The first episode of The Dicey Review Podcast! This is a podcast about tabletop games and the stories that are created when we get around a table.
In this episode we talk about some interesting news updates, talk about what we’re excited about that’s coming out soon and discuss the Legacy and “one time play” aspect of some new board games being released.
If you’re anything like me, the first time you saw this picture it sent chills of excitement up your spine. If you are a fan of the worker placement classic Lords of Waterdeep you will understand. This game is designed by Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson and Andrew Veen. Now you may not know who Peter and Rodney are but they designed Lords of Waterdeep, one of my favorite games ever made. So when I heard that Gale Force Nine was releasing a new game involving this duo I was beyond excited. Now there has been very little information about this game and no real gameplay videos which is very rare in the boardgaming world before the release of a game. I wanted to try and write an article to 1) Give this game more press because I’m a huge fan of the designers and 2) try and put out as much info as we have about the game so far including the most current release date.
Tyrants of the Underdark pits 2-4 players as leaders of different Drow houses (if you’re not a Dungeons and Dragons player a Drow is a type of Dark Elf, if you’re still lost then imagine Legolas from Lord of the Rings with dark skin.) These players are utilizing decks of cards that they build and purchase throughout the game to try and take control of different areas of the Underdark. (The Underdark is a large underground network of caves and caverns in the Dungeons and Dragons universe where all sorts of nasty creatures live). Your deck is comprised of minions. Throughout the game you will continually weed bad cards out of your deck while trying to deal in more powerful cards to allow you to take better actions and control more areas.
You will win the game by having the most victory points. Victory points are acquired by recruiting powerful minions to be in your deck and by controlling important locations of the Underdark.
Every player will start the game with a small deck of cards consisting of some basic minions. You will have seven noble cards and three soldier cards. This creates a ten card deck and you draw a five card hand. The common deck that can be purchased by everyone is known as the Market Deck. This is the common pool of cards that everyone can purchase cards from to strengthen their own decks and make them bigger. To create the market deck, you will take two of the four provided market half decks and shuffle them together. A market half deck is a forty card deck that correlates to one of four included minion types. This will create lots of replayability and vary strategies within game play.
The two resources in the game are power and influence.
You gain power and influence mostly by playing your cards. Any power and influence must be used in the turn that gain them or they are lost. Power allows you to control the board and take out enemies. You can deploy your troops, assassinate enemy troops, and return your spies with power. With influence you can buy more cards from the market.
Tyrants of the Underdark is played in a sequence of rounds that will have the following order:
As you can see during step one of your turn you will play cards to gain different resources in your resource pool and then in step two you will spend those resources to take actions.
An example of an available card for purchase can be seen below. 1) Is the name of the card. 2) How much the card costs in influence. 3) Aspect of the card – minions will have different aspects that each represent different parts of Drow society. 4) Minion type- there are 4 different types of minions in the game that we will talk about later. 5) Deck symbol – which market half deck the card belongs to. 6) Action or rules text – what the card does when you play it. 7) Flavor Text – Gives some story about the minion that is thematic and helps you feel more immersed in the world. 8) Victory Point Value – how many points the card is worth if it is in your deck, hand or discard pile at the end of the game. 9) Inner Circle VP Value – How many victory points the card is worth if it is in your inner circle at the end of the game. 10) How many times you will find this card in the half deck (2 dots for two cards.)
The four different market half decks are tied to the Drow, Dragons, Elemental, and Demons. The Drow cards are streamlined cards at lower influence costs. The dragons contain many high influence cost cards and have five dragons in particular that will reward you for following a certain strategy. The Elemental deck is made up of cards that have a “focus” ability. This ability becomes more powerful if you have multiple cards that have the same aspect. The demon deck features cards that will put insane outcasts in your opponent’s decks. Demons will also have cards that will allow you to devour your own cards in order to play them for greater benefits.
Most actions that you will take in the game will require you to have presence in the different locations where you want your actions to happen. You will have presence at any location where you have a troop, a spy, or at any space that you have a troop adjacent. You will also have presence at a troop space on a route that is adjacent to a site or space where you have a troop.
