QUARRIORS GAME REVIEW Developed by Mike Elliott and Eric Lang and published in the US by WizKids Games, Quarriors is a great dice-rolling game. A 2011 Golden Geek nominee and 2013 Origins Award winner, this game will make you want to travel back in time and play the game again like the first time. In Quarriors 2-4 players will arm themselves with powerful magical spells and summon legions of hex-shaped creatures to battle their opponents. Boldly cover yourself with Glory by defending your creatures from opponents, or choose wisely to challenge increasingly powerful creatures to conquer your enemies. HOW TO PREPARE FOR THE GAME? Quarriors is a dice game based on the same principle as the original Dominion deck-building game released in 2008. A central field consisting of 3 base cards, 7 creature cards, and 3 spell cards is located in the middle of the game board called the "Wildlands". The 7 creature cards and 3 spell cards are drawn (and shuffled as needed) randomly until each stack is unique. Place the corresponding dice on each card within reach of each player. Finally, all players are given 8 quadity dice and 4 helper dice (creatures with low power), and the game can begin. GAME PROCESS On their turn, the player draws a certain number of dice from their bag and rolls them. The faces of the dice with the mystical teardrop symbol, symbolizing quadrature, can be used to provide energy to existing creatures or to attract more powerful creatures and spells from the Wild. The non-square dice faces are usually either creatures that can be summoned into battle or special abilities (spell dice). Players who choose to send their creatures into battle must have enough square available to pay the creature level cost located in the upper left corner of the die. Most dice in the game will have at least one square face and several other faces, all of which are displayed at the bottom of the power card for that die. After the quid value for any creature has been paid, the player sends their creatures into battle. The attacking player adds up the values of all of their attacking creatures (located in the upper right corner of each creature die). Then, in clockwise order, each player offers a defender, which may or may not be able to defeat the attack amount presented. If a creature is defeated (either the attacker or the defender), it goes into that player's discard pile. In the example below, the bottom player (with an attack value of 4) attacks the top player. Attacks continue until all of the attacking player's creatures are defeated, or until any remaining creatures have traveled around the table. These creatures will now act as defenders for that player while the other players take their turns. Any creatures remaining in front of the player at the start of their next turn will gain Glory points equal to the number in the upper right corner of that creature's Power card. After attacks are resolved, players can use any remaining quidity to capture new creatures from the Wildlands. Players pay the quidity cost found in the upper left corner of the power card they wish to purchase. Players then place all rolled dice in their discard pile along with any captured creatures, and active status passes to the next player. Play continues in this manner until one player reaches the Glory Goal, depending on the number of players. WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE GAME Of course, the first thing to mention is the cubes. They are awesome. Not full-size, but a little smaller. They come in all colors and styles. Some are solid, some are frosted crystal, some have specks of glitter, they are just really cool. The illustrations in the game are really nice, with just a little bit of cartoonishness to keep it from looking too serious. The gameplay is easy to explain and only takes a few minutes to get going. WHAT DID YOU NOT LIKE? While the dice are cool, the printing on some of them is blurry. It's not a huge problem, but it can make them difficult to read. The game is fun, but maybe not suitable for many repeat playthroughs (if that's what you're looking for). CONCLUSIONS Quarriors is essentially a simple game: you roll dice, attack other players (if you want to), and capture new creatures (if you want to). The base game includes 130 dice and 53 creature and spell cards, which gives Quarriors a lot of variety. Each set of dice is represented by multiple power cards, and each power card has different options. This means that from game to game, each set of dice can perform completely different actions depending on the settings. Quarriors doesn't offer much strategy, but smart purchases early in the game can make a big difference towards the end...
