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Barnes’ Best- 2015 Game of the Year Awards

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It’s been a great year for games- and not just because I played and reviewed more this year than I think I ever have before, but because there were a number of really high quality, innovative releases that came both through traditional publishers as well as crowdfunding. My collection has a high turnover rate- I don’t keep games that don’t get played regularly beyond the review period- but this year I found myself constantly struggling with finding space to put new games that I want to keep around for a while.

So of course it’s the last day of the year and it’s time to hand out the Barnes’ Best Awards. This year was pretty tough, and I had something of a dry run with the Win, Place or Show feature I ran over at Miniature Market’s Review Corner. I picked three games there- all three are represented here as well- but I was limited to games that Miniature Market stocks. Which actually cut out my Game of the Year choice. I’m also once again changing the format because I can do that, so that I can make sure that the runners-up get their time to shine. Let’s get right on with it then.

Barnes’ Best Honorable Mentions

These are all great games that I felt deserved at least a curtain call before we hand out the awards and head into 2016.

Broom Service- Like a lot of modern Eurogames, this one made a big splash and then sort of disappeared. It sold out as soon as it came out. It even won the Kennerspiel des Jahres. But it’s quietly shuffled away, out of the limelight. Which is a shame, because this is a charming family game with a toothy edge- and a really cool “brave witch”/”cowardly witch” mechanic driving the action. I still love this game, and I find myself trying to get folks to play it quite a lot. If only my kids were just a little older.

XCOM– It’s kind of been shunted off to the side now, but Eric Lang’s “other” 2015 release was a compelling, innovative game that used an app that everyone worried would be obsolete ten minutes after it was released. This was a cool co-op that tried a few new things…and scared away the old folks. It definitely qualifies for a spot on the list.

Blood Rage– And here is the Eric Lang game that everyone liked. Blood Rage is a stunning piece of design work, demonstrating a level of discipline and restraint rare even in the hybrid sector. It’s more Eurogame than Ameritrash in many ways, but it is just about as bloody and breakneck as any other game out there. A great production rounds out one of the best packages of 2015.

Space Cadets: Away Missions– Dungeoncrawlers were a dime a dozen in 2015, but this is the one that had the most heart and the most fun to offer. The golden age sci-fi setting paired up with a couple of exciting, innovative mechanics made for one of the year’s best examples of the genre.

Argent: The Consortium– Level 99 doesn’t make bad games, I’m convinced. But Argent: The Consortium is the best thing they’ve done to date. This is a heavyweight worker placement game that dares to be openly confrontational, competitive and cutthroat. Rich with detail and narrative, Argent would be the best Harry Potter game of all time…if they had the license.

Evolution– Dom Crapuchettes took a Russian card game design and built a surprisingly narrative, thematic game on it. Evolution is really quite simple, but just like in biology things can get complicated pretty quick. I love how this game effectively creates a different biome with each play. The Flight expansion only made it better.

Magic: The Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers– After much angst over whether or not Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro would support this sort of sideways resurrection of Heroscape, the deliverable was a top-notch mass market game with plenty of fun right out of the box. It of course did leave me wanting more, but this game has nowhere to go but up. If the powers that be will let it.

Risk: Star Wars Edition– 2015 was the year that Star Wars returned, and this $25 mainstream title completely surprised everyone by turning out to be a redevelopment of the old Queen’s Gambit design from the Phantom Menace. But this time, the action is set during the three-layered Battle of Endor that closes out Return of the Jedi. Simple, fun, full of drama and loads of Star Wars love.

Before I get into the “big” awards, I want to hand out a special merit badge for Most Improved. This one goes to Star Wars: Imperial Assault. I did not like the core box when I reviewed it late last year. I didn’t feel like it captured any sense of Star Wars, and I didn’t care for the Descent-derived mechanics. After a great mini-campaign expansion (The Twin Shadows), numerous villain and ally packs, and a new Hoth addition, I’ve come around on it. Not quite 180 degrees, but when my friends ask me to bring it over I don’t cringe. Both the skirmish mode and the campaign have improved greatly with more content

Now, the Barnes’ Best Awards for 2015.

