Infinity Games UK Blog

Christmas Board Game Gift Guide

2009-11-27T14:21:00.011Z

If you are wondering what to buy a gamer for Christmas, or looking for something new to play after watching the Sound of Music then this list should help.
There are suggestions here for all ages

Stone Age
This is a brilliant worker placement game where players use there cave people to gather resources, expand there village and build huts. It plays equally well with 2-4 players and has some of the best looking components I have seen.
Game play is very easy to learn and although there is a dice mechanic in the game its more about strategic placement of workers than being lucky.

Endeavor
This is a light euro game where players are exploring the new world and setting up trade routes. The board and components of this game are again top notch and the worker placement rules start out slow and build up as the game progresses. Through the use of careful planning and expansion the players can become governors of these new worlds, but can easily loose them in war. This game scales very well for 3-5 players, although there are some unofficial 2 player rules available.

Mow
This is a clever card game that is very easy to play. Players take turns in playing there Cow cards following some simple placement rules. If they cannot place a card they have to pickup the herd. Each cow card has a number of flies and players are trying to have the least number of flies to win the game. It's a quick game to play and will certainly help some younger children with there numbers.

Small World Expansions
These small expansions are perfect stocking fillers for owners of the base game. Each one adds new races and powers to the game. Gypsies are my favorites.

Roll through the Ages
If you like dice games then Roll through the Ages packs a good civilization game into a small box. Players roll a number of dice depending on the size of there civilization. Collecting goods, food and workers. These are then spent to expand and improve there civilization. You have to feed your cities and protect them from disasters while trying to build great monuments. It's a light game that can be expanded with a free online expansion.

Power Grid : Brazil/Spain and Portugal
If you are looking to expand your copy of Power Grid the third map expansion does a great job. This double sided board provides maps for Brazil and Spain.This time it is supplied in a box with enough room to add the previous expansions.

Wits and Wagers
If you are looking for a party game to play with the whole family Wits and Wagers is a good choice. It's a trivia game with a difference. Players write down there answers then bid on which answer they think is right. Knowing the answers helps, but if you think someone else knows the correct answer bid on them. It's a good game that anyone can play and the end conditions can be lengthened or shortened depending on the group.

Dominion
This game won more awards this year than any other. Its a card game that has a huge amount of re playability. Players all start out equal and slowly build up there deck of cards by buying and using cards. It takes a while to start but once you have played a few rounds the game moves along. If you have played any collectible card game in the past you will have no problems other than finding time to play it.

Stone Age Tournament

2009-10-09T08:10:00.003Z

It's time to use the love hut and send your cave meeples to the quarry but make sure you have enough food.

Stone age is a worker placement game where players are using there tribe to expand and gain victory points. It's a clever game that is simple to play.

We will be using the Yucata site to play the games and full rules can be found here.

First place will win £10 credit, second place £5 credit.

So if you want to join in, reply to the thread on the IGUK forum.

New Releases Round-Up 15th September

2009-09-18T08:29:00.002Z

Boardgame Round-Up

Castle Panic by Fireside Games is a cooperative game where players must work together to stop the hordes of monsters from destroying the castle. The monsters are repelled using card play, these cards depict the archers and swordsmen defending the castle. It has some colourful components and simple rules which help make it a popular game.

Rio Grande have released a couple of games, the first is a reprint of Carolus Magnus. In this game the players must build castles around a board made from hexagons. To do this they must influence several paladin families. It's a bit of a brain burner game, but after a few plays it makes sense. The components are really nice with hexes making up the board and 200+ wooden cubes and markers.

Burger joint is the next release, it's a 2 player game where the players are competing fast food restaurant owners. Each trying to get more customers and build up there restaurant. It's a game of resource management where you need to be careful how you build up your restaurant.

Meanwhile on the colourful island of Waka-Waka someone has broken one of the oldest relics and angered the gods. Each player is one of those gods and you must send as many of the heathens worshiping the other gods to the ocean while keeping your followers alive. Vineta is a lovely game and with each player having a secret objective it can be a lot of fun.

Sierra Madre Games have two games this week. First up is and expansion for Kriegbot. This zip lock packaged expansions adds new weapons, units and scenarios to the Kriegbot battle game.

Erosion is a card game with maybe the strangest theme I have ever seen. Each player is a mountain that is trying to erode the other players. Whoever has the highest mountain at the end of the game wins.

Such a thing by Valley games is a card based party game. Players take it in turns to place a card describing something. The current player then has to think of something that matches all of the cards played. For example, "It flies", "needs fuel" could be a plane. It's a simple but clever game that was up for the Spiel des Jahres in 1989.

RPG Round-Up

Introducing the new RPGs section this week is Cthulhu 101 - an introductory (yet complete) guide to everything Mythos related by Ken ('Trail of Cthulhu') Hite. Savage Worlds takes us to new realms with Mars, portraying the red planet in the vein of the pulp serials like Barsoom.

Onto more future-based topics, Running wild for Shadowrun presents a detailed overview of the animals, spirits, and other non-metahuman entities that dwell in the Sixth World, while 3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars is an award-winning Sci-Fi RPG for 2 or more players that has your Space Troopers killing bugs all across the cosmos. Whether that's legal or not, is something for the likes of Judge Dredd, but Mage-City may have it's hands full with Bad Moon Rising with what at first appears to be a simple investigation - but as Narks start going silent the Judges will have to start asking if this is a new threat, or a very old one. On an yet grander scale there's Galaxy at War for the Star Wars RPG, a book covering everything you need to run a military campaign in the Star Wars universe.

From Sci-Fi to fantasy, Troll Lord Games have released the Tainted Lands Box set a complete RPG that contains everything you need to begin adventuring in those necromantically tainted lands. Mongoose bring Scarrport: City of Secrets to the table - new setting featuring new classes, races, magical items, encounters, and a complete city to explore (put out under the 4e GSL). Continuing the 4e theme Wizards of the Coast unleash the eagerly awaited Dungeon Master’s Guide 2, providing more advice and rules for Dungeon Masters of all levels of experience accompanied by Revenge of the Giants, a D&D super-adventure, designed for paragon-level characters that can be played as a stand-alone adventure or serve as the foundation of an entire D&D campaign.

Finally, returning to darker territory we have Night Horrors: Wicked Dead for Vampire: the Requiem a sourcebook focusing on creatures that cause even the vampires to worry. Last stop on the horror train this week is Arkham Detective Tales, four chilling adventures for the respected Trail of Cthulhu RPG.

CCG Round-Up

Not much new on the CCG front this week, but to keep your collection pristine in the mean time, Fantasy Flight Games have released six new sets of card sleeves featuring FFG art from their various games.

(Board game players can protect their cards from wear with the board game card sleeves, available in both US and European standard sizes.)

Miniatures Round-Up

The battle for Gaia rages on with a trio of new recruits for the Anima: Tactics range. The Empire Agent joins Elisabetta Barbados' cause, while Ahriman, Lord of Darkness the elemental twin of the maidens of light steps onto the stage, joined by Bellith, a fiery summoner for hire.

Meanwhile the Federation's fleets are bolstered by the release of Squadron Pack 91, which includes Heavy Cruiser, Dreadnought, Destroyer, Scout and Tug miniatures for your games of Federation Commander. These are classic sculpts in white plastic based on the designs of Franz Joseph. Squadron Booster 91 complements the range with data cards for each ship.

New Release Round Up - 9th September 2009

2009-09-09T12:28:00.001Z

Boardgame Round-Up

It's a good week for board game releases. Fantasy Flight continue to push out some great games and first up is Ad Astra. It's the first game of a new Designers Collection which will feature original games by bestselling authors. Bruno Faidutti and Serget Laget have put together this light game of space exploration. Players are trying to create the greatest galactic civilization and to do this they must play cards each turn. The interesting mechanic is that all players must choose and play a card simultaneously and are then resolved. Each card then affects all players, but the card player determines the specifics, such as good produced.

The Descent Quest Compendium introduces 16 new quests for you to pit against your team of adventurers. These have been created by a number of award winning designers and promise to add hours of gameplay to an already rich game. Also for Descent are 6 new miniatures to represent the overlords lieutenants.

There are also 2 releases from Z Man games this week. First is Endeavor which was released at Gencon earlier this year. This is a lovely looking game of exploration and civilization. Play starts out in the Mediterranean but moves on to other areas of the world as shipping lanes are opened. It's a mid weight game with some economic mechanics but the game starts out slowly with more options added as the game progresses.

In contrast Order Up is about delivering pizzas. Players must collect the ingredients for the pizza orders then race to deliver them. It's a light family game and part of there KidFun range.

RPG Round-Up

After last week's modest set of releases, the start of September sees a cornucopia of new RPG products, with no time to waste, there's Damnation View, a sourcebook for CthulhuTech covering changes to the setting as well as new equipment and character options and four ready to run storylines. Chaosium release In Search of the Troll Slayer a classic dungeon crawl adventure using the BRP system, as well as Mysteries of the Worm, a collection of twenty tales set in the Cthulhu Mythos by Robert Bloch.

New in for BattleTech is Strategic Operations a rulebook that brings the bigger picture to BattleTech and featuring everything you need to play out the conquest of an entire solar system! Add to that Jihad Hotspots: 3076 which continues the Jihad plotline begun in Blake Ascending and it's nice to see more mechs on the horizon (so to speak). Speaking of mechs, Green Ronin give us Mecha & Manga, a sourcebook that takes Mutants & Masterminds into the world of manga. It includes new character options and new rules to reflect the over- the-top action of a manga setting. At the same time Green Ronin have also released Pocket Ultimate Power, the guide to superpowers in the Mutants & Masterminds RPG, which is back in a handy new pocket sized edition. Continuing the superheroes theme, for Savage Worlds fans we have Dawn of Legends, a complete superhero setting for the Savage Worlds RPG. It includes additional rules and material for better using Savage Worlds as a superhero system.

Mongoose have provided a suite of new titles this week including The Gamemasters Companion for Earthdawn which offers new game mechanics, extended setting material and much more - also The Players Companion for Earthdawn expands on the rules found in the Players Handbook, taking characters from 9th to 15th Circle in their Disciplines. With new character options, background information and more. The 25th anniversary of Paranoia is celebrated by Troubleshooters new rules to ignore, and new missions to be excited by, all dedicated to those staunch defenders of Alpha Complex! Fantasy Craft comes from the creators of Spycraft 2.0 and is a new all-inclusive fantasy roleplaying game containing everything you need to begin adventuring in a world of your own creation. Last from Mongoose but by no means least, a new Judge Dredd roleplaying game, including everything you need to run games set in the 2000 AD comic series.

