Friday Filler: Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe

Now it might seem inappropriate for a new version of Pandemic—the 2008 game of fighting and finding a cure to four outbreaks of different diseases—to be published in the midst of an actual pandemic. It might also seem inappropriate that its subject focuses entirely on North America given the high number of deaths from the Covid-19 virus in the USA. If you believe that to be so, then this review is not for you. However, you would be wrong in your thinking. To start with, the publication date of the new game is entirely coincidental. Second, the subject matter of the new game—just like the original—is about researching, teaching and finding a cure for multiple diseases, which is exactly what scientists are doing right now. So both Pandemic and the new game are about providing medical aid and saving people, undeniably positive rather than negative in both their subject matter and what the players are doing. If you still find the subject matter distasteful, then this review is not for you.

The original Pandemic was published in 2008 to much acclaim. In the game, between one and four players take the role of members of the Center for Disease Control working against four global epidemics—red, blue, yellow, and black—in a race to save humanity. The game was one of the first titles to really distill the concept of the co-operative game, a game in which the players played not against each other, but against the board and the game itself, into something that was simple, elegant, and ultimately, very popular. In Pandemic, the players race around the world, travelling from city to city in an effort to treat diseases and find a cure for them whilst staving off the effects of outbreaks that will spread these diseases from one city to every adjacent city. Too many outbreaks and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Fail to find cures to all four diseases and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Like all cooperative games, Pandemic is designed to be difficult to beat and can be made even more challenging through the various expansions.

The latest addition to the Pandemic family of boardgames is Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe, the second entry in the ‘Hotzone’ family of Pandemic games after Pandemic Hot Zone: North America. Published by Z-Man Games, this again is designed for between one and four players, has players cooperating to treat and find a cure to several diseases, and is played against the game rather than the players against each other. It is however, not the same game as Pandemic, for whilst there are many similarities, there are also several differences. The first of these is that there are only three diseases to find a cure for and the second is that it is set entirely in Europe, as opposed to the four diseases and the global scope of Pandemic. The third is the playing time. Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe can be played in thirty minutes as opposed to the sixty minutes of standard Pandemic. Further there are similarities between Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe and Pandemic Hot Zone: North America, such that their rules can be mixed and matched, although arguably if you have one, do you need the other as another shorter, fast-playing version of Pandenic?

So as with its American counterpart, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe only needs four cards of the same colour to cure a disease instead of five, and there is only the one fixed Research Station instead of multiple Research Stations which can be placed on the board as in Pandemic. This is of course in Genève, the European headquarters of the United Nations and the World Health Organisation as well as the International Committee of the Red Cross. This negates the need for the ‘Operations Expert’ from Pandemic, who can establish Research Stations around the world and the ability of the players to shuttle back and forth between them. The four roles in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe are the ‘Virologist’, ‘Containment Specialist’, ‘Pilot’, and ‘Quarantine Specialist’.

Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe only has three Epidemic cards. These accelerate and exacerbate the spread of the three diseases in the game, whereas standard Pandemic has three, four, and five, the number used to vary the difficulty of beating the game. Diseases cannot be eradicated in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe, whereas in standard Pandemic, they can, preventing their appearance during the game. Lastly, rather than alter the number of Epidemic cards to vary the difficulty of beating the game, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe—just like Pandemic Hot Zone: North America—provides a different means to alter the difficulty of play. In Pandemic Hot Zone: North America it was Crisis cards, but in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe it is Mutation cards, which change how the various diseases in the game work.

Nevertheless, game play in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is similar to that of Pandemic. Each turn, a player will move round the map treating diseases to prevent there being too many on the board, visiting cities for which they have a card to give to another player, and when a player has the requisite four cards of one colour, rushing back to Genève to find cure for the disease of that colour. Designed for two to four players, aged eight and up, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is won by finding a cure for all three diseases. This is the only winning condition, whereas there are several losing conditions. Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is lost if four Outbreaks occur, the players run out of disease cubes of any colour to add to the board, or when the Player Deck is depleted.

As its title suggests, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is played on a map of Europe. This depicts twenty-four cities across the continent, divided into three zones—the blue zone covering Western Europe, the red zone covering Eastern Europe, and the yellow zone Southern Europe. These cities are connected by various routes along which both the players will travel as they move around the continent and the game’s three diseases will travel whenever there is Outbreak in one city. This happens whenever a city with three disease cubes has more cubes of the same colour added to it. In which case the disease spreads to directly connected cities.

The game offers four different roles. The ‘Virologist’ can substitute one required card to ‘Discover a Cure’, so use three cards of one colour and two cards of another colour, and as an action remove a single cube from the board matching the colour of a card in his hand. When the ‘Containment Specialist’ enters a city with two or more cubes of one colour in a city, his player removes one of them. The ‘Pilot’ can Fly to any city within two connections of his current location, skipping the cities between them, and take another player with him. When the ‘Quarantine Specialist’ is in a city, if that city or the adjacent cities would be infected during the drawing of Infection cards, then no cubes are placed in those cities.

As well as the board, there are two decks of cards, both of which contain a card for each of the twenty-four cities on the board. The Infection deck is used to determine where incidences of the game’s three diseases will occur. Over the course of the game, Infection cards drawn will be reshuffled and added back to the top of the Infection deck to represent the populations of cities being constantly prone to the game’s three diseases. The cards in the Player deck are used in several ways. Each represents a single city and can be used to travel to or from a particular city, so to or from London. Once a player has four cards of a single colour—red, blue, or yellow—then he can travel to Genève and use them to find a cure. To acquire four cards of a single colour, a player can either draw them from the Player deck at the end of his turn or take them from or be given them by a fellow player.

In addition, the Player deck contains three other types of card—the Epidemic card, the Event card, and the Mutation card. When an Epidemic card is drawn it increases the rate of infection—the number of cards drawn from from the Infection deck at the end of a a player’s turn, determines the city where a new occurrence of a disease happens, and shuffles the Infection cards in the discard pile back onto the Infection deck to reinfect cities that have already suffered disease already. The Event cards each provide a one-time bonus, such as ‘Mobile Hospital’ which allows the current player to remove one cube from each of the cities he travels to on his turn and ‘Resource Planning’ which enables a player to look at the top four cards of the Player Deck, rearrange them and add them to the top of the deck. There are only four Event cards in the game.

