Category: From the BGB Desk

Articles written by the BGB Team

5 Board Games for Any Party Anywhere

Posted on by E.R. Burgess
5 Board Games for Any Party Anywhere
Photo courtesy — twenty20.com/duangbj from Reshot

Everyone loves a party but what do you actually do there? Not a birthday or anniversary — just a gathering. Sure, you talk to people. But if you don’t really work the room, you can miss the chance to connect with most of the people there.

That’s why the party game exists — to bring people together. Party-style board games give you an excuse to interact and laugh with people you like, love or even you just met. These days, we spend nearly a quarter of our time in artificial social spaces. Do I even need to quote research to say that’s not a good thing and we need more time with friends IRL? (okay, here you go.)

The great news: Party games have gotten so much better than even just 15 years ago. If you pick the right ones, you get half-hour experiences that can wonderfully bring a party of people together.

So let’s get to this list of excellent party games that have given me hours and hours of joy with friends both old and new:

Telestrations

Not so much a game as a fun activity, this drawing game doesn’t require you to be an artist at all. In Telestrations, players draw a picture of representing the word on their card into a dry erase book with multiple pages and passes it to the next player. That player looks at the drawing and writes a word or two to describe it. Then, books are passed again and the next player draws based on those words…and so it goes, varying between a word and a picture. When the books reach the original player, they are revealed and everyone gets to see the hilarious interpretations. Telestrations is a riotously fun experience for up to twelve players.

The 12 player pack, also available in an 8 and 6 player edition.

Codenames

This award-winning game from Vlaada Chvatil is a team-based word game, but one with minimal ‘word nerd’ pressure. Like the classic game Password, each of the two teams has a clue giver providing a word to their team to elicit one word responses. The catch in Codenames is that the clue giver can clue more than one word each turn, in a race to identify all your words on a 5×5 grid before the other team guesses theirs. You need two people willing to come up with clues, but the rest of the team can enjoy the game without feeling any pressure. There’s no upper limit on players if everyone can see the cards. You can even get bigger cards with the XXL edition.

Codenames also comes in Pictures, Disney, Marvel, Harry Potter, Adult and Duel Variants

Wits & Wagers

An award-winning trivia game that won’t frustrate people without a Trivial Pursuit mind. Every question in Wits & Wagers is a number you can guesstimate. Furthermore, if the question is just not your thing, the second part of a round involves betting on who got it right. This excites the gambler in your players and gives people a second chance. Wits & Wagers is enormous fun and it has been a hit at our parties for many years.

Just One

The newest game on the list, Just One is probably the easiest of these games and it’s also cooperative. That means everyone is just working together to do well and laugh it up. Each turn, the active player has to guess a word based on one word clues from everyone else (written on individual display stands). However, if the players come up with the same clue, they aren’t revealed and that limits the information the active player gets. You play to see how many of thirteen words you can get. While Just One requires a little thinking, it’s noto so much that you can’t do it after a couple of glasses of wine. A definite winner for up to 7 players.

A clever new entry in the party game genre, Just One will not be played just once.

Dixit

— Maybe you know Apples to Apples (or its NSFW cousin Cards Against Humanity). A wonderful similar game is Dixit, which has the same “judge picks the one they like” concept but uses gorgeous and unique images on each card. The active player plays a card and gives a creative word or phrase to describe it. Everyone else puts a card from their own hand into the mix, and players then guess which one the active player added. The goal is to not be too on-the-nose so everyone picks your card. Ideally, you want just one person to get your hint. Poor guessers can still get points for people picking the card they submitted instead of the original. Dixit is a blast and has many expansions available.

Dixit is full of gorgeous cards.

Why We Party Game

Let’s be clear on one last point: Party games are not about winning! They are about having fun in a shared experience, not crushing your competition. It doesn’t mean you can’t have a good time competing, it just means that you should focus on the fun and the people first. It’s a party, folks!

So toss out the old Trivial Pursuit (unfair advantage), Bunco (boring), and Taboo (tiresome) and replace them with the winning choices above. Turn your next party into a great experience for everyone and build those real-life friendships that we all cherish so much more than a zillion “friends” online.

This article contains affiliate links. If you choose to purchase my recommendations via my affiliate links, you help support me at no additional cost to you.

Low Effort Creativity in Tabletop Games

Posted on by E.R. Burgess
Low Effort Creativity in Tabletop Games

When you’ve been playing games all your life like I have, maybe it’s a foregone conclusion that new mechanisms are a big deal. Sure, I love an interesting theme that is well-implemented. Most of the time, though, it’s not enough. I like to see new ideas and I can admire them even when the game isn’t necessarily my cup of tea. For example, I’ve often spoken about my admiration for the design of Power Grid even if I do not find playing the game to be much fun.

Thankfully, I like all the games on this list that pleasantly embody a concept I call “Low Effort Creativity” (LEC). As a marketer and product designer working in social media-focused technology, I have used this term to describe apps like Instagram where the simple application of a filter onto an image makes users feel like they had created something special. And maybe they have; what mattered is that sense of creativity being expressed, which is more important than what others think of their creation.

People do the dumbest stuff on Instagram and think they’re being clever.

