Kickstart Your Week! Samurai, Pirates and Lumberjacks
Shogun: Big Box
In ancient Japan, there was a long period of near constant war, in which cube shaped armies would be taken to the Battle Tower, to decide ownership of contested territories. Shogun brings the so-called Warring States period to life in a brilliant board game that has been out for nearly 10 years. Now, Queen Games is on Kickstarter to gather pre-orders for the Shogun: Big Box anniversary edition, adding 4 expansions and 450 custom meeples to the game.
What do you mean you’ve never played Shogun? You’ve been missing out! Players take control of one of the great lords of feudal Japan and his armies. The aim is not just to have the most territories, but also the most developed territories, with each turn asking whether you want to invest resources into building palaces, temples and theatres or to focus on your armies. Battles occur through the fantastic battle tower, which will trap random amounts of cubes on its layers of shelves as they drop through. The cubes that drop out the bottom decide the winner, but any trapped in the tower are not lost and may fall out during later battles. Add in revolting peasants, limited actions and the ever-looming threat of starvation over winter, and you have an impressively tight and challenging game. Go buy it!
The expansions in the new edition add in Tenno’s Court, taking place in the Emperor’s antechamber, the player with the most representatives petitioning the disempowered Emperor will get first pick of a set of favours that may tip the balance of future conflicts. The Samurai expansion adds in bonuses for players able to control territories in 4 of the games 5 regions, encouraging players to maintain influence across the board and making those boarder territories even more hard fought than before.
Military Leaders encourages players instead to maintain connected territories, allowing your leader to visit all of your territories and give bonuses to your units there. Finally the Chambers expansion allows players to compete for control of the important government offices in the different regions for direct victory point bonuses at the end of the game.
Shogun is already a fantastic game, and expansions will add in some new, interesting decisions for experienced players, but nothing that changes the core of the game. I’d say the expansion box is worth a look for fans, while Tenno’s Court is already available (though expensive) the others are new. If you are new to Shogun, you can get the core game now, rather than in February, and while you miss out on the meeples, I’m sure the expansions will be out eventually. And in case anyone is worried, Queen Games have assured players the meeples work fine with the battle tower!
The battle for Shogun: Big Box will be continuing until June 3rd.
Skull Tales
Pirates! Ships! Monsters! Temples and strange islands! Miniatures! This is Skull Tales, a semi-cooperative game, part dungeon crawl, part exploration, featuring plenty of treasure and backstabbing, like any good game about pirates.
It is, in fact, two games in one box. You first play an adventure, where you explore an island looking for treasure, fighting natives, soldiers and monsters controlled by the game. The island is generated randomly, and players gain prestige and loot that they can exchange for gear and abilities at the end of the game. In many ways, it looks like a pirate version of Warhammer Quest, which is no bad thing in my eyes.
In the second half, the most successful player takes the captaincy of the ship, and leads the crew on the voyage home, dodging storms, sea monsters and raiding the odd merchant ship. The captain must be careful to keep the crew morale high or he may face a mutiny, letting another player take the captains seat. Finally in the port phase, players can trade in their prestige and loot for new equipment ready to face the next adventure together.
Games like this, like Warhammer Quest or Descent, succeed with their variety. Currently, Skull Tales has only a small selection of enemies to fight on adventures. I would like to see more in the future to keep the game fresh and the challenge increasing as players grow stronger. The voyage element is a very good edition however, as so often these types of games only happen in the dungeon with tables and dice rolling used to join the adventures together. Added to the semi rather than fully cooperative gameplay should make for a very interesting alternative for the genre.
Skull Tales will be plying the seven seas until June 4th.
Click Clack Lumberjack
“Timmmberrr!!” A board game about lumberjacks and chopping down trees is intriguing. Make it a dexterity game, with a plastic axe and a Jenga like pile of plastic tree segments and you are on to a winner!
Click Clack Lumberjack is an upgraded version of Tok Tok Woodman, in which players swing their plastic axe and attempted to very carefully knock the tree segments so that the bark pieces slotted into the side would fall off, but without knocking whole tree segments off. Just like Jenga, what starts off straight forward rapidly becomes immensely challenging! And better yet, players score points for the bark pieces they collect, so there is a winner rather than just a loser.
Click Clack Lumberjack adds in a variety of coloured bark pieces for different scoring variations, as well as some grub stickers for a variety of possible effects. It’s a stand alone game that looks incredible fun. Well worth a look for couples and families or any dexterity game fans out there!
The Click Clack Lumberjack will be swinging his axe until June 6th
Worth a Look
The Lounge – A polished edition of the Mafia party game (as opposed to its alternative theme, Werewolf). As with the Werewolf game, lots of roles have been added for variety, but this edition fails to address the core issues of player elimination that was resolved in the One night Ultimate Werewolf release. Ends June 5th.
Tides of Infamy – Another pirate game! This one seems like a less brutal version of Merchants & Marauders. Beware your fellow pirates, the elements and sea monsters while exploring the ocean and collecting treasure. Nice (if odd looking) peg and ring system for showing goods being transported. Ends June 5th.
Automania – Players own car factories and aim to make the most money by modifying their production line to fit the demands of the available markets. Sounds like an interesting puzzle from the designer of Escape! The Curse of the Temple. Ends June 6th.
Swamped – Join an expedition into the swamp to find rare herbs. Players will survive as a team by finding a particular set and getting out by nightfall, but each player has their own secret objective to complete. Oh, and watch out for the hungry crocodile! Interesting looking micro-game. Ends June 6th.
The Last Spike – Together build the trans-continental railway but compete to hold the most land deeds along the route! Deeds pay out when cities are connected, but the game ends once St. Louis and Sacramento are connected leaving many investments wasted. Reminds me of the excellent Acquire. Ends June 7th.
Random Musings
Have you ever played a 1:1 scale, that is real life scaled, miniatures game? No? Me neither! But with the Home Raiders kickstarter you might be able to. With a very clever choice of theme, Vesper-on Games has developed a miniatures game that can be played on literally any surface inside the home, with no specialised terrain, just any general household clutter. One of the biggest obstacles to many miniatures game is the importance placed on terrain, but finding the time, money and storage space needed to collect a table full of scenery can be a massive challenge. This neatly solves that challenge. Add on some nice looking miniatures and a rule book that only has 5 pages of core rules (mercifully short for a miniatures game!) and you might be on to a winner. Check it out!
Image credit to Queen Games, Vesper-on Games and Board Game Geek users MagiceF1, garea37, EndersGame, CrimsonGames, GamewalkerLLC, Anaesthetic, BigDumbYack and Grant
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