London: Second Edition (Osprey Games)

The Great Fire of London in 1666 is still fresh in our minds, and the city needs to be rebuilt. As one of the master architects, you are competing with other architects to make the city shine like it used to. This will involve using the right people, acquiring the best land, and building the most prestigious buildings. This is London: Second Edition. London: Second Edition is the masterful republication of a classic Martin Wallace game. It is suited for ages 14+, takes about 60-90 minutes to play, and retails for $55.00.

Setup
1. Put the board in the middle of the table.
2. Give each player a score marker, placing it on the 0 space of the board.
3. Give each player 5 pounds.
4. Separate the city cards into an A, B, and C deck. Shuffle each deck separately. Then, place the A deck on top of the B deck on top of the C deck.
5. Deal each player six cards from the newly formed deck.
6. Find the three starter boroughs of City, Westminster, and Southwark & Bermondsey, placing them next to the board. Shuffle the rest of the boroughs, placing them face-down to form a borough deck.

Game Play - The goal is to have the most prestige when the city cards run out. On your first action, you must draw a city card. After that turn, you may perform one of four actions:
1. Develop your city - Play one or more of the city cards from your hand to the table one at a time.
2. Buy land - Choose a borough card from the three face-up on the table, pay its cost, and add it to your building area.
3. Running your city - Activate city cards in your building display one at a time in any order. Doing this requires you to pay the activation cost, carrying out the effect, and flipping the card face-down if necessary. After activation, you will receive poverty tokens for each stack in your building display, each 10 pound of loans, and card in your hand.
4. Draw three more city cards - Draw exactly three cards from any combination of the deck or the development board.

If the city deck is empty at the end of a player's turn, every other player gets one more turn. The player with the most prestige is the winner!

Review
Martin Wallace is a name that is famous in the gaming world. He is known for making games that are strategic, deep, and thinky. London, however, was one of his most accessible games that was published 7 years ago, and was a game I sadly never got to play. Therefore, when I heard Osprey Games was making a second edition of the game, I knew I wanted to play it! The game play in this is game is clever and unique in that you use the cards in your hand to play other cards in your hand. Then, there is the mechanic of running your city. This is where your points and other benefits come from. However, you have to be careful when running your city, and make sure you lay out your city efficiently and don't have too many cards in your hand as well. If you are inefficient, then you will get paupers which are bad for your city and clog up your hand.

What I liked best about this game was the new artwork. I have looked up images of the old artwork, and it really is night and day! This new game art enriches the theme (which my wife loved, because 1. she is an architect and 2. she loves London) and makes it stand out from other Euro games. The only thing I didn't like about the game was the box component. I know it's Osprey Games m.o. to put their games in a fold-open box that resembles a book, but this game deserved a normal game box in my opinion. That complaint aside, I am thrilled that I finally got a chance to try this game. It crunched my brain and made me think, plan, and manage carefully in order to make the best city possible. I still lost to my wife multiple times (shocker!), but I didn't mind because it was like a fun puzzle trying to figure out each game. If you are a fan of history, London, Euro games, or have just ever wanted to try a Martin Wallace game, this is the game for you!

This game was provided to me for free by Osprey Games in exchange for an honest review.

Zoo Ball (Osprey Games)

We are in the thick of sports seasons at the moment. It's that time of the year when baseball is wrapping up (World Series), basketball is starting, and football is starting to separate the contenders from the pretenders. With that in mind, it seemed like a good time to review Zoo Ball: The King of Sports! Zoo Ball is a game for 2 or 4 players, ages 8+. It takes about ten minutes to play and retails for $30.

Setup
1. Lay out the felt board and flatten is as best as possible.
2. Place your orange disc (Scorer) on the star in the circle and three white discs (Blocker) anywhere on your half of the board. Your opponent will do likewise on their half of the board.

Game Play
On your turn, you may either flick your Scorer or any/all of your three Blockers. The first player to get their Scorer completely into the other players circle (goal) scores a point and the board resets. The first player to three points is the winner. In a four player games, players start in separate corners, and must score in the corner diagonally opposite to their starting position. The first player to score is the winner, so this is more of a chaotic free-for-all in that you aren't only guarding your goal but all the other goals you don't want scored in.

Review
When I first received this game to review, I wondered if there was anything in the box honestly. It felt super-light so I was surprised upon opening it. The game board is a 30" x 30" piece of folded felt that looks like a typical sports field. It creases easily and I would have preferred a neoprene mat, but that would have raised the cost of this game dramatically. The discs have a nice weight and feel to them and slide well across the table. The stickers are well-illustrated and have a nice variety of animals on them. With eighteen white stickers and six yellow stickers, you can customize your team to suit your fancy and have some leftover. The rulebook could have been condensed to one sheet of paper, but Osprey Games added some fun theme with sports commentators talking about how to play the game. As for the game play itself, I found the game to be simple and quick. You can teach the game in about than five minutes and play it in another five (or ten if you're horrible at dexterity games like myself). It is a nice introduction to the dexterity mechanic and suitable for kids and casual gamers.

