[caption id="attachment_216469" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] I played both a physical copy and a Tabletop Simulator mod. The Tabletop Simulator mod is a delight as well.[/caption]

Theme

Mantis Falls is set in a fictional 1940’s mountain town ruled by the mob. The art and naming is supposed to evoke the feeling of a mystery show like Twin Peaks, and the manual actually recommends the Twin Peaks soundtrack as theme music. The artwork, naming conventions, and overall theme do a great job of drawing you into a general sense of dark foreboding, conspiracy, and twisted scheming.…

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So what changed? Covid-19. It sent my kids home early from school, which gave my 9 year old son enough down time to learn how to circumvent my installation controls. So one day I walk in and see my 9 year old and 3 year old sons playing Munchkin: Quacked Quest. I think I even said, “Why are you playing that? It sucks…”

Regardless of my own personal feelings, the kids, especially the 3 year old, kept choosing it over other traditional PC games like Minecraft, Jurassic Park Lego, Rocket League, and a library of over 200 other games. My 3 year old could figure the game out enough to complain that his big brother got the final hit on a giant chicken at the end of one session.

After seeing my…

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Shuffle Grand Prix is an interesting foray into the board gaming world from Bicycle’s newish Games by Bicycle division. It feels like a mash up of Mario Kart and Smash Up. If you’re not familiar with those two games, Mario Kart is a racing video game with the ability to attack opponents and Smash Up is a card game where you select two imaginative factions—such as aliens and pirates—and mix them up to form a team to capture bases. In Shuffle Grand Prix, you take two drivers and mix up their ability cards with their varied strengths and race your opponents until there’s no road left to race. The team of drivers which traveled the farthest is the winner.

Despite the weird concept of a race with no true finish line, the game is short and fun, great for a light snack on a board game night. Read on to learn a bit more about the game play; feel free to skip ahead to learn exactly what I think of Shuffle Grand Prix and see if it’s right for you.

[caption id="attachment_20940" align="aligncenter" width="730"] A Bicycle game relies heavily on cards, but there are some trophy tokens here too.[/caption]

Gameplay

How…

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Such a complex game has great potential to be the most rewarding game in your collection...but with a very steep learning curve, it also has the potential to scare away many…

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Romeo + Juliet (the Baz Luhrmann edition) is one of my favorite all time movies. Combined with my amateur love of theater, themes involving Romeo and Juliet always intrigue me. So, seeing a game named Council of Verona is an instant eyebrow raise for me. Turns out I’ve been exiled in Mantua for too long, as the copy I received is the 3rd edition currently (October 2019) on Kickstarter. 

I asked myself, “how does the story of Romeo & Juliet transform into a game?” Designer Michael Eskue answered that question by creating a mixture of card drafting, motive deduction, and gambling from the perspective of the frustrated citizens of Verona. I delve into the details of how he accomplished that in the Gameplay section. If you’re already familiar with the game, you can skip past to the section titled From 1st to 3rd Edition which precedes my final Thoughts.

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Gameplay

Premise

In Council of Verona, players represent influential citizens of Verona who are ready to see an end to the conflict between the Montagues and the Capulets. The Prince has formed a council to mediate the conflict. Players use their influence to manipulate who gets to be on the council and who gets exiled from Verona. The story of power here…

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There are a lot of reasons that Chinatown, a game originally released in German in 1999, has since been reprinted twice in English. It’s a solid, fun negotiation game.

There are also reasons that it hasn’t gained the world-wide fame that games like Monopoly or Catan have. It’s only fun if you enjoy trading or negotiation. Additionally, its theme of playing as a Chinese immigrant to 1960’s New York drips with racist stereotypes, so you’ll find yourself slightly uncomfortable if you pay any attention to the theme, whether you’re culturally sensitive or uncomfortable playing as another race. (There’s no option to play as a 19-year-old Donald Trump.)

In 2019 and on, should you buy/play Chinatown? Read on for an overview of the 2019 Z-Man Games edition’s gameplay and artwork, as well as my thoughts.

[caption id="attachment_14529" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Use the black token to mark which year (round) from 1965 to 1970.[/caption]

Gameplay

In Chinatown the winning objective is to acquire the most money. Players are Chinese immigrants to 1960’s New York with the dream of owning an empire of large income-generating shops within Chinatown. Each player starts with $50,000. There are 6 rounds of play represented by the years 1965 to 1970.

This Drives the Market

…

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For a nanogame, Orchard: 9 Card Solitaire has received mega-recognition. Beginning as an entry by Mark Tuck in the 2018 9-Card Nanogame Print and Play Design , it has gone on to win that contest and to also win Board Game Geek’s 2018 Golden Geek Award for Print and Play Games. Now, it’s soon to be officially published by Side Room Games. That’s mega-awesome for a design that had to fit an interestingly restrictive set of critiera: 9 standard sized cards and up to 18 other components, along with a logo.

Read further to learn how Orchard followed those restrictions in creating a contest-winning game that you may just want to pick up for a fruitful day.

Components

Orchard has 18 cards. Wait, what?! Yes, Orchard has 18 cards. The original contest restricted games to 9 cards but allowed the games to utilize both sides of the cards. Mr. Tuck’s initial design was only 9 faces but he expanded to use both sides during the contest to give players more variety between games. Once the contest was over, designers were free to do as they chose. For Orchard, that meant dividing the 9 cards into 18 separate cards with actual backs.

