Gimme Games: Samurai Sword

This week's Gimme Games is all about the game Samurai Sword.

Basically just a rethemed cover of BANG! Samurai Sword does a few things differently, I hear. 

Published only two years ago in 2012, this game is relatively new. 

I've played it twice now, both times at game night at the Kingston Gaming Nexus. Once we played with three players, and another with seven. So I've seen both ends of the player count scale. And I must say, the seven side is a lot more fun. 

But first, lets look at the game. Samurai Sword is a card game for (as mentioned) three to seven players. In it one player is the Shogun. Then there are Ninja, who are trying to kill the Shogun. There are Samurai who are trying to protect the Shogun and there is a Ronin, who is just trying to make it out alive. Only the Shogun's identity is known, all other players are hidden roles.

Each player gets a hidden role card. They also get a character card which gives them special abilities. Finally they are given three cards to form a hand. Each turn they draw a card and they may play as many cards from their hand as they can, however they may only play one weapon (unless they have a special effect in play). 

Weapons are the interesting part about Samurai Sword. They have a certain amount of reach, and each do a certain amount of damage. You determine reach by seeing how many living players there are between you and the one you are attacking. Players are not considered living if they have no health points or no hand, so may be skipped over when counting proximity.

Gameplay is usually fast paced, though it drags on a bit in a seven player game. I quite like this game for the speed in at which each turn goes, but the length of the game overall is a bit off putting. With three players the game goes much faster, however is less entertaining as there are two Ninja against one Shogun.

The art is stunning for this deceptively simple little game, and the cards are sturdy. I especially like the little heart and honour tokens included with the game. It all fits into a nice sized box, and is easily portable.

All in all I enjoy this game and wouldn't hesitate to add it to my collection, as it is a fast paced multiplayer game with a nice hidden role mechanic.

Game a Week: Amusement Park Builder

This week we are looking at my latest amusement- ahem, I mean game. It is still very much a work in progress, and isn't really a "Game a Week" as I have started it well before the beginning of this week, and intend to keep working on it. But I thought I would show what is eating my time.

I've trying really hard to develop a solo game that uses the shake and make mechanic. So I did my best beginnings. I chose the amusement park theme because of Boardgamizer, and quite like the idea.

First pass rules:

1 player
Hard limit: 12 turns
Make the best amusement park possible in a year!
Shake and make: 3 equal segments 1, 2, 1

To play the game you start by randomly placing a face up chit on each of the nine spaces.
The number corresponds to how many customers you will get if you build there.
You then shake the container, and read your results. Depending on colour of the button (brown, white, green) you collect one or two cards of wood, metal or money
You may spend the resources listed to buy new attractions or build roads as listed:
2 wood, 1 metal = minor attraction (x1 customers)
3 wood, 2 metal = medium attraction (x2 customers)
4 wood, 3 metal = major attraction (x3 customers)
2 metal, 1 wood = road
2 money = 1 of either resource
5 money = 2 customers

You can then use your resources to build as much as you like.
Every amusement must be attached by a road to a previous amusement.
If you build a road past an open spot for an amusement, that spot is now defunct and cannot be built upon.
When you build an amusement you gain the number of customers shown on the chit, times by the size of amusement you built. (chit says 2, built a Major amusement, you get 6 customers (2x3))
Once twelve turns are over count out your resources, any set of five is equal to 2 more customers.
Count your customers, that is your score.

I'm trying very hard to design it in such a way that everything will fit in the box I am using for the shaking, so everything is rather tiny.

I like it as a jumping off point, but there is very little tension, and the number of customers gets bigger than I would like. So I need to mull on it quite a bit more, but I thought I would share where I'm at.

If you have any thoughts, I would love to hear them!

Gimme Games: Ascension: Immortal Heroes

As promised last week when we talked about Ascension: Storm of Souls this week we are talking about its expansion pack, Immortal Heroes! I picked this baby up at the ever wonderful Nexus for about $30.

Included in this pack are:

• 30 Honor Tokens split into 15 large red ones, 15 small clear ones
• 184 cards split into 
• two starting decks of eight Apprentices, two Militia
• one Cultist
• two Fanatics
• 16 each of Mystics and Heavy Infantry
• 69 center deck cards
• 40 new "Soul Gem" cards
• 20 new "New Event" cards

My initial impression of this box was not favourable, and I'll tell you why. The rulebook. 100% the rulebook. Unlike the Apprentice Edition or Storm of Souls (admittedly both "starter" sets) this box set does NOT contain all the rules necessary to play the game. If you do no already know how to play the game, you are up a creek on with this. For me this was a major drawback, as I bought this set before Storm of Souls.

