We're still at least 17% alive!

Well we can't really deny that Games & Tea has been quiet of late, so we figured an update was about due - this post is part apology, part explanation.

 

A few months ago you may remember we posted a review of Pirates! Card Game, a Kickstarter project by Jules Prick.  It was our utmost pleasure to see the project reach its funding goal, and knock through its stretch goals on the sprint to the finish line!  We've mentioned in the past how when you ramp up your Kickstarter pledge you start to get jucier rewards, and one of the rewards for Pirates! was a pirate sloop tour around the canals of Amsterdam - the birthplace of the game.  Always eager for a chance to dress as pirates and terrorise a European capital city, we jumped on board (see what we did there?), and as things spiralled out of control it's ended up basically becoming a Games & Tea holiday!  Unfortunately, holidays are expensive things, and as a result a large portion of the last few months has been dedicated to scraping together enough pennies to actually see this thing through (an £80 pledge has now turned into a £700 city break!).

However, the funds are now raised, costumes bought, flights and accommodation booked, and some semblance of normality is starting to be restored!  We're jetting off towards the end of September, so when we get back you can expect an in-depth report on our experience of a Kickstarter launch event, and tales of any other game-related shenanigans we manage to get up to while we're there!

 

We're also hoping to get back to a decent reviewing rate fairly soon - one of the downsides to spending so much time raising holiday funds is that we've been unable to get together for fun game times.  We're very eager to get reviews of Space Alert, Firefly: The Board Game, and Space Cadets: Dice Duel on the go, so please bear with us, we promise we're doing our best to restore our former glory!

 

We figured we might as well end this article with a couple of impending releases which currently have us salivating!  Free advertising is not what Games & Tea is about, so it's just a coincidence that these are both from Fantasy Flight.

 

 

If you're one of those rare people in the world who have heard of the Star Wars franchise, this might just grab your interest.  StarWars: Imperial Assault is a strategy board game set in between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, immediately following on from the destruction of the first Death Star (yes, this means you get to play as non-robohand Luke).  Fantasy Flight do seem to be fond of the "1 vs many" gaming style, and they've gone with this approach for Imperial Assault, with one player controlling the Imperial side whilst up to four other players assume the role of the Rebel Alliance.

As you'd expect from Fantasy Flight, the game components look lavish, with no expense spared in production values.  The thing which really caught our attention though is that as well as just setting up for a single game, there is a full narrative campaign of missions which players can enjoy as they watch an unfolding story.  With 59 double-sided map tiles there should be no shortage of battlegrounds, so in theory this should be a game with a high replay value.

 

 

 Again, sticking with the Star Wars universe (Fantasy Flight do love making the most out of their licenses!) we have Star Wars: Armada.  The X-Wing Miniatures Game took the world by storm upon its release last year (check out our review of it here), with demand for more ships far outstripping Fantasy Flight's supply.

Whilst X-Wing did have a few mid-scaled ships such as The Millennium Falcon and Slave-I, the scale of the fighters made larger ships unfeasible, and even though many players were keen to see the release of Star Destroyers and other such capital ships, most knew it was an unrealistic hope.  But Fantasy Flight are never ones to let down their fans and turn down a money-making opportunity in the process, and as a result we have Armada on the way!

Unlike X-Wing, Armada operates on a much smaller scale.  Whereas its predecessor gave players individual fighters to operate, Armada gives you squadrons of fighters which operate as one, and the mid-scaled ships are replaced by the Star Destroyers we all always wanted!  It's not just a case of making everything smaller and keeping the rest of the system identical though - for on thing movement is very different, as players find themselves having to compensate for inertia when piloting such hulking masses around the gravity-free abyss of space.
Due for release later this year, Armada does have us very excited, and we're certainly not the only ones hoping it lives up to the hype!

Arkham Horror, A Call of Cthulhu Board Game, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

A few days ago we made a start on our first Fantasy Flight big box review, taking a look at the box contents of one of their flagship games: Arkham Horror.  Now that we've given you lovely folk some time to let your Christmas indulgences work their way out of your collective systems, we're going to push on with our gameplay analysis and see just how well that plethora of gaming pieces mesh together into a tabletop experience.
 

Arkham Horror is a fully co-operative game, in which 1-8 players must work together to investigate the strange occurrences throughout the titular city of Arkham, and prevent the incursion of an Ancient One (colossal monster, to you and me) into our world.  As we demonstrated in Part 1 of our review, this game does feature a lot of components, and so the initial setup process takes up a fair amount of time and space.

Once the gargantuan game board has been laid out and the starting tokens and cards have been placed in their appropriate locations, it's time for the players to receive their investigator alter-egos with which they must tread these dark and dangerous streets.  This can be done by either randomly dealing out the character cards or by each player choosing their character from the set.  We personally prefer adding a semi-random element to the process, by dealing out two investigators to each player and then allowing them to choose which of the two to keep.  There are 16 investigators to choose from, so even in full 8 player games this still allows for a bit of variation from one playthrough to the next.

Whilst the various attributes of each investigator can be adjusted from one turn to the next (there'll be more on that later), each character in Arkham Horror does excel in certain areas.  In larger games this means that a team can be assembled to deal with almost anything the other worldly horrors can throw their way, whereas in smaller games it leaves players having to vastly tailor their strategies to accommodate their investigators' strengths.  Some characters are combat heavy, and can play a blunt force game, thundering their way across the board leaving a trail of dead monsters in their wake.  Some are good at evading trouble, and can sneak untouched across the city, preventing the Ancient One's incursion before it even knew it faced opposition!  Some are good supporting characters, keeping their fellow investigators both healthy and sane as they battle the forces of darkness.  And some are simply good all-rounders, excelling at nothing but having no overall weak spots.  If playing a solo game we'd thoroughly recommend hand-picking an investigator, as drawing a support character with no other characters to support is a fairly fast path to a devastating defeat.

