Summer IGDC My rankings: 1. * Logger by Erik Dresner 2. * Virus Fight by Jorge Arroyo 3. * Albiorix by Don Sheldon 4. * T-Minus by Daniel Cristofani 5. * Atom Smasher by David Artman 6. * Martian BattleSpires by Jonathan Hartshorn 7. * Pass The Pyramids by Avri Klemer 8. * Dog Eat Dog by Jason Darrah Unranked: * Ambush by Jason Spears and Erik Oosterwal * Tresurion by Patrick Cowden Played: Logger - All enjoyed it immensely and will happily be playing it again. Seems like there is room for tactics and possibly short term strategy. I don't have any suggestions for the game itself, but the rules need clean-up. We had some trouble figuring out how many saplings a tree would spawn and that our player tokens would not come from the 5 treehouse sets. Did wonder about how the game would play if you could put a protester on a non mature tree and/or moving protesters. Played a 3rd time as we had enjoyed the first two games so much. Logger will see regular rotation in my icehouse games and I hope to see it available for online play on SuperDuperGames. (We continued to play this after the contest was over.) Dog Eat Dog - Game seemed to be too luck driven, with very little strategy. After playing a few rounds, we halted the game and moved on to another. I have little to no interest in playing again. Not my kind of game. Pass the Pyramids - Could be ok with kids, as they will get a hoot out of tossing the pyramids. Most people won't have control over how they throw the pyramids, so really it is a push your luck game. Decidedly mediocre. Will probably not play again. Virus Fight - All of us thought the rules were overly confusing. Constantly calling the pyramids instructions made my brain whirl. We started reading these rules at the beginning, then set them aside as they seemed overly complicated. After barreling through them, we found it wasn't so complicated and had potential. We made it through 3-4 turns, and Erik and Jason ended up knocking Trevor out of the game as he was on a lone yellow pyramid, couldn't move it, couldn't move to another pyramid and was eliminated. I look forward to playing this again and me teaching it to others will make it go smoother. Even understanding that each player would have 12 pyramids (4 colors, 3 in each color) was confusing on first read through the rules. Our second game went very well and I feel like I have a firm grasp of the rules, just not on the strategy. I almost knocked another player out, but instead allowed that player to eliminate me. Very fun. Albiorix - This game has lots of potential to be very neat. However, I feel it would great benefit from some simplification and better written rules. In particular, some examples would help a ton. I feel it is a mistake to tell me that a piece moves like some other piece in the game, or worse it moves like this other piece in a different game. Clearly explain how a piece can move. (Please make pictures.) * Define what is forward. * The poetic waxing is fine and dandy, but not good for clear communication of mechanics. * Can the soldier move over other pieces? A chess knight can, but I don't know if that is true here. * Does the dancer move up to 2 diagonal spaces, or exactly 2 diagonal spaces? (I do realize she can change direction during movement.) In our games, we saw a lot of the monad being taken and then the move undone, so something else would have to happen. Not a complaint, just an observation. Atom Smasher - The rules about handing the pieces out confused me some, but we worked out a decent solution. Also I wasn't sure I understood the atom building portion correctly as it seems that the second player would not have to put their pyramids any where nearby the first player's ones. Lastly, we played on a large conference table, so we ignored the wrist rules. We enjoyed the meltdown rules for circling pyramids and had a lot of fun flicking pyramids. I would almost recommend safety glass though, as we had a lot of pyramids shooting off the table. Martian Battlespires - Interesting game, rules need some polishing as I wasn't convinced we were playing correctly. Also it should be more clear that moving a pyramid of yours onto an opponents is ok, even if you aren't attacking. (This indeed could be a good strategy.) I'm willing to give it another go, but at the moment, I wasn't really impressed. T-Minus - After glancing at the rules and the board, I wasn't overly keen to try this game. That was a mistake, it is a good "push your luck" game, with a fun theme. The game can be very fun to play, or very fustrating if the dice are against you. I think we probably should have been more cautious at times than we were. The board also should have the spaces numbered to facilitate easy moving of the rockets. I will likely suggest this again with a few different groups. Some comments after reading of rules (only) Albiorix - I'm confused about what is meant by loyalty to (Queen, Regent or Princess) and how that affects the game. If this is just flavor, it should be after movement and perhaps italics, or some other way to differentiate it. (Found out what was meant by reading talk page. I believe this is supposed to count against the game when voting.) A player may move (or mix) any piece in which: His side's color is the top (or only) pyramid A piece identical (in size and color) to his Monad is contained Otherwise, sounds very cool and can't wait to try it. Atom Smasher - Initial read through the rules leaves me confused as the author tries to instill theme so much as to obscure what is going on. Going back through the rules a second time I'm clear on how the game is played and I like the meltdown rules in particular. Circling the pyramids, rather than having to do some obscure measurement, or worse, having to knock a pyramid off the table is good. I'm looking forward to trying this and it is easily one that will get played with non-gamer family members. Martian BattleSpires - From reading the rules I'm not completely sure how the game plays, but I have enough to try and get started. Seems interesting, so I'm keen to give it a go. Tresurion - This space battle system is not the kind of game I normally enjoy, nor were any of my play partners interested, so we skipped it.