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Review of the Day | Eminent Domain | Tasty Minstrel Games

Among those card games called Deck-building, which are the mostly played in these recent years, some of them are really original while others share the same mechanic as their old father Dominion, without changing much apart from the theme. The game i want to review for you today is Eminent Domain, produced by TMG, which is a sci-fi themed deck-building game for 2 to 4 players. Let’s see what’s in the box and then analyze the game mechanics.

What’s in the box?

The not-so-small box of this game is covered by an evocative deep universe picture which tells you immediately what you’re going to play with. The solid cardboard of the box holds inside the expected quantities of materials: cards (of course), heavy cardboard tokens, a little foldable board to place the cards, some wooden resources disks and and a small box containing plastic spaceships! This last thing really amazed me cause the pieces are really well made and shaped in three different sizes and models. The overall quality of the game is really great, as well as the graphics on the cards (except for the standard planets) and on the box. The rulebook is simple, clear, with lots of examples and gets you into the game really quickly. 

The Game

Eminent Domain can be played with two to four players but it’s definitely a good two player game. Works quick and allows a lot of combos. Once the setup is made, the players have a fixed starting deck with all the possible actions available in the game. These are: Survey, Colonize, Warfare, Produce/Trade, Research. All these actions can be performed in two manners: the first way is playing one of these actions from your hand. In this way you’re allowed to perform the action described on the card. The other manner is choosing and drawing a card from the board in the acquisition phase. In this way, you’re allowed to play the role described on the card. This is the core of the game and the right moment to perform combos. The coolest thing it’s that you can also act in the other player’s turn by performing the same Role they’ve chosen and you can even boost it with cards from your hand, to increase the number of times you can benefit from the effect of the role. There’s always a Leader bonus for the active player who chose the role and the others won’t benefit from it.

Let’s explain the Actions and the Roles of each of these cards in detail.  The Survey action is the main way to draw card, infact it allows you to add two of them from your deck to your hand. The role of Survey card allows you instead to draw Planet cards from the common Planet deck. These planets represent the possible colonies of your space empire or the objectives of your future wars. That’s up to you. Once you draw one or more (boosting the role with cards from your hand) Planet cards, you placed them face down in front of you. These cards will flip to their active side once they’re conquered (with Warfare) or colonized (with Colonization). The Colonization card action allows you to put that card under an face down planet to start colonization. Once there are enough cards (a number defines it) under that Planet card, you can flip it to its active side by using another Colonization card action and the planet will start producing/trading and it’ll give you VP at the end of the game. The Role of the card allows you to increase colonies under the planet or settle it (flip it) as said before. The other way to flip a planet, is to invade it with the Warfare action. This action allows you to take a single plastic spaceship (+1 Strenght) or Attack a planet (if you have the right amount of strenght, equal or more than the planet’s defence). The role of the Warfare card allows you to grow stronger more easily, collecting more spaceships or to attack a planet instead. The Production/Trade card actions are double: you can produce on a single planet a resource or sell a resource from a planet to obtain VP. With the role of this card, you can produce more o sell from more planets. The last is Research action card which allows you to scrap/remove up to 2 cards from your hand or with his role, to acquire one of the available Technology cards only if you’ve satysfied the Technology card’s requirements and costs. These cards will grant you benefit during the game or at the end of it, based on you choices. In a simple introductory game, the Research role is not used and the Technology cards are not availble. The game goes on in this manner, with a player choosing and action and then taking a role, until one player has a given amount of VP or until one or more of the Action card’s stacks is depleted.

