Underground Gamers Board Game Reviews

Rating:  

not BC - A bloke called ‘Brian Cohen’ gets mistaken for someone of importance (an event so controversial, it was not documented until 1979)

England, AD 932 King Arthur dines at ‘the round table’ in Camelot meanwhile killer ‘Rabbit of Caerbannog’ is first sighted outside a cave overlooking the Perthshire village of Killin (the inspired myth for the game killer bunnies?)

No-one expected that in 1477 - The Spanish Inquisition, an ecclesiastical tribunal, would be established by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand I Of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the following year.

27th  October, 1939 John Cleese (A Python) is born

22nd November, 1940 Terry Gilliam (A Python) is born

8th January, 1941 Graham Chapman (An Ex-Python - He has ceased to be) is born

1st February, 1942 Terry Jones (A Python) is born

29th March, 1943 Eric Idle (A Python) is born

5th May, 1943 Michael Palin (A Python) is born

5th November, 1963 Andrew J. Looney is born.

Summer 1969 – ‘Showbiz Agent’ Monty Python forms The Flying Circus.

5th  October, 1969 John Cleese first introduces “And Now for Something Completely Different…”

1974 Final TV series & Arthurian spoof, Monty Python And The Holy Grail is made for 6 pence / £150,000 and no horse budget!

1996 Looney Labs was founded

2003 Spiele, a German game company, licensed a German language version of Fluxx

2004 Flowers & Fluxx were released.

2005 introduced EcoFluxx and Family Fluxx. Also, licensed to HobbyJapan, they subsequently published Japanese Fluxx.

Thursday, October 4th, 2007  Fluxx is reanimated to include Zombies (Creepers)

One year on Monty Python Fluxx – The most anticipated game this year (in this reviewer’s opinion)

I’ve already explained the basics in my review of EcoFluxx……to recap Everyone starts with 3 cards and at the start the basic rules are Draw 1, Play 1 Which then constantly change along with the ‘Goal’ cards which dictate which ‘Keeper’ cards (which you can play in front of you) you need to win and action cards, from, choosing an additional card for everybody to changing hands with someone or resetting back to the basic rules.

With the introduction of new ‘rule’ and ‘action’ cards from having to serenade players or quoting dialogue to receive extra cards its highly recommended that your videos/dvds are dusted down and re-watched before play. I will be swotting up.
If it gets too outrageous you can hope for “This Game has got too Silly..” Action Card reducing to standard draw/play (Quantity) rules or even “My Brain hurts..” which lets you choose which rules to discard.
Consisting mainly of the Holy Grail (although the occasional Dead Parrott & other TV elements appear). The Monty Python take on Fluxx is the most ambitious and crazy zany version that will likely to appear, ever! Not that you’d expect anything else with these two great names joined together……

Rating:                       
Bootleggers is a 3 - 6 player game and when you first open the box looks very complicated but after your first couple of plays and with the help of the clearly explained rule book is about the same level of difficulty as Zoolertto or Settlers of Catan.

The general theme of the game is 1920’s America during the Prohibition period when the manufacture, supply and sale of intoxicating liquors was illegal hence pushing everything underground and enabling many Mobsters to make huge profits in the production and sales of whiskey in Speakeasies – illegal bars, providing they could avoid the Government Agents otherwise known as Elliot Ness and his G-Men.

The game is played over 12 rounds and the Mobster who gets $100G first wins the game also all players’ starts with $10G, a Family Whiskey Still, one Influence marker, a small Truck plus 12 numbered Muscle Cards

Each round is dived into  phases, starting with players selecting a Muscle card to determine order of play for that round, player with highest Muscle card goes first then player with next highest goes second etc, in turn players can pick up a special Men of Action card which give many advantages like more Influence markers, improvements to your family Whiskey Still or a host of other perks to be played now or held and played later, Mob war being a firm favourite, players may also ignore the Men of Action cards and buy another Truck.

The next phase consists of Sending in the Boys or using your Influence markers to gain control of 5 out of the 6 available Speakeasies (note the first Speakeasy cannot be controlled as its run by the local Police). Players in Muscle order place their Influence markers on the Speakeasies. The more Influence markers you place will help decide who controls the Speakeasies, if you have more then all the other players in that Speakeasy you’re the boss otherwise you may have to share power or be a small time player or have no Influence at all and be out in the cold.

Next phase is to Fire up the Whiskey Still, Players roll dice for their Whiskey production, any improvements cards played in the first phase will help them roll more dice and produce more Whiskey – shown in the game as little wooden cubes. Latter on in the game the player who produces the most Whiskey is in danger of having the police raid his Family Still on a dice roll of 5 and destroy all his booze!!

