Hello, today we received a lot of great games, and we will immediately share the news with you!..

 The world needs more board games spawned by nature documentaries. I think it wouldn't hurt designers to try on the theme of hostile creatures more often in their games. Kelp is Carl Robinson's first original work, developed and published in association with Wonderbow Games. Deeply asymmetric in design, Kelp pits a shark against a squid among seaweed, a cat-and-mouse game for two players. Deck building vs. bag building. Cards vs Dice. Lego (at least for a moment) vs. Mahjongg. OCTOPUS Squid game is a survival game. The kelp forest is divided into a 3 × 3 grid, each containing a tile facing the squid player. One tile is a squid. Other tiles are shells, traps and (potentially) squid food.  Players choose two actions in any combination: play a card, return a card to the hand limit, or discard to hide an exposed tile. Each card has a face value. Actions include learning (adding cards to the deck), swapping adjacent tiles, randomly shuffling tiles, hiding tiles, and eating. A squid has two goals: survive and/or eat. If the shark is exhausted in the hunt, then the squid wins. Eating all four food options also results in an instant win for the squid. However, in order to eat, the player with the tentacles must first add a food card and tile to the game through learning, and then reveal the location of the squid and food after eating. Each food consumed adds strength, creating all the motivation needed to relieve tension.  Aside from stealth, the squid's only weapons are traps. If the shark ever discovers the trap, it will have consequences that will affect the state of the field. Traps can also be obtained through training. SHARK The shark's moves are a bit more procedural, but also pretty simple. Toothy takes out two dice from the bag, which he throws and uses. The blue cubes placed along the lines of motion represent the currents that move the shark outside the designated space. When the currents are arranged on the map in descending order, they provide a chain movement. Yellow dice reveal squid tiles if they are tossed high enough to exceed the success threshold. The red dice, which also require successful rolls, allow you to strike a secret configuration of squid tiles.  If the squid itself is successfully hit, players engage in a battle of wits to decide the game. The squid has three special action cards for this circumstance, the shark has a counter card. Both players secretly choose a card and reveal it. If there is a match, the shark counterattacks and wins. The discrepancy allows the squid to perform an evasive maneuver while continuing the game. However, after this first duel, the matching set is removed, leaving only two matching cards and therefore a 50-50 chance of the next shark strike. The third strike is a guaranteed victory for the shark. The shark builds strength in two ways. Search dice used and the first activated current die in a turn are used to activate a series of abilities, each of which requires three dice to unlock. During the game, the shark gets the opportunity to roll the dice and improve with ease. The second way is the one-time ability card market. Any unused dice on the shark's turn go into their wallet, which the shark uses to make purchases based on the number of points. After three dice, a purchase is required. These market cards also add dice to the bag, shifting the balance towards search and strike.  The shark's weakness, however, is the eight-cube lane, which leads to exhaustion. Hit dice used automatically land on this track (removing them from the game). Each card purchase also permanently puts one die on the track. If you do the math, you'll see that upgrades and attack are limited. The shark must move with hasty precision. EXPERIENCE Playing Shark is an internal conflict from start to finish. You want to set the available current points on the board for the future, but you also want to use them early and often to activate those flips. You want to shop early and often for special cards and extra strike dice, but those purchases will lead to exhaustion and an early death if you also have a lot of terrible rolls in your wallet. When you have hit dice, it's tempting to blindly attack on a good hunch, but there are only so many opportunities to swing before you run out of gas. The squid game ends. Anything you want to do that is of any value requires you to disclose some information to the shark. It's very tempting to eat, but once you reveal your position, you must have cards to hide, shuffle and swap them to safety, or your opponent will eat you next.  Not only are the mechanics asymmetric, but so are the behaviors required on both sides. Every turn when the shark feels desperate, it's like you know your time is up from the moment the first die hits the exhaustion track. Even the fact that you have to swim forward all the time ("around" is prohibited) tickles the nerves. A squid, on the other hand, must remain calm, cool, and collected—or it will die of impatience. An untimely bite when the supporting arm is weak will only create a source of anxiety and a great opportunity for the enemy. As much as I love the feel of Kelp, I think people will be disappointed that the last moment of the game depends on flipping the map like an old school game of war. I understand the psychology of conflict: it's obviously best to move the shark to the other side of the board, but the shark knows that. Actually, the shark knows that I know that the shark knows, so I have to do it anyway, because that's the last thing the shark expects. The solution is always interesting, but that doesn't necessarily make it exciting. I think it fits the theme well, so I wouldn't suggest changes, but I wonder what the final answer will be. A great deal of systematic work can unravel in a hurry if the "wrong" map sees the light of day.  