2nd Runner Up

Warhammer Quest: Adventure Card Game– I’m kind of surprised that this little game beat out some of the above, but pound for pound this is one of the best card games on the market. It blows its competitors out of the water by offering a rich, challenging dungeoneering experience with meaningful cooperation, interesting mechanics and a genuine sense of that old Warhammer Quest atmosphere. I keep coming back to this game- specifically the Delve mode- over and over again and I come away satisfied every time. It’s the game that I wanted the Lord of the Rings LCG and Space Hulk: Death Angel to be. It’s also the game that I wanted Pathfinder to be. Adam and Brady Sadler completely knocked it out of the park on this, and I think with expansions it will be a game we are talking about throughout the next year.

 

1st Runner Up

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Shadows of Malice- I don’t think any game touched me in 2015 quite the way that Shadows of Malice did. I requested a review copy of this game from one-man-band Jim Felli almost exclusively because it looked so different than anything else from the graphic design to the concepts to the gameplay. And it is very, very different. It’s lean, spare and minimalist but it somehow manages to evoke the same kind of storytelling and engagement that a great D&D campaign or a game of Magic Realm might. It’s a little awkward, a little alien but once you dig into Mr. Felli’s unique vision, an incredible adventure game like no other unfolds. Compared to other, similar designs this game felt like something on the vanguard- daring, risky and challenging.

 

BARNES’ BEST GAME OF THE YEAR 2015

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Cthulhu Wars- It’s something of a Cinderella story for this $200 gorilla because I never thought I would cover it- let alone own it. But Sandy Petersen and his gang agreed to send me one, and I’m glad that they did because it turned out to be my favorite game of the year. It was also the most surprising game of 2015- it wasn’t bloated or underdeveloped at all like most crowdfunded games. Instead, it was lean and quick, managing to feel both old school and forward thinking at the same time. Of course, the production was just insane, with HUGE plastic figures that managed to pop even my miniatures-jaded eyes. Above all else, Cthulhu Wars provided some of the most fun sessions I had all year and I’ve found myself counting down the days until the next wave of expansions ships- I can’t wait to see how the other Great Old Ones, maps and other features work in this system.

So that’s it folks, everybody go home. Wait…what’s this then…apparently there is another. I’m so sorry, there has been a mix-up. One of the games of 2015 is upset because it did not get a medal. So I’m going to go ahead- on behalf of my children, River and Scarlett- and invite this game up to get the MOST AWESOME GAME OF 2015 Award.

Ladies and Gentlemen, LOOPIN’ CHEWIE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Cracked LCD- Space Cadets: Away Missions in Review

Dan Raspler and Al Rose want you to know that they love classic, golden age science fiction and Space Cadets: Away Mission is their statement of intent to rescue the genre (at least as far as games are concerned) from decades of dreary, dour, wartorn atmospheres and barely human space marine killing machines. SC:AM takes us back to a more optimistic era of rayguns and fishbowl helmets, of Saucermen and stern-jawed, crew-cut heroes. It is a very modern, very well designed dungeoncrawler with tons of miniatures, scenarios, AI opposition, dice combat, loot, et cetera, et cetera. There are 20 scenarios out of the box, and in each you’ll generally do pretty much what you expect to do in these kinds of games- shoot stuff, move/explore, pick up some new gear, flip a switch or two, exit to the shuttle before it all goes pear shaped.

Map tiles are hexes and they are laid out at the beginning of the scenario. The first thing you do on a turn is a scan, meaning that you flip an Alien token on one of the tiles closest to you to see what enemies it spawns or if an event occurs. You’ll get three actions, which may be limited to combat or non-combat ones depending on the character. Finite oxygen stores can be spent to take further actions in a clutch situation. Usually, you’ll be moving or shooting (it’s area to area) but you may also perform IQ actions, such as an analysis on an item or an attempt to subdue an alien Thrall or Brain-in-a-Jar through the power of human science.

Then of course, the Aliens get to go and they activate on a simple triage system that accounts for very different behaviors between the seven different types of enemies. Bugs will attempt to find others of their kind to form a swarm. Saucermen will keep distance and take potshots at the heroes. A Brain-in-a-Jar will attempt to control your character’s mind. It’s a similar system to AD&D Adventure System or Galaxy Defenders, but it’s streamlined here and more specifically detailed.

SC:AM is clearly not quite the most singular or unique concept out there, but I defy you to find a more heartfelt and affectionate game out there today. Of all the things I love about this game, it’s the heart and soul put into it by these gentlemen that matter the most. It’s not quite a purist’s vision though, as it is still a post-Aliens, post-Space Hulk “bughunt”. Trekkers take note- the only negotiations available with these Saucermen are to determine which one you blast first. And there is no red shirt- each hero is specialized and well-equipped to do battle with these extraterrestrial baddies.