Sites will have multiple troop spaces within a single box that represents the entire location.
You will have control over a location if the majority of the colors in the troop spaces are your color.
When you take control of a site you may also get a site control marker that will give you additional bonus abilities or points. So it will bode well for you if more areas of the board can be controlled by your troops and spies for the majority of the game.
This game was initially supposed to release today May 16th! I now see on the Gale Force 9 website an early June release. I hope that this stays true as I am very excited about playing this game. If you have any more questions send me an email at thediceyreview@gmail.com and I will try my best to find out the answer. I want to know more about this game! Until next time I’ll see you at the table.
Paul
Recently I recorded some background music for my how to play video of The Big Book of Madness. I wanted to post the music here for download as I’ve had some interest in it. So here’s a link to download the music for free!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzgvsc_b-5AdUzFWRXhuQmZkaGc/view?usp=sharing
Ever since I was young I have been a fan of fantasy novels and movies. I read the Narnia series 5 to 6 times when I was a boy devouring any information I could find about the world of wizards and magic, goblins and dwarves, elves and dragons and all other manner of mythical beings. I read The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy more than once and was so enthralled that I even took a go at The Silmarillion (which if you’re into Lord of the Rings you may know, but that book is not nearly as interesting I’m afraid.)
Then the day came when my mom’s dear friend Becky told me about a little boy named Harry Potter. Once I read the first Harry Potter novel I knew I wouldn’t be able to stop reading until I found out what happened to Harry and his friends. I devoured the books. In fact many times I would read the books until 3 in the morning under the covers and would get in trouble for staying up so late.
The idea of younger adults that were misunderstood and didn’t fit in finding a place where everyone was like them and they could study magic and have adventures was so appealing to me. Put aside for a moment the fact that J.K. Rowling is an unbelievably gifted story teller and the world alone was more interesting to me than any other series of books I had ever seen. The wizarding world had me hooked and I have always had a love of that style of universe.
If you’re anything like me and love anything related to wizards and the like then the game we’re featuring today will be right up your Diagon alley. The game I’m referring to is The Big Book of Madness.
The Big Book of Madness was released in English in December of 2015 and due to the glut of fantastic games from 2015 flew largely under the radar. Today I’m hoping to change that in a very small way! In The Big Book of Madness you play a young wizard pupil who has released a slew of nasty creatures by opening a very powerful book in the school’s library. The book is a prison in which monsters are trapped, and by foolishly seeking greater power you have set them free. You must learn spells from the library and use your knowledge to fight these creatures or succumb to the madness that surrounds you.
The Big Book of Madness is a cooperative deck building game. Over the course of 6 rounds you will purchase new spells to use, cure curses that the monsters release, cure madness from your deck, and help your wizard friends defeat a host of potential enemies. All of your actions require elements to be activated. Your deck is built of various element cards that you can purchase from a marketplace. You can either choose, Earth, Air, Water or Fire to build your deck. The more elements you buy the more powerful your deck will become because you can buy higher value element cards. You start with mostly level one cards, and as the game progresses you can buy level two or three element cards that will accomplish more per turn. You have a hand of six cards so the higher the number you draw the better for your team.
You will also pick a character to play and this character will have a unique combination of elements that make up their starting deck. Your character will also have a special ability that only they can use. Once per turn you can do things like use a power 1 Air element as anything you want, or potentially cure a madness card from the top of your deck for free etc. These powers can affect how you build your deck and create an interesting choice in your strategy. At the end of the game you are trying to defeat one last monster to be victorious, if you cannot you have failed and are lost to the madness!
Overall this is a lighthearted easily accessible romp for anyone that plays. If you haven’t ever experienced a deck building game and don’t want to try to wrap your head around the strategies of a 500 card deck building masterpiece, this might be for you! I thoroughly enjoy playing this game and my wife who is not a fan of deckbuilders was a fan of this game as well. The theme of the game is very enjoyable (who doesn’t love being a fledgling wizard?), but I also found that there was a deep level of strategy required to be successful in this game. I will say that playing with more players may make this game more interesting with some of the mechanics that we saw but even at 2 players we had a blast.
