Boardgame of the Week Grimm Forest

Grimm Forest, from Druid City Games, arrived today. We got a look at it at the GAMA Trade Show last spring and thought enough of the game to back the Kickstarter campaign for it. Game play is pretty cool. It is a resource management and bluffing game. Undead Viking reviews it here

Boardgame of the Week Relic

If you like Talisman and remember Talisman Timescape fondly, you would like Relic which is Talisman set in the Warhammer 40k universe, meaning that you have 10 40K characters to choose from when playing. Players circle a Warp rift, fighting against the forces of Chaos and working to defeat the evil that lives beyond the rift. 2-4 players expect to take 1-2 hours to play. I think, given the system derives from Talisman, that 2 hours is pretty optimistic. Was highly anticipated but anticipation was greater that actual desire and sales never approach those of Talisman.

Boardgame of the Week: Wonky

USAOpoly has retired the basic all Ages Wonky but still makes the 21+ version. In this version, you are member of the HAZMAT team who must follow directions on the PROTOCOL cards to stabilize the Wonky element cubes. Follow the instructions on all your PROTOCOL cards and have no cards in your hand at the end of your turn to win. Needless to say, the cards are spill proof as consuming liquids can play an important part in the game.

Boardgame of the Week: Camelot

In Camelot, players vie for control of Excalibur. Each player controls five Arthurs and a host of other Arthurian characters in a heated attempt to grab and retrieve the sword before any other player succeeds in this task.

On the surface, the game appears to be a very simple wargame, combat being quickly resolved without any dice as characters fight each other. The key to the game, however, is that two players are always taking turns at the same time, the turns being regulated by "turn tokens" that pass around the board. When one player finishes his or her turn, the turn-token is passed to the next player who does not already have one. If one player is a slowpoke taking his turn, then the other turn-token passes around the table, allowing other players to take turns. This forces players to take very fast turns, usually about 5 seconds each, allowing the game to move along with the intensity of a video game. Games usually take 20 to 30 minutes to play, even with three to six players.

Special rules resolve potential conflicts that could occur when two players try to perform actions simultaneously where priority is in question, resolving quickly and simply.

No player ever quite gets knocked out of the game due to loss of characters; Arthurs always "rejuvenate", returning to your pile of pieces (your "village") that can enter the board. Characters start at a chosen entry space at the edge of the board, and move to the center to grab Excalibur, returning the Sword to their entry space to win. Each of the 5 character-types (Merlin, Lancelot, etc) have their own unique abilities, but everyone starts with an identical set of pieces.

There are also two variants in the rules, allowing players to vary the game by going after the "Accoutrements of Kingship" instead of the Sword, or by gathering a number of gold pieces scattered around the board so as to "buy the kingship". Tokens are included for these variants.

The game is very intense and fast, requiring players to think on their feet and make fast realtime decisions; if you are a big fan of slow, deep thinking, strategy games, you might look elsewhere.

Board Game of the Week: Twilight Imperium

Another game from the Fantasy Flight stable, Twilight Imperium has gone in and out of print a number of times over the past 20 years and is one of the most complex boardgames we sell that is not a wargame. A game designed for those who like their games relatively complex and both strategic and tactical, Twilight Imperium also demands a significant amount of time to play. We played it during a Tuesday night Gaming With Gary session and it took about an hour and a half to get through the 1st turn. However, once you have played a game, subsequent ones play much more quickly. You can expect a game to take 3-4 hours though so either set aside an evening for it or a table, without cats, where you can leave it set up safely.

Board Game of The Week: Tapple

Tapple, from USAopoly is a great party or family game. In Tapple, players select a category such as pizza toppings, the the first player taps a letter that starts an item in that category such as C for "cheese" then hits the timer, starting it for the next player. As the letters get tapped, it gets harder and harder to come up with an item for the untapped letters. If a player cannot think of one before the timer goes off, they are out of the game and play continues until only one is left. A game is generally over in 10 minutes or so but there are dozens of categories from which to choose or you can even come up with your own so great replay value.

Boardgame of the Week Kaiju Crush

Selected for this week Kaiju Crush for two reasons:
1) It just came in this week and is a very fun boardgame, somewhat similar to King of Tokyo, and any game in which you get to crush buildings is great
2) the designers from Fireside Games visited us and demoed the game in early October and we got promo items for the game to give away with a purchase.

Boardgame of the Week: Pandemic Legacy 2

Normally I focus on older games for the Boardgame of the Week but wanted to call your attention to the 2nd season of Pandemic Legacy since this one differs somewhat from Season 1. In Season 1, players worked together to stop the pandemic and removed cubes from the board to show how effectively they had stopped the spread of the disease. Well, guess what? You failed.

In season 2, the pandemic spread, wiping out much of the population. You and your team work together to get supplies to the survivors, bringing back civilization from the brink of collapse, placing cubes indicating successfully delivered supplies. You are still the heroes though.

Boardgame of the Week Saboteur

For those of you who like the "screw with the other players" type of game, I call your attention to Saboteur, an early version of the genre for only $15.  Saboteur has gone through several publishers and comes through Mayfair Games now.

In the game, players lay cards down from the start, trying to reach the gold nuggets. Broken axes, cave-ins and busted lanterns can impede progress but all players are working more ore (see what I did there) less together, except for the secret saboteur dwarves who play block cards without appearing to play block cards and only win if the other players fail. This is a great game for anywhere from 3 to 10 players while the standalone Sabotuer 2 can handle up to 12 players.

Boardgame of the Week Talisman

To complement the RPG of the Week, we will start focusing one post a week on a boardgame. This week's game is Talisman, which first came out in the 1980s and has gone in and out of print ever since. I can best describe Talisman as "D&D on a board", although games like Descent and HeroQest do a better job of replicating the D&D experience. Players start off as a character with certain abilities and traverse the board increasing their strength until they can do battle with the dragon lurking at the center of the board.

Much like the classic dungeon crawls of the era, the outer rim (upper levels) are relatively easy to combat and the adversaries get more dangerous the closer you get to the center of the board. The game can take hours to finish  but players generally stay engrossed until the end (or decide to quit).