In defense of the classics: Star Wars Clue

Re-skinning classic games with modern intellectual property is nothing new, just ask anyone who's ever owned a Charlie Brown chess set or a deck of novelty playing cards. Games publisher USAopoly has built up a healthy cottage industry out of grafting a dizzying array of film and television properties onto board game mainstays like Monopoly, Risk and Clue. While there is no help for Monopoly (it's a terrible game and always will be), occasionally the designers of a reskinned game will add elements in order to make the game more in line with the I.P. they're using. Sometimes this can work to the game's benefit; for example, Doctor Who Risk adds a much needed time limit to a game that can take all day to play, but really shouldn't.

Having not played the original Clue in many years (although I am a huge fan of the 1985 film, which is a work of genius), I picked up Star Wars Clue entirely due to the very impressive looking two-level board. In my defense, it was a spur of the moment decision, and besides, everything is better with Star Wars, right?

The three dimensional board is every bit as impressive as it looks on the box. The graphics are great, and some effort was made to make it look like the interior of the Death Star from the original Star Wars, rather than just slapping on stills from the film. The back side even looks like the death star exterior, but does reveal a problem: the board has a back side, which means whatever unlucky player gets that seat is going to be standing up a lot during the game. Even then, it's a little difficult to see the lower level of the board unless you're sitting right in front of it.

The playing pieces are miniatures of the principal Star Wars heroes, and they're as good as cheap molded plastic can possibly be. The colors are distinct and you can tell which character is which, and that's all you really need from a board game piece, although the miniature painter in me can't help wondering what they'd look like with a spot of paint.

"It was R2-D2, in the docking bay, with the lightsaber."

Well no, not exactly. Recognizing that a traditional whodunnit isn't on brand for Star Wars, the game instead asks players to figure out what room the Death Star plans are in, what planet it will destroy next, and what space ship the heroes will escape on. It's not a bad rationale, but it does remove the element of player pieces getting dragged around the board when they're accused, and it eliminates the murder weapons which were the most visually striking thing about the original game, even if they don't really serve a clear purpose. The planets and ships are represented by cardboard counters that are placed in the room when a player makes a guess, and element we found a little cumbersome but also helpful for remembering what guess had just been made.

One thing I remember not particularly liking about the original Clue is that sometimes you don't roll high enough to move to the room you want to move to, and you get stuck in the hallway with nothing to do. Star Wars Clue attempts to alleviate this, and perhaps make the game feel more like the escape from the Death Star, with a new deck of cards that must be drawn from any time a player ends their turn in the hallway. There are four possible cards that can be drawn: an all clear, which lets the player move to any room on their current level; a "stormtrooper ahead" that gives an additional dice roll for movement, with the caveat that if the player doesn't make it into a room they move to the Trash Compactor; a comlink that allows an extra guess to be directed at a single player; and finally, the dreaded "you are caught" card...

This card has been the subject of nearly all the criticism of this version of the game. When drawn, the player moves directly to the Detention Block and ends their turn. They are stuck there until another player moves into the room to rescue them, at which time the prisoner must show the rescuer one of their Clue cards. If all players wind up as prisoners, the game ends immediately. On paper it sounds like a fun way to spice up the game, but in practice we found it to be pretty tedious, even after house ruling that the prisoner only had to stay in the Detention Block for one full turn.

Even with these additions, the game is recognizably Clue, to the point that our winner was the player who had played the original a lot as a kid and had developed tried and true strategies for winning. We played with a group of Star Wars fans, but at the game's end we concluded that we had enjoyed the Clue part of the game, but the Star Wars elements got in the way more than they helped. When one player asked "so, it this a keeper?" my response was that I would be more likely to buy a copy of the regular edition of Clue.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) It turns out that not everything is better with Star Wars.

Battlefield classic

Even though I probably only played Stratego once or twice as a child, I've always had a weird fascination with it, and I've spent several years hunting down the collector's wooden box edition that Milton Bradley put out in 2002. For years it seemed to be the only one that wasn't readily available, but I did eventually find one at my friendly local game shop (Guardian Games in Portland, Oregon), which carries a substantial selection of used games.

Now, having played the game a few times as an adult with a wealth of gaming experience, I still find it weirdly fascinating.

For those who aren't familiar with the game, Stratego gives each player an assortment of pieces of different ranks, ranging from humble scouts to the powerful Marshall, plus a handful of bombs, a devious Spy, and one flag. The goal of the game is to capture your opponent's flag. Pieces are arranged on the board with blank faces towards the opponent, so he doesn't know which pieces are where until he starts sending his own pieces out. When a piece enters the same square as another piece, the one with the lower rank is eliminated, with a few exceptions: a bomb will eliminate any piece (along with itself) unless that piece is a Miner, and a Spy will eliminate an opposing Marshall (the highest ranked piece) if it is the attacker. Bombs and Flags can't move, and Scouts are the only pieces that can move more than one square at a time.