Final thoughts

Eminent Domain is surely a good kind of deck-building game which takes some of its mechanics from games like Race for the Galaxy or Puerto Rico. Despite this similarity, the game works great and it’s easy to learn and fast to play with. The only thing I didn’t like is that the stack of action card is fixed and combos are not so ‘personalized’. For example, in Star Realms - another good deck-building game - you have many ways to achieve victory and many different cards with infinite combos. That’s what I didn’t find in Eminent Domain. I think it’s surely one of the best deck-building games out there, that’s clear. It has the right depth, the theme is strong, the components are really detailed and well designed. The price of the game is also competitive for what you find inside the box. If you’re a card-gamer, you shouldn’t miss this one. I bet you won’t be disappointed. If you like wargames with a sci-fi theme, that’s not clearly a wargame and if you love euro games you could be surprised in finding euro-mechanics in this game! This game is HexDiceFire approved!

[hexdicefire]

Review of the day | Agricola Family Edition | Mayfair Games

Here we are again with a new review for our followers. Today we chose Agricola Family Edition (for 1-4 players) the recent remix of the basic Agricola from Uwe Rosenberg made to help younger gamers and families to approach to the world of boardgaming. This edition, produced by Mayfair Games - which is a leader company in the euro-themed boardgaming universe - is rich in materials and has a really cheap price. Let’s take a look at the box and its components first and then we’ll proceed to the gameplay!

What’s in the box?

Inside a relatively small box with a bucolic illustration which fits the theme perfectly, there’s a huge quantity of wooden tokens, veggiemeeples & animeeples, tiles and a solid puzzled board. Along wih these pieces, you’ll find a full colour rulebook with many helpful examples and some plastic bag to store everything. The overall quality is great: solid pieces and cardboard, funny and comic-like illustrations and practical design. It’s clearly not a work done with hurry and this pleased me, especially regarding the game mechanics.

The Game

Many of you already know Agricola. It is probably one of the most important and famous boardgame in the euro genre. The goal of the game is to build the perfect farm by managing animals and agriculture, never forgetting to feed your farmers from the oldest to the younger ones. In this version, the goal is identical but some changes have been made to make the game shorter and easier to play. Agricola Family Edition uses a board that changes configuration, based on the number of players. The board holds the resources available each turn, the actions and a turn tracker which has two functions: it shows the unlocked actions turn-by-turn and incates the harvest phase. Each player starts the game with two farmers (two actions, one with each farmer) and a house tile with two wooden rooms, used to hold the farmers. Each game turn, players select their favourite actions on the board with their farmers, going clockwise around the table until all the farmers have been used. Once a player occupies an action space with his farmer, that action can’t be used anymore until the next game turn. There are many actions and strategies, but the most useful are: collecting resources (wood, reed, bricks, grain,food); collecting animals (sheeps, pigs, cattle); building fenced pastures to hold the animals; sowing and planting in the fields; building rooms and making love; upgrade their fireplace and/or their working places. These elements allow the player to litterally ‘live’ inside a farm and take part in its evolution, but living a farmer’s life it’s not that easy. The other players/farmers will compete with you and the main rule of the game is ‘be first and take the best, be second and you’ll better take a rest’. Being first, early-bird, is really important cause you’ll have the first choice on the actions spaces and the resources. Being last means not winning at all.  Sometimes during the game there are also some Harvest phases. These are good moments of the game, cause you’ll see the grain grow and the animals make babies (one for each couple). But these are also bad moments cause you’ll have to feed your farmers family with food. When a player can’t feed one or more of his farmers, he becomes poor and must take a -3 VP counter as penalty for each farmers he didn’t feed.  This means that each move is strategical and if you forget to grant yourself a sure a amount of food you’ll probably lose the game.  The game ends after 14 turns and players count their VPs total. VPs are gained from animals, harvested grain, brick rooms, members of the farmer’s family, buildings built, number of tiles in your farm. The higher total wins the game!

What I think of the game

Agricola Family Edition is really worth its price: the components are great, the gameplay is adquate for the public it aims to and it’s also a good choice for those who love Agricola but don’t have the time to play it. This version has also a good solitaire mode, useful to learn the game mechanics while reading the rulebook or to challenge yourself in your free time. This medium-entry game game can be the first tiket to ‘ride’ in the boardgaming universe. If you have kids, don’t forget to choose this one as gift for your child; if you have an open-minded family, try to introduce them to the boardgaming hobby with Agricola Family Edition. Also, if you’re a couple, this is a perfect two-players game which takes only 45 minutes of your time and gives you the right amount of fun and thinking! Thanks for following this review and my blog and thanks to Mayfair Games for the review copy. Don’t forget to visit their site! There’s a huge amount of boardgames you might like. 

