Poetry Game Review - Cyrano

Reiner Knizia (who is, despite my constant haranguing, a brilliant man) once said that the goal of the game is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning. For most games, that's kind of true. I think if you're being honest, you have to admit that it's more fun to win. But if you're playing Cyrano, that quote is ironclad truth. You'll have the most fun with this game if you're really pouring your heart into winning, but when the end comes and someone has won, you won't care who that person is. You might even win the game, and still be disappointed that it's over.

In case you haven't picked up on it yet, this is about to be one of my 'you are going to love this game' reviews. And the absolutely ironic part of this review is that, when I read the rules, I thought it was going to be more flaming than a San Francisco gay pride parade let by Rip Taylor and the cast of Cats. See, this is the only game I've ever seen that uses writing poetry as a game mechanic.

Admittedly, this is in awfully original game from a couple designers who know how to make games I want to play, so it has the pedigree to kick ass. It's just that the game itself is really odd. You get a theme and two rhymes, and you have to write a four-line poem using all three. You get points for using rhymes that nobody else used, so you can't just grab the most obvious rhymes. Like if you're trying to rhyme 'scoop', you can be pretty sure someone is going to use 'poop', especially if you play with the kind of low-brow miscreants who help me test these wacky games.

You have incentive to write good poems, too, because everyone is going to vote for their favorite. You can vote for yourself, but if nobody agrees with you, you won't get any points for it. You get points for agreeing with everyone else, so it's a good idea to pick the best poem. There's no actual reward for having the best poem, except that it's awfully gratifying to have everyone vote for yours. You don't get points for being a good poet. You get a big, swelled-up head, which is cooler than getting points.

Now, let me say right now that this is the kind of game that no real man is going to go, 'wow, that's what I always wanted to do!' We fix cars and drink hard liquor and swear at people who walk on our grass. We replace leaky plumbing and cook meat in the back yard. We don't write four-line poetry, because we leave that to starry-eyed hippie chicks and artsy college guys trying to get laid.

And yet, even if it is marginally French, Cyrano is an awful lot of fun. There's something about writing poems that appeals to even the crustiest old fart, something creative and lyrical and enlightening. It's even better if we can work in ribald jokes about sex and painful injuries. And since the only real requirement of Cyrano is that you rhyme, there's a lot of room for improvisation, and we found ourselves thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to crack wise and laugh like idiots.

For instance, when the theme of the poem was 'marriage', my poem was about getting honeymoon nookey in Cancun. When we were rhyming with '-ick', one friend had a silly poem about falling out a window and landing on your man parts. Our poems were not art, by any stretch, but one of the most enjoyable poems was a remarkably well-composed tale of a dragon who ate a valiant knight.

The game ended when three of us won at the same time. There are rules for a rhyming showdown, but there's not much point. You don't play this game to win. You play this game to write goofy poems, to laugh and enjoy the nutty inventions of your friends, and to stretch your own creative muscles. You don't have to be a good poet to play this game, which works out for me, because I'm not. Hell, none of us were, especially when we were on a timer.

I can certainly see that a lot of people would find this game absolutely ludicrous, and avoid it like a used heroin needle in a dumpster behind an AIDS clinic. There are no dice, no tense decisions, and no body count. It's about as manly as a lace thong, and yet we all enjoyed it immensely and without reservation.

Not every game has to be a battle of wits fought with meeples or plastic zombies. Some games can be great without difficult decisions and long-term strategies. Every now and then, it's fun to clear away the boards and chits and dice and just let your mind engage in something completely different, and when you're ready for it, Cyrano will be there to entertain you, and maybe persuade you to develop an unexplained interest in Liza Minelli.

Ratings

Theme: 2 (complete unmanly)
Gameplay: 8 (ludicrous rhyming is actually a blast)
Production Value: 4 (replace the crappy golf pencils at your earliest opportunity)
Limp-Wrist Factor: 3 (surprised me by not being gay)

Dogstar isn't carrying Cyrano, and I would like to be surprised, but they probably didn't think it looked all that manly, either.

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Announcement - Ratings System

A month or two ago, someone mentioned I should have a ratings system, so that people could know at a glance which games I like, and compare them to each other. At the time, there were a couple reasons I was opposed to the idea.

The first reason was the most obvious - I am pretty damned lazy. Creating a whole system for rating games is way too much like work. I can make a couple snide jokes at the end of a review and call them my summary, but an actual ratings system might require some effort. And I'm generally opposed to effort.

