Author: ctrlalttabby@comcast.net

Let’s train at Medieval Academy!

In Medieval Academy, you are attempting to become the best knight of all. Here’s how: First, one person deals five cards to everyone. Then you pick up the hand you were dealt and chose a card, then pass them either clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on what turn you’re on. This repeats until all the cards are taken. At the beginning of each round, the card exchange will repeat. Then play begins.Medieval Academy

Unlike the card exchange, play always moves clockwise. You will play a card and move your chosen token that many spaces, on whichever board the card indicates. Some boards score every turn, others score on the third and sixth rounds, and the other two score only on the sixth round. All but these last two also reset at the end of round three.

Then there’s scoring. On the Gallantry board, it gives you the ability to move your piece on any other board. Two of the boards are for Jousting and just give third place one point, second place two points, and so on. The last board that scores every turn is tricky. This board is the Education board. First place gets nothing, second place gets a negative one, and third place gets a negative three. What’s scary is that this is the mild version of the last board to score.

On rounds three and six, you score in “Service to the King” not by your place in relation to others, but by where on the board you are. If you are past the six, then you get six points unless you hit the twelve, and then you get twelve points. The last two that score only on the last round are the Dragon and Charity. The Dragon board gives first place seventeen points, second place gets ten points, and third place gets a measly four points. The Charity board gives third place a negative ten, second place gets a negative five, and first place gets nothing.

Then you count your points. The person with the most points wins!

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That’s a Lie!

Lie is from the same Pack O’ Game as Hue, Fly, Bus, and Shh. They are also coming out with a second Pack O’ Game set (the Kickstarter runs through April 2, 2016). In Lie you start by drawing 5 cards. Then you chose which of the 2 dice on each card you are using for the round. Once you have decided, there is no turning back.Lie

Then the bidding begins, playing like  Stone Soup or Balderdash. Either you declare what you “have”, or you declare the person before you to be lying. To do this you call out “Lie!”. Then everyone shows their hand. If the overall count of everybody’s hands is greater or equal to the previous claim, the person who declared it a lie loses. If the overall count is less than the previous claim, then the person who bluffed loses. For instance, you could call 3 2’s, only having 3 cards in hand, 2 of them being 2’s, knowing someone else called a 2.

If you lose, then on the next round you draw one less card than you did the round before, then stay at that number as your full-time draw number until you lose again. The winner is the last player still allowed to draw a card.

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Scrimish!!!

Scrimish is a really easy game, similar to Stratego, which I will probably reference a lot in this post. You have 5 piles of cards, which each have 5 cards. You chose which cards go where in which pile. Phew. Try saying that 5 times fast! Anyway, the only official rule for where you must Scrimish_webplace a card is the fact that the crown (the Stratego equivalent: the flag) must be on the bottom of one of the 5 piles.

There are basic characters, numbered 1-6, who, rather simply, win if they are the highest number. Then there are the special cards. There are archers, shields and the crown. If you attack with the archer, he automatically wins. If your archer is attacked, he automatically loses. Shields cannot attack, but when your shield is attacked, it takes the attacker into the discard with him. Last, there are crowns. If you want to, and it’s legal (when the crown is the top card of his stack), you can attack with your crown. If he attacks another crown, he wins, and you win. If he attacks anything else, he loses, and you lose. If he is attacked, you lose.

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Zombie Apocalypse… Gamer Style

Today I write about not 1, not 2, but 3 games, all under the category of zombies. The games are Zombie Dice, Bowling For Zombies!!!, and Dead Money. Let’s get started.

Zombie Dice is a game where you- 3 guesses- roll dice. You are a zombie. You want brains. Many brains. Each turn you roll the dice to determine whether or not you will get brains. You start by randomly (no peeking!) choosing 3 dice out of the container. You then proceed to roll them.There are exactly 3 results you could get, unless you’re using the expansions.