In Immortal Heroes they have new event cards, as well as cards that read New Event. However how these event cards work is not explained at all. The New Event cards are explained, as they are new to this set as part of a variant rule. 

Apart from having extremely incomplete rules for a set that says in has everything you need to play, this set adds some new and interesting gameplay. Trophy Monsters now have the addition of Ongoing Trophies, which stay with you, giving their effect each turn. There are also Soul Gems.

Soul Gems are where Immortal Heroes gets its name. Soul Gems are basically heroes from older sets brought back to life for a turn. They are new on the Always Available lineup. These cards are brought into play through either Trophy Monsters or Heroes whose effects tell you to draw a Soul Gem. You then get to use that Soul Gem, or discard it at the end of your turn.

All in all Immortal Heroes is a great expansion, but it is just that- an expansion. If hey had made it clearer that Storm of Souls was required to play, I probably wouldn't have bought it so soon. However regardless of what feels like trickery, I quite enjoy this expansion and would really love the chance to play more of it!

Game a Week: Religion Rally

This Tuesday we're taking a look at a game I made in a few minutes based on a Game Design Showdown prompt of (basically) Religious Micro Game.

This game is a dice and card game which involves fifteen cards and twelve dice.
In it you take on the role of a religion trying to gain followers. You do this by rolling dice.

2-4 players, 10-15 minutes

Game contains:
12 custom six sided dice
15 cards
Rules

The Values of the 12 dice are:
1 Follower x12
2 Follower x8, Priest x4
3 Priest x8 Event x4
4 Revolt x10 Event x2
5 Cruelty x12
6 Crusade  x12

In this game players play as their own Religions, attempting to gain followers.
Players put all the dice into a bag and shake them up. They then blindly select one, two or three dice to roll. They roll them one at a time, resolving the faces as they come up.
If a player rolls a follower, they put that die in their pool
If a player rolls a Priest, they select one other player to reroll a follower in their pool. If they roll anything other than a follower that die goes back in the bag.
If a player rolls an Event, they draw a card. These cards force you to reroll the next die you roll that it names. There are three each of the following cards
Reroll next Cruelty
Reroll next Crusade
Reroll next Revolt
Reroll next Follower
Reroll next Priest
A player may only have one event at a time, and are required to draw a new one when they roll an Event face.
If a player rolls a Revolt they must put one follower from their pool back into the bag
If a player rolls a Cruelty, that die is removed from the game
If a player rolls a Crusade that player must reroll a follower from their pool. Anything other than a follower goes back into the bag.
Once a die is resolved it is either placed into the player’s pool (followers) or returned to the bag (everything else)

Play continues until there are no more dice left to roll. The player with the most followers at this point wins.


I've playtested it a few times to try and even out the dice faces, and this is as good as it is getting, as I am busy working on another game. I hope you enjoyed this week's Game a Week, and I'll see you on Thursday for Gimme Games!

Gimme Games: Ascension: Storm of Souls

A couple of weeks ago I did a review of the Apprentice Edition of Ascension. Today we are going to look at that game again, from a different lens. I bought the expansion starter set Ascension: Storm of Souls at Nexus the other day, and have some additional thoughts to add, due to it's new rules and gameplay.

This expansion set me back about $45, but for a game I really enjoy seems reasonable. The chances of me putting out that money for a blind buy are close to nil- I'd have to know the game first.

Storm of Souls comes with everything you see here:

• The box which can hold all of Storm of Souls, Immortal Heroes and the Apprentice Edition
• 50 Deluxe Honor tokens (25 red ones, 25 clear ones (those gems you see))
• 200 cards split into four ten card starter decks, one Cultist card, six Fanatic cards, 26 each of the Heavy Infantry and Mystic cards, and 101 center deck cards
• The rulebook

My initial impression was of glee, for I like shiny things. The honor tokens caught my eye. The small plastic gems are a nice upgrade, if somewhat unnecessary compared the the cardboard chits, and perhaps easier to forget the value of, as they have no marking as to their value. This hasn't been a problem yet, however.

After that magpie moment I took a look at the cards, shrink wrapped in two decks. I was a little confused until I realised they were not colour coded. This is a drawback for me, as I find the cards take more time to sort after a game. As they move forward with the game, I hope they will consider making more of the cards colour coded, like in the Apprentice Edition.

The next thing I noticed was the slight difference in art on some of the cards. The main set of cards, to be specific (The Apprentice, Militia, Mystic, Heavy Infantry and Cultist). They were more in keeping with the style of the rest of the cards than the ones in the Apprentice Edition. I can't understand why they changed the art for the Apprentice Edition, as the original art (seen in Storm of Souls) is much more cohesive with the rest of the cards.

