Uno is liked by absolutely everyone who played it - a proven fact! The rules are simple and easy to remember, and the games last 15-20 minutes. A deck for playing Uno contains only 108 cards. There are cards with the numbers 0 to 9 of four suits, as well as special cards: 8 "Take Two" cards, 8 "Back Move" cards, 8 "Skip a Move" cards, 4 "Order Color" cards, 4 "Order Color and take four." Each player is dealt 7 cards and the first card is placed for discard. The goal of the game is to be the first to get rid of all the cards in your hand. The winner gets points according to the cards remaining in the hands of the other players.  Each player in Uno discards one card during his turn in such a way that the discarded card matches the color or face value of the card discarded by the previous player. Special cards bring a lot of surprises to the game. For example, with the "Skip Turn" card, you force the next player to… you won't believe it… skip a turn! You can also change the direction of the move with the "Opposite" card, that is, if the move was transmitted clockwise, then the "Opposite" card changes the direction counterclockwise. By discarding a Take Two card, you can force the next player to take two cards and skip the turn. You can order the desired color using the "Order Color" card. Any suit can be used for this card. And the worst thing is the "Order a color and take four" card, using which you can both order the color you need and force the next player to take 4 cards! When one of the players has only one last card left in his hand, he must say "UNO!". If he forgot to do this, and one of the players noticed it, then he forgot to say the magical UNO! takes two cards from the deck. But be on the alert yourself, your opponents are watching the number of your cards, making sneaky plans and will also use special cards against you and each other in every possible way! "Uno" is a great game for the company! Parties fly by quickly and are..

 I'm back with a box of colorful cubes, cards and coin tokens. From the euro, that is. This time an unremarkable one, about which no one says much. Maybe they are hiding something, trying to prevent such a great game from being played by tabletop players all over the world? Let's figure it out. At first glance, everything looks quite ordinary. The Chilean port city of Valparaiso is the port to give the name to another box of euros about how some men try to sell the more expensive gray cubes for the maximum number of pesos to other men who trade orange cubes. But what are they hiding? The secret to chili and fiery gameplay? WHAT'S IN THE BOX? Two-sided playing field for 2-3 and 4-5 players. The sides differ in the number of villages on the island and slots for trade dice.  Tablets for players to stockpile resources and plan their actions using cards.  A pile of cardboard tokens that includes coins, trading tokens, and the first player's marker.  A pile of wood, consisting of meeples, houses and player ships, as well as resource cubes of three types.  An hourglass is especially for narrow-minded people who can't figure out what they want to do and thus annoy others. Mechanically not used in the game, except for the above purpose.  Action Cards: Five decks of 8 cards for each player and a small neutral deck that can be purchased during the game. GAME PROCESS Valparaiso is pretty much standard Euro, where you exchange resources for points, but with little interesting chips. Games without them are usually so unremarkable that they don't even reach the top seven on BGG. In the analyzed box, the rating is almost exactly 7, this is not a very high indicator, and further I will explain why the game is not accepted by the community. But now we will consider the features of the gameplay, and there are two of them that stand out: 1. Programming of processes per round. From the start of the game, everyone has a hand of 8 action..

 I would like to offer you a review of Reichbusters - an ambiguous game that was heavily criticized after its release. It's worth noting that I have decent experience in the dungeon crawler genre, and that I played version 1.1 with the errata, solo. In short, I think Reichbusters is a very good and unique game that suffers from being extremely unfriendly to newbies. PROS Uniqueness.  Surprised? You probably thought that Reichbusters is another representative of an endless variety of crawlers tied to "choose an action - roll the dice." But Reichbusters is a completely different game. It is related to competent drawing of action cards, hand management and creation of chains of devastating combinations. Your characters are true death machines, and the Nazis can only deal serious damage to you by attacking in a mob. The game expects you to annihilate multiple enemies per turn and encourages a playstyle accordingly. Until the alarm goes off, your goal is to make sure that at the end of your character's turn there are no Nazis left in range. Something like X-COM on the highest difficulty: you have to wipe out all the enemies without giving them a chance to fire back. In my opinion, Reichbusters is much closer to Dungeon Alliance (only with dice) than it is to traditional crawlers.  Fan As soon as you break through the obstacles, the game will play with all colors and become a very beautiful self. There are almost no residents with components (before the alarm sounds). Compared to some "Blade and sorcery" Reichbusters, one might say, even minimalistic. You focus on optimizing your moves, not calculating AI, modifiers, etc. After the alarm sounds, the game process slows down a bit: you will have to fill and move small amounts in large quantities. However, it becomes easier with experience. Bad guys always activate in the same sequence, always move in predictable ways, and always combine their attacks into one powerful attack. So..