When setting up the play area you will pick a random selection of monsters to create the book of madness, you will also select a random assortment of available spells to purchase so with the different combinations available there is a high level of replay value in the box. At an MSRP of $39.99 I think you will get your money’s worth with this purchase. You can also purchase this online at coolstuffinc.com for $26.49 and at that prices it’s a steal.
Overall I would highly recommend picking this game up if you’re looking for a fun family game night that will encourage lots of communication and creative thinking. Iello Games also confirmed that an expansion is in the works for future release that adds a whole new mechanic to the game to increase replayability even more! So if you’re looking for a whimsical and enjoyable evening with family and friends go look for The Big Book of Madness, you won’t regret it! I hope you’ve enjoyed the review, I’ve posted a how to play video at the bottom of this article. Thanks for reading and until next time I’ll see you at the table!
Have you ever played a game that was so interesting and in-depth that it kept you up thinking about what you could have done differently? To me that’s the sign of a great game that creates a rich experience. I want to introduce you to a game called The Voyages of Marco Polo.
Let me tell you a story. A few weeks ago my family and I were in the middle of what has become a fairly regular tradition as of late; Sunday night games. The game that had hit the table was our current feature The Voyages of Marco Polo. Myself, my wife and her parents were playing the game and it was apparent from very early on that my wife and her father were going to win this encounter. The real competition was finding out which of the two were going to emerge victorious.
More and more points were scored, the two meeples raced around the board and the end of the game drew close. After the dust had settled my wife was ahead of her father by 4 points and claimed a sweet, sweet victory. One thing I forgot to mention is that certain players if they achieve the goal of making it to Beijing (you travel through Asia during play) you can get victory points for leftover resources. Not all players have this ability and my wife had not reached Beijing. My father in law had. After we had brushed our teeth and laid in bed we heard a gentle knock on our bedroom door (this was almost 15 minutes after the game had ended and everyone had gone to bed) “Yes?” my wife called. We heard the soft voice of her Father in Law utter “I…I think I won. Don’t I get bonus victory points for my resources at the end of the game?” I immediately jumped out of bed and ran to the still set up board. “You sure do!” I said gleefully hoping to be able to spoil the victory (and minutes of bragging) of my wife that night. After the total tally my Father in Law still lost by one point but it illustrated an important point about this game…it’s a great play.
The Voyages of Marco Polo is a resource management, action selection, worker placement game that uses player’s personal supply of dice as the workers. You start off with a player board, a contract to complete that will give you victory points and a character that will give you certain special abilities. You can play as Matteo Polo, Kublai Khan and a host of other notable names.
You will place your dice on certain spots around the board to collect (surprise, surprise) victory points. You will travel across Asia and complete contracts and try to collect as many points as possible. There are many different avenues to victory. Each time you enter a city you unlock new actions to take and new possibilities for winning.
One of the tricky parts of this game is learning to be efficient. You only have 5 rounds to travel to different locations and complete enough contracts to win. This puzzle and race to the finish will create a much deeper experience and gameplay. (So deep that your Father in Law may knock your door in demand a recount!) 
This game is a brain burner that will keep you coming back for more time and time again. The difficulty to master this game is a big draw for me. As far as components go the game is absolutely gorgeous. The design was very well done, and Z-Man games gets to add another winner to their catalog of all star performers.
This game is said to have some elements of Ticket to Ride which on a smaller scale is very true, and elements of Lords of Waterdeep which I feel is less accurate. I will say however that this game is a bit more advanced than the games on my “Start your collecion” article. So if you’ve played some starting games and are ready for a more difficult challenge the game offers a fantastic option.
