Xia: Legends of a Drift System - Kickstarter Campaign.

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last week. I was sick with hand foot and mouth disease, so the blisters over my hands made it hard to write up any posts. Although it was good for one thing, I managed to re-watch all of Firefly (it didn't take that long as Fox canceled it after 14 episodes), which happens to be one of the best shows in the 'verse. I was prompted to do this after finding out that Xia: Legends of a Drift System's Kickstarter page was live. Despite what it may sound, this is not a racing game, this is a sci-fi which board game designer Cody Miller has been working on for nine years!

Xia: Legends of a Drift System 

The game board after set up

Xia: is described as a 3-4 player sandbox game. It was inspired by the idea of being a small time captain of a small starship (aka: Serenity) and making your way in the universe. Here is the blurb from Board Game Geek:

Xia: Legends of a Drift System is a 3-5 player sandbox style competitive space adventure. Each player starts as a lowly but hopeful captain of a small starship. 

Players fly their ships about the system, completing a variety of missions, exploring new sectors and battling other ships. Navigating hazardous environments, players choose to mine, salvage, or trade valuable cargo. Captains vie with each other for Titles, riches, and most importantly Fame.  

The most adaptive, risk taking, and creative players will excel. One captain will rise above the others, surpassing mortality by becoming Legend!

The aim of the game is to get the most fame points (FP) thus becoming the most famous ship captain. The sandbox style means there is multiple ways of doing this. You can be a trader  become a pirate  an explorer, a minor, a bounty hunter, or a combination.

Drift Systems

The game is set in a 'drift system' which is some kind of outer rim world which has skewed gravity fields making planetary orbits random. The drift system is the only one habitable by man and is called Xia.

The spaceships

A spaceship trading with a planet in Xia

The game comes with 15 spaceship miniatures 3 which are NPC's and 12 which you can buy and use in Xia. There are 3 tiers of ships and all the players start with a tier one ship. These all have names such as the Puddle Jumper. The ship has a certain number of spaces which you can outfit with technology such as engines, guns, missiles and shields. The spaces remaining are used for transporting cargo. All in all this looks like a fun component of the game, designing and upgrading your spaceship.

Here are the components of the game

The Rules and Final thoughts

I have flicked through the PDF rules which you can get from the Kickstarter website. Well to be honest I am not 100% convinced, maybe about 70%. Why so? I guess flying round space, simply mining astroids or trading resources seems a little unexciting to me, although combat seems neat but not a major part. The setting is kind of fun however and the art pretty good but not amazing. I love the idea of piloting my own starship like Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly. However in this game it seems that trading, mining etc. are just game mechanics and the theme may not quite overcome that. 

Well I am sceptical, so I won't invest in the Kickstarter. Maybe I will be better off Getting Firefly: the game when it is released. However I am keen to give the game a shot sometime and hopefully be convinced otherwise! 

One of the ships loaded up,
the orange objects are damage markers

Check out the Kickstarter website here. Photos taken from the Kickstarter site. 

Eclipse session - Playing Planta

Last two games nights we have got in two games of Eclipse. It goes along with the current sci-fi theme at the moment. Maybe if we were a more established blog we could call this sci-fi month. For most of the club this is a new game, however in this game we implemented Aliens. To do this fairly we handed out random diplomacy tokens at the start of the game then had the choice of the alien or Terran in that colour. It was a five player game and Chris and I chose the aliens, he got a bit of a doozy, Eridani Empire, and I got Planta. 

I like both these races. People seem to have there problems with both. I however like them because I like the feel of each of these races. The Eridani is the once powerful empire, however are now struggling and in decline. The start with some pretty sweet resources and starting research. However they have 2 less influence which hurts hard later on in the game. The Plantas play like a weed, they multiply fast, getting to explore up to 2 hexs a move, and have 4 rather that 3 colonist ships. However there ships are not very good with bad initiative and less customisable so easy to destroy.

The game in progress, round 4.
I am green.

I managed to secure a good position early on in the game. Spreading fast and I managed to secure a couple of good techs early; improved hull and plasma canon. I mostly had a cruiser heavy fleet, I feel cruisers have an advantage over dreadnoughts, cheeper so you can have better action density when you buy two ships and you can have 4 at a time. Plus there is less to upgrade to get them to a satisfactory level.

