Lacorsa: a racing game that's elegant in its simplicity

When I was a kid I was always fascinated by the cribbage board that seemed to be a fixture in suburban homes of the 1970s. To this day I have no idea how to play cribbage, but I think it was the tactile nature of the cribbage board and its little pegs that intrigued me. Plus it was made out of wood, not the ubiquitous plastic that it seems like everything was made of.

Marketing photos of Lacorsa, a small publisher racing game that advertised heavily on social media after a successful 2018 Kickstarter, gave me a similar feeling. I'm not overly interested in race cars or racing, but the elegant wooden track and simple silhouetted 1960s-style race car miniatures looked great and the game play sounded really interesting.

A game of Lacorsa starts with a row of cars on a straight wooden track. The goal is not to move to the end of the track à la Snakes and Ladders or any number of back-of-the-cereal-box games, but rather more simply to move to the head of the line. The idea is that a race isn't so much about who gets to the end first as it is about who is in front when the race is over. With this in mind, players challenge each other with numbered cards from their hands, with the winner of each challenge moving ahead of the loser and then challenging the next car in line. Or, if there is an empty space ahead, the player can use an extend card to put some distance between their car and the one behind.

In actuality, the game starts a bit before the simple but elegant cars line up on the simple but elegant track. The game comes with six suits of 13 cards numbered one through twelve, plus a special redline card (more on that later). The deck is made up of one suit per car in the race; the cards are then shuffled and dealt out, 13 to each player. The game then starts with a qualifying round where each player chooses one card to play face down. All are revealed simultaneously, and the player with the lowest card starts their car at the end of the track, then the next lowest, and so on until everyone's car is on the track. Then the race starts.

Each "lap" of the race starts with the player whose car is in last place. That player challenges the car directly in front of theirs: both players choose a card and then place all their cards face down in front of them, with the chosen card on top. Cards are revealed simultaneously and if the challenger's card is higher, their car changes place with the loser, moving closer to the front.

The redline is a special card that adds +2 to the value of another card, and is the reason cards are played the way they are, in a face down stack. If a player reveals a redline card, they then also reveal the next card in the stack (also chosen by that player). Playing the cards from the stack hides the fact that a second card will also be played.

After a successful challenge, that player then challenges the next car in front of theirs, or, if there is an empty space, they play an extend card (if they have one) to move forward. One of the three extend cards in each suit is a special draft extend that can't be played by the car in the front, cleverly reflecting the technique of using the slipstream from the car in front of you to reduce drag on your car (something I had never heard of until playing this game, who says gaming isn't educational?).

After two challenges or an extend, that player's turn is over and the next player in line does the same. The lap is complete once the car in front has had a turn to either extend or discard a card if they cannot. The game ends when one player runs out of cards.

Lacorsa is exactly what a racing game should be: fast paced and exciting. The only time it slows down is if you need an extend card to move forward and you don't have one -- this can be a little frustrating, especially if your car is in the lead, but is mitigated by the optional going wide rule that allows you to risk moving backward for a chance at an extend by rolling a die. There are a few other interesting variant rules that can be introduced into the game gradually. Some, like the going wide rule, are pretty essential, but others risk taking away some of the game's simple elegance.

If you want to make it even more portable than it already is, Lacorsa comes with an extra set of cards as an alternate way to represent the race cars. This would allow the game to be played strictly using cards, placing them in a row with spaces in between to mark their positions.

All in all Lacorsa is a wonderful little game that plays quickly and is easy to understand and teach. If it were more widely available it might make a good gateway game; as it is it's a great filler to play in between longer games on game night, or even a good way to get non-gamer friends and relatives to sit down for a game.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) A fantastic game that looks great and doesn't take long but is very satisfying to play.

• Lacorsa official website
• Lacorsa on BoardGameGeek

Rocketeering -- The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future

The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future is a small board game that was published in 2022, and I'm not really sure why. It's based on the 1991 film, but it's a year late for the film's 30th anniversary, and in any case there wasn't much of an anniversary celebration that I'm aware of. But none of that really matters. I bought the game because The Rocketeer is one of my favorite films, based on one of my favorite comic books.

