Board Game Review - Good Cop, Bad Cop (third edition)

Good Cop, Bad Cop is a great team based social deduction game. In each game, players are randomly dealt 3 facedown cards which will determine whether the player is a (as you may have guessed from the title) a Good Cop or a Bad Cop. Each turn, a player may Investigate another player (by looking at one of their 3 facedown cards), pick up some equipment or even a gun, or Shoot a gun they picked up earlier.

The goal is to eliminate the leader of your opposing team. At the onset of the game, you don't know who is on your team so you need to rely on social manipulation and table talk to try and form alliances and determine who you can trust and who may be scheming to take you down. Some of the equipment you pick up can help expose team members, but if you accidentally reveal the leader of your own team then the opposing team will be able to quickly target and eliminate that player.

If you've played games like Mafia or Werewolf, you will find familiar elements here. I like the interesting twists added by the equipment cards that can give you a special advantage or even cause a little chaos by manipulating the identity cards (which could result in a person becoming a member of a different team).

Even though it has player elimination, each game goes fairly quickly so there won't be a lot of downtime for players eliminated early on. There are even some equipment cards that can 'revive' a previously eliminated player to get them back in the game.

Board Game Review - Viscounts of the West Kingdom

I recently had a fun time learning Viscounts of the West Kingdom from Garphill Games and Renegade Game Studios. This is the third in the "West Kingdom" series and yet another amazing game from Shem Phillips.     

As with the other West Kingdom games, players strive to earn the most victory points by hiring various workers and using their resources to advance their goals. Similar to the first two games, you must work to build a deck of workers that will best help ensure you have the right resources and influence to carry out the tasks at the right time.    

Available actions are determined by moving your Viscount figure around a Rondel that outlines a specific path around the board. The amount you can move depends on which worker you play on your turn (though you can adjust this slightly by paying coins or building a certain building). When your Viscount ends movement, you are presented with a handful of different actions. 

Board Game Review - Nidavellir

Nidavellir is one of those games that I kept seeing on the ‘Hotness’ list but never really took the time to learn anything about it. I finally decided to give it a try and I’m glad I did.   

Thematically, Nidavellir is the name of the Dwarf Kingdom and the kingdom is being threatened. Your goal is to hire up an army to help repel the threat. Honestly, the melding of the theme is pretty tenuous but the art and style is fun.  

At a high level this is an auction game where you bid coins to try and hire cards from three different taverns. The cards interact in a set collection / combo method to score points and give some unique bonuses and abilities. 

Board Game Review - Running With the Bulls

Have you ever had a desire to throw yourself in front of a bunch of charging bulls?  Well, Calliope Games has a way to do it that’s safe for you and for the bulls.  Their game Running With the Bulls lets you help direct your own group of “runners” as they try to race across the city of El Toro to a variety of possible destinations. 

The runners and the bulls are represented by colorful dice and the city of El Toro is filled with whimsical artwork with lots of little nuances to make you laugh. 

The game is played over three days (rounds).  Each day, all players roll their dice to determine their starting point at the top of the city.  The larger bull dice are also rolled and will start alongside the runners.  

Board Game Review - Blue Lagoon

Have you played Blue Lagoon? 

 

The game has two rounds. Each round is scored the same and gameplay is basically the same in each phases with a slight rule twist in the second phases. While this is a strategy game, the rules and gameplay are simple enough for younger players or new gamers. The art and theme are great as well. 

 

On your turn, you either place one of your explorers or one of your villages onto the game board. In the first phase, your settlers must either be placed in the water or else on a tile adjacent to a token you already placed. Villages must be placed on land next to a settler you’ve played previously. For the second phase, you remove all of your settlers but leave the village tokens on the board. On your turn you place your settlers next to one of your already placed items.  

 

Board Game Review - Nagaraja

Recently, my wife and I tried out the 2-player game Nagaraja. I knew hardly anything about this game but had heard some good buzz and the theme and mechanics sounded interesting.  

