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i just got done with my first play of this game and I could not be more happy.

This game manages to encompass everything that is great about Blood Bowl while keeping the rules simple and light. The six starting teams all play with their own unique feel. They are not just clones of each other. I chose to play Chaos which was full of brutality and cheating. My opponent picked the dwarves who play in a very guarded yet offensive way.

The box makes the game play seem longer than it will actually be, we were done in about an hour. The game is played in five rounds, each representing a week of the blood bowl season. As the Managers you play through the weekly highlights. These games will give all sorts of rewards; star players, team upgrades and manager upgrades. The upgrade cards rare represented as different types of training your team goes through which makes them better at certain skills and aspects of the game. I leaned towards the more offensive upgrades which made my team better at some skills like tackling and sprinting.

The ultimate goal of the game is to be the team with the most fans at the end of the season. Fans totals are scored on individual scoreboards that each player gets at the start of the game. The rulebook seems daunting at first, but once you actually play the game everything starts making sense very quickly.

The players will have four different skills: tackling, sprinting, passing and cheating. Tackling allows you to attack another player in a match. This is done by comparing the star power of the attacker vs the defender and rolling the tackle dice. Passing allows control of the ball. Sprinting let’s you draw more cards from your player deck which means there will be more players for you to deploy that round. Cheating allows you to cheat (shocking) which is represented in the game by cheating tokens. You take the tokens as you cheat and reveal them during the scoring portin of the game. Cheat tokens will either add to your star power, fan total or get the offending player ejected from the game.

Without going into a longer summary of the rules this game is just plain fun. I was surprised how much of the blood bowl feel was captured in such a small box. This card game will give every blood bowl fan what they want: senseless violence, blatant cheating and a chance to be the ultimate Warhammer football champion.

I was very pleased with the Leaders expansion for 7 Wonders. The leaders add a nice amount of depth and strategy to the game without adding much more time and explanation to the game. The first time or two may add about 10-15 minutes because everybody will be passing the book back and forth to see what their leaders do, but once everybody gets to understand the new pictures this becomes quicker.

Mechanically the leaders add interesting twists to the game. Before the game starts each player gets 4 leaders. You draft these by picking one and passing the pack. Once each player has drafted their leader hands the game can begin. When using the expansions each player starts with six coins because the leaders all cost gold and not resources. Before the start of each age players have the Leader Phase, you pick your first leader and play him face down, everybody reveals and pays the cost and the leader enters play. You can also discard a leader card for three gold or use it to build a phase of a wonder. Nero for example (my personal favorite) costs one gold and gives you two gold for every military victory. Some leaders will give straight up victory points and some will allow you to subtract any one material cost of a type of card. There a lot of these guys to choose from so there is a good amount of diversity each game.

Also in the box are six value gold coins, the Roma wonder card and 4 new guilds. The Roma card is very interesting; instead of producing resources it allows you to play leaders for free, or reduce your leader cost by two while reducing your neighbors leaders by one (depending on which side). The new guilds are pretty interesting, the courtesan guild allows you to place a courtesan token (included) on a neighbors leader letting you use their leader ability.

My groups all love 7 Wonders so I grabbed this expansion with the hopes of keeping the game fresh and it did that and so much more. Everybody has used them insists we use them in every other game we play.

I was very excited for the release of this game, and it did not disappoint in the least! I got my copy yesterday and played 3 games with friends, 2 losses and 1 win!

First off calling this Arkham Horror lite is unfair; Elder Sign has its own unique feel. The dice rolling mechanics add a wonderful random element to the game making each adventure encounter its own distinct challenge. My favorite aspect of the game is the clock mechanic. Every time a player completes a turn the clock moves forward three hours. Each time the clocks strikes midnight a mythos card resolves which (usually) does something quite terrible to the players and sometimes does something beneficial. The turns are fast paced and lead to a lot of cheering and relief when your fellow investigators solve a difficult encounter. Each player rolls the same pool of 6 green encounter dice. You match the symbols you roll vs the symbols needed on the adventure card. If you succeed you commit those dice to that task and move on to the next one, if you fail you will lose a die and try again and sometimes suffer a terror effect listed on the card. If you outright fail and adventure you will suffer a penalty, usually losing some combo of sanity and stamina but occasionally adding a doom track to The Elder God or spawning a monster. Success also comes at a price as you will sometimes add a monster or have to pay stamina or sanity for SUCCEEDING! Some monsters or encounters will lock out some of the dice forcing your hand to tackle those tasks first to get your precious dice back. Other encounters will have a terrible effect that happens every time the clock strikes midnight.

