5 in 4

Pop quiz, hot shot! You've got 5 two-player games and an afternoon to kill. What do you do? What do you do?

The answer? Go and visit David Q. Smith of Mondo Comico fame and play the heck out of them. So here are 5 games we played in (just under) 4 hours.

13. Star System

by Walter Obert
Players: 2
Ages: 9+
Time: 30+ minutes
Type of game: Deductive Card Game
Recommended?: No

 A Cluedo/Guess Who? type game. Be the first to work out which 5 of 20 stars are featured in your opponents movie. Although why he's trying to keep it a secret is beyond me. Not my favourite hidden information game which is why it's now on the shelf of Mondo waiting to be sold!

14. Lord of the Rings: The Duel

by Peter Neugebauer

Players: 2
Ages: 10+
Time: 45+ minutes
Type of game: Hand management
Recommended?: Yes

The fight between Gandalf and the Balrog played out with cards. Exactly turn you must play a card. You shall not pass! Ahahahahahaha! How funny I am.

This is fantastically over produced with Gandalf and Balrog represented by odd little wooden pieces and a lovely cardboard bridge is included to walk them on to represent who has the upper hand at any one time.

Each card has four slots on each side. An filled slot is an attack, an empty one is not. Your opponent plays a card and them you must answer it. Any filled slots that are unanswered by another filled slot means 1 damage to the opponent.

You will play with every card in the deck during the game so you need to make sure you don't use all your best cards up-front.

15. Pick & Pack

by Simon Hunt

Players: 2
Ages: 8+
Time: 20+ minutes
Type of game: Light Abstract Strategy
Recommended?: Yes
A fun little apple collection game where you and your opponent operate a claw grabber like in those fairground machines that contain awful stuffed toys that you can never win because the machine is fixed (or for readers in Japan - UFO Grabbers that contain cool toys and actually give you a very good chance of winning.)

The twist is that one of you controls the horizontal movement on their go as the other moves vertical on theirs. So you've got to try and get something good while denying them on their turn. Or... do you set them up with something so appealing that they'll set you up for an even better tile on your next go.

Beyond the core tiles you have action tiles that can be triggered by landing on an empty space. These can increase the value of your apples or decrease the value of your opponents allowing you to pip them to the top spot.

I've run out of apple gags now.

16. Strike Dice

by Michael Andresakis and Alexander Argyropoulos

Players: 2-4

Ages: 8+
Time: 20+ minutes
Type of game: Random Abstract Strategy
Recommended?: No

Gah.

Full disclosure: I play-tested this game and helped to re-write the rules (as in, make them clearer not change them).

That said, despite being emotionally invested in this and having real respect for the visual attention that these guys have given Strike Dice and their other game, Eragra, I struggle to say many positive things about this game.

An abstract strategy game with pawns of random strength. This unbalances the game so much that it becomes way more about luck than strategy.

The rules are still wilfully obtuse and over-written making a relatively basic game seem complicated and deep at first glance.

Good luck to them but I won't be keeping it.

17. Stratego: Star Wars

by Jacques Johan Mogendorff / Uncredited

Players: 2

Ages: 8+
Time: 30+ minutes
Type of game: Secret movement
Recommended?: No

Classic Stratego with a twist of Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. That's what happens when you make a game midway through a prequel trilogy.

Yours and your opponents pieces are hidden from each other until one attacks the other. Then the pieces involved in the combat are revealed to decide the outcome. The loser removes their piece from the board and tries to remember the location and type of piece in order to make a succesful path to the enemies hidden goal piece.

With certain pieces that work against each other best (think you've found a bomb? You need a droid to defuse it) your brain will be twisting and turn to keep track of what's where.

Unless you're me with my limited patience for abstract strategy games in which case you'll kamikaze charge your way to certain doom.

And yet... I think this might stay. David Q. Smith talked very fondly of playing this as a child and a game like this would be good to have in the house when I finally have children. Because surely I'll be able to beat them at it!

I've weirdly forgotten who won what... Perhaps David remembers.