There are nine Mutation cards in the game, with three different effects, one per disease. Thus, for ‘Resistant to Treatment’, if there are three or cubes of one colour on a city, a player must spend two actions to Treat Disease in that city. There is one of these for each disease. Once drawn, a Mutation card remains in play until a cure for its disease is found. Further, until that cure is found, more Mutation cards for that disease can be drawn and they stack, combining their effects, making the disease harder to treat and easier to spread. In addition, the game’s difficulty can be adjusted by adding more Mutation cards to Player deck. Each Mutation card affects a specific disease in a specific, permanent way. However, unlike the Crisis cards in Pandemic Hot Zone: North America, the Mutation cards in Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe do not feel like a wholly new mechanic, rules for mutating diseases having been previously seen in the Pandemic: On the Brink expansion for the main game. as to which Crisis cards the players will face.

Game set-up is simple enough. Each player is given a role and two randomly drawn Player cards whilst the remainder of the Player deck is seeded with the three Epidemic cards and three Mutation cards. Six cards are drawn from the Infection deck to determine where the three diseases first occur on the board and to form the discard pile. Then on his turn, a player will move round the map, treating diseases, taking or giving Player cards, and so on. At the end of his turn, he draws two more cards from the Player deck, adding them to his hand or immediately resolving them if they are Crisis cards or Epidemic cards. Lastly, he draws Infection cards from the Infection deck—starting at two and rising to four—and adds disease cubes to the cities indicated on the cards drawn. Play continues like this until the game is won by all three diseases being cured or lost by having four Outbreaks occur, running out of disease cubes, or depleting the Player deck.

Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is easy to lose, but challenging to win. Plus winning does feel good. Like any Pandemic game, there is a real sense of achievement in working together, discovering curses to the diseases, and so winning the game.

Time is tight. With a four player game, the number of cards in the Player deck will range between twenty-three and twenty-nine, giving the players between eleven and fourteen turns between them before the game ends. So players need to plan and coordinate their actions from turn to turn, and this is not taking into account the effects of Epidemic and Mutation cards. So the players are constantly thinking, planning, and having to adjust to unexpected events (well, they are not unexpected, their being built into the game and its set-up, so think unexpected timing of events), so game play is both thoughtful and tense. However, since it is a cooperative game, there is the opportunity to discuss what your actions are going to be and that alleviates some of the tension—a little.

Physically, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is very nicely presented. Everything is in full colour, all of the cards are easy to read, and the rulebook quickly guides you through set-up and answers your questions. It even has a list of the differences between Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe and Pandemic. Lastly, the playing pieces are all done in solid plastic. Everything then, is of a high quality.

So is Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe a good game? To which the answer is, yes, yes it is a good game. However, it feels very close in play to Pandemic Hot Zone: North America, and having played one, it is debatable whether it is different enough to make it stand out. The lack of major differences mean that going from one to the other is easy enough and the compatibility means that the different roles and both Crisis and Mutation cards could be mixed into the one game. Yet another problem is that the Mutation cards only have three mutations between all nine cards (there being one of each type per disease) and that does not much in the way of variation.

Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is an efficient, simpler version of the standard game of Pandemic, streamlined for faster play, size, and price. Yet Pandemic Hot Zone: North America already did that and if you already have that, do you really need another version? Had there been more variation in the Mutation cards to make it stand out a little more, then Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe would be worth trying and buying. Without that greater degree of variation, Pandemic Hot Zone: Europe is a serviceable, playable game that is perhaps of more interest to the dedicated devotee of the Pandemic line of games.

Friday Filler: Pandemic Hot Zone: North America

Now it might seem inappropriate for a new version of Pandemic—the 2008 game of fighting and finding a cure to four outbreaks of different diseases—to be published in the midst of an actual pandemic. It might also seem inappropriate that its subject focuses entirely on North America given the high number of deaths from the Covid-19 virus in the USA. If you believe that to be so, then this review is not for you. However, you would be wrong in your thinking. To start with, the publication date of the new game is entirely coincidental. Second, the subject matter of the new game—just like the original—is about researching, teaching and finding a cure for multiple diseases, which is exactly what scientists are doing right now. So both Pandemic and the new game are about providing medical aid and saving people, undeniably positive rather than negative in both their subject matter and what the players are doing. If you still find the subject matter distasteful, then this review is not for you.

The original Pandemic was published in 2008 to much acclaim. In the game, between one and four players take the role of members of the Center for Disease Control working against four global epidemics—red, blue, yellow, and black—in a race to save humanity. The game was one of the first titles to really distill the concept of the co-operative game, a game in which the players played not against each other, but against the board and the game itself, into something that was simple, elegant, and ultimately, very popular.  In Pandemic, the players race around the world, travelling from city to city in an effort to treat diseases and find a cure for them whilst staving off the effects of outbreaks that will spread these diseases from one city to every adjacent city. Too many outbreaks and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Fail to find cures to all four diseases and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Like all cooperative games, Pandemic is designed to be difficult to beat and can be made even more challenging through the various expansions.

The latest addition to the Pandemic family of boardgames is Pandemic Hot Zone: North America. Published by Z-Man Games, this again is designed for between one and four players, has players cooperating to treat and find a cure to several diseases, and is played against the game rather than the players against each other. It is however, not the same game as Pandemic, for whilst there are many similarities, there are also several differences. The first of these is that there are only three diseases to find a cure for and the second is that it is set entirely in North America, as opposed to the four diseases and global scope of Pandemic. The third is the playing time. Pandemic Hot Zone: North America can be played in thirty minutes as opposed to the sixty minutes of standard Pandemic.

Those are the most obvious differences, but there are others. These include only needing four cards of the same colour to cure a disease instead of five, and there being only one Research Station, rather than multiple Research Stations. This is of course in Atlanta at the Center for Disease Control headquarters. This negates the need for the ‘Operations Expert’ from Pandemic, who can establish Research Stations around the world and the ability of the players to shuttle back and forth between them. The Researcher and Dispatcher roles in Pandemic Hot Zone: North America are slightly different from Pandemic, but these differences are relatively minor. Pandemic Hot Zone: North America has only three Epidemic cards, which are always used in the game, whereas standard Pandemic has three, four, and five, the number used to vary the difficulty of beating the game. Diseases cannot be eradicated in Pandemic Hot Zone: North America, whereas in standard Pandemic, they can, preventing their appearance during the game. Lastly, rather than alter the number of Epidemic cards to vary the difficulty of beating the game, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America provides Crisis cards. During game set-up, the number of Crisis cards can be varied to set the game’s difficulty, plus each Crisis card is different, so adding an extra random element to game play.

Nevertheless, game play in Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is similar to that of Pandemic. Each turn, a player will move round the map treating diseases to prevent there being too many on the board, visiting cities for which they have a card to give to another player, and when a player has the requisite four cards of one colour, rushing back to Atlanta to find cure for the disease of that colour. Designed for two to four players, aged eight and up, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is won by finding a cure for all three diseases. This is the only winning condition, whereas there are several losing conditions. Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is lost if four Outbreaks occur, the players run out of disease cubes of any colour to add to the board, or when the Player Deck is depleted.

