Blurbs from the Booth-How I review Games

November 5, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

I love gaming, and spend way too much time and money doing it, but not all games are created equal. Some of my more popular blog posts have been my game reviews. Let’s go through what I look for in a game, and what I want in each area.

Board Games

When I examine a board game, I look at four areas: mechanics, theme, instructions, and execution.

Mechanics-Board games are applying logic and people skills to better handling a situation compared to your competitors. The way that logic works is the mechanics- mechanics covers how a game works. Be it a deck building game, area control, dice rolls, randomocracy, or something mixed between everything, this can really make or break a game. I like when I see several dimensions of mechanics at play. Games like Tiny Epic Kingdoms or Trains take two or more simple mechanics and mix them into something better like flour and eggs making a cake. Some games do this amazingly well like Rococo. Some games fail at doing something as basic as rummy….LOOKING RIGHT AT YOU TENTICAL BENTO! If a game feels like it runs smoothly, then that game will most likely get a five. If the game runs like a car on its last legs about to die on a bumpy road, that game will most likely be a one or less.

Theme-Theme is the story of a game. Chess is a war between two kingdoms. Rococo is different dressmakers vying for the most prestige at a ball. Besides beating your friends at a game, this is the thing that will keep you playing. If you lose the Lord of the Rings card game, you’ve not only lost, but the world will be plunged into darkness! But, theme is hard to make happen. It might just be a simple intro story like in Lost Legends, or it might be an ever pervasive thing that winds through the whole game like Arkham Horror. Weaving a story into the theme is the height of game design for me. Games that have tons of story like Eldritch Horror are great games that deserve a five for theme, while some games like euchre don’t even score a one as there is no story to the game. As the amount of story you want is a game varies from person to person, this is consequently one of the most subject portions of my scoring.

Instructions-I’m a pretty smart guy. I got me a PhD and everything! (cue people pointing out all the grammar and spelling mistakes….) But, if you can’t tell me how to play your magnum opus of a game, then that game is crap to me. Getting your point across is important, but also how you do it is really key. If you hit me with a wall of text in size 4 fonts on a plain white sheet of paper, then I’m going to hate you. What you write has to be entertaining and informative while still being easy and fun to read. Top marks go to games like Dungeon Petz where not only are the rules taught with lots of pictures, but there are lots of small jokes for the players. Games like CO2 are horrible. It is only a few pictures with several pages of just black text in three columns on white pages. Also, if your rules are flat out wrong like pointing to a card that says weapon and discussing how armor works, you are going to make me very mad! The original rules for The Lord of the Rings Dice Game had massive misprints that completely broke the game. Needless to say the online rules were much better. Pictures say a thousand words, as well as, breaking up the text. Even if I can play your game after reading your rules, your rules still have to serve as a quick reference. If I can’t find the rules I need even after a few plays, then those rules are still bad. Layout, text size, text type, word choice, easy of readability, and pictures really define this section.

Execution-Here is my kind of catch all. This encompasses some of the instruction that you might see on cards, the art on all the components, component quality, and even the box. Execution is easy to mess up. If the game is about shuffling cards, and you buy the cheapest cards you can find, then the cards will break/fold/tear and the game is crap. Fantasy Flight games is the king of game execution. Their games have lots of nice tokens with good quality cards. Some games fall apart in the box like my copy of Machina Arcana which had a few warped ties and the cardboard standees for the monsters that broke or bent. This won’t kill a game, but it will make the game more or less fun to play depending on the quality of what you get to play with.

Role Playing Games

RPG’s cover paradoxically more and less ground than a board game. This category covers both a completely new game that is its own thing while also covering a short adventure for an established game. I tend to cover both roughly the same, but some reviews are much longer because of what I have to cover. Let’s look at the pieces that are out there. I roughly divide my reviews on games into: mechanics or crunch, theme or fluff, and execution.

Mechanics or Crunch-The real solids of an RPG is its mechanics. This is the part you will argue over with your GM. I judge an RPG based on how well the mechanics work by themselves or work with the existing rules. I also tend to judge the mechanics of how well the work with the story. RPGs have to have much more focus on the story than a board game does. Players are much more ok with just rolling dice in a Shoots in Ladders to decide how their characters move, but no role playing game person wants to play a game where all their actions are completely out of their hands without some story behind it. Some mechanics are amazing like the simplicity of Dungeons and Dragons 5e, and those systems earn the fives I give them. Some systems are just way to much crap like Fatal (DON’T, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LOOK THAT UP!).

Theme or Fluff-If something is the crunch, then the other side has to be the fluffy bits. Theme and story are the story you play in. You can play a simple game where you just go around and kill monsters by rolling a die and adding a number, but you won’t play that for weeks on end with your friends. A great story is what draws players back to the table. I judge this aspect of the story by how well the story is written and how involved I get in that story. I love when a story draws you in and won’t let you go. I really enjoy the theme of the second part of the Skull and Shackles adventure path. The whole adventure path is about being a pirate, and this whole module is about having a ship, raiding other ships and being a pirate. Weak stories just turn your players away and bore them to tears. If you can’t keep me, the GM, in your story, then how can I be expected to keep my players in your story?

