Card Game Review - Souvlaki Wars

The other day, my wife called me and told me I just got a package from Athens. I thought she meant the Athens that's in Texas, because I live in Texas and couldn't really figure out why I would be getting mail from Greece.

I was wrong. It was from Greece, and it contained a card game about running a fast-food restaurant. Apparently, in a nation where people are lighting themselves on fire because it's cheaper than paying for a cremation, there's still someone with enough money to publish games designed to taunt their hungry countrymen.

In Souvlaki Wars, each player will own a restaurant that serves gyros, souvlaki (this is Greek for 'meat on a stick'), french fries and soft drinks. Even the high-end French eatery only serves Greek fast food, but you get it brought to your table by a snooty asshole with a nasal accent. The other place, you have to brush the cockroaches off your shaved meat sandwich before you eat, but at least nobody tries to feel you up while they put a napkin in your lap.

The game is a lot like those Flash games you can play where people come into your cake store and ask for chocolate cake with white frosting, then you get that guy his food and the next guy wants white cake with chocolate frosting, and then the next guy wants a cupcake shaped like a boob. You get some food cards every turn, and then you get customers, and you try to feed your customers before they get pissed off, cover themselves in kerosene, and start lighting matches.

This doesn't sound like a lot, honestly, but it turns out, Souvlaki Wars is a pretty fun game. You will have to get past the fact that the English is an afterthought and most of the cards are in Greek, but once you do, you'll find out that along with being financially destitute, Greek people actually have some idea how to make cool games. If they would apply this same brilliance to balancing the national budget, maybe they would have fewer human torches and more games about Thermopylae. It's cool that I can sell gyros to fat people, but it would be even cooler if I could yell, 'This… Is… Fattening!'

(As I write this, I am suddenly aware that I am insulting an entire nation while forcing them into an ancient stereotype. At some point, I will need to switch over to jokes about bushy moustaches, hearty soup and fisherman's caps.)

There is a pretty healthy amount of strategy in this game, and no small amount of luck. The designers of Souvlaki Wars were great self-editors - they added exactly as much as the game needs, without dumping a bunch of extra stuff in there. There are event cards that can get you an edge when you need it, or take one guy down a peg when he's running away with the game. You can pick some of your customers, and avoid the ones who have gyros when you're holding a hand full of meat sticks and Diet Sprite. And then there's a luck-of-the-draw element that gets you phone orders, and these are random, and lots of times, you won't have the right food because you blew your load last turn and now all you have is a 50-gallon drum full of french fries.

We enjoyed Souvlaki Wars. It moves fast enough without feeling rushed, but still provides enough tricky decisions and smart plays to engage the mind. It's definitely a lighter game, not one you're going to plan an evening around, but there's enough meat on this kabob to satisfy a light appetite. The art is fun, the game is easy to learn, and it's not often that I get to enjoy a game about serving food (unless it involves lingerie models and whipped topping, and then my wife will totally murder me).

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Light yet engaging
Fun, quirky art
Nice mix of planning and smart plays
Good balance of luck and skill
Decent interaction (with chances to be really mean)

Cons:
Games about restaurants are low on my list of 'damn, that's a cool idea!' games
Not all that beefy, even though it's about beef

You know who doesn't carry small-press restaurant games from Greece? Yep, Noble Knight Games. They do not have this one. I actually can't figure out where you would buy this game. Probably you can find it in Greece.

ANNOUNCEMENT: The winner of the Minion Games contest was David Kartzinel, who will get a copy of Those Pesky Humans. Fun game. Good call, David.

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TCG Review - Redakai

In the comments of my last post, a reader asked if I would review Radekai, and mentioned that it was available on close-out at Target. Since I love to give people what they want (as long as it involves me talking about games), I went out this morning and bought about 20 bucks worth of this game. I played it, and it was very bad, and so I decided to take my revenge the only way I know how - by saying something bad about it on the Internet.

