13 Days Card Game

Okay, everyone, after one play and the expectation of playing again tonight, I would like to give a quick review of 13 Days.
13 Days is a two player card based area control game. Wow, now that I write the description out I can see how many adjectives that game description has, but I digress. You are playing through the struggle of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The general way it works is using influence in different arenas (military, political, and opinion) to gain prestige based on your opponent’s and your own chosen agenda for the round. You will have a hand of 5 command cards, you may play a card for a command or event benefit, using command to add or remove your own influence from different parts of the map. However, if at any time you place more than one influence in one place from a command action you also move your Defcon marker up for each influence beyond the first. You also have a hard cap of 17 influence total and 5 of your influence on each of the 6 locations. If you choose to use the event on a card matching the country you represent (US, Russia, or either can use the UN cards) you just do what it says on the card, often changing influence without changing the Defcon level.

There is a twist to this though, when you play an opponent’s faction card (which you will have to do), you must use it for the command and they have the option to use the event for free on your turn. This really requires you to think about which card you will have left over at the end of the round. After you play through 4 cards each going back and forth you place your last card in an aftermath pile. After three rounds you go through the aftermath pilot and whoever has the most command down based on their factions cards in the aftermath pile gets two additional prestige.

Overall the prestige you get at then of each round and the end of the game is more of a tug of war. You can never have more than 5 prestige over your opponent and each prestige move the marker closer to your side of the scoring track. The game ends either by a person reaching Defcon 1 and staying there until the end of a round or having all of their Defcon markers (3) in the Defcon 2 area causing them to lose, or 3 round are completed and the person with the most prestige after the aftermath wins. If the scoring marker is in the center, the person holding the personal letter token wins (which is how I won).

This is definitely comparable to the game Twilight Struggle, but a much lighter implementation. It has the same feel, the cards have historical images, and there is even a booklet to discuss the events of the Cuban missile crisis. The mechanism is very similar to Twilight Struggle as well. However, 13 Days took 45 minutes instead of 3 hours. It is a much more focused game with a number of choices and a lot of thinking and planning based on what your opponent might do, but it is not nearly as broad or deep as Twilight Struggle which goes through the entire Cold War and deals with the all the world.
I like 13 Days a lot, I know Jennie and I will be playing way more often than Twilight Struggle just because of the time requirements if nothing else. We also will be keeping Twilight Struggle though, the amount of depth and interactions in that game make it worth it, even if it only happens once a year. I would give 13 Days an 8.5 out of 10, I think it great and works well for a two player quick game that requires some thought.

Twilight Struggle

We've had Twilight Struggle for a while, but finally got it to the table.  This is a great two player, very indepth, great historical aspect.  It is a longer game, but well worth the time!  We actually blew up the world so neither of us won.  Yep, we nuked the world...go us.....definitely a learning curve here and I think both of us needed to learn how it worked as much as play through it.  Hopefully next time we can avoid that!

1812

This is 1812 out of Academy Games (in the same series as 1775). This works does 5 players.  This is different enough from 1775 to let you want to own both.  Another great historical option!! 

1775

I love the historical games out of Academy Games.  The "Birth of America" series we pretty much own all of! We've recently played several games of 1775, which plays really well 2 player as well as 4 player.  I am committed to making the British win!  Last game, we tied and France got it all! :)  [I have an entire rant on the American Revolution if anyone is interested...]  This is a great war game that isn't too "war gamish," and the historical content is EXELLENT.  Definitely worth the time!

The Stannards vs the non-Stannards (my brother and I against our spouses)

France took it all....

We realized after about two games that we were missing some cards out of the British deck!!  Anyway, they were great about getting them right to us. Hopefully will increase my winning chances....

Catan and Catan Histories

We recently played Catan, the Ancient Egypt edition.  Now I like Catan...Ray doesn't. It isn't that he hates it, just that he feels it is too long for what it is (for instance with 4 players, Egypt took us 3 hours).    I like base Catan and I enjoy the various expansions (I think the seafarers one is pretty cool), but I really enjoy the historicals.  So I wanted to tell you about the ones I like/don't like of those. 

Now Trials to Rails (the American one)...I want to like this one. Seriously, I did.  But I don't. It is long and repetitive and the mechanics just weren't well thought out/executed.  There are some cool features, but it just isn't that good.  We ended up selling this one.  From what I've seen/heard, the European one (Merchant of Europe) seems to be very similar, so I haven't even tried it.

We do have Struggle for Rome, which I really like. I like that there are two stages of the game...you are wandering, then settle down. I think this really helps and makes this a cool, and unique, version.  I think this is worth picking up and trying.

I also think the new Ancient Egypt one is as well.  Now this comes with the base game in essence, but I have no idea why you'd want to play it. We did the Great Pyramid one and that was fun. I like the addition of the Nile, the God cards, the Great Pyramid.  My biggest "beef" with the game is that the components just aren't up to snuff...and given the price point, they should be.  So that was a major disappointment...the Great Pyramid was well....pathetic. 

My husband's (who doesn't like Catan much as mentioned) favorite is Catan Germany, which was one of the Geographies.  I think the rest ended up just being maps. The production value here is EXCELLENT and the game is fun, the landmarks are just cool and the map is very true to Germany. 

We also have a few random maps, which are just fun to have around. 

We also have played Star Trek Catan and have the extra maps, really this is just a re-theming, no new additions. 

There are two card games: Rivals and Struggle. Rivals is just two player and has a TON of expansions. My biggest beef is that this pretty long and takes a TON of room to play. I like it, but I wish it wasn't so cumbersome to set up/play.  Struggle plays 2-4 and is much more compact....this is the one we still own (we gave the other to my brother). It is fast version of Catan and relatively simple to set up/play.