World of Warcraft Minis Review

We don't have a long standing relationship with miniature games. In fact, our only experience was with Warhammer, and that was only a few of us who put the World of Warcraft Minis through its paces. Already hooked on World of Warcraft, and WoW TCG, we immediately liked what we saw through the drum-up to release, from the few official preview articles, and the hands-on prerelease demo that we participated in while at the Penny Arcade Expo. The question still remained, though: Will WoW Minis hold up to repeat play, and as a secondary question, will it supplant our interest in the WoW TCG?

After toying with the premier release of WoW Minis over the last few months, we have our answer.

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Carcassonne Catapult Expansion Lobs One Over The Fence

We've always felt Carcassonne was fun. The only thing that needed spicing-up through expansions were new mechanics that kept the game fun while adding interesting depths to the already fantastically balanced strategy.

Unfortunately unless you're trying to make Caracassonne more approachable for kids, this expansion easily manages to ruin both of those things. Caracssonne: The Catapult [Amazon, Funagain] includes new Fair pieces to mix in with your stock landscape tiles. If a Fair is drawn the player gets to put his meeple on a relatively shodding tiddily winks launcher which tosses him in a tight arc. If any meeple breaks his fall on his way down, the that meeple is carted off board into to the local medieval infirmary. There are a few different modes, too, including one where you shoot chits at each other and score points on catches, or where your meeple replaces the flatted victim on the board.

That's it. It's a randomized aggressive potshot that's fun for the first few random launches, but then gets as tiring as watching Steve Wiebe try to get the kill screen in Circus Atari. Moreover, this expansion flies directly in the face of the interesting - yet light - strategy placement of Carcassonne & expansions that we hold in the highest of regards.

Let's hope this new direction is a short stint. Here's the official word:

It's fair time in Carcassonne. A traveling salesman arrives and brings his newest invention: a wondrous catapult!

His demonstrations amaze the crowds and inspire the creative to find many uses for this new contraption. Of course, not every planned use is well thought out or successful...

Contains:

• 12 landscape tiles
• 24 catapult tokens
• 1 wooden catapult
• 1 measuring board

Critical Gamers 2008 Holiday Gift Guide - Party Games

Now while we love a board and some strategy in most of our games, they're not the right fit for a social evening. That's where party games come in - they tickle the exhibitionist side of everyone, and promote social elements of gaming in a far stronger light than the cerebral mind-game of positioning and placement. Most importantly, they make us laugh our buttocks off.

We're not going to lie to you; the releases in 2008 weren't very friendly to the party gamer. Sure, you could suck it up and buy the heavily commercialized Partini, but it's just the rehashed/ reboiled essence of decade-old Cranium repackaged under a new publisher, and we simply can't suggest that to anyone.

So for this year's guide we revisit our favorite Party Games. These titles still top our table even after numerous repeat plays, some over the span of years, and that's saying something. So as much as this is a Holiday Shoppers List, also consider these choices our Best of Party Games Eva' list, too.

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Critical Gamers 2008 Holiday Gift Guide - Strategy Board Games

In part two of our Holiday Shopper Guides we look into gifts for the Strategy Gamer. These are the folks who grew up playing Chess, Stratego, and the classic Diplomacy, and are now ready for evolved games with better themes and potentially deeper gameplay.

Most of these games are for the more serious gamer who in their mid-teens and up. If you're looking for a title to fit the younger generation or pickup a mainstream game then you should checkout our 2008 Family Games Holiday Gift Guide, which lists some greats games that are more relaxed and interest a wide range of player types. For those of you looking for strategy war games: we ask you to checkout our War Game Holiday Gift Guide for 2008 which runs down our list of the best war gaming gifts for this year.

But those who want some great stand up strategy games then look no further. We've got quite a list here, including many critically acclaimed award winners that'll satisfy any strategy gamer when they tear off the wrapping paper come late December.

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Critical Gamers 2008 Holiday Gift Guide - Family Games

We once again kick off our annual series of Board Game Holiday Shopper guides with probably the most difficult of gaming archetypes: The Family Gamer. Our goal was to compile a list of fun games that span the disparate interest levels of younger players, teens, and adults where challenge and creativity is more interesting than following the rules.

