0 A List - The Replacements

As lots of people know, I had a house fire a year ago that destroyed every game I owned. It also almost killed my son. Since that time, I've replaced a pretty good number of those games, though happily, I didn't have to replace my son. Do you have any idea how expensive it is to buy a new teenager? Probably not that expensive, actually. Most parents would probably pay me to take their teenage children off their hands.

A few people have asked me what games I replaced, and I thought it would make a handy article, and give me something to write about so I don't have to plow through eight episodes of Band of Brothers just to have a blog post.

1. Warhammer Quest.

Yep, it's still my favorite. The insurance gave me $500 to replace it, and I spent the whole thing. I got the base game in great shape, and it was even unpainted (bonus for me, since I prefer to paint my own minis). The merciful soul who sold the game to me also had a huge mess of extra minis and all the White Dwarf mags that had Warhammer Quest articles, and I got four of the expansion heroes, to boot. I was happy.

2. Heroscape.

My good friend had some extra Scape, and since that's pretty darn close to my favorite of all time, he let me buy it from him cheaper than he should have.

3. Frontiers, Nostra City and Wicked Witches Way.

I lump these all together because they were wicked cheap on Tanga and I got them all at the same time. I love all three of these games, especially Nostra City. When you have a game where you can rat your opponents out to the FBI while you peddle heroin and run whores, it's a winner in my book.

4. That's it.

See, the insurance gave me money for the games, but the repairs on the house went over by almost 20 grand. I wasn't able to buy replacements, because I had to fix my house. So those games are the only ones I was able to buy again. However...

5. Sentinels of the Multiverse.

When the guys at Greater Than Games found out about the fire, they sent me out a copy of the enhanced edition of Sentinels. Holy crapcakes, that's a fun game, and I've been playing the hell out of it. Mad thanks to the Greater Than guys, and also...

6. Super Dungeon Explore.

Same deal with the Cool Mini Or Not marketing dude - he replaced my copy of Super Dungeon Explore, because not only is he awesome, but I can't very well review expansions if I don't have the game.

7. 7 Wonders.

I actually do freelance work for the head marketing guy at Asmodee, and so on top of a bunch of other stuff, he hooked me up with a replacement for 7 Wonders after I helped out at BGG Con.

8. Russian Board Games That Are Actually Card Games.

The Russian guys who make the excellent Potion Making Practice sent me all the games that were lost in the fire, and threw in the expansions. I love those guys.

9. Nightfall.

The guy at AEG is a prince. I ran into him at BGG Con and he said to tell me all the games that I didn't have any more so that he could send me replacements. To be honest, I still haven't taken him up on the offer, because I feel obligated to plow through my current crop of review copies before I go asking for more. But the point is, he's a prince, and I can get Nightfall again when I finally have room in my review schedule.

9. Risk Legacy, Earth Reborn and Race for the Galaxy.

These were gifts from my old man. He's pretty awesome. Seriously. I can't emphasize enough how cool my dad is.

10. Rush N Crush.

My friend John saw a copy of Rush N Crush on sale at GenCon, and when he saw it, he remembered me talking about how much I like it. So he just up and bought it for me. He wouldn't let me pay him back, either.

11. Risk Black Ops.

The best one of all of these is this one right here. This is a bigger collector's item than Warhammer Quest, and I was certain I was never going to see it again. But my friend who worked at Hasbro finagled me a copy, and so I will bear his children,if he asks.

That's it. I would love to show you a long list of stuff, but for one thing, I wouldn't replace a long list of games, and for another thing, the money ran out. There weren't a whole lot of other games I would have bought anyway, and I actually got replacements for more than I thought I would. I'm lucky as hell to have some great friends, and a great dad, and I know some great people in the gaming world. While I would not recommend burning your house down just to find out how lucky you are, I'm not altogether sad it happened. Sure, it put an end to VixenTor Games by destroying all my tools and inventory, but it gave me something more valuable - it let me see how many incredible people I know.

And now I owe all these guys beers. My bar tab is going to murder me.

0 Board Game Review - Abaddon

Remember the early 90's? They were mostly kind of gross, with music predominately made by people who were about to kill themselves, but the games in the early 90's were actually pretty awesome. There was an incongruous mix of excellent plastic and oddly cheap cardboard, rules that were simple enough for a twelve-year-old to follow, and pictures of junior-high kids celebrating their Bat Mitvahs on the back of the box (they may have been celebrating something else, but I never saw an actual human being get that excited about a board game, so I don't think it was whatever they were playing). Also, I'm pretty sure they got the smallest kids they could find, because when I opened those boxes, the parts always looked smaller to me.

Richard Borg remembers the 90's, too, and all those games, probably because he made a bunch of them. And if his latest creation is any indication, he misses those crazy days as much as I do, because Abaddon could have been thrown into a time machine and brought here directly from 1994.

For starters, you've got giant robots. They're not called giant robots, they're called links, but they're not fooling anyone. When you have a walking machine with guns for arms, it's a giant robot. And when they fire missiles at other giant robots, you've got the start of a recipe for pure awesomeness. And when these giant robots are cool plastic sculpts (not cardboard, thank you very much Steve 'we got a million dollars to sell cardboard standups' Jackson), the recipe is getting better.

Abaddon also features components directly out of the 90's, like cheap cardboard and cheesy graphic design and blank dice where you have to put stickers all over them. My favorite ridiculously dorky game component is the victory point cup, with sounds like it should be pretty cool, but is in actuality a clear plastic cup that looks like it might once have been used for urine samples. Or, given the Chinese character stamped on the bottom, it may have held pudding that was only available overseas.

The rules are likewise yanked right out of the 90's. They're incredibly easy and straightforward, and go light on tactical brilliance in favor of buckets of luck. They're not complicated enough to provide for the kind of advanced maneuvering that would make Abaddon a serious game, but they still get you in the mood for firing long-range missiles at other stomping war machines. You totally get to blow stuff up.

A hallmark of 90's games was that a few bad dice rolls could completely ruin you, and Richard Borg has incorporated that brilliantly into Abaddon. When you shoot at an enemy mech, there is a very good chance that you could actually get shot yourself. More than once, as we were playing, attacking mechs would be destroyed on their own turn. But there's a little bonus worked in - if you roll exceptionally bad (as in, you get a 1), your opponent suffers a critical hit, and then you draw a card and see what happens. You could wind up with a weapon malfunction that won't let you attack, or you might burst into flames, or you could get (and this is a quote) super-duper charged and actually get better. It's a wild luck-fest, and it's hilarious.

One thing about lots of Richard Borg games that I've never completely embraced is the way you never know which of your soldiers will get to move on your turn. In the Command and Colors games, you use cards to determine who gets to move. In Abaddon, you have dice that you roll at the start of every turn, which means that sometimes you'll get to move everyone, and sometimes you get no turn at all. When your last scrappy mecha is holding a smart bomb to launch at an enemy, and you roll every kind of robot that is already dead, you'll wonder why you bother making any kind of plan at all.

But it's not as bad as it sounds. The odds of rolling absolutely nothing you can use are exceptionally low (though it could still happen), and you can still use an overall strategy, even if the dice won't cooperate. You might hold back to build your strength, throwing long-range attacks every now and then, or you might get ballsy and just rush in, guns blazing. The beginner scenarios don't have much in the way of tactical complication, but as you play through the different board set-ups provided in the rules, you'll see more and more ways to set up crossfires, flanking maneuvers, defensive formations and other stuff that will let you send giant pneumatic robots to their scrap heap in the sky.

Abaddon channels 1992 like it was brought here on the Tardis. It doesn't try to get all fancy with cutting-edge game mechanics, efficiency exercises or complicated initiative rules. It gives you cool plastic mechs and fistfuls of dice, then gets out of the way so you can blow each other to tiny mechanical bits. If you're looking for amazing production value, brilliant innovation or strategic depth, you're in the wrong decade. Abaddon is unpretentious, and reminds us why we like gaming in the first place - it's like playing with toys, only with rules.

Maybe that's why I miss the 90's. I like not having to pretend that playing with plastic robots makes me smarter than other people. That, or I miss having a full head of hair.

Summary 

2-4 players

Pros:
Excellent plastic mechs - and lots of 'em
It is very damned fun to blow things to hell with giant robots
Light, but still with a little room for strategy
Straightforward and easy to learn
Like playing with toys

Cons:
Not as deep as some people might hope
Some really crappy components (not counting the awesome plastic robots)

Want to play games like it was 1999? Well then run over to Noble Knight and get you some!
YOU KNOW, LIKE THE PRINCE SONG

0 Board Game Review - Panic Station

GenCon has been a whirlwind. I was hoping to get some time to go discover some new games, but I have been stuck in the Asmodee booth selling the bejeezus out of Libertalia (which, I may have mentioned, is pretty awesome). So instead of telling you about some exciting new game, I will tell you about one I played last weekend and thought was pretty darn fun.

