WeViewGames

This review can also be found on our website with images included: Boss Monster Review

Boss Monster is a retro-inspired dungeon-building game published by Brotherwise Games and can be played with 2-4 players. In this game, you compete with other players to build the best dungeon and score points by defeating heroes that’ll try and steal the treasures of your dungeon. But be careful, as the other players can disrupt your plans with a well-timed spell.

Gameplay
Boss Monster itself is quite an easy game to get started with. At the start of the game, you’ll be able to choose a boss monster for your dungeon. They all come with a special effect that triggers when the 5th room is placed in your dungeon. Each boss also comes with a priority number indicating which player can go first. This makes the bosses very unique and each one of them has its own benefits.

There are two types of cards that you can play. You have the dungeon cards and the spell cards. Let’s start by explaining the dungeon cards.

Room cards
Each turn you draw one room card from the top of the room deck. A room card can be placed in your dungeon to strengthen the dungeon, lure any heroes in, or just generate more room/spell cards. You can place a total of 5 room cards in your dungeon before it’s full. However, you can replace existing room cards with new ones and you can upgrade your room cards to more advanced room cards. And you’ll need a good defense to be able to defeat any heroes coming to your dungeon. Each card has a value indicating what treasure it holds. You can have 3 gold rooms and 2 spell rooms for example. If you are the player with the most gold rooms, any hero seeking out gold will come to your dungeon. If you manage to kill them with your rooms, you’ll score a point. If they manage to survive the dungeon, you’ll get a wound.

Spell cards
Spell cards are only generated through rooms that you have in your dungeon and you get some at the start of the game. Spells cards can be used to help your dungeon by doubling the treasures in them, increasing the damage that your rooms do, and much more. But spell cards can also be used to disrupt your opponents by making the heroes that enter their dungeon stronger, countering their own spell card, and much more.

The first player with 10 points wins the game. If you get 3 wounds then your dungeon boss is defeated and you’ll be kicked from the game. You’ll also win if you are the last dungeon standing.

Components
While the box only contains cards, a quick start guide, and a rulebook. There is nothing of bad quality there. I like that the box isn’t that big so that you can easily take it with you. I really like the quick start guide as it helps me remember the rules when I haven’t played this game in a while.

Then there is the card art. And I have to say that it is very good. I really love the 8-bit style that’s going on throughout the whole game. That’s also one of the reasons why I picked up this game.

Luck
Due to this being a card game, you’ll always need a bit of luck to get the right cards to play. However, I always felt that I was somewhat limited by my options to expand my dungeon. Sometimes I would want to strategically build a room to be able to lure in some heroes, but I wouldn’t have the cards for it. And sometimes you’ll just lose because you have no strong rooms and there is a horde of heroes trying to steal your treasures. And then there is also the possibility to discard room cards from your opponent’s hand, basically handicapping them even more.

And while I think you can’t really avoid this in a card game, it can just feel very restricted sometimes as you don’t have any control over it. If you were able to draw 2 room cards every time, you give the player so much more freedom to build their dungeon in a way that they want. Or even have an action that the player can take to draw extra room cards. I know that there are cards that let you draw more room cards, but by that time you usually are mostly setup.

Different heroes
The idea of having different heroes in the game is a very nice addition to the game. There is even a hero that goes to the dungeon that has the least points. And I think heroes like that are very good for such a game, as you can easily fall behind on the other players. I think it would have been great if there were more conditional heroes. Like one that goes to the strongest player or heroes that have a special ability.

Is it any good?
While Boss Monster looks like a fun game, it’s not something that I’ll be playing any time soon. I love the style, idea of the game and I love the heroes that come into your dungeon to defeat your boss, but I feel like there are some areas where the game just isn’t fun for us. I would have loved more freedom with the room cards and some less punishing spell cards. While you can focus on different tactics in your dungeon, the strongest rooms will usually always come on top. A game I like the compare this game with is Wingspan. Now, that might be a bit weird as they are two very different games, but seeing what makes the engine building fun in Wingspan, I wonder if that would also work for this game.

Now, I don’t know if any of the issues above will/are fixed in any of the expansions and I am sure that there are people that absolutely love this game. But I would rather play a game of Wingspan than Boss Monster.

Happy playing!

The full review can be found here: Marvel champions review

Today we are reviewing Marvel champions the card game. The latest living card game (LCG) published by FantasyFlightGames. Marvel champions takes you into a world where you are controlling your hero and are tasked by defending the world from the next big threat.

