In case it is not made abundantly clear by the fact that I spend my free time playing and writing about them, allow me to make a disclaimer: I love board games. I love playing them, I love analyzing them, and I love introducing people to them. I especially love that last bit: bringing someone new into the fold like a shepherd guides his sheep or a crack dealer slowly addicts his new customer to the cheap stuff and then, wham, hits him with the really expensive but oh-so-delicious “good” stuff, forcing him to give up his once cushy way of life. And he’ll turn to the illegal sale of his bodily organs to feed his crushing habit… except with board gaming it’s a good thing? Last week I had the good fortune to sit down with another person, Albert Smedley (who I really hope someday comes up with a rock band called Smedley’s Medleys) who also really enjoys board games and bringing board games to new people; so much so that he’s decided to start a business dedicated to providing that ever-elusive “Game Spot,” a perfect place where you can hang out, play board games, and eat food without feeling like you are a squatter in someone’s living room or getting weird looks from the hipsters in coffee shops who never expected you to know that game even existed.
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​Albert Smixtures carries the title of Fearless Leader for an intriguing new business called Tables Board Game Spot, which he describes as a place to play board games with other like-minded individuals, to try new games before committing to a purchase, and be introduced to new games that you might not have thought about before. One of the services that Albert pegs as essential to the Tables BGS business is their Game Experts, who will not only teach rules but also recommend games based on your current preferences. Like those rule-heavy strategy games? Their Game Experts might steer you toward Twilight Imperium. Enjoy light-weight, cerebral exercises?  They may suggest Concept. Feel like playing a soul-crushingly disappointing game with horrible mechanics and a twinge of nostalgia? They will suggest Oregon Trail The Card Game. And Albert really knows his stuff. After talking with him, he suggested I try Harbour based off my love of worker placement, low count player games and, though it is not my favorite game of all time, I was definitely not disappointed. His suggestion was a solid choice based on the information I gave him, and he was able to come up with it instantly. His mind is built like a steel Mouse Trap. Oh board game humor.
 
Tables BGS will fill that niche that you may have seen popping up lately: board game cafes. They are all the rage now, but Albert Smorgasboard was quick to point out that his is a more unique establishment, as they won’t just be a café, he assures me, but also a bar with local craft beers and cocktails, a restaurant with a full menu all of which will be served deconstructed on kebabs (or sticks, for the unsophisticated out there), and a coffee shop that will serve locally sourced coffee and baked goods. I really appreciate the numerous times I had to write the word “local” in that description.

​Because at the end of the day, this will still be a “board game place” that will have to compete with the other “board game places” and the thing that will really separate his from the others will have to be his willingness to engage the community. And from what I saw he intends to do just that. I met with Albert at one of Tables BGS’s free events that they are currently doing whilst in the middle of opening their actual location in (location redacted). It was at a local bar called Bad Beat Brewing. We sat down and started playing a game of Red Dragon Inn to keep with the theme. Every so often a new patron would walk in and eye the large stack of games Albert had brought with him to introduce. As soon as he saw that, his cards were down on the table and he was talking with the newcomers, introducing himself and the board game night, offering his assistance, and all together just being a really nice guy. It’s that kind of attention to the customer and gamer that will be the key to a successful business. But it’s also crucial that attention is not forced or contrived, and it is not when it comes to Albert.
 
Another interesting addition to his business is what Albert calls “board game catering.” Employers nowadays have learned the importance of employee happiness and are always on the lookout for the next company party or team building exercise. Albert offers access to their library of over 1000 games as well as Game Experts to assist in teaching the games. Which is really quite smart, because playing board games would teach and build many skills that can be used in the workplace such as communication, problem solving, and risk management. The More You Know. 

​Albert says the plan is to open late 2016 in an as of yet unrevealed location in the southeast Las Vegas valley area and, though they currently have all the funds required to open the business, they will be launching a Kickstarter in the near future in an attempt to add new features and to bring even more games to their extensive library. Stay tuned for more info on that.
 
All in all, it makes me incredibly pleased to see board gaming being incorporated more and more into larger amounts of popular culture, whether it’s seeing the joys of DnD in Stranger Things or the successful integration of board games into existing businesses. I look forward to watching board games become increasingly more mainstream as I sip my hipster coffee from my “Band You Haven’t Heard Of” mug, and cannot wait to see what Tables Board Game Spot will bring to the… slab of wood on four legs.
 
For more information about Tables Board Game Spot, check out their website here. Do you like slabs of wood on four legs? Like our Facebook page! Which hipster band have I not heard of? Let me know on Twitter! And if you would like to help shape the content of 2 To 4 Players, especially what games we review, check out our Patreon page to see how you can get involved!

