Little Devils—Review

by Firestone

My group loves trick-taking games—and climbing games. We regularly play Tichu, and we often play Mu and Frank's Zoo and Sticheln (my personal favorite). So where does Little Devils fall in that group? Let's find out.

Components

• 54 cards, numbered 1 through 54. Each card also has a number of devils on it—from zero to five.
• Rules

That's it—but it all comes in a nice, embossed tin case that will stand up much better than the flimsy boxes most card games come in.

Setup

The game plays 3-6 players, and you'll remove certain numbers of the cards depending on how many are playing. Then you'll deal out nine to each player.

Gameplay

The player to the left of the dealer leads any card he or she wants—except a card with five devils on it (unless that's all that person has). Unlike most trick-taking games, the next person can play any card he or she wants, and chooses the direction of the hand. If the second player chooses a card numbered higher than the first one played, then the highest card played to the hand will win the trick. If the second player chooses a card numbered lower than the first one played, then the lowest card played to the hand wins the trick. It will happen that someone doesn't have a card that can go in the direction of the trick, and that person is forced to play in the opposite direction. Well that turns the hand topsy-turvy: the person who leads the highest or lowest card in the opposite direction wins. That seems way more complicated than it is in real life, so how about a couple examples...

Example 1

Player 1—Leads a 31

Player 2—Plays a 40, so the direction is higher and the highest played card wins the trick.

Player 3—Plays a 32

Player 4—Plays a 54, and takes the trick

Example 2

Player 1—Leads a 52

Player 2—Plays a 53, so the direction is higher and the highest played card wins the trick—but there are only 54 cards...

Player 3—Doesn't have anything higher, so is forced to play lower than 52; she plays a 40, reversing the direction of the trick, and will currently take the trick.

Player 4—Only has cards lower than 40, so plays a 35. He has played the lowest card and takes the trick.

The player who wins the trick leads the next one, and since the person who leads will never win the trick, you'll never win two tricks in a row? But don't I want to win tricks?, you ask. No, you don't.

As I said, cards have little devils on them—from zero to five—and you're trying to avoid them. Once you finish a hand, everyone counts up devils, writes it down, and you deal out a new hand. Once someone(s) reach 100 points, the game ends, and the player with the fewest points wins.

Recommendations

Family game? Yes with a but! You should decide if a game with cartooney devils on it is something you want to play. But as far as game weight and luck level, this is a great family game.

Youth group game? Maybe! Again, this will depend on your group. But I could see playing this game as a great introduction to a discussion of demons and the Enemy. You can talk about how the game seems to trivialize and minimize the idea of devils by making them cartooney, but how deadly serious evil in the world is.

Gamers Game? Maybe but probably not! Unless your group really doesn't mind a lot of luck with their games, this one might just frustrate them. But it's an okay filler, and portable.

The Verdict

This game is a very simple member of the trick-taking family of games. And that's okay! When I was a kid, my parents used to play a Euchre variant called Pepper, and I'd bug and bug them to explain it to me. And every time they'd try, my eyes would glaze over. I wish I'd had a game like Little Devils to teach me the basics of playing a card, and winning a trick, but in an easy-to-understand format.

Is this going to make it to many of my regular game nights? No, there's just too much luck. But I'll likely be using Little Devils to teach my kids the basics of trick-taking.

We played at my game group, and everyone agreed that it was just too lucky. If you have a crappy hand, welcome to Pointsville—Population: You. I like games where I can take a crappy hand and play it well and cleverly. But I will say that despite the randomness there was a great deal of laughing and groaning and just plain fun! Sometimes luck and randomness can lead to lots of fun.

I do like that you know exactly which cards are out there and could be played. If, during setup, you just took a random 20 out of the deck and put them aside unseen, this would be a much worse game for it.

One big advantage this has is that it plays more quickly than other trick-taking games. You can't really play Sticheln or Mu as a quick filler. But while it's faster than other trick-takers, this still plays on the high end of the "20-30 minutes" advertised on the tin—sometimes longer.

Something we should mention is the theme of devils. The depictions of the devils are cartoonish and "light"—and you're trying to avoid them during the game. But you're still playing a game with devils on it. It doesn't make me uncomfortable, but it does mean I'll be very intentional about when I bring this out with my kids. I want to make sure we can fully discuss devils and demons and just open a dialogue on it. Use your judgment on it.

The Final Verdict

If the only trick-taking game you've played is Hearts on the computer, or Spades in college years ago, this is a new and unique spin on the genre. It's not deep. It's not complex. It's not NOT filled with luck. But it is fun, and a great way to introduce trick-taking mechanics to young'uns. It scales well, and can be had for $15. All-in-all, it's a good family, group, and gathering game.

Thanks for reading!

A Review. Of Coup. For You.

By Firestone Lately I've found myself getting completely hooked by small games with big gameplay. The Resistance. Hanabi. And now Coup.

Components

• 15 cards—five characters (Duke, Assassin, Captain, Ambassador, Contessa) repeated three times.
• Summary cards
• Money

Now, there are a few different printings of this. The components might be slightly different—and the art is certainly different—but that's what you'll be playing with.

Setup

• Place the pile of money in the center of the table.
• Give each person two dollars.
• Have each person draw two cards, look at them, and place them facedown in front of them.

