As I mentioned in the Terrain Corner for today, Gen Con's just a week away. There's going to be hundreds of vendors there. One of them is Passport Game Studios. They've posted up a look at what they'l
As I mentioned in the Terrain Corner for today, Gen Con's just a week away. There's going to be hundreds of vendors there. One of them is Passport Game Studios. They've posted up a look at what they'll be doing at the show, so you can know to stop by and check them out.
From the announcement:
Passport Game Studios will be in attendance at Gen Con 50 in Indianapolis Indiana next week, from August 16th - August 20th and would like to invite you to visit us in booth #2549 for your chance to see all our latest and greatest. In addition to having two brand new releases for sale at Gen Con- Skyward, and Professor Evil and the Citadel of Time- Passport will also be hosting the team from our partner Rule & Make in our booth who will be showcasing upcoming releases Entropy: Worlds Collide and Hand of Fate: Ordeals.
Even more excitement will be found at the Passport booth: in addition to our new releases and demos, two yet-to-be-announced game projects, one from Funforge and one from Rule & Make, will be unveiled and discussed at Gen Con for the first time, and we're excited for the chance to talk about them with you!
If you would like to schedule time to meet with Passport at the show for a dedicated interview or overview of the new games, please let me know. E-mail me at the address below with proposed times you have available and I'll get back to you promptly with confirmation of the time slot.
It's Saturdaaaaaaaaaaay! Woooooooo!Due to the rain, my initial plans for the day fell through. But I'm hoping to rebound and maybe hang out with some people here and just chill. Yes, just me, them, an
It's Saturdaaaaaaaaaaay! Woooooooo! Due to the rain, my initial plans for the day fell through. But I'm hoping to rebound and maybe hang out with some people here and just chill. Yes, just me, them, and a whole pan of homemade banana pudding cheesecake... But at the moment, I know what you all really want are the day's reviews.
Today we have: Ethnos, Founders of Gloomhaven, Macroscope, Dragonstone Mine, Sheep & Thief, Gyrating Hamsters, Pests, Potion Explosion iOS, Salem, Exit: The Game, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Covil, Meduris, Saltlands, The Flow of History, Sagrada, The Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport, and Ulock!.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Founders of Gloomhaven - the brand new game from Isaac Childres, the designer of the EPIC Gloomhaven board game. Gloomhaven has been taking the board gaming community by storm this year and just hit a record on kickstarter for its second print and currently #4 on BGG!
Isaac takes us through the new euro style game, setting the stage for what we find in the Gloomhaven campaign. So as you choose your race and start to build one of the most influential cities in gaming history, make smart choices and watch your opponents because the fate of Gloomhaven is in your hands!
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Macroscope a brand new one from Mayday Games, which was recently successfully kickstarted. This game is great for adults and kids and is a ton of fun trying to guess what the picture is as you slowly remove the dials on top of the device.
That brings me to the Macroscope device, which you assemble once you open the game up. Its a very innovative game component which integrates with the actual game box. Well done Mayday on this one, so grab a copy and see if you can guess what's under the dials!
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Dragon Stone Mine from Legion and Jade Dragon Studios. A very nice fun little strategy placement game we have had a great time with and a kid favorite at this point. you mine gems and stack them on your own personal spire for the max points at the end of the game. Although its not as easy as it sounds, watch out for other players to foil your well laid plans!
I definitely recommend - so pick up a copy of this game and enjoy all your gem mining.
Gyrating Hamsters is a fun fast paced hamster themed deck building game. Gameplay is approx 30min and is for 2-4 players.
Gyrating Hamsters got funded on kickstarter within its first week and for good reasons, this game has it all! Replay value is extremely high, after every game you always have someone shou “Lets play that again, I’ll beat you this time!” which to me is a good sign to any game dev! The aim of th egame is to build up your clan of hamsters and use them to battle your opponents, the winner of the battle takes the opponents losing cards.
