Fullmetalwwant

Over the course of 7 rounds, players will be using their employee cards to take certain actions in order to either make some dresses, hire some more employees, build some decorations or even call a favor from the queen! But we must talk about these employees first because they are really the heart of the game!

We have three different employees that we can use over the course of the game, each having a different colored thimble in the center of the card. You have the Master (Gold Thimble), Journeyman (Silver Thimble) and the Apprentice (Brass Thimble). These are important because they will allow you to perform actions based on what they are. For this, we take a look at what we can do on each round.

Out of the five cards you start with, you can only play three each round (this changes should you decide to buy more employees). There are 6 main actions you can perform and some are different then others due to what worker you can use:

1. Claim the Queen’s Favor – The Apprentice can’t perform this action. You call a favor to the Queen, allowing you not only to get the first player token but to also gain 5 coins from the bank.
2. Acquire Resources – Everyone can perform this action. You can select a resource from the resource warehouse on the board. The key factor is that the price varies on what row you get it from and how many resources are left on that row. Once you buy one, you either can put it face down in front of you, keeping the fabric, or you can exchange it for some Yarn and Lace, depending on the symbol.
3. Make a Dress – The Apprentice can’t perform this action. Once you gathered enough resources, you can go ahead and make a dress to rent or to sell. The coins on top of where the dresses are determine how much you have to pay to make the dress. If you do decide to rent the dress out to someone, you can place them on the board with your player token on top of it. This in turn allows you to gain victory points at the end of the game if you control a certain hall with the most dresses. Also, some halls have golden fancy spaces which can only be done if you made a dress using a Master employee.
4. Hire a New Employee – Only the Master can perform this action – On the side of the board, you will see a couple of employee cards that will come out at the start of every round and each will be different. Once you do decide on who to buy, you pay the amount depending on how many employees are left. Instead of putting it in your discard pile, you put the new employee in your hand, giving you another turn in the current round.
5. Depute your Employee – Anyone can perform this action. Sometimes, the King may request your employee to be somewhere else so you gain some money in return. At least when you do perform this action, you can perform your employee’s secondary action before they go away for the rest of the game.
6. Fund a Decoration – Anyone can perform this action. This is where most of your money may go to fund certain statues, decorations, fireworks to to be used at the end of the game to net you more bonus points and hire musicians into halls to help break tie breakers should they come at the end. Building part of the fountain will allow you to gain some more money once everyone starts getting paid.

So every round, you fill up the employee cards, fill up the resource warehouse, and put out dresses to buy. Every person gets to pick from three cards of the five they start with and will perform their main action. Some employees have a second action they can perform on the bottom of the card, which could range from taking another resource to gaining some coins. Remember that this changes with every round of new employees that come out so it could change the very game in your favor depending on who you decide to use.

Once everyone can’t play any more cards, we gain some coins, with a base income of 5 coins plus however many more you gain depending on what side of the fountain you built, from having decorations to having a number of dresses. Once everyone gets paid, the old employees that haven’t been bought are put away and a new set of employees enter the game. You restock the resource warehouse and add more dresses to the board (all the dresses that haven’t been made are moved to the right of the track while any dresses that are in the unlit windows are discarded). Pick three cards from you draw pile and you begin the next round (if you can’t draw anymore cards, that’s when you grab all the cards in your discard pile and pick however many cards you have left to put in your hand).

After 7 rounds, you go into a final scoring and this is where the area control of the game shines. Not only do you get points from the dresses you rented, if you control a certain area with more dresses, you get more points. In case of a tie, you use the decoration you built within the hall to break it. If there’s still a tie, then whoever has more dresses on the fancy spaces will get the points. Then, depending on if you have dresses on the very top of the building, you can move them to the roof and gain double victory points if you have built some fireworks. After scoring, you move towards the statues to give you points if you have a set of different dress colors you made. And finally, you gain the victory points on each dress you rented. Whoever has the most points is the winner of the game!

Deck Area Control Building

I have to admit one thing. I’m not much of a fan of area control games. It was never my kind of game mechanic. Maybe that’s why I never liked Risk. But here, it’s done so well that it balances out with whatever you are doing with your dresses. It’s like you can go for some halls to gain points, or you can try to get some decorations up first so that you can avoid tie breakers. You have a choice in this game and not limited on what you can do.

