Maxxx005

In a party board game weekend on a friend’s house I saw the box of “The World of Smog: On Her Majesty’s Service” ( short name Smog ) that have a beautiful art and inside have gorgeous components, the manual have that theme steampunk and alter past with a great story to my Smog become my new favorite game.

How to Play:
In the game you are a gentleman on Majesty’s service, with the mission of obtain four powerful and magic objects in a shadow market on another dimension and obviously return alive.
Is easy to learn although the eight actions you could do, but only three per round, basically is move across the market, buy or sell materials, or artefact, also rotate the title. And to do more interactions there are shadow agents with different effects to the affect the players or the table. The table is very important because where you sit affect the cost to buy and sell (the bottom value, as how you view), there are cards to move (rotate) the entire board, really funny.

Final Thoughts
All steampunk lovers must have this game, also if you like abstract games.
I’m trying to find contras to this game but I can, therefore I wish to have the kickstarter version, with more cards, more agents, and especially the whole boby minis.

Maybe more than one has heard about Warhammer 40K, and his huge and growing universe, with a lot a races, stories and dystopian undertone, well in this game we have four factions trying to dominate a sector of the universe. I don’t play Warhammer 4000 (minis) but I had read a lot and I love the stories.

The Board game
first think when you see the game is the huge box and inside a lot of minis high detailed, four kind of it (Space Marine, Chaos Marine, Orks, Eldars), and structures (citadel, fortress, and factory), Also have card for each faction, dices and titles to the map.
The game have many rules to explain in a simple review, but a going to talk about the mechanics, basically put orders and dominate terrain to obtain a kind of token (who has four is the winner), at this point is quite similar to Game of Thrones. Each faction have their cards and style to play, very different one to other. Combat, resolve first with dice; depending the forces of your troops and later with card adding strong, defense or moral to the value of your dice.

Final Thought
Is a game with much potential to become the best game of WH40K, representing the spirit of each faction property, if you love WH40K almost must play it.
About the factions, Eldars, feel like a little weak I hope with a expansion could be better and add more like Tau.

First I must say I love steampunk themes and this is a great game with this thematic. We have to choice a famous inventor among Albert Einstein to Nicola Tesla and you’re ready to start a race to define who is the best inventor.
2 to 8 players and about 60 or more minutes to play. Is easy to teach and a new player will understand all on 8 minutes, however the game have a developed strategic to get the goal and a lot of interaction (synergy) among the different parts

How to Play
They are four phases:
Draft: to make you Invention and built your machine with more parts or discard and gain resources, dices or cog. There are 4 different kind of cards; Golden, for movement; Silver, for generate more dices, cogs or shield; Cooper, with four connections; and finally Black, boosters a kind of abilities. When you build you have to join the new part with a valve connection. Also you can rearrange any part of your Machine

Vent: that is the most difficult to understand and the begging because in the first round don’t have vent. So I will explain with the race phase.

Race: You’ll roll every dice gained in the draft to active Machine part of your invention. And every dice you use it’ll remain in your machine, and you can’t use it, for that is the vent phase (in the next round) you use the cogs to reduce the dice value and remove the dices, a cog reduce in two.

Damage: the race track isn’t smooth, there are terrain with obstacles that will damage your machine for every negative point you must destroy a part.

Final Thoughts
Well I really love this game, all the parts made a beautiful game as much as components as funny experience game. And now I waiting for an expansion. I recommend play with 3 or 4, maybe 5, more of that take more time and you’ll lack of dices.
Edit: I must add after play the table is a mess with three kind of dices, red, blue, yellow and four kind of card and cogs for everywhere, put all into the box, take a litle time.

Who played Age of Empire III on PC?
I wanna begging with that question: Who played Age of Empire III on PC?
I did this question because if you want a board game similar to computer game, you’ll be disappointed.

Well AoE is a eurogame with worker placement and area control to do points. In the game we are a civilization and with the discovery of a new continent (America) we try to conquest it, for that we have 5 colonist each turn to do actions different among gain a recourse, conquest (go to the a unoccupied place), explore (go to a discovered place), buy a research (quite important in late game), gain a new worker and finally battle or war.
There are five kind of worker:
Colonist: common worker, no bonus
Captains: equal a two colonist
Merchants: gain 5 coins when explore
Missionary: gain a colonist in the same area of missionary
Soldiers: use to battle, kill other units.
Conclusion: If you forget the game computer you could enjoy this board game is a good worker placement game, not the best but pretty good

From the universe of Descent and rune age came Runewars the most epic (and complicated) war board game ever see.
Components
One of the good points on this game is the miniatures, over 200 miniatures, separated to 4 faction; Daqan (humans), Latari (elfs), Waiqar (no-dead), Uthuk (demons), neutral units; the dragons is the highlight miniature and finally 12 heroes. All of this is high detail and really beautiful.
A lot of card for the different events, or seasons on the game, order cards, etc.
Tokens, tokens and more tokens, among this the map pieces

Rules
Well this is without question the hard, dense and long rules game have ever see and play, for that reason just let talk a little reference of the rules.
The objective is dominate 6 grounds with a Dragon Rune’s on it and after seven years (of the game) end, each year have 4 seasons; spring, summer, autumn and winter, each one with special effect and event. Each player have to play one order (of eight orders), this orders we have movement, conquest, recruit, fortification for an example
The combat is complex you have to divide your units for initiative and resolve with the destiny cards (this is like a dice with the possibility you do nothing)
The adventure phase is an extra phase when you play with your hero(s), level up, move or fight with another heroes or do a quest to obtain object or also Dragon runes.

Conclusions
It’s a great game with a lot a rules and mechanics, maybe you will need a couple (maybe three) of matches to play with fluency and really enjoy the game. After that with all the components (I love the miniatures) the game experience is fantastic. Completely replayed, the setup of the map is random in each game.

No Thanks! Is a great party game with a couple simple rules, easy to play and you get a good time to enjoy with friends and family.
Content:
33 cards (numbered 3 to 35)
55 chips

How to play:
The player with the lower score win, the number in the card is its value and any chips is a -1 point.
A player has to choose one of two options, he or she take a card and put it in front, and the other action is he or she say “no thanks” and put a chip on the card and pass the turn.
When a player take a card he or she take with all the chips on it. Finally is you make a sequence (10, 11, 12 for example) the real value is the lower on the sequence (10 in this case)
Before start each player an equal number of chips, generally 11, 9 to six players and 7 to seven players). Shuffle the deck and put 9 card aside to the round, you are ready to start.

Conclusion:
This is the perfect game to play with people that never played a board game before, for that is a party game with flexibility I play this with 9 people and really enjoy.
Also is a family game, if you game nephews or little cousins, children, you can play with them and enjoy as well. And practice maths also you to, in our days we need a calculator or cellphone to made math addition.

Five minutes to learn the game and you are ready to play between above 5 to 20 minutes. Number of player 2 – 4 best played with 3 or 4.
This is a great game it has an interesting mechanic a weird blend between an eurogame and put orders game, an euro because you have to score points until the end of game to win madding order in each round and all this with only four card per players, that is all you need to play this game
It came on a cool bag (like love letter) therefore is simple storage and easy transport (your pocket is enough)
Now lets talk about the Bad Points
It came with few components, 45 wooden cubes, 15 per each resources, you will feel the lack of cubes when you play 3 players game and with 4 players this will be awful.
Another thing is the replayed, I played about five time and I think the game is predictable depending what the others played in first round.
In conclusion about pros and con: this is a really good filler game, perfect to begin the evening and/or between big wargames.