A kinder, gentler wild west: Old West Empresario

There are a few games in my collection that I would classify as “comfort games” – games I’ve played enough times, and with relatively simple rules, that I don’t need to worry about re-learning the game when I sit down to play. These games tend to be relatively non-confrontational, but not often cooperative, as co-op games tend to ramp up the difficulty to compensate for the lack of a thinking opponent. No, I’m talking about games that are relaxing to play, maybe after a stressful day or on a lazy weekend, competitive but not overly confrontational.

One of my favorites in this category is Old West Empresario, a sadly out-of-print game about building a town in the old west. The western theme appeals to me, but what appeals to me even more is the simple but engaging game play.

Like a surprising number of wild west games, this one is about building a town. The game starts with 12 tiles, representing buildings, in the center of the table. These are in groups of two, with each group numbered one through six (identified by a number tile). The rest of the tiles go in the box lid or a bag, to be drawn randomly throughout the game. Each player starts with a Town Hall and a random tile, which begins the game on its unconstructed side, and also a character with a unique game ability, and three coins. Additionally, the game begins with three sets of two Wanted cards, each of which will reward the first and second player to accomplish particular objectives.

At the start of each game round, the starting player rolls a number of six-sided dice: two for each player plus one extra. These dice are placed next to their corresponding set of tiles in the center of the table. On each player’s turn they choose one of the remaining dice and either take a tile from that die’s set, or use the die to activate their town (more on that in a moment). The die is then discarded, and after each player has taken two turns the last remaining die is used by all players to activate their towns.

When a tile is taken, the player can either discard it to gain three coins, or place it in their town on its unconstructed side – the building it represents will still need to be built. Tiles must be placed adjacent to other tiles. A lot of the game’s strategy is in where you place particular types of buildings, as many of them will give income, end-of-game victory points, or other bonuses based on what buildings they are adjacent to.

But buildings still have to be built, and this is where activating your town comes in. Instead of taking a new tile, a player can use their turn to choose a die and then activate all the constructed buildings in their town that are marked with the number shown on the die. Early on this will be your town hall, which allows you to construct the other buildings that you’ve placed, but eventually you’ll have a range of different options such as gaining townsfolk or coins, collecting extra tiles, or even forcing your opponent to lose a coin with the dreaded Undertakers (which also causes you to lose points at the end of the game if it’s too close to the center of town).

Since you only get to activate the buildings that match the die you’ve chosen, you have to think carefully about which tiles to place in your town. If you end up with a lot of the same number you’ll get to do a lot when that number comes up on a die roll, but if it doesn’t, you won’t be able to do much on your turn. You also have to think about when to choose and place certain tiles, since their neighboring buildings will affect how many points they’re worth a the end of the game. But if you wait too long to grab that tile, one of your opponents might get it first.

The game ends when one player has 15 or more buildings in their town, or when a pre-determined number of townsfolk counters have run out. The townsfolk are a secondary currency used to pay for some game effects, and are also worth victory points. Additionally, the artwork on them is adorable, and eagle-eyed players might just recognize a few of the characters...

Maeve and Dolores from HBO's Westworld.

Townsfolk from Old West Empresario.

The only direct competition is the available dice and tiles each turn, and the Wanted cards which offer extra points to the first and second player who hit specific achievements such as having a certain number or type of buildings in their town. So it’s fairly non-confrontational and puzzle-like, but in a good way Honestly I like it better than similar but more complex games like Carson City, especially when considering its effort-to-entertainment ratio. The amount of decision-making hits that sweet spot where you always feel like you have good options, without descending into the dreaded analysis paralysis.

Sadly the game’s publisher went out of business a few years ago, and I don’t think it made enough of a splash to entice anyone else to pick it up for a reprint. But there seem to be plenty of copies out there, on eBay and in the used games market.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) One of those great “simple but engaging” games that we might not play all that often, but is always a joy when we get it to the table.

Dice Throne: more than just battle yahtzee

Dice Throne is one of those rare animals, a Kickstarter game that not only made it to retail, but made it to retail in a way that is very accessible to new players who might want to try it out without spending $100+ on it. By their nature, games produced using the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform tend to be bloated, expensive affairs -- the producers of these games know that they have a captive and obsessive audience, and they want to try to sell that audience as much stuff as possible in one shot. Retail buyers, on the other hand, will often buy on a whim, but aren't as likely to pony up for a huge, deluxe game, and the makers of Dice Throne have solved this problem by splitting up the full boxed game into four smaller boxes. Each one works perfectly well as a stand-alone game, but buy all four and you have everything that comes with the Kickstarter version (other than a handful of promotional cards).

The game itself is a delight. It's a fairly straightforward combination of Yahtzee (without the math) and Magic: the Gathering (without the deck construction and collectability). Each player chooses a character to play as, which comes with a set of 5 dice, a deck of 30 cards, a playmat describing all the character's abilities, and assorted tokens used during the game.

I want to pause for a moment here to talk about the staggeringly high production values on display with this game. Whether you have one of the retail packs of two characters, or the eight-character "battle chests" that come direct from the publisher, each character comes packaged in its own separate plastic box that includes all the components for that character, plus spares of some of the tokens and even extra space in the box in case you want to sleeve the cards. The components are of extremely high quality, with gorgeous artwork and durable, well-printed cardboard components.

The core gameplay involves rolling dice in an effort to get specific combinations of numbers or symbols with which to attack your opponent's character. Your playmat describes all the different attacks you can make, based on how your dice come up. You get two re-rolls each turn, but you can also play cards from your hand to modify your dice rolls, make your attacks stronger, or interfere with what your opponent is doing. Additionally, each character has an assortment of tokens that they can play, either on themselves or their opponent, which grant various gameplay effects. It's just the right combination of the luck of the dice and the ability to modify that luck with your cards and tokens.

