Tuesday 22 January 2013

Games and Grub - Feb 1st at the Green Bean


Look for this banner at gaming events around Windsor
The Windsor Gaming Resource is proud to announce another free Games and Grub gaming event at the Green Bean on February 1st 2013, running from 6PM until 11PM

The Green Bean is an independent coffee shop that provides a wide variety of coffees, teas, lattes and more. They have a full menu that includes fresh made soup, paninis and some really tempting deserts. There's the option for a bottomless cup of coffee and they have free WiFi. For us gamers they have a wide variety of tables and a well lit stage.

This is an open non-competitive gaming event that anyone is welcome to attend. Any form of game is welcome: board, card, rpg, miniatures, whatever you want to bring we are willing to have you. We aren't rule lawyers. You are welcome to bring your own games or share in some of ours. Everything we bring we are willing to teach and no experience is necessary. The goal is to get as many local gamers out as possible to enjoy some good food, some good company and some good games!

Games we've played at events like this in the past include: Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Scrabble, Ca$h and Gun$, Bohnanzha, Magic The Gathering, Carcasonne, Race for the Galaxy, Puerto Rico, Agricola, Core Worlds, Munchkin, Scrabble, Chess and more.

An important note: we are not a private club. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come out and join in the games. If you see someone playing a game and it looks interesting, ask about it. If you see a game on a table and you want to try it out, ask around and see if someone will teach it.

Free Giveaway: Jason Russell has kindly donated a copy of Gears of War from Fantasy Flight games. This will be given away at the end of the event. The only requirement to enter will be to play at least one game at this event as well as stay until the roll off at the end.

The Green Bean is located near the University of Windsor at:
2320 Wyandotte St. W (Lower). Windsor, ON.
It's in the basement of the Church with the big sign that says "God Loves Students" on the side of it, next to Harvey's



Note: The Windsor Gaming Resource has no political or religious ties to the Green Bean or the Church it is located in. It just happens to be an awesome place to play some games and meet other gamers.

You can find them on facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/greenbeancoffee

You can find them on the web here:
http://www.greenbeancoffee.info/

The Windsor Gaming Resource on Facebook:

The Windsor Gaming Resource on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/WindsorGaming

Wednesday 16 January 2013

I picked up Quarriors! yesterday

Seeing as we have a gaming event this Friday with a theme of Dicing with Death I thought picking up another dice game for my collection would be pertinent. So I went down to the FLGS and and grabbed a copy of the 2nd edition of Quarriors! In preparation for being able to teach it this weekend my wife and I played through a few rounds last night. Here are my thoughts after a couple rounds of play.

Quickly:
Very cool and unique mechanics, quick but very random gameplay.

Summary:
Quarriors! claims to be a "Dice Building Game", and that's exactly what it is. It takes the Deck Building mechanic that has become very popular since the launch of Dominion, and does something unique with it. Instead of collecting a deck of cards, you are building a dice bag full of dice. This is a quick game that can be played with two to four players and can go as quick as 20 minutes but potentially much longer.

Game set up involves determining what dice are in play. There are a set of three dice types that are always in play: a basic die that gives you Quiddity which is used to summon and capture monsters, a basic pawn type troop and a wormhole that gives you re-rolls. Each die type is represented by a card and these are laid out in the center of the play area. Followed by this you draw cards from a deck of spells and put them out so that you end up with three types of spell dice in play. Lastly you draw from a deck of creatures, the Quarry. This puts seven creature cards and associated dice into play. Once all of these cards are out you put dice on them, all but the starting cards get five dice each. To finish set up each player takes a dice bag and fills it with 8 basic Quiddity dice and 4 of the pawn dice. Note there are far more cards in the set than are used each game. Each dice type is represented by a variety of cards at different levels with varying abilities.

The game being played about 2 turns in.
The goal of the game is to accumulate more Glory than your opponent. You do this mainly by summoning Quarry monsters and keeping them alive until the start of your next turn. The game ends when the play area, called The Wilderness, has four empty monster cards or one of the players hits the Glory target set by the number of players.

