Boardgame review: The Target

Every Tuesday, the local gaming store has boardgame night. Usually, this means a bunch of three and four player games happening at the same time, but sometimes it's fun to get everyone together into one big game. So, we're always on the lookout for good games that accommodate large numbers of players. The Target by Closet Nerd Games looks like it would fill that niche. Anywhere from 4 to 12 take the roles of spies secretly working for either the CIA or the KGB (Or maybe even working for themselves as double agents). Each turn, one player is the "Target", and every player plays a card that targets them. The ultimate goal for each team is for enough intel cards to be played on their HQ to win.

I really wanted to like this game. The theme is perfect for this sort of secret agenda game. A first glance of the rules and contents made me imagine the players trying to work out each others loyalties, tracking the path of intel so they can either help it to its destination or steal it for their own side. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work out that way. I'll be blunt: this not a good game. There's some good ideas in there, but nothing is implemented very well. It all comes out as a jumbled, confusing, awkward mess.

Boardgame review- Ascension:Chronicle of the Godslayer

Ever since Dominion has come out, there have been a number of entries in the deck-building game arena trying to dethrone it. I already reviewed Thunderstone, which didn't quite manage the task. Can the new entrant, Ascension: Chronicle of the Godslayer by Gary Games step up and do the job?

Boardgame review: Fire and Axe

Fire and Axe: A Viking Saga by Asmodée is pretty much exactly what it says on the box, a chance to pretend to be Vikings, marauding across Europe and beyond. Each player gets to be a band of vikings, sailing their longboat to trade with, raid, and settle the rest of the world.

Boardgame review: Thunderstone

Thunderstone, by Mike Elliott of AEG, is basically the hack and slash version of Dominion. Both Dominion and Thunderstone revolve around starting with a small deck of weak cards, using those cards to add better cards to your deck, and gradually improving your deck until you can start collecting victory points. While Dominion took this idea and made a game with very tight mechanics and a very loose theme, Thunderstone... well, they went a different direction. It would be easy to go down the line and compare every aspect of Thunderstone to Dominion, but that wouldn't be entirely fair. More importantly, it would be kind of boring, so I'll try to resist.

Boardgame review: Dungeon Lords

I've got some more webcomics to point out soon, but I haven't worked out exactly what I want to say about them yet. So meanwhile, here's something completely different.

Dungeon Lords is the newest game by Czech game designer Vlaada Chvátil. I'm already a fan of his earlier games, especially Galaxy Truckers and Space Alert, so when I saw that he had a new game coming out about making a dungeon and staffing it with imps to work it and monsters to fight off invading heroes, the part of me that so fondly remembers Dungeon Keeper got very excited.

So, of course, the actual publication of the game got delayed.

But I did finally get ahold of it, and tricked a couple of friends into learning it with me, and we had a go of it.