If you can find a copy and are looking for a great family experience that all will love I believe this game is a good one for you. The theme is very cool, and the game is just fun to play. I’ve posted a how to play vide0 to help clarify some rules. If you have any questions or concerns you can email me at thediceyreview@gmail.com. Thanks so much for taking the time to read my article and until next time we’ll see you at the table!
Paul
It’s the middle of the afternoon. The sun warms your face as you strain to see the track. The crowd is roaring and urging the racers on. As the animals pound around the curve you see sand flying in every direction as jockeys strain to lean forward past the racer on their left and right. You shift forward in your seat and cheer as you feel your heart pound with every thud of the Camel’s feet as they ra….wait….CAMELS?!
That’s right! Camel up is a betting, action selection, push your luck game about an epic Camel race for up to 8 players. The theme is very cute, the gameplay is surprisingly deep for how simple it is on the surface, and the game has been a winner with every group I have played it with. So let’s put on some sunscreen, find a wide brimmed hat, and head to the sands of Egypt to take a look at Camel Up.
The basic premise of Camel Up is very simple. You will see five Camels on a track on the board that each have their own particular color. The track is around a wonderful cardboard pyramid that comes with the game and holds 5 colored dice. These dice are numbered from 1 to 3 and will be used to determine the Camel movement.
You can take one of four actions in the game. You can bet on a Camel to win the leg (which is when all five dice are rolled once), you can roll one of the dice (this will move the Camel matching the color of the dice rolled) you can place your Desert/Oasis tile on the track to try and effect the other camels racing, and you can bet on an overall winner or loser of the race.
The race will continue until one camel crosses the finish line. You then get to count up all of the money collected and the winner is the one with the most cash! The game has been a winner with my family and with larger groups in particular. If you’re looking for a game that can play party game type numbers but still feel like a legitimate board game with great mechanics, this one might be for you.
I know a lot of people give this game some hate and I’m not sure why. It has a roll to move mechanic which is unpopular by and large but I think in this game it works very well and creates the tension that one might feel at an actual race with money on the line. It’s 30-40 dollars depending on where you buy it and I would absolutely say buy it. This is a great game to play with new or experienced gamers young to old. If you want a fairly brief synopsis of how to play the game along with some thoughts about the play I’ve put a link to my YouTube “Walkthrough Review” below. Thanks so much for reading and until next time we’ll see you at the table!
Paul
I could not be more excited to bring you the news that my favorite game is getting an expansion! This announcement was released on the Portal Games website:
“April 4, 2016. Today, Portal Games announced 3 Is A Magic Number, the next expansion for the award winning Imperial Settlers. Imperial Settlers: 3 is a magic Number is the second Empire Pack for Imperial Settlers from designer Ignacy Trzewiczek. 3 Is A Magic Number introduces all new mechanics and includes cards to supplement all five Factions currently available in Imperial Settlers.
This expansion introduces a new rule: SET. This new ability allows players to score and trigger new effects each time they build 3 cards in a particular color, so called SET. With that rule drafting phase and choice of a right card to draft is even more interesting!
“I like the fact that with this expansion the draft phase gets even more interesting,” Said designer and CEO Ignacy Trzewiczek. “You are not only looking at the abilities of cards, but now you also want to collect particular colors to build sets and activate your powerful feature cards. It’s fun!”
Imperial Settlers is for 1 to 4 players, ages 12 or older and takes approximately 60 minutes to play. 3 Is A Magic Number is an expansion for Imperial Settlers and requires the Imperial Settlers base set to play. The expansion contains 13 Common cards, 50 Faction cards, and 4 Solitaire cards. 3 Is A Magic Number will be released worldwide on May 25th. MSRP will be $16. For more information, you can visit the 3 Is A Magic Number page on our website at http://portalgames.pl/new_en/all-game-list/3-is-a-magic-number/ ”
This is incredible news to me. I’m ultimately looking forward to the new faction being announced the most (because come on, a whole new faction to play? The Atlanteans were great and whoever Ignacy adds next will be a ton of fun!) This announcement however introducing a new set collection type of mechanic will create a whole new level of depth and strategy to the game. You may be able to give up that power card to the player on your left if your set will be completed by a less desirable card, so many possibilities. I can’t wait to hear more but will update as soon as more word comes out! Until next time I’ll see you at the table!
