Silverano

Epic Spell Wars… is an easy to learn cardgame that is insanely fun to play. The artwork in this game has it’s own unique look. That combined with a rule book written in a way that fits the artwork makes this a fun experience for both casual gamers and hardcore gamers. But for the hardcore gamers: don’t expect a strategic game that requires a lot of plotting and scheming. Expect an amusing cardgame that will make you laugh…a lot…if you like the artwork and creating silly spell names.

The goal of the game is to destroy every other wizard. You can play this game in 3 ways: Heal yourself from the start so other mages blow each other up, destroy the highest threat or just focus the one you want to annoy. That said, to win this game you MUST start to flatter people or stay off the radar. I don’t like that at all. It is way too random. Especially when you play this game with more then 4 people. Sometimes you already dropped to 5hp or less and you didn’t even cast something this turn (start at 20hp).

I played this game many times with a lot of different people and to be honest, the game itself doesn’t have a high replay value. Yes, there are a lot of spell combinations and items, but every time I played it, it pretty much felt the same. If you want to play this game again, do it with new people so you can enjoy their enthusiasm about the silliness and the art of this game.

Pro’s:
– Unique artwork and style
– Fun game concept
– Quick to learn and fast to play
– Good for both casual and hardcore gamers (for laughs)
Con’s:
– Low replay value
– Straightforward
(Inappropriate for small children)

Conclusion: This is an entertaining game that is ideal to start a boardgamenight with. Doesn’t take long to set up and will set the mood for the evening. Isn’t really much fun if you play it with the same group of people a couple of times, but I’m glad I have this hilarious game in my closet.

Agricola is an easy-to-learn, two player game designed by Uwe Rosenberg.
You play as a simple farmer (or farmerette) and your goal is to have the most points after 7 rounds.
You can get those points by collecting and raising a variety of animals (sheep, horses,…), building structures or by expanding your farm and make full use of those expansions.

The game is played on 3 boards:
1 main board consisting of resources, fences, cribs, actions, etc.
and 2 small boards, 1 for each player, where they build their farm on.

Like I said before, this game is easy to learn and play but that doesn’t mean you can turn off your “wonder of nature” called a brain. There are different strategies you can and should use, because every “opponent” will play differently and you need to adept to that to be able to get a big farm.
Well, opponent is a harsh word in this case because you don’t really get the feeling you need to beat the person you play against, you just want to build an amazing farm…and sometimes that will mean you are the winner 🙂

The developer of this game really kept it simple and clean. The animals, cribs, fences,… are represented by small wooden figures and the buildings by tiles. The illustrations and design really gives you a peaceful feeling and his is the main reason why I like this game so much. A lot of 2 player games these days are heavily competitive. Agricola on the other hand is what I call “a friendly competitive game”: If you win, that’s great, if you lose…well there is always a next time and you will look forward to that because it was so much fun ! That’s what everyone wants if they play games, they just want to have a nice time! If you want to have a high strategic face-off, that’s possible to of course, but I have the feeling that you might want to search for another game then because it would be a shame to ruin this lovely and relaxing ambience the game offers you.

Pros
– Easy to learn
– Small box so good for when you are on a trip
– Wooden miniature livestock !
– Lots of fun !

Cons
I really can’t find a negative thing for this game.

Conclusion
This game is very amusing and while it’s good for people who aren’t that into board-games, more experienced players will have a lot of fun to. You can learn it very quickly and you will enjoy it for many hours !

Terra Mystica is a strategy board game created by Jens Drögemüller,
Helge Ostertag and Uwe Rosenberg. It’s a very solid game, but it might look overwhelming at first.

The goal of this game is to develop your faction/race the best you can by building different structures and buildings. The problem is, you can’t build on just any type of terrain. The race you’ve picked wants a specific type of terrain, and by using your faction’s powers, you can “terramorph” the ground into what your race prefers.
(for example: the Dwarves like mountains and can only build
on mountain tiles; so they can use their powers to terramorph Plains into Mountains)

There are 14 different races, 2 for each type of terrain available.
Some of those races are well known, for example: Dwarves, Giants,
Mermaids,…
But this game also includes many new races:
Fakirs, Nomads, Auren (Spirits of the forest), Cultists,…
Every faction has it’s own pros and cons and knowing them all
makes the difference between a good and an excellent player.

