Cobra Paw - Game Review!

2-6 players - Age 6+ - Playing time 5-15 minutes

What is it?

As it says on the box, the person with the Ninja-like know how steals the game! And it's true, you need to be quick in this dice rolling, domino spying, finger pointing game of quick eyes and even quicker reflexes!

The Ninja-cat with the smallest paws rolls first, and as you can see from the picture below, the two dice will match the symbols of one of the "Clawfuku" stones, it's then a race to find it and put your finger on the dimple of the "stone". If anyone else tries to grab it too, it's decided by the person who has their finger on the very middle of the stone. Then the person who won the stone gets to roll again. This continues until someone wins a certain number of stones, for example, 8 in a two player game. 

What I thought

It's totally manic and actually quite stressful to be honest! The more people you have, the more fun it is and you also get a longer game...unless you have a game with my partner, who is so quick and catlike it's ridiculous! 

If you are familiar with games from Bananagrams (or viewed by me here), you won't be surprised to hear that the quality of the pieces are beautiful. The Catfuku Stones (the dominoes themselves) are gorgeous, very weighty, so smooth and really nice to roll in your hand. The Dice are just as good too, nice and big. The age range says 6+ and the dice aren't too big for my 7 year old girl to hold in her diddy hand.

The Verdict!

A really fun game if you have a few minutes in between Zoom calls.  Each game lasts about 10 minutes (with two players), but shorter if you play with actual Ninjas.  

Adult Rating:  Adults will love how speedy this is and can imagine it being quite good at a post lockdown party where people may have been drinking a little! 

 /5

Family Rating: Very good.  It is so easy to play that the little ones will be able to pick it up easily and are generally pretty quick too! If you are a particularly quick Ninja, you may need to slow down your skills if playing with younger kids...my partner's kids won't play with her any more!  

 /5

Cobra Paw is available from Magic Madhouse for £11.99 with free postage if you spend over £20, so why not also get another of the games I've recently reviewed!

Dungeon Roll - Dice Game Review!

1-4 players - Age 8+ - Playing time 15-30 minutes

What is it?

This is one of the few great games that I've played, that can be played purely solo. The only reason this is for 1-4 players is because, basically one person plays as a Hero, and the other rolls for the 'Dungeon'. Then the rest of the players can all get a go being the Hero and being the Dungeon.

Each Hero has their own 'Speciality' which is a passive power that allows the Hero to manipulate the game somehow. For each round the Hero also gets to use an 'Ultimate power'. 

A game consists of 3 rounds (delves into the dungeon) and the Dungeon has a maximum of 10 levels. Each level sees the same amount of Monster dice as the level you're on, level 1 has 1 Monster etc. It's up to the party of 7 Heroes (dice), rolled at the beginning of the round, to beat as many Monsters and progress as many levels of the Dungeon as possible.

Each of the sides of the party dice are either; A Thief, a Mage, a Warrior, a Champion, a Cleric or a Scroll. Apart from the Scroll, each side has the ability to either kill one of any Monster type or, if the colour matches, then duplicates of Monsters can be killed with just one side. For example - A Warrior (green) can kill multiple Goblins (which are also green). The same happens with the other party dice, apart from the Champion, which can kill multiples of anything. 

Among the different types of Monsters, it is possible to roll a Dragon.  These get put to one side as a delve (round) progresses but once there are three, it's time to "Slay the Dragon", which means you need three different types of Hero to kill off the Dragon. 

As you kill Dragons, you gain Treasure tokens, which do different things. You may get a party token, which basically acts as an extra to your party dice. You may get Dragon Scales for extra XP (experience points). There are also other Treasures which let you do different things too, like being able to run away from the Dragon and go back to the town. 

XP is gained by advancing levels and is counted up at the end of each round, plus any treasures you've gained along the way. The good thing about this, is that you are then just told what kind of Hero you are, so it's not really about beating the other players, its just about beating the game for as much as you can! 

