Unboxing Week Post Part II: Tokaido

Onto day two of the epic (perhaps not epic, but I’m entitled to some melodrama right?) week of unboxings. Before we start with the festivities please check out the previous post if you haven’t already done so. Yesterday I did an unboxing of the wonderful Fantasy Flight game, Star Wars:Imperial Assault. You can find the link below this paragraph.  

Unboxing Post I: Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Alright, now we move forward with day two!  I have a bunch of games that have pictures all ready to go so it was tough to really narrow down the games into seven that I wanted to add to Unboxing Week.  However, with that being said, this game was always going to be one of the seven.  Tokaido is an absolutely beautiful game by the fantastic designer, Antoine Bauza of 7 Wonders, Takenoko, and Hanabi fame.  This game was beautifully produced by Funforge and they actually have a collector’s edition that was on Kickstarter over a year ago.  Hopefully that beautiful edition will see the light of day within the next year or so!

Tokaido is a point-to-point movement game that has elements of set collection and variable player powers.  You take your meeple and travel the “East SeaRoad” in Japan which connects Kyoto to Edo.  You and your fellow players will travel this road and make stops on the way at towns to shop for souvenirs, at temples to pray to the gods, at panoramic spots to paint, at hot springs to relax, and at inns to eat and spend the night.  Basically you are trying to have the best possible vacation imaginable!

First of all, when speaking of Tokaido, you have to look at the absolutely beautiful art.  The art in this game is done by the fabulous Naiade.  Naiade (Xavier Gueniffey Durin) is quite possibly the best boardgame/cardgame artist out there right now and definitely my personal favorite.  He has worked on Seasons (my current favorite game), Shinobi WAT-AHH!, The Phantom Society, and the upcoming games Melee and The Big Book of Madness.  His work has a very specific style and it fits so perfectly in the boardgame medium.  I always look forward to the new stuff that he puts out.

The first thing to talk about is the rulebook.  This is a pretty standard fair rulebook that does a good job in showing how the game is played with some nice looking art within it.  It is nicely put together with good examples of how to play the game.  To be fair, this isn’t a hard game to play so the rulebook should be able to adequately put forth the rules without the player needing to go to outside means (such as BGG forums) in order to find their answers.  This rulebook does a good job as I have personally never needed to go anywhere else to find answers that arise from the game.

Next we move on to the game board.  This is a tri-fold game board that is made over thick cardboard and will hold up very well under multiple plays with no problems.  As well as being well made the game board is completely beautiful.  It has a stark white background with Naiade’s brilliant artwork on top of that background.  The graphics and icons fit perfectly with the theme and make sense as your meeple takes their journey down the East Sea Road.  The board also has places for the cards that you will need during the game.  It is clear and was beautifully graphically designed.

There are over 100 cards in this game in two different sizes.  The first size is the small mini-card size that is popular in many of the Fantasy Flight games.  These are on nice card stock (sadly not the linen that I usually prefer) with rounded edges and they ruffle-shuffle very nicely.  Each of the types of cards have very clear backs with drastically different colors so that they are very easy to sort out at the beginning of the game.  The other size of card is just slightly larger than the mini-card size and they don’t have the rounded edges.  The reasoning for this is because these cards are put together in order to for panoramic pictures as you are collecting the different sets during the game.  All in all the cards are nice and of a pretty decent quality.

Next up are the components of the game.  These include the cardboard tokens and the wooden pieces.  There aren’t a whole lot of these components as the game doesn’t really need them, but those that are in the game are very nice.  First of all, the cardboard tokens include five colored tokens that show the color of each player and also the coins.  I love the coins!  They are beautifully made and actually have a square hole in the middle of them that really makes them feel like Japanese Yen.  Then, there are the five wooden meeples which are very nicely made and each color also has a small disc which is used for scorekeeping.  The only component I wish was a little different is the five colored discs.  They are a little smallish and I think they could be a little more thematic.

We now move onto the player cards.  These are absolutely beautiful!  Each of the ten characters has their own cardboard card with a small hole in it.  This hole is where you place your color token so you know what color each player is during the game.  On each of the cards is a gorgeous rendition of the character and below that is the icon of the player’s power.  These were a great addition to the game and I love that they were printed on thick cardboard instead of just putting them on cardstock.

Lastly I just want to point out the insert of Tokaido.  Publishers take note…this is how an insert should be done!  It is made perfectly where each of the components/cards/boards has a specific well that they go in and it keeps them so nicely separate from each other.  I love when thought has gone into the inserts of a game.  I understand that it isn’t necessary thing to have a nice insert, but it is a nice addition.