This game was provided to me for free by Osprey Games in exchange for an honest review.

The Lost Expedition (Osprey Games)

El Dorado is the famed city of gold. For centuries, people have been searching for this city, hoping to strike it rich! Peer Sylvester took this idea, combined it with some history, and made the game The Lost Expedition. The Lost Expedition is a game for 1 to 5 players, age 14+. It takes between 30-50 minutes to play and retails for $30.

Setup
1. Take one Explorer card of each Expertise, putting them on the table to form your Team Area. There will always be exactly three Explorers in your team.
2. Place three Ammunition tokens and four Food tokens and place them in your Team Area.
3. Shuffle the Adventure cards, and deal four to every player. Place the remaining deck face-down. (Note: If playing with only two players, deal both players six.)
4. Decide the difficulty you want to play at - easy, normal, or hard. Use a certain number of Expedition cards and Health tokens on each Explorer depending on your difficulty level.
5. Place the Expedition cards in a row in the center of the table, ending with the Lost City card, placing a pawn on the first Expedition card.
6. Place the Morning/Evening token on Morning side and put the remaining tokens to the side to form the General Supply.
7. Choose a starting player and give them the Expedition Leader token.

Game Play - The aim of the game in to reach the Lost City card before all the Explorers die or you run out of time. There are two phases to each round:
1. Morning - Each player (starting with the leader and going clockwise) plays one card at a time face up into the middle of the table until each player has played two cards (three cards in a 2 player game). Once this is done, arrange the cards in numerical order and resolve each card one-by-one. Once the card is resolved, you either gain it for its Expertise or discard it. Once all cards are resolved, flip the Morning/Evening token from Morning to Evening and the team loses one additional Food token.
2. Evening - Evening is similar to Morning, except that the cards are not rearranged in numerical order. Once you go from Evening to Morning, you lose one additional Food token.

At the end of the round, pass the Leader token clockwise. Each player then draws back up to their hand size of four (six in a 2 player game). If the Adventure deck runs out, players lose one Food token. Shuffle the discard pile to form a new deck. If the deck runs out a second time, the game ends in a loss. Other ways to end the game include at least one Explorer making it to the Lost City and all three Explorers dying.

Review
Overall, I have mixed feelings about this game. For starters, I would like to talk about the components. The artwork on the cards is beautiful and makes it feel like a graphic adventure. The cards of also very high quality and large, to display all the beautiful art. The game box is in book format, which I could take or leave, but it seems fitting for Osprey since they are known for their historical books. As for the tokens, they are cardboard and a bit too tiny for my liking. They seem to be good quality cardboard though, so overall I would give the components a very good rating.

I have only played this game solo and with two players, so this is all I can comment on. The game play was very fun, and it felt like you were trying to solve a new puzzle each play through. There were plenty of difficult decisions to make with each game, and it was a struggle trying to balance food, health, and ammunition, mixed with difficult decisions of who was going to ultimately die for the greater good of the success of the party. Whereas this game was fun with one and two players, I can't imagine playing this with more players. It seems like instead of a civil discussion of the best course of action, it would instead turn into chaos trying to make a decision.

What I love best about this game is the historical nature of it. Peer Sylvester explains on the first page of the rulebook that this game was based on Percy Fawcett's final attempt to find the lost city of El Dorado. He took his son and son's friend with him (which is why you have a part of three in this game) and they were never seen again. I would have personally loved it if they used those three characters as the characters in the game, instead of people like Teddy Roosevelt, but there might have been legal issues with doing so, or it could have been too raw to have children dying in a game. At least all the characters are historical in nature, and you have the option to research them outside of the game and learn more about them.

In summary, the game is a fun little puzzle that I find best with one or two players. In ways, it reminds me a bit of The Grizzled, as it is a cooperative game where you can't share information about the cards in your hand. The biggest difference between the two (apart from theme) would be that you have the capability to play this one competitively as well. If you are looking for a survival game with adventure, perils, and strategy, check out The Lost Expedition!

This game was provided to me for free by Osprey Games in exchange for an honest review.

Escape from Colditz 75th Anniversary Edition (Osprey Games)

Colditz Castle is a Renaissance castle in the town of Colditz, Germany. After World War II began, the castle was converted into a POW camp for officers who had become security risks or were dangerous. Despite it being considered an impossible to escape prison, it had a high amount of successful escapes. Major Pat Reid was one of the POWs to escape Colditz Castle. He designed a board game with screenwriter Brian Degas called Escape from Colditz. Osprey Games gave the game an update to commemorate the 75th Anniversary. It plays 2-6 players, ages 12+. Play time is variable in length depending on number of players, and it retails for $65.

