In the brand new board game, Thunderstone: Dragonspire, players compete to find the Thunderstones and save the world.

The Thunderstones like hidden within Dragonspire. But within there, you’ll face the undead, elementals, dragons and giants. It will not be easy to save the world this time.

The box comes with:
New Dungeon Board
Over 500 cards with all-new art
New plastic XP tokens
Eleven new heroes and seven new monsters, plus new village cards

We don’t have an exact release date, only February. So watch your local game store for this new game.

This holiday I made it a point to try out board games that are new to me. While some can be varying levels of difficulty and fun, I am on the look out for the best to showcase to you!

Bang! is a card game by designer Emiliano Sciarra. It came out in 2002 and is still sold at local game stores as well as Amazon.com. Bang! supports 4-7 players and we played with 6.

“The Outlaws hunt the Sheriff. The Sheriff hunts the Outlaws. The Renegade plots secretly, ready to take one side or the other. Bullets fly. Who among the gunmen is a Deputy, ready to sacrifice himself for the Sheriff? And who is a merciless Outlaw, willing to kill him? If you want to find out, just draw (your cards)!” (From back of box)

This card game takes you back to a time where the Sheriff had to protect the town from the outlaws and the Renegade. In order to do so, players draw roles. The following are the roles and what they need to do to win:

* Sheriff – Kill all Outlaws and the Renegade
* Deputy – Protect the Sheriff and kill any Outlaws
* Outlaw – Kill the Sheriff
* Renegade – Be the last person standing

The roles are all kept secret except for the Sheriff (which I was). All the other players draw cards and aim to of course…kill the sheriff.

There are many cards in the deck with many rules. But Bang! is smart in that they have info cards that can be given to each player as a reminder as to what the symbols mean on each card. Most common are Bang! cards which let you shoot at another player. There are also cards that allow you to dodge, boosts for guns, and the ability to throw other players in Jail.

A horse enabled me to shoot anyone around me but in the end, my Deputy got killed and pretty soon everyone was gunning for me. The rounds go by very quickly. On average take about 30 minutes. I fell in love with Bang! While it’s complicated, by the second round everyone should have the hang of it.

At one of the vendors, I was able to play a new game that would be coming out from SJ Games called Cthulu Dice. It’s a fun, quick game for 2-6 players where you get an amount of “sanity” marbles and have the goal of remaining sane while you try to make your opponents go insane. You roll the large Cthulu die that has various runes on it in hopes of stealing the sanity of other players or trying to remain sane yourself. If you loose your sanity before the others, you still get to play but you’ll be rolling for Cthulu. It was a fun and fast paced game to play, which is great if you just want to do a quick game.

Thanks to the power of Twitter, I was able to meet up with one of my followers (Thanks Winyder!) and was brought into the wonderful world of Munchkin. I had a blast learning the game with Winyder and Cherith, and we even had another new Munchkin player join us. It became a pretty intense game once we got the hang of the rules. For those interested, we played the pirate version, and I went without having a class for most of the game. We went for a little bit where we were counting our levels on our respective phones (yes I did see that there is a pretty awesome iPhone level counter app after PAX). But to save us and our phone batteries, we were handed a special Munchkin 10-sided die to count levels! Sadly I did not win, but neither did the person who was doing his best to not let any of us win. Not that it mattered much as I still had a blast and will probably be getting one of the editions to play with some friends back home.

I also had a chance meeting with some WoW players (who also helped me to snag a snazzy PAX East scarf) who invited myself and Cherith to join them on Saturday to play a WoW TCG raid. I had been meaning to build up a deck to play the TCG as it sounds interesting and the fact that they developed a way to play raids seemed pretty cool. So after a great time at the SFX-360 party, Cherith and I headed back to the convention to relax with the guys and do an Onyxia raid. There were six of us total: One person played as Onyxia with the raid deck and the rest of us picked up classes to fight against her. I wound up being the Warlock and had fun learning about the different traits and spells I could use. The warlock pets are handled nicely, as are spells like Rain of Fire.

I also really enjoyed learning how the raid mechanic worked for the game. Onyxia has three phases just like in WoW and they’re timed, meaning you only have a certain amount of turns to bring her down. Otherwise her card flips over and she kills everyone. Onyxia can also cast tailswipe, summon whelps and Deep Breath on her turn among her many attacks. Many cracks were made referencing the Onyxia Wipe Animation and we just had a great time. I picked up on what to do fairly quickly and near the end of the raid was able to pick out what moves I’d want to play on my next turn. In the end we downed the dragon. and I’ll probably have to build up a deck for the TCG and hopefully find a group of people to play with locally.

