Post by masterdecoy on Nov 13, 2009 10:03:26 GMT 10
Opening thoughts:
Yet another of fantasy flights silver line range, Cave Troll is a quick board game of great strategic value.
The game also plays very quickly, and it wouldn’t uncommon to be able to get 2 or 3 games in an hour. The quick play appears to be a big bonus with the other players I’ve played with.
I myself prefer a long strategic game that could go for 3 or 4 hours, but that’s my preference, I just feel a bit more satisfied that’s all
Game Overview:
The game is extremely simple, which history has taught me time and time again is definitely a positive attribute.
Players take turns taking different actions, trying to maneuver their heroes through the dungeon into the most profitable rooms and attempting to heard there opponents heroes into less profitable rooms using their monsters, all the while attempting to trigger scoring rounds when it will profit themselves greatly, and not their opponents.
On each of their turns the players will take any 4 actions they wish, the actions are:
Moving a hero or monster from one room into an adjacent one.
Drawing a card and playing a card, the cards will generally spawn new heroes and monsters, but sometimes will score rooms, find artifacts and the like.
Play an artifact card that they have drawn, these will have powerful one off abilities that when used correctly will spell doom and death for your opponents when used in conjunction with other hero’s abilities.
Use monsters ability, these are generally just, killing opponent’s models or pushing them around.
After the player has taken their 4 actions, play passes onto the next player who will do the same thing.
The real genius with this game however is that it is not set in stone when a scoring round will occur, that is up to the players to determine, Some of the players cards have one or more hourglasses on them, if a player plays a card with an hourglass on it, it goes into a special “scoring” pile.
Once there are 5 hourglasses in the scoring pile, each room will score immediately, so players can control when they happen to a limited degree and once there are 3 or 4 hourglasses in the pile, it really becomes essential to limit the score your opponents will get as well as maximize your own. Indeed the entire strategy of this game is setting up the big pay round that will set you up for the win.
Play ends immediately when a player draws and plays their last card, where there will be one last scoring round. Bonuses will be handed out for any unused artifacts, and to the player that caused the game to end.
The player with the biggest score wins.
Component Overview:
The components in this game are all of FFG usual standards, although the game board defiantly could have benefited from being about 33% bigger, as could the miniatures, but that probably would have pushed the production costs up too high, so Ill forgive them for that little point.
That being said, there isn’t a whole lot to this game, 17 miniatures per player about 20 cards per player and a game board.
Closing thoughts:
The game is quite a lot of fun to play, and the backstabbing factor is set to 12. The short nature of the game means you can, and will want to play 2 or 3 games in a row.
That being said however the game can and will end suddenly, so some players may feel ripped off by how much they where able to achieve.
There are no useless cards in the deck, however the order you pull them might swing a game one way or another, however this is very unlikely, so luck will generally not be a factor and the better player will probably win, the beauty of that being that the game has a very small learning curve, and it will not take novices long to pick up the tricks of the game and compete with the big boys.
I recommend this game highly for the board game un-initiated, as well as a bridge game or a side distraction from the more hardcore games in your collection. After all this game plays so quickly there is no reason you wont be able to play both.
Components: 3/5
Game play: 4/5
Replay Potential: 5/5
Theme: 3/5
Price: 4/5
Overall: 4/5
PM me if you would like to arrange a demo game
Yet another of fantasy flights silver line range, Cave Troll is a quick board game of great strategic value.
The game also plays very quickly, and it wouldn’t uncommon to be able to get 2 or 3 games in an hour. The quick play appears to be a big bonus with the other players I’ve played with.
I myself prefer a long strategic game that could go for 3 or 4 hours, but that’s my preference, I just feel a bit more satisfied that’s all
Game Overview:
The game is extremely simple, which history has taught me time and time again is definitely a positive attribute.
Players take turns taking different actions, trying to maneuver their heroes through the dungeon into the most profitable rooms and attempting to heard there opponents heroes into less profitable rooms using their monsters, all the while attempting to trigger scoring rounds when it will profit themselves greatly, and not their opponents.
On each of their turns the players will take any 4 actions they wish, the actions are:
Moving a hero or monster from one room into an adjacent one.
Drawing a card and playing a card, the cards will generally spawn new heroes and monsters, but sometimes will score rooms, find artifacts and the like.
Play an artifact card that they have drawn, these will have powerful one off abilities that when used correctly will spell doom and death for your opponents when used in conjunction with other hero’s abilities.
Use monsters ability, these are generally just, killing opponent’s models or pushing them around.
After the player has taken their 4 actions, play passes onto the next player who will do the same thing.
The real genius with this game however is that it is not set in stone when a scoring round will occur, that is up to the players to determine, Some of the players cards have one or more hourglasses on them, if a player plays a card with an hourglass on it, it goes into a special “scoring” pile.
Once there are 5 hourglasses in the scoring pile, each room will score immediately, so players can control when they happen to a limited degree and once there are 3 or 4 hourglasses in the pile, it really becomes essential to limit the score your opponents will get as well as maximize your own. Indeed the entire strategy of this game is setting up the big pay round that will set you up for the win.
Play ends immediately when a player draws and plays their last card, where there will be one last scoring round. Bonuses will be handed out for any unused artifacts, and to the player that caused the game to end.
The player with the biggest score wins.
Component Overview:
The components in this game are all of FFG usual standards, although the game board defiantly could have benefited from being about 33% bigger, as could the miniatures, but that probably would have pushed the production costs up too high, so Ill forgive them for that little point.
That being said, there isn’t a whole lot to this game, 17 miniatures per player about 20 cards per player and a game board.
Closing thoughts:
The game is quite a lot of fun to play, and the backstabbing factor is set to 12. The short nature of the game means you can, and will want to play 2 or 3 games in a row.
That being said however the game can and will end suddenly, so some players may feel ripped off by how much they where able to achieve.
There are no useless cards in the deck, however the order you pull them might swing a game one way or another, however this is very unlikely, so luck will generally not be a factor and the better player will probably win, the beauty of that being that the game has a very small learning curve, and it will not take novices long to pick up the tricks of the game and compete with the big boys.
I recommend this game highly for the board game un-initiated, as well as a bridge game or a side distraction from the more hardcore games in your collection. After all this game plays so quickly there is no reason you wont be able to play both.
Components: 3/5
Game play: 4/5
Replay Potential: 5/5
Theme: 3/5
Price: 4/5
Overall: 4/5
PM me if you would like to arrange a demo game
