Number 10          Mansions of Madness:

I have never actually played this game, but for a while it was constantly set up at my FLGS. I  haven’t seen a game cause so much frustration and angst in a long time. I won’t go into all the issues as I’ve read a little up on them, and talked to some of my gaming group about it, but I don’t have first hand experience.

Number 9 Yomi

It could be that I don’t understand this game. I’ve tried it a few times now, and it’s just random rock/paper/guessing, with tons and tons of overwrought special abilities. Also, the full game is $100 for like 500 cards. Weak.

Number 8 Kingdom Builder

Wanted to like this. Thought I liked it about half way through my second game. Then I ended up not liking it at all after my third game. Basically, it boils down to, “Which scoring card is the best? OK, do that.” And then I play on auto-pilot.

Number 7 JAB: Realtime Boxing

This game isn’t really that “bad”. It’s just not fun after two or three plays. After that, it’s basically “been there done that”.

Number 5 Barons

I think the main let down for me here, was that Glory to Rome is so good, and this one is just very very very average. It is VERY luck dependent, but so is any card game right? Well not quite. This one seemed to be entirely driven by card draw, leaving me wanting for anything meaningful to do on my turn.

Number 6 NightFall

Very overrated in my opinion. The mechanisms feel clunky to me, and the sink the leader, gang up on player XYZ element ruins it. It’s not good at all with two players either. You can instantly get so far behind in a two player game, that there is no coming back.

Number 4 Cargo Noir

Horrifying. This game is so un-fun. It’s a very very basic auction mechanism that takes way too long to play.

Go play The Boss instead.

Number 3 Letters from Whitechapel

Go play Scotland Yard instead. This is almost the exact same, but takes way too much time. It’s just covered up with a bunch of chrome. This game is “fair” with two. But really, you could just gussy up Scotland Yard and keep the same the good mechanisms from Scotland Yard without all the fiddly rules of Whitechapel.

Number 2 Star Trek: Expeditions

Wow. This game is so anti-theme. Stay away from this one. You basically run around a planet trying to get a “number”. Ugh.

Number 1 Quarriors!

By far the most disappointing game of the year for me. I think if this game wasn’t being touted as “Possibly Game of the Year” when it first came out, I wouldn’t have been as disappointed. I gave this game an honest shot.

However, a game (even a filler) that has zero meaningful decisions is not a gateway game, is not a light game, and is not a filler. It’s just a bad game. There is good filler out there. To me this game was all about two words “Dice Building”. So it was a marketing stunt, in my opinion. A very well produced marketing stunt, but one none the less.

~ Joel Eddy

 We are so glad to have another great independent reviewer come to our shores. Lance (aka Undead Viking) is continuing his journey to get through his gaming collection. 2D6 is looking forward to following him on this adventure.

Joel Eddy is the most recent reviewer to come to 2D6.org and we consider ourselves darn lucky to have him! Joel is a prolific reviewer of Drive Thru Reviews,  and we will be bringing in some of his older reviews as well as publishing all the new reviews in the coming year. Are you as excited as we are? I hope so!

It has been a great year and Marco has put together a best of the year review! Stay tuned for another exciting year here at 2D6.org.

The Introduction: The First day I saw Sam Brown’s new Kickstarter project Lyssan, I got the sense it was a precious gem wanting to gleam. The game had intriguing knight and noble pieces that acted like a rock, paper, scissors mechanic and the board shows of a glided map of a romantic fictional Europe. Of course I have no idea what the final product will look like ( I ended up playing on a canvas board with hexagonal Catan like pieces), but if the art that Sam keeps posting on his Kickstarter page is any indication that the final game will be a fine dainty indeed. The game takes place in a feudal society were Knights and Nobles rule the land claiming taxes for their projects while other pawns play a lesser role of spy’s stealing secrets and priest for changing allegiances.  Did I say flavor text? The game is steeped with history and story with wide depth for a period piece. Before we start my young squire bring me some meat & mead, and light the fire for it is a long night ahead of us.

The Game play: The game begins with the placement of your starting pieces: Two Castles, Two Knights, Two Nobles, a spy, and a priest. Castle placement is important because all starting pieces originate at these buildings (include the priest and spy at the start of the game). Placement continues alternating turns until all pieces on the board. You also draw four influence cards because every young lady needs to alter the day’s events in her favor.