Gameplay

Coup is a game where you're influencing important people to help you do your bidding, and decrease your opponents' influence, until you're the last person standing. It's a little tricky to explain (those summary cards that come with the game are really necessary), so stick with me. On your turn you can do one of four things—the last thing has some sub-things...

1. Collect Income—which means taking one coin from the bank. Nothing can stop you from doing this or affect this in any way.
2. Collect Foreign Aid—which means taking two coins from the bank. Why would someone Collect Income when they can Collect Foreign Aid? I'll tell you in a minute.
3. Coup—Pay seven coins and launch a coup against an opponent. That opponent chooses one of their facedown character cards and discards it faceup. Nothing can stop you from doing this or affect this in any way.
4. Use the Special Power of a Character—Each character has a special power, and you just do it.

The Duke allows you to take three coins from the bank.

The Assassin allows you to pay three coins to kill another player's character card.

The Captain allows you to steal two coins from another player.

The Ambassador allows you to draw two character cards from the deck, exchange one, both, or neither of the drawn cards with the character cards you already have, and then put two cards onto the deck.

The Contessa doesn't get an action. (But she gets other stuff. Hang on.)

What's interesting is that you don't have to actually have that character card to do the Action... You can bluff your way into any action. So maybe I have the Assassin and the Contessa in front of me. When it gets to my turn I can say, "I'm going to take three coins, because I have the Duke." And that's just what I do. Unless...someone calls my bluff. Anyone at the table can say that I'm lying. If that's the case, one of us is losing a card. If I'm bluffing, I have to admit it, turn one of my character cards faceup, and I'm down to one "life." (You're out of the game when you have to ditch both characters. You've essentially lost your ability to influence people anymore, so you're thrown out to the dogs. Or something.) If I was telling the truth, I show that do actually have that character, the person who wrongly accused me has to ditch a character card, and then I get a new one: You place the card on the pile of remaining cards, shuffle them up, and draw one. It might be the one you just got rid of, and your opponents have no idea. That's one of the great things about this game.

In addition to Actions, some of the characters have a Blocking ability.

The Duke blocks someone from collecting Foreign Aid. (Which is why you might want to just Collect Income rather than Foreign Aid.)

The Captain blocks someone from stealing coins from you.

The Ambassador also blocks someone from stealing coins from you.

And the Contessa blocks someone from Assassinating you.

Again, someone can claim they have a blocking character even if they don't. And again, unless someone calls the bluff, the block happens. The last person with influence (a character) wins. The game is layered and tense and...poker-like, in a way. It's also very simple and elegant.

Recommendations

Family Game? Maybe! Certainly not until they're older. Even then, I'm not sure this is something my wife would want to play.

Youth Group Game? Possibly! It would depend greatly on the group.

Gamers' Game? Definitely! Coup is a terrific gamers' game—especially if your group likes games such as The Resistance.

Final Verdict

The first time we played this, we played it five times in a row. And that was in less than an hour. I will say that this wasn't good with six players, IMO. There was too much information on the table toward the end--because so many characters were discarded--so it slowed down as people tried to figure out who their opponents might still have. Four players felt good, and some people said they thought it might be best with five.

We also had a situation where three people were left, and all three had one character left. On one person's turn he was going to Coup someone, but whichever opponent he didn't kill would just kill him. So he was essentially in the position of deciding who won. Blech. That was my only complaint.

I like Coup a lot, and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy. It's not going to replace The Resistance, but for a change-of-pace filler it's just completely awesome.

So where can you get your own copy? Well, Indie Boards and Cards has a Resistance-themed Coup up on Kickstarter right now! It ends in two weeks, and it's way overfunded. And the best part? It's only $15 shipped. Check it out.

Thanks for reading! And make sure you check us out on Twitter, Facebook, and now Instagram!

Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom—Review

"For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius." ~Dr. Frederick Frankenstein—pronounced "Fronkensteen." Mad scientists, or just misunderstood? Either way, Dr. Gloom has created a machine that brings to life creatures from imagination—or nightmare—which will help him be king of the mad scientists. Or something. It doesn't matter. All you need to know is that The Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom is a neat little card game from designer Michael Schacht. It follows the same pattern of so many of his designs: simple, interesting choices. This one is particularly good for families.

Components

48 Creature Cards in 4 different colored "suits"—or, monsters—numbered 1 through 6, and there are two of each of those numbers. In addition to the color differences, the monsters are different types, so they're easy to distinguish.

4 Monster Machine cards—one in each of the colors. These are double-sided with a "+" symbol on one side, and a "-" symbol on the other.

These cards come in a nice, embossed tin that makes it portable, but also able to stand up to being transported. (Some of my card game boxes are getting worn out over time; that's unlikely to happen here.)

Gameplay

Setup

• First you place each of the four Monster Machines on the table—with the "+" side up.
• Then you shuffle up all of the Creature Cards and deal them out to the players—the number depends on the number of people playing.
• You also create an 8-card deck of extra creatures that is set aside—and then later played exclusively on Dad!
• Pick a start player.

You'll play a number of rounds equal the the number of players, and each round plays exactly the same: on your turn you'll either play one card or pass. The first card played on any of the machines can be of any value. From that point on, any cards played have to follow the current "rule" of the Monster Machine: equal to or lower than the previously played card if the Machine is on the "-" side, and equal to or higher than the previously played card if the Machine is on the "+" side.

