The Adventurers Pyramid of Horus board game review

Way back in 2013 my wife discovered something at GameALot, a game called The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus. This game brings up all the old feelings of Indiana Jones, The Mummy, or mummy serials from way back in the day.

I love the style of the box art

The theme of the game is that a group of adventurers are exploring a tomb and collecting treasures. Your goal: collect as much treasure as possible and escape before the ceiling collapses and you are sealed in with the mummies.

Each player selects a character with a special ability, for example: David Gore –the trigger happy Canadian or Rasputin –the psychic Russian. There are 8 in all. Each character has a special ability which can be used once per game. Deciding when and where to apply the ability can be tricky, you really don’t want to waste it… or pass up using it when it would have helped you most.

A very successful Canadian Adventurer

I love the game because while it does rely on luck, all of that luck is heavily influenced by your decisions in the game. To begin with: for players like me, you seem to have a mummy’s curse placed on your dice rolls, you aren’t that bad off. Each turn a single player is made the Dice Keeper. That player rolls the five dice and all of their players determine their movement from that dice roll. This is great when the niece, who the gods favour, rolls but players groan in agony when it is my turn to toss. This balances the luck by no single player being left behind due to bad dice rolls.

Now how these dice rolls are affected by player choices in the game is when players determine their Wound Load Level (WLL for short.) As you play the game you gain cards, wounds and treasure cards. Every wound you take and every piece of treasure you pick up effect this WLL level. A player without wounds or treasures can count dice with 2 or higher showing, while a player with a WLL of 10-12 can only count dice with 5 or higher showing. Your decisions in the game, such as where you search for treasure, how often you search and even which direction you move in can affect the WLL.

Another thing to affect dice rolls is deciding to pick up idols. These valuable treasures enhance your end score nicely but each idol is cursed. Carrying an idol makes you unable to count its corresponding coloured die. So do you pry open the Horus tomb for that precious idol? Or do you think you will need to count that extra die for your escape from the temple?

Enter the temple

Of course what is a temple raiding game without danger? At the end of each turn the Dice Keeper selects a random stone block from the box and causes the block to land on its number. If a player is on that space they take a wound and move to an adjacent space. If the player cannot move they are crushed and lose the game. If the blocks land in such a way that there is no path to the exit all players behind that line are sealed into the tomb and lose the game.

Well, this is your home now.

There are other dangers and each is in its corresponding area of the tomb. At the entryway is the cobra nest- a pit of deadly snakes where low value treasure can be found as well as helpful treasure hunting items. The next area is the scorpion pit where precious jewels can be found among the poisonous arachnids. The center of the tomb is the crocodile pit, where adventurers can find golden treasures below the murky green waters. Finally there are three mummy corridors filled with ancient sarcophagi each laden with treasure. Within these corridors are alcoves holding precious idols with powerful curses. Beware each hall is guarded by a restless mummy whose mere touch will harm you.

The mummy will win

While I personally enjoy the game it does come off as a little less mature then it could be. It just feels a little kid geared even though I feel it can still be fun for adults. Strategy elements are in the game but they are also a little overshadowed by the luck of dice rolls and card draws. The theme doesn’t fit with true archaeology so it is not educational. It seems to fit more with very old school bad archaeology concepts of grave robbing and temple desecration. So players who are looking for an educational game or a more strategy driven game probably won’t enjoy it as much. I’m pretty much a big kid who idolizes Indiana Jones so I love this game.

So sum up The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus is works for balancing luck with player decisions in order to bring a rounded game experience. This game is geared more towards families and easy fun game nights but still can be a blast for Mummy and Indiana Jones movie fans. The game is really about players deciding which gambles to take and when to cut and run for the exit to score points. I would recommend this for family board game nights and for groups who just want some old school collapsing temple raiding fun.

Lazy Sunday gaming was a bit of a flop

This room is feeling lonely without you!

