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What is your game of the month? Our bloggers are here to spill the beans on what games have been lighting up their lives this month!
Gavin Hudson – Black Angel
I bought Black Angel earlier this year just before lockdown started. I got it on the strength that it had a well regarded solo mode, planning ahead for what was clearly about to happen. Another draw for me was the design team: Sébastien Dujardin, Xavier Georges, Alain Orban. This was the team behind the fantastically innovative Troyes. A game that has hung around my Top Ten games of all time consistently. Seeing as Black Angel takes the core of Troyes and innovates and reimplements it to a space theme, I was fairly sure I was going to love it. And I do!
I’m not going to lie, the first couple of plays of Black Angel were a little daunting. Though this may be because I was learning normal rules and solo rules at the same time. Yet, once you internalise the rulebook and learn the symbology through repeated play and check the clarifications on BGG, the game is fairly streamlined and slick. There are a multitude of choices to explore and routes to victory, meaning it keeps bringing you back to the table and is worthy of its moderately lengthy setup time.
Now, personally I love Alexandre Roche’s artwork for Troyes, but trying to convince most of my friends to play that euro game that looks like a euro game is tough. However, I am looking forward to lockdown ending because I will have no trouble getting a heavy-ish space themed game that looks as pretty as Black Angel to the table. Ian O’Toole has done a bold, punchy art job on the game that gives it a strong visual presence. I posted a picture on facebook of a play the other day and one friend said the pieces looked like food!
Black Angel is a big statement game, literally and physically. But, there is enough going on under the glossy exterior to prevent it being the proverbial fur coat sans the necessary undergarments.
Tom Harrod – The Dragon of Icespire Peak
During this period of lockdown, every Tuesday evening myself and five friends meet up on Skype and play Dungeons & Dragons. And we’re not the only ones! Popular YouTubers No Pun Included have started playing, too! D&D is a tabletop ‘pencil-and-paper’ RPG by Wizards of the Coast. What that means is we created fantasy characters, and then use dice to go adventuring with them! D&D is not too far removed from Gloomhaven, in some ways. We each picked a race, class and background for our character, and roll some skill scores for them. Then we interact with the world, the non-playable characters and the plot as it unfolds around us.
I’m playing a mountain dwarf, a warlock. The other players are a rock gnome rogue, a forest gnome druid, a goliath barbarian, and a tortle paladin. Our other friend is the ‘Dungeon Master’. He chairs, narrates and orchestrates proceedings, prepping exciting things for the session. He bought the Dungeons & Dragons RPG Essentials Kit, which has all the maps and scenario details in it. This adventure – The Dragon of Icespire Peak – is for 2-6 players who start off as Level 1 characters. There’s a whole bunch of one-shot scenarios in here, all around the theme of working towards a final boss battle. By the end (fingers crossed), our heroes will have kitted up to an extent where we fight a mean old dragon!
There’s no spoilers here. But what I will say is that this campaign has been brilliant fun, so far. Of course, a lot of that boils down to the people you play with. A tabletop RPG like this has a different vibe to a strategy board game. It’s tense one minute, and slapstick the next! This ‘Essentials Kit’ has been my friend’s DM debut. He’s done a splendid job, and has confessed to us all he has the D&D bug!
D&D is of course best enjoyed around a physical table. There’s snacks, there’s beer and coffee, there’s rip-snorting laughter, there’s dice, and there’s drama. But in these tricky times, Skype is the next best option…
Nick T – King and Assassins
This month I have been lured back to playing one of my favourite two-player games, King and Assassins Deluxe Edition. It didn’t take much enticing frankly, it was a pleasure to see it back on the table. This game isn’t on the radar of many people, despite my previous glowing review of it, but I literally never get bored of playing it! During lockdown, once the kids are in bed, my wife and I have been playing more two player games by necessity. I am delighted it is King and Assassins we keep returning to.
So why do I keep returning to King and Assassins? Well, I particularly love the balance of the game. It is beautifully weighted to be equal for either player. As a result, I revel in playing as both pompous king and the angry mob with the secret assassins. This asymmetry, coupled with a relatively quick play time and a gorgeous theme make it a brilliant two-player strategic romp. This game genuinely gets your heart racing whichever side of the table you are playing.
The medieval setting gives off the feel of the computer game Assassins Creed and component quality is generally high. Your turn is dictated by a pile of 27 cards that show how many action points each player can use. What you do with these action points is how the strategy is injected in the game and how you become invested in it. Due to the limited movements and action points available the game is quick to learn.
I have played King and Assassins a lot. Yet every game, I have to try a different strategy to try and get the win. Playing as the angry mob, bluffing plays a big part in the game. Will you be passive and hope the king walks past your wannabe killer, or will you hound the king with multiple villagers and get all up in his grill? You’ll vary it from game to game so that your opposition can’t work out quite what you are doing! It is one of my all-time favourites and I am so pleased to make it my game of the month!
Matt T - Shadows of Kilforth
As the UK is still in some form of lockdown, solo gaming has been a bigger part of my life recently. I recently picked up Shadows of Kilforth, a one to four player, role playing, high fantasy card game. Besides the theme one of the things that enticed me into the game was its true solo gameplay. You can play this game controlling just one character.
In Shadows of Kilforth you play as a hero, travelling through a dark magical world. On your journey you will visit strange places, meet even stranger people and defeat powerful foes. These people, places and eminems will allow you to collect certain keywords, items, spells and allies. The Heroes will follow a particular saga utilising the keywords to progress to the next stage. All the while dealing with Gloom which spreads throughout land during the night phase. At the end of the Heroes saga the ancient one will appear and players will have to defeat the ancient one before time runs out.
Shadows of Kilforth has a lot that I like. The artwork is absolutely amazing and one of the best I have seen in a game. The replayability is pretty high with different Heroes to choose from that can take on different classes. There are skill checks for most things in the game which can be modified and mitigated with deed cards and fate tokens. The spells, items, allies and titles that you receive throughout the game can be used to bolster your stats and upgrade your character as you progress through the game. Successful skill checks are based on the roll of a die and results of 5 or 6. The number of die you roll depends on your skill level so there are ways of increasing your chances of success. The stories that you can tell in this game are rich and deep if you want them to be. There is no major narrative so the stories you tell are yours to make.
The game is also challenging and has some tough choices to be made. I like cooperative games that pose a challenge but a challenge that feels beatable if you make smart choices. Choosing to avoid an encounter that is too strong can sometimes be the wise choice. I have been having a great time with SoK and can see this hitting my table often.