I was pretty stoked when I first saw Redakai. It looks freaking awesome. All the cards are printed on clear plastic, and the biggest part of the game involves stacking them on top of each other to alter the way the total stack appears. There are cool plastic accessories, and neat plastic deckboxes, and even chip clips you can use as power counters. The graphics are very cool, if you like the art in Digimon, and the stuff I got comes in sculpted metal tins. If I was only scoring a game on eye candy, Redekai would have already received an uncompromisingly glowing review.

But this is one book that does not deliver on its cover. The game play requires very little actual thought, and the designers failed in nearly every way that matters. There's a training game that requires as much consideration as boiling a pot of water - except that you could actually screw up boiling water. The advanced game is only slightly better, but at least it's a game.

The idea is that you've got these three kids who are all really good at turning into monsters and then throwing horrifying violence at each other, and the other player has a similar team of malcontents. This is how you know it's a game for the kids, because adults are generally a little less impressed with violence to minors. If you can hit one of your opponent's child soldiers three times, the little punk is out of the game, and you only have to take down two more. There's some light decision-making, but overall, this is a game for kids who are even younger than the pre-teen characters who are beating on each other with lightning bolts and mucus attacks. Redekai is probably also a cartoon, but I don't know, because I don't have cable any more.

There are really only two kinds of cards. You can turn into a monster by placing a see-through card on top of your character, or you can attack an opponent by placing a see-through card on top of his character. That's it. If that sounds like a game with a lot of depth and opportunity for smart decision-making, then either you're an idiot or I'm not describing this very well. That, or you're still in grade school.

Every character has defense ratings, and every attack has attack ratings, and if you want to play an attack, it has to beat the other guy's defense. And in a full game played with full decks, we never once ran into an attack card we couldn't play. The theory is sound, but the execution is horribly flawed.

Additionally, turning into a monster is rarely useful. Because the attack ratings are so high, modifying your defenses is usually rather pointless. This leaves you with two reasons to mutate - gain a special power, or heal some wounds. But not enough of the monsters have useful abilities, and not enough of them provide any healing. Unless you buy bucketloads of cards (and we bought a lot of them - they were cheap), you're not going to have enough monsters that you'll usually want to bother.

I wasn't just underwhelmed by Redakai, though. I was very disappointed. The concepts are beyond sound. They're wicked awesome. A card game that keeps track of your stats, with special abilities and power scores and health and everything all right there, changing on the fly thanks to see-through cards - this is really clever. You can see moments of brilliance here and there - attacks that do no damage but render opponents defenseless, monsters that gain special abilities when played on top of the right character, and a sort of weak reaction effect that pops up now and then with some very cool potential for mayhem. The problem is that they had a great idea, and they managed to make it suck.

If more thought had been put into the actual execution of this game, I would have been back at Target tonight, cleaning them out. This game is full of unfulfilled promises. I want to build a ridiculously clever deck and use it to destroy all the children who oppose me. I want to mix up some combos and deliver frighteningly effective child abuse. I want to surprise my opponent with brilliant maneuvers and ironclad defenses. Instead, I'm just going to take turns going back and forth, stacking cards on the other person until one of us manages to finish off the other.

Redakai is long on style and short on substance. Your kids will probably love it, assuming they haven't finished sixth grade, and you'll be dazzled by the holograms and sculpted boxes and plastic accessories. But after you play it a couple times, and never really see the cleverness come together, you're going to wish you had not bought it at clearance, so that you could take it back to the store.

I know I do.

Summary

2+ players (if you have enough cards)

Pros:
Intriguing idea
Outstanding production value
Quite simple to learn
Like playing with toys

Cons:
Very little useful decision-making
Card design mistakes render the game a little on the dull side

If you want to buy a bunch of Redakai, real cheap, go to Target. I'm not going to deliberately give you a link to waste your money, though.