What I thought

Dragon Roll is a really well thought out game, which plays really nicely if you have other players that don't like losing or are just really competitive...you're kind of out for yourself on this game and it really doesn't matter who gets the highest, I just think of it as "have I beaten my personal best?"

It's a really neat little box so can be travelled with very nicely. At the beginning of lockdown, I let my partners kids borrow it while they went off in their caravan for a long weekend. The pieces are made of nice thick card and the dice are just dice, but feel and sound really good...wow...that's quite a geeky thing to say!!  

The Verdict!

If you're bored one evening and everyone is doing something else, maybe playing a different board game, then Dungeon Roll will be enough to keep you busy. It's quick, it's fun and there's loads of heroes to choose from so you can get used to how their specialties work. I really like the Leprechaun at the moment! His speciality is that he can open treasures before killing monsters, so there's more chance of pulling party dice and not using your own dice straight away!

There's also expansions you can purchase too which provide different heroes with more Specialities.

Adult Rating: Good for the adults, while the kids are busy with younger based games.

 /5

Family Rating: Although everyone in the family can get involved, only 2 people will be doing anything at one time, so little ones could get a little bored.

 /5

It's currently available from Fishpond.co.uk for £23.62, however this is shipping from the USA, so not sure how long that will take, although they are offering FREE shipping. 

Alternatively it's available on Amazon.co.uk for £19.97.

Pizza Party - Dice Game Review!

 2 players - Age 6+ - Playing time 5 minutes

What is it?

It's a dice game, where you're rolling against each other. It's totally manic but loads of fun! The aim of the game is to roll for the ingredients and complete the toppings of your pizza slice. First one to complete their pizza wins the game! "Mamma Mia!" 

What I thought

Really good fun, the dice are nice and small for little hands and I love that the box is the shape of a pizza slice. Game play is manic but really good fun. Just be careful when rolling, as it's easy to get carried away and dice then fly off the table.  But if you're smart, you'll roll quick and close to the table so they don't roll far, which is also better for picking up and rolling again!  

The Verdict!

This is a great game, especially for the little ones and it's really easy to play.  If you want to play with more than two players, just buy more sets. 

Adult Rating: It's good fun when playing with the little ones, but will get old pretty quick when playing with the adults, it's just a simple rolling dice game. 

 /5

Family Rating: Little ones love it and will be giggling during the whole game! Good luck getting them to bed!

 /5

Pizza Party is available on Amazon.co.uk of course.. 

BUT! Support the little guys! This shop in Scotland has Pizza Party for only £5.99 and have Free delivery when you spend £25! They have some really nice family favourites on there as well as a lovely selection of newer card games that I've not even heard of!

Back To The Future - Dice Through Time - Board Game Review!

 

2-4 Players - Ages 10+ - Playing Time approx - 1 - 2hours

What is it?

So this game is primarily a 'find and replace items' kind of game, but brings in all the events, locations and items from the Back to the Future trilogy! 

The aim of the game is to resolve wrong doing events over the four timelines, the premise is that Biff has got hold of the time machine again at some point and has removed a load of the key items which Marty and Doc use to complete their missions. The guitar from the high school so Marty can't play that all important Earth Angel track which made his parent kiss for the first time...or the skateboard which Marty uses to flee from Biff's gang in 1955 resulting in Biff eating the manure! BLEUGH!! 

You resolve events and make sure they go according to plan, using rolled dice. These allow you to punch out Biff (the fist symbol), travel back and forth in time (the flux capacitor), to different locations in the timeline (the "forward" symbol), to resolve any symbol (the wrench) and lastly to remove Paradox's (the 'Doc' symbol). More about those in a sec.

For every event cleared you receive an item, which you then have to navigate through time and replace in its' rightful place. All the while, you need to move Biff out the way by punching him out of the way, and if you don't resolve Paradox's in time then slowly but surely you'll run "Outatime"!

What I Thought?

Oh my god, this is such an amazing game!! I couldn't sit still in my chair while playing. The parallels with the films are amazing, and just the fact that the rules allow you to "leave" items in the past for future players to use is amazing. You really get the feel of travelling through time and putting right what Old Biff messed up. With all the events on the board, it's sometimes quite difficult to clear them all and it gets really tense!

