Magic The Gathering is a card game that continues to release numerous new collections of cards for fans and players of the game and the new Sorin vs Tibalt cards are the game’s latest duel deck for MTG followers to acquire and enjoy. The cards centre around two non human planeswalkers, Sorin and Tibalt. Sorin uses his wisdom and experience to come to the decision that the humans of Innistrad may struggle to survive the monsters of Innistrad. But Tibalt is a young pain-mage who continues to inflict pain and torment on those in the Multiverse.

The Sorin vs Tibalt deck lists include many different lands, instants, creatures, sorceries, enchantments and of course the planeswalkers themselves. Sorin, whose aim is to hunt and feed includes lands such as the tainted field and enchantments including mark of the vampire and field of souls within his deck list. The Torin, torment and agonize deck list, includes the coal stocker creatures and the terminate instants.

This MTG deck includes singles, foils, sealed products, mythic, rare, uncommon and common cards and is one that many Magic the Gathering fans will be investing in. This latest duel deck is one of many, which sits along side Ajani vs Nicol, Elspeth vs Tezzeret, Knights vs Dragons, Phyrexia vs The Coalition and many more.

Those who purchase the Sorin vs Tibalt duel deck are sure to enjoy an enthralling game of action, a unique experience that can only be found within the mythical world of Magic the Gathering.

Now available at

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Of course, here in Scotland it’s pronounced ‘cow’

By Strange Prawn

Much as technology and my bank balance tend toward miniaturization, there seems to have been a recent trend for compact, fast but beautifully formed games, ‘microgames’ I believe the kids are calling them. The poster boy, or rather poster princess, for these recent offerings is undoubtedly the well-regarded Love Letter, a game that revolves around you passing a note of affection to the object of your amorous desires without the knowledge and interference of your fellow players. Brilliant.

Hot on Love Letter’s coat tails, or rather creeping along in the shadows behind it, leering and cracking its knuckles, comes another little beauty called Coup. or possibly ‘Coup City State’. Or ‘Coup: City State’. ‘Coup feat. City State’?

I assume we owe the ambiguity to the pre-existence of another game called Coup, but that’s by the by.

Coup is another one of those games, like The Resistance and Skull and Roses that sidles up to you uninvited and whispers in your ear, all hot breath and spittle, “Do you trust your friends? Family? Spouse?” only to respond with a crack-toothed and doubting grin when you assure it that yes, yes of course you do.

A game of Coup takes about ten minutes, and a more queasy, uncertain and enjoyable ten minutes you will be hard pushed to find, yes sir. The aim of the game is to eliminate every other player by forcing them to turn over the two face-down influence cards everyone is dealt at the start of the game. Once revealed these cards become useless, and as before, if both go face-up you’re out of the game. In theory play revolves around amassing coins, for once in possession of seven of them you can initiate an unopposable coup against a fellow player to force them to flip one of their cards. Towards this end everyone can take one action per turn, the most straightforward of which is to claim income, and take one coin from the bank. Or two if they claim foreign aid, but unlike taking one coin, and in common with everything else you will do in the game, this is not without risks…

See, those influence cards, they represent the people at court over whom you can exert, well, influence. There are five different characters, each appearing three times in the deck. Oh yeah, this tiny box contains 15 cards, some coins, rules and player cheat sheets, and that’s it. And it’s worth every penny.

The first of these jokers (there are no jokers), is the Duke. The Duke’s a fun guy to have around, he’ll net you three coins on your turn, but there’s more, he’ll also let you block any of those other scroungers from claiming foreign aid, should you wish to. The Captain is also handy for your economy, as he enables you to extort two coins, not from the bank, but from another player. Pay up suckers. He also protects you from anyone else trying to pull the same thing on you. As does the Ambassador, who, aside from this defensive sideline, gives you the chance to switch out your influence cards if you don’t like what fate dealt you.

The final pair are the nefarious Assassin (assassins get invited to court now?), who allows you to forego all the couping, and just pay a bargain-price three coins to force another player to turn one of their cards over. Unless of course that player has the final courtier, the Contessa, whose sole purpose in life is apparently to distract Assassins. How she achieves this is a closely guarded secret.

I’m sure from the brief and ham-fisted descriptions above you’ll have been able to deduce some of the finely balanced and gossamer-like network of interaction and counteraction that exists between the roles as designed in the game. It is clear and clever and counts for nothing.

