Board? Game Review-Labyrinth



One excellent picture, freshly ripped off of Amazon.com

 Labyrinth. The word brings to mind a twisting maze of stone and rock, with the rapid thuds of the Minotaur's hoved feet booming through the torchlight corridors...

That is, if you have a PhD in Greek Mythology. To the rest of us, our mind fires a blank in the face of such an unspellable nine letter word. Games like Labyrinth take something as appealing as sandwich mold and sterilize it for our young minds. Just look at the box art. The HUMAN SKULL looks like it's going to invite you in for tea and crumpets! (What the heck is a crumpet, anyway?) All this in the spirit that turned the Grimms' story Rapunzel into Tangled and Cinderella into a movie with a G rating.

Rant about children's stories aside, onward.


Most of the tiles on the board are mobile, and on your turn you move a row or column by pushing the spare tile in, shoving another tile off the other side, which is sort of shown in the picture. Then you move your man, trying to get to the next  object shown on your card. Sounds simple, right?
No. Execution is difficult, and takes a bit of brain-power to wrap your mind around.


Pros
Unique idea.
Easy to learn, hard to master.
Plenty of room for messing with your friends' plans, intentionally or not.
Catches the chaos of the Labyrinth. The more players, the more chaos.
Decent artwork, nice miniatures.
Should work well with kids. (I don't know, I don't have kids to play it with)

Cons
Cute. Happy. Fluffy. Bah, humbug.
Almost impossible to plan ahead.
The more you think, the longer your turn, but you win.

Carl Strikes Back

So, I've got a new update schedule. Wait for it.

Here it comes...

Once A Month!

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to actually try and update on a reasonable schedule. Once a month, probably in the middle of the month, although I've thrown that all out the window by putting all this up right now. Oh well.

Enjoy the review, which I blew the dust off of and put it online. Seriously, it's been a draft for about three months.

Card Game Review-Dominion

Dominion is a very unique game.  It's a card game, but instead of having a deck that everyone draws from, each player has their own personal deck that they build up by buying cards, the point of the game being to build the most efficient deck possible in order to buy the most Victory Cards before the game ends.  On your turn, you draw 5 cards, play any action cards from your hand that you want to, and buy 1 card, using treasure cards from your hand.  You then discard everything you didn't use and draw a new hand from your deck.  Action cards-which you don't start with, you must buy them and wait for them to shuffle back to you in your deck-do a variety of things, but mostly add on to the basics of what you can do, such as buying a larger number of cards, being able to play more action cards, or just giving you more treasure for this turn.

What the heck, I'm just going to make a Pros and Cons thing and have done with it.

Pros:
An insane amount of replayability
Well-designed
Moves quickly, as you can plan your turn during others' turns
Medium amount of complexity, fits everyone well

Cons:
Some kooky art amidst the awesome, including completely different styles
Small amount of player interaction
Officially only 2-4 players (Dominion: Intrigue, a stand-alone game, adds official rules for up to 6)

One of the best games I've played.

Life Strikes Back

So, despite my recent activity in this my neglected child, I probably won't be doing anymore updates for a bit due to a recent bout of calculus. I do have a review of the recent classic Dominion in the works, and with a bit of polishing it'll be up in a bit.

Sorry to get your hopes up,
Carl

Animated Awesome

There's been a boatload of great animated movies in the last year or two, and you guys have probably seen all of these already, but this article is aimed towards anyone who's been living in a cave for the last couple years.

The question is not if you should see these movies, but if you're eyeballs can withstand the concentrated awesomeness that contained within. I'm not even going to try to tell you which is one the best, because that would be like comparing apples to oranges. Wait, never mind. Oranges taste gross. Like comparing Star Wars to Star Trek? No, I grew up with Star Wars. I dunno, just read the article.

First, a note on my terminology. There are two different angles of movies, to me. Epics and Comedies. Epics lean towards the plot, Comedies obviously don't. However, sometimes I use the word epic to describe anything good or high-quality. We clear? Good.

 In order of random:

Kung Fu Panda-a bit more of a comedy than the others, with excellent voice acting from Jack Black.

Note: Kung Fu Panda 2 was good, but not as good as the first. Kind of like Iron Man 1 and 2, in the that regard.

How to Train Your Dragon-a humorous epic, with the incredibly well-done characters in the spotlight. It's just awesome. That's all you can say.

MegaMind-a very modern movie, with characters changing lightning fast, in an already fast-paced movie. Even more so than with other movies, it'll take a few viewings to pick up all the nuances of the plot. It's not very well-known, because, well, the trailer looks stupid, and the premise is hard to sell. An example? The picture above.

Tangled-a classic Disney fairy tale created in the modern age, with influences from both eras. Complete with occasional singing, it's more of an epic than these others, which is not to say that it isn't hilarious, but the overall feeling you have after watching it leans more towards epic.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. I made a concerted effort  to throw in some pictures, because lately, my posts have been as colorful as Tatooine in a drought.