Unlike most games, this is more of a co-operative game where all players can get stuck in on each others turns and discuss how to play out the dice.

The Verdict! 

Definitely one of my favourite games at the moment, I really want to get in touch with Ravensberger and BEG them for an expansion...I kinda made my own "Alternate" 1985 timeline, with items you have to return (apologies, I'm such a child!) It's such a fantastic game and I want more of it!

Back to the Future - Dice Through Time is currently available on Zavvi for a very respectable £22.99!! 

Adults Rating: Fantastic game, with lots of tie in to the films to keep the nostalgia up and the adults hyped!

/5

Family Rating: There's spoilers here for the little ones if they've not seen the films, nothing scary though. Sometimes they may get a little bored as the strategy element can take a bit of brain power.

/5

Harry Potter - Hogwarts Battle - A Co-operative Deck-Building Game

What is it? 

2-4 Players - Ages 11+ - Playing time approx - 1-2 Hours

It's a deckbuilding game, but Harry Potter style!

You get all the cards you possibly need to play numerous games (read below)

And look at the gorgeous box! One of the nicest things that my partner pointed out, was the beautiful way all the cards fit in the moulded box! No wastage, complete and utter OCD-genius! 

What I thought?

Seriously.. this game is tough!! Out of the box, you get 7, yes 7, packs of cards.. Now, the first "Game" pack contains everything you need for a simple set up, really neat for first timers to deckbuilding to ease you into the mechanics. This shows you how to play the game and get a handle on the whole needing trade to buy Spells and also Items and Ally cards which give you health and attack tokens.

It's based on the 7 years at Hogwarts, so you have to buy all the decent spells, using a pool of influence from the 'Ministry of Magic', defeating the various wizards and witches from the Harry Potter books/films with attack tokens aptly resembling Harry's scar. All the while trying to stop the villains from taking over the various locations of the Harry Potter Wizarding World. As this ties in so well with the books and films, revealing villains, locations, spells, items and more year by year, so beware of spoilers.

So, back to the Game packs, each one provides more powerful Spells, Items and Allies, as well as more powerful enemies, locations (for the baddies to conquer) and also an upgraded version of the student you play. These Game packs also provide (in some cases) a new mechanic to add to the gameplay. It could be some beautifully printed House Dice which work with some of the cards to provide different things, or new spells with additional tokens!!

The deckbuilding games I've played in the past allow you to purchase additional cards which bring new mechanics to the game, but with the Hogwarts Battle Game, they're all included already in one box!! 

So, as you play the different Game packs, you advance through the Game boxes. We started with Game 1, as we're kind of beginners.. We're currently stuck on Game 5!! Voldemort keeps annihilating us.. we were only ONE turn away the other day!! 

Quality-wise the cards are really nice to hold and the tokens are really robust, there's even some metal tokens you use to track the villains influence on the locations..

.......

Yep. So, given a few more days in between writing this post and we've now completed the whole game, all 7 Years! It's amazing, the new mechanics introduced really do make it fun to progress. More mechanics mean more villains powers, but also more ways to defeat them! 

The Verdict!

Such a good game! Me and my partner are HOOKED and the kids love it too! We've also just ordered the Charms and Potions expansion so I'll be reviewing that in the near future too. We're also pretty excited about the Monster Box of Monsters expansion too!

Well...I would like to say definitely don't get it from Amazon, as that guy has way too much money already! Instead, get it from THESE GUYS! 

Magic Madhouse offer Free post over £20 and, in lockdown, these guys have been a real help with me and my family buying decent games!

It's only £39.99 and that really does make sense as it's like 7 games in one! 

Adults Rating: Us Adults are loving the film tie-ins! Just be careful of spoilers for the kids! 

 /5

Family Rating: A smart 7 year old was playing this, but some may struggle! Length of time playing may also have your little ones wriggling in their seats! 

 /5