Kachina BGL-0046 pub. by Bucephalus Games www.bucephalus.com. 7" x10" lithographed box. 60 Kachina tiles, 1 scoreboard,5 player aid cards, 5 score markers and the rules. MSRP $29.99.
Gameplay Kachina is a tile laying game with much strategy and very little luck. Players take turns laying tiles from their set on the table, attempting to score points by having the highest number tile in the row or column. Certain Kachina tiles, drawn from Native American lore, affect the game in different ways. For example Koshari (The Clown) reduces the value of adjacent tiles to 0, while playing the Warrior allows the player to replace any tile in play with it and take that tile back into their hand. The game ends when the last tile is played and the player with the highest score wins. Designed for 2-5 players aged 8 and up. Expect a game to last 30 to 45 minutes.
Presentation I've been impressed with the quality of Bucephalus Game's releases so far and Kachina doesn't disappoint, though I'm not sure as to the reason for reprinting the same player reference material twice on the reference card. Heck they even put in a little pack of silica ge to keep the card stock dry. The eight age rulebook only needs four pages to explain the rules, though it may take playing through once to understand the effects of the various Kachina in the game. Also, for a game drawing its imagery from Native American mythos, instead of having two pages devoted to other Bucephalus products, I would have liked some background information on where the various Kachina came from and their place within the religion. Overall good game and nicely packaged.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Review--Aquarius
Aquarius pub. by Looney Labs www.looneylabs.com 80 full color card deck. 3 3/4 x5" box. 2-5 players, 10-30 minutes. MSRP $15.
Gameplay Similar to dominoes but with changing victory conditions, ala to Looney Lab's Fluxx. Players lay cards on the table, attempting to connect the element cards that match their secret goal card. This 10th Anniversary version includes the same five elements as the original edition but there's a new style of element card and a new aciton card, as well as rulse for playing a preschool version of Aquarius.
Presentation Aquarius now comes in a two part box, the same style as the company has adopted for its new versions of Fluxx and Traitor and a purchase of 6 games comes in a colorful tuck box displayer, meaning it's much easier to find on the shelf than the previous edition. A cardboard insert keeps the deck from shifiting around inside the box and the rule sheet now comes with color illustrations of the cards rather than the B&W ones on the original. A very nice upgrade over the original game and the pre-school variations are especially welcome as it can be hard to find pre-school games in the hobby game market.
Gameplay Similar to dominoes but with changing victory conditions, ala to Looney Lab's Fluxx. Players lay cards on the table, attempting to connect the element cards that match their secret goal card. This 10th Anniversary version includes the same five elements as the original edition but there's a new style of element card and a new aciton card, as well as rulse for playing a preschool version of Aquarius.
Presentation Aquarius now comes in a two part box, the same style as the company has adopted for its new versions of Fluxx and Traitor and a purchase of 6 games comes in a colorful tuck box displayer, meaning it's much easier to find on the shelf than the previous edition. A cardboard insert keeps the deck from shifiting around inside the box and the rule sheet now comes with color illustrations of the cards rather than the B&W ones on the original. A very nice upgrade over the original game and the pre-school variations are especially welcome as it can be hard to find pre-school games in the hobby game market.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Review: Savage Worlds Dawn of Legends
Dawn of Legends published by Daring Entertainment www.daringentertain.com 8 ½ x11” softcover with black and white interiors. 284 pages. MSRP $39.99.
Gameplay Dawn of Legends is a set of rules for running superheroic characters and campaigns using Pinnacle’s Savage Worlds rules engine and players must have a copy of the Savage Worlds’ Explorer’s Edition. From what I can tell, Autumn Arbor: City o Legends was originally created as a stand alone campaign setting that has been retooled to work with the Savage Worlds rules. The first 104 pages are rules for superheroic creation, the rest of the book delves into the Autumn Arbor setting.