Paul
Hello!
This is some background music I recorded for a how to play video on my YouTube channel. I find that music in the background while playing this game makes for an incredibly thematic experience and creates an engaging atmosphere. You can download and use the music freely. You don’t have to credit me if you use it in a video but if you do that would be very nice! I’m hoping to upload this file on the Mysterium BoardGameGeek page as well. If you can’t download the audio in this article I’ve included a link to my DropBox account so you can. I hope you enjoy and create many fun spooky memories with family and friends. Until next time I’ll see you at the table!
Paul
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ac7ofaphnd9sopi/Mysterium%20Background%20Long.m4a?dl=0
Recently I was looking through my collection and realizing that I am running short on space and will need to pare down a bit. I always knew the day would come when I would be required to get rid of some of the board games I love and cherish so much and today is finally that day. When trying to decide what to do with the games I thought I might sell some and I will probably still do that. I wanted to give one of them away first. I want someone to get a chance to love them like I have. All of my games are in like new condition and will arrive that way as well. Any organizers I might have potentially used will be included. There are a couple of caveats to this contest. It will have a time limit (which if no one spreads the word your chances of winning will be very good…we don’t have a ton of followers) and second since I will pay for shipping I have to keep this within the United States. I feel terrible because I absolutely love seeing on our statistics that we have some global readers but I just can’t afford pay for overseas shipping. I’m so sorry! The contest will end on the 20th of March. This means that any email or retweet that happens before 12:00 am on the 21st will be counted!
What Are You Giving Away?
So now that the preamble is done, what’s up for grabs?! Well you have a choice. There were a few games that I was okay getting rid of. I’m not getting rid of these games because they are bad games, quite the opposite they’re all very good games. They just don’t hit the table for me because of my current gaming situation. So that being said you can pick from the following titles: Dungeons and Dragons: Wrath of Ashardalon, Dungeons and Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt, Pandemic: The Cure, Samurai Spirit, Carcassonne: Gold Rush, or Carcassonne: South Seas.
After I select the winner I will contact you and find out which game you want. These are all fantastic games and ones that your game group or family would thoroughly enjoy. So good luck!
How Do I Enter?
The easiest way to enter this giveaway if you’re a Twitter user is to find my twitter: thediceyreview1. I will send out a tweet saying “retweet this to enter”, you can also email me at thediceyreview@gmail.com and just tell me you want to enter. It’s as simple as that. This is the easiest way I can think of to gather the entries. Anyone who retweets that post or emails me and says something about the contest will be entered. I will use either Random.org to pick or literally draw the name from a hat and contact you on Twitter or through email to get your address for shipping and which game you want. It’s not required that you follow me on twitter to enter or follow the blog but if you find the blog interesting and want to keep up to date on our reviews, how to plays, and coming podcast we would love to have your patronage! Thanks so much and until next time I’ll see you at the table!
Paul
P.S. These are used copies of these board games. They are all in fantastic shape and are organized but please know that!
There are many games on the market right now that will advertise themselves as Deck Builders. “A deckbuiding game of combat and exploration” etc. The deckbuilding genre is one that is extremely popular due to the amount of flexibility that can be created with new cards, the low cost of production, and the possibility for tweaking and creativity.
There is another type of building mechanic out there that I find very interesting that not as many games have taken advantage of, and that is “Bag Building”. There are a few games out that can say that they have a “Bag Building” element to them, which is similar to deck building but with some slight differences. Today’s feature review is one of those games. The game that I’m referring to is Orléans, a worker placement, action selection, victory point salad romp that will absolutely keep you coming to the table again and again. I’m a fan of the way Orléans implements the bag mechanic and think that it creates a very interesting element of luck and planning. So how is this game played and what’s it about? Let’s take a look.
