CO2 has been on the radar for quite a while. Worried about how heavy the game is and hard it would be to learn/teach, I held off on trying to acquire a copy. In a recent math trade I took a shot at picking up a copy and sure enough the pieces fell into place for that to happen.

Ok, so this is one of the more heavier games I’ve played in a long time. This is one of those games where you have to learn the majority of the rules, enough to know what the actions are and why you would want to do each one, then just jump in a start playing. Because while there is a lot going on, the system is pretty streamlined.

Essentially each player is trying to build green energy power plants throughout the world. But in order to do that, they have to propose a project, which gives some immediate benefits, then install the project, then they’re able to build the power plant. The trick is that just because you proposed the project that doesn’t mean you are the only one who can install it. Same goes for when you install a project. Another player can use the expertise that your company acquired and swoop in to install the power plant. This leads to a lot of complex, multi-level decision making. Sure, you want to get projects proposed so you can gain the immediate benefits, but you also want to try and convert someone else’s projects into power plants in order to control that region of the world. Oh and then there are very important expertise tracks, one for each type of green energy. You can’t even build a power plant unless you’ve invested time learning about the energy technology. All the while, making sure the pollution level doesn’t hit 500 PPM or else everyone loses! All that to think about, yet you’re only allow 1 action per turn.

There is just so many things going on, but it’s such a wonderful experience from start to finish. This is one of those games where I find myself smiling while I’m taking my turn. Hurts so good, as I like to say.

As a self proclaimed Stefan Fled fanboy, never has there been a year more exciting than this one! Feld has (or will soon) released 4 new games. The first of those four that I have been able to play is Bruges. Hearing that it’s a good 2 player game, I choose it over the other new Feld game I acquired this year, Rialto, which I hope to get to soon.

Bruges is almost entirely a card driven game. Sure, there is a board to allow players a few other places to get points, but when it comes down to it most of the players’ decisions will be based on the cards in their hands. And man, there are a lot of decisions!

A unique element is how you get cards in the first place. You’ll start each round with 5 cards by usually drawing 4 cards, but you don’t just draw them from a central draw pile, blindly. There are two draw piles and you can actually see the color of the card you are going to draw. Say you need some red workers to activate another card you played earlier, but there are no red backed cards available, which other color do you draw instead? Obviously hoping the next card will be red. Feels somewhat random, but unlike a lot of his games, being diverse is beneficial. It doesn’t seem like you want to specialize in one type of path since you may get stuck from the card draw. All of the cards have a unique character that has some special ability, either immediately, every time you activate it with a worker or an ongoing effect. But these characters don’t do anything unless you put them in a house. And you build houses by placing these cards face down in front of you, thus nullifying the opportunity to use that character’s special ability.

This is definitely a game where sometimes you have to choose from a handful of bad options. Personally, I really enjoy those decisions but I can see how some people wouldn’t. Also, we found that we saw where we could pull off really cool combos, but we either didn’t have enough money, workers or actions (only 4 per round). In a 2 player game there are about 8 rounds and it felt like there should be more.

I’m very pleased with this game. The variety of the cards is outstanding. Every game will be very different. The board is a little overdone and there are a few elements that don’t seem all that interesting (canal building, for instance). But as a whole package, it’s a great game.

Robinson Crusoe: Adventure on the Cursed Island is a game I have been dying to play, ever since I saw an Essen video on BGG. Unfortunately, the latest print run did not meet expectations, so it was very difficult to find. A friend of mine also wanted a copy, so we decided to have him buy one but I would get to play it.

As excited as we both were, getting the game on a Monday and playing on Tuesday was a risky proposition. I did my best to watch some videos and get through the rulebook, but as I found out, it is not an easy game to grasp right away. We only finished about 6 rounds and had to call it on time. No problem, our next game would be much cleaner and with less rules questions.

That brings me to my first “official” game. 4 players, first scenario. Because there are so many moving pieces, I don’t want to get into the how it plays. I just want to give my thoughts.

