Dominion Review

If you haven’t heard of Dominion, then you’ve probably just accidentally stumbled onto this site while looking for Sasha Grey videos. Anyone who has even a passing interest in tabletop gaming will almost certainly have heard about this juggernaut, this behemoth, this Dominion.

I like this game. I hate that font.

Dominion is a card game. It comes in a big old box, a “standard” sized board game box. But all that you get inside is a big stack of cards. Most of the cards are multiple copies of the same card. Your first impression when opening the box is “Oh, is this it? Oh shit. Oh shit. Should have bought Dungeon Twister 2!”

It works like this – you start with a small deck of cards, and draw some into your hand. Then you can spend cards from your hand to buy new cards from those laid out on the table. Then you discard the cards you buy. Then you discard any cards from your hand you haven’t spent. And that’s the game.

That really IS the game. When you get through your discard pile, you shuffle the whole lot into a new deck, and draw another hand. Your deck grows throughout the game, as you buy cards. Essentially, the game is the deck-building aspect of CCGs distilled into a half hour of quick thinking and strategy.

You win the game by having the most victory point cards in your deck at the end of the game. There’s a land grab for these cards near the end of the game, because the cards are entirely useless in the early part of the deck building process. You can’t spend them to buy cards, so they just clog up your deck like hateful things. And yet you need them to win. And so it becomes a game of immaculate timing. A game of judging just when to start making a dash for the prize.

So what about these cards that start on the table? The ones that you can buy? Well, some of them are treasure cards, and it’s essential to cash in regularly. For example, you can spend a few of your small change treasure cards to buy one treasure card of a higher denomination, and that will, when you get those discards reshuffled, put some extra funds into your deck. You can spend three of these…

...to get one of these.

The key thing to remember is that everything that you spend and everything that you buy goes into your discard pile and WILL come back into your deck. So you’re not really burning six coins to buy three in the example above. You’re burning six to secure nine.

Then there are the Action cards. These can be played at the start of your turn, and do various rule-breaking things. They allow you to draw more cards, offer additional opportunities to buy, additional opportunities to play Action cards and additional opportunities to fuck your opponents over.

There’s a real sense of building a little engine, a little economy machine, and in each turn you find yourself analysing the best way to get maximum productivity from your deck, and the best way to react to whatever process your opponent has in motion.

It sounds dull. I know it does. I’m sitting here explaining it and I know it sounds dull. But it isn’t. It all moves at a fair clip – draw, play cards, discard, discard, shuffle, draw. There’s a real thrill in watching your deck grow bigger with every turn, and when you’ve made some good buying decisions and find that a draw turns out a perfect little hand that you had visualised a few turns earlier, it’s as satisfying as cleaving a skull in Warhammer Quest or shooting a Genestealer in Space Hulk.

Okay, maybe not THAT satisfying.

There are 25 different Action cards in the base game, and you only ever play with 10 types at any one time. That means there’s a huge amount of replayability. The mind (okay, my mind) frankly boggles at the possibilities. Then there are the two new titles that are already on the market. Dominion: Intrigue, and Dominion: Seaside. Both introducing new cards to the game, both firmly on my Want List. This is a game that looks like it could run and run, and looks like it certainly intends to.

I’ll say one thing, though. Dominion is a fun game, but it might not be for everybody. Despite its current reputation in gaming as the monster that has forced everything else off the table, I think that there might be people out there who find it all a little bit sedate. You’ll get out of Dominion what you put into it. You’ll definitely enjoy it more if you’re the type of person who will notice the elegance of its design. It’s a gamer’s game, I think. Yep. Yep. That’s what I mean.

“It’s a gamer’s game.”

KIDS STUFF: Elefun Review

Is it a game? Or is it a toy?

It’s certainly an elephant.

Elephant fun. Elefun.

Elefun is, as the box tells us, “The frantic butterfly catching game!” Or “El divertido juego de cazar mariposas!”

