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King of Tokyo is a dice game. The dice ae large, solid and just plain fun to roll. The game takes about 30-35 minutes to play, and it just the best filler game you have every played.

The fun starts when you get to select you monster. Will you be the giant ape? The killer bunny? If you are playing with just the base set there is no difference in how each monster plays. Players take turns rolling the six base dice and matching up symbols to gain different effects.

You can attack other monsters, heal damage that’s been done to you, gather energy (which is used to buy cards) or score victory points. You get three throws of the dice in a turn and can keep whichever dice suit your needs. In order to win the game you must be either the last man standing or collect 20 victory points. Each monster only has 10 hit points, but you can heal as long as you are not in Tokyo. There is a very definite element of a push-your-luck game to this game.

At the start of the game whoever rolls the most “paws” (icon on the dice) gets to enter Tokyo. While you are in Tokyo you earn two victory points each round you stay in the city. Your goal while in Tokyo is to roll as much damage as possible which is passed on to the monsters outside of Tokyo. If you are in Tokyo you damage all monsters outside of Tokyo. There is a small problem with staying inside Tokyo. Your monster can not heal. I have seen many games lost by the player who think “I will stay one more round in Tokyo and then leave.” Someone rolls 4 or 5 points of damage, and they are knocked out of the game

Monsters outside of Tokyo can hit the monster in Tokyo, heal, or purchase cards that can assist you in winning. These cards are purchased through the use of lighting bolt icons on the dice.

I personally think the key to success is by buying quality cards that assist you in winning. But I almost never win so….

The great thing about the game is that even if you never win like me, you have so much fun playing that you immediately want to play again.

If you think the game sounds like fun, be sure to purchase the expansion set. In the base set each character is the same. The expansion allows each character to have special abilities.

I guess the best endorsement I can say is that our family is already planning to play the game over Thanksgiving. And we are all going to play until “fill in family member’s name” wins.

Well I know one thing, that big ape isn’t taking down my Killer Bunny again, not this time.

Theme
Descent: Journeys in the Dark is set in a classic fantasy universe.

Components: The components are typically Fantasy Flight well made and beautiful. I wish they would have made the player figures be colored minitures, but you can purchase them separately if desired.

The Game:In Descent players take roles of a hero each, and one player acts as the overlord, controlling the monsters and playing against all the other players. The heroes available are 4 classes with 2 career choices. These are: Warrior (Champion/Berserker), Healer (Knight/Disciple), Scout (Thief/Wildlander), Mage (Runemaster/Necromancer). You can play one-off games of Descent, but it is fun to play the game in campaign mode. In this version you play a chain of quests according to the quest book. Your heroes gain experience and buy new skills, loot treasures and buy items they can keep. They travel between missions and there’s a card deck to tell you what event happened during these travels.

The game does scale depending on how many people are playing. So you can play the game with 2-5 people. Once person has to play the overlord which can be troublesome in some groups where no one wants to play the role. So if you are playing with just two people one person is the overlord and the other player plays two heroes.

Good:
This game scales to the number of people playing.
Each enounter only takes around 45 minutes to play.
The quests have enjoyable stories where are well connected together.
The tiles are cool to look at and lay down.
When you first play you think this is a very simple game, but after a few games, you realize there is some strategy to keeping your hero group alive and winning.

Bad:
The game at heart is a boardgame not a role playing game. If you are looking for a true pencil and paper experience this game does not fill that nitch.
Heroes are only knocked out – which means there can be frustration with some heroes who are knocked out again and again in a scenario. Once down I think the Overlord can kill them again very easily.
Someone has to be the Overloard.

Ugly:
All game decisions come down to die rolling. If you don’t roll well your party will not succeed. There is nothing more frustrating than to be standing right next to someone and miss them entirely, just because you can’t roll dice.

There are no solo rules.

Wrap-up

I love the game because it is short adventure boardgaming. You can introduce people to the game and have them playing and having a good time within a few minutes. Even though it is not role playing game in the true sense – we all play our characters as if they existed. There are many options of character types which make replay possible. If you have 45 minutes and 2-4 friends try out an adventure.

I knew the dame was trouble the moment she walked into my office. A young starlet has been found dead in her bed. The suspects her sister, a pompous actor, a successful business man,and a director. Who could have killed this young star?

Thus starts another game of Ace Detective. This is a story telling game. The game includes several murders in which you much discover who was the murderer. There are wonderful colored cards that you use to tell the story. Each of these story cards has a large image at the top followed by three smaller images. The large image tell you what type of card it is such as a person, place or danger; shown as a gun.

In order to lay a card down and add to the story your card must match one of the three smaller icons on the last card in the story chain. Some of these cards allow you to place a suspect token on one of the four suspects. These tokens, placed face down, have both positive and negative numbers thus allowing you to place a token with a negative number on someone you don’t want to be the murderer, and positive tokens that allow you to select the suspect.

