Showing posts with label Tabletop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tabletop. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Game Review: Race to the Treasure!

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Created by: Peaceable Kingdom
Players: 2-4
Ages: 4+
Additional: No Reading Required
Facebook | Peaceable Kingdom | Buy From Official Store

Race to Treasure is made by a company called Peaceable Kingdom. They are focused on creating co-operative games that are Eco-friendly. Their games are 100% green. Seriously check out their site for all their information.

Play with heart & soul!

We create games & gifts that inspire cooperation and cultivate kindness.
What we believe | Cooperative Play | Green Commitment

This game is easy. Play time isn't log, setup is quick, learning how to play is simple. No reading required!

Very kid friendly. I highly recommend it for children 8 and under. It was bought with the idea a 5 year old would be able to play it without any issues. After doing a trial run, it meets those expectation.
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Setup:
4 keys and 1 Goblin snack need to be placed on the board.
Roll dice until you've placed all keys and goblin snack on board.
Shuffle tiles and form draw pile.

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Basic Rules:
Draw tile cards to build a road to keys, based on group decisions.
After collecting 3 keys build road to treasure chest.
If goblin card is drawn, goblin moves closer to treasure.
If you need to, build road towards goblin snack (if goblin is getting to close or might beat you). Once acquired can be used at any time during game, to knock goblin back one space.
Beat Goblin to treasure chest to win.

All in all it's not a bad game. Not sure how many times I can stress that this is the kid friendly co-op game that forces on "strategy, math grid concepts, shared decision making, cooperation" according to their website.

Anyone in their preteens is probably going to find this too easy but in our household it was bought to include a little one that most of our games go over her head. She's doomed where she only gets to roll dice, pass out cards, hold cards, or move pieces were we ask her to. No longer! With that in mind, this is perfect.

Working on bringing more gamers into the board game/tabletop world.

 
 
BoardGameGeek | Wiki

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Game Review: Joking Hazard

Being I have always stated this as a review blog to better my writing, I once again feel the liberty to branch out. I have done movie reviews,TV reviews, and would now like to add to the occasionally [tabletop] gaming review genre.
Tabletop games are a love of mine, mostly board games and card games. Not so much miniatures or even RP games.
Gaming is something I enjoy, not as regularly as I'd like, but when I get the chance I jump at it.
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Created by: Cyanide And Happiness
Players: 3 or More
Ages: 18+ Adult Content

Facebook | Kickstarter | Cyanide And Happiness
Buy From Official Store

This was a wonderful gift from my loving boyfriend. Who backed it through Kickstarter and received a Red Box version (see edited picture below). Which also includes two additional card packs, Blast from the Past and Kickstarter Thank You Pack.
It was funded back in on February 2016, he was hoping it would be a birthday present. (Which is actually arrived around early October, earlier than their Nov '16 estimated date, even after some delays.)

If you're easily offended and/or can't handle a few swear words or two, please turn back. Do not pass go, do not collect some humour along the way.

Joking Hazard's plays style and concept are fairly easy. The idea, you are making a comic strip. The catch is, it's in parts.
Each round there are players and a judge. The judge decides who wins that round, by choosing their favourite punchline, based on whatever the heck they decided. (Funniest, crudest, best reference.)

Basic Rules
Gather 3 or more human being and have everyone draw 7 cards. Place the rst in a draw pile, face down. Pick the first judge through nonviolent means.

The deck plays first, by flipping the top card off the draw pile. This is the starter panel.

The judge plays second, by placing a card from their hand on either side of the starter panel, creating a two panel setup.

Everyone else plays third. Each player plays a card, face down, at the end of the setup to create the punchline. The judge shuffles the punchlines and puts them face up one at a time, and then picks their favourite. the winning player then takes their card back for score keeping.

Everyone draws another card, you should always have 7.
Judge changes and so on. The first player to whatever score you want to play wins.

