Princes of Florence – What if it had been an Essen 2014 release?

Posted on February 17, 2015 by gamekahuna

Assertion: Princes of Florence would have been a middle of the pack game if it had been released at Essen 2014.

Agree or disagree?

Imaginary review of a new game called Princes of Florence: PoF has tons of auctions, and aren’t we all tired of those, with some odd and irrelevant spatial aspects tacked on. Furthermore, you can easily get locked out of the second half if you don’t get additional characters, so it is non-newbie friendly.  In addition the valuations are highly variable and getting a few cheap jesters breaks the game.  Try it to get a taste, but does it have legs?

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Dale Yu: Review of Akrotiri

Posted on February 16, 2015 by Dale Yu

 [Editor’s Note – though we try to normally collaborate on a group reviews here at the Opinionated Gamers, sometimes we get our signals crossed and have multiple people write up reviews on their own – rather than try to figure out how to mush them together, we just decided to publish both of them on the same day!]

Akrotiri

  • Designers: Jay Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim
  • Publisher: Z-Man Games
  • Players: 2
  • Time: 45 mins
  • Ages: 13+
  • Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Z-Man

Akrotiri

Akrotiri is a 2-player game set in classical Greek times – players are competing with each other to find legendary Minoan temples.  The game is played on a modular map.  The center of the board is always a map of the island of Thera, and the uncharted waters of the Aegean sea are explored as new tiles are added to the board.

Each player starts the game with one Easy and one Medium map cards.  These cards show the location of the legendary temples that players are trying to discover.  Each player is dealt two Goal cards, and each player chooses one of these two to keep.  The board is seeded with two tiles, and each player gets a tile for their hand. Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2014, Reviews | 2 Comments

Akritori – First Impressions

Posted on February 16, 2015 by lornadune

Akrotiri is one of the latest games released in the 2 player line from Z Man Games. Tile placement games always interest me so I was curious to see how Akrotiri worked.

So the basics, the box is a good size, not too much air and packed with plenty of components. The tiles, cards, and player pieces are of standard to good quality. The resources cubes seemed to have had a minor quality control issue as it appears the paint wasn’t dry when packed and many cubes were stuck together.

Akrotiri has a nice mixture of tile placement, exploration and a little pick-up and delivery. A brief summary of the game is as follows.

At the beginning of the game each player receives a secret goal card. It is possible to have up to 3 hidden goal cards by the end of the game. The goal cards give VP in relation to where a player has built temples on islands. Each player also receives two map cards to seed the board. Players try and match the symbols of terrains on the cards to where the symbols are on the developing map. This will give the player the location of an island to excavate. They may then pay to excavate temples on islands that meet the qualifications. Played map cards are also worth VP.

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Dale Yu: Review of Guardians’ Chronicles

Posted on February 13, 2015 by Dale Yu

 

Guardians’ Chronicles

  • Designer: Frederick Condette
  • Publisher: IELLO
  • Players: 2-5
  • Ages: 14+
  • Time: 75+ minutes
  • Times played: 2+ with review copy provided by IELLO

Guardians

Guardians’ Chronicles is the much anticipated all-versus-one superhero game that has been a few years in arriving to market.  I first heard teasers of the game in late 2012, but the game didn’t hit the streets until Essen 2014.  The subtitle of the game is “Episode 1: The Threat of Doktor Skarov”.  In the multiple scenarios in this game, the Liberty Patrol (i.e. good-guy superheroes) fight off the evil Doktor Skarov and his minions. Continue reading →

Posted in Essen 2014, Reviews | 1 Comment

Dale Yu: Review of the Can’t Stop expansion: Rolling Down the Highway

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Dale Yu

 

Can’t Stop: Rolling Down the Highway

  • Designers: George “Bud” Sauer, Jeff Horger
  • Publisher: Gryphon Games
  • Players: 2-4
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Ages: 7+
  • Times Played: 3, with review copy provided by Gryphon Games

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Can’t Stop is one of the classic games – being a nominee for the SdJ in 1982.  It was one of the first European Games that I owned.  The base game is a classic press-your-luck game where you roll 4 dice each turn, making two two-dice combinations.  You use those two summed numbers to move your markers up the tracks on a stop-sign shaped board.  The catch is this – you only have three markers each turn, and your turn ends immediately if you cannot make a combination that matches the track that one of your three markers is on.  So after each turn, you have to decide if you are going to keep going and press your luck or voluntarily stop your turn and lock in the progress that you’ve made that turn.  The game wants you to press your luck because each of the columns of the board can only be topped by one player – the first one to the top – so if there is a lot of competition for a particular number, you might want to keep going lest you get shut out of that column. Continue reading →

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Desert Island Variants & House Rules

Posted on February 10, 2015 by gamekahuna

OGers’ Favorite Official Variants and House Rules as of the end of 2014

Acquire – Open Shares – Dale

Joe – That’s not a variant.  Playing with trackable information open is a play style choice, not a variant in my book – it’s functionally equivalent to having everyone track the data on paper, or perfectly track it in their head.  Some people – myself included – prefer that, but I’d never think of calling it a variant.

Larry – I’ve read that Sackson deliberately left the question open and, in fact, the original rules did not specify which way the game was to be played.  If a game’s rules say that holdings are hidden, then playing that game with open holdings would be a variant.  But, as Joe says, this can’t really be considered a true variant for Acquire.

Joe – I fear I was not entirely clear – playing with trackable data explicitly open is _never_ a variant in my opinion.  I prefer to play Euphrat & Tigris with open scoring, for instance, but I’ve never thought of that as a variant – just a memory aid.

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