Runebound: 2nd Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)'Runebound' is recent entry in the board-based fantasy adventure game market. Board-based, in this context, means players are limited to moving on a board and having adventures based on cards that are drawn after moving. (Those of you old enough to remember Games Workshop's 'Talisman' should be familiar with the concept.)
Play is relatively simple, although the first game or so will go slowly as players adjust to the system. Each player selects a hero, gets some gold, then sets to adventuring. Terrain dice are rolled to determine how players may move during their turn. Players finishing their move on a city may heal wounds, sell treasure, and buy equipment or hire allies. Players who finish their move on an encounter space may trigger a game-altering event or be given a quest, but will always have to fight a monster. Combat is fairly simple; roll the supplied dice, add the character's combat value, and see if the total beats the monster's. Defeat enough monsters and your hero collects gold and experience, which in turn enables him or her to improve his combat power. There are four levels of encounters to be fought; the player who defeats the final boss monster (or three sub-bosses) in the toughest level wins the game.
The rules are well-written and have clear examples of what players may and may not do during their turn, but care needs to be taken while reading them. I recommend players play through a few turns slowly with the rules in hand as they figure out the game.
'Runebound' also has quality components. The many cards are printed on heavy stock, the counters are made of thick cardboard, and the dice are heavy and solid. The map seems durable for the light use it should see. There are also 12 plastic miniature heroes; sadly, these aren't painted, but they do match their pictures on the hero cards.
The real beauty of the 'Runebound' system is its replayability. After playing the enclosed game a few times players may look for a new challenge. The publisher has already released expansion card sets and map sets that expand on the original adventure, and imaginative players could easily design their own adventures.
'Runebound' is a good family game; players as young as 8 could probably play the game without much difficulty. I recommend it for anyone looking for something light but fun to fill a Saturday evening.

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The world of Runebound is a magical, dangerous world of powerful wizards, noble knights, vicious monsters, and power-mad tyrants. It is a world of great quests and mighty deeds. Above all, it is a world of legendary heroes, and the time has come for you to join them"

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Britannia Review

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(More customer reviews)BRITANNIA is, indeed, a difficult game to play. But that does not mean the experience will not be a pleasant one.
The dificulty arises from the fact that there are a lot of exceptions and foot notes to the rules of the game. These exceptions were clearley designed to portray history in a more accurate way and add to the flavour of the game. It works, but as a collateral effect I'd say it's almost impossible to play BRITTANIA, at least the first two or three times, without making totally inadvertent rules errors while playing.
The game was really designed with four players in mind, with three or five player it gets clearly unbalanced.Maybe it was pressure form the publisher to try to sell to a broader audience, I don't know. Anyway, this ia a personal opinion, maybe people playing with other number thatn four players will find it efficient also.
It's indeed a time consuming game. Rarely it ends before fours hours playing.
The game components are totally adequate, nothing fancy, but fundamentally operational. Game board very beautiful. Rule book is well designed and with good examples.
This is a war game through and through, but with clever and fast combat resolution mechanics (based in D6 dice) and without thousands of complicated playing pieces that keep stacking upon each other in a hexagonal board. Of course, since there are dice involved, luck plays a big part, and a whole carefully planned strategy may be destroyed by a sequence of two or three bad luck dice rolling. But you can easily regain it by good dice rolling when defending... What I say is: with a lot of battles solely resolved by dice rolling, no matter how good a strategist or historian you are, luck is a strong factor in BRITANNIA.
In general, it's no wonder it's one of the few out of print Avalon Hill games that managed to get new life with another publisher. It's exciting, gorgeous to look at and informative.

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Tide of Iron Review

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(More customer reviews)I've heard this product described as Tide of Plastic...and it is very true. This game comes with a huge number of litle plastic pieces. Luckily, they are all really well done. This is a fun game to play. Set up for a normal game is about 30 minutes and the games themselves last from one to two hours. If you're looking for a quick pick up and play game, this really isn't it. Strategy is a huge part of how you set up your pieces, so that is why setup is so long. As you become more familiar with each unit's strengths and weaknesses, setup time will probably be cut in half. One thing to note is that many of the basic scenarios that come with the game seem to be too one sided, with one of the armies seemingly unable to win, based on how the mission is made. I don't really have a problem with this, it seems to make the historical mission more accurate in my opinion. Tide of Iron is a super fun war game and its play mechanics are more accessible than more hardcore games in the genre. I recommend it.

