Publisher: Dynamic Gorilla
Player Count: 3-6 Players
Solo mode: No
Game Length: 30-60 Minutes
Complexity 2/5

“I told you it wouldn’t work,” growled the half-orc Barbarian to the Tiefling Warlock. The Warlock didn’t know if the look of disgust or the whelps now covering the Barbarian’s face said more about his displease.

“I’m sorry. Let’s try this door.” They made their way through yet another dungeon corridor. As the Warlock’s hand moved towards the handle, he could feel the heat radiating from the door. Maybe it was the sun, maybe they were about to escape!

He opened the door. That wasn’t the heat of the sun. As he looked across the otherwise normal bedroom, the Warlock became aware that his Barbarian companion was about to be displeased again, especially considering that now he’d have burn marks to go with the whelps on his face. In this room, the floor is lava…

OVERVIEW

Dungeon Doors is a one-versus-all card game using a basic D&D decision/battle system turned into a light dungeon crawl game with a deck of cards and dice. In Dungeon Doors, a team of players will be 2 to 4 companions trapped in a dungeon. The dungeon is run by another player who is the dungeon master, an evil overlord who once claimed to be one of your friends. In the game, the companions make decisions about whether to open a door on their floor—looking for an exit card or advantage—or to have the dungeon master lay out another floor of cards for you to then open one of the new doors. Meanwhile, the dungeon master will pick cards that make up the obstacles and challenges the companions have to face on each floor. The companions win if they can find an escape card and meet its criteria to escape the dungeon. The dungeon master wins if he can kill them all before they escape.

Dungeon Doors is a light but fun game if you’re looking for the D&D battle experience in less than an hour. To bring the most fun it helps to be silly and whimsical, willing to role-play and add to what the cards are doing in a story and dialogue, and not merely play to win the game. In fact, if you’re playing for competitive gameplay rather than for the silly experience, this probably isn’t the game for you.

SETUP

Setup is quick and simple: The heroes draw a hero card which gives them their base character, then they draw any treasures that go with their character. Different characters will have different health, accuracy, attack, and special abilities. The treasures they start with or gather will also contribute to their stats. The Dungeon Master (DM) draws 5 cards from the dungeon deck and then chooses and lays 3 cards facedown, drawing back up to a 5-card hand. The cards represent ominously unlocked doors that the heroes will be bursting through to face the challenges that lay behind them. That’s the setup!

A TURN

A turn is either going to be: 1) the heroes choosing to open a door on their floor, 2) asking the Dungeon Master to lay out a new floor of 3 cards for them to move to, or 3) the heroes choosing to backtrack to an old floor—which may mean re-facing old dangers—to open doors they left unopened. If the heroes aren’t opening doors and going through rooms, it’s because the players are taking turns in battle, which involves going back and forth rolling dice. A player rolls a d20 for initiative and a d6 for damage, assigns damage, then the dungeon master, then the next character, and around and around this dice rolling goes until someone finally wins the battle by either killing the monster the DM summoned or the monster kills all the characters. This back and forth dice rolling can go on for some time…

SCALABILITY

The instructions say that the game is a 1 vs. 2–5 player game, with one player playing the DM and the other 2 to 5 playing heroes. However, this game could easily be a 2 player game if one player wanted to play 2 heroes versus the DM.

LENGTH OF GAME

Most of our games resolved within an hour or so, but if the dice rolls were going badly it could drag on for some time.

VARIABILITY

The heroes will be different every time and the cards available to create the dungeon will vary every game as you shuffle the deck, which has plenty of cards. It’s unlikely you’ll see the same cards two games in a row, so you’ll always have interesting new sets of challenges for the heroes to face.

COMPONENTS

The game comes with a deck of cards with hero cards, treasure cards, dungeon cards, and “Big Bad” cards, as well as a d6 and d20 dice.

The game is a deck of cards and a little instruction booklet. The Dungeon Doors 101 is a poster-sized fold-out that has very simple instructions as it teaches you the game through a pre-set deck of a few cards. Once you’ve learned the game, there isn’t much to the rules. The instructions acknowledge the simplicity of the game and encourage D&D style imaginings and role-playing as you play through the game.

The art on the cards is all over the place from cutesy to more serious in its depictions of creatures, traps, and items to be found. The flavor text likewise goes from a plain description to attempts at cheesy humor, which sometimes gets a little chuckle.

This game really could have used a pawn or something to mark what room the heroic party is supposed to be in as they move through the dungeon. We actually added a generic pawn for that express purpose.

SPECIAL POSITIVES? 

This game could be a good time killer for anyone who enjoys Dungeons and Dragons but wants a short experience without all the effort of creating a story and everything else that goes into preparing to be a Dungeon Master.

ANY NEGATIVES? 

A strategy game this is not. If you’re playing to test your skill, or even try to win, this is not the game for you. This is mostly a game of rolling a single die over and over to loosely determine a storyline and battle outcomes. It’s a non-strategic dungeon crawl, more focused on silly cards than actual gameplay. There are special abilities, sure; but there’s nothing in the way of dice mitigation, strategy, or personal ability to influence the outcome of the game. The DM is stuck with what they draw from the deck to play and the heroes are essentially facing a more or less random dungeon that the DM is placing. If you’re playing to see who wins you may as well just roll a D6 or D20 and see who gets the highest roll and call that the game.

