Battlestar Galactica is a cooperative game that supports from three to six (optionally expandable to seven) players, in which one or two of them, depending on the number of participants, turn out to be "traitors" and play against their comrades. The average playing time is about 2.5-3 hours. I would immediately like to dispel the myth about the need to watch the series before sitting down at the gaming table. This is completely optional, and you won't lose anything fundamental, since the game is completely self-sufficient. PLOT AND MECHANICS  The task of the human players is to lead the fleet, led by the "Galaxy", to a certain distance without losing either the cruiser itself or any of the key resources - Population, Food, Fuel and Morale. The task of "traitor" players is quite the opposite. The plot of the game, without being sly, repeats the television one. Cylon robots, created by man, revolted, destroyed most of the people, forcing those who remained alive to seek salvation by fleeing. The remnants of humanity on their spaceships, united around the last hope - the cruiser "Galaxy", are trying to break away from the pursuit of the Cylon fleet and find a new home with the prosaic name "Earth". The case of rescue is complicated by the fact that the Cylons have managed to create 12 models of humanoid robots and introduced them into the glorious ranks of the human race. And so "who is who" makes up the lion's share of the intrigue of both the series and the game. At the beginning and in the middle of the game, each participant secretly receives a so-called loyalty card from the others, which determines whether your character is a Cylon or a human. The game has a lot of characters, each of which is endowed with its own special skills, as well as unique positive and negative properties. It is not difficult to guess, it may happen that in the first part of the game, not a single cylon will appear on the field, and in the second phase, the player who honestly saved all this time will learn that he was made and programmed for a completely different matter. Such collisions perfectly diversify the personal game in each game. By the way, the developers, taking everything into account, quite accidentally managed to foresee a strong role potential in the game. Whether you use it or not is up to you, but it is there. Each participant's move consists of two phases - movement and action. In the first case, you can move to a location on a ship, in space or on a special track of Cylons that have opened to the world, in the second - to activate the properties of the location or play the text of one skill card. At the end of the turn, except for specially stipulated cases, a so-called crisis should be drawn from a special deck — a task that must be solved or failed by all participants. The crisis system is the heart of the game; they initiate the fleet's problems, but also propel it to victory. Most crises offer to solve the problem by scoring a certain number of points with skill cards. There are a total of five such types of cards in the basic box, of different colors for convenience. Characters have their own set of two or three different types. In the event of a crisis, the participants secretly lay out their cards from each other; only those whose types are shown on the crisis map are considered positive, the others are negative. Then the sum is calculated and the result is announced. HUMAN HUMAN WHO?  Like any cooperative game, BSG involves constant communication between the participants in the process. Making a plan of action, finding tactical tricks, analyzing the nearest moves - the game provides all these possibilities. Now consider that among the players there is a person who participates in this discussion, but only his goals are completely different. BSG has two unique positions - Admiral and President. The former decides which route the Galaxy will take to victory, the latter has exclusive rights to use Quorum cards that can facilitate the salvation of humanity. What is the Admiral's motivation for suggesting a crisis: the desire to save scarce cards of a certain skill for a more serious problem, or the goal of reducing a key resource? Can you trust the intuition of a player who has arrested another character based on circumstantial evidence alone? Should you support your neighbor who plans to re-elect the current president? Which of the two players who are furiously accusing each other of betrayal is right, or is it possible that the real Cylon is the one watching it all with a hidden smile? Withdraw fighter jets to cover the civilian courts or take the latter to a safe sector for the time being? Sacrificing fuel to save the population, or abandoning people, but leaving kerosene reserves for a long jump? There can be dozens of such questions per game session, and each time you will have to make a choice, because if you just wash your hands, the game will make this choice