‘Pests the game’ was sent over to me all the way from the States and I can honestly say I am so glad I got to play test this! It is brought you from the wonderful mind of Michael McFarland who is a keen gamer and has been since childhood.
Bumbling students of potions class mixing colored ingredients to make potions is the subject here. Players will take ingredient-spheres from a rack (dispenser) hoping that the spheres on either side of the selected ingredient cascade down into one another and create explosions which deliver more ingredients to the potion maker. The player who makes the most points worth of potions wins.
Players in Salem control a group of individuals living in the eponymous village. In the basic mode of play, a random set of individuals are laid out in the middle of the table and the object is to discover which ones are witches with deductions similar to Clue. In the more advanced mode, the witches are controlled by other players. The object is the same, to find the witches, but if you control a witch, you’re also able to penalize other players to make sure your witches aren’t caught. In each case, the player to identify the most witches wins.
In EXIT, players are trying to solve a series of puzzles and open the “locked door” of the room they are in, all as quickly as possible. While each game of EXIT has its own theme (currently Abandoned Cabin, Secret Lab, and Pharaoh’s Tomb), the goal remains the same. Start the timer and use the clues at your disposal to solve a series of puzzles to ultimately escape.
Each player is an Italian Renaissance family seeking to impress the church and expand their power. This is accomplished by acquiring cards representing lands, people, activities or ventures. Dice-based workers are placed to action locations while resources such as wood, stone, and money are managed to the highest efficiency. Victory points determine the winner.
In Covil: The Dark Overlords you will struggle for the supremacy of the regions surrounding an isolated town. Each player controls a Dark Overlord with unique powers and countless troops of minions to “defend the world from enemy hordes”, bring “peace and security to the territories” — at a cost, of course!
Following the call of the gods, the players settle at the base of mountain Meduris. Building huts, bringing offerings to the druid, gathering precious runestones, and building monumental temples is the only way to earn the favor of the gods in Meduris.
In Saltlands, the first group of players to find and reach an exit point wins, leaving the rest to the Horde. There are no fixed teams, players can decide to co-operate or backstab each other as they see fit. Each player starts the game with a single captain but may increase his crew as the game progresses. Each crew member represents an extra life and an action each turn. Players move with their land sails according to the wind direction: being able to criss-cross slowly upwind or speed in the fastest direction, sailing on a broad reach. Each player can choose which group of raiders to move at the end of their turn until all raiders have moved. This allows players to help each other or force a confrontation with the Raiders. Players can fight the raiders and take their vehicles as an alternate mode of transport.
History is a harsh river that flows steadily through the ages. Since the dawn of time, numerous civilizations have risen over the fallen ashes of others, and yet every one of them had once shone brightly in its own moment of glory!
The Flow of History is yet another innovative civilization game from Taiwanese designer Jesse Li. Players develop their nation using a unique bidding/price-setting mechanism to purchase new cards, but what is paid to the supply might also be harvested into the pockets of other players later, which puts a twist on your strategy of bidding cards, and also simulates economic inflation in the game. Don’t forget to build a formidable military to clash with cultures led by your enemy, and create an unforgettable tale of your civilization in The Flow of History.
Draft dice and use the tools-of-the-trade in Sagrada to carefully construct your stained glass window masterpiece.
In more detail, each player builds a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which color or shade (value) of die can be placed there. Dice of the same shade or color may never be placed next to each other. Dice are drafted in player order, with the start player rotating each round, snaking back around after the last player drafts two dice. Scoring is variable per game based on achieving various patterns and varieties of placement…as well as bonus points for dark shades of a particular hidden goal color.
Special tools can be used to help you break the rules by spending skill tokens; once a tool is used, it then requires more skill tokens for the next player to use them.
The Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport is a cooperative deck building game set in the same universe as The Red Dragon Inn. There are a lot of rules and card effects with this game that would take a while to explain, so I’m just going to give you a quick and dirty overview of how the game works.
