Game nite magazine issue 10

Game Nite

Issue # 10

the magazine of tabletop gaming

F

e e r es

ag p 92

GAME REVIEWS “A BOOK OF HISTORIC BOARD GAMES” DAMIAN GARETH WALKER

IGNACY TRZEWICZEK

DESIGNER/PUBLISHER

JOHAN KOITKA BOITEAJEUX

JACQUI DAVIS ARTIST

AND MORE!

IN THIS ISSUE: HISTORY

REVIEWS

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Boardgame History

Part IX Poker

BOOK REVIEW 06

A Book of Historic Board Games Damian Gareth Walker

EDUCATION 86

Games in Education Game Events pt.2

INTERVIEWS 16

Jacqui Davis

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Ignacy Trzewiczek

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Johan Koitka

Artist.

Game Designer/Publisher.

Managing Director of Boiteajeux.

SOLO GAMING 82

Cruel Necessity Jeff Rhind

COMICS 85

Comics

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JurassAttack!

Dynamic Dinosaurs.

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Oh My Gods!

Divine Deduction.

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Looting Atlantis Meaty Filler.

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13 Days Cuban Missle Crisis.

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Apotheca Match 3 Potions.

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Tiny Epic Galaxies Big Game/Small Box.

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Automobiles Racing Game.

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Daxu Clever 2 Player Game.

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Slaughterville Horror Co-op.

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Kheops Pyramid Builder.

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Scoville Labs Scoville Expansion.

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Ancient Conflict Treasure Chest Abstract Game Collection.

Game Night comic strip.

SPECIAL FEATURE

CONTRIBUTORS 90

62 Online Game Sites Pt.2 Boiteajeux.

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Game Nite Contributors

FROM THE GAMING TABLE

Game Nite ISSUE # 10

A

s someone who has always enjoyed playing in competitive tournaments involving games such as Chess, Go, Scrabble, L5R and others, I have always felt that two players was the perfect number for a game, as there is no “outside influence” of a third or fourth player. In this issue we feature several two player games: 13 Days, Daxu, Kheops, JurassAttack! and several games in the Ancient Conflict Treasure Chest. I think that you will find many of them to be interesting!

In this issue, John Anthony Gulla continues his popular series on “The History of Tabletop Games”. In Part IX, he covers the origins of Poker.

Bill Braun reviews the Co-op game “Slaughterville”.

Jeff Rhind continues his series on solo games - this time featuring: “Cruel Necessity”.

David Niecikowski’s shares part 2 of his series on Game Events.

Special thanks to Ignacy Trzewiczek for taking time from his busy schedule to share his thoughts with our readers.

Thanks also to Jacqui Davis for sharing both her thoughts and wonderful artwork.

Thanks to Johan Koitka for giving us an inside look at the popular site, Boiteaeaux.

Congratulations to Daniel Skjold Pederson, Asger Sams Granerud and Jolly Roger Games for winning an Editor’s Choice Award for “13 Days”, as well as David Short and AEG for also winning an Editor’s Choice Award for “Automobiles”. Both of these games are excellent!

As always, if you are a writer, photographer, etc. and feel you have something unique to contribute to the magazine, feel free to contact us. We’d love to have you on board!

Cover Photograph by Serge Pierro.

Automobiles © AEG

Editor in Chief/Publisher: Serge Pierro Editor: Eric Devlin Contributing Writers: Bill Braun David Niecikowski Kevin Lauryssen John Anthony Gulla Kevin Cox Jeff Rhind Photographers: Serge Pierro Bill Braun Jeff Rhind Follow us on Facebook:

www.facebook.com/GameNiteMagazine

Serge Pierro

Visit us at:

www.gamenitemagazine.com

Editor in Chief

Follow us on Twitter:

editor@gamenitemagazine.com

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@GameNiteMag Game Nite

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History The History of Tabletop Games

By John Anthony Gulla

Part IX - Card Games after the Age of Enlightment c.1780 - 1900

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ew Orleans, LA c. 1829 -- By the beginning of

game, and it came to be known throughout much of France as “Glic” (pronounced “Gleek”). Glic shared nearly all of its play mechanics with Poch, though, over time, the names of the phases changed and some variations included what might be interpreted as borrowed elements from the other popular, French card-game, Piquet. After this point in time, however, there seems to be a dash of mystery involved in the genealogy of Poker. Glic appears to have flamed out completely in France by the turn of the 17th century, with no references made to it (or games like it) for more than 100 years.

Developed in the heavily-French areas of New Orleans during the early decades of the 1800s, facets of classic Poker likely stemmed from multiple European sources, with the most direct influences coming from both France and Germany. Certainly, the most obvious connection is found in the name of a French 18th century card game called Poque, which itself seems a transliteration of the German verb and card game called “Poch,” meaning “to bluff” or “to boast.” This etymology partly tells the story of the early development of what would eventually become known to us as Poker. In fact, the popularity of Poker over the next century would allow for it to be one of the more studied histories of any card game, and thus, quite a bit is known about its history.

Well into the 18th century, around 1720, a French gaming publication provided the first details of a card game called Poque, which shared much with the long “abandoned” game of Glic (in addition to some other French games of the preceding century, such as Buoillotte, and Brélan). For example, both Glic and Poque made use of the exact same 3 phases of play (only one of which would be recognizable as a part of Poker to modern gamers), and the same 20-card deck. Poque had seen some advances in terms of in-game betting; players could make decisions to fold, raise, or stay (similar to that of modern-day Poker).

the Enlightenment era, various card games (some of which were discussed in the series’ previous article) were already taking the Western World by storm, with a number of improvements to their overall design occurring frequently throughout the period via increased amounts of play and sharing of various games by increasing amounts of card players. No game, though, would go on to be more recognized as the champion of all card games (or gambling games) than Poker.

As it turns out, Poker’s roots run deep. Way back in the 16th century, German gamers of the day enjoyed a very early card game they called by a few different names, including “Boeckels,” “Bocken,” “Poch” or (as some references record) “Bockspiel/Pochspiel,” which included such mechanics as matching number sets and betting on certain combinations throughout 3 distinct phases of gameplay. As documented in previous articles in this series, Europeans of this era mostly played their own regional games (for various reasons), but some games (or, more simply, some popular mechanics within those card games) would nevertheless find their way over to various other territories, where those populations would then adopt and enjoy their own versions of the game.

The French, in this case, adapted that popular German card

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As fate would have it, Poque quickly gained momentum in France and eventually made the leap back over to Germany, where it is still played there in some form today (as Poch). Still, the longer-than-a-century gap between Glic’s popularity and the documenting of the rise of Poque in France is somewhat peculiar. Perhaps even more interesting, though, is that another card game which shares some of the basic mechanical and procedural similarities with modern Poker was in fact being played in Italy around the same time that Poch and Glic were popular. This game, called Primiera (or Primero), made use of similar combinations and sequences (e.g. pairs, three-of-a-kind, and four-of-a-kind) in an established order of preference, i.e., hierarchy. While there is no direct evidence of Primiera as an influence for Poque (and Poker, by extension), it seems likely that it was at least somewhat influential (if not, very influential), considering its method of play and popularity not only in Italy, but well-documented play in France and England at that time as well.

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Public Domain

The final portion of Poker’s Pan-European history involves Persia (and its surrounding territories). While it is evident from the historical record that the French and others brought the game of Glic, et al., to Persia at some point in the 17th century, the Persians clearly did not rest on the rules that they were taught. Instead, they developed a game out of that ruleset they referred to simply as “As-Nas” –with the “As,” in fact, being a direct transliteration of the French word “Ace.” As-Nas was similar to its cousin Poque, although the betting structure worked differently. Perhaps more importantly, As-Nas is oft-credited with the invention of the “Full House,” i.e., holding three-of-a-kind and a pair in the same fivecard hand. This Full House concept later found its way into American Poker, of course, leading some scholars to the idea that As-Nas was the progenitor of Poker. It seems more evident now, however, to see As-Nas as simply another piece of the puzzle that would eventually develop into the world’s most popular card game.

Although its complete origins are not clearly traceable to just one game or area, one thing is certain: 19th century card players in New Orleans developed the game of Poker from the best portions of those elder games, and added to that other scoring methods and combinations using the 52-card deck that we would likely recognize today, including The Flush, Straight, and the Straightflush. In the latter part of the century, the Joker began to be included in Poker and other games as a “wild card” for the first

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time ever. These inclusions culminated in the classic game of Poker that still exists today. More recent variations of Poker, including the popular Texas Hold ‘Em and Stud games, have extended the life of Poker throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, showing the versatility of a game format created 500 years prior.

Poker, while perhaps the most important of the card games from this period, was not the only card game of the period, of course. Other card games, including such basic, but longlasting games like Old Maid, and Go Fish were also developed during this era, and popular platforms such as Euchre/Bezique made their debut in this time period as well. Euchre (and its slightly younger, French relative Bezique) eventually led to the development of Pinochle, which was a mainstay of trick-taking card players in America and Europe up until the WWI era.

Most interestingly, perhaps, was that “parlor games,” or what we would now refer to as “board games,” began making their way back into living rooms in the latter half of the 19th century.

It was then that Mr. Milton Bradley would find his way into the business of board games, and other, still famous industry names, such as the Parker brothers, would also get their start.

Next time, we extend our exploration of games into the premodern era, uncovering the roots of those famous industry forefathers and the legendary board games they produced.

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Book Review A Book of Historic Board Games

By Serge Pierro

G

ame Designers are much like musicians, since they both refine their concepts until they are able to deliver their final vision. Guitarists such as Eric Clapton dug deep into the repertoire of old Blues artists such as Robert Johnson and reinterpreted them. So what does that have to do with a book on Historic Board Games? There have been recent examples of designers exploring the mechanics of some of these games and using them in modern designs, such as the use of the Mancala mechanism by Stefan Feld in Trajan, J. Alex Kevern in Gold West and Bruno Cathala in Five Tribes. Perhaps by studying the past, we can discover inspiration for the future?

In this 234 page softcover book, Damian Gareth Walker examines a dozen games that come from various cultures of the past. Instead of focusing on classic games such as Chess, Go and Backgammon, we are treated to lesser known games that are deserving of more attention and presented in an engaging format.

The twelve games featured are: Pachisi, Halma, Agon, Tab, Fanorona, Nine Men’s Morris, Wari, Konane, Xiang Qi, Tablut, Asalto and Renju.

Each chapter features an overview of a specific game, covering its history and rules, as well as general strategy and tactics. Some chapters even include a transcription of a complete game that readers can actually play over and study to further understand the nuances of play. Each game also features several diagrams and/or photos, as well as the set up for the start of the game and how the pieces move. As a bonus there’s also the inclusion of some strategic examples and endgame positions. There is plenty of information to whet your appetite about each of the games being discussed.

This book is a real eye opener for those looking for quality abstract games or anyone interested in the history of board games in general. The only game that I actually have experience playing is Xiang Qi and I only recently learned how to play it. I was aware of Nine Men’s Morris and tried it once online. However, the rest of the games were new to me and were a very pleasant surprise.

Not only does Damian Gareth Walker know a great deal about these games and their history, but his website features print and plays, online games, pamphlets and handcrafted versions of many of the games. I was able to find printable materials for all of the games mentioned in the book, so if you see something that interests you, there is the possibility of either possibly playing it online, printing out a Print and Play version or even purchasing an actual wooden version of the game. He also has a gallery of photographs featuring many of these games, as well as having some available for sale at: http://www.cyningstan.com/ I can honestly say that when I was done reading each chapter the first thing I did was go online and see if there was an online version to play. Fortunately there were sites where you could play against a computer A.I. and experience the types of games that many of our ancestors played. Each of these games proved to be quite fascinating and I wouldn’t mind having all of them in my personal collection and will actually be looking to either make or purchase many of them somewhere down the road. I think that many of you will also be interested in doing so. So whether you are a game designer looking for inspiration, a lover of abstract games or someone interested in the history of boardgames, this will be a book that you will want to read.

Author: Damian Gareth Walker Publisher: Self Published

Recommended www.cyningstan.com

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Game Review JurassAttack!

By Serge Pierro

Dynamic Dinosaur Battles

G

reen Couch Games is becoming known for their games that come in a small box, and yet pack a lot of gameplay within. Let’s take a look at one of their recent offerings, Ryan Cowler’s JurassAttack!

The game box measures 4” x 5 1/2” x 1 7/8”, which are the same dimensions as the other games in this line. Normally this is enough room to store 2 decks of cards and the rules.

However, this time there is a cardboard insert that runs along the length of the box to keep the oversized cards in place.

The game features two decks of Tarot sized cards made of a decent card stock and have a little more “play” than standard size cards when “snapped”.

The rules of the game come on a double sided sheet of paper and features color graphics and spot illustrations. Since the rules are simple, this is more than enough information to get you up and running quickly.

Each player gets their own deck of cards which have different backs to differentiate between them, but each of the decks contain the same cards.

Players will shuffle their decks and then draw 5 cards. A round of the game is made up of 3 phases: Face Off!, Fight! and Finale!

During the Face Off! phase each player will choose one or more cards from their hand to play. In order to play more than one card they must be able to form a “pack”.

This means that either the dinosaurs have to be of the same type or that the ability on a card lets them attack with other dinosaurs. The first player will play their card(s) with the second player responding after seeing how many cards their opponent plays.

