Games Overboard » Reviews

Going Cardboard: A Documentary

mercutiom — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 15:23:25 +0000

So I was bouncing around on Kickstarter today and I came across this project on funding a documentary about board gamers, their collections, and their lives. The video, thus far, is embedded below.

It looks like they’re completely funded, and already into post-production with over 60 hours of HD video to be edited and posted together in the final project.

More on the project can be found at their site: Going Cardboard. We’d like to wish Lorien Green luck on the project, and please let us know when the film is complete and where our fans, and us of course, can see it in its entirety.

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: Resolute.

Epsiode 024: Tobago

Gordon1018 — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 13:49:59 +0000

WElcome back folks. I told you that you’d be seeing more of us. REcently youtube upped their maximum time limit for videos from ten minutes to fifteen minutes. This means that there are a couple of videos that didn’t make the time cut before, that I can now post.

Mark and I recorded this video for Tobago back in the spring in AZ. It’s a great explanation of the rules and it’s a game I really like. I hope you enjoy the video.

Episode 023

Gordon1018 — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 06:50:38 +0000

Wow! We’ve been gone for a long time. I know that all of you have been crying yourselves to sleep wondering when we were going to post a new review, and we’re here.

We just moved to Colorado this year and bought our first house. we’re finally settled ina nd have been inspired to start making videos again.

Enjoy this newest review of a game we really like called Jet Set. It’s great to be back and we’ll keep em coming if you keep watching.

Mousetrap Never Works

mercutiom — Tue, 04 May 2010 23:15:02 +0000

We’ve all played the game “Mousetrap” at some point in our lives. For me it was one of those games my friends had, but my parents never bought for me and my brothers.

A good thing too as, if I remember, we always had the problem that the darn thing never really lived up to the hype. Well, someone has taken the frustration you and I felt as children and put that to song.

The song is a parody of the recent OK Go song “This Too Shall Pass” in which they created a rather large and complicated Rube Goldberg machine. Their’s, however, did actually work.

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: Mark’s Guide To Throwing Your Own Game Night.

Rule The Dungeon With Dungeon Lords

mercutiom — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 04:44:43 +0000

I’m sure most of you have played Dungeons & Dragons, and if you haven’t played then you’ve heard of the classic game. (If you haven’t heard of it, then welcome to our planet. Sorry for the mess, we weren’t expecting you.)

Dungeon Lords, from creator Vlaada Chvatil, flips the age old game on its head. Instead of being the victorious warrior attacking the evil overlords castle to save whoever it is you’re supposed to be saving this time to finish the King’s quest, you’re that same said Evil Overlord trying to defend as much of your dungeon from those pesky drunken wannabe knights (pronounced: kiiniig-hits ala Monty Python.)

Throughout gameplay you build your dungeon, release trolls, vampires, ghosts, and other ghoulies, farm gold, and store food for the winter attacks. Spreading imps to do your dirty work for you, the game processes as the supposed “good guys” build up their raiding party and you dig deeper into your dungeon while planting traps to take care of the meddling menace.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I give this game a solid 8. There are multiple strategies you can deploy, and yes, the deck is stacked against you. The board is beautifully designed and the game pieces equally so. I usually go a bit overboard on the imps and not strong enough on the monsters, but choose your own strategy to protect your sacred dungeons from those meddling villagers after your well stocked booty.

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: Episode 1: Hey, That’s My Fish!.

Online Board Games

mercutiom — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 02:09:58 +0000

There are several sites out there that will allow you to play board games online. I’ve even covered a version of Carcassonne I found online way back when. But what if you want to play Tichu, Puerto Rico, or Pandemic?

Well, thanks to Brian, I’ve found BretSpielWelt. A German site that has versions of all of the above mentioned games and many more. Stone Age, Settlers of Catan, Dominion, all can be found and played easily through your browser.

One suggestion, don’t use Google Chrome for this site. Sure it’s fast, but I don’t think the creators of BretSpielWelt have optimized for Chrome. I’ve had no trouble with Firefox though.

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: Redesign Update.

Reviewing Terra Prime, An Exploration Game

mercutiom — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:11:40 +0000

Recently our good friend Mike at Tasty Minstrel Games sent us review copies of Terra Prime and Homesteaders. So first of all, thanks Mike, you rock, and we hope you have a few more games in the pipeline to expand on your collection.

We played both games, and we’ll be throwing a review of Homesteaders up in the future. Now, onto the Terra Prime review.

The goal of Terra Prime is to take over planets and asteroid belts while exploring space with your ship. You collect Bluium, Greenium, Yellium, and Brownium to help fuel your ship, buy new supplies, and bribe alien attackers.