​Hey you lovable readers you. I just wanted to take a moment out of my hectic day to tell you that I do what I do for you. I love hearing that something I wrote has made you think about (or think twice about, see my Oregon Trail review) purchasing that game that's been on your mind. I love spreading this hobby of mine to as many people as I can. I like being that virus, that plague, which passes on the dilapidating disease-of-the-wallet known as board gaming. And when I hear that people get a laugh out of my inane attempts at humor, it warms that little cardboard box shaped spot in my heart. The point that I'm trying to make here (and I'm really bad at expressing gratitude, just ask my wife, I'm still not sure how I managed to get her to marry me) is that I greatly enjoy sharing my love of board gaming with you.

Because I want to share more of my passion for gaming and my belief that gaming is far more than just play, I have decided to set up a Patreon account. NO WAIT, DON'T RUN AWAY! I know, I know, another poor, starving artist asking for money. No no, that's not what I'm getting at here. I do acknowledge that I have a limited board game budget because I need to focus that money on taking care of my family, and I hope that one day I can afford to spend as much money on board games as some people do on cars, or some other ludicrous form of entertainment. But until that day comes, I do have to be choosy about what games I purchase and thus review. Which means that sometimes the games that I review are not the ones you want reviewed. Often I simply do not know about a game that I otherwise might enjoy. Thus, as part of the whole Patreon thingy, I've decided to start up what I call Community Supported Reviews. Those who donate on my Patreon page will be sent emails with a list of games that I could review and will reply with their vote. Higher tier patrons will be able to write in specific games and their votes will also count as two or three. Then, each vote will be entered into a drawing (so that someone can't just pay their way to the top) and the game that gets drawn will be purchased with your donations and then I'll write the review and include everyone's name (or if you prefer to remain anonymous that's cool too).

This will allow me to review more recent games. This will allow me to review the games you want to know about. This will allow me to connect with you, my readers, more than we have before.

Want to get involved? Check out my Patreon page here. Read all about the Community Supported Reviews. If you like the idea, sign up! I can't wait to hear from you! If you Tweet, check us out on Twitter. If your Face Books, check us out there too! And remember, Don't Stop Playing!

So. You went and did it. You ignored my review of The Oregon Trail Card Game (or more likely didn’t know it existed) and shelled out your hard earned cash for this card game. That’s thirteen bucks that could have been used on more worthwhile pursuits: lighting it on fire and keeping your toes warm, folding the bills into mini paper airplanes, or buying thirteen dollars worth of grass seed, planting it, and watching it grow. You did it, and now you have to live with it: sitting on your game shelf or burning in your garbage can, you have to live with that game. No amount of grass watching will erase that. But does that mean that you have to live with a terrible game? Well, yes unfortunately. But what you can do, with some simple modifications, is live with a better game than you purchased. Here’s how.

​Two of the biggest problems with this game were it’s so called “2-6” player count and the fact that most of those players will be eliminated during the game and be forced to sit on the sidelines watching the rest of their friends suffer. These can both be solved by simultaneously lowering the number of players, while always maintaining a player count of six. Have I lost you yet? What I mean is that your party should always begin with six names written on the game’s included dry erase board. This ensures that the four auto-kill cards won’t wipe your party, as well as increase the stock of available Supply Cards to deal with the other Calamities. This may force two or more players to take on multiple roles, which is great for when one of your characters is killed by Dysentery: you still have one more to play. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it helps. For the record, I don’t recommend actually playing with six people, because one will end up getting killed by Dysentery early on and just sit there. So I recommend two, three, at the most four players, each taking multiple characters. Even playing solo, controlling all six characters, would work.

Another huge problem is a weird card balancing issue.
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There are some cards that have one use and one use only, other than serving as trade fodder for when you need more Medicine. Bullets are only used on the Hunt Calamity (which is not actually a Calamity) but basically you trade a Bullets Card for a Food Card. Might be useful to have more food, yeah? Unfortunately, those Food Cards are only useful against the Starvation Calamity (which is definitely a Calamity). However, it is odd to me that these Supplies only have that one use. This leads to you having no reason to deliberate on those Calamities. Do I use this Bullet that I have on the Hunt Calamity, or should I save it for… the other Hunt Calamity? What I recommend is assigning alternate uses for the Supply Cards. For instance, there is a Thief Calamity that steals a Supply Card from the person who drew it. Why not add an option that someone in the party can discard a Bullet card? Sure, it might seem like the same thing, either the Thief takes a Supply Card, or you waste a Supply Card to keep him from taking one, but what if the person the Thief is targeting is the only one with Medicine left, and you need that to cure your Measles? See? Choices. It gives the game more legs. Or perhaps for the broken arm, you can discard a Clothes Card to make a sling. I don’t know, it’s kind of grasping at straws, but otherwise those cards don’t serve much of a purpose.
 
