Blog Archives
Casus Ludi
I know this isn’t a functional rubric for anyone whose output has been as prolific as Martin Wallace’s, but I mentally sort his games into two broad categories. There’s the tight, elegant stuff, full of careful point-generating races between players, logistic considerations, and probably a loan system, and then there’s the big messy sandbox stuff.
Casus Belli inhabits the latter category. More than inhabits; it embraces the role whole-heartedly. It isn’t even a little bit ashamed to be rolling around in the sandbox. What’s that sand-encrusted lump over there? Oh, don’t mind that. It’s just another potential building block. Stick it in the back of the dump truck and call it a pun.
Heliotropes
Three and a half hours into our most recent play of Bloodstones, I turned to the five other players sitting at my living room table. “I just wanted to say,” I began, in the tone of a hard-bitten battlefield commander trapped in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge. “There is nobody I would rather share this ordeal with than all of you.” And then we laughed the laugh of soldiers who had spent too many weeks cowering at the bottom of foxholes.
Bloodstones is the latest title by Martin Wallace, a designer who has produced some of my favorite games of all time. It’s an impressive production, with multiple cloth maps, six unique factions, and oh so many bags filled with wonderfully clacky tiles. Between pedigree and production, it’s an easy sell.
I can’t stand it.
SPACE-BIFF! 