Hollow Earth Expedition
Oct 12Hollow Earth Expedition (HEX) is a Pulp Adventure RPG by Exile Games. The setting is the 1930′s, but with a twist – the Earth is actually hollow (!), and all sorts of anachronistic wonders await within for adventures to encounter, exploit, or expeditiously retreat from. Dinosaurs, lost civilizations, and other pulp oddities give the game an Indiana Jones meets The Mummy meets Jurassic Park (Indiana Jones and the Mummy of Jurassic Park?) feel – if you even choose to leave the surface. The surface world has enough cool stories waiting to be told that you may not even need to enter the Hollow Earth (all of the demos I played in were on the surface world).
Out of the gate, the mechanics are very much like the World of Darkness rules. Success/Failure of an action is derived from successes in a dice pool, with the pool being made from Attribute + Skill + Modifiers. HEX is a bit more forgiving here with their “Ubiquity” mechanic. You can use any even-sided die you want for each die in the pool, and evens count as successes. For example, lets say you rolled a dice pool of 5 with a d4, d6, d8, d12, and d30 and got results of 2, 5, 8, 11, and 30. Three even numbers mean three successes. With higher dice pools this can mean a lot of dice, so Exile Games has released special Ubiquity Dice that greatly speed up the action by combining the average of up to three dice into one – drastically reducing the number of dice you have to roll. Players may even choose to “take the average” on checks where applicable, which is as easy as it sounds. It’s a very simple mechanic that takes a bit to get used to, but it really makes the game fly. Encounters both social and combative focus more on storytelling than on tactical details, though there is enough of a balance for both kinds of players to have fun. Being used to combat always involving a battlemat and minis, a combat done without them was very odd at first while also very liberating. It reminded me of my first AD&D 2nd edition games when I first started playing RPG’s when minis were very rarely used.
It’s the roleplaying that maxes HEX shine. Along with the streamlined rules, characters can earn “style points” when they play out motivations and flaws in their characters, along with good roleplaying. These style points give the pulp infusion into the game, as characters can use them in especially tough situations for bonus dice to make that amazing shot or narrowly avoid the spears from the tribal warriors. In all the demos I played, the style points were given out and used quite liberally which made for a great time all around. The system is flexible enough for fast-paced storytelling that can quickly go from a social scene to a velociraptor chase with a ranged combat with hostile natives in between rather easily. There are a few quibbles, notably with how health is tracked, but the system is very smooth and easy to learn. This game is all about the story, and the rules exist only to help the story along. I’m planning to begin a regular HEX campaign soon, and I’m excited to see what the game’s capable of. A definite “Buy” for RPG fans!
Pack & Stack
Sep 02I’m becoming more and more a fan of puzzle-style games. Games like Ubongo, On the Dot, and Rumis really get your brain working in a different way than most other board games, and while they can be a bit brain-bending, they always leave me wanting to play again. Pack & Stack is a game that has a nice puzzle-like element to it, but won’t leave your brain oozing out of your ears into a puddle on the table (unless you already have some sort of medical condition that would cause that to happen anyway).
In the game, you are trying to efficiently fill up your pickup truck with a pre-selected load of colorful wooden blocks. Unlike most games where you gain points each round for doing things well, in this game you lose points every turn for doing things badly. And trust me, you WILL lose points!
Each round you roll the 5 colored dice. These dice correspond to the 5 colors of wooden blocks in the game (blue, green, gray, brown, and white). You will then collect the appropriate number of wooden blocks of each type, depending on what numbers you roll on the dice. And, these are non-standard six-sided dice, so you may get anywhere from 0 to 5 pieces, depending on the color. After every player had collected their load for the round (and everyone will roll the dice for their own load), each player will draw 2 truck cards. Players will then simultaneously reveal the cards into the middle of the table. Each player will then select a truck that they think will best hold their load of blocks. The catch is that you can’t choose one of the 2 cards that you drew. Also, if you’re the last one to select a truck, you don’t get one from the table. Instead you have to draw a random one from the draw pile. The truck cards in this game are an overhead picture of a pickup truck, with beds of varying sizes and shapes. On the cab of the truck, there’s a number ranging from 1 to 4. This indicates how high you can stack blocks in the truck. So, once everyone has chosen a truck, each player will fill their truck with blocks, trying their best to get them all to fit in the truck without leaving any blank space. If you have space left over in your truck after filling it up, you lose 1 point for every 1×1 block of space (for reference, the white block is 1×1). If you have blocks left over that won’t fit on the truck, you lose 2 points for every 1×1 block that didn’t make it onto the truck. The player who loses the least number of points will get a 10-point bonus. Everyone pays points tokens to the bank, returns their blocks to the starting piles, discards their truck card, and then another round begins. Keep in mind that there’s no time element to filling up your truck
(unlike, say, Ubongo) – everyone can take their time and find the most efficient way to fill it.
