KillSquad EA review

Killsquad is an action RPG that has tight combat that flows just right. Currently there are 4 classes you can play, which all play differently. You earn credits from and during missions. You use these to buy items, which hopefully are upgrades for your character. The first few hours are a blast, but sadly after that the missions start to look and feel the same. The few items you get per mission are just not enough to keep the interest flowing. It's EA so I expect them to obviously add more to the game as it's advances, but in the current state I'd wait on buying it. I've seen too many games abandoned or just released half done these days to warrant paying $25 for what's here right now.

Assembly Build Solve Escape - Board Game Review

Overview

 

Build, Solve and Escape is the goal of this 1 or 2 player strategic cooperative game. After a virus has wiped out all but you and one other person if playing coop, the onboard computer decides to complete the virus's job by eliminating anyone left. Sounds like the start to a bad syfy show right? To be fair in this situation the computer is just trying to prevent the virus from reaching Earth and wiping out the population. To escape, you must match module tokens with the corresponding rooms and get them locked. Randomly the rooms are put in a circle like a clock with each room representing an hour, so you have 12 total. Than one module is put out to start the game. It's randomly drawn and assigned to it's position by a dice roll. This is how all the module placements start out.

Each player draws 3 cards from the shared action deck, these show the different actions you can take. This includes, putting a new module on the board, locking 2 modules that are in the correct rooms, rotating all the unlocked modules either clockwise or counterclockwise, or swapping 2 modules. There is a wild card and some that can rotate both ways as well. These only come into play as the game progresses. Before you play your action card, you get to ask your partner if they can complete one of the operations. They may only respond with a yes or no, then all communication is done for that turn.  To do an action you both need to have an action card in hand with that action on it.  So as the active player you play you ask your partner can you lock? They say "No". Now your in a bit of a pickle, because you need to still have a viable action that will help you towards your goal as well as hope your partner has that same action in hand. knowing your partner can't lock you take a chance and play a swap card, luckily it gets verified by your partner, so you complete the action. You use that card and put it into the discard pile and draw back up to 3 cards.need to verify the action or deny it if they can't match it. The player that verifies is not suppose to show any cards, but since they verified you know they have a swap card in hand.  The none active player does not discards a card unless the action fails. In that case the action card played is lost and the none active player also has to discard a card. You can also play all 3 of the cards from your hand to do a wild card, that allows you to try any action, but your partner still needs to verify it.

 I've mostly only played this cooperatively, I did play it once solo to experience it. It's a lot like a lucky shuffle and dice roll eccentric game of Solitaire. This game really shines with 2 players, in fact I would only buy it if that is how you plan to play it mostly. It's easy to learn, and has simple win and lose conditions, speaking of which you win when you lock all 12 rooms, and lose if you get through the action deck 3 times.

Video Game Comparison

 

While there are a lot of puzzle games for both platforms, the cooperative side of it isn't usually found in video games. With that said some of my favorite that share the cooperative side are; The "We Were Here" series or "Tick Tock a Tale for Two". If you enjoyed either one of those then Assembly will be right up your alley.

Final Thoughts 

 

Overall I really like Assembly, but for serious board gamers this will not tickle the itch of a deep puzzle game. You can play perfectly and still lose due to how reliant it is on luck, both of the card draws and dice rolls. Once you figure out the way it goes, it's really only a matter of having the right cards and luck. It's a great causal game that none gamers will be able to pick up and enjoy.

We played a session on Tabletopia please check it out!

British Vs Pirates Board Game Review

British Vs Pirates

AHOY MATEYS! Prepare your sea legs as today Mature Minded Gamers brings you our review of British Vs Pirates by Exocrate Games. A mix of Skirmish/Pick up and Deliver/Resource/Management, British Vs Pirates is a 2-6 player game that blends action and adventure in a High Seas battle royale. Pick from (at time of review) Six Factions. British, Pirates, Buccaneers, French, South Sea Alliance or the Spanish Armada. Each one provides a unique selection of Captains with various Skills and attributes. Including but not limited to grappling and repelling. Each Captain has a Morale Value that functions as a resource to play faction ability cards out of your hand. This deck of cards are unique per faction and provide depth one shot abilities to change the tide of battle. And lets not forget the reason your really wanting to play this game, the ships!

