Geek vs Life

Hey I know another board game review. This is not even created in Germany. It was created by a man who now lives in Oregon. There is very little strategy in the game, and in fact takes place over a standard board. The game is not a parody of life, but a respectful update. It now includes social economic class, gender discrepancies, and other life realities. You know like drugs, sex, and war. It is called “The Game of Real Life.”

The goal in this board game is similar to “Life,” it has a middle and end. There are jobs, and spaces where life happens. The objective is different. In “Life” the goal is to have the most money at the end. In the game of “Real Life,” it is to have the most happiness when you die. In this game like real life, money does not equate to happiness.

Also in this game you can die without making it to other side of the board. In fact it is quite common. Just like real life, “real life” has life threatening emergencies. You could have a heart attack which kills you before middle age. What determines when you die? Health points (hp). You roll how many you get at the start of the game. As you progress the board you will land on spaces that give you health points, happiness, or loss of health points. You will never lose happiness you have gained just like real life.

Is it a Role Playing Games?  Kinda. After randomness gives you,  your sex, class, and healthiness, you name the child. As you progress on the board, life events occur. For example you have created a rich girl with 30 hp. You name her Paris. Now at first she comes across her being spoiled, but she gets attacked for being the wrong skin tone. Then her father murders an Olympic Wrestler. How does that affect Paris? Especially when she lands on the space of finding spirituality. Maybe she converts to another religion, like Islam. Who knows? The spaces determine your character. To facilitate this you have a diary on your score card.

You can write down how you character changes. How these life events change her life. You can just keep track of happiness, money, and health of course. Yet it is more fun, when you write down these events and changes like a diary. It is notably true after the winner is declared, and each player reads out how their life developed. It is riot.

A couple of notes, as mentioned earlier, a character can die early in the game, however they can still win. Like real life, “Real Life” gives more happiness for riskier behavior. Lots of drugs are fun, but you may become addicted, and OD on said drug(s). Additionally drugs, and sex are optionally. You can decide if your character participates in these activities or not. Nobody can force you to have sex or take drugs. It boils down to choices. (Your character’s choices may influence what they choose or not choose. Or you can play strategically. This is a fun and easy game to play. Those with more imagination will enjoy it more. It sometimes boils down to a weird creative writing assignment.

This is not meant to be an official game rules. The game is exclusively sold at www.gameofreallife.com so buy it there.

Today’s board game review: Carcassonne.

Carcassonne was an important trade route in medieval France. It had many walled cities, and many roads taking you around the countryside. This where the game takes place. The cool thing about the board is every time you play the game it changes. It is a tile based board game. You randomly flip over a piece and build the board. It is somewhat like a puzzle the pieces have to make sense. A piece with a road has to connect to a road, and city to city.

The object is simply. Have more points than you opponent. How do you get points? You get points by your followers. Your followers become medieval occupations. These occupations are knight, thief, monk, or farmer. (I promise this is not a role playing game.) You have a total of seven followers, however you don’t just decide what follower is what occupation, the tile informs what choices you have.

If you have a tile that has a road on it, then you place a thief on it. It it has part of a city on it, you may place a knight on the city. If it has a monastery then you can place a monk. If it has green fields, you can place a farmer. In fact most tiles give you two or three choices. The caveat is say, if Joe has placed a thief on a road, if I connect the road on my turn, I cannot place a thief on that same road knowingly he has a thief on it. Now sometimes things build into each other, and if that is the case whomever has the most followers of that occupation get the points for the completion of building. If there is a ties in the amount of followers then both the players get points.

How does one complete building? Well it depends on what you need to build. Roads are the most easy. They have to start somewhere and end somewhere. Doing so nets the thief one point for each tile that the road occupies. The knight gets his points when his city is completely surrounded by walls. He gets two points be tile, and sometime bonuses points if there is shield emblem on the city tiles. The monk get his points by being completely surrounded by correctly placed tiles. Imagine the cloister is the center of a Tic Tac Toe board. This gives the monk nine points. These followers come back when you complete their objective giving you more chances to deploying your followers in other professions. That does leave one occupation not discussed.

