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Anyway,
this is a kid's game with a little added oomph. 5 plastic pigs
are lined up (one after another) on a circular track. The deck
is shuffled and 7 cards are dealt to each player. The cards are
the various colored pigs. So, when I play my card, I jump the
pig whose color I played to the next empty space. If that
happens to be the front of the pack, I get a food card.
Yawn,
you say? Well, it's not rocket science, but there is one nice
twist. The only way you get to "keep" the food you
earn in a round is by using your last card to move that colored
pig to the front of the pack. If he doesn't become the
front-runner, your food has the same fate as Bill Bradley!
The most food after 3 rounds
wins. (There are some variant rules for adding food to the
track, but we just played the basic game.)
Rating: 6. Keep in mind that
I'm rating this as a children's game... this is a a 6 on the
"CANDYLAND - LOOPIN' LOUIE" scale, not the
"GLOBAL SURVIVAL - EL GRANDE" scale.
SOLCHES
STROLCHE! (Amigo)
I
have no idea what the title means... possibly "Find the
Neon Colored Animal" or something like that. Anyway, a
bunch of heavy stock cards are laid out on the table, each
depicting one of five animals (cow, horse, pig, dog, cat) in one
of five neon colors (purple, blue, yellow, green, red). The top
card of a second deck of cards is flipped over, and the game is
on! The second card shows 4 different animals, each with a
different color. Your job is to find the missing colored animal
and slap it ala SLAP JACK. Kind of like SET for kids.
Rating: 7. Again, as a kid's
game... this SET with animals game works well even with *young*
kids. It's a good little game... fast, furious, and fun.
TIME
PIRATES (Piatnik/Rio Grande)
The
theme itself is intriguing... pirates wandering through time
stealing treasures for wealthy clients. The board art is good,
too... sci-fi-ish but clean & easy to use during play. The
one possible graphic glitch: some artifact pieces have extra
symbols which allow you to use them to travel through time or to
trade artifacts with another player... they would be difficult
to see under the wrong light.
The game is yet another set
collecting romp from Alan Moon... in your turn, you can only
take two actions: move from one time period to another (by
following one of two lines into another century), collect an
artifact (by picking it up off the board), or fulfill a contract
(by turning in your artifact for "points" in the form
of contracts). As well, a player can request (like FREIGHT
TRAIN) at the beginning of their turn for a time period to be
re-stocked with artifacts, and players may use the
above-mentioned special artifacts in addition to their normal
moves.
Each type of artifact has a
number of available contracts: worth 2, 3, 4, 6 & 7... and
costing 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6 of the same type of artifact
(respectively). In addition, there are (numbers are sketchy in
my memory here) wild card contracts worth 2, 3 & points..
and costing 3, 4 & 5 of the same type of artifact.
But, the Time Pirates are
not only racing each other across the centuries, but also the
Time Police (the cops, the fuzz, the Man), representing by a
black pawn on the board and by Police chips mixed into the
artifact bag. If you start your turn on the same space as the
Time Police, you must lose your most valuable set (first wild
cards, then the set you have the most of) AND spend your first
action to vacate that century. The Time Police continue their
cruise through time when time periods are refilled... if their
chip is pulled (can you tell I've been 'translating' via
Babelfish a bit too much?), they are moved that number of spaces
and then another chip is drawn. When the eighth Time Police chip
is drawn, the round is scored. The third time you score, the
game is over.
Aaaahhh, time (unintentional
pun alert) for one last wrinkle. You get a 2 pt bonus for having
contracts in all five types of artifacts... and 2 pts for having
the most valuable collection of contracts for each type. So,
players stack their contracts into five face-down stacks and
assign wild cards where they think they'd be the most helpful.
Next question: does Alan
Moon borrow from himself more than any designer on the planet?!
(OK, Knizia's up there, too.) Note the GET THE GOODS timed
scoring mechanism, and the FREIGHT TRAIN re-stock. Mind you,
they're both good ideas... it's just interesting to see them
keep popping up.
