Scotland Yard board game review

A couple of weekends ago my wife wanted to get more board games. Of course I was all too happy to oblige her. She was in the mood for another cooperative game so we spent quite a bit of time comparison shopping. In my search through the games I suddenly noticed a box with yellow lettering; something that shined like a beacon from my childhood. One of those games I thought lost. Hours of play and travel between friends houses had caused so many lost pieces and damage that I fear that the game was tossed by my mother. I hadn’t seen a copy for quite some time, but I discovered it had been re-released and I had a rush of childish glee.

I am talking about Scotland Yard. This is a sort of quasi-cooperative game where a team of detectives are hunting down a single player named Mr. X in London. Players catch Mr. X by landing on his space. The thing is Mr. X only places his piece on the board on a small number of turns. Most of his movements are recorded in secret on his movement board. The detectives have to deduce where Mr. X may have travelled after he was last sighted and attempt to corner him.

This game is fun for either side. The detectives have fun working as a team trying to deduce where Mr. X may be and work in a group attempting to corral and capture him with limited resources. Mr. X gets to pit his mind against the rest of the players in an attempt to outsmart them.

I really like the mechanic of Scotland Yard as it incorporates both co-operative and competitive play in an ingenious way. I find that many competitive games have times when everyone teams up against a single player who appears to be doing better and it costs that player their enjoyment. Scotland Yard embraces that problem and turns it on its head to make it part of the fun. Mr. X is supposed to be teamed up on and knows it going in.

The difficulty level in this game is altered by the number of players. More detectives make for an easier time of catching Mr. X. Players looking for a challenge should choose which side to play depending on the number of players.

To sum up I would recommend this game to any group. It is easy to learn and strategy is dependant on how deviously cunning the Mr. X player is. The more experience players gain the more of a challenge the game becomes for everyone. There is a reason this game has sold more than 4 million copies and won the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) award.

This game is fantastic for all ages and it should be on your shelf

Check back again next week when I review Ticket to ride.

Castle Panic board game Review

This weekend the wife took me to the board game store. Our goal was to pick up a cooperative game. The owner of Mission fun and games took us around the store and showed us a few options. He was very helpful and even took out some store copies of games to show us how they play. We eventually decided on Castle Panic.

In Castle Panic the players team up to defend their castle from invading monsters. The game requires planning and strong teamwork to beat. Needless to say I was really excited about this game and we went over to the sister in law’s place that night to give it a try. We played through the game three times. We won each game however there were a few points when things looked bleak. Luck of the draw and the fact that we work well in a group really saved us.

The rules of Castle Panic can be easily learned through one play through. There are some special monster tokens and the players turn order can be difficult to remember for younger players, but the creators did something genius. In the four corners of the board are little reminders. So when an Orc Warlord token comes up you don’t need to hunt through the rule book to figure out his special actions, just glance to the edge of the board. This keeps the game flowing nicely and simplifies each turn.

The game map is relatively simple. The board is a circle or pie shape separated into six arcs with two arcs per colour, blue, red or green. There is a second separation by ring within the circle. The center ring is the castle ring, which you are defending. The other rings are swordsman, knight, archer and forest. Certain cards can only affect certain rings and/or certain coloured areas of the board. For instance a red soldier card can only injure monsters in the red swordsman section, where a green archer can only affect monsters in the green archer section. As each players turn ends monsters move forward one section and new monsters are added.

All of this leads to card management and planning. Where to reinforce walls, which monster to slay, which card to trade; any play can lead to victory or defeat.

The replayability of the game is high as monster invasion is random. The invasion is determined by random draws each turn and by randomly rolling which arc the monster invades from. Some of the monster tokens have random effects, like moving the monsters forward/clockwise/counter-clockwise, or there are even monster blitzes where you draw an extra three or four tokens. The game can go from being easy to challenging in one turn. Which personally I find adds to the excitement.

There is an option for the players to keep the monster tokens of the monsters they have slain. The result would be at the end a count is made and the player who slew the most monsters is declared the master slayer. This could add another dimension where players self sabotage in an attempt to attain this title. Potentially adding to the challenge of the game.

For the downsides: As with most cooperative games there can be bit of the type A personality attempting to run the game. There were a few times that night where I know we irritated each other with telling other players how to play our turns. Still we were able to work through it and enjoy the game. I’m also not sure if we were just extremely lucky (first play through the four monster attack was the last token) or we are an awesome team but we won all three games we played. I think the challenge level could be upped a little. The rules do provide suggestions on how this can be done but we haven’t attempted this yet.