But these guys also have a couple of tricks up their sleeve, and I think that those of you who might be shrugging off to get back to Imperial Assault or whatever ought to stick around because SC:AM manages to pull off a couple of fairly innovative, forward thinking ideas. First and foremost is this brilliant Overkill thing that I bet we’ll see turn up in at least five games next year. Combat is a matter of rolling a number of D10s corresponding to range. You score a hit if any of your dice are a 1, 2 or 3. Just one hit. But for each success in excess of one, you can perform an Overkill action. This represents a moment of heroism or an against-the-odds turn of events. Overkill options come from the character, the weapon being used or from the alien being attacked- and all of the above are different from element to element. This is a genius way to introduce an entirely new, fresh-feeling layer of decision making into this type of game. The aliens have overkill effects of their own- for example, a scary Sentinel might cause Terror if it rolls an Overkill, causing Rocketeers in its space to flee after a particularly brutal attack.

Another great idea, well implemented and totally on trend in the larger video gaming world, is crafting. The heroes might find schematics during their missions to clear out slave pens or explore UFOs, and to assemble the items they’ll need to find elements such as Alien Blood, Mysterium, and the wires the Saucermen use to turn humans into Thralls. I love that you find crazy alien tech and have to actually use science to sort out what it is, and then build it. This is another example of a fresh, forward-thinking idea that feels really unique in the genre.

I’m also in love with how this game paces itself. There’s no doom tracker or anything like that. Instead, that beginning-of-turn scan action sets the pace. Because each turn, more aliens are spawned and it becomes a struggle to complete the mission objectives while also managing the rising opposition. It feels like most games have a break point where the heroes either get overwhelmed or get things under control. If all of the alien tokens are explored, the game kicks into a “Red Alert” state, which is generally bad news for the Rocketeers. There is a great sense of tension and urgency, which is yet another factor I’m not seeing in a lot of other dungeoncrawl style games these days.

Then there are the little narrative bits that distinguish it. Like how you can rescue a Thrall and it turns out to be a harmonica-playing hobo that stuns the aliens or an estranged brother of a Rocketeer, who will take a hit for their sibling. I like the range of equipment available and the wide variety of specialized effects- like how if you want to harvest alien blood, you’d better bring an Air Knife. The scenarios are mostly fun, easy to set up and provide lots of exciting moments, laughs, and challenging situation.

I think Space Cadets: Away Team is a total win. It’s charming and fun with a couple of progressive ideas. It looks great, plays smoothly and offers plenty of diversity for return engagements. It’s in a crowded market as far as games of this type go but among the competition, it’s one of the best available.

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Cracked LCD- Cthulhu Wars in Review

I was very, very skeptical of Cthulhu Wars to say the least. I’m not a big supporter of the current trend toward crowdfunding in the hobby games market and I’m not entirely on board with the concept of these “Cadillac” games with astronomical presale prices. But there were three things that drove me to ask the publishers if they would send me a press copy. One is that I had heard great things about it from folks whose opinions I trust. The second is that I wanted to see what one of these luxury class games- in this case one retailing for $199- had to offer in comparison with more traditionally priced designs on the marketplace. The third is that Mr. Petersen is certainly not some upstart, armchair game designer selling their product with a flashy video and lots of promises. This is the guy that created Call of Cthulhu, still my favorite RPG of all time. And he also had a hand in designing games like Doom, Quake and other seminal, hugely influential computer games.

So “the Great Old One” himself responded, issuing a command to one of his Servitors to send a copy to me. A few days later I got this 11 pound box in the mail and opened it up to find a big, black box with good illustrations and luxurious embossing. It looked deluxe, sure. Opening it up, I was a little underwhelmed at first. It’s hard to not expect to be completely blown away, but the reality of it is that Cthulhu Wars is still a physical product, not a life-changing experience. But then I dug through the layer of punchboards and the map and saw IT. It wasn’t Cthulhu that caught my eye, it was Hastur. A huge, bright yellow monstrosity that put me in mind more of old fashioned plastic dinosaur figures more than gaming miniatures. I picked it up and just kind of laughed at it. Was it the taint of madness?

