Sewer Pirats

Who could not resist trying this theme for a game? In Sewer Pirats, vermin cruise down the vile waters to collect the most valuable trash. Your crew? A rat, snail, weasel, racoon, cockroach and toad. 4 of these vile creatures will comprise your crew on 3 ships each players creatures trying to be Captain of the ship or at least get on board for a cut of the booty! The Captain gets the best prize and then it all slides down hill, kind of like the corporate world! HA!

The components in this game ae top notch. Fantasy Flight sets a new bar in cardboard counters these are the Rolls Royce of cardboard counters! The minis are well done. Take a look on the internet at some of the paint jobs! Fantastic! The creature abilities are perfect! For example, the cockroach can slip on a ship without playing cards and the Weasel can “weasel” onto another ship and be captain again, while to toad hops forward and the Racoon robs a card from you just like a bandit!

I played several games of this and enjoyed them all. The game is not too long and it has many difficult decisions. Love it!

Mr. Jack Pocket

I have been playing games a long time and I have never seen so much game packed into such a small box. Mr. Jack Pocket is a two player tour de force which keeps you on the edge of your seat as one player plays Sherlock Holmes and the other player plays Jack the Ripper. This deduction game is unlike any other no cards, just flipping counters, making moves and trying to eliminate suspects before time runs out. It is short and very satisfying and I highly recommend it!

Oh and by the way my favorite Sherlock Holmes is Basil Rathbone!

Star Wars Pinball: A Winner on the Kindle Fire HD!

Up late last night trying to become a Jedi Master in Star Wars Pinball. I purchased the Empire Strikes Back table and it is certainly the best pinball game I have played on the Kindle Fire HD. Reminds me of the Marvel pinball tables on the Xbox but I give the edge to this one with great effects, incredible sound effects, and smooth gameplay!

The Boba Fett table looks good and I am just moments away from buy that one too!

I am playing the light side not the dark side although some folks on BGG might think that is not appropriate but then again they are too busy playing Loupin’ Louie to care! HA!

Mighty Dungeons

I’m not a big fan of tablet games but one recently caught my eye called Mighty Dungeons. A dungeon crawler for my Kindle HD that is like the old board game Heroquest. Reminds me of the days of good old Basic D&D when the game was at its best before collapsing with rules overload. Mighty Dungeons has your full cast of character and spells (Fireball being my favorite so far) and the game is not a drawn out all night affair that you might expect from an Xbox RPG, no you can finish a session in 30 min, which is perfect for me because I have other things, like eating and living on my agenda!

One of the few games I love on the Kindle! 

 

Assault on Hoth

We were just talking about Viking Gods with its paper map and thin counters so now we go to the Star Wars Universe with Assault on Hoth that also has a paper map and rather thin components but the game packs a punch so you don’t really notice.

Assault on Hoth is a tactical battle game much like the command and colors system in which you play out the battle of Hoth as seen in the movie The Empire Strikes Back.

The game includes all the necessary features like taking down the power grid, using the force and harpooning walkers to make them fall like dominoes.

The game is very well balanced and very detailed and you track damage for individual walkers and speeders. A super fun game that is out of print but well worth your time hunting it down.

Assault on Hoth, Star Wars the Queens Gambit and Star Wars Epic Duels are the 3 best Star Wars Boardgames out there and a must for a Star Wars Fan collection!

Undermining: Robots of Death Variant

When I first saw the game Undermining I immediately thought of the Doctor Who Robots of Death episode. Where the Robots on board the mining vehicle go crazy and start killing of the humans and giving the crew “Robophobia”.

In the game Undermining you are mining a planet for different valuable elements and fulfilling contracts to earn money or Star Bucks which is not coffee but the currency in the game. While mining you also encounter alien artifacts which allow you to perform many additional actions and powers.

My variant for the game simply entails pasting a Robot face on one of the player aid cards and slipping this card in the artifacts deck, so a player runs the risk of “Robophobia” when mining an artifact. When a player draws the “Robophobia” card his vehicle shuts down and loses a turn. A simple variant that gives the game Undermining a distinct Doctor Who flavor. A cool game however you play it!

Viking Gods

I opened up the vault of lost games this weekend and played a game of Viking Gods. The date was 1982 from TSR. D&D ruled the roost and very few hobby boardgames were on the market but you would see occasional games like this in the hobby shops and of course with a theme that involved Thor I was all over this game. Thor by the way is my favorite Marvel movie of late.

In Viking Gods one player plays the Chaos side that includes Loki and Fire Giants and Frost Giants and the other player has Thor on their side along with Odin.

For Thor’s side to win he must simply destroy Loki and for chaos to rein supreme they must destroy the tree, Yggdrasil.

Old Avalon Hill wargamers will notice a CRT on the map. Ahhhh a CRT, pure bliss to an Ameritrash gamer. This CRT however is very simple and works really well with only the most basic calculations necessary to resolve a battle.

You can see Loki and a band of Fire Giants start on the rainbow bridge. During the game the rainbow bridge starts to collapse and the chaos player must cover two hexes each turn with black counters.

Frost Giants start up on the Glacier.

Yggdrasil the tree is guarded well but is it guarded well enough from Loki and his forces? It was not guarded well enough because Loki slaughtered Thor and company and very soon I heard one word: TIMBER!!!!!

One neat thing about the game is that in the center of the map their is a Hela peice that roams randomly devouring any piece that it lands next to, sort of a hurricane going on the game that reminds me of the classic bermuda Triangle game! HA!

 

Viking Gods is a nice little wargame that plays out in a short time. It is very portable and enjoyable. The downside is the pieces. Very small counters and a paper map but all in all a great travel wargame rich with theme!