Presentation The cover is OK but nothing striking, a group shot of superheroes flying towards the viewer. It would have been nice to see DOT hardbound as a paperback of this size is going to suffer shelf damage pretty quickly. The Table of Contents does a good job of listing all the powers but there’s only a sketchy indication of where to find info in the rest of the book and no index, which would have been pretty useful for a book this size. That said, Dawn of Legends is pretty complete, esp. in the power list and campaign setting, with over six dozen NPCs included. If you wan to play superheroic adventures using the Savage Worlds system, Dawn of Legends is a good choice; in fact, as far as I know, currently it’s the only choice.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Review--QAGS
Q. A. G. S. (Quick Ass Game System) HEX 6000 Published by Hex Games www.hexgames.com 8 ½ x11” Perfect bound softcover, black and white interiors. MSRP $15.95.
Gameplay The cover, showing an athnromoprhized die with a smirk on its face, gives you a pretty good idea of the snarky attitude towards RPGs found in QUAGS.. Character creation is pretty flexible. The GM decides how powerful they want the players, then givens each player a number of points, called Yum Yums, to build a character by allocating Yum Yums to the three basic statistics, or Words, of Brain, Body and Nerve, as well as jobs, gimmicks, skills and health. The book doesn’t give a set number of points but 100 appears standard and works best with the game system.
The system is pretty straightforward. The player declares an action,, and, after applying modifiers from skills, gimmicks, etc., to the appropriate Word, rolls a d20, needing less than the modified Word total to success.. The roll can further be adjusted by factoring in a difficulty number from Dumb Table #3, which makes the task harder by giving the player a range which the roll has to hit in order to succeed. If the player, for example, wants to pick a lock, a Tough task, the GM sets a difficulty number of 10. After modifiers, the Brain score is 16. The player must roll between 10 and 16 in order to succeed at picking the lock. Yum Yums can be expended, or eaten if using M&Ms or something similar, to modify the score as well. Then, of course, there is a statement in the book that all of the rules are optional, should not get in the way of the game and can freely me modified or ignored by the GM to keep the game moving along.
Presentation QUAGS says on the cover it is for mature readers and the insides do not belie that warning. There’s no problem with the art, which ranges in quality from “eh” to pretty good, though some of it appears recycled from other Hex Games, especially M-Force. However, obscenities are sprinkled throughout the book, especially in the examples. Everything is cleanly laid out, with a one page TOC but no index, about a dozen one page campaign settings, eleven appendices and a whole mess of character and campaign worksheets. There’s even a cartoon explaining how to roll and read dice and a page describing other Hex Games products. Not a bad deal for $16 and 96 pages.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Review: Cortex Role Playing System
Cortex System Role Playing Game MWP1019 pub. by margaret weis productions www.mwp.com 8 ½ x 11” perfect bound softcover w. B&W interiors. 160 pages. MSRP $29.99.
Gameplay 8 Written by Jamie Chambers, the Cortex system uses a game engine derived from some of the company’s other RPGs. Their Serenity and Sovereign Stone RPGs come to mind as the game uses an attribute/skill roll against a difficulty number to resolve outcomes. In fact the system is also very similar to Savage Worlds/Deadlands, in that a character’s competence in an ability or skill is indicated by the size of the dice assigned. A d6 is considered average while a d12 is at the far end of the scale. Unlike Deadlands, ability and skills levels can advance beyond d12 through adding a third dice to the roll.
Presentation—5 Cortex’ cover feature what looks like a brain cell as the focus, with the name clearly visible on both front and back covers as well as the spine. The back cover gives a pretty good job of describing the game but no indication it’s based on MWP’s Firefly system. There’s a good 2 page TOC and a one page index and tables, lots of tables. Art is pretty sparse and serves mainly to break up text and a good chapter on gamemastering. No adventure, but there are three campaign settings included ones based on Margaret Weiss’ Star of the Guardians and one on Michael Williams’ Arcady novels. It would have been nice to have these mentioned on the back cover for additional name recognition. Additionally, MWP offers a free PDF of Cortex to purchasers and this is prominently mentioned on the cover and title page.
