The Re-Review: Stalled

Through the Ages

• 1 play with 2 people
• Played before

As we figure out how to play with wars and aggressions, our scores are slowly working their way up to peaceful-game-level scores. This game is so odd to me, that I’ve played it as much as I have in such a short time and the game takes hours to play. Most of my games have been online and that obviously helps, but even still, there’s a good number of face-to-face plays as well.

Highly recommended.

Magic: The Gathering

• 5 plays with 2 people
• Played before

I’m not wild about collectible card games, and Magic is a big reason for it. It’s a fine game, but I purposefully avoid any game that has a collectible aspect. Beyond that, the game feels very mechanical, like every card is a set of numbers and not much else. That’s okay I guess, but I’d rather play something else.

Not recommended.

Dale of Merchants

• 1 play with 2 people
• Played before

The last time I played this, I messed up a major rule, so this time I made sure to play that correctly to see if I liked the game or not, and my general feelings are: meh. Now, part of that is colored by the fact that I’m not sure of the strategy, but the rest of it is it’s just an okay game. I love the variety, but it’s just a set collection game.

Not recommended.

Five Tribes

• 1 play with 2 people
• Played before
• Part of my 2016 10x10 Challenge

We hadn’t played Five Tribes in a while and my wife suggested it. Every time I play, I’m reminded of why I like the game so much. It’s a relatively rules-light game with a ton of choices, so many that it’s likely going to bring out the analysis paralysis in most players. Still, the games don’t take that long and the game play is excellent.

This is the second time I’ve played with the expansion, and I love the variety that the new meeples and tiles add. Well worth the purchase.

Highly recommended.

Burgle Bros

• 1 play with 4 people
• Played before

If you’re tired of Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert, you should look into Burgle Bros. It feels very similar to those two games, but it brings a sense of style and an additional dimension. The moving guards also make decisions tough as you don’t have perfect information, just a hunch about where they’re going.

I do think that this game is easier with fewer players, but if you have too few, I suspect the guard deck resets too soon. Two players is probably the easiest number I think.

In this particular game, we lost before getting to the third floor and I think that’s due to having too many players on a given floor. I think with that number you need to get folks moving up while you’re still working on cracking the safe on the bottom floors.

Recommended.

Homeland: The Game

• 1 play with 5 people
• Played before

I really want to like this game. I like that it’s a social deduction game with many sides and only one winner. It’s not what you’re expecting from these kinds of games where there are only two sides and teams win or lose together. Instead you have loyal agents, political opportunists, and maybe a terrorist mole. Each of those roles earns points in different ways and there are no teams, you win or lose alone.

However, both times we’ve played, the terrorist has had a very easy time winning the game. The rest of the players can try as hard as they’d like, but ultimately, they’re going to lose just due to poor planning or bad card draws. I’d like to figure out how to properly play this game, but it might be a while.

Not recommended (for now).