture. However, they can’t resist stealing the vulture eggs which are tasty treats for them while on the hunt. Each player takes a turn flipping colored tiles over and trying to remove the same colored egg from the dish full of eggs without tripping the alarm or dropping the egg. If you successfully retrieve the egg, you advance to the tile you flipped over unless another of the same color is before it. If you trip the alarm, the eggs are reset in the dish and you go backwards to a tile of the same color or the beginning. The goal of each player is to be the first one to find the junior tile and retrieve the purple egg that represents the junior tile. There is only one purple tile in this case. The rest of the colors are blue, yellow, red, and those evil tiny green eggs!

Conclusion
Gulo Gulo is a nice way to pass the time with younger children in the family who can’t read. My youngest really loves it, and she is quite good at getting those little green eggs out of the dish. I find the game pretty intense when quite few eggs have been removed, and there are very few eggs holding the alarm inside it. One false move and — KAPOW! — it comes tumbling down. It makes for a few good laughs and groans. This is a good family game for young ones.

Medici is game were players take on the roles of Italian merchants bidding for goods at the marketplace and filling up their ships with the goods. Reiner Knizia is a master of subtle strategy, and this game shows especially when you add more players.

PROS:
Plays fast
Great and intense with more players

CONS:
Dry with 2-3 players.
Average components

GAMEPLAY:
The gameplay is fairly simple and is played in three rounds (days). Each player takes a boat and tokens, then the active player draws 1 to 3 tiles which represent goods in the market. Once the tiles are drawn and placed, each player then takes a turn bidding on the lot of tiles from left to right ending with the player who drew the tiles. These tiles are used to fill up the players boats. Once a player’s boat is filled, they cannot bid until the next round. When the bidding is complete, the next player one left draws more tile and more bidding begins. When everyone’s boats are filled, then the day (round) ends and scoring begins.

The scoring based on the point value of the goods and how many goods the player put in their boat. Whoever got the most point value of goods will get a 30 florin bonus, then other lesser bonuses handed to other places down to no florins for last place. Then the tokens are moved in each market for the goods on the tiles, and there are bonuses for people with the most and second most of a good on the market pyramids. If you can get your marker to the top of the pyramid, you score yet another bonus. After scoring is complete, the poorest player starts the round by drawing tiles.

CRUX:
The meat of the game comes down to two things: jockeying for position to get the most points for a round and getting the most (monopoly) of a certain set of goods by the end of the game. The sooner you secure a monopoly in a good, the more the bonus counts as it’s added per round. You really have to watch and keep up with the goods that everyone is getting, because you need to know who may be challenging you in the same good and know how to spoil market for someone based what’s in their boats. The bidding can get really tense sometimes when trying to secure the goods you need versus the bonus for the round.

CONCLUSION:
I found this game quite refreshing the first time I played it. I was fortunate to start with six players playing the game, and it really made it fun. As the game wore on, I noticed how this game could really get boring with 2 or 3 players, because there is less strategy and competition over bidding on the goods. This game really needs close to the maximum number of players to keep it interesting. The intensity ratchets up while watching everyone’s progress and figuring out how to win bid of a batch of goods you need. Sometimes you get stuck trying to decide if you need to bid on some low value goods and sacrifice the round bonus, just so you can secure a monopoly in that good.

This game seems well suited for casual and social gamers, because it is easy to play and has a lot of player interaction in the bidding wars. I don’t think power gamers will in enjoy it, because there isn’t a lot of depth to the game beyond the number of people playing and no overall long-term strategy. Avid gamers and family gamers with older children should still give it a try.

Try it it, you just might like it.

Kids of Carcassonne does a really nice job of simplifying the game based on it’s namesake for young kids. I bought this for my youngest daughter who turned five not too long ago. We pretty much all enjoying playing a round or two, especially to help satiate my daughters need to play, since you can’t play the more grown up games with the rest of us.

Components:
Tiles are nice and thick, so you don’t have to worry about them getting messed up by the little hands. The artwork is cute and playful which appeals to the little ones. The figures are sturdy wood and well painted just like regular Carcassonne, but a little bigger in this version.

Gameplay:
Each player first chooses their color between yellow, blue, red, or green to play. They then take turns putting tiles down and connecting them just like Carcassonne. However, the tiles will always connect, no matter how you put them down, so it makes it easy for the little ones. The goal of the game is to complete the roads with child on the road that has your color to score points. You show you scored by putting your little figures over the children on the completed road of the same color. The first one to use up their figures wins the game. If there is a tie, then tied players both win.

Conclusion:
I was surprised how fun this game can be for how simple it is. In some ways, I find it more refreshing than regular Carcassonne, and that’s probably because there is less hosing over your opponents in the kid version. It is definitely well designed for younger kids, because there is very little counting and helps them with color identification. This makes a really good family game for mamas and papas with their little ones.

OVERVIEW
Battleship Galaxies is brought to you by Wizards of the Coast and the same designer of once popular “HeroScape” game, Craig Van Ness. In this game, you play either the invading and aggressive alien force “the Wretch” or the defending humans of the USN fleet protecting Saturn. It has very little to do with the old classic Battleship game that we all grew up with in our youth. Each game begins with a scenario setup that details which units you’ll use and which cards will be in your deck. There is a way to draft your deck as well if you want to do that. To win, scenario objectives must be completed. The game combines tactics, deck building, die rolling, and miniatures in a really cool way.

PROS:
Awesome components
Good tactical game
Expandable
Easy to learn

CONS:
A little unbalanced in favor of the “Wretch”
Probably no longer supported by Wizards of the Coast
Too few scenarios!
Boards susceptible to tearing at junction
Adding and removing pegs for shield and hull strength can be clumsy at times.

Gameplay:
The gameplay is fairly simple and turns are divided up into three phases: energy, deployment, and action. Once the board and scenario is setup, each player begins their turn by adding a certain amount of energy to their energy pool (based on the scenario). The energy you receive is basically your currency to do your actions. It costs energy to deploy ships onto the board, to activate ships for moving and attack, and to activate certain cards in your hand or attached to your ship. Each ship has it’s own strength and weaknesses, and each player maneuvers their ships to complete their objectives to win.

Combat is fairly straightforward. Hits in combat are scored by rolling a numbered and lettered die to produce coordinates, and then resolve the possible hit by looking at the target ship’s card with said coordinates. This is where you roll a “B4″, and your opponent says “Hit” like in the old Battleship game. A hit will reduce the shields or hull based on the power of the gun’s capabilities. Each ship also has a “critical” hit coordinate that can completely destroy the ship if shields are down even with full hull strength which makes for some exciting plays.

Conclusion:
Battleship Galaxies is really good space battle tactical game. It seems like the Wretch are a little too strong at times, but it’s not impossible to beat them. The game shows a lot of promise in that it could easily be expanded with more space fleets with different strengths to add to the mix. I really enjoy the game, and I was looking forward to getting some expansions to it. However, it doesn’t look like Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro is going to continue to support it, based on the latest rumors of this writing. They didn’t do a very good job of promoting it to start out which is a shame.

My favorite part of the game is how you can enhance your game play with both tactics cards and ship upgrade cards. I like how you hide your units before deploying them, so your opponent doesn’t know what you have or how many ships your bigger ships could be carrying. This game should appeal to the kid in you with the cool spaceships, and the comic book that comes with is pretty neat. My son and I have really enjoyed it the few times we’ve played. Even without expansions, it’s still a solid game and fun to play. So if you need to scratch that tactical sci-fi space combat itch, this game will do it. If you’re looking to go deeper with more variety, you can always hope that an expansion will come out from either Hasbro or someone else buying the license. It should appeal to avid gamers and family gamers with older kids. If there were more expansions, I could see power gamer flocking to this. Avid gamers should enjoy it because it combines a lot of neat mechanics with a good theme. It’s fun romp and a good game.

Zooloretto has broad appeal in that it attracts younger kids to play, yet has good strategic depth for older players. Zookeeping may sound boring to you, but inside this gem is a competitive masterpiece.

PROS
Beautiful artwork
Easy to learn
Good give’n take strategy

CONS
Rules a little confusing at first
Takes a while to setup the animal tiles

Gameplay
In Zooloretto, players are competing to build a better zoo that scores more points in the end. Each player can choose one of three actions during their turn for each round: add a tile to a delivery truck, perform a money action (5 kinds), or pick a delivery truck therefore ending your turns for that round. Once each player has picked a delivery truck, the round is over. Players then place their tiles (animal, money, or vending stall) in the appropriate location, then put their trucks back to start the next round. Last player to grab a truck goes first the next round. That’s pretty much how the mechanics go.

Strategic Overview
Now, the strategy involved centers around what you can put in your zoo. You can only have one kind of animal in each of your fenced in areas. If you don’t have room for an animal because of wrong type or too many, that animal has to go in the barn. Any type of animal found in the barn at the end of the game is negative two points. Each vending stall found in your barn at the end of the game is negative two points instead of positive two. You really have to manage your zoo allocation well to maximize your points and to get more coins. Some fenced in areas give you coin bonuses if you fill them out completely with animals, so long at the last animal in is not a baby. Even though you start with 3 coins, money is hard to come by in this game, and you’re going to need the coins to either get rid of those animals in the barn or buy an animal from a player to finish an area. Vending stalls are vital to maximize your points in areas where you have few animals.

