(Part of a series, reviewing games I played in September 2013 at That Board Gaming Thing.)

Designer: Richard Garfield
Publisher: IELLO (among others)
Players: 2-6
Playing time: 30 minutes

(Image courtesy of trenttsd@BoardGameGeek)

It is many a person’s dream to dress up in a rubber suit, and fight a massive battle with their friends over a scale model of Tokyo. Or perhaps that’s only my dream. In any case, King of Tokyo allows you to do just that, in a less stifling fashion.

Each player takes on the role of a daikaiju (giant strange creature, or as the rules say: Monster). Your goal is to keep your Monster in Tokyo (or Tokyo Bay, if playing with 5-6 players) as long as possible and rack up victory points — the first player to reach 20 points wins the game. Of course, everyone else will be attacking you and trying to drive you out of Tokyo so they can take your place. If you stay in too long and the other players manage to whittle your life points down to nothing, you are eliminated (no friendly Euro rules here!).

The turn sequence is simple. If you’re in Tokyo, collect 2 victory points. You then roll the dice and resolve the results. If you’re outside Tokyo and end up attacking the player there, and they choose to retreat (alternatively, if there’s no one there already), then you will take their place and receive a victory point. Finally you may buy cards if you choose to.

You get six dice to roll, and may re-roll any or all of them twice to reach your desired result. Three sides are numbered 1, 2, and 3 respectively. These will give you additional victory points equal to the value on the die if you roll a triplet, and one additional victory point for any matching die beyond that. For example, if you were to roll four 2s, you would get 2 victory points for the triplet, plus 1 additional point for the extra 2, for a total of 3 victory points.

For the remaining sides, one allows you to collect an energy cube, which you can save up turn to turn to buy cards. One side has a heart on it, which can restore one point of health if you’re not currently in Tokyo. And the remaining side has a claw on it, which will do damage to whoever is where you’re not: i.e. if you’re outside of Tokyo you can attack a daikaiju inside of Tokyo or Tokyo Bay, and vice versa.

The final and optional step is to buy cards, which can give you points, give you health, give you special abilities (such as a death ray, or fire breath), or combinations of the three. Three cards are revealed face up to start, and as players buy them they are replaced. They come in a variety of costs — the more powerful the card, the more it is. So you have a choice of buying the cheap card that can help you now, or saving up for the more powerful card — assuming you last that long.

I had heard about King of Tokyo when it first came out, and I have to admit I was a little skeptical. But the game quickly won me over. As I said on Twitter recently, there’s nothing like the visceral feel of rolling a big pile of dice. And that’s combined with three different push-your-luck mechanics — first whether to continue to roll and improve your results; second, if you’re Tokyo, whether to try to remain there and capture the 2 points on your next turn, or escape while you can before you get eliminated; third, whether to jump on the cheap card or wait for the energy to buy the better one. All of this combines to make a fun and tense little game. We’ll definitely be picking this one up soon.

Final verdict: Buy.

(Part of a series, reviewing games I played in September 2013 at That Board Gaming Thing.)

Designer: Seiji Kanai
Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group (among others)
Players: 2-4
Playing time: 20 minutes

(Image courtesy of thatmadgirl@BoardGameGeek)

So I’ve been hearing about Love Letter for a while — that it’s a simple, elegant game that has only 16 cards, plays quickly, and provides a rich gameplay experience. So when I saw it on the shelves at That Board Gaming Thing, I thought, “Well, I have to play this.” So my wife Mur and I sat down and gave it a try.

In Love Letter, you are trying to send a love letter to the Princess of the Kingdom. However, you can’t reach her directly, so you must rely on intermediaries, who will both try to deliver your letter, and stop others who are trying to attract her affections.

The cards represent your intermediaries. They have a ranking from 1 to 8, and if played have very basic results. For example, if you play the 8-ranked Princess (presumably a different Princess than the one you’re wooing), you’re out of the round immediately (not smart, but you might be forced into it). If you play the 3-ranked Baron (or Knight in the Japanese version), you compare hands (just one card, remember) with another player — the one with the lower rank is out of the round. If you play the 1-ranked Guard (or Soldier in the Japanese version), you name another card type and a player — if they have that card, they’re out of the round. And so on. There are eight card types and two of each type in the deck.

Gameplay is very simple, and consists of a series of rounds of play. At the start of the round, the deck is shuffled, the top card discarded (the top four for 2 player games), and one card dealt out to all the players. Then, on your turn, you draw one card and play one card in front of you. The round continues until all but one player is eliminated or the deck runs out. In the latter case, the remaining players compare hands and the player with the highest ranked hand wins a point for that round. Then you reshuffle and start the next round. The game continues until one player has won enough rounds to win (7 for two players, 5 for three players, 4 for four players).