To sum up I really enjoy the cooperation in the game, the rules are well thought out, the game board is well designed and the replayability is high. I would recommend this game to families or game groups who are either looking for a way to work on cooperation or just a fantastic and fun game.

Check back next week when I review Scotland Yard

The Game of Life

The Game of Life is one of those games that people buy because it’s popular but then never play. There are aspects of this game that I enjoy but then there are aspects of the game I really don’t like.

The end goal is one thing that really bothers me about this game. Retire with the most money! As if being the wealthiest person before you die is supposed to be the ultimate goal of all. It really teaches a negative lesson, as the best way to be the richest is to take all the limited chances of screwing over the other players.

Let’s go back to starting the game. There are two options: go to school or start your career. It should be listed as “take post secondary education and have a chance at winning or choose to lose.” Salary and job options in the start career path are so limiting that it really isn’t worth pursuing. While I like that this stresses the importance of education, it really doesn’t make for balanced game play.

Another thing that bothers me is the points where you must stop and conduct one of the many “must do’s” in life. There is marriage, buying a house, etc. I don’t really like that there is a specific order and time when each must be performed. It reflects a very limited worldview of how life should occur and which one lifestyle should be pursued. Sure when you get married you can put a same sex peg next to your own but you still have to do it at a specified time. It’s the “grow up, get job, get married, buy house path” that everyone must follow. It isn’t like there are people who have purchased a house before marrying, or people who don’t get married until later in life due to career or not finding a suitable match. Heck some people never marry. Some people never buy a house and choose to rent.

This brings me to the “must buy when you must buy” house option. Buying a house when you aren’t able to afford it is a bad idea in real life. Yet in game it’s a must do. And you can’t buy the exact same type of property as someone else, as if there aren’t trailer parks full of trailers or neighbourhoods full of McMansions. The Game of Life is just teaching some really bad financial concepts here.

Speaking of bad financial concepts, the loan process is handled poorly. In the game you can put off paying massive debts until you retire. Oh and no matter when you pay back a loan it’s the same single flat interest charge. I would love to get one of those loans in real life. Pay off my real debts and laugh my rear end off at the new loaner. It teaches that you can accrue and ignore debt, which is a terrible lesson.

The one thing I really enjoy is the way children are obtained. There is no planning, just surprise twins! Of course the little girl who dreams of a big family never lands on a kid space while the boy who hates the idea of kids needs a second car to fit his brood. It can really crush the spirit of the barren or “accident” prone players.

Why is it that I still get a little fun out of this game? Is it a sense that I wish my life went so easily? Do I have some small part of me which wants a traditional lifestyle? Do I have a dark side that enjoys seeing others fail at life? Or is the game actually fun? I really don’t know.

The Game of Life, a game you will buy because it’s popular and a game you won’t play because it teaches all the wrong lessons about real life.

Zombies by Twilight Creations Inc. review

Zombies! by Twilight Creations Inc. is one of the go to games for certain members of my game group. Well mostly just the zombie buffs. But it’s a game that is so much fun. We all need a night of blowing off steam and what better way is there than to blow away zombies.

Zombies! starts in town square, the goal is to either reach the helipad first or be the first to kill 25 zombies. Easy enough you say? It wouldn’t be much of a game if things didn’t get more complicated. The thing is town square is the entire map at the start. The map expands at the beginning of each players turn as they draw a new map tile. This leads to some serious luck and strategy. Where you place map tiles can either help or hinder any number of players. And you cannot reach the helipad until it is played so you are stuck in town for at least a little while. Personally I love this approach as it gives the game a high degree of replayability and strips the advantage of board memory for veteran players.

The next thing to make the game more complicated is the combat. Once you hit a space with a zombie or start a turn with a zombie on your space, you must resolve combat. On a 6 sided die you kill a zombie rolling a 4, 5, or 6. Roll a 1, 2 or 3 and the zombie is winning. This can be changed by discarding bullet tokens; one for each number you wish to add (so a roll of one requires 3 tokens to get to 4) or you discard a life token to re-roll the die. Be careful, when you run out of life tokens you die. Discard half of your killed zombies and return to town square. You are dead until your next turn when you restart.

