Cash n Guns

A wise robber once said, 'The danger isn't over until the heist is over'. Unfortunately that wise robber was wrong and died shortly after as his friends shot him repeatedly to get a bigger share of the loot from a heist they just completed.

Cash n Guns is a party game in which you try to collect the most treasure from a robbery you just completed while trying to eliminate your companions from the competition by giving them three wounds. At the start of a round (of which there are 8) you put out the 8 treasure cards that will be available that round and then deciding whether you want to load your gun with a bang or a click(you have 5 clicks and 3 bangs). Then everyone points their foam guns at someone else with the intent of either shooting them with their bangs or scaring them with a click and making them stand down. At this point, players have to decided whether to stay standing, risking being shot or lay their character down but not be able to take treasure or shoot this turn. Everyone flips over their cards and discards them, with the people shot by a bang taking a wound and laying their character down. Everyone left standing proceeds to take loot going clockwise. This is done until there are no more treasure cards left and the winner is the player with the most money who is still alive.

The first thing you notice when you first set eyes on this game is how lovely the components are. The box has this lovely mat finish and also the gangsters characters you play are illustrated in this funny cartoon style (they also stand up)! My favourite loot cards are probably the paintings (loot cards that the more you have the more their value) which are goofy versions of other classics like the mona lisa. The foam guns really add to the feel of the game and although you can play without them (probably a good idea if I take this into school) they are really nice.

I do have a couple of problems with this game though, mainly player elimination. With a run time of 30 minutes it can get really boring if you are eliminated in the early rounds (I once died in round three) and you have to be content with watching your companions play while you get to do nothing but watch. There are even problems with this kind of thing even if you are alive because as soon as some aims at you with a bang card you are out for that round, you are either lie yourself down or be shot and have to lie down. This first means that it feels a lot less like you can do anything to affect the outcome of the game and also it is quite boring having to watch of your friends are choosing what loot they want while you are stuck twiddling your thumbs (although for a lot less time than if you are killed outright).

Although this game does have some problems while you are alive you do get to make some interesting decisions like whether you should put a bang or a click in your gun and who to point it at. Also the push your luck aspect of the game is nice as you way up the rewards of staying up with the shots you might take if you don't lay down. It is an interesting decision if you make it to the loot sharing phase on when to take the god fathers desk an item always put out on every turn which lets you redirect one persons gun if they are pointing at you and take first pick on the loot next time.

Overall I think that if you get the right people together (those being normally teenagers like this which is lucky seeming as I am one) it can be a blast, with the silliness of pointing guns at each other and laughing as one of your friend dies (in the game of course). However if you are playing with kids or people who don't like the idea of pointing guns at each other or having to wait for the game to end before they can get back in if they die then it could easily turn sour. Also if you are playing with young kids they could get upset if they died or some was shooting at them. I think I would give this an 8/10 if I was playing with the right group of people but 4/10 if that was not the case.

Flamme Rouge

 Riding a bike is cool but do you know what's cooler pretending to ride a bike! The tour de france is cool, but you know what's cooler flame rouge. Flamme rouge lets you pretend that you are the cyclist you wish you were(without even breaking a sweat)!

Flamme rouge is a racing game were you try and get either one of your two bicycles across the finishing lining. You have two different decks made up of movement cards, one for your rouler(your all-rounder cyclist) and your sprinter(which can go really fast at some points but to contract that also go really slow other times). Picking one of these decks to do first, you take four cards and choose one of them to be that riders movement of that turn and discard it from the game while the other are put at the back of the deck to be re-used later(meaning that if you only pick your good cards at the start then you will be overtaken in the late game as you have to pick the bad cards). After that  everyone moves their cyclists corresponding to the movement cards starting from the biker at the front moving back. Then you get to move up all the packs that are one space apart together because of 'slip-streaming' and they everyone at the front of the pack takes a exhaustion card which is put in that cyclists recycling section.

The first thing I love about this game is the huge variety of strategies that present themselves from the challenge of managing your riders deck and the different strategies that the decisions you make represent. For example you might try to form a breakaway, conserve your energy for a final sprint or if I was in the game just go slowly for the entire race.

The art is also very nice, with different art for each of the riders decks, which is a really nice touch that makes it feel like you are controlling two people instead if two little pieces on a board. However I do have one problem which is scaling, because according to my calculations (which involved lots of counting, searching the internet and a cow) that the course in Flamme Rouge is only 518.16 meters long and a stage in the tour de france covers about 166666 meters and it would take about 33.6 seconds for professional cyclists to complete it. Saying this, the flame rouge is a flag that marks the last kilometre in a race and 518.16 meters is kind of close to a kilometre.

But if you look past the fact that the race is absolutely tiny, you can bask in the brilliance of the theme of this game. It simulates the fact that going out in front is tiring and the help from slipstreaming riders get but also how it is really hard to form a break-away from any length of time without being swallowed back up by the peleton. Anyone who has watch even a bit of cycling will recognise this from the actual thing. Everything works really intuitively

My last small problem is the cyclists, which all had their rides fall of them, and so we will have to glue them back together (all though it will almost certainly never happen, I am very lazy). Also, it is slightly hard to tell the difference between your router and sprinter but it isn't that bad.

