Game Review: Bears!

"Sometimes you eat the b'ar, and sometimes the b'ar eats you"

Straight from the campfires, tents, and outhouses of Fireside Games comes a brand-new dice game called Bears! The perhaps inopportunely timed end-of-summer release has a woodsy camping theme that makes me think of s'mores, a crackling fire, and hard-ass feeling of logs and pebbles under my butt. Mmmm. Too bad s'mores weather is almost over. I mean, except for that inevitable dangerous snowy evening when I decide that s'mores can be made in my fireplace because June is just so far away. But earlier this year, it seemed a lot more timely and exciting at Origins when I first heard about the game. Fireside Games had a booth where one little demo set of Bears! was available, preorders were being taken, and people were elbowing to see what all the fuss was about. Okay, that was mostly me elbowing. But that's only because I never did get to demo the game, even on my eighth stop over at the booth. Finally, when my elbowing and glares failed to payoff, I took the plunge and preordered a copy sight-unseen.

This is a review of how that gamble turned out.

Play Scenario:

This review is based on about ten different plays of the game, each being about 15 seconds or less. Some of the plays were with four players, others with two players.

Game Objective:

It's not just you versus your opponents, it's you versus bears...and your opponents. Make fight-or-flight dice pairing decisions in a big hurry in order to escape (or crush) the bear population. You, as a poor camper, have been startled by bears, and must decide, in a big damn hurry, whether to grab yer gun and shoot 'em (hope you don't miss!), or run for your life. Oh yeah, and there's always the chance you'll get caught snoozing in your sleeping bag by the bears, in which case you're about the be shredded into fluffy down ribbons. Dice grabbing determines your fate.

Turn Mechanics & Game Play: 
Twenty dice are rolled in the center of the table, with each player concurrently rolling five personal dice. The moment the dust has settled, all players get grabby trying to pair the community dice, which have either bears or tents on them, with their own personal dice.

 On the personal dice, players will find a gun, running camper, or sleeping bag. Bears can be paired with guns, meaning you're looking to shoot yourself a b'ar. The running man and snoozing sleeping bag can only be paired with tents, meaning you're hoping to avoid the bears.

Each round ends when either all the bear dice OR the tent dice have been snatched, thus prompting an apoplectic shout of BEARS! by one or more panicky players. If the bears are left, and you're caught in your sleeping bag, then you're going to lose points. If everyone chased off the bears with their shotguns and you slept through the attack, then you are going to earn big points. Slacker chicken.

Points are totaled: 1 point for each bear you shot (TENT + BEAR), 2 points for each bear you outran (RUNNER + TENT), 5 points if you slept through a bear attack and the bears fled (SLEEPING BAG + TENT + no bear dice left in community pool), or -2 points if you got eaten in your sleeping  bag (SLEEPING BAG + TENT + only bear dice left in the community pool). People swear. No one likes to be bear trail mix. And then the next round begins. The rounds continue until someone reaches 50 or 100 points, which doesn't take very long at all.

Out of the Box:

This is a sweet little travel-friendly package. The tall, slender box has charming cartoonish artwork, and is made well. The ads for another Fireside Games release, Castle Panic, that have been plastered all over the inner box didn't even bother me much. Inside the box is pretty much just what you'd expect: A whole slew of dice, tiny rules pamphlet, and a couple scoring cards. Simple. Straight-forward. Probably they didn't need such a tall box, but I enjoy it because it can be used as a dice cup for your many rolls. Some thoughtful creativity clearly went into the design, and I really appreciate how portable the box is. Kudos, Fireside Games!

Praise:

+Shazam! What was that? Was that just another round? Man, this is one fast-paced game. Need to fill five or ten minutes while someone's answering a phone call, greeting the pizza dude, or using the bathroom? Break out Bears!

+Portability. True to its theme, this might be one of my top game picks to pack in my camping bag. Or for a picnic, party, long wait in movie theater lines, etc. This game can be played on just about any stationary small surface. Car trips and airplane rides aside, this game will travel really well.

+Cute and humorous theme. The whole funny premise of being eaten by bears, and running from your tent keeps the game light enough so you almost forget that you're getting stupidly railroaded by grabby friends.

+Wide appeal. Serious gamers, party gamers, non-gamers, and everybody in between can easily jump into this game and enjoy it. I could probably play this with my mom. Ugh. But drunk people--and trust me, I have a little insight on this--probably won't do so well, and will just be eaten by bears. I hope bears like tartinis.

+Challenge. For all its silliness, there really is a serious challenge for players to exercise quick-thinking strategy. Just when you think it pays to be the fastest, you realize that sometimes hanging back is the best strategy. Players who care enough to put some thought into strategy will enjoy some creative, if lightly consequential, approaches to play.