It’s a big blue plastic hollow elephant that blows air like a confused vacuum cleaner. It takes three big expensive big boy batteries that ARE NOT INCLUDED, and the noise you hear when it’s running in a room is incredible. It’s a mix of an electronic hum and children’s laughter, much like you’d hear in a classroom when a vibrator goes off accidentally in the teacher’s handbag.

Sing along!

Before you play, you need to load tiny butterflies into the elephant’s nose, just the way it happens naturally in the wild. Then every player takes a net, and stands around the elephant’s erect trunk. The elephant gets turned on, and it starts to spit spinning butterflies into the air. Everyone tries to catch the butterflies (or mariposas) in their nets. The winner is the one who has killed more of God’s creatures than anyone else.

My daughter Hope loves Elefun. I know she does, because she likes to say “I’m being serious, we need to play Elefun” all the time. But, to be fair, my daughter is not even three years old yet. She has a lot of screwy opinions on a lot of things.

My girlfriend and I had to play the game with my daughter. We’re the gamers in the family, so really it’s our call on whether Elefun is a good thing or not.

Plus points first:

1. Elefun makes our daughter laugh like crazy. My daughter usually reserves her hysterical laughter for when she sees me hurt myself.

2. Elefun isn’t expensive. We got it for about a tenner. From a supermarket. Ten pounds for a plastic elephant that gets distressed and spews insects isn’t a lot of money in an age when you’d pay a fortune for a roller-skating chimp.

3. It doesn’t last very long.

And now our big fat CONS:

1. You will probably have to play it round the clock, leaving you so physically drained that you never have enough energy to produce another child.

2. Joanne and I get too violent while playing it, and end up assaulting each other. Actually, no, this is a positive one. What am I talking about?

It’s a great game/toy for kids. It’s not brilliant for adults. But you can make it bearable by battering each other.

Let’s leave the last word to Hope:

The Isle of Doctor Necreaux Review

I’ve come to realise that I really, really like card games. Packed in slim, small boxes, with lovely cards and able to offer a beautiful game with minimum fuss. I really, really like card games. I place them inside my sideboard, where they take up little room, and I smile at them and stroke them lovingly.

One of the newest card games to hit the shelves is The Isle of Doctor Necreaux, a co-operative adventure game designed by Jonathan Leistiko and published by AEG. It’s a game about going to a nutter’s island to rescue some scientists.

Inside the box you’ll find two decks of cards. One is a Character Deck, and the other is the Adventure Deck. Three dice come with the game, and a handful of counters to mark “charges”. That’s it. That’s all you need.

At the start of the game, each player is dealt three Character Cards. These character cards represent traits that will make up the player’s character.

You might have the card above, and a Ninja card, and a Stone Cold Killer card. That would make you a Stone Cold Killer Echo Medium Ninja. Which is, you know, a decent calling in life. Each card gives a special ability that will assist your team in the dash through Necreaux’s lair.

Many Character Cards start with “charges”, tokens placed on the card, which are spent to activate abilities. Got all that? Good.

The game itself is very straightforward. The aim is to run through the Adventure Deck until you find the group of scientists and the escape shuttle. Once you’ve found both, you can cheese it and pat each other on the back. Unfortunately, there’s a time limit in play. Each turn, the clock ticks down by one minute, bringing you ever closer to the island exploding and killing every man, woman and Stone Cold Killer Echo Medium Ninja unfortunate enough to still be sunning it on the beach.

In the players’ turn, you can do one of two things as a group. You can Rest, or you can Move. Resting lets you heal up a little, and place a charge on one of your chargeable cards. A Rest action is often necessary, but never chosen lightly, as it advances the clock one stop without moving you any closer to finding the objectives. The Move action is where the meat of the game is, so lets get comfy and go into a bit of detail.

