There are also double meeple tokens, new ways to score roads and cities and more tiles. A couple of test games showed that they make it much harder to block a city by creating a non-playable space.

The supplements do cost about $3.00 to get, but they are well worth it.

Trask

Tigris is an old game, released circa 1997 and is quite famous as board games go. I will forgo the usual explanation of game mechanics save for a basic overview.  Tigris involves placing leaders to accumulate points based on the placement/acquisition of similarly colored tiles.  When two leaders come into conflict the leader with the most matching-colored tiles on the board and/or in their hand wins.   There are four colors in the game and the goal is earning points in all the colors. Here is the interesting mechanic that sets Tigris apart; the lowest of the four colors is your score. So if you have 4,5,6,2 as the counts for each color, then your final score is 2! An elegant way to keep one person from specializing and winning the game.   So far as I can tell, there is no difference between the tabletop and the iOS rules.  One nice add-on not available on the tabletop is the “power” of each king indicated on their respective tokens. This makes calculating the battles much easier.

The graphics match the original game and the scoring/mechanics work very well. I played games against the AI and found them challenging. An “adjustment” system allows you to decide the strength of the AI players. I set them all high and found them challenging, but not impossible to beat. Unless you are a total rookie, max them out. Speaking of rookies, the tutorial game is very well done and should get any new players up and running in a few minutes. It runs a pre-programmed game and helpfully tells you each move and what it does.

Tigris also leverages the “Game Center” API provided in the last iOS update.  This means that online play is smooth. I take a turn, hit the complete button and then the next player receives notification it is his turn and so on.  The notification appears through the built-in iOS notification system and I had no issues at all with playing against a remote player, both over 3g and Wi-Fi.

Game options include the usual messages on/off, AI speed, animation speed and the like, but also has a “my music” option to turn off the vaguely Middle-Eastern theme music and replace it with  your own tunes. The built-in music is fine, but it gets old fast.  The game hung a couple of times when I tried to set the playlist. Not sure of the cause, but killing the app and restarting it got it working again.

The game looks and runs great and completely replicates the tabletop experience, but I did find a couple of issues. Playing on an iPhone works, but even with the zoom function I found it a bit difficult to place tiles. Making the droppable squares a bit “grabbier” might help. Though this item is less of a bug than a feature request, I enjoy the in-game chat feature of the excellent “Carcassonne” iOS game and really miss it. How am I to gloat and taunt my victims? I have to exit and send an email/text. Not a major issue, but it is something I would want to see in a future release.

Overall this is one of the best Euro-game implementations in the iOS yet and I highly recommend you check it out.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

This mail address is not active anymore.
To contact Andrea Fanhoni, please contact [redacted] @hotmail.com

I earnestly hope this is merely a vicious rumor with no basis in fact, but the response above lends some credence to the rumor.  I will stay on top of it and keep you apprised.

UPDATE: Got a similar email from Roberto Di Meglio, Nexus’ publisher. Hope is fading…

UPDATE 2: This just popped on the BGG thread from someone claiming to be Mr. Di Meglio, so take it with a grain of salt. That said, it sadly does dovetail well with my rudimentary research results:

I won’t comment about the financial status of NG International.

However, I can confirm that I have now left the company – last week, to be exact, after resigning on june 28th with a 30-days notice, the same day that the last two employees of the company were fired.

I just want to say that the problems were not related to the results of our latest US releases without a partner – Whitechapel was great, selling out in 2 months, and while neither Magestorm or Dakota were huge successes, they did fine from a financial point of view.

As it happens, games are tougher than companies, so I am sure that any good game which was in Nexus’ catalog will show up again somewhere else, sooner or later!

Thanks to everybody who had nice words for us.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

You can read the Reiver Games “The End” post at this link.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

The Last of the Independents is a recent Euro-style board game from Numbskull Games. The idea behind this game is to out engineer, out manufacture, and out advertise your competition as an Automobile company circa 1950′s. Aside from the unique setting, this game is also noteworthy that it is a strategy board game that does not use dice.

The idea behind the game is that you are betting your cash against your opponents to try to win spots on the board. For example, in the first phase you are dealing with the different car models. You can put X million dollars into manufacturing sports cars. Your opponent could bid elsewhere (e.g., luxury cars or compact cars) or they could also put money into sports cars to try to beat you at it. When everyone has finished with the models, all the money tokens for the sports cards are put into a bag, and one drawn at random, that is the winner of the sports car (so the more you spend the better your odds) and this continues for all the different models.

Players repeat the same sequence for  the Engineering  and Promotions phase. You have to be careful though, your money has to last the entire round. So, if you spend all your money in the models phase, your opponents will eat you alive in the promotions phase. You also each get a unique car company that has strengths and weaknesses to help you along the way. And the round ends with announcing who won the Car of the Year (again a random bag draw).

There are other phases, cards to screw people over, earning victory points and all that fun stuff too. But, I won’t go into the entire rules breakdown.

Overall, we found the game  entertaining. The uniqueness of the setting and gameplay was a nice break from the more traditional games. The drawing from the bag mechanic got a little tedious toward the end, because you do it so much. I think a dice cup would have been better suited, because it can be a pain getting little tokens in and out of the bag.