+Works with different numbers of players. The game flows well and is equally interesting, I think, with either two or four players. Many will suggest that four players is best since it creates a party atmosphere and gets people laughing and competitive. But, I think with two players, the head-to-head style is still a lot of fun and does not suffer from lack of competition. Somehow, the game is more serious with two players, or at least it is when TGHITW and I play.

Complaints:

-I will start with the obvious: It's a dice game. There's a whole lot of chance involved, even though one can have unlimited rerolls of personal dice. Chance is so strong, there really can be no true mastery of this game, and your success is left to the fates. Mostly.

-Simple strategy. Once players have rolled just a few times, the strategy of stockpiling RUNNING DUDE + TENT becomes an obvious no-lose strategy. You can't win strictly on this combination, but it will get you far. Yes, the strategy can go deeper, but many players won't take it any further than that. And then you risk getting bored. Fast.

-Yes, it's just dice in a box. This isn't exactly Agricola or Twilight Struggle.

-Based on our assessment that the four-player party atmosphere is where this game shines, it's a pity that more than four can't play. Might there be a multi-player expansion idea in the works? Getting six, eight, or more people involved could make this riotous.

-Honestly, I don't think I could get endless hours of enjoyment here.The game will get pulled out now and then for a little peppy infusion of gaming laughs, but this is not solid enough to be the backbone of your evening of gaming fun.

Overall:

This is a light, fun game to tote out for some levity and great summer fun. Snowy weather, hopefully, won't detract from the summery theme, and certainly has a mass appeal. I will, no doubt, get hours of laughs out of this wacky, manic, frenzied game. And I'm grateful for a new portable selection for my tote bag. But its poetic simplicity keeps it from being anything truly brilliant. Don't expect too much from this game, and you won't be disappointed. It's pretty much dice in a box.

Yes, I think the game is a fun addition to any gamer's collection for its quickness, levity, and broad appeal. Not every game can be Diplomacy or Dungeon Lords. There is a place for simple games like this, and I'm glad it fills a certain gaming niche. I'll proudly play Bears! for some time to come, and I am patting myself on the back (whap, whap, whap!) for taking a chance on this game. The reason it doesn't receive a higher grade is only because it's dice in a box. And it's $20. At a lower price, the bargain value may make it even more attractive to a wider audience. Plus, I have to reserve the highest grades for games that have a rich complexity and brilliance to them. Is this game brilliant? Maybe not. But is it fun? Most certainly.

Pimpability:

Not so much. I mean, one could get cutesy with little tents, or bear minis, and such. But really, no one's going to put too much effort into pimping this game. It's just fine and simple on its own.

Game: Bears!
Designer: Anne Marie De Witt
Published by: Fireside Games, 2011
Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 10 minutes
AIBG (that's us!) Age Recommendations: 8+
Average Retail Price: $20

Grade: B-

Wacky Dice Dreams: Investing in Dice Age

I've really grown to love kickstarter.com--an innovative website that allows people to invest in inventions or creations that they want to see brought to life. Excitingly, this also includes new board game ideas that are looking for funding. It's the womb from whence Alien Frontiers sprang. Would-be investors are pitched about the idea and asked to pledge a varying amount of start-up money in exchange for some thank-you gift (usually a free copy of the game), if the game or creation makes its start-up funding goal.

Recently, TGHITW and I discovered a game-to-be on kickstarter.com that really caught our attention: Dice Age!  This is a unique dice-based game that employs a number of unbalanced, wacky dice in a "game of strategy and risk-taking" (quoting directly from the pitch, here). Here's what the creator also had to say about the game:

 "It was initially a piece of art, and then I developed it into a game. When I first brought them to the university cafeteria, everybody was amazed, wanted one, and couldn't guess how to play. In fact, the rules are pretty simple, but the Dice Age effect is there: You never saw this before."

Take a look at some of these dice, and I think you can see why it made us go "OOoooooOH."

I'm already stoked to start rolling and have some amazing matches. True, I don't even know how it's played yet, but I can already imagine the possibilities and can only guess how competitive this game could be. Its creators are already drawing comparisons between this and Magic the Gathering, and in our household, Magic gets ugly. So damn competitive. So much of my husband stealing a card from my deck, then claiming he didn't and calling me crazy.

I'm also just plain excited because it's so different from anything else I've seen out there. So TGHITW and I decided to make the leap and invest a little mad gaming money into this new game. We've donated enough that we'll be getting a copy of the 23-dice alpha set of the game. Sadly, we couldn't quite afford to donate at the "Adopt a Die" level, where you actually get to godfather (or godmother) a die into existence and get your name listed in the rules book. That would've been something really amazing and special. Sigh.