Each turn starts with the active player scoring their monsters in their Ready Area. After scoring the player gets the option to cull one die from their collection. The main part of the turn starts by the player pulling 6 dice out of their dice bagand rolling them. Players then spend these dice. Instant actions, which are usually re-rolls are activated first. Quiddity is represented by blue droplets on a die face and summon monsters. Any dice with monsters face up can be summoned by paying their level in Quiddity which moves them to the Ready Area. Spell rolled are also moved to the Ready Area at no cost if the player wants. In addition many of the dice have special symbols that break the basic rules, these are all explained on the die's associated card.

After summoning and readying spells there is an attack phase. The active player attacks with all monsters in their Ready Area. Attacks target all other players who must then defend with the monsters in their Active Area. Attack power and defense are listed right on the dice and work as expected. Total attack power, defender decides who defends, if attack beast defense defender dies, continue until all attack power is countered or there are no defenders left. There's no damaging a player in this one, you only ever attack and defend with monsters you have in play.

Next the active player gets a chance to go hunting in The Wilderness. They can take one die from the cards in the center of the table by paying it's cost with whatever Quiddity they have left after the previous phases. Costs are listed on the associated cards. This is the main method of adding new dice to your collection and is the equivalent of the Buy phase in Dominion. Once buying is done all used dice and left over dice in the Active are go to a used pile.  Dice in the used pile are tossed back into your dice bag once it becomes empty.

That's the basics. Like most of these games with pretty simple mechanics, the rest of the rules are exception based. Each die's card lists special abilities that the die has. These include things like spells that instantly kill monsters, ways to get re-rolls or draw more dice, ways to buff the attack, defense or Glory value of a monster, etc. The core game comes with over 130 dice so there is lots of variety there and the way you deal out the starting cards means that every game plays differently. The general strategy is the same as most Deck Builders. Start off with basic dice and use them to buy bigger dice that let you have more power and resources to buy even bigger dice while at the same time removing the weak dice from your pool to increase the odds of drawing what you want.

The new 2nd edition box, with a place for everything.
The Good:
I really dug the whole mechanic here. It's a very unique twist on deck building and I like it. I love the tactile feel of dice and I love rolling them. The variety of creatures and spells means there is a ton of replay value just in the core set. In addition the way they use the same dice to represent different levels of monsters by their cards I thought was brilliant. This one is pretty easy to explain as well and plays very quick while having a surprisingly deep level of strategy.

The packaging on this one is awesome. Now I've heard and seen that the first edition of the game just came in a tin with all the dice loose. Thankfully this has been improved with the 2nd edition. The packaging is a fine example of 5S methodology, there's a place for everything and everything has it's place. There's even room to add more dice and cards from the expansions. I don't think I could have packaged this one better. It also includes some play mats that I guess weren't released until one of the later expansions, though these are included in the rule book to be photocopied instead of giving you separate mats for each player.

The Bad:
I think the major turn off for most people in regards to this game is the high random factor. This game has a level of randomness above and beyond all other deck building games. Not only do you randomize what dice are available and randomize which dice you get each turn, each die has six different possible outcomes once you have it. So even though you may have saved up and bought that awesome Dragon, he's not going to help you much if all you keep doing is rolling 1 Quiddity on his die every single time.

The Ugly:
It seems Wizkids has had no small amount of problems with quality control on their dice. The quality is most definitely not consistent in my set. Most of my dice look great but then I have a few that were very poorly inked. I also have one spell die that is actually malformed and has three sides you can barely read and has an obvious protrusion on one side. Now I see lots of posts on the 'net with other people who have had the same problem and almost all of them end with "excellent customer service", but to me this shouldn't have been a problem in the first place.

Overall:
So far I'm very impressed with this game. It takes an established and somewhat overdone mechanic and does something totally new with it. The game looks great, is fairly easy to teach and played quick while still having a very solid level of strategy and depth. That said, it has a very high random factor, higher than any other game in this genre. That I think will be the make it or break it point in a purchase decision. This is one I suggest you try before you buy if you can to see if it fits for you. I found a lot to like here, despite some production issues that Wizkids is being great about fixing.

Thursday 10 January 2013

Boardgames Are Really Fun: Dicing with Death - January 18th at Villains


B.A.R.F. - Boardgames Are Really Fun
Theme: Dicing with Death

The Windsor Gaming Resource and Villains Beastro are proud to announce our first  Boardgames Are Really Fun event of 2013 scheduled for January 18th running from 6PM until Midnight.

