FollowTheChris

I’ve played the original dominion many times, and it’s great. I love Intrigue, too though, so much that I bought it (something that many plays of Dominion didn’t entice me to do).

The game does add a lot of cards that do rough things to other players, but that’s half the fun in a game like this. There’s also a more interesting balance to the victory points, since some of them have actions associated with them as well.

To be fair, this is a good game in it’s own right. However, playing this after you’ve played pandemic will spoil a good bit of the fun. My game group spent most of the play time saying, “Oh, like Pandemic?”

The set-up can be frustrating, with many unconnected tiles that get placed on the table and repeatedly flipped or removed. The tokens are of okay quality, and the packaging is passable.

The only thing that saves it is that, like Pandemic, it has a great cooperative gameplay.

This is a phenomenal cooperative game.

The basic principle is that there are several diseases spreading around the world, and you are a member of the team that is in charge of stopping their spread. The team must rush around the world treating the infected and performing their research in an effort to devise a cure. Once all the cures have been discovered, the world has been saved,

Sound easy? If so, you’re dead wrong.

The game’s momentum is spurred by epidemic cards, which cause the disease to grow additionally and at an accelerated rate. If you’re one of the unfortunate ones (you will be) who has an epidemic hit a city on the brink, you’ll see an outbreak, where the disease spreads to adjoining cities. You’d better move fast.

Even though you only win rarely (far less than half the time at harder levels), the game is well worth it for the competitive paces it puts you through. Overall, this is one of our go-to games, and is a favorite of everyone.

The biggest drawback to Arkham Horror is the learning curve. Be prepared to read a novel sized rulebook if you don’t have someone else to help teach you. Also, the more into RP the players are, the better.

The game’s great once you get going, and well worth the investment. You just have to get there.

This game allows you to chase Jack the Ripper across Whitechapel as he commits his famous crimes. With one known player as Jack and the rest as Police, the game can get tense quickly.

Jack has several options for each murder, and then more than 100 possible spots to move through on his way back to his hide-out. It’s the police’s job to intervene as he moves through the town. Any single clue that Jack leaves behind can be used to trace him, but if the police get too close he can catch a cab or dart through an alleyway, forcing the police to close in on his hideout.

This game takes a round or two to fully grasp, but only because the tradeoffs between players are so well designed! After the first game, you’ll be dying to play again to see if you can do any better the second round.

The game comes with several nice, wooden tokens as well as a movement tracking sheet and envelope for Jack. Turns move quickly, and players are constantly engaged. My biggest complaint with the game is that it uses a paper pad (pet peeve) as a component, and that at times there are a lot of tokens, in general and on the board.

Overall, this is one that I would highly recommend to anyone who likes a thorough mental workout to go along with their boardgames.