John-Silver Bull Games

Apples to Apples is a great game for introducing lighter gamers into a game night group. The rules are not overly complicated, everyone has a hand of red cards, and each turn they play one of these cards that they feel the “currently judging” player will choose best fits the Green card that has been revealed from the deck for the turn. With the number of available cards being in the thousands now (including expansions), games of Apples to Apples often ignore the scoring mechanic and simply play on until everyone gets bored of making as silly of a comparison with the Green cards as they can.

That being said, there is one expansion that takes the gameplay further, and in some ways surpasses the original game design in quality: It is known as Sour Apples to Apples (I believe it originally was a Target exclusive), and while the Penalty Apple that came with it is kind of gimmicky (it penalizes the player who played the card that the Judge selects as the worst comparison), the cards that within it are redesigned. Rather than having separate red/green card decks and being stuck with the top green card each turn, the cards in this expansion are printed with both a green and a red play on each. This mechanic allows the Judge to select from their hand the Green card of their choice for the turn, as they are now played in a similar fashion to red cards!

Unfortunately, the cards in that expansion are limited, and they never updated the other expansions/original game to follow this design. The game itself is still solid and a great introductory party game, but after being around for so many years now and presenting various spin-offs with limited redesigns (Apples to Apples dice, Apples to Apples: The Big Picture, etc.) I believe that some of those redesigns would improve upon the lasting quality of this game.

This review is coming from a player whose only experienced a handful of games of it, and primarily with just the standard game and no expansions.

That being said, I was first introduced to Sentinels of the Multiverse during a game night with friends, Starring as the Fanatic. My superhero team consisted of myself, the Chrono Ranger (a Shattered Timelines hero from my friend’s game library), Ra, and the Visionary, and we banded together to stop Baron Blade from pulling the moon into the earth. As the game progressed, the Fanatic, Ra, and the Ranger laid out serious damage with the Visionary providing card drawing support, each in their own way from their deck.

Since my first experience I have gotten ahold of my own copy, and since after looking through the components I have come to this conclusion: each deck (hero, villain, or environment) plays in a unique way or offers a unique challenge for each game. The artwork and theme hold very true to the comic book style they are trying to represent, with many of them resembling actual comic characters without being too “familiar”.

Now for the gameplay: the game is played in rounds consisting of 3 phases: Villain, Hero, and environment. The villain phase is exactly that: the Villain plays the top card of their deck, activates their abilities, then ends their turn. The Hero phase is similar, with each Hero still in play using a card from their hand, activating a Power, then drawing a card from their personal deck before ending their turn (most Hero turns do little more than this until the game progresses a few turns.) Finally, the environment deck plays out by playing its card and resolving all environmental effects remaining in play before ending their turn.

The game continues in the manner mentioned above until either A) all heroes are incapacitated and reduced to 0 health, B) the villain is defeated, or C)the game ends due to a secondary condition on a card (usually as a Loss for the heroes). It is designed for 2-5 players, but I have had fun recently experimenting with playing a full game using a single hero to get a feel for their gameplay (and in some select cases, a win is possible this way, but only by overcoming an extreme difficulty, a lot of luck, and potentially an abuse of the “number of heroes” mechanic that a lot of the cards rely on to determine effects and damage).

In conclusion, Sentinels is worth a look for those who have a superhero itch on a game night. It offers a lot of variety (even with only 4 villains in the original set), and while the character deck play style is not for everyone it is an interesting card game without providing some of the headaches/management required for TCG’s and deckbuilders.

While the stack of dice can get excessive during gameplay and the math for figuring damage/health can at times be unnecessarily large numbers, overall Frag is a entertaining (and occasionally humorous) tribute to old-school computer FPS games. At the beginning of the game, each player decides their Stat Totals (this is one of the few places that there are reasonable limits in this game), then the players take turns rolling dice to move and shoot at each other (most weapons can be equipped/decisions can be made whenever the player decides to, similar to how most Munchkin cards are played.)

The game, however, is not without its flaws. It was designed to both poke fun at and mimic FPS shooters of ages past, and it does so down to exposing their own flaws as well: There are situations in which certain cards/combinations of cards are broken and drastically unbalance the game. Just as in Munchkin and other Steve Jackson games, expect to occasionally have arguments and house rulings concerning exactly when and what order various cards take effect as they are played. Finally, I mentioned the math involved in certain cases. This game comes with 18 d6 dice, and depending how combat and battlefield situations it is possible that a player can and will roll all of these (and potentially more) for their damage roll. This attack is then compared and divided by the defender’s roll in order to determine damage, and this formula can lead to some large numbers using division.

Now, if that didn’t scare you, here are some good and potentially amazing things about this game and its design. As the battlefield takes place on a grid, player created maps are not out of the question nor are they difficult to make thanks to the simplistic artwork. For gamers with extra tokens/pawns, the rules are flexible enough to theoretically allow for any number of players provided that you have enough tokens to represent them (the most I’ve ran in a free-for-all game has been 10-12 players with enough patience to wait for their turn, and a similar number for a team game using House Rules). Finally, broken cards aside, this game holds to the FPS theme fairly well, complete with limited ammo, “Cheat Codes”, “Glitches”, “Lag”, dropped weapons upon being Fragged, and much more!

For tabletop groups who want a fairly inexpensive FPS feel to their evening of board gaming without picking up a controller, Frag is worth giving a shot.