Review Rodeo #5- Friday Night at Gilley's Edition Hot

Nice closing line, smartass.

Alright! Finally some talk about the Prophecy expansion! I'm totally disappointed in the lack of Pocket Battles coverage though.

Nice reviews, Mike. I keep looking at CATACOMBS though and going..."really? That's what this is?" Just can't get into the idea at all.

Oh, and question on the Dragon Realm expansion: I have the old Altar version of Prophecy and I know Z-Man changed the card backs, would I feel like half the expansion is wasted if I bought it? I mean, how many new cards are there? And what do they add?

My copy of Catacombs came in yesterday and if all goes will it'll hit the table tonight.

Yeah, you probably wawnt to get the Z-Man edition of the game because it does look really different, and there are a lot of new items, adventures, skills, etc that go with the mainboard...the Dragon Realm part itself and its cards are totally separate though. I guess if you sleeved everything it really wouldn't matter, but who wants to do that? Also, the race cards are meant to match up with the Z-Man character cards.

I'm really enjoying Dragon Realm. And, I think that Catacombs is going to be a purchase for me eventually -- it is different enough that I am pretty interested. Good set of reviews.

Hey - that photo avatar you have on your column is even scarier than your Mark E Smith one :o

Yeah, but if I get the Z-Man nobody is going to want my Altar edition. Now I know how all those 1st edition Runebound owners feel.

Boo for not acknowledging the greatness of Glory to Rome.
Otherwise I am highly interested in 3 of the 4. Sadly I'll probably be trading in Prophecy (Altar version) + Dragon Realm and just getting Talisman instead.

I still quote Nuns on the Run to my girlfriend after a hot shower: "It certainly is... steamy in here."

Heh. But seriously Michael, write an article about rising prices already. Get it out of your system. (My apologies if you have and I've forgotten.)

I actually did about a year or so ago, it was about the death of the $50 board game. Wow. Now I'm going to be writing about the death of the $60 board game...

There's Countdown coming up that has to do with cost.

hahaha, I think Countdown + cost discussion = BARNES/AT/FAT IMPLOSION?

Actually, what I have in mind is more helpful than hurtful...somebody's got to tell the kids that they don't have to spend a hundred dollars to buy a really great game.

Wow. Should have titled it...Games That Frank Had to Practically Chain Me to a Table to Get Me to Play But That I Liked Anyway.

Except for Dragon Realm. That one went pretty easy thanks to Sandi and the knitting needles.

Longships and Kasl need to go on the next one, I think.

Innovation - definitely interested, but this one isn't available to the great unwashed yet, is it?
Nuns on the Run - been thinking about this one. Looks like fun. Pricepoint might be the final decider.
Catacombs - like Ken said, Catacombs just doesn't grab me at all. Not even with your kind words. I guess I need to play a good dexterity game before I can be sold on the concept. When someone says "dexterity game" I immediately think of fiddly bits flying all over the place and a game that sounds more fun in theory than in practice.
Dragon Realm - on my list. Really looking forward to this one.

Wow. Should have titled it...Games That Frank Had to Practically Chain Me to a Table to Get Me to Play But That I Liked Anyway

Oh, now let's be honest Frank...I actively courted a play of CATACOMBS...besides, who's ALWAYS the one who says "I'll play anything, just put a game in front of me"?

I'mma have to revise that now though to "I'll play anything, just put a game in front of me that isn't PELOPENNES".

Or MYSTERY EXPRESS, that game can rot in hell.

Just for all you doubters out there, Catacombs was a blast and it was easily one of the better games I tried at Averfest '10.

I want to like Nuns on the Run because it works with 8 people, but the theme is holding me back.

I fucking *solved* MYSTERY EXPRESS. That's right, I achieved a 100% victory by having all categories correct in the telegram. Of course I couldn't fully exclude all but two of the categories (Time I only got right by luck), but I played with three smart-asses who each hid the one correct card of a category from the other players, or at least from me. So the murderer, motif, etc. were all resembled by the one card per category I haven't seen once during the whole game. I got bored by the game from turn 2 onwards. At least Mystery of the Abbey had singing.

INNOVATION - Well that capsule review sounded a lot better than your description in the forum which left me craving for lamé.

