I is for (The) Isle of Cats

by The City of Games

Picked this one up from Phoenix Fire-- one of 11 games I bought during the sale back in... May? Anyway, I wanted a tile-laying game with a grid and I was looking online at a game called Cottage Garden because I thought I would enjoy the theme better, but I noticed the bgg rating for Isle of Cats was better and decided to support local and go with it instead.

Players: 1-4

Time: 60-90 minutes

Ages: 8+

Theme: Umm... Magical Cat Island?

Mechanics: Card Drafting, Tile Placement (Grid), Set Collection

You are rushing ahead to an island to save some magical cats before some evil dude can get there and do mean things to them. Each turn you explore the island (draft cards), save cats (place them on your grid), and find treasure (smaller pieces that can fill in holes on your grid), while also trying to meet goals (public/group or private/individual). Score extra points for keeping families (cats of the same color) together on your ship.

I love this game! I don't really have anything bad to say about it... I like the way it plays-- it's not too complicated and yet has a variety of mechanics. I like the quality of the pieces and how they fit together just so. I like the artwork-- I can totally see cats sprawling around in the shapes of these tiles. I also love that the excess tiles keep our littles busy while we play. Any cats that aren't rescued during the turn are discarded, so we discarded them straight into Vivi's eager hands. She was so excited to fit the funky pieces together. Soon she'll be old enough to play with us.

My Rating: 10/10 - I would always be up for playing this one.

Dustin's Rating: 8/10 - He enjoys playing it, but he thinks it's a bit on the simple side. He's also bummed that the expansion doesn't add any new mechanics.

H is for (the) Haunting of Indigo House

by Deadbolt Mystery Society

There is some question of whether this counts as a board game. For example, it is NOT on boardgamegeek. Deadbolt Mystery Society provides a subscription-based monthly mystery box. I'm making a judgement call and going with, yes, it is a board game, mostly because I want to compare it to other mystery-solving games like Exit and Unlock.

Players: 1-4?

Time: 90-120 minutes

Ages: 15+?

Theme: Murder Mystery

Mechanics: Co-Op, Puzzle Solving, Deduction

If you find one of these boxes in your possession:

1. Unload all materials

2. Read through all materials (you may want to take notes)

3. Have a QR reader handy, because some materials have QR codes that lead to interviews, witness testimony, "vendor" websites with more information or photos, etc.

4. Use what you've learned to begin ruling out the numbered suspects.

5. If you get stuck, check the hints on the website or discuss with the DBS Facebook Community. (We found the website hints to be sufficient)

6. When you're down to one, submit your results online and it will tell you if you are correct!

Overall, we liked it. Why?

• The story was interesting
• The puzzles weren't extremely hard. There were a couple that stumped us, but a teeny hint put us on the right track. And the hints were way better than Exit.
• The whole thing took 90 minutes.

Negatives (No huge ones):

• Not going to lie, I thought some of the stock photos were unbelievable (Suspect A and Suspect B look like sisters rather than mother and daughter).
  
• The submission at the end was a little weird. It asks for the name of the killer and the room the planning took place in. But both the suspects and the rooms were numbered. So we had to try several combos of name/number | name/name | number/number before we got it to accept our answer
• They're a little pricy at $25+shipping for a scenario that you can only play once. But the way I see it, a date night out would cost as much, if not more... *shrugs*

Overall Rating: 7/10 - It was interesting enough that we would be willing to play another one to see if it holds up.

Kindness Rocks Journey

Because it's about time I wrote about something besides board games...

In the Boise metro, kindness rocks are a pretty big deal. You can find them hidden all over town. Vivian found our first rock hidden in the park near our house. Just keep your eyes peeled and you'll find them in trees, in planters, on building signage, etc. Finding our first rock really brightened my day and discovering the community (a selfless community that promotes kindness) ultimately helped me through a really rough time. I'm coming up on my one year anniversary of rock-painting and I'm still loving it!

First I attended a rock-painting class at the local library. My first attempt at painting was pretty lousy, but in my defense:

1. I hadn't painted anything (besides walls) in decades
2. The library had limited tools, brushes, paints, etc.
3. The "instructor" basically just said "go for it," so when I say "class," I mean that loosely, as I didn't actually learn anything about rock painting.
   

So here is my first ever painted rock:

My mum bought the girls a rock-painting kit and we painted a few together. Here are the results of the kit (you can see the girls' rocks in the background).

