ОГЛЯД НАСТІЛЬНОЇ ГРИ PINATA У грі Piñata гравці беруть на себе роль дітей на святкуванні дня народження, обоє намагаються з усіх сил зламати піньяту та отримати всередині смачну цукерку. Розумне керування вашими картками допоможе вам першим розкрити цю оболонку пап’є-маше. Піньята — це весела швидка карткова гра для двох гравців, у якій гравці протистоять один одному, обидва намагаються отримати якомога більше цукерок певного кольору, щоб виграти бажані медалі. Будь першим, хто заробить 3 медалі та стань переможцем вечірки до дня народження! Piñata постачається з 4 полями для маркерів великого розміру, які вказують, скільки цукерок належить на цій картці та чи намагаєтеся ви грати низько чи високо. Колода з 54 карт червоного, жовтого, зеленого, фіолетового, рожевого та білого кольорів (джокерів), кожна з різними номерами. 5 карток медалей, які використовуються для відзначення перемоги. Значення на медальній картці вказує, скільки цукерок цього кольору потрібно, щоб отримати медаль.  Кілька дерев’яних цукерок чудової форми в непрозорому тканинному пакеті.ПРИГОТУВАННЯ ДО ГРИ Приготувати Piñata швидко та легко. Перемішайте великі дошки (і випадковим чином переверніть їх набік) і розкладіть між обома гравцями в порядку від 1 до 4. Витягніть випадкову кількість цукерок із мішка відповідно до числа на кожній плитці та покладіть туди цукерки. Повторюйте, доки на кожній великій дошці не буде правильна кількість цукерок. Розкладіть 5 нагородних карток збоку.Перетасуйте колоду і роздайте кожному гравцеві по 8 карт. Виберіть першого гравця та починайте гру. ІГРОВИЙ ПРОЦЕС Мета гри «Піньята» полягає в тому, щоб гравець зіграв певні карти на своїй стороні кожної великої дошки «Піньята». Дошка зі стрілкою, спрямованою вгору, означає, що гравець намагається розіграти комбінацію карт із найбільшим значенням очок, тоді як стрілка вниз означає найменше значення очок. Кількість цукерок на кожній дошці визначає, скільки..

 У 1995 році Клаус Тойбер представив світові Settlers of Catan. Того року він виграв Spiel des Jahres і, без жодних гіпербол, назавжди змінив настільні ігри. Через чотири роки Тойбер запустив свою гру у відкритий космос із The Starfarers of Catan. Ця версія включала набагато більшу дошку з планетними системами, нові ресурси для збору та одну велику ракету на гравця. На жаль, виробничі аспекти підвели гру. Ракета та деталі, які до неї прикріплюються, часто ламаються під час повторних дій. У результаті Starfarers зникли з прилавків, залишивши неоднозначну спадщину. З того часу Settlers of Catan було перейменовано на Catan із багатьма розширеннями. Такі люди, як я, які давно чули про те, що Starfarers кращі за стандартний Catan, терпляче чекали перевидання Starfarers. У 2019 році це перевидання нарешті потрапило в магазини. Він поставлявся з покращеними пластиковими деталями та модульним полем. Але чи справді Catan: Starfarers щось хороше? І чи може він бути кращим за Catan? Давайте подамо гру до столу, щоб самі переконатися, чи не так? ПРИГОТУВАННЯ ДО ГРИ Ви почнете зі створення ігрового поля. Воно складається з шести частин головоломки розміром 11 x 11 дюймів, які після збору матимуть кілька порожніх місць, які ви заповните відповідними частинами долілиць. В альманасі гри запропоновано налаштування першої гри, включно з тим, які планетарні системи (відповідні фігури до порожніх місць) куди йдуть, а також позиції стартових фігур кожного гравця в основі поля. Ми дотримувалися цього і виявили, що це призвело до добре збалансованої першої гри, але потім змінили приготування для наступних ігор.  Планети в кожній планетарній системі мають свій символ. Знайдіть відповідні диски та покладіть їх символом догори на кожну планету. Відкладіть усі інші диски вбік.  Помістіть усі картки ресурсів у лоток, що входить до комплекту, переконавшись, що картки товарів увійшли в слот, позначений 2:1. Кожна з інших карт..