Using a method that is very similar to one used in the game, Android, there is no right or wrong answer to the crimes. The tokens that you have placed on the suspects are added and subtracted and the suspect with the highest number is in fact the murderer, and the person with the most tokens on that suspect is the game winner.

Again this is a story telling game. If people you play with only place down story cards due to matching icons the story thread can be totally lost. Points are awarded to players as they tell the story, and plot points are used as money during the game. If you would like to purchase some more story cards, or clue cards, or move someone’s token from one person to another you pay using these plot points.

The story cards have words such as worker, driver, or strong legwork, which I think sometimes limits people’s imaginations. They see the words on the cards and think the card always has to be used that way. I am more of a believer that as long as you are describing a place on a place card or a person on a person card that the card does not have to match the image you are coming up with. I would love to have more of these cards. We usually go through all the cards each time we play, and more variety would be great.

Sometimes it is difficult to know if you want to play a card that makes the story better or play a card that allows you to place or move a token so that you can better be in control of who is the murderer. I’m not sure I wouldn’t have enjoyed the game more as simply a story telling game, that ended with someone winning who had the most points from telling their story.

If you play with a group that love old 40’s detective stories be sure to give the game a try. After all it’s a dark and story night, and a murder is on the lose. Bring out your bottle of Whiskey, set back in your chair in your PI’s office, and set out to discover a murderer. Tell a good story, and enjoy.

At the beginning of the game you select two numbers which must add up to 20 for destiny point and story telling points. The first person to reach these numbers must return to Bagdad, and then win the game.

Seems simple enough doesn’t it? You pick three skills at the start of the game. Select your character and start off walking. You can walk as far as your wealth allows, and you start off poor at the start of the game. After ending your walk you select a card to have an encounter. The selected card provides a letter of the alphabet that another person at the table uses to find a table in the encounter book. For example it might have the letter “N.” Now role a dice, add up any number on the town, or area, where you are located, add 1 or 2 points depending on how much destiny you have, and you have a number that is used on the table N to say what you encounter. For example, you might encounter a possessed chicken. So, what you are going to do with the chicken? You select from several verb options such as pray, run, engage, or fight.

After your selection a paragraph is read from the encounter book. (roll a dice to see if the paragraph below or above is read) and you find out what happens to your character. If you have a skill that applies to the situation, you might have a good result. If you are unskilled, usually you have some sort of status change, and you accumulate destiny and/or story points.

The game was just a little too random for me. And since you had a status change almost every turn it became difficult to keep track of them all. So currently I can’t collect destiny points, I can not use any of my skills, and I can only walk one space at a time. And I can’t wait to see what happens to me next turn.

We had a player who had placed their destiny, and story points at 10 each at the start of the game and was way past 10 points on each, but could not win the game because they had a gender change due to a bad encounter. The card said he had to be his original gender before he could win the game. Where should he go on the board to have that happen? He just wandered around the board hoping to eventually have an encounter that would allow him to win the game.

This is a upgrade of an older game. Why with the upgrade did no one take the time to address the issue that night-time adventures were never going to happen, because you would have had to go through the adventure deck twice to get to them?

There are lots of variants that can be found that people have come up with to play this game. For example, each turn around the table it goes from dawn, full day, to night. And some limit the amount of troubles that each player can have. (We eventually decided that even if the person didn’t get changed back, if he made it to 20 in story or destiny he could still win)

All of these game changes found on the web represent a good game that could have been made better, if someone would have taken the time to update and refresh the rules with the new edition.

Now let’s talk about some of the fun in the game. It is possible to be a man who’s been turned into a woman, who has been turned into a beast, who is insane. If you have the right group of people, I could see these changes as being the kinda of events talked about after play. We enjoyed some of the encounters, and I thought the game materials were very nice.

Perhaps the random game play represents the idea of being lost in a desert looking for a way out. If so the game is the Sahara of all games.

A group of investigators are looking into the weird events that are occurring in Arkham. Portals are opening and monsters are running in the streets. Our job as investigators is to close all the portals, sealing them if possible, preventing an ancient one from arising.

Players are provided with investigator cards which have a back story provided and player statistics. There are lots of investigators to choose from, and some are more helpful than others. The rule book states that you should select an investigator at random. I avoid that rule. What investigator people play with can have a huge impact on game success. When playing with people who are having their first Arkham experience, I would suggest helping them along with a “beneficial” character.

This game is not difficult to understand, once you play it. A have hear a lot of mixed reviews about the game. I think the main reason is that on their first game play, people are overwhelmed by the rules and other people basically played their character for them. Playing Arkham Horror for the first time at a convention is one of the worse ways to get a feel for the game.

Playing several rounds of a two person game, will cover most of the basics, and make the new player feel like they understand the various game phases. And there are 4 phases to this game.

Each turn player in turn goes through the following four stages:

Upkeep – such as collecting money, updating stats etc. This is the phase where you can move the sliders on your investigator card. What this means is you can increase their speed, or will, or another stat. How much you can move your sliders is based on a characters focus. But it is usually 1-2 movement points.