Any one of the two-character sets is a good dueling game by itself, but the choice of characters is a lot of what gives the game its variety. The first series consists mainly of basic fantasy archetypes: barbarian, elf, paladin, monk, ninja, and so on, but the second series adds some more interesting and esoteric characters like a gunslinger, pirate, and tactician. A recent Marvel Comics themed set adds well known characters like Thor and Black Panther, and last year they even put out a Santa vs. Krampus two-player set for Christmas. Can the barbarian beat the ninja? Is Doctor Strange a better sorcerer than the Pyromancer? Who would really win in a fair fight between Thor and Loki? These are the questions that can only be answered with Dice Throne.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Quick, engaging gameplay plus top-notch production value combine to make this one of the best dueling games (or versions of Yahtzee) out there.

• Dice Throne official website
• Dice Throne on BoardGameGeek

Roll West, young man...

"Roll and write" is an emerging style of game that seeks to reduce production costs by eschewing cards, tiles and tokens in favor of players simply marking changes to the game state on a piece of paper with a pencil or pen. This allows these games to be sold at a much lower price point, which can only be an asset in the increasingly crowded board game market.

Actually, roll and write games have been around for many years, with Yahtzee usually pointed to as the first commercial example. But the genre has exploded in recent years, either as a way for game publishers to increase their visibility in stores by putting out simplified versions of games like Settlers of Catan or Patchwork, but just as often with off-the-wall ideas that might not support a $60 board game.

We picked up Rolled West on a whim, having not played any roll and write games (other than Yahtzee), and also having not played Gold West, the full board game it's based on,. So we should be able to judge the game on its own merits without comparison to its parent game or other games in the same genre.

Each player is given a dry-erase board showing what initially looks like a dizzying array of icons. But once you play a few times it's pretty straightforward. The icons represent banked resources, boom town buildings, shipment routes, and mining contracts and claims. On his or her turn, the acting player rolls 4 dice showing symbols that equate to copper, silver, gold, and wood. The player chooses one of these to represent the terrain for the turn, and the other three are resources that can either be spent or banked for use on a future turn.

Players spend combinations of resources on the aforementioned buildings, routes, contracts and claim, with an eye towards maximizing their points at the end of the game. There are a lot of options, so clever players will quickly identify a particular strategy, such as staking claims and building mining camps, developing shipping routes, or saving up resources to buy expensive but lucrative contracts, and then staying with that strategy over the course of the game's six turns. Trying to do a little of everything, or changing strategies mid-game, can be disastrous, as the points tend to rack up the farther along you go on a single track, such as staking claims in the woods or developing a shipping line for silver ore.

Boom town buildings confer bonus points based on the other things you've developed in the game, which can be tricky since you don't want to invest in a particular building before you've figured out what your strategy is. At the same time, as soon as one player buys a building it is no longer available to the other players (the corresponding icon is crossed off on their board), so you don't want to wait too long either.

Players also have the option to bank one resource each turn for future use. Banking resources is really the only way to save up for high value contracts that generally require four or five resources but are worth a lot of points at the end of the game, Additionally, in between each of a player's turns they can bank one of the resources rolled by another player. This doesn't prevent the other player from using it, it just allows you to use it also. This is one of the more interesting decision points in the game, since it can only be done once between each turn -- you're always running the risk of banking a resource, only to have someone else roll a more useful one before your turn comes around again.

As you can see, there is a lot going on here, especially for a game that consists of four dice and what amounts to a 4x6 card for each player. My only complaint about the game is that the iconography on the player cards can be a bit difficult to remember, causing frequent referral to the rules to answer "what does this mean again?" questions. It might have been better to make the player boards larger and include gameplay reminders and tips.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) It's got a huge amount of depth for such a simple game, and yet it can still be played in 30 minutes or so.

• Rolled West on BoardGameGeek
• Weirdly, there is no mention of this game on the publisher's website

Star Wars Destiny: may the dice be with you

When Fantasy Flight Games first released Star Wars: Destiny in 2016, I wasn't particularly interested. It appeared to be a collectible dice game similar to Marvel Dice Masters, which I had stopped playing and sold the year before. I thought Dice Masters was a fun game, but the customizable aspect (building a "deck" based on powerful or interesting dice combinations) was failing to hold my interest, while at the same time making the game difficult to play right out of the box.

However, after seeing The Rise of Skywalker in December and really enjoying it, I found myself wanting to play a game with content from the most recent Star Wars trilogy, which neither of our go-to Star Wars games (Rebellion and Outer Rim) has. Combine that with a bargain priced two-player into set and I was willing to give Star Wars: Destiny another look.

As it turns out, Destiny is a fun, simple game that isn't really anything like Dice Masters. It uses a combination of cards and dice for a straightforward dueling game that manages to remind me of everything I like about collectible card games, while doing away with some of the pitfalls of the format.

Where Dice Masters was a dice game that emulated the structure of a dueling CCG, Destiny is a card game that also uses dice. As such, deck construction is a lot more interesting, while at the same time being simpler than the complex CCGs of old thanks to a lower card count (30 cards per deck rather than the usual 50 or 60 cards) and the fact that your primary cards start the game in play, so the rest of the deck consists of support cards built around two or three main characters.

The goal of the game is to eliminate all of your opponent's characters by inflicting damage on them, while at the same time keeping your own characters safe. Roughly one third of your deck's cards will add dice to the pool started by your main characters; dice are rolled at the start of each turn and used mainly to make attacks and generate resources that are used to pay for additional card plays. The rest of the cards in your deck are played for various game effects, which balances the game between card plays and dice rolling.

