Table Top CKO

Ever heard someone talking about a table top game and thought to yourself, "That game sounds awesome!"; only to get home to look it up and not be able to remember the name of the game or find anything based on the few details you remember? That's where the Table Top Chief Knowledge Officer comes in. I will be bringing you spotlights on classic games, new game related news, and answers to your table top gaming questions. Have a question about a game? Ask! I will do my best to find a suitable answer for you (if other fans like yourself don't beat me to it!). You can even feel free to suggest games to be featured as spotlights or games that you remember that brought you great joy and fun.

[tabletopcko-blog]

Ladies, gentlemen, and NPCs of all ages! Your Table Top Chief Knowledge Officer is proud to announce a winner for the first official Table Top CKO giveaway contest! Amie Burnett! I will be getting in contact with Amie to ship her a prize package featuring a brand new board game (and a few other goodies as well)! Congratulations, Amie! My henchmen slaved over a hot d20 before finally announcing you as the winner! To all of the other entrants and fans, keep an eye out for more giveaways in the future! Until then, remember to share Table Top CKO and show all of your friends who might like table top games. We have more spotlights, reviews, and fun stuff coming up! And feel free to send me a message with suggestions for games to spotlight!

[tabletopcko-blog]

I can write a great b-movie.  Can you?

[tabletopcko-blog]

Berserker Halflings From The Dungeon Of Dragons. Part of the B-Movie series of card games. Designed by Stephen Tassie and published by Z-Man Games. 2005 (2001 for the original game; Grave Robbers from Outer Space).

[tabletopcko-blog]

The king in disguise. The big, bad monster who turns out to be misunderstood. The old, crazy wizard. The obligatory little person. The predestined hero. There are things you just kind of expect to see in a fantasy setting. Especially in a movie set in a fantasy realm. When you add in that it's a medium to low budget B-movie, and you could probably write the script yourself, right? Time to prove it! "Berserker Halflings From The Dungeon Of Dragons" is part of the B-Movie card game series by developer Z-Man Games. The first in the series "Grave Robbers From Outer Space" was published in 2001, with "Berserker Halflings" coming out in 2005. At first, six cards are drawn from the deck. They have words at the bottom which are used to make the title of your movie. One example is "Eagle Slayer and the Story of the Crystal Ring Riddle". For each of these words that appears on one of the cards in your movie at the end of the game, you get bonus points. Those cards are shuffled back into the deck and each player is then dealt six cards. On your turn, you draw until your hand contains six cards. You can then play Character cards, Settings, Props, and Special Effects to make your movie stronger. After everyone takes their first turn, then the real fun starts. What's a good B-Movie without some monster attacks, right? Monsters are cards that you can send to attack other players' movies to try to kill off their characters. Monsters have "attack" values that rival a movie's "defense" score. Some of the cards are bad Settings that you can play on other players' movies. And some of the Special Effects cards do terrible and hilarious things to the other players (while some of them protect you). Each of the cards has certain abilities and traits that work with each other to make the attacks succeed or fail, as well. You have to watch for subtle changes and know when to strike to make sure that your Monsters take out as many Characters as possible. If anybody plays the "Roll Credits" card at any time, the game ends. The movie scores (defenses) are totaled up. Bonus points for title word cards are handed out. The director with the highest scoring movie wins. It's that simple. And games can last a long time or be relatively short, depending on where Roll Credits ends up in the deck. I'm not saying that B-Movie writers have easy jobs. I'm not saying that a card game of chance and random draws is capable of writing a decent movie. I am also not saying that "Spell Tomb; Dark Castle of the Monster Rider" isn't in the works. Look out Skippy! That Assassin was working with the Evil Wizard the whole time!

[tabletopcko-blog]

DING DING DING! Time is up! It looks like (at 60 likes) I'm not going to be able to add to the prize pack, but it's already pretty great. IT'S TIME! For the very first Table Top CKO giveaway, I am going to have a simple drawing. Send me a message here at the Table Top CKO page with your favorite table top game of all time. Each message (one per fan, please) will be entered in a random drawing to win a brand new, still in the shrink wrap copy of the board game Imaginiff (and I might just add a few other surprises, even though we didn't reach our goal). And your favorite game might just receive a spotlight and review here on my page! Official Rules: *Send a message with your favorite game to me here at Table Top CKO. *Must like the page to be eligible. *One entry per person. *New fans of Table Top CKO (liked the page after this is posted) are still eligible to win as well, so keep on sharing! *Winner will be chosen at random and will be contacted privately to receive their contact info and where to send their prize. *Official contest will end at midnight CST on Sunday, June 2nd.