Arkham Horror does require some thought during this phase. It is important that you plan out your move during this phase. Do you have enough movement points to get to your target area? Are you going to have to sneak by or fight a monster?

Movement – Moving to a new place on the board, or moving through the ‘other world’. Movement is also the phase when you sneak around the monsters or take them on in battle.

Encounters – This is the phase where you have an encounter at the location you’re on – this is where most of the action takes place as you attempt to gain clues and resources.

Mythos – At the end of every turn a new mythos card is drawn and has to be resolved. In general, these are there to really mess with your day as new monsters turn up, portals to other worlds appear or ongoing effects batter the adventurers. This is also the point where the ancient ones ‘doom track’ may increase, bringing them closer to awakening.

Encounters and Mythos often result in the players having to pass skill checks, which take the form of dice rolls. A 5 or a 6 rolled is a success, anything else is a failure. If you become blessed, a 4,5, or 6 is a success.

There are several win conditions, the main is by sealing 6 gates or by sealing/closing a pre-determined number of portals. If the ancient one manages to awaken an all out battle ensues to try to defeat it before it can end the world (but whilst these battles are epic, they can also be incredibly hard if your team aren’t well tooled up in advance…and in most cases the awakening itself will decimate your team!)

If at any time a player runs out of health or goes insane they can go to the asylum or hospital. If they are devoured their character is discarded from the game and they can restart as a new investigator.

The monsters that you are fighting/sneaking past have quite a lot of information on their tokens. They have a number that affects the amount of dice you role to sneak past them. For example if your sneak is 4 and the monster has a -2 modifier you will role 2 dice to get past the monster. You have to get a 5 or 6 (unless blessed) to sneak passed.

So you failed to sneak by? Then you have to take the damage the monster hands out, and a horror check. Seeing a monster can make you go insane. Finally after your horror check you can fight the monster, and hopefully you have picked up other cards along the way that will help you take the monster off the board.

There is a terror track for the game, that if you allow to many monsters on the board at a time, will start to rise and buildings you purchase items in will start to close. This is to represent the people in Arkham running in fear.

This is a corporative game, and it is thrilling to watch someone get the police car, running around the board dropping off money, or weapons to investigators in need.

I have heard that the review that this game goes on for hours and no one ever wins. It is true that it can be difficult to win, but with proper portal closing planning winning is possible. Even with as few as two players. Playing with three characters typically takes about 2 hours. I played a game of six people with 3 knowing how to play, and 3 new players and it took us 5 1/2 hours to achieve victory.

This game comes with a lot of wonderful pieces. Set up can take a long time if you don’t have everything organized. I use two large bead boxes. For me set up and take down takes less than five minutes. As mentioned by other reviewers, a large table or two large tables are needed to play this game.

In short, I love the game. You could play Arkham Horror every day and have totally different experience due to character selections and main monster selection. There are also a lot of expansions.

Come to Arkham, walk the streets and enjoy the experience. Did I mention that some of the monsters fly? Maybe you shouldn’t stay in the streets too long.

Elrond has asked us to scout the Mines of Moria to discover the source of Orc activity. We must find our way around the dark lake…..

What is included in this expansion:

Hero- Aragorn This is an Aragorn where his traits are a Dunedain Ranger and his action is that he can reduce your threat to your starting level once per game. He comes at a very high cost (12) but you may consider him for you deck if threat is problem while you quest.

Ally – Arwen Undomiel. She is a character that would be used for questing, and when she exhausts she provides the sentinel ability and 1 to defense until the end of the round. She is also a Noldor.

Noldor and Silvan character attachments are provided for this expansion. If you were waiting to get some cards prior to creating a deck around Noldor characters this expansion would assist you greatly.

Cards I am happy to see:
Elrond’s counsel – If you have a Noldor character you can give another character +1 to question and lower your threat by 3.

Resourceful – attached hero collects 1 additional resource during the resource phase.

Play for this expansion:

This expansion only has two quest cards. However what it does have is tentacles that hit for a lot of damage. There are 9 total tentacle cards in the deck, grasping, thrashing, and striking. Since this expansion plays with this deck, and one other you are going to see the tentacles a lot. The tentacles all do three or more points of damage a hit. So when making your deck you might want to put in a lot of two or three point characters that can be used to defend and die each turn.

The tentacles threat level is very low 12s and 18. So you are going to have to fight these tentacles virtually from the start of the adventure.

The Watcher in the water appears during the final phase. It is very difficult to get him from the staging area to be optionally engaged. He will require you to deal 3 damage to a character you control each turn. (Keep bringing out the “red shirts”)

What I did not enjoy, but the person I play with did, is the winning condition. In order to win you have to discard cards and if the first letter of the cards title matches the first letter of the encounter card’s title you can win. I have played 3 times, and each time we didn’t have any matching letters. We were eventually overwhelmed. I would rather win or lose due to skill not random luck, but the person I played with thought this was a clever way to show them standing at a door trying to figure how the words to get the door to open.

