Kickstart Your Week! Santorini Wind School
Santorini
“Welcome to architecture, class, no who can tell me what the ultimate purpose of architecture is?”
“Erm… to build beautiful things?”
“Don’t be an idiot. The ultimate aim of architecture is, obviously, to stand on top of tall buildings.”
It’s a race to the top, and in the mean time you’ll be building a beautiful plastic representation of the equally beautiful island towns of Santorini, replete with their shining white walls and stunning blue domes. Your aim is to get one of your builders on top of a 3 floor tower, which sounds like it should be the easiest job in the world, except your opponent can build a dome on top that prevent you from standing up there, just like real domes. There are also pretty strict movement rules, that you have to move each turn, you can only build one level higher than you are, and you can only climb up a single level at a time, requiring you to construct a kind of staircase of buildings to ever reach the top of a tower.
Good God is this game pretty! The buildings are beautifully sculpted plastic pieces that fit together. The board, oh man, the board sits on top of a plastic plinth looking like an island above the sea! It’s insane! Of course, this does come at a price (~$50 US). Many abstract games on Kickstarter focus on components, making up for their thematic and artistic shortcomings with carved wooden pieces, and so on, but Santorini has definitely taken this to an awe-inspiring extreme! While the core game is abstract, the God cards that give each player a unique power have been carefully chosen to fit the character of the Greek God they depict. A touch I really appreciate! These cards add a huge degree of variety that can mix up the game every time you play. Or play without for a pure test of strategy! A really great looking (both aesthetically and in terms of gameplay) game.
Santorini will be domed on April 28th.
Zephyr: Winds of Change
Did you guys ever play Skies of Arcadia? The RPG video game about piloting your airship, exploring the skies and their floating islands and generally saving the world as all RPGs tend to have you do. I loved that game. So I’m afraid I am a little bit of a sucker for steampunk, and especially airships. Enter Zephyr.
Zephyr sees you as the captain of your own airship, cooperatively defending the last vestiges of civilisation from the multitude of threats in the sky. You’ll be outfitting your ship with weaponry, defences and technology, hiring a crew who use a transparency system like Gloom to combine different properties and increase the variability. Speaking of variability, the game features numerous missions you’ll be trying to complete, a pile of enemy ships to fight and more excitingly, a variety of ships o command, each of which comes with its own unique deck of action cards that drive the gameplay. The upgrades you buy for the ship add cards to this deck, enhancing your options.
The story too will change each game as you explore the skies, chase down assignments for valuable rewards, while still working to complete the overall mission. Zephyr crams in everything I enjoy most about this theme so if you like this kind of thing too, I totally recommend you check it out!
Zephyr’s Winds will change April 28th.
Miskatonic School for Boys
“Good morning, Henry how was your weekend?”
OK, you’ve got this, don’t mess up and you’ll pass!
“It was – wonderful – sir”
“Oh really, what did you get up to?”
What do human’s get up to!?
“I – ate my parents.”
“You –“
Shit! Er…
“JUST KIDDING! HA HA HA!”
“Your voice, Henry – what is this!? Like a thousand screaming, grating screeches!”
“NO ITS NOT ITS NOT IM HUMAN WHY NOT HAVE A NICE CALMING CUP OF BLOOD”
“Arrrgh!”
Ok. I think I handled that pretty well.
It’s exam time for all you Lovecraftian demons, and that means you’ve taken control over a pupil of the Miskatonic School for Boys. Try to keep your inexplicable unmentionable horrors to yourself and you might just pass the human behaviour exam. But first you need to figure out which pupil you inhabit and due to a complete lack of reflecting surfaces you’ll be relying on your fellow students to help you out.
So it plays out like a game of Guess Who? You asking questions about your student’s personality or appearance and eliminating options depending on the response of the player that you chose to ask. HOWEVER. Each player must either tell the truth, or they can lie and its up to you to figure out whether they are telling the truth or not. Catch them in the act and you’ll steal points. Correctly guessing your character first will earn you points at the end of each of the games three rounds. A nice looking, simple deduction game, and yet another reminder why it’s a bad idea to live anywhere near Arkham.
Times up at the Miskatonic School for Boys on April 30th.
Other Great Games
Rum & Bones: Second Tide – Another vast pile of pirate miniatures from Cool Mini or Not. Now you’ll get to control a host of awesome undersea monsters (the Deep Lords) and some Spaniards (the Marea de la Muerte). Adds a levelling and skill gaining system for your heroes and a faction specific deck of action cards, whose play might draw the anger of the Kraken. In contrast to the original game, heroes activate alternately, letting you better react to your opponents moves. Ends Apr 28th.
Scuttle! – More pirates! This is a dangerous day to be an innocent trader. Scuttle is a nice small card game where the aim is merely to collect 21 dubloons, and do so first. Either you draw or play a card, for either its value in dubloons or as an action or, if it’s a ‘face card’ as a permanent boost. Light and quick playing, the game features some lovely pastel colour scheme that really stands out. Ends Apr 29th.
The Vampire, the Elf and the Cthulhu – C.S. Lewis would be spinning in his grave… Players here are all novelists collaboratively writing a novel, but everyone has their own idea for what novel they should write. Players bid with time to write story elements (gain cards) then use these for their ability, to form sets, and eventually to gain enough impetus to get their preferred elements into the final novel. Ends Apr 30th.
Moscow ’41 – A war game re-enacting the German attempt to take Moscow in 1941. While the Nazi troops are over extended, they are vastly superior to the heavily weakened Russian forces, yet give them enough time and the Russians will be able to resupply and strengthen their forces. Ends May 1st.
Fit The Word – Everyone plays an unfinished sentence and a word to complete it, then all the words are shuffled and everyone must guess which word goes with which sentence. Of course, you only have a limited choice of cards in your hand. Simple, family friendly word game. Ends May 1st.
Turin Market – A quick auction and set collection game. All players chose a card (indicating a set of goods) and these are auctioned off in a secret auction. Winners can then sell goods they don’t want back to the group at a price they set (within the limits of their own money) with players aiming to collect the most of a given good for an end game bonus. Ends May 1st.
Image credit belongs to Board Game Geek users RoosterJuice, , portaldragon, Lukeout, Michael Shinall, PeterCHayward, micheleq, ULTIMO, cwali, Jordan Draper.
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