Edo & HuMei's Game Review Video 003: Death Angel

Our review/playthrough for Death Angel is available now on YouTube!

   

Multiple Game Reviews Up!

A few more game reviews are up on OurBigBlueBall.com

Forbidden Island
The review/playthrough video for Forbidden Island should be coming up soon.

Guillotine

Set

Also on the scope -- Edo and HuMei's podcasts, which we hope to get up on OurBigBlueBall.com soon!

[Game Review] Poo: The Card Game

A review for Poo: The Card Game is available at Poo: The Card Game on OurBigBlueBall.com.

Have a look!

[Game Review + Video] Fluxx

A review for Fluxx is available at FLUXX – The Rules May Change – But The Fun Never Stops! on OurBigBlueBall.com.

Have a look!

Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot

Ah.  Killer Bunnies.

I recall picking this up at a game store that I frequented a number of years ago (before it closed its doors).

It seems innocent enough a game.  You play bunnies, buy things such as cabbage and water to feed your bunnies when the need arises, and carrots.  When the last carrot is taken, the game ends, and you randomly determine which carrot is the Magic Carrot.  The one holding the Magic Carrot is the winner.

All the while, you're trying to kill off your opponent's bunnies.  And I mean with laser guns, chain saws, green gelatin (with evil pineapple chunks!), a sea-whiz mount . . . or how about a miniature black hole?

It's a delightfully morbid little game that's a lot of laughs and has more strategy to it than it appears.  The concept to most understand in Killer Bunnies is that you have to think two turns ahead, and most cards can only be played if you have a bunny in play.

The art is colorful and comical, and there are puns and popular culture references galore (especially in the expansion sets).

If you haven't picked up the game, I strongly suggest that you do.  While there are a number of expansions, you can have plenty of fun with just the basic set.  There is a deluxe set also available, but I don't have that one (I have the original blue box that comes with the bonus yellow booster deck).

You can find more information on it at the official Killer Bunnies website.  There are also a number of other bunny-related games there.

[Flash Game] The Necronomicon

Some of you probably already know about the flash card game based on the Call of Cthulhu mythos, called The Necronomicon.

Not a bad way to kill time once you get all the rules down.  See how far you can get.  My highest is 19-Yithian Librarian.  I'm sure that anyone who would spend enough time on it could get higher than that.

You can find the game here.  It looks like an updated version is here.

Kanji Attack!

I started coming up with a print-on-demand to sell on The Game Crafter, and was writing down a few ideas.

One of them was a game with "runes," where players would play combinations of them with progressively better effects. It started to get a little unwieldly with the number of combinations I was coming up with.

That wasn't so much the pain in the butt. The real problem was coming up with the aforementioned runes. I would have to create them, draw them, scan them, clean them up, scale them . . . then repeat until I got everything I needed.

I was doing a project at work where I would put some kanji on my desk so that visitors could have something interesting to look at what they were waiting for someone in my department, when I eventually got an idea: "Hey! Instead of runes, why don't I just use kanji? They're already made, look like runes, already have meanings, and all I have to do is type them into the graphics software I'm using."

That's how Kanji Attack! was born.

Kanji Attack! is part combat card game, and part educational tool. Progressing through turns, each player plays matching kanji cards for a number of different effects, and the more copies you play, the better the effect is. The first to reduce all their opponents' Hit Points from 20 to 0 wins.

The cards are separated into five types: Attack, Support, Reaction, Boost and Special.

• Attack cards are used to do damage to your opponent;

• Support cards usually have non-damaging effects, such as drawing cards, but can also hinder your opponent, such as by looking at their hand and stealing a card;

• Reaction cards are used when another combination is played, such as by stopping a combination or attack;

• Boost cards can be used to enhance combinations;

• and Special cards have unique effects that other cards don't have.

The full base set contains 108 cards (104 kanji cards, and 4 other cards used during the game), 80 tokens ("winks") to keep track of Hit Points, and accomodates between two and six players.   Future sets will include additional cards and rules.

It's planned for release in the second week to middle of September, and will retail for $19.99. 

Yu-Gi-Oh! -- "Automatic Giant"

Well, my translation of the fourth chapter of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! novel is available in the downloads section of my website.

Enjoy!

Death Angel: The Space Hulk Card Game

Death Angel is a card game based on the world of Warhammer 40,000.  Warhammer 40,000 (40K for short) is, at its core, a tabletop miniatures game, that has spawn video games, novels and various other media.  The full background of the universe is beyond the scope of this post, and you can read up on the series from the above links if you are not familiar.

What I will go in to is that humankind's technology has stagnated somewhat (even though they have technology far above modern time), and the Imperium of Man is always on the lookout for older technology.  One source of relics of the past are giant, floating masses called space hulks, which are a combination of space station and older star ships that have been fused together to form living areas.

These hulks usually have nasty surprises waiting for visitors -- creatures called Genestealers, from a race of aliens called the Tyranids -- think about the xenomorphs from the movie Aliens, but far more bad-ass.  They infect species to call fleets of their brethren to harvest planets...but that is another item that is beyond the scope of this post.

