Kickstart Your Week! Children, Collectible Card Games and the Apocalypse

The Siblings Trouble

Remember those long summer days of youth spent exploring the world out beyond your garden, having exciting adventures, discovering things about yourself and your friends that… wait? Where was I? Ah yes, The Siblings Trouble takes you back to the world of a child’s imagination, exploring caves, woods and fields filled with magical creatures, amazing treasures and most importantly, adventures! The game is all about telling stories, weaving together a series of places and events into a narrative of your adventure, culminating in a fight against some epic and terrible monster. Fail to defeat a challenge that faces your group however, and you are sent home for a bath and early bed, the worst punishment of all!

Most events are resolved by rolling dice, but those dice rolls merely act as cues for the players telling that part of the story. When fighting a spider, you don’t just do 4 stars of damage, you “do a flying leap from a jaggedy rock to squish it”. As the adventure progresses, you find treasures that can be used later to help you overcome challenges, treasures such as shiny pennies or comic books, of course. I really like the little touches that focus on the story. For example, certain enemies might be weaker if you mention something in your story when facing them.

The card art is beautiful, the story variety huge. There are two bosses in the core game (with more to be unlocked in the stretch goals) and numerous locations to visit. I can see this game being fantastic for families, but everyone can have fun letting their inner child loose! The game is limited only by your, and your group’s imaginations.

The siblings will be causing trouble until May 13^th.

 

Millenium Blades

Sadly but inevitably all childhoods come to an end (unless you work in the board/video game industries I suppose…) and we reach those turbulent teenage years. A time where you grow and develop into adulthood… or descend into the madness of collectible card games. Magic: The Gathering, the Pokemon Trading Card Game, Yu-Gi-Oh… these games could grab you by the scruff of neck, shake you up and down and steal your lunch money. Now, older and possibly wiser as we are, perhaps we wish to relive the days of pitched battles in the playground, the excitement of opening a booster pack and discovering that shiney you’ve been looking for, or long nights designing the ultimate deck to annihilate your opponents.

Well Millenium Blades will let you do just that and more, without requiring endless booster packs and slavish addiction. Addiction be saved for more adult pursuits like alcohol, Netflix, or the X-Wing Miniatures Game. Millenium Blades takes the aspects of collectible card gaming we know, and crams them into a board game you can play in an evening. You will play as a collectible card gamer, for an imagined collectible card game, also called Millenium Blades. This is meta-gaming of the highest order, dare I say it, game-ception?

Players will build decks, play in tournaments, trade and collect rare cards, all to become the most renowned player. The game looks a little intimidating rules-wise, but those lucky enough to have played it are describing mechanics that fit neatly into the theme, something that gets me more than a little excited. Add to that asymmetric starting points and a variety of strategies and I’m very interested in seeing how this one progresses.

Millenium Blades will be going even deeper into the dream until May 17^th.

 

Apocrypha: Adventure Card Game

Eventually we all reach the dark, bleak world of adulthood, where real monsters walk the land, performing nightmarish rituals and unspeakable acts to tear down the walls between dimensions and bring about the end of the world. At least, if you are a saint from Apocrypha it is.

Apocrypha is the new card game from Mike Selinker, designer of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game and Betrayal at House on the Hill. Playable as both a co-operative adventure game or as a game master led roleplay game, Apocrypha has players fighting the dark forces of the Novem, a group of powerful entities bent on bringing about the apocalypse, across an unsuspecting modern day world. Over the course of 9 missions, each of which will take an evening, a player’s character will grow through the very thematic mechanic of unlocking memory fragments. These add new skills, and the 8 fragments arranged around the character card on a single card sleeve represents the arrangement of your characters brain, which can be adjusted between games, literally changing their state of mind.

The game is huge too. The 9 missions of the core game represent but one chapter of the games story. 8 further chapter-sized expansions have already been unlocked during the kickstarter, giving full backers over 1000 cards to play with. Bigger doesn’t necessarily mean better, but with each Chapter not only introducing more monsters and challenges to face, but also new/alternative game mechanics, they are adding a substantial amount of variety too. A game to watch.

Apocrypha will be unlocking its memories until May 13^th.

 

Worth a Look

 

Wordariffic – Card spelling game. A creative application of the Cards Against Humanity theme with a substantial amount of variety. Spell the longest word that fits a random theme. Ends May 12^th.

 

 

Hard Days Knight – A card and dice game of brave but inept knights competing to complete quests. Entertaining artwork full of pop culture references and lots of messing with opponents. Ends May 14^th.

 

 

 

Fast & Furious: Full Throttle – Surprisingly enough, a racing game, where players create their own track, upgrade their cars then race. Tactical blocking adds interesting strategy, and lots of characters from the films for fans. Ends May 14^th.

 

 

The King’s Abbey – A dice-placement Eurogame set in the 11^th century. Players build abbeys and train clergy, work together (or not) to fight off Viking raids and go on crusades. Encourages more team work than passive aggressive blocking. Ends May 15^th.

 

 

Xenon Profiteer – Deck building game where players build a plant to extract Xenon gas from air to become top of the new Xenon industry. Build an efficient deck and the plant on the table in front of you for permanent bonuses. Ends May 15^th.

 

 

Random Musings

Have a Cow is a simple card game of cow and hay management. So far so ordinary, but it contains a card for the “Hay Fairy”, the lovely girl pictured. So perhaps someone can explain to me: what is that on her feet!? The Kickstarter page also features images of attractive blond woman playing the game while wearing… bunny ears. I feel a little strange.