…with the lava behind them, our heroes stood before three doors. Where would they go? The Barbarian looked hopelessly at the Warlock, but the Warlock boldly opened the center door without hesitation. Before them lay a sleeping dragon. Smoke came from its nostrils as it dozed. The heroes sucked in their stomachs and began to make their way around the edge of the room until the Barbarian felt something round beneath his feet. He looked down. He had stepped on the dragon’s tail. The dragon’s head whipped around and the teeth took off the head of the Barbarian, leaving the warlock alone next to the decapitated body of his friend. But he didn’t mourn for long, as moments later the dragon’s tail spikes ran through his heart. Somewhere, the sinister master of the dungeon smiled. 

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK? 

I want to be clear: I don’t think this is a badly designed game or that it’s poorly executed. It’s just not a game for me. I like the idea of D&D, but I never really enjoy the implementation. Rolling the dice over and over again became tiresome and boring. I felt no personal investment because I felt I had no actual influence over my destiny.

Yet my boys love the game and continue to ask to play it over and over again, with me as the DM and them as the heroes. They love the tension of opening doors, exploring, making little decisions, making up little stories, and yes, rolling the dice over and over again.

I think there is an audience (besides young boys) who are going to get a kick out of this game and be glad to have it around to kill an hour on occasion. It won’t be a favorite necessarily, but it will be there for some fun times when time is short. The crowd that will love this is the crowd that’s going to go all-in, tell a story with it, and enjoys the silly tension of seeing what the dice roll is and imagining the battle, and seeing an outcome. They aren’t playing to win. They’re playing to see what happens and enjoy the interactions and role-playing with one another as they do.

For me, however…well, I’ll still be playing this for the foreseeable future, but I have to admit, it’s not because I want to.

For the right crowd 6.5–7/10
For me 4/10

Published by BoardGameTables.com
Designed by Corné van Moorsel | Art by Steven Tu
1-5 Players  |  20-40 Minutes

Every great entrepreneur starts out with a dream: some dream of changing the world, some dream of making a fortune, and some simply wonder what on earth this yellow goo is and what machines they need to turn it into some sort of profit…any sort of profit…

OVERVIEW

Factory Funner is a fun, quick, puzzle with a quick-draw element for getting the best machines to make your factory go. (“We are Pakleds from Star Trek: The Next Generation, we need pieces to make our factory go. We want to make it go good.”) Although it describes itself as a real-time game, I think “quick-draw puzzle” is a far better description. In Factory Funner, you are the boss and designer of a factory that makes some sort of…undefined…randomly colored…product (?), and you will have to set your machines that make this mysterious goo and connect them by the most efficient, if not convoluted, pipe system in a way that leads to most efficient production and the greatest amount of profit. It’s really an abstract puzzle with a vague factory theme laid over it where the player who can identify which piece is best for them and grab it fastest wins if they have earned the most money after 8 rounds.

SETUP

Each player takes a board representing their factory floor. Each board is two sided, with the A side being an even game for everyone, and the B sides being varying levels of difficulty. Each player also takes a vat of raw materials of each of the four colors and 3 empty vats to receive whatever products are made. Players are limited to 1 of each color and 3 empty vats. Place a piece representing your factory on the $10 spot on the score track, take 8 random machines, face down, and hit the factory start button (by which I mean start the game).

A TURN

Each turn the players will go “1, 2, 3, flip!” and flip over one of their machines. Here is where the “quick draw” comes in. You can grab any machine anyone has flipped in order to place it on your board, but beware: the first piece you touch you MUST take, and if it turns out you can’t place it, there is a penalty for taking it, and you don’t get to make any money (points) on your turn. Once you’ve chosen a machine tile, place it anywhere on your factory floor, and then the puzzle begins.

You have a more or less unlimited number of different types of pipes to work with to make it where all your machines work. Pipes can overlap as long as they don’t try and enter or exit on the same side of the same hex. You have raw materials that you’ve got to get to the machines and then you need the materials the machines produce to go somewhere; they can’t just spill onto the factory floor. Your options here are to either have what the machine produces go to another machine, which is the thing to do because it will give you massive bonuses at the end of the game; or, the machine can empty out into on of the generic white vats, but you only get 3 of those white vats, so you are limited in what you can do. There’s also black “end products” that empty into black vats, which are unlimited. If you’ve grabbed a machine you can’t make work, you have to discard the machine and take the penalty. When the round is done, you get the money for the value of the machine you placed, but you also have to be able to pay $1 for every other part you placed besides the machine. You can remove pipes and vats and even the raw material vats for free, but when you place them back onto the board, you have to pay $1 for them again.

The machines need input, represented by dots; and they output represented by a number. If you’re running one machine into other, even multiple other, machines, the  number can only feed the number of dots equal to or lower than its output value.

Repeat this 8 times, calculate for bonuses for machines feeding into other machines, and the person with the most money wins.

SCALABILITY

The game plays 1 to 6 players.

The solo mode is really just working through the puzzle of building a factory with whatever you happen to draw. After 8 rounds, you see what your score is. The higher the better.

But the more players, the quicker you have to be in figuring out which machine will actually be good for your factory and grabbing it before someone else does. So the more players, the more tension (and possibly chaos) in those initial moments of each round.

LENGTH OF GAME

This game is quick, 20 to 30 minutes max. It’s really only lengthened by how long it takes everyone to decide whether or not they’ve placed their pipes in most ideal way. I suppose analysis paralysis could lengthen this game indefinitely, because there may be near endless possibilities for perfect placement, but I think most people are going to feel satisfied they’re ready to move on to the next round in a reasonable amount of time.

VARIABILITY

The main variability comes from what machines are available for quick-draw each round. Beyond that, every game it pretty much the same. Nonetheless, I think the ever changing puzzle will keep it from wearing out its welcome for a long time; and after a little time away, can draw people back time and time again.