PIES GAME REVIEW I love old pictures and illustrations of fruits like those found in botany textbooks from the late 1800s. The attention to detail is impressive, the gradation of shades and shapes, flaws. Cards for Pies captivated me, lovingly executed work in an identical style. I found myself getting stuck on the cards while going through them. These cards create a world with a distinctly pastoral feel, the spine of the book covered in dust. Then I got to the tokens with the pie cut out on them, and I started to worry. They did not feel aesthetic. I caught myself thinking about the old writer's maxim: "Don't put a hat on top of a hat."  Pies is supposed to be an empowerment game and is being marketed as such, but that's flat out wrong. There are no suits, no pressure to follow, no trumps. The game exhibits none of the defining characteristics of the genre. This is an auction game about collecting fruits and recipes to turn them into pies.  Each player places one card from his hand in the middle of the table. Then, from the highest card to the lowest, everyone can choose any of the cards played to add to their table. Some cards have recipes that require fruit combinations, while others give you an immediate bonus. Bonuses can be three Pi tokens that can change the value of the card you play, the ability to steal a card from another player, or the aforementioned dog that protects your painting from being stolen. If you have successfully collected the required fruit combinations, you can turn over the recipe card and discard the corresponding fruit. This flipped card is now locked, a safe source of late game points.  Pies are boring from start to finish. There are very few solutions. Playing cards is rarely fun. The quality of solutions is somewhere between limited and non-existent. The only enjoyment to be found is when you play a Pi token that changes the value of your card by 3.14 so that your card is exactly 0.14 higher than the..

 Project GIPF is a series of eight abstract strategy games designed by Chris Burm. Each game has a hexagonal playing area and involves reducing the number of pieces or mechanics of the playing area. The way they approach these elements is not only unique, but also combines what I think are the best qualities in most theses: simple rules that reveal a complex game. If you've never heard of Project GIPF, GIPF , TAMSK , ZÈRTZ , DVONN , YINSH , PÜNCT , TZAAR , and LYNGK , I encourage you to look them up in cardboard form or digitally online. They are worth your time. Today's game: TAMSK  Before I begin, I know some supporters may object to including TAMSK here. This is because in 2007, when Broome introduced TZAAR , he stated that it would replace TAMSK in the GIPF project. fine. When you write a review about a GIPF project, feel free not to mention it. Having played TAMSK, I know it deserves a mention every time a GIPF project comes up. That's because TAMSK , a game about balancing the falling sands of time against a rapidly shrinking board, is a great game. Great game. GAME PROCESS The game takes place on the hexagonal black field located between them. Each player has three hourglass timers; one takes the black timers and the other takes the red timers. You will also have 32 white rings.  At the start of each turn, you'll take one of your three hourglasses, flip it over and place it in any available pipe next to where it started. You will then place one of your rings on top of the hourglass where it will fall around the tube that holds the hourglass. As soon as one player places the hourglass in the tube, the next player can move. They don't have to wait for the ring to sweep through the hourglass just played. When a tube has rings equal to its height, that tube is out of play. This means that the outermost trumpets can only be played once, the second "ring" of hexes can be played twice, and so on. For an hourglass timer..

 In this review, I want to talk about an unusual board game. It is unusual for two (even three) reasons: firstly, it is based on a popular computer game (no, no, this is not Civilization), and secondly, this game is an action game. A real action game in a desktop version! And thirdly, the game was successful, which, as you understand, does not always happen in games (or movies) based on well-known franchises. So, meet: Gears of War, or "Six of War"! The board game Gears of War is based on the computer game of the same name, released on PC and consoles in three parts, which has gained considerable popularity. To be honest, I haven't played the original, so I don't even know who the Locasts are and why they fight the humans. Then, you ask, how did I buy it if I'm not a fan of this game on PC? For several reasons: FFG, Corey Konicka, and fancy Artificial Intelligence (AI). The game promised a never-before-seen opponent AI (yes, this is a cooperative game in which one to four people face off against a cardboard dummy), and looking ahead, I will say that the developer managed to fully realize the illusion that you are playing with a fairly intelligent opponent. And all it took was a deck of cards! A very unusual game genre. Although there were games with a similar content before that (Doom, Space Hulk), it was quite a long time ago and each of them had a villain player. So, this is a real tactical shooter! I wonder how Konichka managed to adequately transfer the infernal shooter from the computer to the table and also turn it into a multiplayer? Miracles, and sometimes...  Perhaps, I will tell you about the composition of the box. Since Gears of War was released by FFG, the quality of miniatures and maps should not be mentioned separately - and so it is clear that it is excellent. Although, I will stop a little bit on minky - I have not seen such high-quality ones anywhere on the tables (or so I think). The detailing is excellent, you can see every..