Each investigator also starts the game with an inventory, containing some set items and some randomly assigned.  For example one character may start with the Tommy Gun, in which case it will need to be sorted from the Common Items deck, whereas one may start with two random Unique Items, which will simply be dealt off the top of the appropriate deck.

The only remaining element of Arkham Horror is the Ancient One itself.  With 8 to choose from these can also be either hand-picked or selected at random.  Seeing as each Ancient One presents different challenges throughout the course of the game, we've always preferred to hand-pick ours, allowing us to effectively set a difficulty level dependant upon how much of a challenge we want.

Vote Cthulhu for a quick and painful death!

With the Ancient One and investigators all selected it's time for the horror to begin!

Each turn of the game consists of 5 phases; Upkeep, Movement, Arkham Encounters, Other World Encounters, and Mythos.  The Upkeep phase allows players to refresh exhausted spells and items and, more importantly, to shuffle their investigator's stats around.

The bottom half of each investigator's character card is devoted to that investigator's attributes - there are some skills and items which can increase these, but the numbers on the card are that investigator's base value.  Each skill track is marked by one of the 0-shaped tokens, and these keep track of each stat's current value.  The character's Focus is shown above the skill tracks, and this dictated how far a player may adjust their skills during the Upkeep phase.  The character above, for example, has a Focus of 1, so one of his skill tracks can be moved one space left or right.  As you can see, skills are paired, meaning that as one stat is increased another is reduced, which means that players must plan their move ahead and decide just how they want their investigator to behave in the coming turn.  You may want your investigator to be fast on their feet, but the downside to this is that they're unlikely to sneak past any monsters with the amount of noise they're making!

The values on the skill tracks are used to attempt various skill tests as and when the game presents them to the investigators, and they follow a nice and simple mechanic which is easy to remember.  The skill value is the number of dice the investigator has to roll, and any dice which land on a 5 or 6 are counted as a success.  For example, the character above has to pass a Luck check.  His Luck value is 3, so he rolls 3 dice, and if any one of them lands on a 5 or 6 then the check is passed - it really is that simple!  Some checks will have modifiers, such as "Pass a WILL(-1) check", but they always work on the basis that 1-4 is a failure and 5-6 is a success.  This is a very good way of working skill checks, as it requires no memorising of complex stat tables - all that players need to do is read their investigator's stat line and roll that many dice.

After Upkeep comes Movement, and this is where players have to choose between fight or flight.  Any time an investigator ends their movement on a space with a monster or attempts to leave that space, they have to attempt to either evade or fight the creature.  Evading is usually the easier of the two options, but leaves the monster on the board to continue prowling, and once the number of monsters reaches critical levels all hell starts to break loose (literally!).  On the other hand, jumping recklessly into a fight can often end badly, sending the investigator to the hospital and causing them to lose much of their valuable inventory.

This adds further to the forward planning aspect of Arkham Horror, as players must toe the line between taking a full-on fight to these other-worldly terrors, and tip-toeing around the city in the hope of not being spotted.  In large multi player games it can often be worth loading one player up with weapons and sending them on the rampage whilst the others attempt to secure the win for the team!

The way to win at Arkham Horror is to seal the transdimensional Gates which are cropping up across the city, and to do this players need Clue tokens (as shown above).  Once players have gathered enough of these they can head through a Gate and attempt to close it.

Depending on whether they are in Arkham or one of the Other Worlds, the players then have an encounter, which is determined by the appropriate deck of cards.  Some of these will require skill checks to prevent the loss of health or sanity, some simply involve a monster appearing which the investigator must then deal with, and some will reward investigators with Clues, items or allies.  One criticism of the Arkham Horror base game is that there aren't a great deal of cards for encounters within the city of Arkham itself, so in larger games players will see the same cards coming out on more than one occasion.

Following the two Encounter phases, the turn ends with the Mythos phase.  The Mythos phase determines the location of the next Gate, the movement of monsters already on the board, the appearance of new Clues, and events which will either be instantaneous or long-standing.

The opening of a new Gate has two effects on the game; first of all it spawns a new monster into the city, and second of all it brings the Ancient One one step closer to its awakening...

Each Ancient One in Arkham Horror has a Doom Track along the bottom of the card.  Each time a Gate opens inside of Arkham, a Doom Token is placed on the next available number on the track - if the final number is ever covered up then the Ancient One awakens, and the board is abandoned as the investigators dedicate themselves to the singular task of defeating this abomination.  If they succeed then they win the game and can give themselves a firm pat on the back, but when the Ancient One does come out then the odds of success are extremely long!

The turns continue as such with the first player being passed around the board; players move, collect Clues, have encounters, and then allow the horrors to take their turn in the Mythos phase.  The game only ends when the final Gate is closed, or the Ancient One is defeated in combat.

All in all our impressions on Arkham Horror have been mixed.  To prevent this review from turning into an epic of Tolkien proportions we've stripped down the gameplay to its very basics, but we have to emphasise that this is the most complex board game we've ever played.  Most of the games we've learnt in the past generally involve one tutorial playthrough with the rulebook open, and then subsequent playthroughs usually run pretty smoothly with minimal rules consultation.  With Arkham Horror it took roughly 2 months of regular games to fully get to grips with the complicated ruleset, and this degree of commitment to a single game may put off a lot of potential players.  That said, once we'd got our heads around it we did find it very enjoyable, and it's nice to have something that we can throw ourselves into for a whole afternoon.