For all I know, my second potential problem may already be solved. I feel both sides, but especially the calamari, could use a little more spice. I'm not quite sure where it's needed, but it's needed. Team Wonderbow has already announced an additional deck of cards with a race for secondary objectives and long-term advantages. Maybe that's the answer, but the overall collection of action makes you wonder if there might not be another trick up one of the squid's many sleeves or something else to liven up the fact that your ultimate goal is hiding in the first place. Speaking of squid, eating as a strategy is an exercise in self-flagellation. In our first couple games when I was a shark, no one tried to do this. The cost seems too high. When I finally sat down like a squid, I went for it. When I raised my head to eat, I had hide and seek, swapping and shuffling. My location was compromised for the rest of the game. I lost. After that, I hesitated to do it again. Even with shuffling cards in hand, there were so many exposed tiles on the board that it was difficult to get back to the safety of the seaweed. I feel like a squid shouldn't try to eat unless all the food is added to the log, unleashing a maddened, overindulgent sprint to the finish line. Studying these food tiles on the map (even if the phrase is grammatically unclear) is the perfect way to put pressure on the shark and create an exciting duel. Squid maps have a delicate balance. If it is too easy to hide the tiles, the squid will live in an impenetrable secret. If the task is too big, the shark will have a full belly. Once you settle into that pocket, the difficulty with the squid is how passive the turns can be. There are back-to-back hide turns to just get through the deck and hopefully make the perfect hand. Such patience may not be for everyone. It wasn't for all my opponents. Shark definitely has options and feels more active from the start. It's just a matter of weighing priorities against the pressure of a ticking clock. I appreciate the extent to which Mr. Robinson imbues Kelp with the personalities of his characters. This sea teems with idiosyncrasies. ALGAE FOREST Kelp is every bit as intriguing as I hoped it would be when I listed it as one of GenCon's most anticipated games. I have never played a game like this. I'm really excited to see the final production - the prototype is nice (even the spare Lego shark is adorable). I am interested in the campaign and any possible future announcements...

 Nicholas is approaching, and Lelekan will help you choose a wonderful gift. A bunch of novelties and time-tested world hits came to us again. So it's time to update your collection...

 Age of Wonders: Planetfall (2022, Arcane Wonders) is a board game based on the video game of the same name. The video game (available on PC and all major consoles) is a 4X-style civilization game; As part of the Age of Wonders series, Planetfall is a version of this family of space exploration video games. I'm told the scale is grand — I haven't played the video game — and Planetfall does what all great "civilization" games do, allowing players to lead empires into space battles, conduct diplomacy with other species, customize leaders and units, and do a whole a bunch of other stuff that seems epic to me. Age of Wonders: Planetfall (Board Game) is so incredibly simplistic that it should be applauded for its simplicity. The tabletop version of Planetfall is a 20-40 minute card collecting game with European-style scoring and small bonuses for each playing faction if they make certain types of cards. “The cover looks pretty epic,” my wife joked before our first two-player game. And the cover REALLY looks pretty epic - it seems to depict a game that looks like it's going to be Mass Effect for desktop. It's not, but I think Planetfall achieves what it's trying to achieve. I'm not sure you'll want to play this game after the first few times you get it on your desk. THERE IS SO MUCH OF EVERYTHING  Age of Wonders: Planetfall is a card drafting game for 2-6 players (well, mostly) that consists of 14 turns over seven rounds. Each player takes on the role of faction leader with tracking of player score, experience points, power and energy. The last two tracks are expendable resources, so you'll be moving these trackers back and forth as you play. Experience points never decrease and range from 0 to 10 points. Experience is useful mainly in the fight against enemy factions, presented here in the form of cards. After a small market of cards is created for each round, the player first in the initiative order places their spaceship token (essentially used as a betting token in Planetfall) on one card in the market. When each player draws one card, the market is resolved from top to bottom, left