Thanks for reading everyone!  This has been an interesting process as I’m finally going back through all of these game pictures and doing the unboxings that I’ve been sitting on for far too long.  I have some good games coming up during the next week so check back in tomorrow for the next one!  Thanks again for reading and let me know if you have any questions or comments.  Until next time, game on!

Family Game Night #8 & Family Game Night #9

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post! It’s great to be back! This post will focus on mine and Em’s 8th and 9th family game nights! 

Our crowd from the 8th family game night!

Our 7th family game night (which you can read about in an earlier post) ended up as just three of us, so we decided to invite a few more people. Lo and behold, we ended up with seven people showing up to our 8th family game night! This time, joining Em and I were “old-hats” Dave, Leigh, Lydia, and Sean. New to the table was our buddy Laura! As usual we started with some delicious appetizers (both of the savory and the sweet variety) made by my beautiful wife Em!

Sadly, I don’t have any links to specific food items that she made for the 8th or 9th game nights because mostly she went to old favorites. But, as usual, you can go over to her blog, A Tasty Mess, at http://www.tastymess.org to check out her previous game night appetizers or any of her other delicious food.

For our game choices on Family Game Night #8 we went with Diamonds to start out the night, and with Poop: The Game to end it. Diamonds is a fantastic little trick-taking game by Mike Fitzgerald which takes games like Spades and Hearts and gives them a little nudge into the modern gaming scene. In this game you have a hand of cards and you are laying down cards in order to take the hand. 

You have to lay a card in the same suite if you have it, but if you don’t you are able to take a “suite-action” which gives you a bonus. This is the reason that I prefer this game over most trick-taking games. Instead of just relying on getting a great hand to take all of the tricks, you can also use the off-suite cards to get point as well. This game plays from two to six players, but I was able to slightly tweak the hand size and it played just as well with my personal seven-player variant. Lydia walked away with the sneaky win, but everyone loved this game!

Next up we went with Poop: The Game. This is a game somewhat similar to Uno where you are trying to get rid of the cards in your hand before you “clog the toilet” and are forced to take all of the cards that are on the table at that point. This is a very quick and fairly silly game as some of the cards force you to make farting noises and such. This is one of the first Kickstarter games that Em and I funded and we’ve loved having it as it is just a simple fun card game to pull out with large groups of people. Em and Dave pulled out the wins in this game. On a fun side-note, this is the first time Dave won a game! He is no longer just the bridesmaid, but now the bride! (If curious about this, just read previous Family Game Night posts!)

Family Game Night #9 was just a couple of weeks ago and we didn’t have as many people as the previous. Due to previous engagements only Sean and Laura were able to join Em and I for the game night. Again, we started with the appetizers, but since they were ones that had been done before, I’ll just go straight on to the gaming.

Slightly smaller crowd for the 9th family game night!

We decided to have an Antoine Bauza game night for this particular evening. We started off with Bauza’s super-fun gateway game entitled Takenoko. This is a beautiful, colorful game that uses tile-laying and set-collection as its main mechanics and it uses them perfectly! Plus, one of your main moves involves moving a panda around the board and eating colorful bamboo! How can you not love it? Sean was able to take this teaching game with a slight win over Em who came in second place.

We then pulled out one of my favorite card-games, 7 Wonders, also by the fantastic Antoine Bauza. This is a quick-playing, civilization card game that plays in just about 30 minutes when everyone knows what they are doing. Both Laura and Sean were new to this game but they picked it up within the first couple ages of the first game. Laura was able to take the first win by crushing us in civic structures (the blue cards) as we weren’t paying close enough attention! I was able to eke out the second win as I focused on a more balanced approach in last game of the night with everyone involved.

After 7 Wonders, Laura needed to leave and Em decided to turn in for the night. That left Sean and I to pick up and play two quick games of the wonderful tile-laying game Carcassonne. I was able to take both games that we played by being a bit of jerk and stealing castles that Sean was building on. Don’t feel too bad for him though, he tried to do the same to me...on a side note, I scored the largest castle I ever have with 40 points!

These were two more great nights with our friends (or as we call them, family!) and we look forward to many more in the future. Em is already planning out our next night’s delicious treats and I think we may break out a game I’m getting for Christmas called Elder Sign. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season! Until next time, game on!

Unboxing: Samurai Spirit

For my second unboxing post I have chosen the brand new game (technically still “unreleased” until Essen Spiel 2014) by the fantastic Antoine Bauza entitled Samurai Spirit.  Bauza is known for such games as 7 Wonders, Hanabi, Takenoko, Tokaido, and Ghost Stories.  These are all very different games which really show the range of Bauza’s design.  