The second reason was a little more highbrow. It's my opinion that you cannot sum up a game with a single number. That's like if someone asks how the weather is in Tahiti, and you answer, '3'. Numbers should only be used as answers when the question has to do with counting things, usually money, but best-case, tequila shots.

I mean, look at Puerto Rico. This is a brilliantly designed game with lots of strategy and quick-thinking plays, but with a theme as dry as Mojave sand. Compare it to something like HeroQuest, where your decisions are virtually pointless, as long as you choose to kill something, but you get to play a story. How do you compare those two games with a single number? You don't, is what I'm saying. The only thing both those games have in common is that they're both games. Rating them both on the same scale would be like comparing apples and boobs.

But over time, the idea began to sound better and better. Not because it would be some wicked handy reference, because I'm not going to go back and rate all the old games (see reason number one). No, it's worth doing because it has potential humor value. If it's also useful to you, well, I would say that was gravy, except that I really only care if it's funny, so it's gravy I'll take on the side so that it doesn't get in my vegetable medley.

So to make the ratings system good for something, my ratings will not be a simple one-dimensional scale from one to ten, because that's for erudite board game geeks who like to argue about statistics because they have small penises. My ratings system, which will obviously be far superior, will rate games based on a variety of factors.

The first factor will be theme, because that tends to be a pretty considerable separation point between lots of game nerds. This rating will go from 1 to 10, and will be in whole numbers, unless there's bloodshed in the game. Violence, which is awesome, will automatically add .5 to any score. So actually, I suppose the scale goes from 1 to 10.5. Of course, I also reserve the right to put whatever number I want. I might rate a game 3.14, just to be obnoxious, or -25, in cases where I'm irritated that I ever opened the box.

After theme, I'll rate gameplay. If the game is brilliant and tense, with critical decisions all the way through, I'll slap a 9 or 10 on it. If it's Candyland, it gets a 0, because the only strategy you can exercise in Candyland is to hide it from your children and hope they forget it exists.

Production value is the third thing. This is a conglomerate score based on the quality of the components, the appeal of the art, and whether there are any naked girls. Naked girls, like violence, will add .5 to any score. Usually naked girls in games are strategically hidden behind bushes or fabric, but games where you can actually spot a nipple might go past 11, unless they're ugly, strung-out crack whores, but that almost never happens in games. Vegas, sure, but not games.

Finally, I'm reserving room for a floating fourth thing. This could be anything from Component Overload to Short Bus Rating, and will be used almost exclusively as a place to make stupid, puerile jokes about body parts or the handicapped. It won't be much use as a comparative rating, but it might make me giggle, and that's enough for me.

Look for the new ratings system to go into effect on my next review, at which time you can prepare your arguments to tell me that I'm crazy for giving that game a 7 when I gave something else an 8, and then I can tell you to shut up, because I'm too lazy to fix it.

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Pointless Ramble - Pathetic Men

I know I said a few weeks ago that vaping beats hell out of smoking, but there's a downside - battery life. I have three batteries and two chargers, and every now and then, I still find myself jonesing with no way to get a fix. So last night, I left the house at 11:45 and drove to the corner gas station to pick up a pack of Winstons. I don't care, really - if I smoke a pack every two weeks, I think I'm still doing pretty well.

This isn't a story about smoking. It's a story about sad little men. Because the guy working at the Shell station at midnight was a dumpy, balding old man in a dirty polo shirt who spends most of his night trying to get outside so he can smoke the incredibly cheap cigarettes that he sticks in the crack in the windowsill every time someone stops by to fill up the tank.

As I was standing there paying for my pack of poison, I had a depressing thought. Maybe I'm just maudlin because I'm approaching a birthday, with two kids in high school and a mortgage that gets paid late more often than it's on time on a house that needs lots of repairs I can't afford. But whatever the case, I found myself wondering if this poor bastard asking me if I want debit or credit ever saw this for himself. When he was a young man and the world was his oyster, did he ever think, 'you know, I just hope one day I can work at a gas station in the middle of the night, and have nobody on the planet who finds me attractive.' Did he have aspirations at all? What happens to a man to make him a pathetic overnight gas station attendant?

