Ultimate Werewolf: Inquisition—A Review

By Firestone I've never been a big Mafia/Werewolf fan. It can be an incredibly fun time, but the player elimination means some people are always sitting on the sidelines waiting. And the bigger the game, the longer you're waiting... So when The Resistance came out—and there was no player elimination—I jumped at it. And it's now my favorite game.

Ted Alspach and Bezier Games recently released Ultimate Werewolf: Inquisition, which promises some of the hidden roles and gameplay of Werewolf, with no player elimination. I'm intrigued. Will it knock The Resistance off the throne? Let's see...

The Overview

Ultimate Werewolf: Inquisition is part of the line of Ultimate Werewolf games that are coming out under Ted Alspach's Bezier Games. It plays 3-12 players, and is for ages 8 and up. It takes 30-60 minutes to play. One "side" will win—either the werewolves, or the good guys.

The Components

1 Rulebook

12 Inquisitor cards, with either a Werewolf or a Villager on them.

19 Hut cards, which are the "houses" that belong to the Residents in the game. Each one imparts some special action.

19 Resident cards, which match up with the Huts—there's one person card for every Hut card.

1 Grand Inquisitor meeple

50 wooden voting cubes

There's a distinction between Residents and Villagers. All Villagers are Residents, but not all Residents are Villagers—some are Werewolves...

The Setup

First you'll hand out Inquisitor cards; this will vary depending on the number of players. A 3-player game has 1 Werewolf and 2 Villagers, up to a 12-player game, which has 5 Werewolves and 7 Villagers.

Then you decide which set of Resident/Hut cards you'll use. There's a whole section in the rulebook that recommends sets based on number of players, or if this one of your first games. The Resident cards also have positive or negative numbers on them, which allow you to try and find a good balance of cards (in which case the numbers will add up close to zero), or to skew things one way or the other if you find one side winning too often—higher numbers to help Villagers and lower numbers to help the Werewolves.

You'll set up two areas of your chosen sets. One grid of four across and three down with the Huts—faceup so the Huts and their powers are visible. Then you shuffle the Resident cards and create another four across and three down grid—facedown, so you have no idea which Resident is under that card. The important thing here is that there is one Resident for every Hut card, but their orientation in the grids is NOT identical.

Choose a random player to get the Grand Inquisitor meeple, and then give each player two voting cubes to start the game.

The Gameplay

On the First Night, whoever the Grand Inquisitor tells everyone to close their eyes, and has the Werewolves open their eyes so they know who the other Werewolves are—this is skipped in a 3- or 4-player game since there's only one Werewolf.

For the Day Phase, each player, starting with the Grand Inquisitor, chooses a hut and either does the action on the hut, or takes two voting cubes. Either way, that hut is no longer available to choose that turn. As the game progresses there will be fewer and fewer huts, thanks to people being killed, so if there are no huts available, you just take two voting cubes. After everyone has chosen a hut, everyone gets a chance to vote on which Resident to kill. Starting with the Grand inquisitor, everyone who has a voting cube has to place one on a Resident; if you don't have a cube, you don't vote. Whichever Resident has the most votes is killed—remove the Resident and the associated Hut from the game. If there's a tie on votes, the Grand Inquisitor breaks ties.

If two columns have a single Resident left in them, they're combined without changing their orientation. (Some actions on Huts will change the orientation from vertical to horizontal.)

Now come the Night Phase. The Grand Inquisitor chooses a column that has two or more cards in it, and removes any votes on them. He picks them up and puts them in a stack keeping them in a strict order—we always have them stack the top card of the column on the one below it, and then those on the one below that (if there are three). This is important because now everyone closes their eyes and passes this stack around the circle. The person to the left of the Grand Inquisitor starts with the stack. If she's a Villager, she keeps her eyes closed and just makes some shuffling noises with the cards but doesn't change the order in any way. If she's a Werewolf, she can open her eyes and change the order of the cards. Each person will say the name of the person they're passing to—or just say "Passing," or whatever—and for a brief moment those two can open their eyes just to make the exchange, but then Villagers have to close their eyes, lest they see a Werewolf turn the cards over and start rearranging. The cards will eventually make their way back to the Grand Inquisitor, who will shuffle or rearrange or not, and then everyone opens their eyes. The Inquisitor then places them back facedown in the column in the same order they were taken: bottom card on the bottom of the column, then the next above that, and the next at the top.

All of this keeping-things-in-order stuff is important because whatever Resident is at the bottom of that column is killed. The Werewolves set it up.

The actions here are admittedly very clunky. This phase shouldn't be a way for Villagers to figure out who the Werewolves are, which is why everyone makes noises and shuffles the cards around as though they were rearranging them. In essence, everyone should "act" like a Werewolf so that no one is outed as a Werewolf because they made noises or took longer than anyone else or whatever. Clunky.

If a Werewolf is killed in this phase, remove votes from all vertical Residents and shuffle them together and deal out a new grid. This is because if a Werewolf is killed at Night, then it's because that column had nothing but Werewolves and they had no choice but to kill one of their own. So the shuffling evens things out again.

A new day starts with the Grand Inquisitor getting passed to the left, and columns with only one Resident getting combined. The game ends when either all of the Werewolves are dead (the Villlagers win), or of there are more Werewolves in the village at any time than there are Villagers—in which case the Werewolves win.

The Huts

I'll go over the Huts and their special abilities. The number in parentheses is the number you use when you're trying to balance (or not unbalance) your choice of Residents in the game—high numbers help Villagers, and low ones help the Werewolves.

Villager/Werewolf (+0)—Take two voting cubes from the supply, and place one of them on any Resident.

Seer (+8)—Look at any vertically oriented Resident, and place it back in the same spot, but oriented horizontally. Neither the Seer (in subsequent turns) nor the Apprentice Seer may look at this card until something changes its orientation back to vertical.

