The Final Empire book review

The Final Empire is the first book in the widely acclaimed fantasy Mistborn series. This novel set in a dystopic world where the dark lord has already won and now rebels must fight back with unique magic powers, a small degree of political skulduggery but most importantly a selection of names that would get them teased so much in primary school that the parents might want to consider home schooling.

The first thing that drew me into this book was how intriguing the setting was. With a unique magic system and a captivating world, once the book starts revealing its secrets… I was hooked. The most exciting thing was how wizards in this world can ingest metals to access magical powers that they can use to, for example, sooth other people’s emotions or push psychically against metal objects to launch themselves into the air. While this magic system sounds like a very dodgy, pop-up ad that advertises huge body-building gains by only consuming 20 grams of iron a day, it is actually one of the things that separates this book out from the crowd of thousands of generic fantasy titles.

The only minor complaint I had with this book is that I didn’t feel like the characters were described in enough detail to let me fully picture them in my head. This led to the unfortunate situation where I imagined that the tyrannical dictator of the world looked like Lord Buckethead (see pictures of Lord Buckethead here). By the time the book got around to telling me what the Lord Ruler actually looked like, I couldn’t get the image out of my head so now the Dark Lord forever more has a large black bucket over his face.

But that small problem didn’t stop me getting hooked and losing my entire social life while I romped relentlessly through this book (not that I have a social life to lose anyway, what can I say my hobbies are board games, reading books and writing blog posts…). This book gets you addicted with almost perfect pacing and makes you care about the characters so you never want to put the book down.

Overall the Final Empire is an interesting fantasy book with a fascinating concept and world building that drags you in time and again. If you are a fantasy fan then it is almost certainly worth a gander but even if you aren’t, I would still recommend at least giving it a go.

P.S. Don’t trust any adverts saying that you can get ripped if you just click on the link below and start taking 20 grams of very expensive iron flakes which you can buy exclusively from their company. Your wallet and more importantly you stomach will thank you.

Codenames pictures Board game Review

In Codenames pictures you all are secret super spies who probably have twenty-seven cool looking guns back at home and have almost certainly terminated at least seven heads of state. Now out on a field mission, you must locate your other sneaky companions with the help of a Spymaster before your rival organisation locates theirs.

Codenames pictures is a game where you play in two teams of two or more people: one person in each team is the Spymaster and the rest normal field operatives. In the middle of the table you place a 4 by 5 grid of surreal pictures (like a dinosaur riding a penny farthing) which each represent the location of different coloured spies (red for one team blue for the other) or regular citizens - only the Spymasters know which ones are which. Each turn the Spymaster must give a one-word clue to guide their field operative teammates to the pictures representing the location of the spy. They also give a number to indicate how many spy locations this clue will reveal. The Spymaster’s teammates then guess which picture represents the location of a spy from their team. If they guess correctly, they place down one of their spy tokens on that picture and can have another guess, but if they guess wrong, they have to stop and their turn is over. Whichever team can find the location of all their spies first wins.

Codenames pictures isn’t actually the first ‘Codenames’ game, with the original title in the series having just words on the cards instead of pictures. I, for one, much prefer the pictures version as instead of 4 by 5 grid of cards just having words on them and looking like you’ve wandered into a seriously geeky literature festival, you get to enjoy the black and white surreal art that makes you wonder if someone has slipped something in your drink. The addition of pictures both makes everything look much cooler and is more open to interpretation than the words, making it a great improvement on the base game.

However, having a major improvement still doesn’t mean this game is going to be amazing. This game often suffers from massive pauses where the Spymasters legitimately struggle to think of a clue that could even point to one or two of the spies hiding places. Even I would prefer the mind-numbing boringness of German lessons (let me tell you they were painful) to the extensive silent periods in this game as you wait for a Spymaster to think of a clue.

But even with these big pauses the rest of my family still enjoy the problem-solving element of the game and have fun trying to puzzle out what clues to give or what picture cards could relate to the word ‘circus’. Personally though, I find these interesting decisions too spread out for my own liking.

Finally, this game makes pulling back from a loss very tricky (even more tricky than understanding German grammar, which is why to a native speaker of German I probably sound like Yoda). If your team isn’t doing well at the start of the game, probably due to having cards that have no natural link between them, this isn’t going to change meaning your team will stay behind.

