Product-Evolution

Producer– North Star Games

Price– $40  here http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00NP7EWNG/ref=sr_ph?ie=UTF8&qid=1465139323&sr=1&keywords=evolution

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 1 hour (2-6 players)

Type-Euro

Depth-Light

TL; DR-It feels like it evolves during play.  97.5%

Basics-  Time for survival of the fittest!  In Evolution, players take the roles of different species trying to survive the best they can over time.  At the start of each turn, a player is dealt three cards plus one for each species they control.  If a player doesn’t control any species, that player automatically is given one species with the lowest possible statistics as a catch up mechanism.  Each card a player receives has a name, picture, a power, and a number on a leaf in the bottom corner.  The leaf number indicates how much food will be found in the watering hole, a cardboard place holder in the middle of the table, that round.  With their remaining cards, players can power up their species.  Each species has a population marker and a body size marker.  Population is the maximum food that that species can take each turn, and body size is used in defense.  The cards a player has can be played on a species to permanently provide that power, or the card can be discard to increase the body or population by one of a species species or create a new species with a body and size of one.

After each all players have played cards, then the real fun begins.  The first player reveals the cards in the watering hole, and places more food based on the leaf numbers of all the cards.  Then, starting with the first player, each player takes one food from the watering hole.  Powers may affect the amount of food takes as some powers take more for the one species or cause another species to take foods as well.  However, one power that a creature can have is carnivore.  Carnivores do not eat plants but other species!  A carnivore attacks another species, yours or another players, and gains food equal to the attacked species’ body size all the while reducing that species’ population by one.  Carnivores can’t eat creatures that are bigger than themselves, and some powers will protect creatures in play as well.  But, the main advantage of carnivores is they do not need food from the watering hole as they food comes from the bank itself.  Play continues until every species around the table has food equal to its population or there is no more food in the watering hole.  If your species didn’t get enough food, you have to reduce your population to the amount of food it did get!  All food you did collect is placed into little bags for end game scoring.  Then, the first player marker passes to the next player.

The game continues until, when dealing cards, you have to shuffle the discard pile to have enough cards to hand to all the players.  When that happens, it is the last round.  After finishing the round, you score points for each evolution trait card on a species, the species population, and all the food tokens you collected during the game.  The player with the most points wins and is the king of the jungle!

Mechanics-I love how quick and easy this game is.  It’s fast, fun, and easy to pick up.  Nothing is overly complicated, but the game isn’t a puff piece either as the diversity here makes every decision important.  When giving up a card to increase your body size, you really have to consider if that card would be better providing its trait to your species, or do you need to increase your population to gain food.  That’s just enough brain burning fun to keep you engaged, but not too much to make you not have a fun, quick game.  My only major complaint is that there is a runaway victor problem.  If a player gets too many species with the right traits, that player might run away with the number of card he or she gets ruling the game from the start and be almost unbeatable.  It’s not self correcting problem as other players will have to fix it. 4.75/5

Theme-This game feels like it evolves.  I start a carnivore, then the rest of the table evolves to fight carnivores, and a few crazy people find ways to eat as well by playing cards like “scavenger” to eat when a creature dies.  Don’t play a carnivore?  Then the tables moves to find ways to eat quicker and get the food before you get a piece.  It’s an arms race in both the biology and card playing, and I love it.  5/5

Instructions-The rules are not bad by a long shot, but I felt like I missed a few small, key details when I read and then played the game.  How carnivores eat and where some food tokens come from are a little vague, but it’s not crucial fault in having fun or understanding how to play the game.  As you saw above, the rules are not complicated.  Once you have them down, you’ll be in good hands.  Getting there isn’t hard, but possibly give the rules a second reading to make sure you have the finer points.  The rules do have a larger description of all the trait cards, and I really liked that addition as well.4.75/5

Execution-What’s in the box is awesome.  I love the cards, the art, the wood dino that is the first player token, and even the bags to contain your food/points.  I’ll even let the Lisa Frank inspired art pass as it looks cool on the the creatures.  If you want to see all the pieces of the game, check out my unboxing here https://youtu.be/QJe0e113Ljs.    5/5

Summary-The best way to summarize this game is to repeat what my brother said after his play “Can we do that again?”  This is an awesome game that plays quick, makes you think fast, and is a pure pleasure to play.  I felt like I was several creatures trying to survive while dealing with cruel fate for food.  I never felt like I couldn’t win or my choices didn’t matter.  If you love evolutionary science or hobby gaming, this is a great game that connects the two in an amazing way.  Can’t wait to play this one again, and I think I will soon as it teaches quickly as well. 97.5%

