Blog Archives
The Race for Atlantis, Maybe
History Time! Around 3,600 years ago on the Aegean isle of Thera, during the height of the pre-Greek Minoan civilization, an enormous volcano went off. In addition to totally burying the settlement of Akrotiri beneath volcanic ash that would later become the principal ingredient in pencil erasers and cosmetic exfoliants, the resultant tsunami and altered weather may have also led to the weakening of the Minoan state, prepping them for invasion by the less-exploded Mycenaeans. Some historians even speculate that the complete disappearance of such an important settlement was the inspiration for Plato’s account of Atlantis.
Set around a thousand years later (landing us in Classical Greek territory), Akrotiri casts two players as a pair of humanity’s first archaeologists, scouring the uncharted Aegean Sea for treasure and ancient temples.
At Long Last, Elephants!
The original Clash of Cultures was easily one of the best Civilization-style 4X games I’ve ever played, and was one of my favorite games from last year — despite three major problems:
1. There were no elephants.
2. The yellow miniatures were trapped in a state of perpetual melting (though this was rectified in later printings).
3. Really, not a single elephant to be found anywhere. The box showed elephants. So where were the elephants?
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.
Terra Terrifica
The central conceit of Terra Mystica is that mystical creatures are reliant on geography, in the sense that witches hang out in forests, halflings love a well-fertilized plain for planting pipe-weed, nomads roam the desert, chaos magicians build their crazy towers in the wasteland (where else?), and dwarves mine the mountains. And because each race is only interested in their own geographical feature, they’re bent on terraforming the entire world until it’s just one unending forest or rolling plain or scorched desert.
Which sounds awful, now that I think about it. Not that it’s going to keep me from transforming as much of the world as possible into lakes so my mermaids can frolic until the end of time.
It Means “Not for Dummies” in Czech
Not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything, but I’m convinced abstract games are among the toughest to design. Your mechanics and rules have to be razor sharp, you’ll imbue it with whatever scrap of theme you can manage, wrap it up to look pretty even though some will complain about how it’s “just a board and some pieces,” and then sit back to endure the inevitable goofballs wailing about how they don’t get it.
Now and then though, you’ll get something amazing. In this case, that something is Tash-Kalar: Arena of Legends, the latest from famed designer Vlaada Chvátil, and it’s a monumental achievement of abstract gaming.
Alone Time: Robin Crusoe
Ahoy there! I’m filling in for Dan today. He told me that this “Alone Time” thing is a series about boardgames you can play by yourself, and there’s none better qualified to tell you about the solitary life than I, Robin Crusoe, of York, mariner, who lived one and ten days, all alone on an uninhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the men perished (ha!), with an account how I was at last strangely delivered by pirates. It’s pretty damn gripping, really.
Before we begin my amazing tale, Dan left me some notes to share with you. Let’s see here… something about an Ignacy Trzewiczek, who made a game about a convoy that Dan liked… best cooperative and solo game of the year… something like that. Sorry, the ink got damp on my last adventure. Sounds like it was boring anyway.
With that dull stuff out of the way, let’s talk about my adventure!
Neuroshima Rectangle
Ignacy Trzewiczek is best known for two things: one, he’s the only boardgame designer alive today whose name is harder to pronounce than Vlaada Chvátil’s (I think. It’s not like I can pronounce either of them); and two, his clockwork brain is responsible for a few recent hits like Prêt-à-Porter, 51st State, and the upcoming Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island. When I heard that The Convoy was set in the same hard-bitten world as Neuroshima Hex, and that it used one of my favorite cardgame mechanics (horizontal area control!), I could neither eat nor drink until I had a copy in my hands. Was my excitement justified? Find out below.
A Pair of Saboteurs
As most of the board games we cover here on Space-Biff! are comfortable members of the ruin-your-partner’s-evening genre, today I figured we’d take a break from that by looking at a friendly little pair of games that are all about working together, promoting peace, and being superfriends!
Except they’re totally not! They might not look it, but Saboteur and its expansion, the improperly named Saboteur 2 (“2” infers a sequel, not an expansion), are possibly the most devious games ever to sport a happy pipe-smoking grandpa-dwarf on the cover. Little does grandpa-dwarf realize, he’s about to get worked.
When Cultures Clash
The thing is, I don’t really like Sid Meier’s Civilization series. I can see the appeal — crud, half the game’s bullet points sound like they were plagiarized straight out of the “This Should Appeal to Dan” playbook. But for whatever reason each Civ experience leaves me wondering what part of my soul is missing and wanting my thirty dollars back. So I was greatly surprised when I genuinely liked the board game version (this one). I didn’t play it too many times because it had some problems, most notably a very long playtime, but it still captured a lot of the things I liked about the Civilization series.
Now I’ve found a Civilization-type game that I love, courtesy of Z-Man Games and Christian Marcussen, designer of the marvelous (so I’m told) Merchants & Marauders. It’s called Clash of Cultures, and it’s one of the best things I’ve played all year. And I don’t mean that as a joke, considering it’s only the eleventh day of the year, I mean from the entire previous year. Find out why below.
Engage the Flick Drives!
A spaceman ponders the mysteries of the wide universe.
There’s this game I’ve owned for a long time, Ascending Empires from Z-Man Games. It’s a great game, and I’ve known that since the day I bought it, but it only made it to the table twice. This summer we started having friends over for game nights a lot more often, and as a result, I’ve been playing it regularly—and it’s rocketed onto my Best Board Games Ever list. Why? Not only because it’s a good game (I already said it is), but because it makes me feel pathetically fantastically hilariously inept.
SPACE-BIFF! 