Card Game Review - Tempt

I often make cheap sport of Reiner Knizia because so many of his games are overly simplified, but I must admit that when it comes to making games, fewer rules is generally better. OK, two rules is usually a little weak, but the overall idea here is that less stuff to track makes a game easier to play. Reiner takes this principle to the highest level possible, and thus manages to ruin hundreds of otherwise mediocre or boring games and turn them into complete garbage.

I bring this up because I recently played Tempt, and it suffers from the exact opposite of the Reiner Knizia problem. It's probably a somewhat common issue among self-publishers - you're the creator of the game, so you're hesitant to chop stuff that seemed like such a good idea at the time. I mean, if you spend two months coming up with a cool new cleaner to get bloodstains out of carpet, the odds are good you're going to hang on to it even after you give up hiding bodies in your trunk.

Tempt starts off really cool. You're competing for three areas of the kingdom, represented by three stacks of cards. You'll build columns of cohorts as your armies, paying the costs for these warriors by sacrificing the limited actions you get every turn. So far, so good.

Then we add in the warrior types. Executioner warriors, for instance, can kill a minion on the other side, while fearmongers send them running for the hills. Build a column with just militia cards, and they'll be even tougher. These abilities add a ton of strategy, because while it might help you take the third column if you added the minotaur there, it could hurt you in the long run when you dilute your militia bonus and never even get to scare off one of your opponent's cohorts.

So we're still doing pretty well, not too simple, not too messy, and then we get to the chanter powers. Each card can be tempted into play as a chanter, and not sit in a column at all, and instead use the special power on the card. These special powers are fairly straight-forward, and many of them have long-term benefits that can give you one heck of an edge.

The game is starting to get a bit top-heavy now. Between tracking costs, strength, discard value, special powers and unit types, you may be approaching the upper limit of crap you can track in your head. But as long as we're here already, let's add in one more thing - temptresses. These are six cards that you'll divvy up between yourself and your opponent. Every turn you'll probably have different temptresses, because you dump one, pass five, choose one, pass four, dump one, pass two, choose one, pass one. Seem complicated? It is. It's also unnecessary - why not just shuffle and deal two to each player? And while we're at it, why are these here at all?

The temptresses provide global abilities that you can use throughout your turn, like cheaper cohorts or the option to get some of your guys back from their military formations. The problem is, the abilities aren't impressive enough to justify the additional complication. They're sort of cool, but they're also easy to overlook, because there's already too much happening.

One extra note - I really wish Small Box Games would sell enough to be able to pay artists. The art on these cards varies from boring to hilarious. For some reason I don't pretend to understand, all the pictures of the cohorts are faded back, so that they're really hard to see. Actually, I might understand it - if the art you have is this bad, you probably don't want people to see it. Which makes me wonder why you would bother in the first place - just skip the art, if this is as good as it gets.

The glut of extra options in Tempt is, in the end, what keeps it from being a really awesome game. It's still fun, but it's just too much. The temptresses are cool, and the chanter powers are cool, and the cohort types are cool, but together, they're too much. It's like having three girlfriends at the same time. It seems like a great idea, until they find out about each other and start burning your Molly Hatchet albums and crushing your beer-can pyramids.

With a little surgical slashing, Tempt could be made into a tight, tense, exciting game. All the ingredients are here for a good time - it's just that there are more ingredients than you need. I like scotch, ranch dressing and ice cream. Just not all at once.

Summary

Pros:
Neat interactions of abilities
Very strategic game play with bits of long-term planning
Plan your turn, but be prepared for surprises

Cons:
Unfortunate artistic decisions
Too many elements clog down an otherwise pretty cool game

Small Box Games is pretty bad-ass. I may not be in love with Tempt, but it's still worth a play. Get it here:
http://www.smallboxgames.com/tempt.html

READ MORE - Card Game Review - Tempt

Board Game Review - Pocket Rockets

Every now and then, you'll see one of these silly interview questions that asks something like, 'if you were stuck on a desert island, what three games would you want to have with you?' I always thought that was kind of a stupid question - my pick is going to be whatever game includes canned food and a satellite phone, because frankly, if I'm stranded at sea, the last thing I'm going to do is break out a game. For one thing, we're assuming you're there with a handful of friends, in which case your first priority should be making spears in case your fellow survivors go all Lord of the Flies.