That probably should have made me glad to have escaped his fate (so far), but it didn't. Instead I was saddened that this man, a guy who may have once been an ass-kicking tough guy with a way with the ladies, was now a hopeless washout. Maybe he spent his whole life a pathetic loser, but that's actually more depressing, because instead of being in the twilight of his life, he's spent his entire life in the gloom of mediocrity. I don't know, but when my mood starts to darken, it develops its own gravitational pull, and sucks all the light out of the corners of my mind.

It seems that when you're thinking dark thoughts in the middle of the night, they tend to snowball. It took the smallest of leaps for me to begin to ask the same questions about myself. I'm about 30 pounds overweight, I have a bald spot on the back of my head like a monk's tonsure, and it's been a long time since a girl made a pass at me. I'm a middle-aged man working in a cubicle in an ugly office full of ugly people. My boss is a spineless weasel, and his boss is the kind of bitch that makes people plot her demise. I sit here in my ergonomic chair at my company-approved computer, smiling while I'm insulted and attempting to ignore it when people sell me down the river.

This isn't what I saw for myself. I was going to be take the world by the ballsack and squeeze until I was rich. I was going to have a trophy wife and a hot mistress, an Italian sports car and a huge house. My maid was going to do the laundry, and my chef was going to cook my meals. My secretary was going to be blowing me under the desk while my staff diverted all my incoming calls. In other words, I was going to do a hell of a lot better.

But life is a bastard, and I made mistakes. I don't regret most of them, because I never would have learned the stuff I know now, but it would have been sweet to be in that Ferrari right now, scoring blow for my tasty hooker girlfriend while she was at her topless photoshoot. On the other hand, in the light of day, with a few hours of sleep behind me, things look a lot better.

I have two great kids and a wife I adore. I have a decent home and enough extra income to buy lots of the stuff I want. I may not be rich, powerful or famous, but I'm also not living in a single-wide in Kentucky, all strung out on crystal meth and trying to dodge my child support payments (no offense if you are a hillbilly meth addict). I haven't done everything I thought I would do, but I've done a lot of things I didn't think I would. For every day that I think how badly I've done for myself, I have five where I wonder how I got so lucky. I'm not always a positive guy, no matter how I try, but in a world with a lot of crap, I've managed to avoid getting too much of it on me.

So what the hell does this have to do with games? Nothing, really, but I did have a point that gets awfully close to being about games. Because at midnight, when that poor schmuck manning the register at the all-night convenience store was going outside for his fifteenth smoke since his shift started, I was playing a game (you know, after I got back home). I feel nothing but bad for the overnight gas man, but after a lot of thought, I'm incredibly happy with my life, and I'm really glad I'm not him. I have the chance to play all the games I want, which is great, because I want to play a lot of games. If my hobby were rock-climbing, stamp-collecting or basket-weaving, my life would give me the opportunity to explore those things, and that's not something everyone can say.

So my life isn't perfect. So it's not as good as I hoped it would be. It's still pretty damned good, and even if it gets to me every now and then, I have a lot to be happy about, and a lot that makes me proud of my accomplishments.

And maybe one day I can buy a Ferrari and spend all my money on French whores. Then my life will be complete.

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Card Game Review - Straw

I am sick to death of games that involve cruelty to animals. I am putting my foot down. We must not tolerate games whose entire goal is to torture helpless animals, even if those animals do stink, step on your foot, and spit in your face.

I am talking, of course, about Straw, a game whose goal, as clearly stated on the outside of the box, is to do physical bodily harm to a camel. That is just wrong. 'The game that broke the camel's back', it says. How would you like it if a camel came along and sat on you and broke your back, huh? That's right, it would suck. Especially because camels are gross.

But gross or not, no animal deserves to be loaded up with so much crap that it buckles under the pressure and literally breaks its back, with the possible exception of hairless mole rats, because those are nasty-looking little bastards. They look like aliens. I suspect they may be evolved from the chupacabra.

But Straw does not ask us to join in the torture of naked mole rats. Instead, it has players taking turns playing cards that add weight to the back of a camel. This pathetic beast of burden is piled high with gold, bird cages, and even piles of bricks. It's inhumane, especially as this treatment is intended solely to break the camel, and not to actually get all that crap across the desert.

The game continues to taunt this poor animal by offering occasional respite, as if that would help. The flying carpet actually lightens the load, and if that were the end of it, the game would only be somewhat heinous. But there are simply not enough of these cards to relieve the camel's suffering, and sooner or later, the camel will fall.

