Alone Time: Keep It Secret, Keep It Safe
Remember that scene in the second The Lord of the Rings movie where Frodo, Sam, and Gollum ran out from under their marsh-bush to shoot arrows at the passing Nazgûl and its fell steed so they could do battle? Yeah, me neither. Because instead, they cowered under that bush and shat their britches and hoped they wouldn’t have to do any fighting at all.
Most fantasy games don’t operate that way. Instead of sneaking about, their heroes barrel in with nocked arrows and raised swords, even though any halfway decent dark lord would seize the opportunity to fit them for some shallow graves. Not so in Darkest Night from Victory Point Games. The theme of this one-to-four-player co-op is familiar in one sense — a necromancer is polluting the kingdom, etc., etc. — but this time, your valiant heroes are going to be creeping around on their bellies and praying they don’t attract too much attention, because if they do, the necromancer is going to mosey over and put some serious hurt on their noble bottoms.
One More Reason to Love Dominions 4
I love Dominions 4. It’s the sprawl of the thing. The thousand thousand units, spells, magic items, deities. The expansive mythology. The steady build from small armies supported by a little bit of magic to massive armies that exist only to protect wizards who cast world-ending doomspells. The fact that I’m running a 13-player, 15-AI game that will likely last over a year and generate stories I’ll remember for the rest of my life — and yes, I’ll also report the whole thing here once the game is done and nobody can use the writeups to suss out my team’s strategies.
Today though, I found one more thing to love about Dom4. You can find it after the jump — though be warned, what follows contains about 85 pixels (no, I didn’t count) of Not Safe For Work thanks to some mythological nudity.
Chess Checkmated: The Duke
Today I’m going to introduce you to a game that’s so good, it basically reviews itself, and one of the few games I’d ever recommend to every human being regardless of their taste in other games. As a lifelong amateur of modern Chaturanga (or Chess, if you insist on being vulgar), it’s also the first abstract game I’ve played that’s both reminiscent of that ancient classic and wildly fresh in its own right. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce: The Duke.
Maybe They Should Stay That Way
Remember the last time you played 7 Wonders and thought, This is nice and all, but it really could use some dragon-slaying!
Yeah, me neither. Still, maybe we should have thought that, because then Lost Legends would have shown up sooner. Also, maybe then it would have included the pyramids or an evil animated Colossus of Rhodes or something. Anyway. Lost Legends is a drafting game, simple in scope and execution: you’re a member of an incredibly selfish party of dungeon-divers, determined to forge your name into the greatest legend around, and leave your friends behind as footnotes in the process. And drafting! Everyone loves drafting.
Looks Like Regular Paradise To Me
Sometime halfway through playing Paradise Fallen, the most recent release from Crash Games, I mentioned the game’s post-apocalyptic theme. Probably as an explanation to why we were paddling outrigger canoes around a misshapen Hawaii for no apparent reason other than to check out a bunch of grumpy tribes, evil coral reefs, clouds of green mist, and freak whirlpools.
“What. This game isn’t post-apocalyptic,” one of our players interrupted.
I insisted it was. If it wasn’t post-apocalyptic, I argued, why is it called Paradise Fallen? And why do the ration cards show tins of spam and emergency water baggies? I had to show him the game box, complete with its smouldering, beat-up Honolulu skyline, to persuade him.
“Huh,” he shrugged, and looked back down at his cards. “Looks like regular paradise to me.”
The Thurotyville Horror
When people recognize me on the street this time of year, one of the most common questions I get is, “How do you guys over at Château de Thurot spend your Halloween?” A natural curiosity, considering our legendary rambunctiousness.
Well, I’ve put together a little video to answer that question, because our holiday celebrations might seem just a smidge unconventional to the uninitiated. You can find it below.
Raiding the Vault of Darkness
I wasn’t too thrilled about the announcement of Hemloch: Vault of Darkness from Small Box Games. Okay, that’s a lie: I was ecstatic for the thirty seconds before I read the description and realized it wouldn’t be a fine-tuned legacy edition of my beloved Hemloch in the vein of the fantastic new Olympus Edition of Omen: A Reign of War. Then I was sad and worried, because Shadow of the Sun, the other game set in the Hemloch universe, didn’t make much of an impression on me. And thus a damper was placed on my expectations.
To make matters worse… no, wait, come back — I promise this story has a happy ending.
Plains of Dust, Caravans of Silk
I’ve covered the work of Todd Sanders before — a whole buncha times, in fact — but Serica: Plains of Dust is still one of his more unusual designs. Yes, more unusual than haunted fantasy kingdoms or clockwork airships, Serica is about the famous 4,000 mile Silk Road strung from the Roman Empire to the distant Han Dynasty. It’s also a deck-building game, though being designed by Todd Sanders, you can bet it’s unlike any deck-building game you’ve ever played.
Risk Legacy: Envelopes
Here’s the drill: as started in the previous installment, my gang of puckish rogues has been playing through Risk Legacy and surviving to tell the tale. However, we’re telling everything, and Risk Legacy is one of the few board games in existence that actually suffers when spoiled — so take heed, because today we’re looking at how the game changed when we triggered the opening of a pair of the envelopes taped to the inside of the box, and once you know what’s inside, there’s no going back.
Tell ‘Em I Ain’t Comin’ Back
If I were to place myself on the Firefly/Serenity Bias Scale™, I’d be a firm 7 — a far cry from the “biased against” minority down at the bottom, a bit above the “no bias whatsoever” score of 5, and not quite the eerie devotion of those who rate a 10.
I’m telling you this because the new Firefly board game, from the same designers behind last year’s lauded Spartacus: A Game of Blood & Treachery, has been landing quite a few positive reviews (and a couple negative ones too) on the basis of its nostalgia factor. Does that seem right to you? I mean, I think it seems perfectly fine, since the game is about emulating the feel and spirit of the television show and movie, but if you’re at all like me — as in, you roll your eyes ever so slightly at that twangy intro theme and some of the more out-of-place western affectations, and really could not give a flying hump about someone’s Summer Glau themed DeviantArt account — then maybe this is the review for you.
SPACE-BIFF! 