Event Review - Memorial Day

I don't try to hide the fact that I'm not all that fond of the people who tend to get elected to lead our country. Our presidents seem to be less and less interested in disguising their corruption, and the wars in which we continue to find ourselves entangled seem less and less just. You can spout on about our global war on terror, but from where I'm sitting, Iraq had jack squat to do with terrorism and everything to do with oil and a vainglorious quest for a legacy.

But no matter how much I find myself disillusioned with the nation's so-called leaders, I find myself filled with pride and gratitude for the men and women who are willing to fight, die and kill to protect us. I may disagree with the Boss Hogg assholes who send them off to die, but I am a devout supporter of our military. I'm downright passionate about it.

And that's why, when school districts decide to make up snow days by having school on Memorial Day, I get pissed. That's disrespectful, if you ask me. You don't have to grow victory gardens. You're not on gasoline rations. We don't even have a draft. We are currently fighting two wars at the same time, and the American people have had to sacrifice absolutely nothing (you know, aside from the ones who died). American schoolkids are taught an ever-dwindling amount of American history, to the point that we leave out entire wars (yes, this is happening - I have two kids in public school, and I can tell you that their education is woefully lacking). And to further separate us from the fighting forces who sacrifice to keep us safe in our beds, local school districts have decided not to acknowledge Memorial Day.

This day should be sacred. Twice a year, we have three-day weekends and barbecues and pretend to remember why our hot dog wrappers are in English. Without our troops, your beer labels might be in French, or German, or Spanish, or maybe even Russian. Twice a year, we get the day away from our obligations, and we should be using that time to at least acknowledge the incredible sacrifices that have been made to keep us safe.

I'm not asking everyone to spend the day in somber meditation. That would be hypocritical to an extreme, since I had a bunch of friends over to play games all day. We grilled hamburgers and drank cold beer. We played Queen's Gambit, Summoner Wars, Dominion and Warhammer Quest. We watched a movie. In other words, we celebrated and had a good time. And we celebrated in honor of the people who are on the front lines, who starve and freeze and sweat, and shoot and stand watch and sometimes die, so that we don't have to go without.

What I am asking is that you remember why this day is important. I did have a good time today, and I don't feel the least bit guilty about that. Hell, that's kind of the point. We celebrate because we're grateful to be free. We celebrate so that we don't forget. We celebrate to remember that the reason we're able to celebrate is because so many others put it all on the line for us.

So if your kid is asked to attend school on Memorial Day or Veterans Day, politely inform the school that as you are a patriotic American, you will not be able to bring your kids to school that day. Because this is not just some random three-day weekend. This is the day we remember that there are brave men and women who gave everything they had to give to make sure that we have the option to get drunk and eat too many baked beans.

So raise your glasses and remember all the men and women who have fought for us. One quick toast, and you can go back to your inebriation and overeating. I hope you all have a wonderful Memorial Day, even those of you who may not be citizens of the United States. I know I did, and I am eternally grateful for that fact.

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Board Game Review - Mr. Jack in New York

It seems a little odd to me that a game about history's most famous serial killing psychopath is a cute deduction game that's perfect for playing with the kids. Well, one kid - it's only a two-player game. But my daughter loves it (though she loves it a lot more when she's beating me) and doesn't mind at all that the goal of one player is to capture the world's most notorious murderer, and the other player's goal is to allow the bloodiest back-alley killer of all time to get away.

Mr. Jack in New York is the stand-alone sequel to Mr. Jack. The premise is that Gentleman Jack (an odd moniker for a man with a penchant for butchering hookers) has escaped to New York City, and now the police have to catch him. But Jack is a master of disguise, and so in order for the police to capture him, they have to identify which of the eight characters is actually the psycho in disguise.

If you've played Mr. Jack, you already know pretty much exactly how this game works. One player is Jack, the other is the police. The players take turns moving two characters at a time to try to expose The Ripper or keep him hidden. The game comes down mostly to a trial of elimination with a heavy dose of tactical maneuvers. At the end of a turn, if Jack is next to another character, or standing under a street lamp, Jack is visible. And if he's visible, the police character knows that all the characters that are not visible are not Jack. If he's in the dark, then the characters who are in the light are not Jack. And if he's completely invisible, then it might mean you're playing an HG Wells game or a cheesy Kevin Bacon movie.