The 5 and 1 cards are special. They have a "mutation symbol" on them. So while you can play a 1 on a 1, or a 5 on a 5, you can also "wrap around"—again, depending on the Monster Machine's orientation at the time. So if it's on the "+" side, and there's a 5 down, you can play a 1 on top of it—or a 1 on a 5 in the case of the "-" side. This kind of...unsticks the machine if it's maxed out at the highest or lowest number, and there's no way to flip the symbol. So how do you flip the symbol on the Monster Machine?

If you play an identical card on top of another card, you get to choose one of two options:

• Flip one of the Monster Machines to the other side (it doesn't have to be the same machine you just played a card onto).
• Force someone (usually Dad!) to draw one of the cards from the extra stack of monsters you put aside at the beginning of the game. This is a way to slow down someone who seems to be winning, or who is about to end the round by going out. Once that stack of 8 is gone, you have to flip a machine.

So players either play a card, or pass if they're unable to play a card. It could be that you pass on this turn and then, because of cards played after you, you're able to jump back in. The round ends if everyone passes because they're unable to play onto one of the machines, or if someone plays the last card from his or her hand—in which case, everyone else gets one final turn to play a card, if possible.

Each Creature Card has 0, 1, or 2 skulls on the top, which represent penalty points. (1's and 6's have no points. 2's and 5's have one. And 3's and 4's have two.) Everyone who didn't go out adds up the penalty points that remain on their cards. If someone happens to have no Creature Cards left, that person subtracts 3 penalty points from their score. Then you play another round just like the last, until you've played as many rounds as there are players. Whoever ends up with the fewest penalty points wins.

Recommendations

Family Game? Definitely! I can't tell you how much I love that my 5-year-old can play this. And there's enough fun play that the 8-year-old loves playing, too. It's squarely in the small realm of games my whole family can—and likes to—play.

Youth Group Game? Under the Right Circumstances! Maybe preteen or junior highers, but I'm not sure senior highers would like this.

Gamer’s Game? Nope! It's a filler, but not one I'd bring to game night. It's not like there's anything to dislike here, it's just that there are deeper fillers out there, and my game group would rather play those.

The Verdict

As a family game—which is how I'll be playing this 99% of the time—it gets an enthusiastic thumbs up. My kids like it. My wife likes it. I like playing it with my kids and my wife—everybody wins! Plus it gives them a chance to gang up on Dad and hand him extra Creature cards. And who doesn't like that?! Besides me, of course.

Thanks to Stronghold Games for providing a review copy of Crazy Creatures of Dr. Gloom, which did not in any way affect my opinion of the game. You can get the Crazy Creatures of Dr Gloom on Amazon here.

And thanks to you for reading!

More Smash Up, X-Wing Tiles, and Free Stuff from Mayfair!

Alderac has officially unofficially announced today that there will be yet another expansion for the hit Paul Peterson title Smash Up, releasing in August. It will feature 4 new factions taking on the same format as Awesome Level 9000. With a few twists. From Alderac's Facebook page: There have already been a lot of questions about more Smash Up, so we'll let you know there is another set of 4 factions coming in August! For the first time, this set has an overall theme running through the factions. Each is distinct, with its own focus mechanically and visually, but there is a common thread that runs through all of them. Speculate away! We interviewed designer Paul Peterson a few months ago, you can check out our interview and see if he left any clues for us on this third expansion...

Fantasy Flight has announced that they are releasing a Tile/Battlefield kit for their X-Wing Miniatures game. The set comes with 12 tiles each measuring a square foot, and featuring iconic locations in the Star Wars Universe. They look slick, and appear to offer a great, and FLAT, surface to hold your battles on! Check out the photo we've included. And you can see the official info on Fantasy Flight's site here.

And finally the deadline is quickly approaching to enter Mayfair's giveaway for a prototype copy of the new Catan expansion Explorers & Pirates! Go follow this link to enter; it's easy!

Thanks as always for reading, and please don't forget to sign up for TOG via email, or RSS feed! And for even more fun do the Facebook and Twitter things!

Oh, What a Wookie!

Chewbacca is on the scene in Star Wars The Card Game. Fantasy flight has announced the first deluxe expansion of the game "Edge of Darkness" adds 22 new objective sets, which is a total of 132 cards, adding two new affiliations: DS Scum and Villainy and the LS Smugglers and Spies. It's within this deluxe expansion that Fantasy Flight revealed today (4/10/13) that the objective set "Wookiee Life Debt" will in fact feature Chewbacca himself. And at a quick glance he will be ready to tear into the Empire and deal some serious damage, even if he takes damage during an encounter! It's not wise to upset this wookiee.

We're still waiting on the multiplayer expansion for this game, to really see the full potential of the title, but from looking at the new wookie objective set, LS players have been given some much-needed fire power to stand up to the Empire.

You can find the full review of the new objective set here.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to tell your friends about us, and do those social Facebook and Twitter things too!

I'm The Boss: The Card Game—A Double-Take Review

Usually, we here at TOG agree on games. There are some games, after all, that are just good, solid games and there is nothing to disagree about—and things are nice and civil here on the blog and it's all "Hey, you're right, I love that about this game!" and "Oh yeah, I totally agree with you about that!" Well...not today, folks. We received copies of I'm the Boss: The Card Game from Gryphon Games to review. And let's just say, there's a bit of a difference of opinion.