The first major decision players have to make in their Move action is HOW FAST TO MOVE. This is vital, vital shit. Your chosen speed tells you how many cards you will be peeling off the Adventure Deck in that turn. So, for example, if you choose a speed of 5 you will resolve 5 Adventure Cards in that turn. You will be moving 5 cards through the deck, searching for that Escape Shuttle card and these lovely bastards:

I'll look after the one on the right, guys, okay? Sweet.

Inside that Adventure Deck you can expect to find MONSTERS, ITEMS, TRAPS and EVENTS. Your speed often plays into the effects of things such as Trap cards. Many traps ask you to roll over your chosen speed to safely duck the effects, so if you’re hammering through Necreaux’s base at a careless and crazy speed of 15, you’re not going to get much joy from that single dice roll. It’s a nice, logical way to deal with traps. The faster you move, the more your team is likely to blunder into tripwires and lasers. (Although, on occasion, moving swiftly can also help you outrun a trap). The faster you move, the more monsters you will have to battle before you get a chance to take a Rest turn and heal up. So logic would suggest you go slow, right? No, because that clock is ticking and you NEED TO FIND THOSE SCIENTIST SUMBITCHES.

Combat is simple, and rarely slows the pace of this exciting game. It’s simply every player attempting to roll over the Monster’s Combat Value to land a hit. If you roll under, your team takes a hit instead. The hit your team takes can be given to any player, so even in assigning damage there are decisions to be made. Taking a hit means you flip one of your Character Cards face down, losing that ability until you can Rest and flip it back up. Here’s a monster:

He’s a bastard. Just saying.

The most impressive thing about Necreaux is contained in this next block of text. Yes, it is such a good thing I am giving it its own block of text.

I’ve played a lot of co-op games by now. And here’s the dark, terrible secret. Most of them aren’t very co-operative. Often one player becomes the lead voice, pointing out the optimal decisions and steering the entire team. Players can often become passengers. NOT IN THIS GAME, BABY. The table is in constant debate, with everyone discussing their own character’s abilities, and how best to negotiate the obstacles.

“I’ll take the hit, my guy can get a free heal if I roll even.”

“No, just re-roll, I’ll discharge to re-roll.”

“But we’ve seen what’s coming. We might need that re-roll. Let me take the hit, this character’s only useful in-”

“Hang on, if you use that item to shift your charges from that card to my Psychic’s card, I can discharge them to eliminate that point of damage!”

“Yeah, but wait-”

With the flip of almost every card, it’s decision time again. It’s maybe the most co-operative co-op game I’ve played. And it’s just a card game!

In closing, here’s what happened at the end of last night’s game:

–ONE MINUTE ON THE CLOCK–

They could sense that the escape shuttle was up ahead. The team dashed towards it, giggling already at how sweet it would be to snatch this victory from the jaws of defeat. Then…

TRAP!

The ground opened up beneath them.

(The card told us that a pitfall trap had appeared and we had to make a choice – either we lose a minute off the clock to negotiate it safely, or one character has to fall in, taking 5 points of damage. 5 points of damage that would kill any of our characters outright.)

Robert fell in. They tried to save him.

“Give me your hand!”

“Leave me! I’ll only slow you down! GO! RUN!”

With that, Robert slid off into the blackness. The others screamed in horror at the loss of their most beautiful boy. Their perfect beautiful prince.

Later, in the Escape Shuttle, they spoke of how amazing he is and how he is brilliant at everything and is the best.

THE END.

Please buy this wonderful card game. You can even play it solo, so there’s no excuses.

DowntimeTown Episode 8: M:TG – PLANECHASE

Watch the new episode of DowntimeTown now. A chat about Magic: The Gathering and a look at the brand new “Planechase” system. Watch using the vimeo below or on the youTube channel later tonight.

DowntimeTown Episode 8: Magic: the Gathering – Planechase from Robert Florence on Vimeo.

Zaa Ooo Zaa!

