Dave Reviews: Point!

Punto

It's... tiny.

That's not much of an intro, but there's not much in this tin. That doesn't mean it's bad; it's just... tiny.

Punto comes in a little tin with a bunch of square tiles. The tiles come in sets of four colors, with one to nine dots on each card. Players draw a tile off the top of their deck and lay it down, in order, until someone has four in a row of their color. The limitations:

• The grid can't get bigger than 6 x 6. The upshot is that if you can't block someone directly, sometimes you can do it by placing a tile where it makes the grid go six wide or long and your opponent can no longer has an empty space for the tile.
• You can place tiles on top of your opponents', but your number has to be higher than the one you're placing it on.

Initially I wanted there to be a mat, something to actually play on, but the shifting dimensions of the board are part of the strategy. Plus, it's really quite impressive to have a very playable game come in such a small package at such a low price (MSRP around $8).

Of course, it has limitations. I imagine they playtested it with players holding all their cards and trying to use their numbers strategically rather than pulling one off the top and hoping they got something useful (or, occasionally, hoping they got a low number because they didn't need a high one at that moment). Maybe they also tried holding a limited number of tiles, say three, and choosing from those, then replacing it at the end of the turn. If that's the case, then the draw mechanic was apparently deemed more fun. I can see that; this is a little pocket game that you bring somewhere as a diversion, not high strategy. As long as you're OK with a couple unlucky draws dooming you, especially in a two-player game, it's fine.

And that's really it. It's fine. The biggest compliment I can pay it is that the designer clearly accomplished his goal of making this a small, cheap, playable game. I've seen many other little games that are the board game equivalent of the candy bars they sell in the supermarket checkout line, and this is better than most. There just isn't much to say about it beyond that.

Score: Siete puntos de diez.

Dave Reviews: Gladiatorial Trumpiness

Gorus Maximus

It's basically Hearts. With... hearts.

Gorus Maximus is a trick-taking game, not about being a gladiator, but about being one of those patriots who run gladiator battles for the pleasure of the populace. (The money is just a bonus.) There are up to five schools of gladiators, each with fighters ranked from 0 to 15. Each player gets a hand of ten cards; this is the whole deck being dealt, and what the deck consists of depends on the number of players in the game.

Each round, one player starts by playing a card. The color of the card becomes both the preferred school and the initiating school. This is where the game gets a little more complicated, and frankly fun, than your average game of Hearts or Spades.

• The preferred school set at the start of the first round remains the preferred school for the whole hand (in theory). The preferred school is the trump school.
• The initiating school is only the initiating school for that round. Once each player puts down a card and the trick is taken, the person who takes the trick starts the next round, and their card sets the new initiating school.
• Players must play a card from the initiating school if they have one.
• The exception to all of the above is that a player may play a card of the same rank as the one played immediately before them in that round. This is a challenge. (For example, if I play the blue 4, the next player can play a green 4, regardless of the initiating school.) A challenge not only lets a player use a different color, it also sets the preferred school for the hand to that color—until another challenge comes, of course.

In theory, players can count how many cards of each suit, and which ones, have been played, just like a good Hearts player would. However, unless it's a full eight-player game, the deck doesn't consist of all the cards of each color, and it doesn't use all of them in order up to a point. In most games, the 0 card and the 4-12 cards are put into the deck. Can those be counted? Sure. But it takes a little getting used to in order to do so proficiently.

In addition, points are scored by the points listed on each gladiator card, and most cards don't score anything. Simple enough, right? Set it up so you catch the point cards. Well... just don't get stuck with one of the cards that take away points. Most games only have one such card—the 8 of each color—but that's a huge hit at -4 when nothing else scores more than two. Expanding the game to six players adds a -2 card, and going to seven adds another -1, so more caution is warranted than simply "don't get the spades".

I've criticized games in the past for allowing too large a player count, and at first I was going to at least partially do so again. Whereas some other games have no business trying to accompany a large group, it makes sense to at least try with something that plays as fast as this, with such a fun (if bloody) theme. It has that drunken party game feel. My critique was going to be that, as with many trick-taking games, catching up is hard if you fall behind, and because it takes three crowd support (three round wins) to end the game, big games can become a slog for someone who's losing. 

But, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that's unfair. It does have the potential to suck for that person, yes. But the only way it becomes a major problem is if lots of other people are picking up round wins, which means overall the game is competitive, and that's good. I suppose the warning to offer is that if you're going to want to quit if it looks like you're stuck in a game that you're very unlikely to win, you might want to avoid six-plus player games of this, but that's not enough to really knock the game itself.

In short, this is surprisingly fun, even if you're very neutral about trick-taking games. If you think you can get your Spades-playing grandpa to throw back a shot of whiskey and try something with actual pictures, this could even be a hell of a family bonding experience.

Score: Fourteen blood puddles out of sixteen.

Dave Reviews: UberLand

MegaLand

I was going to title this with 'Uber' and then whatever the German is for land, but it's just "land". So, we're off to a grand start.

MegaLand is, at its core, a press-your-luck game with mechanics that will be familiar to deck builder fans, even though there's no deck to build. It's also very easy to learn (maybe too easy). You play the role of what is, effectively, a video game character, starting with four health and needing to collect treasure by exploring places with loads of terrible monsters. Each monster will do one, two, or three damage to your character; the game is very explicit about how many of each card, including the ones that don't hurt you, is in the deck. In other words, each round is designed for you to count cards and determine what the best play is based on the odds.

After each draw, you decide if you want to stay in or take your treasures and run. If you leave, you get what you've collected; if you stay and get KO'd, you only get one (unless you buy effects that let you keep or take more). Part of the challenge is not just collecting more treasure, but collecting the right treasure. If you want to buy cards that give you points (technically coins, but you don't buy anything with them) and other abilities, you need sets of different treasure types; if you want to buy more health, you need sets of the same treasure type. The challenge in buying more expensive cards is thus amplified, since it gets harder and harder to collect treasures you don't already have, a challenge mitigated by the fact you can store one treasure on each card you've bought along the way. As with the monster deck, game is explicit about how many of each treasure is in the treasure deck—it's printed on each card—but the deck is sizable and makes card counting very difficult.

The abilities are varied but easy to understand. Some of them also require you to strategize in a certain way or have a certain read on your opponents. For example, one card lets you draw an extra treasure from the deck if you're KO'd. If you buy a few of those, it can be more valuable to risk a KO, or even push on when a KO is guaranteed, if you don't have a usable set of cards and drawing more might let you buy what you need. Another gives you bonus points if an opponent is KO'd, which is great if your opponents go for a self-KO strategy or simply take too many risks, but is a bit of a waste if they play safely.

On the downside, there are cards which give you guaranteed points every night (end of round). They instantly put the game on a timer, and if one person gets one ahead of everyone else, the other players are immediately playing catch-up the rest of the way. They're not a guaranteed win, but really, the timer aspect is the part that damages the fun. Most of the cards score points anyway. Why is it necessary to let people get freebies? When somebody has a lead, there's a certain enjoyable tension in wondering if they'll get those last few points they need to win, or if you might have a chance to catch up. The nightly point cards take that away. And, because of the treasure system, if three players each gather four treasures in the first round, it's quite possible only one of them will have the right treasures to buy a guaranteed point card.

It's really unfortunate, because the only other real criticism is that there was room for this game to have a few more cards and a few more good choices for what to buy. Right now, the game plays so fast, sharp people can do the math and either pull their character or press their luck in a couple of seconds. There's potential here to give players something that will make them slow down and think a bit, at least sometimes, about what they want to buy. That's not a game-breaking problem, though; all it does is reduce replayability. The timer cards may not be game-breaking, per se, but they put a major damper on the experience.

It's still not bad, still worth trying. If you're a fan, awesome. If you end up feeling similarly to what I've described, play again without the automatic point cards, see if you like it any better.

Score: $3.25 out of $5.00.

