Review - Cashpot

Cashpot
Published by Manik Enterprises Ltd
Designed in secret by someone who had access to stickers and a typewriter
For 2-6 players, aged 7 to adult

Every now and again, when I am searching the charity shops and car boot sales for games to add to The Vault, I will find something completely obscure that I have never heard of before. It's pretty much guaranteed that I will buy that game, regardless of the theme or apparent quality, because... Well, just because...

My wife knows this too, and that's why she picked up Cashpot in a charity shop for me. This is a game so obscure that it might not even have made it past the prototype stage. Yes, this game is of such poor quality that it almost feels like a mock-up of the final product rather than the final product itself.

To be fair, the box itself is rather nice (if a bit flimsy), and has some pretty gold lettering. It also claims that the game is "the complete family fun game." I'm not really sure what that means: Do you need a complete family to play (and what constitutes "complete")? Are they boasting that the game is complete inside the box (take note Fantasy Flight Games!)? Who knows? But as this is a game about gambling on a fruit machine, this hardly seems like the sort of thing you would want to sit down and play with your children anyway.

Cashpot - looks relatively well made, until you open the box.

Once inside the box, you are presented with a glossy one-sheet advertising the game. Seems a little redundant, but does include a little tag line stating "It's funny, exciting and sometimes frustrating as you struggle to win enough cash to try for the Jackpot." As we will soon see, only two of those adjectives are true.

The game board is probably the nicest component. It's relatively well made, nicely mounted, and colourful. Unfortunately, one look at it tells you that this game is basically a Monopoly variant. That alone, is enough to bring into question that reference to "fun" on the box cover. Another quick glance and you will also notice a lot of spaces on the board marked "lose" with a thumb pointing down. Oh dear...

The most bizarre thing about the board is that all the spaces are printed so that, from the perspective of the players sitting around the table, all the text and pictures are upside down. This makes it look like all those thumbs pointing down are actually pointing up; but don't let that fool you.

Anyone for Monopoly?

Apart from the board, the rest of the game components are a bit of a sorry state, and they really do help to give the impression that this is just a prototype of a game that was considered too evil to unleash upon mankind.

The paper money included looks like generic "fun money" that might come in a child's supermarket toy, and the IOU slips are even worse as they appear to be photocopies from a master document. The cards are also shocking: They are green slips (all slightly different sizes) with printed text that looks like it has been applied with a typewriter.

If you have a typewriter, you too can publish a board game.

With the exception of a rather unusual hexagonal dice (which is made of metal, and rather depressingly has three sides marked "lose"), the custom dice in the game are plain cubes with stickers applied. The playing pieces are simple plastic cups, also with stickers applied.

The game also comes with a six-sided spinner (because eight dice wasn't random enough), but I'll talk more about that in a minute.

The rules sheet in my copy (and yes, I mean one sheet of paper, printed front and back) is definitely just a photocopy of a document that was typed on a typewriter. It looks awful, it's badly written, and it manages to make a very simple game sound incredibly complicated.

Really? These are the rules?

Okay. Enough about the components. The strange pseudo-prototype quality of the pieces is completely irrelevant if the game is good. So what is the game about, and how do you play?

As already mentioned, this is a game that attempts to simulate the thrill and excitement of playing a fruit machine down your local boozer. It does this by working entirely on luck, with a heavy bias towards generating a result which makes you lose all your money. Here's how:

On your turn, roll four dice. The dice show different fruit symbols, and some of the symbols also have a number on them. If you throw two or more matching symbols, you have rolled a "win." If you do not roll at least two matching symbols, your turn is over. If you roll at least two matching symbols (i.e., "win"), but one of the other dice shows a "lose" result, then your turn is over.

If you manage to roll a "win," as long as none of the dice came up with a "stop" result, you can gamble to improve your score. Gambling is bad, kids; don't do it.

To gamble, pick up any dice that were not part of your "win" (i.e., did not have a matching symbol) and roll them again. Any symbols that match your "win" are added to your win; but if you roll a "lose" symbol, your turn is immediately over.

I like custom dice... Not these dice... Other dice.