Even though Zooloretto could devolve towards multi-player solitaire if everyone wants to play nice and not care who wins, it can get kind of “cutthroat” for those who are competitive. The key part comes down to when you pick up a delivery truck that someone else might want or putting tiles on trucks that hose over a truck that someone would have wanted. It has some mild “take that” factors indeed. There can also be some negotiation going on towards the end of the game when players are trying to figure out how to get rid of animals in their barns and try to convince other players to purchase some.

Conclusion
I really enjoy playing this game with 9 yr old daughter. I bought it for “her” on her birthday, and she immensely loves it. She was a big fan of Zoo Tycoon anyway, so it was an easy pick. I’ve taught it to a few others, and so far they have enjoyed it as well. I did have trouble understanding the rules at first, but as we played it became clearer. It does take a while to setup all the animal tiles, especially with lesser players where you have to remove some animals while you setup. However, with others helping setup, it’s not so burdensome.

I highly recommend this very fun little game.

Alvin and Dexter is really a nice add-on to Ticket to Ride (TTR). If TTR has gotten a little dull to you, this expansion can really mix things up and add some nice strategic options to the game. I was quite impressed with it the first time I played it. Don’t let the little box fool you!

PROS
Adds more strategic depth to TTR
Attracts kids to the game
Adds more bonus points

CONS
Alvin and Dexter tend to fall over
Increases “screwage” factor

Gameplay
Essentially, Alvin (the alien) and Dexter (the dinosaur) are monsters rampaging through the cities in TTR causing all kinds of chaos. When one of these monsters is in a city, you cannot complete a route to it or out of it. As a player, you can use part of your turn to move one of these monsters 3 or 6 cities away based on if you discard one or two wildcards. If you move Alvin or Dexter the most, you get 15 points at the end of game. However, you have to wait another turn, before you move the same monster again.

Basically, the extra points really encourage players to keep the monsters moving. Where the strategy is involved in how can you disrupt your opponent from completing their destinations, yet keep them off of your routes. It adds a “TAKE THAT” factor at a level TTR that has never been seen before. For a 5 player game, it can get crazy, and I can see players dog-piling on a leader. The best part is that it makes the 2-player version of TTR far more interesting, because plain 2 player games are just a race to the finish line.

Conclusion
Even though some people may be turned off by the cutesy monsters, this expansion really freshens up this classic game in a whole new way. I like it that you really have to adapt your nicely planned routes to the disruptive nature of these monsters. I like that it makes the game more interactive especially with less players. It makes for a more tense game, because ou’re even less sure of how many destinations you can complete particularly near the end of the game when most people can figure out where you need to go. My kids enjoyed this game more, because of the monsters when normally they wouldn’t play. Seriously, if TTR has gotten kind of old for you or you got some kids who don’t want to play it with you, get Alvin and Dexter a try.

My wife is a huge Ticket to Ride (TTR) fan, so when she got an iPad, she downloaded it as soon as I told her about. She plays it constantly. I’ve played it myself, and I’m quite impressed with the iOS version.

The artwork is superb, and they borrowed heavily from the game and kept it true to the theme. The interface is well thought out and easy to learn while you’re dragging trains across the screen to complete routes. You can choose between players online or various computer opponents of varying degree of difficulty.

Probably the only downside is that you order expansions individually inside the game. It would be nice if they offered a special deal for buying everything at one time.

For a while they had online only play, but the latest version includes solitaire play, making a great way to kill some time if you don’t want to be bothered with playing anyone else.

Get it! You’ll not be disappointed.

Sid Meier is one of the kings of video game design, and one of his most timeless classics is the Civilization PC game series. The video game can take days to play, so trying to cram it into a boardgame that takes an evening must have been a huge challenge. There was an attempt years ago by Eagle Games, but it fell quite flat. Fantasy Flight Games took up the torch again and has done an excellent job remaining true to the spirit of the PC game. This game is EPIC! The goal of the game is to be the first to achieve one of the following victory conditions: get 15 coins (economic), get to the end of the culture track (culture), research level 5 tech (science), or conquer someone’s capital city (military).

PROS:
Lots of ways to win
Tight mechanics
Awesome artwork
Customizable board (better replay)

CONS:
Simplistic combat (just like the video game)
A lot of pieces, so very fiddly and takes a while to setup
3+ hour play time

Gameplay
Each round of the game is divided into five phases: Start of turn, trade, city management, movement, and research. Some these phases are done simultaneously like trade and research, but the others are done in turn order from the player with the first player marker. The start of turn phase is where players build cities and change governments. The trade phase is where players count their trade icons that their cities can reach, and then players can wheel and deal some trades for goods and trade icons. This is possibly the most interactive part of the game. A player gets to do one of three actions during city management phase: build a building, a wonder (big bonuses), unit, or figure, devote to the arts (culture stuff), or harvest a resource. These city management actions are done per city, so if you have 3 cities, then you get 3 city management phase actions. Building stuff costs production icons which are located around your city. Harvest a resource is for special icons within your influence via a city or a settler. Devoting to the arts is where you can “harvest” culture tokens and spend them to advance down the culture track and receive either “great people” (bonuses) or culture event cards (spoilers). The movement phase is where you move your figures on the map and explore new tiles. This is also where you do battle when your figures move onto squares occupied by opponents figures or cities. Combat is very simplistic where you can use 3 different units where each one can trump the other in a “rock, paper, scissors” fashion. There a rules governing how many units can deploy and who attacks first based on bonuses provided by tech levels, owning barracks, having city walls, etc. The last phase is research phase which costs you trade value. The research tech tree is very neat in that you stack your cards on the table in a pyramid form. This makes it easy to figure out what level of research you need, because you always have to research two of the same level before you can research the next. The research cards improve your civilization and certain bonuses that can be activated via resource tokens. Once the round is complete, the first player token is passed to the next player and the next round begins. The game ends immediately when one of the victory conditions is met by a player.

Conclusion
Even though the game is very fiddly and I personally can get tired of fiddly games, my fanboyism for the computer game makes me want to keep playing the game. I’ve organized the components better, so it’s not so painful on setup and teardown. Be prepared to spend the whole evening playing this game, because it does take about 3 hours to play. I like this game alot, and I wonder if I would really like it if I didn’t like the PC game, so I’m not sure I’m objective. I was surprised that my kids liked it. I think they like all the options of the cards and seeing their civilization grow. Even for such a complex game, I think the designer did a good job making it easy to digest the rules with the five phase rounds. The phases are logical and manageable. Not everything in the PC game is in the board game, but I’m sure that you can’t put everything in the board game or it would become a 3 day game instead of a 3 hour game. I like how the “exploration” aspect is preserved in the game with the customizable board where you flip tiles to see what they are. They also preserved the “hut” and “village” experience of the PC game which give you little bonuses throughout the early phase of the game. One of the differences is that you collect trade which is used for fueling your research engine or converted to production to rush building stuff. I guess the only downside is that it doesn’t take long to uncover all the tiles. If you don’t like long, complex, fiddly games, then this is not the game for you. If you’re a fan of the PC game and you like an epic game, get this!

Flashpoint: Fire Rescue is a cooperative game for 1 to 6 players. Each player takes on a role of a firefighter with special skills, and everyone works together to rescue the people inside before the building falls down or four people die. The game is very well designed with good components and provides a solid co-operative experience.

Pros:
Great theme
Tense action
Nice components

Cons:
Fiddly…lots of pieces to maintain
Confusing and hard to remember rules for fire resolution (especially on experienced rules)

Gameplay:
Each player normally gets 4 action points (unless role card says otherwise) to spend on their turn. They can move, extinguish fires, rescue victims, chop walls, carry chemical hazards, move emergency vehicles, shoot the water hose on the truck, etc. After a player uses their points up, the die is rolled to see where the fire grows, and this gets to be the hard part. There are lot rules to keep track of depending on where the die says the fire lands. The family rules are easier to track fire resolution, but the experienced rules get really complicated. Various things can happen during fire resolution: smoke markers turns to fire, explosions happen causing shockwaves, chemical explosions, victims die, firefighters get knocked out, and walls get damaged. After fire resolution, you then determine if more POI – Person of Interest markers get placed on the board which are normally the victims you need to rescue.

There are plenty of roles to choose from that encourage working as a team. The CAPS firefighter can extinguish 3 fires for free, yet only has 3 action points. The Generalist gets 5 action points. The Rescue Specialist gets 3 free movement points, chop for 1 AP (half), but pays double action points for extinguishing. The Imaging Technician can identify any POI marker on the board for 1 AP (weakest role). The Hazmat Technician can remove hazmats for 2AP which is better than carrying it out of the building. The Paramedic can reduce the cost to move victims out the building, but pay double for extinguishing. The Fire Captain can spend 2 free action points to move other players. The Driver/Operator gets to fire the water hose (deck gun) for half the normal action points, and riding around in the truck and shooting the water hose is probably the funnest part of the game. It’s usually the fastest way to get ahead of the fire if you can roll a good number. However, figuring out the dice is still confusing for when the roll is outside the sector, and it really needs some rework.

