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Awix (3310 KP) rated Apaches (1977) in Movies

Jan 21, 2021  
Apaches (1977)
Apaches (1977)
1977 | Drama, Horror
Nerve-manglingly bleak and grim public information film. Six young children play cowboys and indians, cops and robbers, etc, on a (seemingly quite badly managed) farm and are one-by-one crushed under trailers, drowned in slurry pits, poisoned by weedkiller, etc, etc. All the time the adults are preparing for a mysterious party...

Pretty much guaranteed to traumatise most young viewers, I would have thought, and quite a tough watch for anyone else: you *know* that something horrifically fatal is going to befall one of the young cast every few minutes. In this respect it's written and paced exactly like a horror movie, the kind of thing children would never be allowed to watch - but this is supposed to be educational, see, so they can do things you'd never be allowed to show in an actual commercial movie. Director Mackenzie would go on to make The Long Good Friday and The Fourth Protocol (amongst other things) and brings a mixture of gritty naturalism and an eerie, dream-like quality to the film. Nastily effective: enough to put anyone off a trip to the countryside.
  
Dice Town: Cowboys
Dice Town: Cowboys
2017 | American West, Dice Game
In the expansion review series, we take a look at a game expansion to discuss whether it is a necessary purchase/addition to one’s collection.

This breakdown is for the push-your-luck dice and take-that game Dice Town’s expansion Cowboys.


This expansion adds a new board overlay to placed between Town Hall and Doc Badluck, 21 cow minis, some General Store cards to be shuffled with the base game, 12 Cowboy card, and four Rodeo cards. The Rodeo cards are 10 VP cards that are earned once a player owns a Cowboy card in each suit. Cowboy cards are recruited by the player who rolls the most Aces. They have the choice of recruiting a Cowboy or Stealing Cows (first from the new Prairie Board overlay, but if empty, then from other players). Cowboy cards can offer various abilities to be used or can be saved to earn a Rodeo VP card. Cow minis can be kept in a loose herd in front of the player or can be added on top of a Deed card in order to keep the Deed card and cows from being stolen by other players. If a Deed card shows, for example, a value of 4 then four cows will need to be added to the Deed card. Once the Deed card has its herd of cows upon it, the card is now worth an extra VP. Also at game end the player with the largest herd of cows will earn 10 additional bonus VP. Yee haw!
So here’s the thing: I love Dice Town as is. But adding in this expansion just adds another layer of strategic complexity and increases the enjoyment for me by tons. Having little cows in my play area and using them to graze upon my land deeds is quite satisfying. Being able to sprinkle in some of the Cowboy cards and hopefully earn a Rodeo card as well just boosts the ol’ final score by a significant amount. So the addition of this expansion is all about those VP gainz.

Official recommendation: I think any gamer who owns and enjoys Dice Town should definitely pick up the Cowboys expansion. It adds very important components to the base game and offers more choices for great rolls. And what gamer doesn’t appreciate more choices? This is a definite must-buy for me, but I wouldn’t turn down a chance to play just the base game either.