As its title suggests, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is played on a map of North America. This depicts twenty-four cities across the USA, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. These are divided into three zones—the blue zone covering the north-east, eastern seaboard, and midwest; the red zone covering the south, south-west, and west; and the yellow zone covering Mexico, Louisiana, Florida, Cuba, and the Dominican Republican. These cities are connected by various routes along which both the players will travel as they move around the continent and the game’s three diseases will travel whenever there is Outbreak in one city. This happens whenever a city with three disease cubes has more cubes of the same colour added to it. In which case the disease spreads to directly connected cities.

The game offers four different roles. These are the Dispatcher which can move any player’s pawn to another city where is already another player’s pawn or move another player’s pawn to a connected city; the Generalist, which can do five actions each turn rather than the standard four; the Medic, which can remove all of the disease cubes of one colour in a city rather than just the one when he takes the Treat Disease action or remove all of the cubes for a cured disease for free; and the Researcher, who can give cards to another player whose pawn is in the same city and the cards do not need to match the city they are in.

As well as the board, there are two decks of cards, both of which contain a card for each of the twenty-four cities on the board. The Infection deck is used to determine where incidences of the game’s three diseases will occur. Over the course of the game, Infection cards drawn will be reshuffled and added back to the top of the Infection deck to represent the populations of cities being constantly prone to the game’s three diseases. The cards in the Player deck are used in several ways. Each represents a single city and can be used to travel to or from a particular city, so to or from Boston. Once a player has four cards of a single colour—red, blue, or yellow—then he can travel to Atlanta and use them to find a cure. To acquire four cards of a single colour, a player can either draw them from the Player deck at the end of his turn or take them from or be given them by a fellow player.

In addition, the Player deck contains three other types of card. When an Epidemic card is drawn it increases the rate of infection—the number of cards drawn from from the Infection deck at the end of a a player’s turn, determines the city where a new occurrence of a disease happens, and shuffles the Infection cards in the discard pile back onto the Infection deck to reinfect cities that have already suffered disease already. The Event cards each provide a one-time bonus, such as ‘One Quiet Night’ which allows the current player to skip the ‘Draw Infection Cards’ phase of his turn or ‘Borrowed Time’ which enables the current player to take two additional actions.

Crisis Cards make the game’s play more challenging and are played immediately when drawn. So ‘Logistics Failure’ forces the current player  ‘Draw Infection Cards’ phase of his turn, whilst ‘Limited Options’ forces each player to reduce the size of his hand from six to five. This is temporary, but does last until another Crisis card is drawn. These Crisis cards are really the new mechanic to the Pandemic family, not only can they be used as a means to adjust the game’s difficulty rather than using the Epidemic cards, they can also add an ongoing, if temporary, effect that will hinder the players’ progress. There are just seven of them in the game, but because only three or six of them are used in the game—depending upon the difficulty of the game desired—there is always a degree of randomness and uncertainty as to which Crisis cards the players will face.

Game set-up is simple enough. Each player is given a role and two randomly drawn Player cards whilst the remainder of the Player deck is seeded with the three Epidemic cards. Six cards are drawn from the Infection deck to determine where the three diseases first occur on the board and to form the discard pile. Then on his turn, a player will move round the map, treating diseases, taking or giving Player cards, and so on. At the end of his turn, he draws two more cards from the Player deck, adding them to his hand or immediately resolving them if they are Crisis cards or Epidemic cards. Lastly, he draws Infection cards from the Infection deck—starting at two and rising to four—and adds disease cubes to the cities indicated on the cards drawn. Play continues like this until the game is won by all three diseases being cured or lost by having four Outbreaks occur, running out of disease cubes, or depleting the Player deck.

Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is easy to lose, but challenging to win. Plus winning does feel good. Like any Pandemic game, there is a real sense of achievement in working together, discovering curses to the diseases, and so winning the game.

Time is tight. With a four player game, the number of cards in the Player deck will range between twenty-three and twenty-nine, giving the players between eleven and fourteen turns between them before the game ends. So players need to plan and coordinate their actions from turn to turn, and this is not taking into account the effects of Epidemic and Crisis cards. So the players are constantly thinking, planning, and having to adjust to unexpected events (well, they are not unexpected, their being built into the game and its set-up, so think unexpected timing of events), so game play is both thoughtful and tense. However, since it is a cooperative game, there is the opportunity to discuss what your actions are going to be and that alleviates some of the tension—a little.

Physically, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is very nicely presented. Everything is in full colour, all of the cards are easy to read, and the rulebook quickly guides you through set-up and answers your questions. It even has a list of the differences between Pandemic Hot Zone: North America and Pandemic. Lastly, the playing pieces are all done in solid plastic. Everything then, is of a high quality.

So the first question is, is Pandemic Hot Zone: North America a good game? To which the answer is, yes, yes it is a good game. However, it might just be a slightly too difficult or challenging for its minimum age range of eight and older.

So the second question is, should you add Pandemic Hot Zone: North America to the Pandemic family of games you already own. Well, that depends, because the real question is, who is Pandemic Hot Zone: North America really aimed at? For fundamentally, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is really just a shorter, more tense version of Pandemic, and if you own Pandemic, it may well not be sufficiently different from Pandemic to warrant adding it to your collection. Though that will probably not stop you if we are honest. Yes, the playing area is different, but really the major difference is the addition of the Crisis cards. Otherwise, the gameplay is just like the original Pandemic. 

The clue as to what Pandemic Hot Zone: North America is lies in the size of the game and two other games—Ticket to Ride: London and Ticket to Ride: New York. Both of these are smaller, shorter implementations of the 2004 classic Ticket to Ride. They offer minor variations upon the standard Ticket to Ride rules and a reduction in both playing time, actual size, and price of the game, as well as providing the designer with a new format in which to explore the Ticket to Ride concept. Similarly, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America offers its designer a new format in which to explore the Pandemic concept as well as reduced size, playing time, and price. Which means that in the future there will be other entries in the Pandemic Hot Zone series.

Overall, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America does not actually have a great deal of new game play to offer the dedicated Pandemic fan, who will probably view the game as essentially ‘Pocket Pandemic’. However, Pandemic Hot Zone: North America’s combination reduced playing time, size, and price make it a less daunting introduction to the Pandemic family of games.