First, the theme in this game is stronger than just about any other game I’ve played. That is fantastic, IMO. I don’t need to have theme in my games, but I strongly prefer it. There were so many times when we said, well that’s what we would do in real life. Things just made sense. The cooperative aspect is so much fun, as well. Since there are no turns, this is a highly social game with everyone having input on what we should be doing. For the most part, we were able to agree on things, but there were times when a player really needed to help themselves, so they had to go against the opinions of the group…just like in real life.

I came away very, very pleased with how everything turned out. So happy that someone in our group has a copy, even though I can see the game only being played a handful of times over the year, just because the amount of setup/breakdown involved. Can’t wait to see more copies in the wild so I can obtain one for myself. The solo game should work very well with the theme.

Find a copy, if you can. Then buy it.

The Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game has been in that category of games that I have really wanted to try out, but just never was able to pull the trigger. Well, after a friend of mine told me he could get the core set for $12 at Target, I couldn’t resist. The thing I have going for me is that my wife is is a huge Star Wars fan. To the point where you can ask her about a specific character and she’ll go into the entire back story. Needless to say, getting her into the theme did not take a lot of work. Now, getting her into playing a miniatures game…I was less confident about that.

My tried and true method of introducing new games to my wife came trough for me again. Set the game up on the table well ahead of time and just wait for that right moment to throw out the “hey, do you want to play a game tonight” question.

Ok, ok. Enough about that; what did I think of the game??

We played just the regular setup, where she had Luke and I had “Night Beast” and an Obsidian Pilot. The first game, I pretty much crushed her. One of my ships only took 1 damage. She must have learned a few things, because our second game turned out much differently. Critical hits on “Night Beast” early left me very vulnerable and she was quick to take advantage. After I was down to a single ship, I felt like I had to be on the offensive if I wanted to survive. Some fancy X-Wing navigating put her in perfect position for a crushing first strike, hitting me for all 3 damage on a single roll! That was the end of the Empire.

Love this game and want more ships ASAP! I do have 2 more core sets that are sitting unopened (in case it flopped), but I’m really looking forward to playing with more pilots, upgrade cards and just awesome new miniatures. Time to start getting into squad building, me thinks.

Viticulture is a game that I totally missed when it was on Kickstarter. A friend of mine ordered it online right after it came out and had very good things to say about it. We got a 4p game in and there were a lot of things to like about the game, but also couple issues.

As with many worker placement games, they need to scale with certain player counts. I felt like 4 might be toughest configuration because of the number of spaces that are either unavailable or are taken by the other 3 players. I found myself doing very little on a number of turns, even though I had all of my workers available simply because there was just not a legal place for me to go. Sure, having the game end at 20 points is unique, I would rather have the score track continue on and the end game triggered by something else. Eeking out 1 or 2 points a turn just doesn’t feel very fulfilling, even if it is 5-10% of the total points needed to win. You work so hard to fulfill and order that is…4 points. Psychologically it doesn’t make you all that excited.

All in all the game was very tight. You have to be extremely efficient, which is tough on the first play. This game, more so than many other games, will feel very different the next time I’m able to play. Even with the same player count.

Solid design, looking forward to playing again.

Werewolf Inquisition is a boardgameified version of the hugely popular game Werewolf (full disclosure, I’ve never actually played Werewolf). We played with 5, so that meant 2 Werewolf players and 3 Villagers.

A round consists of each player choosing one of the available roles, performing the action. These actions can be to see one of the face down cards that were set out in a grid format at the start of the game. They contain both Villagers and Werewolves. The Werewolf players are trying to kill those Villagers, whereas the Villager players are trying to kill the Werewolves.

After everyone has had a turn, everyone must vote for someone (or something) to be lynched. The card with the most votes is turned face-up and instantly dies. The role associated with that character is removed from the game.

Then the night phase starts. This is where the start player will pick a column of the face down cards and pass it around the table. Werewolves will be able to look at those cards and choose which will be killed.

