Pandemic – essentially Outbreak: The Game – is probably the most abstract of the three. You move your specialists around a world map trying to research a cure while keeping outbreaks to a minimum. Certain conditions lead to an explosive outbreak, chain reactions across common commuter lines drawn out for you. Forbidden Island makes things a little more personal – explorers on a sinking island rescuing treasure. You try to shore up certain tiles and keep a route off this miniature Atlantis open for escape.

Flashpoint, though, is Backdraft: The Game. You are a firefighter, or a an engine, and you need to rescue victims. Using an ingenious grid based system you roll dice to get tips as to where they are and to track the fire as it spreads through. Everything is a toss up between controlling the blaze, keeping exits open, and getting to victims. Do you chop through a wall – using two of a pool of damage tokens which, when they run out, mean game over – or take the long route?

I’ve only played the simple version, which doesn’t feature specialists, smouldering ruins, fire engines, hazard markers and ambulances, but it’s fantastic. It’s fast, easy to relate to, perfectly pitched as a family game and – most importantly for me – entirely solo-able. The 5 year old gets it too, though, which means that doesn’t have to happen too often.

With two different buildings offering different experiences from the box, two expansions boards (4 buildings) out already in the guise of 2nd Story and Urban Structure AND another expansion currently on Kickstarter, this game has got years of life in it.

I unreservedly recommend you get in on it now.

This first year in the hobby has seen me pick up old interests, collect more games than I have the time to play, and learn to start painting again. I’ve met new people, made new friends and had new experiences from it. It already feels as much a part of my ‘being’ as videogames, so I guess there was always a core that remained interested.

Except for a few games that my son has – Kerplunk, Mouse Trap, Lost Valley Of The Dinosaurs, Hey That’s My Fish!, Loopin’ Louie – this is my collection as it stands and my thoughts on it, spread across a series of riveting posts.

Shelf one. Red November is a Pandemic/Flashpoint/Forbidden Island type co-op game whose central mechanic is far too complicated. I’ve tried 3 times to get through the rule book but no joy so far. I suspect it’ll go before too long. It’s got this whole time mechanic thing going on (not dissimilar to Space Alert I guess) but it’s the kind of thing where the theme and the challenge don’t really make it feel worthwhile trying too hard.

Heroica I love. It’s HeroQuest for the new century and my only concern is that it’s a little bit under-supported. Some of the custom boards being brought out are amazing, but I worry that its lack of depth out of the box has put a lot of people off. It’s pretty hard to find even in the official Lego shops now and the latest expansion hasn’t really turned up anywhere. My son loves it though.

DungeonQuest is like punching yourself in the eye with a pencil and liking the feeling. It’s horribly unbalanced, hopelessly mean and almost unbeatable, but if you drink beer as you play it and play it with friends, it’s entertaining. Worth the £14 it cost me off of eBay at least/

Space Alert I hankered after for a long time, got it, tried once it and it left my family (3 of us) hopelessly overwhelmed. It’s too much for my 4 year old son and I reckon it needs at least 5 players to get the most out of it. I’m glad I have it, as it was out of print for a while and I reckon it’ll be amazing when we get the right group together, but it’s going to collect dust for a while.

Dead Of Night is a print and play game that I’ve not finished building yet, along with Dungeon’ Plungin’ which is behind the light source. Those were good days working from home, at least.

Over on the right is a big box Games Workshop collection. Warhammer: Islands Of Blood is a box of miniatures I got for cheap that I simply practice painting on – I’ve literally no interest at all in tabletop wargames of that type.

Space Hulk is the third edition, coveted since I discovered it existed, glorious in its quality and going nowhere near my son for years. He can play with the first edition, 4 shelves down.

Both Warhammer Quest and Advanced HeroQuest I’d never played before getting and still haven’t. I got the former out to play with my son and discovered that it’s actually got quite a complex combat system, so plan to have a night in front of the fire sussing it out soon. It’s a crazy big box of stuff, and AHQ is slightly less so, and my hope is that as my son becomes more self aware we’ll have lots of rainy afternoons role playing and adventuring together.