Here's our most important criteria for the choosing games for our Holiday Board Games Guide for Families:

1. Games that are interesting for adults, too. Even though we recommend these games to families, we still want play any and all of these games because they're fun for us despite the fact that we're in our 30's.
2. Games that are simple to learn - but yet interesting and offer a quite a few levels of depth. They have to be rewarding for everyone who comes to the table.
3. Games that keep everyone involved from the first turn to the last, unlike the traditional family games from our past - like Monopoly.
4. The games come to a conclusion in about an hour so they're easy to budget time for, and you won't feel that board game hangover as you burn the midnight oil.

There's no surprise that this list jives with many characteristics of Eurogames which came out of Germany in the 1990's - since they were designed for exactly this type of gaming. Also, these games listed here would be great for non families, too, like any social board game group looking to get together a few times a month to play games and just hang out.

And here's our list of Family Games for the 2007 Holiday Season without any further ado:

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Ticket to Ride Card Game Review

Publisher Days of Wonder has once again brought another solid release to the approachable gateway gaming franchise Ticket to Ride, with Ticket to Ride the Card Game [Amazon, Funagain]. Set within the traditional American rail frontier, this installment takes Ticket to Ride to a few new places while holding onto many good aspects of the successful line of board game predecessors.

But without the colorful & fun train pieces, and the classic scramble to claim routes on the board to lock your opponents out of cities, does the Ticket to Ride card game bring enough strong new experiences to the table to warrant your purchase?

The general answer is... Those of you new to the Ticket to Ride line of games should probably start with one of the board game varieties - we suggest Ticket to Ride Europe.

If you're already a fanatic of the Ticket to Ride line of games, then be forewarned: Ticket to Ride the Card Game leans heavily on the use of your memory. If you don't mind that then there's plenty of gaming to enjoy in this new, clean and fun installment.

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Lawsuit: The Board Game Review

Lawsuit [Official Website, Amazon] is a board game for kids. No really! Designed to entice little kiddos ages 6-9, Lawsuit puts each player in the occupational role of a Lawyer, working their way through their own careers.

We have lots of friends who lawyer away in to the wee hours of the morning, and hands-down we love them all. But we know what you're thinking - 'cause we thought it to: in this day and age of stereotypical 'I'm gonna sue you butt off!' we expected Lawsuit to be a bit upsetting, awkwardly making vengeance and greed "fun!" for such a young age group.

When we cautiously lifted the lid and started playing we made note of only a few moral monkey wrenches. Best of all - there's never a point where one player sues another. Instead, it's a game of collecting legal fees from cartoonish cases, which you can use as moral talking points if you wanted to.

Still - those of you with the same cautious knee-jerk reaction that we had might not find much here; as a children's game Lawsuit doesn't have many original virtues. Most of the game is centered around counting spaces and exercising math skills associated with counting money. These mechanics are stock from just about any children's game for ages 6-9. So if you're uncomfortable with the litigation theme for your youngins then you may want to look elsewhere.

But if you're looking to introduce the occupation of Lawyers ('cause, like, maybe you are one?) to your little ones, then Lawsuit just might be the game for you. No really.

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WoW TCG Official Card Sleeves Review

Flash in the pan gamers might not care about material things, but Collectors love to keep their cards in tip top shape. True die-hards shuffle their cards without bending them to ensure lasting value, or precisely position their fingers to pickup each card without peeling back or wearing corners. But still - the normal dealings of collectible card game gameplay devalues their babies no matter how careful players and collectors are.

We're somewhat with these obsessive folks, and we originally tried Ultra Pro Deck Protectors to our disappointment. They were cheap, see-through pieces of .. plastic. Sure, they protected our cards, but they were wrapped in a frictionless, floppy baggy that made shuffling a trial of dexterity. Even worse, cards tended to rotate with the slightest vibration in the floor, or fly off tables with a simple toss from the hand. The cards were near impregnable, will give them that, but as they arched through the air in their protective pouch, onwards down into the dog dish, we wondered: is all this really worth the trouble?

Protecting our investment became a chore more than feeling of pride. Isn't gaming supposed to be fun? Then Upper Deck released these bad boys.

