Your Ticket out of Monopoly-ville: Ticket to Ride

Your Ticket out of Monopoloy-ville: Ticket to Ride

Overall Rating: 7 out of 10

Type: Board game

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 2-5

Playing Time: 30-60min+

Replay-ability: 6 out of 10

Expansions available: 1910 Expansion Pack (Cost = $15)

Cost: Approximately $36

Ticket to Ride is train building game filled with strategy and little geography (though the cities are not necessarily in the right spot--that is Chicago is sort of in Indiana). There are 5 different colors to play (black, blue, green, yellow, and red) each player receives 45 plastic train cars in their color to start the game. They also receive 3 route cards of which they have to keep at least two, and four colored train cards. 

Route Cards!

Route cards have a brown backing and contain two cities that you have to connect with your trains and a number amount that you receive at the end of the game for making that route. If you don't make the route, you get negative points! 

The colored train cards are used to claim parts of a route. There are eight different colored cards plus wild cards. During each turn, you can either draw two colored train cards, one wild train card, take more routes, or claim parts of your route. 

If a section of a route has three yellow boxes, a player must play three yellow train cards or a combination of wild train cards and yellow train cards to claim that section. If they do this, that is the only thing they can do per turn. If there are a number of gray boxes, say two, then a player can play any color of train cards but it must be two matching for example to two blue cards or two green cards, etc. 

Usually you want to try to complete a 20 point route because these are some of the longest, highest value routes, but you can complete a lot of smaller routes if you'd prefer. When picking your first routes, it's best to choose routes that you can complete with one line of trains. For example, try to avoid perpendicular routes or parallel routes because that makes it harder to complete the routes and uses up more of your limited train supply. 

There is also a bonus of 10 points awarded to the player with the longest continuous train. I really like to finish my routes early and then work on getting the longer train. It makes me feel accomplished even if I don't end up winning. 

Overall, this game is easy to learn, fun to play, and not as stressful as other board games. Though the Europe version (which I also own) is more complex and more stressful with tunnels and ferry routes. I like this game a lot and would recommend it. I have played at least 25 times (probably more) and I still really love it. I think it might be time for me to get the expansion pack because I now know all the routes and that's a somewhat unfair advantage. I do think this game has a learning curve as you learn the strategy that works best for you, but it's worth it! 

It's like a Scary Movie: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

It's like a Scary Movie: Betrayal at the House on the Hill

Overall Rating: 9 out of 10

 

Type: Board game, Co-operative with defector

Suggest Ages: 12+

# of Players: 3-6

Playing Time: 1hour+

Replay-ability: 9 out of 10

Expansions available: Not Officially (Some Unofficial talk here)

Cost: Approximately $35

 

So if you like co-operative games, but you miss the competitive aspect of non-coop, then you might want to look into co-operative games that have a defector. In Betrayal at the House on the Hill, all of the players begin on the same team. You're a group of explorers finding omens, events, and items in an old haunted house. Until the time when "the Haunt" begins, at which point a player becomes a traitor or there are monsters or both! This game can be pretty spooky, given the haunted house, creepy event cards, horrifying items (including weapons like the blood danger), and even worse omen cards!

The game starts with three pieces of the board the basement landing, the upstairs landing, and three rooms on the main floor: the entrance hall (where all players start), the foyer, and the connecting downstairs landing to the upstairs landing. In the beginning of the game there is no way for a player to get to the basement, and even once a player makes it to the basement, there is often not a way for the player to get out of the basement. This happens because there are multiple room tiles that cause players to take a one-way trip to the basement.

Room tiles are what build the game board. Each player can explore house in whatever direction they choose as long as they follow the number of moves they have. You explore new rooms but going through doorways of the house into rooms that have not get been discover. You then find a room title in the stack marked accordingly (ground, upper, basement) and place it on the board so that it's door and the door you entered through are connected.

The basement.