Before we go any further here's the run down of the game:

Components

• 96 deal cards in three colors
• 3 "X" cards
• 6 multi-colored "wild" Piece Of The Action (POTA) cards
• 1 Boss and 2 Cousin tokens
• 12 double-sided "I'm In/Pass" disks
• 1 "2X" disk
• 90 money cards
• Rulebook

Gameplay

The game length is a set amount of rounds, depending on the number of players. Each player takes turns being the boss; they will either be the boss once, or twice—again, depending on the number of players.

The Deal—Once players have been dealt their cards (8-10 depending on the number of players), and been given two "I'm In/Pass" tokens, the boss starts the deal by playing a card. The color (1 of 3) of that card played is now the color of the deal, and all cards played during this deal must be of that same color. Once the deal is started play continues around the table.

Player turn—On their turn a player may choose two different actions: 1) play a card, or 2) pass. If they choose to pass they do so by turning over one of their "I'm In" tokens to the "Pass" side; once they have turned over both of their tokens to the Pass side, they are out of the deal, and can no longer play cards, or have cards played on them. Here are their options should they choose to play a card.

• Dollar value cards—Playing these cards will affect the value of the deal; there are both positive and negative values on these cards. If you're not in the deal, you may want to throw negative cards in to the mix to stop folks from making a ton of money while you're left with nothing.

• Piece of the Action cards—This card gives you just that: a piece of the action. This is how you get in the deal if you are not the Boss or a Cousin (we'll explain Cousins in a minute). One thing to clarify though: It does not divide the deal further; it is actually a multiplier. For each Piece Of the Action card in front of a player they either receive or pay the final value of the deal multiplied by the number of Piece Of the Action cards AND add another for being the Boss or a Cousin. These cards do not have to be played in front of you; you can play them on any player at the table (as long as they haven't passed twice this deal). It's the perfect way to help out an ally, or destroy an enemy when the deal is in the negative!

• Reverse cards—These cards reverse the value of the deal for the player who has it played front of them. Say it's a huge deal; well maybe you'll toss a reverse value on the person next to you—or if the deal is way in the red, you can salvage it for yourself and leave the rest of the players holding the bag. You can also save yourself from a reverse card with another reverse. Having an odd number of these cards in front of a player means the value is opposite of the deal as it stands; having an even number means you're in at face value.

• Move cards—These cards have a value printed on them from 1-3. They allow you to move cards either a) from the deal to the discard pile, b) from in front of you to another player or the discard pile, or c) from another player to in front of you or to the discard pile. They're a great way to steal someone's Piece Of the Action, or get rid of a negative card in the deal, etc.

The Boss has one more power each round: He or she gets to select who their cousins are by handing them a Cousin token. (The selection of cousins is negotiable; you can bribe, coax, and lie your way into getting that cousin token!) Players who are either the Boss or a Cousin will be getting a piece of the action. The Boss doesn't have to give it to anyone, but won't get anything extra for not handing it out. And the same person can't get both Cousin tokens.

Once all the players have passed twice (these passes don't have to be both in a row, you can pass on one turn and jump back in and play a card on the next), the deal ends and players get cash according to their Boss/Cousin status and how many pieces of the action they're getting.

One important thing to note is that as the game progresses, the payout will scale from 2x to 5x. After all the rounds have been played players count up their cash and the richest one wins!

Jeremiah—I've probably played this games at least a half a dozen times over the past month. The game is sometimes luck (depending on your hand, and the color of the current deal), but at all times it is about outsmarting, and outbluffing the other players at the table.

Firestone—I've only played this with gamers. At first I thought it might be a light negotiation game I could bring out with nongamers/casual gamers, but it's just too clunky for that, I think.

Jeremiah—It is true that there may be deals you can't impact very well, or much at all due to lack of cards. I always look at those times as opportunities to bluff my way into a cousin token, pass twice to get out, and make a new enemy. That's what I enjoy about this game: Sometimes it has everything to do with how you play the cards in your hand. Others it has everything to do with how you play the cards that aren't in your hand.

Firestone—The luck of the draw is what ultimately killed this for me. We played with 5, so there were only five rounds. The way the payouts scale (from a start of 2x up to 5x), you'd better hope you're in a good later round, because if it's a positive payout x5, and you're not involved, welcome to to not-first-place. Unfortunately, with three suits there will likely be rounds you're completely out of because you don't have any of that suit. (This happened multiple times to multiple people.) Sure, you can try to bluff your way into a Cousin token. But with nothing to contribute, that's tough. Plus, what if it's a negative payout? You have no way to change your circumstance. Just sitting there with nothing to do for one (or more) of the only five rounds was lame.

Jeremiah—The components are well made, definitely no complaints there. Of course I always would prefer room in the box to sleeve the cards though.

Firestone—I agree on this point! The components are high quality—the tokens and disks are chunky and the cards have a nice linen finish on them.

Jeremiah—There's just a warm spot in my heart for games like this, that cause good friends to have overly suspicious staring matches, and make idle threats. I've literally caught myself, in full out good fellas mode saying things like "If you make me your cousin, I won't be your enemy," to a very good friend of mine—and I meant it!

Firestone—That threat only works if I can back it up. Depending on the cards, I might not be able to...

Firestone Final Thoughts—This game was just too swingy for me. Also, the Move 3 card just shouldn't exist: that thing is way, WAY too powerful. I wanted to like this; I've liked all of the other games in Gryphon's Bookshelf series that I've played. This one just fell completely flat for me. But I'm glad Jeremiah likes it so much!

