I got to play Clank! (with the Temple of the Ape Lords and Acquisitions Incorporated expansions) on Game the Game! This was a fun afternoon with Amy Dallen, Gina DeVivo, and Joy Regullano, as we tried to loot the fabled temple and escape before the Ape Lord boss got us.
Did we survive? Watch the video and find out!
I love boba, so getting to review Bubble Tea was a real treat! Here’s my first review for the G33K-HQ:
I’m a big fan of Godzilla. Always have been, ever since those countless Saturday morning monster movie showings during my childhood. I haven’t seen Godzilla: King of the Monsters yet and despite its bad reviews I’m looking forward to it.
Here’s something I wrote for Geek & Sundry about giant-monsters-smashing-cities board games.
Over on boardgamegeek.com they run a 10×10 challenge, in which participants attempt to play 10 different games at least 10 times each during the year. I did it last year and like the Lakers winning championships back in the day, I repeated the feat this year.
Here’s are quick thoughts on the 10 games on my list. Thanks to my wife, nephew and niece, and regular gaming buddies (two on Twitter: Daryl and Oscar) for helping me finish my list.
Santorini. One of my favorite abstract games ever. The game is ridiculously easy to learn: on your turn you move to any adjacent square, then you build on any adjacent square; to win, you must move up to the third level of any building. That’s it. It has surprising depth and lots of replayability due to its God Power cards, which add new moves, abilities, and/or win conditions for each player. Simply brilliant. (25 plays)
Mint Works. Everyone I’ve played Mint Works with has loved it. It’s a stripped-down-to-basics worker placement game that fits inside an Altoids tin. Games take no longer than 15 minutes, but it always manages to satisfy that worker placement itch. (10 plays)
Karuba. This was an insta-hit with my wife and our extended family of gamers. The tile call-outs reminds me of bingo, while the puzzle-like game play is always a blast, as each player tries to guide their adventurer to their temples while scooping up gems. (10 plays)
Onitama. Another abstract that gets bonus points for its terrific, road-trip-friendly packaging. While Santorini provides more depth and replayability, Onitama is even easier to learn: play a card and move any of your pieces according to the card’s directions while trying to capture your opponent’s master pawn or moving your master pawn to your opponent’s side. It plays faster than Santorini and I’m happy that both are in the Gaviola Game Library. (18 plays)
Red7. Any fan of card games should give Red7 a try. It’s a quick filler-type game, but has lots of interesting decisions throughout a game, thanks to its unique card play. Each card can be used in multiple ways so you’re always trying to find just the right card to play on your turn. The win condition is simple: be the last person standing. (17 plays)
Tiny Epic Quest. I love the Tiny Epic series of games. Scott Almes and Gamelyn Games manage to pack a lot of game into small boxes and Tiny Epic Quest is the best of the lot. I enjoy the puzzle-like nature of the Day Phase as you try to complete Movement Quests, but it’s the dice-chucking, push-your-luck Night Phase to complete Treasure Quests that’s an absolute blast. (28 plays)
Guess Who? My wife and I took a weekend cruise to Mexico earlier this year and the ship had a lounge that had a few shelves of board games. Unfortunately, it was multiple copies of chess, checkers, Connect Four, and Guess Who?. Thankfully, we were too busy chillaxing and enjoying the trip to care about how shoddy the selection was. We did, however, play 10 straight games of Guess Who?, so at least I was able to get my board game fix. (10 plays)
Tiny Epic Galaxies. No surprise here: I played another Tiny Epic game 10 times this year. This was my favorite in the series until I got Tiny Epic Quest. Galaxies is a lot of dice chucking, which always makes me happy. The solo game is fun (although TEQ has also supplanted it as my favorite of the series) and the Beyond the Black expansion added some nice touches to it, including new ships and abilities, and set collection and push-your-luck mechanisms. (14 plays)
Imperial Settlers. I’m not sure what I expected with Imperial Settlers, but I heard a lot of good things about it and won an auction for it last year. I like the civilization building aspect, along with card drafting. As the game progresses it becomes a good brain-burning exercise as you try to squeeze as much as you can out of each of your cards. (16 plays)
Viticulture Essential Edition. I lucked out last year and found a BGG user who had a brand new copy for half price. Not sure why I waited until this year to play it, but it was love at first play; the theme and mechanisms blend in so well together. It’s a classic of the worker placement genre and easily makes it into my Top Five Games Ever. When I added the Tuscany Essential expansion a few months later, it took the game to a whole new level. (36 plays)
I got to spend some quality time at Conival, the big bash hosted by Legendary Entertainment’s Nerdist, Geek & Sundry, and Alpha. The lounge was outside on the Marina Terrace behind the Marriott and it was an ideal location overlooking the water.
