Obligatory End of 2014 Post Part III: Top Interests of 2014: Top 10 List (Part II)

Here we go! The top 5 games on my top 10 interests of 2014! These are the games that really interest me, whether it is for the theme, gameplay, or just because it looks cool! To be honest I’m not even sure I would own all of these games, but there is something there that really pushed it up to the top 5 of my list. Before reading this you can check out my two previous posts at the links provided below. The first will tell you what my criteria was for choosing 2014 games versus 2015 games as well as give my honorable mentions. The second post has my games 6-10 of my top 10 of 2014. Honorable mentions of 2014: http://www.alittlelatetothetable.blogspot.com/2015/01/obligatory-end-of-2014-post-part-i-top.html

Games 6-10 of 2014: http://www.alittlelatetothetable.blogspot.com/2015/01/obligatory-end-of-2014-post-part-i-top_13.html

Enjoy the read and as always, if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave them either here or at my BoardGameGeek handle: LateToTheTable. 

#5 – Pandemic: The Cure (Z-Man Games)
Pandemic: The Cure is a dice version of the super-popular co-operative game, Pandemic. It is designed by Pandemic designer, Matt Leacock, and is distributed in the United States by Z-Man Games. This game uses some of the mechanics from the original title and turns them around slightly to create what appears to be a super-fun, dice-chucking, co-operative game! Just like Pandemic, you choose a character which gives you a special set of dice which you use to cure diseases. As you move further in the game the action ramps up as the die seem to be continually against you! Pandemic is a game that I have yet to play but have no doubt that I’d like and Pandemic: The Cure appears to be more of the same and with dice! What’s not to like? 

#4 – Argent: The Consortium (Level 99 Games)
Argent: The Consortium is a somewhat heavy, Euro-style, worker-placement game. It is designed by Trey Chambers and is distributed in the United States by Level 99 Games. Argent is the first real heavy game that Level 99 has in their catalog of games. It is very different from the previous games, all of which were designed by company owner, D. Brad Talton, Jr. Talton is the designer of such games as Pixel Tactics (a wonderful, two-player strategy game), Noir: Killer Vs. Inspector (a small-box, deduction game), and Battle-Con (a two-player, Street Fighter-styled game). 

Argent takes a decidedly different route than these games and I think it is a fabulous one. This game has traditional worker-placement mechanisms that take on a different twist as each worker that you place has different powers that they have at their disposal. This allows you to place the worker where you want them to go and use their power to your advantage. The goal of the game is to get the board to choose you as the next headmaster of a lofty school of magic and these workers are the people you are using to accomplish these goals. Everything I’ve seen/heard/read about this game makes it look fantastic and heavy with a ton of different ways of scoring points! I am very much looking forward to playing this game! 

#3 – The Battle at Kemble’s Cascade (Z-Man Games)
The Battle at Kemble’s Cascade is a boardgame that borrows from 80’s-style, top-down scrolling shooters where you were flying through space fighting waves of enemies in order to just stay alive. This game was designed by Anders and Olle Tyrland and distributed in the United States by Z-Man Games. This game really snuck up on me this year. All of the sudden it was Gen Con and I was hearing about this game that tried to copy the idea of the old, arcade-style, top-down shooter. This was incredibly intriguing to me but I wasn’t quite sure how they would accomplish this. After watching videos and live plays this game has moved all the way up to number 3 on my top 10 interests list! I think this game looks quite amazing. Actually, what is most interesting is that the game almost plays more like a Euro-style game than an Ameri-trash style game. There isn’t any dice rolling to make attacks. Rather, you have a certain amount of energy which you can use to shoot and/or move during your turn. This turns the game into what is almost a puzzle of where to move your shoot and make attacks. I love this idea and can’t wait to try this game! 