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PRODUCT UPDATE Hello, friend. The Lelekan store is updated with board games for every taste. New hits, reissues of favorite classics, and a few unexpected new releases are now available. In this receipt: New games for companies Games for children and family leisure Dueling games for cozy evenings Complex strategies for experienced players And there are many different types of flooring that will suit everyone. Play fun with Lelekan FULL LIST OF UPDATES Dobble: Waterproof (Dobble Waterproof) 7 Wonders: Second Edition 7 Wonders: Cities - Second Edition Draft & Write Records (Draft & Write Records) Fuse: Countdown (Fuse) Beacon Patrol King of Tokyo Hegemony (Hegemony: Lead Your Class To Victory) Dixit 10: Mirrors Dixit 2: Quest Dixit 3: Journey Dixit 4: Origins Dixit 5: Daydreams Dixit 6: Memories Dixit 7: Revelation Dixit 8: Harmonies Dixit 9: Anniversary Edition (Dixit 9. Anniversary Dixit: Odyssey (Dixit Odyssey) Dobble: Harry Potter Arkham Horror: The Card Game: The Dunwich Legacy Arkham Horror: The Card Game – Edge Of The Earth: Investigator Expansion Arkham Horror: The Card Game – Edge Of The Earth: Campaign Expansion Painting (Canvas) Painting: Reflections (Canvas: Reflections) Wyrmspan Card of the Empress Victoria: Card Civilization (CIV: Carta Impera Victoria) And many other interesting things) GAME LIBRARY UPDATE Redcordsman (Unbeatable) Congratulations: if you live in an apartment and miss your own garden, then the perfect game has found you! You've entered a gardening competition, where creating a beautiful garden is everyone's number one goal. Test your skills: will you be able to become a respected Redcordsman? The Game The only way out is to beat the game. Who set the rules? Who is mocking the players' minds? It is not clear. The only thing that is clear is that the game will not retreat until you gather your strength and defeat it! By the way, do not give in to your first impression, because the game is actually not difficult and not scary at all. On the contrary - it is very interesting! PROMOTIONAL OFFERS Amygdala https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/all-games/srategies/amygdala-amygdala-ukr Tiletum https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/all-games/srategies/tiletum-tilletum-anglukr Camelot Market https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/igry-po-typu/card-games/rynok-kamelut-kameloot Lost Seas https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/igry-po-typu/ukrayinskoyu-movoyu/utracheni-morya-forgotten-waters-ukr GAMING SCHEDULE This week we have a club game library, so discounts are available to everyone) Also, if you like any of the offered games, you can purchase it with a 10% discount! So we present to you the schedule of events at the Lelekan club August 25 - August 31 Monday 25.08 17:00 - 20:00, Restless Gobblers, 2 players (multiple boxes available) Age 5+ Club game library 50% discount. Tuesday 26.08 16:00 - 19:00, War Sheep, 2-4 players Age 7+ Club game library 50% discount. Wednesday 27.08 17:00 - 20:00, Smileys, 2-4 players Age 6+ Club game library 50% discount. Thursday 28.08 16:00 - 20:00, Dungeons, Dice & Adventures, 1-4 players Age 12+ Club game library 50% discount. Friday 29.08 18:00 - 20:00 Puerto Rico 1897, 2-5 players Age 12+ Club game library 50% discount. Saturday 30.08 18:00 - 20:00 Castles of Burgundy: Anniversary Edition, 1-4 players Age 12+ Club game library 50% discount. Sunday 31.08 18:00 - 20:00 Coup: Steampunk, 3-6 players Age 10+ Club game library 50% discount. Registration: By appointment, come with friends and family! Question: For additional information, call +380938247182 or write to direct. Come and enjoy a great time with Lelekan!..
Read MoreGARDEN RUSH GAME REVIEW Garden Rush (designed by Kee Mansell) is a lightning-fast two-player game that requires you to stack tiles and build a board in which you plant and harvest vegetables to score points. The game comes in an open box with a magnetically held flip-top lid. This flip-top lid opens to reveal a play area. The box also doubles as a storage mechanism and, when flipped, as a game board that holds the players’ gnome figures. Players sit at opposite ends of a playing field, which is divided into two identical gardens with a hedge between them. During setup, vegetable tiles are drawn from a bag and placed on each hedge square with the vegetable side facing up. Each garden is arranged in a 5×5 grid with the corners cut off, forming an inner square. In the corners of this square are four icons representing special actions that players can perform when these icons are covered by tiles. These actions allow you to take an additional tile from the ruler, harvest (i.e. score points) from a bed in your garden, move a tile from one spot to another, or flip any vegetable in either player's garden to the opposite side. Each hedge cell lines up in a column of cells in your garden. On your turn, you have two options: take the tile or harvest (i.e., score points). If you take a tile, you can place it with the double side with the vegetables facing up in the column corresponding to the location