How Much is Too Much?

I sometimes talk about what makes the games me and my friends play different from the games that the average person plays. One big thing that makes them different is the idea of expansions.

Expansions are simply put, add-ons to an existing game. Imagine you own Monopoly, and there was an expansion set released that added more Community Chest or Chance cards to the base game. Maybe there could be some new player tokens in the expansion too. Of course you probably will never see an expansion for a mainstream game like Monopoly. I think that most people don’t want to have to buy one thing to be able to play another. But to hardcore gamers, expansions go over very well. Just look at the game company Fantasy Flight Games. They make expansions for a lot of their games, and they seem to sell very well. Some games have several expansions, and sometimes it seems like it might just be to much. I’m gonna talk about two games that have a lot of expansions, Runebound and Arkham Horror.

Runebound is a Fantasy adventure game where the players each take control of a Fantasy type Hero character and travel around the board defeating various challenges that are represented by four decks of cards. The four different card decks are separated by four different colors, green, yellow, blue and red. These represent different difficulty levels with green being the easiest and red the hardest. The Heroes can also take the gold they win in beating these challenges to the market and buy more powerful items to aid in their quest. Their quest is to be the first Hero to beat the Red challenge card that contains the Evil Dragon Lord Margath and thus save the world.

Now the game comes with many components like; dice, plastic figures, cardboard counters, the game board and of coarse a lot of Cards! Since the game was released in 2005 there have been several expansions that add even more components, including even more cards! To date there have been three “Large Expansions” that add more characters, counters and even new game boards.

Then there have been 18 “small” expansions that just add more cards! More cards to the Market deck, more cards to the challenge decks and even cards that change the conditions to win.

To demonstrate the massive amount that these expansions add to the base game let me throw some numbers at you. The base game comes with 12 Hero Characters to choose from. If you add all the new Heroes from all the expansions you would now have 34 to choose from, that’s kinda cool. How about the market cards? The base game comes with 84 market cards, that’s 84 items and and allies you can buy with your hard earned gold. But add in all the market cards from the expansions and that total shoots up to 327. That can make it hard to draw that one kick butt item your looking for, unless you use one of the market variant rules that are out on the net. Then there is the challenge decks which were made up of 72 cards in the base game but when you add the cards from the expansion you are looking at 252, and that’s not counting the challenge cards that are for specific storylines. That many adventure cards, some argue, can upset the balance of the game, especially when you are drawing Red Cards looking for Margath. With that many cards it can be harder to find the guy.

This exponential growth also extends to the game Arkham Horror.

What is Arkham Horror? Well let me steal a description from Boardgamegeek.com;
Arkham Horror is a cooperative adventure game themed around H.P Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Players choose from 16 Investigators and take to the streets of Arkham. Before the game, one of the eight Ancient Ones is chosen and it's up to the Investigators to prevent it from breaking into our world. During the course of the game, players will upgrade their characters by acquiring skills, allies, items, weapons, and spells. It's up to the players to clean out the streets of Arkham by fighting many different types of monsters, but their main goal is to close portals to other dimensions that are opening up around town. With too many portals open the Ancient One awakens and the players only have one last chance to save the world. Defeat the Ancient One in combat!

Since it was released, also in 2005, there have been 4 expansions printed.
Two of them were termed “small expansions” that added more cards.

The other two were “full expansions” that not only add more cards but whole new board sections.

With all this laid out on the table the game is huge!!!

You can see from this picture how big this game is when set up to play, what you don’t see is how much more has been added to the base game. Not just in what is out on the table, but in new rules and mechanics. I could break down the numbers again for you on all the cards that were added but I don’t think I need to. I think it is enough to say that the number of Items, and Monsters and Characters, has almost tripled!! But like I was saying, it’s not just the sheer amount of stuff that makes this game somewhat unwieldy, but all the new rules and complexity that are being added with each new expansion. For example, the original rulebook was pretty big at 24 pages. If you added all the rulebooks from the expansions to it, the original rulebook would be 56 pages! Wow! Add to that the rumors that there is another expansion due out at the end of the year, oh boy!

Admittedly, you don’t have to play with all the expansions at once, as a matter of fact they are all designed to be playable without having the other expansions. But these are very long games and when you do have time to sit down and play them you just can’t sway the feeling that you want to use everything. I know that I am not the only person feeling overwhelmed, there is a forum on Boardgamegeek.com were fans of the game are discussing the rumored expansion and how they propose handling this now massive game. Here is a link to that discussion; http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/322334

You know, I do believe that variety is the spice of life, and it really is great that these games have so much of that variety, but how much is too much?

The More the Merrier

So it’s should be no surprise that more players means more enjoyable games, but I was surprised this past weekend to find a game that seems to be just for two players is actually better with four. First let me tell you what we played first.