DowntimeTown Episode 7: Space Hulk

DowntimeTown Episode 7 is now live, and it’s all about Space Hulk: Third Edition.

Enjoy.

DowntimeTown Episode 7: Space Hulk from Robert Florence on Vimeo.

Kingsburg Review

Here’s a wee poem I wrote:

Kingsburg, Kingsburg, roll your dice
Play it nasty, Play it nice
Play it once? No, play it twice
Kingsburg, Kingsburg, egg fried rice

Yes, I was eating egg fried rice on the night I first played Kingsburg. It was a birthday present from Ryan. The game, not the egg fried rice. I didn’t ask for rice for my birthday. I’m not an animal.

Kingsburg is another game published by Fantasy Flight, another release from the massive fun-organ of that board game behemoth. It’s designed by two strapping lads called Andrea Chiarvesio and Luca Iennaco, and two more polite young men you couldn’t hope to meet. (I haven’t met them, but I hope to someday.)

Here’s how it works.

The board is covered in illustrations of the King and his advisers. 18 of them in total. Each adviser gives the player some kind of benefit – goods, military strength, and so on. Each game year sees players employing advisers, growing their cities, and preparing to defend their city when war comes each winter.

So how do you employ advisers? You roll dice.

Here are some people. Put dice on their heads.

“Dice?!” the hardcore boardgamer screamed. “You want me to roll a die?! Me?! A thinker?! A man of logic and brilliance?! You want me to roll a die like I’m a 9 year old boy playing “Move Stevie Sausage Into The Frying Pan By Rolling Dice For Hours: The Board Game?”"

The room fell silent. The hardcore boardgamer grabbed the dice from the table. His hand, covered in sores and calluses from poking chits out of cardboard sheets, now contained the offending cubes. He screamed at them, his eyes bulging from their sockets, bloodshot from multiple sessions of Race For The Galaxy the night before.

“Dice?! Wooden creatures of fate and filth! I cast ye out!” He threw them across the room in fury.

They landed. All four dice showed a 6.

The hardcore boardgamer fell to his knees.

“In casting ye, I rolled ye.” He put a gun to his head, his tears flowing now. “And I rolled ye well.”

The bang shook the room. The spray of blood covered the gaming table. The game’s unsleeved cards didn’t stand a chance.

Yes, you roll dice. Let’s say I roll three dice. I roll a 5, a 4 and a 1. The dice allow me to employ some advisers. So I can employ adviser number 5, number 4 and number 1. Or, I can add dice together and employ number 9 and number 1 if that suits me better. Or 4 and 6 (5+1). Or adviser 10 (5+4+1).

Don’t look at me like that. It’s not complicated. I’ll go through it again.

I roll a 6 on all three dice. I can employ adviser 12(6+6) and 6. I can employ adviser 18 (The King). And that’s really all I can do. You get it?

Once an adviser is employed, no-one else can employ him* and get those benefits he provides. So there’s a little bit of interaction in there with players blocking out advisers who can provide their opponents with stuff they need.

The game’s all about building your city to score points, and defending your city from the winter attacks. To build you need goods and cash. To defend your city you need soldiers. Every player gets some soldiers from the King when it comes time to fight, but you’ll be wanting to bolster your defences. You should place your dice on military men to do this. Some advisers even let you have a peek ahead at the enemies you’re going to face, so that you can better prepare. (Worryingly, the Queen seems to know an awful lot about every impending attack. NEVER TRUST A QUEEN.) A failed attempt to force off the enemies will have you knee-deep in shit. Your buildings might be destroyed, you might lose victory points, lose your trousers, all in all it’s a disaster.

Five years of development and survival and the game gets called. The player with the best score wins.

That’s it?

That’s it.

I love you.

Kingsburg is an absolute pleasure to play. On those nights when you don’t feel like playing something that makes you want to disembowel your friends, Kingsburg is the game to pull out. It’s a sunny, summery game. With its beautiful illustrations and colourful dice, it’s a big explosion of happiness on your table.

