Pirates and Merchants and Navy oh my!

Black Fleet

Black Fleet plays with three or four players, and a game lasts for about an hour.
Merchants, pirates, and navy ships sail the seas.You have a small fleet of ships at your disposal to allow you to amass a fortune.

The merchants deliver goods from port to port, and the pirates try to intercept them, before burying their ill-gotten booty. The pirates try to avoid the navy ships, controlled by all players, which intend to sink them.A fluid and dynamic game.

A card played at the beginning of the turn gives the movement for all of your ships. Each turn is fast and any action is instantaneous.
The fortune cards and the abilities of your fleet allow you to create powerful and varied combinations each game.Pay the Governor’s daughter’s ransom to win!

Players continue to make deliveries and launch boarding parties at a frenzied pace to win ever more doubloons and develop their fleets through new powers.

When all these developments have been acquired, it’s time to free the Governor’s daughter and trigger the end of the game.

This pretty much sums up the game and I would not add more to this so here is what I think of the actual gameplay itself:
First off, love the board, the colours and the details are very cartoony and nice to look at. The ships are a tad dull and I could see some people out there painting them but leaving something original since you need to know which ship belongs to whom. There are actual coins in the game (metal) and they are nice.

This game is very cutthroat because you always try to send your pirates after your opponent's merchants and send the navy ships after your opponent's pirates. You have cards that alter the movements that you do each turn and the development cards have really nice bonusses on them as well that make it harder for other players to win the game. There is good replayability with this game because since you play up to four players and the game gives you 6 of each development card, which in turn are all different, you never know what you will have nor what other players will have as their advantage until the debt is paid.

I really enjoy this game and there isn't much more to say so I gives this game 5 out 5 ahoys!

These games are Legen... wait for it... dary!

Legendary deck building games are seen in the Marvel Universe and now in the Alien universe.
These games are basically like all other deck building games, however, now they are cooperative. Once again they are based on the first ever deck builder: Dominion. You will have probably read my previous post about decking building games because at the time I was not interested in the Marvel game; to tell you the truth I found it kind of stupid. However, once I saw they were coming out with a version based on the 4 Alien movies, I told myself that I had to try this out and I LOVED IT... so much so that I took a second glance at the Marvel game mechanics and found it much easier and simpler than the Alien version and of course they have a villain version for Marvel that is just like the Alien one (I am assuming they based the format on the villain one for the Alien version).

I will start with the Legendary Marvel version:

Here is what is published on the Upper Deck website:

Legendary™ is a deck-building game set in the Marvel Comics universe.

To set up the game, players choose a number of hero decks from the likes of Spider-man, Hulk, Cyclops, or Wolverine, to name a few. Shuffle them together (since players use only a handful of hero decks out of the fifteen included) allowing the hero deck to vary widely in terms of what's available.

Players then choose a mastermind villain (Magneto, Loki, Dr. Doom, etc.) and stack that particular villain's attack cards underneath it. Next, modify the villain deck as needed based on that villain's particular scheme. Over the course of the game, players will recruit powerful hero cards to add to their deck in order to build a stronger and more resourceful deck. Players need to build both their recruitment powers (to enlist more heroes) and their fighting ability (to combat the villains who keep popping up to cause trouble). Players recruit heroes from an array of six cards, with empty slots refilled as needed.

At the start of a player's turn, he reveals a villain and adds it to the row of villains. This row has a limited number of spaces, and if it fills up, the earliest villain to arrive escapes, possibly punishing the heroes in some way. Some villains also take an action when showing up for the first time, such as kidnapping an innocent bystander. The villain deck also contains "master strike" cards, and whenever one of these shows up, the mastermind villain (controlled by the game) takes a bonus action. As players fight and defeat villains, they collect those cards, which will be worth points at game's end. Players can also fight the mastermind; if a player has enough fighting power, he claims one of the attack cards beneath the mastermind, which has a particular effect on the game. If all of these cards are claimed, the game ends and players tally their points to see who wins. If the mastermind completes his scheme, however – having a certain number of villains escape, for example, or imposing a certain number of wounds on the heroes – then the players all lose.

