I learned about this game a couple of years ago, and have been anxiously awaiting its release ever since. Technically, it’s not out yet - it’ll hit the store shelves in a few months. BUT you can buy a down-loadable version right now from Cyanide’s website.  As is usual for new games these days, it’ll cost yah 50 bones, sucks, but at least it’s cheaper than the physical board game from Games Workshop - 82.50!?  What the hell is happening to this world…

Anyways, as most of you know, I’m a HUGE Blood Bowl fan.  I consider Blood Bowl to be an example of a “perfect” board game.  Its got it all - the rule set is solid as a rock, your players gain experience and get better as they play, and the theme is awesome - I mean how can you go wrong when you mix football, fantasy races, and dark humor?  In my opinion its one of the most tactically heavy games one can play.

However, to really get the most out of Blood Bowl, you need to have a group of dedicated players to form a league.  And anyone who has tried this knows that it’s damn difficult.  People get busy or uninterested, games start getting missed, and before you know it the whole damn thing falls apart.

This was really the main reason I took such interest in the new video game version of my beloved Blood Bowl.  Aside from all the pretty graphics - and the game certainly delivers in that department, the video game adaptation of Blood Bowl delivers a faithful recreation of Blood Bowl that can be played against anyone in the world via online matches.

The video game is worth every penny in my opinion, though I cannot imagine anyone who is not familiar with the board game being happy with it.  While the rules and in-game tutorials are included - I don’t think the average video game player will be happy with having to learn all the ins-and-outs of a relatively complex board game.  However, if you are familiar with it, you’ll be able to open the game and get to playing straight away - it’s extremely user friendly for veterans of the board game.  There’s also a “Blitz Mode” in which players can play in real time.  While this may be more interesting to video game players, I can’t comment on it because I really have little interest in it, and have yet to try it out.

The games A.I. is a little on the slow side, so the single player mode is a bit easy - I have yet to loose a game with my single player chaos team.  So online play with other human players is where it’s at.  Unfortunately, there’s a problem with people dropping out of games when they start to loose - Cyanide is currently looking into ways to dissuade people from doing this, so hopefully people doing this sort of thing will become less frequent.

Currently, the rules are faithful to the current living rulebook (LRB5.0), and as of now, you can choose from 8 different teams - chaos, dwarves, goblins, humans, lizardmen, orcs, skaven, and wood elves.  Nearly everything you can buy in the board game for your team is available in the video game - some notable exceptions are the goblin bombardier, team wizards, and assistant coaches which are oddly absent - though they may be added in a future patch.  All of your favorite star players are here - with more being added all the time - Morg N Thorg for example was added to my game via download shortly after I downloaded it.  Additional teams are also planned for release, the next two being the dark elves and undead.

Since I downloaded it, I’ve played a bunch of Blood Bowl matches with my chaos team, “Khorne’s Killers”.  Matches require much less time than their physical counterparts - you can finish a match in about a half hour, though online matches can take much longer. 

My personal opinion is that Blood Bowl the video game is a great value - though I can easily understand why non-fans would feel that the game simply isn’t worth the price tag.  So my final verdict:  Buy it if you love the board game, you won’t regret it - skip it if you don’t.

THE END

-

DEACON

Filed under: Blood Bowl (PC), Video Games by DEACON
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Simulation: “How strong is the game at accurately recreating real life situations?”
Games very strong in this aspect would be wargames. Take a game like Advanced Squad Leader that takes the kitchen sink approach and includes everything that was used during WWII (even down to bicycle regiments). Balance, or rules simplicity take a back seat during design and making sure the results simulate what would have likely happed given the conditions. As a design process these games often start with a specific situation and attempt to recreate it by developing the system. A game like Ogre takes traits from wargames but adds in experience by creating this new world, this new setting and new vehicles and machines to use.

Experience: “How strong is the game at providing the player with a “role” to step into?”
AmeriTrash Games are often the ones that I feel provide a strong experience, sometimes at the expense of the other two categories. A game like Twilight Imperium III makes me feel like I’m in the roll of a Galactic Emperor controlling and directing my people when to expand, when to build up an army, when diplomacy is the best action…etc. Miniature games are another experience game where you take on the roll of a general outfitting your troops, telling them what to defend and where to attack. But miniature games also have a simulation aspect to them. Intricate worlds are created, entire races are developed and the technology and fighting style are all supposed to represent and reflect the back-story and history that these particular races have.

Balance: “How strong is the balance between players?”
This one was a little harder for me to define or come up with a word for but I think balance fits. Euro titles and Abstracts would fall into this category. Abstracts often put players on an equal playing field with a minimal set of rules and win/loss comes down to the player’s skill and ability to execute strategy within a given system. Some of heavy Euros would fall into this like Caylus and Through the Desert. Both of those games I don’t think do a good job at simulating anything. They don’t do a good job at giving me the experience (I don’t feel like a caravan leader in Through the Desert nor a builder in Caylus). What they do a great job at is creating a framework, which can get very complex at times, which tries to find out who has the better skills at working in and manipulating in a particular system. A game like Mississippi Queen gives everyone the same starting resources and has everyone floating down the same river, but also adds in things that add to the experience like ramming and river obsticles.