Influence cards added greatly to the game.. There are three different types of influence cards. The three types are:

1. Surprises which happen and get discarded,
2. Courtiers which are placed in front of you and grant reoccurring bonuses
3.  Vassal courtiers that grant you additional mercenaries.

The game round is built into actions that take place in each of the four seasons. Very reminiscent of other games like Mahjong that us the natural world to guide movement, and I imagined all the old paintings of medieval peasants working in the fields around the castle gathering the harvest.

Spring: You place out five of the different trophies (the game cones with 12). In preceding years one trophy will be over turned and then awarded in the following year with few exceptions (Some trophies can be awarded as soon as a requirement is met).

Summer: Is the season of the tax. Players gain all the resources of the land they currently control with Nobles, Castles and Knights. Players can also move, battle, and deal with shame in the warmer months of the year.

Autumn: Players take two influence cards in hand (We only tax in the summer), and have a secondary turn of movement, battle and dealing with shame.

Winter: While camps settle for the long hardship of winter the order of player is determined by choosing the player with least influence (&Debt) first and the player with the most Influence last.

Good:  What makes this game exciting is the five ever changing objectives. While some influence cards allow you to see ever so briefly in the future (although some games have a flat potential if all the trophies with like objectives (who has the most nobles, who has the most Knights, who has the most spies. One way around this problem is to have the trophies come from different groupings.

Influence cards had a neat mechanic to put them into play in order to purchase them you had to discard the number of other influence cards for it card’s cost. For example a card with an influence of 3 meant in order to play it you had to discard three other cards.

The chess like interaction with the pieces on the board give the game depth. There were multi-level strategies between gathering resources, and setting up battles  while  protecting your property can become intense.

The artwork, the artwork, and the artwork! The artwork is top notch and captures medieval life well.

This one is very personal, but I really love games that draw upon cyclical elements in nature and love that this games round is broken down into the four seasons (although I would like to see some of the art address the different seasons, or maybe a different time keeper of peasants in all four seasons instead of the leaf)

Bad: This is a few of the things we would like to see changed.

The two player scenario didn’t work for us (puppet and master). Running two fractions was difficult at best, and both of us lost our plans for each faction while dealing with the task of the secondary one. Also we felt the Puppet &Master scenario didn’t seem fair (or a little contrived) if you could lose a game because you had the hidden puppet card under your leading fraction.  

There was a strong possibility of a run-away leader in this game. Since a player moves and attacks all at once, the first player of a turn could easily deal a mortal blow to the other player’s ability to gather resources. This meant in the second year a player could easily shut down his opponent’s armies and his ability to regrow them. Taxation seemed to be farer if it happened before all player movement.

Also we were hoping that there was some kind of mechanism or levy to slow a duke down that was dominating the game. This could be addressed with the size of the map and the early placement to slow things down and let people build up defenses. If the map became too big there could be terrain to aid and hinder movement. I also wonder if there were some trophies that could be given for less somehow to keep the game fair.

Being the first player has a great advantage. I can’t even imagine in a four person game if the first three fractions all attacked the forth. It would be devastating for the player to even start the game.

Some Influence cards had looping effects that allow them to be placed back in hand (friends in low places & Favors). That seemed too powerful to only have a few cards like that. I also wanted to see some kind of defense against influence cards. Otherwise you were always at the mercy of the latest card played, and you kind of felt that it would be more interesting if somehow you might have the potential to block an aggressive move made against you.

We wanted named mercenaries or other dukedoms to come to aid as the additional pieces granted from Vassal Courtiers, and not as it is currently labeled by color:  the orange knights, or the black nights. Also it was too confusing and too many like pieces to try and divide camps into Orange Priest/Orange Nobles and Orange Spies/Orange Priests. This could be a little confusing with lots of pieces on the board.

In its current state wording on the text and rules use multiple words to mean the same thing: (Conscript/Recruits, Trophies/Triumphs). This was a little confusing at first and consistency would help the rule book greatly.

Conclusion: I am really excited to the see the end result of this game. I love to see some of  the new thinking this game incorporates into its mechanics. A little more honing and time this game could easily be a shining star in a gamer’s collection.

Post: The exchange below is reposted from BGG with the permission of the authors. While talking about “spouses” below Marco means “wives” because the original question was about a gamer’s wife, but the suggestions in the text apply equally well to families with a gaming wife and a non-gaming husband.

