Galaxy's Edge Review

A game that I was able to find pretty inexpensively (and thus tried out) was Galaxy's Edge.

In Galaxy's Edge, each player takes on the role of a budding galactic empire. On each turn they are able to move their flagship and either place a colony or a military installation. After placing a colony or installation, the player will roll a die - this will let the player either draw or play a card, or it will move one of the players' "ban" tokens (the ban token prevents all players from placing any colonies or installations in that sector).

One of the interesting concepts of Galaxy's Edge is how the military installations work. When placing an installation, a player may choose to place a 1, 2, or 3-tier military base. When resolving who influences a sector, you determine which tier is the lowest one in which only one person has that tier of an installation (what this means is that, if 2 different people have a 1-tier base, 2 people have a 2-tier base, but only one person has a 3-tier base, the person with the 3-tier base wins). This causes players to do more than simply place the biggest military base possible each time.  However, the aspect of this that seems more frustrating is that if two players have military bases around a sector, then they will cancel out and the person that doesn't have any military will wind up keeping their settlement.

Another interesting concept in Galaxy's Edge is the difference in placing military installations and colonies. Colonies score points at the end of the game, but military installations can allow a player to take colonies from other players when all of the systems in a sector have been settled. Overall, however, this aspect doesn't seem to work very well as it winds up being much more beneficial to simply place colonies and go for the end of game points almost every time.

Another concern with Galaxy's Edge is that it is a very generic space game. There were no new concepts introduced in the game. Whereas most space games allow you to take on a race, and that race has different powers, Galaxy's Edge just gives each player a generic spaceship to start with. There are races that each player can have the most "influence" over (only used in end of game scoring), but even then these races are pretty generic.

The next problem with Galaxy's Edge is that there were several aspects of the game that seemed almost pointless. Moving your flagship towards the end of them game and the "ban" tokens both seemed to be just tacked on at the end of the game. Also, the playing of cards was more frustrating than helpful - since you had to roll a die to either draw or play a card, you will wind up not playing very many and being frustrated wishing you were able to play them occasionally.

The main problem with Galaxy's Edge is that it isn't especially fun. We played through the game, and all of the mechanics seemed to work, but playing through the game didn't motivate me to play it again. Obviously each person will have their own opinion of what is fun, and so some people may enjoy this more than I did, but the 3 other people that I played the game with agreed that the biggest thing missing in this game was a sense of fun.

Overall, I give Galaxy's Edge a 5.5/10. If you are really a huge fan of space games and find this one cheaply, you may check it out, but overall there are better games in the genre that I would recommend playing first.

Pirate's Cove Review

One of my last games (currently) from Days of Wonder that I need to review is Pirate's Cove.

In Pirate's Cove, each of the players takes on the role of a pirate, and the goal is to gain the most fame. Each turn, there will be 5 outer islands which will have various rewards for successfully exploring there - however, if you encounter another pirate at that island, you will have to fight it out, and only the last person at the island will get the treasures. Once you have all collected your treasure (or been defeated in battle and forced to flee to another island to repair your ship), then you are able to upgrade your ship. Your ship has 4 stats on it: sail (how fast you are and so who shoots first in battle), cannons, crew (cannons and crew work together to determine how many shots you can fire), and hull (how much treasure you can carry). However, you can only upgrade the stat for the island that you have explored this turn - there is an "outer island" for each stat, plus an island that lets you draw "tavern" cards and Treasure Island in the center where you bury treasure to gain fame. Another thing to watch out for as you are exploring is the dread pirates - these pirates represent already powerful and famous pirates, like Captain Hook and Blackbeard, who will fight you if they wind up at the same island as you.

Overall, Pirate's Cove has a lot of great aspects. First, it is one of the best implementations of Days of Wonder's formula of making games that are engaging enough for a gamer but simple enough to easily bring in a non-gamer. I have played Pirate's Cove with groups of gamers, non-gamers, and a mix of both, and it has played very well with both.

The next thing I like about Pirate's Cove is that you actually have control over what is going on in the game - whether you encounter other players is based on whether you both choose the same island to explore in a turn (revealed at the same time). This means that if you are able to read people's tendencies then you will be able to more easily determine which island they might be going to and go there or avoid it depending on whether you want to fight them or not.  Also, since they have removed any concept of "transit time" between the islands, the game is very fast paced so that it can focus on things other than sailing.