Product-Fidelitas

Producer–Green Couch Games

Price– $ 20 here http://www.amazon.com/Green-Couch-Games-Fidelitas/dp/B00RZNJ6KK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1456088649&sr=8-1&keywords=fidelitas

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 20 minutes (2-4 players)

Type-European

Depth-Light

TL; DR-A simple, small town hides the depth underneath. 95%

Basics-The Revolution will not be televised, but it will be gamified!  In Fidelitas, players take the roles of different revolutionaries fighting for support of the guilds of a town to overthrow the cruel king!  This is done in an extremely simple card placement game where you move various guild members all around the town’s buildings.  Set up is placing the town cards out and then each player drawing two Missio(objective) cards and two Virtus (guild member) cards.  Each turn player then does three things in order: play one Virtus card, score as many Missio as they can, and possibly draw one or more Virtus cards.  The main part of the game are the Virtus cards.  These cards are the different guild members and the powers the each have.  A Virtus card is placed into its guild location if possible and then the cards power occurs.  These powers vary from moving cards to different locations, drawing cards to a location, and even removing cards from the location totaly.  Or the player can play the card to the tavern and then discard Missio cards and draw new ones. Next, the active player checks his or her Missio cards to see if they have occurred.  Missio cards have objectives that could be having three members of a guild on both sides of a location card, have so many of each guild at a location, and even only have members of a specific guild at a location.  Finally, the player draws up Missio and VIrtus cards, and the next player takes his or her turn.  Play continues until one player has 10 points and all players have had an equal number of turns.  Then the player with the most points wins and leads the guilds to overthrow the crown!

Mechanics-I love games that are simple and complex at the same time.  The best comparison to this game is Connect Four if players had to complete different patterns.  Players move cards around trying to create patterns of different guilds according to their Missio cards.  As they are hidden, no one has a good idea of what your goal is and that makes this even more fun.  You may accidently score due to the actions of your opponents!  The games simple to play and learn but complex to master nature makes this a blast.  The icing on this cake is that this experience also happens in under half an hour! 5/5

Theme– The game has a theme, but it’s not as strong as some other games.  I feel the theme of earning influence, but I don’t feel as much as a conquering hero to the revolution.  It’s fun, but might not hit the original story’s goal. 4/5

Instructions-The instructions are short and sweet.  If you can read the rules in the introduction of this article, you know how to play!  Also extremely useful is the fact the the rules describe corner cases to make playing the game that much easier. 5/5

Execution-The game comes in a small box, but packs enough punch to be awesome.  The card art is fun, the minimal writing is enough to give you the rules without being overbearing, and the cardstock is great quality.  It’s all the things I want in a simple, elegant card came.  Also for about $20, it’s priced right for what it is. 5/5

Summary-I love games that have you mastering the game’s mechanics in under five minutes but have enough depth to keep your playing.  This is a pocket game.  If you’re ever bored, then pulling this game from your pocket is a great way to spend half an hour.  Even better your average bar table will hold this game along with an order of fries and some drinks.  It’s compact, yet well put together.  It’s simple, but deep.  The only problem I have is the game’s story.  It’s not a bad story by any means, but I didn’t necessarily feel the story when I played the game.  If you can get past that one point, you will have a blast sitting down to play this game.  95%

Product-One Night Ultimate Vampire

Producer–Bezier Games

Price– $25  here http://www.amazon.com/Night-Ultimate-Vampire-Board-Game/dp/B013TRQSWY/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1454300120&sr=1-1&keywords=one+night+ultimate+vampire

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 10 minutes (3-10 players!)

Type-American

Depth-Light

TL; DR-Even I get to play! 96%

Basics-Are you a vampire?  One Night Ultimate Vampire is the latest instalment of the hit Werewolf franchise.  In this incantation, players all are members of a village plagued by vampires.  During set up, players elected a number of different roles for the players to take equal to the number of players plus three.  Each player get a secret role card as well as a mark of clarity.  This is a token that states you have no effects currently on your characters.  The three unused roles are set in the middle of the table, but not revealed to the players.  Then all players close their eyes.  Much like One Night Ultimate Werewolf, there is an IOs and Android app that the players can use to have an automated game master.    Each of these characters all have different actions that the computer will tell you when to take them.   The computer will then move through the roles, and one by one tell the characters to take their actions and when.  These actions range from the vampires all selecting another, non-vampire and changing that characters face down mark of clarity for a bite mark.  That character is now a vampire!  Another action could be the priest.  That character removed his or her current mark, unseen, and takes a mark of clarity for himself/herself and another character as well.  Midway through the game, the players look at their current marks, and then close their eyes again.  Other characters and roles then take their actions such as the marksmen who then looks at one players mark and another player’s card.  Once all characters have taken their actions, the game instructs you to wake up and to choose a player to kill!  If members of the village team kill a vampire, they win!  If the vampires all survive, then they win.  But, the game throws monkey wrenches into things like an assassin who isn’t a villager, but has to convince the town to kill his/her target to win.