Do you have what it takes to defeat the villains? Or, will you let them escape?

I do have to say that the artwork on the cards and the board is amazing, I really find it bright and true to its origins.

The cards are clear and well defined as to what they do, there are some bolded keywords that the first few times you play you will have to pull the instructions to remember what it does. The one thing I would have done is put the cost of the card on the upper right (looking at the card) corner instead of on the bottom  because I made the mistake thinking that that card gave me that amount of recruit points.


Another thing I would have changed in this game is the points system... it is supposed to be a cooperative game yet there is still a winner (the one with the most victory points)... thankfully they changed this with the Alien version (you have no choice but to work together).

I love the fact that this game has a huge replayability factor (with all the expansions); there are tons of heroes to randomly choose to play in the game, you choose the mastermind randomly, you choose the villains and the henchmen and so on.

                     








There is another version of this game: Villains, but I have yet to try it and like I said previously, it is much closer in gameplay to the Alien version.

Speaking of Aliens, we continue now with Legendary Encounters: an Alien deck building game:

Legendary moves from battling Super Villains to battling chest-bursting, face-hugging, acid-for-blood-having Aliens. This game features some of Alien's greatest protagonists, including Ripley, Dallas, Bishop and Private Hicks, as they go to battle against some of the most terrifying creatures in the universe. Players must work with each other to defeat the terrifying Xenomorphs! Each core set comes with 500+ playable cards featuring all original art. Also included is a Legendary Encounters Alien game mat to help organize the playing field.

First off I have to say that when they say 500+ cards, be prepared to take about 2 hours organizing these bloody cards (ok the Marvel needed some organizing as well but not this long); they are all mixed up. How hard would it have been to place the cards by type in the box? Plus in this version there are strike cards, hive cards, drone cards, starter cards, etc. and the text for these groupings is so small that you almost need a magnifying glass to read them... plus each 'movie' setup has 3 goals to achieve as well and they each have their set of cards with this tiny text... but once you get passed this, you do not want to drop this box and have to do it all over again. However, once you are done a game, you have to sort through all the cards to place them again in the correct groups.

I really love the card illustrations and the playmat (yes a playmat... not cardboard) is very well done... makes you feel like you are in the actual movies.

What I really like about this game is the fact that you get to play through the 4 movies (if you want to) or you can simply randomly choose your three objectives and the 'heroes' you wish to have in your good guy deck and add to that replayibility value again and again. But trust me, you will probably lose the first few times you play because it is not an easy game... and you will want to try and win the next time trying new tactics... Oh and when I mentioned that this game is meant to be cooperative, I meant it; if your partner gets a facehugger and he nor you (not the next player or the one after that) can get rid of it, it is pretty likely he will have a chestburster come out in the next few rounds and die... But hold on to your butts... there is a version of the game that when a player dies he becomes an Alien player using the Alien deck and trying to kill the other players...

I give the Marvel version 4.5 dice out of 5 and the Alien version 5 out of 5...
Enjoy and remember 'In Space No One Can Hear you Scream!'

VEGAS BABY!!!!

Here's a game that when I saw it on Tabletop I knew it was going to be a game that I wanted for my own collection. Let me say, I am not at all disapointed with this title.

Lords of Vegas is an adult version of Monopoly with a lot more money being thrown around; you build casinos, place bets at other player's casinos, expand your casinos, try to take over other casinos, and so on.

 

It is a game for 2 to 4 players (plus there is an expansion to add 2 more players - and in my opinion the expansion is only good for that - I will get to that a little later on) and can be played in just over an hour. There is a lot going on during the game but it is a real fun game to play with a group of people.

Everyone starts out with 2 casino cards and they collect the amount of money that is illustrated on the cards from the bank; this is the starting money for that player. The players place their respective colour tokens on the board and these are known as parking lots for future contstruction. Once this is complete, the cards are discarded for the game the rest of the cards are shuffled into a game deck and the final 'Pay the Strip' card is randomly inserted in the bottom part of the deck and shuffled and placed under the game deck.