But let's assume a less dire scenario. Let's pretend you're packing for a trip with an overnight stay in some one-stoplight backwater with nothing but a crappy motel and a gas station attached to a Subway. Let's further assume that, since you're traveling, you don't have a ton of space for games. Let's take it one more step and assume that you're going to have a lot of time on your hands and two or three road companions who, rather than knocking back some beers and watching some motel porn, want to play games.

In this scenario (which is not only less disastrous, but also a great deal more likely), you might want Pocket Rockets. Before I continue, I must mention right off the bat that the name of the game is not a euphemism. You may have heard the phrase, 'I've got a rocket in my pocket', which generally means you would very much like to have some sex. The name of this game does not refer to that. It's actually just a game that you can fit in your pocket, and it happens to be about building rockets. There are no dick jokes intended.

The game is incredibly easy to learn. There are six stations that allow for six different actions, like building rockets or changing the direction of movement. You have to move around between the stations, drawing cards with pictures of rocket parts (still not a euphemism for anything). Then you go to the rocket-building station. Then you go to the launch pad and fuel up your rocket (OK, that one sounded pretty questionable, but it still doesn't refer to anything nasty). You go around for a few turns, drawing cards and building your rockets, and when all the fuel is claimed, the game is over and whoever has built the best rockets wins.

Despite being a pretty simple game to figure out, it's still clever enough to be fun. You won't be able to build a seriously long-term strategy, exactly, but you'll have to plan your turn pretty well if you don't want to waste a lot of time. You have to make the most of the cards you can get in a hurry, and you may want to sacrifice one move in order to score another, better move later. If you've been driving all day and just want a good way to unwind after you finish dinner and before you fall asleep, Pocket Rockets can be a great way to finish out the day.

It's not just for road trips, either. While the diminutive size does make Pocket Rockets an easy game to shove into the corner of a backpack, it's also a quick, fun game that can fill twenty minutes. I tend to find the term 'filler game' a little condescending, but in all fairness to the term, you're not going to call people over to play Pocket Rockets. For one thing, if they don't know that it's a game, they might think you're making a pass at them, and that could be uncomfortable. For another thing, there isn't enough game here to plan an evening around playing it. But once you do schedule that big game, and you're waiting for the rest of your friends to show up, Pocket Rockets can keep you from having to engage in small talk, and allow you to socialize without all that messy conversation.

I wouldn't say that Pocket Rockets is the kind of game you want with you on a desert island, mostly because nothing in the box is edible. But if you happen to shove it into a shirt pocket on the way out the door, and then your plane goes down with a couple buddies and you somehow manage to make it to land without soaking your shirt (and thus ruining the game), I suppose you could do worse. Ever try to put Cosmic Encounter in your pocket? It won't fit, unless you have absurdly big pockets. And as an added bonus, you don't have to worry about the possibility that your friends are too dumb to play - this is an easy game, light on the brainpower but engaging enough to keep you occupied. It's basically a great travel game, or the perfect game to play while you're waiting for that game of Dominion to finish so you can all jump into Last Night on Earth.

It is not, however, a dick joke.

Summary

Pros:
Easy to learn
Easy to play
Finish in 20 minutes or less
Tricky moves and clever plays, all in a package that will fit in your pants

Cons:
Not particularly deep

If you want a nice travel game at a dirt cheap price, look no further than my friends at Dogstar Games:
http://www.dogstargames.com/product/ASMKG17

READ MORE - Board Game Review - Pocket Rockets

Party Game Review - You Robot

So much for theme week. I was considering doing three heavy games this week, but then I got to Friday and didn't have anything else that would hurt your head. In fact, the only game I have ready to review right now is a party game for children or inebriated grownups. It's called You Robot, and it's only slightly sillier than that 'Honey If You Love Me Smile' game we used to play in eighth grade as an excuse to sit close to a girl.

