Grab Bag

No league for me this week, going to watch my niece's band concert. So, I thought I'd review some of the other games I've been playing lately.

First up, Sutakku. Couple questions for you first. Do you like simple games? Do you like fun games? If you answered yes to either or both of those then you'll love this one. If you answered no to both of those questions, then what the hell are you reading this for? Anyway. This is a simple dice stacking game. It's fast paced and you can knock a game out in about 20 minutes or so. Basic premise is that you keep stacking dice with increasing numbers on the face until you either can't stack anymore(and get zero points) or you cave in to the pressure and take the face of the top die and multiply it by the number of dice in the stack (ie: a 5 on top of a stack of 4 dice would yield 20 points). The person with the highest total at the end of 5 rounds wins. It's fun, very "beer and pretzels" to quote a friend of mine, and you won't spend all afternoon setting it up just to get a game in. 12 dice and a flat surface that's all you need.

5 out of 5

Next up is Quarriors. What do you get when you combine dice and a deckbuilding game? Well, you get this. Quarriors is a pretty fun game I was introduced to a few weeks ago and I do not hesitate to play when I get the opportunity to. It's another really quick game to play. Set up takes about 5-10 minutes and play time is about 30 minutes. Basically what you do is this: You buy dice that represent a common pool of 7 creature types, 3 spells, and 3 (or 4 with the expansion) base types of cards. That's what separates this from traditional deck building games in that you acquire dice instead of cards. There is some strategy to it, but not much. Another game that you play for fun and if you really care about winning it, then you really shouldn't be playing. The only real negatives I have against this game is that the dice are unique and if you lose one, you're screwed. Also, finding a good way to store the dice for easy retrieval later is proving troublesome. The dice come in their own individual bags and picking through all of them looking for the right ones is a big chunk of the set up time. That being said, it's a definite buy.

4 out of 5

Last one I'll do tonight is Nightfall. This is another deckbuilding game in the same vein as Dominion and the like. Gotta be honest, this one doesn't really do it for me. There's a weird combo mechanic in the game that I don't like. I don't know if it just hasn't been explained well to me or if it just sucks, but it really drags the game down in my opinion. The few games I've played just never seem to get going with the speed I like to see in games like this and it just never has floored me like others have. My advice is if you see it being played, watch a few games and then decide on your own. But for me the fun just isn't there.

2 out of 5

That's all the ones I'm doing for now, I'll list a couple more tomorrow.