This week in my gaming group there were two copies of Z-Man Terra Mystica and the 8 of us wanted to play it. Well, I wasn’t mad about playing it, but I’m happy to play anything, so I thought “what the heck… let’s play an Euro”.
Kuźnia Gier, a Polish publishing company known for such games as Wolsung, The Witcher and last year’s Essen releases –
Whoever designed this game must be some sort of planning and structuring genius. Tales of the Arabian Nights is a cross between a board game and the Choose Your Own Adventure books I enjoyed in my youth – only the adventure book that comes with it contains more than 2,000 different paragraphs.
As pretty much everyone knows by now, I love most dexterity games, but even more than that, I truly love science fiction. Even more than that, I truly love 4X conquest games, so when I heard about Ascending Empires, it immediately folded space into the forefront of games I wanted to buy.
Whoever designed this game must be some sort of planning and structuring genius. Tales of the Arabian Nights is a cross between a board game and the Choose Your Own Adventure books I enjoyed in my youth – only the adventure book that comes with it contains more than 2,000 different paragraphs
Yep, another game with dice and miniatures hit the table. This one is a heavily SciFi themed beast called Earth Reborn from Z-Man Games. There are quite a few SciFi themed games out there and it can be tough to stand out. This is another set in the post-apocalyptic Earth (hence the name…) and is basically a miniatures skirmish game between 2 factions – NORAD and SALEMITES. The closest game in style that I have played is Space Hulk so that should give you an idea of the scale. Having said that, Earth Reborn is a very different game.
To start with the game is designed by a small company called Back Spindle Games. By itself, that is a good sign. A brand like the Discworld doesn’t come easily, and for a small company to be able to get that sort of license, they must have made a good impression.
My good friend Michael Fox from the Little Metal Dog Show was lucky enough to meet David Brashaw and Leonard Boyd from Backspindle Games at UK Games Expo for a video demo of their long term labour of love, Guards! Guards! which is based on the Terry Pratchett Discworld novel. Michael picked up their prototype and did his review and now its my turn.
I was never much a fan of the old pirate stories, and I sure as hell don’t like the Somali scumbags that are boarding merchant vessels in the modern world today. That being said, the moment I heard about Z-Man’s Merchants and Marauders, I wanted it. I read a bit about it on the Z-Man website, read some rumours on the interwebz, and each new story made this seem like an amazing adventure game. While I am indeed usually optimistic, I simply had to get this to prove to myself that it may be the game to change my mind, forever, about pirates, and more specifically, pirate games.
Let’s talk about one of Z-Man Games best releases of recent years. No, it’s not Agricola (despite the fact it’s been hovering around the top of the boardgamegeek Top Ten since pretty much the beginning of time) – I’d like to talk about Matt Leacock’s fantastic co-operative game, Pandemic.
