Spotlight on Games
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1001 Nights of Gaming
- T -
- Ta Yü
Abstract tile-layer and connectivity game of river construction
named after the legendary Chinese hero who saved the Realm
of the Middle Kingdom from flood by creating a multitude
of rivers to divert the torrent to a distant sea. A pricey
package, but the very high quality components are suitable for
museum display, or your coffee table when guests come over.
Quite enjoyable for those who find fun in something like Streetcar and makes a very
nice outing for competing couples. The rules are few and not
difficult, so it can even work well for your non-gameplaying
friends. Seems to work best with the "save one tile" variant
and in four-player mode where half the fun is figuring out what
your partner is doing. Has seen three editions so far. The first
featured white tiles with blue color while a subsequent "lava"
one featured garish red tiles with white imprint. There was also
the Kosmos non-edition which consisted of the original blue version
wiith the addition of a sticker reading "Sonderedition"
(special edition).
Wolfgang Lüdtke of Kosmos has stated that it was a one-time
five thousand piece edition whose only difference was that the
price was reduced from 40 to 20 Euros.
[Two vs. Two Games]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6
Niek Neuwahl; Kosmos/Rio Grande-1999/Goliath; 2-4; 8+
- Table Skittles (Skittle-Bowl)
Action game in which one uses a ball attached to the
top of pole by a chain to knock over ten pins. Of limited
strategy, but high fun factor as pins crash and fall about.
[images]
- Taboo
Clearly intended as a party word game, is essentially a juiced-up
version of Password. Here
instead of the give-a-clue, guess-an-answer sequence, the clue
giver speaks rapid fire within a time limit as do the answerers,
the only limitation being five words on the clue card which may
not be used. Also similar to the old Pyramid game show.
Exciting fun, but can pale once players get too familiar
with the cards. As with most party games, loosely-defined
rules can cause a problem, especially with respect to what
is and is not a legal clue. For example, if "pencil" and
related forms of the word are forbidden, is "pen" excluded?
[Two vs. Two Games]
[Party Games]
[Buy it at amazon.com]
- Tabula - The Roman Game
Recreation of the ancient Roman version of what is
today better known as
Backgammon
and in ancient times also sometimes known as Alea. The look
of the board and components do not seem to be trying to be replicate the
ancient game except with respect to the rules, the main difference
being that both players' pieces must roll to enter the board,
akin to Pachisi,
and also that both players pieces start and end at the same space.
The net result is probably generally more hits and possibly
more influence of luck. Tokens are nicely-tactile flattened
glass marbles.
- Tactic Blue
This is a collection of six pure abstracts, all employing the same
pieces and boards. Considering the titles, I wonder that it wasn't
called "Abstract A" or even "Go With Your A Game". Included are a
colored, double sided folding board – one featuring a traditional
square grid, the other a triangular grid – and 100 round pieces
in two colors, all inside a somewhat flimsy blue box. Overall the
set is great for fans of pure abstracts and those enjoying fast,
elegant two-player games. Those who play looking for a theme can,
of course, move on; the rest may like to read about the individual
games, below. [Bambus]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation:
Low; Personal Rating: 6
- Tadsch Mahal (Taj Mahal)
A Knizia "large" game, but as always the flow is very
smooth. Sort of like a combination of Knizia's
Kanzler
(which features a similar card play mechanism)
with his
Imperium.
Also reminiscent of his
Attacke.
Players bid and bluff with cards
giving something of a
Poker
feel. With the results they either try to
collect sets of tiles from the board or build connectivity on the board.
There are at least three good
strategies to pursue, possibly more. Seems to be more fun than
RA,
less absorbing than
Euphrat & Tigris.
Of some concern is the tendency that a player who stumbles in the early going
often seems stuck in a rut and unable to recover. Also it permits
a single player who feels vindictive to largely ruin matters for another.
It remains arguable whether the severe penalty for losing a contest is
a design flaw or a mere matter for strategy.
Set in India by the publisher even though it
was originally designed to represent the consolidation following
the Norman Conquest of England. The original theme probably would
have worked better, but the artistic quality of Hans im Glück
is, as usual, not to be denied – overall they are best in category
really.
And, there is more than one reality. When this game was being published, there
had already been far too many recent ones set in medieval Europe – a visit to
India was a most refreshing change of scene.
A
Deutscher
Spielepreis winner.
- Tahuantinsuyu
Once I had a game prototype called "Magna Graecia", but when I
showed it to my friend Ed, Ed said "I don't play any games with
titles I can't pronounce." Well,
Magna Grecia
did go on to be published. Unfortunately it wasn't
mine and I haven't learned whether Ed bought it, but even if
he did, I can only imagine his reaction to the courageous title
of this one! In fact it means "the Land of the Four Quarters"
in Quechua and the topic is a new one, the expansion of the
Inca empire from its center at Cuzco. Players accomplish this by
discovering randomly distributed tribes and absorbing them into
the greater whole. In addition, they build roads via crayon to
enable further expansion as well as cities, temples, garrisons
and terraces to get more points. These activities are kept
unpredictable via "take that!" cards (some beneficial) which,
innovatively are played between two players, something not seen
since
Plague & Pestilence.
The basic problem with all games of this sort is the potential
for unfairness in the random distribution. The game partly
understands this and attempts to make each tribe internally
balanced. If it has a high labor value – labor is the money
of the game – it gives low points, or vice-versa. And the
better the tribe, the more resources it requires. This is
fine, but fails to consider the wider problem that points
and money are hardly equal. In the first half, just as in
Puerto Rico,
money is all important, but points much less so. The design
compounds this error by forcing the player with the most points to
actually hand over some of his money to the player with the least,
ignoring the likely reality that this victim may have been forced
into the situation by the nature of the tribes placed around
his position and, moreover, may be starving for money. This poor
soul will never manage to acquire the necessary infrastructure
to win and is consequently doomed to endure over an hour of
pointless activity. Positions which begin squeezed against the
narrow end of the map appear particularly vulnerable to this.
There is also a very unbalancing card – it destroys all of a
player's roads in uncontrolled areas, which is often devastating
to trailing players, just the ones who need such roads. It's
possible to lose ten roads this way, which are only re-built at
a rate of two a turn. The rules say to warn players of this,
but what good does it do – the player's only choice is his type
of demise. First timers are not likely to understand the full
implications of the warning anyway. The cards might be better
omitted lest the "I'm never playing this again" phenomenon
result. On the other hand, the card permitting road building
off the printed tracks is inspired fun. But another quibble is
that there are probably too many building types – too little
differentiates them. Terraces seem too minor to justify the
action needed to construct them unless one is blessed with an
enhancing event. Maybe this whole subsystem and its many green,
transparent pieces – from the stained glass industry? – should
have been omitted. There are similar pieces in red and yellow
for cities and garrisons as well as trapezoidal wood pieces for
temples. Tribes are stickers waiting to be applied to plastic
chips. The heavy paper board is attractive and the cardboard
sturdy and fully erasable. The corrugated box is very sturdy,
if unusual. There are a few communication design issues here and
there – mostly around how roads connect and what is enclosed
in which areas – and the whole map is cramped, but all can
be coped with. There is sometimes some unwelcome downtime when
players take a long time to make sure they understand all that is
happening on the map. Overall this is a valiant effort on a number
of fronts, but seems to depend on a fair tribe distribution –
here's an area where a computer could really help a board game –
as well as being played in a certain kind of way to make a good
contest. So would-be empire builders should know this is rather
hit-and-miss. You might have five enthralling sessions, but
the sixth could be such a blowout that you'll wonder whatever
persuaded you to like it. If it happens, you won't mind so
much if you're intrinsically interested in the Inca exploits,
i.e. you already know how to pronounce "Tahuantinsuyu".
Later re-published by Z-Man as Inca Empire.
[Hangman Games]
- Take It Away
Sid Sackson abstract for up to four involves collecting
unowned stones of differing values by jumping them in
Halma fashion over one
another. Tricky is visualizing how the board will appear
for your opponent after you have finished your turn.
Not bad, but the ending which resembles a game of "chicken"
may be uncomfortable. Partnership rules also available.
[Two vs. Two Games]
A Gamut of Games (1992, chapter 4, page 142)
- Take It to the Limit
This is a re-development of
Take It Easy,
the multi-player solitaire game. As before, players are each
building on their own boards, but now the boards are larger,
include other areas and there is also a secondary board. There
are many more tiles (64 per set), each has four different colors
on it and also contains either sun and moon icons. Plus there are
bonus tiles. Also, there is now no longer just one way to play,
but a number of different variants. While all of this is probably
manna from heaven for aficianadoes who have played the original
to death, "Over the Limit" would, for many, be a more appropriate
title. At some point of complexity, contingency planning ceases
to be fun for human beings and enters the domain of the computer.
Several of the scenarios would appear to have found this point.
[6-player Games]
Peter Burley; Burley Games; 2006; 1-6
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 5
- Take Off!
Racing plastic aircraft around the world on a very large
laminated world map with popular air routes in different
colors criss-crossing between cities. Players roll dice
to determine which route colors their two aircraft can use
each turn. Of interest for adults and children alike, there
is some strategy in deciding whether it is better to take any
forward movement one can get or to take a slower route but
one which provides a better chance of moving on the next turn.
[Resource Games]
- Taktvoll
This game comes as a reminder that that one of my favorite sorts
of games is sadly disappearing from the scene. "Educational" is
the wrong term for them as it puts one in mind of those trivia
and word games wholly devoid of any play features. Games like
this one from 1996 that combine play value with something you can
learn offer considerably more than that. In this case the topic
is music, in particular, reading music. Cards come in two main
types: musical notes (whole, half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth)
and staves used to end measures. There are also three treble clefs
and three time signatures: 2/4, 3/4 and 4/4. These two items
are used to begin the three lines to which players take turns
playing a card at a time. Or if they do not want to play a card,
draw a card. Points are granted for finishing a measure by playing
a note of the right remaining size which also permits the player
to get rid of a stave card. They are also granted for either
matching the prior note or playing one which is a harmonious
chord change (i.e. a fourth or a fifth). Players get negative
points for each note card in hand when the first player gets rid
of all his cards, two for each unused stave. There is certainly
a lot of luck of the draw here, but also some calculation of
whether opponents are trying most to go out or to score a lot of points.
But regardless of this, as a free bonus, after you have understood the rules
you have also learned something not only about how to read
music, but how composition is done and how many recent
games can say that? The only one that comes recently to
mind is the rather obscure
Astromagie.
You will even learn that German musical notation does not
precisely use the notes A - G familiar to the English-speaking
world, but instead substitute H for B, a letter taken
advantage of by composer Robert Schumann in embedding secret
codes in his music.
For example, in his Carnaval series he continually uses A-flat, C and B
which in German spell AsCH, the home of Ernestine von Fricken, his girlfriend at
that time. Now there's an original way to send a love letter!
Later expanded by
Taktvoll Bass-Schlüssel
(Base Clef – was it really designed by Klaus Teuber as Luding suggests?)
and
Taktvoll Punktierte
(Dotted Notes, including hemidemisemiquavers?).
Title means tactful, but Takt is also the term used to
mean musical time.
- Tal der Abenteuer
"Adventure Valley" is Reiner Knizia's re-make of his small game
Honeybears.
This edition is much more ambitious, featuring a full-sized board
and considerably more cards. There are also multitudinous
paths to follow (through a valley) rather than just one.
But as before, the key concept is that a card played moves a
piece of the corresponding color forward, but one's score
results from one's card values in a color multiplied by that
color's board progress. Thus, apart from some wild cards,
players face the dilemma of having to discard the very cards one
values in order to get advances. Clearly this means
cooperation from other players is helpful. Also helpful is a
new wrinkle, also used in Knizia's
Keltis:
players gain special benefits by ending on various random tiles
scattered about the board. Some confer extra movement to any
piece, have other special effects or grant jewel pieces which
form their own majority control sub-game. Once a piece reaches
the goal on the front side of the board, the concluding half of the
game is completed on the other side. The illustrations are
nicely realized. The variability from the two board sides and
random tiles is generous. The jewel pieces are made with
mirror glass which under light can be rather blinding. Between
tiles and wild cards, there is perhaps too much luck for
adults, but these features make this otherwise good game
suitable for play by children or families. Once again, Hasbro
demonstrates its limited vision and class by publishing this
only in Europe.
[Ancient Egypt games]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6
Reiner Knizia; 2006; Parker Brothers; 2-4
- Tal der Könige
"Valley of the Kings" has the pyramid building activities of the ancient
Egyptians as its theme. The presentation is nice, but for its price,
one would expect a more lavish treatment. The wooden blocks for example
do not at all resemble pyramid blocks. Some of the features of play do not
recommend themselves either. Bidding for bricks is done blind with losers
still requiring to pay. When it comes to building, players write their
orders, which may include stealing blocks from others. This can degenerate
into rather ridiculous situations in which A steals from B only to have
B simultaneously stealing from A. Meanwhile C being the only one actually
building is winning the game of course.
- Tales of the Arabian Nights (Geschichten aus 1001 Nacht, Le Jeu de Mille et Une Nuits)
Four paragraph games in one in which players encounter a
wide variety of characters from the
A Thousand Nights and a Night
tales as you collect treasures and gain
status traveling across Central Asia by encountering various
individuals and places in a large programmed adventure
book. Win the game when you become the Sultan.
Geschichten aus 1001 Nacht is the German version
(French Le Jeu de Mille et Une Nuits) which adds a few
more adventures.
[more]
[6-player Games]
[Party Games]
[notes]
[status effects]
[escaping statuses]
[skills]
[Silk Road games]
MHML9 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 9)
Eric Goldberg; West End Games/Edition Erlkönig/Z-Man Games; 1985/2000/2009; 1-6
- Tamsk
Second in the series of Kris Burm abstracts (following Gipf
and preceding Zèrtz
with which it may also be played as a meta-game) is a game of
surround and isolate combined with timed action. In a unique
and interesting development, the pieces themselves are sand
timers (some players have reported variance in their timers so
you may wish to compare them to ensure that neither color has
an advantage), which greatly affect what one decides to move.
