It's been a while since I have played a game that I just plain didn't like. Unfortunately this happened last night, and perhaps even more surprising it was a game from Steve Jackson Games ... that involved Cthulhu. I'm as big a fan of Cthulhu as the next raving lunatic and I normally glom onto the goings on of the Elder One himself. But this game is just plain bad. It's far too simple and seems to rejoice in that simplicity but aside from use as a quick game that determines which player goes first in another game I can't see how the game is really even worth it's low, low $4.99 price tag.

The game plays quite quickly with each player having three sanity tokens and the final player with remaining sanity wins the game. Each round a player picks a "victim" and rolls the die against them and will affect their sanity in a few different ways and then the victim attacks the predator and the die passes to the predator's left. The game is just not in any way complex and really falls flat in both it's concept and it's presentation. The game contains one twelve-sided die, about 18 or so green glass counters so that you can play with 6 players, and a rules pamphlet; and that's all. I really have enjoyed a great deal of the games that I have played recently from Steve Jackson Games, namely among them Chez Cthulhu, but this is really just a sub par performance. 

I could even be more petty and say that the name is misleading as it only contains one die, and thus should be called Cthulhu Die but I can see where that would be a bit of a strange name when it gets down to brass tacks.

It came time to review another game for our monthly product meetings and there just happened to be a new game on the shelves that had caught my attention from a publisher of which I have always been fond. Atlas Games has a really good track record of great games in the the Board Game [Seismic] and Role Playing Game [Feng Shui & Nyambe] varieties, but their major releases have almost always been in the card game field, games like Lunch Money, Let's Kill, Gloom, Dungeoneer, Once Upon a Time, as well as others. And their most recent release is another in a long line of really fun games that can make for a really great experience for casual gaming situations and party scenarios. The game only plays up to 4 players which I see as the only real stumbling block from it becoming the kind of game that Lunch Money has become. 

Ren Faire is a game by first time designer Michelle Nephew and she approaches mechanics and fun like a seasoned pro. The game is quite simple but yet really fun as it combines the kind of silliness that one has come to expect from an Atlas Game but at the same time has a sort of system of gratification as you accumulate parts of your costume. The premise of the game is that you want to be the first to have a complete costume (though it need not look good together or even make any sense). The best way to get pieces for your costume is to earn cash and the only way to do that is to complete silly little tasks that vary from flipping cards to belly dancing to jumping up and down for a few turns or even speaking in a particular accent for a while. 

The game has an instant beer and pretzel appeal, which these days means that it has a great deal of replay value (because who wants to break out a new game when you've already got one out and have already played a round of it). I think that the game is probably the most fun with 3-4 players because it makes some of the tasks more daunting in someways and more entertaining in others. 

This is the perfect kind of game to get your SCA (Society of Creative Anachronisms) friends to gather round the table and in no time they'll be shouting "Long Live the Queen!"

The guys and gals behind Flying Frog's Last Night on Earth have had a bonafied hit on their hands ever since the game hit the shelves. The game was one of the fastest sell-outs in recent memory and was one of the most impressive first efforts from any young gaming company in the history of the game renaissance. Many people may be wondering what the fuss is all about and maybe even some of them with good reason. The game might seem a whole lot like other Zombie Apocalypse games on the market but it is most assuredly different and in a whole lot of fun ways. The game accommodates up to 6 players and is played in a team situation. In the 6 player game 4 players play as survivors trying to accomplish a series of goals in a limited number of turns and the other 2 players play as the zombie hordes (in smaller games there is only one player representing the zombie hordes). The game is a combination of character abilities that differentiate the survivors, equipment that can be acquired from searching buildings, and action or event cards that the characters also acquire by searching the buildings. The zombie players have a never ending supply of zombies and a smaller hand of "Zombie Event" cards that are refilled every turn on their side. 

The real charm of the game is the kind of open competition going on between the survivor players and the zombie player(s), the special camaraderie that develops between the survivor players, and the overall uniqueness of the scenarios that the game provides. In the basic box there are 5 different scenarios (Defend the Manor House, Die Zombies, Die, Save the Townsfolk, Burn 'Em Out, and Escape in the Truck) and each one provides a different kind of experience for both the heroes and the zombies. As well the whole board is modular creating a different feel for each game as the buildings that surround the center of town (or the manor house) change with each variation. The benefit of this game as well is the overall production quality. For your $49.95 you're getting some really incredible components, great cardstock for the cards great cardboard for the board pieces as well as really good looking miniatures round out an incredible product from a small company that has everyone noticing. 

In addition to the dynamic base game there is also the Growing Hunger expansion that adds more cards to the variety as well as additional scenarios. On the horizon for Flying Frog is also the Hero Pack 1 which will add more characters into the mix for the survivor team as well as a few new cards oriented toward these characters and an additional scenario. Another expansion growing ever nearer is Survival of the Fittest expansion which will add more scenarios as well as three new decks of cards to the game: Unique Items (which will add new items for the survivors to utilize), Survival Tactics (tactical decisions that are made by the characters to better aid their survival through the night), and Grave Weapons (weapons for the zombies as they rise from the dead). Also there are additional scenarios available through the Flying Frog Games website. All in all I think this is the kind of game that can bring seasoned gamers a great deal of tactical entertainment and bring new gamers to the table with great looking pieces and really fun mechanics. 

A whole lot of people know Phil Hester as a rather great penciller and a consummate professional of the industry we all know and love. More and more though he is becoming well known for his writing talents and for all the right reasons. His work on series like Black Terror and The Darkness have garnered him a whole lot of acclaim but in my experience is that his smaller and under-noticed titles are the ones that really set him apart as an innovative and incredible creator. His books like Antoine Sharp: The Atheist, The Wretch, The Coffin, Deep Sleeper, Golly!, and Firebreather (which is actually possibly going to become a cartoon on Cartoon Network or some nonsense) have caught and held my interest in ways unimaginable and sadly they are (in the cases of the mini-series) overlooked or (in the cases of the ongoings) infrequently published. But that doesn't seem to deter Phil one single second from creating amazing works that aren't necessarily in the greatest spotlight when it comes to the public. 

All that preamble brings me to the book that I have come here to talk about today: The Anchor. Phil's new book from BOOM! Studios has a whole lot going for it and has been received incredibly well by both the critics and the readership. The series follows "Clem" the mysterious nigh invulnerable man who appears to fight off the monster that has appeared seemingly from no where to wreak havoc and destruction down on Iceland. The story goes on to explain that he is really fighting two wars on two fronts. The first in Hell where his soul fights back wave after wave of demons and the damned and remains impervious to damage as his earthly body suffers the pains of the damage inflicted. The second takes place on Earth when one of those demons slips past his defenses and makes it to our world. So while his Soul suffers no damage from his endless war in Hell his body randomly sprouts wounds as he does his best to beat back the creatures from the underworld. The series reveals that he has been at this for quite a long time and might well be the result of a monk's answered prayers from centuries ago.

The series is drawn by Brian Churilla who has worked on a few other monster intensive series like The Engineer and We Kill Monsters and his art has grown to a great extent here in this series and is reminiscent of the work of creators like Eric Powell, Mike Mignola, and Guy Davis and in all the good ways that one can be compared to those masters of the craft. The series is a great read and involves all the kind of stuff that fans of books like Hellboy, B.P.R.D., The Marquis, or any other of Hester's works will love.