Showing posts with label Boardgame. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boardgame. Show all posts
Monday, September 14, 2009
Boardgame Review: Descent - Journeys in the Dark
Boardgame Geek Link
This game is a cross between and RPG and a boardgame about dungeon delving. One player takes the GM role and the others are the party adventuring into the dungeon. The GM attempts to thwart the players with his cards and his action tokens and the players attempt to stay coordinated, stay alive, pulverize monsters, and achieve a dungeon-specific scenario (in the one I played, it was kill the giant at the end of the dungeon).
This sort of game would be familiar to anyone who has played dungeon-crawl board games or RPGs. Someone opens a door, someone goes through the door, monsters are seen, fights ensue, treasure is looted from the room, traps go off, more monsters are fought, etc.
There seems to be a variety of monster quality levels and special abilities and that makes for some interesting decisions. The Ogre, for instance, possesses formidable knockback as well as good damage dealing. The hell-hounds had area-effect conic firebreath.
Combat is by means of customized dice. You roll dice, which differ in face values by their colour. On the dice, you can get hearts (wound points), numbers (range for effects), lightning bolts (special power activators), nothing (blank!), and probably some other icons I forget. A typical roll for a character with a sword might be three dice of differing colours and might generate 6 damage points, 1 range, and 1 power activator. The power activators can be used to trigger powers on items your character is carrying (such as +1 damage or the like).
Of course, being a dungeon delve, it comes with gear you buy at the start and magical and loot you find along the way (plus money). These items take the form of armour, weapons (ranged or melee) with bonuses to damage, magic items which increase magical attacks, and other special ability items. One example of the later was a magic item that let me spend a fatigue to heal two life for another player.
Characters have some skills which let their characters do extra things or have bonuss. In our run through, one character could spend fatigue points to charge and do more damage. My character had bonuses to defense from parrying and from willpower.
Each character also has variable statistics for fatigue, life points, natural armour/defense, and for what dice they use in melee, ranged combat, or magical combat. They also have special powers - my character was sort of a whirling dervish who could trade fatigue for wounds or wounds for fatigue on my turn.
The characters try not to get killed, try to efficiently kill the monsters and limit the DMs respawn locations by keeping line-of-sight to as much of the explored area as possible. The DM in turn tries to find out of the way spots to spawn in monsters and throws traps to slow down and attrit the party.
The players have control of their tactics, their character's gear distribution, and where they want to go at junctions in the dungeon. The GM has control over which of his cards he plays or discards and whether he spends his action tokens piecemeal to bleed the party along the way or saves up for crushing waves at more distributed intervals.
The game also has a campaign system and this apparently lets you run an entire campaign with the same (barring dying) characters. Even more like an RPG, but on the light side and with very sort of simple dice mechanics and a focus on "open door, whack monster, get loot".
Not sure if the game would sustain my interest over the long haul - different monsters, powers, items would help (and there are a lot of expansions). But it isn't a full fledged RPG and its rather one dimensional play (dungeon crawl, shoot-n-loot) would probably get tiring after a time. Still, as a one off or short campaign, it might make for some excellent fun.
Fun: 3 of 5
Strategy: 2 of 5 (there are tactics, not much strategy)
Speed of Play: 4 of 5 (for games of its ilk)
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Boardgame Review: The Halls of Montezuma
Well, tonight I got a chance to try out GMT's Halls of Montezuma.
BoardGameGeek Link
This is a 2-player, partially card-driven/partially dice driven game with a strategic map, a tactical process for resolving battles, and a variety of victory conditions that mix military and political outcomes. I'd guess a full game might take 4-6 hours to play once you knew what you were doing.
This is no Advanced Squad Leader with all supplements nor is it SFB with full rules from all sources and all options in play. Still, it is fairly meaty. The rules were a tough go. The quick start card helped, but was missing some really key lines. Figuring out what counters went where was a bit of a lag at the start, as was reading some of the stuff on the map.
Neither Lorry nor I knew much about the 1846-1848 period - I knew a bit about the context of the Alamo and why it was so pivotal (mostly by buying time), but that was about it. So, unlike Napoleonic Wars, 1960: Making of A President, or Twilight Struggle, my historical background was weaker on this one. But the other three games turned out to be good, so Lorry bought this one and we thought we should try it out.