Plastic rings dropped around the timers land on the plastic
board with a satisfying clatter and it is always guaranteed to
end in rather short order. Although timing may seem onerous
at first, if players first play without the feature, they will
soon realize that one quickly becomes accustomed and a whole new
strategic dimension is added as a mostly full timer should not
be flipped lest it become mostly empty. There is something rather
Zen-like in the way that game often ends, neither player able to
do anything but watch the sands of time slowly settle, the last
of which will determine the victory. There may be an advantage
to the first player, but it appears slight. More interesting
than Zèrtz on the whole and a good addition to
your collection is you like the idea of having a rather unusual
game around. On the other hand, those who don't find abstracts
fun probably won't find any special relief here.
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Tante Tarantel
This lighter offering from Doris and Frank pertains to a tarantula
trying to prevent bugs escaping its webs. Note that in real life
tarantulas don't make webs. Here the players are the bugs trying
to cross the web while the spider is a "non-player" unpredictably
controlled only by the dice. The board is quite nice and the
play elegantly simple and yet fun, including rules for "pushing"
other bugs. Mostly satisfying, although there is perhaps too much
freedom for the spider since it is not that difficult for it to
eat nearly all of the bugs very early, throwing the game into
rather an odd state. Regrettable that this one wasn't picked up
by a major publisher and the plain pawns turned into cute plastic
bugs.
Frank Nestel & Doris Matthäus;
Doris&Frank; 1991; 3-5
- Tapestry
Seems a poorly-judged compromise between game styles. Four-player
match was long and very random, but not grasping the theme
strongly either. For the latter, should be discovering hexes, not
deciding which one to place. Military success should depend on
some factors, not just track advancement. For the former, should
not be so long and random. Having just a few card draws and a few
dice rolls makes things more random, not less. Not much catch-up
mechanism either. Card decks seem unbalanced. For the most part
an n-way solitaire. Three hours of misery waiting so long for
others to finish their turns that I'd forgotten what I planned to
do. Played Alchemists and failed to get anything from it over and
over again. Subsequent
data collection
has revealed that this side is one of the lowest-point scorers.
I feel fortunate to have discovered this so early and thus have no
need to waste more time with the game.
- Target
Card game similar to Cassino
but with more interesting card types and powers. Lacks the
theme elements of Mü
& Mehr: Safarü, however. A
- Tarot (French Tarot)
One of the earliest trick-taking card games. Probably best for
four so that it is not too easy for the contractor to easy to
dispatch the divided opponents. Besides, having to work with a
partner makes things more challenging. It needs a special deck of
cards, some of which are beautifully-illustrated. It is best to
play with a set of cards which are designed for playing rather
than those intended for divination as the latter lack corner
markings and double-endedness which make them inconvenient. As
making a hand depends on having enough cards called "bouts"
in one's hand, throw-ins (i.e. wasted deals) are perhaps a bit
too frequent. Scoring can be a bit arcane at first as well.
[Periodic Table of Board Games]
- Telestrations
The latest of the big party games is a real winner. The proof
for me was that when over the holidays I brought a copy to my non-gaming
siblings and their families, not only did we end up playing
past 1 AM, they also played it again without me the very next
night. This one is a combination of the traditional telephone
game you played in school (each person in class whispers a
phrase to the next and everyone laughs at how much by the end
it has changed) and
Pictionary.
All that's really been done here is to systematize things a
bit and provide erasable pens and booklets and phrases that
make it easier to do. In short, each player has a booklet,
gets a random phrase from a card, and draws a picture of it
which is followed by a written guess which is followed by another
picture and so on. Then each player shows his booklet and what happened,
generating huge guffaws in any audience. Thus it's really
three games: drawing, guessing and making jokes in the commentary.
The first two can be great fun, but the third may be the best one of all.
Certainly the ability to draw well is not required and an
inability will likely generate even more humor.
But this is so much fun that most don't seem to bother with
scoring at all (and it seems a bit unfair by the way that one
can get a point merely for writing the original phrase), or
with the sand timer either. Crazy results like "meditation
helmet" and "shower ninja" are some of the funnier results in
our playings so far; one really should take photos to
memorialize the drawings that go with some of these crazy
guesses. There are a few downsides, none of them major.
Erasing cloths are provided and they get dirty very fast, but
at least are black; the same can't be said unfortunately for
your hostess' white tablecloth. The pens can also get ruined
fairly easily by pressing too hard and seem to dry out early.
We got one pen that was dead on arrival. Fortunately the
publisher seems willing to replace bad pens. Maybe a wet-erase
system would address some of these problems? Some of the
phrases are considerably easier than others; compare for
example the easy "castle" with the considerably more difficult
"hide and seek". This brings up another issue: many of the
phrases are pop culture references that those not in America
over the past four decades (the young and immigrants) may not
get. It's hard to blame the game for this since pop culture
references add to the fun, but it can be a problem since the
person drawing the phrase may not realize that a downstream
player won't get it and thus it won't be possible to toss the card
and draw another. The publisher might consider a "pop
culture neutral" expansion. The issue of running out of phrases will
no doubt be addressed by expansion packs down the line.
Packaging is nicely realized and compact. Pick this one up for
a guaranteed hit at your next party game night. It works fine with four,
but the more the better.
[Party Games]
LLLL8 (Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 8)
uncredited; USAopoly-2009; 4-8
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Ten Days in the USA
Moon/Weissblum spinoff of
Europatour,
itself having been spun from
Racko.
Now the setting moves to the fifty United States sans DC,
Puerto Rico or Guam. Ships are gone, but planes remain and
of course are the only ways to reach Alaska and Hawaii.
The number of discard piles is reduced to three and the
car has arrived as a new way to connect two non-adjacent states.
The map is a very nice size, but surprisingly bland – just the
states without adornment. One could almost use any wall map.
Where are the funny state stereotypes we might have expected, the
New York apple with a bite missing, the Idaho potato looking like
Mr. Potato Head, etc? The tile holders are quite nice, being made
from wood and coming in two parts. This version may be a bit
fairer than its predecessor as the map is a bit more regular,
though I sure enjoy drawing Missouri with its eight neighbors
and rarely see it discarded. But on the whole the wackier,
more colorful and more educational quixotic original is to be
preferred.
[Tourist Games]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
Alan R. Moon
- Terra Nova
No sooner do I write (in the review of
Die Dolmengötter)
that pure abstracts employing majority control are rare than along
comes another one! As in Die Dolmengötter,
players move pawns around to section off territories, having three
action points per turn to move and/or place walls on the hexagonal
grid. When a section is closed, points are scored by the majority
player only, but all pawns in the region are removed. Finishing an
area can be difficult, however, since as soon as players surmise a
region will be closed they tend to stand in the gap, preventing
completion. This tends to cause creation of yet smaller
sub-regions. Playing well in a four-player game seems to indicate
scoring about 12 points per pawn or more. Saving pawns for the end
is usually a very good idea (just as in Die Dolmengötter)
though this will depend on what others are doing. A good design
idea here is that the map is divided into various terrains so that
areas containing 3 terrains pay only 1 point per hex, but those
with only a single one pay 3 per. The best feature though is the
way players are all forced to constantly re-adjust to a common
situation which thus is always revising itself, often in
unpredictable ways. There is no real luck, not even due to the
player order, thought it pays some to target the player to the left
and avoid the one to the right. There is little thematic feeling
either, and like most abstracts it's also often very quiet and
somewhat slow as players have a lot to think about on their turns.
Production is of good quality, especially the collection of thick
wooden hexagons. Also supports a two-player version (untried).
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 5
- Terrazzo & Terrazzino
The board and pieces of this abstract tile-laying game are
made entirely of wood. Each tile is subdivided into five areas
in up to four colors: the four corners and a central area.
A player's turn consists of drawing two tiles at random and
attaching them to existing tiles such that at least one of its
corners matches that of another tile. By completely enclosing
an area of the same color in sufficient size, the player scores
points corresponding to the size. It is possible to score more
than one area at a time. In addition, creation of closed
corridor areas which are free of tiles also score according to
size. The main skill is spatial in nature, being able to
realize where the maximum points are. Beyond this, players
must evaluate how good an opportunity is being left for the
next player who may or may not be able to capitalize depending
on the draw. Included are variant rules which specify drawing
tiles sequentially rather than simultaneously and another
which gives extra points for creation of symmetrical patterns.
The pieces appear to be made of plywood with color nicely
applied to one side. The reverse sides are irregular which
means someone might be able to cheat by memorizing the back
side. Poobably it's best to draw tiles from a bag. Tiles which
have more that one area colored black are a bit difficult to
use as there is no line demarcating between the areas; it can
be done once one is accustomed. Only lasting about thirty
minutes, this lacks the edginess of an
Ingenious,
but should work well as a family game which parents and
children can play together, with luck playing a fairly large
role, but requiring some thought as well.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6
Clemens Helldörfer;
Werksiedlung Kandern;
2004; 2-5
- Texas (Rosenkönig)
Dirk Henn-designed four-player partnership game of placing
and reversing tiles with a view to creating the largest
area. Lookahead and ability to divine your partner's intent
are rewarded in this elegant game later transported to a War
of the Roses theme. Strategically, rather than waiting until
one is forced to use the special judge/knight ability, it
often seems to be a good idea to employ it proactively in the
mid-game, even if the location does not show immediate benefit
but it appears that it eventually might. In any case, you
will very likely have massively ruined your opponents' plans.
May also be played somewhat less-satisfyingly by two.
The original Texas shows all the signs of the indie
production that it is, but is nevertheless an attractive and
quite usable production. Coming in box similar to, but smaller
than, other db-Spiele games, it features a laminated board
bearing an outline of the lone star state. Illustrated,
monochrome laminated chits show yellow farmers on one side,
green ranchers on the other. The moving piece is a largish
black pawn while larger gray tiles depicting the scales of
justice permit chit flips. The monochrome cards have compass
illustrations and actually display better their meanings and
are clearer about their orientation than those in the
Rosenkönig edition. This one comes in the
handy-sized Kosmos "Spiele für Zwei" (Games for Two)
series box and uses stamped wood pieces, laid over a board so
nicely illustrated that first time players often naively ask
if it's okay to place a piece "in the water". The moving piece
is a yellow crown. The main cards show swords pointed in the
various directions while the rest show mounted knights. This
edition does not actually include the rules for four, but
the variant is easily described. Partners sit at opposite
sides and begin with two knights each. Each also starts with three
movement cards, which is the hand limit. The rest is the same,
except that the partners are not to discuss their play.
[Two vs. Two Games]
[Frequently Played]
[Top Ten Gateways]
MLHH7 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 8)
Dirk Henn;
db-Spiele/Kosmos;
1993?/1999; 2, 4
- Texas & Pacific
This is another in the historical railroads series that began with
Wabash Cannonball.
A new element are brown ranch cubes that increase the connecting
railroad's income slightly, but also give income to other
players who can then claim the ranches.
The other novelty is the black Texas & Pacific railroad which
does not start up until a sufficient number of ranches have
appeared and starts from the middle of the map.
Unlike other railroads, it is permitted to
place every last one of its cubes (whereas others can only
place three) at a go. This permits a player to prepare and
really go for it by building out all the way west to El Paso,
as happened in one playing and constituted quite a coup (see
photo). Yet it was not a killing blow as other players discovered
sufficient flexibility in the system to find ways to respond
to such a move and equalize. Offering such possibilities for
drama and give and take may just raise this one above the other
offerings in the series. Of course, until it is picked up by
another publisher, players need to tolerate the barebones
graphics that typify Winsome. In addition there is at least
one ambiguity regarding what happens if nobody has enough
money to bid on a stock, yet this is only action type permissible.
MMHH7 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 7)
Harry Wu;
Winsome-2010; 2-6; 60
[Shop]
- Theophrastus
Players attempt to duplicate on their own displays an alchemical
formula which they are collaborating to create on the master
display. Theophrastus (1493-1541), more commonly known as
Paracelsus, dabbled in alchemy but is better known as a doctor,
in fact the first to prescribe mercury for syphilis. The central
mechanism, regulated by action points and card play mechanics, is
fairly original, even though one wishes for more control. Instead,
the vagaries of card draws can mean a player is unable to fairly
compete. Still, different strategic
possibilities are available. One can play cards secretly or,
more rapidly, face up where they can be affected by others. One
can try for high fidelity or simply play a lot of cards and
hope good accidents will happen. And then there is the choice
between working on one's own display versus revealing/destroying
that of others. The gradually increasing point totals available
for each successive round have been judiciously handled. On the
other hand, while some attempt has been made to balance the deck,
those special cards that allow swapping out one card for another
of the same type are hard to play, not very useful and take up
valuable hand space. Sure, a player could draw a bunch of new
cards and thus discard them, but why should the player be forced
to give up valuable card playing opportunties just because the
system has not treated him fairly? I would happily entertain
a variant permitting them to be replaced by a new card from the
top of the deck without action point cost. Another unfortunate
situation is the dead time-creating mechanism in which a player picks
up an entire deck, look through all of the cards, and chooses a
favorite. Fortunately, this has been assigned such a high price
that it only rarely seems useful. A unique component is a small
pewter mortar-and-pestle. It might have been better however if
this part of the budget had been put into the card artwork which
is not particularly well realized. There are communication
design problems too as the indicated spaces for laying cards
are too small. Worse, many of the specials use the exact same
layout as common cards, forcing players to pay close attention
to their bottom halves, always the most inconvenient part of
a card to read. Full credit should be given for the list of
allowed player actions on the display, but the international
audience could have been included if the English text were
replaced with pictorial versions. While the theme works,
it is paper thin and several at our table questioned the lack
of any disasters/explosions which result from mixture of the
wrong volatile ingredients, a popular signature of this genre.
