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Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Tumble Town in Tabletop Games
Mar 5, 2020
Fun fact about me: I used to live in Le Claire, Iowa (birthplace of “Buffalo Bill” Cody) on a street named Wild West Drive. While the town named many of their streets after American West figures and items, it was not your typical Iowa ghost town – if there are such things. That said, I do have an affinity for the Wild West in my gaming preferences, so when I heard about a dice/building game with an American West theme designed by Kevin Russ (who also recently designed Calico) I was immediately interested. But how does this one… stack up?
Tumble Town is dice rolling, structure building, drafting game with variable player powers. You are charged with choosing building plans to be added to Main Street of Tumble Town. You do this throughout the game by selecting the plans that will make best use of the resources (dice) you gain. The buildings that you construct may allow you special powers to be used on future turns, or one-time bonuses to be used once built. The player who can turn the greatest profit (in terms of VP) at the end of the game will be the winner!
DISCLAIMER: We were provided a prototype copy of this game for the purposes of this review. These are preview copy components, and the final components will definitely be different from these shown. Also, it is not my intention to detail every rule in the game, as there are just too many. You are invited to back the game through the Kickstarter campaign, from your FLGS, or through any other retailers stocking it after fulfillment. -T
To setup, deal each player a packet of starting components: a unique Horse card, two reference cards, Storehouse card, Main Street card, and two brown (they are red in the prototype) dice to be rolled and placed within the Storehouse. Shuffle and display the 1-, 2-, and 3-cactus building cards per the rulebook instructions to form the market. Set aside a number of each die type per the rulebook (both the building cards and dice are determined by number of players). Determine the first player and give them the first player token (a colorful rubber potted cactus). Players will connect their two Main Street cards at the central icon to create a two-card street (we chose the wagon wheel – Easy) and the game can begin!
Turns in Tumble Town consist of four mini-phases that flow into each other rather naturally. The first phase will have the players choosing a revealed building plan card from the offer market. The face-down draw stack will inform the active player as to how many and which type of dice they must draw and roll. Once they have these dice in their Storehouse, the player may now build plans using the dice they control. Buildings can be constructed and placed right onto Main Street, or be placed on the plan card to be placed on Main Street on a later turn. If the player has collected more dice than their Storehouse can hold, they must discard any of the dice they wish. This concludes a turn and the next player can begin their turn.
Certain iconography on the building plan cards allow players to use special powers throughout the game once built, and there are three types. Cards with the silvery bottom panel of symbols and the 1x notation are powers that must be used only once and only when the building is constructed. These powers could be collecting a die of the player’s choice, or receiving various dice counters. The building plan cards that feature a circular arrow notation are powers that can be used once per turn, every turn, if wished. These powers are found on each player’s Horse as well and can be adjusting a die’s face value, or re-rolling two dice, as examples. The third type of power is from the golden paneled cards that have an arrow pointing to a vertical line. These powers are only activated at the end of the game and mostly include scoring variances, like 1VP for each building a player has constructed that has a vulture icon (or a windmill, for example) featured on the card art.
Once a building is erected, the player may choose to place it onto their Main Street cards. When they place them, the player will need to choose where on Main Street these buildings should live. Like Bob Ross always says, “There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.” A player can place their buildings anywhere they wish on Main Street, but the Main Street cards will give extra bonuses to those players who plan ahead and place their buildings strategically. Some plots will ask for a building of a specific height (one die high or three dice high). Some will ask for the base level of the structure to be made of a specific material/die color (brown wood, black coal, silver metal, and gold… gold). Extra points are awarded if one-die-width alleyways are allotted, and these Main Street placements can score a bunch of endgame points.
Turns can be very quick or very deliberate, depending on the types of players involved. AP-prone players will take longer on their turns as they internalize all possibilities of their rolled results, while people like me just fly by the seats of our breeches. The game continues in this fashion: four mini-phases of drafting cards from the market, grabbing the associated dice, rolling them, and attempting to erect the best buildings on Main Street until two dice pools contain two or fewer dice. The current turn order finishes and the game is over.
