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!

Reverse Charades—A Double Take Review

Ugh. Do we really need another charades game?

Yes. Yes we do.

Reverse charades is like charades...in reverse. Instead of one person trying to get multiple people to guess a word or phrase, Reverse Charades is multiple people trying to get one person to guess a word or phrase. And it's a ton of fun.

Components

• 1 timer

• 360 double-sided cards

• 1  set of rules—the easiest, simplest rules card we've seen in a long time.

Gameplay

Players are divided into teams of at least 3 or more players. When it's a team's turn they choose someone to be the lone guesser and the rest of the entire team takes the stage! The other team then holds the cards and reveals one at a time so only the actors can see them, and then the zaniness commences! The team of actors has to act out as many of the clues as they can, scoring a point for each card they get the guesser to correctly guess. The one strict rule in the game is that you can not make a sound, you can't mouth words to another actor, or to the guesser. But you are certainly allowed to use objects, and people as objects, to get the guesser to shout out the word(s) on the card!

Play continues until a point goal is reached, or until everyone is laughing too hard and can't go on any further!

Recommendations -

• Parties/large gathering
• Youth events
• Team-building exercises

Jeremiah—We really enjoyed playing this game; we had some teenagers over and I busted it out—what a hoot! It takes about 45 seconds to explain, and we had some great laughs.

Firestone—I played it with our adult small group from church—4 vs. 4, Guys vs. Girls. When I told them the premise, they were interested. When we got done playing, they wanted to know where they could buy their own copies...

Jeremiah—If there's one downside to the game it's that it requires a larger group (at least 6 people or more) to get a game going. And that's not much of a downside, it's just the nature of how the game works. Anything less and it's just plain old Charades.

Firestone—My one complaint is that the two sides of the cards are identical. They should at least be different colors so we can easily track which words we've run through. I can't believe no one thought of that. It's my only complaint, and I can just put used ones upside-down. But come on, guys! :)

Jeremiah—I love that there are a ton of words/cards included, I'm very interested in checking out the expansions. (Especially the holiday edition! I think this would be a great game for a Christmas party!) I will say that the best and most fun clues were ones that required a team effort. Things like clothesline, assembly line, etc.

Firestone—Yeah, some of the words didn't lend themselves well to the group doing anything together ("Moustache," for instance). It was much funnier when the words did, and the majority of the words were that way. I fear I will never be able to wipe clean the mental image of the guys acting out "Baby Powder"... *shudder*

Jeremiah—The concept is such a simple twist on (what I feel is) something that is kind of worn out. But that twist makes it about a million times more fun than the original. We found that folks who wouldn't normally feel comfortable playing charades in a traditional format—getting up by themselves and feeling singled out—jumped right up when there were other victims involved in the public ridicule!

Firestone—Being alone up there giving clues can be terrifying. Being in a group somehow makes it way easier. One of the quietest people in the group dove right in and was hamming it up.

Jeremiah Final Thoughts - We had a TON of fun playing this game! It definitely takes a party atmosphere to get it going; it's not your typical Board Game Night type of game. This is a top-notch party game, a very well done spin on something that has been public domain for some time. Reverse Charades will be a part of my party game collection and find its way out to many parties and large gatherings!

Firestone Final Thoughts—This is definitely going to every party with me for the foreseeable future. Everyone had a blast, and we laughed A LOT. If you're sick of Apples To Apples and Scattergories, give Reverse Charades a try; you won't be disappointed—unless you're at the bottom of "Dog Pile." Ouch!

Thanks to Gryphon Games for providing review copies; this in no way affected our opinions on the game.

Thanks to you for reading!

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!

The Great Heartland Hauling Co.—A Double-Take Review

"Breaker, breaker one-nine, you got a county mounty comin' up on your back door. You might want to back off the hammer." "No can do. I've gotta get these pink cubes pigs up to Jericho."

The Great Heartland Hauling Co. is a "cubes and cards game" for 2 to 4 players from Dice Hate Me games, and designer Jason Kotarski. You can read an interview we did with Jason right here.

