Colt Express Board Game

Maybe I should just give up my day job and turn into a board game reviewer. Might be nice. 

Anyhoo, today I was given a copy of Colt Express as part of the Father's Day thing. I also got an amazing book. But that's for another day, and another blog post. 

The box says that each game takes around 40 minutes to play. Our first game took a bit longer than this because the first thing we had to do was assemble a little cardboard train that is the playfield. The pieces are beautifully drawn and fit together very well. And the box cleverly turns into a set of compartments so that you don't have to dismantle the pieces, you can just pop them straight in the box when you have finished playing.

The game has an interesting mechanic. Each round a player builds up a sequence of moves from a random selection of cards their character gets. Some moves are open, others are secret. The good news is that if your moves go well you get to pick up the valuables in the carriages or, better yet, punch someone and pick up the loot that they drop. The bad news is that if they do the same to you first, your move sequence gets thrown out of whack and you end up punching thin air and shooting at shadows. 

This is our little train. Players can gather inside the train and punch each other or go onto the roof and shoot at each other. And you get free bits of cactus to help build the atmosphere.

Each player has a special skill (although for the one I played it didn't seem that special to be honest) and the little train works marvellously as a fighting arena. I didn't win. But I really want to have another go to see if I can have more success next time. 

Skull, Mascarade, Coup and Snake Oil

Adam is leaving us. End of the month. Heading to Canada. We wish him luck and thank him for all his efforts making the systems work and helping to organise lots of lovely student events. We are really going to miss him around the place.

The only good thing about him leaving is that in celebration (?) we had a games evening tonight. I was quite keen to have a go at Snake Oil, as I'd not played it before, and other folks had brought along games that they thought would be fun too.

Snake Oil is an OK game. Pitch ideas for dodgy products, and take it in turns to be the discerning (or not) customer. Not bad as a party ice breaker but limited, as observed by David, in that there is restricted potential for deceiving the other players.

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Mascarade is an awesome game, especially if you can get 13 players playing at the same time, which we did.

Lots of bluff, counter bluff, and bluffing when you don't even know who you actually are. Strongly recommended if you are expecting  a large number, but I'm not sure how it would go with four.

I'm going to have a go though. 

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We've played Coup before. Always fun, always infuriating. Especially when you are playing it with this bunch of reprobates.

Bluffing is not encouraged, it is pretty much mandatory. 

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The final game of the evening was Skull. Which pretty much did me in for the night.

Rather like poker, but distilled down into the bluffing and deception bit.

A really, really good game with the right people. And these were definitely the right people. I didn't win, but by golly I was very close. 

Qwirkle is Fun

If you like dominos you'll like Qwirkle. And if you've not played much dominos I still reckon you'll enjoy it. Players take it in turns to lay down blocks and make lines of matching colours and shapes. We spent a happy hour or so playing the game today.

Ticket to Ride Board Game

Ticket to Ride is a track laying train game that I've always wanted to play. And tonight I got to have a go. Up to 5 people get to plan and execute rail journeys against each other. It's great fun. And you get to learn a bit of American geography as well.

Christmas Camel Racing

Hope you had a great Christmas. Ours was lovely. And we spent some time playing Camel Up, the best camel racing game I've ever played. (and I've played one or two).

You get to place bets on the leader at each stage and also on the the ultimate race result. The balance is very finely wrought and leaders can switch position in the blink of an eye, so you have to be somewhat strategic in where you put your money. 

My opinion of the game is in no way influenced by the fact that by some inspired bets I managed to win the first time we played (I came last in the second game).

Great fun for up to five players.

Cash and Guns is Great Fun

While I was in London I bought a board game called Cash and Guns. Tonight we got to play it. The game is set in the aftermath of a successful heist. The gang is gathered to share out the loot, but it seems there is no honour amongst thieves. So everybody gets to try and stick each other up to get the richest pickings. It's a fast moving game of risk taking and score settling. Each player gets a foam gun to point at the other players and you can shout "Banzai" at crucial points in the gameplay. 