Execution-As with board games, this tends to be a catch all for a lot of little things. Text size, art, layout, spacing, font, tables of information, and even the paper quality all factor into this score. I really like how the Dungeons and Dragons 5e players hand book is laid out. For a lot of RPG’s, I know I’m basically reading a text book about a place that doesn’t exist. Here is where you keep me reading. Giving me a boring list of places with little regard to art or spacing will drive me away in a flash.

This is how I judge the games I play. I’d also like to make an aside. I tend to give higher scores than most reviewers. There are multiple reasons for that. For one, I tend to like most of the games I play. I don’t often read bad RPGs or play horrible board games. I tend to see the best out there, but some games are bad, and I know it. And another major factor is I don’t have time to tell my readers about the bad stuff out there. I review one RPG and one board game a week. Reading through 300+ pages of a horrible RPG is not only a poor investment of time; it robs me of time to read and do the things I like. I have way too many stacks of good games and RPGs to read and play that I can’t waste the time to tell you about any bad ones. Oh, I do play them, and sometimes I do talk about them. But, for the most part, I just don’t have the time to spend 3-4 hours playing a bad game/10+ hours to read and play a bad RPG, and hour to write about it, an hour to (poorly) edit my writing about it, and an hour to post that around the internet. If I’m talking about your product, then most likely I like what I see. If I don’t, and you know I’ve seen your stuff, then maybe there is a problem we should discuss.

How about you? How do you evaluate the games that come across your desk?

Ring Side Report-Board Game Review of Belfort: the Expansion Expansion

October 30, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ 2 Comments

Product– Belfort: the Expansion Expansion

Producer– Tasty Minstrel games

Price– ~$20 here http://www.amazon.com/Belfort-The-Expansion-Board-Game/dp/1938146832/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414638034&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=belford+expantion

Set-up/Play/Clean-up-2.5~3 hours (2 to 5 players)

TL; DR– Some great things, some ok things 93%

Basics- Belfort was one of my favorite games (reviewed here https://throatpunchgames.com/2013/12/10/ring-side-report-board-game-review-of-belfort/). I loved to play it, but I wanted some new options to spice up a classic. The Expansion expansion enhances the game by adding new building expansions (hence the expansions expansion) that add on to your current building as well as providing assistants who help you throughout the game. The building expansions provide new ways to get points at the end of the game while the assistants provide new powers like preventing other players from building in an area to avoiding paying taxes all together. Other than these additions, the game is played exactly the same.

Mechanics– This is a (semi)mixed bag. I love the addition of the assistants. They provide new powers that really shake up the game. The assistants change each turn with the players with the fewest points choosing first and working up the point scale to choose each assistant. You might get stuck behind the eight ball on who gets what assistant if you run away with points, but the assistants help prevent the runaway point problem happening through some elegant game design. That I really liked. However the building additions are a bit more cumbersome. I like the expansions in theory. But, you have to have the base building, and most of the costs to build are a bit too cost prohibitive. It makes a player do more calculations to decide if building an expansion is worth it, but I feel most of these costs are a bit too much to make them worthwhile. Also, building expansions are collected when a player doesn’t use an assistant’s power. However, if you’re playing smart you won’t have a turn where your assistant isn’t hard at work. 4/5

Theme- The addition of the small elements in this set really does hammer home some themes missing from the first one. All the assistants do things that their fantasy races would do. It makes a ton of sense and does draw you in a bit more. The building expansions also all make sense like an inn getting a pool. The costs to build some of these items are a bit off (sacrifice a token to build some buildings). But overall, this expansion has a ton more theme than the original game. 4.5/5

Instructions– These instructions are short and to the point. Also, each part of the expansion gets a write up to help you understand the finer points of how the building and assistants works and how to build and use them. I love when instructions answer the difficult questions that will come up during game play. There is some humor in this book, but it’s all in good fun as well. 5/5

Execution– This is small box, but not an empty one. The box comes with several cards for the expansions, cards for the assistants, and wooden blocks for some of the assistant’s powers. In fact, this expansion fits into the original box. I’m not complaining. For the cost, you’d be hard pressed to pick up other expansions out there that are done as well! 5/5

Summary-Overall, I like this expansion. The best thing this expansion does is enhance the theme of the original game. The game does feel more fantasy now with the addition of the assistants. Before, the theme was there but a bit too dry. What I don’t like is the building additions. I don’t think you get enough bang for your buck for building them. Maybe if you play smarter than I did, you will see some combinations I didn’t. I had fun, but the random nature of the buildings you can build means the starting buildings in your hand and their additions will dictate how you must play the game. That’s not horrible, but it can be a bit of a pain. Nothings in bad here, and if you want some added life and strategy in your Belfort, this is a great expansion. 93%

Ring Side Report-Board Game Review of Tiny Epic Kingdoms

October 22, 2014October 22, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ 1 Comment

Product– Tiny Epic Kingdoms

Producer– Gamelyn Games

Price– ~Not out yet, but ~$20

Set-up/Play/Clean-up-30 minutes (2-5 players)

