I got a chance to play Anomaly recently. Nikki and Jeff brought over their new game for us to try. I give a brief overview and initial thoughts on this new hidden-movement game. Overview Three students find themselves stranded on a space station. An anomaly has been discovered on board... some sort of creature that certainly will be their demise, unless the students can coordinate efforts to eliminate the threat. Players are split into two teams: One player plays as the Anomaly while the others play as the stranded students. Each turn players choose from normal movement and track actions or special actions which include setting traps and sensors as well as melee and ranged combat options. The anomaly counters with movement or its special actions which are acquired after a student uses a special action (on the same card). The anomaly must stay alive and heal itself, feeding by draining energy from fuel cells or from the students themselves. The interesting twist to this hidden-movement game is that the students are also hidden from each other. None of the players have knowledge of the other's exact whereabouts unless an action occurs revealing one of them. Each player uses a screen to hide their individual location marked on a mini-map. There are clear plastic markers used by the students to mark the possible locations of the anomaly on the game board. Likewise, there are markers of different colors indicating each of the three students for the anomaly player to mark possible locations on the board. The cat and mouse game goes back and forth, each round ending when the students collectively have only two action cards left. At that point a radiation token is placed into one of the regions on the station. The students or the anomaly must take damage if ending movement in a zone with radiation. Students use a collective health tracker... when any one takes damage, the health tracker is moved. The anomaly's health is tracked on the same health board as the students, working from the opposite side of the life tracker. The game ends once either the anomaly's or the students' life reaches zero. Initial Thoughts
In our game, the anomaly had successfully fed on the students several times, thus reducing the life points for them and increasing life for itself. Late in the game the students coordinated a bait action with a double-strike attack that proved deadly for the anomaly. The students ended up victorious. The game took about 2 hours, including teaching the game. Experienced players can probably plan on games lasting about 60-90 minutes. The artwork is nicely done and fits the theme. The components are all of good quality. My only real component complaint was of the player screens. I found multiple ways to knock mine over, revealing my position on the hidden mini map. Other than that minor quibble, we all seemed to enjoy the game. If you're looking for a middle-weight deduction and hidden-movement game, this might be a good option for you. I enjoyed the challenge and can see our group pulling this one out when we have a group of four. I'm interested in seeing what strategies the anomaly and students will employ in future game plays. If you would like to read more about this game on Board Game Geek, click here. I appreciate everyone's support and feedback. Please use the comments section to chime in with your thoughts or ask questions. Thank you for reading King's GameNight tabletop gaming blog and... Game on!
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Overview/review two expansions for Terraforming Mars.I recently received the Venus Next and Colonies expansions for Terraforming Mars as a gift. This week was my first opportunity to play both expansions. I'll weigh in with thoughts and a review of both. Venus Next The Venus Next expansion adds a new mini-board representing Venus. Players may advance the terraform percentage on Venus to advance their Terraform Rating (TR) in the game. "Floaters" are a new resource introduced in this expansion. These are to represent city structures which hover in the clouds above the surface of Venus, as the surface pressure and temperatures are far too severe for human life. The Floaters are collected on cards similar to microbes and animals in the base game. A new Milestone and Award tile are added with Venus related conditions, adding one more choice for each. A new Venus tag is added to those project cards located on or in Venus' orbit. Finally, a "Solar Phase" is added after the production phase each generation. The first step is to check for end-game conditions. If not end game, in the second step the first player, acting as the World Government, increases a global parameter of their choice on Mars. This is to keep the game from getting too long due to the addition of terraforming Venus, however the new Venus track is not an end-game condition. The three Mars parameters remain the only ones to trigger end-game. Colonies The Colonies expansion adds new tiles representing locations of colonies in the solar system with varying resources. Players may choose to build colonies on tiles and/or send a fleet to trade at a colony location in order to gain bonuses of the available resource. A Trade Fleets Tile houses special "arrow-shaped" plastic fleet tokens used to identify the players as they visit colonies. This expansion also utilizes "Floaters" as well as the "Solar Phase" mentioned in Venus Next. Colonies adds an additional step to the Solar Phase requiring that markers on each of the colonies be advanced to the next step on their resource track. This track increases the abundance of the specific resource available at each colony, making it more advantageous to send a trade fleet there. Unfortunately only one fleet can trade at each colony during a generation allowing only one player at a time to gain those resources. Once the trade action occurs that colony lowers its marker down to the lowest available position on the resource track. Both expansions include five new corporation cards and 49 new project cards, many of which utilize the newest features of each. There is a lot of new content available without much of a learning curve or additional set-up factor. Review and Thoughts
