Game Play: Neuroshima Hex (iPhone)

This is a post a long time coming. As a huge Neuroshima Hex fan, I was impatiently waiting the release of the iPhone version of the game since I first heard about it. My expectations were pretty high: it is a fast pacedturn based game, very strategic and dynamic, played out on a board of specific height and width - in other words, a nearly perfect candidate for the iPhone's touchscreen.

I couldn't have been more pleased with the results. The guys at Big Daddy's and Portal Publishing took the effort to heart and have created a highly polished, extremely authentic, and insanely fun portable version of the game.  As of the latest version (1.01 I believe), the bugs are quite few and the only one that really comes to mind is the ability to crash the game by flipping back and forth between menus at the wrong time during a battle.  Trust me, that doesn't happen anywhere near as often as it might sound and actually only turns up as minor inconvenience from time to time.  The game saves the game before every turn, so even if you have to go dash off to that meeting - everything will be waiting for you when you return.

While geared mostly to fans of the game, the developers do provide an introductory video and explanations for all the tiles.  If the game is intimidating to new users, that's probably more to do with the unique ruleset of Neuroshima rather than any fault on the development team.  I actually feel like I know the game much better now having played against the computer with the core set of rules.

So the only thing I want now is more, more, more... the expansion sets, the iPad support, online play, etc.  But for now, I think the dev team deserves a well earned lager and a couple rounds against Moloch.

Game Play: Neuroshima Hex! (Board game)

A small Game Night got organized and we got a chance to play a couple games of Neuroshima Hex!, a game I first wrote about two years ago after reading an excellent review over at BoardGameGeek.

The review does a fine job of explaining the game, but in short: hexagonal based strategy game where players draw from a shuffled deck of tiles and place them in turn. You can place units anywhere - there is no set "place, move, attack" phase setup so common in most games. Battles only occur when a player uses a battle tile and then the combat occurs across the entire board at once. Units with the same initiative point their guns at each other generally kill each other. The goal of the game is to cause more injury to the others' HQ than you sustain on your own

One of the more impressive aspects of the game is the army design. Each army is unique, has a set of special units, and feel. Your unit summary card even has suggested tactics. Balance is still maintained, though, with the real trick being learning how to play to your army's strengths.

Neuroshima Hex has a reputation for being confusing in some circles, but I think that's a little unwarranted. Now granted, the edition we have has some advantages some previous gamers didn't have. For instance, the rules are printed in English. Also, there's a section in the rules clarifying certain scenarios. I read the rules over before starting, we made a few mistakes the first game but more or less got the hang of it quickly.

This edition has some pretty fine production quality (it even takes some of the suggestions in the original BGG review into account). There are even baggies included to keep the army tiles together.

Highly, highly recommend. My only critique is that I wouldn't buy into the "30 minute" play time indicated on the box. Maybe with 2 experienced players it can get that fast, but plan on spending some quiet time plotting out your moves.