The occupation of the farmer is the most difficult for new players. The farmer gives a player four points at the end of the game for being in a field next to a completed city. The hard part for new players is a field is bordered by roads, rivers, city walls, and edges of tiles. This can make some fields quite large “feeding” many cities (and conversely quite small), also you need to have the most farmers to win a city. (This is like the other occupations, but doubling up happens more by the end of the game.) Again farmers don’t get points until the end of the game, so when placing a farmer, one has to be careful. You are not seeing that investment until the end. Remember you have only a total of seven followers.

Anyhow this is not meant to be an official rule book, just to give you a taste. It is an easy strategic game. It is has more to do with chance. Will you get the tiles to complete your follower’s objective? Should you go for easy points or place your piece in a quagmire of a huge city. If and when should you place your farmer?

The game is played with two to five players. It takes about thirty to forty minutes to play. You may get expansions that add more tiles, more professions, and just more strategy. It is a simple game to play but offers many possibilities. It is not intimating, and again has no warring with other players. Although you can screw them over…

It is a perfect game for a board game party. It contains very little math, and almost no trading. It is easy to learn.

Hey people I don’t know if you know or not, but playing board games is pretty geeky. Or so I have been told. It doesn’t matter that the past time is gaining popularity and perhaps at its peek. Of course that last sentence is only true in Europe, especially in Germany. Yet Americans are Europhiles, so give it a year or two. Everyone else will catch up. In the meantime, I am going to suggest the game “Settlers of Catan. (The name in English.)” (This game was created in Germany.)

Settlers of Catan’s goal is simply be the first to gain 10 points with your new civilization. You gain points by creating new settlements, or growing your settlements into cities. There are other ways to get points but those two previous methods are the most common ways you gain your points. You even start off with two settlements and two roads. (In essence you start with two points in Settlers of Catan.) Another thing to remember you cannot build a settlement adjacent to another settlement or city. Also you need to have at least two roads to separate each settlement or city. Roads give you no points for the most part.

The first question you should ask is how do I build this objects. The reply would be resources. The resources are brick, wheat, ore, wool, and wood. These resources are represented by spaces on the board, where they are created. Brick for example is mined from the hills space. Forests spaces created the wood resource. Each of these spaces are given a value  of  two through twelve, except for the value of seven. Before each players turn you roll two dice. The value of dice determines which resource is “created.” Of course true gamblers and statisticians alike will tell you that some values will be more likely then others. The number seven will come up the most on two six sided dice.

The seven if you remember has no value in creating resources. In fact it activates the Robber pawn. The robber pawn is placed on a resource space. Every time that value is rolled the resources are blocked by the robber. The only way to get the robber off a space is someone to roll another seven or to play a soldier card. (I will get into that later.) The soldier card does not attack other players.

In fact to get this out of the way, this is not Risk. You don’t physically attack people, take their land, or resource cards. This not a game of conquest, but of diplomacy. A player could wait until their resources are all rolled, but the way a player primarily gets their resource is through trading with another player. The player’s turn gets to a initiate trade. Everything is fair to trade, so trade wisely. For example a player, may need wheat to build a settlement, so they trade two ore to procure the resource they need.

These are not all the rules, nor should they be consulted as a rule book. This is just to give you an idea. The cool thing is every time you play Settlers (as it is affectionately known) the island and the values of the island changes. So the game is very re-playable. It is so gratifying to play a game where it isn’t attack after attack. It is also pleasing to sneak in a victory, while trading with the point leader. It is also addicting, one that I fear I have not adequately conveyed in this review.

The game is for three to four players and takes about forty five minutes to play. You can buy expansions to change the game up. I have not played any of these expansions, so I cannot comment on them. (One of the expansion allows up to 5-6 players to play instead of 3-4. It is also adds more amounts of resources to the Island.) I can add that Settlers of Catan doesn’t need to have the expansions to be fun.

What you do if you had one to seven friends over for dinner? What would you do after dinner and the resulting clean up? Would you go out to the bars? Would you put on a movie? Would all disperse like a riot, when confronted with tear gas? Could I offer a suggestion? How about a board game? How about a game called “Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot?”