Overall the problems are insignificant really, when you think about how easy the rules are to explain, while also not making the game simple or limiting any of the strategic options. I think that this is an amazing gateway game but is also worth it for anyone who wants a great racing game. Overall I would give this a nine out of ten and recommend this to basically anyone.

Magic Maze

You are a band of adventurers and because going out adventuring doesn't exactly turn the same profit as getting a regular job, you have, unsurprisingly, no money. So instead of trying to trade goblin heads for the weapons you so dearly need, you decide to just steal them and save all that time wasted bartering. What better place to rob all your supplies than a shopping centre?

Magic Maze is a cooperative game where you have to get four different pawns (representing an archer, fighter, dwarf and wizard) to different shops for the planned robbery and then running to the exits as quickly as possible for obvious reasons. But instead of each of the players controlling one of these pieces, you can all move them a different direction. But two things make this game exciting, one, you are up against the clock and two no one can talk. 

Although this game has an unassuming cover, it holds an absolute gem inside. The first thing you notice about it as you start playing is how intense it is, if your mind wanders of to something else for a moment, it will soon be drawn back in as someone bangs a big red pawn in-front of you which basically symbolises them shouting 'DO SOMETHING!' at you. This is quite different from the turn based games which you aren't always engaged when it is someone else's go and are only actually playing 50% of the time.

The difficulty level is also perfectly managed, when you start you can play the base levels which unlike most game the simple game is just hard enough to be a challenge to a new player (but not to hard at the same time) and as you get more experienced you can choose to do the harder levels which get increasingly complex. For example, each of your must have to go to different exits when they are running out or have to contend with security cameras or in one of the later scenarios your quest for the perfect heist spans two dimensions!

My one problem with this game is that with the bigger player counts some people are given identical action cards except for the fact that one person gets to do a special action as well.. This means that your role in the game is a lot less important ,when you are in a pair, as if you don't spot a vital move you need to make your partner will just do it for you. This means that you feel like you aren't impacting the game and that is a lot less fun. One way to get round this issue is to just split that special card up, meaning on player could do the movement and the other could do the special action making both roles important. The issue is partly resolved in the game by at some points swapping roles, so you wouldn't get a bad role for the whole game but still that is not a perfect solution.

Another thing that this game succeeds with enforcing silence onto the players is eliminating the possibility of someone telling everyone what to do because they can't talk. Which is sometimes a problem in co-operative games were one person basically plays the game and other people are left twiddling their thumbs.

Overall I would say that this game is an excellent option when you feel like working together for a change and is a fun experience which is good for all sorts of situations. I think I would give this a 8.5/10 and recommend it to basically everyone.

Happy Salmon

A 2017 survey into who were the most happy people in the world has showed up some unusual results. It found that the most happy participents weren't exactly people, but instead fish. Salmon as it turns out are very, very happy.

Happy Salmon is a party game full of frantic fun as you try and get rid of your deck of cards by doing various different actions like high-fiving and the signature Happy Salmon move where you slap your hands together. Once you have completed the action shown on your card with someone else then you can discard it and move on to the next one, if you end up in the case that no else has same action as you then you can just put that card at the bottom of your deck to complete that action later.

That is the rules explanation done and you could now play Happy Salmon with minimal to no instruction from the rule book. So I bet you can all guess what my first comment about this game is (and if you can't I am very disappointed in you) being that the rules are so simple, you can take it out and be playing with people having never heard of it in 5 minutes. A major positive if you like me have a bunch of friends who are relatively new to this whole 'gaming' thing.

If you are averse to lots of noise then this might not be the game for you because Happy Salmon gets loud really quickly, as everyone starts shouting (probably not the best game to play in the school library) to see if other people have the same card. This creates an amazing atmosphere as everyone scrambles to get rid of their cards and makes this a pretty much perfect party game.

If all of those things don't make you want to run of to buy this game then the case will, because it is probably the best board game pouch ever created. I mean what more could you hope for than a smiling salmon with a tail and two cute fins that compactly stores your game in style. The cards are also suitably robust so you don't have to worry about them being damaged in the crossfire.

The small playtime of this game means that you can play it several times in a quite short time, but I wouldn't suggest playing it for more than 10 minutes. Actually if you play this for ten minutes I would be very impressed as this game gets you to run round tables and do different hand movements at an increasingly fast pace (exercise and fun at the same time, this is new) which for most people gets them out of breathe in about 30 seconds.

My only complain and this is really not a big deal, is that when you get the cards they are all stuck together which is a minor inconvenience as you have to spend about five minutes breaking them apart but like I said this is the only fault I could find with otherwise flawless game.

Overall I think this game is one of the best party games I own and it is always fun to play. It is also really nice how they provide variants for people with limited mobility. I think I am going to give this game a 8.5/10 and totally recommend it for anyone who wants a really fun party game.