to right. There are four suits of cards. Units must be fought or negotiated; Tech cards grant permanent powers and then scoring conditions at the end of the game. Landmarks encourage players to adopt a specific collection strategy, while Pickup cards offer one-time energy or income bonuses that can be claimed at the start of each round. If a player doesn't like the cards in the market, they can choose Operations instead, which is the transfer action in Planetfall, but a little juicier. You can spend "Operation Points" on things like victory points, power points, and experience points to make trades and prepare for better actions in future turns. Operations aren't that interesting, but it's a necessary evil in a lot of games because it's hard to keep wasting other resources without touching one or both from scratch on the player mat. The rounds are divided into planet decks. Each of the seven rounds has a different deck of planets with cards progressing in difficulty and rewards. You'll see most of the deck each game (especially with more players), so there's not a lot of replayability in terms of the differences between these decks. A deck always contains 14 cards, and the breakdown of the four suits in the deck is always the same: four unit cards, four pick cards, three technology cards, and three landmark cards. The turns are cool. Depending on where a player draws their card, they return to the initiative track in that order, meaning if you pick first, you pick first again the next round. The value of the cards is higher if the cards are in the top row of the market table, so this is a counterbalance to the player who tries to always choose the card first. My Planetfall games have always lasted less than an hour. My two player game lasted just over 30 minutes. I believe that experienced players can complete a game like this for four players in about 20-30 minutes. ALMOST PERFECT Planetfall plays fast. The game is easy to learn. Scoring is open, so it's easy to see how your opponents are doing. Planetfall is quick to break down and quick to assemble. I just wish it was more interesting. My wife realized this after our first game; from turn to turn the decisions are somewhat interesting, but there is usually a clear "best" choice regarding the action. A lot of cards and all Pickup cards feel like that for a reason. Often Pickup cards are exactly the same, with the same card name and the same rewards. If there are scoring milestones in the endgame that encourage players to draw certain types of cards, they always will. And when in doubt, I often find that I usually play the card that scores the most victory points, regardless of what the milestones say. The fast game time is its best asset. I also like how the cards are broken down by value based on the level of the market they are currently at. Some of the purple tech cards have interesting bonuses that make them attractive no matter what you're going to do. Income seems to be a bug in Planetfall - taking Pickup cards to get a single energy boost seems like a waste. But I've found that tech cards often have a reasonable value and consistent income benefit, so I grab them when I can. The most troubling part of the reviewer's Planetfall experience comes late in the game. No matter what I did in each of my games, I was about 10 points ahead of the other players. This could mean that the game is extremely balanced. It can also mean that it doesn't matter what you do in a game that screams "scoring salad" because you're going to score 70-80 points no matter what.  I mentioned earlier that Planetfall is mostly a card-matching game. One of the factions has a bonus associated with the performance of operational actions. Operational actions result in the player not taking a card from the market. In one of our games, a player won with only five cards in the entire game (ie only five cards, while the rest had 13 or 14). The rest of the time he would perform Operational Actions and use some of his Operational Points to gain victory points as one of the expendable actions. (This will pay off well later in the game, as you can always score points equal to the current number of rounds.) Combined with getting a tech card that boosted his ops points even more, and a final milestone that scored points for his remaining resource power, it became a powerful combo. Even then, the bills were tight. I've never had a bad experience with Planetfall, and other players who have joined me in individual games have told me the same. You might have a clever twist or two, but nothing that screams "I'm a genius!" My wife and I both commented after our game together that the game might be too short. It looks like a more strategic affair with potentially important decisions, but by the time you realize it's not, you're dealing the cards for the fifth round of a seven-round game. Planetfall falls into that hard-to-review category—it's an average game, everything about it is good (including the design and rules), and it's a game that I started to forget about almost as soon as I finished writing this review. For fans of the video game, I wonder if Planetfall is a more interesting experience because those fans might recognize some of the enemies or images. Otherwise, there are many great options in the map/open projects category that provide better gameplay...