So what did we think? In short, we weren’t very impressed. On the first two rounds, one of us ended up being forced to play a card that knocked us out of the round immediately. On the next two, there was a little more back and forth, but we really weren’t seeing a lot of emergent gameplay. In the end, we stopped before the game was over. That said, we could see that maybe with more players it would work better, and after talking to someone about it later, he said that was true: it’s best with 4 players. So I don’t feel like we really gave the game a chance in its best configuration, and when I get a chance to play with 3 or 4 players I’ll come back and revise this review. Still, I can’t recommend it for 2 players — it just wasn’t fun.

Tentative verdict: Avoid (2 players), To Be Revisited (3-4 players)

(Part of a series, reviewing games I played in September 2013 at That Board Gaming Thing.)

(image courtesy of duchamp@BoardGameGeek)

Most mystery games use cards as the clues, and you solve the mystery by elimination. The classic example is Clue (or Cluedo) — a set of cards are removed, and by tracking down all or most of the remaining cards, you can deduce the suspect, room and weapon. Games like Sleuth and Mystery of the Abbey are just variations on this.

Mord im Arosa is different. In this case, the clues are cubes in a tower with eight levels, representing different floors of the Hotel Arosa. As you drop cubes in the top, they will fall through the tower until they stop on one of the levels (and possibly knocking other cubes off). By guessing correctly where the cubes have fallen (ostensibly by listening), you collect clues, draw attention away from yourself and eventually determine which one of the players is the murderer.

To start the game, you drop in the two victim cubes, then each player in turn drops in two cubes of their color. Then there are two stages to the game: finding the victims and then determining the suspects.

To find the victims, you guess which floor those cubes might be on and lift the upper sections of the tower to reveal that floor. If you’re right, you place the victim cube on that floor on the investigation board, and a new cube of that color for each cube found near the victim (except yours). If you’re wrong, you must throw an extra cube of your own into the tower. In either case you return all the cubes found (except the victims) into the tower.

To determine the suspects, you accuse one or more players and then reveal a floor to see if their cubes are there. If they are there, then you add a new cube of that color to the investigation board for that floor for each cube found. If they are not, then you must throw in a cube of your own. In either case, you again close the tower and throw in all the cubes found back into the tower.

You can also try to cover your tracks — name a floor, and if your cubes are on there you may remove them before throwing the remainder back in the tower. But if they’re not… again you must add an extra cube of your color in addition to those found, back into the tower.

The game ends when one player runs out of cubes, or has ten cubes on the investigation board. Then players are scored depending on how close their cubes are, by floor, to the two victims on the investigation board. The player with the lower score is the winner, and the player with the highest is the murderer…

I thought the use of a cube tower for a mystery game was very interesting — the only other use of that mechanic I’ve seen is for games like Wallenstein and Shogun (probably because Queen Games has a patent on that particular cube tower). However, beyond that this one didn’t really light me on fire. I think the main issue I had is that the cube placement is random. So while you can try to cover your tracks and remove your cubes, if your cubes are placed on the investigation sheet near the victims, you’re stuck with that high score. You could try to guess the floors near the victims just to incriminate other people, but there’s no guarantee any cubes will be there. So while I certainly enjoyed playing it, I can’t see myself picking this one up.

Final verdict: Borrow

(Part of a series, reviewing games I played in September 2013 at That Board Gaming Thing.)

(Image courtesy of trenttsd@BoardGameGeek)

A party of intrepid adventurers, working together and trying against all odds to find their way out before time expires…. no, I’m not describing yesterday’s game Forbidden Desert. While the overall theme of cooperation, exploration and escape is the same, Escape: The Curse of the Temple is not quite so contemplative. Instead, it’s a mad dice-fest that only takes (exactly) ten minutes to play.

The idea is simple. You are explorers, trapped in an ancient temple. You have ten minutes to search the temple, find the exit, and get everyone out before they are entombed forever. The temple is represented by tiles laid out on the table, and as you explore, you reveal new tiles. Each player has a marker representing them, and dice which you will continuously roll for the entirety of the game. It’s a real-time game: there are no turns, you just keep rolling and shouting at other players what you’re up to, hoping that they get to you and help out.

