Dale Yu: Review of Bruxelles 1897

Posted on December 18, 2019 by Dale Yu

Bruxelles 1897

  • Designer: Etienne Espreman
  • Publisher: Geek Attitude Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 45-60 min
  • Played with review copy provided by Geek Attitude Games

Bruxelles 1897 is a new card game which is meant to be a followup to Bruxelles 1893 โ€“ a game which came to the scene at SPIEL 2013 โ€“ we previewed and reviewed the game way back whenโ€ฆ https://opinionatedgamers.com/2013/12/02/dale-yu-review-of-bruxelles-1893-pearl-games-zman/

If you donโ€™t remember the original game (as I did not), the review outlines it nicely, and once if you had played it before, youโ€™ll quickly remember the details of that game, and then youโ€™ll pretty much be able to pick this one up in a snap. 

Bruxelles 1897 is a card game which is directly based on the original โ€“ which was published by Pearl Games 6 years ago.  While in Essen, I learned that the designer is one of the triumvirate who founded Geek Attitude Games, and as the rights to Bruxelles 1893 had lapsed, the designer was free to use his own company to publish this sequel.  Per the publisherโ€™s notes:  โ€œBruxelles 1897 will speak to a large audience of gamers. Its mechanics are based on Bruxelles 1893 and are made simpler without compromising depth. Those who know the board game Bruxelles 1893 will rediscover its familiar look and feel in Bruxelles 1897.โ€

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 3 Comments

Dale Yu: Review of Son of Doctor Eskerโ€™s Notebook (Spoiler Free)

Posted on December 17, 2019 by Dale Yu

Son of Doctor Eskerโ€™s Notebook

  • Designer: Dave Dobson
  • Publisher: Plankton Games
  • Players: 1+
  • Ages: 10+
  • Time: 45 minutes
  • Times played: 1, with review copy provided by Plankton Games

From the Publisher: Doctor Esker has vanished, leaving behind only a mysterious book full of puzzles written in his own hand. Nobody has cracked his cryptic codes yet. Are you up to the challenge? The game provides a deck of 74 cards which contain ten devious puzzles to solve. You can play through the puzzles solo or together with family and friends. Great for a party, a game night, or a lazy afternoon. Play time 1-3 hours. The puzzles are of many different types, none of which are standard puzzles.

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Dale Yu: Review of Tajuto

Posted on December 17, 2019 by Dale Yu

Tajuto

  • Designer: Reiner Knizia
  • Publisher: Super Meeple
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age 10+
  • Time: 45 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by Super Meeple

The story behind Tajuto โ€“ taken from the cover of the rules: โ€œIn 532, Buddhism arrived in Japan, and took its place alongside Shintoism, which is the official religion. Prince Shotoku, seduced by this new religion, commissioned Buddhist monks to construct a village endowed with an immense garden, in which 8 pagodas (tajuto) would be erected. He announced that once the fourth tajuto was complete, it would make this city an important pilgrimage destination for all Buddhists around the world. The Buddhist monk who has attained the highest level of Spirituality, through deep Meditation and other mental qualities, at this precise moment will be rewarded, and the Prince will name them “Great Guardian of the Sacred Garden of the Eight Pagodas”, and this monk will become the overseer of pilgrimage.โ€  In this game, players are Buddhist monks who are vying to score the most victory pointsโ€ฆ er, I mean, trying to have the highest level of Spirituality by channeling their Meditative powers to do great things.

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Posted in Essen 2019, Reviews | 2 Comments

ใ‚ธใƒณใƒใƒ–ใ‚จใƒˆใƒชใƒƒใ‚ฏ (Zimbabweee Trick)

Posted on December 16, 2019 by xitoliv

Designer: ๆ–ฐๆพค ๅคงๆจน (Taiki Shinzawa)
Artist: ่…ๅŽŸใ€€็พŽๆฒ™็ฉ‚ (Misaho Sugawara)
Publisher: ๅ€ฆๆ€ ๆœŸ (Kentaiki)
Players: 3-4
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 20 minutes
Times Played: 4 with a purchased copy, 2 with exhibition rules on mocked-up components

I woke up the morning of January 20 this year, to find a new .txt file in a shared Google Drive folder.  It was sparse, a single page, and in Japanese.

Iโ€™m not sure what time it was, between 7 and 8 AM, and probably closer to 7.  I had looked at the file on my phone, but that wasnโ€™t going to work. I threw open my laptop on the breakfast table, and copied and pasted the file into Google Translate.

If this translation would be clear enough, I had 20 friends at a house a mile or two away that I could play this with in about an hour!

That day in Japan, my friend kumagoro_h was hosting an exhibition entitled ใ“ใ‚Œใฏใƒˆใƒชใƒ†ใชใฎใ‹๏ผŸ(Is this a trick-taking game?), where designers had submitted trick-taking designs that were maybe not quite what youโ€™d spend money on at your local game shop.  These pushed a little at the envelope in different directions, as they become more conceptual and less commercial.  

I skimmed the rules, and it looked clear enough.  Wait, the game does what. We donโ€™t what. Oh my. I opened a new tab and messaged Dale to see if he could put together a deck of one 1, two 2s, etc.  Did we have decks of cards where we could scrounge ten 10s with the same back? Oh, and theyโ€™d need to be indexed in the upper right.  

I had a game about hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe that I wanted to try.

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Clank! Expeditions – Temple of the Ape Lords (Game Review by Brandon Kempf)

Posted on December 15, 2019 by Brandon Kempf

โ€œWelcome to the Jungle, weโ€™ve got fun โ€ฆ. Gamesโ€

ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย -Axl Rose during his board gaming phase

First off, if you need an explanation of how Clank! plays, please see this review right here. Right on, good review, right? Great game as well. Now, if you want to know more about the Clank! Universe of games, check this out, it even mentions Temple of the Ape Lords briefly, but weโ€™re going to expand on that a bit. Those two links should, for the most part, get you up to speed on everything Clank! up to this point, with the exception of Clank! Legacy, which I am hopeful to have a crack at sometime in the new year.ย 

My general feeling on Clank! is that it is a fun deck-building adventure game. A game of push-your-luck done with cards instead of dice. Wonderfully thematic and entertaining most every time it is on the table. Part of the joy of Clank! is that it is so expandable. New cards, new maps, new tokens, and even new bosses and adventurers. Itโ€™s a really entertaining way to keep a franchise fresh. There are some expansion elements that hit, and some that miss, but Dire Wolf and Renegade have done a great job of keeping more hits coming than misses.ย 

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Culling a Collection

Posted on December 14, 2019 by Brandon Kempf

Warning, ramblings ahead. I wanted to document what it was like for me over the year of 2019 to massively shrink my collection of games to a far more manageable and playable amount. Some of this will resonate with some of you, some wonโ€™t, but this is what it was like for me this year.ย 

Back at the beginning of 2019, I had set a couple of goals for my board gaming over the year. Nothing silly like a 10×10 challenge or anything. I wanted to actually sit down and learn fewer new games, and I wanted to mercilessly cull my collection of games in our house, which at the time of the โ€œresolutionโ€ was over six hundred and fifty games. Mind you, we really donโ€™t have a storage issue โ€”ย  I mean if we were more organized we wouldnโ€™t โ€” but as it was, there just too many games around. Too many games that werenโ€™t getting played.ย 

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Posted in Commentary, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 56 Comments