Galaxy's Edge - Epic Interstellar Conquest In About An Hour

 After playing the amazingly fun "Conquest of the Fallen Lands", I started looking into the publisher, Assa Games, to see what they're all about. It turns out that it is essentially a two-man show, and they had produced a second game after Fallen Lands. This second game is called "Galaxy's Edge", and while at first glance it appears to be a rethemed Fallen Lands, it absolutely is nothing like the other game aside from using a variable, hex-based playfield. This game is about mercilessly conquering the galaxy while appeasing your new alien allies, and it's a nasty snatchfest of stealing colonies from your opponents pretty much the whole game through.

The concept of this game is that you represent a faction that is intent upon taking over the entire galaxy through colonization, military expansion, treachery, and diplomacy. There are five alien races which inhabit this galaxy, and the player who has colonies in the most sectors of each alien type gets the benefit of the alien's ability at the end of the game. The abilities are generally tied to how many of a specific type of installation you've got, either colonies or military bases, and you get a windfall of points by meeting the power's criteria. The end of the game has each player counting points based on the alien powers and tallying the value of the players' owned colonies, with the winner being the person with the most points. It's a little bit mathy, but if you base your understanding of the scoring on the theory written in the rules, it seems quite daunting, yet in practice it's actually quite intuitive and very simple.

Upon looking at the box, you'll find cartoonish characters and illustrations which are quite nice and carry the theme very well. The interesting thing about the art direction is that while the characters and cards all have a very cartoonish feel, the art on the gameboard tiles is noticeably very non-cartoonish. They art and fonts are superb and add a tremendous value to the game's overall look. The included rules are very, very short and completely understandable, with many illustrations that will help you easily get into the game and help you to score it at the end.

The components are top-notch, although the die cutting on the system tiles wasn't the best, with a lot of little hanging chads that you'll have to tear or trim off. Included are hundreds of high-quality wooden bits in four colored sets, a bunch of special event cards, and as mentioned, 30 hexagonal sector tiles in six sets of five types which represent the galaxy itself and the alien races which control those sectors.

I will note that the flagships and ban tokens are huge when compared to the actual tiles they'll be sitting on, making them quite easy to see from any seat at the table...or across the room, for that matter. The last bits in the box are five alien power cards which are used to help you understand what benefits are gained by having the majority control of any given type of alien sectors, which is a key ingredient to scoring well and winning the game.

Setup takes about 4 minutes, provided you've bagged up your tokens by color. First, you randomly lay the tiles down in a rough hexagon shape, with the two center stripes being six tiles long and the rest tapering off down to four. Next, you shuffle the event deck and hand two cards to each player. Randomly choose a first player, and in turn simply pick a sector on the periphery of the board and place your flagship there. You're now ready to begin your imperial onslaught of the galaxy.

Turns amount to moving your flagship to an adjacent tile, building an installation, and rolling the event die if you built something. While this seems pretty easy, it's a little more complex than you'd expect at first glance. To build an installation, you must either have your flagship on a sector, or you must have any one of your installations in a sector adjacent to the one you wish to build in. Building a colony is quite simple, really, as you simply place a circular colony marker within an empty circular "system" space of your choice in that sector. This will, at the end of the game, score you the value of the system you built on, should you be lucky enough to keep that colony.

Military bases may also be built in a similar way, but these are represented by triangular bits, and you may stack these either one, two, or three triangles high to represent their base class. The class of the base only matters when checking for military superiority, which happens when the last open system in a sector is taken, thereby closing out that tile. Even if a colony was the last installation built, you must still check the military superiority status, and sometimes you will be stuck losing a valuable colony even though you've just placed the last installation in that sector. In other words, planning is crucial.

Checking for military superiority was one of the more confusing things in the rulebook, but it is immediately made clear when you play the game. Essentially, you must look to all adjacent sectors and see if any opponent has a class one base on any system to determine if you have superiority. If any other player has one, you then check for class two bases, then class three bases. If you are the only person to have a base of the class you're currently checking, you gain superiority and may therefore take the most valuable enemy colony in the sector you just closed out.

The key to gaining superiority really stems from placing military bases of varying values in key locations so that you always have one of each type in a group of sectors with valuable enemy held colonies, ensuring that even if there are several players' class one bases that you can have a higher class base available to take over colonies. The down side to being a war monger is that military bases have no value related to scoring, so placing a base on a nine point system is a very bad move.

Once you've built something, you must roll the specialty D6 known as the event die. Some faces allow you to play a card from your hand or draw a card from the deck, provided any cards remain, and other faces cause you to place a "ban" token on the sector you just built an installation in, thereby stopping any installations from being built on that location. Each player has one ban token of their color, and these will always end up in play, moving about the board regularly and stopping yourself and others from carrying out construction projects. These are a real pain in the ass to deal with, and you've got a high probability that your ban or another players ban will be placed on the tile you just built something on, meaning it's few and far between that you can develop any one tile very quickly. The other pain in the ass about the ban tokens are that they're huge, and take up a significant portion of the tile they're standing on.

Now as I mentioned, you can play cards if the die allows you to, and these cards have a wide variety of functions. Some allow you to move your flagship anywhere on the board that you wish instead of the usual one sector movement you're normally allowed, where others allow you to colonize tiles for free. Some cards allow you to place a colony token on an alien power card, which adds one point to your count of colonized alien sectors, thereby increasing your chances of gaining that power at the end of the game during scoring. Playing cards at the right time are absolutely crucial to winning the game, and are not an afterthought in any way as in some area control games I've played.

The end of the game comes when either all systems have had installations built upon them or when each player has taken a consecutive turn without building anything. In my experience, we've never had the latter come to fruition, and the game has always ended with the total enslaving of the galaxy. Scoring, as I noted, looks daunting on paper but is actually very easy, provided you follow the step-by-step scoring guide on the back flap of the rulebook.

First, you determine which players have earned the powers granted by the alien species by counting how many sectors of each type you have at least one colony on. Again, military bases do not count towards achieving this goal. The players who have control will take the cards and tally up their scores based only on the alien powers. Some alien powers are based upon having the most, or least, military presence in the galaxy, and others are based upon such things as one point colonies. Once everyone has scored their windfalls, you simply add the values of all of your colonies to that number and that is your final score. The player with the most points wins and is crowned God-Emperor of the Known Universe, or at least that's what we called the winner.