Ok, so essentially that’s the game. Here’s where it didn’t work for me. A the beginning of a game like this we generally start right off accusing everyone of being either the spy, a Minion of Mordred or a Werewolf. Since it wasn’t all that crucial to know who the Werewolves were we were kind of just left with finding out through the actions of the players. Also, you have zero information to start the game, so voting is really random. Usually someone looked at a card and told everyone to keep it or kill it.

For me, a game like this has to really excel as a social experience. This did not. I’m sure a lot of people will meta game better than we did and with more players there are probably many more opportunities for bluffing but with 5 it seemed almost too balanced. If the right roles stayed in the game, the Villagers just needed to not make any dumb plays to win.

Other games played: Dominant Species ( x 4) and Show Manager ( x 3.5)

Look for my upcoming posts soon!

1. Android: Netrunner
   

   Android: Netrunner

   
   I have played other LCGs from Fantasy Flight and they all seemed very dull to me. That is until I saw the core Netrunner set on Amazon for $20 and decided, with my friend, to take a shot at it. Boy was that a great decision. I’ve played multiple games as both the Runner and the Corporation sides. I’ve even started to deck-build, which is not something I’ve ever really done before. Magic: The Gather was not something I was into when I was younger. Luckily this form of deck-building is a much cheaper alternative to that. This is the best, most enjoyable game of 2012.
2. Escape: The Curse of the Temple
   Great way to spend 10 minutes…that is if you can only play a single game at a time. I have yet to only play 1 game because it’s so easy to reshuffle the tiles and go again!
3. Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
   A wonderful Christmas present from my wife. Played many times solo and multiplayer. Even though it can sometimes be easy, I enjoy the theme and the artwork enough to keep trying different combination.
4. Descent: Journeys in the Dark (second edition)
   

   Descent

   
   Our group started a campaign and had a lot of fun. I’ve also played a one-off mission as the Overload and it works very well in both settings.
5. Lords of Waterdeep
   Hands down the intro worker placement game, now. I don’t really care about the theme, the game just flows so smoothly.
6. Merchant of Venus (second edition)
   Played the classic game a while ago, but the new version feels a lot more modern. Very much enjoyed the reprint. Looking forward to playing the reprinted, classic edition now.
7. Libertalia
   This was pretty high on my wishlist all year. Although it didn’t exceed my expectation, it was still a solid game with one of my favorite mechanics: role selection.
8. Fleet
   Have only played it once and it felt like it required at least a couple plays to “get it.” I could see the potential of a nice, quick auction/engine building game.
9. Morels
   Solid little 2-player game. Would fit perfectly in the Kosmos line of games.
10. Empires of the Void
    

    Empires of the Void

    
    After a couple plays, I can’t say that I’ll want to buy a copy, but it was enjoyable. Would still rather play Eclipse.
11. Legacy: Gears of Time
    I’m a sucker for everything that has to do with time travel. This does it pretty well, but the scoring brings it down for me. Just takes too long to explain and too long to execute.
12. Atlantis Rising
    This game might move up the list, as I’ve only played it once solo. It was crazy hard. The graphic design is wonderful and there is no other game with a board like this game. I’m interested to playing it more to see if I can figure it out.
13. D-Day Dice
    With high expectations coming from a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign, this was a bit of a disappointment. I was hoping for more tension and theme integration, but there are a few things that keep it from being a great game.
14. Infiltration
    Because I really got into the Android universe, I picked up a copy of this hoping to recreate some of the Netrunner elements. It kind of worked, but we need to play it again with the mindset of it being like a party game (quick turns, trash talking, risk taking, etc.). Has potential.
15. Agents of SMERSH
    Too long for what it is. The theme is very cool and underutilized in board games, in my opinion. Wouldn’t work with a family as there are a lot of little rules.
16. Dominant Species: The Card Game
    After my first play I was ready to throw this game out the window, but I played a couple more times and it didn’t totally suck, like…
17. Sentinels of the Multiverse: Enhanced Edition
    Ugh. Cannot see why people like this game. Didn’t work for me, didn’t work for anyone in our group.