Each Faction has a unique selection of ships and each have small, medium, and large classes. Within each class their are numerous unique boats, variations of the same class including cannon size, hull points, maneuverability and speed. While British Vs Pirates is not the most refined set of rules, it does provides an easier, faster and shorter game than similar style combat system games such as Battle-tech from Catalyst, while scratching that same itch.

Game-play:

 

During your turn you activate each of your ships, then play proceeds to the following player. With each of those ships you will be taking one of 2 actions. Sailing then Shooting or Shooting then Sailing. Unless you drop your anchor you are required to sail at least one space. However, by dropping the anchor you leave your self open to attacks from the front or the rear arc. Sailing your ship can change drastically depending on the wind, so getting around you opponent isn't as easy as it sounds. Smaller Class ships like the Sloop moves faster into the wind, but slower against. While large ships fair better against the wind, they are slower with the wind at there back. You choose to either pivot (turn) your ship (up to its Pivot Value) then move or  move then Pivot (again up to its Pivot Value). The wind is determined by a weather vain miniature that is placed in the center of the map. It can be changed by playing faction cards and using the appropriate amount of morale printed on the card. With obstacles in the way such other ships, islands, storms and sea monsters the waters are always treacherous. You see, in BvP positioning means something. Well more than something, it mean EVERYTHING. Each Ship has an armor value that is different on each facing of the ship. Generally speaking the fore and aft (front and back) have lower armor than the port or starboard (left and right) and are more prone to being brought down. Once an armor is reduce on a particular side of the ship that mean each shot coming into your ship from that side will be going straight to your structure (hull). Unless you are wanting to sleep with Davy Jones at the bottom of the deep blue, this is not good.

Combat is a very fun aspect of the game. It brings the importance of maneuvering your ship into position to attack and target a certain side of an enemy ship whilst ensuring your particular ship is at the right distance to achieve maximum damage. For example your may have a ship that rolls 3d6 while it is 3 hexes away from the enemy and 1d6 within one. Or you may have chose and same class of ship that is the complete opposite. You roll a d6 than add you weapons accuracy which again is different for each ship. Each die roll plus modifiers needs to be higher than the target's armor. For each successful hit to the armor on that side of the ship, the armor is reduced by 1. Making each future shot on that same side easier to succeed.

Components:

 

The Components of the game are kind of mixed. While the models for the ships are mostly unique in both size, sculpt and color. Exocrate did go with a VERY cheap quality plastic. The art is the real champion here. Each of the Captain and Ship cards have some amazingly colorful and quite honestly
beautiful unique artwork. The Card quality is standard board game and is neither top notch nor bottom of the barrel. The game does come with a bunch of colored d6 that serve the purpose for what is needed in the game.

Video Game Comparison:

If your a fan of Battletech by Harebrained Schemes, Sea of Thieves by Rare and Pirates of the Burning Sea Flying Lab Games. we encourage you take a look at British Vs Pirates by Exocrate Games.

It lends itself to Battletechs damage grid style combat quite well making deterministic damage selection easy yet satisfying. Sea of Thieves in way of movement, where wind plays a huge factor in positioning and control. And finally Pirates of the Burning Sea in captain selection, ship design and weapons selection.

Final Thoughts:

 

I am reviewing the game based on the Vol 2 rules and features and It does need to be said that Vol 2 adds a lot of missing flair and flavor of Game play mechanics. Such as random events, advancement movement and forts. All features that really make this game what it is Also, it does seem a little strange to me coming from playing a lot of skirmish/war-games, the ships and/or captain do not have points totals, so games can seem unbalanced. For Example the South Sea Alliance has Huge Ships that are beefier in defense without much draw back in maneuverability, speed or firepower. We played the game with several player counts and 1v1 seems like the best with 1 or 2 ships each. More players just adds to much down time and the potential for one of your ships to be crippled before you have a chance to react.

All in all we did enjoy this game. A wonderful Beers and pretzels game that is highly tactical, while simple and entertaining. So grab some brews, put on your eye patch and shiver me timbers!

E-Sports Life Tycoon - Review

I had fun for the first few hours, but it does get repetitive pretty fast. Leveling up your team and their characters is cool, but the  training you do to prepare for each match gets old real quick. I liked the manual battles it adds to the matches and makes you really get into it. Overall for $15 it's a decent game that I hope they continue to expand upon. What they got right now is good, but not very long lasting.  I streamed my first 90 minutes of game play if you'd like see it.