“Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick.”

The Battle Of Five Armies is a game that invites adventure and bristling hope as your warriors clash against the mountain-side, spill their blood in the valley, and have their say in the fate of the free peoples that has been thrown into peril.  This game has been a homecoming of sorts for me as I've never quite managed to experience War of the Ring, so I approached The Battle Of Five Armies with pent-up expectations and bated breath.  As Gandalf scorched my dark minions leaving charred black flesh on the countryside or hideous vampire-bats dug and clawed into my furrowed Dwarven eye-sockets - the game damn well delivered with fanfare and blasting horns.

When pouring over the beautiful board, leafing through the large pile of cards, or fondling the excellent miniatures like the one ring you will quickly realize that Ares games has gone all out.  This is a huge production that is primarily focused on reverence and respect for the source material.  It takes J.R.R. Tolkien's work and brings it into the cardboard realm with class and panache.  The way the different units function, the unexpected drama, and the enormously satisfying mechanisms behind the numerous heroes make for a game of emotional excitement and lasting investment. 

The core strategic system of rolling several dice which dictate the options you may perform on your turn is executed with the level of refinement you'd expect after seeing this mechanic first utilized in War of the Ring.  Some turns the dice will taunt you as all you are able to do is muster troops or draw cards and you will have to roll with the punches.  The dice pools are large enough that typically you're afforded a pretty strong range of options, but the game still stresses this over-arching mechanical narrative of make the best with what you have.  You must optimize tactical choices while keeping those strategic considerations in mind and this provides for a meaty and satisfying experience.

The Shadow Army is up against the clock as they must gather their forces of darkness and advance upon the conglomeration of foreign allies in order to overwhelm before the extraordinarily effective heroes enter play.  Each turn the Fate Track stands to advance 1 or more spaces due to a tile draw and at different prescribed points on the track the Free Peoples gain access to a new hero.  The way the Fate tile draw works is one of the more interesting mechanisms as it takes advantage of a push your luck element that often births moments of vocal celebration or pain.  The Shadow player draws a random Fate tile and then may discard it to redraw if he wishes.  The catch is that you can only re-draw if the Free Peoples player decides to activate more than 1 of their generals.  Specific special characters act as generals on the Free Peoples side and they are granted additional abilities if they receive an activation token.  So both sides kind of play this risk/reward game of choosing to take more at the risk of it biting them in their haunches.  It makes for a small moment of excitement integrated into the strategy that is one of the many bright spots in this design.

The tempo of the game is formulated due to the back and forth of each side executing a single one of their action dice they rolled at the beginning of the round.  Both sides will wish to muster more troops, move troops they already have on the board, and fight wherever their numbers allow victory.  The vast asymmetry of the design appears in these actions in addition to the units available, as the Free Peoples' dice boast a wild symbol but the Shadows player's dice possess a Lidless Eye.  This symbol is used to great effect to spur the Goblins climb over the surrounding mountains as they look to descend upon the valley and wreak havoc in a massive strategic flanking maneuver.  Small touches like this show the design team's focus is in the right place.

While the strategic framework is solid and a huge selling point, the battle system is really the touchstone element as the game at its heart is a series of small conflicts as you attempt to shift momentum and deliver carnage.  The conflict is spurred via small pools of dice with card-play being an integral facet of modifying the results and tweaking the outcome.  Each type of unit in the game (Wargs, Great Orcs, Men, Elves, etc.) has their own Unit Card which grants a special effect.  Both sides choose one card for each round of battle and then you roll a specific number of black colored standard six-siders depending on the number of units from your card you have participating in the battle.  If you score at least one hit on the black dice you trigger the bonus effect which can be devastating.  The unit effects typically are strong and evocative from a setting perspective - Wargs tend to chase down opponents with low morale while Dwarves are stout and resilient.  Each unit has style and provides for effective tactical considerations.

Another great facet of the battle system is a simple and elegant approach to terrain.  The map pictures different regions with hills, mountains, plains, and swamp.  Each side takes the unit they have the most of in the battle and compares the terrain type they possess to their opponent's - if either possess the terrain type of the area you are fighting in you get to draw extra cards which may affect the battle or be utilized when executing one of your action dice.  It's a simple and easy to resolve system that doesn't have an overbearing effect on the game. 

