Firefly - Joss Whedon's Ultimate Misbehavior Is Lifting Ideas From Other Games

The world of the TV show Firefly, and the fiction surrounding it, is quite a far cry from your average Sci-Fi, with an odd, kind-of-mystic, pseudo Western/Chinese vibe. As I'm sure you know, the show was incredibly popular, but apparently not so much that it could last more than one season plus a movie, but that hasn't stopped a subculture of fans from reliving its short-lived glory. Enter Firefly: The Board Game, licensed to Gale Force Nine, who up until relatively recently pretty much made its name as a tabletop war game publisher. They seem to have a thing for licensed IP because they've made this and one other board game, based on another show, which is still incredibly popular and well-received by the hobby game community. Firefly seems to be doing the same thing, for the most part, and at GenCon last year people were going fully bat-shit crazy over it. The truth is that sometimes people want something to be better than it is because they like the theme or license, as can be attested to by a litany of really shitty Star Trek computer games.

The thing about this game is that I feel as if I've played it several times before, but the other times it was called Runebound, Return of the Heroes, and Merchants of Venus. See, there's nothing remotely new about this game, to be honest, because it's essentially a portmanteau of a bunch of other games, with a Firefly-branded theme slapped on. As much as I liked the show, I really am a little disappointed because while the game is sort of fun, it's just that it's so much like other games I've played that it feels like I'm walking the same old ground. The base game, even with the "Breakin' Atmo" expansion which is just a small deck of cards with more stuff to buy and people to hire, amounts to running around doing pick-up-and-deliver missions with a skill check at the end. With some missions, there's not even a skill check, you just declare it complete and that's it. All in all, it's just not that engaging or exciting because it's just not that different from other stuff I've played. There's very little player-on-player action unless you get the latest expansion "Pirates and Bounty Hunters", which I own, and I think that it's omission from the game's launch was either a huge misstep or a marketing calculation to sell you new stuff down the road, knowing that it's like Tribble Shit...if it's licensed, it will always sell.

That said, this latest expansion changes the base game profoundly, allowing you to steal other players' crews, kill, murder, maim, pirate, and basically be a dirty, rotten scoundrel for a living. I was much colder on the game before I had this, but considering that I'm about $80.00 USD deep in the game at this point, I'm quite pleased to say that we really dug the game a lot more when we added it in. It quite ably brings the game up to the level of "something new and exciting", and more importantly, it does so without adding bullshit, chrome rules that add complexity for complexity's sake.  It's quite surprising that one little expansion could make such a difference, especially when it doesn't change the basic premise of the game.

Pairing with the new PvP action are new cards and jobs that are indisputably criminal and nefarious, not to mention that it adds the single most interesting character from the entire show, the bounty hunter Jubal Early. Two new ships are in the mix as well, one of which is essentially a Firefly version of Slave One, with the other being a great big, slow, unwieldy cargo ship for doing a bunch of legitimate, or not so legitimate, cargo runs. All said, I would likely have traded Firefly and the first expansion away for something else had I not bought this expansion on the recommendation of the Grand Poobah of Ameritrash Criticism, Michael Barnes. So compelling was his argument that despite his continual execration of the Euro classic game, Stone Age, I could no longer demur and bought in, despite my lingering reservations about the play quality of the base game. I hate it when he's right, and I hate it more when I agree with him.

Now, if there's one thing that can be said about this game and its expansions, it's that the components are top notch. I don't think I've ever seen paper money that was so outstandingly illustrated, to begin with, and the little plastic ships are pretty cool too, despite the players' ships being identical in all but color, unless you include the new ships from Pirates and Bounty Hunters. The cards are all illustrated well, with the backs being really nice looking and the fronts being printed with images from the show, and with legible, understandable text, complete with colored and highlighted key words. I wish more games would do that. The board is probably the weakest point, with it having a total fucking mess of space delineations. Sometimes you just have to kind of wing it because there's no real guidance as to which space is considered to be in a specific area, and it matters because some jobs require you to go to that area, but you're not sure which planet is the target. All in all, they could've done better there, but that said, we just house ruled it and moved on.

Gameplay is quite brisk, and even then, the game can be an hour for a two player game or three hours for a four player game. Turns amount to players taking a couple of actions, in turn, which can include moving one space, moving several spaces and drawing cards each turn to determine if bad shit happens, buying and selling, or completing jobs. Some jobs are legal and simple, but the illegal jobs such as hauling fugitives or contraband across the galaxy are not. There's a sort of police force in the game, but it's really just there to annoy you and screw your plans up, and honestly, the Alliance Cruiser which represents the cops doesn't shot up very often, especially since it can only travel the inner part of the board. Now, the outer part of the board can be particularly nasty because there's a Reaver ship, representing space anarchists of a sort, that also occasionally shows up at your doorstep to kill and steal everything you've got. The card-flipping mechanism is a little bit interesting in that there's a tension you feel because it triggers the cops and Reavers, but it also tends to slow the game pace down a little. The whole card-flipping thing is removed in a two player game, and I think that accounts for the brevity of the game when playing in that format.

The real meat of the game, though, is doing jobs and earning a space buck. These are initiated by talking with contacts, strewn about the galaxy, and simply choosing them from the discard deck. This looking at the discards is a neat way to ensure that you know what's available at all times, and this is a lot like Runebound in that sense, but with Firefly, this applies to jobs as well as items and people to buy. Once you've got the mission, you are told to go somewhere for the first leg, then go somewhere and do something else on the second leg, at which point you're paid for a job well done. There's a reputation system at play so when you do a job, you become "solid" with a contact, and end up getting more options. Some jobs, however, are highly dubious and require one or more skill checks, initiated by drawing a "Misbehave" card. Some require you to have certain items or skills just to start them, and many are incredibly tough because they have high bogeys to hit via a die roll and then adding your workers' skills of a type. All in all, there's not much new here but it works, is simple, and is pretty fun.