Conclusion:

I think this is a very difficult adventure. I felt overwhelmed from the moment play started. If I every manage to pull matching letters, and win you can bet I will NEVER visit the pool of water near Moria again.

Mice and Mystics is a delightful game to play. The game has a wonderful story line about a castle, the evil Vanestra, and how the kings loyal subjects become mice to save the kingdom.

Components:
The games contains a number of markers for when you mouse becomes stunned, webbed, poisoned or wounded. Ability cards for you to choose your mouse abilities. Search cards for when you search an area – some items are good – some are not. Six mice figures with their character cards, as well as plastic miniatures for the roaches, rats, spider and centipede you will be fighting.

The miniatures are not painted but the art on the cards is colorful and very nice.

Tiles are included that you will use as maps for you exploration. They are double sided, and it is very likely that you will flip a tile to continue your exploration. Picture yourself on a grate lifting the grate up and splashing into the tunnel below.

There is an rule book and an adventure book. The adventure book has the various scenarios that you will be playing. You don’t have to play the adventures in order, but its more fun if you do.

Adventure reading note: Currently on the Mice and Mystics website you can purchase Rich Sommer performing a reading of the story moments from the Mice and Mystics storybook. He does a wonderful job with all of the voices.

Gameplay:

Typically you play with 4 mice going on an adventure. The first scenario is the mice trying to escape the dungeon of the castle to the large tree in the courtyard. This is a cooperative adventure game that can be played by 1-4 people. Playing with one person means that person is playing the roles of all four mice.

There is a time element involved in play. As you role dice for fighting or blocking you may role a cheese. If you role a cheese, YEA, you can save them to level up your character, or maybe heal another mouse. If the slimy cockroach you are fighting rolls a cheese that cheese may be placed on the cheese wheel. Once the cheese wheel is full a surge happens. That can be very bad news for the adventures as new enemies are added to the board. Sometimes the surge brings that dreaded cat!

Needless to say there is attacking, defending, scurrying, and healing that is going to go on in the little group.

Summary
I loved the game. It was fun to play and the rules are not difficult to understand. Most scenarios take between 1 1/2 – 2 hours. There are side adventures that your team can decided to take or not that affect the play time. You can play the game as an adventure keeping your level advancements and some items as you move from scenario to scenario.

There is a new scenario that you can purchase online at the Plaid Hat games website.

So grab some friends and go save the kingdom or at least Lilly. She has her tail caught in a mousetrap. RUN she is under attack.

I found the Redhorn Gate to be one of the most difficult adventures for the Lord of the Rings Living Card game. But more on that in just a moment, let’s look at what cards you get with this expansion.

Important Cards you get (in my opinion):
The hero you get is Elrohir. He is a cheaper Aragorn, who can be also be readied by paying 1 resource from his pool. His stats are not as impressive as Aragorn but he is less threat which is very important on this quest. He has a +2 defense when Elladan is in play. Elladan, is NOT in this adventure pack, so his response is not valid for this scenario.

Bofur is a wonderful ally for a single spirit resource you can place Bofur into play from your hand exhausted and committed to a quest. Quest successfully and he returns to your hand. This also causes any “when an ally leaves” responses with cards you may have placed in play.

Timely Aid lets you reveal the top 5 cards of your deck and put one ally into play.

Unseen strike is a zero point card that provides a character with +3 attack when attaching an enemy with a higher engagement cost than your threat. (bring the troll to my pretty axe)

Needful to Know – A two point card that allows you to raise your threat by 1 to look at the top card of the encounter deck. Then reduce your threat by the threat of that card.

NEW for the Redhorn Gate:
Secrecy! On certain cards you will see a secrecy number. For example, Needful to Know shows a secrecy number of 2. What this means is if you can get your threat below 20 you can pay 2 less of the card. That would make Needful to know a zero point card. I find it VERY difficult to keep my threat below 20. So for me secrecy isn’t a large bonus. However if you are a player who can get their threat low you will love the secrecy number.

Difficulty:
The difficulty rating for this adventure is a 7. I have successfully completed other quests with a higher rating. However I found this quest to be very difficult. Questing is super important for this adventure. You must be able to quest quickly or the amount of threat in the staging area will overwhelm you. You must also keep your threat low, and there seems to be an large amount of treachery cards to cause your character to lose questing numbers. If all of this isn’t bad enough you must be very careful when finishing up quest card B. Once you finish B Caradhras become the active location. Caradhras takes a point off of all people who are questing. Any characters who have a 0 in play while questing are discarded from play.

I had several people questing that had a 1 as their questing amount – turned the card over and lost 4 people in one turn. The Snowdrift took out an entire group!

This adventure is actually easier as a solo play than with two people. As a solo player you can often play or bring a character that can look at the top card of the encounter deck and prepare yourself for what is coming. With two card being pulled and some of those cards bring more – (any one want this snow warg?)I found it hard to make decks that could quest – keep threat low – and kill the enemy.

However, I found the theme to be wonderful and when I finally succeeded I felt like I had truly achieved something. Just don’t go snowblind – your never see the troll ahead.