The game was designed by Prospero Hall, the design collective known primarily for what I call "Barnes & Noble games," light strategy games based on recognizable film and television properties that you would expect to see tastefully displayed at your local mall book store. This is not a criticism. These types of games frequently serve as gateways to get new players into the board gaming hobby, and to do that effectively, these games need to be easy to play, visually stunning, and remind players of the the intellectual property they're based on. The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future does all of that very well.

It's a two player game. One player controls the heroes: Cliff Secord, his girlfriend Jenny, and his irascible mechanic friend Peevey. The other player controls the villainous Neville Sinclair and his henchmen, gangster Eddie Valentine and hulking brute Lothar. All the memorable characters from the film are covered. The game consists of playing cards that move the various characters along the board, where they gain resources, fight to take possession of the plans to the fabulous rocket pack, and most importantly, draw Finale cards that provide victory points based on where everyone is at the end of the game.

Once you get past the theme, the actual game play is a bit too simple to be really interesting. If it weren't based on a beloved film, the game would be mediocre at best. But that's the point. It is based on a beloved film, and it evokes that film at every turn, from the 1930s style graphic design to the stunning artwork that reflects the characters without looking too much like the actors -- the decision not to use still photos from the actual film was a good one, as the artwork plays on hazy memories of the movie rather than the possible reality that it may be a little dated and not quite as good as we remember it being.

The real stroke of genius, though, is that the movie's plot is essentially about the characters running around to to different locations and fighting over the plans to the fabulous rocket pack. While it may not be a brilliant game in and of itself, it is an excellent simulation of the film. And that's all a game like this needs to be.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Not an overly compelling game, but I'll play it any time I want to be reminded of the Rocketeer film without actually taking the time to watch it.

• The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future official website
• The Rocketeer: Fate of the Future on BoardGameGeek

Sci-fi tourism in Space Park

Space Park is the type of game that tends to appeal to me right away: great looking illustration and graphic design, at a low enough price point that I can afford to take a chance and buy the game on impulse. These impulse purchases can be a mixed bag, sometimes resulting in great looking games whose novelty wears off quickly (Grimslingers), or games that sounded more interesting than they actually are (Deadline), but every once in a while we end up with an entertaining game that, while simple, bears out repeated plays and earns a place in our collection.

First let's talk about the artwork. The game board is made up of a series of large tiles, each intended to look like a tourism advertisement for a location in outer space. The illustrations are gorgeous: any one of them would look great at poster size, framed on a wall somewhere. The rest of the game's printed components use snippets from these pieces of artwork along with some considered and sophisticated typography and graphic design.

Okay, so the game is pretty, but is it any fun to play? Yes it is. Space Park is an interesting marriage of familiar game mechanics with a few unusual ideas. At its core it's a resource collection game: players move around on a board made up of the aforementioned tiles, each representing a location where various different resources can be picked up, exchanged, or spent in various combinations to purchase victory points and game advantages.

What sets the game apart is the way players move around the board. Regardless of the number of players, there are three silver rocket ships, each starting at a different location. On a player's turn, they perform the action at a location where there is a ship (usually collecting a resource), then move that ship to the next empty location. This is interesting for several reasons, the most obvious being that each player doesn't have their own playing piece, they always have a choice of three pieces to move. More strategically, it means that every time a player takes their turn, they need to think about where the piece will be moving and what advantage they're giving the next player by moving it there.

It's one of those rare games with simple rules but a lot to think about that's great for when you want a lighter game with a reasonable amount of strategic depth. And it's very pretty to look at.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Not necessarily an immersive "play all day" type game, but excellent for what it is: lightweight and fun.

• Space Park official website
• Space Park on Boardgamegeek

Modern Art: not quite so masterly

Reiner Knizia's Modern Art is fairly typical for the prolific game designer, with a fairly simple game mechanic, clever scoring system, and a theme that is tacked-on but still makes sense. It's generally a fun game, especially if you're playing with non-gamers who might be turned off by complex game play or a preponderance of elves and goblins.

Where it falls down is on the artwork, which, while clearly intended to poke fun at the 1960s pop-art movement, is also very hard to look at. So it was nice to see the game re-skinned as Masters Gallery, using classic (and copyright-free) paintings by such masters as Monet, Degas, Renoir, Van Gogh, and Vermeer.

Players play cards representing masterpieces by the five different artists in the game. At the end of each round, the artist with the most cards in play is worth the most points, and players score based on how many cards by that artists they played during the round. Strategy involves attempting to manipulate the "market" by recognizing as early as possible which artists are going to be worth the most points that round, and trying to play cards by those artists.