At least half of the game's strategy is in the setup, figuring out where to place your various pieces at the start of the game. Will you put all your Scouts at the front and run them at the opponent's front line right away? Or will you fill your front row with bombs to take out your opponent's first attackers? Or maybe it will be better to surround your flag with bombs, but what if that's what your opponent is expecting you to do, and he manages to clear the way for his Miners to easily defuse your bombs?

The rest of the game is a series of decisions involving what pieces to sacrifice in order to learn which pieces your opponent has where, and a struggle to remember the position of those pieces once revealed. It's a bit of a guessing game, but it's really more about choosing what pieces to send into enemy territory and when, and where to position your flag so that it remains protected.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Stratego doesn't quite have the timeless elegance of chess, but nevertheless it's an engaging game that's a classic for good reason.

• Stratego on BoardGameGeek

This time it's Battle Yahtzee

Fill-in-the-blanks licensed versions of games like Monopoly or Clue are tie-in products first and games second, and Battle Yahtzee: Alien vs. Predator is no exception. If you're a fan of Yahtzee and the Aliens vs Predator franchise you'll probably enjoy the game, but it's not going to change your mind about either.

That said, the game does add some interesting elements to the game in deference to the confrontational nature of the AvP license. Rather than just trying to score more points than your opponents before the game ends, Battle Yahtzee allows you to use some of your rolled combos to attack your opponents and take away some of their points. It also adds a "battle chance" die that you can roll on your turn, that will either add or subtract from your score depending on how it rolls. Additionally, each player gets to play as a character, either the Alien, Predator, Marine, or Scientist, each with a unique once-per-game special ability.

The additional rules don't really make the game that much more complicated, and it is still recognizably Yahtzee. Players can easily use the included dice and score pads to play by the standard Yahtzee rules, which are included on the rules sheet.

The components are slick and nicely designed, but the dice are a little hard to read, and the included score board is too small for its score tracking pieces, so the board tends to get crowded when player scores are close, and the pieces can get bumped easily.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) Not bad if you already like Yahtzee, but there are a lot of more compelling AvP games out there. AvP Clue looks interesting though...

• Battle Yahtzee: Alien vs Predator on BoardGameGeek

A few classics

You could argue that classic games are classics for a reason, but you could also argue that many classics are only considered classic because they got there first, and no one knew any better at the time.

Water Works falls firmly into the former category. It's a card game that is very easy to play, but with a reasonable amount of strategy and more player interaction than similar card games where the object is to be the first to have a set number of cards in play. Players start with a valve and a spout, and the goal is to play a pipeline of 8-15 cards (depending on the number of players, and which edition of the game you have) between the two.

Of course, it's a little more complicated than simply laying down cards. All the cards in your pipeline must be oriented the same way, so there is a difference between horizontal and vertical pipes. There are also T-Junctions, which will cause your pipeline to go in two different directions, one of which must be capped before you can play your spout card.

More deviously, your opponents can play leaky pipes onto your pipeline, which must be repaired or replaced before you can win.

It's a great game whose card laying mechanics inform many newer games, from Starbase Jeff to Tsuro, and even dungeon crawl games like DungeonQuest.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) A simple game, but still a classic that holds up fairly well.

• Water Works on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: November 9, 2014

Yahtzee is another classic game that has influenced countless others, but in this case it is the game's elaborate scoring system that has made its mark, especially in Reiner Knizia's games.

In Yahtzee, players roll dice in an effort to get the best combination of numbers they can, in order to fill up a score sheet that gives bonuses for things like having the most of a single number, or a sequence of consecutive numbers. The strategy lies in deciding when to fill each section of the score sheet, since you have to fill one each turn, but you always risk getting a better roll for that section later.

Yahtzee is an undeniable classic, and it is simple and well known enough that it has become a favorite "fill in the blanks" merchandise item, much like Monopoly or Risk (our copy is the Pirates of the Caribbean edition). However, I found that it doesn't hold up on its own the way some of the other classic games do: in Yahtzee, the entire game is the scoring system, with the game play reduced to rolling dice and putting numbers in boxes. There is very little to inspire the imagination.

That said, the Firefly version is tempting...

Rating: 2 (out of 5) A little too abstract and lacking in any kind of theme to hold my interest.

• Yahtzee USAopoly official website for licensed versions
• Yahtzee on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: November 27, 2014