[hexdicefire]

Review of the Day: Bärenpark | Mayfair Games

Today our review is dedicated to one of the latest products from Mayfair Games, which is  Bärenpark, a nice, logic and fast boardgame for 2 to 4 players. The aim of the game is to build the best Bear Park (that’s the meaning of the game’s title) by matching the correct park areas shapes in the building sites you’ll receive during the game. It’s pretty similar to a Tetris game and far from what you could think, it’s absolutely not that easy. Let’s see what’s inside the game box and then let’s take a look at the game mechanics.

The materials

Despite of his small dimensions, the box of this game is really really heavy. It contains only cardboard sheets full of tokens and park areas. The illustrations have been realized by Franz Klemens, one of the best and most appreciated contemporary illustrators, famous for Agricola, Oh My Goods, Ora et Labora and so on. I really like the colourful pieces full of details and I like the fact that they’re amazingly resistant. The rulebook is brief, functional, with plenty of examples and images. You’ll put the game on the table in few minutes, I ensure you! Complexively, the quality is high as the quantity of components.

The Game

Bärenpark works perfectly with any number of players but I think it gives the best with two players. The setup is really simple: there’s a board on which you’ll need to place the game pieces (based on the number of players); there are building sites (one for each player) and - only if you’re playing the with the advanced rules - there are some achievements that players struggle to accomplish during the game. After the setup, the order of play is determined and the first player receives a park area of 1 space, while the second, the third and the fourth players will receive respectively a park area of 2,3,4 spaces. These park areas are Polyominoes: 

Polyominoes are “plane geometric figures formed by joining one or more equal squares edge to edge. They are polyforms whose cells are squares ” (from Wikipedia). These game pieces are joined toghter cover the building sites and the icon printed on them. Each building site has a 4x4 squared grid. Each turn, a player must place a park area on is building site or pass and take a Green Space park area. Each time a player covers one or more icon on his building site with a polyomino he performs the corresponding actions. Some actions allow the player to take specific park spaces while other grant them a the expansion of the park with new building sites. Every park area polyomino has a value written on it: this value is considered at the end of the game to check the victory point total. Each building site has a hole that can’t be covered with a park area polyomino: these holes are covered - only once a building site is completely covered by park areas - with Bear statues. Players must play fast and furious to cover their building site cause the faster they are, the most valuable Bear statues they’ll receive. The game ends once a player has completely covered 4 building sites. This triggers a last turn for everyone and then the players proceed with the scoring. The advanced rules add to the game the achievements, which really boost the gameplay. Some of these ask the players to cover their sites with specific polyominoes or with a specific animal cages. Obviously, as for the Bear Statues, the fastest player gets the most valuable achievements.

What I think

Bärenpark is a challenging title for families, couples and casual gamers groups. It gives exactly what it promises: fun, a bit of thinking, visuo-spacial training and a lot of replayabiliy. It is an abstract game and so the theme isn’t very linked to it. Instead of bears, there could have been fruits and vegetables, bookcases or anything else. That’s not really a problem cause whether there’s a them or another, the game could function anyway. Every play is different from the next because of the infinite combinations and possibilities given by the polyominoes placement. The game time is brief: 30 minutes in 2 players and a maximum of 45-60 min in 3 and 4 players. There are no dead times, cause every player can only perform a single action each turn. I would suggest the game to newbies of the hobby, couples in search of light but challengin game, families with kids and casual boardgamers. I would not suggest it to people who want games where the theme is highly linked to the gameplay, to gamers who want a hard-competitive title or to lovers of party games.  If you’ve enjoyed Patchwork from Uwe Rosenberg, you’ll see this game as a sort of Advanced Patchwork, less penalizing and with more possibilities and achievements.