It is a riot. We played it with 7 players (the maximum is 8) and it worked really well. I think it would be less fun with four though. 

Rampage Board Game

Rampage is a deeply silly game. Each player is a monster intent on wreaking havoc on a carefully set up gameboard full of  buildings ripe for destruction and citizens ripe for eating. The game moves are great (one of them involves dropping your monster from a great height onto the population underneath), but things are  balanced so that you have to carefully manage the mayhem that you make. 

We had a go tonight and it was great fun. I really like playing board games, and this is one like nothing I've seen before. 

Loving Love Letter

A trip away wouldn’t be a trip away without a silly game or two to play. So I got hold of a copy of Love Letter. The game is beautifully presented in a red carrying pouch, which is just as well as you only get 16 cards for your money. But the game is still super.

Each player takes the role of a potential suitor finding confidantes who will deliver their messages of love to a beautiful princess. During a round you have to find the best person to deliver your message of undying devotion. But you can also knock out other players and swap cards with each other in a way which is great fun. Even if, as for me, most of your cunning moves misfire in a spectacular fashion.

Number one son observes that at the end of the day it is really only about chance and at some points you are really only choosing from one of a number of possible options which all have a similar probability of success. He’s right, but the setting and the way you can knobble people if you get lucky carry the game along to the right side of fun for me. Well worth a look I reckon.

A Japanese Walk

Tokaido is a game where players seek rest and good experiences while travelling the “East Sea Road” in Japan. It is a nice twist on the board game format and has beautiful artwork on the cards and the board. I didn’t manage to win, but hey, it’s all about the journey, right?

Zombie Dice for Brain Eating Fun

Another day, another game review. I’m taking quite an aggressive stance on the holiday this week I’m afraid, so that means that if you don’t receive a response to a work related email it is because I’m, quite literally, too busy doing nothing. Normal servicer (or what passes for it) will be resumed on Monday next week.

And so on to Zombie Dice. It is a nice, simple, dice game with you playing the role of a zombie, hungry for brains and rather less keen on shotgun blasts. The mechanic is simple enough to get your head (or at least skull) round and great fun.  For me the best bit though was looking up the product on Amazon for a link and finding that game was linked with the following special promotion:

Just what your average Zombie needs….

Braggart–a great game of boasting

Spent some time today playing Braggart. This is a splendid little card game. Each player takes the role of a hero in a bar, boasting of their great deeds and daring dos. You assemble your boasts and present them to your opponents to gain points and win the game. But they can call you a liar and change your story to one which is considerably less impressive. The artwork on the cards is great and the tales you can spin are hilarious. Great fun and well worth tracking down.

Gloom is all about Fun

Another game we spent some time playing over the holidays was Gloom. This is a card game where you make bad things happen to bad people and get points for it. You take control of a thoroughly disreputable bunch and inflict pain, torment and ultimately death on them for fun and profit. You can also make nice things happen to your opponents, should you feel that way disposed.

The winner is the one who manages to make the most unhappy bunch of corpses in the cemetery. It probably doesn’t sound very nice, but it is great fun to play. Then after this we all got together to wish each other a Happy New Year.

And a very Happy New Year to all my readers.

Complicated Games

We played another complicated game today. Great fun, although at one point my brain did begin to run out of my ears.

Anyone of you clever folks out there able to tell me what the game is?

The Most Complicated Game I’ve Ever Played

Tonight we had a go at “The Most Complicated Game I’ve Ever Played”. It’s called “High Frontier” and boy is there a lot going on. The aim of the game is to colonise space, build up your fleet, explore planets and asteroids and boldly….. Well, you know the rest.