There is some deck building in this game but it’s a twist on the mechanic, meaning that you can look at all your cards and just get three to go forward. It’s nice to know that you have a choice this round and in the next round, you can make the same choices depending on what you buy. It’s always a nice mix that helps you determine what you want to do every round. If you want to get more employees so that your turn doesn’t end for the round, go for it. But often times, you need money and sometimes its best to stop. I like deck building games and this is a great way to put a spin on that mechanic. Overall, this is something that can be enjoyed.

Final Verdict

So one of the biggest reasons I decided to buy Rococo was because I was wondering what my girlfriend would like to play. I knew she loved to wear dresses and such everyday so I thought this would be a fine game to play. And man, this is a fine game to play! From the beginning, you knew you have to have some plan in order to get points at the end of the game, Do you start getting resources right from the start to make dresses? Do you build some decorations to get you more money at the end of each round? How about getting some more employees so that you can have more turns in a round? The choice is yours to make and everything you do is judged on these employee cards. Some get better with each passing round and you just have to decide what you want to do. My gaming group really loves this game because you don’t ever feel rushing and you can go at your own pace to determine what you want to do. Overall, dress making is indeed fun!

Ah yes, the life of a farmer is often one of hardship. Often times, you have to decide which crops to grow every year. However, one such crop is known all over the world and that’s peppers. From the tame to the most extreme levels of hot, peppers is a fine little thing that everyone likes, maybe.

Scoville is a game about planting peppers and getting different kinds of them for a contest on who has the best peppers. From fulfillment cards to making some recipes, Scoville is the kind of game that last place can very well mean first place. How will you handle the heat?

By now, mostly everyone took the hot puns so it’s pretty cool here anyways.

Gameplay

Over the series of rounds, players will be able to plant and harvest peppers. There are 5 phases of the game and each has their own rules as to what you can do. Plus, it’s important to understand this because player order is important!

1. Auction – The first thing players do is the auction phase *This doesn’t happen when the game starts, afterwards this phase begins in Round 2* To begin, players put whoever many coins they have in their hands and once everyone is ready, you reveal the coins to everyone. Whoever has the most coins will determine where on the turn order track they want to be. Once everyone decides, in turn order from left to right, you get to select one of the auction cards on top of the board to gain some extra peppers. Once everyone has chosen a card, we move to the next phase.
2. Planting – From left to right, players then choose one of their peppers to plant on the main board. The key thing here is that they must be horizontally or vertically touching another pepper in order to be planted. This is also where you earn award plaques if you were the first person to plant a certain pepper.
3. Harvesting – In reverse turn order, players then move their farmers on the board to gain peppers depending on what two peppers they can make. Players may move up to three notches (four if you decide to use one of your bonus action tiles). When in between two peppers, players look to see what peppers they make and gain that pepper from the supply and continue moving forward. Players can only turn around at the start of the their movement and never in between. Turn order is important because players can go through a player on the board so you have to go around players just to get to a space you want to go. Once everyone has made their move, we go to the next phase.
4. Fulfillment – This is where players can try to fulfill some goods to get some points back in return. While players can perform any of these actions in any order, they can only do each action once!
-Visit the Farmers’ Market: A player can choose one of the market cards to see if they can fulfill them. They can range from giving you peppers, points or coins.
-Compete at the Chili Cookoff: Here you can use a number of peppers to make recipes and earn points. The more peppers a recipe uses, the more points it’ll give you.
-Sell a batch of Peppers: Each sold pepper you will net you $1 for every 2 of that colored pepper is on the board. This is more helpful towards later rounds once you start getting more peppers on the board.
5. Time Check – This is the final phase of the round to determine if we are at the endgame or if we switch from Morning to Afternoon.
-If it’s Morning, check to see how many recipe cards are left. If there are fewer cards then players, then one more round is played and the game ends. If there are still more market cards then players, we are still in the Morning. If there are fewer, then we go into the Afternoon and we replace all the auction and market cards from the Morning deck to the Afternoon deck.
-If it’s Afternoon, check the recipe and market locations. If one of them has fewer cards then players, then play one more round. If both locations have less cards then players, then the game ends without going another round.