Sabre-toothed Seven

8. Mammut

By Kristian Amundsen Ostby

Players: 2 - 5
Ages: 8+
Time: 30+ minutes
Type of game: Social / Auctionish
Reccomended?: Yes

Seems like life in prehistoric times was a little more straightforward than it is now. You'd go out with your tribe hunting and gathering then split the spoils under the watchful eye of the tribe leader. Everyone shared the work and got their equal share of the spoils. Fair. Y'know, exactly like banking works now.

What if the tribe leader wasn't around and we were left to ourselves to decide how to split it? What's to stop me taking all of it? We need some rules to stop that happening. Let's see... If I have nothing in front of me I can take as much as I want from the central pile or take everything from somebody (who either has been too greedy or has what I want).

Seems fair? That's Mammut.

Here's the 2 boards. The far one acts as storage for the 7 sabre-toothed animals and a reminder of the various scoring options, the other is for keeping track of your score and furs.
You get thin and fat mammoths to mark your journey and another one to keep in front of you to:
A) remind yourself what colour you are
B) remind the other players what colour you are
C) play with
During the game you will find yourself doing mostly C.

Each round you'll upend a bag of tiles and leave them as they fall apart from separating them slightly so you can see what side is up. The first player takes what they want but tries to take little enough so that it's not stolen by another player. In our game 7 was decided as being the amount you could take without being acutes of being too greedy. Which meant we'd take 8-9 to try and push our luck.
With a number of ways to gain points and a couple of ways to lose points, you've got to get a good mix and keep an eye on what your opponents are picking up. But, as the tiles are double-sided you can never be certain of what you're going to get each round. So, although you can decide on a basic strategy you've got to be open to changing it.

Like The Resistance, the bulk of this game happens socially. Yes, you have the tokens in front of you to represent the choices you're taking but it's how you argue the fairness of those choices that really makes the game. That's where the fun of this really comes into play.

Also, there are sabre-toothed hamsters in this game.

Greed is Good (Except when it's bad and you get trapped in a pyramid with hungry mummies, crocodiles, cobras and scorpions)

4a. The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus
By Guillaume Blossier and Frédéric Henry

Players: 2 - 6
Ages: 13+
Time: 45 mins
Type of game: dungeon run, Push your luck
Reccomended?: Yes


Feverishly, your eyes sweep across the sarcophagus lid deciphering the symbols as they go. Pausing on one you can't quite decipher you consult your notebook to find the meaning. Sure now of the secret way to unlock the casket's treasure, you tug at the lid's edge. No! You've gone wrong again. You're certain of two of the symbols but still need to decipher three. You've got one more chance before the mummy turns round and starts lumbering towards you. You're certain you could work faster if you hadn't been bitten by that snake and weren't laden down with golden trinkets. You can't possibly drop them though. You have to hold on to the treasure so, when the roof finally gives in you're ready to start running for fear of being trapped... Forever!

This the second of The Adventurers games (I own both which is why it's 4a). The first game (coming soon to The List!) sees you exploring a Raiders of the Lost Ark style Mayan temple. In this version however you explore a pyramid looking for treasure and avoiding the many dangers within.

The game has been refined somewhat but the core system remains the same.
The number of actions each player can take is decided by the roll of 5 dice at the beginning of the round. Any dice value the same or higher than your WLL (Wound Load Level) enables you to take 1 action to a maximum of 5.

How is your WLL calculated? As the game progresses you'll pick up cards. Some are treasures (yay!), some are equipment (yay!), some are wounds (boo!). The more you carry and/or the more wounds you receive the higher the number rolled has to be to count as an action.

The deeper you get into the pyramid, the more you explore hoping to find treasures the slower you get. If you should ever find yourself with 12 cards you have to start dropping treasure and equipment just so you can keep moving.

Despite this reduction in the number of actions you can take, you will find that the game doesn't slow because at the end of each round the first player randomly selects a stone (plastic) block from the box lid. Inside each of these is a number corresponding to a space on the board. The block comes slamming down into the pyramid is placed carefully so as not to damage the board hopefully wounding one of your competitors who rolls out of the way or squashing them if they can't. Each block hinders your movement until, inevitably, they form a wall trapping any with the misfortune to still be in the main body of the pyramid.

The winner of the game is the person still alive with the most treasure. Although, when we play it's generally just the person that's alive.