To complicate things, every character has a special ability. Cloud Rider, for instance, can move through buildings, and Lewis Howard Latimer installs gaslights. Monk Eastman is a mafia boss who can make other people move instead of himself, presumably by making them offers they can't refuse. Captain Callahan moves the crime scene tape, which is only a special ability in this game, because in real life, that job requires less than a fourth-grade education.

With characters moving around, building parks and metro stations, throwing up yellow tape and moving steam ships, it becomes just as important to plan your move as it does to figure out what your opponent will do. Move a metro station to relocate one of your characters, and you might just let Jack have a clear run at the exit. You might move the snobby woman away from the ship captain just to wind up with the Texas Ranger next to her, probably making inappropriate suggestions and asking if she wants to touch his pistol.

As if all that wasn't enough to track, the addition of the sneaky informant can throw the entire thing into disarray. If the cop can get someone to the same space as the snitch, he can grab an alibi card, which will conclusively prove that one of the either people is not the bad guy. In a thematic twist, the mafia boss is not allowed to put concrete shoes on the snitch and drop him into the harbor, which would probably be far too violent for this game. Hell, Mr. Jack in New York doesn't even have bloody noses, let alone outright murder. That would be just tasteless in a game where you're hunting a guy who chops up prostitutes like he was carving steaks. After all, this is a family game.

Mr. Jack in New York has quite a bit more happening than its predecessor, and if you're not sure if you can handle the brain-freeze brought on by attempting to calculate eight different moves at once, you may want to start with the original. But if you're up to the task, and you like a little mental aerobics, the new version is pretty damned fun. It's not one that I pull out very often, but that's mostly because it's just a bit too cerebral for a late-night relaxation game. If it's an hour until bedtime and you're looking to unwind, this is not the game you're looking for. Try Dominion - I can play that when I'm so tired that I'm propping my eyes open with toothpicks.

The Mr. Jack games have proven immensely popular with the hobby gaming crowd, so it's not as though I need to make a steep case for them. If you like the first one, you'll like this one. If you like deduction games with lots of tricky maneuvering, this is a good pick. But if you like to shoot zombies, battle robots or hack your way through hordes of goblins, you'll probably be annoyed, because the theme is just an excuse. Me, I can play nearly anything - but I have to be feeling pretty smart if I want to take on Mr. Jack in New York.

Summary

2 players

Pros:
Very smart game - smarter than the original
A great exercise for the brain
Neat pieces and fun art

Cons:
Practically abstract
Tough on the ol' think muscle

Dogstar Games has a very good price on Mr. Jack in New York, so if you're feeling clever, run over and give it a spin:
http://www.dogstargames.com/product/ASM700300

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Board Game Review - Terakh

The reviews I write tend to come in one of three basic flavors. Your first flavor is the bland vanilla, and it goes something like this:

This game was OK if you like this kind of thing. Here's a joke about boobs or the mentally handicapped.

My second basic flavor is the beatdown review. It reads a little like this:

This game is horrible, and the designer should be embarrassed. Now here's a dick joke.

The third flavor, and my favorite to write, is the Big Winna review. It's kind of like this:

This game is totally kick-ass, and you should buy it if you can. Boobdicktard.

Tonight's review is the third kind of review, the Big Winna review. Because tonight, I'm going to tell you about one hell of a fun game, one called Terakh, and then hopefully you'll all run out and buy a copy, assuming you can find it, which you probably cannot because it does not have US distribution and is currently only available in Canada.

Terakh is an abstracted wargame, sort of. It's played on triangle boards, and has people who kill each other. It has color and glyph coding for movement and effects, and you roll tons of dice. It's the kind of game that would translate famously to a video game I could play on my phone (that is a blatant hint to any Blackberry App developers out there - make more good games, and fewer tower defense games, because those SUCK). It's not terribly complicated, but there's still a lot happening all the time. Success requires attention to details, long-term strategy, and smart tactical maneuvers. A little luck won't hurt, either. OK, a lot of luck.