COMPONENTS 

All the components with this are thick, well produced cardboard. The art is plain, yet attractive and nice to look at it. But the most notable thing about the production is the inserts! This game is packed incredibly tightly into the box, but because of the wooden inserts, it fits absolutely perfectly. And thanks to this basically flawless storage system, when you pull it out to play, you just lay out the boards and the inserts, and this game is ready to go! I’ve never seen inserts this good come with a game. This is a masterclass in how gaming companies ought to produce their games. I’d pay an extra $10-$15 for games, for any game, if I knew every game were going to be this well packaged, organized, and quick to set up thanks to their inserts.

THINGS OF NOTE

Did I mention the inserts? I realize that’s an odd thing to stand out about a game, or often something that means the game is flawed but by no means! The game is good, we’re going to recommend it…but these inserts are awe inspiring.

Also, this game has a non-quick-draw variant where each player takes turn just having 3 tiles to take from. At first, we thought we’d prefer that because it would remove the quick draw element, but we were wrong! The quick draw element makes this game a ton of fun, and we can’t imagine not playing with the quick draw rules.

ANY NEGATIVES?

…the hum of the factory floor was music to the ears of the entrepreneurs who had set out to build a factory that really put out a great product…a great, blue, or black, mysterious product…that probably did something…But people were willing to buy it, so who cares.

But then the sound of a viscous liquid hitting the ground was compounded by steam coming from overloaded pipes, and all I could think as the explosion came was, “Wow, what a colorful explosion. I hope the world will buy my multi-colored goo.”

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We actually received this for review at the exact same time we played Galaxy Trucker for the first time, and that left me unable to think about Factory Funner without comparing it: Factory Funner is WAY better Galaxy Trucker. Galaxy Trucker is a light puzzle built as quickly as a possible, followed by a bunch of randomness at the end, that while sometimes hilarious, is mostly just frustrating and a ridiculous game. Factory Funner, on the other hand, is a mind bending puzzle, where truly the best, most efficient, and quickest of mind will probably win.

This is going to be staying on the shelf for when we are feeling up for burning our brains with something that is quick but really thinky. We’ll also be pulling this out with a lot of non-gamers who we think will really resonate with trying to put together the best system and enjoy a good puzzle. We weren’t so sure we were going to like the game at first glance, but it’s actually really fun and we’re going to be pulling it out far more often than we ever imagined. We recommend this game for anyone that enjoys a puzzle and needs a quick game that will leave you always going, “Okay, if I put this here, that will produce this, but that will mess up those pipes, can I re-route that to go over here?…” Factory Funner is a really fun, quick, puzzle that gives you a real, if abstract, sense of accomplishment at the end of every game.

Overall 7.89/10

As a brain twisting puzzle 9/10

For the storage solution 10/10

Published by Leder Games
Designed by Cole Sehrle | Art by Kyle Ferrin
2-4 Players  |  60-90 Minutes

The Marquise de Cat (Jerram) felt smug (as cats are wont to do) in their control of the forest. They had control of the clearings and were resting pretty in the winter sun. Though the snow was thick on the ground, they found themselves satisfied that when spring would come, they would continue their reign of terror. But they weren’t expecting the Eyrie (the Electric Eyrie, automated player), once proud bird warriors and rulers of the forest to come out of their winter nests in the trees to wrestle back that which they feel is rightly theirs. Meanwhile, from under the ground, a plot was brewing for the Underground Duchy (Wes), mole-people of political ilk, to seek influence over the above ground world. There was great swaying of the nobles and high ranking members of the underground society, but those who longed for power in the sun were gaining influence.

The Marquise was laying down roots, building infrastructure as though he thought his cats would live there forever. For a long time he seemed superior to all around him, especially the Duchy, who were slow to influence the above ground world as they built their numbers underground. As the birds and moles watched the feline influence grow, their bitterness grew. The Eyrie began to move back out into the sun, speeding across the northern fields and preparing for a full scale invasion. The Duchy dug their way so that they had tunnels and opening to make incursions across the forest.

The Eyrie brought the hammer down upon the Duchy. Though some low-level squires were convinced that the takeover of the forest was best, the Nobles remained unconvinced, while the Lords considered and wavered. Several times the Duchess of Mud lent her support to them, but when the Eyrie showed their air-powered superiority, she withdrew her support to save face. The Marquise de Cat was losing his own foothold on the forest. Though many bloody battles were fought, the Eyrie eventually regained their rightful place as lords of the forest, while the Duchy limped back to their underground lair and the cat headed home to sleep in a window. 

OVERVIEW

Root is the cutest (and possibly most brutal) war game in existence. In this area control war game with asymmetric factions, you will take control of a group of forest creatures vying for power over the woods. Each faction plays completely differently from any other faction, making this a challenge to learn and teach, because you could be playing by a completely different set of rules every time you play, and that same dynamic is why this cut-throat game will never become old or boring. But one way or another, you are trying to be the first player to 30 victory points.

A TURN

Because each faction plays so differently, unless I wanted to write a small book, there is no way to describe a standard term except in the broadest of strokes. Each turn there will be roughly 3 phases, which will have completely different actions and goals depending on which faction you are playing. But somewhere during each turn you’ll probably be able to move your warriors, get more cards, build some sort of buildings, battle other players, and possibly expand your army; you’ll also likely be doing something specific to how your faction plays and tries to get points.

SCALABILITY

With expansions, this game goes anywhere from one player—against some fantastic A.I.s— to six players. While playing this at different player counts definitely changes the dynamics, they have a fantastic algorithm that helps you choose factions that will make for a great game no matter the player count, and with the Clockwork expansion of A.I.s, you have even more flexibility.