NUNS ON THE RUN is good.

Is METALFACE13 a troll?

Kasl is pretty cool, nice wooden castle and knights bits. It's kind of a Risk+ game that lasts for 2 hours but where you can build castles and a few different types of units. There's also the wild black plague that can appear anywhere to destroy everything in the territory, and that's why my bro hated this game...like the plague (I don't mind and think it's pretty fun, especially when the plague hits your opponents). A little random event can destroy your biggest stronghold in one fell swoop. The plague can keep on spreading and that's great. I've actually seen a player come back from a devastating plague strike to almost win the game.

Use the optional rules with the secret missions (conquer territory XXXX to win so many extra points), those are great. Yup, it's still won through points, but who cares.

The only part where I thought the game could drag was that in some fights where only knights were fighting, it could take quite a few consecutive throws of the dice for either side to score kills because you need to roll 5s or 6s.

BTW Frank, did you play Valley of the Mammoths with MB yet?

Sands of Time should have followed the FFG marketing model: they could charge $100 if the box was twice the size and they glued plastic figures on top of the discs.

Nope. I like Peloponnes quite a bit. Drop dead Euro, but short, and with enough of a learning curve not to be a complete throwaway like most light Euros.

Mystery Express...seems a little easy.

PELOPONNES isn't a game, it's a chart. You adjust markers on a chart. Things make markers go up, things make markers go down. The bidding is actually kind of fun though since it has a little more bite than usual, it just needs to be a mechanic in an actual game.

My point about Peloponnes is that the auction is the game. All of the charts and numbers are just to complicate the determination about what to bid for.

Your assertion that the game needs more is EXACTLY where euros have gone astray.

As is, it has a few nice ideas, is a little fluffy, and ends in 45 minutes. Like older German games. Using your idea it would be in some kind of Frankenstein of a game that take 2-3 hours, has a dozen ways of scoring, and 4 or 5 other mechanisms stolen from other games.

Instead, the designer found something he liked, centered the entire game around it, and trimmed off the excess. It is a total and purely German style design....but a good one.

I'm with Billyz regarding Catacombs. I wasn't sure about it either...but it was a blast. We'll see with repeated plays how it might go--but it was fun, quick, with a bit more to it than Micro Mutants: Evolution, for example (which you might want to compare it to).

Catacombs sounds like a must have for me, and I generally like hide-and-seek games like Scotland Yard and FoD so Nuns on the Run sounds like a lot of fun, but unless Dragon Realm can somehow make Prophecy less tedious then that's a pass for me. I honestly don't understand the love for Prophecy here (and elsewhere). I bought it and played it twice but bailed on the second game because it was just so damn tedious, and that was even with the "starting kit" variant which is meant to speed things up. It's a pain to move anywhere (it seemed like everyone was stuck in their same general quadrant of the board for a long time), the board is boring the way it's laid out, and the encounters are pretty much the same kind of thing over and over, getting slightly harder as it goes on. I think it was slightly better than Runebound, but Return of the Heroes was a lot more interesting and it doesn't begin to compare to the flavor and gameplay and variation of an adventure game like Arkham Horror. Anyway, I expect some backlash from the Prophecy fans here, but I just don't get the appeal of that particular title...

I've been sat on a review copy of Catacombs for ages. I feel a bit guilty about it because it's no fault of either mine or the publishers but it's going to be while yet before I can get enough plays in to write a proper review. I'll tell the whole sorry tale in the eventual review but I feel compelled to chip in at the point to sayy that fromwhat I've seen so far it really does look like a fun game, and perhaps most surprisngly at all it has a starnge theme thing going on where you're simulating the physical activity of fightiing monsters with the physical activity of flicking discs. If you're a doubter then please do check it out at least before you dismiss it.

Catacombs is cool and the gameplay is pretty fun, but they really should have done a bit more developemtn on it. Frank disagrees with me but i feel like they should have had chains of set encounters, events that alter the setup, flavor dialogue for each room..ect

IE dungeon adventures- The mechanics work and somewhat convey the atmosphere..but it could be so much richer. Fortunately anyone with even a spark of creativity can easy insert those things. Don't get me wrong. I like the game , but I feel they stopped at good when it wouldn't have take much to make it great.