Khazad-dum is an expansion for the Lord Of the Rings Living Card Game. You must have a core set in order to play. This expansion has 3 scenarios in which you are going to Moria to find out what happened to Balin.

What does it add:
Dwarfs and lots of them! There are several dwarf characters to make it easy to play this quest with an all dwarf cast. Dwarlin (new hero) after destroying an Orc lowers your threat by 2. Bifur (new hero) can have other players provide him with a resource.

There are Dwarven attachments and events. Some of my personal favorites are: Durin’s song is an event which provides a dwarf hero with +2 questions, +2hitting, and +2 defense until the end of the round. Khazad! Khazad! which provides a dwarf character with +3 attack until the end of the phase and best of all its cost is zero. Erebor Record Keeper an ally allows you to play one lore to read a dwarf character.

Scenarios:
Scenario 1 is entering the mines. You are entering moria to try to find out Balin’s fate. It is required that your group go past the east gate,first hall and bridge of khazad-dum before you can actually start questing. Be sure to bring as much questing power as possible.

Scenario 2 is where you search for the chamber, and read the book of Mazarbul. This is a much easier scenario than the first and third one.

Scenario 3 is entitled a Presence in the Dark. This scenario can be very easy or difficult depending on how the cards play out. At the start of the game when you are creating the quest deck you will notice that there is a large number of #2s. These are shuffled and placed face down after your first quest. Depending on what you pull you could have a very long way out of Moria or a very short one. I was very luck the first time i played, I got the abandoned tools and the quest that allowed me to use them to escape. The second time I played I was lost in Moria for a long time.

What I think: I think this is a wonderful expansion. I enjoyed playing with totally new characters, attachments, and each quest has some new idea which makes the game fresh. In the final scenario the nameless fear’s threat is the number of victory points displayed. So as you successfully quest and kill Orcs, your questing becomes more and more difficult. In other words, by being successful you may become unsuccessful in questing.

Go quickly and run across the bridge to leave, or the long dark of Moria will swallow up your crew of dwarfs making it impossible to face the nameless fear.

If you are playing the Lord of the Rings Living Card game this is a welcome addition.

This is the last scenario of the Mirkwood adventures. It is time for you to drop off Gollum and continue to other questing adventures. The hero for this deck is Dain Ironfoot. He would be a welcome addition to any dwarf deck. While he is ready, Dwarf characters get a +1 to hit and questing.

There are a couple or Eagle cards included in this scenario. One of the cards I enjoy is entitled Support of the Eagles. You attach the card to a tactics hero and until the end of the phase the attached hero can add a eagles damage or shield to their own numbers. This ability is very helpful for killing the dreaded attercop.

Most of the enemies in this encounter deck are very hard hitting. Be sure to use armor, healing, and any attachments to your best advantage. I kept Denethor as a hero, so I could constantly look at the top card of the encounter deck. It is very unwise to run into an attercop with out warning.

Eleanor is also very important since she can cancel when revealed effects of treachery cards. The “when revealed” cards can be be very deadly, especially the ones that have you damage every CHARACTER that belongs to the player guarding gollum.

Keep your threat as low as possible, and be sure to kill creatures as they appear. If you have two many creatures in the staging area at the end of the quest, you will be overwhelm. If you succeed, congratulations you have dropped off a nuisance to society. Now go quest elsewhere.

David in a previous review talked about the new cards that were in this expansion set. I am going to talk about the quest itself. The entire point of the quest is to try to get your hands on Gollum. But of course Gollum does not want to be captured, and he brings to this expansion an escape mechanic.

How the escape mechanic works is at the end of each questing phase 1 card is dealt per player from the encounter deck. So after you have already exhausted characters to commit to the quest, you have to exhaust additional characters to get past the escape test. A number of cards in the encounter deck have an escape test number on them. So if you are playing the game with two people, pull two cards, and count up the escape number on the cards. If you have exhausted enough characters whose hero points are higher than that target number you have successfully passed the escape test. If your number is equal too or lower you have failed the escape test and you place two token on Gollum. Anytime Gollum has more than eight tokens on him, he escapes and returns back to the encounter deck.

This is where you must use every ability you have to look at the top card of the encounter deck. If Gollum is wasted as a shadow card, he is placed back into the deck and you will have to wait for him to be shuffled through for a second time. There is no way to keep your threat low enough for this to happen. You will lose the quest and Gollum, the sneak, with escape.

Once you relocate Gollum, try to to put the correct number of tokens on the location, and end the scenario. There is one final escape test, but if you pass, you have your hands on the ugly creature, and you are off to your last adventure in this series.

To play this adventure be sure to bring cards that let you view the top of the encounter deck or Denethor. And have as many allies that can commit to quests as possible.

As mentioned in another review this pack also has helpful player cards. So put your boots on and enter the marsh. It may be a frustrating search but Gollum must be found.

While searching for Gollum, your team of heroes comes across a wounded eagle. You must bring the eagle to Rhosgobel in order to save the eagle’s life. If the eagle dies, you lose the adventure.

