ProfPlum

CV or curriculum vitae, for those of you who speak latin, is the resume of life for a fictional character in the game. In this game by Granna games, you and up to three other people are allowed the chance to role the dice (not unlike trying to make the right decision in your real life) and try to put together the resume of your characters life as you might want it to be in a perfect world. Do you choose to work on building health, relationships, knowledge, career or are you all about the possessions. It is all up to you, or how lucky you are at matching the right symbols on the dice to the cards you want to add to your CV.

The game starts by all players being given an individual life goal to keep hidden, then community life goals are laid out on the board-1 less than the number of players. Three childhood cards are then given to each player. You take one card, pass the remaining two to the next player, choose from the two new cards and pass the final card to the next player and these are your childhood events that you get to use once each to assist with a later turn, so use them wisely.Remember, you do have three more phases of life to get through, early adulthood, middle age, and old age, each with a unique deck for that phase of life.

Did you get the shiny new bicycle as part of your childhood events, congratulations you are the first player.

The rest of the game are played out in rounds, and there are phases in each round. Each player in turn will play out all phases of the round on their turn.

1-Roll the 4 dice, everyone starts with four but may be able to earn more as the game progresses

2-Reroll any dice you want to up to two more times, just like in Yahtzee, unless they have the frowning face (bad luck) face up on the dice, those are frozen and can’t be re-rolled. (see your mother was right, a face can freeze like that).

3-Once done rolling you may choose up to 2 cards from the board to add to your resume in front of you. Depending on which symbols (health, knowledge, relationship) you roll will let you know which cards you can buy using the cost at the top of the card. If you roll three happy faces (good luck) you may choose one card from the board as long as that card has no other criteria needed, this card also counts towards your two cards.

4-If you rolled three frowning faces (bad luck), you must discard one of your active cards from your CV in front of you. The top card in each stack is always the active card.

5-Add the cards you just purchased to your CV. Health, Knowledge, and Relationship cards can be added anywhere in those stacks, and Work and Possession cards must be added to the top of their stacks.

6-Clean up-move all cards on the track to the left and add more cards to the board to fill the empty spaces.

At the end of the round, the left most card is discarded and everyone updates their bonus tokens (some cards give bonuses when they are the active card) Tokens are there to help remind what you actually have to use.

Play then goes on to the next turn.

At any time when a life deck runs out, game play stops and check to see if any player is eligible for social assistance. You are eligible if any other player has twice as many card in their CV as you. If this happens you may choose any card without paying its cost (must meet any special conditions).

Game ends when the old age deck has fewer cards remaining than the number of players. Add points up and see who won. You score points for both the stacks in front of you, how many cards are in the health, knowledge and relationship stacks, and for their life goal. Possession cards are scored by victory points at the bottom of the cards. Then the community life goals are scored to the person who completed it best. Whoever has the most points wins, ties are broken by who had fewer cards in their CV to win.

Components are pretty good, cards are sturdy with some fun artwork, tokens are poster board thickness, the dice I worry about as the symbols are screen printed on the faces, and not engraved.

This is a fun little game that I feel does have some re-playability. It is a game bases mostly on the luck of your dice rolls, so that can be frustrating if dice hate you. Great game for family gamers and social gamers, also for avid and casual perhaps, other gamers will might want to stay away from this title.

In Show Manager, the players act as theatre producers, hiring various actors to stage 4 musicals-Moonlight, Lipstick, Queenie, and Rats. (I believe I have an “American” version of the game) I found this game, one of the few out there with a theatre theme. The basic game play is card drafting and resource management. You don’t have to be a theatre patron to enjoy, but the more my gaming group gets into introducing the casts the more fun it can be to play.

Be careful with replacing all the actors on stage too many times, as other players see their perfect casts get swept off stage to be replaced with inferior actors, you can become that hated show manager.

I think this is good for family’s, social gamers, casual gamers and avid gamers.

Set up is simple:

Place the game board on the table
1)Shuffle all actor cards and place on designated space on game board
2)Draw first four actor cards and place on casting spots $0 thru $3000
3)Deal out starting capital to each player $18000 for 3-6 players $36000 for 2 players
4)Select a nameplate and write your name or your stage name on the nameplate
5)Take the 4 production tiles that match the instrument on your nameplate
6)Set the production value for any unclaimed “touring theatre” productions, these will go on board once a production with that name is staged by an active player.

Sequence of Play:

On your turn you may:

1)borrow money against a production already in play (this happens later in the game)
–but only if not all players have produced that show
–and only once from each show
–and only up to $10000
or
2)spend $2000 as many times as you want to replace all actors on stage to hire

Then must either:

Hire one of the actors-only one per turn
or
Stage a musical-only one per turn

Hiring actors is simply, pay the cost to the bank and add the actor to your show (hand). All remaining actors on stage, stay on stage, and cards shift right to fill in gaps and a new actor is placed on the $3000 space.

You produce one show at a time, but be careful, many actors cost money and are only talented enough for certain roles, the actors cards have values that let you know how well each actor fits to the roles they can play. As a producer you have only so much money, this is live theatre after all, to get all four musicals staged.

Each show has a certain number of actors. The show you are producing will dictate your current hand size, when your show is “staged” you can only have 2 more cards left in your hand. You must have the minimum number of cards, dictated by the shows cast size. If you reach your hand limit, you must stage your musical on your next turn.

To stage a musical, you introduce the cast to the other players, placing the card on the table for all to see. Count up your points, an actor can only score points if they take on a role named on their card. If the actor is cast in a role they can’t play, they give no points. Amateur actors, can score 1 point for any role, they are never mis-cast.

If you cast the first version of a show, you get to choose the city all musicals of that name will be staged. Each city has 6 slots, and depending which city will let you know how may victory points you get: New York ranges from 22 to 0, while Stockholm ranges from 14 to 4. So placement will be key depending how confident you are in your production. If production values tie, first player on board gets the higher slot.

After all musicals have been staged by all players, you count up victory points and declare a winner, remaining cash breaks any ties.