Each player's turn consists of taking one of five (6 with the expansion) actions; some can be done multiple times, whilst others can only be done once:
1- Build: This can be done as long as you can afford it and trust me money runs out fast in this game. To build you select one of your parking lots and pay the amount required then you select a color building and place it on the empty space. You will notice that on the board there are pictures of dice on the lots, and with certain pips showing, you place one of your coloured dice in the center of the new building and you are now the casino boss (for now).

2- Sprawl: This is a risky move but could pay off in the end; you purchase a completely empty space next to one of your Casinos and pay DOUBLE the amount. Place a building of the same colour as the casino you already own and place the die with the correct number of pips showing. The risky part is that if later in the game another player draws the lot you sprawled to, he takes over without paying anything (places one his or her die inside the building). You can do this action as many times as you wish.

3- Gamble: Yep you got it, simple, you choose a player who owns at least one Casino (is the boss) and gamble up to 5million dollars per building lot in that Casino. However, if the player who owns the Casino only has 2 million dollars, you can only bid that much (if you double your winnings, the bank will pay the difference that the player cannot pay from his own money). You may only gamble once per turn.

4- Remodel: If you are the boss of the Casino, you can change the color of your entire Casino for 5 million dollars per lot. If I am not mistaken you can only do this once per turn.

5- Reorganize: Here is where the fun is... when you and another player have a joint Casino, you can pay 1 million dollars per pip showing on the dice of all players and get everyone to re-roll their dice and you re-roll your dice. Whoever has the highest dice roll (individual die), becomes the new BOSS (be careful, you could lose your advantage or lose possible future earnings). This can be done once per casino.

6- Build-up (expansion): In my opinion this is the most useless part of the expansion and the most expensive to do... if you want, for 15 million dollars, you can add a floor to your casino. All this does is give you more points when a colour card that matches your Casino is drawn. That is all. Worthless in my opinion (for the price).

So how do you get more money and points? Simple, you can win at gambling or get paid by another player for losing at gambling. However, the main way to gain these is every turn: When a player flips a new casino card, there is a colour on it, match this to any casinos on the board and pay every player the amount of pips on ALL of their dice. Now if you are the boss of the casino, you also receive points for the number of buildings in that casino. If a pay the strip card shows up, you do the same as above but for ALL casino's touching the center of the board (the strip) and in the same manner as points and money.

All in all, this is a really good game and I really enjoy it. I find the replay value to be very high since you have no idea what lots you will start with, nor how much money you will start with, the cards are always mixed up and the end game card is randomly inserted in the bottom quarter of the deck.

Excellent game and I truly recommend this one.

5 out of 5 dice.

Old school comes to the table...

RAMPAGE!

 

 



I am sure there are people reading this that were just as in awe as I was when I first saw this in my local game shoppe. Well that AWE did not last long with me (sorry to say). The game itself is not bad, but it lacks replay value big time and I find it is really aimed at smaller kids (so more of a family game, which is fine).

I was able to test this product and give a demo of it at my local store and not having to buy it was a plus.

When I got home, I noticed there were BONUS stickers with the game; these were for all the little meeples the game comes with - front and back stickers. You don't have to put them on, but it is nice to see the different characters (cheerleaders, army guys, etc.)

 

It took me about 1.5 hours to get all those little stickers on there and now a few months later they are starting to peel off or rip, etc. but it was nice while it lasted.

 

There are also stickers for the monsters and for the pods they stand on.

 

To setup the actual board, you have to actually stick certain bases (building bases) to the actual board and the board itself comes in 2 pieces which you have to join together by a center piece that is also the main base for the stadium.

 

Here is the overview of what you get in the box:

So gameplay is rather simple; you first setup the entire board game (as shown below) and you choose your monster according to colour and then you also choose the matching pod and monster screen and then 4 teeth (I will explain what these do after).