The long and short of the game is that it looks very simple but is deceivingly complex in strategic options, and is a hell of a lot of fun. Everyone at the table rated this game a consistent seven or eight, and I went a step further by rating it an eight-and-a-half. For the record, this is my blog and therefore my opinion is the only one that counts, so that's how I rated it, and I highly recommend this game to anyone who appreciates space themed games or area control games. It's brilliant, and I wish I'd have played this sooner.

Why The Galaxy's Edge Is Where It's At:
- Strong theme and nice art make this fun to play and explore
- Complex strategic options make this a thinking person's game
- High quality components really make this a great value
- The tile-based board gives a tremendous amount of replayability
- Great, short rulebook that allows you to learn and play this game in ten minutes or less

Why This Isn't Nearly As Cool As U2's The Edge:
- The bans and flagships are WAY too big and should be replaced with better components upon purchase

Overall:
This, simply, is one of the best area control wargames that I've ever played. It's a total blast, and any game that can be played from front to back in about an hour while not being overly simple is a real catch. I highly recommend this one, as did all of the players I've played with to date.

Rating:
4.25/5 Stars

Learn more about this badass game at: http://www.assagames.com/galaxys_edge.htm

Note that the picture above with the three folks playing is actually a photo taken by "Howitzer" on Boardgamegeek of the one and only Matt Drake, of Drake's Flames fame. If it's good enough for both Matt and myself, it's got to be a winner.

Social Commentary - Enough with the denominations, already!

Disclaimer:
I'm not actively attempting to offend anyone, but if you are offended, then you shouldn't have read it. Don't blame me because your curiousity got the better of you, perhaps like watching a person burning alive in a car wreck, too horrified to turn away. If you disagree with any of my assertions, go make your own website and tell me to fuck off. This is my little slice of the internet, and I am the Supreme Emperor For Life of the Superfly Circus, and if you enter my home and I spit on you, well, you should've read the fucking sign, now shouldn't you, because it clearly read that "spitting season is now open". 

Anyhow, thank you for reading if you are about to, and if you decided not to, bugger off. A game review will be back in town on Sunday (because I don't work Saturdays) and I have a lovely menu of previous reviews to choose from.  My favorite has to be either Scooby Doo Gold Rush Game or El Grande, and I invite you to find your own favorite.

So, there's an ongoing, exhaustive debate on the merits of Christianity on a website I frequent, and I poke in from time to time to stir the pot or smack some people around there who say some ridiculously outlandish shit out of either ignorance or to just plain be nasty. I rarely make appearances, though, becuase it's not a debate where anyone can win.  It's not like someone's all of a sudden going to "find Christ" because of an internet forum that's not even remotely about religion, except this one thread.

Anyhoo, while perusing the thread, I came upon this post that indicated the author had some problems with Christianity because of the existence various, myriad denominations.  Essentially, he couldn't buy into something where everyone has a varying opinion on the same exact subject, where no new information has been revealed in over a millenium.  After pondering this, I realized that while he is correct about the assertion that it's pretty ridiculous that these little tribes have formed with their own, unique version of Salvation, he is incorrect in thinking that this difference of opinion somehow invalidates the original text.

I responded with an open challenge to all readers:
Read the book, interpret it as best you can, and pray for enlightenment (per included instructions) as best you can for that which you find incomprehensible. Once you've done that several times, then attempt to live in that understanding, as you see it to be.

There is no "great truth" out there, only our understanding or perspective of what "truth" really is. That's an individual assessment, and gathering together for "Mass" to share a group of beliefs is both futile and rather difficult to reason out simply because no two people on the planet share the exact same view on every word of that book, provied no outside intervention, saving the divine, is accepted. For instance, if you're a Catholic child, you're expected to go to Catechism, which is outside influence.

If the original book, the Bible, is the Word of God, and is essentially the final say to all the important questions of the universe, why is a second book required? Why a handbook that has little to do with the Holy Bible itself and is more a guidebook to "how to be a Catholic". Seems to me it would be far better to simply have a Bible study, that way 100% of the time invested is actually done to further that child's understanding of the Bible, rather than guaranteeing that child's indoctrination by repetition of the second-source handbook.

Not knocking Catholics, since I am one, and many denominations of Christianity have their own little "how to". Seems to me that people should just determine the truth on their own and forget about going to a place, hoping that the other folks all are on the same page, or worse yet, having to wing it because you don't actually believe what they're saying.

In short, until you read your Codex of Ultimate Wisdom and determine what it means to you, joining one congregation or another is simply following blindly, without actually understanding what it is you're actually following.

Denominations of all religions, be it Baptist versus Calvinist or Sunni versus Shia, are nothing more than going through the motions if you don't understand the underlying tenets and interpretations, most importantly, your own. Were this not so, there'd not be jacket-bombers in Haifa and Tel Aviv, nor would there be Klansmen.

Seems to me that unless you study your Codex and view the contents with an open mind, not blindly accepting what your parents or pastor told you, who are arguably no more qualified than the man sitting next to you in the pew (or rug) is to interpret that Codex, you're just going through the motions hoping your "tutor" wasn't making a terrible mistake about one interpretation or another.

For instance, in Catholicism, people are taught to belive that when you take communion (the drinking of wine and eating of bread) that the wine and bread actually becomes the blood and skin/meat of Jesus Christ inside your body. So...if you died right then, after taking communion, would the coroner find you were a vampiric cannibal? Obviously not. So, that is something that is meant to be symbolic that some guy in an odd hat took too literally. Then he decided to repeat it in Church every Sunday. It's arguable that this mindset is one pair of mirrored sunglasses away from Jonestown. Why on earth would one simply follow along blindly? Because that's what your parents did, or what you've just "always done"?

If on the Seventh day He rested, and we keep the Sabbath by resting as well, why do we do so on the first day of the week, Sunday, and not the last, Saturday, as Jews do? What, Jesus came along and changed the day of Creation? What about Christmas? We just do it because it's a tradition, but it really has no underlying foundation in the Bible. What's ironic is that there's not much more offensive that you can do to pi55 off a Christian than point out how made-up Christmas is. Go to a small town and when someone says "Merry Christmas" tell them, "Sorry, I don't believe it's Biblical". You're likely to get punched, or at least scolded. Do the same on Easter? Maybe an odd look. Why should people praise His birth on a day not noted or prescribed in the Bible and get angry when someone doesn't buy in, yet on the single most important day to Christianity, the rising from the grave of our Lord and Savior, not say a word. I mean, everyone says "happy holidays" or something at Christmas, but it's not uncommon not to hear "happy Easter" on Easter when going to a store.

