DEAD OF WINTER: A CROSSROADS GAME

DEAD OF WINTER: A CROSSROADS GAME, Plaid Hat Games, 2014

14+, 45-210 minutes, 2-5 players, Co-operative

It's called Dead of Winter because it's set in the dead of winter, you see, and the chances are that by the end of the game all your characters will be dead. It's clever like that. And I'm not kidding, you'll probably lose this game and you'll love it regardless. This is a brutal mind-messing zombie co-op like no other because it tells a really compelling narrative and forces you to make difficult choices in between. To use Plaid Hat's words, "Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition - but for each individual player to achieve victory, he must also complete his personal secret objective. This secret objective could relate to a psychological tick that's fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony!"

There's too many damn people! And not enough food!

How does this play out? Each player gets to choose a couple of characters from a random selection of four cards (more on them later). In each turn, players first reveal the crisis, which is a shortage of cards that need to be set aside, such as medicine, fuel or food. While at times players may deliberately choose to not fulfill the crisis in order to complete other objectives, it's rare that you can do that a number of times in the game because the game punishes you. Each player rolls action dice and places them in their unused action dice box. Good rolls can be used to search or fight zombies, bad rolls for putting up barricades or cleaning out the waste in the colony before it becomes a toxic problem. That's right, you have to even manage your shit pile. Once every player has taken their turn, you pay food according to how many characters are at the colony. And if you don't have enough food for them, starvation sets in and that's a whole other world of trouble. Not long after, you start adding zombies, and this is where a real balancing act needs to be achieved. Do you send characters out of the colony to search for items that might help you? Every time you go travel from one location to another you risk death. The other locations aren't safe, though, so for every one character at an external location, you attract one zombie. Attract too many and the location is overrun and the characters there are killed. But if you stay at the colony, not as many zombies arrive but you have to constantly pay food (people outside the colony are considered to be foraging for food). So, you have to balance where your players go to have minimal effect on the game.

Every player gets a board like this. It's usually academic because your characters are most likely going to have their flesh ripped from their bodies some time soon. 

There are six non-colony locations that can be explored, but remember that every time you go outside, you run the risk of injury or death that is determined simply by a die roll. There's a 1 in 2 chance that you're fine but if you're not, you're really not - you may be wounded, catch frostbite, be killed instantly or get bitten. Each location has its own deck that can be searched that is tailored specifically to the location itself. For example, the police station tends to have more guns, the gas station tends to have more fuel, the hospital tends to have more medicine, and so on. So where you search is a choice but you might not be lucky enough to find what you need.

See that track at the bottom? That's morale. If that drops to zero then the game is over. Morale decreases every time a character dies, every time a crisis is not resolved and every time there's a shortage of food. In other words, often.

The zombies are cardboard cut-outs, which are kind of cute because of the colours and design but there's no question that this game would be even more incredible had they been miniatures. There's also no question that this game would have been prohibitively expensive had they been plastic miniatures, though, so we do with cardboard...

This is turn 2 in tonight's game. See how high morale is - 9 out of a possible 10? Within 6 turns it was at 0. Those locations marked 1 to 6 with zombies on them are the six possible entrances into the colony. Once zombies overrun the colony, you've had it.

As cardboard cut-outs go, these are actually very nice.

One of the wonderful things about this game is how quickly things can go wrong for the colony. In tonight's game, one of the players was bitten - a one in twelve chance - just as they returned to the colony. That's one of the worst things that can happen because the disease spreads. In an instant, three characters were dead and morale had plummeted.

This is our colony and we're about to lose all hope.

You can see that at entrances 1 and 2 we've even set up barricades which repel zombies that try to get in. But it's purely academic because we're about to fail the crisis, lose one morale and lose the game.

So, what is it that separates Dead of Winter from Zombicide, Zombies!!!! or every other zombie game? It's not just that there's a group objective and that there are also individual objectives and that you sometimes have to sacrifice one for the other ("Yes, I know it would help everyone if I searched the gas station, but I really, really need to go to the hospital right now and no-one can stop me.") What really makes this game are the Crossroads cards, a truly ingenious addition to the game. At the start of every player's turn, the player to their right secretly draws a Crossroads card. If a certain precondition is met during that turn, the player holding the card reads it out loud and forces a very difficult choice that either must be faced by the other player alone or by the whole group. Here are some examples...

It's like a Trump rally with all these screaming babies, except there are zombies. And in this game, too #politicalhumour.
Seriously, though. This game has people throwing babies away. It goes places no other game I know goes.

It's very rare to win with these Crossroads cards - sometimes you just have to pick the lesser of two evils. Do you lose all your food tokens, or do you lose 5 food tokens and 1 morale? Difficult choice, and in this case it's just up to that one person. Some of the cards, like the baby one above or this one below, are adult, and they're marked in the bottom right-hand corner, so that if you want a fun family game of surviving the zombie apocalypse (because why not kill zombies with your kids?!?) then you can remove them. We don't.

That is SERIOUSLY MESSED UP! Your character just committed suicide!!!

How do objectives work? At the beginning of the game the entire group gets an objective and then every player gets a secret objective. There are four examples below. Yes, I know my photography in this review is blurry. That's because I'm suffering from frostbite, I'm holed up in the Police Station surrounded by zombies, it's freezing cold and I don't even know why I'm taking photographs because it's the end of the world and who the hell wants to see my photographs anyway?