Paizo continue support for their new Pathfinder RPG with the release of two 1st level adventures: The Bastards of Erebus and Crypt of the Everflame. Cheliax, Empire of Devils is a Pathfinder companion sourcebook which covers the hell-bound nation, its dark capital of Egorian and its shadowy ex-capital of Westcrown.

For GURPS there's the return of Ultra-Tech, including rules for all manner of science fiction equipment for your GURPS 4th edition campaign. Psionic Powers focuses on the powers of the mind for the GURPS rules system, presenting ready to use packages built using the Powers system.

Rounding out this week's releases we have Survivors, a supplement for the Desolation RPG which features a host of new characters options and setting details including three new player- character races, The Encountered Vol. 1 containing over 200 new creatures for the Alpha Omega RPG and finally something for dice fans, a Dice Tower (in Stone Finish) - featuring three internal baffles so your rolls are truly random!

CCG Round-Up

The regular monthly instalment for the King’s Landing expansion for A Game of Thrones has arrived. Tales from the Red Keep is the fourth chapter in the expansion and adds 40 cards to your collection, expanding on the King’s Landing ‘Shadows’ mechanic. On a side note for Game of Thrones fans, Lena Headey has been cast as Queen Cersei in the upcoming TV series.

New Release Round-Up 02 September 2009

2009-09-02T12:28:00.000Z

Boardgame Round-Up

Fred distribution have released Railways of England and Wales by Martin Wallace. This railway game has two sets of rules as it can be played stand alone or as an expansion to the Railways of the World game. Players vie to be the first railway baron in England using typical railway game mechanics. Its a heavy game but 18xx players should have no problems. If you play Railways of the World its a worthwhile expansion giving you more value and some lovely components.

Musketeers by Gryphon games is a card game where players are trying to retrieve 3 gems for the Queen while the Cardinal and his guards are trying to stop them. It's a quick game that takes about 30 mins to play with some nice artwork.

The Stars are Right by Steve Jackson games is another card game, this time you are a cultist trying to summon the dark ones by aligning the stars and constellations. The cards are placed in a 5 x 5 grid and players must use lesser creatures to flip and swap these cards to align them in order to summon larger and larger creatures. Its a fun filler game that is bursting with Cthulhu Mythos.

RPG Round-Up

This week is fairly light on RPG releases after the recent flurry of pre-and-post Gen Con releases, but there's two welcome titles out, the first is The Vacant Throne from AEG, a source book for the Legend of the Five Rings which details the events and individuals of the Lotus and Samurai eras represented in the L5R CCG.

From White Wolf we have Night Horrors: Wolfsbane, for Werewolf: The Forsaken. What creatures exist that even werewolves fear? A source book featuring 29 monsters that turn the predator into the prey.

Miniatures Round-Up

War at Sea Flank Speed is the second expansion to the excellent Axis & Allies miniatures game, includes battleships, cruisers, submarines & aircrafts allowing battles on huge 30 x 40 battle maps.

CCG Round-Up

New collectors tins for Pokemon this week, including Rayquaza, Garchomp, Charizard! Ancient prophecy the new Yu-Gi-Oh expansions adds to the X-Saber cards and one of the legendary dragons, Ancient Fairy Dragon, resides in Ancient Prophecy.

New Releases Round-Up - August 26th

2009-08-26T08:29:00.004Z

Boardgame Round-Up

This week we have a selection of board games and expansions. The most eagerly awaited is the Pegasus expansion for Battlestar Galactica. This expansion follows the events in series 2 of the popular TV show and brings along two additional boards depicting Battlestar Pegasus and New Caprica. Also in the box are 7 new characters, plastic base stars and a slew of cards. You can use one or both of the boards to enhance and expand the game to an epic level.

Unleash your cultists and summon your daemons Chaos in the old world is set in Games Workshops popular Warhammer world. Each player takes the role of one of the four chaos gods vying to shape the world in there image. 45 plastic miniatures as well as over 125 cards and 175 tokens help flesh out this game.

Galaxy's Edge is a science fiction conquest game, players can use either peaceful expansion or their military might to colonize the galaxy. But aliens are also looking to expand into the galaxy.

So Grasshopper, it is time for your kung fu exam. Kung Fu is billed as a real time party game. Players play there hit and combination cards in real time to try and beat there opponents.

Aquarius is a reprint with a face lift. This is a cross between a card game and domino's where players take turns to place cards on the table and connect 7 of the same element cards together. Its a light filler game that is easy to learn and quick to play.

The North Wing is another expansion for Looney Bin. The game set in a sanitarium where players try to cure there patients with electro therapy and drugs.

Lungarno is a tile laying game set in the Pisa region. The tiles represent the various districts of the region such as plazas, tower houses and shops. In addition you must use your merchants to improve your income and gain prestige when your works are completed.

RPG Round-Up

New in this week for the acclaimed Burning Empires RPG is Bloodtstained Stars which contains expanded source material for waging war and combating the Vaylen threat in Christopher Moeller’s Iron Empires universe.

Goodman games have released a trio of D&D 4th edition publications including Hero’s Handbook: Eladrin - supplement covering the fae creatures including their history, courts, new character options, items, and even new monsters. Hero’s Handbook: Tiefling focuses on the Tieflings, tainted by the blood of demons these outcasts live a life of struggle. Featuring new character options and equipment. Finally from Goodman the Dungeon Crawl Classics series continues with DC63: The Warbringer’s Son - The Bandit Lord must be brought to justice, but the PC’s fast discover that he is only the servant of a far greater evil. An adventure for 1st level characters.

Palladium Games releases their latest periodical, Rifter #47 with articles covering all of their major games and 12 to Midnight reveals Skinwalker, an adventure for Savage Worlds where the characters are on an investigation around Pinebox, Texas. Can the group catch a murderer who can look like anybody? - and finally for this week a newly revised and expanded edition of Colonial Gothic , which builds upon what has come before and also presents new options and guidelines for running a supernatural historical horror roleplaying game set during the dawn of the American Revolution.

Miniatures Round-Up

Victrix has just released an excellent new Napoleonic range of 28mm hard plastic figures, the Napoleonic British Highlander Flank Company and Center Company, both featuring 52 individual figures.

CCG Round-Up

This week we have the first expansion of the new Celestial Edition Arc for L5R, Path of the Destroyer. This new expansion includes 150+ new cards telling the tale of a heroic samurai in the Emerald Empire.

New Release Round Up - 19th August 2009

2009-08-19T08:06:00.002Z

Board Games

There are a couple of new games and a couple of reprints this week. First up is Revolution by Steve Jackson games. This is a euro style game of bidding, area control and espionage for 3-4 players. Each player trying to control the city and save it from the oppression of the other players. Martian Rails by Mayfair games takes the Empire Builder franchise to the airless canal covered planet of Mars. The wraparound map of the red planet adds a level of brain burn as players can link up from the other side of the map which adds to this crayon rail game. Arimaa by Z Man Games is a 2 player abstract strategy game. It may look like chess but has 500 more available moves per turn. The makers believe that this makes is harder for a computer to play, so much in fact that they have put up a reward of $10,000 for the first person who can write a program that will beat a selected Arimaa player before 2020.

Reprints this week are RA, a classic auction game set in ancient Egypt. Players bid there limited supply of sun tokens for collections of tiles. This is a simple game to play but can lead to some tense situations. 1960 The Making of the President is set during the famous American elections of that year. Using mechanics similar to Twilight Struggle players try to control areas of America in order to become president.

RPG's

Gen Con Indianapolis is over, but if you didn't get to go, don't worry we still
have plenty of new roleplaying games on offer including Geist: the Sin-Eaters, an RPG from White Wolf where you play a gatekeepers to the Underworld. Wizards of the Coast also has new offerings for D&D with Adventurer's Vault 2 (presenting hundreds of magic items, legendary weapons and artefacts) and Dragon Annual vol 1 (collecting the best Dragon magazine content from the past year).

Creating a bit of a buzz recently is the newly released Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition. This special edition of the popular rule book features a new layout for better usability, full colour art throughout and incorporated errata between the hardcovers. Also for Shadowrun is Dawn of the Artifacts: Dusk - the first in a series of interlinked adventures, taking the runners to the far reaches of the globe to recover priceless artefacts.

Green Ronin has a two new items this week including Peril at King's Landing, an adventure for A Song of Ice & Fire where characters travelling to a Tourney get more than hey bargained for. Freeport: The Lost Island brings the popular Freeport line to the True 20 system. In this series of adventures your heroes must brave a dangerous voyage through uncharted waters to a mysterious island.

Finally from Mongoose, a Traveller adventure set in the Third Imperium - a new duke is appointed in the Jewell subsector and tensions with the Zhodani increase...

Miniatures

This week we have the new D&D miniatures, Legendary Evils this 40-figure set includes monsters of various levels and roles, and each booster pack allows a Dungeon Master to run a ready-to-play encounter right out of the box.

CCG's

This week sees the release of the impressive Supreme Victors expansion for Pokemon, over 150 new cards compatible with previous releases.

New Release Round Up - 12th August

2009-08-12T13:16:00.002Z

Boardgame Round-up

This week's major board game release is Middle Earth Quest by Fantasy Flight Games. This latest game set in the Lord of the Rings world is an adventure game set in the years after Bilbo returns with the ring and before the fellowship. As with all FFG releases this has a huge amount in the box, a large board, 470 cards and plastic figures for the heroes and villains. One player plays Sauron while up to three others play the roles of various hero's working for Gandalf. This game promises to be the adventure game of the year.

Ra, the dice game is an evolution of the classic auction game set in Egypt. Although this time players are rolling dice instead of drawing tiles. Its a more portable version than its predecessor and has rules for 2-4 players. Wizard has been reprinted, this trick taking game of wizards and jesters has had favourable reviews and makes a great filler.

RPG Round-up

Pathfinder RPG, this 576 page hardcover book has been in development for 10 years and been play tested by 50,000 gamers. That's some figures and by all accounts the first print run has already been sold out to the distributors. Pathfinder is a fantasy RPG that contains all of the rules in a single volume that while stand along, can also be played with supplements of another well known system.

The Scoundrel source book for the Traveller system brings to life those who work in the grey areas of the world. An invaluable resource for any rogue or drifter in the party. Western City is a novel RPG system that allows players to explore a wild west system with no games master. Immersive mechanics allow all players to share the spotlight and promise a different gaming experience.

Miniatures Round-up

More additions to the Anima Tactics range! Samael Agent, Elhaim Maiden of Light and Church Agent.