Tune in next week for Shelf 2.

For those that don’t like card games and don’t know what Ascension is (and if there is anyone like that reading this I’m questioning WHY you’re reading this. Are you stalking me? Hmm? Are you, oddball?) it’s a funky game which is technically a deck builder but has a different way of doing things than the Dominions and Thunderstones of the world.

Starting with your hand of Apprentices and Militia (8 of the first, and 2 of the second) which start you off with Runes on the Apprentices to use as currency to acquire cards and Power on the Militia to attack enemies. What differentiates this game from normal deck builders is the simplicity of it all. There are only 2 piles of cards you can ‘buy’ from that are present in every game; Mystics (which have Runes on them) and Heavy Infantry (which have more Power than the Militia on them). The rest of the cards are acquired from the centre row dealt from the Centre Deck.

The centre row is comprised of 6 cards dealt from the top of the Centre Deck and holds 3 different types of cards; Heroes, Constructs and Monsters. These are randomly dealt from the pile and laid out in the middle of the table. On your turn, as long as you have the currency or damage, you can buy as many heroes or constructs as you can afford or kill as many beasties as you can deal damage equal to. Creatures have bonuses printed on the cards which trigger when you kill them and go into the Void (discard pile) and Heroes and Constructs are added to your discard pile and make up your deck (unless, of course, stated otherwise). From this you start building your deck to smash the faces in of Monsters, the spoils of which are Honor gems (when the pile of gems, which is determined by the amount of players, has been depleted the game is over). Constructs and heroes also have Honor points on them which add to your total at the end. So who ever has the most Honor at the end of the game wins the game and gets the girl. Well, there’s no girl, but still nothing says “Come and get it!” more than winning at nerd cards, right?

Heroes are played from your hand and give you benefits like extra Runes to spend or extra Power to defeat enemies, but the interesting cards are the Constructs. Unlike everything else in your deck, the Constructs are put into play and stay there in front of you until the end of the game or another cards power forces you to put it into your discard pile. The Constructs generally tend to have very good powers but also cost quite a bit to buy, whereas Heroes can be cheaper (although there are expensive, seemingly super-bent Heroes too).

There are 4 ‘divine factions’, each having a theme of sorts. Mechana Heroes and Constructs bounce off of each other for Runes or card draw, Void usually have Power enhancers and Banish (to remove a card from your discard or Centre Row, depending). Enlightened tend to help you draw cards and Life are a combination of Runes, Honor Points and card draw.

So what you have here is a deck building card game that strips back the stacks of cards and need to randomise the contents of the game by chucking most of them into a pile in the middle of the table. No need for 10 stacks in the middle if you can just bung them all together into one massive stack, and this is what makes Ascension dead easy to play because you buy what you can when you can and hope for the best, which you might think makes the game feel a bit like a deck builder based around snap or Old Maid or something. The Heroes and Constructs have Honour Points on them so even if you don’t like the look of their powers you can swing the game by surreptitiously bolstering your score while your opponent gathers the Honor Point token gem thingies.

I like Ascension, it’s a daft card game that doesn’t require too much thought. Or so I assumed. Ascension has, or so I’m told, a successful tournament scene which has kind of confused me due to my inability to see strategies in the game. Of course, this is more a failing of me than anything else because as I was looking at how to write this little blog post it occurred to me that there must be strategies to the game because otherwise it would be a very shit game. The way the different types of cards bounce off their own themes is the basis for most of the structure of strategies, with dipping into cards from other factions for the benefits they provide. I’ve only got the first 2 games and reading up on it the strategy just expands with the addition of keywords and mechanics in Storm of Souls (set 3, set 4 is due this summer). The reason I thought there’s no tangible strategy to this game is because the major determing factor in the game is luck. The centre deck is quite large so you are completely at the mercy of the shuffle and draw. My missus hates games that have too much of an element of luck to them (which is why she won’t play WoWTCG with me) and I can understand why, because it’s essentially playing something like Magic the Gathering but there’s 3 decks smashed together and you have to wait until the cards you want are drawn to the centre.

