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I've always said that I'll play anything, if it's fun, but I have developed something of a reputation as a big fan of games where people get killed a lot. And that's fair, because I am a huge fan of games where people get killed a lot. I even designed a t-shirt that says, 'real men play games where people die' (that's kind of a plug, since you can buy that shirt). So it may seem odd, but I have really fallen for a series of games that could not be more European if they came with free healthcare.

Mercante is the second in the Tempest series of games, or the third if you count Love Letter, which apparently the publishers do not, because there's a big '2' on the side of the box. It furthers the story of the evolution of the city-state of Tempest. In the first game, Courtiers, players ponce about and plot to exert subtle influence over the city by gaining the king's ear - and then someone succeeds and the queen gets arrested for treason. In Mercante, the merchants rise up and decide it's about time someone listened to them. Money brings power, I guess, and so you're all trying to elevate your positions by getting rich and powerful.

It might seem like Mercante should be very similar to Courtiers, since they're part of a series, and there are certainly similarities. The art, for one thing, is obviously created by the same artists who made the first game. The setting is the same, except for the obvious difference of the imprisoned queen. But the differences are much larger - and more important - than the things that are the same.

For instance, instead of limited cube placement and cautious card play, you've got bidding wars and limited actions. The game feels very much like it belongs in the trilogy without being the same game with a new varnish. You'll bid on goods to store in your warehouse, try to sell goods to make money, and fill delivery contracts for certain items, like pigs and jewelry. Hopefully not at the same time, but there were some twisted people in Tempest. Some of them might have been into that. You're not here to judge.

You are here to get rich and powerful, though, and while there are several ways to get power, the more effective way is to just go out and buy it. At least, if you're merchants. If you're politicians in modern America, the best way to get power is to lie to a bunch of people and promise other people favors if they'll fund your reelection campaigns. But this isn't a game about American politics, it's a game about the rising merchant class, so in this case, money means power.

Mercante is as brilliant and involved a game as Courtier. The rules might take a couple read-throughs, just to make sure you got them all, and I'm pretty sure we still played wrong. But these meaty rules provide you with a game that is as strategic as it is tactical, smart and tricky, and full of great opportunities to screw your friends.

In fact, that friend-screwage is one of the highlights of the game. So much of Mercante is about bidding, and you can totally hose someone just by bidding them up and forcing them to pay more than their win is worth. You can hire thugs to rob their warehouses. You can close markets just as they go to sell their goods. Over and over, there are excellent chances to make other people miserable, which make Mercante good, clean fun best enjoyed by people who don't take it personally when you treat them very poorly.

I really hope these Tempest game kick off a trend. This idea of connecting games in a series, telling a story through the games, is so much fun I can barely stand it. It's like you get to be there to witness the city-state changing before your eyes. These are not expansions. They're more like sequels. They're similar, but not identical, and each game can stand on its own - but seriously, if you're going to get one, get them all. They are fantastic.

Like all the games in the Tempest series, Mercante is involved, very European, and low on dead bodies. But it's marvelously fun, if you're into this sort of game, and shows just how much innovation the board game industry can come up with. I highly recommend it. And in two days, I'll tell you about Dominare, the best of the bunch.

Summary

2-5 players

Pros:
Involved and smart
Tons of interaction
Heavy without being dull
Tense and hellacious fun

Cons:
Very Euro (not a con for me, more of a heads-up)

You can get Mercante from Coolstuff, Inc., and I am flabbergasted that you can get it for a price this amazing:
http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/165353

Armstrong Indonesia – PT. Graha 
Patriatama Jaya



Mengenal Kelebihan Gypsum Dinogips







Mengenal Kelebihan Gypsum Dinogips  - Gypsum.
Siapa yang tak mengenal bahan plafond atau langit - langit rumah yang satu ini?
Bahkan sejak era prasejarah, daya manfaat dari Gypsum telah banyak dimanfaatkan, diantaranya adalah untuk
penyaring, sebagai bahan pupuk tanah, sebagai bahan perekat,

Instanesia - Apa Saja Penawaran Sepesial dari InstaForex - Instanesia.com?


Instanesia


Instanesia - Apa Saja Penawaran Sepesial dari InstaForex- Instanesia.com? -
Broker. Begitu banyaknya broker forex yang bermunculan di
seluruh dunia. Coba saja browsing dan Anda akan menemukan jumlah broker yang
begitu bejibun jumlahnya. Jika Anda meluangkan waktu untuk membaca satu demi
satu keunggulan

A few weeks ago, I reviewed a game called Courtier, and mentioned how this was the first chapter in a series of games that, when put together, told a story about the evolving city-state of Tempest. In case you don't feel like jumping over to that review, I'll recap:

Courtier is fun.
The story idea is fantastic.
The game ends when the queen gets arrested.