The game play actually makes more sense in a game about up-and-coming artists than it does in a game about established masters, but at least you get to look at better artwork while you're playing. Except...the design of the cards is such that a heavy border takes up almost half of the available space on each card, so the actual artwork is very small. The brightly colored borders aren't doing the works of art any favors either.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) The clunky graphic design isn't quite enough to kill the game, but it is a pity that, in a game about amazing works of art, the art itself doesn't take center stage like it should.

• Masters Gallery official website
• Masters Gallery on BoardGameGeek

This may seem familiar: a trio of licensed re-skins

Folding licensed properties into games has been standard practice for about as long as there has been a modern gaming industry, and it generally comes in two types: games created with the licensed property in mind, and games where the property is "painted on" to a pre-existing design. Both types can be wildly inconsistent in terms of quality, from the exceptional (Firefly: the Game) to the surprising (The Lone Ranger Shuffle the Deck Card Game), to the downright appalling (Doctor Who: the Game of Time and Space).

In many cases, a re-skin of a game using a familiar license can make me try a game that I may not have been particularly interested in otherwise, such as with Jarl: the Vikings Tile-Laying Game, a re-skin of The Duke which I only noticed because I'm a fan of the Vikings TV show.

Star Trek Panic falls squarely into this category. I had played Castle Panic once or twice, and while I enjoyed the game play, the cartoon-fantasy theme didn't really interest me so I never bothered picking up a copy of the game. A Star Trek version certainly caught my attention, and the idea of defending the Enterprise from Klingons and Romulans is a lot more interesting to me than defending a castle from orcs and goblins.

To be honest, I don't recall too many details of Castle Panic's game play, so I'm not entirely certain if there have been any major changes or additions for the Star Trek version. I can say that Star Trek Panic is a fun and relatively simple cooperative game. Each player has a hand of cards representing various tactical moves the ship can make, and they must work together to solve a series of missions, each with a specific in-game requirement such as reaching a starbase or evading a giant space amoeba. All the while, pesky Klingon and Romulan ships appear in random spaces on the board and gradually wear down the ship's shields and hull.

The cardboard components are a bit on the cheap side, but are nevertheless well-designed and very effective. The model of the Enterprise at the center of the board trails fire and smoke as it gets progressively more damaged, which does a great job of building tension and is, perhaps ironically, more dramatic than most of the model effects on the  original television show.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Quite a bit lighter, both in tone and complexity, than most of the other Star Trek games in our collection, which makes for a nice change of pace.

• Star Trek Panic official website
• Star Trek Panic on BoardGameGeek.com

Archer: Once You Go Blackmail brings the world of irreverent super-spy Sterling Archer to Love Letter, a game that certainly hasn't been shy about re-skinning itself. This version adds a "hidden identity" card to the mix, and changes several of the traditional Love Letter card effects so that they interact with the hidden identity card in various ways.

 I'm not sure than any version of Love Letter is really better than any other, but it's great that there are so many to choose from. You should be able to find the Love Letter that's right for you.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) It's still a dirt-simple game, which is part of its charm and makes it ideal for groups of non-gamers, or situations where it might be too loud or distracting to play a more complicated game.

• Archer: Once You Go Blackmail official website
• Archer: Once You Go Blackmail on BoardGameGeek.com

Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China follows the structure of the Marvel Legendary game rather than the more complex scenario-based Encounters series. Players choose a plot and a villain from among those featured in the film, add a few groups of minor villains and henchmen and a selection of the film's well-meaning if barely competent heroes, and try to work together to foil the villain's dastardly plot.
Upper Deck's Legendary series has proven to be a pretty robust game system, with the Aliens and Predator franchises being just as at home in it as the core Marvel property. Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China is no exception; the somewhat ridiculous adventures of Jack Burton and the Pork Chop Express fit right in.

In an effort to reflect the bumbling nature of the Big Trouble heroes, the cards in this version of the game often interact in surprising and not always helpful ways, making the game more random and silly, and quite a bit lighter in tone than the other games in the Legendary series. Originally I was excited about this release because of the possibilities of mixing it up the other Legendary games (Jack Burton vs Predator seemed like a shoo-in), but on playing I find that it holds together so well on its own that I'm reluctant to try add anything to it.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) another great addition to this series that stands so firmly on its own that, if you're familiar with the other Legendary games, you may want to think of this one as a new game that you already know how to play.

• Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China official website
• Legendary: Big Trouble in Little China on BoardGameGeek.com

Lanterns: the Harvest Festival -- an oddly relaxing riot of color

Lanterns: the Harvest Festival is a simple, relaxing game in which players collect lantern cards of different colors by playing tiles, and trade different sets of lantern cards in for points. The playing pieces are lovely to look at, contributing to the serene nature of the game.

Tiles have a color on each side, and are played adjacent to one another in a common grid. You can play a tile anywhere, but if you match a colored side of your tile to one already in play, you get a lantern card of that color. In addition, you get a card for whatever colored tile side is facing you, and your opponents get a card for the colored edge, so a major aspect of the game play is paying attention to what cards you are giving your opponents, and trying not to give them anything too useful.

Some tiles have illustrated platforms in their center, and if you play a tile with a matching color adjacent to a tile with a platform, you get a favor token. These can be spent to trade a lantern card for one of another color, which is an important ability when you're trying to put sets of cards together to earn points.

Lantern cards are traded in for points in one of three possible combinations: four of the same color, 3 different pairs of the same color, or one each of seven different colors. Points are represented by tokens whose value gradually decreases as they are claimed, so the first player to cash in a set of four gets more points for it than the second player to do so, and so on.

Play proceeds until all the tiles have run out, after which players get one final turn to cash in their lanterns before the scores are added up.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) a light, pleasant game that's good for an evening with non-gamers, or when you're not up for something more complicated.

Lanterns: the Harvest Festival official website
Lanterns: the Harvest Festival on BoardGameGeek

Love Letter: elegant in its simplicity

Love Letter is a wonderfully simple game consisting of a mere 16 cards. Each player (up to four) plays from a hand of two cards, with the goal being to either knock all the other players out of the game, or have the highest card when the deck runs out. The cards have different game text, most of them slanted towards figuring out what cards your opponents are holding and getting rid of them. Play continues over several rounds until one player has won four, or everyone is ready to move on to a different game.

The theme involves renaissance-style court intrigue, with different courtiers working to get a love letter to the princess, but the game's popularity has spawned several "fill in the blanks" licensed versions such as Batman and The Hobbit, as well as a slew of home-brew fan creations (I made an Aliens themed version for myself).

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Love Letter is a simple game wothout being overly simplistic, and works great as a quick fill-in game for gamers and non-gamers alike.

• Love Letter official website
• Love Letter 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

The Ripper strikes!

Jack the Ripper is without a doubt the most famous serial killer of all time, thanks as much as anything to the lack of real information about him. He was never caught, or even identified. What's more, his short murder spree took place in Victorian London, a time and place given mythic status thanks to iconic tales like Bram Stoker's Dracula, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, and countless others.

I sometimes wonder if a series of brutal murders is an appropriate subject for a game, but the Ripper's legendary status trumps any sordid reality, and as I mentioned earlier, there is precious little reality surrounding the crimes anyway. So why not, especially if games about the Ripper focus on the mystery rather than the carnage.

Mr. Jack is a two player board game in which one player takes the role of the Ripper, and the other player tries to catch him. The board is populated with a cast of eight possible suspects varying wildly from serious Ripper suspect William Gull to the fictional Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, illustrated in a cartoony style that undermines any possible morbidity and keeps the game's tone nice and light.

Players take turns moving the suspects around the board, with the goal of manipulating them so that certain characters are either in light or shadow at the end of the round. After each round, the Ripper player (who knows which suspect is the real Ripper) must declare truthfully whether the Ripper is in light or in shadow. This allows the detective player to use a process of elimination to figure out who the Ripper is.

To keep things interesting, on any turn after the Ripper was in shadow, the Ripper player can attempt to have him escape by moving him off the map. Both players have the ability to manipulate terrain features on the board in order to make it easier or more difficult for the Ripper to escape.

Once the detective player feels certain he knows who the Ripper is he can accuse, but if he's wrong, the real Ripper "escapes in the confusion"' and the Ripper player wins.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Mr. Jack is quite amusing and involves a surprising amount of tactical decision-making for both players.

