New to the Table

The rule book explains the concept of Takenoko with a comic. Very Penny Arcade in style. Less funny, though.

Great character throughout the rule book.

Takenoko is hex based. There are only 28 of them so it's not likely to threaten the dimensions of your gaming table.

The tray insert is very well thought out. A place for everything.

Neat.

The panda and the imperial gardener are both plastic and carefully, if simply, painted.

The rest of the components in Takenoko (excluding hexes and cards) are made from wood. Bamboo segments of three colours, one die, 'intention tokens' and irrigation sticks are all well made and feel weighty and durable.

Cards.

Takenoko "in the wild".

That box insert, again. A place for everything. Marvellous.

Takenoko, everyone.

I don't know where my Xbox control pad is. Seriously, guys. I haven't seen it for months. The last video game I played with anything approaching mild interest was... Jesus, I don't know! This little indie thing called Stealth Bastard, I think. And the last video game I really enjoyed? Ffffff... erm... 

(actually thinking in real time, now) It was,, It was Stacking. That Double Fine game about Russian dolls. Six(?) months ago? I haven't played a video game in something approaching half a year because I play board games, now. That isn't to say you can't enjoy both. You can. I'll let you. It's okay. Just that I haven't wanted to since I discovered that pushing plastic across cardboard satisfies me so much more! 

Unboxing, punching tokens, shuffling cards, HOLDING LITTLE RUDDY THINGS LIKE PANDAS AND SPACESHIPS! (Accidental CAPS there, but it's cool, so I'm leaving it. I did misspell 'Pandas', though. Went back and changed that.) I love it all.

I need to get better at explaining rules. I'm terrible at that. I get confused and flustered and end up disbelieving myself and not convincing my playmate.

I can't say 'playmate'... Partner? No... I don't know.

That picture above is my Christmas and New Year haul. Takenoko is about gardening in feudal Japan in the face of a destructive Panda. Power Grid, powering more cities than your opponentsOPPONENT! THAT's what I should have said. Not 'playmate'. Hiunger Games is a tiny quick card game. Zombie Dice an utterly random dice thrower in which brains trump shotguns, or something. braaaiiins. And the Star Wars X Wing Miniatures Game is the only game in my collection I have felt the need to buy an expansion for, so far. Probably because the game's core set is annoyingly incomplete. But also because look at the little ships they're fantastic!

So a good variety of games there that share one thong in common: they have yet to be unboxed on New To The Table!

So I think I'll start with...

TAKENOKO!

Rules. Check. Plastic guitars. Check. Awards. Check. A squillion cards. Check...

Just remembered a joke.

Q: How many roadies does it take to change a lightbulb?

A:"1...

1...

1, 2... 2, 2... Check 1, 2. CH! CH!"

The cards are split into three decks. Each deck is used once through the three stages of the game. The first deck, Deck A, is the Rock Star Deck. The Rock Star Deck is the deck we plough to recruit the members of our first band.

We each need five band members: a vocalist, a guitarist, bassist, keyboards and drummer. There is cheap talent and there is expensive talent, each with attribute scores of Charisma, Talent and Opportunism that could be helpful when we need to secure gigs or win over the press. The band you begin the game with may not necessarily be the same band you end the game with.

Here's my motley crew. They're not called Motley Crue, though. I always said that if I started a band I would call them Take Thee Rachel.

In order to take Take Thee Rachel to the upper echelons of super stardom, the band first have to wallow in the basement gigs and ill-booked country & western bars of Deck B: Career Debut.

Again, cash from the manager's kitty is spent booking early appearances, recording demos and basically getting the Take Thee Rachel name on the streets, into small press and hopefully into the ears of impressionable youth everywhere.

Welcome to the Jungle. I mean, Deck C. Not out of cash yet? Spent it wisely enough (and turned over a few lucky cards) to actually make some money? Then cut a record at Abus Road (all studios in the game are riffs on real world studios - here, Abbey Road... but you knew that) and take Take Thee Rachel on a stadium world tour!