[tabletopcko-blog]

Table Top CKO

We have a facebook!  That's where the giveaway contest is happening this week.  Check it out, don't forget to like and share, and enter for your chance to win a pretty sweet swag bag.

[tabletopcko-blog]

You think I would WHAT?!?!

[tabletopcko-blog]

Imaginiff. Originally published by Buffalo Games, Inc. Currently available from Buffalo Games Inc., Mattel, Paul Lamond Games Ltd, Piatnik, and Tactic. 1998 (original).

[tabletopcko-blog]

Imagine if your group of friends were hot dog condiments. Who would be the mustard? Imagine if your friends were being interrogated. Who would crack first? Imagine if your friends were mad scientists. Who would make a time machine their first priority? Questions like these (and even more) are waiting to test your friendships in the game Imaginiff. Imaginiff was originally published by Buffalo Games, Inc., in 1998. Since then it has seen a few revisions and even a card game adaptation. The most common version today is published by Mattel. It's a simple concept and set up. Players write their names on the outside of the board. If there are less than 8 players, other names are added to make 8. You can use other friends, family, or even celebrities and fictional characters. A roll of the die determines which kind of question to ask and how many spaces the players can move for a correct vote. There is a grey question mark which moves around the board, landing on different names. That name is used in the question. Let's say, for example, it has landed on Aunt Sally. There are three types of questions. The red cards are subject questions. "Imaginiff Sally was a piece of furniture, which would she be? 1) Desk 2) Entertainment Center 3) High Chair 4) La-Z Boy 5) Ottoman". The black cards are versus questions. "Imaginiff Sally and I were scientists. Who would win a Nobel prize in Chemistry?". The grey cards are group questions. "Imaginiff we were all in an interrogation room. Who would be the bad cop?". The players then vote by putting their numbered voting cards face down in a pile (either the number of the answer for the red cards or the number of the player for the others). The votes are tallied, and anyone who answered in the majority moves forward the number of spaces shown on the die. The first player to get to the end of the board wins. The game can either be very quick (if everyone has the same opinion of the people gathered), or very slow (if your friends don't let on what they think about certain people). Either way, it's good for a few laughs. Especially when someone explains why they're the only person who thinks a certain way. It might even lead to a love connection. If you're feeling brave, or you're certain that you won't be surprised by what your friends think about you, pick this game up. Imaginiff you find out some new things about your friends and yourself. What's the worst that could happen?

[tabletopcko-blog]

All these villains are driving me batty!

[tabletopcko-blog]

Batman; The Animated Series; 3D Board Game. Parker Brothers. 1992.

[tabletopcko-blog]

Lots of times, TV or movie tie-in games fall short of what the fans want. Not enough reference to the show/movie, changing or adding things, bulky and terrible instructions or game play; just to name a few. While avoiding these problems, "Batman; The Animated Series; 3D Board Game" delivers a simple and elegant game design sprinkled with great art and reference.

Published by Parker Brothers in 1992, the game uses actual stills from the TV cartoon in it's design. Set up can be a bit of a chore. It's a 3D game. Meaning the interior of the Bat Cave has been die cut into cardboard and it's up to you to put it together into the slightly-difficult-to-assemble game board. With all of the set up, it almost feels like one of those games that you would set up and leave set up (either for ease, or because the game itself is a pretty piece of memorabilia). Once you have the Bat Cave assembled, you set the 14 villains that Parker Brothers included (big names like The Joker, Catwoman, and Poison Ivy all the way down to Man Bat, Clayface, and The Mad Hatter) all over the game board. The story here is that Batman has fallen asleep at the batcomputer and the batvillains have broken into the batcave and taken batRobin batprisoner. It's up to the batplayers to take control of Batman and save the batday. The extremely simple mechanic here involves rolling two six-sided dice. One with the numbers one through three on the faces and one with various symbols which each do something different. You then move Batman accordingly (each player moves the same Batman) up and down a 7 space batwalk in the center of the batcave. This mechanic is a big part of the reason this game is more for super hero fans and less for board game fans. If you roll a batsymbol while standing on the batsymbol (or a batarang while standing anywhere), you capture one villain. If you roll an explosion and the resulting move places Batman back on the starting square, a villain gets away. The villains are on stands with point values underneath them (randomized at the beginning of play). The player with the most points after all the villains are captured and Robin is saved wins. Unless the villains that got away are worth more points. Then the villains win! This game is a fast and fun play-through. You can get through quite a few games in just a half hour. If you're a fan of complicated or in depth games, avoid this one. If you're a fan of easy games that anyone can play (or just a fan of Batman), you should check it out. "It’s the game the world deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll play it because we can take it. Because it’s not our game; it is a friend's game, an interesting time-killer... on game night."