I have never seen a game where the players completed the main objective and all players completed their own personal objectives. That's how hard this game is. There have been a couple of times where I've seen the players complete the main objective, and even seen a couple of the players complete their own objectives as well, but not all. Oh yes, see that bottom-right objective? Just because the game wasn't hard enough already with all the managing food, managing morale, managing waste, tending wounds, holding back zombies, dealing with crises, you can also run the game so that one of the players might be a Betrayer. And that is also genius, because when players go off to fulfill their own objectives, are they doing it because they have needs, or are they doing it to actively undermine the group? You learn pretty soon that someone is a Betrayer when you fail a crisis because one of the players has deliberately put down the wrong card. So then on top of everything else, now you have to work out who the Betrayer is. If you work it out.... IF... then you can try to exile them or have them killed. Either way, you're now fighting a battle on two fronts - against the zombies and against the Betrayer. It's bleak, extremely tense stuff.

So, who are the characters? They're a wide assortment of individuals from a soldier to a sheriff to a ninja to a dog. Yes, Sparky the Dog, whom we tend to call Sparky the Wonderdog because he's such an amazing character. Of course, Sparky gets a little stupid when he's equipped a sniper rifle and is killing zombies from a distance, since dogs can't fire sniper rifles. But we try to overlook that. And the fact that most of the characters are white. And also the fact that the ninja is called Mike Cho because, you know, racial stereotyping. Each character has an influence value, that can sometimes be the difference between life or death. They have an attack value, which is the value on one die that they need to fight a zombie, and a search value. Thomas Heart (top-left here) is a soldier so he can kill a zombie with a 1 on one of your 6-sided dice that you roll at the beginning. He's not as good at searching, though, so he needs a 3-6 on a d6 to search a location. 

Seriously, the dog can use a gun. That's just stupid.

Some of the things that you can find in the gas station.

So, let's put some numbers to this game.

Accessibility: 4/5 - The rules are fairly short but there are a number of situations that arise in the game where you're left struggling to look through the rules for a clarification that sometimes just isn't there.

Design: 2/5 - The cut-outs of the zombies and the characters are probably the best thing in terms of visual design here, but you're not really focussing on the aesthetics because you're too busy telling a story, usually the story of how you and your friends died during the zombie apocalypse.

Depth: 4/5 - This game goes places where most other games would not dare to tread. The Crossroads cards provide an extraordinary psychological depth that is only added to with the potential of a Betrayer in your group. You'll find yourself working with people but not trusting them at all. The result is an extraordinary amount of tension to go on top of the tension created by zombies trying to kill you. 

Replayability: 4/5 - Three differing game-length possibilities along with a wide assortment of potential characters and Crossroads cards meant that, while you may not want to play it every week, there is a real draw to return to this game, even if only because you want to eventually beat it!

Availability: 4/5 - Easily available online. At $60, it's more expensive than most other game, especially those without miniatures, but it really is worth it!

Summary: Theres a good reason that this gets 8.0 on Boardgamegeek - because it is an excellent game. You're working with people whom you suiddenly no longer trust, trying to keep everyone else alive while also trying to look after your own interests. The game balance is superb, even if there is a gun-toting dog (although, hey, this is America) and even if many of the situations that arise aren't explained properly in the rules. Your group teeters on the edge of death for the entire game and in the middle of managing resources like food and medicine while fighting back zombies, you're also often forced to make difficult ethical choices along the way. It's cooperative but also "screw you guys, I need to go and do this." I don't know a person who has played this game who doesn't like it. It is extremely difficult, which makes it all the more rewarding when you survive the winter, but even when you don't win, you'll have formed a wonderful story. It's honestly like The Walking Dead - brutal, tense and you never know who's about to die next. The difference is that it doesn't involve staring anti-socially at a TV screen and is instead a wonderful way for an older family or group of friends to get their zombie fix once evening. Moreover, it has another bonus of not having Carl in it. Seriously, no-one like s Carl. Even Carl probably dislikes Carl. If I were the actor playing Carl, I would want zombies to eat me in real life.

Final Score: I'm giving this gem of a gem a whopping 84%.

A BRIEF REFLECTION ON MY GAME PURCHASES

Why Am I Buying So Many Games? - A Brief Reflection

I can't help but notice that I'm buying a lot of games recently. You may have noticed it, too. Of course, I have a lot of old games, from the classics like Monopoly and Sorry! to Clue and Snakes and Ladders. I played these games when I was a child, I used to think that I would play them with my children, too, but I have come to realise that they are, in fact, appalling. It's surprising that I actually even made it out of childhood with games like that. This is probably why I became a TV addict, although having a TV in the kitchen when we were eating breakfast, lunch and dinner probably also helped with that! Some of the games that I bought later in childhood, like Heroquest, The Knights of Camelot and Chaos Marauders still stand the test of time, at least somewhat. They were more complex, more engaging and the artwork was better.

So, why not just play those games? Why is it, for example, that in the last week or so I've bought Castle Panic, 7 Wonders, Castle Assault and Star Trek Panic? Why do I have even more games pending? This little vignette explores why....

Firstly, there is a deep, existential gnawing at my soul that exposes a chasm of nothingness and the futility of my life. So, since my life is meaningless anyway, why not spend it playing games since they bring me joy and help me forget my ultimate cosmic insignificance?

Secondly, Games now are insanely good. I remember reading an article from that bastion of quality British journalism known as the Daily Mail that spoke of the imminent end of board games and that given the quality of computer games nowadays, no-one would want to play games like Monopoly that just results in table-flipping and divorce. Well, that's true, Monopoly is kind of a bad game, but the author of the article was obviously totally unaware of how Kickstarter has revolutionised the board game industry and has helped bring truly extraordinary games to the fore. This is, without question, the golden age of board games. Contemporary game design - and I mean the actual mechanics as well as the actual visuals of the game - are really wonderful nowadays. It's like owning art, but art that you can actually engage with on a physical level and not just a visual level.

I would say that Ghost Stories is one of the most beautiful games that I have ever seen. It's also insanely difficult, which makes beating it incredibly rewarding. It's challenging art, and not like the sex bed by Tracey Emin challenging art.

