Elegant. That’s probably the perfect word to describe Onitama, a new release from Arcane Wonders. A perfect-information, abstract game played on a 5×5 board, each player is trying to either capture the opponent’s Master, or get their Master to the opponent’s shrine. Everything from the box, the components, and the gameplay are top notch.

Onitama comes with a deck of cards that illustrate how a piece can move on a turn. At the start of the game you shuffle the deck, give two cards face up to each player, and put one card face up to the side of the board. Each turn a player will use one of their cards to move a pawn, then swap it with the card on the sidelines. The entire game is played with the same 5 cards cycling between the players. It’s a simple, and beautiful mechanic as players maneuver themselves around the board waiting for an opportunity to strike.

I was able to teach the game to my 6, 9, and 10-year-old with no problem at all, and each of them had enough of a grasp on the game to make smart decisions. My 6 and 10-year-old even beat me the first time they played. All 3 have also pulled the game out to play on their own on multiple occasions now.

I don’t think I can really say much more about it, as I’m already gushing quite a bit.

Onitama is more than worth the $20 you’ll spend to add it to your collection, and you should add it to your collection. It’s a game that I believe will stand the test of time, and always have a spotlight space on my game shelf.

Onitama was provided free for review by Arcane Wonders.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Onitama

Asmodee has a lot of companies under their belt now, and one of those is Moonster Games, publisher of Crossing. Crossing is a game where the peaceful fantasy races of the world come together to snag as many Life Stones as possible by any means necessary. The Summer Solstice is the one time of year they’re not so kind to each other.

The goal of the game is simple. Get as many Life Stones as you can, before the supply runs out. You do this by simultaneously pointing to mushrooms with stones on them. The problem is if another player pointed to that mushroom you both get nothing. Toss into the mix that you can point to a player’s stash to steal it during a turn, and things get a bit more crazy. Have a ton of stones and thing someone might try to steal them? You can cover them instead of pointing to a tile to protect them, but you’re giving up a turn to snag more stones.

It’s hectic, and fun, and really quick. It’s simple to learn for almost any age, though I’ve found that the 8+ age rating might have more to do with maturity than the ability to play. My 6 year old was getting really upset when his gems were stolen, and started to have pretty bad anxiety during play. My 9 and 10 year olds had a blast, and were able to laugh off losses in their fun of playing. My little guy has stated he wants to try again, so I’ll see how well it goes next time with him. After a few plays, having a better understanding may help him with his fear of losing stones.

Overall the game is a blast, is short, and everything can be tossed into the included bag an carried around quite easily. It’s not a game you can focus a whole game night around, but it’s great for short bursts with the kids. At around $25, it’s in a good range to just pick up and play with the family, and I recommend you do so if you’ve got small ones in the house.

A copy of Crossing was provided free for review by Asmodee Games.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Crossing

I had originally posted about Legends of Andor in October of last year. Shortly after that I received a copy of the base set and its two expansions, New Heroes and Star Shield, in the mail to take a look into. It took a while to get this one to the table, but I’m glad I finally was able to sit down and play.

Legends of Andor is a cooperative fantasy adventure game with a built-in narrator. The game has you jumping in right away with a short introductory adventure that lays out the basics to you, then has you jumping into a full adventures. There’s a Legend Deck that lets you know how to setup for each adventure, and has cards that are activated from a timeline that progress the story and game conditions. It’s a great mechanic that makes you feel like you’re playing a fantasy narrative.

Each character in the game has its own strengths and weaknesses, and players will have to constantly weigh their options and figure out who is going to tackle what tasks in any given adventure. The adventures build in scale, but each never really takes more than an hour of time to play through.

My kids and I ate it up. The game has a strong RPG feel with all the convinces of a board game. The New Heroes expansion gives players more flexibility with character choice, but also opens the game up to more players. Sadly, we haven’t gotten to the Star Shield adventure yet.

Legends of Andor is a structured way to get an epic RPG adventure in much less time than you’d think. The Legend Deck is a great mechanic for moving the story along, whether the players are prepared to do so or not. I can’t wait to see what else KOSMOS has in store, and I’m hoping we’ll see more small box expansions, and maybe a large one or two.

Legends of Andor and its expansions, New Heroes and Star Shield, were provided free for review by KOSMOS.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Legends of Andor

Ascension has been around since 2010, and has secured its place as one of the most popular deck builders on the market. Over the years Ascension has seen many expansions, both large and small. Dreamscape is the former, and can be played on it’s own without any other set. In fact, that’s the way I think it should be played.

In my opinion, Dreamscape is one of the most beautiful, and overall best Ascension release to date. The game is solid on it’s own, and the Dreamscape and Dreamborn cards feel like a natural extension of the experience.

Dreamscape adds a new deck that can be drawn from when another card allows. This deck is face down, so you don’t know what you’re going to draw from it. Also, just because you draw from there doesn’t mean you get the card right away. You need to earn enough Insight to “purchase” the card and put it into your pile.