In game design, I see LEC manifesting as a way of giving players something that engages their creativity without building from the ground up. Instead, they’re empowered to make a contribution that gives them an output that is uniquely their own.

Dungeons and Drawings

Despite my passionate love for board games, I first thought about this concept after playing a role playing game. Strictly speaking, it’s not a proper RPG, where high-effort creativity is common. There, players come up with their own characters, a back story and maybe even act things out in a bigger way. Four Against Darkness brings the dungeons and maybe some dragons, but is short on the acting and storytelling.

What it does bring into the mix, however, is a pleasant solo experience with an outcome I didn’t expect. I’m not speaking of the success of my band of four adventurers who delved into the cave of some kobolds. No, I was surprised to find out that the process of wandering in the dungeon was going to lead me to creating something mildly artistic.

4AD, as the serious players call it (a moniker which throws me off as a fan of the British record label with that same name), gives the player a chance to quickly put together a four-person adventure party and start into a dungeon with the simple roll of two dice. Those values tell you the type of entrance, corridor or room you are entering, and another roll or two will tell you if there are monsters and loot to be had. It’s not very “RPG” but it is a pleasant pastime, especially with the solid adventures written by andrea sfiligoi (the designer) and his online cadre of creators who are taking the game in a variety of directions. This concept in itself is admirable and I really love to see such deep community involvement in creatively expanding what can be done with this light game system.

The most compelling part of the 4AD experience is drawing your dungeon on graph paper. Sure, the dice tell you the shape of the room, and what’s inside, and all monsters and such are cleverly denoted by certain symbols. The player gets a chance to show off their artistic side in the depiction of the map.

While I’m no artist, I find this part of the game a lot of fun as I track my progress through dungeons, caves, and castles. My own drawings are just lousy but I’ve seen gorgeous renderings online by talented folks who have brought their own flair to the design and decorations of their dungeon. With the game and its mechanisms as inspiration, players get a chance to engage in some low-effort creativity to make their final map a creation worthy of keeping around to enjoy.

A Conspiracy of Cartographers?

A similar tack is taken with Cartographers, a fine new game that released at Gen Con 2019 to popular acclaim (due out to stores Labor Day Weekend). Like 4AD, Cartographers (from Thunderworks Games) asks its players to get out the pencil and fill in their map with renderings of the different types of terrain designated by turns of some game cards.

Like roll-and-write games, Cartographers players pick where the selected terrain goes but unlike most of those games where I box is filled in, X’d or checked off, here players get to draw trees, water, and other terrain types onto their boards to score points based on designated parameters each quarter of the game. As you progress, your map gets filled with your artwork and, again, while I didn’t have the best looking map, I had a lot of fun with the drawing and wanted to play again promptly. While the variations on goals and terrain offers the replay value, I think the little bit of creativity you get to express helps make the game more enjoyable.

The Creative Call

While both of the aforementioned games ride on your drawing skills (or enjoyment drawing regardless of your skill, as in my case), Brotherwise Games’ Call to Adventure instead engages one’s storytelling skills. In fact, the very name of the game is attractively drawn from the first stage in Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth, from a book that should be ready by all writers and storytellers.

I don’t know about that sequel, the First Threshold.

As with the other games, players are given some parameters on which to hang their creative efforts; Call to Adventure (reviewed here on BGB) asks players to acquire cards that collectively tell the story of their character, from their origin and early days, through the driving force that motivates them, and ultimately to their destiny and the crowning achievements of their quest to get there.

This is played out in simple but clever game play, using throwing runes to acquire various traits, defeat certain challenges, and foil the plans of villainous adversaries as you collect the stories components of your character’s life. The mechanisms are clean and well-implemented but the fun begins when the game ends and you are encouraged to tell your character’s story.

The nine cards you collect, three each for the three stages of the character’s life give you plenty of material with which to work. This isn’t for everyone but I’ve really enjoyed the fact that you can come up with something special by selecting what kind of character you want to be from the various options that come up. You might want to be a hero but find the road hard. You can focus on being an anti-hero, making choices that could be interpreted different ways.

Or you can go flat-out evil and try to be a force for the dark side of life. The choice is yours and it allows you to tailor the story you want to tell at the game’s end. Yes, there are points to count at the end and someone ‘wins.’ But like many of the best games around, it’s most about how you play, what your individual experience delivers, and your own creative way of conveying your story at the end.

Creative Energy Engaged

All three of these games are tapping into the concept effectively, letting players have a bit of a say in the experience they get while gaming on the tabletop. Yes, Legacy games can feel like your own thing because the order in which you experience things and sometimes what you discover versus the next person might vary. Yet, it’s a story you are following. Similarly, the attractive Crossroads mechanism in some Plaid Hat games makes the game experience vary strongly, but it doesn’t engage one’s creativity as the previously mentioned games do.

Was this already present in Pictionary or Telestrations, games that had you drawing up a storm every turn? Maybe, because you could enjoy the artwork produced. But since both of those games have a time element going on, they don’t offer the players a chance to focus on the art instead of the answer delivered at breakneck speed.

I feel like the games I referenced offer the opportunity to truly engage the artistic spirit, both in the slow individual play of 4AD that allows one to take their time drawing up the elements of their dungeon or the chance to build up a story in Call to Adventure over the course of the 45-60 minute play time.