Finally there are action cards. You get three and can play one (and only one) from the beginning of your turn until the beginning of your next turn. This means you will need to strategize which card to play and when. Do you play the “Hey look a shotgun” card which helps you with extra bullets? Or do you wait so you can play “Zombie Master” on an opponents turn to make their life more difficult?

There are some downsides to this game. One thing I need to warn you of here is that many of the action cards are designed to cause problems in game for your opponents. Some players may not be willing to put up with the constant barrage of cruelty and harassment that comes with this game so play with players with thick skin and a good sense of humour. The next big issue I have encountered time and again is that there aren’t enough zombies in the basic box. There are extra bags-o-zombies supplied by the company so do yourself a favour and grab one when you pick up Zombies!

With the exception of #s 4, 9 and 11 the expansions for this game are all add-ons so make sure to grab the core game first. The first expansion I recommend grabbing is the 3.5 “Not dead yet!” expansion. This one is just action cards and I have to say it should just come with the basic set. The cards are so much more inventive and add more variability in play. The second expansion I would recommend grabbing is #6 “Six feet under.” This one will add in some more map tiles, notably the subway stations which help move you around the map, and sewer tokens which help you avoid zombies by hiding out in the sewers (not as useful as it sounds). There are also some extra action cards to play around with. After these expansions we have picked up everything to #9 (except for the blanks) and the rest of these are settings based. They come in to play once an entrance map tile is picked up and the map tiles can then be selected from either the main deck or the expansion deck at the beginning of each players turn. Really just pick them up as to whichever flavour of zombie setting you like. Normally we play with just one expansion so the game can actually end in one night.

I would recommend this game for any group who loves the zombie genre and can handle some extreme competition.

Risk 2210

I picked up Risk 2210 because the game Risk always seemed to be on the shelf of every childhood friend. I wanted a war game that was not quite as simple as basic Risk yet not as complex as many on my shelf. Risk 2210 does fit that niche.

What I really like is that Risk 2210 does include rules for using the board for the basic game as well as the variant so it saves some shelf space.

There are some significant changes. The first set of changes I want to talk about is the revamp of turn structure. A big difference is that there are only 5 turns. In the basic game there was a slow back and forth that could last an entire night. This decrease to 5 turns pushes strategy to the forefront and prevents “wait until someone trades in cards for a large enough army.” Also coupled with the turn limit is the bidding for turn order. Highest bidder picks first and so on. Essentially you could have last play on one turn followed by first play on the next granting you one turn to expand and a second to reinforce. Again this opens up to more strategy. Do you push to go first or allow yourself to go last and await another player to reveal their strategy?

The bidding explained before is done with the commodity of the game: energy. Energy is aquired by territories held. Budgetting your energy wisely is going to be a big factor. It buys turn order, commanders and command cards, and is used to activate command cards. The addition of the energy economy really changes up the game for the better.

The next thing to talk about is the addition of commanders. There are 5, Land, Sea, Lunar, Diplomatic, or Nuclear. The sea and lunar commanders allow you to invade sea or moon territories (commanders do not need to be in on the invasion just on the board). Those commanders and the land commander allow you to roll an 8 sided die for attack or defense into or on their territory type if they are present in the attack. The nuclear commander always rolls an 8 sided die. Now where you keep your commanders becomes a bit of strategy. Protect them at the rear or use them in your attack/defense plan?

Another change is the removal of the usual cards. Now each of these commanders has their own card set you can purchase from. The nuclear command cards are the most destructive but don’t discount the others; in particular the diplomatic commander. A cease fire card can really mess with another player’s invasion plans. Only 4 random card draws can be purchased per turn. Another random card is obtained after invading 3 enemy territories.

There are significant changes to the map. Notably the sea and lunar territories mentioned before. Sea territories open new routes of invasion into continents. Both the sea and lunar territories are left unclaimed at the beginning of the game so whoever expands into them can do so without combat. This makes obtaining these commanders desirable as they provide easy initial expansion. As usual holding a set of territories provides a bonus of units and energy.

All in all I recommend getting this game if you like Risk but are looking for something updated in terms of strategy.

Fluxx

Ever have a game night where no-one knows the rules? A night where every player is a little lost at what is going on? Perhaps there was arguing over the rules? Was it fun? It should be. That is what the game of Fluxx is all about.

Everything in the game Fluxx is changing throughout the night. Every card you play can change the rules or change how to win the game. Basically you make up the rules as you go along. Don’t like the current rules? Change them!