Of course, it’s not really like that because the games been designed with this massive random factor in mind, so you have to think on the fly. Do you mix up strategies or commit and try to get the cards you need? It could all go to tits at any moment, so you need to prepare and think what’s going to work out best because get it wrong and you’ll lose. Of course, like most games that have the victory point win condition, you never really know if you’re ahead or not most of the game, even if you have acquired the most Honor gems.

It’s a cracking little game, and it even has it’s own iOS version so you can play it even if you don’t have any friends. Well, you do have to have an expensive Apple device obviously, us Android scummers are well out of that one. Just don’t think you can win by ignoring the fact that the fates my be waiting around the corner with an iron bar, waiting to scupper you.

In a nutshell it is – ‘zombie apocalypse the board game‘. Six survivors try to erm, well, survive – against hoards & hoards of zombies. The game comes with a modular board of 9 double sided tiles which represent the zombie overrun city, and a lot of minis – 71 in the game and 36 extra as part of the Kickstarter bonus stuff (more on that later). As you might have guessed, a game from a company called ‘CoolMiniOrNot’ is going to feature minis pretty predominantly! They are excellent quality, lots of variety (across the 3 types of zombies there are 8 different poses/sculpts) and fit into the box very well with plastic trays to hold them all. In fact the production quality as a whole, across all the components is exceptionally good.

When I opened the box that arrived I was presented with not just a copy of the game but various extra bits too which mainly were down to the Kickstarter meeting various stretch goals (i.e. them getting way more money than their target). I got an extra tray of 32 zombies + 1 extra big bastard zombie, called an Abomination. Two sets of custom D6 (whooo glow in the dark!), 3 extra “promo” survivors, a bright red ZOMBICIDE t-shirt and a sign art print.  Not bad!

That’s a fascinating list you’re thinking, but what does it play like? It’s a lot of fun. It’s a cooperative game for 1-6 players. I have to say, the rule book isn’t brilliant, it has some poor wording and several holes / ambiguities - thankfully the game isn’t really that complex so it isn’t much of an issue. There’s 11 scenarios in the book to play out, each one with different objectives and criteria. They are broadly made up of the same building blocks; kill lots of zombies, explore the city, kill zombies, find objectives & stuff, kill more zombies, get out alive… or not. Zombies spawn each turn from around the edge of the board or when a door to a building is opened for the first time. Zombies come in 4 flavours; Walkers (bog standard shamblers), Runners (fast and nasty), Fatties (hard to kill and nasty) and the Abomination (nasty and nasty, all but impossible to kill). Survivors can search buildings for equipment and weapons to help in the fight against the zombie bastards, and also level up and gain new skills as they rack up their undead kill count. Each survivor has a different set of skills so they all play differently, there’s even scope to create your own. However as the players level up, more zombies will spawn so it’s rather nicely balanced.

Really the game is all about theme. Mechanically I suppose it’s nothing special – but with 6 players getting into it, all having a laugh, that’s when it started to come alive (no pun intended). When we crowbar’ed open the door to the first building only for the poor Ned to be set upon by 5 zombies – a chorus of pissing taking and planning to save him ensued. Somehow he found a chainsaw and massacred half the room. Followed by me wading in, wielding two machetes and a tonne of  luck, taking out the rest of the zombies. The game feels cinematic, with a wealth of zombie film tropes for your imagination to call upon. Every turn can feel a little bit like a scene from a movie. It almost bordered on role playing at times, in a good way. Having said that, in order to have any chance of winning you need to “game the system” a bit, planning and working out where zombies would move to, or min-maxing the actions you’ll spend each turn.

Apologies for the simply terrible camera phone pictures, playing in a dingy pub basement has its downsides

The streets seem quiet… too quiet

Ned learns the hard way about bursting into buildings filled with the undead

We had six players and went through the tutorial which was over in about 10 minutes, it was the perfect intro to the basics. So we moved on to the first proper scenario. This took us approx. three hours to finish. Yeah that’s quite a long time for such a “light” game, but actually it didn’t feel like a drag. A good chunk of that time was taken up with us planning out our turns, discussing (arguing) over tactics, etc. all part of the joys of a co-op game. That length of play wasn’t caused by getting bogged down by the game mechanics or laborious rules.