Also packed into the hard shell plastic tray were a huge Cthulhu that could be a replica of the statue in the story. There were Dark Young, tentacles frozen in mid-writhing along with their mother, Shub-Niggurath. Nyarlathotep, looking indeed like a Crawling Chaos. And the majestic yet abominable King in Yellow, of course rendered in yellow plastic. It’s been a very, very long time since I have been impressed with miniatures. These impressed me not just with their size, but also their detail and the implication that these were toys meant to be played with. In addition to these incredible pieces, the game is also packed with scads of great-looking monsters and cultists for each of the four included factions. Nightgaunts, Byahkees, Hunting Horrors, Deep Ones, Fungi from Yuggoth- if you know these names, you’ll be thrilled to hold these pieces in your hands.

After the initial sanity check, the reality set in that some of the components simply aren’t as impressive. The cardboard is pretty standard stuff and I’ve seen better in less expensive games. The gate markers in particular could have been and should have been more visually striking. The player mats and tracks are cardstock when they should have been thick punchboard. It’s hard to avoid being disappointed in the bag of plain old black 6mm D6s- games a fraction of the cost of Cthulhu Wars have custom dice. The maps are decent, but the visual design lacks the impact of the plastics.

I don’t usually spend a lot of column inches discussing the physical product in my reviews, but Cthulhu Wars definitely deserves it because of the consumer cost and also because it is such a wild mix of incredible and mundane. The effect is something like driving a Cadillac and realizing that it is just a car after all. It’s still a Cadillac and that matters, but it is important to keep expectations in check. This is still a small press, crowdfunded board game. And it is worth noting that the current “Onslaught 2” Kickstarter campaign offers both free and paid upgrades to several components. You pay extra for the seat heaters and deluxe floormats.

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Out of all of the things I expected out of Cthulhu Wars, the last thing I expected to be quite honest was to encounter an incredibly streamlined, highly refined “Dudes on a Map” design that I think is the best in its class since 2005’s Nexus Ops. This is a spectacular piece of development work that showcases Mr. Petersen’s experience and expertise in creating game systems, mechanics and concepts. This is absolutely a “fun first” design built to put players into a very specific setting, give them the insane powers of an alien god, and then get out of the way as much as possible to let players play. It is highly accessible, approachable and easy to learn. Administration is at a minimum- there are very few tokens to fuss with, no decks of cards to learn and manage, and the bookkeeping is as simple as it gets. In a way, it’s very old fashioned, but it also cuts through a lot of the clutter and bloat that have plagued “conquest” style games over the past decade or so.

The concept is cool and anyone that loves Lovecraft- from the original stories up through recent games such as Eldritch Horror- will immediately appreciate it. What if all of those gate-closing, cult-thwarting, Cthulhu-shooting exploits in other Mythos-inspired games was for naught and the Great Old Ones won? The core game’s map depicts an Earth upon which mankind no longer holds sway, the Great Old Ones along with their minions and monsters struggle for dominance. Cultists spread their abhorrent practices across the post-apocalyptic wastes, establishing gates through which they can summon monsters and even the Great Old Ones themselves. The overall goal of the game is for your faction to earn 30 Doom points. This only takes 60-90 minutes once your group has a handle on the game.

Fundamentally, Cthulhu Wars hews close to the Dudes on a Map tradition that goes back to Risk. Moving pieces and fighting with them is the prime directive. Combat is a matter of rolling dice equal to the combat value of everything in a space with sixes killing any unit (even a Great Old one) and fours or fives resulting in “Pain”, effectively a rout or forced retreat. There are also some other cool concepts at work. For example, if you put a monster in a space with an enemy’s Cultist that does not have a monster of their faction then you can abduct them to earn extra power. So a Nightgaunt can fly in and snatch up a guy left alone holding down a gate.

Each turn, all of the Cultists you have on the board generate a Power Point and you get two for each gate you control. The meager, misguided worshippers are also expendable, so you can sacrifice them for more power. These points are used to pay for movement, battle, gate construction, summoning, kidnapping Cultists and paying to use your faction’s Spellbook powers. These abilities- each player has six- are earned when you complete a specific goal keyed to your faction’s agenda and overall strategic direction. Shub-Niggurath has “achievements” keyed to spreading her “Thousand Young” across the map. Nyarlathotep is focused on control of gates and gaining power. Hastur’s Yellow Sign gang benefits from The King in Yellow spreading desecration into territories, the Undead springing up to serve his majesty. The followers of Cthulhu earn Spellbooks from controlling the oceans and devouring other players’ pieces.

