What game is hitting your table?

[Jolo]

Two player learning game of Andean Abyss, I was FARC and the Cartels, Rob was the Government and AUC.

There is a lot going on in this game, it plays as follows, turn over a card, which has 2 events on it, one that is good for the government and one is good for the others. This is the active card, you will also turn over a second card to determine what will happen the next turn. The card also determines the play order for the turn. The twists are as follows, only 2 factions may have actions in a turn, and what the second faction gets to do is determined by the first faction, also, you cannot get actions in consecutive turns. This leads to interesting dilemmas as you may want the action in the next turn. There is always the option to pass as well.

Rob has handcuffed by the early propaganda card (scoring card) and then it was followed by a card that prevented him from doing sweeps or attacks until the next propaganda card. This allowed the FARC and the Cartel to run wild.

I like it, what is tough is that there is no real good guy in the game.

[Colin Dearborn]

Managed to learn and play a couple more of my haul from BGGCON.

First up was Adventurers: Temple of Chac from AEG. This game has been out since 2009, but I had never seen it played before, it had gotten some good comments and reviews so I decided to pick it up. In this game players are braving the temple to loot the treasure....Yup, Indiana Jones the board game, it even has the rolling boulder.

You start off by getting through the opening glyph room trying to grab treasure and examine the glyphs for future safe passage before the rooms walls slam shut on you. Easy enough, then comes a hallway with a choice of entering the lava room or continuing on to some alcoves with locked grates guarding more treasures. If you enter the lava room you need to check the glyphs with the ones you hopefully remembered to examine in the first room. Make a mistake and you drop into the lava. If you try for the alcove treasure there is that pesky boulder gaining speed coming right for you. After these comes another choice, crossing the river. Jump in and swim (maybe finding more treasure if you think you have time), cross the rotting bridge with planks falling off or go the long way down the boulder path. A mistake in the river or on the bridge will send you out of the game over the waterfall.

Game plays in about 45 minutes, it is fairly tense right to the end as you have to exit before the boulder slams into the exit, sealing it. We got three plays in with 2 of the games being fairly close with a couple of deaths along the way. This is Incan Gold's push your luck feel with a pretty solid game overtop. A huge hit in our house.


Next up was Libertalia. Going to hold off the review until I get a couple more plays, but so far it is looking like a pretty solid pirate themed role selection game.

[Bix Conners]

Last night we got a couple of games to the table with BEAUTIFUL components. These were both four player games.

First up was Timber Tom. This is a light race game where your prospector has to climb to the top of two separate mountains, get some gold then make it back to base camp. Other players are hindering you by planting trees in your path. The game is certainly not very deep, but the components are amazing. Glad I finally got this to the table.

Next, we played Poseidon's Kingdom. This is a Fragor Games product, so you know they are over the top with the game components. I really liked this game as there were a number of decisions to make throughout the game. It certainly has a number of plays as I explore the strategy. Not sure how it will hold up after 6-10 plays, but I am eager to play again.

[Tempest]

Last night my friends got me Castle Ravenloft as an early xmas gift. It seemed pretty confusing at first, but it actually plays really smoothly. It's almost a lot like Munchkin/Munchkin quest, except in multiplayer (I tested out the solo adventures) you're trying to help each other out; there are some actions that do require you to screw each other over however, and they're kinda hard to avoid. But basically it works like you pick and adventure, pick a character and starting stuff, then you go into a dungeon and explore it (represented with random tiles) and then things happen. The first solo adventure I did has you trying to escape the castle as the head vampire slowly wakes up then comes after you; you have to find the secret exit before he and his minions kill you. I managed to escape after almost dying (you have two healing surges, which are basically like extra lives shared between the party) twice. The other solo adventure (I wish there were more than 2) was actually really interesting; you are busting into the castle to hunt down some of the head vampire's top minions which appear after certain tiles are drawn and placed. The neat thing is, once your character dies, instead of having extra lives, you pick a new character that comes in after you and keep doing the same thing until either you get all the minions or all the heroes have died. I came close but lost to a card that came up.

All in all, I think it's a good game especially if you're a fan of D&D (which is what it's based off of) or are interested in D&D but don't want to make the full investment in books etc. I think it says some adventures take from half an hour to an hour and a half to play.

[R Newell]

The wife and I played a co-op game of Mage Knight .  It took a long time (a little shy of four hours) but it was easier to teach than I thought it would be.  We failed to conquer three cities (the goal of the scenario we played).

[Bix Conners]

The wife and I played a co-op game of Mage Knight .  It took a long time (a little shy of four hours) but it was easier to teach than I thought it would be.  We failed to conquer three cities (the goal of the scenario we played).

I am very eager to try this in the new year!!!

[Tempest]

Got a multiplayer game of Castle Ravenloft to the table last night, and it was pretty good. We managed to stay on top of the monsters at first, but it did end up getting a bit tense right up until the end, where I saved the day by throwing out a whole bunch of daggers and getting our quest item to win the game. I also recently got Smallworld Underground; we played with the mini-expansion that allows you to effectively combine the regular map and the Underground map (there were four of us, so we used the 2-player maps from each game) which worked pretty well. It was tons of fun, and we had lots of laughs. I think my favourite part about any of the Smallworld games is the implied narrative that can be created as the game goes on.

[Jolo]

Christmas and New Years means superheroes, or at least it did this year.

Over Christmas I was at my brother in laws and we played Sentinels of the Multiverse three times and Formula De' once. I really like Sentinels, it is a fun co-op. I am a huge fan of comics and this has a good heroic feel about it.

I spent part of New Years in Morse at a friend's place and we played Sentinels, man did we play Sentinels. I think I played it 8 times, and slowly developed who I liked as a character (Tachyon). Tachyon is a speedster and her card play encourages extra actions and a lot of card play. This is a very good game.

[Bix Conners]

I played Sentinels at BGG.CON John and did not care for it that much. Probably because I was never really a comic book person.

I played a lot of various games over the holidays. Last night, I started back up with my Monday Night gaming and I played a couple of two player games of Neuroshima Hex. I now own 11 armies for this and felt it needed some table time. Enjoyable game. I would really like to play a larger team game with 6 or 8 players in teams of two. HeroScape terrain could be used to make the board quite easily to accommodate the extra number of players. Who knows, I may do this at a ChewsDay Challenge game night.

[Jolo]

I played Sentinels at BGG.CON John and did not care for it that much. Probably because I was never really a comic book person.

I don't know you