Empire of the Dinosaurs

I rate this game an 11. It's so good it may bring world peace and cure acne.

Great game! I'm still waiting for the Barney Card ... the only card more destructive than the T-Rex. (Seriously, don't you think you need to add a Barney Card? Think of the opportunities there would be to literally shred all that purple flesh?) The great and mighty Tyrannosaur stalked off from his most recent kill, bloody purple flesh still dripping from his powerful jaws. The adrenaline pumped through his body and his eyes struggled to focus in his crazed quest for another apetizer. His tiny brain lacked the capacity to string verbs and nounds together to form sentences, or even to know what verbs or nouns in fact were. But he knew he wanted another tasty purple snack...a soft, helpless dinasaur-like creature that sang a pleasant little tune and danced like a pfairy before his spine was snapped in two by the Tyrannosaur's mighty chomp. Alas, although the angry creature roamed the continent from swamp to shining swamp for the rest of his days, it would be another 60 million years before the world would degenerate sufficiently to produce another Barnyosaur.

Played this game at the Prototype Showcase at the 2017 Geekway to the West in St. Louis, and absolutely loved it. Great concept which always leaves you with plenty of options. Includes a solid balance of deck building, card enhancement, board/ability upgrading, and combat. Certainly a strong learning curve with lots of moving parts, but it plays brilliantly and was a ton of fun. Really hoping this one makes it to market--I'd love to play again!

Overall a good game. Definitely would take a few plays to figure out the right strategies to win. But player turns are fairly easy to learn.

Hard to say that's a fair rating as I only received a walkthrough rather than getting to play a full game... but I think my rating would be more likely to go up than down.

I am a fan of games where cards get used for multiple things and the balance between needing to get dinosaurs on the table vs power them with cards in your hand seemed really interesting to play with. I also liked how your dinosaurs form a tableau of sorts, but one that you'll be dismantling for points over the course of the game (and your opponent will be dismantling as well when he eats your creatures). Balancing long term combos with turning in your dinos to score points and protecting your combos so your opponent doesn't score off them seems pretty unique. It does seem like this would be great fun with more than two players, but how carnivores attacking prey species works would have to be reworked quite a bit...

Really a neat concept that is well realized in the cards. I'd love to track down Aaron for a full playthrough sometime!