Apprentice Seer (+5)—Pay one voting cube to look at any vertically oriented Resident, and place it back in the same spot, but oriented horizontally. Neither the Apprentice Seer (in subsequent turns) nor the Seer may look at this card until something changes its orientation back to vertical.

Bodyguard (+2)—Protect one Resident by removing all voting cubes from it, and placing the Bodyguard Hut on that Resident. No more votes can be placed on it this round. Remove the Bodyguard at the start of the Night Phase before a column is chosen to pass around.

Hunter (+1)—Take three votes from the supply and place them on one Resident.

Mason (+3—Pay two voting cubes to look at the Inquisitor card of another player. You can't show the card, but you can say whatever you want about it. (This role shouldn't be used in games with fewer than 5 players.)

Minion (+3)—Take two votes from the supply and place both of them on a Resident card that already has at least one vote on it.

Mayor (+1)—Immediately give the Grand Inquisitor to any player (including yourself). This changes who will start voting, and who picks a column of cards to pass around. The Inquisitor gets passed to the left at the end of the turn, as usual.

Prince (+3)—Take four votes from the supply.

Sorcerer (+5)—Look at any horizontally oriented Resident, place it back in the same orientation, take two votes from the supply, and place them on the card you just looked at.

Witch (+1)—Move all votes from Resident card to any other Resident card.

Cursed (-1)—Take four votes from the supply. If someone uses the Cursed Hut during the day, and that Resident is killed that night, it becomes a Werewolf. That column's cards (and the Cursed) are shuffled and placed back in the column. The Cursed acts as a Werewolf from that point forward—including determining numbers of Werewolves for victory.

Troublemaker (-5)—Pay one vote to shuffle a row or column of Resident cards. First, set aside votes on those cards, but keep them near the spot they were on. Shuffle the cards, place them back vertically, and then place the votes back onto the card that is now in the spot.

Wolf Cub (-2)—Take three votes from the supply. If the Wolf Cub is lynched on the day someone uses the Hut, the Werewolves get to kill two Residents that night. You do one round of picking a column, passing it, and killing the bottom Resident. And then you do that all over again. The Wolf Cub is not considered a Werewolf.

The Verdict—I like this game—probably more than I should, honestly. The game plays any number between 3 and 12; I've played with as few as 4 and as many as 10, and there are upsides and downsides with those extremes. It actually plays surprisingly well with the low number; you can't play Resistance with 3 or 4, but you can play this. With the higher numbers, it's cool because there are more Werewolves, and more interesting Residents, but it also has its own problems. In our game, one player was a player or two to the right of the starting Grand Inquisitor. And then, because of where we'd figured some Werewolves were, we kept taking the Mayor and keeping the Inquisitor in that area. It worked well for the Villagers, but over the course of the game that guy had very little to do on his turn. Early in the game, the only Residents left were the generic Villager/Werewolf Huts, so he was forced to take those. Then as the game progressed and people died, when it would finally get around to him there wouldn't be any Huts left, so he just took two voting cubes. He was pretty dang bored, and it wasn't the group trying to keep him out, it was the game's mechanisms creating that for him. It could have happened to anyone, and it probably won't happen every game, but it happened that game, and his experience was poor.

It's very interesting that—unlike a game such as The Resistance, where getting outed means you're essentially done—getting outed as a Werewolf here (or even outing yourself!) isn't the end of the world. There are times where revealing yourself is necessary to save one of your Werewolf residents. But you're still in the game, and there are still things to do and ways to mess with the Villagers. They can't shut you down, but now they have to adjust their play to keep you away from certain powerful Huts, such as the Mayor. It feels weird that being revealed isn't bad, but I think it's interesting.

I've noticed that every single game seems to come down to the wire, and I think the game sort of forces the game to even out and stay close until the end. I'm not sure how it does it, or even if its intentional, but we haven't had a blowout in any of the half-dozen games we've played. The downside of this is that a couple of times the win has come down to mostly blind luck and guessing. That hasn't always happened, but when it does, it feels a little unsatisfying.

As I said, the Night Phase is clunky. Having to have everyone shuffle the cards around, and spend extra time doing it, and making noise just feels weird, but I have no idea what else they could have done. So while it's not great, it's fine in the end.

I do feel I should make mention of the artwork. Most of it is fine and completely innocuous, but the Witch and Sorcerer look more like two ladies who just went shopping for Halloween and decided to grab the "Sexy Witch" and "Sexy Sorcerer" costumes. The Sorcerer especially looks like Kate Upton in a black wig. They're not terrible, but it's just something to consider, and I felt I needed to point out. It's disappointing to see a publisher going that route on what should be a family friendly game. And if they bother you that much you can always choose not to include those roles in your game.

So who would I play this with? Well, it often goes as long as a game of The Resistance, and I would always choose The Resistance over this. If I only had 3 or 4 players, I could see pulling this out with my game group, but we're big-time Resistance fans, so that wins. I would bring this out with nongamers, though—in a heartbeat. The Resistance is very different, and takes some time to understand what you're doing and how much you should be talking and voting and just so much... But this would be a GREAT game to ease people into that sort of game. There are hidden roles, but it's not a disaster if you play it "wrong" and out yourself. And the gameplay is fairly straightforward. And it's short. All of this means that this is going onto my short-list of games to play with nongamers, newbies, and youth groups.

And if your group really likes to play Werewolf, they'll probably like this! It's maybe not as purely social as traditional Werewolf is, but it has some of the feel, and there's no elimination.

The Final Verdict—Ultimate Werewolf: Inquisition isn't perfect, and it will never replace The Resistance for me or my game group. But I like it. I like what it tries to do, and I like what it accomplishes, and I have a fun time while I'm playing it. It's at a perfect level for nongamers, and it will be the game I use to ease my family into this style of game before I eventually spring The Resistance on them... And since there are only 4 of us in the family, we may never get to The Resistance, so this may be it. And that's okay, because it's a solid game.

