It’s difficult to crunch any kind of complicated 4X into a 1-2 hour experience, but “Tapestry” did so rather well I thought. The components are absolutely beautiful and the gameplay is pretty streamlined to a point. There’s still a bit of a learning curve, so this game isn’t for the faint of heart. Expect a 3-4 hour experience your first time out if you’re unfamiliar with moderate to heavy Euro-games. Go check out our gameplay video below for a long, exhaustive, but fun first run-through. Stick around for first impressions afterwards.
Board Games
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Engine building, train networks, hiring personnel to grant you abilities…this game has everything I like. Better yet, no dice! “Empyreal: Spells & Steam” is a bit on the pricey side (the MSRP according to the Kickstarter was around $90), but if you have the money to drop on this you’ll be in for a treat. The quality of the components rivals that of “Wingspan”, most notably the leathery feel of the manual and player boards. The rest of the components look and feel great too. Aidalee was most impressed that the train models were different depending on color…a subtle bonus that I myself missed.
We often see games lean toward fictional characters with supernatural abilities as their protagonists. When games aren’t doing that, they employ everyday Joe’s that somehow have the ability to wade through mobs of enemies with two punches and an uppercut (I’m looking at you, Cody from “Final Fight”). “Unperfect Heroes: Battle Lines” doesn’t feature such people. Rather, the protagonists here, if you can call them that, are misfits looking to cut in front of their opposition in order to obtain their goal (getting to the front of the line). “Unperfect Heroes: Battle Heroes” is scheduled to launch on Kickstarter in January 2020, so it goes without saying that all the content you will see and read about here is subject to change. Per FCC regulations I’m required to disclose that I received compensation in order to cover this game, though any thoughts and/or opinions listed here are my own.
Did you ever buy a board game, open it up, and think to yourself…”dear goodness, what did I just get myself into?” That’s how I felt about “The Taverns of Tiefenthal”. I don’t get what I like to call “setup fatigue” often, but there were so many components in the box. That’s not always a bad thing, but there was no dedicated components page in the rulebook. The gameplay isn’t bad, in fact I quite like the deck building, dice drafting, and worker placement mechanics. The rulebook, component quality, and the Return On Investment felt lackluster however.
“Lanterns” is an extremely engaging board game, mainly because you’re earning something on every player turn rather than just your own. “Lanterns Dice” turned out to be more of the same, but instead of building a tableau of tiles you’re rolling dice and filling out a score sheet (known as roll-and-write). Scoring turned out to be just as tight as it was in “Lanterns” in the sense that there was never a clear leader, sort of like a typical Soccer match.
While I loved the idea of the original Codenames, at most you had to have a three player minimum where one was simply the mediator between the other two players. No longer. “Codenames Duet XXL” can be challenging in the sense that there’s a risk/reward system at play…the more words you assign to a single clue, the more your partner may misconstrue what you mean. I believe that almost half of this game is knowing the way your partner thinks.
In case you missed it, “Castle Dice” recently released for iPhones and IPad devices for roughly $7. It’s an interesting mix of dice drafting and resource management. Seeing as how I can’t find the tabletop game anywhere (when I do the price is beyond inflated) this is a great alternative. Watch the video below to learn how to play!
I can’t recall how many hours I’ve spent fiddling with my digital cities throughout the many versions of “SimCity” and variants thereof, only to tear them down on purpose when I was through with them by calling upon every natural (or man-made) disaster available. “Cities Skylines” is a fantastic video game adaptation of “SimCity” and I was pleased to be able to give this physical copy a go.
I frequently ate at restaurants as a kid and one of the things I most looked forward to was the menu and the puzzles/games listed thereon. Of course, the waiter/waitress only had two crayon colors and my younger brother always had to have the cooler looking of the two…I was often left with some off-putting, unhealthy puke orange color. Mazes were often the star attraction on these kid menus and most were solvable in seconds.
What an incredibly potent game for such a small package! I was pleasantly surprised by “Songbirds” and would have definitely placed it on my honorable mentions for this year’s DGA Awards had I gotten the game sooner. In “Songbirds” you’re trying to figure out which songbird color will be the loudest…that is, which color will gain the most victory points before the end of the game. Players play cards to a grid to effect victory point awards and the one card they are left with determines the color that they’ll score.
I’m not a big fan of dice, but “Roll For Adventure” scratched all the right itches enough for me to thoroughly enjoy it. It’s a cooperative game where players are tasked with collecting so many gems/stones of power before one of the four lands they are trying to protect are overrun. A typical turn involves rolling dice unique to your character, activating your character’s special ability if possible, and assigning dice to one of the many boards to complete tasks. Enemies still remaining have the possibility of being activated, thus doing damage to your lands.
Well, hello! December snuck up on us pretty quickly and you know what that means…another DGA Awards list that is oh-so-helpful in helping people choose what games to look at next and/or possibly buy them for a loved one this holiday season. That’s what I keep telling myself anyway.
Jabuka: an uninhabited volcanic island in the Adriatic Sea known for messing with compasses and other devices due to magnetism. It also happens to be a word game that features coffee bean letters, because it just so happened that the developer thought of the idea while sipping a cup of “joe” at Starbucks. These coffee bean letters can be rotated to form other letters, with the ultimate goal being to form words that are difficult for your opponent to steal while coming up with alternative words using letters in words that your opponents have formed. Special thanks to the folks at Jabuka Games for reaching out and providing a copy.
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My business/economics college class was dry on occasion, but there were times that I enjoyed the projects that the professor handed out. One such project was to create a business and being relatively good at “Chess”, I decided to invent a 3D/4D computerized chess set. We didn’t have to actually make the product, just the PowerPoint. The gaming community and our level of technology isn’t exactly ready for 4D Chess, though I have seen 3D renditions throughout the years.
I’ve always had an interest in the sciences, though anyone who knows me wouldn’t be surprised. There isn’t enough Star Trek, Star Wars, Stargate, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and other big names related to the science community floating around for my liking. “Lab Partners”, a tabletop game that will be seeking funding through the Kickstarter process in July 2019, takes a look at the chemistry side of things but in a fun/humorous way. Essentially, you are an unpaid intern working at your new position at ChemCo’s Research and Development Department. I know, right? Like, what could go wrong?
The zombies are hungry. You and a band of small survivors should probably work together, but it’s every man and woman for themselves in this harsh apocalypse. Your job: be the first player to play seven checkpoints and escape. “OMZ! (Oh My, Zombies!), as you may have guessed, is a casual zombie-themed card game that’s currently on Kickstarter looking for your support. I’ve already posted a written preview and video outlining the game and its features, so be sure to check them out after you’re done here. It supports 3-6 players and plays fairly quickly.