Mechanics– This game is pure, orchestrated chaos and that is beautiful!  Every player gets a role and action.  No player just sits tight is a pure improvement of the game.  All the actions are simple, and what happens to your character is pretty simple as well.  This game takes less than 10 minutes to play, and that’s’ hard to pull off with up to 10 people!  However the best part for me is that all people get to play.  Instead of me running the game and not being able to play, the app makes this a fun experience for everyone you can find!  This is the definition of simple, fast, party fun.  5/5

Theme–  So the game is pretty strange, but  honestly you will have a blast and feel tension.  This game has honest to god tention!  You try so hard to do your action in a way where you won’t cause yourself to out yourself as a vampire or a villager.  The apps simple music helps paint a story.  Sure, you won’t get the amazing story of a DnD game, but it’s 10 minutes frantic voting to try to keep yourself alive and find the monsters among you. 5/5

Instructions– The one problem I have with this game is the instruction.  A cheat sheet would help this game, and maybe a few more explicit instructions.  Sure, the game isn’t hard to play, but unless your read every detail of the book, players miss hiding marks, keeping only one mark at a time, and most players won’t always remember the mark’s functions.  Reading the rules cover to cover will get you those rules, but I think that something else might be able to get the players hitting the ground running a little faster. 4.25/5

Execution– I love chunky cardboard.  I love quick games.  And, I love the app for this game.  It’s available to almost everyone, and now even I, the ever GM for my home games, gets to play the game.  A little more volume might help, but that might be my phone’s quite nature.  I can’t gush enough about how this game is put together.  If you want to see all the pieces check out our unboxing video here: https://youtu.be/54qa9yOJ98c.  5/5

Summary-Ok, this review took longer to read then for the game to play.  If you want a fun, quick, party game for up to 10 people, go buy this game.  For about $20, you get a phenomenal game that everyone gets to play in.  This series has shown some significant changes over time, but from what I’ve seen they’ve keep the games soul while finding the improvements that are need to keep it viable.  Just go get this game! 96%

Product-A.D.A.P.T.

Producer-Gate Keeper Games

Price– Free via print and play, but on kickstarter now! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/johnwrot/adapt-the-card-and-dice-game-0

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 20-30 minutes (2-3 players)

Type-American

Depth-Light/Medium

TL; DR-Evolve for dominance in the sea! 96%

Basics-This here ocean isn’t big enough for all of us….A.D.A.P.T. is a simple card game where players all take the roles of different fish.  Every players is attempting to be the last one standing in a free-for-all.  Play starts with each player rolling on a percent table to find who goes first and what extra options the other players gain to make up for that.  Next, is the basic turns.  First players gain experience points.  Then you have five options: adapt, buy, attack, special, and wipe.  Adapt is where players place a new evolution cards on your fish over any current cards in that slot.  These cards come in several types from fins to organs, but the most important cards are body cards.  Body cards provide a hit point total as well as a body level.  Your body level  plus two is the max type of card you can place on your board, but you can only buy a body level one greater at a time.  Buy is spend experience points to get new cards.  If your body level is high enough, you can immediately place this card, but otherwise you can set this card to the side and upgrade via an adapt action.  If no cards are bought after any turn, then remove the oldest card and place a new one.  Special is use a special actions provided by your new, evolved fish cards.  Wipe is remove all three current cards, gain extra experience points, and then place three new cards.  Attacking is the meat of the game.  Each body provides a die type (four-sided die to twelve-sided die).  When you attack, you roll the die indicated by your body and add you current ferocity score and compare against the target’s survival score.  If you beat the survival score, you deal damage equal to the difference plus your lethality score.  If you match you do one damage plus your lethality score and gain two experience.  If your score is lower than the survival score of the target, you gain experience equal to the difference of the scores.  After a player takes an action and the available cards cycle, the next player takes his or her turn, and this continues until only one fish remains swimming!

