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Regulars readers will no doubt recognize that dice rolls and I do not actually get along all that well.
Games requiring dice rolls often leave me frustrated with Lady Luck. She seems to take special pleasure in turning near victory into laughable defeat based on a dice roll.
As a result of bad luck with dice, I have become a huge fan of abstract strategy games, those which rely on out-thinking an opponent. At least then the loss is mine, and I can work on improving how I play strategically, rather than lamenting how the dice roll. (A deck of cards s only slightly less frustrating than dice).
While abstract strategy games are favoured by myself, I do have a growing interest in a category of games known broadly as dexterity games, and within that category, finger-flicking games specifically.
People are probably most familiar with crockinole as a finger-flicking game.
The Canadian-designed classic might be the best board game ever created, but that is for a future review.
This week the game is Flicochet, a wonderfully simple finger-flicking game which comes in a small package making it ideal to take anywhere you go that you might want a little gaming fun.
The game is reminiscent of bocce/lawn bowling, miniaturized to the tabletop. If not familiar with bocce, it's a lawn game which works on the premise you toss a smaller ball onto a spot on the lawn, then take turns with an opponent rolling larger balls to get closest to the 'jack'. Scoring is like curling, in that you score points fort each ball closer to the 'jack' than your opponent.
Flicochet has the same basic ruleset using small wooden disks and played on a tabletop.
On a smooth-topped table, generally the bigger the better, players place one, or two slightly larger black wooden disks.
Then one player, or team, takes six white wooden disks, the other red disks. You take turns flicking the disks toward the black ones to score points. Along the way you can knock your opponent's piece away, much like a take-out in curling, or you can hit and move the back disks, hopefully to your advantage.
There are some variant rules, but they are equally simple.
Overall this little game is great. Wooden pieces are always a bonus, and the small package (about the size of a deck of cards), makes it easy to take with you. You can teach the rules in a minute and be set for lots of fun, and with practice you can even get better at Flicochet as you hone an actual skill.
A definite winner of a game.
Check it out at www.adventurelandgames.com
Past reviews are collected online at calsboardgamemusings.blogspot.com
All right I'll admit I have a bit of a soft spot for Norse mythology, so when I first learned there was a new game called Odin's Table on the market, I was immediately interested.
Of course it takes more than theme to make a game worth playing.
In the case of Odin's Table released just last year from Mindwarrior Games in Finland, the mechanics were also of interest, with some reservations set too.
The game has strong abstract strategy roots, with game play not unlike checkers. The six pieces aside move only one space, but do so in any of the eight possible directions on the six-by-five-square board. Pieces are captured by simple move and replacement.
The game would be overly simplistic if that was it.
Designer Esa Wilk takes the game in a different direction by adding a deck of specialty cards for each player.
The art on the cards is various Norse Gods, Freya, Odin, Thor and Loki among them. The are is rendered in dark inks and comes across as old and stunning.
A card is placed behind each rank, and it is the cards which determine captures. Each player flips a card and the high one generally wins, there are two exceptions, Loki the trickster being one of them.
So you know your cards, where you are strong, but are guessing at what the opponent has.
It adds some definite luck to the contest, although you 'feel' you still have some control of outcomes.
Once a piece is captured it can return in lieu of another move.
The goal is to get three pieces to the opponent's back row.
The components are good, although the cardboard game pieces would have had a better 'feel' if they were stones marked with runes. The board has a wood-like look, but would have fit the theme better with a board marked out of a piece of leather, which would then tie up to carry the cards and stones.
While the components could match the theme better, the game as presented is certainly serviceable.
The game plays quickly, and is surprisingly enjoyable, with a rather gratifying mix of brain-driven strategy and card-driven look.
Check it out at www.mindwarriorgames.com
Past reviews are collected online at calsboardgamemusings.blogspot.com
-- This review was originally published in Yorkton This Week newspaper in Yorkton, Sask. Canada
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