Richard happily playing Kingsburg, distracted momentarily from thoughts of man's inevitable extinction.

The game flows beautifully too. There’s hardly any downtime. Everyone rolls at the same time, and from then on you’re either choosing your advisers or watching the other players like a hawk, hoping that they don’t shut your options down.

Dice, though. That means that word comes into play again, right? That word I call “The Other L-Word.” Yes, luck is a factor, but doesn’t play as big a part as you would think. Your success or otherwise in Kingsburg will usually be down to the choices you’ve made, which buildings you construct, and which advisers you decide to spread your dice across.

(In the game I almost always choose the Church route. I build the religious buildings. I do this not because I’m at all religious, but because you get a bonus when defending against demons. And it’s always good, in games and in real life, to keep your shit correct when demons are around. Consider this a warning.)

Kingsburg’s a beautiful little game. It’s easy to teach, plays fast, and combines the satisfaction of dice-rolling with the thinky-dinky decision-making of a worker placement Eurogame. My group loves it because it’s light and fun and has a clever mechanic that keeps you interested from start to finish.

And because Kenny, one of our group, is apparently IN it.

One of the esteemed advisers.

One of the esteemed Kennys.

*There’s actually a device that lets you place dice on an adviser who is already taken, but we won’t make the explanation any more complicated than is necessary, OKAY?

DowntimeTown Episode 6: Chaos In The Old World

It’s a brand new episode of DowntimeTown, an extra-long bit of banter about the brand new Fantasy Flight release Chaos In The Old World. It’s a game that’s NOT EVEN OUT YET in most places, and we’ve already played it and played it.

Ryan getting his Tzeentch on.

Check it out vimeo-style below, and be aware that there are some flickering images of demonic corruption throughout:

DowntimeTown Episode 6: Chaos in the Old World from Robert Florence on Vimeo.

Sumeria Review

Sometimes you need a game that is a big sprawling epic. Something that runs for five hours, and has you up all night, hating everyone. And sometimes you need a game that is small, brief, competitive, and clever.

Sumeria, from Reiver Games, is that game.

Sumeria, designed by Dirk Liekens, plays 3-4 people and usually runs to about 45 minutes. It comes in a small box, and as is usual from Reiver Games, the components are of good quality.

Here’s how this intelligent little game works. Each player has a number of traders, and take turns either adding a trader to the map, removing a trader from the map, or moving a trader from one stop to the next available stop. Traders in an area increase that area’s influence, and the area with most influence at the end of the round scores better for the player who controls that area.

Sumeria's board. You put your wee man on those little dots. Not your actual wee man! The traders!

So, in your turn you try to manipulate influence across the board, to try and put the city-state which you control into a higher position of influence than every other. You could maybe do this by removing a trader from an area controlled by an opponent, which knocks that area down the influence track. You could maybe do this by adding a trader to your own majority control area, to bounce it back up the track. The game continues in this manner, through play, counterplay and bluff, until a sixth and final round.

Sumeria is an abstract game, but the theme fits well. It seems logical that a large assembly of traders in an area makes that area more influential, so it never feels like you’re just sliding wooden blocks around a map. It’s a game that makes you feel like you’re actually playing your opponents, and not just the game system. There’s nothing better than knowing that the trader you’ve just planted into an area will, when you pull him back out, turn the game in your favour. There’s nothing better than filling up the roads so that your opponent can’t move his trader where he wants him to go.

Ahhh. It’s wonderful to hear the delicious sighs of your enemies as you recall your traders from their areas. To look into their grim face as they realise that the area they fought so hard to control is no longer as fancy-schmancy as they thought it was. To witness a player’s collapse, as an area slides down the influence track, to hear his soft “fucking hell” rise to the stars.

Sumeria’s only downside is that it’s exactly the kind of game you wouldn’t introduce to new players. It’s not a gateway game. Look what happened between the fictional Mark and Jessica.