 Hi to all! Over the past few days, we've received a ton of great games. Therefore, we are very pleased 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)..

Hello, today we received a lot of great games, and we will immediately share the news with you!..

Happy Birthday, Us! We are already 6 years old! This year, like all Ukrainians, we make one wish, to wake up as soon as possible in a Peaceful and Free Ukraine! In September 2017, Lelekan opened its doors for board game lovers for the first time, and is still open every day to bring a sea of happy emotions, interesting and fun experiences for you and your loved ones! So much has changed since then, but the love for puzzles and games has only grown stronger! We are glad that for these 6 years the number of connoisseurs of interesting and fun time has only increased! Thank you to EVERYONE who was with us, who remains with us, and also thank you to everyone who joins! Therefore, today, we have a nice gift! When buying board games, from September 21 to 24, in our store on St. Rubchaka 21b in Lviv, you will roll 2 dice, which will determine the discount you will receive before your purchase We believe that everyone will find a game that hits their heart, and our team will help with this! Raffle on the occasion of the store's birthday! There will be 3 winners in the draw, who will receive one of our localizations. 1st place Castles of Burgundy 2nd place 13 Tips 3rd place Coup: Steampunk Terms of the draw: 1. Be subscribed to our instagram lelekan.com.ua; 2. Make a story of your gaming evening and specify the hashtag #витаќемолекан; 3. Be registered on our website (link in profile header); 4. Send us a direct message with the name or email address you registered under. That's all. You are participating in a raffle. The draw will last until September 24 inclusive. We will announce the results on September 25. We wish you success)..

 One of the oldest franchises of computer boss-butlers has decided to move to the tabletop format. What came of it? MHW:TB has two game modes. In arena mode, a group of hunters (chosen by you, with pre-selected equipment) fight a selected monster once. But the main game mode is the campaign, during which you hunt a lot of monsters, and at the end you face a super boss. In other words, it's a boss battler like Kingdom Death: Monster, Townsfolk Tussle, etc. Up to 4 hunters in co-op fight card-controlled AI monsters, turning the best carcasses of the slain into gear to fight even stronger monsters. A base company lasts 25 days (longer if you add expansions or combine two bases), but one hunt usually takes just under an hour, so 2-3 game days can be played in 2 hours of play.  The first thing you'll see in the box are the monster miniatures. The quality is excellent by board game standards; little detailed, with more or less hidden seams. It is nice to paint them, but even if you are not a fan of painting, you should at least paint them with a dark shade so that the details are more visible. In particularly large models (Rathalos in the Ancient Forest) the wings lie separately. I was skeptical at first and expected to have to resort to glue or magnets to keep the inserted wings in place, but surprisingly they hold up well. True, the pegs of the Rathalos stand had to be cut by half an inch so that the wings fit a little tighter to the body. There are other components under the loopholes. The hunter miniatures are not inferior in quality to the monster miniatures, although lime green is a strange color for the model (hunters are so easy to distinguish from monsters on the field). There's a stack of decks, rules and adventure books, a two-sided field, and forge memo cards for each hunter (including one for Wildspire Wastes in case you decide to combine the two bases). The organizer is a little disappointing: the cards in the protectors do not fit into the corresponding notches, there is only enough space to "save" the progress (in the campaign mode) of two hunters, and it is not very convenient to store the cards somewhere separate from the miniatures of the hunters lying in the organizer. And I don't like the vertical slots for the cards either - I would prefer the horizontal ones, considering that part of the deck is individual for each hunter. There is only one notch for many different tokens, which is also not pleasing. There are a lot of typographical errors on landmarks, cards and adventure books - not so much critical as frustrating. Fortunately, SFG is already releasing a pack with fixed cards.  