New Release Round Up - 05th August

2009-08-05T13:21:00.003Z

Boardgame Round-up

This week it's all about expansions and there is one we've been looking forward to particularly. The first expansion for Kingsburg has been released. To Forge the Realm gives players a number of mini expansions that you can choose to include in your games. New buildings, alternate building rows, governor cards and soldier tokens are all part of an expansion that will add to an already very good game.

Fantasy Flight Games are also releasing reprints of the Battlelore Scottish Wars and Call to Arms expansions. We're all waiting for the Heroes Expansion and it should be released sometime later this year. Call to Arms provides rules for drafting armies while the Scottish Wars adds more Dwarfs into the mix.

Attack the Deluxe Expansion is a reprint of the original expansion for this war game and provides 360 plastic miniatures along with some new rules. Attack is a fun WW2 area control game, more complicated than risk and highly enjoyable with up to 6 players. The expansion add rules for oil supply, trade routes and technology which increase the complexity of the game but still keep it at a playable level.

In Fzzzt you are a mechanic trying to buy robots as they come off the conveyor belt. A nice auction based game that will take you back to the 80's with its design and artwork.

Just in: Middle Earth Quest and Chaos in the Old World will be shipping on Friday!

RPG Round-up

A few RPG releases this week, Price of Honour is a Feudal Japan source book for Runequest taking players to the Iwami princes that have been thrown into chaos.

Savage Worlds Fantasy Compendium give players of the Savage World system new rules, monsters and weapons as well as advice for setting games in a fantasy world. the Apocalypse Prevention system now has support for Canada in the API:Worldwide Canada source book. New races, weapons, magic and equipment are covered giving more source material for an interesting games system.

Swashbuckler has been improved and released as a 2nd edition, Swashbuckler is an indie release and features an innovative dueling system while characters are defined by what combat moves they know.

Miniatures Round-up

Hot on the heels of last week's beautiful WW2 miniatures for Wings of War another expansion has been released. Fire from the Sky expands on the WW2 games and provides rules for bombers along with extra planes allowing up to 6 players to dogfight at the same time.

We also have Samiel Black Lion, Odin Goldsmith and Kairos from FFG's Anima Tactics.

CCG Round-up

There are two expansions this month for the Game of Thrones Living Card Game. Tower of the Hand is the third monthly expansion and provides 20 new cards, while the Greyjoys are represented in the Kings of the Sea expansion which provides 60 new cards to the game.

Fantasy Flight have tried something different with there LCG (Living Card Games) range, they have removed the collectible side of the hobby so you know which cards you are getting. This has been well received and the Game of Thrones setting is proving to be one of there best. On a side note, Sean Bean has just signed up to play the part of Ned Stark in the forthcoming HBO's series of the Game of Thrones.

We also have a release for the succesful Call of Cthulhu LCG, The Path of Y'ha-nthlei which includes 20 never seen before cards.

New Release Round Up - July 27th

2009-07-31T17:42:00.006Z

Boardgame Round-up

This week we have a new reprint of Tales of the Arabian Night by Z-Man games. We've been waiting for a reprint of this for a while and it certainly delivers. Set in the land of Sindbad and Alli Babba the players travel the land seeking fame and fortune. The game itself is a mix between a choose your own adventure and a board game. For example when you encounter a beggar you decide what you want to do, roll some dice and then turn to a paragraph in the Tales book and see what happens. The artwork and components have been extremely well put together and add to the rich theme of the Arabian Nights setting.

RPG Round-up

This week sees two new Pathfinder supplements. First up is Qadira: Gateway to the East, which describes the country of Qadira and its capital of Katheer - the city of a million caravans and also includes new feats and traits for players and handy articles on the area for DMs. Also for Pathfinder there's Beyond the Vault of Souls, where Magical soul gems have been stolen from the secret vault of the goddess of death and scattered across the planes. Can the PCs retrieve them before a god of oblivion is summoned? Beyond the Vault of Souls is an adventure for 9th level Pathfinder characters.

Continuing with the dungeon-related theme. Pazio have also released the Flip Mat Dungeon as part of their popular 'Flip Mat' series - a complete dungeon laid out over a huge double-sided tactical map. (Compatible with dry or wet erase pens.) The various locales of this dungeon match the Pathfinder module: Crypt of the Everflame.

Lastly on the RPG round-up for this week, Hero games provide a collection of no less than
15 adventures for Pulp HERO, which also includes notes on creating your own expeditions into the unknown.

Miniatures Round-up

The popular Wings of War game now has 12 World War 2 miniatures to add to the series. Spitfires, Messerschmitt 109s, Wildcats and Zeros in several different paint schemes have been released. Each comes with its own manoeuvre deck and a transparent stand that allows you to set the height of your fighter. Along with the recently released players mats, these miniatures will transform the look of your Wings at War games.

Lastly Mosterpocalypse bring you there third strategy guide for their popular collectible miniatures game. The All your Base Strategy guide coincides with the release of the third wave of miniatures. So if you need tips on your units and more information on the new monsters this book will deliver.

New Release Round Up - July 20th

2009-07-17T20:14:00.012Z

We've changed the format of the new release emails, we hope you like it! If you have any comments or suggestions, please contact us.

Boardgame Round-up

Twilight Creations make up the bulk of this weeks new board game releases along with a clever deduction game set in a mental asylum. Midevil Deluxe is an extension of the popular Zombies game and contains everything from MidEvil, MidEvil2 and MidEvil3. After you have escaped from the hordes of zombies you're sent back in time to face a new terrible challenge, skeletons! New artwork and over 100 heavily armed skeletons help bring this tongue in cheek creation from Twilight Creations alive. Bag o Skeletons adds an additional 100 skeletons that can be used with your MidEvil games.

Martians!!!, another Twilight Creations game, this time your slap bang in the middle of an alien invasion. Armed only with your knowledge of sci-fi movies its up to you to save mankind. 100 plastic skeletons are included in the game for the players to evade and kill while they search for the items needed to destroy the alien mother ship.

Looney Bin is a card based deduction game where players are trying to be the first to heal the patients in there ward. Will you be able to cure Fanatical Frank with a frontal lobotomy, or will Delirious Darlene require group therapy and a dose of electroshock?

RPG Round-up

Heading up the new RPG releases for this week are three offerings from Wizards of the Coast for Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition. Divine Power contains new archetypical builds for the cleric, paladin, invoker and avenger classes as well as rules for divine domains. The Eberron Campaign Guide contains everything DMs need to run in this magical film noir setting and Seekers of the Ashen Crown is a 2nd-5th level standalone adventure, nominally set in Eberron (but easily used in other settings). Another WotC offering this week is the Rebellion Era Guide - a Star Wars sourcebook which covers the original Star Wars trilogy.

Continuing on the Dungeons & Dragons front, there are a number of support materials available, including Counter Collection 4e: Epic 1, Counter Collection 4e: Paragon 1 and Creature Collection (for Scarred Lands). Mongoose Publishing has released The Quintessential Rogue, offering new origins, many additional powers and paragon paths and finally there's also a set of stone-finished Dungeon Tiles to help plot out your dungeon in a more tactile way. For those following Pathfinder, Paizo has put out Adventure Path 23 "Impossible Eye", continuing their popular series.

For other roleplaying games Mongoose has released the Central Supply Catalogue for Traveller that offers "A complete guide to arms and equipment in the Traveller Roleplaying Game", also for Spycraft - Shadow Play, a compendium of some of the very best Spycraft articles. Enjoy Westerns? KenzerCo give you Fool's Gold (so to speak), an adventure for their Origins award winning Wild West roleplaying game, Aces & Eights. New in from Palladium is The Nightbane Survival Guide which covers survival in a world of conspiracy, dark forces and monstrous invaders in the Nightbane setting.

Hard Helix is a set of four adventures written by Robin D. Laws for the well received Mutant City Blues RPG, while Scroll of Heroes is an Exalted supplement covering Mortal characters in the Age of Sorrows. Add in a dash of pulpish Cthulhu action with Goodman Games' Age of Cthulhu 2: Madness in London Town, an actual Tarot Deck for use with Mage: The Awakening and the latest issue of Crusader magazine for Castles & Crusades and that's a hefty round of releases for the week!

War for Edađh Review and Interview by Countzero

2009-06-25T12:28:00.007Z

War for Edađh is a card based combat game designed and produced by Nigel and Ash Pyne. Each player controls a number of units that battle each other using some novel game mechanics to determine the winner.

Opening the box you get

Two decks of Cards
Two rule books, Art of the Apprentice and Art of the Warrior
some damage counters
Damage tracking sheets.

The first thing you notice looking at the cards is the unique style of the card artwork. I think you will either love it or hate it, I love it. It's not traditional fantasy artwork, it reminds me of an old 2000AD style.

The next think that will grab you is the two rulebook. Yes, two books both of which are pretty big. This initially put me off the game but they have been designed to teach you the game piece by piece. The Art of the Apprentice book starts off with the base game and slowly adds in more rules as you get comfortable with the game. The second book bring in advanced rules including rules for multi player battles. I currently haven't worked my way through the Art of the Warrior book yet, there is still plenty of mileage from the Apprentice level games for me yet.

Setting up a base game is very straight forward. Each player picks 6 cards from there faction deck and arranges them into three columns of two. So you have a front rank of 3 cards with another rank behind. A terrain card is then placed between them, to start with you use a grass terrain so that the terrain doesn't effect the battle. Next each player takes a damage record sheet and places a mastery point counter on the number 50 and a damage counter on the 0.

Playing the game is relatively easy and revolves around a hand of Combat Mastery cards. Each player has a hand of 6 cards which have two sets of values on them. These are used to determine who wins the round of combat. This is one of the key mechanics of the game.

So first up each player secretly selects one of there mastery cards and plays it face down. the cards are flipped and whoever has played the highest card wins the round. The trick here is that some of the lower cards can actually be higher depending on what the opponent has played. For example the 1 value card is worth 13 if your opponent has played a 12. This adds a twist to the game as you try and figure out what your opponent is going to play.

Once the winner has been resolved you reduce your mastery point value by the cost on the card. The winner then chooses which card from his front rank he will attack with, the defender chooses which card will defend. Each player can then restore some mastery points depending on the unit card chosen.