of the hedge cell you took, or you can place it with the single side with the vegetables facing up in any other column. Once a hedge cell is empty, the remaining vegetables are moved to fill the empty space, a new vegetable is placed at the end of the row, and the new vegetable takes its place on the trampoline. Yes, you read that right. Trampoline. In Garden Rush, anthropomorphic vegetables not only smile at you, but they also seem so eager to be cut and eaten that they literally jump at the chance. WHAT IS ALL THIS FOR? In Garden Rush, each type of vegetable has several patterns in which it can be planted. Once you plant it in one of the patterns, it can be harvested for points equal to the number of plants that made up the pattern. Once harvested, double vegetable tiles are flipped to their single vegetable sides, and single vegetable tiles are removed from the board. If that sounds a little strange, think about carrots. Carrots can be harvested when you plant two or four carrots diagonally across from each other. If you harvest two carrots, you get two points. If you harvest four, you get four points. Nothing else special. These points are important for two reasons. First, there are certain breakpoints on the score track that, if you manage to end your turn with your gnome on top of them, allow you to perform a bonus action (potentially a chain of bonuses if you're clever enough). Second, and most importantly, Garden Rush isn't just about scoring points. It's about getting to 40 points, and that means getting those points before your opponent can do the same. Once a player reaches 40 points, the round ends and whoever is further up the score track wins. Otherwise, the game ends when the bag runs out of tiles, and whoever has the most points up to that point wins. WONDERFUL RAGU There's a lot to like about Garden Rush. The rules are easy to teach and learn. You'll be playing without any problems in a matter of minutes. The game is short, and experienced players only need 20-30 minutes to throw it in a backpack and play with a colleague during their lunch break. The design, while absurd, is bold and fun. The quality of the components is top-notch. The gameplay is also pretty simple. Garden Rush is a game about balancing long-term goals with short-term gains. Do you intentionally score less points to avoid hitting a checkpoint on the scoring scale, or do you forgo extra actions to score more points? And when it comes to picking vegetables from the hedgerow, figuring out how to arrange the vegetables so they fit with other types of vegetables can be quite a challenge. This aspect of the game always reminds me of Tiny Towns in that you have to arrange different objects in a limited space to take advantage of scoring opportunities when they appear. The pace of the game is almost perfect. It starts off slow. With a mostly empty garden, it's easy to relax and just enjoy yourself. But as your garden starts to fill up, things get more lively. The tension builds as your little gnome-point figures battle for position on the scoreboard. The energy is palpable. Garden Rush is, in a word, exhilarating. However, this minor annoyance doesn't spoil my enjoyment of the game at all. Garden Rush ticks many of my boxes, and it's become a game that's practically always in my backpack, ready to be pulled out and set up at a moment's notice. If you're looking for a two-player game that's easy to set up and take down, quick and easy to play, but still offers some challenge, Garden Rush might be just what you're looking for...
Read MorePRODUCT UPDATE Hello, friend. The Lelekan store is updated with board games for every taste. New hits, reissues of favorite classics, and a few unexpected new releases are now available. In this receipt: New games for companies Games for children and family leisure Dueling games for cozy evenings Complex strategies for experienced players And there are many different types of flooring that will suit everyone. Play fun with Lelekan FULL LIST OF UPDATES Tower Stacks High Society Hickory Dickory Dam (Barrage) Dinosaur Island First Snow Skulls of Sedlec: Complete Edition Passengers The Language of Flowers: Complete Edition (Tussie Mussie) Once Upon a Honey Almost Innocent Star Wars: Bounty Hunters Dune: Imperium – Uprising Aye, Dark Overlord! The Red Box Go! Animals Against Tourists (Scram!) Newton & Great Discoveries Concept Kids: Animals And many other interesting things) GAME LIBRARY UPDATE If It Fits Before you get a cat, make sure that your pet is the right consistency for you, because you are the only one responsible for the capacity of the container that it will occupy! How to do this? Just place the box conveniently and wait… not too long. If it fits, the cat will fit! — that’s the motto of this fun and cute card game. As you probably guessed, we call everything cute that contains cats, and this box is really full of them! Click! The Great Wall What would you dream of doing if you found yourself on top of the Great Wall of China? We think we know the answer: maybe at first you would look around, take a deep breath, scream, spit down, admire the views… But who are we trying to