The reason why I feel the classification system should change is because as I mentioned the current terms are restrictive. Games are fought over by people who identify with the different camps or genres of games when in reality the majority of games do not fit nicely into one of the three current categories. By boiling it down to what I feel is the defining trait of each respective genre it allows you to classify games as being strong in experience, above average in simulation but weak in balance (Like TI3). Or weak in experience, strong in balance but weak in simulation (like TtD). Or strong in experience, average in simulation but weak in balance (like the majority of miniature games).

I see these traits on a sliding scale. Think of the back of a wargame box where it rates difficulty or solitaire suitability on a sliding scale…That’s how I see the traits I define. To me it provides the consumer with more and better information on what to expect from a particular title. If a game is high on balance but low in everything else (these would be “Heavy Euros”) chances are it is not for me. I tend to value experience highly so a game like Fury of Dracula which I feel provides a strong experience but is pretty low on balance rates high on my list.

Perhaps my definitions aren’t correct, but I am correct in saying that our current classification system is wrong and of minimal use. The current terms have no clear definition. As games that share traits with Euros or AT or Wargames come out these definitions, often defined by the groups that identify with them, are dynamic and continuously get redefined, but not refined as games we want to call AT or War or Euro (and could really be argued for multiple sides) call the old definition into question and that definition gets morphed to defend a particular title. Then when a game really can’t be classified as one or the other and is a true hybrid or melding of traits terms like Waros pop up further proving that the current classification system just doesn’t work since nothing is as clean cut and we all want them to be.

‘Til Next Time - Happy Gaming
LvT

Filed under: Game Categories, Games - Editorials by LordVonTush
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I don’t know what it is about these past summer months, but as of late is seems like I just can’t get a game in…Curse these beautiful days and outdoor activities! Well a few nights back, I was able to play my first game of Tales of the Arabian Nights with one of my good friends. Neither of us had ever played the game before which for him was understandable since he doesn’t game except to amuse me every once in a while.

Personally, I have a difficult time calling this a game. In the past I have blasted games for being a way to pass time rather than an engaging event, particularly games where the choices you make and what you do has limited impact on if you win the game or not. TotAN fits this like a glove where I feel it is closer to lawn games like bocce-ball or horseshoes than a tactical/strategy game like we’re all used to. At no point during the game did I feel like where I was going or what skills I was picking had an influence on my success or failure in the game. But let me take a step back and talk about the mechanics a bit.

TotAN is best described as a choose your own adventure book, the ones where you read a paragraph, get presented with a few options and then flip to the page that it tells you to. Your turn has you moving a cut-out of your character around a map. At the end of every movement you draw a card from The Encounter Deck, of which there are three types of cards…The specifics of the three types don’t need to be covered here, but what you need to know is the encounter card you draw is the first step to having your story for the turn told to you. At the bottom of each card is a number which directs your opponent to a specific chart with 12 options. You then roll a dice and modify and your opponent tells you your result. This will give you a specific name like Dirty Hag; Terrible Storm; Happy Soldier…etc. Always a descriptive followed by a noun. This then tells you to reference a specific matrix in the matrix folder.

At this point, you as the player actually get to make a decision. Depending on the matrix you are directed to, your character has different action terms on how they can possibly react to the situation. You get to pick things like: Pray; Attack; Hide; Sneak; Follow; Take; Examine…etc. Once you pick that, the matrix directs you to a specific paragraph out of the 2,500+! There are some modifiers which could adjust the exact paragraph you read a bit, but again nothing worthy of detail, just a little note.

Your opponent then starts to read you the paragraph. Many of the paragraphs are divided up into a few segments. The first segment gives a general description of what event is happening. The second segments provide a few options depending on what skills your character has. More often than not, the person will read the “No Skill” option, but say you had the Seduction skill and one of the options is for Seduction, then you have the choice to pursue the Seduction result or go with the No Skill result. Once the decision has been made by the active player, your opponent continues to read the paragraph and at the end you possibly get a reward.

Rewards add things like Wealth, Destiny Points and Story Points, or things like weapons, Status Cards, Skills…etc. Wealth determines how fast and how far you can move in a turn. Weapons typically add skills to you, but I haven’t gone through all the cards so there may be some other affects. Skills I’ve touched on, but basically the depth of skills is they possibly provide you with different options when reading a paragraph. Status cards on the other hand are interesting. They represent things like being Badly Lost to Wounded to Married all the way to Sex Change! For example my first encounter I had last night had me face to face with an Ugly Hag. The option I decided to go with was Attack since I figured hell, it is the first turn let’s see where this game takes us. Well I ended up getting jumped by the crowd, robbed and beat which caused me to lose some wealth and obtain Wounded. This forced me to miss my next turn so I could heal myself back up.

