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Middle Earth Quest
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29th September 09
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Middle Earth Quest is a new release from Fantasy Flight Games - one of their 'big-box' releases which comes with thousands of components. It is set, supposedly, in the period of The Lord of the Rings between Bilbo's Birthday Party and the Fellowship leaving The Shire with the Ring. I am by no means any kind of Tolkien expert, so all the hero characters in the game that you get to play were completely unknown to me.
The way the game works is that one player takes on the role of Sauron, whilst the 1-3 other players take the role of heroes. Sauron's objective is to advance one of his 'plot markers' to the end of the track, or to advance all 3 of them half way along the track. The heroes are trying to advance theirs to the end of the track first.
There isnt a great deal of interaction between the Sauron player and the heroes, apart from when there is a fight between monsters/minions and the heroes. Sauron spends his time playing plot and shadow cards and spreading his evil influence across the land.
The heroes then move around across the land based on the cards they have in hand. The cards are used for movement and combat, so you don't want to spend all of them moving to a fight and have nothing left to fight with. They will move to locations on the map either to cancel the evil plot cards, meet with legendary characters from the books, complete quests, or simply pick up 'favor' - which is basically used as a currency in the game. On the way they may encounter monsters or the more powerful minions that Sauron commands, in which case they will have to fight. The fighting is a simple and easy to understand card-based system with attack and defence. Depending on the toughness of the foe that is being faced, Sauron will draw a hand of cards from one of three different decks.
Its not a particularly long game to play out. Unless Sauron picks up some cards to slow down the advance of the heroes story marker, the game will only last nine turns. Whilst I've only played it once, it does seem to be well balanced as it was pretty close at the end. I would say that I think the game seems to have been designed for 3 players, as in a 2 player game, heroes get an extra action and similarly in a 4 player game, Sauron gets an extra action. If fantasy/questing/battling monsters/defeating evil is your type of game then this wont disappoint you - moreso if youre a Tolkien fiend. If you haven't ever tried one of these Fantasy Flight big-box games before, don't let the size and amount of components daunt you. All the rules are pretty straightforward, self-explanatory and simple.
For me, its not quite as good as War of the Ring in terms of LOTR games, but its a good second place.
User: Wishful_Thinking
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Dice Town. High Roller or Tumbleweed?
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31st August 09
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Howdy y’all! Our group recently tried out Dice Town, a poker dice game with a few extra layers lavished on top, so I thought I’d let you know a little about it and how we found it.
Lets look at the components first – each player gets a set of 5 poker dice and a plastic dice cup for concealing their rolls. The dice are nice – and that many poker dice can easily be used for a regular game of poker dice should you wish to – but the cups feel a little lightweight and cheaply made. There’s a game board (which is mostly used for storing various other bits – there’s no actual gameplay taking place on it) which is colourful and has some cute characters and buildings on it depicting each of the locations, a couple of decks of game cards, a card sheriff’s badge, some plastic ‘gold nuggets’ and some paper money (“why oh why?” was the cry of one of our regular players. Paper money in games is one of his irrational pet hates).
And so to the game. There are a number of locations on the board which the player’s are vying for control of every round. Each of them corresponds to a dice roll, and whoever has the most of a certain type takes control and reaps the rewards. As you all know, the dice depict 9s, 10s, Js, Qs, Ks, and As. Once the rolls are completed (we’ll come to how they play out a bit later), all players compare their rolls and win the appropriate locations.
Nines – The Gold Mine. Whoever has rolled the most nines gets to take gold nuggets. The game starts with 30 in the mine, and the player gets to take a number equal to the number of nine’s they’ve rolled. Once the mine is depleted, the game ends. Each nugget is worth 1VP at the end of the game.
Tens – The Bank. The player who has rolled the most tens gets to rob the bank and take all the cash currently on it. Cash becomes very important during the course of play. Also, leftover cash is worth 1VP per $2 at the end of the game.
Jacks – The General Store. Whoever has the most Jacks gets to take cards from the General store. These can be worth VPs, or affect gameplay in some other way. They get to take a number of cards equal to the number of Jacks they rolled, and keep one, discarding the rest.