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Announcement - Shopping Spree

When I started writing reviews more than ten years ago, I did it for one completely selfish reason - free games. Trade an hour of playing and an hour of writing for a 60-dollar board game, and you're coming out ahead (this equation breaks down when you review a 20-dollar game, by the way). Over the years, I built up an enormous library of games, and the games I couldn't get as review copies, I worked trades or (far more often) just lived without.

I still really do like getting free games. That hasn't changed, and I doubt it ever will. There's something really fun about having a box show up at the front door and opening it up to see a bunch of games I didn't pay for, but still get to keep. Even if they're crappy games, it's still pretty cool.

However, as time has passed, things have changed. For one thing, I find that I actually like writing Drake's Flames more than I care about getting stuff for free. At this point, I actually look forward to writing about games even more than I look forward to having free games show up at my house.

Unfortunately, in order to write about three games a week, I have to actually play three games a week, and that's not always easy to pull off. Sometimes, there won't be many new games hitting the market, and when that happens, there's not a lot to talk about. And that's not the biggest issue I have, either.

The biggest reason I have trouble landing enough games to write three reviews a week has nothing to do with the market, and everything to do with my penchant for writing unapologetically blunt reviews. And they're not just blunt, either - I could just say, 'this is not much fun,' but when I say that a game is as pleasant as prison sex, I tend to alienate publishers.

I mean, let's face it - publishers are just people, and in many cases, they're just people who are really invested in what they produce. They don't want to see their labor of love compared unfavorably to a bucket of warm snot. And they get scared easy; knowing that there's always a chance that I could tear a hole right through their game and cost them sales is often enough to make publishers shy away without ever considering sending me a game.

So my conundrum, in short, is that I want to write about games, but can't if I don't have the games, and people won't send them to me because I said their art looks Stephen Hawking drew it with a box of Crayola stainproof markers. I've gone in circles on this one, trying to find a way to get the games and still be able to write the way I want to write, and I've come up with only one viable solution:

I'm going to have to buy games.

At first, the idea was almost offensive. Why would I write reviews for games that I buy? It's crazy! It's unthinkable! Hell, I only got into this racket to get stuff for free. It's completely counter-productive to buy games just to review them, especially when the most I make off them is about a nickel a day (which goes into my online Project Wonderful account, and which I've never actually withdrawn, meaning I've never actually made any money). If I buy my games, I could just play them and save myself all the trouble of telling people about them.

But then, I'm not really writing for the free games any more. I've discovered, over the last few years, that when I write what I want to write, without an editor or moderator or anyone else to tell me that I'm too raw or offensive, with nobody telling me to say something nice to please an advertiser, with nobody to tell me when I've crossed the line, I freaking love it. I get more out of writing than I do out of playing the games. And when I'm having trouble writing because I can't get games to play, the solution is obvious. I need more games.

So I'm going to buy lots and lots of games. Not all of them - I'll still accept any review copies that anyone wants to send me. But I've set up an arrangement with Noble Knight Games that will allow me to get steep discounts on the games I want to review, and I'll be using it to pick up the stuff that people won't send me. This may cost me a few hundred bucks a month, but if it means I get to keep cranking out the stuff I want to write, it's worth every penny.

It also means that now more than ever, I need my readers to help me out by considering Noble Knight Games when you shop. Drop my name when you order, and it helps immensely. Because where Noble Knight was hooking me up with a game or two now and then, they've really committed to this now. They're selling me inventory at a rate that doesn't make them any money, just so I can keep bringing you reviews (and now, I can bring you reviews of games like Blood Bowl Team Manager and Road Kill Rally, that I couldn't get you before).

It also means that review requests are going to be a lot easier to answer. If you have something you would like to see reviewed, let me know. If I can get it from Noble Knight Games, and I have any desire to play it, I'll just buy the son of a bitch and to Hell with the scaredy-cat publishers. So fire away with those requests - and look for some A-list reviews in the coming weeks.

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Card Game Review - Slapshot

I've said before that I don't tend to be a big fan of sports games. If I want to play a game that feels just like playing baseball, I'll go outside and play baseball. If you're looking to recreate the theme of swinging a bat and throwing a ball, it's hard to beat actually swinging a bat and throwing a ball (of course, if you're doing both of those things at the same time, someone is very likely to get hurt, which is one favorable point for enjoying a board game instead of a sport).

