Mini-Reviews, Thanks to our Sponsor

I've mentioned Funatical Games a few times on this blog, and no doubt some particularly cranky people would ask "what's his relationship with them and is he plugging their games for free?". None of you, I'm sure, but somewhere some wacko is sharpening his Beretta and throwing it at a picture of Tom Vasel on his dartboard, and I don't want to end up on *that* hit-list. So the deal is that my mate John owns Funatical and brings me piles and piles of new games to try (and then he takes them back). This article I'm going to do very short reviews of some of them and you can decide whether I'm biased or not.

Escalation! by Reiner Knizia, published by Z-Man. This is a very simple climbing card game where you must play a higher combo or else take the trick, and least cards wins. The kids liked it because it had funny pictures and they beat me. I thought it was massively dull. Reiner makes some treasures and some turkeys, and this is a turkey. Of course, Reiner is probably more concerned about selling games than geeks playing them.

Duel in the Dark by Friedemann de Pedro, published by Z-Man. This is a very clever game, something like Memoir '44 but with more going on. I like Memoir a lot because it's so simple and quick. Duel takes maybe twice as long, but a lot of people like their games longer and more complicated. If you liked Memoir you should seriously consider Duel. It's about the bombing runs from England to Germany at the end of WW2. One player is the English and has a massive slow bomber protected by a weak nimble Mosquito. The other player has 4 German squadrons. Points are awarded throughout the game for various reasons. There's a lot of bluff and no luck that I can remember. I won't get a copy for myself as the kid was lukewarm on it, and Scrabblette and CyberKev won't be into the theme, but many people will like this game a lot.

Dragon Parade by Reiner Knizia, published by Z-Man. This is one of Reiner's midweight games, and I would class it as "okay". It's about a Chinese dragon parade moving through a city which is half yellow and half red. Players play cards to move the dragon towards the red exit or the yellow exit. At the same time they place stalls which are effectively bets on where the dragon will end up. Points are awarded according to how close your stalls were to the dragon's final location. This is a lot like Reiner's other midweight game, Members Only, which I quite like. Dragon Parade is quicker (and that's good) and simpler (that's good too). It's probably cheaper, and has English rules. I'm positively disposed towards this game - it's probably a good filler. Scrabblette thought she couldn't control the dragon at all and found it frustrating. I found the dragon went where I told it to, which was nice. Your mileage may vary!

Army of Frogs by John Yianni (Hive), published by Gen Four Two. I very much enjoyed my first couple of plays of Army of Frogs - there's some thinking to do about where to place frogs to block people, and how to jump so as to unify your groups. However I don't know how much depth there is to it. Let me explain... each player has 10 frogs which are drawn from a sack as the game progresses and placed on the "island". The island is just like a hive except it has fewer long thin bits. On a player's turn they jump one of their frogs and place another frog. If you have at least seven frogs on the board and all of your frogs are in one connected group, you win. There's a lot of randomness in the order frogs come out, and then there's player randomness in the placement of them on the board. Your frogs may not come out, or your opponents may be able to avoid placing them on the board. The jumping rule is nice, but not very hard - soon you will learn to look for great moves. And eventually, with players of a basic level of skill, the game will come down to someone can't be held out of winning any more, or someone will make a mistake and cause someone else to win. Or worse, someone will be forced to choose which of the other players wins. It's maybe a good abstract for kids, but I don't see it attracting serious geek analysis like Hive. I won't be getting frogs tattooed on my forearm.

Midgard by Eric Lang, published by Z-Man. Midgard is an area control game which reminds me a lot of El Grande. One of the things people like about El Grande is that it's almost deterministic, and that's definitely not a feature of Midgard. There's quite a bit of chaos and screwage in this game. Essentially there are three kingdoms - Alfheim, Jotunheim and Mannheim, and some provices in each. Players play their vikings to win majorities in provinces, and play cards to attack other players' positions and occasionally just destroy stuff (you ARE a viking after all). Dead guys go to Valhalla where still score points. There are also two heavens you can win majorities in. Midgard is a decent game, with room for good play, but also room for screwage. I find I can't take it too seriously, or I get annoyed when people screw with me. It's a game I'll play but not one I'll buy. On the other hand, I won't even play El Grane.

SPONSORED BY FUNATICAL GAMES

During the week before the last Gathering of Friendless I realised my mate from Funatical Games had said "if there are any games you want to try out, just let me know". Funatical distributes Z-Man games (and others) in Australia, so there's lots of interesting stuff. Z-Man's quality varies, but they publish a lot of games. So my mate came over with a big pile of games which I had to quickly read the rules of in time for the Gathering.

This time, to avoid having 7 guests I invited 15 people, and still only 5 showed up. And Jane was late. So the 4 of us started with Ubongo because it's very pretty. CyberKev and I did very well, and it was very close at the end. In fact, if CyberKev hadn't accidentally played the easy side of the card, it might have been even closer. I don't know if I really go for the puzzle component, but for a puzzle game it's OK. I'll have to try it with the kids.

We then played Escalation where I suffered from having CyberKev sit to my right. That meant he could play bad cards at me, and I got badly hurt in several brawls. That meant I couldn't do much to hurt Scrabblette to my left, and she won easily. She also got very good cards, which didn't help. It's a silly game which is best played by kids. Still, it's better than Loot.

Still waiting for Jane, we tried a new word game, My Word. Note the lack of exclamation mark - it's not Reiner's game, it's one where you have to make a lattice of four letter words. We found this to be very good Scrabble training, which is OK if you want that sort of game (I do). We all learned some new four letter words, and looked strangely at some common words which just seemed wrong. CyberKev managed to set himself up for massive points a couple of times, and won easily.

Finally Jane arrived and we played Unspeakable Words to welcome her. Most of us already knew the rules (well, some of them), and it was nice to get into a game without any teaching. Ashley probably should have had some, but we figured he was a big boy who could look after himself. I like Unspeakable Words a lot. Scrabblette completely kicked our butts.

We then went on to Dragon Parade. I didn't have a lot of hope for this game, until we realised it was like Members Only, which I do like. Once I could see the strategy of it, and how nicely it was balanced, I decided I did quite like it. Scrabblette said afterwards she felt she couldn't control the dragon and didn't like it so much. I felt the dragon went where I told it to, and did like it. One complaint though - we ran out of scoring tokens after 4 rounds. We each gave 5 points back to the bank to complet the game. I pulled off a narrow win by foiling Ashley's evil plan to run the dragon out of town.

Jane then had to leave but Scrabblette was fired up and we played Midgard. I love the Norse theme, more than I like vikings really, so I was positively disposed towards it to start. When I read the rules I realised it was like El Grande light, which was not such a good thing. And playing a pissing war game against CyberKev is always dangerous. True to form, CyberKev rushed to the lead. True to form, no matter what I wanted someone else wanted it more. "I think I'll just grovel in this mud in last place"... "NO, THAT'S MY MUD! 20 VICTORY POINTS FOR MOST MUD!" Coming into the third era Scrabblette was one point behind CyberKev, though all I saw was CyberKev in front. I figured my best option was to hit him hard, and played a card which cost him maybe 20 points. However I hadn't noticed how strong Scrabblette's position was, and she went on to beat him by 23. Great... now she can kick my butt at pissing wars as well.

Anpther successful evening. We tried out 4 new games from Funatical, and crossed off another of my unplayed games. The kid says "climbed arc de trioumph and sacrificed my legs, 284 steps just to go up! luckily the eiffel tour as the locals call it has a lift!"