Mechanics-What you read above is enough rules to open the box and start playing.  Sure there is some nitty gritty, but overall the rules are sleek and simple.  Nothing is wasted here, and everyone gets to have fun right away.  The actions you get always give you something to do, so I never felt like I was wasting a turn.  Combat is the most complicated part of the game, but it’s pretty simple.  Some abilities feel somewhat less useful like hiding.  Taking an action, you can force an opponent to roll a die to see if they can target you.  The die value starts at a 1 or higher on a d8.  I’d like some options to be a bit more viable right out of the evolution gate.  If you focus on it, it’s powerful, but nothing you could splash into a fish.  Overall, it’s a more complex Munchkin that isn’t overburdened by its own rules.  4.5/5

Theme-This game also feels like a more complex version of Munchkin that is all screw your neighbor card game.  The only way for me to win is for you to lose.  That theme might throw a few other players, but it also is much more inline with biology.  Only one fish gets to be the top of the food chain.  I did feel like a fish struggling up the chain, so that was a fun addition.  The evolutions feel more like Pokemon evolutions then true evolutions, but it’s fun none the less making frankenstein fish as you randomly evolve new body parts.  If you are ok with a pure combat to win a short card game, you will have a blast! 5/5

Instructions-The instruction currently are pretty simple with little art, but that’s because it’s a print and play game.  The kickstarter will have fancier rules, but currently they do the job well if a bit wordy.  It gets you playing quickly, and the currently available guide cards really help you understand how to play the game quickly.  I’d like more pictures and art for the rules, but for a kickstarter and print and play rules, this is a well done write up that will get you into the game with ease.  NOTE-i’ve spoken the the creator and the rules will indeed have more art, so makes them even better. 5/5

Execution-I was provided a kickstarter pre printing, but honestly I’ve seen a lot worse from current production games.  The cards all look great and have simple icons to tell you what they need.  The boarders tell you where they socket, and that really help you know what you’re doing.  The art is fun, and the pieces looks like the fish they come from.  The player mats all look great and again help you play the game.  The only things that are keeping this game from being out now is some of the cards only had base words on them instead of art.  But for a game that’s almost in kickstarter, the only thing slowing this down is some art and printing!  Well done!  My own problems were some of the symbols were a bit small.  The body score is listed as a number of concentric highlighted fins.  It’s a bit hard to see.  The attack die is also the same way with the die being a bit small in the circle.  If the fin level and attack die had a faint number or sided number to make things a little more readable, I’d be tickled pink.  Want to see the preproduction parts?  Check out our unboxing video here: https://youtu.be/-blQE4UB0YA  NOTE-I’ve also spoken to the publisher and the final will make the die and fins easier to read as well!  4.7 5/5

Summary-If you want a more complex Munchkin game of ocean dominance, then you can’t do better than this.  It plays in about 30 minutes for three people if you know the rules.  Nothing here feels off or breaks the game.  Some options are a bit better than others in terms of cards to take, but I never felt like I was going to lose from the cards I got.  This game does use lots of dice, but as an American style game, luck and randomness will be an important factors in your win or loss.  The theme feel spot on, but that’s an acquired taste-you will only win if you’re the last person standing, so killing the other players has to be something you’re ok with doing.  You can’t let the game do that work for you.  As a veteran of these kinds of games, that’s something I found fun in this game.  As for where the game is in terms of being ready, this game just need a bit of art and a fresh coat of paint for the rules, and it’s ready for the road.  I can’t wait to hit the water and decimate the other fishies in my sea!  It’s currently on kickstarter, so right now is a great time to hit the waves!  96%

Product-Pixel Tactics Deluxe

Producer-Level 99 Games

Price– Can’t buy just yet!

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 20-30 minutes (2 players)

Type-American

Depth-Medium

TL; DR-A NES, an anime collection, and Final Fantasy Tactics in a card-shaped blender. 91%

Basics-Are you ready to old-school Anime rumble!? In Pixel Tactics Deluxe, the big box expansion to Pixel Tactics, players take the roles of rival armies attempting to kill the leader of the opposing unit.  Let’s start by describing the cards, and then the rest will fall into place.  Each card’s face has a leader half and a unit half.  The leader is the main character that the enemy will try to defeat. Each leader has an attack value, hit points, as well as providing either a special action or a special ability for your team.  If you rotate the card, you see the generic unit half.  This side has fewer hit points, an attack, and four different colored rectangles.  These rectangles are the main thrust of the game; each unit has a red, green, and blue rectangle as well as either a tan or purple rectangle.  The red, green, and blue rectangles are what this unit can do or powers it, or your army, gains depending on where it is in your army.  Units in the vanguard (red areas), get some powers, while units to your leaders sides (green or flank), or behind the leader (blue or rear) had different abilities.  The purple boxes are one time game effects (orders), and tan boxes are trap cards that you can place on the board to activate on an opponent’s turn when some action occurs.