There's a good game lurking in there. I'm sure of it. It's heavy, not the easiest to learn, the rules badly need a FAQ or living rules release, the index needs redone, and cross-references need added in quite a few places. Some actual rules fixes or clarifications are also needed. A lot of that stuff can now be pulled off board game geek or ConSimWorld.
But even the turn and a half we did were interesting (we chatted a lot about other stuff which distracted us).
I moved across the Rio Grande on my first action with a smaller force than the US defending Ft. Brown (and they had fieldworks). However, my Zapaderos (sappers) nullified his earthenworks and I managed to score better casualties despite weaker overall firepower (better luck with the dice) and evicted him from Ft. Brown. I then proceeded to try to reinforce, bringing attrited units up to full strength and adding one infantry regiment. I also started converting his fieldworks into a full fortress. That was my good luck this turn.
Lorry, on the other hand, came back at me by sending General Kearney and a small force over to Alte California to capture it for the USA, by way of the Disputed Territories (not currently disputed because my units had all been tied up in the attack at Ft. Brown).
He then got very lucky and rolled high enough to get the USA to declare war at the end of turn one. That's very bad for Mexico - before that, the US fights with one hand behind its back and hte Mexicans have initiative. I'd expect war to normally be declared by player choice or event card by turn 4 on average, but turn 1 was pretty unlucky for Mexico.
The war adds a huge pile of units to the American reinforcement pool and gives both sides bigger hands of strategic cards to work with. More crucially, in the pre-war period, only Mexico can generate reinforcements each turn. Once the war starts, there is an automatic reinforcement every turn plus the US can take a voluntary card based one they were ineligible for beforehand.
We didn't play much further. His reinforcements appeared near Ft. Brown so he had two moderately large forces facing my now-outnumbered single force. My fortification wasn't going as well as hoped - he'd probably get to attack first. Additionally, my baggage train had been left vulnerable in Matamoros and he could have swept around the end and taken it with ease, putting me out of supply before the critical battle for Ft. Brown.
It had the feeling of a very fun, meaty game. We didn't get to explore the taking of states very deeply or the US amphibious options for deep strikes nor what implications the unstable Mexican government had.
The game is interesting because basically it boils down to Mexican political will. If a game end condition arises (dice roll at turn end or perhaps with an event card or a sudden death condition differing for each side is achieved), you look at the political will track for Mexico. If their rating is high enough, they win. If it is a bit lower, a draw ensues. If it is lower than that, they lose. So the US goal is to inflict damage to the Mexican political will. The Mexican goal is to shore it up.
The polticial will is influenced by gaining or losing territories, winning or losing big battles, some events, and the number of Mexican provinces in revolt. Political changes like Santa Anna returning from (and possibly being sent to) exile and change of leaders in Mexico can impact the political will indirectly and influence how the game plays out. Revolts untended tend to spread over the turns but require actions and probably units to quash.
So essentially, the Mexican goal is to keep a stable government, not lose political will quickly, and quash revolts, occasionally kicking the US player for a victory in battle probably helps (and forestalls their adventurism). The US player wants to encourage bellicosity (helps declare war sooner), capture various disputed territories and Mexican holdings, keep the Mexicans out of Texas, not lose battles, and to wait for and/or encourage Mexican state revolts.
You get the feeling even from our short experience that the first game phase involves a few small forces, a few leaders, manouvering and trading back and forth provocations (Crisis phase). When actual war breaks out, the gloves are off on both sides. When the Mexican government collapses (and it may), Mexico is fighting with an extra 100 pound gorilla on its back (similarly a pile of revolts will do that).
The event cards teach you a bit about the conflict and the rulebook includes a deeper look at the events that underlie the cards. I drew Indian Raids twice which brought some annoyance to the US player (they can cut supply lines and increase Mexican political will because they weaken the US). There are certain turn-by-turn pre-ordained events and random ones that come up by card, giving the game an interesting feel.
If we can sort out the unresolved/broken/poorly worded parts of the rules, spend some more time playing this to be faster at it, I think there is a really great game lurking underneath.
