Social Games

Britannia is a game about history of the Britain.

Problems: in my opinion, there is too much to learn in scoring system and when do various tribes arrive and whereto. And many battle results depend on one d6 roll, which you cannot affect a much. Some people live with that, I do not. For a game of this complexity, I feel it is unnecessary to give points according to final position of your tribe - is it historically accurate or not.

This is a cardgame of geek community, in which every player has one roommate of that community, and they try to get as much slack as possible. The first one reaching his or her individual slack goal wins the game. Funny with nice pictures, with quite traditional game flow (clockwise, draw cards, play them, next player), which means that more to wait when more players.

What's wrong: draw well and win the game. Not much tactics, you can choose to try to hinder other players (if you have suitable cards) or drive certain player nuts. Rules have some unasnwered questions and some things could have been written into cards.

This time it is elections, one after another. You draw a card, propose a new law and then an election is held. And then you get and lose (party?) markers. After a few rounds the game is over and the one with most suitable combination 8this time) is the winner.

This game is a bit like Fluxx with elections. It might be fun for a game or two.

This is a game of territory control in late Reneissance Spain. Gameplay is very abstract and consits of sending troops to territories and using special cards to break normal gameplay. Thrice in the game these territories are then scored.

This game is very well thought out and although needs some time to master, is very enjoyable if you try to find a little brain-teaser without too much player interaction nor dice throwing.

This game also has various expansion sets, but for what I have heard and experienced, they are not worth it - the basic game is just better without modifications.

Everyone is falling. Your aim is to hit the ground last. That is not much of a goal, but it is all you can think of.

Fast and deadly, this is perhaps the fastest multiplayer cardgame ever (excluding some stupid guessing games). Rules are simple and easy to learn, although cards could have information on them - but who have time to read them during the gameplay? The real difference in this game is that one player is a dealer who is not otherwise partaking the game. The dealer also acts as a referee for any disputes and controls the game flow speed.

In this game, you do not have time to think out any strategies; just quickly select your tactic and try to survive with that.

'Game with no rules', or how the ad clause went. Practically this is card-drawing game, where you draw one or more cards and then play one or more cards. Then somebody who had played some cards wins. Sheesh.

Card-games of humorous value are the trend, and this is one more to that scene. Each player tries to be more gother (gothic-like) than other players, and the first one to reach 20 goth points is the winner.

This game has reached the second edition, but little has that done to this game. Yeah, it is fun, or was at least for the first 3 games, and it is fast. But I doubt that it will be funny after hundred or so games, and after that it is just a stupid lucky draw game.

If you want to get pissed and then play games, this might be a good choice.

"Life isn't fair, why should a game be?" is the phisophy for this game. And this is what this game is all about: if you win, you most probably keep on winning.

As a game, this is very simple card game, easily playable with standard playing cards (if you start with 3 identical decks), with no need to check the rulebook after you have learned the game in 10 minutes.

I doubt if you can find this game from anywhere, but you might be lucky. Anyway, this is mainly a card game but it also has a board (map) and some counters. However, you do facings like in Canasta to represent your rule in countries.

The game itself is a political game with option of war, with each player controlling random countries from turn to turn, trying to collect gold treasury and control as many countries as possible at the end of the game.

The gameplay is quite smooth and after you have learnt basic mechanics you mainly have to check certain special effects from the rulebook - which also have a complete list of cards, which is quite a spoiler for the game and I recommend that players are not allowed to check it.

The only real flaw in the game is that the actual winner is quite random thing - the game can end almost anytime but if it takes longer to end, you can start to anticipate the end and put several countries without any defense into play, as each player is limited to one attack per turn. Some modification to victory conditions is a good idea.

This card game is set on a world of conspiracy, mainly 80's. Your aim is to conquer the world with your illuminati, a secret conspiracy organisation like Bavarian Illuminati. Have you known that Phone Company is run by Internation Communist Conspiracy?

The game is very well though out, and there is no need to check the rulebook after the first game, except for some rare rulings - as long as you keep the back cover handy. But I cannot think many ways to do it better.

Note: this is based on Deluxe Illuminati I played mainly on early 90's, nowadays there is a new version with multicolor cards and some new illuminaties. Cannot comment that, maybe in future.

A rabid rabbit race or something like this, this game puts a group of rabbits against each other. The first one in the finish is the winner, but to reach it, you must eat 3 lettuce and big pile of carrots.

The gameplay is much based on skill, only dice throwing is done in some special areas. However, this dice throwing can heavily tilt the favor in the game - most of the time, nothing very special happen, but twice I won the game by lucky throw at the start of the game.

Game pieces are not well thought out - the gaming board is pretty and cards and markers humorous, but what fail are the carrot cards, which are in stupid sizes (10, 15 and 30?) and could have been disctinctly colored as 'money' usually is in board games, even in Monopoly.

This humorous boardgame is situated in Republic los Bananos (sp?), with each player controlling one family and trying to get as much money as possible into their Swiss bank account.