Nagaraja is a tile laying, route building, hand management game. Each player is a treasure hunting archaeologist trying to find the most treasure in one of two ‘twin temples.’ 

Each round, a new room tile is revealed. Players secretly bid cards which determine how many sticks and which type of sticks they get to roll. The player who rolls the most Fate symbols on the sticks will get to place the room tile in their temple to proceed with exploration. 

Board Game Review - Cosmic Factory

As a family, we don't always enjoy "real time" games as they tend to stress out some of our players. But we do generally enjoy tile placement games such as Carcassonne as well as drafting games like Sushi Go or 7 Wonders. So we decided to give this a try.

In Cosmic Factory, you are drafting tiles which you will then try to place in such a ways as to create clusters of different types of planets grouped between strings of asteroids and blank spaces.

You will score each color group depending on the number of planets (and the length of your asteroid path) and then at the end of the game your final score is based on the combined total of the score for your asteroids and the LOWEST scoring color.

Board Game Review - One Key

One Key is a co-operative deduction game from Libellud with a feel and mechanic similar to a couple of their other games: Mysterium and Obscurio. In One Key, the concept is that “the key” has gone missing and it’s up to the group to find it. In this case, the “key” is linked to (or is represented by) a piece of odd and whimsical artwork.

To setup the game, one player is selected as “the Leader” (the clue giver) and they draw/deal 11 of these whimsical cards then randomly decide which of those cards is THE “one key.” Over the course of 4 rounds, the Leader will draw and reveal 3 additional cards.

The Leader uses a token to tell whether each card has a “strong”, “weak” or “uncertain” affinity to the key card. The other players (the “Travelers”) choose one of the 3 cards and looks at the token to decide if the Leader felt it was a strong or weak (or uncertain) link to the key card.

Based solely on this information, they discuss amongst themselves which of the 11 available keys should be eliminated. In the first round they must eliminate 1 card, the second round they eliminate 2, the third they eliminate 3 and the final round they eliminate 4 cards to (hopefully) leave the One Key sitting by itself. If at any time the players choose to eliminate the One Key, they immediately lose. They win by making it to the final round of the game and not eliminating the key during the final selection process.

Board Game Review - The Quacks of Quedlinburg

In the quaint little village of Quedlingburg, the miracle doctors and quack surgeons have quite the business going. How would you like to try your hand at brewing a wondrous concoction to cure all ails?⁣

⁣In Quacks of Quedlinburg, players toss ingredients from their bags into their bubbling cauldrons. The more ingredients you can get in the pot, the higher your score. But if you toss in too many white ‘cherry bombs’ your entire potion will explode and you lose your hard earned work for that round. ⁣

Board Game Review - Obscurio

Obscurio is a semi cooperative board game where players are working together to try and escape the confusing Library of a terrible Sorcerer. One player takes the role of the Grimoire, a mystical book that provides (silent) clues. The other players take on the role of the daring wizards who foolishly ventured into the Library and stole the Grimoire. When playing with 4 or more players, one of the wizard players will have "fallen under the Sorcerer's spell" and will be acting as a traitor trying to keep the group from escaping.

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GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW
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Prior to each round, one or more "traps" are identified to add some twists and make things a little more difficult for the wizards. After the trap is identified, the clue-giver (Grimoire) draws an image card which will be the one CORRECT door for the given round. After studying the image for a few moments, the clue giver then draws two more image cards which will be used as clues and sets them on a special book for all players to see. The clue giver next takes two "butterfly tokens" to point arrows at pieces of the clue images to emphasize those aspects as important.

After the clues are marked, all "wizard" players close their eyes except for the traitor wizard who gets to look in a special folder and select up to two additional image cards to be used as incorrect doors. This is done once the traitor knows the clues that the clue-giver has presented which means they can pick doors most likely to mislead.

