Game– Catan: Cities and Knights

Price– $40

Producer-Mayfair Games

Set-Up/Play/Clean-Up-1.5 Hours

Players-2 to 4, up to 6 with an expansion

TL;DR-New life in a classic game 80%

Basics-Return to the island of Catan, this time to defend it from barbarians and build metropolises.  In this big box expansion to the base game, players continue with the standard Catan mechanics of building roads and settlements to harvest resources and amass points.  What are new are players now roll an extra die, can build automatic soldier called knights, and collect different resources called commodities from cities.  Some tiles give you commodities like the forest tiles.  Cities on forest now produce paper and wood instead of just two wood.  You can spend paper on your turn to upgrade your cities.  Each player has a flip book showing how upgraded each city type is in science, politics, or military.  There are three city types to correspond to the new die.  The extra die has green, yellow, or blue cities on it or three barbarian sides.  When you role a city color on the city die and have upgraded your city of that color enough, you get automatic development cards.  You no longer get to buy development cards, you have to earn them through upgrading your city and random chance.  When you role a barbarian, you move the barbarian ship closer.  When the ship reaches Catan, all players send knights to defend the isle.  If you don’t sent enough knights, then the player with the fewest knights has a city downgraded to a settlement.  If you do have enough knights, then the player who sent the most get a victory point for being the defender of Catan.  The barbarians reset, and play continues as normal.  Play keeps going until someone has 13 points instead of the original 10.

Mechanics-Settlers of Catan is how you fix Monopoly.  It’s a quick game that is easy to play without a lot of complicated rules.  I love it.  This big box expansion adds some complications, but the new stuff doesn’t break what already works, but adds some new options to the mix.  It’s an excellent way to add new life to the game.  However, the new mechanics are very chance heavy.  If you loved Catan before, but thought it was a little too American styled because of the random element to the game, you will hate this expansion as it add more randomness to your game. 4.5/5

Theme-Catan isn’t a theme heavy game.  It’s got terrain control for being the governor, but there isn’t much story besides 2 to 6 people settle an island and hate to share it.  This game gives a bit more depth as you get more characters, buildings, and more themed cards, but there isn’t a lot here. 3/5

Instructions-The instructions are well done.  The rules are crisp while getting the point across.  They also have a few examples that will help get the point across.  Again, the rules don’t really build the theme, but they do teach you how to play the game well.  And these rules get my personal blessing because I didn’t have to run to Board Game Geek to figure out a sticky point mid game!  4.5/5

Execution-What you get is good, but you might not get all you need.  Catan has a lot of editions, even for the very first base game.  Some editions don’t work well with different editions of the expansions.  My game didn’t come with two different colors of dice, so to find if I got development cards, I had to mark one of my two basic dice with a sharpie to know when I got development cards with the ship/barbarian die!  Adding a second colored die numbered one to six would have been a real nice small touch.  Also, you have to put stickers on wood.  Not a big thing, but that is always a pain!  But, what you get is nice.  Not perfect, but well done and good quality.  The flip books are cool.  The new boards are great.  I liked what I got.  It wasn’t love at first sight, but it was nice. 4/5

Summary-I like this game more than I like the original.  The original is a well done classic, but just like any other classic; you need to spice it up.  This expansion gave new life to a well loved game.  It’s a bit pricy as you are paying over $40 bucks for the base expansion and at least $20 more for the 5/6 player expansion to the expansion.  But, you do get a relatively lot of stuff.  Don’t look for a complete American style game with lots of story from the board or a complete Euro style game with no randomness in this one do.  It’s a fun mix of the two concepts heading a bit more toward Euro styling. 80%

Game– Shadowrun Online

Producer-Cliffhanger Productions

Price– ~$30

TL;DR– It’s up to you. Do you like preorders?

Basics- Hoi Chummers!  Time to step into the world of Shadowrun again, but this time online!  Shadowrun Online will be coming out later this year, but if you did the kickstarter OR pay to join on Steam, you get a preview of the game.  Right now you are NOT getting the full game, but if you join, later you will.  The game features a short campaign where you play a mage and a gunner as you plow you way trying to find a kidnapped girl or a multiplayer death match.

Mechanics-This game feels like Shadowrun Returns.  That isn’t a bad thing as I liked Shadowrun Returns, but some reviewers feel this game was made for the tablets like my Ipad.  Again, that’s not bad, but it is a thing to consider.  Basically, this game is a turn-based, small squad tactical battle in the Shadowrun world.  Each turn you move a character and have them attack.  My biggest complaint is that I can’t attack then move.  Not huge, but its something to consider.

Visuals-The game looks nice.  The parts you get to play in all look like they belong in Shadowrun.  You can rotate the screen which is a nice feature that’s not in Shadowrun Returns.  All the buttons for your character do look really pretty too.  However, I don’t like the tilt that the screen has.  I found it sometimes hard to visualize where my character was standing in comparison to other people.  This lead to me missing a few shots and dying!