Components

• 46 Freight Bill cards (15 each of soy beans and corn, and 8 each of cattle and pig)
• 19 Fuel cards (10 Move 1, 6 Move 2, and 3 Move 3)
• 12 double-sided Location cards
• 1 Distribution Center card
• 8 Score/Cargo cards
• 4 wooden trucks in the player colors
• 60 wooden Cargo Crate cubes (15 of each of the four colors)
• 4 Reference/Variant cards
• [My Kickstarted copy also came with a Badlands Expansion, a Truck Stop "inspansion", and pieces for a 5th player. I have no idea if these come with all copies of the game or not.]

Gameplay

First you'll randomly set up the board, depending on the number of players. The Distribution Center card is always in the middle, and that's where the trucks start. Each Location card has a "native good," and you'll place five cubes of that good on each card. You'll shuffle the Fuel and Freight Bill cards together, deal five to each player, and the place the top three cards of the draw pile next to the draw pile a la Ticket To Ride.

There are 3 Phases: Move / Take an action / and Refuel

So you have to move every turn; you can do this in one of two ways. First, you can discard fuel cards and move the exact number on the cards. You can add more than one card together, but you can never move more than three spaces on a turn. The second way to move is to pay $1 for each space you move—again, up to three spaces. If you're out of Fuel cards and money, you move to the Distribution Center card, discard as many cards as you want, and then draw up to five cards again in the Refuel phase.

There are a few rules that govern moving:

• You can only use either Fuel cards or cash—not both.
• You can only move orthogonally.
• You can't backtrack to spaces you already passed in that turn.
• You can move through a space with another truck, but can never stop on a space with another truck.
• You can't stop on the Distribution Center—unless you're out of cards and dough, as I said before.

Phase 2 is where you take actions; you have to Load, Unload, or Discard. To Load, you discard Freight Bill cards and load the matching good onto your truck—which holds up to 8 goods of any combination. If the good is a native good for that card, you can load one good for each card you discard. If it's not a native good, it costs two Freight Bill cards for each good you load. If you choose to unload, you discard one Freight Bill card for each good, unload it on a card that has demand for that good, and get cash for each good. You can only Load or Unload one type of good on each turn.

FREQUENTLY FORGOTTEN RULE: A Location card can only hold eight goods cubes at any one time.

Finally, you can take the Discard action. You discard as many cards as you want, and then pay $1.

After you've taken an action comes the Refuel phase. You draw from the supply until you have five cards again—you can choose from the faceup cards, or take your chances with the facedown draw pile.

When a player reaches a certain money level ($30 in a 4-player game, $40 in a 3-player game, and $50 in a 2-player game), every other player gets one last turn and the game ends. If any players still have goods cubes in their truck, they lose money (-$1 for soy beans and corn, and -$2 for each cattle or pig). Most cash wins—with ties won by the player with the fewest cubes left in his or her trailer.

My copy came with some fun variants:

First, each of the Location cards is double-sided. The regular side has the location, a native good, and then two other goods the Location "demands." If you flip to the advanced side, the cards have some obstacles/ For instance, a Road Closed symbol means you can't move into or out of the location from that direction. The Toll Road forces players to pay $1 to move through it. And the Weigh Station forces players to pay $1 for each cargo cube above four in their trailers. These are interesting—though I think the Weigh Station is kinda harsh. It's already risky to stockpile goods, but to get charged for them seems rough.

The Badlands expansion is for a five-player game—you place the two cards on the furthest reaches of the board. There are no native goods on these, but they pay more for the goods they demand. We haven't played with this one yet, but it seems fairly straightforward.

Finally, there's the Truck Stop inspansion, which are special power cards you can purchase and use in the game. They include powers such as making one diagonal move per turn, paying $1 to not move on your turn (which is more useful than it sounds), and the ability to unload multiple goods types on one turn. They're interesting and fun; the only one that doesn't seem to fit is the Ham Radio, which lets you trade goods with a adjacent player. It doesn't really fit the rest of the game at all, and we'll likely never play with that particular card. (Also, I'd be fine if the word "inspansion" never catches on...)

