Monopoly Deal Review

A light little filler game that I tried recently was Monopoly Deal.

Don't let the name fool you - Monopoly Deal is about as much like normal Monopoly as having a tooth extracted (without even having anesthetic) is "major surgery". Here's how it works - each player starts the game with some cards. Each turn, you draw two cards, play up to three cards, and then discard to seven cards in your hand (rarely an issue). The object of the game is to get three complete property sets. Cards come in three main varieties: Money (ranging from $1 Million to $10 Million), Actions (that kick your friends in the teeth and steal from them while they're down), and Properties (that you then have stolen from you while you're on the ground after being kicked). The properties will be the old staples that you're used to, but there are also Wild properties that help you to more easily complete sets. Money is simply money - it's used to pay for things (and serves as a buffer before you have to pay in property). Actions range from forcing players to give you $2 Million as a birthday gift to stealing a complete property set, charging rent to drawing extra cards. Oh, and every action card has a monetary value and can be played as "Money" instead of as an action.  Once someone gets their three complete property sets, they are the winner.

The first thing that I like about Monopoly Deal is that it is a fast paced game. Now, don't get me wrong - I actually enjoy the original game of Monopoly. However, it's not for everyone, and I understand that. Monopoly Deal can be played in a fraction of the time of normal Monopoly. Theoretically, the entire game can be over in two rounds! (If you are able to complete the three 2-property color sets (Mediterranean/Baltic, Boardwalk/Park Place, Electric Company/Water Works.) However, fortunately it's not normally that fast. Either way, turns go very quickly, so there does not feel like very much down time in the game.

Not quite as drooled over as before.

The next thing that I like about the game is that you're never completely out of contention. Yes, if you have no property in front of you, the game can be much more challenging, but there are combinations of cards that can immediately get you right back into contention. If, for example, you had no properties and one of your opponent's had Boardwalk & Park Place, you could use "Deal Breaker" to steal their set, and then play "Double the Rent" with a Dark Blue "Rent" card to go from having nothing to having all of your opponents pay you $16 Million dollars, all on one turn! (Assuming that your opponent that you steal the property set from does not have a "Just Say No" card.) Think about normal Monopoly - when you're losing heavily, what are the chances of you winning? Approximately 0.0003%? That's not true with Monopoly Deal.

Third, I like that Monopoly Deal is a friendly back-stabby game. What I mean is that, yes, you are constantly stabbing the other players in the back. However, they probably won't grow too irritated because they are about to do the same thing. And, the backstabbing happens early enough and often enough in the game that it doesn't feel like you've worked towards something all game and then someone swooped in at the last second to mess up your whole plan. You get stabbed the whole time you try to execute your plan, and if your planning doesn't involve stealing things from your opponents, then it's destined for failure. Let me put it this way - you'll spend as much time looking at what your opponent's have in play (your "options") as you will what's in your hand.

Finally, Monopoly Deal is able to open doors with people who don't normally play many games. Ever had this conversation, "I like board games." "Oh, you mean like Monopoly and Scrabble?" (Mine normally is "I write about board games." "Oh, you mean like Monopoly and Scrabble?" Sometimes they mix in Risk.) You can now answer, "Sure. You should try Monopoly Deal with us. You might like it." Monopoly Deal is fun - they probably will enjoy it. And then, *BAM*, spring Dominion on them the next day!! Or something like that...

Let's make a deal...

Anyway, it's not all roses for Monopoly Deal. One thing that I'm not a huge fan of is how much luck is involved in the game. This luck is almost exclusively in what cards you draw. I've played at least one game of it where I never drew an action card! Not one!! What does this mean? It means that my cards are constantly being stolen by other players and my only response will be to glare at them - no chance to take anything back. Also, not all properties are equal - you have the same odds of drawing Boardwalk as you do Mediterranean. Or worse, Oriental (I like Oriental in normal Monopoly, but in Monopoly Deal, it requires two other cards to complete the set, and still doesn't get much rent). Also, you may draw $1 Million "Money" cards to play, or you might draw $5 or $10 Million. Obviously, the person who draws better cards will have a major advantage.

