Hooyah Review

Since I'm a big fan of co-operative games, I was intrigued by the chance to play Hooyah.

In Hooyah, the players represent a team of Navy Seals that are attempting to complete a Mission.  In order to complete this Mission, they must successfully execute several Operations, during which Events can occur that might impede their progress.  The game is broken up into a series of "Preparation" and "Ops" phases.  In the Preparation phase, players are able to draw two cards - either from a face up group, or from the deck.  They may also play Preparation Equipment cards.  When deciding on cards, they are generally looking for colors that match the current "Ops" cards.  Once the Lt. Commander (one of the roles), feels that the team is prepared for the Op, then they call "Hooyah" and the Op begins.  At this point, a number of Events are handed out to the players.  The Events can be skill checks that you can pass by discarding a matching card, they can force you to lose Health or cards based on a condition, and they can do a few other things.  Once all of the Events are completed, the team goes around playing cards until they play enough cards to pass the Op (for example, they might need 5 purple and 3 orange cards).  If they pass the Op, then they might gain extra Health, depending on how long was spent in Preparation.  If they fail the Op, they lose Health and start over on the Op, after discarding their hands.  After five Ops, they must immediately (no Preparation phase) each face one more Event, and then attempt their Mission (which works just like an Op).  If they succeed on the Mission, then they have won the game!

Completing an Op - Colors matter more than theme

The first thing to discuss about Hooyah before even getting into pros and cons for the game is the theme.  The theme is definitely American oriented, and more specifically, patriotic American oriented.  In fact, each of the missions is based off of a real life Navy Seal mission.  That part I think is pretty interesting (you could even call it a "pro").  One of the specific missions that people will probably easily recognize is "Mission: Compound Raid.  Objective: To capture or kill Osama bin Laden."  So, I think that some people will really enjoy the theme quite a bit.  However, I can see a lot of other people actually being turned off by it.  Yet, with all of that, I felt like the theme was a bit shallow when it came to actually playing the game.  Essentially you are worrying about matching colors much more than you are worried about why you are attempting to complete a Mission.  So, the Compound Raid is a "2 Yellow, 3 Red, 2 Blue," and this means much more to you during the game than anything else.

Now off to the pros and cons for the game.  The first pro that I have for Hooyah is that I felt like it had an interesting communication element.  Specifically, players were not allowed to discuss what they had in their hand.  Yet, if they drew their cards from the face up selection, then the other players would at least have some indication of how much they could help.  Yet, the face up selection often will provide irrelevant cards (though they might be helpful on later Ops or for skill checks), so you must decide between letting other players know what you have, and hoping to draw something useful.  And, after each completed Op, the Lt. Commander (LTC) has to remove one of the face up cards, so the public knowledge grows more scarce as the game progresses.  To mitigate some of this lack of communication, the LTC can perform a "Roll Call" at the end of his turn.  When doing this, each player goes around and says the number of cards that he would be able to play towards a single color (without stating which color it is).  This helps the LTC have a better indication of if the team is ready to begin the Op.  (As far as I'm aware, you are allowed to tell the LTC things like, "hey, lets go on the Op already!"  However, just how much you want to communicate like this should probably be discussed before starting the game, since much of the challenge is in guessing what people have.)

Now that I've gotten all of the pros out of the way for Hooyah, there were several things that I considered cons for the game.  First, is that there is an Event that states "Lose 1 Health for each completed Op."  Each player starts with 5 Health.  Various things throughout the game can gain you or cost you some of this Health.  However, for the most part, at least some players will have 5 Health or less.  There are 5 Ops in the game.  So, if you draw one of these Events after completing the 5th Op (when about to attempt the Mission), then you die.  Instantly.  With nothing you can do about it.  There are 2 Equipment cards in the deck that allow you to discard an Event card and draw another one.  One of the roles (Interrogator) allows you to do the same thing (once per game).  So, you can deflect a maximum of 3 of these nasty Events.  There are 6 in the deck.  And, most likely, you will not be prepared to deflect more than one of them.  So, at the end of the game, you are basically just hoping that you don't instantly die.  (I'm not really sure what this Event represents - all I can think is that it is your character stepping on a landmine!)