The wife and I had planned a lazy Sunday board gaming day for friends and family to hang out at our house. We planned this for the 8^th. I was hyped up for the day as we had 15 people talking about coming out. We ran out to the board game store and picked up a game for a large group, then stocked up on snacks and drinks. The day came and 3 people showed up.

The brother in law came with the niece. The sister in law ended up having to work. My other niece’s husband showed up for a bit but left early to pick up my niece from a baby shower.

We tried out our new game, Masquerade, for a few rounds. I’ll review it once we get some large group plays in. We moved on to The Adventurers for a while then everyone went home. And I just realized we’ve had the Adventurers forever and I never did a review. Check back next week for that one!

Jerks not coming to my party.

To be honest I’ve been feeling pretty blah about it and have been in an antisocial funk since then. But the wife has convinced me to try again. After all the people who did come seemed to have some fun, and I’m always happy to see them. Most of the people who didn’t come had reasonable issues prevent them. My brother was on course, my sister and niece had tickets to the Indiana Jones exhibit, friends from out of town couldn’t make it in for the weekend, and for some friends it was their weekend with the kids.

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So we are trying again at the end of the month. We tried timing it for when people don’t work so we will see how this goes. I shortened the list of invites because some people just didn’t seem interested. My wife wanted it moved to a Saturday so we could have a quiet lazy Sunday. We figured a 1 to 6 timeframe would work so we wouldn’t be interfering with date night plans.

If one of our friends is reading this and wondering why they didn’t get the invite it’s either because all of the planning happened on facebook and you aren’t on there or I didn’t realize you were the board gaming type. Feel free to shoot me a message for the info.

Looking for new games!

I am always on the lookout for another great board game. I’m looking for something that will introduce me and all of my family and friends to hours of play. This weekend the wife and I are finally attempting to host a big gaming day at our new home. Considering we are almost at our first anniversary of purchase it’s about time! Today I’m going to talk about what I look for in a game. At the end hopefully you readers can suggest some new games for me to check out.

The Nerd Dungeon, or my game room if you prefer.

Easy to learn. Important yet not… let me explain. I like a game that is easy to learn and to teach new players because I want to introduce new players to gaming. I need more gateway games to intro new gamers and to keep more casual gamers coming back to my table. It isn’t important to me personally because I love complicated rules games and am a devilish rules lawyer. Of course those games with complex rules have a limited appeal to my usual gaming crowd but I do know some players who would love to get in on them. For example: Dixit is a perfect intro game that keeps players coming back to the table while Twilight Imperium is my super complex dream come true in the form of a board game.

Less reliance on luck/choices should be meaningful. I really hate the old game mechanic of: roll dice, do what board tells you, repeat ad nauseum until game ends. That isn’t fun for me. I really need to have an impact on how the game progresses. I need my mind and the minds of the other players to impact the progression of the game. I need interaction for fun to happen. I’m not totally opposed to luck if it adds chaos to strategy. I like luck factors (card draws and dice rolls) to create a need for more interaction and strategy. For example: Settlers of Catan relies on luck for dice rolls to collect resources but players make decisions on building, trade, and moving the robber. These decisions change the effect of later dice rolls. This blends luck, interaction, and strategy for a fun game experience.

Novices should have a chance of winning. There are games where experience pretty much guarantees victory. I get bored easily without a challenge so I want every opponent to bring a challenge to the table. Chess is an example where experience allows you to beat an inexperienced opponent easily. In Chess there are certain combinations of moves that allow you to win quickly and easily. Typically there does have to be a randomness factor that limits an experienced player’s advantage and allows for novice players to gain traction in the game.

Replayability. I want to be able to play the game often and have fun every time. Mechanics should lend to the game experience being different each time you play. Things like board memory limit this (i.e. the board is static and certain positions are optimal for game winning) I love eurogames with a board that alters each game. A fantastically replayable game is Betrayal at House on the Hill. The map changes each game and the haunt is randomized. Players go in not knowing which horror story they are in and only find out part way through. Players also don’t know who will be the traitor for the game until the random haunt reveal. Of course replayability is increased by my next point.