Then I spotted the Fanatic. A new Always Available card, it costs more than the Cultist to destroy (three instead of two) and is a "Trophy Monster". This is a new mechanic in the Storm of Souls set. Trophy monsters are not banished immediately upon being destroyed, instead they give you their Honor, then stay with you until you banish them. 

Next up were Events. These come into play immediately when flipped into the center row, and are superseded by any new event to enter the row. They add new effects to the board, and have an Event Trophy (which took me a while to figure out- you need to banish a Fanatic to get that effect). 

So far I have played three games with the Storm of Souls set, once with it alone, another with three sets combined and the third with the solo variant. All in all I quite enjoy the new game play offered by the new cards, the events certainly offer a new obstacle to work around in some cases, and new boons in others. 

The solo variant is quite challenging and really requires you to plan your moves to the nearest Honor, for Nemesis will beat you silly if you don't. I will cover how to play solo Ascension on another Gimme Games. Until then, the things to note are:

• The cards in the larger sets are NOT colour coded like the Apprentice Edition. 
• The Honor tokens are now small plastic gems, rather than cardboard chits.
• All of your standard Always Available cards are here, along with the new Fanatic
• There are now cards called event cards
• There is a solo play variant

Tune in next week when we look at Ascension: Immortal Heroes!

Game A Week: Poisoned Cities

Today is Tuesday and that means we have a new game to put up! This one went together with a little help from my friend Sonja (check her blog here). We grabbed some thoughts from Boardgamizer and I pulled a random thought from my head. She helped me tune it up, then with a little more fine tuning from me, we hve the version seen below.

Without further ado, our themes were:

1. city
2. pollution
3. survival (this was a victory condition, but I liked it better as a theme)

Our mechanics were:

1. pattern building
2. chit pull

My first thought with these mechanics was a Zen Garden style city building game, were you had to manage pollution levels to keep your citizens alive. (See my thoughts on Zen Garden here)

This was a little complicated in my mind and would likely have just been a retheme of Zen Garden.

Then I remembered a project I was working on before I bought Dungeoneer (see review here). It had tiles with paths on them that could be built up in sections, forming the board as you go. I shelved it because of my opinion of Dungeoneer and not having ideas of how to do it better.

So now we had a mixture of ideas. The secret design element of Zen Garden, the path building aspect of Dungeoneer. We needed something else, something that screamed survival. Sonja hit this one for me when she mentioned Master Labyrinth, a game I recently bought at Value Village. Instead of a pattern of paths, a pattern of materials.

Thus we have the framework for the theme:

Players are playing as survivors of the nuclear apocalypse. They need to fortify their base in order to survive the constant storms. Their job is to head out into the ruins of the city and gather resources to try and match the building plans they have. First person back to base with all their resources wins.

The game requires two bags of chits. One is the Exploration bag, the other is the Resource bag.
In the Exploration bag you have four kinds of square chits:

1. Roads: These show a road on one side and smog on the other
2. Resource Hubs: These show the number of resources on both sides
3. Radiation: These show radiation on both sides
4. Smog: This tile shows SMOG on both sides

It also requires two d6 (one specialized) and a card for each player listing the trade possibilities.

The game is played by first placing down the Home Base chit in the center of the table. This is where everyone starts and must return to in order to win.

Next one player rolls the exploration die (1d6) and can use any part of the number rolled to pull from the Exploration bag that number of chits, one at a time.

• If they draw a Road they place it Road side up connected to any path on the board. Only one side has to be connected, others can face walls.
• If they draw a Resource Hub they place it attached to any road on the board. It must be attached to an open road. They then drawn the number indicated on the tile from the resource bag and place them face down on top of the hub.
• If they draw a Radiation they must attach it to an open road immediately
• If the draw the SMOG they may flip one or more road tiles equal to the remainder of their Exploration die. The SMOG tile is then replaced in the Exploration bag

After they have drawn and placed all their tiles they may use the remaining sum of the Exploration die to move that number of spaces. A player who moves may not end their turn on the same space they started it on. A player may not move through Radiation or Smog tiles.

When a player lands on a Resource Hub they may take the top tile from the Hub and place it in their Inventory. A player may have no more than four items in their Inventory at once, but may discard an item at any point of their turn. A player cannot earn another resource from a Hub until they land on that Hub. To land on a Hub and take its resource ends your turn.

At the beginning of each round (after the first) one player rolls the Wind die. This die has one face showing wind and another showing a storm. 

If the wind side lands face up all Road tiles currently smog side up are turned road side up again.

