A Review of Sidibaba

Posted on January 11, 2012 by James Miller

Do the words semi-cooperative get your gaming juices flowing?  Do the words real-time invoke more than thoughts of Bill Maher?  Is your memory not taxed enough? Sidibaba, a new game from the wonderful folks at Hurrican, has all of these and more.  It is a game that supports up to seven and plays in under 45 minutes once everyone knows how to play.  It is a very nice looking game that offers something a little different than your run of the mill co-op.  All of these attributes are things that will draw me like a moth to the proverbial flame. Continue reading →

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Five & Dime 2011

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Mark Jackson

Yes, it’s that time of year again when I (Mark Jackson) ask you to submit your Five & Dime lists to me in order that I can continue to compile my completely unscientific lists & compare them to each other.

For those of you who haven’t heard the story, here’s how this all came to be…

The year was 1999… Prince (or, at that point, the Artist Formerly Known As Prince) was still telling to party like it was that chronological year. Y2K was the all the rage – many people were stockpiling water, food & medical supplies in preparation for The End of the World As We Know It (glancing R.E.M. reference). I, on the other hand, was stockpiling games.

And game statistics. You see, my practice of collecting “five & dime” gameplay lists began early that spring, as a post from Steve Zanini on the rec.games.board newsgroup set me off:

Steve wrote:

Anyone familiar with SUMO magazine, would also be familiar with the 5 & 10 list. This is a listing of the games you have played either 5 or more times or 10 or more times. Think this would be a good way to re-cap what you played frequently in 1998.

I found the posts that followed to be intriguing and compiled them to produce a “Most Played” list of 1998. Then I did it again the next year… and the next… and it slowly but surely took on a life of it’s own.

This is Year #14… and now the Five & Dime lists have snowballed into a very interesting way to track gaming trends, albeit only in the online community of “designer” game players & collectors.

If you’d like to submit a list,  please post it to the following thread on Boardgamegeek:

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/743967/the-five-dime-report-2011-edition

And, if you would be so kind, strip expansions out of your list. Don’t lump a family of games together (I consider TtR: Marklin to be a stand-alone game, while TtR: Switzerland is an expansion)… and please ONLY give me your five & dime, not your whole list.

A couple of other simple rulings:

  • all of the Settlers games which require the base game (Seafarers, Cities & Knights, etc.) are considered Settlers of Catan, vs. something like Settlers of America, which can be played w/out the original game.
  • I lump all of the Dominion stuff together… and any other expandable card game system (Race for the Galaxy, Summoner Wars, etc.) works the same.

Finally, I love reading your comments on the various games, but they make it very hard to compile. If you want to do that, please post those comments elsewhere. Thanks!

I’ll close submissions in early February & the results will be posted later this spring in three places:

  • here on the Opinionated Gamers website
  • in teaser form on Boardgamegeek
  • on my personal blog, aka pastor guy

If you’re interested in not-so-ancient history, here’s a set of links for you to follow:

Posted in Commentary | Tagged | 3 Comments

Larry’s 2011 in Review: My First Look

Posted on January 9, 2012 by huzonfirst

The calendar may show that 2011 is history, but there’s plenty of last year’s games still to be played in 2012.  That’s the problem when there are tons of Essen games to go through and when a lot of English language versions are just getting to American shores.  I’ve yet to play Ora et Labora, First Sparks, Hawaii, Dungeon Petz, Quebec, and other notable titles.  Even the new games I have managed to play haven’t necessarily hit the table often enough for me to fairly evaluate them.

Still, it’s traditional at this time of year to look back and evaluate the previous twelve months.  So that’s what I’ll be doing in this article, with the understanding that I’ll be revisiting this subject a few months later with a revised list.  The differences may prove to be enlightening.

The Year as a Whole

2010 was a very disappointing gaming year for me, which always leads to a few fears about the hobby having seen its best days.  But as usual, those concerns were groundless and I’m happy to report that to date, 2011 has been quite a good year and has the potential to be well above average by the time I get around to playing all the titles.  The Nuremberg games in particular were unusually good.  In the next section, you’ll see that the majority of my top games were from the first half of the year.  Part of that is due to how many potentially good games from Essen I have yet to play, but much of it is because of the strong group of games that debuted prior to the Fair.  So overall, I’m quite bullish on last year and only expect that opinion to improve once I get exposed to the remainder of the 2011 crop. Continue reading →

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Jonathan Franklin: Review of Omen (Small Box Games)

Posted on January 7, 2012 by gamekahuna

Omen: A Reign of War

Design by:  John Clowdes
Illustrated by: Michael “Riiven” Ng
Published by: Small Box Games
2 Players (new version goes up to 4 players)
30-45 minutes
Review by:  Jonathan Franklin

Hey, you got your Magic: the Gathering in my Battle Line!

I have been playing a wonderful two player (for now) game called Omen: A Reign of War for the past few weeks.  Normally, review copies get played the necessary number of times and the review gets written.  I have enjoyed Omen so much that it has gotten fairly steady play.

I’ll admit it, I am a conflict-averse gamer who sees multiplayer solitaire as a ‘good thing’.  Omen is not that game.  It is a vicious fight where you are basically handcuffed to your enemy and have a wide array of weapons at your disposal.  Only one will come out of it alive.