Even Easter, the most Holy day in Christianity, was Passover long before it was Easter, and only the Jews still celebrate that. People don't get the house all lit up for Easter, nor do they get a special Pagan tree decoration, and generally there's far fewer lavish gifts given. Where, exactly, was all of this in the Bible...that Christmas gets a whole bunch of movies and TV shows, and 5 weeks of shopping frenzy, yet Easter gets an anti-diabetic swag bag, a long weekend and maybe a ham? Which isn't even kosher! Add to that a f$$%ing mythological bunny who lays f##!ing eggs, and there you have it. Where the hell was all of this stuff in the Bible?

Wait...now ham is OK? Shellfish? Milk and Beef? Hell, let's make it Beef Stroganoff; beef that was LITERALLY boiled in its calf's milk. That's OK now because the Jewish guy who was eating kosher died and rose from the grave, so now it's OK? Maybe that's in the bible too, but I don't get why things suddenly changed. No more killing animals as sacrifice..that I get. Jesus gave his blood sacrifice so we could live without having to off the family dog to atone for Sally getting pregnant at 15.

Now we have go to a confessional instead and tell a guy who hasn't had sex in 20 years all the lurid details of how THAT happened, and then hope he isn't having masturbational fantasies and eyeing my son lovingly. But if Jesus sacrificed himself for all mankind so that I can be forgiven my sins, why the need for the middle man? How is it I tell that guy my dirty little secrets, say some repetitious chant-prayers, and it's all OK? Where the hell is THAT in the bible?

So, you see, following along blindly is folly, at best, that may provide you comfort, but shall do nothing to further your understanding of what it is that you actually believe, or why you belive it.

Study, understand as best you can, and live your life based on that, doing no harm. That's all any God that I can imagine could ask for. Seems like a fair tradeoff for everlasting life to me. And if you're wrong, and there is no God, just a dirt nap and worm food...you lived a righteous life, did no harm, and left no stain upon the earth. Perhaps everlasting life isn't in Heaven, but instead is embodied in the fond memories others share about you when you are gone, based on how righteous and good and kind you were in life.

Read the book and find out for yourself.

So, in pondering this all tonight, smoking my Camel Blue and listening to the lovely and talented Ella Fitzgerald, I've realized that the real trick to it all is that if you do not understand the Bible because you've never taken the time to actually read it, you're not only worse off for it because your laziness has pre-empted your interest in actually going to heaven, you're worse off for it because the reality is thatyou do the things you do because some guy told you to. And he might well have graduated with a guy that likes to burn Qu'rans in Florida, or get on TV and preach abstinance and chastity and then cheat on his wife with several Vegas hookers, or rape small boys. How much bollocks is that?

I think I'm going to start reading my Bible again. The more people talk about Christmas and "being holy" right after spending thousands on a diamond for their wife instead of donating that money to people living paycheck to paycheck in a homeless shelter, the more I shake my head and beg God to understand why he allows us to be so fucking daft.

A Lone Banner - A Tale Of Dice And International Invasions

I recently got my order filled by Small Box Games, which included the new, and very fun, A Lone Banner. It's a light wargame that looks very simple at first glance, but is surprisingly fun and is easily the quickest Small Box Games product to learn and play. Further, the art and font choices are exceptionally easy on the eyes, thematic, and take me back to 1983 when the old film classic, "War Games" was released. When I got my wife and daughter at the table to play this, I even said, in a faux-computer tone, "Would...you...like...to...play...a...game?" They didn't get it, but that's OK, we can't all be geeks.

The concept of A Lone Banner is very simple: Players assume the role of a world leader who is attempting to take over the planet using limited troops, guile, and sheer brute force. Players start with one starting region of Earth and, using dice to represent troops, slowly take over the planet in a systematic global invasion. The dice values represent the strength of the corps or divisions of troops players command to invade territories for both victory points as well as invasion routes to other players' conquered territories. All in all, it's as cut-throat as they come, and it's a brilliant design for a very light, very fast war game.

The components are not the typical Pure Card Line fare, either, because there's only about 40 cards in the deck, but it also comes with four colored sets of three dice and a fifth set of four white dice. The art on the cards is very nice, even though it's simple, and the graphical layout is excellent. I say simple because there really is only about seven pictures total in the entire deck, but I happen to dig them all. I especially appreciate John hearing the clarion call of his fans for him to use readable fonts again, because he actually used one of my all-time favorites on this one, and it's perfect for the theme. The dice are really neat little 16mm jobbers, and I really like the speckled colors. All in all, the quality is great, as usual, and the inclusion of these neat little dice makes me one happy guy. Well worth the thirteen bucks!

To set the game up, you need to randomly hand out one "Starting Region" card, which essentially acts as your nation's headquarters, and then hand out one white die and a set of three colored dice. The last step in setup is to create a "Region Deck" which contains all of the cards that are not Starting Regions, and then to place one card for every player face up in the center of the battlefield. These cards act as the contested regions that are not aligned or otherwise conquered by a given player, and these are the main source of victory points.

There are no rounds in A Lone Banner, but rather in a continuously evolving game. Each player takes their turn, which is broken into phases, and then the next player to their left takes theirs until one or more of the endgame conditions has come to pass, at which point all the players take one final turn each and then the game is over.

On each player's first turn, they will roll their three colored "Troop Marker Dice" and determine the strength of their divisions. You may reroll any die you wish, except if you've rolled a one, in which case you're stuck with that. In certain circumstances, you may roll doubles, triples, or a straight, at which time special powers will come into play if you choose to keep those values on the dice, such as immediately taking an uncontested Region, placing multiple dice on the same Region, or moving opponents' troop markers off of a Region. Once you've opted to keep all of your dice, you may place one of them onto a contested region you wish to conquer, or if an opponent has a Region conquered already, you may place a die on that Region, effectively invading it.

Regarding invasions, you must have a path to invasion before actually invading it. For instance, if an opponent has conquered the Southern region in Europe, you must have conquered a card with the "Invasion: Europe - South" path on the card to be able to invade that Region in another player's tableau. On the first turn this generally doesn't matter, but on all subsequent turns, this is a big part of gameplay. To resolve an invasion, the player who attempts the invasion rolls the white die and adds that to the value of the Troops they placed on the Region, and the defender rolls a white die and adds to the rolled value the number of Regions that he owns on the continent that's being invaded. The highest value conquers, or retains, that Region.