#2 – Castles of Mad King Ludwig (Bezier Games, Inc.)
Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a tile-laying game where you are creating a castle for the mad king, Ludwig Wilhelm. This game was designed by Ted Alspach and distributed in the United States by Bezier Games, Inc. This game is another game in Alspach’s series of tile-laying games which includes Suburbia, Suburbia, Inc., and Lucas Hedgren’s Subdivision. These all have the mechanism of getting tiles and laying them in certain ways to get the most points that you are able to by the end of the game. I love this mechanism! It truly feels like you are building something and even at the end if you lose it still feels as though you’ve accomplished something. This game uses the tile-building mechanism but adds in another interesting twist that the other games don’t have. At the start of a player’s turn they become the master builder. When it is their turn they actually create the prices for the different tiles. This adds a new wrinkle to the tile-building. I love this idea! It makes it even more interactive as you get to make the prices and get money from other players. I look forward to trying this game out! 

#1 – Shadows of Brimstone: City of the Ancients & Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death (Flying Frog Productions)
Shadows of Brimstone: City of Ancients and Shadows of Brimstone: Swamps of Death are two new co-operative, dungeon-delving core sets that are set in the Wild West. They were designed by Jason C. Hill and are distributed in the United States by Flying Frog Productions. These are two core boxes, either of which could be played on their own or added to the other core set for a larger amount of possibilities. Shadows of Brimstone really appears to be an RPG in a box! This game puts you in the Wild West as an archetype as you investigate some mines where Lovecraftian horrors have begun to appear. As you dive into the mine it grows and allows you to fight, find items, and even level up. What really interests me in the campaign mode. After finishing a mission you then go back to the town and can spend money and darkstone to level up and create more powerful weapons. This game really appears to give a sense of progression and looks like a ton of fun to play!  

#1+ – Star Wars: Imperial Assault (Fantasy Flight Games)
Okay, I know that this technically means that there are 11 games on my top 10 interests of 2014 list, but I am making a special exception for this game. The other 10 games on the list I don’t own and am not sure when I will be able to play them. I put this as #1+ because it is the game I am most interested from 2014 to play. However, I didn’t put it on the “actual” list because I already own it! It is just a matter of getting it to the table to play! This game was designed by Corey Konieczka, Justin Kemppainen, and Jonathan Ying and is distributed in the United States by Fantasy Flight Games. This game is on the very top of my list (well, kind of!) because it takes the gameplay of Descent 2.0 and the IP of Star Wars and throws them together into a beautifully produced package! The plastic miniatures are beautiful, the boards are beautiful, and the mechanics appear to be beautiful! It hasn’t hit the table yet (due to time constraints), but I am hopeful that it will be very soon!

Okay, now this is officially the end of my top 10 interests of 2014. My next three posts will cover my honorable mentions and top 10 interests of 2015. Stay tuned for more and let me know what your interests are! Until next time, game on!

Obligatory End of 2014 Post Part II: Top Interests of 2014: Top 10 List (Part I)

2014 is done and gone. My honorable mentions post (check it out at http://www.alittlelatetothetable.blogspot.com/2015/01/obligatory-end-of-2014-post-part-i-top.html) is up and ready for reading. If you haven’t read that post yet it does go over how I categorize 2014 releases from 2015 releases. If you’re curious about my categorization, check out that post. Now onto the good stuff! This post will be the latter half of my top 10 list of gaming interests from 2014. What will follow will be numbers 6-10. Enjoy and feel free to comment or let me know what games you haven’t played from 2014 that you really want to try out! 

#10 – Kanban: Automotive Revolution (Stronghold Games) Kanban is a fairly heavy simulation where you place workers on different parts of an automotive plant in order to design, build, and collect cars. This game is by designer Vital Lacerda and is distributed in the United States by Stronghold Games. This game uses worker placement as its main mechanic in order to create the façade of controlling the day-to-day running of a plant. You are able to place in many different options in order to design a car, build a car, test a car, collect a car, or even take a meeting. 