I am excited to see more opportunities for board game and tabletop designers in general to come up with new mechanisms that tap into the notion of this low-effort creativity, which unlocks the fun of owning part of the game experience beyond just the decisions of how to spend cubes each turn or which spot to drop a Meeple on. Let’s see what you’ve got, designers…

Silver by Ted Alspach and Bezier Games: Session Review

Posted on by E.R. Burgess
Silver by Ted Alspach and Bezier Games: Session Review

Silver Amulet (also known as Silver, since it introduces a new line) is a card-shedding game for 2-4 players newly-released at GenCon 2019 from Ted Alspach and his shingle, Bezier Games. You can learn a bit more about the game by watching my recent 5 Quick Questions session with Ted (or read it – we are all about the options at BGB now). If that’s TL; DW, basically this is a more ‘gamer’ development of the game Cabo, which Bezier Games brought back into print earlier this year.

Silver
Witchy Woman: One of the lovely cards in Silver

Since Ted is involved, Cabo wasn’t just given more interesting new elements, it’s seemingly going to grow some werewolf fur. More on that later.

Card-Shedding? What?

Like Cabo, Silver provides players an initial set of face-down cards of which they only get to view a couple. The object of the game is to optimize the cards in front of you to get the smallest total value.

One does this by drawing from the draw pile to activate them, swapping with those cards or one from discard pile and using some special abilities. Players keep taking turns like this until they feel they have the lowest raw card value among all players. If they do, they use their turn to declare the round is over, giving each other player one last shot to optimize before comparing scores. After four rounds of this play, the player with the lowest value wins.

The difference from Cabo (which is, itself, charming and enjoyable) is that Silver gives every card special powers instead of mostly just values. Different cards allow you to swap, reveal or peek at cards, or gain a power on your turn like drawing extra cards.

Shedding cards from your tableau isn’t easy, though. The main way to shed cards is to trade them for another one in a many-to-one trade. This is done by matching cards on your tableau; if I have two 6 value cards, I can trade it with the top card from the draw or discard pile, hopefully reducing my value. Be careful, however – if you flub an exchange because you try to trade a card (even as part of a set) that doesn’t match, the trade is cancelled and you take an extra card for screwing up. Boo.

Cards number from 0 to 13, but the special powers make some cards more attractive than others. For example, the Doppleganger can match the value of other cards so she’s easy to trade out. Yet, she’s the highest value card in the game so you’ll get stuck with her if you don’t trade the card away before scores are compared. Many of the game-changing powers are on higher-value cards, but even the lowly 2-rank Empath lets you view face-down cards on your tableau. The 3-rank bodyguard (and cover star) protects another good card from being swapped or discarded, so most of them are good in one way or another.

As mentioned above, the game has a Bezier Games-signature Werewolf feel. While the initial set has some of feel of those games with Villagers and Seers, we will probably have to wait for Silver Bullet (the first expansion) later this year to get actual werewolves into the game.

Ted’s Going To Need You To Vote

So if you think you’ve got the lowest value cards, you can declare the round over or ‘call for a vote’ because Werewolf. Really, this is just to compare the total values of your cards. If you called for the vote, you best be right. If not, you get not only your card total in points, you get a 10 point penalty.

However, if you do get it right, you get 0 points for the round. You also get that nice bit of metal, the Silver Amulet. This item can be used by the round-winner to protect a card from other card activations.

The Silver Amulet, which has a nice Game Trayz slot, too.

After four rounds, compare final totals (which you can do on the provided score pad).

Silver is a Lovely Production

Silver’s cards are gorgeously illustrated in a Pixaresque style (they feel a bit like the film Brave to me) and this immediately excited the folks who have played the game with us.

Equally exciting for game geeks like me: Bezier Games worked with Game Trayz to create an insert that fills my heart with joy. While essentially simple in design, it’s highly functional to hold the game’s cards and those from future expansions. The amulet is a pleasant additional touch, even if its ability is the least appealing part of the game for me. I’d call that a minor complaint, this little rich-get-richer element, but it’s a quick game so those kind of balancers are less important.

Silver is a Good One

I quite like Silver and it was enjoyed by everyone with whom I played it so far. My wife was already a Cabo fiend and, indeed, she dominated the first play of Silver, winning three of four rounds. I thought the need to remember the cards (you cannot keep looking at them) would throw her off but it’s not too much of a weight on the mind.

In the end, it plays in 30 minutes or so, includes some interaction when it’s not your turn because you are watching to see what other players might reveal about their hands, and the learning curve is shallow. Additionally, Bezier was clever enough to release an app of the game (previewed in my video podcast) that is completely free. This lets you try the game out in solo play mode so you can learn the game, and see it in action. While I am enjoying the solo play, it’s no substitute for in-person play and the chance to see people surprised when you somehow slipped below their total when the cards are revealed.

Some might ask: Do you need Cabo and Silver? I’d say probably not. Silver is more fun for me, as the special powers make the game. Yet, Cabo is even more approachable than Silver (and the theme is less, um, ‘geeky.’) So maybe there’s a reason why, but I’d go with Silver over Cabo any day.

We quite enjoy Silver and we’re looking forward to Silver Bullet’s Spiel 2019 release so we can add more cards to the mix this holiday season.

