Kickstart Your Week! Sub Colosseum of Destiny
Sub Rosa: Spies for Hire
“Good morning Mr Hunt, your mission, should you chose to accept it is –“
“Ooo! Are we breaking into a top secret military base with the world’s most sophisticated security set up!?”
“Ah, no sorry not tod-“
“There’s a rogue agent and you need me to bring him in!”
“No. Boy this is awkward. Did you not get the memo?”
“What memo?”
“You’ve been transferred to recruitment? We need you to go hire some new spies.”
Sub Rosa (which means done in secret) is a game of secret bidding, trying to sway a variety of mercenary agents to join your spy agency. There will be a few spies cards available, on which you will place your bidding chits. Of course, you can’t win all of them, but you are free to bid anywhere at once. You need to pick your battles, for it is the player with the most spies after the reveal that wins, ensuring each game comes down to a wonderfully tense end. The spies also have special powers, that can be enacted by bidding on them with certain chits, allowing you to move stuff around or change your bids or just generally make a mess of your opponent’s plans.
A quick, straight forward bidding game, Sub Rosa has a surprising amount of depth and fun interactions. I was lucky enough to get sent a review copy of Sub Rosa, and you can read my review here. But in summary, Sub Rosa offers a lovely array of choices, and through the limited number of turns makes each of those choices very important. A great little game I’ve really enjoyed!
Sub Rosa: Spies for Hire is going, going… gone! On April 12th.
Watchmen of Destiny
“My Lord! We have scoured the land for the meanest, most determined soldiers. Those willing to lay down their lives to protect the Tree of Destiny! There’s just one thing they’ve asked for: nice tents to sleep under. Also hot water… and some fluffy pillows.”
You’re aiming to collect an army of these ridiculously cute animal soldiers. Each has some fighting value, and contributes some gold, so that you discard cards in order to hire soldiers into your army (a la Race to the Galaxy). Once a player has 7 soldiers the game ends, and the value of your soldiers is totalled, giving you the option of racing to completion with cheap soldiers or going for quality, a process reminiscent of one of my old favourites, Citadels. However, these mummy’s boys won’t sleep rough, oh no! You need to make sure you’ve bought tents for them all first!
The other element of the gameplay is selecting an item card to play each turn. These tell you how many new cards you get to draw, as well as how many of the soldier type (hunter, warrior, mage etc) actions you can trigger, plus an action of it’s own. Although each soldier can only be activated a certain number of times before they get too tired and have to go to bed… for the rest of the game. Seriously!? Watchmen of Destiny my arse!
This looks to be a really nice game of hand management. There is plenty of scope for interaction with the item card actions and the soldier type actions. Plus a number of different approaches one can take to win. None of the systems seem to complex either and I’m sure the cutesy theme is going to win over some players you might not normally get to play with! Check it out!
Watch for your Destiny by April 13th.
Colosseum: Emperor’s Edition
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears! I’ll give them right back I swear. Also can I have your lions? Come on. I’ll give you my musician. And… V moneys? Go on it’s a great deal. No I’m not giving you my actor he’s the star of my upcoming performance… Actor and the Lions. It’s a working title. Fine! We’ll call it actor and the lion but I’m keeping my money.
I like trading and negotiation games. I just like that they make the game more about the players than the board. Colosseum has trading, but in a twist of brutal awesomeness, lets you bid for the resources you’ll later be trading! I’m cackling madly with glee right now. This gives you the option of picking up lots containing performers you know your opponents will want to give you a good trading position in the following phase! Ha!
Colosseum is all about putting on the greatest shows, attracting the greatest crowds and therefore earning the admiration of all of Rome. It is something of a classic design (although how something is considered a classic after having been released in 2009 is still something I find bizarre about this hobby) but has been out of print for a while. It is well worth checking out this new edition, especially with all the deluxe stretch goal components they’re adding right now. Plus it gives you the perfect excuse to shout “Are you not entertained!?” after each performance.
The Colosseum closes April XVIth.
Sans Alliés
You can’t always get friends over for gaming (sadly) but for those situations there are always solo games. I’ve not explored solo gaming much, but Sans Alliés explores a topic for which solo gaming makes complete sense: a general in command of an army. There is said to be nothing lonelier.
In Sans Alliés you are invading an enemy nation, racing to reach the capital at the top of a pyramid of cards before they can develop their ultimate weapon. What happens when they do? It’s probably better not to know. Manage your forces and plan your route through the territories. By hitting resource centres you can slow down the progress of the enemy as well as upgrade your units, and you’ll need to as each step you take only leads to harder and harder battles.
We reviewed a prototype copy of this last week and really quite enjoyed it. Battles and enemy progress is controlled by little more than dice rolls, which might put people off, but means the game is about calculated risk and pushing your luck. Plus the focus is on planning the overall war; a commander must put his faith in his subordinates and fate when he finally decides to engage the enemy. Plus there are some really interesting and deeper questions this game is asking just beneath the surface (but I’ll leave my review to discuss that).
Be Sans Alliés until April 15th.
Other Great Games
Small Star Empires – A quick fire game of galactic conquest and expansion using Hey That’s My Fish style mechanisms, but featuring more advanced scoring and control opportunities. For example, trade stations score points for adjacent enemy control markers, and nebulae encourage collecting a set of matching colours. Given I loved Hey That’s My Fish, this is definitely one to check out! Ends Apr 12th.
Emergence – A social deduction game, now pitting advanced AIs against the remnants of humanity, but focussing the attention of the players on a central board. Simultaneous action selection, resource gathering, and a spatial puzzle drive the game. A nice graphical style is on display too. Ends Apr 13th.
The Goonies: Adventure Card Game – A coop game recounting the adventurers of the 80’s Kids film (which I’ve never seen so I’m not that fussed by the theme). The gameplay though does look good! Multiple priorities that need to be dealt with, multi-use item cards with which to solve those problems, and a cooperative game in which there are no individual player turns should really drive the cooperation. Ends Apr 14th.
Terrible Monster – A two player micro game about summoning a gigantic monster and eating the other player. However, rather than being focussed on what cards you play, I feel like it is more about knowing when to use up your limited ability to counter each others plays, and knowing when to let things through. Ends Apr 14th.
Kharnage – A ridiculous tableau building war game, in the best possible way (I mean, the subtitle is “Hell yearghh!”). Creating battle lines from units and attacking your neighbouring opponents (mostly), but your turn order, number of new units and amount of attacking is determined by your faction specific battle cards. How you build your battle line will also be pretty important. Cracking art work too. Ends Apr 14th.
Monikers: Something Something – Monikers, the very silly game of communicating people, places and ideas in ever more ridiculous and impossible ways has a new expansion available with more people, places and ideas! Mostly one for the fans, but new players can pick up the base game too. Ends Apr 16th.
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