Conclusion:

Flashpoint is the fifth co-op game that I own, so I really like co-ops. The theme is superb and readily appeals to my son. However, I find the game very fiddly with so many different components compared to my favorite co-op: Pandemic. Also, the fire resolutions rules seem really complicated to me and hard to remember especially when you add in the chemical hazards and hot spots. I constantly ask myself, did I resolve this part correctly, and later on, I look at the board in another turn and found out that I didn’t resolve it correctly. So, I find it highly annoying, and I still don’t understand the “hotspots”! This has to be the hardest co-op yet to get the rules right consistently. My kids love it, but they’re not the ones trying to figure out how to resolve the fires. Pandemic is so easy with a epidemic cards telling you what to do, and the outbreaks are very simple to resolve. The family rules are nice, but I find them lacking without the role cards that add the spice to the game. I personally think the roles should be included in the family game.

My kids want to play it frequently, but it makes me groan and rub my head every time they do. Not too mention, I find it disturbing thematically that you win by saving seven out of 10 people in a burning building…hunh? “Sir, there are still 3 people in the building” “It’s okay to lose a few there chief, now move along and celebrate your victory” All the criticisms aside, Flashpoint is still fun to play and gets very tense at times as you watch those damage markers shrinking and the fire growing.

INTRO:
Very few games can successfully combine the elements of strategic depth, fast play time, and allow many players to play at the same time. It’s like the old saying in manufacturing that you can only pick two out of three qualities that you want in a product: cheap, fast, and good. If you want fast play time and strategic depth, then you need a small amount of players, but if you want fast play time and lot of players, then you need to sacrifice strategic depth. 7 Wonders is a rare gem that accomplishes all three qualities very well, and this probably why it has won so many awards the year it came out. It’s just that good!

PROS:
Fast play time
Scales well up to 7 players
Asymmetric yet well-balanced
Lots of strategy and ways to victory

CONS:
For younger players, lots to keep up with to be successful
Not necessarily easy to setup and teardown (lot of cards to sort through based on number of players)
Not conducive to long-term strategic planning, you have to adapt (can be a pro)

Overview
In 7 Wonders, each player receives a civilization wonder board to play one of the ancient civilizations. This is randomly determined, but if players agree, then you can pick your civilization. Each civilization is different in what resource they automatically produce as well as what bonuses the get for each stage of their wonder they complete. Also, each wonder board has a side “A” and side “B” which kind of acts like a difficulty level to the game. Your starting civilization normally dictates your starting strategy, because of the abilities your civilization has. For example, Giza civilization is almost a pure points strategy based on it’s wonder stages and is probably the easiest civilization to play for newcomers to the game. The goal of the game is to score the most points, and that can be achieved by a combination of military victories, science research, money, building your wonder, bonus cards (guilds and cards that make other cards count as points), and buildings with point values.

Gameplay
The gameplay is real simple in that each age is represented by decks. The cards for each age are dealt out, then you pick one and pass to your left or right based on the age. The cards are either resources for building, give discounts on buildings or resources, or buildings themselves that give certain bonuses or points. It can’t get any easier than that. If you really want to be good at this game, you really have to pay attention to what your neighbors are playing and what cards are still in the age deck you’re playing. The nuances to this game are found in card denial, setting up your long-term point strategy, and maximizing your points sometimes with what you have at the moment. You’re constantly trying to make good decisions with the cards you have. The decisions are easier for a smaller number of players of 3 to 4, because you know that part your hand is coming around back to you. However, it gets increasingly difficult with 7 knowing that the hand you have will never be seen again as you pass it left or right.

Components:
Overall, the quality of the components are very good. Card quality is good, but I’d feel safer sleeving theme based on how much they get handled. The tokens for coins and military points are nice and thick, so they should last a good while. The artwork is simply outstanding. And the design of the game is well done and conveys the information quite well on the cards and boards.

Conclusion
This is really just a great game that gets better with more experienced players. It is not that hard to learn in my opinion, in fact my 9 year old daughter has picked it up quite well and has beaten me a few times.

Strategy Gamers and Power gamers may find this game less appealing, because there isn’t much long term strategy you can consistently count and it’s not a super deep game that last hours.

I think this is a must for Casual and Avid Gamers. There isn’t a lot of interaction for Social Gamers, but they still may find it fun. For family gamers, you kids do need to be a little bit older to really grasp this game at consistent level.

Solid game!

This is going to be a slightly different review then most people are used to seeing. It will compare Jaipur to two other highly recommended two-player card games: Lost Cities and Battle Line. Mainly because fans of one of these games are fans of the others. Even though two of those games are designed by renowned game designer Reiner Knizia, Knizia probably wishes he had designed Jaipur, because it’s that good!

First let me review Jaipur. Jaipur is a game of trading goods and camels for rupees. The game is played in up to 3 rounds as a best of two of three match. Each round, the players take turns trading for goods in the market with items from their hand and camel herd or selling goods for rupees. Sounds simple and straightforward, but it is very subtle because of a limited hand, limited market, and limited amount of goods to be sold. All these have to be managed with skill, so that you can get the better payout then your opponent. The round ends when either three of the six goods sell out or the draw deck which supplies the market is depleted. The winner of each round is the one who bagged the most rupees.

The game is full of decisions that make you press your luck with each turn. Many times you are holding onto a set of goods, because you want to sell a bunch of the same good (3, 4, or 5) for a big bonus payout alongside the normal payout. The more you sell at the same time, the bigger the bonus. However, if you sell sooner then your opponent, you get a higher normal payout in the beginning, because each successive selling of the same good is less rewarding. Then there is the give and take of the market. If you take all the camels (if there’s a bunch) in the market into your herd, then you give your a opponent the first pick of the new items coming into the market. Yet, having the most camels gives you a five rupee bonus at the end of the round. You’re also exchanging other goods in the market with items in your hand, and that could give your opponent an advantage especially early in the game when you don’t know what they are collecting. The give and take aspect of this game is phenomenal in subtly delicious ways.

Now, how does Jaipur stack up to Lost Cities and Battle Line. Well, let’s start with the basics:

Component quality.
The quality of Jaipur components is outstanding even though the cards are a little thin, the tokens are superb. Battle Line will be next with it’s thick and hard-to-shuffle cards, then Lost Cities with the flimsy, big, easy-to-shuffle cards and thick almost useless board.

Fiddliness
Jaipur is easily the fiddliest of the three having so may tokens to setup each round and get in the correct order on top of shuffling the cards. Battle Line is the second fiddliest with having to setup the nine flags in a row at proper card width distance, then shuffle two decks. Last and best is Lost Cities where all you do is shuffle and go again.

Complexity
Both Jaipur and Lost Cities are heavy on the numbers. Lost Cities is probably the worst with having to both add and subtract, then multiply. Jaipur you just add your money, and Battle Line you rarely add. Jaipur has probably the most rules to start out, but the concepts are pretty simple. Battle Line is probably the simplest of all, but the tactic cards can complicate things.

Theme
Jaipur wins hands down, because you almost feel like you’re wheeling and dealing trying to make trades, selling goods, and collecting coins. The other two games can almost be played with a regular deck of cards if they had more suits.

Gameplay
Wow! They’re all great at giving you that “press your luck” and “am I making the right decision?” intensity you come to know and love. Most of the concepts are easy to pick up and games don’t last terribly long. They all have that “let’s play again” emotion that grabs you.

Overall
Just get all three and appreciate them for what they are. They are all worthy additions to your collection. I’ve heard some people get introduced to Lost Cities first, and if they like it, they then get Battle Line. If that goes well, then they move to Jaipur and don’t look back.

Anytime my wife says she likes it and asks for more, I know I have a hit. Jaipur is really a solid little two player game that should appeal to social and casual gamers plus a few avid gamers. If you like playing with your significant other who isn’t big into games, then you might try Jaipur.

Battle Line is another classic Reiner Knizia two player game. He has a knack for designing games that draw you in with it’s give and take appeal. The game is really a remake of “Schotten Totten” with special “tactic cards” and a ancient battle theme added to the game.

The basic premise of the game is that each player plays a card next to a flag then draws a card and tries to capture five of the nine flags in any order or three flags in a row of the nine flags. You win a flag with three cards based on their formation compared to your opponents three card formation across from the same flag. The formations are similar to poker where a run of the same color is highest, next is three of kind, then three of a the same color, then a run of mixed colors, then least is three random cards. The tie breaker is done by highest point count if the formation is similar or whoever completed the formation first if exactly the same (i.e. both have 10,9,8 of the same color then first to complete wins). The tactics cards add a little spice to the game by having “wildcard” type cards and rule breaking cards; however, you can only play one more tactic card then your opponent has already played.

The game definitely has an ebb of flow of press your luck as you try to figure out which card to put down while hoping to draw the card you’re looking for. The risk of putting something down that could potentially destroy an existing formation or start a formation that has no chance of winning can get pretty tense. You can draw from the tactics card pile, but that then limits your hand from getting the cards you need to build the right formation. You don’t want to draw too many tactics cards, because your opponent can kill your hand by not playing any tactic cards and your hand is stuck. My wife almost never draws from the tactics cards.