Silver Bullet

Silver is available NOW on the Bezier Games site and will soon be in stores near you.

5 Quick Questions About Silver with Ted Alspach of Bezier Games

Posted on by E.R. Burgess
5 Quick Questions About Silver with Ted Alspach of Bezier Games

Editor’s Note:As an avowed content geek, I try new formats. People seem to love our 5 Quick Questions interviewette for tabletop designers that is a quick read. We promise no TL;DR. Let’s see how Ted Alspach, founder of Bezier Games and game designer responsible for Castles of Mad King Ludwig, SDJ 2019 nominee Werewords, and the newly-announced card-shedding game Silver, does, shall we?

BGB:Attention is money, my friend. What is the elevator pitch for Silver?

Ted Alspach: We are so excited about this one, we’ve been working on it for two years and we are finally launching it here at Gen Con (2019). Silver is a surprisingly interactive hand management card shedding game. The concept of card-shedding doesn’t happen too often; there are some small games like Golf, Cabo and Rat-A-Tat Cat and little games like that. Silver is its own unique thing in that it’s a littler heavier, more for gamers.

Killer artwork all around.

In Silver, each card has a number of werewolves on it. And you start with five face down; you note just two of them at that point. Your goal by the end of the games is to have as few werewolves as possible by trading cards with higher numbers for those with lower numbers. However, each card also has a special ability so you try to shed as many as possible until someone says they have the lowest value.

There’s this great amount of tension because at any time, someone can call for a vote and say they have the lowest amount of werewolves. Everyone else gets a turn at that point, because there are interactive cards and they can screw with someone or drastically reduce their cards. But if they can maintain, they get zero points, which is good since you want the fewest points, they also get to go first the next round and they also get this special silver amulet of protection to use on the next round.

Very Bezier Boxey, but thicker.

Of course, if they miss it, everything goes awry and they get not just the sum of their cards but also ten points, and that’s rough for them. So that happens four times here and then whoever has the lowest score wins.

BGB: Making games is hard work, so you best have a great reason for making this thing. What inspired this game?

Ted Alspach: So, a couple years ago I played tons and tons for game called Cabo, which is, in a lot of ways, a predecessor to Silver and it is basically you work at getting rid of cards, reducing the cards in your hand. I did like it but it is really light and I discovered there’s this whole genre of these hand management and card shedding games. Looking into those again was looking for something a little more meaty with some interesting decisions. I didn’t see anything, so I started working around some ideas. No one has taken it to the level that I thought gamers would want, with each card doing something special. So, it’s balancing that aspect and it’s really a lot of fun. And, as a game designers, you are looking for these special abilities to balance with the points on the cards. While we were looking into it, we thought we should contact the people who did Cabo to see if they were interested in a more involved game and they ended up letting us publish a new copy of the game since they did it like 10 years ago, which we did and it includes some rules updates based on our play testing with Silver. So, Silver is a result of all that playing these other games and seeing what we could do to develop it into this big beast!

BGB: There are too many games out there. What hole in my game collection does this fill?

Ted Alspach: It’s a middleweight filler, 30-45 minutes and it fills that spot. It is just as easy to learn as Cabo. Silver isn’t any more difficult to learn. You don’t need to know everything just to play the game, so it’s really easy to pick up. And we’re doing an expansion called Silver Bullet that can switch out with cards from the original. (ed. note: This is also available for pre-order and releasing at Gen Con 2019).

Also available at GenCon 2019

BGB: This is Boardgame Babylon, so out with your dirty secrets. What DON’T you want to tell me about this game?

Ted Alspach: Okay, I have two exclusive things for you. I’ll tell you one and then I will show you something else. So, NEWSFLASH: We have four other Silver decks that are under development for Silver and we plan to release them in the next couple of years. We also have about a dozen original cards to fit into it. One of the cards in the upcoming decks is the Mad Bomber. So, points are bad in Cabo (ed. note: and Silver) and if you have the Mad Bomber, everyone ELSE gets points. (Ed. Note: To see the other secret, check out the video version of the podcast here):

BGB: Thanks for telling us a bit about Silver. Let’s wrap up with the key specifics (play time, number of players, and the link to the game) and also, since I think you can tell a lot about a person by understanding their sense of humor, what’s a good joke to close this interviewette?

Ted Alspach: The game plays in 30-45 minutes, for 2-4 players and it available for pre-order RIGHT NOW to be delivered at Gen Con 2019.

Joke Time

This is exclusive for the blog version of this show. Thanks to Ted for our first cartoon response to our joke question:

PRESS RELEASE: ASMODEE DIGITAL WILL LAUNCH THE EARLY ACCESS OF GLOOMHAVEN ON STEAM ON JULY 17th

Posted on by BGB Admin
PRESS RELEASE: ASMODEE DIGITAL WILL LAUNCH THE EARLY ACCESS OF GLOOMHAVEN ON STEAM ON JULY 17th

First Gameplay Reveal Went Live on Twitch Last Week, Viewed by More than 110,000 Viewers

PARIS – June 11, 2019 – Asmodee Digital announced Gloomhaven will start its Early Access on July 17th. For the first time, the gameplay was revealed last week during a four hour-long exclusive stream on Twitch. This special event, hosted by Sam Dempsey, Social Media Manager at Asmodee Digital, with special guest Craig Oman, CEO of Flaming Fowl Studios, was followed by more than 110,000 viewers on Twitch.