The second thing that I think I will list as a con is that I'm not a huge fan of how Rent works. Especially with houses and hotels. To play a house or hotel, you have to have a complete property set - and then it simply increases the rent that can be charged. But, to charge rent, you have to draw the appropriate "Rent" card (each basic Rent card allows you to pick between two color sets and charge all other players Rent. There is also one or two "wild" Rent cards that allow you to charge one player Rent in any color.) Rent seems to require too much setup for too little payoff - especially with the crummier color sets. If I play "It's My Birthday!" then every other player owes me $2 Million. However, if I play Oriental Avenue and then charge Rent on it, I believe each other player owes me $1 Million - for a two card setup! It makes you wonder what's the point in them even including the Rent cards for some of these colors.  Rent just feels a bit too castrated in this game.

The final thing that I will mention is that the instructions are not especially clear. Yes, the game is pretty simple, but when the instructions say something like "just start playing, and it'll make sense" (paraphrased), that's not really a good sign. I still don't know what happens in certain situations in the game - like if I have a house on a property set, and I have to break the set - what happens to the house? Or, if I have a wild property that is worth "no monetary value" and someone charges me more than I can pay, do I have to give them that card? That's like me being so broke that I pay someone all that I own and then give them the lint from my pocket or used candy wrappers and pretend that it increases the value.

Overall, I give Monopoly Deal a 8.0/10. It's a fun, light-weight filler game. And, you can probably pick it up for around $6 at most any big-box store. I would recommend you check it out.

If Monopoly Deal sounds fun, you might also check out Bang!, Hecho, and Jab: Real Time Boxing.

Mice and Mystics Review

One of the hottest games lately has been Mice and Mystics.

In Mice and Mystics, you are a group of mice (that used to be humans) attempting to save your kingdom from an evil overlord that is seducing your father, the King.  Also, the evil overlord controls lots of rats, which is horribly inconvenient.  The game is scenario driven, and in each scenario, the players are working together to accomplish a certain goal - whether that is escaping the castle, defeating the house cat, sending a message via a crow, or something else entirely.  To do this, the players alternate taking turns with their mice.  On each turn, you are allowed to move and take an action.  The different actions include attacking, searching, exploring, and recovering.  As free actions, you are also allowed to level up, equip your mouse, or share equipment with other mice on the same space.  Most of the actions are fairly straightforward.  When attacking, you roll dice and compare the number of hits against the number of blocks - and if there are more hits than blocks, then damage is assigned (and if cheese is rolled, then the side that rolled it gets to collect cheese tokens).  Searching lets you find new items, exploring lets you move to the next tile (or flip the current tile), and recovering allows you to attempt to remove status affects.  Among the mice's turns, the minions that are on the board will also get to take turns; their turns work similarly to the mice turns, but they will almost always attack.  If the mice are able to successfully accomplish their goal before time runs out, then they succeed!  If all of the mice are captured at the same time, or time runs out, then they were stopped without being able to accomplish their mission - thus dooming the kingdom!  (There are various things that "advance the timer," like having mice captured and having the minions collect too much cheese.)

At its core, Mice and Mystics is a very lightweight role playing game.  It includes leveling up, an ongoing campaign, characters that you should embrace, and an overarching story.  In fact, the game comes with both a rulebook and a quest book.  And, that quest book contains 11 different quests.  So, honestly, my first pro for Mice and Mystics is that it is a wonderful choice if you are looking for a way to have a laid back role playing experience that can easily include non-gamers and younger kids (probably as young as 8-12).  I think that the campaign is put together well, and I truly appreciate two specific elements.  First, I like that each scenario doesn't have the same victory condition, and second that there are decisions (side quests) that you have to make during the campaign that will affect what happens later.  And, I especially appreciate that, if you play like I do, then you must make these decisions from an uninformed perspective - which does a good job of representing the vantage point of your characters.  Should I go try to get the cook's attention?  Well, I don't know - do I actually need her attention?  What advantage is there in that?  Well, it seems like a good idea - let's do it!

Equip your characters and help them to level up!