A few weeks after we started playing, the publisher announced that the game would be ending, which we're not seeing as the bad news you might think it is. Really, it eliminates one of the primary down sides to collectible games: the expense of buying random expansion packs and keeping up with a steady flow of new product. Since the game is "over," we've been able to get product at very low prices, allowing us to build up a decent collection of cards and dice quickly, which keeps the collecting and deck-building aspect of the game enjoyable.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) This will be a good game to pull out when we're in the mood for Star Wars without wanting to dive in to a more complicated game like Rebellion or X-Wing.

• Star Wars: Destiny official website
• Star Wars: Destiny on BoardGameGeek

Doctor Who: Dalek Dice yields predictable results

We've all been there: I was $10 away from free shipping on an online order, so I bought Doctor Who: Dalek Dice on a whim.

Expectations should be low for a $12 dice game, especially one based on a popular licensed property from a publisher with a somewhat spotty track record for this particular IP -- Cubicle 7's Doctor Who role playing game is terrific, but their Doctor Who: the Card Game didn't really utilize the license well, and their Time Clash game died right out of the gate.

On the other hand, Dalek Dice was designed by Marco Maggi and Francesco Nepitello, the team that has done such a great job with other games based on licensed properties such as the epic War of the Ring and the more recent Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I suppose I was holding out hope that they would come up with something more interesting than the usual press-your-luck dice game.

What they delivered was...the usual press-your-luck dice game. Nothing clever, no unique Doctor Who twist. Just a game that's boring even in comparison to other dice games like Dino Hunt Dice or Age of War. Not too surprising I suppose, but still a little disappointing.

Rating: 1 (out of 5) We will probably never play this game again, especially since we have similar alternatives that are much better games.

• Dalek Dice official website
• Dalek Dice on BoardGameGeek

Roll Player: character developments

When you say it out loud, a whole board game about creating a D&D style fantasy character sounds silly. But how different is it from games where you're trying to build a western town, an expedition journal, or a space empire? And besides, there are many that would argue that building and developing your character is the most compelling part of playing Dungeons & Dragons, or indeed almost any role playing game.

Roll Player had intrigued me for some time, but it's done by a small publisher who primarily uses Kickstarter so availability has been spotty since it came out in 2016. I finally got a chance to play it at a convention earlier this year, and was instantly hooked, so much so that I bought a copy right then and there.

The game features a game board for each player denoting one of the standard fantasy races such as elf, dwarf, or halfling, plus a few more esoteric choices like minotaur or cat person. From there players are dealt a random set of character class cards from which they choose their profession, a backstory, and an alignment.

Game play revolves around randomly choosing 6-sided dice from a bag, rolling them, and then taking turns choosing which ones to add to the different statistics on your character sheet. The number rolled on the dice is important, but so is the color -- your profession tells you what range of numbers you want, and your back story (as well as other factors) tell you what color and where on the sheet you want to place them.

After dice are chosen, players choose from a row of equipment cards which further enhance their characters, with specific equipment and skills being more or less suited to specific types of characters. Among the choices are skill cards that adjust your character's alignment (their moral compass) when used, as well as trait cards that give a point bonus at the end of the game.

These two phases are repeated 12 times, at which time all the players will have a full player board. Points are awarded based on how well optimized the character is, with bonus points for placing the the right colors of dice in the right places on your sheet, acquiring equipment and traits best suited to your character, and getting your alignment marker placed in a way that suits your alignment card.

It's a well-designed engine-building game, and I find it a bit more compelling than empire-building games like Race for the Galaxy because I'm building and individual character and equipping him (or her) for adventure, rather than a more abstract empire of planets and starships. An expansion adds the ability to fight minor monsters, building up experience in order to face off against a big bad at the end of the game, but honestly I find that addition a little distracting; I would rather just spend time building my character.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) a terrific game that's compelling but reasonably simple to play and not overly competitive, making it a great choice for a casual game night.

• Roll Player official website
• Roll Player on BoardGameGeek

Into the tiny with Tiny Epic Galaxies

Tiny Epic Galaxies delivers on its promise: it has the feel of an epic exploration game, but it comes in a small box and doesn't take all day to play. Now, don't get me wrong, it isn't Xia or Star Wars Rebellion, but it still creates a sense of mighty space empires growing stronger as they explore and conquer new territory.

It's a dice placement game, a growing sub-genre of worker placement where players roll dice to determine what actions they can do in a given round. The actions here are moving a space ship between planets, acquiring one of the game's two resources (energy or culture), using either diplomacy or economy to advance colonization efforts on a planet, or utilizing an established colony's special ability for a game effect.

Players start with 4 dice and two space ships, and compete to exploit the resources of a row of planet cards at the center of the table. Landing on a planet conveys a one-time use of that planet's special ability. Orbiting the planet and taking the time to colonize it takes longer but adds the planet to your pool of colonies, meaning only you may use its special ability. Additionally, each planet provides either energy or culture, so spreading out your ships to take the best advantage of the acquire resource action is critical to having the resources you need to upgrade your empire, which gets you more ships and dice to use on later turns.

As with all the games in the Tiny Epic series, this one doesn't really offer anything truly original, but that's not the point. The accomplishment is that it offers something similar to what you normally only get from much larger and more time-consuming games. The amount of game that designer Scott Almes is able to get out of a minimum of components is astonishing.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) There's a lot more going on in this game than can be expected from a 5" x 7" box, that's for sure.

• Tiny Epic Galaxies official website
• Tiny Epic Galaxies on BoardGameGeek

Deadwood 1876: small things come in good packages

I was drawn to the Kickstarter campaign for Deadwood 1876 by its terrific artwork and simple, elegant graphic design, so let's talk about that first.

