5 Mini Board Game Reviews | Board Game Snapshots

0:00 Okay. This and then we'll do boop boop boop up is Jeffy. You ready? Hello everyone. Welcome back to Foster the Mele, a channel all about and gaming things. Jeff is back. Been a while. He's been gone. what seems to be ages. I know some of you are probably worried that he was literally 13 days. It was so long. Even on my birthday, he was gone. Believe it or not, it's true. It's very true. She has not dropped it since. And I never will. Not until I'm 95 and I forget because that's the only time I'll forget. No, your dementia will kick in before long before. Very true. We are back again today with another board game snapshot.

1:02 I didn't have a big one in me today. That's fine. So, for anybody that doesn't know, our board game snapshot videos are where we do five mini previews or reviews depending on the game and that's what we're here today to do. So, I will say all of not all most of the games we talked about were sent to us for review. Uh we have one app to review today which is very exciting. You're going to be like what? But it'll make sense in a minute. Okay, it'll make some sense in a minute here. Excuse me. Wait. So, without further ado, I say we get into it. And the first game that we are going to be doing a mini preview on is going to be Clash of Corgis, which was sent to us. And uh the Clash of Corgis folks kindly sponsored today's video. So, shout out to them. So, let's talk a little bit about Clash of Corgis.

1:54 Who doesn't love a corgi? people that don't like this. Watch. Look. Magnetic box. You'll love to see it. Clash of Corgi's original is a card game where players aim to be the first player to get rid of all of their cards in their hand. Players will be challenged to keep a strong hand throughout the game and must also consider how to best use their card special effects wisely in the path to victory. To set up, you'll shuffle the deck and deal 12 cards to each player. Place aside the remaining cards in the deck face down in the corner of the table. Randomly pick a first player and start. Players will play the game in rounds. And for each round, starting with the first player and going clockwise around the table, each player takes a turn playing a card combination known as a combo until all but one player can no longer make a combo or chooses not to. Then the player of the unbeaten combo starts a new round. Play continues until one player gets rid of all of the cards in their hand. To start a round, if you're the first player of a round, play any combo known as the leading combo from your hand face up to the middle of the table.

3:00 There's five types of combos. Single, which is one card of any rank. A double, two cards of the same rank. A triple, three cards of the same rank. Four of a kind, four cards of the same rank. And of course, five of a kind, five cards of the same rank. Once a player has played a combo, that player activates one card effect of the cards played if possible. There's a ton of different card effects which you'll see written on your reference card. So, as an example, we have the bard. Play your turn again, but if you do, at least one card from your next play must match this card suit. We have the assassin. Target the next player and skip their turn. And we have the mage. Discard one card from your hand that matches the card suit along with many, many others. Once again, all of which listed on your reference card.

3:53 Play continues round after round until a player gets rid of all of their cards. There are three different variations of this game that come in the box. You have Clash of Corgi's original, Clash of Corgi's Treasure Island, and Clash of Corgi's Capture the Illusionist. all of which have different types of activations for the different types of cards. So, if Clash of Corgis sounds like a game that you might be interested in, it is a game for people who enjoy a good card game, you enjoy corgis, you like set collection, you like triggering actions, and you like variable rules and variable play, definitely check out Clash of Corgis. We're going to have all of the information, links, everything that you need will be in the description below. And shout out to Clash of Corkies for sponsoring this portion of today's video. Okay, Jeff, what have you got for us today? Uh, next, which one do I want to do? I'm gonna do this one next. Okay, next up from All Play, we have For the Emperor. This one was sent to us for review, so please be mindful of that.

4:59 For the Emperor is a How many players can play this? Eight. What? No. I was like, I was like, it's a two definitely a two player. Oh, yeah. I was like, eight people. It is a two-player lane battler game. Uh, all lane battlers. Lane battlers. If you've played a lane battler, this is a lane battler. Yeah. Uh, what's different in this, Jamie? What is different in this? Glad you asked. Good question. In for the Emperor, what is going to happen is you are going to be playing out your clan. So, we the crane clan or the turtle clan? Turtles. You're going to be playing out your samurai uh in one of eight lanes, I believe. Mhm. The difference is when a certain threshold is met uh in each battlefield, in each lane, you're going to be putting out what are basically flags. Banners.

