Thunderstone Advance Towers of Ruin - First play review

Thunderstone Advance Tower of Ruins

For 1-5 players

Play time 2-3 hours

Setup time 15 mins

Teaching time 30 mins

So I was craving for some solid dungeon delving, deck building game and a friend got himself this (Thunderstone Advance). So we quickly arranged a session one Saturday when we had the time.

This game gives you oh-such-an-experience. You basically build your deck by buying/upgrading heroes, equipment, items, villagers and stuff. Then get ready to delve into the dungeon. The deeper you go, the darker it gets, the more the penalty for darkness. There's only one reason why as an adventurer you go deep into dangerous territory - to kill off some monsters of course. The more monsters you kill, the more victory points you add into your deck. Once the boss monster comes out and is defeated, all victory points are added up and the player with the most victory points win the game.

Disclaimer: this review is only after my first game. I have not played the base set Thunderstone or any other of the sets or expansions for that matter. Once I have a few more plays under my belt, then I might add another review. You may take this review as a first impression to an average gamer.

Components 8/10

The number of cards were impressive. Something like 500-600 cards so if you wish to buy this, do include sleeve costs of an additional half the price of the game itself. And yes, you definitely want to buy sleeves because you are going to do a lot of shuffling in this game and games to come.

The insert holds the cards even in sleeves. They used bigger cards as a separators for the various cards (these you don't have to sleeve) which have the names of the different cards written on top for easier sorting. They do look good in the box but I'd prefer slightly bigger cards for sorting so that I don't need to pull them up to see the names written on top. Still they make sorting so much easier as compared to other deck building games like Dominion.

They also provided a board printed double sided. It looks good and will last for many games. This is where most of the cards are placed and where you will be looking at all of the time if not looking at your hand of cards. So yes, the board is a pretty significant component to this game, something I wished Dominion or Elder Sign had.

Game Mechanics 7/10

If you have played deck building games before or know how to play them then skip to the next paragraph. For those of you who are new to the genre, deck building basically takes the fun of building decks with trading card games and makes it into a card game mechanic itself. And trust me, it is fun. You will start with a base deck of 12 cards (in thunderstone at least) and build your deck as the game goes along. Every turn, you will draw a number of cards into your hand to use. Whether you use all of the cards or not, at the end of your turn you discard them all into the discard pile. When your draw deck runs out of cards, you shuffle your discard pile and this becomes your new draw deck. In this way, the cards get "recycled".  Each card will have a cost and a monetary value. You can use cards to buy other cards to give you more or better abilities. The cards that you buy go into the discard pile and will be available to use when you reshuffle your deck and draw them into your hand. Newer players will need to go through the draw deck at least once to understand that discarding cards in this game is not a bad thing. In fact, you don't just want to discard cards, you want to destroy the cards that will not benefit your hand in the long run. That's deck building 101 for you. Now let's get to the gist of this game's gameplay.

Once you know the basics of deck-building, the rest of the gameplay is not too much different than other deck building games. In Thunderstone, you gain victory points by going into the dungeon and defeating mosnters. Each monster has a certain number of victory points, and not just that, some of them have a trophy or ability you can use when added to your hand. As monsters get killed, more come out of the dungeon deck until the Boss of evil comes out. Defeat him and the game is over. Victory points are summed up and the player who has the most Victory Points win the game.

During a turn, the active player may choose either to go to the village to "suit up" or to the dungeons to fight monsters. You cannot do both. Suppose you are not equipped to fight monsters and you do not have enough money to buy stuff or you do not wish to buy anything, then you may choose to either Rest which means destroying (culling) one card in your current hand, or Prepare which means keeping a number of cards in your hand for your next turn, discarding the rest and drawing up to 6 cards into your hand.

There are monetary values on each card and you can use those to buy other cards (equipments, heroes, items, villagers). Unlike Dominion where a card by itself is considered monetary value, a card in Thunderstone has monetary value on all of the cards including heroes and items. This, in my opinion, is a better mechanic because you have more room for strategy - fight or buy stuff?

A good strategy is to cull your deck and destroy all level 0 hero cards (they only give +1 physical attack). Get rid of the cards that would pull you down and keep upgrading your heroes. You can upgrade your heroes by using up XP which you gain when you defeat monsters. A good deck is one where it guarantees every hand you draw will win you something good.

Oh I almost forgot. Throughout the game, you get a pet in the form of a "familiar". This one card is very helpful and you get this by killing your first monster. Then you draw two cards and pick the one that you feel will benefit your strategy. Every player will get only one throughout the whole game so choose wisely.