Edjumacation: What's a role-playing game?

When the average Joe on the street hears "Role-playing Game" they think about giant rulebooks for Dungeons & Dragons, or the odd news article about a group of geeks wearing plastic armor and hitting each other with foam swords.

In truth, there are many things funneled under the title of "role-playing game". They from LARP (live-action rpg, the foam sword guys), to computer games that pretend to be a rpg, to what I consider a role-playing game, tabletop role-playing.

In essence, a tabletop rpg is a collective story with one person, the Game Master, setting the stage, playing the villain, and generally controlling the world the players interact with. Everyone else is a player, and plays the part of one hero in the story, dictating what that hero does.

Important note: a rpg at its simplest takes almost no materials to play. The GM describes what is going on, and the players say what they are doing.
You following?

While this is all well and good, the staple of an rpg, the thing that moves it from a game of make-believe, is dice. Rolling a die to produce a number allows for a random, uncontrollable element. Simplest form: Roll a die when someone is trying to something that with an element of risk. High number means success, low number means failure.

Have an Example, since this post is already long-winded.
GM: The building is crumbling around you from the shockwave. The mercenary in the building across the street jeers and waves the gold statue at you, enjoying your predicament.
Player: I get a running start and leap into the other building.
GM: That'll be tough, it's a long jump. Roll for it.
On a 20-sided die, he got a 14. Not too great, but not bad.
GM: Hmmm....You clear the street and slam into the windowsill. You manage to hold onto the window with your hands but your legs scrabble at the wall, unable to find a foothold. The mercenary stops smiling and starts walking towards you. What do you do?

Okay, so that was really long-winded, but somehow fun to write.

Added layers of complexity add loads of mechanics for what dice to roll when, what unique advantages certain people have, which gives rise to individualized characters, etc. etc. Eventually these added complexities get so enormous they are put in a book and sold, but that's not what this article is about. I'm trying to educate people that an rpg, at it's simplest, is not the gargantuan monster rule-books most people know about. It's a few friends, their imaginations, and probably some dice. I have had multiple enjoyable, impromptu games of this kind of barebones rp.

Thanks for reading!
Carl

P.S. Comment about things that are unclear. That way I can make this article better!

Time will Tell: Citadels

So, I after stepping away from Citadels for a while, then coming back to it, I have a few more nuggetts of information to hand out.  For Free! :)

• Playing with two people is quite amazing, for a game that's designed for 6-8.  The guy with the crown randomly pulls out a character, face-down, as usual, and picks a card.  The 2nd person picks 1 character to use, and also 1 to discard.  Then the 1st person does this, repeat until both people have two characters.
• This creates many interesting dynamics:
• The other person knows which two characters are missing, and if he's up to mischief, he must outguess you on which one you picked.  Picking two likely characters is a good strategy, especially if you look at it from his perspective.
• Limits the amount of craziness: It's just you and the other guy, so you're master plan can't be foiled by some weirdo and his Warlord.
• You can use the "discard a character" to deny the other player a character he finds useful, but that you don't need.  Asset denial.
• 3-player is average, it operates with each person having two characters, but without the neat "discard a character" mechanic.

April Fools!

No, this isn't an update.  I just did it to make y'all think I actually wrote a review.  Why would I do a silly thing like that? :)

Have a nice day!
Carl

Developments:Clearplay, Battlestar Galactica, and First Impressions

Apologies.  This isn't a review, it's actually something that resembles a blog post.

TA DAAA!!!!

I'm a great lover of co-operative games, and in my trawls through the internet I had run into mentions of Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game as a great game.  I was a little put off by it being themed off of a TV show, because most themed games have the entertainment value of SpongeBob Squarepants, meaning they will turn your brain into gray tapioca if you get too close to them. (This prejudice probably came from my video gaming days)

But it was made by Fantasy Flight Games, the guys who made Citadels, so that bumped it up a bit in my sight.

A cousin of mine roped me into watching some of the TV show with him. (He bought the 1st season dvd, so I couldn't say no.)

They're good, but really need a better logo.

First an explanation: we have an amazing device called Clearplay, a dvd player that filters/mutes the less uplifting aspects of modern media.  The show is amazing so far, we've watched the prequel miniseries and 3 episodes, about 6 hours worth.  It's certainly not for kids (12 planets are nuked into oblivion in the first hour).  There are very frequent silences during shouting matches, as well as jumping cameras (which means skipped sections), so watching it without Clearplay probably wouldn't be wise. But with Clearplay we teens can watch it with Mom and Dad. Yay!