And when he does, we learn that the creators of the game want you to believe that just because you're not the one that killed the camel, everything is OK! You have piled monkeys, board games and magical lamps on the back of this beast, and now when you all but force another player to kill the camel, everyone gets points except the person who finally murdered the dromedary victim.

As if simply murdering a camel was not enough, we are provided with what someone must have thought hilarious - killing a camel with a straw. Place that one, infinitesimally small straw on the camel's back when he has reached his breaking point, and the reward for being the villain is that only you score points! So we're not just trying to torment a camel to death, we are rewarded if we can be the most creative at it.

And it gets worse! Because they assume we are deviants, they allow us to kill three camels! The game is only over when three stinky, oddly shaped pack animals are sent to an early grave. Then the players tally all the points they earned by making sport of these poor, dead bastards, and the highest score wins.

The indignity never ends. You may think this horrifying theme can be accepted because the game is suitable for a group of adults, but the game play is so simple, and the rules so easily understood, that it is perfectly enjoyable by children. That's right, train your progeny to kill camels with inhuman torture, so that they can grow up and do the same thing to disgusting game designers with twisted senses of humor (but not twisted game reviewers. We get a pass).

Just to drive home exactly how much the game designers wanted us to hate camels, the art on the game is delightfully cute and adorable. It is perfectly suited to a game for children, which makes it all the more offensive when we consider how much kids will take to Straw. With fast, fun gameplay and entertaining art, this screams out to be played by anyone looking for a light card game that they can finish in half an hour.

I am dismayed at the heartless indifference shown by the creators of Straw. They have taken an entertaining game, targeted it perfectly to be enjoyed by adults and children alike, given us quick and easy rules with enough depth to satisfy a casual adult, then thrown in great art. Then they turned it all into a game about breaking the back of a camel.

I would be writing my congressman, if I were not getting ready to play it again myself.

What? It's fun!

Summary

Pros:
Quick, simple rules
Enough depth to be enjoyed by adults
Light to be enjoyed by kids
Fun, casual card game

Cons:
It is simply wrong to torture camels

Dogstar Games is not currently carrying Straw. Apparently they are taking a stand against animal cruelty.

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Board Game Review - Monkey Lab

There's something about a game that includes monkey madcap adventure that screams 'Play Me!' Seriously, monkeys are fun. That's why Speed Racer had Chim Chim and The Man in the Yellow Hat had bleeding ulcers. Even the Murders in the Rue Morgue were more fun because the killer was an ape. Heck, look at 28 Days Later - throw a monkey into something, and it's instantly more entertaining.

In Monkey Lab, you're all genetically altered monkeys who are bound and determined to free their friends who are still locked up in the lab. You dress in ninja garb and sneak into the lab, using tools at your disposal to open cages and free your banana-loving comrades. You'll swing from electrical cables, bash things with boxes, and fight the other ninja monkeys with scalpels (and a monkey with a scalpel seems pretty intimidating. I would be scared of a monkey with a scalpel).

The theme of Monkey Lab is a hoot, though I don't think it translates to the board very well. This is mostly a maneuvering game where you try to get different objects into the various rooms to score points for freeing the caged monkeys. It's not that it's bad - it's actually clever and a little cute. It's just that I never really felt like I was a monkey ninja. A monkey logistics coordinator, maybe, but not a ninja.

A smart combination of limited actions and special card actions makes Monkey Lab an interesting game, even if it's not a mind-blowing must-have. You might move, check out a box, and then grab an item you need, or you might shag it across the board to be close to an opponent when he opens a box. Because you can score by being around when another player grabs some points, there are a variety of strategies that could grant success. You might focus on beating everyone else to the pieces you need, or you might just hang on coattails and earn your points by helping your opponents score. You can also send the idiot security guard to slow down a particularly irritating monkey foe, a move that could be anything from slightly irritating to downright nasty.

The problem with Monkey Lab is that it doesn't take advantage of the fact that you've got monkeys. If I play a game with monkeys, I want unpredictable hijinks, not carefully planned moves meant to optimize scoring opportunities. It's not that Monkey Lab isn't a good game, because we did find it enjoyable, and I would definitely play it again. It's just that it's too dry for a game with monkeys. I wanted to pull cheeky grins before punching a grown man in the privates.

The pieces in the box do everything possible to make the theme come to life. The monkeys are brightly colored, specially sculpted figures that are delightful little monkey ninjas. The security guard is a hefty plastic goober. The art is fun, and the production is excellent.