for you, and most often not in your favor. Some conclusions when calculating the hidden enemy can be made based on the simplest deduction, for example, calculating who put a card of a negative color in this or that crisis. Others are based on the study of the player's behavior at the table (skills acquired in poker battles will prove to be very relevant), others are based on the analysis of game actions. And, of course, you should not forget about banal intuition, the only question is: will it fail at a crucial moment? However, even if you are not a particular fan of talking, arguing and persuading, there will be a place on board - balanced decisions, calmness and a rare but timely word are worth a lot. This is what the game for humanity looks like - continuous choices, searching for a way out of another critical situation, paranoia and painful doubts about which of those sitting at the table you can trust. HIDDEN THREAT  And what about the cylons lurking under the mass of virtuous people? Playing as a hater of humanity is no less intense and interesting. On the one hand, you are out of panic and paranoia - being the bearer of a Secret, so far hidden from everyone, is a lot of fun. On the other hand, there is a constant search for the right solution alone, a minute-by-minute analysis of your actions, and the feeling of a cornered beast when a loop of well-founded suspicions tightens around you. There are a lot of action options, and this game is advantageously different from similar boxes. In particular, in Shadows over Camelot, another co-op game with a "traitor", the latter has to do as little as possible to win, and when he is revealed, the game takes on a distinctly mathematical flavor. In "Galaxy", a cylon has to crawl out of his skin to bring the hour of complete destruction of humanity closer. Provoke conflicts within the crew and silently enjoy the raised panic, waves of arrests, mutual insults and insults. To take a risk is to fail crises, to make silly moves and honest eyes, or, on the contrary, to contribute in every possible way to the passage of problems, to emphasize one's merits, to prove one's humanity in order to strike one blow at the right moment. And how not to miss this moment? When to take off the mask? Moreover, even after showing his true nature, the Cylon player does not leave the game: you still have to finish off the miserable people, and this may not be easy, because BSG, after discovering all the Cylons, easily turns into some kind of military headquarters game. Paranoia gives way to gut feeling, panic to cold analysis and development of a set of tactical actions. The same thing happens if, according to the game conditions, there are two Cylons, and on the opposite side of the conflict. And how such a confrontation will end is often unclear until the last move. CONCLUSIONS Of course, like any challenging game, BSG has its flaws. This also applies to game balance. In particular, with an even number of participants in the basic version, you need to use the rule of a person who sympathizes with the Cylons, the essence of which is that if there are a lot of resources at a certain moment, she will play for the Cylons, and if there are not enough - for the people. Such a situation is easily calculated, and experienced players are forced to sacrifice one of the resources in order for the "sympathizer" to join humanity. Despite the not so significant amount of text, the game remains very language-dependent until all participants know the meaning of all the skill cards by heart. True, it is not a problem to get a translation of all the cards in the game, but constantly searching for the right text can slow down the gameplay a lot. BSG is not a game that you only need to play once to understand and get involved. Several parties will go only to get acquainted with the possibilities provided by the basic box. The open architecture allows you to find more and more options for action, connections and tricks (in this, by the way, it reminds, oddly enough, Dominion), but it requires more and more game sessions. It is not easy for beginners to enter the company of the mother of players for this reason - the illusion is created that everyone knows what to do except you. It is treated only with subsequent games, if, of course, the desire remains. In general, "Galaxy" is a very "game-addicted" game. It only takes one of the participants to lose interest in what is happening at the table, as it instantly affects the atmosphere and course of the game. Due to the high degree of conflict given by the game mechanics, playing with children, pregnant women and vulnerable young people is not recommended. Battlestar Galactica is a very interesting and challenging game. It is not difficult to understand its rules, but it is not easy to learn to win in it. The frenetic dynamics, when enemy fighters are swarming around the ship, and every wrong decision can turn out..