If the storm side lands face up all Resource Hubs are refilled to their maximum resource number.

On their turn players may trade resources in to the game in order to gain certain effects:

• Trade goals with another player
• rotate goals: you can choose direction
• trade inventories with another player
• trade one item with another player
• re-roll the exploration die once
• re-roll the wind die once

These and their trade amounts are listed on a card in front of each player.

We've not playtested this one yet to determine starting numbers of each exploration chit, resources, or number of resources per hub, but the framework is there, and I consider it done enough to understand. So that's it for this week.

Meet us next week when take a look at another new game, or follow the blog as it constantly has new content in games, art and resources as well as reviews of places I go!

A Game Mechanic Database

So let me explain.
Yesterday was supposed to be a post I had written about house training a dog. Except I apparently never wrote it. I must have dreamed I did or something.
Oh well, I have nothing new to say on the subject, really, so I suppose that is for the best.
So this week you get your Friday post on Saturday.

And what a post it will be.

In recent times I have been trawling the web about game design, as you know.
My favourite places, the Board Game Designers Forum and the BoardGameGeek Design Forum are pretty slow moving forums, as forums go. With only a few to a few dozen posts in a day (as opposed to hundreds) I tend to blaze through the posts (usually quite soon after they are posted). This means I am stuck without my fix of new information related to a topic of interest. Oh noes!

But have no fear, back reading is here. I've been voraciously tearing through the pages and pages of old threads on both forums. And on both forums I've seen call for the same thing many times over.
A game mechanics database.

A whosit, a whatsit? You read correctly. A database of game mechanics. Not a database of games (BGG does that quite well and completely). But a database of the minute particles that make up a game. This would be useful on many levels for designers. A way to cherry-pick for game design, a reference for how games are similar, a metric for how different games are.

However, there is also one really good thread (that I've seen so far) discussing the creation of such a database.
And the insanity of it.

You see, unlike, say, books, mechanics are incorporeal. They exist only in abstraction. While there can be a near infinite number of both books and mechanics, there are easy to identify qualifiers for books. Not so much with mechanics.

So (as you can read in that thread) things have turned to more a board game components database. A list of physical things that can be found in board games.
Such as bricks/blocks (Jenga, Settlers of Catan, Love Letter), cards (poker, Magic: The Gathering, Dominion) tiles (Forbidden Island, Zen Garden) or boards (Monopoly, Scrabble, Candyland).
All this makes sense from an actual "get things done" point of view. But they aren't as fun of a thought experiment.

So I am still thinking about a game mechanics database. And how such a thing would be catalogued.
My point of view is needing a standardized language for such a project, such that each mechanic would be on equal footing. Leaving out the math and possible to change numbers and wording, and getting right to the core of how the mechanic actually plays out.

Do I think I am the one person on earth with the ability to do this? Gosh no.
Do I think it will entertain my brain in new ways? Yes!
Do I think I can make something of some use to other people? I hope so.

Gimme Games: Dungeoneer: Dragons of the Forsaken Desert

Published in 2005 by Atlas Games the outside of this box proclaims adventure! And also that you need to bring your own six sided dice and tokens. I picked this up at Nexus on clearance for $10, and I'm glad I only bought the one expansion.

Upon opening the box you are faced with two decks of cards and a rule sheet. The rule sheet is about four square feet of densely packed text with few illustrations. Two of the cards, you will read in the set up instructions, require you to cut them up. These will be your miniatures and tokens.

There are fours decks of cards in Dungeoneer. The Quest deck, the Adventure Deck, the Map deck and the Hero deck. There are also six scoring cards that double as either turn summaries or symbol references. The Quest deck contains all of the quests that can be completed. The Adventure deck contains monsters, treasure, 'boons' and 'banes'. The Map deck contains cards that show either places ('sites') or passageways, as well as doors and walls at the interconnecting points. The Hero deck is a set of six cards each with a hero's stats on it.

You need at least one die, plus a way of marking every player's level and health, either with more dice or tokens. You also need two tokens per player to mark out where their 'Glory' and 'Peril' are. Each player starts with a hand of five adventure cards, two face up quests, a hero card and a tracker card. They take turns playing first the 'Dungeonlord' and then as the hero, building the map as they go. The first to either kill off all the other heroes or complete three quests wins.

Honestly I have picked this game up and put it down several times as I was not willing to wade through the mass of rules they call a rules sheet. However I finally waded through and played with a friend today, and I was sorely disappointed.