Even in our short game, I felt like there were interesting event cards, good tactical possibilities for fights, strategic issues of supply and troop dispersion (for revolts and to counter flanking moves), and political considerations all to factor in. That first round attack was to try to generate some positive political gains, which it did (adding more than 10% to my political will total). So the game integrates a lot of interesting aspects.
I look forward to playing this one again.
Speed: 2 out of 5 (imperfect rules, meaty subject matter)
Strategy: 4 out of 5 (provisional, must play through full game, lots of seeming depth)
Fun: 4 out of 5 (fun might be higher if the rules hadn't been challenging)
BoardGameGeek Link
This is a 2-player, partially card-driven/partially dice driven game with a strategic map, a tactical process for resolving battles, and a variety of victory conditions that mix military and political outcomes. I'd guess a full game might take 4-6 hours to play once you knew what you were doing.
This is no Advanced Squad Leader with all supplements nor is it SFB with full rules from all sources and all options in play. Still, it is fairly meaty. The rules were a tough go. The quick start card helped, but was missing some really key lines. Figuring out what counters went where was a bit of a lag at the start, as was reading some of the stuff on the map.
Neither Lorry nor I knew much about the 1846-1848 period - I knew a bit about the context of the Alamo and why it was so pivotal (mostly by buying time), but that was about it. So, unlike Napoleonic Wars, 1960: Making of A President, or Twilight Struggle, my historical background was weaker on this one. But the other three games turned out to be good, so Lorry bought this one and we thought we should try it out.
There's a good game lurking in there. I'm sure of it. It's heavy, not the easiest to learn, the rules badly need a FAQ or living rules release, the index needs redone, and cross-references need added in quite a few places. Some actual rules fixes or clarifications are also needed. A lot of that stuff can now be pulled off board game geek or ConSimWorld.
But even the turn and a half we did were interesting (we chatted a lot about other stuff which distracted us).
I moved across the Rio Grande on my first action with a smaller force than the US defending Ft. Brown (and they had fieldworks). However, my Zapaderos (sappers) nullified his earthenworks and I managed to score better casualties despite weaker overall firepower (better luck with the dice) and evicted him from Ft. Brown. I then proceeded to try to reinforce, bringing attrited units up to full strength and adding one infantry regiment. I also started converting his fieldworks into a full fortress. That was my good luck this turn.
Lorry, on the other hand, came back at me by sending General Kearney and a small force over to Alte California to capture it for the USA, by way of the Disputed Territories (not currently disputed because my units had all been tied up in the attack at Ft. Brown).
He then got very lucky and rolled high enough to get the USA to declare war at the end of turn one. That's very bad for Mexico - before that, the US fights with one hand behind its back and hte Mexicans have initiative. I'd expect war to normally be declared by player choice or event card by turn 4 on average, but turn 1 was pretty unlucky for Mexico.
The war adds a huge pile of units to the American reinforcement pool and gives both sides bigger hands of strategic cards to work with. More crucially, in the pre-war period, only Mexico can generate reinforcements each turn. Once the war starts, there is an automatic reinforcement every turn plus the US can take a voluntary card based one they were ineligible for beforehand.
We didn't play much further. His reinforcements appeared near Ft. Brown so he had two moderately large forces facing my now-outnumbered single force. My fortification wasn't going as well as hoped - he'd probably get to attack first. Additionally, my baggage train had been left vulnerable in Matamoros and he could have swept around the end and taken it with ease, putting me out of supply before the critical battle for Ft. Brown.
It had the feeling of a very fun, meaty game. We didn't get to explore the taking of states very deeply or the US amphibious options for deep strikes nor what implications the unstable Mexican government had.
The game is interesting because basically it boils down to Mexican political will. If a game end condition arises (dice roll at turn end or perhaps with an event card or a sudden death condition differing for each side is achieved), you look at the political will track for Mexico. If their rating is high enough, they win. If it is a bit lower, a draw ensues. If it is lower than that, they lose. So the US goal is to inflict damage to the Mexican political will. The Mexican goal is to shore it up.