During the Fight! phase players will reveal their cards and compare the total Ferocity of each pack. The Ferocity is the attack number listed on each card, as well as any bonuses added by card effects. The highest number wins. In case of a tie, there is a “Double Knockout” in which players place the

used cards in their discard piles, with the exception being Eggs, as they are added to each players score pile as if each player had won. Both players do not draw any cards, unless someone has no cards, in which case they draw one card.

The third phase is Finale! and during this phase the player who won the previous phase adds all of the cards played by their opponent into their Score pile, as well as any Egg cards that were in the winning “pack”. The remaining cards used to win the hand are placed into their discard pile. The player who lost now gets to draw up to five cards. The winning player does not draw any cards. This is one of the more interesting elements of the game play, as there are times where you will find yourself purposely trying to lose a hand so that you can draw up to five next turn.

If the winning player has no cards in hand, they draw one card.

Players continue to battle until one of the players has no cards remaining in either their deck or their hand. Then players will add up the points of the cards that they placed into their Scoring pile and the most points win.

While it would be easy to dismiss this as a simple card game that just compares numbers on the cards, there is a bit more to it than that. The abilities on the cards present opportunities for players to be creative, both from a strategic and bluffing perspective.

Serious gamers will enjoy counting cards as they try to play the odds of what card(s) will be played next.

While it is true that there is an element of luck with the draw, it can be circumvented to some extent by a player who can count cards and try to make use of the cards they have, knowing what cards will be showing up for future turns. For those looking for a quick, tactical, filler game, that offers opportunities for bluffing, this is one that you will want to take a look at!

Designer: Ryan Cowler Publisher: Green Couch Games Number of players: 2 Mechanic: Hand Management Ages: 8+ Length: 15 mins.

Recommended

www.greencouchgames.com

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Game Review

Oh My Gods!

By Serge Pierro

Divine Deduction

O

ne of the gods on Olympus has stolen Zeus’s lightning bolt and he is not pleased. Players will try to deduce who the culprit is in this quick filler game.

Oh My Gods! comes in a 5” x 7” box which includes a molded plastic insert to hold the cards.

Players will then cross off the characters they were dealt on their clue sheet. The player who has Zeus is the starting player.

Each turn is made up of three phases: Searching for Clues, Guessing the Thief and Playing a God Power. The last two are optional.

The eight page rulebook clearly presents the rules and offers some tips throughout. The only graphics are the table setup and the anatomy of the cards.

In the “Searching for Clues” phase, the current player will ask the player to their left if they have either a specific Element or Trait. If the player has a card that matches the criteria, they secretly show it to the player. The player Since this is a deduction game, it is nice to see that then marks the revealed card on their clue sheet. If the there are two options for keeping track of the clues. player did not have a card that matched, then they may The first is a pad of clue sheets that can be marked ask the next person in turn and may continue to question with pen or pencil, and the other is the player screens players until one player shows them a card or none of the which are coated for use with dry erase markers. players have a card that matches the request. Players can also ask for a specific god, but doing so will help everyone The 21 cards are linen finished and snapped back at the table. nicely. Besides designing the game, Tim Blank also did the artwork.

The “Guessing the Thief ” phase is best saved till later in the game, because if you guess incorrectly you lose and The game also comes with a pre-punched cardboard are out of the game. However, a correct guess wins the token of Zeus’s lightning bolt. game.

Players will remove Zeus from the deck to start the game. The deck is shuffled and one random card is placed aside and covered with the lightning bolt token, signifying that this is the thief. Then several cards are placed in the central area known as Olympus. Zeus is then shuffled back into the deck and players are dealt the remaining cards.

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The “Playing a God Power” phase is where players can use the abilities that are printed on the card. This is the phase that makes the game more interesting than your standard deduction game. There are several different abilities and many of them make for some interesting plays. The ability of Zeus allows the current controller to give Zeus to another player. This is important, because

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there are several cards that target the player that has Zeus wouldn’t allow them to be played. This was especially in front of them. It should be noted that when a player true when Zeus was in front of a player that was uses a God Power on one of their cards, it is placed in eliminated, thus making several cards useless. front of them for all players to see, so there is a tradeoff of using the ability, yet revealing more information to This is a perfect filler for those looking for a deduction all the players. There are also God Powers that grant game that is longer than Love Letter, yet still can be access to the four or five cards in Olympus, which are completed in the 15-20 minute range. essential to help solve who the thief is.

Play proceeds around the table until either everyone has guessed incorrectly during their “Guess the Thief � phase and the one remaining player wins, or one player guessed correctly and wins outright.

This is a quick filler game that offers some depth in terms of deduction. The use of the Powers adds to the gameplay and makes for some interesting situations.

However, there were times towards the end of the game where the Powers were useless as the current game state

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Designer: Tim Blank Publisher: Gameworthy Labs Number of players: 3-5 Mechanic: Deduction Ages: 8+ Length: 15 mins.

Recommended

www.gameworthylabs.com

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Game Review

Looting Atlantis

By Serge Pierro

Loot the Treasures of Atlantis

W

hile there are plenty of filler games currently available, many of them tend to lean towards the lighter end of the spectrum. Looting Atlantis by designer Nick Sauer is a quick thirty minute filler that looks to provide more depth than your standard filler offerings.

Looting Atlantis comes in a 9 1/2” square box that features a black plastic insert that does a good job of holding the components in place.

The full color, eight page rulebook is concise and features explanations for each of the cards. It is also slightly larger than the box and appears to have been measured for the top of the box and not the bottom, and needs to be “forced” into the bottom to fit. I mention this so that prospective game designer/publishers don’t make the same mistake when doing such measurements for rulebooks.

The four panel board has a gloss finish which we found a bit distracting due to reflection of light sources. Some players found the artwork to be somewhat chaotic.

The game comes with 80 cards that are of a decent card stock, as well as 48 wooden Lava disks. The “Air Cars” are cardboard standees and come with plastic bases. The colors are awful, as we couldn’t tell the blue, green and black from across the table due to how dark they were. We wound up putting them together at weird angles to be able to distinguish one from the other. We eventually decided to just use other components instead.

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To set up the game board, players will shuffle the deck and randomly distribute the 80 cards into twenty stacks of four cards and placed within the designated city sections. This gives the game its distinctive look, as the cards form a “wheel” around the board.

To start the game, randomly choose a first player. Then starting with the player to the right of the first player, each player will place their Air Car onto one of the empty city sections. Then after the first player has placed their piece, the game begins.

A players turn is composed of the following: Place a Lava token on the board and then take two actions.

At the start of each player’s turn they must place a Lava token on the board. There are four spots designated as the starting spaces for the Lava tokens. Once a Lava flow has been established, players make continue to move along the path or start another flow instead. When a path reaches the city area, all of the cards at that location are destroyed. If there was an Air car there, it is removed from play until the owner’s next

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Game Review (Cont.) turn when they will spend their turn bringing it back into play. After Lava has reached a city, players may choose to wreak havoc by continuing to flow from city space to city space, instead of using the standard lava flow path.

After a player has placed a Lava token they may take any of the two actions, which are to move or to pick up a card.

Movement is simple. You may move anywhere on the board where there is no Lava present. This freedom of movement allows players to formulate long term plans without the worry of not being able to bring them to fruition due to the limitations of a movement mechanic.

The second action is to pick up a card from the top of the stack at the city in which your Air Car currently is positioned. If you haven’t moved this turn you can use both of your actions to pick up two cards.

After a player has taken their two actions they have the opportunity to use an ability on one of the cards they have previously picked up. This is optional and does not count as an action. If the card needs to be discarded for the effect to take place, the player places the card on the bottom of the stack at the location where their Air Car is located.

The players will continue to take two actions per turn until one of the Lava flows hits a city, then they will take three actions per turn until the end of the game.

There is an interesting “push your luck” element to the game, as players can choose to forgo their actions on their turn and instead “flee” to one of the Kingdoms on the corners of the board. These areas provide scoring bonuses at the end of the game and the timing of when to “flee” and when to try and collect more cards is one of the game’s more crucial decisions.

The game ends when all of the cities have been overtaken by lava or when all of the cards have been taken.

For a thirty minute filler game there are several interesting strategies that one can pursue. Essentially the game is driven by the options provided by the cards. Each card has a scoring mechanism and a special ability. You will often find yourself questioning whether you should eschew the points and use the ability or try to specialize in collecting certain cards. For example, “Fusion Battery” allows you discard itself to gain two additional actions, which are quite useful for picking up multiple cards on a turn. However, 1 “Fusion Battery” is worth 3 points, 4 are worth 11 points, while 10 are worth 199 points! There are two other card types that max out at 100 points and 144 points for collecting 12 cards. The other cards are worth far less.

Some people may find a pen and paper to be useful when adding the scores due to some of the “unusual” numbers, however it is possible to do the math in your head.

I enjoyed how quickly the game played, while at the same time offering the players a challenge. The game looks quite impressive with its initial layout of the cards spoking out from the sides of the board and while I wasn’t thrilled with the aesthetics of the game, I thought the game was very solid mechanically and is a filler that I would easily choose over others, due to its depth/fast pace ratio. I think of this as a “filler game for gamers” and look forward to having it hit the table again in the future.

Designer: Nick Sauer Publisher: Shoot Again Games Number of players: 2-4 Mechanic: Set Collection Ages: 13+ Length: 30 mins.

Recommended

To calculate the final scoring, players will add the points on the cards in front of them and add their “flee” bonus.

Highest score wins.

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www.shootagaingames.com

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Interview

Jacqui Davis

“Jacqui Davis is a freelance illustrator”

By Serge Pierro

Artist Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with our readers, can you tell us a little something about yourself?

What are your earliest recollections of doing art?

My mom claims that I used to tell her she wasn’t doing things right when I asked her to draw me a horse or person, so she made me do it.

Yeah, sure! I’m a freelance illustrator, I was born in South Africa and moved to England when I was ten with my family, my friends say I’m scouseafrican.

Do you come from an artistic family?

I think so, my parents used to run a decorative sand-blasting company from home when I was little, and then when we moved my Dad went on to sign writing. So I grew up used to the idea of doing something arty for a living - even if it wasn’t necessarily drawing.

Are you self taught or did you study art in school?

Jacqui Davis Artist Euphoria Stockpile Fidelitas Formula E www.jacquidavis.com

Well, I did art in high-school and college, but nowadays these courses mostly focus on fine art. I didn’t get on well with my teachers when they wanted me to experiment, I must admit. I like to draw but don’t ask me what it means most of the time, I just like things to look nice.

The actual drawing lessons came from one awesome art teacher, (Mr. Salt, you were the best), and those how-to-draw books you can get art art stores.

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Interview (Cont.)

Who are your main artistic influences?

As a kid would have had to have been animated movies, any animated movie, I would sit and copy out the characters from all the books I had.

So I suppose you could say it was Milt Kahl and Glen Keane. When I got access to the internet it became the likes of Sam Hogg, Claire Hummel and Matt Rhodes. Then, thanks to Mr.Salt, I also got into the old master painters, a few of my favorites are Leighton, Sargent and Turner (I always thought his landscapes would be great as animation backgrounds.)

Do you listen to music while you work? If so, who do you listen to?

Nope, I can’t listen to music when I’m actually sitting down to be productive - I find the temptation to get up and bop along too strong.

I tend to like to get involved in a story so I either have an audio book on or Netflix.

Who are your favorite board game/card game artists?

That would have to be Kelly McClellan, I discovered her work while I was still at uni, and Your gestures and line work have a very “animation- when I got the chance to work with her on a like” quality to them, do you do any animation? few games after I started freelancing I can’t say how excited I was.

I don’t anymore but I did study animation for three years at University. Then I discovered that like with my dancing, I have no sense of rhythm or timing.

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What is your favorite medium to work in?

That would have to be Photoshop, just because it’s nice to be able to sit down and paint without having to do much set-up.

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Interview (Cont.)

As a Cintiq user, what do you feel that the Cintiq It appears that you use the Kyle Webster series of offers over traditional techniques and mediums? digital pens and brushes. How do these differ from other digital tools currently on the market?

I’m not sure using a Cintiq + P.S combo offers anything over any other medium, it’s just a little neater, which I like. Not having to fight with my old scanner to make things look nice is always a plus. I switched to a Cintiq from an Intuos a couple years ago to help with some wrist pain I was getting, for the most part I’ve loved it. There was scary week or so when I first got it that I was convinced I couldn’t draw anymore because I was so used to my hand not covering what I was doing that my hand-eye coordination went crazy.

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I have to admit I’m still a bit of a newbie when it comes to thinks like PS brushes and tools. I find something I like and I stick to it until it’s broken, I’ve been on CS4 until earlier this year when I saw some of the stuff Kyle was putting out and I just had to give them a test drive. So I can’t really say much about them and some of the other tools out there because I haven’t tried them, but I do know Kyle’s brushes are more responsive and seem to feel more natural than my old CS4 basics.

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How did you get involved in creating artwork for Do you enjoy playing games? If so, what are some the game industry? of your favorite games?

When I graduated I wasn’t sure what exactly I was going to do, I had studied for animation but as I mentioned before I found animating itself wasn’t really for me. So I applied to all the seeking artists threads on forums like BGG and ConceptArt that I could find. Things were slow at first then I was lucky to work with some very awesome people for my first few big jobs. After them I decided I liked the variety of working in board games, (game designers have some pretty impressive imaginations!), and I decided to stick with it.

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I do, but I haven’t played any games recently, there’s no groups that I’m aware of in my area.

At uni though my friends and I played a few and I think the most fun was Zombies!, I’ve never seen a game get people so angry with one another so quickly.

