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.

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.

Card Game Review-Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot

Random, Random, Random, Random.  No, really.  Card Games, by nature, are luck-based, by KB takes it to a whole new level.
The deck is huge!  There are 165 cards in the starter with 9 expansions available, each adding 55.  Except for the last one, which adds 110.  So a grand total of 715 cards available mainstream.  Try shuffling that.
But the huge deck adds to the luck factor.  I only own/am reviewing the Blue Starter Deck, but even by itself the games are different due to the enormity of what cards can come up.  Putting this in perspective: You don't run out of cards during a game.  It's not possible.
Game length-that's another thing.  It's random, too, though roughly an hour.  I'm using roughly in the loosest sense of the word.

Get more bunnies, protect them, attack your friends' bunnies with Wire Wisks, Swords, Flamethrowers, or Evil Green Gelatin (with pineapple chunks).  Grab as many carrots as you can, and hope that one of them is the Magic Carrot.
Really.  Once all the Carrots have been taken, you flip over a deck of cards to find which carrot is at the bottom.  The owner of that carrot is the winner!
KB exists to let you formulate cunning strategies (you have to plan what cards you'll play two turns in advance) and then watch as your awesome strategy is blown away.  Either someone will launch a Miniature Black Hole and kill all your bunnies, or you'll draw a Terrible Misfortune and lose one, or someone will win the game.  It never fails.

The cards themselves are great.  Good artwork with a large amount of Bunny-fied references to pop culture.  They are also sturdy.  No dirty humor, either.  It's very family-friendly.

The expansions are supposed to be purchased in order, but the Red and Violet Booster Packs (the next ones) are non-existent.  However, there is this Internet Rumor that KB is trying to get them back in stock in a couple weeks. (The Christmas Spirit even affects board game companies, just in a different way.)

Publisher released litigation proof statistics:

Publisher: Playroom Entertainment
Players: 2-8, but you can easily add more
Ages: 12+
Game Length: Not released, about an hour

Pros
-Good cards and artwork
-Random can be a good change of pace
-9 expansions, some of which aren't in stock right now

Cons
-Less mature individuals(kids) could be distressed by the sheer brutality available to dictators-in-training
-Sometimes you just have a slew of bad luck
-Strategy is nigh impossible

Neutral
-As random as a cross between Monty Python and MythBusters.  And with more explosions.

I'd give it a 7.8.

Photo borrowed from Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot Blue Starter Deck Page here.

Card Game Review-Citadels

Sorry 'bout the late post, college precal has been trying to grind me into an imaginary number.  On to Citadels!

You've finally been able to amass enough gold for an insanely expensive building, but you're looking at the character cards and the thief is missing! Which means either Uncle Bob or Mom has him, and will try to take your hard-earned treasure.  Or the thief could be lying face-down in the middle of the table, out of reach of those potential..uh..thieves.  But you can't take that risk! What character will they think you'll pick? Should you pick the Magician, because no one would ever think you'd pick the Magician. Or would they think you thought they'd think that, and steal from the Magician anyway? The game's afoot!


Citadels is a deceivingly simple card game of city building, gold, and power.  Play revolves around 8 characters with unique powers, which players shuffle and choose from every round.  You hoard gold in order to build districts, using the characters to boost your income or hinder your opponents.  The real meat comes when a player is attempting to hurt another.  Assassins or thieves must state a character(not a person) to attack, but no one knows for sure who is playing what character.  You can make educated guesses off of what characters you saw when you were picking yours, or other small details, but there's almost always the chance of attacking a unused character or the wrong person.
Aside from character intrigue the game is simple: On your turn you can take two gold or two cards and keep one(these are city district you can build). You can build one district if you wish, and use your character special.  That's it, and play continues until someone builds 8 districts and you tally up points, which is largely the cost of all your districts.
The art is great but has a slight grisly feel, depending on the different cards.(Ex.The prison has a very different feel than the ball room) But it's nothing a sharpie can't fix, My brother turned a falling guy into a bird with the power of Sharpie.
The game is very compact.  In fact, I've been carrying it to school hoping I can fit in a game during one of my hour breaks.
Picking characters is a little slow, especially when first learning and no one knows what the characters do.
The edition that I have comes with the Dark City expansion, which adds new characters you can replace old ones with as well as more special "purple" district, both of which boost replayability.
One of it's main good points is that anyone can play it, but the game rewards those who think deep about the possibilities of who has what character.  What's fun is when the deep thinkers are so wrapped up in competing against each other that they don't notice when the "lesser threat" wins the game by being completely unhindered.

11/2/2010 Edit: The character cards can get rather frayed after a lot of games, I recommend getting some plastic card sleeves.  It makes them harder to fit in the box (there's enough room) but eliminates the possibility of "He's got the thief since the thief has a ripped corner!" Which takes 60% of the fun out of the game.  If I can't spend my board game time stealing my friends' money, what's the point of playing? :)

4/15/2011 EDIT: I made an article about Citadels for small groups of people here.
Summary
Publishers: Fantasy Flight Games
Players: 2-7, but it's built more for 5+
Ages: 10+
Game Length: 40-60 min.

Pros:
-Very well designed
-Simple
-Bonus cards help replayability
-Great art
-Very compact

Cons:
-If you don't like intrigue, a fair bit of back-stabbing and deep thinking, this is definitely not your cup of oatmeal
-Some card art is disturbing, keep your kids in mind. Sharpie Time!

I give it a 8.9, a little bit better than Castle Panic.

Photo from Board Game Geek User Shadow Dragon

Card Game Review-Blink

This is an uber-simple match 'n slap. Because I'm reviewing a simple game first, people might assume my focus is simple games. It's not. I'll be getting into the serious games soon enough.

Blink is short and fairly sweet. It's designed for 2 players, but can be played with 3 or using it as a single-elimination tournament.(This is right off the wrapper, you could probably tweak it for even more simultaneous players with very little imagination)


For adults/parents: This is a game to get if you have kids. The box says 7 and up, but I don't trust wrappers. And that's what a box is, a flashy, tougher wrapper. It's a good enough game that after watching your kids frantically fling cards(or flinging cards with your kids) you might fling a round or two with your spouse.  When playin' strict adults(teens and up) its a nice 2-minute-a-game distraction, but I lost interest fairly quickly when my mother beat me 3 games to 1. She has the reflexes of a walrus, and she creamed me. Ugh.

How it's played:
It's Set with easier, quicker play and fewer players. The deck of cards has five shapes, five colors, and cards with five different numbers of shapes, as you can tell if you squint at the illustrious photo I've provided you with. You split the deck between the players, each player lays one card face-down in the middle of your play area. Everyone draws three cards from their pile, and simultaneously flip their center card.  There are no turns, each person tries to play their cards on one of the stacks, and you can only play a card if it matches color, number, or shape.  First guy with no cards wins!

Pros:
Quick and simple
Good for kids
You can pick it up at Kmart or other general stores for $6. No board game store necessary.

Cons:
Too shallow to hold adults in its spell for long.

I'd give it a 6.2 out of 10. It really depends on whether you have young whipper-snappers or not.

I was going to write a post about how I would review things but decided I should just go ahead and review a game instead of telling you how I'm going to review a game.
Any ways I can improve? Liked my review? Think I'm a bag of hot air? If you're viewing this on the main page you can leave a comment by clicking on the (Some number) comments thing below.
Photo taken from Out of the Box Productions' resource download page.