Anyhow, back to the first turn. If a player has previously placed a die onto a contested Region and one or more opponents have subsequently placed a die onto that same Region, it's time for a battle. The white die is rolled by all combatants, and adding the white die to the colored Troop die is your overall attack value. The highest roll allows you to take control of that Region, taking it from the center of the table into your own tableau. In the case of a tie, everyone takes their dice and goes home. Another action you may take on your turn is the Recon action, which allows you to get swap a Region that is face up with a new card from the deck, but only if the card you wish to swap isn't occupied by any Troops.

If you start any turn with enemy Troops on a contested Region that you also have Troops on, battle ensues. Essentially, each player involved simply rolls a white die and adds the value of their dice on that contested region. Winner takes all, and in ties, nobody wins.

The endgame begins when one of the following occurs: The Region deck runs out of cards, any single player gains seven Regions, any player has 4 Central Regions or any player gains five Regions on any given Continent. After one final turn each, the players tally up the scores based upon the values of the Regions in their tableau, and bonus points are awarded for varying reasons, such as gaining one point for every continent you have a Region of and gaining three points when you own four Regions in a single continent.

All in all, it's a game that takes half an hour to play, is really decent to look at, and is fun as hell. I really liked it, and so did my wife, my daughter, and the friends I've played this with. It's so simple, yet so complex, all in one. Best of all, it's as cheap as your half of a Dutch date at Olive Garden.

Why A Lone Banner Stands Alone At The Top:
- Its small table requirement and quick playtime make this a kickass coffee shop game
- While the art is very, very simple, it's also very, very perfect for the game and I really like it
- The dice are really cool, and there's 12 of the colored ones, which are the coolest

What Makes A Lone Banner Feel Lonesome:
- I wish this was a 2-player game, but it's rated for 3 or 4 players
- This isn't Pure Cards. He lied about that....?

Overall:
This is the perfect filler game, and unless you're so afraid of dice that you consider moving to Germany at the sight of them, you will like this game. There's a little too much cut-throat for some, I'd imagine, but the game is just simply a load of fun and quite brilliantly executed from a design perspective. This is one of the best of Small Box Games' Pure Card Line, which is ironic because it's the one game in the line that isn't just cards. John nailed this one, and were this a 2-player game, I think it may have even beat out my favorite 2-player card game, Bhazum. Great stuff, and for 13$ the price is perfect.

Rating:
4.75/5 Stars

Read more about the game, such as the rules, at:
http://www.smallboxgames.com/alonebanner.html


Preorders for December are closed, and I'm sorry for not getting this out earlier so y'all would know about it for Christmas. Trust me, this is one you want. Preorders open for this again in January, though!

Conquest Of The Fallen Lands - Is That A Stronghold In Your Pocket Or Are You Just Happy To See Me?

A couple of Saturdays back, I was invited to an epic gameday at my buddy's house in the Indianapolis area. The original date was in October, but after the unexpected death of my father I had to reschedule. So, he, another friend from Southern Ohio and his daughter, and myself and my daughter all met up, finally, and had a hell of a time. We played a variety of cool games, such as Hive, which was very interesting and not nearly as simple as I'd have thought by looking at it, Zooloretto, which I subsequently ended up getting through a trade, and one of my new favorite games, Conquest of the Fallen Lands. This game was such fun that I wrote to the boys at Assa for a review copy, but they never responded. In fact, I have another buddy who is sending me his spare copy all the way from the lovely, and recently accidentally invaded, Costa Rica. Thanks, Tom!

Anyhow, this game is a tile-based romp where the players are heroic types who need to rid the countryside of all the nasties that tend to overrun said countrysides. You do this by retaking territories, which are comprised solely of the tiles themselves, and to retake a territory, you simply need to have enough soldiers to take that territory. No dice roll, unfortunately, but instead of randomness being injected, they've put a supply chain system in place. It's one of the neatest area control games I've ever played, although it won't be upsetting my beloved El Grande anytime soon, and not just because it's not packed with a small wooden dildo like El Grande is.

The art, as you can see from the box cover, is not Boris Vallejo's fantasy art, but it's actually pretty neat and the game adheres to the theme fairly well. That being said, the gameplay is such that you're not really all that concerned with the theme, so it could've been a game about a pimp putting his merchandise in the best areas for Johns, so the theme isn't really all that important to the game. The components are of good quality, and included are five sets of colored stones that act as markers for your conquests, a ton of little square cards that depict your allies such as mages, soldiers, and workmen, and a bunch of cards which act as your soldiers, bases, and your spells. In addition to that, there's a really easy to navigate rulebook that is clear, concise, and readable, as well as 61hexagonal tiles that make up the game map. Finally, there's a bunch of coin tokens in varying denominations that act as both the coin of the realm with which to purchase allies with as well as acting as victory points. All in all, I was very impressed with the stuff in the box, it really is very pleasing to the eye, and it's all very durable.

The exact setup is dependent upon the number of players, but in all cases you're starting the game by placing the tiles, each emblazoned with a value, randomly in any shape you deem to be interesting. This is the actual gameboard upon which you will be playing, and once you've got that set up, players simply choose a color and retrieve that color's marker stones. Once the fistfights over who gets to be Mr. Pink are done, each player draws eight cards from the deck, 25 coins, and two allies. All in all, we're talking about five minutes from start to finish to set the game up.

Gameplay is just as straightforward as the setup, which is lovely. On your turn, you may spend coins to buy an ally for five pence a pop, then you may play cards to cast spells or take over territories. Each soldier card has an Attack value and a Support value, and to take a territory over you must play that card right on top of the tile, provided you have enough Attack and Support points to meet or exceed the value of the tile. The supply chain aspect kicks in when you do this, because your soldiers are generally not all that strong, with a common Attack value being one or two points, and you may only play one card to any one territory.

To take higher valued territories, you need Support. This is managed by adding the Attack value of the card you wish to play, to the combined Support values of all your soldiers in territories adjacent to the target territory. Thus, if you wish to invade an area and own five territories adjacent to it that have soldiers with a Support value of one on them, you have a combined Attack value of five plus the Attack value of the card you wish to play upon that territory. It's not "mathy" at all, and only a complete imbecile would get confused, so I was in luck in playing this because if it involved counting past 10, I'd have to remove my pants, and my buddy certainly wouldn't have appreciated that.

There are also fortification cards that can be played upon territories you already control, and these beef up the Support value of that territory, so it's best to hold onto them until you are nearby a very strong territory, such as a 12 point territory. Now you're probably wondering about the allies I spoke of before, because they seemed to be important since you need to give up five victory points to buy them. Well, they are.