Overall, should appeal to cardplay/hand management fans, but
the random factors will probably cause adult players to lose
interest after a few outings.
- 13 Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis
-
As a Cold War themed, ops points vs. event card game, it's
inspired by Twilight Struggle, but unfortunately too much
stripped down. At least in the former one
would read the card flavor and get a sense of what's going on, but
here cards can appear in such random order and without respect to any
precedent that theme goes up in smoke.
- Through the Ages
-
Or "Through Two Ages" as it's sometimes called since usually
time does not permit playing all three of those provided.
This is an attempt to create a
Civilization-style
game in small(er) form. Omitting any notion of a
map, it gives each player a personal board; the main one
offers five tracks: victory points, science points, income
levels for each of these and military might. It also holds a
long line of cards which model the appearance of new ideas and
personalities. Players begin with four actions which are used
to draft these and to play them as well as perform personal board
actions. Tracks there include population, workers, resource
production, food production, science production and military.
These tracks are thoroughly developed so that population
markers become workers which in turn become producers,
but as the population track is cleared, not only does it
take more and more food to create a worker, more food must be
paid each turn to maintain the civilization and more happiness
must be provided to avoid problems. Production pieces
are similar; as their spaces get exposed – representing the
economy getting out of balance – increasing levels of
corruption result. Players also begin with two military
options per turn and regularly get event cards, many of which
have a military emphasis. Some represent new territory, the
player able to mount the most might being able to conquer it
and reap the benefits. There are other cards permitting direct
attacks on others in order to take various possessions such as
points, science or territories, but at no point will any
player really conquer another. All may sound well so far, but
what may not be clear is the large amount of luck involved.
The queue of cards to draft is long, but costs increase from
one to two to three actions or, in the case of wonder cards,
even more as one looks deeper. This causes problems because
good play depends on following a program and building on cards
already played. But too often those few cards one needs cost three
the first time around and by the next are irretrievably gone,
the game itself always eating a few between player turns.
There's also plenty of luck in the military events. A player
may try to take a military approach, though
curiously more often it seems to be thrust upon one just based
on which cards happen to be available to draft early, but if
unable to regularly draw those cards necessary to make
attacks, the opponents will just discard them out of play
while all the world's armies sit around idle. Or, conversely,
the player with the military may get all of the cards and
thereby those who haven't developed this ability get attacked
every turn and fall into a rut from which they cannot escape.
There are only a
few government cards as well, but as one of the few ways to get
more options they're very important; being able to aquire one
at not too great an expense can make a big difference. It's
also true that some cards are always valuable to take while others
are almost never useful. All of
this randomness is not intrinsically wrong, but becomes
problematic when combined with the overall play length and
downtime. Player turns tend to be fairly long – longer
as play continues – and there is little to do during
another's. For this reason three should be the maximum number
of players, perhaps two; even so the "short game" will
probably take three hours and the full perhaps up to five.
In terms of presentation, the small box is welcome and there
are not a few wooden bits in several colors. There are
some errors such as an incorrect starting marker on the
religion space and the production and science colors are too
similar. The larger disaster though are the scoring track
spaces which are smaller than its cubes. As play goes on there
are a great number of little rules and details here and there;
this means that something like the Tesla card which affects
other players more than its owner is a bad idea; most likely
it will be forgotten amid all the other chrome rules which
must be recalled. Rules errors and forgetting whether all the
necessary tracks have been updated are common in this heavyweight
affair which despite offering good ideas, feels insufficiently
developed. Perhaps one day a streamlined version can be
created that preserves the best of it without these downsides.
Maybe then too we can also get the map that a game of this
type deserves.
HMLM5 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; High: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 5)
Vlada Chvátil; Czech Board Games-2006/Eagle Games-2007; 2-4
[Amazon]
- Thurn und Taxis
Karen and Andreas
(Puerto Rico)
Seyfarth game of card drafting and route placement
for two to four. Like most of the best games, this is one of
simple rules, but tricky decisionmaking. Turns consist of
just three phases: (1) draft a city card; (2) play a city card
that expands the current route; (3) possibly declare a route
complete, place corresponding markers and collect rewards. The
most interesting design decision is that once per turn any one
of these stages may be improved, i.e. two cards may be drawn or
two may be played or the route may be credited as two longer
than it is. This credit is important as a major component of
one's final score is the longest route ever completed (up to
7), though this must be worked up to, i.e. first at least a 3,
then a 4, etc. Accomplishing 7 is one way to end the game, but a
lot of points are also available by completing routes of lengths
5-7 as well as filling up each of the regions. These points are
first come-first serve and though there are multiple awards, they
gradually decline in value. This rather easygoing system proves
for a variety of approaches: (1) don't think about regions, just
try to get out as fast as possible; (2) concentrate on maximizing
points for route lengths; (3) maximize points for regions; (4)
some combination of any or all of the above. Impinging on all
of this are tactical considerations. You can see what opponents
are drafting and building. Do you want to steer clear of them
so that your picks are not disturbed or operate in the same
area and possibly disrupt their plans? It's also possible to
take entertaining gambles by drafting two non-adjacent cards
on the route you want, hoping to pick up the joining link on
the next turn. Because there are six cards to draw from, plus
the deck, and the ability to clear the draft pool if desired,
luck of the draw does not feel particularly onerous. The theme
fits okay, though it seems more likely that to be realistic
one should be building always outward from an existing
base. More information on the history is available at this Wikipedia
entry. There are some interesting city choices like Budweis
and Pilsen, presumably to excite fans of pilsners and Budweiser.
There's also one city in Poland on offer, but its region
isn't worth any points. Is this the latest form of a Polish
joke? Overall this is an unpretentious effort that I wouldn't want
to spoil for you by raising expectations too high, but I think
most will enjoy it – even on the first try as the system
tends to be forgiving, even if you just want to build up long
routes and not pay much attention to the rest. Then the ability
to keep trying various approaches should keep you coming back.
[Spiel des Jahres Winner]
[Frequently Played]
Strategy: High; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
[Buy it at Amazon]
- Thurn und Taxis – Alle Wege führen nach Rom (All Roads Lead to Rome Thurn und Taxis Expansion)
It's appropriate that this
Thurn and Taxis
kit goes to Rome, where the pope lives, as this
expansion forgives your sins. What sins could those be? I
think you know. You've committed them, surely. Those times
you've placed houses and inefficiently left half your route
unplaced. Or those times you've tried to complete a certain
color and fallen one short. If you've been annoyed by that,
this expansion kit is here to help. Part one is a new board
depicting the Alps and Italy down to Rome. It's kind of
accurate to actual geography. At the top each player
distributes face down chits numbered 1 through 5. These are
assumed to be riding on the adjacent and rather distinctive
wooden coach pawns, which are colored to match the five
regions on the main board. Now whenever anyone fails to place
a house, the player moves the coach for that region toward Rome.
The paths are constructed so that there are both slow and fast
ways to arrive there. A player aims to make sure his high point
chits reach the bottom, but at the right time for if an
opponent's chit of the same type arrives later, the first
arriving is discarded and does not count. It's quite possible
that some coaches do not arrive at all so this can be a tricky
business. But at least now all of the cards on a route count for
something. Part two of the expansion is tied into the
specialist helpers, those who give the extra card draw, the
clearing of the draft pool, the extra card play or the extra
length of the route. Each time a player gets the help of one of
these he takes a corresponding chit. When the supply of
a chit type is exhausted, all players must turn in a set,
ideally one of all four types, which permits placing a house
anywhere on the board. Turning in three chits grants a
victory point while turning in two gives a card draw. Now
there is an easy way to place that last, hard to find city for
a particular region and pick up its scoring chit. Of the two,
part two is the more interesting and useful, but it does
trigger more pool clearing than usual, creating greater
chaos which might be annoying for some. The Rome board
is often a matter of mere busywork, being both a rather
hazy situation as well as not affecting scoring a great deal.
Still, the expansion can have the virtue of reinvigorating
play somewhat by changing up all the usual old parameters and
considerations. This is a kit probably more for those who were
not the game's biggest fans, but liked it somewhat and wanted
more of a tactical element from it.
Strategy: High; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7
Karen & Andreas Seyfarth; Hans-im-Glück/Rio Grande; 2008; 2-4
[Buy it at Amazon]
Thurn und Taxis: Glanz und Gloria (Thurn and Taxis: Power and Glory
This is billed as a
Thurn and Taxis
expansion, but it isn't really: it's a spinoff, a
translation to another geography and a set of variant rules but
the original game does not participate, with the minor but
important exception of supplying its wooden bits. The original
map covered southern Germany and neighboring lands; this one
covers areas around Holland, Saxony and Prussia. Play is
fundamentally the same with a few variations. Whereas before
cards were always played to the current route, now they can
instead be played face down and treated as a horse. The reason
is that each card in a route now also requires a horse card
(though the starting carriage provides a two-horse credit).
This rule makes for an easy way to deal with being unable to play a
card and even use up cards that opponents want for the
purpose. The map includes four free cities –
Bremen, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Lübeck – which are not
part of any neighboring country and are not considered
countries themselves. But they have a similar restriction in
that a route may only place a station in one of them. They
also confer a benefit however as bonus tiles are claimed for
placing stations there. Finally, the carriage cards and the
helper who extends route lengths is not used. However, most of
these variations can be undone and this map can be played
using the original rules as well. Surprisingly, there seem to
be no rules for combining the two maps, which do share
territory at their edges, and playing a grand scenario, which
could potentially support twice as many players. If you live
in the areas shown, this might be fun to have. If you have
played the original over, say, thirty times, you're probably
ready for this. But most won't need it. In fact
these could have been variant rules published on the web,
but instead an entire new game has been created, which should have
been playable on its own except for a few cheap wooden bits.
This has hardly been the proudest moment for its original publisher
and the rest associated with the creation of this product.
[Vote for the next review]
MLHM7 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; High: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7)
Karen & Andreas Seyfarth; Hans-im-Glück/Rio Grande-2007; 2-4
[Buy it at Amazon]
Tic Tac Toe
As the outcome is always a stalemate with proper play, questionable
whether it is a game.
[Periodic Table of Board Games]
Tichu
Card game of the climbing family is based on the Chinese game
Zheng Fen
or on Dou Dizhou,
is difficult to penetrate, but ultimately very rewarding.
For example, the pre-game card passing seems
merely an unnecessary bit of randomness, but with a
card passing
convention can become more interesting. The same
goes for some of the special cards such as the Dog and
the Mah Jongg which at first seem to be rather pointless
additions. The decisionmaking around the many different
ways to configure the hand make it more sophisticated than
Frank's Zoo.
The tactic with the
Dragon is to give it to the opponent whom you think will be the
last one still holding cards. If you are successful at this, you
should receive the Dragon back at the end. If you or your partner
declare Tichu and either of you has the Dog, you should give the
Dog to your partner so that both know about it. Try never to
play on your partner's play, well, almost never. There are many
other strategic considerations, e.g. to reserve Aces as a winner
on single cards, too numerous to list here. The most important
talent is to rapidly identify the best combinations in one's
initial hand.
[analysis]
[rules summary cards]
[translation]
[Two vs. Two Games]
[Frequently Played]
[Top Ten Gateways]
[6-player Games]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 10
Urs Hostettler; Fata Morgana/Abacus; 1991; 3-6
[Buy it at Amazon]
Ticket to Ride (Zug um Zug, Les Aventuriers du Rail)
In this Alan Moon effort players connect up track segments
per randomly-drawn goal cards. They receive even more points
for simply building the segements, longer spans paying off
disproportionately better. The right to build depends on owning
a sufficient number of matching color cards, some of which are
drafted on each non-building turn. About half the segments –
mostly the shorter ones – are "wild", i.e. can be built using
any single color. Something of a "catch-up" mechanism is provided
in the ability to draw extra goal cards, but it's weakened as the
draw wastes a turn and because uncompleted goals are penalized so
it may end up hurting more than helping. Negative plays such as
competing for another's color of interest or even building his
track, thus precluding him, are available remedies, but it may
be that those lucky enough to draw good cards from the outset
are unfairly rewarded. To some extent this is the multiple goal
structure of TransAmerica
combined with the occasional selfishness of Streetcar. The shared element is
the need to intuit what others are attempting and which paths
a successful track would take. Having this ability is probably
the ticket to enjoyment in this one. While it mostly clicks along
just fine, older hands will probably wish it had headed in a more
original direction.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6
Alan R. Moon
[Buy it at Amazon]
Ticket to Ride Europe (Zug um Zug Europa, Les Aventuriers du Rail Europe)
The new incarnation of Ticket to Ride, again by Alan
Moon, takes a ride to a new continent, but much else. There
are two signficant additions. One is the ability to buy, with
victory points, a station house which permits the one of one
opponent track. The second adds randomness to track building –
randomness in card acquisition apparently not being enough –
so that building certain "tunnel" segments requires drawing
cards which can add extra expenses. So this edition sticks
pretty close to the original and will neither disappoint that
game's fans nor awaken the interest of dissenters. For those
trying to choose one of these for the first time, familiarity
with the geography is probably the overriding factor and after
that it depends on whether you prefer your trains more elegant
or with bells and whistles added. Ticket to Ride Märklin
(below) is the third entry in this series.