I don't think I would take Monkey Lab to a room full of drunk buddies bent on playing games that make them either laugh or punch somebody, but Monkey Lab is still a good game. It's got long-term planning, problem-solving, and tricky decisions. The pieces are delightful, the art is cartoony cute, and the game play is fast and fun.

It's just too bad I never got to fling poo.

Summary

Pros:
Interesting and fairly engaging
Cute art and great pieces

Cons:
A little dry, especially for a game with monkey ninjas

If you're looking for a good family game that everyone at the table can enjoy, you should run over to Dogstar Games and pick up Monkey Lab:
http://www.dogstargames.com/product/AEG5005

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Video Game Review - Red Dead Redemption

I buy two or three video games a year. It's not that I'm cheap, it's just that I'm usually really busy, and many of the games I want to play aren't all that appropriate to play when my 14-year-old daughter has friends over. But when I do buy a game, I tend to buy those go-anywhere games that game nerds affectionately call a sandbox game. Why they call them that, I don't know. Sandboxes are small places full of dirt. Sandbox games are not small, and while there may be dirt in them, they also tend to have water, and trees, and people with guns and maybe prostitutes, none of which are usually found in a sandbox, unless that sandbox is in a very bad part of town.

The television ads for Red Dead Redemption called my name. I absolutely love the Grand Theft Auto games (except for those early, top-down games - those were heinous crap), and so when the guys who make those games decide to make a Western, I'm all over it.

At first I was worried it was going to be a sequel to Red Dead Revolver, which is cool, but all you do is go through levels and kill people. But it's not, it's a humongous sandbox game, which is exactly what I was hoping it would be. I wasn't particularly interested in whether or not it had a compelling story. I wanted to ride a horse, shoot bandits from a moving train, and get into duels in the middle of the street at high noon.

Red Dead Redemption definitely lets you do all those things, but it turns out, it's also got the best story I can ever remember seeing in a video game. For that matter, it's got a better story than many movies I've seen, and rivals some of the best tales ever set in the American West. It's suspenseful, exciting, engaging and powerful. Plus you can totally kill a grizzly with a buck knife, which is another thing you don't expect to see in a sandbox.

The main character, John Marston, is a classic Western icon - the reformed outlaw who just can't escape his rough-and-tumble past. His family is held hostage by government agents who force him to hunt down his 'prior associates' - by which we mean the bad sons of bitches he used to call friends. During the course of his travels, he'll make lots of friends, travel all over the West, and shoot hundreds of people right in the face.

The stuff you can do in this game will amaze you. You can catch and break wild horses. You can hunt wolves in the deserts of Mexico. You can climb snowy mountains and then fall off of them. You'll hunt bounties, save damsels in distress, and board moving trains careening out of control. You can drown a lot, too, because John Marston can't swim, which seems like an oversight in his education, if you ask me.

In fact, there's so much to do in Red Dead Redemption that you don't ever have to finish the story if you don't want. You can hunt elk, cougars and even a spotted jaguar. You can raid outlaw hideouts and spend hours playing poker (and cheating, if you're so inclined).

But there's one thing you can't do in Red Dead Redemption, that fans of Grand Theft Auto will find surprising - bang a hooker. John's a family man, and he loves his wife enough to put himself in harms way over and over, and kill a whole hell of a lot of people to get her back. Not that there aren't women willing to render services, though. This is the Old West, and there are an awful lot of saloon girls willing to bed a bad man, even one as scarred and gnarly as John Marston.

That might give the impression that Red Dead Redemption is less 'mature' than the Grand Theft Auto games, but nothing could be further from the truth (well, honestly, there are things that are less true. Like if I said dinosaurs and humans were alive at the same time, for instance, or the moon was made of cheese). This is so much more mature than any game you've ever played.

For starters, the gore factor is a lot steeper. When you do finally manage to kill a bear with a hunting knife, you'll want to skin it, which gets blood everywhere, and leaves a mangled, skinless corpse on the ground. You don't see that in GTA. And one scene has Marston walking in on a man and woman in an active state of undress - the first time I can ever remember seeing a woman's nipple in a video game that wasn't made by the Japanese porn industry. The language is harsh, the violence is brutal, and the adult themes are off the chart.

