Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a superhero? According to the Reckoners series from Brandon Sanderson and the TV Show The Boys most of us would abuse that power for our own gains. Masters of Mutanite takes that concept and makes it into a fun, deck building game. It doesn’t take itself seriously as witnessed by the awesome 90s throwback Kickstarter video (think Crossfire when watching it!), the artwork, and the fun gameplay. Spoilers, I really like this game, but read more to see why.

Let’s Get Started

Masters of Mutanite, at its core, is a deck building game. Everyone starts out with the same 8 cards and has 4 they can play on their turn. A player does not have to play all 4 cards but can keep any unplayed cards for their next turn. Players also start with a trait that is unique to their character. Each character sheet has 3 starting traits players can choose from. One of those traits is chosen and kept in front of the player for the rest of the game. The 2 not chosen will be shuffled back into the trait deck.

The play area consists of location tiles arranged in a different configuration…

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In Big Monster, players compete, or work in teams, to gather the most points by collecting different types of monster tiles, creating crystals, and accomplishing different goals. It falls in the drafting genre with games like 7 Wonders, Sushi Go, and Bunny Kingdom, but with a slight twist. Instead of passing your stack of tiles to the player next to you, Big Monster introduces a different concept called “smart drafting” where you pass your stack of tiles to any player you wish as long as they have not received a stack from another player.

Big Monster plays 2-6 players with different modes of play — fully competitive or teams — and changes slightly when playing with 2 or 3 players. The player with the most points wins.

The variety of monster tiles in the game provide many scoring opportunities. Some will have a basic point value while others will allow you to upgrade an existing tile to one with more points. You can also gain points from crystals. Different tiles will have sections of a crystal showing and points are awarded when a full crystal is completed. Others don’t give any points themselves but help you accomplish goals in the form of medals which give between 5 or 10 points.

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You and your fellow aliens have been living peacefully on this lovely planet, but some klutz tripped over a coolant cord in the Core and now you only have a short amount of time to get off this planet! However, you’re not the only ones racing to leave. The other colonies (your opponents) are also in the same boat. They’ll do whatever they can to get their aliens to the Lift Off Point before yours, even if that means getting in your way. And to make matters even worse there is a Garglore, a giant monster, you have to beware of. Will you ever get off in time?

Lift Off: Get Me Off This Planet was originally published by Pencil First Games in 2015, and has launched an expanded deluxe edition on Kickstarter, which I will be covering in this review.

The game is played over a varying number of rounds with players completing different actions to get their alien meeples (Alieneeples… yes, the designers actually call them this) to Lift Off Platforms and onto their Spaceship. The game ends when a player has all 10 of their Alieneeples on their Spaceship, in which case they win. If instead the planet explodes first, whoever has the most Alieneeples on their Spaceship is…

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For the last few years we have seen a growing number of game publishers introduce mobile apps that handle a lot of the bookkeeping; games like Mansions of Madness or Chronicles of Crime. The publishers of Chronicles of Crime (Lucky Duck Games) have joined with the publishers of Joan of Arc (Mythic Games) to bring us Time of Legends: Destinies, a competitive app driven game. How does it play out? Let’s find out!

Game Play

In Time of Legends: Destinies each player chooses a character and via a mobile app will  explore locations, talk to other characters, and collect different items to try and accomplish their character’s destiny first. Each character starts with 2 coins and 5 dice (2 big Main Dice and 3 small Effort Dice) as well as their player board to show their different skill stats.

After a brief introduction of the scenario, players will tell the app which characters will be in the scenario. The app will display the different starting stats for each character, then players will place skill tokens on the skill track of their player board corresponding to the values provided by the app.

[caption id="attachment_14384" align="alignnone" width="730"] Player board with skill tokens[/caption]

Then the app will…

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Drafting, a simple game mechanic of choosing a card from your hand and playing it, has been introduced into a few different hobby games. In some it’s the main mechanic, where in others it’s a variation on game play. In Bunny Kingdom, drafting is the main mechanic but with a slight addition of territory control. Will you draft cards to increase your control of the board or to push ahead at the end of the game? So many choices, but what will your strategy be?

Game Play

In Bunny Kingdom you are trying to get the most points by having fiefs that produce different resources and have lots of towers. A fief is any number of orthogonally connected territories and the points for fiefs are calculated with the following formula:

Points = # of towers * # of unique resources

[caption id="attachment_13267" align="alignnone" width="730"] In this example, the pink player has a fief producing wood and fish (2 different resources) and has 3 towers, so they would get 6 points (2 * 3 = 6)[/caption]

Exploration Phase

This is also considered the drafting phase where all players simultaneously choose and place two…

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Leslie Ewing

Tales of Glory

Publisher: Ankama
Designer: Romain Chastan
Availability: For Sale

Simultaneous action selection… ok, I’m interested. Tile laying… yep, still liking this! Beautiful artwork… where can I purchase? I saw a review for this game a few months ago and I’ve been anxiously awaiting its arrival. From a small glance of the rules it seems like a pretty simple game, but with a little bit of meat on it. I can introduce it to family or non-gamer friends and they would have a lot…

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Setup

To get started, shuffle all 15 Relic cards and give 3 to each player facedown. Then put 9 cards face up in a straight line to make up the Continuum. The last card should be put facedown in a horizontal position at the end of the Continuum - this card is called the Codex. Place a crystal on the image on the back of the Codex that matches the color of the card on the other end of the Continuum. Then each player will take their player card (or Sorcerer) and place it under a card of the Continuum that is the same color as the one covered by the crystal on the Codex. Make sure the tip of the Sorcerer’s staff on the Sorcerer card is facing to the player’s right.