There's actually more in that review (or I couldn't very accurately call it a review), but those are the salient parts for this review.

Depending on how you want to rate these things, Love Letter is either the second game out of four, or a sort of plug-in wedged between the first and second. It doesn't really seem to fit in the series - the other three all have Latin-sounding names (and not like Geraldo Rivera Latin, more like Semper Fidelis Latin), they all have the same size box, and they are all rather weight board games. Love Letter, by comparison, obviously does not have a Latin name (either racially or linguistically), comes in a cloth bag, and is a light card game. Which explains why Alderac didn't make it an 'official' part of the Tempest series.

However, Love Letter definitely takes place in Tempest. It even furthers the story. You're all suitors attempting to cheer up the princess after her mom gets thrown in the hoosegow (supposedly she committed treason, but I'm pretty sure she was set up). To make the princess smile, you're trying to get your love letter into her hands. Her guards - and the other players - all want to make sure you fail. In terms of the timeline, this takes place between Courtier (the first game) and Mercante (the second game). It's kind of like a special episode of Friends that takes place between when the gang meets up for coffee and witty banter and the next time the gang meets up for coffee and witty banter.

What ensues is a delightfully cutthroat card game that plays out in less than twenty minutes and leaves everyone laughing just a little. It's ridiculously straightforward - on your turn, you draw a card, then play a card. You only start with one card, so when you're playing, you're limited to a choice of two cards. This might seem like Love Letter has a lot of luck, and if it does, then kudos, you're very perceptive. Have a gold star.

That heaping helping of luck is why a game this deliberately cutthroat still keeps everyone smiling. Sure, you hosed your daughter out of the last point she needed to win, but she knows you didn't have any choice. It was that or discard the princess, and automatically lose the round. So you had to play the guard, guess the countess, and kick her out of the round. Those are the breaks.

Theoretically, the goal of Love Letter is to have the character closest to the princess holding your love letter at the end of the round, because that's the letter she gets. However, in practice, the goal of the game is to boot every other player by finding their love letters and making sure they wind up in the wood chipper (the letters, not the players - it is bad form to put your fellow games into wood chippers). There are so many ways to get knocked out of a round that sometimes you don't even need any help. Sometimes you're stuck holding a card that knocks you out if you play it, and a card that forces you to play your other card.

But like I said, those are the breaks, and Love Letter is a surprisingly fun game, even though it is almost too light to even be part of the the Tempest series. Where the other three games have more meat than a barbecue buffet, Love Letter is a handful of popcorn. But it's fun popcorn, like the kind that comes in the big bucket and has cheese or chocolate or butterscotch, and after two days the only thing left in there is the cheese popcorn because your co-workers are pigs. Greedy, greedy pigs.

One more point here - the Tempest series of games is so well-developed and deep, with an obvious history and an enormous cast of characters, that I would really love to read fiction taking place in this city. Fiction based on Love Letter would be less compelling than Fifty Shades of Twilight, but all the intrigue and backstabbing in the other games would make for fascinating reading, if it was written by someone competent (and by 'someone competent', I mean 'not that lady who wrote Hunger Games').

I think I'm going to make this Tempest Week. My other two reviews this week will cover Mercante and Dominare. By the end, I'll be repeating the same jokes so many times you'll all leave and go read those dry-as-a-mattress reviews at BGG just for variety. So come back Wednesday and I'll see if I can't make you yell at your monitor, 'You used that one already!'

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Quick and light-hearted card game
Fast and fun, with some opportunity for smart card play
Beautiful art
Wonderfully cutthroat without making anyone mad at you

Cons:
Heavy on luck, with virtually no strategy

It took some looking to find a copy of this anywhere, but you can get it at Funagain for just ten bucks. Perfect if you're trying to push up for a shipping discount, but worth it all by itself.
https://www.funagain.com/control/product?product_id=027097

Libratama - Mengenal Lebih Dekat Produk Rodcraft




Libratama - Mengenal Lebih Dekat Produk Rodcraft


Libratama - Mengenal Lebih Dekat Produk Rodcraft - Mengingat pesatnya perkembangan dunia industri saat ini, peluang pada bidang penyediaan piranti alat
- alat industri mulai banyak dilirik beberapa pengusaha. Kesadaran yang makin meningkat bahwa
kelancaran aktivitas dunia industri juga harus

Reviewing movies turned out to be a pretty awesome idea. While I still haven't managed to get an invitation to a private screening of, well, anything at all, I am starting to get noticed. A couple weeks ago, this lady from Redbox emailed me and said I could have 25 codes for free Redbox rentals so that I could give them out to my readers. I have been renting movies like crazy!