Gameplay
The gameplay of the game is quite easy, but there are a lot of small things that might take you back to the rulebook to figure them out. You start a game by choosing your own deck which includes a hero, the cards of the hero, cards of one of the four aspects in the game and some general cards. Based on your hero, you also have an obligation card and nemesis cards. Those are removed from your deck, but are part of the game that you are playing with your hero. Obligation cards can be used by the villain to have the hero perform a certain action and the nemesis cards can be placed into play through the villain.
Along with your deck, you’ll choose a villain to fight. Here you pick all cards specific to that villain and some general cards. You are also able to add extra modules to your fight and each hero has a recommended module that you can add to the fight. More about modules in the modules chapter. The goal of the hero is to defeat the villain.
Now you are all done to start playing the game, right? Almost. We, of course, have to put our tokens down, put the life counter of our hero and our villain to the right spot, draw to our hand size and trigger any effects from the villain. The villain starts with a scheme. The goal of the villain is to either finish his scheme or defeat all heroes.
There are two phases in a turn. You first start out with the player phase where you control your hero. Your hero is able to do multiple actions:
-Spend cards to play cards: Each card generates a resource and each card costs a certain amount of resources to play. You are able to discard cards to generate the resources to be able to play a card. There are different types of cards that you can play. There are cards that can only be played when a certain condition is met or cards that are allies that’ll help your fight against the villain.
-Flip your hero: Hero cards have two sides. The alter-ego side and the hero side. You can flip your hero once every turn.
-Use the abilities on your cards: Each card has its own ability that you can use while it’s on the field. Usually, you’ll have to turn your card sideways to indicate that the ability has been used and some abilities require resources to be used.
-Use your hero/allies actions: Each hero/ally has the following actions (Recover, Thwart, Attack, Defend). Recover is only available on alter-ego form, while the others are only available on hero form. 
The second phase is the villain phase. Here the villain either attacks you or schemes depending on what side of your hero card is showing. This is very interesting, because you control what the villain will be doing. Is your hero low on health? Well if you switch to your alter-ego, the villain might be able to finish their scheme. The villain has his own attack and scheme value. The villain will also draw a card from their deck. On the bottom right corner, there is an x amount of red triangles. This value will be added to their attack/scheme value. So depending on the card that the villain gets, it might be a big attack or a smaller one which keeps the game interesting, but can also just completely kick you out of the game if you have bad luck.
Then as the villain’s latest action, it will draw a normal card from his deck. This card will then be played. The cards are thematic to the villain that you are fighting against and range from additional enemies to more schemes that boost the villain’s main scheme.
The gameplay is quite easy once you figure it all out. Expect to use the rulebooks a lot on your first game, but the rulebook has all the information that you need. 

Heroes
There is a total of 5 heroes in the game. We have Black Panther, Iron man, Spiderman, Captain Marvel, and She-Hulk. The game starts with two premade tutorial decks for the player. Those are great decks to start out with and start to learn those heroes. The rulebook also contains decklists for all the heroes. Using this will give you the chance to learn how all the heroes play.Each hero plays very differently because their hero card is different, but also the cards that are part of that hero. Iron man starts out quite bad because he is still “inventing” new upgrades. Once iron man has all his upgrades equipped, he is almost unstoppable. It’s great to see that the stories of the hero also play a part in how they play. With some heroes, this is better executed than other ones.Some heroes are also better to fight certain villains than other ones. This might feel like they are a bit underpowered sometimes, but I think this is part of the game. Sometimes a hero isn’t the ideal match for a villain, but the hero should adapt to their villain and eventually beat them.
Villains
There is a total of 3 villains in the game. They also have 2 difficulties. Each villain has a normal and hard mode. Each villain has its own story, scheme, and deck of cards. The difference with other games of this type is that there is no campaign where you can beat the villains in a campaign like order. Instead, you are able to choose who’ll fight and every fight is a new game. However, there is actually a story that connects all three villains with each other. I won’t spoil it here, so you can try to figure it out yourself.

Modules
Each match, you are able to add modules to the villain’s deck. The villain itself has a recommended module that you can add to the deck, but there is nothing stopping you from adding even more modules to the deck. If the hard villains are too difficult, you can always try playing normal difficulty with more modules. Because the modules are only a few cards of the whole deck, it could be that they aren’t even played. I think modules are great because they change the battle against the villain without changing the core of the battle. It also adds a lot of replayability to the game by mixing all the heroes with the different modules.

