RogueLieutenant

Quantum is a space game, if you hadn’t already figured that out.

I’ve heard some people call it an abstract game with a sci fi theme, but I guess I just get too sucked into the theme to notice it’s just an abstract game.

The theme is fantastic. The colors are eye catching and the artwork is gorgeous. The whole game has a dedicated backstory about how these different factions are competing to put these giant planet sucking machines (Quantum Cubes) on planets.

The story is neat if you care to read it. If you don’t that won’t matter.

The heart of the game is your ships, or your dice; same thing. You dice are your ships.

Depending on what die face is showing that shows what ship it is.

A ONE is a slow battlestation all the way to a SIX which is a nimble scout.

These numbers represent how far a ship can move as well as its combat strength (lower is better).

Each game is different in a big way. The game comes with a chart of different ways you can lay out the planet tiles. These different tile layouts make for drastically different games, some that lead to more exploration and others that force you into more combat.

The game even includes tips on making your own map layouts that will be balanced and fun.

To win you need to get rid of all of your quantum cubes. To do that you can either kill enough people until your ‘dominance’ gets up to six, which lets you place a cube, or you can construct cubes on planets.

Each planet has a number (7,8,9,or 10). To construct a cube on that planet your ships orbiting that planet must add up to exactly the number of the planet.

It’s really fun and makes for a lot of maneuvering to try to get your ships in the right spots.

There’s much more to the game than what I’ve mentioned here.

There’s cards that give you special traits, each with an adjective that describes how your people are developing. “I’m a righteous warlike clever people!”

Each ship has its own special action that can be used to great advantage. For example the THREE can swap places with another friendly ship and a FIVE can move diagonally.

Using your ships special abilities in tandem can really put the momentum your way.

Quantum is fantastic, fun, and gorgeous.

The crossroads expansion simply adds new choices for each stop along the way.

Now everywhere you stop you’ll have the choice presented in the base game, or you can choose to done a new thing.

You can gamble at the farm.

Pay to go to a bath house instead of a hot springs.

Amulets and calligraphy cards change the way you score and play.

You can buy legendary items at the village that will earn you more points.

It’s very compact and adds a lot more decision making and replayability to Tokaido.

In Saboteur everyone takes on the roll of a gold digging dwarf.

Saboteur is a hidden roll game (probably my favorite genre) and everyone is either a gold digger, who want to find the gold, or a saboteur, who want to stop the gold diggers from finding their shiny nuggets.

Gameplay is simple.

There is a starting card, and three treasure cards face down 7 card spaces away from the starting card. Only one of those three has the gold.

Players play one card on their turn and then draw a card.

They can add a card to the path, getting closer to a treasure card.

If they suspect someone of being a saboteur, or if you are a saboteur and want to hinder someone, you can break one of their tools by playing a card on them. This keeps them from adding any more cards to the path.

There’s a card that lets you peek at a treasure as well.

If the saboteurs can stop the gold diggers from getting to the treasure (the deck of cards runs out) they win. Otherwise the gold diggers win.

But whoever got there first gets first pick at the gold cards! In the end there will still only be one winner.

After 3 rounds whoever has the most gold wins.

Important to note is that the discard pile is face down. On your turn you must either play a card, or discard a card. You could have awesome cards and be the saboteur and say “All my cards are ****. Gotta discard.” And they wouldn’t know you were lying because you discard face down.

This game is very fun. Especially with more people (it can have up to ten).

It’s not as easy as in say, The Resistance, to hide the fact that you’re a saboteur, but experienced players will find subtle ways to deter the gold diggers without bringing suspicion on themselves. The more players they easier it is to fake people out.

If you enjoy hidden role games you should try this one out.

I won’t cover the rules as that’s likely been covered in every other review here.

I will say that the game is really cool as it evolves as you play in a very exciting way. It’s really really neat.

But A problem my group encountered was that one player won most of the games we played.

When you win you get to add cities to the board that benefit you and you get to write on the board and name continents and all sorts of neat stuff.

When it’s the same guy doing that every time, it starts to become his game.

The layout of the board starts to favor him.

Rich get richer sort of game flaw…

If you have a player who is very good at war games and very competitive, I would recommend avoiding this game.

There’s no undoing things in this game.

One bad apple can ruin this game for everyone, and it’s not a game you can just start over.

Be sure to consider your group carefully before starting this game.

Timelines is super easy to learn.

I bought it because I knew my family would like it and it is one of the simplest games ive ever taught anyone to play.

If you or anyone you play with has a mind for history this is the right game.

The cards are much smaller than normal, but if they were bigger the table would fill up with cards way too quickly.

There are a lot if cards in thr game, but eventually if you know enough history or play the game enough you might end up knowing a lot of thr cards.

you’ll learn lots though!

super fun!

This game was the first thing I’ve ever funded on Kickstarter and it was a good decision.

This game is from the same company that brought us The Resistance and Avalon. (Coup actually takes place in the same universe as Resistance.)

RULES
The game is super simple to learn the rules. Slightly less simple to develop a good strategy but we’ll get to that.

Basically there are five characters in the game, and three cards of each of them.

Each character has an action and counteraction associated with them.

Everyone gets two. These are the people they influence in this future government where everything is corrupt.

You want to destroy your opponents influence, i.e. make them lose their cards.

On your turn you get one action.

The crazy thing about this game is that you can take the action of any card in the game whether you have it or not. It’s up to the other players to decide if they want to call you out on it or not.

You might say you have the captain and steal two coins from another player when actually you only have the countessa and the assassin. If no one challenges you you get away with it.

If they do challenge you and you can’t show you have the card you claim, you lose an influence, if you win the challenge, they lose an influence.

It’s as simple as that.

Well once you start playing you’ve got to read people and try and decide whether to bluff or not and who to target with your attacks and whether you should challenge other people’s actions and things get wonderfully crazy.

It’s a lot of fun.

I’m personally having a hard time bluffing. It’s scary to bluff!

You only get two influence and once you lose both you’re out of the game!

If you’re not a fan of player elimination in games you might wanna pass this one by.

But not really. Games go by pretty fast. Usually between 10 and 30 minutes.

If you’re a fan of bluffing, deception, and deduction games Coup is a must have.

If you need a fun quick game to fill a spot in your life you need it.

This game is really fun and I imagine the more you play and learn when to bluff and when to take certain actions the game will only increase in fun as time goes on.

I had been waiting to get my hands on this game ever since I saw the review of it over at Shut Up and Sit Down.
(hope that link works…)

If you don’t like fun.

I just recently found this site and it’s beautiful! I love the design, the XP system, the community, the rating systems, all of it!

But I was going through my library and wish list and adding things and there are games not listed on this site!

Saboteur comes to mind. One of my favorite games and I can’t find it on here! :O

Another of my favorite games, Star Wars Miniatures is also sadly lacking from this site. I wish I could fully represent my game collection on here as well as my wishlist.

Other than that this site is beautiful. As much as I love BoardGameGeek.com, it is a messy messy site. BoardGaming.com has wonderful design and doesn’t feel like it’s drowning you. It’s more like cuddling you.