After reading the rule book (which will not only learn you the rules but also introduces you to the Lore of the different factions), you will notice that Terra Mystica isn’t so hard as it looks. The gameboard
and faction boards are well designed and every information you need is
illustrated on them. Of course you need to know what some icons mean, but after playing ones, you will definitely understand them.

The most fun thing about the game is that you can win in many different
ways:

You can choose to build your cities adjacent to another player’s
territory, which gives your opponent some benefits but the cost of your
Trading Houses is reduced
or you can build your structures far away from
anyone ,which gives you more control of the adjacent terrains.

You can focus on Spiritual evolution or quickly rush
your Stronghold so you have its bonus.

…

This game isn’t well known and I believe that’s a
shame. I played it many times and it’s really fun to master all the
different races and strategies. The chances of getting bored is close
to 0 so…don’t hesitate to buy it if you like the theme!

Pros
– many factions
– different possibilities to win
– nice Lore (back story factions)
– Terramorphing is a cool concept

Cons
– might be overwhelming at first
– factions not always equally balanced in my opinion

Conclusion

I would recommend this game for avid, strategy, casual and power players.
It’s a little hard to learn for kids and it takes some time explaining
how it all works so it’s not really a game for social players.
But the people who like to think before they act will enjoy this game
a lot.

The only thing left to say is:
Have a nice day! 🙂

Dixit is a fun family game made by Jean-louis Roubira. What makes this game so great is
the combination of beautiful artwork and innovative game mechanics.

Game play:
First you choose a colored rabbit. This is your score marker. Every time you score, your bunny hops onto the next score tile.
Normally I don’t mention what kind of score markers the game has, but in this case I gladly make an exception. If you open the dixit box, you will see that there is a beautiful “landscape” and it’s on this landscape your bunny will hop.

At the beginning of the game, you will get six cards. On these cards are images of random stuff. (for example: a dragon and a boy, a cradle in the middle of a forest,…)
These beautiful pictures are like fragments of a fairy tale.
One player starts the game and chooses one of his/her cards. (this player is the storyteller for this round) Then he/she gives a tip that matches the image on the card *. Then the storyteller lay down that card face down. Now, the other players choose a card from their hands that also matches the tip. Then all those cards are mixed and shown.
All the players, except for the storyteller, must choose which card they think that belongs to the storyteller. Based on which cards those players choose, points are assigned.
Then there is a new storyteller.
And so it goes on until one player reaches 30 points.

*The tricky part as a storyteller is that not all players may choose your card, but at least one must. So your tips cant be to simple or to hard.

Conclusion
Dixit is an easy to learn game that is a must-have if you want to have some fun with your family or friends. You will learn a lot of new things thanks to the tips other players give . I, for example, like to give tips that are based on Greek or northern mythology.
It’s fun for both young and old and I hope other people will enjoy the game as much as I do.

pros
– easy to learn
– beautiful art
– innovative game mechanics

Cons
– if you play this game with the same persons over and over again, you will get bored after a while.
(tip: buy an expansion to overcome this con)

I hope you enjoyed reading this review!
Have a nice day 🙂

“All the magic happens underneath our own feet and we don’t have a single clue!”

Smallworld Underground is a marvelous board-game designed by Philippe Keyaerts. It is, just like Smallworld, a strategy game and is comparable to risk, but in my opinion much better. (no dice -> less luck,more strategy)

First of all it’s fantasy themed, which I like more then a realistic theme.
Secondly, The illustrations are so beautiful! For example this cute version of the Kraken.
You have 15 different races and each of them can have one of the 21 available special powers which gives this game a lot of replay value.
Not only are the races very appealing, the board itself is just gorgeous. This is always a good thing because if you want it or not, you are going to spend a lot of time looking at that board.

The goal of this game is to collect as many coins as possible by conquering lands en keeping those lands.
Every piece of land that is in your control at the end of your turn will give you one coin.
So choose a race and keep pillaging those regions! Fight for honor! For Glory! Fight…for Victory!
Of course, after a while, your army will become smaller, you simply can’t avoid that.
Then a true leader must abandon his former race and army to get a new one. I know, this sounds harsh and…(moment of silence)
it’s hard to make such a decision, but let’s face the truth…you wanna win, don’t you? :p
This is another great aspect of the game, when you feel that your current race is “too stretched out”, your race can go in
decline and the next turn, you may choose a new race from the ones available.