You Robot will not allow any opportunities for physical contact, but there is a certain amount of goofy party fun. It's kind of like playing charades, but instead of moving your hands and making faces to try to get your team to guess 'Swiss Family Robinson', you'll use three double-sided cards to get your teammate to point to his head.

Everyone playing is split into teams. There are rules for an odd number of people, but the best rule for this case is that one person has to leave. Then one person from each team becomes the crazy teacher (I didn't make up that phrase, it's in the rules) and the other is the robot. The teachers all look at a card that will tell them what they have to get their robots to do, and then they wave the cards around until one of the robots does what it shows on the card.

There are two things that make this a little bit interesting, instead of Down's Syndrome charades. First, the varying poses are actually somewhat interesting. You might have to make your robot clap, or talk on a phone, or stand on one foot. Sure, that's still pretty special-ed dorky, but some of the poses are difficult enough to be fun. There are no pole-dancing or oral sex poses, because this is a party game that seems intended for children, but I'm personally in favor of an adult version that includes nudity and maybe some dry humping.

The other thing that makes You Robot a little clever is the hand of cards you use to instruct your robot. You can't make faces, move your hands around or say anything, but you have one card that shows the whole body (so you can point to the leg), one that shows an arm, and another that shows arrows. The arrows can be turned to tell your robot to lift his arm or lower his chin or call Child Protective Services (that last one would take a few extra steps). A few other cards give more specific instructions, if you can get your robot to understand what you're trying to say.

My kids are teenagers, and they loved You Robot, and even begged us to play more. My wife and I were unfortunately sober, and we thought it was really dumb, and so refused to indulge them. But if you consider the fact that the kids are still young enough to think stupid things are fun, it makes sense. They also pretend to hate ball pits, but drop them off at Chuck E Cheese when there's nobody else around, and they'll pretend to be killer whales for hours.

Despite some cute, whimsical art and a somewhat innovative premise, You Robot held no appeal for me whatsoever. But if you're trying to entertain a room full of awkward teens at a church lock-in, you could do a lot worse. Because teenagers only think something is dumb if nobody else is doing it.

Summary

Pros:
Kids seem to like it
Like charades, but with a backwards twist
Cure art
Cheap, small and portable
Up to 10 players, so you can occupy a bunch of kids at once

Cons:
Most adults will read the rules, then be too embarrassed to admit they took it out of the box

Dogstar isn't carrying You Robot, but you can find it cheaper than used dirt at Funagain:
http://www.funagain.com/control/product?product_id=020554

READ MORE - Party Game Review - You Robot

Board Game Review - EVE: Conquests

I've done theme weeks in the past, where I reviewed three games with something in common. This week's theme appears to be 'slow and complicated.' Maybe I should tack Through the Ages onto the end. Too bad I did that one already.

Today's slow and complicated game is EVE: Conquest. It's based on a video game (strike one) and is published by White Wolf (strike two). Yet somehow it still manages to hit a double. Not a home run, certainly, and if you're playing with two people, it's a humiliating strike-out, but get four people around the table who want to spend some time creating extraordinarily long-term strategies and planning out every nuance of a thoroughly complex chain of events, and you'll wind up having a good time.

The board is this giant map full of star systems with inhabitable planets, and you'll all be trying to grab up territories and claim political power. The thing is, at any given time, only a few of those planets are worth anything. You have to surround a planet to build an outpost and exert a little political influence, and in order to score, you have to put outposts on two planets that are important right then.

This slightly complicated idea is further muddied by the fact that, on any given turn, you can only do one kind of thing. You have three different markers for development, production and logistics, and each one has to be scheduled. You don't just go around the table in order - you have to put your marker four months out, and when it comes to your turn four months from now, you'll be able to build some troops. You won't be able to send them anywhere, mind you. For that, you have to wait another two months for your next logistics turn. And if you want to grab nearby unclaimed territories, you have to wait another month after that for your development turn.