Recommendations

Youth Group Game? Under the Right Circumstances! It won't accommodate a crowd, but if you've only got a few, it's light enough to play with nongamer teens.

Family Game? Definitely! My 8-year-old played this a couple of times with open cards, but he'll soon be ready for playing the "real" game—cutthroat style!

Gamer’s Game? Yes! It's a meaty, longish filler—and I like those kind of games a lot. Groundbreaking? No. Fun? Yes!

The Verdict

Firestone—Dice Hate Me have packed a ton of game into this tiny package. There's a full game, and three variants/expansions in a perfectly sized box; I love that.

Jeremiah—Agreed...talk about bang for your buck! In an industry that is full of expansions, and re-releases, and add-ons, etc., it's awesome to get a great bunch of stuff packed in the box!

Firestone—My youngest (5) is too young for this right now, but he does love moving the trucks and drawing cards for us. My oldest really liked it; in fact, he said, "This game is so fun!" One thing the Truck Stop expansion is great for is evening out his game. I randomly gave him one of the powers cards to start with, and that seemed to settle any disparity in playing level. It won't be long before he won't need that, though.

Jeremiah—I love playing games like this with my kids, because they also just blurt out their praise or disdain for the game. My youngest (4) is far too young to play so he often "helps daddy," but my oldest loves it. In the short time we've had the game it's made its way to the table several times with my boys already. And that's not counting the times I've played with my gamer friends.

Jeremiah—The components are really of a high quality as well. I LOVE the truck meeples. My own personal pet peeve, is that they packed SO much into, I can't sleeve the cards and still fit them all into the box. Bummer.

Firestone—The truckles, truckeeples, big-rig-eeples, whatever are awesome. I agree about the sleeves. It seems like this will show wear fairly quickly—since the entire game is cards—but there's just not room in the box. :( Also, this could have used 100% more Pork Chop Express in it...

Firestone—The game group thought this was pretty good. Fillers are always welcome, and this is one of the better ones.

Jeremiah—Meaty fillers are even more welcome. There's something to be said for a game that moves quickly, and packs lots of gameplay, strategy, and decisions into a pretty compact amount of time.

Firestone—One thing I like is that this isn't another game about trading goods in the long-ago Mediterranean. Trucking is a rarely used and unique theme, and it fits perfectly.

Jeremiah—I believe the discussion we had was something to the effect of "I really like this game, but the theme isn't what I would have chosen. Maybe if we were pirates, or sailors, sailing to different ports to trade goods..." The theme works well for the game, but as a matter of taste it wasn't up my alley.

Firestone—Since the board changes every game, each game will be slightly different. And if you play with the Truck Stop, those are randomized and only a few used. So there's plenty of replayability.

Jeremiah—This speaks again to the value of picking up a copy of the game. Lots of variants. Here's a thought, too: Use some locations with the advanced side, and some with the normal side up. You've just doubled your variance in the board setup!

Firestone Final Thoughts—This game is just fun. I can play with gamers, family, and nongamers—and that's awfully rare these days. The box size, price-point, and amount of fun crammed in make this a great deal. I recommend it heartily!

Jeremiah Final Thoughts—Completely agree, it's super easy to learn for all skill levels, and tons of fun. The game moves really well, too; there are constantly decisions to make, but none that bog down the pace. The Great Heartland Hauling Co. gives enormous bang for your buck!

Thanks so much 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!

Why, You 'Cheeky Monkey'—A Double Take Review

We know how much you all love to hear the thoughts we both have on games, so here we go with another Double-Take Review! This week's lucky contestant is Reiner Knizia's Cheeky Monkey, from Eagle and Gryphon Games.

