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

Western horror dungeon crawl

It may come as a bit of a surprise that when I first heard about Shadows of Brimstone, I wasn't terribly interested. Sure, I love an adventure game, I love a horror game, and I really love a western game, and this promised to be all three, plus it was coming from Flying Frog Productions, the publisher behind two of my favorite board games (Fortune and Glory and A Touch of Evil). But the setting looked like a rather appalling rip off of Shane Hensley's Deadlands, and at the time I was suffering from Kickstarter exhaustion, and not really interested in backing another expensive game.

I was resigned to ignoring this game, but then a very generous friend gave me a copy for my birthday, freely admitting that his motivations were somewhat selfish: he wanted to play the game, but didn't want to assemble and paint the miniatures (more on that in a moment). It looked like I would be taking a closer look at Shadows of Brimstone after all.

It's definitely a game in the midst of an identity crisis. The mash-up of wild west and unspeakable horror isn't entirely new (see the aforementioned Deadlands and its accompanying card game, Doomtown), but it adds elements of the classic dungeon crawl to the mix, setting the game in an abandoned mine represented by a board of interlocking room and corridor pieces.

More than that, Shadows of Brimstone can't seem to decide whether it wants to be a role playing game, a board game, or a tactical miniatures game, so it tries to be all three, and not entirely successfully.

At its heart, I think Shadows of Brimstone wants to be a "role playing game in a box" like Hero Quest, Descent, or Mansions of Madness. Players take on the roles of archetypical western characters, and go adventuring in the dungeon-like mine which may or may not contain a portal to a Lovecraftian other world, depending on the scenario being played. Unlike Mansions of Madness or Descent, the game avoids the need for a game master to control the villains, instead combining a basic scenario outline with a deck of randomized cards to determine the shape of the board and what monsters are encountered.

An initial, major turn off for me was the "assembly required" nature of the game's miniatures, which come in several pieces on plastic sprues and require several hours of assembly before the game can even be played. I don't mind painting miniatures or even a minor bit of assembly, but this was above and beyond, requiring a professional level of model making that is normally reserved for players of high-end tactical games such as Warhammer.

Perhaps because of the lack of a game master, encounters tend to be very combat-heavy and light on story, and this is where the game is most successful. The simple rules for determining the monsters' actions work well, and the combat system is pretty straightforward, although without a player controlling the monsters, their tactics tend to be of the "move into position and then keep hitting you until you or the monster goes down" variety.

The game's attempts to mix board game and role playing elements are less successful. It has a lot of the things you would expect from an adventure board game, such as cards and counters representing your character's possessions and abilities, but these are strangely incomplete, with no in-game way to track a character's money or experience points other than writing them down, which seems awfully low-tech. The game designers insist that this isn't a problem, but it's very telling that the fan community very quickly stepped in to fill this gap in the game's components, creating a variety of unofficial print-and-play money and experience tokens.

In a similar vein, the game has an abstracted feature that allows players to visit town between dungeon (sorry, "mine") encounters, with the result of their last encounter sometimes even having an effect on the town visit. While in town players can spend their money and experience to buy better equipment and improve their abilities, but there are no cards or tokens to represent these improvements. Players are expected to just write them down on a character sheet.

The problem I have with the game's reliance on a written character sheet is that there are actually very few character creation options available. Players starting a new campaign must choose from one of four different archetypes, and from there they choose one of three option cards, but that's really it. The addition of a character sheet really seems like a cheap way to make up for some conspicuously missing components.

One role playing element I do really like about Shadows of Brimstone is the idea of multiple games being linked as a campaign, with characters gaining experience and abilities as they progress across gradually more involved and difficult scenarios. It's a neat idea that gives the game a more epic scope than other, similar games. I just wish it either had more consistent board game components, or more open-ended role playing game options.

Rating: UNDECIDED. I want to like this game, but it has some weird shortcomings. I really feel like we need to play through a few more games before I give it a rating.

• Shadows of Brimstone official website
• Shadows of Brimstone on BoardGameGeek

How I learned to stop worrying and love the DC Comics Deck Building Game

The first time I tried the DC Comics Deck Building Game was at a game convention in 2013, and I didn't really like it all that much. I thought it was overly simple and not very interesting.

This was about a year and a half after DC Comics launched the "New 52," a complete reboot of all their comic book titles. I had been an avid DC Comics reader since the 1980s, but I didn't really care for the changes they made to their characters and storylines with the New 52, so I wasn't really very happy with DC at all, and my dissatisfaction was probably leaking through and interfering with my enjoyment of the game.

A friend reintroduced me to the game in January of this year, and this time I enjoyed it quite a bit. Maybe it was the fact that I was playing it with friends instead of convention demo staff, or maybe my irritation with DC Comics had subsided. Maybe it's just that I got to play as my favorite DC character (Superman). In any case, I did like the game enough to pick up a copy of the base game and the Heroes Unite and  Forever Evil expansions.

