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"Brian's Board Game Reviews"
Read my boardgame blog: THE GAMES WE PLAY
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TICKET
TO RIDE
(pictures coming soon)
I
hadn’t thought much of the description of Ticket to Ride when I
first read it, but every review I read raved about it. All but the most hardcore gamers loved this
game and said they played it often with their friends and family and that
THEY loved it too. It had been
the top selling game on TimeWellSpent.org
for like the last year or so. With
all that good press, we decided to give Ticket to Ride a shot.
And
I am SO happy we took everybody’s overwhelming advice.
This game is a ton of fun. The board represents the United States with
a series different-colored “train routes” between various cities, which
vary in length from one to six spaces.
Players start out with 43 train pieces and four train cards, which
are colored to correspond to the various route colors on the board. They also start out with two or three “trip tickets” which I’ll
get into later. On each turn,
players can either draw cards, draw trip tickets, or claim a route.
Players
earn points by claiming routes with their trains.
The points go up exponentially as the route’s length increases.
For a route one space long, you get a single point.
For a route six spaces long, you get fifteen. Players claim routes by laying down enough
cards of the appropriate color for the route in question. To claim the five-space green-colored route
between San Francisco and Los Angeles, a player would lay down five green
cards and then place one of their train pieces on each space in the route. Obviously, with the way the points are tallied,
it’s in a player’s best interest to claim longer routes, the obvious caveat
of that being that it takes longer to draw six cards of one color than
three – especially when it seems like the cards you need never seem to
come up when you need them.
At
the beginning of the game players draw trip tickets showing two cities
that they have to connect with a continuous line of their trains by the
end of the game. Each trip ticket
has a certain point value, with the longer routes obviously giving more
points than the shorter ones. At
the end of the game, you gain the given number of points for each ticket
you complete and LOSE the number of points for whatever tickets you fail
to complete.
The
game is played until one player runs out of trains, at which point you
tally up the points for each route and trip ticket. An additional bonus is given to the player
who has the longest continuous route.
The player with the most points wins.
We’ve
only been playing this game for a few weeks now but we’re loving it.
It has exactly the right amount of complexity and options for strategy
so that you can feel challenged yet still have a nice laid back game without
thinking too much. Part
of the excitement comes from the fact that you really don’t know who’s
going to win until the very end of the game when all the points are tallied.
The rest of the excitement, or tension, comes from the fact that
since nobody can see the other players’ trip tickets they can end up inadvertently
(or on purpose if their particularly perceptive) blocking somebody’s route,
forcing them to have to take the long way around.
My
only beef with this game is that it involves minimal direct competition
with the other players. By and
large, you’re so concentrated on completing your own trip tickets that
you don’t really have time to worry about blocking your opponent’s route. And even if you did have time, you can’t be
completely sure WHERE they’re actually going, so you may end up wasting
trains that could have been put to use elsewhere.
But other than that, it’s a great game. In fact, it’s so great that we finally pulled it out to play with somebody else other than just the two of us. A couple weekends ago, Lauren’s sister Lisa and her husband Tim were visiting and we spent the entire evening playing Ticket to Ride and having a blast. This was such a different kind of game from what most of us are used to playing, that I expected Lisa and Tim to just kind of say, “Okay, that was interesting,” but otherwise, be unimpressed. Instead, Lisa went with Lauren the very next day to buy the game herself.
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Hera
and Zeus is a two-player card game which is
REALLY hard to learn at first but once you play a couple times becomes
second nature and is a LOT of fun to play.
The gist of that game is that each player takes on one of the title
roles from Greek mythology. In
the story, each of the gods has kidnapped the other’s favorite mortal:
Argus in the case of Hera and Io in the case of Zeus.
Players build up their gods’ armies by laying cards of varying
strengths facedown in three columns in an effort to locate the Argus or
Io card in the opponent’s deck. In
addition to fighting cards, there are also mythology cards that allow
special functions but cannot attack, as well as fighting cards that can
beat every other card on the table except for one – which is usually quite
weak whenever it attacks anything else.