Basically, if you like Runebound, this will probably be a nice change of scenery while being a very similar game, especially if you like Runebound and always yearned for a simpler, English version of Return of the Heroes. There's a lot to like here, especially if you're going to buy the base game and the expansions in one fell swoop. I can't say that I'd be recommending this without the Pirates and Bounty Hunters expansion, because it's such a retread of what I've already played ad infinitum, but I think the Circus as a whole is pretty split on that matter. Some players really dug it, and those were unanimously the same ones that never played Runebound. My wife and I both were very tepid, having played Runebound so very many times, but once I introduced the expansion, we both agreed that the "missing piece" that could make the game shine was now present. The short version is that we intend to keep flyin' for a good long time, but we're a little miffed that we had to have an expansion to get to that point. To add to this, there's yet another expansion that's releasing at GenCon, Blue Sun. It appears to add a new side-board of sorts to expand the space you can explore, which is a good thing, because once Jubal Early starts flying around, space gets very small, very fast.

Why I'd Wear A Brown Coat, Even If It Was Made Of Poo:

- Production values are absolutely dynamite, especially with the paper money

- Replay value is there, for sure, because there's a ton of cards

- Brisk pace ensures that there's the perfect amount of downtime

- Very few expansions have ever done so much with so little

- Two Words: Jubal Early. Does that seem right to you?

Why That Brown Coat Is Probably Made Of Poo:

- The base game is lackluster and feels very samey in relation to older games

- The wee player ships are identical, except in color, which kind of sucks

- Card-drawing during long moves mostly serves simply to slow the game down

- How many pick-up-and-deliver jobs can you do before you just get worn down?

- It's really hard to fit everything in one box if you have both existing expansions

Overall:

The base game could be great for someone who hasn't played similar games, but it's certainly not going to replace Runebound in my collection anytime soon. The first expansion was also quite lackluster and uninspired, but does add a few interesting items and characters. The latest, though, is that whole "you complete me" kind of expansion that I can't help but wish was in the base game to begin with. I can't recommend the game highly based on the base game, but when you toss in Pirates and Bounty Hunters, all of the sudden this is a game that has some teeth, which is kind of odd, since it is essentially retains the same pick-up-and-deliver core, while adding a big dose of "screw you", and making traveling near other players quite dangerous.

Rating (Base w/ Breakin' Atmo expansion):

3/5 Stars

Final Rating (Base with all expansions):

4.25/5 Stars

Learn more about the Firefly game here, at Gale Force Nine's page:

http://www.fireflythegame.com/

Revolver - This Colonel Ain't About The Chicken

I know I'm late in reviewing this, but nobody has ever really talked much about this one, so here I am, a year after first playing it, talking about it. Let's just get one thing straight: I really don't like very many card games. I'm a board gamer, and these deck building games, trick taking games, and other card-based games just don't do it for me, by and large. Some card games can transcend their disability (read: being a card game) with me because they're not quite card games, really, such as Summoner Wars or Trick or Treat, and it's that way because they're not really card games as much as a poor man's board game because the cards are really more like flat, rectangular units or locations.

Well, when "Dangerous" Dave Roswell, a dear friend I met at Fortress: Ameritrash, turned me onto it, my first thought was, "Shit. Another card game I won't like." It turns out that not only is the game very good, it's so much different than many of the card games that I've played, both in style and play, that it might actually be one of the best card games I've ever played. It is so good, in fact, that I just bought a second copy to replace the one I got from Dave and subsequently loaned to my friend Chris, knowing I'd probably never ask for it back. Only a very solid game would cause me to own it not once, but twice, especially when it's a card game in one of those abhorrent tins that doesn't seem to fit well on a shelf full of games.

Revolver, from Stronghold Games, has an "American Wild West" theme which is both very different than the usual fare (read: not zombies or generic fantasy tropes) and truly exudes a Wild West feel. Being a two-player game, it pits the good guy"Colonel" player and his posse against the "Outlaw" player in a game that's part battle and part racing against the clock. There's several cards in the tin which represent locations and have a sort of timer mechanism printed on them. These represent the battlefields which the two players will battle over for around four turns, until the time runs out and you move to the next. You simply place cards with icons on them on your side of the battlefield, the other player does the same, and then you see who has more hits. If the good guys do, the bad guys lose one of their gang members, but if the bad guys do, they get one step closer to escaping across the Mexican Border. 

It's a very simple game, mechanically, but there's a lot of strategy that goes into it because many cards cause special effects to happen which bolster your side's ability to make war upon the other. Some allow you to play extra cards, some block the opponent's ability to place cards on a battlefield, some give you auto-kills of the bad guys, and a whole lot more. I was kind of surprised how much I liked the game, and it has a very different feel to it. It almost feels like a John Clowdus game in some ways (which is a good thing), but without the multiple-purpose cards. The best part is that it only takes maybe 30 minutes or so to play, and setup only takes about 3 minutes, if that. I've brought my wee tin all over the place, and I've played it with friends and the wife over dinner at restaurants, at the park while the kids attempted to shatter all the bones in their bodies on the jungle gym, and so on. 

From a value perspective, I think it's a pretty slick deal because at around $20.00, it will provide you with a whole lot of fun. I've probably played it 10 times at this point, and I'm still all about playing it again. Shit, the kids are at their aunt's house for the next couple of weeks, so me and the missus are going to be all over this at night when we're about half in the bag thanks to Mr. Tanqueray and Stella Artois. It's also worth mentioning that the art is actually pretty damned good, and the components are top quality, with well painted wooden blocks, thick cards, and great little punch-board tokens. There's a handful of cheap expansions as well, two of which Fortress: Ameritrash's Josh Look was kind enough to sell me on the cheap. I've not played them yet, but the first expansion changes the core rules a little, such as being able to set ambushes for the bad guys by placing cards underneath a battlefield, and the second expansion adds a new Prison location from which the bad guy player can free his defeated cronies. 