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World War II was the greatest mobilization of fighting men and machines that the world has ever seen! Tanks and soldiers combined into a veritable tide of iron that changed the world. Now, the largest and deadliest conflict in history comes to your tabletop in Fantasy Flight's game of World War II squad-level tactics! This epic game grants two to four players control of either the American or German military forces. An innovative game system allows players to customize their squad compositions, make both tactical and strategic decisions with the unique "command" system and engage the enemy through the planning and execution of WWII battlefield tactics. Tide of Iron provides players with a vast array of high-quality modular game boards, terrain overlay pieces, various battlefield fortifications, operations and strategy cards, as well as 17 unique unit types, and features hundreds of detailed plastic figures, including soldiers, tanks and other combat vehicles. For up to six players (divided into two teams).

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Anima: Shadow of Omega Review

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(More customer reviews)It has fewer rules than any other card game I've run into of its nature, such as Pokemon, Magic: The Gathering, and Yu-Gi-Oh, and it is much easier to pick up. The game is never the same two times in a row, and it is very amusing to play. The artwork on the cards is simply stunning. I do recommend this game for those that enjoy card games and those that love roleplaying games all at once, for it is both rolled into one!

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Anima: The Shadow of Omega is a non-collectible card game set in the same original setting as the Anima: Beyond Fantasy roleplaying game. Inspired by well-known Japanese video roleplaying games such as Final Fantasy and Suikoden, the world of Anima features traditional Western fantasy staples, including magic and medieval arms, combined with an emphasis on martial arts and Eastern concepts of honor and mysticism. In the Anima: The Shadow of Omega card game, players form a party of four adventurers that explore the land and engage in combat with fantastic beasts and each other, gaining new powers and eventually confronting an ancient menace.Anima: The Shadow of Omega includes 110 cards, each one featuring a unique piece of stunning, full-color art depicting a character, creature, or location from the Anima universe.

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DungeonQuest Review

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(More customer reviews)Let me get this out of the way first.
I'm a proud owner of the original 1985 edition published by Games Workshop, along with the Heroes of DungeonQuest and Catacombs expansions. There are an absolute myriad of unscripted ways in which you can die, and your job is to survive with as much loot as possible. Thank DungeonQuest for turning me into a connoisseur of rogue-like video games such as NetHack, Diablo, ADOM, and even ToeJam & Earl.
DungeonQuest (1985 edition) has been an almost unmatched favorite board game of mine for over 20 years. In fact, I purchased Descent: Journeys in the Dark in an attempt to find an newer game with similar gameplay to DungeonQuest. Alas, Descent is great, but doesn't scratch the itch. When I heard that Fantasy Flight Games picked up publishing rights, I anxiously awaited their release with skepticism. I could finally stop worrying about losing/damaging the long out-of-print contents, but only if they could reproduce the experience!
I've played this 2010 edition of DungeonQuest very aggressively both solo and with up to 3 players (age 30+). Ready to pass judgement. I'll try to clarify for new players, though there are many references to changes from the 1985 edition.Pros:
- Custom characters. Each of the 6 unique characters has meaningfully distinct perks. Depending on which character you draw at the start, you will significantly change your combat or exploration strategy.
- Catacombs. Including what was previously an entire expansion (as well as 2 extra characters), is very generous. Catacombs are much more dangerous, but offer faster, diagonal movement beneath the dungeon floor.
- Extended sundown. Game lasts longer than before, giving chance to survive after the doors would normally have locked you in the dungeon to die. The increasing chance of death looms like a game of Russian-roulette (why not, since you should be dead by then in the original anyway).Cons:
- Sell-out. Obviously, some things were changed just to fit Terrinoth, rather than having Terrinoth fit DungeonQuest. Most of this is not bad, and, in fact, the 6 new cross-over character sheets for Descent more than make up for this downside! However, it's more than a bit unnatural to run into "easy" demons and trolls in the once goblin-filled dungeon. Similarly, the combat system uses melee, ranged, and magic instead of the more natural melee-only stances.
- Chance of survival has increased. Based on my 28 plays, there's a 32.1% chance of survival. The original survival rate was 15%. I've had games where all 3 smart players successfully survived with loot. Terrible. Life should feel much more fleeting and precious.
- Combat card mini-game is complex. In the original, I enjoyed reading my opponent's face in the "slash > leap > mighty blow > slash" intuitive combat. Some immersion is lost in the new combat card game. It's much more strategic, but also more abstract. Though, even newcomers to board gaming can pick it up after about 2 games.
- Catacomb movement is unintuitive. For instance, in the catacombs, movement is only diagonal, but the player is asked to declare a compass direction (N, S, E, W) upon entering. In the original, this compass direction was the predominate movement direction, but in this version, the player is necessarily offset into a NW, NE, SW, SE direction on exit.Changes:
- Includes Catacombs; an expansion in the original.
- Includes 6 heroes; the original started with 4.
- Rules are clearer; addition of ~10 official optional rules.
- Combat is more complicated, but retains rock-paper-scissors elements.
- Heroes are more legendary; likewise, mundane orcs are now trolls, golems, demons, etc.
- Arrows are gone, so bows no longer have ammo; they're abstracted into new combat.
- Pets are gone, hence no separate HP; they're abstracted into new combat.
- Not limited to 26 turns; sun has increasing chance to set after turn 26.
- Rings are now runes (and different).Complex combat rules and much better chance of survival slowly become less of a downside as you play. In fact, you get used to the combat, learning to build feeling into it. The more abstract combat mostly comes when using one of the characters that has no pro-combat perk or lame combat cards. I'm loving the extended sundown and unique, unpredictable potions and other new loot. Catacomb deviation isn't crazy either when you look at it as diagonal movement from the start.
As in the original, there are numerous cases where a player must remember to resolve certain rules in following turns, despite no on-board representation. Also, many tiles have special rules that need to be frequently looked up until remembered. However, most of the time, these special rules add a dynamic flair that keeps the game fresh and immerses you further into the story.
Bottom line, this is a game about survival. It's for those who love randomity and randomly generated dungeons. It's also a game that tells a story. Win or lose, each game you'll have totally unique experience to talk about, and walk away fulfilled.