 Yesterday we tested the game The Golden City, which arrived at the beginning of the week. Since the parcel was from Germany, I have the game in German - Die Goldene Stadt (published by KOSMOS). The field and game components are completely language-independent, incl. to master it, only the rules in Russian or at least in English are necessary. The original rules take up only 4 pages, in the Russian version that I was able to find on the Internet, there are only 2 of them (there are no pictures, and they are not particularly needed - the rules are very simple).  The field is of good quality, moderately bright, wooden houses without chips and well painted, cardboard components from 3 mm cardboard, playing cards are quite dense, but "Business cards" (the equivalent of victory points) in quality as in the Manager (if someone remembers), that is. cheap paper  Inside the box is an organizer with more compartments than components. Why? Not clear. However, there are 4 slots for cards - enough to spare, because of cards in the game is 88, and the depth of one card slot is 70. Protectors are desirable, because after all, cards are not linen. Protectors from Fantasy Flight Games Mini European 1 11/16 x 2 5/8 (44x68 mm) are perfect, although they are sold in 50 pieces, and the package, on average, costs 150 rubles, but they are dense, unlike CardPro, which are sold in pieces of 100 rubles for 100. According to my own feelings, I like the FFG protectors much more - they fit like a glove, cards do not pop out. Two people played, but the game is for 3-4 players, so I had to play for two at once. Preparation for the game takes no more than 5 minutes. When playing with three, each player gets 18 houses and the hand with which to vote, when playing with four - 16 houses. Each player gets three coins twice, one "Coast" type landscape card. The rest of the landscape cards are shuffled and resounded one card at a time. 8 product cards are shuffled and the top 3 cards are placed face up. Nearby are placed 8 bonus cards (very necessary, which greatly affect the final calculation), 6 key cards, etc. "Business letters". Also, 16 scoring cards are laid out so that "1" is on top and "3" is on the bottom. That's it, you can start the game. The playing field is an island. There are 16 coastal locations along the coast, with the Golden City itself in the center, and between them are 30 rural locations - forests, meadows, mountains and wastelands - 12 of which are near the river. All locations are connected by a network of roads. The game consists of several rounds. Each round consists of 6 phases: Opening of scorecards. Teaching landscape maps. Bidding for a pair of landscape cards. Construction of houses. Receiving "Business letters". Changing the first player. The scoring map shows which riverside towns need to be captured in a given round to get Business Letters, and it also shows the item that will earn its owner additional Business Letters that round. In a game of three, 3 pairs of landscape cards are laid out, in a game of four - 4 pairs. Next, starting with the first player, everyone lays out their hand on the pair of cards they want to get. Next, all players clockwise do the same. If someone placed his hand on occupied cards, he must pay one coin to the Bank and remove the hand of the one who previously voted. Accordingly, the one whose hand was removed can choose a free pair or put his hand on his previous choice of a pair of landscape cards, but having already paid 2 coins, etc. When a hand lies on each pair, the phase ends. The construction of houses must be carried out according to certain rules: building a house requires a connected chain of already existing cities, that is, you cannot build a house somewhere in the middle of the map. It is necessary that the houses are connected by a network of roads, starting from a house built in a coastal location; in a coastal and rural location, only one house can be permanent; you can build up to 2 houses per turn (more simply won't work, because you only have 5 landscape cards); to build a house in a coastal location, it is necessary to discard 1 card of this location; to age a house in any other location, it is necessary to discard 2 cards of this location; to build a house in the inner part of the city, you need to discard 2 maps of this location + a key; Obtaining "Business Letters" from the card played in the first phase. Counting takes place in two categories: for goods and houses standing on one of the rivers or in one of the quarters of the city. If the player has the goods shown on the scoring card, he receives 2 "Business Letters", if the player has at least one house on the river shown on the scoring card, he receives 2 "Business Letters", similarly per sector cities If you are the only player with the right type of goods, you get 2 additional letters. If you are the only player or the player who has more houses than others on the required river, you get 2 extra cards. That's all the action. The game continues until one of the players has built all their houses (the round will be played to the end) or until all the "Business Cards" have been exhausted (which, in my opinion, is not realistic). At the end, bonus cards are revealed, which can dramatically change the situation. The winner is the one with more "Business Letters" at the end of the game. As a result, what we have: a highly addictive, simple, multi-award winning family game that can be played by three or four people in 60-80 minutes. For serious board players, the game will seem too simple, but for people who do not want to bother with the rules and engage in "taking away the brain", as well as for families with children from 7-8 years old - this game is perfect...