Some mastery cards allow the defender to guard, a check is made against a couple of values on the cards and if it passes then no damage is taken and both cards are flipped.
If the guard fails, or there was no guard available you work out the damage of the attack. Both cards are flipped to reveal some rows of stats. You cross reference the terrain type to find an attack value and defend value. If the attackers attack value is higher than the defenders defend value you will hit for a larger amount of damage, otherwise if the defenders value is higher there will be a lower amount of damage applied.
A check is then made to see if the card is discarded, this will happen if you took more damage than the cards discard value.
Both cards are kept flipped and another round is started. Players choose and place another mastery card and the pick another pair of cards to battle with. After three rounds are played a number of checks are made.

First, if the players damage marker is higher than there mastery point marker they loose the game. Otherwise players will have to discard cards to reduce there damage marker to bring it down to a specific level. Next players have the option to discard more cards to increase there mastery points value.
Finally a check for routing is made, if you have more cards in your discard pile than your opponent you are shaken. In the next round if you have more cards again you rout and loose the game.

This is a very general overview of the base game and is mechanics, and it doesn't really do the game justice. There are huge amounts of other rules that can be added, terrain cards effect combat results. Battlemasters improve a units stats. Standards card will stop units from being shaken and tactics cards can be used to effect the outcome of battles.

For someone who wants a very detailed battle game this is an ideal game, even players who are used to simpler games can start off with the basic rules from the apprentice book and add more rules as they become comfortable with the game.
Overall I have enjoyed this game so far and it's got better the more rules we have added to it. Terrain, range and battlemasters have all added to it to round out the basic game. I am sure the rules I haven't added can only improve things. I am also very interested in the world that has been designed for this game, more units and factions are on teh way which will help flesh out the world its history and the ongoing conflicts.

Summary

Presentation: Beautiful artwork that sets it apart. 9/10

Clarity of Rules: Initially overwhelming, but stick with it It will make sense. 7/10

Game Length: Games take about 30 minutes or longer depending on how many rules you are using. 8/10

Value: A battle game that will grow with you 7/10

Overall: A clever game that's quick to play, and uses some clever mechanics. (8/10 not an average)

More information can be found on the WarrioElite website. Along with details of future expansions, rules and more play examples.

Nigel and Ash are the two designers of War for Edađh, following is a small interview discussing there game and future works.

War for Edađh is your first game, what inspiration did you have to come up with it?

Nigel - The actual inspiration came from playing RPGs. When we were playing we wanted a style of game where your own choices and decisions alone would determine success or failure but this didn’t exist on the market so we went ahead to create it ourselves. We then adapted the mechanic to work for battles and so War for Edadh was born.

Ash - Because we wargamed as well, but thought that our tactical mechanic would lend itself well to a battle game.

You have decided to self publish, is it easier to do this than find a publisher?

Nigel - I really couldn’t say if it’s easier as we haven’t ever tried to find a publisher for the game. However, from when we were researching the industry it certainly seems that it is very hard to find a publisher who will take a game design that hasn’t been developed in house.

Ash - It wasn’t ease that governed publishing it ourselves. We want to do this for a living and also we want to ensure future releases are in accord with our vision of that future line-up so that the game and the world remains consistent, as well as how the releases are offered up. Plus, for a lot of that future, game or world, we’re really the only ones who can flesh it out so that it’s in keeping, or integrate ideas gamers want to see in a way that maintains the Edadh ‘thing’.

I am a fan of the artwork in the game, did the artwork influence the game units?

Ash - Thanks! We worked on the world as the rules progressed in parallel. I think the nature of the Factions defined a lot of the troop types when it came to working them out, but the concept art did influence things. As an example, in the last few months I drew a canopy-running mount for the Nuko (one of the next Factions to be released) and right there we knew it was going to get made into a Troop card, which it will.

Plus as environment affects the game, the mounts and armament that a Faction uses were designed for use in those environments and as such these things then influenced the game units when we were working out what they should be.

Of course, sometimes I would go and draw something after we’d decided what the troop was going to be.

Nigel - The whole of the world of Edadh and the artwork for it was created hand in hand. I, Nigel, am the lead game designer and my brother, Ash, helped massively with this and is also the artist and visualised all our ideas for the world of Edadh. My wife, Debs, designed the cards, their look, etc. We created the world together but then Ash would go off, take those ideas and make them more ‘real’ by illustrating them. For example, when designing the Ang army we decided we wanted several troops with different war beasts of differing strengths. We decided how many and then Ash would go off and make those beasts up. Sometimes he has just sat down and drawn something from an idea he has had and shown it to me and we’ve both liked it so much that we’ve had to include it in the world somewhere. So, to answer your question, sometimes yes and sometimes no!

The game is a little daunting at first, is there any tips you can pass on to beginners?

Nigel - Play along to the ‘Art of Apprentice’ rulebook as you read it. Don’t try to read all the rules and then play. Take it step by step as it is laid out and you should do fine. If you run into any problems then go to our website – www.warriorelite.com – and ask us a question on our forum – we check it daily. However, when you get it you’ll find it is actually quite simple, a quick playing game and a lot of fun. We are also – in the very near future – going to produce tutorial videos on how to play the game so it’s worth checking the website for those.

Ash - Because the game introduces a new playing style, the rules are a little tough to grasp just from reading – especially as the expanded rules rely on a knowledge of how the basic rules operate and build on them. So a gamer really does need to play as they go and nail the gameplay of the Apprentice before even contemplating the Warrior book.

This way, it follows the modular nature of the game. You get to play the simple version and could just stick with that if you like. Or you could add in the expanded rules one by one and opt then to play with those.

Do you have any plans to expand War for Edađh with additional armies or rules?

Nigel - Oh yes, we’ve got more ideas than we can keep up with! The website has details of some of the new armies we are planning to release. Over time we will also be releasing new games that you can play with the same cards you will have got – for example, a scout versus scout guerrilla warfare style game where you can ambush your enemy, lay traps for him and do other stuff such as this. And then we’ve got plans for siege rules, naval combats, aerial dogfights, campaigns, adventure style games, and more all using the same cards. You’ll find that the core system is very versatile and there are several variants of this that we’ll be releasing as well.

Ash - There’ll be quick-play games, like jousts and such, that we’ll put on the website for download, whilst other rules types will come in the expansions - for aerial dogfights and airship combats, Clan campaigns including espionage and trade, adventures in the Underearth, and an RPG rules set where the mysteries of the world begin to unravel.

We have the world worked out with its Factions waiting in the wings to be released. Some of these will play in their own tactical way and will be supported with their own Stratagem Cards, for example.

Do you have any other games designed and waiting to be published?

Nigel - At the moment War for Edadh and its expansions are taking up all our time. We do have plans for creating a sci-fi game using the same mechanic as in War for Edadh so you’ll get spaceship combat and the like.

Ash - But that’s quite a ways off yet. We do have it worked out in note form, but from experience we know that it’ll be quite a bit of work to realize it all.

What designer are you a fan of and who would you like to work with?

Nigel - I’m not a fan of any one designer. There are many games that I love and definitely have admiration for the designers of those but I have eclectic tastes in games and there is no one ‘line’ of games that I prefer above others. Who would I like to work with? Wow, I’ve never thought about it before but I think more for nostalgia reasons than anything else – being brought up with Fighting Fantasy gamebooks – I would love to meet up with Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.

Ash - One has to knuckle one’s forehead in the absence of any hat to tip, to Gary Gygax for introducing us to the world of RPGs at a young age. It opened up a whole new interest. Of course, there were some Spectrum games that deserved to be played over and again also.

Thanks for your time chaps, good luck with Battle of Edadh!

Update: Battle of Edadh now has an overview video, please see below...

Vikings Tournament

2009-06-25T11:46:00.003Z

The final game of Vikings has been played and congratulations goes to Adam8 who managed to fend off Earthquake and DeanrThomas to take home £10 store credit.

Final scores were

Deanryhomas : 41
Earthquake : 53
Adam8 : 65 ***THE WINNER***

The next tournament will be Arkadia, so if you are interested sign up here.

And trusts no one...

2009-06-09T20:04:00.004Z

And trusts no one.... A review of Cutthroat Caverns

Cutthroat caverns is produced by Smirk and Dagger games. In the game you are one of a band of adventures grouped together to explore nine dungeons and aiming to be the one with the most prestige points after the ninth cavern has been completed. Its a very fun card game with a huge element of back stabbing. You have to work as a team to complete the challenges of the caverns, but always try and come out on top to be the only person to win prestige.

Opening the box you get

Deck of cards
6 Character cards
Encounter cards
Encounter health chart
Tokens and glass beads

The build quality of the game is very good, essentially its a deck of cards and some large card sheets and tokens. The artwork is very well done, its typical fantasy but the monsters have a dark and brooding style about them. It all looks good and will certainly last a large number of plays.

Setup is very easy, every player takes one of the character cards. There are 6 to choose from and all have an image of the character and a health meter on the side showing number 100 to 0 in multiples of 5. All characters are the same so its purely an aesthetic choice of character. Each player then gets dealt 7 cards to make up there hand.

The pile of encounter cards are then shuffled and the top card is drawn. This will depict the first monster the party encounters. It will show how many life points it has and describe how it can damage the players. A glass bead is used to mark how many life points the monster has on the chart. The party will now have to attempt to kill it by using cards from there hand. These are mainly damage cards showing a value from 0 to 100, item cards such as potions of healing or strength and interrupt cards which affect the damage being played by the other players.

Each player is dealt an initiative card for the first round, this will determine the player order for this round. Players then place face down one of the cards from there hand. Player 1 then reveals his card and lowers the damage marker by the amount of damage. Players can interrupt this action by playing any interrupt cards they have. These can do a number of things such as stop the damage with a critical miss card, double the damage with a critical hit card, swap cards with other players or change the direction of the damage. Play then moves on to the next player.

If a player has managed to kill the encounter only they take the encounter card and the prestige points marked on it. If the monster is still alive it deals damage determined by the encounter text. Again, you can play cards to redirect the damage or negate it using interrupt cards. Players then take a card to replenish there hand and the initiative cards are dealt out again.

The crux of the game is that you want to be the hero that kills the monster and to stop the other players from delivering the killing blow. This can be harder to achieve than you think, with interrupt cards being played by everyone sometimes a relatively easy encounter can take its time.

When the encounter has been finished, the bead that marks the number of counters is moved on by one and each player refills there hand to 7. The next encounter card is drawn and another battle is started. The majority of encounters are monsters, such as necromancers, orcs and Medusa's. Most will have a bit of text describing how they they damage the players, usually it will be player 1 takes 5 damage, or the player who deals the most damage will take 5 damage.

There are some not combat encounters in the deck. These are usually trick or trap type rules that damage the players depending on whether they pass or fail a task. These make a welcome change from the combat orientated encounters. The item cards can be used at any time, they usually heal the player or increase there damage. They can also be used to heal the other players, and if they agree the healer gains some prestige points.