Once you determined what happens, another round begins until one of the above happens. Once everyone is finished, you count up how many points you have based on the market, recipe, award plaques and bonus tiles you have. Coins are awarded points for every 3 dollars you have, you get a point. Whoever has the most points is the winner of Scoville! In an event of a tie, the winner is the one who has the most coins!

Feeling the Heat

Scoville is probably one of my favorite games made by TMG. Everything about the game screams theme and the peppers are just the best little components I’ve seen. The game itself is like a thinking game. You understand how to make more peppers but the key factor is that auction phase of the game. Do you go first to get more peppers or do you decide to go last in hopes to harvest the best peppers while prevent players from getting theirs? The choice is yours to determine where you want to go. The game allows you to get points from either the market or the chili cookoff so you can expand your options and get the peppers you want.

Later in the game, you will start getting more of those complex peppers that can be worth big points at the end of the game. Each time you make a phantom pepper, you see how much work you placed into getting that. Those bigger recipes call for using more rare peppers and it’s often very hard to get what you want because other players went on your space on the board. This is where money can be a big hindrance to players because you get money from completing market cards but it isn’t that much. So often times, you have to bid smart in order to get what you want. And that could mean coming between first and last and your goals could change depending on where you go.

If I can mention one thing about this game is that this is a fun game that isn’t that heavy. It does make you think but it won’t take you hours to complete the game. It’s simple to understand the rules once you get a few rounds in and players will start talking out loud about what they want to do. I remember in one game a friend was taking a while to decide what they want to plant. Thankfully the game comes with those breeding charts or it would take forever to finish the game. Often times, you have to really think about what you want to do but players could plant brown peppers on the board to mess up the field. This is because brown peppers can’t make other peppers and are the loser peppers of the world so if you plant them next to peppers that can make other peppers, you might as well try planting at a different area to get those good peppers.

Final Verdict

Scoville is probably one of my favorite games from TMG (and I like Belfort and that’s a bit more of a heavier game then Scoville). The fact that you plant peppers and make other peppers is really great and once the game ends and you see the board, that’s a lot of hard work for just peppers. Everything about the game is wonderful and the peppers themselves won my heart over. This is a fun little game that can be great for other players to enjoy very much. While some players complained about the bidding aspect of the game, I like it very much just so that it gives a sense of luck with who gets to determine their player order first. But remember, its not always the first or last player to gain the victory.

Through the Ages is known as one of the top civilization games to play. However, it’s a long game to play and could take many hours to play with friends. Actually, trying to get your friends to play the game is a bit hard, unless they like those kinds of games. Roll Through the Ages is the same game but as you can tell by the name, you roll dice to determine what you do.

First of all, the game comes with 7 wooden dice and 4 pegboards. The quality of the components themselves is the best I’ve seen in a small game. It’s light and feels great too so you can take it on the go. The game also comes with a huge stack of double sided score pads so that’s nice as well.

You start off with three dice and each side of the dice represents a different symbol. You can either gain food to feed your cities, gain workers to help build monuments or build more cities to roll more dice. And you can gain goods and coins to build developments, avoiding certain disasters or gaining extra food or workers per dice. Disasters are represented as skulls and for everyone you roll, you must keep (unless your playing the solo version of the game). Each disaster will cost you points or your opponents might lose points.

Using the pegboard is easy. The green color is your food and goes up and down with the food you get. Everything else is your goods and every good you roll, one goes up from the bottom to the top. However, if you have more then 6 goods out, then you must get rid of them.

The game is good when you want to play a quick solo game or with 4 players, the fun really starts to pick up. Your battling to build an monument first so that you can get the points in the square. If you do build it, everyone else will earn the points next to the square. At the end of the game, whoever has the most points wins the game and has the mightiest empire!

Uwe Rosenberg is known all over the world as one of the best game designers, from Bohnanza to Agricola, he either likes farming or beans. Caverna: The Cave Farmers is what many people are calling Agricola 2.0. The game itself not only makes you have your little farm but now, you get to mine in a cave! Yes, sounds exciting but this made me love the game that much more.