First up was History of the World.


I have been trying to get my own copy of this game for awhile now. My friend Ed bought it awhile back but it is out of print now. So I bought a copy on ebay for over $100 bucks, but it was worth it. It is such a fun game. Think of it as a Historically based Risk type game where you control not just one army throughout the whole game but several different armies throughout history. The game starts in 3000 B.C. with the Sumerians and ends in 1914 with pre WWI Germany. That spans a lot of history and the game divides that time into 7 Epochs. Each Epoch has 7 major Empires from roughly the same time frame and the players are randomly given control of one of those empires. Then the goal is to try and expand that empire as much as possible in the one turn that represents that Epoch. Then you move on to the next Epoch leaving the remnants of your old empire on the board and picking up the mantle of another empire trying to expand.

So this past weekend the four of us got together and played.


It was Me, Brandon, Scott, and Jessica, and like the title at the top of the page suggests, it was very fun to play this great game with more people. In the past Scott and I usually only got to play it with Ed so we were used to 3 player games. But History of the World is designed to be played with up to 6 players so it was no surprise that we enjoyed it more with 4 people.

I have to say that Scott might not have enjoyed it as much as I did because he had his worst game ever. Based on his score through out the game he was constantly in last place. Even the fact that the last place player gets to draw Empire Cards first could not save him.

Here is what the board looked like at the end of the game;

Scott was Green and Brandon was Yellow. I was Blue, and as you can see I was able to take control of Northern Europe and a good portion of Southern Europe too. This was thanks to the fact that I drew the Romans in Epoch 3 and Spain in Epoch 6 and then finished up with the Germans in Epoch 7. But it did not win me the game. I came in Second. Jessica, who was Red, won the game with a hefty score of 239.


So the final scores were; Scott 160, Brandon 203, Me (Mike) 212, and Jessica 239.

I guess the big surprise and the reason for the title up top, is the 4 player game of Crokinole we played. Scott and I had played some 2 player Crokinole the day before, and it was typically one sided, in more ways then one.


Not only did Scott kick my butt, but as usual in a 2 player game of Crokinole, each players discs are mostly on one side or the other. This had never bothered me before until the next day when we all got together and played a 4 player game. It makes total sense to me now. There are 4 quadrants to shoot from, duh! And when you play in teams of two you and your team mate shoot from opposite sides of the board. This completely changes the dynamics of the game. Now there is nowhere to hide. Your discs can be shot at and knocked of the board from both sides now, and in turn the goal in the center is more accessible for your team, you don’t get blocked out as much. If you are wondering what I’m talking about I suggest that you read my last blog entry where I explain the basics of Crokinole.

Well the bottom line is that it is always preferable to try a game with more people, even though it is a lot easier to get small groups together. I am just very glad that Scott and I have found some fellow gamers that we like to hang out with and enjoy these games together. Thanks a lot fellow gamers!!

Descent into……Crokinole?!?

Well it’s been awhile since I wrote but I hope to avoid that in the future by doing shorter articles. We’ll see how it goes.

My last blog was about my hopes for Descent, the yet to be determined ultimate dungeon crawl boardgame!


The Road to Legend expansion is supposed to make this game everything I ever wanted. Well I bought everything, the base game and all the expansions, plus the Road to Legend expansion. I have read through everything and I can say that the game sure looks great but I have not played it yet. Scott and I have been too busy with other games like Galaxy Trucker and Kingsburg. We have also been playing some Magic the Gathering since both Scott and I have been buying lots of cool pre-construct decks. Mostly we have avoided playing Descent because we have been busy breaking in some new players! Scott’s friend Brandon and my friend Jessica, have been joining us for few gaming sessions and learning the ropes. We have to start them slow and Descent would be a lot to deal with for first time players.

But the big thing that we have been focusing on right now is Crokinole!



Crokinole is an old dexterity game from the 1800s. It involves players taking turns flicking little wooden discs across a circular board and trying to get there discs as close to the center hole as possible, or, if your lucky, getting it into the hole for a GOAL!!! A goal is worth 20 points, and that’s a guaranteed 20 points. You can get other points if you can keep your discs on the board without them getting knocked off the board and falling into the outer ditch. It is difficult though because one of the main rules in Crokinole is that if your opponent has a disc on the board you have to try and hit it with your next shot. This usually results in your opponent getting his disc knocked into the ditch and if you are not careful and you overshoot, your disc might wind up next to his. At the end of the round when everyone has shot all 12 of their discs you give points for the discs that are left on the board dependant on what ring they are in; the outer ring is worth 5 points, the inner ring is worth 10 points, and the center ring is worth 15 points. As I mentioned earlier getting a disc into the hole in the very center is worth 20 points and you get those points immediately and remove your disc, your opponent can not take those 20 points away now, because your disc cannot be knocked off since it’s removed from the board. This obviously makes getting a goal very valuable. At the end of the round you take all the points awarded for that round and they cancel each other out and if a player still has points left after that they keep them and mark them down on the scoreboard. They you play another round. You keep going this way until someone passes 100 points and wins the game.

