Books, Games, Movies and more

Reviews of books, games, movies, tv shows and some madness of a gaming community

[kaylan-bennett]

5 Minute Dungeon

5 Minute Dungeon is a fun, fast paced game that has some similarities to Munchkin and Safehouse. It’s for 2-4 players that get to pick one out of 8 characters. Each character has its own set of cards and a tableau with a place for the draw and discard pile, a picture of the character and the description of the character’s special ability. Depending on the number of players you have a certain amount of hand cards (3 for 4 players, more with less).

As a team you have to fight through a dungeon to reach the end boss. To reach him, you need to overcome obstacles, fight people and monsters. There might also be some events. All this comes in another set of cards, with the back of the card looking like a door. This pile is on top of the end boss. Together you open the first door and have to solve whatever faces you. The obstacles, people or monsters show what kind of cards you need to move on. There are four kind of cards plus sp ecial cards in the player’s own draw pile. Red (sword), Blue (scroll), Yellow (shield) and Green.

For example: You need 2 red and 3 blue cards to get rid of the obstacle in front of you. The players have to solve this together and announce which cards they have and put them on the table. But - and this is in part what makes the game fun - you only have 5 minutes to move through the whole dungeon AND fight the end boss. So you have to be really fast.

Your character’s special ability can help you. One can freeze the time by discarding three hand cards. The timer is stopped and everyone can discuss the next step. As soon as the first player puts down another card in the middle, the timer has to be started again. A player can run out of cards and is not allowed to pick up the discard pile, unless another character’s special ability allows him to do just that. Most cards however land in the middle of the table and are lost. The game is easy to understand and as it only takes 5 minutes to play it, it’s nice for in between longer games or if you don’t have a lot of time.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: The Game

The Game is a pretty simple yet challenging card game. It’s a cooperative game for 2-4 players. You can probably play with more than 4, but I doubt it will be much fun.

It’s the game of the year (Spiel des Jahres) 2015!

You basically make 4 piles of cards. 2 go down from 100-1 and the other 2 go up from 1-100. But since everyone puts their cards on the same 4 piles and you aren’t allowed to tell the others which cards you have... it might be problematic.

To make things easier you are allowed to jump 10 up or down. For example: There is a 54 on the pile that goes down from 100-1. So you have to place a card lower than 54 on this pile. If you have the 64 in your handcards, you are allowed to play it. But you aren’t really allowed to say that you have a 64 and there might be 1 or 2 more players before your turn! The rules however allow the developement of some codewords. So if you have a 53 it could be a very good card for that pile and if you have the 64 you might say, that you have the perfect card for that pile.

If your cards are really bad, you can warn the others that you will go pretty big steps either up or down, so they could ask you to not play cards on certain piles.

You shouldn’t bend these rules too much, as it won’t be much fun to play then.

On each turn you must play 2 cards, you can play more if you think they are really good. Then you draw as many cards as you played.

Once there are no more cards to draw, each player only has to play 1 card each turn.

You win the game if you played ALL the cards.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: Codenames

Codenames is nominated for the game of the year award 2016 (Spiel des Jahres)

You can play it as one team versus the game or with two teams battling each other. You randomly pick 25 word cards and place them in a 5x5 grid on the table, so that everybody can read them. Two players, one of each team, get to see a grid card, that shows a 5x5 grid and has either 8 red squares, 9 blue squares, 1 black square and 7 beige squares or 9 blue and 8 red. If the latter, the blue team starts. The player looking at the grid card needs to locate all the corresponding words on the 25 cards on the table and then explain as many as possible with just one word. Of course you won’t be able to explain all 9 words with just one word, but you can often combine 2 or 3, if you are really good you might even get more.

For example: one word is “dance” and another is “golf” - you might say sport or ball. You also add a number, saying how many words can be associated with the word ball. In this case: ball, 2.

Now the blue team tries to guess which two words go best with the word ball. The example might be easy, but there could be other words on the table, like leather, which could also be associated with ball. In this case the blue team would have to discuss and decide which 2 words they’ll go with. They can also only pick one word and then pass and keep in mind that there is still one word left.

If the blue team decides on the word “dance”, which was correct, the explainer puts a blue card on the word dance. If the team picks a word that wasn’t meant, it could either be a point for the red team or neutral (beige). If they however pick the black card, it’s game over.

For my example of “dance” and “gold” being blue words and “leather” being red, instead of saying ball, they could have said sport to rule out leather.

It’s quite difficult to connect as many words as possible with just one word. The rules for these words are basically the same as in scrabble. You can also pick a film or a song title or a famous person. This is why the game isn’t suitable for children. They usually can guess if the associations are easy as in the example above, but they won’t be able to connect words, as the connection isn’t always very obvious.