 In order to actually play a card at all, you need to meet the ally requirement on the card. For instance, if you are playing a soldier that has a little image of a workman, you need to have an available workman to do so. If you choose to play that card, you must immediately flip the ally card over to indicate that he's done his deed for the day, and that ally can no longer be implemented for further destruction and havoc that round. Once you've taken over a territory, you gain the value of that territory in coins, which can be retained as victory points or spent down the road on allies.

Beneficial spells can also be cast, and these are activated in a very similar way to the soldiers, although these require the activation of your allied mages instead of soldiers and workmen as is the standard for the soldiers. These spells vary greatly in what they do, from denying a key territory to allowing you to multiply your force for a turn. We played several different spells during our game, and they are indeed integral to gameplay, not an afterthought. In fact, the most significant play of our first game was when my friend's wife was kind enough to play an area-denial spell upon a 12 value territory that effectively removed my ability to expand any further by blocking my strongest fortress from supporting my troops.

Once you've expanded the influence of your empire, you may then opt to discard cards and gain new cards at a ratio of two to one, and in addition to any cards you got through trading in that manner, you may take one card for free just for being so heroic. Finally, you may take another free card for any Mages you did not activate on your turn. Once you've replenished your hand, you flip your allies back to the face up side, and your turn is over.

The game ends when the last territory has been taken over, or if no players can play any further cards. It is at this point that you regret buying so many allies, because your coins on hand are the sole determining factor of victory. The player with the most victory points wins, and the game is over. All in all, this is a very, very fun, replayable game that I cannot see getting old anytime soon. I'm waiting with bated breath for my Costa Rican copy from Tim Tim Timmy!

What Makes This Conquer Crappier Games:
- So easy to learn, a caveman can do it (TM)
- Fast plays and minimal downtime make this game epic fun
- Neat, light hearted art makes the game fun to look at
- Light enough to not stroke out while playing, but complex strategies can be devised and executed

What Made The Lands Fall In The First Place:
- Lack of much direct player interaction makes this far less backstabbity than I'd otherwise have liked

Overall:
This is one of the more fun area control games I've ever played, and I'd absolutely abandon Small World for this ten times out of ten. It's not incredibly deep, and there's not a tremendous amount of direct player interaction, but it certainly isn't multiplayer solitaire. I highly recommend it after three plays, and I'm seriously jazzed about getting a copy from my buddy. If you have a spouse that likes light, friendly games with a splash of cut throat, this is the one you want. Just a great, fun little game.

Rating:
3.75/5 Stars

You can learn more about Conquest of the Fallen Lands at the Assa website here:
http://www.assagames.com/

If you didn't get my reference to Boris Vallejo, then you not only may be an uncultured swine, you apparently do not like nakedness, either. Google Boris Vallejo, and learn about the best fantasy artist of your lifetime. He makes Larry Elmore look like a 9 year old, novice finger painter.

Happy Thanksgiving! Now Let Me See Your Genitals, Please!

Ah, Thanksgiving. It's the merriest time of the year, especially for the TSA, who will get to see more nakedness in one day than half of the internet porn fiends in the world.  When I was growing up, I never would've imagined that the State would illegally search people with carcinogenic, high intensity x-rays to the point where they could see every part of your glorious naked body, down to the millimeter. Why is anyone submitting to this illegal search?

Have the American politicians finally weakened our resolve as Americans to the point that we're OK with giving up some of our most sacred rights for the ILLUSION of a tiny bit of security? What's next? The mall cops are going to be fondling your wife's breasts on the way in to get your Christmas presents because you might be a terrorist? Americans need to "man up" and accept that our policies over the past 50 years have pissed some people off, and they may want to blow YOU up.  Not "You" as in Americans, but YOU, PERSONALLY.  Deal with it.  Embrace it.

Go get a Concealed Carry license if you're worried about it, because the cops can only show up to clean up the crime scene after you're already dead, and the TSA are no different. Embrace the fact that as "civilized" as we believe ourselves to be, our Chevy Suburban's tires are soaked with the blood of millions that we've allowed to be repressed and murdered, all so we can have that big screen TV and drive to the golf course in our 10MPG trucks. Everyone knows it, so don't act surprised that I'm saying it.

There's a crackhead within 30 miles of you that would slit your neck for a rock if they had the chance, so don't think this is something new. There's always people that want to do you harm, but is that a good reason to let your God-given rights (or Natural rights, if you're not into that whole Deity thing) slip away to make you "feel better"?

But back to the subject, the Blue Shirts.  The TSA has been granted extraordinary leeway, by the fucking morons in Congress, to illegally search you, and the sole reason is economic and political. They want people to fly so that money can be made and taxies levied.  They want people to "feel safe" when they fly to aid in this, and the fact is that we're no safer now than we were on 9/11. Terrorists can still blow you up, shoot you, or do anything they want. It's all theater at the airport, because it's extremely obvious to anyone with a modicum of sense that it's not about actual safety and more about making you feel safe. The only problem is that I now have more fear of my own government than I have for being blown up.

Let's take a look at what our friends at TSA are doing to "protect us":

First, they said that "no images will be saved", but in the usual Washington bullshit machine style, they lied:
http://gizmodo.com/5690749/these-are-the-first-100-leaked-body-scans

Then, they said that "these machines are safe and do no harm", yet this is substantially false as well:
http://healthfreedoms.org/2010/01/05/cancer-danger-in-airport-backscatter-x-ray-machines/

But wait, it's effective in stopping terrorism, right? Fuck no, it's not:
http://consumerist.com/2010/11/adam-savage-tsa-scanners-missed-my-12-long-weapon.html

But that was just a fluke, right? Nobody else, especially not a foreign national, could do that, right? Yeah, let's just see about that, Mr. TSA douchebag:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/10/for-the-first-time-the-tsa-meets-resistance/65390/
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/the-things-he-carried/7057/

But the TSA has sound judgement, right? They have the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom that tells them what is a weapon and what isn't, right? Yeah, right:
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/11/18/another-tsa-outrage/

But this is all totally legal, right, because Congress says so? No, it's not. Back in the 1960s, our good friends on the Supreme Court actually indicated what constitutes a legal search and what doesn't, and this is the case that decided what the government COULD and COULD NOT do:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_v._Ohio

So, this Thanksgiving is the National Opt-Out day.  I encourage you to send a strong message to the Politburo in Washington that we, as Americans, do not want to be looked at by a bunch of fucking TSA perverts, nor do we want images of our children's naked bodies to be viewed by pedophiles on the internet at some point when the images are leaked, as they will most certainly be.