Each player will start off by selecting a color and taking the corresponding player board, starting workers, player meeple, track cubes and buildings. You will then need to set up the board and I will say right off the bat, if this game has a downside it’s setup. There are a lot of resource tokens and worker tokens and they need to be set up in a particular way. That being said I will also say that the game would lose some of its appeal to me if it wasn’t set up the way it was. It’s absolutely gorgeous and once the board is out with the resources and workers I get really into the experience and want to dig into the game play. Just know that the first time or two that you play it may slow you down a bit. After the setup you’re ready to turn over the hourglass tile for the round and begin action selection!
The above picture is a close view of the player board. This game can look a bit complicated but in reality the mechanics are very straightforward. On the player board above you will see empty spaces with spots for certain workers to be placed. To take these actions you simply fill in the empty spaces with workers that you draw from your bag and once everyone can no longer take actions the round is over and you begin the whole process again after resolving the hourglass tile for the round (this tile can be good for all players or potentially bad which creates some variability round by round).
Each action that you might select in this game will either allow you to gain a new worker, money, knowledge, a new building, or a movement on the right side of the board. This is where the “Bag Building” element comes into play. When you look at the board above you will see cubes and available workers next to certain colors. Some of the actions that you select will allow you to take one of the available workers, move along that worker’s track and gain bonuses based on what type of action or worker you pick. For instance if you select the red knight, you will move up on the track that allows you to draw more worker tiles from your bag at the start of the round. This gives you more options and allows you to take more actions later in the round. If you select the Black Trader tile you can draw a building tile to expand your player board that will give you bonus abilities and more options to select. This will allow you to pursue a different strategy or follow a strategy more diligently. This is a large portion of the game and this section alone creates so many choices the player has to make and so many viable strategy that could lead to victory that it makes you want to try the game 10 different times just to experiment on worker recruitment strategies.
You also have character meeples on the right side of the board in the starting city of Orléans that incorporate another significant aspect of the game. On the right half of the board is a map with roadways, waterways, and cities. Three of the actions on your starting player board will allow you to move along these roadways and waterways, and build “Guildhalls” in the cities. (Provided no one already did that). When you pass goods on the road while traveling between cities you get to keep that good. The items you collect will be worth victory points at the end of the game and the buildings you construct will also be worth points.
This side of the board also provides a viable potential strategy that my wife and mother in law often use to beat me.
The last board to talk about is the “Beneficial Deeds” board. There is another board that you can send workers to that will give you bonuses in the form of knowledge or money and allow you to collect Citizen tiles that will be worth points at the end of the game as well.
Above is a picture of the “Beneficial Deeds” board. This action can be completed by going to the “Town Hall” action space on your player board. The last person to put a worker in the empty space on this board gains the citizen token and the end game points. You have to be careful though because the workers placed here are lost for the remainder of the game.
Are you beginning to see a pattern? There are a lot of ways to win this game. On the flip side of that coin there are a lot of ways to lose this game (as I can personally attest to). One thing I will say is that no matter whether you win or lose you will want to play again. The design of Orléans is fantastic and creates an atmosphere of tension and strategy that I have seen with few others. The more I play it the more I am loving the experience. From the first moment this game hit the table I knew I loved the art and the theme. As you can see from the pictures the renaissance style is so pleasing and well done. The gameplay is engaging and the strategies are practically endless. I ranked this game as an 8.5 on boardgamegeek and it has crawled its way onto my top 10 of all time. I’m fairly new to the hobby but of the games I have played this is very high on the list. There is a ton of depth and a good bit of complexity with this title so know going in there will be a learning curve. Absolutely pick this game up though. If you have the chance buy it and play it I don’t think you’ll be sorry. This is Orléans by Tasty Minstrel Games. I’ve posted a how to play video below just in case you don’t want to slog through a rule book. If you have any questions please email me at thediceyreview@gmail.com. You can also follow me on twitter at thediceyreview1. I hope you enjoy the video and until next time I’ll see you at the table!
The Dicey Review 