We'd like to thank Ted Alspach at Bezier Games for providing a review copy of Ultimate Werewolf: Inquisition. This in no way affected our opinion of the game.

Pixel Lincoln—A Double-Take Review—Plus A Video Review!

"Four score and seven years ago, I kicked some serious butt with a sausage link whip...." ~Abraham Lincoln  Deck-builders and retro 8-bit graphics—two big gaming trends that have been smooshed together in Pixel Lincoln. What did we think of it? Keep reading and find out!

The Basics

Pixel Lincoln is a side-scrolling deck-building game designed by Jason Tagmire. It's for 1-4 players, and takes between 30 and 60 minutes to play, depending on the number of players. The goal is to score the most VPs.

4 player tableaus

4 wooden Lincoln meeples

Cards—including Characters, Enemies, Items, and Player cards.

Double-sided player board

A HUGE sturdy box

The Setup

As with most deck-builders, you start with a starting deck of cards—5 Beardarangs, which give you one Power, 5 Jumps, which also give you one Coin. You set the board out to whichever side you'd like (there's no functional difference; it's just different scenes depicted on each side). You also have one Player card and two Life cards that you place on your tableau.

Then you create the two Level Decks. You combine three Enemies, three Items, three Characters, and a Special Item. You shuffle that all up, divide the deck into three small decks, shuffle three Checkpoint cards into each of them, and then stack the three decks on top of each other.

Finally, you set a facedown Mini Boss and Boss card off to the side for each of the two decks.

The Gameplay

On a player's first turn, he or she chooses a Level to engage. So you take your Lincolneeple and put him in front of one of the Levels and start to make your way through it—just like an old-school side-scroller. There's no restriction on how many people can be in one Level—though there are certainly strategic reasons to pick one over the other.

You have five of your initial 10 cards in your hand. Beardarangs (and later weapons you purchase) let you fight the Enemies. If you meet or beat their toughness, you defeat them and you place the card in your scoring pile on the tableau. Unlike many deck-builders, cards you defeat don't go into your hand to clog it up.

Jump cards let you Jump one card in front of you—maybe you can't fight an Enemy, or don't want an Item, so you just pass it. You can also use the Coin on the card to buy the Item in front of you. If you do, it's added to your discard pile, like a normal deck-builder. If you start your turn in front of an Enemy, it 'ambushes" you, so you have to deal with it in some way—either defeating it or Jumping over it.

If you can't defeat or jump over an enemy when it ambushes you, it hits you, and you remove one Life card. You start with two of them, and your Player card is your third one. If you lose all of your lives, you're eliminated, and wait until the game is over, or everyone else dies, to add up VPs. Life cards are worth 5 VPs at the end of the game, so you want to stay healthy!

Most cards in the game have a small symbol in the bottom corner—an X or a Key or a Clock and so on. Character cards task you with collecting certain symbols by the end of the game, and if you do, you'll get VPs. The Character cards also cost you to buy, but they go to your score rather than your discard pile. Speaking of those symbols, if you discard a card with a symbol on it during your turn, you get to either score a card from your hand, look at and rearrange the top cards of the Level Deck, exit the current level and enter the other, or cancel the effect of an Enemy or Item card—either on your turn or on an opponent's turn to keep them from doing something cool.

If your Lincolneeple gets through the current "screen" and makes it to the Level Deck, everything behind him is wiped away, he moves back to the front of the Level, and you draw five new cards—so it's like a side-scroller, in that anything you pass is gone and you can't go back and get it again.

There are three Checkpoint cards in each Level Deck. The first time someone hits the Checkpoint everyone in that level gets to do one special action: either exit the level, draw a card, or put a card from your hand into your scoring pile (basically culling a card). The person who actually reaches the Checkpoint gets to do one of those things twice.

The second time you reach a Checkpoint, you still get to do one of those things, but now you place the Mini Boss card where the Checkpoint card was. Mini Bosses are just that: stronger than regular Enemies, but not as strong as Bosses. They're worth VPs, depending on which Mini Boss it is. They can't be jumped over or bypassed—you have to defeat them to continue in the level. When you reach the third Checkpoint card, you get the bonus, and then replace it with the Boss card. It's tougher, and worth more VPs.

Once both Bosses from both Levels have been defeated, the game is over, and you count up VPs.

The Verdict

Firestone—First of all, I really love the artwork in the game. I vividly remember the Christmas I got my NES—I spent the WHOLE day playing Super Mario Brothers. It was the start something big and influential in my life. The artwork definitely takes me back to that, and is fun.

Jeremiah— Yep! The artwork is amazing; I remember when I saved up a bunch of money and my parents drove me to Gold Circle and I bought an NES, which came with Super Mario Bros. and I bought a copy of Kung Fu. So legit...

Firestone—The theme is fun, and way more interesting than Dominion. Zzzzz... So getting my kids, or teenagers, or whomever to play this will be easier. Probably. Because let's face it: My kids don't care about retro, 8-bit graphics. In fact, to their eyes, they look junky and old. But still, the theme is is unique

Jeremiah— The theme is what drew me into the game. It's wacky and out there, but lots of fun. Dominion is a great game, but you'll never find a mutton-star in your Dominion deck, nor will you have to face down a Puking Turtle.

Firestone—The components are hit-and-miss for me. If there's one iconic aspect of Abraham Lincoln, it's his stovepipe hat. Unfortunately, the Lincolneeples look like they're wearing Afros, rather than stovepipe hats. The cards are fine, but kind of thin. The tableaus are nice, thick cardboard, with a good finish on them—though I did find it weird that there's no place for your deck or discards. I really like the Level Deck boxes that come with the game. Setup is time-consuming (as with most deck-builders), but you can create the Level Deck ahead of time and put them into these nifty boxes, which look like old school NES boxes.

Jeremiah— I think the one component that fell shortest to me, is the meeples, Lincoln meeples would have been awesome; these are just weird looking meeples. I agree that the player boards are laid out oddly, but for the most part I'm good with all the components. In fact, the level board is great, a friend of mine always says that card games need boards—well, in this game, you've got them!