Now that the traitor has selected their cards to mislead, an additional set of random cards are drawn to bring the total to 6 door/image cards. The wizards open their eyes and those 6 cards are randomly placed around the game board. A timer is turned and the wizards each need to move their player token to one of the 6 doors.

Board Game Review - Apocalyptic Picnic

I got Apocalyptic Picnic with the direct goal of it being a fun, light card game that would appeal to my daughter. Our family plays a lot of games but my daughter is not a big fan of many of the games we play. She's a fan of the party game vibe and she does LOVE light card games, especially those with a zany feel or somewhat outrageous mechanics. Based on the description of the game, we felt like this was something that would be right up her alley that we could play together as a family.

Opening the game, we were impressed with the sturdy box and insert. The box shape doesn't fit neatly on our shelf but it holds the cards well and is set up for good organization. The cards themselves have a nice feel and a fun graphical design. The theme and artwork are quirky and cartoony but just gruesome enough to evoke the theme.

The idea of the game is that you have come to a large family reunion picnic. You have 5 cards in front of you that represent your immediate family. To begin the game, one of your family members has already become a zombie. Your goal each turn is to manipulate the cards you draw and play to "bite" or otherwise infect other players' family members to turn everyone else into zombies while you keep the last non-zombie family member in front of you.

Game Review - One Night Ultimate Super Villains

If you've ever played party games with a medium to large group of teenagers, there's a good chance you've played Werewolf (or Mafia). This game involves randomly assigning some small number of players to be the Werewolves and the rest of the players to be innocent villagers. The game then plays over alternating phases where the Werewolf team will "murder" another player in their "sleep" and then everybody wakes up and votes on a player to eliminate. Naturally the Werewolf team hopes that a villager gets voted off while the villagers want to eliminate the werewolves. Gameplay continues until all of the werewolves are eliminated or the majority of villagers are eliminated.

In recent years, Bezier Games has been releasing numerous special roles and variants to the game. One of their most recent additions is One Night Ultimate Super Villains.

In the Super Villains version, the werewolves are replaced by (you guessed it) super villains. Each super villain has a special ability that lets them interact with the game in a different way. The game also comes with a pile of unique Role cards for all of the other players. Instead of just being an innocent bystander, the "villager" players may take on roles of super heroes or other characters with different abilities.

Board Game Review - Cabo (2nd Edition)

As a family we play a number of games with a standard deck of cards. In fact, my daughter often prefers the simplicity of these card games over a full board game. Cabo is a game that has the feel of some of those games, most notably a game called "Golf" (or as my family plays it "9 Holes").

Cabo is played with a deck of cards ranging in value from 0-13. Each player is dealt 4 cards face-down and allowed to look at and replace 2 of them. Then players take turn drawing cards and either discarding them or putting them in place of one of their cards. Turns continue until one player thinks they have the lowest card values in front of them and that player "calls Cabo." Every other player gets one more turn and then cards are revealed and players get the score of the cards in front of them. If the person who "called Cabo" has the lowest score, they get 0 points. If they didn't have the lowest score, then they score the points on their cards plus a 10 point penalty. The game continues with new rounds of the same gameplay until one player's score goes over 100 and the person with the lowest score wins.

Board Game Review - Lost Cities: Rivals

More than a decade ago, my wife and I picked up a copy of the card game Lost Cities. This simple game of card management and trying to outguess your opponent (and the deck) has been a mainstay in our collection ever since and one we still play on a regular basis. This past summer, Dr. Reiner Knizia released Lost Cities: Rivals. As you may suspect from the name, this game is a sequel of sorts to the original Lost Cities but it has a few differences as well.

A number of years ago, a full "Board Game" version of Lost Cities was released. That version borrowed on the general theme and some of the mechanical ideas of the original Lost Cities but made some significant departures in order to create a compelling board game experience. With Lost Cities: Rivals we are closer to the original version of Lost Cities but we still have enough changes that this should be considered its own distinct game.

