Dale Yu: Review of Toy Battle 

Toy Battle

  • Designers: Paolo Mori, Alessandro Zucchini 
  • Publisher: Repos
  • Players: 2
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 15 minutes
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/43EJ20K
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

On land, on sea, in clouds, and even in space, battles are breaking out between toys. Your troops need your tactical talent to lead them to victory. Your mission? Be the first to reach the enemy headquarters or control more territories than your opponent.

On your turn in Toy Battle, you either draw two toy troops or place a troop on the board and apply its effect. When you place a troop, you can place it on an empty base, a base that you control, a base that the enemy controls with a lower-valued troop than the one you’re placing, or the enemy’s headquarters; however, in all cases you must place on a location that has a continuous path to your own headquarters through bases that you occupy, that is, that have your troop on top. If you occupy bases that form a continuous path around a region, you claim the medals within this region. (You don’t lose these medals if the enemy later occupies one of these bases.)

The game ends as soon as you occupy your opponent’s headquarters or win the required number of medals based on the current game board. If a player cannot draw or place a troop, the game ends, and whoever has the most medals wins.

 

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Dale Yu: Review of  Light Speed Arena

Light Speed Arena

  • Designer: James Ernest, Tom Jolly, Leonardo Alese, Emanuele Santellani
  • Publisher: Pegasus Spiele
  • Players: 1-4
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 5-10 min
  • Amazon affiliate link: 
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

A real-time tabletop shooter in which you aim with your tiles and take a smartphone picture to let the app unfold the battle for you. As the roar of the crowd resonates, the arena is lit with the brilliant glow of sponsor ads: Pick your faction and step into battle. Tactically place and orient your spaceships to score the most points by taking down enemy vehicles, collecting mineral units from asteroids, and impressing the game sponsors.

This is a real-time, tile laying game. The game begins with two tiles in the center and starting the timer. Every round, each player places one spaceship anywhere on the battlefield while everybody else is doing the same! Aim at enemies and asteroids, while appealing to the sponsors and avoiding friendly fire. After 8 rounds, players stop and take a photo with the companion app. The companion app will play the battle for you and calculate the scores. Scores can also be calculated manually with the Downgrade Pack.

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Dale Yu: Review of Ghostbumpers

Ghostbumpers

  • Designers: Inka Brand, Markus Brand 
  • Publisher: Deep Print Games
  • Players: 3-6
  • Age:8+
  • Time: 15-20 minutes
  • Amazon affiliate link: 
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

The monsters are terrorizing the fairground. You dive into a crazy bumper-car ride and try not to lose your nerve. Who will be the first to get scared?

In this trick-taking game, you don’t want to win too many tricks, because each trick carries the risk that your character gets scared. The braver you play, the more points you can earn.

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Talia Rosen: Fall Mini-Reviews

Image of two expansion boxes for the board game 7 Wonders Duel, featuring Pantheon on the left and Agora on the right.

I’ve played some great games this fall, so it’s time for another round of mini-reviews about the 32 different board and card games from the last two months.  It looks like I haven’t done a set of mini-reviews since I extolled the virtues of Cartographers, Brian Boru, and Radlands in 2023 and detailed my qualms with Everdell and 9 Lives in 2022.  So I’m back to give you the quick and dirty on 32 more games, starting with the best of the best… mega 7 Wonders Duel with both the Pantheon and Agora expansions together!

Cream of the Crop

7 Wonders Duel gives you an epic feeling in a 45-minute package when combined with both the Pantheon expansion and the Agora expansion.  I’ve played this 2015 game a total of 58 times, including with one or the other expansion, but recently getting to try it for the first time with both expansions together was a real treat.  It’s not for the faint of heart, given all of the icons and rules in play, or for anyone new to the design, but with some experience under your belt, this fully expanded version is an absolute gem.

The cover of the board game 'Living Forest: Kodama', featuring a whimsical forest scene with a waterfall, trees, and mystical creatures.

I also got Bauza’s and Cathala’s sequel The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth to the table, and it’s really impressive how they’ve changed the formula to give the sequel a really different feel, while keeping the core the same.  This video interview with the designers sheds a lot of light on their thought process behind the Lord of the Rings sequel.

My second favorite game of the season has definitely been Living Forest with the 2023 Kodama expansion.  While I was lukewarm on the original Living Forest base game, the expansion really solidifies the game for me due to the way that it strengthens the flower victory path with new cards and tree tiles.  I’ve also settled into playing this primarily as a two-player game where it seems to shine as a head-to-head battle, in which the fire/water victory path (and “wasting” an action to block an opponent) makes more sense overall.

Back to the table this season were also the wonderfully tense and variable card game Radlands, the clever Dr. Finn head-to-head battle of wits Nanga Parbat, and the decent enough silent dice game Sky Team. Even more exciting though was trying the new Twisted Paths expansion for Lost Ruins of Arnak…

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Dale Yu: Review of Deep Dreams

Deep Dreams

  • Designer: Santiago Zanon
  • Publisher: DEVIR
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 10 min
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

 Little Bruno has gone to sleep and will travel during the night between dreams. Our mission as dream guardians is to keep him immersed in the most pleasant dreams and assure us that he wakes up as little as possible during the night.

The goal in Deep Dreams is to score points playing and connecting dream cards, that show the four colors of the dream. You will need to create the largest color groups connected to score victory points, while making sure Bruno doesn’t wake up by drawing a continuous path with the white lines and arrows through the cards. Some dream cards got powerful effects that will help players to get better combinations. And at the end, the longest path will have the greatest reward. Get ready to enter the world of dreams and ensure that Bruno has a quiet and peaceful night.

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Heroscape: Here Be Dragons… and Pirates… and Some Very Creepy Forest Dwellers

Chris (upper right) and Braeden (lower left) contemplate how to defeat me. Only one of them was successful.

In the last couple of weeks, the newest story arc of Heroscape arrived – and thanks to the kindness of family and friends, the new stuff has been hitting the table and I’m looking forward to giving you the lowdown on it. I know many of you are looking for coverage of another magical land (aka Spiel Essen)… but Valhalla will have to do for now. (The team here at the Opinionated Gamers are writing up reviews as quickly as we can get to the new Essen stuff – just be patient!)

A quick reminder for those of you living under a (virtual) rock when it comes to board games: Heroscape is a miniatures skirmish combat game played on a board constructed out of (incredibly cool) plastic terrain pieces. (Seriously: folks who play with other minis systems have used this 3D terrain because it works so well.) Since the theme is a battle for dominance in world where the Valkyrie Generals can recruit warriors from multiple times & dimensions, there is a wild mixture of heroes & squads – aliens & Matrix guys & Braveheart & dragons & robots & kung fu monks & gorillas with guns, to name a few. More recently, the good folks at Renegade have added polar bears & space pirates, to name a few more. And it’s one of my favorite games

With that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at the four new figure sets… as well as some new terrain and a smattering of promo figures.

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