JESSICA: Hey, listen. You want to play a game?

MARK: Um…sure. What have you got?

JESSICA: How about a majority control game about traders in ancient Sumer?

MARK: How about a fuck off about fucking off?

If you have a group of gamers, though, PROPER GAMERS MAN, Sumeria is going to be a hit. Even if you’re playing with someone who can be very slow at thinking through his turn (Richard, this is for you, my friend), the minute-to-minute tactical nature of the game doesn’t allow people to get bogged down. It’s very much a game of reacting to the short-term tactics of others, and so rattles along at a fair wee clip. The rules are easy to learn, and yet there’s a lot of depth.

Trader in, trader oot. Shake it all aboot. What’s not to like?

Nothing. It’s great.

The lovely Hopey modelling the lovely Sumeria.

Here’s a Sumer song to play us out.

Tannhauser Review

Forget the Gate for a moment.

Tannhauser was a poet. The Tannhauser of legend knelt at the feet of Venus and adored her. He became remorseful, begged for forgiveness from a Pope, was denied, and returned to his adoration of his goddess. He is there, we imagine, even now. Rapture of the flesh.

Tannhauser is poetry, eroticism, torture, guilt and love.

Fantasy Flight’s Tannhauser is set in 1949, a year which sees the First World War rumbling on. But after 35 years of conflict, things are about to change. The Reich has found some occult artifacts, as they often do in works of fiction. Now things are about to get very gothic, very steampunky, very shooty and very roll-a-lot-of-dicey.

In truth, Fantasy Flight themselves explain the game better than I can. Watch this video, and then read on to see my take on the gameplay.

The first thing to be said about the game is that it’s beautiful. When you lay the fella out, with its lovely double sided map board (a house and an underground cavern), and place all those pre-painted miniatures on there… You just have to step back, look at it and say “Man!”

INT. ROBERT’S HOUSE – NIGHT

ROBERT and KENNY are sitting at the table. Tannhauser is laid out upon it.
JOANNE enters.

JOANNE
Is this Tannhauser?

ROBERT
Aye.

JOANNE
Oof.

As a great man once said: “It’s an FPS.” Tannhauser is simply the board game equivalent of a PC or console first person shooter game. Ten characters, each with different abilities, each with multiple weaponry and equipment loadouts. 5 baddies, 5 goodies. Different modes of play – Story Mode, Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, King of the Hill…

“It’s an FPS.”

Tannhauser is an easy game to learn, and an easy game to play. You’ll be rolling a lot of dice. You roll for initiative, you roll to shoot, you roll to go hand-to-hand, you roll to duel. You do have a little bit of control over Lady Luck. Tinkering with your weapon loadouts can give you an advantage (some weapons will kill instantly on a natural 10, for example), and you can spend Victory Points to shift the goalposts. Victory Points can be found in crates, by the way.

In crates. “It’s an FPS.”

The standout feature of the game is the “Pathfinder System.” Each map is littered with coloured circles. If you’re on a red circle, you have line of sight to anyone else on a red circle. If you’re on a yellow and blue, you can see along the yellow and blue path. It’s a beautiful system, and it removes any abstraction from the game. Miniature skirmish games are often fraught with LOS debates and rules lawyering, so it’s nice to find a game that allows everything to just be and lets players get on with trying to kill each other. It also allows for moments of high drama, where characters can be RIGHT BESIDE EACH OTHER on adjacent circles, but neither having line of sight because of a half-closed door.

The teams seem beautifully balanced. The Union (the good guys) have incredible weaponry, but aren’t very nippy on their feet. The Obskura Corps (the bad guys, MY GUYS) have some crazy mystical powers, but they need to duck in and out of the shadows – they’re not the most resilient bad guys in the world. Take this big prick, for example–

OZO - Can't get my head round him

–for some reason, I can’t keep this gentleman alive. Kenny killed him two games in a row just last night, without Ozo even firing off a single shot. I’m not blaming the game for this. I’m blaming me. Characters have their strengths and weaknesses.