Overall, I really enjoy this game, partly because my wife asks for it a lot. I enjoy the press your luck feel especially with a good opponent. This game in some ways is better than Lost Cities, because it’s less “mathy”, and it plays a little faster in my experience. You can get three games in compared to Lost Cities, because Lost Cities requires three hands to get in one game. This game should definitely appeal to casual gamers and social gamers, because it is easy to pick up. It makes a really good couples game too, and it travels pretty light.

Word on the Street is a easy yet challenging word game that is great for families and casual gamers!

The rules are fairly simply, and the game plays fairly quickly in around 30 to 45 minutes. It scales well from 2 to 10 players, since you play in teams. The goal of the game is to be the first team to capture 8 letter tiles to win the game.

PROS
Easy to learn
Team play
Don’t have to be the best speller with good teamates
Good components

CONS
Can’t think of any

GAMEPLAY
The game is straightforward by having a board that looks like a “street” with all the letters tiles laid down in the middle at the beginning. Each team takes a turn drawing a category card, and they must spell a word correctly that relates to the category. So, if the category is a “Type of Fruit”, the team could say “BANANA”. They must then proceed to spell each letter and move the correct letter that is NOT captured towards their side of the street one section at a time. So for “BANANA”, the B would be moved one section and the “N” would be moved two sections closer to the spelling team. If the letter is moved all the way off the board on your side, it is now captured and can no longer be moved by the other team. You can still use captured letters to spell words, but it just means that you don’t get to move it and makes it harder to come up with words that have letters to be moved to your favor. This all happens in single turn before the timer runs out. If the timer runs out, the team stops spelling the word and cannot finish.

It is possible that the other team can challenge the word chosen if the word is misspelled or doesn’t fit the category. If the challenge is successful, the letters are moved back to their previous position. If the challenge is unsuccessful, the challenging team loses their turn.

Strategy
There is a nice strategic aspect to the game of give and take as you not only try to capture letters for your team, but you are also trying to prevent the other team from capturing letters as well to buy your team time. The other team can also blurt out words not related to the category to throw the other team off.

Some criticism of the game is that you can learn some “goto” words that are great for this game like “grasshopper” or “baseball” that could spoil the game for experienced versus inexperienced players. I don’t think it’s a valid criticism, because these “goto” words only work for very few categories that come up and they don’t come up that often. Also, not only does the category have to come up, but the board has to be set up with the correct letters on it to really capitalize on the right letter combination which may not be there due to the letters already being captured.

Conclusion
So far, this has been a hit with my whole family that enjoys playing games. We have even had company over that has enjoyed it as well, so it has a broad appeal. I enjoy it over a game of Scrabble any day, because it’s fun and brings out the laughter more. The time limit keeps analysis paralysis in check. It’s a great way to test your kids spelling ability and help them out too, so I like the educational aspect as well.

Social gamers should really love this game, because of the team play.
Casual gamers should find it fun, since it’s easy to pick up and run with it.
Family gamers can get into it with the children that can spell.
Avid gamers should just get into it, because it’s just fun.
Power gamers and Strategy gamers should look elsewhere.

I highly recommend it.

Introduction
Risk 2210 A.D. is a neat sci-fi/post-apocalyptic twist to a classic game where mech robots battle it out for territory. Gone are the days of playing Risk for hours and hours on end with one, two, or three people eliminated waiting for the game to finish. The game is set to only go 5 rounds (years), and whoever has the most points wins the game. This game contains a lot of neat mechanics to make the gameplay interesting with very nifty strategic choices beyond the basics of Risk mastery.

PROS
Limited play time to 5 rounds
Commanders with variable powers
Command cards
Better replay value with devastated land markers
More territories (moon and sea)
New 8-sided die

CONS
Long setup time
Analysis Paralysis prone

Gameplay
The game begins with each player setting up their set number of units by picking territories to place their units in just like normal Risk. However, four of the territories are randomly removed from the game by placing “Devastated Land” markers on them that no player can enter. This provides a neat replay factor where the map will not be the same every time you play and changes each players overall strategy. Also, there are now “moon” and “sea” territories, but those aren’t allowed to be used at the start of the game.

The last setup turn is different in that the players place their “commanders” and “space station.” What? Commanders? Space Station? Yep! Another new twist is the concept of commanders and space stations. There are 5 types of commanders: Space, Land, Marine, Nuclear, and Diplomat. Each player starts out with a Land and Diplomat Commander, the rest have to be “hired” or paid for by 3 energy (game currency). Each commander has different characteristics that provide bonuses when attacking and defending the units they are alongside, and give players access to tactical cards you can buy based on the commander type as well. The Land commander gives a player extra attack and defense bonuses (8-sided die instead of 6-sided die) for units on land and has cards that help units on land. The Diplomat commander only gives a bonus on defense and has more counter-defensive/disruptive and extra point cards. The Space commander provides access to the moon with bonus die for attacking and defending on the moon, and the cards help moon units. The Marine commander provides access to sea territories with attack and defense bonuses at sea and cards that help sea units. The Nuclear commander provides bonuses on both offense and defense for any units location and has the most riskiest and costliest to activate cards(most damaging even to yourself). The space station provides a defense bonus and allows an entry point for units to move to the moon territories from land, once a space commander has been acquired.

Now, a normal round for each player begins with an auction for turn order. Each player bids “energy” (start with 3) to determine who gets to pick their turn order and sometimes it is more important to not pick the first turn. After play order is determined, the player begins their turn by reinforcing their troops and collecting energy based on the number of territories they own and the number of entire continents, sea colonies, or moon colonies they completely possess. They then have an opportunity to buy another commander or space station, and then buy up to 3 cards. That is of course if they have enough energy which is also used to activate certain cards. So careful energy management is another strategic option that must be managed in this game. Once these steps are completed, the player may begin attacking just like normal Risk and continue to attack until they are done. Battle is resolved as normal risk, and once a player is finished, they can reinforce one territory by moving available units across connected territories the player occupies. This done for each player, and the round is complete when everyone gets a turn. Then the auction begins again for the next round or year. Once five rounds are done, all the players tally up their points based on territories owned, complete continents owned, complete colonies owned, and any point cards played; and the victor has the most points as always.

Conclusion
Overall, this is by far the best edition of Risk I have yet played. It brings a lot more strategic depth to the plain vanilla Risk game. There is so much going on besides just acquiring more territory to acquire more troops which is still important. Energy management is critical in being able to pick your turn order, purchasing commanders, purchasing cards, and activating cards. Hand management is critical as well for supporting your commanders and playing the appropriate card at the right time to help your overall strategy. The “Devastated Lands” can also dictate what may be the most optimal strategy based on which lands are blocked at the start of the game and add a lot of replay value. Each commander provides strategic options to help you accomplish victory not just because of the cards, but the territories you can now occupy. Of course the best part of all is the game is limited to five rounds instead of taking forever between skilled players! I say that it won’t take forever, but the added options do make players prone to “analysis-paralysis” drag the game out sometimes. Also, it’s very rare that a competent player is eliminated from a game (unless other players gang up on you), because it is limited to five rounds.

Because of the depth of options, this version of Risk should appeal more to power gamers, and the limited play may help casual gamers even with the long setup time. For those squeamish about wargames and kids, the units are mostly robots, so you can be less squeamish about tearing up their opponent. This helps you introduce a wargame to your kids more easily, and my son just loves the robots! So it has appeal to family gamers as your kids get older. It’s just a great game altogether and worthy addition to your collection!

Stone Age is really a well designed worker placement game. The artwork is beautiful (really some of the best). It’s a much simpler worker placement game compared to others in the same “genre” in some ways, yet requires a bit of math when determining the resources you get on spots. It’s a civilization style game as well as you grow your primitive tribe into a larger more advanced tribe.

PROS
Beautiful artwork and components
A little easier intro to worker placement

CONS
Too mathy for a gateway game or family with younger children
Theme kind of dull
Resource luck driven

GAMEPLAY
Each player places their workers on spots to take action. When gathering resources like stone or wood, you can place multiple workers, however, when taking actions like tool making or hut building allow only one worker. You continue to manage your tribe by gathering resources to grow and feed your tribe as well as purchasing huts and civilization cards.

It is important to keep your people fed or you could lose 10 points to cover your food deficit. The game ends when all the huts are gone or all the cards are gone from the supply. The person with the most points wins the game.

The game offers a variety of strategy through the use of huts and civ cards. There is luck involved with the die roll for resources, so if you don’t like dice, you may not like this game. I also don’t like that I have to do math particularly division to determine my resource amount which makes it hard to bring younger kids into the game.

CONCLUSION
Overall, our family preferred Agricola, and I think part of it is because of the theme appealed more to them. Having sheep, cows, fences, and a tidy home seemed to capture my family’s imagination more. Besides, in some ways the family version of Agricola is even easier than Stone Age if you’re trying to introduce someone to worker placement games. There’s no die rolling, but there is luck in the draw of action cards in Agricola. Stone Age is still a really good game with a lot of options, so don’t be afraid to try it.

There is a reason this game has been around so long. There’s also a reason why there are tournaments held for this game and over a dozen books dedicated to it. It’s a really good word game. It’s not a “kids” game either, because the better the vocabulary you have and better you can the spell, then the better you can dominate in this game.