As I said, it's a good game that I, my wife, my 12 year old, and several of the Circus Freaks have enjoyed. Not a single person said anything untoward about it, although it was rated a little lower than I'd have expected when I polled them all. If I had to name just one flaw with the game, I don't think I really could, to be honest, if we're talking the game itself. Now, I hate those little tins that come with this, Panic Station, and the original edition of Quarriors. They never fit anywhere right, and the art isn't nearly good enough to be a little display piece. Other than that, though, the game is solid, really fun, fast, and portable. I think, since I've been thinking about this game for an hour or so now, that I'm going to get the wife out of bed right now, set this up, and whip her ass at it. Or try, at least.

Why My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys:
- Nice art and good components make this look nice on the table
- Tons of replay value allow this to not end up a shelf toad
- Just the right amount of randomness due to card draws make each session different
- The price point is perfect 

Why This Bronco Needs To Be Put Down:
- Cremated bodies are the only thing that should come in embossed tins
- I think it's slightly easier to play the good guy side, but not by much

Overall:
Revolver, with its unique Western theme, fast play, portability, and price make this a game that is very good, although probably not great, and that is simple to learn, teach, and play. While it is the epitome of a filler game, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing because it's not expensive and is so accessible that you can literally teach it in just a few minutes at best. We highly recommend it if you like quick-playing card games that don't involve set collection or trick taking. 

Rating:
4/5 Stars

Learn more about Revolver at Stronghold Games' Revolver page:
http://strongholdgames.com/store/revolver-line/

Krackades Mini - "Healthy Body, Sick Mind" Does Not Even Begin To Explain...

About a month and a half ago, I had an upcoming party to go to with the folks at the Circus HQ, and so when I coincidentally got an email from "Krackie Krackades" (no shit, that was the email address) to review the new game, Krackades Mini, I figured it would be a good game to play at the party. In essence, it's a party game that is dirty as hell, much like Cards Against Humanity is, but this is much more of a game, where Cards Against Humanity is really more of an activity than a game. We played it three times, per the Circus rules, and while the first time was really fun, it very quickly lost its ability to entertain, much to our disappointment.

The game itself is nothing more than a deck of kind-of-ugly cards with four suits; you need to supply your own paper, pen, and Play-Doh, which is one thing that you regular readers know that I truly fucking despise. If you sell me a game, I don't want to have to go to the store to get extra shit. Anyhow, the four suits are "act", "draw", "sculpt", and "Krack Attack"; it's a sort of design portmanteau of "Charades", "Cranium", and "Telestrations" in that people use acting, drawing, and sculpting to elicit the content of the cards so that their teammates can guess what the card says. The first three suits are pretty self-explanatory, but the last are cards that teams can use to alter other team's efforts, such as making them perform their card standing on one leg, or with their eyes closed. As it turns out, it's a one-play wonder, in that as long as you follow a key rule that I'll get into later, it will be a really good time, but not because of the design as much as the looks on people's faces when they realize what it is that you're trying to act out, draw, or sculpt. 

Now, these are not even remotely guessable unless you are a total degenerate, or in other words, if you're like me. For instance, one card asks you to sculpt a "big penis vein", while another card asks you to act out "99 problems but a bitch ain't one". Some are genuinely funny, such as drawing something representing an "asian glow", but some are just reaching. In short, it's a mixed bag, and with the right crowd you can have a good time. This is definitely the kind of game that you break out when your friends and their spouses are around and everyone's had a couple shots of bourbon. The amount of fun you'll have is directly proportional to the level of debauchery that precedes it, and the utter sickness of mind of the participants. 

The magic to making this game last for more than one session is to be sure that nobody has seen the cards in advance so that they really have to guess, rather than have it be sort of a raunchy, multiple-choice game. It was hard for me to play because I looked at some of the cards, which gave me a huge advantage, since guessing "doggy style"  isn't as hard when you know the card is in the deck. I only looked at a couple of each to get an idea of what to expect, so I limited my bias, and I suggest that you don't even look at the cards when you get it so that you don't ruin it for yourself. 

I have to admit, the biggest downside of the design is that the best part of the game is the reveal if your teammate doesn't guess it, since the laughs abound at that point. Once you've seen all of the cards, the game loses all of its humor, and really, all of the fun, so you literally can only play this once or twice with the same people and expect it to be anything but a total waste of time. In short, this is the epitome of an "experience game", one that you play once and talk about for months, but won't be able to recapture the original magic on replay. The first time we played it someone literally spit out a mouthful of beer all over the table and damned near drowned because they were laughing so hard. The second time was notably less fun because we had seen almost all of the cards, and a lot of the shine had faded because of it. The third time we played it, it was a lot more sighs than laughs, and I refuse to play it again because of this experience.

Now, the game retails on Amazon for $13.00, so it's cheap enough to get you past the fact that this is a one-time game, and we had such a fun time with it the first time we played that I wholly recommend it. You'll notice that there's no pictures here, which is odd, and I did this specifically for the reason I mentioned - the less you know about the game, the better, so you can enjoy it fully the first time you play. It had an unsuccessful Kickstarter campaign a while back, and I can understand that there's a limited market for it, but I think this game would actually be a great $25.00 party game, especially since the Kickstarter version (not to be confused with the subject of this review, the mini version) was actually a full game that contained all the required parts, and had a lot more cards. As I said, these two points were the only drawbacks to the currently available Krackades Mini, so honestly, the Kickstarter version would've been a really, really good party game for people with sick minds.