For here is the dark heart of Coup, and every beat pumps not lifeblood, but deceit and distrust. It matters not one iota which two cards you have actually been dealt. You are free to lie, to claim  influence over anybody, and use the associated abilities, whenever you like. Of course, that’s only true as long as you follow the golden rule of Coup: Don’t Get Caught.

For all the talk of coups and assassinations, it is often this very distrust that proves the decisive force in this game. If you sense something fishy going on, say a fourth player has just claimed influence over the Duke, you are free to challenge their action. If you were right to doubt the lying scum, and they cannot produce evidence of their truthfulness by revealing a Duke, they must immediately turn over one of their cards. Contrariwise, if they do show you they had a Duke all along, you must flip one of yours. They then get to shuffle His Dukeness back into the deck and draw a replacement. Who knows what they’ve got there now.

The counteractions can also naturally be challenged, leading to the possibility, nay inevitability, of exchanges like the following:

“I take two of your coins with my Captain”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Really”

“Uh huh.”

“Fine, here he is *shows Captain*”

“Balls. *flips over a Contessa* Okay then, I’ll block you with my Ambassador.”

“What!? Why didn’t you do that to start with!? Rubbish. Don’t believe you.”

“Orly?”

“Yup.”

“Ahem…” *Shows other card, it is an Ambassador*.

“You arse.” *turns over Assassin that replaced the Captain – and was last card*.

I have been on the receiving end of this particular manoeuvre, in all its ruthless tactical brilliance. Look at it, it should be obvious that no one would attempt such a patently ridiculous ploy unless they wanted to be challenged, but then you knew better, didn’t you? You, dear reader, saw that one coming, yes?

Because that’s the other thing Coup says to you. Honeyed words of flattery: You’re a smart cookie, right? You can tell when you’re being lied to, you can look someone in the eye and divine their honesty or otherwise, right? Because, after all, aren’t you just that little bit smarter than they are..?

Of course you’re not, and of course you can’t. But we all like to believe, don’t we, that in that moment when wits clash we have the ability to spot the tells, untangle the deceit, peer down into someone’s very soul and correctly catch them in a heinous lie.

There’s a fine line you need to walk to play the game well, one that meanders between not appearing too strong, not being too obvious and trying to misinform in ways that aren’t so offensive to the other players that they’ll challenge you. Unless you decide to be one of those people who chooses to not to use a power you possess until it’ll definitely piss someone off, in which case I loathe you. I would never do that.

Uh-uh. Not I.

Hopefully sticking to this tricky path will see you into the last two or three, at which point it becomes all about trying to work out, using your suspicions about what your opponents have as well as everyone’s relative wealth, which card or cards you need to ensure victory. Ideally you would actually have them, but hey, as long as they think you have them…

The first few times I played Coup I thought this mathematically predictable aspect to the endgame was  a bit anticlimactic, taking all the bluffing derring-do of before and flattening it into a grey plain of dull inevitability, but I was wrong. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. I now realise the whole game (all ten minutes of it!) should be spent trying to get yourself into a position where the inevitability tilts your way with the final other player, at least assuming you were right about their cards. Which you probably aren’t.

This aspect adds yet another axis of deduction to the n-dimensional bluffogram that represents this game mapped onto fibspace.

So yeah, I usually try and round these things out with a wee bit tying into the introduction, maybe pulling together some of the similes and metaphors I’ve strung throughout the review, if I’ve remembered to do that. But I am just going to say this. Play Coup. Because I can’t think of anything else to say.

Or can I? Aaah….

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By Paco Garcia Jaen

I have been obsessed with ghosts since I was 5. The first three weeks of pocket money I got when I became five – the official age when you started to get some pocket money in my family – I spent in a book for children with hundreds of stories about ghosts. I can’t remember how many times I read that book, but I remember I had it until I was 15 and I still remember a few stories, so I guess it was a few.

One thing that became very obvious to me from an early age is that ghosts stories tend to be tragic ones. If anything because they involve someone’s death. But I also learned that they make great stories.

Phantom is Ludonaute’s attempt to mix great story with great gaming and for that they’ve come up with a ghosts story.

“Pah! There are plenty of games out there that combine great story and great gameplay” I hear you say. Maybe, but there is a twist to this one.

This game is not just a game. It is actually, a book too. So much so that it comes with its own ISBN. The game is based on the story, but you don’t need to read the story to play the game, or play the game to enjoy the story. It helps, though!