I managed to secure the centre hex early on in the game, nice. However for the rest of the game I defended my position rather than move out and attack. I had quite a few battles from those contesting for the centre hex. Some were quite large so we used the over flow tiles to battle on the side. However the lack of initiative was crippling causing some heavy losses before i could even shoot. The shields were very helpful as a protective measure. I managed to win most battles but not without some serious losses.

A middle hex combat pushed to the side.

Sadly we had to cut the game one round short (round 8) due to time constraints. This round was the hardest for me as my focus was mostly on defending the centre hex. Zac playing Terran got behind my only weak point and got a interceptor into my home hex. Perhaps if we played the next round it would have been the end for me and my weeds. I think if I had gone on more of an offensive after taking the middle hex I would have been better off as it would weaken the opponents. However then I would have been open for attack from others. 

Planta player board.

Over all I enjoyed playing Planta, although there lack of initiative and weak ships hurt later in the game. I feel that they probably are a better defensive specie so in that sense I played them ok. However I am sure there are much better strategies out there, 

Photos take from my iPad so not the best quality. See our Eclipse for the iPad review here. 

Eclipse: A New Dawn for the Galaxy iPad Review

It has been a great couple of weeks for sci-fi. The release of Star Trek Into Darkness; the announcement of Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game wave 3; Alien Frontiers 4th edition kick-starter campaign; and of course, Eclipse being released on the iPad! Eclipse is an epic 4X board game designed by Touko Tahkokallio. The premis of a 4X game, for those who don't know is eXplore, eXpand eXploit and eXterminate. Eclipse is a highly rated game and has made its way to 5th on Board Game Geek. 

Eclipse and it's very large box

This game was transferred from cardboard to the iPad by Big Daddy Creations... and they did a great job! Such a great job that I got myself a copy of the board game after a few days of playing the app, as you can see above. So lets look at more depth into the game on the iPad.

Design

Eclipse on the iPad has a well made user interface, one of the best I have seen (admittedly I haven't seen allot). It utilises a 'tray' system allowing you to open trays with relevant information that a player needs to know. As you can see from the photo below the game has allot on information on every player's board so compacting that into a 10inch display in no easy task.

The player board fro the Eridani Empire

The 'tray' system.
Trays for the ships and diplomacy functions are pulled out

The tray system defiantly sets a gold standard for board game apps in the future. Another useful aspect of this is that you can always see the world map. The world map functions well and looks great. They have changed some of the planet colours and the hex layout slightly from the board game. This I believe is a good thing as Bid Daddy Creations has taken liberty to change things in order for it to work better on the iPad.

The world map zoomed in.
There is allot going on.

The only issue I can find with the user interface is sometimes the world map can be hard to distinguish what is going on as there is allot but you can quickly get your head around this. Another way to make the world map easier to read is by turning off the starry background and going with plain blue, however that is a bit boring. All in all they have done a great job with this, so much that if you didn't know it was a board game, you may not even realise.

Gameplay 

The gameplay is great, after all there is a reason it made it to the top 5 on Board Game Geek. At first it seems a little overwhelming, but the primary concept is actually quite simple. In order to take actions you use influence, but this comes at a cost, the more influence you use the higher the cost in money (one of the three resources) you have to pay at the end of the turn. So in order to take more money you need to colonise orange planets. The more colonists you have spread out over the galaxy on orange planets the more money you get. Simple huh. The same applies to the other resources  science which lets you research technologies and materials which lets you build ships, orbitals and monoliths from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

When you take actions, spending influence you can only take one action at a time (except free actions like trading resources), then every other player has a turn (up to 6) till its your turn again. When it is your turn again you can take another action or pass. This carries on till everyone has passed. The key actions you can take is; explore another hex connected to a wormhole, then you can place an influence on this hex/sector to control it then claim its resources; change influence of your sectors; research new technology such as ship upgrades; upgrade your ships; build ships; or move your ships around the board. Once everyone has passed ships in the same sectors fight it out!

Combat

In combat you simply roll the dice (well pressing a button) corresponding to the weapons equipped to your ships and you hit on a 6. However you can equip your ships with computers which add bonuses to your ship. For example if you have a +2 computer you will now be hitting on 4/5/6 not just 6. The game has a cool effect when shooting rather than just some dice rolling effect. The space ships are highly upgradeable, better weapons  better computers and shields, better movement rates (drives) and energy. Energy is important because you may have researched allot of neat stuff, but you need the energy to power some of the better weapons, computers, drives etc.