The second issue is that of space.  With so many components, Arkham Horror does need a lot of space to set up and play, and gamers who don't have a great deal of space at home may struggle to play.

This is a 4 player game set up and ready to go, to give an idea of the amount of playing space needed!

The final issue we had was that Arkham Horror is not a well-balanced game. At all.  The ease of the game is directly related to the number of players involved in our experience, with 1-player games verging on being impossible, 2-players being extremely difficult, and 3/4-player games presenting a decent balance.  We've yet to try out games with higher player numbers than this, but it does point to a trend of more players meaning easier games.

Negative points aside, we have enjoyed our experience on the streets of Arkham.  There are enough variables to keep the game from going stale (aside from the previously mentioned issue with  the Arkham Encounter cards), and it's an extremely intricate and involving game.  It's also a big box game which doesn't break the bank, which makes a refreshing change.

So let's break it down and see what the final verdict is...

The Good Points

• Arkham Horror is a very involving game, allowing players to lose themselves in a single campaign against the other worldly monsters for an entire evening.
• It's a beautifully presented game, with nice quality artwork throughout.
• The skill checks work off a nice simple D6 system, preventing the need for complicated skill tables.
• As a game for 1-8 players, this is something that can be played by a gaming group of pretty much any size, and can also be practiced alone to help gain a better understanding of the rules.
• With 16 investigators and 8 Ancient Ones, there are enough variables to prevent playthroughs from becoming too similar.

The Bad Points

• Arkham Horror is very complicated, and so it will take a long time and a lot of commitment for players to have a firm grip on the rules.
• It takes up a lot of space, so players living in small apartments may not have room to set up and play the game.
• The game could do with more Arkham Encounter cards, as these will be quickly re-used in larger games.
• It's very poorly balanced, with the ease of the game increasing with the number of the players.

Recommended Number of Players: 3-4

Whilst Arkham Horror is advertised as being for 1-8 players, 1-player mode is really a waste of the players' time, as they'll be unable to keep on top of the Gate openings before the Ancient One awakens.  The flipside of this is that with lots of players on the board it's easier to run around and keep on top of things from one turn to the next.  In our experience 3-4 players presents the best balance, forcing players to keep their wits about them without becoming too difficult.

Average Game Time: 3 hours

That's right, we weren't kidding when we said that Arkham Horror would take over your evening.  With such a complex ruleset and deeply involved game turns, a playthrough of Arkham Horror clocks in at roughly the 3 hour mark.

Replay Value: Medium

Arkham Horror does have a lot of variable elements, with the stack of Other World Encounter and Mythos cards, and the selection of investigators and Ancient Ones.  This helps to give a random element to the game which can prevent it from being too samey from one playthrough to the next.  However, the Arkham Encounter cards will be exhausted very quickly, and the extreme length of the game may put some people off coming back for more.

The Future: Bright (if Cthulhu doesn't devour you)

Arkham Horror is one of Fantasy Flight's flagship games, and as such has been blessed with a wealth of expansions.  These add extra sections onto the game board, new investigators, new mechanics, new items, new encounter cards... basically everything needed to refresh the base game.  There are currently 8 expansions to choose from, but it's a safe bet that Fantasy Flight aren't done with the franchise just yet.

Price: £35

For a big box game, Arkham Horror carries a refreshingly small price tag.  Most games of this size will set you back around the £50 mark, but Arkham Horror comes in at roughly £35.  As one of Fantasy Flight's biggest games it's widely available, with a lot of FLGS carrying it on their shelves as standard fare.  For those that don't, however, it should be very easy to order in.

OVERALL SCORE: 7.5/10

Tea consumed during this review: PG tips with milk and 2 sweeteners... it went cold before drinking.  Brew rating 5/10

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more of the same, come and like us on our Facebook page to keep up to date with our reviews, as well as our general day-to-day ramblings!

Arkham Horror, A Call of Cthulhu Board Game, Part 1: Box Contents

Over the last few months we've had the opportunity to play a few of Fantasy Flight's big box games, but they've always seemed like such a colossal undertaking that we've yet to send any of them to review stage.  Well we've decided it's about time to do something about this, so we're turning our attentions to Arkham Horror, a co-operative game for 1-8 players by Richard Launius and Kevin Wilson.

I do hope they remembered to take out wiffle-monster insurance.

Arkham Horror is a Lovecraftian game, so inside you can expect to find Cthulhu and other such wiffley terrors (or "Ancient Ones", as they're more eloquently known).  Players form a team of investigators, working their way around the city of Arkham as portals to other worlds open up in various locations, spewing monsters onto the city streets.  The aim of the game is to close up these portals before one of the Ancient Ones awakens, or, if that fails, to defeat the Ancient One in combat before they can go on to destroy the world.  The Ancient Ones are unspeakably tough though, and containment is usually preferable to a face-to-face showdown.

"Don't worry, lads. I've got me a bottle of whisky and a shotgun, I got this..."

This is a game which has been out for quite some time and is a staple of many gamers' personal collections, so let's push on and see what we thought of it, starting with the rather colossal box contents.

Welcome to Arkham Adventure Land, kids! You are here.

As is typical with a Fantasy Flight big box offering, the gaming board is something to behold.  It's glorious to look at, with a street map of Arkham itself, and the various other worlds which players will be traversing during the game.  It's very nicely presented and there's a lot going on, leaving you in absolutely no doubt that you're in for something rather epic.  However, the flipside of this is that Arkham Horror needs a lot of space to play.  On top of the game board there are also several decks of cards, the Ancient One's character card, and the individual players' character cards which must all be set up around the table.  As a result Arkham Horror has become a game which we're unable to play at Games & Tea HQ, and instead must make a trip to the 6'x4' gaming tables of our FLGS whenever we fancy a go.

