An Average Gamer - Reviews in 500 Words

This little small box game falls right in the sweet spot for me so it was easy to decide to back it on Kickstarter. Shardhunters  by Lycan Studio  just arrived and I was able to pull it out and play a couple of quick hands of it. I don't know if any of the normal terms apply for describing it. It involves blind bidding during the Hunt phase to try and collect Monsters since the person with the most monsters at the end of a Hunt gets a "shard." Why do you want shards? Well, you use them to buy more Shard Hunters and the first person to win a Hunt with 5 Hunters is the winner. While I am not sure the theme makes sense if you think too long about it, the game play is definitely challenging. Trying to guess whether your opponents will bid low or high during a particular combat and then bid enough to beat them while also planning your strategy for the next 3 combats of the Hunt keeps things interesting. The Hunters add special rules to each Hunt which will make it easier t...

I backed this one probably for the same reason many others did... I wanted a game that felt like the cult classic Tremors movie (and series of Sci Fi channel spin-offs that were just plain goofy fun.) But I am going to talk about the retail version of Terror Below by Renegade Game Studios and not all the kickstarter add-ons and upgrades. The retail version runs about $45. The components for the game are excellent. Plastic worm eggs and rubble, wooden cars and a decent quality game board. The cards seem a bit thin and the dice are so-so, but overall, the quality rates well, especially for the price. In the game, each player takes on the role of a hunter/collector/survivor trying to find worm eggs and deliver them to specific locations, which gain you victory points. There are also bounties in play that you can get to increase your victory points. The first one to reach 20 points wins. Each character starts with a an item (in our first game we had a dog with a sharpened st...

I picked up the starter box of Star Wars Destiny from Fantasy Flight Games for my brother-in-law because he is a huge Star Wars fan. Like most starter sets, Destiny provides you with the bare bones to get started. You get Rey and Poe versus Kylo and Phasma. This is a collectible dice and card game. Personally, I am not generally a fan of collectible games. I think they reward players with more money and disadvantage those with less. But, that truly only applies when playing competitively. If you are just playing with friends who like the setting and don't care about buying up all the best combinations, then any collectible game can be fun (I play Magic with my nephew and though we occasionally buy packs, we don't go out trying to buy specific cards to help us win). The dice in Destiny are used to gain resources and for combat. The cards get you extra dice or special abilities that are triggered based on how you roll. The dice and cards can also gain you Shields whic...

After 2 weeks off, post GenCon and some family trips, we're back talking about the games we have on the table.  With family obligations I have only been able to get in some light, quick games and one of the ones that my young nieces adore is  Dungeon Mayhem by  Wizards of the Coast . This 2-4 player game is light on rules and plays in about 10 minutes. Each player takes the role of one of 4 adventurers (Sutha the Barbarian, Oriax the Rogue, Lia the Paladin, or Azzan the Wizard). Your goal is to beat (knock out in my niece’s world) the other players and claim all the treasure in the dungeon for yourself. This is not a think-y game in the least. With your cards you deal damage to other players, heal yourself, put out defenses or draw more cards. This is a player elimination/king of the hill type game with each character having 10 health and once it reaches 0, that player is out. But since the game plays quickly, even with younger kids, no one is...