Heavy Games 16 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Cutthroat Caverns

A perfect balance of cooperative gameplay and back-stabbing goodness.

An artifact of untold power lies in your hands. To claim it, you must escape the caverns alive. No less than nine horrific beasts stand in your way – that, and the greed of the other players.

In this game of kill-stealing, you decide whether to swing for a whopping 50 points of damage – or hold back, awaiting a more opportune time to strike. Only the final blow matters if you are to score the kill. Hold back or sabotage other’s plans too much – and the entire party will die, without a winner.

In 1960: The Making of the President, you take on the role of Kennedy or Nixon, protagonists vying for the right to lead their country into the heart of the Cold War. However, it is not just foreign policy that poses a challenge to American leadership; this is also an era of great social turmoil. As the United States continues to build upon the promise of its founding, candidates must contend with the question of civil rights and balance their positions on social justice against the need for valuable Southern electoral votes. Of course, the ever-present issue of the economy also rears its ugly head, and both Nixon and Kennedy will compete to be the candidate with the voters’ pocket books in mind.

A STORYTELLING BOARD GAME SET IN THE 1970s COLD WAR ERA.

SMERSH is a portmanteau of two Russian words that translates to “Death to Spies.” It operated as a counter-intelligence agency by the Red Army during the 1940s. Despite having had a large number of paid employees, little was known about the agency until recently when Russia opened their archives.

Agents of SMERSH is a cooperative Storytelling game that pits players as UN Secret Service Spies set in an alternate 1970s timeline against a newly formed and independent SMERSH. The game will be able to accommodate play with either The Encounter Book that contains over 1500 written encounters with a similar reaction matrix to Tales of the Arabian Nights – or played more simply with only encounter cards with shorter encounters and no matrix. Agents of SMERSH includes custom dice to determine success or failure of encounters, and more strategic play from what is typically expected of a Storytelling board game. There are plenty of James Bond gadgets, guns, cars, pop references and detailed artwork – not to mention a touch of humor. The game features the artwork of George Patsouras (The Resistance & Flash Point).

Keyflower is a game for two to six players played over four rounds. Each round represents a season: spring, summer, autumn, and finally winter. Each player starts the game with a “home” tile and an initial team of eight workers, each of which is colored red, yellow, or blue. Workers of matching colors are used by the players to bid for tiles to add to their villages. Matching workers may alternatively be used to generate resources, skills and additional workers, not only from the player’s own tiles, but also from the tiles in the other players’ villages and from the new tiles being auctioned.

In spring, summer, and autumn, more workers will arrive on board the Keyflower and her sister boats, with some of these workers possessing skills in the working of the key resources of iron, stone, and wood. In each of these seasons, village tiles are set out at random for auction. In the winter, no new workers arrive, and the players select the village tiles for auction from those they received at the beginning of the game. Each winter village tile offers VPs for certain combinations of resources, skills, and workers. The player whose village and workers generate the most VPs wins the game.

In Warrior Knights, each player takes on the role of a Baron vying for control of the Kingdom. Each Baron commands four faithful Nobles who lead his armies into battle. Each Baron seeks to capture cities in order to gain Influence (victory points), which is used to measure his claim to the throne. Barons may also seek to gain advantage by increasing their income, gathering Votes to use at the Assembly, or by amassing Faith, which can be used to gain a measure of control over chance events. Only through cunning strategy and careful diplomacy can a Baron hope to attain victory.

Darkest Night, by designer Jeremy Lennert, is a fully-cooperative board game for one to four players (up to six with variants), set in a kingdom broken under a necromancer’s shadow. Each player takes on the role of one of the kingdom’s last heroes (nine playable characters), each with a unique set of special abilities, just as they hatch a plan to save the realm.

Searching the kingdom provides new powers and equipment to strengthen you and your party, as well as the keys that can unlock the holy relics and defeat the necromancer. You can acquire many powerful abilities—unique to each hero—that can help to fight the undead, elude the necromancer’s forces, accelerate your searches for items and artifacts, and more. The knight is a brave and powerful warrior; the prince can rally and inspire the people; the scholar excels at locating and restoring the treasures of the past.

But ravenous undead roam the realm, and as the necromancer continues to build his power base, he blights the land and his army steadily grows. As the game wears on, the necromancer becomes more and more powerful, creating blights more quickly and effectively. If an area becomes too blighted, it gets overrun—and the monastery receives the spillover. And if the monastery is ever overrun, the necromancer wins and the kingdom is swallowed in darkness!

Before the monastery falls, it’s up to you and your party to defeat the necromancer in one of two ways: If you can gather three holy relics and bring them all back to the monastery, you can perform a powerful ritual to break the necromancer’s power and scour the land of the undead. Alternatively, you can try to defeat the necromancer in direct combat—but be warned, he will readily sacrifice his minions to save himself.

Can you save the kingdom from darkness? Do you have the courage, the cunning and the will to withstand the necromancer and his forces? Strategize, plan and bring out the best of your abilities to end our Darkest Night!

The Capo is getting old and about to retire. You think. Maybe it’s time for you to make your moves from behind the scenes, to put the gangsters into play that support your goals. Will you gain the most respect?

Nothing Personal is a game for 3-5 players. Players attempt to gain the most respect in five turns (five years) by amassing respect amongst the mafia through influence, negotiation, blackmail and bribery.

Players take turns playing influence cards to take control of gangsters and work them up the chain of power. Each position and gangster has their own special abilities that give players the edge they need to accrue the respect they deserve – to become the Boss of Bosses.

Assuming the role of one of the greatest sorcerers of the time, you will be participating in the legendary tournament of the 12 Seasons.

Your goal is to raise the most victory points by gathering energy, summoning familiars and magic items. If you amass enough crystals and symbols of prestige, you will become the kingdom’s most illustrious mage. Optimize the cards through skilful combinations, using the seasons wisely to access the energies of crystals and become the the new Archmage of the kingdom of Xidit.

In a first phase, select 9 power cards at the same time as your opponents. Do the right choices, because they will determine the rest of the game. Acclimatize to the season to make the most of the actions proposed by each roll of the dice! Collect energies, invoke magical and familiar objects, and collect enough crystals, symbols of prestige.

Sekigahara is a simple 3-hour block game based on the campaign in 1600 that unified Japan. Hidden information on blocks & cards, but no dice. Cards are not events (this isn’t a typical “card-driven wargame”) but rather motivation (suited by clan). Units fight only when a matching card is produced.

Get ready to enter the poor and dreary Whitechapel district in London 1888 – the scene of the mysterious Jack the Ripper murders – with its crowded and smelly alleys, hawkers, shouting merchants, dirty children covered in rags who run through the crowd and beg for money, and prostitutes – called “the wretched” – on every street corner.

The board game Letters from Whitechapel, which plays in 90-150 minutes, takes the players right there. One player plays Jack the Ripper, and his goal is to take five victims before being caught. The other players are police detectives who must cooperate to catch Jack the Ripper before the end of the game. The game board represents the Whitechapel area at the time of Jack the Ripper and is marked with 199 numbered circles linked together by dotted lines. During play, Jack the Ripper, the Policemen, and the Wretched are moved along the dotted lines that represent Whitechapel’s streets. Jack the Ripper moves stealthily between numbered circles, while policemen move on their patrols between crossings, and the Wretched wander alone between the numbered circles.

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