The game was Panic Station, and my exceptionally timely review comes out only a year or so after its release. In terms of board games, that makes it a super old game, and every reviewer worth a pile of warm spit has already reviewed it, leaving me to pull in last like your annoying kid brother saying, 'hey, guys, can you believe the latest Avril Lavigne album?' when everyone else is already listening to Adele. (Please, someone tell me we haven't moved on from Adele yet.)

Panic Station has a team of 4-6 players trying to stop a viral infection from taking over YouTube and posting your homemade sex movies. That, or you're fighting an alien invasion. Honestly, it's probably that second one. The first one would hardly be a family game.

The problem with fighting this alien invasion is that you're in a remote Arctic research station, and one of you almost certainly has a bad case of alienitis. That one person is going to try to infect the rest of the crew,  and if he can pull it off, the bad guys all win - except for the last guy who got sick.

Yeah, this is a familiar idea. It's basically the plot of The Thing, except this one has androids for no apparent reason except to be wacky. I mean, the android on each team is the only one who can shoot a gun, even if the human can find one, so he is handy to have around, but the game could have just given you each a scientist and a soldier. Some of the thematic elements don't make a lot of sense, is what I'm saying. It would be like if your team was a hardened killer and Bert from Sesame Street.

Also, the rules are kind of a mess. The publisher, Stronghold Games, has drafted a final, corrected version of the rules, and before you try to read the rules for yours, you should talk with them about getting the new one. The original is so convoluted and confusing that the first time we played, we did almost every single thing wrong. And so we hated it, and I had to go check out BGG to see what I did wrong, and then amidst heavy groans from my friends, we played it again.

And the second time, we loved it. In fact, we loved it so much that we played it twice, and I got requests to bring it back again. It is absolutely not a perfect game, and there are a lot of ways to do it wrong, but when my group is that adamant about wanting to play it again, the game did something right.

What Panic Station does right is paranoia. It has everyone accusing the other players of being shifty and disreputable, of displaying antisocial tendencies, and of having smelly feet. Come to think of it, we're gamers. We might just have smelly feet.

The greatest thing about this particular game of mistrust and deception is how quickly the paranoia can shift. If you are certain that you know which of your friends are trying to kill you, and then another of your friends finds himself in a potentially compromising situation, you will find yourself questioning his motives, even as he attempts to assure you that he avoided the infection. You just won't know who is on your side.

Of course, at some point, it begins to be pretty obvious which players are trying to kill the others. And after that, Panic Station changes into an exciting game about paranoia and turns into an exciting game of tactics and strategy and scheming. The humans have to fight their way through a station overrun with parasites and alien hosts, avoiding infection and gathering the crucial elements they need to burn the nest and stop the alien horde from spreading to the world. At this point, even with certain knowledge of which players are bad and which are good, there still remains an enormous amount of tension, the kind of tension that, when one team finally beats the other, will have you celebrating loudly and proclaiming to your enemies, 'Ha! In your face, alien scum!' until you remember that one of them is your ride home.

Like I said before, Panic Station is not perfect. It is almost too easy for the aliens to win in a four-player game, and not very hard for the humans if they have six. This is easily overcome by the fact that the real strength of the game is in how well it draws out unpleasant emotions like fear and mistrust and a general hatred of stinky shoes. Again, the shoes might just be because someone should be washing their feet, but I am not making any apologies. We play on Saturday afternoons. You guys are just lucky I'm wearing a clean shirt.

Despite a handful of flaws that would seriously ruin a different game, Panic Station is actually really good. It has balance issues, thematic problems, and a confusing rule book, but in the end, it delivers the most important thing a game can deliver - fun. You will scheme and accuse, plan and fail, and probably get a lot of your friends killed. Those might be the ingredients for a really horrible high school dance, but they make a great recipe for a fun game.

Summary

4-6 players

Pros:

Plenty of paranoia

Loads of planning and scheming

Enough mistrust that you avoid the classic cooperative lead-dick syndrome

Pretty darn fun

Cons:

Rules may cause you to play completely wrong

Odd thematic decisions break the suspension of disbelief

Inconsistent with varying sizes of groups

I am posting this review from my iPad, and it is almost impossible to put in links on this thing. When I get back to a real computer again, I will tell you to go get it at Noble Knight Games.

0 Board Game Review - Monopoly Millionaire

I know that in some circles, it's offensive to say you like Monopoly. It's like walking into a Baptist church and saying you have a thing for naked sheep. But I can't help it, I love Monopoly.

There's awesome deal-making. There's shrewd building. There's timing and calculating odds and a whole lot of luck. Sure, it may take a couple hours, but I don't care. It's two awesome hours, and that works great for me. If you can't finish in two hours, you're doing it wrong.

But Hasbro keeps messing with it. Apparently, nobody ever told them that if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Some reinventions have been kind of cool, like the one where you build parks and prisons and stuff, and the Monopoly Deal card game was actually pretty damned slick. But they're not all perfect. For example, there's Monopoly Millionaire.

This is one they could have thrown back. There are a lot of things wrong with Millionaire, and it looks like they made all the changes to make the game finish faster. Well, as a die-hard fan of Monopoly, I don't want the game to finish faster. I don't want an artificial accelerant added to my Monopoly, any more than I want artificial grass added to my furniture. I want all the underhanded dealing and ruthless maneuvering. I don't want to finish early just because some Euro geek said Monopoly lasts too long.

For instance, they took out two spaces from every side. There are no more trains, no more utilities. They took out the tax spots, too. You can call those spots extra if you want, but they added a ton to the game. Not so much as income properties, since they were capped pretty low, but they were great for trading fodder, and I could always fool - er, cajole someone into giving me a lopsided deal by throwing in the B&O.

They made the pawns upgradeable. You've got three levels of each pawn, so you start out in a go kart, upgrade to a convertible, and then one more time for a limo. OK, never mind, that part was kind of interesting.

They put special powers on some of the cards that would let you do stuff like steal property from other players or jump ahead to the next unowned property. This part I disagree with vehemently, because stealing from the other players should only occur when they don't actually know you're stealing from them. Like if you say, 'look, I'll give you Park Place, and you give me Tennessee, and then we'll both have a monopoly, and yours will be awesome' and neglect to point out that the orange properties get more traffic than any other spaces on the board. And then immediately put hotels on them when the other player is about to land on them, and you steal all their money and they have to mortgage Park Place to pay for the rent they just gave you. And then take Park Place.

But the worst part is that they made the game end when one player has a million dollars. This wouldn't be so bad, but they added zeroes to the end of every bill, and a million bucks is chump change. It's like having a thousand in classic Monopoly, and I've hit that point after someone else bunches of times and still won the game. It's a crappy way to end the game before you get to the good part.

If I had to guess, the Hasbro marketing guys spent five minutes reading comments at BGG, and saw some ADD asshat say that Monopoly takes too long, and they want it to end in half an hour. Then the marketing guys went to the designers and said, 'make the game end in half an hour,' and the designers said, 'but it will suck at half an hour,' and the marketing guys said, 'no, some random BGG asshat said half an hour would make it a good game, so make that happen.' Then the designers looked around at the job market and said, 'since our main employable skill is making board games in a nation where most of the people only play games on their iPads, and we don't even have the programming skills to set up our DVRs, maybe we better do that.' And so they did.

I can see what Hasbro was going for with Monopoly Millionaire. They were trying to make it finish quicker, because today's gamers want their games to end before they accidentally start having fun. But in this case, they have made a big mistake. While previous versions of Monopoly actually improved the game, like the little computer thing that would keep track of your money by swiping a credit card, this one is a failed bit. I wanted to like it, because since the fire, it's the only version of Monopoly I own.

Unfortunately, Monopoly Millionaire sucks all the soul out of the old classic like a Ghostbusters vacuum cleaner. Everything that I love about classic Monopoly is gone, replaced by copious amounts of luck and flashy pieces. I easily admit that this is the prettiest version of Monopoly, and I do kind of like the upgradeable pawns, but that's it. There is literally no other thing about Millionaire that is better than the original, and a whole lot wrong. Skip it. I can't think of a good reason to own this game.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Looks really good
I do like the upgrading pawns

Cons:
Fixed what wasn't broken
Took everything that was great about Monopoly and surgically removed it

Don't get Monopoly Millionaire. I'm only posting the picture so you know what to avoid.