Components—

• 1 very adorable and VERY soft plush monkey (who is a double leg amputee and has had his abdominal cavity hollowed out in some sort of freak accident). This acts as the bag, from which you'll be drawing chips.
• 52 white plastic poker chip tokens
• 1 sheet of animal stickers, which you'll place on those poker chips.
• 7 bonus tiles, which are large cardboard disks with animals (and the number of bonus VPs they're worth) on one side, and facts about the animal and its habitat on the other.

Gameplay—Players simply take turns pulling tokens out of the abdominal cavity of the plush monkey, and placing the tokens in front of them. If a player draws a token that matches the top animal of any player's stack, they get to capture that token as well and place it in front of them. If they draw a duplicate to one they've already pulled that turn, they lose everything they've gained that turn. If they decide to stop after drawing any number of tokens, they keep those tokens and place them in a single stack in any order they choose. Then play continues to the next player.

Going Cheeky—If a player draws a Monkey token, they can choose to "go cheeky" and take the topmost token of any player's stack—exchanging the Monkey token for the chosen one.

The game is over when the last token has been drawn and stacked. The tokens are sorted by type, and each bonus token is awarded to the player with the most tokens of that type. Each regular token is worth 1 point, and the bonus tokens are worth their face value. The scores are totaled up and the highest score wins.

The rules have several scaled-down variations to help younger players learn and play the game—such as using no bonus tokens, or not being able to go cheeky. This is a nice way to get younger kids into the game, and then gradually introduce a new rule or two in subsequent games. (And there will be subsequent games...)

Jeremiah—When the package containing this game arrived and I pulled it out, my boys immediately wanted to play! The monkey "container" is cute and soft and looks great sitting on the shelf in my nerd room.

Firestone—That's exactly what happened here, too. "Dad! Dad! What is that? It's a GAME?! Can we play?"

Jeremiah—The downside of the components is the stickers! I was totally okay with having to put the animal stickers on the tokens; the problem was they didn't come off of the paper cleanly or easily. So it took forever trying to peel the perfect circle of paper off of the back of the stickers.

Firestone—I have never felt as uncoordinated as when I tried getting those stickers off the sheet. It was like Andre the Giant trying to thread a needle while wearing mittens... But once I got the stickers off, they went on great, and I haven't had any problems with them peeling.

Jeremiah—The game is pretty fun and has lots of teachable moments for younger kids. My youngest often gets very upset when someone takes his favorite animal from the top of his stack (which is often whatever animal is on the top of his stack!). So there are lots of "being gracious" and "good sport" talks that happen around that aspect of the game. Despite that, my boys both LOVE the game and think it's really fun.

Firestone—My teachable moments involve learning when to press your luck, and when not to. "Son, you have all but one of the animals already on this turn. The chances of you drawing an elephant are slim..." He, of course, draws an elephant and I realize they haven't learned A THING!

Jeremiah—The length of the game makes it the perfect kids filler game. Or the "we don't have time to setup/play anything else right now" game, but they're not getting cheated out of playing a great game. It just happens to be shorter, for those nights when bedtime is eminent.

Firestone—We (try to) have Family Game Night every Monday, but sometimes the evening gets away from us and we realize it's nearly bedtime. Cheeky Monkey is the perfect length for a quick game—though if the kids are really pressing their luck, sometimes the game can get "stuck" for a little while.

This game gets a solid 7 from me—a great game that the kids love to play. The monkey bag gets a perfect 10, though. Overproduced, unnecessary, and completely wonderful.

Jeremiah - It may be hard to think that a game this simple has even simpler rules, but those scaled down rules made it super easy to teach my 4-year old the game. I told them when we started that there were other rules and when we finished the first game they immediately wanted to know the rest of the rules. When I explained the "Going Cheeky" rule, they both grinned ear-to-ear and my 4-year old exclaimed, "If I get a monkey, I'm going to go cheeky!"

I'm giving it a bump up to a 7.5—my boys really like this one...a lot. It's totally a kids game that will never see the light of day with my gaming friends. And in the category of inexplicably disfigured but amazingly cute and cuddly plush animal containers, it scores an 11!