It is a great looking game. It comes packaged (like all of the games in the "dark city" series from Facade Games) in a box designed to look like an old leather bound book with a magnetic lid. All the game components other than the cards are made of wood (no plastic) and beautifully designed, especially the three engraved discs that represent the locations in the game. The artwork on the cards is very well-rendered, in a style that is just cartoony enough to be expressive but without looking silly.

The game's design is also very minimal, which appeals to me as a respite from the current trend towards overproduced Kickstarter games with hundreds of plastic miniatures and overdone, hard to read boards and rulebooks. Finally something simple and (hopefully) easy to play.

Or is it?

The rules and mechanics of the game are simple enough. The game consists of Safe cards, Deadwood cards, and three locations at the center of the table. Each player starts with two face down safe cards in front of them, and there is a stack of three more in the center; Safe cards consist mainly of gold in various denominations, with a few guns and other items sprinkled in.

Players also start with a hand of Deadwood cards that represent items used to perform actions: guns for fighting, horses for movement, and various bits of leatherwork such as hats and holsters for manipulating the cards in various ways. Player pawns are randomly distributed among the three locations (more on this in a moment).

The goal of the game is to be in the location whose occupants collectively have the most gold (depicted on their face down Safe cards) at the end of the game. Once the winning location has been determined, the occupants of that location use their remaining weapon cards to fight it out to see who the final winner is.

Play consists of each player playing one Deadwood card from their hand. A card can be played as a weapon to attack another player, in order to either take one of their safes, or to switch places with another player's pawn or force them to leave your location. Weapons have variable strengths but use dice to determine the outcome of combat, so a lower card isn't necessarily a lost cause. Or, it can be played for another effect such as moving between locations (if there's room, each location is limited to a certain number of player pawns), peeking at face down Safe cards, or drawing extra Deadwood cards from the deck.

After each player has had a turn to play a card, there is a heist round, where players use weapon cards to fight it out for one of the safes in the middle of the table. Then another round of play begins, and so on, until all the safes in the center have been claimed. At that point there is one final round, and then the winning location is determined and the final showdown happens.

It sounds like there's a lot going on, and there is, but there is one critical problem. A key strategy to the game is figuring out who has the high value safes, so you can either steal them or make sure you're at the location with the most gold at the end. It's supposed to be a "game of shifting alliances" where you side with the others in your location to make sure you collectively have the most gold, and then backstab them in the final showdown. The problem is that with only four turns per player before the final showdown, you just don't have enough time for the amount of social deduction or level of strategy that the game calls for.

Because of the amount of bluffing and secret information involved, the game relies on all the players having a roughly equal understanding of the rules and especially the strategy, which makes it very difficult to teach. This is a major problem for a game that, like any "shifting alliances" game, needs a large number of players to be interesting.

On the other hand, I think there is a fun game here somewhere, and the gorgeous design and components make me want to keep trying to make it work.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Too much social deduction for a board game, or perhaps too much structure for a social deduction game, but the game is beautiful to look at.

• Deadwood 1876 official website
• Deadwood 1876 on Board Game Geek

Covert: it's a spy world after all

There are good reasons why the Cold War (the period between the end of WWII and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991) is such a compelling genre for stories and games. The massive distrust between America and Russia combined with a fear of all-out war, plus the rapidly advancing but still largely analog stealth and surveillance technology made it a unique time in world history, both thrilling and terrifying.

Covert, designed by Kane Klenko and published by Renegade Game Studios, does a good job of evoking the cold war with what on first glance seems to be a disparate group of game mechanics. The goal of the game is to collect sets of cards representing spy gear like listening devices, travel documents and hidden escape kits, and then turn those cards in for points, but as usual there's a bit more to it than that. The sets players are going for are determined by mission cards that will sometimes also include the need to have a pawn in a particular spot on the board.

Movement around the board is also one of the principal ways of gaining more cards, either by having a pawn in a certain part of the board when it's time to draw cards, or by following other players around and collecting clue tokens that they leave behind as the move from city to city on a board representing Europe during the Cold War.

But that's not even the most interesting part of the game. Player actions are determined by a dice placement system where at the start of each round, each player rolls 5 dice and uses them to determine what of 6 possible actions they'll be able to do that turn. The first player to choose a particular action can do so freely by placing a die showing any number on that part of the board, but the next player who wants to be able to do the same action has to place a die that comes either before or after the dice that are always there. For example, if your opponent plays a 2 on the "draw a card" action, you have to play either a 1 or a 3 in order to also do that action.

If the numbers just aren't cooperating and there's nowhere on the board you can play, you can spend a die to draw a random token that gives you a one-time special ability, such as being able to switch the number on a die or play two in a row. You can also just end your turn early, which guarantees that you'll get to go first on the next turn.

On top of all that, there's a code-breaking phase consisting of two rows of random numbers, and a deck of equipment cards with 3-digit codes on them. If you can manipulate the numbers so that any 3 of them match the code on your card, you can either use that card as part of a set of equipment (the main way of scoring points), or cash it in for bonus points at the end of the game.

Covert is be complex without being complicated, and it manages to make all of its different abstract game mechanics work together well, and also feel like they're intrinsic to the theme. When I play this game I really feel like I'm getting a sense of what it must have been like for those Cold War spymasters, managing tons of moving parts, manipulating events to work out in their favor, and taking advantage of situations they might not have control over.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A very entertaining game that combines theme and mechanics well.

• Covert official website
• Covert on BoardGameGeek

You can't win them all: Planet of the Apes

I like cooperative games, I love adventure games, and I'm a huge fan of the Planet of the Apes, movies, so this game should have been a shoe-in for me. Unfortunately, despite some really nice production value and a very well-considered application of theme, this game just isn't very interesting to play.