Killer Bunnies is a strategic card game, when a player tries to get the Magic Carrot. This game should not be confused with a card collecting game ala “Magic: The Gathering” or its ilk. (If one has played a card collecting game, they will be familiar with the ideas of rounds, turns, and upkeep.) One starter box is all you will ever need to play the game. (You can get booster boxes, but more on that later.)

So two things you need to remember in winning the game. First, you need to get the Magic Carrot to win. This is made difficult, because there are twelve possible carrots. Also the Magic Carrot changes every game, in a method like “Clue.” It could be the first carrot you received or the last carrot taken. So the best strategy is getting as many carrots as possible, but if you only receive one carrot, you still have a chance to win the game, albeit a small chance. How do you get carrots? Well there is a store, where you can buy carrots. Of course the store can become closed, which means no carrots can be bought. There are also cards that give you one or even two carrots. Once the final carrot is taken from the carrot pile, the game is over instantly. Second, you need a bunny alive at the end of the game. In fact, most cards you use, you need a bunny alive. So bunnies equal good, and are as important as carrots. So the best strategy in regards to the bunnies is killing the other opponents’ bunnies. (You should also try to keep your bunny alive or add more bunnies to your side.) This is achieved primarily through “Weapon” cards, which destroy other bunnies. You can also use cards that starve or thirst another player’s bunnies. So again those are the two things you need to remember, because they result in a win!

Of course there are other rules, and cards, but they all finesse to get you to victory! Another thing that sets this game apart is that it is planning of cards. Most cards have to be played two rounds later. They have to go through what is known as “Run.” So you place a card, face down, and wait two rounds to use it. This requires obvious strategy. It also breaks hearts. The result being that two rounds later your bunny is dead, and that cool card you wanted is now discarded. In fact, it was probably a “Choose a Carrot” card. So nothing is predictable, and constant change requires changing implements of strategy.

There are some cards that don’t have to go through the “Run.” They are called “Special” or “Very Special” cards. Specials cards are played during your turn, instead of flipping over a “Run” card. Very Special cards are used during anyone’s turn, and don’t count as a card being played, enabling you to play a “Run” or “Special” card during your turn.

Two other types of cards,” Money”, which go towards buying food or carrots, and “Play Immediately” which always kills your bunnies.

This may sound overly confusing. It isn’t really. Your actual turn is almost the same every time. Remember you have two cards flipped down called the “Run.” The first thing you do is flip over that top card. Do what ever the flipped card tells you to do. Be it a bunny, kill another bunny, or gain a carrot. Push what was the bottom “Run” position to the top “Run” position. Draw a card, and compare it with the rest of your hand. (You have five cards in your hand at the beginning and end of your turn.) Place whatever card you choose, including the recently drawn card, into the previous empty bottom “Run” card spot. This signifies the end of your turn.

This isn’t all the rules, and should not be misconstrued as the rules. Go to www.KillerBunnies.com to find the official regulations, or purchase the game.

As stated earlier you only need the starter box to have the complete game; however, you can get booster decks, which add more stratagems. For example the “Red Booster” adds a weapon shop, where you can buy back used or discarded weapons. You can also buy shields that block a weapon, but the shield is only good for one use. Oh, yeah four more carrots are added to the already twelve carrots, prolonging the game. There are nine boosters in total. A couple of notes on boosters, one is that you need to purchase the boosters in order. You can find the information on the boxes or website about what the following booster is. The second thing is the game is complete with any starter or booster that you get. For example you could buy the first two boosters of “Red” and “Purple.” You shuffle those decks with the blue and yellow cards of the starter box, but you don’t need more boosters to play the game. The game is complete if you stop buying boosters right there. Of course you can always buy more, and add the card to your deck.

It is a fun, devious, time killer, of a killing bunny game. What really gets people into the game is the strategy, with the combination of luck. The strategy is real easy to understand. Keep your bunny alive, and kill the others, while questing for that magical carrot. Yet, because it isn’t a pure strategic game, it becomes a broader game for the possible audience. The luck of draw changes the game. You never know what you are going to get. Hell, even winning is pure luck. It all boils down to who has the “Magic Carrot.” If you have all eleven carrots, and your opponent has only one…well the odds are in your favor, but you’re not guaranteed a victory. Unless of course, you kill your opponents’ bunnies. The game is a perfect balance of luck and tactics.