Even though San Diego is known for its mild weather, it can still be pretty tough being in the sun all day and thankfully there were plenty of shaded areas, misters, and two huge fans to keep everybody cool.
I loved that Conival was outside: it made for a nice change after being engulfed by the sweaty masses inside the convention center. And what better way to enjoy the great outdoors than by playing board games?
My friends Marlon and Julla met me at the lounge and we played FUSE and Wits and Wagers. We shared a loss and a victory in FUSE and were awarded some terrific freebies: books and a book bag.
In Wits and Wagers I eeked out a single-point victory, thanks to the final question, which couldn’t have been more perfect for the setting: “What year did Superman first appear in comics?”
While you Google the answer to that (here, I’ll help you), I’m going back to the con for more gaming and what-not.
I completed my Every Night Is Game Night: My Daily Play & Blog Challenge for May!
It took me a few extra days into June to finish, but it was a fun experience sharing my thoughts on the games I played during the month. Thanks again for reading and for chatting with me on Twitter.
Here’s what I played and blogged about in May:
Inspired by Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York, I present Humans of the Tabletop, an ongoing series about the people I’ve played games with.
“The first game I played was Legendary. My friend said it was a deck builder. I didn’t know what that meant and seeing all of those cards was frightening, but after one game I thought it was pretty cool. Before I knew it, I’d bought the game and five of the expansions.”
This is my continuing series on clearing games off my Shelf of Shame (games I own that I’ve never played).
I’d heard that Guildhall had excellent card play in spite of its bland artwork. After I scored a copy of it and its expansion Job Faire, they went unplayed as other games grabbed my attention. Then my buddy Daryl demo-ed the Guildhall: Fantasy re-theme and it inspired me to get my copy off my Shelf of Shame.
Guildhall is a card game of set collection with a bit of “take that” that’s easy to play once you figure out the iconography, which is the biggest obstacle to learning the game. Some of the icons are not intuitive and I find myself referring to the rulebook more than I like to.
Each card represents a worker (Historian, Dancer, Assassin, Farmer, etc.) and has a special ability. Players are trying to reach 20 victory points first by playing cards for their special abilities before moving them into their guildhall. Each worker from each profession is moved into a guildhall as players try to collect a set of five different colors. These are converted into victory point cards, which sometimes have additional abilities.
Like other card games, it’s interesting to see how to use the cards’ abilities in different combinations. Since each player is limited to two actions per turns and a few other restrictions, you’re constantly trying to maximize your turn to get as many workers into your guildhall while preventing your opponent from doing the same.
There are “take that” cards that allow you to discard single or whole sets of cards from your opponent’s guildhall and this certainly won’t appeal to those who don’t like to see their hard work destroyed thanks to a lucky draw from their opponent.
AEG did the right thing with The Guildhall: Fantasy re-theme; not only does it look better, but the icons are a bit easier to understand (or maybe I’m used to them after a few more plays?).
Overall, I liked, but didn’t love Guildhall. I’ll play the Job Faire expansion and see if it’s enough for me to keep the game, but probably not.
I’ve now played 9 of the 49 games on my Shelf of Shame!
Shelf of Shame 2017
I’m an unabashed fan of Scott Almes’ games, especially his Tiny Epic Series (I own and enjoy Kingdoms, Galaxies, and Western; I Kickstarted the Galaxies expansion and Tiny Epic Quest). I appreciate how he uses some of my favorite game mechanisms in games that play in less than an hour, like worker placement in Western, dice allocation in Galaxies, or 4X in Kingdoms. It’s also cool how he includes solo rules for most of his games.