If you don't believe that we're in the Golden Age of board games, take a look at this beauty. This is part of the description of game play of a forthcoming Kickstarter called Planetarium. Look at the artwork on that card! And look what it is - it's a game about planetary formation that teaches science as you play. It's not just art, it's actual educational art that engages you. Instead of going round and solving who killed whom by a dull process of elimination, or instead of rolling dice and sending other players' pawns back, or instead of building hotels and charging people rent, this game has players being planets that have to develop. You're not a human (see, for example, Wiz-War), or an orc (see Chaos Marauders) or a vampire (see Fury of Dracula).... you're a goddamn planet! Just conceptually that's mind-blowing, and that's even before you get to the game mechanics and artwork. If you can think of a concept, there's probably already a board game about it. That is what I mean by the Golden Age of board games.

Thirdly, co-op games. I never knew of such things. Games where you can work together against the game? Brilliant! I've actually seen someone flip a Monopoly board before. Why do people continue to expose themselves to such ruthless interplay? Why would you invite friends round just to simulate taking all their money? How is that a positive social experience? Co-op games avoid this entirely by ensuring that all players win (or lose) together. And my enjoyment of co-op games is not just because a certain person I've known very well for the last fourteen years or so *cough* *cough* hates to lose, but because honestly it's really nice to sit with someone or even with a group of other people and try to overcome a difficult challenge together. When four of us won at Ghost Stories for the first time, we were truly overjoyed. We felt like we had really achieved something together.

Dead of Winter is a spectacular Co-op game. This isn't my copy. This isn't even my house. If it were my house, the table would have matching chairs. I share this photo to remind myself that just because someone else may enjoy the same game as me doesn't mean that they have good taste in furniture.

Fourthly, TV is really bad. It really is, especially in America where there are commercials about as often as you breathe. And not even clever English commercials. They're just bad. And while a good film is fun here and there and while Breaking Bad was obviously a ridiculously good TV show that everyone should watch, I really don't want my kids growing up to be telly addicts like I was. I wasted so many years watching so much junk as a child. I would much rather my children read books, draw and play board games - spend leisure time thinking, learning, adventuring, maybe competing against each other and maybe sometimes working together. So, I'm stocking up on a variety of games that we can play as a family, that the children can play by themselves, and that Jenny and I can play by ourselves or with friends. It's basically an investment in family.

Fifthly, I have a compulsive spending problem. I like to hoard things, which is something that goes back to my childhood. It makes me feel secure - I feel safe surrounded by my games. Not surrounded like I would go to bed with my miniatures if I could, although, come to think of it....

Sixthly, community. It's the reason I got into X-Wing (and also partially the reason I'm slowly extricating myself from it as the community changes), it's the reason why I'm into Blood & Plunder now, and indeed to some extent Zephyr as well. These games have communities, generally of nice people. Not always, some are screaming racists and anti-semites ("not all Nazis were bad" said one gamer to me recently) but I've made some real friendships as a result of some of these games. I had a social group even before I moved to America, thanks to X-Wing and the Facebook group that I set up. That's an amazing thing.

And finally, games provide a roller coaster of emotions. Yes, so do books, but books take a long time to read and a game only takes hours or sometimes only a few minutes (Spaceteam, for example, lasts about five minutes per frantic game). Yes, so does TV but you're not as involved in a TV show as you are a game. You don't control what happens on TV so you can never get the same sense of personal drama. The tension I felt as Dracula running away from four vampire hunters, the exhilaration of making a good shot at Flick 'Em Up, the drama of a bad die roll... with good games these emotions are unparalleled.

I've shared this photo before and I'm sharing it again. Why?
Because my sheriff shot two men in one round and that was AWESOME!!!!!

If the game is good and the person or people you're playing with are good gamers, then you can really get into a game and really be there. I've searched dungeons, I've shot villainous cowboys, I've battled ghosts, I've put out raging fires, I've fought light-saber duels and flown X-Wings and TIE-fighters, I've sucked the blood of hapless humans (not really, it's not kosher), I've withstood massive Roman sieges, and much more... and all from the comfort of my own home with friends and family. And that is why I keep buying games, because games are awesome. And that is why I review games in this blog, so that you, dear reader, might also share in the best of games and have the best of times with friends and family.

YOUR CHANCE TO VOTE FOR WHICH GAMES I REVIEW

I like to mix up the reviews on this blog to provide a different kind of game every once in a while. But what if you have a particular game you want reviewed? I'm a man of the people... I can respond to such requests. If you want me to review a particular game, all you have to do is become a follower of this blog and then post a comment on this thread of the top 5 games that you would like to see reviewed before all others.

Here's the long list of games that I've got, or that are due to arrive in the next year....

GAMES REVIEWED SO FAR

Dead of Winter - 84%
Jailbreak - 78%
Flick 'Em Up - 75%
Red November - 65%
Candy Land - 14%

GAMES THAT I COULD REVIEW NOW

Armadora - small, cute magical conflict game
Balancing Beans - children's solo puzzle game that subtly teaches algebra
Battleship - classic game

Bohnanza - card game involving beans

Carcassonne - popular tile-laying game

Castle Panic - cooperative game to keep monsters out of your 3-D castle, with expansion

Chaos Marauders - old school card-laying battle of orcs
Charades for Kids - it's charades, but for kids
Chess - classic game
Chutes and Ladders - please don't make me review this. Candy Land was bad enough.
Clue - classic game

Dark Tower - 1980s classic board and electronic combo
Dead of Winter: The Long Night - sequel to the above
Dinosaur Escape - cooperative game for kids

Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! - competitive game for kids based on a popular book
Dungeon! - classic 1980s dungeon crawl