The official World of Warcraft TCG Deck Sleeves [Horde, Alliance, Neutral] come in 75 a pack - not 40 sleeves like the leading brand. That means one pack of these things will cover your entire deck and side deck. Quite nice. And though they're slathered with a pretty slick Alliance or Horde emblem on one side, that's not the best part.

The best feature of these cards is that the back is textured. It makes shuffling a snap, and it keeps the cards from hitting mach 3 when they land on the table.

Conclusion
What seemed like a token sell-out product from Upper Deck churns out to be a killer hit. Sure the deck sleeves seem like a little thing, but isn't it hte little things in life that we're supposed to stop an appreciate?

Darn right.

Edit: These used to be available at the Upper Deck Store, but no longer. You can find them at Amazon.com. If they hit the Upper Deck store again then we'll let you know!

Rating: 4 out of 5 (our rating system)

WoW TCG Servants of the Betrayer Review

The Servants of the Betrayer [Amazon, Funagain] release marks 5th set of the solidified World of Warcraft trading card game. No longer the new kid on the block, Upper Deck now has a foundation of cards and mechanics to work with, and as the middle set release in the Outland series (between March of the Legion and The Hunt for Illidan coming later this year) the Servants of the Betrayer has the potential to both solidify the style of the game, the set, and steer the entire franchise in new directions at the same time.

But does it pull it off?

The Setting
This set release includes a standard lot of heroes, each sports new flip powers, specialization the works -- as is the norm. But Upper Deck found the story of Outland - the shattered and floating home world of the orcs that the current detailed focus is the World of Warcraft MMORPG - needed an extra oomph beyond the stock set of heroes.

Outland is ruled over by a particular bitchy demon named Illidan Stormrage who's nicknamed The Betrayer, hence the name of this expansion release. Outland's story is saturated with backstabbers, traitors, and unsavories, and Upper Deck aimed to bring that feeling home in the WoW TCG version of this setting.

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Gisborne: a Eurogame Board Game to Avoid

We tend to ignore the bad releases, and as 'Critical Gamers' one could superficially complain that we're doing our readers a disservice. In reality we cull all of the crappy games you shouldn't play, silently dismissing them to the bottom of the stack.

\We hope to start talking a more proactive approach to steering you way from games.

We haven't played Gisborne (Clementoni, 3-5 players, 40 minutes) ourselves, but we can smell a frustrating and unimpressive experience when we see it coming. We've done some research and what we've found just ain't up to snuff to win moneys from our gaming budget. And we thought we should warn you.

Gisborne is a game in which players explore New Zealand during the colonial age, and though isn't necessarily a game you should completely avoid, it sports some glaring faults. The over engineered components - once sloppily assembled - don't easily fit back into their box without a heavy sigh of dismantling, and the rules take a few gaming runs to go through to fully understand. Finally, the game is only a slight advancement on the innovation scale. In the end, this is not the most approachable Eurogame - a genre of games that are meant to be approachable - so we highly suggest that you spend your money elsewhere. It seems that this game can only be recommended to Eurogame fanatics who want to stay on top of the genre.

Here's an entertaining critical look from a Board Game News' review, specifically about the game's pieces and woefully inferior packaging techniques:

"Ideally, you'll convince a mortal enemy to open the game box. You'll invite him over under the pretense that you want to settle your differences, that you want to limit future confrontation to family board games and not acid-filled scarfs and showers booby-trapped with razor wire. You'll wave towards the box in a friendly manner, inviting him to open it, while you fetch him a drink from the kitchen. Will a Merlot be good? Whatever he asks for, though, you can put it out of mind and pour a celebratory glass for yourself since his doom is near thanks to this lethal chunk of cardboard... " - W. Eric Martin's Review on BGN

Overly critical? Perhaps. In the hopes of being somewhat impartial (despite this article's name), we'll end this story with some links for you to research the game for yourself:

• Tom Vasel's Postivie Review on RPG.net
• W. Eric Martin Biting Review on Board Game News
• Board Game Geek's Gisborne resource page

Last Night On Earth - Avioid The Mansion Scenario

Last night we sat down to play the Last Night on Earth - our favorite zombie board game to date - and something bad happened: we didn't have fun. Why? We had the unfortunate event of randomly drawing the Manor House scenario, something that we'll ensure won't happen again.

