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.

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

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!