Dungeons & Dragons Attack Wing - modern miniatures game
Elementos - super simple portable two-player game
Engineering Ants - cooperative kids' game with a twist
Exploding Kittens - super-successful Kickstarter card game
Flashpoint - cooperative game of firefighters, with expansions.
Fleeced! - Wallace & Gromit rustle sheep
Friday - solo card game in which you try to help Robinson Crusoe survive
Fury of Dracula (3rd ed.) - Semi-cooperative game in which players try to hunt down Dracula

Ghost Stories - Extremely difficult but beautiful cooperative game, with expansion

Heroquest - classic table top game, with expansion
Hey, That's My Fish! - penguins compete over diminishing resources
Hi Ho! Cherry-O! - children's game
Hoot, Owl, Hoot! - Cooperative game for kids

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes - Not a board game. One player uses a computer to describe the bomb while others try to help them defuse it.
Kings of Israel - Like Pandemic but with Biblical Prophets and some excellent twists
Knights of Camelot - Old school 1980s TSR game where you gather experience by performing quests
Let's Go Fishin' - children's game
Lord of the Rings Living Card Game - Extremely difficult cooperative game for one or two players, with expansions
Lord of the Rings Risk - Like Risk but different
Make Your Own Opoly - Monopoly but you design the board
Mice and Mystics - Cooperative fantasy game of mice battling cockroaches, cats, etc
Monopoly - classic
Monopoly (Star Wars) - classic trying to be better
Monopoly (Transformers) - classic trying to be better
Monster Factory - cooperative or competitive kids' game of tile laying to create fun monsters
Pandemic - modern classic resource management game

Pop Up Pirate - stick swords in a barrel until the pirate pops up. Great for pirate parties

Race To The Treasure - cooperative game for kids trying to reach the treasure before the ogre

Rush Hour - children's solo educational puzzle game
Scrabble - classic

Sentinels of the Multiverse - cooperative card-laying game to defeat various villains

SET - annoying matching game that hates colourblind people
Slapjack - kids' card game that teaches local animals

Socialism! - An add-on that makes Monopoly nice
Sorry! - simple classic game with a merciless twist
Spaceteam - mega-fast paced cooperative game trying to repair a rocket before it falls into a black hole
Spot It! - matching game for kids or adults
Star Wars: Empire vs Rebellion - Part Poker, part blackjack, part something else, all in the Star Wars universe
Star Wars: Epic Duels - modern classic miniatures game that spawned a thousand fan decks

Star Wars Miniatures Starter Set - don't make me review this, please. The game failed because it's so dull.

Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures - the biggest-selling miniatures game in America today, and for good reason
Stratego - classic wartime strategy game

Terror in Meeple City - dexterity game of rampaging monsters

The Battle of Balaclava - old school board game attempting to recreate a disastrous battle

The Ladybug Game - children's game
The Mystic Wood - classic TSR, search the wood, solve a quest and leave before anyone else

The Siege of Jerusalem (2nd ed.) - extremely complicated game recreating the Roman siege of 69C.E.

Toss Across - Noughts and Crosses (aka Tic-Tac-Toe) with beanbags
Twister - classic

Wiz-War (8th ed.) - Wizards duel to the death, or try to steal each others' treasure
Yahtzee - classic

Zombies!!! - Before Zombicide, Dead of Winter and all the others, there was Zombies. Features the grossest artwork of any game.

It's funny. Listing them like this shows me that I've really spent a lot of my life playing games....

GAMES THAT I COULD REVIEW BUT HAVE NOT YET PLAYED (SO A REVIEW MAY TAKE A WHILE)

Then There Were None - animal extinction game for older children
Captain Sonar - co-op team game of tense submarine combat
Castle Assault - solo or 2-player game of....ya know... assaulting castles
Ivor the Engine - Kids game based on the BBC TV classic

Legends of Andor  - stunningly beautiful cooperative game

Star Wars: Imperial Assault - one of the highest rated games of all time
7 Wonders - The highest rated family game on BGG. Ancient city building.

GAMES THAT ARE ON THEIR WAY

Bloc by Bloc - Cooperative game of contemporary urban insurrection
Blood & Plunder - 28mm historically accurate pirate game
Conan - Insanely popular Kickstarter semi-cooperative game
Imploding Kittens - The expansion pack to one of the biggest Kickstarters ever
Joking Hazard - offensive card game by Cyanide and Happiness
Planetarium - beautiful planetary formation game, all sciency and stuff
Scuttle - pirate car game for kids

Zephyr: Winds of Change - Cooperative Steampunk dirigibles game

Don't forget - follow this blog and then post a comment below to try to influence what I review soon!


CANDY LAND

CANDY LAND, Hasbro, 2014
"A Sweet Little Game for Sweet Little Folks"
4+, 15-30 minutes, 2-4 players

According to the nostalgia sheet included with this game, Eleanor Abbott created the game Candy Land while she was a patient in a San Diego hospital back in 1948. She was a retired schoolteacher afflicted with polio. Seeing the number of children who were suffering from polio at the time, she decided to created a bright, fun, colourful game. 

"Who wouldn't love to dream of visiting a land with Gumdrop Mountains, Peppermint Stick Forests and Ice Cream Float Seas?" Well.... me. And anyone else with half a brain. I get it. If you're stuck in hospital in the nineteen fifties with nothing to do and you really don't have much of a brain to play an in-depth strategy game, then a game that is totally dependent on luck might just be for you. But that's different to releasing it on the mass market in the twenty-first century. There was never a reason to inflict this game on the rest of us, and certainly not in today's market.

I honestly think this might be a strong contender for the Worst Board Game in History. Here's how you play...

The Candy Land board is a smorgasbord of colour, on which apparently only Aryan children run about in an attempt to get diabetes. There are no dice in this game, instead there's a selection of cards each with a coloured square on. When you pull a card, you move onto the next square with that colour. Pull a card with two coloured squares and you move onto the second square of that colour. Sometimes you can follow a cut-through, like the Rainbow Trail, which is basically like a ladder in Snakes and Ladders. [For American readers, Snakes and Ladders is Chutes and Ladders. Don't get me started. I'm not in the mood after playing this game.] 

