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Boardgame-Reviews

  • Battle for Hill 218--$10 Well Spent

    I pretty much stumbled upon the existence of this game by accident...you see, I'm hooked on AI versions of board and card games, so I'm always scouring for new ones.  Then one day I happened upon the AI version for Battle for Hill 218....and one week and probably 50 games later, I figured it was time to get my local shop to order me a copy.

  • Battle for Rokugan Review

    The first counter goes down on the board, sliding off the owner's thumb with a satisfying thwack. Its arrowhead points at my capital like an accusation. Besides that, I'm clueless. What is it? Given that it's sat on a territory border, it's either an army or a bluff. But if it's real, how many samurais are rolling in my direction? My palms begin to sweat. What do I need to do to defend myself? 

  • Battle for Slaughter Gulch - Board Game Review

    I love Deadlands. The setting, specifically, is amazing. You've got the Wild West, which is awesome on its own, but then to really mix it up, there's this supernatural, mad science, pulp monster, impending doom horror thing working. It is, in my opinion, one of the best settings for a game ever created.

  • Battle Line Review

    battlelineLike all walks of life, gaming is invariably filled with nuggets of received wisdom that old hands can pass down to newcomers with a nod and a wink and a feeling that they’ve done a good deed to help a young ‘un on his journey of discovery. One such pearl of knowledge is that Lost Cities is absolutely the best two-player game that a gamer can play with non-gamer, most specifically a non-gaming spouse. And since most gamers would love nothing more than to spend more time gaming and are unfortunately hitched to someone who, in spite of their considerable merits, isn’t terribly interested in games this is a particularly important piece of information. It is therefore a great shame that it’s actually false. The best game you can play with your spouse - indeed one of the best games two people with a short time window can enjoy - is a close relative of Lost Cities called Battle Line.

  • Battle of the Deckbuilders: Ascension vs Dominion

    So, as the Ascension players amongst you will already know, I have the app on my iPad. I’ve played the game and lot and enjoyed it, got my money’s worth, but frankly I’m starting to get a little bored of it, even with the added pleasure of losing repeatedly to you lot. I guess deckbuilders aren’t really my thing: there’s not been one pure deck building game I’ve really enjoyed. Must try Nightfall some day, just to be sure, but for the time being I think my flirtation with the concept is done. Nice idea, generally poor execution. The future would seem to be using the mechanic in tandem with something else, much like Mage Knightand A Few Acres of Snow.

  • Battles Of Westeros - First Look

    As many of you folks may remember, back when BATTLES OF WESTEROS was announced a lot of folks, myself included, weren’t exactly impressed with the “mystery box” and I even dubbed it an epic fail. I went so far as to state that I didn’t even want a review copy of it.

  • Battleship Galaxies - Boardgame Review

    Vapor's Fate dropped out of orbit just outside Saturn's orbit, right on top of the ISN Everest. Captain Skiles of the Intergalactic Space Navy raised the alert and began mustering his forces, but the Wretch battleship was already launching ship after ship from the bowels of its nightmarish hull. The enemy ships closed for battle, firing cannons and missiles and lasers as fighters circled like hungry vultures and flame began to erupt from ships on both sides. The Wretch fleet hammered at the Everest, blasting the ISN battleship's shields to ribbons and blasting huge pieces from its hull. The Everest gave as well as it got, and the Wretch destroyer So Bwa Tet tore into pieces with a powerful explosion.

  • BATTLESTAR GALACTICA Review and Petition- Bring Back Muffit

    You know how those evil, conniving network executives are- they completely ignore how awesome shows are and just go around cancelling stuff willy-nilly and demanding changes. In Sci Fi's BSG series, they made the most dreadful and completely inexcusable omission ever, at least since Tom Bombadil was cut out of LORD OF THE RINGS. This casualty, beloved by millions and billions of fans, is Mufft. The image above shows how seamlessly he would fit into the cast and crew of the new BSG. For him to not be represented in BSG is one of the greatest crimes of the century, up there with the Holocaust and New Coke. It's like they took all the fans of the show, raped them, rounded them up in cattle cars, and sent them off to the gas chambers, burned the corpses, and then flushed their ashes down a toilet that goes straight into a sewer somewhere to hell where the devil and NBC hold court.
  • Battlestar Galactica: Starship Battles Review

    One of 2018's best is the new king of its genre.

