Knizia, despite being an undisputed master of the modern two-player card game (amongst a multitude of other accolades), is not infallible. It’s not that Blue Moon, his take on the kind of 1v1 card combat game typically relegated to CCG territory, is bad. Far from it. In fact, when viewed solely as a work of product innovation, this is one of his most groundbreaking achievements. Remember, Fantasy Flight’s LCGs(™) did not exist at this time, so Blue Moon positioning itself as an alternative to Magic: The Gathering that didn’t require the hoop-jumping and wallet-draining of mediocre-by-design starter decks and randomized booster packs was an attractive proposal. Furthermore, the game is easy to understand, fun, and each playable deck is tactically distinct. So what holds it back from greatness? Unfortunately, Knizia’s highly European, minimal approach to game design — which serves him extremely well when designing, say, Euros — does him few favors when working in the high fantasy, direct conflict space. Of course, he’s much too talented to reduce its system to the point of meaninglessness, but Blue Moon is still lacking in the sort of flavor and dynamics you’d want from a game about appeasing powerful dragon lords by proving your worth via magical warfare. Most games of Blue Moon will be played with the prebuilt “People Decks” provided in the base game. Deck customization is allowed, of course, though is quite restrictive unless you really go wild with all the expansions. Besides, the original release only came with two decks: the “Vulca” and the “Hoax”. Thankfully, a more recent…
Saboteur is a poor game that doesn’t do the little it does very well. As a bluffing game, it is pathetically one-note. As a take that card game, it is lifeless and undramatic. As a route building game, it is simplistic to the point of mindlessness. I know the game has earned its fair share of devotees over the 15 years since its release (there are some very enthusiastic reviews on BGG as evidence of this), but this is a view I do not share in the slightest. It’s a fairly unique title, sure, but it’s also shallow, repetitive, and obnoxious. In fact, the game’s flawed nature is so openly admitted to — even by its fans — that perhaps there’s not much of a reason for me to be writing this review. Thing is, though I agree with all the commonly acknowledged problems that Saboteur has, I personally find it to have many, many more. Saboteur is a game about a group of dwarves mining for gold. Some of the players play as good little dwarves trying to get to the gold stash, while others play as the titular Saboteurs: evil, butthole dwarves eager to stop the gold from being found. The game is played over a series of three rounds. At the beginning of each the map of the mine is set up by placing the entrance card at one end of the table and three “Goal” cards face-down at the other, one of which is hiding the gold…
Fairy Tale is a clumsy little card drafting game which predates 7 Wonders by 6 years and it shows. Aside from being first, Fairy Tale offers nothing of interest that newer, better drafting games haven’t improved upon several times over. I know many board game critics put a lot of stake in which-game-featured-what-mechanic-first chronologies, but I’m not one of them. Of course I enjoy tracing the origins and influences of game systems and ideas across the years — a process I derive extreme personal edification from — but these reviews are about whether or not a game is good. There are plenty of bad games with good ideas in them (in fact, I’d say most of them have at least one), but distinguishing the good idea from the good game is no simple task. Be that as it may, let’s aim to do just that. I respect Fairy Tale and the creativity of its design — especially for its time — but it is a dated, unpolished game that there’s just not much of a reason to return to 15 years after its initial publication. Playing Fairy Tale will feel very familiar to anyone who’s played more recent drafting games like 7 Wonders or Sushi Go!. The game takes place over a series of rounds, players are dealt hands of cards, they select a card to keep then pass the rest to another player, and this goes on until everyone’s selected a full set of cards. However, unlike those other games, Fairy Tale follows this drafting phase with an additional card-playing phase. Players…
Why Tsuro was one of the first modern board games I purchased, I have no idea. I remember it intrigued me, but I don’t recall why. It’s simplicity? It’s box art? It’s price? It’s a fairly unique game, so maybe that had something to do with it. After all, the purchase was made well before my realization that uniqueness in the tabletop space is frequently out of alignment with quality. Case in point: Tsuro itself. This is not a good game, not even close. About the nicest thing I can say about Tsuro is that it’s inoffensive. But oh wait, it’s a game designed by a white dude that draws aesthetic and thematic ties to ancient Chinese philosophy for marketing purposes. And oh no, in the introduction of the rulebook it even claims the game “represents the classic quest for enlightenment.” It’s 2019 yo, some woke somebodies out there must be outraged! Personally, however, there’s another passage in the rulebook I find far more offensive: the one that declares Tsuro a “masterful blend of strategy and chance.” Which, this being a board game review and not a Twitter rant, is the passage I’ll be addressing today. Let’s cut to the chase, Tsuro is so shallow you can practically exhaust the depths of its possibility space after only a brief explanation of its rules. So let’s do just that. Tsuro is a tile-laying game played on a large square grid. Players are dealt three tiles each, then place their pawns on their chosen starting point around the grid. On these tiles…
Betrayal At House On The Hill is one of the first board games I ever loved. It is also one of the first I ever hated. Like so many modern board game neophytes, with maybe a game or two of Dominion and Catan under my belt, my first impression of Betrayal At House On the Hill was one of delight and wonder at its seemingly infinite possibilities. The idea that a game’s objectives and victory conditions could be different every time it was played was mind-blowing. My friends and I played it many times over the first year or so I owned it, alongside a steady diet of titles from an increasingly wide selection of other games I’d been acquiring at a somewhat embarrassing rate. We began noticing something odd. We enjoyed every other game we tried more than Betrayal, aside from the rare massive whiff (which will remain nameless until I review those as well). Fast-forward roughly six years, and oh how tastes change. To say that I now consider Betrayal At House On the Hill to be a bad game would be a massive understatement. It is abysmal. Awful in every regard. A masters class unto itself in how not to make a game. The illusion it had cast me under has long since faded away, and it is abundantly clear that the true nature of its sprawling, open-ended design stems not from ambition, vision, or cogency — but simple ineptitude. When I dislike a game and am collecting my thoughts on it, I always spend a decent…