Month: April 2019

Organ Attack is a fun and silly card game that is absolutely savage when you play it with competitive friends. In this game, you are given a set of organs that you have to protect. These are displayed in front of you for all players to see. In your hand, you have cards with medicines to defend your organs – but you are also given deathly diseases and ailments used to damage your opponent’s organs. There are specific diseases that effect specific organs, as well as some that are general and can affect any of them. There are also cards that are defensive or reactive, such as the “contagious” card – once someone attacks one of your organs, you can then attack theirs.

Generally, it takes two diseases to remove an organ from the game, but there are some stronger cards that count as two. There is even a card that allows you to steal someone’s organ (this will 100% end in a life long vendetta between you and your friends if you play this card). The game ends when only one person is left with organs. As in life, there are only certain diseases that can affect certain organs (ex. the appendicitis card will only affect the appendix), but there are other cards that can affect multiple organs of your choosing. This often limits who you can attack, as it can only be whoever has the organs that correspond to the diseases you have in your hand. You can strategically freeze yourself, or freeze your opponents, to protect yourself from attacks or prevent an opponent from playing cards.

Recently, the creators of this game added an extension so the game can play up to six players, which is the exact size of my friend group, so I was very excited. The art for this game was done by Awkward Yeti, who created the popular “Heart and Brain” comic series.

Mechanics

Strategy – There is definitely a level of strategy in who you attack and when (it is more dangerous to piss off certain friends over others!). Trying to decide if you should freeze yourself or someone else, focus on one organ or try to get multiple, and who to retaliate against when they attack you all give this game a fun level of strategy.

Aesthetic – I absolutely love when games make their packaging fun. The box for Organ Attack looks like a little book, and has the medical staff on the front – it’s super cute! The art on the cards is another great thing about this game. Every card has a little joke, and it just adds an extra level of hilarity to the game.

Elimination – One thing that I am not a fan of in most games is the element of elimination. I would rather there be one action that ends a game than a mechanic that allows a player to be eliminated. If other players happen to get all the cards that correspond to your organs and you are removed from the game right away, then you just have to sit there and wait for everyone else to be done. If there was one improvement I would make to this game, it would be to remove the possibility of elimination.

Overall, I give Organ Attack a 7.5/10

Sunken Sailor is a great party game that can be played with a large number of people. With a twist on the set up of a classic drawing and guessing game, you don’t want to make your drawing too good, or else you won’t get any points! Everyone is given a card. Each card contains part of a story, told from the perspective of different people in a ship (some of the stories are pretty suggestive, this is not a game for children!). Within the story text, there is an underlined word – that is what you are trying to draw. One card does not have part of a story, but has something implying they were not all there the night of the story, therefore cannot remember – this person is the “sunken sailor”.

Each player is given a different colored crayon. On their turn, they can draw something, but their turn ends once the crayon is lifted from the page, and each player gets two chances to draw. Everyone is expected to draw part of the underlined word, but here is the trick – the sunken sailor, who is picked in secret at random, does not know what is on the card. They get to guess what the image was at the end. If they guess it right, they get more points. At the same time, players are trying to draw enough to prove that they know what the secret word is so they can reveal who the sunken sailor is. At the end of a round, players get to examine the drawing, then point to who they think the sailor is. Once revealed, the sailor guesses what the secret word was.

Here is an example of what a round might look like. The secret word here was “storm”:

In this example, the light blue color is the sunken sailor. You can tell because they drew generic things that would be in most sea-themed cards – the ocean and a boat. While the word may not be obvious to people who don’t know what the word is, all players who knew it was “storm” would be able to tell who was who. A dark cloud, rain drop, lighting bolt, and big, dangerous waves. If it had been too obvious, then the sailor can guess it.

Mechanics

Party numbers – Having a fairly large friend group, I often have a hard time finding a game that plays more than four people. Luckily, Sunken Sailor plays up to eight, and it is already set up to be a fun party game.

Random chance – Because the sunken sailor is drawn at random, it adds an extra element of mystery to the game. At the same time, I have had situations where one unfortunate person has been the sailor three times in a row, and then we have to get new cards

Replay-ability – an issue that any game with guessing cards has is that the cards are finite – after playing many times through, you know what is on most of the cards, and it makes guessing a little easier for the sailor.

Aesthetic – My favorite thing about this game is that the company really went the extra mile to make all of the parts of this game pretty and uniform. It is just super cute to look at. The lid of the wood box slides off and becomes the clip board for the drawing to be done on. Even the crayons and paper are branded.

Humor – The cards could have just had the secret word on it, but the creators went the extra mile to create humorous and NSFW stories, which I think is essential for any party game. What’s better than having a good laugh with your friends?

Conclusion

Overall, I give this game an 8/10. As a party game, it is just a ton of fun. It is especially fun if you get a group of 21+ and live true to being a sunken sailor. It makes everything even more funny. If you have a goofy group, you’ll have a great time with this game.

Pantone is a colorful and creative game that is great to play with friends. The game comes with a box of colorful cards that players have to use to make their partner guess who they are creating. Characters that players can create can be real people or fictional. With only four cards of each color and limited time, the prompts create a challenge for players to make their character clear. Pantone is played in teams of two – one person creates and the other guesses, then it switches. If your partner can’t guess who you made, the other team gets a chance to answer. The prompt gives hints for you to read to other players, with each hint becoming more obvious as people guess incorrectly. The less hints you need to guess, the more points your team is awarded.