Thanks for reading this review, for more info, visit Mayfair’s website:

https://www.mayfairgames.com/

[hexdicefire]

Review of the day: Final Act | Tyto Games

Today we’ll look at the new game Final Act from the newly born company Tyto Games, from which we have already reviewed Elementos, their first abstract boardgame. This company never stops surprising me with their games. The products are well designed and components are really amazing. Final Act is a confrontational two player boardgame which takes place in a Middle-East theatre of war, during a tank battle in the desert. The war is just the theme, cause the game is not what you usually call a Wargame.

Let’s look at the components and then at the gameplay!

The Components

From the box to the last wooden piece, Final Act is a pleasure for the sight. Inside the relatively small game box, with an evocative war painting, you’ll find plenty of components: a resistant big board with a squared grid superimposed, two realistic tank screens (one for each player) on which 14 command dials (2 for each tank in the game) are disposed, two cotton bags containing the same amount of pieces for each player which are: 7 wooden tanks, 7 wooden bombs, 7 wooden fire token, a cardboard swamp and minefield, and 3 thick wooden berms. There are also some stickers to identify the tanks and the bombs once they’re on the board and the last component is a small and clear rulebook. My vote is 10/10, cause the materials are simply perfect, impressive and resistant!

The Game

The idea of the game is really simple and takes me back to when I was I child playing Battleship. Infact, the game works similarily to a Battleship game: you must secretly determine on your hidden screen the direction of the tank’s movement and the ‘bet’ on the enemy movement by placing bombs on the spaces you think is going to move to. After that, each player reveals their screens and move the tanks accordingly to their dials. If when moving, a tank ends on the space where the enemy has placed a bomb, that tank takes a hit. For the first hit, the tank goes on fire but still moves and fires. After the second hit the tank explodes and is out of the game. The game ends as soon as on player arrives with his tank on the last line of defense of his enemy. The gamplay is dinamic and pretty fast, except for the movement determination phase, when each player has to secretly move his dials. There are two dials for each tank: the first one allows a tank to move in one of 6 possible directions while the second dial is used to rotate - to the left or to the right - the cannon. Each tank has a range of fire of 7 squares and a maximum width of 7 squares. It covers only the squares in front of him, but there are two exceptions: if a tank is on the berm, it has a range of +1 square; if a tank is behind the berm, his range can be totally or partially obstructed. The swamp is a terrain feature that blocks the tank movement while the minefield gives a hit to the tank who moves on it. Although the aim of each player is to reach the last line of defence of the enemy, it is not always wise to advance straight-forward. Infact, by doing this, a player’s movement can be more predictable and tanks can be easily destroyed soon. Sometimes it’s good to make a strategic retreat or an evasive manoeuvre that the enemy doesn’t expect. In the desert it’s hard to take cover!

What I think of this game

I’m a great fan of wargames and historical themed boardgames and I must admit that this one gives me only the basic war flavour. There’s no realistic historical setting and I think it was specific choice of the creators. Apart from that, the mechanics are really psicological: bluffs, previsions, logical thinking and visuospatial perception make this game really intriguing and not as simple as you could think at first sight. It’s deeply strategical and there are no chance or die rolls to save you if you make the wrong move or you don’t reflect on what you’ve to do. Final Act has a specific target of players from what I’ve seen: it’s good for chess players, abstract gamers, tank lovers, families, two player games’ lovers and casual boardgamers. The components as said are really impressive and they’re worth the price of the game. There are more expensive games with nothgin inside of them, so this one it’s really a good deal. The game time indicated on the box can be applied to successive plays, cause the first game can even last one hour and a half. If this review has given you the curiosity to try Final Act, don’t hesitate and jump on Amazon to gift yourself a copy of it! See you in the next review!

