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Ian Noble
United States
El Dorado Hills
California
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This article is copied from my site TheNobleGamer.com
This is the first article in my new segment New To Me Games. Every Monday I will be highlighting 2 or 3 games that I have not played before. These games are either newly published or have been around for a while, I have just not been presented with the opportunity to play them. Basically I will go over some of the things that made me want to buy the game and then talk about how I felt after my first couple of plays.
Summoner Wars
Lisa (my fiancée) and I play a lot of games with very little confrontation. Because of this, any time there is some confrontation I usually just avoid it and take the path of less conflict. Unfortunately I like games with confrontation, so this means that many of the games I would like to get to the table don’t make it. So a few weeks ago I started looking into games with nothing but confrontation, but not cut throat or backstabby, thinking that this would eliminate that choice we have to make between good and evil. This is when I found Summoner Wars.
Sure enough, the feedback after our first play was all positive! Of course it helps that she kicked by butt, but still… Lisa really enjoyed the chess like aspects of moving your units around the board and the simplicity of attacking. I agreed with her on most everything, except I would have liked to see more special units or at least a wider variety of special ability for the units. Many times we were attacking with the same types of units so it felt a bit samey, until we were able to build up enough magic to get the bigger guys on the board. Maybe this was because it was or first play, but I’m definitely looking forward to the reinforcement packs and extra factions to keep this game fresh. I highly recommend it for people who want to play a game with combat but might have a gaming partner that isn’t into war games or any other super confrontational type games.
Glen More
Glen More kind of snuck up on me after a few really positive reviews showed up on BoardGameGeek. The more I started looking into it, the more I thought that this might be a really good game to add to my collection. I’ve always been a fan of tile laying games for the simple fact that it feels like the game is building in front of your eyes. The other thing that moved this game up my wishlist was the way it handles collection of the tiles and turn order. Glen More has mechanics that are not duplicated by any other game in my collection. I’ve played a few 2 player games and one 5 player game. Each game was equally interesting and enjoyable. The only real difference was downtime in the 5 player game. If one of the players jumps way ahead on the path, they could be waiting a while before getting to go again. Obviously this is supposed to be in the game as a deterrent to jump way ahead of everyone else. We really love this game and I cannot recommend it enough...especially since it’s only around 20 dollars!
Tikal II
I am a big fan of the original Tikal, so when I heard that there was going to be a sequel it definitely got my attention. Well after more and more information came out on Tikal II, it was apparent that this was going to be a sequel in name only. The game looks and plays much different than the original, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Some of the issues people had with the first one were the amount of possible analysis paralysis from players trying to decide on their 10 available actions and also the fact that it just didn’t play as well 2 players. Those 2 items were ones that the designers specifically called out as being things they wanted to fix in this newest version. And after playing a 2 player game, I can honestly say that they did a good job of keeping to their word. The game plays much quicker turn to turn and we felt that it played just fine 2 players. It was obvious that playing with more than 2 would make for a more competitive game, but with 2 it was still a fun experience. I recommend this game to people with kids or adults who like games with interesting decisions, but not so much that you can’t converse with the other players while the game is going on.
Be on the lookout more New To Me Games next week!
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Like you, I'm a major Tikal fan, so I'd definitely like to try the sequel sometime. Looking forward to your next reviews.