First off is brains.  This means you caught the human and get to snack, if you don’t get shotgunned (more on that later). You set all the brains you roll on a turn to the side.Second is footprints. Footprints mean the human is hiding. If you choose to roll again, so as to hopefully get more brains, you will count the footprints as one of your 3 dice and reroll it.The last possibility is a shotgun. This is when it turns out that the human has a gun, and shoots you. If you are shot 3 times, you lose all brains for that turn and your turn is over.

At the end of each roll, you may choose whether you are satisfied with that turn’s roll, adding them to your total, or whether you would like to keep rolling so as to search for more brains. The goal is to be the first person to get a total of 13 or more. There is a catch, however. After somebody reaches 13, everyone else gets one more turn, a last chance to get more brains.

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Next is Bowling For Zombies. In Bowling For Zombies, you are zombies, out for a bowl. You have zombies of different levels in your hand, as well as three body parts. First, you play a zombie. This is what you have to plan carefully. You don’t want the highest card, as the strongest zombie walks away in search of a snack. You also don’t want the same zombie as someone else, as equivalent zombies rip each other up. The remaining zombies get the loot. This is where you have to be careful, for the highest level remaining zombie picks the bowling lane he wants first, with lane values varying from 1 to 9.

Then there are the body parts. If you play the head, you can collect any two bowling lanes, so long as they add up to 9 or less. The next body part is the leg, which allows you to put it in another person’s score pile, counting as a minus 1. The last is the hand. The hand allows you to discard a lane. I did find the pictures on the cards a bit disturbing.

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Dead Money and Bowling for Zombies

The last game is Dead Money. In dead money, you have many cards that you are trying to get rid of. Each card has a special ability that comes into action when you play it. Some cards require 1 hand, some 2. You may play up to 2 hands worth of cards each turn. Some cards require brains. When you draw a brain, you play it in front of you. When you play a brain-requiring card, you also roll a die. If the roll is under the number on the top corner of the card, you drop the brain and it goes to auction. This is where the numbers really kick in. You use the numbers to construct the best poker hand you can, if you want the brain. There is, as usual, a catch. Each card has a symbol with either 1 or 2 coins. If you win the poker hand, you have to draw a card for each coin on the cards you played. The first person to end their turn with no cards wins.

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What Hue will win?

There is a game called Hue. It came in the Pack O Game with Fly and Shh, as well as many others. Hue is about… so subtle… colors. In Hue there are several cards with different colors on each. There are five colors. You are, in the long run, trying to create long lines of each color. Ish. Let me explain.Hue

Each turn you play a card, generally to make at least 1 line of a color longer. At the end of the game you count each color. There’s a catch, however. You only get to score 3 colors, depending which ones are on your chosen score card. Your score card is the one card that you decide you won’t play. If the color isn’t on your score card, and there’s a long line of it, you can use your poison card to block off that row. Be careful, though. You only get 1 poison card each per game. Poison cards make that chosen row worth 0 points, no matter how long.

When placing, you may chose to cover a part of the rows already in place. When you do, you must cover at least a full square of the card (divided in white lines). When scoring, show your score card, then count up the longest line of each color on your card. Then multiply the color on the middle square of your card by 2. Add the 3 colors, including the doubled one. The player with the most points wins.

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Off to a new Dimension!

There is a wonderful logic game known as Dimension. You’ve got length, you’ve got width, and you’ve certainly got height, but open up to a new Dimension, where everything is round. That’s right, this game is about balancing balls. But that’s not the best part. You’re structure of spherical shapes must fit the random criteria of the draw pile, or you will lose victory points.Dimension

Each player has 15 balls, 3 of each color. Each turn one person will flip over 6 goal cards, a.k.a. the random criteria, and then the timer. Some examples of goals are: black cannot be on bottom or green must touch white. You have until the timer runs out to build as large of a structure as possible while still fitting as much of the criteria as you can. In some cases there are goals that will contradict each other no matter what, like one goal saying that green must touch green and another saying that green cannot touch green. In this case, you just choose which one you don’t want to do.

