Kero
I’ll just come out and say it. I have mixed feelings about Kero. Directly after I played it I took it out of the library and put it up for sale in the Used Game section. I never wanted to see the game again. Now, after thinking about it for a long while, and talking about it at length, I may put it back in the library, because I think it might actually be a really cool game.
Let me explain …
First of all, Kero is a two player game where you are clan leaders in a post-apocalyptic world, sending off clan members to explore new lands and compete for kerosene. The art is beautiful, the components are of good quality, but it’s the mechanisms that make this game shine. Each player has a tanker truck that has sand timer inside of it.
On your turn you roll dice Yatzee style, until you either bust getting fire on each die face or get the items you want. But the time you spend rolling your dice is spent with your sand timer. If you run out of time, you have to stop. To refill your sand timer, you have to spend items you have received, and you turn your timer over … but only for as long as it takes your opponent to roll all fire faces on their dice. I have never seen that mechanism before and it’s such a unique and cool way to limit your actions.
But this is where it went terribly wrong for me. I could not roll the dice well to save my life. Multiple turns I busted on MY FIRST ROLL, while my opponent got exactly what she wanted with time to spare. And when it came time to refill the tanker truck, she rolled all fires RIGHT AWAY and when she was filling up her tanker, she filled her sand timer before I could get all flames. It was painful. AND THEY WERE THE SAME DICE. So, it wasn’t even that my dice were weighted differently.
I got beat so bad that it wasn’t fun. Also, I yelled and cursed a lot. But the more I talk about this game, the more I want to try it again. Maybe on a day where my luck is slightly better.