Kickstart Your Week: Nukes, Swords and Pigskins

Nuclear War

Nuclear War, or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb, is a simple card game of throwing the ultimate weapon about like so much confetti at a wedding. Make sure all your friends get a taste of taste of radioactive fallout, there’s no better way of getting that healthy green glow!

Nuclear War is utterly dark, satirical and totally daft. It’s a game where your (non-specific) country’s little old ladies might get up and move to your enemy’s country in protest of your aggressive war like tendencies. Where recycling means getting warheads back, and Super Germs are released into your own population “by accident”. The game is completely take-that in style, but that is completely appropriate for what it’s trying to achieve.

What takes the game from simple card game to awesome simple card game, is that you play cards several turns in advance. This gives a huge advantage to whoever strikes first, and any alliances an intensely thorny undercurrent. In addition, any player who is wiped out is able to fire off all their remaining weapons in a glorious last strike, meaning as often as not, everyone is going to die anyway. So why not go out in explosive style? And this is why this game has survived for 50 years, despite no marketing. Truly something special hides in this box (and it’s not just the Super Germ).

If you want to understand the sentiment of this game, there is no better way of getting that than with the Kickstarter video, where the designer, Doug Malewicki, wanders on screen in his boxer shorts to question why, if no-one has bought the game in the last 49 years, they will buy it now! It’s a good question! But if you’re one of the many new people in the hobby, you might want to take your turn in the satirical MAD game of Nuclear War!

The fallout will settle Aug 3^rd.

 

 

100 Swords

100 Swords is a dungeon crawler, and a deck builder, and a micro game! But why is it called 100 Swords?! Because… it has a lot of swords? Except it doesn’t have that many swords… umm well it’s a micro game maybe there’s 100 cards! Well, there are two base games, each with 54 cards. It’s possible… I mean 100 Swords sounds a damn sight better than 108 Swords! Anyway, the answer is I don’t know but it’s a cool name, for an equally cool sounding game!

This is a two-player game, where players are competing to get as much gold and glory out of the dungeon as they can. You start out with a handful of crappy swords and some boots, but by the end of the game you’ll be walking out of that dungeon looking like the Iron Throne.

It’s a very simple game to play. Every card can be played to move, attack or for it’s special power. What you need to do is to plan the best use of your hand of cards, and get the most out of each turn. Except you probably don’t know what’s in the dungeon ahead of you. All the dungeon cards are face down and must be explored. Maybe it’s another powerful sword, or maybe it’s a nasty monster. Heaven forbid it’s the Boss! But slaying monsters or playing items can reconfigure the dungeon too, making this as much a puzzle game full of hidden information as a traditional dungeon crawler! And it is here that the game really becomes interesting, as you jostle with your opponent to discover and capitalise on as much of the dungeon as you can.

100 Swords is a nice looking, light, easy to learn game. It has an interesting twist on classical deckbuilders (you’re searching for your items rather than choosing from an open market) and it looks like a fun puzzle. There are 2 full decks available, with a number of bonus cards for varying the dungeons you play, meaning lots of variety right from the start. Go check it out!

Cut your way to the Kickstarter page by Aug 8^th.

 

 

Pigskin

I read a lot of Kickstarter pages now a days, and I can generally get a good feel for where in my list I expect that game to come within the first few seconds. Some times it’s the art style, some times it’s just the theme. As bad as it sounds to say, this surface level approach can be very accurate. So it’s a wonderful surprise when I find myself completely back-peddling on those first impressions and realising that an exterior is hiding a really interesting game! This week, Pigskin took me totally by surprise.

The appealingly named Pigskin is a game about American Football. But that doesn’t really matter (which is very important to people who, like me, don’t care for American Football). This is a fast playing, card drafting game, with an additional element of tactical card play. On each of 4 rounds, you and your opponent will draft players to form a team, then play out a match by simultaneously playing those cards. Some will score touchdowns, unless your opponent has played a tackle card. Some have special abilities, and you score bonus touchdowns by having players with the same kit. The winner of each match scores 3 victory points, and there are some bonus VPs available for having the most of a certain type of player at the end of the game.

So when you are drafting your team, you have a huge number of variables to think about! You want a balance of tackling and scoring potential, you want to match the colours of the players for bonus scores, but you don’t want to miss out on the bonus abilities, and don’t forget the bonus victory point requirements that change every game! Since there are only two players, you can also be paying attention to what cards your opponent has taken, to a degree. And that’s really going to come to the fore when the match starts, and you’re trying to catch their scorers while slipping through to score the most points you can. A fast paced game that squeezes in so many decisions and elements to balance has fantastic potential!

Get the Pigskin to the end zone by Aug 9^th.

 

Worth a Look

Fleet: Wharfside – A new stand alone follow up to the Fleet series of games, players are now at the docks, buying fish from the wharf and selling it to the market to complete orders. It’s a lovely looking economic game that is easy to teach to anyone! While it does have one of the least exciting box covers I’ve ever seen, it contains a really nice looking game. Ends Aug 4^th.

 

Mow Money – Flex your green fingers in the cut-throat world of the lawn mowing industry. Get the best reputation to win the city landscaping contract. To do that, you’ll be competing to complete contracts in a clever reverse-auction mechanic: lowest bid wins! But of course, you’ll be paid less and be less able to invest in new lawn mowers and expansion. It’s a weird theme but captures a realistic system for bidding for contracts and I couldn’t believe such a mechanism hadn’t been implemented more broadly! Ends Aug 7^th.

 

Image credit to Board Game Geek users: Gambiteer, binraix, laboratory, roaranimation, riddlen and maydaygames.