I play games!

I played a few new games the other night that turned out to be quite a lot of fun. The first, Thunderstone, is the first big, er, homage to the deck-building mechanic in Dominion. For the uninitiated, you have three virtual stacks of cards in front of you: 1) a personal deck of cards from which you deal 2) your hand, and 3) your personal discard pile. You can use cards in your hand to buy more cards (meaning you use the cash value on the cards to claim a card in the display…you don’t actually spend the cards—they go into your personal discard pile, along with the card you just bought). Thus, your deck grows in size as you seed it with cards that help you achieve victory points. The cards that give you victory points don’t really help you until the end of the game, and so they water down your deck if you accumulate too many too soon. The play in Thunderstone is similar to Dominion, with small exceptions, but it still manages to be its own game.

Unlike Dominion (and Dominion: Intrigue…I have yet to play Seaside), you have three options on your turn. You could visit the Village, which allows you to buy a new card according to the treasure value in your hand, which is really your only option in Dominion. Secondly, you could Rest, which enables you to trash any number of cards from your hand (these are taken out of play for the rest of the game…handy for getting rid of negative cards like Diseases). The third option, and primary source of VPs in Thunderstone is the Dungeon. Here you are trying to defeat one of three revealed monsters using the attack capabilities of all of your heroes, militias, and their weapons and spells. Buried in the bottom 5th of the monster deck is the Thunderstone card, which signals the end of the game.

I like that the VP cards (monsters) are variable (in VPs offered, XP offered, and battle modifiers), and that you can’t just employ a simple strategy like streamlining to have a money-rich hand to do well. You have to have a good mix of heroes, spells, and weapons to be successful in battle. Another cool feature is leveling up your heroes, which can be done in the Village. If you’ve accumulated enough XPs, you can cash them in to convert your Squire to a Knight, and then to a Lord, which can have profound effects on your ability to fight, as well as offering another reason to go to the Village. Another seeming piece of chrome that ends up working quite well is the requirement for a light source in the Dungeon. The deeper you go in the Dungeon, the more light (torches, flaming swords, etc) that you need to avoid incurring a nasty disadvantage in battle. Just one more thing to juggle as you seed your hand with items.

As I said, the system works quite well. The only real niggle I have with the game (aside from the packaging) is that there is no unseen hazard in going dungeoneering. What I mean is that you would never go into the Dungeon unless you had a good enough hand to beat one of the monsters, all of whom have completely revealed stats. There are some monster cards will tell you that you will lose a fighter in a battle with that creature, but such creatures can be defeated with, say, wizards and militia, negating that threat. I would prefer some amount of chance in these battles, despite the certainty that the game would be that much longer.

Desire to own: moderate *** Desire to play again: very high *** Overall: 8/10

After Thunderstone, we played Campaign Manager ’08, which is as fun as it sounds. I played the Obama side against Josh’s McCain. It was quite a blast to play up the quotes and throw around phrases like “Politics as usual”, with mock pathos. It was a little eerie when Josh rasped “I already know how to do that,” with that classic McCain, "I'm not an angry guy--listen to my quiet, pleading voice," voice.. All of the components were top-notch, game depth and game length were completely appropriate, and many laughs were had.

Desire to own: unclear...high, I think *** Desire to play again: high *** Overall: 8/10