We'd like to thank Gryphon Games for providing a review copy of Cheeky Monkey, and you for reading! We would LOVE it if you liked us on FaceBook, and followed us on Twitter!

Kerflip!—A Double-Take Review

One of our favorite things in the world happened a few weeks ago. We were sent two, count them TWO, copies of a game (one for each of us) to review. And better yet, it turns out it was a pretty fun one. Kerflip! dares to walk into the realm of games dominated by the likes of Scrabble (the old cardboard-and-wood version of Words with Friends) and Boggle. That's like someone trying to make a trading and expansion game that's better than Settlers... Okay, maybe it's not that daring a course of action. Anyway, the rules and gameplay of Kerflip! are pretty simple, and as follows.

The game comes with a bunch of letter tiles in a bag, a small deck of bonus cards, a nifty playing board, and one hourglass timer. The tiles have two sides, one that is orange, and another that is white.

There are no "player turns"; everyone plays a round at the same time. And a round looks like this.

Depending on how many players are in the game (2-4), players remove—without looking—a certain amount of letter tiles from the bag, and on the count of three drop them on the board. Once dropped, players quickly flip the orange tiles over to the white side and then shout out a word that the letters make. Being quick here is a big advantage, as you'll see in a minute. If someone is taking way too long to blurt out a word, any player can flip the timer over and put the pressure on them. If they don't say something, then they pay the ultimate penalty: not scoring anything that round.

Once players have all shouted, or at least spoken a word (shouting isn't always required) each player in shouting order arranges the tiles to spell their word, and then scores it. Once it has been used, it is flipped from white to orange. Then the next player spells their word, scores it, and flips any white tiles to orange. (Orange tiles don't get flipped again.) And so on.

It's important to be so quick because when you score a word, you get 10 points for using tiles that are still white-side-up. Once they've been flipped to the orange side they are only worth 5 points. Also printed on the white side of specific tiles is a number. If you are the first to use that letter, you will be handed a number of bonus cards equal to the number on that tile—these cards range in value from 0 to 20 points. Once that tile is flipped the number goes away and subsequent users of that letter do not receive the bonus cards. These bonus cards, which aren't allowed to be seen (even by the recipient), give extra points for final scoring.

Once everyone has spelled, scored, and flipped their letters, the board is cleared by simply brushing used tiles to pits on either side of the board next to where the bonus cards are held, where they drop below the playing surface. Play continues in these rounds until any player can no longer pull their allotted amount of tiles to begin a round.

There is also one super awesome tile that gives your either 25 or 50 points for being the first person to shout a word on the round that it is thrown on the board. You get the amount of points that is shown when it drops. (One side is worth 25, the other 50; it's that simple.)

After the game ends, players add their points to the bonuses on the cards they gathered during the game and whomever has the most points wins. Once you're done, you lift the board (which stays inside the bottom half of the box) up and shake all the tiles into the unseen collection cup, which then pours them neatly back into the bag.

Jeremiah—Games like this SHOULD be fun, light-hearted, party game experiences. And for the most part they are—although I have some friends you just don't want to play word games with. You will be destroyed. But I will proceed as if I was not going to play with "those people."

Firestone—I stopped playing word games a long time ago—especially play-by-email ones like Words With Friends. "Hmmm...Steve can barely keep his shoes tied, but somehow he knows the word 'fuliginous.' I smell a cheater..." This is one I'll definitely play, though; the speed factor levels the playing field a bit.

Jeremiah—I thought the components were thought out, and well done. It's the small things, like the tiles actually flip without turning the letters upside down so you don't have to flip and spin to be able to read them. And let's be honest: The board/cleanup mechanism is pretty ingenious! The worst part about games that have tiles is cleaning up the tiles. Well done!

Firestone—Yeah, this gains a full point for thinking through the pain-in-the-butt aspect of tile games: cleaning up. They just said, "What if we made it not awful?" and then made it super easy.