0 Board Game Review - Merchants & Marauders

I started writing my review of Merchants & Marauders last night, and realized that I would have to be a much better writer than I actually am if I wanted to make this game sound like it was as fun as I found it to be. So I scrapped it and started over, though I'm not sure why I bothered, having already thrown in the towel and decided the task was beyond my level of expertise.

The problem is that when I start telling you about the game, you're going to think Merchants & Marauders is slightly less retarded than a brain-damaged lab rat chewing on the plastic pawns from Candyland. 'Ooh,' I'll say, 'you can buy stuff in one port and then go to another port and… wait for it… sell it!' And you'll think I'm an idiot.

Or I'll tell you how you can turn pirate and raid merchant ships, and the raid is summarized by drawing three cards and seeing if your victim escaped or if he just shot some holes in your dinghy. And if you win the fight with the merchant, you will get some money and some cargo and you can take that cargo to a port, where you can… wait for it… sell it! I know, I sound like an idiot.

It's fun, I swear. It sounds like a game about running a business, but instead of doing all this competitive bidding and screwing opponents out of great contracts, you just handle the accounting and order office supplies. But it's not that game at all, because you have pirates. And you can be pirates. And you can die.

Oh, yes! I did forget to mention that, didn't I? Yeah, your pirate can totally croak. You can have your ship shot out from under you and find yourself tits up in Davy Jones' locker (which is stinky, because he was in the Monkees and girls used to give him used undergarments and he kept them in his locker). You can get stabbed to death by enemy pirates, be hanged by Dutch naval officers, or be forced to walk the plank by the other players at the table. Yep, the other people playing the game can kill you. If you want interaction in your board games, it really doesn't get any better than killing the other players (not literally, of course, unless some nimrod spills a beer on the board, and then no jury would convict you).

In fact, the better you do, the higher the odds get that someone will want to kill you. A really successful pirate will be wanted by the nations he has offended, and those nations will pay a whole buttload of money to anyone that can bring down the scurvy raccoon who keeps stealing all their silk pajama pants. If you're a crazy good pirate, the other players are going to have very good reasons to try to hurt you and keep you from winning, especially because if you are a really good pirate, you've probably got some great stuff worth stealing.

You don't have to get all piratical to play Merchants & Marauders. You can be an honest merchant plying the Caribbean, trading sugar in Port Royal and cacao in Havana and slaves in… oh, no wait, that's still distasteful. We don't want to be that historically accurate. Let's just stick with exploitation of the locals and murder of innocents.

However, just because you don't have to be a pirate, that doesn't mean there's not a good reason to give it a shot anyway. It's easy to knock off some poor floating treasure barge and make off with all their tobacco. Plus, if you do, there's a really good chance that the French navy will send all its ships to come get you, and they'll blow big holes in your boat and you can shoot back at them and you can both swing over to the other ship on ropes hanging from the snarled rigging, and then you can each realize that the enemy is on the other ship and swing back, but then the other guys are swinging back, and the whole episode looks like one of those hilarious Scooby Doo sketches where the heroes run in different doors on either side of a long hallway and the bad guy never catches up to them.

It wouldn't seem like there are many different things to do in Merchants & Marauders, but pirating and trading aren't the whole deal. You can upgrade your ship with better sails and cannons, you can hang out in bars and listen for rumors, you can lead the English frigate to the pirate hideout, or you can battle dangerous pirates on the open seas. And you can swash all these buckles on a stunningly attractive board with fantastic plastic ships and beautifully illustrated cards. And even though I know this sounds like it wouldn't be very much fun, Merchants & Marauders is probably the best pirate game I've ever played.

And the reason I really liked Merchants & Marauders is that while it lacked crazy depth or difficult decisions, it felt like I was a freebooting privateer in the Golden Age of Piracy. I was Henry Morgan and Bartholomew Roberts, alternating between bloodthirsty raids and legitimate business ventures. I scraped my hull in the shallows, sheltered in port during a storm, and braved angry Spaniards who wanted to stretch my neck. I covered myself in glory and gold, and if I had been a real pirate, you would be reading about me today. Probably you would also read about how I got butt lice and died too fat to get out of my bed, but the pirate I played in Merchants & Marauders was practically a historical figure. And I say 'practically,' because it was just a game. Real pirates marched across Panama to raid cities on the Pacific, and I didn't get to do that.

When I say Merchants & Marauders is the best pirate game I've played, keep in mind that I'm qualifying it with the word 'pirate.' This is important because I can't think of any pirate games I actually liked enough to want to play very often. Pirate's Cove was fun… twice. That pirate game from WizKids was terrible. So there's not a lot of competition, which means that saying Merchants & Marauders is the best pirate game is not the same thing as saying it's awesome.

I'm offering that qualification because although I did enjoy Merchants & Marauders, I don't know that I'm going to play it another fifty times. I won't be getting rid of it soon, but it just didn't have the epic punch or brain-steaming strategy that I usually like when I play a game. It was fun, and at times exciting, but if I never got to play it again, I would kind of shrug and say, 'meh, I'll live.' Compare that to some of my actual favorites, where if you said I couldn't play them again, I would kick you in the dingus.

If you're looking for a great pirate game that captures the feel of the days of swashbuckling danger on the high seas, Merchants & Marauders can deliver. It doesn't have a ton of depth, but that's OK because it's more about playing out the story of being a disreputable businessman in a time when laws were more like rules of thumb and brazen men made their own fortunes at the end of a sword. Or they bought stuff in one port, when to another port, and then… wait for it… sold it.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Be a pirate! Or a merchant! Or a merchant-slash-pirate! It's an adventure however you do it.
Absolutely fantastic art and pieces
Enough strategy to be worth playing twice

Cons:
A little shallow, but still enough meat to be satisfying

If you want a good pirate game, I think you would be hard-pressed to do much better than Merchants & Marauders. You can get it from Noble Knight Games:
ARR BLOW ME DOWN

0 Board Game Revisit - Risk Legacy

My new plan of playing the games I actually enjoy even though I have a huge stack of review copies sitting in the corner of the room and calling in silent, hissing voices, 'play us!' is working out pretty well. Today, instead of playing one of the dozen games I've got lurking in the corners of my office like monstrous toddlers with sharpened teeth, I played two games of Risk Legacy. I may not have reduced the pile any, but DAMN! did I have a good time.

The first time I reviewed Risk Legacy was about a year ago, before it came out. I played 13 games on that particular copy, which was obviously unlucky because my house caught fire before I could make it to 14, and destroyed that copy of the game. That level of luck is infectious, apparently, because when Risk Legacy's numerical curse destroyed the copy I had, it took every other game with it. It also cost me fifteen thousand dollars to fix the house. That was one unlucky board game.

So being a rationally superstitious man, when I got a replacement copy of Risk Legacy for my birthday a month ago, I resolved that I absolutely had to play it more than 13 times. Sure, I could have decided to stop playing after 12 games, but come on. It's Risk Legacy. It's one of my favorite games. I would much rather break the curse by going to 14. I'll risk it.

The thing that struck me as I played games two and three on my new copy was how incredibly awesome this game really is. I already know what's in all the envelopes, so it's not as though I'm looking forward to the surprises Hasbro has seen fit to bestow upon me. But what amazes me is how this new board is completely different, and the games I play on it will be new and fun and unlike anything we've played before. The surprises that matter are not the ones Hasbro dreamed up. The surprises are the ones you'll create yourself because you really need to protect North Africa, so you put in a bunker, or the world capital winding up in Canada and being named Sphincter.

Risk Legacy is the most unique game you'll ever play. Sure, it's a do-over of a 50-year-old classic, but there is no other game that mutates and changes so thoroughly as you play, until your Risk Legacy game will be unlike every other Risk Legacy game, and the more you play it, the more you make it your own. No other game has you writing in permanent marker on the board, tearing up the cards as you play, or putting stickers into the rulebook. Well, OK, other games have tried, but it was always a lame gimmick, and not anything that actually worked. Risk Legacy, on the other hand, works.

The furor over Risk Legacy has died down, thanks largely to the fact that gamers can only focus on any particular game for 45 minutes, or until Matlock is over. I still remember all the people who have revolted against the concept of permanently altering their game, people who have called Hasbro a money grab or tried to coat their board in dry-erase plastic so they could wipe out their changes. I remember all these people who totally missed the point and I want to get a little angry at their short-sighted idiocy, but when I do start to feel my blood pressure rising, I remember that I am having so much more fun than they are. It's like revenge for them being stupid - you feel free to act like retarded nerdlings, because in the end, I have something almost magical, and all you have is an obsessive-compulsive disorder and conspiracy theories that you can expound on the Internet to other like-minded anal-retentive assholes.