• Mr. Jack official website
• Mr. Jack on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: May 27, 2014

Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper takes a more serious, scholarly approach to the material. As the title suggests, it is a rummy game, with a standard playing card deck's suits replaced by evidence cards supporting the different popular Ripper suspects: Montague Druitt, Prince Eddy, Dr. Gull, Dr. Pedachenko, George Chapman and Jill the Ripper, representing the idea that the killer could have been a woman.

Players play melds of evidence cards against the different suspects, along with cards representing the five victims and their respective crime scenes. At the end of the game, the suspect with the most evidence in play is revealed as the Ripper, and cards associated with that suspect are worth double. However, there is also an alibi card in the deck for each suspect, and naturally, the suspect can't be the Ripper if he has an alibi in play.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper adds some interesting extra elements to the standard rummy model, and the game's structure fits the theme particularly well.

• Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper on BoardGameGeek.com

Date Played: June 1, 2014

UPDATE July 20, 2015: Another look at Mystery Rummy, Lost Cities, and Camelot Legends

Finding the score

If you've read my reviews of Fortune and Glory or the Indiana Jones DVD Adventure Game, you'll know that I am a great fan of the pulp adventure genre, especially the Indiana Jones series. That theme is what initially attracted me to Lost Cities when I first picked it up way back in 1999.

The theme is certainly rooted in the search for the relics of lost civilizations, but it takes its inspiration from the ponderous nature of an archaeological expedition rather than the fast-paced thrill ride of an Indiana Jones movie. That's not necessarily a bad thing, as the game play is interesting, and the slow pace gives players time to look at the beautiful artwork on the cards.

Lost Cities was our introduction to the games of German mathematician and game designer Reiner Knizia. Knizia has created over 400 games, and in many cases he doesn't design games so much as he designs elaborate scoring systems. The actual game is often just a way for the players to interact with the scoring system, but to me, Knizia's genius is in finding the right theme for each system he comes up with, and I think he does that pretty well with Lost Cities.

It's a two-player card game that consists of five different sets of cards numbered 2-10, each set representing a different expedition to find a lost city. Each set of cards also includes three "investment" cards, which represent the various universities and governments that might back an expedition.

Players play cards from their hands to different stacks in front of them, one for each expedition. There are discard for piles each expedition in the center of the table, and players have the option to discard to these stacks or take the top card from one of them instead of drawing from the deck. At the end of the game, players score points based on the numerical values of the cards they've played into each of their expeditions, and any investment cards played into a stack will double, triple, or quadruple the score for that stack, depending on how many investment cards were played.

But there's a catch. Actually, there are several:

• Each player deducts 20 from their score for each stack. So if you can't score at least 20 points from a stack, your score will quickly go into negative numbers.
• Investment cards must be played before any cards with numerical value. So you have to decide whether you're going to try to multiply your score before you really know whether you're going to make it out of the 20 point hole. The multiplier is applied after the 20 points are deducted, so if you have 2 investment cards on an expedition that only scored 10 points, you are looking at a final score of -30.
• Numbered cards must be played into expeditions in numerical order, from lowest to highest. So if you draw a 7 for the desert expedition after you played the 8, you are out of luck and have to decide whether to discard the 7 or hold it in your hand to keep it away from your opponent. This is where the game's theme really shines: each card illustrates a progression on the path to one of the lost cities, so as you play each successive card, it is as if you are moving farther into the jungle, deeper into the ocean, or higher into the snow-capped mountains.

Meanwhile, your opponent is playing cards into his own expedition stacks, so you have to be careful about which cards you discard. Each player is required to either play or discard a card every turn, so a good deal of the strategy is in anticipating what your opponent is doing, so you don't give him too many cards he can use.

It's a simple game, but with a lot of strategic decisions to make. The random nature of the cards means that every game is different, so it has a lot of replay value. Plus, it comes in a relatively small box and doesn't have any tiny, easy-to-lose pieces, so it makes a great travel game, which is appropriate for a game about exploring lost ruins.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Not an overly compelling game, but easy to play with enough strategy to keep it interesting.

• Lost Cities at BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: May 3, 2014

UPDATE July 20, 2015: Another look at Mystery Rummy, Lost Cities, and Camelot Legends

Fast food zombies

Like most games in James Ernest's Cheapass line, Lord of the Fries is a simple game built on a humorous premise: in this case, players are zombies working in a fast food restaurant, doing the best they can to get bizarre meals out the door with limited ingredients.

