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

What took us so long to get into Legendary: A MARVEL Deck Building Game?

I'm not really sure why it took me so long to buy into Legendary: a MARVEL Deck Building Game. I'm a big fan of the superhero genre, and of deck building games in general. It could be that I already had several editions of the DC Comics Deck Building Game, although the two games aren't really very similar. I picked up Legendary Encounters: an ALIEN Deck Building Game on the first day it was released, and it remains one of my favorites. I also bought the Predator edition, and have plans to pick up the forthcoming Firefly and Big Trouble in Little China editions as soon as they are available. Maybe that's what finally got me to pull the trigger on the original Marvel edition.

It's interesting coming to the original Legendary game after playing both Encounters versions. They are recognizably the same game with only minor structural changes. Where Alien and Predator both use scenarios based on the films to structure the cards that players play against, Marvel uses different combinations of super villain masterminds, lower-level villain groups, and plots pulled from decades of comic book storylines.

Legendary's basic approach is a little abstract. Rather than each player taking control of a specific hero or a team of heroes, they instead start with a simple deck of cards representing SHIELD agents. Players then gradually add cards to their decks representing signature moves from a pre-selected group of superhero characters (usually five), so the game isn't so much "I control Wolverine and you control Spider-Man" as it is all of the players orchestrating Wolverine and Spider-Man's battle against the various villains menacing the city.

Plot cards provide all manner of interesting variants on the basic rules, creating different win conditions and sometimes making the villain cards behave in different ways. Each plot is presided over by a Mastermind villain who brings his own henchmen and tactics to the game, and with near-infinite combinations of plots and Masterminds, you can guarantee that no two games will ever be alike.

The Marvel version of Legendary really puts you in the middle of a superhero battle, so much so that it's all the more interesting that the game system seems so well suited to the Alien and Predator franchises too. Best of all, since the core Legendary game is more or less compatible with the Encounters editions, you can have the Avengers try to fight off an invasion of acid-blooded Aliens, or see how Wolverine matches up against the Predator...

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Legendary is a robust game system with a huge amount of replay value, especially if you're brave enough to start mixing and matching the different editions.

• Legendary: A MARVEL Deck Building Game official website
• Legendary: A MARVEL Deck Building Game on BoardGameGeek

Leaving Earth puts you in the space race

Leaving Earth is a somewhat dry but oddly compelling game, and it's not really like any other game I've played.

I say dry because at its core it is a game about mission planning. Players are put in charge of a nation's space program starting in the 1950s. The goal of the game is to score points by accomplishing missions on cards that are randomly dealt at the start of the game, and scaled based on the players' desired difficulty. They can be as simple as getting a capsule into orbit, or as difficult as putting a live astronaut on Mars (a recent expansion even includes missions to Jupiter and Saturn).

Each turn represents a year of game time, and during that time players get a fixed amount of money to spend on developing technology and buying space ship components such as rockets, capsules, supplies and astronauts. Each piece of technology comes with three random outcome cards, which can either be success, minor failure, or major failure, and each time that particular piece of technology is used, the cards are shuffled and one is flipped over. After an outcome, a player has the option to "buy off" the card, removing it from the stack for that piece of technology, so eventually, with enough testing, the technology will always work. The challenge is balancing when to play it safe and thoroughly test, and when to move quickly (it is a space race after all).

The second part of the game involves assembling spacecraft and launching them into space, and this is all about managing thrust and weight. Rockets generate a certain amount of thrust, depending of the difficulty of the maneuver you are trying to perform. However, each rocket can only be used once, so your craft will need to have multiple rockets to fire at various stages of your craft's journey, and each of those additional rockets is more weight you have to launch into space.

Planning these missions is very tricky, since you have to figure out how many rockets you need to get through each step of the spaceship's journey. The game offers a mix of simple and complicated missions, which are randomly drawn at the start of the game, so every game will have a different mix. The first strategic decision a player will need to make is whether to try for a bunch of easy, low-point missions, or spend the whole game working towards a high-value mission like putting a permanent base on Mars.

In addition to the brain-stretching game play, Leaving Earth features some truly gorgeous artwork and graphic design, which makes looking at the game a joy, even if you're scratching your head trying to figure out how many rockets you will need to get to the Moon and back.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) This game is gorgeous, utterly engrossing, and unlike any other game I've played.

• Leaving Earth official website
• Leaving Earth on BoardGameGeek

Bang! -- the fight has commenced...

I really enjoy Bang!, but it's often a struggle to get together a large enough group to make the game interesting. Additionally, I find the game's "guess what role everyone is playing" aspect to be less interesting than the combat mechanics and spaghetti western theme.

I love the idea of a two-player version of Bang!, emulating the classic showdown at high noon seen in so many western films, so I was happy to see that it has become a reality with Bang!: the Duel. The choice to make it a separate game rather than an expansion or rules variant is interesting; the game is similar enough to the core Bang! game that I'm certain it began as a variant, with the designers eliminating cards and game features (such as the hidden roles) and adding others to support the two-player format.