As a board game, Gloomhaven has raised $4.4 million on Kickstarter thanks to more than 45,000 backers. Acclaimed by both board game players and critics, the Gloomhaven board game achieved the highest rating on BoardGameGeek and won 6 Golden Geek awards including “Board Game of the Year” in 2017.

In the digital adaptation of Isaac Childres’ ultimate strategic board game, developed by Flaming Fowl Studios, you play as a squad of 2-4 mercenaries, in a world of darkness and trials. Gloomhaven is a balanced mix between Tactical, RPG and dungeon-crawling. Its legendary unforgiving difficulty rewards only the best strategic-thinking players. Gloomhaven will be released in Early Access with the same gameplay as the board game, adding a new exclusive roguelike mode. The campaign mode will be available at the official launch of the game.

The VOD of the gameplay reveal stream is available here.

For more information about the game, feel free to visit:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/780290/Gloomhaven

5 Quick Questions about Aftermath with designer Jerry Hawthorne

Posted on by E.R. Burgess
5 Quick Questions about Aftermath with designer Jerry Hawthorne

Editor’s Note: As an avowed content geek, I try new formats. People enjoy our 5 Quick Questions interviewette for tabletop designers since it’s a quick read. We promise no TL;DR. So let’s see how the amazing Jerry Hawthorne, storytelling game designer of Mice and Mystics, Stuffed Fables, and the thrilling new game Aftermath (which you can pre-order NOW) from Plaid Hat Games, does, shall we?

BGB: Attention is money, my friend. What is the elevator pitch for Aftermath?

Jerry Hawthorne: My new game is Aftermath. Humanity has mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind a ruined world. You are a group of young critters trying to provide for your colony in a cooperative adventure game you play inside a book.

BGB: Making games is hard work, so you best have a great reason for making this thing. What inspired this game?

Jerry Hawthorne: I have a fun and adventurous story to tell, and a fun new game mechanic that allows me to tell it.

BGB: There are too many games out there. What hole in my game collection does this fill?

Jerry Hawthorne: This game allows you to play through an apocalyptic story through the eyes of a tiny mouse. It is also a complete colony building experience, but done in such a user friendly way, it makes campaign play super easy (ed. note: Okay, I WANT IT).

Aftermath
The mice look good here but wait until you see those minis!

BGB: This is Boardgame Babylon, so out with your dirty secrets. What DON’T you want to tell me about this game?

Jerry Hawthorne: There is only one way to lose and that is if your colony disbands due to poor leadership.

BGB: Thanks for telling us a bit about Aftermath. Let’s wrap up with the key specifics (play time, number of players, and the link to the game) and also, since I think you can tell a lot about a person by understanding their sense of humor, what’s a good joke to close this interviewette?

Jerry Hawthorne: Aftermath will be in retail stores this September but you can pre-order it now. It’s a cooperative adventure game for 1-4 players of all ages. It plays in 90-120 minutes depending on your mission.

Aftermath

Editor’s Note: I highly recommend Mice and Mystics and Stuffed Fables, which have helped my friend and myself introduce board games to his sons while I also inspiring my own son to play more RPGs. There’s a ton of fun and joy in theses boxes.

JOKE TIME

Guy walks into a doctor’s office with a duck on his head. The doctor asks “How can I help you?”

The duck says “Doc, can you get this guy off my ass?”

PREVIEW: Battlestations: Dirtside from Jeff Siadek – LIVE on Kickstarter

Posted on by E.R. Burgess
PREVIEW: Battlestations: Dirtside from Jeff Siadek – LIVE on Kickstarter

A couple of years ago, I had the pleasure of getting a visit from legendary SoCal game designer Jeff Siadek and his producing partner Joey Vigour over to my place to try out the second edition of Battlestations!, Jeff’s magnum opus. The original was a huge success, with a massive community of gamers adding to the lore of the versatile sci-fi adventure game. The new edition updated the art, mechanisms and more to bring the game to modern audiences. The Kickstarter was a rousing success so it’s not surprising that I got an email from these two gents last month suggesting it was time for the sequel.

So, after a little planning, I got a similar visit to see their next big game in the series—Battlestations: Dirtside. While the original Battlestations was focused on capturing the feel of ship-to-ship combat with a full crew adventuring into space, Dirtside brings the modularity of the system down to the planet level. Away missions were available in the original game but the scale wasn’t ideal for exploring a whole planet. Dirtside solves that problem, and adds many more adventures and scenarios to the ever-expanding game worlds Siadek and his community of fans have imagined.

What’s it all about?

Battlestations: Dirtside is a science fiction adventure game that accommodates 1-9 players, with most missions lasting one to two hours. The game can be played cooperatively or solo, or even in “scrimmage” play that moves even quicker.

My Rhinoceros-esque scientist dropped down to the planet to find the cure for a raging disease infecting a different world. I horned in on it immediately. 🙂

The joy of Battlestations: Dirtside is the sandbox system, achieving a happy medium between an RPG, a board game and a minis game. The rules provide enough detail to get the character and adventure of your dreams while still moving along at action movie speed. Watch Jeff tell you all about it:

What’s in the Giant Battlestations: Dirtside Box?

