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Game Review – RoboRally

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RoboRally Box ArtRichard Garfield is justly (in)famous for creating Magic:The Gathering, a game so nerdy that groups have to meet in secret less a roving chess team find them and beat them up. But before that, Garfield made RoboRally – a game that makes Magic:The Gathering players look like cage fighters.

RoboRally is exactly want it sounds like; each player has a robot which they guide around a factory floor. The object is to win the race by touching numbered flags placed in strategic locations in turn – the first robot to touch the last flag wins.

Each turn players are dealt 9 program cards each specifying a simple instruction (“turn 90° clockwise”, or “move forward 2 squares”, etc). Before any of the robots move, players place 5 cards face down in front of them in “registers” and discard any cards left over. Then each player reveals the card in register 1 and moves their robot on the board accordingly. Then register 2 is revealed, and so on.

But things aren’t so simple. In addition to avoiding the other robots, the factory floor itself is littered with obstacles. There are conveyor belts that carry any robot on top of them, walls that block movement and worst of all, lasers. Each robot also carries a laser, so damage is inevitable. Damaged robots first receive less cards at the beginning of the turn. The damage quickly accumulates to a point where the registers themselves become faulty, locking a movement card in place for multiple turns.

Because you effectively program in 5 movements ahead of time a certain amount of forethought is required. Forethought that might go to waste, because other robots can interfere with your carefully laid plans. You never quite get the cards dealt to you that you need, and once the damage starts to bite your robot with be careening all over the board.

RoboRally board, showing positions part way through a game
RoboRally scales really well and is actually better with more players, so long as you don’t mind a certain amount of chaos. It sounds complex but the rules are very clear and each turn takes only a few minutes. It is certainly not a game of deep strategy as any plans you make will collapse hilariously, but it is not totally random either.

Fast paced, humorous, and nice to look at. Highly recommended.

Game Review : Fury of Dracula

Some time after the events of the eponymous novel Dracula returns, and he is furious! No longer content to lurk in London, the count spreads his evil throughout Europe, pursued by 4 hunters hot on his trail.

Fury of Dracula figures

Fury of Dracula is an odd board game that reminds me a lot of the old Scotland Yard game familiar to anybody that grew up the the 80s. One player takes the role of Dracula – their goal is to stay alive for long enough to see their nefarious plans come to fruition. All the remaining players take the roles of one or more hunters determined to bring Dracula down for good (there are always 4 hunters so a given player may be playing more than one – we only had 2 players so one person played all 4 hunters.) Each turn the players move around a stylised map of 19th century Europe, the hunters move openly on the board but Dracula’s position is hidden from the other players.

Feed Card from Fury of Dracula

Dracula moves by placing location cards face down on a track, leaving a trail of old locations behind, each one possibly containing a surprise that the count has prepared to harry his pursuers. If one of the hunters stumbles across the trail, the surprise is revealed – usually some sort of combat ensues (Dracula has allies) or something else bad. On the bright side, at least the hunter knows they are on the right track.

If Dracula manages to leave a long enough trail, the oldest card drops off and the encounter “matures”, often helping Dracula come closer to his goal. It is in the hunter’s interests to keep on Dracula’s coat tails once they see any sign of him.

Once the hunters have found Dracula, they can engage him in combat to weaken or hopefully kill him using any of the items they may have picked up on their journey. However Dracula has terrifying powers and combat is dangerous, 3 out of every 6 turns occur at night when Dracula is especially powerful! Timing is everything when trying to kill a vampire.

Fury of Dracula is an enjoyable romp with excellent atmosphere – Dracula is outnumbered and constantly on the run during daylight hours, but may brave a frontal assault during the nighttimes. Combat is done with dice and cards, and works very well once you figure it out. Dracula starts off with a large advantage, but this slowly wears away as the hunters gather items to use against him. The game seems fairly well balanced overall, although in our game Dracula went down early under the weight of a series of terrible dice rolls (or that is my excuse anyway.)

The main flaw of the game is it’s complexity. There are 5 different decks to take care of, and a plethora of counters and tokens. I can’t say I didn’t get my money’s worth, but there is an awful lot of stuff to keep track of. Many of the rules have odd exceptions that apply only at certain times or to certain characters, exceptions that are only found scattered around the rule book not on the cards themselves. The rule book is pretty good, but the rules do not lend themselves to easy explanation – this is not the kind of game you just pull out and play.

Having said that, Fury of Dracula is a fun game assuming that you want to put the effort to learn something new.

Game Review : Light Speed

A lone asteroid tumbles slowly through the inky vastness of darkness of deep space, as it has for millions of years. Suddenly a ship winks into existence just a couple of hundred metres away – emerging from hyperspace in a purple flash. Milliseconds later it is joined by another, and another, completely surrounding the lonely rock. The Empire has sent a fleet to liberate the rare ores that are urgently need for the war effort. But the purple bursts have been interspersed with bright blue flares – the Federation has also sent a fleet. Lasers flare, this will all be over in seconds…

Light Speed describes itself as a real-time space combat table top game – sounds impossible but this simple little game manages to fit a lot into a very small package. Each player (up to 4) starts with a deck of cards, each representing a particular class of ship. Each ship has a number of lasers, a hull rating (life points), a speed rating and possibly some shielding to protect it. The battle begins by all players drawing a ship from their deck and placing it on the table in a hopefully advantageous position where its lasers will do the most damage to either the asteroid or to an opposing ship. Once a ship has been played it cannot be moved. Once a player has placed a ship they can draw and place another one as quickly as they like without waiting – the game ends when the first player has warped in his entire fleet so everyone needs to be paying attention. If a player still has cards in hand the un-played ships do not take part in the battle.