If anyone has ever played Agricola or any worker placement game, you will understand Caverna. If not, you do have to learn what each action space on the board does in order to get resources, get fields or mine and expand within your cave. Over the course of 12 rounds, you have to feed your dwarves, gather some animals and try to aim for the most points at the end of the game.

The game itself takes about 30 minutes per player so games can get really long inbetween downtime but when you see what’s in front of you, you wouldn’t want to stop (just don’t try to get 7 players to play, that seems a bit long). Caverna replaces the cards from Agricola with the action board, which changes depending on how many players are playing. Rubys are a new component that allows you to trade them for wood, stone, grain, pumpkins or anything else that will get you what you need to feed your family.

A new part of the game is the cave itself. Now you can mine your cave to make more to furnish your caverns to add new rooms to grow your family or any of the other furnishing tiles that comes with the game. You can use these tiles to gather more resources or give you more victory points at the end of the game.

Another new feature is the expedition. Now you can use ore to forge a weapon (between a level 1-8), then going on an expedition to find loot based on your level. After that, you can level up before moving on. This is a neat feature that makes get loot others might take on the action board. You can also use a ruby to allow your weapon dwarves to go first instead of allowing your weaker ones go first, a move that could change the game.

Now, when it’s all said and done, the game is pretty pricy at $90.00. However, you are getting 7 pounds of a great game and all the wooden meeples too! From grains to pumpkins, sheep to dogs, ore to rubies, you get everything in the box. Along with over 400 pieces of cardboard to punch out, the box just closes (I went with two plano boxes to get the job done to sort everything).

If you are on the fence about the game, wait till you can at least get it at the 90 dollar price point because with so many components and with a great game, Caverna is a hit for 2013 and I bet we will see an expansion in the future.

Takenoko is a 2-4 player game which places you in the middle of a pond, trying to complete objectives based upon how you make the board. You can control the Gardener, a man who can grow bamboo on the space and every space surrounding him of the same color. But you can also control the Panda, who can eat bamboo and add it to your collection. The three main colors are red, yellow, and green of bamboo you can grow and the land you choose as well. This can go hand in hand because you can be able to complete different tasks to get you the most points in the end.

As you can see, this is how the game board would look like after a couple of turns of selecting tiles. Improvements help the tiles in their own way. You can have a tile protected from the bamboo, making it impossible for the panda to eat it. You can also fertilize it to grow two bamboo stacks instead of just one. And you can have a water tile on it, making it possible to grow bamboo. The water blocks are a way to get water to the outer most tiles on the board that are far away from the center tile. Finally, you can roll the weather dice after the first round to give you an extra action, double down on a single action plus 4 other weather conditions to make the game that much interesting.

Everything about the game is just beautiful, from the bamboo wood pieces to the dice itself, the game is just beautiful in every way. You have the ability to place the tiles to meet some of your objectives. You can have the Panda cards, which allow you to eat the different colors depending on what the card needs you to have. The Gardener cards allow you to score points on how high and how many a certain color of bamboo you need to grow. And finally the Tile cards, making them set up in a shape and a color to get you the points needed to win.

There is also a Deluxe Edition of the game as well and it’s giant. It has giant pieces and everything but it will cost you $300 dollars but it’s a collector’s piece for sure for those who like collecting those games.

Takenoko is a fun game that surprised me and my gaming buddies with such a unique set of rules and what you have to do to win the game. The pieces are beautiful and the game is simple, yet challenging at the same time. Pandas need the love and this game really delivers and everyone should at least give this game a go with family and friends alike!

Another expansion for the deckbuilding co-op game Legendary is one that features probably one of the best teams in the Marvel Universe: The Fantastic Four. Over a hundred cards are included in this small expansion but it’s enough not only to give you more heroes, but two more Masterminds and a few more schemes to make Legendary that much more of a game to have when it comes to expansions.

Being a small expansion, you have to go big when it comes to Legendary. 5 Heroes are introduced in this expansion: Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, The Thing and The Silver Surfer are the new heroes taking on The Mole Man but more importantly, Galactus in a showdown of epic sizes.

