Renegade Fall Virtual Convention (Game Convention Thoughts by Brandon Kempf)

A couple years ago, if you had talked to anyone who played games with me and asked them my favorite publisher, they would have easily been able to answer. It was Renegade Games. I love the Clank! Universe and the twist it turned on deck-building games, I loved the stand along titles as well, they all fit almost perfectly into that family style gaming that I love. Somewhere along the line, Renegade took a turn, while still churning out fantastic Clank! Material, the other side of the coin began to slip for me with some questionable releases. I still think that Renegade is a fantastic gaming company, they just haven’t been aligning with me as of late. I jumped at the chance to hang out and checkout Renegade’s Fall Digital Convention, as I had high hopes for a couple of their newer games and I had hoped that there may be signs of me falling in love with their games all over again. Over the weekend, the Renegade Games team hosted demo, after demo over on Tabletopia, along with having panels and media presentations. They tried, much like Capstone Games did, to make this feel like an actual convention, you just didn’t have to fight past the guy with the wagon and overstuffed backpacks. 

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Dale Yu: First Impression of Magnefix

Magnefix

  • Designer: Roberto Fraga
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 6+
  • Time: 15 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by AMIGO

Magnefix is the first game that I know of which uses “MAGFORMERS” – Intelligent Magnetic Construction Set For Brain Development.  In this game, each player gets a set of five magnetic open squares, one each of pink, orange, blue, yellow and green.  They are magnetized on the edges so that they stack as well as stand up next to each other.

There is a deck of 55 construction cards which are shuffled and placed on the table. To start the game, the top construction card is revealed and it shows a top-down view of a set of MAGFORMERS.  All players quickly manipulate, stack or balance their five MAGFORMERS in order to replicate the top down view seen on the card.  All five pieces must be used in the construction. Continue reading

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Dale Yu: First Impressions of Scrolls of a Northern City

Scrolls of a Northern City

  • Designer: Chu-Lan Kao
  • Publisher: Antler Studio
  • Players: 1-5
  • Age: 12+
  • Time: 30-40 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by Taiwan Boardgame Design (who distributes for Antler)

Each autumn, I eagerly await shipments from Taiwan Boardgame Design – the area is one of the booming new regions for game design, and the growing presence in Essen is proof that the rest of the world is taking notice as well.  Some of the games come with a bit of buzz about them, while others are complete surprises.  Scrolls of a Northern City would fall in the latter category.  Though it has a release date of 2019 on BGG, I had heard nothing about the game until it showed up on my doorstep.  Antler Studio is new to me – BGG only has two games listed for them, and both arrived in the same parcel just this month!

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Dale Yu: First Impressions of Quetzal

 

 Quetzal

  • Designer: Alexandre Garcia
  • Publisher: Gigamic
  • Players: 2-5
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 45-60min
  • Played with review copy provided by Gigamic / Blackrock

In Quetzal, players each lead a team of archaeologists and adventurers to the ruins of an ancient temple.  Using their team members, each player explores the island and the temple trying to find the most valuable artifacts and bring them to their ship in the harbor.

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Aqualin (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

  • Designer: Marcello Bertocchi
  • Artists: Sophie Rekasowski
  • Publisher: Kosmos
  • Players: 2
  • Time: 20 Minutes
  • Times Played: 6
Down here all the fish is happy 
As off through the waves they roll
The fish on the land ain’t happy
They sad ’cause they in their bowl
But fish in the bowl is lucky
They in for a worser fate
One day when the boss get hungry
Guess who’s gon’ be on the plate?

I love the Kosmos two player games lineup. My oldest daughter and I played hours of The Reef, Odin’s Ravens and yes, even Elk Fest. The games are rules light and quick playing, something that was always of utmost importance to my daughter, who always had something better to be doing, at least until she noticed we’d already played five games and we were setting up the sixth. We kind of fell away from those titles as the years progressed, not because we grew to not enjoy them, but things just change, right?

 

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Dale Yu: Review of Decipher

Decipher

  • Designers: Bill Eberle, Greg Olotka, Peter Olotka
  • Publisher: HeidelBÄR Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Times played: 2 with review copy provided by Asmodee NA (who distributes here for HeidelBÄR)

Decipher is the second game in the Letter Piece series which reimplements one of my favorite old-time games, Runes, from EON.  The main concept behind these Letter Piece games is that all of the 26 letters in the alphabet can be constructed using some combination of four different basic shapes (the red long straight, the yellow small straight, the blue half moon and the green tight curve).

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