The format is truly lovely. If you haven’t seen the unboxing video yet, you might want to spend a few minutes watching it. This game comes in an A5 size box divided in two parts. The box looks like a book and feels like a book. In fact when you open it, the first thing you have is a book.

Said book has the story and the game rules written both in French and English side by side. Very well printed and very well bound, reading the story is a joy. It just feels right to hold this box in your hand and flip the pages. The story is lovely – more on it in a paragraph or two – and very entertaining, with a great dose of atmosphere that gives you enough to help you get immersed in the game, without becoming a chore to read.

The bottom part of the box contains two decks of cards. And my goodness the cards are incredible. Although a bit on the slippery side, they are the thickets cards I’ve ever seen in a game. Printed full colour and with seriously gorgeous illustrations, one can tell this game has been designed to be played time and time again, which you will want to do if you want to get the most out of it anyway. I was extremely impressed with the decks. And with the illustrations.

The story sets up in colonial times in a mansion where a massacre has taken place. The result of the massacre is that two ghosts, that of a doctor and an American Indian, are competing for the control of the mansion. When a new family moves into the property, they see a way to draw power from the fear they instil in the members of the family.

The game gives each of the two players control of one of the ghosts. They have at their disposal six types of spirits with unique abilities that they can use to lure family members into the home, scare them into different locations within the mansion, steal other ghosts, etc.

During setup, a basic layout of the mansion is laid on the table. This displays the 5 main locations in the property. Each turn, players can place up to two cards. A place and/or a ghost. Place cards add new rooms and aspects to the main locations, for example a gazebo to the garden, and each new place has fear points to represent how scary they are to the family members. Players can also place a ghost, though not on the place they just laid, and carry out its effects. Once the “fear factor” of the combined places and ghosts matches the fear resistance of the family member, said family member is claimed by the player with the highest fear inspiring set of cards. First player to gather 11 points, wins the game. Each family member has a set number of victory points allocated to them.

The game play is rather simple and indeed the game plays in about 20 minutes. Our first game took us about 45 and that included reading the rules, so this could be the perfect game to take to a pub while you wait for your friends to arrive.

Conclusion

Although the game is not without its flaws, I have found it very enjoyable every time I’ve played it. Even if you don’t need to read the story to play the game, it is so accurately brought into the game that it really becomes very easy to visualise in your head what’s happening when you charm someone, or scare them into another room.

The rules will take you a bit to get used to, though. Not because they’re complex -they’re not – but because the translation is not as good as it could be and some meaning is lost in translation. For example the rules call “stock” instead of “deck”, and the word used for location is “apparition”. Once you get round it, and the best way is to start playing the game, everything falls into place and within minutes you’ll be playing without looking at the rules.

The number of family members is high enough that the element of unpredictability stays high, but small enough that you can control who’s left to come to formulate your winning strategy.

There are a couple of aspects of the game that are a bit unbalanced. For example the toddler will give you twice the number of points than any other member of the family. However the two older siblings give you less than any other member. This is to reflect that toddlers are more difficult to scare than pubescents and it is well portrayed in the story, but it could mean that a bad hand of cards will ruin your chances of winning if you invest too much in getting the toddler.

This game benefits greatly from continued play, though. Once you get to understand how many cards are there, how many ghosts of what type and how many different places and their effects, one can start to predict – or try to – what’s coming and device a longer term strategy.

Overall I find this game very satisfying. With stunning visuals and gorgeous theme and atmosphere, the simple mechanics make it perfect for a quick game between games and to bring people into different card games. It isn’t a super deep game that will suck you in and make you spend weeks creating strategies, but it will certainly keep you amused and occupied for many hours.

Very recommended indeed!

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Call It A Furry Party If You Want, But It’s A Fun Card Game

By Peter Ruth II

Well, as usual, Small Box is up to no good. First, they make this killer game called Omen: A Reign of War which took everyone by surprise and turned into the “out of left field” smash card game of 2011. I mean, if ever a game needed an iOS app, it’s that one. And then they delivered Hemloch, an odd little card game with an odd little theme that is oddly, pretty fun. So, I was kind of thinking they were due for a stinker. I mean, we’ve loved most of what came out of the joint for a while, and then came Tempt, one of the most truly awful games I’ve ever played…with a rulebook so bad that it was incomprehensible. But John Clowdus and Company are, by and large, batting close to 1000. So, here comes Tooth And Nail: Factions (TANF), which has what I think is the best art and theme to date out of the company. “But how does it play?” you ask…well, let’s talk about that.