Sometimes you land on a square with a dot on. If you do, you've obviously entered some kind of sugar coma and can't be woken from it until you draw another card of the same colour. That's right - in the middle of the game you can just sit there. For turn after turn after turn. Stuck in hospital with polio? Want to escape to a land of sugar and fun and colour? Tough. Sit there and don't move until you randomly draw a card with one particular colour on it. Having fun yet? No? Then let's add another element. Let's take the Snakes/Chutes from Snakes/Chutes and Ladders and make them even worse. That's right, kids. You can be one square from the end and you can randomly draw a Candy Hearts card that takes you all the way down the board to the square right near the beginning with the Candy Hearts on. Feel like you're going nowhere in this hospital? Here's a board game to simulate your ennui. Did you get the Ice Cream float card? That's great. And yet totally meaningless because through absolutely no skill of your own at any random time you can be demoted to the back of the pack. Feeling like life is unfair as you lie there randomly afflicted with polio? Of course you do. So we've made a game that truly simulates the random cruelty of your life. We know, we know, Snakes/Chutes and Ladders at least controls how far you descend and also deliberately spaces out the rewards and punishments to create a luck game that's at least slightly balanced. But why should life be fair? Let's raise your hopes with random luck draws, so that you can dash ahead of your friends with the Ice Cream Float card only the next turn to have your hopes crushed with the Candy Hearts card. Welcome to hospital life.

And what about game design? Sure, this game is designed for children aged 4 and up, so we're not exactly looking for complex game mechanics. Yes, having a square on a card and moving it along is fine. If you're 4. And are living in the 1950s where the height of child entertainment is a stick you found in the garden. For the rest of us, particularly those of us who have played exciting contemporary board games with young children, it is mind-numbingly tedious. But let's keep it simple. Let's imagine we're a very sick 4-year old in need of something simple. The rules say that if two characters land on the same square, they share it. Really?

"Hi! We're forming an unhealthy obsession with sugar. Want to join us?"

They don't bloody fit!!!! How the hell can they share the square when they don't even bloody fit?!? 

Truly, it's hard to find ways for this game to get worse. Perhaps only if there were a sequel where the characters have eaten too much sugar that they are now too obese to move meaning that you can draw cards all you like but the playing pieces are just going to sit at the starting square until the players themselves stuff their faces with junk food and spew like some Roman banquet so that their pieces move to the square with the main colour evident in their vomit.

If someone gives you this game, assume one of three things about them - (1) they don't remember how appalling it is, (2) they suffered from polio as a child and they're trying to open up to you about their experience, or (3) they loathe you with a deep, profound hatred.

By the way, polio isn't funny and vaccinate your children. Seriously. In fact, maybe Hasbro should distribute this game to every anti-vaccination family around the world and force them to play it until they realise that highly infectious transmittable diseases are horrifying and unnecessary, which is also a perfect description of this game.

Time for our ratings. I think you can guess where I'm going with this.

Accessibility: 5/5 - The rules are ridiculously short because there's nothing for you to do in the game. Just pick up a card and move your piece accordingly. 

Design: 0/5 - Yes, it's brightly coloured but so is a paint pot, the pieces are too big for the squares and the game is totally random.

Depth: 0/5 - The shallowest game I have ever played. There is absolutely no skill involved at all. You are a passive pawn of chance. You literally have no input in this game at all.

Replayability: 0/5 - Seriously, why would you play this game twice? Nothing in this game is compelling in the slightest. If you give this to a child, all you're doing is teaching them every time they play that life is fickle and that nothing they do will change their future.

Availability: 5/5 - That's right. Potentially the Worst Board Game in History is readily available on today's mass market. It wasn't consigned to history. It's not a museum piece. It's a piece of crap that parents and grandparents still buy children today because adults are obviously cruel and want to dash the hopes of their children from the earliest possible age. If a child asks you for this game, realise that they think you are evil. And if you buy it for them, you just might be.

Final Score: Just because young children seem to enjoy this game because they have yet to learn of better things, I reluctantly award this game double figures. 14%

FLICK 'EM UP

FLICK 'EM UP, Pretzel Games, 2015
A cowboy-themed dexterity game

8+, 2-10 players, 45 mins

Here at "Boy Got Game," we like to bring you a variety of games and there's surely nothing like Flick 'Em Up. Yes, there are dexterity games on the market, but none so beautifully conceived as Flick 'Em Up. I'm not even going to hide how I feel about this game because it's such a winner - the only question is really how well I'm going to rate it. 

We start with the box itself. There's quality here unlike anything else I've seen. This wooden box is hefty, it's weighty. It feels like the kind of box you stored your most precious toys in as a child. It's an extremely important detail because it immediately shows you the care that has gone into this game.

Inside the box is an extremely simple rule book, a scenario book, some thick quality cardboard tokens and some simple but really effective wooden pieces.

The heart tokens you need from the very beginning but the rest are only used in scenarios as the game gets more complex. What is noticeable as you open the box, though, is the lovely array of colour and the clear simplicity of the game ahead.

It's the buildings that set the scene so brilliantly. Made from very durable thick cardboard, the buildings are colourful and cartoonish without being childish. Just like the box, they cleverly take you back to earlier years, of watching Westerns on TV. And the hands on the clock move - as a time marker. Each scenario tells you when the clock should start and when it should end (high noon) but when a game tells you that the time is up and you turn to each other and say, "No, let's finish this," that's a real indicator of an excellent game.