The final element of battles is the inclusion of heroes and leadership tokens.  Each side places a number of leadership tokens on different armies at the beginning of the turn.  When rolling dice in a struggle, each side may re-roll a number of dice equal to their leadership.  Leadership is comprised of 1 for each token plus the total leadership from heroes accompanying the unit.  This is hugely powerful as armies with leadership can trounce a larger poorly led force.  Thematically this really works with Tolkien's narrative as we see an enormous effect from notable characters in his stories. 

This game is one of the richest I own in terms of bringing about a sense of theme while integrating outside source material.  The heroes all function in appropriate and clever ways as you find Bilbo disappearing from combat as he places the ring on his finger or Beorn acting as an army unto himself and tearing through much larger forces.  I also love how they treat Thorin, penalizing The Free Peoples if he moves away from the Front Gate which is perfect when comparing to his personal struggle to leave his post in The Hobbit.  The Great Eagles and Bats swooping in, Gandalf tearing it up, and Bolg at the fore of the black army all just deliver on the promise of the definitive Battle of Five Armies game.

This is a great game.  I can't help but speculate that buzz has kind of fell off mostly due to this title's appeal residing explicitly in those who already own War of the Ring.  While this doesn't have quite the epic scope War of the Ring has, Battle of Five Armies is an immensely enjoyable strategy game of resounding narrative and utmost reverence.  Despite the fact that this is a middle-weight two player game that will be difficult to get off the shelf for my gaming lifestyle, I cannot help but grasp this one with a firm two hands and appreciate all of the small touches which contribute to the greater whole.  This fantastic game delivers on the climax of The Hobbit in grand style and it's deserving of a fate that's far greater than it's gotten thus far.

Looking back, 2014 was the year I basically quit playing new games. This was due to a couple of factor, not the least of which was a general sense of chaos in my gaming life between August and November, when most new titles come out. But at least some of it was conscious, because there were a lot of moments when I just decided to play something I already knew instead of whatever the hot game was. That makes me sound a little snooty, as if I'm really proud of the fact that I'm above the lowly activity of playing new games. The truth is that I was better able to find the best way for me to enjoy the hobby, and in my case that meant playing more games that I already owned, or that had already been given enough time for their quality to not be as informed by that early rush of hype

Sometimes I let my inner Brett Michaels get the best of me.  When it comes to boardgame themes and settings I need a chance just to get away.  I gotta get a break from the same old, same old.  So in my never ending quest, looking for nothing but a good time, I tend to search every nook and cranny for weird games.  Make no mistake, The Bloody Inn is WEIRD.  

OK, take everything you read in this MUTANT CHRONICLES preview over at Gameshark.com with a grain of salt.

Being a reviewer can be an odd job. All sorts of games come across your desk and you take on what you can, hoping that you can in some small way guide people to the games they will love. Since turning The Giant Brain towards journalism, I’ve always wanted to help out small publishers and local designers and you can’t get much more local than someone who lives a literal stones throw from my house (I haven’t tried this as I might smash a window).

I don’t often talk about how much I like Power Grid. On F:AT, it’s usually regarded as one of “those” games, the kinds liked by boring accountant-types and fun-murderers. Besides being unfair both to Power Grid and to accountant types who aren’t so boring, it’s simply untrue. Indeed, another reason that I don’t usually let on much about my love of Power Grid is that EVERYONE I KNOW LOVES IT. I forget the last time I went to a large organized game night with at least one table of this Friedemann Friese favorite, no fooling. Perhaps in a feeble attempt to be cool (at a board game party, mind you), I downplay my affection for that big green box.

The strange thing is that in my immediate circle Power Grid has crossed a lot of boundaries. It’s been embraced by thinkers, trash-talkers, experienced gamers, and neophytes alike. I’ve known more than a few people who have been introduced into the hobby through it. So when I think about Power Grid, I find myself pondering why it’s such a success.