The game is really simple in that each player draws letter tiles up to a maximum based on number of players. They take turns spelling words on the board, and score points based on the letters and the squares they have placed their tiles. The only catch is they have to make a word from one of the letters on the board except for the first initial move. The person with the most points wins.

The depth to this game comes into not only how well you spell with what tiles you have, but also in how well you can get the bonus squares on the board to maximize your points each turn. Managing your hand in this game is also a key strategy, because you don’t want to find yourself with a rack full of vowels or consonants.

The components in every copy I’ve seen so far have been great. The board is sturdy, and the tiles are solid wood along with the tile racks. You can get fancier versions of this game if you desire, but the basic game is pretty much all you need unless you’re a serious Scrabble aficionado.

Overall, I enjoy this game when I play it. It’s more of a brain burning/deep thinking word game. So “analysis paralysis” prone players, might make this game long. There isn’t much interaction between players except when there’s a question on the validity of a word which might get heated. For a more challenging and enjoyable game, you need to play someone close to your skill level, or else you’ll either crush someone or be crushed…not fun then. If you’re a social gamer looking for a quicker word game with more “fun” as in more interaction and laughs, Word on the Street would be a better fit.

Sorry! Sliders is a fun little dexterity game that brings “curling” to the tabletop. This game really doesn’t have much to do with the original game of it’s namesake, “Sorry,” other than the shape of the pawns.

The game basically involves each player taking turns sliding their pawns down a track towards a center target. Each player then gets to score points once all pawns are used up based on where in center area the pawns wind up. The player to get all four their scoring pawns home first wins the game.

Really, the rules are simple, but the game is just plain fun as you try to aim your pawns to either bump someone out of a good scoring position or to get yourself into a good scoring position. It takes quite a bit of skill to consistently hit your target.

The components are okay quality overall. The pawns are made of durable plastic, but the boards are made of flimsy cardboard that sometimes can be warped slightly. This can make it hard to consistently shoot the same way down the track between different colors. However, the pawns slide very well down the track and were very well designed.

Overall, this is a game everyone can easily enjoy. My kids thoroughly enjoy it. There is a lot of replay value in the many different ways you can setup the board. It makes a good fun filler in between heavy game sessions. Compared to a $200 Crokinole board, this game is a steal if you can get it under $20 with just as much fun!

Race for the Galaxy is a card game that is like San Juan on steroids! It has the same role selection and simultaneous action mechanism as San Juan(except each user can still pick the same role) as well as using cards to “purchase” other cards to place on your tableau. In this game, you’re building your galactic civilization by scoring victory points through exploring other worlds and trading resources. If the victory point chips run out or 12 cards are in a tableau, the game is over and points are tallied to see who the winner is.

This game has so much depth with many different strategies. It takes a while not only to learn the multitude of icons, but also all the various planets and support cards to understand how they work together to create your overall strategy. For example, some worlds support a military strategy, so if you find yourself drawing military worlds and military units, it may be best to start working with those cards. There are plenty of expansions to this game that will continue to satisfy the power gamer as they explore new strategies or ways to enhance older styles of play.

Personally, since I game with my family, I don’t see this ever hitting the table. I had a hard time learning the icons on my own, to the point it seemed like work. I have enough games that require “work” that I didn’t feel the need to go through it again. There isn’t much interaction going on in the game, because everyone is concentrating on their tableau. However, if I was younger and had more time with proper game partners, I would probably pick this up again. For now, I’ll stick to San Juan with the same amount of interaction with less brain burning.

Memoir ’44 is a great tactical wargame for 2 players that takes under an hour to play. It’s not just a game, but a whole game system that can be expanded and tweaked to your heart’s content with about 15 expansions so far. The game comes with over a hundred well crafted plastic miniatures that represent the Allies and Axis forces. There are fifteen scenarios to play from, giving you a lot of replay value before you move on to other expansions. The focus of this base game is the D-Day invasion of 1944 and the ensuing battles after the invasion.

PROS
Easy rules
Short playtime compared to other wargames
Nice components

CONS
Not entire historically accurate figures
Sometimes takes a while to setup and put back
Potentially too luck-driven for some people

Overview
This game is meant to be lightweight unlike other wargames that can bog you down in a thick rulebook and hours of playtime for a single scenario. It was designed by Richard Borg using his now famous “Command and Colors” system that started with “Battle Cry”, and can now be found in “BattleLore”, “Command and Colors:Ancients”, and “Command and Colors:Napoleonics”. This version of C&C is supposed to be accessible, and it works really great with younger kids to introduce them into wargames and history.

Since it’s so lightweight, it is more abstract, so do not expect an accurate historical simulation of the battle, but the game is designed to give you appreciation of the struggle. There is a huge following around this game system, and I’m talking about adults now, not kids.

Gameplay:

The game is centered around 3 types of units (tanks, infantry, and artillery) on each side that follow the same basic rules. These types of units each have different range and firepower. You position your units to maximize your firepower represented by the number of dice you roll, while minimizing your opponent’s firepower by proper use of nearby terrain. Certain terrain types reduce the number of dice your opponent rolls against you when attacking. The board is divided into three sections representing a players right flank, center, and left flank. The cards you draw are what allows you to activate which units you want to move and engage in battle. So, careful hand management is key to this game, if you want to be a consistent winner of Memoir’44.

Each scenario comes with a historical background and has been designed to reflect the conditions of the battle. This means that some scenarios will highly favor the Axis (Germans) or the Allies (US/Britain/France), but not all are lopsided. Some people may not like a lopsided battle, but historically some battles were lopsided. Also, each scenario will sometimes come with special rules such as treating units as “special forces”, special terrain factors, the number of cards each player has, who goes first, certain medal objectives, and how many medals are needed to achieve victory.

Conclusion:
This is by far one of my favorite games! I love how easy and quick it is to play(setup can sometimes take a while if there is lots of terrain). My six year old son loves it, and so do I because it’s FUN! I love the little army units and pushing them around. The game is expandable, so if you want to go deeper, there is room to grow. It also gives me an opportunity to talk to my son about the sacrifice these men made to achieve victory and secure our freedom.

Possible Con –
People who don’t like luck and dice will probably not like this game. However, the luck factor can be managed some through careful hand management and proper use of terrain. That is a skill in of itself that I enjoy. Also, the luck factor gives younger inexperienced players a better chance to win and not grow discouraged by pure skill games that Daddy crushes them at all the time! It also can make for some very thrilling victories!

Some scenarios are tougher on one side versus the other. Again, that is to remind us of how hard the sacrifice was for the men who freed France from Nazi control. For instance, the landing at Omaha Beach was exceptional brutal and high in US casualties, and the Omaha Beach scenario in the game is very tough for the Allies, but winnable. So, when you play it remember, and then switch sides so both people can share the challenge.

Get it! I think you’ll enjoy it!

Castle Panic is a simple and fast co-op of pure action! It’s a lot lighter and quicker then the likes of Pandemic or Forbidden Island.

The goal of the game is to defend your castle in the middle of the board from the oncoming horde of monsters! Players work together to protect castle by sharing soldiers, archers, knights, heroes, and other special cards. It’s a very simple game, because the board is broken up into colored zones with rings based on the range attack of your troops, and most of your cards are colored coded as well. This means that a “red” soldier card can only fight a monster in the “red” soldier ring on the board, etc. The monsters move closer to the castle each round, and more monsters are drawn from the monster token pile each round. Sometimes those tokens have special effects like boulders that barrel through monsters to smash a wall, or make monsters in a zone move forward another ring. There are also different kinds of monsters of varying strength and ability (those darn trolls!).

Each player gets a certain number of cards based on the number of players. They can draw up to their maximum hand allowance, choose to discard one card and draw, trade one card with another player, then play as many of their cards as they desire, so long as it is playable. The game recommends you go ahead and show your cards, so everyone can plan together (this works great for kids), but if you have a bossy player, you might want to try hiding your hands and discuss trades. The player who gets the most monster points by killing certain monsters (not always the most monsters), they become the “master slayer” of the game.

Even if the game ends with just a single part of your tower still standing, you still win the game. You basically have to survive the onslaught and have one part of your tower intact. Note if one wall is left, and no towers are left, you still lose.

Castle Panic is really a light and fun co-op. It’s not a brain burner of a co-op of the likes of Pandemic. My six year old son absolutely loves this game! It’s not necessarily a kids game, because there is quite a bit of planning involved as you get ready for the next wave of monsters and try to trade cards to the next player to help them do the most damage their turn. Kids will love the artwork indeed. There is an optional official variant where someone can play the monsters, and my daughter likes that part. It’s a great way to past the time with kids besides the likes of Life or Candyland!

Power gamers will tend to gravitate to Pandemic or Defenders of the Realm type co-ops. This game is well suited for family and casual gamers!

Innovation is neat civilization style card game. It took me a while to understand the rules, but once you play a hand, it begins to make sense. I recommend you learn from someone who already knows how to play to make it a lot easier.