 "Zooloretto" does not let go. Point. I don't stop liking this unimaginative game at all... On the shelf there are untried "Dracula" and "Shadows of Camelot", recently "Warcraft" came with an add-on, and I want to play "Zooloretto". If anyone doesn't know, Zooloretto is a game about a zoo. In it, players act as managers of their own zoo, buy animals, build stalls and new enclosures, in short, do everything to earn victory points. As one of my friends likes to repeat: "Everything is like in life." "Zooloretto" is not really an original game. The author (the well-known Comrade Shakht) reimagined his most successful brainchild - the game "Coloretto" - in a new way: threw the hell out of abstraction, added money to the game, replaced colored cards with tokens with animals, and voila! We had to come up with a new name... Before us is a game that looks great, with simple rules, high dynamism, low competitiveness. In short, a find for the family. "Professional" boardgamers perceived the game as recycled material, saying that "Coloretto" is pure gameplay, leavened on interesting mechanics, and "Zooloretto" is purely a money-making game. But! This game has one great feature - it is not abstract at all. For me personally, this is the main reason why I prefer to collect animals rather than pieces of colored cardboard. Any action in this game is closely related to the setting and is logical. Money brings a very light economic aspect to the game in addition to the tactical one, and add-ons provide a fan. Appendix one: Tokens of Podlanka. Finally you can make abominations! These are nine tokens of problems that play in the zoos of rivals and close places for animals in enclosures, prohibit the construction of stalls and break the roof of the reserve, forcing to spend on major repairs. I like to make abominations! Appendix Two: Mission Maps. Loudly shouted, of course, about the mission. Simply, at the beginning of the game, each player receives a card on which it is indicated for which animals the player will receive more points, and for which he will not receive at all. Only 5 animal species out of 8 are shown on the maps, which makes players compete harder for them. At the beginning of the game, these cards create a light atmosphere of the game "Mafia", everyone is thinking about who will collect the giraffes you need, and who will push the useless pandas, for which you will not get points anyway. But you can throw these pandas into your spare! They don't give a minus for them either! Supplement three: "Zooloretto XXL". It is the simplest. Just doubles the number of tokens. However, there is another side to such a sharp increase. There are too many animals! Now the reserve is swelling like yeast, and you have to buy a large aviary without fail, although this does not save the situation much. zoos of the world stand, apparently, empty cells) and cut off glasses for it. However, the course is not very profitable. 6 points for the first serve, 5 for the second, 4 for the rest. Other additions somehow did not work for me. Scatters of mini-addons from one Super Animal tile, such as King Kong, Christmas Reindeer, and other fabulous fauna, have a common drawback: they give a big advantage to whoever acquired that animal. "Zooloretto Exotic" introduces a new system of visitors to the game, which, as if from another game, was torn off. "Aqualoretto" (Shacht knows how to invent names) is the same thing, but filled with lappet. In our gaming group, which consists of girls, the game went with a bang! Fewer than two or three games in a row are played extremely rarely, since the duration of the game is 15-20 minutes. The number of jokes and pranks at the table is off the charts. The game is recommended to everyone who does not like complicated rules, as well as to all animal lovers. PS The most frequent phrase during the parties: "Buy an elephant!"..

 Rune Age is distinguished by a high level of interaction between players and aggression (up to the elimination of the player), asymmetric factions and different game scenarios. The scenario shown on The Realms of Terrinoth reduced the game to an "arms race" in which the goal was to accumulate enough power to destroy the main enemy, the dragon lord card that lies in the center of the table from the start and has a power of 18. The west was mentioned and mentioned. a co-op scenario in which "trouble" is thrown into the deck of events, and players must work together to counter that deck. Scenarios also determine the cards available to players; yes, in the scenario played out at the event, there were only 3 different neutral cards available to players. SCHEDULE The basic set of the game features four factions - the same as in Runewars. Each faction has its own unique set of stacks of cards that a player playing as a faction can buy into their deck, and they are unique. Most of the faction's special cards are troops. In addition, each faction is matched with one card representing the kingdom itself, which has 20 stamina. Also, each faction has its own stack of so-called fortresses - they give players points of influence. Common deck cards can be bought by all players. These include gold cards and neutral cards; the second includes various tactics that can affect the player's turn or battle, as well as neutral troops. The city maps represent the various cities of the Terrinoth universe (Vinevale, Frostgate, etc.). Cities have defense levels at their disposal and can be captured by players. Once a city is captured, it is positioned in front of the player who captured it and can rotate 90° (like resources in collectible card games) to grant them influence points to purchase cards. The Event Deck provides unique instant events and enemy cards that come into play and can be attacked by players. Most of the enemy cards when defeated bring