Bobtina

One of the first comments that I often hear leveled about this game is that it is pandemic with a luck element added. Since most people are familiar with Pandemic as the cooperative game, I’ll give a comparison of these two games so that you can see if you will like it.

Here is a little rundown of how the two games are similar:
Each player gets a character that has unique special abilities and the characters must conquer four disease/warlords to win the game. They are conquered by collecting enough cards of a certain color. As you collect the cards, the disease/minions start to pop up across the board. If you don’t deal with the disease/minions, there will be an outbreak/overrun and minions will spread faster than expected. Having a too many of these outbreaks/outruns can result in players loosing the game.

Defenders of a Realm adds substantial twists that make feel like a unique game rather than a rebranding of Pandemic. These twists are as follows:
The most noticeable difference is that players must roll dice to remove minions from the board. This means that plans don’t always work out as perfectly as they do in Pandemic. Not all characters have the same number of actions per turn. The number of actions a character gets is dictated by the number of hit points a character has. If a character ends their turn in a location with minions on it, the character loses hit points, which results in a loss of actions in the next turn. A character can take actions to heal and gain hit points back, but if they choose not to and push their luck, a character can die. The player will be able to come back into the game in the following turn with another character, but all of the cards that the previous character had are lost. Another great thing about DotR is the quests. Each person gets personal quest cards that they can choose to fulfill. This gives players something to do during those times when they don’t feel like they are essential to taking down a warlord or clean the board of minions. Lastly, when trying to defeat the warlords, it is almost always a group effort. Instead of handing all of the cards to one player, most of the time multiple players will gather at the warlord and fight it together.

The bottom line: While DotR uses the same “game engine” as Pandemic, the unique features in DotR are substantial enough that it doesn’t feel like a Pandemic rebrand. I highly remmend this gave for anyone who enjoyed Pandemic.

Though I do not have this particular set, I do play FoW and can speak of the game system as a whole. This is a fantastic miniatures game. The rules are fairly straight forward (but as with any miniatures game, there are a lot of them to learn). I have some friends who started the game with this set and they say that it makes learning the rules very simple because the missions progress you through the rules slowly, without overwhelming you. As with any miniatures game, expect to spend a lot of money on components. That said, Battlefront Miniatures (the company that makes the game) does a good job of keeping the pricing down and the rules don’t change every other year like with some companies *cough* Games Workshop *cough*. They do a lot to make sure that the customers are happy and this includes being as historically accurate as possible in the sculpts and the rules for each unit.

Bottom line: If you want to try out FoW, this is a great place to start.

This is a coop game that makes coop hard. You aren’t allowed to see the cards in your the other players’ hands, turns take a lot of pre-planning, and, oh ya, players can be eliminated from the game really easily. Who wants to have to sit out a coop game after only two turns (this has happened in a game I played)? As a solo game, when you control multiple teams of space marines it becomes a lot of fun. The preplanning becomes much easier and much more important while the game is more nerve wracking as you watch the number of space marines slowly dwindle.

For the most part, this game has a quick play time, but sometimes it drags on and on and on and on and on and on (get the picture yet?) and on and on (just had to add those last two for good measure). Even when the games don’t drag on, every group I have played with insists on playing it multiple times, which essentially gives it the feeling of going on forever. The only time I can say that I would break this out is after an all night gaming session at 3 am when everyone is braindead. Why? Well I’ll tell you (even if you don’t want to hear it): there is little to no strategy in this game. You end up winning by the luck of the draw with the rules changing all the time along with the winning conditions you cannot play out anything. All you can hope is that you draw the right cards at the right time. The only semblance of strategy comes when you have to play a large amount of cards every turn. The strategy comes in deciding the order that you wish to play the cards. Other than that, you just have to let the game mechanics take you for a ride. A ride that I’d rather not be on.

This is one of my favorite games that I own and part of the reason is that the replay value is so high for any group that tries it. The basic mechanics of the game allow for replayability, but what really makes the replayability shine is that there are various difficulty levels that you can play the game at. This makes it great fro teaching a simple game, but also keeps the game engaging for a group of experienced gamers. On a side note, I play a lot of solo games and this game is perfect for solo play.

I usually don’t judge a game based on the first play, so I gave this one another shot and remained unimpressed by it. Sure there is some replay value (due to the randomization of the routes), but it is very minimal. Overall, the strategy remains simple: hoard your cards and only play when absolutely necessary. It is a strategy that doesn’t take long to figure out and is nigh impossible to subvert. Couple this with the fact that the ideal string of routes can be figured out rather quickly and you get a game that falls flat after a few plays. As a result of its lack of depth, I can only recommend this as a family game.

There is a lot of love for this game out there and I can understand why, but I find that my copy doesn’t hit the table as much as I expected it to when I first bought the game. Here’s why: the player interaction is just too darn low for me. Essentially, you are building a deck to buy things faster than you opponents and the only interaction comes if your opponent buys some attack cards. At most, when you are attacked, it is annoying, but it only slightly hinders you for a turn. Couple this with the fact that there are very few attack cards in the game and you have a system that feels like you are playing solo (for the most part). Not to say that playing solo games is bad (I do it all the time), but when I have people to play games with I’d rather interact with them. I suggest trying the game out a couple times before deciding whether or not to buy it.

Hands down, this is one of the greatest games out there and it has the name recognition with non-gamers to rival Settlers of Catan. It is a fantastic game the is easy for people to pick up and with all of the expansions it is really easy to get a customized gaming experience. One of my favorite things about the Carcassonne “system” is that multiple copies of the game can be combined if a larger, longer game is desired

Bottom line: This is a must have for any serious collection

As the title says, this expansion is best with experienced players only. This is because the people who are not playing the necromancer have to walk a very delicate line between taking opponent’s territory and not killing so much that the necromancer will become strong. The very nature of Small World’s race/special power combos make it good for replayability, which is taken into consideration since the necromancer player chooses six special powers at the beginning of the game (one of which he/she starts out with and the rest can be purchases later on).