However, I am nothing if not a veritable font of contradiction. I played Slapshot this weekend, and it's a game that recreates an entire season of hockey. It's a sports game, and I liked it, and I didn't play any hockey at all. Come to think of it, outside high school, when we played with a volleyball and brooms on a basketball court, I've never played hockey. I'm from California. You can't really wait for the pond to freeze when the temperature never drops below 60.

So Slapshot is a game about sports, and I don't like games about sports, and I liked Slapshot. Weird, huh? Probably the saving grace is that while it is theoretically a game about managing a team of cartoon hockey players through a season, it's also very abstracted, with a lot more attention paid to building your hand (also known as your team), damaging your opponents' hands (their teams) and winning hand comparisons (hockey games). You don't have to worry about stuff like penalty shots or high-sticking or other words that you would associate with hockey if you knew anything about the sport, which I do not.

The way this works, you'll have a hand of six cards in a specific configuration (three blue, two green, one red). The game gives you ways to swap your cards in an attempt to improve the quality of your hand, and it gives you ways to devalue the hands of the other people at the table. Then, when you think your hand is good, you can challenge another player to a game, and he has to accept or be hit in the face by a really big Canadian guy with missing teeth and a thousand-yard stare.

The hockey game part is where you find out how well you've done at building your team. You'll compare cards, one at a time, with another player. It helps to have the best players, but you can still lose a game to guy who has a mediocre team, but puts them in the right order. Unfortunately, until you've played with the same people a lot, you won't have the foggiest idea what the right order might be, and so randomly shuffling your hand is about as effective as carefully stacking your deck. While this might seem ridiculously random, what it really means is that it's very important to get a solid team before you start challenging everyone to a fight.

A few extra tidbits help to make Slapshot a little more strategic, like goalies who can stop every shot and bruisers who can send opposing cards to the hospital. But by and large, Slapshot is about as difficult to play as Monopoly, but it finishes a lot faster. In fact, this might be the perfect game to break out when your family is staying over for Thanksgiving and you're looking for any way to relate to them that doesn't involve another game of Scene It: Nickelodeon. It's easy to learn, easy to play, and has enough skill to keep your interest, and yet enough luck that Uncle Barney can win.

In fact, if there are marks against Slapshot, it's that it is almost too accessible. I know I sound like a game snob now, but the fact is, lots of us like a pretty sophisticated game, and Slapshot doesn't really deliver sophistication. It delivers hockey in a card game. There's a bunch of luck, and planning from the first play is about as useful as putting a screen door on a boar. Or tits on a submarine. I don't know, it's just not all that useful.

If you're looking for a deep, involved, intelligent game that will challenge your mind and engage your imagination, Slapshot is not that game. But if you want something fun, fast, and easy to play, you could do a lot worse than to pick up Slapshot. And when Uncle Barney doesn't have to fall asleep on the couch while your nephews endlessly guess quotes from iCarly, he'll thank you for it.

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
Fun, fast, and easy to learn
A little strategy and a lot of luck
Great for people who don't play many games

Cons:
A little shallow
A lot of luck

You can get Slapshot pretty cheap, which is good. You just have to go over to Noble Knight Games and order it.
SLAP A HIGH STICK IN THE PENALTY BOX

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Contest - Minion Games

It's been a long time since I ran a contest. This is primarily because I don't really have anything to give away, but it's also because I hate dealing with postage. It's a pain in the ass, really, and it's easier if I just blow it off and wait for free games to show up so I can write about them instead of actually buying them like normal people.

But last night, I got an offer that I just couldn't refuse. Well, I suppose I could refuse it. All I had to do was go, 'I have decided to refuse your offer.' So I guess it's more accurate to say I decided not to refuse it. So whatever, couldn't or wouldn't, it amounts to the same thing - someone is getting free stuff. You can be just like me, getting free stuff, except that you don't have to feel obligated to write about it and add some dirty jokes to go for the cheap laugh.