5:56 Banners. Thank you. That's the word I was looking for. Banners. Banner. And when a banner is reached, like for example, there's four two threes, two twos, two twos, and two ones banners. So you're going to keep playing out cards until one battlefield has four total characters on on either side. And then you're going to place out the four banner, and that's signifying that you can't play more than four done samurai to that battlefield. Subsequently, Mhm. When there is three in a battlefield, you'll put out a three banner, etc., etc., etc. You're going to be playing out cards until each person only has one samurai left. And each of these samurai are going to have a power value as well as a ability that is going to happen. And the ability is pretty straightforward. Add a strength to a different battlefield. Uh place a token here. You add the banner strength of this battlefield to your power at the end. Mhm. Etc. So then once all cards have been played and there's one in each character's hand, the game ends and then you're going to just allot most lane battlers, you're going to go from battlefield to battlefield comparing power. Whoever has the most power in the battlefield will gain that banner.

7:12 Whoever has the most banners at the end of the game is going to win. Is a very very straightforward lane banner with just the added mechanism that you can only play a certain amount of characters to a battlefield. So where normally in these lane battler games you might be like oh well you know I see you know Jaime's played out a nine card I should maybe try to combat her there. You might be like no I'm going to leave that for her because um again like thresholds can be met with how many characters. So for example if I play in one lane or if I see Jamie has two characters in one lane and I have none. If she plays one more character and the three banners are still available in the pool, she's going to lock down that battlefield and I actually can't play any characters to it. Yeah. So, you actually have to be mindful of how many characters are being played to a lane, not necessarily just the power values. I guess that's kind of the unique thing is that every battlefield will have at least one card played to it. And so, like, not necessarily. You could have one, I think, that would have zero. I like it.

8:18 I mean, it's it's a very very straightforward lane battler. Uh there's intro to lane battlers. Yeah. Uh it there's not a lot of like uh math or anything like crazy confusing in this. So, if you're like not used to lane battlers, which I think is like kind of an allplay thing like accessibility in games, which is great. Uh I think this is a good place to start. The artwork is beautiful. Um the theme's really cool. I do like the samurai theme. Um, and I do like that it gives you a decision space that's somewhat different than other lane battlers, cuz there's a ton of lane battlers out there, and they're all pretty similar. Yeah. Um, I like that this forces you to actually figure out how many units you can put in a lane versus necessarily, like I said, just the power values. Yeah. And the abilities on the cards are really interesting because like there's one card that if you play it out, then the other player can't play anything higher than an eight. So they couldn't play an eight or nine. So then like there's some ongoing played. There's some end game abilities. There's a Ronin card that I think like straight up blocks a lane.

9:25 Like if you play the Ronin out and there's no one else there, it just like blocks it. So it adds like an extra little element. Also, it's tiny. Can I have it? It's tiny and it only takes 15 minutes to play. So, I find a lot of like not that many lane battlers, not that many lane battlers take a ton of time to play, but this one in particular is extremely quick because you're just playing one round to see who wins. So, you could play it as many times as you like. Uh, like we mentioned, this is from Allplay. They've got a new set of smallbox games coming out. Uh, we're going to put the link to the website. I believe you can either pre-order them or just straight up order them right now. We're going to be talking about one other of them. Uh, but if you are curious, this is another one. We haven't played it yet, but it's called Terrible Quest, where you literally tear the paper up. Isn't that fun? We haven't played this one yet, so we'll talk about the other one. Curveballs into these videos. I know. We just didn't get a chance to play this one before. Are these all designed by the same people?

10:22 Uh, it's these these are designed by the two in front of me are designed by two different people, but the art is the same person. I uh Yeah. So, the art artist the artist is the same in all three. Yeah. Very good. The next game up on the list for today is from Salt and Peppa. So Salt and Peppa's here and this was sent to us for review from Salt and Peppa games. This is the Battle of the Divas. If it's not on Gamefound already, which I think it is, it will be coming to Game Found soon, but I'm pretty sure it's already on Gamefound. So Battle of the Divas is a two-player only game where each player is playing as one of these two divas. They are opera singers, okay? Diva girls, div.a ladies. So, I'm gonna flip it over this way. Basically, what you are doing is you are going to be performing at different operas trying to shut them down. Okay? Because you shut them down in a good way. Shut them down a good way. You're like, I closed out the show, basically. So, there are going to be four operas available to play into at a time. On your turn, you're going to play a card from your hand into one of the four operas. They all have different instruments that are kind of the main instrument. If the card you play matches that instrument, you gain fame. And then you can also do that card's action ability that's on it. Then at the bottom of the card, there's going to be notes and potentially masks. If you're not matches one of the notes, and by notes, I mean rhythms matches that opera, then you get applause. Good job.

