Keyzersose

From the first ‘tile system’ board I’d ever seen, through the activation of magic that flips the tile to specific types of magic, empowering certain characters and weakening others, to the first diceless (thank you, thank you) combat system that could have flavors of poker to it, this game is truly an overlooked gem.

It’s not difficult to learn, (but this set up is probably the original one that inspired Fantasy Flight games forever) but the mechanics require some attention early on until everyone gets a feel for the game flow. Once that happens everyone goes off questing until they have what they need to satisfy victory conditions. Then it’s a race to be the first, so backstabbing ensues, but thoroughly under control, nothing like the Munchkin BS.

It’s just that there were so many *ed tiny cardboard markers to keep track of, because if you lost the one +6 dagger for thieves, it made the thief pretty useless. All the parts had a tendency to rattle around in the box, contributing to that loss.

Much like the original Cosmic Encounter from Eon games though, the artwork on the character cards is suitable for framing. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new artwork,(in cosmic, and other modern games) but it suffers from a “cartoony-ish” bent. The old, classic artwork owed more to Vallejo and the like. It was adult, but without the adult oriented themes in heavy metal.