Guest Blogging Super Dungeon Explore

I recently had the opportunity to do a guest review of the board/miniature game hybrid Super Dungeon Explore at the video game RPG website www.rpgfan.com. I had a great time writing about a fun and interesting game that took my love of board games and 80's video games and mashed them together into a truly fun and entertaining gaming experience!

Link: http://www.rpgfan.com/features/Super_Dungeon_Explore_Spotlight/index.html

Eminent Domain - A Review

Tasty Minstrel Games has taken their games to new heights with the space themed, Seth Jaffee designed board game Eminent Domain.  While the title of the game may sound like the sort of legalese a cheap polyester attorney would feed you right before demolishing your house to make way for an interstellar bypass, in execution Eminent Domain forgoes any legal wrangling and instead tasks players with discovering and settling planets to score influence points. Any sleazy space attorneys that may be part of these proceedings have, thankfully, been abstracted out of gameplay.

In Eminent Domain, players attempt to score influence points by discovering planets, colonizing or attacking them, and researching technologies. Each planet gives different benefits to the player, allowing him to excel at certain actions or trade resources for points. Players take turns selecting a role card from the center of the table, and performing any instructions on the card before adding the card to their personal deck. By using cards in their hand, and special features of planets on the table, players can enhance the effect of certain roles. Whoever can best manage their deck, and make the best role choices will ultimately gain the most influence, and win the game.

Eminent Domain is reminiscent of several different modern games. The role selection mechanism that was popularized by San Juan and Race for the Galaxy is featured prominently in Eminent Domain’s gameplay, as is the deck building paradigm that Dominion pioneered. Despite this obvious influence, Eminent Domain manages to take these two disparate ideas of role selection and deck building and merge them together into a unique mash-up that has a flavor and strategy that stands on its own.

Components:

Right out of the gate, the components in Eminent Domain scream high quality. The artwork is colorful and pleasing, and the components are rugged and well made. This is especially redeeming, as Tasty Minstrel Games suffered some production issues during their freshman attempt at publishing games a few years ago, when a large majority of the first print run of the game Homesteaders was shipped from the factory with critical manufacturing flaws. Not willing to be knocked out so easily, Tasty Minstrel Games has shifted production of their games to a different, highly respected manufacturer, with absolutely stellar results.

Board – Although Eminent Domain is more of a card game than a board game, it includes a glossy board to hold the various cards that players will collect through the game. This is not only nice because it helps organize the play space, but it is also functional in imparting rules information to the players when all of the cards of a certain type have been collected.

Cards – Gameplay in Eminent Domain centers on the manipulation of its various cards. These cards are printed on linen stock and display vivid, colorful artwork. The cards are good quality, but they have black edges, and even after a single play the edges of my cards started to show some whitening. Because the cards will be constantly shuffled during play, Eminent Domain (like most deck builders), is a candidate for card sleeves.

Cardboard Bits – The few cardboard bits found in Eminent Domain are thick and sturdy. The Influence Point tokens, starting planets, and player reference cards were a joy to punch from their cardboard sheet; some even fell out out on their own, impatient to play. This may seem like a small detail, but it's actually very important to me. When I first open up a brand new game and find that the cardboard pieces are difficult to punch, causing them to split or tear, it makes me anxious and affects my enjoyment of the game. I plan to keep my games around for many years, and knowing that pieces aren’t going to be defaced before the first game has seen it's first play is greatly appreciated.

Spaceships – When first opening Eminent Domain, one finds carefully packaged in a baggie, inside of a small box, a set of small, black, plastic spaceships. The spaceships come in three different shapes, with each shape a differing size. The spaceships serve as simple counters to denote a player’s current military might, but they look really neat, and are a lot of fun to handle. It could be argued that wooden cubes or cardboard tokens would serve the purpose just as effectively as these little plastic fighters, but during play, little touches like this really help reinforce the theme. It is a bid odd though that the ships come in three sizes, because the size of the ship has no relevance in gameplay. Seth Jaffee was kind enough to talk to me about these interesting components, and I came out of the exchange with much more information about the ship tokens came to be, and what the future holds for them - You will have to wait till the conclusion of this review for that juicy info though!

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Nightfall: Blood Country - A Board Game Review

Nightfall: Blood Country is an expansion to the supernatural themed deck building game Nightfall. Designed by David Gregg, and published by Alderac Entertainment Group, Nightfall is a deck building game that encourages direct confrontation between players, and rewards the building of card combos through the use of its unique “chaining” mechanism which uses color matching to bring new cards into play. I really enjoyed Nightfall, and its stand-alone expansion Nightfall: Martial Law, and I was very excited to give Nightfall: Blood Country some table time.