I'm a sucker for Sci-fi.  The main gist of the show is that a bunch of humans are trying to survive on their Battlestar (sort of a space dreadnought) while being pursued by the uncountable hordes of evil robots called Cylons.  The humans fly around, hoarding their resources and collecting as many civilian ships as possible.  But here's the rub: the Cylons have made synthetic humans, programmed to infiltrate the fleet and sabotage.  No one knows if their best friend will try to blow them all into atoms or dump all their food into space, which is the real meat of the show.  The characters are really fleshed out (including one that has hallucinations/transmissions of a Cylon/robot human) and they keep the audience guessing as to what their actions mean.

Anyway, we got the board game and have played 2 games.  It's definitely the most complex game we've ever tackled as a family, and took 3 nights to complete, about 4.5 hours all told.  At the start of the game, each player gets a Loyalty Card which tells them if they are a Cylon or not, and everyone picks a character from the show.  They all have positive and negative special abilities, the negative ones adding some dynamics other games don't have.  Also, half-way through the game everyone gets another Loyalty card, so if noone got a cylon card at the beginning, you will have a cylon by the end.

Mom was the sabotaging Cylon and had no clue what she was doing until about halfway through the game, but even so, we Humans barely scraped a win.
The 2nd game we played in one night, about 3 hours.  Mom was the Cylon again (talk about rotten luck) and I thought I was dead because the cards had practically framed me into being a cylon.  But Mom's such a rotten liar we figured out it was her, but before we could throw her in the brig she revealed herself and took lead of the Cylon army and ran us out of fuel.  Which means we died.

So we probably won't be playing BSG again for a while, but I look forward to our next game!

P.S. Mom says she looks forward to the next game, too.

Party Game Mini Review-Werewolf

The Keen observer will notice that I have put up a link on the bottom left titled "Werewolf".  It's a free, fairly simple game that I've enjoyed immensely.  So I am now spreading the word.

I would describe the game, but that would be redundant for anyone that actually goes to the link.

We always play with a couple variant Villagers.

1. 1 Villager is a Hunter Villager.  When he/she dies, the player may pick one person to kill.  The picked person is out of the game.

2. 1 Villager is a Little Girl Villager.  That player may peek during the Werewolf phase of night, but if the Werewolfs see her, she will almost certainly be their next victim.  This has never happened in-game, but speculation has risen as to what would happen if the Little Girl didn't try to be secretive, and opened her eyes with the werewolfs, who would then have to quietly figure out who was pretending to be the werewolf.

I enjoy the deception in the game, but I'm usually the Moderator, as I'm the main advocate for getting people to play it.

Hope you enjoy it! (Assuming you can ever get a group big enough to play)

Carl

Board Game Review-Pandemic

Pandemic was my kick-off into co-operative games, my first one.  I've loved co-ops ever since. Working with your friends instead of against them just makes games more fun, in my opinion.  (I tend to exaggerate my love of back stabbing for humor's sake)


Pandemic is very well-designed in difficulty.  Most of the games I've played have boiled down to two outcomes: the game burns us, or we barely scrape a win. 
So, the basic premise: Each player is a disease hunter, each with their own specialty.  You rush around the world, trying to balance destroying the 4 different kinds of disease before they become too prevalent and finding cures for the 4 by getting someone with 5 cards of a disease type, which players can pass to each other under certain conditions.  You get two cards that can be used for cures each turn, but it works as a timer, because once that stack of cards is gone, you lose.  Nice mechanic: you can discard cards to fly to their assigned cities for free. An example of balancing collecting cards for the cure versus fighting the diseases.


It's a good game that anyone can play, but it has a larger learning curve than Castle Panic, since it is more complex.  The theme is well done, with a little above-average artwork.  They went for a fairly tame theme, which works for me.  Unlike most co-op games, in which the world dies by zombie or alien invasion if you lose, instead, the world merely dies of disease. :)
The stock game might become repetitive, but the expansion adds in a lot of replayability with the different modes of play and additional characters you can throw in.  Unfortunately, the expansion is another $30 onto the already $35 base game.

Publisher Stuff:
Publisher: Z-Man Games
Players: 2-4 (expansion "adds" a 5th, using the exact same rules as with 4 players)
Ages: 10+
Playing time: 45-60 minutes




Summary
Pros:
-Well Designed
-Tense for 80% of the game


Cons:
-Possible for one person to start playing dictator, especially once the tension ramps up

I'd give it a 9.0, I will never turn down a chance to play it. 


P.S. I'm a little out of it since I just had my wisdom teeth removed Friday, so if there are any questions, shoot up a comment and I'll fire back.


P.P.S. I wrote this before Christmas, and I guess I was really out of it, since I never posted it.  But I've polished it up a bit, and here we are!

I'm feeling productive again.

I'll be trying to get back to the attempted one-update-a-week schedule.  I am also painfully aware of how terrible my previous efforts at humor and reviewing have been, as well as the articles exceeding length.  Instead of editing them, though, I'm going to press forward and keep bringing out new material.

Hope you had as great a Christmas as I had,

Carl