Jeremiah—There's so much FLIPPING. The down side to this game is that I felt like we did more housekeeping than actual playing. Counting tiles without looking, dropping, flipping, shouting, spelling, flipping, flipping again, flipping some more, score keeping, handing out cards, sweeping away tiles. Thankfully, there's a fun game in the midst of all that busy work.

Firestone—To be fair, Jeremiah, the word flip is right there in the title... ;) I didn't mind the flipping so much. The "gamer" in me isn't too fond of the bonus cards, since they are of varying points, but I totally understand why they help in a casual game like this—especially if you're playing with people of varying abilities.

Jeremiah—Like I said earlier, I really thought the components were well done. I did however think the timer was a bit too much. We have much more effective means and steeper penalties to get someone's butt in gear (which may or may not include the threat of dismemberment—just sayin'...). On one occasion I didn't even remove the timer from the box.

Firestone—We haven't used the timer at all. I prefer tasers...

Jeremiah—It's an awesome casual family game. It literally will take about 5 minutes to learn and/or teach everyone, from the veteran gamer, to folks who are just realizing there's a game called "Risk."

Firestone—It's not the sort of game I'm going to play with my regular game group. But this is perfect for my wife and I to play with our oldest—who's 8. He's already a terrific reader, but this helps him work on speed and spelling and accuracy. He just wants to play round after round after round of it. And if that's not a great endorsement, I don't know what is.

Final Thoughts and Rating:

Jeremiah—Overall I've enjoyed the times I've played the game. It's a really quick filler and it can be fun to watch folks get flustered trying to make words with letters that haven't been used already. My overall rating is 7.5. My mad-scientist-like-components rating is a perfect 10!

Firestone—Anything that creatively challenges my kids gets a good score from me. And the fact that he asks to get creatively challenged in this way is even better. This is a solid 8 from me—with a Thanks-For-Thinking-Through-Common-Problems rating of 10.

We'd like to thank Creative Foundry Games for providing a review copy of Kerflip! and you for reading.

Gears of Whoa!—A Tzolk'in Review

By Firestone

One of the most buzzed-about games of the last year was a little game called Tzolk'in. But it seemed like the interest might be simply because of the cool gears that cover most of the board. Well I've played it now, and I can assure you, there's a solid game to go with those cool gears.

The game is set in Central America during the time of the Mayans, and you're trying to earn the most VPs through careful placement of your workers. There's a large, ornate gear in the middle, and five smaller gears around that one. The large one acts as the game's "timer" It will turn once around, and then the game ends, while the smaller ones will turn many times over the course of that large gear's one turn. Science! There are also a few tracks—including a tech tree and three temple tracks. And there are spaces for buildings and monuments, which you'll buy with resources. The game crams a remarkable amount of information onto one board without becoming overwhelming.

Turns are "simple": You will either place one or more workers onto the board, or you will take one or more workers off the board.

Each of the gears has spaces for the workers to sit on, and each gear has different actions around them. You have to place your worker on the lowest available space on each wheel, and possibly pay to do that. The spaces start at zero corn (the game's currency), and go up from there. So you have to pay corn to place your worker (unless it's on the lowest space, which is free), but you also have to pay for each worker you place beyond the first one each turn. And the prices ramp up for each worker, so you always have to carefully consider whether you can afford to place workers.

At the end of each turn, you turn the big gear, which turns the little gears, which move the workers on those gears. So each turn a worker will move ahead and be in front of a new action space. The spaces get better the further along the gear you go, but because you have to either place workers or take them off, it can be a tricky thing to get workers to ride that gear for a while.

When you decide to take a worker off a gear, he gets to do the action that's in front of him when you take him off. (If you decide you actually want to do an action further back on the gear—because something on the board changed, or you timed the taking off/putting on poorly, or whatever—you can, but you have to pay one corn for each space behind you that action happens to be.) One of the gears has actions that let you take corn or wood. One lets you get building resources, such as wood, gold, stone, or crystal skulls. The third gear has actions that let you advance the tech tree, build Buildings, and build Monuments. The fourth gear lets you do things such as pay corn to advance on the Temple track, get another worker to use in the game, and build a Building using corn rather than resources. The last couple of spaces on every gear allow you to take a earlier action on the gear, but without having to play the extra corn. The fifth gear is a little different, in that those spaces give you straight VPs and let you advance on the Temple track. The further on the wheel, the more VPs, but each space costs one crystal skull, so once someone has claimed a space with their skull, no one else can use that one.