Here are the 2012 games I or someone in my group owns and have yet to play (in no particular order):

Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendard

Here’s to 2013!

Village

This game has been on my radar for a long while. When TMG announced it would be selling copies directly through their website, I almost pulled the trigger, except for the “no new games, until I play the ones I’ve got” mandate I put on myself. I was definitely happy to hear that one of the people coming to our new local board game club was bringing his copy.

We played with 4 people, all new players. The owner of the game never played before, but did an excellent job of explaining the rules. Pretty standard worker placement fare, so we all grasped the rules really quickly. The differences between this game and a lot of the other games in this space was what set this apart, however. Each space requires you to take a resource cube, which seems like a great idea. Except for the fact that there are black cubes spread out across the board. Black cubes require you to use, one of the most interesting elements of the game, time. Each player has a board that tracks the amount of time they’ve used (or more accurately, their workers have lived). When your marker has gone all the way around the board, using 10 time spaces (I like to think of it as 100 years), you must select a worker to be either written about or buried. If written about, you gain a certain amount of victory points depending on how many of your other family members have also been written about. So using time can be beneficial. That is if you’ve planned it well enough to not have to see a valued family member parish before his/her time.

The path I took was to try and keep as many family members alive as long as possible, in order to take advantage of their wealth of knowledge. I was barely able to keep my guy in the church until the end of the game and it paid off big time. Even though I didn’t receive any points from the book, I accumulated so many points from dominating the church, it more than made up for it.

Obviously I’m simplifying the game a bit, but every turn was interesting and I felt like it flowed very well. I’m sure I’ll pick up a copy one of these days…when I finish playing all the other games I haven’t played, that is.

Dungeon Lords

This was my third play of Dungeon Lords (DL) and we had 2 brand new players with us. Rules explanation took a bit of time because of all the little details. It is a Vlaada game, after all. But they picked up on it pretty well and we were off.

I can say that I like this game a lot, but it does feel like he took a number of things in DL and refined them in Dungeon Petz. I’m anxious to see what will be added with the expansion that’s supposed to come out late this year (2012) or early next year (2013). Any crossover with Dungeon Petz would be awesome!

Cosmic Encounter

I don’t think I’ve documented my relationship with Cosmic Encounter (CE) on this site before. So I’ll give you some quick back story. My first play was extremely underwhelming. I had a single turn in the game and we used hardly any of the special cards. It was basically a pretty version of the old card game War. Fast forward to about a month ago (July, 2012) when one person from our game club brought his homemade copy of the original version of CE. We had a group of 5, so I was a little worried about whole one turn for the whole game thing. Fortunately we played with all kinds of special cards this time. Along with 2 aliens per player. It turned out to be a very, very fun game and totally changed my opinion of the game. Since then I’ve played one more game of it and it was equally as fun (although a bit longer than it should have been).

My most recent game also had 5 players and we used just about all the cards, except for a couple hazards that are generally not all that fun. Per the usual CE game, everyone’s powers seemed unbalanced so the meta-game was in full effect. The best part of the game (at least for me) was when I had 4 VP and I was attacking another player, who also had 4 VP, and we started talking about negotiating. I was very clear to state that we “can negotiate”, which he might have mistakenly took for we “will negotiate”. He played a Negotiate card, I played an Attack card and BAM, victory was mine! In any other game, backstabbing my friend would be a d**k move, but in CE it is the way it’s supposed to be played. Another great game.

Merchants and Marauders

Merchants and Marauders has been a game sitting on my shelf for a while now. I was committed to getting it to the table this week, though! More than 4 days before playing, I had it setup on my table going through the rules little by little to make sure I was prepared for anything that came up. Little did I know, the game would be over in about 1 1/2 hours…well below the expected time frame.

We had 3 players, one stated their intentions on being a Marauder from the get go. We all sailed around doing our thing, until the Marauder and the other Merchant met in the middle of the board. A battle ensued and the Marauder was able to take down the Merchant, plundering around $20 in cash, multiple cargo cards and pretty much ruining that captains day. Because he had one of the bigger ships, I was not about to get into a skirmish with him. Little did I realize, he was hoarding cash and all he had to do was sail back to his home port, stash $50 in gold and declare victory…just like that.