But let’s not put the cart before the horse, let’s talk about what it is before we talk about what it does. To sum it up, the game’s about factions of weaponized, bipedal critters such as an American Bulldog toting a DPSAM (dog-portable surface to air missile) or a lizard dude with a tomahawk. And it’s not all guns and whatnot, some of these creatures are magic users (like, I know, right?…Of course there are! How could there NOT be magical, glowing foxes?) and will mess you up with a fusillade of fireballs. Now, these factions are small, 30 critter armies whose sole purpose is to tear the guts out of opposing armies. In short, it’s a war game played with cards.

Now, as I said, the art, while a little “artsy” and “dark” really shines for the most part. I love it. I think it really carries the theme well, and there’s enough unique creatures in the game that it’s not too repetitive, although there are five copies of six critter cards in each of the six decks that come with the base game. As usual with a Small Box game, TANF has nothing but cards. You get seven factions, although one is more or less a mercenary faction that you can add into your own faction, which is made up of regular, full-bleed cards, and one card for your faction that lays out it’s special faction power. Then, there’s five reference cards which double as action point counters. If there’s one thing I have to say about John Clowdus, the man knows how to stretch a buck. I suspect, in fact, that some Clowdus long ago invented copper wire by fighting with his kin over a penny. Every card has multiple uses, per the “Way Of The Small Box”, and as usual, it’s clever and really adds to the game’s strategy.

Now about strategy, TANF really shines in the way it goes about what it does. This game is a duelling game, no more, no less. It’s probably had its roots in Magic The Non-Showering the way you tap cards in order to activate them, but it’s not like M:TG as far as I can say, although I am the last guy you’d call an expert on M:TG. There’s essentially two ways to play cards to your tableau, either as a “Command” card which allows you to use their card powers as actions, or as a “Warrior” card, which you can use to beat up the enemy. Now, the thing that is neat about this game is that it’s a bit like the old-school card game War in that you’re trying to deplete the enemy’s deck. To do this, you can attack, use your command cards, and use special attacks that are straight out of a game like Final Fantasy Tactics or something. Heck, really, this game is more like an old school JRPG’s tactical battle sequence than anything else. And it’s really fun, especially when you make elephant roars during the slaughter. Perhaps I’ve said too much…

Anyhow, the idea is that you have these two areas on your side of the battle. You have the war zone, which is where your front lines are. Then you have your command zone, where your hyenas laugh their asses off at your pathetic enemies, or use powers, whichever you prefer. While you get one action for free per turn, the more command cards you have on the table the more action points you can take. Alternatively, you can draw a card from your deck instead of taking an action point for each command card played, but that has its disadvantages since every card you draw is a “life point” gone, in essence. Now, each turn you get a card from your deck in addition to the cards you can optionally take, but the real goal is to have the maximum guys on the line and in the command center so you can deal as much damage per turn as possible without expending your own cards. It’s really quite a balancing act, and with so many options, there’s a lot of times that there is no obvious “optimal play” to make. Pretty tense, really, especially when your deck is getting thin.

The one thing that I think really stands out about the factions is that they are really, truly unique feeling in how they operate and interact. Even though there’s only two troop types, magic and mechanical, Small Box really found a way to make each faction stand apart from the rest. I’m not entirely sure that I’ll ever really master how to play each, but after the several games I’ve been in on thus far it’s clear that you can’t just use a cookie-cutter strategy and hope to be competitive. I should note that while each faction plays differently, you essentially only have a total of six unique cards per faction, so the strategy isn’t found in the wide range of cards that you can play as much as what you can do with the cards you have, and the fact that they can be played multiple ways.

The one thing that’s really lacking from the faction decks are responses to actions taken against you. Sort of like what I hated about Dungeon Command, whatever your enemy does to you, it just happens and there’s not jack squat you can do about it. You just have to sit there and take it, without any real way to stop it. From that standpoint, it’s another “I go, you go” game that doesn’t have the variety of defensive options that something like Summoner Wars has. In that regard it’s no different than a game like Ascension, but I generally prefer games where you have the option to make a saving throw, or have some mechanism where attacks will not always succeed. I guess I’ve been in enough fights that I’ve learned that you simply don’t land every single kick and punch. Now, I’m alone in this at my house, since my PETA-mocking friends and family here all liked the game and didn’t think it was at all like Dungeon Command. I suspect that it’s because a miniatures game has a different feel, but I stand by my estimation regardless.