Deck C is the brutal third stage of Rockband Manager. Deck C represents the band's career apex and at the end of this stage the game is over for all players. Here the stakes are high and the drop down is stomach turning. As success goes to Take Thee Rachel's heads we find the temptation of groupies and drugs to hard to resist. We're spending cash like men with no hands and not all our troupe may make it to the end (there is an 'overdose' card... really... band members can die!).

Here's another joke.

Q: What do you call someone who hangs around with musicians?

A: A drummer.

But, how is Rockband Manager a multiplayer game? How do the players interact? All  I've really done above is describe Rock Star Ate My Hamster in tabletop form. And while I'm hoping to wrestle these rules into submission until it taps out a solo variation, Rockband is a game designed for three to six players.

Those plastic guitars in the picture above represent each players intention. Taking turns, players will view a band member, for example, from an available selection of five, that they would like in their band. The player places the guitar on the card to state their intentions and if another player quite fancies that musician (or drummer) in their band then they can place a guitar on it, too. Then a bidding war begins, with each player dipping into their limited cash supply in turn as the band member is auctioned.

The same process applies throughout the game for booking gig venues, recording studios and advertising budget.

Victory points in Rockband Manager are called 'decibels' and it is these that are counted up for each player until a victor is declared. Did you manage your band well? By adding up the decibels from the concert cards, any awards won, unspent cash and other sources we find out whether we'll be throwing a TV out of the window in frustration or... throwing a TV out of the window in pure, victorious joy.

Defenestration, folks. Any excuse.

For starters, the box is frustratingly dull. Muted browns and oranges, that were all the rage in sci-fi when Star Wars episodes 1-3 were released, have not stood the test of time well. It's 'dustiness' is almost foreshadowing of it's fate as it lies forgotten on wardrobe tops the world over.

Also, and this is a pet hate, I don't like seeing the game board on the front of the box. It confuses the eye, dulls the impact. Hit me over the head with Theme on the front, show me the abstract interpretation of the theme on the back.

Give me a reason to pick the box up off the toy shop shelf and turn it over. Let me feel the heft of it in my hands. Consumer desire for a product increases 50% when they're holding it. That's absolutely true*.

See? There's the board, again. This time perfectly, respectably presented where it belongs. 

I'll just bluster through the components now. The "Quest rules and story booklet". Twenty pages long, five of which are in English. 

Map tiles, twenty of them. The box calls them Mata Nui Boards.

(shrug)

TERRIBLY FRAMED PHOTOGRAPH of the six player pieces. Why aren't they buildable? Why has this Lego game not given me anything to build yet?! Judged on their own merits, they're not bad pieces. Sturdy plastic, stable. Would have preferred, at least, for them to maybe have stronger colours. More definition.

Each piece has a mask and symbol on the reverse. Bionicle - Quest for Makuta relies on some baffling iconography to communicate various aspects of play. Baffling to me. Probably much less baffling to the cyborg-like mind of a nine year old nerd.

Each unmemorably monickered machine gets his own equally forgettable, dusty-hued player card with which to keep track of his accomplishments.

Dice. You roll these.

Banks of tokens, won by players following exploration/combat. 

This unattractive bit of plastic is the Makuta Temple piece. And is equally the most disappointing and most PROMISING bit of kit on the board. 'Disappointing' because it's supposed to represent a temple but looks like a hub cap. 'Promising' because it has little slots around the base that seem to encourage the player to perhaps BUILD his own temple using existing Bionicle pieces. Bionicle pieces that don't come with the gameWHY AREN'T THERE ANY LEGO PIECES IN THIS GAME?!

Anyway, this is the quarry of the titular 'hunt'. Flip over the relevant tile, place the hub cap, reach it first, win.

And, here it is in action! Despite my misgivings regarding it's style, it actually looks pretty striking and interesting when lain out like that.

So that's Bionicle - Quest for Mugatu.. I mean Mufasa... Makuta!

And I didn't get to build anything. Cheers, Lego of 2001.

While I've no doubt that Bionicle - Quest for Makuta is a good game for younger players; a great introduction to 'dungeon-crawl' mechanics, I doubt it's validity as a Lego product.