It's amazing to me that I have not grown the least bit tired of Risk Legacy. I love the game as much today as I did the first time I played it. This is the only time I'll play a game five times in a weekend and still say, 'anyone up for one more?' It's also the only game where, if I said that, everyone would agree.

Most people who play Risk Legacy will never need more than one copy. They may not even play through it 15 times. If they do, they can continue to enjoy their uniquely branded copy of this amazing game for as long as they like having fun. But for my part, having seen how much fun it is to build this world twice, I plan on owning several copies before I die. I'm going to have the one where Alaska's biggest city is Palinoia, and Brazil is a smoking ruin, and then I'll have the one where the world capitol is Testica, and then I'll have the one where the Enclave of the Bear guys can't spread out too fast because they get insecure if they get too far away from each other. I'll play one copy until the world gets a name, then play it some more, then I'll go get another one and start a new planet. Then when we decide to play Risk Legacy, we'll go grab them all and decide which one looks like the most fun.

If you haven't played Risk Legacy yet, what the hell is wrong with you? If you ask me, it's a flat-out travesty that it didn't sweep every award for 2011, and I simply cannot imagine why every gamer on the planet isn't playing it right now. Well, not right this minute. It's late. Your mom is wondering why you haven't walked the dog yet. So go let Spot mark an X, then get back inside and do something important - play Risk Legacy again.

0 Board Game Review - Starship Merchants

When you see a game called Starship Merchants in today's market, you are most likely to believe that this is one of those games where you build ships and explore planets and conquer enemies and have political battles in the senate where Jar-Jar Binks is responsible for the fall of the Republic because, unbelievably, somebody took the goofiest dingbat in the entire Star Wars universe and said, 'man, you know what this comic-relief halfwit would do best? Politics!' Maybe they thought he looked like Lyndon LaRouche.

But it's not one of those games. It's an exercise in economics, supply and demand, and business planning. It has more in common with a Euro about a bunch of Spaniards trading across the Atlantic (you know, the ones where we conveniently ignore that slaves were a high-yield crop and pretend all anybody wanted was coffee beans and sugar). You'll hire ships, trick them out with killer upgrades, then mine minerals that look like french fries out of an asteroid belt. It's one of those games where making a bunch of money is the ultimate goal, and where you'll spend all your money every turn so that next turn you can make more money, which you will, in turn, spend all in one turn.

It's a very interesting game with loads of critical decision points. You can blow all your dough on buying a ship outright, or you can buy on credit and pay it back later, along with some rather painful interest. But if you spend everything, you might not have any money left for a pilot or a survey computer, and then the guy with the debt can scoop you for the best space ice cubes. You might buy a refinery, and hope it pays off long-term, and then find out that you can't afford the three extra bucks that would let you pick up a new ship and carry even more purple paintballs.

There's even a little luck, because when you do get out to the asteroid belt and want to see what's available, you're pulling cardboard squares out of a cloth bag. Get the really great squares, and you'll make a ton of money. Get the crappy ones, and you'll make... slightly less money. There is luck, but it's not much luck, and so this is still a game that hinges almost exclusively on making the right decision at the right time.

What it is not is very interactive. Whether you buy the best ship or not is irrelevant to the guy behind you, unless when you bought the best ship, he couldn't get one. He also doesn't care if you get the best space rocks unless he also wanted those exact space rocks. There is some opportunity to mess with the other players, like if you get the new model spaceship and make the old model obsolete, leaving your opponents with ships that aren't worth the paint on the hull. But for the most part, you could play this game solo, except that then you wouldn't know if you won.

I did really enjoy Starship Merchants. Toy Vault is starting to impress me with some pretty decent games - between Abaddon and this one, we've got some pretty darn cool games coming out of this company that used to just make fuzzy Cthulhu stuffed animals, which are perfect if you're a horribly maladjusted parent who tells his kids Lovecraft stories at bedtime. All these successes have me excited for Apparatus, the next game from Toy Vault, and I'm even considering picking up a pair of stuffed zombie-face slippers for my daughter.


If you're a fan of games where people die, Starship Merchants is going to leave you wondering if you couldn't have more fun playing Barbies with your friend's four-year-old niece. There will be the same amount of violence, unless your buddy's niece is a little unhinged. It's very much a game about running a business, making efficient decisions, and spending just the right money at just the right time. If you're bored by games that feel like you're managing a fast-food chain, you're not going to like this one.

But if you're the kind of person who enjoys the kinds of games that come out of Germany, where it is actually illegal to make games where people get killed (unless they die of old age, sleeping peacefully in their beds, and the game abstracts it by saying 'discard one family token from the hovel, because Grandpa was hungry and you couldn't bring yourself to kill the family cow for a couple of flank steaks'), you might really enjoy Starship Merchants. It has a few painful rules oversights, like not mentioning what happens when a player can't buy a new ship and loses his old one because the space fins fall off, but by finding workarounds and making up a few rules while we were playing, we got around these problems and had a very good time.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Very smart game with lots of good decisions and planning
Good management without feeling too much like work
Engaging and tricky, and even when you're far behind, there's still fun stuff to do

Cons:
Not much in the way of interaction
Some rather glaring rules oversights

If Starship Merchants sounds like your kind of good time, get yourself over to Noble Knight Games and get a copy, and even save a little money on it:
GET PAID IN SPACE

0 Board Game Review - Mice & Mystics

You know that scene from The Jerk, where Steve Martin is all excited because the new phone book has arrived at the gas station, and he goes, 'The new phone book is here! The new phone book is here!' Remember how he's so far over the top that he is running around with his hands in the air? Well, that was me when Mice & Mystics finally showed up at my house. My copy is a demo that was used at GenCon, and let's just say that it has been lovingly enjoyed, but I didn't care because I was so damned excited to finally play with my family.

Now, first things first, I've already written about this game once. But when I wrote about it last time, I was just playing with the guy who made it. We tried it, had a good time, but I was just enjoying the experience, and not trying to run the damned thing. It's one thing to have Jerry standing there going, 'yeah, now you get this, and you did that so here's one of these, and have some chili because I just made it.' It's another thing entirely to be the guy who reads the rules and has to remember how many different treasures you can have, and when do the rats get a turn, and what does it mean when the roaches are greedy. I assumed it couldn't be too hard, considering the fact that the game is designed to be for families.

And I was right. It was pretty darn easy. And that meant that instead of having to be the dungeon-mastering head man, I was able to join in the game alongside everyone else and have swashbuckling miniature adventures against cranky house cats, villainous rats and monstrous spiders. We climbed out of sewer drains and up into the kitchen. We slew cockroaches like a can of Raid. We made friends with the castle cook, dodged the vicious crow, and finally escaped from the tunnels, only to find more adventure waiting for us.

All the administrative stuff, and the different rules that actually allow you a fairly wide set of options on any given turn, are made simple through the use of a very cool set of dice. The dice have swords and shields and arrows and numbers and explody marks, and best of all, cheese. When you move, you roll the dice and check the numbers. When you search, you roll the dice and look for explosions. When you fight, you roll the dice and look for swords or shields (and cheese - you'll want a lot of cheese). Special abilities will have you roll and look for cheese, or explosions, or shields, or whatever else, and it means that the game has tons of flexibility without getting complicated.

I've already commented at length at how much the game feels like living out a story, but the thing that impresses me now that I've had to actually be in charge of a game is how well the rules make those stories happen. Mice & Mystics contains an incredible number of customizable components, from double-sided boards and delightful treasures to swappable encounter cards and a flexible timer. With subtle manipulations that appear to be little more than a flick of the wrist, a journey through the castle pipes can be either a frenzied race from an implacable foe to a charge into the face of a powerful enemy.

The story book that you get in Mice & Mystics does an incredible job of showing how flexible this system can be. The various adventures you can play will have you escaping, rescuing, sneaking, sabotaging, and otherwise doing all manner of heroic things made that much more heroic because you're playing a mouse. The adventures string together, and if your mouse learns how to thundersqueak in one thrilling tale, he'll still know how for the next one. This would seemingly create a situation where you'll eventually become too powerful, but happily, the additional abilities are not super powers, they're just a wider array of options.

And those options are beautiful. Now that I've seen the card art, the delightfully sculpted plastic miniatures, the beautifully illustrated tiles and the board shaped like a broken grandfather clock, I can't believe this wasn't made by a much bigger publisher. The components are so high-quality that even though my copy had been played something like 20 times already, it was in surprisingly good shape. Everyone in the family had to stop playing every now and then to gawk at the pictures or examine the minis. Money went into this game, and a lot of talent, but the most obvious thing that went into Mice & Mystics was passion. This isn't just a product. It's a labor of love.