Thomas Marshall wrote:
Ok, Marco – you started this whole thing, so you have to help us out.

That your reviews have made (yes, made) me buy games I never would have even considered playing, let alone buying, I can happily accept.

But you are doing all us grognards a great disservice by not counseling us on the most serious issue affecting our gaming happiness: Inventory-counting Spouse/Significant Others.

So when my other half – who already points to my recently (and drastically) trimmed down (via auction) wargame collection with the sneer of a Roman Emperor pronouncing Mortal End to a defeated gladiator – waits in “covered hexes” to intercept the postal supply wagon making a run with an increasing number of new wargames, and hits me as I walk in the door at night with “ANOTHER one?”, how do I roll successfully on the SAC (Spouse Ambush Chart)? What’s your secret? You have a wedding ring on in the videos, so somehow you keep rolling your Survival Number on the SAC with all those games in your collection.

Or, do you just keep rolling a 6: “Spouse gets 5 new pairs of shoes for each new game release”?

With modifiers, of course.

Marco Arnaudo replied:
hi Thomas,
this is not an exact science, but trial and error (mainly error) have taught me a few strategies that, when combined and used judiciously, allow one to keep a steady stream of games entering the house and to preserve the peace in the family. All of the following assume a spouse who is not into gaming and does not know too much about the details of the gaming world. But if the issue has come up to start with, chances are that the spouse belongs to this group.
Here are some ideas:

1) NEVER set up a wargame room, and possibly not even a wargame shelf. It’s like signing a confession! Scatter your games around the house but don’t hide them, because that rises suspicion. Keep some on one shelf, some on another, some in a closet, some in the basement, some in your office at work, etc. Move the games around the house, find new locations all the time, store smaller games in the boxes of larger games (LnL’s Totensonntag fits in the box for LnL’s Dawn’s Early Dawn), let trusted friends borrow your games and keep them at their place, and generally speaking keep the spouse’s perception of your game collection off balance. It will look like you have way less than you do. Recently my wife told me “With all the games you buy you must have, like, 50 or so by now!”. Heh.

2) Print and play. Print them and assemble them at night or when she is out. Store the games in plastic folders scattered here and there around the bookshelves. She won’t realize how many you get.

3) Magazine games. Not every spouse knows that these magazines come with complete games (“Honey, I really enjoy reading about history”).

4) Combine online trading with online buying. Your wife sees you going out once or twice a week to bring traded games to the post office, and she feels relieved, she feels that you are getting rid of games in order to get new ones, and that the overall collection is not growing much… maybe is even being reduced! Can a husband be any more responsible than this? But then she may not notice that of the 3 boxes that arrived today only 2 (or 1?) are from trades. Especially if you are buying from private sellers, the boxes are indistinguishable.

5) Variant of the previous: sell games on Ebay to finance new purchases, make a big deal at dinner about how good you feel selling your games so you can get new ones ‘virtually for free’. You can even use part of that money to bring her flowers or other treats. Then you buy more than you sell. Again, she may have assumed that you buy only for what you sell.

6) Treat her, and encourage her to treat herself. She works so hard, doesn’t she deserve to go to the spa? Have her nails done? How about that knitting class? Pottery classes? Wine tasting? Then she’ll feel guilty stopping you from buying a game for yourself from time to time… especially since she sees all the efforts you are doing trading and selling your old games [see above].

7) Give money to friends to buy games for you. Does your wife hate your friends so much that she wouldn’t allow you to keep the games they give you ‘as presents’? Then there are the games you ‘borrow’ from them (and that you never ‘return’ of course, since you paid for them).

Variant: the friends buy games for you, and then you meet with the friends for game nights at their place. When I go to a game night I like to bring a TON of games, like, a suitcase with 10-20 games [true, btw], because, you know, one never knows what people will feel like playing. But sometimes one may leave with 20 and return with 21… or 22… It takes a very observant spouse to figure it out. She DOES figure it out? “Gosh, I packed in a rush because I wanted to be home on time, I must have grabbed Brian’s game by mistake”.

9) Buy directly from the publisher and say you are playtesting and getting free copies from the publisher. Gee, some playtest kits these days look JUST like the final thing. Advanced rule: Then sell / trade the ‘playtest kits’ following the rules explained in 4 and 5 above.