Samurai Spirit is a co-operative adventure where you take one of seven samurai and fight off a horde of bandits as they attempt to loot and raze a small village.  You are trying to fend off the bandits over three rounds and you want to save at least one house, one family, and stay alive.  This is no easy task, as Bauza is well known for his difficult co-operative games!

A good friend of mine was able to pick this game up for me at Gen Con 2014 as Funforge (the game’s publisher) brought 300 copies for early sale.  Along with the game they included a promo card that was an eighth boss for the final round of play.  This card is an especially mean card that has some nasty penalties for those samurai that don’t deal with him quickly!

The first thing I noticed as I picked the game up from my buddy was that it was much smaller than the typical game on my shelf.  This box is less than half the size of a “normal” sized game such as 7 Wonders.  This made me a little nervous at first but I pushed that aside as I know that Funforge is well known for their excellent component quality.  When I opened up the box it was obvious that my hesitations held no weight.  There weren't tons of components, but each and every one of them were beautiful and of great quality.  The box came with cards, game boards, an unpunched token board, and a rule book.

To begin with, the game has seven player boards (above).  This is where the “majority” of the game will be played as they hold all the information you need about your character.  Each of the seven samurai (yes, this game is a nod to the exceptional 1954 movie by Akira Kurosawa entitled Seven Samurai) has their own power that they may unleash and/or share during the game.  Each of these boards may then be turned over to show the “beast mode” of each of the samurai.  This is a more powerful version of the samurai that may be unleashed during the game.

Then, you have the village board (above).  This is a simple village picture where you have six house tokens, three family tokens, and a certain amount of barricade tokens depending on the amount of players.  The tokens will be removed as families are killed by the bandits or as houses/barricades are burned.  Then, on the right side of the board you will place your bandit card deck.  Above the village is a place for your bandit cards that have snuck by the samurai.  Finally, there is a spot of the left side of the board where you place the bandit discards which represent defeated bandits.

Speaking of cards, there is a large deck of beautifully rendered bandit cards (above).  Each of these cards is numbered 1-6 and contains different icons which represent penalties that the samurai can take during certain conditions.  The cards that are numbered 1-4 are regular bandit cards are the samurai start out by fighting them in the first round of play.  The cards that are numbered 5 come into play during the second round and are considered lieutenants of the bandit clan.  Finally, if you are able to make it that far, the cards that are numbered with 6’s are the big, bad bosses.  These nasty cards have some bad penalties and often have two of them!

Lastly, I should mention that this game has an excellent box insert designed for storing all of the components of the game. It is a well-molded plastic that holds everything perfectly.  My wife knows how much I love this simple idea in gaming.  Come on publishers, make good inserts for your games, it isn’t hard and it makes for happier gamers!  That being said, this game is the perfect example of a well-done box insert!  Bravo Funforge, you’ve done well!

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot to mention the amazing samurai-shaped meeples that are included with the game!  They are an awesome addition!

So, needless to say at this point, the components and the box insert in this game are spot on!  This is definitely a game that screams quality over quantity.  While there aren’t many components, they are all so well thought out and well crafted that you don’t miss the ridiculous amounts that are in other games.  Also, after a few plays and really getting the rules down, I am loving this game!  Well, I suppose that’s all for now, until next time, game on!

Family Game Night #4: AKA "Unofficial" Family Game Night #1: AKA Antoine Bauza Day

This past Thursday (9/11), our friends Becks and Chris came to see us.  They live in England and are only able to come to the states once or twice a year, so whenever they're able make it “across the pond” we try very hard to get together and just hang out for a little while.  Em and Becks celebrated their 21st anniversary of being best friends while they were here...I don’t really how this affects family game night, but at least you know how we all know each other!

They arrived in the afternoon while Baby Knives (our child’s middle name is Knives so Baby Knives became an early nickname, just FYI) was taking  her nap (although not sleeping - welcome to the world of 2 year olds).  They arrived, had some lunch and Em decided she wanted to teach them Takenoko by the fabulous Antoine Bauza.  Just as an aside, I love that my wife now suggests we play games instead of it just being my idea!

As I’ve explained before, Takenoko is a simple modern board game where you take control of a panda who wants to eat bamboo and a gardener who wants to grow bamboo in order to please his emperor.  It is a simple and brightly colored game that uses game mechanics such as tile placement, set collection, and pattern building in order to obtain your objectives.  This makes for a super-fun, entry-level game that is easy to teach and fun to play.  Becks and Chris had a ton of fun playing and then even wanted to go for a second round.  Becks took the first (teaching) round and Em won the second.