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If you had an opportunity to do the artwork for a game from a specific game designer, who would it be, and what would you like the theme to be?

Aw, that’s not fair! It may sound corny but I really have enjoyed working all the game designers I have so far because they are all different. For the theme I think I’d like to work with either animals or mythology next…let’s go for a combo and say if someone could come up with a game about Egyptian animal-headed gods that’d be great.

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How does working on the cover of a box differ from painting cards or components?

Are you involved in the actual graphic design of the box?

For one thing the cover is one of my favorite assets to work on. I tend to spend more time on it than I do on individual cards because that’s the first thing most people will see, and I like try to give an idea of the world the game is based in. If I can fit in references to the card art all the better. As for the graphic design; no, I leave that to graphic designers out there who know what they’re doing. ;) Continued on next page>

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Interview (Cont.)

What is the piece of artwork that you are most proud of?

At the moment it would have to be a personal piece I finished just the other week. It’s a group shot of some characters from an IP I work on with an artist friend on my down time. I started it in Feb 2015 and left it for months when work got busy and typically if I leave a sketch for that long it never gets finished. So I was rather pleased with myself for actually sticking with it. But come back in a few months and it’ll be something else, I never like my work for too long.

Do you illustrate projects outside of the game industry?

Do you accept private commissions?

Yes, I’ve also illustrated a few kids books and Yes, if people want to get in touch about work worked as a copy-artist for several educational they can always visit my site (jacquidavis.com) activity books. or email me, (logicfairy@gmail.com)

What projects are you currently working on and do How can readers keep up to date on what projects you have any news on upcoming projects? you are working on?

I’ve just finished up work on What Ho, World! for UFO Press and the Kickstarter should be up soon. I’m also currently working on a game called Leaders of Euphoria for the guys at Overworld Games, so keep an eye out for that if you’re a fan of the original Euphoria.

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I’m actually terrible at social media but I’m trying to get better about it this year. Twitter is the platform I’ve found I enjoy using the most so if people want to follow me there my handle is @logicfairy.

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Game Review

13 Days

By Serge Pierro

Thematic Two Player Game

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hen discussing 13 Days it is inevitable that Twilight Struggle is going to be mentioned. Not that this is a bad thing, after all Twilight Struggle was ranked #1 on Board Game Geek’s list of top games for quite some time. However, can “13 Days” really deliver the same type of experience in only 45 minutes? Let’s find out.

The box measures 8” x 11” x 1 1/2” and comes with three pieces of corrugated cardboard cut to specific shapes to keep the components from moving around during shipping.

The four panel game board is made of thick cardboard and is rather small at 11” x 16”, but it is the perfect size for the game.

The 24 page rulebook uses 10 pages to cover the rules and the other pages for a complete play-through of the game. This is an excellent touch and first time players will really appreciate the ability to read through an entire game.

Also included is a 16 page booklet that gives a brief history of the “Cuban Missile Crisis”, as well as giving the historical backstory to each of the cards in the game. I’d venture to say the students would probably learn more about this historical event from reading the content and playing this game, then they would probably learn in a classroom.

The game comes with 52 linen finished cards that are separated into two different decks and a special “Personal Letter” card.

The rest of the components include both red and blue wooden cubes and disks for each player, as well as six cardboard tokens for the American and Russian flags.

The game consists of three rounds containing the same eight steps.

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The first step is that all of the markers on the DEFCON track are moved up one space. So even before the players get to make a move, the tension has already escalated.

Step two is to draw three Agenda cards.

Then players will place their Flag counters on the three areas shown on the cards drawn. Then they will choose one of the

Agendas and place it facedown under the appropriate still use it for the placing Command cards, but first you area on the board. The other cards are shuffled back have to allow your opponent the opportunity to use the into the Agenda deck.

Event on the card. The same holds true for the Russian player drawing an American card. The UN cards are In step three players will be dealt a hand of five Strategy neutral and either player can use the Command section cards. These are the driving force behind the game. There or the Event section. are three types of cards: American, Russian and UN. If you are the American player and have an American card After each player has taken turns playing one card per you can use it for either placing Command cubes or use turn for four turns, they take their remaining card and the Event. However, if you draw a Russian card you can place it facedown under the board in the area marked Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.)

“Aftermath”. These cards will be used for scoring at the end of the game with the player with the most Command cubes on their nationality cards gaining a 2 point bonus. This is step four of the round.

During step 5 players check to see who has dominance in each of the three “World Opinion” areas of the board.

These give special actions to the players who have the most Command cubes in each area. If players are tied, there is no effect.

Step 6 is where the main scoring takes place. Players will reveal their hidden Agendas and resolve them.

Points are awarded based on the specifics printed on the cards. There are Agendas that target the DEFCON 2 area of the track and upon revealing, the markers on that specific track are advanced one space. Prestige points are then marked on the associated track. These points will move back and forth between the two players throughout the game.

Although the aforementioned scoring is important for winning the game, step 7 checks for nuclear war and could signal the immediate loss of the game. If a player has one of their DEFCON markers in the DEFCON 1 section of the track during this phase, the game immediately ends with that player triggering a nuclear war, thus losing the game. The other scenario in which the game immediately ends is if a player has three of their DEFCON markers in the second area of the track.

After all of the above has been completed, step 8 simply moves the round marker up to the next spot. If it moves onto the Aftermath space, the game ends and the cards stacked under Aftermath are revealed and the player with the most Command cubes on their cards receives a two point bonus that is applied to the Prestige track.

The player with the most Prestige wins.

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Simply stated, “13 Days” is one of the best two player games that I have played in recent memory. Not only is the historical theme well integrated with the mechanics, but the tension between the superpowers also permeates the gameplay. I loved the balancing act of trying to accomplish your Agenda, and yet at the same time have to deal with the escalating DEFCON track.

There is little to find fault with, however, the Personal Letter card never changed hands to use the +1 Command ability. It just wasn’t worth an extra cube to give up the opportunity to break an endgame score, especially when the scores are generally hovering around the “0” space on the scoring track. I’m sure there are scenarios when this would be useful, such as when you might need to deflate a DEFCON track by a fairly large amount, but otherwise it seemed better to hold onto the card.

This is a brilliant game that captures the essence of the Cuban Missile Crisis with its solid mechanics and well researched theme. This is a game that I can easily highly recommend to anyone interested in an excellent two player game that plays in only 45 minutes.

Designer: Daniel Skjold Pederson & Asger Sams Granerud Publisher: Jolly Roger Games/Ultra-Pro Number of players: 2 Mechanic: Area Control, Hand Management Ages: 10+ Length: 45 mins.

Highly Recommended www.jollyrogergames.com www.ultrapro.com

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Game Review

Apotheca

By Serge Pierro

The Secret Potion Society

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ith the current popularity of “Match 3” apps, it should come as no surprise that someone would develop a board game based on this concept. In Apotheca players will attempt to connect three potions in a row by using the abilities of their Apothecaries.

The game comes in the somewhat standard sized square box and features a full color cardboard insert with a well in the middle to hold the components, as well as a folded shelf to hold the board. Players will have to supply their own bags to keep the tiles from moving about in the well.

The oversized 16 page rulebook is slightly smaller than the box and is printed on high quality paper. It is well illustrated and covers all of the pertinent material, including variants for solo play and one player vs. all. The back cover features a reference of all the Apothecaries and their abilities.

The four panel board features the dark evocative artwork that has the feeling of a candlelit room. There are several areas of the board that are spot UV coated. This proved to be a bit distracting at times due to glare.

The 45 large 3” tiles are made of very sturdy cardboard and have rounded corners and feel substantial. The Apothecary Stations are made of the same high quality cardboard and are assembled via puzzle piece joints.

The plastic gems are of three different colors, as well as having different shapes.

The Tarot sized cards are of a decent stock and since they are not shuffled throughout the game they should be fine as they are. Eduardo Garcia’s artwork is both gorgeous and moody and is well displayed on the oversized cards.

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To start the game, set up the board as per the illustration in the book and randomly give each player an Apothecary from the deck. The deck and the remaining Apothecaries are placed in “Apothecary Alley” along with the Gems.

On a player’s turn they will get to take two actions. Players are not permitted to take two of the same action on a turn.

The available actions are: Reveal, Restock, Power and Hire.

Taking the Reveal action allows a player to turn over one of the facedown tiles and receives a Gem that matches the tile. This is the only action that allows players to obtain Gems.

Once facedown tiles start to run low, one of the players will use the Restock action to place tiles until there are three facedown tiles on the board. This action can only be used if there are two or fewer facedown tiles on the

board. When used, the player who is placing the tiles gets to look at the tile and place it where they wish, while at the same time having the arrow on the back of the tile facing them, indicating that they are the only ones able to peek at it.

While the first two actions are used quite often, the remaining two are equally important as they will be used to score the points necessary to win the game.

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Game Review (Cont.)

To use the Power action, players will use the abilities of any of the Apothecary that they have in front of them.

This is essential for manipulating the board to set up scoring opportunities. It is important to keep in mind that once a player scores they must place the stack of tiles on top of one of their Apothecaries and its ability is no longer available to the player for the rest of the game.

This brings us to the last action, Hire. We found it to be extremely important to have multiple Apothecaries in play in order to have any chance at winning. Besides having multiple abilities available for use per turn, some of the Apothecary are better than others and you want to have a “spare” available at all times so that when you score you can place the tiles on the less valuable one and keep your “key” one available for future turns.

The game ends when one player has covered three Apothecaries with matched tile sets.

Besides the standard gameplay, there are also variants included which have an entirely different feel and gameplay to them. There is a four player team version in which players play on teams of two. There is also a solo variant that was challenging, though it seemed a bit random. But the one that really stands out is the “Master of the Market” variant, where one player takes on all of the other players. The rules for this variant are somewhat different from the main game and provides the players with a unique experience that is seldom seen in other games.

Apotheca is a light game that taps into the popularity of the “Match 3” genre and does a nice job of presenting it in a board game format. Due to the artwork and graphic design there is a certain moodiness that permeates the game.

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Although the gameplay is simple, the tough part was trying to set yourself up for a match while denying your opponent from doing the same. This required that you had to calculate the possible moves on your Apothecary vs. the moves available to your opponents. Which brings us to the problem with three player games, by the time it becomes your turn again two players have had an opportunity to rearrange the tiles on the board, thus depriving you of the strategy you tried to implement.

Although I am a big fan of solo variants, I found this one to be a bit too random. First of all, not all of the tiles are used in the game and I found that a huge part of any success was the drawing of a key Apothecary and having a “backup” available so that you could continue to use the key one.

This is a fine game to play with families due to the popularity of the “Match 3” genre, yet there is enough substance to keep gamers engaged and should prove to be a popular choice for those looking for an entertaining light game.

Designer: Andrew Federspiel Publisher: Renegade Game Studios/Knapsack Games Number of players: 1-4 Mechanic: Action Points, Special Powers Ages: 13+ Length: 30 mins.

Recommended

www.renegadegamestudios.com www.knapsackgames.com

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Game Review

Tiny Epic Galaxies

By Serge Pierro

Epic Filler Game

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ver the last couple of years it has been hard not to notice the popularity of the Tiny Epic series of games designed by Scott Almes. These have proven to be popular amongst a wide range of gamers, even though the themes and game play are quite different.

The latest offering is “Tiny Epic Galaxies” which had 12,458 backers on Kickstarter.! Let’s take a look at the game and see if it lives up to the hype.

The box for Tiny Epic Galaxies is… tiny. It measures 4 1/2” x 7” and is very sturdy. There is just enough room for all of the components.

One of the more interesting things about it is that the cover has a printed graphic on the inside and is recommended for use as a dice tray, whereas the inside of the box bottom features a clarification of the Planet actions. The side panels also feature mini bios of designer Scott Almes and illustrator Bill Bricker.

The twelve page rulebook is well illustrated and clearly presents the pertinent information for the base game, as well as devoting two pages to the excellent solo variant.

The game mats are made of linen finished card stock and measure 3 1/2” x 5”. The player tracks are a little cramped, but this is to be somewhat expected due to their size, but it’s not to the point of being detrimental to the game play.

The 52 cards have a linen finish. These are broken down into a 40 card Planet deck and 12 Secret Mission cards.

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All of the tokens are made of wood and come in five colors (red, blue, yellow, green and black). The Empire, Energy and Culture tokens are silk screened with a custom white graphic for each. Though it was strange that the red Energy token was printed with a pinkish purple lightning bolt, which made it hard to see.

After setting up the game as per the rulebook, a first player is chosen and play moves clockwise around the table. On a player’s turn they will roll the amount of dice indicated on their Galaxy mat. Each die face has one of the six available actions. To activate a die a player will place it on the Control mat and take the action that was rolled. Players are granted one free reroll per The dice are the highlight of the game and each face turn. Additional rerolls can be obtained by spending looks amazing. Everyone agreed that the Diplomacy one energy. icon was stunning. The icons are recessed and crisply printed in white on a marbled grey/black die.

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Game Review (Cont.)

The Actions on the dice are as follows: Move a Ship, Acquire Resources, Advance Colonization and Utilize a Colony.

There are two main options available for the “Move a Ship” action: “Landing on the Planet” and “Orbiting the Planet”. Orbiting is the most common, as this is how you gain control of a Planet, which will grant you the opportunity to use its abilities throughout the game, as well as being the main source of victory points.

“Landing on the Planet” allows the player to use the Planet’s effect immediately. There are other minor move actions listed in the rulebook.

