The Unlikely Next England Captain

If you know me at all, you will know how passionate I am about football. I loathe it. I am bored by it. I take a particularly perverse pleasure in every single loss that the England football team suffers. As you can see, I am singularly passionate about football.

So what the hell am I doing reviewing a football-themed game when I am still trying to work out why my parents gave me Super Striker for Christmas when I was five? Which was in 1972.

So here is what happened. I was at Curry & Games, a local games meet that takes each month here in Birmingham. J-P Treen approached Chris and myself and asked if we would like to play a game of his. It was, he explained, a game about football titled Next England Captain. Given this theme, both Chris and I agreed with a certain reluctance. We played through it and much to our surprise, found that we had enjoyed ourselves and we had enjoyed the humour of the game. We did break the game though. Sort of.

Leap forward eighteen months and another game design or two and Next England Captain is not only being showcased at UK Games Expo this weekend, but it also being launched on Kickstarter. My name may or may not be in the credits because I helped J-P Treen with the game’s blurb, but the game itself is all his and this review is all mine. So read on and be surprised as I am to find myself reviewing a football-themed game.

The game in question is Next England Captain: The Anti-Football Game, published by Too Much Games. This is a meticulously researched card game for two to four players aged ten and up that can be played in twenty minutes. Each player controls the fate and dreams of a football player—he can make career moves, but sometimes his career is out of his control—who one day hopes to become the Next England Captain. The game is a satire, but a gentle one at that…

It consists of four Playing Mats—one per player; twenty Career Tokens—five per player, each representing a Career Move; and seventy-two cards. The cards are divided into six colour-coded types. Club (black) cards represent the football team that a player plays for—such as Flower Show F.C. or Leyton Occidental; Squad (blue) cards represent his position on the team from ‘Catastrophic Loss of Form’ to ‘He Scores When He Wants’; and England (red) cards are his position on the England national squad, usually ‘England Regular’, but if he is fortunate, ‘England Captain’. If he is unfortunate, it will be ‘Scotland Regular?’ and thus make him ineligible to play for the England team. Status (orange) cards represent a range of things, whether he has a ‘Girlfriend’, ‘Wife’, ‘Children’, or a ‘Car Crash Personality’; Money (yellow) cards are deals that the football player can make, such as ‘Coaching Ambassador’ or ‘Trademark Celebration’; and Final (black) cards represent what a player does after his career, perhaps ‘Foreign Move’ or ‘The Pundit’. Final cards can only be played on a player’s final turn.

Every card has a points value. At the end of the game, each player totals the values of his visible cards—some cards will add to, or modify the total—and the player with highest score will win the game.

Each Playing Mat has spaces for each card type when they played, one on top of each other—only the top card counts. The Playing Mat also has spaces in the middle for placing a player’s Career Tokens when played.

The first problem with the game—all right the second problem with the game, because the first is that it is after all, a football-themed game—is determining who goes first. According to the rules this is the person who last kicked a football. Which is a problem in some gaming groups as they collectively try and work out exactly how many years go any one of them actually kicked a real life football… Once that has been decided, each player receives a hand of four cards and the game can begin.

On his turn, a player can do one of two moves. The first is a Career Move. This allows him to play as many cards as he can, but only one of each type. Essentially, this is the football player doing his best to further his career. It also uses up one of the player’s five Career Moves. The second is to discard cards and refresh his hand. A player can discard as many as he likes, but he must take a ‘Penalty!’, drawing a single card and playing it if he can—this representing the fickle hand of fortune—before he refreshes his hand back up to four.

For example, Dave has the following hand: Woolwich Rovers (8) Club card, Chairman’s Toy (6) Squad card, Trademark Celebration (5) Money card, and Sponsored Boots (2) Money card. As a Career Move, he plays the Woolwich Rovers, the Chairman’s Toy, and Trademark Celebration cards, but not the Sponsored Boots card as it is not worth as much. The other advantage is that the combination of Woolwich Rovers Club and the Chairman’s Toy Squad cards make him eligible to play for the England.

On his next turn, Dave still has the Sponsored Boots card in his hand as well as the Aston Park F.C. (6) Club card, the Scotland Regular? (5) England card, and The Pundit (9) Final card. Of these, he decides to save The Pundit until the final turn because it is worth points and opt for a Penalty! in order to get a better hand. The card he draws is the Leyton Oriental (3) Club, which he has to play. Unfortunately, not only is the card worth fewer points, it also makes him ineligible to play for England! Oh well, Dave had better hope that his new hand of cards gives him a Club card that will make him eligible.

Two Career Moves grant a player certain benefits. ‘Write your own History’ allows a player to take a card from the discard pile before having a normal Career Move, while ‘This is your Year’ enables him to play two cards of the same colour instead of the usual one allowed. Both are useful because certain cards have requirements that need to be met before they can be played. The most basic is the need to have a strong combination of Club and Squad cards so that the football player is eligible to play for England and the player can play an England Regular card. These requirements grow the nearer a player gets to becoming Captain of the England Football team. To become that, he needs to be an England Regular and have the Children Status card, the latter also needing Wife or Celebrity Wife Status cards, and they each have their own requirements.

Why all of these requirements? Well, as the game designer has explained to me, no Captain of the England Football Team of the past seventy years has held the position and not been married or had children. As he has also explained, Next England Captain is meticulously researched, and who am I to say otherwise? (Anyway, saying otherwise would probably mean having to look up a bunch of tedious facts about a very tedious game—and no, I do not mean the one that I am reviewing).*

*(It should actually made clear that not all of the facts given in the previous paragraph is true. This was also relayed to me by the game's designer, which might not lend much credibility as to his reliability as an expert on the position of Captain of the England Football team. Neither does the fact he himself has never held the position of  Captain of the England Football team, but then again this may also prove to be untrue—how would I know? In the meantime, the designer discusses the subject of the position of Captain of the England Football team and marriage in a post here).

Once a player has conducted his last Career Move, everyone else has one more turn. This is the only turn in which Final cards can be played. Then everyone totals up the value of the top cards on their stacks and the highest wins the game. 

Next England Captain combines card drafting and hand management elements with press your luck and storytelling game play. Each player needs to discard cards and take a Penalty! several times in order to get the cards into his hand to make a Career Move a worthwhile move, but will often be forced to play Career Moves in order to keep up with his rival players. As a player puts his cards down, he is also playing out the career of his player and all its highs and lows. What makes this entertaining are the cards, which whilst all drawn from the lives of football players in the Premier League, are all absurd in one way or another, if they do not out and out poke fun at football players and the Premier League. For example, the Sports Drink Promo Deal Money card has the slogan, “Looks like wee. Tastes like sweat. Makes you awesome.”; the Car Crash Personality Status card has words “Why Always Him?” on it as well as the symbol of a sports car; and the ‘Super-Injunction’ Status card has no effect at all, not even a score value at game’s end! (It has been suggested that the latter prevent the other players from talking about the player).

So what do I think of Next England Captain: The Anti-Football Game? Well, first we need to deal with the Rooney in the room. So here goes… I HATE FOOTBALL. Nothing short of a lobotomy is going to change this. So what do I think of Next England Captain: The Anti-Football Game in light of the Rooney in the room?

I actually enjoy playing Next England Captain: The Anti-Football Game.

I actually like Next England Captain: The Anti-Football Game.

It is not quite a perfect design in some ways. Some cards are more important than others—the Status cards in particular. This though, is by design. The role of England Captain is primarily a public relations role and thus whatever football player has the role needs to project the right image—married, children, and so on. So it reflects the Premier League just as it should. 