In this game, each player is playing technologies to improve their civilization to get to a certain number of achievements to win (points determine winner if number of achievements aren’t made). The technologies are the heart of the game, because they bestow special abilities (called “dogma”) to players that allow you draw more cards, steal cards from other players, make special achievements, and other fun stuff. Also, sometimes “dogma” can be shared with other players based on how much of the same icons opposing players have. This can make one more cautious about exercising the “dogma” on your technologies, because you may benefit your opponent too much.

Gameplay is simple by the fact that you get two actions per turn. You either meld (put a card down), draw, or use a dogma effect from one of your top technology cards. Again, these dogma effects are “rulebreakers” allowing you to do some extra actions along with sometimes allowing your opponent to do the same.

This game is unpredictable, because even if you might be losing, a new card drawn from a supply pile in a new technological age may completely change the game. I’m not sure if there is a sure fire strategic “solution” to this game either, because there are too many combinations. It really makes you play to the very end, because you just don’t know who is going to win.

I like this game better than Race for the Galaxy even though it has icons like Race. The icons in Innovation are a little bit easier to grasp. The interaction in Innovation is a lot more direct than Race for the Galaxy even when players take the same action. Innovation is not as deep a game as some others, because you can’t really develop a long term strategy due to it’s unpredictable nature. It is a more of a “tactical” game where you have to react and play the most beneficial card at the moment.

Definitely a good game for avid gamers and probably social gamers for the unpredictable fun (might cause some laughter and groans). My guess is that most power gamers will gravitate to something more deeper like Race for the Galaxy. The rules may be turn off for casual gamers. For family gamers, there is nothing wrong with this game, you just may have to wait for your kids to get a little older to appreciate it, and depends on your family dynamics.

San Juan is a game that was inspired by the groundbreaking strategy game called Puerto Rico. It has the same theme and same role selection mechanic contained in Puerto Rico along with some nice twists. It’s a pure card game and is a lot less fiddly than Puerto Rico, and it plays 2 to 4 players.

In San Juan, you again take on the life of a plantation owner where you build your plantation to produce goods and improve parts of the capital of San Juan with better buildings. The goal of the game is to get the most victory points, but the points are found in the cards.

This game requires skillful hand management as you try to improve your “tableau” of cards. To put a building or a plantation card down in your “tableau” during the building phase, you must pay for it with cards in your hand to the discard pile. This is the tricky part, because you have to give up some good cards sometimes to put down the right card for the next phase of building your “tableau”. But don’t fret, the deck is reshuffled when it runs out, so you might see the card you’re looking for again.

Players choose roles such as building, producing, trading, etc. Each player gets to perform the same roles that is picked, but only the person who picked the role gets the role bonus. The bonus usually involves getting extra cards for some phase for example.

The first person to have 12 cards in their tableau ends the game. Then players add up the their points as explained in each card in their tableau. The person with the most points wins.

I really like San Juan, because it has a good amount of strategic depth versus standard card games. However, it’s a good game to introduce people to the next level of card driven games like Race for the Galaxy which shares a lot of core mechanics. As I mentioned early, it is a snap to set up, because there are very few extra items beyond the cards themselves. Even though the game says it plays 2 to 4 players, it plays better with 3 to 4 in my opinion. It makes a pretty good family game too!

I got this expansion, so we could play with six people instead of five. This is nice. I think Carcassonne plays better with more people, because it brings more interaction as people are competing for space.

The Cathedrals and Inns add a nice twist to the game by adding more “risk” to the game. If you don’t complete a city with a Cathedral or a road with an “Inn”, then you don’t get any points. So, if you’re confident that a you can complete it, then you’re okay. However, if you play the 3 Tile hand variant, this can be a killer way to hose another player over. You can hang onto an Inn or Cathedral and slap it on opponent’s city or road near the end of the game, knowing that they can never finish it.

A worthy expansion!

Phase 10 is a game that I played a lot with my wife when we were newly married (that and Canasta). My wife is a big fun of rummy style games, so this was a hit.

The game requires players to complete all phases first to be the winner. Each phase has certain criteria that must be met in some form of a set, run, or run and set in your hand. Those phases get progressively more difficult to complete as you move up in phases. It interesting how some people are lucky enough to move up quickly, then get bogged down on a phase allowing others to catch up.

It is also a game of give and take, because people can pick up your discards. So you have to be careful trying to figure out what to discard and know what phase each player is trying to complete.

It’s a decent game. Works great for casual gamers and families.

A nifty little game that really doesn’t involve any strategy whatsoever. Everyone pretty much stares at the cards on the table trying to make a set of the patterns on the cards. Someone says, “SET”, then everyone checks that person to see if they made a set. Person with the most sets wins.

Okay, you might think that sounds boring, but if you like puzzles, this game will suck you in! Your eyes might get bleary trying to find a pattern, and your head might start to hurt, but this game can make a nice diversion from your current fare of gaming.

There really isn’t much too this game beyond what I put, so no need for a long review here! Puzzle aficionados go buy it!

UNO is a classic card game this is easy to learn and easy to play. There isn’t much depth to it, and it is very random. This game is more well suited for younger players and can sometimes make a good time killer with them.

In this game, you try to be the first person to go out. Each player tries to discard cards of the same color unless they have a card that change the color. There is lots of cards that skip people, reverse turn order, change the discard color, and make players draw two or four cards. So, you might be thinking you’re about to win, then someone skips you or makes you draw more, etc.

It’s a fun little game.

Just as Catan was a groundbreaking “gateway” game to designer games and gaming with family, Puerto Rico stands as a big favorite among gamers. It has the innovative role selection mechanic that inspired other games like San Juan, Galactic Emperor, and Race for the Galaxy.

In this game, you are a Puerto Rican plantation owner. Your goal is to have the most thriving plantation, best developed section of San Juan (the capital), and ship plenty of goods back to Spain. All that accounts for victory points and of course you win with the most.

Each player during their turn gets to pick a role that allows everyone to perform a specific action. The roles are Builder, Craftsman, Prospector, Trader, Captain, Mayor, and Settler. The person picking the role gets the action plus a useful bonus that no one else gets. As you develop your plantation by selecting specific items to grow and adding buildings to the capital to process plantation produce into goods, you’ll spend your time carefully watching your opponents moves. The buildings you select give you slight advantages over your opponents in certain areas such as role selection, selling goods or producing goods, and final score tallying.

The reason you need to pay attention to what your opponents are doing is because you can adversely affect them in several ways. Sometimes you want to deny them the bonus action on a role even though he or she still gets the same action. Other times, you need to block your opponent from trading a good by placing yours first in the trading section, or you can deny them the good they want to ship back by filling up a ship first causing that player to lose goods. Even though there is no direct interaction in this game, you can see there is a lot of indirect interaction that makes this game stand out.

Personally, the game falls a little flat for me. I mostly play the official 2-player variant with my daughter. The theme doesn’t grip me like other games where Agricola has the tension of keeping your family fed, making it more rewarding in the end. I prefer to play San Juan which is Puerto Rico made into a card game. It’s still a really good game.

This was one of my wife’s goto games with me, since I got the board gaming bug. I can’t count how many times we’ve played this. This is another Reiner Knizia classic game of press your luck and subtle give and take of cards.

Each player goes on a “expedition” to find lost artifacts….nah, just try to build a stack of cards with the most points. The theme really has no meaning other than pretty artwork on cards. The trick is that you have to score over 20 points on each stack to make positive points (i.e. subtract 20 points). The person with the most points after three rounds wins. If you have bonus cards that can double, triple, or quadruple your stack the better, unless you’re in the negative… then it hurts! Very rarely can you start out with the 20 plus points in your hand for a stack (or suit), because you really have to build it as you go and hope another card you need comes along.

It’s a game of give and take, because your opponent can discard cards to the center which you can pick up in lieu of a draw or vice-versa. The problem is that you don’t know what’s in the opponent’s hand and whether or not they need that card. You could potentially give them the game by giving them a card you can’t use, but you have to discard it because you’re hanging onto other cards you need to complete your stack of cards. This is where the game gets tense especially towards the end of the game.

It’s not a deep game, just a tense one of do I pick the card or discard that card or do I hold out for a better card kind of game. Very enjoyable game overall, and the game plays very quickly!

This has got to be one of the easiest games to learn, yet can be very hard to master on a consistent basis. Even younger kids can quickly pick this up, because all you do is lay down tiles that fit like a puzzle. Of course the subtly to the game goes into how players jockey for points by placing their workers on tiles and can get very cutthroat depending on the crowd playing.

PROS
Very accessible
Easy to learn
Nice components

CONS
No fifth player in base game
Needs more expansions for more depth

GAMEPLAY
If you place your worker in a city, it’s called a knight and scores you two points per city segment. If you place your worker on a road, it’s called a thief and scores you a point per road segment. If you place a worker on the countryside, it’s called a farmer and scores you 3 points per completed city touching your field (scored at the end of game). Players will try to stage tiles to try and steal your points by having a majority of workers in a city, on a road, or in a field. However, you can’t just plop a worker on an adjoining occupied space when you place it. That’s the rub, you have to stage the tile, so that it eventually joins up later with the occupied tiles in getting the majority to take the points. The other moves are to deny your opponent really big points, by completing their cities or roads earlier than they wanted.