The contest is sponsored by Minion Games (as you may have guessed, had you read the title of this post and saw that it said, 'Contest - Minion Games,' though I suppose you may have been confused and just thought it was a game about creepy little bastards who work for mad scientists or something). They're running a contest, too, where they'll give away a game every week and then someone will get something for free, just like me but without the stupid gags.

If you want to enter the contest at Drake's Flames, all you have to do is write me an email and tell me which Minion Games game you want to win. Then I'll go through the list, throw out anyone I don't know, and just make one of my friends the winner. Then Minion Games will send a free game to someone I know, and everyone else will think they entered a fair contest run by a totally impartial third party.

Ha! No, I won't really do that. I'm not paying for shipping, so I don't care who gets this free game. There are some fun games in there, and honestly, I'm just going to pick one random person and send the name to Minion, who will send hunchbacks to your house to rub their hands and say, 'yes master!' in a most obsequious fashion. That, or they will send you a free game.

So I'm basically telling you about two contests. For the Drake's Flames contest, do these things:
1. Go to http://www.MinionGames.com and look at their games. They have some fun ones.
2. Pick one of these games as the one you want to win:
    Five-Fingered Severance
    Grave Business
    Those Pesky Humans
    NITRO DICE
    NILE deLuxor
    Sturgeon (don't pick this one, it's not very much fun)
3. Email me at matt@vixentorgames.com and tell me your name, your address, and what game you want.
4. Wait a week, and then I'll pick a winner and send the name to Minion, who will ship you a free game (if you won - for most people, step 4 will not really be necessary).

For the Minion Games contest, where they're giving away a game a week, you have to buy something. It's cool, though - the contest is actually at RPGshop.com, and they have a TON of stuff. Like crazy dice, RPG books, board games, and other stuff that's especially cool if you're a nerd. Here's how you enter that one:
1. Go to http://www.RPGShop.com.
2. Buy something. I don't care what. Neither do they, but they would rather you spent a lot of money.
3. When you get to the last step of the checkout sequence, there's a little notes box for special order instructions and what-not. Just put 'Drake's Flames' in there, and you'll be entered to win a free game.

So there you have it, two contests for free games. For the first one, all you have to do is email me. For the second one, you have to buy stuff, which I know you do anyway. For the Drake's Flames contest, I'll announce the winner next Monday, April 30, and then that lucky bastard can have a free game. For the RPGShop contest, I won't have any idea who won, so I won't be announcing that.

OK, go.

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Expansion Review - New Summoner Wars Decks

If you're enough of a nerd, you probably know of the existence of the cable program 'Attack of the Show'. It's a nerd thing where they look at nerd stuff and pretend it's all really cool, which it actually is, but nobody but nerds accepts that fact at face value, and I have a hard time believing the super-hot dame on that show is actually a huge fan of Skyrim. But there is one part of the show that's very believable, and it's the part where that guy from Mad Men comes on and talks board games. It's pretty cool that a guy who has a small part on a boring TV show from a cable channel plays games, and it's even cooler that when he was picking his favorite two-player games, one of them was Summoner Wars.

I should make it clear that I had nothing whatsoever to do with the development of Summoner Wars. I played it about two years before it was released, and then did absolutely no playtesting of any kind. But I am pretty good friends with Colby, the guy who created and publishes the game, and so I still like to stand a little taller when I see Summoner Wars winning massive industry accolades and being very, very successful. The only bragging point I have in relation to Summoner Wars amounts to name-dropping, but I still puff up like I actually did something when the game wins awards.

It also helps that Summoner Wars is one of the funnest games I own, which is especially awesome when expansions come in the mail. Colby is a never-ending fountain of gaming genius, because every new faction adds something so cool that it completely reshapes the way you play the game. The most recent additions are perfect examples.