Two of the die faces are dedicated to “Acquiring Resources”. This is the main way of increasing your “Energy” and “Culture”. The amount of resources obtained is equal to the number of ships you have at locations with the relevant resource type.

There are two different die faces for “Advance Colonization”, one for Diplomacy and the other for Economy. Each moves one of your ships along the associated Colony track.

The “Utilize a Colony” die face is an important one, as it allows you to upgrade your Empire, thus granting you more dice, ships and victory points. It also allows you to trigger the actions on your colonized Planets.

Since this is a dice game, there is always the possibility of a bad roll of the dice. Fortunately there is a way to mitigate those rolls. By using the “Converter” you can use two dice to change any other die to any face you like. It’s an expensive trade, but there will be many times when it is just what you need to Colonize a Planet before someone else does.

One of the more interesting mechanics in the game is the use of the “Follow” option. This allows players to spend one of their “Culture” to take the same action that the current player just took. This went a long way to keeping players engaged even when it wasn’t their turn.

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The end of the game is triggered when a player reaches 21 points and everyone has had an equal number of turns. Then each player turns over their Secret Mission card and the victory points are added to their total and the player with the most points wins.

The game also comes with an excellent solo variant. On the back of each of the Galaxy mats is a special Rogue Galaxy mat that you will play against. The beauty of this is that each of the Rogue mats is graded from Beginner to Epic, each with escalating scales of toughness. I was able to get from Beginner to Hard with only a couple of losses. However, the Epic version is brutal and will provide players with a very challenging solo game.

While Tiny Epic Galaxies might come in a small box, it is not a reflection on the quality of the enclosed game.

This could have been easily made into a much larger game, but that would have done nothing to improve the actual gameplay. This has become our latest “go to” game when we are looking for something that is quick, entertaining and engaging. The inclusion of the well designed solo variant makes the game a bargain.

Overall, the production values and gameplay make this a game that many players will be very interested in trying.

Designer: Scott Almes Publisher: Gamelyn Games Number of players: 1-5 Mechanic: Dice Rolling, Action Allocation Ages: 14+ Length: 30 mins.

Highly Recommended www.gamelyngames.com

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Interview

Ignacy Trzewiczek

By Serge Pierro

Game Designer & Publisher

“Ignacy Trzewiczek is a game designer and publisher of Portal Games.”

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with our readers, can you tell us a little something about yourself?

Due to the fact that you write a blog and have published books, it appears that you are interested in writing. Who are your favorite authors and what are your favorite books?

I work for Portal Games, I design and develop games published by them.

I hope you have played Robinson Crusoe, Imperial Settlers or Stronghold – these are some of my most popular designs so far.

Did you start designing games at an early age? If so, do you remember what your first game design was like?

Ignacy Trzewiczek

I began as an RPG writer. I wrote a bunch of stuff for Warhammer RPG, then I wrote a couple of RPGs, with Neuroshima RPG being the most successful. Unfortunately it was never released in English, so only game fans in Poland might know of that game :)

Designer/Publisher Robinson Crusoe Imperial Settlers Stronghold Neuroshima RPG www.portalgames.pl

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I am huge fan of Jules Verne.

I am also a huge fan of H.P. Lovecraft. I am a sf and fantasy nerd. I’m also a huge fan of fantasy books written by David Gemmell and Glen Cook. Of course, I love Tolkien, Herbert, Heinlein and all the other great sf writers. I love books, I have a huge library at home and it is a great passion of mine.

Last issue we reviewed “Board Games That Tell Early in your career you wrote RPG’s, how do you Stories 2” and found it to be an excellent collection feel these influenced your design process now that of essays and articles, have you ever considered you publish board games? writing a book of completely new material? If so When designing an RPG you care a lot about what would you like to write about?

I write it every week on my blog BoardGamesThatTellStories.com :) I write short pieces and then once in a while I collect best of them into one volume and publish as a collection, sort of a ‘Best of ’.

giving players as many different options as possible when he creates his Character. In Neuroshima RPG there are more than 20 different professions, more than 10 races, 5 types, hundreds of skills etc. We were providing players with endless options to customize their Character.

I have a couple of ideas for more books, but at this time I am fully focused on development I took this and I use it in my designs nowadays. and design for new Portal Games titles. I don’t I give players as many options as possible. My games have the reputation of having huge have as much free time for writing as I wish.

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Interview (Cont.)

replayability – it’s because I try to provide as board game that is a very strong adaptation of much content as possible, exactly as I was doing the theme. I love the whole genre, so I also read back then, in the times of Neuroshima RPG. many books by Jules Verne and other writers who wrote about castaways. There are many Robinson Crusoe is considered to be one of your novels about such adventure and I read most best designs. How much did the book influence of them. Having all those stories in my head, it was much easier for me to design hundreds of your design of the game? adventures and events that appear on the cards in Robinson Crusoe. The game consist of around It’s my favorite book of all time, I read it many 300 cards! times and with no doubt that let me build a

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What games over the years have you enjoyed Who are your favorite game designers? most, from both the point of personal enjoyment, as well as those that influenced your growth as a I am huge fan of games and therefore I am huge fan of many designers. I love the work of Eric designer?

I play and enjoy games of many different genres and types. I am both an avid party games player, as well as a heavy strategy gamer. On one hand I love Time’s Up and on the other hand I love Lewis & Clark. On one hand you will find Commands & Colors in my collection and on the other hand you will find abstracts like Hive or Pylos. I try to experience all different alleys of our hobby and learn from each game.

Lang, I love the work of Bruno Cathala, Seji Kanai... The list is looong!

Is there any particular designer that you would be interested in collaborating with? If so, what type of game would you be interested in making?

At this point it is too early to say, but no doubt, sooner or later I will try to co-design a game with one of my designer friends. It should be fun! :)

When the opportunity presents itself, what games When starting a new design, do you start with a have you currently been playing? theme or a mechanic?

For the past several months 99% of my play time has been the prototype for First Martians. When I take a very short break from the prototype and play at least one or two games of something interesting, I play anything that is in the reach of my hands ;) This weekend I played two very good games – Quadropolis and World’s Fair 1893. Then I went back to work on First Martians. It’s a huge project and it doesn’t leave not much time for many other games :)

I start with experience. I define the experience I want players to have and then I choose the theme and mechanic. For example, in case of Robinson Crusoe, I wanted players to feel that they have a desperate fight for survival, a struggle with forces of nature. I put more and more problems that they will face and then I gave them the tools to overcome. Therefore wisdom and knowledge let them win against brutal nature. This is the most important theme in all books of Jules Verne, it’s his personal theme and I wanted it to be heart of the game.

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Interview (Cont.)

What do you think defines your “styleâ€? as a game designer, is there a specific mechanic or rule set or‌ ?

I named my blog Boardgamesthattellstories. com and this defines my approach. I try to build games that are as immersive as possible, with a rich theme and rules that match story that is told. Whenever you play Robinson Crusoe or Stronghold or upcoming First Martians, I hope players feel the story as intense - as if they were reading a book or watching a movie in a theatre.

As both a publisher and designer you have a unique insight on the process of developing a game. When you are designing, do you take in account production costs at that time, or do you complete the design and then later tweak it to work within a certain budget for the production?

Yes, you are right. I have this great opportunity to design games with my Production Manager assisting me and for the whole design process we discuss and think about the final components of the game. It is an extremely comfortable situation. I would not be able to design a game like Rattle, Battle or First Martians they way I design them without this very close cooperation with my production and without knowing cost of particular components in the final product. It makes design much easier.

As a full time game designer/publisher, can you give us a breakdown as to how you spend your time during the day creating/developing games?

For most of the day I work as a CEO of Portal Games. We are a pretty big company with 10 full time employees and another 10 people who work with us on particular tasks like translation,

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website and others. It’s a full time job and it is very time consuming. I develop games for about 2 hours a day (on average) when playtesters come to our office and then I also playtest and create a lot in the evening and during weekends. It is a a really hard task to manage the whole company and at the same time be the developer and designer for the company.

Luckily, I am very passionate about my job, so the more things to do, the more happy I am! :) Continued on next page>

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Interview (Cont.)

The Complete Master Set of 51st State has been recently released. Can you share with our readers what changes were made and do you feel this would be a good place for a new player to enter the game?

It’s a brand new edition and it is much easier to get into. We made the rules much easier to grasp, the rulebook is so much easier to understand and better. It’s the perfect edition to start with.

At portalgames.pl we published few articles that discuss in detail all the differences between the editions and all the choices we made to make this new edition better. I strongly encourage your readers to visit PortalGames.pl and give this Games Designer Journals a go. They show the design process and all of the behind the curtain things we do as developers.

“Crazy Carts” seems to be an unusual game for you to be releasing. What is it about the game that made you feel that you wanted to publish it?

You are right. It is not heavy science fiction gamer’s game. It’s a fun, light family game with an unique twist. I loved the game from the very first test game. We had this prototype submitted, we played it and the whole team had the same feeling – it’s original, unique, it’s like no other game on the market. And it is fun.

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So we decided to publish it. It is a huge challenge to Portal Games. We specialize in rich thematic science fiction and fantasy games and Crazy Karts is something completely new. We are all excited about this new project and we will see in upcoming months if we were able to present the game to the audience.

Are there any upcoming projects that you are at liberty to discuss or announce?

This is an extremely interesting year for Portal Games. We just released 51st State Master Set, in June at Origins we release the previously mentioned Crazy Karts, but it’s just a beginning!

In August at Gen Con we are releasing Tides of Madness (sequel to award winning Tides of Time) and Cry Havoc – our first big area control game, so called ‘dudes on the board’ with 54 miniatures, huge board and revolutionary battle resolution system. In September we will release a new edition of Robinson Crusoe and in October our biggest project so far – First Martians. Huge epic adventure game that utilizes engine from Robinson Crusoe and moves setting to Mars. It’s a huge project that I’ve been working on for months!

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What advice would you have for aspiring game designers?

Patience. Patience. Patience. That’s all you need. Playtest until you cannot stand your game, and then playtest some more. If you like your game, that means you didn’t playtest it enough. You need patience to work and work and fix and improve and correct...

You need lots of patience.

Thank you! - Ignacy Trzewiczek

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Game Review

Automobiles

By Serge Pierro

Wave The Checkered Flag!

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istorically, racing games have proven to be popular, whether they are classics such as Backgammon, or modern efforts such as Formula De, the impetus to cross the finish line before your opponent is still found appealing. Automobiles joins the ranks of games in this genre. Let’s see if it has what it takes to cross the finish line as a winner.

The twelve inch square box is an impressive 3 1/2” deep and includes a custom black plastic insert which has plenty of room for the components, storage trays and possible card expansions.

The large 16 page rulebook is printed on high quality matte finished stock. The rules are clearly laid out and there are a generous amount of illustrations, as well as numerous examples.

Perhaps the most interesting component is the inclusion of plastic storage trays for the cubes. Each of the two trays holds five different groups of cubes and comes with a perforated/attached lid. We immediately removed the lids so that we had more table space, but they snap together securely when the game is stored.

The four panel game board is double sided and features “Daytona Beach” on one side and “Monza” on the other.

The game also includes five, high quality, cloth bags with drawstrings that have Automobiles silkscreened on them.

The custom wooden meeples have the profile of a racing car. The only component that I was not happy with was the wooden lap markers, as these were prone to fall over and move. I would have preferred flat wooden discs instead.

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There are 282 wooden cubes included in various colors.

Also included are five double sided 5” x 8” player mats made of card stock. One side features artwork for a Formula One car and the other side is more of a Nascar look. Although each features a different color, both sides of all the cards are identical and feature turn reference instructions.

The driving force behind the game are the cards by which the cubes base their effects. The card stock is a little flimsy, but they are not shuffled or placed in hand, so this is not a factor as they are only displayed as a reference. One of the nice features of the rulebook is that there are several predetermined sets of cards that can be used for a game, with each set providing a different experience.

Game play is fairly straightforward with each player receiving 12 starting cubes to place in their bag and the matching player mat for their car. At the start of the game the players can choose to use one of the suggested card sets from the rulebook, or they can randomly choose one of each type. This design allows future expansions to be easily integrated into the current set of components.

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Game Review (Cont.)

After determining the starting order, each player will have the opportunity to spend the amount of cash listed on their starting space, with the player in the pole position receiving $10 and each player thereafter gaining $1 more than the previous player. This money will then allow players to customize their starting bag by purchasing additional cubes. It is this customization that makes “Automobiles” more than just a mindless race around the track.

On a player’s turn they will draw seven cubes randomly from the bag. These will determine what they can do on their turn. These cubes will either be Gears to move the car around the track, action cubes that have special effects or Wear cubes which slow you down.

As players accumulate Wear throughout the game there might be some turns where they will draw several Wear cubes and want to take advantage of using a Pit Stop.

Although it costs a turn, it enables a player to remove all of the Wear cubes drawn.

To move, players will place the appropriate colored cubes on the associated colors of the racing track and “string” them together to form the “line” that the car will move along the track, as well as using them for their special effects. When the movement phase is over, any remaining cubes can be used to purchase more cubes based on their cash value.

Each player will play in turn until a player crosses the finish line and all players have had an equal amount of turns. The player who has finished furthest beyond the finish line wins the game.

Automobiles is a brilliantly designed racing game.

Instead of resorting to the randomness of a dice roll, the “bag building” aspects of a deck builder are utilized and allow for the customizing of your collection of cubes.