How did we do? Well, we’d managed to grab three objectives and the food we needed, without losing anyone so we regrouped back at the starting building on the centre of the city to plan our next move. That’s when things started to go wrong. We had two objectives still to go, then we lost Amy and Wanda when they opened a door to be confronted with a group of three Runners. The Runners shot out the door like lightning and ripped the pair of them to pieces. OK we were pretty much screwed now, with the unstoppable Abomination on the loose and huge hoards of Walkers on the prowl. We hatched a desperate plan; Josh would make a suicide dash past the Abomination to take the last of the objectives, he probably wouldn’t make it back but it wouldn’t matter. We handed he food supplies to Phil who would make a desperate run for the exit, if he made it, we’d win. Somehow the crazy plan worked! Josh had the ‘Slippery’ skill making it possible to run through zones with zombies (normally not easy to do). Ned and Doug (controlled by me) kept the hoards at bay with chainsaw and sniper rifle, giving Phil the cover he needed. To our amazement Josh made it back in once piece! In fact all four of us reached the exit. It was very close, another turn, maybe two and we’d have all been zombie chow.

Amy is staring down a whole street filled with undead

Josh survived this, he’s one slippery dude

VICTORY! Four survivors make a dash for the exit

Summary – A great game. Definitely good fun with 6 players. Easy enough to play with non-gamers and the zombie survival theme is an easy on for people to get into. Maybe not a game for the purists that like their eurogames and elegant mechanics. However I highly recommend it to anyone that wants to have a laugh, with some mates, blowing zombies to bits for a few hours. Which is everyone, right?

Gosh, has it really been this long? When 2012 started and this nugget of an idea settled in my head for Caution: Small Parts, I wasn’t sure exactly where it would go or take me with it. Unfortunately, just as we began to get something of a pace going the usual thing that occurs early on in every blog’s life happened here: real life.

I can’t talk for any other member of the crew, but I know that I’ve been unable to to push and act as the focal point any such thing needs to stay alive, vibrant and relevant. New jobs, domestic stress and all that.

But here we are, September, and I’m ready again. The job has settled down, the domestic stresses are still there but manageable (seriously, parenthood is hard…) and I’m trying to address some of the areas I’ve neglected. Boardgaming being one of the main culprits.

How to do this though, and how to do it in a way that involves kickstarting this blog again, is a conundrum. It’s not like I’ve stopped buying games – exclude such ridiculous thoughts from your minds – as the collection has continued to grow unchecked. Descent to Doom, Flashpoint to Fortune & Glory, Last Night On Earth to Red November. Silly levels, especially considering they’re not getting played.

So, here we are. Play more games. Write about them. A simple equation that solves two riddles in one go.

The promise – September: a month of games. Every day I shall do something related to tabletop gaming. Every day I shall indulge in this hobby and this shall fuel a multitude of updates to the site, establishing a rhythm that will stick.

I’ll try and keep this short and to the point, as one of the reasons for the dearth of posts here lately is a lack of time, and an increasing tenancy to write longer & longer posts.

Memoir ’44

Picked this up second hand and cheap on a total whim while at Salute earlier in the year. I’m not a big fan of historical games or WWII stuff but I liked the little hex titles (I’ve long been a sucker for them since the old GW game, Mighty Empires) and had generally heard good things about the game.

It’s a two player game, with players re-playing various battles from WWII, with lots of little plastic soldiers, tanks and artillery guns. The board is hex based, doubled sided, and comes with lots of terrain tokens; rivers, forests, towns, etc. allowing you to create a huge range of maps. The mechanics are very simple, with some super easy to remember rules for movement and combat.

It’s quick to play, esp. when you get into the flow of it, aside from the set-up which can be a bit of a fiddle. Unlike Yann I sort of liked the frustration of not being able to command exactly the units you wanted all the time. Sure it’s random but I didn’t really mind, it’s not a detailed simulation (thank god!) it’s a lightweight war game, for people that normally hate war-games.