This scenario pits 4 nimble axe toting heroes against 16 shuffling zombies. The goal: prevent the sea of zombies appearing on the cusp of the board from reaching the mansion in the middle. If 9 zombies set foot indoors before the sun rises (some 15 turns) then it's lights out. Game over. You lose.

It all boils down to this: there are just too many zombies to fight, and there ain't no way to kill 'em all. As soon as one dies, another appears on the edge of the board, walking in the dead Z's footsteps. While this is great for theme, it stinks for balance. Due to the combat mechanics of the game - a hero has to roll doubles on two dice to kill a zombie - the heroes quickly become flooded with beaten zombies, but not killed zombies. Their only chance is to pick up some key weapons drawn from a random deck, but they have to reach the fringes of the map to successfully search for weapons, knives, and supplies. Spending the time moving and searching means even more zombies make their way to the Mansion, setting up forts with kitchen tables and couch cushions.

Sure the heroes can use their bodies to attract zombies away from the Mansion (zombies have to move towards adjacent heroes), but they soon fall due to the mass mob and the nature of the fight dice. And once it's down to three heroes things just start falling apart fast. Even the Zombie player was having a pretty lame experience , and felt sorrowful as he tore the intestines out of the heroes and wore them as hats.

It got to the point that we thought we had done something wrong, or played the game in some stupid way, so our group played it again; the heroes lost 7 turns in the second time around, too.

We've had lots of great times with Last Night on Earth, and we hope it remains a mainstay in future, including the Growing Hunger Expansion coming in the next few months. But we'll be sure to ditch the Mansion House scenario when it comes around next time.

Wits and Wagers Review

Self-captioned “Trivia for people who don’t know stuff,” publisher North Star Games’ Wits and Wagers [Amazon, Funagain] attempts to mix things up the trivia genre. Instead of players straight-up answering stock trivia questions on pop culture or mainstream history, the questions hit the edge obscurity requiring players to ballpark a guess at the answer. This increased challenge is balanced by betting phase where people stake points on which guess is the closest answer without it going over (every answer is a numerical value). This layer of abstraction keeps everyone involved and entertained throughout, and makes Wits and Wagers a great addition to anyone’s stack of party or trivia games. In fact, it conrasts some older titles in the trivia game genre, making them seem like the dinosaurs that they are.

Yes Trivial Pursuit, you dice tossing and inconsistently challenging spawn of ancient early-1980s gaming culture, we’re looking at you.

Slightly tarnished by the inclusion of some cheap components, Wits & Wagers’ gameplay shines through its foggy exterior to deliver a fast paced and most importantly fun 20-30 minute trivia party game that's well worth your time.

Read on for a more detailed breakdown in our full review.

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Top 5 Halloween Games 2007

The weather just turned all overcast and rainy up here in New England, and when darkness fell as the sun set at about 3:30 pm it suddenly struck us: Halloween is just a few weeks away. Something about the cold rainy weather of autumn complements the theme of fighting undead beasties, and that’s a-ok with us. Our game nights for the next few weeks just went into zombie / demony / vampire slaying-fest mode.

Here is our select top 5 games to throw down for the 2007 Halloween season. Some of our choices might surprise you, but hey toughen up -- it’s freakin’ Halloween ya pansy. Close your eyes and stick your hand in this bowl of eyeballs, or even better read on to see our selection for this year.

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WoW TCG Damage Dice Review

We didn’t know what we should have expected from the WoW TCG Damage Dice [Amazon, Funagain], and Upper Deck accessory product that's a sideshow to the formidable WoW TCG. After all – it’s just a box, with dice in it. It’s a Box O’ Dice. Pure and simple. But to be honest, we thought it would be something at least a little bit cooler that it actually is.

The Good Points
It’s a handy little dice carrier that’s not too large and matches the artistic theme of the game, bringing some of the World of Warcraft cartoony art style alive on your table top. It really is a pretty slick looking treasure chest model... when viewed from afar*. The dice set contains both blue and red dice for assigning damage to your alliance or horde allies, and two 10-sided dice (one 1-10, the other 10-100) which work well in tandem to assign damage to your hero. In other words, the product does what it says it does without any major usability gripes.

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