The dice are used for exploring and moving through the temple, activating gems (more on that in a bit) and avoiding curses. You start with five dice, each with various symbols on them: two adventurers, one torch, one key, one gold mask and one black mask. To move into a new room, you need to roll the two symbols on that tile. To explore and reveal a new tile, you need to roll two adventurers. If you roll a black mask, then that die is cursed and you can’t re-roll it — the only way to clear it is to roll a gold mask, which allows you to clear up to two black masks. In some cases you can end up with all five dice as black masks, in which case your only hope is that someone else can get to your room and “loan” you a gold mask to free up two of your dice.

Finding the exit is not enough. To leave, you also have to activate gems in the chambers that you’ll uncover throughout the game, again by rolling symbols on your dice. The more players that help out, the more gems you’ll be able to activate at one time. For every gem that is unactivated, each person will have to roll that many keys on their dice to escape. As you start with five dice, and the number of unactivated gems you start with is always larger than that (for example, with five players you start with fourteen gems), it’s clear that you’ll have to dedicate some time to activation.

And if that isn’t enough… as I mentioned, you start with five dice. But every three minutes or so, you have to return to the starting tile. If you don’t make it in time, you lose a die. And if you don’t have enough dice to unlock the exit, you may be trapped forever. Now, those who make it out can give a single die to those who remain — but do you really want to depend on that?

As you might expect, the tension gets rather high: you’re trying to find the exit, activating enough gems so you can unlock it, but still trying to get back to the center periodically so you don’t lose any dice. And all of this is driven along by a ten minute soundtrack — a CD comes with the game, or you can download the MP3s off of the website. Alternatively, there’s an egg timer you can use — but what’s the fun in that?

The main box also comes with two expansions: one which adds treasures than can help you out, and one that adds curses… which don’t. We haven’t had a chance to try them yet, but I’m sure we will at some point.

We had a great time playing Escape at That Board Game Thing, and have subsequently purchased it. It does have two downsides. The first is that at 10 minutes it’s too short for a full cooperative game — but it does make for a nice filler, or for one game in a night of short games. The second is that it is very frenetic, which may turn some people off. But for those who love that sort of time pressure, and who love rolling a lot of dice, it’s great fun.

Final verdict: Buy.

(Part of a series, reviewing games I played in September 2013 at That Board Gaming Thing.)

(Image courtesy PurpleHeather@BoardGameGeek)

Forbidden Desert is the latest cooperative game from the brain of Matt Leacock, creator of Pandemic and Forbidden Island. The concept is that you have crashed in the desert near the ruins of an ancient civilization. You need to explore the city, collect the parts of a mysterious flying machine, assemble them and escape before any of you die of thirst. The sun and the blowing sands are your enemy, but with luck and cooperation you might all make it.

The board consists of 24 tiles with a desert theme on one side, placed in a 5×5 grid. As you proceed through the game, you can explore the tiles and flip them over to reveal either part of the city (which allows you to pick up gear, or move around via tunnels), directional markers indicating where the parts of the flying machine are, or oases (one of which is dried up), which give water to whoever was there when it was explored.

However, the placement of the tiles is not static. At the end of your turn, you must turn over sand storm cards which can reveal either a wind event, a sun event, or the storm picks up (this mechanic should seem familiar to Pandemic players — think of the infection cards). If the wind blows, then the “hole” in the board (remember, there are only 24 tiles) will move with the wind, and sand markers will be placed on tiles. More than one sand marker, and you must dig the tile out before you can excavate it. If you run out of sand tiles, then the game is over and you lose.

If the sun beats down, then you must use up some water, or hide in a tunnel, or use an artifact. If any character is out of water when the sun beats down, then he or she dies and the game is over. Finally, if the storm picks up, then the storm marker ticks up, which as the game progresses will lead you to draw more and more sand storm cards, thereby ratcheting up the tension as the game goes on. If the storm picks up too much, then again the game is over.

To help you combat the sand and sun, each person gets a role card, which give you special abilities, and as mentioned, you can also can collect gear such as jet packs and (if I recall correctly) water rations. In our game, we didn’t use our gear or our abilities enough and we ended up losing. But if you are cleverer than us, manage to collect all the parts of the flying machine, bring them to the launch point and get everyone there in time, then you can take off and return to civilization and win the game!

I played Forbidden Island when it first came out, and while I thought it did a good job of taking the gameplay mechanics of Pandemic in a different direction, my memories of the game are that I also felt it was a little too light for me. Forbidden Desert, on the other hand, hit the spot just right. This time I thought there was enough going on, with the desert exploration, the shifting tiles and sand, and of course the collection of the bits of the flying machine. There’s a lot of nice stuff going on here, and I highly recommend it.

Final verdict: Buy.