There are 8 Ancient Ones altogether in Arkham Horror, all presenting various challenges to the investigators as they try to prevent their incursion into our world.  As well as being incredibly tough adversaries in their own right, each has an effect on the overall gameplay as they "stir in their slumber".  None present a particularly easy challenge, but some are noticeably tougher than others, which allows a bit of catering for either new or highly experienced players.

The great Dexter Drake - with a top hat this fine, how can victory elude us?

The other oversized cards come in the form of the 16 investigators' character cards.  The front side of these cards shows the name and a portrait of the investigator, as well as their base statistics, starting point on the board, inventory, and any special abilities they may have.  The rear of each card contains a short back story, giving a little more information about each character and their reasons for being in Arkham at the time of this otherworldly incursion.  This background information is in no way vital to the gameplay, but it's a nice little touch to give players more of a connection to their investigator.

Each investigator card comes with a matching token, featuring the artwork shown on the character card.  Again the artwork on these is very nice, but we have had occasions where one player has moved another's investigator due to the similar nature of some of the characters.

Pick a card, any card...

We mentioned earlier that Arkham Horror features several decks of cards, and here they are in all of their glory!  The standard sized cards shown on the left half of the picture dictate the course of events around Arkham and in the Other Worlds, setting up encounters for the investigators, determining the locations of new portals, the movement habits of monsters, and ongoing effects which take place across the city.  The smaller cards on the right are those which affect the investigators directly - being items, spells, skills and so forth.  As with the game board itself, the sheer scale of Arkham Horror is amply demonstrated in this card selection, and players must be prepared for a highly in-depth gaming session when they sit down to play.

There are a lot of tokens contained within the Arkham Horror box.  This can look intimidating at first glance, but on closer inspection there are actually mercifully few types - just a lot of them!  There are a handful which are used to track events throughout the course of the game, and so must be separated beforehand, whereas most of the tokens are expendable items such as money, stamina and sanity (anyone familiar with H.P. Lovecraft will know that sanity is expendable!).  The fact that there is nothing to separate the tokens once they're all in the box is a slight annoyance, and the set up for our first few games was slowed when we had to fish out the 14 setup tokens from the other 196 expendables!  We would highly recommend getting hold of a couple of resealable polythene bags early on, allowing separation of these tokens between games.

What's that coming over the hill?  Is it a Cthonian?  Is it a Cthonian?  ...oh wait, it's a Gug.  We're all screwed.

And last, but not least, come the monsters.  While the chosen Ancient One stirs in its slumber, these lesser creatures take to the streets (and skies) of Arkham to hamper the investigators' efforts.  There are 60 monsters altogether in Arkham Horror, some of which are a walkover and some of which are formidable in their own right.  These monsters move around the city, leaving investigators with the choice of either sneaking past them or engaging them in combat.  Sneaking past may seem like the smarter option, but as the number of monsters in the streets of Arkham increases, the difficulty of the task in hand goes up exponentially.  As an extra incentive there are also bonuses available for those brave enough to take these beasts down.

So that's the Arkham Horror box contents, and boy there's a lot of content!  This is certainly a game which leaves you feeling as though you've got your money's worth right off the bat, but it also seems more than a little intimidating at first glance.  Before we leave this article to move on to the gameplay side of things, there is one more item we'd like to cast a critical eye on: the rulebook.

Anarchy rules!

Obviously every game needs a rulebook, and there's nothing wrong with the layout of Arkham Horror's offering, but the issue we had here was one universal to Fantasy Flight's big box games: it's too damn big!  It certainly looks nice when you take the lid off the box of your new game and are greeted by a full colour rulebook the size of the box itself, but when it comes to needing to make quick references back to said rulebook then the size becomes impractical.  With the game itself taking up so much space already, having a rulebook that opens up larger than a sheet of A3 paper is more of an annoyance than anything else.  The rulebook clocks in at a mere 24 pages anyway, so we can't help but feel that halving the size and doubling it to a 48 page book would be a much more sensible option.  But perhaps that's just us.

So with that final rulebook-based note we're ready to move on to gameplay!  How do all of these elements come together?  Just how long does this game take to learn?  How does it work with varying numbers of investigators?  And just what happens when Cthulhu himself wakes from his slumber?  For answers to all of these exciting questions (and more!) check back in a few days for our overall verdict.

Hey, That's My Fish! A Sub-Zero Game of Fishy Strategy

A few days ago we decided to try and make the Christmas shopping of some of you lovely folk a little bit easier with a short gamers' gift guide.  One of the games featured was Fantasy Flight's Hey, That's My Fish! by Alvydas Jakeliunas and Gunter Cornett.  At the time of that article we had played a couple of games but hadn't had the time to write a full review, so we're here now to rectify this issue and bring you our full thoughts on the game!

 

 

Hey, That's My Fish! is a strategy game for 2-4 players, the aim of which is to gather more fish than your opponents.

There were two things about Hey, That's My Fish! (we'll abbreviate it to HTMF! for the remainder of the review!) which instantly appealed to us.  The first was the title/box art, which struck a chord with our daft sense of humour, and the two penguins on the box were soon given the permanent nicknames of Smug Penguin and Shatner Penguin.  The second was the price (which we'll address at the end of the review as always), which made it too good to pass up.

