Monarchy

I received this for Christmas, and couldn’t be happier. It’s a great game, and simple to teach. The instructions are a short pamphlet, and fairly straightforward. It’s simply a tile laying game where you have to lay a tile so that it’s sides match all the other sides of tiles it touches. You then use a meeple to claim certain areas on your ‘map’ such as roads, cries, monasterys, etc, and score them when they are complete.

My wife and I have played this numerous times since I got around to opening it, and she absolutely LOVES it. Unlike me she’s not a gamer, but she will ask to play this game, so I would say that it’s a good introductory game.

I received this beauty, along with the first expansion, for Christmas last year. I have had a blast painting the figures (they are unpainted) and playing the game. For those of you familiar with Descent, this is a very similar game in most respects, and in many ways is Descent with a Star Wars skin. There are a few differences, however. The main two being that line-of-sight works differently (in IA you draw a line from one corner of the attacking figure’s square, to two corners of the figure being attacked, without going through the attacked figure), and that the imperial player uses something called threat to ‘purchase’ more soldiers, whereas in Decent they just kept coming. This helps prevent the imperial player from ganging up on the other players, but if they save up their threat, they can really come down like a ton of bricks later in the campaign. You also get a skirmish game included, so in many ways it’s two games in one! But on with the pros and cons:

Cons:
– Difficult instructions. FFG is thier usual self and these instructions can be head bangingly
difficult to understand.
– if you don’t want to paint the miniatures, you either have to leave them unpainted, or pay
someone.
– Long setup time between missions.

Pros:
– Two games in one. This allows you to do tournaments with the skirmish game, if you so
chose.
– Fun game play, and once you get the hang of it, not to frustrating (you might want to look up
a walk-through video on YouTube, however).
– you don’t need to purchase the extra figures to play the game, their are tokens to represent
them, you do get Luke and Vader included, however.
– it’s Star Wars! What else is there to say!

In conclusion: it’s a fun time for all, and truly Star Wars in a Box!

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is one of Fantasy Flight Games Living Card games. That is, it’s like a collectible card game, except instead of purchasing randomly placed card packs, you buy expansions with specific cards in them. This can help keep costs down, but it still can get expensive. The base game comes with three adventures, one easy, one hard, and one that’s **** near impossible to beat with the cards in the base set. I only own the core set, so I can’t give advice on the expansions.

Cons:
– Steep learning curve. This game will chew you up and spit you out.
– Complicated rules. The rule book is 30+ pages long. And, let’s face it, FFG is not known for
their well written rule books. You can watch a video on the games website, however.
– Only three adventures. If you want more, you’ll have to buy some expansions.
– It’s supposed to be a 2-4 player game, but it only comes with two threat trackers. If you want
more, you’ll have to buy another copy of the core set.

Pros:
– As I said, this game is dripping with theme. The card art is beyond gorgeous.
– You feel like you’re in Middle-Earth. The funtion and theme work together.
– Inexpensive. You can pick this up on line for less than thirty bucks.

In conclusion, if you can get past the difficulty and complicated rules, this is an excellent RPGish game to have.

If you are a lover of tabletop war games such as Warhammer, Warmachine or the like, X-wing is right up your alley. It is strategically complex, but simple enough to learn in one or two games. There’s no novel-long instruction booklet here. In-fact if you go to Fantasy Flight Games website, they have a video that will teach you about 85% of the game.

The components are just superb, prepainted plastic ships, with coorisponding bases. My only complaint is that you have to be careful removing a ship from its base, as you can pull of the plastic mounting off of the ship, otherwise five stars. The dice are excellent, as are the thick cardboard tokens. There are aftermarket plastic tokens and movement/firing templates available, if you’d prefer that. For those of you with a 3D printer, there are also .stl files available..

The game itself has just 4 phases, which helps keep the complexity down. There are several scenarios available with the game, and you can also go on the games’ website and download numerous fan-made ones.

This was actually the first ‘board game’ that I picked up, as I eased myself into my new hobby. I had played the iOS version, and when I saw this in the store I picked it up without hesitation. It’s simple to learn (I taught my non-gamer wife to play, and she loves it) and has just the right mix of luck and strategy. It was designed by two champion Magic: the Gathering players, and has some of that feel to it. The cards are well made, and stand up to repeated use. My only complaint is the ‘score’ cards that keep track of your remaining authority (life points). It’s easier to just use a sheet of paper.