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With the help of Verika Model and Gamer Gal helped Game Universe celebrate their Brookfield location’s one-year anniversary a few weeks back.
During this time when things will be getting tight for local businesses we ask that you try and support your local businesses, if you are able, as much as you can.
Good local businesses like Game Universe who are active parts of the community and are generous with groups like ours deserve to be remembered in times like these!
Also pictured are game from MilCoG sponsors we spied on the store shelves! We appreciate all our sponsors and partners during times like these! Consider patronizing those who give to the community!
Components: Detailed miniatures and quality cardboard, and while the card stock is nice it could be thicker.
Game Setup: Game setup is variable based on player count. There are several map scenarios included in the game and there is a section on making your own maps. Setup is not quick, but its not overly long for a game like this either. Plan on at least 10 or 15 minutes.
Mechanics: Deck building, tableau building, variable powers.
Game Play: Activate a row and column of your city to gather resources and use powers. Move your army to conquer lands, build new buildings, research new tech.
Last Word: We *really* enjoyed out time with Monumental. Its a nice combination of a civ game and a deck builder. VPs are awarded at the end based on 4 different criteria and ignoring any of them is not advised. The mechanics mesh together nicely and its nice to play a civ game that doesn’t take all day but still feels finished when its all over. If you are like us you will want to sleeve your cards though as we plan to play it quite a few times.
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Components: Excellent component quality with thick cardboard and nicely sculpted plastic bits. Beautiful art that captures the theme nicely.
Game Setup: Rules were clear and setup took about 10 minutes our first time. Subsequent setups probably in the 5 minute range.
Mechanics: Tile laying, special powers, set collection.
Game Play: Choose a tile to place to construct point scoring opportunities for yourself, choose characters to define how you will score points, and activate special powers,
Last Word: Scoring by line-of-sight is a unique mechanic that plays out really neat. There isn’t a lot like Tang Garden out there for this reason alone. Its easy and fun to play as well as a different twist on tile laying games and the bling really makes it look pretty while its on the table. We’re looking forward to subsequent plays of the base game and also adding the expansions.
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Components: Stand issue components that you’d expect from a major publisher. Nice art that fits the theme.
Game Setup: Setup wasn’t hard and took about 10 minutes. Rules were clear.
Mechanics: Resource management, hand management, area control, Rondell.
Game Play: Manipulate the dual Rondells to maximize your worker placement and resource collection.
Last Word: Pretty standard medium-weight Euro fare. Everything worked fine and its a solid design. That said it fell kinda flat over here and really did not move us. Again, its a perfectly fine design and I can see how people like it. In fact, we did like it fine enough. It just did not set itself apart from the 1000’s of other games we already own in this category. Not sure it will see the table again. YMMV on this one.
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Components: Good components with some nice touches like the “glass” cubes for power and suspicion, and the jail cells on the tile holder. Good, fitting art.
Game Setup: Setup was easy – 5 minutes.
Mechanics: Resource management, hand management, area control, hidden auction, bidding, variable player powers, set collections, bluffing.
Game Play: Bid for control for areas that give rewards. Some bids are hidden and some are not. Use resources to craft items for points. Variable end-game scoring. Be careful not to attract too much attention when bidding or lose points.
Last Word: A clever bidding game with a fantasy RPG theme. Everything works well with this design and we found it to be very fun – so much that we wonder why there isn’t a bigger buzz around this game. Its probably too much for a gateway game but for any hobby gamer this is a easy play that returns a lot of fun if you like player interaction. For us this peaks out the gaming ROI meter and we’re keeping our copy in easy reach for when we have a quick hour to play something that hums along nicely but is still big fun. Also good any any player count – its hard to get a 2 player auction/bidding/bluffing game to work this well. Thunderworks has a solid title on their hands with this one!
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