One of the oddest oversights I found was what I call the Impotent Typhoid. Here’s a mechanic that is actually really neat: you draw a disease card, ex: Typhoid, and if that card is drawn again and you haven’t been cured, you die. It presents the dilemma of “Do I cure this now or do I wait in order to do something else, but risk that other Typhoid card being drawn?” That’s a really interesting way to develop tension. Kudos. But let’s say that first Typhoid is cured. There’s a second Typhoid card in the deck somewhere, and when you draw you must cure it before the… nonexistent third Typhoid card is drawn. There are only two Typhoid cards in the deck. Therefore, if someone draws the second Typhoid, they can safely make their way to Oregon without curing the disease. The tension and danger is completely gone. My rule says that whenever the second card of a disease is drawn, the first card, after being resolved if necessary, gets shuffled back into the Calamity deck. This ensures that there is always the lurking danger of dying from that disease.
 
The last grievances I sought to bury like so many of my digital pioneers along the Oregon Trail were those painful and unnecessary Instant-Kill cards, the two Dysentery cards and the two Snake Bite cards. I get what they were trying to do with these cards. The most famous way to die in the original computer game was by Dysentery. They wanted that to be a memorable and dreadful experience; they wanted it to be the boogeyman of the game, everyone hoping that someone else would draw it. The only problem with making it unavoidable is that it offers no tension, no excitement, only pain and frustration. So, in order to keep the spirit of Dysentery as an unstoppable monster while still making it fun and avoidable, I modified it that, whenever Dysentery was drawn, you had to IMMEDIATELY discard a Food and a Clean Water card, to simulate the patient staving off death by dehydration. I went with this option instead of the Draw Two = Death like the other diseases because I wanted Dysentery to stand out and still be a formidable, terrifying draw, but I also wanted it to be avoidable through planning and good resource management. Likewise, the Snake Bite Card can be negated by the Bullets Card, giving you simple yet impactful choices.
 
A few ideas that I haven’t had time yet to integrate are rotating Trader cards, which dictate an economic trading system instead of the Trade Two Cards For One system the game currently has, as well as a competitive version in which each player has a six team wagon and they compete to see how far they can make it down the trail.
 
So there you have it: how to make the best of a bad situation. It may not make the game great, I’m not Uwe Rosenberg, but it will at least make it a playable game with more choices. And that’s really what this game was missing: the whole… game part.
 
Thank you for reading 2 To 4 Players guide to home-ruling your copy of Ox Crap The Oregon Trail Card Game. If you want to know other ways to make roses of poop, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, and make sure to check back for the latest news, reviews, and other gaming related content. Remember: Don’t Stop Playing.

I loved playing the Oregon Trail computer game as a kid in elementary school. You were subjected to terrible tortures, rudimentary medicine, and horrendous culinary options. Oh, those things were also present in the Oregon Trail computer game. It was without a doubt one of the more entertaining, if frustratingly difficult, aspects of my elementary education. So it was with no small amount of nostalgic joy that I greeted the recently released The Oregon Trail Card Game by Pressman Toy Corporation. Would my hopes be achieved, as so seldom happened in my computer Oregon Trail endeavors, or would my hopes be crapped upon the ground, much like most of my hapless pioneers dying of dysentery on the digital Oregon Trail? Let’s find out.

​The answer is somewhat complicated. I can say that I enjoyed my time with The Oregon Trail, but I did not enjoy my time with it as a game, and even what I did enjoy only came after I made some modifications of my own to the game. So, out of the box, one might say that the Oregon Trail Card Game is not worth its weight in Ox doodoo.
 
Which is unfortunate, because there are a lot of good ideas in Oregano Trail. It’s a Target exclusive, which is like saying creepy clowns are a McDonald’s exclusive: sure they’re there, but they aren’t necessarily what the brand is known for. However, in spite of carrying the stigma of being “Target exclusive,” (a stigma I genuinely hope disappears) it gets a lot of things right. Pressman Toy could have phoned it in on this one and let the nostalgia factor carry this game to mercantile success. Instead they attempted to capture the spirit and feel of the original, infuriating computer game, complete with its unfair and unstoppable death, while also incorporating genuine, accepted gaming mechanics such as hand management, cooperative play, and the main source of tension coming from a deck of cards. That is at least the source of tension the developers wanted. The main source of tension turns out to be poorly implemented game mechanics.