We were all like “what just happened?” Obviously I should have been more aggressive and not let him keep all that cash on board, but I almost felt like it would be a lost cause if I attacked him. I liked the game enough to give it a second chance. Especially since next time we’ll all know the rules. Beautiful game, which super high production quality. I hear an expansion is in the works, so that’s another reason to keep it around.

I didn’t find myself in Indy for GenCon, but I was still able to get a bunch of good games in with a bunch of good people. Maybe next year this space will be filled with all the cool new games I did get to play at GenCon, but if not, I know I can still have a good time without having to fly 2200 miles.

Prologue

Lately I haven’t had much gaming time at the table with my wife, since we have a brand new baby girl to raise. Games that can be played solo a bit more interesting to me, now. This is where Disaster on Everest, a solitaire game that simulates a group of hikers scaling Mount Everest. In this review I’ll let you know how the game plays and if it is an entertaining experience.

 
Conclusion spoiler (For those who like to get right to the point)

Good, solid solitaire game that is really unlike anything I’ve played. Length of the game is just right. Can be a bit fiddly, but no more so than most euro games.

 
Brief rundown of the rules (Skip if you know how to play)

Setup

Very simple setup. Pick a color of clients to explore the mountain, along with 2 guides. Place all the tokens on the Base Camp space. You then put all the event tiles into a bag or bowl; basically something to draw from. These will be used to simulate different events (both good and bad) that the climbers will encounter on their trip. Then you mark the number of Prestige you start the game with by placing a counter on the 18 space of the Prestige track.

Gameplay

The game is played over a variable number of rounds. At the beginning of each turn you draw an Event tile. At that point you have 2 things to do with that event. You can either “purchase” it, meaning you pay the amount printed on the tile in Prestige, then the event happens (all the different events are listed on 2, double sided player aids included in the game). Like I mentioned above, sometimes events are bad. So why would you want to purchase something that is not beneficial to the climbers? Well, you only have 6 “freebies” before the virtual storm hits. So if you pass on an event it goes on the “Storm Track” and pushes the game towards its end. After all 6 spaces are filled, then there are only 9 rounds left in the game and movement is severely limited.

The next part of the round is really the meat of the game. This is when you move you clients and guides up the mountain. The player has 3 options for movement: Move both guides; each guide can bring with them 1 client, for up to 2 spaces, Move one guide and 2 clients; clients can move the number of spaces printed on their token, or Move four clients. You can also forgo the movement of a single guide, for two turns to give you the ability to draw 3 events and choose the one you want to occur.

I should note that each guide has 2 of 4 different abilities: Fast – can move client 3 spaces, Expert Climber – can move through blocked ridges, Strong – can move 2 clients, Resolute – Ignores storm movement restrictions. Throughout the game you will be decided the most efficient way to get your climbers up the mountain…and back down.

After all the movement there are a few things to resolve like the Hillary Step, where the game intentionally slows the climbers down by putting them in a queue.

 
My Impressions

The game really fits in a unique space in my collection. Many games claim they can be played solo, but you’re really just dumbing down the actual game. This game is designed to be played by one player, so the rules are streamlined, there aren’t many things to keep track of that aren’t listed on the board and the play time is just about the right amount of time I want to be playing a game by myself

One issue I had was the components are certainly not up to the quality of most of the games I play these days. Now, there are nothing wrong with what’s included in the game, they are very functional. But they feel very cheap and look very basic. After I started playing, however, I was able to look past those things.

So if you’re looking for something you can bring you on long business trips or if you find yourself as the only one awake at night and want to play something, this is a great choice. It won’t win any beauty contests, but it’s definitely a solid game.

If you’re interested in picking up a copy of Disaster on Everest, our friends at VictoryPointGames.com have plenty in stock. So go grab yourself a copy!