[hexdicefire]

Review of the day| Elementos by Tyto Games

Some games are better than others - just to quote Morrisey from The Smiths. Elementos it’s a clear example of an original abstract game which is surely more intriguing, challenging and aestetically better than most of the games belonging to the same genre. 

I was one of the first to obtain a copy of it in Italy, from the new company Tyto Games which is also famous for its upcoming title “Final Act”, totally different from Elementos. Infact, Final Act is a revolutionary Tank Battle game with amazing materials and graphics. Soon, there will be a review of it on this blog, so stay tuned!

Speaking about Elementos, it is a simple to learn and hard to master little portable game, entirely made of wood. Small enough to be carried in a bag and big enough to hold inside everything you’ll ever need to play it, it’s a good filler which can be played 1vs1 in a breif coffee pause. Let’s see the mechanics and the materials.

Materials & Mechanics

A little wooden box, more long than thick, painted with a squared-grid on both sides serves as game box and game board at the same time. Once opened, there’s a compartment inside to hold the playing pieces in two colours: black and white. For each of the two colours, there’s a fixed assortment of three different double sided disks, totally made of wood. The three different symbols you’ll find painted on them are: Tree, Fire, Water. Yes, these are the Elementos! The main idea of the game is that Fire beats Tree, Tree beats Water and Water beats Fire. That’s how you’ll use your disks, which are placed on the appropriate player’s coloured side during the setup. Along with the disks there are two Sticks (a black one and a white one), which are placed inside the small hole at the centre of a disks (the selected disk is the one placed during the setup sorrounded by the other disks). This Stick is a sort of protection against the other pieces. Each disk, as previously said, is double sided. On a side - for example - there’s a Tree and on the other one there’s Water. Let’s see how the game works!

After the setup, one player starts choosing an action among these: 1) Move a disk from a square to another one, toward the enemy’s side; 2)Flip a disk to the other side, in order to change the Elementos; 3) Move the Stick from a disk to an adjacent other. When the players moves a disk, if he’s adjacent to an enemy piece whose Elementos is the nemesis of his piece, he eats it. Like chess! The objective of the game is to bring one of your disks in the enemy’s side of the board, placing it on a marked square. If it seems too easy to do, I dare you to play a game of Elementos!

Final thoughts on the game

Elementos is really a little jewel in the boardgaming world. It is elegant with its materials and minimal graphics; it is fast and frenetic to play with; it’s a two player game and I love two player games cause you can feel the head to head challenge growing while you play. The strategy is not that predictable as it seems: once you move you can’t go back and you must be sure that your piece is useful on both sides to make tricks against your enemy. If the enemy advances a Water disk near your Fire disk, you can surprise him by flipping the Fire disk to a Tree disk. Now his piece is in danger and he can’t go back! That situations are really unexpectable and hilarious.  The stick is really fundamental to avoid being eaten by the other Elementos disks, but it must be placed strategically and must never be left back. The game can also be used to do small and fast tournaments inside your clubs, and it is perfect for every age. You can teach it to your childrens or to your grandfather and they will enjoy it the same!  What can I say more about Elementos? Go and get it! You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Tyto-Games-Elementos-Board-Game/dp/B019CU3JVA

[hexdicefire]

Review of the Day | Super Motherload | Roxley Game Lab

Today we’re going to take a look at another title from Roxley Game Laboratories: Super Motherload, an amazing deck-building/mining game for 2 to 4 players. I’ve already made another review of a Roxley’s game - Steampunk Rally - which can be found here. Now, let’s take a look at the box of the game and then into the game itself. Follow me for another HexDiceFire’s review!

What’s in the box?

I bet you’ve already stopped for a minute admiring this wonderful cover. It looks live a videogame poster and the colour palette it’s really psychedelic! This is the first cool thing of the game while the others are hidden under the lid of the box. Speaking about the box, it’s really small but thick and easy to store on the shelf. Inside, you’ll find really good quality components. The game boards are 4 and double sided; the cards are really well designed, in a standard format; the tiles are thick but easy to punch out from the cardboard sheet; the rulebook it’s colourful and explains everything with clear examples.