11:52 You're on rhythm. That's amazing. And if you have different color masks, you get applause as well. An applause is what you need in order to meet a certain threshold in that particular opera in order to close it down. Then what you're going to do is you're moving on a piano and everybody has a vocal range. So to start your vocal range is smaller throughout the game. You can increase it but you're going to be moving on the piano based on up to how many notes you played, how many rhythms, rhym city. So you're going to do that and then wherever you land on the piano, you are either going to be placing out a note or flipping a note if it's on somebody else's. Uh so it's do rea. We all know the song. And then you are going to be looking at the black keys that are next to you. And each black key has two actions. You choose one and you do both of the actions on that key. It's a variety of different actions. everything from uh increasing your vocal range or closing down the opera or potentially adding some notes into the opera or potentially adding cards to a timeline which is another big factor of this game because you're going to be creating a timeline uh that will get scored at the end of the game. Yep.

13:03 And when you play a card to a timeline, you also get to do the action. There's a lot going on in this game. However, the rule set is actually pretty straightforward. like when you kind of get the rhythm, the right item, you know what's going on. I just wanted to quickly mention when Jamie mentioned there's a timeline. So all of the cards have uh not I shouldn't say all of the cards, most of the cards will have a year on them. Yes. And a timeline it's an event. Yeah. Timeline triggers based off of the years of the timeline. Exactly. And the events that you have in your hand are either positive for you or negative for the other player. And then they'll have some kind of an action. But there's also character cards which also have actions, but they want to be next to your events in the timeline essentially. So, there's a lot going on in this game. But like I said, when you kind of get going, it's pretty straightforward. Couple couple turns and you're Exactly. And what you're trying to do is, like I said, you're closing down operas. As soon as five have been scored, the game is going to end. And then you're going to go through your endame scoring. You're going to score points for so many different things, but every time you close an off opera, points will be scored. You're gonna score for like instruments you have in the orchestra and music notes that you have on the piano. A ton of different things. Lots going on for a small box game. So, the question is, did we like it? The answer is I freaking loved it. I freaking loved it. Yeah. If you like uh kind of Yeah. So, like this I just I didn't realize this, but I just saw this on the side of the book uh box when you were talking. It says Battles Without Bullet series. Yeah. Yeah, that's like

14:35 their Pope game, their Operation. It is kind of like It's kind of like a a miniature war game, but not war themed. It's historical games that aren't about war basically or not fighting in war. Like the like I most games that are coming out with the musical theme don't resonate with me. I didn't come from a musical family. Resonate. Was that pun intended or not? Uh not intended. Um, I'm not a musical person. I've tried to be. I'm not. I don't have the ry them. He doesn't have any rhythms. I don't have any rhythms. Uh, the So, the theme didn't um I just bit didn't connect with me. But I love the mechanisms. There's a lot of like there was one turn at the very beginning of the game where Jamie like played a card down and that let her trigger something. Let it let her play another card down and then it was like, "Oh, I get to play another card into the timeline and then when the card gets played in the timeline, then it triggers something else." Yeah. the And normally comboy games like that I'm like, "No, because I get lost in them." But this was pretty straightforward. Yeah. Um to Jaime's point, it seems like there's a lot going on in this game, but there's it's pretty straightforward. So, if you're looking for like a comboy experience that isn't like overwhelming, uh I think this is a a great one. I had a lot of fun with it. Um way more than I thought I was going to when we first started. Yeah. Because again, just based off of the theme. If you like the musical theme, I think this is a no-brainer. Yep. But um yeah, I very I very much enjoyed it. Um I think it's a great I don't Is it played more than