Here is an example of the kind of picture you would be trying to make. See if you can guess who this is!

Hopefully you were able to guess that it was Elsa from Frozen, meaning that my Pantone skills are fantastic. If you were not able to guess it, that means I need more practice (or that you need to watch Frozen again, just saying).

Mechanics

Competition – The team element of this game adds just the right level of competition to keep things interesting as players try to create and guess. If you’re playing with a close group of friends, it’s also really fun to roast each other when the creations are absolutely horrible.

Aesthetic – One of my favorite things about this game is just how nice it is to look at (which is why it’s the header image of this website and my Twitter!). The whole thing is based around colors, so the box is filled with what are basically paint swatches.

Packaging – This sounds like a really weird and minor thing to care about, but I love it when everything has a place in the box. When playing Pantone, players are constantly grabbing new cards from the box. Since there’s a limited building time, if a card gets stuck it can really slow you down. Pantone has solved this issue by putting a slope from the middle of each card slot, meaning that the card can teeter back and forth if needed. It’s a small but really useful touch.

Strategy – If you are someone who pretty much exclusively plays strategy games, this is not the game for you. If you aren’t a creative person, you may struggle a little to be good at this game. You can still do well, but you might be on a different wavelength from your partner. You can still have a lot of fun playing this game, but you need a good sense of humor if your friends roast you over bad creations.

Gameplay – This game has the same issues as any pop-culture guessing game – after a while, you get to know the cards, so if you’re playing against someone who has never played, they’re at a bit of a disadvantage. There’s also a possibility that players won’t know the character on the card, which gets tricky.

Conclusion

I really love this game. My friends and I are very comfortable with each other and we have a lot of specific jokes about certain characters that are fun to try to draw out. That being said, I consider myself to be a visual and creative person, so Pantone fits me very well. If you are not either of these things, you may not feel the same way. Overall, I give this game an 8/10

Overview

 

Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is a game that has a great mixture of teamwork, strategy, chance, and story. Players are CDC employees who work through 12 stages (the 12 months of the year) to save humanity from ever-spreading diseases. Depending on which character you pick, players have different abilities, such as removing more disease cubes or being able to move another character’s piece on your turn. I played this game with three of my closest friends. My character was the medic, so I was able to pick up more disease cubes and stop the spread of certain diseases once cured.

The diseases are spread by drawing city cards at random to see where the disease spreads next, but if an Epidemic card is found, cities that have already been drawn are shuffled and placed on top of the deck, increasing the amount of disease in a city, which could lead to an outbreak. The game is won by curing all four diseases, which you do by collecting cards that match the color of the disease. There are several ways that players can lose the game:

• There are no more cards for players to draw
• There have been eight different outbreaks during the game
• All disease markers of any disease have been placed

In this version of Pandemic, the consequences of the decisions you make in one stage will continue to effect you in the next one. If you played the original, you’ll love the Legacy version for all the twists and turns that it involves. Here are some of the biggest differences:

• Every time there is an outbreak, a sticker with a number between 1 and 5 (depending on how many outbreaks) is placed next to it, which effects the game play more as it escalates
• Character cards can be changed with different abilities, relationships with other characters, or damage that could eventually lead to your character dying (you have to rip up the card, which is a difficult thing for any board game fan to bring themselves to do).
• Each round has certain objectives that you have to complete to win, rather than just curing all four diseases
• You have two chances to win each of the twelve rounds, and if you lose a round twice, you can still continue to progress
• There are certain upgrades and game changes after each round

**Disclaimer: If you care about spoilers for the story of this game at all, do not read this section**

The first round of this game starts like any other Pandemic game – there are four diseases that are spreading across the world, and the four CDC members have to move around to stop the spread and cure the diseases. Once you pull the first epidemic card, things start to get different. Whichever disease has spread the most at this point has mutated, and cannot be cured (for us, it was the black disease, which was mostly in the Middle East). As the game progresses, this disease becomes more difficult to cure, and eventually mutates further to create essentially zombies.

It is also revealed that the government was the one who made the zombie disease, and you were accidentally helping them. The objectives change, and you spend the last couple rounds curing the zombies and toppling the government. One of the players is even revealed to have been in on it the whole time, and you have to rip up their card when reveal, forcing you to basically negate any upgrades you have given that character, and it truly feels like a punch to the gut (shout out to my friend Katie, who was devastated when it turned out she was the traitor).

 

**spoilers have ended**

Mechanics

 

I have heard people complain that you can only play through Legacy games one time. While this is true, I believe that the number of times you play it makes up for it. Since you can play each of 12 rounds twice if needed, you will play this game anywhere between 12 and 24 times. My group played it 17 times. There are few games that I know I played 17 times, so for me, I think it was worth the money.

I hate elimination mechanics in games. It’s no fun when someone is eliminated super early and just has to sit around while the others finish. Pandemic: Legacy gets around this by allowing you to choose a new character if yours dies, and there are a bunch of choices to pick from.

Wrap up

 

Overall, I would give Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 a 9.5/10. It is addictive and has a great plot. All of the elements are beautifully themed and you get a lot of play out of it. My one complaint is that the directions can be a little bit hard to follow because there’s just so much going on. As a whole, it is a fantastic game that I would recommend for anyone.