The next pro for Mice and Mystics is the world and the story that you find yourself thrown into.  Suddenly, your father has taken ill, and this evil woman has far too much control over your kingdom.  So, what do you do?  You have the castle mystic turn you all into mice, obviously.  Now, as mice, everything is gargantuan!  In fact, even the rats are larger than you.  Both the setting and the enemies in the game do a good job of helping you invest in this theme.  I also like that, as you experience different things, you get to learn more about the story of what is happening around you.  In fact, there are story segments both before and after each adventure, along with an opening prologue and final epilogue for the quest book itself.  And, for the most part the story is interesting - though there are occasionally lines that make me cringe.  (My least favorite line in the book is, "and to make sure Collin didn't dawdle, Nez said, 'Now don't ya dawdle, boy!'"  I really wish they had someone read through that and realize that the word dawdle sounds awkward when used twice in the same sentence.  A thesaurus would have truly helped this line.)  There are also some minor logic problems, in my opinion, but if I go into detail, I'm concerned that I might spoil part of the story for you.  And, as I said before, the story is one of the best parts of the game!

Yet, though I thought that the campaign was well done, there were some definite cons that I had for Mice and Mystics.  The most immediate con that I had for Mice and Mystics was that I felt like I was constantly running into rule ambiguities.  Now, I will confess - I learned this game from a tutorial video.  However, this video was on Plaid Hat Games' site, and was referenced on the front of the rules ("If you want us to teach you how to play, you can visit...") so I was hoping that watching it would be all I needed in order to start playing the game.  Unfortunately, after watching it, I still didn't feel like I understood the game very well, and even after reading the rulebook and referencing it during the game, we often found ourselves guessing at how certain things worked.  One example is with the "Fishhook and Thread" object.  This object is found in the water on the first scenario.  When moving out of water, the rulebook specifies that you must roll a die, and if you roll a "star", then you successfully move out of the water.  The Fishhook and Thread allows you to connect two spaces on the tile and move between the spaces "as if they were normal adjacent spaces."  Now, does "normal" mean non-water, or does it mean that you are able to move between them as if the spaces in between didn't exist?  Do you roll a die, or not?  This is just one example of a multitude of times that I found myself scratching my head trying to decide what exactly the game intended for me to do.  I'm hoping that in the future the FAQ for the game starts addressing more of these issues, but when I referenced it, it still felt like it was in its infancy stage.

Epic battles on miniature scales

The next con that I had was that I felt like the actions were too prescribed.  Now, if you recall, there were several different things that a mouse could do on his turn.  That sounds exciting, right?  Unfortunately, in order to actually explore (move to the next tile), your current tile had to be cleared of minions.  Why the mice decide they need to fight every household pest is beyond me (ok, ok, they are "heroic" mice - sure), but I really didn't understand why they weren't willing to ever run away.  Regardless, the net effect of this rule is that most turns amount to charging at opponents and attacking.  You will occasionally search, and you will occasionally explore (well, at least if you hope to advance the game), but when you should do each thing is pretty obvious, and so there's not a lot of strategy behind when to fight and when to do other things.

My final con for Mice and Mystics was that I felt the dice played too much of a factor in determining the outcome of the game.  Now, random elements in games are good - they help each play experience to be different.  This is a great thing!  However, in Mice and Mystics, you roll the dice so often that it feels like the entire game depends on how those rolls land.  Did the minions attack you and get some of your cheese?  Did they also roll a lot of cheese when they were attacking and defending?  Then there's a good chance that you aren't going to have a chance to complete your quest, since time will run out well before you are able to actually advance in the game - after all, you hear a roach scurrying around the corner, and you can't resist engaging in an epic battle of one inch warriors! 

Overall, I give Mice and Mystics a 7.0/10.  I think that the campaign nature of the game is well done, but I found the actual gameplay grew stale for me too quickly, so I will probably move away from the game without bothering to complete the campaign.  However, the story was interesting enough for me to cheat and read it, without taking the time to play the chapters.

If Mice and Mystics sounds interesting, you might also check out Runebound, Talisman, and Flash Point: Fire Rescue.