This allows for players to be creative and tailor the game towards a personal strategic concept. While there is randomness due to the pulling of cubes from the bag,

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skilled players will refine what allocation of cubes they will want to use and in what proportions.

The replayability due to the various cards makes for many interesting scenarios when coupled with the two enclosed maps. Both maps have different feels and I felt that Monza was certainly the more dynamic and interesting of the two.

Although 3 rounds is recommended, we found that the game really shines in the 5-7 round zone. This forced players to deal with the Wear they kept accumulating throughout the game and made for a much more strategic and interesting game, though at the price of it being longer.

The majority of the cards are solidly balanced with each color having its own feel/flavor, though some of the green and blue cards raised eyebrows, especially the “Hybrid Engine” which proved to be a distraction, as the game seemed to revolve around players accumulating the most cubes in order to take advantage of its ability, instead of actually racing around the track.

I’d love to see an expansion of new cards and tracks.

Although I am generally not a fan of racing games, this is has not only become my favorite racing game, but it is also one of the most enjoyable games I’ve had the pleasure of playing recently.

Designers: David Short Publisher: AEG Number of players: 2-5 Mechanic: Bag Builder Ages: 14+ Length: 45 mins.

Highly Recommended www.alderac.com

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Game Review

Daxu

By Serge Pierro

A Quality Two Player Game

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ecently I have become enthralled with the game designs of J. Alex Kevern. World’s Fair 1893 and Gold West were both excellent games, so I was really looking forward to Daxu, to see if it continued his output of quality game designs, as well as how it compared to other two player games.

Daxu comes in a square 8” box that is linen finished and is reminiscent of the classic Kosmos two player series of games.

Inside there is a somewhat standard white cardboard insert with a storage well for the components. This is not a tight fighting compartment and there is movement amongst the cards.

There are four rule booklets included: English, Dutch, French and German. Each booklet is four pages long and the rules are concise and well explained. Given its size there are an impressive amount of graphics that aid in the setup, learning and scoring sections.

Each of the trifold gameboard’s panels measures 6” and is linen finished.

The wooden Reputation markers come in two different colors.

All of the cards are linen finished and are of a good quality.

Overall, the production quality of the game is excellent.

To start the game the board is placed in the middle of the table and the two reputation markers are placed on the middle of the board which is worth zero reputation. Each player receives a set of four action cards and is dealt eight cards to start the game, these are sorted and placed on the relevant areas of the board. One player is awarded the Tie Break card.

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The game consists of rounds that contain four phases. The phases are: Flip 3 cards, Choose an action, Resolve actions and Adjust reputation.

During the first phase three cards are flipped over. These will be the cards that will be affected by the choice of actions the players use in the next phase.

The second phase is the main segment of the game where players will choose an action from their deck of four action cards. The choices are: Give, Take, Cooperate and Undermine. Give means that you are willing to give the three cards to your opponent. Take means that you want the cards for yourself. Cooperate means that you “agree” with the action card that your opponent plays and you gain +1 reputation. Undermine results in the opposite of what your opponent played and you lose −1 reputation.

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In the third phase the actions are resolved. Both the rulebook and player aide have the resolutions for ties and certain card combinations. Example: If both players play “Give”, the player with the lowest reputation wins all of the cards. If they are tied for reputation, then the player holding the Tie Break card wins and then passes the tie break card to the other player.

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Game Review (Cont.)

During the fourth phase players adjust their markers on the reputation track. This may be necessary as there some cards that have +1 or −1 reputation marked on them and when you win the cards you also become liable for the reputation gains and losses. If players used the Cooperate or Undermine actions, then the reputation adjustment is done during this phase.

The above phases are continuously done until you can no longer flip over three cards from the deck. Then the scoring round commences.

The scoring mechanism is one of the more interesting aspects of the game, as it rewards close play and punishes excessive majorities. Scoring is determined by the number of cards that each player has at a specific shop. Since there are 9 cards of each shop, an ideal score would be winning a majority with a 5-4 score, whereas winning by a 7-2 score would be detrimental, as you would actually lose points. Another factor is that half of the board/shops are scored in a more forgiving manner, whereas the others are less forgiving.

Example: For the Baker’s shop if you win by 1 card you score 4 points, by 2 cards you score 2 points and by 3 cards you score 1 point. However, if you win by 4 or more, you lose 1 point and your opponent gains points equal to the number of cards that they have on their side.

Example 2: For the Teahouse, which is on the less forgiving side of the board, if you win by 1 card you score 5 points and by 2 cards you score 3 points. But if you win by 3 or more, you are penalized as mentioned above.

Each of the shop areas are scored and then there is a special bonus that is based on each player’s final reputation. The board has little coins on each area that indicate the amount of reputation earned/lost. This number is added to previous score and the highest number wins. If there is a tie, the current owner of the Tie Break card is the winner.

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This is a game where you are essentially playing the person sitting across from you as much as you are playing the game itself. Normally I prefer games where the skill level of the players determines the outcome, however, in this game the subtle psychological drama that ensues as each player is trying to outwit their opponent leads to some interesting moments that a purely skill-based game lacks. Knowing when and how to set up an opponent is as equally important as winning some of the cards.

I like the fact that the cards had +1, −1, or 0 reputation printed on them, as this allowed for more strategic play.

You had to weigh how much reputation loss you were willing to take in order to bolster a shop in need of cards, while at the same seeing how many +1 cards you could afford to take without beating your opponent by a large amount.

Daxu fits in very nicely with some of my other favorite two player games, such as Lost Cities, Hera and Zeus and Targi. It’s nice to see these types of games starting to come back to the forefront, as publishers have been a bit leery on releasing two player games due to their lack of potential resales.

J. Alex Kevern continues to be on a roll and I’m eagerly anticipating his next design!

Designers: J.Alex Kevern Publisher: White Goblin Games Number of players: 2 Mechanic: Set Collection, Area Control Ages: 10+ Length: 30 mins.

Recommended

www.whitegoblingames.com

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Game Review

Slaughterville

By Bill Braun

Horror Themed Co-Op

I

grew up in the early 80s. Summer vacations were spent with friends riding our bikes to the nearest arcade, playing Dungeons & Dragons and Call of Cthulhu, and renting countless movies from the local video store. Back then, video was King, and everyone was jumping on the video-rental bandwagon. Although Blockbuster was still several years from becoming a reality, there were plenty of mom-and-pop establishments that appeared, seemingly overnight, on just about every street corner. It was during this time that I became somewhat of a movie addict, and my preferred genre of VHS entertainment generally leaned toward horror; and let’s face it, the late 70s and early 80s was a portal for what appeared to be an unending stream of horror movies. As you might imagine, my affinity for the macabre eventually bled (pun intended) into other mediums of entertainment – including board games. However, finding a board game capable of capturing the distinct feel of a 1970s / 1980s low budget, B-rate horror movie has been surprisingly difficult. Few have tried, but with varying degrees of success. Welcome to Slaughterville, developed

by Christopher Brown and published by RubiOH Games, promises a game of fun and horror for 1-6 players. But, is this a game that Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees would be proud of, or will gaming groups everywhere run from it in terror?

Gameplay Players begin by selecting one of the available stereotypical characters most commonly found in horror movies: The Jock, The Nerd, The Hottie, The Bad Boy, and The Professor, to name a few. Each character card lists five attributes that are used to test their will, fight monsters and villains, and survive the dangers of Slaughterville. These statistics include Combat, Agility, Nerve, Perception, and Health. With the

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exception of Health, every other attribute represents the number of dice players will roll when attempting to pass a particular challenge. Like so many games that have come before it, a five or a six on a six-sided dice represents success.

Additionally, each character has a set of unique special abilities and talents. Some of these special abilities require the player to discard a previously obtained clue token, while a character’s talents are innate and always available.

After choosing a character, a Villain is selected for the team to face off against. These villains range from Werewolves and Body Snatchers, to Serial Killers, Slashers, Cannibal Rednecks, and Zombie Hordes. Each Villain comes with its own Villain board that details which locations need to be included with that scenario, identifies the steps taken during the Villain’s turn, and details the win conditions for both the players and the Villain. Players are then free to add locations to the scenario while ensuring that there are a total of six in play. Each location and Villain has its own unique deck of 24 cards. In the case of the Villain, these cards represent the Villain’s health as well as additional events and abilities that might occur during the Villain’s turn. The Location’s deck includes a mix of terrifying and supernatural events, allies that may join your fight against evil, and items to give the player a much-needed edge. Lastly, the character’s starting tile is placed beside the Villain’s tile, and the game can begin.

Gameplay is relatively simple. Each player may take two actions during their turn. In addition to freely switching their equipped items from the items they have in their inventory, they may move to a new location, trade items with other players at the same location, or encounter a location.

Encountering locations makes up the bulk of Slaughterville and doing so is as simple as revealing the topmost card from that location’s deck, reading the flavor text, and attempting

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a wide variety of challenges. And while there is a limit to the number of items a character may have (only two items may be equipped at a time), there is no limit to how many allies can join a character. Both items and allies typically provide characters with enhanced attributes and combat abilities.

After each player has taken a turn, the Villain strikes back.

Consulting the chosen Villain’s board details their actions.

Depending on the scenario, this may involve Cannibal Rednecks hunting locations for their next meal, advancing the turn marker on the player’s starting area, or rolling dice to determine if the Beast Within is able to resist its predatory urges. A new Villain card is then revealed from the Villain deck, the first player token passes to the player on the left, and a new round begins.

Slaughterville focuses on a high degree of random dice rolling, not the least of which occurs during combat. Whether during a single round, or until one or the other combatants has been knocked out (or escapes), combat involves each side rolling a pre-determined number of six-sided dice and comparing the results. These rolls may be modified based on attached allies, items, and Villain abilities, and essentially comes down to the player who rolls the most successes (5’s and 6’s). Each success negates a success from the opposing side, and any dice that remain inflict that number of wounds.

When a character is wounded they add wound tokens to their character card, while wounds inflicted upon the Villain equate to the removal of Villain cards form their deck. Being successful in combat is also the most common mechanism that provides characters with clue tokens that can be spent on special abilities, meeting specific requirements to defeat the Villain, healing, and finding a way to escape from future, potentially unwinnable, combat.

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Game Review (Cont.)

Theme and Components Slaughterville embraces the slasher/creature film genre of the late 70’s and early 80’s like nothing I have seen before in a board game. It relies heavily on the use of still photography – costume-clad actors and actual location images – in place of any significant artwork. It is reminiscent of the development efforts and many of the games designed by Flying Frog Productions. As such, the art style yields a high degree of corniness, while at the same time providing fond memories of many of the movies I enjoyed as a young adult. It is also clear very early on that Christopher Brown went to great lengths to further capture the theme through consistent flavor text, with every card and board in the game providing its own unique narrative. Skipping over this flavor text will lose much of what Slaughterville is attempting to achieve.

To fully experience this game players must immerse themselves in the story and, if willing, go so far as to roleplay each card.

Although I applaud Christopher Brown’s dedication to theme, reading each of the flavorful entries is a challenge in and of itself due to the incredibly small font size. Granted, my eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but I still consider myself fortunate to have better than average vision. Even so, the text – in particular, the text on the Villain boards – made for a difficult experience that often slowed down gameplay. While I generally enjoyed the overall art design, the graphic design needs a lot of work, and the rulebook is no exception.

The remaining components are of a nice quality – Villain and Location boards are thick and durable, and the cards are a decent stock – but I do take some issue with the player pawns that were included. It wasn’t because they were ordinary pawns in a variety of colors, but the decision to not include a better way to match the chosen pawn color with the chosen character. During my play-through

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Photo: Bill Braun

of Slaughterville, my fellow gamers and I would occasionally forget which color our pawns were and accidentally begin taking actions using another player’s pawn. It’s true, not every board game needs a finely detailed miniature, but by simply including tokens of the same colors as the pawns that could be placed on the player’s selected character card would go a long way in remedying this issue.

Final Thoughts I enjoyed my time playing Slaughterville. The rules, although somewhat vague in certain situations, were easy to comprehend and teach. Each Villain felt unique in both the win conditions and actions, and I appreciate the attention to detail that was made to bring those mechanisms to life.

However, if you’re considering giving this game a try (and I suggest you do), be advised that Slaughterville’s wonderfullyrealized theme is only matched by its randomness. Constant dice rolling aside, the odds are very much stacked against the player(s) from the start. If you have any hope of surviving you must arm your characters with as many allies and items as possible, as quickly as possible. However, these items and allies can only be dug up from the six chosen locations in play, and each location includes 24 cards that consist of mostly random/thematic events that generally yield no long-term benefits. Adding to this, most items and allies require passing an attribute check. Fail that check and all hope is lost as that much-needed shotgun or priest is added to the growing discard pile. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy

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randomness in games. It is a recurring mechanism in many of the games that I play and own. However, Slaughterville takes the concept of randomness to an entirely new level. Gamer beware. Like many of its inhabitants, Slaughterville will lure you in with its strange happenings, but will happily crush you beneath its heel before you get a chance to leave.

Designer: Christopher Brown Publisher: Rubio Games Number of players: 1-6 Mechanic: Co-op Ages: 14+ Length: 60-120 mins.

Worth Trying www.rubio-games.com

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Interview

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Johan Koitka

By Serge Pierro

“Johan Koitka is the Managing Director of the popular board game site: Boiteajeux”

Managing Director of “Boiteajeux” What made you want to create a site that allowed What are your favorite games, both onsite and off? players to play popular hobby board games?

