Blocks!: Richard III

I love Columbia block games, but this implementation is not good. There are just too many issues that I have to fully list here, but a few include: poor integration of rules within the game itself (pointing to an external PDF is not great), low-resolution of the map, short game, clumsy AI, poor ability to navigate the gameboard (no click an drag), and more. I'm sorry Columbia, I hope this gets some updates and then I'll come back. Until then, I'll happily continue to buy and collect your boardgames.

I'm tired of making excuses for Avalon Digital. It's a lovely *looking* game. But the engine fails to follow the rules as designed, and what use is a digital adaptation at that point? The reps from Avalon even whined on Steam that we, the players, were asking too much of them, while again and again issues were bought to their attention and not addressed. Sadly, this seems to be the usual course with boardgame adaptations. The companies want your $, but they don't want to provide a game that enforces the rules.

[quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6142328/][b]Like this Review? Follow The Cpt Froggy Club Curator Page for plenty more![/b][/url][/quote] On the main menu screen there’s Continue, New Game, Options, Quit and Load Game once you have already started a game. Selecting a New Game will give you three game campaigns to choose from: The War of the Roses 1460, 1470 and 1483. The War of the Roses 1460 is a complete game and consists of three campaigns which take place over the whole length of the War of the Roses conflict. The War of the Roses 1470 has two campaign scenarios from 1470 onwards. The War of the Roses 1483 has only the one campaign scenario. Once you have chosen which campaign to play you can then choose to play the game as either the Lancaster (Red Rose) or as York (White Rose). Selecting any of the campaigns will give you some historical information on the war, historical characters and battles from that timeline. You can play against a friend in local two player (Hot Seat) or against the AI. There are three options to choose from regarding the AI Persona (difficulty). The options are Balanced, Defender and Aggressive, Balanced is the default setting, Defender AI will have your enemy being more defensive in their actions while Aggressive AI will be more offensive towards you. Once you’ve finished selecting the AI Persona and have chosen your side, you can hit the Start button to proceed to your game. You can also select Display Tutorial if you would like to have the tutorial displayed while you're playing the game. Once a game starts, there’ll be some information explaining the objectives of the game and how many campaigns in your chosen game. Each of the campaigns consists of seven turns and each player will receive seven cards from a deck of twenty-five. So, if you play the 1460 campaigns, you’ll play three rounds of seven turns. At the start of each turn you will be able to play one of the cards you currently have in your hand. The cards have information on them along with Action Points, which range from zero to four. Selecting one of your cards and the AI will do the same and the player who has the highest action point will win and go first in most instances. There are some Event cards and playing these will outrank normal cards with higher action points. If both players play the same event cards, then the Pretender wins the tie. After you find out who has won and goes first you will then find yourself on a map of the greatest country in the world … England (Rule Britannia!!!). There’s also a bit of Scotland, Ireland and France on the map. The map is divided into many regions which are broken up by coloured borders depending on whether they’re vacant, friendly or hostile regions. The Lancastrians start with control of the throne with the Yorkists in exile and waiting to invade and snatch the throne from the Lancastrians. Choosing to play as the Yorkists, you will play using the white blocks, the Lancastrians are the red blocks. The Lancastrians are already placed on the map, and they start with control of ten nobles to the Yorkists’ zero nobels in 1460 campaign. The object of the game is to become King (as the Yorkist) or to hold onto the Kingship (as the Lancastrians) at the end of the three campaigns. You can also win by default if you manage to kill all five heirs to the throne. When it’s your turn to move, you will be able to use your action points, depending on which card you chose. So, if you choose a card with four action points you will be able to make four moves. There is a pool of nobles from which you can select yours. Clicking on one of the nobles will show some details on them, such as who they are, whether they are loyal or a potential traitor, their strength, power, status and initiative. Some of these nobles can only be placed in a certain region if there isn’t an enemy already there. So, you can only place London Urban Militia in the region of Middlesex, but once you have them on the map you can move them as you please. Each noble you bring to the board from the pool of nobles will cost one action point. They won’t be able to move until the next turn. If you have multiple nobles in one region you can select them all and then drag them to another region, which will only count as using one action point. You can move one block by sea, although if you move to a major port then you can move two blocks, costing you one action point. Having multiple nobles in the same region is a good thing, as any noble on their own won’t have much chance against multiple nobles attacking them. You can have four nobles in any one region except for Cities, where you can have five. You can have more in a region, although each region can only supply up to four blocks (five in Cities) without any penalty. The penalty will reduce one step from one of the nobles of your choice in that region. The more nobles you get under your control, the better, as it will increase your score. Although, to win you will be required to reduce the number of nobles the Lancastrians control. You’re unable to know which noble is where on the board; the only way to find out is to go into battle. You do this by dragging your nobles into a region with the enemy. So, you could drag two nobles to battle with one of the enemy nobles and you’d think you’ve got the edge. However, if you decide to do this and you are going first in that turn, you could lose that edge if the enemy decides to move more nobles into the battle region. At the end of each players’ turns, the battle phase will start. Each of the blocks involved will have one battle turn per battle round, with a maximum of four battle rounds. The available options will depend on the block (noble). You will be able to Fire, Retreat or Pass, although you will not be able to retreat on your first move. There are other options, Charge and Treachery, and if you brought two groups into the battle then one of them will be in reserve for the second turn. The sequence of turns will depend on the combat initiative of those blocks. There are three initiative types: A blocks, B blocks and C blocks. A blocks go first, then B blocks and finally C blocks. Defending A blocks will go before attacking A blocks and so on. Blocks! Richard III is quite an interesting little game. It’s not too hard to learn, which I always like. It looks nice, plays well and smoothly, and I’ve enjoyed playing the game so far. How your game pans out all depends on which cards you draw at the beginning of each campaign. The battles are decided by random dice rolls, which were a little bit frustrating at times because I wasn’t quite sure what I needed to roll. Sometimes rolling one, two or three would do damage, while other times rolling a three wouldn’t do anything. Rolling four, five or six didn’t seem to do anything for me at all, so I’m a little confused (.com) with the whole rolling dynamics. However, I still enjoyed playing the game; it’s not overly complicated, nor does it take too long to complete. Worth giving a bash. [quote]THE FULL REVIEW CAN BE VIEWED IN IT'S ENTIRETY [url=https://www.zeepond.com/zeepond-reviews/blocks-richard-iii] HERE[/url] AS IT WAS TOO BIG TO POST HERE.[/quote] Positives + Not overly complicated + Enjoyable playing at your own pace + It’s England … Rule Britannia!!! + Nice graphics and music + Has achievements Negatives - Frustrating at times with cards drawn and dice rolls - No cards currently Lead the House of Lancaster to the throne or change English history by leading the House of York to victory. 7/10 [quote]Key provided by developer/publisher for review purposes via THE CPT FROGGY CLUB! Any opinions expressed are entirely my own! [/quote] [quote]For more reviews, great game giveaways and much more. Come join us @ www.Zeepond.Com and [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/thecptfroggyclub]The Cpt Froggy Club[/url] Steam Group[/quote]