Now, while I’m shit at ordering Ozo around the map, give me this bad boy and all bets are off–

Stosstruppen - A fucking BEAST

Now, the chap above is just one of the Obskura Corps’ troopers. But he’s a monster. He moves fast, and when he gets into close combat with someone, it’s a case of STAB, SLASH, HELP!, TOO LATE, YOU’RE MINE, OH MY GOD HELP OH GOD, TOO LATE TOO LATE SHHH SHHH SHHH DIE SLEEP SLEEP SHHH DIE FRIEND SHHHH MY BABY DIE SHHHH SHHHHHHHHHH SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH UGHHHHHHHHHHH! This is a game where you play your characters to their strengths.

The game isn’t without strategy, then, but the strategy is light. That’s fine. It is, after all, “an FPS.” I’ll give you a look at some of the strategic choices you might make during a play of Tannhauser.

EXAMPLE TANNHAUSER STRATEGIES

1. Stay away from that big fucker with that fucker of a gun.

2. Don’t stand in a cluster, you tits. She’s got dynamite!

3. Sneak up behind that wee wanker and slit his throat with your claw.

4. STAY AWAY FROM THAT BIG FUCKER WITH THAT FUCKER OF A GUN!!!

Tannhauser plays 2-10 players. I’ve only ever played it 2-player, so I can’t speak for these massive games. I imagine, though, that it might just work. The thing is, Tannhauser is a game that sees characters getting cut up and killed regularly and quickly. In a 10 player game, if you’re the first character to get popped, you might not fancy waiting around for a new game to start. But then again…

…here’s the thing. “Dicefests” are often met with disapproval in this age of Eurogame snootiness. But sometimes there’s no greater entertainment than a do or die face-to-face dice roll. Kenny and I had a stand-off last night. Two characters, going toe-to-toe. Both refusing to run away. Both rolling at each other for turn after turn. Both refusing to die. It was amazing. I imagine that, even if it had been a 10 player game and we were the last two left, people would have enjoyed watching the drama play out.

Tannhauser has a full expansion already, called Operation Novgorod, and it’s also a thing of beauty. It brings in a steampunk character set, and features a beautiful snowy outdoors map. The miniatures in Novgorod are particularly beautiful–

Wow. Right? Oof.

–further enhancing the I AM COLLECTING ACTION FIGURES HOORAY! element of the game. There are individual character packs available too, and you can swap these into the factions. In truth, there’s room on the table and in people’s wallets for more expansions than are currently available. GET A MOVE ON, FF.

If you like the theme and you like computer games, you’re probably going to be right at home with Tannhauser. There’s a lot of scope in the game for the kind of things videogamers enjoy – learning the pros and cons of your character, fucking about with the weapon loadouts, trashtalking.

Tannhauser is poetry, eroticism, torture, guilt and love. And dice, and dice, and guns, and bombs, and monsters, and leather, and whips.

And, last night, lots of Jack Daniels.

Citadels Review

Citadels. Ahhhh, Citadels.

It’s a card game. It’s a city-building game. It’s a role-playing game. No. It’s a role choosing game.

In Citadels, each player is dealt a hand of cards representing areas of a city. The player has to pay to build these areas. Once eight areas are built by any one player, the game ends. The first player out gets a point bonus and then the cities are scored. Some city areas are worth more points. Some combinations of areas give further point bonuses. The player with the most points wins.

It’s remarkably simple. But it’s not a game about what you do. It’s a game about who you are. In each game turn, every player chooses a role from a hand of cards.

A royal pain in the arse.

WHO WOULD YOU WANT TO BE?