The Villains Beastro is a unique, funky, weird, mystical, fun, serious, laid back, Viking-feeling, pub-looking rock n’ roll type place that has offered to open their doors for us. It’s the perfect spot for a group of geeks to hang out and play some games. There are plenty of tables of all sizes, a well lit stage area, some great beers on draft, a selection of harder beverages and a selection of great tasting sandwiches. Villains has agreed to give us the space for free and I encourage everyone to support the venue by buying food and drink.

The theme for this event is: Dicing with Death We are looking for games with dice them. Games like Quarriors, Roll Through the Ages, Airships, Yahtzee, Boggle and more. Note we encourage you to stick to the theme but it's not necessary and we aren't going to kick you out if your favourite game is Catan and you choose to bring that.

This is an open non-competitive gaming event that anyone is welcome to attend. Any form of games are welcome, board, card, rpg, miniatures, whatever you want to bring we are willing to have you. We encourage people to bring games that fit the theme but if there's something you just have to share, feel free to bring it. We aren't rule lawyers. You are welcome to bring your own games or share in some of ours. Everything we bring we are willing to teach and no experience is necessary. The goal is to get as many local gamers out as possible to enjoy some good food, some good company and some good games!

An important note: we are not a private club. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come out and join in the games. If you see someone playing a game and it looks interesting, ask about it. If you see a game on a table and you want to try it out, ask around and see if someone will teach it.

Villains is located Downtown at:
256 Pelissier
Windsor, ON N9A 4K3



Villains Beastro on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/villainsbeastro

The Windsor Gaming Resource Webpage:
http://w-g-r.com/

The Windsor Gaming Resource on Facebook:

Classic WGR Review - Race for the Galaxy

For my next classic Windsor Gaming Resource Forum review revival I thought I would go with Race for the Galaxy by Thomas Lehmann released here by Rio Grande Games. My reason for choosing Race is due to the number of times I see it recommended on the Google+ board game community owned by +Ben Gerber.

My initial review of Race for the Galaxy was done back shortly after the game was released. I received my copy for my birthday in 2009 and reviewed it shortly there after on January 15th. At the time of this review the game was flying up the Boardgamegeek.com charts and had just hit number 10 in the world.  After the classic review I will take a moment to let you know if my opinion of the game has changed at all.

Classic WGR review from Jan 15, 2009

Quickly: an interesting role based card game, definitely similar to Puerto Rico, Twilight Imperium 3rd Edition (and probably San Juan).

Summary:
This is an abstract non-collectible resource management card game with a Sci-Fi cover. There are two types of cards in the game. The role/phase cards and draw cards. Players are each given an identical set of role cards to choose from each turn. Unlike other role games, players choose simultaneously and players can end up choosing the same role. Another unique feature to this game is the fact the draw cards are used for 3 different things. They can be played in a players area to represent planets or developments or they can be placed face down on a production world to represent goods or lastly, they can be discarded from the hand representing the spending of resources needed to play development and planet cards.

The roles chosen determine which phases of the game actually take place. If no one chooses a specific role/phase then that is skipped this time around. The player choosing the role gets to do the action for that phase and in addition gains some type of bonus. All other players also get to do the action on the card but without the bonus (unless they chose the same card). 

The various roles/phases are:

Explore - everyone draws cards, generally you draw two and keep one. There are two different explore actions, one lets you look at more cards but still only choose 1 and the other lets you look at an additional card and keep two.

Develop - everyone can play development cards from their hand by discarding a number of cards from their hand equal to the cost of the development. A player choosing Develop pays 1 less.

Settle: everyone can play a planet from their hand. This could require having a certain military rating or could required the discarding of cards. A player choosing Settle gets to draw a card.

Consume: use consume powers on cards (which generally results in victory points being gained). There are two consume powers, one that lets you trade a produced good for extra cards and another that nets you double victory points.

Produce: place goods on worlds. The player playing produce also gets to put a good on a windfall world (special worlds that start with a good on them, but don't regularly replenish).