The Spellbooks are outrageously overpowered and unfair. Some of them are at Cosmic Encounter levels of rules bending or breaking. Cthulhu can submerge with a couple of Shuggoths and Star Spawn and spend just one power point later on to pop up anywhere on the map. Nyarlathotep has a Madness ability that allows his player to choose for everyone else where “pained” (routed) figures are moved to after combat. Hastur can move to a Cultist that accidentally spoke his name and then abduct them. The Black Goat faction can turn their congregation into one die combat units.

The point is that all of these appropriately godlike powers are extremely powerful and desirable, while also giving each faction both a unique flavor and a variable, situational strategic direction each game. Some Spellbooks interact with a faction’s units to augment their abilities in movement or combat. They are all well balanced and well written, but it is imperative that new players understand what each faction’s special ability is along with all of their Spellbooks. Unaware players may miss the importance of not allowing the Black Goat’s monsters to run rampant or of keeping the Crawling Chaos player out of gate territories.

Scoring all of the above is quite interesting. In each round, each player get Doom points for each gate they control. Each player also has the option to perform a Ritual of Annihilation wherein power points are spent in exchange to effectively double the points earned from gates and give the annihilating player a secret Elder Sign mark worth one to three points for each Great Old One they control. But it is also at the expense of resources available during the turn. The Ritual becomes more expensive each time it is performed and there is a terminal point at which so many of them ends the game whether someone has reached 30 Doom or not.

This scoring method has a knock-on effect- it keeps the game moving forward, continually escalating the stakes but without creating the kind of “steamroller” effect that often occurs in this type of game. There are a couple of checks and balances in place. If you manage to get two more gates than everybody else on just one turn, you can do the Ritual to get a four point jump in addition to a possible three point boost from an Elder Sign, which also serves to baffle the “beat up the leader” impetus. And then there is a charity provision that enables a player that gets just completely devastated on a turn to earn power points equal to half the leader- which can be a big boon.

This is a very aggressive, very fluid game so fortunes and territorial control can change dramatically over the course of the action. There is no turtling, the close quarters map with few territories simply doesn’t allow it. Rebounding from losses is fairly easy, and “Pain” results are more common than kills. The feeling this generates is one of struggle between equivalent powers punctuated by dramatic shifts in game state.

The immediacy of this game- coupled with its easy play and approachability- makes this one of my favorite designs in this genre space. I love that it is a game that someone can come to my house, see on the shelf, get curious about and I can have them up and running with it in about ten minutes. Setup and commitment are minimized. Impact and engagement are maximized.

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Brilliantly editorial in its design yet over-the-top in production, the final question in regarding Cthulhu Wars is one that has likely been on the minds of any reader who has not yet either bought the game from the previous Kickstarter campaign or pledged on the recent one. “Is it worth it”? It’s a harder question to answer than it seems because in comparison to other products on the market it’s difficult to argue for it when you can easily buy three or even four very high quality, comparable titles for this game’s selling price. And that is before you figure in the expansion material, which is also premium priced with a full set of add-ons costing $600 before shipping.

But here it is. The answer might be regarded as something of a cop-out, but I’m going to tell you, reader, that it is simply up to you. Take a look at what is online, take a look at what is offered in the current Kickstarter, think about what your tastes are and what your group likes to play. Consider if a luxury-class Dudes on a Map game is something you want as a centerpiece in your collection. If you are interested in the Cthulhu Mythos, factor in how much you think that playing with these awesome figures and powers would be fun. Play someone else’s copy- if you dare to tempt yourself.

For my part, I think it is worth it because it is a masterful design that evokes an old fashioned sensibility while presenting itself in a very modern and very innovative set of rules that feels outside of the usual set of influences and antecedents. The miniatures, if you can call them that, do actually impart a sense of grandiose, cyclopean theater to the game and I would not want them to be reduced or replaced by less extravagant components. I appreciate the heart and soul of this game, I value that Mr. Petersen in some sense regards it as a culmination of his life’s work in games. The expansion content lingers in my thoughts like some kind of malignant corruption, the sound of a mystical unseen flute summoning my wallet.

I love this game and I think it is one of the absolute best games released this year and in time it could become one of my favorite games of all time. It is the best crowdfunded board game released to date. Like most of the games I cover, I was given it to review so take from that fact what you will. But if not for Mr. Petersen’s generosity, I would have been on my phone ordering a copy immediately after my first play.

