Viceroy Review: Pyramid shaped-point salad – pleasant but not filling.
Concepts as simple as pattern building and colour-matching appear in games frequently. Viceroy, a strategic game of creating a conceptual “pyramid of power” in a fantasy world aces these in a very satisfying way. In the process, however, it kind of forgets what games are meant to be and the end result limps, rather than soars over the finish line. How come? Put on your best puffy shirt and let’s find out!
The Grizzled review: Cardboard Western Front
War. War never changes, or so Fallout intros have been telling us for the past twenty years. What about it never changes exactly? Is it the heroics, the explosions, the glorification of sacrifice that brave men and women go through? Or is it the broken lives it leaves behind and the attempts to put these back together through friendship, love and a sense of community? The Grizzled, a title suggesting a scar over a painful wound, lands squarely in the latter category and scores an emphatic victory in doing so.
2016 Gaming by the Numbers
The final 2016 summary post will focus on the quantitative side of my gaming last year. I am finding it fascinating to review my gaming habits via Board Game Geek logged plays and hope you will find some of these stats informative. As a data nerd it’s been a blast putting these together and analyzing these. Especially now that I have two years of solid data and can do a longitudinal comparison. Onwards to geekery!
My First Carcassonne – big meeples for little gamers
“Roads go ever on and on” – Bilbo Baggins
As the board games hobby becomes increasingly popular, the demand for games that are accommodate the youngest audience grows. It is no surprise that a modern classic like Carcassonne would be among the first to receive this treatment. How does this simplified version stack up against its cherished predecessor? Let’s chase after that chicken for a while!
2016 Gaming: My family’s top games
I am very fortunate in that my wonderful wife and son share the board gaming hobby with me and put up with my constant suggestions to move around pieces of cardboard following arcane rules. I find that it’s something I can share with my family. I know that not all families enjoy board games, and some parents prefer to share their love of video games with their children. I know a few people like that. I even have a friend who uses emulator sites similar to Gamulator (gamulator.com/roms/gamecube) to play old retro games with her family. However, for board game families, last year was great in terms of family gaming, and I wanted to list the games that worked best so that we can look back to appreciate the year that was and hopefully provide some helpful suggestions to other families out there.
Whilst I’m all for playing games with my family (which I absolutely love to do), I sometimes like having the opportunity to play some games on my own from time to time. In fact, a lot of my friends are gaming fans too, some are actual gaming fanatics so I can learn a lot from them. If you ever need to know What is the Current world of warcraft player count or what the best team on FIFA is… my friend is the person to go to. I like to play all different types of games, from video games to online games. And you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that most of them take place on my mobile phone or tablet device. Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, and even the odd game of roulette through applications like mega888 2021 have all become appealing to me in recent times. I have yet to win any extra money on the casino site, but I’m holding out hope that it will happen soon, but it’s just a great way to pass the time when I have nothing else to do, which is very rare, as these game suggestions get played regularly in our household. I’ve also been interested in learning more about the gambling side of the gaming world in terms of cryptocurrency gambling. Now that cryptocurrency has become ‘the new thing’, I’m eager to get involved. I know there are so many types of online casino gambling, such as NEO gambling, Bitcoin gambling, DOGE gambling… the list goes on. I find it all very interesting as a game lover.
The Undercity Review: A bumpy descent
Down in the titular Undercity – a setting for Iron Kingdoms games, mad alchemists concoct pungent elixirs, trollkin and bodgers sharpen their rusty blades, huge steamjacks whir into motion and an ominous threat is rising. You are invited to play out a series of adventures in this rich world with a bunch of dice and extremely detailed miniatures. Will your experience be as good as the grotesque art promises? Strap on your gas mask and load your magelock pistols – we are about to find out!