Review: Drachenherz

 When a game is talked about as having a lot in common with Lost Cities, it’s a game that knows how to get my interest.  Lost Cities is a great 2-player game as there’s more depth than first expected and is one of the games my girlfriend really enjoys too.  However, this kind of comparison does give Drachenherz a lot to live up to.

Drachenherz is a simple, 2-player game.  The board shows a very nice painting of a scene where a dragon dominates the sky whilst an archer takes aim, a princess waits to strike and a troll lurks ready to grab the princess, and so on.  Each of the characters has one or more outlines around them to show where cards are placed and there are some arrows from one card location to another.

Review: Rattus

Rattus is by the same designers who created Oregon, one of my favourite board games.  For me, Oregon has a great mix of strategy and planning without being heavy – plenty to think about, a good amount of control, but relatively light so most people can enjoy it.  So, I was really pleased when I heard they had created a new game.

Rattus is themed around the Black Death, the plague that wiped out 1/3 of the European population from 1348-1350.  In essence, players take turns placing their population (coloured cubes) onto the European map and, as you may expect, population pieces get removed as the plague sweeps from area to area.  The winner is the player with the most population left at the end of the game.

Review: Qwirkle

At first glance, Qwirkle reminded me of Ingenious (also called Einfach Genial and Mensa).  Not a bad thing at all as I really like Ingenious and am playing it on my iPhone these days too.  Qwirkle’s gameplay is different to Ingenious but also has a really good thinking element to it.

The game consists of 108 square tiles which each show a coloured symbol.  There are 36 different combinations of the 6 different symbols and 6 different colours, and there are 3 of every different colour/symbol combination.

Each player takes 6 random tiles from the bag. On their turn, they place any number of tiles in a straight line (like Scrabble) so long as they obey a single rule: the tiles in any line placed (or formed by adding to other lines) must either be of unique shape but matching colour, or unique colour but matching shape. 

Review: Claustrophobia

At first glance, Claustrophobia looks like it could be a fantasy-themed Space Hulk – in fact, I often call it Dungeon Hulk when trying to describe it.  As a big fan of Space Hulk, this is no bad thing at all; however, Claustrophobia is more than just a re-theme of Space Hulk as it has it’s own unique gameplay too.

Set in the tunnels beneath New Jerusalem, Claustrophobia is a game for two players – one playing the demons invading from below and the other playing the humans trying to defeat the demons once and for all.  A Holy man leads a team of condemned thieves and murderers ‘enlisted’ to fight the demons – weak but numerous troglodytes and a few, powerful demons.

Replay: Colonia

[If you don’t know how to play Colonia, please read my initial review before reading this post.]

My initial review of Colonia was one of my earliest reviews and focussed a lot on how the game is played.  My recent play of Colonia made me want to re-visit it and talk more about the gameplay.

This time we played with 5 players.  The 3 of us that had played before were slightly concerned that it would be more chaotic than when we played with 4 because plans could be more easily disrupted by other players because there would be more players who could take the action you were planning before you did.  In actuality, it didn’t feel like this and you just planned with other players in mind as usual.  It did make player order even more important because the amount of materials/goods/contracts/relics are the same no matter how many players are playing.  So, there were fewer materials/goods/contracts/relics per player to be had compared to a 4 player game.

Review: Savannah Tails

Savannah Tails is a game of Ostrich racing.  The designers’ previous game was dog sled racing (Snow Tails) and this is a lighter and very different game.

Each player has a deck of cards which each show one of four colours and a number from 2 to 6.  The track along which the ostriches race is made up of sections – straights and curves – which can be arranged in lots of different way.  Each track section shows 4 trails (red, blue, yellow and black) and each has a tree at one side of the track. 

At the start of each round, the playing order is determined by the player whose ostrich is furthest forwards, and ties are split by whoever is closest to the tree on that section of track.  On their turn, a player plays one card from their hand of 4 (sometimes 5) cards, moves their ostrich along the track and then draws another card from their deck.  When each player has taken a turn, a new rounds starts.

Review: No Thanks

No Thanks is a push-your-luck game for 3 to 5 players.  The game consists purely of a deck of 33 cards and 55 plastic chips and is pleasantly, and appropriately, low in price.

To start the game, each player is given 11 plastic chips.  The cards (numbered from 3 to 35) are shuffled and 9 cards are randomly removed from the game (without anyone seeing which ones).  A card is from the deck turned over (face-up) and the current player chooses whether to take the card or leave it.  If they want to leave the card, they must place one of their chips on the card; but, if the player has no chips, they have no choice and must take the card.  When a player takes a card, they get any chips that are on top of the card too – then, a new card is turned over and the player who took the previous card gets first choice on taking or leaving the new card.

Review: Palastgeflüster

I stumbled across this game and when I read the rules decided to buy it via Amazon.de (as it’s not easily available in the UK) which proved pretty cheap as it consists of just a deck of cards.  As you may know from my list of top 10 very portable 2-player games, I like having games that are easy to carry around.  Palastgeflüster is definitely easy to carry and plays 3 to 5 players.

The goal of the game is to reach 6 points with 3 players (5 points with 4 players or 4 points with 5 players).  The cards display one of the 7 different characters on them as well as a colour around the edge – the colours are either one of the player’s colours or brown.  Plus, there are some King cards which are kept separately.

Top 10 Games: That Need 2-Player Rules

If you’ve read my blog, you’ll know I really like  good 2-player games.  They don’t need to be 2-player only, just so long as they play well with 2 as it’s too often a great game plays poorly with just 2 player.  This is often because what one player does, the other player counters or reacts to.  Alhambra is a great example of a game that plays superbly with 2 players (in fact, I think the fewer players the better with Alhambra).

I recently entered the Krakow competition to create rules for a 2-player game and it got me thinking about the other games I would really like to be able to play 2-player.  So, here’re the top ten games in my collection for which I’d like to be able to play a 2-player game….

Review: Mow

 Mow (pronounced Moo as it’s the noise cows make in France) is a simple but active card game with good player interaction as each tries to obstruct the other players. 

The game consists of two decks of cards – one deck is used for 2 to 5 players and the other deck is added for 6 to 10 players.  Each card shows a cartoon cow and has a number on between 0 to 16, plus each has a number of flies on it from 0 to 5.  Flies are bad and the players want to avoid collecting them.

Each player starts with 5 cards.  On their turn, a player plays a card to the centre of the table so that a single row of cards builds up and these will be in numerical order.