Table Top Gaming tagged posts

Hounded is a modern fox game from Atlas Games.  Fox games are a category of board games for two players, where one player controls one, or sometimes two, fox pieces, and the other player has multiple pieces representing either prey, or hunters, of the fox. Variants of the game date back as far as the 14th century, with historic links going back even farther than that.

In Hounded, the first player controls a hunting party consisting of the Master of the Hounds, three Foxhounds, a Bulldog, and a Terrier.  The second player controls the Fox. Each different piece has it’s own unique movement and special abilities.  Similarly, 23 of the 49 hidden tiles that make up the 7×7 play space also have special bonuses on them when revealed.

There is a pair of reference cards to help learn what eve...

What do you get when you combine a mansion, a dinner party, and murder? No, not the 1985 cult classic film Clue! Well ok, not JUST the 1985 cult classic film Clue. I mean, who doesn’t love some Tim Curry? It is also not Kill Doctor Lucky, although that’s closer and I did make this exact joke in that review as well. (Go look it up elsewhere on this site).  Get Lucky is the answer this time and I’m sure that’s a shock, given the title of this review.

Get Lucky is card based version of Cheapass Games’ classic, and recently re-released, Kill Doctor Lucky.  The premise is the same, the characters have all been invited to a dinner party at Lucky Mansion, and each want to kill their serendipitous host.

Each player controls two characters at a time, with three characters hanging out in the Draw...

What do you get when you combine a mansion, a dinner party, and murder? No, not the 1985 cult classic film Clue! Well ok, not JUST the 1985 cult classic film Clue. I mean, who doesn’t love some Tim Curry? In fact, when you are done reading this go watch it.  You’re welcome.

The answer I was going for with that question, is Kill Doctor Lucky.  The first game published by Cheapass Games and arguably it’s most popular, having spawned nine separate sequels, spin offs, and expansions prior to this release.

The good doctor’s last major incarnation was licensed and produced by Paizo Publishing, and released in full glorious colour.  With Paizo’s licence expired, Cheapass Games has rolled out a new edition just in time for the game’s 19...

Deadfall is a simple bluffing game from the mind of James Ernest and  Hip Pocket Games, and is based on their very popular card game, Pairs.

In Deadfall the goal is to call your opponent’s potential bluff when you believe that they have played the last card of a given value.  If you are right they pay you the value of that card, if you are wrong you pay them the same.  What makes it a bit trickier is that each player only has a 6 card hand dealt from a 55 card Pairs deck.  But what is a “Pairs” deck, and why does that matter?  I’m glad you asked!

A regular deck of cards has 4 cards each in 13 values, a Pairs deck is a numerical pyramid.  there are 1x1s, 2x2s, 3x3s, and so on up to 10...

If you want to play a nice, simple, game of Monopoly, Uno, or even King of Tokyo, you may wish to bypass this review.  All of those are great games, and deserve to be played, but Yashima is a different breed of game.  It is by no means an intrinsically difficult game, but it will take a bit of time to learn, and certainly gets more fun when you can play it more.

Let’s start out with the rulebook, all 18 full sized pages of it.  This can be daunting, and the first group that I looked at playing with it voted it down as a result.  But when I managed to get the right group together, it was worth the effort and there are a number of pages that are simply back story and flavour. The mechanics of play are actually very simple...