I think the meeting option in the game is the most interesting as this is the way you time the game and get mid-game scores. It is an interesting mechanic that looks like it works incredibly well! I also love that there is a non-player character (Sandra) that is controlled by the game in order to score the players at each option. Sandra moves around the plant checking up on each player to make sure they are doing their jobs well. The game actually has a “nice” Sandra and a “mean” Sandra built in so that the players may choose to play the easier or the more difficult versions of the game. Kanban is a fun-looking, heavy, Euro-style game that definitely has the possibility of ending up on my shelf this year! 

#9 – Tragedy Looper (Z-Man Games) Tragedy Looper is quite an interesting addition onto this list. It may be the most original idea of all the releases on both my 2014 and 2015 lists! This game was created a few years ago by Japanese game designer, BakaFire, and was finally picked up for United States distribution by Z-Man Games. This was widely considered one of the most innovative games of a few years ago and even this past year at Gen Con and Essen Spiel. 

Tragedy Looper uses deduction and co-operative play in order to solve the mystery of a murder. It is a one versus all game where one player takes the role of the mastermind against one to three other players who take on the roles of the protagonists. What really makes this game interesting is that the players may lose a round but they then go back in time to try again and now have more information with which to work out the mystery. There are a set amount of times the players can go back in time which creates a timer of sorts for the game. This looks so incredibly interesting and I really want to play it! I think this would be a play-before-buy but it still makes it very high on my lists of interests from 2014! 

#8 – Lords of Xidit (Asmodee) Lords of Xidit is an interesting programming game that is a re-implement of an older game called Himalaya. Himalaya was originally created by Régis Bonnessée and has now been re-implemented as Lords of Xidit and distributed in the United States by Asmodee. Lords of Xidit takes place in the world of Bonnessée’s other hit, Seasons, but they are very different games. While Seasons takes on hand management, card drafting, and dice rolling, Lords of Xidit uses programming and area control mechanics. This game not only looks beautiful, but also looks like a ton of fun. You go around the board programming your moves ahead of time and then everyone simultaneously show where they are going. It is possible to continuously run into other players and have stuff taken before you get there. Along with the great mechanics, it has an interesting scoring mechanism where you need to make sure you are never last in any of the scoring areas. A cool looking game that is like nothing else I own.  

#7 – Dead of Winter (Plaid Hat Games) Dead of Winter seemed to come out of nowhere this year. It was a game that wasn’t on everyone’s radar until just before Gen Con of this past year. Dead of Winter was designed by Jonathan Gilmour and Isaac Vega and distributed in the United States by Plaid Hat Games. This game holds the same distinction as all of Plaid Hat Games, they develop and produce everything in house. That being said, the game itself looks quite interesting. This is the first in a line of Plaid Hat Games titles that will feature the “A Crossroads Game” subtitle. The crossroad’s cards add decisions into the group’s game that are both interesting and at times incredibly difficult to make. All of this happens while each player has a secret agenda they are working on during the game. Often times, there is a traitor in the mix. All of this together makes for what appears to be quite an interesting game.

#6 – Panamax (Stronghold Games) Panamax is another fairly heavy Euro-style game that has hit my top 10 interests of this past year. It was designed by Gil d’Orey, Nuno Senteiro, and Paulo Soledade and distributed in the United States by Stronghold Games. This game is more on the economic end of Euro-games while Kanban (the other heavy Stronghold Games title on this list) has more of a worker placement mechanic. Panamax has the players controlling shipping companies as they are attempting to get their ships and cargo through the Panama Canal. It uses heavy economic mechanics as well as interesting dice-rolling and placement. Your goal is to have the most money in your personal coffers (as opposed to your companies vault) which can be obtained in many different ways. This game looks interesting, fun, and beautiful and thus hits #6 on my top ten interests of 2014.

There you have it. These are the bottom five games in my top 10 of 2014 list. Let me know if you think something should be higher on the list, lower, or not on it at all. Stay tuned in the next few days for my top 5 game interests in 2014! Until next time, game on!