The game plays out slowly with two people, and the rules are confusing enough to make a simple battle take us minutes of time to try and figure out. You are using other people's Peril points to buy certain things and your Glory to buy other things. As Dungeonlord you are playing the monsters and traps, as hero you are playing, well, your hero.

The artwork, while good, is a bit too dark to read well, even in full light. The cards are of very good quality and are easy to hold. You need a rather large playing surface on which to build out the map. The floor is my first choice, at this point.

I would certainly give this game another shot if there were a more experienced player in the group, or I found a tutorial to follow. However until those conditions are met I will be shelving Dungeoneer and hoping no one asks to play.

Good luck gaming,
~ekobor

Game a Week: Storm Clouds

Iitttttt's Tuesday! And you know what that means?
It means we have another Game a Week!

This week we are going to design the game I'm calling Storm Clouds. It is using the Theme and Victory from Boardgamizer: Storm and Block all Players.

This will be a game for two to six players.


Players each play as a storm front attempting to take over a region. Each player is attempting to block out all other storms from the region.

It is played on a hexagonal board made up of hexes.
There are seven hexes from corner to corner, making each edge a line of four hexes.

In a two or three player game each player starts with 4 gems on the board at the edge nearest to them.

In a four to six player game each player starts with 3 gems on the edge nearest to them, sharing one corner with an opponent.

In a two or three player game each player starts with 6 other stones in their pool.
In a four to six player game each player starts with 7 other stones in their pool.

Players then take turns either placing a new stone or moving a stone one space in any direction.

You may have no more than ten stones of your colour on the board.
You may only place a stone adjacent to one of your own stones.

When moving you may jump over any one of your stones.
Jumping must occur in a straight line.

A stone surrounded by stones of the other colour is captured.
A group of stones of one colour are considered a unit. If they are surrounded by another colour they are all captured.
Captured stones are removed from the game.

Win by removing your opponent from the board.
If there is nowhere to move or place a stone, you have lost by default.
If no one can move or place a stone, the game ends in a tie.


Initial playtests of this game reduced the number of available stones from 18 to 10. There is certainly strategy involved, and no one strategy has yet to come out on top.

We've only playtested a two player game, though three would be easy to envision.
The four to six player games are harder to imagine, and may require a larger board, but the theory should still be the same. For a one week game, I'm going to call it done as is though.

Gimme Games: Alien Frontiers

This week on Gimme Games we have Alien Frontiers!
Now, I don't own this game, so I cannot take pictures of it. However it is the game I played at game group this week.

Opening the box you are presented with a board, a rule book and several smaller boxes. Four boxes hold the player pieces and another holds fuel and ore, while a sixth holds other game components such as the center alien die, the planet tokens and the docking tokens. You also have a score track to keep track of player scores. The player pieces are split between six dice, ten colony domes and 1 rocket for the score board.

The game is played by rolling your dice to see what actions you can preform. The different actions are listed on the board, as well as 'docking' slots. Only a certain number of dice in certain combinations can do specific tasks, such as gather ore, collect fuel or build colonies. The board also shows a desolate planet with sections marked off. Each of these sections is named after a famous sci-fi writer, such as Asimov's Crater.

You start the game with three dice and have to use your dice to build the other three by rolling doubles and paying fuel and ore. We played the three player version which has each player start with seven colonies to place. As the game goes one you can collect more ore and fuel, as well as alien artifacts. These alien artifacts allow you to effect other players and the board.

As you manage to build colonies on the planet the player with the most colonies in a specific area earns points and the title to that area. These deeds give you bonus special abilities and are quite worth having. Each colony you place also earns you a point. The game is over when one player has placed all of their colonies upon the planet, and the player with the most points then wins the game.

The art work in the game is first rate sci-fi, and the pieces are good quality. The pieces that get moved the most are chits, while the cards are strong and matte. The colony pieces are two part plastic with a little city inside of a clear dome- a great way to enchant younger players. The game has optional purchasable "rocket dice", which are basically barrel dice to add to the theme of the dice being your ships.

All in all it was a very fun game, with a lot of strategy and a fair helping of luck. It took us about an hour and a quarter to set up, learn and play the game, between three players. The man who taught us kept referring to the game as "space Yahtzee", and I must admit that term has merit. I would certainly play this game again, though I might reduce the amount of colonies needed to be placed for a shorter play time.

Game a Week: Blacksmiths

Today (and hopefully more in the weeks to come) we are going to look at a very quick game design!

Taking our cues from Boardgamizer we will start with a random Mechanic(s), Theme(s), Victory Condition and an optional Constraint. 

This week's set consists of:

Mechanic: Pool Building

Theme: Armor Building

Victory: Most Reputation Points 

Constraint: Must have cubes

So from this we have a simple theme:

Players play as blacksmiths trying to outdo other blacksmiths and win the patronage of the prince.