In the massive container, you get some exceptional minis representing a variety of intriguing space races, plenty of scenario boards, and a ruleset that will address all of your questions. Like GURPS and even the modern D&D edition, a lot of elements are reduced to standard die rolls so you can play quickly, but you can also delve deeply into the game to design and equip your character with the skills and items of your choice. You can also level them up and use them on future missions, letting that light RPG feel surface without putting a major burden on any of the players.

How does it play?

Dirtside comes with tons of scenarios that all require a bit of setup to configure the board for the game world you’re exploring, but then gameplay is pretty fast. Once you have a character, you can bring them on future missions so you can see your character progress and more quickly dive into future games since you already have one to use. Player turns are easy but engaging – make a move, take a variety of action options to drive, shoot, explore and discover on the planet you’ve reached.

Battlestations: Dirtside
Designer Jeff Siadek

The Missions library is a vital part of the game and Siadek is making sure it is large. So will that aforementioned community of Battlestations fans. Many of those, by Jeff and by others, have multi-scenario story arcs—let’s just say it: Battlestations was Legacy before Legacy was cool. Dirtside is inspiring a whole new movement within this community, who will surely build missions to scale for planetary encounters of all kinds.

“We knew that planetary experiences were constrained by the scale of the ships being used and rules specific to them,” designer Jeff Siadek told me, “With Dirtside, we needed to change things around a little bit allow whole planet events, exploration on a larger level and to offer unique experiences you don’t see in other games that try to capture the thrill of Battlestations. Our scenarios are much larger than just these missions you see in other games.”

Developer Joey Vigour added, “We wanted replay value for the scenarios, too, so there are totally different directions a mission can go and there’s like 15 threats but so you can redo the same missions again with different threads. We wanted quality stories, not just a board where you run around and shoot things.” Of course, shooting things and running around can be fun, and this is totally available in the game, too.

Battlestations: Dirtside is fun and now available to pre-order on Kickstarter

We had a lot of fun with Battlestations: Dirtside and I expect it to do well on Kickstarter. In one scenario, we dropped onto the planet trying to find the cure for an epidemic happening on another world. We managed to claim it but almost landed our ship right on top of our away team (the drift rules are clever).

A second mission had us fighting off denizens of another planet with a timeclock ready to blow up the world. We had to keep using our Luck chits to avoid the blow up and managed to escape just in time. And, yes, there was running around and shooting of bad guys—but all within the storylines.

Battlestations: Dirtside
The Battlestations: Dirtside setup at Gamex 2019 from Strategicon

I had a raucous good time with Jeff and Joey, who are always wonderful to see, and I enjoyed playing the unique alien races from in the game on detailed planets included in the scenario book. If you want an adventure game with old-school rolls to resolve combat and tight enough mechanisms to make the game move along well, Battlestations: Dirtside should be looked up on Kickstarter ASAP. There’s a whole lot of game time in this big box of space adventure fun.

For more information on Battlestations: Dirtside, please check out the Kickstarter page today. The original Battlestations! Second Edition is available now on Amazon.

Disclosure: Boardgame Babylon accepts no payment for reviews, previews, comments, whatever, but accepts review copies occasionally. It’s kind of obvious, but the designers came to my house and taught me the game. Yes, I’d call them both friends but I’d also call a lot of people in board games my friends and that doesn’t affect my reviews.

Board Game Cafe Pioneers Launch Kickstarter In Support Of Hex & Company’s New Manhattan Location

Posted on by BGB Admin
Board Game Cafe Pioneers Launch Kickstarter In Support Of Hex & Company’s New Manhattan Location

For Immediate Release

NEW YORK, June 3, 2019 — Hex & Company is excited to announce the launch of a Kickstarter campaign, bringing a new location to the Upper East Side of Manhattan. A collaboration between the owners of New York City’s three existing board game cafes, it will retain the successful programming and features while elevating key aspects of the experience.

Hex & Company already operates Manhattan’s largest board game cafe, located on Broadway at 112th Street. Patrons gain access to a library of hundreds of board games to play during their visit, with even more available for purchase. The store also serves small plates, locally-roasted coffee, and a wide range of beer, wine, and cider options. Hex & Company has hosted hundreds of public and private events, from corporate outings to bachelorette and birthday parties.

The Upper East Side location, at 76th Street and First Avenue, will feature a menu developed in consultation with Ducks Eatery chef Will Horowitz. These comfort food favorites include house-smoked meat and fish, boozy milkshakes, and grilled pizzas. This location is also adding cocktails and mocktails to an already outstanding craft beer list.

“Our board game library will feature all of the classics and plenty of titles you haven’t played before,” says Greg May, one of the owners. “And we’re proud to offer a home to local and independent game designers In fact, one of our stretch goals for the Kickstarter campaign is to ‘pay it forward’- using some of the funds to back indie tabletop games.”

“We’re really proud of what we bring to our neighborhoods,” said Mark Miller, co-owner. “Our mission is to create safe spaces where all ages can come in and be engaged socially and intellectually.” This philosophy is reflected through the store’s family-friendly and community-building initiatives, including the after-school program that has delighted thousands of children over the last eight years.

