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Review: DreadBall

[Everybody, please give a warm welcome to Matt Drake of stellar review site Drake’s Flames. Matt’s going to be dropping by from time to time with reviews of giddier board games than we usually cover- think miniatures, dice and prolonged whooping.

In other words, it’s his job to make sure SU&SD doesn’t disappear up its own bottom. Take it away, Matt!]

In the future, sporting events will be part displays of athletic prowess and part gladiator death matches. You will be able to watch your favorite player dodge past the defense to score a magnificent shot on the goal, and then you can watch your OTHER favorite player grab that first guy by the scrotum and throw him like a frisbee. This sport of the future will be called DreadBall, and it will be awesome.

Quinns: Morning, everbody! Are you well? You will be after reading this week’s instalment of the news, featuring no less than SIX games, every one of which sets my table-gaming soul quivering like a jelly. As always, our news is hand-stolen mostly from the excellent BGG News blog, as well as Meople’s Magazine. A fine internet periodical.

Let’s kick off with the story that Quantum (above) will be arriving in shops very, very soon. What we have here is an elegant-sounding sci-fi game where every die is one player’s ship, and the number of pips it shows is its speed, power and building ability. Very slick! And Fun Forge have draped the thing in lip-smacking artwork.

Your quiet little 16th century village has suddenly become infested with some very unfriendly werewolves…can you and the other villagers find them before they devour everyone?

Ultimate Werewolf: Ultimate Edition is the ultimate party game for anywhere from 5 to 68 players of all ages. Each player has an agenda: as a villager, hunt down the werewolves; as a werewolf, convince the other villagers that you’re innocent, while secretly dining on those same villagers each night. Dozens of special roles are available to help both the villagers and the werewolves achieve their goals while thwarting their opponents.

Kotaku Article: Top 5 Friendships-Ruiners

Quinns: This month I gave Kotaku a powerful gift. The top 5 board games to play if you want to leave your friendships as cold and laced with poison as old scorpion shells. It starts like this…

“One piece of trivia orbits modern board gaming like a dark, sexy star. Someone who doesn’t really play them will always have heard from their friend, who heard it from another friend, that something like Game of Thrones or Battlestar Galactica is mean it ruins friendships.

“But Game of Thrones? Battlestar Galactica? These are games where the backstabbing and twists of the knife are expected. If you really want to test your friendships, these are the games you should be playing.”

…and rapidly moves on to the five games I think should be handled with care. I’d recommend you all go and peruse my warnings, before it’s too late.

The Opener: Ultimate Werewolf & Chilli Con Carne

With Halloween just around the corner (or, as we call it here in England, “All Hallow’s Ween”), we’re very proud to present part 1 of our spooktacular gaming suggestions! Neatly reviewed in time for you to place and receive your order in time for the sexiest night of the year. Or was that Pancake Tuesday?

Anyway, to begin with, what could be simpler, safer or spookier than an evening of Ultimate Werewolf? Just you, a big pot of chilli, and between 4 and 60 of your closest friends.

[Is everyone aware of the swelling “escape the room” genre of videogames? When we heard about a London-based installation offering the opportunity to escape a real-life room, we were intrigued. So much so we activated Pip, freshly-internet famous from our Let’s Plays of The Resistance, Memoir ’44 and Twilight Imperium, to go and see if it was any good.]

“What if someone needed the toilet?”

My friend Simon has been on the receiving end of a “what I would have done differently” monologue for the last few minutes and has decided to leap in with a question. The monologue revolves around HintHunt — a real-life room escape game in the vein of Crimson Room.

Except is it a room escape game, Simon? IS IT A ROOM ESCAPE GAME?

HintHunt gives you exactly one hour to get out of the locked room in which you find yourself. The solution can only be found by discovering clues scattered hither and yon and using them to solve a chain of puzzles. You could also just break the door down and leave but they ask you not to do that before you start. There is backstory for the scenario but it’s just there to offer an excuse for you clambering around a room shouting words and numbers at each other and glaring suspiciously at all surfaces within reach.

Toc Toc is a fun, fast-paced game of dexterity that many have described as a “Reverse Jenga”. With over 10,000 copies sold in Korea, this hit game is now taking the US by storm! Play from 2-7 players as you become a woodman (or woman) trying to take down some bark (+1 point each) without knocking off the center pieces (-5 points each).

You get 2 chops with the axe each turn and the game continues until all the bark is gone!

In Renaissance Man, each player is an example of the title character – skilled as a scholar, a merchant, a knight, and a baker – and throughout the game will hire, recruit and train others with the goal of producing a Master of one of these four areas of study. Each round consists of players creating actions by combining a worker in play with a card from hand:

Merchants hire new workers.
Knights compete to recruit workers from the common pool.
Bakers offer their goods in exchange for workers’ actions.
Scholars train others in the ways of the Renaissance Man.

Instead of providing these actions for a player, a worker in play can be assigned to support higher-level workers. Two workers are required for support, and they are laid out as such in a pyramid-fashion. Five workers create a player’s foundation, and the first player to complete a pyramid structure of fifteen workers creates a single Master of study, thus winning the game. A little luck will help along the way, but the day will surely go to the player who finds the most clever ways out of the trickiest situations in Renaissance Man!

The card game with ever changing rules! It starts out simple, with just the Basic Rule card: draw one card and play one card during each player’s turn. But New Rule cards quickly make things chaotic.

Even the object of the game will often change as you play, as players swap out one Goal card for another. Can you get the Rocket to the Moon before someone changes the goal to Death by Chocolate?

In the far future, humanoid empires of the universe turned to an intense study of ancient civilizations that existed on a planet known as Earth. They learned that these ancients simultaneously built pyramids towards the sky and had an extensive knowledge of the stars. It was rumored that perhaps they were the original colonizers and space-farers of the first human age.

Now, at the edge of a colossal black hole, a pyramid-craft known as the Zoneplex has emerged with legendary markings and glyphs of the deep past. The known empires have sent their elite warrior-monk mystics on a one-way mission to gain control of the Zoneplex, to emerge victorious and ultimately control the pathways of the universe and time itself.

Zoneplex is a game that combines a tile-laying/exploration mechanism, a collaborative battle system and a zone control system to create an intriguing adventure in an alien pyramid.

Review: DreadBall

Games News! 14/10/13

Ultimate Werewolf

Kotaku Article: Top 5 Friendships-Ruiners

The Opener: Ultimate Werewolf & Chilli Con Carne

Pip Escapes A Room

Toc Toc Woodman

Renaissance Man

Fluxx

Zoneplex

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