But, good news! They've already made their funding goals, so the game is definitely going forward! In fact, the funding exceeded even the highest dreams of the creator, and as a reward, each investor is getting a bonus secret Olympus Mons die. More OOoooooOHing. There are 471 total investors as I type this, including yours truly.

I encourage all to go check it out: DICE AGE. In fact, if you check it out by tomorrow (Sunday, June 19), you can still hop on board as an investor. Or, at the very least, you could just make yourself familiar with this interesting new dice game that I will surely be reviewing this September or October. See it at its genesis.

Building a Jenga Dice Tower

Let's start with the obvious question: What in tarnation is a Jenga dice tower? For those of you not in the know, a dice tower is any kind of small tower (usually made of cardboard or wood), in which you place dice in the top of the tower, and they roll out the bottom, effectively rolling the dice for you. Because, ya know, it's a lot of work to roll those dice. All those days playing Alien Frontiers or Risk, I've been thinking "Blast! If only there was some way--SOME WAY!--I could relieve this dice-rolling wrist stress and still have a perfectly random outcome." Well, a dice tower is the answer.

So granted, I rebuffed, rejected, and roundly mocked the idea of making (or worse, buying) a dice tower for a long time, but the greatest husband in the world persisted. Stubborn monkey. And thank goodness he did; It turns out that the function of a dice tower is to be just plain FUN! It's another cool useless gadget that makes people smile. So consider me pro-dice tower from here on out.

Now to get ourselves a dice tower, we turned to a particularly creative mind over at BGG: user BadgerWithAGun. He has posted a brilliantly created PDF mock-up of directions for building a cheap and awesome dice tower using Jenga blocks (view the plans HERE).Yes, Jenga--that game that no one plays anymore, and dumps off at every thrift shop in the world.

Here is the story of how we sat down last night and decided it was time to build our dice tower, and hopefully you'll see how fabulous and easy it is. Maybe you'll be making one of your own this weekend (If so, we want to see pictures! )

Step 1: Gather Your Dice Tower Materials

You'll need the following items to build your Jenga dice tower:

• 30 Jenga blocks (one complete game set comes with more than 30)
• Wood glue
• Foam board, or game board that you'd like to chop up
• 3 wooden clothespins
• Sharp scissors 
• Paper towel
• Felt (optional)

All of this is going to be uber cheap. Check at a couple thrift stores and garage sales, and you should be able to get a used Jenga set for about $1.00-4.00. A new bottle of wood glue cost us $3.00. Felt costs you pennies, and the rest we had on-hand. So the total cost of this dice tower, for us, was just over $5.00.

Step 2: Start Gluing Your Jenga Blocks

Per the instruction sheet, use the wood glue to start assembling pairs of Jenga blocks into "Ls", and then glue together the "Ls" (as shown in pics) to form 1 Jenga block x 1 Jenga block squares.

These will be the levels of your tower. In total, you will need 6 of these squares. Hold off on stacking them on attaching the squares to each other--it's not time to stack the tower just yet. (In the pic below, I've just stacked them to make sure they're all coming out even, I haven't attached the squares together yet.)

 

Tip: Make sure you keep a small sheet of paper towel on-hand, and keep wiping away excess glue before it dries. And remember, since the blocks are sitting on their sides, and will eventually be stacked on top of each other, "Jenga" logo orientation doesn't matter. 

Once you have all 6 of your Jenga block squares glued and dried, you're ready to move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Glue Together the Tower Base

Now it's time to assemble 6 Jenga blocks into a 2 block x 1 block rectangle. This is going to be your base, your tray that the dice roll out into. At this point in our building process, it was getting a little late at night, hence the goofy shadows in this picture above. There was glue everywhere, and the cats were campaigning to go to bed. But no one can thwart us when we decide to build a dice tower late at night! Good thing our wood glue dries really quickly, though.

Step 4: Cut Out Your Ramps and Base

Set aside your Jenga blocks for now, and pull out that foam board you set aside for this project. Or, if you're crazy like us, you can butcher an old game board for this purpose. We chose an old Stratego board whose pieces had long ago been discarded. Using the scissors, we cut out two identical pieces of the game board that are just wide enough to fit inside one of the Jenga squares, and just long enough to extend from the top edge of the blocks to the bottom edge, so as to form a ramp. You'll have to gauge the angle the best you can. 