Each player gets six of the grooviest little prong-sided hockey pucks that ever got put in a game. One side of the disc dude has a stick-art man ready to hurt people, and the other side has the same stick-art guy hiding behind his shield (or it could be a different stick art guy - they all look the same to me). You position your wacky warrior pieces around your little triangle board, which has more triangles in a bunch of different colors. So far, this is extremely abstract. But when you add in the fact that the entire goal of the game is to kill your opponents and destroy their elders (which are four-sided dice), it becomes an abstract with a body count.

Each player also gets an idol token, which is a tiddly-wink that fits inside the prong on your disc dudes. When your warriors cap other warriors, you can put rubber bands on the prongs of the hockey puck sporting the tiddly-wink (those are technical terms, which I am using to make myself feel smarter). Those rubber bands make your idol tougher, which is especially cool because idols have all kinds of special powers, like ranged attacks and teleporting and stuff. So now you have a teleporting hero who hits harder than anyone else and can take a punch.

The reason those idols don't unbalance the game is because combat is a basic roll-off on an eight-sided die, and even if you're adding a bunch to your roll, if you get a 2 and your attacker gets a 6, your ass is dead. You only get one hit point on most guys, so this capricious luck factor (which I usually hate) actually ends up making the whole thing a little more balanced. Sure, you've got your Ultimate Fighting Champion, but he can still get smoked by a nerd with a pocket protector if the dice don't go his way.

There's a ton of different things to do in Terakh, but you only get five actions a turn, and some stuff costs multiple actions (like attacking) and some stuff is limited to elders or idols. You can spin the board where you elder is sitting, and you can teleport from the central purple triangles on each board. You may want to park some guys on blue spots, to use a particular spell, or you may want to crowd around the purple spot to keep a foe from bringing in his fallen troops. Then you've got cards with spells you can cast to totally manipulate the game, and while these cards mostly require you to have a guy on the right color, they're incredibly good at changing the outcome of the battles. In fact, the whole game can twist on a few cards and some really smart plays that nobody saw coming.

I think the main reason Terakh is a simply awesome game is the fact that it never gets to the point where you go, 'that guy is going to win,' because the other guy might be totally sandbagging and setting up a superior position at the expense of sacrificing a few of his hard-earned ass-kickers. You can take out nearly everyone on the other teams, be sitting with all of yours, and then lose because the other guys pulls a last-minute Hail Mary and ganks you without any warning. It's not luck, either - if you don't see those killer plays and the other guy does, he's going to make you pay.

On the topic of luck, Terakh is chock-full of it. People who hate leaving the outcome to a die roll are going to detest this game, because you could have your entire turn pissed right down the toilet because the dice hate you. And then your buddy could have a streak of luck so insane that you'll go from winning to sucking wind before you even realize what's happening. Me, I'm a big fan of dice, but if you're not interested in seeing some twists of fate that send the top dog to the bottom of the heap, you should probably pass.

One last topic deserves special mention. The pieces in Terakh are unique and really, really nice. I suggest you spin past BGG and look at some of the pictures of this game. Ender's Game, in particular, wrote a great picture review. The warriors are incredibly sturdy plastic, and the triangle board that you have to spin a lot have velvet on the back. Yeah, like an Elvis painting. The colors are bright, the rulebook is full-color, and the art is... stick figures. But whatever, it's worth owning Terakh simply to have a box of the wackiest components you'll see in a game. The only way to make these more unique would be to include a quart of motor oil and some Russian porn.

I seriously recommend this game. It won't be leaving my collection, and I plan to play it at nearly every available opportunity. It's fun, smart and tricky, with the kind of components that make you want to play the game. Do yourself a favor and check out this awesome indy game.