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Review: Martian Fluxx
Martian Fluxx pub. by Looney Labs. 100 card deck plus instructions. MRSP $16
Gameplay--Martian Fluxx, as you might guess, is a Martian themed version of Looney Labs popular Fluxx game. This version is packaged in the 3 3/4 x 5" box that Looney has gone to with their releases since Zombie Fluxx, which makes them easier to display and find on the shelf. The backs of the decks are still the same, meaning this deck can get shuffled together with any of the other Fluxx decks, though the card assortment means you'd need to shuffle in the Creepers, Goals and Keeper cards to keep the deck playable. Most of the Creepers are Pathetic Humans, while the Goals are such things as Take Me to Your Leader and Martian Chess, with Keepers such as The Mothership and Martian Chess.
There are two new cards in the game: The Meta Rule and the Ungoal. The Meta Rule is a rule card that plays along the Basic Rules card and stays in play the entire game. Once the players agree to put it in play at the start of the game, it can't be removed by an Action card or a New Rule. If the Ungoal is drawn and put into play, once its conditions are met, the game ends with no winner. Since its conditions specify Martian Fluxx cards, it won't be used except in games where other Martian Fluxx Cards are also used.
Salability--Martian Fluxx doesn't have the "cool" factor of zombies and and, for whatever reason, zombies are currently cool, nor does it have the name recognition of Monty Python. MF will sell because, hey it's Fluxx, but I don't expect to see it doing the numbers of either Monty Python Fluxx or Zombie Fluxx. Looney Labs does have a demo kit available which gives you posters and sell sheets, as well as a demo deck and a dozen promo cards to hand out to purchasers or demo players.
Gameplay--Martian Fluxx, as you might guess, is a Martian themed version of Looney Labs popular Fluxx game. This version is packaged in the 3 3/4 x 5" box that Looney has gone to with their releases since Zombie Fluxx, which makes them easier to display and find on the shelf. The backs of the decks are still the same, meaning this deck can get shuffled together with any of the other Fluxx decks, though the card assortment means you'd need to shuffle in the Creepers, Goals and Keeper cards to keep the deck playable. Most of the Creepers are Pathetic Humans, while the Goals are such things as Take Me to Your Leader and Martian Chess, with Keepers such as The Mothership and Martian Chess.
There are two new cards in the game: The Meta Rule and the Ungoal. The Meta Rule is a rule card that plays along the Basic Rules card and stays in play the entire game. Once the players agree to put it in play at the start of the game, it can't be removed by an Action card or a New Rule. If the Ungoal is drawn and put into play, once its conditions are met, the game ends with no winner. Since its conditions specify Martian Fluxx cards, it won't be used except in games where other Martian Fluxx Cards are also used.
Salability--Martian Fluxx doesn't have the "cool" factor of zombies and and, for whatever reason, zombies are currently cool, nor does it have the name recognition of Monty Python. MF will sell because, hey it's Fluxx, but I don't expect to see it doing the numbers of either Monty Python Fluxx or Zombie Fluxx. Looney Labs does have a demo kit available which gives you posters and sell sheets, as well as a demo deck and a dozen promo cards to hand out to purchasers or demo players.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Review: Fleets of the Three Galaxies
Rifts Dimension Book 13: Fleets of the Three Galaxies published by Palladium Books PAL 873. Softcover 128 pages. MSRP $16.95
A sourcebook for the Risfs RPG, FTG presents the most powerful fleets in the Galaxies, along with ships, key figures, problems. Mainly useful if you are running a space based Rifts game or doing something with the battle between demons and Deevils in the Minion War series of Rifts supplements.
A sourcebook for the Risfs RPG, FTG presents the most powerful fleets in the Galaxies, along with ships, key figures, problems. Mainly useful if you are running a space based Rifts game or doing something with the battle between demons and Deevils in the Minion War series of Rifts supplements.
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