In each game, you’re trying to beat the chosen scenario. There are seven scenarios in the game of varying difficulty and in order to win you generally must defeat the boss monster for the scenario. (There are occasionally other win conditions and these are spelled out on the scenario card.) Each scenario has its own requirements for which components to use and which monsters will be in play, so game setup varies.
Unlock! is a cooperative puzzle-solving game intended to simulate an escape room for one to six players. Players have sixty minutes to solve the puzzles keeping them from their goals. If they’re able to solve them in that amount of time, they win.
It's Saturdaaaaaaaaaaay! Woooooooo!Due to the rain, my initial plans for the day fell through. But I'm hoping to rebound and maybe hang out with some people here and just chill. Yes, just me, them, an
It's Saturdaaaaaaaaaaay! Woooooooo! Due to the rain, my initial plans for the day fell through. But I'm hoping to rebound and maybe hang out with some people here and just chill. Yes, just me, them, and a whole pan of homemade banana pudding cheesecake... But at the moment, I know what you all really want are the day's reviews.
Today we have: Ethnos, Founders of Gloomhaven, Macroscope, Dragonstone Mine, Sheep & Thief, Gyrating Hamsters, Pests, Potion Explosion iOS, Salem, Exit: The Game, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Covil, Meduris, Saltlands, The Flow of History, Sagrada, The Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport, and Ulock!.
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Founders of Gloomhaven - the brand new game from Isaac Childres, the designer of the EPIC Gloomhaven board game. Gloomhaven has been taking the board gaming community by storm this year and just hit a record on kickstarter for its second print and currently #4 on BGG!
Isaac takes us through the new euro style game, setting the stage for what we find in the Gloomhaven campaign. So as you choose your race and start to build one of the most influential cities in gaming history, make smart choices and watch your opponents because the fate of Gloomhaven is in your hands!
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Macroscope a brand new one from Mayday Games, which was recently successfully kickstarted. This game is great for adults and kids and is a ton of fun trying to guess what the picture is as you slowly remove the dials on top of the device.
That brings me to the Macroscope device, which you assemble once you open the game up. Its a very innovative game component which integrates with the actual game box. Well done Mayday on this one, so grab a copy and see if you can guess what's under the dials!
theMCGuiRE review takes a look at Dragon Stone Mine from Legion and Jade Dragon Studios. A very nice fun little strategy placement game we have had a great time with and a kid favorite at this point. you mine gems and stack them on your own personal spire for the max points at the end of the game. Although its not as easy as it sounds, watch out for other players to foil your well laid plans!
I definitely recommend - so pick up a copy of this game and enjoy all your gem mining.
Gyrating Hamsters is a fun fast paced hamster themed deck building game. Gameplay is approx 30min and is for 2-4 players.
Gyrating Hamsters got funded on kickstarter within its first week and for good reasons, this game has it all! Replay value is extremely high, after every game you always have someone shou “Lets play that again, I’ll beat you this time!” which to me is a good sign to any game dev! The aim of th egame is to build up your clan of hamsters and use them to battle your opponents, the winner of the battle takes the opponents losing cards.
‘Pests the game’ was sent over to me all the way from the States and I can honestly say I am so glad I got to play test this! It is brought you from the wonderful mind of Michael McFarland who is a keen gamer and has been since childhood.
Bumbling students of potions class mixing colored ingredients to make potions is the subject here. Players will take ingredient-spheres from a rack (dispenser) hoping that the spheres on either side of the selected ingredient cascade down into one another and create explosions which deliver more ingredients to the potion maker. The player who makes the most points worth of potions wins.
Players in Salem control a group of individuals living in the eponymous village. In the basic mode of play, a random set of individuals are laid out in the middle of the table and the object is to discover which ones are witches with deductions similar to Clue. In the more advanced mode, the witches are controlled by other players. The object is the same, to find the witches, but if you control a witch, you’re also able to penalize other players to make sure your witches aren’t caught. In each case, the player to identify the most witches wins.