Customization
The game gives you various decklists for your heroes, but that doesn’t restrict you from making your own deck. The game has a total of four aspects that you can choose from together with a pile of general cards. If you want to create your own deck then you’ll start out with choosing your hero and your aspect. You can then decide how many cards from the aspect you want to take and how many general cards you’ll include in your deck.
 
Replayability
This game has a lot of replayability. You can play against different villains, with different difficulties, with different heroes, with different amount of modules with a customizable deck that you can create yourself. You can basically choose so many own things that your games will never be the same and I think that’s great! Apart from that, I think there is also a big community around the game that’s always coming up with something new. What about a custom made villain or a campaign mode with the 3 villains. Make your own rules and share them with the community. I am sure they will appreciate it!

Aspects
Aspects are a big thing for the deckbuilding part of the game. There are a total of 4 aspects in the game:
-Aggression: As the name applies, this aspect is for very aggressive gameplay. It has a lot of cards that deal damage to the villain and/or enemies.
-Justice: The justice aspect is excellent in removing threat from the various schemes. If your hero doesn’t have a lot of ways to deal with a lot of threat, then this aspect can help you a lot with that.
-Leadership: The leadership aspect is all about multiple allies and cooperating with other players in your team. 
-Protection: As the name applies, this aspect is for heroes that want to defend a lot, but still deal some damage. 
I think those aspects are really great and very diverse. They change the way you play a hero. If you use protection, you’ll do a slower game than when you are using the aggression aspect. It also lines up if you are playing with other players as everyone will have their own aspect. For the players that aren’t into the deckbuilding part, the rulebook consists of a deck for every hero with their own aspect.

Future content
As of right now, there is already new content planned for the game. This future content consists of individual hero/villain packs and also a pack with multiple villains teaming up together. And I have a mixed feeling about it. On one side, I am totally down for more new content to consume and review the new cards of the different heroes/villains. And I think it’s brilliant that you are able to skip new content if you don’t like it. For example, the miss marvel expansion doesn’t really appeal to me, so I can decide to skip it and the only thing missing is the hero itself and the cards that come with it. But I can still play against the same villains and still have a lot of fun.On the other side, I can already see myself getting every type of new content and not having enough time to actually play it. It seems like they are aiming to have new content every month and that sounds like a lot. I don’t know if that’s normal for a game like this, but I can see people being burned out from all the content after a little while. The base game still has so much content I have to play around with and soon the new content will drop. (Although the content has been delayed to the start of next year).

Player count
According to the box, the game can be played solo and up to 4 players. I think this game is ideal for solo and it wouldn’t surprise me if this game was built up from solo gameplay. There are only a few cards/mechanics that interact with other players and they also pay fine for solo plays. For example, target an ally can be one that you control or one that your friend controls. This game is played best with 1 or 2 players because it reduces the downtime between turns. Each player has their own turn which, because of the limited interacting with other players, is just downtime for other players. 

Components
This game only has a few components. It has a total of 4 player life counters, 1 villain life counter, a lot of tokens and a lot of cards. If you want to read more about the content, you can do that at our What’s in the box. The components are great and the art on the cards are amazing! You can see that they took a lot of time to get it all right and that multiple artist are/were on the team to get the amazing art together. Unfortunately, there is one small thing that’s missing in the box and that’s dividers. The box is made for dividers, but there are none in there. Luckily the community went creative and created their own dividers. I suggest this one: Marvel champions dividers.

My opinion
Marvel champions is a fantastic game that I’ll be playing for a very long time to come and will probably cover more on the website when the new content drops early next year. It bothers me a bit that there is already so much new content announced when the base game isn’t even that old yet. If this was a video game, the people would be raging on the internet about it. I love the amount of replayability especially because I am able to play this solo. If I have some spare time I can pick up this game, choose a hero, a villain, some random modules and get started with my game. Every game is different because of the different things I can choose for my game. This is also great for two players because it keeps the game very fresh. I just don’t think I’ll be playing this with 3 or 4 players, because it’s so much better at 1 and 2.I also very much like how the villain plays. The villain can quickly go through his deck, but he doesn’t actually play all those cards. So after a few games, you can still encounter cards that you have never seen before. Currently, I have played around 10 games and I have yet to find the card(s) that put my nemesis into play. The other thing is that danger is always lurking around the corner. One moment you think you are safe and the other moment you have to add a lot of threat to the schemes. But this can also be a bad thing as sometimes you just lose without you being able to prevent it.