[Spiel des Jahres Winner]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6
Alan R. Moon
Ticket to Ride Märklin (Zug um Zug Märklin, Les Aventuriers du Rail Märklin)
The third design of this game employs a map of Germany and ties
into the toy trains of German manufacturer, Märklin. (Note to
Moritz: please cover the pronunciation of this one on a future
podcast). This version adds passengers which each player may only
use thrice. They are placed on segment completion turns and may
subsequently move, once, along the player's entire route from that
city, picking up special point tokens along the way. As each city
only has a few of these tokens, this version has a greater
incentive to get routes played earlier. There's another reason too:
there are more single-player routes, many of them difficult to
detour around when missed. The upshot is that runaway leaders can
occur much more easily. The tie-in causes some problems too –
confusion mostly – since cards which have the same function carry
different illustrations in order to showcase more of the
manufacturers product. Those who want a meaner game will find it
here, but why, when it will depend on luck of the draw anyway?
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 5
Alan R. Moon
Tikal
Game of archaeologists exploring the ancient Mayan jungle at Tikal
(in modern Guatemala). The by-now familiar action points system
dictates what each player may do in a turn and can sometimes cause
an excess of downtime if players are overly zealous in analyzing
their options. The board expands by placement of hexagonal
tiles which are either drawn from a deck in the basic version
of the game or auctioned in the advanced version. The latter
actually makes for a better game as skill is enhanced and luck
minimized. It does not actually add as much time as one might
think since the time one spends thinking about where to place a
drawn tile is already considered during the first auction. The
appearance of the game is wonderful. Strategically, it appears
wisest to avoid major back-and-forth battles with other players;
instead, try to carve out a private area and fill it with good
tiles. Being the first to "excavate" the only level 10 and
level 9 pyramids is a good idea however. Having extra workers
available in a central area for when the scoring tile appears
and then grabbing points opportunistically can be a workable
strategy as well. Torres,
also by designers Kramer and Kiesling, is a similar system in
some ways, particularly the action points and the possibility
of capitalizing on what others have done before you.
[Spiel des Jahres Winner]
[Deutscher Spielepreis Winner]
In an interview, Wolfgang Kramer gave variant rules for those wishing
to speed up play:
Provide a one-minute sand timer and 4x6 chips (in the four
player colors). Each player receives the six chips in his color.
As soon as the active player places his tile, the timer is started.
If a player runs out of time, he turns in a chip and flips
it again for another minute, etc. At the end of the game, any
remaining chips are worth three points.
Timber Tom
This game of hiking by a French inventor is mainly in the
Anglo-American school. Players all begin in the center of a
large map, race to reach peaks in two to four corners and
then return before the others. Available to help
are two helicopter rides from heli-pads that are somewhat
conveniently placed – though not ideal – bridges, canoes and
re-supply stations. Supplies are needed to operate on the
peaks and can also be jettisoned to get extra speed. Axes and
a chainsaw are used to cut through trees. These appear as if
by magic in front of one during others' turns. They will
require either a detour or using up a cutting tool. There are
also random event cards which get drawn in non-wooded areas.
Mostly these don't do too much – even a helicopter crash has
fairly minor results – but the three keeper cards are pretty
good. (Each player can apparently only use one of these,
leaving open what happens if someone draws two.) The big
story here though is that this is not a conventional flat
board, but a peg board which physically provides five different
elevations. The result is a gorgeous and very inviting display.
The plastic prospector figures have pegs instead of bases.
The player displays are also well made with wells to hold
plastic gold sacks, supplies and thick cardboard resource
cards. Trees are also plastic, mounted on pegs, and come
in their own sub-box. The entire package is one box to hold
the board under which goes a box bottom filled with foam and cutouts to
hold the various bits. These two are combined together to fit
into a closed sleeve. Also included is a special 3-4-5 die
with tree icons imprinted on the 4. The communication design
is pretty good too as it's generally clear
which dots are in which terrain. In the manufacturing process
some holes seem not to get punched, but it's usually clear and
fixable. Some care is needed in using the board, however, and as
a result this is probably not for kids. There are also enough
little rules catches that less experienced game players should
stay away anyway. On the player displays
it would have been handier had one column shown the
heli-flights and the others the heli-radios rather than
hiding the latter behind the former, but this is easily
managed. The instructions are mostly clear. The playing
experience is leavened by most of these physical elements, but
as is often the case with physical innovations, somewhat let
down by the rules of play. Forcing the players to move an
exact number of spaces and end exactly on certain spaces
generates ennui, for both current player and
opponents. It can also cause some strange wanderings where you
don't go directly at a target, not because trees rise up to
meet you, but because it would cause an overshoot.
The other issue is that being able to place one to four trees
per player turn permits a fair amount of kingmaking. There are
also some odd board areas where because of the layering there
are dots missing from the square grid. In these places it's
possible to skip a space and thus go faster than usual, an
advantage for the experienced player who knows where all of
these are. Without
this special board, would this be anything special at all? No.
But on the other hand, there it is, and if you respond to great
bits, this can make up for a lot.
Strategy: Low; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 5
Marco Bing; PYXI; 2008; 2-4
Timbuktu (Tombouctou)
Nicely-presented nearly abstract game by Dirk Henn about desert caravans
proceeding to Timbuktu. While it is true that there are
some not particularly onerous memory elements, deduction
(seeing two "5" cards eliminates the possibility that any
other rows have thieves on space "5") and observation of
the activities of opponents play just as important a role.
When one adds in the concept of bluffing so as to misinform,
it really becomes just too much fun.
Dirk Henn;
db-Spiele
Time Pirates
While the setting is not much like
Time Bandits
– a dreamy film which would seem to appeal to gamers –
they do share the idea of going back into history to collect and then
sell artifacts for big profits.
In this Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum design players
acquire points which are then used in competitions
to score bonus points. A bit reminiscent of Murphy in the way players move
about the board and of RA and many
others such as Moon's own Reibach
& Co. in the way that tile draws from a bag spell out
an uncertain end to the rounds. There is a definite ability to
ruin the chances of others by setting the time police on them.
As in Andromeda, the
chaos factor appears to be a bit higher than many of the games
of its type, but there is definitely a feeling of fun. Not
without decisionmaking either as one must decide whether to get
scoring markers early before the round ends or hold out hoping
for a larger-sized marker. Unfortunately, as with several other
Moon games, there are several different versions of the rules
swirling about. I much prefer the one which grants the player
three actions for being willing to draw from the bag. However,
this makes it even more imperative that there be fewer than five
players.
[Holiday List 2004]
[Pirate Games]
[6-player Games]
Alan R. Moon
Time's Up!
Party game of guessing the names of celebrities, the first time
fully-described, the second time described by one word with
gestures and the third only through gestures. The mind stretching
part is to think up gestures that uniquely identify famous names,
but it must be admitted that memory plays an important role.
Of about the same interest as most party games in which the point
is to get players to escape their inhibitions and display some
truly ridiculous behaviors. Known as Celebrities prior to
publication.
[Party Games]
[Two vs. Two Games]
[Buy it at Amazon]
Tin Soldiers
Trick-taking card game, the tins being those of corn, tomatoes
and other kitchen comestibles. Wrinkles are (1) cannon cards which
serve no function other than to cancel one other card played; (2)
à la Stratego the
lowest card can win if it is played on the highest; (3) players
have three unknown cards that can be played at any time; and
(4) taking a "3" permits examination of one of someone's unknown
cards. Cards have point values à la Mü or Der Flaschenteufel to provide scoring plus
unplayed unknowns are worth double. This may be one of those
trick-takers which appeal to those who do not normally like the
form because aficianadoes will find this system entirely too murky
for more than one reason. First, there is no telling what kind
of unknowns one has and what should be done with them; second,
there is no telling what others will be doing with theirs;
third, there are so many ways to avoid following suit that
there is no deducing anything about anyone's hand; and fourth,
play of a random unknown can have such a large effect in either
direction that it mostly renders pointless any strategy which
preceded it. That said, if the admittedly cute illustrations
please you, the four player partnership version must be the most
scientific. Now your plays have a greater chance of making sense,
the flag card set collection subsystem has a better chance of
working and the cannons are more useful as they can preserve
a win for your partner. This is another noble attempt from R&R Games, but more is
hoped for in future. Unusual packaging puts everything into a
metal canister of a style usually used in the United States to
sell bandages.
[Two vs. Two Games]
Tinners' Trail
Martin Wallace continues to plumb British history with this
game of tin and copper mining in Devon and Cornwall. He also
departs his heretofore Warfrog label to create the first
publication in the new Treefrog line. No reason
has been given, but it seems very unlikely that any publisher
or game with "war" in the title will ever win the huge prize
that is the Spiel des Jahres (German game of the year) award.
Not that this one is nlikely to do so anyway. The map depicting
the southern peninsula is divided into areas, about half of
which are seeded, by rolling special dice, with cubes representing
copper, tin and water. This is a nice feature in that every
playing will differ, some boards being more challenging than
others. The number of water cubes indicates the cost to mine a
single cube; each turn spent mining adds another such cube.
Players also use actions to add technological developments
like pumps, port facilities,
adits,
special workers, etc.
which do things like reduce the amount of water, increase
the number of cubes or increase the removal rate. These are
all free in terms of cash, but using a system similar to that of
Thebes,
have action costs that put player pawns further down a track
so that others may get multiple turns ahead of them. It's also
possible to prospect in the vacant areas of the board, using
the dice to determine what's available. In any case,
obtaining a mine is always via an auction. Since adits span a
pair of areas, it's a good idea to gain adjacent ones, at
least as long as the limited number of adits hold out. There
is a lot of determination of exactly what items are worth here
and some strategic variability, e.g. in what to acquire and
how much to prospect. But there is also a great deal of luck
as the market has no feedback loop but changes from turn to
turn based entirely on dice rolls. If, say, on turn two
a player manages to acquire a great number of commodities,
sells them at the maximum prices and then prices fall to the
bottom and never recover, then pretty much the entire second
half will have been played in vain. This may make some
thematic sense, but others choices really don't, such as the
fact that earned money doesn't count for itself, but must be
spent to obtain nebulous VP awards (which is a competition).
These awards don't even have any thematic representation,
e.g. baronetcy, yacht, and so on, which could have been easily
done. This is a knock against it winning the game of the year
as does the fact that this is still more a railroad-style game than
anything else. But for fans of that genre, some of the
deficits in theme may be a turnoff. Another problem is the
limited player range which must be either three or four. The
wooden bits including tall mine and worker pieces are nicely
made and even an unnecessary pawn showing the auction site is
included (it's just as easy to lay a mine piece down until the
purchase is complete). It would have been good if more water
cubes had been included as these are constantly running out.
(Use the blue player's cubes when necessary.)
The map is attractive in a stark sort of way, but the money
track, requiring a base 20 orientation is going to be
confusing for many to use. There would have been space for a long track
or if this was objectionable for some reason, let's have base
10 please. If you're good at putting a price on anything and
don't mind some large helpings of luck despite a playing time
over an hour, give this a try.
BBC article on how the pasties of the game are part of
Cornish economics in 2012
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 5
Martin Wallace;
Treefrog Games; 2008; 3-4
Titus
Uwe Rosenberg-designed card game in which player players attempt
to collect cards in series. Cards depict coins having values
from 1 to 19 – it is far from clear how they connect to
the title. In an innovative mechanism, a player draws a card
from the deck or from another player's completed series. If it
is numerically adjacent
to another card, the player may take another turn. But cards
taken from another's series are first flipped over to reveal a
new value, which will be at most two values away from the showing
value. Completion of a series confers a victory point card which
are granted in gradually declining values. Although pleasant,
like some other games by the same designer, apart from some rather
minor considerations of what cards others are seeking, seems to
play itself. May work better with a maximum of three players.
Uwe Rosenberg; 2000
Tobago
The 1980s and even the early '90s saw a type of German game
that seems to have been lost today. Surprisingly its essential
qualities are difficult to pin down. It's the old story of "I
can't define it, but know it when I see it." Probably though, this
elusive quality revolves around simple instructions, a good
relationship with theme, healthy doses of luck and an innovative
mechanism or two. Either this combination has become hard to
find or the interest has all gone in other (perhaps heavier)
directions for this one sails in as a refreshing return to
yesteryear.
This, the inventor's first, has been termed a logical
deduction game, but really "reverse deduction" would be more
apt. The players do not strive to deduce from acquired facts,
but create facts which are commonly deduced in public.
The board, a highly stylized rendering of
the Caribbean island
is overlaid with a hex grid demarcating various terrain types,
e.g. beach, forest, lagoon, mountains, etc. Four treasures are
sought and each player contributing to a discovery will share
in the findings. Players do this on their turns by playing
a card against a treasure that helps clarify where it may
be. This may be something like "not in a mountain", "on a
beach", "within one of a forest", etc. When eventually the
only possible space has been determined it only remains for a
player to drive his jeep over to that location and claim the
treasure. Driving is more inventive than one might think. It
doesn't go by a strict count of spaces, but instead a jeep pays one
point (of its three) to drive as far as it likes within the
same type of terrain, but also pays one of its three movement
points whenever the terrain type is changed. Treasure
distribution is also handled in novel fashion. Each player
draws a treasure card for each card he played into a treasure
and then turns them in for shuffling. The top card is revealed
and the most recent contributing player either takes it or
gives the next player the chance to do so. This continues,
each player discarding a credit each time he takes a treasure.
But also in the deck are two curses. Whenever one turns up
any player still in the distribution must give up either a
treasure or an amulet and all the rest of these treasures
are discarded, so just as in
Diamant
waiting too long can be dangerous.
But what about these amulets? To help replayability, the
puzzle board can be assembled in different ways. In addition,
there are stand up plastic figures in the form of
4 huts, 3 palm trees and 3 statues, which also participate in
clues. The statues have the additional effect that on each
turn they rotate sixty degrees and then pieces are placed
where their gaze meets the ocean. Players may drive
around, pick these up and later employ them as above, or
to re-open a previously disqualified treasure space, play
another clue card or take an additional three moves (without,
however, picking up more amulets). Amulets can sometimes be
real situation savers for times when it seems no one can nail
down a treasure's final location or when a player finds that
not one of the clue cards in hand can serve any useful
purpose. There is additionally a rule permitting swapping out
all of one's cards. Trying to figure out what all of one's
cards might do with each of the four treasures can take some
time and this can create some downtime, even frustration,
occasionally, but for the most part tends to be
acceptable. Playings usually complete in an hour. Physical
presentation is quite good with unusual outer clamps securing
the puzzle board together. The standup figures are well and
attractively made and the artwork outstanding.