SOLO PLAY

The A.I.s are at the core of what makes the solo mode work. Essentially you’re just playing the game normally against any number of A.I.s. While this can involve a lot of book keeping from one faction to the next, none of the A.I. factions is difficult to work with, making the solo mode very enjoyable. This works especially well because, as I went through the turns for each faction I was playing against, I was still able to think through my own strategy based on what the A.I.s are doing. And while they have programming so you know what they could do and what their limits are, there is definitely a level of unpredictability that makes it where an A.I. will never play the same way twice. And the fact that each A.I. also has 8 different ways to vary the difficulty means you can make it as hard or easy as you like.

VARIABILITY

The variability in this game really comes from how differently each faction plays, and how the combination of factions that are playing interact. On a less significant level, there is a light “luck of the draw” element having to do with what cards you get into your hand from the deck, but you are never (well, rarely) without a possible winning strategy just because of what you’ve drawn.

LENGTH OF GAME

This game is going to take anywhere from one hour to two and a half hours to play, increasing with player count.

COMPONENTS

The cards are good quality and the the little wooden miniatures are adorable!

EXPANSIONS

If you like this game, the expansions are essential simply because they add even more factions, different maps, and if you want solo options and the ability to make games more interesting by adding in an A.I. player (especially at lower player counts), the  Clockwork expansion is a must! We own them all and will buy every expansion that comes out.

NEGATIVES?

The battle system is a simple roll of the dice with very few, if any, ways to mitigate the rolls, and that is going to be very frustrating at times. The impact of any one battle is limited, and you can further limit how much a battle can affect you. It’s not without strategy and calculated risk, especially because it’s more than a “highest number wins” system. You roll two dice that range from 0–3, and you lose one warrior per point the other side rolled. That makes for some more strategic thinking about how many warriors you want to commit, and means that rarely is a single battle, or even a few battles in a row, going to make or break your game. But sometimes, the dice do not love you and it feels brutal.

While I really believe that every faction in Root is balanced, some factions are simply easier to learn than others, and some factions will be at significant disadvantages at lower player counts.

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?

In years beyond measure, the Marquis de Cat (robot) had taken control of the woods. Little did they know that lurking in the shadows underneath the dirt the Underground Dutchy (Wes) was watching, waiting, debating. One leader saw an opportunity. Above ground, a cult of religious lizard zealots (Kaitlin) had risen up, and these lizard zealots had begun to push back against the cat monarchy, believing that pagans—cats and birds alike—should be converted or killed for not offering proper religious devotion to the dragon god. 

The raccoon vagabond (Jerram) had no stake in these matters, all he wanted was to get rich and retire somewhere comfortable. Unfortunately, he never could gather the goods required. What none of them realized was that there was a movement of restlessness growing amongst the woodland creatures who were tired of being walked on by every great power that came through the woods. Quietly, the Woodland Alliance (Abigail) began to quietly host meetings, gathering sympathy and strength through these gatherings that spread their influence, especially gaining sympathy with the unheard people of the woods. 

Suddenly the underground primary residence of the Duchy was ambushed by the alliance and destroyed, sending the blind moles back into the darkness. The religious cult realized they had not been listening to the people of the forest as the Alliance tackled their gardens of worship, toppling their temples of devotion to the dragon god. The Vagabond, in the meantime never could find a faction to align himself with in order to gain the wealth which he sought, and he would have to settle for middle-class mediocrity as he was unable to wield the influence that he self-deludedly told himself that he had; for the once unheard woodland creatures, rallied by the alliance, rose to power and had no interest in his greed. Rather they were seeking the freedom of their people!

No one could hold back the Alliance. The cats suddenly began to fumble and started offering supporters many times over to the Woodland Alliance and each time the Woodland Alliance had a chance it took full advantage of organizing and deploying its supporters, warriors, and officers in order to show that they were the ruling power in the forest now. They would not be stopped. They would not be challenged. And they were victorious! (A victory from a first time player!) 

This is one of our favorite games of all time. There is simply nothing better than taking control of adorable little animals, and brutally murdering everyone else in the forest. This is a game of big plays and big emotions. There is a good chance that you are either going to beat the feathers off of everyone else, or you’re going to be left crying in a clearing surrounded by the bodies of those who were once your friends.

The thing is, every faction plays so differently, I imagine that anyone can find a faction they really enjoy playing. But don’t be fooled, despite how adorable this little game is, this is a game that takes a lot of time, and is filled with direct conflict. This is a game that will ruin friendships in the best of ways, as you absolutely destroy their plans, or find everything you’ve been working so hard for in the last hour completely wiped away. This is a game where you may be filled with the ecstasy of triumph or feel absolute hopelessness and frustration. And we absolutely recommend this game!

Overall 9.3/10 

Published by Absurdist Productions
Designed by William Thompson
2-4 Players  |  30-60 Minutes

The ruins of [Definitely Not Jurassic Park, that would be a trademark violation] passed under us as the helicopter lifted up over the mountain. The remains of fences were strewn in a path making it clear that a creature of gargantuan stature had forced its way through. Up ahead we could see a clearing as the chopper moved forward…and there they were, a herd…herd?…of dinosaurs. We had heard of this, they told us this was what they were bringing us for, but so few had ever seen [not Jurassic Park] that it took our breath away. I heard one paleo-vet whisper, “They did it…They actually did it…” The chopper landed at base camp, and we stepped out of the copter.

OVERVIEW?

In PaleoVet, the park is empty of people, but the dinosaurs are still on the island. They need someone to take care of them and protect the from modern parasites and diseases. Life may find a way, but it helps to have a good doctor on retainer. Paleovet is a dice game where you’ll use your rolls to cure those dinos and improve your hospital in order to get the most points at the end of the game from the dinosaurs you’ve been able to help.