Somewhat chaotic, this is a favourite due to theme alone. Good silly fun.

Three adventurers ready to take on the perils of the pyramid! They're all grey so the designers included little coloured bases so you can tell them apart. Yes, that one in the middle is Rasputin.

Mummy 1,

Mummy 2...

...and Mummy 3. They all want to eat your brains!

The full pyramid. Around the board are the various treasures you can collect and decks of cards for the different areas you can search in.

David shows just how easy it is to lift a block from the box. Well done Sir!

Key of the Door - 21!

DOOM! This one missed you, but you won't always be so lucky.

Mike and David's characters are, wisely, heading towards the exit. Greedily  and stupidly, I decide to search for just a few more treasures...



3 blocks crash down and I head for the exit. Nearly at the wall and laden down, I'm moving 1 space a turn until... DOOM! A block falls sealing my fate... FOREVER!



Haggis

3. Haggis

by Sean Ross


Players: 2 - 3
Ages: 13+
Time: 45 mins
Type of game: Card, Trick taking
Reccomended?: Yes

About once a week, I'll head into my local game shop, Mondo Comico, where confused philanthropic billionaire (only one of these words is true) David Q. Smith, Esquire hosts game session.

There'll be a game or two going on and, if you're lucky, there'll be a game about to end or a few people milling about so you can jump into a game quickly. Occasionally, there'll just be 1 other person around and you get the chance to play a 2 player game. It's rare these will come out at a games night as people generally want to play with larger groups.

This past Tuesday though I arrived whilst a game of Robber Knights (coming soon to The List!) was halfway through. Thankfully, there was one other unattached gamer there so we were able to break out another game.

Which was Haggis. I'm going to play this again soon as we spent most of the game getting to grips with the rules.

Haggis is a trick-taking game and, if you want to play with 2 and don't mind either defacing a deck of cards or referring to a list of notes, one you can try out now.

You will need:
1 friend
1 deck of playing cards
1 pen (if you're going to deface the cards)

Pull out the aces and 2 sets of royalty leaving you with 4 suits of cards 2-10 and 2 sets of Jack, Queen, King (suits are irrelevant). Write 1 on each 3, 5, 7, 9, 2 on your Jacks, 3 on your Queens and 5 on your Kings. These are the point values of the cards when you add them up at the end.

Put a set of royalty in front of each of you and shuffle up the rest of the cards dealing 14 to each leaving 8 in a pile on the table (this is the Haggis).

Look at your hand and decide how likely it is that you will be the first player to get rid of your cards and bet either 0, 15 or 30 points on this. At the end of the game you or your opponent will win this depending on whether you were successful or not.

The player to the left of the dealer starts (or the right of the dealer as there's only 2 of you anyway). You lay a trick and then the other player either plays a higher trick of the same type and number or passes. When the other player passes you collect the cards.

The tricks are mostly sets (singles, pairs, three - 6 of a kind) and sequences (run of 3 or more cards of the same suit or runs of sets (2 or more)). Along with these are bombs which beat anything. These add a massive dose of strategy to the game as, while they beat anything (apart from higher level bombs), the cards won go to your opponent adding to their score but giving you control of the next round. I'm not going to tell you what they are. You'll have to buy the game if you want them.

The round is over when one person gets rid of all their cards. You then score thusly:

0, 15 or 30 points for clearing your hand
5 points for each card in your opponents hand (including any of the royalty on the table)
Both players collect up the cards they won (the person who emptied their hand gets the Haggis and the remainders of their opponents hand ) and score the points on the cards

The game can continue until one player reaches a certain point value. 250 points is suggested for a shorter game, 350 for a longer one.

This isn't the kind of game I'd normally go for, being relatively themeless as it is. I got it as part of a Kickstarter deal along for Flashpoint: Fire Rescue (coming soon the The List!) for a few quid extra and have been pleasantly surprised. It feels like a traditional game and certainly draws inspiration from old card games. Whilst the box says 13+ I wouldn't hesitate in introducing this to a much younger audience and it being a success. That is, of course, assuming you're willing to dumb down your play a little.

Buy it at your local game shop (most will order in for you) or: