Star fluxx

Have you ever wanted to play a card game where the rules are constantly changing? One that has a general Sci- fi theme, but touches on some of your favorite books or shows? One that is easy to teach, even easier to play AND fits inside your pocket? Than Star fluxx could be a game for you.     

                       

The box cover

Upon opening the box, you see the inside divided in two, each filled with cards,with a rules sheet tucked underneath the insert. 

Inside the box

The rules sheet is short, with a few graphic examples, but after playing a few games you won't even need the it any more, as everything is written on the cards.

The contents of the game are the cards, divided by color, into Keepers, Creepers, Actions, Surprises, Goals and New rule cards. The keepers and goals are the most numerous, as the game is centered around them.

The contents laid out

Every game starts with the Basic rules card placed on the table. All the other cards are shuffled together and placed close by. Each player then gets 3 cards from the deck to start with.

The basic rules card gives the instruction on what a player has to do during his turn. He must draw 1 card from the deck, then play 1 card from his hand. Sounds simple enough, right?

During gameplay, as the players play the cards from their hands, new rules will come into play. When they do, the player will be instructed to discard the previous rule card that alters that aspect of the game (for example, if a draw 2 card was already in play, when playing a draw 5 card, the player would discard the draw 2 card from the game). New rules that introduce a new aspect would be placed along the growing row of rules cards. Most of them also have an additional effect when they come into play.  

Some times the player will be able to use the new rules to his benefit, other times it will hamper him.

New rules

The meat of the game are the Keepers and the Goals. The keepers are what the players collect / steal / trade during the game, in order to achieve the goal that is currently in play. Some of the keepers have an additional effect when in play. As you can see in the image bellow, most are recognizable if you ever read or watched any Sci-fi in your life. It is these little references to Star wars, Star Trek, Doctor who, The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and others, that give this game its theme.

The keepers

The goals will present the players with the task of collecting the 2 keepers that are shown, before a new goal card replaces it, in order to win the game.

The goals

But watch out, there are 3 cards in the game that change the way its played even further. These must be played as soon as the player draws them. Just follow the text on the card, and draw another card after that. There creepers will attach themselves to the keepers from the player that drew it. They prevent the player from wining the game even if he has the matching keepers for the current goal. The way you deal with these is either to play a new goal that shows the creeper as one of the requirements, or by using one of the action cards.

The creepers

The action cards are one time sort of events, that you can play from your hand, and discard them afterwards. These will allow the players to trade the cards in their hands or in front of them, draw additional cards for the turn, steal a keeper from the opponent, or even discard some or all of the new rules.

The actions

Then there are the surprises. There is only a few of them, but they allow the player to pick the effect listed on the card, and play it either during their own turn (as the rest of the cards) or during the opponents turn thereby preventing the opponent from playing his chosen card.

Surprises

The game plays 2-6 players, ages 8 and up. Its very language dependent as there is a lot of text on the cards. The box says it lasts between 10-40 minutes. Most of our games last around 20 minutes, but we did have a few marathons where we couldn't finish the game after 90 minutes, as the rules are constantly in flux(x). The rules reset card will soon become the favorite one in the deck.  

We had this game for a better part of a decade. We fell in love with its general Sci-fi theme, as at the time there were no Fluxx titles for a specific franchise like there are today (for example there are 4 star trek titles plus an expansion). Having a general sci-fi theme instead of a franchise specific one, means there are but a few cards for each more famous franchise, and that just makes it easier for players to recognize the more famous bits, thus ensuring that every game ends up with an exchange of favorite quotes. 

What we think? Well, after so many years in our collection, we never thought of getting rid of it, though we don't play it as often as we used to. The cards are starting to warp a little. Our average playtime would tend to class this game as a filler, but it can easily turn into a mess where it gets hard to keep track of all the rules that are on the table, and drag on for over an hour. We would much rather play it 3-4 times in a row than go through 90 minutes of actively trying to finish the game just so we can remove it from the table and play something else.

We would recommend this as a filler game if you enjoy a bit of table banter and the inevitable exchange of favorite quotes. It isn't an actual sci-fi game, and the general theme won't make you feel like you just played a Star trek game for example. If we ever get a chance, we would love to try a few other fluxx titles (especially the Star trek and Doctor who ones), perhaps they would have a more immersive theme.

We give it a score of 7/10. 

Warlord games American Civil War Epic Battles

We have been looking into starting historical war-gaming for a while now, but have found that 28mm (as a standard on the market) had too many issues for us. The individual boxes were confusing for someone who just started collecting. Rulebooks would generally fail to explain what each unit (or battalion) needed to have in regard of uniform choices, instead telling you how many bases or figures needed to be there. One had to dig deeper into that rabbit hole to figure out why some models in the unit had different bits of their uniforms, and why some of them were even painted differently than the rest. 

The worst part (for us) in 28mm historicals has to be the scale, or more specifically how many actual men does each figure in your unit represent. Coming from other 28mm games, we were comfortable knowing that each figure was 1 individual soldier, so it came as a nasty surprise to learn that those nice looking 24 figure units marching around the board were in fact anywhere between 500 and 1200 men. 