After we had dinner we decided to play a few more games (of course). For our second, I wanted to pull out Hanabi (also by the great Antoine Bauza) and teach it to them.  This is a favorite of mine as it is totally different from any game I’ve ever played.  This game’s mechanics include memory, co-operative play, hand management, and set collection.  What makes this game totally different from any other game I’ve played is that you take your hand of cards and instead of looking at them you face them out towards your fellow players.  

You then take turns giving hints and attempting to score the most possible points (25 being the best) and creating a “crowd-pleasing” fireworks event.  While the theme is thinly pasted on, the game itself is a ton of fun.  Beware though, there is a certain level of frustration that players can have during this game as you never see your own cards.  I love pulling out this game whenever I can because it isn’t a great two player game and my wife isn’t a huge fan of it.  Becks and Chris seemed very entertained and I think if we had played a few rounds we may have hit a very high score!  As it is, we had a perfectly respectable score of 18.

Lastly, we ended up pulling out our third Antoine Bauza game of the day: 7 Wonders.  This is quickly becoming one of my favorite games as it is so quick and easy to teach and everyone who has played it really seems to enjoy the mechanisms and gameplay.  This game uses set collection, variable player powers, and my personal favorite, card drafting as its gameplay mechanisms.  Becks and Chris figured out the game relatively quickly during our teaching game (where Becks won again!) and then settled in nicely for another round before they had to leave for the evening.  Em took the final game, edging me out when Becks played a card I needed to finish a science set!

Happy Antoine Bauza Day!

As usual, we had a ton of fun playing games with our friends and teaching them a whole new side to the boardgaming world.  As both Becks and Chris enjoy gaming they both seemed to have a great time and I look forward to the time they're back in the states so we can have another prolonged gaming day!  Even though this wasn’t a planned “Family Game Night,” it was just as fun and I hope to have many more “Unofficial Family Game Nights!”  As always, it’s been a pleasure.  Until next time, game on!

Family Game Night #3

On August 31^st Em and I had our third “family game night” and they seem to be going really, really well.  For our third night we had three other people join us.  Dave, Lydia, and Leigh all came over to eat delicious appetizers and have fun gaming.  This was the first time Dave met Leigh and Lydia and they all hit it off as we had a great night gaming!

Let’s start off with the food that Em served us this time.  While the last game night had a “theme” of Italian style appetizers, this time Em passed on a theme and just made some stuff that sounded good.  It ended up being a very “cheese-centric” night and as usual her food went off with a bang! 

The first thing she chose to make for our third game night was a puff pastry tomato tart recipe that consisted of a puff pastry crust, sour cream, cream cheese, and tomatoes all baked in the oven.  The next recipe chosen were mini crab cakes with red pepper sauce.  These were as good as any crab cake you’d find in a restaurant!  The third savory appetizer Em went for were mini cheese ball bites with pretzels for serving.  Lastly, for a dessert appetizer, she chose to go with chocolate chip cheesecake swirl brownie bites.  By the end of the night I think we had finished off all of the appetizers before everyone left, that's how you know the cook is great!  If you are curious about the recipes, just hop over to Em’s blog, Tasty Mess.  You can find the post at http://www.tastymess.org/2014/09/family-game-night-2-aka-excuse-to-serve.html.

Onto the gaming!  This particular evening I chose to go with another game by Antoine Bauza entitled 7Wonders.  This may be his most popular work as it has been featured on Tabletop with Wil Wheaton.  7 Wonders is a fantastic “card-drafting” game where all of the players are trying to create their civilization and win the most victory points in doing so.  There are many different routes to victory including building civilian structures, science structures, military structures, guild structures, and your specific wonder.  Some of the wonders include the Babylonian Hanging Gardens, the Colossus of Rhodes, and the Pyramid at Giza just to name a few.  A player receives their starting hand of seven cards, chooses one they are able to build (using resources acquired), and then turns the rest of their hand over to the player to their left or right.  The game consists of three very quick ages and then you score at the end.

I had just received this game earlier in the week and decided that it was the game that we HAD to play as I’d heard nothing but great things about it!  I was SUPER happy that I went with this game as everyone had a blast playing!  It didn’t take long for everyone to pick the game up and by the second playthrough everyone had developed their own strategy for winning.  After three games, Em won one, Lydia won the second, and I won the third.  Dave came in second every time thus becoming our “bridesmaid” for the evening.  “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride...”

Another great night in the bag as Em and I are having a blast having these get-togethers!  I’m not sure what our next game will be but I have a few I’d like to break out.  As usual, I’ll let you know then!  Until next time, game on!