When you open the box, you will notice that there are a lot of race tokens. The publisher added a simple “storage system”
to the game so you can easily take the race tokens you need.
Furthermore I want to say that the rules are easy to learn and are well written in the rule book.

This board game has a special place in my growing collection of games. It’s my favorite game now and probably will stay my favorite game for some time longer.
Hopefully I inspired you to try out this game for yourself and when you do, try to win for me 😉

“Hmm…I’m not feeling very confident about this..better throw in some dynamite”

Elder Sign (ES) is a horror themed game and is becoming one of my favorite games to play. It’s easy to learn and cooperative, this means that if you are looking for a game to “lure” some people into the board-gaming world, this is probably a good choice. The goal of the game is to solve the mysteries before time runs out and one of the Elder Creatures appear. If such an Elder appear, it’s not lost yet, you have a chance to fight it…but I really suggest to just unravel those mysteries fast 😉

Overall, I believe that the designers did a very good job.
There are many different characters (in this game called “investigators”) each having their own unique ability. There is a magician, a psychologist, a salesman, a doctor and many more.
You can increase the fun of this game by role playing a bit if your into that.

In this game, you don’t have a game-board but over-sized cards, which represents the different rooms of the museum. Because there are plenty of rooms, the replay factor of this game is medium to high. Except for the normal rooms, there are “Other World” cards. When you complete an investigation successfully, it might open a gateway too these Other Worlds.
It’s a fun extra they included in this game.

ES is a dice rolling game so I would suggest to increase your positive karma as much as humanly possible , because it really *peeps* if you keep on failing investigations. You will feel down and useless.. this is probably one of the downsides of the game. Even if you win, you can feel bad because you didn’t do much to help achieving the victory.
On the other side, if you are having luck, you will feel amazing because YOU carried that game and thanks to you, your fellow investigators won too. (even if you know you just were lucky, you can’t avoid feeling this way)

Now, even though this game is mostly luck based, you can change the outcome of an investigation by using items (ex. ->Dynamite<-, Guns, etc), allies, personal abilities or even mighty spells. The downside of the items is that there aren't many different effects. Most of them just adds an extra die and that's it. It would be better with a larger variety of effects.

I've already played it a couple of times and it feels like it's impossible to lose. Some of my "Fellow Investigators" weren't really thinking a lot and were making tons of mistakes and we won by far.. so maybe this game is a little to easy.

Conclusion: If you like playing coöp games and you don’t hate the horror theme, it won’t be a bad buy…it even will be a good buy! The game is beautifully designed and well made. It doesn’t take long to set up and it takes 1-2h to play. Have fun!

If you want to see some game-play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh4nSpV2n4k

I’ve played Magic The Gathering for some years and it’s THE BEST cardgame on the market. It’s as simple as that. One downside for competitive players (like myself) is: It’s gonna cost you A LOT of money and A LOT of time. Seriously.

The good thing of the game is that there are a lot of different cards. Every couple of months, a new series of cards is released. Every series of cards has his own story, new cards, redesigned cards, new races, new theme,… It’s really lots of fun to collect many cards.

The game has his own economy, which is a good and a bad thing.
The good thing is: you don’t need to buy hundreds of boosterpacks to obtain a rare card.
The downside is: some cards cost more then €100 each.

This game is a good example of a game who’s easy to learn, but hard to master. With so many different types of cards and strategies, it’s gonna take time to learn them all and if you want to play competition, you need to know them all.

Of course, for the people who are competitive but don’t want to invest a lot of money in it, there are drafts and pre-releases. Some of the stores who sell MtG cards organize these gametypes.

And if you are a player who just wants to enjoy the game without the need to prove yourself, there are dual-decks. These premade decks (2 in a box) cost around €20 and contains the following:
– 2 themed decks
– a short story around the theme
– a how to play “manual”
If you want to try MtG out, I recommend buying a dual deck.

Furthermore, I want to say that the community of this card game is really good. Most of them I encountered are friendly, polite and wants to help you if needed.