Jeremiah Final Thoughts—I've played this game with my veteran gamer friends, and the casual gamers alike, and we've all had a great time, many laughs, and more than a few icy stares thrown in one direction or another. While card management can be tedious from time to time, the over-arching mechanic is to be devious and outsmart the other players, not the game. And that I appreciate. I've won the game a few times, and I've lost a few (mostly because I was wrapped up in trying to tank other players and forgot to take care of myself) but every time I've had fun.

Well there you have it, folks. PROOF that we don't have identical taste in games. Which one of us do you agree with? Let us know in the comments. Thanks for reading!

Emperor's New Clothes—A Double Take Review

A couple of weeks ago we received prototype copies of the Kickstarter game Emperor's New Clothes—a game with a new twist on an old tale. We can't wait to share our thoughts with you. The game includes:

1 - Game Board

64 - Player cards

8 - Role cards (1 Emperor, 2 Swindlers, 4 Townsfolk, and 1 Child who breaks the illusion)

4 - Six sided dice

A whole pile of resource tokens

4 Meeples (for score keeping)

1- Starting player pawn

and the rule book.

The game begins with players randomly choosing a role and keeping that role secret. And dealing 5 cards to each player—it's pretty much that easy!

The player turn goes something like this: The starting player rolls all four dice, then decides whether to keep them, or re-roll any number of them, up to two times. The reason for keeping a certain numbers/combinations relies solely on the cards in your hand. Each card has certain abilities that can be triggered by certain dice roll totals or combos (or both in some cases) which will then allow you to score resource tokens.

Resource tokens are used for 1 of 2 things on your turn: either to buy you victory points, or you can cash them in for more cards. It often depends on what your role is. So the players take turns rolling dice, and using them to activate cards out of there hands, which then scores them resource tokens. After players have decided whether to spend or save their resource tokens, the round continues with the next player's turn. One round consists of each player taking a turn, and then victory conditions are checked. If no one has won, then the next round begins; players select new roles, the starting player pawn is passed to the left, and the whole thing starts over. The tricky part is there are sooo many ways to win and/or lose in this game! It all depends on which role you have (which, by the way, changes after every round!!). There's an element of "The Resistance" in this game, which basically means that if someone finds out who you are mid-round, there are plenty of "Town Crier" cards in the deck which players can use to block certain actions, take dice away, and stop you from scoring resources.

The beautiful part of this game is the marriage of old-school table-top gaming, and technology. The cards, game board and even the dice have been printed using some ridiculous ground breaking process - that we would almost call magic! We certainly don't claim to understand how it works, and Hoke's gaming (designers) and Game Salute are definitely not spilling the beans (something about patent lawyers and all that). But as far as we can tell it's like a mix between those "hidden picture" images they used to sell at the mall kiosks, and the technology described in this video from MIT:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rWycBEHn3s]

It's said that because of the printing process there are actually a small percentage of gamers (estimated to be around 3%) who will actually not be able to see the artwork—or at least not in great detail.

Jeremiah—Let's put aside the unreal components for a minute. If this game was printed via a standard process, it would be an amazing game. There's enough depth in the mechanics to keep the veteran gamers coming back, but it's light and fun enough to introduce to a new or casual gamer.

Firestone—I'm always looking for a game that's going to be a hit with my game group, but that I can also bring out with newbies. Emperor's fills that void.

Jeremiah—Let's also not forget the humor side of this! Sabotaging your friends with cards like "Skid Mark" and "Holey Sock" add a decent and light-hearted amount of skullduggery to the mix, without giving too much power to the swindlers!

Firestone—I thought the "Bamboozle" card was a little overpowered, but for the most part these were a good mix. I'll never forget the look on my friend's face when I played "The Man Who Was Thursday" on him.

Jeremiah—I know Scott is probably going to disagree with me on this, but I love the randomness of changing roles after every round!! It keeps you invested in the game, and keeps you always thinking! Having just ONE strategy will not score you the victory in this game!

Firestone—Oh Jeremiah, you and your crazy love of chaos...

Jeremiah—What can I say about the components... When I opened the box it was breathtaking. To get that kind of depth, movement, and clarity on a completely FLAT surface, without the use of glasses or special lights! Totally science-fiction-type stuff; the future is here, folks!

Firestone—Agreed! The kids were begging to play this as soon as they spotted that board. And it's not just pretty; all of the information you need in the game is right there on the board. The meeples were great; I'm so sick of companies insisting on giving me crappy plastic pieces. I love the old-school basic-ness of the wooden bits. Basic-ness sounds like bacon; now I'm hungry...

Jeremiah—I fell in love with this game and the idea from the word go! The mechanics are an incredible amalgamation of card and resource management, dice rolling, and backstabby role playing, with a dash of chaos mixed in. All that wrapped in a beautiful package! This is a future Game Of the Year candidate, I score it an 11!

Firestone—This gets a big thumbs-up from me, too. Often games with this many mechanisms don't do any of them particularly well, but they've managed to combine everything into a nearly perfect whole. Emperor's New Clothes should be seen to be believed.

The Kickstarter project ends in just 6 days, so check it out and see what you're missing.

Coloretto—A Classic Review

By Firestone I love a good filler. Having a great, short, interesting game to fill the constant gaps is worth its weight in gold. Coloretto is a terrific filler.

