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Sorry for the short hiatus last week, folks--work was crazy and all that. However, I feel confident that this will keep the "Ken's Back" meme going for at least another solid two or three years.
Today's talk--Nightfall: Blood Country, Carnival, and Quarriors! Rise of the Demons. Join us, won't you?
Just going to jump into the gaming talk this week, as I've got a lot to cover. I will say I'm a solid "meh" on the Oscar nominations, and I would talk more about my PS3 gaming as Black Barney has requested...but I'm embarassed to admit the only thing I'm playing is WWE All-Stars. Man, this game is the king shit, with mile-high body slams, somersaulting leg drops, and bone-crushing clotheslines; the only way it could be better is if they had included incoherent Ultimate Warrior promos.
I Lie Awake, and Dread the Lonely Nights...I'm Not Alone
Quarriors! is a game that's sort of fallen from grace a bit
after a huge surge of initial hype. It was one of the many games from the "Comeback Kid" Wizkids this year, and while the 130 custom dice mixed with deckbuilding concepts had a lot of folks excited, they soon ran into certain dice dominating the game as well as problems with a runaway leader.
I still enjoy the game, but in particular the runaway leader issue does seem to happen more often than I'd like. Usually it's due to a lucky buy or a fluke Assistant making it through and getting an early cull going.
I was hoping that the new expansion might breathe new life into the game, as it hasn't hit the table nearly as often as I thought it would initially. The expansion is pretty much exactly as I'd envisioned it, production-wise. Because the cards are separate from the dice, you can make all new creature cards for the existing dice. Mix in a new creature type and the all new cursed Quiddity (think Dominion's Curse cards) to increase player interaction, slap an affordable price tag on it, and you should have a recipe for success.
While the expansion does a great job adding variety and interaction, it doesn't really do anything to fix the core problems with Quarriors. It still makes sense to purchase the most expensive die you can. Those that cull early end up with a massive advantage. And now, instead of Dragons dominating the entire pool, you get Demons, which are every bit as bad and completely dominate the games that they're in.
The Demons are at least interesting in that they have a tendency to nuke the board, score, then remove themselves from the
game entirely. But they have massive attack and defense, making them hard to kill--then they destroy everything in play, let you score a 5-point burst, and remove themselves from the game, keeping your deck slim for purchasing another Demon.
Cursed Quiddity is cool, but it's easy to have a pool of cards that either have very little focus on these new "evil" Quiddity dice, or target players with Cursed Quiddity but end up with nothing in the bank to actually get it out. The Cursed Quiddity is bad to have for sure as you have faces with "0" Quiddity on them as well as the triple-burst side. Right now, the only effect from a triple-burst icon is that you gain another Corrupted Quiddity, but the designers are promising new triple-burst interactions in the near future. But in games where precious few of these dice make it into player's bags, along with the fact that only one of the six sides has the triple burst, means you can go entire games where this never happens.
Despite everything I've said here, I actually like Quarriors! despite some of its problems. There's no denying the tactile awesomeness of chucking fistfuls of cool custom dice, and unleashing your monsters to crush your opponents' beasties has a visceral thrill to it. It's a good game for turning off your brain and enjoying for what it is.
Rise of the Demons has some very cool stuff going on, and if you're a fan already this is a no-brainer. a And to be fair, to rectify the problem with having few cards dealing with Corrupted Quiddity, the rules offer suggestions for having more cards with cursed effects flying. I don't think that this expansion will change anyone's mind who has already written off the game, but I appreciate the expansion model they've used here and despite the flaws in the system, this is worth brining out every other month or so.
Basically, if you think you'll like this expansion, you probably will. That's the best way I can sum it up, I think.
But I Can Live and Breathe and See the Sun in the Wintertime
As I detailed in my "Best of 2011" list, Nightfall was my third favorite game of last year. It probably rated more table time than any other game I played for the year; the base game was excellent but I knew that it was the framework for something more. It covered the basics of getting minions into play, blocking and attacking, and doing direct damage, but it was fairly obvious there was plenty of design space to cover.