I've heard some concerns about the ability to play this game once you've finished the book. I suppose from one standpoint I can understand it, but at the same time, do you complain about a D&D module because you can't play it twice? Or do you take a look at all the tools at your disposal then do like junior-high kids have been doing since the 70's, and start making your own dungeons with hundreds of demonic seductresses and no bathrooms? Because having read through the rules, played the game and had a look at all the pieces at your disposal, I can promise that if we finish all these adventures before more come out, I'll be writing my own. And it won't even be that hard, because all the pieces are already there.

I think that's one of the things that I really noticed when I was able to hold a copy of the game in my hands - there is so much I can do with this one base set than I imagined. Once my heroes finish with the evil witch and her evil minions, I can use what I already have to build new scenarios that will be just as thrilling and imaginative as the ones I've already played. As more pieces are released for Mice & Mystics, I can add those to my repertoire, and I'll have so many fun things to do with this game that I will have even less time to play all my other games.

Honestly, I really hope Plaid Hat Games releases some mini-expansions that include stuff like new treasures and opponents, because I can see myself having a great time writing my own stories. And the great thing about Mice & Mystics is that unlike every other dungeon crawl I've ever played, the story is the most important part. It's not all about establishing line of sight or managing the combat order. It's not a game where you have to balance your inventory or count your gold. You might look for the weapon that grants the best attack bonus, but you'll do it because you have to save the realm from the clutches of the dark queen, not because you're trying to balance attack speed with defensive bonuses.

I have said for a very long time that my favorite game of all time is Warhammer Quest. I'm not entirely prepared to surrender that position, partly because I've got a few hundred plastic miniatures to paint and I paid 500 bucks to replace the copy I lost in a fire. But I can comfortably say that Mice & Mystics is easily in my top three, sharing the limelight with Risk Legacy. And if I get the tools I need to make Mice & Mystics the game I know it can be, I might have a copy of Warhammer Quest available, cheap.

Summary

2-4 players (maybe more, depending on the adventure)

Pros:
The most story-driven board game I've ever played
Planning and strategy and tactics are important, too
Absolutely stunning components
Exceptionally good to play with your kids (unless you cuss as much as I do when you win)
One of my favorite games ever

Cons:
Not enough out yet to make it my number one

Mice & Mystics still isn't out yet, which means you've still got time to get in on the awesome preorder. You can save $25 on a $75 game, and get two promos in the process. But time is running out, so hurry your ass up and order.
http://www.plaidhatgames.com/store/18

0 Board Game Review - Puzzle Strike 3rd Edition

Oh my holy crap. I have been playing this game wrong since I got it two years ago. It worked so well that I just assumed that's what was intended, and now I feel kind of stupid because I finally read the rule correctly and thought it was a rule change. The rules haven't changed for counter-crashing, I just played wrong for two freaking years.

So now I feel bad. Sort of. See, the way we played it worked so well that we could knock out four games in two hours, and we loved it. When we played it correctly, we didn't like it any more, because it took too long and was kind of slow. What used to be a slam-fest is now kind of long in the tooth.

So I apologize. The rule change was not a rule change. This is the same game as before, but a little more free-for-all than it used to be. I'm keeping my first review up here, so that everyone can see what a maroon I am. I take it back, and when I review Shadows, the expansion to Puzzle Strike, I'll make sure to play it right. Then I'll revert to playing it wrong, because the way we used to do it, we liked it a lot better.

Here's the original (wrong) review:

It must be so awesome to be Dave Sirlin. Not because his games are successful - they are, but that's not why I'm jealous. I wish I was Dave Sirlin because there must be a parade playing in his head every day, where little imaginary people carry him on imaginary shoulders and whistle 'Hail to the Chief' everywhere he goes. To read the rules he writes, he is this generation's greatest  designer, a veritable virtuoso of cardboard, the Amadeus of gaming.

Though I have to wonder - if Sirlin is so magnificent, why does he need three tries to get it right? Puzzle Strike 3rd Edition is the same game as Puzzle Strike 2nd Edition and Puzzle Strike 1st Edition (the original, of course, was just called 'Puzzle Strike,' because it came out before Sirlin knew he was going to have to keep changing it). The difference between the two predecessors and this latest iteration is that a bunch of the chips changed and the rules of the game changed. Yeah, that's all.

The least obvious but most interesting changes that Sirlin has made to his magnum opus is that many of the character chips have changed. By way of refresher, you start each game with three character chips that are unique to you, and buy more as you play. These character chips are usually fairly powerful and can really alter how you play. The fire chick can take wounds to do some harsh attacks, then throw the wounds away to do other attacks. The fish dude has lots of defensive capabilities. The panda is pretty good at getting paid. The ninja girl is extraordinary at showing people her bikini underwear.

The changes in the character chips range from 'so what' to 'I can't believe he did that.' The panda, for instance, has changed almost completely. My original copy was lost in the fire, so I'm going off memory for some of these, but I do remember most of these being pretty much how they are now, with several being very different. The changes affect... well, almost nothing, really. They probably make the game more balanced, so that you can win with whoever you use, since that's kind of Sirlin's thing. He believes emphatically in balanced tournament play, and fun is a lot less important than balance.

For instance, he probably thought the 'combine' action was overpowered. That would explain why it costs you money to do it, which would make it a little more difficult to decide whether to combine your gems if it were not for the fact that you almost always want to combine your gems whenever you possibly can. This particular change has almost no effect on game play, at least from where I'm sitting, because I'm still going to combine every single time I can, and I don't care how much it costs.

The rules changes, on the other hand, definitely change how you play. For starters, it's not last-man-standing any more. The game ends when one player goes over 10 gems, and then the player with the smallest gem pile wins. I think this decision was made to balance out the other significant alteration, in which countering attacks actually removed gems from the game.

As opposed to nearly every other change, which I have to say are all improvements, this cancelling thing almost ruins Puzzle Strike, at least for me. The best thing about Puzzle Strike was always how fast it went, how it would be almost a frenzy of action for 20 minutes and then you would be watching the last two players battle it out. I liked that. Hell, I loved that. I liked the old Puzzle Strike more than nearly every other deckbuilder, exactly because it was this frenetic, mind-bending duel that would build towards an inevitable climax. It was tense and fast and fun.

Now, though, Puzzle Strike 3 is not fast or tense, and that has the basic result of making it less fun. It takes almost three times as long to finish a game, and it has removed the tension and sense of impending doom. It might balance better, and it might make for better two-player tournament play, but it has made these giant strides at the expense of making it not as much fun to play.

I know Dave Sirlin is a genius. I know this because it says so in the rules, where he says how fantastic the game is, and how it's hard to make a game this fantastic. But genius or not, I'm going to have to overrule him. When I play Puzzle Strike with my friends (as opposed to tournaments, because I would rather lick the shocky end of a 9-volt battery than play this game in a tournament), we will not use the amazing disappearing gem rule. We're overthrowing the establishment, breaking the rules, forging our own path and striking our own trail. We're true innovators. Mavericks, if you will. What's next? I don't know. Maybe we'll start ripping tags off mattresses or feeding our mogwais after midnight.

I'm poking a lot of fun at Dave Sirlin here, and it's not entirely fair because I have, by-and-large, enjoyed all his games. Yomi was a blast. Flash Duel is still a riot, and the new version is even better than the original. And Puzzle Strike is still awesome, but in this case, it's going to be awesome because I am throwing out some if his rules. They might work great for two-player tournament battles, but they suck when you're playing with your friends. And unlike Dave Sirlin, I don't give a flying rat's ass about game balance, as long as the game is fun.

Summary

2-4 players (but apparently, Sirlin thinks you should just play with 2)

Pros:
Many of the changes are actually better, and make the game faster
Still a pretty damned fun game
All tweaked up for tournament play

Cons:
At least one of the new rules makes it less fun than it was - not broken, just less fun
I don't play tournaments, so I could care less about balance issues

If you're thinking about playing Puzzle Strike in tournaments, you probably really need the 3rd edition. If not, just play what you already have. It's still fun. Either way, you can only get this online from Game Salute:
SO MUCH BALANCE

0 Expansion Review - Dungeon Command: Tyranny of Goblins

Tonight's review feels a little like I'm cheating. There are probably a dozen games ahead of Dungeon Command in my pile of stuff that I'm supposed to review, but when it comes down to it, I don't want to play those. I want to play Dungeon Command again. So when the Tyranny of Goblins set arrived, all the other stuff got pushed to the back of the list so I could send my evil hordes out to take on the heroes of Cormyr.