The Filth is a brand-new faction that specializes in being incredibly gross. By itself, that is not much of a super power, to be honest, or neckbearded basement trolls the world over would form their own Justice League. But the byproduct of being disgusting is that The Filth can mutate into fun new shapes, and some of these are just plain crazy. You aren't going to have a lot of guys on the board, but the ones you have will be rocket fueled. Also, gross.

Take, for instance, the spew mutant. This ugly son of a bitch will puke at opponents three spaces away, and if he can hit with both dice, throw in a third damage for good measure. Or the edible mutant, who is covered with Ho-Ho snack cakes that can be peeled off and eaten to regenerate the health of his teammates. Sadly, offering up his spleen as a protein shake is not healthy for the edible mutant, but he's pretty tough, and can do an awful lot of exceptionally frustrating healing before he goes down for the count.

These mutant freaks are a great way to get very tough guys into play, but cheap. It's not all glory days, though - since the original victim stays in play underneath the mutated version, when your enemy finally manages to cap one, he'll get double the magic from it. This means that where it might take you three turns to accumulate enough juice to summon a champion, a lucky opponent who kills three dudes in one turn could be a powerhouse the next. First he cleans you out, then he drops the hammer when your defenses are down.

And if there's anyone prepared to deal out the pain, it's going to be the other new faction, the Mercenaries. This is not technically a new faction - Colby has been putting mercenaries into expansion packs for a while now, but up until this point, all you could do with them is a little deckbuilding. Now, though, the Mercs have their own summoner, and even better, you've got a ton of cards to tweak them exactly the way you want.

Even without tweaking, though, the Mercenary deck is bad-ass. They specialize in knocking down walls. And not metaphorically, like when a social worker connects a junkie with his long-lost dad. No, they really just screw up actual stone walls. The summoner will do automatic damage to a wall, and then get extra cards for it. One champion will bust walls and restore magic cards from his discard pile. One of the commons will stand next to enemy walls and steal magic. And just when you thought it was safe, because all the walls are down, they'll bring 'em back.

I can't even decide which new faction I like better, because they are both insanely entertaining to play. As with every other deck in Summoner Wars, you have to play the teams correctly to take advantage of their abilities. The Mercenaries, if played right, will have their enemies trembling, without any way to summon. The Filth, if played right, will turn their enemies into bird-monsters and take control of them. Either way, these are two fantastic additions to a fantastic game.

Yes, with the two new factions available for one of my favorite games of all time, Summoner Wars just keeps getting better all the time. You can ask that Mad Men guy, if you don't believe me. He's kind of a nerd, but then, if you're reading this, the odds are that you are, too.

Summary

2 players (4 if you buy extra sets)

Pros:
Two new decks with wildly different abilities add brilliant new play options
An amazing game gets even better

Cons:
Nope, forget it

Normally, I would link to Noble Knight Games at this point, and send you scurrying for your credit cards. But they're sold out, and since Colby is my friend, I would rather you bought from him, anyway. Plus, this way you can get the promo cards:
http://www.plaidhatgames.com/store.html

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Board Game Review - Lords of Waterdeep

If you were to tell me that Wizards of the Coast was going to make a D&D game about ruling the city of Waterdeep, I would not have been surprised. But if you told me that game was going to be a worker-placement Euro-style game, I would have laughed at you and told you that you were insane. A dry Euro game can't be a D&D game! Euros are only supposed to be about farming and making recipes and delivering the mail! The granddaddy of dungeon crawl games is not supposed to spawn Euros. It's supposed to spawn violent games with too many rules, and with the right crowd, sexual innuendo and half-naked women with gigantic metal weapons.

Obviously, the guys at Wizards did not ask me for my opinion. Which is good, because otherwise they would never have made Lords of Waterdeep, and I could not have played it, and I would not have discovered how much fun it is. On the other hand, I would not have been forced to admit that I don't know everything. Of course, that's easier to do at 41 than it was at 19, when I would rather put my hand into a wheat thresher than admit that I was not actually smarter than my parents.

