Forum Overview :: Reviews :: Alhambra - Positive! Guillotine - Positive!

[quote name="Last"]<b>Alhambra -</b> This is a game where each player builds a palace which is then scored at the end. It's nice-looking and a good introductory game for people who don't usually play boardgames. There's a bag of tiles, each tile has a palace room and some wall segments on the borders. Each turn there is four tiles on the table for you to purchase. You can purchase a tile using money cards from your hand OR draw a money card. There's a couple of easy rules for adding tiles to your palace (the walls need to line up, all roofs need to point upward). You score by having the most of a particular color of room. The pros are that it looks nice, plays fast, and has somewhat of a rubber-band effect (like 7 Wonders) where even if you play blindly then you will probably lose but you will still end up within 25% of the first place score. Nobody will feel like they fucked up their palace horribly at the end of the game. In fact, after each game you will be inspired to try a slightly different strategy next time, which is good. The cons are that the rubber-band effect kind of stops you from feeling like your decisions are all that important. The game relies somewhat on randomness (sometimes you don't get great options to buy on your turn). It also takes a few games before you have an idea if you are doing well or just fucking around randomly. But, all in all it's fun and a good choice for playing with family. There's a Wil Wheaton tabletop video where they play this game so feel free to check that out. <b>Guillotine -</b> This is a simple $10 game that plays very fast and is super easy to pick up, and is fun. Each player is an executioner during the French Revolution. You have a deck of about 70 victims of varying worth, and you start by laying 12 of them face up on the table. You also have a handful of action cards that are used to rearrange the line (move a person in a blue shirt back two spaces, move any person to the front of the line, etc) or affect the other players (take a card from another player's hand, force a player to discard two cards, etc). On your turn you can choose to play an action card from your hand. Then, you must take the victim at the head of the line and draw an action card. It's a comedic game, all the victims are bumbling, hateful fatcats (although there are some sympathetic urchins that are worth negative points if you collect them). It plays super fast (about 10 minutes) and is a good warmup game or drinking game if you are playing with new people. [/quote]