Multiple routes to victory. I believe a game is “broken” when it becomes apparent that there is a single game winning strategy. For example Risk. Ask pretty much any player how to win Risk and they typically go with this strategy: take Australia and slowly build to take Asia. It works very well and if you are playing against novice players you are pretty much guaranteed the win. I prefer a game to have mechanics to counter opponents’ strategies. If there are multiple routes to victory the game develops character. Moves, countermoves, bluffing, deception and observation make for a deeper game experience. Risk 2210 does change the game franchise creating new routes to victory and limiting the advantage of taking Australia by opening routes to invasion.

Enjoyable for the losers. A game night should be fun for everyone at the table. Every player should feel like they contributed to the experience and should be able to pull off some interesting plays. Game nights for me are more about the companionship with friends and family and I want to enjoy their company. While I really like to win games I don’t want to sacrifice friendships for it. I still play like a jerk sometimes but I want other players to have fun too. After all you don’t bond over the “who won” stories; you bond over the stories of awesome plays. A great game to enjoy even when you lose is the story telling game Gloom.

Theme. The theme of a game makes it more relatable and playable. For example: My dad worked on the railroad. We grew up around trains, so naturally Ticket to Ride is a huge hit with the family. It’s easy to overlook flaws in a game when the theme fits with the players. Finding the right game for the right players is a fun experience in itself. Getting that Doctor Who game right for one niece or Harry Potter for another, Star Wars or Firefly for my wife, Superheroes for a nephew and the brother in law, or the perfect wargame for my brother… it’s worth the effort to get a game right for them.

The right number of players. I like a game to fit my game group. I should be able to have people over for a great game experience. Typically I have about 6 people at the table causing issues with games that only allow for limited numbers of players. I’m not sure why but it seems 5 players has become the standard. I also grew up in a family of 5 so 4 player games have just never see our table. I’m also working on building my game group. I’ve been playing with groups of 12 or more people so I need more “big group” games. Unfortunately I can’t get everyone into RPGs (yet) meaning I am in the market for simpler tabletop games for large groups.

Okay now that I’ve talked about my overall concepts about games I think I will address my views on types of games.

Beer and Pretzels- I love this style of game if it is done right. I need it to be fun, funny, and simple to learn, and have a short play time. Usually this is a high luck/low strategy game. It’s great for when people just want fun, great to start a night or for bringing casual gamers to the table. Great examples are either Bang! or Poo!

Eurogames- These are games from Europe that don’t fit the typical American game ideas. They tend to focus on strategy, keep their rules simple, have quality components and reduce the luck influence. This really is my favorite style of game. Think Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride.

Wargames- My brother and I had a huge sibling rivalry going on growing up and we tended to really get going around a wargame. We fell in love with wargames because even though we really got competitive we really connected over them. Memoir 44 or our old standby of Axis and Allies are good examples of wargames and we are always on the lookout for something better.

Mass Market games- At the risk of sounding like a hipster I have to say: I hate mass market games. I hate Monopoly and its ilk. I think these games are detrimental to the concept of board games because this is what people who hate board games think board games are all about. They never get introduced to the plethora of amazing games out there because they hit that mass market wall of (in my opinion) poorly designed games.

Collectible Card Games- I got into CCGs when I was younger but I feel I have outgrown them. And there I go being an old Hipster again. My problem with CCGs is that I don’t want an investment strategy, I don’t want to research, and I don’t want constant new editions making my investments irrelevant. I want to grab a game and play it. I tried Magic the Gathering and it left me feeling like a gaming version of a meth-head. Just my personal tastes here, go hard if you like CCGs but leave me out.

Miniatures games- I haven’t played any miniatures games. On one hand I’m wary of them because they seem to be very collectible in nature and I don’t want the old CCG habit kicking in. On the other hand I like the look and the painting aspect looks like it would be fun. I’d love to command an army of burly dwarves or post apocalyptic soldiers and mechs but I just don’t know which game I would like or if I want to make the investment. Being an adult and having bills sucks.

