I’ve Been Drinking on the Railroad – A TransEuropa Review

All aboard – and a plethora of other train puns too unbearable to publish – this week, a look at TransEuropa! Yes, yes, I can hear the collective groans now; a million (ok, a couple hundred) voices crying out, “Another train game?” Yes, dear readers, another train game. Bear with me during this brief review, though – a) it’s fun, b) you can play it blitzed, and c) it has about as much to do with trains as colored cubes do with making burgers. In TransEuropa, each player randomly selects five differently colored cards, each with a Eurasian city on the face. The goal for each round is to place little bits of “track”... Read More

A Few Fries Short of a Happy Meal – A Burger Joint Review

There’s just something strangely fascinating about playing with your food. Lately, it seems that gamers who like games and grub have had a buffet of choices: Wasabi!, Wok Star and Lord of the Fries are some that have been recently released. Since I was not one of the lucky few who grabbed up a scarce copy of Wok Star, I decided to go completely American and try my hand at fast food franchising with Burger Joint. The object of Burger Joint is to be the first foodie to reach 12 on the scoring track by building up basic restaurants like Burger Joints or Pizza Parlors, and then converting some of them to Diners or hoity toity Bistros. The basic... Read More

Dice Hate Me at the Bookstore: The Games Bible

I will happily admit that I’m pretty easy to shop for around the holidays. Any amusing trinket will usually bring me extraordinary glee, especially if it is shiny or has pretty pictures on it. However, when it comes to gifting me games or game-related paraphernalia, the gifter may often find themselves in dangerous territory since, well, I have a lot of stuff. Thus, consider my utter shock and surprise glee when my in-laws presented me with a gaming gift that was both new and incredibly thoughtful – The Games Bible. As I thumbed through the pages after the gift wrap had all been torn asunder, I also began to realize that this little gift... Read More

Cold War: CIA vs KGB – Dosvidanya Boredom

Throughout the last half of the 20th century, the world’s two largest super powers – the United Sates and the Soviet Union – were engaged in a deadly covert battle of wills that could have erupted in nuclear annihilation at any moment. It was a time of cunning subterfuge, dual-handed diplomacy, master spies and double agents; a time when the silent bids to be the reigning force on the planet toppled entire governments and the world seemed to brace for mass destruction. For a card game, that’s a lot of theme to pack into a box no bigger than a six-inch submarine sandwich. Amazingly, in Cold War: CIA vs. KGB, it works –... Read More

The 2010 Dice Hate Me Holiday Gift Guide

The holidays are upon us and tis the season to be gaming! Friends and family will soon be gathered near, and what better way to celebrate than to grab your dice and pour some cocoa? Every year, I always make it a point to have a few games under the tree for others; not only do they make great and unique gifts, but after they’re unwrapped you get to play them. Bonus! The blessing and curse of giving games as gifts is variety. There are a lot of games out there to choose from, and pairing the right box with the correct beloved can sometimes be trying. Worry not, gentle readers – use the Dice Hate Me Holiday Game Guide to aid you in your... Read More

Launch Pad: In Space, No One Can Hear You Whimper

From 1957 until the early 70s, the national super powers of the United States and the Soviet Union were pitted together in a heated head-to-head race for space. In their quest to reach the cosmos, each nation recruited top technicians and harvested vast resources, all while trying their best to protect their budding rockets from spies and saboteurs. Launch Pad is a lot like that, except this time imagine that JFK strapped on a rocket pack, flew over to Kruschev’s pad and booted him right in the kremlins. In Launch Pad the objective is simple: use resource cards to build cool spaceships, send them through quality control, and then roll ’em... Read More

An Even Bigger Bang!

If you’ve followed the site for awhile or keep up with the Dice Hate Me Twitter feed, you know by now that my coworkers and I play a lot of Bang! More than any other game that’s been introduced at lunchtime, Bang! seems to bring about the most mischievous glee as we ignore common courtesy and mercilessly gun each other down. Bang! also elevates our creativity, as we are continuously concocting and introducing various house rules to make things more interesting or to fix what we consider inconsistencies in theme. Back in July, I wrote a brief article on some of the basic house rules that we use in the office. With the exception of using... Read More

Monopoly Deal – Like Landing on Free Parking

Say the word “Monopoly” to most die-hard gamers and they are likely to run screaming from the room as if their face is engulfed in flames. To some gamers, that very flaming fate would be preferable to the tedious, near-death experience of another game of Monopoly. To those of you who cringe at the thought of Passing Go; to those who abhor little metal Scotties; to the dear few who pray you Go to Jail so you don’t have to sweat bullets trying to get past your cousin’s stupid Skid Row with hotels on them – I’m here to tell you that it’s safe to come out from behind your stack of Eurogames. I’m going... Read More

Chrononauts – Fourth-Dimensional Fun

What would you do if you had access to a time machine? Would you use it for the (supposed) betterment of mankind, preventing the assassination of a national hero, or guaranteeing the demise of a horrible dictator? Or would you travel to the future, steal a sports almanac, and return to the past to put a bet down on the Red Sox in the World Series? You can do all those things and more in Chrononauts – provided other time-travelling mischief-makers mucking about the timeline don’t get in your way. In Chrononauts, you take on the role of a time traveller who has access to key points along a timestream – represented by a grid of... Read More

Monty Python Fluxx – What a Silly Game

Fluxx is the very first card game from Andrew Looney, and it is fair to say that it is the main reason that Looney Labs has grown into the company that it is today. Ever since its introduction in 1996, people have been going absolutely bonkers over Fluxx because Fluxx is absolutely bonkers. At almost every convention, you’ll catch large groups of people gathered together, throwing down cards, laughing uproariously and generally having no clue as to what’s going on at any given moment. This is the cult of Fluxx – all hail Discordia. For many years, one of my friends who is deeply ingrained in the cult of Fluxx tried to indoctrinate... Read More