For more information, please visit www.hexnyc.com/east. 

About Hex & Company
Hex & Company reflects the effort of three small business owners- Mark Miller, Greg May, and Jon Freeman- who are dedicated to strengthening local communities through great food, drinks, and games. Hex & Company currently operates at 2871 Broadway and is coming soon to 76th and First Avenue, with sister stores The Brooklyn Strategist at 333 Court Street in Carroll Gardens and The Uncommons at 230 Thompson in Greenwhich Village.

Review: Call to Adventure from Brotherwise Games

Posted on by E.R. Burgess
Review: Call to Adventure from Brotherwise Games

Call to Adventure is kind of a revelation. I have been increasingly interested in games that effectively tell a story while also having a tight set of mechanisms that make for a clean game. Brotherwise Games, previously best-known for the video game nostalgia-fest Boss Monster, have delivered on this combo in spades. While their Kickstarter was a hit, the game is now widely available. I believe it deserves your attention.

Let’s be clear: I love eurogames. I’m a proud eurosnoot—that term is hilarious and I embrace it (mostly because I think our hobby sometimes takes itself too seriously). But I admit that the appeal of story-driven games is compelling, especially as a storyteller myself. I have also been intrigued by games that encourage low-effort creativity and we’re seeing more of them these days. That’s not necessarily a bad term—we are in an era when people enjoy building on existing stories. Call to Adventure (CTA) engages this notion well, giving players a chance to add a bit of themselves into the game. While you the game plays effectively with smart mechanisms, (and it just sails), you also build a story that you can tell at the end of the game.

Gorgeous artwork, enjoyable game

Answering the Call

CTA starts with some cards dealt and selections made to seed the basics of your character. That’s an Origin, Motivation and a Destiny. You get two of each and get to pick one for each stage of your character’s life. Right from the beginning, this gives you a strong sense of how your character will develop over time. This can help drive the choices you make about increasing your experience and skills. Each turn, you select one of four or five face up cards for the stage you are on, with an option to discard one by spending Experience tokens.

Some cards just add characteristics and you can just claim them. Others represent challenges you need to achieve and give you two options, a top or bottom choice. Usually, the bottom one represents something harder, but the reward will be greater, too. Depending on which path you take, you’ll place an acquired card showing the top or bottom of the card to show off your reward, usually the ability to do more or a story element that can rack up points when you gain multiples of them. How do you take on those challenges and add to your skills? Well, you ‘throw the bones.’ Well, runes – that is.

The Runes from Call to Adventure: Chunky and fun to throw

Rune-Throwing

The game comes with runes that are kind of like a coin toss but they are so much nicer than that. First of all, there’s a standard set you always roll, which might also give you a Hero or Antihero card (more on that later). Then, there are different runes to line up with six attributes: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity…you know the rest. You earn the right to throw more as you gain experience, using the appropriate ones depending on whether its a challenge for your military prowess, knowledge, or perhaps your guile. This simple system has just the right amount of sophistication to make it not merely a coin-toss-fest, but still quick enough to keep the game moving and under an hour from beginning to finish.

When you fail at a Challenge, it is discarded but you get an Experience token to help you in the future. So, you did learn a little something.

One of the Four Player Boards with cards mid-game.

Hero and Antihero cards can be acquired and played during the game, from both runes and cards you collect. However, your tendency to goodness and not-so-goodness are tracked with a sun/moon token (shown above left). When you’re in the middle, you can play both. However, when you go to the extremes, it can help you gain points (or lose some heroic points). This adds pleasant nuance to your character story. This is a smart design.

Each of the Attribute and Challenge cards (that you achieve) are added to your character board in one of the three slots. The next section opens when you have three from the current level. They each give you some advantage or special ability, helping you along your journey. You can double-back for a lower-level cards if you want, but this could keep you from staying on pace with your competitors, as the game will end when one player gets three Level 3 cards on their board. After a final turn, players count up their points to see who won, with totals including cards you won, played Hero/Antihero cards, Experience tokens (that are often used in the game), and any bonuses from your Destiny card.

An Individual Call to Adventure

Enjoyably, the designers built a good solo mode right into the game’s basic mechanisms. Adversaries are special challenges that lack two options but can become an integral part of your character’s story. In solo mode, one of these is pulled out and setup as a final battle for the character – giving you something to built toward for that ultimate showdown. This feature works with the cooperative variant as well.

There’s more to it, including some Ally cards that add interest to the game. But mostly, the rules take a backseat to the clever story-construction the game engenders. While you don’t have to do it, at the end of the game, you are encouraged to tell the story of your character to the table. This inspired idea helps elevate the game a bit more. Engaging the creativity of players is one of the most appealing new features of modern games that I’ve started to notice in recent days.

I’ve sung the praises of Four Against Darkness for similar reasons. While that game is fun for its mechanisms, the true joy is in writing out your dungeon with your own decorations and artwork. The upcoming Cartographers from Thunderworks Games also inspires players to not just roll and write, but roll and create their maps. More designers are coming up with intriguing ways to include some creative energy into the genre and I love it.