TL; DR– Truly a pocket-sized, quick 4X game! 94%

Basics– Tiny Epic Kingdom is a 4X game where players try to out expand, out exploit, out evolve, and out build there opponents. Each player starts with some resources (corn, ore, and mana), a territory card in front of him/her, and two meeples on one location within that territory. What makes this game interesting is the way these actions are handled and the game speed. The current lead player chooses an action: move a meeple within a territory, move to another territory in front of another player, build your tower, research magic, make more meeples, or trade resources one for one. When the player chooses his/her action, he/she must choose to take an action that hasn’t been taken for at least five turns. When an action is selected, a wooden shield meeple is places on the action selection card, and the card is only cleared when five actions have been taken. After the lead character chosen action is done, each other player in order chooses to take either the same action or gather resources. When you gather resources, you gain corn, ore, and mana from each space you occupy. Each action is also very simple. Moving across a territory or to a new territory simply moves a meeple, but can result in wars. When two meeples from different factions meet, the players must go to war. War results are decided by how many resources each player is willing to spend. Mana provides two war recourse, ore one, and corn none. Each player then decides how they are willing to spend by secretly placing a 12 sided die down to indicate how much they will spend. When this is done, the player with the most spent wins, but both players must spend all the resources. However, each player can declare peace resulting in an alliance and sharing the space. When you build your tower, you spend ore equal to the next level of the tower you’re building and move up a victory point track. When you make more meeples, you spend food equal to how many meeples your currently have plus one, and gain another meeple on a space with only one of your meeple. When you research magic, you spend magic equal to the next space on the magic track, and gain a special faction specific ability. The trading action is a catch all action that allows you to trade one recourse for one of any other. The game end is triggered when a player either: has seven meeples out, has fully built their tower, or fully researched their magic, and the game completely ends on the turn when the last of the five action marker shields is placed on the action selection board. Points are scored by ranks on the tower, magic research, meeples in play, and extra magic point powers. Player with the most points is the winner.

Mechanics– This is an amazing game. There is no randomness, no fiddly bits, and no wasted turns. Each turn and action will somehow allow you to build you your faction. I also can’t say enough about the action selection. I love games where every player is always active somehow as opposed to some games where when you’re off turn, you might as well not even be in the same room If you can out maneuver your opponents you will win and feel like a winner. When you do something is almost as important as what you do and who does it. I’ve played quite a few 4X games, and this one feels the least fiddly. Nothing here is tacked on for some odd aspect of balance. Everything here feels smart and balanced. Instead of dice, combat is an exercise in outsmarting your opponents and resource management. The hidden dice wager mechanic here is amazingly fun and amazingly tense. There are multiple paths for victory (ALWAYS a plus!). And all of this is packed into a game that takes 30 minutes for FIVE players to play! Hands down awesome. 5/5

Theme- This isn’t the most thematic game out there, but you have to keep in mind this game is designed to be played in less time than you get for lunch at work. The races mostly feel different because of their magic powers. The undead can get more food when people die. You can eventually build constructs out of ore. Those little things drive home what theme is in this game. The player interactions do tell a story, but this isn’t a game where you can expect the Lord of the Rings to just happen. You will feel like you’re in a fantasy world, but don’t expect RPG level of immersion. 4/5

Instructions– The instructions do a decent job of explaining the rules. The rules are short, well written, and overall great. However, there are a lot of powers and interactions that could use a set of FAQ’s or some further information and explanation. It’s nothing game breaking, but an extra page or two on the seven pages of rules would really help me understand exactly what the designers meant in some cases. However, if your group has some common sense, it won’t stop this game from being fun. 4.75/5

Execution– This game comes in the same size box as Dungeon Heroes which is a small box about one inch high, by six inches long, by four inches wide. That’s a pretty small box. But what you get in it is anything but small. You get a ton of wood pieces, player boards, territory cards, and action boards. All of this is done on good quality cardstock. I also know Gamelyn Games prides itself on its wooden meeples, and this was no exception as all the wooden tokens and meeples are well done. With all the stuff you get in here, this box feels like a Tardis. 5/5

Summary-This is a fun, quick, well done game. It’s small enough to fit on a bar table top and easy enough to play you can learn and win in under an hour. My only problems are the game’s theme isn’t its strongest assets and the rules are a tad ambiguous in a few places. These are not in any way major problems. And, I promise if you want 4X that you can play in less than a weekend (looking at you Twilight Imperium!), you will have a blast with this game. I have never played a game of this that didn’t end with all the geeks standing around the table assessing the other players, and that’s when you know stuff gotten real! And, for the price, you can’t beat this game. 94 %

Ring Side Report-Board Game Review of Among the Stars

October 14, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Product– Among the Stars

Producer– Stronghold Games

Price– ~$50 here http://www.amazon.com/Among-The-Stars-Card-Game/dp/B00KD4LN36/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413249689&sr=8-1&keywords=among+the+stars

Set-Up/Play/Clean-Up-One Hour (2-4 players)