Role Playing Games- I love them. I love the story telling the character growth and the camaraderie of the RPG players. I could spend my life creating RPG characters and am more than willing to GM. I started on Heroes Unlimited and RPGs became my teenage “bad habit” as my parents opposed them. They bought into the “RPGs are occult” mentality of yesteryear. Screw you Tom Hanks and your Mazes and Monsters!

Deck Building- Defined by having a starting deck and slowly purchasing newer cards in an in game market. I’ve had issues getting into the mechanic. It just hasn’t clicked with me all that much. That is until Legendary: Aliens. Now I’m open to trying them again but the theme really has to resonate with me. The set-up and take-down time for most deck builders seems to be more work than the gain of fun from them. Maybe it’s my CCG prejudice kicking in but I’m just not really into deck-builders. I am willing to give them a try.

Now that I have talked about what I look for and enjoy in games I would like to ask you dear readers: What games do you like? What do you look for in a game? Do you have suggestions to expand my game library?

Thanks for reading and commenting below! Check back next week when I talk about my first attempt at a big gaming day in the new place.

Dixit Game review

Over the Holidays the wife’s sister picked up Dixit. My first play through was on New Years eve and I wasn’t quite at my peak game learning condition that night. Let’s just say things were a little fuzzy. Since that night we have played quite a few times because the in-laws made a terrific find.

The rules were simple to learn, I was able to quickly grasp the concept even in my fogged frame of mind. All of the players receive a hand of cards. Upon these cards are oddly beautiful artworks, some quite bizarre. A player is selected to lead by selecting a card from their hand without showing it to the other players. The player gives a clue to the card by saying a word, phrase, singing a song, or… whatever. The other players then s

elect a card from their hand and give it face down to the player who gave the clue. The cards are shuffled and laid face up.

At this time players chose which card they believe is the right card. They do so by selecting one of their numbered tokens without showing it. Once all players have made their selection they show their tokens. Any correct answers score points and any wrong answers score points for the player who played that card. So other players will play cards they believe best fit the clue in order to earn points.

Scoring is rather interesting for the active player. The clue giver gets zero points if either all players or no players select their card. Therefore in order for the clue giver to score points clues must be vague enough to ensure at least one player selects the wrong card. But the clue must also be clear enough so at least one player selects the correct card. It creates a need to be able to anticipate how other players think.

How do you get window?

The game really drives creativity and shows how other players’ minds work. An important example is a friend who used the clue “Window." All other players played cards with windows in the artwork. Unfortunately his card had a kid and a bear with a slingshot which made him think of a broken window. No actual windows in the artwork. He was too creative and complicated in his clue and we made fun of him all night.

I find that the game is fantastic for working on interpretation of art and creative thinking. It’s simple enough for kids to understand but still complex enough for adults to enjoy making it a great family game.

There two negatives to Dixit. Some of the artwork is a little bizarre, enough so that it just doesn’t work with everyone’s creative processes all the time. Also the limited number of cards means that the same artwork will be seen repeatedly. This will lead to players getting in to a habit of repeating clues and the game becoming stale. Thankfully there are some expansions to the game for when this starts to become an issue.

To sum up Dixit is a great game for any game group. It is both simple to learn and deep in creative nature. This game is fantastic for building art appreciation and interpretation as well as driving creative description. While the bizarre nature of the artwork doesn’t play to everyone'

s tastes it can still be fun to attempt to discern the meaning of it. The limited amount of cards can begin to lessen replay value but there are expansion sets available to add variety.

I would recommend this game for families who want a goofy way to build their children’s imaginations and work on their creativity. I would also recommend this for adult groups who appreciate art and enjoy being creatively obtuse in their description of it.

Remember to support your local board game store!