With that, we can get into the meat of the game. Each player starts by drawing five cards from a deck of Pixel Tactics cards.  From these first five, each person will select a leader and place that character in the center of their board.  After selecting who gets to go first, players take turns taking two actions for section or wave of their unit (vanguard, then flank, and finally rear).  The actions a player can take is recruit (place a character in that section), attack (range or melee), spell (the rectangle says spell:some ability), issuing orders, laying traps, clearing corpses (removing fallen characters), or moving characters to different locations.  After both players have taken two actions for a wave of a unit , then play moves to the next wave.  Once all three waves have taken actions, the play moves back to the vanguard and the next player takes over as first player.  

I’d like to expand on attacks quickly.  Each unit has an attack value.  When a unit attacks, it does that attack value in damage to another enemy.  Unless a unit has a ranged attack, that unit cannot attack a unit behind another unit or if one of your units is in front of it.  Therefore, position is important.  Corpses do not block combat, but corpses do block placing new units, so unless you removed them with an action, your army will quickly be unable to place new fighters!  If a unit has damage equal to its health at the end of a wave’s actions, that unit is defeated and flipped over and is now a corpse.  Combat is just that simple. The game continues with each player taking turns until one player has defeated the other player’s leader and reigns supreme!

Mechanics-I like the quick nature of this game.  Thinking of similar card games like Magic, each card is a spell (order) or a unit, and that opens up a range of tactical options.  It’s fast, fun, and not a rules slog as different orders can’t do infinite combos or other such craziness that can build up in other games.  It’s just a quick game of fun tactics that you learn in under 10 minutes and feel smart when you discover combos in the cards.  It is a bit limited as this box only has two 30 card decks, and both decks are exactly the same.  It’s fun, but you can see why there are five other Pixel Tactics expansions besides this one.  However, to open new fun, this box also comes with drafting and league rules.  If you and your friends want to open up a tournament, this box and the other expansions give you the experience you’re wanting.  Well done! 5/5

Theme-This is a hard one.  There is NO real story in this game box, but it also drips theme in a strange, Frankenstein combination of genres.  I don’t have a clue what the heck any of the factions are or why they are fighting.  However, there is a ton of theme here.  Each leader has a full name and title.  These titles get all kinds of fun and the powers reflect it.  The generic unit side also provides you with some fun flare as the various cards have powers that all reflect exactly what you would think a card of that type should do.  Honestly this game feels like a smoothie made by blending the NES game catalog, Final Fantasy Tactics, and an anime collection.  What comes out is tasty and flavorful, but might not always make much sense, like green tea-flavored kit-kat bars.  4.25/5

Instructions-The rules to this game are thick, but if you just want to play a two player game of it, you will use about ⅕ of it.  The rest of the rules are for alternative game modes and how to use league rules and expansions.  That said, the thing reads well.  It’s a bit wordy because the rules need to explain how you kill your friend and your friend has to see how that is fair in detail, but overall it reads quickly.  It could use a few more pictures, but it’s not bad by any means.  4.75/5

Execution-This box serves two masters reasonably well.  On one side you have players like me-I’ve never played before and this is an excellent jumping on point.  Here is a full box with dividers for your growing collection and two starting decks so you can play in five minutes.  On the other side you have full avid collectors.  Here is a box where you get new cards, new common cards for drafting games, and dividers to make you colection fit in one well-constructed box.  I only have two minor problems with this game: the leader cards in the deluxe box and card icons.  Leader cards are chibi art cards of the leaders without having the basic unit side.  You get several beautiful cards, BUT you don’t get cards for all the units you get in this box.  Why?  That makes me mad–I have toys I can’t use!  The card icons help you quickly figure out how a card works.  And that’s great, but they can be a bit busy.  The overload of icons isn’t on all the cards, but maybe a few less would help improve readability.  These are only slight  annoyances and not nearly enough to completely detract from the beauty of this game.  Want to see all the cards in the box?  Check out our unboxing video here: https://youtu.be/uHSQNmhsFVo 4.5/5

Summary-I’ve never been much of a card gamer, but this one does win me over.  I can’t stand the pay-to-win mechanics of Magic, but this game gives me enough strategy and evolving gameplay that I can have a blast for a one-time cost and in a way where I don’t have to spend days learning the complex rules of the game.  I’d like a bit more theme as I don’t know why I’m killing the other player, but It also doesn’t really matter-The cards feel like they should.  The rules are streamlined, if a bit wordy, and the execution of the deluxe box is amazing.  My biggest problem with this box is I want more, which is always a great problem to have.  If you are looking for some classic NES nostalgia, your anime fix, and a fun 20-30 minute strategy game, then this is the game you’re looking for! 91%