Lost Cities: Rivals is a straightforward card game in which each player takes on the role of an adventurer setting off on expeditions with the goal of achieving the most fame. Prior to each expedition, the player may set a "wager" to potentially double, triple or quadruple the amount of fame they receive. The deck consists of 5 different suits/colors with each suit containing 3 wager cards along with numerical cards ranging from 2-10. Cards must be placed in numeric order with the player not being allowed to backtrack. So if the player places a red 7 and later finds a red 6, they are not allowed to play the 6 and instead must pass up on those juicy points. Wager cards must be placed before any numbers are played. Thus a player is required to wager that they will do well in a color before having full confidence of getting the cards they need. So far this should sound VERY similar to the original game and indeed it is, with a few significant differences.

Codenames - Boardgame review and game night report

A couple of years ago, I was introduced to the game Codenames. When it first came out it was all the rage and was getting a ton of buzz. When I heard the initial descriptions of the game, I was a little skeptical and wondered how it would catch on with my normal gaming friends, family and other groups of gamers since we don't often go in for party-style guessing games. Once I finally tried it, I decided it was worthwhile and wanted to introduce it to my family. It was a quick hit. Everybody really enjoyed it and was excited to play both as a guesser and as clue givers.

That winter I was going to a family holiday gathering with extended familiy and was asked to bring games. I packed Codenames. Knowing that there would be younger kids there, I went out and bought a copy of the Disney version to bring along. Once again, I was a little skeptical as to whether or not it would go over well and work with younger kids and once again I was pleasantly surprised. Just this past month, I was selected by #Tryazon to be a participant in a Codenames party night showcasing Codenames Disney and Codenames Marvel. I got a copy of the Marvel version and sent out invites.

Game Review - Ice Cool

Ice Cool is a fun lightweight game with great table presence. It’s accessible for younger players while still fun and challenging for adults. It quickly gained appeal and won many awards including the Kinderspiel award for 2016 (children’s game of the year in Germany).

Thematically the game is about a bunch of penguins in their icy school. The game is played over several rounds. Each round, one player takes the role of “hall monitor” trying to catch the other players who are rushing around the halls (skipping class *grin*) trying to grab some fish to snack on. The round continues either until the hall monitor has successfully caught each other player or until one student has successfully grabbed all their fish.

This is a dexterity game where each player “flicks” their penguin to move around the school. The penguins are plastic pieces with a rounded, weighted bottom. They reminded me a little of the Weebles toys from the 70s (“weebles wobble but they won’t fall down”). The school is built from numerous boxes that interlock to form several rooms with doorways. A player then flicks their penguin to try and get it to move through doorways around the school. If the student penguin moves through a doorway with one of their fish tokens over the door, they collect a fish card. If the hall monitor penguin touches a student penguin (or if a student runs into the hall monitor) then the student hands the hall monitor their “student id” card. At the end of the round, the hall monitor receives fish cards based on the number of student ids they collected. After each player has had a turn to be the hall monitor, everyone counts the number of fish they’ve collected to determine the winner.

Game Review - Kingdomino

Kingdomino was the Spiel des Jahres (German Board Game of the Year) winner for 2017 so I was naturally intrigued. There are 3 levels of the Spiel des Jahres: a children's game award, a family game award and an "advanced" or "strategic" game award. Kingdomino won in the standard/family category so it fit into a sweet spot for my family of gamers.

The theme of the game is that each player is a ruler in a land trying to build up their kingdom to contain the most prosperous swaths of different types of terrain ranging from deserts to mountains to lakes and others in between. That said, the theme is very light in this game so it's doubtful you'll feel like a regal Lord or an imperialist land baron without some serious role playing at the table.

The mechanics of the game are based on game play from dominoes (hence the mash-up in the game title). The game consists of a number of rectangular tiles (the number varies based on number of players). Each rectangle can be thought to split down the middle like a domino with each side containing an image of one terrain type or another...for example a tile may have a forest on one half and water on the other half...or you may find the double-mountain tile or some other tile with the same terrain across the entire tile.

