What’s the best vehicle? If you answered submarine, you are correct. The only real example of board games using submarines in the past is Battleship. And Battleship is… um… very bad. So you may be skeptical when I say Captain Sonar, a game about finding the other side’s hidden submarine and blowing it up, is actually really good.

So what makes it this good? The first thing that makes it a really fun game is the teams. That’s right, this is a team game. And it’s not a team game where the game designers take a two-player game and split it up amongst multiple people. This game avoids that with its second mechanic that makes it so special: it being real time.

Real time games are few and far between. And a lot of them can just be a really simple race to do a certain action. But then you have the crème de la crème, games all about quick thinking and usually if it’s a co-op game it involves communication. And Captain Sonar involves a lot of communication. Players have to communicate because each player has their own system. Each player gets a marker and a sheet representing their system. I think I need to explain the systems for you to understand Captain Sonar’s brilliance.

The captain controls the movement of the ship and can choose to surface (more on that later). The captain has the added puzzle that they can never cross over their own line and can never move into the islands on the map. The captain has to shout the direction they are moving so the enemy team’s radio operator can write it on an overlay they are given. The radio operator can then move the overlay around the map to see possible locations the enemy sub could be. The first mate must choose a system to charge and give the captain the ok before the captain can move again. If a system is fully charged it can be used unless the engineer breaks it. Because every time the ship moves the engineer also has to break something in one of four boxes on their screen corresponding to the direction moved. The engineer has wires that connect multiple breakable objects. If all the objects on the wire break the wire fixes itself. “Why does the wire fix itself?” you might ask. You’re not an engineer so why are you asking these questions?!

As you can see there are some excellent puzzles, but none of that matters because more importantly the systems facilitate communication (don’t worry I’m not about to talk about some abstract game design concepts)! Let me give you an example: you are the captain and you have been working with the first mate to charge a missile to fire on the enemy submarine, but then your engineer breaks the missile system and you can’t use it. That’s really funny and really tense. Because at any moment the enemy ship can be rushing towards you. But you might not have time to communicate in depth with everyone on your team, making communicating a tactic.

And each system is directly tied with another system. For example the engineer needs to get the captain to go in specific directions or else the ship will stop working faster than an employee not paid by the hour, the radio operator must try to convey to the captain which way you need to go if you want to attack the other team, and the first mate must get the engineer not to cross off the system that they have been charging for the last 5 turns, come on!

It may sound like Captain Sonar makes you want to strangle your teammates. But surprisingly it does not. Why? I don’t know, but I don’t need to know because at the end of each game no matter if I won or lost I would always be able to appreciate my teammates for what they did. And once you finish a game of Captain Sonar you will get a chance to see where the enemy team was, and you will either be really close to guessing where they were, or extremely wrong, both are great!

I know at the end of most of these reviews I say “buy this game if you are this type of person”. But not this time, this is a game that everyone can get behind. Even if you have some players that are experienced and some that are first time players. Everyone has their own role so you don’t have to learn too much to understand how to play.  Even if you like deeply strategic euro-games you will probably still love this game because you can still deeply strategise. I would feel like a bad reviewer if I didn’t mention that this game includes more maps to play on. But I haven’t tried them simply because I want to master the first one, and so far it’s been enough to keep me interested. I probably should also mention that the rules recommend you play the turn based variant for your first game, and I’m going to tell you that you should definitely not listen to that and just play it real time even for your first game. If you haven’t figured it out by now, I think Captain Sonar is good… no, great… no, excellent! But there is one problem, you need 8 players to get the full experience of Captain Sonar. It’s still fun with less but it is definitely the best with 8 players. But if you are looking to buy a board game with some cool concepts you should definitely consider Captain Sonar.

Written reviews have their benefits. But there is one thing that video reviews will always have that written reviews can’t. And it is the ability to have a cheesy star wars opening crawl. But hey, we can use our imaginations! Imagine a dark background dotted with stars suddenly yellow text appea… ah screw it. Let’s just get into the review.

Star Wars: Rebellion is complicated, really really complicated. Star Wars: Rebellion has some balancing problems. Star Wars: Rebellion is huge, maybe even too huge. Star Wars: Rebellion is extremely long. And perhaps worst of all, Star wars Rebellion: has some infuriating luck. All that being said, I love this game. I will be the first to admit that this game is not for everyone. But if the concept of the game I explain to you today sounds interesting, you will (almost definitely) love this game.