Why Krackades Mini Overdoses On Awesome:

- Sick, filthy fun, with a dash of backstabbing, make this a great party game

- Simple rules make this a game that isn't hard to explain at all, especially when wasted

- It supports huge crowds, so you have no upper limit on players

- Two words: KRACK ATTACK

Why "Krackades Mini" Is How One Describes An HIV+ Midget Crack Whore:

- You need to buy extra materials in order to play, especially if you have no young kids

- If you look at the cards before playing, you ruin the game

- You have to have at least 8 people to make this worth playing

- There's not enough cards to support three full sessions with the same people

- The art is about two steps above stick figures

- There's very little that's novel about the design

Overall:

I'd totally buy this if I had a party to go to and I knew that I'd only play it once or twice with the same crew, and also, the crew is pretty open to "irreverent humor" (read: crass, lewd humor). If you're looking for a long-term party game like Wits and Wagers, but grimy, that you can play for dozens of weekends at barbecues, this isn't the game. The price point is perfect, though, for that one-time experience if that's your goal.

Rating:

3/5 Stars

Learn more here: 

http://krackades.com/

You kind of have to see this video: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ua6WU6K1c

Stratego: Fire And Ice - "Let's Paint A Wizard's Hat Onto The Mona Lisa To Freshen It Up!"~ Hasbro Designer

Over spring break I've been introducing my 12 year old daughter to some of my more advanced games because most of her friends are away with family and whatnot, but since we're moving soon we're preserving our vacation time for the move and so here she sits, with only a couple of neighborhood friends to hang with. Anyhow, a couple nights back we broke out Stratego: Fire and Ice, and playing the basic "classic" rules, we played a couple of games. She immediately fell deeply in love with it, because it's simple to learn, relatively quick, but has enough strategy to feel like it's not a total waste of time. It's actually quite brilliant, according to her gleeful smiles as she trounced the shit out of me not via luck, but by being a clever little turd. Woe is me when she's 16 and dating.

If you haven't heard of the old Hasbro game, Stratego, you've been hiding under a rock for 30 years. Recent versions have tried to spice up (read: bastardize) the game with all kinds of new skins and special powers, such as a Lord of the Rings and Star Wars version, and this latest iteration, a generic fantasy version. To me, this speaks to the broad appeal and longevity of the game's core mechanics, and to Hasbro's apparent ideology that freshening up games for the iPad generation can sell more units.  All I know is that when  I saw this sitting at my local Goodwill store for 4 bucks, complete, I could not help but buy it to see whether my nostalgia for the game was ill-conceived. 

As it turns out, now that I've been playing hobby games for a great while, I understand with great clarity that this game is literally a great grandfather to games like Dungeon Twister, or other more European style confrontational games. Further, as I realized just recently after reflecting upon a thread at Fortress: Ameritrash, this is actually a hybrid combat/deduction game. Unfortunately, with regard to the new advanced rules, they literally destroyed what made classic Stratego what it is.

The first copy I ever saw was the 1970's version that had a Colonel Mustard-looking guy smiling across the board at you, holding a piece. Never trust a guy with a pornstache, says I, and that skeevy pervert totally looks like he's got some children locked in a basement somewhere. Anyhow, it had Marshals, Colonels, Captains, and so on down the ranks to the lowly Scout; only a very few pieces had any powers, and in almost all cases, the guy with the stronger piece would win an individual battle. The only way to know what rank the other guy's piece is was to attack it, which forced you to make incredibly tough decisions that delivered a very palpable tension. It's what made the game so fun to play. Not so any more, because with this latest "Fire And Ice" version, gone are the military ranks, replaced by mostly generic fantasy wankers such as the Dragon, Mage, Elf, and Dwarf. The funny thing is that the art looks straight out of Heroscape, down to the "Lava Monster" creature that looks a hell of a lot like a Marro Warrior, if you know what that is. I'd argue that it's not that the new rules are "bad" in the sense that they don't work, it's that

Regarding the art and components, the board a nice looking four-fold design which I love because it's small enough to take up very little room, and the components are of the usual new-style "castle" design with sticker faces. Gone is the medium sized, rectangular box and now the box is a small square, making it easier to put on shelves with newer-style games. In addition, I am incredibly happy I didn't have to sticker these myself, thanks to the previous owner, because there's like 100 pieces and the stickers have to sit in this little recessed area which I cannot see being anything but a white-hot bitch to get in there right. The stickers on some of my pieces are awry, which gives credence to my thoughts on the subject. 

It's hard for me to really define what the art looks like; it's somewhere between Larry Elmore and whoever did the art on Heroscape. It's not really bad, although the board art is a bit on the lazy side, but rather it's just so damned generic and cartoony looking that it's hard to take it very seriously. My major complaint is that my board has the wrong power names written on the character images on one side of the board, so instead of "Flight" or "Detect Unit", they all say "Quickness", although the power descriptions are right. Pretty funny shit, you'd think someone would've proofread, especially at a mega-corporation like Hasbro. Anyhow, the rules are really simple, even using the Fire and Ice rules, so it's not a big deal to learn or teach, and to a 12 year old, no less, and it only really takes 45 minutes to play, so it's actually a great little 2-player filler game.

So, back to the "classic" game, my friends. I started looking at the way the game is set up, the actual design of it, and I realized that it is the epitome of a Euro game. There's no luck at all, and every move is an important decision. It is the ultimate brain burner, and from the moment you crack the box until one player takes the flag, it's a battle of minds. There is no post-game whining about dice rolls; if you lost, you lost because the other person out-thought you. The best part is that the complexity comes from the strategies you employ, not the rules, which in my mind is one of the most important features of a truly great game. There's no chrome, everything makes sense, and every design feature serves a purpose. It really doesn't get any more awesome than that, from a design perspective.  With the art direction and the new powers, it's almost a drop in for a Dungeon Twister theme; in fact, I think this game could've really been branded with the Dungeon Twister moniker because I see a lot of similarities between that game and this. The difference is that I think it's far more intimate because of the small amount of controlled units; Dungeon Twister is SEAL Team Six to Stratego's Battle of the Bulge.