They're doing it right, these days, Lego are. My next two unboxings will be excellent examples of how Lego do tabletop gaming in 2012, how they should have been doing it in 2001. By letting us build as we play.

KJ @SonAndGames

The box is precisely, exactamundo the same size as Fantasy Flight's 'big box' games meaning it fits perfectly on top of my Lord of the Rings LCG. Stack-tastic.

Not a great deal of void space in there. Great presentation. 

Are you fucking kidding me? It comes on three boards?!

No no, of course not...

It comes on five.

Well... five is a lie. Lord of the Rings is played on three boards. The topmost board in the picture above the picture above represents your chosen Hobbits' progress along the path to darkness. The dark Lord Sauron begins the game at the opposite end of this tracker. He moves closer to the Halflings with each bad decision or clumsy die roll. If any of your party occupies the same space as Sauron, that player is eliminated. If Sauron catches up with the ring bearer, game over.

The other boards are two in number but have scenarios on each side. Four scenarios that your Halflings must work through are: Moria, Helms Deep, Shelob's Lair and finally Mordor, where, should you have any surviving Hobbits left in your party, you can chuck the ring into the bloody volcano to score a victory.

Fatty. You remember Fatty, right? Oh, come on! FATTY!

Player token with relevant card.

Sauron, die, and steam-rollered One Ring (plastic).

Progress tracker cones, pile of event tokens, the shields represent defence (duh). The heart, ring and sun tokens must be collected by each Hobbit during a scenario. Any Hobbit who is missing any one of these tokens at the scenario end (there are four scenarios) must progress one step further towards Sauron on the main progress tracker.

Gandalf: "The board is set, the pieces are moving. We come to it at last, the great battle of our time."

Gimli: "Certainty of death, small chance of success- what are we waiting for?"

KJ @SonAndGames

I love bad sci-fi. Wobbly sets, wooden acting, spaceships held up with string. The Cold War rush of Ruskie paranoia flicks is one of my favourite eras of cinema history. The box art for 'Necreaux struck a chord with me. Love the cold colour scheme and the dramatic title font. The Dr himself looks like the kind of megalomaniacal villain I've seen in a dozen movies. So far so good.

The plot is suitably B-movie-esque: Necreaux has kidnapped the worlds top scientists to force them to help him build a doomsday device on his monster and trap filled island. It's up to you to traverse his lair to find the scientists, then an escape shuttle, and escape before the timer (that counts down with every turn) reaches zero and the device activates.

Oh, also, the box is tiny. Perfectly proportioned to slot into that miniscule bit of space I have left.

Anyway. Too many words. You might pretend to come here for the articles (or at least that's what you tell your other half) but really you're here for the porn.

Two decks of cards (the slipperiest, slidiest, most unholdable-est cards you'll ever encounter, by the way), some tokens and three dice. Rulebook on the left, Countdown Track (tell you in a bit) on the right.

Cards. Two decks. One encounter deck and one character deck.

Characters first then, as choosing your character attributes id the first thing you'll have to do. Your in game counterpart is made up of three randomly selected attribute cards, each with it's own advantage, skill or power.

The three cards you choose (there are many, many more than just the cards pictured) may have you play the game as a 'heroic' 'rogue' with 'precognitive' powers. The Heroic card may grant you extra strength during combat. The Rogue card here does not suffer damage when retreating from combat. Powers of precognition granted with your third card may entitle you to rifle through the encounter deck before the next turn.

These are not considered three separate characters. These are the three, randomly selected, driving forces that make up one single character.

The powers attached to each card cannot be used, however, unless the card is sufficiently 'charged'.

Charge tokens. Each turn pop one of these on each of your character cards and spend them at your leisure to activate that cards special ability.

The encounter deck is made up of five different card types: Trap, monster, event, room and item.

The Countdown Track is the ticking clock that must be advanced with every turn. If the token reaches 00:00 before both the scientists and the escape shuttle cards are discovered within the encounter deck, the game is over. You lost.