SETUP?

The game has three modes: normal, casual, and light. In all modes you’ll split the dino deck evenly into 5 stacks of 10 cards each. In light mode, ignore all text and only match dice to the Dinos. In casual mode, the text on the dino cards is used in addition to dice. For the normal mode, split the upgrade deck into 5 stacks of 6 cards each, but the upgrades aren’t used in the casual or light modes. Each player receives 4 standard white dice and a player aid card. Once you’ve set up the decks and laid out the materials, you are ready to help those poor, helpless (except for their ability to kill you) dinosaurs.

A TURN

This may sound odd, but the single best thing about this game is the incredibly helpful little player aid. Turns are separated into 6 phases, and you’ll go through all 6 phases on your turn before the next player goes. You can see the phases below. The turns are quick with good decisions to make!

 SCALABILITY

The game says 2–4 players, but there is an obvious solo mode: Just play and try to beat your own score. The designer tells me he’s working on a solo mode for the final product. I think the solo mode will be a welcome addition, as I would definitely play this for a light game while watching Jurassic Park on a Saturday afternoon. I also think they could add components for 5–6 players. While that added game time might cause the game to wear out its welcome for a night, everyone would want to play it again soon.

LENGTH OF GAME

The current box says the game is 10 minutes per player. We have played this in all modes and all player counts. The game is 45 minutes, period. Because of the way you go through the stacks of dinosaurs, it was 45 minutes every game, regardless of game mode or player count. It’s really fun, and it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

VARIABILITY

Variability primarily comes from shuffling the decks of dino and upgrade cards. It’s definitely “luck of the draw” in the sense of cards and dice rolls, but unless you play the “light mode”, you always feel like there is something you can do to help your strategy.

COMPONENTS

We played with a prototype copy, and the quality was good. The Z cubes are plain but get the job done. I don’t know what the card quality will be like, but the art on the cards is cute and cartoonish. The custom dice are really cool. Overall, good quality components all around, but you would want to sleeve the cards pretty quickly to preserve them.

EXPANSIONS?

While the base game is heading to Kickstarter soon, this game is ripe for expansions! Whether it’s just adding more dinosaur and upgrade cards or even adding a couple of mechanics, this game is begging for an expansion or two (and so am I!). And a little pterodactyl (named the game’s designer) told me that expansions are already on the radar as long as the Kickstarter succeeds.

THINGS OF NOTE

The designers of this game have done us all a favor and already thought through scaling this down for our kids that are inevitably going to want to play a wonderfully illustrated dinosaur game that the adults were enjoying just fine by themselves. The “light” mode takes out all of the reading, so you’re just matching dice to dino cards, which oddly enough makes this the hardest mode since you can’t mitigate the dice in any way. The “casual” mode takes out the upgrade cards but the writing on each dino card is in play. The “normal” mode uses all of the text on the cards and adds in the upgrade cards. This is arguably the easiest mode since you can do quite a bit to manipulate the dice and guide your strategy. Many games don’t have different modes like this,  but we greatly appreciated it as we have two not-yet-readers and they were able to play the game and enjoy it, too!

ANY NEGATIVES?

The biggest negative is that I already want an expansion! We’ve played this game more than 10 times, but less than 20, and while we will still play it more with what we’ve got, we want more. Call it greed, call it gluttony, give us more! I don’t think that’s a negative, so much as a “We love it. Give us more! We’re greedy for more!”

And throw in 5–6 players while you’re at it. Even though it’s a 45 minute game, it doesn’t feel like a slog, and two more players would extend it to an hour. That hour would be fun and light, so I’m confident no one would feel tired of the game.

…”AAAAAHHHH!!!!” the blood curdling scream rang out as the T-Rex opened it’s eyes. The tranquilizer had worn off! The Rex rolled over and stood up as dino docs and assistants scattered in every direction. The Rex grabbed the nearby sedated Amargasaurus by the throat, and trailing blood behind, smashed through the wall back out onto the island. “Calm down, everyone, we’ve still a Triceratops to treat. Back to work! I need a splint and some dino-antibiotics over here!” 

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?

This is a really well thought out game that always felt fun and engaging, especially in the “Normal” game. Even though you’re rolling dice, there are great mitigation possibilities and combos that you can plan out based on what dinosaurs you bring into your hospital and what upgrades are available. Your strategy never has to be stuck in this game, which is really rare. This has the potential to be one of those games that you play with everyone: fun filler for hardcore gamers or when wanting a lighter game; use it to bring your non-gamer friends into the hobby; play with it your kids, even your non-reader kids! We really hope it does well in the Kickstarter! We’ll be backing it!

Overall 7.9/10

As an entry level game 10/10

As a game to play with kids of any age (and still be interesting to the adults)! 10/10 

Design by Janko Nišavić, Vukašin Nišavić
Art by Nenad Mirković
Published by Giga Mech Games
2-4 Players | 120-180 Min.

They never told you how cold it was going to be in the trenches. They never told you about the screams of your friends. They never told you how numb you would become when you saw another unit taken out by mortar fire, and the general ordered to the charge into the next field. We didn’t ask for this fight. Serbia is a proud country, but we weren’t responsible for the murder of Archduke Ferdinand. 

The news from the south tells us that the Bulgarians have joined the Germans and Austrians. The Bulgarians are reported to be marching up from the south, taking over cities as they go, only repelled by a small military band that was already in the south. In the North, bombs ring constantly as the combined forces of Germany and Austria-Hungary sweep in from the North, quickly overrunning Sabac and moving towards Belgrade….