Even the new version, with it's new powers, is definitely still a Euro-style game, with simple rules and deep play, but with all the chrome nonsense that comes into play, I think it can be chalked up to "adds complexity for complexity's sake" at best, "abortion on a shingle" at worst. At least from a thematic standpoint, everything makes sense, but sadly, from a design standpoint, it seems like someone from Hasbro couldn't stand to leave well enough alone and, to add insult to injury, had to use cool sounding (read: insipid) names like Volcandria and Everwinter, as if it wasn't generic enough just adding generic fantasy tropes into the mix. It's like the Magic: The Gathering third string team was out of ideas, reached into a hat, and pulled out rejects from 1989. On its face, and only on its face, it's not a bad update of the classic game, it simply certainly muddies what was once a stellar game design. One could make the argument that it adds to the game by giving players more choices, thereby adding a new layer of strategy. Sadly, once you get past the skin deep level, you realize that it murders the key tenet of the original game, the risk-taking mechanic, and since there is less risk, there is less tension, which makes it boring.

The changes are so profound that the game is hardly recognizable; it's not really Stratego as much as it's more of a "generic fantasy battle game". The board layout is the same, and the unit composition is the same, but that's about all. Funny enough, I think the printing error I mentioned may well be Ms. Hermance Edan's revenge for the wholesale, rapacious profiteering through "updating" of her original 1908 design. Yes, a lady originally invented this game, if you weren't aware, and it was originally designed over 100 years ago. That's a fucking classic, if I ever heard of one, and Hasbro essentially went to The Louvre and painted a wizard's hat, replete with magnificent yellow moons and stars, onto Da Vinci's masterwork.

To be more specific, let me elaborate on some of the changes, since they kind of irritate me. First, the Dragon, this version's avatar of the Marshal, can fly over any units in orthogonal directions, land, then attack. In 1908, the first plane had only been invented 5 years prior; no, the Marshal couldn't fly. Another example is that the Mage can reveal itself, select an enemy unit within 2 spaces, and force the opponent to reveal its rank. In the classic game, a key decision point on every turn was whether to attack an enemy unit because the only way to determine its rank was to do so, and which was the core risk-reward mechanic in the game. In that same vein, the Elf can shoot any creature up to 2 spaces away, essentially giving the game ranged attacks, which make no sense when you consider the classic rules' adherence to a battle's victor taking over the space of the defeated unit, and again, the risk-reward mechanic that made the game so tense. Now, you can create a wall of strong units in your first rank, put Elves and Wizards in the second rank, and with zero risk simply force the enemy's hand in revealing itself. These two additions, alone, are a colossal, epic, indescribably fucking stupid change to this game's core mechanics. It literally changes how you play, and this is where the "rules get in the way" of the strategy. 

Because all of the new unit designations have special powers, so it's much more of a miniatures game than old Stratego. Maybe it's nostaligia, but honestly, I don't know that I'd be interested in playing it even if I had no experience with Stratego, primarily because if it stood alone as a miniatures game, it simply wouldn't be all that good. My daughter and wife both share this opinion, after playing the classic rules and the advanced rules, and the wife never played Stratego's classic version prior to playing the advanced rules. The long and short is that the game's changes are so profound with regard to removing the tension and risk-reward mechanics that the game itself is simply not the same game.

Anyhow, while none of us can really offer a strong recommendation of this version of the game for the aforementioned reasons, this version does have a few redeeming values. First, it comes with the classic rules, so you can literally just avoid playing the Fire and Ice rules. Second, the smaller box that I mentioned makes it easier to store than the old-school rectangular box. Now, on the flip side, the pieces aren't the old-school engraved bits, which is a definite negative; stickers peel off eventually, but the engraved, painted numbers don't.  I mean, if you look at it from the perspective that you get a "free" variant Fire and Ice version packaged in with the classic game, maybe it's a good deal. That said, if I wanted to buy Stratego, and I don't plan to buy it again, ever, I'd want the Onyx version, but if I wanted to buy cheaply, I'd most assuredly buy an older, classic version off of eBay for a low price. I guess what I'm saying is that this version leaves a lot to be desired, although for the four bucks a paid for it, I really don't have too much room to bitch, considering I can play the classic rules any time I want.

Why Ice Is Cooler Than Santa Sipping A Milkshake In A Blizzard:

- Stratego is a classic that every person must play, and will likely love

- The small box makes this version of Stratego easier to store

- It has the classic rules built-in

- The "new-style" pieces are nicely molded and don't tip over

Why Fire's Coming Out Of Them Like Lava:

- Fantasy tropes scream "We don't care enough about you to develop something cooler"

- The new rules ruin most of the tension that makes Stratego a classic

- The misprint on the board is irritating

- Stickers instead of engravings are understandable, but undesirable

Overall:

First, the new rules murder most of the tension in the game, which was a deliberate act of gaming vandalism. Next, the stickers were a necessity to show the dragons and elves and whatnot, but putting that many stickers in small little apertures has to suck. Finally, with a market capitalization of over seven billion dollars, you'd expect them to hire an editor, but no, the misprint indicates otherwise. Short version: this version is inferior in almost every way to older versions, so buy them instead, but the classic game is so incredibly well designed that you should most certainly go out and buy an older version instead. In my estimation, "Jumbo Original Stratego" has the best value-to-quality matrix, and when I get some cash I'm going to get that one.