Editor's Note: Jason emailed us to let us know that the reason he doesn't have a hat is that Booth stole it, which started this whole affair! So we just missed that, and are dorks. Sorry, Jason!

Firestone—The weird thing to me is that when I play a game that calls itself a deck-builder, I expect to...build my deck. You're kinda doing that here, but there's nothing to clog up your deck, so defeating enemies is a no-brainer. And there are few opportunities to cull you deck. You can do it three times if you are in the Level when someone hits the Checkpoint, and if you choose that as your bonus, and if you have something you want to cull in your hand at that time. That's a lot of ifs. You can also discard the cards with the star "suit," but again, that's only if you've picked up that card during the game at some point, and if when you draw it again, you have one in your hand that you want to cull. So it's less a deck-builder and more a deck-adder. Kind of. At any rate, I still felt that I had super-clogged-up hands at the end.

Jeremiah— Yeah, it's more of an 8-bit adventure simulation game, and in my opinion it does that creatively and well; "deck builder" is sort of a misnomer with this one, but I don't mind it at all, because I think the game itself—which has deck building elements to it—is fun and a nice trip down memory lane. I've thought more about the not being able to cull cards as often aspect of it, and it makes a little more sense to me, seeing as how half of the cards in the level don't go into your deck, they get scored, if you could cull cards often you'd not have much of a deck left... Just an observation.

Firestone—This also seems to have a player-number problem. When I played with four, there's so little control that it's easy to find yourself in front of an enemy (or worse, a Mini Boss or Boss) at the start of your turn. Hope you can deal with it. One guy got seven turns during the game: four turns of doing something, two turns where he couldn't do anything—anything, and one turn of being able to do nothing but his hit by a Mini Boss he'd started his turn next to. On those four turns where he did something, he bought two one-coin-cost cards for his deck, and those were the only Item cards he ever had the opportunity to buy. That's a problem.

Jeremiah and I played a 2-player game, and there was much more control, and it just "felt" better.

Jeremiah— When we played with 4 players we didn't run into the issues you described, but I could see the game changing, especially in the later stages of it, as players are burning through cards in the level before your turn gets back. I'm guessing 2-3 might be the sweet spot to keep it balanced.

Firestone Final Thoughts—I'm really not happy about becoming the Grumpy Old Man of the blog, but this game just didn't do it for me—at all. It's thematic and has fun enemies and items, but it's mechanically mediocre. If I didn't already have the DC Comics Deckbuilding Game, I could see using Pixel Lincoln to introduce my kids (or nongamers) to deck-builders. But I do have it, and it's just better, so I'm going to use that. Maybe I'm taking it too seriously. And I'm sure there are groups out there who will LOVE the art and theme and humor, and this game is just perfect for them. But my group and I didn't like it, so for me, Keep This on the Shelf. 

Jeremiah Final Thoughts—Yep, I disagree. If you go into this one expecting a deep deck-building experience, you will likely be let down. However that doesn't make the game any less fun; it's just a different type of fun. Let's have some real talk for a second. You're a pixelated version of our 16th president, who is going through levels of a game fighting absurd enemies, using -possibly- even more absurd weaponry to defeat "bosses." I'm pretty sure you might be taking this one too seriously if you take it seriously at all. This is a fun, light-hearted game that will amuse the younger crowd, and delight those old enough to appreciate the nostalgia. Grab your Chicken Cannon, strap on your Beardarang, and Put This on Your Table!

We'd like to thank Game Salute and Island Officials for providing review copies of Pixel Lincoln. This in no way affected our opinions of the game.

Thanks for joining us for the review! And check out the video review down below!!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50rXovc3fWc]

Chicken Caesar! A Mini-Review

- by Jeremiah A few weeks ago I wrote about my inability to get Chicken Caesar on the table. Well, we had a breakthrough a few nights ago and managed to fumble our way through a first playthrough. So my opinions aren't yet complete, nor is my full understanding of the rules. (There's a lot going on here!) I thought since it has been so long since receiving the review copy I would at least update everyone on the status, and give some initial thoughts. So, here goes...

The Setup - This is a pretty straight forward process: Select a color, and the correct number of chickens (pawns and matching cards) depending on the number of players in the game. Stack the office tokens next to the corresponding offices on the board, and set the tax rate to 3. Give everyone 1 Frumentum token which is the currency of the game. And give the first player the Suffragium token. Oh, and also grab your Latin-English dictionary--you'll need it. For instance, while frumentum is the currency of the game, it is actually Latin for grain, because you know, chickens. And Suffragium means "vote", because you know, Caesar...

Game Play - The game begins with selecting a starting player, then players take turns placing their chickens in the 4 different political houses, which are Aedile, Praetor, Censor, and Consul--and of course the office of Caesar. The game goes through several phases, in which players (after turn 1) advance into vacated office seats, perform their office actions (changing tax rates, assigning guard chickens, choosing to exile a chicken from office, or overseeing the improvement of monuments), gain the rewards of their office (sometimes money, but always an office token to place on their chicken's corresponding card), and then resolve attacks from the foxes who will more than likely take a chicken off for dinner. And finally, Caesar usually dies, and players make suggestions to improve their dead chickens' monuments.

The main scoring engine is to either gain tokens from many different offices, which are cashed in at the end of the game, or to earn a ton of cash during the game. Frumenti is then totaled and whoever has the most wins.

The Verdict (albeit not the final one!) -

I think I like this game. It is about what I thought it would be. Obviously I've only had one go at it, and the learning curve is pretty steep, but I'll offer my comments thus far, and would love to hear your thoughts as well.

Components - The quality of the components are great, I felt from an artistic standpoint there is a touch of an identity crisis. The art design and imagery is great, and of high quality, but the only thing that makes it "Chicken" Caesar is the fact that the cards have chickens on them, and the tiny little foxes above the tax rate indicator on the board. Otherwise the board is set in ancient Rome, with pristine alcoves for monuments of the deceased, and a swank palace for Caesar. It looks great, but it doesn't look Chicken-ee enough in my opinion. It's quite the juxtaposition.