TL; DR– Builds well on the drafting mechanic with a fun theme 97%

Basics– The galactic war is over, but how will peace proceed? In Among the Stars players take the roles of different alien races building a communal space station to serve as neutral territory after an intergalactic apocalypse. Players build their space stations over four rounds. Each round a player receives some location tiles. Each turn, a player selects one tile and can either pay to build that location, discard it for money, or discard it to buy and build a reactor (some tiles need power that reactors provide). Then, all players will pass the remaining tiles to either the right or the left. The player then builds onto his or her station or collects money. Some locations give instant points while others provide points at the end of the game. A round continues until you only have two location tiles left. After selecting your last tile, you discard the other, receive a new hand of tiles, and the game continues. After three more rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Mechanics-I love drafting games. I love planning and tile laying games. This combines them booth beautifully. Each choice you make maters and you never feel like you can’t do something. Also, the alien races provide interesting powers that help you plan your moves. This game feels like a combination of Suburbia, Carcassonne, and Seven Wonders, and that’s great company to be in. 5/5

Theme- The theme is good here, but not perfect. The basic story is the alien races declared peace after a giant war. The instruction book does an excellent job explaining all the nuances of the war and the races which I enjoyed. However, the fact that this isn’t a co-op game loses some of the theme for me. The story of cooperation is somewhat lost when the different races have to fight over who builds the better station. I love the details and art that build this world, but the story and the mechanics fight at bit in the execution. 4.5/5

Instructions-The instructions are well written and easily describe the game. The mechanics are not difficult to understand, and the rules explain them well. After the rules, the book spends most of its time describing the game universe. Since this world is well developed, it’s a nice addition to the game and the story you get to play in. 5/5

Execution-I like the tiles, I like the art, and I like the pieces. The components are all well done. I would have liked a bag to shuffle the tiles in, as it’s always harder to shuffle tiles compared to cards. But, what is here is well done. 4.8/5

Summary– A friend of mine brought this game with him when he stayed at my house for a weekend. I played once and asked my local gaming store to pick this up right away. It’s a great game that has a lot of replay. The randomness of the tiles and the different races all provide a different experience each time you play it. The story might not be perfect, but it does draw you in a bit. The mechanics are a combination of all the things I love to make something better. You can’t go wrong with this game. 97%

Ring Side Report-Dual Board Game Review of Eminent Domain: Escalation

October 8, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Product– Escalation expansion to Eminent Domain

Producer– Tasty Minstrel Games

Price– ~$25 here http://www.amazon.com/Tasty-Minstrel-Games-PSITTT5001-Eminent/dp/1938146808/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412735641&sr=8-1&keywords=escalation+eminent+domain

Set-up/Play/Clean-up- 45 min (2-now 5 players)

TL; DR– some good, but drastic changes the game 85%

Basics– In the future, there is only war! Escalation is the five player expansion for Eminent Domain. The game play doesn’t change from my original write up here https://throatpunchgames.com/2014/05/05/ring-side-report-board-game-review-of-eminent-domain/. This expansion adds another player as well as character roles, additional research cards, new planets, and roles for the larger ships in the base game.

Mechanics– I really loved the base game, and was excited to get my hands on the expansion. However, the expansion makes some drastic changes to the base game that severely shift the mechanics of the game. This expansion allows some research cards to be bought using fighters instead of research. This means that war cards become the default strategy as now a hand full of red warfare cards can buy you either research or planets. The roles for larger ships allow fighters to more easily capture planets further enforcing this. Instead of now trying to balance research, colonization or attack, and survey, any player will now just choose to focus on surveying and warfare. This changes the flow of the game, and not for the better. This is chiefly evident in one power that lets a player conquer another player’s planets. The player who does the conquering doesn’t even have to pay for the planet; the stock of points in the middle pays the person the planet was stolen from. This shifts the play from light deck building to “get all the red cards first” game. It makes the game much less fun. Hands down the best part is the expansion are cards for a fifth player. The new planets and research cards are interesting, but many of them feed into the problem of war being so dominent. 2.5/5

Theme– If you like the change in mechanics, then you will love the theme. I don’t, but I can see how the theme changed. The universe is at war now, so the cards and mechanics will reflect it. I might not personally like the change, but it’s done well. 4.5/5

Instructions-The rules are short and get the new changes out to the players pretty well. It doesn’t have the text book problem, and it gives a great explanation to all the changes. Well done. 5/5

Execution– This is a good expansion for its parts. The instructions are laid out well. The cards all have great art and stand up well to shuffling. The tokens are well done. I like what I see here. Heck, even the expansion box can fit in the original box. 5/5

Summary– I’m not a fan of this one. I love the addition of a fifth player, but the changes to what warfare cards can do are just too drastic. While you can’t get all the research cards for a victory, you can get enough to easily stomp you opponents. Also, you can now get research cards and planets that produce new ships each turn, so every turn you will almost be invading two planets a turn feeding this problem even more. It changes a game with an awesome balance between colonize, trade, and warfare to a hostile game of war. I didn’t have as much fun playing this. However, the instructions are well written, the expansion is put together well, and the mechanics, while not my favorite part of this expansion, really do reflect the theme. If you want Eminent Domain, but need to attack your fellow players, this is the expansion for you. 85%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Battle Merchants

September 30, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game– Battle Merchants

Producer– Minion Games

Price– $50 here http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Merchants-SW-MINT-New/dp/B00LXFF56K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1412045384&sr=8-1&keywords=battle+merchants