Should you get it?
I think this game is great for anyone who really likes solo games. I am sure you’ll have a lot of fun with just the base game. If you are looking for a fun game for your gaming group, maybe skip this one unless you are prepared to take some more time between turns to play. The game will be getting a lot of new content in the near future, so if you want to keep up with that, you might have to put down a lot more money on this game, but if you are fine with that or are content with just the base game and/or the occasional expansion, then this game is great for you.
Happy playing!

This review can also be found on our website: Star Realms Review

Hi!

Today we are reviewing Star Realms. It’s a card game with a space theme that is playable with 2 players. It’s designed by Rob Dougherty and Darwin Kastle, both known because of their place in the Magic hall of fame, and published in 2014 by White Wizard Games. The game started as a Kickstarter campaign in 2013.

The base game consists of 128 illustrated cards and a rulebook and that’s all that you need. Because the game is contained in a small box, it’s easy to take it with you on vacation and it doesn’t take up too much space on your shelf.

Gameplay
The game is quite easy to learn/play, but still gives you many decisions that can give you the edge above some other players. Every player starts with the same deck of cards and 50 authority. Authority is your life in this game. Every round you draw 5 cards and you get to play them on the board. The cards can, when played, give you any of the following effects:

Trade: used for buying new cards from the trade row

Combat: used to damage your opponent

Authority: used to gain more authority

There are 2 types of cards in the game. There are ships and bases. Both those cards can give you the effects that are listed above, but could also give an additional effect. Ships go away after your turn, but bases stay on the playground until they are destroyed.

There is also a trade row in the middle of the playground consisting of 5 cards. You can buy new cards from the trade row with the trade you get that round. You cannot keep trade through your turns, so it’s usually smart to spend most of it. New cards go into your discard pile along with the cards that you played that turn. When your deck is empty, you shuffle your discard pile and use that as your deck. So you are always improving your deck.

Some cards that share the same faction have a separate effect. So it’s good to base your deck around at least one faction. There won’t always be enough cards to build your deck with only one faction, so experiment with different combinations and see what works best for you.

The core of the game is basically to draw cards, play cards and expand your deck. Doesn’t sound too difficult, right?

Factions
There are 4 different factions in the game and they all play very differently. They all follow a certain theme, so they are fairly easy to distinguish on the cards.

Trade Federation:
The trade federation focuses on trade and growth. They are not very aggressive, but they do have a defensive branch to protect their trade from other factions. In the game, they specialize in generating large amounts of trade and gaining authority.

Blobs:
The blobs are the first alien life that the human race encountered. Ever since humanity met them, they have been very aggressive. The blobs specialize in generating large amounts of combat and removing cards from the trade row.

Star Empire:
The star empire consists of former colonies of the trade federation. They felt like the federation failed to give them enough protection from the blob, so they decided to unite and create their own empire. The star Empire specializes in drawing cards and discarding cards from the opponent.

Cultmachine:
When the industrial mining worlds were completely separated from the federation due to the blobs, they decided to take measures in their own hands and advanced their technologies. Soon the technology became their religion and god. The machine cult specializes in removing cards from your deck and have many bases.

Factions just bring so much more to the game in the way of playing. Sometimes you’ll only be using one faction but usually, your deck will consist of multiple factions that all work together to make sure that you win.

Our opinion
This. Game. Is. Amazing. For the price (around 15 euros), you get so much content that’ll definitely keep you going for quite some time. The base game supports only 2 players. You can also play with 3-4 players, but then you need to buy another copy of the game. The different factions really play differently and you will usually need to combine them together for your own deck. We do think some faction combinations are very strong. And sometimes this can be difficult to beat due to the trade row being random. But usually, this balances itself out quite well.

Card games come with a bit of randomness due to drawing the cards. Sometimes this can be annoying, but it’s not too bad due to you buying your own deck. Sometimes you’ll get unlucky and help your opponent to get a card that helps him to beat you later on, but the games are quick so you can quickly beat him in the next game.

Should you get it?
If you are a fan of quick 2 player games that appeals to either casual and competitive players, then yes, go get it right now! Honestly, for this price, you can’t quite go wrong. Even for 3-4 players, I think this game is worth it. If you want to buy 2 sets, make sure to buy the base set and the expansion one. This way you get even more fun out of it!

