Post by Gilvan Blight on Mar 5, 2007 9:48:15 GMT -5
Quickly: a thinkers game, no randomness, just not that much fun.
Summary: okay the pasted on background is that two forces of mer-men are fighting over the city of Atlanteon. The board is a grid of squares each 'representing a section of the city'. First the players set the board by playing out 3 towers, 2 white and one black, then take turns playing tiles. Each player has a set of tiles numbered 0 to 9 and one king tile. These are always kept face up so the other player can see what you have left. Each turn a player plays a tile. Once a tile is orthoganally (not diagonally) surrounded it is 'scored' This is done by adding up the values of the tile itself and all surrounding tiles for each player colour. The player with the highest total, controlls the tile and adds a wodden token to it. The castles are scored differently. The white castles are awarded to the player with the highest total surrounding it, but the player doesn't get to place a token. The black is scored by the lowest total and the player gets to place a token. This continues until the map is filled or a king is captured. Victory is determined by the player who plays thier king and all of their wooden tokens (11), the player who 'scores' the oponents kinds or the player who owns all three towers. The game suggests you play one round on each side and score points for each token the oposing player has left after victory is determined.
The Good: simple rules with deep strategy. This is pretty much a trademark of Mr. Kniza and this game is no exception. There is aboslutely no random factor in this game, making it more akin to Chess or Go then other Fantasy Flight games, this is often considered a good thing. The Wooden pieces are a nice touch for a 'discount' game. This is part of Fantasy Flights Silverline collection, and thus retails for $20 CDN or less. It's an interesting diversion for the price.
The Bad: for some reason it just wasn't that much fun. Not sure why, but I would rather play other 'thinkers' then this one. The art on the tiles was nice but duplicated for each player, it would have been more interesting to see two different looking armies. The box this came in was generic so there isn't really a place for all the bits (thankfully there aren't many so mixing them doesn't take long to sort out).
The Ugly: typical of Kniza games they could have called this anything and slapped any 'background on it' Heck on boardgame geek you can download Mars Attacks pictures to put over your tiles. It's an extremely abstract math game that really has nothing to do with undersea battles.
Ovarall: this was a fun diversion for one night and I may bring it to some gatherings for some stimulating and relatively quick two player games between main games. It was alright, and I can't even tell you exactly why, but it just wasn't that much fun. I can think of many other pure strategy games I would rather play.
Summary: okay the pasted on background is that two forces of mer-men are fighting over the city of Atlanteon. The board is a grid of squares each 'representing a section of the city'. First the players set the board by playing out 3 towers, 2 white and one black, then take turns playing tiles. Each player has a set of tiles numbered 0 to 9 and one king tile. These are always kept face up so the other player can see what you have left. Each turn a player plays a tile. Once a tile is orthoganally (not diagonally) surrounded it is 'scored' This is done by adding up the values of the tile itself and all surrounding tiles for each player colour. The player with the highest total, controlls the tile and adds a wodden token to it. The castles are scored differently. The white castles are awarded to the player with the highest total surrounding it, but the player doesn't get to place a token. The black is scored by the lowest total and the player gets to place a token. This continues until the map is filled or a king is captured. Victory is determined by the player who plays thier king and all of their wooden tokens (11), the player who 'scores' the oponents kinds or the player who owns all three towers. The game suggests you play one round on each side and score points for each token the oposing player has left after victory is determined.
The Good: simple rules with deep strategy. This is pretty much a trademark of Mr. Kniza and this game is no exception. There is aboslutely no random factor in this game, making it more akin to Chess or Go then other Fantasy Flight games, this is often considered a good thing. The Wooden pieces are a nice touch for a 'discount' game. This is part of Fantasy Flights Silverline collection, and thus retails for $20 CDN or less. It's an interesting diversion for the price.
The Bad: for some reason it just wasn't that much fun. Not sure why, but I would rather play other 'thinkers' then this one. The art on the tiles was nice but duplicated for each player, it would have been more interesting to see two different looking armies. The box this came in was generic so there isn't really a place for all the bits (thankfully there aren't many so mixing them doesn't take long to sort out).
The Ugly: typical of Kniza games they could have called this anything and slapped any 'background on it' Heck on boardgame geek you can download Mars Attacks pictures to put over your tiles. It's an extremely abstract math game that really has nothing to do with undersea battles.
Ovarall: this was a fun diversion for one night and I may bring it to some gatherings for some stimulating and relatively quick two player games between main games. It was alright, and I can't even tell you exactly why, but it just wasn't that much fun. I can think of many other pure strategy games I would rather play.