Hotsky Totsky Secret Trotsky

After an all-nighter working in Illustrator, I have modded Secret Hitler into Secret Trotsky.

As more Trotskyist articles are passed, the unplayable General Secretary of the Party pulls the state deeper into War Communism, from which he may never recover. The goal is to enact full socialism before the Comintern eats itself alive, or else to kill Trotsky before he becomes Chairperson (after three Trotskyite Articles are passed).

Here are dem PDFs.

Why Kingdom Death is Going to Replace Every Boardgame I Play

Uh... yeah.

So this weekend Jason, Frank, Jocelyn and I got together to play Kingdom Death: Monster. I was of two minds about Kingdom Death before playing. The first, of course, was that its exploitative artwork was idiotic and juvenile (and maybe even Bad For Games). The second was that it seemed interesting, like something I would really like in that it was supposed to be ruthless, weird, and gross. These two thoughts were held in tension throughout the weekend until I finally got to play it. The title of the review kind of gives it away—turns out the "like" side won.

Whatever problems I have with the artwork are cured by the game design. I don't have to stare at the large-breasted drawings and what-have-you. Really, all the Kingdom Death survivors should be gaunt creeps, not well-formed Adonises—which, by the by, is what I named my founder, since I had the beardless young fellow as my survivor model—but at some point I make the concession to the game that other people want things that I don't and maybe they get something out of it.

STARTING OUT
The concept of Kingdom Death is fairly refreshing. I'm assured by my friends who can play Dark Souls (because they have PCs) that its Dark Souls-like. This renews my interest in ever getting to play Dark Souls (I won't ever be able to), but that's besides the point. I have very rarely played a game that felt like Kingdom Death unless it was one that I designed. Even then, I tend not to stray into the particular realm of semi-sexualized body horror that KD inhabits.

To start with, everyone immediately writes up a character, like a pen and paper game. However, everyone's character, save for gender and name, is exactly alike. These are the Founders of the society in Kingdom Death. You get a fragment of stone and some cloth... and are immediately pitched into a battle with a baby White Lion.

That's this guy.

Before you really understand what's going on in this insane and awful world, you have to battle a beast. Only once you've slain it do you move on to build your first settlement, which we named Golgotha. Adonis, Enoch, Solaris, and the other founder who's name I've forgotten, moved in right away.

GAMEPLAY MECHANICS
There are a number of vastly different phases in the game. These have their own contribution to the gameplay loop. Settlement phase comes first, where you grow your society, picking attributes (whether or not you carefully cannibalize the dead to recover precious resources or bury them in graves, for example) that affect the shape of your culture. You discover technologies (as soon as you kill the White Lion you discover Language, for example) and they affect the abilities your characters have and the items they're able to create.

Then you move on to the Hunt, whereby you seek out a hideous beast to fight and slaughter for its disgusting organs, bones, and pelt. The Hunt phase actually resulted in the most deaths over the course of our 4-lantern-year game on Sunday. Solomon, one of the new survivors, had his brain stilled by the raucous voice of the Hooded Knight. The other deaths that occurred happened when we drew a Murder story card during Settlement and the murderer (crazy Solaris) and her victim (the other nameless founder) were lost.

The final phase is the Showdown, where you actually do battle with the beast you've been tracking. This is where the AI deck comes into play (each monster has a randomly constructed AI deck built out of a pool of that monster's card types) and where the game really shines. The battle mechanics are simple and fast, meaning you can fight, win, and die in about 20-30 minutes and then return to the settlement with your loot to spend it on shit.

WHY ITS SO GOOD
The flavor is pretty interesting, but the persistent mechanics that mirror games that are more traditionally in the digital realm are what draw me to this game. Also, its almost infinitely replayable due to the variety of things that might actually happen in any given campaign. The game is 20 lantern years long (each year encompasses the three phases) and has boss battles, heredity, research, weapon crafting, and branching story options based on card draws.

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?
It's also hyper expensive and difficult to assemble. If Frank hadn't bought it, I never would have. So, consider the $400+ price tag before you rush off to find Kingdom Death today.

A Board Game of Thrones

Having gotten this game for a friend and subsequently discovered that it also works on Vassal thanks to some modules designed by a few clever-boots, I've played it a few times recently. The connection with the old favorite Diplomacy is not to be denied. Like Diplomacy, it's primarily about lying and manipulating, with the actual mechanics of the game being secondary to these tricks, temporary alliances, and other such friendship-ruining agreements.