 Biblios is one of my favorite fillers. Since I bought it, I've probably played 30 games. A little bit for a filler, you might say. I have two excuses: 1. When you have over a hundred games in your collection, you go to game stores, you often play on your friends' boards, etc., even 10 games for some home toys is a good indicator. 2. Biblios belongs to the category of thorough fillers. That is, the party leaves for 30-40 minutes. It is not for you to fill the counter of duels in the "Scottish Duel". RULES The game takes place in two large asymmetric phases. Phase 1 - sorting the cards and putting them on the hand. Players take apart the entire deck. It is done like this: a player takes one card at a time and must immediately decide whether he takes it into his hand (1 card!), puts it in the auction deck (1 card!) or lays it out for other players (1, 2 or 3 - depending number of opponents). After 3-5 cards are dealt, other players deal with 2-3 face up cards. The move is passed to the next player.  Phase 2 - auction. Here, players trade for cards by opening them from one of the auction decks. At the same time, you need to pay for colored cards with numbers with money, and for money cards with the number of face-down cards discarded from your hand. Cubes? There are dice in the game, but you don't have to roll them. They lie on a special field with the number three up. During the game, cards can be dropped that change the value on the dice by +1 or -1. The top value of the die is the victory points that are awarded at the end of the game. Whoever has the largest sum on browns will receive points from the upper face of the brown cube, etc. The sum of the points on the received cubes determines the winner. IMPRESSION The rules are simple as two by two, and the process is very gambling. That is why we periodically use the game as a gateway for newcomers. With whom did we play it and with random companions on the train, with..

 An event occurred in 2018. It took place only for fans of abstract beautiful games, and perhaps it is even worth cutting the circle of those involved in "fans of Rainer Knytsia's work". But it definitely happened. The reincarnation of his best game (of which there are several hundreds) Tigris & Euphrates was released. An abstract deck that was reissued even by FFG, one of the trendsetters in the field of amerithrash! "Tiger and Euphrates" is one of my favorite games, even in the 10x10 challenge I recorded it for 2019, so I was intrigued, to say the least, when I heard about its "re-release" called Yellow & Yangtze. And since I am deep in the topic, I will try to cover a little today not only the game itself, but also in the part about the impressions to show its distinctive positive and negative qualities in relation to the progenitor, when they appear. WHAT IS THE GAME ABOUT? Apparently, this is one of the most thematic (if not the only) boards of the "soulless" genius of Knytsia. Players act as the rulers of the country, who seek to squeeze as much territory as possible and subdue all spheres of life in the state, spreading influence wherever possible. On the common playing field, party members build empires using tiles representing different classes of people, from fishermen and merchants to governors and governors. Actually, the theme of the game about the "class struggle" for territories is very strongly felt during the game (for the abstract). And although the process itself is more reminiscent of something like go, I can say that for me personally, the thematic nature of this abstract is at the highest level among all boards of this class. Perhaps because all these permutations of colored tiles are quite varied, each with its own rules and exceptions, well tied to what is happening on the game map. You always understand how and why fishermen or certain governors act, because their actions are logical, and it is impossible to..