Nightfall: Martial Law was the first expansion/standalone, and it brought with it an attempt to expand the available strategies. Pretty much before Martial Law, you could do minions or direct damage; control options were limited to a few "Counterspell" type cards. Martial Law brought with it more of that type of card as well as addtional cards that could stay in play, providing additional benefits. It also brought with it the Feed mechanic, where you could repeat the effect of a card, for a cost.
Martial Law took a good game and made it a great one. Now, Nightfall: Blood Country (David Gregg, Alderac Entertainment Group, 2-5 players, 45 min.) attempts to pick up the ball and expand the game space even further.
It's interesting to note right off the bat that Blood Country is not a standalone set. You'll need either the base game or Martial Law to play with these cards. Also, you'll notice right away that this game comes with very little in the way of new rules. The box is surprisingly small, containing only the selection of new draft and archive cards. The focus on this expansion is not adding additional rules, but instead providing additional strategies; to me, those are the best kind of expansions, if done
correctly.
I think the thing I like most here is the number of minions with "In Play" effects. Before, most minions would have a one-time effect when played, possibly an ongoing effect on occasion, but otherwise they were meat shields of attack, health, and defense. Now you have cards like Maggie Hawke, who you can inflict one point of damage on to gain 1 influence. You've got Shadow Hound, probably one of my favorite cards in the set, who you can destroy at the start of any phase to destroy a target minion. That's an amazing amount of reactionary control, no more worrying about getting caught with your vampiric pants down when the wolves come howlin'...send in the Hound.
Feed is explored a little more thoroughly this time, and the big thing that the cards like to play with in this expansion set is the type of Wounds you have. Prior to now, the types of Wounds only mattered in endgame tie-breakers (which was admittedly kind of lame.) Now, several cards key off of specific wound types. Flash Frenzy allows you to inflict direct damage on a player, but now you can Feed it by discarding a Bite wound. Rabid Rex has a comes-into-play effect where a player receives wounds from the stack until he receives a Bite or Burn wound. This isn't likely ever to be more than a Wound or two, but the lure of "hitting the jackpot" and handing them four or five wounds at once is incredibly tempting.
The one truly new rule is the alternate way to establish the public archives at the start of the game, and it is a HUGELY welcome change. Previously, players would draft cards, eventually choosing a few for the public archive, and only then were the rest of the public archives dealt out and populated. Now, you deal out public archive cards at the very start equal to eight minus the number of players. This lets players make much more intelligent drafting choices as they get a peek at what some 
of the public cards would be. It used to suck pretty badly to draft a pair of cards that worked well with each other, only to discover that none of the chain colors really matched up very well with the common archives.
I really enjoy this set, even if there are a couple of misfires, most notably Wight Trash. It's a funny joke, but the card is so difficult to get into play and attack with it that I'm not sure why they bothered. But hey, they can't all be winners.
For games like this, expansions always pose the question of whether they're a.) satisfying for existing fans and b.) enough to lure in people who may not have enjoyed the game before. For a.) I think it's a solid win. Rather than flood players with a ton of new rules, this expansion takes the existing framework and continues to breathe life into different concepts that expand the gameplay possibilities in some subtle and not-so-subtle ways. The ability to play more control-style decks is welcome, as it is a nice change of pace from aggro, aggro, aggro. As to b.), it's tough to say. I think that you already need to be a fan of the game for this set to have a solid impact, as some of the things it's offering are not things that are readily apparent. The lack of new rules may make folks say that this is more of the "same ol', same ol'."
I disagree, even though it will be nice to see some rules additions for their next set, The Coldest War. Until then, this remains a great, fun deckbuilder that's full-bore interaction, backstabbing, and bloody vamp-on-wolf-on-ghoul action. If you haven't seen me talking endlessly about Nightfall before, and you disliked Dominion due to the multi-player solitaire feel, well, this is about as opposite to that as it gets.
So that's my verdict--a solid, fun and welcome addition for fans, but not likely to pick up many of the unconverted. It's a great price, and the new cards offer a lot of new strategies, so if you're already a fan of Nightfall, go pick up Nightfall: Blood Country post-haste.
(Thanks to AEG for providing this review copy.)