If you rolled a "win" and managed to keep it, you add up the numbers on all four of the dice. This will be how far you move around the board. If you rolled a "win" but didn't roll any numbers, you still have the chance to get some money, but you can't move.

You must move the full movement value rolled, and then resolve any actions based on the space you land on (such as drawing a card, or giving money to another player). A large majority of spaces, as already mentioned, are marked "lose." If you land on a "lose" space, your turn is over AND you must pay the bank £10.

After moving, if your "win" is still going, then you get money from the bank based on the matching symbols in your "win." Refer to the chart printed on the game board, and take the correct amount of money. For example, if you rolled three bells, then you would collect £10.

Once you have collected your winnings, you have the chance to gamble again. If you choose to gamble, roll the special hexagonal dice. This could double or triple the amount you win, but as three of the six sides of the dice are marked "lose" there is a 50% chance that after all that, you will lose your bloody winnings anyway.

If, by some miracle, you manage to accumulate £100, you get to spin the awesome jackpot spinner to determine whether or not you are the winner. Yes. I am not kidding. The winner of the game is determined by spinning a six-sided spinner.

It gets worse:

Only two of the spinner's sides are marked "win." Two are marked "lose 1/2" which means you lose half your total money and play continues. However, the biggest kick in the teeth is that the remaining two sides are marked "lose." Spin that result, and you are wiped out - you go back to £0!

Spin to win (or, more often, not).

Having explained the rules, I don't think there's a lot of need for me to go into any kind of detail regarding my opinion.

This game is terrible.

You have to be so lucky to scrape together even a small amount of money (and a wise player will NEVER gamble), and even if you squirrel away your winnings £1 or £2 at a time and finally get to £100, there is a 66% chance you won't win anyway. There is a 33% chance you will be smacked in the face and sent back to £0.

This game goes on forever. It's agonising.

I feel like this wasn't so much a game, but a teaching aid for helping people to understand the evils of gambling. I haven't attempted to work out the odds, but there must be a much greater chance of finishing your turn without gaining any money than there is of winning some; and if you do win you will probably only win £1 or £2. There is no incentive to push your luck, because you will probably lose whatever little you gained; and even if you do finally get to £100, you will probably lose it all anyway.

It's worse than Monopoly.

There. I said it.

So, if that's how I feel, why am I keeping this game in my collection?

Two reasons:

I rolled this out with a group of friends after a barbecue, and as we consumed a few beers, the game came alive. Everybody kept losing. The game was dragging. As a gaming experience goes, it was one of the worst. But everyone was having a blast. We mocked each other. We groaned. We laughed. We cursed.

We actually had fun.

Sometimes, you watch a movie that is so bad it actually becomes enjoyable (as evidenced by the existence of MST3K). I think of Cashpot in much the same way. It is a terrible game. It has poor design and poor components. It is just a luck fest that drags on far longer than it should. But with the right group of people, and with a beer in hand, it is actually a fun way to spend an evening.

Would I want to play it every week? No. Of course not. But every now and again, it's okay to switch your brain off and do something mindless.

And Cashpot is truly about as mindless as it gets.

And as for the second reason why I am keeping this game: Well, I look at those components, and I have to wonder. Maybe I really am the only person in the world with a copy of this travesty. I collect out of production board games, and maybe now I also own a never-in-production board game.

I have never seen another copy of this game anywhere, and for that reason alone it has earned a place in The Vault.

So, in a strange roundabout sort of way, this is actually a positive review.

I bet you wouldn't have gambled on that.

A Public Service Announcement

After a recent visit to a charity shop where I paid just £4.99 for a mint condition copy of A Game of Thrones The Card Game by Fantasy Flight Games, I decided to push my luck and hit all the charity shops in another nearby town to see if I could have similar success elsewhere.

Deep down I knew I wasn't going to have another lucky find like my Game of Thrones score, my luck doesn't run like that; but when I went into a charity shop and saw a copy of The Pillars of the Earth, for a fleeting moment I thought I had struck gold twice in a row. Another big box board game based on an incredibly popular book, apparently complete, and priced up at just £2.99!