In EXIT, players are trying to solve a series of puzzles and open the “locked door” of the room they are in, all as quickly as possible. While each game of EXIT has its own theme (currently Abandoned Cabin, Secret Lab, and Pharaoh’s Tomb), the goal remains the same. Start the timer and use the clues at your disposal to solve a series of puzzles to ultimately escape.
Each player is an Italian Renaissance family seeking to impress the church and expand their power. This is accomplished by acquiring cards representing lands, people, activities or ventures. Dice-based workers are placed to action locations while resources such as wood, stone, and money are managed to the highest efficiency. Victory points determine the winner.
In Covil: The Dark Overlords you will struggle for the supremacy of the regions surrounding an isolated town. Each player controls a Dark Overlord with unique powers and countless troops of minions to “defend the world from enemy hordes”, bring “peace and security to the territories” — at a cost, of course!
Following the call of the gods, the players settle at the base of mountain Meduris. Building huts, bringing offerings to the druid, gathering precious runestones, and building monumental temples is the only way to earn the favor of the gods in Meduris.
In Saltlands, the first group of players to find and reach an exit point wins, leaving the rest to the Horde. There are no fixed teams, players can decide to co-operate or backstab each other as they see fit. Each player starts the game with a single captain but may increase his crew as the game progresses. Each crew member represents an extra life and an action each turn. Players move with their land sails according to the wind direction: being able to criss-cross slowly upwind or speed in the fastest direction, sailing on a broad reach. Each player can choose which group of raiders to move at the end of their turn until all raiders have moved. This allows players to help each other or force a confrontation with the Raiders. Players can fight the raiders and take their vehicles as an alternate mode of transport.
History is a harsh river that flows steadily through the ages. Since the dawn of time, numerous civilizations have risen over the fallen ashes of others, and yet every one of them had once shone brightly in its own moment of glory!
The Flow of History is yet another innovative civilization game from Taiwanese designer Jesse Li. Players develop their nation using a unique bidding/price-setting mechanism to purchase new cards, but what is paid to the supply might also be harvested into the pockets of other players later, which puts a twist on your strategy of bidding cards, and also simulates economic inflation in the game. Don’t forget to build a formidable military to clash with cultures led by your enemy, and create an unforgettable tale of your civilization in The Flow of History.
Draft dice and use the tools-of-the-trade in Sagrada to carefully construct your stained glass window masterpiece.
In more detail, each player builds a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which color or shade (value) of die can be placed there. Dice of the same shade or color may never be placed next to each other. Dice are drafted in player order, with the start player rotating each round, snaking back around after the last player drafts two dice. Scoring is variable per game based on achieving various patterns and varieties of placement…as well as bonus points for dark shades of a particular hidden goal color.
Special tools can be used to help you break the rules by spending skill tokens; once a tool is used, it then requires more skill tokens for the next player to use them.
The Red Dragon Inn: Battle for Greyport is a cooperative deck building game set in the same universe as The Red Dragon Inn. There are a lot of rules and card effects with this game that would take a while to explain, so I’m just going to give you a quick and dirty overview of how the game works.
In each game, you’re trying to beat the chosen scenario. There are seven scenarios in the game of varying difficulty and in order to win you generally must defeat the boss monster for the scenario. (There are occasionally other win conditions and these are spelled out on the scenario card.) Each scenario has its own requirements for which components to use and which monsters will be in play, so game setup varies.
Unlock! is a cooperative puzzle-solving game intended to simulate an escape room for one to six players. Players have sixty minutes to solve the puzzles keeping them from their goals. If they’re able to solve them in that amount of time, they win.
Hello there, beautiful TGN readers. And welcome once more to Saturday. Hopefully you're getting some gaming in, or are going to be getting some gaming in at some point today. It seems only right.Let u
Hello there, beautiful TGN readers. And welcome once more to Saturday. Hopefully you're getting some gaming in, or are going to be getting some gaming in at some point today. It seems only right. Let us know what you've been getting up to with this great hobby of ours.