While the previous expansion, Nightfall: Martial Law had all of the components to play as a stand-alone game, Nightfall: Blood Country is an expansion in the strictest sense, and requires one of the previous Nightfall incarnations to play. Since I have previously reviewed both Nightfall and Nightfall: Martial Law, I am not going to write an in-depth description of gameplay. If you aren’t familiar with Nightfall, my review of the base game gives an introduction to gameplay.

Components:

The biggest difference between the components in Nightfall: Blood Country and the other Nightfall games is the box. The colorfully illustrated box has a small footprint, at around 6” x 4” x 3”, much smaller than the full-sized boxes of its predecessors. The previous games in the series are already built to hold expansions in them, so Nightfall: Blood Country's small footprint is very economical. Some people may be tempted to put the cards from this new expansion into the original Nightfall box, and simply discard the expansion box, but there is a compelling reason to keep the smaller box around. Even with its diminutive dimensions, the expansion box still has plenty of room for more cards, and it comes with the same foam spacers and divider cards as the original game. In fact, Nightfall: Blood Country even comes with dividers for wound cards, and the starting player decks, making it an excellent portable solution for when you want to take Nightfall with you without the hassle of lugging around a big box.  I haven’t yet checked to see if all of the original Nightfall cards and Nightfall: Blood Country cards will fit into the expansion box together, but there is definitely enough room in there to pack a wide variety of cards, making it perfect for travel.

The expansion also forgoes a full-fledged rulebook, opting instead for a single folded sheet that describes new rules, presents a small FAQ, and adds some new game fiction. The majority of the text is devoted to game fiction; a fiction that moves the action to Canute, Oklahoma.

The Game:

Nightfall: Blood Country doesn’t really add much to the core game mechanics; there has been a change to the original drafting rules that call for the random public archives to be selected and revealed before drafting starts. This small change is actually very effective in making the drafting process much more strategic, due to the fact that players now have a frame of reference when drafting cards. In the older drafting rules, the random cards were just that: random. Now, the random cards can better mesh with the rest of the selections.

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D-Day Dice Kickstarter - an Interview with the Designer.

I have been keeping tabs on a few of the new board game projects utilizing Kickstarter as a platform to springboard publication. One such title is D-Day Dice, designed by Emmanuel Aquin, and scheduled for publication by Valley Games. The D-Day Dice Kickstarter hit the ground running with incredible momentum, achieving its target funding within 24 hours - but there are still a lot of great goodies to be unlocked within the next few weeks if the stretch goals are reached.

D-Day Dice is a dice based multi-player co-op WWII themed game focused around the organization of resources at hand to build and direct a unit of Allied forces against a German machine gun nest. In it's simultaneous play model, players must effectively manage the resources that are rolled on the dice, and work together to choose how best to utilize their resources.

Game designer Emmanuel Aquin was kind enough to speak with us a bit about himself, his game, and the design process of D-Day Dice. More information about the game can be found on it's Kickstarter page at: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1325766284/d-day-dice-board-game

 Nerdbloggers:

Thanks for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk to us! First of all, can you tell us a little about yourself? You have a very interesting background that may resonate with a good number of our readers.

Emmanuel Aquin:

I'm a little French-Canadian with a very uninteresting background. The only thing of interest is that my father, Hubert Aquin, was a very well-known Quebec novelist and intellectual.

I have been all over the place, so focus may not be my best quality. I started as a novelist (wrote my first published novel when I was 20), then I went on publishing 3 more novels until 1995 (when I was 27). These are all "serious" novels -- in French, no less :-). Then, needing a change of pace, I went on publishing a couple of absurd sci-fi novels, in the vein of Alice in Wonderland and the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I also did some illustrations for school books (I wanted to be a comic-book artist when I was younger).

Then I was convinced by my then-girlfriend to start my own publishing house. So I became an editor (I was an assistant-editor before), layout artist, graphic designer and illustrator. I also created an erotic collection, in which I published 4 erotic books. These were very tongue-in-cheek (ouch!) and done in the spirit of the Oulipo French movement of the late 50s (like George Perec and Raymond Queneau, for those of you with checklists). It sounds artsy-fartsy, said like that, but it was mainly books that used sex as a pretext to have fun. 2 of them were "Choose Your Own Patch" novels where you played a sex secret agent who was a Viking in the sack but the stupidest man to walk the Earth, sent on idiotic missions against sexed-up villainesses. Artsy stuff, I tell you.