I had read some pretty solid reviews about The Pillars of the Earth, a worker placement style Euro game in which players attempt to contribute to the construction of a cathedral; so I grabbed that box as quickly as possible and dropped my payment without stopping to check what I had purchased. It was only once I got home that I realised my terrible mistake.

I hadn't purchased a copy of the well respected worker placement game. I had purchased a copy of The Pillars of the Earth Medieval Challenge which is, quite depressingly, a trivia game. The aim of the game is to move around the board answering questions on (a) medieval history or (b) the book on which the game is based. Correct answers will allow you to contribute to building the monastery.

Crap.

I've basically just bought a copy of Trivial Pursuit (a game I can't stand), except this is a version that only contains questions I have absolutely zero chance of answering.

So, there's a lesson to be learned there. When you are shopping, always take a moment to think about what you are doing. Take a calming breath, and make certain you know what it is you are buying.

At least the money I spent went to charity: That helps me sleep better. And it wasn't all bad, because I did find a fine condition copy of Cluedo Super Sleuth  in the same store, also for £2.99.

Everyone knows Cluedo (or Clue as it will be known to my American readers), but not so many people will know this Super Sleuth variant. It has a modular board that players build as they explore the mansion, random events that can occur when players roll the movement dice, and helpful items that can be used to solve the mystery. The game also includes three incidental characters: A butler, a dog, and a detective. And no, before you ask, the butler didn't "do it."

These characters are activated through the random events, and can be used to block areas of the board, or to force opponents to move to certain locations or discard items they are carrying.

The game is slightly chaotic as a result of the random events, and the extra items and characters; but it makes Cluedo feel slightly more like a board game and slightly less like a puzzle, which is a good thing in my book.

Best of all, the production quality for the game is through the roof, with all six player pieces and the three incidental characters being represented by beautifully cast pewter figures. Words can't really describe how nice these pieces are, so here are some pictures instead.

I think these pieces are worth the £2.99 I paid alone, and I think imaginative gamers could find lots of uses for them. Players of the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game could definitely use these pieces for investigators or NPCs.

Overall, a mixed result from my day in the charity shops, and a valuable lesson learned that I will no doubt forget the very next next time I go out.

Review - The Muppet Show

The Muppet Show
Published by Palitoy Ltd
Designed by someone who doesn't want to admit it
2-4 players, aged 8 to adult

Yes, it's time to put on make-up (or is that just me?), it's time to dress up right (actually, I'm at home in just my pants, so what?)... It's time to review another out of production board game from The Vault!

Ah, the Muppets. I have a soft spot for those fuzzy little guys. I grew up with them (and their Sesame Street colleagues), my wife has a complete set of Muppet statues in a glass display case in the study, and I never fail to watch Muppet Christmas Carol every December 24. So, of course, when I saw The Muppet Show board game in a local charity shop, I had to pick it up.

The copy I found is pretty bashed up. There is sticky tape on the corners of the box lid, and some of the components are a bit "used," but even so, I paid £4.99 because I couldn't bear to leave it on the shelf.

The cover of the box declares this to be an "hilarious, fun-packed family board game" and that right there is the first warning that this game isn't going to be that special. You know that guy in your office who wears the comedy ties and thinks he's the funniest man alive when really he is just an annoying idiot? Same rules apply here. If something describes itself as being "hilarious," what it really means is "a bit boring, and trying to hard."

But before we get into that, let's lift the lid and see what we get:

First up, you get a flimsy four-page rules sheet. One page is a cover picture, one page is a contents list, half a page contains the rules, and the remaining space is taken up with descriptions of how the different cards work. Yeah, this game isn't that complicated.

The Muppet Show rule book

As the game plays up to four people, you get four groups of player pieces. Each group comprises two Muppets (cast members) and one matching "set." So, for example, the red set comprises Dr Teeth, Animal, and a set showing the band's instruments.

If you are really that interested, the other groups are:

Green: Miss Piggy and Rowlf dressed as surgeons, with a surgery set.
Blue: Gonzo and Zoot, with an orchestra set.
Yellow: Fozzie Bear and Scooter, with a park bench set.

