Games Review

Petroglyph Games is definitely making a name for themselves in board and card games. I think it's time for them to come up with a good slogan. Believe it or not, I have one they can use:

"Games for your head."

And when I say, 'games for your head,' what that means is, 'games that make you do more math than a certified public accountant.' The ol' cerebral adding machine is going to get one hell of a workout on any Petroglyph game I've seen so far. Even when they make a deck building game, it's got a buttload of math.

But lots of math isn't always bad. Take Heroes of Graxia - this game has a whole heck of a lot of adding and subtracting, but it's still an incredibly fun game. It seems that if a game provides enough awesome stuff, it can offset a painfully enormous pile of math.

One of the great elements that Heroes of Graxia provides is bloodshed. As all real men are aware, games are better if there's violence, and Heroes has violence enough for everyone. In fact, the whole point of building your deck is to be able to commit more aggressive bodily harm. You win the game by having the most prestige points, and you get prestige points by killing things. Whether those things are the legions of the other players, or just random marauding monsters, the way to win is to do lots and lots of violence.

And then you need to tell me a story. A good theme goes a long way toward making any game more interesting, and Heroes of Graxia has a wonderful theme. Cool fantasy bad-asses fight all over the place, winning magical weapons and powerful auras against giants and dwarves and undead and all kinds of stuff. You'll build your army while your enemies build theirs, trying to amass a force powerful enough to stomp all over everyone else and slam their fingers in car doors. Then you'll wage war against everyone, and charge into battle against heinous monsters. The story expands as you play. It's a story about getting into fights and then killing things, but those are some of my favorite stories.

It helps a story along if you have really pretty pictures, and Heroes of Graxia has the kind of art that will turn heads. Every card is beautifully illustrated, with art so good it makes you want to play just because it's so damned pretty. The images are better than you'll see from nearly any other publisher with only four games in their catalog, I'll tell you that.

But story and violence and sexy art aren't enough to make a game awesome. It has to make you work, plan your strategy, and push yourself to get just a little farther ahead. Once again, Heroes of Graxia delivers. Because there are victory points on some of the cards you can buy, a deck that emphasizes buying power might be just as viable as one hell-bent on crushing skulls. A balanced deck is important, too - lots of attack power isn't going to last if you have a feeble defense. Those monsters fight back, and your opponents aren't going to just sit there while you build a peaceful hippie commune and grow hemp.

But let's say you don't really feel like picking fights with your friends. You can still build a powerful deck that never has to go into battle against the other players. Just lean heavy on defense, and buy spells and armor that are more potent against monsters or when you're defending. An army bristling with power is going to intimidate players looking for an easy fight, and like the saying goes, you don't have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the slowest guy. As long as someone at the table is the weakest link, you should be able to concentrate on bringing down the mightiest monsters, and let the other guys duke it out. It's the tortoise-and-the-hare strategy - just keep moving ahead, keeping your head down, and let the hot-heads run the table while you quietly pick up all the cards that make you the winner.

While there is a fantastic amount of strategy and planning and cool moves, none of it happens in a hurry. In fact, if two other players at the table are constantly battling each other, you'll spend a lot of time watching. It can get seriously tedious, especially because battles are a flurry of card play followed by ten minutes of third-grade math class. While the other guys are double-checking their addition to make sure they didn't forget the bonus they get because the knights are defensive and the orcs are pulling power from auras, you will have time to make a sandwich and check your Facebook. (By the way, real men do not check their Facebook while they are killing other people. It's rude.)

If you're looking for a quick game with easy rules, just keep walking. Heroes of Graxia is not designed for pussies. You'll need some stamina to finish a game, but after you do, you'll be talking about all the stuff that happened for the next hour, and figuring out when you can get everyone together to play again. It probably won't be that day, though - your wife is going to be wondering when you're coming home, and you're probably low on beer by now, anyway.

So sure, there's a lot of math. But if Heroes of Graxia took all the math out of the game, it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun. The math gets huge when armies get enormous, and then the mayhem goes from exciting to epic, with rivers of blood flowing right through the middle of the table and past that sandwich you made while you were waiting for it to be your turn again. It's brutal and thrilling and brilliant, and if you have to do some addition to get all that, well, that's a small price to pay.