We played the first scenario in the book; Pegasus Bridge, in which I (the Allies) was attempting to take and hold two bridges. I won, but at the end we realised we missed the part about the Germans getting more command cards as the battle progressed, so poor Rob struggled through the whole thing with just 2 command cards! So it’s no surprise I won.

The allies advance on the dug in Germans in an attempt to take the bridge

The brutal, plasticy reality of war

Next up was Sword Beach, This involved tanks, bunkers and artillery, and erm, a beach, but oddly no swords. This was a more balanced battle, but I could see from the start I was going to struggle. Despite some valiant efforts, and jammy dice rolls, Rob (as the Allies this time) made some good advances and slowly whittled my squads down and took the two towns for victory!

Come at me bro

Rob as usual providing excellent hand modeling work

I really enjoyed Memoir ’44. I think it’s simplistic re-working of the normally fussy and ponderous tactical war-game genre is a great idea. It’s simplicity is a strength, as the base game is just the core of a vast collection of expansions and extra scenarios, each building on the core system. Days Of Wonder have done a good job. I’d definitely recommend  it and advise people that normally ignore WWII type games to give it a chance.

Quarriors - Quarmageddon

Quarmageddon is the second expansion for Quarriors. After the disappointing Rise Of The Demons I was a bit apprehensive. Then I heard it was going to feature a proper storage solution, then I saw the pictures on BGG and was instantly sold. I mean how could you resist this?…

Colours! The pretty colours!

There’s room for the base set + Rise Of The Demons and of course the new Quarmageddon dice too. It’s a great system and much better than the big cube tin, albeit less cute. There’s a new rule book which is just an re-jigged and clarified version of the original, plus a couple of new optional “advanced” rules. The new rules are here if you want to look

We played with all 6 of the new Quarmageddon creatures and the 2 new spells, plus a couple from the base set to make up the numbers. It’s definitely a lot better than Rise Of the Demons, some of the creatures abilities seemed a bit narrow but they still added a good amount of variety to the game without being too confusing or overburdened with new mechanics. I liked the spell that let me draw and roll an extra dice for each creature summoned, combined with the new cheap 2 point Imps, I got quite a combo happening one turn.

We also tried out the new playmats, these are included on the back of the new rulebook to photocopy (lol). Instead I downloaded them from WizKidz website where they are available in PDF form, and printed onto some glossy photo-paper. They are OK but don’t really add much to the game. However they’ll probably be invaluable next time I’m teaching a new player to play

New dice and playmats

This is a good expansion to a great game, if you enjoy Quarriors (and if you don’t you’re probably dead inside) then I’d recommend you pick up Quarmageddon

Bollocks, that was far longer than I intended, oh well!

It’ll be the first consumer fair I’ve ever really been to. I’ve done plenty of corporate ones – and will, in fact, be at the Grassroots Football show at the NEC on Friday, which is somewhere inbetween – but never just visited something like this off of my back, to stroke my own interests. I anticipate that, between a hall full of nerds and meeting some of the people who’ve written for this site, the chances of my skin being worn as a cloak by a psychopath have increased by some 137.65% since I booked the tickets. I’m a little nervous.

That’s a good sign, though. It means I’m pushing out of my comfort zone and that I’m excited. I’m excited at the prospect of the Bring & Buy stall skinting me forever. I’m excited at battering my way into a few games of something alongside groups of someone or another. I’m excited that I may see some famous faces – Steve Motherfucking Jackson and Ian Goddamn Livingstone for instance – and that I may make some new friends, or turn internet ones into proper real life acquaintances.

Above all that, though, is the chance to see real board games, in the flesh, and figure out whether or not they’re my thing before I buy them or add them to a wish list. It’s so difficult to do sometimes, and I just end up deciding based on the number of miniatures in them or whether or not Ben or Steve say they’re shit.

Are you going? I’ll be there on the Saturday, the big dude in the corner laughing nervously as someone sharpens a knife and guts me.

My latest purchases – Crossbows & Catapults, Space Alert and Red November – all suffer in different ways. They take something that should be relatively simple and make it over complex. I mean, Crossbows & Catapults man! You make a castle, you fire discs at your opponents, when a castle lies in ruins the victor dances in front of the victim. That’s it.