REVIEW In Periodic: a Game of the Elements (hereafter referred to as Periodic), players compete to collect sets of elements and advance their research as they navigate the periodic table. Doing this research requires energy, but a lot of it. Players will need to use their reserves effectively to find the items they need to complete the objective cards and progress along the achievement track. When the game ends, points are earned for the objectives achieved as well as the achievement track, and the player with the most points wins. If you're just curious to know what I think of Periodic, feel free to scroll down to the Opinions section. For the rest... PREPARATION Preparing Periodic is relatively simple. The game board is laid out, and 8 element group cards are randomly placed around it, 4 on each side of the board. The objective cards are separated by color and shuffled into four face down decks. They are placed above the playing field, and the top card of each is turned face up.  Objective cards depict specific sets of items. The objective dice that correspond to the objective cards are then placed on top of each of those items, the bonus tiles for each stack of objective cards are placed on top of the corresponding objective cards, and the lab tokens are set aside. Finally, one energy is placed on each of the periodic trends below the periodic table. After choosing their player's color and collecting their pieces, each player gets some energy to start the game. After the starting player is chosen, each player places one of their lane markers on one of the element group cards (dictated by turn order), their flask on the element with the lowest number corresponding to that element group, and then another lane marker on the first place of achievement track. You are now ready to play Periodic. MOVING In Periodic, players will use energy to move their vials around the game board so they can find the items they need to fulfill the requirements..

 Tales of Arabian Nights awaits you with adventures, quests for glory and funny situations. You will wander through magical lands, meet sultans and beggars, and sometimes thieves. Difficult tests of your skills await you, because the goal is to build your destiny with your own hands and bring the story of the greatest adventure to the Book of the Arabian Nights. COMPONENTS  Among the components of the game, the Book of Stories immediately draws attention to itself, which looks like ancient game books. This fat volume weighs perhaps 75 percent of the total volume of the game. Its constant and important companion is the table of reactions.  Also in the box are 4 decks of cards (encounters, treasures, statuses and quests), reference sheets, skill tokens, fate and glory point markers, 3 time of day tokens and a playing field. Plus cardboard characters for each of the players (up to 6), wealth tokens, origins, objectives and a character sheet. And three cubes: one is a fate cube, the other two are ordinary cubes. The illustrations are very beautiful, the quality of the components does not cause complaints, except for the slightly curved field. GOAL OF THE GAME The real goal of the game is to immerse yourself in the story of your adventures, but there is a formal winner: the first person to complete their goal by accumulating both fate and glory points in a certain amount, and then return to Baghdad, wins. PREPARATION FOR THE GAME The game unfolds quite quickly and simply. Everyone takes their character sheet, matching markers, and a cardboard figure and places it in Baghdad, and the Wealth, Fame, and Fortune markers on the starting divisions on the track to the side of the playing field. After that, everyone draws a quest card. All of them are different and require the fulfillment of certain conditions. For example, visit certain places, learn certain skills, or return home after being enslaved. Completing quests rewards fame and..