Oh, and as a side note, if you have an iPad, Pandemic is now available on the App Store — check it out, it looks pretty good.

(Part of a series, reviewing games I played in September 2013 at That Board Gaming Thing.)

The first game we tried to play Saturday morning was Dungeon Lords, by Vlaata Chvátil. Needless to say, a game that has a set of tutorials for combat, followed by an “easy play” first game, is not the sort of thing to start up first thing in the morning. So we skipped that and moved on to a much simpler game to warm up the old noggins.

(image courtesy of dr.mrow@BoardGameGeek)

Animal Upon Animal (or if you prefer, Tier Auf Tier) is a stacking and dexterity game. Each player is given a collection of animals in various shapes and sizes, and then takes turns trying to stack them up on the back of a very patient crocodile.

However, before you start stacking, you must roll a die. If you roll a one or a two, then you must place that many animals on the stack. If you roll a question mark, then another player gets to choose which animal you must place. Contrarywise, if you roll a hand, you get to give an animal to another player to place. And finally, if you roll the crocodile, you place an animal up to its nose or tail, to create a new base to build on.

Of course, with stacking games, the fun is what happens when the stack collapses. If one or two pieces fall off (not likely) then the person who just placed keeps them. If more fall off (more likely), then that person keeps two and the rest go back in the box. The winner of the game is the person who gets rid of all of their pieces.

The strategy of the game is rather minimal: Try to place pieces so that it screws the next person in line. And it was clearly designed for little kids (the box says ages 4-99). But the game is fast enough (about 15 minutes) and the pieces are charming enough, that it’s just a fun little filler — good to play with your kids, or just while you’re waiting for the next big game to start.

Final verdict: Buy It.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of participating in That Board Gaming Thing, an invitational board game convention that takes place right here in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. While I didn’t manage to play any (except one) of the hot games, I did play a number of fairly recent games, many of which were new to me. Over the next few days, I’ll be posting some short reviews of these games, and perhaps some others throughout October. The ranking system I’ll be using is based on the Sound Opinions system of Buy It/Burn It/Trash It, but instead: Buy It/Borrow It/Trash It.

(Image courtesy of moonblogger@BoardGameGeek)

The first game I played at the con was Liberté. It’s an older game (2001) by Martin Wallace, and recently republished by Valley Games. It covers the period from the start of the French Revolution to Napoleon’s rise to power. At its heart it’s an election game, played over four rounds. You collect cards which either allow you to place markers in regions on the board and hence build influence in one of three factions, or allow you to perform special actions, such as remove other players’ markers from the board. You may also reserve some of the cards, which allow you to push more influence to break ties.

At the end of each round, you determine which player has the most influence in each space (if possible, breaking ties by using the cards mentioned above). The faction that wins that space gets one vote in the election, and that player gets a marker indicating their influence in that faction. Note that factions are not tied to an individual players. So you, as a player, could be pushing for the royalist faction (white) in one space, while pushing for the moderates (blue) in another space, or the extremists (red) in a third.

Your main goal is to score points by having the most influence in the faction that wins the election (i.e. has the most overall influence) each round. There are also subgoals that score points such as having majority control of the minority party, or majority control of the army, or majority control in certain regions. In general, the player with the most points wins.

I could see the draw of the game, and maybe with a few more plays I might be able to grok it. But in general it felt like there was too much going on — too many spaces to keep track of, and in a way, too many options to consider. So while I suspect once I get to know it a little better I might enjoy it more, for a pick-up game it didn’t work for me. On the other hand, Stefan Feld fans would probably enjoy it a lot.

Final verdict: Borrow It.

I’m a bit tardy on this, so I apologize. In Podcast 27 I covered a great old Mac puzzle game called The Fool’s Errand. Well, about three weeks ago the sequel was finally released. The game is called The Fool and his Money, and gives the follow-up adventures of the Fool immediately after the completion of The Fool’s Errand. It’s available for both PC and Mac, and if you like puzzle games I highly recommend it. You can find out more about the game here.

It’s that time of year to make the annual pilgrimage to Cockeysville, MD and Balticon therein. This year I’ve been added to some board gaming panels in the Gaming track:

An Introduction to Strategy Boardgames Sunday, 11:00 AM; Parlor 3041
All you Ever Wanted to Know About Cooperative Games Sunday, 1:00 PM; Parlor 3041

I will have Vintage Gamer buttons, and will be happy to talk to anyone about games of any age, and the forthcoming return of The Vintage Gamer.

As a side note — if you are attending Balticon — the Gaming track looks stronger than usual this year, so I’d recommend checking it out, not just for me.