Set-up/Play/Clean-Up– ~2.5 hours

Players– 2 to 4

TL; DR– You will never have so much fun fostering warfare! 95%

Basics– Let’s make some money! In Battle Merchants, you play the role of a weapon supplies for different fantasy races during a time of great war. This game is played across four seasons. In each season, players take turns doing one action until three new battles happen and the war begins. Each turn you can do one of four things: get weapon skill cards, build weapons, sell a weapon, or draw a kingdom card. By getting different weapon skill cards for each of the four weapons, your skill building each weapon type increases. This is only important for when fights occur at the end of a season. Building weapons allows you to build up to three weapons to sell. Selling weapons allows you to sell weapons to a spot on the board that wants a weapon you have for money. Each race at war is fighting on two fronts, and these fronts will require one of the four weapons for each spot on their side of the conflict. The factions won’t buy a weapon they don’t want, so you have to diversify enough to be able to sell all the weapon types. When you sell to a side of a conflict you get money and a token for that race. The more tokens you have for a race, the more money you get each time you sell to them in the future. When both sides of a battle have weapons, then a battle token is moved to the center of the board, and the next battle token is revealed allowing more weapons to be sold to the sides of that conflict. If a conflict doesn’t have a battle token as it was moved in a previous season, then you can still sell to that battle again. Kingdome cards give the player extra abilities and powers that provide new strategies for winning the game. When three battle markers are moved to the center for that season, then each player get one round before the time of war. At each battle with weapons on each side during the time of war, the weapon skill of each player’s weapon is compared and the higher skill says while the winner collects the defeated weapon as a marker of conquest and extra points at the end of the game. Weapons that are still on the board at the end of the time of war need to be maintained, so the player who made those weapons gets extra money. After four seasons and the times of war associated with them, just like life, the player with the most money wins.

Mechanics– This is a deceptively simple game that has lots of deep strategy. On a turn, you can only do one action, so the game moves at a good clip while still having to make important decisions. Everybody starts out on equal footing, so you have to think fast and figure out how best to procedure. My only problem with this game is a run away victor problem. As winners get both points at the end of the game for most defeated weapons and extra points/money for having weapons on the board at turn end, a player who wins the first battle of the game can develop an unopposed lead pretty quickly. 4.5/5

Theme– You do feel like a weapons dealer in a fantasy war. The boards are cartoony enough to make it light hearted, but there is the undercurrent of making money off bloodshed. In fact, a strategy you can take is to sell weapons to BOTH sides at one battle. You get a win money for weapons attendance at a fight, the sale of both weapons, and defeated weapons for points. That right there nails the theme of being a cold hearted weapons dealer. 5/5

Instructions– The instructions are not bad but are something you have to read very carefully to really get all the small details. It’s a half sheet style of rules folded to make several pages in the rulebook. The rules do teach the game well, but there are a number of fiddly rules that can really change the game. These rules could use a bit more emphasis. Also, some rules are presented in examples, and that would be great, but the rules are not presented before or outside the example. That’s a pet peeve that makes the game somewhat hard to completely understand your first time through. However, after that initial first game, you will be playing this game like a champ. 4.5/5

Execution-I like what comes in this box. It’s got great cards with some fun, cartoony art. The boards are all great cardboard. The tokens are nice chunky cardboard. My one small problem with this game is the weapon skill cards. It took me ten minutes to find what the rules meant by the different colored backs. During game set-up, you separate the spring/summer weapons cards from fall/winter cards. What that means is some of the weapon skill cards will have colored spring/summer sections of the center season wheel, while the fall/winter will be light brown and the reverse will be true for the fall/winter cards. It’s not a major problem by any means, but I hope it helps you understand what that means when you play! 5/5

Summary– This is a great game. The theme might not be for everybody as you do play a conniving war profiteer in a fantasy setting. However, I enjoyed being the bad guy. The mechanics are fun; even they are not completely balanced. I liked the art and the physical build of the game. Overall, this is a great game that I wish I could play with more players. 95%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Pathfinder Adventure Card Game-Skull and Shackles base box

September 29, 2014September 29, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Product-Pathfinder Adventure Card Game-Skull and Shackles

Producer-Paizo

Price– $60 here

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– ~25 min per player per scenario (1-6 players with expansion, 10 scenarios in the base game)

TL; DR– A fun addition to the Card Game. 89%

Basics-Ahoy matey! This game is the sequel to the hit Pathfinder Adventure Card Game-Rise of the Runelords. Players take the role of one character and progress between scenarios to move along the Skull and Shackles adventure path. You have a character that has the six standard Pathfinder stats as a die. Each turn you can move between different locations, and draw the top card of that deck as an encounter. That card is either something you can equip like a spell or a weapon (a “boon”) or something that will attack you like a monster or an obstacle (a “bane”). You can then play cards from your hand to give you extra dice or bonuses to your roll, select an ability based on the card encountered and roll the die related to that ability score. If you beat the number on the card, you can add it to your hand if it’s a boon, while banes are defeated. If you don’t beat the number on the card, you discard any good cards you encountered or take damage if you fought a monster. When you take damage you discard cards from your hand. If you can’t play cards from your hand to keep exploring, you draw up to your hand size. If you can’t, then your character dies. If you encounter something called henchmen while exploring, you encounter it as above, but if you defeat it, you can close the location the henchmen was at. If you encounter and beat a villain or man bad guy for the scenario and the other locations are closed, you win! While much hasn’t changed, what has changed is pretty different.