You'll glue these in place, and then grab those wooden clothespins mentioned in the materials section. Snip off small little wooden bits of the clothespins to use as braces for the ramps to sit on. Above is what the underside looks like once it's all been cut, assembled, and glued. You'll need to make a total of 2 of these, and these will become Layer #1 (top layer of the tower), and Layer #3. 

For the final ramp, we cut a piece of game board big enough to create a ramp from the top of Layer #6 to the bottom of the dice tray (so it'll be almost twice as big as the other ramps, since it spans two layers). Here is a sneak peek at the diagram from the PDF instruction sheet over at BGG. 

Notice in this diagram that there's also a piece of game board that is cut to the size of the base and attached as the bottom of the dice tray. This is the step where you should go ahead and cut out this base piece and glue it to the bottom of the tray.

I'd have more personal pictures to show of this step, but this is where it started to get really late, and I started to get easily distracted playing with the cats or doing other important things while the greatest husband in the world (GHITW) did all of this part. Here's a pic of the final result. In the center is the base tray, with the bottom piece of the Stratego board attached underneath, and Layer #6 on top, with ramp in place.

Step 5: Assemble Your Tower!

Zzzzzz. Zzzzzz. Mememememe. Zzzzzzz. What? What's going on? Oh, that's right. I was off, um, not paying attention while GHITW fidgeted with the ramps for a needless amount of time. Okay, it was really only about 20 minutes, but it felt like a really long time.

But now it's time to BUILD THE TOWER! Yeaaa! Before you bust out the glue, practice stacking the layers together (staggering each layer so its block formation alternates), with ramps in proper place, facing the proper direction. Once you think you have it right, do some test rolls of the dice. Try a few different sizes of dice just to make sure everything's lined up and working right.

Once you're satisfied, apply a generous amount of glue in between the layers to stack your tower up. Be sure to wipe excess glue away with your paper towel.

Once it dries, you're ready to let the dice roll! That's all it takes. 

Now, some people find dice towers a little noisy, and suggest gluing in mats of felt on the ramps and the bottom tray. I don't know. The sound with the game board ramps and the Jenga blocks is kind of neat, I think--sort of a fun wooden tinkle that sounds like a steam punk wooden gadget (or so I imagine). We'll be skipping the felt.

After that, the tower is yours to decorate. Leave it plain, if that's your bag. I plan to do some elaborate sketching and painting all over this one (photos to come at a later date if it turns out well!). Or, you might want to just grab a can of spray paint and go to town.

The most important thing is to have fun with this contraption. I've heard stories of these towers being built double-sided so that a D&D Dungeon Master can choose which slot to drop the dice into--one so the dice rolls out to a tray facing the players, and one so the dice rolls out to a tray concealed behind the DM's screen. Brilliant. Unnecessary, maybe, but brilliant. Make this tower your own, make it interesting, make it unique, and add a little extra fun to your gaming experience

And don't forget to share those photos of your own dice tower!

Board Game Review: Alien Frontiers

The Greatest Husband in the World and I were some of the early investors in the game Alien Frontiers over at Kickstarter.com, so it was a real pleasure to finally see this game "in the flesh" and put dice to board after so much anticipation. Here's our review of our earliest plays.

Play Scenario:

This review is based on two initial plays of the game on two separate occasions. Both games employed 3 players.

Game Objective:

This is a retro-stylized space game where players compete to build and establish "colonies" (read: little wooden dome tokens of their given color) on an alien planet, and thus earn points to win the game. All the players are competing for the 8 different slices of the planet pie, and will employ plenty of treachery in order to dominate as many territories as possible.

Turn Mechanics & Game Play: 
In order to dominate this alien planet, all the Major Toms (that would be you) need to collect resources, manipulate game bonuses, and build colonies. This is done by rolling between 3-6 dice each turn, and then placing the actual dice onto the board in worker placement fashion. The dice themselves are referred to as your "ships", and can "land" in different resource areas on the board according to your rolls. (Think Agricola, except that instead of placing your farmer on a "wood" space, here you're placing your dice ships on "gray ore" and "orange fuel")

Different dice combos and numbers will help determine where you can distribute your "ships". Roll a 3-of-a-kind? Score, you can land those three "ships" on the "Colony Constructor" slots and pay to build a new wooden dome dealy colony and place it on the main planet. Roll a 5? Sweet, that's high enough to meet or beat the highest die/ship over at the "Lunar Mine" slots--looks like it's time to collect some "ore tokens" (read: little wooden gray cubes).

 
Of course, there are limited slots where the players can place their ships, so you better hope no one cock-blocks you right out of your goals.

When each person has placed her dice ships all around the board and completed all the subsequent actions dictated by the placement, then the turn is over and it's the next person's turn to roll and place.