Too bad the codes don't work for videogames. Wish I had figured that out before I kept Barbie Adventures for a week and a half.

So anyway, then another lady says she'll send me some codes and I was like 'yes! This racket is SWEET!' But instead of bogarting the whole pack for myself, I thought I would have a contest and let someone else rent some movies. I can only rent Avengers so many times before someone starts to question why I would bother, especially since I own it.

Here's how this will work. You send me an email. Tell me you want a code. Then next Friday (or somewhere in the vicinity of the 22nd of March), I'll pick 25 names at random and email them a code and a dirty joke. You can delete the dirty joke, if you want, but hang on to the code because you'll need it when you rent a movie.

Just to clarify, I have absolutely no idea how you use these codes. I haven't actually rented anything from Redbox in a long time, because I have HBO and On Demand and it's way too easy to watch a movie without even leaving my living room. Plus I can't find the remote for the BluRay player. But probably you plug in the code at the Redbox site and then they reserve the movie and you can watch it for free, as long as you get it back to the vending machine outside the Piggly Wiggly before nine the next night. Otherwise you probably have to pay for your movie and your laziness.

My email is below. I'll sit patiently waiting for your emails to come pouring in, showering me with requests for codes that will save you a whole dollar. And you know what? Even if you don't want a code, email me anyway and ask for one. Who knows, you may win a dirty joke in your email. If I don't get 25 people who want to save a dollar on an inconvenient way to rent a movie, I'm going to be very disappointed.

Here's my email:

matt@vixentorgames.com

You won't hear it when you read this review, but just know that having to repeatedly type 'Serenissima' is going to get so old that I will be using profanity several times. Not about the game - that's actually pretty cool. Just about having to type Serenissima a bunch. There went a cuss word right there.

Serenissima is a sort-of reprint from the mid-90s that has players taking on the roles of medieval traders in the Mediterranean (that also gets some adult-themed language, just for being so damned hard to spell right the first time). Hell, it might be an identical game to the original, but I wouldn't know because I just found out it was a reprint about half an hour ago.

So you'll take your boats (which are actual, tiny plastic boats) and fill them up with sailors (who are actual, tiny pieces of wood) and then sail around to pick up cargo (which are also tiny pieces of wood) and sell it places. Sometimes you will get money for delivering the cargo. Sometimes you will stimulate your local economy. And sometimes someone will come up and sink you and send all your cargo to the bottom of the sea. This last one actually happens a lot more than you might like. But since you can do it back to them, it's actually pretty sweet.

At face value, Serenissima doesn't have lots of complicated rules. Every boat can do one thing during a turn, and a boat with more people can sail farther and fight better because then you can let one crew take a nap while the other is working. And your one thing isn't all that impressive, either - you can pick up cargo, sell cargo, fight or invest.

And yet there are an incredible number of decisions to make as you play. Should you get that close to the rival ships? Should you build now and spend all your money, or save some so you can buy some stuff later? Build a fort or build a church? Istanbul or Constantinople (son of a bitch, that's hard to type fast)? Never mind, in this game, it's Constantinople. Apparently the Ottomans haven't stolen it yet.

A lovely feature of Serenissima is how much interaction you will have as you play. The more players you have, the faster you will run out of resources and have nothing left to do but steal stuff from the other players and blow them out of the water (not literally - they had to use bows and arrows and swords. They didn't have missiles). But fighting isn't the only way to mess with your friends. You can buy up all the boats so they can't get any. You can steal the last chunk of stone that they needed to build a fort. You can blockade them and keep them from dropping off their goods.

I was really surprised as I played Serenissima at how much fun I was having. This is not a dead-sexy game - the board is short on color, the boats are nifty in function but bland in form, and there are a whole damned bunch of wooden cubes.  And THAT surprised me because it's being distributed in the United States by Asmodee, and I don't know that I've ever seen them make an unattractive game before now.

But bland or not, Serenissima (you have no idea how many times I had to hit backspace to get that word all the way out) is very fun. When we played, there was hollering. Battles went south, deals were struck, allies were betrayed. It was pretty awesome. And this was all in a game about doing business! No wonder I like gangster movies so much - they're just doing business, but that often entails outright homicide. Like this game.

Whose title I am not going to type again.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Cool plastic boats that you fill up with sailors and cargo
An excellent balance of trade and warfare
Requires careful timing and long-term strategy

Cons:
A little on the bland side, visually

You can get Serenissima (dammit!) for a ridiculously low price at Coolstuff:
http://www.coolstuffinc.com/p/165369