fool? The first thought that comes to your mind is to take a nice photo! As soon as possible! The board game "Klats!" is exactly about this: in it you will have to choose the right parts of the wall, move them, swap them around to find the best angle for your little one (if you don't know, this is a Ukrainian "selfie" - we shout "here I am!" and take a picture!). And all this in conditions of fierce competition, because walking along the Great Wall alone is too expensive a pleasure! Everyone wants their own photo, get in line! PROMOTIONAL OFFERS Amygdala https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/all-games/srategies/amygdala-amygdala-ukr Tiletum https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/all-games/srategies/tiletum-tilletum-anglukr Camelot Market https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/igry-po-typu/card-games/rynok-kamelut-kameloot Pirates Of The 7 Seas - Second Edition https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/board-game-pryznachennya/family-games/piraty-7-moriv-druge-vydannya-pirates-of-the-7-seas-ukr Lost Seas https://lelekan.com.ua/uk/all-board-games/igry-po-typu/ukrayinskoyu-movoyu/utracheni-morya-forgotten-waters-ukr GAMING SCHEDULE We present to you the schedule of events at the Lelekan club August 18 - August 24 Monday 18.08 17:00 - 20:00, Radlands, 2 players (multiple boxes available) Age 14+ Games library at club rates. Tuesday 19.08 16:00 - 19:00, Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, 1-4 players Age 14+ Games library at club rates. Wednesday 20.08 17:00 - 20:00, CIV: Carta Impera Victoria, 2-4 players Age 8+ Games library at club rates. Thursday 21.08 16:00 - 20:00, Radiance, 1-4 players Age 10+ 50% discount on the tariff. Friday 22.08 18:00 - 20:00 Siege Storm, 1-2 players Age 14+ Club Day 50% discount on the rate. Saturday 23.08 18:00 - 20:00 Lovecraft Letter, 2-6 players Age 14+ Game library for a large company 50% discount on the tariff. Sunday 24.08 18:00 - 20:00 Pret-A-Porter: Third Edition, 2-4 players Age 10+ Games library at club rates. Registration: By appointment, come with friends and family! Question: For additional information, call +380938247182 or write to direct. Come and enjoy a great time with Lelekan!..
Read MoreBULLET BOARD GAME REVIEW When a friend expressed interest in playing Bullet, I found myself in the unusual position of having to tell him to read the rules. This almost never happens, but the circumstances were exceptional. When I returned fifteen minutes later, I asked him if he knew how to play. And indeed, during that time he had managed to learn everything in detail. STAR EXPRESS Bullet is essentially a mobile app. 1-4 players race — it’s a real-time game — using cards and abilities to remove colored balls from their game boards. These balls are randomly drawn from each player’s personal bag and added to their personal game board. The balls have numbers that indicate the number of empty cells they cross before stopping. If a ball accidentally reaches the bottom of the game board, it takes away some of your health. Balls are removed by playing cards from your hand that depict something like a tetromino. Certain cells must contain a ball, some must be empty. Once the ball tokens are lined up properly, which almost never happens without using one or two special powers to move them, they can be discarded. The incentive to move quickly in Bullet has two aspects. First, any balls left in your bag after the time runs out must be added to your board in full, without any mitigation. The more balls on your board, the more likely it is that the next one will fall to the bottom. This deluge of penalty periods can be devastating. Second, any bullets you manage to remove will be passed to the player to your left in the next round. The more bullets your opponents have, the harder their job will be, and the better for you. Bullet Star is a knock-out game. There is no winner, just the one who can last long enough to see the bodies of their enemies float by. BARGAIN? I think mobile apps provide a kind of mindless dopamine rush. The closest I've come to that in my desktop experience is probably the crazy pinball mania of Ganz Schon Clever!. Bullet and its big sister are a little too cognitively intensive to evoke the bliss of a mobile app gaming experience, but they still feel like video puzzle games come to life. You definitely get good value for money. The set includes eight characters, each with a unique deck of cards and asymmetrical abilities. Bullet Star also includes rules for various modes, including boss mode, co-op mode, team mode, and solo mode. The experience is insane. You have to sweat. There's a strong feeling that you could figure it out if you could just see the one thing you're missing. My only complaint is that you could play alone, as you won't really notice the other players at the table. The only time you think about other people is when one of them throws you a fresh batch of balls that you've taken out so you can add them to your bag for the next round. It requires such intense concentration that you don't even start swearing madly. And where's the fun in that?..