New additions to this expansion come with the ability to Focus recruit points now. What that means if, say you pulled a card that allows you to focus three recruit points. While you lose those three points, you gain back however many attack points you get from the card so it can be quite powerful (saying this because Galactus is a mighty 20 Attack Power).

Also, thanks to Galactus and his Villains, we now have a Cosmic Threat on their cards. You pick one of the symbols (strength, tech, etc.) and it will make them weaker, granted, it will take a lot to get Galactus down and with his Masterstrikes, it’s a game that could be challenging.

The Burrow ability is with The Mole Man Villains in which they could avoid an attack and move to the street section of the board (if there’s no villain there) and you have to attack them again.

This small expansion to Legendary is probably one of the best expansions next to Dark City. While it only offers 100 cards, you can’t go wrong with Fantastic Four and Silver Surfer trying to take down Galactus and this is one expansion everyone should get for their game.

Legendary is quickly becoming one of the best deckbuilding games yet and of course, we got to have some expansions and Dark City is a bog box expansion which adds more heroes, more masterminds and more schemes, as well as other little goodies.

Our Heroes included are Daredevil, Blade, Iceman, Ghost Rider and others as they now have to take on new, tougher Masterminds. Kingpin, Stryfe, Mr. Sinister, Mephisto and Apocalypse are now wrecking havoc. New schemes are added to make the challenge that much more interesting.

When it comes to Kingpin, you now have the option to bribe him and his villains that follow him. This allows you to use both Attack and Recruit points to take them down. Nightcrawler uses the Teleport ability to use cards at another turn, something that could be useful in future turns.

Other then that, nothing else has changed but now that you have at least 400 more cards added to Legendary, there’s just more to have fun with the game. If you already own just Legendary, grab Dark City because it adds more Heroes (which, the artwork is actually different within each hero which is just a bonus) and the new Masterminds will add a challenge to your game.

Let’s face it, by now, you understand and know of deckbuilding games. But when you want to combine that with Marvel, the possibilities are just endless in size. Legendary is that game that you keep coming back for more and it looks to become one of the top deckbuilding games around.

Legendary is a deckbuilding game that centers around the world of Marvel. From Spider-Man to Iron Man, Captain America to The Hulk, heroes will assemble together to try to defeat the likes of Red Skull and Loki from, you guessed it, taking over the world. First, you gotta follow some set up rules before you dive in.

You gotta pick your Mastermind. Red Skull, Magneto, Dr. Doom and Loki are the Masterminds and from there, you build the villain deck, made up of a select group of Henchmen (weaker bad guys) and the Villains (stronger bad guys who tend to follow a Mastermind). Scheme twists are added to the deck to go with whatever scheme you decide to randomly do. Allow a villain to escape the city can cost more then a hero. And you can’t forget those bystanders as well. Once that’s done, you randomly select you heroes to create the Hero deck and the game is on.

On your turn, you flip a card from the Villain deck and go from there. You start with some basic cards and try to have enough recruit points to start buying super hero cards to make your deck more powerful to start taking out the villains before going one on one with the Mastermind. This can go on for a while since the Mastermind tends to always come back a few more times before finally being defeated.

There’s a lot of rules I just can’t cover but it makes you really think that your part of the team since all your friends are fighting together to stop the Mastermind. At the end, whoever has the most victory points is the true Legendary Superhero.

This game is possibly one of the best games out there. The artwork, while looking the same for the heroes, is that of comics and it’s great. The learning curve isn’t steep at all and after a few games, everyone will get the hang of it and hope to get their favorite hero to play with. With 11 schemes to randomly choose from, the challenge is there. Plus, the rulebook also adds some more challenges if you think the game is getting a bit too easy for you. Marvel Legendary shines as a deckbuilding game and with so much space in the box, expansions will indeed assemble into this great game.

Many card games want you to have fun with the rules and with others. But for Gloom, this is a game where the fun is with depression. If you are a storyteller, then this game may be for you.

Gloom is a game where the ultimate goal is to make your family as miserable as possible while making your opponents families as happy as possible. The point is to get the most negative points to win the game. But how is this possible? Well, it is a card game but the cards themselves is both awesome and a tiny drawback.