Components. Again, this is a prototype copy of the game, and the publisher was decent enough to include a listing of items to be improved in the final version (like the red dice being poured brown in final – that really messed up someone’s strategy during a play-through for us because they kept forgetting that red is actually brown). The overall art style is very simplistic and I do NOT mean that negatively. The graphics and artwork are great, and give exactly what is needed without being so distracting that you cannot concentrate on your strategy. The dice are normal dice quality (that always seem to roll poorly when I’m rolling… hmm…). Once you see the photos of how the game will look during production, you will appreciate how great this is going to look on the table. No problems with components at all, save for the red vs. brown debacle that happened on our table. I really hope they keep the awwwwesome rubber cactus first player marker because it’s amazing.
I absolutely loved this one. I have always enjoyed using items for purposes other than originally intended – in this case, using dice as building materials. Of course, playing any game with dice introduces a bit of luck and instability in strategy, but Tumble Town offers quite a bit of manipulation of dice rolls that keeps almost all dice results feasible and useful. I really enjoyed the stacking, the quick turns, and the desperation when someone takes the last wood die when I was gunning for a wood-based building on my next turn. This game is light, but is chocked full of difficult decisions and luck of the roll. Tumble Town is for people who enjoy the rolling and stacking from FUSE (minus the frenzy), and the spatial building placement chaining of Villages of Valeria.
If this is the game for you, then we highly encourage you to check out the Kickstarter campaign which is running until Thursday, March 26. Tumble Town has already exceeding the funding goal at time of this review, but all future pledges will contribute to stretch goals that will improve components and add other components (spoiler?). So get out there and build up Tumble Town, ya yella-bellied greenhorns!
Tumble Town is dice rolling, structure building, drafting game with variable player powers. You are charged with choosing building plans to be added to Main Street of Tumble Town. You do this throughout the game by selecting the plans that will make best use of the resources (dice) you gain. The buildings that you construct may allow you special powers to be used on future turns, or one-time bonuses to be used once built. The player who can turn the greatest profit (in terms of VP) at the end of the game will be the winner!
DISCLAIMER: We were provided a prototype copy of this game for the purposes of this review. These are preview copy components, and the final components will definitely be different from these shown. Also, it is not my intention to detail every rule in the game, as there are just too many. You are invited to back the game through the Kickstarter campaign, from your FLGS, or through any other retailers stocking it after fulfillment. -T
To setup, deal each player a packet of starting components: a unique Horse card, two reference cards, Storehouse card, Main Street card, and two brown (they are red in the prototype) dice to be rolled and placed within the Storehouse. Shuffle and display the 1-, 2-, and 3-cactus building cards per the rulebook instructions to form the market. Set aside a number of each die type per the rulebook (both the building cards and dice are determined by number of players). Determine the first player and give them the first player token (a colorful rubber potted cactus). Players will connect their two Main Street cards at the central icon to create a two-card street (we chose the wagon wheel – Easy) and the game can begin!
Turns in Tumble Town consist of four mini-phases that flow into each other rather naturally. The first phase will have the players choosing a revealed building plan card from the offer market. The face-down draw stack will inform the active player as to how many and which type of dice they must draw and roll. Once they have these dice in their Storehouse, the player may now build plans using the dice they control. Buildings can be constructed and placed right onto Main Street, or be placed on the plan card to be placed on Main Street on a later turn. If the player has collected more dice than their Storehouse can hold, they must discard any of the dice they wish. This concludes a turn and the next player can begin their turn.
Certain iconography on the building plan cards allow players to use special powers throughout the game once built, and there are three types. Cards with the silvery bottom panel of symbols and the 1x notation are powers that must be used only once and only when the building is constructed. These powers could be collecting a die of the player’s choice, or receiving various dice counters. The building plan cards that feature a circular arrow notation are powers that can be used once per turn, every turn, if wished. These powers are found on each player’s Horse as well and can be adjusting a die’s face value, or re-rolling two dice, as examples. The third type of power is from the golden paneled cards that have an arrow pointing to a vertical line. These powers are only activated at the end of the game and mostly include scoring variances, like 1VP for each building a player has constructed that has a vulture icon (or a windmill, for example) featured on the card art.
Once a building is erected, the player may choose to place it onto their Main Street cards. When they place them, the player will need to choose where on Main Street these buildings should live. Like Bob Ross always says, “There are no mistakes, just happy accidents.” A player can place their buildings anywhere they wish on Main Street, but the Main Street cards will give extra bonuses to those players who plan ahead and place their buildings strategically. Some plots will ask for a building of a specific height (one die high or three dice high). Some will ask for the base level of the structure to be made of a specific material/die color (brown wood, black coal, silver metal, and gold… gold). Extra points are awarded if one-die-width alleyways are allotted, and these Main Street placements can score a bunch of endgame points.