Summary

Pros:
Fantastic component quality
Cool mix of theme and abstract
Triangle boards and dead bodies make it a man's abstract
Lots of strategy, great tactical plays and long-term strategy

Cons:
More luck than many people will find acceptable

You can only get Terakh in Canada, which would suck if they weren't offering free shipping right now. Also, the game is ridiculously underpriced, so it's like you're robbing them. Here's a link. Go rob them.
http://www.terakh.com/order/online.html

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Making Stuff

As many of you are aware, I own VixenTor Games, which makes dice towers and other gaming accessories. We're considering launching a new product line, and we need a little help. I've heard these 'give something away already' grumblings, so I'm killing two birds with one stone here.

Run over to the VixenTor Games website and read the front page news story, then click the link and take the survey. You'll be entered to win fifty bucks store credit (enough for a deluxe dice tower), and you'll be doing me a solid.

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Board Game Review - Feudo

Regular readers may have picked up on the fact that I like games that have what polite women sometimes call 'hoochies'. The harem in Dominion: Intrigue, for instance, is one of my favorites, mostly because it features scantily clad females who have a lot of sex. After reading the rules for Feudo, I decided that I liked at least one element of this game before I even played it, because one of the units each player controls is the seductress. She's actually called 'milady', but since all she does is knock boots or give men diseases, I like to think of her as a trailer-park porn queen.

If the main goal of the game was to get horizontal with cheap floozies, Feudo would actually have a lot going for it. And this 'milady' thing is such a dominant part of the game that it definitely does make it more interesting. It's kind of like chess meets a wargame, but with hidden moves and the plague. But it's also a little bit Puritan, because it's really in your best interest to avoid getting close enough to let the other guy's tramp get her hooks in your leader. Before you know it, she's producing a dress with stains on it, and he's telling lies to Congress.

Each player in Feudo gets the same batch of units. Mostly, they're all soldiers and knights, but you also get a baron (who is a bad-ass on wheels with a weakness for easy women) and milady (the afore-mentioned trollop). At the top of each turn, everyone picks which units they'll move that turn, and whether they feel like paying them to work harder. Then you take turns moving the guys you chose, and you try to take cities and kill people to earn big points. If somebody gets too close to your trampy dame, she'll run right up and bed their leader, and the whole army will sit around with their thumbs up their asses, wondering if he's ever coming out of his tent, and whether he might not have the clap later.

To add a little mayhem, you've also got the plague running around the board. Get too close to an infected city, and all your guys will start calling in sick to work. Let your floozie get too close, and she'll be able to transfer her bad fortune to the enemy. Basically, all his guys will need penicillin shots, and it will burn when they pee.

Since fights are won or lost based entirely on the point values of the troops involved, you're not likely to see someone trying a desperate, against-the-odds maneuver. There's a little luck in where the plague goes, but winning or losing Feudo will be based mostly on using your head and playing smart. Keep your horny baron away from the cheap lay, use your power where it will do the most good, and spend your money when you can really use the edge. You can't do a lot, so you have to make it all count.

So Feudo is a fairly smart game with hookers and a body count. So what I can't figure out is, why don't I like it? It seems to have all the ingredients for awesome, and yet it just kind of falls flat. There seem to be some unbalancing elements, too - the whore will always seduce the baron, if she gets close enough, and then that player essentially misses his entire turn, creating one hell of an advantage for everyone else. The plague can suddenly wind up right in the middle of your concentrated power, and the next thing you know, you're too weak to pick up the TV remote, much less go kill things. And since you only get a few units for the whole game, going toe-to-toe with another player just opens it up to let the other players grab cities and then kick you from behind while all your guys are facing the other way.

I hate to criticize a game with easy women and killing. It seems to go against everything I believe about games. But even when games do include sex and violence, they still need to be fun (especially when there's sex and violence, it should be fun. Why else do we go to the movies?). Feudo seems like a pretty smart game, and while it doesn't completely fail, it never really succeeds, either. So whether or not milady is wearing a T-back thong and stripper boots, I'm still not going to play this game again.