Rating:

1.5/Stars

Check out the rules here:

http://www.transformertoys.co.uk/images/instruction-scans/hasbro/stratego%20new%202010%20instructions.pdf

Then go buy this:

http://www.amazon.com/Toyland-9495-Jumbo-Stratego-Original/dp/B000FCURJ2

Oh, and check out the single most optimistic person on the planet:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/221353146506?lpid=82

Tobago - Can You Believe This Yahoo Is Comparing It To Android?

Why are Moai statues on Tobago?

One of the first things I realized about deductive reasoning games is that there are very few that I really like. I'm a big fan of Clue, but the problem with other games that employ the mechanic of deducing something from little clues is that you are pissing into the wind for a good portion of the game until you can slowly remove suspects enough to nail down a couple of strong leads. Tobago, from Rio Grande Games, is a different sort of deduction game because instead of looking for a murderer, the location of a Battleship, or the elusive Mr. X, you're looking for treasure, and the treasure isn't really so much "hidden somewhere" as much as "needs to be hidden by players". The difference between this game and so many others in the genre is that the players are the ones who control the actual locations of the treasures, of which there's four; Players have direct control over where the treasures are, yet are tasked with "finding them". Imagine Battleship where instead of putting white markers on your side of the board to indicate misses, you place them to indicate possible locations, and you can remove them by playing cards with Tetris-like patterns, allowing you to whittle away the pegs until there's only one possible location. That's what Tobago is, kind of, plus a little more.

Maybe it's the beautiful little Easter Island statues or the palm tree pawns, or perhaps it's the idea of hidden plunder, I've always wanted to play this. I finally got it on the cheap, and it sat here for six months or more, waiting to be played, because I loaned it out for a while, then I finally got it back, but now my wife an I are preparing our house for sale. That, and there was always something that I perceived to be "better" on my shelves. Well, last night I finally played the last game of Tobago with my daughter, and I'm not entirely sure that it will see the light of day again at the Circus, or at least at my house. It's not a bad game, and the most apt word that I heard said about it after beginning to poll players was, "It's funnish". That about sums it up: it's fun, in a not so fun, brain burning kind of way. 

The most interesting thing about the design is that it only allows players two options on a turn: move, or add a card to one of the treasure maps. You'd think that such a minimal amount of choices wouldn't cause the "brain burner" syndrome, but there were some really long turns of "analysis paralysis", which is very uncommon at the Circus. If anything we get "Highsfuk Syndrome", where players are too inebriated to be playing; rambling on for 20 minutes about a drunken tryst in the Philippines, debating the grammatical correctness of the use of the phrase "more perfect" in the U.S. Constitution preamble, or the superior feel of a Lucasi cue versus a McDermott. In other words, it's not that we don't know what to do, it's that we get distracted in conversation, at least normally. With Tobago, we were all kind of slow in taking turns because of the nature of the design.

Tobago has beautiful and plentiful bits, from the treasure and clue cards, of which there's probably almost one hundred, to the cast statues and trees, to the wooden vehicles and huts. As a beautiful final touch, the windscreens and headlights are even painted onto the jeeps. It's a very pretty little game, with nice art throughout, and if you were to judge it on its bits alone, it would probably score quite strongly with people. The best part of the game, at least in my opinion, is the rule book and reference card, which made the game easy to learn and play, which would otherwise be a bit hard to understand because it's quite the odd bird. 

Anyhow, in my view, Tobago can be compared to FFG's Android in some ways, which I was attempting to do at a game night, although it was met with vociferous caterwauling and a great gnashing of teeth. In Android, you're not looking to find a suspect as much as you're trying to frame a suspect. This is the same in Tobago, because you're not trying to find the treasure as much as use cards to remove possible locations, but the players are ultimately in control of where the treasure is through the use of clue cards to establish the treasure maps. In short, you're both looking for treasure and placing it, simultaneously.

The treasures start with a clue card that tells everyone at the table one thing, such as that it's "within two spaces of a river", or "it's not in the largest mountainous area", and then as the game goes on, players place new clues to create each map and narrow down the choices. Players have a vested interest in creating all of the maps rather than just sticking to one, because when a treasure is finally revealed, no matter who recovers it, anyone who contributed to the map gets a share of the treasure, although the treasure distribution is done via a sort of bidding mechanic that has a dash of press-your-luck. Some treasures are cursed, and when a cursed treasure card appears, any treasure cards remaining in the recovered treasure go away, and anyone who passed on previous cards is screwed out of the loot. Furthermore, anyone who did not claim treasure but partook in the map making for a cursed treasure has to lose their most valuable card, or use a recovered amulet to block the curse.

"Amulet", you ask? That's right, like so many Euro games, the designer gave players a way out of bad shit happening to them. When treasures are recovered, the little statues place amulets at the furthest point directly in front of them, along the beach. These things are the "Knight Card", allowing you to ignore the curse by discarding an amulet you recovered simply by driving over it and stopping. The not-so-Euro aspect of the thing is that you can also use the amulet to do other things, such as discard and redraw all of your clue cards, play a second clue card on your turn, take an extra move, or remove one cube from the board. It's most certainly an interesting little nugget, but the truth is that in all of our games, people had two or three in their pile of stuff, meaning that they went unused and were taken primarily for insurance against the cursed treasures, which is funny because there's only two curse cards in the entire deck.

Now, there's one truly fucking horrible design aspect that every single person who played it decried: the cube placement. The idea is that you place these little cubes in possible treasure locations, but you can't always do it when there's only one or two cards, primarily because there's not enough cubes to put on every possible space. So, what ends up happening is that players have to spend too much time imagining the spaces, then look through their hand of four cards (six in a two player game) to figure out what would reduce the possible locations. This is where the "brain burning" comes in, and it's not really that bad, but it's also not a whole lot of fun. The game ends when the thirty treasure cards are depleted, which takes about an hour with two players and a little bit more, but not much, with four.