Next England Captain: The Anti-Football Game can of course be played straight and its satirical elements ignored, but the ‘Anti’ of the game’s subtitle is very much part of the game’s enjoyment. Surprisingly, it is an enjoyable kick up the pomposity of the Premier League and a footballers’ life that in twenty minutes shatters what dreams you might have of being the Next England Captain.

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Monster Filler Thriller

Being a city planner in Tokyo must be a thankless task. After all, every few months, the city and its infrastructure gets stomped, disintegrated with blasts of radioactive breath, pulverised with claws and tails, and otherwise converted from town planner’s big dream of city life into dusty piles of rubble. The culprits are Kaiju – big monsters, of which Godzilla is the most famous. Of course, all this is beneath of the notice of the monsters – well, they are big monsters – as King of Tokyo proves.

This is a light dice and resource management game in which between two and six Kaiju battle each other to be the one and only “King of Tokyo.” They include a big ape – “The King”, a giant humanoid crab – “Kraken”, a large lizard – “Gigazaur”, a colossal alien robot – “Alienoid”, an ernormous draconic robot – “Meka Dragon”, and a lapine “Cyber-Bunny”. Suitable for players aged eight and up, the game is quick to teach, looks good, and plays in half an hour or so.

Designed by Richard Garfield – the designer of Magic the Gathering and RoboRally – and published by Iello Games, King of Tokyo consists of a card and a standee for each of the Kaiju; a set of eight custom dice; sixty-six Power Cards; a pile of Power Cubes; plus a board and the rulebook. The latter represents the city of Tokyo and is marked with two spaces, one labelled Tokyo City, the other Tokyo Bay. The space labelled Tokyo Bay only comes into play when there are five or more players. The Kaiju boards are marked with two dials, one for Victory Points, the other for the Kaiju’s Health. The Power Cards grant a Kaiju special powers or bonuses, some of which are discarded after use, whilst others are permanent. Sample permanent powers include Fire Breathing” which lets a Kaiju blast his neighbours with fire each time he inflicts damage, whilst “Giant Brain” allows a Kaiju to reroll the dice four times instead of three. Sample discard powers include “Frenzy” which lets a Kaiju take another turn immediately after his current one, whilst he gains two Victory Points and heals three damage taken with “Nuclear Power Station.” Each Power Card has a cost which is paid in Power Cubes. Some of these Power Cards possess corresponding tokens indicating their use.

At the heart of the game are the dice. There are six of these, in black marked with a lurid green with the numbers one through three, plus a heart, a lightning bolt, and a claw. In addition to these six standard dice, there are another two dice, these in lurid green, but marked in black with the same numbers and symbols. These green dice become available when a Kaiju purchases certain cards.

On his turn a Kaiju rolls the six standard dice. He can roll each die a further two times if he does not like the result, but must keep the rolls after that. For every set of three of the same number, a Kaiju gains Victory Points – more if he rolls sets with more of the same number of them. For each Claw rolled, a Kaiju inflicts a point of Damage; for each Heart rolled he heals a point of his Health; and for each Lightning Bolt, he gains a Power Cube. Power Cubes can be spent to purchase Power Cards.

How a Kaiju inflicts Damage on his fellow Kaiju is where King of Tokyo gets interesting. A Kaiju outside of Tokyo can attack and inflict Damage on the Kaiju who is in Tokyo, but the Kaiju who is in Tokyo can attack and inflict Damage on the Kaiju who are not in Tokyo. Thus the Kaiju who is in Tokyo is likely to be attacked again and again – and worse, he cannot heal himself through the use of dice. So what then, is the advantage of remaining in Tokyo? A Kaiju gains Victory Points by being in Tokyo, but he can leave any time that he takes Damage, his attacker taking his place in Tokyo.

King of Tokyo is won either by amassing twenty Victory Points or being the last Kaiju standing.

Essentially, King of Tokyo is especially luck based, and at first glance appears to involve very little in the way of tactics or decision making. True, there is little in the way of a tactical element to the game – does a Kaiju attack or not? The game does involve more in the way of decision making though, and it all comes down to the dice rolls and whether or not a Kaiju can roll the symbols on the dice that he wants, or as the game proceeds… needs. During the opening stage of the game, a Kaiju will want to inflict as many Claws as he can to inflict as much Damage as possible on his fellow Kaiju, to gain as many Victory Points as possible, and to gain sufficient Power Cubes to gain those all-important Power Cards. As the game progresses and a Kaiju suffers Damage, then he will want to roll Hearts in order to regain Health. Of course, this is what a Kaiju might want to roll on the dice, what he actually rolls and decides to keep is another matter…

King of Tokyo is a simple, throwaway filler of a game. It is easy to learn and play, and it is a fun family game with an obviously joyous love of its theme that shines through in its components and “beat ‘em up” style of play. As much as will enjoy that theme, more serious gamers will quickly become aware of the game’s flaws. First, as much as it is a game designed for between two and six kaiju, it plays poorly with two and it really only plays well when there are four or more involved. Second, the game always comes down to a battle between two Kaiju as it is a knock-out game. Once a Kaiju has been knocked out, he cannot re-join the game and so has to wait for the game to end with nothing to do except cheer for one Kaiju or another. Third, the powers on the Power Cards are far from balanced, and since this is a luck-based game, getting the right combination of Power Cards can make a Kaiju nigh unstoppable…

Ultimately, whether you like King of Tokyo comes down to whether or not you like the theme enough to compensate for the luck factor. If so, then the game is fun, it is easy to teach, and a joyously silly filler thriller.

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Under the Sea RPG

The Walt Disney Company does not do roleplaying games. None of its many and varied properties has ever been licenced as a roleplaying game. Which in some ways is a shame, for the gaming hobby is aging and its adherents have young children or even young grandchildren who do not have an easy way into the hobby or a means of being introduced to the hobby. As much as Fantasy Flight Games’ forthcoming StarWars: Edge of the Empire RPG is effectively the first Disney RPG, the lack of an actual Disney RPG based on its more family orientated properties seems such a missed opportunity. Yet what if there was an RPG that was like a Disney RPG, both in terms of feel and tone? One that would appeal to a younger audience? One whose rules were simple and easy to understand? And one that was easy to run and came with easy-to-use support?

Mermaid Adventures: An RPG of Undersea Fun fits all of those requirements, and more. Plus it comes from an unexpected publisher, Third Eye Games, better known for its more mature themed, action-orientated RPGs, Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. and Part-Time Gods. As its title suggests, Mermaid Adventures is all about the lives and escapades of the seafolk in and around the magical kingdom of Atlantis under the sea. They will help King Neptune and Queen Anastasia as well as their friends and others; take part in the annual Undersea Olympics; explore the Dark Lands that lie beyond the borders of the Kingdom of Atlantis, home to pirates, bandits, and worse; and generally have a fantastic time!

Players in Mermaid Adventurestake the roles of these seafolk, all of whom are half-human and half-sea creatures. They include Fishfolk, traditional mermaids known for their curiosity; Eelfolk, who make great friends, but like to play jokes and pranks; Jellyfolk who are almost transparent and are great hunters; Lobsterfolk, hardshelled, but charming; Octofolk, tentacular seafolk with an aptitude for magic; Rayfolk, who can make themselves flat and have a reputation for sneakiness; the big and strong Sharkfolk; and the spiny, Urchinfolk, obsessed with magic.

Characters are easy to create. A player selects the type of seafolk that she wants to play; this sets the base value for the character’s five attributes – Body, Mind, Charm, and Luck – and gives a single positive Quality that all members of the selected species possesses. For example, Octofolk start with the free Quality of Tentacles, which enables them to get things done quickly when using their (hands) tentacles. Five points are assigned to the character’s attributes and then the player rolls on a number of tables to determine hair style and colour, eye and fin colour, some extra details about the character (possessions, clothing, knowledge, features, and so on), and the character’s goal and its accompanying Quality. Lastly, the player selects four more Qualities. These from Artistic and Beautiful to Weapon Training and Writer via Mechanical and Nosy. Additionally, a character can chose Magical Qualities like Healing Touch, Lullaby, and Water Bending. Lastly a character can have an Animal Companion, essentially a second, less capable character that the player controls. This is a slightly more costly option though.

