City of Turnips & Engines
Today, you are privileged — privileged — to receive a guest review from Somerset, who is possibly Space-Biff!’s most dedicated reader. Today, she’s going to tell us about an expansion to one of her favorite board games, City of Iron, which we reviewed over a whole dang year ago, which makes this sort of a special event.
Always been convinced that srikas are the sure way to victory, but never quite been able to prove it in gameplay? Well, here’s your chance to show everyone your srika strategy is now totally viable. Experts and Engines, an expansion for Ryan Laukat’s City of Iron, spices up the game with four new elements. Each nation becomes more diverse, steambots arrive on the scene, Kraxian Pirates make their debut, and new buildings and towns are up for grabs. Take a look after the jump.
Kemble Was Actually Just Some Dude
Every now and then, a board game comes along with an idea that makes me think, “Why didn’t someone else come up with that sooner?” In the case of The Battle at Kemble’s Cascade, the topic is classic arcade shmups. Don’t know what a shmup is? It’s a—
Hold on. This is the internet. Go look it up yourself, slacks.
What I will tell you about is The Battle at Kemble’s Cascade, which mostly — mostly — captures the spirit of those arcade classics.
Space-Biff! vs. Three Years
If what I’m reading in these childhood development manuals holds true, then this is the year that Space-Biff! becomes truly annoying. Mostly by throwing tantrums in public and insisting it can put on its own pajamas, it can it can it can! *stomp stomp stomp* … (fails miserably at putting on its own pajamas).
Yay?
Anyway, it’s fun looking back. But even more fun looking forwards! Thanks everyone who actually reads this nonsense, and here’s to three years!
Alone Time: Darkness Returns Twice
When you’re a force for righteousness like myself, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as driving a holy relic through the eye socket of a foul necromancer. Ah! The splash of his brain-ichor, cold and rancid, soaking the cuff of my tunic!
There are very few games that provide necromancer-slaying goodness quite so well as Darkest Night, one of my favorite solo and co-op games from last year. Its first expansion, With an Inner Light, which added the incentive of quests to get you roaming the map more and just hanging out in the mountains and forest less, was too.
So the question: are the two newest expansions for Darkest Night, On Shifting Winds and From the Abyss, as good as we’ve come to expect from Victory Point Games?
Hyperboringa
I’ll come out right and say it: Hyperborea isn’t actually hyper-boring. That was just too good a pun to pass up.
Rather, Hyperborea is interesting. Interesting and also, unfortunately, a disappointment to its mother. She tells people it’s an investment banker.
Dead (But Not Sick) of Winter
We’re all sick of zombies, right? I mean, unless you’re one of the hundred million people who keep buying all those zombie-themed games, the ones with the ludicrous quantity of undead minis, and the dice games, and every single thing with a dismembered hand on the cover, the zombie thing feels pretty played out?
I understand. And I agree. Zombies have run their course. Down with the undead. Long live the living.
But you’re going to have to take my word on this one: Dead of Winter from Plaid Hat Games is another game with zombies in it, but even so, it’s pretty much the best game of 2014. So buckle up, keep that shotgun close at hand, don’t trust anyone with a bleeding bandage on their arm — no matter how many times they insist they just snagged it on a broken window — and get ready to see how good a zombie game can be.
The Art of Victory, I Presume
We’ve all been there before. You want to play a game, but judging by the clock, you’ve got exactly one hour before your attentions are needed elsewhere. Not fifty minutes, not an hour and twenty. One hour.
Thank goodness then that Ars Victor is the one-hour wargame. There are no others. None.
Okay, leaving aside the harping on its faintly silly self-appointed subtitle, let’s talk about why Ars Victor might actually be a contender for what you play when you’ve only got an hour.
War Express
Age of War is possibly the smallest game I’ve played this year. So small, in fact, that I’m going to try and review it in a single breath. No cheating, I promise. Here we go:
Age of War is the latest from Reiner Knizia, and the first thing you notice about it is that it’s a mere seven dice and [count them later, can’t stop writing] cards. So it’s a small game, but perhaps it has a big heart. I don’t know what I’m saying I can’t concentrate. It’s pretty fun. I had fun with friends. I think it gets too
Ohmygoodness. Guess I’ll have to do a real review after all.
It Also Gazes Into You
Look into his eyes, and tell me what you see. For me, he looks like the trailer-folk of the sea, majestic and graceful, but probably smokes too much for his own good — which, granted, fire probably doesn’t work down there, so maybe he just snacks on too many mollusks or something. He tried the gum a while back, but it didn’t kick the cravings like it advertized. His pod-mother always said—
Wait, what were we talking about? Oh, right: Abyss. Yeah, let’s talk about that.
Borrow, Ignore, or Buy?
A lot of people are bored of the zombie thing. Not me. For one thing, the appeal of straightforward bad guy artificial intelligence is undeniable: they walk towards you, walk some more, and then paw at you like a drunkard on the subway. There are no cover mechanics to worry about, no flanking, no need to do anything other than walk and paw. And anyway, aren’t they sort of a Metaphor? For death, or how you don’t like spending time with your grandma because she’s slow and she paws at you?
I suspect Run, Fight, or Die! is a metaphor too. Possibly for death. Maybe for boredom.