Players choose to either play as the Law or the Outlaw, with a separate deck of cards for each. Unlike most "separate deck: games however, cards played go to a common discard pile, and as soon as one player runs out of cards this is shuffled together into one deck, representing the idea that as the battle progresses, each side gets more desperate and starts using the other's tactics.

As with Bang!, the game features character cards with unique abilities, but in The Duel, each player plays with a stack of characters (four in a normal game, but this can be scaled for shorter or longer games). Each player has two characters in play at a time, one "active" and one "rearguard." Only the active character's abilities are in play, but they can switch places during the player's turn or as a result of game effects. If a character is killed, the next one in the stack steps up, and the game ends when one player runs out of characters.

It's a fast-paced, simple game that is recognizably still Bang!,while making the game system work as a two-player duel, and it retains the spaghetti western flavor that drew me to Bang! in the first place. I kind of wish this version could be played with more than two...

Rating: 4 (out of 5) An easier-to-play version of the spaghetti western classic.

• Bang! the Duel official website
• Bang! the Duel on BoardGameGeek

It's a game-eat-game world

Back in 2013, we decided to play through all the games in our collection as a way to assess which ones we actually enjoyed, and which we were keeping for sentimental reasons or for no reason at all. The process has eliminated nearly 40 games from our library, which would be great if we didn't buy new ones just as quickly...

One of the criteria we've been using to help decide whether a game stays or goes is the question, "does playing this game take time away from playing another, similar game that we might enjoy more?" A perfect example of that was Eldritch Horror, a game we initially liked quite a bit. But after a few plays we found that we enjoyed Arkham Horror or Fortune and Glory more, and saw no need to spend time playing a similar game that we didn't enjoy as much.

This brings us to the latest round of games that are getting the boot, and why we don't think we'll miss any of them.

Battle Yahtzee: Alien vs. Predator. It may be AvP, but it's still Yahtzee.

• Original rating: 2.
• What we'll play instead: for Aliens and/or Predator action we have the Aliens board game, the Aliens Predator CCG, and Alien & Predator Legendary Encounters (separately or mixed together). See Quarriors below for other dice games that are a lot more interesting than this one.

Castellan. I love the idea of this castle-building game, but in practice there is very little variation between games, so it gets a little dull after a few plays.

• Original rating: 4.
• What we'll play instead: Through the Desert and Samurai are similar strategic place-and-control games, although they are also very similar to each other. hmmm...

Longhorn. I love a western-themed game, but Longhorn's cattle rustling theme is largely tacked on to an abstract numbers exercise. The only thing this game really has going for it are the nifty cow meeples.

• Original rating: 2.
• What we'll play instead: Spurs is an excellent western adventure board game.

Lord of the Rings: the Confrontation and Lord of the Rings: the Duel. We bought both of these in response to our passion for both Lord of the Rings and two-player games, but we're finding a lot more of our gaming time is social these days, making two player games something of a liability when we want to include more players in our gaming. And after these two are gone, we'll still have 6 LOTR games in our collection, so I don't think we'll be spending any less time in Middle-Earth.

• Original ratings: LOTR: the Confrontation: 3; LOTR: the Duel: 3.
• What we'll play instead: for more Tolkien-inspired gaming we have Lord of the Rings: the Board Game, LOTR: the Search, LOTR: the Card Game, Middle-Earth Quest, and War of the Ring. Additionally, Jarl and Serpent Stones both have a head-to-head, abstract movement mechanic that is very similar to LOTR: the Confrontation.

Marvel Dice Masters. We were originally charmed by this game's Marvel Comics theme and blind booster collectibility, but we're finding that the game's emulation of the CCG/LCG model (where you put together your "deck" of killer combos before the game starts) is a bit of a turn-off. We want a game we can just play right out of the box.

• Original rating: 4.
• What we'll play instead: Legendary: a MARVEL Deck-Building Game or the underrated and sadly out-of-print Marvel Heroes Strategy Board Game.

Quarriors. While the clever game play and pretty dice were what attracted us to Quarriors, the goofy cartoon-fantasy theme was always a bit of a turn-off, and even with all the expansions condensed into as few boxes as possible, the game is a major shelf-hog that doesn't really justify the amount of time we spend playing it.

• Original rating: 4.
• What we'll play instead: Elder Sign and Discoveries: the Journals of Lewis & Clark are both fun dice games with smoother game play that are more thematically interesting, or if we want something simple we can break out Dino Hunt Dice or Age of War. 

Race to Adventure. There's nothing wrong with this simple game about using shared resources to complete a collection of objects, it just repeats the theme and game play of a few other games that we enjoy more.

• Original rating: 3.
• What we'll play instead: Relic Expedition is extremely similar on a lot of levels (1930s adventure, treasure hunt), with much more lavish components. Fortune and Glory is a more complex and engaging game with the same theme.

Zeppelin Attack! This small deck-building game has some original ideas in it, but the lack of depth makes the game play pretty similar from game to game.

• Original rating: 3
• What we'll play instead: Star Realms and the DC Comics Deck Building Game are both similar in terms of game complexity, but have a lot more replay value (and better artwork). 

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