The game reminds one of Birthright though of course with less detail on the actual ruling of places and more emphasis on warfare. Its alternate-history Westeros is one in which the families of the land more or less stay together and don't fight each other (Renly and Stannis, for example, are both commander cards in the Baratheon deck regardless of their disputes in the books) and in which Eddard Stark was never beheaded. That's ok, though, because the game is FUN AS HELL. Instead of writing your orders down on a slip of paper like Diplomacy, you put face-down markers on the table and then everyone flips them over at once. Even once you've declared your orders, you can still choose WHERE exactly you want to march that dangerous army, eliciting the possibility of further diplomatic talks before your troops shred the much-needed provinces of a neighbor.

Also interesting (and by interesting I mean great) are the uneven starting positions of the great houses. The Starks, for example, have the vast and unpleasant wasteland of the north at the beginning of the game. On balance, however, they are only adjacent to one house. The Lannisters, on the other hand, have a clear road to the heart of the kingdom where all the finery of the realm awaits them... but they are surrounded by other Houses and an alliance against them is likely to form early. The play styles of each house are markedly different, as are the abilities their various cards give (Kevin Lannister makes footmen as valuable as knights, meaning Lannister armies will tend to allow more footmen in their ranks).

Rarely is the game measured as a slugfest between armies. Victories or defeats on the battlefield must be followed by sound strategy on the rest of the board else you will be certain to lose. I was playing the Lannisters and the Baratheon and Stark players (there were three of us) pushed me back to Lannisport and then took it... and meanwhile, the rest of my armies were sacking the central kingdoms and the Bay of the Ironmen and I won by taking my 7th castle with Stark wolves baying for blood at my very doorstep.

The influence tracker is a great way to represent complex political realities within the simple world of the game. It shows how close each house is to controlling the "legitimate king," which presumably changes as the influence changes, to controlling the most important and warlike fiefdoms of Westeros, and to commanding the court of the king. Each of these things alter the way the game is played. Holding the Iron Throne allows you to break ties and go first. The Valyrian Steel Blade (fiefdoms) grants you bonuses in war, and the Messenger Raven (king's court) allows you to change some of your orders AFTER everyone has committed.

The wheeling and dealing necessary to win the game is a cold business. As players fall behind, it behoves the smart and right devious lord to recruit them into his cause and promise to shield them as they rebuild. In this way, their meager remaining forces can be put to good use. In one game I forced a shattered army out of the Eyrie and southwards towards King's Landing... thus infuriating the Baratheon player and causing her to turn, not on me, but on the Lannister player who's forces were moved by treaty.

Well, when you play the boardgame of thrones, you win or you die.

Hirelings, a Review

So while we were at GenCon Indy this year (for the first time) we met John Harris, an awesome fellow with a board game to kickstart. That board game was Hirelings: the Ascent, and its family friendly, putting you and your companions in the shoes of level-less hirelings who's adventurers are dead. You're carrying their backpacks, stuck in the bottom of a dungeon (in this case a dragon's cave), and the dragon is about to breath a roaring cone of fire through all the tunnels and scorch you alive.

Sound like an amazing game premise? It is. Being level 0 stuffhaulers and bodymen, you come into the dungeon with a backpack full of stuff that belonged to the (now dead) adventuring party. However, as it isn't your pack you don't really know what's packed in there. Magical items, generally helpful, fill it to the brim. You have a limited supply of these and they may help you to get out... but you don't get to decide what you're grabbing, you simply dip your hand in and pull out something that may (or may not) be worthwhile to you.

But don't be fooled! Those items are ALSO your health! If the fireball catches up to you, you need to lighten your load to put on some extra speed, thus throwing off one of your treasures from the backpack. If you have none left to ditch, you're done, mate: fried, cooked, annihilated! No more running for you. This simple game design manages to capture the frantic frenetic pace of a real escape very well.

Unboxing: The Mahabharata

A few days ago, Jocelyn and I got our hands on a board game that was tucked in the back of a shop beneath some other things. There were only two copies of it, and they seemed to have been forgotten there. Always interested in new board games, we took a look at it. A strange white box greeted us and the game's cover promised something new and exciting; the Mahabharata, it read, India's Epic: experience an ancient legendary adventure.

Always a sucker for strange new board games, we of course bit. Our collection grows apace and this felt like a good addition. The Mahabharata smelled faintly of Indian spices and had clearly been made by hand by someone who felt the epic had not gotten the treatment in the public eye that it deserved. When we got home, we opened it up immediately to have a look at its contents.