Pirate Fluxx

Today (February 3, 2011) at game lunch we were lucky enough (thanks to Francis @burnumd) to get a preview play of Pirate Fluxx by Looney Labs. We also received a nice gift for getting to play the game early, and I look forward to adding it to my set.

SWAG from Looney Labs

I and a few others had never played Fluxx before so this was novel on 2 levels. The game is one that is…well constantly in flux. The Rules can change, the Goal(s) to win can change, you can lose everything and still end up winning. It can take 10 minutes to play or go on for sometime. We were able to get through 2 games at lunch as that is just the way of the Fluxx today.

The game has different types of cards, Rules, Goals, Keepers, Actions, and more. They control the flow of the game depending on what card is played. Although I haven’t played Fluxx (yet!) I have been told (thanks Francis) Pirate Fluxx is similar with some new rules and surprise actions added in. I would talk more about specifics but it would consist of going through many of the cards as there is where lies all of the rules. Needless to say it is a card game with a draw pile, a discard pile, face up cards that players use to win and other face up cards that control how the game is played.

One of the cards commanded that Ye talk like a pirate, matey, and it was pretty funny as some “tried” to accomplish it. This had to be attempted to gain a benefit of extra cards but only by talking like this for 2 full rounds (there were a lot of “Yarr”s spoken this day). Another required that everyone call the holder of the card “Captain”. Some of us found it hard to even consider calling some people who (you know who you are @angermonkey).

Contents of Pirate Fluxx

Some said before the game started that it could be frustrating. I thought it was a lot of fun and would love to share it with family and others. I plan to try Fluxx thatI own have not yet played [embarrassed]. I will likely add Pirate Fluxx to my game inventory after it comes out on February 11, 2011.

Coming soon I will post about another Looney Labs game that we played a few weeks back. “Back to the Future: The Card Game”

On January 26th, 2011 @josh_yeager brought and we attempted to play Betrayal at House on the Hill by Avalon Hill (really Wizards of the Coast) for the first time. The following is a basic description of the game and some of our thoughts.

Betrayal at House on the Hill

First I want to say attempting to play any game over an hour lunch period, is a challenge, so one with complex and not thought out instructions is an even bigger challenge. All of the instructions were there but they put special cases before telling us about all of the basics first. Some may say RTWFM (read the whole fucking manual) before you start, but really what percentage of people do that with a game, or ever for that matter.

The game has some standard tile based, create as you go mechanics. You have 3 floors to explore with your characters and depending on the card you draw and the floor you are on it gets built out. I found myself feeling like I was one of those meddling kids as I played “”Rut-ro!”.

These are Omen cards

Once we understood the basics we did start to make some headway. However the main event of the game (the betrayal) occurred after there were omen cards on the table and ONLY after a player rolled 5 dice that equaled less that the number of omen cards on the table. This event was a major part of the game. You were given the core mystery to solve in the game and someone was the bad guy. It sounded like it would really get fun at that point but 45 minutes in and we hadn’t gotten close to that yet.

Flatten those cards.

We will try again some evening when we have some more time. Although it said it could be played in an hour, we have our doubts, even if you know the rules, that this would be possible.

The components of the game we would give a B+.
Some of the pieces warped and this appears to be a common problem.

The sliders on the character cards that kept track of your characteristic did not fit snuggly. They were sliding and falling off and that does not make it easy to keep track of your character.

Character Card

We think the game is worth finishing and there are a lot of people out there that really seem to like it. Sometime soon I will update this post once we have an evening to play it all of the way through. Then we will get back to you with our complete feelings on this one.

This is the cover art.

This is one of the tower tiles.

Today Bryan Cogswell @bcogswell brought Batt’l Kha’os to play. This is a tile based game for 2 people (sadly only the 2 of us could make it today). The game has Humans and Orcs battle to capture towers for points.

I liked the look of the game right off the bat. It seemed simple at first but as we played there is a ton of strategy that needs to be considered. There are elements of Carcassonne like strategy and I found myself considering Tic Tac Toe strategies as well. All in all a lot of fun and the right of amount of challenge.

The game is a 2009 tile (card) game made by Z-Man Games. The art is good and it makes it easy to understand what things are. We played the basic form of the game and it took about 30 minutes to play. I was eager to try it again but with a first time play and reading instructions we used up lunch time.

This is a sample of taking a tower.

There are human and orc towers and the goal is to control the four corners around the tower with your troops. If there is a tie, then the tower owner wins. This gives the home team, as we called it, home field advantage. This added a lot of the challenge and thought of strategy. As it only takes 2 corners to win your own tower but +1 to win the other guys (+1 because there is the possibility that a corner will have no troops).

Overall I think it was a lot of fun and want to play it again. The age range is good for 10 and up and likely I will eventually buy it to play with the family.

The coming posts will be about all of the previous games we have played so far in Game Lunch. Feel free to comment or ask questions and I hope that others at the lunch will find time to comment about the games as well and talk about the mechanics.

So please keep reading, I will have more posts soon.

What is Game Lunch? Yes, it exactly what you might think it is, gaming during lunch. I started a lunch time game event, with friends and colleagues last fall. It happens on most Wednesdays and we play new board and card games each week, or we play as much as we can get done over lunch time. It allows us to try out new games and mechanics.

So I will start off with talking about different games that we’ve played over these lunches and I will add in any of the thoughts and comments we have about the games, good or bad. I might even dip into games the same group plays at other times either with consoles or online, we will see. After that I will drift off into other things that are game related. Especially if it is related to technology, mobile and location based entertainment.