Love Letter

You are a suitor trying to win the love of Princess Annette. However she has (very inconsiderately) decided to lock herself in a castle and so you must rely on the lengthy process of using intermediaries in the castle to get your letters to the princess. I mean do they not have some form of postal service in this country!?

The objective of love letter is to either eliminated all of your competitors or have the highest numbered
card when the communal deck you draw cards from runs out. To start everyone draws one card from the deck and the game can begin with the starting player drawing a card. They then choose one out of their two cards to play and apply the corresponding effect which can be anything from looking at another player's hand (the priest's special ability) to secretly comparing hands with another player with the person who has the smaller value card being eliminated (the baron's ability). You must however be wary because although the princess's card has the highest value, if you discard her you are automatically out of the round, making her one of the biggest risks in the game.

The first things you notice about this game is how compact it is (it can easily fit in my blazer pocket)  only needing 16 cards to play the game, meaning that you can take it anywhere with you making it the perfect game to take on holiday for example. Although if you do have a bit more space you can use the other amazing components like the bag you keep everything in which is delightfully furry.

Although there is player elimination the rounds go so quickly that you barely notice the wait before you can join in again. The fact that rounds go so quickly means that you can fit a game in any small patches of time that you have spare. 

The game has the right amount of strategy to make it interesting as you figure out what card everyone else has, while trying to keep your hand secret. Although luck plays a role in this game, you can improve you chances by figuring out how many cards of a specific type have been played letting you have a better picture of what everyone could have (this is made easier by the help cards which show you how many of each card there is) but still keeping a bit of uncertainty in the game making it feel fair while still being tense.

Also, every game you play is different as before you play each round, you remove the first card from the deck face down, making every game different and putting another factor you need to add into your calculations.

I absolutely love this game, it is portable, fun and has the just right amount of strategy. The only thing that I would say is that some people might not like the suiting theme but you can just get one of the various different re-skins like the: batman, hobbit and star wars themed versions. This is a must have game for practically everyone and I would give it a 9/10!

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.