16:06 two? No, it's two play. Okay. I was going to say I don't know if I'd want to play it higher than two. Um if it does, but if it can't then ignore me. I Yeah. So I like everything. I love the musical theme. I It's all based in actual history. So the characters that you see, the characters that you play in the rule book, it's got like historical information. And that's something that Salt and Pepper Games has been doing. Like Operation Bar Clay is another part of this line, I believe. So far, every game that I've played from Salt and Pepper, I have loved. And they're all based in history, but it's not like that super dense heavy war game that you like killing troops. Exactly. That you might expect from a lot of like historical based games. Um, another thing that I like, there is a decent amount of interaction in this because there the fame track allows you to manipulate that timeline. Uh, so you can mess with somebody's cards so that they can't score points, which is great. It's it can be very mean, but I think in a way that isn't like the main focus of the game kind of. Yeah, it's a byproduct.

17:09 You do things that's going to impede other people as opposed to like directly attacking them, per se. So, if it sounds like something you might be interested, I will put the game found link in the description below. I would definitely recommend it if you are a two-player primary household. I thought it was fantastic and I'm excited to play it again. So, that is The Battle of the Davos. All right, next up is another allplay smallbox game and that is Slambo. Slambo. Slambo was sent to us for review. Um, Slambo is a very fast tug of tug of war themed game that I very much liked. Yeah. Uh, shockingly amount. Takes five minutes to play. I'm sure I'm sure there's other games that do something similarly that we've never played, so take that for what it is.

17:58 I've not played something like this, but I freaking loved it. So in slambo ultimately what you're trying to do just like in sum suma wrestling when you're trying to push the other person out of the ring you're effectively trying to push the other person outside of the ring and the ring is represented in this game by a spectrum of numbers from 0 to 10. Yeah. So when I play, so it starts at five. There'll be a five card down. And the cards are all series of numbers. I think from one to uh -9 maybe. I don't even know if there's a negative 9 in. Uh it depends. So -7 to plus 8, but if you play it a higher player count, you could go all the way up to plus eight. There's a spectrum of of cards in here, either negative or positive, that you're going to play down. So, for example, if I was to start the game and the five's down, cuz it always starts down. And I played a neg five card, then it's at zero. So, I would put the card down and say zero because five. Yeah. Plus neg five is zero. And then Jamie would go next and she would play her card. And let's say she played a four positive. She'd be like four. Then I'm going to play a card and add to those values. And it's going to go back and forth. And what we're trying to do is force someone to play a card that makes them go above 10 or below zero. So for example, if I had one card left and Jamie had one card left and there was a five on the table and I had neg five. Maybe I would play the neg five. Well, I'd play the neg five down.

19:30 Yeah. And then maybe all I have left is two. And so she has to play it. It goes below zero. And then you yell slambo. Slambo. Slambo. And then you take a shame card because you lost the round. That's what it said. If, and this can happen if you play a round where no one goes outside that threshold, no problem. It's called a break. You're going to reset. You're going to add another shame card to the shame pile and play again. If that happens again and you tie, do it again. You're going to add another shame card and then play again. At any point when you push the person outside of the ring, outside the 0ero to 10, they're going to take what'sever in the shame pile, the first person to take three shame loses. Yeah. First person to have three shame. Yeah. And then you can also play a little bit more difficult where the threshold is from one to nine. So it's meant to be a two-player game, but you can play three to four and it adds in like special rules. We've only played it at two, so we don't know, but it's pretty cool. It's like copy the top card or reverse play or it's like a plus or minus 8 so you can like play that and decide what it is. So it's funny because like when I first played it so I I've already kind of said my opinion. I really really enjoyed this game. I think it'd be a great airplane game. I think it'd be a great travel game. Takes up no space. It takes up no space. It takes no time. It's very straightforward. It's very simple and it's just cards. Yeah. I when I initially played it, I was like I don't feel like I'd want to play this above two. I think it's a great two-player game, but now that you just said that, all the special stuff, I

