Category Archives: Board Game
Lords of Waterdice
All too often, worker placement games cast their players as glorified clerks, a few tall steps removed from the action. Take Lords of Waterdeep, for instance. Despite being a reasonably solid game, its main attraction — that static resources were replaced with heroes and scoring was accomplished by completing quests — was something of a ruse. A purple cube might have represented a wizard, but it never behaved like anything more lifelike than a block of wood splashed with indigo dye. A quest might have claimed you were undertaking a dangerous venture, but as long as you showed up with the right team, success was guaranteed.
There are plenty of recent worker placement games that sidestep this problem. And now Champions of Midgard can be considered one of them.
Shoot the Moongha
With a title like Moongha Invaders: Mad Scientists and Atomic Monsters Attack the Earth!, you know what you’re going to get. At least in general. You won’t be managing any trains, that’s for certain.
There’s Gold in Them Thar Hills
There are five resources in Gold West, and every turn shoves about a dozen ways to use them in your face. And yet, Gold West is also one of the year’s simplest, most streamlined titles.
Don’t believe me? I’ll prove it by the most unlikely method possible: by running you through the rules.
Motel 666
The Bloody Inn is about as soothing as it gets. Set in a quaint village in 1831 Ardèche, it’s about operating a pleasant little countryside inn, providing room and board for passing travelers. Eventually, you might add new annexes for your guests’ comfort and edification or have comical run-ins with passing law enforcement officers.
Then you single out your wealthiest guests, murder them, stuff their lifeless bodies beneath the annexes you’ve built, steal all their money, and launder it until you’re filthy rich.
Okay, so that took an unexpectedly grim turn. I suppose the “bloody” in the title should have been a tip-off.
A Great Game about The Great Game
In the second quarter of the 19th century, the crown jewel of the British Empire was unexpectedly placed under threat when the Russian Empire began a period of aggressive expansion into Central Asia. India had been the linchpin of the British Empire’s interests abroad for nearly a hundred and fifty years, so the prospect of a Russian frontier bypassing the khanates and the Afghan emirate that had previously stood as a buffer zone between the British Raj and the Russian Empire sparked a flurry of activity. Spies, armies, diplomats, and traders poured into the region. Just like that, the tribal leaders of Afghanistan found themselves squeezed between two desperate empires.
Welcome to what came to be known as The Great Game.
A Study in Emaciation
What made the original version of A Study in Emerald one of my favorite games of 2014 was the constant feeling that absolutely anything might happen. As a loyalist (or anarchist) trying to sustain (or smash) the regime of alien overlords that had settled in quite nicely by the time Sherlock Holmes appeared on the scene, you’d be going about your business when everything went suddenly and irreversibly off the rails. Perhaps a zombie horde began spreading across Europe, or some vampires seduced your best agent into their coven. Meanwhile, a mi-go concealed a crucial assassination target’s brain on Pluto, Cthulhu consumed London for brunch, and Otto von Bismarck marched the entire Prussian army into Madrid. And the game was only half finished.
Martin Wallace’s new take on A Study in Emerald is less interested in star-crossed anarchic madness and more in being easy to get along with. Gone are the original game’s excesses, flights of fancy, and more outlandish occurrences. In fact, all sorts of things have been stripped out, right down to basic concepts like the dangers of traveling across occupied Europe or the individual appearance of various historical figures. In their place is something that will undoubtedly strike fans of the original as somewhat withered.
Paradoxically, it’s also the better game in a lot of ways.
Steal My Heart
Your crew stands motionless, not daring to move, to breathe. The tumbler ticks beneath your fingertips, your heart pounding so loudly in your ears that you can hardly hear the dropping of the pins. This is the moment you’ve been waiting for. Your crew has circumvented the guards, crawled through service ducts, hacked the security system to bypass lasers and heat sensors. At long last, you deciphered the combination to the safe, pieced together from memos and computer logs throughout the bank offices.
The final pin slides into place. The door, a solid foot of clockwork steel and reinforced concrete suspended by hinges thicker than your demolition man’s biceps, swings outward with a whine. Your crew cranes their necks to get a peek inside.
Within, something begins to bark. Loudly and repeatedly. Down the hall, you can hear footsteps, coming fast.
“This is what the customer sent us to retrieve?” Rook says, bafflement evident in his voice. “A damn chihuahua?”
Going Golden
The entire span of human civilization is a lot to compress into three or four hours, let alone a trim 90 minutes. And yet that’s precisely what The Golden Ages aims to accomplish, cheerfully charting mankind’s ascent from mudbrick ziggurats to skyscrapers to star ladders. Better yet, in an age when a game’s briskness is often valued over its cleverness, all too often leaving the possibility of deep gameplay experiences stranded along the side of the road in its haste to arrive at its destination, The Golden Ages manages to be something even more valuable than fast: compelling.
Valley of Green Mystery Fury (2nd Ed.)
As those who know me can attest, I abhor repeating myself. Which is why I can’t even begin to fathom doing individual reviews of all the new editions, deluxe boxes, and standalone expansions appearing on shelves this time of year. Thus, rather than subject myself (and you) to a plodding second refrain of things I’ve already covered in the past, what follows is a breakdown of six excellent new versions of older games. Take a look.
Pandemic: Spoiled Meat
Today we’re continuing the adventures of everybody’s favorite gang of disease-fighting, globe-trotting pathologists, a journey that began when [redacted]. You can read all about it over here. In either case, what follows after the jump CONTAINS SO MANY SPOILERS THAT YOU WILL EXPERIENCE SYMPTOMS SIMILAR TO EBOLA IF YOU READ THEM UNPREPARED. IF I’VE WARNED YOU ONCE, I’VE WARNED YOU A HUNDRED TIMES. OPENING THIS CONTAINER CARRIES THE RISK OF PLOT-POINT INFECTION. BE CAUTIOUS, BE AWARE, BE SAFE.
SPACE-BIFF! 