New year new gaming post

Hello dear readers. I know I haven’t posted in about a month and I’m sorry about that. The Christmas season didn’t leave a lot of opportunities for games or blogging. But the New Year may hold promise for some serious gaming.

Of course we did do some gaming: Christmas day was spent with the wife’s side of the family and we took time to play Cards Against Humanity and watched the Doctor who special together. I didn’t get anything board game related for Christmas but hopefully I will make it to the store sometime soon. We decided to nerd in the New Year at home this time around. Friends of ours got a stone raclette grill for Christmas so we pulled out our fondue pot and had a fantastic fondue dinner. Guess what we followed up with: board games. The two other couples from dinner and our international man of mystery friend dropped in later. We played some Cards Against Humanity, followed by The Resistance, and then we were introduced to Dixit. Honestly I will need to play Dixit again as I had imbibed in way too much New Years spirit to be able to give a decent review. We ended the night playing Monty Python Fluxx with the one couple who ended up crashing on our air mattress.

We have to do a fondue/game night again. Grilled meat, melted cheese and geekery all go so well together. But 8 people maximum will fit for that kind of night in our house.

For Christmas the wife and I got some gift cards for home improvement stores and we spent a little of it on book shelves for the game room. We organized it a little more down there and we think we are ready for Lazy Sunday gaming. Beginning in February we will have a list of friends and family that will come over on Sunday afternoons for some board game fun: whoever can show is in by 13:00 at the earliest and out by 18:00 at the latest kind of thing. I hope this will get more friends and family into board gaming and introduce us to more games my friends own. Which I will then review for you.

I’m also trying to start an RPG group: Pen and paper role playing. I could GM for the Palladium system as it’s the one I’m most familiar with. I have ideas for most of their lines but I think the Heroes Unlimited game would probably be the most accessible to new players and easiest to start since players could just pick up Century Station heroes and start playing.

I’m running a little low on games to review but once the holiday bills get under control I should be able to budget for some games. Money is a little tight so the game budget will probably only allow for me to move to a monthly post format, unless my lottery investment pays off of course.

In the mean time feel free to comment below on which games I should be looking in to for my board game budget.

Until next time, hope you have a fantastic New Year with more fun playing new games and old favorites!

King of Tokyo Expansions review

Last time I reviewed King of Tokyo; a fun Kaiju Monster battle royal style game. This week I will be talking about the two expansions for this game: King of Tokyo: Power up and King of Tokyo Halloween.

King of Tokyo: Power Up makes me very happy. In the original game each monster draws from the same power deck. So even though each monster has its own play piece and player board with cool artwork it didn’t matter. The monsters seemed too generic for the game. In the Power Up expansion this is resolved by adding special Evolution power decks for each monster. Now each monster is given its own style. These cards are gained at the end of a turn if a player has 3 or more hearts rolled even if they are in Tokyo. I like this because it’s a secondary way of building powers when you have trouble building energy. Also players who are struggling in the game tend to focus on getting hearts. This helps underdogs gain some power and possibly get back into the game with a great power.

The Power Up expansion includes another character called Pandakai: a giant panda monster. He does add some variety to the characters but he’s not my favorite as I prefer traditional Kaiju style. He can still be popular with the kids though. Adding this monster doesn’t do a lot because the maximum number of players for the game stays at 6. Still it’s nice to have variety and a new monster that could appeal to newer players.

The King of Tokyo Halloween expansion is a little smaller. It does include two new Halloween themed monsters: Pumpkin Jack and Boogey Woogey (A giant pumpkin monster and a giant blob monster respectively.) This expansion is my wife’s favorite as she seems to have fallen in love with Pumpkin Jack. Again these don’t add to the maximum number of players but they do add variety. They come with their own evolution decks as well.