You place your monster on the pod in one of the four corners of the board. Then each player has a choice to do 2 of 4 possible actions: move, attack, blow or throw. Then you get to eat a meeple in your zone for each tooth you still have.



 

Here is a short description of each possible action:

 

1- Move: Remove your monster from the pod and use your fingers to flick the pod then place your monster back on the pod (be careful, if you flick too hard, you might fly off the board and you lose a tooth).

 

2- Attack: If you moved your pod close enough to a building (touching at least the sidewalk surrounding the building) you take your monster, stretch your arm over the building and drop your monster - any meeples that fall off stay where they land; any building levels that are completely free of debris are collected behind your monster screen and if by chance you made another monster fall over, they lose a tooth and you collect it behind your screen.

 

3- Blow: This action is quite interesting and funny at the same time. You place your chin on the top of your monster and take a deep breath and blow as hard as you can on whatever you want. Once again, any meeples that fall off stay where they land; any building levels that are completely free of debris are collected behind your monster screen and if by chance you made another monster fall over, they lose a tooth and you collect it behind your screen.

 

4- Throw: This action is fun, if there is a vehicle in your zone, you may take the vehicle place it on the head of your monster and flick it towards something and same as above with the meeples, floors and other monsters.

 

Once you have completed 2 of these 4 actions (you can also do 1 action twice), you get to EAT meeples that are in your zone (ZONES are identified with colours and borders - there is a park zone, a marina zone, street zone, etc.); however, you cannot eat a meeple that is touching a sidewalk or on debris and you cannot eat more than the number of teeth you have.

 

So you do this until there are no more floors left to clear. The game ends and you score your points (and if I am not mistaken, certain meeples are worth more and so on).

 

As you can see, it is a really simple game (maybe a bit too simple) and a tad pricey for what you get but it will keep your little ones entertained for a couple of hours possibly - just make sure to keep an eye on those flying meeples.

 

As a gamer I give this 2 dice out of 5, but as a family man, I would give it a 4 dice out of 5.



Family Games

Here's a nice family game that is simple to understand but you have to be quick to select the right item: Ghost Blitz

The back story is that a ghost took some pictures but they either came out wrong or actually right. When you draw a card, you look at the colors, the items and if something is right, then you pick that item, if nothing is right, then you pick what is missing from the picture. But you have to make sure you select the correct answer (whether right or wrong) and if you don't select the correct item, then you must give one of your cards (which you won by choosing correctly before) to the person who did choose correctly.

The game goes on like this until there are no more cards to draw and the winner is the person with the most cards. This game has 2 sets; Ghost Blitz and Ghost Blitz 2.

3.5 dice out of 5

CardLine and TimeLine are very similar family games; CardLine is more for kids and Timeline is more for players ages 13 and up. However, the premise of the game is all the same; start with one card on the table with either a size, age or weight (for CardLine) or a year (for Timeline) face up and each player is given a certain number of cards with this information face down and must guess if the card they hold goes before or after the one on the table (or between 2 cards on the table).

Here is an example for CardLine: On the table you have a Wolf and you decide that you are going to use the weight category for the game; the first player looks at their cards and chooses a giraffe, is that giraffe heavier or lighter than a wolf. If the person guesses right, then the card is placed on the table at the appropriate spot, if not, then the player discards that card and chooses a new card. The player with no cards left, wins the game. Now the second player will have 2 cards

on the table and must choose to place one of their cards either between the 2 cards, after the 2 cards or before the 2 cards... and this goes on until someone wins.

As for TimeLine: Same concept except that you need to know your history or be very lucky... these cards are usually inventions or things that were discovered, or books that were written, etc. and so you start with one card on the table with the year face up and then each player plays their cards in the same fashion as CardLine; before, after or between other cards. Again, first person to get rid of all their cards, wins.