Check here for more info about this: http://www.optoutday.com/, and while the liberal morons will say this is about "the right's agenda of racial profiling" to attempt to create a racism issue, because really, that's all they ever do anymore. It's not about racial profiling, it's about individual profiling. If you have 20 stamps on your passport, some from the Gulf region, you need to be pulled aside and talked to.  The Israelis have done this for years and have never had a terrorist penetration into their airport, so why do we need to spend billions on this equipment that will most certainly be found to be illegal, then sent to a scrapyard somewhere? What, you say? The Israelis don't need to see your kids' naked bodies to stop terrorism? Let's take a look at that:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/12/israeli-airport-security.html

Don't give up your rights without a fight, that's all I'm saying.  Just remember that the Government looks at your rights with great envy and furious anger, and they'll do just about anything to make sure that eventually, you'll be just a tax-creation machine with no individual rights for the purposes of "making this nation more secure."

At least one Congressman has some cojones, though...
http://holt.house.gov/images/stories/updated_TSA_letter_11.19.2010.pdf

"Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary security deserves neither liberty nor security, and will invariably lose both." ~ Benjamin Franklin

Heroscape - Saving Some Of The Best For Last

Wizards of the Coast was nice enough to send me a complimentary set of Heroscape Wave 13, or D&DScape Wave 3, called Moltenclaw's Invasion. Now, I am not a huge fan of D&DScape because I think much of the draw of Heroscape is the interesting backstory and wide cast of compelling characters from different genres, so I was more than a bit skeptical about how Wizards would decide to end the seven year run of Heroscape's existence. I was pleasantly surprised.

I'm here to tell you that they went out with a bang. Some of these new squads are on their way to becoming my favorites, and for good reason. In the typical Heroscape formula, they've made characters that can be implemented in a wide array of armies, and to really get the full power of these new guys, you really need to have some of the older stuff as well. Allow me to elaborate.

First, there's the obligatory Hero Pack, called Heroes of Fallcrest, which contains four new heroes to battle it out on the landscape of Valhalla. The first is Moltenclaw, a dragon whose stature is about the same as a Deathwalker, but is so much more. He's worth 170 points, and he has a special attack that's a cross between Mimring and Zelrig, with five squares affected by four attack dice. Further, he's got Lava Resistance, can fly, and has six life points. His only downfall, if any, is that he's only got three defense dice, so he is a bit on the fragile side.

Next in the Hero pack is Siege, a Warforged hero with a really slick new special power type. If you placed the X order marker on him, you may, when activated by another order marker, reveal the X on him which activates his Crag of Steel power. This power raises his defense from five to eight, but lowers his attack and move rating from five to three. With five life points, he's a real tank and can walk right up to someone like Charos, take some beating without flinching, and start hacking. All in all, he's really a neat looking model, and is an interesting addition to the game.

Eltahale, a Goliath Warden, is the third hero in this pack and he has an interesting new power as well. His Thunder Ram attack allows her to advance to a target, attack with 4 dice, and these dice affect two figures of your choice that are within 2 spaces of that target. With five attack dice and four defense dice, she can move up to six spaces and cause some pain and suffering. She also has a second special attack that allows her to teleport up to 5 spaces away to an adjacent figure and then beat on that opponent with an additional attack die. The downside is that at the end of her activation, you must roll a die, and upon a skull's appearance she takes a wound.

The last hero in this pack is Evar Scarcarver, a Human Frostrager. Not sure what a Frostrager is, but suffice to say there'll be no bonding there. Anyhow, Evar has the double attack power, and with 2 attack, it's not that impressive. What is impressive, though, is that he has a Kruglike power called Frost Rage (Now I know what a FrostRager is!) which can be activated in the same manner as Siege's power, with the X order marker. This power allows you to add an additional attack and defense die to Evar for every wound marker he currently has. With five life points, we're talking about him having six attack and seven defense dice by the end of his life. That's a very potent little figure, and for 110 points, he is every bit as good as similarly costed figures, if not better. I've played with him as a forward scout, and he can run the gauntlet through squad fire, taking wounds and getting stronger with each hit, until he comes across a powerful hero, at which point he's juiced up to the point he can put some serious carnage in play upon them.

The next pack in the wave is called Bugbears and Orcs, which is comprised of two common squads. The first squad is the Horned Skull Brutes, who are clearly meant to be marine-type invasion units. With three to a squad, and costed at 75 points each, they're quite impressive alone as they have four attack and four defense points each. What really makes them impressive is that, like Tor-Kul-Na, they can expend other units to ignore all the wounds they receive. In this case, it's the Goblin Cutters from the last wave. These guys have a second power as well that allows them to swap places with friendly, engaged figures, meaning that you can move faster, lighter units into place and then swap these guys in for a surprise attack with a far more powerful unit. Very slick, indeed.

Moving on, the final squad in this pack is the Death Chasers of Thesk, a Gorilla-like squad of three Orcs. These guys have hero bonding that's very flexible, and can play well with any Large, Wild hero, such as Me-Burq-Sa or an Ogre Pulverizer, who is in this wave as well. With four attack and two defense dice, these guys aren't going to set the world on fire, but for the cheap cost of 55 points, they're exponentially better than the Roman Archers that share that cost.

The third pack in this wave is called Icewind's Scourge, and surprisingly is a second hero set. The first hero I'd like to talk about is the fearless Frost Giant of Morh. Gone are the days of Jotun-sized giants, though, as this guy is about as tall as Brunak. At 140 points, and with six life, he's an average costed hero, but when you consider he has four defense and attack dice, he appears bit on the weak side for an expensive hero. That is, until you check out his powers. He comes with the Indomitable power, which adds two movement points to his original five when he begins his turn unengaged, but adds two attack dice instead if he begins the turn engaged. To add to that, he has Battle Frenzy which allows him to attack subsequent times on a D20 roll of 16 or better, just like the Aubrien Archers. His final power, which is the most fun to play, is the Dying Swipe ability. This power allows you to roll three attack dice upon his death and any skulls rolled are unblockable hits against any adjacent figure or figures of his choice. This is incredibly satisfying when a powerful, high defense hero is close enough to be killed for free, essentially, and I did exactly this on Sunday afternoon. You can fill your ranks with these guys, becuase this guy is Uncommon, not Unique.