Dave Reviews: So Much Fucking Colonialism

Pax Pamir

I've lodged the odd complaint here and there about games which treat colonized nations of yore, and the people especially, as pieces in a board game when they were effectively treated the same way in real life during those periods of time. Pax Pamir puts players in the role of Afghans during the nineteenth century, deciding whether join a coalition with the British, the Russians, or to put their own people first.

To which I say: LOOK! LOOK! IT'S NOT THAT FUCKING HARD!

Pax Pamir is a tableau-building game that works with a pretty small tableau (you only keep three from turn to turn without cards that let you hold on to more). There's a central market of cards, most of which are people who will be part of your tableau, or court, and provide various benefits. Many of them are allied with one of the three factions at work in the country. You start the game allied to the faction of your choice; however, odds are this will change during play, because as soon as you hire someone from a different faction, you essentially declare loyalty to that group and discard everyone from your current faction.

This sounds like a punishing effect to be carefully weighed, and it can be if you've started to rely heavily on certain faction-specific cards, but there are a couple of fairly common reasons to do it. One is if it looks like you've blown through a lot of cards for your faction and it looks like you're going to see different factions for the most part from this point on. Because not all the cards are used every game, this is somewhat unlikely, but an experienced player can get a sense of when they probably won't see many more cards of a given faction unless the deck got stacked hard in their favor.

The second, and more important one, is the dominance mechanic. Each faction has a couple dozen small towers that can hit the board, either standing to represent allied tribes or laying down to act as bridges between provinces. Transport and military might are the keys to power; therefore, if any faction has managed to get at least four more of their pieces on the board than both of the other factions, that faction is dominant and allied players receive VPs.

OK, so you chase the dominant faction, right? Not necessarily. If you've allied with the British, and the Afghans are pulling ahead, you might be able to score better if you switch sides. However, if no side is ahead by four, then scoring is based on personal power, so it may be better to see if you can keep the British just close enough so that the Afghan-allied players can't get their dominance points. It's an intriguing blend of not just risk vs. reward, but which risk you need to take vs. which type of reward you're chasing.

The one thing that breaks the theme a bit is that when one faction is dominant, all the pieces come off the board and players effectively start rebuilding with their current courts and allegiances. This is clearly necessary for game design—without it, early dominance would just turn into a snowball with everyone racing to join the winning side—but it's a little weird given the game's context. The rulebook says they come off because the region settles into an uneasy peace. I mean... whatever explanation you want to give, I guess. It feels like whichever side is dominant would start painting the other towers their color.

But that doesn't particularly matter for the gameplay itself. This is a game that's quite deep without being confusing (though you might forget some rules at first, like the connection between your tribes and your cards—if you lose all of one, you throw out all of the other). Setups are almost always fragile, but breaking them takes work on the part of your opponents, so you can usually defend yourself if you don't have greater priorities. And knowing what to prioritize takes experience, so your first game is probably going to feel ugly, even if everyone's new and you win. There's a good chance that, after one game, you'll feel a little 'meh' about it, or like you're missing something. But if you're even a little intrigued by how it plays, it's worth having another go, because there's a lot of play here.

One last soapbox moment: Though I've griped about games where you play as a colonizing force, it's possible there's some context in this game that is also problematic or could have been handled better. Some people might not like the fact this game is about European powers trying to meddle with a yet another nation, regardless of the role the player takes. But I think it's important to acknowledge the difference.

We tend to reward media that portrays people who defend their homes because there's something relatable at a very core level in that situation. We also often elevate conquering heroes, but nearly always in the context that they've fought for their nations, or gods, or some other higher purpose. A game where players act as the colonizers feels weird because, although colonization was done in the name of God and country, we now understand it to have been thoroughly fucked up. We understand that there was never any glory in it, nothing worth exemplifying. Playing as the people of the nation in question, even in a scenario where it's often wisest to work with the foreigners, at least puts you in the position of someone trying to make the best of a fucked-up situation in their home country.

I'm sure I'm in a minority, possibly a small minority, of gamers who legitimately enjoy a game more on that basis. But I am, and I get to pass out the scores, so bonus points to this one.

Score: Twenty-one out of twenty-four dominance towers (they're not goddamned cylinders, they're square).