Blog Archives
Valley of the Blings
If I had to pick any two things that strike me as faintly outdated, it would be the funerary customs of Ancient Egypt and pure deck-building games. Probably the first more than the last.
Valley of the Kings from AEG is blend of both, casting you as a pharaoh employing the magical powers of deck-building to fill his final resting place to the brim with enough grave goods to ensure a resplendent jaunt through immortality. Which raises the question: is this commingling of the elderly a positive one, or entirely unholy?
Red Nile: Crimson Sun
Once upon a time, there was a game from Small Box Games named Bhazum. People liked it, or at least they indicated as much by giving it overall positive ratings on BoardGameGeek. It was recently given new life as Crimson Sun, the second entry in Small Box Games’ Kickstarter tripartite, The Nile Ran Red.
All this impressive investigative journalism would be worth a poop in a sock if I’d ever played Bhazum, but I haven’t. Which means I have no idea whether it’s the same game as Bhazum, or updated, or downdated, or anything at all. Instead, all I can tell you are my impressions of the game on its own merits, so apologies to all those Bhazum fanatics that have been sending me hundreds of emails. You guys will just have to go pester somebody else now.
Red Nile: Lords of the Sand
What’s the first thing that springs to mind when I say “The Nile Ran Red”?
If it’s the story of Moses, then you’re on the same tangent as all my friends. Upon hearing about Small Box Games’ most recent collection (which happens to be entitled “The Nile Ran Red,” in case you hadn’t pieced that together), every single one of them said, “So it’s a game about Moses?” Then they laughed at me, because despite my degrees in history and religious studies with an emphasis on Biblical texts, that thought never once occurred to me, and it really should have. One day, all that education will come in handy! But apparently not today.
Anyway, aside from being decidedly un-Biblical, The Nile Ran Red is actually three separate games, and we’re investigating them one at a time — starting with Lords of the Sand.
Polis Party!
Given the choice when playing a board game simulating a historical conflict, I’ll always pick the losers. Confederacy, Axis, Cavaliers, Optimates, Tories, FARC, Syndicate, Harkonnen. That way, if I lose — then hey, no worries. They were going to lose anyway. Can’t argue with history.
But if, on the other hand, I win… then I’m a wargame genius.
Polis: Fight for the Hegemony is all about one of my favorite historical flashpoints, the decades-long conflict between the Athenian Delian League and the Spartan Peloponnesian League. And yes, while this means I’m shouting “Dibs on Athens!” the instant it hits the table and plotting how to alter history so the overrated Spartans don’t win again, it’s also a great game for a few other reasons.
Fantasy Frontier, or Regular?
If there are two things everybody fantasizes about, it’s the exploration of virgin lands and captaining an airship as it unloads its cannons at another airship. I’d also settle for captaining the Starship Enterprise.
Fantasy Frontier makes both dreams a reality (provided you count a board game as a legitimate version of reality, that is), and that’s still only half the story.
Thrice the Pixels, Triple the Tactics
I’m occasionally overwhelmed with feelings of inadequacy, the sense that no matter how hard I try, I won’t be able to convince more people to play Pixel Tactics. I mean, I’ve already written about this gem from Level 99 Games twice (here and here) and apparently there are still a handful of people who have yet to check it out.
But it’s not too late. The third game in the series has just arrived, and there’s hope for you holdouts yet.
Three Generals Walk into a Bar…
You’ve probably heard that old joke about what happens when Bernard Montgomery, Omar Bradley, and George Patton walk into a bar, spot a gorgeous woman at the back, and undertake a contest for her affections. No? Well, it goes something like this: Patton goes straight for her and starts bragging about the size of his detachment, Montgomery chats up the other ladies in the room in hopes of making the primary objective jealous, and Bradley sits around feeling inferior. Who gets the girl? Well, nobody does, at least not by Christmas 1944.
Very few military rivalries have been so romanticized (or even so outright trumped-up) as the one between Patton and Montgomery, and sometimes Bradley gets slotted in there too. With the release of 1944: Race to the Rhine, you can finally live your dreams of proving once and for all that [insert chosen general] could have proven himself better than [insert rival] by crossing the Rhine and ending the war, if only you’d been there to lend your insight.
COIN Volume II: Clash of Cubans
As you may remember, I’ve been working my way through Volko Ruhnke’s COIN Series (COIN for “counterinsurgency,” though my little group goes by the “Coin Collector Club” to sound barely less nerdy), beginning with the first volume, Andean Abyss. I liked it quite a lot, but felt it was a tricky entry point to a series that’s known for its complex asymmetrical conflicts.
As though on cue, the second volume of the series bursts through the door, dressed in an army jumpsuit, drab olive field cap, and underwear over the top of the pants. It’s Cuba Libre, here to save the day!
Blue Moon, You Saw Me Standing Alone
It’s become more popular to bag on Reiner Knizia over the last couple years, to the point that it’s increasingly easy to forget that he has some pretty amazing designs floating around. Case in point: Blue Moon, Knizia’s take on the collectible card game that turned out completely unlike any CCG before or since. It wasn’t even a real CCG! Psych!
Now Fantasy Flight Games has taken Blue Moon and all its expansions — just shy of a whopping 350 unique cards — and released the entire thing in a single box. It’s a lot to take in. So much, in fact, that I went through four major emotional stages as I tried to get a handle on why so many people have fond memories of Blue Moon.
Build a Better Star Realm
Star Realms is a purebred deck-building game, descended from deck-building stock and distilled from deck-building ingredients, and completely unburdened (or perhaps “unadvantaged,” depending on your point of view) by the frills that round out most modern deck-builders. There’s no board to explore. No bidding. No hybridization with other genres. Just a bunch of cards, the compulsion to buy them into your deck, and a whole bunch of shuffling. It is, in short, what we would surely call a deck-building game, through and through, nothing more and nothing less.
Or is it?
SPACE-BIFF! 