Scott and I have been playing a lot of Crokinole because he just bought a custom hand crafted board from the Hilinski Brothers. They make a lot of unique and beautiful boards and you can get one from their website at www.crokinoleworld.com. Scott ordered the Cat Balou board.


It’s a very nice board and blast to play on. Of course we just had to break it in, so needless to say we spent a lot of time last weekend doing so.

The Mechanix

Every boardgame has at least one “mechanic”. A mechanic is a system of rules that when looked at in a generic sense can be applied to anygame. When a game designer sits down to create his game he has to decide how to achieve the effect his going for with a system of rules. For example Monopoly has the very basic and often used mechanic of random movement determined by dice roll. This may seem like such a no brainer game mechanic that it is practically transparent, but you know someone somewhere had to think it up first, and not every game uses it. Look at Chess, that game defiantly doesn’t have random movement. That is because game designers have different goals when designing a game, and sometime they can achieve those goals by coming up with there very own unique game mechanic, but a lot of time they borrow a mechanic from another game and tweek it slightly to work within the parameters of their game. Some gameplay mechanics are just that good and that much fun that they have to be used again and again. As a matter of fact if you go on Boardgamegeek.com you can browse through games by what kinda of mechanics it has, it’s true! All the games on BGG are categorized by mechanics, and there is a good reason for it. Some gamers just really like certain types of game mechanics. I always love a game that has great mechanics. When I sit down and play a new game for the first time I will always get more excited about it if it has a really cool mechanic or better yet if it shares a mechanic with a game I’ve already played before and enjoyed. Recently I got a chance to play some new games that have mechanics that remind me of other games I’ve enjoyed in the past.



Kingsburg is a game where you try to influence members of the King’s Court in order to give you things that will help you win the game. In the game you roll three dice, and if the total on any one, two or all three of your dice equal the number attributed to one of the King’s Court you can place these dice on that person. Then you gain influence over them and consequently gain materials or favors that help you build your province. In the end if you have the most prosperous province your win.



This method of rolling dice and assigning them to spots on the board to gain various actions reminds me a lot of another game I have played in the past called Yspahan.



In Yspahan the dice that are rolled are assigned to a “Dice Tower” that determines what actions the players can take during the game. Each player only gets one choice and when they choose, the dice for that selection are removed. So there is a lot of opportunity to screw the other players, but that makes it so much fun.



Another game I recently played was Race for the Galaxy.


This is a simple card game but contains a lot of strategy in the play of its many planet and development cards. There are so many combinations and different directions you can take with the cards that you play that the game might not seem that simple after all.

One aspect of the game that is similar to another game I’ve played, are the Action Cards.

These action cards determine what phases of the game are performed and since the cards are played simultaneously and face down, every player has no idea what phases they will get to perform except of coarse for the action phases they themselves select. Also there is no way to pick all the phases you will want to perform at the same time. So there is an element of guessing what phases the other players might choose. This is very similar to another favorite game of mine called Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is a game about building settlements and growing and shipping crops. The settlements and crops are represented by card board chits and wooden pieces, it’s a boardgame with all the euro type pieces. In the first step of each players turn they select a “role”.

In the picture above you can see these roles fanned out across the top. Each role selected enables all the players to perform an action, with the person who selected the action getting some sort of bonus. Not all roles will be selected so in every round there will be actions that no one will be able to perform, just like in Race for the Galaxy.

Of coarse this similarity should not be surprising since Race for the Galaxy was originally slated to be the card game version of Puerto Rico. The guy that was working on Race had his initial design turned down by the company that publishes Puerto Rico, so he decided to slap a Sci-Fi theme on it and tweek the game play a little and tada, Race for the Galaxy happened. I’m very glad he did not give up on his design, Race is a very fun game.

The last new game that I played that reminds me of other game mechanics was Tikal.

This is a fun game were you control an expedition force that is out exploring a jungle in order to uncover lost treasures and the Temples of an ancient civilization. The game represents this exploration aspect with large hexagonal tiles that are drawn randomly from a face down stack.

I’ve always loved games where you get to flip up tiles as you explore, in this case a jungle, but in most games of this type, a dungeon. Warhammer Quest is one such game that comes to mind. I find that I am always drawn to any game that has an exploration mechanic and there are more then a few, and too many to mention here.