Turns can be very quick or very deliberate, depending on the types of players involved. AP-prone players will take longer on their turns as they internalize all possibilities of their rolled results, while people like me just fly by the seats of our breeches. The game continues in this fashion: four mini-phases of drafting cards from the market, grabbing the associated dice, rolling them, and attempting to erect the best buildings on Main Street until two dice pools contain two or fewer dice. The current turn order finishes and the game is over.
Components. Again, this is a prototype copy of the game, and the publisher was decent enough to include a listing of items to be improved in the final version (like the red dice being poured brown in final – that really messed up someone’s strategy during a play-through for us because they kept forgetting that red is actually brown). The overall art style is very simplistic and I do NOT mean that negatively. The graphics and artwork are great, and give exactly what is needed without being so distracting that you cannot concentrate on your strategy. The dice are normal dice quality (that always seem to roll poorly when I’m rolling… hmm…). Once you see the photos of how the game will look during production, you will appreciate how great this is going to look on the table. No problems with components at all, save for the red vs. brown debacle that happened on our table. I really hope they keep the awwwwesome rubber cactus first player marker because it’s amazing.
I absolutely loved this one. I have always enjoyed using items for purposes other than originally intended – in this case, using dice as building materials. Of course, playing any game with dice introduces a bit of luck and instability in strategy, but Tumble Town offers quite a bit of manipulation of dice rolls that keeps almost all dice results feasible and useful. I really enjoyed the stacking, the quick turns, and the desperation when someone takes the last wood die when I was gunning for a wood-based building on my next turn. This game is light, but is chocked full of difficult decisions and luck of the roll. Tumble Town is for people who enjoy the rolling and stacking from FUSE (minus the frenzy), and the spatial building placement chaining of Villages of Valeria.
If this is the game for you, then we highly encourage you to check out the Kickstarter campaign which is running until Thursday, March 26. Tumble Town has already exceeding the funding goal at time of this review, but all future pledges will contribute to stretch goals that will improve components and add other components (spoiler?). So get out there and build up Tumble Town, ya yella-bellied greenhorns!
Kara Skinner (332 KP) rated Ride of Her Life in Books
Jun 12, 2019
Woman Surprised When Neighbor Waits For Her When Coming Home Late
Genre: Contemporary, Erotica
Word Count: 3,830
Average Smashwords rating: 5 out of 5 stars
My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Warning: quotes below are certainly rated R.
When Andrea’s car breaks down and she gets a ride home with a coworker, the last thing she expects is her sexy yet scary-looking neighbor, Bo, waiting for her and livid. Worried out of his mind, Bo is done flirting with Andrea without action. Tonight, he’ll show her exactly what he wants with her.
Ride of Her Life is a hot little escape, but it’s like daydreaming about the stock photo of a tattooed macho man. True, it has some great sexy time.
He was fucking her hard and fast, but it was too much. Too raw. Too intimate. She felt too vulnerable, and she tried to lower her legs.
“No.” Keeping her legs close together, he leaned forward. “I like it this way. It makes you tighter. Makes you pay attention to me.”
The increase in pressure startled her. “Bo!”
He bucked at the sound of his name, and Andrea could hardly stand the pleasure. It felt naughty, exhibitionistic, and so damn good.
“That’s right, sweet thing. Give it to me. I’m the guy who’s meant to be your lover, not your handyman.”
But Bo has no character whatsoever. For that matter, Andrea isn’t much better with her inconsistent weirdness.
Bo is a jerk. He was mad that his neighbor didn’t call him when she was going to be home late or ask him to drive all the way to the college just to give him a ride. He was even more irritated that the coworker who dropped her off was male. Bo is her next door neighbor! Sure, they’re closer than most neighbors, but that doesn’t mean she needs to call him when she is a little bit late.
There’s an inch of depth that flickers beneath Bo’s otherwise boring flatness. His anger stems from worry and he’s insecure around Andrea. He doesn’t think he’s smart enough for her and in a moment of vulnerability asks her what he means to her.