The campaign mechanics are quite simple and at the same time work well. You have 25 days in the base (the rules recommend spending at least 20 days hunting). With the addition of Elder Dragon or Kula Ya Ku, the limit increases by 5. It is also possible to combine both bases and get a large campaign lasting 45 days. Although each player has their own character progress sheet, there is fortunately little fiddling involved: you only need to count the number of available resources and keep an eye on potions. There is space on the sheet for equipment if you want to write it down, but since each item has its own card, it's easier to put the cards into their respective decks after the game. Although if you keep track of the equipment that was crafted in the forge, you can recreate the hunter from scratch. The pace of the campaign is quite strange. 25 days seems a little excessive (however, the rules suggest reducing the number of days if you want to increase the difficulty); players exchange resources and armor freely, and the campaign rewards you with resources fairly generously, so you rarely need to individually hunt down a monster specifically for the gear you want. It is also surprising that when combining the base, 20 days are added to the campaign. Equipment is divided into 4 tiers (5 if Elder Dragons are added to the game), each hunter in the base has two identical "trees" of equipment T1 and T2 - ore and bone. In the base, each hunter gets T3 and T4 weapons from two specific monsters, so when combining sets, your hunters will most likely only need 3-4 monsters out of a dozen available to max out, even if they decide to mix and match armor or want to get multiple weapons . from one shooting range (there are reasons for both). As a result, practically doubling the length of the campaign turns the game into a fairly easy walk, unless of course you are burning with the desire to hunt down all the monsters purely for the sake of the process. The actions available between hunts are also a bit disappointing. There are benefits to them - yes, you can exchange three common resources for one of your choice, get a resource for free if you're lucky with the dice, and most importantly, visit the monsterologist (Handler) to get the chance to re-quest - study of the monster (Investigation). But these actions are no different in both databases, except for the resource table, and are listed at the end of the adventure book, rather than in the core rules. I would like to see more elements of the computer game in this phase, for example, given by quest researchers. Although, perhaps, such a feature will appear with additions.  Hunting is divided into two phases: preparation (Gathering) and battle. When you go on a quest, you build a deck of a certain number of Time Cards. These cards reflect the limited time available to find and kill a monster; if the time runs out, the quest is failed. As already mentioned, the hunt begins with a preparation phase, in which you are shown a piece of artistic text and given a choice of two options of what to do. This continues until you find the monster and the hunt begins. Moreover, during the preparation phase, you may have to add certain time cards to the deck (their effect can be both positive and negative) due to certain events or receive some bonuses or penalties. But most often you will be offered to spend time cards on gathering resources. Some types of resources can only be mined in this phase. In addition to resources, you may also encounter Scout Flies. They allow you to randomly draw several face-down tokens from the pool, which can have positive or negative numbers. Once you discover a monster, you reveal those tokens, count the amount, and shuffle one of the three cards into the monster deck accordingly. In my opinion, this is the weakest element of the game. Not that the preparation phase is terrible; it flows much more smoothly than, say, the hunting phase in Kingdom Death: Monster. Also, when you're bumping into resources and guessing how many time cards you'll risk removing from the deck (given that you have to defeat the monster in the remaining time) for the resources needed to craft the next shooting range's gear, there's tension and it's gratifying. Especially when it turns out that Roar or Rampage went to reset (or not very happy when A Brief Respite goes to reset). The problem is that this phase is the weakest developed. Take, for example, resources. Some types of ores can be mined only in the preparation phase. There are also special resources (say, Firecell or Coral Crystals) that are required for crafting weapons and are obtained mainly during the preparation phase. This works great in a computer game, as ores and special resources are only found in a specific area, usually a specific deposit, and you can always revisit that deposit when you visit the map. Not so in a board game, of course. If you want, say, a Winged Drake Hide, all you have to do is wait for a card that gives you a Winged Drake Hide. Moreover, it is not indicated anywhere that these items are mined during the preparation phase, so those unfamiliar with the franchise can only wonder if it is a typographical error that the weapon requires, say, Coral Crystal - because it is not listed in the table of trophies of any monster. What's even more annoying is that you only get one chance to attempt