The twists to the game that differentiate it from dominoes come in the way you select your tiles, the way you place them in your tableau to build your kingdom and the way you score at the end of the game.

Game Review - New York Slice

As a family of pizza lovers and board gamers we were intrigued by New York Slice from Stronghold Games.

The game concept is simple an uses a mechanic that many parents of "fairness minded" children may find very familiar. One player divides up the pizza in a way that seems most fair to them and then everyone else gets to choose the portions they want first. The trick comes in trying to set up the choices so that the other players take what you want them to take and leave alone the juicy slice you want for yourself.

The first thing we noticed when we sat down to play was the art and graphic design. They really outdid themselves in terms of making a cohesive, thematic game. The game box is constructed to open like a pizza box (albeit a bit more durable). Inside you'll find the dozens of pizza slices that look almost good enough to eat. The other components continue the theme with a rule book organized as a menu you might find in your local pizza shop and a score pad that's a guest check register from that harried pizza shop waiter or waitress. Even the "today's special" bonus tiles look like the name plates you'd see in the counter display. The graphical experience is absolutely fabulous. My only design gripe is trying to store the bits back in the box after gameplay...the slices don't fit real well and end up sliding all around. Fortunately they're made of very durable cardboard so it shouldn't cause any real problems.

Game Review - Exit: The Pharaoh's Tomb

My family and I had a lot of fun in a mini "brick and mortar" escape room at a recent convention but the price to take 5 of us into an escape room is pricey so it's not something we're going to do much. Even as a date night for just my wife and I, the cost is up there. So this new trend of escape room games at home has me excited. Having the "Exit" series also win the German Spiel des Jahres award this year also means that the trend will likely continue to give us fun new offerings.

I ordered a copy of the Egypt themed "Exit" escape room game "The Pharaoh's Tomb". My daughter wasn't super excited for it so it was just my two boys, my wife and I. We sat down, not knowing exactly what to expect, and opened the box. I'll work to avoid spoilers while also letting you know what's in there and what we experienced.

The contents of the box are simple...basically you get a bunch of cards, a decoder disk, two "strange items" (paper strips with hieroglyphs), an instruction book and a diary/notebook from a previous explorer. (It's not a spoiler but I enjoyed the nods to pop culture in that the notebook was from "Dr. Ford" and there are some hidden images that remind you of a certain whip toting, snake hating adventurer)

Weekend of Gaming Awesomeness at SaltCON 2017

This past weekend was my chance to escape away to my personal convention of choice...SaltCON. This multi-day event is held up in Layton, Utah and is filled with hours and hours of board games. It's a time to catch up with friends who I only see online or at this yearly convention.

It's a time to find out about brand new games, play prototypes of games still in development or play games that I otherwise won't get a chance to play at home (usually due to length or complexity). It's also a place to meet with vendors and exhibitors selling goodies that are specific to the board gaming hobby like player maps, game inserts/organizers, special dice or other fun items to show off your love for the hobby. It's one of my favorite weekends every year and I'm always excited for the first week in March to arrive. Here's a low down of my gaming experiences from the event.

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THURSDAY

I started out my Thursday with a game of Terraforming Mars (By the Way - wait for the price to drop a bit closer to $60...current high price is because it's sold out by retailers, but a new printing should arrive soon) by Stronghold Games in the Envoy room. Thanks to Scott from Envoy for teaching. I had a good time with this one although I diluted my strategy by trying to do too many different things (and made a bad name for myself by sending a big fat asteroid to destroy a ton of plant life, but hey, all's fair in gaming and terraforming). I look forward to trying this again to try out some different strategies and improve the ones I tried this time.

Next I learned and played Trickerion: Legends of Illusion by Ape Games. Thanks to Mark for teaching. This is a fun worker placement game with a great theme.
I enjoy the balance of trying to figure out which tricks to learn and prepare for and how to do all of that in a way to optimize your time to get on stage and perform the show. Quite a fun game that I'd enjoy playing again.