Blood Bowl (Boardgame Review)

Name: Blood Bowl
Game Designer: Jervis Johnson 
Publisher: Games Workshop
Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)
Summary: A fantastic (and fantastical) game of strategy, comedy, and brutality set on the football pitches of the Warhammer fantasy world.

For something a little different, Godfrey did a video review. Click the embedded video below to view:

Puerto Rico (Board Game Review)

Name: Puerto Rico
Game Designer: Andreas Seyfarth
Publisher: Rio Grande Games
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Summary: A unique, and surprisingly enjoyable game of economic management and strategic thought.

Puerto Rico is an "Age of Discovery" game, where the players take the roles of plantation owners in the newly-founded colony of Puerto Rico, competing to amass the most victory points by the game's end. These can be accumulated by shipping goods back to the Old World and through constructing special buildings. The manner of play is very unique; it seems a little complicated at first, but it doesn't take long to get a firm grasp of the rules. Each turn, the players select a "role" such as mayor, builder, craftsman, among others, which guides what they can do. The person to select the role gets a special benefit, then everyone else plays the role normally. Then the next person selects a role, and so on. In the picture below, you can see an example of the board each player has, with a few crops and buildings already in play and some money and victory points in the top right corner; the available roles are laid out above. Crops can be sold for money to purchase buildings with as well as shipped back to Spain for points.

Below: croplands and buildings must be "worked" by colonists, signified by the little brown puck-like tokens.

It sounds a little strange, I know -- this whole "role" thing was what stopped be from buying the game myself for many years (despite rave reviews from other board game geeks of my acquaintance), but my sister bought it for me for Christmas a few years ago and I am very glad she did. Don't let the unique and exotic-sounding rules turn you away -- overall this is an excellent and enjoyable game that anyone can play. I am a huge fan of strategy games myself, However, my wife and sister-in-law, who are not strategy gamers at all, were able to quickly grasp and enjoy Puerto Rico. I think this is a key to games of this type, as you want everyone to have fun. Be warned, though, that this game isn't exactly light -- it does requires concentration and thought! This only makes it more stimulating, in my view, which is what we should be striving for otherwise we might as well rot our brains in front of the TV.

Below: the main game board that houses all the buildings available to be built, and the bank.

Puerto Rico doesn't have as much interaction as The Settlers of Catan does, but it still makes for a very fun evening or rainy-day entertainment. People will have fun trying to out-smart each other with the proper selection of roles, and trying to get their goods aboard ships before the others can, to reap the victory point rewards. The game involves no warfare, or anything objectionable (perhaps some P.C.-types would be offended by the colonial theme -- which makes it even better in my view). In the games we played there was lots of laughter. Luck is a very limited factor in this game, making it more strategy-oriented.

A game of Puerto Rico takes between 1 and 2 hours, depending on how many players you have and whether you're having to explain the rules to others as you go. It seems to average for around $25 USD, which in my view is a bargain for all the stuff that you get in this game, and the replayability. Every game will be different and there are many paths to winning based on the mechanics of the game, and therefore as a strategy game I think this has more replayability than some. In fact, Puerto Rico really demands to be played numerous times because successful strategies are not self-evident.

Overall, I still like The Settlers of Catan better, but Puerto Rico seems to have wider appeal as boardgamegeek.com rates it nearly 10% points higher than Catan. It is definitely an enjoyable game and I highly recommend it to anyone that wants a fun game that doesn't take too long to play and is intellectually challenging. For some more reviews of the game, you can go here.

Boardgame Review: Genesys

Review by Godfrey Blackwell

Name: Genesys
Game Designer: Sam Stewart
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)
Summary: A wonderful "generic" role-playing game system with a unique "narrative dice" mechanic that allows for hugely entertaining, cinematic adventures in any setting a gaming group may choose.

