Zeenoth

Mr Jack Pocket is a clever little 2 player game. One player plays the investigation team, trying to find Jack the Ripper, while the other one is Jack and has to hide long enough to escape.

How the game plays is very interesting: in the beginning of odd turns you flip four coins that represent four different actions. The inspector chooses one, Jack takes two from the remaining three, and the inspector takes the last one. Then, on even turns, the coins are flipped over and four new different actions become available. It is now Jack who starts.

On my first games I found it very fun, but it quickly turned out that it was a lot more difficult for Jack to win, and we ended up tossing a coin to determine who would play the investigators.

Legends of Andor is a cooperative adventure game with great artwork (illustrated by Michael Menzel). There are four characters; each of them has a special ability.

Game play

Each player takes on the role of one of the characters. A day is divided into ten hours, allowing you to do more or less actions. For example, a combat takes at least one hour, and the length of a travel depends on how far you go.

The game features a great number of components, various monsters, and an incredible number of different tokens. All this may seem confusing when you open the box, but there is a very short rulebook that lets you learn everything step by step, when you need to know. The scenarios are progressive too, so in the first ones you don’t need everything.

The different events in the scenario are revealed progressively, as the narrator token moves forward: when a day is finished or whenever a monster is killed. But be careful: when the narrator gets to the end of the track, if the objectives are not fulfilled, you lose the game !

My experience with the game

This game is difficult! Monsters are popping everywhere on the board, every now and again, and the time constraint is very, very high. At the end of the game, pressure is always high, because victory is never certain. This is what makes winning so rewarding!
Since there are several objectives to accomplish and powerful bosses, I found it easier with more than two players.
However, more characters to choose from would be a plus.

Replay value

Since it is a scenario-based game, I feared that the games would be more or less the same. So I played the same scenario twice (the one in the mine) and the experience was very different. The first time it was almost easy (we had been very lucky) and the second time we lost by far! Some of the scenarios are designed so that they don’t look the same every time: you don’t even get to fight the same boss!

Conclusion

Legends of Andor is definitely a great game, that looks very good. Maybe figurines would have been even better, but you can’t have everything you dream of in the same box! I recommend it to gamers who want to have a hard time beating the game, and who are a bit into medieval fantasy too.

Vikings is an economic tile-placement game. Each player has to acquire islands on which they may place vikings. There are six different types of vikings (represented by colored meeples) with different powers : giving you gold or victory points, allowing you to place other vikings on the islands, defending your islands against war ships, or feeding your people.

Game play

On their turn, each player must buy a tile and its associated viking. The tiles represent either a part of an island or a war ship. The specificity of the game is that the tiles are initially placed around a price wheel, costing 0 to 11 gold. You cannot take the 0-gold tile unless it is the last of the viking’s color, and once this 0-gold tile is taken, the wheel turns until the 0 spot reaches a new tile, making expensive tiles cheaper. The player must then place the tile on their personal board, adjacent to an already placed tile. They may place the viking on this tile, if it is in the correct row.

The game plays in six rounds. At the end of every round, you earn gold depending on the number of goldsmiths you placed, and every two rounds there is also a big scoring phase to earn victory points according to the ships and the other vikings you placed.

Why I like this game

I played it over 20 times, mostly in 2-player games, and I still enjoy it. You are competing with the other players to get the right set at the right time, you can pay more to take tiles that your opponents want, and they will do the same.
I personally think it plays best with two players, because my friends and I like to play aggressively, and with more than two players you loose some control over what you get.
There is a variant provided in the rulebook, with bonus tiles that really add variety to the game, and thus, replayability.

Why it is difficult to master

I find that the game is difficult to master, because on each scoring phase, a lot of parameters enter into account, and in the last scoring phase there are even more. Maybe too many parameters, because sometimes it seems that a player is doing very well and in the end they can get behind someone who has always been struggling to get resources and/or to place their vikings.

Conclusion

Vikings is a fast-playing Euro-style game, very strategic and with much interaction. It surely isn’t a must-have for casual gamers, but I recommend it for “avid gamers”. Moreover, it is a good-looking game, and I love the wooden meeples !