Load Bearing Bosses (5 Minute Dungeon)

You strap your shield to your wrist, while your friends to your side ready their gear, prepare magic, or stretch to loosen themselves up.  You and your band of heroes have been sent to deal with the menace in this location, but they knew you were coming.  The walls crumble, the floor is filled with pot-holes, and of course, the monsters.  You have a very limited amount of time to slay the master of this place and save the world.  It's time to venture into the 5 Minute Dungeon (the title never seemed to make sense until now).



BACKGROUND:  5 Minute Dungeon is a co-operative card published by KOSMOS for 2-5 players.  Cards are played in rapid succession in order to travel

GAMEPLAY:  Each player begins with a unique character and matching deck.  Then players decide which boss they'll be fighting, and shuffle a number of Door cards together indicated by the bottom of the Boss Mat, and a number of Challenge cards equal to players.  Flip the first card and start the timer.

DUNGEON:  Each Door card has a number of resources on the bottom.  All players attempt to match those resources from their hand until all symbols on the Door card have been matched.  Once they have, the Door card and all cards assigned to it are removed from the game, and draw a new Door card.  Resources can always be assigned to Door cards, even without matching.  Other ways to defeat Door cards are with a Hero's Ability or Action cards.  Any time you are under your hand limit, draw back up.



WINNING:  Once players have gotten through all Door and Challenge cards, they must fight the Boss. Like always, assign Resources to the Boss card to defeat it, but non matching cards cannot be assigned.  If the players manage to defeat the Boss before time runs out, they win.  However, players lose if they run out of time, cards, or cannot defeat something with their cards or abilites.

CONCLUSION:  5 Minute Dungeon is a crazy, ridiculous, hilariously fun game with admittedly some weird, clunky mechanics.  The fact that you don't discard your cards when you use them hinders your progress, especially with heroes that focus on discards.  The resource is a nice and simple idea when you're timed, but that means it's not as hard as you'd think to lose to a small encounter.  However, the end results is that the timer would not work without the game being simple, and vice versa.  This is a game that had an idea, and ran with it in a really cool way.  The positives outweigh the negatives by a pretty significant amount.  This is a dungeon you should definitely explore.

AFTERTHOUGHTS:  If you do consider picking up this game, I would also recommend you play with the free timer app available on Android, iPhone, and Windows Store.  It is a nice timer with some wonderful voices to add some flavor to the game.  My favorite is the Epic voice.

The Geekist Link (Geek Out)

5 come in, only one comes out.  Will you be the one that survives?  Will you leave your friends in the dust and come out the superior mind?  Only time will tell, ladies and gentlemen!  This is GEEK OUT!



BACKGROUND:  Geek out is a party game for 2+ players, publisehd by Playroom Entertainment.  The goal is the be the smartest one in the group, able to name more things from various categories then your opponents.

GAMEPLAY:  The turn player or team rolls the die, and draws a card from the deck and read the prompt on the card.  If they like, they may increase the number on the card.  For example, if the prompt is to name two named fictional weapons, they may take the minimum two, or increase the amount.  The next player/team may pass, or raise the bid.  This action keeps going until all players/teams have passed, save the last bidding team

SCORING:  The team then lists off answers to the prompt equal to the amount they have bid.  If they are correct, they score the card and 1 point, but failing causes them to take a -2 point token.  If the bid was at the minimum, no penalty is given.



WINNING:  A player or team wins when they have collected 5 points.

CONCLUSION:  This is a game generally for geeks and nerds, as if the title couldn't tell you that.  However, as long as you can consider yourself learned enough with your friends, it can be as balanced or unbalanced.  However, it's a party game, and that means tabletop gamers aren't going to be getting a ton of intrigue out of this game.  It is meant to be played with no real seriousness attached to it.  The problem is that it should be played as an in-between, brain refresher, but the clues attached to it are a little stronger than most of those types of games.  Yet it doesn't have the complexity a larger game with engaging mechanics has.  If you want to play it to prove your the geek of your friends, that's fine.  If you have a bunch of nerdy friends that can cause this to be relaxing, this should be fun.  Otherwise, you may end up with it stuck in your closet.

Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny (Superfight)

Godzilla, Batman, Optimus Prime, and Abraham Lincoln.  These names were sung in the annuls of history, as part of the first fight to end all fights, the one true battle for the ages.  Now, it is time for the next generation of fighters.  Captain Picard, Nickelback, and Princess Zelda are merely a few in the next battle for the crown.  
It.
Is.
Superfight.



BACKGROUND: Superfight is a card game for 3-10+ players, and published by Skybound Games.  Create the most ultimate warrior and pit it against the reigning champion to see who is the best character in the multiverse

GAMEPLAY:  There are two ways to play: 1v1 or Last Man Standing.  In both versions, each player will have a hand of 3 white character cards, and 5 black modifier cards.

LAST MAN STANDING:  1 player is designated as a Referee.  They draw 1 white and two black cards, and play them.  Everyone else plays 1 white card and 1 black card face-down, and plays a third black card on the player to the right's face-down card, also face-down.  Flip all cards face-up, and argue which one would win against the Ref's card.  Whomever the Ref chooses as the winner takes the Ref's white card as a Trophy



1v1:  In this mode, 2 players choose 1 white and 1 black card as their fighters, and draw 1 black card from the deck to add to their fighter.  Then both players make their arguments about who would win, and the players vote on the winner.  That character claims the opponents white card as a Trophy, and the next player chooses a black and white card to fight against the winner, and draws a black card from the deck.

WINNING:  Both games ends when all players are either sick of the game, a player reaches a preset number of Trophies, or when there is a clear winner with no form of victory for the other players.

CONCLUSION:  Superfight is the Apples to Apples or Joking Hazard for nerds.  Now while it is true that there is a specific box for that group, the people that really enjoy the hypothetical battles between two fictional or non-fictional characters are those with way too much time and think way too hard about stuff, yours included.  After all, I run a board game blog.  Still, this is the kind of game where you can laugh and have a good time if you don't take it too seriously.  This is going to appeal to a very specific type of people, and that's fine.  I recommend it wholeheartdly, but I'm a massive nerd who likes to wonder about Godzilla with a chainsaw vs Naruto with a natural 20.

The Butler Did It (Mysterium)

December 4th, 1928.
I fear my time on this earth has come to an end, or so it would seem.  Just yesterday I woke up and passed right through the privvy door.  I know that no one will be able to read this, as I write it with my finger, and the words appear for the briefest of seconds.  The man living here, Mr. MacDowell, seems to be a nice but a bit jumpy.  I am not sure if he is reacting to my presence or not, but I can only pray it is the former.  I leave this Mysterium (oops, meant to write mystery) to him.



BACKGROUND: Mysterium is a board game published by Libellud in 2015 for 2 to 7 players.  One person takes the role of a ghost with amnesia, and can only give the barest hints of who killed them, while the other players, or mediums, attempt to decipher the clues.

GAMEPLAY:  Each turn, the ghost takes a Vision Card, a card with very pretty art, and gives one to each medium, drawiing back up to 7 cards each time a card is dealt.  Using a crow token allows the ghost to discard based on the difficulty.  Then, the Mediums look at their cards, and the timer is flipped.  Each medium tries to guess appropriately based on the cards laid out in front of their tokens on the first stage.  Once time runs out, mediums cannot move their token anymore.  At the end of each turn, the clock hand moves forward 1 hour.



WINNING:  If a token is placed on the card that matches the card on the ghosts board, they move forward on the track.  The players win only if every player guessed correctly all 3 times.  If at any point the clock would move past 7 o'clock, the game ends and everyone loses.

CONCLUSION:  Mysterium shares a lot of similarities with Dixit, both are weirdly named games with enjoyable mechanics and beautiful artwork.  Mysterium could have fallen into the trap Exploding Kittens did, where just the art sells the game, but it manages to be so much more.  Although this game is supposed to be co-operative between the ghost and mediums, it never felt as difficult as other co-op games, and that's a shame.  I enjoy working against the clock, against the game itself, and I never really seemed to struggle.  Does that make it easy?  Well, I do know the clock did get to 6, so I don't know.  Playing with your normal game group might actually make this too easy.  This is a game that seems to embrace the idea of playing with strangers, or as an ice-breaker.  There's a simplicity to this that makes it accessible to others not used to games, but it is a detective game, first and foremost.  You might have fun solving this one.