I love boba. Growing up in Los Angeles with predominantly Asian friends, we didn’t say, let’s get coffee. Nope, instead we’d say, let’s get boba, also known as bubble tea in other parts of the world. For the unfamiliar, boba are marble-sized tapioca balls that you can order in a drink, drinks such as milk teas and slushies, in all sorts of flavors as well as other add-on toppings. My personal favorite is taro milk tea with boba. So yummy!
So you can imagine my excitement when I found out that Renegade Game Studios has a new game called Bubble Tea, another real-time game by Aza Chen, complete with the adorable animal artwork that he’s also known for. He’s also the designer of one of my favorite games of 2017, Shiba Inu House.
Bubble Tea is all about making boba drinks! At left is a taro milk tea with boba at Milk Run, one of my favorite drink cafes in the Phoenix area.
Coming out in July, Bubble Tea is a 20-minute game for 1-5 players. The game comes with wooden dice, Customer cards, Tea Base cards, Moji Moji cards (which are these transparent square tiles for layering ingredients), and a drink shaker! Just like when you order boba and they mix up your drink at the cafe, so will you, except with dice that feature drink ingredients drawn as cute animal characters. Characters such as the Milk Tea Cow, the Green Tea Frog, the Tapioca Dog, and the Taro Ball Bear.
Oh. My. Goodness! These cards are just so freaking cute! And I see the cute doggo from Shiba Inu House.
Bubble Tea is actually two games in one, which was a pleasant surprise! In both games, players are trying to craft the best drinks the fastest and get the most victory points. The first game actually involves shaking up the dice in the drink shaker. The current player places the dice inside the shaker and shakes them up. They flip over the shaker, the dice land on the table and then everyone yells, “1, 2, 3, Go!” to start.
Simultaneously, players are trying to match the tea base and ingredients shown on the dice by arranging and stacking the Moji Moji cards on their Tea Base card. This is trickier than it sounds because the nine Moji Moji cards that each player has are all unique, with different ingredients situated in various squares. The Tea Base cards are gridded, so you’ll have to arrange the transparent cards on top of each other in varying orientations, while following the grid on the Tea Base card, to match the dice that have just been tossed out of the shaker.
Players quickly stack and place their transparent Moji Moji cards to match the dice shown.
When a player finishes their drink, they take the shaker lid and cover the dice. Players check to see if they made the drink correctly, and if they did, they gain a Customer card. If that player didn’t make the drink correctly, they lose a Customer card and the other players continue playing. The game ends when a player gets three Customer cards.
For the second game, players are again simultaneously competing, this time to complete their Customer cards and gain victory points. In this game, you don’t need the dice, just the shaker, which will sit in the middle of the table. Each player draws 5 Customer cards and place one card of their choice face down in front of them. When everyone is ready, they all say, “1, 2, 3, Go!” and flip over their chosen card. Just like in Game #1, players must arrange their transparent Moji Moji cards onto the correct Tea Base card, according to what their Customer card is asking for.
If a player is first to complete their drink by placing their Moji Moji cards to match the ingredients on the Customer card, they receive the VPs on the back of the card.
The player to finish their drink first grabs the shaker. Game play stops, and they check the player’s card to see if they have the right number and type of ingredients in their drink as well as the correct Tea Base card used. If they did, they flip over the Customer card for VPs. The harder the drink, the more VPs it’s worth. If the player incorrectly created their drink, the round continues until someone correctly makes their drink.
At the end of the round, everyone passes the leftover cards from their hand to the player on the left. This game ends after five rounds, when there are no more cards to pass. The player with the most points wins the game.
Bubble Tea is just so adorable, and it comes with its own shaker!
Bubble Tea is so fun, and I just love, love, love the theme! Seeing a mainstream board game company create a game about a possibly niche food theme — but one that’s been a major part of my life — just warms my heart.
Bubble Tea is perfect to bust out with your friends at the boba cafe or when you need a quick filler for up to five people. The artwork is colorful and adorable, and having an actual shaker is just super duper cool, even if the dice can be a little bit loud when you’re tossing them around. But it doesn’t matter, because that action is such a small part of one game, and more often than not, you’re just frantically working to place that Sugar Monkey in that one sweet spot on your Tea Base card.
Thanks Renegade Game Studios for sending me a copy of this game!
A few months ago, I started seeing a lot of buzz online about Tiny Towns, a new game from AEG. It wasn’t until recently that I got a chance to play it, and, what can I say, this game is delightful. If I’m being honest, I initially dismissed it because it seemed too light for my group, but after playing it multiple times, I discovered it’s a great crunchy, puzzly short game.
I’ve had so much fun every time I’ve played Tiny Towns.
In Tiny Towns, each player gets a 4×4 cardboard grid in which you’re building out your little town. Each square can hold exactly one resource or building. On your turn, you become the Master Builder — yes, there’s a cute little hammer included in the game — and you choose one of the resources: wood, wheat, brick, glass or stone. Then, everyone grabs that resource to place in their town to place on a square that’s empty. After everyone places their cube, they have the option to build any of the buildings in play for your game.