Summary

Pros:
Killer strategies and clever plays
Many different paths to victory
Great battles with fabulous body counts
Fantastic art

Cons:
Moves pretty darn slow sometimes
Imperial buttloads of math

If you've got the staying power to play this game, I can't possibly recommend Heroes of Graxia enough. It's hardcore and brutal and fun as hell. And it's available at my new sponsor, Noble Knight Games. Run over there and show them some love:
HEROES OF GRAXIA AT NOBLE KNIGHT

It's not all wine and roses, though. For one thing, the appeal of Cartouche is hard to spot if you're not looking for it, and it's pretty dry, thematically. It lacks the tension and depth of Dominion (you had to know that comparison was coming), and it's subtle enough that it can look boring as hell on the surface. It's really plain-looking, but it's got personality.

And then there's the worst part - the cards blow. Not the stuff on the cards, like art and what-not, but the cards themselves really suck. I don't know if this happened to everyone, but in my game, the cards aren't all the same size. It makes it really hard to shuffle a deck of cards when they're all different widths. My wife honestly mistook it for a homemade game, especially because all the cards are half the size of normal cards, but they come in a box that would totally have held them if they had been normal size. I don't know what possessed Small Box Games to sell us a miniature game, but it was a bad call. Let's face it, size matters.

Cartouche is a fun game. I wouldn't say it's the best Small Box has made, but it's certainly enjoyable, with a surprising amount of depth and versatility. The teeny tiny cards were a horrible decision that makes it harder to play than it should be, but even still, my wife and daughter both said they would like to play it again. That's a good omen. Plus it's got huge boobs.

(That last sentence didn't mean anything. It's just there to be quoted.)

[DAY LATE EDIT: John Clowdus, the mastermind behind Small Box Games, informed me today that not all the decks were screwed up by the printer. Also, if your cards are messed up, contact John to get replacements.]

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Fast and deep
It might not look like much, but it'll get the job done

Cons:
Short on tension
Pretty bland at first glance
Half-pint cards were a very, very bad idea

You're in luck. Usually Small Box Games has sold out of their games by the time I review them, but right now, you can preorder a copy and get it in a month or so. Here you go:
http://www.smallboxgames.com/cartouche.html

Cowboy Action Shooting has to be one of the most bizarre events I've attended so far. It's entirely possible that it was more surreal than when we used to go watch the Society for Creative Anachronism people at the park, when they would get dressed up in historically inaccurate armor, swing foam swords, and address each other by fake names such as Lionheart Vineripen and Gronad Bronzeweiner. The difference, when it comes down to brass tacks, is the dedication. Sure, the SCA people spent a ridiculous amount of their time coming up with their alternate personas, but the Cowboy Action Shooting people bring actual firearms. They also have costumes, and like the medieval reenactors, create fake names for themselves.

If I was going to join the Single Action Shooting Society (SASS, for short), I would need a fake cowboy name. I'm having trouble thinking of one. My first instinct was Dingus McDingus, but I'm not Scottish.

The SASS members have some singularly silly names. The first guy we met goes by the name Bang Gunsleigh. I did not make that up. We also met Aloe Vera (this was a man, incidentally) and Grumpy Grandpa. Then we flipped through their newsletter (it's huge!) and found a man who calls himself Bad Penny (when did Penny stop being a girl's name?) and Double Barrel Betty, whose 'gun rack' did not live up to her title.

(Big Bill Hootenanny? Probably taken.)

The costumes ranged from shockingly accurate to barely adequate. Everyone had cowboy hats and boots, and two-gun holsters, but a lot of the guys were just wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt and calling it finished. Some went whole hog, though, with coats that looked like they came off a dime store mannequin and checkered vests with pocket watches. One guy had those old-school pants that had to be held up with suspenders. You could almost assume he was wearing long underwear. It might have been red.

(Poopsy Turdshooter? Too crass?)