Components

• 63 color cards—nine copies of seven colors
• 10 "+2" Cards
• 1 "Last Round" Card
• 3 Jokers
• 5 Row Cards
• 5 Summary Cards
• 1 Rule Booklet

This is all housed in a small card box, which can be had for a very reasonable $10.

Setup

Place one of the Row Cards on the table for each player in the game. Each player takes one card of one color and places it in front of him or her. Shuffle the rest of the cards into a pile, deal 15 cards off the top of the pile, place the Last Round card on top of these 15, and then place the rest of the pile on top of this stack of 16 cards.

Gameplay

This is very simple: You either draw a card and add it to a row, or take a row and add the cards to your collection. If you choose to draw a card, you place it in one of the rows. A row can have at most 3 cards in it. If all rows have 3 cards in them, you must choose to take one of the rows. If you choose to take a row, you gather the cards and sort them by color and type. ( You can only take a row if it has at least 1 card in it...) Once you've taken a row, you're done for that round; once everyone has taken a row, the round is over. You place the Row Cards out again, and start a new round. Once the Last Round card is drawn, you finish the round and the game is over.

Scoring

Now you assign the jokers to one of the colors, and count up the colors.

1 card = 1 point

2 cards = 3 points

3 cards = 6 points

4 cards = 10 points

5 cards = 15 points

6 or more cards = 21 points

Here's where it gets interesting. You only get to pick 3 colors that will score you positive points, according to the numbers above. Any sets in any colors beyond those 3 will score you negative points. So you're trying to collect 3 colors, and no more, if possible. This, of course, makes where people place the drawn cards ripe with mean possibilities.

Now you simply add up the positive points, subtract the negative ones, and add 2 points for each of the "+2" cards you've managed to snag.

The person with the most points wins.

Recommendations

Youth Group Game? Yes! It's light and easy. The only negative for this is that it only plays 5; also, there's no theme to speak of, so it could be seen as "boring."

Family Game? Definitely! It's a game my oldest can easily grasp, and I suspect the youngest isn't far behind. And its length makes it something my wife enjoys playing, too.

Gamer’s Game? Absolutely! This is an excellent filler, with interesting choices.

This game is fun, fast, cheap, portable, and worthy to be in any game collection.

Thanks for reading! Let us know what some of your favorite fillers are!

Kill The Overlord—A Double-Take Review

Do you like card games for crowds? Do you like games with shifting-roles? Do you like manipulating a game in order to straight-up kill your friends? Kill The Overlord, by APE Games, gives you the chance to do just that in a take-that game for 4 to 8 players. Components

The game comes with:

• 16 character role cards (two sets of 8)—These are oversized cards that are double-sided. They have a male character on one side, and a female on the other. Functionally, they're identical, but it's a nice touch to think of the women gamers (admittedly a minority) who might want to have a matching character. The artwork is done in a sort of anime style.
• 1 execution order card—This is the same size as the character cards; it gets passed around a lot.
• 44 plot cards—These are normal-sized cards that let you do things, such as give the Execution Card to someone else, or take the Execution Card yourself, and many others.
• Gold tokens—Punchboard money in denominations of 1's and 5's. They do just what they're supposed to do.
• Elimination Tokens, numbered 1 through 8—Punchboard tokens.
• Rulesheet—It's a sheet with rules. Good info, and examples. At first I thought they were overdoing the emphasis on Giving and Taking the execution order. Then you play the game and realize there's a reason they do that...

Gameplay

So the game starts with you taking a number of character cards—this will always include the Overlord card, and then the others will vary depending on numbers of players. The game comes with two full sets of character cards—8 "basic" ones and 8 "advanced" ones. You can mix and match them however you'd like. Each card has the character's name, a number in a shield, an amount of gold that character gets each turn, a description of that character's special power, and then the picture of the character. For example, the Squire, who is ranked #3, gets one gold per round, and his special power is that his hand size is increased by two and he gets to draw a card at the start of every execution. (He's one of my favorite characters...) The Captain is ranked #5, gets three gold per round, and when you give the Execution Order to a player, that player has to discard a plot card if able.

You deal out the roles and give everyone 5 gold. The first thing you do is draw up to two plot cards, up to your maximum hand size, which is four unless you have something that changes that.

Then you collect income (skipped on the first turn since you already have money). The higher ranked your Character Card, the more money you'll collect—up to 6 if you're the Overlord!

Next comes the Coronation phase, which is just a simple check to see if the person who is currently the Overlord has 30 gold. If so, that person automatically wins.

Then we have the Executions phase—this is when most of the game's action takes place. The Overlord chooses a character to take the Execution Order. The game makes this distinction because there are a number of plot cards and character special powers where something happens when you give the card to another player. But here, the Overlord is choosing someone to take the card—not give. It's a little hard to explain at first, but soon everyone gets what you're going for in the distinction. The player who gets the Order then tries to give it to someone else—generally through the play of a plot card. People keep playing cards and passing the Execution Order around until someone gets it who doesn't have any way to ditch it. That player is "executed" and out of the round—he or she puts their character card into the middle of the table and takes the lowest-available Elimination Token.

This continues until the Overlord is eliminated this way, which ends the round—and yes, it can happen that the Overlord is the first person killed. Once that happens, there are a few steps that determines how the character cards are distributed for the next round.