The game starts with the basic rule of draw one card play one card. After that the changes start as each player plays their cards. These cards fall into one of several types: New Rule- which is a rule change, Action- steal cards or eliminate rules etc, Keeper- an item or creature card which can help win the game, Creeper- a bad item or creature that prevents you from winning… usually, Goal- a game winning goal which is replaced each time a new Goal card is played, and some editions include Meta – permanent game rules and Surprise- cards that can be played at any time.

This game is super easy to learn and doesn’t have much room for strategy. Basically it’s a frantic game that kills time with fun and laughs. Fluxx doesn’t require much space, setup is easy and the learning curve is simple so using it to start off a marathon game night while someone sets up the big game is a great idea. It’s also a great game to break in new players; after all they aren’t going to be the only player at the table who doesn’t know the rules.

What I really like is that you can pick up pretty much any edition of the game and start playing. Most of the new editions are stand alone instead of the usual expansion formula many game lines use. So you can pick up a theme that suits your group and just start playing. Most of the editions could be combined but my group prefers to choose one theme at a time.

I personally own Monty Python Fluxx, Martian Fluxx, and Oz Fluxx, while the in-laws own Star Fluxx and Zombie Fluxx. Personally I would like to pick up the basic game and maybe Pirate Fluxx, Cthulu Fluxx, and the upcoming Wild West Fluxx. The most popular edition among us is Star Fluxx. After all we are all geeks. However the other editions all get their play time. One of these days I really need to do a Python marathon with the Monty Python films and the Python edition of this game.

For those who want more family oriented night there is Family Fluxx or EcoFluxx. There are also expansions for the core game that include Christian Fluxx or Jewish Fluxx for those so inclined.

I highly recommend picking up at least one edition of the game for your group. Fluxx will always be fun, and will see frequent rotation in your gaming schedule.

Have fun!

Memoir 44

At first glance I assumed I wasn’t going to like Memoir 44. I looked at the box and it didn’t seem to appeal to me as I thought it was another simplified wargame. I thought I needed something more complex. Then my brother had to go ahead and buy the game proving me wrong in the process.

I fell in love with this game after the first play through.

At first glance the set up seemed complicated, but it was completed much more easily and quickly than I had anticipated. The variation in the box components and the map suggestions provided are amazing. The replayability is very high. The game provides suggestions for simple short battles or ongoing campaigns, there are even rules for adding multiple boards together for epic games. Maps ideas can be obtained to cover so many historical battles of World War II. This is an armchair general’s dream game. The rules and set ups are simple enough for younger gamers and there is so much room for expanding upon strategic development in this game. Teens and smarter young characters should be able to play with old time wargamers and everyone should enjoy it.

The big part of strategy in this game comes from the split between three territories on the board: right flank, centre and left flank. How you work within these three will be determined by the random cards you draw. Each card gives directions to units and they vary in usefulness from set up to set up. On one game my units were heavily concentrated in the centre and right flanks with a token unit on my left flank. The cards available to me mostly focused on the left flank. I had some serious issues getting momentum for my battle plans and my brother ended up walking all over me. The second game was miraculous as it seemed like the dice weren’t actively trying to kill me. This became a frantic and close battle with my brother eking out a narrow win by the skin of his teeth. Now my brother always wins wargames. He's a combat engineer, he lives and breaths war. Having him frantic and wide eyed over my efforts got me hooked.

There are so many expansions for this game. Campaign books open up loads of maps to attempt. Army packs open up the Mediterranean, the pacific theatre or the eastern front. An equipment pack expands on unit selections, and an air pack does the same for aircraft. New boards for desert/winter warfare, battle map packs, and there's even an old style army campaign bag to hold everything.

The big benefit is the dollar value you get from Memoir 44. You don’t have to break the bank to get a fantastic basic wargame. I have certainly shelled out more for games without the level of replay value or strategic value. The best part is the developer Days of Wonder allows for the uploading of scenarios by fans onto their website and lets registered players download them for free here.

For the downsides to the game there is the random draw factor for the cards. There is a significant amount of luck factor as to which strategies you can implement. This could bother those who prefer to develop a strategy. However, personally I enjoy the addition of the luck factor. It gives the game the feel that somehow I am unable to communicate with certain units, and I'm dealing with an inept military hierarchy that is hamstringing me. It really pushes the real time strategy on the fly approach.

If you enjoy war games at all go out and get Memoir 44. This is me saying I was wrong, my brother was right.