But no. No, not here. This Battlegrounds edition gets itself bogged down in the movement of pieces (6″ or so at a time), action points (2 per turn, unless you own the expansion – I do – in which case you get 3 when you free your hostage), vague notions of ammunition (what to do when I run out?) and clearing the field. It took, literally, 10 minutes of play before all of these fun sucking minor details fell apart in favour of “You shoot, I shoot”. Ludicrous.

Red November takes a vaguely complicated system and applies a pretty shitty rulebook to proceedings. Once again, Headless Hollow has gamesheets here that are about 1/16th the length but 1,000,000 times clearer. Someone pay him money, please.

But Space Alert. Jesus fucking Christ. It comes with a rule book and an interactive lesson booklet designed to teach you how to play without reading the rule book. It’s the most text dense, colour miscoordinated lump of shite I’ve seen in a long time. It literally makes no sense, instead focusing on being all clever and funny where it should be succinct and insightful. The three of us just stared at the book and the board as the entertaining CD played in the background and we continued to have no fucking idea what to do.

And it made me angry. All of the above did. It’s always down to me to read the rules, to bludgen my way through bad writing and text books put together as an after thought. And, having imparted upon myself some semblance of knowledge that lets me get off of the ground, I’m then responsible for explaining this minefield of vagueness to my coplayers. It’s maddening, but if I don’t do it then no-one will and we’ll never play.

Is it my fault? Do I expect too much? Just give me a simple flow chart, a step by step guide to a turn that isn’t spread across 200 pages with multiple exceptions printed in tiny font and hidden away. It’s maddening and it’s absolutely putting me off buying more games and it needs to stop. I don’t look at games and wonder “Will my family enjoy these?” any more. I wonder “Will I be able to make head or tail of this and explain it and get through the first 6 games to the point where everyone understands it and we can just get to the point where we enjoy playing it?”.

And that’s a really shitty customer experience to have.

Wiz-War is for 2-4 players, with each player controlling a wizard in a maze like labyrinth, engaged in magical combat for superiority over the other wizards. Why the wizards do this, and why they are in a maze is never explained, but you know these magical types, funny old lot, I suppose it’s better than a punch up in the carpark of the Lamb & Flag. You each have a home board sector and two treasures, victory points are scored for killing another wizard and for bringing an opponents treasure and placing it in the center of your home sector. There’s a large range of spells at your disposal spread across several schools of magic; Cantrips, Alchemy, Conjuring, Elemental, Mentalism, Mutation and Thaumaturgy.

Despite appearances it’s not some super detailed dungeon crawl type game at all, don’t let the dungeon-like board and plethora of tokens fool you. Games take about 20-30 minutes, the spells fly quickly and wizards nip around the maze grabbing treasure pretty fast. It’s definitely a light game. The fun really comes from the interactions of all the spells, seeing through walls to cast a create wall to box a enemy wizard in, followed by them teleporting out of your cunning trap or casting a counterspell. When bouncing a lightening bolt through a portal (which act like “wrap-around” warp points to join up parts of the board) to take down a wizard that has just covered you in corrosive acid – it’s hard to stifle a grin. The wide mix of spells and effects really does lead to some comic and unexpected interactions in the game. You won’t find deep strategies here or a clever complex rule-set, just spells, mayhem and sweet revenge

One disappointment from the couple of games we played - victories came from dashing about and grabbing the treasure and not from blasting the opponents into prismatic chunks, one player commented “it’s more like Wiz-Olympics than a Wiz-War”. There’s a mechanic where you can burn a spell in order to gain extra speed on your turn, and it took us by surprise how powerful that aspect of the game was. However I think future plays will be different now we know how strong that can be, everyone will be on guard for it.

