Reviews written by metalface13

I'm not sure even a 6 does Blood Bowl justice on 1-5 scale. It's a classic and probably my all-time fav. It's got everything: Orcs vs. Undead vs. Elves vs. Dark Elves vs Halflings vs. Chaos in a fantasy rugby/football bash. It's brutal, visceral and fast. It's got RPG elements so you can create your own star player only to have your heart broken when he's pushed into the crowd and ripped to shreds by rapid fans.

It's alright though because you can always buy a replacement.

Well, I've been putting off giving a review of BattleLore mainly because I'm not sure how I feel about the game. The recent news of Fantasy Flight Games' acquisition of the title has prompted me to give it a shot.

When I first got BattleLore I was really impressed with the game. It was crammed full of miniatures (too full though, as everyone knows about the bent minis) and had great artwork, board, tokens, etc.

Also it changed a lot of things that I was frustrated with in Commands and Colors: Ancients: Cavalry was actually powerful (I know, historically infantry ruled the times of the Romans/Carthaginians, but when I first played CC:A I didn't know that and didn't understand why my mounted units couldn't trample everything under their hooves), BattleLore got rid of the whole evade thing, but made it more difficult for units to battle back. There are no general in BattleLore but you do have the lore council and the lore deck.

Then the Call to Arms expansion came out and you could customize your forces and make every battle really different.

And there's the monsters! How awesome is it to have a hill giant, earth elemental or giant spider in your ranks! Not that awesome. They are really worth the effort to use in battle.

Then as the game got more advanced, the long it takes to set up. Set up time basically equals play time. If I'm going to spend 45 minutes setting up I'd better be playing the game for longer than 1.5 hours.

Then I moved away from my brother and BattleLore has set upon the shelf except for the one time I took it over to my friend's house and we played it. It didn't do much for me, honestly. Instead we play more multi-player games like Descent or games with our wives.

When I first got BattleLore I probably would've given it a 5. A great game, but not a classic. Now I give it a 3. But a 3 instead of a 2, because it may still hold some potential with FFG.

I got this in a math trade. Great deal considering I traded Scarab Lords (yawn!). I've only gotten two matches in but LOTR: Confrontation is a fun game. I was a big fan of Stratego as a kid and Confrontation builds on that and produces a game of trying to out think your opponent and always stay two steps ahead. The board is really abstracted, but each character's special abilities are really fun in the way they counter each other. Great, quick-playing 2-player game.

A couple of years ago I was really obsessed with playing Talisman. I was looking for a simpler adventure game than Descent and Talisman looked like it was it. Unfortunately Talisman was out of print and I really didn't want to pay $100 for a used board game. Then I heard about Prophecy.

I ordered it (the Altar edition, I was a true Prophecy pioneer) and it was a hit. I like it's goofy artwork and the glass beads (I think the Z-Man version has cubes?) and the board is a very stunning, abstract map. My only problem are the flimsy cards, but I think the Z-Man version may have fixed that. Oh, another great thing are the character stands! The plastic bases are the best out of any game, hands down.

Game play is essentially Talisman, but better. You have two stats Strength and Willpower which are connected to Health and Magic respectively; get wounded and your current strength is down until you heal. When you spend magic on spells or to initiate battle of wills, then you have less Willpower in those battles. Battles resolve just like Talisman, add your modifiers and see if you get the higher roll than the encounter.

You also get a lot more freedom in movement. A lot. You can always move one space to either side of you for free, pay 1 gold to ride a horse two spaces either way, spend gold to go port to port or travel via magic gates. Also there are plenty of skills that affect movement.

As for skills, each character is a member of two guilds from which they spend experience to gains skills. Any character, however, can have skills from any guild. You just have to pay gold AND experience to get the skills.

The winner is the first person to gain 3 of the 5 artifacts protected in the Outer Planes spaces guarded by a lesser and greater guardian each. If all of the guardians have been defeated, but no player has 3 artifacts it becomes a PvP game. Well, you can still do PvP all throughout the game, but there's little reason to do so.