Another great card game I had the chance to demo was Summoner Wars. Created by Plaid Hat Games, Summoner Wars takes place in the world of Itharia where you can battle it out as a Goblin, Dwarf, Elf or Orc. I wound up battling it out as a Goblin, and once I got the hang of it avoided being massacred by my opponent by what I’m convinced was sheer luck. There are two different starter sets that you can buy which come with two of the factions, game board and all the other materials you will need to play the game, and at $24.95 per starter set is a pretty good deal.

To wind down on Sunday, I met up with some twitter people again to play Race for the Galaxy and Betrayal at House on the Hill. Race for the Galaxy was pretty fun, but admittedly I had more fun playing Betrayal at House on the Hill. I’ve always had an affinity for board games and this hit the spot for me. It was a fun mystery game where you get to build your own haunted house and try to avoid the person who winds up betraying you. The game is out of print, however it is said that an updated reprint of the game will hit shelves this fall, and I will probably pick it up.

All in all PAX East, as my first PAX, was a pretty awesome experience. I got to see some cool stuff, meet awesome people and play games. It was cool to have the chance to meet Carlos Ferro, the voice of Dom from Gears of War, who said he likes Gaming Angel. And meeting Wil Wheaton, who is actually one of my influences to write, was really great. It also clinched my need for wanting to go to PAX Prime. I’m glad that the first PAX East did so well since that means there’s a great chance of it being even bigger next year. So I will see you next year Boston!

I’m not big on board games lately, but at a party someone took out Chrononauts and it changed my view on card games.

Chrononauts is a time travel card game, where you play as a time traveler with a secret mission, a secret identity and the job of fixing Paradoxes. Your specific card has a series of events that you will need to have happen in order to win the game, although there are a few different ways that a player can win the game.  And, of course your mission will conflict with what the other players will need to accomplish.  Along the way you will also collect Artifacts that you need to win.  Winning allows your character to return to their own time.

So, how does a Paradox happen? Other players are able to change history by adjusting the TimeLine (the arrangement of the cards that acts like a game board).

The game itself does not take too long to play and was so much fun we started a second game right away. This is a game that I would consider a staple for a game ground, and one that any group of people can play and have fun with it: no matter the skill level. You may even learn something new about history!

Last week I had a hands-on with Disney’s original title for the Wii, Guilty Party. Guilty Party is a party game geared toward families and young children and where other Third Party Wii titles have failed Disney just might excel.

Guilty Party is created like a mystery board game akin to Clue. Stubbs the Zombie creator Wideload Games is working with Disney on Guilty Party, which results in a cute and hilarious game.

The title has a story that is woven through all the various mysteries to be solved. The clues are earned through various mini-games. Just because it’s a party game does not mean it has to be easy. There are levels of difficulty and the game will also increase the difficulty if it thinks the current level is too easy for you. The mini-games vary from things we have seen before to bribing a witness or staring them in the eyes. Everything uses the motion features of the Wii-mote controller.

After a successful challenge, the gamer will get a clue. Clues are gathered in the players notebook where gamers can go over the list of clues to figure out who they want to accuse.

The voice acting is very well done and helps bring the very creatively designed characters. I laughed throughout the entire demo.

Guilty Party will be available in the second half of 2010 and it just might be the first third party “party game” that families should pick up.

And these enemies will later decide to befriend you just so they can play this game and kick your puny attack score repeatedly out of revenge or retribution.

Players: 3-10, depending on how many expansion/theme decks are in your possession, and whether or not you have enough recreational leave available from your employer.
Ages: 12+
Genre: Strategy/RPG
Playing Time: 30 minutes minimum.
Manufacturer: Steve Jackson Games

BUY

While it has been available since 2001, Munchkin has long been considered a required staple in any game library, simply because there aren’t that many games that will have such a profound effect on players without a console and television acting as a conduit. Munchkin manages to inspire the best and worst out of all of us with a very simple premise: “kill the monsters, steal the treasure, stab your buddy.”

This card game is an ingenious spinoff of the RPG genre, recreating the elements of dungeon-crawling that are synonymous with Dungeons and Dragons. For those who have been brought up on D&D or even any RPG game developed by Bioware or Blizzard, you will recognise a lot of those elements in here (picking a class, a race, and levelling up after killing monsters). However, many of these role playing elements are left to chance, with the cards deciding if you will be an orcish bard or a half-elf thief. Leaving this up to chance may be detrimental to the player’s ability to successfully apply traditional strategy techniques, but it also contributes to this game running for an hour on average, although some people have claimed to have had a game that has continued for eight hours.

It is far too easy to make your friends fight your battles for you...

When you have your turn, you’ll kick down a door (draw a Door card) in order to explore a “room”. Most times, you will find a monster that you have to choose to fight or run away from. However, this door card might be a character class, a race card, or even a curse that makes you lose your armour or allows another player to take an item. If you have the good fortune to pick a monster, the fighting mechanics are simple: add up your level with your bonuses (armour, class, etc.), and see if this total outranks the level of your monster. If it does, you win, the monster dies, and you get to “loot the body”, which allows you to draw a number of Treasure cards. You also get to go up a level, which is the primary goal of the game – the first to reach level 10 wins the game.