Setup
1. Before beginning decided upon the number of rounds. 50 is standard for new players, with 40 being used for more experienced players.
2. Decide which player will take the role of the German Security Officer. Each other player is an Escape Officer of a different nation among the allied POWs at Colditz. Give each player a number of pawns of their color based on the number of players there are.
3. Separate the Escape Equipment cards into four piles and place them face-up beside the board.
4. Give one Escape Kit to every Escape Officer.
5. Shuffle the Security and Opportunity decks and place them face-down beside the board. Then, deal one Security to the German Security Office and one Opportunity card to each Escape Officer.
6. Set up the POWs according to the starting positions in the rule book. The German Security Officer then decides where to deploy his guards. One guard for every Escape Officer must be deployed to guard posts in the inner courtyard, and between two and seven extra guards in the outer courtyard. Remaining guards are placed in the Barracks.

Game Play - Start with the Escape Officer to the left of the German Security Officer and proceed clockwise.
1. Roll both dice. The combined result gives you the total distance you can move your pawns (Guards or POWs). You can split the result as many times as you wish, but you may never move a pawn through a space with another pawn.
2. If an Escape Officer rolls doubles, he may move a POW out of solitary for the cost of one movement point. If you ever roll doubles, you may roll again adding the extra dice to your total. (Note: You may never roll more than two extra times due to rolling doubles.)
3. On your turn you may gain Equipment cards, which can be freely traded between other Escape Officers on any turn, but the German Security Officer's team.
4. Escape Kits are gathered similarly to Equipment cards, but an Escape Officer can never have more than one at a time. It takes four pieces to make and you must have one POW in each of the four room types at the same time.
5. You escape by using Equipment to get through obstacles and the Escape Kit once you reach a target on the board. A guard may make an arrest by moving into the same space as a POW. The game ends when the round counter reaches zero or two POWs from the same nation escape. There is the possibility to have multiple winners if Escape Officers pull this off on the same turn.

Review
For the most part, Escape from Colditz is a simple dice-rolling, point allocation system. It is a classic game in this sense, and it shows in some of the mechanics, like being rewarded for rolling doubles. Osprey Games is aware of this though, and let's you know they are aware. They have enough great games in their catalog that they could have easily updated the game's rules and mechanics to bring it more in line with modern gaming, but they felt it would be doing a disservice to the game and its designers, who were so closely tied to this game and the history which it represents. I applaud them for this decision.

As for the art and components, when you first open the box, you feel a bit immersed in theme. The boxes inside which hold the cards and other components feel like you are opening a kit from World War II. Yes, the player pieces are pawns, which most people look down upon, but meeples were not needed for a game like this and would distract I believe. I really liked the way the board looked too. Yes, it is a lot of individual spaces to move and absorb on initial glance, however, the color scheme has a very intuitive feel to it.

The game can play a little long (a couple of hours), but I really enjoyed the one versus many nature of it. Yes, it can be tough mentally/emotionally to play the German Security Officer, if you immerse yourself in the theme, but it is still a rewarding experience. What I really like about the game is the decisions you have to make. For example, if you have one POW close to escaping, but could be caught, you can move another of your POWs to intercept a guard, be caught, and let the other one escape. To some it might be a matter of moving pawns, but again, if you immerse yourself in the theme, it is a beautiful sacrifice that a person made for the betterment of another.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience this game provided. If I had to compare it to anything, it would be The Grizzled. It provides a tense experience that leaves you feeling drained after playing it, but in a good way. You feel like you have all the time in the world when you start with 50 rounds, but as it counts down, you get to 40 and then 30, and then 20. Suddenly, your pulses is racing and your stress level goes through the roof! This is how a game should make you feel! With that said, it is not a game I would want to play multiple times in a row, or maybe more than once a month, just because I feel like it would lessen the experience and make it more playing a game and maximizing your chances of winning, not experiencing the emotional and visceral response. However, I feel like this is a game that everyone should play at least once, and I firmly believe it belongs in every high school history classroom in the country.

This game was provided to me by Osprey Games in exchange for an honest review.

Shahrazad (Osprey Games)

In 1,001 Arabian Nights, Shahryar (the king) was married to a woman he loved. He found out that she cheated on him and had her killed. Because of her unfaithfulness, he vowed to never experience this again and marry (and kill) a new woman every day. After doing this for 1,000 nights he was introduced to Shahrazad. Each night, she would tell him a story, but not finish the story, so that he would keep her alive another night to finish the story and start another one. This went on for 1,001 nights until she was out of stories and he had fallen in love with her. Osprey Games visits this theme in the game Shahrazad. Shahrazad is a game for 1-2 players, ages 8+. It takes about 10 minutes to play and retails for $20.