The Game Play - The crux of the game play is player interaction; if you're simply moving your pawns around the board, you're missing out. We played with four players, and we had fun with trying to barter, beg, or bribe our way into better positions, but I can see the game thrive with 5-6 players and give more chances for sub-plots to take place.

Likes and Dislikes - I like the spirit/idea of the game, I love games that are highly interactive and are driven by trying to outsmart the people at the table instead of trying to outwit the game (unless of course it's a co-op). I like the theme; it's what first attracted me to the game, to be honest. It seemed ridiculous, in a good way, but I don't know that the players experience the "barnyard" in barnyard politics. My biggest dislike is the rule book; it's dense, and the designers know it, and admit it, so this isn't news to them or anyone. But it really created a hurdle for us as we played through the game. If there was a quick question we needed clarification on, it often felt like we had to read a full-out thesis on the issue at hand before we got the answer we were looking for. For many, this would be a game killer. I'm hoping to power through this and get a better grasp of the rules so when we play a second time we can get through it more smoothly. But it can hinder a player's ability to make an informed or well-thought-out decision if they are unaware of the process that comes next.

Overall - Like I said, overall I think I like this one. It needs a few more plays for me, but there is a fun game on the other side of that rule book, one that hits a lot of sweet spots for me. Stay tuned for more thoughts and my finalized review soon!

Thanks for reading; we hope you'll find us on the interwebs at Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, and we invite you to tune into our Podcast every month as well!

Railways Express—A Double-Take Review (Plus a Video Review)

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer. ~Corrie Ten Boom Today we're taking a look at the new game from Eagle Games, Railways Express, which is a stripped-down version of the Railways of the World series. So what do we think? Let's find out...

The Overview

Railways Express is a tile-laying train game where you're trying to connect each of the four cities on the map that match your color.

2-4 Players

Ages 7 and up

15 minutes per player

The Components

64 plastic locomotives (16 in each of the four player colors).

231 track tiles—these include straight tracks, curved tracks, and complex crossing tracks.

120 reroll cubes in each of the four player colors.

4 wooden dice—2 track dice and 2 terrain dice.

1 game board. This thing is huge. The scale might be 1:1...

18 Service Bounty Cards for an optional way to play.

24 Railroad Operations Cards for an optional way to play.

The Setup

Each player has four cities on the map in his or her color, and one of those cities is considered the Home City for that player. (Monterrey for Blue, Los Angeles for Yellow, Minneapolis for Red, and Montreal for Purple.) Each player places a train in their Home City, and then places two reroll cubes in their other three cities. Then each player places one reroll cube in each of the "neutral" gray cities on the map, and takes two of the remaining reroll cubes to start the game. Designate a start player.

The Gameplay

Each turn in very simple:

1. Roll the four dice and split them however you choose.

2. Build track tiles on the map based on the roll.

The track dice have two sides with two straight tracks showing, two sides with two curved tracks, and two sides with one of each. And the terrain dice have two sides with grassland, one side with water, one side with mountains, and two sides with all three terrains, which acts as a wild.

So you roll all four dice, and the pair them up—one terrain die with one track die. Then you place up to four track tiles following the terrain and track you rolled. You can split the placement however you'd like. So if you roll a mountain and a grassland, you could place one mountain track, two grasslands, and then the other mountain track.

Your first track played in the game must be from your Home City, and each subsequent placement has to either come off of a previously placed track tile or a city of your color that you've previously connected to.

Because of where you are on the board, and the terrain and track you roll, it's possible you won't be able to place any track down at all—or will only be able to place fewer than four tracks. That's here the reroll cubes come in. You can turn in any reroll cube you've collected to reroll one or two of the four dice. You care free to use more than one reroll cube on a turn if necessary.

You can choose the order of cities you visit once you leave your Home City. Once you do connect to one of your Home Cities, you get to collect the two reroll cubes on it. No player can ever connect to a colored city of another player. You are free to connect into and out of any of the gray cities on the board, and if you do, you get your reroll cube on that city. Because the spaces are hexagons, up to three players can connect to each of those gray cities, but the fourth player is just out of luck.

But the point of the game isn't to connect to the most cities—it's to connect your four cities. So don't get distracted. Once someone does connect those four cities, each player who hasn't had an equal number of turns gets one final turn. Ties are broken by reroll cubes.

The Extras

The game comes with two decks that give you more options for play.

The Service Bounty Deck consists of 18 cards that are identical, other than the city named on the card—there's a card for each of the gray cities on the board. You shuffle the deck at the beginning of the game and deal four face-up. If someone connects to one of those cities while the card is visible, he or she gets an extra reroll cube, and you discard that Bounty and draw a new one so there are always four visible bounties.

The Railroad Operations Deck are various cards with various powers, that include being able to play on any terrain without having to roll a terrain die, a free track tile placement on a certain terrain, and cards that you play on others that keep that player from playing on a certain terrain type. You get to draw a card when you connect to a gray city (not one of your own).

The Verdict

Jeremiah—So let's talk about the components. Everything was well-made—the cards, the board, etc. There were some choices that I wouldn't necessarily have made (wooden dice, plastic trains seemed backwards to me), but nothing that ruins the game. The only quirky part about the components were areas of the board that were or were not considered to be water hexes. The rules say that only the bright blue hexes are water not the pale blue, and sometimes it was really hard to define what those were.  Oh, and did we mention, the board is HUGE!?

Firestone—Yeah, unless it's something like Twilight Imperium, I almost always prefer wooden pieces to plastic, but they're mostly good. (The wooden dice are just okay.) I agree that those ambiguous water spaces are the board are annoying, though it's easy enough to make a house-rule decision. Publishers: If a space isn't a water space, don't put water in it! No one will be angry if you err on the side of clarity!