• First, any players who were still alive at the end of the round get new cards. The highest-ranked character alive takes the highest-ranked character card on the table and places his or hers down. (This will always be the Overlord card, since the death of the Overlord triggered the end of the round.)
• Now in descending rank order, any other players still alive do the same thing.
• Finally, any players eliminated in the round take new characters in the same way—except now you go in order from the lowest-numbered Elimination Token up to the highest. So the first person eliminated in a round will end up with the lowest-ranked character card for the next round.

You shuffle all used and unused plot cards together and play another round. As we said before, anyone with 30 gold and the Overlord card will win. Another way to win is to be the Overlord and be the last person executed in a round. If that happens, you automatically win—though this won't happen often as the other players will work together to make sure the Overlord isn't the last person left alive.

And that's the game!

Recommendations

Youth Group Game? Yes! This is light enough—and accommodates enough people—that it would work well as a youth group game.

Family Game? Sort of! Not with our young kids, but surely when they're older. They'll need to invite friends over, though, as this is better with more.

Gamer's Game? Maybe! If your group loves lighter, take-that games, this is just the ticket. If your group likes deeper games, this can fit in as a filler—though it's a bit long for a filler.

The Verdict:

Firestone—I'll be honest. No one in my group normally likes these type of games. But every single person (other than one guy who wasn't feeling well) thought it was really good "for what it is." That sounds like damning with faint praise, but for a group of people predisposed to dislike a game, the fact that we all enjoyed it says something.

Jeremiah— There are folks I game with who really enjoyed this game; it fell right in their wheelhouse. I too enjoyed the game, but could see how it may not be for everyone.

Firestone—The components are good, especially for the price-point. One small complaint about the plot cards: There are gauntlets on these pointing in different directions to help you figure out who exactly would be affected by you playing the card. Unfortunately, the drawing of the gauntlets is super-stylized, and most people at the table (myself included) had no earthly what they were. Once someone pointed it out, it was obvious, and you realize that's really helpful. But this was definitely a case of choosing form over function, IMHO.

Jeremiah—I thought the components were well made. I enjoyed the stylized look and detail of the character cards. The male/female option is a nice touch, although some of my group noted that the anime style in which they were drawn made some of the characters look rather androgynous. But fortunately this is a purely cosmetic function of the components, and has no bearing on the gameplay itself. We also had a few folks who didn't realize that the plot cards had gauntlets on them.

Jeremiah—I guess I would describe the game play as "light-hearted cutthroat". If you're the Overlord for a round, you can be sure that everyone else is going to gang up on you, but that's okay because you'll be ganging up on the new Overlord in the next round. It's light-hearted in that you can have a pretty good time playing it and killing off your friends without investing a lot of brainpower into strategizing your moves. Which isn't to say there aren't advantages to having a few (albeit loose) strategies.

Firestone—Light-hearted cutthroat is a great way to describe it. Yes, you're trying to kill everyone, but oddly enough it doesn't feel mean-spirited. The end game is interesting. In our game, many people had enough gold to win, so everyone was working to keep those three people from getting the Overlord card. That can be hard to do, since you can only work with the plot cards you have. One of the reasons we liked this particular version of this particular type of game was that it did feel as though you have some control over what happens. It's certainly not all luck.

Jeremiah—The plot cards act as a good equalizer. You can have a great character role for a round but if your hand isn't that great you'll probably get picked on by the Overlord until you are executed. It's important to note, that everyone starts with 4 cards. And certain roles can draw up to a higher hand limit when the time comes. We weren't too clear on that from the instructions, but a quick search on the interwebs cleared it up for us.

Firestone—My biggest complaint with the game was that it had some "Kill Dr. Lucky Syndrome"—which means that if player A is about to win, then player B has to stop that from happening. But if player B does that, he weakens his position, leaving the door open for player C to end up winning. I'm not a fan of that AT ALL, but this didn't seem as bad—possibly because you're not going strictly in seating order, but rather in rank order.

Jeremiah—Final thoughts and ratings: If you've read any amount of our reviews, you know that I'm a fan of games that involve lots of cutthroat, competitive, out-smart-the-game-AND-the-other-players elements. And this has a good deal of all of that. There are tons of characters so the replay-ability with the different combinations of characters is pretty high, and I like games that a gathering of 6-8 people can all sit down and play together. I'm giving it a solid 8 overall, for the different groups of folks that I play games with it hits a pretty wide audience.

Firestone—Final thoughts and ratings: This feels like a 7 to me. I like the variable characters, and extra characters, and I felt I had interesting decisions to make. I'll probably keep it in my bin for a while for game nights, and I think we'll pull this out when we need a filler. Will it be there 6 months from now? Not sure. It'll definitely stay in my pile of games to play with youth group or in "party" situations.

We'd like to thank APE Games for furnishing us with copies of Kill the Overlord for this review. Please check them out!

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Thanks for reading!

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game—A Review

By Jeremiah Well, we've certainly done our share of gushing over this game, but we've never actually given it our full, in-depth review. Until now. If you've never played a living card game (LCG) before, know this: The rules are deep and complex, and they're very similar to a collectible card game (CCG)—the biggest difference between the two is market collectibility. A CCG is distributed through starter decks and booster packs that randomly give you the cards of a 200-300 card set. An LCG releases the complete set in an expansion, so you're not trying to buy pack after pack after pack to get that one awesome card. You know exactly what you're getting in every pack, and my pack is going be the same pack you get.