Of course, if you lose, you die, and your fellow players can loot your body.

This is where the ability to stab your friends right royally in the behind comes into play, and it is no secret that your fellow players will be happy to help you in order to further hinder your efforts to reach level 10. They can help you to defeat any monster or curse (after negotiating for a share of the treasure, of course) or they can play whatever curses are in their hand to make the monster more difficult for you to beat.

Munchkin can be considered quite an illogical, random game where the inability to plan for the long term can be a turn-off. However, the jokes make up for it, and a fast-paced game where you have a limitless potential to cause your friends misery far outweighs the lack of careful game play.

And, of course, the primary reason I can think of is that this game gains its audience by its own self-deprecating humour, which somehow makes it accessible to a wide demographic. With many alternate themes of the original card game now available (including Munckin Fu, Space Munckin and Munchkin Booty) as well as a plethora of expansions for the original Munchkin deck, it is hard to foresee anyone being genuinely bored with this game.

Players: 3-6
Ages: 10+ (I recommend 12+)
Genre: Strategy
Playing Time: 20-60 minutes, depending on luck
Manufacturer: Cheapass Games

BUY

In order to play this game, you will also need enough money (paper or real, though I do not condone or suggest playing for realsies!) to give each player $2000 in denominations no smaller than $50. Monopoly and all of its alternate forms have money perfect for this, as do most little kids’ play cash registers. A d6 or standard 6-sided die is also needed.

The description from the Starlit Citadel website reads as follows: “In Unexploded Cow, you’re part of a mine clearing industry in France. Except to clear these mines and free the cities of France, you’re using some Mad Cows from England. They’ve got to be used for something right?” The theme and basis of this game is you are moving your herd of cows throughout France, hoping to take over the towns.

I do have to warn you that the rules are, at some points, poorly written and a little confusing. It’s best to talk these complicated parts through with whomever you’re playing with to see what the general consensus is about the reading of the rules. Essentially, there are three phases of a turn: draw, play, roll. You draw three cards at the start of the game, and two at the start of each turn. After you draw, you can play as many cards as you want. If you have four cows and an event card and want to play it all, you can! Each card, either a cow or an event, will have a price. You pay the price to the pot (explained below), and then put the card into play.

Cow cards are placed in front of you and this is your field. If you want to be really mean, you can put a cow in front of someone else (into their field) and make them pay the price of it. Granted you lose ownership of the cow, but you don’t have to pay for it. Event cards are played then discarded. The instructions for the events are written right on them, so it’s simple enough.

After you’ve played as many cards as you want, you take what’s called a “bomb roll.” To do this, you roll the d6 and, starting with the cow in the furthest right spot on your field, you count up until you get the number. You can only count each cow once so it there isn’t enough cows, then no bomb is found. If a bomb is found by a cow, that cow explodes and its owner (whomever has the cow in front of them) collects the amount of money on them. There are some specific special cows, but those are best to see for yourself. Let’s just say things can get really, really hectic, but a lot of fun!

One nice thing, though it can get complicated if you’re not careful, is the money system. This game has a “closed bank” system which means that there is no bank and all money paid will be won by another player. There is an ante at the beginning of the game that goes into a “bank” that doesn’t change amount, and then there is a “pot” where players pay money and get money from. So with a group of four people, there will be $200 tucked aside and the other $7800 will always be either with a player or in the pot.

I played this with a few friends, and we all agreed that it was a very fun game and worth buying. At first we were all a little confused, but after a few turns each and a couple games, we picked up on it. We were laughing hysterically, much to the distress of the two puppies that were jumping in and out of our laps, and had a blast. This is a great game for older kids because of the complexity and teenagers, but adults enjoy it, too. If you feel like random silliness and a good strategy game, then pick this up. It goes for about $10 and totally worth it!

Review product provided by Starlit Citadel and does not affect the outcome of this review.

Pokémon Rumble, a new game, combines board game and trading card game aspects in an all-included game set. The set comes with a playmat, 16 exclusive foil cards with the Rumble logo, 14 energy dice, 1 target die, and 14 player markers. Each player gets 2 markers, so this game is set for up to 7 people to grab the box and play! Everything is done on the mat and nothing extra is required, so it literally is a play right out of the box game, perfect for curious first-time players that may not have the means to buy packs and make full decks. The game is also designed as an accompaniment for the up-coming WiiWare game, Pokémon Rumble. This game has an MSRP of $9.99.