Firestone—I was pleasantly surprised to see that the game was for ages 7 and up. And it proved to be true! We even played with my 5-year-old, and with a little help, he was doing well. We'd talk about how to split his dice, and then he would put them down where he wanted to go. The age requirements might be my favorite thing about this game.

Jeremiah—Yeah, I was really glad that even on the box it says the game is for ages 7 and up. Most games I play with my kids (5 & 7) have an age rating of 8, 10, 12, 13 etc. and up. Railways Express is a great, introductory tile placement game, and is really for just about any age of gamer!

Jeremiah—I really enjoyed that this was SO easy to learn, but it didn't feel like an easy game to play. Which is to say that I felt like there were some weighty decision to make, concerning how to spend your re-roll cubes, which path to take and so on, but the mechanics were pretty light weight and uncumbersome.

Firestone—I felt it was kind of decision-light, but that just means it's a good family game and not a good gamers' game. I like family games, so it's not really a dig.

Jeremiah—While there are some decent decision making moments, the game is really driven by the dice. For "certain people" *cough cough* Scott *cough* that can be a major downside. But dice-rollers have a certain appeal for the casual player, and this Railways Express is no exception to that. This will be one that I pull out for casual players, or family game nights for sure. Making the right decisions can definitely give you a great advantage, but there aren't so many decisions to be made that a casual, or younger player will be gripped with analysis paralysis.

Firestone—Since when do I not like dice?! Oh yeah...since always. :) Look, if you roll better in this game, you will do better than those who don't. Period. Again, in a family game that's fine.

Firestone Final Thoughts—I've not played any of the Railways of the World games, but as an "express" version of anything, this does what it's supposed to. It strips down play, and is a great introduction to the concept of building tracks on the map. As far as I'm concerned, this was the very, very first step in introducing my 5-year-old to Age Of Steam. If you're playing with gamers, keep it on the shelf, but when it's with family or nongamers, put Railways Express on the table.

Jeremiah Final Thoughts—Railways Express is exactly what Eagle Games says it is. It's an express, or streamlined version of their hit title Railways of the World. It plays fast—an hour max, and probably faster with experienced players—which could definitely earn it a spot as a solid filler game, although that would seem weird because it's so HUGE. If you're looking for a quick-playing game, especially with casual players or a game for your family game night, you should definitely put this game on the table!

Thanks for reading! And if you'd prefer watching, just click on the vid below! And please subscribe to our YouTube channel while you're at it!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXrTJz0VbS0]

Top Promoter—A Double-Take Preview (With Video!)

"I'm gonna knock you out! Momma said, knock you out!" -LL Cool J

Today we're taking  a look at Top Promoter, a card and dice game that takes place in the world of competitive boxing. The game is designed for 2-5 players, and plays fairly quickly.

Players take to the table as promoters, trying to earn the most money by placing their fighters in bouts that they will hopefully win.

The Components

Cards—There are 5 nearly identical decks of 15 fighters and 5 action cards. We say nearly identical, because while all the boxers have the same name, each one has a different popularity value. This will make sense very shortly.

Dice—The final version will feature 7 dice per player color. We had prototypes that had just a handful of red and white.

Locations—More cards featuring cities/venues for the bouts.

The Gameplay

The game starts by putting locations into play—one fewer than there are players. And the number of locations used in the game is scaled depending on the number of players in the game. (Because once they run out,the game is over.) Players then shuffle their decks and draw five cards.

Players then select a boxer from their hand and place it face down in front of them. Simultaneously they reveal their chosen boxer, and whoever has the most popular boxer chooses a location to place their boxer. Each location can take six boxers (three bouts, consisting of two boxers each: the low card, mid card and main event). You want to get your boxer into the main event because it pays more money. But once a fighter is put into a bout other players must match the weight class of that boxer. And you, of course, cannot pit your own fighters against themselves.

Once a location is filled (whether others are or not) you resolve the bouts at that location, pay out the prize money, discard all the boxers there, as well as the location card, and replace it with a new one from the location deck.

Bouts are resolved by rolling dice. Each boxer has a dice value printed on their card indicating how many dice you roll for them, and if that boxer is capable of a knock out. If they're able to KO a boxer, there are three different rolls that will accomplish that. A boxer with a 3 on his card needs to roll three-of-a-kind, a boxer with a 4 needs to roll a straight, and a 5 requires a full house roll. Players take the appropriate amount of dice and roll them, then compare highest to highest. If one player rolls a 5 as their highest and the other rolls a 3 as their highest, that's it: The fight is over and the player who rolled a 5 wins. If there is a tie you go to the next highest and compare, and so on.

There are action cards that can affect the payouts, or cause a fighter to forfeit, or move a bout into the main event slot, and so forth.

And that is pretty much the game. You choose boxers, try to maneuver them into the best bouts to get the best payouts, and then let them duke it out. Whoever has the most money when the locations run out is the Top Promoter!

The Verdict

Jeremiah—We can't really comment on the components for the game, since we were playing prototypes with tiddly-winks for money, and generic dice. I will say that the artwork in the form that we saw it in was nice, bright and colorful, and I enjoyed the cartoonish nature of it!

Firestone—Yeah, I liked the artwork, too—each fighter was unique and colorful and evocative.

Jeremiah—I really enjoyed half of the game. There are some great decision-making moments and strategic maneuvering to try and get your boxers into the best bout and then ratchet up the payouts with the special action cards to try and make a big score. I found this part of the game enjoyable and fun!

Firestone—Yeah, that was definitely the best part. You really had to think about when to play your special cards, because the moment a location was full, it was "scored," so you had to try and figure out if a location would score and you should play that card now or risk another go-around when you might be able to get yourself in an even better position to utilize a card.