All the Cheap Thrill Seekers, the Vendors and the Dealers
The light card game market is a pretty crowded one. People in general are more comfortable with cards, and it's easy to take a game with simple rules, shuffle 'em up, and play. The good Dr. Knizia probably has three dozen offerings of this type alone.
Carnival (Cherylin Joy Lee Kirkman, Dice Hate Me Games, 2-4 players, 30 min.) is cut from the same mold as some of those card gaming classics, but tries to spice things up with action dice that players can use to take different actions during a turn.
The framework of the game is set collection, as players are rival Carnival owners looking to acquire the parts they need to get 4 of their 5 rides up and running. While there are different rides, they all have the same "parts"--Seats, Banners, Lights, and Materials. Again, four out of five of those sets, you win the game. There are "Wild" cards that can be used to substitute any part, but if you complete a ride naturally it is protected.
Protected from what, you might ask? Well, that's where the dice come in. On a player's turn, they can either choose to pitch a Wild card from their hand or in play plus a number of cards from their hand and re-draw the number discarded. Otherwise, they roll three dice. There is a small player board showing what each die result can be used for. A "1" will let you draw the top card of the deck, a 2 the top card of the discard pile.
It's after that, things get a little sneakier. A "3" lets you steal a random card from an opponent's hand. A "4" does the same thing, but after stealing a card you give them one from your hand--a perfect way to dump duplicates you don't need. The "5" allows you to swap a card from your Midway for someone else's Midway (keeping each Midway legal, with no duplicate parts.) Last but not least the "6" is the Midway Steal, where you simply take a card from someone's Midway and put it in your own, then discard a card from your hand. That's where the protection comes in with these Midway steals and swaps; a natural set gets locked in and cannot be swapped or stolen.
You're choosing two of the three dice to take actions with, and you can take the same action more than once if you have two of the same result. If you roll three of a kind, you get to take three actions of the same kind, but all three must be taken.
I didn't mention the Tickets. You start the game with three of these, and they each give you the choice of one of three abilities. Once per turn, you can discard a ticket to re-roll some or all of your dice; add or subtract one pip from a die; or, on an opponent's turn, you can discard a ticket to block a player's action, cancelling it. This ties in to the natural sets, because if you do complete a natural set and have fewer than three tickets, you get one from the supply.
Mostly, the game comes down to really light, short-term tactical decisions. Breaking up an opponent's set when they get
close to winning, or stealing a part you need. The Tickets have a certain bluffing element as since they're once per turn, an opponent might bait you to use one with an action only to follow it up with the action they *really* wanted. There's a certain degree of hand management, because the only time you receive any 'free' draws is if you end your turn with fewer than three cards, then you get to draw up to three.
The hand management and the dice sometimes conspire to bring the game down, though. Since you can't play duplicate parts, if the dice don't co-operate or you don't luck into drawing Wilds, you'll spend turns doing little or nothing. This is a bigger problem in the endgame when players have their rides locked down, or there are no non-duplicate parts to steal or trade. In fact, there's a rules issue here too as the rules dicatate you *must* take two actions but don't mention what to do when no two actions are both legal. A non-rules lawyer like myself understands this means you just forfeit the action(s) in question, as there's no other solution that makes sense, but the rules don't mention what to do at all.
That means that most games of this will run quickly and cleanly, but you'll hit a game where because of the composition of each player's Midway along with hand clogging, you'll get several uneventful turns as players are unable to utilize their dice nor cycle or get fresh cards.
Carnival is a cute game, and is certainly suited for the casual gaming market that it's aimed squarely at. Again, this is a crowded design space, but the dice spice things up and make it more interesting. If you're already loaded with many "games with your significant other" games, you are safe to give this a pass; but if not, there's enough card drawing and dice throwing that you could do much worse than Carnival. As a side note, my wife enjoyed the game quite a bit and we fired off several games in a row. It's never going to be a favorite, but it's fluffy and fun in small doses.
(Thanks goes out to Gamesalute.com for providing this review copy.)
And that's going to do it for this extremely belated edition of Next of Ken! Tune in next week for more scintillating opinions and EXCITING REVIEWS~! Or, more babbling about WWE video games. Either way, I'll see ya in seven.