Trading Card Game fans get four new collector’s tins this holiday season. Each tin comes with four booster packs and either a Charizard, Garchomp, or Rayquaza Lv. X foil card. The Arceus Collector’s Tin debuts December 16 and contains a rare Lv. X Arceus card as well as the booster packs. No matter which you’d pick, you’ll be getting a spiffy tin and a nice boost to your collection. Each has an MSRP of $14.99.

Coming soon is Pokemon TCG: Platinum – Arceus. This is to help with the release of the TCG’s Platinum update. There will be new starter decks (about $11.99 each) and booster packs ($3.79 each). It will provide some new cards for current players, and starter decks are always a welcome thing for new players.

Well, that’s it for now everyone!

Frank Beddor

Not too long ago (at least it seems as such) it was announced that a Monopoly movie was going to be made by director Ridley Scott. And yesterday an article from the LA Times surfaced with an interview with Frank Beddor who will be writing the movie. Some may recognize Beddor’s name if they’ve read The Looking Glass Wars series, which is a re-imagining of the Alice in Wonderland story. In the LA Times article, Beddor talks about the plot of the movie, and well… I’ll let you read what he has to say:

“I created a comedic, lovable loser who lives in Manhattan and works at a real estate company and he’s not very good at his job but he’s great at playing Monopoly. And the world record for playing is 70 straight days – over 1,600 hours – and he wanted to try to convince his friends to help him break that world record. They think he is crazy. They kid him about this girl and they’re playing the game and there’s this big fight. And he’s holding a Chance card and after they’ve left he says, ‘Damn, I wanted to use that Chance card,’ and he throws it down. He falls asleep and then he wakes up in the morning and he’s holding the Chance card, and he thinks, ‘That’s odd.’

He’s all groggy and he goes down to buy some coffee and he reaches into his pocket and all he has is Monopoly money. All this Monopoly money pours out. He’s confused and embarrassed and the girl reaches across the counter and says, ‘That’s OK.’ And she gives him change in Monopoly money. He walks outside and he’s in this very vibrant place, Monopoly City, and he’s just come out of a Chance Shop. As it goes on, he takes on the evil Parker Brothers in the game of Monolopy. He has to defeat them. It tries to incorporate all the iconic imageries — a sports car pulls up, there’s someone on a horse, someone pushing a wheelbarrow — and rich Uncle Pennybags, you’re going to see him as the maître d’ at the restaurant and he’s the buggy driver and the local eccentric and the doorman at the opera. There’s all these sight gags.”

Now, I highly enjoyed the movie based on Clue, but I don’t think I can get behind this. I just see it being campy, and in a bad way. I think Clue worked because you can easily make a murder mystery movie with quirky characters that takes place in a big mansion (and having Tim Curry involved is always a plus).  But with Monopoly I think that it’ll be a stretch. I will give Beddor credit that he’s come up with an interesting take on how to make it work in a movie setting, I just doubt the final product will turn out well.

Then again maybe my pessimism will pay off later if the move does turn out good, but I’m not keeping my hopes up.

Via Aint It Cool News

BUY

Oshi, the game of influence, is a board game with a very nice feel to it. It has a simple layout and a straightforward style of gameplay. The main point is to use your pieces to push your opponents pieces off the board. This is pretty nice because for those that know a little bit of Japanese would know that Oshi means “push”.

The board is a wooden square divided up into a grid. On each side, there are small markers on the board itself that shows players that haven’t played before where their pieces are supposed to go. The pieces are designed to have a set number of levels. The smallest piece has one layer and can move one square in any direction. The two level pieces can move two squares in any direction, and, of course, the three layer pieces can move three squares in any direction. By any direction, that means forward, back, left, or right. The trick is that a piece can only move in one direction per turn.

Another thing about the pieces is how they can push each other. A one-layer piece can push one other piece. Two layer pieces can move up to two, and, of course, three layer pieces can move up to three other pieces. The pushed pieces can be your own to get your key pieces out of danger or multiple pieces of your opponent’s to try and get a big score. Score is the important part of this game; you need 7 points to win the game. Again, one layer pieces are worth one point and so on.

The game is actually pretty simple to play, like I described above. It is a strategy game that does require some thinking. It’s no where near as complex as Go or even chess, but it can be a little more difficult than checkers. It has potential to become a classic kid’s game, while still being something older kids and even teenagers and adults would enjoy.

My own experience with this game was unwrapping it and playing with a few of my friends. We’re all in college and supposedly smart and most of us enjoy doing logic puzzles, yet we managed to find enough challenge in this simple yet addicting board game while playing against each other to play game after game for a couple hours. We managed to find some of the best ways to get out of situations that appeared a lot, like learning when it was a good idea to move our own pieces or even sacrificing a piece of ours for the sake of taking more points from the other player.

For puzzle game fans, this is a definite buy. You can find it in most online stores for $19-$30, which makes it a good price for such an addicting board game.

Review product was provided by Starlit Citadel, and does not affect the outcome of this review.