I've owned the physical board game for some time now and I often find playing an app is the best way to learn the rules, especially before I teach it to others at a games night. I thought i'd splash out and finally learn Richard III having noticed it in the steam sale. Finally get it to the table! Happy days! If you already know how to play then this app is fantastic! Looks the part, feels like the physical game. The board looks identical as do the cards. Helpful animations. The blocks themselves are a different matter however. They've shrunk the instantly recognisable heraldry icon into the top left corner and now have most of the block covered by a generic looking soldier. I know you can see details by doing a mouse over but for a macro-view it's annoying. If you don't know how to play, well god help you. The 'tutorial' is a few pop ups that give you a rough idea on how battles work and then a generalised description of block movement. It's doesn't explain the charge and treachery mechanic, detailed movement mechanics or a full succinct explanation of battles. There is no reference to any of these rules during play either! The rules are attached in PDF (in settings, and not immediately obvious!), but are just a scan of the physical game's rule book. It's incredibly dry, no way to navigate quickly and a right pain to cross reference while in play. Please sort out a better tutorial! Don't expect people to read a 25 page PDF. There is a brilliant strategic war game here and the app developers have put up several barriers for people new to the game to play and enjoy it. Really shooting yourself in the foot. Will change my review to recommending it once a better tutorial is in place.

The AI is terrible. I can set it to aggressive and do nothing and win. That's to say, I use none of the points on my cards for movement or recruitment. I take advantage of none of the cards for forced March, plague, muster, Etc. I simply press fire when required. I never retreat. And with this unplanned strategy I win every time. The designers need to go back and improve the AI. Unfortunately, I feel that they will never do this. There are designers who wish to increase their sales who do make improvements in the AI. I wish Avalon digital were one of these.