Artist Victor Boden deserves a lot of credit also for coming up
with a beautiful variation on the usual rectangular board.
The cards employ iconic language without text that works well
enough after getting used to it.
There is fair amount of luck of the draw in the treasures, but
the design elements are inventive, the tropical island setting
enticing and solving the challenges both fun and absorbing.
Players interested in this sort of system might also check out
a precursor called
Old Town.
MMMM8 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 8)
Bruce Allen; Zoch-2009/Rio Grande-2009; 2-4; 60
[Amazon]
Tom Tube
Two player tile placement and movement game in an outer space
setting. Turns are very simple as a player either (a) moves or
(b) draws and places a single tile. Tiles are rhombus-shaped and
contain paths usable by the player, the opponent, or both. The
goal is to retrieve two of one's own items from across the board,
plus as many of the randomly-appearing cubes as possible and
return home first. As in
Lost Valley,
isolation of a triangular
opening permits placement of a special piece, which is here
even more important as the triangles come from one's own supply
and tend to be very helpful connections. At its best there is
tantalizing choice between taking a tile and moving, reminiscent
of Quoridor. Part of taking a tile includes having a plan
for each type you might draw. Part of moving includes where
the opponent is and if you were both to start moving now, where
he will end up and what he can grab unless you get there first.
This creates a series of little sub-games and the advantage tends
to shift back and forth as new tiles appear and their order makes
games different every time. Occasionally things don't go so well
since if a player can luckily draw a number of straight or simply
very appropriate path'ed tiles he can be very hard to stop. It
should be noted that pawns block one another too so that is
another tactical consideration. Collected cubes afford special
movement abilities like moving on the opponent's tube or even a
short jaunt without any tube at all. If not careful, an astronaut
can wide up lost in space! Overall it's that rara avis:
a German science fiction game and a good one at that, at least
most of the time. If you play, make time to do so a few times
since even though the instructions are easy, learning how to
use all of your options and play well is not.
[Kronberger Spiele]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7
Tonga Bonga
Game set in the South Seas has some intriguing mechanisms.
Players first decide how much they are willing to spend to
attract sailors for their ships. Then they supply sailors of
randomly-determined quality for these contracts and here players
have a conflict of interest between making money and not speeding
up their competitors too much. Unfortunately the end game is thus
fraught with kingmaking phenomena. Its brilliant ideas still
not fully exploited, this realization can only be recommended
for children.
Stefan Dorra;
Tongiaki
Game of the Polynesian dispersal across the south seas for two
to six. Finely sculpted wooden ships are placed on the beach
spaces of hexagonal tiles. When a beach group is filled, a new
tile is drawn and the ships either sail to a new island
or are destroyed, their chances being proportionally helped as
more players are involved. The winner is usually the one who has
managed to spread to the most islands, but exclusivity may be a
useful alternate approach. The island names follow the real ones
so it feels somewhat thematic, although there is no difference in
player abilities. The tiles are nicely made, not true hexagons,
but artistically curved and yet still able to fit together. The
artwork is appealing with minor communication design problems –
the slightly too large ship foot print can obscure the beach and
the beach launch points can be hard to distinguish. Like any
"turn up the tile and see what you get" game, the vagaries of
luck can ultimately become a frustration, but this one does
inspire repeat plays just because the turns are so short and
rules so simple. The fill-up-the-beach mechanism from first
time inventor Thomas Rauscher is fairly innovative too, or at
least hasn't been used much lately. War game players may enjoy
this more than other society games because the probability
measurement aspect is also important here.
[6-player Games]
Too Many Cooks
It's strange to realize, but only in 2002 did Reiner Knizia,
creator of so many games, publish his first trick-taking card game
(unless there were some in his book Kartenspiele im Wilden
Westen). This one shares a title with another game published
in 2001 and the kitchen events topic with Tin
Soldiers. As we might expect from a non-trick-taking
designer, the tricks are rather unusual. Although suit is still
followed as normal (usually), taking the trick has nothing to do
with relative card strengths, but only with having the cards add
up to ten or more. Players try to collect as many cards from
the suit they have bid before the hand and to avoid some other
suit or type of card, usually the chili peppers (others being
mushrooms, onions and peas). The chili pepper suit does not share
the same distribution as the others and also has the side effect,
when played, that for the rest of the trick following suit is not
required. The game consists of five hands during which each player
will bid one of the four different suits or the fifth possibility,
taking no tricks: "No soup today" (shades of Seinfeld).
Because one's forced bid may have no bearing on the actual state
of the hand, Too Many Cooks probably will not gain a
strong following with trick-taking fans, but should be pleasant
enough for many who don't normally go in for this sort of thing.
It seems this is the publisher's target audience since not even
the usual pen and paper are required: little discs containing
stars are provided to track the score instead. The attractive
graphic design is loud and cute, but some cards may be easy to
confuse at first. Some icon indicating their special meanings
really should have been added to the chili pepper and bouillon
cards as in the heat of haute cuisine they are too easy to forget.
Also, players are forced to fan their cards in only one way as
the index number is not provided on both sides. But except for
the too large packaging, this is the best entry I have seen from
R&R Games to date.
Top Car Races
Auto racing game for children of ages 4+ is in the form of a
gigantic twelve-page book, each spread of which shows a different
race track. Four nicely-made plastic cars are provided, but
beware the detachable wheels which could get lost or swallowed.
The form of the race is roll-and-move, but instead of a die a
built-in electronic spinner lights up and makes sounds. Most of
the race courses have spaces which, when a car ends on them,
causes something to happen, i.e. move back, move forward,
lose a turn, etc. This requires that at least one player be
able to read. The courses are dramatically illustrated and at
least there is plenty of excitement, even if no skill. It could
be of value in getting young players interested in reading.
Tor
Knizia game for two players depicts a soccer match.
Each player has an identical set of cards à la
Raj
and tries to correctly outguess one another to score goals. Amusing
for a few plays, a game probably lasts all of five minutes.
Tori
- Finnish game reminiscent of Marracash
- It is the 1952 Olympics and you are trying to get fans into your shops in
six colors. There are six fans, each a different color and represented by
a large pawn. As long as no one is in your shop at the moment, you can
move the fan of the matching color across the grid to your shop. But if
other players have matching empty shops that are closer to the fan's
starting place than yours, you have to pay one location card per shop
skipped (representing marketing costs). When the fan arrives you receive
cards in that color equal to the size of your shop. These cards are
needed to later expand the size of your shop. But now the fan is swapped
with the one fan who is off the board and so is the wrong color and it
becomes your great desire to get him out of there! Hope that someone else
has a shop of that color and moves him or that you can.
- Points are gained by having the biggest shop in a color. The one with the
largest gets the gold medal, second largest the silver; each gives some VP
in a different combination, including sometimes the silver being oddly
worth more than the gold.
- To expand your shop you need to play enough cards in that color to match
the size your shop will be after the expansion. This implies that to do
an expansion you'll need to have the fan visit at least twice. You also
need to play a location card, the gridded board being divided in 9 large
areas. You get these cards by drafting two at a time.
- An interesting limitation is that each player's hand is limited at all
times to a combination of just 8 location and color cards.
- One of the shops is water based and so depends on building in the few
water tiles that are around the perimeter of half the board.
- Also providing points are two hidden objective cards, one indicating 3
colors in which you get points for cumulatively building a certain number
of expansions, the other 3 areas for which you get points by building a
certain number of expansions. These are a good idea in giving players a
more definite motivation, but can be kind of unfair of two players happen
to draw overlapping cards while others' goals are completely separate.
It's especially bad for you if the player to your immediate right is bent
on collecting the same area cards you are because you'll almost never see
them.
- Another issue is that a couple districts are intimately connected with
the blue color. If you get extra points for being in these districts *and*
in this color, it's great for you, but if you don't get this fortuitous
connection, it's rather unfair. The same applies also with purple and its
districts.
- In the two player game you can get into a really bad lockup from which
it's impossible to extricate yourself. If you manage to get, say, the
yellow pawn in front of your blue shop and the blue pawn in front of your
yellow shop you're at the mercy of the opponent to rescue you from this
deadlock and why would he?
- Perhaps the most interesting part of the game is in positioning your
shop. Because you can place anywhere in a large area there are numerous
interesting considerations e.g. how to sort of cut others off, how to be
the most central so as to always be closest to the fans, how to ensure
maximum ability to expand, etc.
- Unfortunately the game can end way too soon before these interesting
decisions really all occur and bear fruit because as soon as one supply of
expansions is empty (which can happen very fast if two players are
competing over a color) or two different colors get down to just 1 piece
each, the game is over. This makes the game feel like it needed more
development time. So what's there is pretty good, but it could be better.
Torres
Game about medieval Spain from the same team that produced
Tikal.
Title means "Towers" in Spanish. Pretty
much a gamer's game with plenty of lookahead requirement
and nearly without chaos, apart from that introduced by
the other players that is. Has an uncommon three-dimensional
element as players hop up levels to be the greatest knight
in their castles. I have usually played using the basic
rules but giving each player their own color cards as a
shuffled deck. Cards are chosen by drawing the top three
off the deck, selecting one of them, and placing the
remaining two at the top or the bottom of the deck as the
player prefers. A good game apart from two possible
pitfalls: (1) the analysis inherent in the action point system
(also found in Tikal)
means that some players can spend twenty minutes taking
their turn; (2) theme and game actions are not well matched.
Java
by the same design team is a third entry in this series.
[Spiel des Jahres Winner]
Total Depth
Subtitled "An Oil Man's Game", explores the world of oil drilling.
As in
Monopoly,
players roll
dice to move around the outside board edge. Other similarities
include an extra turn when doubles are rolled, two decks of cards
("Production" and "Exploration"), income tax, income upon passing
the start space and even incorporation of the unofficial "Free
Parking" variant, here called the Slush Fund. Different is
an interior board path and an elevated 6x6 drilling board.
Landing on an outer board space usually offers the chance to
lease a plot on the drilling board if not already leased. Travel
on the interior board, possible only by landing exactly on its
entrance or possession of a plastic permit token (obtained
by landing on other spaces), permits drilling once one has
a drilling company. This is very much a costly hit-and-miss
affair, especially when drilling without any other proven oil
fields nearby. But if the player does not go bankrupt, eventually
his plots should be populated with a lot of black plastic pegs
indicating gushers rather than the yellow ones which signify
dry holes. Then each time a player passes the start, he is
paid based on the number of barrels he is pumping. Unlike Monopoly, the idea is not to
drive others into bankruptcy, but to be the first to reach one
million dollars. Some of the rules are a big obliquely-worded.
The intention is that each roll for drilling costs $5,000 for
example, but this is not explained where one would expect. How
to use the drilling completion sheets is not very well explained
either, but the idea is to keep a running total of all production
on the righthand columns. Drilling may occur anytime the player
ends a turn on the interior track. The Production deck seems to
get exhausted very quickly, but the Exploration deck is hardly
ever touched. A nice rule with these cards by the way is the
ability to bury some types of cards back in the deck if not to
the drawer's liking. Other cards are incredibly devastating
however, e.g. one which causes a player to lose his entire
drilling company, something which is incredibly difficult and
expensive to acquire. In fact, while there is a good atmosphere
of real drilling situations, there is so much chaos in the dice,
cards and spinner that many players will feel their skills are
not properly rewarded. A good idea is the Audit space which
requires the player to reveal his cash data. A nice touch is
a space reading "Blow Out - Call Red", an inside reference to
real-life oil firefighter Red Adair.
this 1984 game for 2-5
unknown; Orc Production Corp.-1984; 2-5; 120; 12+
Touché
Parker Bros. game published 1979 uses magnetism, which seems
strangely underutilized in games. The plastic gameboard has
a white border surrounding a grid on which move cone-shaped
clear acrylic pawns. Inside the pawns are metal disks, colored
white on one side and red on the other. When a pawn is moved
the tokens across the game board the disks flip over due to
magnets attached below the board. These were re-arrangeable
between games. The aim is to align four pawns in a row in
your color. While fun to see the discs flipping up and down,
a rather flavorless abstract. Requires a good memory.
Touring
Seminal card game invented 1906 was good enough to get patent
no. 836532 on behalf of the Wallie Dorr Company. It was purchased
by Parker Brothers and published more or less continuously,
with modernizations in artwork and terminology over the years,
until 1975. The property was subsequently acquired by Hasbro along
with the rest of the Parker line. This was really the progenitor
for all of the later "take that" card games in which players
have holdings and play "event" cards to try to ruin those of
others. The thats of this game are rather mild, probably because
players are trying to build up their holdings at the same time and
combination with strong events would have been unworkable. Even
so, the deck distribution seems to be overheavy with disasters
and sometimes players seem to spend most of their time doing
nothing but waiting for the right card.
A French adaptation,
Milles Bornes,
added the tactic of holding the safety (Coup Fourré)
card until a judicious moment.
There have been many, many imitators, including a recent one by
by Hasbro called On-line (not described here).
[Take That! Card Games]
Tracks to Telluride
Railroad game set in 19th century Colorado features an
unusual board construction mechanism, apparently patented:
four sheets are joined each at one corner and rotated out
to fully display. Crayons are used to draw narrow- and
standard-gage track on the hex map. Income is acquired by
contracting mines and by first entry into cities. Interaction
is provided in the form of lawyers, whose injunctions can
stop opponents from blasting their way through difficult
mountain passes. This is the biggest issue as a player
who is lucky and gets through his pass quickly can be hard
to stop. Also, if players gang up on someone with their
lawyers they can prevent him, seemingly forever, from
getting through the pass. Some players don't mind this;
others find it unfair and very annoying.