The game plays like a combination of Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings board game with some Yahtzee thrown in. Players are confronted with of a row of cards based on the prominent events of the film, each requiring a particular combination of dice rolls in order to pass. A player's turn involves rolling dice in the hopes of getting the right combination, with a bit of card play to change dice facings. Success moves the marker representing Charlton Heston's Taylor along a path which serves as a timer, with an ape marker moving along the same path. If the ape makes it to the end before Taylor does, the players lose.

It's a simple enough game, but it relies on a lot of luck to get the dice rolls and the have the cards you need to progress, so it can be frustrating when you lose on what amounts to a bad roll or draw. In the end, this game is really just about rolling dice, with very little in the way of meaningful or interesting decisions to make.

The Planet of the Apes theme is nicely applied, with the cards calling back to iconic scenes from the film, and the idea of having players take on different aspects of Taylor's psyche rather than separate characters is an interesting solution to the problem of the story really only having one main character.

It's really too bad the game isn't better.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) The great use of theme actually makes this otherwise dull game all the more frustrating.

What we'll play instead: Lord of the Rings: the Board Game and Elder Sign are both similar and a lot more fun. Doctor Who: Time of the Daleks is another very similar game that uses its theme well and offers more interesting and immersive game play.

• Planet of the Apes official website
• Planet of the Apes on BoardGameGeek

Doctor Who: Time of the Daleks -- it's about time...

Doctor Who: Time of the Daleks is essentially a re-themed Elder Sign, but I think I'm okay with that. Thematically, Elder Sign is a game about tweedy academics solving problems intellectually rather than with brute force, and that is absolutely what a Doctor Who game should be about.

Like Elder Sign, the core gameplay in Time of the Daleks involves rolling dice and matching their symbols in order to complete tasks. Each player plays as a particular Doctor, with assistants and gadgets that allow him to manipulate the roll of the dice in order to get the right combination of symbols. Each successfully completed task moves that player closer to winning the game.

Also like Elder Sign, there is a villain at work, essentially trying to outrace the players and prevent them from winning. In this case it's the Daleks, and their presence is felt in the game in several ways. Failing at a task will generally move the Dalek saucer forward on the scoring track, and of course they win if they beat all the players to the end. Additionally, any failure will also result in a Dalek figure being placed on the board, where they reduce the number of dice the players get to roll. Too many Daleks on the board will also lose the game for the players.

There are a few ways in which Time of the Daleks differs from Elder Sign (enough to keep Reiner Knizia's lawyers at bay, anyway). The dice-rolling tasks that players must accomplish are determined by a combination of two different tiles on the board: a location and a dilemma (usually a villain from the TV series' long history). This makes for a great deal of mix-and-match variety, as Silurians may threaten the planet Karn in one game, and the Time Meddler in another.

Combine that with a randomly shuffled deck of companions, and the game can tell a multitude of what if stories as Leela teams up with Sarah Jane Smith and the 11th Doctor to stop the Cybermen from invading Clara's apartment, or the First Doctor and Nardole foil the Master's Trap at the Bank of Karabraxos.

Another way in which it differs from Elder Sign is that it is only partially co-operative. Players are in competition with each other to get to the end of the score track first, but they all lose if the Daleks get there first. If a player is having a tough time solving a dilemma, he can ask one of the other players for help, which they may be inclined to do if it will slow down the Daleks. Additionally, the assisting player shares in the reward for completing the dilemma. It reminds me a lot of the multi-Doctor stories where they fight and bicker but end up cooperating for the greater good.

If you read the online chatter about this game, the main complaint about it seems to be that the announced expansions for the game have not yet materialized, a year after the game's release. Part of this frustration no doubt comes from the fact that the game was originally intended to feature six Doctors rather than four, and was scaled back in order to get the asking price down. The game's coverage of the world of Doctor Who does feel a little thin here and there -- clearly there is room for a lot more content.

Nevertheless, it's a solidly designed game with some beautifully designed components (The Expanse Board Game could learn a lesson here). Most importantly, it feels like Doctor Who, which is something no other board game in the show's 55 year history has quite managed to do.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A good game that could be a great one. It captures the feel of Doctor Who, but not quite the depth.

• Doctor Who: Time of the Daleks official website
• Doctor Who: Time of the Daleks on BoardGameGeek

Check out my OnTableTop.com project blog about painting the miniatures that come with this game.

Viking roundup, part 2: Champions of Midgard

Continuing our look at the weirdly large number of viking games we've acquired recently.

Champions of Midgard is a viking themed worker placement game, which means we can't help but compare it to Raiders of the North Sea, especially since we picked up both games within a few months of each other. Apart from the obvious similarities, however, the two games couldn't be more different.

For the most part, Champions is a more traditional worker placement game. Each player gets a set number of workers, which they use to compete over common spaces on the board. Spaces are a mixture of resource gathering and opportunities to fight monsters such as trolls, giants, draughr, and dragons, which is the primary way to score victory points. Players use their workers to recruit warriors (represented by dice) and supplies which are needed to travel to far off monster-infested lands.

An interesting wrinkle on the "use resources to fulfill quests" theme is blame, a currency in the game that subtracts from a player's score. One of the spaces on the board is the Troll, and the player who successfully fights the Troll each round gets to give a blame token to another player, and get rid of one of his own if he has one. If no one fights the Troll, every player gets a blame token. Blame tokens are worth negative points at the end of the game in a somewhat exponential manner: one blame is -1 point, 2 is -3 points, 3 is -6, 4 is -10, and so on, so managing blame becomes a critical part of the game's strategy.