This will be a War-like trick taking deck building game for three to six players.

Each player will start with a deck of fifteen cards.
These cards are numbered one through five in three suits:
Horseshoes
Silverware
Armor

Each player draws three cards from their deck.
The first player plays one card and each player follows suit if they can, attempting to be the highest number.
In case of a tie horseshoes trumps armor, silverware trumps horseshoes and armor trumps silverware.
Three way double tie (Same number and suit or same number all three suits) is resolved by playing a bonus round, winner takes all.

Each trick you win gains you an effect based on the winning card's suit
Each trick won by armor earns you one Reputation Point.
Each trick won by horseshoes earns you an extra draw this next turn.
Each trick won by silverware lets you change the card you played in the next round after everyone has played.

Once the trick has been taken, each player draws one card from their deck.
If a player has no cards in their hand at the end of the trick, they draw three cards.
The player who won the trick is now the first player for the next round.

When you win a trick you take all the cards played into your discard pile.
If ever you need to draw and your deck is empty, shuffle your discards to create your new deck.

To win acquire 3 Reputation points or be the last player with any cards.
The Reputation points are represented by cubes, to just barely fulfill the Constraint.

I've played this once using three decks of regular cards (ace through 5 of hearts, diamonds and clubs) and except for the slight confusion over which suit represented which, the game went well. It seems sound.

Any and all opinions, comments and criticisms would be appreciated!

Gimme Games: Gargon: The Amulet of Power

Next up on Gimme Games is GARGON: The Amulet of Power!
Designed by Rüdiger Dorn for Rio Grande Games, Gargon was released in 2001 and appears to be out of print now. It is a card game played with a custom deck of 102 cards. I picked up this game a few years back from Minotaur Games for the hefty sum of $7.

Upon opening the box you are presented with two stacks of cards and a rule page. My first impression of this game was to fall in love with the art and the cards. The art showcases beautifully rich colours and fantastic creatures. The cards are sturdy and have a crosshatched texture, making them sit nicely atop one another and not swing too much. They are slightly smaller than the standard playing card, but the quality of the material makes them easier to hold

There are six suits in the Gargon deck, Red (phoenixes), Purple (gargoyles), Grey (dragons), Blue (pegasi), Yellow (manticores) and Green (faeries). Each card offers a full card piece of art, a number from zero to fifteen and a series of  'amulets' from zero to five on a single card. These numbers and amulets are repeated in each corner like a standard playing card, making them read easily.

The game requires 3-5 players, and means it. The game does not offer ways of reducing numbers of players, and that is a big drawback for me. However I could easily see adding another set to the game to make it accommodate more. The rule page offers a great overview, telling the story behind the game as well as the way to play.

The rules are laid out in a very easy to follow fashion, and the game itself is quite simple. You are attempting to capture the most amulets by defeating your opponent's cards. The lower the number on the card, the more amulets it is worth. The higher the number, the more power the card has. Cards of one suit cannot attack cards of another. Whoever captures a suit's zero number card doubles their points from that suit in the scoring round.

Play passes by allowing players to lay down one to three cards in various combinations. Once each player has followed the trend of the starting player by laying down a combination of cards, all cards are flipped and battles take place. All cards of a certain suit are compared to each other, with the highest card winning the battle and being acquired by the winning player for their scoring pile. Each player who lost a card then draws a card to replenish their hand.

The most tedious part of this game is scoring. One must count up the amulets they have won, by counting the amulets upon the cards. You also have to factor in who got the most of each suit, as they get bonus cards, and who got the zeroes, as that doubles your score for that suit. While only simple addition (and possible multiplication), it takes a fair amount of time for all the players to do this, and makes the game feel like a complicated method of getting you to practice math.

Gameplay is quick, though the game can last up to an hour. If a player experiences analysis paralysis it can bog the game down quickly. But as a light friendly game it is certainly a winner.
All in all I enjoy Gargon: the Amulet of Power and will certainly keep it in my collection for the years to come.

Game Design Resources

I am not a game designer. Nor will I ever (likely) be. However I do find game design to be a very interesting topic, and as such have collated quite the collection of references and resources. Since that is what I do when I pour myself into a hobby- I make lists of resources. However it is often the case that my interest in the hobby wanes (only to wax again later), and I am left with list upon list of resources and no current use for them!

If this is the case, why shouldn't you, the intrepid game designer to be, benefit from my hours of web searching, scrutinizing and scanning? My time spent ranking and rating and otherwise spent categorizing?
You should! As such I am starting a series on resource sharing.