The cards themselves are actually see through. When placing cards on top of each other (given that it’s for a positive or negative effect) it will cover up your character card and give you a positive or negative point value. You can use certain cards to also effect your opponents family in a positive way as well. While I do like the cards, often times it’s hard to really get a good grip on the cards because they always slide around but that’s just me.

The real deal breaker here is the fact that you can just say what’s on the card but for Gloom, you really have to get into it. Make the game like a story and why your characters want to be as unhappy as possible. A good story can make or break a game and this is one of those games. But if you don’t like telling a story, that’s perfectly fine. The game as it sits is a lot of fun when you have the right people playing it and sometimes it’s good for a laugh.

Gloom is a tale of woe but it’s a fun card game. The cards themselves won me over (or in this case, decided to slide all over the place) and it’s a chance to find out just how much of a depressing family you can make. Regardless on how you feel at the end of game, I do hope you have a miserable (positive here folks) time as possible.

When it comes to filler games, you can choose from a large amount of games before you get pumped to tackle that big game everyone wants to play. Food Fight is one of those games that surprised me and my friends the first time I brought it out to the gaming table. After explaining the rules to them and after playing it a few times, they agreed it’s a fun game to play between games.

Food Fight is your game where you recruit food cards to make a small little stack of cards to fight in a selected battlefield between breakfast, lunch and dinner. Of course, your troops also has the advantage of winning ties on their field. Other cards also help out like Instants to buff up your troops to win the battle. And in an event of a tie or only a single person battling on a selected battlefield, then you will have The Dog come out to try to stop you in the long run.

In the end, you are given mints for each battle you won and whoever has the most will claim the battlefield and the victory points with it.

It’s a fun little game to play, so much so that I picked up the small expansion with it and I do hope down the road, maybe another expansion will show up. But if you need a break between games to help you get ready for the big game at that game night, Food Fight is a game to try and enjoy.

When it comes to deckbuilding games, many can point towards Dominion as one of the classics up towards Marvel Legendary. Trains, while having such a simple title, is not just a simple deckbuilding game. In fact, the true power behind the game is the fact that it comes with a board along with 500 cards and a few components. Let me explain.

Trains is a deckbuilding game where, much like any other game, you buy cards to build a deck, allowing you to buy better cards and even those wonderful victory point cards.

But wait! There’s a catch this time around.

The board itself won me over because it’s another way to not only gain victory points but to feel like your laying down rails on the board. You now have the chance to not only expand into cities between the double sided board (Osaka or Tokyo) but to other small cities to give you the most points.

While you still have you main currency (reflected as trains), you now have the Lay Rails and the Station Expansion cards, allowing you to lay the rails towards cities and build stations in those cities to net you the most points. However, a factor in that whatever you do, you gain a Waste card. From laying down rails, expanding into rivers and mountains, to building stations and even putting down a rail with another person, you gain a Waste card, giving you nothing but an extra card of nothing.

The fact that you can use the board with the cards you have to gain victory points is a much needed breath of fresh air when it comes to deckbuilding games. Trains has the chance to be a great game with everyone if expansions start happening down the road and I fell in love with the game. It’s not the cards (they do look lovely) that won me over, it’s the fact that you have two ways to win that make this game that much enjoyable.

If there’s one game that started all this for me would be Zomibes!!! After my friend brought it over one fine day, I decided to grab my own copy of the game and two expansions. Every now and then, I would bring it out again and play with my same friends that started this out for me. While still a fun game, it does lose its value over time.

Zombies is your standard game where you must either get to the helipad to escape the town or kill off a certain amount of zombies to win the game. You are dealt with cards from a deck (mine’s just stacked with the 3.5 expansion for extra cards) and from there, you explore and kill zombies by rolling dice. While even with the expansions, the game does get a bit clustered? As you place more expansions, both your town and deck of cards get larger and larger. By the time the helipad is drawn out, you got a map full of zombies and just one giant maze of things.

But in the long run, Zombies is a game that may lose its value over the years but for every other day, it’s a game that you can enjoy with your friends.

Granted, that also depends if your friends either like the whole zombie genre or they hate it.