Warriors are represented by dice which are rolled to combat monsters. The different types of warriors are not necessarily better or worse than each other; sword- and spearmen provide some defense, allowing you to play it safe, while axemen tend to do more damage but provide no defense, meaning that more of your warriors will be killed in combat.

There's a fair amount of variety as far as what you can choose to focus on in the game, and this is guided to some extend by Destiny cards, which grant extra points at the end of the game for accomplishing goals such as having killed the most of a particular type of monster, or having the most gold or food left over at the end of the game.

It's a little more involved than Raiders of the North Sea, and a lot more fantastical, to the point that I think it has more in common with Lords of Waterdeep than any of the more historical viking games like the North Sea series. It is definitely sufficiently different that we play both games fairly often, sometimes even in the same weekend.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A good mix of worker placement and dice rolling, with a fun theme and some neat twists you won't find in other games of this type.

• Champions of Midgard official website
• Champions of Midgard on BoardGameGeek

Steam Park: because robots need amusement too

I'm a huge fan of engine-building games, where the goal is to assemble a combination of game elements that will let you do whatever it is you need to do to win, and the main source of competition is that it's a race to see if you can build an effective engine before your opponent does. It's the main reason the Star Trek CCG continues to hold my interest after all these years, and it's why I like Steam Park.

In Steam Park, the goal is to build an amusement park consisting of rides and support buildings. The rides are occupied by randomly drawn robots of different colors, and only robots that match the color of your rides will ride them and give you the income you need to keep your park going and eventually win the game.

Aside from filling up your rides, the other major element of the game is cleaning up the mess visitors leave behind (apparently robots are just as messy as humans). Visitors to your park provide you with income, but they also leave dirt that must be cleaned up, otherwise you lose points at the end of the game. So game play is a balance between building more rides to attract more visitors, cleaning up their mess, and adding support buildings that make it easier to do both of those things.

Player actions are determined by rolling dice with different symbols representing tasks such as building, cleaning, and attracting visitors. At the start of each round, players roll their dice as many times as needed to get the actions they want for the turn, but the first player to finish rolling their dice gets to go first for the round, and the player who goes last generates extra dirt that needs to be cleaned up, so you don't want to spend too much time trying to get exactly the dice rolls you want.

Other than the sometimes frantic scramble to grab the first player token each round, the game involves very little direct interaction with opponents, with each player building their own park and trying to gain as many points as possible before the end of the sixth round. This "speed rolling" phase is really the only thing I don't like about the game - I don't enjoy games with any kind of speed or timed element - but there are a couple of variants that replace this with a turn-based rolling phase (including one I came up with myself, see below) or a drafting phase where all the dice are rolled together and the players take turns selecting the ones they want for the turn.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) An entertaining game with a goofy but fun theme.

• Steam Park official website
• Steam Park on BoardGameGeek

Steam Park variants for the roll phase 

These two variants are designed to eliminate the "frantic rolling" part of the game in favor of something turn-based that gives players time to think about what they're doing. I came up with both of these after reviewing a lot of similar ideas on the BGG forums.

Roll in turn

1. Each player rolls their dice once and examines the results. In player order from the previous round (choose a random first player for the first round of the game), players choose to add some or all of their dice to their pig board.
2. After all players have decided which dice to keep and which to reroll, any player whose dice are all on their pig board may take the lowest numbered Turn Order token available. If two or more players are in competition for the same Turn Order token, the player who went later in the previous round wins (resolve ties randomly for the first round).
3. Players who still have dice not on their pig board now roll again, placing dice they want to keep on their pig board. Return to step 2 and repeat until all players have a Turn Order token.

A player using the Planner Park Director (from the Play Dirty expansion) does not reroll their dice in step 3. Instead, that player places any dice they want to keep on their pig board during the first step 1; if they still have dice during step 3 they may change the facing of one die and place it on their pig board, then return to step 2.

Draft

Create a dice pool consisting of 6 dice per player (plus 1 espionage dice per player if using the Play Dirty expansion). The first player from the previous round rolls all these dice into the center of the table.

In reverse turn order from the previous round (choose randomly for the first round of the game), players take turns doing one of the following:

• Choose a die from the pool and place it on their pig board.
• Take the lowest numbered Turn Order token available.
• Choose a number of dice from the pool equal to the number of players in the game and reroll them, then add one of the rerolled dice to their pig board.

Continue until every player has 6 regular dice, 1 espionage die (if using the Play Dirty expansion), and one Turn Order token.

A player using the Planner Park Director (from the Play Dirty expansion) may change the face of any blank die they choose from the pool, as they add it to their pig board.

Explore the west in Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis & Clark

Discoveries: The Journals of Lewis & Clark is one of two games that came to my attention at around the same time, by the same designer, featuring artwork by the same artist. Due to my enjoyment of Manifest Destiny (a terrific comic book series that features the Lewis & Clark expedition encountering all manner of supernatural monsters during their journey), I had decided that I wanted a Lewis & Clark game.

I spent a little time researching Discoveries and Lewis & Clark: the Expedition, and for reasons I can no longer recall, I decided on Discoveries.

It's a charming little dice-placement game, an emerging game style that combines common Euro-style worker placement game mechanics with dice rolling, so that the roll of the dice determines how limited your choices for worker placement are, rather than competing with other players for available spaces on the board.

Over the course of the game, players use their dice in various combinations to purchase Tribe cards, representing various native tribes encountered by the expedition, and Discoveries cards, depicting terrain features as well as plants and animals to be cataloged. The Tribe cards provide additional options for dice spending that make it easier to purchase Discoveries, which are ultimately how each player earns points towards winning the game.