That said, the other thing that John Clowdus is known for is being the master of variants, which is really just him doing what he always does, stretching that buck ’til poor old George Washington looks like Joan Rivers. That’s where the dog faction comes into play. If you want to spice up your game, and really, I think it’s the only way to play after you’ve mastered the concepts of the game, every card in that mercenary set is a reaction card played when it’s not your turn. Were it not for the Dogs of War faction, I think the game wouldn’t have gone over nearly as well since the rest of the game, while much more strategic than Dungeon Command, would suffer from the same deficit of what I’d call “actual interaction” where players are playing at the same time rather than taking turns shooting arrows while the other watches. In short, for me, I think the Dogs of War are really integral to the game play and really makes the game shine more than it already did although, again, my friends disagree with me on this point.

There’s also a three and four player variant in the box, which I haven’t tried, but which I’m not keen on trying either because I really like it as a fast, two player game. There’s also other variants in the rulebook for alliances, which allow you to pool two decks and then remove ten cards, leaving you with a 40 card deck. That’s a neat variation on the game which we did play, and I enjoyed greatly having foxes fight alongside vultures, knowing that under any other circumstances, the foxes would be vulture food. This alliance variant is a lot of fun, and I have to admit that I might even like it more than a single faction because of the neat pairings that end up on the table.

I’ve talked about using them as commanders and warriors, but I haven’t talked about other uses. Some of the other ways to use the cards is as currency to boost attacks or initiate special attacks. In addition, you can sacrifice cards in your hand to “take the hit” if you want to preserve cards already played to the table that would ordinarily be forced to die. At first, I thought that there weren’t enough unique guys to go around, but that was before I got to playing the game really, and once I got to the point that I understood the game, I was glad there weren’t a bazillion unique cards because it would become unwieldy. I think the mix is really quite perfect when you bring in the Dogs of War deck, and if you really require more dudes, play an Alliance game and use two decks.

Now, as a final thought, I’m going to do what I always do, rip on the rulebook. I love John, but the man needs a proofreader and a blind play test team like I need hair plugs. There are some misspellings, which are no biggie, but the layout is wonky and there are some things that we couldn’t really figure out easily, like how many “formation attack” troops you could use in a single attack. Thanks to BGG, we found the answer quickly, but Small Box’s penchant for making rulebooks that are sometimes all but indecipherable has reared its ugly head again. It’s not that you can’t read the book and play it, it’s that some of the things are explained in such a way that they’re harder than they need to be or not completely explained, I guess. Either way, after a couple of plays and one lookup on BGG, we got it sorted out and were pecking the eyes out of walrus’ with giant bipedal vultures.

All in all, it’s a great little medium weight duelling game with the only luck factor being in the draw of the cards. I’m not a big card game fan, in general, although John has come a long way towards breaking me of that predilection, and Tooth and Nail: Factions is yet another successful example of how a guy who started out selling 20 copies a pop of card games nobody ever heard of can grow into a powerhouse publisher with a high quality product that is not only a good value for the dollar, but a lot of fun. I think one final thing worth mentioning is that John already has some Print-and-Play expansions you can download, and it’s pretty clear that the only thing that will limit the “legs” this game has is John’s sick and twisted imagination, which has shown no sign of wearing out anytime soon.

• Why The Only Thing Cooler Than Chaingun Toting Elephants Is NOTHING:
• The game play smart and engaging; you will want to keep playing
• It’s not as complex as many SBG titles, making it a great for the family
• Lots of truly unique factions make this game infinitely playable
• Expansions, variants, and print and play content keeps the game fresh
• Because gun toting elephants F*****G ROCK, that’s why!

Why I Broke A Tooth And Chipped A Nail Playing This:

• This is the big time, so I expect better rulebooks with no typos
• Without the Dogs of War expansion, it’s a little less exciting

- There are no iOS or Android versions, which would make Small Box RICH

Overall:
Everyone really dug this game, and I really was the one lone dissenter because I felt like the game had too much deterministic effects laid against the defender. Once the Dogs of War were unleashed, the game immediately changed, in my mind, from a fun duelling game into a really dynamic, action packed game of critter gittin’. The pace is fast, the options are all very intriguing and there’s very rarely an obvious play, which are all signs of greatness. While the rulebook could use some TLC, don’t let my ongoing critique of Small Box’s rulebooks deter you; it’s worth the hassle, without a doubt.