If you play in one team vs. the game. You will cover a word of the other colour (either red or blue, depending on your colour) after each turn. You usually win this way, but the goal is to have as little as possible words covered by the other colour.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: Meisterwerke

Meisterwerke (formerly sold under the name “identik”) by Asmodee is a drawing game for 3-6 people, although more could play.

You don’t have to be able to draw very well, because this game is more about speed and following instructions. Each turn one player picks a card and looks at the picture in a way, that the others cannot see it. Everybody else has a pencil and a piece of paper at the ready. When the sandtimer is turned, the one with the pictures has 2 minutes to explain what they can see on the picture  - as fast as they can and as much as they can. When time has run out, everybody swaps their pictures and 10 specific things about the picture are unveiled. If you drew that you get a point each, so up to 10 points. For example: On the original picture is a dog with a little bow and you can only see one eye of the dog. These could be two points, 1 for the bow and one for only seeing one eye in the drawn picture. The person explaining the picture mustn’t see these 10 things beforehand, so sometimes you don’t get points, because it wasn’t said. Or maybe you do get points, because you drew it that way anyway. The person explaining gets 1 point for each of the 10 things, if at least one person got it right.

This game was nominated for Spiel des Jahres, but is pretty unknown and hard to get for a decent price in English speaking countries.

It’s a lot of fun and you have to explain and draw really fast. So the pictures aren’t always pretty, but there is lots of laughter when you get to compare it to the original.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: La Isla

La Isla is a board game by Alea - Ravensburger for 2-4 players. It’s best played with 4 people in my opinion!

You find yourself on an island as a scientist looking for animals, and the playing board is round and consists of different pieces that you can put together differently each time you play. On each piece is one of 5 different animals. You randomly put them on the pieces, while trying not to put the same animal next to each other.

The game mechanism seems a little complicated at first and I probably won’t be able to explain it well enough. It’s usually best to just play 1-2 rounds openly to understand it.

Each turn every player receives three cards. These cards all have three different options. The option on top is like a bonus skill, on the bottom left corner is a ressource and on the bottom right corner is one of the 5 animals. You use all three cards, but you can only use one of the three options per card and not the same kind twice. So if you want the ressource from one card, you cannot get any of the ressources from the other two cards.

You have something like an envelope with the letters A, B, C and D on it. You place the card where you want the bonus skill under A, the card with the ressource under B and the animal card under D. Nothing goes under C. When all the players have placed their three cards, you put card A into the envelope. The envelope has three slots and only the top part of the card will be visible once put in. Then everyon gets the ressource on card B.

A and B can happen at the same time for all players.

C should be taken in turns! You don’t need a card for this. You take one of your scientists and put them on one of the island pieces. This costs 2 ressources. The ressources both need to be of the same colour as the island tile you want to land on! Since you do start the game with one ressource of each colour and you got another ressource at step B, you’ll be good to go! The bonus skill you have in your envelope can help you, for certain tiles you only have to pay one ressource, or you get a ressource of your choice.

Step D can earn you points if you already have the animal shown on the bottom right corner of the card you put under D. A marker for the animal on your card goes one spot up.

Next round everyone gets 3 cards again, and because your envelope has three slots you can put card A with the bonus skill into the second slot. This way you can have up to three cards with bonus skills. In the fourth round you have to replace one of the cards in your envelope.

To get animals you have to surround an animal on the island with your scientists. The tiles come in different shapes, they have either 2, 3 or 4 sides, so you need 2, 3 or 4 of your scientists to capture an animal. When you captured an animal you can pick it up and get 2, 3 or 4 winning points.

Basically for card A you try to pick bonuses that you can use for your next couple of rounds, for step B you pick a ressource in the colour you need, step C you place one of your scientists and D might earn you winning points.

We noticed that everyone was pretty much playing for themselves. We didn’t really get in each other’s way on the island and the game was already over before we might had to be faster to capture the remaining animals. You don’t really have to pay attention what the other players are doing, so it felt a little disconnected, like a game you might play for yourself.

But it was fun and having to decide which of the three cards is used for which step was sometimes a difficult decision. You need that ressource, but you also really want to get the points for the animal on the same card...

Once you understood the 4 steps, it’s an easy game that takes about 40 minutes.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: Five Tribes

Five Tribes is a board game by Days of Wonder and is for 2-4 players, ages 13 and up.

The player tries to gain power in the sultanate of Naqala by using one of the five tribes to help him or by conjuring a djinn and have access to his special powers.