artifacts to the winner - they provide the player with additional game opportunities. All players receive starting cards according to their faction. Thus, the human faction receives maps of troops of four types: infantry, archers, knights and siege towers. Their prices are 1, 2, 3, and 4 gold, respectively, and their power is 1, 2, 3, and 4. In addition, there are 3 fortress cards available to the human faction, each of which can be purchased and placed in front of you by spending 4 gold or capturing with battles (with a total strength of 2). A captured or purchased fortress earns 1 point of influence. All army cards, in addition to price and power, have special game features that are used in battle. CONDITIONS OF VICTORY Any game in Rune Age begins by choosing a scenario, depending on which the victory conditions change, for example, to destroy a dragon lord whose power is equal to 18. In addition, it is possible to win by destroying the kingdom cards of all opposing players - the player whose kingdom card has lost all 20 stamina points and is out of the game (this game moment is being clarified and is not the truth). FLOW OF THE GAME  There are three types of resources in the game: gold, influence and power (the ability to fight) - all of them are represented on cards. Cards are purchased by spending the required resources and then either go into the player's discard pile, which is later transformed into their new deck, or are laid out in front of the player, ready for action. During his turn, a player can spend gold or influence to buy new cards, or start a battle to capture a card. Gold is spent as in other similar games: the player simply discards gold cards from his hand and acquires new cards for the amount of their value. Influence is carried out by the cards lying in front of the player. They are not mixed in the player's deck, but are returned by 90° as payment for the purchase of cards. The third possible action is to declare a battle by playing troops from your hand. At the end of any player's turn, everyone adds five cards from their decks to their hand. This allows you to enter the battle as a defender without being helpless on your next turn. BATTLE Battle works like this. A player declares a battle during his turn and first states his objective, which can be a neutral city laid out at the start of the game, a neutral city already captured by another player, an event map showing an enemy (including the main enemy - scenario objectives), or a kingdom another player. In all cases, the battle is the same, but only at the end of the battle with the event card, an additional loss step is performed. The player who announced the attack is considered the attacker. He starts the battle by laying out a troop or tactic card from his hand. If the target is a neutral card, the player simply continues laying out cards until they want to stop, or until the power of the laid cards exceeds the defense level of the attacked card. If another player controls a card, players take turns laying down one card until both save. After saving, the player can no longer lay out cards; if one player saved, the other player can lay out as many cards as he wants. Maps of troops and tactics also use their game capabilities. Once the winner of the battle is determined, all cards are discarded into the hosts' discard piles. In a battle against a neutral enemy, a die is rolled to determine the player's losses. Two faces of the cube are empty, three - with one depicted army, and one - with two. The dropped edge dictates how many troop cards the player will be forced to destroy before calculating the final strength of the opposing sides. A few words about the abilities of the cards. Having played a pawn, the player reveals the top card of his deck, and if it is another pawn, he can take it into his hand, otherwise discards it or returns it to the top of the deck. The archer's ability allows you to force the opponent to discard one troop card (from those already laid out on the table for the battle). The ability of the knight allows you to reveal the top card of your deck, and if its power level is 3 or less, take it into your hand, and if it is more, discard it. A siege tower allows you to discard cards from your hand and add +2 strength for each of them for the duration of this battle. The undead faction has more interesting actions, for example, resurrection: such troops, entering the game, allow the player to find a card with the ability of resurrection in his discard pile and put it into battle. Other factions have cards that can "injure" themselves to gain extra power or allow the host to draw more cards during battle. A few words about the terms "drop", "wound" and "destroy". When discarding a card, the player simply places it in their discard pile. When destroying a card, the player returns it to the purchase pile from which it was purchased — including the card leaves the player's deck. If a card is destroyed during battle, it no longer adds power to the host. Therefore, troops that can destroy other people's cards are very valuable. Wound (this only happens in battle) a card, the player turns it 90 ° to indicate that it is wounded - the card still adds its power to the host's total power for that battle, but after the battle it is not reset, but destroyed. Tactics cards can be played during turn and battle. For example, Battle Cry and Forced March. The first is a combat tactic and gives +1 power for each friendly troop participating in the battle. Forced March allows you to destroy one card from your hand to draw two cards from your deck. Such cards are bought by spending influence. MISCELLANEOUS NEUTRAL TROOPS A neutral demon army has been spotted in the game. It costs 6 units of influence, has a power of 5 (the strongest of the observed troops). Additionally, a demon