The group I was visiting with my son specialized in live ammo at steel targets on a gun range. There are other variants, like mounted shooting, which uses blanks and balloons, and quick-draw competitions, where they shoot at each other with wax bullets. But this group uses real bullets, often loaded using black powder, which makes an enormously awesome cloud of smoke and spits fire out the barrel. They're timed, with penalties for missing targets, and they use scenarios plucked straight out of black-and-white John Wayne movies. The targets represent the various bad guys who need a good case of lead poisoning, and before you can shoot, you have to use a gunfighter line. Ours was, 'Walk away or draw.' I wanted to add, 'ya yellow varmint,' but that would have cost me time.

(Smokey Splodeypants? That has some promise.)

For all the silliness wrapped around the falsely historical cosplay, I have to admit that it was a hoot shooting the guns. For a pretty low fee, we got to show up and shoot other peoples' guns with other peoples' bullets. We got to shoot twice, both times firing a pair of six-shooters, a lever-action rifle, and a side-by-side double-barrel shotgun. All the weapons were serious - you could definitely kill people with any of these firearms. These aren't show guns, and they have all the kick and clouds of smoke you would expect if you ever saw a Clint Eastwood movie.

(Big Chief Fartswhenheruns? My great-great-grandma was Blackfoot Indian.)

Cowboy Action Shooting is really fun. Sure, you have to adopt a silly name, but the costume part is cool. And the guns – man, I don’t shoot very often, but it’s a hell of a good time every time I do it. The whole affair is surreal, but you can tell these people are having fun. It’s like LARPing for Republican gun nuts.

(What about food? I could be The Denver Omelette, or Juevos Rancheros.)

For all the fun I had, though, I doubt I’ll be doing it again. For one thing, if I want to go back, I have to sign up. There’s a steep yearly membership fee, and then there’s the costume. Just the boots and hat could cost a couple hundred, and all of that is before you even buy a couple thousand dollars worth of replica Old West firepower. And even if I could afford all that, there’s still the silly name.

The last part, at least, I can figure out. I’ll be Rusty Wild Rex Autry Wayne Trigger Rogers. I’ll bet that’s available.

Summary

Pros:
You get to shoot some awesome guns
Semi-historical silliness, which is great if that’s your bag

Cons:
Ridiculous names
Seriously expensive

You can find out more about the Single Action Shooting Society here:
http://www.sassnet.com

The craziest thing happened the other day. I played a card game and - this may be hard to believe - it was not a deck building game. Weird, right? It seems you can't swing a dead cat any more without hitting a deck building game. I'm still a little amazed myself.

The game is called Gosu. That seems like an odd name, but it's a severely shortened version of 'Goblin Supremacy', which, now that I write it, is still a pretty odd name. You take turns playing goblin cards into your armies to try and win the great battles. It's not a particularly difficult game to learn, but there sure are a lot of nuances for a game where everyone doesn't have their own deck of cards.

There's just one deck in Gosu, and every card in the deck is a goblin. There are three levels of goblins, and five different kinds of goblins, and each goblin does something different. Some do stuff right when they come in, and some have abilities that you can exploit later. There are goblins that kill other goblins, which is handy, and goblins that trap other goblins, which is sometimes even handier. Lots of the goblins let you draw more cards, and that's particularly important because otherwise it can be damned tricky to have enough cards to do something.

In fact, a large part of the game is balancing your need to whoop ass with your need to have cards to play. Focus too heavily on playing cards and killing the other guys, and the next thing you know, your hand is empty and you have to sit there while the guys you have been stomping take turn after turn, gleefully stabbing your goblins in their soft parts and building enormous juggernaut armies that you couldn't hope to defeat. But spend all your time drawing cards, and you could wind up with a squadron full of goblins who sit around with their collective thumbs up their collective asses, and once your huge army of losers wins one fight, you're hopelessly incapacitated and all the long-term planners will pick apart your army like a demented kindergartner pulling the wings off flies.

Technically, you win this game by getting three victory points, and you get victory points by winning the battles that happen after everyone runs out of stuff to play. The battles are a little anti-climactic - you just see who has the biggest army, and that guy wins. But so much is riding on the battles that the game is all about the cards you play getting up to that point. You have to plan ahead if you're going to put together the right combination play. The voices in your head will sound something like this:

'I need to kill that general. If I play this shadow, I can kill that general. Except that in order to play that shadow, I need to discard two cards, but I don't have those cards, so I need to get more cards first. If I play the ancient, I can draw two cards, but it will fill up the row, and then there's no room for the shadow. But I could mutate this alpha into the shadow after I get the cards off the ancient, but if I do, I won't be able to play this bigger alpha, which I need to win the battle. But if I play the bigger alpha, I can't use his ability yet, which means he's a waste, so I want to wait to play him until after the battle. So I'll play the ancient to get the cards, and instead of the shadow, I'll mutate this fire into a meka, which will let me...'