CONCLUSION
The base game is good starter game, but ************ really needs expansions like “Inns and Cathedrals” and “Traders and Builders”, before it really starts to shine in a major way by giving you more strategic options for scoring. I think some players tend to grow tired quickly of the base game, so go get the expansions to breath some longer life into the game.

This game is easily accessible to casual and family gamers. It’s easy to learn and doesn’t take a long time to play. Social gamers may find this get to cutthroat unless they’re into to that sort of thing. Power gamers may want to look into playing with more expansions to add more depth. Avid gamers should find the tile laying and scoring a fun mechanic to enjoy.

The first few times I played this game, I laughed a lot. But now that I’ve been through the cards a few times, some of the initial fun has started to wear off. I still enjoy it, but it’s just not the same. It’s a good game for couples getting to know each other as friends and breaks the ice. This is decent party game too.

The game is pretty simple where each player takes turns being the “judge”. The judge selects a green card that has an adjective on it. Players pick a card that the green card describes, and they hope the judge picks there card. This is where the hilarity can ensue if you don’t take it too serious. Whoever’s card gets selected by the judge, they will get the green card. Depending on the number of players, whoever reaches the maximum number of green cards first wins the game.

There are a lot of cards in this game, so it will last you for a quite a few plays before it gets kind of old. If it starts to get old for you and you game regularly with the same people, it’s best to mix up partners or mix up players you play with to help keep it interesting.

Overall, it’s a good game for a while, but to me it fades after while.

Pandemic is a well designed co-operative game that can really be tough to beat. This game scales well with 2 to 4 players, and you can even play it solo as well (just pick 2 roles).

Players pick roles that give different abilities, then work as a team as you race around the world trying to save it from four virus outbreaks. There is only one way to win the game: cure all viruses. There are many ways to loose: too many outbreaks, player deck runs out, or virus cubes run out.

You’ll be constantly trying to slow down the spread of the diseases long enough to find the cures. To find a cure you must have 5 cards of same color (unless you’re role is Scientist then 4) as the virus, then bring those cards to a research station for a cure. It might sound easy, but you only get 4 actions per turn, and you draw new infections after each player’s turn. An epidemic card can really mess you up, because it increases the infection rate and reshuffles the infection discard pile back on top ready to reinfect the same cities again. It takes careful coordination between players to maximize the teams effectiveness at stemming the tide of infections to prevent outbreaks (really bad) while getting the cure.

The game has different levels of difficulty, and even the easiest level can be quite challenging. I marvel at those who can win this game at “legendary” level.

This game has pretty wide appeal, because of current events and who doesn’t like to save the world! Even my kids dig it and they’re really not quite old enough to play it.

One con: This game can degrade into non-cooperative and boring play if someone in the group is too bossy or not patient with other people’s mistakes. Just come together to have fun and work together.

Reiner Knizia has a knack for developing simple, but good strategic games. Ingenious is a tile laying game of colorful tiles where each player scores points in one of the six colors as they make connections. This game combines a neat scoring method that encourages players to keep making connections that increase your score per color you put down. The person with the highest LOW score among their colors wins the game. There’s some subtle depth in laying the tiles especially near the end game where you can try and block your opponents from getting their low scores up while keeping your colors moving.

This game is a hit with my family of various ages!

Hive is a nice little strategy game. The object is the capture your opponent’s queen bee with a wide array of assorted insects. Each insect has special movement abilities much like chess pieces. You move your pieces about trying to surround the opposing queen. Once surrounded, the game is over.

The pieces are nice and hefty, and the bugs appeal to kids. The game comes with a nice zipper bag for carrying anywhere. It’s a quick game, so it makes a nice filler for a game night between games.

I really enjoy this game and it’s one of my top favorites. For a civilization style game, it hits a sweet spot of not being too complex, decent amount of strategy, and player interaction.

The game is about managing a colony on a fictitious island called Catan. You race to build the best colony among your peers to reach 10 points to victory. Some scenarios require more points. The interaction is achieved through negotiating for good trades to get the resources you need, and placing the robber on opponents to slow them down.

The strategy comes down to good settlement placement going for points through most roads, biggest army, or getting development cards. Besides placing the robber on leader, you can block opponents from getting to key resources by getting there first with roads.

Because the board is not fixed, but can be randomly created each time you play, this makes Catan quite replayable. It also keeps the game from being too “fixed” or “solvable” with a single solution, because it’s different everytime.

This game is another family keeper, because everyone in my immediate and extended family enjoy playing it.

Bohnanza is a nifty little trading game about beans! The goal of the game is to have the most gold coins by selling your bean fields. Each player tries to maximize their beans in their limited number of bean fields (start with two, purchase one more). It’s important to trade and give to get what you want, because every turn you must plant the first bean in your hand even if it’s a bean you don’t want. That’s the beauty of the game of trying to manage your hand while trying to get the right beans to plant.

The game is fun and good for a socializing. The graphics are cartoony, so it appeals to kids. My daughter has the strangest strategy for an eight year old, yet she either wins or comes close each time. Also, it makes a good filler on game nights. Family gamers should enjoy it, because it appeals to kids, easy to learn, and is fun. It’s a very social game with all the trading and negotiating going on throughout the game, so social gamers should really like it. Causal games should be able to pick it up easily as well.

There is just a few rules to this game. Place your piece only touching your previous piece on a corner, and nowhere else. Place your first piece on the starting location. From there, the deceptively simple game goes deep as you vie for control of the board area trying to block your opponents while maximizing the number of your pieces on the board.

The game is best played with 4 people, and starts to fall flat with less.

With simple rules, a wide range of ages can easily pick up this game. It is well suited for families.

I have played Pandemic, Castle Panic, and now Forbidden Island. Each one fills their own little niche for cooperative play.

Forbidden Island plays very similar to Pandemic in some respects, because it was designed by the creator of Pandemic (surprise surprise) Matt Leacock. It plays a little lighter than Pandemic, but it’s still challenging! It’s less fiddly than Pandemic, so it’s a quick setup and go kind of game. The theme is a little more light-hearted, but just as tense. The board design is modular which makes for greater replay value, and I’ve seen variant setups that are available in the German edition. This makes for a better cooperative game with younger kids, and I think they’ll like the theme better.

The component quality and artwork is absolutely top-notch! The price is incredible!

If you’re looking for something meatier, get Pandemic (and the expansion “On the Brink”).
If you’re looking for something more action-packed with hacking and slashing, get Castle Panic.
If you’re looking for a good quality cooperative game on the cheap and fun for the family with younger kids, get Forbidden Island.

Acquire may not be as old as Monopoly, but it is older than me and I can see why it’s a classic. Finally, an economic game that is far better than monopoly could ever hope to be! I know a lot of people who have owned older versions are upset at the quality of the components compared to earlier versions and rightly so, but really, the game just rocks! Buy this cheaper version to play, and then go buy an older expensive version to store in your closet, so you can be an Acquire snob saying you have version 19xx something:-)

PROS
Easy to learn
Simple but deep strategy
No roll and move!
Interesting choices

CONS
Latest edition component quality quite bad

OVERVIEW
Acquire is a game about investing in hotel chains and getting the most money in the end, similar to Monopoly, but that is about where the similarity ends. The game does a wonderful job of creating the experience of investing in stock, simulating growth in value as the hotel chain grows, merging, and fighting to be primary stockholder for huge payouts on mergers. The gameplay is brilliantly simple, but the strategy and decision making can go way deep! It is done in such a way that the word elegance comes to mind. Even though there is luck involved in the way you draw tiles for this game, I at least get to choose where I want to move by placing a tile. Whereas in Monopoly, you have to move where the die tells you (roll ‘n move) which aggravates me.

GAMEPLAY
In this game you perform 3 simple actions: place a tile, buy up to three stocks, and then draw another tile. When I place a tile, I can decide if I want help grow a hotel chain(don’t have to own it), create a hotel chain, or merge a hotel chain. After that, I have to decide on which hotel chain on the board I want to buy stock. This is where things get interesting, because you know that if you own the most stock in a hotel chain that gets gobbled up in a merger, you’ll get some major moolah. Of course the bigger the chain is when it gets gobbled, the bigger the payout is. So, you may finding yourself trying to weigh out when you should merge the hotel chain if someone doesn’t do it first and whether or not you grow it. Again, there’s a risk involved, because if a hotel chain gets beyond 11 tiles, it is safe from acquisition. If that happens and you’re a major stockholder, then you’ll keep growing that “safe” hotel chain for the big payout at the end of the game. When mergers happen, you also have to decide if you should trade your stock in for the new hotel, sell your old stock, or keep it for when you decide to start the old chain back up again. The game has a lot of subtle strategy as you try to weigh out how you grow a hotel chain or merge it, based on how much stock you own in it or how much someone else has invested in it.

CONCLUSION
Acquire is just a beautifully designed game and is a lot of fun to play. This is a great way to teach your kids about investing in stock too! This game is so easy to play, I think it would appeal to casual gamers and possibly older family gamers. It should be a hit for avid gamers as well.

I really enjoy Catan with this expansion. Some people say that it doesn’t add much to the base game, and I agree. However, what most people don’t know is that this game is what Catan was originally designed with Seafarers. So when you play Seafarers, you play Catan the way Klaus Teber originally designed it. When Catan was published, they cut out the boats and pirates to give it wider appeal, lower the complexity level, and lower the cost.

