Boardgame

Created by Iikka Keranen and Rich Carlson of Digital Eel) (developers of, among others, Strange Adventures in Infinite Space, Plasmaworm and Dr. Blob's Organism -- all computer games), Goblin Slayer is an asymmetric boardgame in which one player controls a dwarf entering a cavern infested with goblins to retrieve an artifact.

The board consists of seven large hexes printed with smaller hexes, and is laid out semi-randomly prior to play. The dwarf player controls only a single dwarf, while the goblin player controls 12 goblins (or, optionally, 10 goblins and an ogre -- my advice is, take the ogre). The dwarf and ogre move two spaces a turn (though the dwarf can't attack if he moves more than one), and the goblins move one space a turn. Prior to play, the goblin places the artifact and two "hero's stones" on the map, in any hex or hexes; the dwarf player begins in possession of one stone.

Each large hex contains a "tunnel" hex; goblins may enter a tunnel and go into the goblin player's pool. Killed goblins also go to the pool. The goblin player can enter goblins from his pool into tunnel hexes, one per such hex.

After both sides have moved, the dwarf may kill 1D3 adjoining goblins (the ogre takes two "hits" to kill); the goblin player then rolls 1D6 and, if he rolls less than or equal to the number of goblins adjoining the dwarf (the ogre counting as 2 goblins), the dwarf dies.

Thus, the dwarf moves to the treasure, picks it up (and may optionally seek out the other hero's stones), then moves out, while goblins try to surround and kill him. Stones can be expended to: a) allow one extra hex of movement, b) add one to the number of adjoining monsters killed, or c) as a "saving throw" to prevent the dwarf from dying (which is probably how you'll use them).

It's playable in about 15 minutes, and not a bad little game to play while waiting for other people to take their turns in a more intense game, or while waiting for another game to start; it is, however, largely a die-rolling exercise. Yes, there's a little bit of strategy in terms of move planning by the goblins, and deciding when to use the hero's stones, but not all that much, and the winner is likely to be determined by luck rather than cleverness.

Still and all, it's free.

If you were in one of a handful of places in 1995 in the United States, you knew that a revolution was starting. It's been going on quietly ever since, even though most people are still blissfully ignorant of it. This game, Settlers of Catan, was the opening shot.

The location: 14th century France. The objective: to develop the most valuable district of Paris. The story: irrelevant. This is a German game, after all, so it's all about the gameplay.

This is primarily a game of resource management. You have three resources: gold, cubes and rats. Cubes let you take your normal actions each turn, as long as you don't run out of them. Gold lets you take a special action at the end of each turn, as long as you don't run out of it. Rats accumulate each turn and do nothing, as long as you don't have too many... but if you collect more than 9 of them, really bad things start happening to you. Most game actions involve gaining more Gold, gaining more Cubes or reducing your Rat population. And if you concentrate entirely on managing your resources, you should have no problem keeping them all under control.

Naturally, the object of the game is to score Victory Points, and most actions that get you VP don't do jack squat for your Cubes, Gold or Rats. It's a constant balancing act of how far you can push your resources without everything breaking.

Player interaction comes in the form of a CCG-sealed-booster-like "draft" at the start of each round. You draw three cards (representing three of the nine possible actions in the game), keep one, and pass two to the left. You then receive your right-hand opponent's two passed cards, keep one, pass one to the left, and receive the discard from your right. Each turn you choose two of the three actions to take. So, you never know exactly what actions will be available, and much of the strategy comes from balancing your need to keep actions that are useful to you with your desire to not pass actions that the players to your left desperately need.

There are several more nuances to the game, but all in all it's a game where you have lots of good options at every decision point but you can't do everything, so every time you gain something you know you're also giving up something else. The level of complexity is similar to Puerto Rico, so if you like that game you'll probably enjoy Notre Dame as well.

This game does have one advantage over other games in its class. Most games of this complexity, due to their strategic depth, take about 90 minutes to play. Notre Dame takes half that, allowing it to fit in shorter play sessions.

This game you cannot play, I'm afraid -- at least, not unless you possess a time machine, and can travel to the premises of Carrington Bowles in mid-18th century London to purchase it, or you are among the handful of people lucky enough to own one of the few extant copies of the game. Lacking that, you will have to be satisfied with the image at left (a more detailed one here). It's a scan of the board as it appears in Table Games of Georgian and Victorian Days, which is my primary source on the subject.

Four terrible diseases have broken out all over the world, and they're spreading fast. The fate of humanity hangs in the balance. The clock is ticking, and your small team of health professionals has to find a cure to all four diseases before time runs out, or before infection spreads so far that it's just too late to save the human race. There goes Kinshasa! There goes Mumbai! There goes Tokyo! You'd better hurry.

You see, senor, in the beautiful Republica de los Bananas, life is cheap and times are hard. Each player controls one of the great families of the nation, and the important government jobs -- El Presidente, Minister of Internal Security, and the leadership of the three army brigades, air force, and navy -- are shared out among them. The ultimate objective of the game is to have the biggest Swiss bank account at the end; each turn, El Presidente draws a fixed number of bills from the money deck, and announces a budget for the coming year.

To continue a theme, my fondness for German board games is no secret. I’m hardly a Germanophile; it's just that the most complex, thoughtful, and engaging tabletop games seem to come out of that country. For the most part, they lend themselves to social gatherings, including family groups, are generally well researched, have far more substance than games like Trivial Pursuit or Taboo, and yet do not require the same commitment of time, study and focus of a game like Go. Ra, Modern Art, and Puerto Rico, the subject of this review, are among my favorites.

Like a well-written book, each playing of Puerto Rico reveals further complexities. A trading game set in colonial Puerto Rico, when ships had sails, the game tasks you, the player, with sending goods back to Spain. While there are several different mechanisms that become more or less important as the game progresses, there is really one way to win: amass the most victory points, something that's important to remember -- during a recent game, one of my fellow players adhered to what seemed like a foolish strategy, seeking out quantities of a commodity with no cash value, but won the game, having earned the most points by sending the most goods back to the Old World.

One of the best-selling hobby boardgames of the mid-80s, Richard Harris's Talisman, was recently republished by Black Industries, a subsidiary of Games Workshop. Despite its fantasy theme, it is intermediate in complexity between most of what appears in the hobby market and the sort of thing published by mass-market boardgame producers. You can almost imagine it being published in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, during the first flower of game design as a creative enterprise, under the aegis either of Mr. George Parker or Mr. Milton Bradley.

Alhambra combines bidding, building and planning in an unusual and engaging board game. It's the successor of Henn’s earlier stock market game, Stimmt So, but Alhambra has been reworked with a Moorish theme and a tile-layering component. The object of the game is simple: using tiles depicting different building components and with different walls, each player tries to make the best (and biggest) Alhambra possible. Gameplay is simple, rules straightforward, but execution can be very complex. Here's how it works:

Reiner Knizia is a boardgame god. While the German-born designer has lived in England for many years, he comes from a culture that reveres the form far more than we do in this country; in Germany, as in much of Europe, playing tabletop games remains a mainstream form of social interaction. Knizia, who holds a Ph.D. in mathematics, has designed more than 30 games, including Lord of the Rings, which requires players to adopt a cooperative strategy, and Tigris and Euphrates. Most of his games reward abstract strategies, and many, like Ra and Modern Art have an auction or bidding mechanic. Modern Art is my favorite of these games.