Overall, if you liked the first game (Codenames) then you probably like this game but it is practically the same and therefore probably not worth picking up.  However, if you are a newcomer to the series, I would probably give this a pass. This game ends up leaving you not feeling less like the swish and cool James Bond and more like Dave who works alone in a darkened room as a part time secretary for a small branch of the MI5.

Deep Sea Adventure Board game Review

Warning: dark humour involved

What’s better than a diver? ... A dead diver! But what’s even better than one dead diver? … Lots of dead divers. In the board game Deep Sea Adventure, you can drown repeatedly with your friends before diving again to collect the treasure dropped by your previous diver’s corpse. What could be more fun?

In this blackly comedic board game, each turn you roll two dice and, starting from a submarine, advance along a communal track of treasure tokens. When you have moved you can choose to take the treasure token you land on for points but this will mean that you will move slower and you will use up one oxygen from the shared tank at the start of your turn for every treasure you have. At any point you can choose to go back up to the surface but beware, if you leave this too late and don’t get back to the submarine before the oxygen runs out then your diver will drown. However not all hope is lost, as during the next of three rounds, you can go down to collect your previous diver’s bounty that is placed end of the track of tokens (and you know maybe even say hi to their dead corpse while you’re down there).

With the right group of people who like this kind of dark comedy (read dead inside) Deep Sea Adventure can be a total blast with everyone laughing when you all drown (just like in water polo lessons in PE, but with more laughing and less paperwork). However obviously not everyone will find this hilarious (read still has a soul) and so you just have to be a bit careful before playing or
buying it for someone.

One of this game’s biggest strength is its size, as you can easily tuck the box in with whatever else you might have in a backpack or bag so if you ever have a spare moment you can easily crack it out and play a game. You could even take it on your diving trip to Hawaii and play it with all your friends (actually as I say it that it sounds like a lot less of a good idea).

But hidden under all of the game’s clean aesthetics and surprisingly tiny box is an underlying problem. That is that the most optimal strategy to play this game, one that will let you win most of the time, is actually the least fun way to play. The game shines when you are taking big risks and then drowning with all your friends before and laughing as you all get zero points. However, if you want to even get some points you are probably going to have to play it really safe and turn back almost immediately for fear of running out of oxygen, which is no fun. I find myself often taking risks that I know will probably lose me the game but are going to be more fun than just poking my toe into the water each round.

Overall I would say that if you are the kind of person that likes dark humour and repeatedly dying with your friends then this the game for you and otherwise congratulations for still having a soul.

Ticket to Ride Board game Review

Ticket to Ride is a fast-paced train board game that sees you laying down trains and inadvertently getting in everyone’s way as you race to complete train routes. Although it can’t help sort out the crippling public transport issue in Britain (a problem that has been said to make several experts quit their jobs and move to Hawaii) it can be a chuffing good time — you see what I did there, yeah, I’m not proud.

The aim of Ticket to Ride is to earn the most points by completing routes between the cities shown on your secret ticket cards. You build your routes by putting down trains on the different coloured tracks. On your turn you can either claim two colour cards from a communal selection or by picking hidden cards from the deck. The objective is to collect the same number of colour cards as a section of track on the board, at which point you can claim this track and put down your trains. 

Ticket to Ride is a classic and for a reason. It has supplied my family countless hours of fun because it manages to do so much with so little rules. Every decision you make is   very simple as you aren’t overwhelmed with options, but can also be excruciating as you have to choose between taking more useful cards and claiming routes early. Having low amounts of rules also means that anyone can play it, making it a perfect introduction for anyone into the hobby of board gaming.

Near to the end this game  it can get very animated (sometimes making people more excited than train spotters when they see a vaguely old locomotive) as everyone races to connect the cities on their secret ticket cards. The feeling you get when you realise someone else is trying to  put trains down on the same section of track as you and then racing to try to beat them to it have created some of the most tense moments of my life (almost paralleled by waiting for the hosts to announce the winner on the Great British Bake Off).

The only small problem with Ticket to Ride is sometimes you can lose to bad luck as some people get easier combinations of cities to link together (sometimes being able to do it all in one simple train line) while other people have to criss-cross across the board in a spaghetti-like mess of trains.

Overall I would say that Ticket to Ride is a bona fide classic and is one of the first games I would suggest to anyone, whether they are looking for a way into the world of board games or are just interested in a great game. Or maybe just want to see how hard setting up a transport network can be (harder than it looks apparently).