Onsite: Myrmes, Tzolk’in, Kanban and Dungeon Twister. Yeah, big games :) I love the opportunity offered by turn-based play to really explore the possibilities of heavy games or to engage in very deep analysis if desired, a bit like chess by mail, something that is not really possible around a table without boring your partners.

I didn’t create the site myself, but Frederic Meurrens did, and he did it for the same reason that I joined it after some months: we are core gamers. Back in 2004 it was not as easy as today to find players for boardgames in real life. Online play can be a good solution to this problem, but there were very few online platforms at the time, and they were not always user friendly... Off the site: Terra Mystica. But, I still hope I will have the authorization to adapt it one day! and never in French.

We decided to give a professional and international direction to the site in 2011, but The site has some great games, such as Trajan, in memory of this very French start we decided Kanban, Agricola, Concordia, the Gipf series etc. to keep the name, which means “games box”, How do yo go about choosing what games to make even if it is not very convenient for two thirds available on the site. Especially those that aren’t of the community now.

available on other sites.

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Interview (Cont.)

Although the site is free, what are the benefits of We focus more and more on big games, for purchasing a membership?

several reasons. First, because we work more effectively on the games we like to play. Then because in my opinion turn-based play suits well to this type of games. Finally, precisely because they are not often available on other sites. The development of such games takes months, something you can hardly make on you spare time.

Premium members often benefit from new games previews. A few games, like Dungeon Twister, are even premium-only. They have also access to a lot of additional features, like automatic refresh, real-time alerts, friends management, choosing color, private notes, etc...

Besides these features, more and more players understand that if they want to continue to enjoy this professional service, they have to support us. It makes sense, considering most of them spend more than one hour a day on Boiteajeux.

We are also attracted to adapt very recent games, because one of our goals is to help players to choose. There are so many new games nowadays, not always good, so we try to highlight the games we love. We hope it inspires our favorite designers and publisher to keep up the good work. Our players often buy games Can you give us a behind the scenes look at the they have tested on Boiteajeux. Of course, finding skilled players around the world for this everyday operations of Boiteajeux? particular game you have and love for years is Boiteajeux is my full time job. Some friends are also great. helping me in their spare time. Our top priority

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is debugging. We are players, so we know that nothing is worse than having a game ruined by a bug. We make really strong beta test phases, and after that when a bug is reported it is usually fixed in less than 24 hours. Most of the games have no bugs left from the very beginning. Agricola is the main exception, because there are so many interaction between cards, and sometimes the right way to deal with them is really unclear.

Tracking reports and requests from players takes a lot of time, but it is worth the pain, because the community is very grateful about that.

Although I personally prefer the turn-based gaming system, do you have any plans to have real time games available?

I don’t think so. Other platforms do this well, and in my opinion the two systems don’t coexist very well on the same platform. But Premium membership allows to create quicker games, and some games are actually played live, even if nothing wrong happens to you if you stop playing for a while. We have already made lots of change to improve the pace of games and we always listen carefully the community Then, the next game to come. We tried to suggestions on this topic. release 8-10 new games per year, and as we rarely do light games, it’s quite hard. That’s why important but non-urgent topics, like a better Are there any upcoming announcements that you looking and responsive portal are often delayed. would like to share with our readers?

We prefer to take care that our games work on touch devices, as 30% of our users use mainly We are currently working on Alchemists, which was for me THE game of Essen 2014, along them now. with Kanban. With Tzolk’in, Dungeon Petz and How open is the development process for users Dungeon Lords already adapted, I can’t hide that I am a big fan of Czech Games Editions.

who are interested in programming games for the site, or are they developed “in house”?

We are also preparing another Stefan Feld.

Castles of Burgundy and Trajan are among our We develop the games on our own. It’s the part most played games, so we definitely need more of the job that is the most fun! :) And I am a bit Feld games. I think most of them fit very well reluctant to ask the community to work, while I with our turn-based system. try to make a living. www.boiteajeux.net

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61 www.redravengames.com

Special Feature Online Boardgaming Sites

By Serge Pierro

Part II - Boiteajeux

I

Home shows “My Games in Progress” with both the games and your user name in red to indicate that it is your turn to move, while games listed in black indicate that it is another player’s turn, with the current player’s turn listed in bold lettering. Each game that you are currently playing has your current elo rating listed to This popular site is known for their collection of deeper the right of the game’s title. This feature is also used for board games and with 2.7k Facebook “likes” it is easy games in the “Waiting Room”. The “Waiting Room” to see why. There are currently 59 games available and is where you will find players of specific games looking feature some fine games such as: Agricola, Alhambra, for opponents. One of the features of this area is that Concordia (as well as the Salsa Expansion), Deus, The if you click on a player’s user name a separate box will Castles of Burgandy, Dixit, Dungeon Petz, Dungeon pop up and display a history of that player, including Twister, Ginkopolis, Kanban, Myrmes, Nations: The Dice their elo ratings and win/loss records for all of the games Game, Trajan, and Tzolk’in. they have played. There is also a “Replacement” tab for games where someone has left and a player can enter The site also features a nice collection of Abstract games, this game so that the other players can finish it. Not including: Dragon Face, Yokai No Mori and many others. surprisingly there is a “Start a New Game” tab which But the highlight of the the Abstract collection is the will allow you to choose a game and set the parameters inclusion of GIPF series, including: Dvonn, Yinsh, Gipf, you wish to play the game with.

Zertz, Tzaar and Punct, all of which I consider to be the finest Abstract games available under one imprint.

The Games tab lists all of the games on the site, as well as a screenshot to give you an idea of what the user The main means of moving around the site is via the interface looks like. It also lists a link to the game on Navigation Tabs: Home, The Games, Ratings, Forum, Board Game Geek, the rules and a link to the official Become Premium!, My Profile, Partners and logout. website. n Part Two of our series on online board gaming, we take a look at the French site, Boiteajeux. This site specializes in games that are a bit “heavier” than other sites and presents a formidable array of great games.

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A four player game of Trajan.

The Ratings tab allows players to see their overall rank on the site listed along with the other players, as well as their ratings for individual games. You can filter the ratings also by the top 10, top 50 or all players. There is also a “Progress” tab that allows players to see how much their ratings have increased or decreased over the last month, week or day. Solo gamers will appreciate the special section for the scoring of solo games.

The “Forum” tab takes you to the site’s Forum section.

Because this is a French based site the bulk of the the Forums are in French. There is only one dedicated English section. This makes it a bit of a hassle for English, or any non-French speaking players to find pertinent information, especially with problems and such. The Forum also lists all of the games on the site so that specific discussion can take place, however

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Special Feature (Cont.)

The start of a two player game of “Die Bergun Von Burgund”(The Castles of Burgundy).

again the predominance of French is a major turnoff for non-speakers. Having studied French in the past I’m able to get the general idea of many conversations, however that is not helpful when trying to find out something specific.

While the site is free, they do offer special “members only” perks. The information is accessible by clicking on the “Become Premium” tab that lists the costs and benefits of becoming a premium member. These include: Auto Refresh, Turn Notification, Customizing the User Interface and more.

One of the things that I really like about the site is that the graphics and the layouts for many of the games are excellent. It should be kept in mind that due to the size of some of the games there might be a need to do a small

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scroll to reveal a part of the game that is off screen. For the most part though, many of the games play just fine on their main screen without any need for scrolling.

Of course the main attraction is the quality of several of the games. To be able to play the likes of Trajan, Concordia and the GIPF series is amazing. The caliber of players is also quite strong, seemingly stronger than on other sites, which shouldn’t be too surprising seeing as many of the games here are a bit deeper than some of the games offered at other sites.

The only real problem I have with the site is that the preponderance of French in the forums. With the growth of the site into an international entity, perhaps there should be some thought given to making the forums more English friendly, seeing as how that seems to be the norm for international sites.

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The games in progress screen.

With online sites I like to explore different strategies, as well as experimental ones, in addition to trying different games. However this site is less forgiving for experimentation due to the strength of many of the players and your rating will suffer accordingly.

If you are a fan of medium to heavy games or abstract games, then this is certainly a site that you will be wanting to take a look at. www.boiteajeux.com

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Game Review

Kheops

By Serge Pierro

Build a Pyramid

O

ne of the benefits of a growing board game industry is that some games that were previously out of print are now being picked up by publishers and being reprinted with higher production values than their previous incarnations.

Fans of two player games will be happy to hear that White Goblin Games has produced a new edition of Kheops designed

by Bruno Faidutti (Citadels) and Serge Laget (Mare Nostrum).

Let’s see what this new printing has to offer.

Kheops comes in a square box and features a standard white cardboard insert with a well down the middle. This is adequate for all of the components, sans the pyramid frame. The frame will have to be stored above the well and is prone to movement within the box.

The 32 page rulebook is broken down into four languages and thus only 8 pages are relevant to the language at hand. The concise instructions contain numerous illustration, including examples of the gameplay, symbol explanations and endgame scoring.

The components are the main difference between this edition and the 2008 version. Joshua Cappel’s graphic design elevates the game’s theme and the physical components all look great.

The Pyramid frame is made of a linen finished cardboard stock that comes in six pieces that are assembled via puzzle piece joints. The 50 Pyramid tiles are of the same stock and finish as the frame. The custom pawns are outstanding, as the level of detail extends to each of the worker figures actually having thumbs. A custom score pad is also included.

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Players will have the choice of either red or white pawns. If a player chooses red, they have the advantage of going last. If a player chooses white, they will have the advantage of using the special Pharaoh pawn.

The Pyramid frame will need to be put together and filled with the initial tiles as per the instructions in the rulebook. The remaining tiles are placed into stacks for players to draw from. Each player will draw a starting hand of three tiles.

On each turn a player will have two tasks to complete.

The first one is placing a pawn on one of the unoccupied tiles within the Pyramid. If there is a circular Instant Action icon on the tile, the action is immediately resolved.

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The second task will be to place one of the tiles from your hand into the Pyramid. At least one of the sides must touch another tile in the Pyramid frame. The player chooses the tile’s orientation. After placing the tile, a tile is drawn and play continues in the same manner with the next player.

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Game Review (Cont.)

Each player has an identical set of pawns, with the exception of white who has the special Pharaoh pawn which counts as two pawns and can’t be the target of opponent’s actions. The other pawns include a Mummy, Priest and Workers. The Workers are common pawns with no abilities. The Mummy is an interesting piece as it can be used as a normal Worker or to remove an opponent’s Worker from the game. It also is a triggering device, as you can’t play your Priest or Pharaoh before your first have your Mummy in play. The Priest’s ability is that it can’t be targeted by an opponent’s actions.

The Instant Actions on the Pyramid tiles are the main offensive and defensive tactics to determine the final positions of the Pyramid tiles and the pawns. There are four Instant Actions: Pivot Corridor, Pivot Room, Swap Pawns and Move.

The Pivot actions allow a player to choose a tile and change its orientation. This oftentimes leads to a “tempo” battle as players will try to have the “last word” on a tiles orientation, leading either to a high scoring network or breaking up an opponent’s network.

The Swap Pawns action is pretty straightforward; you can switch the position of one of your pawns with one of your opponent’s pawns. Like the previous actions, this will often times lead to a “tempo” battle as players try to prevent majorities being formed in a network.

The Move action is mainly used to move one of your Pawns to a more profitable location.

The game ends when the red player completes the Pyramid. Then the scoring begins.

There are two main points to know about the scoring: Ankhs and Networks score points and Fragments do not. A Network is when two or more tiles are connected by openings, while a Fragment is an isolated tile.

removed from play. Second, score any pawns covering Ankhs. Next remove any pawns on a fragment. Then determine who controls each of the Networks by the amount of pawns each player has in a Network. In the case of a tie remove all pawns and no one scores.

Once the ownership of the Networks is established, follow the scoring method as listed in the rulebook.

The use of the enclosed score pad will make this much easier as there are several different scoring possibilities within a network. After totaling the all of the various means of scoring, the player with the most points wins.

It is surprising to see that this game hasn’t reached a wider audience, as Faidutti and Laget have delivered an interesting game. If you passed on the earlier version due to the lackluster graphics, you may want to take another look at this one.

The game play is strategic and tactical, as players try to both build Networks that they can control, while preventing their opponent from doing the same. There is a lot of give and take as players constantly try to maximize both their pawn and tile placements. Fans of the Kosmos series of two player games will feel right at home with this fine offering. It appears that White Goblin Games is putting together their own line of excellent two player games by top designers and we will be keeping an eye out for their future releases. Overall it’s an interesting game that competitive players will enjoy.

Designers: Bruno Faidutti & Serge Laget Publisher: White Goblin Games Number of players: 2 Mechanic: Tile Placement, Area Control Ages: 12+ Length: 45 mins.

Recommended

Scoring is tabulated in a specific order. First, any pawns in a network that contains the Curse icon are

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www.whitegoblingames.com

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Game Review

Scoville Labs Hot New Expansion

By Serge Pierro

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ast issue we took a look at Scoville and was impressed with its creative pepper breeding mechanic, and now Tasty Minstrel Games has just released an expansion for the game, Scoville Labs. Let’s take a take a look at what this new offering adds to an already solid game.

Scoville Labs comes in a small 4” x 6” x 2 1/2” that is packed with an assortment of components, as well as a small company catalog featuring some of their games.

There is a small eight page rulebook that lists the new components, as well as providing instructions for the use of the new Lab boards and expansion related setups.

One of the criticisms of the original game was that there weren’t enough peppers available for larger player counts.