And then you'll realize that you have completely forgotten what you were trying to do in the first place, and you'll discard the shadow you needed, mutate the alpha, and end up discarding the rest of your cards to pay for cards you shouldn't be playing anyway. So, see, you have to think.

There's a great balancing element in Gosu. Many cards have bonuses on them, but you can't use the bonus unless someone at the table has more points than you. So it's a completely viable strategy to let one player win the first battle, and then use the bonuses with the cards you decided not to play in order to totally blow the doors off everyone else. That player who thought he was winning will get to feel stupid, and if that isn't why you play games, then you're not having as much fun as you could.

Gosu has nearly everything I like in a game. There's absolutely fantastic art, a fun theme, and considerable violence with a healthy body count. There's planning and strategizing and quick tactical plays. It's got enough friend-stabbing that you can make young children cry, and you'll have to make really tough decisions, often without having enough time to think about them. It's fun and good-looking and comes in the coolest box ever (though I fail to understand why the box is as huge as it is).

If you like games where you have to think a whole lot while committing aggravated assault on ugly humanoids, Gosu is a blast. It's oddly refreshing to play a card game that does not make you build your deck on the fly, because it's starting to seem like that's the only kind of card game being made any more. With stunning art and tons of depth, Gosu is likely to see a lot more table time at my house. Only I'll have to play it with my friends, because my kids get upset when I kill their goblins. When I'm playing with family, I'll probably have to stick to deck building.

Summary

Players: 2-4

Pros:
Surprising depth
Lots of options
You'll have to balance a lot of factors to keep yourself in the game
The art is totally wicked
Lovable body count
No deck building

Cons:
Nothing comes to mind. This game is really fun.

Surprise! You're never going to believe this, but Dogstar Games is not carrying Gosu. I know, that's almost as hard to believe as a card game that isn't about deck building. Noble Knight has it, but it's out of stock. Here's the link, in case they get more:
NOBLE KNIGHT LINK THAT IS TOO LONG TO JUST PASTE IN HERE

If you've been reading Drake's Flames for a while, you probably know that Dogstar Games keeps this site stocked up with good stuff. If it weren't for them, we would have run out of games five or six times, just this year. Thanks to Dogstar Games, I've been able to respond to several requests that otherwise would have just gone unanswered because lots of publishers would rather send me a bag of flaming dog crap than a review copy. Many of you have been awesome enough to buy games from them, which has really kept them sending me games, and I totally appreciate it.

That's not changing. If I have my way, Dogstar Games will be sponsoring Drake's Flames until I'm writing from the nursing home (hopefully, that will be a very long time in the future). In fact, I recently found out that they do a ton of business in Magic: The Gathering, so if you're thinking of buying some cards, I would consider it a serious favor if you bought your Magic cards from Dogstar Games.

However, my recent decision to start reviewing roleplaying games has left me a little high and dry. It seems that RPGs are, as an industry, even more dysfunctional than board games (and let me tell you, that's saying something). Out of all the companies I've recently contacted for review copies, only one responded, and they didn't even have any stock they could send. My initial foray into reviewing roleplaying games seemed destined to fail - until we were saved by a white knight.

Technically, our white knight is a Noble Knight, as in Noble Knight Games. One the largest internet retailers of roleplaying games and CCGs, Noble Knight Games has also been the biggest retail customer of VixenTor Games since we started. So I'm on a first-name basis with the owner over there, and when I explained my predicament, he came to the rescue.

Noble Knight Games sells a ton of stuff, including vast amounts of products that would otherwise be out of print. They have old collectible card games, new miniatures games, and a warehouse chock full of RPG books. In fact, from now on, any time I review a CCG or RPG that they carry, I'll be linking you to their site to get a copy (unless, you know, it totally sucks, in which case I'll be linking you to a photograph of a smelly bum sleeping in a dumpster). The only exception is Magic: The Gathering, which Dogstar sells like crazy.