The board consists of 5x6 little cardboard tiles that you can mix up each time you play for a little more diversity. On each of the tiles are three randomly picked figures from the five available colours (tribes in this case). Each player has 8 camels in their own colour and some gold coins to start the game. You get points for each of the 30 tiles you own, for each palm tree and each village that are on the tiles you own. Gold gets converted into points at the end of the game and djinns also give you points plus some little extra bits. It’s actually complicated enough that you get a tally paper, so you can write down all the points first and then add them up.

Before the first round can start the starting player gets randomly selected, but wait, he or she isn’t really the starting player... only the first one to bid for the starting position! If you really want to be the first one to go you can bid up to 18 gold for that position, or if you don’t care: 0, but then you might also end up being last. Each round you have to bid in the order of the previous round.

When it is your turn you pick up one pile of the little figures on the playing board and for the very first turn there are three on each tile, so you pick up three. Then you can “move” three tiles into any direction but diagonally, on each tile you pass you put one of the three figures down,. On the last tile, in this case the third, because you only had three figures, you pick up all the figures on that tile in the same colour as the one still in your hand. There has to be one in that colour, otherwise that move would be illegal!

The number of figures that you now have and the colour are important. Technically for the very first move you could have four from the same colour, if one tile had three of the same colour. More likely that you’ll have 2 or 3 now.

On to the colours: Green: The merchants! Next to the board are up to 9 ressources including slaves, these get filled up before each new round (not each turn!). When you end your move with green figures you can take as many ressources as you have green figures, but you have to take them from the top of the line. Each set of ressources can win you a lot of points, depending on how many different ressources you have for each set.

White: The wise man! With one wise man plus either a second wise man or a slave you can buy one djinn (only on certain tiles, see further down). Before each round three djinn cards are turned around and you can buy one of those. There is a little info sheet with all the different abilities of the djinns. Some djinns are useful especially at the end of the game, others can be used during your turn, but those usually cost another wise man plus slave. Each wise man you still own at the end of the game gains you more points.

Yellow: I don’t remember what yellow stands for, but you just keep them. The one with the majority of yellow men gets 10 points for each player he or she trumps. With 4 players you could get over 30 points if you have the most. If you have the second most yellow men, so more than two other players, you’d still get 20+ points. Plus one point for each yellow man.

Red: The assassin! An assassin can kill yellow or white men that belong to another player or kill of one of the figures still on the playing board. Any colour, but as far from the tile the player landed on as the number of red men they got.

Blue: When you end up with blue figures in your hand you can count the tiles around the one you just ended on. Count all the ones that have blue numbers on them and then multiply that with the number of blue men. So if you have three blue men in your hand and there are 2 blue tiles around the one you ended on, you get 2x3=6 gold.

When you end on a tile and there are no figures left on it, because you just picked up the last one(s), then you can place one of your camels on this tile. You then own this particular tile and the number written in the right hand corner are winning points.

Now all the tiles have one additional action: Place a palm tree or place a village on that tile. This you have to do, even if you do not own this tile. Other actions are optional: buying a djinn - you can only do this if you can pay for a djinn! - the small and the big market. On the small market you can pay 3 gold and pick one of the first three ressources. On the big market you can pay 6 gold and pick two of the first six ressources. This can help you to complete your set of ressources!

You can also sell ressources during the game, if you need money for the bid. But the more different ressources you have at the end, the more points you’ll get.

The game time is probably around 40-70 minutes.

What we noticed was that we didn’t have any clue about how many points the others have, not even a ball park. And at the end of the game we were all very close. That probably means that the game is pretty well balanced and it doesn’t matter if you concentrate on ressources or buying djinns etc. It was a lot of fun, not my favourite game, but I’d play it again!

[thxxghtx]

[caliaf]

THIS IS SO WELL DONE IT SCARED ME

[sawmestarttobelieve]

This is the only kind of 3D I can appreciate without a massive headache and extremely strained eyes, so to whomever made this, thank you

[kaylan-bennett]

Flash Point (Fire Rescue) Part 2

So, I wanted to talk a little more about this game. In the first part I explained the basic game, but it gets a little more complex if you prefer that. The game is recommended for ages 12 and up, but the basic game should be no problem for younger children - I’d say 8 and up, especially when they play with together with older people who can give them advice as it’s a cooperative game.

Once you have beaten the basic game you can turn the board around to a different house with more rooms and less doors. You arrive with a fire truck and an ambulance and can decide on 4 parking spots for each around the house. The ambulance is driven by a paramedic and can be moved for 2 action points by any player. The ambulance then collects the rescued people, that you brought out of the house. (In the basic game you only had to get them outside).

The fire truck has to be driven by a player, which means you have to go outside to the parking spot it’s in and drive it to another side of the house for 2 action points. For 4 action points you can try to aim at a bigger part of the house and put out more then one fire. But you have to roll the dice to determine which field you aim at and if you are unlucky there may not be a fire. If you do aim true, you will put out the fire on that spot and all surrounding fires. This is really helpful if that area has a lot of fire and it’s unlikely to miss.