One of the best design aspects, if not the bits, is the board design. There's three double sided boards which are set up so that no matter what permutation you choose, there's always a "largest area" for any given terrain type, a feat to behold on its own, but that also gives you 32 or so different ways to set the board up. On top of this, the bits that get placed are always placed randomly using some no-go rules which makes every game very unique and really does afford the game a lot of replay value. It's like playing Scotland Yard if every time you played, the board setup was wholly different, disallowing "favorite strategies".

I've played it with two players, three players, and four players, so I've got a good grasp where the sweet spot is, and I think it's with three. With four players, it's a little too crowded and there's a little too much shit going on. It becomes a bit of a race, to a degree. With three, there's enough room to roam around without being beset by other players in an area. If there's one overarching praise that I feel needs to be heaped upon Tobago, it's that it has no "kingmaking" in a three player game, which is incredibly hard to do. The game seems player-neutral, and by that, I mean that there's no apparent leader, and no real way to beat up on the leader. 

The one overarching complaint that I, personally, have about this game is that there is zero player interaction, either direct or indirect, except in the treasure capture phase, and even then, it's simply taking or passing on a given treasure card. It doesn't seem to hurt the game any, and few people in my group mentioned it, but to me, it's a very "multi-player solitaire" kind of game; every player pretty much just plods along and "plays their own game, on their own terms", so to speak.

At the end of the day, Tobago is a surprisingly interesting little game of treasure hunting, with a small dash of truly exciting moments. For instance, my daughter moved her car onto a space for no apparent reason, but the next turn she dropped a clue that removed all the cubes from a treasure, leaving her on the exact location and allowing her to immediately recover it. I never saw it coming as she had been moving randomly for a few previous turns, or so I thought. There was a simultaneous sense of both pride and dread because while she was sneaky enough to pull a fast one on dear old Dad, she was sneaky enough to pull a fast one on dear old Dad. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that, and I know I'll be watching her a little more closely at this point.

Why Tobago Is A Nice Place To Visit:
- Great components and art make this look very nice on the table
- Clever design allows you to play this daily for a month and never see the same map
- One of the more interesting deduction games we've seen
- The amulets allow for some sneaky little gambits that nobody will see coming

Why I Wouldn't Want To Live There:
- A little too much brain burning regarding the cubes, at least for our tastes
- Zero player interaction makes it a solo adventure, but with others
- How Moai statues got onto a Caribbean island, I'll never know
- Very few "gotcha" or exciting moments make this a very, very dry game

Overall:
I really am kind of mixed on this game, as were some of my comrades. On one hand, you have a really slick deduction mechanic that makes the game very interesting, but on the other you have this very dry, Euro-style game with very little interaction between players. I guess the only word that I can use to describe it is that of a 12 year old little girl: "funnish".

Rating:
3.25/5 Stars

Read more about Tobago here: http://riograndegames.com/Game/340-Tobago

Rampage - I'm Not Cute...I'll Mess You Up

I'd heard almost nothing about this game, except for the fact that it was a dexterity game and that it looked cutesy, but I'm a sucker for dexterity games, especially ones depicting wholesale carnage in a city of meeples. Further, I'd heard that the meeples come in six colors depicting different types of personality, such as soldiers, old men, and blondes, and that who you ate mattered. Since I've had extensive appearance experience eating blondes, I thought it would be a good fit. I un-pledged my 250$ or so from the new Dwarven Forge Kickstarter because I already have six 27-gallon tubs of the stuff, and proceeded to being on a bit of a spending spree. In my house, if money gets allocated, it had better be spent, or you lose it; I ended up with Rampage, Settlers of Catan (again), Quarriors: Quartifacts (May my 12 year old suffer for this), Lords of Waterdeep (again, this makes 3 times) and Stone Age (again). That burned through maybe 3/4 of my cash and I'm holding out for something truly awesome. Feel free to recommend, and if you say "The Duke", eat a bag of dicks, because I played it 30 years ago when it was called "Chess".

Anyhow, Rampage caught the most immediate attention, and so it was the first to be un-boxed and played. The rules are incredibly simple, and Repos Production, the publisher, was kind enough to include a shitload of examples and a short FAQ section that did a great job of guiding us through play. As it turns out, if you were to look at this from the 10,000 foot perspective and announce that it's a kid game, you'd be wrong by several orders of magnitude. It looks like a kid game, but it is in fact one of the truly fucking nastiest, most utterly evil, brutally confrontational games of all time. It's like Godzilla meets Diplomacy if you play it right. Maybe that's just how we play it, but it's not at all like what the artwork would have you believe. There's a ton more game in the box than the Super Mario art illustrates.

I'm going to go off on a little tangent here, because it seems appropriate: As an open statement to all publishers, I'd like to point out that if you want to sell a game to gamers, don't hide the game under a coating of art that appears to have been drafted by The Lollipop Guild. This game would've been SO MUCH MORE AWESOME if it was done by some of Michael Bay's special effects artists. People wouldn't look at it as some weenie kid game, they'd look at it as the big monster game that people have pined for since Godzilla was on TV. It was a missed opportunity, at least for us.

Anyhow, regarding the components, it's kind of an amazing design regardless of the cartoon art, which is actually quite good despite being very youthful. One of the smartest things are that not only is it a puzzle board that actually fits together well, but the little ruins tiles that come along with the game are sticky-backed and you remove a film which allows you to glue them onto the board. This is important because you flick discs to move on the board, and if the glue boards weren't glued down, every flick would topple a building; the glued boards act as little bumper areas so that you can bounce off of them without toppling buildings. There's also the fact that you place these big wooden monsters on the discs when you're done moving so that people can take actions to knock you over, which scores points and hurts your ability to act.