It’s clear the two of them have history together. They have been neighbors for a while and Bo is always there to help with lawn mowing, giving her takeout, and doing repairs around the house. Andrea fantasizes about him at night but is scared to acknowledge her attraction to him. Bo seems to know it anyway and basically takes her on a picnic table with Andrea barely getting a consent out.
The lack of real consent is a huge turn-off for me. Just because he mows her lawn doesn’t mean he gets to, well, mow her lawn. There’s a difference between dominating and borderline-raping, and I wish that was much clearer here.
Andrea’s character is all over the place. She goes from caring to femme fatale in less than four thousand words.
At first, she’s slightly scared of Bo. She’s nervous and innocent for most of the story.
The tingle was back. Her entire body vibrated with anticipation and nerves. She’d never done anything like this. A thrill of uneasiness and excitement rushed through her
By the end, he’s just a fuck for her.
“Can we go inside now?” she asked, her lips brushing against his ear.
“On one condition. Tell me what I am to you.”
She smiled softly. “Oh honey, you’re the man I call when I need a ride.”
Where is this new found confidence of hers and when did she start calling him honey? Did her orgasm compel a man-eating ghost to possess her for the sake of reliving glory days?
We’ll never find out, because that’s where the story ends. There’s no real conclusion and just the flippant line to half-heartedly tie the ending and beginning together. It left me wholly unsatisfied.
Word Count: 3,830
Average Smashwords rating: 5 out of 5 stars
My rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Warning: quotes below are certainly rated R.
When Andrea’s car breaks down and she gets a ride home with a coworker, the last thing she expects is her sexy yet scary-looking neighbor, Bo, waiting for her and livid. Worried out of his mind, Bo is done flirting with Andrea without action. Tonight, he’ll show her exactly what he wants with her.
Ride of Her Life is a hot little escape, but it’s like daydreaming about the stock photo of a tattooed macho man. True, it has some great sexy time.
He was fucking her hard and fast, but it was too much. Too raw. Too intimate. She felt too vulnerable, and she tried to lower her legs.
“No.” Keeping her legs close together, he leaned forward. “I like it this way. It makes you tighter. Makes you pay attention to me.”
The increase in pressure startled her. “Bo!”
He bucked at the sound of his name, and Andrea could hardly stand the pleasure. It felt naughty, exhibitionistic, and so damn good.
“That’s right, sweet thing. Give it to me. I’m the guy who’s meant to be your lover, not your handyman.”
But Bo has no character whatsoever. For that matter, Andrea isn’t much better with her inconsistent weirdness.
Bo is a jerk. He was mad that his neighbor didn’t call him when she was going to be home late or ask him to drive all the way to the college just to give him a ride. He was even more irritated that the coworker who dropped her off was male. Bo is her next door neighbor! Sure, they’re closer than most neighbors, but that doesn’t mean she needs to call him when she is a little bit late.
There’s an inch of depth that flickers beneath Bo’s otherwise boring flatness. His anger stems from worry and he’s insecure around Andrea. He doesn’t think he’s smart enough for her and in a moment of vulnerability asks her what he means to her.
It’s clear the two of them have history together. They have been neighbors for a while and Bo is always there to help with lawn mowing, giving her takeout, and doing repairs around the house. Andrea fantasizes about him at night but is scared to acknowledge her attraction to him. Bo seems to know it anyway and basically takes her on a picnic table with Andrea barely getting a consent out.
The lack of real consent is a huge turn-off for me. Just because he mows her lawn doesn’t mean he gets to, well, mow her lawn. There’s a difference between dominating and borderline-raping, and I wish that was much clearer here.
Andrea’s character is all over the place. She goes from caring to femme fatale in less than four thousand words.
At first, she’s slightly scared of Bo. She’s nervous and innocent for most of the story.
The tingle was back. Her entire body vibrated with anticipation and nerves. She’d never done anything like this. A thrill of uneasiness and excitement rushed through her
By the end, he’s just a fuck for her.
“Can we go inside now?” she asked, her lips brushing against his ear.
“On one condition. Tell me what I am to you.”
She smiled softly. “Oh honey, you’re the man I call when I need a ride.”
Where is this new found confidence of hers and when did she start calling him honey? Did her orgasm compel a man-eating ghost to possess her for the sake of reliving glory days?
We’ll never find out, because that’s where the story ends. There’s no real conclusion and just the flippant line to half-heartedly tie the ending and beginning together. It left me wholly unsatisfied.
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