After the ninth encounter the person with the most prestige points will win the game, if it is a draw then a final encounter is played. This is a great decider as everyone usually has a chance to win, even if they were not one of the tied players.

So Cutthroat Caverns is a very easy game to play and great fun. The opportunities to back stab your opponents are always there and you have to make sure that you take advantage of them. There are a number of expansions available for the game that add more encounters and cards to be played. This should increase the re-playability an already great game.

Summary

Presentation: Nice artwork and very readable cards. 7/10

Clarity of Rules: Well written rules make it an easy game to learn. 8/10

Game Length: Games take about 30 minutes or more depending on the number of players. 9/10

Value: Essentially a card game, but will have great re playability 7/10

Overall: A fun dungeon bash where its everyone for themselves. (8/10 not an average)

Spiel des Jahres 2009

2009-05-26T18:49:00.009Z

The Spiel des Jahres is the biggest award in the world of board gaming. Its a German award and is presented to the best family game of the year. It's a big award and can easily increase the number of sales of a game.

Previous winners have included, Keltis, Zooloretto, Ticket to Ride and Carcasonne. The games have to have been released in Germany within the last 12 months and I believe to not have any moving pieces.

This years nominations are looking really good, mainly because there are a couple of great games that have been released outside of Germany in the nominations list.

Dominion
This is a great card game where players are buying cards to add to there deck. Its been compared to CCG's but without the collectible element. Everyone starts off level and its not down to how many packs of cards you have bought.
I have posted a review of this earlier and really like the game. I think its got a good chance of winning even if its a card game which historically haven't done that well.

Pandemic
The second of the games that most of you have heard about or maybe even played. This is a co-operative game where the players team up to stop the spread of deadly diseases. It's another great game that deserves its nomination.

Fauna
This one is only available in Germany I believe and is by the same designer as Powergrid. Although this is probably as far from that game as you can get. Fauna is a trivia game where players guess statistics on animals. Such as weight, length of tail and origin. I am not sure of this one, I think Friedemann is a great designer just not sure that this one is the winner.

Fits
Reiner Knizia finally won the award last year for Keltis (Lost Cities the board game) but I don't think he will be adding another trophy to the mantelpiece with this one. Fits (Fill in the space) is essentially Tetris the board game. Players must use the shapes to fill in the spaces and match up symbols to score extra points.

Finca
This game is set on the island of Mallorca with the players growing and managing different fruits by placing workers on the island. The key is to be as efficient as possible in the distribution and delivery of the crops. This one looks very colourful and has all the ingredients of being a winner.

Personally I really hope either Dominion or Pandemic win this year. It would be great to see a game that originated from a non German publisher take home the title.

The winner is announced at the end of June, so stay tuned.

Small World Review

2009-04-17T12:50:00.006Z

Small world is the latest offering from Days of Wonder and is a reworking of an older game called Vinci. Its an area control game set in a fantasy world with very oddball races. Play time is around 60-80 minutes and its a very easy game to play and the random elements of the game certainly add to its re-playability.

Opening the box you get

2 Beautiful double sided boards
14 Fantasy race's and tokens for each
20 special power tokens
Numerous other tokens depicting lairs and forts and other items
victory coin counters
a custom 6 sided dice
Rules booklet
player aids

The first thing you notice when looking at the components is the quality of the artwork. Days of Wonder are up to there usual standard here, the components look beautiful.

Setup is very easy, the two boards are double sided so there is a board for each player number combination. Place the board down and then shuffle the race tokens and place 5 down next to the board. Next shuffle up the special power tokens and place one next to each of the race tokens. These sets of tokens lock together so that the special ability is connected to the race. Next a number of counters need to be placed on the board. There are mountain counters that need to be placed on ever mountain region plus lost civilization counters which go on other regions.
Deal out 5 victory coins and a player aid to each player. First player is the person with the pointiest ears!

The aim of the game is to end with the most victory coins and you gain these coins by using your different races to expand over the world depicted on the board. You do this by choosing a race and then using it to conquer the different areas on the board. There will come a point when your race has over expanded or has lost its way, you can then put that race into decline and start off with another race. This in effect allows you to score with two races at the same time.

Most of the fun of the game is playing the different race/power combos and these are very diverse. Each race has its own power and these are pretty stereotypical. The dwarfs gain extra victory points for controlling areas with mines, the humans for farm areas. The special powers add the twist, beserker gives combat bonus's while flying allows you to attack any region on the board. With 14 races and 20 power tokens available the number of combinations is pretty big. This has lead to Beserker Halflinks, Flying Skeletons, Commando Elves, heroic amazons, wealthy ratmen and stoutfull orcs to name a few. There are some very good combinations, some probably better than others but all are fun to play.

The first player gets to choose which race/power combo to buy, the first in the row is free all others cost victory coins one for each combo missed. So if the first player decided to choose the commando halflings which are the third race out of the five, they would put one victory coin on the first race and one on the second and then take the halflings. They now total up the large numbers on each token of the combo and take that number of counters for there race.

Now its time to start taking over some of the small world. Your first conquest must be either a coastal territory or one that borders the edge of the board. Each region requires two tokens to conquer it plus one for each other token in that region. So a mountain region would require 3 or a hill region with a lost civilization would also take 3. Some races and abilities will effect this. If you end with a single race counter in your hand you can perform one last attack using the special 6 sided dice for virtual reinforcements. The dice has 3 blank sides and the others are marked 1,2 and 3. You can roll this dice and add the reinforcements to that final battle. This will usually net you about 3 or 4 regions depending on powers and where you have attacked. You can then redistribute your tokens around the regions you now control.

Next you add up your victory points, 1 per region you control plus any bonus points. So for example if a flying human race had taken over 4 regions but 2 of them were farmland the player would receive 6 victory points. Humans get a +1 victory point for each farmland region controlled. finally the race/power tokens are rearranged with all tokens pushed up and a new combo drawn from the stack.

When each player has made there first conquest you now have the option in your turn to put your race into decline. This takes a whole turn and you simply remove all race tokens from the regions you own except for one which you flip over to its black and white side. you also flip over your race/power tokens to signify that its in decline. You still gain the victory points for the regions you control, but usually not for any special abilities or race bonuses. Why put a race in decline? Generally the race can't go any further, either all the tokens are used up or the race simply has no where to go. It's also the only way to get two races on the board that you can score with. So those 4 or 5 regions with your declined race will help boost your score with the new race. Choosing when to put your race into decline is one of the key points to the game.

Each game runs for a set number of turns, this depends on the number of players and there is a marker on the board to help you keep track. When the last player has finished the last turn everyone counts up there victory points and the player with the most wins the game.

Small world sounds incredibly easy to play, it is. There are basically only a few rules that you need to remember and they have made everything very simple. You will be up and playing very quickly and soon sending your crazy races across the board trying to score you as many victory points as possible. The number of race power combinations is certainly a huge draw to the game, I haven't got board with it yet after a couple of plays. Trying to get the right combo at the right time can be a huge bonus whether or not its a very aggressive race combo which allows you to quickly over run a large number of areas or one that allows you to strategically take specific region types. Either way you should see those victory points start racking up. Not being tied to one race is also a good mechanic, if you get board you can simply put it into decline and pick something more interesting or powerful.

Summary

A light Euro game with a lot of replayability. 8/10

Clarity of Rules: A well written rule book and simple rules. 8/10

Game Length: About 45-60 minutes for 4 players 9/10

Value: Lots of races and power for you to try, and beautiful components. 9/10

Overall: An interesting game that's easy to play and will appeal to most gamers . (9/10 not an average)

Jungle Speed Review

2009-04-05T18:23:00.006Z

Jungle speed is a dexterity, pattern matching game that is played fast and furious. Its a huge amount of fun, but be sure that nails have been clipped and all jewelry has been removed!

So whats in the bag? The game does come in a box, but this just houses the zebra print bag full of components.

80 cards depicting coloured shapes and patterns

Wooden Jungle Speed Totem

Rule book

Not a great amount in there, but its all good and very well made. The pieces are made to last and its a good job as they will get plenty of play.

Game setup is easy, the cards are shuffled and dealt out to all of the players. The Jungle Speed totem is then played upright in the center of the table within reach of all of the players.
The first player then turn over his top card into a discard pile in front of him. It's important that the card is turned over away from the player, so in effect the other players get to see the card a split second before the dealer. Although this is going to be very quick.
Players then take it in turns to flip the top card in there stack over. If any two cards on the table have matching symbol, not colour the players with these cards must make a grab for the totem. The quickest player then hands over there discard pile to the loser who adds it his pile of cards.

This continues until someone has played there last card and wins the game.

It all sounds easy enough, but there are a few things that make the game a little tricky. Some of the cards look very similar but have subtle differences. One may have a pair of circles with a hex in the middle another will have a pair of circles with a square in the middle. During a quick game these can easily be mistaken for being the same.

There are also three types of joker cards. The first has 4 arrows pointing into the center of the card. If this is turned over then all players must make a grab for the cards in the center. Another shows 4 arrows pointing outwards. When this is played all players simultaneously flip over a card. The final special card shows 4 coloured arrows pointing into the center of the card, this changes the game from matching shapes to colours.

If anyone makes a wrong grab for the totem or knocks it over then they take every ones discard pile, so you want to make sure you only grab when there is a match. Again, this can get tricky when the game gets fast.

This game is a lot of fun, its quick to teach and play and can get a bit physical as the game speeds up. You have to be quick to grab the totem and false nails will fly. I have played it against all ages and its been well received. Maybe not for the deep thinkers of the group but most have come around to it, especially after a drink.

I have seem some extreme Jungle speed played on the web, where the totem is placed in a different room or further away from the table. This results in mad dashes for the totem instead of frantic table grabs.

Summary

A party game of matching shapes and reflexes. 8/10

Clarity of Rules Nothing to them, flip, match and grab. 9/10

Game Length Anywhere from 10 to 20 mins. 8/10

Value

Lots of re playability for a fast, quick game. 9/10

Overall A fun game of speed and reflexes . (9/10 not an average)

Pitchcar Review

2009-03-08T19:29:00.005Z

Pitchcar is one of the finest dexterity games produced and one that everyone should try at least once.

It's a finger flicking race game where you control the car around a race track.