Mechanics-This game is and isn’t much different from the original. Let’s look at each section individually.

Basic Play– The basics play described above hasn’t changed. The rules go a little more in depth and make that section MUCH clearer, so that is very appreciated. However, it feels like there are definitely winner and loser abilities and skills. Maybe further in the game, some of the skills will matter. But right now, it feels like some of the characters just don’t matter.

Ships-The largest new mechanic is the addition of ships. The ships provide a constant bonus or ability for your group and the bonus to move as a group. Also, the ships provide an awesome way to deal with not getting enough gear. When you beat another ship or get to store plunder, you roll on a random chart, and place one of five different types of cards under the ship. If you win, you get these cards in addition to any other bonuses for the scenario.

Display and Other Small Changes-Display is a new mechanic where you don’t just reveal a card from your hand, you set it in front of you. The card now provides an effect and will then tell you when you can pick it up or if you have to discard it. Some cards allow you to constantly use a displayed card. This is just part of a handful of new terms for the game. These new cards do an excellent job of updating the rules. It provides new options for card design and helps the players. I like how the rules have moved along.

Summary– The game plays like the basic adventure card game. It’s a great game, but some of the characters don’t feel like they matter. Maybe that will change, maybe not. That will depend on what comes out later in this scenario. Ships are amazing and help prevent characters just not getting enough cards. The new terms and mechanics like display provide some new design and play space, and the new characters are fun. It’s not perfect, but it is a blast to play. 4.75/5

Theme-You’re a pirate and you sail the high seas! You get to move through the Skull and Shackles adventure path with was an amazing adventure series. I like what I’ve seen so far as it hits the high points reasonably well. However, if you haven’t played the adventure path, you will feel lost. You do feel like an island hopping pirate, but the story does lack a bit since the story is still told by half card length paragraphs. I really wish Paizo would publish a quick summary of each adventure part and an epilogue so the players would know a bit more about what is going on. 4/5

Instructions– Here there are some problems, but they don’t break the game. You just might end up cheating by accident. The rules are a giant tome! There’s a lot going on here, but what it really needs is a one page summary to help character jump in the action. The rules are a bit of a text book that tends to bury some important rule points under lots of other text. The rules by themselves are ok. They get the points across, but some concepts like who controls ships, number of cards per check, and even the blessing deck can get lost in the text. Rules on the cards need some work too. The first scenario of the main campaign is already errata’ed by the designers. That’s a major problem! That’s the scenario that should have gotten the absolute most number of plays and should be the most rock solid. A bit more writing in some areas and much less in others would really help make the concepts and story much clearer. 4/5

Execution-For $60 you get a ton of cards, rules, and a nice box. The cards are well done with great art, and they’re of decent enough quality to withstand lots of shuffling. The design has slightly changed, but again, it’s all for the best. As always with Paizo, the art is well done. All and all, this is well done. 5/5

Summary– The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game is a great co-op game. My wife and I love to play this game. The Skull and Shackles is a great addition to the franchise. I loved playing through the Skull and Shackles adventure path, and this give almost the same experience. The major problems in this game could be fixed with some clever writing. Some of the rules and story need clarification, while some excess writing needs to be trimmed. The characters are fun, but some just don’t seem as interesting or useful. However, all told, I’m enjoying what’s this new base set, and I can’t wait to see what’s next. 89%

Ring Side Report-Board Game/ iOS review of The Manhattan Project

September 18, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game-The Manhattan Project on iOS

Producer-Domowicz Creative Group

System-iOS

TL;DR– Great for multiplayer, problems with single player. 80%

Basics– BOOM BABY! It’s Manhattan Project on the iOS. It plays exactly like the original board game. Players take turns placing workers on the main board and placing workers on different locations on their own boards, or recalling workers from where they have been placed with the goal of building the most bomb points. For my full review of the base board game, check out this link: https://throatpunchgames.com/2013/10/29/ring-side-report-game-review-the-manhattan-project/ This is the iOS version of the game that my mother and I played on the iPad. Let’s break the game down.

Mechanics-The iOS game follows the same mechanics as the base game. What it does add are some nice animations as well as doing all the computations for the game well. The game functions pretty smoothly. What problem you will have are some things are not indicated well. Some items will glow if you can do them, but others like the construction area don’t. It’s not indicated if you can have multiple people on there. The game works well, but a few changes would really help things. HOWEVER, NO MATTER WHAT BAD THINGS YOU CAN SAY, THIS GAME HAS AN UNDO BUTTON! That makes life so much better! 4.5/5

Visuals/Sounds– The game looks nice, but it’s basically just the board game floating in space. It’s easy to read as you can zoom in, but it’s not suped up like some other board games on the iOS. The game looks like the developer just took the tabletop version and placed it on the iPad. That’s not bad, but I would like a bit more. The sounds are ok, but the music can get a bit repetitive. 4/5