The Interrogator saves you.  Once.

This leads to the next con for Hooyah - the tension in the game doesn't seem balanced correctly.  In most co-operative games (Pandemic comes to mind) bad things are happening.  You try to keep them in check.  Slowly, you feel more and more like your hair is on fire, as there is nothing that you can do to stop the onrushing doom that is coming!  Your only hope is to reach the game end condition just seconds before you all die.  That's really one of the fun things about co-operative games - feeling like you're about to lose at any given moment, yet having the ability to reach out and steal a victory.  Hooyah is basically the exact opposite.  You very rarely actually feel like you're doing poorly.  In all of the games that I've played, we've been easily slaughtering the game.  And then, at the end, we hope that we don't draw an instant death card.  Because if we do, then we had a loss handed to us in the midst of our victory.

The last con that I had for Hooyah was that I felt like there weren't very many meaningful choices.  Basically, it was "hey, that card is the right color - I should draw it."  There are a few choices for the LTC to make - specifically, when should the team attempt the Op, but most everything else is a bit trivial.  Part of this, I believe, is that the Equipment cards don't serve much of a role.  I believe that one of the choices that you are intended to make is "should I use this Equipment card."  (Equipment cards can do things like letting you discard two other cards to make a card of the needed color.)  However, since the game is generally easy enough that you don't need to utilize the Equipment, you get back to just drawing the matching color and hoping to not draw the death Event.

Overall, I give Hooyah a 6.5/10.  The game functions, but without much of the excitement that I've found in most other co-operative games.  Plus, doing very well throughout the game and then suddenly losing because of a single Event card can definitely leave a sour taste in the mouth of new players.

If you like co-operative games, you might also check out Yggdrasil, Defenders of the Realm, and Space Alert.

I would like to thank U.S. Games Systems for providing me with a review copy of Hooyah.

Washington's War Review

One game that I was incredibly excited to receive a copy of was Washington's War.

Washington's War is a Revolutionary War board game.   One player takes on the role of the British army, and the other takes on the role of the Americans.  The game is played over a series of rounds - each round representing a year between 1775-1783 (in a long game).  On each turn, both players get to draw 7 cards.  These cards can be either "Ops" cards, or Events.  Events simply do something to alter the game, or a phase of the game.  They can help in combat, determine when the game ends, move the French closer to a treaty with the Americans, have Benedict Arnold betray the Americans, and many other things.  There are two types of events - Mandatory and Optional.  With Ops cards, a player can bring in reinforcements, move a General (possibly to attack), or gain Political Control in different regions of the board.  At the end of each round, many troops are lost to winter, and Political Control can shift if certain parts of the board are isolated from others.  After a certain number of turns (based on which events are played), players check for victory conditions - and whoever has Political Control over enough of the colonies is declared the winner!

The first thing that I like about Washington's War is that a lot of the elements of the game give it a nice historical theme.  Specifically, some of the things like winter attrition, though incredibly challenging in gameplay terms, make complete sense in the setting of the game.  One of these elements is the fact that, even in battles, you generally don't kill especially many troops.  I think that this really depicts the inaccuracy of the muskets used during this time - it's much more likely that you will destroy a large army by catching them in a place where they can't flee (thus getting them to surrender) than it is to wipe out them out on the battlefield.  Honestly, this element of a war game where you are pushing armies around instead of killing them reminds me of the Game of Thrones Board Game and, though I didn't really like it especially much in that game, I think that it works well in Washington's War.  (It helps that you can wipe out an entire army if you can force them to surrender.)

Ok, I thought the flash made this picture look cool.