The untried Advanced Tracks to Telluride
possibly addresses this, but is said to lengthen duration to six hours.
Otherwise plays well and lasts about the right amount of time.
[another review]
Personal Rating: 6
John Bohrer;
Winsome Games-1994; 2-6
Traders of Carthage
This is technically a board game, but featuring one of the smallest
boards you'll ever see. All it shows are six movement spaces from
Alexandria to Carthage along the southern Mediterranean Sea, the last
two spaces indicating pirates. Ships are moved by players spending
their hand cards to buy other cards of the same type which have been
laid out as a purchasing pool. A player not buying instead draws from
the deck to get more purchasing power. Purchased cards become holdings
that pay off if the ship of their color reaches the goal first, but
cards matching a ship in pirate waters at that time are lost instead.
Successfully selling a ship earns a chip in that color, making that
good more valuable at the end – thematically this can stand for
developing a specialty in a particular commodity. Points are
determined by multiplying the number of cards sold by that of the
highest value sold (2, 3 or 5). And this is the whole game apart from
some minor ameliorations such as the ability to remove a card from the
purchase pool and the ability to use a hand card of the same color to
save a pirate-threatened one. But while play is simple, decisionmaking
is complex as one must consider specialization vs. opportunism, buying
vs. leaving it for the next player and looking ahead to see what
others will do. And yet it tends to move right along with not too much
downtime, packing in a high number of difficult choices in a short
amount of time. Production is adequate, including square-cut cards and
wooden pieces. At the time of this writing it seems that new licensees
will bring out more elaborate versions to the market soon.
The 2008 Z-Man Games edition is well-realized, preserving
all the existing rules and changing the graphics from the cartoonish
to the rustically beautiful. The latter are undeniably attractive
without overshadowing the original, which also felt fine given the
light nature of play for this card game. The only complaint about the
new version might be that the appearance of the board is a bit dark.
Possibly the intent was to depict a sea captain's aged map, but it's
more as if seen through a gauze that won't wipe away. Physical card
quality and size are noticeably improved.
[Buy it at Amazon]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 7
Susumu Kawasaki; Kawasaki Factory; 2006; 2 - 4
Trailer Park Gods
Card game involves Greek gods trying to attract
worshippers in modern trailer parks. Akin to
Nuclear War
and
Plague & Pestilence.
in the sense that players use cards to build up their holdings and reduce
those of others. The theme is not very attractive, the
black-and-white card art definitely not so, and the rules
do not permit a balanced game. Instead, a player who is
already in the lead is rewarded with more cards and thus
the rules actually encourage runaway leaders.
[Take That! Card Games]
TRAiNSPORT: Austria
First game in the TRAiNSPORT series covers Austria and bordering
regions. Players build track to complete valuable contracts and
be the first to reach the monetary goal.
Uses crayons on a laminated board to show which track has been built.
Challenging decisions on which provinces to build and how quickly
abound.
A little bit subject to luck of the draw and one's position with respect
to the start player, in general a rather satisfying experience. The lack
of pawns means it should be easy to play on a train!
Otherwise, players ought to blow up the map to a larger size and
issue cubes to use rather than drawing. Otherwise, keeping track
of the number on has built can be a major drag. Update:
This was actually done for the 2007 edition.
[Winsome]
TRAiNSPORT: Switzerland
Second in the series is not really different apart from a different map
which is a bit more expensive to build on due to more mountains. A good
source of variety for fans of the original.
[Winsome]
Transsib
Trios of Russian mafia roam six cars of a Trans-Siberian
train, legitimately selling at various stops, but also
squeezing for rubles, committing thefts and even murdering
one another. Player compartments begin stocked with various
commodities – electronics, tools, jewelry, etc. – each
of which has a different fixed price at each major station,
thereby concentrating player attention on different wares for
each stop. This is one of those systems where one needs to be in
six places at once – to protect, squeeze, steal or sell – but
has only three operatives. While one is away, others will play
until one can get back an try to salvage matters. If contesting
players happen to both be present, the matter is resolved by
blind bidding using victory points. The catch-up mechanism gives
the losing bidder the difference in the bid. Because an item
once protected can still be stolen or squeezed many more times,
accurately evaluating its worth is very difficult. Even worse,
if both players manage it and come up with the same number,
they both lose because neither gets it and both have to go to the
dining car. This gets kind of humorous if there's a tie in a duel
to the death. One can imagine the conversation: "Hey! you just
tried to kill me! ... Dinner?" The dining car, by the way, is
the linking car in the middle of the train, but isn't particularly
well presented, imagining the train as a horseshoe. Communication
design is rather poor in general – commodities are confusingly
given player colors – and the English instructions for the Winsome edition are even
worse because they twice fail to establish the general rule before
going into confusing examples. This edition also uses some unique
components: 35 metal washers adorned with color stickers. So,
while there are some interesting beginnings here, chiefly around
positioning, there is so much randomness – besides the bidding,
turn order is determined randomly, on the spot – and lack of
strategy that this really cannot be recommended. The closest
area of interest might be for players who just want a wild and
wicked ride. But for others, just consider this: each turn one
has only 2 actions, but very frequently one doesn't even want
to use them all. This is a far cry from the many far richer
systems in which there are many options to take and one must
choose only the best subset.
Traumfabrik (Fabrik der Träume)
Reiner Knizia-designed game about Hollywood movie producing
(title is "Dream Factory") is another in the system which
produced Medici and RA. Here the main innovation is the
"communist" monetary system in which all of the other players
share equally in the coin given up by the player winning the
acution. The system begins to wear out its welcome as what
strikes most forcibly, now more than ever, is the chaos of
the clumping of the lots and the significant inability of the
player to do anything about them (except perhaps keep the number
of players down to three). Side notes: all of the directors
and stars are dead (with the exception of "guest star" Reiner
Knizia, his first actual appearance in a game as far as I
know). This fact probably does not help the theme for many players
who may not remember directors such as Michael Curtiz. The theme
is not that strong in the first place as players tend to only
be concerned with packing bins rather than thinking about the
actual people that the tiles represent.
Travel Buff
Not about naturism, but a
Trivia game based on the idea of worldwide travel includes
questions on the world's geography and similar data. Board is
a large circle which players traverse by rolling a die to
pass through various regions, getting a question about that
locale. As in
Trivial Pursuit,
players must accumulate points in diversity. It is possible
to choose the difficulty level, and thus the payoff, of
questions, but sometimes the levels seem inappropriately
chosen. Unfortunately marred by too many giveaways of cash
which permit avoiding questions. Will disappoint both
strategists and trivia masters alike.
[Party Games]
[Tourist Games]
Trendy
Knizia card game about the fashion world resembles his
Modern Art
stripped way down. Playing cards featuring parodic names
of famous haute couturists, players must decide whether to
join the current trend or buck it and thus
start their own. Played over several hands, is very
simple to explain and understand and yet intriguing to play,
at least in part because of the need to size up the playing
styles of the opponents, surprisingly more important here than in many
other games. At the same time, one feels there is one further
development twist missing which would have made it truly
addictive. Certainly, numerous variants suggest themselves, e.g.:
not re-dealing but saving hand cards after each hand, removing the
value 3 cards in five-player games, devising a special rule for
what happens when a supermodel (doubler) card makes the total exceed the goal
(perhaps it is never attainable for the rest of the round?), having
players all secretly choose their card at the same time, having "Out"
cards also affect cards in the hand, having "Out" cards terminate
a designer for the rest of the hand, etc. A good bet
for introducing non-gamers to the hobby. Rated for ages eight and up.
T-Rex
Card game of the climbing type. The theme sounds just like
that of Dino. Each player runs a science team,
travelling to the past to steal dinosaur eggs, taking care
to return to the present before meteorites strike the earth,
which ends the game. On each turn, the players choose to
play high cards to collect eggs or low cards to be able to
direct future collecting efforts. The winner will be the
player who collects the most points in dinosaur eggs in
the twelve rounds of the game. A mix of trick-taking, card
counting and bluff. As in most games of the climbing type,
a good memory for what cards have been played is an essential
ingredient to success.
Trias
"Triassic", which I jokingly like to call "Dinosaurs on Holiday",
depicts in an abstract way the events of the Triassic Epoch,
the time when, simultaneously the first dinosaurs appeared and
the world continent, Pangaea, began to split up, eventually
to form the still-moving continents we know today. There are
really two games going on, one of continents, represented by
small hexagon tiles, splitting up and another of dinosaurs
trying to dominate as many of these continents as possible. The
rules by which the super-continent gradually fritters away are
amazingly elegant and usable. In addition, everything else
like the length, scoring, allowed actions and their costs is
very cleverly adjusted. Because of the random, modular setup,
will be different every time and it takes several times before
all the possible tricks and strategies are discerned. Some
players may feel a little lack of control due to the cards which
force the type of tile which must drift, but this is probably
necessary to keep the game moving and make matters just a little
bit predictable. Those whose taste runs toward abstracts and
fans of Doris & Frank Games will probably like this one more
than most. Two-player version, quite a donnybrook, is mostly
concerned with carving out and dominating the largest continent.
With artwork by Doris Mätthaus this is a publisher to watch.
[Gecko Games]
Tribun (Tribune)
This is
another of the pawn placement games, of which
Pillars of the Earth
may be the best known recent example.
The setting is the late Roman republic, as players represent leading
nobles attempting to dominate the state. Pawns are used to
claim monies, laurels and the right to contest one of the seven
categories, but mostly to claim cards. These cards –
representing patricians, plebeians, senators, vestal virgins,
gladiators, etc. – are used in card bidding
wars to establish who is tops in each category, which confers
a benefit each turn as long as the position is held, as well as
a special bonus at the time it is claimed. Cards come in
various values, the range of which is kindly indicated on the
cards themselves. They are acquired in a variety of
ways. Some are straight purchases. Some are unknown at first
and, only when revealed, purchased via blind auction. Some
offer the chance to be purchased at par value or provide that
value in gold instead. Some are purchased in sequential
fashion, each player taking a card from the face down group
after the higher bidders have chosen. Many require spending
money in addition to the pawn. Besides that already shown in
the various card acquisition methods, there is also versatility
in the various game victory conditions, different ones being
available depending on the number of players and desired game
length. The victory conditions are not that strong
thematically as usually they seem to just require a hodgepodge
of various levels, but the categories themselves nicely
provide the sorts of things one would expect: legions from
gladiators and so on. Domination of both patricians and plebeians
is useful, or, alternatively, senators and vestals. What's
nice about the victory conditions is that they don't provide a
complete recipe of what must be achieved, but allow the player
to choose the most attainable subset. There are quite a few
cards and bits and all are beautifully produced and
illustrated. The cards are of the long, thin variety previously
seen in
Caesar & Cleopatra.
The only complaint might be that some text is
a bit small. Good play is all about evaluation, both of
various options and about what the opponents are going to
choose next. There is also a critical blind auction each turn
which determines which category is safe from being contested.
Although the pawn placement mechanism is getting a bit too popular
and blind bidding is never a favorite, this shows that both, in
the right context can be a hit.
Overall it's a very satisfying result that may well be the best of
Essen 2007 so far tested. The back page of the instructions
includes a variety of variants. At least two useful ones are those
which provide that on turn one only two cards may be used for
contests and that discards are face down. Also, the best number of
players is probably more three than five.
[Buy it at Amazon]
Strategy: High; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 8
Karl-Heinz Schmiel; Heidelberger Spieleverlag/Fantasy Flight; 2007; 2-5
Tricks
Trick-taking card game by Alan Moon. Features a card drafting
system before actual card play begins. The bidding system seems
unbalanced as a player with an unlucky deck stack can wind up
having no purchases due to no fault of his own. Card play itself
seems to overly reward high bidding.
Alan R. Moon
Trigami
This trick-taking card game by David Parlett
uses the standard 52-card pack. Somewhat akin
to Hearts with
each player secretly choosing his own "pain suit"
after examining his hand, it could also be called Sticheln without trumps. As in
the inventor's Ninety-Nine,
pre-game declarations to earn extra points are available. You
may choose your pain suit randomly, say, or make a double or
nothing wager. It's also possible to score a lot by taking
every trick. All works quite well overall, diagnosis of
the hand being a particular challenge. There's also plenty
of tactical decisionmaking as players go void in various
suits and dangers mount on all sides. The removal of the
trump concept makes it slightly less confusing than
Sticheln, but
it can be just as "evil". Related to Bugami. [Rules]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium
Tri-ominoes (Triomino)
Dominoes variant uses
triangular pieces with three sides to match with. A bit
frustrating in that the publisher's choice of which pieces exist
and which do not seems illogical. Not every combination exists.
Luck of the draw can be too large a factor as well — tiles which
are identical on all three sides can be very difficult to play.
Trivial Pursuit
Very popular trivia game has appeared by now in many general
and specialized editions. Even immortalized by the televison
program Seinfeld. Rumor has it that a question about
Ronald Reagan from the Canadian designers was removed in the
US edition. Are some of the answers intentionally wrong for
copyright purposes?
[6-player Games]
[Party Games]
[10 Most Famous Board Games]
[Buy it at Amazon]
Trolley Car
My own card game would probably be considered to be of the
"climbing" or "eights" variety. My goals were for it to be fast
and fun, with plenty of options (hence the large hand size) but
with some dilemmas such as the fact that the card one gambles
with is the very type of card one could use to help one's cause
as well as dissonance between getting rid of a card versus helping
an opponent. [rules]
Trouble
Game for children is similar to Sorry, but featured the cute
Pop-o-matic gadget which permitted dice to be used in the game
without the possibility of it being swallowed. Basically another
in the Pachisi family.