I'll get this out of the way, right off the bat - Lords of Waterdeep is definitely a Euro-style game, and it's definitely dry. Sure, you can recruit a band of warriors to purge tentacled horrors from the sewers of the city, but mechanically, you may as well be preparing a recipe for chili pie.

The theory is that you're in charge of some ruling group in the city of Waterdeep, and stuff comes up and you have to protect the city. You send out your agents to recruit adventurers and build taverns and find worthy quests, but you never actually get your hands dirty and kill something. You sit back in your ivory tower, drinking mimosas and dabbing at your guyliner while you send your minions into the city to do your bidding.

Happily, the minion-sending part of the game is actually very compelling. You've got all these things you can do, and places you can go, but you're in constant competition with your opponents. If you need a cleric, for instance, but the Harpers get there first, you'll have to send an agent to go pull some dirty tricks that let you steal guys from other people, because otherwise you're going to have to wait until the enemy agent goes out back to take a leak.

This results in the first layer of semi-artificial interaction - blocking your opponents. This is the most passive-aggressive game idea ever invented, and for some reason, Euro people don't mind that. I suspect they also learn how to let out heavy sighs and specialize in making you feel guilty when you ask them if they could pay for their own coffee this week. If this was the only interaction in Lords of Waterdeep, I would hate this game an awful lot.

There is, however, a second layer of interaction that is a great deal less artificial - the intrigue cards. Using these cards, you can directly screw with your friends. You can swipe their adventurers and steal their gold. You can sneak in behind them when they think they've blocked the builder's hall. You can assign them jobs that they have to complete before they do anything else, which ends up costing them resources and time. In a game where you never have enough resources or time, that's pretty damned mean-spirited. So I loved that.

The combination of blocking your opponents and directly hosing them makes for a game that has just the right amount of interaction without being so nasty that your wife won't play it with you. If the D&D folks are going to make a Euro, at least they made one that isn't some boring, solo circle-jerk. Where many games of this nature have you pretty much ignoring what everyone else is doing, the key to enjoying Lords of Waterdeep is in carefully scrutinizing the other players. Is the City Guard building an army for a massive warfare quest? Quick, give them a mandatory job that will kill off half their fighters! Is the sneaky mage chick running magic jobs like they were going out of style, revealing that she is almost certainly hiding a bonus for arcana gigs? Better run up there and reset those quests before she can snag another one!

I'm not going to pretend that your average blood-and-guts fan is going to love Lords of Waterdeep. The interaction is there, and it's exciting, but there's no disemboweling warfare. There's subtle intrigue and careful maneuvering, combined with reading your opponents and guessing their moves before they can pull them off. You'll have to plan ahead and build contingency plans for when those nasty Red Sash assholes steal your high-dollar mage's tower or hire all the thieves. You must be prepared to counter the underhanded attacks on your own grand designs, and keep an eye on every other player, all the time. And don't count the money until the game is over - in one game, right as the game ended, one player revealed a hidden bonus and shot from last place to a huge winning margin. She snowed us all, kept her head down and avoided looking like a good target, and snuck past us to make us all look like drooling chumps.

I really enjoyed Lords of Waterdeep, and can see myself playing it a lot more. It has some problems, like the fact that it could just as easily be about filling orders for potted plants, but in terms of providing the kinds of things I like to see in a game, the game delivered. Heck, it may give Flash Point some competition for family game night favorite. So what if it's a D&D Euro - it's a fun game.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Requires good planning and clever execution
A sweet spot of interaction that's not too nice, and not too mean
A Euro game that actually requires you to read your opponents, not just stare at their cards
Perfect for family game nights or weekend gaming clubs

Cons:
A theme as rich as D&D should never, ever feel pasted on

So now that I like this game, you're thinking of buying it, and just need to find a good price for it. How about saving ten bucks on it? Yeah, that's right, Noble Knight Games has it at one hell of a discount.
SAVE ON THE LORDS

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