Blog Archives
Rock the Cradle of Civilization
Sometime in the 23rd or 24th century BCE, things weren’t looking great for the Sumerians. Over hundreds of years they’d built multiple city-states along the alluvial plains of the violently unpredictable Tigris and Euphrates rivers, formed a powerful religion with priest-kings and mudbrick temples as their bases of authority, and even had time left over to develop writing somewhere along the way. Then an usurper came along, conquered most of the city-states, took a name that literally translates as, “No guys, really, I’m a totally legitimate king, I promise,” and set up the Akkad Dynasty. It would last for about a century and a half before more usurpers, more invaders, more uprisings continued to transform the face of Mesopotamia.
It makes for gripping history, and it’s exactly what you’ll be doing in Reiner Knizia’s Tigris & Euphrates.
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.
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.
SPACE-BIFF! 