Queens – The Saloon. The most queens gets to steal cards from an opponent. They take a number of cards equal to the number of queens they rolled from one opponent, keep one and give the rest back. These can be either General Store cards or Property Claim cards (worth 1-5 VPs).
Kings – The Sheriff. The most Kings get’s the sheriff’s badge. The Sheriff gets to decide who wins ties. They can (and will) be bribed!
Best Hand – The Town Hall. Whoever has rolled the best poker hand controls the Town Hall. They get to take the first Property Claim card, plus another for every Ace that is in their hand (up to a maximum of 3 cards total). These are the primary way of getting VPs in the game.
The last location is Doc Badluck. If you played a hand and did not win any locations at all, you may visit the doc. He’ll give you rewards based on what you rolled. One of his most useful functions is to be able to protect your Property Claim cards so that they cannot be stolen. This is se useful that we found ourselves frequently attempting to NOT win any locations – harder than you might think!
Lets roll the dice! Each player rolls their 5 dice and secretly glances at their roll. The only option that doesn’t cost any cash is keeping 1 die and rolling the rest. Keeping none costs $1, and keeping any extra dice costs $1 per die you wish to keep past the first one. Decide what you want to keep and conceal it under your hand, with the rest of your dice concealed under the cup. All reveal at once – pay any cash you owe and roll again. You can now see what other people are starting to go for. Rinse and repeat, until one player has decided to keep all their 5 dice. At this point, all other players get ONE more roll, which they have to keep. Everyone has now settled their rolls, and locations get assigned. All cash spent by players this round goes to the stagecoach, which is delivered to the bank available to be robbed next turn.
We found this game light, entertaining and fun. The new layers added to the basic game of poker dice (which we all find quite dull), add much, and there is a degree of strategy to the game, as you can change what you are going for mid-roll if you see from your opponents rolls that you cannot hope to win what you were after initially. As mentioned before, you sometimes find yourself trying to win nothing at all! Its quick (less than 30 mins), and a nice filler game in between the more serious stuff. The cartoony artwork is nice and cutesy. A word of warning though – it says it’s for 2-5 players, however I don’t think its worth playing with less than 4. All in all, 7/10.
Dice Town ain’t big enough for the two of us!
-GSM
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Dominion: Intrigue... Intriguing?
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29th June 09
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Dominion was, for me, one of the games of last year. Simple, easy-to-understand, and more importantly, completely new and refreshing mechanics made Dominion a game for everyone, from the “casuallest” to the most hardcore gamer. It has a frankly surprising amount of depth and strategy to it, and the large number of possible 10-card deck combinations you could be playing with, combined with the short playing time, made it a game we’d come back to regularly.
And so, it was with some excitement that we broke out the new “expansion”, Dominion: Intrigue, at the weekend. Firstly, I should explain that it’s not really an “expansion” in the strictest sense – as it can be played as a standalone game. You don’t need to have the original game in order to play it although by the same token you can quite happily combine any or all of the 10-card decks from either set to form your 10 sets of Kingdom cards for the game. As with the original game, the box comes with a handy insert to hold all the sets of cards individually, but new to this set is the cardboard template that runs down the middle of the box that tells you which set goes where. This was something that gamers had hand-made for their own sets of the original game, so its nice to know that someone at Rio Grande is listening.
Intrigue introduces only one new game mechanic: “Pass”. This enables you to pass a card to the opponent on the left. Beyond that, there are no changes to the core game mechanics. There do seem to be, however, plenty of new choices to be made depending on the card sets that come out.
I’m certainly not going to go into detail here about every card that we came across and how we chose to use it, but I’ll go over some of the ones I felt were key in the two games that we had. The most obvious new type of card you’ll come across is the “double” card – that is to say a card that is two types of card at the same time. For example – the Great Hall is both an action card (+1 card, +1 action) and a Victory card (1VP). Similarly the Harem is both a Treasure card (2 coins) and a Victory card (2VPs). Beyond the obvious of giving you Victory cards that can actually be used in gameplay (rather than just taking up dead space in your hand), they also count as BOTH types of card when being referred to by other cards. Which brings me on neatly to another type of card that makes an appearance in Intrigue. There are a number of action cards that have variable powers (either random or player chosen).
