Thursday, August 26, 2010

LEGO Minotarus

I don't talk much about board games here.  Nothing against them, they are just not something I talk a lot about, but I would hazard a guess and say that a full half of my game room shelf space is devoted to board games.  My kids and wife love them and it is something we can all do together.

So if you were at Gen Con this year you saw the LEGO booth.  And if you saw it then like me I am sure you looked at their new board games, Minotaurus, Rames Pyramid, and Lava Dragon.  I am sure that LEGO is still kicking themselves for not bringing product to sell, because they would have raked in the bucks.

We went to our local LEGO store and picked up Lava Dragon and Minotaurus.  The salesman mentioned that they had been selling out of them over the last three weeks and couldn't keep them in stock.


Well I can see why.

We got the games home and my LEGO loving son wanted to build them right away.   That is part of the appeal of these games over say most board games.  You have to build everything first.
It was easy for him (he regularly builds the big Star Wars LEGO sets, so something under a 100 pieces is nothing) and we all sat down.

The rules are simple.  Roll a die, move your pawns.  Try to get to the center of the maze and don't get hit by the Minotaur.  Oh, and you have to build the die too.  On some rolls you can move the Minotaur to send a pawn back to "home" or move a wall to block an opponent.  The game move quick and I can see how it will be a little different each time.  The rule book also comes with some suggested "house rules" like more or less powerful Minotaurs, the ability to jump over some walls and how many pawns you need to get in to win.

In truth this game reminded me of the old Mattel "Electronic Dungeons & Dragons" game from the dawn of the D&D age.

If LEGO is moving into the board game world then I think they are going to do very, very well.  For the RPG crowd this game is nice little diversion and I am sure it will not be long before there are house rules about how the pawns can attack the Minotaur and even rules separating the three pawns each into "classes".  Maybe that is too much, but I can see ways to do it now and certainly someone else will too.

Anyway, see more here.  http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?p=3841&cn=595&d=70

7 comments:

  1. I saw these recently in a Target store on an endcap.

    It is very, very hard to resist buying these sets.

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  2. These are toys that make me say, "why didn't we have this shit when I was a kid..." I think these are great! Especially the minotaur set.

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  3. I just saw these yesterday. My immediate thought was that the dice could easily be reconfigurable Just hope Lego release the dice base and blank face inserts to allow customizable dice.

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  4. My son has Minotarus and Monster 4. They're fun. Of course, my little boy is all about Lego's.

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  5. My son has Ramses Pyramid (which seems a little unnecessarily complicated but is an awesome set) and Monster 4 (really simple set up but deceptively challenging with the rules variations.....) both are fun!

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  6. I think my youngest would like this a lot.

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