The eagle has twenty hit points and starts off with two wounds. The eagle loses two hit points per turn, and can not be healed more than 5 points at a time.

It is important to play with a healing deck, or at the very least Glorfindel who can heal every turn. The adventure deck is made up of cards that can hurt either the team or the eagle. For example, if you leave an attack undefended, the shadow card pulled will more than likely say the damage has to go on the eagle. For an example of team injury there is a card that causes a wound on every hero who has attachments.

This expansion lends itself to some nice story telling. We have our eagle on a make-shift stretcher, and we are fighting spiders, and other birds that want to attack us and wound the eagle even more. There is even an insect card that can do damage. Glorfindel is running around trying to keep the bird stable until we get to Rhosgobel, where we then go searching for athelas. If you can find enough healing herbs the eagle is healed and you win the game!

Play with a deck of eagles and other ranged fighters. A lot of the creatures that you are going to fight can only be damaged by these two types.

There is a lot of fun to be had with a fighters killing spiders that pop up, and ranged heroes shooting down birds. Unlike the last scenario where you had to kill four trolls that I don’t believe can be done solo, I have completed this one as a solo adventure.

Take a time out from searching for that evil loving Gollum and save an eagle. The trolls in the previous quest were harder, but I found this quest more rewarding.

Rook City is one of the Sentinels of the Multiverse recent expansions. This game adds two heroes, four villains and two environments to the wonderful comic themed card game.

Mr. Fixer is a martial arts expert who can use various positions to throw his tire irons or other car parts at the bad guys.

Expatriette is a gun loving hero, who everyone seems to love to play. She has a wonderful selection of guns, and ammo. Both her and Mr. Fixer seem to do more damage than the base characters. They certainly need to do more damage, Rook City has very difficult villains to defeat.

Plague Rat a wonderful rat villain deals toxic damage while he walks the sewers.

The Matriarch is so far the hardest villain created. She has birds that can darken the sky and take points away from you again, and again. Its like being pecked to death.

The Chairman may be working behind the scenes, but he has an operative that you have to destroy first before you can get to him.

Finally Spite is a villain that you don’t want to let get access to drugs that make him more powerful.

This expansion also added irreducible damage or damage that can not be decreased by any effect and indestructible cards that cannot be destroyed or removed from play.

If play from the base game has not changed. You still have the villain phase, hero phase than environment phase. The cards have wonderful art and the game is just a blast to play. If you are looking for super hero card action you don’t need to look any further. This game is awesome.

These cards will fit into the updated Sentinels of the Universe base box. I’m off to save Rook City – evil is everywhere there.

There seems to be a debate going around as to who is the better ” big box space game” is it Eclipse or Twilight Imperium? If you are looking for a game that has political or diplomatic interaction as well as in-depth battles play Twilight Imperium.

However if you are looking for a space game that takes less time than twilight Imperium, diplomatic interaction is not important, and you can play with some streamlined battle rules,play Eclipse.

Eclipse will require you to read the rule book prior to playing. Maybe a couple of times, but after you get the flow down you can actually have turns happen quickly. The game takes place over 9 rounds. You can however do many things per round, as long as you have money to pay for them. You are after all creating an empire, you are going to have to pay for all of the expansion that you do.

During each turn you can:
1. Explore – turn over a hex – plant you flag and put down a population. Remember you have to have money for upkeep of these planets.
2. Influence – If you decided a planet is simply not worth the cost, you can remove your influence token (think flag) and put it back into your supply. If you decided you want that world back later you can use influence to plant your flag again.
3. Research- This is the euro component of the game. In order to upgrade you ships that you are sending out into the vast void of space you need to do some research in order to upgrade them. This is a little bit random. What is available to be researched is pulled from a bag at the beginning of the game, and at the end of each turn. Examples of research items includes improving you hull, or purchasing the technology to shoot missiles. It is possible that you would like to purchase the ability to take more shots before being destroyed, but the person who played before you purchased that research first.
4. Upgrade your ship. You purchased the research, its time to place it to good use and upgrade your ship.
5. Build – You can build ships, monoliths (if you have the research) starbases, or orbitals (again you need to have the research).
6. Move – will you have done research, upgrading your ship, let’s move and attack or explore.

You will not be able to pay to do all of these selections each time. You will not have the funds. You constantly need to be thinking, if I want that in the future should I just stop my turn now.

You can battle the ancients that are on the planets you are exploring or you can take on the other players. Battle is done very quickly and easily summed up – if you roll a 6 you hit. There are ways to make you hit on lower numbers and take more damage all by how you set up your ships. But compared to other games, battle for Eclipse is quickly done.

Here are some of the reasons I like Eclipse:
You can customize you ship, and you can play alien races with their own strengths and abilities or play the human race.
You can play a lot of different ways and still win.
Once you have the various moves down that you can do a turn the game flows quite quickly.
Even when you lose you want to play again.