Maybe if you are really competitive and don’t enjoy the randomness of card games, then this game won’t be for you. Or maybe the theme isn’t something for you. If you want a different theme. The makers of this game also created a game like star realms, but with a fantasy theme called Hero Realms.

Happy playing!

You can also read this review on our website: Ticket to Ride Europe Review

Choo Choo! Train coming through the reviews. You are seeing this correctly, we are reviewing Ticket to Ride Europe today!

Gameplay

Ticket to Ride is a game where you’ll be placing a lot of little train carts. The board consists of various cities in Europe with connections between them. At the start of the game, you’ll get 3 normal destination cards and a large one. On those cards, you’ll see between what cities you need to make a connection. The more points a card is worth the further the destination. At the start of the game, you get to choose what destination cards you keep. Usually, you’ll want to get cards that are close together and get rid of the ones that aren’t. If you don’t complete a destination card, you’ll lose points at the end of the game.

Your hand will consist of various colorful train cart cards. Whenever you want to place a train cart on the board, you’ll have to pay the number of cards equal to the number of train carts you want to place. A connection between cities can be a colored one or a non-colored one. if it’s a colored one, you need to pay it with cards of the same color. If it’s non-colored, you can pay with any color as long as it’s all the same. Completing a connection will give you points right away.

Then there are also two other types of connections. You have the ferries and the tunnels. Ferries force you to pay some connection tiles with locomotive cards. The tunnels force you to grab the top three cards of the draw pile. If any of your connections color is drawn, you’ll have to pay more cards. If you can’t, then you can’t finish the connection and you take your cards back.

Your turns consist of drawing train cart cards, playing cards to create connections and drawing new destination cards to gain even more points. The last turn begins when a player has less than three train carts left.

Our opinion
Ticket to Ride Europe is a very fun game that is easy to understand and easy to play. The game can be played with 2-5 players. We like playing it with 2 players, but we feel like the board is just too big for 2 players. The game is most fun when you have to be quick with laying down connections before other players steal the best connections between cities. With 2 players this isn’t really possible, because you are often playing away from each other and rarely meet each other on the board. Other than that, the game is very fun to play with 3-5 players. The board is perfect for that player count. All materials are top quality, the miniatures really add a lot to the feel of the game. The game also has a lot of expansions that will add new boards/mechanics to the game.

Along with the fact that the game is just good quality, there are also different strategies that you can use in the game. Larger connections give you more points, so making a detour to your destination might benefit you more in the end, but leaves you with less train carts to use.

Should you get it?
It depends a bit. If you will only be playing this with 2 players, see if you can try it out somewhere first and see how you like it. If you have a group of people and are able to consistently play with 3-5 players, then yes this game is definitely worth it. With 2 players you might be better of playing one of the smaller standalone games like New York or the expansion India which is designed for 2-4 players, but it contains a board designed for 2-3 players.

Gameplay
Each player starts with an identical 10 card deck. The person who goes first gets to draw 3 cards from his/her deck. The other player(s) draw 5. A card can contain one or more of the following symbols:

Health Icon: Add the number to your total health

Combat Icon: Choose a player or their champion to deal damage to. The player has to subtract the damage from their health, if you target a champion, you have to make sure you can take them out or they will heal themselves before the next turn!

Gold Icon: Use the gold to buy more actions and champions from the market

On top of these symbols, a card can have an effect written on it. They are pretty self-explanatory.

When you played all the cards you had in your hand and used their effects, you put all the cards, except the champions, in your discard pile. The cards you bought from the market you bought also go there. You now draw 5 cards from your deck. If you don’t have 5 cards in your deck you take the cards you do have and shuffle your discard pile so it becomes your deck.

If you plan your strategy well you will take out your competition and win the game.

Our opinion
The game is easy to play and quick, which makes it very nice to play if we need to kill some time or aren’t feeling like a heavy game. The mechanics are very solid although the rules about preparing a champion can be kinda confusing as the rules don’t go into it enough.

With how the mechanics of the game work it can be difficult at times to draw what you need, or even to find something in the market. This especially happens when high-cost cards dominate the market early in the game.

But all by all, it’s an amazing game that you should definitely give it a try for the cheap price it’s selling for.

Should you get it?
If you are a fan of quick 2 player games that appeals to either casual and competitive players, then yes, go get it right now!

If you rather play this sort of game with a space theme then go check out Star Realms. We will do a review of star realms soon so stay tuned!

Trust us, you won’t go wrong with any of the 2 games.

Happy playing!
The full review can be found on our website: Hero Realms Review