Rochester Gamers Community

Vietnam Solitaire is a simple solo wargame designed by Dave Kershaw and available for purchase in electronic format on the wargamesdownloads.com website. In this strategic-level game the player assumes the role of the commander of American and South Vietnamese forces and plays against the simulated North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces.

The game is purchased as a PDF file of only about 200KB, so it is fairly quick to download. The file prints out as seven pages of rules, one page of counters, and a single page for the map. The 56 counters and the map are in full color and at least the map needs to be printed out in color so that you can distinguish between the various terrain types on the map.

Well, here it is, the hottest game out right now. Dominion captivates players by its simplicity and keeps them coming back because there are consistently new depths to the game to explore.

Dominion is a game that completely revolves around the cards in play. Each player starts with a deck of 10 cards, 7 copper (worth one treasure each) and 3 estates (worth 1 victory point each). Then they all draw 5 cards.

On each players turn, he or she may play one action card and may purchase one card to add to their deck. Following that, they discard their ENTIRE hand and draw 5 new cards. No waiting to establish your deadly combo here, your deck gives you what you get each turn and that’s it.

Modern Naval Battles: Global Warfare (MNB:GW) is a card game portraying combat between modern ships, submarines, and aircraft. It is one of those games that, while not being extremely detailed or complex, are a reasonable simulation that presents the players with many of the challenges, decisions, and results you would expect in the real world.

You won’t find rules for maneuver, searching or detection in MNB:GW. This game assumes that the opposing sides have found each other and are ready to slug it out, toe to toe. If you have played other modern naval warfare games, you probably already know that the speed and range of modern weapons make the movement of individual ships mostly irrelevant. Once the missiles start flying, the ships might as well be sitting dead in the water. Therefore, MNB:GW is all about launching enough hardware at your opponent to sink his ships before he sinks yours.

Combat Commander: Europe is the first instalment in a series of card-driven tactical wargames, designed by Chad Jensen and published by GMT Games. Players re-create World War 2 infantry skirmishes between Germans and Soviets or USA. This extremely popular game has been compared favorably to other tactical WW2 titles such as Advanced Squad Leader, Up Front, and Conflict of Heroes.

Each nationality has a Fate Deck of 72 cards, with each card playable as an Order or an Action, and also serving to generate random dice rolls, random events or random hexes. On his turn, a player may play Orders (limit determined by the scenario) or discard unwanted cards (capacity determined by nationality). He then replenishes his hand to a number determined by his posture (i.e., attacking, defending, or other).

From the publisher, Smirk & Dagger Games:

An artifact of untold power lies in your hands. To claim it, you must escape the caverns alive. No less than nine horrific beasts stand in your way - that, and the greed of the other Players.

Without teamwork, you'll never survive. Without betrayal, you'll never win.

Cutthroat Caverns is a 3-6 Player game, recommended for ages 12 and up, that takes about 1.5 to 2 hours to play. The game itself is completely card based with small stones to keep track of the Players Life Points, the Encounter number, and the Monster's Life Points.

Component wise, the game is comprised of the before mentioned stones to keep track of Life Points and Encounter numbers, the Encounter card that represents the Monster, Player cards with a Life Point track, and the playing cards. In addition, there are Prestige counters and various other little tokens that are used with some Encounters.

At its heart, Race for the Galaxy is a development game. In the game, each player manages resources (cards) to settle and develop a community among the stars. The game involves each player selecting one phase of the turn to happen, than performing all phases that each player selects.

First things first, what do you get for your money? In the base game you get the cards, including 6 different starting planets, and the action cards, plus the victory point chips. The cards are high quality, and the chips are pretty standard punch out cardboard. It seems like the game is priced like a board game, but given the rising price of board games, its reasonable.

Cold War: CIA vs. KGB is a card game for two players and produced by Fantasy Flight in late 2007. The theme of the game puts the players in a struggle for influence during the Cold War. Players are given an objective and through clever play of cards, the players battle back and forth to take the objective to gain victory points. Players can also tilt the scales in their favor by way of "Agent X" cards as well as Event cards obtained in previous battles. The game ends when one player accumulates 100 victory points.

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