The layout is very “Tongiaki: Journey into the Unknown” combined with “The Settlers of Catan” with a little “Rio Grande Games Galaxy Trucker” thrown in on the side. I have to tell you outright, that the first time you play this game, it’s going to take you longer to set it up correctly than it will to actually play through the game.

So you take your ship and “explore” new regions in space. If you happen upon a planet you have the ability (depending upon your supplies) to colonize and start producing. Blue planets produce Bluium, yellow produce Yellium, and green produce Greenium. (Don’t you just love the names. We got a kick out of those.)

During your explorations you’ll also come across Asteroids and Aliens. Asteroids you’ll first have to navigate through. After that you have the option to either colonize or leave them alone. Colonized Asteroids do not have to be navigated again, uncolonized ones do, so be careful. If you do choose to colonize an Asteroid they’ll produce your Brownium.

If you come across some aliens you have two choices. If you’ve been able to upgrade your ship you might choose to attack them and take your chances. In playing we found that it was preferable to bribe the aliens instead. Sure you lose a few resources, but you take care of the threat and with the official rules, you get a few resources back as well. (I’ll talk about an alternative option in a bit.)

Overall, I personally liked the game. The others weren’t as hot on it, but I could see that with a few tweaks and unofficial rule changes it could be a good game to keep in the collection. I’d want to make sure I played with people who had been through the game before as the rules are rather lengthy (I’ve attached them to this post if you’d like to download them, and they’re available at the official Terra Prime site.)

Now, about those rule tweaks I mentioned. First, the rules say that when you’ve defeated or bribed an attacking alien you use a Reward tile to cover them so you know you don’t have to kill or bribe them again. I don’t like this as it speeds up the game play too much. Instead we used the Support tiles to cover the aliens (they have no other real use) and then collected a resource cube from each of the other players. The payoff is usually better, but the other players got to decide what the briber got so as not to make it really worthwhile to run around only bribing aliens.

The second tweak that we tried was ignoring the END at the bottom. We stopped when one of two options happened, either we explored the entire region (all tiles were flipped) or we ran out of Reward tiles. This allowed the game to last a little longer and made the adventure more fun.

Overall, I’ll give the game a 3 out of 5. It’s got a place in the closet now, but there is a possibility of it being bumped if/when something better comes along.

Terra Prime Rulebook

Gaming Can Make A Better World

mercutiom — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:22:56 +0000

I’m a big fan of the TED conference and the talks that come out of it. Today I was catching up on some of the more recent ones and this video struck a particular chord that I thought should be shared with the community here.

I think it’s important that we take whatever strides we can to change the world for the better, regardless of what your version of better is. I find it interesting that someone is out there studying how online games can lead us to that future.

So, while I don’t play WoW (as I’ve mentioned before) I think there’s more to this than that simple forum. I think that those of us who love and enjoy games are better suited to helping the world because we’re used to working together and socializing in ways that will allow us to make the changes necessary.

No related posts were found, so here's a consolation prize: Monopoly’s New Revolutionary Design.

Episode 022: Tichu

Gordon1018 — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:23:11 +0000

Not often do you find a game that is so universally loved by your gaming group and family that you actually wear copies of it out. I found this game in Tichu. I grew up as early as 8 years old playing Pinochle, so I have a long-time attraction towards trick-taking games. I had read about and heard about this game numerous times online, but had never got the opportunity to play it. I even bought a copy on Funagain.com during their fall clearance sale. Too bad the rule book was in German.

When my wife and I got to Dallas for BGG.con the forst game that we were asked if wanted to Learn was Tichu. It was love at first “bomb”. We literally cannot get a group of people together without someone asking if we can play it.

Enjoy our video. IT was tough to get all the info into less than ten minutes, so if you have questions or comments we’d love to hear from you. We love this game, and I’m sure you would also if get the opportunity to play.

World Of Wifecraft

mercutiom — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:58:41 +0000

While I’ve never played World of Warcraft (the closest I’ve gotten was the Leroy Jenkins video) I thought this was worth sharing. What if the addicting MMORPG were a real-life game with the goal of being a better husband?

Games Overboard » Reviews

Going Cardboard: A Documentary

Related Posts

Epsiode 024: Tobago

Related Posts

Episode 023

Related Posts

Mousetrap Never Works

Related Posts

Rule The Dungeon With Dungeon Lords

Related Posts

Online Board Games

Related Posts

Reviewing Terra Prime, An Exploration Game

Related Posts

Gaming Can Make A Better World

Related Posts

Episode 022: Tichu

Related Posts

World Of Wifecraft

Related Posts