At the end of each turn you score. You get one point for each ball you use, and you lose two points for each goal you miss. If you use all five colors, and complete all the tasks, you get a bonus token. These are important for end game scoring. If you don’t have any, you lose 6 points, so I recommend getting as many as possible. Will your structures be a round wreck or a celebrated cylindrical construction? It’s your choice!

I would recommend this for anyone who enjoys logic and building.

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Shh!

Shh is a cooperative game that came in the same Pack O Game as Fly. In Shh, you are trying to make words using consonants from your hand and vowels from the table. The consonants can each only be used once per game. The vowels are reused and reused until the game ends. There is only one of each letter, so any words with duplicates of a letter would count as invalid.

ShhThe catch is you aren’t allowed to tell your teammate(s) what letters you have and what words you have in mind. You take turns placing letters until one person, on their turn, decides that the word is finished. When the word is declared finished, the players use a show of hands to question the words validity.

If the validity is questioned, then the players must check the validity in a dictionary. A valid word is set on the scoring pile, minus the vowels, which go back to the center of the table. If the word is more than 5 letters, flip the vowels used to the +1 side.

During scoring, count the consonants in the scoring pile and add the amount of vowels with the +1 side up. The rules include a rating out of 4 of how you scored.

I would recommend this for people who enjoy cooperative games and for families who have trouble getting their kids to sit down long enough to play a game.

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I think you’ve got the Concept

Concept is a game sort of like Charades, but instead of acting you place tokens on categories to help the other people guess your topic. If you don’t like Charades, you’re probably not going to like Concept.

Concept - games and money marked

In Concept, you draw a card and chose one of the nine phrases or things on the card to attempt to communicate without words. You set aside the card and place the Main Idea piece on what you think is the most important aspect of your chosen topic. Then you place little cubes on the other aspects. If your team successfully guesses it, you get light bulbs as victory points.

As an example, let’s say my word was whiskey. The Main Idea would be liquid, and some of my other aspects would be brown and old/adult because only adults can drink it. If my word were ninja, I might put the Main Idea on job, and aspects on death, black and star. In the photo, the Main Idea is marking the games spot and a token is marking money.  This topic turned out to be Monopoly.

I would recommend this game for anyone who enjoys cooperative or party games.

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As a comparison opinion to my rating of this game, click here.

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Please Continuo the game

In Continuo, you place tiles next to each other in any possible way to get the most matches of each color that you can. At the end of the round you count up how long each continuous color section you made was. At the end of the game you add all your rounds together and the person with the most points wins.Continuo
The house rule we played with is that instead of adding it all together, we add each of the four colors individually. The color you have the lowest total points in is your overall score. If that color passes up another color the next turn, the color that now has the least points becomes your overall score.

For instance, if I had just played the tile to the right in the picture above, I would have 7 red, 5 yellow, and 0 blue and green. That would make 0 my score for the turn. On the other hand, if we were playing the traditional way, my score would be 12. The problem with the original is that if you’re winning halfway through, you’re probably going to win the game.

I’d recommend this game to people who love strategy and math.

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Battle for Manhattan!

The ultimate battle… who will rule Manhattan?! Or would you prefer… say… Hong Kong? In Manhattan you are playing buildings to try to have the biggest buildings, the most buildings per city, and tons and tons of buildings.Manhattan

You are frequently battling over buildings, as you place pieces on each other’s pieces. This helps you achieve the goal of highest building in the world. Whoever has the piece on top at the end of the round owns the building and earns points for it.

You place pieces by playing a card. The grid of spaces is always on the bottom of the card. You play the card in front of you, and, depending on your position, may play on a building in any city if it is in that position. This way, what would get you a building in the top right of a city could get me a building in the bottom left of a city.

At the end of each round, points are awarded for each of the categories listed in the first paragraph. At the end of four rounds, when you’re out of building pieces, the person with the most points win.

Geeky Idea: Put a Godzilla figure on the board when you’re done and let him knock down the board. Either that, or a cat.

I would recommend this for people with lots of gaming experience who aren’t afraid to lose.

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