Spent dice are placed on a board at the center of the table, either to the right or the left depending on what they were used for, and this generates one of the more interesting decision points of the game. Each player has 5 dice of their own color, as well as a number of neutral dice that can be picked up in various ways. A player can forego their normal turn in order to replenish their supply of dice, and when they do, the have two choices: they can either pick up all the dice, regardless of color, on either the left or the right side of the board, or they can pick up all the dice of their color, regardless of whether they are on the central board or in use by another player.

Picking up dice from the board can potentially net you more dice to use, giving you more options on your turn. However, using dice of your opponent's colors is risky since they could take them back at any time. This can be a problem as some of the tasks you spend your dice on need to be carried out over multiple turns, and progress on those tasks is lost if an opponent decides to take back a die that you are using.

I find the game very appealing, and reasonably unique among the games in my collection both in terms of game play and theme. However, I'm still curious about the other Lewis & Clark game...

Rating: 3 (out of 5) It's a fairly simple game, but with some interesting decisions to make and some beautiful artwork to look at.

• Discoveries: The Journals of Louis & Clark official website
• Discoveries: The Journals of Louis & Clark on BoardGameGeek.com

Alien vs. Predator: 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 pair of classics: Water Works and Yahtzee

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

Age of War: Risk Express by any other name

As I mentioned in my reviews for Seven Card Samurai and Shitenno, we're always on the lookout for a good samurai game, especially one that isn't a Risk clone as many games about feudal Japan tend to be. It may be a bit ironic, then, that I was drawn to Age of War, which started life as Risk Express, a Risk-themed dice game designed by Reiner Knizia and published by Parker Brothers in 2006.

Apparently, Risk Express didn't stay in print for very long, and for whatever reason, Fantasy Flight Games decided to give the game a samurai makeover, complete with new artwork for the proprietary dice and tiles that represent the different provinces of feudal Japan.

Each starts in the center of the table and is printed with one or more rows of symbols representing infantry, cavalry, archers, and generals, that must be rolled on the dice in order to conquer that province. The rows of symbols have to be matched one at a time, so it will take several rolls in order to conquer the province. If a roll fails to produce the symbols needed, the dice can be re-rolled, but each re-roll of a failed roll requires the player to remove one of the dice, until eventually the roll matches all the symbols needed and the province is taken, or the player runs out of dice.

In addition to conquering tiles from the center of the table, players can also attempt to take over their opponent's tiles, although it requires an extra "general" to be rolled. The tiles are matched by color in a group of four, two groups of three, three groups of two, and one single tile. If a player conquers all the tiles in a color group, they are worth more points and safe from attack, so an important element of the game is strategically choosing which tiles to go after, while keeping an eye on your opponents and preventing them from completing their sets.

If this sounds a little familiar, it's because it is very similar to Elder Sign, a Lovecraft-themed dice game also published by Fantasy Flight Games. Elder Sign adds a lot of elements to the game, giving it a more elaborate structure and adding cards that can be played to influence the dice rolls, but the core dice mechanic is the same.

I think that's all right though. Lovecraftian games need to be more complicated in order to fit the theme, and while I like Elder Sign, I also enjoyed the simplicity of Age of War.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Age of War is far too simple to be really compelling, but it's a nice simple game that can be played in a short amount of time, and the small box makes it a good travel game.

• Age of War official website
• Age of War on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: October 14, 2014

Quarriors: pretty dice, and a game to go with them

Quarriors is another ingenious idea from Wizkids Games, the masterminds behind Heroclix who are so good at coming up with games that are really justifications for adults to play with plastic toys. Not that I have a problem with that. I only gave up collecting action figures because Heroclix gave me plastic figures and a game I could play with them.

Quarriors replaces little plastic superheroes with custom dice, and is sold as a boxed game with expansions rather than in random booster packs (for the collectible version, see Marvel Dice Masters). It takes its game play cues from Dominion and other deck building games, where the idea is to customize your deck during the game by adding cards from a common pool.

With Quarriors it's a pool of dice each player is creating, starting with a few generic dice representing currency (called "Quiddity" in the game) and some low-level characters. A random assortment of additional dice representing characters and spells is made available in the center of the table, and players use their Quiddity dice to purchase new and better dice which they can use to attack their opponents and, if they survive, score Glory points.

Each player's dice are kept in an opaque bag, and each turn the player starts by drawing and rolling six dice. Dice faces can come up as creatures of varying strength levels, Quiddity that is used to purchase more dice, or spell effects that can allow for re-rolls, drawing and rolling additional dice, or making creatures stronger. After your creatures are put into play, they attack each opponent's creatures in turn. Then each oppoenent takes their turn, and at the start of your next turn any creatures you still have in play score Glory points, and are then returned to your pool of dice to be drawn and rolled again. The game ends when one player gets to a certain amount of Glory points (determined by the number of players).

The base set alone comes with 130 dice representing many creatures and spells, and in turn each creature or spell has three different versions, so the game has a lot of replay value, and a good part of the strategy is in using what's been dealt at the beginning of the game. You can't rely on that favorite creature or spell being available every time. Add several expansions which add tons of new dice and new game mechanics such as corrupted dice that have negative effects, or the ability to send your creatures on quests for powerful Quartifacts.

The game play is solid and engaging, and the dice are of reasonable quality and very pretty to look at. The only thing about the game that I don't particularly care for is the goofy theme they chose to wrap it in. The somewhat cartoonish artwork on the cards is fine (and in many cases quite well done), but the marketing material and even the rule book are written in an obnoxious style that makes me think of a television presenter shouting at an audience of five-year-olds. Luckily it's not enough to interfere with my enjoyment of the game.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A nice blend of strategy and random chance, with some lovely components in the form of custom printed dice.

