Cursed! (a mini-review of Small World: Cursed!)

 

Small World: Cursed! is a mini-expansion to the game Small World that adds a few new races and a few new powers. Much like Grand Dames, "mini" is definitely an accurate description—this expansion is essentially the punchboards with the races, their tokens, and the special powers wrapped in a paper sleeve. (Also like Grand Dames, it's so small it was hard to find on the shelf of my FLGS. Be warned.) Fortunately, it also comes at a mini-price of only $10 (and if you look you can find it discounted even further).

Is Cursed! worth it? I think so.

Here Come the Ladies... (a mini-review of Grand Dames of Small World)

Grand Dames of Small World is a mini-expansion to Small World, adding three new races and two new special powers. "Mini" is an accurate term, as this expansion is essentially a few punchboards with the tokens wrapped in a sheet of paper, coming in at about 1/4 inch thick. It was hard to see on the shelf of the board game store, it's so tiny. Fortunately, it comes at a low price of $10, and if you look around, you can find it discounted even further. Is it worth the price?

Dicing through Africa (a preview of DiceAFARI)

Kickstarter has been a hotbed of activity recently, with new designers and projects as prevalent as the fast-flowing backer funds. But it's not just the unpublished who are turning to Kickstarter for a boost. Established companies have been using the platform as well to fund their projects.

One of these projects is DiceAFARI, a new dice game from Stratus Games. (We loved their Eruption, which came out earlier this year.) Stratus Games, in a bold (and genius) move, has made the prototype of DiceAFARI available to anyone who wants to give the game a try. Below are our impressions.

[Ed. note: This is a preview of a non-final non-production copy of the game.  Our opinions reflect that of the game at the time we played it; the final product may feature different gameplay, art, and components.  The pictures are of a print-and-play prototype version of the project, with components were robbed from a copy of Agricola.]

[Ed. note 2: Also of interest is the Board Game Geek designer diary by designer Chris James.]

Gaming Weekends and First Impressions

Living as I do on the edge of civilization (or at least far away from the rest of my kin), I try to spend my birthday among family, and this year was no exception. I traveled to the exotic land of Nebraska to spend the weekend with my sister and brother-in-law, and true to Nebraska's landscape, there wasn't much to do except game. All told we fit in eleven plays of eight unique games (three of them mine, two already reviewed—El Grande and Eminent Domain—and our 7 Wonders review coming this week), four of which were first-time plays for me. I also got to try a new game I got for my birthday and attended open gaming at my local gamestore this past Saturday (I went with friends, so I didn't chicken out this time). Needless to say, this would be considered gaming overload for most, but I took it in stride, and now I'll give you my first impressions of all the new games I played.

(First plays of Midgard, Glen More, Puerto Rico, Resident Evil Deck-Building Game, Ra, and Stone Age)

The Great Pig Roast (a mini-review of Eruption)

The long-dormant volcano is about to erupt...and thanks to Stratus Games, you'll get to be part of the action (and maybe burn your friends' villages in the process). Check out what we think of this new game below.

[Ed. Note: This is a preview of a print-and-play copy of a pre-published version of the game.  Our opinions are based on the status of the game at that time.  It is possible that rules, art, design, or other gameplay elements were changed for the final production version. ]

Quarriors Mini-Review

A game that has been on everyone's radar, it seems, is Quarriors. I mentioned that I had the chance to try it at GenCon, and since then, I've played it a few more times. I don't feel comfortable giving the game a full review treatment after my limited number of plays, but I wanted to help you, dear reader, make an informed decision about whether this game is worth your gaming dollars. It's also best if you know at the outset that dice games are not my favorite. I typically favor cube and card games. So, please, take this opinion with heaping spoonfuls of salt. (And if any of my concerns are mitigated by playing the game more, let me know in the comments! I would like to be fair.)

A follow-up to Intrigue - too many cooks? (A mini-review of 6-player Dominion/Dominion Intrigue))

8 player dominion is highly NOT recommended

In the past week I had a chance to play the 6-player variant of Dominion made possible when one possesses both the base game and the Intrigue expansion.

The reason for creating this variant is obvious:  sometimes you have more than 3 friends over to play a game, and Dominion is one of the best games out there.  It's fun, it's easy, you never know what to expect, and it's fast.  Games are meant to be a social experience, after all, and why should such an experience be limited to 4?

Unfortunately, adding more players creates a problem that just about EVERY game has to face - downtime.  Waiting for 3 people to take their turns? Not so bad.  Waiting for 5?  Now that's a different story.  In addition, the more players you have, the more likely that one or more of those players will talk a long, slow turn, thinking too hard when they should have been planning ahead during the other players' turns.

Explore further! Explore Further! Go back to Camp! (First impressions of Incan Gold)

I had an excellent evening this past friday night, playing games with a large group of friends.  Since we're talking about board games and not teen partying, 'large' is 7 people, too many to play certain games like Catan, Smallworld, or Dominion.  However we did pull out some old favorites - Falling and the Great Dalmuti - and one new game - Incan Gold.  Falling was a blast as always, and I was surprised how well it worked even with 6 "goblins" falling at once.  Space gets a little tight when everyone's trying to reach over each other, but I think a big crowd makes it all the more entertaining.  Dalmuti is a casual classic, a good finisher to any game night as rounds are fast and you can play as long as you like without requiring much energy.
Incan Gold, however, was a new experience, and I thought I might as well share my impressions.

Aaaaaaaaaaah!!! (A review of Falling)

"Goblins falling from the sky
can you teach us how to-THUMP!"
-traditional goblin falling song


Thus begins the card game called Falling: The Goblin Edition.  Falling is a simple, fast paced card game for up to 8 friends.  It takes about 5 minutes to explain the rules, though the game is best learned by playing through a few rounds - which are very, very short.  I was not lying about fast-paced.

The concept behind Falling is simple: you are goblins, and you are falling.  As the instructions note, it doesn't really matter where, or why - but there are a lot of goblins, so some of them are bound to be heading towards the ground.