Spirit Games hosted an extra
Beer & Pretzels event this year at the Town Hall which was a welcome and pleasent surprise.
There seemed to be plenty of people playing games, it was a little quieter than a normal B&P Sunday, but being the weekend after Essen there may have been a bit of lack of time to fit another gaming day in so soon. That said it was an excellent day with the usual Hot/Cold Food selection and beer on tap for most of the day.
I managed to play two games of Lost Temple:
Components:Excellent quality, the artwork is especially good on the board and the cards. The player meeples are good but do suffer from falling over as players bunch up on the board squares, also the cards to show what colour player you are the red/orange are way to similar and you have a purple card but a black meeple.. not an issue but a bit of a shame everything did not match up better.
Gameplay:At the start of the game players are dealt one of the 9 character cards, on the bottom right of the cards are symbols showing what that player will start with, a number of gems and possibly a machete, most importantly it shows there starting position on the game board. After this initial placement all the cards are handed back to the start player who is the person at the back of the race.
The cards are shuffled then the start player deals out a number of faceup and/or face down depending on the number of players, then selects a card from the remainder. The rest are handed to the player on his left and so on until everyone has chosen. The start player then announces each character in order and the player who character is called reveals the card, takes a gem from the bank and takes the action of that character. This continues until everyone has taken their turn.
There are certain spaces on the board with chance tokens, these have both positive and negative results on you race to find the lost temple. There is also a chance token that gives someone the start player for next turn which helps mix things up a little. There is also several space of Deep jungle which you need to have a machete to move through otherwise your movement ends on that space.
Each of the characters has a unique ability that helps you in someway on you quest to find the lost temple and a careful choice and use of these characters is essential to doing well.
The character mechanic is similar to
Citadels as is the downtime this produces whilst people ponder their selection, though once you are more familiar with the roles this should get a bit faster. Otherwise this is a very different game from Citadels and is good fun to play.
The winner is the first person to land on the Lost Temple (There are two on the board, the first is used with 6-8 players the 2nd for less players)
Conclusions:I really enjoyed this game, I have only played it with the full 8 people so far but even with this number it was fun and not overly long. It certainly engenders a lot of banter around the table, with everyone having a good time.
I like the characters better in this than Citadels, there is still plenty of opportunity to mess with someone's turn but still leaves them with something to do, whereas I felt in Citadels some of the characters were overly cruel and could sometimes stall someones ability to play a turn for too long.
All in all an extremely fun game that will certainly get a lot of play with my group.
I also played Smallworld Underground:
As usual with
Days of Wonder this game is really designed, with lots of excellent quality components and different sized boards depending on the number of players.
Like its predecessor,
Smallworld, the game relatively easy to pick up and play as the core mechanic is very simple -
2 tokens to conquer an empty region and 1 extra token for each token in an occupied area. One of the new additions for this versions is the river, which costs only 1 token to occupy but has to be vacated before scoring (With some exceptions)
You choose from one of six race/ability combos stacked by the board, the first is free but each one you skip over to grab the one you want you have to place 1VP on. This combo determines how many tokens you get as well as what abilities and possibly bonuses you may have. Each turn you conquire areas then score VP's for each area you occupy plus any bonus VP's. Your VPS are kept hidden from other players. When you feel you have used up your combo you can put them into decline, they still score VP's but that is all you do that turn. All bar one of your tokens are removed from each area and the token turned over to the uncoloured side to show it is in decline, at the star of your next go you select a new combo. Play continues like this for several rounds, the number varies depending on player numbers.