The cast members are made of card, with plastic stands, while the sets fold up into 3D standees and then fold flat again for storage.

The red team.

I own the Palitoys version of this game, in which movement of game pieces is determined by playing cards. As I understand it, there are other versions where movement is determined by a spinner. I think using cards is better, as it allows for at least a small amount of strategy; but I'll get to that in a minute.

So, you get a deck of 46 cards. They are thin, they are monochrome, they are boring. Don't expect any cool Muppet art here. You just get words and arrows, printed in blue. Missed opportunity. Very poor.

The final component is the best. You get a wonderfully illustrated game board depicting the stage on which the Muppets perform. The crowd comprises lots of familiar faces from the show, including Kermit (which, I guess, is why he doesn't actually exist as a playing piece in the game).

Overall, the components are what you expect for a game that was published in the 1970s: Flimsy, and not even remotely comparable to the components of a modern game. Even so, I can't help thinking there was some cost-cutting going on here. The components could have been - nay, SHOULD have been - better than this.

However, a game rises or falls on its gameplay, not its components. So, what is this game all about? Let's check the rules to see what they say:

"It's a fast moving game that captures all the humour of the show itself."

Honestly? I'm not seeing where all this hilarity and humour they keep banging on about is coming from. Really, guys. You can't just put the name of the Muppets on a box and use the word hilarious and expect the game to be fun. It doesn't work that way. Trust me.

Here's basically how the game works:

Each group of cast members starts at the back of the board next to the doors of the appropriate colour. Their matching set piece starts on the board in completely the wrong place. The aim of the game is to get both of your cast members and your set into the correct spaces at the front of the board (i.e. each cast member is standing on a space containing his or her picture, and both cast members are in front of the set, which is also on its indicated finishing space).

Detail of The Muppet Show game board

You achieve this frankly less than hilarious goal by playing a card each turn from a hand of three cards (drawing back up to three afterwards). In the version of the game with the spinner, you simply spin and do what you are told; but the version with the cards allows a small amount of strategy, as you have three cards to pick from. Most of the cards do the same bloody thing, but at least there is a bit of choice.

Hilarious cards, featuring all your favourite Muppets... Oh, wait.

The cards allow such hilarious actions as, moving a Muppet orthogonally, moving a Muppet diagonally, moving a set up or down (they can't move diagonally or sideways), moving a Muppet AND a set (stop, you're killing me), or moving (wait for it) an OPPONENT'S Muppet. There are also some "hazards" which you can play on an opponent's turn. They hilariously allow you to move a Muppet to one of three different spaces on the board (backstage, the wings, or the dressing room). Yeah. Really.

Yawn.

The strategy comes from trying to move the different playing pieces in a way that helps you and hinders your opponent. As no pieces are allowed to move through a space containing any other piece, the aim should be to trap an opponent's pieces in places where they cannot move. However, the large playing area, and the limited number of pieces on the board, mean it really is very difficult to stop an opponent from making useful moves, so you might as well just race for your own finishing spaces as quickly as possible.

Not hilarious. Not humorous. Not fun.

What else can I say? This is obviously a children's game, but even by that standard it falls short of being a "good" game. It's actually quite an interesting concept: Moving your cast and the set into place to begin the show is a neat idea, with good potential. Unfortunately, the very small deck of cards, and the limited actions you can perform, mean there is little replayabiliy and absolutely none of the humour the game seems determined to enforce. Furthermore, the shocking lack of Muppet artwork and in-jokes on the cards is a massive oversight that really damages the enjoyment of the game for fans of the characters.

It should also be noted that the game is craptacular with less than three players. With only one opponent to play hazards on, and with only a few cards in the deck to cycle through, what should be a quick game turns into a painful chore where one person moves a piece, his opponent moves it back, and then the cycle repeats. The winner will be determined entirely by luck.

Having said that, I do intend to keep my copy in The Vault. I might play it occasionally (just so I don't break my rule of only keeping games I actually play), but this one is mainly being held on to for nostalgia.