The object of the game is to get one member (ONE MEMBER) of your party to Oregon by playing a total of 50 connecting Trail cards. If everyone else dies horribly, but one member survives, you still win. Target can do coop too! Eat your diseased heart out, Pandemic. You take it in turns to lay out Trail cards that continue the green pixilated trail from Missouri to Oregon. Some trails will let you get off scott free. Others have a river that will have you rolling a die with a 50/50 chance of crossing unscathed. Still others will tell you to “Press Spacebar to Continue.” Which, thematically, means you ran into one of those random events that occurred so often in the computer game. It could be your character falling ill, a thief coming to steal your stuff, or the dreaded dysentery. These calamities usually require you to discard some of your valuable Supply cards to negate their ill effects. Extreme Cold, for example, requires a player to discard a Clothing Card. If one round of play passes with nobody playing a Clothing Card, you die. Many calamity cards revolve around the chance of drawing another card of the same name. Cholera, for example, you can cure by playing two Medicine Cards. If any other player draws another Cholera Card, the player with the first Cholera Card dies. And then… the dreaded Dysentery Card… which states… well… take a look.
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Yup. No saving you. No chance to avoid it other than dumb luck. So, if you draw that Calamity Card on your second turn (as happened on our second playthrough) your game is over. Oh wait, I’m sorry. The first player to die becomes the Shopkeeper, the one in charge of doling out and trading the extra Supply cards. So, the Monopoly banker. But utilized even less. Now in a game with a player count of 2 – 6, surely this instant, unavoidable Calamity is the only one of its kind? Unfortunately, it’s not even the only one of its NAME. There are two calamitous Dysentery cards, but not only those, but also two Snake Bite cards, which also result in unavoidable death. For those who can’t count, that’s four instant kill cards. So each game you play with less than five players has the potential to totally wipe your party with cards you can do nothing about except pray they don’t get drawn. So maybe they won’t get drawn, yeah? There are only thirty two Calamity cards. Math is hard, I know, but that means that one out of every eight Calamity cards will straight up kill you.
 
And this shines a particularly blinding light on the major problem with this game. Yes, there are good ideas in this game, but the underlying mechanics behind the idea are not fully understood by the developer. If you have a game where death means elimination from the game, having cards that will instantly kill you will do nothing but piss off the player who draws it. If you have a game where you discard item cards to negate ill effects on other cards, there need to be choices of when to use those cards. Food is a supply card, but it is only useful on two Starvation cards. That is the only use for the Food card. So it’s not like you say to yourself, I could use my food card to get rid of this Starvation or I could save it in case something else comes up that will require that same Food card. There is literally no reason to not play your Food card. So the only risk comes from whether or not you actually have one.
 
Another problem: those cards I mentioned that are like a ticking time bomb, waiting for the second card to be drawn in order to take effect? In every case like this, once that first card has been dealt with, the second card has no consequence. Take Cholera. The first time Cholera appears, you play two Medicine Cards to get rid of it. It is discarded. The very next turn, Cholera is picked up by a different player. Phew, good thing you cured that Cholera, or you would have died. Now you need to cure the second player right? Wrong. There is no third Cholera card. The only other Cholera card is in the discard pile. There is no danger that a second Cholera card will be drawn, so you can ironically safely continue to be infected with Cholera for the rest of the game with no fear of it killing you.
 
This is the main issue with this game. Though it has the bones of sound game mechanics, those mechanics are so poorly thought through, so poorly implemented into the game, that there is no real “play” in this game. The only “choices” that are presented to you are which trail card to play and whether you want to play a Supply Card to negate a Calamity Card. These are not actual choices however, they are the illusion of choice. You don’t really choose which trail card to play. You play all the trail cards in your hand that don’t have ill effects on them, then you play the ones that do. There is no actual choice here. Same for negating Calamity Cards. If you have the supplies, there is no choice about whether to play it or not. If it is a dangerous card, like the first Cholera card, you play your supplies. If it is not a dangerous card, like the second Cholera card, you don’t play your supplies. Again, there is no choice to be made; the choice is made for you by the circumstances. This is less a game and more an experience. You experience the game, you do not play it.
 
I could go on, such as how the game says its for 2 - 6 players, but doesn't scale between those differing player counts, but that would be like beating a dead ox. My only consolation in this is that it is a step in the right direction. This is a mass market game, not meant to only be sold in local game shoppes, but in the mass consumer locations that attract a much larger clientele and, in the hopes of the developers, a much higher financial success. Most of these games have traditionally been mechanicless, ignoring the tried-and-true mechanics that are already in existence and instead relying on outdated gaming tropes such as movement by die roll. However, seeing a mass market game even ATTEMPT to integrate the more nuanced gaming mechanics gives me hope that our hobby will someday gain enough traction to become more widely accepted, and we won’t have to spend the rest of our days either locked in our parents’ basements or speeding from shadow to shadow to stay out of the burning sunlight as we head to the local game store to purchase the latest cardboard creation.
 