My next two pros really are very intermixed, so I'll talk about them at the same time.  First, I liked that both sides had significantly different advantages and disadvantages (this also works with the historical feeling to the game), and second, I liked how "Isolation" and placing Political Control markers worked.  The two sides in this game play quite differently.  And, if you want to win, then you truly have to capitalize on your strengths and find ways of exploiting your opponent's weaknesses.  Specifically, the British player gets a lot of troops, especially early, and has major combat advantages to start the game.  The American player, however, is able to quickly get small armies positioned on different parts of the map in order to gain Political Control and isolate the British player's control - and winning the game is about Political Control (and not killing things), so this is a very useful ability.  One of the elements of the game that you check at the end of each round is called "Isolation."  Basically, it means that if you can't find a way to connect your Political Control markers to some troops or some neutral areas of the board, then you will lose your control in those areas, as the people will feel isolated from your influence.  It isn't generally very easy to isolate your opponent's political markers, but successfully doing this at the right times during the game can really determine which player wins and which player loses.

Now that I've mentioned several things that Washington's War did very well, there were a few areas that I disliked.  First, this game is overly complex.  One of the reasons that I was so excited about this game is that it has a 90 minute playing time - and, for the most part, I've found this to be accurate.  However, it also has a 24 page rulebook that is very text heavy (there are a lot of diagrams and such - I'm more focusing on the length than the quality), and also has another 14 page book for examples of play, strategy tips, and design notes.  To read through and really understand the rulebook will probably take around an hour.  I read it three times before my first game.  And then, I referenced it repeatedly every time that I played.  Basically, here's how it reads, "the British player performs this rule like X, but the American player does Y.  Exception: in Z situation, everything is different."  There really feels like an exception to every rule.  Oh, and the French armies (obviously) work differently than either the American or the British armies.  Yes, I realize that much of this is attempting to capture the historical feel of the Revolutionary War, but it seemed quite excessive.  Additionally, I thought that, though the rules covered everything, they weren't one of GMT's better rulebooks.  Rules weren't laid out in the actual order that you would encounter them in the game, and I often wanted to look up rules, but wasn't able to find what I needed in the index.  This led to flipping pages and trying to remember what section covered that exception.  The complexity and the rules will definitely be your biggest hurdle in enjoying Washington's War.

My next con was that I really disliked Mandatory Events.  More specifically, I really disliked that Mandatory Events made your hand significantly worse.  Some Mandatory Events are fairly neutral - they set what year the game will end.  However, other Mandatory Events would actually help the other team!  I've played card based political games (like Twilight Struggle) where you might draw your opponent's cards and you have to make the most of a bad situation.  However, in Twilight Struggle, there are ways of mitigating the impact of these cards.  In Washington's War, if a British player draws one of the strong American Mandatory Events, then he is forced to play it, and he doesn't get to redraw a card.  So, not only does it help his opponent, it also hurts his hand because he has one card that is functionally useless.  If you draw an opponent's Optional Event, then you can at least use it to give yourself an advantage in combat, or discard it to perform a political action.  With the Mandatory Events, it's like having a card in your hand that says "Pass."

Playing this card helps.  A lot.

The final con that I will mention for Washington's War is that I felt that it was far too luck based.  This luck came in what cards you draw and how important single die rolls were.  Now, I'm really okay with luck in games.  However, I feel that there is a disconnect in Washington's War - rule intensive games have a highly strategic feel to them.  Generally, the longer it takes to learn a game, the more I want random factors of the game to be mitigated.  Here's an example of a card that is amazing - "Baron von Steuben Trains the Continental Army."  To start the game, the British get a +1 advantage in every combat.  Why?  Because the American troops are horrible and throwing pitch forks at them.  However, this card permanently removes this bonus from the British.  See how this is useful?  So, if an American player draws this card early, then he will have a much easier time than if the British player draws it and is able to discard it during a combat.  Another element of luck is in determining your General's combat rating.  To start a fight, each player rolls a die.  On a 1-3, the General's rating is cut in half for that battle.  That hurts quite a bit.  But, then the battle is also determined by a single die roll (with modifiers).  I can outnumber my opponent by 3-4 troops (5 troops is a massive army in this game, and is the most that you can ever attack with), have the better General, and discard a card to give myself an advantage and still lose the combat.  Yes, this represents the fact that things go horribly awry in battle.  But, the winner of a battle coming down to how players roll a six-sided die became frustrating to me.

