I watched The Prestige last weekend. What a good movie. I was surprised by several things. The acting was topnotch. The story was interesting and fun. And it had David Bowie.
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Review: No Thanks!
Designed by Thorston Gimmler
Published in English by Z-Man Games
The Basics:
No Thanks! is a card game in which players pay a chip not to take a card from the middle of the play area. Each card has a certain amount of points on it. By taking the cards from the middle players add points to their ‘hand’. The idea of the game is to have the fewest points at the end of the game. So you must pay to keep your point total low.
Components:
The game consists of 33 cards numbered 3 through 35 and 55 playing chips. That’s it.
Oh, and a rules sheet.
Setup:
Deal 11 chips to each player. Shuffle the cards. Deal 24 cards face down to the middle of the play area. The remaining cards are not used this round and are placed back in the box.
So How Do You Play No Thanks!?
The first player turns over the top card of the deck. He has the option to either take that card or pay a chip not to take it. If he chooses not to take it, he places a chip next to the card and play moves to the next player. This player has the same options – take the card AND the chip or pay a chip not to take it. Play continues until someone decides to take the card. This player takes the card and all the accumulated chips. He then flips another card from the deck face up. He now has the same options – take it or pay. Taken cards are placed in front of the player. Taken chips are added to that player’s pool. One twist to play is that consecutive sequences of cards score only the lowest card in the sequence. Also if a player has no chips he must take the card in play. Play continues until all cards are taken. Players then calculate their final score by adding up the points on the single cards and then adding the points from the lowest card in each sequence. Then they subtract a point for each chip they still have.
So How Do I Like No Thanks!
This is a very fun and surprising game. The rules are so simple yet the strategy involved with keeping your point total low, trying to get sequences, and keeping some chips makes for hard decisions. I like this. The fact that you do not use all the cards ensures that you can’t card count as you never know which cards are in the deck and which are in the box out of play. This is a good mechanic. There is a take that element in the game that is fun. You can drive play around to the guy who has no chips left, forcing him to take the card in play. You can take a card to keep it from someone need it for a sequence. You can take a card just to keep the next players from getting needed chips. All of these tactics come into play to add fun.
My group was very surprised by this quick filler. It has unseen strategy and tons of fun. It is a regular filler at Hypermind and one I will be teaching at work soon.
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This is the first of what I’m calling ‘Read Through Reviews’. These are reviews of games that, for some reason, I haven’t played yet. At some point I may get around to them but I want to get some first impressions on them down. First up
Apocalypse Prevention, Inc. from
Third Eye Games. The designer is Eloy Lasanta.
API is a role playing game in the vein of Inspectres and Ghostbusters. It’s really more like ‘Men In Black’ the rpg. You play an agent of a secret organization tasked with saving the world from ‘demons’ or other dimensional monsters. Ok, that sounds pretty cool. The game shoots for a horror/humor combination and from my reading it will deliver this.
Here are my impressions.
Cons
- I didn’t like the placement of the reference guide pages. I would have liked them at the end.
- Combat math is too much.
- The layout of the book or maybe the organization is a bit wonky to me for some reason I can’t put my finger on.
- It doesn’t really tell you how to play. It assumes you know. Some examples of play would have been super.
Pros
- I like the cover art. The art throughout the book is pretty good. The illustrations of the ‘races’ and characters gave me a good idea about those characters.
- I like the ‘In Brief” section. The back story is good and imaginative. Anchoring it in history is a neat idea. It gives the story some weight and makes for some story hooks like playing past incarnations of API.
- I like that the book jumps right into the process of creating a character. This is what most people want to get to first and it should be at or very near the front of an rpg.
- I like the positive and negative ‘aspects’ of Passions. Like Aspects in FATE but just different enough to be interesting.
- The Reference Guide is good. It is relatively clear, understandable, and gives an idea about how the game works.
- I like how levels and references are based on 10. The ‘she’s a 10′ comparison to explain this was spot on and cleared it up immediately.
- The list of Gifts and Drawbacks is extensive. There is a lot of variety and interesting takes on clichéd ‘powers’. And there are some unique ones as well. I like the ‘taint’ spell. I have not seen that one before. That is very cool.
- The GM section is pretty good and fairly clear. Again, examples would have been good.
- FATE influence is heavy which is good. XP instead of Fate Points is a neat change and interesting. I like that you get XP for acting within your Passion.
- The sample characters are good and show well what a character should be like.
- I like the target numbers ladder for conflict. Again FATE influence with a twist.
- I really like the Initiative Track. That is the coolest and most unique thing that jumped out to me. It’s a board game mechanic in a rpg. It’s a visual reference for initiative. Neat.
All in all the book is pretty good. I like the MIB vibe with some Ghostbusters mixed in. The system seems solid from the read through. Idemoed it at MACE this year with the designer (who is a very cool guy). The demo was a little rough but I can see some light there. I think adding examples of play would be a huge plus. The demo showed the system off but if I hadn’t had that I would have been lost or at least confused about how conflict was suppose to actually work.
Eloy announced that API will be getting Savaged!. He is currently working on the conversion and I look forward to this. My group has just begun using the Savage Worlds system and it is fantastic! I highly recommend it.
That’s about it.
That’s about it.
Go Forth and Game,
tomg
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