I love the block games from Columbia Games and I do own several of the physical boardgames. I was pretty excited when I heard that these block games were being developed, and bought Blocks! Richard III. The first few games were fun learning games, but as I played more games against the AI, I became disappointed with it. Pretty much the dumbest AI i've played against and this game is not worth getting for the very poor AI. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, but from what I've read on Steam, there are bugs. A note to Avalon Digital-improve the AI on this game and the other games in the Blocks! series. I would not recommend this or any other Blocks! games if the AI is not improved. If you MUST get a Blocks! game on Steam, wait till its heavily discounted. Not worth it at full price.

Beware of Avalon Digital products! I really wanted to like this game, but I was initially disappointed by the shortness of the campaign and the lag/momentary freezing of the game. I was encouraged by the developer who was vocal in the forum, but who ended up being a back-slapper for Avalon. None of the "we will look into it" posts by this guy ever amounted to much of anything. I should have refunded the game, but as usual was slow in doing so, and missed the window.

This was my first purchase of a block game tabletop adaptation. Next time I will just buy the actual tabletop version. The computer version is a little too simplistic in terms of graphics and game play to compete with other computer games. (I beat the AI on my first game.) While I appreciate the developers trying to be faithful to the tabletop experience, the graphical dice roll was cheesy. Graphics are not sharp and the zoom is at an awkward angle. I did appreciate all the Shakespeare quotes in the game rules however! Overall, if you are really interested in this game, I would recommend buying the tabletop version.

I've played this a few times now and am already bored of it. The game is very one dimensional with over-complex rules (for example, on movement of blocks). The AI needs a lot of work to make it competitve (it isn't at all), The interface is clunky and not at all intuitive. Finally, multiplayer is very buggy. We had to abandon several games after they froze, or when the synchronisation between players failed). All in all, the game is fatally flawed in too may ways to make it playable. I am very disappointed, not least because it was fairly expensive.

2/10 EDITO: Parece que han arreglado el tema del fallo del ultimo turno, pero la IA es una autentica "cascara de papa" o yo yo soy un genio, cosa que dudo, o soy una persona con muchisima suerte. He empezado otra partida en nivel balanceado ( los otros dos son agresivo y defensivo) y en una partida con movimientos totalmente al azar, sin tener en cuenta nada sobre posiciones, fuerzas de unidades, etc, ya que lo unico que queria era probar si el ultimo turno volvia a fallar el juego, he vuelto a ganar. Por los pelos, pero he ganado. Es como jugar al juego de la Oca, solo dependes de los dados. Realmente no vale un duro, es como jugar con un niño, y da igual si sabes o no las reglas. Tampoco sirve para nada la eleccion de cartas de inicio de turno. Estas cartas las elegi tambien al azar, llegando incluso a veces a no realizar todos los puntos de accion para abreviar. Yo suelo jugar en solitario a todos los juegos, y aunque yo sea malo y/o la IA tambien me gusta el reto y la difilcutad, el tener que pensar algo. Aunque con el tiempo se le coja el tranquillo y se le gane al encontrar las debilidades de la IA, pero durante un tiempo tienes que aprender las mecanicas del juego. En este juego ese periodo no existe, ni existe la necesidad de aprender nada ANALISIS ORIGINAL. No lo recomiendo por una razon. El juego parece muy interesante por sus mecanicas, pero en ultimo turno de la gran campaña el juego se queda bugueado y no se puede terminar la partida. Lo he reportado y no han contestado. Al parecer ya estan pensando en el proximo juego segun se ven en las notas de actualizacion de la tienda. Tambien tiene errores en la traduccion. Por otra parte la IA es muy mala o yo soy un genio ( cosa que dudo). He jugado una campaña corta moviendo los bloques sin pensar y jugando las cartas al azar, y he ganado sin problemas. No hay que olvidar que el juego solo tiene multijugador en pantalla dividida, por lo que después de jugar una partida no se me apetece jugar mas. En la gran campaña bugueada yo iba ganando de forma muy amplia. No devuelvo el juego por que no lo compré en Steam -------------------------- I don't recommend it for a reason. The game seems very interesting for its patrons, but in the last turn of the great campaign the game gets bugued and you can't finish the game. I've reported it and they haven't answered. Apparently they are already thinking about the next game as seen in the update notes of the store. The game also has translation errors On the other hand, AI is very bad or I am a genius (which I doubt). I've played a short campaign by moving the blocks without thinking and playing cards randomly, and I've won without any problems. Do not forget that the game only has split-screen multiplayer, so after playing a game I don't feel like playing anymore. In the great campaign bugueada I was winning very widely. I don't return the game because I didn't buy it on Steam