Friday Filler: Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger

In the 1980s, in the United Kingdom, if you wanted to do solo fantasy adventures, then you played the Fighting Fantasy™ series, which began with 1982’s The Warlock of Firetop Mountain—as detailed in You Are The Hero: A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks. In the USA though, readers could have adventures via the Choose Your Own Adventure series which began in 1979 with The Cave of Time. Unlike the Fighting Fantasy™ series, the Choose Your Own Adventure series was text based, there were no attributes, no dice to roll to overcome a challenge or defeat an enemy. One of the more popular titles was House of Danger in which a young psychic detective is driven by his nightmares to explore the house in his dreams in order to determine what they mean. Now Z-Man Games, best known as the publisher of Pandemic, has taken Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, and turned it into a game.

Designed for one or more players, aged ten and up, Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger is a simple solo adventure game that can be played cooperatively. It joins a growing trend of board games that combine storytelling, roleplaying, and cooperative play, such as Escape the Dark Castle: The Game of Atmospheric Adventure and Legacy of Dragonholt. Of course, where they draw on fantasy—after all, fantasy is the default genre for roleplaying—Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger does weird horror, so expect to encounter aliens, ghosts, chimpanzees, and infamously, banana-shark hybrids!

The game is played in five chapters, each represented by a deck of thirty Story Cards and thirty or so Clue Cards. As play progresses, these are revealed, their events and challenges overcome or failed, the aim being to progress from one chapter to the next until the secrets of the house are revealed. Essentially each chapter works as a solo adventure in its own right, so there is a framework of sorts which structures the play of the over the whole of the game. Play of each chapter takes between twenty minutes and an hour, which means that a full playthrough of Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger can take as long as five hours. Thankfully the game is not hampered by heavy mechanics and the eight-page rulebook starts with two-page quick-start rules designed to help you play within a few minutes of opening the box.

The focus of the game is the double-sided game board. On the one side is the nightmare image that beset the dreams of the game’s protagonist. At the start of the game, the players get the opportunity to study it for two minutes in search of clues as to what the protagonist might be facing in the ‘House of Danger’. It is then turned over to reveal two tracks—the ‘Danger Meter’ and the ‘Psychic Scale’. Ranging in value between three and six, the ‘Danger Meter’ indicates the degree of difficulty the protagonist will face in attempting to overcome the Challenges that the Story Cards often present. The value will rise and fall according to the instructions given on the Story Cards and if it gets two high, it will reset back to three and reduce the current value on ‘Psychic Scale’. Ranging from one up to twenty-five through five levels, ‘Psychic Scale’ measures the protagonist’s extrasensory powers and if it rises high enough, the protagonist will have premonitions, essentially visions much like the nightmare side of the game board. The game includes tokens for both tracks.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger has two sets of cards. The aforementioned Story Cards contain a mix of options and challenges, essentially much like a solo adventure book. The outcome of the options or challenge on a Story Card will point to other Story Cards as well as Clue Cards. There are five types of challenges—Climbing, Fighting, Dexterity, Perception, and Strength—each matched by Challenge Boosters which can be found in the second set of cards, the Clue Cards. These provide either a +1 or +2 bonus to the rolls made against the Challenges, so so the Pocketknife provides a +1 bonus against Strength Challenges and High-Powered Binoculars give a +2 bonus against Perception Challenges. Besides the Challenge Boosters—some of which can be kept from round to round, others have to be discarded after use, the Clue Cards will also continue the story.

Played solo and the player sets the Chapter up and begins by drawing a Story Card, taking any decisions as needed and resolving them, before going onto the next indicated Story Card. Play proceeds until the protagonist achieves the goal for the Chapter, completes it, and can move on to the next. With two or more players, they take it in turns to draw the Story Cards and discuss what the protagonist should do before resolving the current Story Card. Later Chapters in the game allow the players what is called a ‘Story Return’, which enable them to go back in the current Chapter to pursue other lines of investigation. It is a nice touch, one that models the reader of a solo adventure book sticking his finger in a page so that he can return to earlier paragraph should something unfortunate happen to his character.

Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger is simple enough in play, the storyline is engaging, and works as well for two players as it does one. More than that and really there is not enough substance for the players to be engaging with. There is a constant tension between keeping the ‘Danger Meter’ low in order to make Challenges easier and stop it driving the ‘Psychic Scale’ down and so denying the players further Clues in the form of the Premonitions.

The primary problem with Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger is the quality of the components. The rulebook and the game board are both good quality, but the quality of the cards is shockingly poor, done on thin card which makes them feel cheap and nasty. The content on the cards is fine, but the card stock is just poor. Further, the components are jammed tightly into the game’s box which makes getting them back out more fiddly than it should. That said, the design and layout on all of the components is well done, nicely matching the graphic style of the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

Another downside to Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger is that it does not offer a huge amount of replay value. Once it has been played through—and that will take a good session or two, or perhaps several if each Chapter is played as a filler at the start of a session—there is little reason to go back and play them again. Perhaps the players may want to explore the storyline more fully or want to play towards different ending, but either way, most of it will have been explored on a full playthrough anyway. 

Best played by one or two players, there is a lovely sense of nostalgia to Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger, both in its graphic design and its storyline, but it is let down by the disappointing quality of its components. Now of course like its inspiration and source, it does not offer much in the way of replay value, but the storyline is enjoyable and the game play simple. What matters then is the gameplay on that first playthrough, and with Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger that is solid and engaging.

—oOo—

Z-Man Games will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between June 1st and June 3rd, 2018 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Pandemic Over Arkham

Although there had been cooperative games before, some even dating as far back as 1989 as in the Aliens boardgame or even 1974 with the Eascape from Colditz boardgame, it is oft forgotten how groundbreaking Pandemic was when it was first released in 2008. Although its subject matter was grim—four scientists from the Center for Disease Control attempting to find cures to four epidemics before they wiped out mankind—it was an accessible subject matter, and to most people, the play of the game against the game itself was novel as well as challenging. The rules were also instantly accessible, so that you could open the box, read through and do the setup in minutes before starting play. Once you played, you knew that you had to go back and play again, if only to beat the game itself, because essentially, playing Pandemic was like playing a puzzle. So it was in June, 2008 when playing Pandemic for the first time, it having gone on sale that weekend at UK Games Expo. Since then, it has become a mainstay of the hobby, only receiving attention anew when Z-Man Games published Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 in 2015. Back in 2009 though, a friend commented that the diseases in Pandemic—red, blue, black, and yellow—might not represent diseases at all, but rather they could be cultists devoted to one of the Great Old Ones of the Cthulhu Mythos. So the yellow disease cubes could be members of the Cult of the Yellow Sign, the black cubes members of the Brotherhood of the Black Pharaoh, and so on. In 2016, the interpretation of the disease cubes in Pandemic became a reality with the publication of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu.