Read MoreWONDERFUL NATURE Are you tired of the hustle and bustle of the city? Tired of the constant noise and distractions? Maybe you should take a break from the hustle and bustle and escape to the idyllic countryside. Enjoy the pristine beauty of the countryside and remember: it is your responsibility to keep it pristine and lush. Naturopolis is the latest pocket-sized game from publisher Button Shy, and is a direct successor to the Sprawlopolis line of games. This game, along with Sprawlopolis and Agropolis, and their associated mini-expansion games, share the same core gameplay mechanics. Solo or in pairs, you play cards from a deck of eighteen cards and create a specific landscape with different scoring mechanisms. However, Natuoropolis takes a different approach to the theme, focusing on creating natural beauty and scenic landscapes, while punishing you for spoiling that beauty with an excessive amount of roads and asphalt. BUILDING A BETTER WORLD Those familiar with other games in this series will recognize the gameplay pattern. Setup only takes a few minutes. Shuffle all eighteen cards together and draw the top three. One side of the cards depicts the aforementioned landscapes, while the other side of each card features a separate scoring target. These first three cards will be placed with the targets facing up, indicating your unique scoring mechanisms for this particular game. You will then deal three cards to the first player and one card to any additional player(s). Turn over the top card of the deck to begin, and you’re good to go! The moves are simple: you simply add a card to the table in front of you. Each card contains one quadrant of each biome in the game: forests, grasslands, mountains, or lakes. Some cards depict rivers, some depict roads, and some depict campsites. You can place your card so that it overlaps or lines up edge to edge with any card already played on the table, and it can even create gaps in the landscape if you follow the other placement rules. After placing a card, you pass the two cards remaining in your hand to the next player. This repeats, with each player placing one card over and over again until the deck is completely empty. A COMPROMISE IN BEAUTY After all, you have a beautiful natural landscape to admire… but what does that mean? Looking at the three objectives you drew at the beginning of the game, you can sum up your target score by adding the numbers on the three objective cards. In general, scoring options that are harder or less common to complete may only add a couple of points to your target score, while easier objectives will add more to your target score. Beat that score and win the game. Can’t beat it? It’s a tough game—you lose, and your park will be ugly. In addition to your specific goals, there are some standard scoring rules that help give your landscape an edge. For each of the four main biomes, you'll receive one point for each card that falls within your largest contiguous area of that biome. This encourages you to try to build large, sprawling forests and massive lakes. However… you'll also need to manage your roads, as each individual road will reduce your total score by two points. This is the biggest difference from previous games in the Sprawlopolis series, and reflects the thematic emphasis on the beauty of nature. CONCLUSIONS Thematically, Naturopolis achieves its goals. The tension of choosing between starting a new path and continuing to develop your sprawling biomes is at the heart of the gameplay decisions. Balancing your moves between setting up big point wins and managing negative point values leaves each of your fifteen card turns on a razor's edge. Given the context of the other games in the series, it's easy to see how this game repeats the formula and tweaks it a bit to make it seem new. There are also combo expansions that let you add this game to the other two in the series to combine cards and create mega-landscapes with a mix of natural beauty, cityscapes, and farmland. On top of that, it all fits comfortably in your pocket or purse, perfect for a quick game at the brewery or while waiting for your meal. That said, the same minor flaws as the other games in the series are present here. While Button Shy positions these games as co-op, in our testing they really felt more like a solo experience. Much of that is due to the game's limited size. The eighteen maps feel much better for a solo player than when you're sharing your card draws with someone else. Another minor issue I ran into while playing was that the road penalties are so severe compared to the points you're earning that the game almost always requires you to manipulate the placement of roads rather than actually scoring points. The fact that the theme is combined with the mechanics seems intentional, but as a player, actively working to reduce losses was less fun than creating the perfect landscape for my target maps. However, at just $12 and with a few free add-ons, it's hard to pass up such a challenging solo puzzler in such a small package. Be prepared: you'll probably lose most of the time. While Naturopolis isn't likely to win over those who didn't like Sprawlopolis or Agropolis, it offers much of the same compact gameplay and will please fans of the series. If you're new to the series and are wondering whether to get involved with this game, don't worry. It's affordable and works reliably as a standalone game, and it can also serve as a great introduction to the world of Button Shy's wallet-sized games...
Read MoreFor your convenience, we have compiled a schedule of game libraries for next week so that everyone can play the board game they want) So we present to you the schedule of events at the Lelekan club ..