At this point, I decided I liked painting and began investing in the tools and paints. Here are some of my early rocks (as you can see, I was really interested in honing the dotting technique):

As I got more invested in the hobby, I began learning new techniques: fluid art, for example. Here are a few of my recent favorites:

And now, here are some of my recent favorite painted rocks:

Here is a donated rock I contributed to. Can you guess which section is mine? (Spoiler: It's the eye). This one is now on display at an assisted living facility. Hopefully it's encouraging smiles!

G is for Grimslingers

by Greenbrier Games

So my husband loves collecting role-playing games that it seems we'll never play, and one of those games is Deadlands. I think one of his groups played it for a session or two, but it fizzled. I've never played it-- though with how much he talks to me about it, I feel like I have. So when I first learned of Grimslingers, I thought it would be a good way to help him scratch that itch without needing to get a big group together and I added it to our never-ending wish list. When I saw it and one of its expansions at one of Phoenix Fire's swap meets, I had to get them. I had to.

Players: 1-6

Time: 15-90 minutes

Ages: 14+

Theme: Science Fiction/Fantasy Western

Mechanics: Rock-Paper-Scissors Card Duels, Campaign Co-op

I don't even know where to begin. This game is a hot mess.

I guess we can start with something good: The art is beautiful. Ultimately, it's what drew me to this game in the first place. Take a look at those covers above. Aren't they pretty?!

Now the frustrating as all get-out: This game has been re-printed several times with different editions/new rule books, which contain new/removed rules. We happened to get the version of the base game with 3rd edition rules and the expansion with 4th edition rules. Now, I insisted we play the base game with the third edition rules. Why? Because...

• That's how it was released and therefore how it was meant to be played.
• We had already completed half the campaign with the 3rd edition rules before we even realized that we could play it with the new rules/components. Why not stay consistent?
  
• What if we didn't have the expansion? It's components are required to play the base game with the new rules.
• I didn't want to open the components in the expansion in the event that we didn't want to play it (better resale value).
• I am stubborn.
  

Well, the 4th edition rules change game-play quite a bit (for the better). In retrospect, I wish I was less stubborn and that we played the first campaign with the 4th edition rules. The photos below illustrate the biggest rule changes. The first photo shows set-up for two players using 3rd edition rules. The campaign progresses from moving your team meeple along points and landmarks on a small map. The second photo shows set up for 4th edition rules. Players move through playing card "tiles," flipping them up to explore and resolve events. You need a lot more table space to play with the new rules. Also, the new edition comes with player boards, an enemy board, and an item board to help keeps things straight and remind you of turn orders and available actions.

3rd edition rules

4th edition rules

We spent a good 2+ hours just looking up rule clarifications for this game. Which is extra confusing when there are multiple versions floating around. The campaign booklet for the base game mentioned several rules that were no longer in existence and completely impossible to find. If you check out the bgg page for this game, there are 316 threads, the vast majority of which are questions asking for rule clarifications. On that note, another pro for this game: The designer, Steve Gibson, is very, VERY good about responding to all of these questions. Most of our issues were solved from scanning these forum threads and watching his videos. Some questions, however, went unanswered and we had to make judgement calls, which, as a complete rules junkie, was very hard for me... *sigh*

So, basically, the rules, as written, are pretty terrible, EVEN with the updated 4th edition rules, which are far superior to the 3rd edition rules. If you decide to play this game, save yourself huge amounts of PAIN and frustration by getting the expansion and opening it first! Throw the third edition rules in the GARBAGE.

I know I'm jumping around a lot (like the rules, ha ha), but I was being honest when I said I didn't know where to start... An interesting thing about this game is that there are two game modes. You can play versus duels (kind of like Magic) or you can play the campaign mode. Before you start the campaign mode, the game encourages you to play a versus duel to learn the fight mechanics. We did the versus duel with a couple of friends. We all ganged up on my poor husband, so he was out first. I was out second. And then our friends battled for the win. We all liked the theme enough that we decided to continue on to the campaign. Within half an hour of searching for rule clarifications, they abandoned us to Rock Band 4, and we had to play the campaign on our own at a later date. My point is, the versus portion of the game could be cool if you like that kind of thing. I'm more of a co-op gamer myself... (Because I'm a sore loser--unless we're all losing-- that I can manage better).

I don't want this review to drag on forever, so I will just say-- This game has such potential. The art and theme are awesome, the narrative (albeit silly at times) builds an interesting world, the characters are fun (I played La Fleur Noire, a vampyre that hangs out with a giant talking bear professor -- see above-- in both campaigns), and the game play is mostly fine assuming you're using 4th edition rules (and barring some hiccups requiring rules look-ups and some judgement calls).

Our Rating: 4/10  for the base game, 3rd edition rules... 7/10 for the Northern Territories expansion, 4th edition rules.