So how does it work? There are two players in Star Wars: Rebellion. One plays the rebellion and one plays the empire. Already the first interesting part of this game has been revealed, and that is the asymmetry in Star Wars: Rebellion. The empire starts with more units, it has better cards it can use, and can take over empty planets just by moving onto them. It may seem futile for the rebellion to resist, but they have one trick up their sleeve. You see, the rebellion just has to survive a certain amount of rounds. But the empire needs to find and destroy the secret rebel base. The rebels can even complete objectives so they don’t have to survive as many rounds, and they can move their rebel base if they play a certain card.

This isn’t going to be a full rules explanation, simply because there are so many rules to explain. But I will explain the basics of a turn. The game centres on leaders, leaders are the famous Star Wars characters that, just like the movies, do everything. This really helps with some hilarious theming, since in the movies the Stormtroopers and rebel troopers are quite useless against the main characters. And this perfectly reflected by the game requiring you to use leaders to move units, and to use mission cards. You can play these mission cards at the begging of a round and assign leaders depending on their stats. In the next phase players take turns revealing a card or using a leftover leader to move units. When you reveal a mission card depending on the card it will either let you use that cards ability, or it will give your opponent a chance to counter your card. You can only counter or move with leaders you haven’t assigned to cards in the previous phase. So this makes a really cool puzzle of which leaders you want to assign to cards and which you want to leave behind in your leader pool. If you choose to counter a card with a leader both sides roll dice equal to the amount of the stat of the leader that matches the cards required stat. Whichever side rolls more successes wins.

You can also use your leaders for moving. Moving allows you to place a leader and bring any units from adjacent planets into this planet. If your enemy has units there, a battle happens. Battles don’t involve that much strategy. But that’s alright because the strategy is in the game around the battles. Preparing units, finding information, and denying the other side of information, producing units with factories (a side of the game I won’t be discussing today). But the battles serve their purpose of being a high-tension culmination of a sides planning. You roll some dice and maybe play some cards in a battle, that’s it. But inside your head you are holding your breath because this battles outcome will affect the game in quite a significant way no matter where the battle is. It feels so good to have your plans succeed in a climactic battle, and it feels so disheartening to have your plans result in a failure. Is that a bad thing? You tell me.

There is one more huge thing I haven’t talked about yet, and that’s theming and feeling. And for a Star Wars game, that is a huge part of the game. But what do I even mean by feeling? Feeling isn’t something people really talk about hugely in games. But I think it is really important to a game experience. Because the reason we play board games is not just for the puzzle, (actually never mind, euro gamers do) it’s for the social experience. I would just play a single player game otherwise. And the experience is made because of feeling. And Star Wars: Rebellion gets that. Star wars rebellion makes the Rebellion feel hopeless even if they are winning, and it makes the empire feel powerful even if they are losing. Some people (who may or may not include me) have a hard time playing the rebellion without wanting to burst into tears. And this is all extremely thematic, in fact this whole game is extremely thematic. And I expect nothing less from a Star Wars game. Star Wars: Rebellion gives you something all board games should try to give you: stories. I could tell you the story of how two of my most powerful rebellion ships got crushed by one star destroyer after careful planning, I could tell you the story of princess Leia turning to the dark side, or I could tell you the story of one of many daring rescues. Do you see why this game is great?

So I recommend it, right? Well… yes? Maybe? I don’t know. Star Wars: Rebellion has a price of ninety US dollars (or 0.01 Bitcoin). That’s three Modern Arts, that’s one and a half full priced AAA video games, that’s nine Coups (the game, an actual Coup probably costs a lot more than ten dollars)! And do you really want a game where some players can get so demoralized they almost want to quit several times in one game? Do you really want a game where one side might make a sub-optimal play just because they feel bad for the other side? Do you really want a game that can take most of a day only to end it an extremely one-sided final battle? Probably not. But I do, I want that game. And maybe, if you are just crazy enough, and you can find some else who is also just crazy, and you think the idea of the rebellion feeling hopeless will be fun for you, and the concept of this game is making you bounce around in your seat. Then you will love this game.

Now, before you think I am reviewing actual modern art, let me tell you that I am reviewing the game “Modern Art”. In fact this game is really far from the whole modern art culture. Modern Art instead has you playing as museum galleries that care about one thing: having the nicest collection of art and getting and building a lasting relationship with artists so you can provide a great experience for the people who visit your museum. Just kidding, you only care about money! I think this theming is really funny. The fact that you play as museums that are obvious parodies of real ones, but in this world you need to make the most money to win is very funny. Sure this isn’t the must thematic game, but the little theming it has is quite unique and (perhaps unintentionally) funny. But theming doesn’t matter at all if the game sucks. So does it?