Prophecy is a simple adventure game, but it does adventuring right. The game can tend to drag on a little long sometimes, so we'll either play with some quick start rules (characters get an item and a skill to start with) or play winner is first to get 1 artifact, or 2 artifacts or whatever.

Currently, I'm a little bored with Prophecy, so I'd really like to give it a 4.5 stars. I really want those expansions to come out and give Prophecy a breath of fresh air.

I played Dungeoneer once. It sounded cool: Pocket sized Descent where everybody gets to be a hero AND play evil Overlord-like cards on the other players. But it wasn't cool. It was rather ho-hum.

Each player receives a quest at the beginning of the game and you're trying to complete your quest to win the game. The quests require you to go to a specific room and do a specific thing. You build the dungeon as you play, drawing from a pile of dungeon cards and placing it on the table connected to a room already played. The problem is you can wait the entire game for your card to show up so you can complete your dumb quest, so it's luck of the draw (literally) as to who gets their quest room to come up first.

There is a variant where you lay out all the dungeon cards first, but none of us were interested enough after our first game to give the variant a shot. Also I don't recall the characters really being all that different.

So while the game has some good ideas - everybody's a hero and the villain - the game fell way short of my expectations.

Pirate's Cove ain't bad for a pirate game. Actually it's really good for a pirate themed game. There are lots of games out there with the pirate theme just slapped on there, but Pirate's Cove actually tries to be a pirate game. Note the difference between a pirate themed game and a pirate game.

Anyway, Pirate's Cove of course has great components (it is a Days of Wonder game after all); the map is gorgeous, the ship sculpts are great, the cards have really fun illustrations on them.

Game play is alright. You get to outfit your ship how you want it: lots of crew, lots of gun, make it fast, make it hold lots of stuff, any combination. Each round you secretly choose which island you want to visit. A card is dealt face up on each island depicting how much treasure is available or other benefits. Each island also has a unique upgrade ability: buy more crew, upgrade cannons, upgrade your hull, etc. If you and another pirate ship end up on the same island a fight erupts. Combat is pretty plain though. Also there is a legendary pirate that roams the seas. His paths follow a pattern so you can dare to take him on if you want. To score points you haul your treasure to the center island and bury it there.

A fun family or entry game, but doesn't really have the piratey goodness I want to sink my cutlass into.

What a waste of theme! C'mon! King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table fighting for truth and justice, fending off foreign invaders and searching for the Holy Grail by laying down a run of five? LAME! The components are beautiful and give you the illusion you're actually playing a board game, but then you realize you're just playing a lame rummy variant.

Also the traitor? Goodidea, lame execution. Should be present in ever single game.

I love zombies. Zombie movies, The Walking Dead comic, The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z books. Zombies are great and provide wonderful social commentary or they can just be gory fun.

Last Night on Earth plays like one of those straight-to-DVD flicks rather than Dawn of the Dead, but that's OK.

Last Night on Earth has simple gameplay, lots of different scenarios and great bits. And let me tell you about the soundtrack! Wait, don't let me tell you about the soundtrack, it's terrible.

I haven't played the Growing Hunger expansion yet as I still haven't played through all of the scenarios in the base game. I am really looking forward to Flying Frog's new game, A Touch of Evil: The Supernatural Game.

It's not perfect, it is 'overly designed' but it's the best super hero game I've played. Yeah, that's right Barnes, the best. It's got great, prepainted figures and packs one hell of a punch in its combat system. It's probably my favorite combat system out of any game. I wish more adventure games would mirror it in their designs.

Also, it plays in two hours or less and plays great with 2-3 players (it plays up to 4 but I've never played a 4-player game).

It's got its detractors. I don't think it was the super hero game everybody was looking for, but it's one of my favorites.

Forget Yahtzee! Can't Stop! is the ultimate dice game. Push your luck as far as you can, you CAN'T STOP! Great game.