After combat you can take over hexes of those you defeated (assuming you also destroyed their colonies. Then if you can't afford to pay for all the influence you spent that turn you have to declare bankruptcy and remove influence off hexes you can't afford to pay for. This however can sometimes be to your advantage as it doesn't use up a turn like the action 'change influence'. This all lasts for 9 rounds then the game is done.

Simple huh. OK maybe to so much, there is allot going on in this game. I imagine my description did not do it justice but once you get the hang of it, it's allot of fun and plenty of variation to each game to keep you coming back for more. But this all raises one big problem, how do you learn to play it? For me it was simple, I have already played the game so only really needed to learn the user interface which the in built tutorial helped with immensely. However I have heard that this tutorial does not do a great job in teaching you how to play UI aside. There is a inbuilt manual which is reletively logical, but still people seem to complain. So if this is a problem I recommend just downloading the PDF manual. I do recognise this as being a problem with complex games as I downloaded Le Havre, a complex game, on sale a while back and still don't have any clue how to play.

Species 

You have a choice to play with seven different species in this game. They all offer different advantages and disadvantages. This follows some story line of the seven different species forming a galactic council after some war. However the peace is soon to be shattered as you play eclipse. Yep that's the premis of the game, it's alright and there is a pretty cool opening sequence explaining this. Terran (humans) are the most common and everyone can play Terran however the 6 different aliens can only have one player each. Terran are pretty standard offering no special benefits however they have no real disadvantage either, middle of the road. Peoples favorite seem to be the Hydran Progress who have special researching powers and Orion Hegemony who are pretty good in combat. Others are; the Descendants of Draco who are friends with the ancients (ships which occupy some hexes to make occupying them harder); Planta who rock at exploring and are more peaceful than the rest; and Mechanema who are robots who can build stuff on the cheap. However a race that I am enjoying are the Eridani Empire who I describe below. All these races provide a good amount of variation and add to the challenge!

A description shot of one of the races.

AI games vs Online Play vs Pass and Play

First off, I have never played pass and play and probably never will so, no comment. Playing against the AI is fun, there are 3 difficulties, easy, medium and hard and they all presset their challenges  I recommend playing with 3-4 players rather than 5-6 as it can take a while to get round to your turn, despite the AI having relatively fast turns. I find the bigest challenge is trying to play with the Eridani Empire, they start off with allot of money and some good starting research however 2 less initiative than the other races! This is quite challenging and the great starting resources don't seem to make up for it. None the less it makes the Eridani a good challenge!

I am not much of a computer gamer so online play is a bit foreign to me. However I decided I would give it a shot. The online play is pretty good, it has an in-game chat function and there seems to be a few different games to choose between. However my two main concerns are; firstly it can be a bit buggy, however I am sure Bid Daddy Creations is working on this; secondly, people pulling out before the game is finished, which is frustrating as I have never managed to finish a game. My first game I wasn't doing great but I managed to beat this one guy in combat with a bit of luck and he "rage quit", not very sportsman like. So I don't really rate online play to hightly but maybe if I had a better experience I would have preferred it.

Conclusion 

I can honestly say this is a great buy. It is a well made app, it looks great, the user interface is good, the gameplay is superb and it is allot of fun. Watch out however, if your like me you may end up buying the board game as well. Unless of course you already own it in which case you probably know it will be an awesome app. However if you were contemplating one or the other I would recommend geting the cardboard option. There is nothing quite like playing someone across a table (a very large table is needed for eclipse).

All in all it is a great app. Bid Daddy Creation's is working on some of the bugs as you can see here. I am also looking forward to them making the expansion Rise of the Ancients for it, I am tempted to get the cardboard version of this also. So what would I give it?

Overall: 9/10

For more on board games click here. Photos taken with a 50mm f1.4 lens or taken from the Bid Daddy Creations Website.

Play-testing A Study in Emerald

Monday night saw four of us gather for our weekly games night, including Chris who was keen to join us again after two weeks on honeymoon.  This time the game was Study in Emerald a currently prototype boardgame by Martin Wallace that is in its Kickstarter project phase.  The prototype is available for play testing before the board, rules and design are finalised.

