Mascarade, by Bruno Faidutti

Sometimes the fog of war and the din of battle are too much. Sometimes alien invasions are more than a person can handle. A person can only stop a world-wide spread of a disease so many times before needing some rest and relaxation. When world saving games and battling ancient evils gets to be a little too much, there’s always the Mascarade.

Hide behind your mask, bluff your friends, and collect the gold. In Mascarade you take on the role of a guest at a grand party and, using your wit and wiles, try to collect thirteen gold coins before the other guests. There are three potential sources of gold in the game. The courthouse, the bank, and other players. Each character has a unique ability that helps or hinders the flow of gold. The catch is that nobody, even you, can really be sure who you are.

This is a guest post from Andrew Christopher Enriquez, co-host of The Nerd Nighters and life-long gamer.

So after an exactly 20 year hiatus, I finally played D&D again. I was the same ages as my son is now when i played my first session. I ran my wife and two kids (8 and 10) through the first scenario of the starter box. OK so i have played in a few 1st edition campaigns but they were always really shorted lived, and saying i haven't played D&D is not saying i haven't Role played at all. But for all intents and purposes I've been away from the brand for a very long time.

We went to the Reaper store up in Denton one night to pick out minis for our characters, and minis for the bad guys. I figured this would help keep the kids engaged if they had mini's to care about, especially if they took the time to paint them themselves. My son has ZERO patience for playing games, and a pretty bad temper to boot. Board wiping(he has ODD) because he has to wait in turn is not an uncommon occurrence, so we usually keep it to light quick paced games. And D&D definitely is not light or quick paced, ESPECIALLY since i haven't played in so long

So how did we do? Well to be honest i should really preface this by saying my wife wanted absolutely NOTHING to do with this, she didn't want to role play at all. She has a hard time getting into any game where she embodies a character, even Mice and Mystics and Betrayal are too much for her. This is not a complaint, i understand role playing isn't for everyone, shoot no game genre is for everyone. I just knew going in, that she decided to play with us because i pressured her into making this a family event. And she hung in there as best as she could.

Horrible Hex, by Jon Moffat

I had the good fortune to attend Unpub 5 in Baltimore last weekend, a collection of incredibly bright designers and a breeding ground for great game design. I met with Aaron from Stone Circle Games and got a demo of Horrible Hex, which I'd been looking forward to since my Back It! interview with designer Jon Moffat. I was also excited to play because of their hilarious Kickstarter video (link below).

Horrible Hex is a tile placement game for 1-3 players, in which players vie to create patters of red and black hexes by sliding, swapping, pushing, and jumping tiles on the board. It's a delightfully simple game, as the only real barrier to learning is understanding the two steps in the turn (movement, then placement) and the symbols on the hexes themselves.

If you're a fan of abstract strategy and tile placement games (I am), then I think this game could be right up your alley. More after the jump!

Railways of the World, Video from Edo's Guest Reviews

Hey Nerd Nighters, I was asked to give a few guest reviews of games I love for Edo's Game Reviews! Here's the first in what should be a series of them: Railways of the World by Glenn Drover and Martin Wallace.

Give it a watch, and let me know in the comments if you would ever put your head through a game board like I did :)

See more of Edo's Game Reviews here - they're great!

Rise to Power, by Allen Chang and Alistair Kearney

Normally I adorn these first few paragraphs with quippy one-liners and phrases meant to draw the prospective reader closer to the bottom of the article, where surely I'll let loose some long-considered opinion of a game that redefines the way the reader sees games, and this game in particular.

Sadly, there's no time for that today. I'm so busy playing Rise to Power that its difficult to make time to check my my mail, let alone compose a flowery introduction. You'll have to make due with this: Rise to Power was the best game I played at PAX South, and perhaps the best game I've played in 2015.

If that's not enough to convince you to drop everything and go play it, read on!