OVERVIEW

March of the Drina is a World War I reenactment of the Serbian campaigns that began World War I, and then continued throughout the war. Each player will take control of a country, with one player being Serbia, on whom the board is centered; and one to three others players taking over the armies of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the German Empire, and Bulgaria—which are all allied, and so win or lose together.

This head to head war-game is on the lighter side of war games, with relatively simple mechanics of movement and fighting, but nicely augmented with fun standees, and a unique health keeping method and a calendar that serves both to keep the game limited to fourteen rounds, provide variables in each round, and actually teach the history of the Serbian campaigns.

The Serbians win if they can reclaim control of all of their cities including Montenegro. Everyone else wins if they can take over every single Serbian city (and Montenegro), as well as 6 cities outside Serbia and hold them for one round.

A TURN

Each round beings with a flip of the calendar. Then each country takes a turn, always in this order: 1) Austria-Hungary, 2) German Empire, 3) Serbia, 4) Bulgaria. When it’s your turn each individual unit (standee on the board) can move its number of unit move points and possibly engage in battle. If it moves into the space of another player’s unit (standee), there is a battle. If you win the battle, they lose a health point and retreat one hex. If you lose, your unit loses one health and retreats to the hex from which is attacked. If it’s a tie, both units lose one health, and you still retreat to the hex from which you attacked. If you attack, you forfeit the rest of the moves for that unit this round (with the exception of artillery, which fires from a distance—and so takes no damage for a loss—then moves). Generals may never attack, but only move.

Battles are easily resolved with a little mathematic equation: (The attacking unit’s attack stat)+(the unit’s health)+(one “luck card”) vs. (the defender’s defense stat)+(the defender’s health)+(one “luck card”); the higher sum wins. In the case of artillery, they’re able to fire from a range, and so do not take damage if they lose or tie. Once you’ve moved and/or fought or just chosen to not move with every single unit in your control (which can be mighty hard to keep track of which you have and haven’t moved) your turn is over; you collect money based on the number of cities you control, and the next player goes.

Some rounds will have bonuses or penalties for certain types of units for certain countries that are somehow vaguely tied to the actual events of World War I that round is supposed to be representing. Several rounds will also include a reinforcement phase where you can pay to either place new units adjacent to a general or otherwise heal units that are still on the board (as long they’re in range of a general).

SCALABILITY 

While the game says it’s for 2–4 players, as awkward as it is to have one player playing Serbia (which starts with a far larger army than any other country) and another player playing all three of the other opposing factions (which, while they have a much smaller force individually, once they are combined, are pretty much the same as Serbia), I think it would be even MORE awkward to have 3 players trying to play cooperatively and synchronize their tactics versus the one Serbian player. It says 2–4, but it would be difficult at more than 2 players.

VARIABILITY

The variability of the game comes from two places, one unique and cool and the other pretty run of the mill, and possibly terrible: 1) a secret tactical placement phase before the game starts and 2) luck cards.

1) The game starts with something I haven’t seen before, but I feel like would be a cool feature in a lot of war games: each player receives a copy of the map in miniature from a pad of paper that is a print of the map. On that map, using a little letter code, you will secretly plan the starting position of all of your starting units. Once everyone has filled out the map, you reveal and place your units. Assumably you’re placing them based on some strategy you have, but you don’t know what strategy they have, so depending on what everyone decided to do, this could begin the game in a way that will result in back and forth war, or it could be wildly unbalanced; but after a few games I think the best strategies will be become fairly obvious based on the map. Nonetheless, this is a really neat way to start a game and I would love to  see more tactical games use some kind of a starting mechanic like this. With the right map and variables, this player starting variable mechanic was really cool. It maybe could have used a couple of suggestions for starting positions and starting formations just to give you ideas, but maybe not.

“Okay, now if I place a platoon up here I can plan to move down, but I’ll have this unit over here to try and flank them and come around and take those cities one at a time while the main army sets up a tactical front that they’ll be forced to deal with. But I also know that if I try coming in from the south, if they don’t defend I’ve got them, and if they do I can move further south and start bringing up a second front from the rear and box them in…”

2) The luck cards on the other hand are just as arbitrary as rolling dice, and somehow less exciting. While you go into each battle with some knowledge of which unit is stronger and more likely to win, you still each draw a luck card to calculate the final battle scores, and it could be utterly brutal. The problem is, once a unit is on a downward spiral, no amount of luck is going to stop that unit from being pounded to death quickly. The instruction book claims that you can balance out how much luck there is by removing certain cards from the deck to either have more luck or more skill. We tried the “normal” setting and the “more skill” setting and still found that the cards just made everything feel like a crap shoot. (And to be very specific, two games in a row I had an absolutely statistics defying set of good draws while Kaitlin’s draws were terrible, causing me to absolutely slaughter her whether I was playing Serbia or whether I was playing the invaders. Either way, it made for two very MISERABLE games for her while I simply dominated her. And it wasn’t particularly fun for me either. It was just a mechanical slog, like playing a game of Sorry!.)

LENGTH OF GAME

The game suggests it will be a 2–3 hour game, and it will be every bit of it. But if one side or the other makes a mistake or manages to have some major victories early on, it’s going to be a slaughter and fairly miserable time for one player or the other. At least, that was our experience.

COMPONENTS

The components are pretty average. The board is a nice and clear map of the region printed on good stock. The standees are fine, although the way they’ve pasted faces of the designers on the soldiers is just silly, but I think the cardboard standees work just as well as miniatures, and certainly it’s a lot less expensive, and with fairly nice print jobs it looks fine. There are also bland round tokens you can use in place of the miniatures. Supposedly some people found it difficult to see the map with the miniatures, but I think the tokens would take away what aesthetic appeal there is. Also, the tokens that make the health marker system very problematic, because you don’t have enough sticky magnets.