Execution-This game is well done, but the major problems you will have boil down to a lack of instruction. Everything in this game comes directly from The Manhattan Project board game box: tokens, boards, and instructions. The bad thing is that there are no instructions for how to play the game on the iOS. If you’ve played a few of these before, you will be fine. Your first play through will be a bit of a mess because you have to learn as you go. That’s a pretty sizable problem. However, it’s a problem you will have only for your first play through. Nothing you won’t get past, but it will turn a few people away. The AI is a bit weak; I’ve never been bombed by the AI, had espionage happen, or even lost once! It’s fun to play, but if you’re a decent player, you will win. When you do win, the game doesn’t allow you to do anything or prompt you to quit. You have to manually quit. That’s not a problem per se, but a little bit more effort would really make this game better. As for the multiplayer, it does amazingly well with either the pass and play or internet versions. I had to explain to my mom how to play and start an internet game (see above), but once she understood how to play she was off to the races. So, great job on the multiplayer! 3.5/5

Summary– I love The Manhattan Project. It’s one of my favorite games that I can’t convince my local gaming group to play. I loved it before, and now I have the chance to play on my iPad. If Playdeck’s games are the A tier games, then this is a solid B game. The game is good, but you will be left wanting a bit more. It’s the game you want, but a little bit more would really knock this out of the park. The absence is what really notice and hurt the game: no iOS instruction, no prompting for things, and limited AI. What is here is the board game you want that works well and is fun. If you can get past the problems and know this game,then this is a great iOS title. 80%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Guildhall

September 9, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game-Guildhall
Producer-AEG
Price– $50 here http://www.amazon.com/Alderac-Entertainment-Group-AEG5601-Guildhall/dp/B00AQJ5Y92/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1410285314&sr=8-2&keywords=guildhall
Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 40 minutes
TL; DR-An awesome, quick card game. 88%

Basics– Rise up through commerce! In Guildhall, you play someone who starts a guildhall in the middle ages vying for power through the economy. You do this by creating the most powerful guild in town. You start with a hand of six cards. These cards each show a profession and a color. Each turn you choose two actions: play a card, discard and draw up to six, or buy victory points. When you play a card, you place it directly in front of you and get a benefit based on the number of other cards of that profession you already have in your guildhall. The current card does not count for this. That is really important! As an example let’s look at the weaver. If you have no weavers in your guild hall, when you play a weaver from your hand, you get to place one card in your guild hall. If you have two weavers in your guildhall already, you get to place two cards directly in your guildhall, but you have to take one card back to hand. If you have four weavers in your guildhall, you can place as many cards as you want from hand into your guildhall, but you must pick up two cards from your guildhall. There are five colors to each profession. You can only play cards that you do not all ready have. As an example, you can’t play a red farmer if you have a red farmer, but playing a blue farmer is ok with a red farmer in your guildhall. When you have five different color cards of one profession in your guildhall, that stack is turned over and can be used with the second action to buy points. As another action, you can spend one or two stacks of cards by placing those cards in the discard area to buy a victory card. Some of these cards are just a ton of points while other cards give some points and extra actions or free cards. The last action that you can take is to discard as many cards as you want and draw up to six cards. After your two actions, you move all your played cards into your guild hall, and the next player goes. The game continues until someone scores 20 points and is the winner.

Mechanics-I love this game. The mechanics are tight and card combos come out really quickly. Nothing is too broken since any card you have a chance to get could always show up in your opponents hand too. It moves quickly, teaches easily, and is a great game even in a short timeframe. 5/5

Theme-This is not a theme heavy game. The art is all nice and the characters look like their concepts, but beyond that it’s just playing cards. Some of the actions the cards do is related to the role on the card, but it’s not as strong as I would hope for some cards. The game is really fun, but the mechanics and theme are just too separated. 2.5/5

Instructions-AEG does an excellent job on these rules. It’s even written in two languages-English and German. The rules have text, but columns and boxes to break up the text making this a quick easy read. It’s read quickly and teaches the rules really well. 5/5

Execution-This game is executed really well. The box is way too big for the cards in it, but the box also comes with some really cool plastic dividers to help make the size less of a problem. The cards are nice quality and don’t tear easily. The coins are nice and chunky. And the iconography teaches the rules in a way that requires no language, just concept pictures. Well done! 5/5

Summary-I love this game. It’s a quick game to get out either between longer games as a filler or as a few games over a night. It’s less than an hour even for four players. I wish the theme was a bit stronger, but that’s my only problem. This is a game I keep in my car when I’m out and about. You never know when you might want or have the opportunity to get a good game in, and this one is easy to teach, quick to master, and a blast to play. 88%

Ring Side Report- Board Game Review of Shadowrun: Crossfire

September 4, 2014 ~ fineyoungmisanthrope ~ Leave a comment

Game– Shadowrun: Crossfire

Producer- Catalyst Game Labs

Price– $60 here http://www.amazon.com/Catalyst-Game-Labs-CYT27700-Shadowrun/dp/B000B2VCDG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409799537&sr=8-1&keywords=shadowrun+crossfire

Set-up/Play/Clean-up– 20 min per player (2-4 players)