I still think it's a simple game, but I don't see that as a negative. As deck building games go, this one is about as easy to play as it gets: Each player chooses a hero with a unique game ability to play, and starts with a deck of basic Punch and Weakness cards. The main deck is shuffled, and five cards are played out, which represent heroic allies, villainous opponents, equipment, and super powers, all of which are bought by playing cards from your hand for their power value (just like any deck building game). The object of the game is to use the cards in your hand to buy better cards for your deck.

Additionally, there is a stack of super-villains, each of which must be defeated, again by playing cards from your hand. The super-villains tend to cost a lot more power than cards from the deck, and as each new super-villain card is revealed, it attacks all the players with a negative game effect. I particularly like the super-villain stack idea, as it gives the players something to work towards (building up higher-power cards to defeat the super-villain) and it gives the game a time limit, as the game ends when the last super-villain is defeated.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) Not a complex game by any means, but it's great for casual play with non-gamers, or as a light warm-up before settling in for something more involved.

• DC Comics Deck Building Game official website
• DC Comics Deck Building Game on BoardGameGeek

World conquest, Cthulhu style

Cthulhu Wars is the brain child of veteran game designer Sandy Petersen (creator of Call of Cthulhu), and it really shows off his lifetime of experience with games in general, and the Cthulhu Mythos in particular. It did over two million dollars on Kickstarter, largely due, I'm sure, to the game's incredible array of miniatures. However, credit is also due to the incredibly smooth and well thought out game design, a fact that was made very clear in the months Petersen spent demoing the game all over the country, in advance of the Kickstarter campaign launch.


One of the biggest problems with area control games like Cthulhu Wars is that once you start losing, it can be difficult to recover. Couple that with the fact that area control games tend to be elimination games that only end when one player knocks everyone else out of the game, and you often have a game where the early leader will run roughshod over the other players, who wind up just wishing the game were over.

Sandy Petersen must have been aware of this problem, because a lot of the game play in Cthulhu Wars addresses it, and for the most part eliminates it. All the players are in the game until the bitter end, and there is a built in time limit to keep the game from going on for too long.

Rather than playing as intrepid investigators on the verge of madness, as with most Lovecraft-inspired games such as Arkham Horror, players of Cthulhu Wars get to be the bad guys. Each player takes command of an ancient, god-like horror such as Hastur, Nyarlathotep, or even Great Cthulhu himself, along with an army of monsters and cultists. Cultists open gates which allow your monsters, and eventually your ancient one, to enter play, and the monsters guard your territory and attack the other players.

Each turn, players earn power based on the number of cultists and gates they have in play, and spend it to move their pieces around the board, summon new monsters and cultists, launch attacks, and eventually bring their ancient ones into play. One nice bit of balance here is that you always earn at least half as much power as the strongest player, so you can't really fall too far behind, even if you get completely wiped off the board.

 Players start the game with a stack of six spell book tokens specific to the ancient one they are playing, each with a unique ability. They have to earn these by accomplishing certain goals, also specific to their ancient one, such as occupying a certain amount of territory, bringing a certain number of creatures into play, or destroying so many enemy units in battle. A player can't win the game unless they've earned all six of their spellbooks. I particularly like this aspect of the game, as it gives each player a plan for what they need to do over the course of the game, and the different requirements and abilities serve to make the player factions even more different from each other.

The game play is deceptively and refreshingly straightforward, and I find that when we play we rarely need to refer to the rule book for anything more that a quick refresher, which is unusual for a game of this scale and complexity. The game round is divided up in such a way that you're never waiting long for it to be your turn to do something, which is also nice and definitely feeds into the idea that every player is there for the entire game, with very little down time.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A very immersive game with a lot of strategic depth, and smooth, intuitive rules. The only real down side is its high cost ($200 retail for the base 4-player game). The miniatures alone are worth it though.

• Cthulhu Wars official website
• Cthulhu Wars on BoardGameGeek

Check out my OnTableTop.com project blog about painting the Sleeper faction miniaures for this game.

Splendorific

Splendor is not generally the kind of game that attracts our attention, but I couldn't help noticing the number of "best of the year" lists it appeared on. I looked into it a bit more, and it still didn't look overly interesting to me, and I had no interest in trying it out. But then fate intervened in the form of a copy of the game being given to Katherine as a birthday gift.

We played it at her birthday party (who can resist a brand new game?), and again a few days later, but then we put it on the shelf and promptly forgot all about it. We definitely didn't dislike the game, but, as I said, it's just not the kind of game that normally attracts our attention.

When it came time to write this review, we finally got it out to play again, and I honestly wasn't sure what to expect. My memories of having played it several months ago were hazy at best; I didn't recall disliking it, bit I didn't recall liking it overmuch, either. Imagine our surprise, then, when we wound up playing for several hours.

