All Hands on Deck! Kickstarter Preview

This post is not a review, but a preview of a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter.

All Hands on Deck! is a family set collection game with a fun, cartoony pirate theme. The game consists of 108 cards made up of 3 different bands of pirates (colored suits) as well as a variety of actions cards. 

The goal of the game is to assemble a team of winning pirates - either 7 consecutive pirates from one crew, or 3 consecutive pirates from all 3 crews. Players go about this by participating in auctions and through clever play of their action cards.

Each round, there will be a card from the deck put up for auction. All players will put up cards from their hand into the blind bid auction. All pirate cards values are added up, and the highest bid wins. Any actions cards that are included in the bid are also resolved in turn order.

Once someone assembled a winning hand, the game ends!

That it pretty much it! The game is great for families - it is easy to understand, has fantastic artwork, and a fun theme. Decisions in the game - like knowing which cards to give up in your bids and which to hold onto as sets (as well as which type of set to shoot for) are simple, but also not so easy as to make the game uninteresting. All Hands on Deck definitely has enough gameplay to be enjoyable for everyone, and definitely doesn't outstay its welcome!

If you think All Hands on Deck will be a good fit for you, go check it out on Kickstarter!

Dead Panic Review

Dead Panic is the latest release from Justin De Witt and Fireside Games, who are both probably best known for their 2009 release, Castle Panic.

Dead Panic is a cooperative game in which players take on the roles of survivors fighting to escape a zombie onslaught. The players do this by moving around the board, and using whatever weapons they can find to kill zombies and stay alive. 

The survivors are still alive in the cabin...but the zombies have take out a wall!

Dead Panic bears some cosmetic and a few gameplay similarities with Castle Panic, but for the most part, the games are pretty different.

One of the most interesting aspects of this game is that while the game starts off cooperatively with all players on the side same, if a player character dies, she turns into a zombie - essentially switching sides - and now has the goal of killing the other players. Players win the game if they are able to survive long enough to find the pieces of the broken radio, collect them all, assemble them, call the van, and get into the van. Anyone who makes it into the van and escapes wins, and any zombie players lose.

Each player will choose a character to play. Each character has special abilities that will need to be utilized in order to make sure the group survives until help can arrive. On a turn, a player will have 2 actions. Possible actions include basic things like drawing a card (when still inside the cabin), using a card, moving, and other special things like repairing, trading, or assembling.

After taking actions (and hopefully killing some zombies), the player has to draw an event card. This card will usually indicate how many zombie tokens need to be drawn and added to the board, as well as which zombies move. After this, all players have to fight any zombies she shares a space with, by using either any weapons she might be (hopefully) carrying or her bare hands. 

Dead Panic is a game that I had high hopes for. I had really wanted to like another game from Fireside Games - Castle Panic - which is distantly related to Dead Panic, but found it overly simple with not very many decisions to be made. While that game was a good choice for family play with younger children, I was hoping that Dead Panic would add more options, and more decisions to a base system that I thought had some interesting potential. And although Dead Panic does add more to the system, I would not say it is a vast improvement over Castle Panic. 

I do really like the aspect of players turning into zombies and then working against the rest of the players. That adds a neat dynamic especially towards the end of the game - when it becomes pretty clear that at least some of the players are going to win, do those in stronger positions take the risks necessary to make sure everyone survives, or does it devolve into "every man for himself" at some point? That piece of the game is a lot of fun. And of course rolling dice for combat adds an exciting "Ameritrash" level of excitement to the game. Overall, though, I was disappointed with Dead Panic.

First, the rulebook is formatted awkwardly. It is easy enough to read through to learn the game, but there are so many tiny rules and rule exceptions that finding that clarification during the game can be very frustrating. The publisher has released a FAQ that address some rules confusions, which is great of them, but might not be found by some players.

Look at all of those! Are you kidding?

I mentioned the rules exceptions above. In many games, and most cooperative games, there are upkeep steps that are required to keep the game moving. These steps are usually outside of the realm of any single player's turn, and (ideally) need to be memorized in order to keep the game moving smoothly. In Dead Panic, at least one of the players needs to know how the zombies move each turn. The table above shows all of the special rules for zombie movement. Does that look like fun to you? For our games I would have kept the rulebook open to this page, but we kept having so many other rules questions that I had to keep flipping back to it. This may seem like a minor quibble, and maybe it would be for some players, but for me, having to look up and confirm rules questions after a fourth and fifth game in the rulebook and the FAQ is rare, and a deal breaker.

I think I would have to give Dead Panic a 5.5/10. There is a game here, but I don't find it especially enjoyable. I do think it is worth reiterating that I did have high expectations for Dead Panic, and these were not compatible with what Fireside Games intended with this release. Dead Panic is absolutely one of those games that I could see other people enjoying, that I just don't "get."

Jim would like to thank Fireside Games for providing him with a review copy of Dead Panic.

Ophir Kickstarter Preview

[This post is not a review, but a preview of a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinschaffer/ophir?ref=card). Components, art, or rules may change between when Jim played the game and the final release of the game.]