Both of these games come in a nice tin canister and (you may not notice it in the pictures - also sorry for the quality - it was late when I took them) the cards are placed inside a nice felt holder. The cards in CardLine are bigger in size which helps when small kids are playing and the cards in TimeLine are quite small but you get more cards. There are many versions of both CardLine and Timeline and can all be mixed in to one major deck for more players. I believe the suggested number of players is 2 to 6 but I think you could be more if you put all the sets together and have a one heck of a 'TIME'. The price is nice on these as well so not a budget breaker if you are looking to break into small card games.

These games get a nice 4.5 dice out of 5.

 

Here is one of the many dice game out there that allow you to play a quick game with your family and introduce younger players to turn-based games. Dino Hunt DICE comes with 10 beautifully coloured dice that depict either a leaf, a dino print or a dinosaur. The point of this game is to get to 20 points before the others do. How do you do this? Simple, place all the dice in the cup (which is nicely illustrated) and take out 3 random dice, roll them and if you get dinosaurs, you want to keep them; if you get leaves, you take those dice and take out more dice from the cup (to a total of 3 in your hand) and roll again; if you get a dino print, they remain on the table until you get three and you lose your turn and any dinosaur you tried to score is lost. So you might want to stop rolling when you have 2 prints. You just keep rolling until you score your dinosaurs or get 3 dino prints.

 

This is a great game for small kids because the game play is quick and could be over in 10 minutes and then you start over again. Similar games to this would be Zombie Dice and Chupacabra but the themes of these two dice games are more mature in nature and aim at the older crowds (but I play them with my little guys and just explain them the rules in a cute way). They retail for 11$ to 22$ because they come with more and more dice (10 in Dino Hunt, 13 in Zombie Dice and 24 dice in Chupacabra).

 

All of these dice games get the max; 5 out of 5 dice. 

 

Who doesn't know the story of The Three Little Pigs? Well this game puts a small twist on the original tale.

 

In the box you get a bunch of house piece tiles (some wood, some straw and some brick) separated into roofs, doors and windows. You also get 5 dice that you get to roll a total of 3 times and then from there you decide what you want to build.



Here is a turn example: First place all the doors, windows and roofs into piles sorted by their type (straw, wood or brick), then the first player rolls the 5 dice and keeps the dice they want to use to build a piece of their house; if they get 2 doors and 1 window and 1 roof and 1 wolf, the wolf is set aside and the die cannot be re-rolled (if you get 2 wolves you spin the wolf wheel - will get to that later), they can keep whatever materials they want or re-roll any of the 4 dice that are not wolves.

Once the player has rolled three times, then the player can take a tile equal to the number of dice it shows; if you have 3 doors and 1 window, then the player can take a wood door and a straw window (you need at least 1 die to take any straw materials, 2 dice for wood and 3 dice for brick). Now that player places the two tiles so that the door is on the bottom and the window above that door - there are many ways of placing these materials - they do not have to be the same material at all but you must follow these rules: Your house must also start with either a door or a window on the bottom and a roof on the top. You can place more windows beneath other windows if there is no door under it, or you can place more windows above other windows. You cannot place 2 doors above or below each other and you cannot place any tiles on that house once you place a roof.

If you choose to build a house with all the same type (ie straw), there is an end-game bonus that goes to the player who has houses built with the same types for all levels of material. Also there are other rewards for the player with the highest built (completed) house - includes a door, at least one window and a roof - and so on.

Now I mentioned the wolf dice, well if you get 2 or more of these dice during your rolls (you must stop if you get to 2 but you could roll 3 on the first shot), you have select another player with tiles in front of them and select one of their houses to blow on. Then you spin the wolf spinner, and you remove any tiles from that house that match the type that is on the spinner (ie wood, straw or brick).

Very simple game and kids will love this. The price is a tad high for what you get but still lots of fun.

4 out of 5 dice

If you love poker and Yahtzee, well here is a game for you that combines both: Roll'n Bump.
The title says it all, you roll dice and you bump your opponent's dice.

What you get in the box: you get 26 dice (5 of 5 different colours - however some of the colors are really close and hard to tell apart - and 1 special die) and 49 coloured cards (including one special multicoloured card).

