Dungeon crawling is the most overworked, over-produced genre in all board gaming. Even more so than impressive Renaissance nobles. It was a surprise, then, to find one mentioned over and over when I cast about for the most innovative games around. What could Vast: The Crystal Caverns possibly do to revitalise the most moribund group of games at all? The answer came as quite a shock, because it's not only new for dungeon games but for board games in general. Vast essentially makes each player play by a different...
As average as average gets. My 6-yr old, Emily, really liked it and wants to see it again. So the movie is a success on that front, but I'll let her grandmother take her the second time, I don't think I want to go through that again. This is my first foray into the Cars franchise (probably because i have no boys), so maybe I would have warmed up to the movie had I been previously exposed to these characters before. I don't think it would make that much of a difference. So...
One of the most famous magic items in Dungeons and Dragons is the bag of holding. On the outside, a small cloth bag. On the inside, a pocket dimension capable of storing huge amounts of stuff. Pax Renaissance is the closest real-world equivalent that we have. On the outside, a small box, no bigger than a couple of packs of playing cards. On the inside, one of the densest, biggest games we've seen this decade. Your first clue comes from the rulebook, which is uncommonly thick for such a small box and printed in tiny font....
Really fun for a movie basically about toilet humour. I took 6-yr old Emily to see this on Sunday and it was a big hit (she wants to see it again). Being a super hot day, the air conditioning knocked me out for the first half of the movie but it was pretty easy to catch back up once my eyes opened. I think this movie had my favourite cartoon villain i've seen in a very long time. He stole every scene he was in thanks almost entirely to a great voice performance...
As a worker placement game, I didn't have much hope for the engaging theme of Alchemists. All the rich, wacky art, plastic potion bottles and player screens in the world couldn't make up for the thematic drag of worker placement. At least, so I assumed. Turns out that I was very wrong. Each turn, players place their cubes across various action spaces which are then resolved in strict order. The key ones at the start of the game are gathering alchemical ingredients, selling them for gold and using them to brew potions. This latter action can...