Ophir is the latest game from Terra Nova games (http://www.terranovagames.com/) seeking funding on Kickstarter. Their previous game, Guile, was successfully funded on Kickstarter about a year ago, and is a light, very interesting, card game all about bluffing and deduction.

Comparatively, Ophir is much more complicated than Guile, but it does still very much fall in the "family" category of games. In Ophir, players assume the roles of different government, trade, and religious dignitaries who are all sailing around the region of Ophir with a singular goal - building the Temple.



A lot about the setup of Ophir is modular and randomized, which adds a lot to the replayability of the game. Even players who have played previously will have to take a good look at the board state after everything has been set up and reevaluate whether their strategies will be effective for this game.

The locations of all the goods and the Temple and Market are random, as are the two barriers (which block player movement), as well as the order of the market cards (somewhat - there is an A and a B deck, which are shuffled separately and then combined, A on top of B). Players also draft the special roles in the game, with the first player having her choice from among 1 more than the number of players.

Players will be sailing around to the different islands, picking up goods, and delivering them to either the Market or the Temple and receiving rewards like money, favor, or victory points. The main way to score points in the game, though, is by contributing gold or silver towards the construction of the Temple. Players can purchase gold or silver by paying either coins or favor, and can then deliver the gold or silver to the Temple site in return for victory points.

Moving around the board is interesting too, because each player will have an influence die on their ship. If a player wants to sail into a space which already contains another player's ship, she has to either spend a valuable favor point, or risk rolling her influence die in the hopes of rolling a value that is equal to or higher than the highest influence die on the space she is trying to move to. If the roll is unsuccessful, her action is wasted and her ship stays where it is, but if it is successful, she is able to move into that space, and the value she rolled is the new value of her influence die - which could be bad news for the other players who might want to move into her space.

How awesome does that look? And this is only a prototype!

In fact, one of the big draws of Ophir is the really phenomenal looking 3-D Temple that gets constructed throughout the game. As each level is completed by the players, another level is added, which has art corresponding to the Temple getting closer and closer to completion.

The game will end when either the Temple is completed, or when there are not enough market cards left to fully replenish the market. At this point, players will get extra victory points for any gold or silver they happen to be carrying at the time, and the player with the most victory points wins!

While there is a lot of randomization in Ophir, the gameplay is very simple, which makes this a great game for more experienced gamers to play with friends or family members who may not be as engaged in the hobby. The art and components will absolutely help those "non-gamers" feel more comfortable and more drawn to the game as well. The pick up and deliver mechanisms are also very intuitive and will be very easy to explain to new players as well. I feel that Ophir is a great gateway game for people interested in the beautiful art or in a easy to learn pickup and deliver game.

If you think Ophir would make a good addition to you game collection, go pledge now! (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinschaffer/ophir?ref=card)

Wanted: The Outlaws Kickstarter Preview

Wanted: The Outlaws is a game currently funding on Kickstarter from publisher Bibelot Games. It is a light, family style game of cards and dice set in the old West.

In Wanted, players use Loot to recruit to hire characters and build their posses. They then use these posses to go on jobs and earn Reputation. After all of the cards have been used, the game is over and the player with the most Reputation wins!

To set up, the deck of cards is shuffled, and dealt out into 6 piles which are turned face-up. Each player starts the game with 12 Loot. On her turn, a player can do 1 of 3 actions. She can recruit a face-up character by paying Loot, she can use the characters she already has to go on a face-up Job, or she can Report a Tip. Reporting a Tip will gain the player 1 Loot, and the ability to place any of the top cards in the middle of the table on the bottom of its respective deck. 

The action that drives the game is going on Jobs. These are the horizontal cards that describe something to be done in town. A player can use her posse to go on a job as long as her characters' cumulative stats for Smarts, Power, and Will either equal or exceed those stats on the job card. If a player decides to go on the job, she rolls the number of dice pictured in the upper left hand corner of the job card, and gains the benefits (and suffers the penalties) from that roll. Players can gain either 1 or 2 Loot or Reputation or suffer either 1 or 2 wounds.

Wounds are placed on characters that went on jobs, and if a character takes wounds equal to their hearts, that character dies and is discarded.

Uh-oh! Looks like some of these Outlaws are going to make it home for dinner!!

That is pretty much the game! Play continues in this way, each player getting 1 action per turn, until all of the cards in Town are gone. At this point, whoever has the most Reputation is the Outlawiest Outlaw of the All!!

The theme is a lot of fun, too. There are a good number of games set in the Wild West, but I can't think of many that fall into the light, family category. For that, I can't recommend The Outlaws enough!

The game is definitely light, but doesn't overstay its welcome, and gameplay is smooth since each turn is so short. This is certainly a game that I would pull out with my family, or with my younger niece and nephew for a short, rootin' tootin' dice filled romp. It would be even better suited to playing with grade schoolers because players would need to practice adding their character's stats to see what jobs they can do.

If you think Wanted: The Outlaws would be a good fit for you, then go check out their Kickstarter campaign!!!