Setting up your first game is easy, you place the 15-point multicoloured card in the middle of the table and then, depending on the number of players - for this example, let's say 4, you place 6 piles of 8 cards around the middle card, flip the top card of each pile face up and give 5 dice of the same colour to each player and place the special white die in view of all players.

How to play: You get three rolls of your dice (which seems to be the case will most dice games) and when looking at the cards in play you may want to try and roll for a small straight of 3 dice, a medium straight of 4 dice or a long straight of 5 dice; or you might want 2 of a kind, 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind or go big and try and grad the middle card for 5 of a kind; or you might roll nothing good this turn and try and take the single die cards (a 4 or a 2, etc.). The goal is to have the highest rolled dice on any of these cards - whether you are trying for a small 3 dice straight, you will want a 4,5,6 so no one can bump you, or if you are trying for the 3 of a kind, you will want three 6's so no one can bump you; or once again you might want to place more than 4 on the single 4 card because there are no cards with 2 of a kind or more at the moment on the table. (I may add a quick video showing a single turn just to explain this a bit more).

Once you have placed your dice, then the other players play their turns trying to outscore your dice and bumping you off the ones you took. Each card has a point value and there are also 4 colours of cards that if you have more of one colour that end of the game you get more points.

This game was a hit at family parties and I recommend it for all ages; 5 out of 5 dice

All of these games are available at Multizone 

Foolish enough to enter the Gauntlet?

If you are ready for a crazy game that tries to take the RPG style of gaming to a new level, then Gauntlet of Fools is the game for you.

In this card/dice game, 2-6 players can choose from many different characters that randomly dealt out along with many different ability cards that are dealth alongside the characters.






Each player will choose a character while other players will try and boast their way to take that character for the other player; but beware, boasting comes with a price; you can take that monk with the flaming sword but will you do it blindfolded while getting over a hangover? However, these boasts will make you lose dice or life points right from the beginning of the game so be careful what you boast about. The whole point of boasting is not only to get the character with the great ability, but to pretend like nothing can stop you in this gautlet of baddies you are about to face.

The gameplay is simple, once you all have your characters and abilities and so on, you enter the gauntlet searching for many foes. These foes come from a deck of creatures, events and so on; and once a card is played from this deck, all players must face the card as if they were alone in this game (this is not a cooperative game at all); so even if you defeat the card by out-matching it's defense, the other players must do the same. Now, when that creature attacks, it also attacks everyone and you have to be able to defend the attack, otherwise you get wounded and after just 4 wounds, you are DEAD.

However, when you "kill" a creature, you get the gold or sometimes a bonus that is described on the card itself and the player with the most gold at the end of the game wins, so you could die first but be the richest of the bunch.

First off, you see what you are going to encounter (could be a monster, a modifier card - which will possibly affect the next card if it is a monster - or an event card that also affects all players - could be in the form of all getting a wound or all getting gold -).

Then, you attack the creature; you do this rolling dice (equal to what your character's ability card shows) and if you roll greater than or equal to the defense of the creature, you kill it and gain it's treasure, but then you still have to defend against the creature's attack (which to me if you killed it, it should not attack you - I think this is a small flaw in the rules; I would personally change this rule to make it more fun that if you kill the monster it does not attack you, thus making the game last a little longer) and if you fail, you get a wound and if you get 4 wounds you are dead, but you don't lose your gold (on a side note, you do not die right off the bat once you get that 4th wound; if you can heal once the fight is complete, you may remove that 4th wound and continue, if not, then you are dead.)

So this goes on and on until all players are dead and then you count up the gold per player and determine a winner.

My two cents on this game is that I love it but I would rather not use the boasting and just play the simple game and like I mentioned before, change that rule of defense once the creature is dead, it's dead and cannot attack YOU; it can go ahead and attack others unless they also killed the monster.

Because of the simplicity of this game and because it has great replay value it will get a 4 dice out of 5.

Game available at Multizone