Gamer Reviews

Trivia? Love it, but it can be difficult to review or recommend. Fun, but with a set ‘shelf-life’. Only so many plays before the same questions start coming up; hurting replay value. Here is the brilliance of Geek Out!, there isn’t a ‘right’ answer; only accepted ones. Geek Out is a blend of trivia, Name That Tune, and game-night debates. Convinced you know more about animal themed super-heroes than your friends? Time to prove it! Take turns rolling for category deciding minimum bid and topic. For example, Two Animal Themed Super Heroes; now comes Geek Out’s twist. You can agree to that number OR you can bid higher, then everyone will have a chance to do the same until everyone is out and the highest bidder must deliver on their geeky bragging. Can you outbid, out-geek or outwit your friends through a combination of knowledge and strategic bluffing? If the high bidder manages to name the promised quantity, they get the card (worth 1 point) and the bragging rights. If, however, their bidding bests their brains, they get a Penalty Chip (worth -2 points) making more work for themselves. The official rules suggest playing to 5 points, but you can adjust as you see fit for longer or shorter play. If time is a factor, you can also play ‘marathon’ style; set a timer and see who can get the most points before the bell. Get the determined point total and hold your head high; you’ve out geeked your foes! Play or Nay: Quality: Cards are a bit on the cheap side. Not unheard of in the genre but with so few components and most being cards, it is notable. NAY Ease: Setup is basically just opening the box, play is quick to get into. Perfect for a party game. PLAY Fun w/ Friends: Great for any number of people. Teams are best with more than 8. PLAY Fun for One: Not made for solo play, but I’ve been known to challenge myself with cards in downtime. PLAY Value: Coming in under the 20 dollar mark, with mechanics that lend themselves to greater replayability. PLAY Overall: We don’t know about you, but arguing about nerdy things is a large portion of our day anyway. Add in that I can do so and maybe win? Don’t mind if I do! PLAY Pros:

Lends itself to replayability thanks to bidding mechanic
Engages all players with bidding and challenging answers
Easy to set up and clean, as a party game should be

Cons:

Group Dynamics can make or break the fun, best with nerdy but amicable groups that are looking to have fun, not ‘rule lawyer’ their way to victory.

This is a great game for a large group! (up to 12 people)

It is the lovechild of Clue, Werewolf and Mysterium.

The group must discover who amongst them is the Murder (as well as their weapon and the evidence left behind) but the person who knows the truth can not speak, they can only provide information through randomized cards (like the ghost in Mysterium)
Game play is quite short (15-20 minutes) so we always end up playing 5 or 6 rounds.

The expansion adds some fun roles, but it most valuable for the added clue cards.

Best for groups that are vocal, and enjoying bluffing!

A resource management engine builder with dice. Santa Maria is a different twist on dice drafting

Gameplay/Replay

The game is played over 3 rounds. Each round 3 white dice per player are rolled. You may draft up to 3 of those dice each turn to activate the buildings in a column on your personal player board. You also have a blue die to activate a row on your board. You gather resources and can use them to buy tiles to place on your player board to give you more buildings or to buy ships that give you bonuses at the end of the round like coins, VP, or moment on the conquistador and religious tracks.

The tracks themselves are a factor as well. The religious track allows you to unlock up to 2 more blue dice, as well as place tokens on a bonus board for ways to cheat, more resources, or end game goals.It’s first come first serve here, unless you want to pay 2 coins to another player to share that space with them. The conquistador track is a point grab track that resets every round. In a 3 player game for example furthest player on the track gains 6 points in the first round while 2nd place gains 3. 3rd place gets nothing.

Your round ends when you decide to pass and take a bonus. 2 coins will get you start player next round.

End game is scored by a combination of VP collected, VP on ships, complete columns and roads on your board that have people tiles in them, and your religion track reward spots that grant points based off the goal they display.

With all the different ships, dice combos and buildings you can get, and various end game goals, replay is quite high

The Bad

Jostled player boards can create a problem as the tiles shift. Also initially your starting board is kind of sparse so it seems like it is hard to get things going.

In Conclusion

A solid dice drafter/engine builder. Worth at least playing, and possibly owning if you love rolling and drafting dice like in a game like Roll Player

I am reviewing this edition pictured. There is an earlier edition from 2001 with most of the same dogs but there were a couple of different dogs and the art work was not(in my opinion) as nice. Basically, you ,as a dog, wander the streets marking your territory, begging for food, hiding from the dog catcher, drinking from a public fountain, burying bones, delivering newspapers, escaping from the pound and occasionally fighting with other dogs. Each dog has it’s own deck of cards showing success or failure at the six different actions a dog can take and how many action points it has to take actions on a turn. Smaller dogs are generally more likely to succeed at begging but more likely will lose a fight. When you spend action to do an activity such as beg you turn over the top card of the dog’s personal card deck and look up the results. If you are just walking or drinking water or marking your territory,done by leaving a pee marker on a lampost by the way, that costs action points but not a card. The game play is fun and innovative and has a light strategy to it as to what to choose and when to choose it, for instance you cannot beg at the same location twice in a row on the same turn, but you can beg at location A, then go to B and beg and then return to A to beg again if you have enough action points,however, it is also legal to arrive at A and beg and end your turn and then beg at A again on your next turn. There is supposed to be a kickstarter version of this game with some rules changes and new dogs coming out in September that I will be watching for.

Orange Nebula published a beautiful looking adventure euro

Gameplay/replay

Running in almost opposition to another favorite of mine, Dark Domains, you play a wretched adventurer thrown off of a boat who washes ashore on an island where you are found by your first companion, as a fire of inspiration is lit within you you vow to explore this new island while seeking to redeem your past misdeeds. Each round you (in any order) move, activate your power and your companions’ powers gaining stats and abilities, and use (and possibly gain control over) a building. Controlling buildings your opponent uses gains you honor (VP) as does gathering new companions, claiming relics, gaining new traits, upgrading your movement speed, and vanquishing monsters.

Movement is done between the hexes, you can move up to 2 spaces initially, you can go through occupied spaces but not land on occupied spaces

Using your or your companion skills will cause you to exert influence to gain one of 3 basic stats as well as possibly activating a companion’s special powers. Influence is limited however (more on what that might mean later)

Activating buildings allows you to use a building based off cost. Some you can repeatedly use, some you can only use at most once per turn.

You also have free actions. Spending 3 cubes from a stat for example can give you a specialization tile which counts as 2 cards from that stat (which can help you win majority of that stat at end game) You can combine 2 different base stat cubes to get one advanced stat cube and returning a cube to your influence supply. You can recall influence from a companion (causing them to abandon you and costing you honor, told you there’d be more on what limited influence might mean later) as well as other free actions

As an aside, this might be the most organized rulebook I have ever seen. Almost every time a rule is mentioned, they tell you what page in the rulebook you need to go to to get further details. Why don’t ALL rulebooks do this?! Also the Game Trayz inserts hit it out of the park again. If I were Dictator of Board Games I would require ALL board games to have game trayz and rulebook’s like Vindication. One more thing, and sit down for this one, they have a start player rule that is not ridiculous. It is based off the numbered spot you randomly start on. No “start player is the last person to purchase wood pulp from a prominent clergyman” or something like that

The Bad

Depending on the random game end conditions, the game might end really fast, this might be fixed by playing again though, so is it bad? Who can say

In conclusion

Play it now dagnabbit!