Next up in the cavalcade of heroes is the Master of the Hunt, or the Golden Spearchucker, as we've come to call him. Besides being the single coolest looking figure in the last two waves, this guy is all beef. At 140 points and with six life points, he's tough as a box of rusty nails, and he has four attack, defense, and range to boot. That is, until you include his Javelin special power, which can extend his range to seven spaces if you can roll better than a 15 on the D20. To add to his exquisite lethality, he has the Mortal Strike power which allows you to re-roll any skulls, giving an additional wound for every skull you roll a second time. All in all, he's my favorite hero from this set, and he looks a bit like a buffed out Luchadore due to his golden, winged mask. Very, very cool, and to add to the coolness, this guy is an Uncommon hero, meaning you can have two or three Luchadores chucking spears and mortally wounding people all day long. In the words of Palpatine, "Excellent!"

The last hero in this pack is the Ice Troll Berserker, who is a Ferocious Beast, sans Maggie. Yes, I have a 2-year old, so I know about Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. Anyhow, this guy is an 85 point Uncommon hero who is both tough and can regenerate either one life point normally, or two life points on an ice or snow tile. With four life, five attack, and two defense, he's really a gambler's figure as he can either whip some ass on an epic scale, or if you're luck is rotten, die quickly and cost you big. He has the Ice Troll Charge special ability which is almost exactly like the Tarn Vikings' power, allowing you to move again on a D20 roll of 13 or higher. If you're on an ice or snow tile, it then becomes a 50/50 chance because you add three to that skill check roll, meaning you only need to hit an 11 or better to activate it.

The final pack in this set is the Valkrill's Legion pack, which is loaded up with all kinds of goodness in the form of ridiculously neat squads and a big Ogre. The first is my new personal favorite, the Mezzodemon Warmongers. These billy badasses are hands-down some of the juiciest in all of Heroscape. With three attack and defense dice, and at 65 points a squad for two units, they don't look very juicy at first. When you look at their Exoskeleton power, which allows them to completely disregard an attack at the cost of one Exoskeleton marker, these guys are very tough to kill. To elaborate, you start with one marker for each Warmonger in your army, and you may discard one marker each time one of these would otherwise be killed, disregarding all wounds. This only affects normal attacks, which weakens it a bit, but still, if you have eight of these, you essentially get sixteen life points between them all. That's epic. On top of this, these figures have a range of four spaces, making them deadly from a distance, and they have a Poison Cloud power that adds one attack die when attacking adjacent figures. I just love these ugly little bastards, and I've completely murdered a Knights and 4th Mass build with them.

The last squad in this wave is the Death Knights of Valkrill, an incredibly powerful little two-man death squad that costs 60 points to field, but can bond with any Relentless hero you control, meaning you get to team up with Khosumet, a Dumatef Guard, Taelord, or a variety of others. These guys have a meager two attack dice, but they also have the Soul Weapons ability which reduces any attacked figure's defense by 2 dice. These guys are amazingly powerful, in short, against virtually all squads and all but the most powerful heroes. With five defense as well, these guys can take a pounding while getting into attack position, meaning that while you only get two attacks per activation, both will be effective.

The last hero in this wave is the Ogre Pulverizer, mentioned before due to its bonding with the Death Chasers. This guy is costed at 100 points, which seems expensive, but he has six life points, four attack and three defense points, making him a strong defensive figure to field. He has the double attack ability, allowing him two attacks per turn, but this is softened by the Lumbering Bully power which causes him to take wounds based off of an unsuccessful attack. This is, in my opinion, the worst hero of the entire pack. He really isn't a figure I'd field, and unless you have nothing else to bond with the Death Chasers, I don't expect to see him around. This is unfortuante, because he looks really, really cool.

Now that I've given you all the information I could on these guys, there's one last thing I need to say about this wave. The models are a lot better looking than the last wave, but the paint job is a lot worse. This wave's paint jobs are full of missed spots and colors that don't match across figures of the same squad, such as one Death Knight's sword being black and another's being cyan, and smudged at that. Maybe it's just my pack, but this is the one I got, so that's what I have to base my opinion on. The other thing is that the Exoskeleton Markers were not actually included inside the pack with the Mezzodemons, but instead is in a hero pack. This is no biggie if you plan to buy one of each pack, or even one of each Hero pack and two or three of the common squad packs, because the markers come in sets of six. If you just want the Mezzos, though, you can contact Wizards customer service and they'll ship the markers out to you for free. Alternatively, you can just paint some standard wound markers or use a proxy token if you don't want to mess with it.

The long and short is that while Heroscape has died after a spectacular run, all things must end and instead of softballing, Wizards has produced a great new wave of figures. My only complaint here is that I now have to go back and spend some money on the old Dungeons and Dragons waves because they've made me, the ultimate D&DScape skeptic, a believer. These are solid figures and I plan to play them now and in the future.

What Makes Moltenclaw's Invasion All Kinds Of Hot:
- Mezzodemons and Death Knights are some of the best squads ever
- The Golden Spearchucker has quickly become one of my favorite heroes
- The Frost Giant's Dying Swipe is super cool and the ultimate F-You to attacking figures
- New, innovative X order marker powers are a neat new use of the worthless X order marker

What Makes Moltenclaw Fizzle And Sputter:
- Epic Fail of quality assurance regarding the Exoskeleton markers being put in a hero pack
- The low quality paint jobs are distracting on the otherwise very cool models
- The Ogre Pulverizer is quite simply the Dund of D&DScape

Overall:
It's a sad day for all Heroscape fans that the line has gone the way of the Dodo, but this pack really indicates that Wizards has committed to going out with some style. Great new heroes and awesome squads will have you wishing for more, but the quality of the paint jobs and the failure to properly package the markers takes a bit of shine of this otherwise great expansion.

Rating:
4/5 Stars

Head to http://www.heroscapers.com/ for more info on these and other Heroscape units, because this is the last chapter in a very, very long saga of battles in Valhalla.

Cartouche - Plagues, Pestilence, And A Pyramid Of Cards

Sometimes I just don't have the time to set up a huge Heroscape war, defy the Great Old Ones in Arkham, or protect Fortress: America from the rest of the world. It's times like this that I look to Small Box Games for a quick card game that doesn't require hours to play or set up. Today's entree into the world of fast card games is Cartouche, the latest Pure Card Line game from Small Box. It's a deck building game where players vie for control of Egypt, attempting to create the greatest Dynasty in the known world. Now, I'm going to put out there that there are very few deck building games that I've ever really liked, including Dominion which I got rid of a month after buying, although Smallbox was the one that made me a believer in the genre when I played Bhazum, which I still play quite a bit.