Elk Fest Review

One of the more unique dexterity games that I've played recently is Elk Fest.

In Elk Fest, each player is trying to help his moose get across the river (the table - and yes, it is called "Elk Fest", and you are using moose; there are certain things in life that you just have to live with, and this is one of them).  In order to move your moose, you must position the "stones" (discs) so that your moose is able to advance across the river without falling in.  Both players do this by taking turns flicking the stones and moving their moose if they can (and want to).  If you knock a moose into the river, or knock a stone out of the river, then your opponent will get to take extra turns.  The first player to successfully move his moose to the opposite platform is the winner!

The first thing that I like about Elk Fest is that it is a precision flicking game.  I love PitchCar and Crokinole, but in both of them, you can generally just flick your disc as hard as you can (obviously not when you're trying to score in the middle in Crokinole).  As long as you aim well in those games, you are generally rewarded for shooting harder.  However, with Elk Fest, you must be incredibly precise.  Since your moose is only about 1-2 inches wide, you do not have much leeway with getting the stones close together.  And, if you get them too close, then your moose isn't advancing very far.  So, again - it's all about precision.

This easily fits in my pocket.

The next pro for Elk Fest is that this is the only dexterity game that I can think of that can very easily be setup and transported.  If you decide not to carry the box (which really isn't even all that big - just a lot bigger than the components), then you're carrying around a game with 10 pieces in a bag.  This fits easily into my pockets.  And, once you arrive at your destination, all you need is a table - place your eight pieces and poof! you're ready to play.

Since this really isn't a complex game and there's not much more to say (I could try to write an entire paragraph out of "it's fun" if you'd like), I'll go ahead and give you the answer to why "Elk Fest" uses moose before I move onto my con.  (The instructions give me this reason, I did not come up with it all on my own.)  It's because games are made in Europe.  And, in Europe, many people speak a different language than I do - specifically, many of them (that play and design board games) speak German.  And, thus, the original name of the game is Elchfest - which, you know, sounds like "Elk Fest."  However, in German, it means "Moose Fest."  So, when playing, if it makes you feel better, you can pretend that you know German, and that you are pronouncing it Elchfest, which logically is a game about moose.

Playing on a Crokinole board is an option

There is only one real con that I can think of for Elk Fest.  Since you play it on any given table, your disks slide differently based on what table you play on - how smooth it's surface is, how much friction there is, and obviously how clean it is.  This is the downside to the ease of setup and transportation - since you don't provide the playing surface, your game may play quite differently based on what playing surface you use.  I'm also not 100% convinced that all of the discs slide exactly the same, either, but that part might just be in my head.  However, if you're like me and have things like a Crokinole board lying around, then you could always just play Elk Fest on that so that you know the surface you're playing on is smooth and even (though there is a hole in the middle to avoid).

Overall, I give Elk Fest an 8.5/10.  I really enjoy this little dexterity game, and I intend to continue playing it - especially when I don't want to carry around a more cumbersome game.

If you like dexterity games, you might also check out Caveman Curling and the games I mentioned previously - PitchCar and Crokinole.

Trollhalla Review

 Haven't you always wanted to be a Troll that gets to "Halla"?  Wait, that's not what this game is about? Trollhalla is about looting and pillaging? But... isn't that when trolls holla?

In Trollhalla, you take on the role of a family of trolls that is attempting to loot the tastiest islands.  You can pillage (eat) cows, billy goats, princesses, monks, and other screaming victims.  On each turn, you will place two of your trolls (but they can't be next to each other since they don't get along).  These trolls can either be in a boat or used as scouts to help the boat decide where to go.  When playing scouts, you get weather cards that give you extra powers.  After placing your trolls, you can use a weather power (if you want to) by discarding two matching weather cards.  Finally, you roll the die to see which boat tries to move.  If the boat is full, and a clear path has been scouted, then it goes and pillages an island.  If not, a captain troll is placed to help the boat move next time.  Play continues in roughly this manner until all of the possible pillaging places have been plundered (the bag runs out of tiles).  At that point, you get points based on the tiles you have pillaged, and any bonuses you may have scored (for things like pillaging the most princesses).

