It's maybe pure ignorance on my part but I've never seen a huge number of board games that sit within the organised crime genre. There seems to be more Sci-Fi than Scarface. I own The Godfather: Corleone's Empire, which was a grail game for me and was its own tale of negotiation and acquisition and offers that couldn't be refused. Wise Guys from Gale Force Nine enters the fray with a Goodfellas attitude on how you win at life, which is to gather up as much money as possible, without effecting your influence and clout and your ability to make money on the black market. It is a remix of a Sons of Anarchy game from a few years ago, but this time it returns without a connected IP. There's an attraction to this kind of genre of game, because these are criminals, but also the ultimate in non-conformists to a societal norm. Most of us don't want to work a normal job with a steady life and pay check if given the choice. Some of us already live on an edge, working fr
In space no one can hear you apply sun screen.. Apologies for the frankly dreadful attempt to start off a first thoughts piece for Dranda Games and their game Solar Storm. A disaster averting sun spot of an adventure where factor 50 isn't going to cut it and winding down the window to let in a breeze might just cause slight chafing or actually third degree burns. Though bad intros aside, what we have here is mixture of card game and resource management with a theme that places you in red alert, trying to avoid an impending disaster as you attempt to restart your stalled spaceship as it crashes towards the sun. The ship is represented by a 3 x 3 grid of cards with the energy core in the centre, awaiting patiently for the other surrounding cards to divert power to it so you can get the hell out of there and save your burning soul. Each card has three spaces to represent potential damage as well as information on what resources are required in order to both repair and send