2 To 4 Players gives The Oregon Trail Card Game 2 Dead Oxen out of 10.
 
Thanks for reading 2 To 4 Players review of The Oregon Trail Card Game. You can find The Oregon Trail Card Game at your local Target. If you like Dead Oxen, or Dysentery (because who doesn’t) or just want to chat, follow us on Twitter, drop us an email/comment and don't forget to check back to 2 To 4 Players for more gaming content. Remember: Don't Stop Playing.

Sovrano is the premiere game of new developer Cambium Games. Games meaning things you play, Cambium meaning... hold on... Things that help woody plants grow. No I'm serious, look it up. It's the layer in trees that creates the rings. Which, considering the calling card for Cambium Games is that all their games will be made entirely from wood, is quite fitting. You clever little thing you. So, being a Cambium Game, Sovrano is, you guessed it, made entirely of wood.
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Oops, no sorry. That's my Print and Play copy. Sorry. Ahem. Being a Cambium Game, Sovrano is...

...wooden. Which is very nice. Being new to Kickstarter, however, I have not yet got my hands on the actual thing, and had to suffice with my Print and Play game, which incidentally was also made from a tree, just not as prettily.

If the first thing you say when you look at Sovrano is "Oh great it's chess..." with the same inflection with which you might greet that one classmate at the school reunion who set your pants on fire during high school, then Sovrano is probably not for you. It draws heavily from the old game of movey piecey over here, takey other piecey, checkmate I win. If, however, the first thing you say when you look at Sovrano is "Oh great it's chess..." with the same inflection with which you might greet that one classmate at a school reunion with whom you used to go out and set other peoples' pants on fire during high school, then I encourage you: take a close look at Sovrano. It's not chess, oh no. It's devil's chess. My wife, when she played this with me, said she had never experienced more anxiety playing a game than she experienced playing Sovrano. In fact, after a few games of it, she said she wouldn't play with me anymore; she was getting too antsy and so I had to find others to play it with me. IT WAS AWESOME.

The main objective is simple: get the most points at the end of the game (or kill the other player's emperor). How do you score points? Simple again. If you have any pieces occupying the "Tower-spaces" (they're the spaces that look like towers) at the start of your turn, you get a point for each one you occupy. The game ends either when a player's Emperor has died, or when a player can move his Emperor to the "Throne-space" (that's the one in the center with a crown, not a throne, I would like to point out, Cambium Games, NOT A THRONE) and survive until the start of his or her next turn. When that happens, that player scores three points and the game is over. So, you could potentially capture the Throne-space and still lose. But of course, being the savvy gamer you are, you wouldn't. 

During your turn, you have to move at least one but can move up to three pieces. Each piece has laws governing how it moves, much like chess. The Guards can only move forward, back, or side to side, no diagonals. That is also the same method they use to take pieces. The Emperor can move to and take pieces from any adjacent space, much like the King of chess. The Archers, however, are the key, the lynch-pin of the game. They move similarly to the Guards, but they can only attack diagonally, up to two spaces away. Most of my games ended up with my using the Guards to deny my opponent access to areas and forcing his units into the sights of my Archers and then taking them down by arrows. A very satisfying experience. If it seems overly simplistic, don't worry. I haven't yet revealed the part that really made this game worthwhile for me: each piece is only allowed to move one space at a time. While this might seem like it would make the game exceedingly slow, take another look at the board. The pieces are already almost touching. A few turns, and there's already going to be conflict. The one space movement of Sovrano is what sets it apart most from chess, in that you have to think so far in advance of your actual turn, you have to plan ten, fifteen moves ahead in order to accomplish your goals, because it will take that long for you to maneuver all your pieces into the positions you want and then, oh no your opponent did not just move that Archer there that completely ruined your plans, but it's ok you can just adjust and OH NO I forgot about his other Archer and now I've lost my Archer.

Each turn will see you deliberate over how best to move your troops, and each decision will have weight and consequence. "If I move here, then that opens up this side of the board, but if I don't move here, I leave that Guard completely exposed." There will be times you will watch helplessly as you realize your opponent's plan cannot be stopped. But there will also be times where the opposite is true, where your strategy paid off and you confidently stroll in and take your rightful place on the Throne while your opponent looks on in envy. Games can turn from victory to defeat very quickly, as one wrong move can mean the end for your entire plan. Much like in chess I found myself making a move only to realize after it was over how stupid it was, which only proves that a) I am dumb and 2) each move must be made with great care and precision. But these mistakes are short-lived; games of Sovrano take between 15 and 30 minutes, so you can always have a fresh start.