Read MoreMACAO GAME REVIEW Macao is now a Chinese city, but in the 17th century it was a Portuguese colony and major trading center. In Macau, players take on the role of Portuguese adventurers, improving the city's infrastructure, collecting valuable goods, and then trading them across Europe, striving to become the most prestigious adventurers of their time. Macao is played over twelve rounds. At first glance, it seems like a game with a mix of mechanics: a bit of board building, a bit of pick-and-drop, and a bit of territory control. But Macau is actually, for lack of a better term, a turn-based game. At the beginning of each round of the game, five different colored dice are rolled and placed in the center of the playing field. Players then choose two of these dice to collect the dice. The color of the collected dice is the same as the color of the selected die. The number of dice collected is determined by a value. But more importantly, this value also determines how many turns the players will have to wait before they can access the collected dice. After players have collected their dice, their player components, called "wind roses", take their turn, and the dice in the next area of the wind rose become available to them for that turn. These dice are spent on improving your city and collecting goods by buying up city blocks, fighting for position in turn order, moving your player marker along the wall, activating cards and paying for their abilities, and moving your ship along waterways to deliver the goods you collect. In the style of Stefan Feld, Macau is a game full of opportunities to earn victory points, and almost everything you can do will result in you earning them at various stages of the game. And whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins. There are many more in-depth details that I will cover soon. This is just a general overview of the game. If you think you have heard enough and just want to know my opinion, feel free to skip to the Opinions section. Otherwise, read on and I will give you a brief rundown of how it is played in Macau. ANCHORS Macao is organized as follows: After placing the main board on the table, the 24 Office cards are shuffled and two are placed face up along the outer edges of the board for each round of play. The remaining cards are shuffled into a deck and placed side by side. The Goods tiles are shuffled and one is randomly placed on each of the city blocks. The Joker tiles are also placed in the marked positions. The beige discs are placed next to the Tribute track. The remaining components—the dice (which can be sorted if you like, but I just keep mine in a large bowl) and the coins—are placed within reach. Next, each player chooses a color and receives tokens of the chosen color, including a compass rose, a ship, two discs, a table, and twelve possession markers. In addition, each player receives five gold. The player's tokens are placed on the wall and prestige track. His ship is placed on one of the positions. Now that you have done that, choose the order of play in some way and arrange the players' discs on the wall in the order you have chosen, from top to bottom. From now on, the player whose disc is furthest along the wall and on top will be the first player for the current round. Second, third, and fourth are determined in the same way - furthest in front and closest to the top of any piles. In turn, each player will choose a card from a small selection of cards. This card is placed on their table. Each player also receives one die of their choice, which must be placed next to the one-dot area on their wind horn, and two dice of matching colors, which must be placed next to the two-dot area. You are now ready to play Macau. CUBISM In Macao, you live and die by your compass rose. So before I delve further into the gameplay, it's important to understand how the compass rose works. Your compass rose is divided into seven sections. Six of them contain a picture of a die set to a different point value (from one to six), and the seventh contains a picture of a large arrow. Collected dice are placed in the area next to the compass rose adjacent to the value of the die used to collect them. To better illustrate this, consider the following example: A player chooses a red three and a blue four as his dice. He takes three red dice from the supply and places them next to the compass rose area that represents the three-dot die. The four blue dice are placed next to the face of the four-dot die. After choosing the dice and collecting the dice, each player turns their compass rose. The arrow will then point to the dice available to the player in the current round. If there are no dice, the player takes a penalty marker, which will cost them three points at the end of the game. So, choosing higher value dice will give you a lot of dice in future rounds, but you can't completely ignore lower value rounds without risking penalties. This is the lifeblood of Macau. But as important as it is, there are many other considerations. OTHER CONSIDERATIONS Before the dice are rolled at the beginning of a round, there is a card phase. In this phase, four cards are drawn from the deck and added to the two cards set aside in preparation for the current round. These cards have a tribute value in the lower right corner and a coin value in the lower left corner. These values are added up and the beige Tribute track discs on the main board are placed accordingly. This means that during their turn, the player can purchase the amount of Prestige on the right by paying an amount of gold equal to the value on the left. This is one consideration, and it is risky. Do you pay the amount being asked now for the reward offered, or do you hold on to your money (and money is very tight in Macau!) in the hope of an even better deal that may never come along later? Once the Tribute Track is sorted, players take turns, in the order they draw, choosing one of the cards to place