Overall, I give Washington's War a 7.0/10.  If you can get through the rules and start playing the game, then there is quite a bit to like about the game.  However, with the very steep entrance barrier mixed with the fairly high luck factor for the game, it didn't quite live up to the expectations that I had for it.

If Washington's War sounds interesting to you, then you might also want to check out 1989: Dawn of Freedom, Game of Thrones, and Twilight Struggle (really, everyone should check out Twilight Struggle if you haven't yet).

I would like to thank GMT Games for providing me with a review copy of Washington's War.

1989: Dawn of Freedom Review

One of my all time favorite games is Twilight Struggle.  Because of this, the fine people of GMT Games suggested that I try out 1989: Dawn of Freedom, since it's by the same designers and is somewhat of a "part 2" to Twilight Struggle.

In 1989, each player is struggling to take (or maintain) power in Eastern Europe.  To do this, players alternate playing cards that can either be used for "Ops", for the event showing on the card, or to advance on Tiananmen Square.  If using a card for "Ops", the player may add influence to any countries where they currently have influence or are adjacent to countries that have influence.  Alternatively, when using a card for Ops, a player may choose to make "support checks" by adding the value of the card, a few modifiers, and a die roll, to see if their opponent's influence is removed (and possibly their own influence is added).  Whenever a card is played for Ops, if an opponent's event is on the card, then that event will still occur.  If you want to avoid this, you can play a card in Tiananmen Square (once per round), to try to get one of a variety of bonuses - and to prevent your opponent's event from occurring.  One special type of event card is a scoring event.  When a scoring event is played, a Power Struggle immediately ensues, where both players get cards based on their position in the scoring country, and they play a small mini-game with them.  Whoever wins gets bonuses, which can include taking or keeping power in the country.  Finally, the players score points based on each player's position in the country; and if the Communist player still has power, then they get a bonus based on the number of times the country has scored.  Play continues like this until one player has 20 points (in a tug-of-war scoring, where only one player can have points at a time), or until 10 rounds have been played - signifying the end of the year.  If all of the rounds have been played, one final scoring takes place, and the highest score wins.

If you're familiar with Twilight Struggle, and you just want to know what is different, here's a quick list before I get into the pros and cons:

• There is no Defcon track
• There is no Headline phase
• Realignment rolls and coups have been combined into "support checks"
• Power Struggles occur during scoring rounds (I'll write more about these later)
• The Space Race has been replaced by Tiananmen Square
• No single scoring card has an automatic win condition (though one triggers an early game end)
• Each city has a "type" (worker, farmer, elite, etc)

All of the events are based on history

Now, let's start digging into the pros and cons.  The first major pro was that I found 1989 to be incredibly engaging.  I enjoyed each of my games from start to finish, and I was even thinking about the games I played afterwards - and found myself really looking forward to the next time that I would be able to try it out.  Now, I play games a lot (though I'd like to play even more), and I often find myself looking forward to game night - but normally I am thinking to myself "ok, what game do I need to play so that I can review it."  With this one, I was thinking specifically about wanting to get together with someone to play 1989 - forget all of that "what should I play" nonsense, I wanted to play this.

The next pro is fairly standard with all of the games that these designers make - I really appreciate the historical richness of the game.  I like that each of the events are based on things that actually happened, and that, if I was willing to learn it, I could easily learn some history simply by playing a game that I enjoy!