cannot be destroyed during battle unless it is first wounded. A very useful ability to battle with enemies (event cards). EVENTS DECK The deck of events is formed before the game. The objective card starts the game already on the table - it was the main enemy (dragon lord) with a power of 18. At the end of each round, before the first player starts a new round, a new event deck card is drawn. During the familiarization game, the first artifact from the event deck appeared, which was laid out according to the text in front of the player sitting to the right of the first player. It gave the player an additional unit of +1 influence. The following events turned out to be enemies that, when defeated, left the player as artifacts that give additional points of gold or influence. Near the end of the game, an instant event appeared, which turned out to be an enemy and attacked each of the four players in turn. His power was 12 points, and the player had to exceed them by playing cards from his hand. Any points not absorbed were converted into damage to the player's kingdom map. Yes, the eyewitness (and author of the original note) who had no combat cards in his hand took all 12 damage, reducing his kingdom's durability from 20 to 8 all at once! THE FINAL BATTLE The people won. At the beginning of the last turn, the player had one gold card, Battle Cry and 3 Forced March in their hand. After playing Forced March, the player destroyed the gold card and got two infantry. After playing a second Forced March, I killed one infantryman and got a infantryman and a demon. The third Forced March destroyed the footman and allowed for a second demon and a knight. People at that point already had an artifact that gives +3 might in battle with the scenario objective, so the player started the final battle by playing a demon (+5 might), a demon (+5), a knight (+3), taking from the top of the deck into a pawn's hand, a pawn (+1), revealing and discarding a gold card from the top of the deck, and a Battle Cry (+4) that gave 21 power with the artifact. Since..

 Many draw parallels between "Cuba" and such games as "Puerto Rico" or "Struggle for the Galaxy". Indeed, the driving force of these games is the choice of character cards (roles, phases - the essence does not change from this). Let me remind you that in the basic "Cuba" players have five characters at their disposal: a worker (extraction of resources and products), trade (buying/selling goods), architect (construction of buildings), foreman (activation of buildings) and mayor (export of goods for victory points ). In each round, each player plays four characters from this list, and the remaining character after 4 rounds goes off to engage in politics, buy votes with the player's money and seek leadership in those same votes to be able to dispose of the four bills and decide which laws will be accepted by the government. , And which are rejected.  Addition "El President" adds one round of moves in each round. In addition to 4 of the 5 characters, each player must sooner or later use one of the available Cuban cards, taking it from the field for himself and performing a unique card action. At the beginning of the round, each Cuban is in a separate place on the field. A certain action of the president is tied to each such place. By taking the Cuban's card, the player crosses out one of the president's possible actions from the list in this way. At the end of the character phase, the presidential car drives along the boulevard and stops near the last card of the Cuban (the others have already been sorted by the players). After that, the president's action is performed, related to the place on the field where the card of the remaining unwanted Cuban is located. Cubans: dancer (player becomes the first player in the next round), musician (player receives 2 coins), day laborer (allows to immediately move the player's products from the yard to the warehouse), port master (replaces ships in the port), lawyer (activates one building per coin), revolutionary (the player receives a victory point).  Actions of the President: In the next round, two characters will go to the parliament. All bills are accepted, the phase of buying votes and voting is skipped. In the next round, it is allowed to move the worker figure before using the foreman. For a coin, each player can rebuild an already existing building into another, spending only the difference in resources. The leader loses 2 victory points. Each player takes a token of any product from the market.  In addition to all of the above, the El Presidente expansion includes several tokens for new buildings, ship maps, and bills. Among the latter, I would like to draw attention to a very strong law that should pull up the laggards. As long as this law is in effect, players will receive additional points at the end of each round. Everyone will receive the number of points equal to their current place on the victory points line: the leader will move up by 1 point, the third player - by 3... This method of pulling out the laggards was used back in Snow Tails. Thanks to this law and the fifth action of the president, the counting of points in the last game in "Cuba" revealed a striking equality: three out of four players scored the same number of points and the winner had to be determined by the amount of cash left at the disposal. In general, "Cuba" with the addition, despite a slightly higher difficulty, is somewhat more loyal to lagging players. Still, this game is not suitable for family leisure: too many rules, too much planning. However, if you sit down to the game to shake your brains, and not just to relax, if you are worried about the upcoming mental duel, where the main weapon will be a mixture of hard calculation, logic and cunning, then "Cuba" will not leave you indifferent...