At the end of the game the person with the most VP's wins. This game is just elegant in how it looks, plays and scales as the board size varies according to the number of players. There is a lot of humour in this game born out by some of the bizarre combos you can get. There are new landscape types and races though some of the powers are similar to previous ones but somehow more viscous
There is also now the addition of "Popular Places" and "Righteous Relics" which are gained when killing Monsters (the equivalent of the Lost Tribe Areas in
Smallworld), which appear in pairs!. Each one of these items gives the player an additional power they can use on their turn which ramps up the inter-player rivalry
There is a fair amount of carboard in this game and, I must say I think this is unique, no waste you use the carboard sheets left over from the punching to line the bottom of the box so when you place everythin back in the box it fits snugly stopping the tokens from moving around. They also supply a custom fit try to house all the race tokens which works really well.
This is an excellent addition to the series and adds a lot more fun into the game without adding too much more complexity. If you have played
Smallworld then you will be able to pick this up with ease, just getting used to the new races and powers as the rule changes are relatively minor. For new players this may be a little more involved than the original but still easy to pick up.
Excellent game and worthy of a place in my collection.
A good three player game of Medieval Mastery:
Launched at the UK Expo2011 this is an independently published game by
Chaos Publishing.
Components:It comes with a set of coloured dice and a set of cards for each of the 6 players, a deck of artifacts and a set of Hex tiles (Territories, Castles and Lakes). All of the components are of good quality, the cards are well made and would not look out of place in a game by any of the larger manufacturers. The artwork is very much in keeping with the theme and well drawn.
SetupAlthough tiles are placed at random, there is a defined layout according to the number of players. Castles and lakes are in set positions plus the territories, which have values 1-3, are laid out in a certain pattern according to value. Each player has their own deck of identical cards which are shuffled at the start of the game and players deal themselves a hand of 5 cards. Players also start with 3 random artifacts, 1 x Sceptre, 1 x Crown and 1 x Orb, all of which provide special powers which can be used during play. Finally on each players Castle they place a D6 with the 6 showing face up to show the number of Knights that start there, if they have a homeland(s) near their Castle their Knights needs to be evenly spread between the Castle and Homelands.
GameplayOn a players turn they add 3 additional Knights to their Castle then they can make one advance, Knights can move out from the Castle through areas controlled by you own Knights into either empty areas or into an area controlled by another Player. If the area is empty those Knights take control and earn the player points (1-3), the first player to 13 points wins.
Various tiles have special effects or conditions that need to be taken into consideration, but in general each hex can only have upto 6 Knights of that player. Battles are handled by cards each player choosing a Conflict Card (Valued 1-5), if they have one otherwise they are assumed to be playing a 0 value card, playing it face down. The conflict card value is added to the number of knights they have, support cards can also be played at this point which add to the total, the highest wins and the loser loses the difference in numbers from their Knights, the remainder fleeing back to their Castle. On a draw the attacking player loses 1 Knight, players can also use their Artifacts if appropriate, there are also cards that shatter these making them unavailable until the end of that players next turn.
As cards are used you do not draw any replacements, the only time you make your hand back up to 5 is when you enter Combat, thereby encouraging players to encroach on occupied areas both to decrease players points but to gain those much needed cards.
This is a brief overview, there is much more details to the tiles and cards.
ConclusionsI really enjoyed this game, well I did buy a copy, there is a lot here with plenty of variation to keep you coming back for more. There is also enough components to have up to 3 games of varying sizes running simultaneously from the same set!
This will get a lot of play and I commend the makers of this on the attention to detail, well written rules and superb gameplay which, with my limited plays to date, seems well balanced.
I look forward to more games from them if they end up the same standard or better than this one.
Finally, at the end of the day I tried to get in a game of
011, but this proved a game too far as thjis was late in the day getting started and the particpents (well mostly me) were a little too tired to properly figure this one out. We managed a walkthrough the turn and figure out some of the actions but I feel this will need a few plays to figure out properly. Looks good thought, artwork is excellent and the components top notch. I did have to "mod" the cog and dial pieces to prevent the screws getting looser or tighten during use, I basically hacked a crimp up to provide some slim plastic washers so the metal pieces that formed the spindle tightenedon each other rather than the carboard that was meant to spin!