Let me explain. The Ironworks, for example, is an action card that lets you take a card of up to 4 coins in value into your discard pile. Depending, on the type of card you take, however, will also give you an additional bonus. Take an action card, and you get +1 action; take a treasure card, and get +2 coins; take a Victory card, and draw 1 card into hand. We found this to be a very useful card as it can be used to best suit your situation at the time. Another example, is the Tribute card. This one is a lot more random. It’s an action card that forces the opponent on your left to discard two cards from the top of his deck. As long as the cards are different, you get +2 actions for each action card discarded, +2 coins for each treasure card, and +2 cards for each Victory card. So you have no idea what you’ll be getting.
On to Victory cards then. Besides the usual Estates, Duchies and Provinces, Intrigue introduces a whole bunch more, given the player many more options and paths to victory. There are the afore-mentioned “dual-cards” which give the player 1 or 2 VPs but also give the player actions or treasure so that the cards can be used in gameplay. Another new card is the Duke – costs 5 coins, and gives the player a number of VPs equal to the number of Duchies in the player’s deck. The Duke provides a very real alternative to the standard race for the Provinces.
And lastly, the attacks – I’m only going to talk about one here – the Torturer. +3 cards and every opponent has to discard two cards or take a Curse into hand. Note that’s “Discard two cards” NOT “Discard down to 3 cards” as per the Militia in the original game. So play 2 or 3 of these guys on your turn and your opponents will either be playing their next hand with no cards, or a fistful of curses.
Intrigue is definitely a worthy addition to Dominion – If you liked the original, this won’t let you down. It also has rules for playing up to 6 players, which I haven’t tried yet but could prove to be a very different game. Its going to take a great many more games to figure out some of the more obscure combos that are on offer from the 2 sets, but that’s all part of the fun isn’t it?
Intriguing? Definitely! Thumbs up from me!
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 Friday saw the GSM team's first playing of the new offering from Days of Wonder, SMALL WORLD. It immediately becomes apparent that someone somewhere has given this game a great deal of thought and love. Even before playing it there are a number of cute little details, such as the oversize player aid cards and the handy box to hold each races' tiles.
The premise of the game is simple. There are a number of races vying for, for want of a better word, lebensraum, in the "Small World". Each player takes control of a race and will attempt to grab as much land as they can with the forces they have available. Once they feel they have got as far as they can, they can put their race "into decline" and take a new one, starting the process all over again.
Each race comes with a special ability, but what really gives the game some flavour and can lead to some hilarious combinations are the powers - basically adjectives that combine with the races to give them an additional special power. I can't be bothered doing the maths, but since there are 15 races and 20 powers, that makes for a large number of possible combinations. I myself started the game with Swamp Ghouls, which entered the map to the North East. They managed to capture 5 territories, including a couple a swamps before going into decline. All the Swamp ability does is give you additional victory points for each swamp region you control. The Ghouls' ability, however, was a different matter. Usually, when a race goes into decline, they leave only one unit behind in each region, making them fairly easy to capture and eradicate. The Ghouls, however, leave all their troops behind, meaning they would be around for a few turns yet.
At this point the 101st Airborne Division of Flying Trolls came into play, capturing all empty territory available on the map behind enemy lines (the Flying ability) and instantly laying down fortifications (the Troll ability). The Trolls didn't want to go into decline despite being a little overstretched as there were still a few Ghoul allies out there, but eventually they had to, even though it meant killing off 3 Ghoul regions. Each player can only have 1 race in decline at a time, unless...
...the Spirit ability shows itself, which it did with my very next race, the Sorcerers. Sorcerers have the ability to turn enemy troops against themselves, but this was less important than the Spirit ability, which means that this race can be in decline alongside another, allowing that player 2 races in decline at the same time. So the Sorcerers did a fast land grab through the territory vacated by the Ghouls on the previous turn, and using their ability managed to make a foray into the Elves' territory by turning the Elves against themselves. And then the Sorcerers left as quickly as they had arrived, going into decline alongside the Trolls.