In a bold move, I am going to dump the rules explanation at the end of the review, so if you want them, they are there, but since I never read rules summaries, and neither does Nate, I’ll change things up.

The basic idea is that there are three piles of cities and through six stages per turn, you play cards on your side of the city, gaining/spending cards and coins to get victory points (VPs).  In addition, you can use special powers to buff yourself or decimate your opponent.  The game ends when one person has completed five feats or two of the three city stacks have been exhausted.  At that point, the player with the most VPs wins.  The summary card below is about all you need to know about turn structure.


Photo © John Clowdus

This game is awesome because it is brutal.  If you favor strategy over tactics, you might want to look elsewhere.  Let’s say I offer up a good card at the end of my turn and use it to take coins.  Blammo, my opponent plays a card that steals all my money.  Hoard cards?  Lose them.  Place great beasts in a city in preparation for next turn?  Killed.  The coolness of this in a cardgame is that you are playing your own fears as much as your opponent.  Unlike where you play a card to optimize your chances of success, here you are always worried that if you take a certain path, it could be perfect or you might be hit by Clowdus’s Ju-jitsu and your plan will just benefit your opponent.  You know they only will have 5 cards or so, but imagine the negative effects of 20 cards you have already seen and might even hold.  Just to be clear, many of the cards benefit the active player, so you can definitely make yourself stronger, but by doing that you are not hurting your opponent that round.  Hmm.

Continue reading →

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Best New (to me!) Games of 2011

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Mark Jackson

I really, really wanted to make this a top ten list… but then, thanks to the magic of Christmas, I had to add one more. So, I used my board game blogging superpowers to smoosh two of the games into one entry. (Next, I’ll leap a tall building in a single bound in order to stop an argument between rules lawyers… I have promised to use my powers for good.)

You’ll notice that there’s a BUNCH of sci-fi/fantasy games on here… it’s been a really great year for those of you who like that kind of thing.

10. Battleship: Galaxies AND Star Trek: Fleet Captains

I am so glad I own both of these games… and yet, they just don’t get to the table as much as I want. In fact, after an initial flurry of play when I first received Fleet Captains, it hasn’t made it’s way out again. Battleship: Galaxies has seen more sustained play, but pretty much just because my 10 year old son loves it.

While they both share the whole sci-fi/space vibe, they’re very different games. Fleet Captains is an immersive Klingon vs Federation adventure in the Star Trek universe. (In my review here on the Opinionated Gamers, I called it “an experience game” and dubbed it “Dungeonquest in Space”.) Battleship: Galaxies, on the other hand, is a starship combat game that utilizes energy points to limit how many ships and/or action cards you can power each turn.

At the same time, they have some similarities: they both look great when they’re set up… and both take a lot of time to get set up. (Both games have some pretty serious deck-building decisions front-loaded during game prep… which makes both games tougher to teach than they are to play.) Both games have a detailed mythos that adds to the flavor… and both are lacking something.

  • In the case of Battleship: Galaxies, it’s a crying need for scenarios that vary up the basic “charge or turtle” decision inherent in any combat game. The five scenarios provided with the game are just not enough, Hasbro!
  • In the case of Star Trek: Fleet Captains, it’s the need to expand into the huge universe… it’s past due for some Romulans & the Borg.

9. Quarriors

I acknowledge that Quarriors has problems (tiny dice that are sometimes hard to read, for example)… and that it’s especially prone to slow to a crawl with gamers who want to min-max their probabilities. That said, I’ve had a blast every time I’ve played it with my son… it’s fast, it’s funny, there’s a lot of interesting things to do, you get to cheer and/or boo your dice rolls, and I find myself smiling when I play.

The new game to compare this to is probably King of Tokyo – which I also enjoyed but felt like I was much more at the mercy of the dice & the foibles of the other players. So, though it made me laugh as well, I’d pick Quarriors.

8. The Struggle for Catan

I was worried that this would be the card game equivalent of the Catan Dice Game… that it would have the thematic trappings without any of the fun of the (still wonderful) original Settlers of Catan. Thankfully, I was wrong.

It’s not a deep game, mind you – it’s a filler card game that romps along at a nice clip, with a nice mix of “take that”, hoarding resources & a few special ability buildings thrown in for good measure.

Not only does it play in under 30 minutes with 2-4 players, it also works well with 2, 3 or 4.

7. City Square Off

Do not let the fact that I’ve been friends with the designer (Ted Cheatham) for over 12 years keep you from trying this lovely two-player Tetris-y game. It’s a quick filler that everyone from my six-year-old to my mom has enjoyed.

And the most important point for many who read the website is what I said in my review: “My non-gamer wife voluntarily taught the game to one of her friends.” Continue reading →

Posted in Best Of | 10 Comments

10 (Occasionally) Obscure Gems of 2011 – An Early Take

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Joe Huber

It’s too early for me to really consider the games of 2011 – among other things, there are many I haven’t played yet, and many I haven’t played enough – but that doesn’t preclude giving a “where things look right now” perspective.  So, picking right now, and knowing the list is likely to change, what are my ten favorite 2011 releases?

Continue reading →

Posted in Best Of | 6 Comments