This game is available now from Numbskull’s website, your FLGS, or Amazon.com and various other retailers.

MSRP is 39.99. This is a must have game for any car aficionado who is into board gaming. People into marketing and engineering may also enjoy it for its theme. It is also a good fit to play with any non-gamers, as it does not have a gamer-centric appearance (my wife still will not play RuneBound with me after years of attempts).

Thanks to Patrick Stevens, the games creator, for submitting this copy for review.

Stuart

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Here is the box after opening.

The card deck in the lower-right corner in the plastic bag is an oddity. None of the cards are in the manual, so I am assuming they are promo cards. Here is the list if you are interested.

Death Sentinel
Blade Trap
The Vision
Mammoth
Harruli (complete upgrade set on this character)

A new addition in this release are experience point tokens. Here is the pile of experience.

Here is a shot of the dungeon board/light tracker.

The sorter cards as well.

I am doing this post far too late at night for any real analysis, so if you have a specific question about the game I will do my best to answer it.

Update: I am adding a scan of the front manual page with the card listings.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Players acquire palette color cards by playing hex tiles and combining the two  or more colors on either side of the connection point(s). As one of the many color-blind gamers this mechanic made me a bit nervous, but these are primary colors so it is not an issue.  As with other tile-laying games, I sense many opportunities to mess with other players. “Oh, I am so sorry, did you need that side of the tile? Oops, I blocked it totally without malice and by accident.” Wink, wink, nudge. nudge.

Here is an image of a player making a tile connection.

Here are some of the colors derived from the connections. This shot came from a useful reference sheet that comes with the game.

Victory points derive from completed commissions (all of which are famous paintings) and whatever remains in your hand at game’s end.

“Pastiche” is relatively rules light, with only an eight page rulebook and feels like a “fast” game.  “Pastiche” supports 2-4 players and an estimated play time of 45-60 minutes. Once I get a chance to play it, I will post a review.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Defenders is a co-op game with players fielding player characters (cleric, paladin, etc) to defend “Monarch City” against four evil generals and their minions.  Their rapidly multiplying minions.  Normal co-op mechanics apply, with minions randomly spawning everywhere, heroes exterminating minions and card collecting to get enough mojo to kill the four evil leaders.  Since this is a fantasy game, you have to roll dice to kill minions and then get enough dice (though collecting cards of the correct color) to defeat the evil generals. Through some great teamwork and an excellent magic gate placement by your humble author, we defeated the evil and saved the world. Hurray!

Play is fast and easy to learn, but we stumbled over some of the turn sequences. Experience is an excellent teacher, so the next game should go smoothly.  Overall, a fun game and i would play it again.  I am an RPG player from way back, so throwing dice to kill things warmed my cockles.  I know that Euro gamers often spurn the randomness of dice in favor of long-term strategies, but I happen to like a little chaos in my board games.

“Fzzzt!” places you in the role of a budding  industrialist building some factories. This quick card game is distantly related to “Thunderstone” and other deck building games, but much simpler and uses a bidding system to get cards. These cards then enhance your pool of resources to build specific card combos. These combos equal victory points. I am uniformly awful at bidding games and my last place finish underscored the point.  Still, a quick game and fun art.

Finally, I got in a round of a prototype medieval-themed card game that is still under development. It was a kick and had a great theme. Sadly, it is still so early in development that the rep requested no images. Suffice to say I will follow this one and let you know more as soon as I can.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer

Click this link to enter our contest for a free copy of the “Eoris” Role-playing game!

I am about to commit heresy among board game fanatics, but here we go.

My question is this; do board games really need these beautiful board game components?  I am not saying sell games with sub-standard components that fall apart after three games or go the Cheapass Games route and simply reuse the same tokens/meeples over and over again.  Solid, durable components that get the job done without 10 Pantone colors and art worthy of Leonardo  da Vinci on every token are acceptable to me.

I advocate this “generic” approach for a couple of reasons. Primarily it is about getting board games out to the public and cheap allows more people to play.  That and it helps overcome “sticker shock” from hobby newcomers when buying a new game. $25.00 is a practical impulse buy. $50.00 is enough to give pause.  Move more retail units and the hobby grows stronger. This is a good thing.

While cost is clearly an issue, I have a feeling. Nothing firm mind you, just a feeling deep in the back of my skull that this “marketing arms race”  drives game design and that is evil.  I keep asking myself, “Did ‘Board Game X’ really need 300 miniature plastic goblins or did the need to add cool components drive the design?”  Did a competitor come out with a 250 goblin game and you have “goblin envy?”  Of course, this is purely subjective, but some of the “BIG” board games released over the past couple of years seems oddly…over-designed.  If the tail did indeed wag the dog, then we all suffer for it.  Lean, fun mechanics should drive component design, not the other way around.

Speaking of design, a generic approach would put new game designers on equal footing with the established juggernauts. Start-up costs for a board game publishers are huge and a public that accepts a great game with less than great components might encourage more designers to release games. This is a good thing because the next “Settlers of Catan” is on a kitchen table somewhere waiting for a release…

Do you agree or am I alone in my thoughts?

Please feel free to rant at me in the comments below.

Trask, The Last Tyromancer