Obligatory End of 2014 Post Part I: Top Interests of 2014 - Honorable Mentions

Another year has passed us by and, with that, it is time to roll out “best of 2014” lists. Instead of doing a “best games of 2014” list I have decided to go another way with my next series of posts. The first will be three part series focusing on games that came out in 2014 that I still really want to play and/or own! Almost all of these games have been mentioned at some point during my Gen Con and Essen Spiel posts, but there are a few that have jumped up and become more interesting over the past few months! The second series will focus on games that will/may be released in 2015 that I am most interested. Finally, I will probably do a final wrap up post making seven in all. The final post will cover the entire year and also will cover what my first “real” year of gaming was like!

Before going on I will explain how I separated the 2014 release dates from the 2015 release dates. Some of you may be thinking as I go over my 2014’s, “where is so-and-so game?” If a really good-sounding game isn’t on the 2014 list it may yet show up on the 2015 list. This is because I am separating games by English distribution. For instance, a game may have made a showing at Essen, but if it doesn’t have an easily obtainable English version through an American distributor, then I am putting it on the 2015 list as it will probably be released widely this year at some point. As an example, Viceroy, a game released overseas by Hobby World, will be release in the first or second quarter of 2015 in America by Mayday Games. I hope this clears up my decision-making somewhat. That being said, on with the honorable mentions of my top interests of 2014!

The first game to slide its way onto my most interesting games of 2014 honorable mention list is Doomtown: Reloaded, designed by Mark Wootton and Dave Williams and distributed by Alderac Entertainment Group in the United States. This is a card-driven game in the style of Fantasy Flight’s Living Card Games or LCG’s for short. These LCG’s (which is technically a trademark by Fantasy Flight Games) are games which are released as a base set and then have regular expansion packs to add onto the number of cards in the game. These games are widely used as tournament style games as they usually focus heavily on a 2-player, combat-heavy style of play. Doomtown: Reloaded, while not technically an LCG, holds true to this type of game as they have already released two expansions with many more on the way. This game looks like a ton of fun and the deck building in it actually interests me. If anyone is curious, The Fourth Ring would be my faction of choice!
 

The next game to be mentioned is Kingsport Festival, designed by Andrea Chiarveslo and Gianluca Santopietro and distributed by Passport Game Studios in the United States. This is a re-implement of Chairveslo’s 2007 hit Kingsburg. This is one of the first games to really use dice as the “workers” in a worker-placement style game. Kingsport Festival uses the same basic game-play mechanic of Kingsburg but themes it in the Lovecraftian mythos. Instead of being heroes protecting a city from attacking monsters, you are a cultist attempting to raise the elder gods from their slumber in order to destroy the world. While it is a darker theme, there are a few mechanics that are most interesting and cement it as an honorable mention in my 2014 interests list.

The third game to make its way onto this list is Arcadia Quest, designed by Thiago Aranha, Guilherme Goulart, Eric M. Lang, and Fred Perret and distributed by Cool Mini Or Not in the United States. This game didn’t really hit my radar or even crack it until after Gen Con. Even then, it took seeing quite a few reviews and video play-through’s until I became somewhat interested in the game. Arcadia Quest takes chibi-styled characters and throws them into a 2-player game where each person takes a guild and attempts to move through campaigns while getting more points/honor/gold than the other player. While appearing to be a dungeon-delver, this is actually quite a different game altogether. The two players go through campaigns using their guild characters against each other to complete missions and win the round. When complete the players take the same characters and are able to get them better equipment and spells and such before they go into another round of the game. Each campaign has roughly six rounds in it and the character progression goes the whole way throughout. A very interesting idea that appears to be good dice-chucking fun!

The fourth game on the list is Battle Merchants, designed by Gil Hova and distributed by Minion Games in the United States. This is probably my biggest surprise for the list as I didn’t know much about this game at all when I did my Gen Con and Essen Spiel posts. Battle Merchants is an area-control and card drafting game where you take on the role of weapons crafters/dealers who are selling to different fantasy races in order for them to wage their wars. You are able to create stronger weapons and sell to the different races in order to gain their favor during the war. It appears to be quite an interesting game and nothing that like other games I currently have in my collection.