In the burning house itself aren’t just flames and smoke anymore. You have dangerous goods inside the house. A fire on these fields would automatically cause an explosion. You can remove these goods!

To make the game a little more varying you can blindly pick a specialty card. On these cards are different jobs/specialties which give you certain abilities to help with the fire rescue. This way one player may only need one action point instead of 2 to remove a fire completely and another can more easily remove dangerous goods. It mostly changes your strategy, because it makes more sense to actually use your ability and act differently than you would without it. What’s nice: you can change your ability midgame for 1 or 2 action points and just blindly pick a new one. If your ability was to more easily remove dangerous goods and now they are all removed anyway, it might be smart to change your ability and hope for another good one that’ll be helpful to beat the game.

There are a couple of more tiny things you can add, but this should show you how much variety this game offers!

[kaylan-bennett]

Flash Point - Fire Rescue (Game)

Flash Point is an awesome cooperative game, in which everyone plays a firefighter trying to rescue people out of a burning house.

The board is a layout of a house with different rooms, all on the same level. The rooms come in different sizes and have closed doors to one other room. Some doors lead outside the house. The board is divided into 8x6 squares inside the house, plus one row of squares on the outside around the house.

This game has different levels of difficulty and can get quite complex. This time I am only going to write about the first level of difficulty for beginners. I’ll probably write about the other difficulties in a week, because they offer more tasks and variety to the game.

At first you set up the game and put place some fire tokens inside the house and three questionmark tokens. These questionmarks can be men and women stuck inside the house needing to be rescued, a cat or a dog or a false alarm. The aim of the game is to rescue 7 people, although you can decide if the pets count as well. If they don’t count you may still decide to rescue them, should you find them or leave them.

Then you can freely decide on which square outside of the house your firefighter wants to start. You can put him (or her) in front of a door or decide to smash a wall to get inside, because the path to the fire might be too far and through the wall would be the shortest way.

On your turn you get 4 action points. Walking one square costs 1 action point, opening a door is also 1 action point. You can put out a fire, which will turn it into smoke (you just flip over the fire token to get a smoke picture) for 1 point and put it out completely and remove it from the board for another. If you land on a square with a question mark you can turn it around for free. If it’s a false alarm, you just remove it. If it’s a human being or a pet, you rescue them, by carrying them outside. But moving with a person or pet costs 2 action points per square. You can also push them one square for only 1 point, for example when you want to move them out of harms way or out the door into safety.

After your turn you roll two dice. A six sided (in red) and an eight sided (in black) dice. This will tell you on which square will be smoke. If you have to put a smoke token on a square which has a fire next to it (left, right, over or under) the smoke will immediately turn into fire. If however there already is fire on that field, an explosion happens and there will be fire on every field adjacent to it. There might be a wall, in that case the wall gets damaged and marked with a black token. Once a wall section is marked with two black tokens, it’s broken down enough for you to walk through, but also for fire to pass through.

A person or pet is saved, when it’s outside of the house. You’ll always have three questionmark tokens in the house, so once a person is saved, you roll the two dice to get the location for a new questionmark.

Since it’s a cooperative game you can discuss your strategy and coordinate.

You lose the game when all the black tokens are used up, which means so many walls inside the house were destroyed by explosions that it’s not safe for you anymore. You win, when you have rescued 7 people (and pets).

I enjoy cooperative games. Some people don’t like them, because there is too much talking and you cannot always do what you’ve planned to do on your turn. Well you could, but if other players recommend a different strategy, you might follow their advice and regret it later on?! If you do like cooperative games, this is a fun one and the easiest level is usually quite easy to win, although you might be really unlucky and have many explosions.

Tune back in, when I write about the more complex possibilities of this game.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: No Thanks!

(German: Geschenkt.... ist noch zu teuer!) You play this card game with 3-5 people and have cards numbered from 3 to 35 and chips. Before you can start you have to shuffle all the cards and blindly discard 9 cards - this way nobody knows which numbers aren't in this round. Every player gets 11 chips, these are your points. The deck of now 24 cards is placed in the middle of the table and the first player draws the top card and places it next to the deck, so that everybody can see it. Now the first player either takes this card, then the number shown on the card will be minus points for this player. Or he doesn't take this card and pays one chip and puts this chip on top of the card. The second player now gets to decide if he or she wants to take the card plus the chip or pay another chip.