Exploration of these space hulks are dangerous, and thus the Imperium of Man uses Space Marines to explore them.  Not just any Space Marines, but cream-of-the-crop, bearing Tactical Dreadnought Armor (Terminator armor) to protect themselves.

It doesn't always work.

There was an older board game based on this exploration called non-so-coincidentally Space Hulk (and a limited re-release recently), and was known for being extremely one-sided, and Space Marines died quite quickly.

Anyway, the card game version is similar, in that you explore a space hulk, and try to get out alive.  Each player assumes a team of two marines from the six teams available.  Depending on the number of players, they may control more than two teams.

Each turn, players play an action card to determine what their team will do: Attack, Support, or Move + Activate.  These actions allow all the team members to do something.  The only problem is, you can't play the same card in consecutive turns, so planning is imperative.  It is a good think that this game is a cooperative venture, and everyone gets to plan among their groups.  Each turn an Event card is drawn to affect (usually hinder, but sometimes help) the marines, and spawn Genestealers throughout the group.

There are a total of five locations (counting the initial location) that marines have to survive through.  Once they do and complete whatever the text is on the final location, they win.

Easier said than done.  Often, Genestealers will spawn in the most inconvenient of areas.  In the game, the marines are presented in a column, and face either the left or right of the formation, with some terrain cards sparsed in certain portions of the formation.  This is where the Genestealers spawn, and can sometimes be behind the marines, which makes it a lot harder for them to survive an attack.  If a swarm (group) of Genestealers is too large, the marine will undoubtedly die.

My friends and I have a blast with the game, however, the number of players also increases the difficulty exponentially.  In the ten or so times we've played a three-player game (where each player gets two teams), we've won approximately twice.  Compare this to the six two-player games that have been played (each player gets two teams), we've won about two times.

Some items of strategy to keep in mind:

- Doors are your friend.  If at all possible, try to put some Support Counters on the door when you can: this will reduce the number of Genestealers remaining in the formation when you move.  The Red team is crucial for this, as its Move+Activate card allows them to put two Support counters on the door instead of one.
- An action card allows ALL members of a team to do that action.  This is highly important, as one attack could mean the different between succeeded and having a marine die.
- Protect the heavy hitters.  There are three particular marines that are crucial for survival.  One is the Red team member with the assault cannon (the one with three attacks); second is the holder of the flame on the Purple team (the one that destroys a number of Genestealers equal to the die roll); and third is the wielder of the lightning claws (using its attack card, can automatically slay up to three Genestealers in range, but has a chance to die himself).  Try to keep these ones toward the middle of the formation to exploit their ranges.  Put Support tokens on the flamer-holder when you can, in order to exploit its mass-kill effect.
- Terrain cards can only be activated once per turn.  That is, the Door can only be activated once per turn, and the same goes for terminals.
- You can't spend Support tokens from marines that are facing away from a swarm in order to survive its attack.  If you are rolling to survive from an attack from a swarm, you can normally spend a Support token to re-roll if you are facing the swarm; you can't do this if the marine is facing away.

If you are a 40K fan, it is highly advised that you pick up this game, and I'm glad I did.  I might have to pick up another copy, as my cards are getting worn.  It's available from Fantasy Flight Games, and the official website for the game is here.

Set

Your head will hurt when you start playing this game.  I don't mean as you play this game; rather, your head will start hurting when you first encounter this game.

From the Wikipedia article about Set:

Several games can be played with these cards, all involving the concept of a set. A set consists of three cards which satisfy all of these conditions:

• They all have the same number, or they have three different numbers.
• They all have the same symbol, or they have three different symbols.
• They all have the same shading, or they have three different shadings.
• They all have the same color, or they have three different colors.

The rules of Set are summarized by: If you can sort a group of three cards into "Two of ____ and one of _____," then it is not a set
Given any two cards from the deck, there will be one and only one other card that forms a set with them. One example of a set would be these three cards:

• One red striped diamond
• Two red solid diamonds
• Three red open diamonds

In one game, the dealer lays out cards on the table until either twelve are laid down or someone sees a set and calls "Set!" The player who called "Set" takes the cards in the set and the dealer continues to deal out cards until twelve are on the table. If a player sees a set among the twelve cards, s/he calls "Set" and takes the three cards, and the dealer lays three more cards on the table. It is possible that there is no set among the twelve cards; in this case, the dealer deals out three more cards to make fifteen dealt cards, or eighteen or more, as necessary. This process of dealing by threes and finding sets continues until the deck is exhausted and there are no more sets on the table. At this point, whoever has collected the most sets wins.

A friend introduced the game to a group at a regular family game night at a now-defunct comics and game store I used to go to, and for everyone who didn't know the game, their heads actually started to hurt.  The key to Set is to let the rules sink in -- approximately one week should does it; not even playing during that week.  The next time you play it, you'll start to get it.  It won a Mensa award, and you by all means don't have to have the Mensa-level I.Q. in order to play it.

You can pick it up at various hobby stores, online, and even at Borders.  There are also many variations and other games at The Set Company.  There's also a version for the mobile phone that you can download.