You could always go for 28mm skirmish rules, and in fact that would be preferred if you enjoy the narrative in such games. A group of soldiers could enter a building to find some wine bottles inside and get drunk, the officer could be a real ladies man chasing skirts instead of enemies, troops could run out of ammo and had to find a supply cache to reload... We found that the skirmish rulesets that gave us such a narrative flair tend to be over complicated for our taste, while others actually being far to simple, lacking many troop choices or tactical possibilities. There are no grand cavalry charges, no infantry forming squares, no artillery decimating infantry that got a bit too close... 

One could always try 6mm scale, with either keeping the 24 figure ratio per battalion making it a super affordable option, or try fitting extra models in there, perhaps even using the 28mm bases for individual companies that comprise each battalion. This would most likely cost as much as the 28mm variant, but could look more real to the eye. The one that didn't go blind painting all the tiny details.

Enter Warlord games and their new Black powder Epic battles set during the American civil war. Hard plastic, 15mm scale, decent price, and with more than 2400 miniatures inside.

The big box in all its glory

                              

Inside you will find 12 gray and 12 blue sprues of minis, some 24 green sprues for the bases, a Black powder 2nd ed mini rulebook and an A4 sized booklet on the conflict. Then there are 2 sheets of paper flags, 1 for each side, 2 frames of laser-cut mdf terrain by Sarissa precision, and a bag of dice.

The box itself is made of thin cardboard and was already bending when we got it, but the artwork is amazing.

The sprues

The rules

The mini rulebook is 200 pages long, filled with photos, diagrams and some historical facts. It covers the whole black powder period, not just the American civil war, and even has some basic scenarios and orders of battle for each conflict. There are many supplements available for each conflict.

We will most likely be using a different ruleset for our games, but more on that subject in another article.                       

The booklet

The booklet is 25 pages long, and covers the conflict in a bit more detail. It has some amazing artwork as well plus photos of the new 15mm miniatures in action. Inside you will find some rules modifications to the original Black powder, most importantly a scale conversion for all the measurements from 28mm to 15mm. There are also 5 scenarios presented, each with a map and an order of battle. The scenarios are Greenbrier river, Wilson's creek, Salem church, and Gettysburg day one and two. 

Of those 5, only the first one can be played with the contents of this box, the others need extra miniatures. We would have liked to either get a larger book with maybe ~20ish scenarios complete with orders of battle where you know that you will need to buy extra miniatures, OR a couple of scenarios where you use only the contents of the box. This we find to be an ugly marketing move.

                                      

The iconic fences

The terrain provided is nice, but lacking. The house is nice, we were able to build it in about 30 minutes, but the fences we find most lacking. The provided fence is just too short. We would have preferred to get a longer fence, maybe even instead of the house. Warlord are offering a set of 3 buildings for 15 pounds, enough to maybe create a small farmstead for your games, but no option for extra fences (at least not as of may 2021). No choice but to build our own when we start working on Acw terrain.                           

The house

The flag sheets are our favorite part. Such a nice selection for both sides, they even include flags for cavalry, Zouave regiments and the Iron brigade, along with many famous regiments one might want to represent on the field of battle.

Downside is there is no painting guide whatsoever. A missed opportunity for the booklet.

The Union flags

The Confederate flags

The figure frames are all the same, 12 each in gray and blue, so you can start playing before you paint. They are of nice quality,the only flash I found was on the officers swords. The pegs on the strips could have been a bit thicker, to allow assembly without glue. This way I had to use a small amount of universal glue in order for the strips to stay on the bases during gameplay / handling, but be easy enough to remove from the bases when the time comes for painting. 

The uniforms and hats are generic enough to pass for both sides, allowing for cheaper mass production. Its a shame Warlord didn't make the other figures of this line in plastic, instead they are metal and have a significantly higher price. 

The other thing we find lacking with the plastic figures apart from the small pegs, is the mounted officer. Its fine as a single figure, but to have 24 identical ones, even more if you get another starter. They could have had a separate plastic sprue, with maybe 3-5 different mounted officers than put 6 of them in the box and be done with it. This way its passable if you keep the officer close to his unit, but the moment you need to base 2-3 mounted figures on a base for a higher command, you are out of luck.

  

                                           


                                              

                                              

                              

A Confederate artillery battery

A Confederate officer leading his men to battle

A Union officer

Union troops, closeup

A Union gun

Union troops, closeup #2

A Union line

The finished house is pretty decent

This box allows you to build 12 units of a 100 men each, plus 12 guns and mounted officers, per player. The number of figures per unit even allows for a 1:1 ratio, where each unit is a company with up to a 100 men. Having a minimum sized regiment with 4 units, would allow for a smaller brigade, all with just this one box. Alternatively you could have each unit represent a regiment, with ~1:10 scale and have a whole division for each player with just one box.

Overall, we feel this is a solid product, but with a lot of room for improvement.We give the miniatures a 8/10, and the whole product as a whole a 7/10. We would recommend this to anyone just starting to collect this period as a nice alternative to 28mm scaled armies.  