I bought Harbour from my buddy Oscar last year and it sat on my Shelf of Shame until recently, when I solo-ed it using the 20-move solo variant rules on BGG. It was an easy way to learn and play the game.
A few of the reviews of Harbour have called it Le Havre Lite or Tiny Epic Le Havre since it has similar worker placement and resource management mechanisms, but in a smaller package. Players race to buy four buildings from a common pool first. Each building has a cost payable by one or more goods from the current player. On their turn, a player will send their worker meeple to a building and perform the action(s) listed on it; often, it’s to trade for more goods, which can then be used to buy a building. Players have a home base that they can return to for more actions, as well as travel to an opponent’s buildings to perform their actions (although this costs one good).
What makes Harbour so much fun is the economic mechanism in the game. Whenever a player buys a building, they must “ship” enough goods to pay for it. So, if the player has 5 fish and 3 lumber and the current market has fish at $5 and lumber at $3, then the player can ship those goods for $8 and buy any building up to $8. Then, after the purchase has been completed, the market shifts, with the fish and lumber being worth less, while livestock and stone go up in value.
It’s a neat part of the game, trying to time your purchase just right so that you get the most money for your goods. More often than not, an opponent will buy something and change the value of your goods. Thankfully, there are buildings with powers that allow you to adjust the market to something more to your liking.
I enjoy Harbour, even if it usually ends more quickly than I prefer. It’s a great warm-up game, a filler with a bit more meat on the bones.
I’ve now played 8 of the 49 games on my Shelf of Shame!
Shelf of Shame 2017
What a wonderful surprise Sun Tzu was!
Sun Tzu is a two-player war game of area control, hand management, and bluffing. It’s psychological warfare in ancient China, with thematic The Art of War text on the cards.
I scored my copy last year in a math trade and I liked the theme and premise, but it collected dust before I finally got it off my Shelf of Shame, thanks to another meetup with my buddy Daryl.
In Sun Tzu each player attempts to control regions in ancient China by using cards numbered 1-6. These cards are part of players’ hands throughout the game, but they also receive special one-time use cards after each turn: the numbers 7-10 and modifier cards like +1, +2, and +3.
For each round cards are played face down for each region, then they’re revealed one at a time to resolve battles. For example, in the Qin region Player A plays a “3” and Player B plays a “5,” then Player B places the difference (2 armies) on the region and they now have control of Qin.
Each round is made up of playing cards and resolving battles. There are nine possible rounds to a game, with scoring after rounds 3, 6, and 9; however, if a player ever reaches the maximum 9 points after rounds 3 or 6, then the game immediately ends. This is the basic gist of Sun Tzu.
But there’s so much more.
The special one-time-use cards are fantastic elements added to gameplay. For example, if I was trying to gain control of a region that contained a lot of my opponent’s armies, then I could play my “10” and hope that my opponent played a low card. This would allow me to take some of their armies from the board and replace them with mine. However, if my opponent had played their “+1” card, then my “10” was all for naught. Their “+1” card basically negates my 10, since it’s used as a +1 to anything I played. Thus, my 10 is trumped by their 11 and they get to add 1 army to the region.
Another cool one-time-use card is the Plague card, which, when played, cancels the battle in the selected region. It also calls for half of the armies in the region to be taken off the board. Since armies are limited (each player begins with 18 in their reserve, with a few more available via certain card effects or actions), this is a good way to gather your forces for future turns.
There are also one-time-per-game Warlord cards that can be used at any time. During our last game Daryl busted out a Warlord card to tip the final region to his favor, which led to his single-point victory.
Finally, there are event cards that can trigger other changes to the game if their conditions are met at any time.
I’m ecstatic that I was able to get this off my Shelf of Shame; Sun Tzu is a tense battle of wits between two tabletop generals. It’s become one of my favorite two-player games and one that I highly recommend (for a more in-depth review, check out the iSlaytheDragon.com review).
I’ve now played 6 of the 49 games on my Shelf of Shame!
Shelf of Shame 2017