The Game

Unlike many others deck-building game, this one will place you in the cockpit of an excavator, ready to discover the best minerals and precious stones under the surface of Mars. The game uses a series of boards - which will be added one after the other - to simulate the depth of player’s drilling activity. Players will use a set of basic action cards, which will be upgraded during the game, to perform 2 actions on each of their turns. The main actions are: 

-Drill: the players combines cards - from their hands - with the Drill icon and with the same colour, to drill under the surface of the planet or to continue a previous tunnel. This is the main action and so the most frequent.

-Draw: the players can draw two cards from their personal deck to improved their drilling possibilities

-Bomb: which works really similar to Drill with the exception that players must also have bomb token (previously obtained) and a bomb pattern on a card. The pattern shows to the player the effect of his bombing activity.

When a player uses Drill, he counts the number of cards with the Drill icon and the same colour and places a Drill pattern token of the same size as the number of cards played. This back tokens simulate the tunnel the player has drilled. If this tunnel covers one or more resources, then the player obtains them and places them immediately as an investment the available cards he wants to buy to improve his deck. These new cards will be purchased only when there are as many resources as the card’s cost. 

During the game, players will also have the possibility to score points with Achievement cards, placed near the board to show to the players the reward obtained for following a particular strategy. The game ends when the players have gone deep enough to reach the end of the fourth board. Then they will sum their points taking them from the cards they bought, the achievements and the artifacts found in your tunnels. The player with most Victory points is declared the best Mars’ Driller!

What I think of the game:

I found this game really challenging and deep, not only for its tunnels. It has a lot of replayability, amazing graphics and it’s hard sometimes to make the best strategy. The system is original and it remembered me of some old mining videogames of my youth. The overall quality of the product it’s great and its value is surely higher than the price of the game. I would reccomend this one to every kind of player: from the casual boardgamer to the card-geek; from the classic thinker of the group to the players who want a one-hour boardgame.  What are you waiting so? 

Thanks for reading this review, follow HexDiceFire for more!  The rules of Super Motherload are downloadable here and more info about Roxley Game Laboratories and the other great games they produce, can be found here.

[hexdicefire]

Philosophy of Boardgaming | Part. 1

Have you ever wondered that boardgaming is something more than a simple hobby? It involves a series of abilities and skills which sometimes your brain already has or that it’ll develop by playing games. This is not a news of course but did you ever think about what happens when you’re playing a game or - for example - what you think you’re doing while you play it? In this article I’d like to share my thoughts about it with you.

1. A World

Wichever is the boardgame you play, it’s like a world that unravels in front of you. It has a set of specific rules that you must accept and follow to gain an entrance ticket into it and I bet you have collected many of these tickets in your gaming nights. Effectively, within the invisible walls of this world, your can bring as many friends as the game states, but once inside the game they could act as enemies or as needful assistants and teammates.  How many times you had the occasion to ‘hate’ your beloved friends for beating you in a game or supporting someone else and not you? How many times you had the occasion to start a friendship with other gamers during a match? That happens beacause we step inside a world of cardboard and pawns a leave behind our known reality and with her, all the problems.

2. Types of gamers

Games have the power to modify or simply bring out people’s characters and sometimes this is the most important social aspect in gaming. This power allows the player to act somehow freely from what he really is. For example: when a shy and taciturn friend of yours plays a wargame and he keeps attacking you and rejoices for his dice rolls with screams and lughs, you won’t probably recognize him as your usual friend. In a similar manner, there are also chatty and annoying friends who become silent when the game starts.  I’m not saying that everyone becomes Mr.Hyde while playing a game. Many gamers are just themselves during the game but something unexpected and unconventional always comes out from them at the end. There are many types of gamers, and I’m sure you can put your mates in some of these categories:

- The Thinker: The German-mathematic calculator Lord. The Alea-killer. The one who plays to win and not to partecipate. When he/she makes a move, the other players rejoice and raise their hands to the sky. Don’t mess with him/her, he/she’s doing math.

