The Overlooked

Post by: Grant Rodiek

As a start to this week’s blogging, I wanted to write about a few games that I really enjoy, yet others don’t seem to talk about much. Now, I believe these games to be commercial successes, due to sequels, or reprints, but I just don’t see much chatter about them. Therefore, this post is about 4 (potentially) overlooked games and my recommendations for them. Enjoy!

1775 Rebellion OR 1812 The Invasion of Canada

I just love these games. They have a classic, beautiful aesthetic with large boards that display the maps, wooden cubes, and cards with illustrations that resemble paintings from the era. The mechanisms are dead simple. On your turn, play a movement card from your hand of three. The card details how many groups of soldiers you may move, and the distance up to they may travel. Battles begin at the end of movement exactly like they do in Risk, but there’s a shift. Every army, like the British Regulars or Colonial Militia, roll different custom dice. The dice indicate how likely the groups are to deal damage to their opponent, do nothing, or outright flee. It’s simple, but so effective. The British Regulars never flee and are very effective in combat. Makes sense. The Colonial Militia are cowardly and flee like bandits. They aren’t professional soldiers. It happens.

Movement and battle is augmented with a few Special cards. And my favorite cards, those that let units board ships to make incredibly decisive moves, really up the ante. Your opponent thinks you are bottled up in New York, when suddenly he ships a warship full of men down to the southern theater.

Games take around 60-90 minutes, and only a few minutes to teach. There is also a great deal of strategy mixed in with the luck of the dice and card draw, which makes it very approachable. If this hasn’t piqued your interest, I have one more item to fire across your bow: it’s a team game. One of the few team games I’ve seen, actually.

In each, one team represents the forces of the British Empire, the other the wily Americans. 1775 Rebellion focuses on the American Revolution and supports four players: Continental Army, Continental Militia, British Loyalists, and British Regulars. Hessian Mercenaries and the French can enter the fray, but controlled by the other players. The Native Americans are neutral and can be recruited by players.

1812 The Invasion of Canada is about the War of 1812. This one plays up to five players. The factions are mostly the same as before, but the Native Americans are controlled by a third player on the British side. The French and Indian War is not far off as the third game in the series…

This is a lovely game. People tend to say 1775 is the superior game, and it does have some refinement and nice elements. But, both are wonderful.

1775 on Amazon here. 1812 on Amazon here.

Vampire Empire

This game was my first foray into the Stronghold library. This is a 2 player game, similar to Revolver in its simplicity, with asymmetrical play and a heavy dose of bluffing and deduction. There are 9 character cards, split evenly into three colors (Clergy, Nobility, Commoners), and double sided: one for Vampires, one for Human. All characters begin in the Human form. Thanks to the games nice card sleeves (provided), the back is hidden and you can pull out the card to switch the character.

Vampires are determined at the beginning of the game by pulling 3 tokens out of a bag. The Human gets to secretly examine 2 other tokens, so they know 2 guaranteed humans.

The Vampire wins by killing all the humans, or having all three of the vampires in the Castle. Humans win by killing all of the vampires. I think there may be other ways, but I’m forgetting. It’s been a month or so!

The game is a simple one of hand management and choosing where to pick your battles. Players have cards that can be played by discarding a defined number of cards. The costs vary between Night (the Vampire player’s turn) or Day (the Human player’s turn), so preserving some surprises and the costs to afford them is crucial. The Vampire player may play coy, or boldly, by revealing a Vampire and switching out the card. The Vampire player can use any character to kill any character, whereas the human can only attack known vampires. When the Vampire player uses the Bishop to attack the Noble…is the Noble a Vampire and he’s tricking me? Or is the Bishop the vampire? Or neither? There’s some beautiful double think.

Combat is resolved by players playing cards that match the color of the character (so, brown cards can be played to attack with or defend for commoners). So, do you protect the noble? Only to find in the future it was a ruse to get you to waste cards protecting a vampire? Or do you let the noble die? Only to find it was a human all along? Or, you let it die and called the vampire’s bluff — he just killed one of his own?

This game has a great art style and comes in a lovely tin. It takes just a few minutes to teach, but is full of depth and so many plays. It’s well worth a look if you enjoy 2 player games, deduction, bluffing, and simple hand management.

Only $22 on Amazon.

Claustrophobia

I’m a lover of 2 player games and asymmetry. My friend returned from a convention, mentioned this game, and it went straight to my Christmas list a few years ago. This is a great game that is the best combination of theme and trash with simple, well designed mechanics.

Do you like dungeon crawling? Combat? Being a demon lord? Step right up! One player controls a small group of 2-4 (about) convicts, guided by a battle priest, who are fighting the demonic hordes for redemption. For each character there is a nifty tray with a number of slots. Each slot has a Movement, Defense, and Attack value. Some are better for sprinting through a cave, others for standing firm, others for taking out everything. At the start of a round, you roll 1d6 per character, then assign those rolls. 1 die per character. This provides the nice combination of choice within limits. Here’s where things get interesting: whenever a character takes a damage, you must place a peg on one of the rows. That means if you assign a 4, and there is a peg in row 4? Your character is stunned and does nothing for the turn. As you take damage, your options diminish. Tricky, tricky.

The player who controls the demons essentially owns a limitless horde of weak little goblins. He has some heavy hitters, but mostly  a mass wave of goblins. As the human player explores, the demon player chooses how the tiles or oriented. This lets him create mazes or circles that wear down the humans as they valiantly explore. That’s fun. Also, at the start of the round, the demon lord rolls a number of dice, then assigns them to a mat to activate abilities. It’s somewhat like Alien Frontiers, if you’re familiar. These abilities let the demonic player draw powerful action cards, spawn more monsters, and other shenanigans.

So, what else? Lots of great scenarios for variation and good stories. It’s packed with beautiful, pre-painted miniatures. There’s not one, but two great expansions with more tiles, cards, characters, and monsters. More minis!

The base game is only $46 on Amazon with a ton of fun content.

Legacy: The Testament of Duke de Crecy

Portal is one of my favorite publishers because their games stand in the middle of Euro and Ameritrash design. I’ve heard Eurotrash and I’ve heard mid-Atlantic to describe such things. I think Legacy is one of their best titles, but also one that doesn’t seem to receive as much hype.

The goal in Legacy is to build the most incredible family over 3 generations. You will build an actual family tree with cards as your characters marry, have children, die, and so forth. This looks quite cool on the table and you begin to tell a story as your family grows.

At its core, Legacy is a worker placement game. Players use their limited actions each round to have children, get married, buy mansions, obtain titles, win friends, begin business ventures, and more. These actions are taken to increase your family’s wealth, increase its prestige, and bring in just the right characters. Matchmaking at its finest!

The game plays well with 2-4 (and has an official solo variant I’ve never tried) in around 45-75 minutes.

As a personal anecdote, I was joking with Ignacy once about how my friend’s male character married a woman who looked like a man. Without the colored border, we wouldn’t have known. Ignacy immediately named the character and noted “ugliest character in the game!” It was hilarious and just notes the charm throughout the title.

Grab it on Amazon here.

Any titles you’d recommend? What are some gems of your collection that seem to have been overlooked? Share them in the comments below.

This entry was posted in Blog and tagged 1775, claustrophobia, fun games, legacy, overlooked games, recommendations, vampire empire by Grant Rodiek. Bookmark the permalink.

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