Opening the heavy red box you get

Six straightaways
Ten 90-degree curves
Rail pieces for straights and curves
Eight car discs with stickers
One Start/Finish line sticker
Rule sheet

First thing is to put the stickers on, the 8 car disks each require a sticker your choice as to which colour. Then the start/finish line sticker needs placing on a piece of straight track. Next up is building the track.
The track pieces are made from MDF and fit together really well, they have a black coating to make them look like a race track and to also aid in the flicking. The rules booklet comes with some suggested tracks and all are very easy to put together.

After the main pieces of track are assembled you need to put the crash barriers on. These are plastic strips that come in two sizes. The longer is used on the curves and the shorter on the straights. It's worth double checking the track as the crash barriers are only used on one side of the track pieces.

A flat table is essential for this game. The slightest difference in height will usually result in a small lip where the tracks pieces join. This can cause a few irritations when it comes to racing.

Racing is easy, its all in the flicking and shoving techniques of the racers. But before you can race you have to qualify.
Players take it in turns to do a qualifying lap. The winner is the person who can flick there car around the track using the least number of flicks. If a flick results in your car coming off the track or ending upside down you have crashed. You have to put your car back to where it was.

Once everyone has qualified the cars are arranged on the grid in typical formula one fashion. The game can take up to 8 players so the start can be a little crowded, but the more players the better. Players now take it in turn to flick there car around the track. One flick at a time. Once everyone has had a turn it starts again with the player in the lead going first. If you accidentally knock an opponent off the track you put the car back on where it came off.

After 3 laps the first player over the start/finish line wins the game. It's that simple.

This game is a lot of fun, from setting up the board to trying to rebound your car around the track its all good fun. I have played this game with several groups of people of all ages and everyone has enjoyed it. The only minor point to the game is maybe the cost. It weights in at just under £40 but you get a hefty game for the money and one that will get a lot of play.

If the price is an issue there is a Pitchcar mini version available. Its about half the price and about half the size so it may be easier to play in smaller venues. It's the exact same game that has just been scaled down.

There are also expansions for both versions of the game. I think the most impressive is the first expansion for the main game. This adds a jump and tunnel. This component alone can really transform the game. If you think you have got your flicking action down, wait till you have a vertical element added to the track.
Other expansions add chicanes, longer straights tighter curves and an elevated section. So you can really change the tracks around.

Pitchcar Expansion 1 - Jump and Tunnel
Pitchcar Expansion 2 - Crossroads and Corners
Pitchcar Expansion 3 - Long Straights
Pitchcar Mini Expansion 1 - Ramps
Pitchcar Mini Expansion 2 - More curves
Pitchcar Mini Expansion 3 - Long straights

I really like Pitchcar, its a great game to bring out at party's or when you need a break from heavier games. It's quick to setup and tear down and a game will usually last about 20 minutes unless you get stuck in the tunnel

Summary

A fun game that will get the crowd going. 9/10

Clarity of Rules Ready, aim, flick. Not much more to it. 9/10

Game Length About 20 mins for a 5 player game, so it gets a few replays in. 8/10

Value

Quality components that will last. 8/10

Overall A fantastic game that will continually hit the table no matter who is around(9/10 not an average)

Army of Zero Review and Interview with Steve Mainprize

2009-02-10T20:52:00.008Z

Army of Zero is the first game by Point Zero Games, designed and produced by Steve Mainprize. The game is a card game for 2 players who are using a squad of hardened warriors in a battle of strength and wits. The game also comes with a puzzle that can net the winner £1000 if they are the first to solve it.

Opening the box, what do you get.

3 packs of cards that make up the 84 different warriors and rules
2 dice
Puzzle entry form.

The cards are made from good card stock and the artwork is very nice. There are a number of different clans that the warriors belong to, these take there names from animals such as Panda, Lion and Turtle. There is a slight oriental theme to the cards and they do remind me of a manga style comic. The animal clan affects the artwork, so for example the zebra clan members have white and black striped armour, while the lion clan all have long flowing blond hair.
The cards have the stats of the character at the bottom, these are Speed, Combat, Armour and Weapon. The value of each is from -2 to +2 with each character balanced out. i.e. if a character has +2 speed, they probably have -2 armour.
The cards also have a number of symbols down the left hand side. These are part of the puzzle but that's as much as I know.

Setup and play are both very simple. The 84 warrior cards are shuffled and 10 are dealt to each player. Each player then takes a dice and their 3 combat cards. These combat cards comprise of 2 sword cards used for attack and a shield card used for defense.
Each player then flips over their first character card. They then place face down either an attack or defend card. These are both simultaneously flipped and the outcome determines what happens. If they are both swords then each player rolls a dice and adds there speed value. Highest goes first and takes out there opponent.
If both players played a shield they stalk each other waiting for someone to attack.
If a shield and sword are played both players roll there dice and add there combat value. The highest hits the other and becomes the attacker. Both players now roll there dice and they add there weapon and armour values respectively. If the attacker is higher they have wounded there opponent and the card is removed.
If not then another round is started.
When a character is removed from play both players take back there combat cards, if not then only the defense card can be retrieved. This means that players can only get two attacks in before they have to defend. Knowing this can help the other player if they have been playing defensively.

The rules sound simple and they are certainly not as complex as other card based games. But they are very quick to learn and fun to play with younger children or as a filler before a bigger game.

The puzzle element and the £1000 prize is definitely an interesting concept and one that I haven't seen since the Perplexcity cards were released. I have spent a bit of time on the puzzle but so far I'm stumped. So if anyone has any clues then please pass them on.

Summary

Presentation 84 different warriors and a simple rule set. 7.5/10

Clarity of Rules Rules are clear, but a flow chart would be handy. 8/10

Game Length Games last around 15 minutes but could be altered by adding more characters. 7/10

Value Nice cards and an interesting incentive. 9/10

Overall A cracking card game that quick enough that it should hit the table during those odd times. (8/10 not an average)

Steve Mainprize is the designer and publisher of Army of Zero. He graciously took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions about his game.

Army of Zero is your first game, what inspiration did you have to come up with it?

I'd been on sabbatical from work for a while, particularly wanting to spend more time with my two boys. We were playing a lot of games, particularly trading card games, and I think the germ of the idea for Army Of Zero must have come from all that. I wanted a multi-character card game that was easy to learn and didn't require as much investment in time: I think other parents will know what I'm talking about! So basically, what we've done is taken some of the tropes of very "busy" games like CCGs and RPGs, and filtered them through much simpler game mechanics that are closer to trump games and even rock/paper/scissors.

You have decided to self publish, is it easier to do this than find a publisher?

I don't think either route is what you'd call "easy"! As far as self-publishing goes, I personally think there's definitely something to be said for the satisfaction of following an idea through from the initial concept to having a finished product in your hand, but it probably depends on the kind of person you are. The most creative people I know aren't what you'd call "finishers": they might have a dozen brilliant ideas a day but aren't built to see them through to completion. If you're that kind of person, you're going to need to have a publisher, or at least a business partner, who's going to make sure your scheme ends up fully baked (instead of half-baked!).

So it just so happened that we had the resources and the inclination to self-publish. Your mileage, as they say, may vary.

The puzzle element is quite different. What made you decide to add this element to the game?

I read a story once - possibly apocryphal, possibly true - about two crossword compilers who disliked each other so much that they each independently started hiding insulting messages about the other in their crosswords. The problem was, the messages were so cryptic that neither realised the other was doing it.

I love codes, cyphers and hidden messages: at one point we were going to have the puzzles designed into the Army Of Zero cards but not even tell anyone! The plan was that someone would eventually realise that these unexplained elements on the cards meant something and would start figuring it all out, and the story would start to spread... but in the end we realised that that's a cute high-concept idea, but maybe not such a good business model. Ultimately you have to tell people about the puzzle competition because it's one of the things that makes the product unusual.

Do you have any plans to expand Army of Zero with additional characters or rules?

We've got plenty of ideas for new puzzles that could end up in a second edition. Some of those puzzles we didn't have room for in the first edition, some have only been thought of relatively recently. We've also got alternative sets of rules that we're playtesting at the moment: some of those just tweak the existing game, but others are basically whole new games, using the existing deck. The idea of an expansion pack that gives characters altered statistics - weapons, special items, that sort of thing - is an obvious option, but it's going to need a lot of playtesting because the balance of abilities between the characters is perfect at the moment and we don't want to mess that up.

Do you have any other games designed and waiting to be published?

Actually, no: we really like the Army Of Zero character designs, and there's a lot of time and effort that's been expended on them. We really want to develop the theme. Wherever we go next, it'll be an "Army Of Zero" product.

What designer are you a fan of and who would you like to work with?

I like Todd Breitenstein for his game Zombies!!! (or however many exclamation marks there are), which is definitely the game we've played most in the last year or so. It works as a game and the atmosphere is spot-on. And although it's not a game as such, I think there must be something in Kit Williams' book Masquerade coming through into Army Of Zero as well.

I implied earlier that there are RPG influences: back in my role-playing days - and we're going back 20 years now! - I used to love playing Paranoia, so I'd probably suggest that working with Greg Costikyan would be a hoot.

Dominion Review by Count Zero

2009-02-10T20:12:00.005Z

Dominion is a card game that borrows heavily from the CCG market. It's currently taken the Board Game Geek crowd by storm and for good reason. It's a fantastic game that has been warmly accepted.

Opening the box you get 5 decks of cards, a rules booklet and a plastic insert. Not exactly brimming with components but as its in essence a card game you don't need anything else. Also the re-playability of this game is amazing, you are sure to get your monies worth out of these 500 cards. The cards are of good quality and are going to last, although card protectors are always a good idea. The artwork is pretty good, maybe not as good as the Race for the Galaxy artwork but they convey the role of the cards very well and all tie together with a common theme.

The rule book explains the rules very well with a couple of examples and explanations of the cards and effects. The plastic tray allows you to sort out the cards and stack them to make things easier to use in the future. There is a inlay available on the geek that makes sorting out the cards and finding them much easier.

The huge number of cards are broken down into 3 main card type. First up are the money cards, these show golden coins with either a 1, 2 or 3 stamped in the middle. The cards are your currency cards and are used in the game to buy other cards. Next up are the green victory point cards. These also come in three flavors and are worth either 1, 3 or 6 victory points and are used in the end game scoring.
The main bulk of the cards are the action cards. There are 25 different types of action cards and there are 10 of each. These action cards cover numerous places in your dominion and provide you with the game actions of your deck.

Game setup is very easy. The money and victory point cards are separated and placed on the table. 7 single gold coin cards are dealt to every player along with 3 single victory point cards. This gives each player a deck of 10 cards. These cards are shuffled and placed in front of the player. Next 10 of the possible 25 action point cards are chosen. The rules have a number of set combinations that help you get started but you could easily randomly select 10 action cards and use those.
The table should now have 3 piles of money cards, 3 piles of victory point cards, 25 action point cards plus a trash marker and maybe some other card types. Each card has a cost associated with it and is shown in the bottom corner. This can be anything from 0 to 6 gold.