Proposed box art

The game picks up where the wonderful short story by Neil Gaimon ends: with the sun setting on the Victorian Empire, Sherlock and Watson take what seems to be another assignment - a murder, a word written onto the wall beside the body and no apparent clue as to the culprit.  But as they investigate further, the assignment becomes stranger than any other: the body is not, well, human; its blood is green and although there is little that is left of it one can tell that it is not of this world...

For those who want to read the story I won't give too much away, but the story ends with the uncovering of a movement of people in Europe against the established royal families and other elite.  Known as the Restorationists, they strive to restore the natural order of things by removing the rather unnatural aristocracy.

Anyway, back to the game.  The game play is based on the accumulation of victory points.  One accumulates such points by taking control of cities, by killing agents, or by assassinating the named royalist in that city.  The board is set out with a number of cities on it, linked by movement tracts, and cards immediately above them with the top card turned over:

The board and it's groundbreaking artwork 

Each player has a deck of ten cards, of which (s)he draws six.  Each player has their agent on the board.  The game has an "influence" mechanic whereby a player bids either on a city or on a card deck by playing influence tokens on them.  If at the start of their next turn they have the most influences on the city they can take control of that city (and get the city card as well as the victory points) and similarly if they have the most influences on a card they get that card which enables them to do different things during their turn.

Bidding far a card
(Mrs Peacock is the white player with the sheep from Agricola)

A highly contested city

A turn consists of two actions: if you are to take a city or a card, that has to be your first action and you can only do that once per turn.  A basic action requires the playing of cards, which have symbols on them - block to enable you to place an influence block and a coin to move places or buy more influences.  A normal action involves placing influences on one card or one city.

There are more actions than that involved that I won't go into: blowing up agents / royalists, turning yourself or others into vampires, bringing on zombies, accumulating more agents, having double agents (which is cool) and the like.  There is a lot of variety to the game play and I could not get my head around tactics for most of the game.  You are also either a Royalist or a Restorationist.  Whichever you are appointed to at the start affects the way you play as there are only royalists on the city squares to blow up so the Restorationists have more ways to accumulate victory points.  The Royalists are, if you like, defending more - trying to kill agents before the agents kill the royals.

The restoration and war tracks 

Without the board game bling, we were never going to be "wowed" by the game.  I can see, however that the game would be fun and could be played a number of times with different tactics depending on which side you are on and how the game unfolds.  So my lasting impression is quite favorable and I am keen for Steve to buy it so I can play it more often.

I think with some cool pieces and an attractive game board that it could be a real winner.  The rules do need a bit of clarifying though - there were some "rules moments" which us gamers all know about: particularly around free actions but also whether you are playing with your fellow Royalists / Restorationists or whether it is every (wo)man for themselves.  Zac and I as the Royalists came out on top with a bit of rules bending and Steve and Chris in true anarchist fashion fought each other and came last and second to last.

Stephens restorationist card,
looks a little bit like a spy from the Resistance

Allocating points is always random so I say 7.24926 / 10.

Zac dedicates his victory to Nadar

A Study in Emerald - Kickstarter Campaign begins

A Study in Emerald is a short story by Neil Gaiman, one of my favorite authors. So when I learnt at Boardgames by the Bay that a game based on the premiss of A Study in Emerald was being made I was excited. A Study in Emerald is an adaptation of the classic Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, by adding in aspects from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulu mythos. Kinda makes me think of Empire of the Dead. Anyhow you can read it for free, just google it.

Box art, Sherlock and Watson
(or Greson, or Lestrade I can't recall which)
inspecting the murdered Old One

The Kickstarter campaign for this started just a few days ago here. It is already funded and on its way to the stretch goals which include a few more cards and posters. I must admit the stretch goals don't seem that exciting but after the Empire of the Dead Requiem campaign with amazing stretch goals including 12 free models its hard to compete. I have put my name down for this through my FLGS Seriously Board (well less local as its a website as there isn't a FLGS in Wellington that sells a good rage of BG).

