The Final Hour In Freshwater Cities

In this edition of “In the Cards,” we stretch the limits. You’ll notice a steady evolution from city streets to rolling rivers filled with fish that mutate into Cthulhu and threaten to destroy the universe as we know it. Enjoy!

Cities: Skylines - The Board Game

Cities: Skyline – The Board Game, from Kosmos, caught my eye for several reasons. The most interesting of those? Cities: Skyline is a cooperative city-building game. More importantly, it’s not a dexterity game. The idea of the players sharing funds and making decisions to meet the needs of a city is fascinating to me. Unlike real life, I hope it plays like a city council that actually works. Cities: Skyline is based on a popular PC game and looks a lot like SimCity, the revered city-builder of my childhood and DOS (If you know, you know).

Freshwater Fly

Freshwater Fly is the follow up to Bellwether Games’ Coldwater Crown. Based on that alone, I’m interested. Add in some sweet dice drafting and a rondel, and I’m very interested. The other thing I like about Freshwater Fly is the theming. I’m not a fisherman. My 8-year-old daughter is more of a fisherman than I am, but I am attracted to games with unique themes, and this one fits the bill. You’d think due to the combination of skill and luck in fishing; we’d be inundated with fishing games, but alas we are not.

Arkham Horror: Final Hour

Is it possible to play an H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu themed game from Fantasy Flight Games in under an hour? Not bloody likely, but that is the promise of this new release from the publisher of Arkham Horror and Mansions of Madness. A game like Final Hour seems like the holy grail, but I’m concerned that the narrative and thematic elements will suffer in order to keep the playtime down. I still want to give it a try. We got a brief rundown of it at the Alliance Open House, but I didn’t get a feeling of how a full game would play out. Aside from that, any opportunity to use my painted Arkham miniatures is welcome.