These phases happen in the order listed above so, for example, you can't produce and then consume they always happen in this order. To make things interesting most of the cards you play on the table (developments and worlds) modify one or more of the phases. These do a wide variety of things like letting you draw or keep extra cards when exploring, making it cheaper to buy developments or worlds, giving victory points during consume, letting you draw cards during specific phases etc. In addition to this each played card is worth victory points, with generally, the more expensive cards giving higher victory points.

What all this means is that players will start small building cheaper developments and settling minor worlds that will give them resources and discounts on playing later cards. By the end of the game players are spending large amounts of resources and building/settling bigger things.

The game ends when a pool of victory points are exhausted (12 per player) or when a player places his 12th card on the table. At this point players total their victory points (from cards played and from tokens gained during the consume phase). The player with the most points wins.

The Good:
Really nice looking cards that include some good humor as well as nice art. I really like the way role selection works in this game. The fact that a phase doesn't happen if no one chooses it really separates this game from other's of it's kind. It really ups the strategy level when trying to choose a role. The way explore works by having you look at multiple cards but only select a small few is interesting as well, as you really go through the deck quickly, and can actually spend rounds 'hunting' for that perfect card (and hoping someone else doesn't already have it). For a role selection game this one is nice and quick and pretty simple to play and learn. You don't need a couple hours like Puerto Rico or an enter night like Twilight Imperium. I was also very impressed by the wide variety of strategies that can be used to win at this game. In one game I tried using military might, in another I specialized in cards that improved my card drawing and holding during the Explore phase. There are variable victory point cards that also give a lot of points for a wide variety of play styles and strategies.

The Bad:
The one problem with the way the explore phase works is that it gives the experienced player a significant advantage over a new comer. This is due to the fact that an experienced player will know the cards, and will know when it's worth searching for just the right world or development and will realize when certain cards are 'used up' and no longer in the deck. Now of course this isn't a problem if everyone playing is equally experienced, it can actually be a benefit in that case as the play gets much more strategic. Due to the fact victory points are tracked three ways (set on cards, variable on cards and with tokens) it makes it very hard to see how many points each player has (which is part of the rules, that everything is open), which makes it hard to tell who is in the lead, which is very important near the end game when you are making decisions based on whether or not to play a 12th card. I have seen some good suggestions online to use a Victory point track, this may be worth looking into as it would alleviate this problem.

The Ugly:
Instead of having a ton of text on the cards this game uses a symbol system to represent most things in the game. This is especially true for the powers each development and world gives you. There have got to be at least 30 different symbols used in the game. The first place this became an issue was reading the instructions. It was very confusing and hard to follow. The second place is during the game. There is a reference sheet as well as a list of all of the powers in the book, and we found we had to look these up constantly for our first two games. One of the worst parts is that some of the symbols are very similar and small (especially the difference between a Production World and a Windfall World. I would have definitely preferred something like most CCGs where pretty much all of the rules are there in text on the cards.

Overall:
This game is currently rated number 10 in the world on boardgamegeek.com, and I don't think it's over rated. This is an excellent card game and a new and great use of the role choice system. The only real problem with the game is learning what all the symbols on the cards mean.
Everything you get with the core game

My current thoughts, about four years later:

Re-reading this review today I have to say that my opinion on this one really hasn't chanced much. Since writing this I have picked up a copy of San Juan and sure enough the games are extremely similar. For whatever reason the theme of Race for the Galaxy appeals to me more. Plus Race has a variety of expansions now that move it further from it's San Juan roots. I still really enjoy this game and still break it out fairly regularly. It's become a favorite two player game for my wife and I. Now I do admit that all games I play now include the first expansion: The Gathering Storm which I also recommend fans of the game pick up. 

To address specific points in the old review. I'm still finding new strategies and ways to play this game. I've seen quite a few people claim that this is a multi-player solitaire game and I can't say I agree. You just need to play one game with someone who recognizes your strategy and does things like hold onto key cards so that you cannot build them to realize that this game can be quite cutthroat. The player experience disparity is still an issue, especially when teaching the game to new players. That's something that I actually think is a strength of the game as system mastery and knowing the cards does give an advantage and in the long term this is a great thing. Lastly: I still hate the symbols. Every time I go a few months between plays of Race for the Galaxy I have to re-teach myself what all the funky pictures are on the cards. I still, to this day wish the rules were just printed on the cards.

So even today, almost four years after my initial review I still strongly recommend Race for the Galaxy. It's one of the best card games in my collection and actually one of the better games I own overall.