Once the ships have popped out of hyperspace (this takes about 30 seconds), a huge battle commences. This constitutes the scoring and takes a lot longer than actually playing the game. The smaller, speedier ships fire their lasers first but tend to have less powerful weapons and little shielding. The more powerful ships have massive armament and are well protected, but only get to shoot at the end of the battle meaning that they might already be fatally damaged before firing a shot. Space battles are not for the careless, friendly fire is a distinct possibility. Players get points for destroying enemy ships and mining ore from the asteroid (with the multipurpose lasers).

Light Speed is well named, being both light and speedy. The rules are simple and the play fast-paced. Even the scoring, a purely mechanical process, is quite fun as the battle turns on a few well placed (or misplaced) cards. There is certainly an element of luck, but quick thinking and cunning rules the day with plenty of opportunity for table talk.

Highly recommended, especially since it only costs US$5.00!

Game Review : Citadels

Citadels is an easy but fun card game where the players compete to construct the most impressive city by amassing wealth to spend building various districts (docks, university, cathedrals, etc). The game ends when a player plays an eighth district then everyone’s city is scored (and certain bonuses added) to determine the winner. Simple.

Or not so simple. There are 8 role cards, each player will get one of these each turn which will enable certain actions. For instance, the Magician role can swap hands with another player, the Architect can build more in a turn, the King gets first choice of roles for next turn, etc. Because there are more roles than players and the roles are chosen secretly in turn, the way to win lies in choosing the correct role at the correct time. Some of the more expensive districts also confer additional bonuses apart for score such as more money or protection from certain attacks so thinking several turns ahead is required.

Citadels can be quite a sneaky game – many of the roles allow you to ruin your opponents plans by stealing cards or money, or even destroying their hard won districts from under them. But it is hard to get an unassailable lead and the way the roles work means that no player can really feel ganged-up on. It is also one of the few games I have played that actually works better as a 4 or 5 player game (haven’t tried 6 or more) without leaving some players in an unwinnable position.

The game itself is attractive and the cards are well designed. The one flaw is that the role cards get constantly handled and can get bent or scuffed up, which is a problem since they are supposed to remain identical to maintain the secrecy required. The basic game is flexible, the official website has a whole bunch of alternate rules to turn it into a children’s party game or a drinking game (although hopefully not at the same time). With 4 or 5 players the game takes about an hour to play.

Highly recommended.

Card Game Review : The Spoils

I think it is best to say two things right up front : firstly, The Spoils is a collectable card game just like Magic the Gathering. If you are not familiar with this form of gaming the rest of this review is going to be impenetrable, but in short each player builds a deck of cards from a much larger pool and then plays this against the opponent’s deck. Different cards have different effects, the skill in deck building lies in picking cards that compliment each other. The collectable part comes from the method of acquiring these cards, instead of just buying a full set you typically purchase small packs containing a random selection of cards, so each player is building decks from a different subset. Vast secondary markets exist for players wanting to trade surplus cards with others, sometimes for surprising sums of money since some card are deliberately printed in small numbers.

Secondly, The Spoils is a collectable card game just like Magic the Gathering. Seriously, it is basically Magic with a quick paint job and the VIN ground off. This is not necessarily a bad thing – I like Magic the Gathering, but the similarities are pretty blatant. I can almost imagine playing a Spoils deck against a Magic deck in the same game, most of the rules work in exactly the same way, only with different keywords (cards don’t get tapped, they become “depleted”, etc.)

Having said that, Spoils does differ in a few interesting ways which seem to be designed to make the decks play more consistently. A common problem with Magic is that sometimes you just don’t draw enough land cards of the correct type to play your hand full of spells. In The Spoils, you start the game with two staple resources (basic land) cards of your choice already in play – this hugely helps if you are running a 2 colour deck since you can ensure that you have both colours available.

Additionally, the costs for all cards are colourless – you can tap (sorry, deplete) any colour to pay for them. However, most cards have a “threshold”. A certain character (creature) might have a threshold of 3 rage (red) with a cost of 4 – to put this creature into play you must deplete 4 resources (of any colour) but you can only do so if you have at least 3 red resources out (depleted or not). Along with the staple resources there are special resource cards that still produce a single mana but count for double when calculating threshold, as a special bonus the card art for these special resources features scantily clad ladies for no particular reason.

You can play any card in your hand as a resource by playing it face down. These work just like regular resources but do not count towards threshold at all. Although you can usually only play a single resource a turn, you can deplete 3 resources to put another resource into play at any time.

Combat works much the same as it does in Magic, the big difference is that characters have an extra Speed statistic. This works much the same as first strike but with multiple levels, the faster character hits first and suffers no damage if it kills the other character outright.

These changes do make for a smooth game – it is almost impossible to imagine getting screwed by a bad starting hand in Spoils (especially since the mulligan rule is very forgiving.) On the other hand, one of the things I like about Magic is the unpredictability that forces you to have backup options in your deck if you don’t get what you want, Spoils is more forgiving but I think less flavourful. You could get much the same effect in Magic with a couple of house rules.

The card design is good without being brilliant, the art is perfectly OK if sometimes a little tacky. It may seem like I am damning The Spoils with faint praise, but there is actually a lot to like. It is just that The Spoils has little reason to exist in a world that already contains Magic the Gathering.