Insight is earned a few ways, like when a Dreamborn card enters the field, or when a player purchases a Dreamborn card. Dreamscape cards can be creatures or constructs, or a new type of card called Vision. These cards stay in play, and provide huge bonuses if you can meet their conditions.

If you’re an Ascension fan, Dreamscape is a must-buy. If you’re looking to get into Ascension, I’d ignore the other sets and jump right into this one. There’s no better Ascension experience in my mind.

A copy of Ascension: Dreamscape was provided free for review by Stone Blade Entertainment.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Ascension: Dreamscape

I received a nice surprise in the mail today, a DreadBall Foam Kit from Battle Foam. The kit contains 2 foam trays, each of which will fit in the Dreadball box and old the contents of the base set. I was a bit dissappointed that both didn’t fit in the box, but what I did was put one in the box and one in the lid.

The foam is excellent quality, and there’s even a harder foam on the bottom to keep the trays stable. One of the trays can fit the Dreadball cards and minis, while the other is strictly for minis. As you can see in my picture I’ve got 4 different teams, dice, cards, counters, and extra 3D printed hex bases stored with room to spare.

The DreadBall Foam Kit is $37.99, but is a great deal for people like me who are horrible at cutting their own foam storage solutions. The fact that both don’t fit in the box isn’t much of an issue, since I’m sure I can find a better case to put these in. I’m just glad my minis aren’t bouncing around loose anymore!

A DreadBall Foam Kit for Game Box was sent free for review by Battle Foam.

• Comments Off on Second Look — Battle Foam DreadBall Foam Kit

Back in October I posted about the Crabs Adjust Humidity: Omniclaw Edition, the collection of 5 volumes of the 3rd party Cards Against Humanity expansion. Vampire Squid Cards was kind enough to send me the boxed set and I had a chance to bring it to a holiday party and see how the cards stack up.

This boxed set makes a horribly-fun game just as horrible.

There’s some great cards in this set, and there were plenty of times were drinks were spilled, or spat out, while trying to read the cards people played. The Omniclaw Edition contains 560 cards, and no rules. It’s meant to supplement Cards Against Humanity, but this edition contains enough to play on it’s own. Keep in mind, there’s no blank cards in here.

It’s got a hefty price tag of $50, which is double what that CAH base set costs with only 10 cards less. Still, if you’re a fan of the game you owe it to yourself to grab these and expand upon all the horrible and offensive.

A copy of Crabs Adjust Humidity was provided free for review by Vampire Squid Cards.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Crabs Adjust Humidity

We put Thieves! on the game table and wound up playing it over and over. This game from Calliope Games has the three to six of you taking on the role of criminals fleeing from a heist. The cops are right on your trail and now it’s every bad guy and girl for themselves. Each turn, you play a card to divvy up the loot: either place a loot card on yourself, face down, or give some loot away to another thief. Why give away that precious money? Because eventually the police hunting you down will recover the largest stash. You’ve got 6 bags of loot showing? Throw three bags to your fellow crew member so she gets nicked instead of you.

The first part of the game has a lot of Take That! action where your crew loads up the others with loot and starts playing police cards to trigger raids (and plays cards to steal from other players’ stashes). The game starts to shift as the end game approaches. As we’ve been throwing our fellow criminals to the cops, getaway cards are revealed from the draw deck. Once seven of the eight getaway cards are revealed, the crew has gotten away and whomever has the most loot wins. It’s a game of pushing your luck, bluffing, and timing.

Thieves! hit our table and didn’t stop being fun. The only downside to the game was the unpredictability of when those last getaway cards would show up — some games it seemed like the last few were grouped together, some games it felt like we were never going to get away from the police. (This could be solved by seeding portions of the deck with getaway cards beforehand, similar to placing epidemic cards in Pandemic, but that’s a bit too much prep for a fast, quick game like Thieves!)

Thieves!: ten bucks, light and fast, easy to learn, easy to play. A really good deal. Buy it at your local game store or direct from Calliope Games.

Also in the package was 12 Days, a Christmas-themed game where you’re trying to give the best gifts of the season. Starting with your hand of twelve cards, you pass one to your neighbor, simultaneously play one card, and whomever has the lowest number showing wins that day. Day cards and Gift cards range from 1 to 12, with each gift card appearing a number of times as it’s rank — there’s one 1, seven 7s, and twelve 12s. (Well, there’s two zero-rank gift cards, but…) At the end of the game, you’ll have eleven gift cards in your hand. Whomever has the most gift cards of that rank gets points equal to that rank.

And that’s pretty much it.

We played 12 Days. Despite it being beautifully-illustrated (with Echo Chernik‘s faux-stained glass artwork), we all wanted to go back to playing Thieves!. When we played that game, we were laughing and joking and loud. When we played 12 Days: silence. We were more concentrated on our cards, trying to determine how best to shuffle our numbers around to gain points.

