Holiday Shopping Stuff- Fleet

I had a chance to play several games last week that were fun, fast, and family friendly. One, Garden Dice, is pretty ideal for all ages. The second, Fleet, is better for older teens who can calculate and manage "economies."

In a game of Fleet you create and manage a fleet of fishing vessels in Nunavut, Canada. Players can buy boats and fish for shrimp, lobster, tuna, or other sea thingys. Players can also invest in wharfside pubs, casinos, and fish processing ships. The winner is the person who can land the most fish and generate the most victory points.

Fleet's main game mechanism is a set of auctions. Players bid for "licenses" to seek out certain kinds of fish. A license will also allow you to get some in-game bonus. One key to the game is to bid for the best licenses and not pay too much. The other key is to most efficiently create your fishing fleet and then catch lots of fish.

It's clearly personal taste that makes the theme of Fleet so appealing and the theme of Garden Dice so unappealing. I also like auction games. Fleet seems to have a number of routes to victory and that's always appealing.  Finally, the components of Fleet are really top notch (like Garden Dice's are). This is another family friendly game that's fun and inexpensive and is absolutely recommended for older teens and groups of gamers.

Holiday Shopping Stuff- Garden Dice

I did originally start this blog to talk about games for kids. Last week I got a chance to play two games that would actually be big hits for younger players or games with the family.

Garden Dice is a game about planting and harvesting vegetables. The players get a rectangular board and a chance to roll four dice. Based on the dice results you can buy seeds, plant them, water the seeds, or harvest the vegetables. You can always do one or more things in a turn, the question is just how best to use your dice.

Garden Dice has a good degree of potential strategy as players try and plant in the best locations, collect the best harvested vegetables, and occasionally unleash a bird or rabbit on their opponent's plants. In fact it has more than enough depth to entertain experienced gamers. At the same time if you're old enough use numbers and colors you can probably play the game at a basic level at least. The game components are colorful and cheery and the theme is pretty inoffensive.

The garden theme did nothing for me so I don't think I would play or buy this game for myself. I would, however, heartily recommend it to anyone shopping for kids or for a family appropriate game. It probably would also be a good filler game or something to play though later in the evening after the serious gaming is done.

A Warmish Place Has Just Frozen Over

I listen to Meeples and Miniatures each month and usually I end up taking host Neil's advice pretty seriously. He was right about Saga being terrific and his recommendation of Commands and Colors was spot on. So this month the color drained from my cheeks when he and friend Rich Jones announced that they're playing Warhammer 40K again.

"Finish Painting Us Mr. Lazybones!"

Historical gamers love to hate 40K, partly for some good reasons and partly because it's an easy and appealing target. The game requires a fairly gigantic investment to start playing and the manufacturers routinely make certain components obsolete and in need of (expensive) replacement. The battles combine lasers and automatic weapons with cavalry charges and chainsaws as melee weapons which could be considered possibly rather silly, if not completely and insanely unlikely. There are a host of other elements which allows 40K to be charitably classified as a "fantasy game."

That being said, Neil from Meeples is the Anna Wintour of wargaming and so now I'm uneasily eyeing my Dark Eldar and feeling the need to get them on the playing field. At least the models are pretty nicely sculpted. And the odds of getting a game in are a bit better than with the Nemesis game I was recently reviewing.

Kickstarter- Maybe it's time...

I've spent a good deal of time looking over Kickstarter offerings but I haven't bought in yet. For every great Kickstarter game (i.e The Resistance) there seem to be a dozen or so that turn out to be disappointments. Some of the miniatures offerings look promising but turn out to be either ridiculously expensive or (strange but true) paralyzingly cheap. For example, a 100$ investment in Reaper plastic minis yields you so many figures that you'll never paint all or even most of them and you're better off not littering the kitchen with them.Which my wife can attest is something that husbands should not do.

I may have to bite the bullet now, though, and not just once but twice. Since my first "4:30 Movie" as a child on local NY television I've been a fan of rampaging giant monsters. Back in the day there was a different old science fiction or monster film on at 4:30 every day and I watched as many as possible. While it would seem like rampaging monsters would be a great gaming genre I've only really seen it done well twice- Crush, Crumble and Chomp and Privateer Press' Monsterpocalapse. Now prolific designer Martin Wallace is re-releasing Moongha Invaders, which received great reviews but sparse publication.  It looks great and the price is right.

Speaking of right price, Kickstarter is also featuring Boss Monster. This is a dungeon building card game that features some of the most inspired 8 bit artwork I've seen in years. I don't even really know how the game is played or even if there are rules at all. The cards are just so too cute and the designers are like two gaming friends from high school I forgot I had. My brain tells me that Moongha Invaders is a great game, my heart tells me I must buy Boss Monster....

A Fun Surprise- Magical Athlete

I like to believe that there are inexpensive and undiscovered games out there that are awesome and fun. In the past I can't say I've found this to be true. Inexpensive and unknown games all too often demonstrate after one play why they're so obscure. Still, I keep searching. Then last week I discovered Magical Athlete.