We do like the odd abstract game like Ingenious or Set (well, Katherine likes Set), but for the most part, the games we play tend to be fairly literal, with players playing characters coming into conflict with plots and villains, and often complicated rules intended to allow for a fair representation of the various actions a character in a story might need to perform. Splendor makes for a nice break from that, with deceptively simple rules but a lot to think about during the game.

Put simply, the game is about manipulating resources in the form of jewels of different colors. The game starts with three rows of four cards, each depicting a cost in jewels, and a resource in jewels that the card provides every turn once it's been purchased. A limited supply of poker chips, representing the different jewel colors, is off to the side, along with some yellow chips that can be used as any color.

Each turn, a player can either: take two poker chips of the same color, or three of different colors; reserve a card by picking it up (that player also gets one of the yellow chips); or purchase a card, either from the table or one he's reserved, using a combination of jewels on cards he's already purchased and on poker chips he's picked up on previous turns.

Cards that are reserved or purchased are replaced from one of three decks (one for each row), so there are always 12 cards to choose from. Cards in the first row tend to be easier to buy, while cards in the upper rows are more expensive but are usually worth more points at the end of the game.

In addition to scoring points by buying cards, there are a number of tiles put into play at the start of the game, representing nobles who will award points to the first player who buys whatever combination of cards is depicted on the tile (i.e. four red and four black cards, or three each of several different colors). The game goes on until someone reaches 15 points, at which point everyone gets one last turn to try to catch up with the winner.

The secret to the game's strength is in the number of choices it gives players to think about on their turn. If I take chips from the supply, the colors I take might give my opponents a clue as to what card I'm trying to buy, in which case they might try to get it before I get a chance to. If I focus all my attention on getting the noble tiles, I risk overpaying for cards by using chips too often, rather than relying on purchasing cheaper cards to provide a good base of resources.

We found in playing that each turn we spent a lot of time thinking about what to do, going over the different options and possible consequences, but we spent almost no time referring to the rules.

Rating: 4 (out of 5) It's not a game that we'll spend a ton of time playing, and it doesn't fire up our imaginations the way games like Arkham Horror or a good CCG do, but Splendor is very engaging and makes for a welcome break from the more complicated games we tend to favor.

• Splendor official website
• Splendor on BoardGameGeek

Another look at Mystery Rummy, Lost Cities, and Camelot Legends

For us, the current board game renaissance began in 2005, just as the final collectible card game boom was breathing its last. Prior to 2005 we had spend the vast majority of our time playing seemingly every CCG we could get our hands on, from Aliens Predator to Doomtown, but we had started to take notice of a few of the stand-alone card games that were filling game store space left by departing CCGs.

We may have been suffering from a bit of random booster pack burnout, so the self-contained nature of these games really appealed to us, as did their relative simplicity when compared to the complicated rules that most CCGs of the late 1990s are known for.

I don't recall where or when I picked up Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, only that the box artwork intrigued me, as did the fact that it was the first of a series of card games about famous crimes and criminals both real and fictional (although I never did pick up any of the other games in the series).

While relatively simple, the game works because it starts with the basic framework of rummy, which has been played in one form or another since at least the 18th century, and has proven its ability to stand up to multiple variants over the years. Mystery Rummy takes the basic rummy mechanic of playing melds of matching cards with an eye towards getting rid of all your cards before your opponents do, and adds a few twists and turns to make the game a little more thematic, reflecting the hunt for Jack the Ripper in 1880s London.

Read the original review.
Original rating: 3 (out of 5)
New rating (pass or fail): PASS

Lost Cities is a card game by prolific designer Reiner Knizia, first published in the US by Rio Grande Games in 1999. It has all the hallmarks of a Knizia game: deceptively simple game mechanics, a complex scoring system, and a theme that fits the game perfectly. In this case, the theme is 1930s-style archaeological exploration, with card plays representing investment in, and then progress on, expeditions to the far corners of the world.

Like Mystery Rummy, Lost Cities has its roots in a classic card game; in this case, double solitaire. The game play feels familiar enough that it is instinctively easy to play, but there is enough going on in terms of game mechanics and theme to give players a fair amount to think about while playing.

Read the original review.
Original rating: 3 (out of 5)
New rating (pass or fail): PASS

Camelot Legends was introduced to us by none other than Zev Shlasinger, founder of Z-Man Games, when we met him at a convention in Denver in 2004. The game's stunning artwork (and Mr. Shlasinger's charming sales pitch) may have blinded us to its ultimately bland game play, but I think it is more likely that the game was okay for the time. However, it doesn't hold up when compared to the current standard of board and card games, which may explain why Z-Man has never republished it.

Read the original review.
Original rating: 3 (out of 5)
New rating (pass or fail): FAIL