Dale Yu: Review of Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition [Essen SPIEL 2024]

Rebel Princess Deluxe Edition

  • Designers: Daniel Byrne, Gerardo Guerrero, Kevin Pleaez, Tirso Virgos
  • Publisher: Bezier Games
  • Players: 3-6
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 30-45 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Snow White, The Little Mermaid, Cinderella, and many other fairy tale princesses are celebrating a five-day party. The prince charmings, who have not been invited, will try to infiltrate the ball to propose marriage to the girls. As a princess, you have to avoid marriage proposals and remain single and independent after the celebrations.

Rebel Princess takes place over five rounds, representing the five days of a party, and each round has a special rule that makes each game totally different. The general mechanisms are those of trick-taking games, in which each player plays a numbered card into each trick, following one of the four suits in the game. The player with the highest number of the suit that started the trick takes all the cards of that trick — but that’s not necessarily good as players want to avoid taking cards with prince charmings, who each bring one marriage proposal, aside from the enchanted frog who brings five proposals. The player with the fewest marriage proposals after five rounds wins.

Importantly, each player assumes the role of a different fairy tale princess and has a special ability that they can use once per round.

Continue reading

Posted in Essen 2024, Reviews | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Review of Pixies [Essen SPIEL 2024]

Pixies

  • Designer: Johannes Goupy
  • Publisher: Pandasaurus / Bombyx
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20-30 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by Pandasaurus

In Pixies, you move through the seasons to meet little creatures emerging from a flower or sheltering in the hollow of a tree. Choose one of the revealed cards, but be careful which ones you leave to your opponents!

Place that card in your playing area according to its number. Cards placed one on top of another are validated and earn you points at the end of the round, as do your largest color zone and your spirals. Easy…yet you’ll find that the other players won’t be short of bad advice.

Continue reading

Posted in Essen 2024, Reviews | 1 Comment

Dale Yu: Review of Neodreams [Essen SPIEL 2024]

Neodreams

  • Designer: Ivan Lashin
  • Publisher: Hobby World
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 12+
  • Time: 30-60 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

In the near future, an astonishing new technology has been developed that allows the sleeping mind and machine to be connected. It is called Oneiroshunt, and with it, the business of crafting and selling dreams has become a thriving industry. For the right price, clients can learn new skills, overcome deep-seated fears, and travel to the most extraordinary locations all from the comfort of their beds.

In Neodreams, each player is the CEO of a company that is developing and using this technology, and they must expand fast to keep up with the competition. In this economic strategy game, players will deploy their Oneironauts to gather resources, craft stunning experiences, improve dreamscapes, and gain clients. The player who accumulates the most wealth once enough dreams have been created will dominate the Oneiroshunt industry for years to come!

 

Continue reading

Posted in Essen 2024, Reviews | 1 Comment

Dale Yu: Review of Fairy Ring [Essen SPIEL 2024]

Fairy Ring

  • Designers: Laurence Greniew and Fabien Tanguy
  • Publisher: Repos
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 30-40 minutes
  • Played with review copy per Asmodee NA
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3B2nSye

A ray of moonlight shines in the clearing. The fairies wake up and stretch their wings. Mushrooms pop up from the ground, forming a circle. The first fireflies start to land. Magic is returning to the forest, and now it’s time to prepare for winter…

In Fairy Ring, you want to create a mushroom village to house the fairies in the clearing. Guide your fairy carefully, from village to village, through the fairy ring to gather as much mana as possible. You have two seasons to develop your village before winter begins. Each decision counts towards winning the game.

Continue reading

Posted in Essen 2024, Reviews | Leave a comment

Cole’s Creations Compared

With two Kallax cubes dedicated to the work of this one designer, I think it’s time to compare and contrast the work of the truly inimitable Cole Wehrle.  I first discovered Cole’s unique design style in November 2018 while at the Netrunner World Championships at the FFG headquarters in Minnesota.  I’d never heard of Root before that fateful day, but between dozens of Netrunner games, a friend pulled out a copy of Root, started explaining it, and I was hooked.  It was a bit reminiscent of when I was at a Magic: The Gathering event in 1996, and between games of Magic, someone pulled out a copy of Settlers of Catan, and I was simply drawn to it in a powerful and inexplicable way.  Root has been an all-time favorite since then, rocketing up my list of favorites and my played games list, and overtaking thousands of others games in the process.  But of course, Cole didn’t stop at Root, and while many of his subsequent games have an aesthetic that is extremely similar to Root, the differences among his underlying creations are striking.

My thesis is that each of Cole’s creations fills a very different niche in the hobby and in my collection, and each excels at something distinct (not unlike the Clash of Civilization Games).  Root is the four-player free-for-all extraordinarily asymmetric combat game for bashing your friends while playing the psychological warfare of demurring and finger-pointing that was pioneered in 1959 by Diplomacy and perfected in 1995 by El Grande.  By contrast, Oath, Pax Pamir, and Arcs all offer something very different and unique, despite their seeming similarity…

Continue reading
Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Dale Yu: Review of Tower Up [Essen SPIEL 2024]

Tower Up

  • Designers: Gregoire Largey, Frank Crittin, Sebastian Pauchon
  • Publisher: Monolith Board Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 30-40 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by Flat River Games
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3ZoBKgg

Congratulations! Your architectural firm has been selected to renovate the city’s downtown…but you’re not the only ones. To pip your opponents at the post, you need to manage your resources and carefully plan your constructions. Be careful not to leave too many opportunities to your competitors!

Continue reading

Posted in Essen 2024, Reviews | 7 Comments