Colt Express: the great cardboard train robbery

The train robbery is a standard western trope, from 1903's The Great Train Robbery all the way through to the two spectacular train action sequences in 2013's The Lone Ranger. Joss Whedon even used a train robbery as the centerpiece of the first regular episode of his space western TV series Firefly.

But imagine the chaos if six different bandits all tried to rob the same train at the same time. I don't think that's ever been done before, but it's what happens in Colt Express.

The playing area in Colt Express consists of several train cars loaded with money and jewels, along with an engine that contains a box full of money but also an ornery Marshall who will kick bandits out of any train car he finds them in. Rather than a flat board, the game gives you a charming set of three dimensional train cars which allow players to move their pieces through the interior of the train, and also on the roof.

Players take the roles of individual bandits, each with a unique ability. Play consists of several rounds of playing move cards to a common stack, and then resolving those move cards in the order they were played. Since some cards are played face down, you don't always know what your opponents are doing, and some actions can result in your piece being moved unexpectedly, which can throw off the rest of your moves. The goal of the game is to have the most loot when the game ends after five rounds.

The predetermined moves aspect of the game invites comparisons to Robo Rally, but Colt Express manages to be a lot less frustrating and a lot more charming (I've played with people who hate Robo Rally but really liked Colt Express). I think the fact that you don't have to plan all your moves for the round at once is one reason. When playing your moves, you can react, in a limited fashion, to what your opponents are doing. The limited time frame is another plus; one of the main complaints I often hear about Robo Rally is that it can sometimes take hours to play. A game of Colt Express generally takes 30-45 minutes, and the pace is much faster. There is never a sense of being "stuck" like there often is in Robo Rally.

The playing pieces themselves are delightful, if a bit small for adult hands. The three dimensional train cars are beautifully illustrated, and the game includes pieces of scenery that have no bearing on game play, but can be scattered around the table for decorative effect.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Out of a few recent Robo Rally-like games, this one is a clear favorite, not just for the western theme (always a plus for me) but for the light, fun tone and fast-paced game play.

• Colt Express official website
• Colt Express on BoardGameGeek

VOLT: Robot Battle Arena -- for people who don't like Robo Rally

Robo Rally is a very divisive game: some people really love it, and others just cannot stand it, to the point where they'll get up and leave if it hits the table. Personally I've loved it since I first played it, but I definitely understand why it drives some people crazy, as their carefully constructed movement plans inevitably fall apart over the course of what are often confusing, non-linear turns.

VOLT: Robot Battle Arena appears to be an attempt to capture the intent of Robo Rally (robot races and battles with pre-programmed moves) while eliminating the frustrations, and it largely succeeds.

The game is played  on a simple grid map (the game comes with a few different ones to choose from), and each player uses a hidden player board to plan their three moves for the turn, with choices being to move forward, backward, left, or right, or to shoot in one of nine possible directions. The moves are planned using six-sided dice, but they aren't rolled randomly. Rather, the player chooses what numbered side to place on each move, with the number determining either the distance moved, or the severity of the attack.

The only catch is that you cannot do the exact same maneuver twice in one turn. For example, you can't move a number of squares to the left, fire off a shot, and then move left again. This makes strategic planning a bit more important.

Players earn points by occupying certain board squares at the end of a turn, or by destroying opponents' robots. The game ends when a player has scored five victory points.

An advanced game option adds module tiles that give players special abilities for their robots, as well as a few additional game variants such as team play and a best-of-three multi-game option for longer games.

By eliminating Robo Rally's randomized deck of movement cards, VOLT gives players more deliberate and useful options each turn. The reduced player count (2-4, as opposed to Robo Rally's 2-8) keep the games a little shorter, and the increased emphasis on taking out opposing robots means you have to pay a lot more attention to what your opponents are doing, where in Robo Rally you're just hoping they'll stay out of your way.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) I would give VOLT a 3.5  if we were doing half stars. It's a fun and engaging game that is simple to learn but gives you a lot to think about while playing, but that same simplicity keeps it from being something I want to play often.

• VOLT: Robot Battle Arena official website
• VOLT: Robot Battle Arena on BoardGameGeek.com

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

Shadows of Brimstone: a 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

Cthulhu Wars: world conquest, Lovecraft 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.