 

Upon opening the box, we were greeted by a noticeable lack of gaming board, which might seem a severe oversight for a board game at first glance.  Whilst we do still consider HTMF! to be a board game, the playing area is actually made up from a series of modular hexagonal Ice Floe Tiles, 60 of which are contained in the box.

 

 

These tiles are each illustrated with 1-3 fish which form the overall object of the game.  The only other elements in the box aside from these tiles are the playing pieces...

 

 

While it's nice to support smaller, indie games, the nice thing about buying products from larger companies such as Fantasy Flight is the quality of the overall product.  We were overjoyed the first time we opened the HTMF! box and saw that there were no wooden pawns or anything of that nature, but actual models of both Smug Penguin and Shatner Penguin for us to use during our games.  There are four colours to choose from, and four penguins of each colour.  During 2 player games each player will use all four of their penguins, for 3 players they will each use three, and in 4 player mode only two of each are used.

This summarises the box contents in their entirety!  Simple?  Of course.  Does this mean it's a poor and unchallenging game?  You should know better than to ask us that by now!  Let's take a look at the gameplay...

 

 

Before HTMF! can start, the gaming area must first be laid out.  The Ice Floe Tiles are shuffled up and placed in a grid as demonstrated above, with alternating rows of seven and eight tiles.  The rules dictate that the tiles should be placed face-down to assist randomisation, and then flipped face-up afterwards.  This seemed to us like an unnecessarily fiddly and time-consuming addition to the set up process, and we found that by simply selecting the tiles blindly from the box whilst constructing the grid meant that they could just be arranged face-up from the outset.

This is a little bit of a slow process, and if playing on a smooth surface it can get quite frustrating as the slightest knock to a single tile can upset the entire layout.  We'd thoroughly recommend trying to find a nice, high-friction surface to play on - the rubberised back of a card-gaming mat has saved us a lot of aggro during our games.

 

With the gaming area set up, players must squabble amongst themselves over their favourite colour of penguins, and then they're ready for their initial placement...

 

 

At the beginning of the game each player must place their penguins on Ice Floe Tiles containing only a single fish.  Players alternate, placing one penguin at a time until all of them are on the board, and then the game is ready to start!

 

As mentioned earlier, the aim of HTMF! is to gather more fish than your opponents.  Each player takes it in turn moving a single penguin.  Penguins can move as many spaces as they want in a single turn, but must move in a straight line, and cannot move through other penguins.  When the penguin has completed its move, the player collects the Ice Floe Tile on which it started its move, and adds it to their pile.  The next player then moves one of their penguins in a similar fashion, and the process repeats.

 

 

As Ice Floe Tiles are collected, the playing area begins to shrink around the penguins, limiting the players' movement options.  When a player can no longer move any of their penguins they are out of the game, removing their pieces from the grid and collecting the tiles they finished the game on.

 

 

This is where the strategic element of HTMF! comes into play.  The first instinct of any player is to start collecting as many fish as possible, but by cutting off your opponents' penguins you can cunningly find that you have the entire board to yourself!  In the picture above the blue penguin has isolated the red penguin in the corner.  Seeing as penguins can't move through eachother the red penguin has no movement options, and once the blue penguin moves away his Ice Floe Tile will disappear, stranding the red penguin on a little tile island until the end of the game.  The term "deceptively strategic" did get thrown around a lot during our review sessions, and it is an excellent way of describing the game.

HTMF! doesn't actually end when only one player remains in the game, but continues until that player no longer has any legal movement options.  This means that the key to victory is often outmanoeuvring your opponents, isolating and eliminating their penguins, and allowing you to slowly hop around the board collecting as many of the remaining tiles as is legally possible without backing yourself into a corner.

 

KHAAAAAAAAN!!!

Although a group of strategically-minded players can give a game of HTMF! a very chess-like edge, the simple game mechanic and colourful, friendly game pieces make this an ideal family game, and for specialist gamers who want to introduce their young ones to the hobby then it's an ideal platform.  Whilst the temperamental nature of the tiles on a smooth surface can cause frustration, HTMF! is an excellent game in all other areas, being easily accessible, quick to play, deceptively strategic (we had to say it again), and fantastic value for money.

 

The Good Points

• Visually, Hey, That's My Fish! is a very fun game.  Amusing and colourful game pieces and a nice cover make it appealing from the start.
• The modular board keeps games nicely randomised, so that no two grids will ever be the same.
• The simple mechanic makes it accessible to players of all ages, whilst at the same time a group of adults can delve into deeper tactical thinking to make the game more of a challenge.
• Unlike many board games, HTMF! takes up a refreshingly small amount of space on the table, making it nice and easy to crack open for a quick game.
• A game of HTMF! doesn't take too long to play, making it a good wind-down game.
• It's such good value for money!!!

The Bad Points

• The modular board is very prone to being knocked during set up or whilst collecting tiles.  We can't stress highly enough the benefits of playing on a surface with a little grip.
• Hardcore "serious" gamers probably won't enjoy this game due to it's colourful and family-friendly theme.

Recommended Number of Players: 3

HTMF! can be played with 2-4 players, and frankly it works just as well with any number!  The number of penguins for each player decreases with the number of players, and so the gameplay runs just as smoothly.  2 player games can be a little bit more tactical as players only have to out-think one opponent, whereas 4 player games become more chaotic as the moves of three other people become harder to predict.  Our personal preference is for 3 players as it gives a higher penguin count (9, as opposed to 8 in 2/4 player games) and thus makes the grid seem a little busier.