The game is designed by Martin Wallace, I haven't played many of his games but my FLGS recommends him. I have read the rules (which you can get from the official website) and it seems like it will be allot of fun. It's core mechanic is deck building but with a twist. You are either on the side of the resistance or the government, who in this case are a bunch of Old Ones from the Cthulu mythos who have taken over the world, oh no. However your alignment is hidden until you choose to reveal it so you can try to trick others into believing you are on their side. You win by getting the most victory points however if your alignment looses from bad play of a team mate, despite having the most victory points you will lose. So team play will help. 

One thing I am curious about is when you have an odd number of players there will be one side which has more players. That side seems like it would have the advantage and I wonder how the game overcomes this. As I haven't played I don't know yet. However deck building, secret identities, Sherlock Holmes and Cthulu mythos, how could this be bad? Plus it seems to be well rated from those who have played the prototype on BGG

The art work seems pretty good and appropriate for the theme, though it could be a tad more interesting. Maybe they will add colour to the cards? 

I am looking forward to seeing what the world map will look like as the prototype isn't that interesting yet.

The cool thing about the kick-starter campaign is they give a link to the games official website. Well thats not that amazing, but the website has all the stuff you need to print the prototype game! Sweet. So I might just do that to play it before the official game comes out sometime in October or thereabouts. Nice. 

Check out the official page here complete with a downloadable prototype. Boargamegeek link here.

Eclipse for the iPad!

Games club on Monday saw a bunch of new guys coming along to check it out. We played Empire of the Dead and X-Wing. However with all our efforts tutoring newbies we didn't manage to prepare for a session report. Next week however we are planning to start a D&D campaign. However on other news...

I just found out that a iPad app for Eclipse is about to come out soon! No not the twilight movie Eclipse. I have only played this game a few times but it is pretty enjoyable. Though appearing complicated it has a pretty simple but intuitive gameplay I thought. Plus I'm a sucker for sci-fi.

Here are some screenshots. 

It looks like the board is in the middle
with the player boards at the side

Player boards must be easily collapsable to zoom in. 

Good some instructions or I would get very lost

My only concern would be from previous experience. I got Le Harve for my iPad knowing it is a top rated game. However it is such a complex game that it was pretty hard to learn on the iPad. Maybe because I already know some Eclipse basics this will be easy enough to learn. 

I think I will definitely get this when it comes out in the app store in a week or so. 

Plethora boardgame review - fun and long.

I thought I would take some time to review a smalltime board game designers game, Plethora. It is designed by Shem Phillips, which is especially cool because he is a New Zealander (which we are also). This neat little game has many great aspects, all except the length as other reviews have noted.

Box art, a guy with the different gemstones you can get in the game.

Looks and Design

Plethora looks great, it was funded by a Kickstarter like campaign. The board is composed of multiple tiles, all depicting a picture of a different building which work together to compose a city. The artwork on these tiles is fantastic, although it can be a little hard working out which tile you need to get to next as some only differ slightly. Another downfall is the cards and board bits are slightly glossy, I prefer a matt finnish.

The meeples are wooden and good quality, though I am not sure why the yellow pieces (nobels) are so spiky! All in all I give the looks a 8/10 and the quality is superb.

The yellow, spiky nobels

Gameplay

Plethora has a pretty simple yet fun feel to it when playing. The aim is to get the most nobility/victory points. To do this you buy cards off a nobel by being in the same square with gold. You can purchase any of the cards as long as you have the right gold to do so. The cost is determined by the yellow number on the tower above the card. There is also a possibility on each card to get more points by trading resources at the end of the game. 

However to get gold you must follow the path of a noble. Which works like this.

1. Get a rendezvous from a square a nobel is in. This is simply a card with a location to get to.

Rendezvous

2. Once you are at the rendezvous point exchange the card for a commission, this depicts a certain amount of gemstones you need to buy (with silver) to complete the commission

The commission cards sit above the gemstones,
which sit above the rendezvous

3. Once you have the gemstones you can trade the compleated commission and return the gemstones for the depicted gold and silver, which you can then use to buy nobility points and convert to silver to buy more gemstones. 

You can have up to two rendezvous and three commissions at a time. To get the gemstones, as I call them, white, blue and orange (actually perl, sapphire and ruby or something like that) you need to get to the location where they are sold then buy them for the silver depicted, so the more that have been purchased the greater the cost. This is a neat little mechanic which is used a other games, but fun none the less. 