The final game and the one I’m most interested in on my honorable mentions list is Hyperborea, designed by Andrea Chiarvesio and Pierluca Zizzi and distributed by Asmodee in the United States. This game has been on my radar for some time and it just continues to interest me. I so badly want to try this game out! It uses a “bag-building” mechanic where you pull your cubes out of the bag pool you are building and thus make your particular race/civilization stronger and more able to take over the kingdom of Hyperborea. This is another wonderful idea of a mixture of the European-style and American-style of games that is become more popular. Can’t wait to try this one!

This concludes my honorable mentions for the games released in 2014. Stay tuned to my page during the next week to two weeks as I will be doing my top ten interests of 2014 and then my top ten interests of 2015. Enjoy the gaming goodness and as usual let me know here or on the same post in BoardGameGeek 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: Imperial Settlers

And now, for a real treat, I unbox for your reading/looking pleasure my hottest game of the past couple of months! Imperial Settlers is the new release from Portal Games by fabulous designer, Ignacy Trzewiczek, and I have been excited for this release for some time. If you look back on my posts you’ll see that this game was in my honorable mentions (basically numbers eleven through fifteen) of my top interests from this year’s Gen Con. Shortly after Gen Con, after I actually saw some gameplay and learned more about the game it shot to the top of my Hot List on BoardGameGeek. By the way, if you ever want to look me up on “the Geek,” my handle is LateToTheTable. Feel free to PM me and I’ll add you! Anyway, back to the important stuff...

So, after Gen Con, this game shot up to the top of my Hot List and thus to the top of my purchase list. Unfortunately it sold out at Gen Con within a couple of hours and then was basically unavailable for a long time as Portal was reprinting and getting copies shipped back to the United States. The only way to get a copy during this period was to cave to the ridiculous gougers on Ebay or Amazon. Thankfully I am a slightly more patient person and didn’t break down and pay upwards of $80 to get my copy. 

Finally, after weeks of watching Ignacy’s vlog updates I saw that the copies were shipped and on their way to America. Now I just had to wait for them to clear customs (about a four week waiting period) and then get restocked and then I would be able to get my copy! Now that I have my copy, it is sitting on my television stand and has already been played eight times (only solo variant so far) in the short time I’ve had it. 

To start with, this game is a re-imagining of Ignacy’s game 51st State which is a game I haven’t played yet. However, after playing Imperial Settlers, it just makes me want to find and play 51st State even more! I would have actually bought 51st State before Imperial Settlers but Trzewiczek has vlogged that he would love to make a big box version of the game that adds in all of the expansions as well as New Era and hopefully plans on doing it soon. I’ll just go on record now that as soon as I see that this is done I’ll have it on pre-order! 

Imperial Settlers is, at its heart, a card game. You play one of four factions (Romans, Barbarians, Egyptians, and Japanese) and are trying to build your specific faction buildings in order to get bonuses and actions to score victory points. This is done by using resources that each faction starts with and can get through other common and faction cards throughout the game. Each of these cards either gets you a resource, an action, or a permanent bonus throughout the game. Through these actions and buildings you are able to score the points that are needed to win. While playing there is player interaction in the form of razing other player’s buildings in order to get resources from them. Imperial Settlers would best be described as a card game which uses card-drafting and engine-building as its primary mechanics. The game is played through five rounds and in a shocking twist; the winner is the player with the most points at the end! I know, shocking right? 

Enough of the gameplay of Imperial Settlers, on to the components! This base set is filled to the brim with component goodness! Being a card game first and foremost, we’ll start with the decks of cards. This game comes with 220 cards in the base game. You get 30 Roman faction cards, 30 Barbarian faction cards, 30 Egyptian faction cards, 30 Japanese faction cards, 84 common cards, and 16 attack cards that are used for the solo variant. The cards have a slight matte finish and are standard size. If you choose to sleeve your games (personally, I don’t…at least not yet) they could be put in normal Magic: The Gathering sized sleeves. They are very good quality cards and should hold up with multiple plays. 