Dice. You roll these.

Right, so here's The Isle of Doctor Necreaux in play and I guess this is as good a time as any to share my feelings about my first play through.

I wasn't set on fire about it. The theme is muddled and takes it's cues from a much wider spectrum of cinema than the box suggests. On many cards I found references to B classics like Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Blob, but also references as far reaching as Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones! Not game breaking but certainly spell breaking. And 'Necreaux makes you work hard to maintain that spell; the rich theme that the box art suggests doesn't come through with the sketchy card art or the meagre back story/plot presented in the pamphlet-like rule book.

Theme aside, 'Necreaux is haaAAA-ard. It's a brutal, punishing game that feels just as unfair when you're winning as when you're losing. Mainly because it's a game almost purely of luck. Monsters, traps and events are overcome on die rolls. Very little strategy is applied through the game - just occasional (almost forced) choices like whether to use a character's Charge Token to grant a reroll after a bad fight.

I did like a couple of things: having discovered items unusable until you have earned them by defeating a monster creates a situation in which hard choices have to be made regarding which item to take and which to leave behind from a stack of discovered weapons and potions.

'Speed' also impressed me. The entire encounter deck, the whole thing, has to be dealt with before you can beat the game (the escape shuttle is the final card, see). At the start of each turn, the player must determine the 'speed' his team will travel through the deck for each turn. This is good strategy and encourages replay until a progression 'sweet spot' is found. I mean, going through the deck one card at a time makes sense because after each turn you get to rest and replenish your characters, but wait! The clock is constantly ticking and at that snails pace death will catch up with you before the end of the deck is reached. So you should set your speed to ten and turn over ten cards in this turn, but wait! Ten cards could see you fighting six monsters and unless your team is at full strength you won't make it through that turn intact.

This is The Isle of Doctor Necreaux's saving grace - that each turn is preceded with the difficult decision of how fast you want to travel through the deck based on your team's current state of health. This turned a game of sci-fi coin flipping into a tense struggle. A true test of luck and balls - Russian roulette without a revolver.

'Necreaux won't find it's way to my table often. But it does have it's size, speed of setup, play and tear down in it's favour. Ideal for when I'm short on time and feel like a no brainer, then.

As ever, I'm not sure I did the most marvelous job of breaking down this game but if you want to know more I'm always more than happy to discuss my experiences on Twitter @SonAndGames

Thanks, Reference Pear.

A little hole in the top right, there, is the full extent of the damage suffered to this twenty six year old game.

With lid, board and rules removed.

Cardboard cut-outs on plastic stands represent player pieces. Normally I'd moan but for the purposes of Black Cannon, large, easily toppled pieces are really the whole point.

"Me holds are burstin' with swag. That bit of shine matters to us?"

And here's the titular weapon of mass destruction itself. Along with all four original cannon balls and all the booty.

The board fits together like a four piece jigsaw puzzle. It's in great condition and very colourful. The meat of the game is collecting buried treasure from either island and trying to take it back to your colour coded, home corner of the board. Cross paths with another ship (or actively hunt it down) and you get to break out the cannon.

A bit like It's A Knockout. But with pirates. And without Stuart Hall.

Not original dice, sadly :(

"The only rules that really matter are these: what a man can do and what a man can't do."

There's the box plus AWESOME POSTER. The blurb on the front promises ease of mastery. TSR underestimates my thickishness with rulebooks. I've got Gordon Ramsay furrows on my brow that weren't there before my recent board game interest.

Rulebook. 64 pages of characters and monsters and spells... 

There had better not be spiders.

Back of the box. This is the worst of the damage. It's pretty caved in and creased :(

The above two pictures show the Dungeon Master's screen and the contents of said screen: Step by step Dragon Cards.

I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT ANY OF THAT MEANS

yet

This is where the magic happens. Full colour (color, @CptRoboto) dungeon map. Disappointed it's printed on paper and not card. Is this common in D&D games or are beginners getting a bit of a raw deal?