Strictly speaking, role-playing games aren't usually boardgames, and Genesys certainly isn't since a board is definitely not necessary. Some groups may choose to use one for simulating combat scenarios, but the core rules certainly contemplate no boards, just old-fashioned "pen and paper" (and dice) to play the game. That said, I'm reviewing this as a board games since that's the closest thing that fits ... and I must say that Fantasy Flight Games has knocked another one out of the park with this offering.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I played a fair bit of role-playing games in my youth and found them a lot of fun. I decided to try out Genesys since, as a"generic" system that was not tied to any particular setting, I could use it to make a game that was enjoyable for all of my children. I certainly made the right choice as the Genesys rule system excels and being truly generic and compatable for any setting one might imagine. For our first "campaign" (series of linked adventures) I created my own space opera-ish setting heavily inspired by the Alien movies (but without the eponymous and terrifying creatures).  The rules have worked really well for everything we need to do from astrogation, to firefights, to deciphering strange ancient glyphs

The games I found, and especially the combat, really feel like fight scenes from movies -- realistic, but not too realistic, with mechanics like "narrative points" for the players to spend at key moments to ensure that their "big darn heroes" don't meet an untimely end. The game is still very intense though and have had players on the edges of their seats. There's also been a fair bit of hilarity.

This is all acheived by the unique "narrative dice" system, that seemed a bit strange at first, but once we started using them I think they're fantastic. Most role playing game systems use various numbered dice from six-sided to 20-sided. Genesys uses these same shapes of dice but instead of numbers have symbols to denote "success" or "failure" as well as bonus "advantages" and their opposits, "threats" (we tend to call them disadvantages). You can read more about the mechanics here: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/genesys/

For the purposes of this review, suffice it to say that it really makes the game creative and dynamic. Instead of having to pore over tables or have charts for this-and-that weapon in this-and-that setting, the game master just assigns a difficulty (and a corresponding set of difficult dice) and the player roles against it with ability and proficiency dice. Plus there are boost and setback dice that can be added for extra flavour -- so for example a rifle shot at long range would be a certain difficulty, but if its raining the GM can add a setback dice to reflect this.

Just as an example, something that I had occur a number of times in sessions is where a player would actually role more failure than success results, meaning they had not succeeded in their task, BUT, they rolled three or more "advantages" so as game master (with assistance of the players) we had to interpret how they could fail to do what they intended but with a whole pile of positive benefits. Usually we had the character succeeding but in an unexpected way (for example, a character trying to climb a cliff failed and therefore stumbled but in doing so, they swung on their rope to a spot that ended up being better and made the ascent faster than they would have on their initial course).

As such, I give the system a full 5/5 stars and we had an immense amount of fun with our first adventure which lasted about five or six sessions, with the Blackwell children begging dad every Saturday if we could play another session of Genesys. Albert took notes and we hope to have some session reports up soon to demonstrate the sort of fun we had!

Lord of the Rings (Boardgame Review)

Name: Lord of the Rings
Game Designer: Reiner Knizia
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games
Rating: 5 stars (out of 5)
Summary: A wonderful family game with unique co-operative-play ruleset based on the Lord of the Rings novels, wherein the players take on the roles of the hobbits as they attempt to take the Ring of Power to the Cracks of Doom

For any family with children, and fans of the Lord of the Rings (without it, the game may not be as fun/meaningful), this is a game that we highly recommend. At the Blackwell residence we've played it with children as young as seven. The younger ones need help but children around 10 or older can handle the game without difficulty. The aspect that we really like is the fact that it's a co-operative game rather than a competitive one, where the players must work together against the game itself to avoid the corrupting influence of Sauron and destroy the Ring of Power.

The rules are very unique to support this concept, but work very well. Be warned, however, this game is very tough to beat, even once you've "figured out" the "tricks" to it. Even when the players work together, victory is far from assured, and disaster guaranteed if they don't cooperate.

The game is played on two game boards, one that tracks the progress of the Fellowship and monitors each member's level of corruption, and the other is in fact a series of four boards that represent the four "scenarios" that must be traversed -- Moria, Helm's Deep, Shelob's Lair, and finally Mordor. Below is a picture borrowed from Board Game Geek showing the two boards, the one on the left being what we've called the "scenario board" with white markers showing the fellowship's progress on three different tracks (only one of which must be fully traversed to beat a scenario, strictly speaking, but with important items to be collected on the others). On the right is the board showing how close to succumbing to Sauron the hobbits have gone.



The game mechanics involve the use of tiles and cards. Each turn, each player in sequence must draw a tile with a symbol on it that corresponds to one of the three tracks on each scenario board. This will then allow the Fellowship to progress one space on that track. Moving along the tracks, they will collect shield tokens which can be used to purchase special Gandalf cards (which come in very handy in a pinch), or to try to counteract some of the events that can occur whenever someone draws one of the dreaded event tiles -- which general involve bad things that happened in the novel. The secondary tracks also provide heart, ring, and sun tokens which must be collected by each player before the end of a scenario otherwise they will take "corruption" and move closer to Sauron. They are also dealt a hand of cards which may be used to progress further on these tracks. Special cards received at various  places in the game bring non-hobbit characters like Aragorn, Boromir, Gimli, et al into play.

