Review of Blend Off!

Posted on March 13, 2017 by Craig (shigadeyo)

Blend Off!

  • Designer: Scot Eaton
  • Publisher: Thunderworks Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Ages: 6 and up
  • Time: 15 minutes
  • Times Played: 8
  • Game provided by the publisher for review purposes.

BlendOff_Review1

Introduction

Blend Off! is a real time game in which all players are frantically rolling dice to collect fruit, blending smoothies, and filling orders to earn gold stars.  Makes total sense, right?  To best understand the theme and mechanisms of the game, it’s important to know the backstory.  Here it is as told in the rules…

Blend it Like Becca — a small-town smoothie shop sensation!  It’s been a slow night.  Becca the shop owner, Kevin the runner boy, and the Master Mixers – including you! – have started closing up shop.  One minute before close, the door swings open.  Outside, you see parked school buses and a line of people all the way to the street corner!  The high school girls’ volleyball tournament has just gotten out, and everyone is craving a smoothie for the ride home.  Becca cuts a deal: whoever blends the most smoothies tonight gets free smoothies for a month!  The Blend Off has begun, and only one can win.  There’s just one problem: Kevin.  Skittish at best on normal days, he flies into a frenzy, grabbing fruit for you from the fridge at random.  Take the fruit Kevin brings, complete the orders Becca calls back, and blend your way to victory!

In the game, players represent the Master Mixers who are competing to blend the most smoothies.  Each Master Mixer rolls a Fruit Die representing Kevin\ and the random fruits he retrieves from the refrigerator.  The deck of Blender Cards represents Becca who is continuously calling out smoothie orders to be filled.  Unlike many games, there are no individual turns.  Players are all playing and taking actions simultaneously until the game ends (when Becca is out of orders).  The player that earned the most gold stars from blending smoothies is the winner. Continue reading →

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Dale Yu: First Impressions of Divinity Derby

Posted on March 12, 2017 by Dale Yu

 

Divinity Derby

  • Designer: Carlo Rossi
  • Publisher: Ares
  • Players: 3-6
  • Ages: 10+
  • Time: 45-60 minutes
  • Times played: 2, with preview final prototype copy provided by Ares

Divinity Derby is a new race/betting game coming out from Ares.  I had the chance to play a nearly final prototype copy of the game this spring.  I have played a number of other Rossi designs this month (Dungeon Time, Mino & Tauri, Picassimo) – and the breadth of the selection is pretty impressive… So, I was definitely looking forward to how this would play out.

In Divinity Derby, players take on the role of mythical gods – each from a different culture.  They are observers/participants in a great race between six mythic creatures.  The gods will try to affect the progress of the race as well as place bets on the outcome.  The god who is best able to predict how the race goes will be the winner of the Divinity Derby. Continue reading →

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Dale Yu: Review of T.I.M.E Stories: Expedition Endurance (Spoiler Free)

Posted on March 9, 2017 by Dale Yu

T.I.M.E Stories: Expedition Endurance

  • Designer: Croc
  • Publisher: Space Cowboys / Asmodee
  • Players: 2-4
  • Ages: 12+
  • Time: 90 minutes
  • Times played: 1, with review copy provided by Asmodee NA

T.I.M.E Stories: Expedition Endurance (aka TS:EE) is the fourth expansion to the T.I.M.E Stories franchise.  As you probably know from previous reviews, T.I.M.E Stories is a novel cooperative game where players take on the identities of people in different time streams – trying to rectify problems in the space-time continuum.   

Note that this game is an expansion ONLY and you will need to have the base T.I.M.E Stories box to play the game.  As with previous reviews – I will not include any spoilers here on the gameplay.  Any elements that I will talk about will be stuff that has already been publicly revealed by Space Cowboys or Asmodee.

[Note: Once you click through, you’ll see some images from the game itself.  There should not be any true spoilers included below the jump though – all images have been taken directly from the web/press releases from Asmodee NA that are freely available on the Web.]

Continue reading →

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Dale Yu: Review of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures

Posted on March 8, 2017 by Dale Yu

 

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective: Jack the Ripper & West End Adventures

  • Designers: Suzanne Goldberg, Gary Grady, Jerome Ropert
  • Publisher: Space Cowboys / Asmodee
  • Players: 1-8
  • Time: 60-120 mins
  • Ages: 10+
  • Times played: 6 cases so far, with review copy provided by Asmodee

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective was perhaps the first Spiel des Jahres winner that I owned – either that or Rummikub.  Of course, at the time, I didn’t know what the Spiel des Jahres was, and I’m certain that neither of my English language versions of those games made any mention of this German award. My original Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective was a brown binder with pages and pages of text.  I remember playing through the cases on my own as a youngster.

Ye old school SHCD

The series has been redone by Ystari/Asterion/Space Cowboys in the past decade.  Many of the cases are taken from the original game and its expansions, but there have also been new cases developed for the updated releases.   Continue reading →

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Dale Yu: Review of Emergents: Genesis

Posted on March 7, 2017 by Dale Yu

 

Emergents: Genesis

  • Designers: Anthony Conta, Kyle Gallagher, Matt Ferrando, Miles Rodriguez
  • Publisher: Urban Island Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Ages: 10+
  • Time: 30-45 minutes
  • Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Urban Island Games

Emergents: Genesis is a superhero/comic themed game set in a unique universe created by Brian David-Marshall.  In this world, Emergents are budding superheroes that have decided to fight each other.  That battle is what takes place in this game.

The game is a PvP deckbuilding battle royale.  For those of you who are familiar with the deckbuilding genre (Dominion, Thunderstone, etc.), many of the concepts will feel very similar.  Each player starts the game with an Emergent Avatar card – this gives you your identity as well as your special power in the game.  There are four different classes of Emergents in this world, and each has a different way they can take advantage of the game rules. Continue reading →

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Bohemian Villages

Posted on March 6, 2017 by gschloesser

Design by Reiner Stockhausen
Published by dlp games
2 – 5 players, 45 minutes
Review by Greg J. Schloesser

bohemian-villages-cover

I enjoy when boardgames teach me something new.  I grew-up in the hobby playing wargames, and remember the thrill I would get from reading the often extensive “Historical Notes” booklets included in many Avalon Hill and SPI games.  I often enjoyed those history lessons more than the game itself!  I recently learned something new from Bohemian Villages, the new dice-rolling game from Reiner Stockhausen.  This new tidbit of information is that there is a German saying: “This is like Bohemian villages to me.”  The background of this saying is provided in the introduction to the rules and harkens back to the days of the Thirty Year’s War when German troops encountered a foreign speaking population living in Bohemian towns with confusing names.  The resulting confusion led to the “Bohemian villages” term, which is the equivalent of the English saying, “It is all Greek to me!”

This interesting little bit of information likely served as a bit of inspiration for the theme and title of this latest Stockhausen design.  Players roll dice and attempt to inhabit various businesses and buildings in villages in hopes of achieving wealth and riches.  Each of the nine village boards depicts various buildings upon which players can place their dice, effectively inhabiting those buildings and deriving any benefits they may confer.  The objective is to generate the greatest wealth through a variety of building occupations.

A player’s turn consists of rolling the four dice and arranging them to create one or two totals.  In order to be valid, a combination must include at least two dice; a single die is not considered a combination and a player cannot use it to place a figure onto a building.  Once the player forms these combinations, he may place figures onto buildings that have the corresponding value.  For example, if a player forms a “9” and a “5”, he may place figures on an inn (value 9) and a tailor shop (value 5).  He may choose any unoccupied building in any village, splitting the two placements as he sees fit.  It is then the next player’s turn, who repeats this process.

Continue reading →

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