The Halloween expansion does include some new elements to game play as well. It adds 12 new cards to the power deck that are costume cards. Your giant monsters will be allowed to purchase costumes that grant a variety of abilities or effects. These costumes can be stolen by another monster that rolls 3 claw swipes against you. It rips off the costume and gets to keep the outfit for itself. The expansion also includes 6 black and orange dice to fit the theme. These dice work the same as the base game but allow for a second set at the table. I like this as you can just keep a set at each end of the table.

To sum up I like both expansions. I recommend the Power Up expansion if you would like to add some style to the monsters in the game. The Pandakai monster in this expansion is okay but he’s not the reason to buy it, the evolution powers are. The Halloween expansion adds two interesting characters: Pumpkin Jack and Boogey Woogey. The costumes cards this expansion adds in are fun and a bit weird. Also, the extra dice help game play moving. Unfortunately while this expansion does include evolution power cards for the two monsters in it these won’t be playable until you buy the Power Up expansion.

Until next time, Power Up your game night by Boogey Woogey-ing down to your local game store, grabbing King of Tokyo and these two expansions.

King of Tokyo board game review

I’m a bit of a Kaiju junkie. I was introduced to Godzilla a.k.a. “the King of Monsters” quite young, it was at a sleepover at a friends house early in my elementary years. The giant monster stomped into my imagination and his atomic breath seared away preconceived notions of what a monster could be. The actual memory of the party is fuzzy, I forget who the other kids where at that party, but I vividly remember the movie and my own atomic/technicolour breath from overeating candy.

When a game called King of Tokyo showed up on my suggested board game list I was more than interested. It took me a while to convince my wife to play it. The wife just doesn’t have the same love for city stomping killer Kaiju that I do. She finally played at this year’s GameALot and we both loved it.

In King of Tokyo each player selects a knock-off style Kaiju monster: Then they compete to become the King of Tokyo. A player wins when they reach a total of 20 points or if they knock out all other monsters.

Each player rolls 6 dice to determine their actions for a turn. They can keep as many as they want and re-roll the rest up to two more times. Claws deal damage, either to the monster in Tokyo or to all other players if you are in Tokyo. Hearts regenerate health but only if you are not in control of Tokyo. Lightning bolts build energy which can be used to build up powers. Or there are three point value numbers of 1, 2 or 3. Any roll of 3 or more of a single number can give you that victory point number, plus an additional point for each of that number above the triplet.

The rules are very simple so new players can pick up the game quickly. I find it is a great entry level game that can still be fun for more advanced gamers. There are several elements of strategy that make the game interesting. Staying longer in Tokyo allows you to build victory points faster and allows you to damage all players outside Tokyo, but staying out of Tokyo allows you the option to heal damage and makes you less of a target for other players. Knowing when to take over the city or when to leave is very important. The purchasing of powers will allow a player to customize their monster and make each game variable and dynamic. Finally there is a strategy in selecting which dice to keep and which to re-roll; do you want to build points, build energy, heal or attack?

Of course there are a couple of drawbacks. In the base game while the monsters are varied in creative artwork and look really cool, they don’t actually vary in play style. Each monster plays identically and only gains powers available to all players for purchase. Nothing is really monster specific. Also the dice rolling creates a very random game that sometimes makes it difficult to really get the strategy element you want going. The upside of that is it negates a little of the veteran player advantage.

The game is for 2 to 6 players but it loses a lot with fewer players. It just feels better with all 6 players to get the real dynamic Kaiju brawl going. It is still fun but the wild unpredictable nature of the game really comes out with more players. The play time is about 30 minutes. I find that the game moves quickly and keeps players involved nicely as each player’s choices can drastically change what is going on in the game.

To sum up I think King of Tokyo is an ideal game for any group. The rules are easy to learn allowing players to jump into play and get to fun quickly. The theme is fairly universally known so even players who aren’t as into the genre (like my wife) will still understand it and can still have an enjoyable game. King of Tokyo is great for kids and adults so I really think it should be on your shelf. There are expansions that I will get into next week.

Until next time, I recommend you roar into your local gameshop, smash some cash onto the counter and stomp on out with King of Tokyo in hand.