Jeremiah—The bouts are where the whole thing fell apart for me. I don't mind dice AT ALL; I love dice, I own a lot of dice. But the bout mechanic is just too shallow for me. I can't get over the Risk-like feel of it. It doesn't matter what you do or how you jockey for position, you get, one, single, solitary roll to try and roll the highest number. Ugh. Yahtzee even gives you 2 re-rolls.

Firestone—Dice-disliker here... But even so, I like games that do interesting things with dice. THIS DOESN'T DO THAT. All that maneuvering and it comes down to one dice roll?! Aaargh! And there are ways to get more dice for your big rolls, but no way to change them or affect them in any way. So even if I manage to roll six dice to your two, if you roll a 6 and I roll all 5's, I LOSE! I understand that's kinda thematic, as sometimes the underdog does beat the big dog (Buster Douglas!), but...ugh.

Jeremiah Final Thoughts—I'm holding out hope that there will be an expansion that will add cards that allow you to tweak the dice, or alter them in some way that will make the bouts a little less of a flip of the coin. Time will tell. I have to say that until they do come up with some expansion or fix, Keep This On the Shelf.

Firestone Final Thoughts—There was some potential here, but it's been wasted with a terrible, terrible bout-resolution mechanism. I agree with Jeremiah: Keep This On the Shelf.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to watch the video review below. Have a great weekend! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a51_OHjoF6g&w=560&h=315]

Abstract Distraction—A Review of Yinsh

By Firestone A few months back I reviewed Zertz, which is part of Project Gipf—a group of highly regarded abstract games by designer Kris Burn. In today's review we set our sights on perhaps the most accessible game in this series: Yinsh.

The Goal

Be the first player to collect three Rings from the board.

The Components

5 white bakelite Rings

5 black bakelite Rings

51 round bakelite Markers, that each fit inside of the rings—with white on one side and black on the other.

1 Game board

The Setup

Each person places his or her five rings on any intersection of the board—only one ring can ever occupy an intersection.

The Gameplay

The board consists of a hexagonal grid, with lines intersecting with one another. On your turn you do one thing: Place a round Marker into one of your Rings with your color (black or white) facing up, and then move the Ring along any line you're connected to for as long as you'd like, or until you hit another Ring, or until you pass over any Markers—at which point you place the Ring on the next intersection after the last Marker you pass over. Every marker you passed over is now flipped to its opposite side—black to white and white to black. This is not optional.

Once there are five Markers of a color in a row on the board, that player removes a Ring from the board and places it on the space provided along that player's edge. Once you've managed to remove three Rings, you win.

And that's it!

The Verdict

I'm not a huge fan of abstracts, but for some reason these games in Project Gipf just grab me. They have simple rules, but deep gameplay. They have beautiful bits. They each feel different. And finally, I'm terrible at them.

Yinsh is the game I pull out when someone wants to play an abstract from my collection—well, Yinsh or Ingenious...but we're talking about Yinsh today! My 9-year-old played this when he was 8, and had no problem picking it up and doing well.

One of my favorite things about this is how the game balances itself with a sort of catch-up mechanism. When you remove a Ring, you're one step closer to winning, but you're also now more restricted in your options on the board, because you have fewer pieces to work with. Now, of course, this doesn't always mean the person behind will now catch up, but it makes it slightly easier to do so, and I like that.

There are also subtle ways to mess with your opponent. You can "trap" his Rings by placing your Rings where he wants to go, or make it so his only move with a Ring will benefit you by flipping Markers to your side.

The Final Verdict

One of the barriers to abstracts is that they often seem daunting to new players, Someone new to Yinsh might not dominate right away, but something about the gameplay, aesthetics, and simple rules makes this a great entry point for someone new to abstracts. And as someone who's not new to them, I still really enjoy this too. It's a great addition to Project Gipf, and any collection.

Thanks for reading!

A Double-Take Review of King's Forge

There's a new dice-rolling game on Kickstarter! Do you have what it takes to claim the King's Forge and become the greatest blacksmith in all the land? Let's see what this game is all about!

The Overview

You are trying to be the first player to craft four items for the king. If more than one player accomplishes this feat on the same turn, whoever crafted the highest-valued item wins.

The Components

91 dice, including:

• 42 black Metal dice
• 22 green Wood dice
• 14 red Gem dice
• 10 blue Magic dice
• 2 white Library dice
• 1 purple Cemetery die

53 cards, including:

• 26 Craft cards
• 18 Gather cards
• 4 Storage cards
• 4 Black Market cards
• 1 Player One card

4 tokens: 2 yellow "Automatic 6" tokens and 2 green "+1/+1" tokens

The Setup

Everyone gets a Storage card and five black Metal dice.

Set out the four Black Market cards. Then you'll choose which Craft cards to use in the game—between 9 and 13, depending on the number of players. You sort them according to their worth (a number between 1 and 48), place the three least-valuable ones out on the table, and then put the rest of the cards splayed out above the three low ones, with the dice icons visible to all.

Then take the 18 Gather cards, separate out the two Mine cards and the two Forest cards, and then shuffle the remaining cards and choose seven randomly. Place them facedown in a pile near the Black Market cards.

The Cards

These are complex and a key part of the game, so they deserve their own section.

Gather cards are unique cards, each with an upper and lower half. When you claim one of these cards, you'll choose which half you're going to do on that turn and "pay" a number of dice, depending on the card. The Gather cards have squares on them. White squares mean you can choose any die to fulfill that. A green square means you can only use a green die to pay for that square. A red is just like green—only red!! And a square that's half blue and half red means either color will work. So one card might have you paying any one die to get a black die. Or another might have you paying two green dice to get a red die. Or yet another might have you pay two dice (one of which you'll lose forever) in order to change any 1s rolled to 6s.

There are also Black Market cards. Every dice spent here is lost forever, but it will allow you to get that green or red die you desperately need.

Crafting cards have a number of dice on the bottom (between 1 and 6), of differing colors. Each die on the cards has a number on it as well, and that's the minimum number you need on that color in order to craft that item. So the lowest-valued item (the Anvil) takes three black dice and at least 2 on each in order to craft it. The Battle Axe takes a black 4, black 5, black 6, green 4, red 4, and blue 4.