With this expansion Tasty Minstrel Games looks to alleviate some of those concerns by including several different components to address this, including 42 wooden pepper tokens and 6 plastic ghost pepper tokens. Additionally there are 36 pepper chits that can be used in place of larger pepper groups, as well as using the punched out pepper spaces on the lab boards - as the backs of the boards have the same colors as the main pepper groups, thus granting even more peppers.

We found that there were more than enough tokens for 3-4 players, but wonder if there are enough for 6 players with maxed out Lab boards.

Also included are several items that augment the base set’s main components. These include 12 new Market cards and 12 new Recipe cards. Like the main game, these also have a linen finish and can be mixed in with the main sets. The new cards have an expansion icon in case you would like to separate them from the base game. Six additional “Plant 1 Extra Pepper” tiles are also included, as well as a single linen finished card that the winner of the game receives as a bonus for the next game.

Six alternate Breeding charts are also included. These use a different layout for resolving the different breeding combinations. However, many of the players preferred the original charts, though it is nice to have the option.

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The real star of the expansion is the Lab boards. Six of them are included and they are made of a very sturdy cardboard stock and like the main board they have the pepper “punch-outs” so that the tokens can be held in place. The tolerances on these are more forgiving than the original board.

The Lab boards allow players to privately breed their own crops of peppers. This is accomplished during the Planting phase. After a player has planted their mandatory pepper on the main board, they now have the option of planting an additional pepper in their Lab. The first pepper type planted, as well as its location, are two of the key strategies for getting the most out of the Lab, as peppers have to be placed next to an adjacent pepper from that point forward. Breeding is resolved when a pepper is placed next to an adjacent pepper and it immediately yields the result. If you should plant a pepper next to two peppers, you get the breeding result of both. We found that breeding secondary colored peppers in the Lab gave players access to white and black peppers that might not have been available on the board. This allowed for more flexibility as players now had two separate areas they could use to pursue their strategies and allowed for more dynamic play as Recipes were easier to complete when compared to the base game.

The addition of the Lab boards greatly increases the game’s replayability, as well as taking an already solid design and adding a new layer of strategic depth. At this point I consider the Lab boards to be an essential element of Scoville and I can’t picture playing without them. If you are a fan of the original game, you will certainly want to consider adding this expansion!

Designer: Ed Marriott Publisher: Tasty Minstrel Games Number of players: 2-6 Mechanic: Auction, Set Collection, Grid Movement Ages: 14+ Length: 60-90 mins.

Recommended www.playtmg.com

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Game Review

Ancient Conflict Treasure Chest

By Serge Pierro

Abstract Game Collection

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hile it is easy to put together a collection of board games based on specific themes, abstract games generally aren’t purchased in the same fashion. With Ancient Conflict Treasure Chest: World Edition, Playford Game’s approach is to offer a collection of both vintage and modern abstract game designs so that players have several choices to choose from when looking to play a game.

The Ancient Conflict Treasure Chest: World Edition is the top of the line offering from Playford Games. The difference between the various editions is the amount of games included.

The copy I received was shipped in a corrugated cardboard box, in a plastic bag with a sheet of bubble-pack across the top of the board. While their were no problems with this method, there is nothing to store the Chest in other than the unattractive cardboard box. Since this is meant to be more of a ”luxury” item, it seems that they believe that you will keep it displayed on a coffee table and not kept in a box for storage.

The game collection comes with a 24 page rulebook that is broken down into individual sections for each game. There are beautiful photos across the header of each game and the layout is clean. However, the cost of this look comes at the expense of some games not having the clearest rules. It would have been much better to have a less appealing graphic layout and focus more on making the rules as clear as possible. There was some

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ambiguity to some of the rules, for example there is no mention as to whether the orientation of the pieces in Ilios could be changed (we decided no, and played with the “top” of each tile facing the same direction).

The “treasure chest� of the game is a wooden box with a wooden top that is the actual game board. There is room inside the box to store all of the included games.

There are several cloth bags with drawstrings included to store the various pieces. However, it should be noted that the pieces must be lying flat within each of the bags so that the board/lid will lay flat and fit snug.

The main concept of this collection is that there are pieces that have various graphics on them that can be used in several different games. This allows for more games to be added to the line without the need for the owner to buy new pieces. The concept is similar to Piecepack and Looney Pyramids. Each of the tiles are made of wood and have printed graphics that appear to

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Game Review (Cont.) be covered with a lacquer-type finish. Overall they have a nice feel to them and should certainly last. However, there are some caveats, as the pieces can get small chips along the edge when they are removed from the “punch board”. This is due to the nature of the grain of the wood.

More importantly is the printing of the tiles themselves. While many of the graphics were crisp and clear, there were many that were a little blurry. While this doesn’t necessarily affect the gameplay, there will people who will be distracted by this. Clearly there is a need for better quality control on the production of the pieces.

Although there are several other games and variants in the works, we will be taking a look at the 10 games included in this collection.

The nicest components are the Chess pieces. Since the Kings are only 3 inches, this is not a tournament legal set, (3 3/4” - 4 1/4” is legal) but for the casual player this is a really nice set. The white pieces are a natural wood color and the black pieces are finished in black. All of the pieces have felt bottoms and have some weight to them. The lid of the storage unit is the chess board and it appears to be a maple board with black squares printed on it. I’m not a fan of painted boards as they eventually wear away at spots. It would have been much nicer had a thin veneer of a darker wood been used for the dark squares. This board is serviceable, but since this is also used for many of the included games, a more durable finish would have been preferred.

The Checker pieces are a bit mundane, as they just use the other side of some of the tiles. Players who are used to playing Checkers with round disks will probably be a bit unsettled by the usage of squares.

While this fits in with the overall concept, it might have been worth introducing some disks in the design system to allow for disk based games such as Checkers and Xiang Qi. Journey Stones is a two player abstract game designed by Frank Zazanis with the theme of sea battles of the Celts versus the Vikings. Each side has twelve pieces, six that move diagonally and six that move orthogonally. These are set up on the back two rows of an 8x8 board, with the diagonal moving pieces in the back and the orthogonal pieces on the second rank. Piece movement is dictated by the height of the stacked pieces. There are two parts to a player’s turn. The first part is

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to move. Pieces move in the direction indicated on the tile and the amount of squares moved is dictated by the height of the Warship or Fleet. The second part of the turn is the forming of a Fleet or capturing an opponent’s Warship or Fleet. To form a Fleet a player moves one of their Warships onto one of their other Warships. The newly formed

Journey Stones

Fleet will now move in the direction indicated by the top tile and the amount of spaces indicated by the height of the Fleet. Once a Fleet is formed it has to move the exact amount of spaces indicated by its height.

This is an important aspect of the game, as the more powerful Fleets can run out of spaces to move in certain positions on the board, due to an opponent cutting off avenues of movement. A captured Fleet consisting of three Warships counts as three sunken ships and not one. The game ends when 7 Warships have been sunk.

One of the ancient games included is the Egyptian game, Seega. It is played on the same board as the other games and uses a 5x5 grid of squares. Players will use the reverse sides of the tiles with 12 dark brown and 12 brown tiles used. Players will take turns placing one of their tiles onto any of the squares within the grid, leaving the center square empty. Once the board is set up players will take turns moving one of their pieces to an adjacent empty space. A player may capture an opponents piece by sandwiching it between two of their Continued on next page>

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Game Review (Cont.) pieces. The game ends when a player has only one unit left on the board. The rulebook also includes advanced rules with more pieces and a larger playing area, as well as some additional rules.

Latrunculi is game from ancient Rome which features the pitting of a Roman army against a Germanic army. The game is played on an 8x8 board and each player will control sixteen armies (pieces), as well as having an invincible King.

The armies are placed on the back two ranks and the King is placed on the third rank, four squares from the player’s right. On a player’s turn they will move and have the option to capture. Pieces move in an orthogonal fashion to an open adjacent square, however they may also jump over a piece(s) to reach the target “adjacent” square. This allows for a more dynamic game as armies are able to move greater distances by planning accordingly. Like other ancient games, Latrunculi uses the sandwiching technique to capture pieces. One of the more fascinating elements of the game is the invincible Kings. Since they can’t be captured they are often found in the midst of the heaviest fighting to assist in capturing the opponent’s pieces. The game ends when one player captures all of the opponent’s armies.

Perhaps the most interesting game in the collection is Eliot Hochberg’s Ilios. This is billed as a cross between Othello and Go. This is a 2 to 4 player game. The game can be played on 6x6, 7x7 and 8x8 boards. Before the game begins players will place some tiles to prepare the battlefield. It is important to note that this game uses a large number of the tiles in the game and that the colors of the tiles are not a factor. To play a tile it must point to an opponent’s tile or one of the earlier placed Iron Weapons and may not point to an empty space or a previously placed Wasteland tile. After placing your tile you “Raid” by taking one of your tokens and placing/replacing it on any of your opponent’s tiles that your placed tile is pointing out and then placing a token on your just placed tile. A tile is captured when it is totally surrounded and kept by the player who captured it. The disk that was on the tile

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remains in play on that square. The player will then draw and play continues to the next player.

The game ends when there are no more empty squares. Players will total their captured tiles and Iron Weapons and the most points wins. Fans of contemporary abstract games will probably find

Cartography

this and Cartography to be the most interesting games opposite corners of the tile layout before your opponent in the collection. does the same. To setup the game, players will draw 16 random tiles and place them in a 4x4 grid and then Quorsum is an entertaining filler game designed by roll two dice to determine to either go first or place the Steve and Will Erickson that uses dice and tiles. The pieces on the four corners. I preferred using the Knights object of the game is to get both of your pieces to the from the Chess set as the pieces, as they could easily be

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Game Review (Cont.) positioned to be pointing at the corner in which they have to finish. The Knights move orthogonally and have to follow a path of their color. If the tiles are of a different color, they will then have to roll the dice in an attempt to turn the tile over, with the roll result equalling or higher than the number of buildings on the tile. One of the more interesting aspects of the game is that you have four dice to use on your turn, but you have to allocate them to the actions you wish to do.

Example: You can allocate two dice for attempting to turn over a tile, while the remaining two can be used for moving a Knight. Any dice that are successfully rolled are available for reuse, whereas the unsuccessful ones are placed aside and can’t be used again this turn. Your turn continues as long as you still have dice available to roll. The first player to have both of their Knights reach the opposite corners wins.

Regular readers of Game Nite will remember that we have already reviewed Cartography (see Issue #7), however the version included in this game collection has higher production values as the pieces are made of wood and feature a puzzle piece connector that avoids tile movement. Other than the tile upgrades the game remains the same and fans of Go will want to give this game a try. This edition also features less tiles than the regular version and should be kept in mind for those who are interested in playing the 3-4 player versions.

Frank Zazanis II’s King’s Ransom is also included in the package.

This game has been published before, though this time it will have wooden tiles instead of cards. This is a Chess variant that is played without a board and has a bluffing element to it. Since Chess is my all-time favorite game and having a disinterest for bluffing/deduction games, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this. Perhaps the unknown/bluffing element adds a bit of uncertainty/excitement to the game, but as a Chess purist I found nothing of profound interest in the game. It is a cute game for those who aren’t serious about Chess, but purists will probably want to avoid it.

Kush is Playford Games publisher Dave Stennet’s contribution to the collection and it has an unusual feature: on your turn

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you can move either one of your pieces or an opponent’s piece. Play begins by having each player place a Wasteland tile anywhere on the board until all the tiles have been placed. The Wasteland will indicate areas in which players

Ilios

may not move their main tiles. Once all the Wasteland tiles have been placed, players will then place their main tiles, alternating turns, until all of the tiles have been placed on the board. On a player’s turn they may move one of their tiles or an opponent’s tile to any adjacent

tile. Tiles may not be moved onto an empty square or one of the Wastelands. Play keeps alternating until no one can make a move. The player with the most stacks of their color wins. Although it is simple, between the setup of the Wastelands and then the main pieces, there is a decent amount of strategy and replayability.

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Quorsum

Overall this is a fine collection of Abstract games.

Serious Abstract fans will probably already own a decent chess set, so they may want to look at one of the different offerings available, sans the chess set. The ancient games were interesting, but the modern designs were more engaging. If you are looking for a collection of Abstract games, then you will most certainly want to take a look at what the various collection configurations have to offer and choose one that would suit your interests. It is hard to give an overall rating for a package such as this, so instead I’ll break it down individually.

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Recommend: Chess, Illios, Cartography, Quorsum, Journey Stones and Kush.

Worth Trying: Seega, Latrunculi and King’s Ransom, Checkers.

www.playfordgames.com

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Solo Gaming

Cruel Necessity

By Jeff Rhind

Oliver Cromwell lamented during the execution of King Charles I in January 1649 stating, as he looked over the decapitated body, that it was a “cruel necessity.�

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ruel Necessity by Victory Point Games was one of the first true solitaire experience games I ever purchased and it still sits proudly on my shelf, for good reason. Designed by John Welch, the game is a States of Siege™ game that simulates not only the military battles that were going on at the time but also mimics the political and religious struggles during the English Civil Wars of 1640 to 1653 as you attempt to further Parliament and Puritanism.

You can play each civil war individually as scenarios or play the full campaign (all three civil wars) using all three decks of event cards. Although these event cards are randomized, they do contain meticulously researched flavor text that gives the player an insight into the events occurring in England during this tumultuous time and how those events are reflected in game play through the movement of military forces and the influences of politics and religion. Organizing the event cards in chronological order, provides the player with a more historical reference from with which to enjoy the game.