At the start of the game, players choose a menu from among restaurants such as Ratherbee's Steakhouse (home of the mighty cholesterol onion), Montezuma's Mexi-Deli (ostensibly food, affordably priced) or the original Friedey's, the fast food restaurant of the damned (featured in Give Me the Brain, another early Cheapass game). Once the menu is chosen, the deck of cards representing ingredients is adjusted accordingly, and all the cards are dealt out to the players.

Players then take turns calling out items from the menu that they hope their opponents won't be able to put together with the ingredients they have in their hands. Meals on each menu range in difficulty from simple one- and two-ingredient combos to absurdly difficult meals that require large combinations of cards. 

Once a player calls out a meal, play passes to the left, with each player given an opportunity to either play the cards needed for the meal or pass a card to the next player, with play reaching the player who originally called the meal last. If everyone passes (because they are unable to build the meal), play starts around the table again, but this time the meal can be made minus any one ingredient. The player who is able to make the meal gets to call the next one.

Play proceeds in this manner until any player gets rid of his last card. Scores are totaled based on the cards each player has played to the table, with the values of cards still in their hands subtracted from their score.

It's really just a variation on any number of traditional playing card games where the goal is to play cards in combinations and get rid of all your cards before the other players do, just enhanced by James Ernest's usual sly wit.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) Lord of  the Fries makes for a good warm-up game, but like the fast food it makes fun of, the game gets old quickly.

• Lord of the Fries was most recently published by Steve Jackson Games
• Lord of the Fries on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: March 1, 2014

The perfect theme

When I first read the back of the box for the Lone Ranger Shuffling the Deck Card Game from Wizkids, the game play seemed perfect for the theme. Cards represent characters moving between the cars of a train, trying to put themselves in an advantageous position to collect the most silver and win the game. The climactic action scene in the film takes place aboard a moving train, so it seemed that more thought than usual was put into a game that was really just a piece of merchandise for a big summer movie.

The game is as advertised: each player secretly controls two or three (depending on the number of players) of the nine characters. These characters are laid out on the table in a row, with each position representing a train car. At the beginning of each turn, an adventure card is flipped over, showing what will happen at the end of that turn. Usually, characters in the positions indicated on the card gain silver, but just as often they can be pinned (not allowed to gain silver until unpinned by a player) or robbed by the characters around them.

The object of the game is to use movement cards to maneuver your characters into the positions that will gain the most silver. An additional goal is to keep the characters you control a secret for as long as possible, because if another player correctly guesses one of your characters, they get half of that character's silver.

It's a reasonably entertaining game for $10, and as I mentioned earlier, the game play fits the theme very well. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found out that the Shuffling the Deck Card Game series is Wizkids' "fill in the blank" generic game for licensed properties! It was first released as a Pirates of the Cursed Seas game (using artwork from the strategy game with the punch-out pirate ships), and there have since been versions for The Hunger Games and Pacific Rim.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) Considering that it is mainly a piece of tie-in merchandise, this game is surprisingly engaging.

Date played: March 1, 2014

An ingenious solution

It should be readily apparent that we love playing games, and we're not going to stop just because we're travelling. However, traditional travel games don't really hold much appeal for us, and you can't really play Arkham Horror on your airplane tray tables (not even in first class). The solution for us is the unfortunately out of print travel edition of Reiner Knizia's Ingenious, a clever little tile laying game with Knizia's usual flair for creative mathematics and unusual score-keeping.

The game consists of a bag of double-hexagonal tiles, each printed with two colored symbols. The object of the game is to lay your tiles on the board in such a way that they create unbroken rows of the same color. When you place a new tile, you score points in each color based on the rows of that color that radiate out from the tile you placed. But, as usual with a Reiner Knizia game, there's a catch: at the end of the game, the color with your lowest score is the only one that counts, so you have to be careful to build up all your scores as evenly as possible.

It's great fun for two players, and it travels well, packed in a box not much larger than a paperback book, and taking up very little in the way of table space. In the travel edition, the tiles even lock to the board so you don't have to worry about them sliding around. You could probably even play this game in a car, as long as neither of you is driving...

Ingenious Challenges is a follow up to Ingenious which presents three different games based on the same idea of color matching and managing your score in the different colors as evenly as possible. It includes a Card Challenge, a Dice Challenge, and a Tile Challenge: all use the same colored symbols and a variation on the same scoring system, but they are subtly different enough that they don't seem like the same game with dice instead of cards or tiles.