 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 full of joy and fun! And after each finished game, you want to play again and again! The game will not get boring and will appeal to different people, "from small to large"!..

 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 cards. You place four of them into special slots on your tablet at the start of the round and do them in the order listed, one at a time, when it's your turn to walk. Moreover, the sequence can be broken by paying a certain amount of coins. And they are important because at the end of the game they change 20 to 1 for victory points. Therefore, every 1-2 is given for small actions and their adjustments can affect the final score, which here is quite small. Conditionally 30 points are scored.  There is also an additional mayor slot where you can lay out a card, but for this extra action you pay 5 pesos, so you have to think about whether it is worth the drain of invested resources. As the game progresses, players will be able to use resources to purchase additional action cards in their mini-deck that are more effective and, among other things, that bring victory points. They play in the same way and give either similar actions or significantly improved direct ones. In this point of originality, I will note an unusual and interesting way of obtaining these new cards. Each player has a ship token in port that can be loaded with goods (three types). All enhanced action cards are located in one of three sea zones where you need to swim and ship certain resources there, after which the chosen card is added to your deck. At the same time, the deck of new actions is divided by strength, and you have to pay gold for more powerful cards, and in a cunning way.  2. But the second item is an unusual feature of Valparaiso. Several villages and intermediate points between them are depicted on the playing field. In the villages, you can carry out trade operations according to the original scheme. By playing the trade action card, you activate all your merchants in the villages and they bring you profit. How many little men are in the village, so many times you trade there for one action. In addition to the question "what will I get in the village?" is solved in an original way: in each location there is a set of dies, in which today's losers are indicated. For example, in one move you get red cubes, and if you come to another, you will get the opportunity to buy more cubes, but for coins, and in the third you can exchange resources for points, etc.  All of these opportunity tiles are circulated daily in the villages and trade opportunities vary each round. Another trick is that if you want to trade in the village, you need to get to it with a special traffic card. And the further you move, the more expensive it is, while passing through intermediate points, you will need to pay the owner of this point.  Yes, you can still build your own houses in intermediate points and villages: the former will allow you to collect tribute from those passing by, and the latter will increase trade activities in a specific village. Here, in fact, are all the unique features of the game. We shake the deck a little with new action cards, wander around the villages and exchange red and white cubes for coins and victory glasses. In the end, we consider who bought the cards more expensively and collected more money in order to merge all this into the software at the exchange rate. IMPRESSION Very flat. Valparaiso presents itself as a normal Euro, with interesting mechanics of markets and buying action cards. But as a result, everything flows into flat, some ... same-type, or something, body movements. The original mechanics even capture your attention for a while, because everything here is not the same as in ordinary Euros. However, gradually the process turns into monotony and the realization that you are not doing anything original. For example, the ability to change the sequence of programmed actions for money initially seems like a good game feature, for example, you can skillfully adapt to the actions of your opponents. But as a result, it turns out to be a completely useless stray, which works not that several times per party for everyone, but once for several parties. After all, if you plan correctly, then you never need to change the sequence, and even situations when it may be necessary to overtake an opponent are very rare, or rather, do not actually occur at all.  But this is a minor minus, okay. And here is a plus from the same opera: the mayor's action slot, which can be used for 5 coins - this simple chip works as it should. Want some extra action? Please: pay money and do more. Nothing special, but cool. You have to consider whether you need this extra action or it is better to save your finances. The same sailing on a loaded ship according to maps is done interestingly, but no more. It doesn't feel like a separate mechanic, it's just another way to make the game different from everyone else. Why? For the player in the process, this means nothing, a small chip that does not affect the general perception in any way and does not stand out in the brain as a noticeable feature of the game. Well, yes, to get an enhanced action, you must first spend four basic actions: get goods, load on a ship, swim in the right direction, buy a card.  