Each turn an event card is played that can cause enemy armies to march toward their fortresses or besiege yours. They will adjust the various political markers on the political tracks (which include the Monarchy, Parliament, Puritanism, Catholicism, Scotland and Ireland) and possibly give you die-roll modifiers (DRMs) which can assist you in bumping those political tracks into a more favorable position. Lastly, you may acquire more Zeal points or lose some. These Zeal points are essentially action points that you can use to push invading armies away, increase the strength of your Royalist held fortresses, purchase Achievement cards that gain you

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victory points if you can complete them, or you use them for other actions. You can save Zeal points and carry them over to a future turn however, most times, you will be spending them all as the game is tense and there is quite never enough Zeal points to go around.

Photo: Jeff Rhind

During the game, event cards will trigger battles. You will leave the main game map and carry out tactical skirmishes on the Battle Display Mat. Your Royalists pikes and cavalry will encounter the better-equipped Parliamentary units.

Die rolls can swing the battles from a slight win for the Royalists to your crushing defeat. Historically, most battles ended in a draw. Additionally, you may be able to play Battle Event cards that can both help or hinder you. These

battles are quickly resolved and are representations of “push of pikes� combat of the day. Alternatively, there are optional rules that simplify the battles portion of the game and are diluted down to a single die roll and checking a table. Once the battle is resolved, you will return to the event card following the event on the card in sequence.

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Solo Gaming (Cont.)

Photo: Jeff Rhind

I wish the map board was mounted instead of being two halves on thin cardboard, but sadly it is not. However, a separate deluxe map board is available for purchase separately from VPG. Plus, you have to like that burnt smell you get when you open a Victory Point Games box.

For those that don’t know, VPG cuts their counters using a laser cutter. They are cheeky about it by including an official VPG napkin for cleaning the soot off the edges.

I’m used to it and although it’s their modus operandi., some gamers may not be accustom to it or even like it.

Lastly, the rule book is in case and rule format and is a bit of mess. Lots of different shaded boxes, colored and highlighted text – it’s all a bit much to look at but the book is thorough and has plenty of illustrations, examples of play, and insights into the game and its various ideas and concepts as presented by the designer.

All that aside, this game is one of the best solitaire games on the market. This is not an easy game to win and you will lose more often than not. Although you are trying to

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gain as many victory points as you can, there are degrees of victory and degrees of loss. A lot is going on as you manage the ever present pressure from Scotland, Ireland and other armies besieging your fortresses. Event cards trigger battles where the game switches to the battle mat for that “roll your battle dice” distraction. Achievement cards give you VPs at the end of the game as you attempt to fulfill certain requirements which usually revolve around the political tracks and that influence that can affect your points positively as well as negatively.

In conclusion, it’s a simple game, the rules are not complicated and it’s all easy to grasp. However, there is a lot to manage as you make decisions as to whether or not you should roll that die again to boost Puritanism now or save that Zeal point for something else later.

Great tension and excitement in die rolls and that flip of the card! The game has a lot of historical information that ties into game play and this integration makes Cruel Necessity not only a fantastic board game but also a brilliant learning experience.

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Education

Game Events

By David Niecikowski, ABD, MAED/CI

Part 2: Coordinating Game Events Before Preparation

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his is the second article in a three part series on the description, benefits, preparation, and coordination of game events. The previous issue discussed the description and benefits of game events. Game events are vital for anyone interested in promoting game literacy and nurturing and growing a game community. What follows is an excerpt from my book Game Design in the Classroom about preparing to host your own game event.

Determine the Purpose, Goals of the Event Potential attendees, the person or institution who is providing space, and those volunteering to help will want to know why people are being brought together to play games. It may be necessary to form a committee to help define the event’s purpose/goals and increase buy-in. Members could include key volunteers, persons who may have to approve the event and/or provide space for the event, and people who have networks to help promote the event.

Location Considerations Events for students and their families will often take place at the school of attendance, specifically in the cafeteria, library, or multi-purpose room.

Smaller events may take place in a classroom. Depending on the audience and purpose/goals, other locations may include public libraries, places of worship, and community centers. Some businesses, such as game stores, book stores, restaurants, or malls, have community rooms or areas open to the public.

Regardless of the location it is important to consider parking, if the location is safe during the time the event is held, e.g., nighttime, if the amount of space will accommodate the number of anticipated attendees, and if the location has an adequate number of tables and chairs. Other factors may include sufficient lightning, heating/cooling, bathroom access, and disability access. Travel distance can be a major consideration for potential attendees, especially if the purpose/goals of the event include outreach to those who are economically disadvantaged and who may be discouraged by long distance travel. The more centrally convenient the location, the more people will likely attend.

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Timing and Length of the Event Depending on the audience and purpose/goals of the event, any day of the week and any day of the year can justifiably be selected. For example, it is common for game enthusiasts to have gaming events on major holidays because it may be the only day when friends and family are in town and off from work. Some major and regional conventions are held over holidays but generally not over Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. Of course certain holiday dates may not be

appropriate for school events. Before setting a firm date, a quick way to gauge reaction to potential dates is to survey event volunteers and avid gamers to see if they would attend.

If too many are unable to attend then the date will likely not work for the casual and inexperienced gamers. With regard to the time of day, consider potential attendees work schedules and other conflicting events in the community, e.g., school events and sports. A reasonable time to begin a school event is 6:00pm on the weekdays. Best times for weekends can vary, especially if the event is part of a larger

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initiative, such as a fair or parent day. In terms of length, schedule 2 hours if the majority of attendees are likely to be casual and inexperienced gamers, otherwise, it is common for avid gamers to hold events that last 4-8 hours.

Who to Invite?

This is an important question to consider before deciding how to promote the event and it may be limited by the availability of space and tables at the location of the event.

If the event is held at a school, will only those from a certain classroom, from a particular grade, or members of a program be invited or will it be open to the entire school or those who attend nearby schools? Is the event regional where anybody in the city or school district can attend? If children are attending, especially at a nighttime event, it is recommend that a parent/guardian be required to chaperone and participate. At a minimum, be prepared to record parent contact information if children can be dropped off at the event and picked up later.

Promoting the Event A local or classroom/grade level event will need at least 2-3 weeks lead time to effectively promote. Larger or more public events (such as those held at a library where potential patrons visit infrequently) need 4 or more weeks. However, too much lead time may require a reminder a week before the event. Common promotional methods include flyers, signs/ posters, and announcements in organization newsletters and the newspaper. Other more popular modern methods include digital social networking through list servers, online forums, website bulletin boards, Twitter, and Facebook.

Good old fashioned face-to-face networking and phone calls work as well and are still likely more effective than any of the other mentioned methods. If appropriate, do not hesitate to contact organizations, such as the PTO/PTA or local game store to help promote the event. Regardless of the method, it is important to include the date, time, location, purpose/ goals, and any other requirements in the announcement, such as “children must be accompanied by an adult”, “please

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bring a game to share”, and RSVP requirements to help gauge demand and whether additional space, tables, and volunteers will be needed. A method to consider that will increase RSVP response is to include in the announcement that door prizes winners will be drawn from those who RSVP by a certain date – even then, maybe 50% of those who RSVP will actually attend but it does provide a potential maximum when factoring in those who arrive but who did not RSVP. What Games To Play?

Unless there are multiple copies of a game attendees are to learn and only those who can be successful at playing the game are invited, ideally, a wide variety of games should be included to play at a gaming event that will meet the experience level of potential attendees. For example, potential attendees may include single parents who arrive with preschool aged children and their school aged children, families with members who cannot read or speak English, students who attend without adult chaperones, and attendees with physical or cognitive impairments. Therefore, it may be essential to provide games that are easy to learn and teach, games that can be played by a three year old, games that do not require English skills, and trained volunteers to help teach and assist those with disabilities. Consider including a healthy number of classic, popular games that most people already know how to play, e.g., Chess, Checkers, Backgammon, Mancala, Chutes and Ladders, Candy Land, Scrabble, Monopoly, Uno, etc. More recent games, or hobby games can be included as well but trained volunteers may need to be available to teach attendees how to play and answer any questions during game play. If the event has a theme, such as mathematics, then this may limit what games to make available for play but it does not change the need for a sample of easy to learn games.

Other factors include the amount of time it takes to play a game and complexity of the rules. Short and easy to learn games are ideal for the causal and inexperienced gamers whereas avid game players often enjoy complex games that can take 2 or more hours to complete. Providing games that are appropriate in content and theme must also be considered

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in relation to the community standards of potential attendees.

Games with small parts should be kept out of reach of children under 3 who are in attendance. Volunteers should be trained to monitor who has access to games with small parts and advise parents if the game would be appropriate for younger children. If possible, include puzzles at the event for children who may have not have interest in playing games for the entire event.

Some events include tournaments for games, such as Scrabble, Monopoly, and Magic: The Gathering. Events with tournaments often need a judge, tournament rules, timing regulations, and enough materials. Be sure and check local regulations and laws if entry fees can be charged and prizes can be awarded.

How to Obtain Games Do not let the number of games you personally own or have access to hold you back from holding an event. The easiest way to overcome a lack of games is to recruit volunteers to bring games or to urge in the event announcement for attendees to bring their favorite game. Do not hesitate to ask colleagues and other supportive adults to help with providing games and to volunteer in helping teach and play games with attendees. With enough lead time, consider contacting retailers and game manufacturers for assistance. Some retailers and manufacturers will donate games, especially if they have assurances that the games will be added to a game event library that will be frequently used by many people over repeated events. Some may even volunteer, especially a local retailer, to help teach games at the event and provide door prizes to help increase attendance.

Securing Assistance Coordinators of larger events will need volunteers to help promote and set up the event, teach games, answer questions during game play, make attendees feel welcome from start to finish, and cleanup after the event. Volunteers of all ages can be recruited and depending on what they will be asked to

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do, will need training before the event. The following sample includes some excellent advice on how to include student volunteers in the Giles Pritchard has written about how he successfully coordinated a Community Game Day for adults and children at his school. In order to accommodate the anticipated crowd, gaming preferences, and age levels, volunteer students were prepared six weeks prior during lunch as “Game Ambassadors”. The students were trained to manage the games available for play on the game day. The training included “selecting appropriate games, teaching them, and dealing with any issues that may crop up”.

According to Giles, from 3:30 to 6:15, his Ambassadors were busy and very helpful to attendees. He states “… it is a wonderful opportunity for the school as a whole to connect in a social and fun event, but is also a rich learning experience for those involved in the management of it.” Due to the success of the event and based on parent/community feedback, he plans to offer the event annually.1 As mentioned in the previous section on “How to Obtain Games”, assistance can also be sought from local game retailers and game manufacturers. If appropriate, other businesses may be approached to help provide space, tables/ chairs, food, and prize support.

Part 3 of 3 in the next issue will discuss during and after preparations of coordinating Game Events.

REFERENCES: 1. Dickerson, R. P. (2009). School program suggests board games for families. Log Cabin. Retrieved April 25, 2016 http://thecabin.net/stories/031009/loc_0310090003. shtml#.VyG1yhGTVx4

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Contributors Serge Pierro

Serge

has playtested numerous games for several companies, including Wizards of the Coast and AEG. He has also written for Duelist, Inquest and Gamer print magazines. His award winning photography has appeared in both newspapers and magazines. He has self published a game, and has several other designs scheduled for a 2016 release.

Eric Devlin

Eric has been the North East Regional Representative for Wizards of the Coast, the brand manager of Legends of the Five Rings, as well as working with Sabretooth and Third World Games. He has an extensive background in playtesting for top companies. He has also written for Games Quarterly, Duelist, Inquest and others.

Bill Braun Bill has been a contributing writer for PSNation and High-

Def Digest, an Editor and Publisher Relations Director for 30PlusGamer, and the co-creator and podcast host of A Band of Gamers.

John Anthony Gulla John graduated with an M.A. in Humanities, wherein he focused his study on games, the history of gaming, and game design as it relates to the Humanities. He is an avid board gamer and game collector, with over 200 games in his current collection. You can reach him on BGG.com under the username JohnAG68

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Jeff Rhind Jeff is a single father raising a 17 year-old son and a 6 year-old daughter,

and slowly coaxing them into the world of tabletop gaming. He has been gaming for many years and shares his love and appreciation for the hobby by reviewing and talking about games on his web site: completelyboard. com as well as his You Tube channel at youtube.com/completelyboard.

You can also follow him on twitter @jeffrhind

David Niecikowski David is a published game designer and recognized expert on using traditional

games with families and students. Since 2000, over two dozen of his board games, role-playing supplements, books, and articles have been published. He has also worked as a freelance marketing and event consultant with scores of industry companies such as Alliance Game Distributors, Gen Con, Wizards of the Coast, Upper Deck, Mayfair, Rio Grande, AEG, and Out of the Box.

Kevin Lauryssen Kevin has a Master in Audiovisual Arts and majored in

Animation. He works as a Freelance Draftsman for multiple companies in Belgium. He’s an avid gamer who has created a web-comic about boardgaming. His work can be found at www.game-night.be

Kevin Cox Kevin is a published game designer, graphic designer and co-owner of KnA Games. His first tabletop release is a sci-fi co-op called Space Movers, which he created with his wife, April. Kevin has been gaming for over 30 years and has an extensive collection, which features many vintage games. In addition to gaming, Kevin enjoys being a husband and all around geek.

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Issue #11 September 2016

www.gamenitemagazine.com