The goal of the game is to get 5 crystals first. The main way of doing this is by creating a Paradox. A Paradox is when you have a set of 3 cards in your hand that have the same color, number,…

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Call to Adventure is a 1-4 player game where each player will craft a character by either gaining abilities and going on adventures. Once a player has placed their third card under their Destiny card the round will finish and players add up their points. Whoever has the most points wins.

You can also check out our video review of Call to Adventure and its expansion, Name of the Wind.

Preparing for Adventure

There are 8 different decks of cards to shuffle to get the game started (you’ll also shuffle an additional deck if playing solo or coop). Shuffle the Origin, Motivation, and Destiny card decks separately and give 2 cards from each deck to every player. The players will choose one card from each set and discard the other. After each player has selected their cards they will reveal their Origin and Motivation cards by placing them faceup on their player boards. Their Destiny card will remain face down until the end of the game, but players are allowed to look at their own Destiny card at any time.

Then shuffle the 3 story card decks (labeled with a I, II, or III to indicate which Act the deck represents) and place them in the center of the table where everyone can see them. For a…

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Imagine being part of the OSIRIS-REx Mission team. You need to plan a mission to space and figure out the best rocket that will accomplish the goal of the mission. In Xtronaut: The Game of Solar System Exploration you get to build different rockets to accomplish missions. Get to 10 points first and you win!

Let’s Get Started

Setup is pretty straight forward. Each player picks a player board as well as the different markers of the same color. All the Playing Cards are shuffled and 5 are dealt to each player. The Mission Cards (hex shaped cards) are also shuffled and 1 is dealt to each player and then placed at the top of their player board. Place all the remaining Playing Cards and Mission Cards facedown within reach of all players. You are ready to begin.

The goal of the game is to reach 10 points first. You gain points by building up your rocket on your player board to get to the right delta-V (change in velocity) that is required by your Mission Card. The size of the rocket you use  to finish the Mission Card will determine the amount of points you receive. If you don’t reach 10 points after finishing a mission, select a new Mission…

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Chess is thought to have originated in the 7th century, and is played by millions of people around the world who love it for its strategy and complex thinking. What would happen if we included a bunch of cards into the mix that will throw off your strategy? Enter Kamikaze Chess.

Overview

Kamikaze Chess is a small deck of cards - 24 Chess piece cards (12 for white and 12 for black) along with a set of 32 Kamikaze cards. The Kamikaze cards are placed face down to create the Chess board and, when a player lands on one of the cards, it is flipped over and the action is performed. Unless otherwise stated, the action on the card is to be performed by the piece that landed on the card.

The 6 different actions are

• Sudden Death - remove this Chess piece from the board (except for the King) - 8 in the deck
• Attack - move this Chess piece now but not to its previous spot (cannot capture the King) - 6 in the deck
• Trade - swap this piece with any other active chessman - 6 in the deck
• Sacrifice - revive any 1 of your captured chessmen in…

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Imagine yourself reflecting on a moment in your past that you wish you could redo and all of a sudden a future you appears. They tell you, “Here is a time machine, you know what you have to do.” You take the time machine and realize it is set to go to the date of the event you were just thinking about! As you hit the button that will send you back the future you says, “Don’t mess it up this time!”

Read along as we review The Perfect Moment, the 2017 Card Design Contest from Button Shy Games. It was designed by Michael Brown and art was done by Jonathan Fisher.

Overview

The Perfect Moment is a two-player card game where players race to have the most points. Players will use the actions on the double-sided cards to arrange the cards in front of them to match symbols on other cards in order to score points. The theming behind it all is that you are essentially trying to change a part of your past with those items, but we'll more on the theme later. The deck only has 18 cards in it so the game lasts about 15-30 minutes.

This game has…

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So, you got a new game. You watched reviews and how-to-play videos and maybe even read a few articles about it. After playing the game a few times you quickly move on to another one. I find myself doing this quite a bit. Does anyone else have this problem?

My husband and I got into the gaming hobby in the last few years after some friends introduced us to games like Small World, Agricola, and Kingsburg. My addiction to board games really started when we found the YouTube series TableTop. I binge watched the entire first three seasons in just a few days. These days I keep up to date with a few board game channels including The Dice Tower and Man vs. Meeple. I can never get enough!

But over the last few months I’ve noticed a trend… the older games in my collection don’t get played like they did when they were new. Is it because the older games aren’t that good? Or do I have the “Cult of the New” syndrome? “Cult of the New” is generally for the games that are brand new on the market, not games that are just new to me. So, is there a name for this? Calling it something like, “I only want to play the new to me games,”…

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