From now on each players turn consists of a single action point followed by a single buy although the cards that you are going to play will seriously affect this. The first couple of turns are very straightforward. You draw 5 cards from your deck, so your initial hand will be a mix of gold coins and victory point cards. As you have no action cards in your hand you skip this and move onto the buy phase. You now discard a number of gold cards to buy a single card from the numerous piles of cards in front of you. You are mainly going to start by buying the action cards, but you can buy more of the money cards and the victory point cards. The card you have bought and the gold cards used are put on your discard pile along with any cards left in your hand. You then draw another 5 cards as your next hand.
Each payer then has there action and buy phases. When it gets back to you you will have 5 cards that are again made up of the remaining gold and victory point cards. You will not have an action phase but you will get the chance to buy another card. Again the gold cards, the card you bought and the rest of your hand are all placed on the discard pile. You should now have 12 cards in your discard pile. These are gathered, shuffled and 5 new cards are drawn for your next hand.
When it is next your turn you should hopefully have an action card in your 5 cards. In the action phase you will play this card and then use the actions or bonus's that the card gives you. These can vary from drawing extra cards, gaining extra actions, harming the other players, gaining gold or managing your deck. These first few hands are all about setting up your deck to be as efficient as possible. After your actions have run out you then get a buy phase. Hopefully you will have enough gold to buy another card for your deck.

This is the main crux of the game, everyone starts out on an equal footing and its up to the players skill and a little bit of luck to get there deck working as efficiently and effective as possible. There are numerous card combinations available. Some basic ones involve the village card (+1 card, +2 actions) followed by the smithy (+3 cards). This pairing allows you to in effect draw 4 cards from your deck then get to play an additional card. Other cards such as the market (+1 gold, +1 buy, +1 card., +1 action) are a good all rounder giving you a number of benefits. You can stack up any number of cards, so you could start with a market, the card you drew was a village, you play this and grab another card. This is a smithy which you then play. Out of the 3 cards you draw from playing this card you get another village. All of the cards actions and bonuses are accumulative so playing 3 market cards would give you +3 gold to spend.

After a number of turns you should have a fairly reasonable engine running allowing you to speed through your deck and allow you to buy at least one card every turn. When this has happened its time to start buying the victory point cards. You don't really want to get them too early as they make up part of your deck. They are in effect useless until the end game, so buying lots of them too early will dilute your deck. Drawing 5 victory point cards would make for a useless hand.

the game ends when either the 6 Victory point card deck is exhausted, or three other decks are exhausted. The current player then finishes his turn then all players count up there victory point cards. The person with the highest number of victory points wins the game.

I think dominion is a great game. It has taken the task of building a deck of cards into a game and it works very well. Due to the fact that there are so many types of cards each game will be very different. Plus, all players will start on a level footing. With CCG's the person who had the most money would generally have the better deck. There is an element of skill involved, finding cards that work together is very important and you can learn a lot from someone who has played the game. But the more you play the more combinations become apparent and the more your mind starts working out other tricks that can be played.

I can see that Dominion is going to have a large number of expansions. The designer started out with 100 different cards and picked 25 of these for the game. This means that we are going to see a fair number of expansions with new actions cards over the coming years. I believe that these expansions are going to be playable in there own right, which will also be nice for players who have maybe missed out on this great game.

Summary

Presentation 500 cards make for a very re playable game that uses new mechanics. 9/10

Clarity of Rules Rules are clear and concise, you will be playing in no time. 8/10

Game Length Games can range from 20 mins to 45 depending on the number of players. 9/10

Value Good card stock plus loads of re-playability. 8/10

Overall A fantastic card game that plays fast. It's going to stay on the hot list for some time. (9.5/10 not an average)

Pandemic Review by Countzero

2008-12-21T11:48:00.002Z

The world is being gripped by deadly viruses and its up to a small team to find cures and help the worlds population before a pandemic starts.

Pandemic is a cooperative game from Z-Man games that has taken the gaming community by storm. Its very easy to play but you can rack up the difficulty factor if you find things a bit to easy.

So, what do you get when you open the box.

A nice glossy board depicting the world and its major cities
5 large wooden pawns
6 Wooden research station markers
2 decks of cards, one for players one for the diseases
5 role cards
loads of coloured cubes
some cardboard tokens
Rulebook

All in the game components are pretty good, the cards and board look really nice with good quality artwork. The pawns and research stations are a little on the large side, which can cause a problem when everyone is at the same city or location.

Setup is very straight forward, role cards are shuffled and one is dealt to each player. There are 5 roles in the game, each one having its own special ability in the game.

The medic can remove more cubes in cities that he visits.
The operations expert can build research stations without using cards.
The dispatcher can move other players pawns
The scientist can find cures easier
Finally the researcher can swap cards with players.

Once everyone has a role they are dealt some player cards. These correspond to the cities on the board and are used to travel around the board and also to be spent when finding cures for the diseases. The number of cards dealt depends on the number of players. But first you must seed the deck with a number of epedemic cards. These are bad and the number you put into the deck determines how hard the game is. 4 is easy up to 6 which is very tough.

Next up is the seeding of diseases around the globe. There are 4 different coloured diseases, Red, Yellow, Black and Blue. I wish they had put names to the diseases but you can easily make up your own names. The top 3 cards from the disease pile are turned over and 3 cubes of the corresponding colour are placed on that location. 3 more cards are them turned over and 2 cubes go onto these locations. Finally 3 more cards are turned over and 1 cube is placed on these locations. The world should now have 9 infected cities and its up to the players to find the cures for each disease while stopping the infections on the board from spreading.

Each player then has 4 action points to spend. These are spent in a number of ways. Moving along a movement track between locations costs 1 point. Discarding a card from your hand to fly to that location costs 1 point. Discarding the card of the location you are on to fly to any other location costs 1 point. Flying from one research station to another costs 1 point. Removing one disease cube from a location costs 1 point. Building a research station costs 1 point. Finding a cure is 1 point and lastly trading a card is 1 point.

There are a number of different things you can do but they are mainly broken down into travelling or doing actions. Sounds complex, well its not and its very easy to start moving your pawn around the globe and making some headway into curing the infections on the board or working towards finding cures. Each of the different roles alter some of these actions, the medic for example can remove more cubes and the operations expert can build research stations with paying the exact card cost.

Once you have spent your 4 action points you get to draw 2 player cards. These are generally more locations or one of a few special cards.
After this its time to spread the diseases. You have to draw a number of disease cards from the disease pile and place one cube on each location. Pretty straightforward at the start but as the cubes start mounting things can get out of control. If you ever have to put a fourth cube on a location you instead trigger an outbreak. This means that you instead place one coloured cube of that disease onto every city that connects to the city that had the outbreak. This in turn can trigger more outbreaks. Each time you trigger an outbreak the outbreak track increases by one and when it hits 8 its game over.

Whats makes things worse is the epedemic cards that you seeded the deck with. If one of these is drawn the disease discard pile is picked up, shuffled and placed back on top of the disease pile. So in effect the cities that have already been infected and going to come around again.

So how do the players find cures? They need to discard 5 cards from there hand that are all the same colour. So 5 yellow cards would find a cure for the yellow disease. The scientist only needs 4 which makes life a little easier for him. You also need to be in a location with a research station.

When the players get all 4 cures they win the game, they loose if the outbreak marker hits 8 or the player deck runs out.

I have played Pandemic many times with differing numbers of players. Most games have been very tense and hard won with the players only just scrapping a win. Either with only a few player cards left in the deck or with the outbreak marker coming close to its limit.
As a cooperative game it works really well, the 5 roles are all needed and I personally don't think that they are unbalanced. I am happy to play with any of the roles although the researcher and scientist combo can certainly find the cures the quickest. But all that time researching allows the diseases to spread. After a couple of games you should have the abilities of the different roles down and know how best to use them in conjunction with the other players.

The theme in the game is pretty good, as I mentioned earlier it would have been nice to add names to the diseases but that's pretty trivial. I have also seen other users use coloured zombies instead of the cubes.

Whats not to like, well the board can be a little cluttered at times. Smaller pawns would help this or making the board a little bigger. Also its very easy for a seasoned player to just run the game and tell everyone what to do. These are pretty minor points compared to all the good things in the game.

The second print run should be hitting shelves very soon and with an expansion due in 2009 things are looking good for Pandemic.

Summary

Presentation: Game looks good and plays very well if a little tense at times. 9/10

Clarity of Rules: Excellent rules will get you playing very quickly. 8/10

Game Length: Games take about 60 minutes to play sometimes a little quicker if the players have a good run. 9/10

Value: Good quality components that are well made 8/10

Overall: This is currently my favorite co-op game. It plays really well and doesn't take too long. (8.5/10 not an average)

Kingsburg Review by Count Zero

2008-12-15T13:00:00.002Z

Kingsburg Review by Count Zero

The king is dying and the kingdom is going to be passed on to one of his loyal ambassadors, its up to you to prove that you are most worthy of the realm. You have to do this by building various buildings in the country and protecting the land from invading armies.

The artwork on the box of this game is amazing, it gives a good feel for what you are going to get when you open up the box. Inside you get one large board that depicts the 18 different advisors that you will influence in the game. 5 smaller board that each player uses to mark which buildings they have build. A large bag of coloured dice, three in each colour and some plain white ones. Various cardboard tokens to be used by the players to mark there buildings and to gain other dice rolling advantages. Some wooden tokens to mark victory points and times in the game, a small deck of cards to depict the various enemies that attack in the winter season. Finally a nice colour rulebook that explains the game very well with good use of examples. The components are all very well made and the main boards artwork is very nice. It's a slightly cartoonish fantasy theme that works really well.

The game is played over a period of 5 years, with each of the years broken down into 4 seasons. The game starts in Spring and all players roll there three coloured dice. The values are totaled and the playing order is adjusted with the lowest going fist.
Now comes the basis of the turns. The dice that you have rolled are placed on the advisors, the dice can be broken down or placed as one. So for example if you total was 9 (3+2+4)you could put all three dice on the master hunter who is advisor number 9. Or you could place two dice totaling 5 (3+2)onto the soldier. Once you have placed some or all of your dice the next player places his. He cannot at this point place his dice on an advisor who already has dice on them. Once everyone has placed on one advisor the starting player can then place any remaining dice. This goes on until everyone has placed there die.