The game ends when the first player gets down to 0 points. At that point, the remaining player who has the most points is the winner. Even with a full complement of 6 players, the game only takes about 30 minutes to play.
I really enjoy this game, and have found that it’s especially a lot of fun to play with my kids. My kids are 6 and 3, so we play with some modified rules (mainly, we don’t “race” to get the best truck). But, even for my 3-year-old, she can still be engaged in the game by rolling the dice, collecting the correct number of blocks, and then sorting them into the correct piles at the end of the round. We even pretend to “drive” the trucks to the different piles to drop off the blocks, which they think it great.
But, don’t get me wrong, this game is also quite enjoyable for adults, too. In other reviews, I’ve heard a lot of complaints about how there’s really only one meaningful decision in the game, that being the selection of which truck to use. While that may be true, I don’t think that it detracts from the gameplay, and it definitely makes the game more accessible to non-gamers who might be overwhelmed by too many decisions. Having said that, Pack & Stack is definitely a game that favors those who have a good overall sense of spatial awareness. So, in general, I suck at this game. But, that doesn’t keep it from being fun! Components are very nice and colorful, and the artwork is cartoony and fun. If you’re looking for a light, fun, short game that can be played in a variety of settings, Pack & Stack is a definite “Buy”!
Dice Town
Jul 23Ah, dice games. There’s something about rolling dice that immediately makes a game seem more accessible and more “fair”, just because of the way dice tend to balance out differences in skill by way of simple probability. In a way, it’s an excuse for people to not have to make optimal decisions in a game, because a lucky dice roll could still turn the tide in their favor. There’s no doubt that rolling a natural 20 in a game of D&D is a truly exciting event, but when a game has too much of a luck element, many people just stop caring about the outcome, because they feel they have very little control over it. Recent game designs have sought to mitigate this problem by combining dice rolling with bluffing elements (a la Liar’s Dice), or by making all (or most) rolls of the dice have some sort of intrinsic value, regardless of whether the roll is low or high (To Court the King, Kingsburg, Yspahan). In Dice Town, Ludovic Maublanc and Bruno Cathala have combined all of these mechanics together to create a very enjoyable dice rolling game with a fun Old West theme laid nicely over it.
In Dice Town, you are attempting to gain victory points and other resources by creating particular “hands” of special poker dice. These special dice have playing card symbols and denominations on them – 9, 10, Jack ,Queen, King, and Ace (the faces have different colors to differentiate them, but there are no “suits” in the game). By having the best hand of dice in one or more of several different categories, you’ll be able to acquire money, gold nuggets, cards, and other resources that will gain you points and help you during the game. You start the game with 8 dollars, 5 dice, and a neat bullet-shaped dice cup. The youngest player is assigned the role of Sheriff and given the sheriff card. On your turn you, all of the players will simultaneously roll their 5 dice onto the table, keeping them hidden from the other players. After rolling, you secretly look at your dice and decide which of the 5 you would like to keep. You put the other dice back into your hand, and then everyone reveals the die that they’ve kept. You may keep more than one die, but you have to pay a dollar for every additional die that you keep. After the dice are revealed and payments made, the players roll again, repeating this process until each player has built a 5-die poker hand from their dice.
The second part of the game is the distribution of resources, or as I like to call it, the “cash and prizes” step. The board in the game depicts several typical Old West locations, including the gold mine, the saloon, and the general store. Each location will give out a certain reward to the player who has the “best” hand in a certain catergory. For example, the player who has the most 9’s in their poker hand is rewarded with gold nuggets from the gold mine, one for each 9 that’s in their hand. In the event of a tie, the Sheriff decides who wins, and it’s perfectly acceptable (if not ethical) to bribe the Sheriff!
So, the rewards are as follows:
Gold mine (player with the most 9’s) – winner gets one gold nugget per 9 in their hand
Bank (player with the most 10’s) – winner will get all the money from the bank. After that money is taken, the bank is resupplied with all the money that was paid for extra dice this round.
General Store (player with the most Jacks) – winner gets to draw one General Store card for each Jack. Then, they get to keep one and discard the rest. Some of these cards are worth victory points, some are rulebreaking cards for certain situations in the game.
