Event Review - Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School

Since I was old enough to hold a crayon, I wanted to be an artist. As a kid, I went through drawing books like a teenager with a stack of Playboys. I learned how to draw superheroes from a book called How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way. Starting college, I announced that I would draw comic books for a living.There's just one problem - I'm really not very good.Happily, you don't have to be good if you want to draw. There's no policeman who confiscates...

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Board Game Review - Five-Fingered Discount

I'm running a low-grade fever and just generally feeling run-down, like the Energizer Bunny just left my house and took all the batteries with him. I know that making jokes is going to be harder than normal, and that would have me concerned, except that Five-Fingered Discount is going to do me a big favor and supply all the jokes for me. I am grateful.Five-Fingered Discount is one of the new crop of games from Minion Games, a plucky little publisher...

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Board Game Review - Eclipse

It seems that these days, so many games are half-hour throwaways that try to simulate a serious game with light rules and quick play. Games like that can be fun, but too often, they remind me of eating a tofu burger (my wife is a vegetarian, so yes, I have eaten a tofu burger. I would rather eat my sock). They're like imitations of serious games, like getting a patty made out of soy beans when what you really want is a half pound of ground cow.Eclipse,...

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Card Game Review - Timeline

Sometimes I wonder about game publishers. I know there's this constant race to publish more stuff in an ever-running race to keep up with the Joneses (and by 'Joneses' I mean 'Fantasy Flight'), but I am often distressed at the poor judgment shown in choosing titles and themes. I don't think many people would be interested in watching a riveting television show about people who arrange cardboard boxes for a living, but for some reason, publishers...

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Board Game Review - Commander-in-Chief

Publishing a game in a market glutted with games takes a certain amount of hubris. I mean, you have to hang on to the belief that what you're developing really is as good as your mom told you it was, and ignore the guy who asked you why in the world you thought this was a good idea. But there's a point at which you really ought to question the visions you had where Jesus came down and told you to self-publish.Commander-in-Chief is a self-published...

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Kick-Ass Game Review - Summoner Wars Master Set

If you need an example of how to release a reboot, just take a gander at Plaid Hat Games (incidentally, 'taking a gander' was originally a phrase that meant 'urinating on a goose', and when done properly, tended to draw a crowd). (Also incidentally, I made that up.)Plaid Hat Games makes Summoner Wars. In fact, the company was created to sell Summoner Wars, although they're branching out now with a new game coming out real soon and more in the pipeline....

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Board Game Review - Imperial 2030

World conquest is one of those themes that just about anyone can understand. You just gather a bunch of troops, send them out to war, and grab anything that isn't nailed down. Kill all the men, rape the horses and ride off on the women. Or, you know, whatever it is that you do.But in real life, taking over the world is way trickier. If you piss off enough people, sooner or later they all band together to deliver bloody kidney blows until you cry...

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Mind Game Review - Double Agent

Different people like different kinds of games. That's not exactly breaking news. No need to stay tuned for live updates at ten. But I have seen very few games that fostered split opinions like Double Agent.Double Agent is not a board game, and although it is played with cards, it's not really a card game. It's more like a mind game, where your goal is to get inside your opponent's head and sucker him into a bad play. There are six secret agents...

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Dumping My Stuff Review

I have too many games. This may sound like a good problem to have, but in my house, games are a little like that one episode of old-school Star Trek where those cute Tribble thingies fill up every corner of the Enterprise. I've got more games than I can store. If someone walked into my office without knowing me, they would think they just entered the home of some decrepit old lady who hasn't thrown out a newspaper since 1927.Now, maybe this isn't a problem with which you can empathize. But if you're reading Drake's Flames, there's a very good chance...

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Pyramid Game Review - Ice Dice

It's been almost two years since I first reviewed Treehouse from Looney Labs (you can read about it here), so it was about time to score another set of brightly colored translucent triangles and play more wacky abstract games. Well, maybe it was past time. It's hard to say, because I can't figure out how to set the clock on my cell phone (I have a new kick-ass Android phone, that keeps track of my budget and plays games and reminds me to take out...

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Card Game Review - Star Fluxx

I think we need to start a campaign to tell Looney Labs what settings to use for Fluxx. We've got zombies and pirates, Martians and potheads. We've got Monty Python and eco-friendly shrubbery. Looney Labs cranks out another Fluxx version about once a year, and so I think we need to offer some ideas. I think maybe Dino Fluxx, Balanced Diet Fluxx, and Porn Fluxx (my personal favorite idea) should be added to the lineup.At least this year, we won't...

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Dice Game Review - King of Tokyo

Transcript from a private conversation that may or may not have occurred in my head the other day:Me: I wish I could find a really cool game that I could break out quick, play in fifteen minutes, then put it away when everybody finally shows up.Also Me: Yeah, but those tend to be so empty and crappy and boring. Half the time they're just abstracts, and I never feel like I did anything, and the other half are about medieval France.First Me: No kidding....

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