If you missed out on the Kickstarter, or abstain from Kickstarter in general for personal reasons, the great news is that you can always order it from John at the Small Box website. Personally, if Small Box could Kickstart this game as an iOS app, I’d be first in line to sign up, because this really would be perfect for it and would absolutely get me off the Ascension wagon for good. It’s simply a great game, and I honestly hope it does as well as Omen. While it’s not going to unseat Bhazum as my all-time favourite, it most certainly is in my top 5 hobby card games.

Rating:
4/5 Stars

Check it out here at Small Box’s site: http://www.smallboxgames.com/factions.html
Check out the rules here: http://www.smallboxgames.com/rules_factions.pdf
Check out the VIDEO here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smallboxgames/tooth-and-nail-factions-a-new-card-game-from-small

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By Shorty Monster

Before I start, I just have to say, I love me some Blood Bowl! I’ve been a fan since I was a teenager and still have the same set that I bought back then. I’m going to show my age a little here, but not in old way and say I just missed out on the kick ass foam board, and had to settle for card. This didn’t stop me and my high school wargaming group buying three teams each and running so many leagues we actually had promotions and relegations, with knock-out championships and a lucrative transfer market, even though we could only get together to play on weekends.

So I was more than a tad excited when one of my favourite producers of card/board games, Fantasy Flight Games, announced they were taking a swing at Blood Bowl. The first rumours were that it would be a deck building game, and since I’m also a lover of all things Dominion I was well up for this. The concept has since changed and is now a basic card game with each player taking on the role of a team manager and playing a season of several weeks against the other players.

Since this game was bought for me several months ago, there will be no un-boxing, but if you want to know what you get without a piece by piece breakdown, here you go. To start with, a lot less tokens than I usually expect from FFG, but it is technically a silver-line game and thus designed to be a bit more compact. You get some balls, some cheat tokens, and a few team tokens to track your star player picks. Along with that comes a nifty cardboard point tracker per player (four in all, as the game can handle 2-4 players).

Then you have the cards. A team deck for each of the six that are available at the start, plus an upgrade deck each too. there’s two big stacks of star player cards split between what are basically the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’. A nice touch here for fans of the board edition of the game is the addition of star player Morg N’ Thorg in each of the decks. He can only play for one team at a time, so he could be a waste of a pick, but well worth the risk as he is one of the best players in the game. Add to that a deck of other upgrade cards, the rest of the game is made up of Tournament cards and highlight cards that form the basis of the game play and a couple of tackle dice that will look familiar to the fans.

Right, so now we have all that, how do we use it? I’ll keep this simple, as if you want the full rules, they’re available for download. Each Manager starts with a team, and gets a few weeks of game play to earn the most ‘star power’ points by winning highlights and tournaments (and cheating of course), as well as increasing his team roster as the season progresses with star player picks and upgrade cards.

In a turn each Manager has his chance to commit a player to a match up; they can grab the ball, tackle another player who’s there or any number of other cool things they have the ability to do based on the card text. If the team member is a cheat, the manager has no choice but to take a cheat token, and although this is often rewarded with a roar of the crowd (fan points), they also run the risk of being caught out by the ref and sent off, so I wouldn’t advise relying on them too much. At the end of the week, the team with the most star points at each match up wins the rewards on the card (new star players, fan points, team/staff upgrades) and play continues until the end of the season. the winner is the Manager with the most fan points, with some very nice Blood Bowl themed ways of resolving a tied score.

I think that actually sums the whole game up quite nicely, but just remember, although cheaters don’t always prosper, they often do though so I say go for it!

One of my biggest questions when going into playing this game was whether or not it would capture the excitement I remembered from playing the original game as a kid. In my mind it actually surpassed it. Although Blood Bowl is supposed to be a fast and brutal game, the confines of the rules and the simple fact that it’s a board game mean that it can actually slow right down when playing, as each figure is moved and the manager takes the time to maneuver them all into place for one blitz and then maybe a throw or two. The card game lets you try out a cool move almost every time you play a card, with only the first few plays of each week being tactically thought out to give you a better chance later in the game. The tackle dice and the cheat tokens are a great way to add in the risk factor of the original game to most of the actions.One of the best things about game play though is not knowing which players your opponents will have on their roster each week. You may think you’re going to kick all kinds of ass at the Chaos Cup, but then the Riekland Reavers manager drops a treeman star player and rocks your world. And the ground under your feet.