• Quarriors official website
• Quarriors on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: June 22, 2014

The thrill of the chase

Over the years, collectible games like Magic: the Gathering have gotten a bit of a bad rap for what is perceived as the "scam" of selling cards or miniatures in randomized booster packs, thus "forcing" players to spend a ton of money in order to get the cards or miniatures they need to play. I take issue with that idea for two reasons. First of all, no one can force you to buy something you don't want. But more importantly, building up a collection of game pieces with which to customize your deck of cards or army of miniatures is a huge part of the experience of these games.

I think the thing that has soured a lot of players on the idea of chasing cards by buying booster packs is simply the rising cost of those packs. The cost of a pack of 15 Magic: the Gathering cards has risen from $2.25 in 1993 to $4.00 today, and a Heroclix booster pack, $8 for four figures in 2002, is now $15 for five figures. In fairness, the average cost of a movie ticket or a comic book has more than doubled since 1993, but I can see where the thrill of collecting might diminish a bit when players are shelling out $100 or more every few months to maintain their collections.

All of which brings us to Marvel Dice Masters, a collectible dice game that combines elements of card games like Magic with colorful, custom-printed dice featuring characters from Marvel Comics. The game is sold in a starter set that includes all the basic dice needed for two players, plus dice representing Marvel characters such as Iron Man, Captain America and the X-Men, and booster packs containing two random dice with their accompanying cards that explain their abilities in the game. The booster packs retail for a mere 99 cents, substantially cheaper than a pack of Magic or Pokemon cards.

Since its release in April the game has been incredibly popular, so much so that the publisher is struggling to keep up with demand. The game's success seems to prove my point that maybe it's not the collectible format that players have grown weary of, but the amount of money they're talking themselves into spending on it.

The game itself is very similar to Wizkids' earlier Quarriors. Players begin with a bag full of basic dice that represent energy, which is spent acquiring more and better dice that represent characters who do battle with the opponent's dice. But Quarriors takes its game structure from deck building games like Dominion, with players all choosing from a common pool of dice, and their characters never staying in play for more than one round. Dice Masters uses the the collectible game model, with each player bringing their own "team" of dice, using combinations and strategies that have been thought out before coming to the table.

Each player begins with 8 "sidekick" dice in their bag, and an assortment of dice with corresponding cards representing Marvel characters (as well as iconic items such as Captain America's shield and Thor's hammer) on the table in front of him. There are also an assortment of action dice in the center of the table, that both players have access to. On his turn, a player draws and rolls 4 dice from his bag. These dice can come up as either one of four types of energy, or a generic sidekick character. The energy is used to add character dice to the player's bag from among those he's brought to the game. When the character dice are eventually drawn and rolled, they can come up as energy to spend, but also as characters that are used to attack the opponent's dice, or the opponent directly if he has no defenders available. The goal is to reduce your opponent's life total to zero from a starting value of 10-20, depending on the scale of the game.

Marvel Dice Masters is a lot of fun, with entertaining game play to back up the great looking dice. I find myself less interested in the more competitive team building aspect of the game; when we play, we always just take turns choosing the dice we're going to use. I must admit that I wouldn't mind at all if it were sold in a boxed set like Quarriors, but I really don't mind the collectible aspect of the game. I still enjoy the thrill of the chase.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) There's not quite enough depth to this game to warrant a 5, but it is a lot of fun, and definitely offers more strategy than the more random Quarriors.

• Marvel Dice Masters official website
• Marvel Dice Masters on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: May 3, 2014

Less than the sum of its parts

Both officially and unofficially, The Lord of the Rings has inspired countless table top games with its somber elves, greedy dwarves, sprawling forests and underground tunnels.. It's a great story and a fantastically detailed setting.

Wizkids Games came up with a fairly innovative game with Quarriors in 2011. Dubbed a "dice building game" it combines the build as you play strategies of deck building games (popularized by Dominion) with custom dice. It's a great game, but its goofy, cartoonish setting is a bit of a turn-off for me.

So The Lord of the Rings Dice Building Game (also by Wizkids) should have knocked it out of the park, combining the game play and nifty dice of Quarriors with Tolkien's tried and true characters and setting. Alas, no.

Like many Lord of the Rings games, this one is cooperative, with players working together to defeat the forces of Sauron, here represented by custom dice which come into play gradually over the course of the game. Borrowing a concept from Decipher's Lord of the Rings Trading Card Game, the quantity of Sauron dice that enter play depends on the number of dice the players add to their pools. Additionally, the Ring spreads corruption, rendering certain dice unusable.

The game's length is determined by a deck of location cards, simulating the journey through Middle-earth that is central to the Lord of the Rings story. As each new card is flipped over, more dice become available for the players to use, but more are added to Sauron's pool of dice as well.

On their turns, each player must decide whether to use their dice to clear away corrupted dice (which helps everyone), assist the other players in fighting Sauron's forces, or score points for themselves. It's a mostly cooperative game, and if Sauron gets too far ahead everyone loses, but there is still an individual winner based on points scored.

So far it's a lot like Quarriors, but with Lord of the Rings characters and the added complication of Sauron, who acts as a kind of extra player, controlled by the game and out to ruin everyone's day. Unfortunately, this is where the game falls apart. Sauron's minions have to be defeated before players can advance to the next location, but this can take a long time and will usually drag the game out, making it take far too long to play for the amount of interest it holds.

Adding the Sauron dice and the cooperative element to the core Quarriors game mechanic was an interesting and very thematic idea, but it just doesn't bear out, and I think the game suffers from trying to be too familiar and too different at the same time.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) Other than the Lord of the Rings theme, this game fails to improve on Quarriors, and takes too long to play without adding any meaningful interest or complexity.

• The Lord of the Rings Dice Building Game official website
• The Lord of the Rings Dice Building Game on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: March 17, 2014