Summary

Pros:
Highly tactical and very strategic
A very small amount of luck means skill is a greater factor
Relatively easy to pick up and learn
Whores and war

Cons:
A few unbalancing factors
Not really all that interesting, which is odd because it's a fairly well-designed game

You may be reading this and thinking, 'well, Drake didn't like it, but I still might.' So here's a link to buy it. Knock yourself out.
http://www.funagain.com/control/product?product_id=016740

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Card Game Review - Tempt

I often make cheap sport of Reiner Knizia because so many of his games are overly simplified, but I must admit that when it comes to making games, fewer rules is generally better. OK, two rules is usually a little weak, but the overall idea here is that less stuff to track makes a game easier to play. Reiner takes this principle to the highest level possible, and thus manages to ruin hundreds of otherwise mediocre or boring games and turn them into complete garbage.

I bring this up because I recently played Tempt, and it suffers from the exact opposite of the Reiner Knizia problem. It's probably a somewhat common issue among self-publishers - you're the creator of the game, so you're hesitant to chop stuff that seemed like such a good idea at the time. I mean, if you spend two months coming up with a cool new cleaner to get bloodstains out of carpet, the odds are good you're going to hang on to it even after you give up hiding bodies in your trunk.

Tempt starts off really cool. You're competing for three areas of the kingdom, represented by three stacks of cards. You'll build columns of cohorts as your armies, paying the costs for these warriors by sacrificing the limited actions you get every turn. So far, so good.

Then we add in the warrior types. Executioner warriors, for instance, can kill a minion on the other side, while fearmongers send them running for the hills. Build a column with just militia cards, and they'll be even tougher. These abilities add a ton of strategy, because while it might help you take the third column if you added the minotaur there, it could hurt you in the long run when you dilute your militia bonus and never even get to scare off one of your opponent's cohorts.

So we're still doing pretty well, not too simple, not too messy, and then we get to the chanter powers. Each card can be tempted into play as a chanter, and not sit in a column at all, and instead use the special power on the card. These special powers are fairly straight-forward, and many of them have long-term benefits that can give you one heck of an edge.

The game is starting to get a bit top-heavy now. Between tracking costs, strength, discard value, special powers and unit types, you may be approaching the upper limit of crap you can track in your head. But as long as we're here already, let's add in one more thing - temptresses. These are six cards that you'll divvy up between yourself and your opponent. Every turn you'll probably have different temptresses, because you dump one, pass five, choose one, pass four, dump one, pass two, choose one, pass one. Seem complicated? It is. It's also unnecessary - why not just shuffle and deal two to each player? And while we're at it, why are these here at all?

The temptresses provide global abilities that you can use throughout your turn, like cheaper cohorts or the option to get some of your guys back from their military formations. The problem is, the abilities aren't impressive enough to justify the additional complication. They're sort of cool, but they're also easy to overlook, because there's already too much happening.

One extra note - I really wish Small Box Games would sell enough to be able to pay artists. The art on these cards varies from boring to hilarious. For some reason I don't pretend to understand, all the pictures of the cohorts are faded back, so that they're really hard to see. Actually, I might understand it - if the art you have is this bad, you probably don't want people to see it. Which makes me wonder why you would bother in the first place - just skip the art, if this is as good as it gets.

The glut of extra options in Tempt is, in the end, what keeps it from being a really awesome game. It's still fun, but it's just too much. The temptresses are cool, and the chanter powers are cool, and the cohort types are cool, but together, they're too much. It's like having three girlfriends at the same time. It seems like a great idea, until they find out about each other and start burning your Molly Hatchet albums and crushing your beer-can pyramids.

With a little surgical slashing, Tempt could be made into a tight, tense, exciting game. All the ingredients are here for a good time - it's just that there are more ingredients than you need. I like scotch, ranch dressing and ice cream. Just not all at once.