[tabletopcko-blog]

Yahtzee. Milton Bradley (owned by Hasbro). 1956.

[tabletopcko-blog]

There are some games which are nearly universal. Some games are as widely known as how to breathe or blink. What I'm trying to say is that there are some games that there are very few people who haven't played, or at least heard of them. Yahtzee is one of those games. A simple "Poker Dice Game", the invention of Yahtzee as we know it today is dated back to Edwin S. Lowe's filing of the game as as a trademark with the U.S. Patent Office on April 19, 1956. There are a few similar games dated a few years before that, but this incarnation has that exact date to consider it's birthday. The game is produced by Milton Bradley Games (now owned by Hasbro). The object of the game is to score points by making sets and runs with dice. There are five dice and you can re-roll up to twice, giving a maximum rolling of 15 dice if you scrap your whole hand in the first two rolls. Sets of each number are safe rolls if you don't have much else. Runs score more points. You fill up your score card by placing your hands in each category (sometimes taking a zero if you can't get anything else). The Chance category sums up the total of the faces and awards you with those points (essentially free garbage points!). The rarest (and hardest to get, statistically) roll is a Yahtzee; five of a kind. The first Yahtzee is worth 50 points, with each subsequent Yahtzee being worth 100 (if you can manage it). The scores are totaled at the end with the highest score being declared the winner. Each score sheet can handle multiple games, which encourages fun for hours!

[tabletopcko-blog]

Eclipse Phase. Catalyst Game Labs, now Posthuman Studios. 2009.

[tabletopcko-blog]

Sometimes, role playing games can be predictable. Similar character choices, similar basic story line, similar classes, and similar encounters. Eclipse Phase uses a pretty standard d10 (ten sided dice) mechanic system. And that is exactly where the similarity stops. Originally published by Catalyst Game Labs in 2009, Eclipse Phase is now published by it's creators (Posthuman Studios) under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Do you know what that means? All of the source material can be accessed for free online! And the developers encourage players and gamemasters to "remix" their works! You literally only need 2 d10s, some players, a GM, and the internet. The Creative Commons License isn't even the best part of the game. Forget everything you know about traditional futuristic, post-apocalyptic games. Eclipse Phase offers a veritable buffet of story, scenery, characters, setting, and everything else you need to write a million detailed stories. Set in a far flung future, after the destruction of earth as we know it, 90 percent of Earth's inhabitants have been killed by the organic computer virus Exsurgent and humanity is scattered. Civilizations have popped up throughout the solar system. Human kind in it's purest form is no more. This loss of humanity is largely made possible by morph technology. Body dying or injured? Buy a new one. Need a change in your life? Buy a new one. Don't like your body's hair color? Buy a new one. Transhumans can encode their consciousness into a digital form and hop into other hosts and bodies. Sometimes, they can even stay as information. The types of bodies vary wildly, with cloning becoming the new designer drug. Immortality has been attained, provided you remember to back yourself up and not go insane. While the morph system is an awesome draw and storytelling tool, it's not even my favorite part of the game! The wild variances in socio-political views of the different planets and moons is astounding. It leaves room for any kind of adventure your party desires. Whether fighting in the streets in the collectivist anarchy of the Outer System or disrupting an assassination attempt in the Republic government of the Inner System, or anywhere in between in any number of other places, you're sure to keep busy. The technology and advancements of the time period also allow for a heavy science fiction flavor guaranteed to get any player's mouth watering. I can't even get into everything the setting has to offer. Virtual reality, augmented reality games, digital consciousness, experience playback, cloning, splicing, space travel, zero gravity sports. Everything. Seriously. Everything. All in all, if this review hasn't been enough to convince you to look into this game setting, you must really not like role playing games. I want to take this time to thank Patrick Uzzetta for suggesting Eclipse Phase for a spotlight. And I would like to thank my fans for taking the time to keep up with me and tell all of their friends. But now I really need to morph out. This splicer is making my ego itchy.

[tabletopcko-blog]

Demon Dice. Lester Smith and Tim Brown. Fast Forward Games. SFR, Inc. 2003.