To make matters even more difficult, there are three levels of turns, and you have to allocate resources to upgrade them. An upgraded production turn takes longer, costs more, and yields a whole hell of a lot more troops, which, as I mentioned a second ago, you can't use until a logistics turn. You have to plan when your turns will occur, and you have to look at when your opponents will have turns, and you have to guess where your opponents will play and defend those areas while creating a long-term strategy that involves timing your turns to maximize the benefits of each. Between turns, you can build a Hadron Super-Collider, because that's going to be a little less involved.

At some point, you're going to run up against an enemy. Someone at the table is going to have a planet you want, or you're going to need to stop them from expanding any more. Assuming you've got a logistics turn, you can take a bunch of soldiers (which you placed earlier, on a production turn) and invade. But this isn't Risk - you don't just roll three dice to his two and count losses. You pick from a bag of 15 dice that come in three different flavors, and if you have spies on the enemy planet, you might get to find out what your enemy picked. Then you roll, and compare tactical results, hits, shields, and any extra effects if you play some cards. Even fighting is complicated, which is not like real life, where fighting is basically five seconds of frenetic activity followed by six months of braggadocio.

And to be seriously anti-climactic, once you attack one time, the fight is over. If you didn't kill everyone, you'll just have to wait six months and attack again. I did mention this isn't Risk, right? So you also can't take one planet, then use the survivors to hit the next one. You can attack once, maybe twice in a turn (assuming you've got two guys in position), and then you're done. Hope you didn't spend too much money on that move (unless it worked).

The end result of all this high-minded planning and strategy is that the game is slow, but very deep. There are so many different decisions that even on a simple turn, you could spend five minutes puzzling over which outpost would be best suited to receive a couple reinforcements. With all the different planets you could grab, cards you could play, turns you could upgrade and fortresses to reinforce, you'll be tired when you finish playing. This is another big fat burrito of a game.

Apparently, the creators of the game were not satisfied with making complicated rules. Because just knowing how to play is complicated, but actually getting through the game is incredibly difficult, thanks to some design decisions that appear to be made solely to confuse and irritate. For instance, you have to surround a planet in order to claim an outpost there, but since adjacency is determined by slim white lines, it's not hard to miss one and think you own a planet, and then notice three turns later that there was one line extending halfway across the board, and since you didn't ever put a soldier on that planet (probably because you didn't even know it was there), you shouldn't have grabbed that spot in the first place. The map looks like a spider web in a wind storm, and it's not at all difficult to get lost.

Color schemes are another problem. There are four colors of players - white, blue, red and gold. Each player has three turn markers - blue for development, gold for logistics, and red for production. So my question is, what color-blind asshole thought it would be a good idea to make the turn markers the same colors as the players? Because I'll look over at the planning calendar and think I've got a turn coming up, but I don't because while the next turn is blue, it's the red player's blue marker, not the blue player's gold marker or the gold player's red marker. Would it have killed someone to use purple?

These aren't the only design problems that plague EVE, but they're the biggest. We could talk about the outpost colors, or the giant plastic poker chips (presented in pastels right out of 1986), or the cards that don't seem to do what they ought to do (why are production cards only useful during a logistics turn?). All the incredibly poor design decisions in this game mean that what could be a thoughtful, smart game tends to dip into violent, frustrated profanity on an overly regular basis, as players discover that they have, once again, made the wrong move based on some little thing they missed. It makes the whole game more difficult to play, and when the design gets in the way of the game, that's a travesty.

If the producers and visual designer for EVE: Conquest had done a better job, this could have been a really cool game. As it is, it's a good game, with the right crowd, and it could be fun. But it's sloppy, cumbersome and more complicated than it needed to be, and that means that you should only buy this game if it really sounds like just your thing. Otherwise you'll be trading it away, and since I already have a copy, you won't be trading it to me.

Summary

Pros:
Really deep
Long-term planning is critical
Fun, if you like this sort of thing

Cons:
Ridiculously bad design decisions make it harder to play than it should be
Longer and more complex than it should be
Not pretty at all

If you just have to have a copy of EVE: Conquest, you can get it here:
http://store.eve-online.com/EVE-Conquests-Board-Game-P148.aspx

It is NOT worth what they want for it.