You set up the buildings, barrels, tumbleweeds (yellow cubes) and men according to the picture on the scenario and then you're ready to play. And the rules are disturbingly simple. You activate one men at a time and choose two of the following actions - move, shoot, use tokens. Each action can be performed twice - for example, if you find yourself in a good spot then you may not want to move but shoot twice. How do you move? Replace the character with the move token and flick it to where you want to go. If you flick like a lunatic and it hits something before stopping, you don't get to move.

Okay, that shot really hurt.

How do you shoot? You put down a little bullet token by the side of the character and flick it. If you knock the opposing character over, you cause a wound - if you hit it but don't knock it over, it's a glancing shot and no damage is done. Too many wounds and the character dies. If you go into a building where an opposing character is hiding out, you have a duel where each takes a shot at the other over an ever-decreasing distance until one character is hit. If your bullet ever hits something before hitting a character, there's no damage, at least in the basic game. And you can't shoot a man when he's down.

Duels are great. It's worth running into a building just to do them. In our last game, I ran into a building with three opposing law-breakers. Pow! I shot the first one dead. The other two fired back and missed. We drew closer. Second shot I missed and they both fired back, missing. We drew closer. Blam! I nailed that villainous Old Man Cooper and sent him packing. His henchman fired and missed. We draw closer. I fired again and sent his henchman straight to hell. Three on one and I popped them all. That's what a great evening's gaming is made of.

The sheriff and some of his men see Old Man Cooper come into town.

To remember turn order, the figures on the clock have differing colours. The scenario will tell you what colour hat everyone starts with. The player with initiative activates their first character, then the opponent activates their first character, then the first player chooses another character, etc. Each time a character is activated, you turn their hat over to the other colour, which is a very convenient way to remember turns.

"This town is ours for the takin', boys..."

Each side has five characters, which means that in theory the game can take ten players, but I wouldn't recommend it for a moment because that would mean waiting an eternity for your turn. The fewer players the better for this game. Two players is ideal, three or four is possible, but I wouldn't go beyond that. Indeed, in a four-player game, even though it says that each player chooses a certain number of characters, I would play that each player takes alternate turns.

This is a surprisingly strategic game. Whom do you activate first and should they move or shoot? How certain are you of making that shot...? Is it worth the risk of running out into the open?

Two of Old Man Cooper's boys may be down
but a long-range revenge shot hurts the law.

For added atmosphere, at the start of a game put on the soundtrack to The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly. It lasts almost exactly the same length of time as an average game and creates a ridiculously atmospheric mood to the game. 

The game is rated for 8+ but there's no reason it couldn't go down to 6. Yes, the strategic element means that older players are likely to think more about turn order and even character orientation (when you move or pick up a character, you choose their exact angle, which makes a difference because when you shoot you have to put the bullet next to the side of your figure and a good choice of angle makes it harder to be shot). At the same time, though, two young players of a similar age could certainly enjoy this.

The sharpshooting villains strike again...

Everything about this game is classy. The wood is simple yet effective, weighty yet capable of being flicked over. Where earlier scenarios involve just killing certain people (the first scenario has the victory condition of killing 3 opposing characters while the second has you having to kill one specific lead character), later ones get more complex, involving dynamite, rifles, bags of money and much more. Each scenario builds up nicely, allowing for a gradual increase in complexity. At the same time, though, the core mechanic is extremely simple - flick a bullet at another cowboy to kill him. I've seen reviews of this game that express real frustration because sometimes it gets a little fiddly - a building might get in the way, the angle may be horrible or you may miss every shot in a round. But that's what makes this game great, because when you hit it feels GREAT. And that's the joy of dexterity games. You don't have to be a great military strategist, you just need to be able to flick a token.

Two can play at that game, varmint!

I'll call the undertaker...

This picture is from scenario 2, where the sheriff is carrying two guns and can fire twice with each shoot action (giving him the possibility of shooting four times and round). It makes him a monster but all Old Man Cooper's men have to do is kill him to win. This is where strategy comes in. I decided to keep him as far back as possible and let my men bring Cooper's henchmen down to as little health as possible before bringing in the Sheriff....

Clearing out the henchmen...

Flanking fire!

The Sheriff dispenses some justice - two kills with two shots!

Old Man Cooper is down, hiding behind his henchman. I'll just gun him down first then...

Old Man Cooper's last stand

It's not often I'll mainly show photos of a game but the pictures really say it all. With Flick 'Em Up, you turn your dining room table into the Wild West. You're taking the shots, you're gasping as bullets whistle past, you're cheering as opponents go down. You're hiding behind barrels, running into the saloon all guns blazing, you're taking the sniper shot that stories are made of. Yes, it's more expensive than your average game but that's because of the quality of the pieces, which is extremely high.

It's a competitive game but casually so. Some games rely on the exact measurement of millimetres. Not this. This game just oozes fun. You pick up and put down your characters in roughly the same place they were before because it's not about the pick up, it's about the flick up. Or something.

To the ratings, then!
Accessibility: 4/5 - The rules are extremely short but not always clear. House rules are definitely needed throughout but the tone of the game is such that these are always created quickly and easily.
Design: 4/5 - This game oozes class. It feels like classic Westerns and puts you right in the action. There's nothing fancy but the combination of wooden figures and cardboard buildings works perfectly.
Depth: 3/5 - The scenarios improve in depth but at its core this is a dexterity game where you flick tokens, so depth isn't really the aim here.
Replayability: 4/5 - The simplicity of the game means that this is a perfect family game to pull out on a rainy afternoon. Set up the buildings as you want, create a scenario (or use one from the book) and then go!
Availability: 5/5 - Available online and in good stockists.

Final Score: 75%. It's simple, it's fun, it's engaging. If you're looking for in-depth strategy you won't find it here. If you're looking for something totally different to your average board or card game, this is it. More expensive than many other games but totally worth every penny.