Troyes
Named after the northern
French city,
this is worker placement with a difference: the workers are
rolled dice. Life in the 13th through 17th centuries
is depicted, each player's dice representing a nebulous
collection of citizens. Players
earn points by doing things like working on the cathedral
and working against unfortunate events. Dice come in four
colors representing military, religion, civilian and enemies.
There are a number of different areas into which players
allocate dice, each of them operating by different rules.
Kudos to the art design for creating a central area to store
unused dice so that everyone can clear see the potentials.
Players also acquire a number of activity cards – in
twenty-seven types – each providing a different special
benefit. At times it becomes difficult to keep them all in
mind and forgetting to use one of more of one's advantages is
not uncommon. This is all rather long and complicated, and
made longer because it's difficult to plan
much while not playing. It's also
very evaluative with big plays not easy to come by;
more often players can only get a few points here and there. There's
definitely a chance to, in effect, attack others, however, by buying
their dice, often paying far less than they are worth. Not only in
this are fixed prices in the game rather off – the value of
having workers in particular areas is rather overrated as well since
if one is going last it's not unusual for all of your dice to have
been purchased away from you. The trouble is that players are
thus rewarded for abusing
the chances of the last player, who is not necessarily the
leader, just because they happen to have the
dice they want instead of hitting the leader as they otherwise
would. The
system is not very elegant, being filled with all kinds of little
exceptions and gotchas. Usually this should be for thematic
reasons, but if it's the case here, they're not brought out enough to be
noticeable. Instead one just obsesses over which dice can
be purchased. The communication design exhibits similar
problems, often generating confusion. It's also possible to
run out of money pieces; shockingly the rules giving no instructions
about what to do about in this situation.
It's also unfair in that there's a great advantage in
going first, yet in no configuration of players does each participant
receive the same number of chances to do this.
MMLH5 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 5)
Sebastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges & Alain Orban; Pearl-2010/Z-Man-2010; 2-4; 90
[Amazon.com]
True Colors
Party game in which players cast secret ballots regarding their
fellow players, often on humorous topics. Players score points
based on guessing correctly about how the voting went for them,
whether they received all, some or none of the votes. Points are
higher for all and none, so eccentrics
may have some advantage! Humorous as long as there
are unused cards or new players. Can be good for mixing purposes.
[Party Games]
[Buy it at Amazon]
Trump, Tricks, Game! (Auf der Pirsch; Jagen, Troeven en Slagen!)
Trick-taking card game by Günter Burkhardt, creator of
Kupferkessel Co.
and also the trick-taker,
Volltreffer.
This one features a 52-card deck of four suits and so could
theoretically be played with ordinary cards except that the 6, 7,
8 and 9 cards contain varying amounts of footprints. At the end of
the hand each player sums these prints and multiplies them by the
number of different suits he has them in to score. Then, surprise,
the cards taken in trick form the new hand – no
re-shuffling needed! A special rule prevents uneven hand sizes by
simply limiting the number of tricks each player may take. This
leads to some unusual plays since tricks without points should be
strenuously ducked, quality rather than quantity being the goal.
Dilemmas are created when the player must choose between points and
future trumps as the next round's trump suit is always known. As a
result, one turn's weak hand often becomes the next round's strong
one. If plans go correctly, one should have the ideal hand for the
last hand where tricks are no longer limited and points are given
for taking cards in the bear and boar suits, less so for those of
wolf and mouflon (mouflon?! even in such a simple game there maybe
something to learn, if
mouflon
is a new word for you.) The last round wisely tends to be the one
which yields the most points. The game is usually quick, though it
has a slight memory element beyond the usual trick-taker (which
suits does one yet need to take?). Production and artwork are
quite good, the animals being presented in bust form. Some may find
there is too much luck for whoever has drawn the most protected 7
cards (each of which has three hoof prints), but this should not be
common. This is a good addition for trick-taking fans seeking a
little variety.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 7
Tsuro
This abstract tile-placer supports up to eight on a board of
thirty-six squares. Each tile has eight entrances/exits connected
to the paths which cross a tile in various ways. A turn consists
of placing one of your tiles adjacent to your current position
and then moving your pawn along the new path until it ends. If
this path bridges to other tiles, the trip can be a long one and
if it ends off the board, the player is eliminated. The biggest
surprise here is the way that so many of the advances of the past
few decades are ignored. It cares so little about a balanced
start that players are allowed to set up wherever they like,
including next to one another. By this means both players, but
especially the second to place, can have a profoundly negative
effect on the other.s chances. Regular starting positions and
switchback start orders have been around for decades, so why
not use them here? It.s similar with tile draws. Perfectly
symmetric tiles are the worst to get as they offer no choice
in their orientation. Given that, probably some better method
than random draw should probably have been devised for their
distribution. It would have been nice too had more strategic
aspects been put in. As it is now, all a player can do is try to
avoid others, unless a coup can be delivered, and head for the
empty part of the board. But one thing it does well is finish
quickly so that even eliminated players need not wait long. In
fact there tends to be "one more time" feeling. This probably
works best for those wanting a light outing with a lot of luck,
i.e. mixed groups, children, those who seldom play, etc.
Reiner Knizia's later take using the same system is called
Indigo.
[6-player Games]
[Top 10 Games for 7 or More Beginners]
[Frequently Played]
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 5
[shop]
Tuchulcha
For this 2-4 player game, veteran designer Marco
"Medici"
Donadoni performed research into the history of
Pachisi
and traced its surprising origin back to the ancient,
mysterious Etruscans. More importantly, he unearthed the many
original rules which have been lost over the centuries. Some,
like the fact that two dice are always rolled rather than
one, are not so surprising. That doubles permits rolling an
extra die is only a little more so. That there was no need
to roll a "6" to enter – this has always seemed, like Monopoly's Free Parking, a
later, ill-advised variant. But more interestingly, it also turns
out that the modern strike rules are but a watered-down subset
of the real ones. We all know that a single pawn cannot hit a
pair, but it turns out that a pair of tokens moving together
may take out a pair or less, but not more, and so on. Research
also turned up the previously lost terrain of the board, which
featured places of power in which a pawn's strength is doubled
or even tripled – the latter being a dilemma since they must
be vacated on the following turn. All of these are favorable
recoveries, but the most vivifying of all are the special powers
which up to two players may decide to adopt during the course
of play: Tuchulcha and Lasa. The former – sort of an Etruscan
Fury with the face of a vulture, the ears of a donkey, wings
and snaky locks – allows the player's pawns to never be hit,
to roll four dice choosing the best three and win if he can
prevent all players from reaching the goal. Lasa – sort of an
attendant or nymph in the Etruscan pantheon – never lands on an
opposing pawn and tries to instead land on the portals at the four
corners of the board before anyone else can win. Despite their
vastly different goals, the roles appear well-balanced and
generate special tactical considerations, e.g. it is probably
a bad idea to knock out Tuchulcha before Lasa since only
the former can strike the latter. Okay, time to come clean:
my story of re-discovery is only a story, but nevertheless is
one that feels true. This is a fun and challenging experience,
quite a cut above Pachisi
and especially in full four-player mode. It plays more quickly
as well. Three-player outings with one less role are less
exciting and suffer from a different board with a confusing
path while the two-player version seems to need more going on.
With neutral pieces to move, decisions are less difficult. The
(Italian) presesentation is quite good, including fancy pawns
representing Etruscan priests. Extensive background material
is included as well. The English instructions could have used
one more proofread by a native speaker and one wishes for more
disquisition of exceptional situations, but you will manage. I
would suggest one variant. Because life can be difficult for
the player to the right of Tuchulcha if he declares very early,
I would suggest that this player be given the first right of
refusal for Lasa. Recommended for game and non-game fans alike.
[summary]
[Holiday List 2004]
[daVinci Games]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Low
Turfmaster
Horse racing via card play which probably works best for about six players
for downtime reasons, although even with eight catching a hedge is
uncommon if players show the smallest amount of caution. Simple rules
make no great demands. A little long for winding down, probably best for
fans of the racing genre. Expansion tracks based on real life ones have
also been published. The review in Counter magazine seems
to permit more lane changes than the rules allow.
[6-player Games]
Turmbau zu Babel, Der (Tower of Babel)
Multi-player Reiner Knizia game about building the 7 (here, 8)
ancient wonders of the world. Its mechanisms remind of several
other Knizia efforts, but the picture is becoming too tangled
to cover here. However, we can say it is not related to Knizia's
previous effort using the same title.
Apparently, along with ancient Egypt
(Tutanchamun,
RA
and
Amun-Re),
he just loves the topic. In terms of actual play, what's
most interesting are the three ways of scoring, all quite
different. One holds various "build" cards and receives points
by having their offer refused by the current builder. But points
are also received for having been one of the primary contributors
when a wonder is completed. Finally, the completing contractor
receives a token which scores in a set collection end game. The
path of least resistance is to participate in all three of
these sub-games, but their widely disparate natures suggests
that probably one of them is a more reliable path to victory
than others (see
Basari).
This is a research job that few will require much inducement to
undertake. And why should they? Play moves along briskly and
everyone is always involved, without decisions being easy at
all. While the packaging is quite a bit larger than necessary –
this could have been a card game, I can understand the desire to
create large illustrations of the wonders in all their glory. The
artwork is monumentally cold, all whites, grays and pale blues,
and reminiscent of 1930's Expressionism. The only complaint
revolves around fairness in the card draws as getting a lot of
the same type seems especially powerful. Although theme fans have
only the art to entice them, most should enjoy this, especially
if viewed as the light, quick
and fun vehicle it really is, which the presentation belies.
[Ancient Egypt games]
[6-player Games]
Strategy: High; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium
Tutanchamun
Unusual collection game by Knizia offers a
level of elegance which has rarely been matched. Line up
the tiles in any order you like. On your turn you can move
your token as far forward as you like. There are so few
rules I initially wondered if it was even a game. Some of
its ideas seemingly picked up in
Fossil
five years later. Can have a bit of a kingmaker problem.
[Ancient Egypt games]
[Periodic Table of Board Games]
12 Caesars
Card game in which players conduct a series of
blind auctions for one of the twelve Caesars named
in Suetonius' famous books of the same name.
Each Caesar has a different point value based on
his chronological order. There are also bonus points
gained for gaining a series. There is no attention
to theme whatever. Cards are rather flimsy.
With blind bidding and luck of the draw, there is
little to no stategy.
[6-player Games]
20 Questions
Re-packaging of a traditional pastime.
Normally the game is played by having one person
think of an object and the other(s) asking up to
twenty questions which can be answered yes or no
to figure out what it is, the object being to ask
the fewest possible questions. Here the game is
reduced to cards which contain the name of a person
and twenty clues about them. Diverting, but really
only playable once.
[Party Games]
[Buy it at Amazon]
2010 Election, The
This
print'n'play
simulation of the 2010 British parliamentary elections –
think Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Nicholas Clegg –
makes for a brilliantly evocative experience game. The primary
mechanism, area control, is not usually a favorite of this site,
but it works well in this two-player situation, which is
also shaped by constraints which change over the course of its many
(short) phases. The succession of placement (and removal) phases
demonstrates a deep understanding of the various forces that affect
British voting, but also permits them to be applied in ways
very accessible for the players. What's clever is that at the
same time it serves the typical national election night
experience of waiting up all night, watching the
ebbs and flows in the returns, trying to predict outcomes and
at last savoring the successes and surprises of the final results.
As a game there appears to be a slight imbalance in favor of
the Tories, but in our games Labour have also won. In
addition, while the Liberal Democrats appear in the game as a
virtual player, we created a variant that had them played by a
human being and decreed that if they could do better than they
did in the real election, they would be declared the winner
instead. This was not at all difficult to implement and indeed the Liberal
Democrats have also won a playing. Most print'n'play efforts
have areas where improvements could be made and this is no
exception. There are places where the instructions could be
made more clear and, speaking as a non-Briton, some rules assume
a knowledge of British politics or geography that may not be
there. One example, but not the only one, is the mention of
the Parti Falangist counter which is mentioned as an optional
rule, but never really explained.
It's also unfortunate, but this is what happens in a
simulation, that Britain contains so many identical election
districts. More variety in districts would probably make the
decisionmaking more interesting. Or perhaps there might have
been cards in hand that give players special effects in
certain districts. In terms of presentation, the map is very
functional and yet pleasing, but might have included
some player aides, e.g. so that players know which
districts are home turf for which parties. (Again the
assumption seems to be that only Brits would be interested in
the game.) A
road map showing what
happens in each phase for each player would also have been
good to have, practically necessary for a fair game, really.
There are a great number of chits to be cut out for this game,
fortunately none double-sided. If you have them, it would be
completely feasible to use cubes in several different colors,
which would make for a more satisfying experience. At least
the version I have played includes chits for parties which no
longer exist; presumably other scenarios applying the same system
to other historic elections are going to be created. In terms
of strategy, usually it's a matter of deciding whether to
concentrate one's forces or spread them out, and tactically
how to be as efficient as possible, reinforcing probable
success and knowing when to opt out of a doubtful situation.
The treatment of media success is sort of a
Rock-Paper-Scissors situation which is fun to figure out as
well. There is also a fair amount of randomness, particularly
with the small parties, as their presence is drawn from a bag.
Dice play a role as well. Overall this is an insightful, yet
relatively simple to play simulation of its topic and one
which can probably please many, but especially so for the
political junkies among us. Counter art by Mike Siggins.
[2010 Election road map]
MHML8 (Strategy: Medium; Theme: High; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 8)
Charles Vasey;
self-published-2010; 2(3); 60
23
For some it's not unusual that the chief fun in a game is
figuring out how to play it successfully. But once that it
accomplished, and if there is only one way, how much fun
remains? This specimen of Amigo's annual card game
is a shedding game reminiscent of
The Great Dalmuti.