Each of the factions has their own deck of 30 cards and they each have a completely different feel to them. The artwork on these cards is absolutely amazing! It is almost a chibi-style of cutesy art that shows the building and the little people of your nation on it.Check out my pictures to get a good idea of what they look like. I absolutely love the art and think it fits perfectly with the theme and play of Imperial Settlers. 

Along with the faction specific buildings you also get 84 cards that are common buildings and can be built by anyone who has them and the resources to do it. These have the same art as the building factions. The great part about the art is how they all build together. The common cards have light grass on the backgrounds of their cards while the factions have stone (Romans), brown grass (Barbarians), sand (Egyptians), and lush, dark-green grass (Japanese) on the background of their cards. This is such a small but perfect detail that this game is rife with! It is a simple artistic design that makes the cards more interesting and also helps you separate them and make sure they get to the correct side of your player board. 

Lastly, there are 16 simple action cards that are used with the solo variant of the game. These cards aren’t specifically interesting, but they don’t need to be as they are a simple way to track the dummy player’s moves during the solo game. 

Next are the different boards that come with the game. There are five total boards that come in the base set. The first is the score tracking board. It is a fairly simple board but still holds with the art and theme of the game. It is made of solid cardboard and should hold up very well during multiple plays! It goes from 0 – 49 points and then you can flip your tracker over (which is a little picture of one of the people in your faction) and it has a +50 so you can go back to the beginning and continue scoring. Also on this board, on the right side, are five numbers that represent the five rounds that you will be playing. There is also a little tracker token that you use with this portion of the board. By the way, even the token has a little cow picture on it in keeping with the art/theme of the game...love it! 

Secondly, the game comes with four player boards that represent each of the four factions that you can play with. These are long, thin boards that show your faction and the specific resources that you’ll get during your production phase. Every faction gets a different influx of resources and they each play completely different so it’s nice to have these different boards for each of them. A nice detail, and in keeping with the artwork/theme, is that on the right half of the board (where you play common cards) the background is the light green grass while the left half of the board (where you play faction specific cards) is in the color of that faction. Again, I may be beating a dead horse, but this is just a beautiful and simple detail that makes the game that much better. These boards are made of the same thick cardboard as the score tracker and hold the same impressive artwork as the cards. They are a great way to really keep you cards sorted and organized throughout the play.

Now, we move on to the components. Trzewiczek and crew really went all out on the components of this game. Normally, for a game of this style, you would have a bunch of different colored cubes that represented the different resources. Not so in this game! The stone, wood, workers, and apples are all nice, wooden pieces that are shaped like their namesake. It is such a simple thing and makes the game feel that much more thematic as you get to take hold of a resource that looks like an apple or piece of stone instead of a colored, wooden cube. The game also has nicely shaped cardboard pieces for a couple of the other tokens such as gold pieces, swords, and shields. These components really add the art and fun of the game as you don’t have to keep track on a piece of paper or with little blocks of wood. Great job Portal Games! 

Lastly, the game comes with a nicely illustrated and well laid-out instruction booklet that does a great job of explaining the rule-set of Imperial Settlers. On my first few read-throughs I haven’t noticed any glaring problems or any badly written rules. On top of that the illustrations really help in getting the play down with a visual medium. The insert of the box isn’t the greatest that I’ve ever seen, but neither is it the worst. The best part about it is a hidden little Easter Egg that you can find if you unfold the insert. There, hiding on side of the insert, is a picture of two little ninjas from the Japanese faction that state, “Mission failed. He found us. Oh crap!” This is just another of the little details that have made me fall in love with this game! 

All in all, this game is a home-run in my book. The components, rule-set, and artwork of the game all come together to create a civilization game that will hit my table time and time again. Also, and a huge bonus in my book, it has a fantastic solo variant that I can play when I have no one to play it with! On an interesting and awesome note, just a few days ago in his vlog, Ignacy Trzewiczek stated that the first expansion (brilliantly entitled “Why Can’t We Be Friends”) for the game was complete and in its final printing steps. That means that soon I’ll have even more awesomeness to add to the game! Imperial Settlers has all of the things that I want in a game and I see it moving quickly up my favorite games of all time.

