Dale Yu: Review of Rumble Nation

Rumble Nation

Designer: 与儀新一 (Shinichi Yogi)
Publisher: Hobby Japan
Players: 2-4
Ages: 10+
Time: 20-40 minutes
Times Played: 4 times with review copy provided by Hobby Japan, 5 plays with first edition (by 77spiele)

Rumble Nation was a highly anticipated SPIEL 2019 game for me; I had been introduced to the original release (then called Tenka Meidou) by James Nathan; but, of course, like all of the great JP games of his that I have played, it was essentially out-of-print and quite unavailable by the time that I learned about it!

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Surviving the Purge: Sentient (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

  • Designer: J. Alex Kevern
  • Artist: Chris Ostrowski
  • Publisher: Renegade Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Time: 45-60 minutes
  • Times Played: 5

Sentient (adjective): able to perceive or feel things

Sentient is a dice manipulation puzzle. An ever changing puzzle at that. In the game you are going to be purchasing sentient robots and then attempting to calibrate them to best suit your needs. 

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Brandon Kempf – Surviving the Purge 7

Over the next few months, instead of going with my Three Games articles, I am going to take a look at my collection and try to discuss why certain titles survived the great purge of 2019. During this process I may take a look at some games that didn’t survive, but only as a measuring stick for what did survive. Since I am silly, like a lot of gamers, I use Ikea Kallax shelves to display the games that we own. This makes it pretty easy to break things down cube by cube, so that’s what we’re going to do, twenty-four cubes, plus a top shelf for games that don’t fit in the cubes, over the course of a few months. I hope you enjoy!

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Opinionated Gamers – First Impressions of Fuji Koro

Fuji Koro

  • Designer: Jerome Demeyere
  • Publisher: Game Brewer
  • Players: 1-6
  • Age: 12+
  • Time: 90-120 minutes

From the publisher, the story behind this cooperative or competitive game: “Mount Fuji is on the verge of erupting. Red hot lava will soon consume the three secret Seien-ji (聖煙寺), sacred temples hidden deep in the bowels of the volcano. The Shōgun is determined to preserve the precious heritage and sends his most noble and gifted samurai warriors on a quest inside the volcano to retrieve the valuable goods. After a grueling climb through snowstorms and treacherous rocky terrain the samurai find the entrance that leads down into the cavern. The volcano rumbles and the walls start shaking! The floor underneath their feet crumbles and our brave samurai fall into the huge cavern that contains the three temples, which are slowly sinking into the smoldering lava.

It is now up to our heroes to explore the cavern and find as many of the relics, sacred scrolls, and monks as possible, to bring back safely to the Shogun before the volcano erupts and all is lost forever.

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Alubari: A Nice Cup of Tea

•Designer: Tony Boydell

•Publisher: Studio H

•Players: 1-5

•Ages: 10+

•Time: 45-120 minutes

•Times Played: 3, with a review copy provided by Tony Boydell           

 My wife Shelley loves tea. Almost every day starts with the ritual of tea making: filling our electric kettle, selecting the type of tea she wants for the day, steeping the tea, and then pouring some for breakfast and the rest into her thermos for the day. Therefore, when Tony Boydell announced that his next big-box game would be entitled “A Nice Cup of Tea” my ears perked up; I’m lucky enough to have a gamer for a wife, but if the theme ties into something she loves, that is always a plus.

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Dale Yu: Time Stories: Revolution (the blue cycle) – TIME Stories Revolution: The Hadal Project and TIME Stories Revolution: Experience

TIME Stories Revolution: The Hadal Project

  • Designers: Kevin Delp, Melissa Delp, Manuel Rozoy
  • Publisher: Space Cowboys
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 60-180 minutes on box; our game took about 180 minutes
  • Times played: 1, with review copy provided by Asmodee NA

“In TIME Stories Revolution: The Hadal Project, a standalone scenario in the “blue cycle” of TIME Stories, you and your fellow agents journey to the year 2099.   Rediscover the TIME Stories universe with TIME Stories Revolution, a new cycle of missions. The rules have changed but the Agency’s commitment to preserving humanity and the space-time continuum hasn’t.  As all the TIME Stories Revolution scenarios, The Hadal Project is a complete, standalone game. The scenarios can be played in any order. In 2099 NT: While a terrifying virus is devastating the world’s population, a scientific base immersed in an oceanic abyss makes a strange discovery that could decide the future of humanity. Conduct an in-depth investigation and crack the secret of the HADAL project.”

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