The Lord of the Rings: The Card Game, which I will refer to as LOTR from here on out, delivers what everyone would want in a CCG, but puts it in a co-operative format. It's quite simply one of the funnest card games (LCG or CCG) I have ever put my hands on!

The Core set of the game includes a starter deck of 4 spheres of influence (you'll see more about that later), several sets of encounter cards, 3 quest decks, 2 threat counters and all the various tokens you will need (progress, wound and resource).

The game is designed for 2 players...or is it? With the purchase of a second core set you can expand to 4, and the design actually scales very well for anywhere from 1-4 players (yes, you can play a solo version!). Players each control three heroes which come from 4 different "spheres of influence" in Middle Earth: tactics, spirit, lore, and leadership. As with any LCG or CCG, deck customization plays a big part in terms of your success or failure.  I won't go into the ins and outs of deckbuilding here. I will say that there is a group of 4-6 of us who play together, and we've all sort of taken ownership of our own sphere, and we all play with mono-sphere decks. It has its advantages and its disadvantages, but it's seemed to work for us for the time being.

Because the game is co-op the player turn is set up slightly differently than a standard card game. Instead of each player going through the different phases of a turn, completing their turn and then play moving on to the next player, players in turn walk through each phase of a turn or round. For instance, after the refresh phase in which players give each hero a resource token (money) and draw a card and pass the "first player" marker to the left, players start the planning phase. Whoever was just passed the first player marker now plays cards from their hand, paying the appropriate resources to do so. These are typically items or allies to add to your party. But instead of moving on to the quest phase, the next player then performs their planning phase, and so on. During each phase players are encouraged to discuss their strategies and what they are doing, making it one big team effort. You're not supposed to reveal exactly which card you're holding in your hand but you can definitely talk about the abilities that card will give you, or your teammates.

So we're all in this together...well then what are we up against? Aside from each players' deck, there are two other decks involved in the game. A quest deck, and an encounter deck.

The Encounter Deck—It's full of baddies, locations, and other stuff that you will have to encounter during the game. Defeating enemies is not how you win the game, but they can certainly be the reason you lose the game! Traveling to locations can earn you certain bonuses or penalties depending on where you are going.

The Quest Deck—This deck is usually only 3 cards, though sometimes more and sometimes less. It tells you how you win the game, and sometimes gives you alternative loss conditions as well. It also tells you which cards go into the encounter deck, which often gives you a clue as to how hard, or what type of quest, it's going to be.

Typically to successfully complete a quest you have to place an amount of progress tokens on the currently active card of the quest deck. And often fulfill some other condition. So... How does one place a progress token on the quest deck? I'm glad you asked.

The two most crucial phases of the game are the quest phase and the encounter phase.

The Quest Phase—Players must decide whether to commit their heroes and allies to the quest; if they do, they exhaust that character, and turn the card on its side (just like tapping in Magic The Gathering). This means that the character cannot attack or defend any baddies coming out until the next turn. But their "will" is committed to the quest and cancels out an equivalent amount of threat in the staging area (which is where the bad guys live after they come out of the encounter deck, and before they attack). After the last player has committed characters to the quest, out comes one encounter card per player in the game. Each of these cards have a threat level on them which adds to the threat in the staging area. AFTER these cards are revealed, if the total amount of committed will is greater than the threat, then players place progress tokens on the quest (or active location they have traveled to) in the amount of the difference. If not, then each player increases their threat level by the difference on their threat counters. (Hitting 50 on your counter signifies the end of the game for you!) Okay, take a breath. Still with me? Good.

The Encounter Phase—Things get hairier in the encounter phase. Players can choose to engage any of the bad guys in the staging area, or let them engage you later. It's often helpful if someone is primed for fighting to have them engage a tougher opponent so they don't beat on your friend who isn't ready to face such a battle. Each decision piles up on the next, because there are mechanisms in place that will cause enemies to engage players based on your threat counter. And, if you have all of your characters committed to the quest, you're taking damage points that get turned into even more increases on your threat level. Things can snowball really, really quickly.

That, believe it or not, is a very rough overview of the game play. I told you. It's deep, complicated, and meticulous. But it is so fun!

This is not a casual party game; it's not even for the casual gamer—every decision, every card played, choosing whether to commit, to defend, to attack, everything, can make or break the success of the quest.

The storyline continues through the release of Adventure Packs, each of which includes a quest deck, usually a set of encounter cards, some new player cards to continue spicing up your deck, and setup instructions (often using several encounter sets from the core set). I love this aspect of it; it's like playing an RPG without having one person specified as the game master who has to put in hours of prep time before everyone else gets to play. For $15 you get a new quest and can have yourself a great evening. The down side is that rarely after we beat a quest do we go back and play it again. (Although there are plenty of them that took us more than one attempt!) And because of the monthly pace that Fantasy Flight maintains in releasing these packs, I'm a good $100+ behind in my chapter packs!

Final thoughts and my rating—I was introduced to "gaming through a couple different CCG-type games, so this title hits home for me. And it provides many nice twists to what is usually a head-to-head genre. The game is complex, but that complexity gives it a platform to build and expand on continuously, and also gives great great depth to the gameplay. The cards all have great synergy, not only within each sphere, but cross-sphere, making each quest a true team effort, which is something I've come to really enjoy about the game. And the Tolkien theme is icing on the cake. I give this one a 10.

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