My reviews of this are
mixed... you know, an o.k. family game, maybe in the same class
as ANDROMEDA. Then we found out that Jay had taught us a rule
incorrectly... chips turned in for contracts do NOT return to
the bag until you score the round. (We had put them back in the
bag.) This would cut a good bit of time off the game and up the
tension level, which means I will definitely have to give it
another try.
Rating: 7 out of 10. With
the rule correction, this could be a wonderful family romp or a
45 min. gamer filler.
VAMPIRE (Goldsieber/Rio
Grande)
First
problem: My complaints about SCHOTTEN-TOTTEN seem equally valid
here...this game could be about literally anything. I've always
thought that BASARI kind of had a lock on disconnected themes,
but it looks positively 'American' compared to VAMPIRE.
That said, the game itself
is a simple RUMMY variant with a LOST CITIES-like discard
scheme. Players are (ha!) vampire hunters, collecting cards
worth one or two points and then melding them in sets of three
or more. On your turn, you can take 2 cards from the deck, then
meld or discard one card to the appropriate discard pile (one
for each 'suit' of vampires), OR you can pick up the entire
discard pile of one suit and then you must meld. A second meld
of a type of vampire you already have sends the first meld off
to the discard pile.
The game ends at the (hallo,
Knizia!) end of the deck OR when (hallo, Knizia again!) one
player has a meld in each suit. (Shades of ZIRKUS FLOCATI). At
that point, the lowest meld on the table of each type (counting
not melding as a zero meld) is discarded and players count up
their points.
That's it. Really.
Can't say it's a bad game...
but it's not really about anything... and the card play is
interesting but not spectacular. Yes, I'm damning it with faint
praise, but I guess I was expecting a little more here. (To be
fair, the art is not terribly graphic but rough for the
RUMMY-like nature of the game.)
Rating: 5 out of 10. I
should note that my wife enjoyed the game of this she played
later in the weekend... evidently going out fast & furious
with a win. It also seems to be gathering some positive press
likening it to other ‘lite’ Knizia games.
WEB OF
POWER (Goldsieber/Rio Grande)
Each
player represents (I'm guessing here) the head of an order of
monks, bent on influencing the Known World for good and the
benefit of the people. (Yes, this is an optimistic
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view of
ecclesiastical power struggles... what can I say?) Anyway, each
player has two resources at his disposal to accomplish his ends:
cloisters and advisors. The 'battle' rages across 12th century
Europe.
On
your turn, you use the three cards in your hand (two identical
cards can be used as wild cards... and all the cards except
those for France allow you place pieces in one of two countries)
to start monasteries (cloisters) and send advisors to the
various kings. At the end of your turn, you refill your hand,
choosing to take from two face-up cards or the top of the deck.
When the deck runs out, you score the cloisters... the player(s)
with the most in any country score the total number of cloisters
in that country. The second place players(s) score the number of
cloisters the first place player has, and so on.
In the second (and final)
round, a number of new scoring opportunities present themselves.
If you have a line of 4 or more cloisters (that cross a national
border), then you score the number of cloisters you have in the
'chain'. As well, the player(s) the most advisors in BOTH of two
adjoining countries score the total number of advisors in both
countries.
One final rule: a country
can only have as many advisors (from all players) as the number
of cloisters held by the first place player. (This is the rule
we screwed up in our first game - which I won... kind of throws
a pall over my victory, eh?)
There's nothing terribly
original here... but what IS here is very, very good. I see this
occupying a closer niche in our gaming group... at 30-45 minutes
and very fast game play, it will work very well! (I think it
will also work well as introduction to non-gamers for games like
EL GRANDE and EUPHRATES & TIGRIS... again, short playing
time and simple rules - with the cards reducing your options to
manageable levels.)
Rating: 8 out of 10. EL
GRANDE-like with nice graphics and quick play... and some very
interesting scoring tradeoffs.
But then again, what do I
know?