 

Average Game Time: 15 minutes

HTMF! is a short game, running for around 15 minutes (20 when you include set up time).  This makes it good for younger players with short attention spans, and also for games nights when players just want a simple game to break up the evening.

 

Replay Value: Medium

The modular grid helps to keep HTMF! fresh across multiple games, and the simple nature of the game means that it's easy to introduce new players as well.  The difficulty of the game always boils down to the strategic skill of your opponent, so unless you're evenly matched or can provide a stream of new opponents it will probably start to lose its shine after a while.

 

The Future: n/a

HTMF! is a self-contained game, but let's be honest, there's nowhere it could really go with expansions.  Apart from the possibility of more tiles to expand the grid, and thus adding the option of a fifth or sixth player, HTMF! is very much it's own thing.

 

Price: £10

That's right!  We hinted at it being a bargain, and HTMF! will set you back a measly £10!  This actually makes it the cheapest game we've ever got our hands on at Games & Tea (technically Felinia and Sedition Wars cost us the same, but they were bought on clearence rather than having a low RRP), and we can't see why anyone wouldn't want to take a chance on it at that price.

 

 

 

OVERALL SCORE: 8.5/10

 

Tea consumed during this review: PG tips with milk and 2 sweeteners.  Brew rating 6/10 (too much milk).

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more of the same, come and like us on our Facebook page to keep up to date with our reviews, as well as our general day-to-day ramblings!

Coming up soon...

Good evening, ladies and gentlegamers!  It's been a couple of busy weeks outside of the world of board gaming.  We've been re-discovering our tabletop love, swelling our Khador ranks in Privateer Press' Warmachine, picking up the Children of December crew for Wyrd Miniatures' Malifaux, picking up some more Batman goodness for Knight Models' Arkham City, and picking up a sizeable beginner force of Brotherhood for Prodos Games' Mutant Chronicles Warzone Resurrection!  Yep, all in all it's been a fairly crazy couple of hobby weeks!

 

Will we be writing up blog entries about any of these systems?  We will not.  Our original mission statement was to make Games & Tea a board/card game blog, and that's exactly how we intend to stay.  If you are interested in reading about any of the above systems, then we'd thoroughly recommend checking out our good friends over at The Hobbynomicon, as they're much more into the tabletop scene than we are.

 

Our rediscovery of all things tabletop has not caused our board game love to wane in the slightest, however, and even though it's been a good few weeks since our last review (the wonderfully non-PC Cards Against Humanity), we just wanted to reassure our readers that we have a whole host of wonderful things to bring you in the world of reviews...

 

 

The most recent addition to our review stack is Fantasy Flight's Arkham Horror, a classic Lovecraftian game and staple of many gamers' collections.  We may be late to the party with this one, but we're certainly looking forward to bringing you our thoughts on it.

 

 

Next up we have Star Fluxx from Looney Labs.  In the past we've brought you reviews on Zombie Fluxx and Monty Python Fluxx, and anyone who's read these will know that we have a bit of a soft spot for what is ultimately one of the Marmites of the gaming community.  Unlike some of its predecessors, Star Fluxx does not fit a specific theme, but instead touches on the sci-fi genre as a whole, and we'll be talking to you soon about just how well Looney Labs have managed to pull that off.

 

 

Sticking with the sci-fi theme for the moment, we have our review of Wizkids Star Trek Attack Wing to bring you.  This game is built around Fantasy Flight's Flightpath system, developed for their Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game, and so the two play very similar.  In order to include some of the technologies from the Star Trek universe however, the gameplay has been tweaked slightly.  We concluded that X-Wing plays nicely as a game straight out of the box, so stay tuned to see whether or not Star Trek Attack Wing manages the same feat!

 

 

And finally, the game we're most excited about: Mantic Games' Deadzone.  This is fresh from Kickstarter, and due to arrive with us at the end of the month, courtesy of our FLGS Titan Games.  Deadzone, whilst really more of a tabletop system, looks set to bridge the gap between board game and tabletop wargame with it's fluid mechanics and complete starter box.  Much like with Wyrd Miniatures' Puppet Wars, we'll be looking at this with a board gamer's eye and seeing if it plays well straight out of the box, or if it needs to be augmented with further purchases.

 

So that's what you can expect from Games & Tea in the coming months!  On top of this there will be the continuation of the Diary of a Roleplay Beginner, with the introduction to a second roleplay system set to stir things up on that front in a few weeks!

 

For now though, we hope you're still enjoying Games & Tea, and happy gaming!

Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game, Part 2: Gameplay & Verdict

Our last post took a look at the substantial box contents of Fantasy Flight's X-Wing Miniatures game.  Now it's time for us to climb aboard our starfighters and take the battle to the enemy, as we run through the gameplay and give it an overall Games & Tea verdict!

 

 

The first players must decide upon is the points value of their fleets.  Each pilot's points value is shown in the lower-right corner of their pilot card, with more experienced pilots having a higher value than those fresh out of the academy.  Various ship upgrades can add points to each fighter, but for the purposes of this basic runthrough we won't be adding that complication.

 

 

For this battle the Rebel Alliance is fielding Luke Skywalker, with a points value of 28.  The Galactic Empire is sending out Night Beast and an Obsidian Squadron Pilot to face him, with values of 15 and 13 respectively.  This gives both sides a total value of 28, and so should lead to a close-fought battle.

The numbers down the left hand side of the card are the physical stats of the ship and pilot.  From top to bottom they are:

• Pilot skill (orange) - This determines which ships move/attack first.
• Attack value (red) - The number of attack dice rolled during combat.
• Defence value (green) - The number of defence dice rolled during combat.
• Hull rating (yellow) - This shows how many hits the ship can take before it is destroyed.
• Shield level (blue) - This shows how many hits the ship can take before it starts suffering hull damage.