But all those things are tenth-grade jack-off fantasies compared to the maturity of the story. This is a tale of a man seeking redemption for his sins, and nobody young enough to describe his age by his grade level is going to grasp the depth of the story. A grown man might spend hours pondering the implications of the finale; a kid is just going to want to be an outlaw.

The GTA games are labeled mature because you can shoot people out a car window and pick up hookers in the park. Those might be 'mature' activities, but they're really just uncontrolled testosterone binges. Red Dead Redemption is mature for the same reason Fight Club is mature. Sure, there's blood, but the fact is, a kid just isn't going to get it. There's more to this story than meets the eye, and it has the kind of ending that will leave you contemplating for hours.

I highly recommend that you avoid any spoilers about the end of Red Dead Redemption. I also recommend that if you're going to play this game, do it soon, because two years from now, this ending is going to be as legendary as finding out that guy from Metroid is actually a girl. Two more extremely important points, if you do buy the game:

1) Finish the stranger mission 'I Know You' before the game ends.
2) The game isn't over until the credits roll.

If you're offended by profanity, put off by gore, or just have a PETA membership, you should keep walking, because this game is really raw and extraordinarily mature. But if you're an adult with lots of time on your hands and a fondness for games that do more than just tell you where to go and who to kill, Red Dead Redemption might be the best game you'll ever buy.

Summary

Pros:
An incredible array of things to do
A staggeringly huge world
A story that redefines what video games can be

Cons:
Very, very mature - kids should absolutely not play this game

If you need a link to find one of the most popular video games on the planet, you don't deserve to have Internet access.

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Board Game Review - Abandon Ship

It's a well-known fact that rats have magical powers. OK, in all fairness, not everyone knows that, but that doesn't make it less true. Think about it - have you ever seen a rat who couldn't get out of a pair of handcuffs? No, you haven't, because they're magical. Plus they have really tiny feet.

It turns out that rats are also able to stop a ship from sinking simply by having two of them working together. This was not actually one of the magical abilities that I knew rats possessed, but apparently, Reiner Knizia knows this, and incorporated that simple fact into a game called Abandon Ship.

In Abandon Ship, a bunch of rats are racing to get off the ocean liner before it goes under. Every so often, the ship sinks a little, and when it does, one rat might drown. But if there are two rats at the same level, that's as far as the ship can sink. Because, you know, magic.

Aside from the magic rat thing, Abandon Ship is actually a pretty cool little dice game. I thought it was going to suck, because it was a Reiner game, but I'm a big enough man to admit when a game is fun, even if I do still hold him personally accountable for Atlanteon. There are seven rats, each in a different color, and a sweet sliding board that depicts the ship that's quickly sinking into the ocean. There are eight dice, one for each color rat, plus a white die, and the dice have different symbols that tell you how you can move the rats.

The trick here is that rather than having one rat you're trying to move, you have a secret tile that tells you three rats you have to represent. Get your rat to the biggest scoring spot, and you're ahead. But if your rat is the only rat at the bottom when the ship starts going under, your rat drowns, which is unfortunate for both him and you. Should you wish to avoid this calamity, simply make sure you have a duet of magical rats who can slow the sinkage. I can't say for certain that this magical ability has been documented, but were it not for the power of two that lets rats keep a sinking vessel above the water line, a whole lot more rats would die, and the game would be called Drown On A Ship instead.

Players take turns choosing a die and moving a rat, and if you make it too obvious which rat is yours, you can pretty much count on the other players to move your rat backwards until it winds up going down with the ship. There's a good element of bluffing here, because if you tip your hand, you're hosed. Of course, if you're not lucky, you're still hosed, but it's a dice game. That kind of thing tends to happen with dice. Apparently rats are not magical enough to manipulate your rolls.

There's not a tremendous amount of strategy or tactical brilliance to be found in Abandon Ship. It's a light, fun dice game with a little bluffing and a lot of luck. It's cute and entertaining, and you can finish in less than 20 minutes. And as an added bonus, it's not a boring math game, which separates it from a huge number of Reiner games.

It even comes with magic rats.

Summary

Pros:
Fun and cute and fast
Tricky, some nice bluffing, but not too taxing

Cons:
Not a lot of meat. Sort of like a magic rat.

Apparently Dogstar Games is light on magical rats. They aren't carrying Abandon Ship right now. If they do in the future, I'll be delighted to update this link. In the meantime, you can get it at the Alderac online store:
http://store.alderac.com/abandon-ship-p-1164.html

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