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Cracked LCD- Champions of Midgard in Review

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Champions of Midgard is a really good game. It’s new from Grey Fox Games and designer Ole Steiness (Police Precinct). It’s also one of the best looking games released this year, all done up in a heavy metal Viking motif with rockin’ fonts and illustrations that will make you want to throw up horns and lick the blood off a battleaxe as you ride a flaming longship into Valhalla. There is dice rolling, monster fighting and a brilliant mechanic that allows you to shame your peers that have proven too cowardly to do battle with the local trolls. It’s easy to get folks interested in it, it’s easy to teach and it’s easy to play. And it’s a single purchase title, not a product line with 25 expansions available out of the gate.

There is a lot going for this game, to be sure. In fact, going down my list of desirables, it checks off almost everything from its pricepoint to its play length. But it’s not exactly a strong differentiator that Champions of Midgard is another worker placement game, and that design schematic has become increasingly stale over the past year or so. It’s certainly no fault of Mr. Steiness, who acquits himself quite nicely by bringing dice-rolling combat and a cool setting into a low-complexity example of the genre closer to Stone Age or Lords of Waterdeep than the more elaborate Feldian or Rosenbergian iterations. Before we get deeper into it, I’ll go ahead and state that anyone that likes either of those two games but wishes there was a little more rock n’ roll in them (so to speak) are probably going to love this game.

Each player represents an upstart Jarl, vying for Jarlship (Jarlhood? Jarldom?) of the village. But said village has monster trouble. Trolls and Draugr are bothering the fine folks, and there are also monsters a boatride away that need to be dealt with for fame, glory, the favor of the gods and monetary bounties. Each Jarl has a special ability and starts with four disappointingly generic Meeples with which to select actions on the non-geographic board. The process is fairly routine, and anyone who has played any worker placement game released since Carcassonne will have a handle on what to do without instruction.

So the bulk of competition, as to be expected, comes from placing a worker down on a desirable spot before someone else does. There are a couple of economic conversion functions available, with the resources including favor, gold, wood and food. There are four spaces that are modular and change every turn, reminding me somewhat of the buildings in Waterdeep although they are fixed for the entire game. A merchant ship comes into port each turn and offers a variable conversion rate. There are also a couple of card draw spots, one is for Runes that you must have to carve into a piece of wood since that’s what it costs and these give you a special action as well as points for the end of the game. The other cards are Destinies that are kept secret and function as individual objectives.

But where it gets more interesting is in hiring warriors. There are three types of warriors- swordsmen, spearmen, and axemen. Each are represented by a different color of D6 with differing odds to hit, block, miss or do double damage. If you want to go fight the monsters, you’re going to have to grab some warriors and some monster cards forbid some types of warriors. Other bonuses and abilities affect specific classes. And anyone that you don’t send out to stab Draugrs can also be dispatched to hunt for food.

Fighting the local monsters is as simple as putting your worker down in front of the Troll card or one of the two Draugrs available each turn. After all workers are placed, the warriors do their thing. You roll up whoever you have committed to fighting a creature looking to exceed their armor value with hit results. The monsters also return the favor, and you have to eliminate warriors back to the general pool (Valhalla!) unless you roll shields or have other effects to save them. Any favor tokens you’ve bought or earned can be used to re-roll. Monsters give you points and sometimes bonus resources- they are actually the principle way that to make money in the game.

So you’re going to want to fight early and often. More significantly, somebody has to fight and defeat the troll card for the round or everyone receives a Shame marker, which counts against your score at the end of the game. But it is a one-person-only spot, so whoever does it has to win or their failure impacts everyone. If they beat it, they also get to give one player a Shame marker. I love this. It’s fun and it adds a sometimes hilarious psychological element to the game. And it is also the only aggressive-aggressive point of conflict in an otherwise passive-aggressive design.

Battling monsters in distant lands is a little more complicated but also more rewarding. You’ve got to either rent a publically available longship or build a private one with wood and gold. You can then load your vessel up to capacity with any combination of warrior dice and food that you like- with the provision being that the journey to the closer monster cards requires that you have one food for every two warriors and to get to the more distant ones you have to pack one food for every die. And then there is a journey card that is flipped to see what happens on the way- which may include battling a Kraken. I really enjoy the logistics and risk-taking present in this element of the game. This portion of the game reminds me quite a lot of the Ragnar Brothers’ classic Fire & Axe.