The first thing that I really like about Trollhalla is the billy goats.  The billy goats have a special rule - they don't get along with any of the other loot that is on your boat.  And so, when you collect a billy goat, they kick one of the other tiles off of your boat (except for another billy goat).  And, billy goats are only worth one point each at the end of the game.  However, there are a couple of reasons that you might want billy goats.  First of all, there is a bonus for being the first (or second) person to collect one of each type of plunder.  Second, there is a bonus for each plunder type - you have to have at least three tiles of that type, and then you get the bonus unless another player exceeds the number you have.  The bonus for billy goats is 25 points - which is significantly higher than any other single scoring in the game.  Of course, you might have a fairly empty ship if you have enough billy goats to score that bonus.

Most victims are screaming

The next thing that I like about Trollhalla is that it flows well and doesn't have much down time.  Even against people that traditionally spend a lot of time thinking about their turns.  For most games, the time on the box is often very contingent on the people that you play against - an hour long game can easily take two or three hours if everyone playing is really a thinker.  However, I think that Trollhalla really can be played in about an hour regardless of who is playing - assuming that they know how to play the game (which is pretty easy to teach) and pay attention.  One of the reasons for this is that you really can think about your next move on the previous players turns.  Some things will change, but enough will stay consistent to help you make decisions more quickly.  (And, there's just not that many options in the first place!)

Finally, I liked how the captain trolls worked.  Whenever you roll a die at the end of your turn, you attempt to move the corresponding boat.  If it is not full, then you place a captain in the boat.  If it is full, but there are two or more islands that are equally scouted, then you place a captain as a scout (to break the tie).  If a captain is on a boat that pillages, the captain gets loot.  However, every time that a boat moves, the scouts are sent to a special track, and they will share in the captain's loot.  Once that track is filled, the person with the most trolls on the track will get to take one tile from the captain's loot, and then remove all of their trolls.  Then the player with the second most trolls and so on.  This is a nice little way to get another tile, and can help reward the players for scouting.  Plus, the placement of the captain prevents the game from stalling.

Now that it's full, decide where to go

The main con that I had for Trollhalla was that I felt like the strategy was a bit too prescribed.  (This may be the real reason that it plays fast.)  At least nine times out of ten, if there is an empty spot on a boat, that is where you want to place your troll instead of using him to scout.  This is not always the case (hence I said nine times out of ten), but it is typically better to get to pillage anything than it is to try to decide what you will get to pillage (placing a single scout won't guarantee where the boat goes).  The only reason I can think of to not place on a boat is to avoid a billy goat.  You might also want to try to ensure that you get a certain tile to complete a bonus or two, but even if you do that, you will only want to place one of your two trolls in scouting (since you can't place them in the same place), and so you would still want to place the other one on a boat.  I'm sure that there are people that disagree with me on this and feel like there are more strategies and such, and I welcome them to share them in the comments, because I simply didn't see them.

My other con for Trollhalla is that you lose points at the end of the game for unused weather cards.  I am guessing that this rule is in place to encourage the players to actually bother playing the weather cards (without them, the game could be a bit "dry" - hehe, that was a weather pun; one of the weather cards is a storm... you know, where it's raining and such), because I can't really think of any other reason for this mechanic.  And, it seems odd to me that you would force a player to use bonuses.  (Since I haven't mentioned them before, the weather cards can let you do one of three things: clear all of the scouts from one location, allow the active player to place an extra (third) troll, or flip a boat around so that it is pointing the opposite direction - thus reversing who gets what tiles when pillaging.)  If a player chooses not to use bonuses, shouldn't they be disadvantaged enough without costing them points? 

Overall, I give Trollhalla a 7.5/10.  I can see why people like the game - it is fast, the theme is enjoyable, and there is strategy involved.  However, for me, I felt like the strategy was a bit too prescribed, so I probably won't keep coming back to this title.

If you like quirky themes, then you might also like Road Kill Rally, Micro Mutants Evolution, and Loch Ness.