Gamer Reviews

The fact is, I spent 20 minutes typing and re-typing trying to explain the rules to you because of how easy, simple, intricate, and borderline perfect they are.

But I’m not going to do that. I’m sure you can find “How to Play Love Letter” articles all over the internet. Just gotta say that for the price of this game, (and assuming you’ve ever enjoyed a board/card game before), you are doing yourself a major disservice by not owning this game.

The short version is: you win by being the last person not eliminated from the round, OR by having the highest card in your hand after the deck draws out.This opens up possible victory via process of elimination, out-manipulating your opponents, having the best poker face, OR by (maybe subtly coaxing) your opponents into getting a little too greedy…

All of this depth from a game with SIXTEEN cards – it’s truly an impressive achievement.

There is some luck involved, as there will be with any card game with random starting hands, but not so much that skilled play can’t save the day for you.

One thing worth mentioning – this version: the Kanai Factory Edition, has a slight rules difference than most of the other versions. Again, I’m trying to avoid teaching you the whole game in a review, but the Kanai version has a rule where you can potentially instantly lose if you hang on to high value cards (which, recall, is the goal of the game).

The other versions (Tempest, etc) replace that rule with one that may either allow for more strategy….or may put you at a serious disadvantage. Personally, I like the sudden death version of the original Kanai Factory Rules, but you may want to do your research when choosing a version (although technically, you could play with either rule set with any version….shhh don’t tell).

Easy to teach, plays quite quickly. I got prettier components on Etsy to replace the little wooden cubes and ingredients (transparent acrylic from Laserland), and ordered the speckled eggs from Stonemaier Games. I’m adding expansions as they come out.

I think it’s a great Christmas game too, with the partridge in a pear tree, two turtledoves lyric of the 12 days of Christmas. It’s an easy worker placement game where you settle birds in tree, prairie and water ecosystems, and lay eggs to either pay bird settling costs or to accrue points. Settling birds also depends on having the proper foods that each bird needs.

Very fun, good for lighter gaming with friends and family. If the dice tower eventually falls apart, I might spring for a new one. Hoping that the creators come out with a big box soon to better fit all the expansions and core game.

Marvel Unlimited is a game developed by CMON and distributed by Spin Master Games. Designed for 1-4 players (but can play 5 with some slight modification), the players select a Marvel superhero (Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Ant Man) to face off against one of three super villains (Red Skull, Ultron and Taskmaster).

Game setup is fairly straight forward, you select a villain and set aside their mini, deck and plan card, you select 6 location at random, and lay them out clockwise. Roll a die or use some other randomizer to place the villain on a location, then place the heroes opposite. Everyone shuffles and draws 3 cards and you’re off!

Play proceeds clockwise with the villain going, then 2 players going, laying out the cards in sequential order forming a “story line”. This is significant because each player can combo their own card play with the card play of the previous player for a more dynamic turn.

We played a handful of games over the holidays with my kids ranging in ages from 5 to 11, and everyone picked it up pretty quickly, even the 5 year old, though she needed help with any cards that had abilities on them as well. They all really enjoyed the experience.

The game’s components range from excellent to subpar. The miniatures are all well-crafted with fun designs and as a model painter, I look forward to painting them. The tokens are all the good thick card stock we’ve come to expect of tokens and should hold up to repeat play nicely. The locations, decks and villain plan cards leave much to be designed and are rather flimsy. Sleeving the decks will alleviate the deck problem, but not the others.

The kickstarter for this game made a killing, and there were a plethora of expansions and exclusive pieces, so we should start seeing a lot of that in 2022 which is good for the game to get some added variety.

Being a avid Marvel Champions LCG player (See my review on the MCLCG page), this game shares, at a minimum, a similar linage… being a cooperative, Marvel, card game… but that is where the similarities end. MCLCG is a much deeper, more complex experience to Marvel United. That said, this game has its own nice niche, and is an excellent game for family game night, for casual gamers and as a nice distraction game when avid gamers need to break up game night repetition.

I highly recommend this game for any family that’s a fan of Marvel comics or the Marvel Cinematic Universe or any casual gamer looking for something fun to bring to the table during their game nights!

I own three different editions of this game, and used to organize my club’s annual Blue Max tournament; it is an exceptionally fun game, which has been polished through the years.

However, this latest edition is NOT very good.

First, it only includes a fraction of the planes; six planes only, including four single-seaters and two multi-seaters, and they are all low-speed planes. Most likely, the publishers intended to publish expansions (or at least one for faster planes), but in comparison to even the first edition by GDW, which comprised 16 single-seaters plus the same two multi-seaters, it just doesn’t look like value for money.

Second, the use of card decks to determine damage means that this part of the game will deteriorate much faster than the rest.

The other physical components (card decks aside) are very nicely done and durable, but come on! Did the game REALLY need to include a myriad teeny-tiny counters for fuel points, when ticking boxes was so much easier and unambiguous? Or to replace the very simple fire damage table with special dice? How were those improvements on the older versions?

In short, this specific edition failed to heed the age-old warning, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

Had they not tinkered so much with the game mechanics, and merely taken care of the graphical quality of components (such as they did for the excellent aircraft maneuver sheets), plus made available a wider range of planes, the publishers would have updated a real classic to more modern industry standards.

As it is, I shall keep playing the older editions, eventually incorporating the best rules from “Canvas Eagles”.

The game has a serious design issue (which they tried to correct in later version). With good players, the last turns become a constant stopping of others to complete the victory conditions thus it drags on in an unending blocking game which only boredom Leads to Someone just giving up.

At a two player count, it feels repetitive and completely predictable.

Cards and components are nice but not worth playing at any player count. The Art on the cards is beautiful and the way the map fits together is good.

Pity but more playtesting early on might have solved the issue. The exp Asians tries to solve the issue of the never ending blocking game by introducing the concept of „we need a king“- ie the Game will end no matter what.