Mark
Jackson runs Game Central Station, a Nashville based gaming
group and website. His favorite game this week is CLOUD 9.
PLAYER'S
NOTES
by Peter McCord
Brandywine is the newest
game in GMT’s American Revolution series, following the
initial release of Saratoga. The system rules are nearly exactly
the same, with only minor changes to clarify earlier errata or
to address game specific problems, like victory conditions. This
series is something of a third generation Blue and Grey game,
although it does not use the formation activations of other
incarnations as in Across 5 Aprils or Glory. The game simulates
the one day battle with hourly turns. Combat is odds based,
mandatory while in ZOC, and uses a chit system (taken entirely
from 1776) to produce die roll modifiers. Morale, leadership and
terrain also modify the combat die rolls; the table uses a ten
sided die. The results on the table increase only incrementally,
and so die roll modifiers are more critical to combat success
than initial odds, usually. Players also track army morale,
which can waver due to cumulative defeats. As army morale
declines, unit morale may fall as well.
Brandywine opens with a
British assault on Maxwell’s detachment who are stuck on the
wrong side of the apparently large Brandywine creek and who do
their best to scurry across it, or else they become casualty
victory point fodder for the Queen. Unless either player is
excessively cunning or foolish at this point, this initial
skirmish is usually followed by a four turn lull. The main
British force arrives behind the creek on turn seven, and a
potentially large battle may ensue by the meeting house.
Brandywine’s rules are
very tight; the only questions I came up with were some
anomalies in the slope LOS rules (errata is forthcoming). One
apparently quirky rule for me is the prohibition of retreats
through stacks, which results in perhaps too many unit captures,
which are critical to victory determination. Many of the
Prussian units are large enough to only be able to stack alone,
and so the result is that the larger, sturdier units surrender
more frequently than the smaller, irregular units. This struck
both me an my opponent both as unwanted artifact of the rules;
in any case, be careful where you deploy units with names like
"Donop."
Strategically, I think this
battle as presented is a bit stale. If the British can earn an
early VP versus Maxwell, they can sit back and not attack,
earning a marginal win on points, unless the Americans can
somehow counterattack across the very creek they decided to
defend behind. Conversely, if the Americans can pull out an
early VP, they can easily run away from the relatively late
arriving British on Turn 7, abandoning the meeting house
entirely. The game ends with the Americans in full retreat, but
the British still lose. I think with some minor tweaking of the
marginal victory conditions, this game could be an outstanding
chess match, with both sides committing their artillery and
leaders with caution and sweat. On a positive note, the inherent
game system is slippery and deceiving; seemingly minor setbacks
can explode into catastrophic failures, and hopeless positions
can easily be reversed. Perhaps too much fate resides in the
potential double move, as the game has a turn by turn initiative
die roll. I think this game is a must have for all Revolutionary
War gamers, and while the components (especially the counters)
are first rate as usual for GMT, due to the situation I can only
recommend this game mildly.
The Gamers’ Drive on Paris
is a devilish new entry into their Standard Combat Series line
of games. The basic system rules plus the game specific rules
total no more than 8 pages, and all of the concepts and terms
are easily recognizable to anyone who has played at least one
wargame. The game simulates the opening months of WW1 at the
division level. The game opens with the Schlieffen plan more or
less in place; the Germans must violate Belgium’s neutrality
and run like hell for Paris before they run out of gas, or the
trenches set in. The French are saddled with their historical
Plan XVII, meaning they must attack into Germany.
The game divides the map
into with a "French Deployment Line" (FDL) that is
printed right on the map. While the Schlieffen plan races (or
slogs) north of the line towards Paris, plan XVII bumbles and
stumbles south of the line. The Germans may cross the line with
impunity; thus, they can shift forces back and forth at will,
subject to the distances involved. They have a few train units
to move folks around as well. The French, however, cannot cross
the line at all, unless Paris is threatened. Except for a meager
flow of replacements, the French are stuck defending in the
north with only
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