I had an absolute blast playing Sovrano. I hope that you won't look at it and think "It looks too simple." It's not. I hope you won't think "It's just a smaller game of chess." It's not. It's stress-inducing, anxiety-causing fun made from a tree, and it is available on Kickstarter now.

Today's First Play is brought to you by frustration, betrayal, and more tension than a game of tug-o-war at the Montague-Capulet family picnic. Actually it was brought to you by Plaid Hat Games, The Game Shoppe in Omaha, and the Eastern Nebraska Gamers Guild, but who wants to name drop? Grab your parkas, cuz I played Dead of Winter for the first time, and things got pretty cold.

I love games with a traitor mechanic, mostly because I'm such a jovial, helpful guy in real life and I love to get the chance to be a real jerk in a manner that won't end with my sleeping on the couch. Dead of Winter is a betrayal, cooperative, crisis management game that tells a wonderful, albeit gruesome and more often than not horrifying, story. It's Shadows Over Camelot with zombies. It's Battlestar Galactica in the snow. Come, let's make Cylon Snow Angels.

I knew I was going to enjoy Dead of Winter from the moment I saw it laid out in all its glory. The main board represents the colony of survivors holed up for the winter, with different mini boards surrounding it depicting the various locations survivors could scavenge for supplies. 30-odd different survivors stood off to the side of the board, awaiting their demise at the hands of the too numerous to count (30) zombies. The survivors are unique, beautiful, and going to die.

The colony has one super objective that the regular characters are trying to accomplish. Ours was to reduce the number of zombies at each outer location to below 3. Seemed like a very doable scenario. Let me douse those words with barbecue sauce now, I'll be eating them later. Each player will receive an individual objective as well, with the possibility of receiving a traitorous objective. So to win, the good characters have to accomplish both the main objective and their own personal objective, while the traitor has their own set of win conditions. And lucky me, I was the traitor. Traitors gonna trait.

I know, I know, another zombie game. Toss a rock, and 20,000 zombie games will flock toward the sound like the mindless shells they are. Personally, I'm over the whole zombie craze. So why is this different? Dead of Winter doesn't play like a regular zombie game in which you are an overpowered Rambo plowing through zombies like a competitive eater with hot dogs (gross analogy). Instead, if a zombie gets hold of you, you are dead. There's no fighting against them, you're just dead, or worse, bitten with the chance of infecting the rest of the colony. Yes, you can kill zombies on your turn, but as soon as its the zombies' turn, one hit and you're the most boring class in school: history. But that's not even the kicker. See this isn't really a game about zombies. The zombies make the backdrop; they build tension by being an ever-present danger, but they are not the focus. No, the focus is on surviving in a harsh, post-apocalyptic winter.

That means finding food. That means finding whatever supplies the crisis you drew that round needs in order to have it not completely screw up your colony's day. That means managing how many survivors you can safely contain in your colony. You'll never know agonizing decisions until you have to decide whether to bring a new survivor into the colony, rescuing them from the gaping jaws of the undead, or to turn them away because you don't have enough food as it is. Or worse yet, when you justify losing one of your survivors to the horde because it will be one less mouth to feed. The fact that the survivor with the lowest Influence on their player card is the one chosen to be devoured by zombies if there are multiple choices is the game's way of saying that the other survivors don't like that survivor as much as the others, and is therefore the one left behind to stall the hungry horde.

Surviving in the Dead of Winter also means dealing with the "winter" part of the title. That means that every time you do anything that requires you to leave the warmth of your vehicle, colony, or location, you have to deal with being exposed to the elements. When this happens, you roll the Exposure Die, which could lead to you getting frostbite, which will give you another wound each round until cured, getting injured on some hazard you couldn't see through the blinding snow, or getting bitten when you were least expecting it. We lost the game thanks to that smug little die.

Look at it sitting there, all high and mighty. Oh, you've got a zombie-killing ninja, do you? Well, how about 3 consecutive wounds in one turn to completely turn your game around? No thanks, Exposure Die, there are less traumatic ways to make me cry like a little girl.

And there's the Crossroad cards which are drawn every turn. These were my favorite element. They have a condition that, when met, pauses the game while the player reads an extremely thematic scenario and then a choice must be made, sometimes by the player, other times by the group, such as whether to send out survivors to search for a missing child, whether to search your survivor's childhood home that they accidentally stumbled across. Each card feels like it was ripped straight out of an episode of The Walking Dead. Or maybe the episode was ripped straight off the card???

It was a great time, we were doing well (I say we, but I mean the colony, I was the selfish traitor, remember?) up until two consecutive crises asked us to find gas cans. We had literally given up all our gas cards to finish the previous crisis, and now we need even more gas? It was too much for the survivors to handle, and we were overrun by zombies. I was the traitor, and I literally did nothing to screw up the colony. AND IT STILL FAILED. I'll just be eating those words I wrote earlier, about it seeming like a doable scenario. Eating them like the zombies ate our cold flesh.