  • Battlestations

    BattlestationsPicture the scene:

    The little scout vessel is bravely battling the star cruiser around a deserted mining asteroid. The pilot (who resembles a tumbleweed) is trying to keep the ship steady as he throws it into another turn. The marine (who looks like a bowl full of earthworms) throws himself into an empty missile and launches himself into space. The engineer (a gorgeous woman, because no sci-fi epic is complete without a smokin' hot dame) is trying to evade an incoming missile by ejecting the breakfast dishes into space.

    That's actually a pretty silly scene, come to think of it. I don't know why the breakfast dishes make missiles explode. I don't know about the wisdom of using a missile as a boarding device. But I know this - it sure is fun to try.

  • Battletech - 35th Anniversary Beginner's Box and Intro Set Review

    Celebrating 35 years of overheating Mad Cats.

  • Battletech 25th Anniversary Introductory Box Set in Review

    I've got a review of a classic game up at Gameshark.com- one of the classic American hobby games. It's a new Battletech intro set, fresh for its 25th anniversary, and if you've been looking for a way to try the game out there is literally no better way to do so. This is a great, great product. The only problem is that, well, it's a 25 year old game and it hasn't exactly kept up with the design paradigm. Which is kind of commendable, but I do think there was an opportunity here to bring Battletech to a more modern gaming audience. But whatever, you can run an Awesome around on the map and smash a Jenner. Those are my least favorite mechs, I hate them for some reason.
  • Battue - Storm of the Horse Lords. An Ameritrash Jr. Review

    Prophets of the Horse Lords foretell the coming of a leader who will unite the hordes into one great, unconquerable nation! They say when one of their Khans sacks the City of Brass Pillars and sits on the Golden Throne, then all the Horse Lords will band together to unleash a human storm! As the Golden Horse they will triumph over their enemies and rule Terris!

     

  • Bemused Review

    According to some literary theory, an author's interpretation of their own work is no more or less valid than that of any reader. If we apply the same to game design, what do we make of designer Jim Felli's insistence that Bemused is not a social deduction game? It looks like one, smells like one and plays like one so, in the face of so much evidence, we can only put this down to a case of madness, right?

  • Bending the Rules of Time and Space

    ComsinIncursionLet's start by stating the obvious: Cosmic Encounter may be the best game ever designed. It has endless variety, gameplay that is consistantly surprising, and constant interaction. And if we can't agree on that, then we can at least agree that Fantasy Flight has done right by the game. Their 2008 reprint of the Eon classic was generally a very complete package. It had 50 aliens, nice components, and even a little variant called “Technology,” which was a great addition to the Cosmic spirit.

  • Beneath the Missing Sea: A Tale Best Left Buried RPG review

    “Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world.

  • Best Game Component Ever- DARK TOWER

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  • BETRAYAL 2nd Edition and QUANTUM THEORY in Review

    Yep, it's Halloween and there will never be a better time to review the just-released 2nd edition of BETRAYAL AT THE HOUSE ON THE HILL. I'm also looking at QUANTUM THEORY, a PS3/360 game that I doubt any of you will ever play.

  • Between Seven and Nine - Discworld: Ankh-Morpork Review

    I made a strange realization a week or so ago. For all of my Ameritrash leanings and pretensions, I usually like games by Martin Wallace. Wallace usually designs dense economic games with drab names that only conjure images of furrowed brows around the table. But heaven help me, I enjoy his work. I’ve been playing Brass with some friends online, and when I combine that with my face-to-face experiences with the game I find that it’s becoming one of my favorite heavy Euros. I enjoyed Last Train to Wensleydale as well, though I would need to play it a second time to make sure. I don’t love everything he’s done, of course. I’m not a huge fan of Steam (though I want to try the older Age of Steam to make sure), and Automobile showed me how frustrating and dull his games can be. But of the Wallace games I’ve played, I like more of them than I hate. He’s especially shown himself to be gifted at lighter fare, like his older game Way Out West and the criminally rare Moongha Invaders.

  • Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig Board Game Review

    Is “Just as good” not good enough?