As if all of that weren't enough, I still have way more stuff to explain!

There's a space where you can put a worker down to claim the first player marker. Each turn where no one does that, you put corn on the wheel. So as the corn adds up turn over turn, there's incentive for other people to grab that first player space.

So there are three Temple tracks. Since you're Mayans, and Mayans believed in many gods, you'll be trying to win the favor of the gods and advance on these tracks. It's not like there's a Sacrifice A Villager space—it's completely abstracted. You take an action on one of the wheels, and move your marker up the ziggurat. That gets you more VPs during scoring, and a couple of spaces give you resources, too. There is a mechanism in the game where you can beg for corn if you can't pay for something, but this "angers the gods"—which simply means you have to move down one of the tracks. It's not the focus of the game, and there's nothing that made me feel I was being asked to worship anything—it's just one of the game's mechanisms given a thematic coat of paint.

The tech trees let you do things such as gather extra corn when you take the Gather Corn action; get extra wood, stone, or gold when you gather that resource, or get resources when you build a Building—plus a few others. The tech trees are cool, but as with so many great games, you can't do everything, so you have to choose wisely, and hope your choices are better than your opponents' choices.

Finally, there are two tracks on the bottom of the board. One holds Buildings; at any time there will be six of them on the board. They let you do things, such as move up on a tech tree, or move up on Temple tracks, or spend less to feed your workers at the end of each turn. There are two batches of Buildings; you use the first ones in the first half, and switch to the second batch for the second half—and the second batch has better Buildings. Another reason to build Buildings is that some of the Monuments will give you VPs for having certain-colored Buildings.

The game comes with a number of Monuments, and each game you'll use exactly six of them. Those—unlike Buildings—won't be refilled. They give you bonuses and VPs at the end of the game, but you have to build them using resources, just like a Building.

The game is divided into four quarters, and at each quarter you'll have to feed your workers—two corn each unless you've built a farm Building. Unlike Stone Age, starving your people here is a BAD IDEA. Also depending on the quarter, you might score some of the Temples, or get some resources. After the last quarter, you count up VPs, add in bonuses from the board or from Monuments, do a couple of other fiddly things, and whoever has the most VPs, wins!

Whew! Well that's it. As you can see, there is a LOT going on. Your first game will probably take you a while, because even though you can only take off or put on workers, there is a lot to think about. This game is all about timing. You'll constantly be trying to figure out whether putting these guys down this turn will allow you to take that action later to get this resource to later turn into that Building provided your dude on that gear can ride far enough along to get to the Building action. This is NOT a light game...

One the great things about the game is that there are many things that change the experience from game to game. The Monuments are different each game, for one. Another thing is the starting resources. The game comes with tiles that have various bonuses on them, such as a free movement up one of the tech tracks, or another worker to start the game with, or a free skull, or moving up the Temple tracks. You get four tiles, and you choose two of them to start the game with. That will often determine what route you take (at least at the start). Your experience from game to game should be quite different. And because there are so many viable routes to victory, you'll feel complete freedom to explore a different strategy from game to game.

You'll need to determine if the Temple tracks are enough to keep you away from the game. Again, it's completely abstracted, but there is talk of "pleasing the gods" to move up, or "displeasing the gods" and having to move down. You're not sacrificing people to these gods, or worshiping them in any way. But we'd understand if that makes you uncomfortable.

This is one of the best games I've played in the past year. I can't wait to try out some new tactics and strategies—and I REALLY can't wait to get my grubby hands on a copy of the game, and paint those sweet gears. If you like deep games, and/or worker-placement games, check out Tzolk'in. It's way more that a gimmick.