There are seven buildings in play every game. One building is always the Cottage, and, for the other six, players randomly select one card from four of that type to use. Players also receive two monument cards, and they keep one of them to potentially score in the game.
Tiny Towns comes with a lot of wooden buildings and cubes, and one hammer. The pink building is your monument, and everyone only gets one of those pieces.
Each building has resource and spatial requirements that must be fulfilled, and if a player has laid out their resources in the exact pattern on their grid, they can remove those resources and place that building on any of the spaces those resources occupied. After everyone builds (or not), the hammer moves to the left, and the next player starts their turn.
The game feels like a mix of Patchwork and Bingo (and I mean that in the most positive way because I love Bingo!). You’re anxiously awaiting the caller and hoping they pick the resource you need so you can place it in a beneficial location. Or you hope that you can place a resource you don’t need at the moment in a space that won’t mess you up too badly.
In each game, the Cottage is always in play, and then one random card from all the other types. Each card indicates what resources and pattern you need to build it, and what the building’s benefits are.
Game play continues until everyone fills up their grid, either with buildings or resources. There’s player elimination, but the entire game isn’t very long so it’s not a big deal if you’re eliminated early. When everyone is done, you remove all the unspent resources on your grid, and any unused space is -1 point. Players then calculate their VPs based on the building’s benefits.
Tiny Towns, which plays in 45-60 minutes, is for 1-6 players, which is great, as I’m always on the lookout for solid games that satisfy large player counts. And the best part, it keeps all the players engaged throughout the game — at least until they’re eliminated.
I’m the Captain … oh wait, the Master Builder. Isn’t this hammer so cute?
The game also offers opportunities to be a just a teeny bit mean, as you can pick to see which resources your neighbors are waiting for, and then select something else. There were more than a few moments during our games when someone would yell, “Why did you pick that??” The one complaint I’ve encountered so far was that you were at the mercy of the Master Builder’s selection, which, to me, adds to the puzzle of the game. You have to be flexible in placing resources but also deal with unwanted cubes.
You also don’t want to build in a way where you’ll trap yourself in a corner, unable to clear cubes for a future building. It’s the perfect mix of resource gathering and pattern building. When you plan and place your buildings perfectly, it’s so very satisfying. But more often than not, you’re staring at your 4×4 grid saying, “Gah, poor choices were made!”
Have you played Tiny Towns? What are some of your favorite crunchy short games?
This review of Teotihuacan was featured on Episode 60 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Dragon Castle, Blue Lagoon, Iron Dragon and Circle the Wagons.
What was the most complicated game that came out in 2018? I actually don’t know the answer to that question. But I can tell you which game was most complicated to say for a lot of people, so much so that there were video tutorials on its pronunciation. I grew up in LA and was surrounded by all types of languages. So seeing and saying a word like Teotihuacan comes pretty naturally to me. But in case you needed a tutorial, the word is luckily spelled exactly how it sounds, which isn’t always the case with Aztec words.
This average-sized box comes with an insane amount of components, which makes each game unique.
Teotihuacan: City of Gods was published in 2018 by NSKN Games. It’s designed by Daniele Tascini, who has also published The Voyages of Marco Polo, Council of Four and one of my absolute all-time favorites, Tzolk’in.
In Teotihuacan, which plays in about 90-120 minutes, players play as powerful noble families trying to achieve everlasting glory while planning the construction of the pyramid. In its essence, the game is a giant rondel, with, when completed, a gorgeous pyramid sitting in the middle.
The board is incredibly busy, which is a detriment to the game. People see that beautiful pyramid and then slowly back away when there’s a million things they seemingly have to decipher on the board.
I’m here to tell you to come on back and don’t be freaked out by board!
This board is way to busy, which can make the game more daunting than it is.
There are 8 action boards on the entire board. Instead of worker meeples players use dice to represent their workers, and the pips on the dice indicate which power level that worker is at. On a player’s turn, they can take a normal turn by advancing one of their dice 1, 2 or 3 action spaces in a clockwise direction.
After moving that worker, that player must perform one of three possible actions on the action board they’ve landed on. They can either collect cocoa, worship or perform a main action.
Cocoa is needed to enter an action space where there are other dice present and if you want to take a main action. To collect cocoa, you count the number of different colored workers already present on the action space, and you receive that number of cocoa plus 1.
If you decide to take a main action on an action board, you must pay cocoa equal to the number of different colored dice on that action location already there. Each action board has a different main action.
Three of the action boards are locations where you receive resources to build houses and/or pyramids. Those resources are wood, gold and stone. When you land on an action board, how strong your worker dice is determines how much you’re receiving. Also, when you land on a location that already has your dice, you’ll also receive more resources because your workers are more powerful there.
Another action board allows you to pay gold in order to receive a technology or benefit for the entire game. If you have two dice there, or you enter the location with a 4- or 5-level dice, you can pay gold for higher-level technologies. Many of these technologies will trigger when you activate a certain action board.
Even though there are a lot of dice on the board, this is by no means a dice game.