First up is... The Designer's Resource List  from BoardGameGeek.
Now over on the 'Geek they've got a whole forum section divided off for board game design. Right at the very top you'll find this list. What I like about this list is that it has quite a few things on it! What I don't like is that it hasn't been updated in a year, and that, well, there are so many things on it! It can get kind of bogged down- especially with the very minimal descriptions given.

Next we have the aforementioned BoardGameGeek Game Design Forum.
This forum is a great place to talk about board game design.
Pluses: Active and friendly with good resources available in the pinned threads.
Minuses: Everything is muddled together. You have your mechanics questions next to your theme discussions next to your playtest requests and everything just gets a bit lost.

A Brief Crash Course on Game Design is another thread on the BGG Design Forum.
This thread discusses in a nicely detailed manner all the steps to take an idea from the paranoia stage straight through to prototyping and production. It offers a nice set of questions to ask yourself of your game to see where it is heading.
It also gives advice on playtesting, both by yourself, with others and in blind runs.
the only thing I don't like about this thread is that the majority of the time is spent explaining production of prototypes, playtesting and publishing and not much attention is paid to the actual steps of designing the idea.

Exploratory Learning Through ...Games links to the course syllabus of San Diego State University's course EDTEC 670.
This site is a little hard to follow, not being a student. But if you take the time the resources it offers are quite good. With exercises and design outlines as well as 'required' reading.
the Board Game Analysis worksheet is great for cementing your ideas about what you want from your game. The Board Game Design worksheet helps you discover and utilize different mechanics and pieces for your game. the First Steps article is a great introduction on how to actually come up with ideas and design thoughts.
The one drawback is that everything is oriented to making an educational game. If that is not your intent you have to draw from the gist of the message, rather than the actual content.

Offering a concrete example How to Learn Board Game Design and Development walks you through the design process is simple steps, as well as offering several definitions up-front.
I love the list of questions asked, as well as the card game example used. The whole thing is easy to follow and gives an especially nice overview of the playtesting process.
It also offers a nice, though small, list of places to seek out more information on the topic of game design.

The Board Game Designers Forums is an entire forum dedicated to board game design.
It includes subforums for Mechanics Discussion, Playtesting, Thematic Elements, and General Design as well as many more.
It also allows you to have a mini blog on their site, as well as game journals to share your content.
It has the plus of being very diverse and informative, but it is a slow going forum and the content on the rest of the site is rarely, if ever, updated.

/r/tabletopgamedesign
I'll admit. I know very little about reddit. All I know is that this subreddit is very active and very informative.

The Ten Things Every Game Needs is an article listing... the ten things every game needs.
From Rules and Inertia to Fun and Flavour this article covers all the bases. While you could probably do with out one or two (strategy isn't strong in Candyland, to mention one) I would sense woe for anyone trying to disregard them all.

Back to the 'Geek for a couple of Board Game Mechanics.
This link takes you to the BGG's list of board game mechanics, which each have a definition and example games. While by no means the be all end all of mechanics lists, it is certainly a good start.

Offering ways to evaluate games and more content is Games Precipice, a blog.
everything on this blog has some value, so there is too much to list. But I will certainly mention (again) their How to Evaluate Games series. Looking at things from a game balance as well as a production stand point, this is a great yard stick to hold up.

Boardgamizer is a random generator that you can submit ideas to. It offers up Mechanics, Theme, Victory and an optional Constraint from which you can build a game.
It is great for getting the creative juices flowing and for jumping off from. It also offers some hover-over definitions for some of its mechanics.

For today, that's all I'll post. But maybe in the future we'll see more of my go-to places for this topic and others.

Happy Designing!

Tabletop Day!

Yesterday was International Tabletop Day!
Congratulations and a big heap of thanks to all those involved in making this day a reality!

Tabletop, for those who don't know (as I didn't until recently), is an online video series hosted by Wil Wheaton and populated with some of his moderately famous gaming friends. In the series they play and demo board games for your amusement and edification. They explore the rules and pieces while making an entertaining watch.

International Tabletop Day is a day to gather friends and family and game your heart out! Lots of locations world wide offer tournaments and contests with give-aways and prizes. There is sure to be a location near you. And if there isn't, you should start one! And while the day may be over for this year there is no harm in planning your own board game get together- or planning for next year!

My day saw me at the Kingston Gaming Nexus with my mother, where we tried out three games new to us.

First up was Zen Garden:

Zen Garden is a deceptively simple game requiring you to make patterns from tiles to form a garden. There are several modes of play, but we only cracked the first.

It seems we were the first at Nexus to play this game, as the tiles still needed punching out!