READ MORE - Board Game Review - EVE: Conquests

Board Game Review - Carson City

It's my opinion that games with backstories should build on those themes and bring them to life. Like, if I'm playing a spaceship game, I want it to feel like I'm flying around the dark space between planets and blowing up asteroids, and if I'm playing a farming game, I want to feel like I have a boring, menial job. I think that's why I like Carson City so much - it really lets you feel like a cowboy settling an Old West town, especially because everyone knows that cowboys and settlers did immense amounts of math in their heads and that nobody ever died in gunfights.

A person unaccustomed to European games might not understand the story of Carson City very well. If you grew up on John Wayne matinees and Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns, you probably have a completely skewed idea of the American West. Carson City sets this story straight. For one thing, your cowboys don't die if they lose gunfights. They're deader than Elvis if they go to work, but gunfights are only scary if you win. And for another thing, every good scholar of the Old West knows that the main skill critical to a cowboy's success was the ability to add long strings of numbers in his head.

This brilliant execution of theme is accomplished by simulating the development of the town of Carson City. You'll start with a rather mountainous area and one single house that designates the middle of town, and you'll buy mines and ranches and roads and guns, and the town will grow right in front of you.

Every turn you get a set number of cowboys who will go to work for you. They will run out and claim land deeds, grab the rights to build hotels and churches, train with guns, or just play poker. There are nearly twenty different actions a cowboy can take, and the first part of every turn consists of placing your cowboys to tell everyone else what you hope to do that turn. If someone else really wants to do what you're doing, they can send a cowboy to shoot your cowboy in the face, which would be a lot worse if that bullet to the head was actually bad for you.

After everyone has placed their cowboys, you go through and let your cowboys go to work. Once your cowboys finish the tasks you've assigned them, they die, because shoot-outs are not hazardous for your health, but showing up at the office will lay you out cold. Good thing you get more cowboys every turn, because the mortality rate in Carson City is insane. I can't believe you ever manage to persuade new people to sign on, because every time one of them does what you tell them to do, they wind up in a pine box.

There are so many things to do on your turn, and so many properties available for purchase every turn, and so many places to put those buildings, that it can be really difficult to figure out what to do on your turn. You may want to get an egg timer to accurately represent how hard it was for real cowboys to make up their minds. And since very few of the actions are simple, you'll have to balance five or six different things in your head just to decide whether or not to build a saloon. For example, since the saloon earns money based on adjacent houses, you probably want to put it close to a house you own, and since it has to be on a road, you'll need to buy roads, and since someone else wants the good supply of roads, you'll need to buy the extra guns, only now you only have one cowboy left, and you need to claim the land, so maybe you can accept the loss of the roads, because you need one cowboy to go stand in the middle of a sandy plot and put a 'SOLD' tag on the for-sale sign. And that's an easy turn.

Yes, the lives of cowboys were fraught with complexity, and Carson City brings it all to life. To further represent the diverse characters you might meet in Carson City, you'll have to choose personalities to help you out on your turn. The cavalry captain raises more troops, while the banker raises lots of money. The Chinese worker can buy cheap buildings, and the settler grabs free land. These personalities, when used properly, completely alter how you play, and add yet another level of complication. If you really want to grab the only bank, you may want the sheriff so you can go first, but if you're about to score massive coin for your chain of drugstores, it might be a good idea to take the grocer.

With the dizzying array of decisions to make every turn, Carson City is not a game for the mentally weak. If you like a fast game with a high body count, you probably ought to consider some other distraction. But if you like to ponder multiple dimensions of strategy and tactical placement for hours at a time, just like real cowboys used to do, Carson City might appeal to you. And if the mind-twisting array of choices becomes too pedestrian for you, you can ratchet the whole thing up a notch by playing one of the multiple variants included in the rules. Is the wide-open playing board too simple for you? Flip it over, and add a river! Are you getting bored with the competent sheriff? Play with the variant characters, and now the sheriff gets his ass shot off every turn!