Room tiles usually have special symbols on them that tell you which card to draw (event, item, or omen). The play continues this way with players drawing items and decreasing and increasing their player stats according to the cards and room tiles until the Haunt begins.

Each die has two blank sides, two sides with one, and two sides with two.

The Haunt begins when a player fails a haunt roll. After each Omen Card draw, the player has to make a haunt role. The player roles six dice to determine whether the haunt will happen. The player must role equal to or greater than the number of omens out on the board in order to avoid the haunt. For example, if there are four omens on the board, a player needs to role a four or higher.

Once the haunt begins, there is a traitor attempting to murder/change/whatever the other player either alone or with a group of monsters or the traitor turns into a monster. There 50 different haunts outline in the traitor's guide and the survival guide of the game. Once the haunt occurs, the traitor leaves to read about their objectives and the heroes stay to talk about their objectives. The heroes have to be careful not to give away information to the traitor or vise versa because neither party knows the full story.

Overall, this game is super fun to play. There's a horror-movie-esque feel, but even if you don't particularly enjoy horror movies, it's still worth a shoot, especially with the right people. You can play in character if you want and it makes it that much more fun to make up how the people arrived at the house together and how they are all related and what their motivations are. But if you're not into doing that, then it's just as fun to simply play the game!

The replay-ability of this game is crazy! There are 50 different haunt scenarios, the game board is never the same, and the characters are great. I love learning about the new haunts and trying to figure out what is going to happen next.

Just a note though: There are a lot of punch out tokens, so you might want to have some Ziploc bags ready when you open this game. That's probably the only downside I see for this game.

Save the World Together: Pandemic

February 10, 2014

Save the World Together: Pandemic

Overall rating: 8 out of 10

Type: Board game, Co-operative

Suggest Ages: 8+

# of Players: 2-4

Playing Time: 45min+

Replay-ability: 7 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes

Cost: Approximately $40

 

Introducing, Co-operative games! Co-operative games are games in which everyone playing (or most people playing) are working together to defeat the game. These games are the best for many reasons. You can play them with sore losers, people who always win, and people who are nervous about learning new games because the sore losers can't be upset about the game, an object winning, the always-winners only win if you do, and the nervous people don't have to feel like they're playing alone against people who are already better than them. 

I really recommend this game to everyone. Co-operative games build relationships instead of destroying them... And also I think this game would be great for teaching (older--8+) children teamwork, listening skills, and strategy. (We all know that even adults need to relearn these skills! Myself included.) The reason I list listening skills is because the rules explicitly state that members have to agree about certain actions before other players can take them. 

So what is Pandemic? 

The premise of Pandemic is that every members is apart of a team of science/health related individuals who are trying to save the world from 4 diseases. These diseases are represented by different colored disease cubes (red, blue, yellow & black). Each of these diseases attacks different sections of the board. For example, the yellow disease is located in southern USA, South America, and Africa.

From this angle, you can see how the diseases are located in different areas. You can also see the cure vials.

 When a city has three disease cubes (like Santiago does in the photo above), there is the risk of an "Outbreak". An outbreak occurs when a city that already has three disease cubes gets pulled from the "infection deck" again. Santiago is probably the best place for an outbreak to happen because the mountains prevent it from being connected to any other city except Lima. An outbreak causes the "outbreak counter" to go up one space. If more than seven outbreaks occur, the game is lost. The outbreak also means that any city connected to the outbreak city receives one cube of that disease color. In the case of Santiago, only Lima would get a cube. 

Here is a view of the entire board. The green cards are the "infection deck" that cause cubes to be place on different cities each turn. The Outbreak counter is to the left. The infection rate counter is under the infection deck. And the blue cards are the "cure deck."

Each turn: each player has four actions per turn. They can move to different cities, remove disease cubes, build research stations, give/take cards from other players, and/or cure a disease. Each player has a specific role that comes with special abilities. For example, the Medic can remove all the disease cubes from one city for one action and remove all disease cubes of a cured disease by simply entering that city. He's (probably) the most helpful role, but everyone gets a special ability. 