To end, I just have to throw out a quick anecdote from a couple of days ago: The night before this story I played my 6th solo round of the game and accidentally knocked a worker (essentially a pink meeple) off the table. I totally forgot about him/her and went to bed after I was done. The next morning I woke up and went out into the living room where my wife was up with my 2-year-old daughter. I promptly got a bowl of cheerios and sat down in my recliner and watched Fiona Knives (her middle name is after Knives Chau in the Scott Pilgrim comic) roll around on the floor watching Sesame Street. She noticed me and then got a guilty look on her face. She then proceeded to stand up and walk over to my chair. She looked up at me with those brilliant blue eyes and curling ringlets of blonde hair and stuck her tongue out. Then she took the poor meeple, which was lying on her tongue, out of her mouth and put in on my chair next to me. So, long story short, even my daughter loves this game...even if it is just because she loves the taste of meeple-flesh!
 
Thanks for reading everyone! Until next time, game on!

Unboxing: Diamonds

Recently I received my first Stronghold Games release.  This game, entitled Diamonds, is designed by Mike Fitzgerald and was released at Gen Con this year to rave reviews.  Diamonds is a trick-taking game that plays somewhat like Hearts or Spades but really kicks it up a notch.  The great part about this game is that even when you are unable to get a trick you can still get “suit-actions.”  These are simple actions that you are able to take by playing card off-suit when you don’t have the same suit that is started.  This makes the game much more interesting than a “normal” trick-taking game.  These suit-actions give every player a chance to get points even when they aren’t taking any tricks for the round.

Enough of the gameplay, as that isn’t what this post is about.  This is about the components and the unboxing of Diamonds!  Diamonds is the first game in Stronghold Games’ pocket line.  This means that it is a smaller game with less components that some of the larger Euro-style games that they’ve released recently (i.e. Panamax or Kanban: Automotive Revolution).  Now, just because it has less components doesn’t mean that this game suffers from lack-luster pieces, as a matter of fact, they are quite amazing!

To start with, this is a card game.  That being said, it makes sense that the cards are the main part of the game.  Stronghold could have put in any deck of cards and it would have worked pretty well, instead they made an absolutely gorgeous deck of 60 cards.  These are linen-finished cards with great heft and fantastic art.  I can’t stress enough how beautiful these cards are.  They have an Art Deco feel to them and they are finished in a metallic ink that shimmers and adds to the overall beauty of the cards.  There are four suits, spades, clubs, hearts and, of course, diamonds.  Each of the four suits has fifteen cards numbered one through fifteen.  There are no face cards or trumps in this game and I think that adds to the simplistic beauty in the gameplay.

While the cards are the main part of the game, Stronghold took it a step further and gave us an awesomely tactile component in plastic diamond components.  There are two different types of diamond components in the game.  The first are the smaller, clear diamonds that are worth one (or two) points.  The second are the larger, red diamonds that are worth five (or ten) points.  These diamonds are how you keep score throughout the game and are what you use to take your suit actions.  The simple tactile feeling of these crystals makes the game so much more than just a card game!  They give a both a visual and physical feel that really adds to the fun of Diamonds.

Lastly, there are six player screens and six player aid cards that are included in the game.  Before playing the game I thought the screens were overkill, but after playing I see that they add to the fun of not necessarily knowing what your opponents have in their vaults.  They are a simple bun fun addition to the game.  I am a huge fan of adding player aids into the game, so I think the addition of the six suit-action card aids was a perfect component to print with the game.

All in all, the components to this simple and beautiful trick-taking game are perfect.  Stronghold Games could have gone cheap and flimsy but instead really bumped up their game and made this game a wonderful addition to my game library.  Thanks for taking the time to read this post.  Next up will be an unboxing of Imperial Settlers by Ignacy Trzewiczek and Portal Games which should be in my hands in a couple of days!  Until next time, game on!