War of the Ring Card Game

• Designer: Ian Brody
• Publisher: Ares
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 12+
• Time: 90-120 mins
• Played with review copy provided by Ares Games at SPIEL 2022

Well, many of the gamers on this list have War of the Ring as one of their favorite games.  I have enjoyed my few plays of it, but the base game tends to take a bit longer than I like… So, when presented with a card game, I was interested to try it out and see if it gave me the same sort of experience, but hopefully with a shorter game time.

In this game, players participate on 2 teams, the Free Peoples (Frodo and Aragorn) and the Shadow (Saruman and the WitchKing).  Each player gets a unique deck representing the characteristics of their faction; taking the faction cards that correspond to each player’s chosen character.  Each faction also has a separate battleground deck which is shuffled and set aside. Finally the path deck is created with the number 1 cards on top and in order until the number 9 cards are on bottom.

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Hercules

• Designer: Fabio Lima
• Publisher: mebo games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30min
• Played with review copy provided by publisher at SPIEL 2022

In Hercules, players represent an Apprentice of Hercules and will roll the dice to perform mathematical operations in order to complete the legendary Twelve Labours of the almighty warrior. It’s a race, but being the first to complete these challenges won’t be enough to claim victory! Ultimately, the winner will be the player who has earned the most points from their cards, cubes and bonuses they gained by cleverly doing maths.

Wait maths?  First, why do those English people insist on saying it funny?  (At least the didn’t stick an extra “u” in the word).  But, yes, this is a game that will involve lots of math/arithmetic.  Luckily, the largest number you’re going to have to deal with is 12, but for some of you, that might require you to slip off a shoe as you’re going to run out of fingers to work with.

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Come Together

• Designers: Vegard Eliassen Stillerud, Eilif Svensson, Asmund Svensson
• Publisher: Chilifox games
• Players: 1-6
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60-90 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher at SPIEL 2022

My brain automatically starts singing: “Here come old flat top / He come grooving up slowly / He got joo joo eyeball /  He one holy roller / He got hair down to his knee / Got to be a joker he just do what he please…”

The title gets me into the mood and theme of this game – “It is the late 1960s, and a new generation of young people cherish freedom, friendship, and love by creating gatherings where everyone can come together in peace and enjoy the ultimate life experience — music festivals! Everyone wants to see The Cascadians, Tikki Tooraid, and Great Western Cowboys this summer, but which festival will they play?  In Come Together, you organize your own festival, using your volunteers to attract an audience and the hottest artists, build stages and camps, and gain publicity to make your festival the best of all time!  Come Together is a worker placement game, but with a special twist: When you place workers, you do not immediately gain the card you just claimed. You must wait until a player activates that location (which activates it for all players on that location). Players are constantly facing important dilemmas: One dilemma is whether to claim a card or activate a location. Timing of the activation can be crucial. Another dilemma is whether to claim the card you really want or claim a less attractive card in order gain more publicity by joining players on another location.“

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Tidal Blades Banner Festival

• Designers: JB Howell, Michael Mihealsick
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher at SPIEL 2022

Tidal Blades Banner Festival was a pleasant surprise from SPIEL 2022… Why?  Well, as I was doing my hurried research for the show, I was excited to already have a dinner date set up to play “Tidal Blades” with an old friend.  We enjoyed a nice dinner, played the game, and I went home happy knowing that I had also requested a copy of “Tidal Blades” at my upcoming meeting with Lucky Duck.  It was at that meeting that I discovered that Tidal Blades is just the name of the game universe (attributed to Mr Cuddington) in which multiple different games are set in (3 so far as of this review).  I enjoyed my play of Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef at my dinner, but I was definitely pleased to get a demo of an entirely different game at my meeting – as I was there to look at Tidal Blades: Banner Festival.

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