Ingenious Challenges is also a great travel game, but for a different reason. Its relatively easy rules, bright colors, and complete lack of elves, space marines or Cthuloid monsters make it a nice game to play with the non-gamer friends and family you may be travelling to visit. And it comes in a very small box.

Rating: Ingenious 4 (out of 5), Ingenious Challenges 3 (out of 5) Both are great games, but the original is a bit more elegant.

• Ingenious official website
• Ingenious Travel Edition on BoardGameGeek.com
• Ingenious Challenges official website
• Ingenious Challenges on BoardGameGeek.com

Dates played: February 18 and March 8, 2014

Everything is better with dinosaurs

Sometimes you just want to play a simple game. One that doesn't take 20 minutes to set up and four hours to play. Maybe you have half an hour to kill before it's time to leave for a movie, or you're waiting for everyone to show up for game night.

At the same time, maybe you also need to imagine that you are hunting dinosaurs for your dinosaur zoo.

The only solution is Dino Hunt Dice, a nifty little risk management game from Steve Jackson Games.

Players roll three dice at a time, chosen randomly from a cup. Each die has three symbols on it: a dinosaur, a fern leaf, and a footprint. There are three different colors of dice in the pool - green dice have fewer footprints and more dinosaurs, yellow have an equal number of each, and red are the most dangerous, with more footprints than dinosaurs.

Each dinosaur rolled scores one point. Fern leaves mean the dinosaur is hiding, and you roll the die again. A player can end their turn after any roll and bank their points, or they can keep pulling more dice out of the cup, rolling three at a time, but if you ever have three footprints showing on the dice you've rolled, your turn ends and you don't score any points for that turn.

It's an amusing little game and a great exercise in knowing when to quit. Plus it has dice with little dinosaurs on them, which is good enough for me.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) A very simple game and not something we'd spend a lot of time playing, but for what it is it's pretty fun.

• Dino Hunt Dice official website
• Dino Hunt Dice on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 29, 2013

The inscrutable Devil Bunny

I don't think there is any question that James Ernest is one of the most prolific game designers around, nor is there any question that he has a strange and unusual sense of humor. As the founder of Cheapass Games, he established a business model with such extremely low production costs that he could design and release a lot of games that never would have made it to market as glossy, high end products. Games with interesting and unusual mechanics, and games with themes that were always humorous and sometimes downright bizarre...

Two of the stranger games to come out of Ernest's fertile if somewhat deranged imagination are Devil Bunny Hates the Earth (2001) and Devil Bunny Needs a Ham (1998). Both games feature Devil Bunny, a cartoon character created by Ernest early in his career, and his weird needs and even weirder plans for fulfilling those needs.

In Devil Bunny Hates the Earth, Devil Bunny has decided that he hates the earth, and will make his hatred manifest by releasing a particularly unsatisfying variety of saltwater taffy. The players are sentient taffy machines who will attempt to destroy themselves by luring squirrels into Devil Bunny's taffy factory, thus saving the world from his wrath.

But none of that really matters, other than providing a glimpse into the psyche of a game designer. The strange story of Devil Bunny's salt water taffy factory is just an excuse to present a game about moving pieces around on a board. In turn, each player rolls a die, and the result of the roll gives him a choice of either adding a new counter to the board, or moving counters that are already there. Counters move in a specified pattern, and the player's goal is to eventually move six counters onto the space containing that player's salt water taffy machine.

If it sounds simple that's because it is, and unfortunately in this case the game never really gets particularly interesting. There is too much left to the random roll of the die, and not enough going on to give players much to do or think about.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) There's just not enough going on to hold a player's interest.

• Devil Bunny Hates the Earth on BoardGameGeek.com

Devil Bunny Needs a Ham is a much more interesting racing game. Players are sous-chefs in a race to climb to the top of a tall building. Devil Bunny appears to be laboring under the impression that knocking them off the building will get him the ham he so desperately needs. It's a game about racing and forward movement, so the theme could have been anything (race cars, a marathon, people in an ill-conceived theme park running away from dinosaurs) but sous-chefs climbing a building makes as much sense as anything else.