Monday 7 January 2013

Gygax magazine gets official launch date

I just received an email update from Jayson Elliot in regards to Gygax Magazine. It seems we finally have an official launch date:

It's been quite a wait, but it's finally time! The first issue of Gygax magazine will be unboxed at 2pm EST on Saturday, January 26th at The Brooklyn Strategist. We'll be streaming the unboxing live at GygaxMagazine.com for everyone who can't be in New York City that day.
As soon as the first box is opened, you'll be able to order single copies or subscriptions online. (And of course, we'll have them in the store as well.)

The staff of Gygax magazine, including Ernie Gygax, Luke Gygax, Tim Kask, Jayson Elliot, Jim Wampler, and James Carpio, will be online for a video Q&A. We'll have some other special guests that day as well.

After the unboxing, we'll keep the video running while we run gaming events all afternoon. There will be a limited number of online seats available to join the in-store games via the virtual tabletop Roll20. A followup email will be sent next week with a link to a form where you can sign up to play online.

Keep following us on Twitter and Facebook for more details as we get closer to the unboxing day! We'll be sending a followup email next week with details for anyone who wants to attend the event in person.

Mark your calendar:

Saturday, January 26th
2pm Eastern Standard Time

GygaxMagazine.com

The Brooklyn Strategist

333 Court Street
Brooklyn, New York
See you there!
-Jayson

Sunday 6 January 2013

Review - Horus Heresy by Fantasy Flight Games


One of the games I received Xmas morning was Horus Heresy from Fantasy Flight games. Up until owning it I didn't know much about the game. I knew it was a reprint of a classic Games Workshop chit based wargame but that's about it. Over the holidays I got to play this one two times and figured that was enough to give it a fair review. I do apologize for the picture quality, they were taking with my iPod.

Horus Heresy is a strategy wargame for two players set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. In this game you get to re-create one of the most iconic battles of the Warhammer universe: The Battle for Terra. This is the climax of the galactic civil war that pits brother against brother as the forces of Warmaster Horus, corrupted by Chaos, march on the Emperor himself and his palace on Terra.

Initial setup, the Battle for Terra begins.
As expected each player takes one side of the conflict. One playing the traitors and the other the loyalists. Victory is gained by wiping out the opposing general (The Emperor of Mankind or Warmaster Horus), controlling all four space ports after the mid point of the game, or in the loyalists case: just lasting until the end of the game.

As is typical of Fantasy Flight, the game is beautiful. Lots of high quality components, colour coded miniatures, 3d board components, full sized and small cards, full colour rulebook, etc. This all comes in a Fantasy Flight "Coffin Box".

Gameplay is controlled through a unique initiative system. There is a track along the bottom of the board and each player has a token on it. As players play and activate cards their marker moves to the right. At the start of each turn the player who's marker is farthest to the left gets to go. Along that track are also special squares that have different effects, like refreshing the board, giving players more cards or having an event happen.

Player actions are all handled by strategy cards. These cards can be played onto a rather neat Strategy Map section of the board or played directly from a players hand. Playing onto the Strategy map usually costs less initiative and also makes many cards more powerful, playing from the hand is quicker but you loose any strategic effect the card has and it usually costs a significant amount of initiative. Other actions include manipulating the card piles on the strategy map and drawing more strategy cards.

The actions the strategy cards allow are mostly what you would expect. There are cards for moving units around the board, cards for launching attacks, cards for repairing and building more units and cards for special effects like orbital bombardments. Each player has their own deck and they are themed to the armies each is playing. The traitor players deck contains more attack cards and bombardment cards as well as interesting ways to get new units into the game. The imperial deck contains more repair, maneuver and unit building cards.

Khorne armies are building at Space Port Primus
Combat is inevitable and is again card based. This time though players draw from unique combat decks, one for each side in the battle. The number of cards is determined by the strength of the units in the fight. Combats are fought for a set number of iterations and these determine how many cards can be played each turn. The defender chooses who is active first. The active player plays cards to attack and then the passive player can play cards to defend. Then the roles swap. In addition to causing damage and preventing it each card has a special effect. These effects can only be used if the unit type listed on the card is in the battle. Here's were we get to see things like how good Space Marines are or the fact that Titans can destroy fortifications.