Does it feel like an adventure, a gameplay feature? No, just a series of intermediate body movements for the purpose of buying a card approximately the same as the one you have in your hands. The same with trade in villages. The idea of sending your traders deep into the island, finding the right treaty tiles with the right effect, waypoints where you can set up a checkpoint that charges a fee - all great. It sounds In fact, it turns out like a ship - a bunch of left-wing actions for the same thing that we have seen in other crowds. We spent a movement card, then a construction card to set up our house, then used a trade card - three actions in all - just to get a couple of goods cubes.  It is because of these contrived actions, which lead to rather ordinary and unimpressive results, that the general feeling of monotony of the process is created. The player works-works, accumulates-collects these few resources, then loads, floats, unloads the mined, and as a result receives a card, the same as his starters, but with the possibility of purchasing some additional tree. And while this whole routine process is going on, victory points are collected, and the game ends very quickly. You managed to buy a trio of cards, once or twice to merge goods for software — and here is the final tally. Oh_oh  The interaction in the game is carried out at the level of blocking transitions from village to village with your houses and charging for passage, but this is not enough to talk about any competition on the field, in principle. Therefore, the players here are quite independent from each other and adjust each of their engines, if it can be called that separately. I'd even go so far as to say that this minimal interaction hinders the jostling, as the constant hand-to-hand exchange of coins becomes tiresome after only a couple of rounds. Someone built a house at the crossroads. And now every other player, passing through this path, must give 2 coins to the owner. So everyone started trading in one village - and everyone who does an action there must give a coin to everyone who has their little man/house in that settlement. And so every turn! If you want to show someone by example what fiddling is like in board games, sit down to play five in Valparaiso.  This is the general impression. But the box is not without advantages. Yes, the overkill with intermediate actions is felt, but these walking around the island and setting up the construction of houses in the villages were declared as a board chip. Loading the ship with goods and storing in the port what will still be needed on land is also fun. The development of all these mechanics by the authors is visible. No matter how you play, the time of the game is at your disposal — only 20 minutes per..

 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 far, the 6 games I've played have taken less than 2 hours (not counting layouts). The shortest took 70 minutes. All six were raid missions. Redrawability Without exaggeration, Reichbusters is one of the most addictive games in my collection. Thanks to an option like RAID, you can quickly generate a mission for yourself with a variety of tiles, objectives and enemies. With so many heroes to choose from and the ability to choose starting gear and skills, each game is completely different from the last. This is one of the main advantages of Reichbusters. I will also write down the quality components, thematics and decent complexity as pluses. CONS Unfriendliness.  The 1.0 rulebook is just awful. The redesigned version is better, but still not great. Key mechanics (patrol level, alert level, line of sight) are explained in a very vague way, making it difficult to get into the game. Plus keywords. The game has "silent", "stealth" and "stealth". They all work in a similar way, but in the same way. The same goes for "accurate," "focused," and "unmissable." I think cramming so many keywords into a rulebook like a wargame was a mistake. This creates a big barrier for newcomers. Oddly enough, some of the items that can be mined have icons that clearly demonstrate their effect. Why couldn't the same be done with character attributes? Fortunately, the era has larger cards for each of the characters that list the main keywords. But they should have been included in the game from the beginning. Layout Inevitable evil, unfortunately. Primarily due to assembling a map from tiles, as in Descent. A good organizer will reduce time costs, but you will still have to spend 30-40 minutes on the layout. Assembly is fast: 5 minutes. It is easy to be deceived in expectations. This is not a simple cube thrower. There is almost no loot. When the alarm sounds, you should run, not stay and fight. CONCLUSIONS I love Reichbusters. I bought the game more out of curiosity and was surprised at how long it took. The gameplay is polished and very fan-friendly, there are many successful mechanics. The regalness is off the charts, plus chic art and underpants. It's a shame that Reichbusters' reputation has been severely damaged by its lack of newbie friendliness and terrible rules.  Rating - 9/10...

 Hi to all! Over the past few days, we've received a ton of great games. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we want to inform you about fresh arrivals and product updates in our store. Get acquainted with the novelties and what's new in Lelekan-chiku. Hurry up, the games are great and will satisfy all tastes, be the first in time)..