A third aspect to mention about Pirate's Cove is both a pro and a con - the battle system. When battling another pirate, you will first determine the fastest player at the start of each round. After this, in speed order, you will each declare who you are attacking, and which part of their ship you are firing on. Then, for each crew/cannon combination you have, you will roll a die, hitting on 5's and 6's. The pirate you fired on will immediately take damage, and if they are damaged beyond a certain threshold they will retreat (before firing again). This works very well except for the die rolling. The die rolling (as it is in lots of games with dice and chance) causes this experience to be very frustrating sometimes - you may have your opponent completely out-manned and out-gunned, but when you roll all low numbers and they roll all 6's, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Adding more to the luck element of the game are the "tavern" cards. You can earn or buy these cards in various ways, and they are all useful in the right situation. However, there are 4 cards (representing the parrots of famous pirates) that are much more powerful than any of the other cards in the game. This is great if you draw one, but is frustrating if your opponent draws one at the wrong time.

Overall, I give Pirate's Cove a 9.0/10. It is by far the best pirate game I have ever played (defeating at a minimum: Sword & Skulls, Dread Pirate, and the constructable mini's game). A note about this game, however, is that you need to go into it realizing that if you have bad luck in the game, this will defeat even the most sound of strategies.With that said - this is one of very few games that I have seen in which almost all of the players enjoy simply playing the game, regardless of whether they are winning or losing (after all, it becomes amusing after a while if you cannot hit the broad side of a barn with your cannons).

As a final note, I will mention a variant of the game which I enjoy. The standard rules suggest that you play with 1 or 2 dread pirates depending on the number of players in the game, and then move the pirates around the islands in ascending order. I prefer to randomly pick 2 dread pirates (that have not been defeated/killed) each turn and then roll the dice to determine which island they are going to - after the players decide where they are going. This prevents them from simply running away from the pirates all game, even though it adds even more of an element of luck.

If Pirate's Cove sounds interesting, you might also check out Cargo Noir, King of Tokyo, and Dixit (a storytelling game).

Acquire Review

A game that's been in my collection for a while, but that I'm just now getting around to playing and reviewing is Acquire (in all honesty, my version is the original 1962 version from 3M, not the latest reprint by Avalon Hill that I have linked to).

In Acquire, each player is taking on the role of a hotel mogul, and the goal of the game is to earn the most money. In order to do this, each player will be both buying stock and developing hotel chains. On each turn, a player will start with 6 tiles that represent potential hotels. They will choose one of these tiles to place on its appropriate position on the board (a grid that is labeled 1-A through 12-I). This placement can cause several things to occur: a hotel chain may be founded, two hotel chains may merge, thus causing a buyout of the stock of the smaller chain, or a single hotel may be placed in isolation. After placing their tile, the player will then have the option of buying up to 3 stocks of any of the hotel chains that have been founded. Once one of the hotel chains has grown large enough, or several of the chains have grown to sufficient size, then the game is over, all the players sell their remaining shares of stock, and the person with the most money is the winner.

Acquire has some very interesting features. First, the drawing and placement of tiles works pretty well. It gives the players strategic options as to where to place each turn, but still forces them to make the best of what is available to them. This keeps the game from becoming too redundant, as the game will be different each time simply based on where people are able to found hotel chains and when they are able to merge them together.  This aspect of the game is one of the main strategic pieces while playing Acquire.

Next, the buying and selling of stock works well. Each player is able to buy whichever stocks they want (and can afford) each turn, but only up to a maximum of 3. This helps prevent a player that has had a windfall of money from being able to buy all of the shares of one or more of the chains and helps maintain competitive balance. Also, the selling of stock - specifically the fact that there is a majority and minority shareholder bonus - encourages the players to have certain stocks that they invest more heavily in. Once a player begins investing in a chain, it is also important to figure out when to try to grow the chain and when to try to have it bought out by a bigger chain (thus freeing up some money or giving you more of the bigger chain's stock for a cheaper rate).