I was initially concerned about adding both of these expansions at the same time and attempting to play with their additional variants and rules. Luckily these two expansions dove-tail together quite nicely. Venus Next introduces "floaters" and Colonies utilizes them in many of its project cards and one of the colonies tiles. Neither added too much and together ended up being quite accessible. Adding both expansions didn't seem to lengthen the game other than the initial explanation of the rules, set-up and a few questions along the way. Our three-player game went quite smoothly. I didn't use the Corporate Era extended game corporations or cards. I added only the cards which came with each expansion. There were plenty of corporations and new cards to make things interesting. I have to say that overall I really liked both expansions. I think I'll recommend playing with both in future game plays, as long as its with experienced players. It may be too much for new players to absorb. I found an oddity or omission in the rules for Colonies. There is no mention of "floaters" in the Colonies rule manual. Luckily, I happened to have Venus Next and was reading its rule manual as well. Anyone with only the Colonies expansion would have to look up "floaters" online to understand how to play. As a result... this makes these two expansions feel even more like a pair that were intended to go together. My group enjoyed playing using both the Venus Next and Colonies expansions. We had fun adding new mechanisms to a game we all enjoy. I give both of the expansions a positive review and encourage those who love Terraforming Mars to pick up these expansions. Please continue following the King's GameNight gaming blog and Facebook page. Until next time... Game on! Recently, I played the relatively new game, Maniacal. This was the first play of the game for any of us and was essentially a "learning game". I'll share my thoughts about this game and the first play through. General Overview While at my friend Troy's game night, we got to play Maniacal. This relatively new game is designed by Hassan Lopez and published by Eagle-Gryphon Games. In this strategy game 2-5 players compete as super-villains. Each player starts with a lackey and acquires different henchmen which are attracted to your villain based on location cards. The game starts with a "7 Wonders" style draft of location cards. These cards can be purchased and built or turned in for money. An example might be that if you build a laboratory, scientists will be attracted to join your forces. After attracting henchmen to your evil team, players select which evil contracts they may want to attempt. The game uses a timing system of weeks. Each contract or action taken will take a number of weeks to complete. Those occurring on continents further from your home base will cost more time. While your competitors are attempting contracts you may choose to scheme against them. Schemes come in the form of playing a card which typically makes the task harder for your opponent to accomplish the contract. There is also a choice of using a self-directed scheme option which can aid you and doesn't negatively impact opponents. Scheming against others and completing contracts earns the players "infamy" points which serve as victory points in this game. The game is played over the course of three rounds, each comprised of an increasing number of weeks. The player at the end earning the most infamy is the winner. Initial Thoughts As I mentioned in my opening, this was the first time any of us had played the game. Though the rules aren't extremely complex, there were a few twists on concepts and terminology which we discovered later we had played a few of the rules incorrectly or simply misinterpreted them. The whole group agreed that the game was fun and we liked the mechanisms it employed: card drafting, dice rolling, asymmetric powers, etc... The turn order mechanism used was similar to a few other games I've played – it was measured in time. In this case each action took "weeks". This concept could get a little tricky, but we quickly seemed to have that and the card drafting under control. The dice were in four different colors representing Brawn, Intellect, Stealth and Magic. These different dice each with different dice faces had different success probabilities which made them unique and fun. One big hiccup we had was some confusion around the terms of TURN and ROUND. Later we discovered something in the rules referring to the PHASES of a round which helped us figure out the issue. Once we wrapped our heads around the timing in weeks with turns/rounds performed in phases it made more sense. It took us this first game to all feel comfortable with the format, mechanisms, etc... It ended up being more of a "learning game", but a fun one at that. Final Notes
Overall, I believe everyone enjoyed playing Maniacal. It is fun playing as super-villains. There were a lot of nuances within this game to explore. The use of dice added to the tactile enjoyment. It's always fun to roll a ton of dice... though sometimes not so fun when you get an inordinate amount of blanks. I'll need to play at least once or twice more before I give a full review or any recommendations. I will say that I'd be excited to play again, especially with this first game under my belt. Its fun to learn new games, though sometimes it may take more than one play before you fully understand. Keep watching for new posts on this site. Chime in with your thoughts in the comments section and follow the King's GameNight page on Facebook. Game on! |
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