Saloon (player with the most Queens) – winner gets to steal from one card for each Queen in their hand from opponents. They can keep one and return the rest to their owners.
Sheriff (player with the most Kings ) – winner will be the Sheriff for the next round
Town Hall (player with the best poker hand) – at the beginning of the game, 3 property cards are laid out on the board next to the town hall space. The player who puts together the best poker hand will get the bottom property card (worth between 1 and 5 victory points), but a bonus card for every Ace that’s in their hand, up to a total of 3 cards. If you’re not familiar with poker hands, don’t worry. The order of winning hands is listed on the back of the property cards.
If, after all of that, you still haven’t received a reward during the round, you can visit “Doc Badluck”, who will let you choose from one of several consolation prizes (which are actually pretty good).
After that, a new round begins. The game continues until the property card deck is exhausted, or until the gold nugget pile is depleted. Then, you add up your score. You get the points on your property and general store cards, 1 point for every gold nugget, and 1 point for every $2 you have at the end of the game. If you’re the sheriff at the end of the game, you get 5 points. Highest point total wins.
This game, for me, is a perfect combination of dice rolling, very light strategy, and a clever theme. The artwork is cartoony and fun, and the component quality is excellent. The game is easy to teach, and I believe will interest gamers and non-gamers alike. I had the opportunity to play this with some family members, and I was amused by the metagaming (in the form of good-natured ribbing) that occurred, especially when it came to the Sheriff’s reasoning in their tiebreaking decisions!
As a gamer, I’m not really interested in playing a game that is pure luck and no strategy. Dice Town is a refreshing mix, and the fact that it’s accessible to non-gamers makes it even more appealing. Overall, a very enjoyable game, and a most definite and emphatic “Buy”!
Timestreams
Jul 18From the rulebook: “In Timestreams, you take the role of an inventor of the time machine, traveling the timelines to ensure that your own time remains dominant, seeding the ages with inventions that favor your era while trying to thwart other time travelers from relegating you to the dustbin of history!” Sounds exciting, eh? Well, I’d love to say that the game creates a theme-y feel of time travel, but it doesn’t. However, it’s a very clever, interactive card game, and that fact that it has a time travel theme pasted over top of it in no way detracts from the gameplay.
Timestreams is a non-collectible card game from Bucephalus Games. The game is sold in pairs of decks, each deck representing a different era in history. There are six time periods – Stone Age, Medieval Era, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, Modren Day, and Future Tech . The box says that the game takes 45-60 minutes to play, and I think that’s pretty accurate. Out of the box, the game is for 2 players, although you can play with up to 6 people if each player has a different deck.
Each player will get a pre-constructed deck that represents a particular era in history. In each deck there are 2 main types of cards: Inventions and Actions. The goal of the game is to lay down invention cards in each of six “eras” that will gain you the most points. But, each era only has six scoring slots, even though it’s possible to play more that six cards under each era.
You’ll begin the game by laying out the six era cards in a row on the table in chronological order, from Stone Age to Future Tech. These are mainly just placeholder cards to keep the rows of cards organized. Each player will draw a certain number of cards based upon the number of players (6 cards for a 2-player game). The player who has the deck that represents the earliest period in history (in this case, Stone Age) will go first. On your turn, you’ll play an invention onto the current era, or an action card. An invention card will have a specific points value, which may score at the end of the game. The invention may also have either a “Play” ability or a “Score” ability. A “Play” ability will activate immediately, while a “Score” ability will not activate until the scoring phase of the game, after all the cards have been played to the table. The “Play” ability might allow you to draw more cards, switch the position of cards, prevent the invention from being affected by Action cards, etc. If you choose not to play an invention card, you can instead play an Action card. Action cards are effects that happen immediately, which do various things to positively impact you and negatively impact your opponent. Of note, there are Action cards that add or remove scoring slots from an era, which can drastically mess with your opponent’s strategy.
Players will take turns playing cards on an era until both players pass. Then, you draw 6 more cards (plus, you keep any cards left over from the previous round – there’s no maximum hand size), move to the next era and begin another round.
This continues for 6 rounds, after which you begin the “Score” phase. Start at the left-most era, you resolve all of the “Score” effects for the cards in the scoring slots, top to bottom. Once all the “Score” effects have been resolved, all of the cards that fall below the scoring threshold are discarded. Then, the players take the remaining cards and place them in their score pile. You continue this process until all eras have been scored, add up the points and determine your winner.
This game surprised me – when I read the rulebook I thought it might end up being kind of a dry exercise, a “who cares?” sort of game. But, it’s actually a really clever back-and-forth struggle to claim those valuable scoring slots. The cards interact nicely with one another, although you’re not going to see the big CCG-style card combos in Timestreams. In a way, that’s a strength of the game, because the decks seem to be pretty balanced.