This is a really nice game, quick and simple to teach new players. It’s pretty and well made (as you’d expect from FF). Doesn’t take an age to play and provides the thrill of mixing up lots of different combos of spells al-la  Magic The Gathering, without all the baggage that Magic has. I’ll certainly be on the look out for any future expansions as the game is clearly made for building on (fifth player, new schools of magic, new cards and spells, new boards, variant rules, etc.). Definitely worth picking up

Buying blind is a gamble at the best of times, but I saw this game on Shut Up & Sit Down and they loved it. I liked the look of it and those chaps always seem to know what they’re on about so I thought I’d take a punt after the enthusiastic review so it wasn’t really like buying it blind. Unfortunately it seems they were playing a completely different game to me.

A co-operative card game, you are part of an elite search & rescue team sent to the titular Isle of Dr Necreaux to locate and rescue a team of scientists who have been captured and held for some nefarious reason by the Ming the Merciless lookalike. It looked compact with nice artwork so I took a quick nip to Amazon and I procured  a brand new copy for £13, which has to be a bargain, right? RIGHT?! Well…

My partner in dorkery Jonny came round as he does on a Monday (whether I want him to or not) we jumped straight in after reading the instructions, which while being short, seemed to be easy-ish enough to follow and the game itself easy to set up. It comes with just 2 piles of cards (Chatracter traits and the Adventure Deck), a countdown timer, tokens and some dice. You deal each player 3 Character cards, of which they choose one and pass the other two to the person on their left, then they choose another one and pass along again until you have 3 cards, all of which makes up the Character you are playing. This was the first thing that confused us, as Character, Player and Team aren’t that well defined. I’ll get back to this.

After you’ve chosen your Character cards the Scientist and Rescue Shuttle cards are shuffled into the last 2 thirds of the Adventure deck which are then stacked up to form the pile from which you’ll draw cards to have, well, Adventure! The aim is to get to the scientists and then get to the shuttle and escape the island. The game can end in numerous ways with you escaping without the scientists, with the scientists or the island getting blown up and no-one escaping.  Along the way you’ll be fighting monsters, evading traps, getting split up and manically trying to escape before the timer ticks down to zero and the game is over. The timer represents the turns you have before the bomb goes off, destroying the island. you get 12, 11, 10, 9 and 8 turns depending if you have 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 players.

The interesting thing about this game is that it’s played by consensus, as in everyone has to agree what to do in a turn. Your options are move through the island, or rest to recover and reload. Rest moves allow you to turn one flipped Character card back face up and may add one Charge to a card with the Charge keyword. Charges are used to trigger various character powers as directed by the card.

Movement is measured as ‘Speed’, which is represented by turning over cards from the Adventure deck, with the minimum being zero but the maximum being limitless. However, as the more cards you turn over the more you risk running into things that are going to kick your teeth in or hinder you horribly. You only have limited turns to get the scientists out and off the island (so when you’ve done your moving you move the turn counter down one), so you have to strike a balance between caution and speed. The thing is the island is out to get you any way it can, and it’s an evil, hateful, spiteful shit of an island,

First, you have Monsters. Monsters have to be fought by rolling a D6 and are defeated by rolling a number higher than their printed Combat Value (CV on the cards). The Monster has hit points equal to the amount of people playing, so it is, theoretically, possible to defeat a Monster in one turn. Each player gets a roll, however if they roll LESS than the Combat Value the team takes a hit for each dice with a number less than the Monsters Combat Value. This damage is represented by turning a Character card face down, or discarding a face down card from the game. The damage can be distributed between the team members as the team sees fit unless otherwise stated. Some Character card powers can still be used while the card is face down so there’s an element of strategy as to who takes the hits. If you don’t want to fight the Monster you can choose to retreat, but each Character takes a hit point of damage, you lose any stockpiled Item cards (which are stacked on a separate pile when revealed and are won by defeating Monsters) and the turn is over.

Once the monster is defeated you continue your turn if you have unspent Movement or the turn is ended if it’s the last move.

Then there are Trap, Event and Room cards. Traps are instant effects that generally fuck up your turn or deal damage to you, usually by rolling a dice against your teams Speed. Again this is where you have to be careful as if you’re rushing with 6 or more speed you’re essentially fucked as a lot of them trigger by rolling less than your Speed.

Event Cards can swing either way, offering benefits or detriments to your team depending on a roll of the dice, usually modified by how many Character cards with a certain keyword (like Heroic) you have on your team. The  Room card works in a way like Event cards.