- The Noisy: The kind of player you don’t want to sit near you. He/she’s always keeps an eye on your cards and uses the wooden blocks to make pyramids. He/she comments him/herself while making a move and reconsiders it too many time for the others to follow his/her choices.

- The Lucky Guy: This one always knows the result when throwing the dice. He/she just can’t miss a throw and he/she loves playing Ameritrash games. He/she doesn’t have a strategy in his/her head, but at the end of the game, he/she’s always the winner.

- The Last Comer: He/she is always late when you plan a game. You’ve just finished your explaination of the rules and he/she opens the door shouting: “I’m here!”. This is the moment when you and your friends need to waste precious time to explain the game again.

- The Rules Reminder: The Human Rulebook. He/she remembers every rule of every game and he/she won’t forgive you if you forget an important rule. On the other hand, thanks to this rare beast, we can skip reading rulebooks entrusting him/her.

- No Man: He/she’s the one who doesn’t know what he/she wants to play. He/she simply says NO to every game proposed just to let the other gamers go mad thinking about alternatives. 

- The Enthusiast: This kind of gamer wants to play everything, without ever considering what he/she’s playing. From Monopoly to ASL, from Risk to Brass: he/she wants to play it anyway. If it’s a game, then it needs to be played. It is the right mate to try often new games.

- The One-Shot: When you have this kind of player in your group, it’s really hard concentrating on a game for a long time. This player always needs a new game cause he/she plays games no more than one time each. You’ll probably need a store or the entire BGG archive to satisfy him/her.

Have you recognized some friends of yours among these types of gamers?

3. What happens after a game?

We’ve seen how a boardgame allows you to enter in a new world and how people act in this peculiar world. Now we’ll see what happens at the end of a play. Is a boardgame a satisfying experience, at least as rewarding as you’ve hoped when you started playing it? Satisfation comes with fullfillment of some gamer’s expectations. For example: some gamers wants a game to be deep while some other don’t want it to be demanding and that’s usually the main selection they make when choosing a game to play. But it’s clear that not every game gives the experience requested. You could have chosen a game you thought it was lighter and then discovered how complicated it was. When a boardgame fills your time with joy and happiness or even with challenging tasks, it’s clear it has done its job. The greatest satisfation is when everyone at the table feels like you about the game. There’s a double reward when you’re satisfied of the game you’ve chosen and your friend declare they loved it. 

Summarizing, here’s what a game it’s capable of: Creating a whole new universe with a new set of rules; transforming people’s characters and personalities; gratifying and rewarding players.

Thanks for reading this article. Follow me for the next part and don’t hesitate to criticize or appreciate this little essay.

[hexdicefire]

Kill the King! | Kickstarter’s prototype review | HexDiceFire

Yesterday we decided to try this new Kickstarter’s game called “Kill the King” designed by Petter Shanke Olsen. The project is actually running on Kickstarter, so if you decide to back it after you read this review, click here.

Kill the king is a siege-wargame, in which a player has to defend the king inside the castle and the opponent has to rush with his troops through the gates of the manor to behead the monarch. You think it’s simple? Well you’re wrong! Follow me in this brief introduction to the main game.

Components?

I can’t talk about the components and the box cause I received only a print-n-play version of the game, with good quality counters (but not definitive) and a thin paper map, which had a great graphic printed on it! There were some missing counters, like an attacker’s archer and the leader’s counter for the defender. Also there was no turn track marker and no destroyed walls counters. But I managed to play the game anyway! I bet the final work will be great and you can notice that from these photos of the prototype!

(This is the standard game army set-up, following the one on the rulebook. Set-up indicates only which troops you should use, not their starting positions. Those are up to you and your opponent!)

Playin’ the game

There are two main options to play Kill the King! : one is the short game which lasts only six turns and it’s called Attack & Defend, while the other is the standard Kill the King main game, which lasts for 11 turns and allows the player to spend ‘virtual coins’ to buy their armies. For our first game we decided to follow the set-up suggested by the rulebook, but I think the great thing is building your army based on your personal strategy. Each unit has a ‘coin’ cost and while the attacker has 90 ‘coins’ to build his army, the defender has only 45 ‘coins’ cause he obtains defence benefits from the castle.  Once the armies have been built, the players deploy their troops behind a screen (the box of the game) hidden from the opponent. After this step, the attacker begins his frist turn, moving and eventually attacking.

There are different types of units in the game and each of these is important in some particular moments of the game. For example: the catapults, are slow and can only fire if they don’t move. The attacker should use them at the start to demolish castle walls and free the bastions. In later turns the catapults are pretty useless, considering they also have no defence. Archers are good ranged troops to cover the advancing of cavalry and infantry or as defence over the castle walls. Swordsman are the best unit of the game cause they have a medium attack and medium defence value. Spearman are not that versatile, but they’re good at defending the King inside the castle or at killing the cavarly with a good dice roll. Cavarly is a valuable piece cause it moves really fast among the battlefield and can be used - once a wall or the main gate are down - by the attacker to enter the castle and kill the monarch.  There’s also a Battering Ram, which is used by the attacker to demolish the main gate easily and should be manned by an infantry troop. There’s also a Leader, which may be chosen among four types of available, everyone with special characteristics.

Every troop has a particular way to attack the enemy. The Swordsman and Cavalry only attack the enemy in their front side (the facing of an arrow determines the facing of a unit, which is important for attack and defence purposes). The Spearman attacks two subsequent enemies in front of him; the Archer has a range of 4 but can’t attack anyone in melee or adjacent to him; the Catapult can shoot minimum at range 3 and maximum at range 6 a devastating blow which affects the hit space and spaces hortogonally adjacent to it. These troops have also defence values based on the side they’re hit by the enemy. Usually the front is the stronger and the rear is the weakest. Some units have also zero as defence value, so if they’re hit, they’ll die.

To make an attack, the player rolls a die and checks on the unit’s diagram if the number rolled is a hit. For example, an infantry Swordsman gives a hit if he rolls 1-3 on a d6. Then if the defending opponent has, for example, and Archer facing the attacker, he will save himself only on a roll of 1 on a d6. If a unit takes a hit and fails to defend himself, then it’s gone and out of the game.

The walls and the gates, as well as the King’s door, have a defence value. When they’re hit, the ‘save’ themselves with a roll of 1-4 for the wall, 1-3 for the main gate and 1-2 two for the King’s door! “C’mon king, time to go!”

(”Noooo! We failed! The King can’t be killed!”)

What I think of the game

Kill the King is really a fun, simple and innovative game. It has many interesting features, like army-building (which is a thing I love!), an epic siege mode, the possibility to use two copies of the game to create a GigaMode version with two defenders inside the castle and two attackers.  It is perfect for those who love simple wargames or they’ve never tried one; it is good for kids to learn the basics of strategical planning; it is perfect to recreate little medieval battles or even imagine King’s Arthur armies fighting against Mordred! One thing I must say about the game: the attacker should take his Leader inside the castle before the sixth turn. If he can’t accomplish this mission, then 5 enemy cavalry units will appear at his back, ready to attack. I failed with my Leader, so these cavalry units appeared and my opponent used these to literally ‘eat’ my pieces outside the castle (Catapults and Archers). I want to tell to the author that maybe these reinforcement should be less or should enter two turns later or the attacker won’t make it in his first games. Except from this aspect, I think you should take your money and buy yourself a copy of this great game. I can’t wait to play it again and I just can’t wait for the final version of the game!

KILL THE KING!  (Hex Dice Fire salutes you with this song!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3ZfrCPKEqM

And don’t forget to follow the Campaign of the game here!