Another couple of pros that I will mention briefly are that I love the tug of war nature of the game, and I like that you have to make hard decisions (and sacrifices) during the game.  Each game will be different based on who you play with, and what you draw.  If I play with someone that is very interested in taking over Hungary, the entire first half of our game might be focusing on Hungary - because it's important to counter what your opponent is doing.  One example of this is that I drew an event (as the Communist player) that gave the Democratic player an influence in every city in Czechoslovakia where I did not have control.  I spent the entire round building control in Czechoslovakia to mitigate this effect.  My opponent naturally thought that I had a Czechoslovakia scoring card, and so he was countering my moves there.  That's the great tug of war.  Then, at some point, I knew that I had to give up and play the card - or throw it in Tiananmen Square.  I chose to play this one and throw a different card away, so that I would get the 4 Ops points, even though it made me sacrifice a bit by giving my opponent some influence in Czechoslovakia.

Some cards are very powerful

Now to talk about Power Struggles.  If you like Twilight Struggle, then you will basically like or hate 1989 depending on your feelings about Power Struggles.  When a Power Struggle ensues, each player gets 6 cards if they have at least one city in the scoring country.  Then, for each additional city, they will get 2 more cards.  The cards come in 6 types - Petition, Strike, Rally, March, Leader, and Wild.  (Though the Leaders really act as Wilds, and the "Wild" are more like events.)  If you have a Leader, and you have the corresponding type in the scoring country (ie, you have an Elite Leader, and you control an Elite space in the country), then they can be used as any of the first four types.  Whoever played the scoring card starts with initiative and plays a card.  Their opponent then must play a card of the same type.  If they are able to do this, then they roll a die, and if they roll at least the number in the corner of the player with initiative's card, then they get to take initiative.  Otherwise, initiative stays the same.  Cards are played back and forth like this until one player cannot play a card.  That player loses the Power Struggle.  Finally, both the winner and loser roll a die.  The loser is rolling to see how much influence they have to remove from the scoring country.  The winner is rolling to see how many victory points they earn (and if they are the Democratic player, to see if they take power in the country).

I haven't decided my feelings about Power Struggles.  Conceptually, I really like them.  I think that they are a neat additional element of the game.  I don't think that they are especially strategic - or, more specifically, I think that the strategy is fairly basic in them. But I enjoy them.  Theoretically.  However, when you draw 10 cards, and 5 of them are leaders that you can't play, you really feel like the game just punched you in the face.  Or, if you draw 12 cards and don't have any of a certain suit - and then your opponent leads with that suit - you become disenfranchised with this mechanic.  So, as I said, I still haven't really decided my feelings on this element of the game - but it is the single biggest change from Twilight Struggle.

Here's a hint: Ruse is in Bulgaria

Now to get to the cons.  I'll start off with a very minor con.  As it turns out, I don't know my Eastern European geography especially well.  So, when a card tells me that something happens in "Ruse," it will take me a while to figure out where that is (the first time - I do learn where it is on the gameboard eventually... though I still can't find it on a normal map).  This con goes away as you keep playing the game, but it will probably be something that you will encounter in your first game or two.

My bigger con is that the game seems to be a bit more luck influenced than it initially seems.  More specifically, bad luck can be more detrimental than I would like.  One example of this is in the Power Struggles that I mentioned earlier.  Bad luck in a Power Struggle can be a major swing in points.  For example, let's assume that I am the Democrat player and we are having a Power Struggle in Poland.  It's the second time that Poland is scoring, I didn't do well the first time, but I have since gained a small advantage (2 more countries than my opponent).  I have the advantage, so I "should" win the Power Struggle.  We score Poland, and I get a horrible draw in the Power Struggle and lose.  I will possibly lose influence (making it harder to win the next struggle), my opponent may get some victory points (if he rolls well), but then I will also lose 6 points for letting the Communist player have power in Poland after it has scored a second time.  Six points is a huge point swing based on bad luck.  And, that's just one example - there is also a decent amount of luck about when the scoring cards are drawn, as well as who draws them.  There is also luck in die rolling for Power Struggle results, support checks, and Tiananmen Square results.  I'm not suggesting that the game is luck based, but what I am saying is that when you have bad luck at a critical juncture of the game, it will be incredibly frustrating.