There were a couple of drawbacks that I saw to Acquire. First, Acquire is a game in which you can be defeated well before the game is over. In some games you always feel like there is a chance (however remote) that you will be able to come from behind if things go well, but Acquire is not like that. In one of the games we played, in fact, one of the players (yes, through poor strategy) had rendered himself irrelevant within the first few turns with nothing that he was able to do but place tiles - he had no way of buying or selling any tiles to generate any more money. I prefer games in which you always have a chance of coming back, or in which several of the players that are doing poorly have a chance of joining forces to come back against a player that is running away with the game.

Another problem that I see with Acquire is that there are some fatal mistakes that players can make. Specifically, if a player runs out of money for more than a couple of turns, this often means that he will lose. It seems like in the game the emphasis is more on selling stock than it is on growing a hotel chain to be larger, and I would have preferred that there was more of a balance which would allow both strategies to be feasible alternatives.

Overall, I give Acquire a 7.5/10. It is a good game that I will continue to play occasionally, but it is not something that I will play on a regular basis. If you are interested in playing stock based games, I would recommend trying Chicago Express before playing this game, but if you run across a copy fairly inexpensively or have a friend that has a copy of the game, it is definitely worth trying out.

Some other games that you might also want to check out are Monopoly Deal, Innovation (a card game) and Bootleggers.

Chicago Express Review

The newest board game that is slated for review is Chicago Express (Wabash Cannonball).

In Chicago Express, each of the players takes on the role of a new entrepreneur that is investing in different railroad companies. The players each start with a certain amount of money, and are not able to perform any actions until they are owner (or co-owner) of one of the starting railroads. This initial ownership is determined by auctioning off the first share of each of the starting 4 companies. After this, the players will take turns auctioning more stock from companies to raise funding (or to gain partial ownership), construct railroad tracks with one of their companies' funds, or develop land around where they have tracks laid. At the end of each round (which ends once a certain number of 2 of the 3 actions have been taken), then each of the railroad companies will pay dividends to be split among their respective owners. Once one of several end conditions occurs, then whichever player has the most money will be declared the victor.

There are several incredibly neat aspects of Chicago Express. The first thing is that each player must carefully weigh how much they are willing to pay for each share of stock. There is a lot of strategy with this because the player must factor in: how much it is worth to start collecting dividends in that company, how much it is worth to prevent another player from collecting as much in dividends, and how much operating capital they want their new company to now have to spend.

The next interesting thing about Chicago Express is what happens with the money used to purchase stock. The money that is spent from the auction goes to the company, and they must purchase their tracks using only this money. This is a game mechanic that I have not seen previously, though it more accurately represents real life than most stock based games. After the player purchases the stock, they have a say in what that company does by being able to use that company's funding to purchase track. Therefore, if a player buys stock in a company that doesn't do well, it is their own fault (or the fault of one of the other owners - potentially a minor shareholder that is wasting the company's money) for not handling the company's finances well - after all, there is no element of chance in Chicago Express.

Another awesome thing about the game is how well it plays with different numbers of players. Since the number of stock and companies available in the game stay consistent from 2-6 players, the strategy completely changes. In 2-player, each of the players will probably start with 1-2 companies that they are the sole owner in and have a lot of operating capital with, whereas with more than 4 players, there will be at least one company that will be split from the beginning. Because of this, the strategies that can be implemented successfully in 2-player may fail miserably in 6-player and vice versa.

A final thing that I cannot stress enough about Chicago Express is how well balanced the game is. Between the number of actions that occur per round, to how the money is divided to start the game, to how the interactions between players works because of the way dividends are paid, the game shows amazing balance in every aspect.

Overall, I give Chicago Express a 9.5/10. Going into this review, I was planning on giving it a 9, but the more I think about it, the more I fall in love with this game. It is easily the best stock-based game that I have ever played, and it may also be the best train game I have ever played (I need to replay Steam: Rails to Riches before saying that definitively, but it is far and away better than Ticket to Ride). I would recommend that everyone try this game at some point.

Chicago Express on Noble Knight Games (about $50)
Chicago Express on Funagain Games (about $48)
Chicago Express on Amazon (about $43)