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DungeonQuest is a re-imagining of the classic board game of dungeon exploration for 1-4 players. Set in the vibrant fantasy realm of Terrinoth (first popularized by Runebound), DungeonQuest retains the peril, tension, and brutality of the beloved original game while updating both mechanical and thematic elements. Players take on the roles of brave (or foolish) heroes willing to brave the legendary dangers of Dragonfire Dungeon. Fortune awaits those able to venture into the dragon's lair. In DungeonQuest, Players must guide their heroes through the twisting halls of Dragonfire Dungeon in pursuit of unimaginable riches hoarded by the Dragon Lord Kalladra. Whoever can amass the most wealth and make it out of the dungeon before the closing of the doors seals their doom will emerge victorious. However, merely surviving the harrowing dungeon is a feat all its own.

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Runewars Review

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(More customer reviews)Ive been playing all the "mechanics" games for years now. Games like Carcassone, Settler of Catan, Tikal, Agricola, Balloon Cup, Incan Gold, Ticket to Ride - and although those games have provided me & my friends with endless hours of fun, I always felt like they were lacking in theme and depth, and they were more about new and innovative mechanics. But I wanted something heavier, something that took more time and had more depth and theme to it than just 1-2 hours of mechanics.
I spent a few hours poking around, trying to find one that would fit the bill, and I found Twilight Imperium and Runewars. For me, although both games look and feel epic in nature, Runewars had the advantage of being playable with 2 players, and my wife is all about the fantasy setting and not so into Sci-Fi, so Runewars won out (although I will be buying Twilight Imperium at some point anyway).
I brought it home, and it looked amazing. Nice big box, 192 miniatures, 4 races, big heavy map hexes, it was gorgeous. We immediately punched everything out and I spent the next hour reading through the rulebook.
In this game there are 4 different races, all with their own personality and skillset. This makes for a very intense game. It takes a few games, but you soon begin to realize that each race has their own strategies for winning the game. Its not neccesarily about brute force and simply overrunning the map with your army. In fact, doing so will most likely cost you the game. There is a level of depth to this game that I have not yet seen. There is questing, and conquest, and tactics, and politics - all happening at the same time, and all viable ways to win the game. The polotical side of the game causes all sorts of bluffing and deceiving between players. Because of this, I have seen players pull the win right out from others many times, and its always the most amazing feeling. The depth of strategy to this game is simply amazing, and pulling off the win against all odds is REALLY why this game is so enjoyable. No one is overpowered, and no one can safely say "they have the cat in the bag".
I highly recommend this game, even at the outrageous price. I will get more playtime from this game than all my others.
I also want to stress, this isnt some light game. This is your gateway game to the heavier war games. Plan on 3-5 hours per game (although they can be played in 2 if everyone is familiar with all the rules). The first game will be slow, but every player is basically engaged the entire game, there is very little downtime.
Writing this review just makes me excited to play again.

