Saturday, March 9, 2013

Heres' a couple more of the mini-reviews:


Tsuro, the game of the path, is a clever little game with a neat aesthetic. Players place cards from their hands to create a "Path" of unbroken line that their pawn will follow. The conflict arises when players meet each other, and can misdirect opponents by placing paths in front of them. Yes, it starts out innocently enough, but the game gets  messy fast. The art style is cool, doing for traditional Chinese design what Laser (I'm not calling it Khet, everyone I know calls it Laser.) does for Egyptian historical art. Gameplay isn't the best balanced thing in the world, but gets to be good madcap fun by the end of the game, and reminds me of the cycle thing from Tron. Short playing time. Check it out if you think its  interesting, but don't go out of your way for it.


Most everyone has at least heard of Munchkin, Steve Jackson games' hit series of humorous games parodying everything from D&D to the webcomic Axe Cop. They're a whole lot of fun to play, but only if you know what they're referencing. Great to relax over with friends, falls apart if you try to be serious with it. Theme takes precedence over balance, as is to be expected in a Steve Jackson game. Still, it works, given what Munchkin is-a game that will make you laugh, nothing more, nothing less.


King of Tokyo is a game saturated with theme. Player control huge monsters (Totally not men in rubber suits), fighting to cause maximum destruction in a city filled with poorly dubbed civilians. This game was a birthday present to me, and I'm absolutely loving it. The power up cards are a barrel of laughs, the monsters are unique and well designed, the aesthetic is awesome, and the gameplay, while not very deep, is balanced well and delivers a very fun 30-minute game of monstrous king-of-the-hill. Great game for fans of Kaiju flicks, or curing kids from their lifetime of Snakes and Ladders.


Lastly, someone expressed interest in the rules of speed four. While there are some variants, here are the rules, as I remember them, that I used at Bearcon:

Players have a playing hand and an off hand. If you're right handed, your right hand is your playing hand and your left hand is your off hand and so vice versa. Players put the off hand, cupped, on the base of the playing board on their side. (The boards we used had a oval shaped base with little round "Feet" you could rest your hand on easily, but feel free to change that if you have a different board.) This is to anchor the board to the ground more effectively, and to make sure players off-hands are equidistant from the little drop-in slot up top. Players put as many of their tiles as they like in their cupped off-hand. Then players lock eyes and count down from four to g"Go!" After "Go!" you can place your tiles in with your playing hand as fast as you like. If you run out of tiles in your cupped off-hand, feel free to take them from wherever, but don't move your off-hand any more at all. the game ends when one player gets four tiles in a row, and then calls it. (Sometimes you might not notice you've won until a later or inconvenient time. If that happens, have an impartial referee decide how to deal with it.) It gets really frantic and silly, but thats' the fun part. Certainly a party game, and only requires a connect four board and at least one friend.

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