each quest, and even if you come across Coral Crystals in the second Tobi Kadachi study quest, you'll only be able to use those resources if you remember exactly what you did path , spend a day visiting the monsterologist to get the chance to do this quest again, and repeat the path. It would be better to indicate at the start of each quest what resources can be obtained here. Not necessarily exact numbers, just roughly so that the player knows that Tobi quests #3 and 4 or Anjanath quests #1 and 2 are required to get the Winged Drake, and not have to wander around hoping to stumble upon the right one, and not wondered why he did not find what he needed: because he made the wrong decisions in the preparation phase, or in this quest, there is no such resource in principle. Artistic descriptions are also not always thought out. Yes, while hunting for Anjanath, we ended up in a cave, then in a forest, then in a cave again. Not that it's completely unrealistic, but it's a bit strange. We had to go through the previous paragraphs several times to make sure we didn't make a mistake. The mechanics of scout flies are stitched with white threads. Yes, it's part of the franchise, so it should be present in the game, but the only point they make is to generate a random number that dictates which of the three cards to add to the II deck. The system is quite frozen with minimal exhaust, so chasing these flies doesn't make much sense. I would like their effect to be more tangible, for example, to return useful time cards from reset.  And here is the main part of the game, where you will spend the most time: the battles. This is where the game unfolds in full. The mechanics are quite simple, but at the same time quite deep and interesting. The battle takes place on a field of 6×6 cells. What the field looks like is described in detail at the beginning..

 In this article, I will evaluate the application solely from a gameplay point of view, here you will not see an evaluation of the compatibility of the game's lore with the so-called Shadow of the Wicked (in the girlhood of the Vampire King).  The add-on fixes several issues with the base game: 1. Slightly improves the position of free peoples, adding to them actions thanks to the cube of rulers and powers with add. recruitment and protection thanks to the abilities of the rulers. On the one hand, the rulers are relatively easy to "awaken" in order to gain access to their proteins (for example, to "awaken" Brand, you only need to have a Severian active and spend an action cube with the value of Nym), on the other hand, it is also relatively easy for the Darkness to memorize them remember that it also gives the Darkness access to the white "scorned by corruption" versions of the rulers. I don't know if there is a balance here, but the chip is generally interesting.  2. Fixes an issue where a player has too many eyes dropped due to darkness, which deprives him of the ability to act on the field. Or when a few eyes dropped and the free peoples didn't drop swords or will of the west, meaning the brotherhood wouldn't advance, making the eye cubes useless. It is now possible to spend eye cubes from the hunting pool, just to correct the rulers. You roll the cube with an eye, draw 3 hunting tokens from the bag, choose one and place it on the field next to one of the rulers you want to carpathize. At the same time, there are 2 tokens in the bag, which force you to discard the rest and count as 0, that is, they mean, in fact, the failure of the corruption attempt, that is, corruption is not a freebie for Darkness, there is also a risk of wasting an action in vain. 3. Adds a little more opportunities to Darkness with Dark Lords. This solves the issue where Darkness lacks Nazgul leadership, and solves the problem of lack of variety of whites and combat capabilities of Dark minions. Leaders are still given the same ruler cube as free peoples. 4. They add more meaning to free peoples in the movement of satellites through the field. In the base of satellites, it rarely makes sense to move around the field, often cards like "There and back" or "Fear, fire, enemies" somewhere in the middle or at the end of the game lie dead weight and are used as combat. Now the satellites have an additional meaning to move them in order to "cure" the rulers of the disease. In general, the additional is normal, it slightly improves the balance of the base, makes it more diverse. Not sure if it will additionally go well with lords, most likely there will be a slight imbalance in favor of light. With warriors, most likely, it will be bad, even more advantage in favor of Svetlana, but I do not recommend playing with warriors at all in principle. All in all, I recommend this add-on for purchase and will buy it myself (but haven't seen the event map yet, maybe there will be a hat)...

Hello, received a batch of great games today, And we will immediately hurry to share the news with you!..