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.