Reviews – Page 15 – Meople's Magazine

Russian Railroads

29 July, 2014 Kai Reviews

Russian Railroads is a European optimization game, subtype worker placement. Every game, you try to do better than the one before, optimize your strategy and score a bit higher. But it’s not a typical game of the genre. Where you often have a lack of options in other such games, only one or two routes to victory which you try to use as well as you can, Russian Railroads gives you many different, viable ways to score. Its many moving parts create a fascinating whole that will let you find new ways to a higher score for a long time.

Mai-Star

23 July, 2014 Kai Reviews

Geisha are a fascinating and confusing part of Japanese culture. Women that you pay to be with for their conversational skills, or their talents in the arts, or even for their ability to play games. They are personal entertainers, but with a long history and, to us, strange customes.
Mai-Star, a game about geisha, will probably not do a thing to make you understand them better. But it will entertain you for half an hour, and then maybe for some more.

Rococo

13 July, 2014 Kai Reviews

Games about making dresses are a tough sell. Between games about conquest, economic success and survival, tailoring just doesn’t compare. So to stand out, a game about making ballroom gowns needs to excel in other areas. Having well linked games mechanics and a new take on deck-building might do the trick for Rococo.

Istanbul

9 July, 2014 Kai Reviews

The second nominee for this year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres, Istanbul makes you run around the bazaar district of the titular city in a desperate search for rubies. Why rubies, you ask? No idea, to be honest, but as the game progresses it turns into a frantic search for your lost assistants, anyway. Leaving your assitants behind to work, then gathering them up again and leaving them somewhere else, that’s the core of Istanbul.

Canterbury

1 July, 2014 Kai Reviews

Games where you build cities are not exactly new. But they rarely go into the logistics of it, things like “before you build a theater there, shouldn’t you supply food and water”? Canterbury goes into that part of building cities, but it doesn’t need complicated rules for it. Just make sure you build things in order and make sure you get the majorities in supplying city districts, because that’s how you win.

Concordia

18 June, 2014 Kai Reviews

The Roman Empire has always been a popular setting for games, so Concordia is not innovative in that respect. But it is a game by Mac Gerdts, so you know it will not be a run-of-the-mill, nothing-new-to-see-here game. Gerdts’s games are special. But even by the high standards he set with Antike, among others, he has outdone himself with Concordia.

Splendor

11 June, 2014 Kai Reviews

Collecting gems to buy cards that are worth gems, making it easier to buy more cards. When thus summarized, Spiel des Jahres nominee Splendor doesn’t sound like much. But once you start playing, you will realize that games don’t have to sound complicated to draw you in, make you play again and again, try new approaches to outsmart your opponents. Because playing Splendor is not a difficult, but getting what you want with your opponents interfering is.

SOS Titanic

26 May, 2014 Kai Reviews

I imagine that sometimes the pitch for a new board game must sound a lot like the pitch for the weird blockbuster movie of a year. “It’s a Patience game, only you can play it with friends and it’s about rescuing people from the Titanic.” It probably wasn’t an easy sale, but here it is: SOS Titanic, the multiplayer solitaire game with superpowers.

Anno Domini

18 May, 2014 Kai Reviews

Although we do like our deep, strategic games, not all games have to be that to be fun. In fact, when done well, even very simple games involving trivia knowledge can be a ton of fun.

The Agents

5 May, 2014 Kai Reviews

When a big secret agency shuts down, many shady people suddenly find themselves unemployed. The Agency was the biggest secret agency there was, and dealing with their leftover agents to make a profit is your job in The Agents.