The Opinionated Gamers

This week’s reviews look at the conjugation of dice games from Essen 2014.  There are a good number of dice games this year – and I’m slowly but surely making my way through that stack.  I will start the reviews this year with the games most similarly named.  Each uses a bunch of dice in different ways to achieve fun.

Cubist

• Designer: Alf Seegert, Steven Poelzing
• Publisher: Gryphon Games
• Players: 2-4
• Ages:  7+
• Time: 40 minutes
• Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Gryphon Games

The final game in this conjugated review series is Cubist – a relatively unheralded game that I discovered just before the fair this year.  Cubist thematically has gamers trying to make art installations to contribute to a local modern art museum.

Each player starts with his own workshop, with two areas for working on art projects.  These projects are constructed out of the twenty dice in that player’s color.  In the center of the table is the Museum of Modern Art.  Players will contribute their dice to the construction of this museum – the size and shape of which is determined by a randomly drawn card.  There is space on the central board for the museum to be built.  At the start of the game, the single red die is rolled and placed in that area.  This is the first portion of the museum to be built.  The rest of the pieces will come from the players.  There are three art installation cards available in the center of the table which can be claimed in the course of the game, and there are also four Artist cards – each of these will grant their holder a special ability. Continue reading →

This week’s reviews look at the conjugation of dice games from Essen 2014.  There are a good number of dice games this year – and I’m slowly but surely making my way through that stack.  I will start the reviews this year with the games most similarly named.  Each uses a bunch of dice in different ways to achieve fun.

Cubo

• Designer: Julien Gupta, Johannes Berger
• Publisher: Queen Games
• Players: 2-4
• Ages: 8+
• Time: 25 minutes
• Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Asmodee

Cubo comes in a brightly colored small square box – I didn’t know much about it prior to arriving at Essen, but I did have a chance to see it at the Asmodee press event.  Why Asmodee?  As it turns out, they are distributing Queen Games now over there.  (As you might have heard, Asmodee is pretty much trying to take over the world – they have also recently acquired both Days of Wonder and Fantasy Flight Games). Continue reading →

This week’s reviews look at the conjugation of dice games from Essen 2014.  There are a good number of dice games this year – and I’m slowly but surely making my way through that stack.  I will start the reviews this year with the games most similarly named.  Each uses a bunch of dice in different ways to achieve fun.

Ciub

• Designer: Tom Lehman
• Publisher: Amigo
• Ages: 10+
• Players: 2-4
• Time: ~45 minutes
• Times played: 3, with purchased copy

Ciub is a very interesting game that uses 7 different types of dice and a touch of deckbuilding to create a unique completed product.  The goal of the game is to roll dice to get certain combinations of numbers that match up with those printed on victory point cards.   There are 7 different colors of dice, and each color has a different assortment of numerical values and special abilities.

At the start of the game, each player has 5 white dice.  These white dice have the numbers 1 thru 4 and two swap actions (more on this later).  The tableau of victory point cards is set up with two rows of five cards.  The bottom-most row of cards are those which are generally available for collection.  The upper row cannot be collected just yet, but these are the cards that will soon move into the bottom row – so you can use them to plan ahead.

Continue reading →

The Staufer Dynasty

• Designer: Andreas Steding
• Publisher: Z-Man/Hans im Glueck
• Players: 2-5
• Ages: 13+
• Time: 20 min/player
• Times played: 2 with review copy provided by Z-Man, 1 at Gathering of Friends with Hans im Gluck final prototype

Generally, when I see that Andreas Steding is releasing a new game, I’m immediately interested.  His games tend to follow the same pattern – medium to heavy in weight, classic Euro-game style often leaning on worker placement, solid mechanics with a mostly pasted on theme.  Going all the way back to Kogge, which was one of the first games I ever picked up in person in Essen, and continuing on with Power&Weakness, Hansa Teutonica, Firenze, Norenberc, and Five Points – you can see these characteristics shine through.

Continue reading →