Eventually someone will take the card and get all the chips and sometimes you have to take a card because you don't have anymore chips or maybe you are low on chips and the card isn't one of the highest and already has lots of chips on it. This way you get new chips and can avoid taking one of the higher cards. Once you have taken cards you can however put adjacent cards under or on top of your cards. For example you have the number 22 card and the 23 card is in the middle of the table, then you can just wait until there are at least some chips on it, take it along with the chips and put it under the 22 card you already had.  If the number 21 card is drawn you can put it on top of your 22 card and now have 21 minus points instead of 22. If the other players let you, you can try to go even lower. Also you can merge piles. If you have the 22 and 20, that will mean 42 minus points, but if you manage to get the 21 card you can make one pile with the 20 on top.

In the end the player with the least minus points wins.

It's a very quick game and a lot of fun. You need some luck and some strategy. But if a certain card you would need to make one pile isn't even in the game... well, your strategy won't work.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: Love Letter

Love Letter is a card game for 2-4 players.

The box of them game and the title didn't really get my attention, I probably wouldn't have looked twice at this game in the store. Luckily I got to play it at a gaming evening, because this little game is a gem.

You have 16 cards with 8 different characters and numbers from 1 to 8. Every player gets one card at the beginning of the game. At your turn, you draw a second card, compare your two cards and decide which one to play. At the end of a round the player with the highest card wins that round and gets a little heart.  The one with three hearts wins the game.

Sounds easy? Well..

Let's look the different cards:

The lowest card (1) is the Guard, this card is 5x in the game. When you play the card, you get to guess one of the other player's card. If you guess correctly, this player is out of this round.

The next card (2) is the priestess, twice in the game. You get to look at one other player's handcard. 

(3) The Baron, twice in the game. You compare your card with another player's card. The one with the lowest card, is out for the round.

(4) The Handmaid, again twice in the game. This card protects you from all the other cards for one round.

(5) The Prince, twice in the game. You can pick yourself or another player to discard the current handcard and pick a new one. Discards someone the Princess (8), they are out.

(6) The King, only once in the game. You can switch handcards with someone else.

(7) The Countess. Only once in the game. Does nothing itself, but if you have the Countess and draw a Prince or King you have to discard the Countess.

(8) The Princess. The highest card, only once in the game. You don't play this card, you keep it. If you have to discard it - you lose the round.

At the beginning of each round, one card is put to the side, so you can count the cards being played, but you cannot be 100% certain which cards your components have. As soon as you know all the cards and characters, this game won't just be luck. 

Very simple to learn, explained in 5 minutes, but takes a little longer to master. 

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: Escape

Escape is an awesome and very exciting cooperative game.

What's special about it? - It uses a CD that plays in the background and not only sets the mood for exploring temples, but also gives special sound effects when you have to do what the name of the game tells you: escape!

2-5 players play together, exploring a temple, finding the exit. Everyone has 5 dice that show different symbols: a running man, a torch, a key, a black mask and a golden mask. At the beginning there is the entrance to the temple and two rooms connected to the entrance. All the other temple pieces are stacked and placed somewhere everyone can reach on the table. The exit tile is shuffled into the last four room cards and put at the bottom of the pile!

To add more rooms the player has to be in a room with at least one free opening and role two men. You role all five dice and can put needed symbols aside and only role the remaining dice. Whenever you role a black mask, that die is unusable and can only be redeemed by a golden mask - a golden mask can redeem up to two black masks. Since there are two black marks on each die, you can paralyze yourself and have no more dice to role, then another player in the same room as you can role a golden mask and free you or at least two of your dice.

To move between rooms a player has to check the two symbols on the desired room and role these symbols before moving.

In some rooms you can activate gems. This is very important. If you don't activate enough gems before the time is up, you won't be able to use the exit and leave the temple. The number of gems is depending on the number of players, e.g. for three players you get 11 gems. To activate gems, you first have to move into the room. In the room will be a picture of the needed symbols, usually four torches or four keys are needed to activate one gem. To activate two gems, you'll need seven keys or torches and since you only have five dice you have to work together. If you are really good you can team up to get 10 torches or keys and activate three gems.

All this time the music is playing and setting a nice mood for exploring the temple, but suddenly there will be a gong and you have about 20 seconds to role your way back to the entrance. After that time you will hear the sound of stone doors slamming shut and you are locked in. As a punishment you lose one die.

Now you have to hurry even more and get more rooms into the game to find the exit. There will be one more time when you'll have to rush back to the entrance and the next time you'll have to make your way to the exit and role enough keys to get out. The number of keys needed is dependend on the number of gems not activated. Remember? With three players there were 11 gems and you only have five dice and if you lost one or two dice during the game... So basically you have to have activated enough gems during the run through the temple that you have a maximum of 5 gems, preferably less, left.