Destiny and Story Points are best described as the Victory Points in this game and by collecting those you inch closer to the win. At the beginning of the game each player, hidden from others, selects a combination of Story and Destiny Points that total up to 20. Tokens are taken to record your goals and placed under your player board. These are kept hidden until someone reaches their selected levels and reaches Baghdad. The rest of the players then have one turn to get to Baghdad if they too have met their goals. If both players are in Baghdad with the requirements for their Status and Destiny Points then it goes to a tie-breaker. And this is what happened the other night.

During the course of our game we were having a blast. Since you have little control over the specific events that you encounter you just have to go along for the ride. Because a lot of the paragraphs or descriptions are vague, your mind is able to wonder and if it is in the gutter like ours were the other night…Well we had a blast. My opponent managed to snag himself a lovely D’jinn wife who, I can’t remember the exact quote, but to us it sounds like he married a sex hungry D’jinn who does nothing but fuck and keep him exhausted.

But the amount of fun I had still doesn’t gloss over the fact that the game just doesn’t seem to offer much in the way of strategy or tactics…I feel like you’re just along for the ride. That’s why after one game I am pretty comfortable in saying that I’ve seen ust about all this game offers, but have only scratched the surface of what the game contains. By that I mean, I don’t expect any “A-Ha!” moments where all of a sudden a clear path to victory becomes apparent. I don’t expect games to be tight all the way down to the wire where people are pulling out all the stops to try to secure their victory. What I do expect is to hear a myriad of unique stories and funny situations that your character gets him/her-self into.

So as I wrap this up I’ll go back to my opening thoughts about how I have a hard time calling this a game. Games to me imply some sort of competition where opponents test their skills against each other…TotAN does not have this. Our game ended with my opponent whooping me in both Destiny and Story Points, he got to Baghdad first and had to wait the full turn as dictated by the rules before he could claim a win. Well during that last turn I didn’t have my goals accomplished (as I said he was whooping my ass) but was able to get back to Baghdad with my only chance of victory being pulling a paragraph that gives me the Story Points that I so badly needed to achieve my goals…I went through the event, had my paragraph read to me, and got my two story points allowing me to accomplish my goals. What struck me as odd though is the tiebreaker, which I ended up winning. I assumed the tie breaker would be either Story or Destiny Points so you could imagine my surprise when I started going through the tiebreaker list and I ended up winning - My voice even cracked in surprise as Ifound out I won. I’ve said it before and this is something I really believe, but winning or losing for me is secondary compared to the experience you have be it in the game or with the company you keep and that is something fully exemplified in TotAN. In my opinion I really should not have been called the winner, but again with this game it isn’t that you got there, but how you got there. Think of all those college road trip movies, more often than not the hijinks that occur, happen on the road and such is the case with TotAN.

So, do I recommend this game to people…One hundred percent I do (provided you value experience over win/loss). Really the only thing for me that keeps it from a perfect game is like I mention above this feeling that I just can’t or have very limited control over things. Never in all the games I’ve played have I been so entertained by both what was happening to me as well as what was happening to my opponent. The atmosphere is light and lively and it creates exactly the situation that I like when gaming with people. It is hard not to have fun with this game unless you can’t get past the lack of meaningful choices. I will admit that it isn’t a game that I want to play all the time because that lack of control does little to scratch my gaming itch, but for a social game which I’d venture to say is a party game in disguise there is nothing else that I’ve found that compares.

‘Til Next Time - Happy Gaming
LvT

Filed under: Games - Board Games, Tales of Arabian Nights by LordVonTush
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I haven’t played this yet, so don’t expect a review…

As I was reading through the rules to BlackBeard, I couldn’t help but just shake my head in wonder. Being a game about pirates, booty is an accurate and way of describing loot, gold, treasure, with a period term that has character. Most everyone should also know that booty is an alternate term to describe one’s backside and a pretty tame one at that. But for whatever reason the designers/rules author decided that they needed to clarify that “Booty” referred to treasure and not one’s backside because, as they describe “this is a family game”.

So for the record I just want to get this straight:
-Booty does not equal family game when it could be possibly confused to mean one’s backside
-Stealing, killing, raping, looting, burning, destroying and kidnapping equals a family game provided it doesn’t include “booty” in reference to one’s backside

Perhaps this isn’t the forum for this topic, but are we this fucked up in society that the possibility that booty could mean ass could derail a game from being considered “family friendly” but the average life of a pirate, which you’re playing in this game, is perfectly suitable for family play? There is an action called Debauchery and Revelry for fucks sake! How do you describe that to kids? “Well since these pirates are at sea for so long, they often miss their birthdays so when they get back into port they hire the local baker to provide a three layer yellow cake covered in chocolate icing and have a birthday party for the entire crew. They also hire clowns to entertain the crew with balloon animals and magic tricks”.

When you break down and look at the definitions of “debauchery” and “revelry” it sure sounds like a drunk and naked fuck fest with plenty of booty to go around (and I’m not talking about the treasure kind of booty).

I’m confused…

‘Till Next Time – Happy Gaming
LvT

Filed under: BlackBeard, Games - Historical by LordVonTush
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