Having already thoroughly enjoyed the original Dungeon Command sets, I really wasn't worried about the goblins. Heck, I was really looking forward to them. But as is the case with almost any expansion release, there was always the possibility that they would either be too powerful or too weak. Too strong is how these things usually go, as new powers and new units are introduced to an existing game, but every now and then, the new stuff just isn't up to competing with the old stuff.

So I played the goblins, and my wife played the heroes. And I got my ass kicked so badly that I have to write this review standing up.

It might seem like I'm about to complain about the goblins being underpowered, but let me clear that up right now. My wife played very well, and I made mistakes. I should have sent my weaker units to gather treasure, rather than charging them into the fight. I should have played a little more defensively, and built up my forces before I sent them running across the field like a third-grader fielding a kickball. I can't even blame it on the dice, because the game doesn't have any dice. I lost because I sucked and my wife played really smart.

In fact, if anything, my loss illustrated how well balanced the new set is. If I had won with as many mistakes as I made, the goblins would have been a total train wreck. They do have some incredibly powerful units, but everyone else has those, too. They also have some really weak guys, but everybody else also has punk-ass cannon fodder. There are some incredibly cool examples of units working together - the wolf is twice as dangerous next to a goblin cutter, and the hobgoblin sorcerer is especially impressive if you keep him in the background. The strength of your team is not in how big they are, but in how you use them. You know, like a penis.

Happily, not all your fighters are goblins. Sure, you've got a good handful of goblins, but you've also got a hobgoblins and bugbears, a wolf, a troll and a huge burly demon. Yeah, that's right, the goblins have a demon. Like the other two sets, using these pieces appropriately is the key to winning the game. Your bugbear berserker is a bad-ass, but all by himself, he's cannon fodder. Manage your territory, though, and you'll be able to control the battlefield and continually flummox your opponent (and who doesn't like to hand out some good flummoxing?).

The order cards you get are also really handy, though unlike the drow or hero sets, it can be really hard to get extra cards. That's one strength the original sets have that the goblins lack, but the order cards you can get tend to be pretty darn cool. You can run faster, hit harder, and stand longer. I think my favorite was the dodge card, 'mortal wound,' which ignores the heaviest, most brutal attack - but then your guy dies at the end of your next turn, so you better make that next turn count. This was one part I did right - after my berserker was tag-teamed by some pipe-hitting heroes who should have cut him down in his prime, he managed to get one more turn. I like to imagine the looks on the faces of the ranger and cleric when the bugbear looked at the hole in his chest and started grinning. Then he killed them. Then he died.

I kind of wonder if anyone is buying these sets just to use them to play D&D. If they are, I think they're not doing too bad. The game is great, and you get 12 painted miniatures for 40 bucks. That's just over three bucks a figure, and you get a pretty decent variety. No, there are no orcs, but I'm not even sure those guys are evil any more. I think they've been turned into a goofy Games Workshop sideshow.


I still have kind of a beef with the format of Dungeon Command. We were discussing as we played how much we wish we could just buy some cards, or a few new figures, so that we could fine-tune our armies a little. It's great to get this balanced army that's ready to go, right out of the box, but I desperately want to mix it up. Of course, that's easier to do now that I have three different sets. It would be easier if I had some smaller sets, is all I'm saying.

A nice thing about the Tyranny of Goblins set for Dungeon Command is that it's not hard to figure out if you want it. If you like Dungeon Command, and want to see more variety, get the goblins. If you're buying a couple sets to try it out, the only question is whether you like goblins more than dark elves (or both more than heroes). There are no balance issues to mess it up and no difficult decisions that you'll regret later. Goblins are fun, and so are drow, and so are heroes. Buy the ones you like, or just try the game with one set, or go for broke and get them all. All I can really tell you is that the game is a blast, and now you can add goblins, and if that's not enough for you, then I'm sure there's an exhaustive but wordy summary on BGG somewhere that you can read if you're already bored with folding socks and watering the grass.

Summary

Pros:
Lots of new cool figures
A new faction with new possible play styles
Adds one more piece of awesome to a game that was already pretty darn awesome

Cons:
Same as before - I wish they had boosters

Did I say 12 minis for 40 bucks? Not if you're shopping at Noble Knight.
GET EM CHEAPER

0 TV Show Review - Oz

In my constant attempt to write about things that are absolutely not games, here's a review of an old TV show that you can't get on Netflix and won't see on regular cable. It's one of the first original series that HBO rolled out, and they're incredibly protective of their stuff. Apparently, they feel that if you get to see a man's johnson during the show, they're not inclined to let you get it for a nine-buck-a-month Netflix membership.

Oz was a cool show about life in a prison. Well, maybe 'cool' is the wrong word. 'Depressing' might be a better descriptor. This prison was apparently run by shrub-brained bobble-heads, because they were constantly allowing the inmates to kill each other and get high as balls. It was the blueprint for what would become the typical HBO drama - huge cast, lots of different story threads, and an endless parade of needless nudity.

The story of Oz follows a handful of inmates, guards and administrators who deal with life in the day-to-day doldrums of a maximum security penitentiary. There are drug dealers and murderers, priests and prostitutes, and even a few nerds. They are not so much characters, however, as they are tools used to tell a story and evoke emotion.

It's pretty obvious, when you're watching Oz, that the writers were going for a modern-day Shakespearean tragedy. It becomes especially obvious when the inmates put on a production of Macbeth. The show has three goals - to tell a compelling tale, to get you invested in the characters, and to appeal to people who want to see blood and naked people.

I'll start with that last one. If you want to see an incredible number of stabbings interspersed with full frontal male nudity, Oz can sure deliver. I mean, there are lots and lots of moments when I wanted to cover my eyes. Sometimes at the violence, sometimes at the dick parade. I'm not squeamish about either, but sometimes it's just more than you need. Some of those deaths were incredibly gruesome, and I could live the rest of my life without ever again having to see the privates of the guy who does Mayhem in those insurance commercials. You'll be lucky if you don't develop a bit of a complex watching Oz - apparently, they only hired well-hung actors.

As far as the characters, they were very well-realized. From the poor sap who is doing time for a DUI-turned-manslaughter to the Irish gangster with a talent for survival, the characters in Oz are a varied and entertaining bunch of people to watch. The only problem is, you start to root for some of these guys, but being a tragedy, nobody gets a happy ending (except in prison terms - there's enough disgusting sex that you know a lot of these dudes had a 'happy ending').

In fact, this ties into the next point. I know the show is going for tragedy, and it accomplishes that in spades, but after watching six seasons of Oz, your psyche is going to need a break. I know bad things can happen to people, and I know prison isn't exactly a Caribbean resort spa, but it's amazing how horrible things get for these people. So many people are so badly hurt that it becomes difficult to care what happens. I mean, I want to hope Beecher can find peace and freedom, but come on! How much bad crap can happen to one guy?

All that said, Oz does a remarkable job of telling a story. In the course of six seasons, the show spins a yarn of greed and hope and morality and the flaws of the human condition. It's aggressively intelligent with a powerful undertow of subtext. It even ends with a visual metaphor that manages to put a final punctuation on the story without a heavy-handed attempt to wrap up all the loose ends.

However, while the story itself may have been well-executed, Oz obviously has its flaws. As one of HBO's flagship original series, there were too many mistakes in theme, timing, and character development. They were going for Shakespeare, but they missed the mark. Even Shakespeare knew that sometimes, the audience wants to see a good guy win, at least every now and then. In order to weave their tale of corruption and darkness, the writers sacrificed believability and they opted to deny any real relief from the relentless oppression.

I did enjoy Oz, and I'm glad I watched the whole series. I wish they had made a few minor changes, and having done a little homework, I know that it was not even remotely realistic. Prison is not a pleasant place to spend your afternoons, but I think even a Russian gulag is run better than this. But for all the depression and pain, there's an entertaining story, one that will make you think. And more importantly, it will make you redouble your efforts to avoid becoming a resident at your local correctional facility. Because DAMN, prison sucks. Even in real life.

0 Event Review - Bed & Breakfast

I've been married a while now. It's eighteen years this coming Saturday, and we wanted to spend the night at a bed & breakfast nearby. The problem was that there was a huge wedding party at the place we wanted to go, so we went a week early. Which was last night.

In case you're completely unaware of, well, anything, a bed & breakfast is like a hotel, except usually they're just somebody's house and they let you sleep upstairs. Breakfast is generally assumed to be included (thus the name), and it's better than when you stay at the Motel 6 and they have gross donuts in the lobby. The rooms are more luxuriously appointed, and the idea is that your stay feels more personalized.