No. No it does not. In fact I would go so far as to say that this is my favourite auction game I have played. And I have played quite a few auction games. So what makes this one so special? Well the first thing is that instead of the winning bidder just paying their money to the bank, they pay it to the auctioneer. That’s right, players take turns being the auctioneer. But it doesn’t end there: the auctioneer can bid on the painting they choose to auction, but in that case they pay their money to the bank.

But to understand how good this really is you need to understand another system in this game, and that system is the auctioning system. I like to imagine Reiner Knizia (the designer of Modern Art) sitting in a room and thinking, “what auction mechanic should I use for this game?” And then he was like, “Screw it, I’ll just use them all.” The game uses a system where depending on the card you choose to auction there are a different auction type. Now remember when I said that you need to understand this system to understand why having players take turns being an auctioneer is so great? That’s because each auction type gives the auctioneer and the other players so many interesting strategic choices.

Let me give you an example. In the open auction, players make a bid in real time until nobody else wants to bid (remember, including the auctioneer). Now this is just an extremely fun social moment, the auctioneer wants to encourage bidding wars to make lots of sweet sweet Moolah off the other players. So the auctioneer has to try to hype up the players into bidding. Now this can be hilarious if you have a super enthusiastic auctioneer because it is really funny to watch them say a bunch of silly things to convince the other players to bid higher. But if you have a more shy auctioneer who prefers thinking about the puzzle of the game, that is also hilarious because players will expect the auctioneer to try to convince them to buying this painting and just get nothing. Now both of those situations are really funny, but there can be an infuriatingly hard puzzle in this game for those who want it.

And that puzzle is made great because of one more system I haven’t told you about: the artists themselves. Modern Art gives you five different artists to play with. I might not be an art connoisseur, but me and the people I play this game with all have opinions on the artists. Also these artists are not fictional characters, they are each real artists with their own style. To be honest some of the paintings are a bit, well… crap. But that’s a good thing! This adds some great humour of people not bidding on the obvious choice just because they don’t like the art.

But these artists don’t just offer some art with varying degrees of success, they offer some delicious puzzley gameplay! You see the whole reason you are buying paintings is to “sell” them. “Selling” is equal to discarding your cards and gaining money for them at the end of a round. A round ends when an artist has five paintings out. Then the top three artists with the most paintings are each given different monetary values depending on their rankings. The other two artists are just left being worth nothing. “Because as you all know when there is more of something in an economy, it goes up in value”. The game ends after four rounds, and in the later rounds if an artist is in the top three artists they get to add all their previous rankings to the monetary value of their paintings. Let me give you an example of how this all comes together to make a great puzzle with some social elements.

The current auctioneer is using a double auction to auction of two paintings from the artist Daniel Melin. In earlier rounds Daniel was ranked first and then third. This makes their paintings worth at least fifty universal currencies each if they get placed this round. Currently there are no other Daniel Melins placed this round. Also a lot of the paintings of Daniel Melin were played in earlier rounds. But this could be worth up to one hundred and forty universal currencies. The auction is a hidden auction so each player hides a bid in their fist and reveals simultaneously. So wouldn’t it be worth to bid at least eighty for this? Well maybe, but there is one little detail that makes this decision much more interesting. The fact that the auctioneer gets your money. So they would make a guaranteed eighty universal currencies, and you would only make a maximum of sixty. But what if the auctioneer isn’t in first place? A detail I should probably mention now is that all your money is kept secret. This mechanic is in place so people don’t know who is in first and just not buy from them. So you decided to bid seventy-five. And then when everyone reveals you break out into laughter as your see the auctioneer has bid seventy six on the painting and denied themselves of your money when they could only make a maximum of sixty four money from these paintings.

Did this example illustrate how this game combines a great puzzle game, and a great social game into one game? I hope by now you see how good the concept of this game is. And I will tell you that in practice it is just as good as it sounds (maybe even better). Overall I would highly recommend modern art. There are a few issues though. The first one is it requires at least three players to play and is really best with four or five. Another issue is that the game can drag on a bit long. Though there never feels like there is a time where you know who won. But it does have to be this long for all the brilliance of the artists system to shine. If you are looking for a great party game, I would actually not recommend this game. Since this game takes an hour, and it takes some more thinking then your average party game. But if you are looking for a game with lots of social elements but still a very fun underlying puzzle, then Modern Art is an extremely good choice.