Our sample character is a pretty princess, perhaps a little spoiled, but still generous of heart and ready to go off on adventures. Her nosiness sometimes gets her into trouble, though she will often try and charm her way out of it. If only her parents were not immune to such attempts! She owns a yo-yo, a toy that she found which must have been dropped overboard by a human!

Princess Pandora
Body 2, Mind 2, Charm 3, Luck 3
Hair Colour: Red Hair Style: Bangs 

Eye Colour: Amber Fin Colour: Light Blue
Qualities: Adventurous (Free); Beautiful, Royalty, 

Lullaby Song (Magic), Nosy
Goal: Giving (Take a hit to Luck to let any player make any reroll)

Extras: Yo-yo, Pointy Ears

Mechanically, Mermaid Adventures uses what the designer calls the “PIP System.” It requires a handful of white dice and a handful of black dice (or just dice of two different colours). The white dice are positive, whilst the black dice are negative. To undertake an action, a player rolls a number of dice equal to the appropriate attribute, with results of four, five, or six being counted as successes. A player can roll more white dice if she can involve one or more of her Qualities. The difficulty of the action determines the number of black dice to be rolled, with a Mid-Range Task calling for two black dice to be rolled, a Tough Task requiring three black dice to be rolled, and so on. Rolls of four, five, or six on the black dice count as failures and cancel out any successes rolled.

A player only needs to roll a single success to succeed at a task. If she rolls three successes more than failures, then the result is counted a critical success and she gains a small bonus. Conversely, rolling three failures more than successes results in a critical failure with extra consequences… If a player rolls an equal number of successes and failures, then she succeeds, but with minor consequences. A player can attempt a re-roll for a Task, but must take a “Hit” on the attribute, temporarily reducing it by one.

For example, Princess Pandora wants to hold a midnight feast for her friends and knows that the cook will not give her anything. So she attempts to distract the cook whilst her friends sneak into the larder and pinch some goodies. The Games Master or Navigator sets the difficulty of the Task at Tough as the cook knows what a little madam Pandora is, so Pandora’s player has to roll three black dice. Pandora’s player will use her Charm of 3 of course, but for her Royalty Quality – she swishes her tail a bit! – and Giving Quality – Pandora explains that it is for her friends! – she gets to add two more white dice. On the white dice, Pandora’s player rolls 1, 2, 5, 5, and 6, and 1, 3, and 4 on the black dice, or three successes and two failures. Cancelled out, that just leaves her with a single success, which is enough to distract the cook and Pandora’s friends will be able to get into the larder a whole lot more easily.

The same mechanics are used for combat and conflicts, the rules for both covering not just fights, but also attempts to charm or persuade major NPCs or other player characters, to trick them, or to use magic on them. In these cases, the acting player character always rolls the white dice, while the defender rolls the black dice, essentially serving as the Task’s difficulty. Further, in these cases, if a player character or NPC is successfully attacked, they take damage to the defending attribute. Should a character suffer enough damage to reduce an attribute to zero, then it can no longer be used, and the character will suffer an even worse effect, such as suffering a bad scar for the Body attribute being reduced to zero, or being drained of magic for the Luck being reduced to zero. These effects are rolled randomly.

For the Navigator or Games Master, there is a selection of NPCs, advice to Navigator to keep the game moving and exciting, whilst also allowing the players to add details to make their undersea world as real as they want it. This is as much as the advice really amounts to, but in the hands of an experienced Navigator, this should be no problem. Were this squarely aimed at a neophyte Games Master, then this section would be sorely lacking, and it might be worth addressing if Mermaid Adventures were to be given a second edition. That said, the Navigator also receives a set of tables to roll adventure ideas on and a quintet of ready-to-play adventures. These see the player characters come to the rescue of a sinking ship, enter the Undersea Olympics, get lost in the Dark Lands, and more…

Physically, Mermaid Adventures is not quite perfect. It is engagingly presented, particularly in terms of art, done in full colour by Melissa Gay, in a style that perfectly captures the light hearted nature of the game. That said, the layout is a little rough in places, and the book could really do with another edit to give it a little more of a polish. The book is easy to read and an experienced eye will run through this is in an hour or so and be ready to run it with relatively little preparation.

The inspirations behind Mermaid Adventures are obvious and they show in its lightness of the treatment of its subject matter and its setting, which is very lightly drawn. This lightness is supported by the mechanics, which are easy to grasp, and all together they make the game very accessible. Similarly, the scenarios make Mermaid Adventures easy to run and there are more ideas to be got out of the adventure generator, though more adventures would not be unwelcome. Above all, the illustrations do the most to capture the feel of the game and setting – light, adventurous, and action packed. These serve to make the RPG suited to play by younger players, with the setting particularly orientated to young girls, though there is nothing to stop young boys playing too.

Mermaid Adventures: An RPG of Undersea Fun is a game with charm, one that is nicely suited to be run for a younger audience.

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It Spells Murder!

Murder of Crows is a new card game from Atlas Games – the publisher of other card games such as Gloom, Cthulhu Gloom, and the recently re-released Once Upon a Time. It is a game of spelling, detection, and undermining your fellow players that can be played through in twenty minutes or so. Designed for two to five players, aged thirteen and up, it is a darkly themed humorous game that easily slips into play between other games.

The aim of the game is simple. To win, a player has to spell out the word, MURDER. This is done by playing the game’s many letter cards, each marked with the letters M, U, R, D, or E. Each of the five letter cards also has an extra effect beyond adding to a player’s MURDER. The “M” or “Misplace” card allows a player to steal a card from a rival’s MURDER and add it 0t1000o his hand; the “U” or “Uncover” forces every other player to reveal his hand of cards and allows the current player to steal any one of the revealed cards; the “R” or “Reap” allows a player to draw another card; and the “E” or “Expell” card forces every other player to discard his hand of cards and draw back up to three. As can be seen from these five cards, the game has a strong “take that” element in that the majority of the letter cards affect the other players rather than the current player. Well, this is a game about murder after all…

Given this strong “take that” element, it is no surprise that Murder of Crowsprovides a means of blocking these “attacks.” Each of the letter card is marked with a number of crows in the top left hand corner – one, two, or three. When a letter card is played, if a targeted player has a card marked with a number of crows equal to those on the letter card played, then it can be used to block an attacking card. A second card type, the “Wild Crow” card, can also be played to block an attacking card. Another use for a “Wild Crow” card is as a letter card in a player’s MURDER. The letter it replaces needs be chosen when it is played and it has all the effect of that letter. A player’s MURDER can contain only the one “Wild Crow” card.

Play itself is simple. Each player begins the game with a hand of five cards. The first player is decided upon who is decided to look the most suspicious… (Cue any number of arguments, if not murder itself!) On his turn he draws one card and plays one card into his MURDER on the table in front of him. The effect of a letter card takes place – or is blocked by one or more of the other players, and then the next player takes his turn. The first player to spell out MURDER is the winner.

In addition to spelling out the word Murder, a player’s MURDER also tells the story of a murder. Placed in order, the “M,” “U,” “R,” “D,” “E,” and “R” letter cards spell out the atmosphere, place, culprit, motive, means, and victim for the player’s MURDER. For example, “Shadows haunted the night” “on a shore reeking of dead fish when” “Heidi Harmony” “due to an inferiority complex” “used a frozen turkey to bludgeon” “Alexis Eldridge”. This adds an element of ghoulish storytelling to the game as well as a degree of uncertainty to the crime as the atmosphere, place, culprit, motive, means, and victim for a player’s MURDER will change over the course of the game.

