The Games of Steffen Benndorf

Posted on September 20, 2013 by Lucas Hedgren

The Games of Steffen Benndorf

Reviews by Lucas Hedgren

I really enjoy dice games, especially those that aren’t the standard “roll 3 times”. Even two times is enough of a difference to pique my interest. Leading up to the 2013 SdJ announcement, I had heard some rumblings of a little dice game to come out at the Nurnberg Fair, called Qwixx. I then read the rules, and thought not much about it. Seemed, I don’t know…..fine. Then, SdJ nominations get announced and Qwixx was on the shortlist. Intrigued enough to track down a copy, I order one from amazon.de, and I end up pleasantly surprised.

“Who designed this?” I say to myself. “Steffen Benndorf? Never heard of him. What else has he made?” Continue reading →

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Review: Wild Fun West

Posted on September 19, 2013 by gamekahuna

Wild Fun West
Designed by Andrei Novac, Agnieska Kopera, and Vlad Sladariu
Art by Agnieska Kopera and David Prieto
Published by (NSKN Legendary Games)

4-8 players
Ages 8+
45-60 minutes

Reviewed by Jonathan Franklin

Looking for a large group game without the dead silence of 7 Wonders? Craving something with more theme than pushing cubes in a Renaissance town? Have a jones for auctions of all sorts?

Step right up and listen to the tale of Wild Fun West!


Photo by Andrei Novac

Wild Fun West is a light auction game that plays 4-8 in about an hour. Is it worth your time and effort? If you are looking for a streamlined beer-and-pretzels auction game with a wild west theme, you have hit the jackpot! If not, read on to find out if it is for you.

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Review: Sushi Go!

Posted on September 17, 2013 by gamekahuna

Sushi Go!
Designed by Phil Walker-Harding
Published by Adventureland Games

Review by Jonathan Franklin

Players – 2-5
Playtime – 20 minutes (even with 5 players)
Ages – 7+

Warning – do not play this game or read this review when hungry!

Sushi Go! is an adorable drafting game that is perfect as a light filler or an after-dinner game with non-gamers. No steak here, so gamer snobs can move on. The rest of have a tasty treat ahead.

Photo by Nathan Morse

Sushi Go! is a drafting game. Instead of the three ages of 7 Wonders, in Sushi Go!, you are eating three meals, we call them Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, but this is not explicit from the instructions. All players pick up the pile of cards they were dealt, choose a card to play, play their chosen card simultaneously, then pass all the remaining cards to their left. No paying for cards here – just pick it and play it. Pass your hand and repeat until all the cards have been played. At the end of each meal, score your tableau of cards and discard all but the pudding cards. Then it is time for the next meal. After three meals, you score your pudding cards, desert, of course, and determine the winner.

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First Impression: The Mystery of the Templars

Posted on September 17, 2013 by Andrea "Liga" Ligabue

The MysteryofTheTemplarsDesigner: Silvio Negri-Clementi
Publisher: Stratelibri
Players: 2-4
Ages: 14+
Playing Time: 150 minutes
First Impression by Andrea Ligabue (1 play with a review copy provided by Stratelibri)

The Mystery of the Templars from Silvio Negri-Clementi, published by Stratelibri, Giochi Uniti, Heildeberger and Ystari Games is an huge project: a game that try to cover the history of the Knights Templars, over the almost 200 years, from 1119 to 1312.
Players are masters of secretive organization trying to help the Order of the Knight Templars using goods, money, knights to recover lost relics until the persecution of the French King started on Friday 13 October 1307.

What clearly appear from the reading of the rules is that we are in front a very particular game about the Templars: not mighty battles, not heavy armored Knights but trade and planning.
The Mystery of the Templars is a resource management game with a very peculiar implementation. A first part of the game where players try to get money and acquire buildings in the old Europe, using resources gained in the Holy Land. In the meantime they have to discover the holy relics and start to move knights in Europe. First with the fall of Jerusalem in 1187 and than with the fall of Acri in 1291 the game take a twist. Players are no more involved in missions in the Holy Land and have to start to prepare for the Persecution of the French King that, in the 1307, will push the Knights in the four secret recovers. This last part of the game is a real rush in the attempt to move as much resources as possible (relics, knights and money) in the secret recovers.

How all this really works need for me more than a single game sessions. Here I’ll try to write my impression after just one game, introducing you also some more details about the rules.

MT_board_1036x694_low

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Posted in Essen 2013, First Impressions | 1 Comment

Essen Preview – The Phantom Society (IELLO/Funforge)

Posted on September 16, 2013 by Dale Yu

The Phantom Society

  • Designers: Frederic Colombier + Herve Marly
  • Publishers: iello / FunForge
  • Players: 2-4
  • Time: ~20 minutes
  • Ages: 8+
  • Times played: 6, with review copy provided by IELLO

 phantom box

The Phantom Society is a neat deduction game in beautiful packaging.  As the story goes, there are ghosts haunting an old hotel, and these pesky spirits are destroying hotel rooms left and right.  The Phantom Society has been called in to save the day – they are trying to find the destructive ghosts before the whole hotel is ruined.  In the game, some of the players take on the role of the ghosts while the rest take on the members of the Phantom Society.  The goals of each side are asymmetrical – the ghosts want to destroy rooms of summed value greater than 45; the Phantom Society wants to find the ghosts before they hit that total.

The hotel is represented by a 6×6 grid of spaces, representing the different rooms of the hotel.  There are 4 colors of rooms, and a ghost that matches each of the 4 colors.  In setup, each player gets a set of nine rooms in a single color (values varying from 1 to 6), and players take turns placing a room onto the board until all the rooms are filled.  Once the hotel rooms are in their place, the Phantom Society players go get a drink in the next room while the ghost players place the four ghosts somewhere hidden on the board. (The rules actually say that the Phantom Society players should just close their eyes… but then the ghosts have to whisper, and that’s no fun…) The ghosts go underneath the room tiles so that their location is secret.  Each ghost must be placed under a room that matches its color.  These ghosts will never move during the game, so be sure to remember where you put them!

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Posted in Essen 2013 | 3 Comments

Stack and Attack

Posted on September 16, 2013 by gschloesser

Design by:  Jeremy Burnham
Published by:  Egra Games
2 – 4 Players, 30 minutes
Review by:  Greg J. Schloesser

Stack and Attack

The Christian Bible contains the story of the Tower of Babel, wherein the people living in Shinar attempted to construct a tower to the heavens in order to get closer to God.  God was offended by this attempt to reach the same level of greatness as he, so he caused the tower to crumble.

Apparently these were not the first people to attempt such a feat.  According to the story presented in Stack & Attack, ancient neanderthals aspired to achieve the same goal.  This time, however, it is not God who is offended.  Rather, neighboring tribes are the agents of destruction, tossing rocks and boulders at opponents’ towers in an effort to cause them to tumble.

Each player begins the game with a player mat and a handful of cards depicting rocks — small, medium or large in either a flat or round shape.  The object is to successfully stack these rocks to reach the desired height of 15 “arms.”  Neighboring tribes are competing to be the first to accomplish this task, and do not hesitate to toss rocks at your tower in an effort to thwart your progress.

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