The game is very exciting and even hectic at times. Especially during the race back to the entrance, with the music being very dramatic and even having a loud heartbeat-sound near the end. Everyone is rolling dice at the same time, because you have to be super fast and at the same time trying to make plans with your friends which room to move to, to activate gems together or helping someone with too many black masks.

The CD has to tracks with different music, but the signs are always at the same time. If you don't want to play with a CD or don't have a CD player handy, you can also use the old fashioned hourglass that comes with the game.

If you have ever played Ligretto, it's quite similar to the stressfulness.

It's still a lot of fun and one round only takes 9 minutes. Although you  might want to play something slow and quiet afterwards.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: Hanabi

Hanabi is the game of the year 2013 (in Germany).

It is a very simple, yet quite difficult card game. Hanabi means firework or fireflower and the players team up to make a beautiful firework with their cards.

It is very simple: You get 4 or 5 cards in different colours (red, blue, green, yellow and white), with the numbers 1-5.  You can play a red one (e.g.) and place it in the middle of the table, then the next player can put a red two on this card and so on until you reach the red 5.  Instead of playing a card you can drop a card, for example when a red one is already on the table, there cannot be another during this game, so you won't need your red one anymore and can throw it on the discard pile.

It's quite difficult: because you cannot see your own cards! Since all the players are a team, you can however see your teammates cards. If you buy the deluxe version of the game you get cardholders! Instead of playing a card or discarding one you can give one hint to one teammate on your turn.  There are two kind of hints allowed: You can either tell a teammate one colour: e.g: you have three green cards - and you can show him/her which cards are green. Or you can tell one number: e.g. You have 2 threes - and also point to them. You and your team have 8 hint coints. When you use a coin you turn it upside down. When all 8 coins are upside down, you can't give anymore hints. But whenever you discard a card you can turn one hint coin downside up. Also as a bonus, when you finish one colour on the table (1-5) you get to turn one coin around, too.

It's a very fast paced game, because you can only do one of three actions at your turn: play a card, discard a card or give a hint. You'll probably run out of hints very quickly at the beginning of the game and then start to use hints more wisely. If the game is getting to easy you can add another colour of cards (rainbow), which is treated like any other colour in the game. You can also only play with 7 hint coins (or play with 9 if the game is too difficult or you're playing with younger children). If adding another colour is still to easy, you can use the rainbow coloured card in a special way. Whenever you tell a teammate that they have blue cards, you have to treat the rainbow coloured card as a blue card (or as a red card, yellow etc.) So you won't know if it's blue or rainbow... and you are only allowed to play a rainbow card on other rainbow cards. It's not a "joker" that can be used for any colour.

When someone tries to play a card, but cannot place it on the table - because it's the wrong colour, wrong number... then the gods will be angry and send a lightning bolt - that's another coin that you have to turn over at this point. After all three lightning bolts are turned over, you lose! The game ends when you have lost, obviously. Or when you have finished all the colours (fireworks) or when the drawpile is empty. There is no shuffling discarded cards back into the game. When you have successfully finished all the fireworks from 1-5 in all the colours, you get 25 points (or 30 is you play the advanced version). Which is an awesome firework. If the game ends, because there are no more cards to draw, you count the highest cards (top cards) on the table and then get a rating for your fireworks.

I like this game, because it is very easy and fast to learn, it's fast to play and yet difficult to win. And even when you have an awesome team and are winning all the time, you can add the rainbow coloured cards and make it more difficult.

[kaylan-bennett]

Book: MacRieve by Kresley Cole

MacRieve by Kresley Cole is part of the Immortals after Dark series.

It's not recommendable to start with this book, the main story of this book is a stand-alone, but the background story isn't and all the worldbuilding isn't.

As a quick catch-up: The world is basically our world, but there are a lot of different other species living among us - from the "lore". They live in our dimension or in other dimensions. Most of them are well known, like vampires, witches, werewolves, succubi, valkyres... The accession happens every 500 years where the lore kind split into two groups and basically kill each other - they cannot stop the accession, but it keeps the population on balance. For the last few books some humans have found ways to take away the powers of the lore people and put them into prisons. One prison got destroyed and a lot of the lore kind died, but also a lot got away.

Uilleam MacRieve just called MacRieve because nobody who isn't scottish can't pronounce his first name or Will by his family, is a Lykae - a sort of werewolf. He has a twin brother "Munro" and they spent their childhood in Scotland. When MacRieve was only 9 years old he was fooled into believing a succubus was his "mate". Lykae mate for life and there is only one. The succubus literally took his seed as a source of nourishment and used her powers to tie the boy to him. When his parents found out they killed the succubus, but his mom didn't survive the fight. After this he hated all succubi and killed pretty much every succubus he ever met, thinking that they are all evil.