Maybe I'll just go and watch my Muppet Show DVD instead. Now, that really is hilarious.

Playing Chance With The Tape Monkeys

When I go out shopping at the weekend with my wife, I never miss an opportunity to sneak away quietly to tour the charity shops. I don't often find anything of particular interest, and I tend to see the same sorts of games turning up time and time again (such as Carol Vorderman's Sudoku, Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, or some piece of crap specially made and packaged for Marks and Spencers to stock the shelves of their "gift" section at Christmas). However, there is always a sense of excitement going into a charity shop - that sense of maybe, just maybe, just this once, if I'm lucky, maybe I will find that mint condition copy of Heroquest which still has the little flames on the candlesticks and a complete set of skulls and rats for the book cases.

Buying board games in a charity shop is really a gamble. No-one has the time to open the box and check all the components are there, and quite often you can't open the box anyway because the damned tape monkeys have been at work. For those of you who have never heard of these mythical creatures, they run around charity shops and car boot sales, using sticky tape to seal up the boxes to board games. They pretend they do it because they don't want any bits of a game to go missing, but really they are vindictive little monsters who cause more harm than good. Their overenthusiasm leads to an inability to gauge the quality of a game, and the tape they use is always the stickiest stuff they can find, which will often lead to some box damage when it is finally removed.

When I see something interesting in a charity shop that the tape monkeys have got to, I will usually buy it anyway. I figure, if I get a complete game I will be a happy man; if I get half a game, I can probably salvage a few bits, and at least I have contributed to charity. It's nice to get a warm fuzzy feeling every now and again.

Twice on my shopping excursion yesterday I was confronted by the work of the tape monkeys, and twice I took a gamble that paid off (with mixed results).

First up, I saw this little beauty sitting on a shelf: Tomb of Doom.

It was priced at £2 and looked absolutely ridiculous. Of course, I couldn't see in the box because of the monkey tape.

There were a lot of reasons to pass on the game. For a start, it is battery operated, so it was a double gamble: It might not have been complete, and it might not even have worked. It also didn't look like a game I would play, and my one rule when buying board games is that I will only buy something if I intend to play it.

Long story short: I bought the game against my better judgement.

Rather surprisingly, it is complete (except for the instructions, which aren't really necessary) and it works. It is also, as predicted, utterly ridiculous. If you stick an incorrect key in the treasure chest, the skull laughs, chatters its teeth, and rolls its eyes. Not much of a game, but probably a pretty decent Halloween decoration.

Touring the other charity shops was a complete bust, and I was about to go home when I noticed a box in the window of a charity shop I had never been in before. The logo on the box said A Game of thrones and I hurriedly went inside and snatched the box before the other guy loitering nearby got his grubby mitts on it.

Of course, I was hoping it was the board game of A Game of Thrones which was out of print for a while but was recently rereleased by Fantasy Flight Games. My hope was that someone had upgraded to the new edition, and I could score a cheapo copy. However, what I actually had in my hands was A Game of Thrones The Card Game, also by Fantasy Flight Games. This was the 2009 reissue of the game, when it was changed from a collectable card game into a "living" card game (I'm not going to get into the difference here - maybe I'll do that another time).

I had heard good things about the game, so I was no less interested (yes, I don't just collect out of production games, I also collect and play modern games, which is way my house isn't big enough). The game was sealed up with tape, so it was impossible to see what I was getting, and the price was £4.99. I took the risk and bought it.

When I got home I carefully removed the tape without causing any damage. I slowly removed the lid expecting to find a jumble of creased and battered cards, and probably an incomplete set of pieces. I didn't expect this:

That is the game board, in the original factory wrapper. "Not bad," I think. "Looks like someone has kept the game in good condition." So then I removed the board, and I find this:

That, my friends, is a full set of unpunched game counters in the original factory wrapper. Of course, by now, I am pretty pleased with myself. Looks like I have bought an unplayed copy of the game for a real bargain price. Removing the sheet of tokens confirms it, as I find four decks of cards in the original shrink wrap.