The basic gameplay is quite simple and straightforward, although some little things need to be checked from rulebook or remembered, there is no reference sheets nor any explanations on cards or board. And when a coup is started, things get even more complicated.

This game is great fun but have two problems: a) it can get very slow when a coup is tried each turn and b) after all, you can easily win by drawing certain cards - otherwise you need to be in certain position and usually you cannot even influence on that.

In this game, players build up an elven world of multiple realms with villages, and then travel across that land, collecting gold. This is then repeated, and the player with most gold in the end is the winner.

Gameplay is based on cards, which are without any text so any international version is easy to make - this also means that players must remember things or check them from the rulebook, but luckily there are not many things you have to remember. The rulebook is also a bit vague about some things, some extra finish should have been done in that part.

The card packet talks about 45 min playing time but in our tests it was more like 1-2 hours. However, we have only player two games, so I cannot yet say if the game will eventually get very boring with only one winning strategy, but it was quite promising, although one card (gold) seemed a bit overpowered. However, some extra interactivity would have been nice.

This satiric game is about Soviet Union politics, with each player starting to control aging communists, with aim to hail on the Red Square Parade for two (or was it three?) times. The gameplay is quite smooth without distinct turns for players (good when many player).

As politics do stressful things, they age. And when they age, they get sick, and are put into sanitarium or die off. And everything ages the politics, from KGB investigations to failed political actions.

Little girls on break, beating each other into pulp. Very fast gameplay, with little strategy to learn, after it is mainly politics ('beat that one first!') and dumpster searching. For the components, some things could have been written into cards, just now they only have a picture, typename and value and flavor text. But you have to read exact rules for special cards from the main rules, even after tens of games.

For just wasting your time for ten or so minutes, this game is a quite entertaining. It has its problems with big crowds (waiting for your turn) and sometimes the last two might fight for quite a long time (well at least 5 minutes..), and of course after all it is quite a luck game, who draws most humiliations is the winner - especially after people know it better they just discard cards until they draw enough defense, very boring...

See also our Lunc Money House Rules (in Finnish).

In this German card game, each player tries to build as spectacular city as possible. Each player has a different character (from King and Architect to Assassin and Thief) each turn, and that character affects the gameplay for each turn. And after each turn, each player selects a new character and so on, until one player gets his (or her) city large enough, when all cities are scored.

This game is well designed and quite fast to play. Of course you have to learn a bit German to play this, but I have heard that English version is coming, too. It also has expansion set which I have not seen. The game has a little problem that if you have bad luck, you just have that and cannot try to manipulate it.

Ancient Egypt has given theme to this game of tile drawing. The game board, pieces and the rulebook make this game look very complicated, but in fact this game is very easy to learn and to master.

Sad that this game has very little to master, game result is too linked to lucky draw. Extra bonus that they have listed number of different tiles to game board and there is practically no need to use rulebook after the game is learnt.

This game is about four ricochetting robots in a gameboard, trying to reach target flagpoints with as few moves as possible. What makes this game really interesting is that there is no such things as player turns or order, and any player can join or leave at any time, without causing distrubtance to game flow.

And this game is a real brain killer! Or how can you say, evil. You think and try to figure out a better strategy while time runs... It is also a very decent game, with modifiable map (with some thousand different setups) and absolutely no need to see any rules after you have learned them in 5 minutes. The only minus goes to that sometimes a bit too simple task comes up, but that is only a small glitch.

This is a robot racing game, in which each player controls one robot that is trying to reach flagpoints. The gameplay is simultaneous, with each player doing their program at the same time and then executing it simultaneously.

The basic gameplay is quite simple, but may cause problems to some people, as it requires certain kind of brainwork to understand how things work, so this game is good brain exercise.

And this game has big number of different modifications, special tiles on board, extra rules and things like that. Most of these can be quickly checked from quick reference sheets or easily remembered, but if extra add-ons are added, more special rules are needed and some of them really need to be checked out from the rulebooks - some extra thought could have been done to some of these specials, but in overall, they are as good as they can be with mechanics like this.

Warning: be careful when setting up the board - hard board pieces and badly placed flagpoints make the game very long and possibly practically impossible to win.

Settlers of Catan is a boardgame about town and road building and resource gathering. It is a turn-based game with little rules which are easily learned without no need to check the rulebook again, except when using some specialities for the very first time.

The only problem in basic game is that production sector is randomly selected each turn, and as this is the only thing affecting your progress, makes the game depend too much on those dice rolls. To make the game much more better, some people use a deck of cards from 2 to 12 representing 2d6 distribution.

This is a card/board game in which a group of creatures are put against each other in the arena, and players bid for winner (or, to be more, 3 winners). The losing creature of each round is killed and this is continued until only 3 creatures remain, when player with most bids on these creatures is the winner.

There is not much mechanical luck in the game, although there are some good cards in the deck - other players decide your fate, not card draw. So good poker face, tactics and politics is essential.

The game finish is quite good, special cards have their meaning printed on the card and there is absolute no need to check the rulebook after few first games. There was one vague rule (spectators).