Physically, Murder of Crows is nicely done. The rules sheet is easy to read through, although it will be passed around from player to player in order to check what each letter card does. It helps that the game includes a reference card, but more than one would have been useful. In fact, one per player would have been very useful.

The game’s fifty-five, full colour cards though, are very nicely done. Perhaps a little thin for extensive play – though Murder of Crows is a filler game and will not be played over and over – every card is attractively illustrated by Thomas Denmark, who along with Eduardo Baraf, designed the game. Denmark’s full colour art for Murder of Crows is Gothic Americana in style, possessing a sly humour that echoes that of Edward Gorey.

In terms of play and tactics, a player is simply trying to spell out his MURDER whilst preventing his rivals from spelling out theirs. Late in the game, as the players get closer and closer to achieving that goal, the game becomes quite cutthroat as they try and stop each other. Since almost every letter card is used to attack one or more of the other players, then one key tactic to be aware of, is knowing when to block. A player can of course use one of his letter cards – that is if the crows on the blocking card matches the card being played, but if he has a “Wild Crow” card, he can use that. Of course, that “Wild Crow” card might be a stand in for the last letter he needs to complete his MURDER.

The given age of the game – thirteen plus – seems a little over cautious. Younger players should not have too much difficulty playing Murder of Crows, although the “take that” element might be a little too cutthroat for them. Nevertheless, Murder of Crows is a light filler game, one with slight tactics, a light storytelling aspect, and a wryly dark theme. Murder of Crows offers fast, fatal fun.

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Swim for your Limbs!

Get Bit! has been around for a while, but this “robot-swimming and robot-chomping-shark” game has been just a little difficult to get hold off as it went in and out of print. Now it is back in print – but for how long? – and available outside of the USA, I finally got to play it thanks to my friend Dave, and now, thanks to my friend Dave, to review it too.

Designed by Dave Chalker and published by Mayday Games, Get Bit! is a fast playing filler game for four to six players, aged eight and over, that can played through in about twenty minutes. It is light enough to be played by non-gamers, whilst just about everyone will enjoy both its theme and its components. The game’s idea is that you and your fellow “buoyant” robots are out for a leisurely swim when you are attacked by a robot-eating shark. Fortunately, most of the robots can swim hard enough to stay ahead of the shark. Unfortunately, this means that the shark will have a chomp at the limbs of the slowest robot swimmer – and the shark does love his robot limbs. As long as a robot has a limb, he can keep swimming and even keep swimming ahead of his fellow robots. It is all a matter of effort. Yet if he loses all of his limbs, a robot can no longer try and outswim either his fellow robots or that hungry, hungry shark!

The game consists of six Dismembermen robots, each in a different colour; a set of seven cards for each colour, for a total of forty-two cards; the rules leaflet; and the hungry, hungry shark with its jaw already to open and then clamp down on the slowest robot! The rulebook is plain, but it is an easy read and it explains the game well. The game’s physical components are terrific though, being high quality and durable. The humanoid robots are identical, bar their different colours, and are easily handled and posed, and of course, their arms and legs come off. The shark both charms and menaces simultaneously. Each of the sets of card is identical apart from matching the colour of one of the robots. Each set is numbered one through seven and is illustrated by an image of the robot swimming closer and closer towards the viewer. So the “1” card has the robot in difficulty and far away, whilst the “7” card is closer and making headway…

Get Bit! is an easy game to play. Each player receives a Dismemberman robot and a matching set of cards. All of the robots are laid out in a line, one after the other, with the shark at the rear. Each round of play consists of three phases: Choose Cards, Move Robots, and Get Bit. In the Choose Cards phase, each player selects one of his cards and places it face down on the table. Once everyone has chosen a card, they are revealed simultaneously and the Move Robot phase begins. If any of the cards played have the same number, then their players do not move their robots, whereas the player who played the lowest untied card gets to move his robot to the front of the line, furthest away from the shark. Then the player who played the next the lowest untied card gets to move his robot to the front of the line, and so on, until all of the robots that can move have done so.

Once all of the robots have moved, or not moved if there were tied cards, the robot last in line is subject to the Get Bit phase and loses a limb to the shark. He also moves his injured robot to the front of the line and gets to pick up all of his cards on the table and return them to his hand. A player also picks up his cards and returns then to his hand if he only has the one card to play. Then the next round begins. The Get Bit phase does not occur at the end of the first round, but do so after that. Play continues with any robot losing all four of its limbs being eliminated until there are only two robots left. When this happens, the shark eats the robot at the back and the one at the front gets away to swim another day.

Unsurprisingly, game tactics are as simple as the game play. This is a game of counting what cards that your rivals have played in order to try and work what the best card that they have their hand is. If you can play a card higher than that and it is not tied with any other player’s card, then you just might find yourself at the front of the “not losing a limb” queue. Included in the game are rules for four variants that allow two or three participants rather than the minimum of four; for a longer game; and a memory aspect to be added to the game. Expansions are available that allow for a seventh player and let a player control the shark!

Personally, Get Bit! is too light for continued play for my tastes. I would not want to play more than twice before it loses all of its limbs as far as I am concerned. Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable game, a fun game, an easy to teach game, and a good looking, very tactile game. Plus everything fits into the game’s very nice box.

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Kitten Killing Kuriousity

You have a kitten. You leave the room. The kitten follows you because you are not in the same room. You come back into the room and close the door behind you. The kitten miaows because you shut it out and not because it was kurious. You open a kupboard. The kitten climbs in because it can. You shut the kupboard. The kitten miaows to be let out because you shut it in the kupboard and not because it was kurious. You take a bath. The kitten jumps up on the side of the bath and almost falls in. The kitten looks at you because it is your fault and not because it was kurious.

As the saying goes, “Kuriousity Killed the Kitten.”

The Kitten Killing Kuriousity is the subject of the possibly tastelessly titled kard game, Kittens in a Blender. Published by Red Shift Games, it is a light, silly, simple kard game designed for two to four players aged eight and over. Both the title and the theme of the kard game are both its selling point and its downfall. After all, would you play a kard game in which you try to send your rivals’ kittens to the blender whilst trying to save your own from the whirring blades that can only give you a fur-fang feline smoothie. The problem is the kuriousity of kittens – they will klamber onto anything and that includes the kitchen work surfaces where there are innumerable dangerous appliances, one of them a lidless blender into which the kurious kittens will inevitably klimb. All that it takes is one kurious kitten to lay a fluffy paw upon the switch and MIAO-whirr!-SCRUNCH!!

Which sounds like a hideously tasteless theme for a kard game.

Then again, this is just a kard game and Kittens in a Blender is a great title.

The game consists of one-hundred-and-ten full-kolour kards, two large full-kolour kards, the rules sheet and both the lid and tray of the box that Kittens in a Blender comes in. One of the large kards is The Blender and is placed in the lid of the game box, whilst the other large kard is The Box, which is placed in the tray that the game came in. The rest of the kards konsist of four sets of Kitten kards, each set a different kolour. Each set konsists of sixteen kitten kards and each kitten is given a name, and looks ever so, ever so kute. The remaining kards konsist of the following: 

• “Kitties on the Move,” which allow a player to move between one and three kittens.
• “Blend,” which turns The Blender on, blending all kittens in The Blender, but saving all kittens in The Box and sending all kittens on The Kounter to The Blender (though not blending them… yet!).
• “Blend/Pulse” works like “Blend,” but can also be used to stop another player using a “Blend” card.
• “Dog’s in the Kitchen” forces players to swap hands.
• “Kittens in the Blender” moves all kittens in The Box and in The Kounter into The Blender.
• “These Kittens in the Blender” works like “Kittens in the Blender,” but only affects kittens of one kolour.
• “Kittens on the Kounter” moves all kittens in The Blender and in The Box onto The Kounter.
• “Kittens in the Box” moves all kittens in The Blender and on The Kounter into The Box.