Steve"Voice of AT"Avery

Catacombs could use events,traps, and a couple of terrain obstacles. It also begs for more items and an experience system.

It doesn't need flavor text before each room or a full rpg system

In other ways. I do like where they stopped. The game is a breeze to teach and there is a lot of stuff as is and they kept it cheap. They also originally had a lot of elements in there but began to strip for time cost and simplicity. I went through the same procedure with BBS. And found that I liked the stripped ultra fast game best.

I gotta agree with Frank on this one: I think that they stripped down Catacombs just enough to where it greatly improves its accessibility whithout noticeably affecting gameplay.

They now have the advantage of seeing how this thing sells and gauging the financial viability of any future expansions.

My point about Peloponnes is that the auction is the game. All of the charts and numbers are just to complicate the determination about what to bid for.

I agree that the minimal aspect of the game is its strongest point and I do appreciate minimalism and restraint WELL OVER bloat and excess. I don't think the game needs "more" at all, that's not the problem with it. What it needs is qualities that it doesn't have ANY of in the first place- style, character, context, and passion. It has no heart whatsoever, it is literally a set of mechanics with a very tenuous connection to a city-building theme. It's totally styless and cold to the extreme, and that's something that the great German games are _not_.

The counterpoint to PELOPONNES, in terms of a game that does something very similar but is vastly more successful, is RA. RA has character, style, context, and passion. It doesn't feel mechanical or cold (even though it really is) and it aslo has a very direct, minimal approach to design. It also has "baffles" that obscure the ability to assume absolute values but they're not on charts. Why you'd play PELOPONNES over RA when you're reaching for a 45 minute, simple auction game is beyond me.

I gotta agree with Frank on this one: I think that they stripped down Catacombs just enough to where it greatly improves its accessibility whithout noticeably affecting gameplay.

And I would agree too. It's becoming too often that I hear "all this game needs is..." or "this game would be better if..." statements about games. And I'm seeing people try to bolt on all these ideas, concepts, and rules onto games in an attempt to increase flavor, setting, or theme. I think that's a huge mistake when we're talking about simple, direct games like CATACOMBS. Sometimes, enough is enough. In CATACOMBS, it's just enough, and adding FFG-style bloat to it would take away all of the charm and just make what should be a dumb fun game into something less accessible and fat.

The best games don't "need" anybody to fix them up with a bunch of Frankenstein rules.

Is Peloponnes a cheap Kremlin rip-off?

NO WAY. I think you're a cheap KREMLIN rip-off.

Nuns On The Run sounds right up my abbey.

Seriously, out of all the games you listed, I'd play Nuns on the Run. Why? Because it is just... how do I explain it?

You might have seen a game based on the London Tower, I forget its name, but it's a really fun high concept game that does justice to the idea of a castle setting with a real story that isn't derivative. The British have this game on sale in The Tower of London and is a tourist trap souvenir board game - but the sound of Nuns of the Run reminds me of how fun that Tower of London game was with the stealth.

With so many board games out there - it's easy to get lost - but Barnesy, while you review a lot of fantasy genre games and sci-fi games, which I agree should be recognised as a valid form of board game setting - something like Nuns on the Run which not only gives you an original idea but somehow manages to make it kid friendly as well - makes it something that I'd want to pick up now when I'm young not just for me so that my children will be able to enjoy it too.

I think board games aren't meant for people who just want to win all the time - half the fun of them is the communal rage they inspire amongst players who you call your friends but become enemies for about 2-5 hours depending on the game length. As I've become less naive about how board game competitiveness works - I've started to not take the agressiveness of board gaming at face value and dismiss it as a symptom of our hypermasculinised society as I go back to reading the sensitive new age guy classic Train Man by Hitori Nakano.

I am not hatin' on fantasy and sci fi games - I'm just saying high concept games like Nuns on the Run display a charm to them which appeals to me more than getting my arse handed to me by Warhammer 40,000 players who had better army units than I could afford. Likewise, I do enjoy revelling in the sheer nerdery of games that have a fantasy or sci fi feel because with the right sort of people who don't dismiss what fun the "genre game" represents to genre fiction fans - it's good fun.