Time was running out at this point so it was a matter of take as much as you can in the final remaining turn, so in came the Berzerking Orcs. Berzerking gives you the chance to occupy territory with less troops, depending on the roll of the reinforcement die, whilst the Orcs get extra points for conquering occupied regions rather than empty ones. So a quick landing in the south of the map saw the Orcs take 5 regions in the final turn, earning 10 points plus however many remained of the Trolls and the Sorcerers. In the final reckoning, the Ghouls/Trolls/Sorcerers/Orcs team had pipped their nearest rival to victory by a mere 2 points.
The consensus of the GSM group was that it was a very enjoyable game. We all felt it was a light/medium game that was easy to pick up, and we would certainly be playing it again in the future.
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FANTASY FLIGHT - SOMETIMES LESS IS MORE!
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25 May 09
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 The latest gaming session involving the GSM team saw the first outing of ANDROID, one of the recent offerings from fantasy flight. Seeing Kevin Wilson's name on the box, and as a firm believer that ARKHAM HORROR is one of the greatest games ever made, I was very excited to get cracking with this one. What a great theme! murder, conspiracy, futuristic setting, what could go wrong?
After unwrapping and punching tokens for what seemed like an eternity, we revisited the rules. A number of our group had already read them in advance, however you know how it is. When you actually get to play a game for the first time and see the pieces in from of you, you invariably need to go through all the rules again. Simply getting through all the rules took over an hour - not unusual for a big-box FFG game. The rules are never particularly complicated; there are just so many of them...
So finally we were ready to go. Our First game (with 5 players) took approximately 4 hours. I'm sure future games will take less now that everyone is familiar with the rules and what they are trying to achieve. The game itself was enjoyable, but i'm not here to argue the merits or otherwise of ANDROID in particular. What I do want to mention, however, is that in my opinion ANDROID suffers from the same fundamental issue that has plagued numerous Fantasy Flight games over the last few years. The problem that we have found as a group is that their games seem to work much better with fewer players, to the point that 2-player games offer the best experience.
With some of FFG's complex games, the turns are so long and involved that you find yourself only actually *playing* the game for a very short period of time. The rest of the time involves waiting around for the other players to take their turns. In their defence, they have tried to mitigate this somewhat in recent games with an assortment of mechanics. ANDROID, for example, gives you the option of playing "dark" cards on your opponents, which have to be played so that you can "move into the light" enabling you to play your own beneficial "light" cards. We found, however, that a large proportion of these are so situational to never really be of much use during actual gameplay. Another example of trying to keep players involved during opponents' turns can be found with MARVEL HEROES, in which the nemesis of each hero takes on the role of the villain during the combat situations. Again, however, this provides only a brief respite from the sitting around, making tea and finding other ways to entertain yourself until your turn eventually comes round again.
Our group has thus far encountered this phenomenon with the following FFG games: ANDROID, MARVEL HEROES, WORLD OF WARCRAFT, STARCRAFT and TWILIGHT IMPERIUM. All of these games play at their best with the smallest number of players possible. With just you and your opponent involved in the game, you find yourself always at the centre of the action with no downtime whatsoever.
I'd like to end by just saying that this is in no way detracting from the great games that FFG continues to offer regularly. The production values are among the highest of any publisher out there, the themes and mechanics are refreshing and innovative and the balance is invariably spot-on. And in terms of cooperative gameplay - namely ARKHAM HORROR and more recently BATTLESTAR GALACTICA - well, these are both simply genius and will get replayed ad infinitum among our group. So, if you're reading FFG - for your competitive games please take some time to think up ways of keeping all the players involved during the game, even when its not their turn. Oh - and while I've got you - please stop packaging your games with that utterly pointless cardboard insert who's only purpose, as far as I can fathom, is to prevent me from getting all the components back in the box until I throw it away!
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