The characters and monsters who populate the dungeon are represented by folded pieces of paper :-/

There are a lot of them, I guess. Fashioning them out of wood or plastic would have made for an expensive game. But still...

The dice. And something I have to read first.

Hmm. Tilty. I love it when I buy something old and it has all the original shit in it like product catalogues and club membership forms. 

That's the whole kit, right there. Twenty-five pages of rules, 226 cards, ninety-seven tokens and a book of wallet-emptying ads to drool over.

Those halfling footprints are Progress Tokens. Each scenario (there are three in the box) requires you to place a certain amount of these in order to succeed.

Damage Tokens. 40 of them. Lord of the Rings the card game is gonna hurt.

Resource Tokens. In game cash, if you like. Collect them at the start of every turn. Spend them quickly on cheap resource cards, or bravely hoard them and splash out on something more powerful.

First Player Token. For two player games. I will be playing alone. I will use this token to soak up my tears.

Threat Counter. There are three ways out of this game: complete the given scenario (hah), have your team of heroes die a hero's death, or see the threat counter reach 50. Threat increases on every turn and the decisions you make in combat or the resource cards you put to use can pinch the flow of threat or throw open the floodgates. When the threat level reaches 50 your team is considered overwhelmed with threat and unable to continue.

Twelve Hero Cards. You may choose three to take with you on your journey. I'm personally quite looking forward to trying different combinations of hero until I've put together a super-team.

120 Player cards (yay, they're good). Draw one per turn and be given an ally, a weapon, possibly food or medicine.

84 Encounter Cards (boo, they're shit). Everything in that deck wants to kill you.

10 Quest Cards. The scenarios. Double sided.

The art throughout, from box to rulebook to each individual card, is pretty cracking. Spiders can fuck off.

Look how much room it takes up! I've omitted the rulebook, but come on! I've got limited space, Fantasy Flight. I'm not made of... fucking... shelves, yeah?

Okay, so I might buy the expansions which would justify the monumental box size... BUT I MIGHT NOT.

Now, if you don't mind. Me and my favourite Canadian need some private time.

That's pretty much how the whole thing looks when laid out. Squad of marines in formation up the middle, occasional pieces of notable terrain which is where the game's enemies, the genestealers, spawn at every turn. Notice the cards at the top with the Aliens-like radar. They're 'blip decks'; the reverse of the genestealer cards.

  Each turn you may engage the genestealers in combat and you will have to defend yourself from theirs. This die determines the result of any skirmishes. The chance element is reduced by beefing up your marines with 'support tokens'. Additionally, each marine has a range of fire and a unique ability that may help when in battle.

Here, for example, is Sgt Lorenzo's ability card.

Event cards are weighted just as much towards the enemy as they are to you. And often you'll find yourself faced with some difficult choices.

As far as the choice of whether or not to buy Space Hulk: Death Angel is concerned, though... It's a no-brainer. Get.

The theme may have excited many (the positive feedback on Twitter and Reddit has been humbling). But for me to stay interested, it needed to excite ME. I don't like cats. I don't know much about Victorian London. I'm not religious.

Not that I'm shying away from hard work and research, but to make a start on such a project that is completely foreign to me seems incredibly daunting when I have no prior Brain ammo to throw into the thing.

Not to mention that for the game to meet the vision in my head, the scale would have had to be enormous. Blockbuster proportions.

"Hi, I'm Kelsey, and with no experience whatsoever, I'm gonna go ahead and make Avatar 2. It's OK. I brought blue paint!"

Over-ambitious is not a big enough term.

Miscreant Felines and the Fog Monsters of Olde London Towne is on haitus. On the back burner, so to speak. I will return to it in future and in the meantime I will slowly chip away at learning more about Victorian culture. The events, the literature, the notable people. And I can't promise I'll start liking cats any time soon, though. So it might end up being squirrels.

Squirrels are nice.

So, Secret Project With Friend, 'Disaster!' is still bubbling away. My co-designer is the lead on this one, and we get very little time together to playtest our crude prototype, so although it's hot, it's slow moving... Like Lava!

Now, then.

Say hello to Clifford's Brain.

;)