Chloe Todd is a young woman who lives for soccer and is still human as far as her dad is concerned, who keeps checking her bloody on a regular basis. When suddenly she starts changing and her dad has to leave her alone.

Her dad is really the one behind the capturing of the lore kind and putting them into prisons for vivisections and other experiments - MacRieve was one of the prisoners.

Some witches capture Chloe and put her up for auction. As pretty much everyone from the lore wants to take revenge on Chloe's father, the bids are high. MacRieve and his brother also want to win her at the auction, but even though they are very rich, they don't stand a chance. At the auction MacRieve suddenly smells his true mate and of course realizes that it's Chloe - a human and the daughter of his capturer...

He rescues Chloe and takes her home - a safe place. He tries to woo her and make her fall in love with him and she is quickly falling for him, but doesn't tell him that she is changing and not a human. When she finally does change, she - who would have guessed - is a succubus. This opens a ton of problems as MacRieve hates succubi and stops trusting her and would actually prefer to kill her, but the wolf inside of him has already decided that she is his and to be protected.

I generelly like this series, but not all the books or all the characters. After MacRieve finds out that Chloe is a succubus he treats her like vermin, worse, just when she decided to trust him and fall for him. I had a harder time to forgive him than she did, especially because he only started to love her again, when he realized that succubi and their male counterparts incubi are not at all like the one he met as a child. But having strong emotions towards a character means that it was written very well. I still would have prefered to genuinely like him.

[kaylan-bennett]

Book: Elven Lord series conclusion

A few months ago I have written about the Elven Lord series by Kathryn Kennedy here. But then I had only read the first part. Now I am done with part 2 and 3.

Part 2 was quite a while ago, so I am cutting it short - trying to remember the most important parts of it. The second part - The Lady of the Storm -  is a few years after part 1 and Dominic and Cassandra are older, but they only appear as secondary characters. This time Cecily (who was still a little girl in book 1) and Giles have to fight for the rebellion and steal an elven lord's scepter. Cecily is the daughter of the elven lord Breden, who can command water and so can Cecily. Her powers are too strong and she has to be kept hidden away from Breden, who - like all the other 7 elven lords - feels threatened by anyone with too much elven magic.

Giles lives in the same village as Cecily and secretely works to protect her, when the village's security is breached, they flee and go on a long journey to find Cecily's stepfather Thomas (who was also in book 1) and save him. They fall in love on this journey and not only steal Breden's scepter, but also discover the place of the portal to the elven world. Since getting rid of the elven lords is the main goal of the rebellion, this is a big step.

Book 2 wasn't very good. There were exciting parts and enough suspense to make it interesting, but the love story itself was pretty boring. He felt too inferior to her noble birth, she kept telling him that that's nonsense... until the very end.

It doesn't really deserve a much longer entry and it didn't motivate me to read book 3 which I forgot I already owned until two weeks ago.

Now thinking that there are 7 or 8 elven lord's, there might be as many books, book three is the final book in this series and since it's only a little better than book 2, it's for the best.

Book 3 - The Lord of Illusions- is probably 20 years after book 2 and the rebellion has stolen a few more scepters. This book deals with one more scepter and the freeing of England from the elven reign. Our hero is Drystan who was hidden away from the elven lord as a child and grew up in an orphanage in Wales maintained by Cecily and Giles. He hears the three scepters kept in Wales in his head and many consider him mad.The scepters send him dreams from a girl who is the key to the portal to Elfhame. When he's found proof of her existence in black on white he leaves Wales for England to find Camille. Camille is a slave in the castle Dreamhame and already in love with her from his dreams he lets her work for him and provides for her. When with her his own created illusions seem real and the characters in the book take quite some time longer than the reader to realize that it's her power to amplify the power of others.

This pair has so much potential but the author is throwing it all away. There are however some good parts and it is way better than book 2, but still doesn't reach book 1. So maybe it's a good thing that there are only three parts to this series.

[kaylan-bennett]

Game: Towns

This time I am not going to write about a boardgame. Due to the summer break and not getting together very often to play and also because nobody had any new games to play (and we really want to replay a lot of the old games again and again), I didn't really have much to write about.

So, it's another computer game: Towns

In Towns you manage a small settlement and hopefully develop it into a big town. 11 humans have decided to leave society and wander off into the wilderness and you basically get to tell them what to do.

At first you should make them chop down some trees for wood and harvest apples and pears for food. You can declare different kind of "zones" as a storage-area for ressources and later on you can start and build walls around these zones and a roof.

To keep the food coming you can plant some wheat, build a mill and a bakery to bake bread and cake. For the mill and bakery equipment you'll first need a carpenter and a mason and their workbenches/tables. Carpenter and mason are as well just zones you declare and the walls you can build right away or later in the game, make the townfolks work more efficiently.