on their table. Each card has a cube value required to move it from the player's table to their active card area. Each player's table can only hold five cards. If the table is already full when a player chooses a card to place on it, one of the cards in the table is discarded to make room for a new card, and the player receives a penalty token, which, you guessed it, is worth minus three points at the end of the game. This is another point to consider. Cards that are harder to play usually have stronger abilities. How many of these do you want to take on? After the card phase is complete, dice are rolled, dice are collected, and compass roses are turned (which may result in penalty tokens) as described earlier. The action phase then begins. During their turns, players may spend dice on: – move your marker along the wall to control the order of turns. – buy one city block by paying its cost and replacing the goods tile on it with one of your property markers. – move your ship one space along the waterways one space for each die spent. If a player lands their ship in a port for which they have the appropriate goods(s), they deliver them to the port (starting with the highest value space) and receive Prestige for doing so. – activate any cards that have been removed from their tableau into the active cards area, and for which they have the required dice. Such cards are usually rewarded with prestige or coins in exchange for certain dice. Sometimes you only have a very few dice at your disposal. In such cases, choosing what to do with them is quite simple, since you have few options. But there will be many cases where these decisions will be difficult. To better understand why these decisions can be difficult, let's talk about scoring. PRESTIGE In Macau, prestige is gained from a variety of sources. Some of it will be earned throughout the game for various cards activated, goods delivered, or the tribute scale. However, a significant percentage of it will be accrued for the final game scores. At the end of the game, you'll earn points for the largest cluster of property tokens in the city—two points for each cluster—and take a penalty token for each card left on your table. There are also many cards that, when activated, will also earn you end-game points. The person with the most prestige wins, and ties are broken by the person furthest away from the wall. CONCLUSIONS As I thought about Macau and how it made me feel, I came to a strange realization. For a game I love so much, I have a lot of negative reviews. For example: – Nowhere in the game (not in the components or the rulebook) does the game explain the different types of goods. They are labeled on the cards, but there are no accompanying illustrations to explain what they are for. Do you have a card that gives you extra points every time you deliver lacquerware? Good luck figuring out what that good is. I think it's the red one that looks like a bunch of vases? Then again, there are blue and white ones that look like Delftware. So maybe that's them? Or maybe it's the one with the green plate. Who knows? – Macao has some of the cheapest and lowest quality components I've ever encountered. This isn't so much the game's fault as the publisher's. In my experience with older Alea games, this kind of "skill reduction" seems to be the norm rather than the exception. – The tribute table is so random that some games go by without using it. And that seems strange to me. In a well-balanced game, there should never be any aspect of it that feels irrelevant. Yet the tribute table often is. – Aside from a few cards that reward their owners for doing so, there’s little incentive to move along a wall other than to go first. In fact, most games I play involve very little movement along a wall. Often the only reason..
Read MorePRODUCT UPDATE Hello, friend. The Lelekan store is updated with board games for every taste. New hits, reissues of favorite classics, and a few unexpected new releases are now available. In this receipt: – New games for companies – Games for children and family leisure – Dueling games for cozy evenings – Complex strategies for experienced players And there are many different types of flooring that will suit everyone. Play fun with Lelekan FULL LIST OF UPDATES EXIT: The Game — Dead Man On The Orient Express EXIT: The Enchanted Forest EXIT: The Game – The Disappearance Of Sherlock Holmes Unmatched: Slings And Arrows Andromeda's Edge Star Wars: Super Teams Come Sail Away! Defenders Of The Wild Inori Exploding Kittens: Good Vs Evil The Witcher: The Roleplaying Game - Quick Start (The Whitcher: The Roleplaying Game) Beaver Creek (Beaver Creek) Rival Restaurants Beacon Patrol Mysteries of Karak II Castle Myce And Mystics GAME LIBRARY UPDATE Sushi Draft Who's hungry? Sushi Draft is a card game where your main goal is to score the most points by eating lots of different types of sushi. The player with the most diverse menu gets dessert! Each round (turn) you must choose one sushi card to "eat". Then choose one sushi card to keep in your hand, and pass the rest to the next player. The game continues until each player has "eaten" five sushi. After three rounds, the players count their points and the one with the most points wins! Sonic the Hedgehog: Dice Rush Speed is Sonic's game, and in Sonic The Hedgehog Dice Rush, 2 to 4 players race in real-time to create the ultimate Sonic the Hedgehog level. Players simultaneously roll their dice and compare their scores with cards featuring sections of a classic 2D Sonic level. Act fast, as certain sections will earn you extra points, while others will take them away from you! SCHEDULE OF GAMING PLACES In August, we continue to delight you with various game libraries in our club. This week we'll be able to try on roles from pirate ship captain to Egyptian architects, do a little zombie killing, and head to the wonderful valley of the beasts. So we present to you the schedule of events at the Lelekan club ..