Overall, I give 1989 an 8.5/10.  I really, really enjoy this game, but I have also been so frustrated by bad luck (I didn't win a single Power Struggle in my first two games, regardless of how many cards I or my opponent received, and often rolled a 6 afterwards, forcing me to remove quite a bit of influence) that I just can't give it a 9.0 or higher.  With that said, it is one of the only games in recent memory that I think about between gaming sessions, and that I really have the urge to want to play (instead of wanting to play games in general).

If 1989: Dawn of Freedom intrigues you, you should also check out (of course) 1960: The Making of the President, and Test of Fire: Bull Run 1861.

I would like to thank GMT Games for providing me with a review copy of 1989: Dawn of Freedom.

Road to Enlightenment Review

One of the latest games that my gaming group has received from Kickstarter is Road to Enlightenment (BoardGameGeek link, not Amazon).  Just as a forewarning, I am writing this review after not completing a full game.  There are a few reasons for this: first, I do not intend to ever go back and play a full game (and, I feel like this game warrants a review).  Second, my "Reviews Alphabetically" page is keyed off of the word "Review" being in the title.  If you prefer to think of it as a "First Impression" (that won't get a second impression), that's fine with me.  If you feel that I need to play a game more than part of one time before my thoughts on it are valid, that's fine - I understand your position.  This is why I'm warning you up front - so you can skip the rest of this post.

In Road to Enlightenment, each player takes on the role of a monarch during the Age of Enlightenment.  Each monarch has a different army strength, navy strength, monarch strength, weakness, and once per game effect.  To start the game, you will also have 3 "favorite" luminaries and 10 luminaries that are selected blindly from the different luminary piles.  Once all this is done, the game begins.  Each round, every player will use the cards in their hand (generally 7 luminaries and your 3 "favorites") and set them up to perform 2 actions and collect taxes.  When playing them as actions, you can play another card that allows you to "enhance" that action (and there are also luminaries that allow you to "respond" to an action).  Once all of the actions are set, starting with the first player, each player will reveal their action and execute it.  After both actions, players will do "Taxes and Trade".  To do this, you reveal all of the cards that you have placed in the third pile and match up income and politics icons - then, take this total in coins and pay your upkeep cost.  Play continues until the "Final Round" marker is encountered - allowing the game to be anywhere from 10-15 rounds long.  The one other thing to mention is that there are "Cultural Census" rounds occasionally (set up randomly like the "Final Round" marker).  During these rounds, players have the opportunity to participate in a "Cultural Census" instead of their second action.  This census works similarly to the "Taxes and Trade" section, except that different icons are used.  Whoever has the most icons gains 4 points on the corresponding track, and second place gains 2.  Whoever has the most victory points from science, art, religious dogma, and taking over territories at the end of the game wins!

Yes, I did say from the outset that I didn't finish my only game of Road to Enlightenment.  And, so, you're probably expecting that this will be a glaringly negative review.  However, Road to Enlightenment really has some cool aspects to it.  First off, I really liked the historical setting of the game.  Not being much of a history scholar, I really wasn't expecting to recognize many of the people in the game.  Yet, even with my one college class in Western Civilization, I was able to recognize many names like Pascal, Rembrandt, and Blackbeard.  Plus, it really made sense that I was trying to gain more science and art, since those truly were some focuses of the time period.

The next thing that I found very interesting about Road to Enlightenment was how scoring worked on the science and art tracks.  They had a "king of the hill" mechanic.  So, if I gained science, and thus had as many points in science as someone else had previously, they would shift down one spot (and shift the next person down and so on until there is an empty scoring square).  This mechanic was really neat.  I still don't know if I "like" it, so much as thinking that it was innovative, but either way, I like that this gain Road to Enlightenment a unique twist.

My third pro is that I really liked some of the concepts of Road to Enlightenment.  For example, this was a time of religious turmoil in Europe, and this is represented by some monarchs being Catholic and some being "Anti-Catholic".  This grouped players into teams that scored points together if the religious track was in alignment with their dogma.  The uneven starting positions were also nice, and I also liked how the "favorite" luminaries worked (three cards not discarded and available to you each turn).  Many of the other aspects of the game like stacking actions with enhancements, and how attacks are resolved (and how your allies can help) were also interesting.

