Thursday, March 15, 2012

Crossroad February 2012 Tournament BatRep Part 1



Sorry all I will be doing another Board game review by the end of the weekend I had my hands full and my energy sapped with a very sick doggy that had surgery on Tuesday which I took off from work. Stonewall is fine now and getting better by the day so we can get back to regularly scheduled programing. Until I get a new review up amuse yourself with a battle report from my friend Benito. Cheers and happy gaming.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Magical Athlete




Magical Athlete is a great take on a racing game that can be fun for all ages!!!
It's designer is Takashi Ishida and current US publisher is Zman Games.

Magical Athlete is full of fantasy based racers all of which have different powers adding to the fun! There is a Necromancer, Medusa, Ranger, Demon, Troll, Centaur, Ghoul, and Ninja just to name a few!

In Magical Athlete there are two phases the Draft phase:
Where players buy racers at their current value on the market track. Starting with the first player they will flip over a racer and either purchase that racer at it's current value or pass. Then the next player will flip over a card from the deck offering another racer and the first racer if still there will move down the track to a cheaper position and the new one will take it's place. The values are from 4 to 0.  Depending on the number of players the players get coins (4 get 8 points each, 5 get 6 points each) for the draft. They will be purchasing racers equal to the number of races (4 players 5 races/racers, 5 players 4 races/racers). If the drafting slots are filled on the board then the current player will have to purchase one of them. It is possible that players will get their full allotment of racers before other players have they will just no longer be in the draft.

The Race phase:
Now you are ready to begin the racing portion of the game. Players will in secret determine which racer that will be running for the race and revile them simultaneously.  Each racer for each player will only race once during the game and each race will only award points to the first and second racers across the finish line! The points are more for the later races so choose your racers carefully.

Then with the start player they will roll the D6 and move that many spaces or perhaps take advantage of a power that may move them differently (like in the case of the Amazon for example which can advance 5 spaces instead of rolling, or the Merchant which can exchange places with another player instead of rolling). The first racer that crosses the finish line wins the race and the second racer that crosses is second, the other racers get no points.

At the end of the last race points are tallied and the player with the most points wins. 

The game can easily be finished in less time then is listed on the box of 60-90 minuets unless some funky dice rolling happens or it is your first time. The components of this game are nice it may take you a bit to get over the silly art I know it did for me but once you get past that this is a really good game! The variable fantasy based racer powers makes for a lot of twists and turns with the races which keeps it interesting, and procedurally it is not a very difficult game which provides a lot of fun and can be enjoyed  by the young as well as non  board gamers too. I would highly recommend this one I have 14 plays recorded but I know I played it more before I started recording plays.

Have a great day gaming!


For more information:http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/24565/magical-athlete