The health markers are these plain, black magnets that stick to the bottom of the standees. That’s a creative way to keep track of health and something I wouldn’t mind seeing in other games, but maybe not just plain fridge magnets that you have to count. In fact, they blended together so that is was often hard to count how many health a unit had. The fact that they just have utterly plain blacks magnets that you just count is a little odd, but the idea is unique enough if it could be implemented better.

The cards are actually fairly low quality, but they’re fine.

The player aids are pretty clear, although printed on the cheapest stock they could find, as is the military income board. The thick cardboard money is pretty funny because it seems utterly unnecessary, and in total contrast to how cheap the other boards are.

But there are a couple of BIG COMPONENT PROBLEMS:

1) The rule book is hot garbage. Whoever helped with the English translation needs to work on their English or their editing before they do another translation from Serbian to English. The game is not utterly terribly designed, just plainly designed. But the rulebook doesn’t make sense half the time, occasionally seems to contradict itself, and often assumes you remember a rule from pages before rather than just repeating the rule that it would be clarifying. They’ve tried to organize it in a way that makes sense, but it just becomes a discombobulated set of disconnected rules that you have to eventually put together. Once you’ve figured it out, it runs fairly smooth but discerning some of the rules is really difficult. We’re still not 100% sure if you’re supposed to only do reinforcing when the calendar says or if you can do it every round. We’re pretty sure you just do it when the calendar says to, but the rule book at times seemed to be contradicting itself, and we had to read and re-read and come to a conclusion based on rules that were pages apart with no reference to one another. And for a game that is ultimately pretty mechanically simple, there are a lot of rules. In the rules for setup where are no less than 7 exceptions to the setup rules! That’s a half page of exceptions to rules you just spent a page explaining, that then won’t matter for the rest of the game!

2) There aren’t enough ownership tokens and money tokens! We were constantly running out of money and the winning side was always taking over so many cities that there weren’t enough tokens to indicate they had conquered the city. There just needs to be more.

They have tried to provide an organization solution with the game, but it just doesn’t work. They need to organize the game components by country.

After so many years at war, we had become numb to it all. It was just endless repetition, and both sides felt that something good was lost. In the end, we just wanted our home back. In the end, we just wanted the fighting to end…to imagine a different ending to it all. But we couldn’t go back and change the past, and we couldn’t bring back our dead. So we mourned and tried to rebuild. 

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Basically, this game should be slightly better than Risk…and yet actually winds up being stale, monotonous, and unentertaining. It is lifeless war game with little excitement and tension that leaves a lot to be desired. We had a pretty terrible experience. Every game we played, once one side had managed just a couple of victories it was only a matter of time until the end. We never made it past 6 rounds before one side or the other was completely wiped out. While there are rules for a minor restart, it would have amounted to nothing worth doing, and would have just been frustrating for the losing player. There is no comeback mechanism of any kind, and once you’ve lost some key battles early on, the game is over very…slowly and painfully, and torture is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

The movement and battle mechanics are plain and simple, unimaginative, uneventful, and lifeless. With nothing else to do, it becomes repetitive and unexciting.

There are a lot of great ideas here. This is a game that has the potential for a major overhaul, with some added mechanics, the good ideas kept, some things to keep it interesting added in, some improvements to the components, the terrible ideas removed, and Drina 2.0 could be amazing! I wanted to like this game. There is something about it that seems like it should be a fantastic entry level war-game. I can tell this is a passion project by people who care. I can tell there is the spark of a good game here. It seems like it should be a good game…and it just wasn’t.

Admittedly this was our first foray into this more classical style of war game. (I mean, we’ve played Risk. We’ve also played Root, Eclipse, Memoir ’44, and Twilight Struggle. And frankly I’d rather play any of those than this. In fact, we love all those games I just named, and Root and Eclipse are in our Top 10.) I don’t know if it’s just us and this type of war game or if it’s Drina, but we did not enjoy this. And I’m pretty sure it was Drina’s fault, because we can find enjoyment in most anything. We have laughed through some terrible games. We got to a point with Drina where we were only playing to write the review, otherwise we would have quit and played something else. It was a chore. It was uninteresting, and we were glad when it was over.

It looks pretty nice on the surface. It looks cool when you open the box. It looks pretty when you set it up. But once you start playing, well…war is hell, and this is the worst hell of all: a game with a lot of potential that doesn’t deliver.

Overall—3.9/10

Kaitlin’s experience—0/10 (Wes’s experience was only better because he won every game, but it wasn’t really any fun because once the beat down started, it was just relentless and bland. Kaitlin had no possibility of recovery. Those luck cards, man, they can be just completely unfair…but that’s war.) 

Designed by Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Chris Leder, Kevin Rodgers
Published by Mondo Games & Restoration Games
2-4 Players  |  25-40 min

It was a cold, blustery night in old London town, as the mists descended upon Soho. Unseen in the night, terrors lurked seeking blood and vengeance. While the people slept, a battle raged on the streets and roofs of the city as two unlikely enemies sought blood in the mist…

OVERVIEW

Unmatched: Cobble & Fog is a head-to-head, duke-it-out fighting game using miniatures, a map, and a card deck for each character. Each game ranges from cat-and-mouse to boxing match as you move your character around the map, representing the streets of Soho or the mysterious Baskerville Manor, using your hand of cards to perform battle actions and settle the question: who would win in a fight between Dracula and Sherlock Holmes? The box brings to life four characters of classical literature that you never realized you wanted to see fight one another. But trust me, you do want to see them fight! Each player has abilities specific to their canon leading to fascinating match-ups between the variable powers. Sherlock Holmes could be using his deductive skills to track down Dracula (as Dr.  Watson shoots Drac in the back), or the Invisible Man could terrorize Dr. Jekyll until Mr. Hyde makes an appearance to beat the Invisible Man to death with a cane. A game could be as swift as Stephenson, as stimulating as Stoker, as dramatic as Doyle, or as mind-warping as Wells.

