Ascending Empires

Ascending Empires is a dexterity game for 2-4 players. It's a nice little twist on dexterity games as you can also do different types of actions to take each turn instead of always just flicking a game piece (like Pitchcar or Micro Mutants).

I guess the biggest complaint about this game is the board. The board consists of 9 sections that fit together like a puzzle. Because of this, the pieces are not flush and causes your ships that you flick to stop or get misdirected when it hits a higher spot in the game board. If you think about it before you flick your ships, you can push down on the pieces to help make the board flush. This seems to work just fine.

Ascending Empires plays 2-4. I liked it better with 4 but Michael had no problem with just 2.

Here's what the board looks like set up:

Here's what you can do on your turn - choose 1 of the following:

1. Recruit troops - you can recruit troops onto any planet without having to reveal it (they all start face-down).
2. Use 2 movements - Launch a starship, Land on a planet, & Navigate a ship each count as 1 movement.
3. Create a colony. These count as +1 to the planet's defense.
4. Create a city. These count as +2 to the planet's defense.
5. Create a research station. These help develop technology but count as +0 to a planet's defense.
6. Develop technology. These help get you added bonuses.

Navigating your ships is the dexterity part of this game. It's pretty fun to do and not too difficult (except for the board issue). Ascending Empires plays pretty quickly so you don't get too bored in between turns.

Another part of the game I like is destroying other starships! You have to have 2 of your starships within range of 1 opponent's starship in order to destroy it, which is a little more difficult. Or you can just ram one of your ships into someone else's ship, which also destroys your ship. This seemed to be easier to do.

Happy gaming!

Time's Up

So we went to Borders today because they are closing and everything is 40-60% off. I bought a book and our friend Kristin bought Time's Up. She LOVES that game and we told her they had it so she wanted to get it. Anyway, it made me think of reviewing Time's Up...so....

Time's Up is a party game for 4 or more players. The rules suggest you have 2 person teams but we like playing boys vs. girls.

You start by passing out 40 cards total then dealing each player 2 more cards. Then players discard 2. If you want a shorter game, you can deal out less cards or if you want a longer game you can deal out more cards.

You pick a starting team and they pick a starting player. That player has all of the cards face down. When they timer starts the player flips over the top card and then follows the rules according to the round. Time's Up plays in 3 rounds: 

Round 1: Plays like Catch Phrase. You can give as many clues as you can without saying any part of the title or words on the card. Passing to the next card is not allowed.

Round 2: No more than one word can be used for each clue and passing is allowed. But your teammates can only guess 1 answer for each clue.

Round 3: Only pantomime and sounds are allowed. Your team can only guess 1 answer for each clue and passing is allowed.

Of course you are timed during these rounds. You have 30 seconds to get your team to guess as many clues as they can.

Once the deck runs out, meaning all the cards have been correctly guessed, the round is done. Teams count how many cards they have, each being worth a point, and note it on the provided paper. All the cards get put back into the deck and are shuffled, then the next round starts.

So as you can see it is different than other games because the rules change each round. This makes it a little bit harder and a lot more fun. The ideal thing to do would be to use pantomime from the very beginning to make it a little easier for your team to guess.

Ascension

We had ordered Ascension from coolstuffinc.com in June and hadn't received it until Friday August 12. The way coolstuffinc.com works is they ship your whole order together, but if you ordered something that is a pre-order, they won't ship everything until it the whole order is fulfilled. So anyway, we went to GenCon and learned how to play Ascension for free (oh yeah). And it was amazing!

Ascension is a deck building game (like Dominion) and plays a lot like Dominion and Magic mixed together. Unlike Dominion, there are only 8 cards total for you to look at at any given time. 3 of those cards are permanent cards that never change: Mystic, Heavy Infantry, and the Cultist. The other 5 cards are constantly changing.

Examples of changing cards: Heroes, Constructs and Monsters.

The upper right hand corner is how much the cards cost if they're in a Rune (the triangle) or how much militia it takes to defeat them (if they're in the red).

On your turn, you start with 2 Militia cards and 8 Apprentice cards. You shuffle these and draw 5. This is your starting hand. You make the other 5 your face-down deck. Your deck will start growing as the game goes on.