Power Grid was one of the earliest obsessions I had in board gaming, one that followed me through all of my gaming circles. It was one of those rare games that appealed to me instantly, where I knew right away that I HAD to buy a copy. I ended up getting it from my wife as a wedding present, which obviously gives it some sentimental value as well. But beyond that, I just find it to be enormously satisfying, on both a strategic level and a experiential one.

The premise is straightforward. Each player is tasked with hooking up a series of cities to provide them with electricity. The game is divided into a turns, where players auction off power plants that run on various kinds of fuel, like coal or oil. After buying fuel for your plants, you then connect cities to your grid and power them to make money. When someone has connected to a certain number of cities, the person who is able to provide the most cities with power (based on the capacities of their plants and the fuel they have on hand) wins the game.

A couple of mechanical touches are worth highlighting here. First of all, the fuel market has been justly celebrated as a great abstraction of supply-and-demand economics. Each individual fuel token is placed on a track with increasing numbers. The first person to buy a barrel of oil will pay less than the guy who is buying fifth or sixth, especially if numbers 2-4 are buying it as well. Each turn, new resources come to the market at a preset rate, but it’s easy to see a situation where the price keeps increasing because you are using more than is being produced. It’s a fascinating system because it can be manipulated, but also because Friese has built in a small observation about limited resources. He’s clearly got at least a little interest in the environmental impact of the race for energy. You can buy wind farms that give you power for nothing, and the coal and oil plants are depicted with smokestacks that belch fumes into the gray sky.

Another distinction in Power Grid is the draconian catch-up mechanism. The player in last place will buy their fuel and connect their cities first, which will save a lot of money. This is not a simulational consideration, but rather a design one. It’s clear that if it wasn’t there, you could call the leader about a third of the way through. It’s an artless solution to that problem, but in practice it becomes another element to manage. This is one of those things that will drive some people crazy, but it’s never bothered me much. It’s not like it allows bad players to win. Rather, it allows the game to absorb a little bad luck or extenuating circumstances. That it’s pretty gamey is unfortunate, but it’s a net positive.

Power Grid is often lumped into the broad category of Eurogames like Puerto Rico and Caylus, but it’s not an entirely accurate classification. It has a lot more in common with old-fashioned train games, especially the classic Empire Builder series. This isn’t just speculation either; Power Grid was originally released in German as a game called Funkenschlag. There were many mechanical similarities, but in Funkenschlag the routes were drawn in little crayons on the board, just like in Empire Builder. When Power Grid was released, (still called Funkenschlag in Germany) Friese made the wise decision to render these connections printed on the board. Perhaps the most impressive thing was that he was able to create a game that made such the genre highly accessible and pretty quick, without sacrificing much in the way of depth. And it makes sense mechanically too. Nothing feels bolted on or showy, and the entire thing feels much more thematic than the average Eurogame.

If that’s true, then why would anybody not like it? Because sometimes Power Grid feels just a little too much like bean-counting. Money is a constant factor, and it’s a running joke that you’re always exactly one dollar short of what you need. That invites a lot of analysis, and the game doesn’t do much to discourage it. It’s not that it’s necessary to compute everything to win. I am a very intuitive player, and I’ve won my share of games by knowing broad ideas of when to buy what and evaluating purchases without counting every buck. But it becomes a problem because those who DO math it all out will bog down the game for everyone else.  And in a broader sense, it’s just a patchy design. A lot of things feel like they were put in to keep the game from breaking, like the catch-up mechanism. There’s not a lot of finesse, and forgetting a minor rule, especially in the power plant auction, can make the whole game stop working until someone figures out what happened. Such temperamental design is unfortunate. The fact that the game needs to be resolved by the tie-breaker about half the time also feels a little weird.

Then why on earth does everyone love it so much? Because at its core, Power Grid does what Eurogames do best: it rewards good play. There are no cheap wins. The victor has earned it through good decisions. But it offers more than just a strategic reward. The challenges presented through the game are the result of the other players, not some phoney difficulty built into the design. It’s the sort of game you play with your head up. And because of the strong thematic tie-in, an experienced player can guide new people through it and show them the greatness. Along with Acquire, it’s one of my favorite games to introduce people to economic games. It understands the basic pleasure of being a tycoon.