A TURN

Each turn you have three possible actions, and you must take two, and can take the same action twice: 1) Draw a card, then you have a choice of whether or not to move according to your characters move points; 2) Attack! using an offensive card. Your opponent will then have the option to defend playing a defense card. There may be immediate, during, or after combat effects on the cards; 3) Scheme, which involves playing a card with some sort of instant effect that can help your character, hurt your opponents, or offer other advantages. Turns are short, sweet, and simple.

SCALABILITY

We have only played this game with two players, but it can be played with up to four players on the board. I can only imagine that would make for a tight battle until some players were eliminated. With only two players, there is plenty of room for some cat-and-mouse, but beware, if your deck runs out, you don’t reshuffle, you’re just out of cards for the rest of the game, and your character becomes exhausted and takes two damage every time you move, which will prove fatal!

VARIABILITY+EXPANSIONS

Cobble & Fog offers four different characters and two different maps, making for at least 24 different combinations of two player games. Cobble and Fog is also cross-compatible with any other characters and maps from the Unmatched series leading to almost never ending possibilities of fights you never realized you wanted to see! (I wonder if Sherlock Holmes could beat down the raptors from Jurassic Park…Hmm…Deduction and dinosaurs, an unlikely combination—but Doyle did also write The Lost World, after all—no, not the Jurassic Park one, the old one.)

LENGTH OF GAME

Games could range anywhere from a few minutes to an hour. The box says 20–40 minutes, but depending on the match up and what cards you draw, you could have a prolonged chase, a quick and dirty murder, or melee mayhem as classic characters crack skulls, fire revolvers, beat one another in fisticuffs, and suck your blood.

We’ve had games where the beat down happened quickly, and other games where a cat-and-mouse chase between the Invisible Man and Dracula depleted both of our decks and we were glad when the Invisible Man was able to pop up out of the fog and deliver a death blow to Dracula (well, Wes was; Kaitlin wasn’t).

COMPONENTS

The miniatures are top notch and begging to be painted to bring the game to life. The cards are good quality, and the inserts hold everything very efficiently. It’s a great example of what a game insert ought to be. All the other components, like the dials and tokens representing companions to the heroes, are plain, but good quality. Some characters have helpers or sidekicks, such as Dr. Watson for Holmes and the Sisters for Dracula. Other characters don’t. If a sidekick has a health dial, then their health must be depleted before they are considered dead (Curse you, Dr. Watson!). If they lack a health dial, they have a health of one point and any damage incurred defeats them (So long, Sister!).

NEGATIVES?

This is a card-based street fight, where what you draw can make or break you, which will annoy those who abhor having to deal with luck factors. This means that in some games one player will easily overpower the other, due to luck of the draw, although I do think most of the time things are actually pretty evenly-matched—instead of “unmatched”.

While we don’t have a good sense of whether or not all the characters are balanced overall, there were definitely combinations that made it seem as though one character was more powerful than another. The cards can give and withhold, after all.

Once again the Invisible Man had vanished into the foggy night. Dracula turns one way, then the other. His sister wives drew near comforting his heart. And then they cried out in undead horror as an unseen hand delivered a death blow to their beloved Dracula.

SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?

We love this game. It’s pretty quick. It’s never going to be the same twice. It’s tense; it’s silly; it’s friggin’ Sherlock Holmes fighting the Invisible Man! The art is fantastic, and the variable powers are interesting and fun. This is a relatively simple, yet super well thought out game (even if the balance between characters isn’t perfect) that offers a direct conflict, one-on-one fight experience like no other board game I have ever seen. We recommend this for a fun, quick, fight-to-the-death between your favorite characters from 18th century literature!

As the only board game I know of like this 10/10

Overall 8.1/10 

Designed by Rory Muldoon
Art by Rory Muldoon
Published by Alley Cat Games
2-3 Players  |  5-15 Minutes

(In a bad British accent.)

“Would you like to go for a walk down on the pier, lovely?”

“Absolutely, my dear!”

It was the finest day of the season as we strolled past fishermen and flower shops, poets pondering and lovers lost in each others gazes. It reminded us of simpler times when we had the luxury of sitting upon the boardwalk ourselves, enjoying the sea breeze, the bustling sounds of businesses and beaches, and taking salty air into our very bones.

Designed by Mandela Fernandez-Grandon
Art by Klemens Franz
Published by Lookout Games
2 Players  |  30 Minutes

It was back in the 1890s and, aye, do I remember it well. She was a lovely lass, but I dinna expect her to be so skilled a mason. We had been contracted ta build up Glasgow as they prepared to install the ye olde subway system, and so we were racin’ ta leave our mark upon the faire citae, but more faire was my opponent… 

Scythe + Invaders from Afar Expansion
Designed by Jamey Stegmaier | Art by Jakub Rozalski
Published by Stonemaier Games
1-5 Players  |  90-115 Minutes

After a the long war, there was an uneasy peace across Europa as eccentric new leaders, empowered by ungodly steam technology began to assert their influence across the land. What remained of the Scots, Clan Albion, entered the fray along with the Nordic Kingdoms of the North, whilst the Rusviet Union encroached upon the land from the East. However none of them could win the hearts of the people like the Crimean Khanate, who was serving the people as he blessed the farms, ending the famine that had wracked the continent after the war. But no one saw what was coming next…