 Today we will evaluate the game "Carcassonne: Amazon". There is no need to consider it from all sides; I think she is well known to everyone. But it is interesting to see what has changed, and what new Klaus-Jürgen Wrede can offer in a series of games with almost 20 years of experience. In fact, like all additions and spin-offs, reimagining the gameplay of the classic board in some way, "Amazon" does not bring drastic changes during the game. Instead, players are offered a new emphasis in the form of a mechanic that now needs to be emphasized throughout the game. This was the case in previous branches, this box was no exception.  Let's start with the first obvious change - the environment is now tropical. Bright jungles, colorful animals, blue rivers and villages with baskets of flowering fruits - everything sets a much more cheerful mood than the gloomy gray Middle Ages. Although I am personally quite satisfied with the basic design, the new version is more pleasing. I know that for some, design plays a huge role when choosing a table, and some cannot be forced to even try an excellent box, when its color does not please the gentleman's taste. So here plus/minus is relative; some will appreciate it, some will not. Of the changes in the gameplay, two can be singled out, one of which is small and one is very large, which greatly changes the accents:  Let's start small. Now the role of "villagers" is played by two huts, two special "meeples", which can only be placed on the "fields" (in this case, the jungle). At the end of the game, points are not awarded for completed castles (in this version, they are villages), but for animals grazing in the jungle. Such a change was already in the series earlier, in the version of "Carcassonne" called "Hunters and Gatherers". In general, it does not fundamentally change anything, except for the calculation, which becomes easier, well, and diversity in terms of drawings on the field is added. A plus..

GAME PROCESS Assassin's Creed Brotherhood of Venice has a great tutorial mode: through a chain of memories, you gradually get to know the gameplay without having to read the rule book from cover to cover. However, I will describe the gameplay in general so that you don't have to judge the appeal of a game by its franchise alone. At the beginning of each turn, you draw an event card that will have some effect on the current turn. Your assassin can then spend one of three action cubes (or four if you stocked up on one from past turns) to move to another map tile, attack, or perform actions necessary to complete the mission objective.  The mechanics of movement here are simple: with one action you can climb the roof, climb the tower or sneak down the street. And since it's Assassin's Creed in front of you, you can synchronize by climbing to the roof and find out the location of hideouts or scenario objectives. In addition, here, as in Monolith's Conan and Batman Gotham City Chronicles, players can divide the stock of actions between themselves. This is especially important because players can spend Action Cubes completing mission objectives together or attacking enemies. In short, unite and conquer. When you find yourself in the same location as a guard (or vice versa), you first have to make a Stealth check. If you fail to roll the dice, you are exposed and alerted. More about anxiety below, but I assure you, it does not bode well.  In stealth mode, you can use the hidden blade to stealthily eliminate guards. Or, if you're really lacking in thrills, you can wield a sword or other weapon that makes a noise that will expose you and cause you to panic. White combat dice represent a hit, the activation of a weapon's special ability (which also counts as a hit), and the response of surviving enemies. As soon as corpses appear, it is wisest to get rid of them before other guards notice their dead comrades. At the same time, you not only..

 Without putting it in a long box, I decided to dedicate the next review to the game Floating Market from our acquaintance from Morocco, Ben Pinchback. This time around, Ben sends players on a much weirder mission than controlling market stalls — we'll play as tiny Thai shekels who scour the floating market in search of fruit for their grandmother's salad. Whoever collects all the ingredients first will receive a salad from grandma. As I said in the previous article, the toy packaging components of this company are great, but the gameplay... We will look at it today. Let's find out what is hidden behind the phrase of the authors in the description: "Experienced board players will appreciate the unique combination of long-familiar and new mechanics of rolling multifaceted cubes with fast and fun gameplay." WHAT IS THE GAME ABOUT? In the first paragraph, the entire plot, which, like almost most Euro-boxes, is unnecessary. But, let's face it, the subject is... offbeat/funny/ridiculous (emphasis added)? The justification for collecting a set of multi-colored cards in the form of "you're a granddaughter, but here's a papaya" is kind of... strange, in general. But that is not the point. You will not be able to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the game in any case, neither at the expense of the design, nor at the expense of the theme or mechanics. Here we will roll multifaceted dice. WHAT'S IN THE BOX? The playing field, which is a floating market and its surroundings:  Several tokens for operating on the playing field:  Player Color Meeples and First Player Marker:  Fruit and Coin Cards:  A mountain of player-colored dice, all suits from d6 to d12: HOW TO PLAY? There are seven types of fruit represented by cards. The object of the game is to be the first to collect 5 or 7 different ones depending on how long you want the game to be. These fruits are stored on boats, and all the efforts of the players will be directed to..