The polticial will is influenced by gaining or losing territories, winning or losing big battles, some events, and the number of Mexican provinces in revolt. Political changes like Santa Anna returning from (and possibly being sent to) exile and change of leaders in Mexico can impact the political will indirectly and influence how the game plays out. Revolts untended tend to spread over the turns but require actions and probably units to quash.
So essentially, the Mexican goal is to keep a stable government, not lose political will quickly, and quash revolts, occasionally kicking the US player for a victory in battle probably helps (and forestalls their adventurism). The US player wants to encourage bellicosity (helps declare war sooner), capture various disputed territories and Mexican holdings, keep the Mexicans out of Texas, not lose battles, and to wait for and/or encourage Mexican state revolts.
You get the feeling even from our short experience that the first game phase involves a few small forces, a few leaders, manouvering and trading back and forth provocations (Crisis phase). When actual war breaks out, the gloves are off on both sides. When the Mexican government collapses (and it may), Mexico is fighting with an extra 100 pound gorilla on its back (similarly a pile of revolts will do that).
The event cards teach you a bit about the conflict and the rulebook includes a deeper look at the events that underlie the cards. I drew Indian Raids twice which brought some annoyance to the US player (they can cut supply lines and increase Mexican political will because they weaken the US). There are certain turn-by-turn pre-ordained events and random ones that come up by card, giving the game an interesting feel.
If we can sort out the unresolved/broken/poorly worded parts of the rules, spend some more time playing this to be faster at it, I think there is a really great game lurking underneath.
Even in our short game, I felt like there were interesting event cards, good tactical possibilities for fights, strategic issues of supply and troop dispersion (for revolts and to counter flanking moves), and political considerations all to factor in. That first round attack was to try to generate some positive political gains, which it did (adding more than 10% to my political will total). So the game integrates a lot of interesting aspects.
I look forward to playing this one again.
Speed: 2 out of 5 (imperfect rules, meaty subject matter)
Strategy: 4 out of 5 (provisional, must play through full game, lots of seeming depth)
Fun: 4 out of 5 (fun might be higher if the rules hadn't been challenging)
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Boardgame Reviews: Roll Through The Ages & Race For The Galaxy
Roll Through The Ages
on BGG
1-4 players, 25-45 minutes to play, dice-based VP collecting game. Custom dice generate food, workers, various trade goods, money and disasters. Player choices include when to reroll dice (risking disasters or trying to get what you want on the dice), where to allocate workers (building wonders or producing cities which give you more dice), whether to seek food (feeds cities and avoids penalty points), trade goods (money in another form), or money. Money and trade good help you buy 'developments' - things like leadership, irrigation, religion, empire, etc. each of which affects either how disasters impact you, how you produce extra goods or food, how you can reroll dice, or things of that sort.
Played 3 games. Kinda liked it, but got annihilated by enemy dice rolls that generated negative points. You have to watch carefully for when your enemy is going to suddenly end the game on you (having bought five developments or all wonders being built).
Speed: 4.5 out of 5 (fast playing)
Strategy: 3.75 out of 5 (there is some strategy, but you need the dice to cooperate)
Fun: 3.75 out of 5 (was fun, but sometimes the dice just hate you)
Race For The Galaxy
on the BGG
2-4 Players, 60-90 minutes to play, card based game where you are trying to build synergistic engines of productivity. Players use cards from their hand to pay to lay worlds or developments. Developments are things like 'mining robots' or 'star marines' which give benefits to your military rating or production or consumption, whereas worlds tend to offer places to sell things (cycle cards for more cards or VPs) or production centers to produce goods.
This game involves picking which phase of a turn you might want to execute - explore (cycle cards out of the deck into your hand), develop (build non-world developments), settle (settle worlds), trade + consume (cycle cards and produced resources for more cards and/or VPs), or produce (have your production worlds generate goods).
When you've played 12 cards in front of you into your 'tableau', the game ends. The game also ends if you run out of VP tokens (12 pts of VP per player in initial pool).
The point of the game is to get an engine going whereby you can perhaps produce and then sell to great advantage one of the four resources, or where you can play plenty of military planets and facilities cheaply, or where alien tech becomes 'your thing', etc. Whatever gets you to the most VPs the fastest.