OK, so the theme in Carson City took too many illegal left turns for me to sign off on the story, but I still love the game. It's extraordinarily difficult to master, really tough to learn the rules, and requires Herculean mental gymnastics to play well. It's fun, but it's absolutely not a light game. If checkers is a mouthful of cotton candy, Carson City is a three-pound steak-and-shrimp burrito. It's good and satisfying, but it's not easy to finish.

Summary

Pros:
Incredibly deep strategy
Extreme planning required to play
A great mix of tactics, planning, strategy and nimble play, plus a lot of reading your opponents
Really fun, if you like lots of thinking

Cons:
Very complicated
A little slow
Tough to learn
Doesn't really feel like a game about Old West towns and violent gunfights

Dogstar Games has Carson City. It's not the new one from Eagle Games, though - it's an import. Same game, though, as far as I can tell:
http://www.dogstargames.com/product/39938

READ MORE - Board Game Review - Carson City

Expansion Review - D&D Scape

I used to play a whole lot of roleplaying games. I played everything from small-press rags to big-dollar productions, and I played Dungeons & Dragons more than anything else. It wasn't my favorite, really, it was just that it had more modules and stuff, and everyone knew the rules. Sure, I would have rather played Deadlands or Blue Planet, but when everyone around you plays D&D, you either play D&D or you play online solitaire. And I did love to play D&D, so that worked out.

That was a long time ago, though, and I don't play many roleplaying games any more. I discovered at some point that the greatest danger in D&D was not that you might end up worshiping Satan, it was that it made it harder to get laid. I might break out D&D with the kids if they're bored on the weekend, but for the most part, those days are past. I still get a little nostalgic about it now and then, though, and so when I heard that Wizards was going to do D&D Scape, I was pretty excited.

Turns out, not everyone was with me. I was amazed at the angered masses who were furious because Dungeons & Dragons was going to wind up hip-deep in HeroScape (or the other way around, depending on who you're asking). To me, this was more HeroScape, and best of all, it finally addressed my greatest concern with the game. For years I've been getting less interested in HeroScape because of the bizarre, rather silly theme - I can only pit elves against robots and superheroes so many times before I start to see it as an exercise in tactical positioning. The story element disappears along with my suspension of disbelief, and then it's just too dry to eat up all my spare time.

But now, the story is back, and it's better than ever. I know a bunch of you may be in the 'D&D ruined Scape' camp, and I can understand that, but for me, this is like a Red Bull to the brain stem. I'm suddenly excited to play HeroScape again.

To understand what makes D&D Scape so great, I'll start with what doesn't. For starters, the new figures are cool, but that's not the hook. If I really want the figures that badly, I can always just go buy the D&D Minis. That's all these are, unfortunately. They just ran down some of the D&D prepaints and popped them onto a HeroScape base. That really feels a little cheap.

It's not the new price, either. Sure, the D&D master set is cheaper than the original, but it's not hard to see where they saved the money. You get eight dice instead of twelve. You get less than half the terrain, and only a third of the figures. It's 25% cheaper for half as much stuff, and in case numbers confuse you, that sucks. I can sure see why long-term players would feel a little rooked.

And it's not the new terrain types, either. The only new terrain pieces are dungeon, shadow and stalactites - and those are exactly the same sculpts as grass, water and icebergs, but now in shades of gray. You could create every piece of terrain yourself from the buckets of stuff you already own, using just a couple cans of spray paint and an ink roller.

With all these shortcuts and cost-reductions, it's not hard to see why the die-hard fans might feel a little misused. No more metal-winged angels fighting zombies and minutemen, no Vydar in this box or even the next wave, and the value you used to enjoy when you opened a master set dropping right down the toilet - these are good reasons to be pissed. You can't build big armies, because you don't have enough figures, and you can't build big maps, because you're short on tiles. Plus there's a common squad in the box... but just the one. So you have to buy a bunch more. Up to this point, you may feel a little like Wizards just showed you a giant dildo and said, 'here, hold this in your ass.'