We played this twice to a tie.

Next up was the Tabletop sponsored Love Letter!

A quick little game, this one requires you to guess at your opponent's hand in order to acquire the enduring love of a princess. 

We played this once and mum beat my pants!

Finally we played a game of Seven Dragons!

A dominoes style game where parts of the card must match up. You are trying to be the first to match up seven of your hidden goal dragon colour.

I won the one game we played of this, though mum was raring for a rematch. 

However food took precedence.

So all in all it seems mum and I are at a tie! 

What game should we play to break this tie? 

Post your suggestions in the comments!

Gimme Games: Ascension: The Deck Building Game

My recent forays into game design pulled up a rather interesting phenomenon that I had missed in my several year hiatus. Deck building games (DBGs). Starting with Dominion in 2008 and still going strong, DBGs take the traditional model of Collectible Card Games (CCGs) and flip it on it's head. DBGs don't start with players having their own individualized decks of playing cards, instead the point of the game is to build that deck, from a set (or several sets) of standardized cards. 

Ascension came on the scene back in 2010 and has had many expansions since then, and is still going strong. With the next expansion coming out June 2014 I see no heralds to its demise. After much deliberation, I picked up the Apprentice Edition at my local game store, the Kingston Gaming Nexus, and cracked it open as soon as I got home. Let me say, I was not disappointed in my purchase.

The Apprentice Edition is a two player starter set of the game, and came in around $13. It has everything you need for two players to begin the game. It includes 110 cards, 30 Honor tokens and the game mat/rules sheet. My first impression of the game was positive. I love the art, the cards feel sturdy and are easy to read. My main gripes were that the cards are very slick (leading to them sliding all over the place) and that the rules sheet is printed on the back of the game mat (meaning you can't reference it while playing).

The rules are clearly written with plenty of pictures to illustrate the points being made. Frankly, I think this is the easiest game to learn that I ave played in a very long time, thanks to the rules set up and simplicity. The mat printed on the reverse side is also very well done, if a bit busy. It has rules references across the board. One could probably figure out the majority of the game from the game mat alone. It tells you (facing each player) the purpose of the 'center row', what to do on and at the end of your turn, what each of the three main symbols stands for, which way up to place your deck and discards, as well as information about the honor pool, the void, always available cards and what cards to discard when.

The cards are split into three colour classes, White, Grey and Black. White cards are not worth Honor and form your starting deck. Grey cards are always available to acquire or 'banish'. Black cards are monsters, heroes and constructs available to be banished or acquired as they are turned over. 

As for the art, it is all beautifully done in a pencil art style. The cards show a nice unity of creation, especially since all the art work is done by one artist. The cards themselves are relatively unambiguous in their layout, though some starting players can confuse the cost to be paid with the benefit received. Other than that one small issue the cards are clear and easy to read with any confusing text being immediately explained. The flavour text is unobtrusive- perhaps too much so as it can be hard to notice on cards with longer effects.

The Honor tokens are split, with half being one point honor tokens and the other half five points. In this set they are printed cardboard chits, however in larger sets are actually plastic gems. I believe I prefer the chits myself, as they have the number worth printed on them, however the lure of pieces that look like shiny gems is undeniable.

As for game play, the game is played (like all DBGs) by building your deck larger, and attempting to capture the most honor. You acquire honor by buying Heroes and Constructs to put in your deck and banishing Monsters. These heroes, constructs and monsters come from the center row and the always available cards. You acquire Heroes by collecting Runes from your hand, and defeat Monsters by collecting Power. As cards are removed from the center row, new cards fill the gaps from the Portal deck, opening up new options. Each time your deck runs out of cards you shuffle your discarded cards and start a new deck, essentially folding in the new cards you have acquired with the old ones you have used. 

The game plays quickly with turns taking less than a minute, and the whole game lasting about thirty. It is quick to set up, especially thanks to the game mat and distinctly colour-coded cards. The longest individual part of the game is probably scoring, which requires only simple addition. The player with the most honor, from chits and deck wins! 

Two final notes: while it is possible that the bigger sets of Ascension go further in depth as to the story of the game, don't expect too much exposition from the Apprentice Edition. It does not adequately explain the storyline of the game or the setting. If you are looking for a game to tell a story with, this may not be the game for you.
The second thing is there is a free app of this game in the iOS store here, letting you try the first set of the game with no risk. All other sets of the game are available for purchase within the app itself.

All in all Ascension is a very fast-paced enjoyable fantasy card game that is easy to teach and easier to learn. If you're looking for a quick and cheap in to discover the world of deck building games, I think I've found your answer!