There are eight rounds of play but it almost feels like two too many because it can feel somewhat repetitious. The monster decks are random so there is no sense of ramping up the difficulty or an escalation pushing players to keep up with a power curve. The overall tension in the design is very low, despite some do-or-die dice rolling. This is a game where the worst thing that can happen to you is that you lose all of your warriors. And then on the next turn you might wind up with more than you had last round.

The ups and downs of sending out warriors sounds exciting and it is, but those three spaces are in the center of the board for a reason. Claiming those spaces and sending the warriors out is the most important element of the game and everything orbits around those functions. The result seems to be that the development curve- considering that this is most definitely not any kind of “engine building” game or “efficiency exercise”- seems to be fairly flat across the entire game. Other than players maybe building their own boat or gradually having more Destiny cards to pursue (goals such as “have the most red monster cards at the end of the game” or “have the most wood the end of the game”), it doesn’t feel like turn seven is fundamentally different than turn two aside from a player’s current resource holdings, and I think this is the biggest weakness of the entire package. There is an extra worker that players can unlock and that increases options, but there have been more than a few points where the choices have felt too restrictive. Particularly in the late game.

Reflecting on Champions of Midgard, I’m inclined to argue that worker placement burnout is one reason that I’m not just completely over the moon about it but I think more significantly that the repetition and relatively flat development curve are more culpable. I keep thinking about Lords of Xidit or Waterdeep where there is a buildup to larger battles that takes time, requiring you to make several profitable choices before you can work up to bigger rewards. But in this design, the strongest monsters in the game might hit on the first four turns and go down easy to a player with a strong warrior pool and lots of favor tokens. But hey, that’s fun too. And this game is fun, no doubt. There’s a lot to be said for a game that offers a great meat-and-potatoes gaming experience with broad appeal and an exciting setting and Mr. Steiness has given us exactly that.

Cracked LCD- Psycho Raiders in Review

psycho raiders

I love it when games have moments- those points where the narrative, the structure, the rules and the interaction all come together to equal something more than a group of people rolling dice and pushing counters around with a context mostly held together with pictures and nomenclature. Nate Hayden, one of the best game designers working today, blew me away last year with The Mushroom Eaters. A game full of moments. I named it my Game of the Year last year because that’s what you do as a critic when something has a profound effect on the way you think about whatever medium it is that you are criticizing.

Psycho Raiders, which Mr. Hayden and his gang released last year as a “Halloween Horrorgame Magazine”, had a moment. Fleeing from the titular murderers that had already immolated their friend, three young campers on Halloween night in 1978 made it to the outskirts of a small, rural town. They managed to scream loud enough to alert a mechanic in the gas station. He grabbed a hammer and ran outside, seeing these kids running from a black van and a couple of gas masked psychopaths on foot. The mechanic threw the keys to a fixer-upper parked under a streetlight to Randy, who had been injured when the Psycho Raiders attacked his pickup with a flamethrower. Ginger had run alongside Randy, while their friend Dawn made a run for the woods.

All three made it to the car. The mechanic stalled one of the raiders, attacking him with the hammer. The van sped along the road while the kids got the car going. Randy floored it. And flipped it on the first turn out of the gas station.

All three crawled out. Randy told the girls to run for it. He picked up a tire iron, badly hurt by this point but determined to fight back. Torch, the raider with the flamethrower, blasted him again but it wasn’t enough to kill him. But it still set him on fire. He was about to die from burning on the next turn.

And then it started raining. The friend I was playing with uttered “bullshit.” We cracked up, because what else are you gonna do but laugh at that?

With the fire out, Randy lunged and smacked Torch with the tire iron. But Beau, one of the other Psycho Raiders stood by and laughed, jabbing their victim with a rusty old saber. Randy just wouldn’t die. He took a swing at Beau, but he dropped the tire iron. Beau stabbed him through the eye.

It was such a strangely sad, grim moment. Randy was at the end of the line and he knew it. But he grasped at every chance he could take. It felt like he deserved a better end, and when it rained on him it almost felt like there was a shot at survival. But when he dropped his makeshift weapon- bloody, burned but still fighting- it was like this nihilistic collapse of goodness, courage and hope punctuated by a bloody red KILL card.