I'm curious if Warlord will follow up this conflict with any other. Perhaps Napoleonics? Leave you thoughts in the comments bellow. 

Carcassonne

Carcassonne, by Rio Grande games 

This was one of our first board game titles. We got it some 10+ years ago, after being introduced to it by the friendly staff of a local game store. She described it as being a "no-brainer".

The cover of our copy

Inside you will find a short rules explanation, a scoring summary, a score track, a bag of meeples and a set of colorful game tiles. I believe our copy is the 1st edition, and I understand that some of the artwork and rules may have changed through the editions. 

All the components

                               

The box comes with a cardboard insert which holds all the game tiles on one side, and the meeples on the other. The score track,and the rules go on top. The insert feels too big with too much space being wasted, instead of making the score track and the rules smaller thus able to fit in a smaller box. We usually get rid of the cardboard insert the moment we open the box as its a waste of space most of the time.This one we kept as it holds the components nicely, even if it is too big. If ever we do get some expansions for this game, there is more than enough room inside to keep it all in one box. 

Insert with tiles and meepls

The game tiles are all beautifully drawn, with an unequal number of copies for each. Most have some part of a castle, and around a half have a road going through them. A number of them even have an icon of a shield in the top left corner, and this is used during scoring.

                              

Game tiles all sorted out

On the back-side all the tiles have a light art, while one of the pieces has a darker art on it. This one is the starting tile, and you always begin the game with this one.

The objective of the game is for the players to build upon the medieval landscape, trying to make the biggest city, although there are other ways to gain points. 

To start, the players lay down the starting tile in the middle of the table, and shuffle the rest of the tiles into separate stacks, face down, close to each player. Than when its their turn, a player takes the top tile from the stack, flips it face up, and decides where to place it. Each new tile has to connect with any tile already on the board, as can be seen in the image bellow. After this, the player has a choice of placing one of his meeples on the tile he just placed in order to score points. This will lock the meeple if the feature the player is building is still incomplete, up until the feature is finished, and the player gets his meeple back. The game ends when you use the last tile available.

No matter how you place the tiles, you will always have a different game, as the number of tiles, the order they come into play and the way the player can set them up makes this game infinitely replayable.

Just an example of a map you can create

The scoring summary explains how to place your meeples on each tile in order to score points, having them become a thief if placed on the road, a knight if in a city, a monk if in a cloister, or a farmer if placed on the green areas around a city.

Each time you score points, you move your meeple around the score track. If ever you pass the final number on the track,just lay the meeple on its back and continue moving him that way, to show that you have made it through the track once.

You may end up with some incomplete features when the game ends. These also score points in the end, just less than usual.

                                               

The game plays with 2-5 players, ages 8 and up, and lasts around 30-45 minutes. Setup takes about 2 minutes. Its easy to teach, quick to play, with very little downtime between turns as there isn't too much thinking required (a real "no-brainer"). We recommend it to anyone who wants a light game to play with either friends or family.

There are many expansions and spin-offs available, as well as video game variants for pc, mobile and consoles. The base game has a very affordable price point, but with the many, many expansions this could add up. 

We find the base game so good that we still have and play it after more than 10 years of owning it, yet we never felt like we needed to add any expansions to it. 

Our score: 8/10

Current board game collection as of May 2021

 

This is our current board game selection. We intend to make a review for most, if not all of them. Expect new titles to be added, while some might get removed, as we slowly update our collection.  

Age of dogfights WWI demo game

We did a demo game of Age of dogfights WWI by Forsage games, and had a blast. 5 planes per side, with both sides having 2 scouts and a photo recon mission. Only one scout per player managed to reach its target and take the photo, but they were both swiftly shot down after that. 

The end result was 3 planes shot down and 1 damaged by the British, and only 2 planes shot down by the Germans. As both sides failed their main objective, this was a minor victory for the Allies.

The game lasted about 90 minutes, with around 20 to teach the whole rules. I didn't want to just have a dogfight so I added a photo recon mission, to show how that mechanic works, and maybe have a chance to use the rear mg on the scouts as well.

Setup

Two German fighters starting high then diving hard to gain more speed (and show-off)

The Brits all come on board turn 1

The German number 6 plane rushes the enemy head-on, manages to damage one (No.61) but gets shot down in return

German number 5 realizes his initial plan to flank the enemy left his comrade vulnerable

Two Brits diving on a sole adversary

 No.4 was in a good position to rid himself of the damaged scout, but was in a cloud and so unable to get a clear shot

No.5 going for the wounded scout gets his wings damaged after this image was taken

 The sneaky German scouts,who waited 2 turns to come on board,as they waited for their allies to create enough of a distraction for them to reach their target

On the right, the lone Brit destroys one scout,while the other takes his photo.He gets him too after 2 turns.On the left the remaining German fighters chase the wounded scout,and destroy him only after he manages to take his photo

After all that, the 2 remaining German fighters (one with damaged wings) decide to head for home thus ending the game.