We then have to run the Whisky to the Speakeasies in our Trucks, each truck can hold either 4, 6 or 9 crates (cubes) of Whiskey depending if it’s a small, medium or large Truck, at this stage players may attempt to buy more crates of Whiskey if lacking or sell off any spare Whiskey Crates. Once the has been done players line up their trucks in the docks in front of the various Speakeasies in Muscle order, the game can also turn quite nasty if players decide to use any Men of Action cards now – like Hijack a truck and nick another players Whiskey.

We now come to selling the Whiskey, a simple dice roll determines how many Whiskey crates each Speakeasy will buy, some more some less. In Muscle order the Trucks lined up in the Speakeasy Docks now sell they booze and collect their Dollars. If a player has Controlling Influence at a Speakeasy as the boss he will collect a Profit margin on all Whiskey sold.

That’s the basic overview of the game, the game moves pretty quickly and what’s nice about it is if you start losing and have some bad rounds you still have a chance to catch up and win the game, the key to winning this game is Influence of the Speakeasies the more you have the better and also gets some more trucks. All in all this is a great game which combines Euro gaming in the scoring and production of whiskey with the more aggressive American Games yes you can attack and screw each other up also I love the little Mobster Influence markers and plastic trucks and think every gamers home should have a copy of this game, bags of fun all round.

Rating:
UG Mole’s Diggin It Award
Zooloretto just seems to get better and better. Don’t be confused it’s not really about running a zoo, that’s just a cover to make the game look cute, similar to a cuddly lion cub. However, like a cuddly cub over time it will grow to become a man eating beast of a lion. As you play the game more it starts to growl and its teeth and deep rooted nastiness becomes apparent. This is not nasty, as in ‘the games not worth playing’ sort of nasty. Nooooo, this is the nasty that brings out the dark side in everyone. You can be so nasty it will make you smile, laugh or even chuckle with pleasure as you use your cunning and skill to bring your competitors’ zoos to their knees.

So, how does it work? The Underground Gamers saying ‘simplicity is genius’ is carried out to perfection. It is based around loading trucks. There are the same number of trucks as players and each truck has three compartments. Each player in turn selects a tile at random, and loads it onto a space on a truck. The tiles are either a type of animal, a type of vending stall or money. Alternately, instead of adding a tile to a truck, a player can choose a truck to add to their zoo. Doing this ends their participation in that game phase until each player has chosen a truck. The trucks are emptied into the zoos and the next round of truck loading can begin.

But this is so simple, how does it become ‘little finger in the corner of the mouth, Dr. Evil type nasty’? This is the genius – each zoo has three enclosures and you can only keep the same type of animal in each enclosure (as in life you wouldn’t want to keep your zebras and lions together as your lions would get fat and your zebras scared!). You get plus points and money for filling enclosures. Each zoo also has a barn where all the other animal types you can’t get in your enclosures are kept. At the end of the game, each animal type in your barn earns you minus points. So the playing strategy is to choose trucks that contain animals that you have in your enclosures and, avoid picking up other animal types, so that you don’t end up with a massive collection of animals in your barn.

The game gets really nasty as the trucks are being loaded. You can’t help but laugh out loud as you load that panda that your competitor really doesn’t want onto the truck containing the flamingos that he or she really wants. It is surprising how much fun it can be and how rewarding it is when you load unwanted animals to mess up the trucks for everyone else!

Now as I have written above, the cuteness really is a mask to give the nasty side of this game a gentle, soft, loving and respectable appearance. The cuteness does goes off the scale when you get an baby animal from a breeding pair (marked out by the male and female signs on only some of the tiles). However, all this part of the game seems to do is cause additional truck loading ‘warfare’ as when a breeding animal is loaded onto a truck, unwanted animals are promptly dispatched to that truck. Be prepared to take some pain (and to quickly fill your barn) while putting together a breeding pair.

Other elements of the game I should mention are:
- Vending stalls. Can be used to rescue points from enclosures that are not nearly filled.
- An additional enclosure, like buying the extra bean field in Bohnanza, can be added to your zoo to give more space for putting animals.
- Instead of loading an animal onto a truck or taking a truck you can undertake a money action -  such as buy an animal from another player’s barn. These are handy but will cost money.

Cracking stuff – so when does the game end? The game ends when all animal, vending stall and money tiles have been stacked onto trucks and loaded into the zoos. It’s then time to work out the scores.

An excellent game, but don’t be fooled by the cute appearance – the pepperami advert saying is apt here – it’s a bit of an animal. 5 stars…..