The concept of the game is that players call upon Egyptian deities in order to build their decks into more valuable cards and combinations of cards, and at the end of the game, when two of the Deity decks are out of cards, the players score their Dynasty deck based upon the types of cards they've won. In theory, it sounds to be simple, but Cartouche is not for the faint of heart; the rules, while diminutive, are very hard to understand until you've played a couple of times, and the iconography is such that the game takes you a good long while to actually figure out. This isn't to say that it's a bad game, it's more that it's got absolutely no text on any given card and so there's a lot of icon memorization. Think Race for the Galaxy, but harder.

When you open the box, which is two standard size poker decks wide, you're met with the rulebook, which is larger than Small Box's usual size, and 144 half sized cards. Of those cards, there's only four cards that are not used for gameplay, and those are the reference cards. The art on the cards is pretty and definitely recreates the hieroglyphics that it is clearly trying to, although the folks I played with thought it to be bland. I was an Egyptian history enthusiast at one point of my life, and I went to school next to the San Jose Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, which is the coolest museum in the area for all things Pharoah, so maybe I'm biased.

Setup of Cartouche is pretty simple, but sorting the cards is a bit of a pain since they're so small and there's so many of them. Luckily, though, there's little color coded cartouches on the sidebars of the cards that allow for quick recognition and sorting. Anyhow, to set up the game, hand out the reference card to each player and then sort all the cards into six stacks based on the color of the deity cartouches. Once the stacks are made, hand one card from each stack to each player, so everyone starts with six cards. As per what Small Box Games has started to do to mitigate luck of late, there's then a draft round where each player, in turn, takes one card from their original hand, places it face down in front of them, and then passes their deck to the left until it's rolled around six times and everyone has six cards. Shuffle your 6 cards, place them face down into your Dynasty deck, and then draw the top 4, placing them in front of you as your Staging Ground. Once you're there, you're ready to build your Dynasty.

I'd get into the nuts and bolts of how to play the game, but this game is very complex by my standards, so instead I'm going to simply give a short summary of what the basic premise is. Each round consists of four steps, starting with the Choice step, where you decide whether you want to play with what you have in your Staging Ground via a Standard turn, or you can alternatively choose a Shuffled turn, which allows you to take a card from the Exodus deck, which is non-existent at the beginning of the game, and discard it and then shuffle the Dynasty, Discard, and Staging Grounds together to create a new Staging Area, although you get to only play one card because you shuffled, and your Staging Area will only have three cards in it rather than the normal four.

After you've chosen your type of turn, you move to the Blessing step, where you take cards from the appropriate Deity decks, based upon the icons at the bottom of cards in your Staging Ground. If you have pairs of matching deities on your staged cards, you can take the top card of that deity deck and place them on the bottom of your Dynasty Deck. This is a major way to get new cards into your Dynasty, although because you place them on the bottom of your deck, you may not see them for a while.

Next is the Development step, where the meat of the game really happens. Depending on your choice during the Choice step, you can play either one or three cards from your Staging Ground. This consists of either discarding a card from your Staging Ground and taking two new cards from the Deity deck that matches the minor deity at the bottom of the played card, moving one of them to the Exodus deck and the other to your Dynasty deck. Now alternatively, you can play the card ability icon instead of using the deity icon, and this allows you to use the card's ability, which varies with the type of card ability icon. Card abilities can be used in conjunction with other cards you have in play to augment the cards, such as having an Armory card and a Soldier card in your Staging Area and playing the Soldier card to gain the War ability, thus stealing a card from an opponent. In short, the game is about creating combinations of card types to stomp the piss out of your opponents, forcing them to discard allowing you to gain cards either from the various decks or from the opponents themselves. Unlike Dominion, this is a very backstabbity game, and I think this is what really separates it from other deck building games of this type.

The last step in a player's turn is the Replenish step, where you simply draw up cards into your Staging Area until you either have the maximum of four, or are out of Dynasty cards, in which case you'll probably want to play a Shuffled Turn next round to re-up. Cartouche, in a nutshell, is about getting your Dynasty deck trimmed to the best combinations of attack cards and points cards as possible, so that you don't get stuck with cards that are essentially useless or not good combinations in your Staging Area. It's not "mathy" or anything like that, and there's twelve different card ability types, so it's not like there's a huge amount of possibilities. The "mathy" part comes at the end of the game, when you do the scoring.

The game ends when two Deity decks are gone, and it comes a lot sooner that you'd think, especially in three or four player games. Scoring was a little wonky for me every time I've played, but it gets more intuitive over time. Essentially, each Person card is worth one point, and for every three of a card type you have, if you have a matching Progress card type, you get to score that Progress Card too. The player with the highest score wins, goes onto become Pharaoh, and his distant heirs end up having their firstborn killed off by the Angel of Death! Some legacy, huh!

Why Cartouche Makes Frankincense:
- The game has a LOT of cutthroat, which I always enjoy
- Smart players can quickly figure out what the best combinations are, making it interesting and competitive
- Short playtime allows for several plays in a night or allows Cartouche to be a warmup for some Ameritrash later in the night

What Mummifies Cartouche:
- The amount of iconography makes Race For The Galaxy look like tiddlywinks
- The scoring is overwhelming, even after a couple of plays
- I'd give my left nut for Small Box Games to make Quick Reference Guides, because there's a lot of stuff going on here

Overall:
Cartouche is a pretty complex game with a ton of options and excels at player interaction and smart combination building, but the artwork is really only appreciated by those who like the sort of Egyptian artwork that is exhibited. Further hampering the game's appeal is the fact that the icons are plentiful and can be completely overwhelming, meaning you must refer constantly and copiously to the rulebook, which can slow gameplay down. Even after several plays, I still had to go back to the rulebook several times during my turn, and so did everyone else at the table, meaning that the rulebook essentially acted as a player turn marker.

That being said, we enjoyed Cartouche fairly well, and the one guy in my group that digs Dominion said that although it was more complex, he really liked the idea and gameplay of the game. So, in short, if you like deck building games, you should certainly try Cartouche, especially if you think that these kinds of games should have more interaction and less multiplayer solitaire. Cartouche is heavy on interaction and when you get past the intial information overload, it's a neat little game.

Rating:
3/5 Stars

To learn more about Cartouche or Small Box Games, check out www.smallboxgames.com 

Small Box combines shipping, so check out some of my other Small Box Games reviews, such as Bhazum, Irondale, and Politico: Fall of Caesar and see if you want to get a couple at the same time.

Note: The Superfly Circus has officially received Porkinz' Stamp of 4pproval.  If you weren't aware, it is a highly coveted prize, and I thank Porkins kindly for his acknowledgement of the skill and talent of the Superfly Circus Staff. w00t!!