In order for all of this to happen you have to start your turn by rolling three dice, which depict what actions you can do on your turn. For the most part this is fun and can lead to some pretty awesome turns. However sometimes you get a bad roll and you end up going in circles.

Thoughts

For the most part I enjoy this game, I like following the noble path, keeping gemstones to keep the price high for other players and purchasing the right nobility/victory point cards. It is simple enough for most people to pick up and learn their first time around yet enough strategy to keep you asking for more. However it does end up being about 90 minutes which is long considering the simplicity of the game. It can also get repetitive repeating the noble path.

I would definitely play this game again and it is a good game to play with newer gamers. Also I got this game at an op shop for $4 so no complaints there!

I give it a 7/10

It's not essential to play this game on a cat tablecloth

See more board game reviews here. Photos taken with my 600d and a 50mm f1.4 Sigma lens.

Weekend of games, Formula D, 7 Wonders and more!

This weekend Dan and I were away with a bunch of others and managed to play four awesome games! Most of these were group games as it was a crowd of non-gamers. One of them, Formula D is quickly becoming a favorite! In played order:

7 Wonders

This is the second game of 7 wonders I have manage to play (and Dan's first) although my last was a while ago so I hardly remember.

I had a lighthouse, 'wonderful!' 

7 wonders is a pretty good game! The game mechanic is clever and there is enough interaction to keep you on your toes. I found, however that it was hard to know all the various ways to get victory points, because there is a lot! As a new player I found we tended to focus on clear ways to get points, such as the blue victory points cards and the red fighting cards. I am definitely keen to play more to get more of an idea.

The Resistance

I added The Resistance to my collection about a month back at Boardgames By the Bay. The Resistance is kinda like Mafia but has a better game mechanic, no player elimination, and it's quick! Our whole group played, so it was a 9 player game! The only problem with The Resistance (more of a problem with me) is that I haven't quite worked out how to tell who the spies are. I guess that will come with time.

Formula D

This game is good. I will have to write a review of it soon. We played a four player game, which I thought would not be as good as a larger game but it was still pretty good. If you want to read more of my thoughts on it check it out here. Dan won this game, starting from last position. I lost, though I was in the lead for a good portion of the game I handled the last corner badly and got overtaken... by everyone.

Dixit Odyssey

Dixit Odyssey is a good group game I have had for a little while now. The premise is similar to Apples to Apples. You have a hand of cards all with pretty awesome artwork, one person is the storyteller and says a phrase or word about their card then places it down. After that everyone chooses a card they think matches it. After this everyone votes for the card they think was the original to get points plus hope people vote for their card to get even more points! The catch is the storyteller gets no points if nobody or everybody votes for their card so they have to come up with a semi-obscure clue.

I like Dixit but I find the problem is when you have more players (we had 11 as some more people joined us in the morning) is that it takes ages to score each round. This gets a bit tedious after a while. However it is a good game for a wide range of people.


See my review of Settlers of Catan here. For those interested, games club is back up and running with our Empire of the Dead campaign so another EOTD post from Dan should be up soon. 

The Settlers of Catan, is there too much luck?

Settlers of Catan is the boardgame where most modern gamers start, and some would say started the whole modern boardgaming movement! A pretty awesome claim to fame for designer Klaus Teuber. However, is it a good game? Well it does make its way into the top 100 on boardgame geek, well its at rating 100 now so it may not stay there for much longer.

Gameplay

I am not sure how much to go into this as I am sure most people have played Settlers. It seems to be almost as prolific as Monopoly or Risk so skip this section if you must. The basics are, you roll for resources which you get by having a settlement or city next to a resource, which you can then use to build roads to get to new locations for more resources and numbers, settlements, cities and development cards which help you get more resources and attack other players. The aim is to get to 10 points to gain the title 'lord of catan' (only in the old version) and win the game. If you want a better definition get the rules from here.


Luck and frustration

This is the most frustrating aspect of Settlers. What you do requires the luck of the dice. There are ways to minimise this, for example putting your settlement on a 8 is better than a 12 as there is only 1 way to roll a 12 and 5 to roll a 8 (at-least I think its 5 of the top of my head). Also don't forget to get a diversity of number. However even if you have really great numbers they never seem to roll for you! It is sooooo frustrating! 