This is a red letter day! Today marks one of my best ever charity shop finds. I am absolutely delighted, and would easily have paid more than £4.99 for a game in this kind of condition. I look forward to getting this to the table and I will hopefully add a review here on my blog later on (it will appear under "Reviews" rather than "The Vault" as it is not out of production).

Overall, this was a good day. I took on the tape monkeys, and I won. I gambled, and I triumphed. Ha!

But there's always another day, and the monkeys never rest.

Advanced Space Crusade Arrives... Sort Of

When you collect out of production board games, you tend to spend a lot of time on ebay. A couple of times a day I will do random searches just to see if anything has come up within my price range (and that is, indeed, a very small range), and every couple of days I will do specific searches for games I don't have but wouldn't mind adding to the vault.

When I do those searches I tend to be looking for games that are cheap and complete. Obviously, most lots I find tend to fit into no more than one of those categories. Sometimes I get lucky, like I did with Dragon Strike (mint, unpunched copy scored for 99p) but most of the time I have to accept that I need to pay a bit more for a complete copy.

The alternative is to buy games that are not complete and then purchase the extra bits and pieces needed. I ended up buying three copies of the game Dark World in order to get a single, perfect set. Each time I bought a copy I sold off all the bits I didn't need and used that money to buy another incomplete set. This worked out incredibly cheap (in fact, I ended up with a bit of spare cash to put towards my next purchase), but it took a long time, and to be honest, I don't really like doing it.

Another example was my copy of Ghost Castle, which I bought from a charity shop. It was missing only the glow in the dark skull. I eventually sourced a skull, but it cost more than the rest of the game had cost me!

So, in most cases, I will hold my nerve and wait for complete games that are going at a reasonable price.

That said, sometimes I will take a gamble on a game that is usually expensive but is going cheap because it is obviously missing a few pieces. That is what I did with my recent acquisition of Advanced Space Crusade, a long out of production game from those lovely people at Games Workshop.

Man, I really wish they still made games like this... Okay, maybe not exactly like this. A bit like this. But better.

From what I could gather from the ebay listing and the picture, the game had none of the miniatures but it looked like all the card was there, most of it still in the original cardboard frames. It also looked like it had a few other random bits and pieces from other games. So, I took the risk. This game only comes with 15 marines and six tyranids, so I thought it would be relatively easy and inexpensive to complete the game IF everything else was complete.

The package arrived today, and when I opened it, this is what I was greeted with:

It took quite a while to sort out all the bits. There was a lot of stuff that didn't belong in the box. There were a few miniatures:

Keen eyes will spot a wizard from Warhammer Quest, some genestealers from the old genestealer sprues that Games Workshop used to sell, a metal space marine with no arms (poor chap), some horribly mutilated Slaan, and a random 15mm scale orc catapult. Genestealers are always useful, but everything else will go on ebay at some point when I have the strength.

There were lots of loose cardboard tokens, and they were a real pain to sort through:

I found quite a few bits from Space Crusade, and even some stuff from the rare Mission Dreadnought and Eldar Attack expansions. I will try to find homes for those as well - not because I am a money-grubbing S.O.B; but just because I have no use for those parts.

Possibly the biggest bonus in the box was this:

That, my friends, is a complete set of equipment and order cards from Space Crusade AND a complete set of order, equipment, exarch, and alien event cards from the Space Crusade Eldar Attack expansion. That's a pretty good find, and I am hopeful someone on ebay will take them off my hands.

Unfortunately, after I had sorted out all the cardboard components, I was not left with a complete copy of Advanced Space Crusade as I had originally hoped. I was missing a good chunk of the doors, some of the marine counters, some of the exploration counters, and a few other tokens for things such as transport cysts. On the plus side, most of the components that were there were in lovely condition (most of them have never been punched out) and rule book is almost immaculate - I have never seen such a pristine copy.

So, all in all, I guess the gamble paid off. I should be able to break even by selling off all the bits I don't want, and the bits of Advanced Space Crusade I do have are in great condition. But now I am in that situation where I have to source lots of spare bits.

Ah well, here we go again.

I just hope I don't have to buy three copies of this one...