Each of the hobbits has a unique ability which must be used carefully to the benefit of the whole group. Players are allowed to discuss what cards they have in their hands (but may not show the cards) to decide how to try to complete a given scenario. Many of the bad events allow a player other than the one that incurred the event to take the penalty adding to the cooperative aspect. If the ringbearer is touched by the Sauron piece, the game is over as Sauron has captured the ring. Below is a scenario where the ring is very close to being taken, also showing some of the tiles and cards:



Aside from the co-operative play, another nice aspect of this game is that it can be played in about 60 minutes (rather than the hours upon hours that many of our favourite games involve). It also can be played with as few as two players which is a rare treat for occasions when there isn't a whole family or group of friends available to play. The only downside is that it may have limited appeal to people not interested in Lord of the Rings, although if they've at least read it or seen the films (which most people have) they should enjoy the game.

On the whole, we find it to be a most unique, enjoyable, and challenging game. Be sure to keep track of  your scores on the sheet that is provided for the purpose. It being so hard to actually beat the game, this adds a level of at least trying to beat your previous best score. All of us as Swords and Space give it 5/5 stars.

Axis and Allies (Boardgame Review)

Name: Axis and Allies
Game Designer: Larry Harris, Jr.
Publisher: Milton Bradley
Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)
Summary: A classic WWII-themed boardgame for 2-5 players; starting in 1942 the game covers the whole globe on a game-map broken up into chunks like Risk; similar to Risk in some ways with with a satisfying increase in complexity without becoming overly detailed.

Albert and James both list Axis and Allies as one of their top three favourite board games, so we decided we'd best do a review of it as soon as possible. We recently finished playing a game doing a turn or two each evening for a week to give us extra inspiration.

For anyone who enjoys boardgames and is interested in World War II history, this game is pretty much a "must have". The game is recommended for ages 12+ but James (7 years old) had no difficulty playing and in fact he and Albert playing the Axis defeated me last time we played. The game is similar to Risk in many ways in that it is based on a global map broken into chunks, battles are fought by moving playing pieces from one map section to another and rolling dice. The "economic" system is a bit more complex -- IPC's (Industrial Production Points) are earned for each map space occupied, although each space is worth varying numbers of IPCs. You can also only build new units on map spaces where you have an industrial complex.

Board Initial Setup showing player reference sheets, IPCs

A look at the game map partway through our recent play-through showing 

how the map is divided and with different IPC values on regions

A big plus for this game is the very nicely sculpted miniatures which beat the pants off of any abstract tokens. Each nation's infantry is unique to that country (i.e. the German infantry look like Wehrmacht troops). In later editions the aircraft, tank, and naval counters are unique as well athough in the edition we have (2nd) they are all the same just different colours.

The game takes about 2-3 hours to play depending on how many players and how quick they are. The reason we give it 4 instead of the full 5 is that since it is history-based and the map starts the same every game this limits replay value slightly (versus games with random setup) and if played too often could get repetitive. In the game manual, the designers note that some players complain that the odds are too heavily stacked in the Allies favour, but Albert and James were able to defeat me using very aggressive tactics (and some of James' trademark "hot dice").

The game is true enough to history for a good game that feels like WWII without getting bogged-down in details. There are more advanced versions of Axis and Allies which we look forward to acquiring, but the "basic" or "classic" version is probably the best for more "casual" board gamers or people who don't feel like investing 6+ hours. Setup does take a while, so we recommend that if you're getting together with friends to play, set the board up ahead to save a lot of time.

A view of the full board, showing the Axis victory

Highlights/favourite parts of our contributors:

Albert: "I like that teamwork is involved in the game." The game does involve two teams (that cannot be changed) and players, Allies and Axis alike, must work together to have any hope of success.

James: "I like how you can build different types of units." What makes this game really stand out as superior to Risk is the fact that there are units with different attack/defence and movement characteristics. In the classic game the options are infantry, armour, fighters, bombers, battleships, submarines, and transports.