Summary

Pros:
Neat interactions of abilities
Very strategic game play with bits of long-term planning
Plan your turn, but be prepared for surprises

Cons:
Unfortunate artistic decisions
Too many elements clog down an otherwise pretty cool game

Small Box Games is pretty bad-ass. I may not be in love with Tempt, but it's still worth a play. Get it here:
http://www.smallboxgames.com/tempt.html

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Board Game Review - Pocket Rockets

Every now and then, you'll see one of these silly interview questions that asks something like, 'if you were stuck on a desert island, what three games would you want to have with you?' I always thought that was kind of a stupid question - my pick is going to be whatever game includes canned food and a satellite phone, because frankly, if I'm stranded at sea, the last thing I'm going to do is break out a game. For one thing, we're assuming you're there with a handful of friends, in which case your first priority should be making spears in case your fellow survivors go all Lord of the Flies.

But let's assume a less dire scenario. Let's pretend you're packing for a trip with an overnight stay in some one-stoplight backwater with nothing but a crappy motel and a gas station attached to a Subway. Let's further assume that, since you're traveling, you don't have a ton of space for games. Let's take it one more step and assume that you're going to have a lot of time on your hands and two or three road companions who, rather than knocking back some beers and watching some motel porn, want to play games.

In this scenario (which is not only less disastrous, but also a great deal more likely), you might want Pocket Rockets. Before I continue, I must mention right off the bat that the name of the game is not a euphemism. You may have heard the phrase, 'I've got a rocket in my pocket', which generally means you would very much like to have some sex. The name of this game does not refer to that. It's actually just a game that you can fit in your pocket, and it happens to be about building rockets. There are no dick jokes intended.

The game is incredibly easy to learn. There are six stations that allow for six different actions, like building rockets or changing the direction of movement. You have to move around between the stations, drawing cards with pictures of rocket parts (still not a euphemism for anything). Then you go to the rocket-building station. Then you go to the launch pad and fuel up your rocket (OK, that one sounded pretty questionable, but it still doesn't refer to anything nasty). You go around for a few turns, drawing cards and building your rockets, and when all the fuel is claimed, the game is over and whoever has built the best rockets wins.

Despite being a pretty simple game to figure out, it's still clever enough to be fun. You won't be able to build a seriously long-term strategy, exactly, but you'll have to plan your turn pretty well if you don't want to waste a lot of time. You have to make the most of the cards you can get in a hurry, and you may want to sacrifice one move in order to score another, better move later. If you've been driving all day and just want a good way to unwind after you finish dinner and before you fall asleep, Pocket Rockets can be a great way to finish out the day.

It's not just for road trips, either. While the diminutive size does make Pocket Rockets an easy game to shove into the corner of a backpack, it's also a quick, fun game that can fill twenty minutes. I tend to find the term 'filler game' a little condescending, but in all fairness to the term, you're not going to call people over to play Pocket Rockets. For one thing, if they don't know that it's a game, they might think you're making a pass at them, and that could be uncomfortable. For another thing, there isn't enough game here to plan an evening around playing it. But once you do schedule that big game, and you're waiting for the rest of your friends to show up, Pocket Rockets can keep you from having to engage in small talk, and allow you to socialize without all that messy conversation.

I wouldn't say that Pocket Rockets is the kind of game you want with you on a desert island, mostly because nothing in the box is edible. But if you happen to shove it into a shirt pocket on the way out the door, and then your plane goes down with a couple buddies and you somehow manage to make it to land without soaking your shirt (and thus ruining the game), I suppose you could do worse. Ever try to put Cosmic Encounter in your pocket? It won't fit, unless you have absurdly big pockets. And as an added bonus, you don't have to worry about the possibility that your friends are too dumb to play - this is an easy game, light on the brainpower but engaging enough to keep you occupied. It's basically a great travel game, or the perfect game to play while you're waiting for that game of Dominion to finish so you can all jump into Last Night on Earth.

It is not, however, a dick joke.

Summary

Pros:
Easy to learn
Easy to play
Finish in 20 minutes or less
Tricky moves and clever plays, all in a package that will fit in your pants

Cons:
Not particularly deep

If you want a nice travel game at a dirt cheap price, look no further than my friends at Dogstar Games:
http://www.dogstargames.com/product/ASMKG17

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