The game starts with The Blender and The Box being placed on the table with a gap between them known as The Kounter. Each player picks a kolour of kittens, his aim being to get as many of that set into The Box and safety as he can whilst sending his rival’s kittens into The Blender. If there are less than four players, then the sets of kittens not in play are removed from the deck. Every player then receives a hand of six kards.

On a turn, a player plays two of his kards, in any order, follows any instructions on them and then draws back up to six. Any player can play any kard, including kitten kards belong to his rivals – these kittens are destined for The Blender. Play continues until all sixteen of the “Blend” and “Blend/Pulse” kards have been played. Then all of the surviving kittens for each player are counted and skored two points apiece. Similarly all of the kittens that were blended – how exactly you can tell one blended kitten from another is not explained – and a point is deducted from a player’s skore for each of his kittens that got blended. The player with the highest skore is the winner.

Objectives and tactics are twofold. Get your kittens into The Box, either from your hand, The Kounter, or The Blender. Get their kittens into The Blender, either from your hand, The Kounter, or The Box. Once there are enough of your kittens in The Box and their kittens in The Blender, play a “Blend” or “Blend/Pulse” kard – your kittens will be safe and go towards your end game skore, whilst theirs just need ice to be a feline frappé and deduct from their skores at the end of the game.

Physically, Kittens in a Blender is an attractive kard game. The kards are bright, breezy, and every one of the kittens on the sixty-four kitten kards is kute. Really kute. The rules are simple and easy to pick up. It could do with another set of kittens and kards to bring up to a maximum of six players, but then we are still waiting for a six-player full game of Ticket to Ride, so there is the possibility.

All right, so the idea behind Kittens in a Blender is a bit tasteless. Ket over it. Ket over yourself. It is just a game and no kittens are actually hurt during play. There is no “Live Action” version of this game. Seriously.

Konsole yourself with the fact that Kittens in a Blender is a not a kreat game. It is too light, too silly, too throwaway. It is though, a fun and silly well done filler of a game, one that can be fitted in between more serious games with kreater depth. We all need a filler game if not a klowder of them. Kittens in a Blender is a kute addition to your filler game klowder.

Plus Kittens in a Blender is a really kreat title.

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Wicked. Witty. Wrong.

Cards Against Humanity is probably the least politically correct card game I have ever played.

Cards Against Humanity is probably the funniest card game I have ever played.

Cards Against Humanity is probably the vilest card game I have ever played.

Cards Against Humanity: A party game for horrible people is an incredibly simple game of answering innocent questions with horridly hilarious and impishly inappropriate answers. It is easy to learn, plays for anywhere between thirty and ninety minutes, and can be played by between five and twenty players. In playing you will probably either overawe or offend your friends, if not both with the obscene nature of your answers.

Published by Cards Against Humanity, LLC, Cards Against Humanity comes in a chunky little black and white box inside of which can be found a simple rules pamphlet and approximately six hundred cards. Some ninety or so of these are Black Cards, each of which contains a question or statement such as “What did I bring back from Mexico?” or “Alternative medicine is now embracing the curative powers of _____________.” Some Black Cards have two blank spaces, such as “That’s right, I killed _____________. How, you ask? _____________.”. The remaining cards are White Cards, each of which contains a word or phrase, such as “The Chinese gymnastics team,” “Guys who don’t call,” and “Binging and purging.” The White Cards are used to answer the question or fill in the blank, or blanks if the Black Card has more than one, presented on the Black Cards.

Game play is very simple. At game start, each player is dealt a hand of ten White Cards. One person starts the game as “Card Czar” and draws a Black Card and reads out question or phrase on the card aloud. Every other player selects a White Card from his hand which he thinks is the most suitable – the wittiest, funniest, most offensive, or will be appreciated the most by the Card Czar – and passes it to the Card Czar face down. The Card Czar shuffles the White Cards that he has been given and then reads out the question or phrase on his Black Card, each time answering the question or filling in the blank in the phrase with a word or phrase from the White Cards. Once all of the White Cards have been read out, the Card Czar chooses his favourite answer from the White Cards. Whomever played the winning White Card receives the Black Card as an Awesome Point. Then the next player becomes the Card Czar, everyone draws back up to ten White Cards, and a new round begins.

So for example, as Card Czar, Michelle draws a Black Card and reads it aloud: “Life for American Indians was forever changed when the White Man introduced them to _____________.” Going round the table, Dave plays “Unfathomable Stupidity.”, Anthony plays “Cheating in the Special Olympics.”, Hugh plays “A Gypsy curse.”, and I play “Britney at 55.” Michele takes these White Cards and after shuffling them, reads them out as follows:

• “Life for American Indians was forever changed when the White Man introduced them to ‘Cheating in the Special Olympics.’”
• “Life for American Indians was forever changed when the White Man introduced them to ‘Unfathomable Stupidity.’”
• “Life for American Indians was forever changed when the White Man introduced them to ‘Britney at 55.’”
• “Life for American Indians was forever changed when the White Man introduced them to ‘A Gypsy curse.’”

Michelle looks the White Cards over and after a moment or two’s deliberation chooses “Britney at 55.” as the most appropriate answer. I get to keep the Black Card as an Awesome Point.

Play progresses in this fashion until the game ends. This can either be when all of the Black Cards in the game have been played, in which case the player with the most Awesome Points win; or when a player gains enough Awesome Points to reach a previously agreed upon total and thus win the game.

Physically, Cards Against Humanity is very simply presented. The cards are all two tone, black and white. None of them are illustrated. The text on each one is easy to read and the rules are similarly as easy to read.

Cards Against Humanity is huge fun to play, even if the examples given above do not wholly capture how much fun it is. Part of the issue with that is the fact that were I to include some of the answers given on the White Cards, I would attract undue attention from search engines. They can often be of an adult nature and that does not fall within the remit of Reviews from R’lyeh. That issue though is more to do with this site rather the game itself.

The most obvious fact about Cards Against Humanity is that it plays in a very similar fashion to Apples to Apples in that each turn one player has to match answers from each of the other player's hand to a given question. Which is something of a problem. Apples to Apples includes hundreds of questions and thousands of answers, so it offers plenty of replay value. Even then I tend to find its game play a little too light and unsatisfying if played too often. Cards Against Humanity contains fewer cards so suffers from the same problem, though probably to a greater degree, and playing it too often will spoil its crass charms. That said, in addition to the simple rules provided, the rule pamphlet gives rules for upping the stakes each round as well as eight house rules that can be added for variety.

One obvious problem with Cards Against Humanity is that it is an American game – then again, so was Apples to Apples originally, although it has since received versions in other languages and specifically for other nations. Some of the answers on the White Cards are specifically American such as “Dental dams.”, “Aaron Burr.”, and “Shaquille O’Neal’s acting career.” There is no way around this, bar creating your own cards, which is perfectly possible given that Cards Against Humanity can actually be downloaded from the publisher’s website and printed out for free. In the meantime, we will only have to wait for nation specific cards.

Further, its very American nature is not helped by its lack of availability. The game sells out very quickly it is true, but it is only available in the USA or in Canada. Where it is available internationally, the prices can be exorbitant. Nor is it available internationally via Amazon.com, which would have been the easiest of solutions to the problem. (In case you were wondering, I did buy it via Amazon.com and then had it shipped from the USA by a friend).