10) You write reviews and the publishers send you free review copies. If you do, problem solved. Enjoy your free review copies and buy some extra ‘review copies’ (if you know what I mean). If you don’t review yet, you can start. If you can’t start… does she have to know you are not reviewing games??? Advanced rule: Then sell / trade the review copies and the ‘review copies’ following the rules explained in 4 and 5 above.

Final note: Don’t rely on any of the above too much or too often, with the exception of point 1, which must become a habit and a way of being.

Good luck, and sorry I can’t elaborate more right now. Wife is calling and I have to go to change the baby and make dinner!

(originally posted here:http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/65612/marnaudos-video-reviews/)

Introduction: Well this is my first endeavor into writing for a beta game, and I am struggling about how to go about it. First off I don’t want to call it a review because the game I am playing will be dramatically different than the one you would be picking up in the stores in October. The game represents a web company and you hire nerds and suites to make you money and produce better products to get more users. Louis the game designer wrote me and asked if I would like to write a review for his new game Startup Fever. I agreed to do it, not realizing it would fall at the same time of the end of the school year. Needless to say this game preview has been writing on only two plays of the game and here’s why. It is currently a game you can back on Kick starter and the deadline is fast approaching! I am trying to get it out for the sake that this game has great potential and the game designer Louis Perrochon  from the little I know of him seems to be a really down to earth and approachable guy( Another words someone who cares and is passionate about gaming).

The Events: Anyway I received the game in the mail and proceeded to read the rules several times and play it several times. I found the game a little daunting at firsts because it is a little busy. There are tons of little pieces all over the board and the mechanics of the game keep you working. The beta was simple a nightmare for anyone with colorblindness. At first glance it was like one had tossed a bag of skittles on the table and told you to make a first move. I didn’t get to play with my first attempt at a university play group because there is so much I didn’t have a firm grasp, and struggled to understand all the little idiosyncrasies the game offers.The learning curb which isn’t really steep, but does need a little extra time to memorize all the little extra rules and I found riddled throughout the game.

The First Playing: Finally I played with my friends gaming group. It didn’t go over well for a few reasons. Not due to any faults of the game, but the fact you have to consistently having to be bothering your opponents with event cards otherwise you will lose the game. Most of these event cards are not nice and designed to make an element of play of your turn fail. There is one person in our group who is just plan nice and does not like being mean to her opponent’s, and we struggle with the viciousness of play. We tend to play friendlier versions of games. Needless to say you can’t take this game personal. Startup Fever in order for it to be played properly needs to be critically cut throat.

The Second Playing: The second playing was a three person game with the University group. The early part of the game is pretty static as you feel you are just doing maintenance to the process and make minor decisions like do I start hiring nerds or suites right away or hold out for a large suite or large nerd. The game slowly builds with intensity as workers and money begin to run out. It turns out that my beta copy of the game was sent with an older rulebook. This would explain some confusion of the game. We got into some of the wars as products came head to head and companies were spending all their money to protect their investment. The theme played rather well as we laughed at some of the terminology and humor that allows to quickly make quips about why Neal your CEO closed a big deal and your company is getting more money or why Kate messed up planning on a web feature and messed up the turn order making you play last. One person dominated the battle for Social Networking and comments like oh your Facebook or Twitter and crushing the competition (sorry live journal).

The Good: Startup Fever is designed for people who love to play commerce games with lots of cut throat action. The theme does a good job thrusting you into the mindset of a conniving CEO trying to get your company off the ground while taking out people that are getting the way of your profit margin.  Event cards prove to be fun with little touches like naming the employee Steve the guy that allowed himself to be an instant poach because you stopped offering free food in the employee food courts.  There was a lot of fun strategy as well, but almost too much as players forget some of the things we were supposed to do each round like user loss which allowed a person with unlaunched companies (Companies that have not gone public) to lower the lead of launched companies on the board. Also sometimes you forget about your large suite or nerd that gives you bonuses for all parts of your company.

The Bad: The negative qualities of the game are the sheer business of it. This game has lots of little pieces and you are moving them all the time. Some of the wording was confusing like fully vested meant an employee was more willing to leave due to the maturity of stock options. Even the color of the pieces didn’t make things clear with White cubes for money (We didn’t want cubes for money) and Green cubes for suites. This is the beta and the game still needed some rules tweaked and some maintenance elements streamlined like working out turn order which got a little tedious sometimes.