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RED NOVEMBER

RED NOVEMBER (Revised Ed.), Fantasy Flight Games, 2011

"A Frantic Game of Survival On a Gnomish Submarine"

Imagine the scene.... you are your life partner sit down for a nice evening of board games. You play a few games and one of you wins all the games and the other person loses all the games. One person is happy, one is unhappy. Slowly, the relationship disintegrates, lawyers are brought in, children are traumatised.... it's just not necessary. Thankfully, a good number of decent co-op games are now on the market that don't shatter relationships and therefore ensure that little Tommy only sees Daddy at the weekends. Where most board games pit players against each other, or a team of players against one player (usually the evil overlord of some sort (e.g. Fury of Dracula, Heroquest, etc.)), cooperative games pit all the players together against the game itself. The most common way of achieving this is by having some sort of time limit and a task or set of tasks that need to be achieved before time is reached. 

How is this achieved in Red November? "Bad times have hit the experimental gnomish submarine BFGS Red November." [I have to interrupt here to say that I genuinely don't know what BFGS stands for. They never say. It's certainly not Big F'ing Gnomish Submarine, as we'll see shortly."] The sub has gone crazy, and everything is going wrong all at once. Fires are burning, the sub is leaking, and critical systems keep failing. Help is on the way, but the gnomish sailors must work together to survive until the rescuers arrive."

In other words, this game follows the totally standard format of co-op games, in having a task and a time to achieve it. Given that it follows the standard formula so tightly, how does Red November do it in a way that makes it different and exciting?

"Red November is a cooperative survival game for 1-8 players playable in 1-2 hours...."

Wait! 1-8 players? That's interesting. Not only can this game apparently be played solo but it can conversely take twice the number of people that your regular board game can take. The game expects you to play with at least three people, which is why there are starting places for 3-5 players, 6 players, 7 players and 8 players. What they don't indicate on the board is where you start if you're playing solo or with 2 players. Despite the fact that you can take a fairly educated guess, that's a little oversight. But let's open the box and see if there's anything else creative and exciting inside...

Board and rules. Nothing spectacular here. Let's go further...

And here you find the standard FFG (Fantasy Flight Games) box set-up, with a gap in the middle for the actual game contents and two large dividers to fill up the rest of the box space. And here's the first item of concern with Red November. It's clearly designed to be deliberately small to suggest a cramped submarine, but I find it's impossible to escape the thought that FFG was just trying to save money by providing the smallest possible game tokens and cards. Yes, there are eight figurines, but each one is only just larger than a thumbnail, and I have small fingers. No, really, I had to have an oboe made specially for me because my hands are so small.

How small? This small.

The same feeling of being cramped could have been achieved with a normal sized board and significantly larger gnome figures. And since we're talking about the gnome figures, I must mention that they all look exactly the same. Yes, FFG have just created one figure and mass produced it in a wide range of colours. So the figures aren't exciting at all. They're tiny and fiddly and no-one playing the game really pays any attention to them. In theory, they could be painted to make them more interesting (leaving the bases the original colour), but they're so small I don't fancy trying that any time soon. FFG get points for a novel idea but loses them instantly in the implementation.

Perhaps the game play is more novel. Players start in randomly determined rooms and the first turn, particularly for the very first player, is always spent not really knowing what to do because there are no crises to deal with, so most people head to the Captain's Cabin, where there is Grog hidden, or to the Equipment Store (room 8) where you can pick up tools that might help you in the future.

Perhaps the most unique feature about the game is the fact that there is no set turn order. A time track exists round the edge of the board and each player places their marker on the time track. Once all pieces move clockwise round the track, the game is won. But there are three measures on the board that need constant attention because they keep increasing - the asphyxiation level, the heat level and the pressure level, three tracks that are on the top left of the board and whose token is an extremely simple coloured wooden block. As in really cheap, wooden blocks. 

If any one of the three cubes reaches the end of their line, the game is over and all the gnomes die. If any cube passes the star midway along the line, then a successful reset by a gnome only takes it back as far as the star. If a gnome resets the track when the cube is still on the star, it resets back to zero. This is a very simple but effective mechanic that makes you afraid of drawing event cards (see below) because you don't want to move the cubes further along the tracks. In the two games we've played so far, we've had tracks reach one space from the end and stay there for a few turns, threatening game over. That makes for a really good amount of tension. This is the mechanic that really makes the game fun.

"I want you to create a really clever token for these tracks."
"How about a cheap, small wooden cube?
(*sigh*)

The time track is perhaps the most interesting and novel element of the game. In a rush against time, the designers realised that what's important isn't who is next, but who is last. Here's what I mean. Everyone starts with their time marker on the same space on the time chart...

... but then as they progress their markers move along the time line. The person who is at the back of the time line always takes the next turn. Why? Well, it's quite clever. Let's say your gnome decides to spent ten minutes trying to put out a fire. At the same time, another gnome takes four minutes to fix a leak. The gnome who has spent less time can then go and try to address a situation elsewhere on the sub, so the person at the back of the timeline, whoever it may be, always goes next. In the picture below, for example, yellow took an extremely long time to perform an action and so progressed furthest along the time chart. Green goes next because they're furthest back. What we know for sure is that Green, Orange and Red will all get a turn before Yellow, and that can be very useful for planning. This is perhaps the most novel part about the entire game.

As you move along the timeline, your marker crosses spaces with stars on them. Usually these signify drawing an event card (which is always either negative or neutral, never positive) but sometimes they allow you to draw an item card. 

Unfortunately, there's a problem. The board is so small that when your marker moves along the timeline, especially if you cross another person's marker, you often can't see if you've crossed or landed on a space that has a star on it. So, while the above configuration is how the game is meant to be played, it's better when those pieces are put next to the timeline but off the board. That surely was not the idea in design. This means that you're left playing a game where your pieces have to be off the board and where you cannot bump the board otherwise the pieces will go flying and you'll forget where you were. This is undoubtedly the most frustrating part of the game.