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu is a cooperative game in which stalwart Investigators work to thwart the summoning of the Great Old Ones in the Lovecraft Country towns of Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport. They must race to find the clues necessary to close the Gates in each of these towns all the while cultists gather and summon Shoggoths—things from an elder age—that will inexorably move towards the Gates and once there summon an Old One whose influence over this section of New England will only further hamper the efforts of the Investigators. Not only do the Investigators have to contend with the difficulty of piecing the clues together to close the Gates and nefarious cultists determined to summon their eldritch masters, there is the chance that they will be sent mad by their very efforts. 

If too many Great Old Ones are summoned and Cthulhu is woken from his slumber, then the Investigators lose. If they are overwhelmed by cultists—that is, when the supply of cultists runs out—then the Investigators lose. If they are overwhelmed by shoggoths—that is, when the supply of shoggoths runs out—then the Investigators lose. If they fail to gather the clues in time—that is, when the supply of Clue cards runs out—then the Investigators lose. If they all go insane, then the Investigators lose. If they seal all four Gates before they run out of Clue cards, then the Investigators win. 

So five ways to lose, one way to win.

Designed to be played by between two and four players, aged fourteen and up, the design of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu is a mix of Pandemic and Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, the old and the new, the latter being the new theme. Though that said, that theme owes much to Arkham Horror with the need to shut several gates to prevent the intrusion of the Old Ones. It is played out on a map of four connected towns in Lovecraft Country—Arkham (green), Dunwich (yellow), Innsmouth (purple), and Kingsport (red). Each town consists of five locations, plus a Gate. One location in each town is marked with a Bus Station, though Arkham has two. Above the map is a line of spaces for Old One cards, each one representing an Old One who will be awakened when a Shoggoth passes through an open Gate and bring its baleful influence to bear upon Lovecraft Country and the Investigators. For example, the awakening of Hastur heralds the appearance of another Shoggoth and the movement of all Shoggoths closer to open Gates, whilst Yig makes Gates closer to seal. At the end of the line of six spaces for these Old One cards is the space for Cthulhu himself. When he is summoned, then the game is over. Under each space is a number, indicating how many Summoning cards are turned over at the end of each turn. This number increases as more Old Ones appear, escalating the game’s difficulty as play proceeds.

The map also has spaces for the Summoning cards and the Player cards. Both decks contain cards corresponding to locations on the map. The Summoning cards are used to determine where the Cultists will appear and spread their influence on the map as well as if any Shoggoths on the map will move towards an open Gate. The Player cards represent clues. If an Investigator can collect five of one colour and go to the Gate in the corresponding town, he can seal the Gate. Seeded into the Player deck are two other types of card. The first are Relic cards, which grant the Investigators a temporary advantage. For example, the Seal of Leng allows the Investigators to block and cancel the effect of an Old One for the rest of the game, whilst the Book of Shadow lets an Investigator look at and rearrange the top four cards of the Player deck. The latter mirrors the effect of the Forecast card from Pandemic, but the use of Relic cards forces a player to roll the Sanity die to determine if his Investigator loses Sanity. The second type of card is the Evil Stirs card, which works much like the Infection card from Pandemic. In effect, it increases the difficulty of the game, making the player roll the Sanity die for his Investigator, reveal a new Old One, make a new Shoggoth appear in a random location on the map, and the Cultists regroup—the cards in the Summoning card discard pile are shuffled and added back onto the top of the Summoning deck. This means that the same locations are open to Cultist influence again and again...

Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu comes with seven Investigators—Detective, Doctor, Driver, Hunter, Magician, Occultist, and Reporter, each with their own special ability. These abilities are a mix those new in Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu and those adapted from Pandemic. So for example, the Detective needs four Clue cards to seal a Gate rather than five, much like the Scientist in Pandemic, and the Doctor can do five actions per turn rather than four, much like the Generalist in the Pandemic. Whereas, the Driver moves an extra location with a Walk action and ignores Ithaqua’s effect, which is new to the Pandemic family of games. Each Investigator comes with its own card that explains his or her abilities and this card is double-sided. The front is done in full colour, whereas the back is monochrome and details the Investigator’s abilitis after he has lost his Sanity. For example, the Doctor goes from five actions per turn when sane to four actions per turn when insane. Some card effects enable an Investigator to regain lost Sanity, whilst an insane Investigator who successfully seals a Gate fully recovers his Sanity.

Lastly, it should be noted that instead of wooden cubes and pawns—since replaced by plastic—being to represent the diseases and CDC members as in Pandemic, this game uses fully sculpted plastic figures. Those for Cultists and Shoggoths are anonymous, but those for the Investigators are individually sculpted figures which match the illustrations on the Investigator cards. These are nicely detailed figures and greatly add to the period feel of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu.

At the start of the game, six Old One cards are randomly selected and placed in their slots on the board. Each player chooses his Investigator and is given the matching Investigator card, four Sanity tokens, and a reference card. All of the Investigators start play at the Train Station in Arkham. Cultists as well as one Shoggoth are seeded in six locations drawn from the Summoning deck. These cards also from the Summoning discard pile. Relic cards are added to the Player deck and then each player receives two or more cards from the deck as his starting hand. The number varies according to the number of players. The fewer the number of players, the more cards a player is given. Lastly, the Player deck is seeded with the Evil Stirs cards.

On his turn a player has four actions and can get his Investigator to do the following. Walk to an adjacent location; while at a Bus Station, ‘Take the Bus’ by discarding a Clue card to move to any location in the town on the Clue card or discarding a Clue card that matches the town the Investigator is in to move to any other location in the town; or move through one Gate to another. He can also give a Clue card to another Investigator or take a Clue card from another Investigator as long as the Clue card matches the town they are in. He can also defeat a Cultist or Shoggoth and remove it from the board, though defeating a Shoggoth takes three actions. The later also earns him a Relic card. Lastly, he can seal a Gate by discarding five Clue cards of the same colour as the Gate on the Gate’s location. Notably, using a Gate or a Relic card, encountering and/or fighting a Shoggoth, or revealing an Evil Stirs card, all result in the player needing to roll the Sanity die. This may lose the Investigator one or two Sanity or attract the attention of some Cultists. 

From one turn to the next what the players will be trying to do is keep from being overwhelmed by Cultists and stop any Shoggoths reaching open Gates. They will also be trying to reach the same towns so that their Investigators can exchange Clue cards and so have enough to close the Gates. At the end of each turn, they will receive two more cards from the Player deck—these can be more Clue cards, Relic cards, or Evil Stirs cards. This means that they may not be useful. Also at the end of the turn, a number of Summoning cards will be drawn, these indicating where new Cultists will appear  and occasionally, that any Shoggoths in play should move.

