Thrilling days of yesteryear

Perhaps appropriately, Cowboys: Way of the Gun is a game out of time. It was first published in 2007, but it has the look and feel of a game from the early 1980s, right down to the "bookshelf format" game box and a design sensibility that definitely favors function over form. It reminds me a lot of the 1989 Aliens board game, which is an excellent game design let down by weak production values.

Mechanically, Cowboys is a very well-designed small scale skirmish game that avoids a lot of the convoluted rules that seem to plague most games of this type. It plays on a grid for easy movement, and has simple game mechanics for establishing range and line of sight. Since it is played on pre-printed boards, the rules for moving and shooting through terrain are also very straightforward. It's a very fast-paced game, with the average scenario taking around 30 minutes to play.

"Move and shoot" games can get stale easily, and like several others such as 7TV and Alien vs. Predator: the Hunt Begins, this one uses a deck of event cards to give players a way to introduce some tactical decisions and unpredictability to the game. This game's event deck also functions as a standard poker deck, which allows it to be used as a random number generator for things like initiative. It might have been interesting to take this a step further and replace the dice with card draws to determine whether or not an attack is successful.

The real meat of the game is in its scenario book, which details 26 simple game setups that recreate famous gunfights both historical and fictional, from the shootout at the OK Corral to the three way standoff at the end of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The scenarios in the book escalate slowly, starting with one-on-one "shootout at high noon" games before eventually moving on to more complex setups with victory conditions beyond simply killing all of the other side's cowboys.

Unfortunately the game falls seriously flat on its outdated production values. It uses cardboard standups and tokens in lieu of miniatures, which in itself wouldn't be a problem, but the artwork on the game pieces is very bland. The same holds true for the game's various boards depicting sections of wilderness or classic western buildings like saloons and banks, which is a pity because they are otherwise of pretty high quality, printed on nice sturdy cardboard.

"The fight's commenced! Get to fightin' or get away!"

That said, the game's simple rules make for some cinematic action that inspires the imagination. In one game, I had to have Wild Bill Hickok run into a general store to reload his weapon, then come crashing through the store's window into the street to get a shot at his opponent. In another, recreating the famous gunfight at the OK Corral, I was stuck with one character (Ike Clanton) who didn't have a weapon, so I had him run around getting in the way of my opponent's line of sight, much like the "get to fighting or get away" scene from the 1992 Tombstone movie.

It shouldn't be too difficult to find some gunfighter miniatures (in fact, I have tons of them) and maybe even find some western town maps with better artwork, which is all it would take to make this a truly great game.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) The biggest problem with this game's weak production value is that it's a hard sell to get others to play, especially if they're not particularly interested in the historical west.

• Cowboys: Way of the Gun official website
• Cowboys: Way of the Gun on BoardGameGeek

The ants go marching

March of the Ants is not a game that would ordinarily catch my attention, but a good friend of mine did the artwork for the Minions of the Meadow expansion, which prompted me to back the Kickstarter for the expansion and pick up a copy of the base game. Well, that, and the giant centi-meeple...

Nepotism aside, the game is pretty good. It features elements of resource management and area control, with a tile-based board that unfolds gradually as the game progresses. Each player works to expand their colony of ants outward to collect resources while avoiding (or fighting off) the dreaded centipedes. Player turns involve a lot of meaningful decisions and the game gets going right away, avoiding a lot of the slow build-up that is common to resource management games.

The mighty centimeeple...

Cards are played for various effects, but mainly to evolve your particular species of ant by improving its head, thorax and abdomen, which gives you additional in-game abilities and results in an often bizarre Frankenstein-like mix of different ant parts.

The expansion adds several small modules to the game which can be mixed and matched depending on how much more complex players want the game to be. It includes aphids which players can herd to generate more food, parasites which add a bit more "take that" style player interaction, and predators that can be used to further antagonize your opponents, but at the risk of giving them more points if they manage to defeat them.

The game also includes a solo/co-op variant, which increasingly seems to be a must for Kickstarter games.

The graphic design leans towards readability over aesthetics (which is a welcome change from a lot of games from less experienced publishers), and the components are solid and of high quality, with nice bright colors that make everything easy to see and understand.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) The game mechanics and structure are extremely solid, but the theme leaves me a little cold, otherwise I would probably play this game more often.

• March of the Ants official website
• March of the Ants on BoardGameGeek