Read MoreMOVIE MIND GAME REVIEW In 2013, I saw 160 movies in theaters. Technically, that was every "wide release" movie that year. That means I have a problem; it also means I sat out movies like The Smurfs 2, The Hot Cop, and the only Die Hard movie that was truly terrible, Die Hard Good Day. I regularly watch 75-100 movies in theaters every year. I refuse to talk to other people during the Oscars. I've seen Indian movies in India. I've gone to the theaters alone during COVID. I've waited outside theaters in all weathers to be first in line for midnight premieres. It's safe to say that I like movies. I'm pretty good at film trivia, but my general knowledge of movies, accumulated over time, is pretty strong. When I got my hands on a game from Gigamic, namely Movie Mind, I immediately sat down to figure it out. Here's the short summary: a lot of fun, but only for die-hard movie buffs. Movie Mind is a three-round quiz game for two or three teams against each other. On their turn, a team draws one of 80 picture cards; the opposing team selects a reader who asks five questions that must be answered within 90 seconds. Each correct answer earns one point. Between rounds, each team has the opportunity to answer one question about the card currently in play to potentially steal a point. After three rounds, the team with the most points wins. The illustrated square cards are the heart of Movie Mind. Each card features visuals from 10 different films released over the past 70 years or so. The illustrations don't always try to depict a single scene; sometimes there's a character from, say, Pulp Fiction walking up to a masked man you remember from the Scream movies, without any context. It's essentially a collection of ideas piled into one space, so as you listen to each question, moviegoers have to figure out which films are depicted, then try to match the answers to the random questions: "A film about an airplane." "A film in which a character is granted three wishes." "A film in which a man leads a group on a great adventure." Vague, isn't it? More often than not, when someone on my team answered a question correctly, I would yell, "Where do you see THAT?" because I couldn't find the link to the image for some reason. The illustrations further complicate matters; on one card, the character is simply sitting on a couch. Most of us had no idea who this person was supposed to be, despite the fact that this was a character from a very successful comic book franchise. That's because there wasn't much additional information about this character; he was just sitting there. But if you recognize some of the characters, symbolism, or key visual moments from your favorite movies, then you're in for a treat. Also, there are no quotes in the images. For a fan who knows movie quotes well, this won't help you at all in the "Movie Quotes" game. WHO WILL BE INTERESTED IN THE GAME? Movie Mind really works, but it's a game for a true movie buff. I know this because even as a movie buff, I often had a hard time answering some of the questions. The illustrations by Diane Fayol and Charles Deroux are interesting, and many of the players I sat with found the work to be solid, if not at times impressive. But that's not the point. When you see something from, say, Jaws, you just have to see a shark, and bam, you get it, right? Jaws is and always will be "The Shark Movie." (Apologies to The Meg, Shark Tale, and the classic Sharknado TV franchise.) But, "Interstellar"? Can you imagine things from the movie and then imagine them animated? How about "Lawrence of Arabia"? You imagine the footage from the movie, but it's not drawn, right? This makes Movie Mind a little more difficult than it needs to be. It's always fun, and as I often say on these pages, I love games with screaming, timers, racing, and drama. Movie Mind has it all. But if you have a friend who considers himself a movie buff because he's seen all the Star Wars movies, this game isn't for him. This is for the person who loved — and remembers! — Big Fish. Fan of the French film Amelie? Go here. Are there any references to Star Wars, Jurassic Park, or some Marvel movies? Sure, and those references are a bit ahead of the less obvious ones. But I think the main enjoyment here will come from someone who has a really broad and deep taste in filmmaking. One manufacturing flaw: the hourglass is a bit awful. My included hourglass only holds enough magic dust for 55 seconds, so I used my smartphone timer. With two teams and 90-second rounds, this game takes literally nine minutes to play; let's call it ten, since you'll have to spend 60 seconds learning it. For this price, and the reasonable price at many online retailers, you'll be in great shape if you decide to pick up a copy of Movie Mind!..
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