Being Saturday, we have our batch of review articles we've found over the week.
This week we have reviews of: Trajan, Warmachine/Hordes, The Witcher Adventure Game on iOS, Fidelitas, Parfum, Super Dungeon Explore: Forgotten King, Gripping Beast Plastic Saxon Thegns, Quantum Gothic sci-fi Terrain Pieces, and Letters from Whitechapel.
Buckle up, boardkids! It's time for Team SU&SD to tackle the Official 38th Best Board Game of All Time: Trajan. A game of thrashing as many victory points as you can out of Ancient Rome.
Don't believe what you've heard. Shut Up & Sit Down can still handle heavy eurogames.
Eric: Welcome back to our survey of the world of miniatures wargames. This week, our game is Warmachine and Hordes. “But wait,” you might be thinking. “Eric, aren't those two games?”
Well, my imaginary interlocutor, sort of. Warmachine is a game about steam powered robots with smokestacks bigger than their legs, where wizards shoot spells out of pistols and your “warcaster” channels their willpower to bend the battlefield to their plans. Hordes, by contrast, is a game about lumbering monsters with fists bigger than their heads, where wizards shoot spells out of staffs and your “warlock” channels their rage to bend the battlefield to their plans.
At Gen Con 2014, Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) showed off their upcoming board game The Witcher Adventure Game, based on the books and video games of the same name. Shortly thereafter, the board game made its way to our gaming tables. Overall it seems like The Witcher Adventure Game received a warm, yet still mixed reactions. Personally, I find it enjoyable, even if it does have some flaws.
At the same time as its cardboard release, FFG set The Witcher Adventure Game loose on our iPads for some digital gaming goodness. Today we are going to take a look at this digital release and see if it’s worth an investment of your gaming dollars.
The government has gone corrupt (shocking right?). No, not those clowns down in the state capitol, I’m talking about The Crown. They have finally taken things too far and the citizens in this Medieval city are preparing for a rebellion. Time to see if we can extend our influence enough throughout the city and lead this coming revolution.
Today we are going to be looking at Fidelitas, the first offering from new publisher Green Couch Games. Designed by veteran game designers Jason Kotarski (The Great Heartland Hauling Co, FrogFlip) and Philip duBarry (Revolution!), Fidelitas seeks to have players maneuvering citizens around town to achieve their hidden objectives. Is this quick playing game of medieval posturing fun or should it be given the axe. Let’s find out.
Fidelitas is a hand management card game for 2-4 players that takes about 20 minutes to play. Fidelitas plays best with 2 players.
Creating perfume was once a highly valued art form. Gifted perfumers often catered to the great and the good in society. They knew their customer’s favorite fragrances and took care to create exactly what those customers wanted. Those were the days before large commercial enterprises and modern technology started churning out mass-produced, lab-created fragrances that the perfume-wielding salesperson tries to hit you with every time you go to the mall. Parfum takes you back to that simpler time and lets you attempt to become that valued, master perfumer.
The Forgotten King is a stand-alone expansion for Super Dungeon Explore. It introduces a new fully cooperative play mode, new heroes and enemies for the new environment and some changes to the original rule set.
Battle Brush Studios have put up an in-depth review (including painted pictures as usual) of Gripping Beast's hit plastic set Saxon Thegns (for Saga and the likes).
Today we review the Cannon, Missile Launcher, and Radar/Comm dish from Quantum Gothic, a company producing Sci-Fi Gothic wargaming scenery and miniatures set in a time where the multiverse of mankind is engulfed by endless bloody wars. Here you can see the 3 kits we ordered, each arrived in blister packs as shown below. We chose these as they look like they’ll fit right into several of the our wargames we play, especially Warhammer 40k with its gothic theme.
We take a look at the co-operative deductive board game, Letters from Whitechapel, by Gabriele Mari and Gianluca Santopietro. Distributed by Fantasy Flight Games. Letters from Whitechapel is for 2-6 players, age 13+ and takes about 120 minutes per game.
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