Example:
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It's a very open ended game where you're encouraged to adjust the rules to your liking and even suggest other ways to play the game.
There are also Red Panel cards, with suggested play of becoming a bonus round!
Some other suggested play examples include, Jerk mode, Marathon, Neverending Story.
Along with a list of "Suggested Drinking Rules" with, Drinking Wagering, Ultimate Sacrifice, Bottoms Up, Learn 2 Read, Decked Over, No One Cares.

The first time we played we already established some 'house rules'.
First, not one single draw pile. We make multiple piles all over the table and you can pick any number of cards from any of them. There's just too many to try and create one pile.

Second, there are red bordered cards that normally launch you into a different play style, we ignored that and played two cards instead. Allowing for split play.
Meaning, of the two cards played if the judge only liked one from each player, each player gets 1 point instead of 2 points.

While this is a fun games, it feels rather limited after a few plays. Which is why it fell on only a 3 star rating. Even after about the 20 rounds we played, it was a pretty simply standard kind of game.

The cards themselves are hilarious, the typical Cyanide And Happiness we know and love. I've no doubt seen all of them and hope to see more hilarious inappropriateness from this game.

Despite the rating, I will be playing it again. Hoping to try some of the other modes or even create my own! Mwahah!


"Joking Hazard was made possible by the 63,758 people who backed us on Kickstarter. If you're one of them, thank you so much. You brought this game to life!"

 
 
BoardGameGeek | Wiki


This is what my box looks likes. It's originally NSFW (Not Safe For Work) but I edited it so that it's cleaned up... It's still pretty obvious what it says.  

Wednesday, November 2, 2016

FTW: Finds This Week

This is my own version of a "Books/movies/things I've recently acquired" meme. It's not expected to be a regularly scheduled blog entry, only when it's relevant. Please enjoy my play on FTW, "For the win!"

"Deals FTW!"

I scored BIG this week. Prepare yourselves, which is a coupon and price matching/shopping story. There's a bit of text if you're interested but I will add a TL;DR edition at the end.

This find is a little different, as it's related to a new segment I'm planning on bringing in.
As I've always stated this has been a 'review' blog to better my writing, I primary do movie and book reviews, I've decided to try adding some tabletop games into the variety!
There is a new review in the works and excepted to be posted soon.

With that said, let's talk about the finds.

Board Game Mania!

This week Target has a great "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" sale that applies to both video games and board games. The only fine print, you can not mix and match. All 3 item must be either board games OR video games. Cheapest is free.
Taking that into account, after reading all the fine print. I used a few money saving tactics I had laying around.

Firstly, Target will price match. You have to be able to show the store or website themselves is selling it for the price you want matched. This can only be done through their Guest Services area.
(Example: If it's listed on Amazon it must said "sold by Amazon.com" if sold by a seller/dealer or through fulfillment can not be honored or matched.)
There's a story to how I found that out. Read below if you must know.

Target also sent out their Christmas catalog and had coupons attached to it. Simple "Spent X amount get X amount in a gift card." This week I only had to do a little grocery shop and grab some odds and ends, so I made sure to spent $50 and get a free $10 gift card off that offer.
Along with that I had a $5 off anything coupon that was still good.

Le proof!
I grabbed King of Tokyo first which was listed at $39.99 and price match it down to $27.73. Second, Race to Treasure at $15.99. Third, Mr. Toast at $14.99.

Through the sale Mr. Toast was free.
Use my $10 gift card and $5 coupon making Race to Treasure only 99¢.
King of Tokyo was paid in full at price match. + tax
Total: $31.96

That's $10.65 a game or two games for free, whatever way you want to look at it.
I'm beyond proud of myself.

These are essentially Christmas presents to the family. We talked about trying to encourage more family time. We bought all 3 of them taking into account the children's ages.
Each kid is going to get to open one of them. I'm laughing pretty hard at giving "Irresponsibility: The Mr Toast Card Game" to the teenager.

TL;DR
Used a sale promotion "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" to get a free game, got the most expensive one price matched making it 2/3 of the listed price. Then used a gift card and a coupon to get the second game free as well.
Had an epically confusing time with Target inventory system
Scored 3 brand new board games for under $11/each.


Take advantage of any awesome finds or deals this week?