Setup
1. Shuffle the Story Tiles.
2. Place one of the tiles face up in the middle.
3. Deal two tiles to each player, which they must keep secret from each other.
4. Place the rest of the tiles face-down in a stack.

Game Play - On your turn, you will either place a new tile or replace an existing tile. Your tiles must always be kept secret from other players, until they are revealed. After they are revealed, you may then discuss on where to best place the tile.

Placing a tile - A tile must touch at least one existing tile. When placing a tile above or below an existing tile, you must remember that a column may only have three tiles in it. When placing a tile to the left or the right of a tile, you must offset the new tile, halfway up or halfway down from the adjacent tile.

Replacing a tile - When you replace a tile, you remove one tile from the area and put it in your hand. You then put the new tile in the exact same location. After drawing a new tile, you will now have three tiles in your hand, so you must place two tiles next turn.

Scoring - Going from left to right, check each column. If any tile is touching a lower-numbered tile to its right, flip the higher-numbered tile over. Now, each face up tile should form a path from the left-most column to the right-most column. Any tiles that don't form a path are also flipped over. Now, find the largest group size for each color (red, blue, yellow, and black) and score one point for each tile in that group. Subtract one point for each face-down tile and one point for each gap. This is your score for Round One.

Round Two - Remove all face-down tiles in the game. Choose one column and keep it in play to form your starting area. Remove the rest of the tiles from the play area, re-shuffle them and play out and score Round Two, the same as Round One. Add your two scores together to get your final score and see how much the Sultan likes your story.

Review
Shahrazad is a fun little tile-laying game set in the universe of 1,001 Arabian Nights...to a degree. You take on the role of Shahrazad in that you are trying to tell a coherent tale, but the actual tiles are not tales from 1,001 Arabian Nights, I believe. Instead, you see Pinocchio, Beauty and the Beast, and Rapunzel, just to name a few, so that seemed a bit off to me. The component quality is high and the artwork is evocative. The game says it plays one to two players, but I would consider it best as a solo game, and then I would consider it more puzzle than game. It is fun trying to beat your previous best scores and see how good of a story you can actually tell.

This game was provided to me for free by Osprey Games in exchange for an honest review.

Agamemnon (Osprey Games)

We are all familiar with the story of the Iliad. In this epic by Homer, we see the final weeks of the Trojan War. Osprey Games has taken this tale and created a two-player game called Agamemnon. In Agamemnon, players will take on the roles of the Greek gods trying to influence the war and help ensure their side is victorious. The game plays two players, age 12+. It takes between 15 and 30 minutes to play and retails for $24.

Setup
1. Lay out the game board with the side up labeled Agamemnon.
2. Place all the String Tiles on the board that match their color/pattern.
3. Give each player a set of Playing Tiles, turning them all face down and mixing them up randomly, and a card labelled Greeks or Trojans.

Each circular space on the board is connected to multiple Strings of Fate (String Tiles). There are three types of String Tiles - Strength, Leadership, and Force, which are won different ways. Additionally, there are four types of Playing Tiles - Warriors, Leaders, and Weavers (which are subdivided into Warp and Weft). Each of these tiles contribute different things such as strength or rank.

Game Play
The starting player flips over one Playing Tile face up and places it on an available space on the board. After this, players flips two Playing Tiles and place them on any available spaces on the board. The final turn involves the second player placing his last Playing Tile on one of the three available spaces left. Two empty spaces will remain on the board. (Note: If you play a Weaver during your first two turns, you can replace them with another tile.)

Scoring
Score each String of Fate individually. A string is considered to be any connected path of the same String Tile that hasn't been split by a blank space or a Weaver. Whichever player controls a string receives all of those String Tiles to put in their scoring pile. If there is a tie, no one get those tiles, and they are removed from the game. The player with the most Strings of Fate wins.

Review
Agamemnon is an abstract game that relies on area majority. The game is all about tactics and trying to make sure you either have the most strength or sheer numbers. However, you also need to know when to cut a string. Since playing tiles are revealed randomly, you might feel like you don't have complete control over the game, but there is a variant where you can play with those tiles face up, but it can add to length of the game due to analysis paralysis. On the back of the game is a different board with different tiles, so this will add some variability to your game.

The unfortunate part of this game is the theme. I really enjoy the story of the Iliad, so I was excited to try this game, but the theme did not come through at all. That said, the game play is solid. It is fast playing and you can feel the tension mount as you play more tiles. There is nothing more frustrating in this game to commit some warriors to a string and then have that string taken out from under your nose the next turn. Luckily, the game plays quickly, so if you are defeated, you can quickly play another game with your opponent. Overall, this is a solid game and a decent way to introduce your kids to classic literature.

This game was provided to me for free by Osprey Games in exchange for an honest review.