Smashing Things Up - A Game Night With Paul Peterson

Last night our gaming group was fortunate enough to have a special guest. Turns out a member of our group is old friends with Paul Peterson, designer of the Guillotine card game. He joined us to introduce us to his new game, "Smash Up", which will be put out by AEG. Smash Up got it's debut at GenCon and sold out in the first two days. Not bad!

Anyhow, Smash Up is a cool game in which you take two decks of card, each with a theme and smash them up into a single deck. So, you might end up with Robots and Dinosaurs with Lasers or Ninjas and Wizards. Each themed deck is made up of Minion and Action cards. Each turn you play a single Minion and/or Action card from your hand. Card effects may modify these basic moves. 

What you are doing with these cards is battling over any of five bases that are in play at any given time. Bases have effects on them that modify the Minions and Actions played there and/or other game effects. Bases are scored based on who has more points of Strength there with a first, second and runner up reward. These rewards very from Base to Base as does the overall Strength of the Base - a number you have to overcome with the total Strength of all Minions, from all players, placed at that Base.

Big D contemplates his next move.

The game plays rather smoothly and the combinations of different themes allows for a good amount of variety in game play and strategy. Ninjas, for example are all about sneaking in and changing things up. Wizards are about moving cards through the deck and hand. Zombies seem to be about resilience. Smash 'em up and you have great fun with your Zombie Pirates!

In addition to showing off his baby, Paul was a great guy to hang out with and is every bit a gamer as the rest of us. Between jokes, jibes and the usual trash talk, table talk, gossip and such, he even fielded our endless questions on the game design process.

I know he's a busy dude and he lives always away, but I do hope we can have Paul back for some more games.

Thanks Paul for coming over and thank you Chuck for inviting him.

-Eli

The Isle of Doctor Necreaux

Last night at our weekly Game Night, I was introduced to a fun little card game called "The Ilse of Dr Necreaux". We played it once and I have to say it's really fun. It's an odd sort of card game in that it's a cooperative play game, with each player playing a member of the team.

At the beginning of the game you construct a character by selecting three character traits from randomly drawn cards. Using these abilities, you and your team go on a fast-paced race through the lair of Dr Necreaux, battling monsters, traps and looking for equipment and the key elements to win the game.

The game play here was described to me and very much resembled "Munchkin" but with the players all working together instead of against one another. The key difference to this game and others I've played is that it's all based on timing your pace through the lair. You set your speed and that determines how fast you go through the lair, but it also determines how many encounters you face before your next rest.

All in all the game was fun and showed potential. A big bonus was the art style of the cards which was a sort of nod to the likes of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. I found a lot of inspiring ideas that could be used in miniatures if I ever get back around to doing 28mm pulp sci-fi again.

Thanks for reading,

-Eli