This all sounds easy enough, but the Evil Stirs cards are an ever constant and imminent threat, promising to complicate things, always ensuring that Cultists are constantly recruiting from the same location over and over again—just like the Infection card causes cities in Pandemic to be infected again and again with diseases. In both cases because the Evil Stirs or Infection card empties the discard pile and returns it to the top of the Summoning/Infection deck respectively. Of course, in Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, the Evil Stirs card brings with it the appearance of Shoggoths, ready to move towards the nearest open Gate. 

Just like Pandemic, the order in which the cards appear—from both the Player deck and Summoning deck—can also hamper or aid the play of the game, which is as should be. Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu makes the play of the game easier, but more challenging. Easier by placing fewer limitations on movement and the exchange of Clue cards, but more challenging by forcing the players to regulate two factors which left unchecked will ensure their defeat—the number of Cultists and Shoggoths—rather than the one as Pandemic. Then even more challenging by imposing situational difficulties upon the players with the effect of the Old One cards revealed when a Shoggoth is allowed to go through a Gate.

Physically, the presentation of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu matches the theme. It feels and looks fustier, mustier, just a little ornate, and not at all like the killer elegance of Pandemic. Many of the well done components support the game’s replayability. There is not just the replaying again to beat the game and prevent Cthulhu from being summoned, but also the replaying of the game to beat it at a higher difficulty, which can be adjusted. The increased number of Investigator roles to choose from and the number of Old One cards provides more choice when setting up and playing the game as replayability.

So in looking at Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, the question is, is it still a Pandemic game? To which the answer is yes. The core mechanics of Pandemic are central to the mechanics of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu and anyone coming from the one to the other will adapt with. In fact, the core mechanics of Pandemic remain obviously visible such that the Lovecraftian theme of Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu does feel somewhat pasted over the top of them. Yet, that theme also allows the elegant brutalism of the Pandemic mechanics to be pushed and extended, making Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu more challenging and ultimately, more uncaring. Perfect then, for a Pandemic game.

—oOo—

Z-Man Games will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between June 2nd and June 4th, 2017 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Make a Saving Roll to Heal

Back in 2008, Pandemic from Z-Man Games was a big hit. The game pitched members of the Center for Disease Control against four global epidemics—red, blue, yellow, and black—in a race to save humanity. The game was one of the first titles to really popularise co-operative games, games in which the players were playing not against each other, but against the board and the game itself. The players raced around the world, travelling from city to city in an effort to treat diseases and find a cure for them whilst staving off the effects of outbreaks that would spread these diseases from one city to every adjacent city. Too many outbreaks and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Fail to find cures to all four diseases and the players will fail and humanity is doomed. Like all co-operative games, Pandemic is designed to be difficult to beat and can be made even more challenging through the various expansions.

Of course, Pandemic has been made all the more popular with the release of Pandemic Legacy, a version of the game played as a campaign, with various factors having a permanent effect on the board, the cards, and the game itself. Before that, there was another release for Pandemic. Not another expansion, but a standalone game, one that has the same theme and objectives, yet introduces a physicality to its mechanics. Pandemic: The Cure is a dice game, continuing the trend of taking well-known board games and re-implementing them as dice games, from Catan Dice Game and Carcassonne: the Dice Game to Bang! The Dice Game and the more recent, Roll for the Galaxy. In Pandemic: The Cure the diseases have become dice, rolled randomly to determine where they appear. Similarly in Pandemic: The Cure the players’ actions have become dice, rolled randomly to determine what they can do from one turn to the next.

With the dice as disease, the players now have to undertake two tasks if they are to find a cure for each disease—collect samples and then roll to find a cure. A sample is one disease die that has been treated and collecting a sample means that a player must sacrifice one of his action dice to store that sample until the cure can be rolled for.

This rolling of dice has a number of big effects. For starters, and obviously, it adds a random element to the Pandemic design. The original board game was card driven and as the game progressed it became easier to predict which cities were likely to be infected again and again because they had been infected before. The ability to predict which diseases are going to appear and where has been lessened in Pandemic: The Cure because the dice are pulled blindly from a bag and then rolled to see where they appear. Some prediction is still possible—the players can still track the colour of the dice available on the table—but no more than that. Unable to predict exactly what dice will appear and where, the players are forced to be slightly more proactive than reactive than in the board game. 

Another difference between Pandemic and Pandemic: The Cure is that diseases cannot be eradicated. They still keep coming back out of the bag to infect Region Tiles anew and can still trigger Outbreaks, though like the boardgame, once a cure has been found, they are easier to Treat. This further forces the players to track the number of Infection dice in play.

With each player having their own dice and being able to re-roll undesired results, the number of actions a player may have from one turn to the next can vary wildly. Some turns it might be none, others it might be as many as five. As a game progresses though, a player will find himself giving up dice to take samples, so will find himself with fewer actions.

The game consists of a plastic hoop—the Treatment Centre—with peg holes to track both the Infection Rate and Outbreaks; six numbered disks—the Region Tiles—each one corresponding to a continent, plus another disk representing the CDC headquarters; seven role cards and corresponding pawns and sets of action dice; a Cured Disease card and ten Event cards; a cloth bag; and forty-eight Infection dice in four colours.  At game start, the Region Tiles are laid out in order around the Treatment Centre, everyone receives a Role card and the corresponding dice, both in matching colours. Then twelve Infection dice are rolled, the numbers rolled determining which Region Tile they are placed on.

The Infection dice are where the game begins to get clever. The opposite sides of normal six-sided dice always add up to seven; not so here. Instead, the numbers are weighted so that they will always land on certain Region Tiles. For example, rolls of five only appear on black or yellow dice and when rolled are placed on the Africa Regional Tile, whereas rolls of one appear on blue or red dice and are placed on the North America Region Tile. Then are the player dice. All have the same set of symbols—an aeroplane (Fly to any Region), a Ship (Sail to an adjacent Region), Hypodermic Needle (Treat an Infection die and move it to the Treatment Centre), a Bottle (Treat an Infection die in the Treatment Centre and save it for a Cure attempt), First Aid (used to buy Event cards), and lastly, a Biohazard symbol. When rolled, this moves the syringe along on the Infection Track and increases the chance of an epidemic.

Every set of role dice also has its own symbols, representing special actions. For example, the Medic has multiple Hypodermic Needles on some dice which allow him to Treat multiple Infection dice with one action, whilst the Dispatcher has the Helicopter symbol which can be saved to airlift anyone to any Region Tile before the Dispatcher’s next turn. 