TL; DR– Randomness hurts the story. 84%

Basics-Welcome to the shadows, chummer. Crossfire is a co-op deck building card game where players take the roll of different Shadowrun characters. Each character chooses a race and a roll. The race give you hit points, a starting hand size, and starting money. The rolls are twofold. The rolls give you a starting deck of cards as well as determine what cards will attack your character. The players then choose a scenario. The scenarios give you a set up conditions, new rules, and a story. Aside from the scenario specific changes to the basic game, the game goes as follows. A number of obstacles are dealt out equal to the number of players. Each obstacle has a color and that obstacle will attack a player with the same roll color. Then, players take turns as follows. First, the start player draws a crossfire card. This card will give an effect for the round such as increased damage to players or players not being able to heal. Some cards also have an effect if enough crossfire cards are in the discard pile. Next, the player play cards with icons that match the current icons on any obstacle to damage it. If the players play enough cards to completely damage an obstacle, then the players get money. Otherwise, counters are used to indicate the next icons that have to be played on the obstacles to defeat them, so damage to an obstacle is tracked between players. When the player is done playing cards on obsticles, any obstacle in front of him/her damages that player. Finally, the player draws cards if he/she has less than three cards, buys cards from the center, and play passes to the next player. This player takes an almost identical turn except does not draw a crossfire card. Play continues until it’s the start players turn, a new crossfire card is drawn, and the game continues. If all the players do not have an obstacle in front of them, then the crossfire pile is discarded. The game keeps going until the players beat the scenario or a player dies. If the players beat the scenario, they score karma (experience) based on the scenario. If a player dies, then the players run away and only get one karma each. Between scenarios, players can spend karma to upgrade their characters, but they almost always start with the same basic cards in their starter deck.

Theme-This game feels like a stripped down Shadowrun game. It’s fun, but you don’t get the complete experience. There is a bunch of Shadowrun things here ranging from quotes and story starts for the scenarios, but the games random nature makes the cohesiveness come apart a bit. You don’t get the story you would expect from a standard night of playing Shadowrun, the Pathfinder adventure card game, or the Lord of the Rings card game. Both of those card games have more targeted effects and story. Make no mistake, this is Shadowrun. But, it’s not as Shadowrun as I wanted. 4/5

Mechanics– Your enjoyment of the mechanics of this game will directly reflect how many people you play with. If you play with four, this game is awesome. Each player gets a roll; everybody gets a ton of turns to help, even if one player has all the obstacles in front of him/her. The mechanics of building a deck, using icons to target icons to damage an obstacle, rolls, karma, and money will all work pretty well. But if you play with three players, or god forbid two, this game is a ride on the pain train. With fewer players, the current players take more rolls. But, those same players DON’T take more cards for those rolls. You take two roll cards, choose one, and then get the base cards for the roll you choose, not the one you didn’t. This means you get fewer icons and can still be target by obstacles from that color. That’s a problem as the random nature of the obstacle deck means the Orc Decker/face could get all face obstacles even though Orc only has Decker cards. That player will die, and his/her partner won’t be able to do anything because the center market cards could only be black attacking cards. The balance is off if you are missing players, so that is a very troubling problem for me as my wife and I typically only play co-op cards together. 4 /5

Instructions– The instructions are ok. The rules start with a quick start guide, but the quick start isn’t quick, and to really understand the game, you have to read the full rules anyway. Also, the rules hide some of the more fiddly bits of the game in text. They rules do a decent job of explaining the game, but it could use a bit more polish and a one page external summary of what to do to get you playing in under five minutes. 4/5

Execution– I like what I see here, but the game makes a very BAD sin! This box is full of cards, room to expand the decks, glossy character cards, stickers, and lots of nice, hard tokens. The cards don’t bend or tare easily. A major complaint a while back was that the stickers would ruin the game. But, the glossy cards and the stickers work together to hold the stickers just enough to keep them on the character cards, but not hard enough to make it a pain to change stickers. However, this game could really use a start player marker among the many other tokens. Also, the book says to just use a dry erase marker to track karma on the characters. But, no marker comes in the box. I HATE when instructions do that. If you tell me to use something to do X, by god, you better have put X in the box! This game has a MSRP of $60, and I don’t get a nice way to track karma besides buy another thing?! Why not give me stickers? What’s here is well done, but what’s missing is pretty obvious. 4.8/5

Summary– This is a fun game, but your fun will really very with the number of players you got. Like any good Shadowrun RPG game, you need all the bases covered-one person on magic, another on computers, a talker, and a guy/gal with a gun. Playing a game without those people will really make life that much more hard, and that’s reflected in this game. It’s fun, but it’s punishing if you don’t have that full party. Another problem is the story. It’s there, but get used to randomness. I’d like a bit more targeted problems for my team to deal with, so each game fits the story, not just random encounters. This game is fun, its one I want to play more of, but it’s one that I know the sheer randomness of could really make me hate playing. A bad draw, and a bad night can really spin out of control easy. What this game really needs is more options and cards. I really want some more cards for characters, half rolls, and more scenarios. If Catalyst promised semi-regular releases of this game, I’ll keep buying! Keep that in mind, shoot straight, never deal with a dragon, and you will have a great time. 84%