Replayability 9/10

The replayability is unending from a first timer's perspective. In each game, you will only use three types of monsters and 4 types of level 1-3 heroes. I heard from the friend that there are 20 different types of monsters and 20 different types of heroes. The cards we used for our first game didn't even cover half the number of cards provided. So yes, the replayability is high in my opinion. However, someday you will have used all your cards (especially if you play lots of solo games) and then you might get bored. Then get the expansions and God knows there are so many. Definitely high on the replayability scale.

Gameplay 7/10

I love the idea of dungeon crawling in the form of deck building. I love the idea that we could "level up" and buy weapons and armor. However, when we played this game, it came a bit short for me. I think it was because we could buy heroes. Heroes are meant to level up so how can you buy them? You can also buy multiple of the same heroes to ensure you have enough physical strength to battle the monsters. Per game you get to upgrade to 4 hero types and you get to buy 5 different weapons/armor, which was a bit little in my opinion. There are some specialized weapons that could only help dwarfs and some heroes that had special abilities. Other than that, we just look at their physical attack value. In other words, we are playing heroes with one stat - Physical attack (or better known as strength to the regular dungeon crawlers out there). No defense or speed, no accuracy or magic. Even the magic attacks just stack onto physical attacks.

Thunderstone gives a dumbed-down experience of dungeon crawling without the maps, stats, movement strategy, etc. It is a streamlined dungeon crawling in the form of deck building. Which does not mean the game is not fun. Hey, I rated a 7 for gameplay so it must have its pluses.

Yes, yes it does and is fun. The many cards on the board keep you occupied most of the time, even if it is not yet your turn. We played a 4 player game and the downtime was barely felt (although there were times when some other player was also busy looking at the board they did not even know it had reached their turn, which was frustrating for the rest of us and took a longer time for us to play). Every turn feels very significant, every decision is important. Do I destroy the bad cards this turn or buy a card to strengthen my deck? Do I have enough Physical attacks to kill a monster this turn. The strategy and tactical depth is deep enough to keep a heavy gamer engrossed.

I love the idea of having a pet Familiar. When you draw this card, it stays by your side until you use it to help you out. Some pets don't help you out so much like the one I drew during this game. But it definitely is a good idea. I can imagine myself lurking in the dungeons with my pet beside me. The thought of going into darkness doesn't seem as scary anymore.

For the dungeon deck, we arranged it according to the different levels of monsters (level 1 shuffled and placed at the top, level 2s in the middle and level 3s at the bottom with the Boss). This made much more sense as monsters get stronger and stronger rather than drawing level 3 monsters at the beginning of the game.

During our game, I started out with the worst of lucks. I drew all heroes and no weapons, then all weapons and torches but no heroes. Then my luck grew worse as the game progressed. I decided to cull my deck a lot and only get the necessary cards that I needed (thanks to my friend who owns this game for the strategy tip). Pretty soon, I could draw some pretty descent hands and played them really quickly to kill lots of monsters. I won the game with 31 Victory points and my friend who owned the game tagged behind at 28 (although he killed the Boss).

Overall 7/10

I'm not saying this is a good game because I won. That would make this review useless. It is the experience that matters to me. Did I have a good time playing Thunderstone? Yes, I did. Was the experience worth the time and effort? Yes, it was. Was there enough strategy and tactical depth to keep me thinking even after the game ended? Yes. Was the social interaction between friends rich? Unfortunately, no. We mostly focused on our own decks and our own game strategy that there was not enough time to listen to another person's strategy or even converse about stuff. Though I'm grateful to my friend for teaching me how to build a good deck and watching how the others are playing. I guess all deck building games would suffer from player interaction unless a decision affects everyone else as well.

Though I enjoyed this game, I would not be playing it every game night. My heart still belongs to those nights where we shouted from across the table laughing about the antics of our friends and how our luck took a turn during games. Seeing the true colors of friends and how we can socialize over a board game still means something to me.

Thunderstone Advance Towers of Ruins. A good game if you're looking for a streamlined dungeon crawl, deck building game. Better than Dominion in my opinion but probably not for the casual gamers out there (It will kill some brain cells).

Pros:
-Deck building with level upgrades
-Heroes and many of them
-Combined with dungeon delving
-Plenty of cards = high replayability
-Beautiful components
-Hack and slash monsters
-Good strategy
-Engrossed in the board and cards most of the time

Cons:
-Lacking social interaction
-Not many elements of dungeon crawling


If you have played this, what did you think of the game? Feel free to leave me a comment on your opinion of it.

Pandemic Board Game Review

Pandemic

by ZMAN GAMES

for 2-4 players

Play time 1.5 hours

Setup time 10 mins

Teaching time 15 mins

Who ever thought everyone could actually win together in a board game? Pandemic is one of those games where you can. This is a cooperative game (the first of its kind) that has one of the best and classic designs. Everyone was so impressed by it that game designers decided to come up with more cooperative games and now we have a ton of them that has copied or tried to improve upon the basic idea of either everybody wins or everybody loses. And I think it's just brilliant.