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Runewars is an epic board game of conquest, adventure, and fantasy empires for two to four players. Designed by Corey Konieczka, Runewars pits players against each other in a strategic game of battles and area control, where they must gather resources, raise armies, and lay siege to heavily fortified cities.Runewars takes place in the same popular fantasy universe as the best-selling board games Runebound and Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and dozens of fan-favorite heroes and monsters play their part. The wars for the dragon runes are beginning, and only one faction will emerge victorious. What would you do to claim the ultimate power?

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Starcraft: The Board Game Review

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(More customer reviews)This game is based on the Starcraft computer game. As such, it does a great job of modeling the concepts and gameplay of Starcraft in a tabletop environment. It uses a combination of game tiles, figurines, cards, and cardboard chits to represent the Starcraft game.
If you don't have an experienced player to guide you, plan on taking a whole day to learn this game. Once everyone knows the game, plan on 2-3 hours per game.
The game is of quality construction - almost all the Starcraft units are represented with plastic figures, along with cardboard punch-outs representing things like planets and buildings, and finally sets of cards that represent technology, random events, and unit combat power.
The basic board consists of laying down 2 planets per player, with a starting base on 1 planet. Planets are connected, but require a transport to move units between. Planets have areas on them, each area either has crystal, Vespene gas, or conquest points players struggle to control. You will build, move, research, and battle in order to achieve victory later in the game.
Though it takes time and a lot of reading, the rules are logical and consistent, so once you start understanding the phases of a turn and the subtleties of the rules, you begin to appreciate the amount of strategy available - just like in the computer game. You can try to rush, expand, build mass air, turtle up. A lot of the computer game concepts translate quite well into the board game.
Even the real-time nature of the game is modeled in the game. Players take turn laying down "order" tokens on planets. Nobody knows what each others orders are, but the orders on a planet stack up, and during the execution phase, the orders are revealed one at a time. In this way, an element of interactive surprise causes you to adjust your plans on the fly based on what someone else just did.
Battles are resolved by pairing attackers and defenders figures, and using cards for each pairing to represent health & combat power, as well as any special bonuses that might come from researched technology. Thus battle is sort of a mini card game. There is an element of luck here, in that at any given time you will only have a subset of cards in your hands to use in combat, but all players can shape their hand and add more powerful cards to their deck as the game progresses.
The game has some nice touches, like modeling cloaking and detection, and including special units like the Zerg queen or Protoss Archon, and the Terran nuke strike.
The learning curve is steep, but once you get through a couple turns of play, you really start to feel like the game is incredibly deep - with lots of strategy options.
This game is much more complicated than any other game I have played (e.g. Settlers of Catan), but this ends up providing much more strategic depth then other games. Recommended if you like deep games in general, and Starcraft in particular.

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Whether you choose to lead the versatile Terran, mysterious Protoss, or voracious Zerg, in Starcraft: The Board Game you'll command an army like no other in the universe. Once again, Fantasy Flight Games brings one of the world's best-loved computer games to your tabletop. Players take control of the Protoss, Terran, or Zerg and battle across multiple worlds. True to the Starcraft legacy, each of the three races features a unique and distinctive play style, and the inclusion of two distinct factions for each race allows for up to six players to compete for galactic dominance at a time.
With over 180 plastic figures and dozens of unit types, Starcraft: The Board Game features an innovative modular board of varying sizes which guarantees a new experience each and every game. An exciting card driven combat system allows players to modify and upgrade their faction with a wealth of powerful technologies. Players can unleash a Zergling rush, use powerful Protoss shields to halt an enemy invasion, or even send cloaked Ghosts out to guide nuclear missiles to their target.

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Wings of War WWI: Top Fighters Blister Review

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(More customer reviews)This is one of the best expansion packs for this game so far. It includes the Fokker D VII and Sopwith Snipe planes - and two of the best maneuver decks in the game (so far).

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Each Wings of War Booster Pack includes a set of 70 new cards (half the cards normally included in a complete set of Wings of War) which expands on the existing games and allow the players to fly 2 additional planes.With the Top Fighters booster pack, the Fokker D. VII and the Sop with Snipe are added to the game, and each of these planes (included in the blister in multiple color schemes) will fly to the battle with a new maneuver deck each. The cards will feature several planes from the Russian Civil War and other post-1918 conflicts in Eastern Europe. Also included in this set are the airplane cards for the Breguet BR.14 A2 and the Nieuport 23, plus a Bolshevik Sopwith Camel.A Wings of War Booster Pack is not a complete game. The Top Fighters requires either Famous Aces or Burning Drachens. Part of the Wings of War series.