Event cards range from Leak to Fire to Fire Spreading and much more... and those are just the normal events you have to deal with. An attack of the Kraken (for which you need an aqualung and need to swim outside), missiles potentially launching and much more form potential grave dangers to the crew. 

There are definitely some cute dynamics when it comes to the events. If you have a flood in a room, for example, it fills up quite quickly...

If you open a hatch to a room with high water, the waters flows instantly between the two rooms, making low water in both. Low water slows you down but at least it's not impassable like high water. This attention to detail on how water and fire spread in a submarine adds real depth, as it were, to the game. 

Fire is the worst, though. Fire can spread very quickly and if you're caught in it, can be deadly. If you're lucky, a fire will start on a space where there's already water, which means that fire doesn't really start. But if it does start, not only can it spread but it adds to the Asphyxiation Track because it starts to burn up your oxygen.

I am reliably informed that fires don't just use up oxygen when they start but also while they continue to burn. As a former scientist with a crippling combination of OCD and pedantry, the fact that in this game oxygen does not continue to be consumed while fires rage annoys me. If it did, I appreciate that the game would be totally unbalanced, but the truth is that sometimes you just leave fires to burn while dealing with other things, and that does not seem to be sensible behaviour to me on a small submarine. You should be rushing to put out every fire and you don't.

Another challenge which can sometimes be fixed are blocked doors. If a fire is raging and you have to get it out, sometimes you have to spend time just getting the door opening, and that can be very challenging. Fixing things takes an action and takes time. You choose how much time you want to spend fixing the problem (1-10 minutes) and then roll the die. Imagine you decide to spend nine minutes fixing something. You roll the d10 and so long as you roll 1-9 then you are successful. Staggeringly, I have played this game twice and seen two differing players choose nine minutes but roll a 10. And that is actually really annoying because when that happens you realise that the core of this game is basic management of statistics and odds. You can help those odds with cards, like a fire extinguisher which adds +3 to your roll, meaning you only have to take 7 minutes to be certain of putting out a fire. Nonetheless, you're playing a numbers game and sometimes it seems a little stale because of this.

The room on the left has low water. Room 4 is on fire. It would be nice if you could open the door between them and have the water put out the fire, but the rules don't allow that. And anyway, this door is blocked so there are two reasons your plan won't work.

No review of this game can do it justice without mentioning one key element - Grog. No gnome may enter a room on fire until he takes a swig of Grog. But when he does so, he increases his intoxication level by one (to a maximum of four). At the end of a turn where you've had a swig of Grog, you're forced to check to see if you pass out. And that is a lot of fun. The gnomes gradually get more and more drunk which significantly increases their chance of passing out which, in turn, significantly decreases your chances of success. And if you're really lucky, you'll find some Coffee which will reduce your intoxication level.

It's actually things like this that save this game. Turning it into an actual drinking game where you have to take a serious drink every time your gnome consumes Grog makes the game especially fun, although the success of a game shouldn't really be dependent on how drunk the players are. As events build up, gnomes start passing out, they start stumbling and dropping items, the Kraken attacks at the same time that the missiles are about to go off and the chaos is fun. By the end of the game, your board might look a little something like this...

And then the designers add a clever twist near the end of the game. The sub is almost destroyed and you're all starting to panic. If there are fewer than ten game minutes left, any player with an aqualung can go outside, swim away and abandon their colleagues. That's right! It's co-op until you decide it's a totally lost cause and leave your friends to die. If that happens, you win if they do die, and you lose if they don't. That's a really nice twist for a co-op game.... "It's okay, I'll hold onto the Aqualung in case the Kraken attacks." "No, no, it's fine, I've got it...."

So, there are definitely some really nice touches to this game, particularly the intoxication rules, the sense of chaos and the clever way that turns are determined. What stops this from being a top game, in my opinion, is the annoyingly small board and the need to constantly perform a statistical analysis of likely rolls. 

We played this game twice and won twice. The first game had three players and was ridiculously easy, the second had four and was clearly harder. This makes sense because each player can only perform one action but may end up drawing anywhere between 2-5 events in each turn, meaning there's much more to deal with. So, if I were to recommend this game, it would be with a minimum of 4 players.

To the ratings, then...

Accessibility: 4/5 - The rules are short but, weirdly, can be confusing because a couple of differing pages may talk about different aspects of fires, for example. You can easily run a game with only one person knowing the rules and quickly explaining them to the others, though, and that's good.

Design: 2/5 - I've got to go low on this one. The board is nicely drawn but way too small and everything in this game just seems a little cheap.

Depth: 3/5 - Not a particularly deep game, more a game of balancing statistics and placement to minimise damage.

Replayability: 4/5 - It's fun and because much of what happens is dependent on which card you draw or what dice you rolled every game will be different.

Availability: 5/5 - easily available online or in local friendly game stores.

Final Score: 65%. This could have been much better had FFG thought more about how the board works, or doesn't in this case. Unless they actually wanted us to get annoyed at how small the sub was, in which case they lose points for trying to annoy us. A good amount of tension, a lovely possible twist near the end to add to the tension but the downsides to the game, such as the board size and the overdependence of just playing odds, means that while fun, I have to say that there are much better co-op games on the market. If you can get it for free (as if we're somehow all playtesters for FFG getting rewards or something!) or reduced then it's worth picking up. But at full price I would be inclined to say that there are better co-op games on the market and it might be worth spending a little more to get one of them instead. But since I haven't reviewed them yet, I definitely won't tell you what they are, and certainly won't mention Dead of Winter, Pandemic, Flash Point, Mice and Mystics or any other game.