Then I grew bored of being poor all the time, so I became a TV writer, working mainly on kid shows and teenage sitcoms. I'm still in that phase as of this writing.

Nerdbloggers:

That's quite an interesting background! It sounds like you've been busy, yet still managed to find the time to design a game as well. Can you give a quick description of the components and gameplay found in D-Day Dice?

Emmanuel Aquin:

No, not really.

Well, OK. D-Day Dice takes place, wait for it... in Normandy, on D-Day. You are a soldier tasked with taking out a machine-gun nest that's killing all your friends. Every player has a set of 6 dice (2 red, 2 white and 2 blue), which he will roll each turn to accumulate soldiers, items, courage and stars. These resources accumulate from turn to turn, so you need to plan ahead. The action takes place on a "battle map", divided into sectors. You start at the bottom, at the waterline, and must take out the bunker that sits at the top of the map, On the way, with the help of your dice, you will find soldiers to join your unit, stars to recruit specialists and items that were dropped by dead soldiers. And you need courage to be able to advance toward the bunker.

Gameplay is simultaneous, so no downtime, and cooperative: the players win together or lose together. So they need to trade and share stuff if they want to have a chance. And since it's the Normandy landings, the maps are brutal: you lose soldiers every turn, depending on the "defensive value" of your sector.

The "unique" mechanic of the game is the RWB system: when you roll your dice, you try to obtain a triple result on a red, white and blue die. If you do so, you gain a bonus called an RWB. These bonuses are the key to winning.

So even though you roll dice, the game is not really luck-based. It's more about adjusting your strategy depending on your rolls, managing your resources and moving tactically on the battle map. In a nutshell, there are no bad rolls in D-Day Dice, just bad decisions.

Nerdbloggers:

That sounds like a lot of fun, with some unique mechanics. What was the inspiration for the game, and did you have any design goals when you set out to create it?

Emmanuel Aquin:

I was mostly inspired by 2 things: I played "Roll Through the Ages" and thought is was very bland (although I loved the mechanics), and I discovered a nice print-and-play solo dice game called "The d6 Shooters", by Eric Herman, which was quite entertaining. I'd say these are the main inspirations for D-Day Dice.

And my goal, when designing DDD was simply to create a game that worked. This was my first original design ever. I wanted it to be full of tension, and thematic.

Nerdbloggers:

What was your design process like?

Emmanuel Aquin:

Trial and error, mostly. I had the basic idea of "roll dice to stay alive", then I grabbed a handful of dice. My first prototype was boring as hell, but I had some red, white and blue dice. I was desperate to make it interesting, so I decided to improvise a rule about rolling a triple result on 3 different colors. Once I had that idea, the rest developed itself in a fairly painless manner.

Nerdbloggers:

It's my understanding that D-Day Dice started out as a Print and Play game. Do you think D-Day Dice benefited from it's genesis as a print and play game?

Emmanuel Aquin:

Absolutely. Remember, this was my first design, so I had no idea what I was doing. I thought it was cool, my girlfriend did too, but I couldn't tell if other people -- the ones that weren't sleeping with me -- would enjoy it. Making the game available as a PnP not only gave me access to great feedback from the gaming community, it also gave me the confidence to enter my game in designing contests.

Nerdbloggers:

Will there be differences between the print and play version and the published version?

Emmanuel Aquin:

Changes are big, actually. In the PnP version, when you roll a straight, you win the "Medal of Honor". In the commercial release, there is a slew of "Awards" you can win with a straight (and with select items). Also, instead of a dozen specialists and about 15 items in the PnP, you have 24 specialists, 28 items and 6 vehicles in the Valley Games version. There is more of everything, and with all these new additions come new rules, new twists and more depth.

Nerdbloggers:

 As for components, how will the dice look? Has a choice been made between printed or engraved dice?

Emmanuel Aquin:

All the dice will be engraved, including the 4 "unit marker" dice, which serve as both player tokens and turn counters. Since you roll those dice all the time, they need to be durable.

Nerdbloggers:

Kickstarter has become very popular for introducing games lately. What benefits do you feel that Kickstarter gives to a game like D-Day Dice.

Emmanuel Aquin:

Exposure is one of them. Then there is the community aspect of having a group of players join in the fun before the game even reaches the stores. Of course, the money raised ain't nothing to sneeze at, either: it will allow us to print the first expansions at the same time as the base game, which saves money in the long run. On top of all that, it's a great testing ground for the reception your game might have, although, we'll have to wait to verify that statement :-)

Nerdbloggers:

For those reading this after the Kickstarter campaign: Will D-Day Dice be sold through retailers after the Kickstarter has completed? On the other hand, what are the benefits for those who choose to become early adopters and help kickstart the game?