To make your "ruling" easier, you can set auto-jobs, for example you want to always have at least 5 wheat in storage, you can set the wheat number to 5 and as long as there is wheat on the field (not wild wheat) and less than 5 in storage, one of the townspeople will harvest as much wheat until you have 5 in storage again. The same goes for bread and more complex food later in the game and almost everything you can order your people to do can be automated.

When everything is running smoothly you can build personal rooms for your townspeople. Everyone wants their own room, preferably with a bed, some decoration and walls - they will be happier when they sleep within walls. Once a townie has their own room, they will go there to sleep. When you build more than 11 rooms and your folk's average happiness looks good, more people will come to your settlement.

The thing is: this settlement is upon a dungeon! And to get into the dungeon and into mining (for iron, copper, gold etc.) you might want to give your townies weapons and armour - at the beginning these will be made of wood or maybe stone, later in the game you will have iron and loot from the creatures to make better weapons.

Once you start digging down and you have a tavern with tavern rooms, heroes will come to your town. These heroes are very useful as they'll discover the dungeon for you and hopefuly find some iron and gold.

Meanwhile you have to watch the happiness of your people, if they work too much, they will get unhappy quickly and if they idle too much...they will be unhappy. Find a good mixture. Also when your town grows bigger and more immigrants arrive - watch out for the food supply! The townies are not smart enough to pick an apple and eat it themselves, they will starve. So make sure you expand your wheatfields and grow your own apple and pear trees. Cows and other animals can be bred for their products and meat.

So basically you are the manager and in charge of 11 townies and more. You have to plan ahead and turn a small settlement into a big town.

What I like about it: It's a lot of fun, especially once you know how to use the controls and where to find this and that. The controls are pretty easy to use, but some things don't really fit into one category. It's very satisfying when new settlers arrive or when the first heroes come!

What I don't like: The layers of the world! You build on layer 1 and you scroll up or down to go to other layers, which to me is very confusing and hard to differentiate when you build a higher building or dig down deep. I made a lot of mistakes building my first two storey house.

[kaylan-bennett]

Book: Elven Lords Series by Kathryne Kennedy

I discovered a new (to me) paranormal romance series called the Elven Lords by Kathryne Kennedy. Currently I am about to finish book 1: The Firelord's Lover and have already bought book 2: Lady of the Storm for my Kindle.

The world is very interesting and takes place (so far) in England. England is occupied by Elven Lords, called Imperial Lords. They all have unique powers and because they live for so much longer than humans they get bored and play "games". The faction that wins these games, gets the human king. A lot of humans have elven blood and at least a little elven magic in them. As children they are brought in front of whoever's sovereignity they live in and are testet. Supposedly those children with enough magic are sent to Elfenhame, the magical land, where everything is beautiful.

Dominic - our hero - is the bastard son of Mor'ded, the Imperial Lord of Firehame in England. Dominic has inherited the firemagic of his father, but his magic wasn't strong enough to be sent to Elfenhame, but strong enough to become the General of the Lord's troops and fight against another Lord's troops to win the King.

Dominic had an aweful childhood. Because his father kept feeling, that Dominic also possessed the most powerful fire magic - the black fire, he kept putting him under trials and even killed his son's best friend and his dog, just to make him use his magic. But alas, Dominic could never call the black magic and therefore wasn't a threat to his father. Dominic's solution was to bury his human heart and become unfeeling. He didn't dare form anymore attachements to humans or animals, scared that his father might hurt or kill them to test his son.

Lady Cassandra - our heroine - grew up in a convent and was promised to Dominic when she was quite young. But the convent was only a ruse, in truth she was being trained to assassin Mor'ded. Her magical gift, due to some elven blood in her veins, was dance. She learned the dance of death and trained for years. Nobody was going to suspect her of being an assassin.

Her goal was to win Dominic's trust, but what she never expected was to fall in love with this man, who supposedly didn't have any emotions. He knew pretty much from the first kiss, that it was going to be very difficult to pretend to be indifferent towards Cassandra. But he had to try to protect her from his father.

I really like Cassandra a lot. She is a strong personality, but still has insecurities and emotions that are stronger than her training. She has a good heart and her main reason to kill Mor'ded are the wargames and the slaves he and the other Imperial Lords keep. When she falls in love with Dominic she realizes that she could sacrifice her own life to achieve her goal, but not his.

His indifference towards her is very interesting, because it's fake and the author switches the point of view between both characters, so you know how she feels and what he is thinking and can really get to know and like both characters.

The world building is very subtle in the background and you learn more of it all the time and get curious to find out about the other elven lords and if they ever get back to elfenhame or have to stay in the human world and if the humans ever get control back.