So that’s the game. Sounds, good right? Sounds like it could be a fraught, mad scramble with bountiful laughs, derring-do and peril in a Saturday morning matinee way, right? No. No it isn’t. The problem this game has is that it’s obscenely unfair. Now, before you start I’m all for games that are difficult, because what’s the point in playing a game just to piss through it and finish it? It’s not a video game. Video games, for me, are there to be enjoyed, played and then traded when I’ve had my fill of entertainment whereas board and card games last much, much longer. They require replaying again and again, mainly because playing against different people means you get a different challenge and the random factor of cards and dice rolls means strategies need to change each time you play (if the games designed well, at least). Castle Ravenloft is hard. Lord of the Rings: The Card Game is hard. Space Hulk is (arguably for the Space Marines) hard. Isle of Dr Necreaux is just poorly thought out and spiteful.

First off the rules aren’t incredibly clear (as this FAQ  makes apparent) which is an instant NO in my book (but that’s a rant we’ve had before from Pele). I’m not sure why rules are so frequently shoddy and ill written, because it’s a pretty fundamental thing to have to get right. Just one of many axes to grind about this hobby. Anway, so the rules aren’t great. But there’s more.

The Monsters are often ridiculously powered and kick your teeth in for you. Take, for example, the Formless Terror. The Formless Terror has a Combat Value of 5 which means you need to roll a 6 to hit it, but the problem is it has hit points equal to twice your team size so, essentially, you have to roll 4 6′s to defeat it. What? Really? Ok, then lets run away from it. No, no you can’t because if you do you roll 3 dice and place it back in the deck the number of cards equal to the number you just rolled.
Maybe it’s just that Monster, right? The rest aren’t THAT bad? Not quite, but they’re pretty nasty.

The Military-Grade Defense Drone discards itself when it deals damage, but also gets rid of any pending Item cards and deals 3 additional points to the one it deals if you fail the Combat Value roll. What about the Psychic Leech? Once it deals damage it gets placed under one damaged character card and then puts a -2 modifier on that characters rolls until it’s discarded through a rest action. Oh, and you don’t get to do anything else on that rest action. Cheers for that. The rest of the monsters are similarly evil.

The rooms, events and traps aren’t as bad as the monster except for one, which is the Sliding Wall. The Sliding Wall effectively splits your team up, so you have a Main team and a Lost team. All encounters are now separate, with the timer only going down when the Main team take their turn. This changes the Monsters health as you are now 2 teams of however many players you decide upon (if you’re playing with 2 or more). The problem is if there’s only 2 of you playing you’re in big trouble, especially if you get split up very near the beginning of the game. This happened twice to us and it’s ridiculously frustrating, especially as the only way you can join back up is to draw another Sliding Wall card.

Then there’s the character cards themselves that seem to be inversely proportionate to the head fucks that are the Monster cards in that most of the simply aren’t very good. There are 33 cards, which is great if you have 4 or 5 players as you’ll likely get a spread of cards that might possibly probably be good, but in 2 player the chances aren’t that great. On one hand you have the Skilled Character card which gives you +1 to ANY roll, which is awesome, but on the other hand you have the Ninja card which damages a monster as soon as it’s drawn but makes it so your combat rolls on succeed on a natural 6 and fail on a natural 1. That I don’t understand at all, but then that could be just me.

I’m going to be honest and tell you we only played a few games of The Isle of Dr Necreaux before finding all of the above made the game to be absolutely, positively, utterly and completely devoid of any kind of fun simply through being sheerly, bloody mindedly hateful and difficult. Should we play it more to get a more balanced view? Should we keep playing even thought we’re not enjoying it, just to see if we’re wrong? Well, to be quite frank  why should we? The game’s fairly simple to pick up and understand, we found the FAQ, went through Board Game Geek for rule clarifications and we still found the game to be horrid. I’ve already said not all games should be easy, but there should be an element of balance to the game to keep it enjoyable, and that’s the fundamental thing; I play board and card games for fun and enjoyment. This gave me neither.