On his turn, a player rolls his dice. He can either use them as necessary or he can re-roll, travelling to the different Regions, Treating Infection dice, collecting Samples, and so on. Biohazard results cannot be re-rolled. Just like the board game, the players need to Treat the Infections and find a Cure, which is done by Treating Infection dice and moving them to the Treatment Centre, and from there collecting Samples which can be rolled to find a Cure.  The latter simply involves rolling the collected Samples and beating the target. At the end of his turn, a player draws more Infection dice from the bag and rolls to see where they appear.

Like Pandemic, there is one way to win—find the four cures, and like Pandemic, there are multiple ways to lose. These are  running out of time (the infection rate syringe reaches the end of the Infection Track), too many Outbreaks (eight or more), and too many people infected (not enough Infection dice to be drawn from the bag).

Of course, Pandemic: The Cure is like Pandemic, a co-operative game. The players need to work together and every player’s turn is about discussing the possible optimal actions as well as carrying them out.

Ultimately, the rolling of dice and and the design of the playing area do undermine the game. The problem is that it abstracts the Pandemic concept and hinders a player’s engagement with the game. No longer is he trying to save Istanbul or Shanghai, but rather the world in general. Yet the dice add variability and frustration to the game in equal measure as well as tension—is your next roll going to save humanity or help destroy them? Rolling dice also add a physicality, making the game more hands-on and engaging.

Streamlined and quicker to play, Pandemic: The Cure is Pandemic’s lighter, simpler, and more family friendly brother. Perhaps a little overpriced, Pandemic: The Cure is the slick addition to the Pandemic family.

Reviews from R'lyeh Christmas Dozen 2015

Since 2001, I have contributed to a series of Christmas lists at Ogrecave.com—and at RPGaction before that, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles from the last twelve months that you might like to receive and give. Continuing the break with tradition—in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists—Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about ‘Baleful Blandishments’ to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents its annual Christmas Dozen, I can only hope that the following list includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you do not have and someone is happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you.

—oOo—

Frostgrave: Fantasy Wargames in the Frozen City
(Osprey Publishing) $24.99/£14.99

In a first for Reviews from R’lyeh, a set of wargames rules makes its annual Christmas Dozen. Frostgrave is a skirmish miniatures game in which rival wizards and their apprentices lead warbands into the icebound city of ‘Frostgrave’ in search of treasure, relics, and knowledge lost to the cold centuries before. Both the background and the rules are simple, making it easy to learn by experienced wargamers and novices alike—and making it easier to teach too! The buy-in cost is also low, each warband needing just ten figures, and because the rules give plenty of options, it means that one warband is rarely going to be the same as any other. Frostgrave can be played in single one-off skirmishes, but the game gets better when played as a campaign because a wizard can learn from his experience and not only gain more spells, but get better at casting them! Miniatures are available for the game—though any can be used—as is a fiction anthology, Frostgrave - Tales of the Frozen City, and the first campaign, Frostgrave: Thaw of the Lich Lord.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection Vol. 5: United Kingdom + Pennsylvania
(Days of Wonder) $40/£25.99

New boards are always welcome for the classic Ticket to Ride board game and never more so with the line’s Map Collection series. The fifth and very latest Map Collection addition, not only adds two new map boards, it adds technology and shares, elements usually found in more complex train games. Even better, the new map boards includes a map of the United Kingdom so that now you can play across the nation that gave the birth to railways! On the Pennsylvania map, players now compete for shares as well as routes, giving them new ways to score points, whilst on the United Kingdom map, players need buy technological advances to build beyond England to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and further… For long time Ticket to Ride fans, this expansion adds new rules and challenges, but without adding too much complexity that would make it that much more difficult for casual players.

Shadow of the Demon Lord
(Schwalb Entertainment) $49.99/£39.95

The end of the world is nigh! All that stands between the world and its destruction is the Veil, yet the Demon Lord rends at it, weakening it and spreading his influence in the real world beyond. Thus the trolls come out of the mountains, beastmen out of the Badlands, zombies from the grave, and cultists out of the shadows to spread fear and chaos, hearkened by the coming of their master. Perhaps though, there is a chance, just a slim one, that the Demon Lord can be stopped—and if not that, then at least the chaos and the horror held off, at least for a little while… This is the set up for Shadow of the Demon Lord, a dark horror fantasy RPG from the co-designer of Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, inspired in part by his love of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. Its focus is entirely upon the characters and the horrors they face, even beginning the game not knowing what career they will follow let alone what madness they will have to deal with, but once they progress, they are free to choose their path as they want. The RPG offers a wide choice of career paths, simple mechanics, and simplified level progression that means that characters gain a level every adventure! Perhaps the end is just the beginning?

Thunderbirds Co-operative Board Game
(Modiphius Entertainment) $69.99/£45

Calling International Rescue! 

Only the Tracy family and the amazing vehicles and gadgets of International Rescue stand between the disasters and the plans of the nefarious Hood that beset the future of 2065. In this co-operative boardgame, the players work together as the Tracy brothers, along with Lady Penelope, racing to stop one disaster after another whilst working to thwart the plans of the criminal mastermind known as the Hood. Based on Gerry Anderson’s classic 1965 Thunderbirds television series, the game comes with the famous vehicles, each a fantastic little model, and the disasters that we remember from on-screen. Designed by Matt Leacock—a name known for designing co-operative boardgames like Pandemic and Forbidden Island—the Thunderbirds Co-operative Board Game not only has charm and nostalgia in abundance, but succinctly captures the feel and style of the television series.

Colt Express: Horses & Stagecoach
(Ludonaute) $19.99/£14.99

The trainrobbers are back! Plus they brought their horses with them and there is a stagecoach to rob too.

The Spiel des Jahres award winning Colt Express was one of the best board games of 2014, so it was no wonder that it was included 0n the Reviews from R’lyeh Christmas list of 2014. It is still a great game, but this year we got the first expansion—Colt Express: Horses & Stagecoach—which enables the players to not only rob the train of the core game, but leap from the train onto horseback, ride the length of the train, and then leap back aboard, or leap onto the stagecoach and rob that! There are more jewels and money to be stolen, hostages to be taken, an ornery old man armed with shotgun to contend with, and when things get bad, flasks of whiskey for a bandit to imbibe and refresh himself with. More options mean more chaos means more fun!



White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying
(Barrel Rider Games) $34.99

Taking the Old School Renaissance to the stars, White Star: White Box Science Fiction Roleplaying is inspired by sources including Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, Doctor Who and Firefly, but at its heart, this Swords & Wizardry-powered RPG is a Space Opera game through and through. Wearing its inspirations upon its sleeve, White Star devotes time aplenty to exploring the genre and its variations and different story types in depth and then discuss how to do them using the rules. This is helped by the familiar Dungeons & Dragons-style mechanics that also make White Star easy to play and easy to run, but there are plenty of optional rules that enable the GM to tweak the game to his tastes. (The designer has promised us a White Star Companion which will include more options and support. Lastly, the retro-future feel of White Star is echoed in its simple design, making it feel like the 1977 Sci-Fi RPG we never had.