The biggest problem though with Cards Against Humanity is its humour. Putting the answers on the White Cards together with the Black Cards can give results that make you wince at their tastelessness and whoop with laughter at the same time. Many of the answers refer to sexual acts – hence the game having a minimum playing age of seventeen years – and other adult references. This is not a game for anyone of a “conservative with a small ‘c’” persuasion as Cards Against Humanity will easily offend them. Nor is it for anyone of a “Conservative with a big ‘C’” persuasion as Cards Against Humanity does have a Left Wing bias. Or at least the designers just have a deep and abiding hatred of Glenn Beck. (In all likelihood, to balance this out in a rare case of political balance, it appears from the rules that the game’s designers have hired Former Vice President Dick Cheney to handle their complaints and legal department).

Once you have a copy of Cards Against Humanity, you will chortle, you will cry, and you will cringe. Not necessarily a game to play with your family, Cards Against Humanity needs likeminded people who share its humour to get the most out of it, but it should not be overplayed or it will lose its appeal. Although slightly heavy to carry around, it works well as a convention game and as a pick-up game, possibly at the bar or just with a drink to hand. Going where almost no card game has gone before, Cards Against Humanity is a sublimely sinful satire.

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Dave Gorman versus Boardom

Dave Gorman is a comedian who likes doing things. He hates to be bored. He is also a comedian who likes a challenge. He has in the past set out to prove that there are more people in the world named Dave Gorman than himself. Similarly, he has travelled the world in the search of “Googlewhacks.” Some of these have formed the basis for his comedy shows, in the case of former, “Are You Dave Gorman?”, and in the case of the latter, “DaveGorman's Googlewhack Adventure.” In both cases, the comedian has turned the activities into books as well. Sometimes he combines his activities with a comedy tour, such as “Sit Down, Pedal, Pedal, Stop and Stand Up,” in which he combined a comedy tour with a cycle ride from Britain's southernmost point to its northernmost tip. For his latest book, Dave Gorman has taken an activity and written about it, but not turned it into a comedy show. In Dave Gorman vs. The Rest Of The World, Dave Gorman is so bored that he goes out and plays an awful lot of games – with us.

As a kid, Dave Gorman liked playing games. He liked going round to friends’ houses to see what they were playing, and then joining in. His starting point in Dave Gorman vs. The Rest Of The World is that as adults we do not do that. Playing games is not an adult pursuit, whereas going out for a pint or to a nightclub is, though of course, as you, the reader of this blog and I, know that to be anything other than the case. Plenty of adults do get together every week and play games. Sometimes more than once. It is just that such activity is not seen as normal or ordinary when compared to say, watching a football match or going to nightclub, but I digress... So the author decides to see if he can pop round the corner to friends’ houses and see what they are playing. Rather than ringing the one bell of the one house, and when the door was opened, asking, “Would you like to play a game?”, he asked on Twitter and got an awful lot of responses.

Born out of a desire to do something between the time that he arrives in a town and the time when he needs to be on stage to perform, Gorman finds himself travelling the length and width of the country – and not the world as the title of the book suggests – at what are essentially people’s invitations. So the question is, what does he get to play? He starts off with The Laser Game: Khet in Didcot and Ping Pong in White City. He plays Kubb in Milton Keynes and Kensington – not actually in Kensington, but near Liverpool Street Station. More interestingly for us he does get introduced to Settlers of Catan and plays it not once, but twice. Perhaps the book’s apogee when it comes to this type of Eurogame is when his holiday collides with that of Tim Harford in the Lake District. A well-known economist, Harford presents series on Radio 4 entitled More or Less, which discusses numbers and how they bear on recent news stories. Bar the likes of Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson, Tim Harford is perhaps our best known board game player, having confessed to being a boardgamer in public. He exposes Gorman to Agricola.

It proves to be all a bit much for our Mr. Gorman. He does play other Euro Style games, and some are even mentioned in the back cover blurb, but none of them are mentioned in more than passing. Instead, the author concentrates on pub and garden games, and there is nothing as such wrong with that. Except that, if a game is mentioned on the back cover blurb, surely it deserves more than a mention in the book itself? After all, it might be that the reader wants to read about what a known comedian like Dave Gorman thinks of such a game. It might be that the blurb suggests that he tries a whole lot more of the games that the reader likes if that game is not all that well-known. It is not entirely fair to criticise the author on the basis of his preferences and experiences when it comes to playing games. It is clear that he has a preference for something that he can grasp immediately, usually something with a physical element, whether that is Darts, a game that he is known to be fond of, or Smite, a game that is wholly new to him.

Despite the slight interest that Dave Gorman vs. The Rest Of The World will have for anyone who enjoys board games, the book itself is well written, the author’s voice gently carries you along with an observed humour about the places he visits and the people that he meets, and he does include the rules for many of the games that he played – though not Agricola obviously. That would be bulk up Dave Gorman vs. The Rest Of The World enormously given density of the  Agricola  rulebook's rules. Yet given the array of games that he plays, the author leaves it up to the reader to go and find out more about them. An appendix detailing a little more about each game and where the reader might go to purchase said game would have been more helpful than the rules given for Texas Hold ‘em Poker given in the one appendix. Why not help the reader find these games for himelf?

Ultimately, the point behind Dave Gorman vs. The Rest Of The World is that there is no point to it, at least in comparison to other Dave Gorman projects. Can he find enough people named Dave Gorman in “Are You Dave Gorman?”? Will he find enough Googlewhacks in “Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure”? Or rather that there is no drive to it, no sense of urgency. It is as meandering as the author’s journey up and down the country, a lazy if pleasant travelogue of a read that matches the holiday that the author took in getting to play the games described in the book. That is, until the book’s penultimate game, the playing of which takes an unnerving and unsettling swerve… This swerve though, is the book’s counterpoint to its actual point. That playing games as an adult can be as fun as when you were kid, that it is as fun as any other social activity.

In the meantime, Dave, if you are ever at a loose end, would you like to play Cards Against Humanity?

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The Gloom that overcame Glaaki

Back in 2004, Atlas Games published a card game of a singularly ingenious, yet depressingly design. It told the story of how the members of four families were driven each to a mournful end after a life time of ill omens, distressing events, and ennui to end it all. The cleverness of the design lay in the nature of the cards, for they were not cards at all, but each was a slice of thin, transparent plastic marked with various icons, images, and pieces of text. Game revolved laying cards upon the top of various family members, the transparency of the cards enabling various elements of the cards underneath the uppermost one to remain visible and in play until such times as they were covered up, their effects negated and replaced with the uppermost icons. In addition, the design of the game and its theme, inspired by the art and stories of the artist, Edward Gorey, enabled the game to work as a story telling game too, letting the players narrate how each member of his family was driven first to despair, and then to his or her death… The game in question was Gloom – The Game of Inauspicious Incidents & Grave Consequences, and it would win its publisher, and its designer, Keith Baker, the 2005 Origins Award for Traditional Card Game of the Year.

In 2011, Keith Baker returned to Gloom. Not though to provide us with another expansion, but rather to explore a new theme using the same basic format and mechanics. That new theme draws from a source as uncaring as that of the original Gloom before going on to exacerbate it with elements that are in turn batrachian, inhuman, and tentacular, if not to say, wholly unwholesome. The theme in question is the works of H.P. Lovecraft, and the new game is Cthulhu Gloom -- The Game of Unspeakable Incidents and Squamous Consequences.