So give a hearty hello to our new knight in shining nobleness, and go buy something, already. They've got so much cool stuff, you won't know where to start. As always, if you're looking for deals on board games, you can get them at Dogstar Games, but for just about any other kind of game, take a gander at Noble Knight Games.

There's an ad over to the left there - you know, right under the one for Dogstar Games - so you can find it real easy. And in case you hate clicking a freaking big square box, here's a text link:

http://www.nobleknight.com/

Set your bookmarks.

I once complained at some length about the exclamation point in the game Attack! Since then, I have noticed this increasing trend of putting inappropriate punctuation into game titles. It's not quite epidemic level just yet, but it is getting pretty out of hand. It's bad enough that publishers are not only comfortable using improperly placed punctuation, now they're preceding those errant marks with words that are not actually words.

I'm referring, of course, to Fzzzt! You probably knew that, though. Not only are you educated enough to be able to guess which game I meant without any assistance, but I also actually said the name of the game in the title of this review. That tends to narrow it down.

I could rail on at length about how absurd it is for actual grown men to invent a game that doesn't have a single vowel, but instead, let me tell you why I don't care. The reason is simple enough - it's fun. Fzzzt! has players bidding for robots as they become available, then using those robots to build widgets. The robots you win go to your discard pile, and then they help you win more auctions that will also help you build more widgets. So what we're looking at here is an auction-based deckbuilding game, which is a sort of snooty nerd way to say it's a card game where you get more cards as you play.

It's kind of ironic that I'm able to have a good time playing a game when inviting players to join me involves making a sound a little like an epileptic llama, and if I want to say it correctly, I have to make that sound really loud. But it's so easy to learn how to play that you won't have to make that sound for long before someone will come over and ask you to stop spitting so enthusiastically. Then they'll join you, because the rules are simple and the game is a hoot.

You start off with four cards of varying power and go through eight rounds of bidding on cards that you can use to win the game. There are the robots, of course, and these go into your discard pile, which you'll shuffle and replay several times as the game progresses. Then there are production units that you can finish by plugging robots into them at the end of the game, assuming you scored enough robots to finish them, and you better hope you can so that they don't cost you points at the end of the game.

But of course, the irritation with the ridiculous title can't end just because you've started playing. One of the cards is actually called Fzzzt!, which means you have yet another opportunity to hiss like an ice cube on a hot skillet. This card is kind of cool, because it has decent bidding power, but it's also a penalty point at the end. It's kind of worth it, though, because you could score like 80 points anyway, and that one point isn't going to be the deal breaker, unless you have a bunch of them, and then you're dumb and shouldn't have done that.

Fzzzt! plays out pretty fast, like half an hour or so, during which you'll probably only have to actually say Fzzzt five or six times. You don't have to yell it, of course. That's optional. But what's not optional, if you want to win, is a good mix of planning ahead and raw luck. You'll have to make some smart calls on the spur of the moment - if the guy before you bids three cards, and you really want that robot, you'll have to pick some good stuff to fight him, or decide if it's worth running him out of cards so you can get an easy shot at the next one. There's a nice mix of 'he who hesitates is lost' and 'strike while the iron is hot.' Maybe it's 'he who hesitates is hot.' But that doesn't make any sense. So never mind.

So here's the deal, publishers - enough with the silly names. But if you are going to make silly games that sound like dog farts, use Fzzzt! as a template - make them fun. And make them like the Gryphon Games reprint, and put them in one of those cool tins, and have an expansion with a bunch more cards so you can play it with six people. Then I'll forgive your ridiculous naming conventions.

Summary

2-4 players (5-6 with the expansion). Spitting optional.

Pros:
Easy to learn
Deceptively clever
Neat auction game meets easy deck building
Plays fast, so you can play it a few times in a row
Good balance of planning and quick thinking

Cons:
Not a lot of long-term strategy
No vowels
Errant punctuation

As far as I can tell, the Gryphon Games reprint of this game is not out yet. It should be, sooner or later. Hopefully sooner. It's fun.