 Designer Scott Almes is best known for the Tiny Epic series of games published under his Gamelyn Games label. Our team reviewed about five of them, and we generally found the games to be okay—nothing incredibly special, but nothing incredibly bad either. Then I reviewed Roller Coaster Rush, another Almes design, and it was probably the worst game I've played in 2023. Really terrible. So, based purely on recency bias, I was a little freaked out when I opened the box for Capstone Games' US-published Beer & Bread 2022 edition. Almost immediately, these fears disappeared. If Beer & Bread landed on my desk in 2023, I'd probably name it my favorite two-player-only game, just ahead of Sky Team. A LITTLE OF THIS, BUT NO MORE OF THAT My review of Beer & Bread starts with a scoring system. A bit like Between Two Cities, New Ark, Tigris and Euphrates and other classics, Beer and Bread is a race for points by completing orders on two different sets of cards, beer cards and bread cards. The lower of the two scores becomes the player's final score, so balancing is key to victory. Each player represents an unnamed village upstream from the opposing village. For six years, the villages will hold friendly competitions to see who can make the most beer and bread. Each year is a circle, and each circle is simple. Given a hand of five cards, players must use a card for one of its three functions. Harvest and Store, which produces one of the game's five resources, which will be stored in a nine-room warehouse. Craft and Sell, an order fulfillment feature that requires the player to spend 4-7 resources to obtain a card Upgrade and clear by requiring a player to slide a card under certain parts of their side of the board to have permanent or ultimate power. It also allows you to move score cards from the bakery and/or brewery to get points at the end of the game. In odd-numbered rounds, players play one card each and then..

 Sipping rum from a deep mug, tucking a dagger and a couple of pistols into our belts, we set out to set sails on ships and furrow the seas playing Merchants and Marauders . GAMEPLAY What is this game about? This is a game about sailors who wander between several islands of the Caribbean basin and trade some with honest trade, and some with robbery (caravans) of merchants and colleagues who pass by.  The essence of the game is very simple: swim, trade, steal, earn 10 glory points and you are the winner. Overlaid on this simple system is a set of rules that specify exactly how this is done. For example, you can trade every time you enter the port, while each city has a "scarce" product for which you can get more money, and by selling 3 pieces at once, you can get a glory point and be one step closer to victory. Also, with the money earned, you can buy various minor (but nice!) improvements for your ship, such as sails, guns, hammocks for team members, etc. In general, the non-combat part of the game revolves very much around the ports - in addition to trading and buying improvements, in some ports you can get missions (which are more often reduced to swimming somewhere and passing a check of one of the parameters there by rolling one or more dice), even in the city you can get a rumor map (roughly the same as missions, but available in all ports). For both missions and rumors, you also need to check the "influence" parameter of your captain with dice, no dice rolled - no rumor/mission. You can also repair a damaged ship at the port or buy a new one (a glory point is also given for the purchase).  A player has 3 actions on their turn that they can spend moving to an adjacent sea zone, entering/exiting a port, or trying to find a merchant/other player hanging out in the same zone (by checking the "reconnaissance" option with the dice). Here we smoothly approach the description of the combat unit. For attacks on neutral merchants, the..

PLOT The Betrayer's War takes place after the events of Tales of Darkness. If you don't have a completed Tales of Darkness campaign saved, you'll have to go through a "short" (if the rulebook is to be believed) cut-scene before the game, which is actually 40 minutes long, making choices, making decisions, etc. .Keep that in mind.  The adventures of our group began with the pursuit of a thief in a watchtower. After that, the plot becomes more open; we are trying to capture the locations of the various factions scattered across Terrinoth to help Waikar the Betrayer defend Terrinoth from the dragons and Uthuk I'Lan.  We haven't finished the campaign yet, but it feels like Traitor's War is paying more attention to each individual hero and the group as a whole. The story of each character is better developed than in Tales of Darkness. Moreover, what is especially pleasing, it is woven into the gameplay. Scenarios not only focus on individual heroes, but often change their playstyle in new fan-made ways. In particular, with the help of upgrade cards, which are tied to new types of tokens; For example, darkness (umbra), curtain (shroud). The first gives special bonuses to certain characters (yes, Chance will learn to essentially teleport), and the second allows you to dodge the character's target enemies.  Regarding the components. In "Traitor's War" new, experienced versions of the heroes we know appear, and the bad ones also look great. Some plot enemies have their own special minion, and they appear more than once throughout the story. There is also a giant, impressive dragon miniature. And a new three-dimensional terrain that is used in various scenarios. I will not spoil much; I'll just say that the first three scenarios manage this terrain in very interesting ways. The authors perfectly integrated the plot into the script. We encountered many scenarios where it was interesting to follow the development of the plot from beginning to end...