The cards the players try to get rid of consist of
one 1, two 2s and three of everything else up to 23.
Before play begins players discard three.
Whoever is dealt the 1 plays first. From there they
take turns playing cards all of the same rank which are
equal to or higher than the last played. In the latter case,
if the distance is more than one, the player takes one chip for each
intervening number. Or a player may pass and take a chip. Or
pass, take two chips and force the next player to
play. A player may also check out by laying down the remaining
hand and taking a chip for every card in it. Play is over two
rounds. During this entire period players may expend from a
very limited supply special chips that permit playing cards
differing from the current rank by up to five, including in
the lower direction. Each chip taken counts a minus point and each
special chip two positive ones, the highest score winning.
Because of the discarded cards and those randomly discarded
before play, this fortunately never has too much to do with
memorization of which cards have already fallen. Much of this
sort of plays itself, even the decision whether to force an
opponent play, which should basically only occur if the
opponnent passed last time and the situation has not changed.
The most significant and intriguing activity is figuring out how to
discard. Should one drop duplicates or cards which are too
close to other cards? This may be spoiling it (in which case
stop reading now), but the answer is neither. Instead
the best approach is to discard cards of every other rank
because having been able to play, say, a 10, likely that the
pile will have moved on past 11 before it's your turn again.
Which of many cards to discard should begin with the second
rank after a long gap. For example, if the hand looks
something like ... 4, 5, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 13 ... the 11, and
13s look like a good bet to drop since the living will be
scarce in the period between 5 and 10 and the lowest card
possible should be retained. This one plays best with
four; with fewer there are too many cards out of play.
Having huge gaps in the hand and not knowing whether anyone
else has those cards in play either makes things quite difficult.
It's too bad also that this simple game does not permit five
or even six players in the same way as a
No Thanks
or
Foppen,
which probably could have been done by just including more
cards. In sum this is okay, but not up to the standards of a
Stich-Meister
or a
Byzanz.
[English translation]
LLMM6 (Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 6)
Christoph Behre; Amigo-2011; 2-4; 25; 8+
Twilight (Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde)
Trick-taking card game for partners.
Each team represents a pagan cult, worshippers of either
Sun or Moon. Cards represent priests, souls to collect, and temples.
If one wishes, a player may demand that another player
at the table play a card for him. Definitely innovative,
but it can be difficult to become accustomed to
this rule. 2003 Update: re-released as Dr. Jekyll &
Mr. Hyde in 2002 with very attractive artwork by
Carsten Fuhrmann. Now the cards depict Jekyll/Hyde, friends and
locations. The card notation is cleaner as well, although to
my eyes still not perfect as designations such as "F4" connote
a code whereas what one really wants is to read that the rank
of the card is F and its point value 4. Ideally the F would
appear in one corner and the 4 in the other. Of course with
play one quickly becomes accustomed. The same must be said of
the game in general. Whereas at first it appears very difficult,
with experience it becomes a delightful endeavor to try to guess
from their plays the nature of each player's hand, not to mention
trying to fake out the opponents. Strongly recommended for expert
trick takers.
[Two vs. Two Games]
[Holiday List 2003]
[Bambus]
Twisted Fish
(Note: a complimentary copy of this game was received for purposes
of review.) Let's redo
Go Fish!
Not exactly a promising proposition, is it. On the other hand,
unlikelier re-makes have proven worthwhile, e.g.
Tuchulcha,
so why not? Besides the rubber duck, what do we have here?
There are eighty-one cards, sixty-five of them showing various
undersea creatures (shrimp, starfish, jellyfish, whale,
hammerhead, blowfish, barnacle, crab, dogfish, clownfish,
flying fish, eel card shark) in five suits. The rest are
special "take that!" cards, reference cards and replacements.
There are two ways of playing this sort of game: one is the
Go Fish! style where one simply requests a rank and
receives all of the cards of this rank, the other is the
method used by
Authors
in which it's necessary to specify the exact card and receive only
only that. Unfortunately it's the latter method that's in use
here and the unnecessary delays it introduces are only increased
by adding a fifth suit. This extra number of cards also ruins
the game for two as there are far too many cards to
comfortably hold. But what about that duck? What's it doing in
a game about fish? There is no discussion in the rules, but
from reading online it appears that the idea is, just for fun,
to place it in front of a player who has four of a fish, but not
the fifth, for they are a sitting duck. The artwork showing
anthropomorphized fish is cartoonish and certainly colorful,
but rather simplistic and not as attractive, say, as compared
to the work of
Doris.
This doesn't work well for children either. There are too many
cards to hold and the younger ones won't be able to read the
text of the special cards. Not everyone will agree, but
Go Fish
can actually be an enjoyable outing for kids and adults alike.
Unfortunately, this attempt has failed to improve its basic
premise. It's not sick and twisted, but merely twisted, and that
not in the right direction.
Martin Uniacke & Jody Fedele;
McNeill Designs;
2006; 3-6
LLLM3 (Strategy: High; Theme: Low; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: High; Personal Rating: 3)
[Buy it at Amazon]
Twister
Apart from
Grass,
is there any game that better typifies the 1960's?
This classic party game was published in 1966.
The reason for most of its popularity is now past. Back when it wasn't
cool to feel up members of the appropriate sex in public, a game
helped make it okay, but nowadays it seems anything goes.
[Party Games]
[Buy it at Amazon]
Tycoon: the Real Estate Game
By Wolfgang Kramer and Horst-Rainer Rösner.
Players are building and profiting from hotels and factories in nine
of the most capitalistic cities of the world. In each, there is an
ongoing contest have the most hotels. At the same time, there
is a worldwide contest to have factories in the most developed
cities. Finally, profits are earned by diversifying into as
many cities as possible. Thus there is more than one strategic
path to take and as players may only take one action a turn,
there are many dilemmas, including what others are planning.
There is not a great deal of chance apart from the airline
tickets which control where a player may move. Strategically,
it is unorthodox, but for the first two turns of the game it is
probably wisest to take two small loans. If only the box didn't
have such a large shelfprint, this game would probably be brought
out more.
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Medium; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 7
Horst-Rainer Rösner & Wolfgang Kramer; 1998; Jumbo; 2-4
El Capitan
is the 2007 re-make which re-sets the action in the
Renaissance Mediterranean. Rule changes are slight. One
permitting the first placer in a city to start in the second
space helps out in the early stages of few-player games.
Disallowing taking a loan as the first action injects players
right into the board and eliminates a boring beginning. But
the headline here is that the new ship has foundered both
graphically and thematically. The great trading cities of the
period were the Italian ports Genoa and Venice, so why is the
title in Spanish? And why does it refer only to the person who
gets the ship from place to place rather than the duke or doge
who is deciding the investments? And what's the rationale for
building towers in ports? At least it's a Renaissance topic
– hardly any games have been done on that. Not.
Production-wise, wooden bits have replaced plastic, but Mike
Doyle's communication design leaves much to be desired.
Unbelievably, a decorative, calligraphic typeface depicts the
all-important city names, which are practically
indistinguishable from one another, especially for the players
forced to read them upside-down. A graphical guide meant to
help is so small and dark as to be no help at all. In fact
everything is quite dark, puzzlingly out of step with a rather
cheerful system which includes plenty of cooperation. The
"picture post cards" featured for each port, the best art in
the package, are unfortunately too small to really be
appreciated. Including the too-large box of the first edition,
this decent design has been twice betrayed now but sub-par
production. It's a fair guess that in the next decade it will
have a third chance – let's hope it's the charm it
deserves.
Games of the Italian Renaissance]
Strategy: Medium; Theme: Low; Tactics: High; Evaluation: Medium; Personal Rating: 5
Horst-Rainer R&osner & Wolfgang Kramer; 2007; Pro Ludo/Ystari/Z-Man; 2-5
221B Baker Street
While not the
earliest Sherlock Holmes game,
it is one of the classics and no doubt the one longest in
print, even pre-dating the famous
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
by six years. Encountering it is a bit of a surprise. The
aforementioned game is all about reading and analyzing long
stories told by characters and experts. On the other hand
classic logical deductioners like
Clue
are bare bones exemplars of process of elimination. This is
neither. But there are similarities. Each playing is a
specific case having a background that is read out before play
begins, specifying vicim, circumstances, situation, etc.
Players still traverse the map to reach locations like the
museum, park or hotel where they pick up clue cards that lead
them to the shared booklet from which they read a paragraph to
learn information. But the clues are of quite a different
nature. To repeat the example from the instructions, a single
clue might read
Killer Clue (four parts)
I. A wise bird that hoots
This informs the player that there are three other clues about
the identity of the perpetrator that are yet to be found. Here
are the rest:
II. The alphabet letter after W
III. The opposite of "east"
IV. The season after summer
Now think about that a moment, noting that the clues are
ordered. If the meaning is not apparent, then
perhaps encountering the suspect name "Alex Westfall" will
make it so. It's this sort of puzzle-y clue in which the game
revels and undoubtedly the source of its enduring popularity,
despite its creators' lack of interest in the other game mechanisms.
The process of gaining clues remains the simple roll-and-move,
old and unfair. To flavor it up a bit, each player has two
cards, each of which may be used once. One is used to lock a
clue so that no other player may see it, the other a key that
removes the lock. There are also a few special spaces. The
carriage house lets a player instantly cab it to any location
on the board while Scotland Yard and the locksmith permit
recovering used lock and key cards, respectively. But that's
about for this bare bones system. The initial game includes
twenty cases and so of course may only be played twenty times
before needing expansion kits to provide new challenges. It's
sort of too bad that the clever portion of this game is
married to such a prosaic and out of date one, but this
can still work, especially for lovers of crosswords and other
such puzzles.
Orient Express
is a later example in similar style.
[Sherlock Holmes games]
[6-player Games]
[Frequently Played]
LMLL6 (Strategy: Low; Theme: Medium; Tactics: Low; Evaluation: Low; Personal Rating: 6)
Antler Productions; John N. Hansen Co.-1975; 2-6; 90 minutes
Amazon
Typo
Word game with cards, a re-development of the numeric game,
Take 6.
As in its predecessor, each player simultaneously reveals a card –
containing a single letter –
and tries to add it to one of the existing card rows with the proviso
that he be able to say a word which contains the fragment in
question. If unable to do so, he must "eat" one of the rows. Since
just as in
Boggle
or
Scrabble
the dictionary is in effect part of the rule book, there can be
occasional problems disputing what is and isn't a word, but
balanced against this can be the fun of citing a word where
opponents thought it impossible. At the very least the mind is
stretched to see words in a new way. As play is not timed like
Boggle,
yet not long like
Scrabble,
it fairly earns its space on the game shelf. Moreover, there
are tactics available as well since a player facing problematic
words can play a card late in the alphabet hoping words will have
cleared before this turn. The typewriter theme – remember that
ancient artifact? – is nicely reflected by cards which look like
the typing of an old machine on worn paper. But don't play with
people unwilling to conclude their word searches in a reasonable
amount of time. In that case a timer may be a good idea after all.
[6-player Games]
Strategy: Low; Theme: Low; Tactics: Medium; Evaluation: Low
[Cwali]
Tyranno Ex
Memory-based game of somewhat abstract evolution.
Tyros
Martin Wallace design about the ancient settlement of the
entire Mediterranean littoral. Players don't control a single
empire, but attempt to dominate all four. In their hands are
nicely-sculpted plastic ships, cardboard city tiles and cards
in four suits which permit the movement and construction of the
above. The crucial dynamic is that each space can only hold one
city, which can be built if the ships of only one player are
there. Since a space lacking a city can only hold two ships,
either a player manages to secure the city before another's
ship can arrive, or, the area tends to hold both ships for the
duration, the city going unbuilt. Since moving to a location
requires cards of the location's color and building a city
requires even more cards of this color, the composition of the
ten cards one receives each turn is very important, perhaps even
too important, although it can be improved somewhat by trade
with others or with the deck. While the first impression is one
of trade, expansion and conflict, the overall feeling is of an
almost-pure abstract with many blocking moves, particularly in
the second half when players no longer trust one another enough to
trade any more cards. Very often the player feels helpless about
being able to make any progress at all and becomes resigned to
the more limited goal of creating stalemates hampering others.
In our first playing, all four empires were located in the
extreme east (despite the adjacency rule). This created a very
skewed playing in which two empires could make no progress
whatever and tended to make matters rather unfair for two of the
players, as well as make half the cards in the deck useless for
all for the entire second half. While not a normal situation,
the fact that it could happen at all tends to indicate that
more development was needed. One separation from reality is the
complete absence of combat, which historically did occur, and
here maybe would have helped to break up the many dead-locked
situations. Another is that all the empires are supposed to be
based on the Phoenicians, whereas in reality the Egyptians,
Greeks, Romans and others ought to have been explicitly
mentioned. Or, the theme could have been transferred to the
mysterious "Sea Peoples" of an earlier era who settled in a
variety of areas as far dispersed as Palestine and Tuscany.
It's difficult to say what audience this game should find as
military game fans will find it too bloodless while abstract fans
may find too much luck of the draw. With this entry in Kosmos'
"Games for Many" series, one perceives a lesser success rate
than in the "Games for Two", probably reflecting the greater
difficulties inherent in development for multiple players.
[Games Featuring Phoenicians]
Martin Wallace
Tzuris
A trick-taking card game which feels overcomplicated by too
many rules. It would be
much better if the card selection were eliminated and the
pre-game bidding minimized. Also, although five are allowed to
play individually, it probably works much
better as a 4-player partnership game. Similar to
Twilight's
rules for asking another player to play a card on your behalf,
here the twist is that you get to choose which card from your
hand another will play.
[Two vs. Two Games]
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