Author: Kai

Samara

Reviews

One thing boardgames usually play quite loosely with is time. One round equals one month? Then using your workers to construct a building takes a month, be it a log cabin or a cathedral. Need a new worker? That takes a month. Travel to the next city? Sounds like a month-long trip. Getting money from the bank? Better bring your tent, because guess how long that will take.

Well, not so when you start building the city of Samara. Corné van Moorsel’s Samara is all about time. The game’s basic unit of time is still a month, but how many months something takes and how many people you need to accomplish it, that’s where things get way more interesting.

Read more

Silver Amulet / Silver Bullet

Reviews

I’m starting to wonder if Ted Alspach had some bad (or maybe very good?) lycaontrophic experiences in his youth. He created Ultimate Werewolf, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Ultimate Werewolf Legacy, and a bunch more, what are the odds the neighbors’ dog didn’t whisper dark secrets to him?

Ted’s newest take on the lupine exposure genre is the Silver series, so far containing Silver Amulet and Silver Bullet and soon to be joined by Silver Coin. The furry beasts in these games are much more insidious than usual, though. In the Silver games, people are not simply werewolves or not werewolves. Werewolves exist on a gradient from “not a werewolf” all the way to “holy crap, that is absolutely a werewolf”. Finding the most werewolf group of people will be a challenge under those circumstances.

Read more