Included among the units on both sides are Heroes. Here you've got the various Primarchs of the Space Marine and Traitor Marine Chapters, Horus and the Emperor and the Fabricator General. All of these Heroes break the rules in some way and give units with them some extra abilities. In addition having a hero in a fight lets you draw cards from a special hero combat deck. To give them some staying power heroes use a special damage track that's printed on the board that means they are hard to eliminate.

That's the long and short of it without getting into too many specific details. As you can tell there's a lot going on in this game. A lot of moving parts and a lot of choices each turn. Added to that, the game includes a scenario book with 6 different scenarios you can use for set up at the beginning of the game to add replayability and mix up the challenges.

As noted earlier my wife and I played through two full games of this. It's not a short game taking us about 2 hours each time, but in both cases we were still learning the rules. Due to the amount of thinking time each turn I don't think this would get much shorter with successive plays. In both plays I found the game rather interesting. The initiative mechanic combined with how you choose to play strategy cards either from your hand or on the strategy map is really cool. The strategy map is a big part of the game and a lot of the strategy in the game is figuring out what orders to play where and in what order and when to mess with your opponents plans. While I really liked this card playing aspect I was less of a fan of the combat decks. I found combat to be a little too random for my tastes. My biggest complaint about the game though is the 3d components. They look awesome, they truly do, but by using them you make your game less functional. There is not enough room on these 3d fortification to fit the units that start in them at the start of the game. That's right you can't even do the basic set up without balancing figures precariously on the thin plastic scenery. Added to that there are breach counters that fit great over the 2d board but don't really work with the 3d fortifications. It's just odd. Someone didn't think this through completely.

Overall this is a very beautiful game that looks great out on the table. Some really unique and interesting mechanics like the initiative system and the way order cards are played combined with the strategy map will probably keep me coming back to this one for more. That is true even though I don't really enjoy the combat system much, finding it a bit too random and I found the 3d bits looked great but weren't really that functional. If you are a two player zone based wargame fan who also happens to be into Warhammer you will probably love this. If you are fans of one or the other, there's some cool stuff to see here and if you find it for the right price I can recommend picking it up (it was dirt cheap as part of the Fantasy Flight Holiday Sale). If you aren't into Warhammer or wargames, there's nothing really here for you.

Thursday 3 January 2013

Classic WGR review - Alhambra

Photo by: Gary James released under CC Attribution, Share Alike
It's been a bit since I've resurrected one of my classic Windsor Gaming Resource Forum reviews. Looking through the reviews I've done over the years I noticed Alhambra. I chose this one since it was one of the games we broke out on New Years Eve just a couple days ago. As usual I will follow my original review with my updated thoughts.

Classic WGR review originally written March 17th 2007:

Overall: an excellent tile game, unique gameplay, fairly quick, lots of fun.

Summary:
Players complete to build the best Alhambra (big palace like structure with lots of diff buildings). This is done buy playing tiles. Each tile represents a building in the Alhambra. There are 8 different coloured buildings. Players score points for having the most of a colour of building in their Alhambra in three different scoring rounds.

Players take turns doing one of three actions. They use money in hand to buy new tiles, they take new money into their hand, or they rearrange their Alhambra. If when buying new tiles the players plays exactly the right price they get an extra turn. When taking money they can take any number of cards with a total of 5 or less, or one card with a total of 6 or more.

Alhambra's are built by laying tiles. Players start with a plaza and add around that. The building tiles often have walls on them, these make building interesting, as all buildings must be placed so that a person on foot from the plaza could get to them, so no walls blocking the path. The walls also serve another purpose, they are worth points during each scoring round. With 1 point awarded for each wall section in a chain.

The Good:
Excellent packaging and full sized cards. I love games where everything has a place when putting them away for the night, and you don't have to worry about bits falling all over the place. I also love decks of cards that are card sized. More unique gameplay. The one thing that stuck out the most about my last few games, were the fact they are very different from what's out there. This was a tile game that didn't feel like Carcasonne. Very competitive. You will spend a lot of time trying to decide if you should take the tile you need, or take a tile you know your opponent will want so they can't have it. Same with the money. Pretty quick to learn, it's a bit hard to explain but the rules are short and quick to learn once playing. It won't take more then 2 rounds to get it.