The game seems to be a modified version of the popular San Juan card engine. I think it offers more options for strategy, but is also a fair bit more swingy. If you draw well, you can really get a powerful engine going fast. If not, you can somewhat affect this (one of your explore options lets you cycle deep into the deck but you can only keep one card) but it can be tough straights to be in. If you choose a strategy that's a non-starter (military build up, for instance, and you don't draw military worlds), you can languish in the lands of card starvation and VP starvation.
Played 2 games. Got trounced soundly in both. Part of it was card luck, part of it was choices that (retrospectively) would have been better differently. Jury is still out on whether I could have know at the time to go another way. Have to play it a few more times before deciding I'm not fond of it or the random factor is too big.
Speed: 3.5 out of 5 (Not bad, but later in the game you can have a lot of cards to watch)
Strategy: 3.5 out of 5 (It seems like there is strategy, but your draw cards and strategic plans can not mesh well sometimes leaving you languishing in agony)
Fun: 4 out of 5 (The game is flavourful and expansions add a fifth player and actual invade-and-capture of military planets)
on BGG
1-4 players, 25-45 minutes to play, dice-based VP collecting game. Custom dice generate food, workers, various trade goods, money and disasters. Player choices include when to reroll dice (risking disasters or trying to get what you want on the dice), where to allocate workers (building wonders or producing cities which give you more dice), whether to seek food (feeds cities and avoids penalty points), trade goods (money in another form), or money. Money and trade good help you buy 'developments' - things like leadership, irrigation, religion, empire, etc. each of which affects either how disasters impact you, how you produce extra goods or food, how you can reroll dice, or things of that sort.
Played 3 games. Kinda liked it, but got annihilated by enemy dice rolls that generated negative points. You have to watch carefully for when your enemy is going to suddenly end the game on you (having bought five developments or all wonders being built).
Speed: 4.5 out of 5 (fast playing)
Strategy: 3.75 out of 5 (there is some strategy, but you need the dice to cooperate)
Fun: 3.75 out of 5 (was fun, but sometimes the dice just hate you)
Race For The Galaxy
on the BGG
2-4 Players, 60-90 minutes to play, card based game where you are trying to build synergistic engines of productivity. Players use cards from their hand to pay to lay worlds or developments. Developments are things like 'mining robots' or 'star marines' which give benefits to your military rating or production or consumption, whereas worlds tend to offer places to sell things (cycle cards for more cards or VPs) or production centers to produce goods.
This game involves picking which phase of a turn you might want to execute - explore (cycle cards out of the deck into your hand), develop (build non-world developments), settle (settle worlds), trade + consume (cycle cards and produced resources for more cards and/or VPs), or produce (have your production worlds generate goods).
When you've played 12 cards in front of you into your 'tableau', the game ends. The game also ends if you run out of VP tokens (12 pts of VP per player in initial pool).
The point of the game is to get an engine going whereby you can perhaps produce and then sell to great advantage one of the four resources, or where you can play plenty of military planets and facilities cheaply, or where alien tech becomes 'your thing', etc. Whatever gets you to the most VPs the fastest.
The game seems to be a modified version of the popular San Juan card engine. I think it offers more options for strategy, but is also a fair bit more swingy. If you draw well, you can really get a powerful engine going fast. If not, you can somewhat affect this (one of your explore options lets you cycle deep into the deck but you can only keep one card) but it can be tough straights to be in. If you choose a strategy that's a non-starter (military build up, for instance, and you don't draw military worlds), you can languish in the lands of card starvation and VP starvation.
Played 2 games. Got trounced soundly in both. Part of it was card luck, part of it was choices that (retrospectively) would have been better differently. Jury is still out on whether I could have know at the time to go another way. Have to play it a few more times before deciding I'm not fond of it or the random factor is too big.
Speed: 3.5 out of 5 (Not bad, but later in the game you can have a lot of cards to watch)
Strategy: 3.5 out of 5 (It seems like there is strategy, but your draw cards and strategic plans can not mesh well sometimes leaving you languishing in agony)
Fun: 4 out of 5 (The game is flavourful and expansions add a fifth player and actual invade-and-capture of military planets)
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