Great things come in small packages. Case in point — Eight Minute Empire!
Eight-minute Empire may come in a small box but it’s a great strategic filler game that lasts probably about 30 minutes. The box itself is 6 inches by 9 inches, so it can easily tuck away in your bag to bust out when you’ve got some time to spare.
The game plays 2-5 players and game play can be varied depending on the total playing. It comes with a sturdy map that when unfolded is about the size of a sheet of paper. The basic mechanics of the game is area control and card set-building.
An overhead of Kanban: Automotive Revolution, which comes with a lot of pieces and cards.
Kanban is one of my more recent purchases and it’s taken me a while to bring it up here on the blog since it’s such a heavy, heavy game and I want to do it justice when talking about it. When you first open the box, there are a million little pieces, including car meeples! Brace yourself, folks, this is a long write-up.
Kanban: Automotive Revolution is a 2-4 player game that plays about 90 to 120 minutes. Doesn’t sound too bad, right? Well, that totally doesn’t factor into explaining the rules for the first time, which, when I first was introduced to it, the rules explanation took seriously nearly 2 hours. The setting is a car factory assembly line. The game at its core is worker placement. You are placing your one worker on a spot in order to activate an action within one of five rooms. And then there’s Sandra, the factory manager who is represented by the pink meeple, checking up on workers’ progress and keeping the factory running efficiently.
Gamehaus Cafe in Glendale, CA. I wish Phoenix had something like this! This place is awesome.
Hi, folks! I’m back from being out of town and totally feel recharged. And guess what? I got some board gaming in during my time away.
So the beginning of this post actually starts about a month ago. I get a text message from some friends in Los Angeles, telling me that they’re at GameHaus Cafe and that they’re thinking of me. I actually visited this place about a year ago when I was in town; I didn’t get a chance to play as I was on my way to a wedding reception, but I did get a chance to take some photos and pose nerdily in front of the massive game library. Seriously folks, this place is amazing. You need to check it out!
Anyway, my friends aren’t board gamers at all, but they were invited by another friend who also wanted to check the place out. They were amazed by the sheer volume of board games out there they had never heard of, especially games in the back room where you need to drop off your ID. So they said next time I’m in town that I should bring some games when I visit their pad.
And that’s my cue to let the flood gates open into the world of board gaming …
I got to play Lords of Waterdeep for the first time. Here are some of the quests you can collect.
Last Saturday was International Tabletop Day. All my meetup groups around the Valley were hosting their own special event. I ended up going to a friend’s event at his home and then moved over to my usual biweekly gaming group event. It was nice to see friends who don’t usually make it to all the events, so there was some time spent catching up on everybody’s lives.
The first game I played was Lords of Waterdeep. Strangely enough, I’ve never had a chance to play it before. I love the heavy crunchy games, and this game has never been suggested during my usual meetups. It’s a great game though that’s on the short side that introduces the concept of worker placement for new board gamers. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
Are you guys all excited for International Table Top Day tomorrow? Woohoo!! There are so many events in the Phoenix area; I’m splitting my time between two events and wish I could do even more. So many games, so little time!
Anyway, it’s that time of the week — Friday link love. Enjoy!
— The Board Game Family asks if Splendor is a splendid family game? Here’s my review on the game.
— Daniel Solis has designed some neato commemorative coins for Tabletop Day.
One of my favorite games to play — Battlestar Galactica. But we only play it with five players.
All games come with a set number of players. It says so right on the box. But as you game more and more, those numbers often become mere suggestions. Sometimes playing with the max number of players isn’t always a good idea. Sometimes adding another player negatively affects everyone’s gaming experience.
On boardgamegeek.com, when you search for a board game, there’s an entry for each game that says “# of players” and then, “User suggested # of players.” That second entry is key. Just because you can play with seven players doesn’t necessarily mean you should.
Kanban … making cars efficiently with either negative or positive reinforcement. I can’t wait to bust this open!
Hey folks! It’s been an insanely busy week, so this will be much shorter than a usual post. Also, I’ll be combining my Friday link love to this entry as well.
First off, the Easter Bunny came and sent me Kanban! By Easter Bunny, I mean amazon.com. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this game since first playing it back in December. But before I write about it, I have to get more familiar with it and have a few more games under my belt. It took about 2 hours (with various interruptions) for my friend to explain this game to us newbies. It’s pretty heavy, in my opinion. I’m so excited to play this again!
It’s that time of the week again! Here are the interesting stuff I found for this week.
— Earlier this week, Gen Con threatened to move convention if Gov. Mike Pence signs a religious freedom bill, which he did on Thursday. A similar bill here in Arizona made it to then-Gov. Brewer last year, but she wisely vetoed it. Gen Con has an economic impact of $50 million for the state, but its contract with the Convention Center doesn’t expire until 2020. Ugh.
— Opinionated Gamers review the game [redacted]. They didn’t seem too impressed by it and said the rules were too disorganized. That’s too bad. I kept seeing this game at BGG Con but didn’t have a chance to play it then. I thought the box artwork was intriguing.
Can you handle the pressure and save the world against aliens?
I recently played two board games that required digital devices — XCOM: The Board Game and Alchemists. I totally geeked out over playing both of these games for the first time as I’ve never played a game that incorporated such technology. Fancy! I thought both games offered a fresh new dynamic to board gaming.
XCOM is a 4-player cooperative game where you and your friends are defending the world against an alien invasion. The game incorporates an app on the iPad or tablet that streamlines the game and dictates human response to the invasion. The app tracks your play in real time, which can be very nerve-wracking. Talk about making critical decisions under the gun!
It’s Friday! You guys are probably just counting down the hours at work, surfing the net and thinking about the weekend. In the meantime, I’ve rounded up some board-game links and other fun things for you all to enjoy.
— An entertaining boardgamegeek.com thread about naming your kids after board games. I love Meeples probably more than the next guy (obviously since it’s part of my alter ego) but that would be an awful baby name. But I must admit, Caylus sounds pretty bad-ass.
— A great list of top 10 cooperative games by Board Game Quest. Eldritch Horror is on the list, which is a great game and a slightly shorter version of Arkham Horror.
— Opinionated Gamers did a review on Istanbul. I had a chance to play this at BGG Con. It has a mechanic that’s similar to Five Tribes in terms of moving around the board and collecting resources.
— The Board Game Family talks about going to SaltCon, which is a gaming convention in Utah.
— Over at The Daily Worker Placement, a review talks about how Diamonds brings a fresh approach to the old trick-taking card-game mechanic. I also love how the website banner looks like a newspaper masthead.