What I don’t like about Eclipse:
I thought the game would benefit from better art design.
I understand that you need to keep track of numbers for research, and money, and science. I just don’t understand why they had to be little cubes that manage to hit every two seconds. (Slider bars anyone?)I never know what row this cube goes in that just fell on the floor.

There is certainly enough difference between Twilight Imperium and Eclipse to make them separate games in my mind. Twilight may be a deeper game in a lot of ways but you can’t beat a game that you can play in about an hour or so that lets you become the galactic empire. I’m just going to take my dreadnaught over here….Hum is that a plasma missile? Guess I will just take my ship and go back home.

I think that Morels has some wonderful artwork. I loved the art for the various mushrooms, and the day and night cards have a wonderful feel to them. And like Rodiek mentioned in his review you can order hand crafted stick and pans to play the game. What do you do with these handcrafted sticks and pans you ask? Well you try to make as many matching mushrooms as you can. For example 4 porcini mushrooms. Each type of mushroom has a value so your decision making could be based on cooking only groups of valuable mushrooms.

In the game Morels you have several choices you can make each turn. It could be called a gateway “choice” game. The game starts by you laying out a certain number of cards in a row. Each turn some of these cards will go into a decay pile. When the stack of cards has been gone through the game ends. During your turn you can pick up cards that are “at your feet” in other words at the end of the line ready to go into the decay pile. But what if you don’t want the mushrooms that are at your feet? You want the mushroom that is 4 cards up from your feet. That is where the sticks come in. You can sell a group of two matching mushrooms to purchase sticks. Each stick allows you to move one card up. One stick and you can pick up the third card from the end. Two sticks and you can pick up the fourth card from the end etc.

So on your turn you can pick up a mushroom, make a purchase of sticks, cook your mushroom (turn them into points) pick up all the cards in the decay pile, or place down a pan card.

A pan card? Well in order to turn your mushrooms into points you are going to have to cook them in a pan. Your mushrooms can also have points added to them by cooking them in butter or vinegar.

Back to the beautiful cards, there are day cards and night cards. If you pick up a card that has a moon on the back the mushroom is worth more, making night time picking seem like an excellent idea. Until you meet the destroying angel which makes you discard cards and stay keeps you with a low card hand for a number of turns.

There are also baskets in the game that allow you to have a larger than normal card hand. That’s right this game has a limit of how many cards you can have in your hand. That decay pile looks great and has one of the cards in it you need! But picking up all three cards will put me over my hand limit….Oh no don’t decay until I can get my hand limit up – sigh too late the card is gone.

I enjoyed the game a lot. This is a game of choices but can be played by ages 10 and up I would think. The concept of the night cards being worth more points may required some math from adults to children playing. The scariest card is the destroying angel which you can view above.

If you have about 30 minutes and want to play a fun family game with great art bring out morels. Just remember not all choices are as clear as night and day.

This game tells the story of the first part of the hobbit. It has three new scenarios and takes you up until the time where Bilbo finds the rings. You need the base game to play because you need the spirit, loyalty, and other hero cards. And some of the other card sets are used to make up the threat decks.

I am not going to talk about way the game works – it has the same play as the base game. I felt like this expansion was like the base game with the training wheels removed. (In other words we lost a lot!)
The way you know you are having a good time with a game, to me, is when you lose and then you think…hum let’s try again and tweek our decks just a bit to see if this helps.

This expansion add some fun cards. First off there is Bilbo. He has his own set of cards with a pipe icon on it. In the first scenario it is important to keep him alive. If he dies he loses the scenario. He has a resource pool which allows you to use him to assist in difficult tasks.

Then there are new “sack” cards. At certain times in the game you will be required to select from the sack deck. The sack when attached to a character makes them useless. The card will say attach to the hero with the most resources or attachments.

There are treasure cards that you get to keep and use in other scenarios.

And the trolls Bert, William, and Tom will make you wish for a “sunrise” card. After Bert engages a player – well someone is going into the sack.

I have not played the last scenario yet, having not survived the trolls, but there is a new mechanic for doing the riddles. The first player names a sphere and costs, shuffles his deck and discards the top two cards, for each of these cards that matches both items, you can place one progress token on the stage.

If you enjoyed playing the base game or other expansions, I think you should enjoy this expansion set. I thought this expansion was very difficult, so if you haven’t played any of the base scenarios, I think you should try them out prior to taking on these. I totally enjoyed seeing items from the book, and I did think the game had a good story telling feel. The second part of the hobbit is told in another expansion module.

Until then – I will keep trying to pass by the trolls. Maybe if I just add these two cards….