My only big criticism of the game is the complexity of the scoring phase. When there are multiple scoring effects in an era, it can get a little confusing to figure out which cards are in the scoring slots. This is probably an issue that would get easier with repeated plays. There are some cards that offer bonus points, and since there are no tokens included in the game, you might need a piece of paper and a pen when scoring. And, I guess I’m not a huge fan of the card artwork, which seems a bit of a mishmash of blurry watercolors.
But, overall, Timestreams is a really fun card little card game that I’d definitely recommend. It’s a “Buy”!
Convention Tips, Part 1
Jun 21Ah, summertime! School is out, the weather is warmer, and a man’s heart turns to…game conventions! Yes, it’s convention season for me and Cody, a time for gamers from around the country and the world to pack their bags and head off to locations with exotic names like Columbus and Indianapolis. This is one of my favorite things about living in the Midwest – it’s really a great place to live if you’re a gamer. I daresay that I would not be as involved in the gaming hobby as I am had I not moved to Indianapolis 8 years ago and discovered Gen Con.
So, I thought I’d do a series of posts on convention tips. I’m not necessarily an expert, but neither are most of the other people who write internet blogs, so you’re free to take my advice with as much of a grain of salt as you please.
Tip #1 – Choose wisely. Much like choosing any other sort of vacation destination, it’s important to choose a game convention that matches your interests. What kind of games do you like to play? Are you interests purely gaming, or do you like other geek stuff like sci-fi and anime? Are you interested in a big exhibit hall with vendors, or do you just want and opportunity to get together with other people and play games? Here are a few of the major conventions and what they have to offer:
1. Gen Con – first held in 1967 in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, Gen Con has become the largest consumer game convention in the United States, with more than 28,000 attendees in 2008. It is held in the middle of August at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis, Indiana. In addition to an expansive exhibit hall with hundreds of vendors, the convention also offers a selection of over 6000 game events. Everything from roleplaying games to CCGs, board games, and miniatures games can be found. Fans of anime and cosplay are also well-represented. When it comes to American game conventions, Gen Con is definitely the “Big Show”. Every gamer should make a pilgrimage to this convention at least once!
2. Origins – The Origins Game Fair is put on by the Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA) and is held in Columbus, Ohio during the last weekend of June. While not as well attended as Gen Con, it’s still a large convention, with more than 14,000 attendees in 2008. This convention seems to have less of a focus on the dealer hall and ancillary events, and more of a focus on pure gaming. There also seems to be a much greater representation of miniatures games and wargames at Origins than at other cons. But, it’s still a great all-around gaming con. Of particular interest to boardgamers is the Board Room, run by the Columbus Area Boardgaming Society, and offering lots of gaming space and an extensive library of board games that you can check out. If you’re looking for a “big con” feel, but can’t make it to Gen Con, Origins is a great time.
3. BGG.Con – BGG.Con is a newer convention, put on by the creators of BoardGameGeek.com, and focuses almost exclusively on board and card games. It is held in the middle of November in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. It was first held in 2005, with an attendance of 250. Since then, it has shown steady growth, and boardgamers on BGG have commented that it’s a very friendly convention with a heavy emphasis on open gaming. I haven’t had the opportunity to attend this one yet, but I hope to go next year, since it’s only ~15 minutes from the house where I grew up.
In addition to these 3 major players in the realm of board, card, and roleplaying game conventions, there are also many other smaller conventions such as TempleCon, RinCon, Adepticon, and many others. There are also multi-genre cons like Dragon*Con and Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). So, whatever your gaming tastes are, there’s a convention that will fit your interests. But, choose wisely!
World Wide Wing Night 5!
Nov 06This Saturday, November 8th, the Game On! With Cody and John podcast
will be hosting the Indianapolis edition of the gaming holiday World
Wide Wing Night 5 – a time where we eat wings, drink the beverage of
your choice, and play games!
Here’s the info:
What: World Wide Wing Night 5
When: Saturday, November 8th from 7:00 to 11:00pm
Where: Buffalo Wild Wings – 8020 US 31 S. Indianapolis, IN 46227 (just north of Greenwood). Look for the Game On! Sign inside. Click here for a map.
Why: To eat, drink, and game!
If you plan on attending, please RSVP to the Game On! Inbox at gameoninbox@gmail.com. Feel free to pass this along to any gamer who may want to come, and bring your favorite game!
We hope to see you there!