21:01 think it would get it would be a different experience. It'd be totally different. I think in a two-player game, you're getting that very straightforward tugofwar back and forth, but in three or four, you're going into chaos mode of like things are just getting blown up and like I think that'd be super fun. Um, but I think different fully different experiences. Yes. But I do think at the three or four player count, this would be a fantastic con game. Yeah, such a great travel game. Like Jeff said, you could play it on an airplane. It's you can teach this in under a minute. It's so easy. And then you just play. It was so fun. And the quickest game is probably going to be around 5 minutes. I think we played for maybe like 10 because we kept we kept breaking. Yeah. Um and and there was a little bit of stuff at the at the beginning like figuring out how it works. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, we both really really enjoyed it. I would definitely recommend this because it's it's unique, it's quick, it's fun, it's simple, it's ages six and up. You can literally play this with anyone. So, just as a reminder, can you grab me for the Emperor? These small box games, I'm going to put the link in the description below if you're interested. If they sound like something you might like, I think you can order them right now on all play. Uh, and I think that they're starting to ship out really soon as well. So, get your copies if you're interested. Mhm. The next game that we are going to talk about is actually an app, but it is a new app version of a board game which we love and that is King Domino. So, uh this game King Domino looks great. It looks great. So, this is the obviously the iOS version of it. I

22:34 got a key for the game which allows me early access to it. So, I actually don't have access to the full game as of yet. So, for anybody that doesn't know what King Domino is, it's a tile placement game. It was one of our gateway games. It's one of our favorite entry level games. Like, we've played it with Jeff's mom. We you could play it with anyone. And it's a game that we are still always playing on BGA, everything like that. But now you have the app version. So, basically, you just click play. What I have access to is single player. So, that's you're playing against a a robot. We all know about robots. Exactly. But as the uh game gets fully completed, you will have a pass and play, which Jeff and I love a pass and play game. We usually always do like patchwork and stuff like that on the airplane. You'll have online multiplayer and online with friends. So these ones are coming soon.

23:23 There's also going to be some expansion content. So like King Domino first, I think it's called. And there's a bunch of different expansions. And then just Origins, but Origins and then there's going to be different themes. So just like quickly, there's also going to be different modes. Oh, there it is. Yeah, Age of Giants and Origins. You were right, Jeff. So, right now, all I can play is the regular. Right now, I get to play the uh special version, but they're also going to have King Domino Classic. So, if you want it to be a little less like jazzy. Yeah. So, you just click the game, you can add however many AI up to four, start the game, and then you're literally going to be playing King Domino. Nice. So, I'm just going to show you a little bit of it, and we'll talk about it, but like look how fun. Woo!

24:10 It looks great. It looks great. So, King Domino, you're placing out tiles, you're placing out terrains, you're doing all of that good stuff. Who am I playing? Some kind of a king. So, basically, you're just going to take your turn as you would in King Domino. You're going to select whatever tiles and then in order to play them, you're just dragging and dropping. It's so easy to use. You're literally just like, "Yes, I want this. I will drag and drop this." That's great. If you're playing against the AI character, it takes its turns like extremely fast. So you can rip through a game of this pretty rip through a game of this really quick. So now look, it's your turn. That's great. You literally just drag it and drop it that you're you're just playing the game. You know what I mean? Uh so it plays pretty quickly now. As more and more opens up, like I said, there's going to be more access to the game, more options. I am personally just really excited for the pass and play version, but from what I've used so far, the app works really smooth. It's beautiful. And there's a tutorial mode, of course. So, if you've never played King Domino before, you can use the tutorial mode. It will teach you. You'll play a full tutorial game and then you can just hop in and play, which is great. So, if you are interested in the King Domino app, I will put information in the description below because it's fun and we all I personally I'm loving all of these games turning into apps.

25:34 Like, I'm loving it. Everybody knows Jeff loves Root, the Root app. 10 out of 10. He would recommend indeed. And there's just like I don't know, there's something about like the interactivity of them versus like on something like BGA where you're just basically playing the game. This like makes the game come to life. Yeah, I like my games with a little bit of life in them. All right, so all of the information will be below, but so far from what I've seen and what I've played, I have very much enjoyed my experience. Bonus game. Bonus game. Uh I had a chance to finally play the board game version of Slay the Spire. Correct. Which we do own. We do own it. Uh was not sent to us. We purchased that one. Um, but I was at Gamers Ranch for my work retreat and they had a copy of Slay the Spire and uh, one of my colleagues had played it before, so was able to teach and run us through one session of that and it was incredible. Um, it is exactly what the video game is if you've played it. So, it is a roglike game where you are going to be building your deck and running through a dungeon. And the dungeon has minions you're going to fight. It has campsites. It has treasure that you're going to get. And most treasure items in this game are going to be cards that you can then uh add to your decks to give you more. And it's hard. It's a deck building game. It is 100% a deck building game. I haven't played it. Um you can get money which allows you to buy new cards or upgrade new cards at the market. Um you carry