The Gameplay

The game is divided into two phases: the Gather phase and the Crafting phase.

First deal four of the Gather cards face-up to the center of the table, and then each player grabs any dice on his or her Storage card.

Now each player in turn order can either:

• Claim a Gather card.
• Take a Black Market Action and ditch a Gather card.
• Pass

To take the Gather card, you just pay for it with the required dice, and place it in front of you. (And if you get any dice from the action, you grab the dice and put them on your Storage card. You'll get them next turn.) Then you deal out a new Gather card and it's the next player's turn. If you take a Black Market action, you pay for it, grab the dice and put them on your Storage card for next turn, as normal, and then you choose and discard one of the face-up Gather cards. Or you can pass. If you're the first person to pass, you get to choose either a black die and add it to your current pool of dice. Or you can grab a "+1/+1" token, which allows you to add 1 to two different dice during the upcoming Crafting phase.

The dice you start the turn are all you use over both phases, so it could be that you don't want to gather anything and only craft, or vice versa. But those dice are it. That Gather phase if over if everyone passes, or if there are no more faceup Gather cards and at least one person has passed.

In the Crafting phase, each player in turn order rolls the remaining dice he or she has, manipulates them if possible (due to Gather card abilities or tokens you might have), and then tries to craft an item. You have to have the correct dice colors with the correct (minimum) values in order to attempt it.

Editor's Note: In our video review we were playing a rule wrong. In the rules-set we received, it said in one spot that you could only craft one item, and in another that you can craft as many as you want. We only noticed the "one craft" rule, so we playing that incorrectly, and mentioned that incorrectly in the video. Please forgive us. And play correctly.

One of the key mechanisms in the game is stealing. A player in later turn order can steal an item that you're trying to craft on that turn. In order to do that they only have to meet the dice values you already have, and then at least one of the dice has to have a greater value. So if I try to build the Anvil with a 2, 2, 2, you could steal it with a 2, 2, 3. And then there's weeping and gnashing of teeth...

A player further down in order could also steal the item from the player who stole it from you! After everyone has a chance to craft or steal, you reset things, gather back your dice, and shuffle up the Gather cards and start a new round.

The first person to craft four items (you play through the full Crafting phase) wins. If more than one person accomplishes that on the turn, whichever of those people who crafted the item with the highest value wins.

The Verdict

Firestone—This is a good game! I'm not a big fan of dice-rollers, but the way you can manipulate them here makes this a dice-roller I actually enjoy!

Jeremiah—I enjoy a good dice roller, and this is a good dice roller. I love that there is much more than just dice-rolling going on here too!

Firestone—I used to think the stealing mechanism was too powerful. I might still think it is, but after some thoughtful back-and-forth email discussion with the designer, I'm coming around. I never thought it was enough o a problem to keep someone from playing.

Jeremiah—I never had a problem with it. I felt thematically it was perfect. Maybe stealing isn't the proper term. It's more of an "I made a better object than you did so mine got accepted by the king. Maybe you shouldn't produce such sub-standard wares and you wouldn't have to worry about this sort of thing happening, and no, you don't get a consolation prize for under performing!" mechanic. Or you could just say it's stealing.

Firestone—I can't really comment on components since what we played was a prototype version, but I LOVE the artwork I've seen so far on this. It's cool, colorful and evocative. I hope it reaches some stretch goals that allow them to produce some slick dice, too.

Jeremiah—Yeah, I'm pulling for the cool dice. I like dice. I own a lot of them, and the dice in the prototype were sort of boring and smaller than standard dice. The artwork we're seeing on the Kickstarter page really puts the game over the top. Having pretty pictures on a card doesn't make it play any better, but lets face it: We're a visual culture, and those sort of ascetics make a difference.

Jeremiah—I've played a handful of 2-player games now, and the game seems to benefit from multiple player interactions. It's still fun with only 2 , but it gets really fun with 3-4 players!

Firestone—Yeah, I think more is better on this one. Some guys in the group played 2-player, but they thought it wasn't as good as multiplayer—which they'd also both played.

Firestone Final Thoughts—My gaming group played this two times in a row the other night, and that almost never happens—even with published games, let alone a prototype. I play a lot of prototype and prerelease games, and this is one of the best I've played in a long time. I can say without hesitation: Put this on the table! Gamers! Nongamers! Youth groups! I think this would fit them all.

Jeremiah Final Thoughts —There's a lot to like about King's Forge! From solid well thought out mechanics, down to the little details with some cool geeky references. It's those little touches that make a big difference when you're sitting at the table. I've had a lot of fun with this one! The theme is cool, and completely friendly to any group of folks you'd want to play with! Without a doubt I recommend you put this on the table!

You can check out our video review below. And head over to the Kickstarter page to jump in on this one! Thanks for reading!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIEGfp18Vg]

A Video Double-Take Review of King's Forge

We get a lot of prototypes to review. Some of them are awesome. And some of them are the Nickelback of games. Today we turn our sights to the Kickstarter game King's Forge by Clever Mojo Games and Game Salute. How's that game? I'm glad you asked...

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IIEGfp18Vg]

Thanks for watching! We hope this video gave you a good overview of the game. As you can tell, we liked it.

A Double-Take Video Review of Fluxx: The Board Game

Sure, you already read our review  of Fluxx: The Board Game from last week. But that wasn't all we had to say about the game! (Okay, it was almost everything, but still... Video!) Watch Firestone be slightly less grumpy about a game! See Jeremiah do a terrific Pac-Man impression!  

Thanks for watching and reading, and please let us know how we're doing. If we can improve on something, we want to hear it!

Our Double Take Review of Fluxx the Board Game by Looney Labs! It's a new spin on an old classic, but is it worth it? Watch to find out! What did you think of Fluxx the Board Game? What do you think of our channel and reviews?