As with the original Gloom, the aim in Cthulhu Gloom is to drive your “family” down a path of horror and madness to an untimely death, suffering the most horrifying stories possible, all the whilst attempting to keep the members of your opponents' family happy, healthy, and annoyingly alive. This done by playing Modifier cards and Event cards on top of the Character cards, the aim being to drive each character’s Pathos as deeply into the negative so as to give the lowest Self-Worth score possible before doing them in by having them suffer an Untimely Death. A game comes to an end when an entire family has been eliminated, all of its members having fallen prey to the same inevitable inter-dimensional doom that will befall us all – though the fate of the family members in Cthulhu Gloom will at least be more entertaining. In a non-Euclidean sense, that is... At which point the Pathos inflicted upon the dead members in each family is totalled, along with any points gained from Story Cards played. The player whose family has the lowest Family Value – or the highest negative Family Value – derived from the Self-Worth scores of those Family members who met an Untimely Death wins the game.

More recently, the original Gloom has been the subject of an episode of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop. It is worth watching to get an idea of how the original Gloom is played and thus an idea of how Cthulhu Gloom is also played.

One difference between Gloom and Cthulhu Gloom is the nature of its families. In Gloom, the members are for the most part, related by blood. In Cthulhu Gloom, this is not necessarily the case. So whereas the Whateleys are all related as members of the old Dunwich family, and the Marshes are all related as members of the old Innsmouth family, the members of the other two families in Cthulhu Gloom are not. They are instead members of the faculty or students at Miskatonic University or staff and patients at Arkham Sanatorium. Thus, they are a family by association.

Designed for two to five players, aged thirteen years and up, Cthulhu Gloom is intended to play in an hour. The game comes with twenty Character cards, fifty-four Modifier cards, eleven Event cards, twenty Untimely Death cards, and five Story cards, along with the double-sided rules-sheet. Of all the cards, the Character cards, each of which has the name of the character, an illustration of the Character, and a piece of flavour text on it, do not have any game effect icons or text on them. The Modifier cards all also illustrated, but have one, two, or three icons on the left-hand and right-hand side of the illustration, place a game effect described in the text below. The icons on the left are always Pathos Points, the values ranging from +25 down to -30; whilst the icons on the right are either Effect icons, which indicate how and when the game effect takes place, or Story Telling icons – Blank, Goblet, Horror, Investigation, Madness, Magic, or Romance – which have two uses in the game. When a Character has certain icons visible on him, it allows other cards that require those icons to be visible to be played on him. The other use is if the game is being played as a Storytelling Game, in which case the icons are used to help tell the story of how the Character came to his Untimely Death.

For example, the “Gibbered with Ghouls” Modifier card has an illustration of a Ghoul on it, and to the illustration’s left is a single “-10” Pathos Points icon, whilst to the illustration’s right, is a Persistent effects icon (meaning that the card’s effect continues until covered with that of another card), plus a Madness and a Horror icon. The game text below tells the player that whilst his draw limit is decreased by 1 card, he can now draw from the top of the discard pile as well as the draw pile!

Event cards lack the illustrations and icons of the other card types, and once played from your hand, are discarded. For example, “The Thing on the Doorstep” allows a player to move one Untimely Death card from a dead Character to another along as the soon-to-be dead Character has negative Pathos Points, or “The Voorish Sign” which can be used to cancel another Event card when it is played.

Story cards also lack icons, but they do have dramatic and powerful effects when played and can benefit a player’s Family Value at the end of the game. For example, “The Call of Cthulhu” requires a player to have two Madness icons visible, but at the end of the game, all of the Pathos Points for a player’s Characters count towards his total Family Value, whether they are alive or dead! This is a very powerful card!

Lastly, the Untimely Death cards, one for each of the Family members in Cthulhu Gloom, are all illustrated with a skull. Some also have Pathos Point icons or blank icons that cover up Storytelling icons, but all have a small piece of game text that can be positive or negative. For example, the “Wasted Away” Untimely Death card adds an extra -10 Pathos Points if the Character it is played on has a Madness icon visible. Once an Untimely Death card is played on a Character, he and his cards are set aside. He is out of the game until the end, although he can be affected by certain Event cards.

At the start of the game, each player receives his Family, or four of them in a four-player game to prevent the game from going on too long, the discarded Family members combining to form a fifth Family if there is a fifth player; and a hand of five cards. Two random Story cards are placed in the middle of the table.

On his turn, a player can take two actions. He can play a Modifier card on any Character still alive – this will alter the Character’s Pathos Points and Storytelling icons, and give an effect too; play an Event card for a one-time effect; play an Untimely Death card on any character with negative Self-Worth score; claim a Story card and its benefits, though it is only possible to have one of these; discard his hand, or pass. These actions can be done in any order except that an Untimely Death card can only be played as a first action. A player cannot place a really good Modifier card on one of his Characters to make his Self-Worth score even worse and then protect the newly depressed Character by playing an Untimely Death card. He must wait until his next go to play the Untimely Death card as his first action, giving every other player the opportunity to improve that Character’s Self-Worth score and so make the playing of the Untimely Death card less attractive.

Strategy in Cthulhu Gloom is simple. Decrease your Self-Worth of the characters in your Family whilst attempting to improve that of characters in rival Families. In other words, make them have a less miserable time than yourself! A player should not refrain from having a rival Character suffer an Untimely Death, especially if his Self-Worth is not very low. This effectively takes that Character out of the game and prevents his Self-Worth from being lowered even further.

In addition to keeping a careful watch of the Self-Worth of each of the Characters in his rival Families, a player should keep an eye on the icons and the text visible on their cards. By covering these up with the icons and text on other Modifier cards, a player can stop negate the effect of a good card or reduce the number of Storytelling icons in play and so prevent an effect from a Story card, for example.

As clever a design as Cthulhu Gloom is, and Cthulhu Gloom is a clever design, it suffers from the same issues as Gloom did. The cards are too small. Not too small for a player to read them when they are in his hand or in front of him on the table, but too small to be read by other players sat round the table. Which leads to a lot of peering at other players’ Families and the cards played on them, and this has a disruptive effect as from a distance the cards appear to be a little too busy. In some ways, this fussiness seems strangely appropriate, but it is almost as if the game would have been better if the cards had been double the size… Of course, the cost would have been as proportionately large as well.

Physically, the cards in Cthulhu Gloom are well done, and pleasingly illustrated by Todd Remick. If there is a physical issue with the cards it is that in places it appears that the Storytelling icons do not match. This had me looking for a “quarter Moon” icon until I realised that it was actually a simplified Madness icon. The rulebook requires a care read through though, as the game actually looks more complex than it is.

Although not mechanically any different from the original Gloom, this is a well done reiteration. Where it improves on the original game is its theme, as thematically, Cthulhu Gloom is highly entertaining, especially if you know your Lovecraftian fiction. The game takes a slightly “tentacle in cheek” approach to its source, one that is just humorous enough to entertain, but not so as to detract from awfulness that will be inflicted upon the Families. Cthulhu Gloom is a fiendishly luminescent design with a fussiness that complements the theme and the source. Mannered and maddening, Cthulhu Gloom -- The Game of Unspeakable Incidents and Squamous Consequences is satisfyingly sanity sapping.

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Love, Hate, & Survival

Gorilla Games publishes a couple of games that I like. BattleStations manages a rare combination of light roleplaying and space combat against a Star Trek-like background that has a darker side to it than is usually hinted at in Gene Roddenberry style setting. Who Would Win? is a silly game of ridiculous comparisons. Whereas the latter is a light social game that works with both parties and families, BattleStations is very much a gamer’s game with several supplements supporting its setting and the capacity for a GM to create his own material. Lifeboat is the third of Gorilla Games’ titles that I have tried and liked. It is another card game, and although not necessarily a family or a party game, it is actually far more social than Who Would Win? with a strong emphasis on interaction, diplomacy, negotiation, and treachery.