There is a familiar feel to this game, fans of Arkham Horror will see a lot of familiar faces carry over into this game. All of the investigators from the base game are present with new and powerful abilities flawlessly adapted to the dice based nature of Elder Sign. My favorite is The Diletante, her Trust Fund ability allows her to discard a unique item or spell to roll the bonus yellow and red dice while completing an adventure card. These are not just photocopies of the Arkham investigators, they all fit perfectly in The Elder Sign world.

I can’t recommend this game enough. It usually plays out in about an hour and has a unique feel that distinguishes it from being dismissed as “Arkham for dummies”. You can make the game more fun by reading the text on the cards in a spooky Vincent Price style voice. Go give this game a try, it should not disappoint!

I will come out and say it; the card stock issue annoys the **** out of me. The original game is a thicker card stock where this game is more like a magic card. Toss some sleeves on the game and the problem is fixed.

The expansion for ascension functions as a stand alone 2 player game and also allows 6 players when paired with the original. Mechanic wise it adds an ability called fate, which is an ability that takes place the moment the card enters the center row. One card has a fate mechanic of “every player draws a card”. Nothing game breaking but it is a nice and welcome addition to the game. The expansion also comes with rules for a team variant and solo play.

My only suggestion is for more than 4 players add a second center row. With 5-6 people there is no real strategy or planning, you just grab whatever comes up. For 5 we do the normal 6 card center row with 4 extra center row cards underneath it and with 6 we do 12 cards total in the center. This allows a good 4+ experience while still having enough cards that you aren’t just grabbing whatever happens to come up on your turn.

Don’t let the naysayers sway you, if you really love ascension get the expansion. Outside of the card thickness issue which is easily solved with card sleeves it is a great first expansion t an already great game.

I am not the biggest fan of the deck building genre, but this game changed the way I think about it as a whole. Ascension at it’s core is a very easy game. The rules are not very complicated which makes it easy to teach to new players. You start with a basic deck that produces 8 runes (resource) and 2 power (how you kill stuff). There are 3 static cards that you can always buy or fight; two are cards that produce +2 runes or lower as opposed to the basic +1 cards and the other is the cultist who you can always fight to gain 1 honor (victory points).

Those are the basic rules of the game! There will always be 6 cards face up in the center row, you will buy new cards from there to add to your deck and encounter monsters that can be defeated for honor and sometimes other benefits. Every time you buy or defeat a card from the center it gets replaced by a new one. The new cards you buy from the center will produce all sorts of different effects like allowing you to trim less powerful cards out of your deck or draw extra cards as they are played. My favorite mechanic of the game is playing the cards: you have to buy them from the center row, but every time you draw the card it is free to play! You only pay for the cards once. The object of the game is to obtain the most honor. There is a set amount of honor on the table (30 per player) which are represented by little gem looking counters that come with the game. You get this honor by killing monsters and playing specific cards (some characters produce honor when they are played for example) and once all the honor is gone from the table the game is over. The cards you purchase have printed honor value on the bottom of the cards that factors in when you are calculating your final score. Whoever has the most honor wins!

With all of that boring **** out of the way this has seriously become a favorite in my household and amongst my gaming group. We absolutely love the dynamic of the game and not knowing what is going to flop in the center row next! This game has appeal for our hard core gamer friends (most of us work at the same board game store) but our more casual friends love the game as well. It has become a staple at almost every game get together we have, and I can’t reccomend this game enough!