However:

If you get 12 Days for just $12, you can also use it as a Christmas-themed Pairs deck and a Christmas-themed The Great Dalmuti deck (two games we liked better than the game in the rulebook). Suddenly, you’ve got three games, plus the twenty or so other games that can be played with a Pairs/12 Days/The Great Dalmuti deck (rules are over at Hip Pocket Games), for the price of one.

Calliope Games has 12 Days for sale, as should your local game store.

One copy of Thieves! and one of 12 Days were provided free for review by Calliope Games.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Thieves! and 12 Days

Fans of Mafia or Werewolf who want a bit more out of their game, pay attention. Mafia de Cuba gives you what you love, and so much more.

Actually, the only thing Mafia de Cuba shares with the previously mentioned games is the face that each player has a role, and someone is trying to figure those roles out. The really cool part? Players choose their roles through gameplay.

The game starts with The Godfather, the only non-secret role in the game. He fills the cigar box (the actual box the game comes in) with 15 diamonds and the character tokens. He then passes the box to the next player. Players can take any number of diamonds out of the box, or a character token. The first player can actually take TWO character tokens and hide one, this removing it from play. Once the box makes it around the table, The Godfather questions the players trying to find the thieves. If he recovers all fifteen diamonds he wins. If he accuses the wrong people, he’s eliminated and victory is awarded based on who was accused. Each different role has different victory conditions, most sharing victory with other roles. The game’s expansion, Revolucion, adds more roles and a fake diamond.

The game is a blast, and I actually prefer it over other social deduction games. Everything from the pieces, the roles, and the role play really hit the right buttons with me. Speaking of the pieces, the game’s box is designed to look like a cigar box, the plastic diamonds are excellent, and the character tokens have enough heft to make them feel substantial. There’s a player-aid under the lid of the box with a space to place a sticker with the extra rules that come with the expansion, so all the rules are right in front of you during play.  It’s a game that feels solid from the ground up, the only downside being you need at least 6 players to play.

The rules are simple, and you’ll really only need a references sheet for the roles for the first few times you play. The expansion adds more depth, and a lot more fun.

I see this replacing Werewolf in my game collection, though I’d love to see a Werewolf themed version of this in the future.

A copy of Mafia de Cuba was provided free by Asmodee Editions.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Mafia de Cuba

I first came across Dragon Racer after seeing a series of images from the game on Imgur. Intrigued, I shot a quick email off to Thylacine Games to see if they’d be interested in a review. I’ve now had a chance to sit down and play this one with my kids, and am very glad I followed up on my gut instincts.

Dragon Racer is about just that, racing dragons. Each player will have a team of 3 dragons that they need to “Fire Up” each round and move across the board. This is done with a card drafting mechanic. Each turn players draw cards and have a draft, trying to get the correct cards they need to power up their racing team. As you play more and more dragons get shuffled into the draw deck, gradually getting more powerful. Each dragon a player can “Fire Up” provides movement around the board. Players can then swap out weaker dragons on their team for more powerful ones they received during the current round. There’s also a boost mechanic that lets you score some extra movement if you have more dragons from a certain racing area than other players.

There’s also an attack system where you can make it harder for other players to “Fire Up” their dragons, and variable player powers. Some characters give movement bonuses if certain conditions are met during a round. One even lets you field 4 dragons on your racing team instead of 3. The winner of the game is the person who’s gone the farthest around the track after 7 turns.

The game has a good amount of depth to it, and the basic rules are very easy to grasp. The best part? It plays in 15 minutes.

Dragon Racer is beautiful, and underneath the makeup is a damn good game. You can snag a production copy of the game for $30, or a print-and-play version for $7, over at the Dragon Racer website.

A copy of Dragon Racer was provided free for review by Thylacine Games.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Dragon Racer

It’s been almost a year since I took a look at Shadows over Malice by Devious Weasel Games, a great cooperative fantasy game of epic proportions. When I was offered the chance to take a look at its expansion, Seekers of a Hidden Light, I jumped at the opportunity. Once again finding the time to get the game to the table was a challenge, but my oldest son and I finally did over the course of a couple of nights. Seekers adds one major thing. Quests. Glorious quests. It also adds Lux potions and rules making combat more interesting.

One of the best parts of the new expansion? The rules are pretty clear, and concise. It took no time at all to incorporate them into the base game. While we had a great time playing, the added layer of depth the expansion adds was pushing it a bit for my 10-year-old, and I think reference sheets are going to be in order for future plays.

Seekers of a Hidden Light only adds to an already great game, making it feel more complete. There’s really no reason not to pick this up if you already of Shadows of Malice, and no reason to leave it out of your game whenever you play. The only thing I’d really like to see if a new, comprehensive rulebook with Seeker’s rules included, and the clarity of the expansion’s rules carried out throughout.

You can snag Seekers from the publisher’s site for $27.95.

A copy of Seekers of a Hidden Light was provided free for review by Devious Weasel Games.

• Comments Off on Second Look—Shadows of Malice: Seekers of a Hidden Light