In the game “A Touch of Evil” you get to select your Hero, and start discovering the town of Shadowbrook. Shadowbrook, the game board, is under attack from some supernatural villain. The game contains several villains, such as a werewolf or a rampaging horseman. Each villain has a unique set of minions and special events that they use to attack the heroes.
There are eight heroes to choose from, and each of them has their own special abilities. Their job is to investigate various areas of the game and collect information. This information is collected in the form of investigation tokens which is the “money” for the game. There are several major and minor areas of the board for a hero to investigate. Included in the major areas is the town center, a manor, a windmill, the olde woods, and an abandoned keep. Once your hero arrives at one of the location they will select a card and read it aloud.
The card can have something good like an item or an ally or it could be a fight or an event that happens to your character. While your hero is investigating various areas of the board, a Shadow Track keeps record of how much control the villain has. As the villain take over the town you will find it easier to find lair.
You are not alone in your search, this game can be played co-op style so that all players are assisting, but even if you decided to go every man for himself the town’s people of Shadowbrook can lend some assistance to the final battle. Most new players do not see the importance of viewing a townspeople clue, but it can be helpful to know who can be counted on in the final battle.
People who play this game for the first time are often confused by what they should do. Where should they go? There is not a right or wrong answer; they are just setting off to investigate. I usually suggest that they leave town center, pick a spot and pull a card. Combat occurs with six-sided dice being rolled. You can however help you chances of succeeding by collecting items that will allow you to role more dice. Still some people are not fans of games where luck plays a part in combat success.
Once you have the required amount of information you can then attempt to defeat the villain. If you are playing co-op everyone attends the final battle. If you are playing alone you need to be sure to bring some townspeople with you to assist.
The game can be completed in about 1 ½ hour , and there are some wonderful expansions that add to the fun. At GenCon an expansion entitled The Coast was added.
The game says it plays up to eight, we played with that many people at GenCon but I had no idea what everyone was doing. We ended it with three groups of people all doing their own thing. (There are also team rules with the game.) The perfect number for me to play with is four. Everyone can see the board, and can be engaged in decision making. So grab some friends and go help out the town to Shadowbrook, I hear that there is a vampire that moved in once the headless horseman was defeated. Just be careful of its bite.

Recently I got the opportunity to demonstrate this game for several teachers. They were very excited about using the game in the classroom. Everyone was dealt five cards – that they were suppose to place in order.

The instructions were covered in under 3 minutes and the card play began.

The trick is to place the ones you are guessing first, you have a better chance of being correct if the time line isn’t very full. After all everyone knows that the invention of penicillin happens after cave man painting.

Another feature of this game is that it can be played by as few as two people.

There are however a few drawbacks to the game in my opinion. First the cards are small. They are a bit smaller than the original Ticket to Ride cards. If you play the game in a classroom, you would have to be sure to count the cards after each playing.

The second problem is the early timeline cards. I did have a couple of people offended by some of the dates on the early timeline cards. If you think someone will be offended due to religious reasons, you might want to remove some of the earliest cards.

I can’t wait to see some of the expansions. Should add for even more fun. Grab a friend and pull some cards…wait when was the elevator invented?

My entire gaming group love playing Mansions of Madness.

Let me talk about the negatives before I move on to why everyone loves the game.
First, there is a long set up time. My advice, if you know you are going to play set it up prior to people arriving. Check the set up. During one of our recent playing, it became clear that I had not set up the board correctly and the group was in a no win situation. (I forgot to add a door)
Not everyone in my group enjoys the puzzles – they feel stressed to make the correct decision.
It may be possible to have a situation where no one wins.

The positives
With the different scenario choices, and expansions, it is possible to play the game frequently and have a different experience every time.

The pieces are fun to work with- and if you purchase some of the pre-painted miniatures (or paint them yourself) from Fantasy Flight, you can have the “main” fight include a painted miniature.

Since the characters are not forced to go in one direction, it can be pure joy to watch what trouble people can get into. There is usually at least one person in the group who is sure they should go check out something (the cemetery) while the rest of the group “Goes on ahead. They will catch up.”

The theme is easy to understand- everyone enjoys a haunted house story.

Even though this is not a “press your luck” game most players feel like they should stay as close to the door and explore at the same time. This isn’t possible and leads to a lot of fun group discussion.

If you have 2-3 hours and want to have a fun time, turn down the lights, turn up the scary music and kill off the investigators one at a time. After all everyone knows you shouldn’t go into a cemetery alone.

Sentinels of the Multiverse has been repackaged and it now stores the cards easily in the box. (I even placed plastic protectors on all of my cards and they still fit in the box.) The box art has been updated, as well as some of the card art. The updated games also includes color card separators which makes it easy to find your superhero, supervillain, and environment easily.

Also with the updates comes cardboard chits which you can place on a card so that you can easily see that it takes “+1 damage” or “does +1 damage.” This was a great and much needed addition to the game.

The base game is very easy to teach and was correctly reviewed by Jared. With each expansion additional complexity has been added, making the game increasingly challenging. The updated rules has a great chart that rates the heroes, and villains. They are rated on a scale with 1 being the easiest and 4 being the current hardest.

Everyone I have shown the game has enjoyed playing. I start with a basic easy set of characters (the characters rated a one), and if they would like to play with added complexity we play with the rook city expansion or Infernal relics. The 39.95 usd price I think is very reasonable when you think about the number of cards that are included.

The game is great fun, and can be played by all levels of players.