But when Erevan blasts the advancing troll with flaming death, and the drow elves quit laughing and gape in horror as their greatest ally goes up in smoke, you won't be telling your friends about the exciting story of how you rolled double skulls three times in a row and left your opponent with all his order markers on the dead guy. You'll be shouting about how that one elf sorcerer ran pell-mell to escape the bloodshed as his compatriots fell like wheat, and then turned on his attacker to blast that evil troll into ashes with a last-minute attack of desperation. You're suddenly not seeing skulls, shields and wound markers. Now you're seeing dark caves and magic spells and ferocious dragons. Now the game turns into a story.

And that's where D&D Scape redeems itself. Classic HeroScape is a fantastic game, but it rarely felt like a story to me unless I built theme armies like werewolves versus vampires. It was tough to really drop into the game, or experience the immersion I used to get from a night of Dungeons & Dragons. Now, when your last surviving hero leaps atop the rocky outcropping and succeeds in beating back a host of dark elves, you'll celebrate his victory, not his die-rolling. You need smart play to win, but now you have a tale of heroics unfolding as you play.

It's not just the consistent theme that makes this work, either. The new master set includes a campaign feature that lets you keep surviving heroes from one battle to the next, and instead of building huge outdoor maps, each fight is a room in a dungeon. Sure, you can still just draft a 500 point army and battle across some uneven ground, but I could do that before. Now my fights have a purpose outside placing third in the local tournament. Now I'm fighting to stop the spread of evil!

For the old-school fans out there, D&D Scape will work just fine with the classic version you know and love. Points are balanced, figures have cool powers, and there are lots of great ways to make your people work together. Strip out the story and the license, and this is still HeroScape. It's just that now you don't get as much for your money.

I'm certainly not going to try to talk you down if you hate D&D HeroScape. I can think of lots of reasons that the execution of this set was a disappointment. I'm not going to attempt to convince you that you're wrong - but I'm still incredibly happy this happened. Because for the first time in a year or two, I'm really excited to play HeroScape again.

Summary

Pros:
Story! Theme! Consistency!
New terrain types and treasure glyphs add a lot to the game
Connected games make you feel like you're telling a continuing saga

Cons:
So many shortcuts to save money might make you feel a little abused.

I'm going to have to take a cattle prod to Dogstar Games to get them to list the new D&D Scape stuff. It's like passing on free money.

READ MORE - Expansion Review - D&D Scape

Board Game Review - Riches & Rascals

Educational games have a long history, and most of it involves them being boring and preachy. They are usually designed to make children learn things whether they like it or not, and so actually being fun pulls a far second place to being chock full of knowledge.

Riches & Rascals follows this storied lineage as if there were a formula. It is immensely educational, but sadly, it is not a good game. However, since it is most likely to appeal to grade-school teachers attempting to make inattentive fifth-graders remember some modicum of world history, it is good that the part of the game that imparts knowledge is exceptional.

The game does not look like it should be dull. The board is huge, hand-illustrated, and beautiful. There are dozens of tiny counters indicating things like dead cave men and scarab beetles, plus some big ones for stuff like the invention of the wheel. These are supposed to be placed on corresponding pictures all over the board, which makes the setup for Riches & Rascals take approximately twice as long as you'll be able to get a classroom of kids sit in their chairs without someone throwing a spitball. If you are trying to grab the attention of a small group of sugar-junkie pre-teens, I recommend simply dumping the tokens in a pile and playing the game, already.

Each player has a boat, signified by a small plastic boat (a fortunate choice, really). The players roll dice to move around the board, going from port to port and trading stuff for other stuff. If you're the African trader, you'll start out with gold, and you can take it to China to trade for diamonds. If you're the Middle Eastern boat, you'll have cedar logs that you can take to Europe and trade for amber. This is ostensibly the goal of the game - to trade up and score big points for having a bunch of different commodities at the end of the game.

Every time you roll the dice, one of them might show you a scroll, and when it does, you get to read a page from the history scrolls. Each one tells you some historical fact that you may or may not know already, and then you get a reward, unless your boat capsizes and you lose all your goods. The rewards you get usually entail putting some of those tiny tokens into your boat, which is probably overcrowded to start with because you put all those diamonds and stuff in there.