Each week of game play is thoroughly exciting, and can be affected by a variety of things, such as the weather or the tournament of the week and where each manager wants to concentrate his efforts. Do you go for star player drafts, team upgrades or getting the fans on side? Each has a different effect on the remaining weeks and makes the game less predictable and a hell of a lot of fun.

So yes, I loved the game, but it isn’t perfect. My biggest gripe, and the only one that’s actually worth mentioning in a review of an otherwise stellar game, is how much the two player game sucks. Every time I have played with just two managers, the game has been decided by the end of the first week. One manager can get such a good draw on star players that they romp over their opponent in the second week and never give them the chance to recover for the remainder of the season. This happens due to the luck of the draw, and the fact that star players are placed on top of your roster deck meaning you’re going to draw them for the second week. If your opponent hasn’t been lucky enough to grab a Dwarven Death Roller, a tree man and an ogre, they’re going to struggle and then falter. With even one extra manager in the game the lucky player’s resources will be split and they will have fewer chances to dominate the game. Four players is just as good, but can require a bit more pace on the table than you’d think, and it doesn’t add much more than the third Manager in terms of game play.

I’m sure there are people out there who have a house rule to drop the huge advantage one player can get in a two player game, but myself and my better half – who bought me the game, thanks beautiful – have just not bothered playing it without at least a third player these days. I don’t want this to put people off, but when you look at what the company has done with some of its other Silver Line games (Elder Sign and Deathwatch specifically) that work with any number of players equally well, it’s a bit of a let down.

If I was going to give it a star rating, the failure of the two player game would drop it an entire star. But since I otherwise adore this game, it still come in at a four star review from this sports fan.

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By Paco Garcia Jaen

Sometimes family expect you to follow the professional traditions and for you to take on the family trade. So a banker might expect their offspring to become bankers, butcher to become butchers too, and so on and so forth.

But what happens when your family is actually professor Frankenstein? What if the family business is all about assembling body parts and bringing the dead back to life? It’s not the type of subject you can learn at university, I would say. So how do you learn the trade?

Well, you practise with deceased pets.

In Tobynstein you play as cousin of professor Frankenstein and your mission is to earn your cousin’s favour by reviving a dead pet to prove your worth.

This game comes from a Spanish company called Homo Ludicus(yes, yes… I can also make tons of jokes about the name and no, none of them were that funny) and, although you wouldn’t be blamed for not knowing them, they have a very impressive catalogue of games! And they are all in Spanish and English, with very decent translation, so nothing to fear regarding the country of origin.

The game, for 2 to 6 players, is a fast and fun paced competitive game in which each player will search for body parts in a deck of cards, stitch body parts together to get a full pet or steal a body part from an opponent. Once the player has managed to collect and stitch together all the body parts needed, one must announce “Revive!” before drawing a new card. If the card drafted contains a lighting bolt, the pet will come to live and the player wins.

There are two things that jump up in this game. The production values and the artwork. The cards are made of rigid cardboard that most games would love to have. They are not as thick as a standard board, but they are not thin card either. They, basically, will never bend unless you specifically make them.

The artwork is hilarious. And gruesome. But mostly hilarious. The cartoons of the four pets you can assemble are just fantastic. Toby the dog, Garfield the cat, Bernie the Iguana and George the chameleon. When you dig for parts, you can find either their heads, their torso or their lower limbs. You can either assemble perfectly so you end up with a full animal, or mix body parts but matching the colour of the stretcher where they are located. So, for example, you could have two parts dog and one chameleon if the chameleon is on a bed that matches the colour of the other two parts.

The gameplay is very simple. All players reveal what action they want to play at the same time. Theft goes first, then digging for body parts and then stitching body parts together. When you draw from the main deck, you can find objects too, that might help – or hinder – your effort in finding the right body part for you. All and all, a very simple game.

And it is very funny too. The bizarre combinations of animals are really funny and some of the object you can find are just perfect for the theme. The replayability is fair, though not great. We had a couple of games and we felt we needed something a bit “meatier”, but for a game that takes about 20 minutes to play, it is pretty excellent.

I’m not sure this would do well amongst young children, but I think anyone over the age or 10 should be OK with it. The size of the box is nearly pocket size (could be smaller if they were normal cards, though) and it doesn’t take long to learn, so one for a quick filler or a train journey.

Overall, more than happy to give this game 3 well deserved stars.

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