My first cooperative game was Shadows over Camelot. This was introduced by a friend and it got me hooked to board games from then on... So cooperative games have a close place in my heart. Some time soon, I might just do a game review on Shadows over Camelot... 

In Pandemic, players will become a character/role that is part of a medical team of experts trying to cure the world of diseases which are infecting the world more and more during the whole duration of the game. There will be moments of "Ok we can control this", and as the game progresses, "Sh*t, we have to treat that one there. No this one, first. Sh*t we're going to lose.. Arrr!", to "Phew, that was a close one. What the ****, another Epidemic card?". Well, you get the idea.

Game components 9/10
The board is made with awesome material and the printing made to last. After 10+ games, nothing has deteriorated, no blunt edges or scratches, so a good quality board. Cards are a bit thin so i sleeved them to avoid damaged corners. You get wooden blocks for pawns.. And the coolest part are the translucent cubes in four different colors, 24 of each color. Then some other wooden components that make up research buildings, infection rate and outbreak rate.

The components do their job well so I have no complaints there. However, don't let your 2-year old get his hands on them. Otherwise, you'll be losing the game more often... (well it's true...)

Game Mechanics 8/10
Coop games have a very awesome mechanic in that every turn, each player will play the good guy and then the bad guy or vice versa depending on which sequence the game system decides to make you do first. Basically you're all ganging up to go against the game itself (or going against the designer if you wish to put it that way). All good coop games have this similarity - that it is never easy to win. So for the first few tries, you're definitely going to lose a few times. But that's ok, because the challenge will make you come back for more, and you'll be thinking about it night and day trying to figure out how to beat the freaking system.

At setup, every player gets a character card which depicts your role in the medical team and your special ability that will help the team if you use it well. Players will also be given a number of cards in hand with countries or events on them.

Then every turn, you can perform 4 actions which comprise of walking/driving/ferrying around the board, flying using the cards you have in your hand, building research stations to travel to and fro on the world map, treating diseases and finding cures. And trust me, 4 actions are not enough to do all you wish to do.

After deciding and executing the actions, the active player will draw 2 cards and resolve any Epidemic cards if they draw any. You may only have 7 cards in your hand at all times.

Then comes the bad event - infections. You will draw cards equal to the infection rate, and infect the said cities with disease cubes. Have more than three in a city, and an outbreak occurs which infects all the cities adjacent to that city. And if these cities have more than three cubes as well, a chain outbreak occurs. Sometimes, chains can happen three or four times and you'll be covering your eyes as your precious cities are engulfed by the likes of the flu virus.

There are 3 ways to lose this game and only 1 way to win. Have 8 outbreaks and you lose. Finish up all one color of disease cubes and if you cannot place the number of cubes required on the board, you lose. Finish your player deck and you lose (This helps to keep the playing time controlled but oh boy does this hurt your chances of winning). The only way to win is to find all four cures. You do not need to eradicate the diseases, just find the cures.

Repayability 8/10
The replayability factor in Pandemic comes mainly from the different roles available to you. Different combinations provide different advantages and a different way to strategize and a different way to play. Pandemic also gives you the option to tweak the difficulty of your game by adding or taking out Epidemic cards. That way if you're up for a greater challenge, just add one more in.

The expansions "On The Brink" and "In the Lab" provide you many variations which make you want to play the game more. I have not had the chance to play these yet, but from the reviews of some, it makes me want to get them.

Game Experience 8/10
I love it... Most of the time, you will think that you have got it covered and this game will be a breeze, until someone draws an Epidemic card.. and then chaos happens. The challenge it gives as a coop game makes me feel like I'm playing a chess game but at a cooperative level. We all want to win, and win together we will, if we unite our brains together and work as a team. And I love team play. The feeling that comes when we manage to find all the cures is exceptionally satisfying..

Sometimes I play this game solo as well. Since it's a multiplayer solitaire game, I play 2-3 players myself just for the mental challenge which refreshes me every time.

This game may be brain taxing for the more casual light gamers. Wifey doesn't like it because of the uncertainty of not knowing when and where the cubes will appear next, and also when Epidemics will happen. But I say bring it on...

So get a bunch of tough competitive gamers and force them to cooperate together to play this game. It will be a blast watching them squirm as they realize that no one person can gain the glory for himself/herself.

Overall 8/10
A good rating for a good game. Pandemic will do justice for regular board gamers. Light casual gamers may wish to look for something less brain taxing. But if you love the challenge and you love team work, get this game. Awesome for the adult and youngsters alike.

Pros:
Coop
Difficult (Challenging)
Good strategy/Less luck (although some luck is involved)
Teamwork

Cons:
Not for light casual non-gamers
Difficult
Brain taxing


What did you think of the game? Leave me a comment on your opinion of it...