The Conclusion: Now here is the Kicker, while we discuss this game as is it is in this current reality it could be greatly different by the time it makes it to market. So I say if this game sounds at all appealing to you it deserves a second look because it has great potential. If you want to help someone else with their own startup you have a few days till June 13^th to help a new game designer with his game making fever.

On Tuesday, I awoke to a brand new 2d6.org launch page!  A hacker had exploited a weakness in an old build of the WordPress platform that this website is presented on.  Fortunately, this hacker was white hat — while showing us his impressive avatar and attempting to play some music, he told us how he gained access to the the host site.

Fortunately, we were already in the process of moving the site to a new host. About six months ago, this site was handed off to a few boardgame enthusiasts here in Bloomington when Nick Cassidy (the web site’s founder) graduated and moved away to pursue his passions. After a few delays, we finally got underway with getting new content on line and new staff to support the operations.  Nick has been very helpful in getting all the content moved over but his job responsibilities kept him from transferring the domain and redirecting the DNS entries.

Nick was the first one contacted by our hacker about the full site pwnage and this prompted him to get everything finished up. There was about a day of DNS limbo and then some work to fix a couple bugs and get our new content on line.  Most importantly, we patched the security holes that were previously exploited by updating our WordPress installation and all of the widgets being used.

Today, we are hosting the 2d6.org site on our own server, we’re in full control of the domain rights, and are taking the appropriate steps to keep patches up to date and content backed up. I hope that our subscribers and our sponsors can feel the same confidence in our ability provide consistent board game reviews, opinion and special features.

Given our short list (that includes games with varying mechanics), in our eyes, we’ve arranged the list from least to most complex / difficult to initially learn.

San Juan:

San Juan is a card game adaptation of the famed Puerto Rico, and plays particularly well with 2 players. Although San Juan does not incorporate all of the depth of Puerto Rico, many of the moving parts are in tact, while still providing a fun experience in a relatively short amount of time. If you or your significant other are interested in a highly accessible, filler gateway game that introduces the main concepts of Puerto Rico, San Juan may fit the bill.

Lord of the Rings: Confrontation:

As long as your significant other doesn’t have any adverse feelings toward high fantasy themed games, Lord of the Rings: Confrontation may be the perfect short duration, 2 player game that you’ve been looking for. Much like Stratego, Confrontation incorporates a hidden unit mechanic that keeps players guessing where an opponents strengths and weakness are located on the board. However, unlike Stratego, Confrontation incorporates a different assortment of unit abilities and game ending conditions, that drastically sets it apart from the classic.

Stone Age:

When deciding to play a worker placement game that takes roughly an hour or less to play, and won’t cause mental exhaustion after a hard day at work, Stone Age is our game of choice. Between acquiring materials to build structures, producing tool upgrades for material collection bonuses, and keeping your tribe fed, Stone Age does a very good job of maintaining theme, while providing “gamey” player progression. Stone Age does incorporate a fare amount of luck, but in our mind, not enough to outweigh the strategic decisions made throughout the game.

Caylus:

If the luck factor of Stone Age turns you off, and you’re looking for a step up in complexity and duration, Caylus may be more your speed. Highly regarded as one of the gamers game, Caylus incorporates a fair amount of player interaction and strategic longevity. Unlike Stone Age, Caylus will require a much heavier time investment in order to grasp the game beyond the fundamentals, and should be considered a different beast. If you and your significant other can work through the complexity, and enjoy the worker placement mechanic, you won’t be disappointed.

Tigris and Euphrates:

I’m not going to sugar coat this one. Tigris, like Caylus, incorporates a fair amount of strategy that will not become apparent until you’ve played the game several times. That being said, if the two of you are up for the challenge, want to try something with a considerable amount of confrontation, and are interested in experiencing a set of cohesive game mechanics that work very well together, Tigris and Euphrates can’t miss. In all honestly, out of all of games that Ashly and I play these days, Tigris seems to be the one that hits the table time and time again.

If any of our recommendations have peaked your interest, we encourage you to do a bit of own your research. If your personal favorite 2 player games didn’t make our list, let us know about them! We’re interested in your recommendations.

-Nick Cassidy