I love the boats and the feeling of exploration. It really makes Catan more Civilization like, and really completes the game. The complexity doesn’t ratchet up too much with boats, which I like. It finally makes wool more useful. The one thing that I don’t like about Cities & Knights is that it completely changes the game I enjoy, but Seafarers only enhances the base game experience.

I highly recommend it. This is the way I want to play Catan!

This is my kind of economic game. I can’t fully explain why, because there are subtle moves to be made in this game as you go about improving your electric company empire. This game in some way is reminiscent of some of the famous train games, but set to power company theme instead. The reason why is because instead of buying better train engines to deliver more product, you’re buying better power plants to use resources more efficiently. Instead of planning train routes, you’re planning connections to cities to supply power for profit.

The only product you deliver is power, but how you deliver it is where it counts. So it becomes a game of efficient planning and knowing which resources to use at the right time to maximize your profit. The game has 5 resources (really 6 for one special plant) to provide power: Coal, Oil, Nuclear, Trash, and Wind. You don’t purchase wind of course, but the others you have to buy. Each one has a different value, and that value changes on the resource market based on supply and demand. The resource market is really the most brilliantly designed piece of the game. As other players buy up resources, the price of that resource goes up, and vice a versa, when no one is buying it up. That’s part of the subtlety of this game: watching the resources and buying the right plants that use those resources to maximize profit.

There’s an auction round where you bid on power plants. Each power plant can only be powered by either one kind of resource or two (coal or oil). This becomes a factor in how you play the game, because some resources are naturally more expensive then others such as nuclear. As the game progresses, you get opportunities to get more efficient power plants that use less resources and power more cities. You have to make sure you keep up with the number of cities you want to power if you want to keep making money. Of course the winning condition is based on the number of cities you can power in the final round, and doesn’t come down to money unless it’s a tie. So on that final round, not only do you have to have enough power plants to power your cities, but you also have to have the right amount of resources to run those power plants! So spend wisely!

There’s a city connection round. Buying the first connection to the city is the cheapest. Up to three players can share a city, but each space gets more expensive. To build a city, you not only have to pay for the spot in the city, but you also have to pay for the connecting lines to that city from one of your nearest city sites. There a lot of tradeoffs to be made as you fill up the board and try to decide if buying that city is worth the effort at this time.

CONS:
The rules take a little getting used to because of the way the game is broken up into phases that cause certain rules changes at different times during the game. I downloaded some player aids from “BoardGameGeek.com” for this game to help me keep it straight. I recommend you do the same. Go to BoardGameGeek.com, select “Browse Games”, select “Power Grid” (near the top), go down to the “Files” sections, and you’ll find the player aids.

Overall, just an excellent economic game with a great theme!

Okay, I put this as my favorite not so much for stunningly game play, but it got my family playing board games more with me! This is my goto game when my mom or my sister and her family visit. This is my wife’s favorite game..probably all time. This game really shines with 4 to 5 players, because it ratchets up the intensity of completing routes and adjusting your strategy. The game is about connecting routes between cities to complete an overall destination ticket for points. Even though each connection gives you points, if you don’t complete a destination tickets, you will lose points on the ticket.

With two players, I found it quite boring, because it becomes a race to finish your destinations. I recommend the expansion for two players and better handling of cards.

Ticket to Ride is a fun game with broad appeal. It’s not a hardcore/power gamer type of game, but definitely shines as a game for families and casual players.

Okay, I got this game because I do a little farming and BoardGameGeek had it at #1 for a while. However, this game is very fiddly with lots of components and lots of upkeep between turns. I do appreciate that this game has tons of depth and replayability with all the different types of decks that are included.

PROS
Great Replay value
Tense theme
Deep game

CONS
Fiddly
Hard to read rulebook

Overview
Agricola is a game about farming in medieval times where if you don’t farm well you starve. In the case of this game, if you fail to feed your family at harvest time, you have to take begging cards that detract from your final score. Your goal is to have a very well-rounded farm and keep your family fed. If you focus too much on animals, you loose points for lack of vegetables, and vice versa.

Gameplay
Players take turns placing workers on resources and actions to develop their farm and make it better. As each turn progresses, more actions become available to the players, but you can only put one worker on one action at a time. So players spend their time vying for spots to do what they need for their farm and grow food. This can make the game enjoyably tense while trying to plan for feeding your family at the next harvest.

Lots of replay value built into the game, because you have many different ways to play. The game comes with three thick decks of varying complexity to play with during a game. You choose which deck you want to use. These decks provide “occupations” for your farm that give you an advantage in different areas of the game. This really ups the complexity level of the game. That’s why there is a “family” version of the game for younger people that doesn’t use the cards.

CONCLUSION
It’s a very well-designed game. I enjoy it sometimes when I’m in a mood where I don’t mind putting up with the fiddliness of so many components to push around. Nimbler minds may not mind.

If you like really complex games with some brain burning…this is your game. I can power gamers and strategy gamers gravitating to this game. Definintely not for social or casual gamers, because it’s very complex. I would only recommend the family rules for family gamers with young middle school kids, since it removes the player decks from the game.

This is a very easy to setup and travel solo/co-op game. I haven’t played it co-op, but I’ve enjoyed it as a solo game. I’m not a fan of WarHammer 40K universe either, but I remember the old Aliens movie. This game is based on it’s bigger more expensive board game cousin: Space Hulk. It’s a lot cheaper version with some tight game play and very thematic. It’s amazing how such a little game basically writes the story as you go along, and you can picture your marines stalking through the dark corridors with sweat dripping down their brows in anticipation of something bad about to happen. Yeah, lots of theme for a little game and the artwork is very well done. The components are good quality too.

This is game is tough to beat and is very challengingly. The rulebook could be better in going into more in-depth detail, but it does provide great diagrams showing you how to setup and play.

This game won’t be for everyone, because it has a darker and more tense theme. Not everyone likes macho marines in armor taking on creepy aliens, but others will take to it immediately. Might be a little too scary for the little ones too.

Take Yahtzee and Civilization, then throw them in a little box. Shake real hard for a few minutes, and Presto! You’ve got Roll through the Ages.

This is a nice little game that you can play with others or yourself. It works better with others, because it adds a little more interaction between players than Yahtzee ever did. You can affect other people with some of your Civilization advances and wonders, and you can end the game sooner on a certain condition.

It’s a small box, so that makes it a good game to travel.

So if you like Yahtzee, I bet you’ll like this even more. If you hate Yahtzee, well, you might want to give it a try.

Traders and Barbarians is not a single expansion like Seafarers or Cities & Knights. It’s really a bunch of mini expansions that allows you to customize your basic Catan play without adding too much. I haven’t played all the extras, but I like that when parts of Catan get old, I’ve got something to add.

Some of the mini-expansions really only tweak the game a little, but others can really alter the game. The biggest expansion called “Traders & Barbarians” kind reminds me of Cities & Knights “lite”. My kids love the “Fisherman of Catan” addition, because you try to get fish which allow you to do some neat things like move the robber or get certain resources. I always play with the “HarborMaster” card now, because I like adding another path to victory through putting settlements on harbors.

The Catan cards which replace the die is another nice tweak if you’re tired of rolling die and never getting certain numbers. The cards almost guarantee that one of your numbers for resources will happen, and they have special events that add some variety to the game.

If you’re looking to spice up Catan with a lot of variety, Traders and Barbarians is the way to go!

I like this game, although my beef with it is not the chaos. I understand that this game is about chaos and craziness. However, this game can get quite long especially with more players. It is nice they have a timer for the last player to select actions, but it still takes a while.

This game reminds me of computer programming, because you’re trying to program your robot’s next 5 actions. You race your robots to flags that have to be done in order. The first one to the last flag wins the game. In between each action is when the insanity happens, between laser beams, assembly line belts, and turn sections.

Overall, if you don’t mind the chaos, and perfectly laid plans spoiled, then this game can be fun.

I really like Pandemic, but this expansion just makes the game so great! I love the fact that they added lots of new roles! I’m not sure which is my favorite now, but it is somewhere between medic (original game), troubleshooter, and field operative. My daughter really enjoys the bio-terrorist version of the game.

More powerful strains of viruses are added by new epidemic cards that really increase the challenge, along with a new mutating virus to mix things up a bit. This expansion really adds a lot of replay value to the game.

The petri dishes add such a nice touch to the game! You can now store all the virus cubes in them, and an extra dish for the player tokens and research stations. Only problem is that it just doesn’t quite fit in the original game box, but I cram it in anyway.

Well worth getting if you like the original game.

This expansion really adds a lot to the base game. I can’t imagine playing without it. First off, the normal-sized cards are awesome. You can finally shuffle the deck compared to those tiny ticket-sized cards from the base game. A lot more destinations are added for some extra game play. The Big Cities variant is made to make 2-player TtR shine over the base game. That is one limitation of the original game is that it is a snooze fest with 2 players. You can also play with all the destination cards for a lot of variety. The downside of playing all the destination cards is a bigger luck element is introduced towards the end game, because players will be drawing more destinations to find routes they already have completed for extra points.