Zoomaka

Zoomaka is a game I have have been looking forward to playing for a while, but have been delayed due to the business of life.

The game is currently on Kickstarter (here), and as I write this it has 3 days to go.  However, I have had the print-and-play version for a while, and have even had it printed for a while.  Tonight my wife and I finally found some time for games, and this was the first one we tried.

I have to be honest; print-and-play is not normally my thing.  I typically don't like to play games that have low-quality components.  And simply printing a game is about as low budget as it gets.  But with it not shipping until April 2018, there wasn't much choice!  I did splurge and print them at a decent quality and in colour.

One of the print-and-play sheets

TES Legends - Rumble in Skyrim Gauntlet

This past weekend TES had one of their Gauntlets, this time the "Rumble in Skyrim".  This one was exciting for me for a few reasons; I actually had some time this weekend to play, Skyrim has ended up being one of the sets that I have more of (than any of the others) and it was the first time it came out (harder to find "pre-made" strategies).

I actually tried to prepare for this one, and made two decks ahead of time; one spellsword (which is still my favourite deck type) and one scout.  I even splurged and crafted a couple of legendary cards in Skeletal Dragon and Undying Dragon.  I tested them both out and they seemed okay; however, I found it hard to judge when playing casual against standard decks as limiting to Skyrim cards eliminated quite a few of the key cards in each deck type.  My plan was to play each deck in two of the runs (out of the 4 that counted to the overall standings).

The first deck I played was the Scout deck:

The Elder Scrolls: Legends - Basic review from a casual perspective

The newest (computer/phone) game I have gotten into recently is The Elder Scrolls: Legends.  This is a free-to-play online card game in the same vein as Hearthstone.  

As I have started to play this as my main computer game, I am intending to write a series of posts about some of the aspects of the game from a casual, free-to-play perspective.  There are a lot of great articles, videos, etc. about the game out there, but I find that they tend to be from the perspective of serious players who put a ton of time into them.  While there is nothing wrong with that, there may be others out there who are a lot more casual and wondering if this is a game for them.

TES Legends is an online collectible card game where you build decks and compete against other players.  The game is available both on PC (through Steam) and on the iphone/ipad.  Thankfully your account transfers between all platforms (so you are always using the same collection, etc.).

There are 3 primary play modes; story where you play on of the storylines through, using combinations of pre-made decks and your own decks, arena (both solo and versus) where you draft a deck for the "tournament" and play that through, and play, where you use your constructed decks in the monthly ladder.

The "Home" screen showing various game modes

Power Grid, Deluxe

This is a game that I have been meaning to write a review about for a long time!

I thoroughly enjoyed playing Power Grid whenever I have played it, so I decided I wanted to purchase a copy.  However, when I got to my local game store, I was faced with a dilemma purchase Power Grid or Power Grid Deluxe?  I have to admit, that up until that point I hadn't even been aware that there was another version.  This is noted as a 10th anniversary edition, that has a few tweaks (which I will explain more), but was also more expensive (I could get the original plus a few other maps for the same price).  In the end I went with the deluxe version, even though it isn't compatible with the extensive library of maps available (which definitely interested me; however, I have since found that there is a kit you can buy to make it compatible).

This is primarily a comparison to the original, some of my thoughts about the game in general can be found here.

Stone Age Photos

Stone Age is a game that gets played fairly often, both 2 player and 4 player.  One of the things I appreciate about this game is the level of detail for the artwork on the cards, tiles and boards.  For that reason, I was having some fun taking photos while we played the other day.

My Green Team, ready to start the game

Kings Cribbage - A Review

Kings Cribbage is a game that we have had the opportunity to play with a few different groups in the past little while.  While far from my typical game choice, it was a lot of fun and the big thing for me is that it seems to have an audience with those who aren't typically into boardgames.


Kings Cribbage is essentially a combination of cribbage and scrabble.  You use tiles to create cribbage hands on the game board.  After the first turn, all of your future hands must tie into the tiles that are already laid on the board.  Each "hand" consists of up to 5 tiles, but the scoring can get quite high as you can create or add to multiple hands in a single play depending on how the board plays out; however, each tile laid must contribute to the scoring in that hand, which can sometimes limit you.  There are bonus points for laying all 5 of your tiles in a turn, or creating a 5 tile hand of the same colour (only two colours, dark and light in the version we played).  One of the more interesting twists is that the 6 and 9 are interchangeable (just turn them upside down!) making them surprisingly useful.

Board at the end of a game of Kings Cribbage