Emmanuel Aquin:

If you join the Kickstarter campaign, you will receive some bonus exclusive cards that are not essential, but fun. In addition, you'll receive a mini-expansion, some cool swag (like "D-Day Dice" pouches and army patches), and a good deal on the game.

If you prefer to wait, the game should reach the stores around April 2012, less the exclusive cards and dice pouches.

Nerdbloggers:

Last question. This one isn't related to board games. November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month); aside from your own, what are your favorite novels?

Emmanuel Aquin:

Many are French, as one would expect:

- Mémoires d'un tricheur, by Sacha Guitry (was made into a film by Guitry in 1936)
- L'étranger, by Albert Camus (The Stranger or the Outsider, in English)
- Dieu et nous seuls pouvons, by Michel Folco (about an executioner dynasty in France)
- The Egyptian, by Mika Waltari (adapted into a movie that I never saw)
- The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

A novel I enjoyed recently was World War Z, by Max Brooks. That one took me by surprise.

I also enjoy good short stories, like the ones from Guy de Maupassant, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and Roald Dahl.

I have to admit, though, that I much prefer non-fiction. I read mostly historical books, biographies and essays. Go figure.

I'd like to extend my thanks to Emmanuel Aquin for taking the time to talk to us about his game, D-Day Dice, and I strongly urge everyone to check out the Kickstarter project!

Battle for Moscow - A Wargame Review

This is a review from a series of articles I am writing about my foray into wargaming. The introduction to these articles, with a bit of background, can be found: here.

My previous review in this series looked at Strike Force One, a very basic introduction to some of the main ideas found in hex and counter wargames. I enjoyed playing it, and it piqued my interest, but after playing it several times I was interested in tackling something with a bit more depth. Luckily I found just that in Victory Point Games’ printing of Battle for Moscow.

Battle for Moscow is a small, beginning level hex and counter wargame that simulates the Battle of Moscow during the start of World War II.  Battle for Moscow takes the ideas introduced in Strike Force One (zone of control, retreat paths, combat tables, etc..) and builds upon them to deliver a deeper play experience. Due to this added complexity, and the actual historical setting of the game, it feels much less abstract than Strike Force One, and stands on its own as a game that can be replayed multiple times, while remaining enjoyable.

Components:

Battle for Moscow comes packaged in a plastic bag, with 40 full color double sided counters, a foldout cardstock map, and cardstock turn tracker/player aid. The 4 page rule booklet is concise, but informative, and the full color illustrations do a good job in describing the different movement and attack scenarios that the player will encounter. A welcome bonus for the new wargamer is the BATTLESSON sheet that goes into some detail about the wargaming hobby.

All of the components have a matte finish, and have been handcrafted using high end desktop publishing equipment, so the artwork on the map, counters, and in the manual is vivid and readable. The only complaint I have with the components is the fact that the handmade nature of the counters can cause the front and back of the counters to be slightly misaligned. This is purely a cosmetic concern, however, and doesn’t affect actual gameplay at all. Victory Point Games is looking into upgrading the equipment they use to create die-cut components, which should alleviate this issue in new games manufactured after spring of 2012.

Setup:

Setup in Battle for Moscow is fairly easy: players place their pieces on the indicated hexes of the game board. Each unit in Battle for Moscow is double sided. This is one of the new concepts introduced in the game. Both sides of the unit counter have numbers printed on them, representing the unit’s movement allocation and strength of the unit. One side shows the unit’s full strength capability, while the other displays the unit’s half-strength capability.  During gameplay, a unit can be damaged, but not completely destroyed; and likewise, reinforcements can be brought in to bring a half-strength unit back to full strength.

Setup for the Russian player is a breeze. He just places all of his units in the indicated hexes, with the half-strength side facing up. All of the Russian units have the same statistics, so it doesn’t matter where they are placed. The German player however, has to give some more thought to his setup process. The German player’s units are all brought in at full strength, but he has two different types of units – armored units, and infantry. Even within these two different types, units have different strength and movement stats, so initial placement for the German player can have huge implications during the game.

When a player is first introduced to the game as the Russians, looking at the initial setup can be intimidating. The German player has many more units on the board, and they are all at full strength, while the entirety of the Russian army is at half strength. This is a bit deceiving, because due to reinforcement rules, and geographic factors, the Russian player actually has a bit of an advantage. I must meekly admit that I have yet to win a game as the Germans, although I have come very close a couple of times.

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