The
initial difficulty as you can probably already see comes from the fact
that there are a LOT of cards with different strengths, weaknesses and
functions to keep track of. Pythia
for instance has a strength of zero which means that anybody can kill
her. BUT, if Pythia attacks Poseidon
or Nemesis, the two strongest cards in each opposing deck, then SHE wins
the fight. In addition, rather
than attacking, Pythia can be used to spy into an opponent’s hand or to
reveal all the facedown cards in any one column.
With me so far?
The
first time Lauren and I tried playing this game we got fed up and quit
before we got two turns into it. There were too many cards to keep track of and we kept getting confused
about who did what and what went where. To be fair, we were exhausted and didn’t have the energy to figure
it out at that exact moment. The
next night we did it right. We
went through each card one by one and figured out what they did and who
they beat. That gave us a good
perspective on how to proceed and even though we still referred back to
the directions several times in the first few games, we at least had a
working knowledge of the game’s mechanics and flow.
After that, we’ve had nothing but fun with this game. The box comes with “cheater” cards for each person’s deck, which
give a short description of what each card can do, but for the most part
we’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even need to look at them anymore.
There
are so many different strategies that one can use in this game, not the
least of which is the use of bluffing. Placing cards facedown in a certain way so that
your opponent thinks you’ve got a stronger card on the table than you
actually do; hiding your Io or Argus card behind weaker cards so that
your opponent won’t think to attack it; holding onto really powerful mythology
cards for a long time in the hope that your opponent won’t attack it in
your hand… these are all typical “bluffs” that one will employ in this
game which ratchets up the tension and excitement several times over,
especially toward the end of a close game.
But
beyond that, and in my opinion the mark of a really good game, there are
many strategies that you can develop to counteract the strategies being
developed by your opponent. Lauren
and I have been on similar learning curves with this game and so have
figured out how to exploit the inherent weaknesses in the other person’s
strategy. For instance, if a person
plays their Hera or Zeus card, it gives them four actions per turn instead
of three. This seems like it would
be a benefit because you can attack or draw more cards than normal. But as you get to the end of the game and your
draw pile gets drained, it becomes harder and harder to do four actions
per turn. And in this game, you
have to use ALL your given actions each turn or you lose. A smart player can ride out a game making small insignificant moves
in the hopes that the other player will drain his pile and run out of
things to do. Lauren and I have
learned, and are still learning, how to use various strategies to our
advantage and exploit each other’s strategies to their detriment. No game is ever the same and the tension is
palpable during those close games that get down to the very end. Sometimes a game has literally been decided
by a single card left in somebody’s draw pile.
Suffice it to say, we love this game and even though this factor doesn’t really dictate a good game (as we, again, learned in Monsters Menace America), the artwork on each of the cards is beautifully dark and fits the theme of game perfectly.
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Cartagena
(said: car-ta-HAIN-ya) is advertised as a “prison break” game where you’re
trying to get a band of pirates down a tunnel and into their awaiting
sloop. The theme really only serves
as a jumping off point for the artwork which utilizes a lot of skulls
and guns and other pirate paraphernalia, but when you get right down to
it, the game is actually a simple abstract game of getting your pieces
from point A to point B. But that
doesn’t hurt the game a bit. In
fact, I think it probably helps it because it doesn’t get so bogged down
in “theme” like Monsters Menace America, that it tries to make
more of itself than what it is. In
fact the simple design of Cartagena gives it a certain timeless
quality where you could see yourself playing the exact same version of
the game with your grandkids forty years down the line.
I’ve
read reviews that call Cartagena “Candyland for adults,”
and I think that’s an accurate, if overly simplistic description.
It’s similar in that you draw cards that correspond to spaces on
the board in order to move your pieces down the path toward the end and
the first person to get there wins. But this goes beyond merely flipping a card
and moving, flipping a card and moving.
Players control six pieces (pirates) and have the choice on each
turn of moving forward or backward. To
move forward, you have to play a card from your hand and move to the next
space with that picture on it (skull, ruby, knife, key, bottle, gun). If the closest applicable space already has a pirate (yours or somebody
else’s) on it, then you move to the next available space with that picture.
In theory, if all ruby spaces between you and the sloop are filled,
you could play a ruby and move your pirate all the way to the end.
You
start the game with only six cards, which is obviously not enough to get
all your pirates down the tunnel. You pick up new cards by moving backwards to the closest space with
either one or two pirates already on it.