Game Play:

So you use the abilities on your cards to acquire new cards, put used cards into your discard pile, and then draw your new hand of 5. Some cards will let you gain honor and all monsters you defeat will get you honor. Whoever has the most honor at the end of the game wins.

We have played this game almost every day since we've received it. We love it! It's a pretty quick game for the most part. It plays 2-4 unless you get the expansion then it plays up to 6! We played with 5 yesterday and it played a little slower than 2-4 players, although 2 of the players had never played before. I think I like it best with 3.

One last picture of the whole game board set up before I end:

Telestrations

Heeeeeeere's Heather! lol!

Let's face it, many people we play games with like party games. Party games are fun, but in moderation. So here is one of my favorite party games: Telestrations!

Telestrations is based of off telephone and pictionary. Everyone has their own sketch book and marker. You draw a card and roll a die to pick which idea from that card you have to draw. It plays 4-8.


Example of game play:

I start with the word weightlifter. There are 4 people playing. I write the word weightlifter

then I draw it on page 1 and pass it to the left.

Player 2 looks at page 1, guesses what it is on page 2, then passes it to the left.

Player 3 looks at page 2, draws the guess on page 3, then passes it to the left.

Player 4 looks at page 3 and then guesses what it is on page 4 and passes it to the left.

I now have my own booklet back. I look through the pages and laugh at what people drew and guessed! It gets a lot more interesting with 8 players. This game allows you to get to know people from their guesses/drawings. It's a lot of fun when the guesses don't match the original pictures!

Quarriors!

We just received Quarriors on Thursday. Michael was SO excited for this game because he loves dice games so he read the rules and we played Thursday night. I have to say it was pretty cool!

It is a deck building game (like Dominion or Ascension) but with dice instead of cards. Here's what the game play area looks like:

Each card represents a monster or a spell. You are trying to build up your Quarry by using Quiddity (magic that acts like $) to gain them. Each card has a cost. If you achieve that cost with your Quarry, you add the die to your Quarry. Here's how a turn works:

1. Doesn't pertain to your 1st turn. But every other time you would score your creatures you have in your Ready area. Each creature is worth a certain amount of glory.

2. Draw 6 dice and roll your Active Pool. Place these dice in your Active area. Here is a picture of what the dice look like. They are cool!

3. Ready spells and summon creatures. Each creature has a cost located in the upper left corner of each die. You must pay to ready them. Spells do not cost anything to ready.

4. Attack! This is part of the game and actually makes it quite fun. Unlike other deck building games, there is not much interaction with players so having to attack your friends makes it a little more exciting. As you can see in the picture above, the attack is located in the upper right corner. If I were attacking with a 3, I would kill any creature with a 1 or 2 defense (located in the lower right corner of each die). Each die has different sides. Not all sides contain the creature. Some contain Quiddity. This makes it a little harder to always roll a monster. Each creature card contains a picture of every side of the dice so you can see your odds of rolling a monster each time. Monsters that did not die remain in the ready area. Monsters that did die go into the used side of each players game area.

5. Capture 1 new dice. You can now use your Quiddity you rolled to gain one new creature or spell. This will be moved to the used side of your game area.

6. Move spent dice to used pile. All of your Quiddity, whether used or not, goes into your used pile.

That's how the game works. It is fun and a nice little twist to regular deck building games. I love playing with dice because it makes it harder to get what you want every time. I think that makes games more fun!

Our 1st GenCon Experience

Michael and I went to GenCon Indy, the biggest board game convention in America, I think. It was from August 4-7. We arrived Thursday evening and made it over to the convention to look at our options for the next few days. It was a lot to handle! Things I noticed the 1st day:

*There are some weird people.
*There were a ton of people.
*Every room in the convention center and rooms in the connecting 4 hotels were filled with events!
*There was a ton of games you could play either by buying event tickets or sometimes for free!
*There was an auction to bid on items.
*It didn't smell nearly as bad as I thought it would.

We were able to learn and play Ascension (which is a game we have, but never played), Talisman (which is another game we have but never played), Munchkin Quest and Dungeons & Dragons. We really wanted to play Descent, but it was $6 and 5 hours long for the intro game and they were sold out. Bummer!

So we realized that it is important to look at the list of all events and plan our days out before we get to the convention so that we can buy our tickets the 1st day we get there.

All in all, it was great and we will definitely be going again next year!