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

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.

Tile Laying Game-Carcassone

Carcassone is a bit different than most games.  Instead of the game supplying a set board for you to play on, you and the other players create the board.  Half of your turn is picking a random tile and deciding where to put it in association with the other tiles on the board.  It's impossible to have the same board twice.  The other half of your turn is deciding if you want to put a person on the tile, but your choices are limited by what terrain is on the tile.(castles, roads, intersections, monasteries, etc.)  The players try to gain points by completing castles, thieving roads, farming, and.... having people be monks. (Monking around?) 

There isn't a whole lot of nastiness you can send at other people; you decide if that's good or bad.  In the basic game, once you have your "meeples" (the technical name for the little wooden men) on the board, there isn't anything your opponents can do about it.  The expansions (oh, don't get me started on the expansions!) add the ability to eat meeples with a dragon, use "towers" (a nice way of saying a medieval biker gang throws your meeples into a filthy dungeon until you can pay the ransom.),and anything else you can think of.  I only mentioned the expansions we own here, because there are so many of them.
Sheesh, there's probably a Carcassone: Insurance Salesmen by now.

We own the Inns and Cathedrals, River, Princess and Dragon, and Tower expansions.  River adds some more creative depth to the game, but, as I've said before, my family just isn't ruthless enough to use the Dragon or Tower.  Inns and Cathedrals "ups the ante" on some of your buildings, making them triple points if completed or nothing.  Each expansion (duh!) adds more tiles, which adds to game length.

Carcassone scales well with different amounts of players, but with smaller numbers you have to conserve meeples more.

I've played Carcassone so frequently for so long it's turned into a poorly written sci-fi villain, those ones with the "unison voices".  We are Carcassone.  The universe is us and we are it. Bow to our awesome omniscience or be blown away by our pathetically weak minions.
What I'm trying to say, is that I've played it so much it has become black-and-white.  There is no good or bad, there is It.  But trying to look past that, it's a good, simple-but-complex-enough game to play, especially if you're tired of always having your plans ruined by your younger brother.

If you've noticed that most of the games I've been reviewing are simple-but-complex-enough and I haven't rated any game badly, that's because:
a) I play these simple-but-complex-enough games the most, some members of my group can't handle anything more complex.
b) I'm reviewing the games I enjoy first.

Pros
-Simple-but-complex-enough, like several of the other games I've reviewed
-Board is never the same twice
-Lots of expansions

Neutral
-Not a whole lot you can do to your opponents if you don't have the expansions

I'm giving it an 8.5.

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