Designed for four to six players, aged twelve and up, the theme in Lifeboat is very simple. The players are survivors aboard a Lifeboat rowing to safety after their vessel has sunk. Tensions between the survivors are high. Not only do they possess few resources between them, they also each have a secret love aboard whom they want to see survive as well as a secret enemy whom they would like to see go aboard and be left behind as shark bait. In the days it takes to row to shore, the survivors will squabble over who will be Quartermaster and thus control the resources, who will be Navigator and thus steer the boat closer to shore, whilst the stress of the near constant squabbling and the near constant threat of thirst and dehydration takes its toll. If a survivor can make it ashore alive, he scores Victory Points, and he can score more if his Secret Love also survives, his Secret Enemy dies, and for bringing loot such as jewellery, paintings, and money with him. A game should last no more than an hour.

The game consists of forty-two Provisions cards, six Character cards, six Placeholder cards, six Hate cards, six Love cards, twenty-four Navigation cards, three wooden Seagull meeples, twenty Wound Markers, plus the rules sheet. The six Character cards are Lady Lauren, Sir Stephen, the Captain, the First Mate, Frenchy, and the Kid, each of which is illustrated in an Edwardian or 1920s style, and is marked with values for their Size (a measure of their strength in combat and their capacity to take damage, ranging between three and six) and Survival Value at game’s end (ranging between four and nine). Each character also has a Special Ability. Lady Lauren, Sir Stephen, and the Captain value jewellery, paintings, and money respectively, and get extra Victory Points for smuggling them ashore. Whilst the First Mate is “…JUST PLAIN BIG,” Frenchy is an excellent swimmer and never takes damage for being knocked overboard and the Kid is a Pickpocket who can steal Provisions cards from other survivors. There is a Placeholder, a Hate, and a Love card for each character.

The Provisions cards consist of various different items. They include weapons such as Gaffing Hooks, Knives, and Oars – the latter can also be used to row the boat; bottles of Water to stave off thirst and Medical Kits to provide healing; and Life Preservers to help a survivor endure going overboard without suffering injury amongst others. Our favourite was the Bucket of Chum, which ensures that sharks attack anyone or everyone who has gone overboard. The Navigation cards determine at the end of each round if the boat is any closer to shore – indicated by the appearance of seagulls on the card; if any characters are knocked overboard, thus loosing anything that they are holding and possibly suffering an injury into the bargain; and if any characters suffer from thirst after rowing the boat, fighting, or just because…

At game’s start, each player receives a Character card, plus a Hate and a Love card to indicate their Secret Love and Secret Enemy. It is possible for a character to love himself, which makes him a Narcissist who will score double Victory Points for surviving, though of course, it means that no one else has him as his Secret Love and so will not willingly support him. Similarly, a character can hate himself, making him a Psychopath who will score Victory Points for the deaths of anyone else aboard… Everyone receives a single Provisions card with the rest of the Provisions deck placed at the boat’s prow. Then the Placeholder cards for the characters are placed in the following order: Lady Lauren, Sir Stephen, the Captain, the First Mate, Frenchy, and lastly the Kid who sits in the boat’s stern. Behind sits the Navigation deck.

Each turn represents a day spent at sea by the survivors. Each day begins with the survivor in the bow of the boat doling out the Provisions as the Quartermaster. Cards are drawn equal to the number of survivors and first the Quartermaster chooses one before passing the remaining to the next survivor in the boat, who again selects one before passing on the remaining cards. Then beginning with the Quartermaster, each survivor takes a single action. This can be to “Do NOTHING,” “ROW” the boat, “CHANGE SEATS” with another survivor, “MUG SOMEBODY” for a Provisions card, or “TAKE A SPECIAL ACTION” as allowed by a Provisions card.

To “ROW” the boat, a survivor draws two Navigation cards, chooses one to add it to the Rowing Stack whilst the other goes at the bottom of the Navigation deck. To “CHANGE SEATS” with another survivor, a survivor simply swaps places with another in the boat, changing the seating order in the boat. If the other survivor refuses, a fight can ensue. Survivors usually attempt to “CHANGE SEATS” to gain control of the important seats at the bow and stern of the boat, the Quartermaster position allowing a survivor access to the Provisions cards first whilst the Navigator position has control over who takes or avoids injury and thirst at the end of the day as given on the Navigation cards.

Similarly, a fight can ensue if a survivor refuses an attempt by another to MUG him and take a Provisions card. SPECIAL ACTIONS let a survivor use and open the Parasol, which staves a survivor’s thirst, remaining in play until lost overboard; or use a Flare Gun to get closer to the shore or use a Medical Kit for healing. Provisions cards like the Parasol or the Flare Gun are used just the once before being discarded.

A fight is a simple matter of comparing the combatants’ Size values against each other, the higher Size always beating the lower. Stalemates are always resolved in favour of the defendants, but both attacker and defender can boost their respective Sizes by using weapons like the Knife or Gaffing Hook and by getting allies to aid them. The looser, or losers, if allies are involved all take a single Wound. A survivor can take damage equal to his Size before being knocked unconscious. If he takes another Wound or is knocked overboard, he is killed. A survivor who is successfully mugged must give up a Provisions card or if he was attacked over his seat, he must swap places with his attacker.

At the end of the day, the survivor who is in the boat’s stern serves as the Navigator. He gets to choose a single Navigation card from the Rowing Stack and carry out its effects. This can include a Seagull appearing to indicate that the boat is closer to the shore – four of these needed before the survivors are rescued and the game ends; if any survivors are knocked overboard, their being injured in the process and losing any Provisions cards that they have on the table; and if any characters suffer from thirst after rowing the boat, fighting, or just because… It is possible for a character to be thirsty a total of three times if his name is listed on the Navigation card and they also rowed the boat and was involved in a fight. A survivor can use any bottles of water Provisions cards to offset the effects of thirst.

A game of Lifeboat ends once four seagulls have appeared on the Navigation cards and the survivors are rescued. A player then scores Victory Points if his Survivor made it, his Secret Love survived, his Secret Enemy died, and for any loot he brought ashore. The player with the most Victor Points wins.

Physically Lifeboat is nicely done. The art on the cards has a charmingly period feel. The rules are simply explained, but they are perhaps a little too plain.

One of the interesting aspects about the design of Lifeboat is how the survivors are balanced. They are balanced in that the higher their Size value, the lower their Survival value at game’s end. For example, the First Mate has Size 8 and Survival 4 versus the Size 3 and Survival 9 of the Kid. Similarly, the survivors with lower Survival values tend have more powerful Special Abilities. For example, the First Mate has no Special Ability, but the Kid is a Pickpocket who can Mug other Survivors without the need to fight them. It is one reason why the Kid is such an annoying character!

The other balancing factor between the strong and the weaker survivors is that the names of the stronger Survivors appear on the Navigation cards more often and thus suffer from thirst or are knocked overboard more often. The best balancing factor are the players themselves, who will each have different motivations depending upon the Love and Hate cards that they drew at game’s start. These will drive their survivors to support or attack different survivors each time the game is played, rather than necessarily team up on the same players each time, which can be an issue in others that have a “take that” style element to their play.

Despite the balancing factor of the Navigation cards, the high Size values of survivors like the First Mate or the Captain might be difficult to assail, or at least seem so. Either though, can be defeated through a combination of allies and weaponry, and making these alliances – often temporary – is the fun part of playing Lifeboat as is working out who a survivor’s Secret Love and Secret Enemy are, and then using them to your advantage, whether that is to gain support or to stab him in the back. This aspect will certainly appeal to the player who likes to engage in table talk or roleplaying a little in order to form or prevent alliances. Overall, Lifeboat is well designed, fun to play, and comes without the survivor guilt.

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