The Bad:
The wall rule seems hard to remember. The fact that walls need to go next to other walls or blank spaces when building your Alhambra seems to get forgotten. Contrived 2 player rules. It's a good game two players, but you have to toss in a third imaginary player and give them tiles. It changes the feel of the game quite a bit and as mentioned just seems contrived.

The Ugly:
For everything I like about the way everything packages up for this one, I hate the box size. I am getting really sick of companies putting out games in odd sized boxes that don't fit well on shelves with your older games. I miss the days of Avalon hill when everything was a standard size and everything looked great next to each other.

Overall:
Another welcome game for my collection. This is my second Queen game and I am very impressed by their presentation and packaging (except for the dumb box size that doesn't fit well on shelves). An excellent tile game, even better then Carcasonne and Tigris and Euphates.

My thoughts now, over 5 years later:

Well I think the fact that we decided to break this out for a Gaming in the New Year party to welcome in 2013 is a great indication that this game is still getting play at my table. I still really enjoy this one. I'm still not a big fan of the two player rules but I love it with three or more. It plays just as well with 3 or 6 players. I also find that that 'odd' wall rule isn't as hard to remember as I found at first. Now many years later some of the mechanics in Alhambra are still unique, which is cool to see. It also looks like Queen Games might have read my review since the box has been changed to a more traditional shape on the latest printing. I think my only regret regarding this game over all those years is that I don't break it out enough and I never actually picked up any of the really cool looking expansions.

Wednesday 2 January 2013

Games and Grub - Feb 1st at the Green Bean



The Windsor Gaming Resource is proud to announce another great Games and Grub gaming event at the Green Bean on February 1st 2013, running from 6PM until 11PM

The Green Bean is an independent coffee shop that provides a wide variety of coffees, teas, lattes and more. They have a full menu that includes fresh made soup, paninis and some really tempting deserts. There's the option for a bottomless cup of coffee and they have free WiFi. For us gamers they have a wide variety of tables and a well lit stage.

This is an open non-competitive gaming event that anyone is welcome to attend. Any form of game is welcome: board, card, rpg, miniatures, whatever you want to bring we are willing to have you. We aren't rule lawyers. You are welcome to bring your own games or share in some of ours. Everything we bring we are willing to teach and no experience is necessary. The goal is to get as many local gamers out as possible to enjoy some good food, some good company and some good games!


Games we've played at events like this in the past include: Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Scrabble, Ca$h and Gun$, Bohnanzha, Magic The Gathering, Carcasonne, Race for the Galaxy, Puerto Rico, Agricola, Core Worlds, Munchkin, Scrabble, Chess and more.

An important note: we are not a private club. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come out and join in the games. If you see someone playing a game and it looks interesting, ask about it. If you see a game on a table and you want to try it out, ask around and see if someone will teach it. 

Free Giveaway: Jason Russell has kindly donated a copy of Gears of War from Fantasy Flight games. This will be given away at the end of the event. The only requirement to enter will be to play at least one game at this event as well as stay until the roll off at the end.

The Green Bean is located near the University of Windsor at:

2320 Wyandotte St. W (Lower). Windsor, ON.
It's in the basement of the Church with the big sign that says "God Loves Students" on the side of it, next to Harvey's


Note: The Windsor Gaming Resource has no political or religious ties to the Green Bean or the Church it is located in. It just happens to be an awesome place to play some games and meet other gamers.

You can find the green bean on facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/greenbeancoffee

You can find the green bean on the web here:
http://www.greenbeancoffee.info/

The Windsor Gaming Resource on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/windsorgamingresource/

The Windsor Gaming Resource on G+:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/116086449289642584022

The Windsor Gaming Resource on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/WindsorGaming

Look for our banner at various gaming events around Windsor

SnarfQuest returns in Knights of the Dinner Table


Jolly Blackburn from Kenzer Co. just let this image slip over on Facebook. It looks like SnarfQuest is coming back in a big way, this time in Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine.

I'm a big fan of this comic from way back in the day. From the pages of Dragon Magazine to the graphic novel and later even a board game, that well wasn't so hot. I'm really looking forward to seeing Snarf and the group return. I think it's time to start collecting Knights again.