Each player gets two or three counters (depending on the number of players and the length of game desired), which they move along a 6x21 grid of squares. Die rolls determine how far each counter can move, and on a roll of 6 Devil Bunny jumps on the counter in the lead, dropping it back to the start unless it hits another counter on the way down. The catch is that counters can't move straight forward, only sideways or diagonally, so the route to the top is a circuitous one. Additionally, after the halfway point on the board, counters that fall and aren't caught get removed from play.

The six spaces in the top row are each worth a descending amount of points. The game ends when all six spaces have a counter in them, at which time the owners of those counters total their points to see who won.

There is a lot more strategy here than in the other Devil Bunny game. The limits on forward movement and the need to protect your topmost counter give you more to think about, and while there is a random factor it still gives players choices to make regarding the movement of their pieces.

Rating 3 (out of 5) A fairly interesting light strategy game; something to play between other games or as a warm-up.

• Download a free print-and-play PDF file of the rules and board for Devil Bunny Need a Ham from the Cheapass Games website
• Devil Bunny Needs a Ham on BoardGameGeek.com

Date Played: December 29, 2013

Three Cheapass card games

James Ernest started Cheapass Games in 1995 with the idea that most gamers already have all the dice, counters, and other playing pieces they need, so giving them more with each new game was a waste of resources. If he just gave the rules, boards and cards, they could scrounge the rest of the components they needed and  he could sell his games for a lot less.

It's a great idea, and it certainly let a lot of games see the light of day that probably wouldn't have otherwise. Most of the games published by Cheapass were based on gag ideas like a hapless millionaire wandering the halls of his mansion while his guests try to kill him, or zombies working at a fast food restaurant. Many were extremely clever, probably just as many fell short of the mark, but all of them were informed by Ernest's sharp wit, superb graphic design sense, and frequently ingenious use of public domain clip art.

In Before I Kill You Mr. Bond (later re-titled James Ernest's Totally Renamed Spy Game, and still later, Before I Kill You, Mister Spy, for what I can only assume were legal reasons), players are supervillains who use cards to build elaborate lairs and score points by luring spies there to taunt them. The more drawn out the taunt, the more points, but also the greater risk of the spy escaping and destroying your lair.

The game's core mechanic relies on whether or not one of your opponent has the counter card to the taunt you are using, so we found it to be rather abrupt with only two players. We tried it out with five players and it played a little better, but it was still more of a race to see who could build the biggest, most indestructible lair and score points from taunting spies. The mechanic of countering opponents' card plays and letting the spy escape never really seemed to get off the ground.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) Clever and humorous, but the game play never really seemed to get moving.

• Before I Kill You, Mister Spy official website
• Before I Kill You, Mister Spy on BoardGameGeek.com

I have to imagine that The Big Cheese is a reflection of its designer's ongoing frustration with corporate culture. Each round a card is turned over, representing a meaningless corporate task. Players bid a number of their workers (each player has ten), and the high bid wins the project, which then takes a number of rounds to complete based on the number of workers on it (in true corporate fashion, the more workers on the project, the longer it takes to complete). When a project finishes it pays off a number of points based on a die roll, with some projects rolling smaller or larger sided dice, for a greater range of possible points. The first player to get to 40 points wins.

Rating: 1 (out of 5) Our group seemed to like this one the least. The bidding mechanic was interesting, but the theme (simple cartoons of rats, poking fun at corporate life) failed to grab us.

• Download a free print and play copy of The Big Cheese from Cheapass Games
• The Big Cheese on BoardGameGeek.com

The Big Idea, a game about presenting absurd new product ideas to venture capitalists, was definitely our favorite of the three. Players play two-card combinations of objects and descriptions to create bizarre and unlikely new products such as Dangerous Drink, Frozen Tool, and the extremely questionable Laptop Lotion. There is then an elaborate bidding process to determine whether the products are successful or not. This is initially a popularity contest based on each player's sales pitch for their silly product, but in later rounds it becomes more strategic as players invest in products that look like they're going to pay off.

The player with the most money at the end wins (of course). This isn't necessarily the one who had the most successful products, but the one who invested the most wisely.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) With decent game play and a very amusing premise The Big Idea was easily the best of these three games.

• FunForge published a deluxe, color edition of The Big Idea with somewhat altered rules, but it currently appears to be unavailable
• The Big Idea on BoardGameGeek.com

Date played: December 2, 2013