Android: Netrunner is an asymmetric two-player card game based on the old CCG Netrunner Richard Garfield authored alllllll the way back in 1996 (can you imagine playing a game over twenty years old?!). Over the years, the design has proved quite popular and remains a tournament favorite for many dedicated players. A CCG-turned-LCG(™) that has been played competitively in some form or another for the last twenty-five years when so many others have come and gone, it must be good right? But how good? Better than… Magic: The Gathering? Yes, much better. It’s not even close. Whether its deeper or more complex is a much harder question to answer — and one I don’t have the tournament-level experience in either to adequately tackle — but Android: Netrunner is a far, far more enjoyable way for two well-played gaming enthusiasts to spend an evening together. Its exquisite theming, immersive world, unique player interactions, tense information exchanges, and flavorful scenarios all compliment a creative, asymmetric core system that commands the utmost attention of your tactical sensibilities. I just spent the entire introductory paragraph raving about how great the game is, so lets start off the review proper by griping about something that doesn’t really matter. What is the deal with the new core sets rulebook? It actually states on the very first page that you’re going to need to consult an online reference for some of the rules questions that arise during play because they aren’t covered by the text. That is stupid annoying; why would you not provide everything needed to…
Co-operative games are prone to a number of design issues that competitive games easily side-step: over-reliance on RNG, inert economies, tension through attrition, ease of min/maxing, etc. The flavorful chaos wrought by player opponents is not easily replicable by cards and cubes, which is why many co-operative games tend to feel more like complicated jigsaw puzzles rather than organic, mutable systems. That isn’t to say there aren’t riveting co-op experiences to be had around the table; in fact, there are plenty. Space Alert is a boisterous, real-time programming game that really gets your blood pumping. Descent and Fury Of Dracula have all but one player co-operating against a mastermind or villain, so the narrative tension is still player-derived. Kingdom Death: Monster has a surplus of agonizing group decisions that affect the way the story plays out in dramatic and unpredictable ways. I bring up these examples because Legends Of Andor has nothing so fancy. In fact, it is very much in the vein of the social puzzle co-operative games that are prone to all the issues I just listed off. And yet it is great. Not due to massive groundbreaking innovations or game-changing gimmicks that flip established mechanics on their head, no, Legends Of Andor is great through sheer artfulness, which is not something that can be said about very many games. Legends Of Andor is a fantasy adventure game somewhere between tower defense and dungeon crawl. Each game, players take on the roles of heroes and make their way through a different “Legend,”…
Among The Stars is a derivative and highly repetitive card drafting game about building space stations. Players pass “Location” cards around the table and add them to their personal tableaus by spending “Credits” and “Energy Cubes”, which scores them points and activates abilities (which usually score more points). There are variable player powers and shared objectives to vie over for points as well, but they’re mostly inconsequential. The vast majority of player scores comes from the location cards. The game is played over four essentially identical rounds, and the player with the highest score after that wins. This exceedingly brief summary is about as far as I’m going to go into the overall structure and rules of the game, aside from some particulars which I’ll be getting to in a moment, as the focus of this review will be comparing Among The Stars to its two most obvious tabletop relatives: Suburbia and 7 Wonders. Spoiler alert: they are both far superior games. The set-up rules for Among The Stars begin with an immediate red flag: “The game can be played in two modes: Aggressive and Non-Aggressive.” Is it so much to ask designers to design their games instead of leaving it the players? I’m all for optional variants and other methods of extending the longevity of a game that may otherwise exhaust itself after a few too many plays, but to place this choice front and center in your game’s set-up betrays a serious lack of confidence in the appeal of your game. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m just a…
Coup is a good game for people that don’t play games. It has bluffing, hidden roles, variable player powers, a dash of deduction, a pinch of probability, and many more modern game design goodies in a very compact package. When it exploded back in 2012 with a chorus of claims that it is “a lot of game” for its size, that’s because in a way it was. It’s an impressively deft design that mixes myriad mechanics with ease. The problem is these eclectic elements don’t add up to much, and Coup greatly misses the mark in several key areas such as narrative, balance of risk/reward, and social impact. This is a last-man-standing player elimination game where the winner is often the player that played the most passively. This is a bluffing game without bids or bribes, a hidden information game without much information in the first place, and a filler that is — in direct contrast with the genre’s name — unfulfilling. What Coup wants to be is a game about political espionage and subterfuge. To start off, you shuffle the deck of 15 role cards (3 each of 5 different types) and deal 2 face-down to each player alongside an initial supply of 2 coins. Players then take turns performing 1 of 7 actions. 3 of these are general actions, while the other 4 are tied to specific role cards. The general actions are: 1) take 1 coin from the bank, 2) take 2 coins from the bank, and 3) pay 7…
Disclaimer: The author of the following review has been using a misprinted Machi Koro card as a bookmark for the last three years. He felt obliged to inform his readers of this and ensures them that this fact is a mere triviality and has in no way affected his opinion of the game because why the heck would it? Ah, Machi Koro. The game of great first impressions and eventual disdain. I say that of course because every single person I’ve introduced the game to (myself included) have all experienced this, shall we say, phenomenon in nearly exactly the same manner and at exactly the same pace. In fact, this opinion seems widespread enough amongst us crazy board game enthusiasts in general that I believe an official term should be minted for it, so let’s do just that. We can call it the “Machi Koro Appreciation Depreciation Effect”, or the MKADE for short. So what specifically is the MKADE? Based on my own analytical observations of several different players of all different backgrounds, I have chosen to define it as a three-stage process in the gradual transformation of one’s opinion on the game of Machi Koro. The stages are as follows: “I really enjoy this game and would like to play it again very soon.” “This is not as fun as I remember it being.” “I never want to play this game again.” For the sake of immediate relatability I have decided to name each stage after common utterances I’ve heard in post-game discussions…
Upon opening the story book and beginning to read aloud the two-page prologue, I immediately knew that there was something strange afoot with Mice And Mystics. It wasn’t that the writing was particularly bad or the setting and theme particularly trite — nothing so plainly damning as that. Very simply, it was just the length of the dang thing. By the end of my recitation my throat was sore and I didn’t feel like playing a game anymore. The pacing of the game had been thrown off before the first turn was even taken. And then it hit me: I still had to read the chapter introduction. Mice And Mystics envisions itself as a hybrid of sorts between children’s storybook and co-op dungeon crawl. Cool! Problem is, the game inherits the absolute worst of both worlds: a simplistic narrative that no well-adjusted adult could possibly care about and some mucky rules overhead guaranteed to stymie the vast majority of children that come in contact with it. It is clear that Mice And Mystics wants to be a bridge between young and old, to speak to kids of all ages, to bring families together and give them a grand adventure to experience. But instead, it is a game with no discernible audience and a heap-load of design flaws. In Mice And Mystics, players take the roles of a prince and his cohort who are magically transformed into mice as they plan a counterattack against the evil queen and her minions who have overtaken their castle. It is…