I’m not being objective here. I know that it’s a number-crunching game, and I know that it’s mechanical clumsiness could have been sanded away. But Power Grid has been one of my constants, something that I’ve always enjoyed even when I moved on to killing orcs and space aliens in my games. Nostalgia won’t save lousy games, and Power Grid has shown it’s quality many times over. And I’ll be playing it for years to come, if for no other reason than I can shake a box and find four opponents at every game night.

OK you’ve read the name, feel free to hum a few bars of the R.E.M. song in your head so that we can get on with the review.  You good?  Alright, let’s move on.  

The fox in the forest is a game of wonderful contradictions. It is light in footprint, consisting only of 33 cards and a handful of scoring tiles. Then, that tiny footprint walks all over your notions of what a card game can be. It is simple, yet smart.  Short in the amount of time it takes to play but long on replayability and strategy.

Cast you mind a good few months and hopefully you'll recall that co-operative games are al rubbish. So it might seem a bit of a surprise to see this piece on here authored by me, especially considering that Arkham Horror is probably one of the most talked about games around here. So what's the point in discussing it all over again? Well, this is what comes of everyone telling me I ought to write more reviews about Ameritrash games: AH is the only solidly AT game that I've played enough times to warrant a review that I haven't already reviewed. So here you go - and besides, I was smugly amused by the idea of comparing what I found in AH with all the problems I've previously documented about the co-op experience.

Take her fast,
Take her deep,
Take her where the fishes sleep..
Damn the depth,
Damn the pressure,
Take her down just like the Thresher... "

Let me tell you about this game idea. It's not my idea, but it's a good one anyway. The game is called The Isle of Dr. Necreaux, and it has huge cool potential.

First, it's a pulp game. That's cool right off the bat. A group of heroes has to infiltrate the island lair of the evil genius Dr. Necreaux, who is holding hostage a whole bunch of scientists and about to blow up a doomsday device and destroy the planet. So far, this is brilliant.

Being a Viking had to be the worst job ever. Sure, there were perks, like running off with all the women and pillaging at random, but the commute was hell. You think you have it bad getting stuck in traffic? Try doing it in a boat with no roof on it, rowing to your next raid, while freezing rain soaks through your clothes and your beard crusts over with salt from all the waves crashing on your face. And then when you get to work, instead of boring memos and bad coffee, you've got angry villagers throwing all manner of sharp things at you to get you to leave.

On the other hand, Viking stuff makes great stories. And in Fire & Axe from Asmodee US, it also makes a really cool game.

Somehow, I never did a full “proper” review of Tournament at Camelot. I did, however, include it in my Top 5 Family Card Games. So, let me crib my own work and include my summation of that title:

“A trick taking game that comes with asymmetrical powers and mitigates the luck of the draw with a thematic double tiered catch-up system all while framing it around a melee to the death. It's not only a mouthful; it can be a handful. Like a skillful juggler, Tournament at Camelot has a lot of plates in the air and, sometimes, it can break a few plates due to it's over ambitiousness. It is not that it is too complex, it is that the flow can be broken as more and more rule bending/breaking powers come into play. It features a Feint system that strategically pushes “tied” cards out of a match that can be used to focus your assaults on a player of your choice... assuming it doesn't backfire. Godsend cards and special companion powers that trigger as your hit points become low are the aforementioned catch-up mechanisms. When you put it all together, it provides an experience that makes you forget you are playing a trick taking game and not actually engaged in a tournament of Arthurian proportions.”

I find it a lot more satisfying to discover a great 25-year old game than I do to pick up whatever the new “buzz” game out of Essen happens to be.There’s something inherently rewarding about digging up a game that’s been cast aside by assumed progress in game design idioms and left for dead, yet still remembered chiefly by the long-standing veterans of our hobby.So many great older games have been forgotten in the rush to find the next PUERTO RICO- I often wonder if most gamers have any sense of history regarding the hobby, something I think is essential for providing a frame of reference in really appreciating where the hobby is today and where it was before SETTLERS OF CATAN.So let’s go back to 1979 for this one and have a quick peek at the Avalon Hill/OSG gamette THE LEGEND OF ROBIN HOOD, a one-hit wonder from Joe Bisio.

One of the decade's best games is back.