The board is full of incredibly detailed descriptions of places to try and reach using rockets which you need to carefully provision and fuel if you are going to get anywhere. I think it would take a day to play it properly, we only really managed to scratch the surface of the gameplay. But I did manage to colonise Mars, which I’m rather pleased about. The game is packed with proper science about space exploration, and much of the gameplay is really a simulation of the things you’d need to do if you really wanted to explore space. Great fun.

King of Tokyo

Number one son doesn’t like board games with lots of dice. He reckons that they remove the skill, and doesn’t like being beaten by blind chance. I, on the other hand, love lots of dice. I like to be able to point to an unlucky throw as the reason for my failure to win, rather than any lack of skill/intelligence on my part. I reckon that chess would be vastly improved by a bunch of dice and a spinner.

Having said all that, number one son rather likes the “King of Tokyo” game, even though it has lots of dice. I like it too. Each player is a monster trying to take over Tokyo, or be the last one standing. A turn is a bit like the Yahtzee game, where you repeatedly throw a bunch of dice to get a good set, and then decide what to do with it. You have to balance attacking, healing and buying power ups as you go along.

The games are fast and furious and fortunes can wax and wane on the throw of the dice. We got through a couple of games in an hour and they were great fun. Even though I didn’t win.

Pesky Dice.

Wallace and Gromit’s Fleeced Boardgame

Spent a good chunk of last night playing Wallace and Gromit’s Fleeced the Boardgame. This is based on A Close Shave, one of the brilliant series of animations produced by Nick Park at Aardman. You play as one of six characters in the story (I was Preston, the evil robot dog) and you move your beautifully made playing pieces over the board trying to snare sheep and get them back to your lair. You can do this by fair means, picking them up from their hideouts and leading them home. Or you can play foul, and “rustle” sheep from the other players.

The game is full of lovely touches, from the whistles that each player needs to blow before they herd their sheep to the cheese cards that you can pick up on the way. There is even a “Hard Cheese” card that gets you sent straight to the police station.

Some of the reviews in Amazon are quite funny. One complains that you can’t finish the game because everybody keeps stealing sheep from each other and nobody wins. It is true that you could play the game like this, just like two chess players could play for ever by moving their pieces back and forth and not doing much. However, I reckon it is absolutely great fun. I might even spend some of the “Miles Millions” ™ on a copy.

Take the Brain Loser

Having beaten number one son at his game yesterday, today I thought I’d take him on at one of my old games. Take the Brain. This is a game I got many, many, years ago. It is a bit like chess, but your  pieces (numbskulls and ninnies) can only move according to the arrows on the squares they occupy. Very tactical and strategic. Which is probably why I lost.

However, it brought home how useful it is to play games against your kids. If you win you feel good. If you lose you feel good that you have kids clever enough to beat you…

Mage Knight Winner

Over the last two evenings we’ve been playing Mage Knight, a game that number one son brought along. My goodness it’s complicated. Cards, markers, dice, crystals, hexagonal maps, little figures and towers. And a winner. Me. Not sure how I did it but I ended up with more fame than anyone else at the end, which is how they decide who wins. Great fun.

New Years Eve Games: Dobble, Spot it! and The Resistance

We spent New Years Eve playing some games we’d not tried before.

First up was Dobble. This is an awesome little pattern matching card game with very simple rules and amazingly raucous gameplay. Great fun with a whole bunch of mini-games. While looking up links for this blog post I’ve found that Dobble is no more, but the game is now being sold under the much more sensible name of Spot-It. Same game but much cheaper. If you want to keep a bunch of kids (or adults who are a bit like kids) busy – but not quiet – then take a look at this game.

The Resistance is much more cerebral. You are either a loyal resistance member or a traitor bent on sabotaging missions. As the game progresses it is up to the loyal members to identify the traitors and the traitors to sow confusion amongst the ranks and thwart everything. This is great fun too, especially if you get to play as a traitor.

Galaxy Trucker

This is my space truck. Didn’t win.

Galaxy Trucker is a really good board-game. We spent some time today finding out how it works, and what happens if you build a space ship with no engines.