What is it about the title of this game that's so off-putting? Maybe it's just the dogged literal mindedness of it. There's exactly not one whit of inspiration in naming a game about magical athletes Magical Athlete. It feels lazy. Was there just a deadline that had to be met? "Quick, name the damn thing, the printers are waiting!" We'll have to wait for the expose on Meeples and Miniatures to learn the truth.

Snark aside, this is a very fun game. The goal of the game is to win a series of footraces held between different magical beings. You may control a druid, a medusa, a centaur or witch. There are many different racers to choose from. In each turn you roll a die and move ahead that many spaces. The first person to get to the end of the track wins. The fun of the game stems from each racer's special power. When centaurs pass someone they "kick" them back one space. After a siren moves she "lures" each other racer one space towards her. If you pass the witch she casts a spell and you stay frozen the next turn. Most of the powers happen automatically. So the siren moves ahead, then she pulls everyone towards her. That may then trigger one or more other powers. Each turn can lead to a string of unexpected events and various characters being kicked forwards and back, frozen, or somehow affected.

While there is a certain element of luck to the game we found that you can also use your powers carefully and thoughtfully. I wouldn't call this a Very strategic game but it certainly rewards some planning. There are also a series of races to be won and players form alliances in order to rack up the most points over all  the races.

I found Magical Athlete to be outrageously fun. It's a game I don't mind losing because of the luck element and it's a game that is fun to win through planning out your special power. If you can count to six you have learned the rules so this is a great game for younger players and older players can start a game without lengthy rules explanations. It's also cheap and easily available. You could even convert it to a miniatures game. Highly recommended!

Liberte- A Good Election Night Game

As the battle of the titans heats up in the presidential election it's perfect timing to talk about a political board game. A game that simulates a time where losers weren't relegated to Fox News or the Harvard University Department of Political Science, but instead swiftly executed before a crowd of garlic eating rustics. The game is Liberte, the game of the French Revolution.

I've found over time that I greatly prefer games with some narrative quality. I think I would rather take part in a good story than win or lose. For that reason Liberte at first did not grab me. In the game you support political candidates in revolutionary France. You may support conservatives, radicals or moderates. Further, you may support one faction in one region and another elsewhere. At the end of each turn the votes are tallied in each region and one faction "wins." Then the player who most successfully supported that faction gets points. Say you support the radicals in four regions. Even if the radicals win the overall election you need to have them win in those four regions to have your support count. The end result is that players may support one faction in a given region just to beat an opponent and keep them from scoring.

I confess I didn't understand the system at all until a turn had been played. It's pretty simple once you see it.

So far the game is a politics game where you allocate resources and try and win points. Liberte begins to shine when you add in factors that bring the period to life. There are rules for grabbing public acclaim as a general. There are rules for sabotaging friend's plans with bread riots, political clubs, emigrating nobles, and finally the Terror and guillotine. In the game we played the conservatives took a strong lead at the beginning. Then radical political clubs began to spring up across the land. My team lagged in last place after a terrible first turn. The other players put their generals out into the field and started gathering fame. By some luck I then unleashed Madame Guillotine on them, heads rolled left and right,  and I ended up in decent shape at the end because my minion was the only surviving general and won all the fame by default.


I was pretty happy with Liberte. It is a game that rewards some calculation but there is enough luck and narrative to make it fun rather than just an exercise in numbers. The system certainly fits the theme and the rules end up being pretty simple.

More Games With Staying Power

Many years ago I stumbled on a computer game called Space Hulk. In the game you led some space marines into a mysterious spacecraft and then tried to survive waves of attacks by hideous space monsters. The sound effects were super effective and my room echoed with shouts, gunfire, and space monster roars for months. Later on I discovered that the game was based on a successful board game. At the time, though, the experience of leading my hapless heroes through one ambush after another made a huge impression.

Fast forward to a few years ago, when I picked up Space Hulk- Death Angel. This is a card game that allows you to play out the same basic experience as Space Hulk. The card game can be played solitaire or with friends and as it was pretty cheap I thought I'd give it a go. Years later it's possibly my most played game.

The essence of the Space Hulk experience for me is that you're commanding a team that only has about a 20% chance of surviving. You're not playing to achieve a wild success, you're playing to maybe eject one grizzled survivor from the spooky space hulk or more likely at least have a dramatic chase through the ship before going down with guns blazing. You know that you're going to need lots of luck and when you finish a game in complete defeat you're already gearing up for another chance to get lucky and survive.

Good Times on the 386

Death Angel captures that experience perfectly. There is a good deal of strategy and tactics involved. Further, there are lots of special units to choose from and the game has huge replay value. I certainly play better now than when I started. Still, the few times I've "won" it's been as much from some lucky breaks as from tactical skill. In other games that might be irritating, in Death Angel it's great fun. Add in several cheap expansion packs and a nice narrative quality and Death Angel has paid off its initial investment ten fold. I wish I could say the same about, say, Thunderstone. Or Dungeon Lords. Warhammer 40K. Or a few others....

Anyway, if you're looking for a great solitaire or group game that's fast paced, exciting, and unpredictable, Death Angel has a lot to recommend it.