This is the root of what makes Psycho Raiders great. It’s brutal, violent and it has that same sense of grand guignol seediness that permeates the kinds of gritty horror films that the game is clearly referencing. It’s a game that is not fair. It does not seek to empower its players. It does not serve to make anyone feel smart or clever. When playing as the campers, it captures a sense of being hunted down and slaughtered by amoral, remorseless human monsters. When playing as the Psycho Raiders, it puts the player in the role of soulless, evil gods of death deciding not if people are going to die, but how mercilessly they are going to die. It is the perfect horror game that accomplishes a level of psychological terror that I, for one, previously thought was not possible in game design.

Needless to say, this is not a game for everybody. It’s rated X and it means it. This is savage, questionable entertainment rife with the very blackest of humor and heavily influenced by 1970s exploitation films. It’s the tabletop equivalent of a video nasty. Yet it is a game that should be played by anyone that thinks they understand what atmosphere, theme and narrative mean in the context of a gaming hobby currently bogged down in a morass of bloated production values, redundant structures, a despairing lack of risk-taking and a complacent fear on the part of designers to challenge players to expect more.

Ironically, this is a game that could have been published in 1980. The very specific, simulation-oriented rules call to mind classic SPI or Avalon Hill adventure games, not Fantasy Flight or Z-Man ones. Most of the game is very simple and familiar in terms of movement and combat, it’s all classic hobby gaming structure. The map is paper and printed right there on it are all the tables you need to roll on for results. Be prepared to bring your own dice, cut the cards out yourself and supply players with pencil and paper. If all of that sounds barbaric to you, maybe give Psycho Raiders a pass and go play Last Night on Earth instead.

It’s old fashioned and out of fashion, but there are two masterstrokes that modern designers should be paying attention to. One is the hiding mechanic, which lets players place and move multiple on-board tokens to obscure where they actually are. The other is the best use of the tired, hackneyed “traitor” mechanic I have seen to date. There are a couple of townsfolk that can enter play like the mechanic mentioned above. The Raider player can secretly designate a die roll’s worth of the townsfolk to be sinister and on their side. What’s more, the Raider player can actually let the campers use the townfolk and decide at an opportune moment for them to show their true color, which is of course always black.

There are also many details such as rules for screaming, unsafe driving, for using a telephone, for weather, for spreading fires and for tear gas. There are rules for if Joey shows up in his Camaro as a kind of white trash Deus ex Machina as well as other events that could happen. You may never see any of these things happen because the gameplay is wide open- how the story of these campers on the run from the Psycho Raiders is entirely up to you. Situations like the moment described above may occur once but never again. This is truly emergent gameplay enabled by relatively loose rules and a masterful design-level grasp on balancing playability, simulation and narrative.

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The old timey packaging is absolutely brilliant- it is an old fashioned magazine game. The components are a paper map, a few counters and some cards that you have to cut out yourself. The illustrations are willfully crude, unrefined and raw. If you expect every game to be stuffed full of possibly toxic made-in-China plastic and kitschy-ass fantasy artwork, you might mistake this game for ugly or cheap. But the slightly sleazy, off-putting visual design is absolutely part of the package.

You even get a gas mask-wearing underwear model in the centerfold, standing in front of a wood panel wall with a cheap Halloween decoration on it. It’s the kind of slightly upsetting thing that makes you feel like something is wrong either with the people who made it or with you for buying and owning it. Flipping through the magazine, which contains the rules, there are several weird cartoons that range from surreal to disgusting. There’s an upsetting piece of short fiction. This stuff is as transgressive as board games get. This stuff is as immersive as board games get.

But most significantly, the magazine also includes a comic that serves as a direct prelude to what occurs in the game. Turn one literally picks up right from the last panel, with the campers’ pickup barreling down the road with the Raiders’ van right behind it. From there, the players finish the story. This is how background story or fluff text should be done from here on out.

Psycho Raiders actually came out last year but for various reasons it was one of those games I never got around to. At this point, it’s clear that I was wasting my time looking for transcendent moments in other games. This is the real deal, this is the mythical, Utopian game I’m always on about that is innovative, progressive, playable, narrative, thematic and compelling. It’s every bit as good as The Mushroom Eaters, and as such I’m appending my 2014 Game of the Year award to include both games released last year that have Nate Hayden’s name on them.

This is an incredibly renegade, daring piece of game design and packaging that makes me want to buy a copy for every single person who has ever used the asinine turn of phrase “dripping with theme” and one for every person who thinks that anything coming out of the morass that is Kickstarter is anything approaching “innovative” or “progressive”. It would be an object lesson in what a truly maverick game product should look and play like in 2015, even if it is defiantly and gruesomely atavistic.

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