Story-Here is the meat and potatoes.  Shadowrun Online has to have a decent, cyberpunk, dystopian story. This is where the game lives or dies.  The story you get to play is pretty short, but done well enough.  The characters do speak to one another in the missions, but between missions the characters mostly get walls of text expanding on what’s going on.  I’d like more to engage me, but it’s not bad.  I sit and read walls of text in Shadowrun Returns, and I love that story.  What I see from this game, I like.  But, this game HAS to keep up what it brought to the table as a minimum!  More story telling will keep this game from the fate of so many MMO’s littered at WoW’s feet.  This game can’t beat WoW through anything else but story.

Summary-I’m not grading this one.  I usually do, but this one is just a nice tech and story demo of what coming out later this year.  What I see happening is a simple MMORPG that will do well with the touch screens set in the Shadowrun Universe.  It you take out the MMO part, that describes Shadowrun Returns.  Both games use an extremely similar, simple interface.  I don’t mean that as an insult, as the simplicity doesn’t bog down the experience with clutter and won’t keep newer players who have never heard of Shadowrun from coming to the table.  The visuals are very similar which is good for not only bringing players in.  The story is fun, but it’s short.  I played the demo in 1.5 hours.  For $30, that’s a bit much, but I have to keep in mind that I’m paying for the full game and getting delivery in pieces.  Most of us hardcore Shadowrun fans want more like riggers, deckers, astral combat, customizable characters, more missions et al.  I do recommend this game, but you have to decide if you are ok with buying a game ahead of its being ready.  Right now, you don’t get much of a game as it’s a 2 hour tech demo.  I love kickstarter, so I’m fine with one year lead times and paying way ahead for a game.  If you love Shadowrun Returns, then you will love this.  Now, you just have to decide WHEN you buy it.

Product– Run & Gun

System-Shadowrun 5e

Producer– Catalyst

Price– PDF $25

TL;DR– What fans have been dying for! 93%

Basics– Time for the first hardcover expansion for Shadowrun 5e.  This book focuses on physical combat.  It starts off covering several new weapons ranging from swords to laser guns.  Next, the book presents new armor and clothing options.  From here, Run & Gun begins to focus on combat heavily starting with small squad tactics and new teamwork combat maneuvers.  After team combat, the book spotlights called shot locations, special attacks with different ammo types, and more combat options.  Following general combat, the book introduces martial arts with new combat maneuvers specific to each art.  The last two sections of the book focus on environment hazards and demolition.

Fluff or Story- This book is full of stories.  Catalyst takes great care to build story in across all the levels of the book.  Each section of the book is introduced with a story building the world of Shadowrun.  Every weapon is treated with some banter between different characters as they review the items as if they were talking about items in an internet forum.  Even major rule sections get snark like summoning fire elementals underwater (spoiler-it’s a bad idea!).  Every inch of the book builds 2075 America into a living, breathing world. 5/5

Crunch or Mechanics- This book is also full of mechanics.  The book introduces armor pieces, new armor/weapon types, martial arts forms, rules for all sorts of things from casting spells in a space suit to explosive decompression underwater.  Even better, the book emphasizes and re-presents small rule sections that players and GMs may have forgotten.  I really enjoyed quick rule summaries of these important, minor rules in sidebars.  Building on this, the book provides examples of how to do the math that makes the game work.  And as I said before, the book has lots of fun with its own rules and seriousness.  A perfect example is explosive decompression.  You fail a little, and it’s bad.  You fail a lot, and it’s really bad.  You completely screw-up, and you summon a kraken and die (most likely).  It’s an excellent way to meld rules, the world, and theme. 5/5

Execution- I’m reviewing a digital copy.  What I saw, I liked.  The text is nicely divided so you don’t have solid pages of block text.  The whitespace, side bars, tables, and pictures makes this a pleasure to read.  The book has lots of pictures, but could use a bit more.  In Gun H(e)aven 3, each gun got its own picture.  This book doesn’t have the space for that, but I think more pictures of the items would have helped me with my mental pictures of the game.  Also, this is the first printing/release of the book, so there are a few errors that are being compiled to help with future releases of the book.  Honestly, it’s a fun read, but I felt like I wanted more to see and a bit fewer errors.  The faults are by no grind them to a halt, but they are noticeable as you dig deeper into the book and system. 4/5

Summary- This isn’t the book I thought it would be.  That is not a bad thing, but I don’t know if this was what I thought I was going to get.  But, I am happy with the end product.  I feel like I’ve learned a bit more about the world of Shadowrun.  I love the new abilities that were carried over from forth edition or created for fifth.  The last two section of the book are not as useful if you just play in the urban sprawls and want to gun down any go-gangers you see, but if you ever need to blow up a space station, there are well-done rules that will help you and your GM carry out whatever pyromaniac dreams you may have.  Yes, plan B can be twice as much explosive as plan A.  The Shadowrun community has been dying for some new Shadowrun 5e content, and this product delivers.  While this product has a few flaws, if this is the quality of the next books, then I will happily buy each and every one. 93%