Put Your Blue Genes On (A Review of Genegrafter)

If intense stares could kill...

Evolve or perish.

These words conclude the story introduction to the card game Genegrafter, an introduction that promises a tense standoff between various factions of genetically enhanced superhumans.  Set in a futuristic cyberpunk world where these supers are starting to take over, Genegrafter gives you the opportunity to build your own faction of combatants and attempt to wipe out your opponents.

Does it succeed?

We've Got Supers! (A Review of Sentinels of the Multiverse: Enhanced Edition)

They're back!

Superheroes. Who among us hasn't at one time in their life donned a blanket cape or rushed around the park pretending to have flight or super-strength. The draw is undeniable; if you are a superhero, you can still be yourself, but stronger, faster, better. Since we can't actually get superpowers (yet?), what better way to experience the excitement than playing a boardgame about being superheroes?

While a number of superhero games had been released in the past, most were quick knockoffs or movie cash-ins with no real quality inside the box. Then, one day, along came Sentinels of the Multiverse - a superhero game not tied to a movie, show, or comic book, targeting the hobby-gaming market with the promise of substantial gameplay. We reviewed the original game, which came in a tiny box and consisted entirely of an unruly mess of cards. We liked it, but felt that it fell short in many areas.

Fortunately, the game was successful enough to warrant an expansion (and then two more), and with that first expansion came the new "Enhanced Edition" of the base game. With some gameplay tweaks, a much larger box with better storage, and the addition of tokens, lets talk about how the Enhanced Edition improves upon the original game.

News Bits: 8/13/2012

This week is GenCon, so that's the biggest news. If you're not going (like me), you can live vicariously through those who are. And you can be sure that, come next Monday, I'll have the juiciest tidbits ready for your perusal, with my usual comments, of course.

Oh, and if you will be at GenCon, be sure to track down chief dragon slayer @Futurewolfie...if he isn't too busy doing all the tasks I've assigned to him.

Now: the news.

Dominion, More Dominion, and Even More Dominion
Again, I make no pretense of impartiality here: I love Donald X's design. I think it's fantastic. So I was especially excited when he released these five previews of Dark Ages (1, 2, 3, 4, 5)--with another 26 cards awaiting discovery at GenCon! But that's only one Dominion announcement. The other centers on third-party Dominion apps and websites. As of August 22, all these will close down. (You can see one such announcement on Board Game Arena and another on Isotropic.) On the positive side, the official Dominion app (and online implementation) will be released August 16 for iOS and Android. Details are a bit scant now, but it seems that users will be able to play the base game for free, with additional expansions available as in-app purchases. And according to DXV on BGG, playing with expansions will require only one player to have purchased it. All of this, depending on in-app prices, seems like a pretty good deal to me, and I am super stoked about this.

In which I take a break from writing about games and instead write about superheroes.

If you haven't heard about it, NBC just recently started running a new show called "The Cape."  A quick overview of the plot:  the [fictional city's] last good cop is framed to make room for an evil corporation to take over the police force, and as a result, the city. Said cop falls in with circus people, receives an awesome cape, learns some escape-artist illusions, and decides to fight back, as a vigilante, to save the city from previously mentioned evil corporation (ARC) and return to his family.

About 3 episodes in, and I love this show.  Here's why.