Splitting…

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Pandemic is one of the first games I experienced with a ticking time bomb. In Pandemic, players must draw from an infection deck each turn. This causes infections to spread slowly, but interspersed among the deck are 5-6 epidemic cards which cause the infections to ramp up. Players must balance dealing with the infection directly and researching cures in order to win. Another more complicated game of this nature is Dawn of Peacemakers.

In Good Dog, Bad Zombie, the ticking mechanism is the spread of zombies on the board. The game ends in defeat when zombies have successfully attacked 10 times, which causes the dogs to go feral. In other words, the dogs forget what it’s like to be pets. The dogs win when they rescue enough hoomans to take to a new town to preserve their domesticated way of life.

…

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Glink

In fact, the first time I introduced a goblin to the party, I had taken a turn at being the DM. I did a double no-no on that adventure - introducing the goblin while setting them up in a dream adventure. I had my reasons; I wanted to throw in a lot of puzzles and other weird stuff into a world our regular DM was running without messing anything up. The moment the players realized that it was a dream, they groaned, so... damage done. I still introduced my new player character, a goblin named Glink. Not only was he a goblin, but he was a thieving rogue goblin. Having killed nine goblins earlier on in the same adventure, the other players lacked much trust in goblins and kept Glink bound up and weaponless for quite some time. I found the experience to be an exciting and welcome change from my ho hum quiet monk.

[caption…

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3 Laws of Robotics is the latest game to tackle the social deduction genre group of games known as Mafia or Werewolf. It’s understandable why so many game designers have created their own take; these games successfully bring together gregarious outgoing jocks with quiet theater nerds and everyone in between, providing a potentially larger market than most games.

Each designer tries to address some perceived problem in the basic game. Some versions add multiple roles. One Night shortens the game but increases the intensity by shortening the narrative experience to one night. The Resistance adds more information to deduce from while making it playable at shorter player counts; at the same time drastically altering the feel of the game.

My own original experience with Mafia was actually playing it in Ukraine with college age youths who obligingly played in English for my benefit. It’s been nearly twenty years, but I still look back with a great fondness for that time of gaming fellowship with brothers and sisters from another culture. We played Mafia for hours with just a few roles and games were loud, well-paced and joyful - despite the theme of death involved. Until now, I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the various additions or modifications to the game.…

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There's nothing contrary about upcoming Kickstarter game, Gartenbau. Designed by Alex Johns and David Abelson, Gartenbau finds a way to evoke tranquility and peace amidst a race for limited resources and prestige. Much like a dog show or a small town garden contest, Gartenbau hides what would normally be a cutthroat competition with a thick cover of civility, cuteness, and beauty. Where the former contests require hard work and experience, this latest contest of flower gardening requires flexible puzzle solving to grow the most prestigious garden and be crowned the Master Gardener. Read further to learn more about Gartenbau, how it plays, and why I'm itching to put my maids all in a row.

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Theme and Artwork

“Gartenbau” is actually German for “horticulture.” The German naming is no accident and helps to signal that Gartenbau is a Euro style game (though fully American in creation). In Gartenbau, each player takes on the role of a gardener who is racing to grow 4 fully mature flowers from seedlings. However, the theme doesn’t begin with flowers and gardening.

Instead, the designers have indicated that Gartenbau is based on color theory and it shows throughout the game. The colors of the game begin with a combination of primary and secondary colors and combine towards…

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Just as in its movie namesake, the Home Alone Game is all Christmassy in show and decor and in general atmosphere, but the entire gameplay is a ruthless contest of cat and mice. As I read through the instruction manual, I immediately texted pictures to my Android: Netrunner buddy, “Dude, this is Netrunner, Kevin is the Corp and the Wet Bandits are runners! In Ugly Christmas sweaters!” That’s a perfect summary for anyone who has played or understands Netrunner. But it isn’t a direct 1:1 though.

[caption id="attachment_10847" align="aligncenter" width="730"] One kid, two very dumb bandits.[/caption]

Setup

In Home Alone, players decide who will play Kevin, the kid who gets left home in the movies, and who will play as a Bandit. The main game is a…

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Blessed are the Peacemakers...or do you want to be Lord of Harrenhal?

Risk is one of my guilty pleasures as a Christian pacifist. Scheming, war, and violence are bad things! BUT I love the aspects of playing a war game. Using tactics, strategy, and manipulative diplomacy/propaganda to conquer the entire world through a series of roughly simulated battles gives me joy. So when I saw a request for reviews of a game titled Dawn of Peacemakers, my interest was piqued. Upon quickly purviewing the Kickstarter page, I thought to myself, “oh this is great, a game about stopping two warring factions. Blessed are the peacemakers, indeed!”

[caption id="attachment_10597" align="alignnone" width="730"] ♬Why can’t we friends, oh why can’t we be friends?♫[/caption]

Upon close inspection, I found the game to be less Lord Jesus and more Lord Petyr Baelish (Littlefinger from Game of Thrones - a manipulative schemer). Not a discouragement, just a mental resynchronization. To win each of the main campaign’s scenarios, you want to make both armies retreat simultaneously. Instead of controlling the armies, up to four players each control an adventurer traveling around the battlefield attempting to manipulate, scheme, and undermine both armies until they each give up in frustration and despair. There’s also a skirmish game where…

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