Dale Yu – Review of Lost Cities: Roll & Write

Posted on November 4, 2021 by Dale Yu

Lost Cities: Roll & Write

  • Designer: Reiner Knizia
  • Publisher: Kosmos
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20-30 minutes
  • Played ~10 times with review copy provided by Thames&Kosmos

lost cities roll and write

Lost cities is one of the classic two-player games in my collection. It has always been one of my go to games when posed with the question of what to show a new gamer and there are only the two of us around. The original game has the right mix of tactical strategy, card luck, and push your luck excitement which has kept it a mainstay in my 2p rotation.  The original game has had a number of spin offs including a board game version as well as an entire line of Keltis games.   This most recent version capitalizes on the current trend for roll and write games.

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Dale Yu: Review of K3

Posted on November 3, 2021 by Dale Yu

K3

  • Designer: Phillippe Proux
  • Publisher: Helvetiq
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20 min
  • Played with review copy provided by Helvetiq

k3

K3 is maybe not the best known mountain to gamers; it seems that everyone wants to make a game about K2… Broad Peak is a mountain in the Karakoram range on the border of Pakistan and China, the twelfth-highest mountain in the world at 8,047 metres above sea level.  In this game, you will try to climb to the top of this mountain from the final base camp.

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Dale Yu – Review of Stich Rallye

Posted on November 2, 2021 by Dale Yu

Stich Rallye

  • Designer: H. J. Kook
  • Publisher: Amigo Games
  • Players: 3-5
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20-30 minutes
  • Played with new version provided by AMIGO

stich rallye

This year at SPIEL 2021, Amigo is bringing a interesting Korean Racing game to the market. Originally sold as Spring Rally (back in 2018) – players race their spring driven cars around the track – the board is double sided and this allows you to race on two different circuits. Each player gets a contraption made up of two discs that represents the spring in your race car.   There is a deck of cards, made up of three suits from 1-15, which can be modified for player count.  The appointed cards are shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of five cards for the first round.  The later rounds are longer with 7 cards being dealt in the second round and 9 cards being dealt in the third and final round.  The game is won by the first player to complete two circuits of the track.

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Matt Carlson: The Dice of Gen Con

Posted on October 31, 2021 by Matt J Carlson

As I mentioned previously, for many years Gen Con was a mecca for role-playing aficionados. As with any pastime, players grow fond of their tools and toys. Role-playing is no different and one can look no further than a player’s dice to get a sense of a gamer’s personal style. The field of dice manufacturers has exploded of late, fueled by every gamer’s credo of “hey, I could always use more dice.” It used to be enough to provide interesting colors – perhaps going so crazy as to have a swirl of two colors AT THE SAME TIME! Simply Incredible. Now, coloration is no longer enough. Gamers can get dice made out of metal, semiprecious (even precious) stones, and wood. There are extra large and small varieties and a wealth of options for the symbols appearing on the faces. Since the dealer hall is just chock full of vendors, I thought it might be fun to take you, the reader, on a trip through the dealer dice hall. Note, that many, if not most, of the dice vendors have multiple stalls throughout the hall. Letting no temporary dice-buying urge to go unchecked.

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Matt Carlson: Gen Con 2021 – RPGs

Posted on October 30, 2021 by Matt J Carlson
An example animated map by Arkenforge.

Gen Con started out in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin a little over 50 years ago. It focused on wargames until the mid 70’s when the first tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons and Dragons, came onto the scene, quickly overtaking prominence at the convention. The role-playing side of things remains strong, even at this year’s reduced level of activity. While most of the gaming takes place outside the exhibit hall, there were still plenty of RPG-oriented booths to peruse. Here’s a sample of what I found… Boilerplate excuses for all errors contained within still apply.

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Dale Yu – Review of the Holiday Hijinks Series  (Spoiler Free)

Posted on October 29, 2021 by Dale Yu

The Independence Incident / The Kringle Caper / The Pumpkin Problem

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The Holiday Hijinks series are a set of three (so far) pocket sized escape room/puzzles.  I first encountered The Indepence Incident after a friend received it as a gift from the Gathering of Friends.  We brought it to the table as an opener for game night, and we were quite impressed with the challenges provided by this small packet of 18 cards.  The idea here is an “Escape room” of sorts- with the goal being to get though the deck to the last card.

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