Oh yeah, and there are some special powers granted by "Alien Tech cards", which are designed to give all sorts of bonuses and/or do damage to others. Any player who dominates a territory of the planet also receives a bonus power. So there are lots of ways to goose your abilities and screw over other people.

Out of the Box:

This game looks straight-up beautiful. The board is vibrant, as are the sets of player dice. I thought we might have to upgrade the dice sets to something more insanely fun, but there's no need; The designers rightly decided to go for vivid colors and quality pieces. The colonies, gray ore, and orange fuel tokens are standard painted wooden pieces (better than plastic!), and the score track is a glossy cardboard rectangle that is separate from the main board.

Praise:

+The theme, along with its vibrant colors and retro card illustrations, are fun (if not totally unique).
+The dice mechanism is refreshing and fun. I know, I know--dice equal chance. But since a bad roll will not truly cripple your play (it'll just make you change your game plan), the mechanism is more fun than frustrating.
+This game is combative. (And usually I love combative games. Cooperation is for Girl Scouts and Kindergarten teachers!) Players can shit in your Cheerios by stealing your resources, claiming control of your territories, blocking your special abilities, blocking resource slots, and more. Is it too much combat though? (see "Complaints" below.)
+Players have a major ability to make a comeback. Just because one person's way ahead on the leader board, that doesn't mean the game is locked up. This keeps the game tense and constantly changing.

Complaints:

-There's certainly an element of Analysis Paralysis in choosing where all of the dice should be placed each turn. Certain drag-asses may benefit from having a turn timer added to the game. Don't play with indecisive people.
-Chance. Yep, there are dice in this game, so us mere mortals cannot fully manipulate and control our own game play. Fortunately, much of this is mitigated by the wide array of options for using your dice. As noted above, a bad roll won't tank you or piss you off too badly. But still, they're dice.
-Is the "Raiders' Outpost" too powerful? The "RO" is used by placing a run of three dice, allowing you to steal 4 (count 'em, 4!) resources, or a card, from any one player. Four is a lot, people. Especially since those four can include the expensive gray ore tokens. You can castrate another player with one easy maneuver, since the resources are somewhat critical to building colonies and it can take an entire turn just to stockpile three or four resources. And the RO user can do this over and over...and over again. Maybe it should only be one or two resources stolen?
-The scoring track is pretty arbitrary and not necessarily a reliable gauge for your game performance while the game is ongoing. Here's the thing: You can lose points as you lose control of territories you previously held. As a result, this game's very much like a basketball game: The score only really matters in the last five minutes of play.

Overall:

This is a fun game. I'm not a "space theme" person, as sci-fi normally bores me. There. I said it. But in spite of an initially unappealing theme, this game is extremely enjoyable and the theme was just this side of pretentious and convoluted.

Overall, the game is well-balanced (maybe except for the Raiders' Outpost bit) and was obviously thoroughly play-tested. All three players thoroughly enjoyed the dice placement mechanism enough to negate the usual grumbles about chance. I was also delighted that the the Alien Tech cards, which at first seemed somewhat tacked-on, ended up being instrumental to gameplay to just the right extent; they're powerful without overriding basic game elements or focus.

Game length is pretty much perfect for this game. We spent about one hour on our second (more seasoned) game, and that felt just right. After playing the Battlestar Galactica Board Game, I have a Charlie-in-the-trees type of fear of epic space games that take hours to play. This is not true for Alien Frontiers. Once you've mastered the rules, expect this to be a game that can be repeated a few times in a single evening.

We will not only be keeping this game in the Board Game Closet of Glory and Doom on a long-term basis, but this is also one that we will trot out fairly regularly, and would be excited to teach novice gamer friends.

Similar Games:
This game is a distant relative of Agricola in many ways, thanks to its worker placement ways. Except, it's not as constricting and nail-biting as Agricola. A little more flex and fun make this a more easygoing version.

Pimpability:

The domed colony tokens are just begging to be replaced by tiny little space colony miniatures...of some sort. I'd be surprised if several sets haven't been pimped to this end already. A truly enterprising person may also consider replacing the wooden gray ore and orange fuel resource pieces with polished stones. Aside from that, the game is pretty solid as-is. Even an organizer tray for the box is pretty unnecessary since little baggies suffice nicely to house dice sets, tokens, and cards.

Game: Alien Frontiers
Designer: Tory Niemann
Published by: Clever Mojo Games, 2010
Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 1-1.5 hours
AIBG Age Recommendations: 13-60
Average Retail Price: Out of Print currently (will be reprinted soon, $39.95)

Grade: A-