So if you are new to these types of boardgames you may have been wondering what makes some more popular that others. Well there is usually a lot of focus put on the theme or the storyline. Or maybe people will look intently at the amount of strategy or the “fun factor”. Also people are concerned about how hard it is to learn, or how fast it is to play. For me though, one of the first things I look at is the mechanics, and it always gives me a thrill when I play a game that does a good job of incorporating my favorite mechanics.

RPG’s and Me Part 3: The Future

In my last blog I prayed for a game company to make a game like Warhammer Quest, but with higher production values and full ongoing support for the game, I hoped that it would contain everything that a player would need to play the game to the fullest and that it would all be available in the base game and it’s subsequent expansions. I believe that my favorite game publisher, Fantasy Flight, may soon deliver this Holy Grail to myself and others that have searched for the definitive mix of RPG, Dungeon Crawl, and boardgame all in one.



When Fantasy Flight released Descent in 2005 my friend Ed bought it right away. We were both very excited and I was very jealous that he had gotten it before me. He was telling my friend Scott and I all about the game via e-mail and phone and he insisted that we make the 3 hour drive to his home so we could all play it. Scott and I had many fond memories of playing Warhammer Quest together and always wished that we could have played it with Ed. Now here was a game that promised to be better than Warhammer Quest and Ed had it. Needless to say we made that 3 hour drive.


So we played and we were disappointed. When I say “we” I mean Scott and myself. Ed thought it was great, but he had never played Warhammer Quest. We explained to Ed that one of the most addictive qualities of WQ was building your character up over many game sessions. Descent did not have this ability. Descent was designed to take a character from “zero to hero” in one session. Your character literally starts with nothing and then over the course of crawling through this one dungeon finds items that give them tremendous power. Also there is some boosting of the characters innate abilities. In WQ, we argued, the player really becomes attached to their character because of the time invested in trying to not only make them more powerful but customize them with all the various skills and special items available. The characters in WQ had so many different options that each character pack came with a small rulebook that was typically 8 to 12 pages long. That is what Scott and I wanted out of Descent, not some quick “play with them once and throw them away” characters.

Descent had some great things about it though. The production values were high. Every component was great quality. The miniatures for the monsters and characters; lots of cardboard tokens for keeping track of health and potions; cards that represented your magic items with fantastic artwork; modular board pieces for designing the dungeon; all these were great. Also the player that ran the game and acted as the “Overlord” got to do all kinds of fun things to stop the Heroes. Like setting off traps, and spawning more and more and even more monsters for the Heroes to fight. Best of all these things though was the combat system. It used a unique set of dice that simplified combat but retained enough depth to make things exciting.


There were two expansions released for Descent. The Well of Darkness in 2006, which added more monsters, more Heroes, and more Traps for the Overlord to use.

Then there was Altar of Despair in 2007, which added even more Monsters and Heroes and Traps.


I have to admit that all this extra stuff coming out was making me excited for the game again. It was exactly what I had always wanted for Warhammer Quest, affordable expansions that added more of everything. It really showed that Fantasy Flight was dedicated to supporting the game. With all this cool new stuff Ed was able to talk Scott and me into playing with him again, I even borrowed it from him and played it again with Scott by ourselves. Once again we just could not get passed our disappointment with not being able to flush out and build our characters over time. I scoured the internet trying to find anyone that might have come up with their own rules to play the game this way, I even spent sometime while I was borrowing the game from Ed to see if I could come up with my own rules, but it was all hopeless, I gave the game back to Ed and gave up on it.

Well now there is some very interesting news. The designers of Descent have heard the pleas of other Descent players that feel the same way as I do. Fantasy Flight has announced another expansion for Descent to come out in 2008, but this one will be different. It is called The Road to Legend.

This expansion promises to add “Campaign Rules”, which means finally you can make a character and watch them grow and improve over multiple adventures. It’s what I’ve been waiting for all these years. As far as I can see it is the only missing piece that will make Descent the RPG Boardgame I have been questing for. In addition this expansion claims that it will shorten play time from long arduous 3-4 hour sessions to quick 1 hour sessions. This is possible because of the new rules that enable the carrying over of characters from one quest to the next, these new rules simply enable shorter play sessions because you can just pick up from where you left off. There will also be mechanics in place that will even give the Overlord player a chance to experience the joys of character building themselves, by giving them evil boss characters to grow and cultivate, striving to turn them in to the ultimate super-villain, a true nemesis for the Heroes.

I know I have been so nit picky about finding the perfect RPG Boardgame, that most people will say that I won’t be anything but letdown by The Road to Legend. I have hope though, I think that this has been a long time in coming and I believe in Fantasy Flight. They are my favorite game publisher after all.