 

With the pilots chosen the ships need to be assembled, complete with base-inserts appropriate to each pilot.  They are then set up in each player's starting area on the 'board' (usually the very edge of the playing area), and any asteroids can be randomly scattered about to add an extra tactical element.

 

Once this set-up is complete it's time to move!

 

 

Seeing as X-Wing is supposed to simulate a constantly-moving dogfight, the ships MUST move each turn.  The course they take is determined by the Movement Dials, as shown in our box contents overview.  There is one dial per ship, and by twisting the dial the players can cycle through a wide range of movement options.  Each ship has to have their course plotted in secret, with the dial placed face-down beside its corresponding model once it has been selected.  When every ship has had its Movement Dial placed, they can begin to move.

 

 

The order of movement is determined by the pilot skill values of each ship.  The pilot with the lowest pilot skill moves first, so in this case it's the Obsidian Squadron Pilot, with a skill of 3.  His movement dial is turned over, revealing a movement of 2 with a curve off to the left.

 

 

The appropriate Movement Template is placed at the front of the Obsidian Squadron Pilot's base, and the TIE Fighter is moved forward, so that the end of the template is flush with the rear of the base.

 

 

Night Beast is the next pilot to move, with a skill of 5, and once he's moved then Luke Skywalker's skill of 8 allows him to make the final move.

 

After making its move, each ship is allowed to take a single action, and the available actions are dictated by the ship types rather than the individual pilots.  These actions are shown by the symbols in the blue/grey bar at the bottom of the pilot cards (next to the shield value), and are also on the right of the base inserts.  There are a wide range of actions across the various ships in the game, but for the purposes of this review we're going to show you the three most-used actions by having each pilot utilise a different one.  Obsidian Squadron Pilot has used a Dodge action, Night Beast has used Focus, and Luke Skywalker has used his Target Lock ability to lock onto Obsidian Squadron Pilot.  Each ship has a token of the appropriate type placed beside the miniature, and then we can move onto combat.

 

 

When it comes to combat, the pilot with the highest ability shoots first, and so Luke Skywalker opens fire upon the Obsidian Squadron Pilot.  The measuring ruler is used to determine that Obsidian is within range 3.  Seeing as this is the maximum range of Luke's lasers, Obsidian gets one extra defence die to try and avoid a hit.

This is the first point at which X-Wing stumbles as an out-of-the-box experience.  The box set contains 3 attack dice and 3 defence dice, but TIE Fighters have a defence value of 3, and X-Wings have an attack value of 3, so if either are receiving a bonus then there aren't enough dice for a single roll.  The only option (aside from buying further dice, which defeats the point of being able to play the game straight out of the box) is to roll once, and then re-roll one of the dice (preferably a miss) to add to the previous 3.  It's a point which could have been easily addressed by simply putting 4 of each dice into the box set, and it seems like Fantasy Flight let themselves down a little after making such an effort to get so many other aspects of the game spot-on (see the box contents section for details).

 

 

So Luke and Obsidian roll off at the same time.  Luke rolled 1 hit and Obsidian rolled 1 dodge, which, combined with his Dodge action, gives him 2 dodges.  Tough luck, young Skywalker!

But wait...

 

 

Luke expends his Target Lock, allowing him to re-roll his dice.  This time the force is definitely with him, and he rolls 3 hits!  Obsidian's 2 dodges allow him to avoid destruction, but the third hit makes a dent, and the Obsidian Squadron Pilot suffers a point of hull damage.  The Dodge and Target Lock counters, having been used up, are returned to the game box.

 

 

The Empire Strikes Back!  Night Beast makes his attack on Luke, who is within range 2, so both ships roll off with just their face-values.  This means 2 attack dice for Night Beast, and 2 defence dice for Luke.

 

 

Night Beast gets one critical hit and once focus symbol.  As he used a Focus action this turn he can discard his focus token to turn that symbol into a hit!  Luke, in the meantime rolled a focus symbol and a miss, but his special ability (see the pilot card) allows him to change one focus symbol into a dodge.

 

 

With these effects applied, Luke has dodged one hit, but the other hits home, reducing his shields by 1.

 

 

Finally, the Obsidian Squadron Pilot gets to have a shot at Luke.  We already know the range is 3 (from Luke's attack on Obsidian), and so the dice are rolled.  Obsidian rolls 1 hit and a focus, Luke rolls 2 dodges and a miss.  Luke has successfully dodged this single hit, and the combat phase is now over.

After the combat phase, any unused Dodge or Focus tokens are removed from play, but any unused Target Locks remain in play.  Let's take a look at how the ships are faring after this round...

 

 

As you can see, Night Beast is cruising around, having taken no damage this turn.  Luke's hull is in-tact, but he has just 1 shield token remaining.  Obsidian Squadron Pilot has suffered the worst though, and has taken a hit to his hull, as indicated by the explosion poking out from the top of his pilot card.

 

The game continues in this fashion - movement, combat, cleanup - until one side has been completely wiped out, or until any predetermined objectives have been met.

This, once more, is a nice element which gives X-Wing more of a standalone/board game feel than that of a tabletop system.  In most tabletop games, battles are played to a predetermined number of rounds, and at the end of the final round the victor is usually decided based on the points value of their remaining units.  With X-Wing you actually feel as though you're achieving something, as the game doesn't end until the mission has been accomplished.  This not only gives a tremendous feeling of satisfaction, but also makes the game exciting to play, especially towards the tail-end of a mission, when ship numbers are dwindling and both sides are anxious to scrape through with a victory!