The Assassin: He can choose to murder any other character. He announces who he wants to kill and BAM! the player who chose that unfortunate character misses his turn. He’s a stone-cold bastard. But the assassin could choose the wrong character. He doesn’t know who’s who when he chooses his victim. He might not choose the character who is being played by the game leader. He might choose a character who isn’t being played at all. It’s a risky life, the life of an assassin, but murder is fun. The Assassin’s favourite TV show is The Apprentice.

The Thief: The Thief chooses a victim, and then when that character is revealed, he steals all that character’s gold. The Thief is a hated man. The Assassin and The Thief are in the same Five-a-Side team. A proper couple of buggers.

The Magician: He’s off his nut. He can fling away cards and magically draw new ones. He can point his finger at another player and steal their entire hand of cards. An unpredictable force, like diarrhea.

The King: He gets to announce all the other players, calling out their names like he’s the boss of them all. He behaves like a diva, giving it “all eyes on me” and is a total pain in the arse. The Assassin loves killing him. He receives one gold for each Gold coloured city area he has. Crucially, he’s first to choose who he wants to be in the next turn. Everyone detests him.

The Bishop: He’s a defensive character, so hardly anyone ever wants to be him. He gets money from religious districts, highlighting the exploitative nature of organised religion and encouraging debate and soul-searching at the game table. His areas can’t be destroyed by The Warlord, because they’re protected by God or are made of chocolate and thus are too tasty to destroy or something. I don’t know.

The Merchant: He receives gold for each trade district he controls. He also gets ANOTHER gold every time he takes an action. He always has The Thief making kissy-kissy goo-goo eyes at him. His favourite TV show is Knots Landing.

The Architect: He draws lots of cards and can buid loads of stuff. He’s a smartypants. He can accelerate the game towards a finish if he isn’t kept in check and told to sit down and behave. He has a nice beard. By which I mean, a fake wife.

The Warlord: He’s a cool dude. He skateboards. He receives gold for each military district he controls. He can also send out his army to destroy other players districts. Except for districts controlled by The Bishop, who made his city out of chocolate, rendering it too tasty to destroy. Confirmed.

I have never met a living soul who doesn’t like Citadels. Bruno Faidutti’s design shines from first to last, in a beautifully paced, constantly exciting game. It’s a game with a lot of legs, too. There’s no real optimal strategy, because you need to keep reacting to the choices of the other players. If someone is hogging The King, kill him. If someone is building up lots of cash, steal it. If you’re the one making all the money, should you choose The Thief in order to protect yourself from attacks? Or would Assassin be a better choice, in order to off The Thief?

In our group, the roles take on a life of their own. The King is pompous and annoying. The Assassin is quiet, cool, evil. The Magician is a dirty psychopath.

It could have been a simple race game, with everyone paying to play cards and be first off the table. But the characters bring the cities to life. When you look down at the table and see the cities taking shape, and look across the table and see Kings and Merchants squabbling with each other, you know something special is happening.

And then there’s the look of the game. Let’s just be straight about one thing here –

Citadels is beautiful. Citadels is alive.

Here is the Manor. If you build this district, make sure to mind it. Mind your Manors. Jesus. Sorry.

The artwork is staggering. There is never a play that goes by without someone commenting on how beautiful a card is, and picking it up for a closer look. Anyone who argues that the art design of a game isn’t important needs to experience Citadels and see how beautiful artwork can elevate a wonderful game design into something magical.

The Harbor. Don't Harbor any grudges against the person who builds this. Get it? Jesus. Sorry.

Citadels is an essential game for any collection. It plays quickly, so can slot in before or after a longer game (I refuse to call Citadels a “filler game.” It’s too good for that.), and will quickly become one of the most requested games you have. Guaranteed.

More reasons to buy it? Sure.

It all fits in a small box that can be taken anywhere. It’s inexpensive (under 20 quid for the base game with the expansion included).

It’s a work of games design brilliance, no doubt. It’s also a work of art.

There’s literally no good reason not to buy it.

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