Dale Yu: Quick Pictorial GenCon 2011 Report

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Dale Yu

Well, it’s been a whirlwind weekend for me – things lightened up just enough to make a break for Indy for 1 full day at GenCon.  Below is my report of what I saw (or at least what my new Android phone camera saw) at the convention.  My apologies to anyone who I saw/talked to that doesn’t get mentioned here – I wasn’t able to take detailed notes as I was trying to make it through the exhibit hall in my limited time there!

The reason I’ve been busy at home is that we’ve managed to have another basement flood.  Looks like 70-100 games will be leaving the collection and headed to the garbage dump.  The good news is that I was going to try to prune out about that many games so that everything fit in the basement.  The bad news is that I didn’t get to choose which games got ruined by the sewer backup.  There are maybe 10 games that I’ll want to replace the ruined copies, but the rest may have self-selected their way out of my game collection.

Anyways, I’m making a quick report here with just pictures and captions.  I’ve got to get back to the basement cleanup after leaving it for a day and a half. I’ll try to get more written down later in the week – and Matt Carlson will also be posting a review of his time at GenCon this coming Wednesday

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Summer Reruns #4 — The Many Faces of the Desert Planet

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Talia Rosen

After explaining last week why six player games are no good, I thought it would only be fitting this week to republish my glowing session report of Dune – the pinnacle of six player gaming.  Frank Herbert’s Dune is a remarkable book and amazingly the Dune board game manages to do the novel justice.  Sadly it’s a long out-of-print 1979 Avalon Hill game, but I found it not too difficult to track down the French Descartes edition and there are rumors of an FFG reprint, albeit potentially and sadly with a Twilight Imperium re-theme.  Dune is one of those games that’s clearly not for everyone, but I would still encourage everyone to give it a try at least once or twice.  Be warned though that playing the game may just inflame your desire to play it more, as it did with me.  The diversity of experiences available in the game is simply addictive.  For fans of the book or Cosmic Encounter or negotiation games or just plain fun experiences, be sure to track down a game of Dune.  The session report below may give you some idea of what to expect, but as you’ll see, Dune is an unpredictable and difficult to tame beast.  So what have other people’s experience been on the wonderful world of Arrakis?

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Pastiche – Review

Posted on August 4, 2011 by gschloesser

Design by:  Sean D. McDonald
Published by:  Gryphon Games
2 – 4 Players, 45 minutes – 1 hour
Review by:  Greg J. Schloesser


Sid Sackson’s Bazaar meets the art world.  This provides a decent description of Sean McDonald’s Pastiche, an entertaining game published by Gryphon Games that features classical paintings from world renowned artists.  The challenge is to amass the correct colors to complete these master works of art, producing the most valuable paintings and become recognized as the world’s foremost artist.

The game is chock-full with heavy cardboard components, including over thirty commission cards depicting replicas of master works of art from mankind’s history.  Each of these cards depicts the colors required to complete the painting, its value and interesting historical information on the artist, painting and where it is currently on display.  Over four dozen palette tiles are used to form a modular board, which dictates the color cards a player receives on his turn.  These hexagonal tiles each depict one of the three primary colors in the center and an assortment of six of the primary colors along the corners.  Each player receives a handy reference card which displays the color combinations required to create a specific color.  For example, two blue cards and one yellow card create teal.  The card also provides other valuable information about the acquisition of certain cards.

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Kid Games: A Quartet of Mini-Reviews

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Mark Jackson

OK, these are not new games (well, with the exception of the Magic Labyrinth expansion)… but they’re new to me. And, more importantly, they’re new to my kids. Continue reading →

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iBoardgaming – Summer 2011

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Matt J Carlson

The boardgame and boardgame-related releases on iPhone and iPad continue to increase.  While that’s a great thing for gamers, it does mean it can become difficult to sort through which games are worth a deeper look.  The trend of including multiplayer play continues, both with new games as well as updates to older titles (BattleLine was just upgraded for online play, while Ticket to Ride had a pass and play mode recently added.)  What follows is a slice of games released in the past couple of months with at least some boardgame or strategic elements.  Some provide a very polished experience (I’m looking at you, Ascension), some are simply off-the-wall unique (Yoomi and Duo), while others simply hold a large promise of things to come (insert “Everygame” here…)  Perhaps the strangest theme of this column are the number of games that are near blatant rip-offs of popular boardgames.  I can’t condone that sort of thing (and have no hope of figuring the official legality of any of them), but perhaps the interest will show major publishers there is a market for many of their games ported onto the iOS platform.  Special update: According to the PR folks for Ravensburger, Puerto Rico will hopefully arrive on the app store tomorrow on August 4th.  Check the end of this round-up for a bit of teaser information.

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Dale Yu: Review of Quarriors

Posted on August 1, 2011 by Dale Yu

Quarriors: 130 dice in a tin cube – packed with all sorts of fun!

Designers: Mike Elliott and Eric Lang
Publisher: WizKids
Time: ~30 min
Players: 2-4
Ages: 14+

From the box:  “Quarriors [is] a fast-paced game of hexahedron monster combat! You must strategically balance your options each turn: do you use your Quiddity to summon creatures in the hopes of scoring Glory OR spend it all to capture more powerful Quarry from the wilds?  Outmaneuver your opponents through strategic spell use, the acquisition of powerful Quarry, and ultimately, by striking down opponents’ creatures to gain the most Glory!”

Make sense?  Maybe the terms are new to you, but if you’re familiar with Dominion and Magic: The Gathering, it’ll be easy to pick up this new “dice-building” game from Wizkids. Quarriors takes the current trend of deck-building games and gives it a big twist by using dice instead of cards as the building blocks.  The game comes with 130 different dice – 3 basic types used in all games and 15 other types, of which 10 are used in each game.

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