Each of the 18 advisors helps the players in one of several ways. Mainly through giving them resources, either wood, stone or gold. They can also supply troops for your army, spy on the Winter enemy or give victory points.

The advisors are then played and players recieve there resources or abilities. Now comes the spring build phase, here players spend there resources to build the buildings on there build mat. The starting buildings are relatively cheap, a single wood for a palisade or a wood and a stone for a tower. Each building is worth a number of victory points and generally gives the player some abilities. The more expensive the building the more victory points it provides and the better its power. The tower gives +1 to your army, the Inn gives a +2 token each summer which can be added to a dices value. (A 6 could be used as an 8).

After this has happened its time for Summer, again the players roll there dice, adjust there starting order, influence there advisors and recieve there benefits. Building happens again and hopefully the players will start scoring some good points.

Autumn is played in the same way with an added phase. When Winter comes a random army is going to attack the realm, anyone who has used there spy ability will know the strength of the attacking army and will hopefully have prepared. Players can now buy armies at the cost of two goods for an army. Once everyone has bought there armies the king will send in reinforcments. A single dice is rolled and added to everyones army strength. The enemy card is now flipped and will display the enemy type, goblins, zombies etc. The card will display the stregth of the army and each player thats army is greater than that will defeat the enemy and recieve the cards bonus. This is usually victory points or resources. Anyone who doesn't defeat them as the bad effects of the card played. Usually loosing victory points, resources or in the worst case buildings.

The first year comes to an end and by now everyone should know what they are planning for the other 4. There are a couple of extra events in the turn order. At the end of Spring and Summer the king will help the loosing player and give the winning player extra victory points. This is a nice little bonus, being the loosing player gets the kings favour in Autumn. This allows them to influence an advisor who already has dice on them or to build twice in a build phase. This little bit of help can bring the loosing player back into the running.

The next 4 years are played exactly the same with the winter enemy getting harder and the players building effecting the game. By the third year some building that produce victory points should be in play and the defensive bonus of other buildings should take the edge off of the winter phase.

After the end of the 5 years whoever has the most victory points wins.

It all sounds easy enough but there are several things that effect the outcome of this game but mainly its a planning game. What buildings you build really effects your game, the buildings are in a basic technology tree. You have to build a statue before the church, and a church before a cathedral. The higher up the tree the better the building and victory point bonus. The winter attack is also a key point in the game, early in the game the kings help will generally be enough to defeat the enemy but by year 5 the winter phase can dramatically effect the players. If you haven't built up your army you may loose your most powerful building and the victory points that it was worth.

Kingsburg was better than I expected. It plays really well and once the first year is played everyone will know what the have to do. I really think that this game will be nominated for the SdJ as its a great gateway/family game.

If you are interested there is a java version available here http://mitglied.lycos.de/thunderfall/

There will also be an expansion out for the game towards the end of the year.

Summary

Presentation: The game looks great, its well put together and the components look the part. 9/10

Clarity of Rules: The rules are really well written, there are plenty of examples to help you play. 8/10

Game Length: The game takes about 90 minutes which will get shorter once everyone has played a couple of times. 9/10

Value: Good quality components that are well made 8/10

Overall: This is a great game that would be an ideal gateway game for friends or family. (8.5/10 not an average)

New 15% VAT rate now active at IGUK

2008-11-30T22:06:00.002Z

The new 15% VAT rate is now active at IGUK all existing and new products will now have the 15% VAT rate applied, making a 2.5% saving!

Neuland Review by Derek Carver

2008-05-26T10:25:00.003Z

Some games come to our attention as a result of a flurry of rave reviews but then inexplicably disappear from public awareness no more than six months later. “How can this happen?” we ask ourselves. “Why did we all rush to buy this game yet now nobody wants to play it – not even a single bid when put on eBay!” We’ve all been there and as I write this I can see a host of examples on my shelves that I’ll refrain from listing!

But there are other truly excellent games that sort of creep into our awareness. Hardly anybody mentions them on the various boardgame sites. It is as though they never happened, yet as the months – even years - go by more and more people get talking about them. Three immediately spring to mind that I’ve no hesitation in naming. One was ‘Die Macher’, another was the cardgame ‘Der Flaschenteufel’, and the third is ‘Neuland’.

‘Neuland’ has just been reprinted (which is why I am writing this piece) in a much more colourful format. But interestingly enough it was because it looked so terribly dull in its first publication that I bought it. Not that it was badly made. It was simply extremely dull to look at. But with so much competition to get a game published, I thought, a game looking as dull as this must be really special in order to have found a good publisher! So I bought it. And how pleased I was that I did. I have always regarded it as being one of the two best games of its year (2004) and I couldn’t understand why people weren’t raving about it.

What I didn’t know at the time, of course, was that only a very few copies had been printed – somebody told me 500. So it wasn’t surprising that it was little known. (I seem to remember that this was the number of the first printing of ‘Die Macher’, which also wasn’t reprinted for several years.)

But now the demand for ‘Neuland’ has grown sufficiently to justify a reprint. When I commented on this to a well-known German reviewer he said how delighted he was because this was one of the very few games that in his review he had ranked 10 out of 10.

There is no point in taking up space with a detailed explanation of how it is played because this information is now available elsewhere. But if you are familiar with the Splotter ‘Roads and Boats’ you will instantly recognise a similarity (although ‘Neuland’ plays in a far shorter time). In both games players can build manufacturing facilities but these facilities, once built, can be used by any player – not just the builder. And unlike games such as ‘Caylus’ the builder of the facility derives no benefit if others make use of it. What is more – and here I’m back talking about ‘Neuland’ – since only one person can occupy the facility at a time you’re a fool if you build the thing and then fail to have any action points remaining that turn in order to place one of your pieces on it.

In a nutshell it is a game of progressive development. You start off with some basic commodities that you then use to convert to something higher up the scale, which in turn – and in association with other commodities – convert into something even better. The aim is to finally acquire the more abstract concepts of a civilised society and so win the game. And if, like me, you are getting fed up with felling timber to build your hut to house your cow, to sell your milk, etc. etc., don’t be put off; you’ll find ‘Neuland’ rises above this now rather tired concept. There is also a very clever and most original ‘movement’ system, which you’ll discover if you play the game.

At first sight the aim seems to be so very daunting you can’t ever imagine getting there without a considerable amount of brain-ache. Certainly a degree of brain-ache is involved but nothing excessive (after all, my brain has now been round a very long time but it can still cope with ‘Neuland’ OK). In fact, if you enjoy a challenging game you’ll be delighted. A few weeks back I introduced it to a player who is known as being “not easy to please” to put it mildly and he instantly placed an order for the upcoming version, proclaiming it as being the best game to come his way for a very long time. So there you go.

It is for four players maximum and it plays equally successfully with three – maybe better because your turn comes round more quickly. I’ve not played it with two so can’t comment.

I suppose it is important to stress that all of my comments relate to the original version. The reprint, which is due to arrive in the UK any day I’m told, has added more colour to the components and might or might not incorporate some changes – we’ll need to wait and see. But the game was so excellent that I can’t imagine it has been radically changed in any way.

Derek Carver

Battle for Hill 218 Review

2008-05-20T12:49:00.001Z

Battle for Hill 218 review by Count Zero

Battle for Hill 218 is the latest offering from Your Move Games, there most popular game so far has been the Battleground series but I think things may change now.

For your money you get a single deck of cards in the standard cardboard box, similar to a deck of Magic cards. Opening the box you get a small paper instruction manual, two decks of 26 cards one set blue and the other is green. Finally there is the Hill 218 card.

Each player has the same set of 26 cards; these are split into the different troop or equipment cards that make up your army. These are infantry, heavy weapons, tank, special op's, paratroopers, artillery and final air strikes.

Setup of the game is very easy, the hill 218 card is placed on a table. It's more of a marker and serves no real purpose in the game other than as a visual aid. Each player then takes there two air strike cards and places them on their side of the table. There deck of cards is then shuffled and five cards are drawn. From these five two are discarded.

Player one now starts, he draws two cards from his deck and places one of his 5 cards. The first placement needs to be on his side of the Hill 218 card. You have to imagine that the board is made up of a grid of spaces. Each space being able to take one card. The spaces on opposite sides of the Hill 218 card represent your base. Your objective is to place one of your cards in your opponent’s base space. Sounds easy, but it can take a bit of effort.

Player two now takes his turn, he draws two cards from his deck and places two on the table. From this point on, both players take turns to draw two cards and place two. These can be either from their hand, or one of their two airstrike cards. The rules of placement are simple; each card has an image showing its supply route. This is represented as arrows running from a square. Cards can only be placed if they can trace a line back to your base. So for example, an infantry card will show supply routes North, South, East and West. You could place another infantry card next to this card in any of those spaces. Most of the cards have this same supply rules except for paratroopers who can be dropped into any space on the board.

Once a card has been placed it has the opportunity to attack. Again a small image will show the attack directions that this card can use and whether it can destroy a card or will need support to help it. The bigger unit cards such as tanks and artillery can destroy cards. So for example a tank can destroy a card to its North, South, East and West. So place it in front of an enemy card and it will destroy it. Most of the other cards need help to destroy your enemy’s cards and this is where the support rules come into place.

The final image on the card shows what support that the card can play, it will again have markers pointing North, South, East, West or in all directions. If a card is placed that requires support in order to destroy the enemy card the cards next to it are checked. If they can offer support then the enemy card is removed. Sounds a bit complicated, but after your first game you will get it.

The final type of card is the airstrike; by playing one of your two airstrike cards you can instantly remove one of the enemy’s cards from the board. You only have two of these so you need to use them wisely.

First player to place one of their cards into the opponents base square wins the game. It's a quick game that last about 10 minutes, so you will be playing multiples of the game or usually a best of three games to determine the winner.

I have found that the player who starts second seems to have a bit of an upper hand. But I am expecting this to even out after more plays. Hill 218 is a good quick game; it's one of those games that will surprise you with its unexpected complexity. From the start it seems pretty easy, but after a couple of games the strategies start forming.

As a bonus, your move games have put a free java version on there web site. It's easy to install and allows you to play the game without spending any money.
The link is here http://www.yourmovegames.com/pages/hill218.html

Summary

Presentation
Card stock is good with a nice shiny finish. 8/10

Clarity of Rules
Rules are pretty clear, after a game you will not need them again 8/10

Game Length
Games last about 10-20 minutes, so you can play a few quickly 8/10

Value
It's a pack of cards 7/10

Overall
An abstract game with a WW2 theme, quick to play and allot of fun (8/10 not an average)