However, there were also some things that I disliked about Road to Enlightenment.  First off, I cannot get over the fact that you get punished for taking over other players' territories.  If you successfully take over an opponent's territory, you gain one victory point, and they lose two (at the end of the game).  However, you also have to pay an extra coin of upkeep every round that you own the territory.  Plus, if you take over a heavily fortified city (like Paris), then they have the advantage when trying to take it back!  The harder a territory was for you to take, the easier it is for you to lose it.  Because of all of these factors, there is absolutely no strategic reason (that I see) for attacking early in the game.  This really limits your strategic options, and it also encourages all of the players to do the same actions, which will cause more chaos on the "King of the Hill" tracks - potentially even causing you to lose points during rounds in which you actually perform those actions (by having players go after you and knock you down the track)!

Really, the ultimate reason that I will not go back to Road to Enlightenment is the time.  One of the people playing the game had previously played, but had a few rules wrong the previous time.  Because of this, he re-read through the rules and looked up some unclear situations on BoardGameGeek, and was teaching us how to play.  With him teaching us, we got through the first 6 turns (of 15 - we looked and our "Final Round" was on the last possible space) in over 3.5 hours.  Maybe that didn't quite sink in - after 3.5 hours, we weren't halfway through the game.  The game has some really neat aspects to it, but it felt like it needed to get distilled more to it's essence so that it was playable in a reasonable amount of time.  Now, yes, I know that wargamers are accustomed to games that take much longer than this, but I generally do not like to play games that take this long.  And, in this case, I really didn't feel like there was enough going on in Road to Enlightenment to warrant this time.  After all, essentially, you are taking 30 total actions in the game - two per round for 15 rounds.  This has no business taking this long.

Notice the order of the icons changes

So, what made it take so long?  I've been kicking this around in my head.  First, I think that the rules are very confusing, causing it to take quite a while to learn.  Again, I believe that we were playing this correctly, as the person that was teaching us had done his due diligence to look up all of the rule ambiguities prior to the game.  Next, I think that the game suffers horribly from poor graphic design, and players have to regularly compensate for this (which takes time).  One example of this is that every luminary has text explaining what they can do instead of using iconography.  Yes, I realize that heavy iconography (like in Race for the Galaxy) can make the learning curve a bit steeper on games.  Yet, having things like "advance 1 on the culture (symbol) track" simplified by +1 (symbol) would greatly simplify things when looking to see what your options are.  Here's the worst part of the graphic design that I noticed - there are (I think) 6 symbols that can appear in the top left corner of your luminary cards.  But, they aren't always in the same order or location on the card!  So, if I'm looking to see how much money I can make for taxes, I have to look for the income icon and the politics icon.  But, I can't just line up my cards and see which have each icon, because I have to look at all of the icons on each card to see if one of them might be in a different location!  And then, add to this the (very thematic but) fiddly rule that if your monarch is Catholic, he cannot use politics from a luminary with Anti-Catholicism (and vice versa) and suddenly I have to look for a third icon on all of my cards.  Again, without it being in the same spot on the card each time!

The last con that I will list is that the game has "deck building" concepts in it - you will be gaining and losing luminaries.  But this aspect didn't seem to work well.  First, there is no way of getting rid of bad luminaries - you always have to replace them.  And, so, you are constantly watering down your deck.  Plus, there are some luminaries that are just better than others (an action that gains two science is better than one that gains one).  But, since the draw is blind, you have to get lucky to draw these, and they are generally removed from your deck as soon as they're played.  Which then means that your deck is constantly getting worse.  Add to all of this that we had one pile completely empty for most of our four player game.  And the game goes up to seven players - with this many players, you will really be forced to take what is available instead of what you actually want.  Furthermore, the cards you gain are put in your discard ("exhausted") pile and reshuffled every turn before drawing - so there is no guarantee that you will ever see any given card that you gain.