What makes it worse, is when your luck evens out as the game goes on it is often hard to come back as your opponents have build around you minimizing your opportunities! To make it worse when I play with my wife's family my mother in law always puts the robber on me despite the fact that I am losing miserably she has some weird reason for finding it better to place the robber on the loser rather than the winner! Grrr.

A great entry level game

Settlers is a relatively easy game for new gamers to learn. As I mentioned above my in-laws enjoy playing settlers when we visit. It is easy enough to learn and enjoyable while you try and master it. However I find because of this, many of my non-gamer friends want to play settlers, which renders it an overplayed game growing dull quickly.

Fun

Settlers is fun. The game play is interesting, and when luck doesn't draw you a foul card it gets even better! Like most people I know it was one of the first modern games I played so it has a soft spot in my heart. Also, you can make towers with your pieces while you play.

Verdict: 6.5/10

I guess in the end settlers is a good enough game and a good game to play with new gamers. However every so often luck can get you down (and bad robber placements!).

See more reviews? Check out our Alien Frontiers review here.

Boardgames by the Bay

Last weekend I managed to find myself in Tauranga at Boardgames by the Bay a board game convention organised by Seriously Board. I managed to play a plethora of games over the weekend, most I have never played before. Martin Wallace was there play testing some games he is designing at the moment including a follow up to Discworld Anch-Morpork, the Witches. However the upcoming game I am most excited about is A Study in Emerald, which is based on a short story by Neil Gaiman. You can read the story here. Sadly I missed out on the play testing

So here are the games I played and what I thought in played order:

Yggdrasil

Note: click on the titles to view the game in board game geek. 
The unpronounceable game Yggdrasil started of my weekend. It is a co-op game where you are all gods trying to stop evil gods such as Loki infiltrate some sort of tree, which is important. I must admit I wasn't particularly flattered by this game, but its not really a theme I would normally be excited about. Verdict? 5/10.

The Speicherstadt

The Speicherstadt is a bidding game where you bid for cards which allow you to preform certain actions, such as convert resources to victory points or silver which you use to bid with. It is a neat little game which puts you on edge as you bid against the other players to try and get the required resources and cards to get the most victory points. Verdict? 7/10.

Alien Frontiers

Managed to get in a game of Alien Frontiers a game which I love. See my detailed review here. Verdict? 8.5/10.

Formula D

This game was amazing. Racing tiny cars around a race track sounds boring but Formula D takes a simple concept and makes a pretty fun game. It works by rolling dice based on what gear your in, the lower your gear the slower you go. Each turn you can either go up, down or stay in the same gear which you need to do in order to take the corners because if you go to fast you will wear down your car and eventually it will be destroyed. A fun sociable game which anyone can pick up. I am definately adding this to my collection. Verdict? 7/10.

Discworld: Anch-Morpork

A game by Martin Wallace. This game is a fantasy game where each player gets a randomly assigned character with a different victory condition. It is set in the town Anch-Morpork created by Terry Pratchett. It works by drawing cards which you can then play to do certain actions. The aim is to get control of territories by placing meeples and building towers. This game looks great and has good artwork. However I did find though the game play was interesting it was not particularly complex. A good game for new gamers. Verdict? 7.5/10.

Star Wars: X-wing Miniatures Game

A mouthful of a title. I really like X-Wing, easy enough to learn, a healthy amount of strategy, and plenty of variability. Plus who doesn't like flying little spaceships around a table. See some of my session reports here and here. Verdict? 9/10.

Spartacus

Spartacus is a fun game based on the TV show which I have never watched. The game works by trying to bring your opposition down by playing nasty cards, bidding in the market and then fighting your gladiators against each other. You can also place bets on the gladiators. I liked the game but it suddenly ends, which I have been led to believe is normal. You feel like you are winning but then someone suddenly plays a few cards and wins the game. I am afraid that put me off the game a bit. Verdict?6.5/10.

I managed to get another game of Formula D in here. 

RoboRally

A classic game and a goody. Similar to Formula D except you are robots, with lasers and coincidentally you shoot each other as well as trying to make it to the finish line first. The catch is you have to plan 5 moves before each round starts with randomly assigned cards. This can leave you spinning in circles, driving into holes which can become quite frustrating. Overall this game is allot of fun and I would recommend giving it a shot. Verdict? 7.5/10.



Overall it was a good weekend and will probably go again sometime.