27:05 health over from fight to fight. So if you go to a campsite, you have to make a decision whether you heal or do you spend money to upgrade a card. And then you're fighting through all of these minions and going through this map and making decisions on which path you want to go on to get to the top. And then you're eventually going to fight a big baddy. Um, and you're going to play through like three different eras of that. And you're going to be upgrading and doing your thing throughout the whole um, what session session. And if you lose, you basic you reset everything. I was gonna say, yeah, I I get confused about rogue light. Rogue light. Yeah. So rogue light is you carry your progression from this one is if you lose, you start over.

27:54 The only like thing you would carry over in the video game is like you might get access to like a new character, but you don't carry any of your cards or anything over. And how many people did you play with? We played with a full four. Okay. Um, I would I don't know how much it would it just scales for player count. So, it's not like it's it's not Yeah, it's not changing the experience uh based on player count. Um, it's a cooperative experience. I should mention that. And how it works at a higher than one player count, because you can play this solo, is depending on player count, you're going to just put out more bad guys. Got it. per fight. Kind of like too many bones. Correct. Okay. Uh, and each person is going to be assigned to essentially a lane or a row. And that row is going to have bad guys in it that you need to fight through. But each person can like help someone out. So you can talk and be like, "Hey, like can you you you're going to play your cards out and for most cards is either hit or shield." And so you might be like, "Hey, like I need you to hit this guy on your turn because he's going to do damage back to me."

29:05 actions and then the bad guys actions and then so if you are able to take sort of thing but um ultimately it's slay the fire if you've played the video game the board game I want to play is the exact same and it was an incredible experience I want to play it again there's like I think maybe like four different characters that all have kind of their own unique abilities and play at least like I don't want to say it's asymmetrical cuz it's not it's just variable player powers essentially. You think I like it? I think you would love it. I think you would really like it. I think you would like it solo a lot. It might be something to do on your solo solo mode. I really would like to. But anyway, can you teach it? Yeah, I could teach it to you very quickly. I think you would catch on very quick. Um, I absolutely adored it. Jamie has not played it yet, so uh we might come back with some thoughts after she has, but I love the video game and I was really looking forward to seeing what they did in the board game. And all they did was clone because the video game is a board game essentially. It's a deck building game, right? Um, so it's makes sense to try. It's so good. I loved it. Um, yeah, I really want to play it. Very very very good. Let's play that soon. If you like the video game, you and you like board games, you will like the board game. You think I would like the video game?

30:20 I I've been trying to get you to play the video game for a while. I think you would. I'll have to try it. It's just if there's too many things to move, I get confused. I would say Yeah. you I think the thing that you the hurdle you would come across is just like controlling the game. Yeah, I think you would like the game. The game usually controls me like in Pokemon. Yeah. When I get lost, the game now controls my life cuz I don't know where I'm going. So, those are some games that we have been playing again recently. Now, if you've played any, we'd love to know your thoughts in the comments below or if there's any that you're interested in. Like I said before, links for all of the ones that are currently like on Kickstarter or you could buy now or whatever. It's all going to be in the description below if they sound like things that you're interested in. But I think that's everything that we have for y'all today, right Jeffy? Yep. That's right. Now, if you're interested in buying board games, some of them game found etc. But other board games, you should first start by checking your friendly local gaming store and for us that is the boardroom game cafe. That's right. And if you like what you see, please subscribe. We hope to see you again soon. And now we say goodbye. Goodbye. Later.

31:27 So, oh, go ahead. What if I did, Jeff? Wouldn't that be banana sandwich? All right. All right. So, the next Just grab a drink of this. Yeah, I'd say I want a sip, but we all know that I don't like it. But for anybody that loves or does Listen, let me start that over again.