Overall, I give Road to Enlightenment a 4.0/10.  I think that there are some neat concepts in this game, and that is really why it was disappointing.  Ultimately, though, the cons outweigh the pros heavily enough that I won't want to play it again, and the longevity of the game makes it fall into my "broken" category (but just barely).

If you like historically based games, you might also want to check out Twilight Struggle, 1960: The Making of the President, and Axis and Allies: Pacific.

Wings of War (Dawn of War) Review

For today's review, I will be talking about Wings of War. The version I played was Dawn of War, but I believe that the review should be appropriate for the whole system. As a note before getting started I should mention a couple things about the picture 1) Wings of War did not make an exciting picture and 2) I never claimed to be a good photographer... sorry about that. (Of course, I never claimed to be a good writer, either...)

In Wings of War, each player controls several airplanes and attempts to maneuver them in order to be able to shoot down the other player's planes in a dogfight (or potentially trying to bomb things depending on the scenario). In order to move the planes, the players select both a maneuver card to execute and a speed at which to execute it; the interesting thing is that the players must decide on the next move that will be executed before the previous move actually occurs (essentially, you're always thinking two steps ahead). After this, the front movement card is played and the movements occur. From here, each player determines if his planes are in range and have a clear shot at any of the opposing planes - if so, the opposing planes take damage related to the distance between the two planes and the type of plane that is firing. Turns continue like this until one player has successfully shot down all of the opposing aircraft.

The first pro of Wings of War is how the movement system works. Each of your movement cards has a line and one (or two) different colored arrows on it. When moving, you align the movement card with the front of your plane and then you lift your plane and align the arrow on the plane with the correct arrow on the movement card (based on how fast you were going). This is a really neat system and works pretty well in execution. The only down-side that I found to it was that, since the game was new and the cards were slick, the planes would slide and thus wouldn't be in the exact position that they were supposed to be.

The next pro is the historical nature of the games. Each of the games in the series is based on actual fighters from World War I and World War II (depending on which game you have). I'm definitely not an expert in history, but I enjoyed getting to look at the different planes from these eras and I also enjoyed that, depending on which plane was used, the planes had different movement cards (in order to more historically depict the actual movement of those planes).

To go along with the historical nature of the game, the last pro was the number of scenarios that were available. Between bombing runs and different kinds of dogfights, I think that the people who enjoy this game will be able to have a large amount of replayability because of the scenarios that are included.

However, there was one serious con to me about Wings of War. This con was that we wound up circling each others' planes much more than actually shooting at each other. There are several reasons for this; obviously one reason is that we weren't good at the game - I'm sure if we played it more we would get better at maneuvering our aircraft. The next problem is related to the historical realism in the game; airplanes (unfortunately) can't make turn at a right angle. This means that you have two options to turn around: play a sharp turn for about 5 turns in a row, or play an Immelmann turn (where you flip your plane around 180 degrees). Either way, if you miss your shot at your opponent, you will probably spend the next several turns getting yourself back into position. Whereas some people may find this enjoyable, I was not one of them.

The more I think about the cons of this game, the more focused I become on the one above (the only others I can think of are that 1) the cards get bumped as mentioned above and 2) sometimes it is hard to remember which movement cards go with which plane). There were no real significant flaws to the game other than this. If you enjoy strategically positioning yourself and attempting to outwit your opponents maneuvers, and are willing to have large amounts of time where you are flying past each other, than this con should even be ignored. However, whereas I really enjoyed the game when we started, by the end of the fight I was fairly bored since we spent a significantly larger portion of our time trying to reposition ourselves so that our planes were near each other than we did actually get shots fired. (And most of our shots were directly facing each other as neither of us was very successful at getting a shot in from the side or behind the other person's plane.)

Overall, I give Wings of War a 6.5/10. I feel somewhat bad about giving it such a low score when I can really only name one con, but the con was essentially the crux of the game.  As a final note, I would like to re-point out that this is what I thought of the game; with the giant bias that the primary concept of the game (positioning your plane to get a good shot off) didn't hold my interest.