I loved this game because it was a semi-coop game, which I love anyway. I love solving crisis cards; they are like solving mini goals on the road to solving the big, main objective. I love the randomness of the Crossroad cards, which may or may not trigger based on the card's requirements. And I loved all this because it really was like watching an episode of the Walking Dead taking place on the table in front of me. Survivors all running around, having things happen to them, sometimes involving zombies, but always involving the struggle to survive in an inhospitable world. I love a good story. And Dead of Winter let me experience that.

Thanks for reading 2 To 4 Players First Play of Dead of Winter. You can find Dead of Winter, and many other great games, on Amazon or better still at your local game store. If you like Dead of Winter or just want to chat, hit us up on Facebook and Twitter, and don't forget to subscribe to 2 To 4 Players for more gaming content and remember: Don't Stop Playing.

It's Christmas in July (or sometime in there) as Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu from Z-Man Games will be out in summer 2016. Hot off the heels of my favorite game Pandemic Legacy, Reign of Cthulhu takes classic Pandemic and reimagines it in the style of HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. When I first saw this at Ungeek.ph, I did what any self-respecting person would do: pour loads of time into overanalyzing what little bits of details we have. It looks like it will be more than just a re-skin, with different mechanics overlaying the basic Pandemic game. What mechanics? Well, we don't really know for sure, all we have are a few images to attempt to harvest information from. Maddening, isn't it? Well, I'm going to do some investigation on the images we do have and share my thoughts on how Reign of Cthulhu will drive you crazy (in a good way) and how it will differ from the Pandemic we know and love.

The board has four regions from Lovecraftian lore: Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth and Kingsport (Green, Yellow, Blue, and Red respectively). I guess they thought black would be too dark for a game about descending into madness. The very first thing I noticed was the decreased number of locations. The regular Pandemic had 12 spaces per region, whereas Cthulhu appears to have five normal spaces and one special space (perhaps a summoning circle?) per region. That means there are 24 spaces on the board. Let's take a look at the component list.
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​Using my brilliant, Sherlockian deductive reasoning, we see that there are also 24 Summoning cards. My guess is that these replace the Infection Deck. So, you will be drawing Summoning cards to summon something on the board's spaces instead of drawing infection cards to infect cities. What replaces infection cubes? I have a guess that it is the Cultist figures, because there are no other components listed that come close to the original Pandemic's 96 disease cubes (24 for each region). And, if you look closely, and I mean verrrrrry closely at the Sanity Die Effects chart at the bottom of the board, if you roll a 6 you add 2 cultists to your current location. There are 24 cities (locations?) on Reign of Cthulhu's board, and 26 Cultists. Will that mean it takes fewer Cultists together in a single location to trigger this game's version of an outbreak? We do not know.

​The 7 Investigator figures and Investigator cards obviously take the place of the Role cards, providing genre appropriate characters and special abilities for the players. I don't wonder if the number on the upper right of the Reporter card represents base sanity, but again, there is not enough info to say for sure. It would be a sane assumption.

The Shoggoth figures seem to be enemies that will perhaps pursue the Investigators around the board in their search for clues. Not much is known about their function, but looking at the "You Must Roll The Sanity Die" chart, it says you must roll the Sanity die if you start your turn something something something in a location with a Shoggoth. So my guess is the Shoggoths will be chasing after you or will be summoned (perhaps as the consequent of an "outbreak?") and if you start your turn on the same location as a Shoggoth you have to roll the Sanity die to see how crazy you become.

The 4 seal tokens take the place of the four vials, and will be used to show you've "cured to disease" so to speak, tracking your progress towards winning the game.

The 44 Clue cards are obviously the Player cards that will make up the player deck and that players will be drawing from to form their hands and will be used to win the game/perhaps move around the board. But if there are 44 player cards and only 24 locations on the board, that is different from the old Pandemic's 48 cities and 48 Player cards. My guess is that there are two cards for every regular location (pictured on the board shaded in their respective color) and one card for each special space in each region (the ones that are colored lighter blue and have some sort of rune drawn on them). That's 5 normals locations, times 4 regions, which is 20, times 2 cards for each location, which is 40, then add one card for each light blue circle location, which makes 44. However, there are four spots on the board for cards... so at the beginning of the game, do you split the deck out by region, and you only draw cards corresponding to the region you are in? Again, too early to tell.