 

The actual mechanics of the game are well thought out, as we touched on in part 1 of our review.  The simple idea of templates for movement and measuring firing range remove a lot of the typical tabletop clutter, and the combat system of rolling hits against dodges is fast-flowing and intuitive.  The mountain of tokens supplied in the box set are easy to keep track of, especially when each ship only has a limited number of available actions (an Imperial player, for example, will never have to worry about Target Locks with this beginners box).

The Quick Start rules give a nice balanced battle, and contain less detail than we've addressed here in this review.  Once these have been mastered then players can progress up to the full set of rules shown here, and from there can move on to include ship upgrades.  It's an excellent 3-tiered system which allows new players to ease into the game without feeling overwhelmed.

 

The big question though, is how satisfying is it as a standalone game?  Does it require a further investment of ships, or is the starter box enough to keep you going?  Well it's certainly satisfying, but as a complete game it is slightly flawed.  The main flaw being that if the Rebel player chooses Luke Skywalker and upgrades him with R2-D2 then he's effectively invincible, and the Imperial player will quickly lose heart.  The other niggling flaw is the dice issue, as raised earlier.

When we reviewed Puppet Wars a few weeks ago we were let down by the fact that it wasn't playable straight from the box, and the worry with X-Wing was that it was going to suffer similarly.  Well, we can definitively state that it doesn't!  Whilst perhaps feeling a little incomplete (you'll find yourself lusting after a wider range of ships fairly quickly), X-Wing does work as a standalone game.

For comparison purposes we've also played a couple of large-scale 200 point games, and the two experiences are very different.  With the larger games it does feel good to be in control of an entire fleet of fighters, but entire turns will often pass by with no damage being dealt to ships on either side, and frustration can quickly seep in.  Whilst you do have turns like this in small-scale skirmishes, the fact that the turns pass by so quickly means that these are quickly forgotten in the mad frenzy to stay alive!

The nice thing, however, is that if you do decide to expand you can do so at a slow pace and keep the costs down as a result.  After trying out the box set we went out and bought one extra TIE Fighter and an A-Wing, and the simple addition of these two ships has given enough variation to keep the game from going stale here at Games & Tea.

 

The Good Points

• In the X-Wing Miniatures Game, Fantasy Flight have succeeded in making a tabletop system that doesn't feel like a tabletop system.  This makes it incredibly accessible and very easy to pick up and play.
• At the end of the day, it's Star Wars!  Classic Star Wars!  Most gamers will have grown up loving these films, and it feels a bit like living a childhood fantasy.
• Further ships can be bought to expand the set at a very reasonable price, so it doesn't need to break the bank if the decision is made to add a little variety.
• The quality of the minitaures is high, although a little shelf-by-shelf comparison may be required to make sure you get the best ones possible.

The Bad Points

• The X-Wing starter box really should come with one more of each dice.  Any game which will require you to roll 4 dice at some point should provide the players with those 4 dice.
• Combining Luke Skywalker with R2-D2 is an instant way to make the Rebels unbeatable with the box contents, which is a pity seeing as Star Wars fans will want to have them flying together.  They are a perfectly valid combination in larger-scale battles, just not against a pair of TIE Fighters with no backup.
• X-Wing is limited to just 2 players, so isn't really an option in a large gaming group.

Recommended Number of Players: 2 (no other option)

As mentioned above, the only way to play X-Wing is with two players.  There are no options at this point for a third faction to enter the fray, and it can't be played with just a single player.

 

Average Game Time: 30 minutes

Using one of the missions in the rulebook and playing the X-Wing vs 2 TIEs balance from the started box, a game will last half an hour on average.  The addition of extra ships will obviously lengthen games, and large-scale engagements can take anything up to a couple of hours.

 

Replay Value: High

With the range of different pilots, upgrades, and missions, it's fair to say that no two games of X-Wing need necessarily be the same.  Once players have got their heads around the mechanics of the game they can even start to create their own missions, or even ongoing campaigns.  X-Wing is certainly not a game which will go stale for quite some time.

 

The Future: Bright

The Future of X-Wing is in the additional ships being released by Fantasy Flight.  At the time of this review, the currently available ships are; X-Wing, A-Wing, Y-Wing, Millennium Falcon, TIE Fighter, TIE Advanced, TIE Interceptor, Slave-I.  The next batch of releases is set to include the B-Wing, HWK-290, TIE Bomber and Lambda Class Shuttle.  With other Extended Universe and prequel ships still to choose from, Fantasy Flight have the potential to continue releasing new ships for a number of years.

 

Price: £30

The box set for X-Wing will cost roughly £30, and for that you'll get a good all-round 2 player experience.  The smaller fighters retail for around £12 each, and the larger ships (The Millennium Falcon etc) will cost around £24.  As we mentioned, we picked up two extra fighters to give a good variety of gameplay options to our set, and by visiting our local hobby store we were able to buy everything we needed for £45, which is a decent price for a specialist game.

Availability is one of the only let-downs for X-Wing, as Fantasy Flight unfortunately don't seem to be matching the demand with their supply.  X-Wing is such a popular game that most ships are unavailable from many retailers until October (we were very disappointed not to be able to add a TIE Interceptor to our collection, opting for that third TIE Fighter instead), and even the latest wave of releases have already pre-sold out in many places.

 

 

 

OVERALL SCORE: 8/10

(9/10 with the inclusion of 2 extra ships)

If you enjoyed this article and want to see more of the same, come and like us on our Facebook page to keep up to date with our reviews, as well as our general day-to-day ramblings!