If there is one pirate on that space, you pick up one card. If there are two pirates, you pick up two cards.
Those
are the only rules. Very simple
and easy to explain, not like Monsters Menace America. The only thing Lauren and I have to constantly
check back at the directions for is to remember how many cards we start
out with: is it four or six… I think it’s nine… But in spite of
how simple the game is to learn, it still lends itself to plenty of strategy
as you “make chains” and “break chains” with your pirates, allowing your
pieces to jump farther down the board without allowing your opponents
take the same advantage. Another
little added twist for this game is that the “board” is actually made
up of six sections of tunnel that you reassemble at the beginning of every
game, making the layout different every time.
There
is a second way of playing this game that lends itself to being more “skill
based” than “luck based.” I’ve
come to realize that for serious gamers, the word “luck” is definitely
a four-letter word and the less a game depends on any luck factor the
more integrity it has. In Cartagena
the two luck factors are that you don’t know what cards your opponents
have and you don’t know what cards you’re going to draw from the pile. So even though there is still a good deal of
strategy going on, the actual decision of whether to draw or move is more
dependent on luck than skill.
In
the “skill based” version of Cartagena, which the directions call
the “Tortuga version” all cards are face up. You can see what your opponents have and they
can see what you have. In addition,
the first five cards of the draw pile are also face up. Much more strategy comes into play because you
can see exactly which chains your opponents will be able to exploit and
make a much more educated decision about where to move and what to draw.
I’ve
read several reviews that say the Tortuga version of Cartagena
isn’t all it’s cracked up to be because it takes what should be a fun
and simple game with just the right amount of strategy, and tries and
turn it into something it is not. In
the end, everybody’s turn ends up taking twice as long as they agonize
over every move and the game turns into a slow boring march rather than
a fun sprint through the tunnel. I
must say that while we’ve never actually played the Tortuga version, I
would tend to agree with those reviews.
There is still plenty of strategy involved in the “luck based”
version of the game and the fact that you don’t know what cards your opponent
has adds a certain “risk factor” to the mix which adds to the excitement.
And yes, it keeps the game moving and fun which, if you’ll remember,
was the whole point of this anyway.
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In
Monsters Menace America you take on the role of one of several
classic movie monsters with slightly altered and comical names – for instance,
the giant ape monster is named Konk. It’s the monster’s job to move around the board, which depicts the
United States, and “stomp” major cities to collect health points. In addition to cities, there are other sites
that you can “stomp” in order to gain Mutation Cards, which give you special
powers, or Infamy Tokens, which allow you extra opportunities to attack
later in the game.
In addition
to controlling a monster, players also control one of the four branches
of the military to defend the country from your opponents’ monsters.
The caveat of this is that all military forces are still, in theory,
loyal to the country, so they cannot attack other units and if you happen
to cross paths with your own monster, you still have to shoot it out.
Players
spend the game building up health points, mutation powers and infamy tokens
in preparation for the Monster Challenge. Once a certain number of cities have been stomped,
the Monster Challenge begins. Players
take turns rolling a die, trying to inflict as much damage as possible
on the opposing monster. It’s obviously
in one’s best interest to have as many health points as possible before
entering the Monster Challenge, but it’s also wise to have collected several
mutation cards and infamy tokens which give you added strength or skill
and allow you to take extra swings at your opponent, respectively. The last monster standing is the winner.
Lauren and
I played this game several times that first night and then again the next
night. We soon realized however,
that the enjoyment on this particular game is a bit short-lived.
Once you get past the novelty of the artwork and the fact that
you’re controlling monsters (I for one had a blast making monster noises
and explosion sound effects whenever I fought a
military unit), the game really kind of drags. There are certain games that lend themselves to complex movement
and strategy. But Monsters Menace
America, by its very design was never intended to be one of those
games. What should be a lighthearted
stomp fest becomes a complex and slow moving game as you move your monster,
deploy your military units, attack a city, fight other units, assess damage
and health points, collect mutation cards and infamy tokens as well as
military research cards, keeping track of what cards you need to play
at the beginning of a turn and which can only be played once and which
ones will actually have an effect on your opponent…
It was too much hassle for a game where, let’s face it, you’re
playing the part of a fire-breathing dinosaur.