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Wings of War WWI: Watch Your Back Review

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(More customer reviews)I'ved enjoyed the few sessions I've had of playing this with my kids. It manages to give a nice approximation of world war I dog-fighting with very simple materials and rules. You pick a playing surface (table top, rug, whatever), each start with an airplane card or two at an edge, and the choose maneuver cards for the next three moves. Once both players have planned their moves, they reveal them, moving their planes across the play area using the arrows draw on the maneuver cards. If the planes get in range of each other, they can shoot, and the target player must draw cards from a damage deck. A simple mechanism that works well for a friendly game. I like just flying the cards around the tabletop without having any game board. It feels very free form.
Different planes use different maneuver decks and different damage decks, which are supposed to accurately reflect the capabilities of the real planes. So, for example, the two seated planes that are the stars of "Watch you Back" all use the "H" maneuver deck, which does not allow them to do Immelman turns (which in the game works basically like a turn on a dime), so the single seaters have an advantage in maneuverability, which can almost make them evenly matched.
"Watch Your Back" comes with the "B" damage deck and with the "E", "F", "G" and "H" maneuver decks. There are a couple problems with that. First, a few of the planes that come with the game use the "A" damage deck, which does not come with the game. (You can get it with "Burning Drachens" or "Famous Aces".) This is not really too bad, because you can more or less fake a "A" deck by having people draw two cards from the "B" deck, since the A deck does about twice the damage as the "B" deck.
The second problem is that, while the damage deck is shared between all players, each plane must have it's own maneuver deck. Since you only get one of each of the four maneuver deck, that means you can't have two planes with the "H" deck fight against each other, unless you get a second "H" deck which you can only do by buying a second copy of "Watch Your Back". Though I suppose a few minutes with a photocopier would be an viable alternative.
So if you have just this one game, there are limitations on the matchups that you can create, since you have to choose planes who use different maneuver decks, and that makes it a little hard to set up balanced games. There may be a certain realism to that, but it can be a bit trying from a game play point of view.
I probably will buy some more sets, since this is rather fun, but I think it's worth knowing what you are getting into when you buy this.

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Fly into Daring Missions in the Skies of World War IThe game can be played by itself or mixed with WoW Famous Aces for larger scenarios. It includes 5 models of planes: the Nieuport 11, Hanriot HD.1 and Halberstadt D.III fighters, together with the British/American DH4 and the Austrian Ufag C.I two-seaters. There are also 4 decks of movement cards, 1 deck of combat cards, rulers, counters and a promo card for the first set depicting an American SPAD XIII.

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Wings of War WWI: Famous Aces Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a very enjoyable game, and you will literally be playing 10min after opening the box. I play this game with my 3 sons ages 13, 9, and 7 and they enjoy it immensely. You can play with just one box set, but the additional sets add more options. This game gives you a great opportunity to spend time with your children and teach them some history. I've found that as I get older I'm not as interested in complicated games as I used to be; and while this game is simple, it's engaging enough to keep all four of us interested for hours.

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Duels in the skies with the Famous Aces of World War I Wings of War - Famous aces is the first set of the WWI collection. It includes 5 types of planes: the Spad XIII, Albatros D Va, Sopwith Camel, Fokker Dr1, Sopwith Triplane. Each one was flown by an ace: between them Baracca, von Richtofen, Rickenbacker, Fonk, Olieslagers, Bakers. There are also 4 decks of movement cards, 1 deck of combat cards, rulers, counters and a promo card of the second set Wings of War- Watch your Back!, depicting an Austrian two-seater Ufag C.I.

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Wings of War WWI: Burning Drachens Review

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(More customer reviews)This game adds a new dimension to the other wings of war games if you own them. Of course this can be played on its own.
I love the history of the balloon observers in trench warfare.
Timmy

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Wings of War Burning Drachens is the third set in the Wings of War collection. It includes some of the most used airplanes of the WWI as the Nieuport 17-23, the Albatros D.III, the Pfalz D.III/D.IIIa. It also includes optional altitude rules, anti-aircraft guns and machineguns. Other additional rules are proposed for a more intriguing and varied simulation of WWI air combat, even if the basic system is the same, simple one of the first two sets. The set is totally independent, but it can be mixed in the others in the collection for larger scenarios.

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