Beyond that, the wooden monsters have little ridges on their heads so that you can place the car tokens on top without having them slide off. Throwing cars is a big part of the game, and this was just a smart, practical design move. It's these little details that make this a very smartly designed, well thought-out game. Also, there's three unique sets of cards in the game that define which monster type you are, what your powers are, and one of the cards is a one-time use power which can be played to give you a big boost. My copy from Coolstuff Inc was shipped with some meeple stickers, which was the low point, since they are cut poorly and since the meeples aren't all cut uniformly, the stickers hang over in spots. It's also 45 minutes or so to sticker the whole thing versus five if you forego putting the meeple stickers on. Finally, I will caution you to be very careful removing the glue liner on the back of the puzzle piece because even though I was careful and I have a high level of hand precision, I still managed to pull some of the laminated cardboard up. The good news is that a dab of Mod Podge between the layers and an overnight stay under a heavy book will sort it right out.

I can talk about all kinds of neat little aspects in the game, but for me, the best part of the game, to be honest, is that the actions you can take in the game. These revolve entirely around flicking cars off the top of your monster's head, putting your chin on the monster's head and blowing things over until you see stars, flicking your disc to move as I mentioned before, and my personal favorite, picking up your monster and dropping it on top of buildings, blowing them to high heaven. It's a very tactile game, to say the least, and there's not a single thing that you can do in the game that isn't inherently fun. I can't really think of any other game, even my beloved Heroscape, that can say that. My only gripe about the game, which was echoed by others, is that the board is a little too small for four players, making it a bit claustrophobic and too easy to attack other monsters. This ends up with a lot of nearly-toothless monsters, which needlessly lengthens the duration.

Besides simply breaking things, the idea of the game is that you can take actions to knock over the buildings, comprised of card stock floors sandwiched between layers of meeples, and when the buildings fall, you can score by "eating" the meeples and floors. The trick is that the meeples come in six colors, and to score them, you have to have a full set of 6. Each set of 6 is worth points, unless you have a special power that allows you to score other meeples, so having 7 reds, greens, blues, yellows, and blacks, but only one grey will only net you a score for one full set, with the rest not being worth anything. The kicker here is that during the setup, when you're assembling the buildings, you randomly snatch four meeples per level and place them as the supports for the next floor. Each of the six buildings have 14 meeples each in them, and the stadium has 4, so it's not like there's two hundred or something. That's what makes the game so nasty.

If you play the game as a meeple hunt, biting as many in half as possible in a blind orgy of destruction, you'll be disappointed. A child would love it, but not an adult. It's banal if you play like that. The real strategy comes from figuring out how to get sets, while leaving enough meeples of colors you don't need to entice other monsters away from their current location. The best part of all is that meeple eating is governed by the monster's amount of teeth, which start at six each, and can be reduced to two through injury and attack. You may only eat one meeple per tooth, and so it's a viable strategy to attack enemies to reduce their ability to consume wooden flesh, thereby preserving the wee wooden citizens for your own appetites.

How's about you kiss me hard on the mouth. Godziller?

Another factor that makes this game neat is the "run away" board, a little side tableau that stores meeples that have eluded the monsters via being knocked off the board. It's double sided and has several sections, with each having a set amount of spaces per section before calamity strikes the monster that knocked the last one in a section off. It's another facet of the game that allows you to pursue alternate strategies, such as intentionally knocking off just the right amount of meeples so that the following player has to be incredibly careful or suffer the loss of a tooth and other tragedies. I'm telling you, for as many teeth as are lost in an hour of play, this game might've been called Kentucky Rampage.

The long and short is that you should never judge a book by its cover, and with Rampage, this adage is incredibly apt. I am disappointed that they went the King of Tokyo route on this instead of making it a really grim, dark monster game, but that disappointment is tempered by the fact that this game is fucking awesome on every level. I rarely say something is for everyone, or a true "auto-buy", but if you don't own this, you're missing out. If you don't like this game, there's something seriously wrong with you. Not a single person I played with, from a 47 year old man to a 12 year old girl, had anything but great things to say about it. There's very few games that are so universally lauded, repeatedly, by my groups. I think the only downside is that the temptation to play it over and over again will eventually lead to burn-out, but 6 games in I'm still fine with playing it again, and this is over the span of 4 days. My real gripe is that I can't get Stone Age to the table, but I suspect that has everything to do with the smell of the dice cup.

Why I Want To Go On A Rampage:

- While very cartoony, the art is good and the components are very high quality

- The design of the board is brilliant

- Replay value is huge, with tons of different power and creature combinations

- There are not a lot of rules, and the rules help the game rather than hinder it

- Anyone can play this game, but it's not as simple to play well

Why Tokyo Is Safe:

- The art is cartoony, and some of us would've preferred more dark, grim art

- With a board 5" larger in each direction, it would've been better for 4 player matches

Overall:

I can't begin to tell you how much we love this little gem. This immediately took a place on our Forever Shelf, next to the likes of Survive, Zooloretto, Ravenloft, and Pandemic. I can't remember a game so universally accessible, easy to learn, easy to teach, and fun to play. With Spring Break starting today, I plan to pit my 5 year old against my 12 year old which will keep them occupied, but once they're in bed, the wife and I are going to bust out some cocktails and get down with some monster fun. I'm dead serious - this game is a 100% sure-fire auto-buy in our opinions, and I can't see anyone not having a great time with it. 

My only caveat is that you view it as a serious strategy-dexterity game like Ascending Empires despite the game's mechanics and look; if you simply play to eat more meeples than the next guy, you might be disappointed in the long term. There's more to this game than meets the eye, and if you play it as the scoring system intends, there's something wrong with you if you don't love it. 

Rating:

4.75/5 Stars

Check the game out here: http://rprod.com/index.php?page=description-43

I'm not cute, I'll mess you up...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrgRYeB_edw

The enormous monster crotch catapult...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COFMBR7gbhg