Read the review here.

Machi Koro: Harbour Expansion
(IDW Games) $19.99/£14.99

One of the best games of 2014 was Machi Koro, the 2015 Spiel des Jahres nominated dice and card game about building your Japanese town better and faster than your rivals. Which is why it made the Reviews from R’lyeh Christmas list of 2014. As much fun as the base game is, it needed more Landmarks to make your town stand out and more Establishments to generate the income needed to buy those Landmarks. In 2015, Machi Koro received two expansions that did exactly that—Machi Koro: Harbour Expansion and Machi Koro: Millionaire’s Row. Of the two, Machi Koro: Harbour Expansion is the better expansion, slickly adding not only the cards needed for a fifth player, but a swathe of new Establishment cards that interact with each other and the cards in the base set. Even better though are the new rules that modify the Marketplace where the players can buy their Establishment cards. It just limits those available at any one time to just ten types—rather than all of them as in the base game—which forces the players to make more careful choices and breaks up the easy paths to victory of the base game. The result is a much improved, slicker game. If you own only Machi Koro, then definitely add Machi Koro: Harbour Expansion (and possibly think about Machi Koro: Millionaire’s Row), but if not, then Machi Koro: Deluxe Edition is the perfect choice (plus it comes in a tin!).

Read the review here.

The Dracula Dossier
(Pelgrane Press) $74.95/£49.95

In 2012, Review from R’lyeh liked Night’s Black Agents so much that it made the Reviews from R’lyeh Christmas list of 2012. It set the secret agents a la James Bond and Jason Bourne not against the traditional mundane conspiracy, but against a conspiracy headed by vampires! Now the horror-espionage RPG lives up to the author’s pitch for it as “The Bourne Identity meets Dracula” with The Dracula Dossier. This huge sandbox campaign works from the idea that Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a fictionalised account of an attempt by British Naval Intelligence to recruit the infamous vampire that failed… Repeated recruiting attempts during World War Two and the War on Terror have only turned the vampire’s antipathy against us and now it is your turn to deal with the threat. This is of course going to be a mammoth undertaking and the campaign is equally as large—a giant set of clues, people, locations, and more designed to support the GM in running an improvised campaign and in doing so, complementing the toolkit aspect of Night’s Black Agents. It is also a fearsome work of the imagination that comes with gaming’s biggest set of clues—the annotated and redacted version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula!

The Metagame
(Local No. 12, LLC.) $25.00

2015 was a good year for party style games, with Code Names, Love 2 Hate, and Spyfall all being released and all being good games, but there was one card game in 2015 that outshone them all—The Metagame. This big box of cards might look like the infamous Cards Against Humanity, but where that game was in black and white and contains one basic game in a big box, The Metagame comes in a white box, its cards in colour and black and white, and it comes with six games rather than one. The cards are divided between Opinion cards—such as  “Which is the most useful on a desert island?” and “More Myth Than Fact”, and Culture cards that range from Enron, Brie Cheese, and World of Warcraft to The Vagina Monologues, Riverdance, and Romeo and Juliet. The games include trying to match Opinion cards with Culture cards, guessing when the things on Culture cards appeared, debating both Opinion cards and Culture cards—and more! The Science Fiction Expansion Pack and the Film 101 Expansion Pack are both available and add to the mix and the fun. The Metagame is both a good family and a good party game and can be played with anyone.

Tianxia: Blood, Silk, & Jade
(Vigilance Press) $44.95/£29.99

With the release of Jadepunk: Tales From Kausao City and Feng Shui 2: Action Movie Roleplaying, 2015 was a great year for the wuxia genre, but if Reviews from R'lyeh had to choose one, it would be Tianxia: Blood, Silk, & Jade. The setting is the classic Jiāngzhōu, the ‘border land’ on the edge of the ‘Divine Realm’, which has a reputation for banditry, gangsters, and corruption. Pirates, like the Blue Carp Brotherhood, led by the infamous pirate king, Fish-Eye Cheng, prey upon the boats moving up and down the Silk River whilst Five Demon Forest is known to be a haven for the bandits and thieves that prey upon the Jade Road, but is reputed to be haunted too. Jiāngzhōu is also home to the Wuxia, the ‘Wandering Swordsmen’ and ‘Knight Errants’ who lead lives often independent of society. Many are mercenaries, some follow their own paths, but all seek to become masters of Kung Fu. This broadly drawn setting is ably supported by delightfully cinematic Fate Core rules and solidly done new martial arts rules which in combination emulate the classic tales and action of the Wuxia genre.

Read the full review here.

Eyes of the Stone Thief
(Pelgrane Press) $49.95/£32.95

In traditional Dungeons & Dragons the megadungeon is a static construct, a fixed structure dug deep into the earth that bold adventurers will delve into again and again, exploring its secrets and facing its threats. Plus, if it is a ‘Living dungeon’ then perhaps its denizens will change and react in response to the player characters’ action. In 13th Age, the storytelling, action orientated interpretation of Dungeons & Dragons-style gaming, the dungeon is definitely living and it is far static, swimming to the surface to devour whole towns and cities. Designed for characters of Fourth to Eighth Level, Eyes of the Stone Thief, at first the adventurers will have to venture inside to rescue someone, but once it has their scent, the dungeon will begin hunting the adventurers! Which means that the adventurers will have to go back in to stop themselves from being hunted down… Can they stop this 'Moby Dick' of a dungeon before it gets them?

Pandemic Legacy
(Z-Man Games) $69.99/£54.99

Since 2008, Pandemic has been the touchstone by which all co-operative boardgames have been measured. It set the standard, combining an engaging theme with elegant mechanics that see the players trying to find the cures necessary to stop four diseases that threaten to become pandemics and overwhelm the world. Last year Reviews from R’lyeh liked the stripped down, faster playing dice-based variant of Pandemic the Cure, but this year Pandemic fans were faced by not just a new challenge, but a whole new set of challenges joined by secrets and surprises. For Pandemic Legacy answers the question, “What would happen if what you did in one game of Pandemic carried over to the next… and the next?” In other words, with Pandemic Legacy, the original Pandemic becomes a campaign, with chances that the characters played in game being hurt, killed, or hopefully getting more capable, with diseases becoming more virulent or less deadly, cities being saved or lost, and even worse, government funding being cut—all depending upon how well the players do! Ultimately every copy of Pandemic Legacy becomes a game of its very own, unique to the playing group that played through it.