To win the game, you have to cure all four disease. There is only one way to win, but there are multiple ways to lose. This idea seems to be common to co-operative gaming. I think the idea is that if there are multiple people working one problem then the problem has to be more difficult. Anyway, you lose pandemic if 1) there are more than seven outbreaks, 2) the cure deck runs out of the cards before you can cure the diseases, or 3) you run out of disease cubes.  

 It is VERY important to read all of the rules! My friends and I played this game wrong for so long because we neglected to read everything. (Duh!) But now we play it right and still love it! 

If you play this game and decide you love it, you can share that love with the game creator, Matt Leacock, on Twitter. I tweeted at him, and he actually replied!! 

You can also see this game played on YouTube with Wil Wheaton on his TableTop Series. 

If you have any questions, feel free to comment below!

Extreme Babysitting: Evil Baby Orphanage

February 4, 2015

Extreme Babysitting: Evil Baby Orphanage

Rating: 6 out of 10 

Type: Card

Suggest Ages: 13+

# of Players: 3-6

Playing Time: 15min+

Replay-ability: 5 out of 10

Expansions available: Yes

Cost: Approximately $15

I should start by saying that this game isn't for everyone. In order to truly like the game, you have to be willing to embrace the bizarre dark humor. The premise of the game is that each player is a Time Nanny who uses their ability to travel back in time to adopt evil babies. For example, the Baby Deck is made up of evil babies ranging from baby Hitler to baby Guy Fawkes. They adopt these evil babies before they grow up and become horrible people in the hopes that they can turn them into less horrible people. (Nature vs. Nurture, maybe?)

There are two decks for this game. One deck is the Baby Deck which is made up of all the evil babies. Each baby has a different set of actions that it takes if it is unsupervised during a player's turn. The most common of these actions are Bite, Bully, Grab, Creep, and/or Babble. Although some cards have no unsupervised actions and some have special unsupervised actions such as the Unabomber who allows you to use your good toys are bad toys. (We'll get to toys a little later.) 

The unsupervised actions are show by the different symbols within the circles or with text explaining special actions. Due to blurry photo the babies from left to right: Robespierre, Joseph Stalin, Lizzie Borden, and Elizabeth Bathory.

The second deck is the Nanny Deck which contains special nanny cards. One card, the "Trail of Cookies" allows players to lure a baby away from another player. Another, the "Musical Chairs" lets a player choose either another player or themselves and whoever they choose has to place all of their babies under the baby draw pile and select new babies from the top of the draw pile. This card can be dangerous to play because the player could draw higher mischief point babies and be closer to winning the game. (I'm getting to the winning, I promise!)

Special Nanny Cards and also two "bad toys": Sippycup of the Damned.

But first, the toys! Good toys such as the "puppy-sized elephant" allow a nanny to supervise their babies, nullifying their unsupervised action. For example, Lizzie Borden is a biter baby but when you give her the puppy-sized elephant, she does not bite during that turn. Supervising is an important step because it allows you to keep your babies or prevent your babies from helping other orphanages. 

So how do you win? A nanny wins when she/he has ten mischief points at the beginning of their turn. Each baby card has a set number of mischief points, signified by the number in the top right corner of the card. It can be tricky to win because the other players have all of their turns to knock down your score and steal your babies.  

This a typical hand of cards. This player has 6 mischief points, three good toys, and two special nanny toy cards that let me steal a certain type of baby from their opponents.

Overall, this game is very fun and quirky. The art is fitting and adorable. I wouldn't recommend this game for younger players because of the violence displayed with guns, but for a mature group of people with the right humor, it's a great game. The game is often short (though it can stretch for a while if all the players remain on their toes) and so this game is a nice break from more complex, intensive strategy games. It also has a nice variety of cards so that the replay-ability is better than some other games. I have played multiple rounds of this game in one night without getting bored or annoyed because you receive different babies and nanny cards and so the game is altered. 

If you have any questions, feel free to post in the comments below!