So that's how you play, more or less, but that's also where you start to run into problems. For starters, the various trade goods are little beads. The cedar logs are cylindrical wooden beads, and the amber chunks are brown beads, and the diamonds are paste-on glitter buttons. The gold bars, on the other hand, are cute little plastic deals that actually resemble gold bars. It appears the budget came to a grinding halt after procuring 50 gold bricks, and the creators of the game had to resort to what they could find at the discount craft store.

Then there are the boats. Apparently, nobody counted on meeting great white sharks, because you're definitely going to need a bigger boat. As soon as you hit two or three ports and swap your wood beads for plastic beads, that boat is going to be overflowing, and every time you move it, the trade goods are going to fall out. It's immensely impractical, not to mention the fact that if any of the players are aggressive traders, you're going to run out of beads.

So let's say you can forgive the beads and the tiny boats. Let's just jump right past that and chalk it up to the production values you expect in an educational game. Now we stumble headlong over the game itself, which is a complete mess. Like the kind of mess you might find if you leave the ham out on the counter and the dog takes it down and eats it all and then throws up all over the house.

At first, this looks like a very basic roll-and-move game. And to my complete horror, that's all it is. The game consists of rolling dice and moving. You might trade, you might not. That's it. Those are your decisions. Even a stupid child is going to figure out pretty fast that this game is less interesting than, say, eating boogers.

And the trading thing doesn't work at all. Seriously, you need an abacus to keep track of the trades. Trade five amber for ten cedar, then ten cedar for twenty gold, then twenty gold for forty diamonds, then do it all again on the way back, and before you're six pages into the book, someone is trying to pile 160 beads into a boat that can barely hold five. You'll run out of beads, and worse, you'll forget about teaching history because you have to spend all your time teaching math.

The worst thing, though, and the one reason I could only possibly recommend this game to an elementary school teacher, is that the game is way, way too long. You only read from a scroll when you roll one, which happens about every third turn. The game goes until all the scrolls have been read. And there are enough scrolls that if you start when the kids get to school, you'll still be playing when the bell rings and they all go screaming out the door to see their mommies.

I understand the powerful desire of the home-brew inventor to create a game. I've had that itch, and I've given it a shot myself. But in my case, after a few tests, I understood pretty quickly that the game I was making would not work. In the case of Riches & Rascals, however, it seems the creator did not test the game anywhere near as much as she should have, and published it without getting even one unbiased response. Otherwise, someone, somewhere would have said, 'this is like a train wreck into a tidal wave caused by an earthquake.'

But all is not lost. The history scroll element of this game is very cool, and the educational aspect is extremely sound. A few simple tweaks, and this game could be just the ticket for a small classroom of smart children. For instance, throw away the scroll die and read one every turn. Hell, read two. And allow trades on a one-for-one basis, which works because amber is worth more in China and gold is worth more in Saudi Arabia, and if you're hard-pressed for more currency, allow trade-ups only in your home port. Finally, use two dice, not one, so that the standard turn consists of something more than rolling the dice, moving one space, and then frowning as you pass the dice.

Normally I wouldn't suggest repairs to a game. I like to review them the way they were written. But there is so much promise in the educational side of Riches & Rascals, and I fear nobody will ever discover that brilliance if they can't bring themselves to play the game. A few simple changes to the rules, and this could be a fun learning experience that really makes kids feel like they're part of history. But leave it the way it is now, and Riches & Rascals could be renamed Six Hours You'll Wish You Had Back.

Summary

Pros:
Very attractive map
Nice tokens
Great educational value

Cons:
Unfortunate choice of components
Trading rules are a complete disaster
Roll and move and that's all

If you're a teacher willing to do a little legwork to make Riches & Rascals a fun game, you might find it brings a lot of interest to a classroom. You can find it here:
http://www.richesnrascals.com/

READ MORE - Board Game Review - Riches & Rascals