Other than that, though, you're pretty much just in a hotel.

We've actually been staying at bed & breakfast places for a while. We've checked out a few, from the place way out in the middle of No Place, Texas to the gated compound in the middle of the big city. We have started to figure out the things about a B&B that make it really appealing, and the things that make you just kind of wish you had stayed at the Hilton.
There are lots of features you might want out of a good B&B. The bed is important - it needs to be big and comfy, because let's face it, that's in the name. If the bed sucks, you're just showing up for breakfast. You're there because you need some time away from the kids, the pets, the bill collectors, the probation officers, and the in-laws (you may not have all those things. I'm just covering the bases) and your escape should include a really good night's sleep.

Another important reason you go to a B&B is for the surroundings. The place we went last night is in the middle of the city, which we chose because we wanted to be close to our home, and because we wanted to be able to just run out real quick and grab dinner so that we could bring it back and watch a movie while we ate. The whole area is gated and fenced, so you've got some real privacy, and it was ridiculously quiet, especially considering we were in the middle of the city.

Usually, though, we prefer to make the two-hour drive to the place out in the boonies, where we can go hiking before dinner, hit the outdoor hot tub after dinner, and watch the sun come up from the spacious front porch before breakfast. This particularly awesome B&B has a llama that will follow you around when you go for a walk on the trails. It's incredibly cool to be trailed by a 7-foot-tall herbivore while you're on a nature walk.

You also want to consider the space you get. At last night's spot, we had a whole cottage, including a spacious dining room table which we used to play Glory to Rome and Mice & Mystics (yes, we're nerds - we went on our anniversary vacation and played games). At our preferred, country spot, the room doesn't have a table - just a bed and a bathtub - but there's a lovely common room where you can go downstairs and chat with the other people staying there.

Another neat feature of many B&B's is the communal breakfast. This is where they go, 'breakfast is at eight,' and everyone shows up, and you eat whatever they bring out and talk with the other guests before you all leave and never see each other again. There's a down-homey sense of community and, I don't know, humanity that feels like a lost art. This is another thing about staying in a B&B that makes it better than a hotel - in a hotel, if anyone talks to you in the lobby, you duck your head and put your hand on your pocket to make sure they don't steal your wallet.

Probably the thing that sets a B&B apart from a regular hotel more than anything else is the personal touch. There's no concierge or guest services attendant. There's just the lady that owns the house, and she'll see if she's got any aspirin, but would Tylenol be OK? If you forget your razor at a hotel, they can probably give you a cheap disposable. At a B&B, they'll tell you where to find the convenience store, and say hi to Jerome while you're in there, he's a friend of the family. Get sick at a hotel, they'll send room service with some Imodium. Get sick at a B&B, the guy who runs the place will whip you up some chicken soup and see if you need extra pillows, and here's a quilt my grandmother made, and should I call the family doctor?

I really like taking my wife to B&B's. We always have fun, and usually come back very relaxed and happy. Then we walk through the door and find out the cat pooped on the landing, the kids spilled orange soda on the kitchen floor and there's a roach stuck in the puddle, and they ate all the Pop-Tarts while we were gone.

So happy anniversary to me!

0 Updated Game Review - Glory to Rome

Cambridge Games Factory is kind of an interesting little game company. For a publisher with such a small library, they have some surprisingly good games,especially considering the fact that their art has traditionally been gleaned largely from bad clip art collections that were overused in 1997. The jewel in their crown is a smart, engaging game called Glory to Rome, a game that was actually less fun because of horrible design and hideous art. It's actually very impressive that a game this unsightly grew such a loyal fanbase.

And that loyal fanbase has been amply rewarded. Last week, Cambridge Games sent a candy bar to every person at BGG who ever got really angry at people who pointed out how ugly Glory to Rome was. If you didn't get yours, don't write to CGF. Send an email to Octavian at BGG and demand your candy. Throw in some harsh language. He responds well to that.

As an additional reward, Cambridge Games also went back to the visual drawing board and completely reworked everything about Glory to Rome that didn't work. There's new art, a new design, and it's all printed on really nice linen cards with giant playing boards. It even comes in an actual box, as opposed to the crappy plastic clamshell they used to use,which was probably leftover when a manufacturer of feminine hygiene products went belly up.

And the result is pure dead sexy. The box is larger, mostly black, and features an imperious Roman eagle. Every card now has original art that, unlike the original, does not interfere with the way the card works. The different ways you can play each card are obvious and easy to see, with clear color differentiation and big symbols where they need to have big symbols. Not only is this an exceptionally attractive game (and not just compared to the original, which was seriously coyote ugly, but it's objectively attractive), the new design makes the game easier to learn and easier to play.

Speaking of play, the graphics aren't the only thing that got attention. The rules to Glory to Rome worked great already, but there were some people who wanted to see a little more throat cutting. Cambridge heard those people and added a few cards to the new game. These cards are clearly designed to make Glory to Rome far more interactive and bloody, and the best part is, if you liked the old game, you don't have to play with the new, blood-in-the-water rules. The cards that you remove, and the ones that replace them, are clearly marked and easy to find, so it's simple to just swap 'em out and play the way you like.

There's no point in rewriting a full review of Glory to Rome. I already reviewed it once, and I loved it. Basically, this new version is great, and a massive improvement over the original. I still kind of wish they had nabbed the art off the Italian version, but this does look really, really good, so I can't really complain. And neither should you, if you want your candy bar.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Looks amazing
Far better material for the cards
New rules options allows for more spirited game play


Cons:
Still pretty Euro

Still might be a little unbalancing at points, if you're a sissy



Noble Knight Games is sold out of the Black Box Glory to Rome, but if you watch for it, they'll probably get more.

AVE ORANGE JULIUS

0 Video Game Review - Borderlands 2

I was going to review the Schlock Mercenary board game tonight, but I can't because I haven't played it. I meant to play it last week, and then I didn't, because I was playing Borderlands 2. Then I was totally planning on making time to play it this afternoon, but unfortunately, I used up my whole day playing Borderlands 2. In fact, since I bought Borderlands 2, I have had almost no free time. I seem to be incapable of doing anything else. It's just so damned fun.

Borderlands 2 is a shooter, one of those games where you only see the end of your gun and bad guys are all over the place and you kill them. And I'm not entirely sure why I'm so hooked on it, because I get totally bored by most shooting games. I'm not even intending to play Halo 4, the Medal of Honor games actively offend me, and I don't intend to even sample the next Bioshock retread. The idea is sound, and I generally like the action part of the equation, but first-person shooters are so ubiquitous that I don't pay them much attention any more.

So why am I addicted to Borderlands 2? Why is it taking up all my time, so that I can't seem to get anything else accomplished? What is so damned fun about this particular shooter, when I am so bored by shooters in general?

There are a few reasons. It's funny. The setting is a riot. The story is interesting, with amusing characters and diabolical villains and tough heroes. There are varying missions, thrilling treasure hunts, and entertaining minigames. There's a tangible improvement system that gives the gives the game a sense of being a role-playing game. And best of all, the co-op game is awesome.

Borderlands 2 is (unsurprisingly) the sequel to Borderlands, which pretty much has all the same stuff - humor, action, story, and great co-op. Like the original, it takes place on the planet of Pandora, a far-off toilet of a planet overrun with bandits and mean critters and diabolical corporate soldiers. You can pick from a diverse cast of characters - the ninja, the siren, the commando or the gunzerker, plus the $10 DLC mechromancer. Each plays very differently, with bonuses for particular weapons and kick-ass special abilities, like capturing enemies in bubbles of pure energy or deploying automatic turret guns to cover you while you reload.

So you pick a badass killer, you start hunting for the mystical vault, and then you dive head-first into an orgy of off-center humor and deadly opponents. There are scags and bullymongs, varkids and spiderants, bandits and robots. Some run right at you, swinging for the fences. Others throw rocks or fire shotguns. Still others wrap you in webs or cover you with gooey acid. There are lots of different enemies, and even more guns.

Yeah, guns. From Maliwan's fire-spitting sniper rifles to Jakob's devastating rocket launchers, you'll find hundreds of guns. Some will suck, and you'll sell them for pocket money. Some will be so impressive that you'll have a new favorite. A huge part of the fun is looking for the rarest and most powerful guns, comparing your SMGs to find the best fire rate, reload speed, magazine size and damage rating. Basically, there's a huge variety of great loot, and finding it sometimes more fun than actually using it.

As you improve, you'll get better guns, not to mention getting a lot better at a lot of things. You'll regenerate health when your shields are full, or light people on fire when you punch them, or reload your guns whenever you kill a bandit. This is an over-the-top game, and you play over-the-top heroes. And if you're lucky, you'll play it with someone else.