Next up we have 12 Relic Cards. This could be a couple of things. They could be items for the players to use against the Great Old Ones and cultists. But my guess is that they are the game's version of Epidemic cards. I think at the beginning of the game you will select 6 or 7 Relics you want to shuffle into the player deck, which could make the game harder or easier, as each Relic may have a special effect, and as each Old One has a special effect as well. Shuddle M'ell (EDIT: It looks like this is a misspelling of Shudde M'ell and they are aware) makes all the players lose sanity. Azathoth looks like he removes 3 Cultists from the something something, I am guessing the unused Cultists pile, which, if one of the ways players can lose is when you must place a Cultist and cannot do so, similar to the disease cube loss in Pandemic, will make it easier to lose in that particular way. And last, the mighty Cthulhu is a game ending power, so he must be summoned at the end of the game, perhaps as the final Relic card is drawn.
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​The Old One cards are also used, along with a new board section at the top of the board, to replace the infection rate. It looks as though during setup I'm going to guess you place Cthulhu in the final slot and choose or randomly select 6 other Old One cards and place them facedown in the slots and then, as Relic cards are drawn, you flip over one of the Old Ones, the special effect of the Old One takes place, and then the number underneath the Old One will be the new rate at which you draw Summoning Cards.

The Sanity tokens represent the player's sanity, max of 4 judging from the 16 that come from the box. I assume if a player loses all their sanity tokens something terrible happens to them, perhaps a game over, perhaps something else.

Lastly we have the Sanity Die, which hints at that system which is ingrained in every Cthulhu game, the idea of losing your proverbial marbles. There are certain circumstances outlined in the "You Must Roll The Sanity Die" section that will cause you to roll the Sanity die and then take the action in the "Sanity Die Effect" table. From what I can make out of the table, the results are thus:

​1-2 Nothing Happens
3-4 Lose 1 Sanity Token
5 Lost 2 Sanity Tokens
6 Add 2 Cultists to Your Current Location

What happens when you go insane? What will Shoggoths actually do? What other Old Ones will make appearances and threaten your psyche? What do those bus icons mean next to one space in each region? These are all answers we will have to wait for.

Have any ideas other than what I've listed here? Share them in the comments, and don't forget to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and share our work with your friends!

I discovered this company thanks to my wife's endless searching on Youtube for board games (good, so I don't have to brainwash her). It's a "wood manufacturing company" (their words, not mine) that claims to be a "single source supplier for children." So they supply children, do they? Brave of them to admit it, the Witch of Hansel and Gretel will be glad to have found a new supplier. But, this being a gaming blog, we are not concerned with plushies or wooden nesting toys. Being a father, I am concerned with plushies and wooden nesting toys, but that's a different blog. No, we are concerned with Haba's line of children board games.

Yes dear readers, that is a children's game. The production quality alone sets this apart from your grandma's Chutes and Ladders. They don't just phone it in when they create their games, thinking that because it's a children's game doesn't mean it can't have all the visual and mechanic polish that goes into any other tabletop game. That is a freaking gorgeous volcano. Knowing that their games will be played by children, all the games are colorful, made with large pieces to avoid having to pay for someone to put a choking hazard warning on all their boxes, and focus on easy to pick up mechanics. Knowing that the children playing their games will be younger and will need adults to play the games with them, Haba has made the games appealing for adults to play with their children, with genuinely fun games, if perhaps simpler than others. And that's not a bad thing, saying their games are simpler, because they HAVE to be. For kids that young (some go as low as 2+ years) to be introduced to gaming, by necessity the games must be simple. But that does not mean they cannot be fun. Take Fire Dragon, pictured above. You roll dice, fly your dragons around an active ruby-spraying volcano collecting the rubies that spew forth from the extremely functional aluminum volcano, and trying to land on a space with another dragon to steal their rubies. Kids love it because it is simple, just about counting spaces, picking up shiny objects, and experiencing the thrill of getting to take something from their siblings without their parents yelling at them. Grown ups love it because it teaches their children decision making skills (should you get one ruby off the ground or take one from your sister), because, as a competitive game, it can help children to be gracious in defeat, and lastly because of that volcano! Wait, I guess that one is satisfying to both kids and adults. It's an aluminum, two piece volcano that you will be filling with rubies and, at a specific roll of the dice, you will separate the two pieces of volcano and the rubies will spill out onto the board, cascading into the spaces around the volcano, ready to be picked up by the players. What a sound and sight smorgasbord for the adul... I mean children to be a part of.

But what I appreciate most is that the games are like small prep courses for entering the larger world of gaming once the children grow up and never leave their parents' basements. One game, The Orchard, is a cooperative game, where the kids play against the game itself and not each other and win or lose together. It's like Pandemic 101. Another highly popular game is Rhino Hero, a game that sees the children laying down card stock walls and roofs and the titular Rhino Hero in a larger version of a card house, seeing how high they can get the tower. It is like an Intro to Dexterity games.