Recommended: Call to Adventure

Call to Adventure is utterly gorgeous, too. If the appropriately 8-bitty artwork from Boss Monster made you think they were going to go on the cheap for this one, put it out of your mind. Quite the reverse, the artwork in CTA is fantastic and evocative. I expect to play a lot more Call to Adventure and look forward to their future expansions, which include one based on Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller series (although maybe they should hold it hostage until he finishes the third book…).

Call to Adventure is a unique gaming experience that I really enjoyed and I think you will, too. It’s family-friendly and absolutely worth your gaming dollars. Get it on Amazon or at your FLGS, and answer the call!

Review: Time Breaker from Andy Looney and Looney Labs

Posted on by E.R. Burgess
Review: Time Breaker from Andy Looney and Looney Labs

Time Breaker is another wacky game from the mind of the great Andy Looney. In the game, which is perhaps a spiritual sequel to Andy’s earlier Chrononauts, players are part of the Time Repair Agency chasing a Time Breaker through time to bring him to justice. But this is not a cooperative game; players want to be the officer to bring the Breaker in, meaning that you may actually try to stop some of the other players in their pursuit.

Time Breaker
A lot of time stuff in that little Looney box…

What’s a Time Breaker, you may ask (especially with the way Avengers: Endgame recently threw out much of what sci-fi geeks ‘know’ about time travel)? The game defines it as a criminal that is attempting to cause issues in a timeline rift. Thus, the players need to chase this temporal hooligan through a game board made up of a 25-tile grid, each representing a specific spot in history. The tiles each show a previous place in history from which you can come into the space and a secondary time you can jump to from there (denoted by red and green arrows, respectively).

Players start at the center of the grid, in the Time Repair Agency spot and they are each dealt a hand of three cards. Each turn, the active player draws a card and then does one of three things: Plays a card to move their agent or the Time Breaker, uses the green arrow to jump to the next time spot, or they do a Hail Mary option of drawing the top card and doing whatever it suggests. That last option is called a Wormhole and you get what you get.

Most of the cards that allow movement do one of two things: Either let your agent move one space vertically or horizontally, or jump to a specific time tile. The Wormhole is really only for those moments when you have no other useful option.

Time Breaker
The Time Breaker is a cube of time-busting clear plastic.

Time Breaker Cards

Some cards allow players to move the Time Breaker himself. This is helpful if one of your opponents moves onto the space with the Time Breaker to arrest him. They simply need to verbalize that they are arresting him (creativity welcome) and then the Breaker will go with them when next they move. Now, if you get to the space where your opponent has actually apprehended the Breaker, you have the option of also placing them under arrest and the first player to move away from that space will take the Breaker with them. But it’s much easier to simply move the Breaker with a card.

Breaker cards are easy to spot since they are black, and most let you move the Breaker token. Some Breaker cards actually close a time gate instead. This removes the tile from the 5 x 5 grid and flips it over. Now, if you jump to that space either from a card or tile path, you are sent to the center of the board instead. This is a welcome mechanism as it pleasantly speeds up the game as you go since getting the Breaker back to the center space is the winning condition.

These closures create gaps in the board which are traversed as if they were just not there, allowing you to move directly to the adjacent space and with the added fact that the game allows for wraparound movement from one side to the other. This movement flexibility is welcome and it grows as the game board gets smaller. Players are able to immediately walk between spaces based on using the green arrow cards and move cards. This eases up one of the game’s challenges: Movement cards directly to you want to go to scarce and the real challenge of the game is figuring out clever ways to navigate to the Breaker and bring them to justice.

Forward to the Past

Time Breaker was popular with the players at our game table. They enjoyed the fast play and movement around the board and the opportunity to foil each other’s plans just as they were about to make their way back to the Time Repair Agency with the nasty Breaker in, presumably, temporal cuffs. The efficiency of play is a factor, with serious gamers perhaps ending the game much quicker. As a result, Time Breaker has a wide timeline for play, noted on the box as 10 to 40 minutes. This is a similar time commitment to the other Looney Labs games which have can wild swings of luck on the basis of card play and options that you don’t have a great deal of control over. That isn’t a slight on the game, in my opinion, because that speed works well for casual players looking for a Fluxxy experience..

Time Breaker
The tiles have a lot of art!

If we had any concern with the game, it’s the graphic design, which crams a great deal of information onto every single one of the game tiles. In an effort to allow people to use either visual or numeric cues, the individual tiles, which aren’t so large, feature both the image associated with a certain time tile and the actual date. This makes for a kind of messy tile that can be difficult for people discern. I would hope that if Looney Labs does a second edition of the game, they might simplify the tiles. Rather than helping, the visual searches slow the game a bit.

Time Breaker is for 2 to 4 players, ages 8 and up. For its portability and ease of play, I do recommend the game, especially for Looney Labs fans. More serious gamers may find Time Breaker enjoyable as a quick filler and to enjoy the artwork, which is charming.

Charming Art – quite Looney, too

In my view, Time Breaker is an excellent encapsulation of the Looney Labs brand, and fits well into their ludography. I enjoyed the game and expect to play it again as it becomes available in the Strategicon Library at Gamex 2019. The game is available now at your Friendly Local or Online Game Store and on Amazon.com.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a copy of this game for independent review, which is now being donated to the Strategicon Game Library.