Borderlands 2 has possibly the best couch co-op I've ever played in a shooting game. My wife and I are loving it. You can drive while your partner shoots. You can heal each other when you get shot down. You can share ammo and money and loot and experience. You'll snipe from above while your partner goes in close with a 12-gauge. You can catch your enemies in a crossfire. And you can do it all without having to get online, because this game works great when you're both on the same TV.

In fact, I think the main reason I'm addicted to Borderlands 2 is because it gives me something genuinely fun to do with my wife. She's got the mechromancer and I've got the commando. She drives better than I do, and I shoot the rockets like they were on a wire. We laugh at the jokes and swear when we get killed, and spend hour after hour blasting the piss out Hyperion security droids and mutated super-bugs.

So while I really did mean to play that Schlock Mercenary game - it looks like a lot of fun - I don't feel bad at all. I am having a ludicrously good time, spending time with my wife, and irritating my teenage kids enough that they go hang out with friends instead of watching television all night. It's a win-win-win. It's Borderlands 2, and it's even better than the first one.

0 Timekiller Review - Going Back To School

Going back to school when you're a full-grown adult with a day job and teenagers is just about as much of a headache as you probably think it is.

I've been a graphic designer for almost 15 years, and I am damned good at it. I specialize in print design, from catalogs and postcards to packaging and brochures. I like to say that I make art that people throw away. I have a few decent freelance clients, and make a little bit on the side now and then, but I want to do a lot more. The problem is, the market for print design is on a downswing. Catalogs are being published electronically. Postcard mailers are being replaced by email blasts. If I want to stay relevant, I need to learn me some web design.

So I've gone back to school, and while I love learning new stuff, it's a whole lot of headache.

For instance, it's tough to get student loans when you're in night school. I had loans, grants and scholarships for my bachelor's degree, plus I lived at home and waited tables. I would say I paid for school myself, but that would be a load of crap. Uncle Sam paid for most of it. But this time around, the bill is all mine.

Plus it's amazing how much work it is just to learn things. I'm not even talking about the time (though I will in a minute). I'm just referring to how much of my brain is taken up with things like CSS syntax and user-side script calls and dehydrogenated lithium byproducts (I made up that last one. I'm pretty sure I made up the second one, too. But CSS syntax really is beating my brain into submission). My head is tired from trying to remember a hundred new values for HTML attributes, and it's making it tough to remember to brush my teeth before I go to work.

And every time I learn one new thing, I discover another half a dozen I'll have to learn next. I finally manage to figure out how to use embedded stylesheets, and then I realize that I really ought to master WordPress and social media feeds. Once I get those down, I'll have to figure out v-cards and Google Analytics. I suspect this is what a web designer sees when he looks at print design. "What do you mean, I have to include a SWOP3 color profile with my collected document? And what the hell is proportional lining?" I know that stuff. But web stuff makes my head hurt.

But the very worst thing about going back to school is the time sink. I can't believe how much free time I had before. I have to write schedules for when I'm goofing off. I spend so much time reading school books and sitting in class that when I actually have time to do something I enjoy, I have to budget my time like a single mother with a welfare check.

It's not as bad as it sounds, though. I actually really love learning new things. I have been experimenting with web sites in ways that amaze myself (though they probably look totally amateur to anyone who can do it for a living). Some of the stuff I've learned recently is like upgrading my Crayolas from the 16 colors to the 64 with a sharpener in the side of the box. My head is spinning with the possibilities.

And even better, I've already got my first client. It's a really small gig, one that any seasoned web designer could do in his sleep, but it's still pretty awesome to know that I can actually apply what I've learned in a real, tangible way, and make a little scratch at it. I may not have as much time for stuff like playing games and eating healthy meals and sleeping, but it is exciting to consider the possibilities for the future.

If you've got something you really wish you could do, and you can break off a few nights a week and a couple thousand bucks, going back to school can be pretty awesome.

You know, once you're done.

0 Nothing Review - Not Doing Anything

The toughest thing about trying to update three times a week is that sometimes I run out of stuff to write about. Want to hear about what I had for lunch? Should I review the egg & cheese on flatbread you can get at Subway? How about my wife's recipe for bolognese?

No? It's just as well. I don't actually have that recipe.

OK, how about I review working in a cubicle farm. I could tell you all about gray fabric and painfully fluorescent lights. That would be fun, right? I could complain about my boss, maybe share something that nobody else is experiencing - at least, nobody else under the age of seven, because the odds are spectacular that you've got a day job. You know about ugly offices and corporate drones.

Oh! I know! I could review night class!

Wait, crap, I just did that.

Hmm. Maybe I could review the games I've been playing... except dammit, I haven't played anything new in a long time. I did try that Schlock Mercenary game I was talking about, but just the training mission, so I still haven't really sunk my teeth into it. It seems fun, but 'seems fun' is not a review, unless you review for BGG. They can apparently get away with that.

Family woes? Everybody has those. TV shows I've been watching? Not watching anything good. Making stuff in the garage? Nope, not since the fire burned up all the tools, except for the ones in the shed, which were stolen while we were staying in the hotel.

So tonight's review is a review of nothing. It's a review of exactly how thoroughly mundane life can be, when nothing in particular is happening even though the entire country is doing something interesting. Storms destroying the East Coast, a couple of pandering empty suits trying to get you to tell them they should run the country, embassy attacks and animal cruelty cases, and the best I can do is tell you how I get home from work at six.

Come to think of it, just go read the news somewhere. If that's not interesting enough to hold you a couple days, you can come back here and bitch about it.

0 Abstract Game Review - Serpent Stone

I know, you're all amazed. You're saying, 'holy crap, it's a game review! At this game review website! What will they think of next? Cheese on a cheese sandwich? Is there no end to the insanity?'

Saturday afternoon, after I got out of my web design class (which, by machinations of devils and bureaucrats, consumes Saturday mornings for three months running), I got to play a game I have not reviewed yet. It's called Serpent Stone, and it was with a considerable amount of delight that I am able to say I enjoyed it. Delight because now that I don't have time to plow through giant mountains of games every week, it really sucks to play crappy games.

Serpent Stone is not a huge game. It doesn't come with plastic miniatures, cardboard money tokens or anything else super fancy. You've got a deck of cards and a vinyl play mat that won't lay flat. The goal is to take your opponent's power stone, which is a cool gamer word for 'the goal spot.'

You play Serpent Stone by building a trail of warriors from your home to your opponent's goal spot, or as I previously established, 'power stone.' It's an abstract recreation of an Aztec game that may or may not have existed, though if I were placing bets, I would not put money on the actual game being historically accurate. For one thing, I doubt the Aztecs had playing cards. Though I can't say for sure - it is possible that the Spanish learned of the technology of playing cards when they paid visits to Central America, and brought the game to Europe, where drunken Englishmen turned it into Cribbage.

You'll build this train of warriors across the table, and your opponents will build his own, and ultimately you run into each other. When that happens, you have to attack the other guy (which will take his dudes out of the game completely) or capture them, brainwash them, and turn them over to your own side. This is an important part of the game, and when you get the right hand of attack and capture cards, it's a good idea to hold onto them until you're ready to make the most of them.

The coolest element of the game, however, is the sacrifice. This is where you don't take a turn at all, and just store up for a bad-ass double turn next time. If you're feeling seriously frosty, you can even do it twice, and that third turn is going to be a doozy. Since you can lose the game by running out of cards in your hand, and this sacrifice maneuver will totally do that to you, it's a risky move - but do it right, and you'll rock the pants off your opponent. Do it wrong and you totally lose. Like I said, it's risky.

It doesn't seem like there's a lot to this little two-player abstract, but when you look at the result and see a fun, exciting, challenging game, you might think Reiner Knizia made it and they took his name off because there wasn't enough math and nobody would believe he did it. He didn't make this one - it was another guy completely - and that's probably just as well. This game is actually fun. And has no math.

Serpent Stone is smart, easy to learn, and fun to play. You can finish in 15 minutes, which is enough time to play it again. Maybe a couple more times. I played a prototype (though I'm not sure why, since it's actually a published game), so I don't know if you will also get a crappy vinyl play mat that won't lay flat, but the lousy mat is the only bad thing I have to say about the game. The art is fun and the design is excellent. If you're looking for a good two-player abstract, you really ought to give this one a shot.

If you want to know more about Serpent Stone, like when it might be available for preorder or something, you can check out the game's blog at:

http://serpentstones.com/

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can buy this game right now. The Kickstarter is over, and Game Salute doesn't seem to be carrying it yet.