Another action board allows you to use wood to build buildings. The earlier you build these, the more victory points you’ll score, but the houses are relocated from Building Row on the Main Board, which comes to play during the scoring round.
The last two Action boards deal with the pyramid, either selecting decoration tiles that sit on steps of the pyramid, or building the pyramid itself with resources you’ve collected. The pyramid tiles are study square mah-jong-type tiles and are just delightful to play with. Taking either one of these actions moves you along the pyramid track.
Now instead of performing a main action, you can always worship. When you worship, you enter an action board’s worship space and claim a discovery tile, which are benefits or masks for end-of-round set collection victory points, or you can go up a temple track. If you want to do both things, you’ll have to pay with cocoa. There are three temple tracks in the game, from which you can receive more benefits or masks as you advance on them. When your worker worships, that dice is locked until you pay to free them on a future action or until someone pays cocoa to bump you off if they want to worship as well. Also, during your turn, you can unlock all your dice for free, but that’s all you do on your turn.
After performing a main action, at least one die will level up. This is how you get more powerful workers that move around the board. Once you hit level 6, you ascend. You then advance your marker one step on the Avenue of the Dead and select a reward on the Ascension wheel, which includes unlocking a level 3 dice for the board. Your die that ascended then starts at Level 1 again and at the Palace Action Board. When a player ascends, they advance the white disc on the Calendar Track.
Tracks galore in Teotihuacan, whether you’re going up the pyramid track or one of the temples shown here.
The calendar track controls the pacing of the game. A normal round consists of everyone taking their turn, and then advancing the white disc. When the white disc reaches the black disc, an eclipse is triggered. Players gets VPs for their step on the Avenue of the Dead (which is multiplied by the lowest visible number on the Building Row on the main board), and for their step on the Pyramid track (which is multiplied by 4, 3 or 2 points depending on if it’s the first, second or third eclipse.) The player farthest along the pyramid track also gets 4 points, and the pyramid track is reset for the next phase.
Players also get points for collecting sets of masks and each player must pay 1 cocoa for each of their worker that’s a level 1 to 3, and 2 cocoa for their level 4 and 5 workers. The game continues for three eclipses, with fewer rounds each eclipses to trigger end-of-round scoring, and the person with the most victory points wins the game.
Some have said Teotihuacan is a re-skin of Tzolk’in. The time mechanism and sheer genius of Tzolk’in is unmatched, even by Teotihuacan. I feel like Teotihuacan is more forgiving, whereas Tzolk’in is straight up mean, which I love. You can always enter a space in Teotihuacan; what you receive or action you take is determined by whether you have enough cocoa.
Look at our glorious pyramid! But that also means that the game is suddenly over.
But Teotihuacan is still a solid game and worthy of its predecessor. The beauty of this game is managing your workers around the rondel as well as the timing of when to level them up. I enjoy the variability of each play. The game comes with a lot of components, from the cool pyramid tiles to a bunch of sturdy cardboard tiles. I just wish the board wasn’t so busy with unnecessary artwork.
And that’s Teotihuacan! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as Meeple Lady, or on my website boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!
This review of Escape Plan was featured on Episode 59 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Monopoly Deal, Village, Ticket to Ride: New York and Piepmatz.
We’ve all watched countless heist films. A group of skilled individuals lay out a plan, execute said plan and grab the loot. And then what’s the saying? The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
Well, then shoot, Plan B. Hide the loot and lay low – for now.
But now the time is up, and we’ve all got to grab our hidden loot and get out of the city.
Welcome to Escape Plan, the latest game designed from Vital Lacerda, with artwork from Ian O’Toole, published by Eagle-Gryphon Games in 2019. Escape Plan picks up right this moment of the heist narrative: players have three days to evade the cops, get their money and get the heck out of the town.
Escape Plan, published in 2019, is Vital Lacerda’s latest game.
Lacerda himself has said that he just adores movies and is constantly inspired by them when designing board games. And Escape Plan manages to capture the tenseness of those heist films we’re so familiar with, all the while figuring out the game’s puzzly inteconnectivity that is a signature of Lacerda’s board games.
Each day has six phases: players get their income, the police start to close the exits, the city gets revealed, change turn order, player take their turns, and then prepare for the next day. At the start of the game, you don’t know which one of the three exits is the correct one, and you also don’t get to see where different locations are on the board because the city hasn’t completely been built out yet.
I really enjoy this aspect of the game because it forces you to make decisions with the new information and locations presented to you at the start of each day.
On your turn, you either move or rest. That’s it. Simple, right? But wait, it’s a Lacerda game! When you do a move action, you move 1-3 spaces on the board, try and avoid the police, and visit a location. The most common locations to visit are businesses and safehouses, where you can either collect end-game VPs or up-front cash to help you with your getaway.
Eachh player gets their own board, which tracks their income and has spaces to hold their contact cards, asset and equipment tiles.
Each player receives a different escape plan and a player board, which holds asset and equipment tiles, and contact cards, as well as tracks your income, wounds and executive actions, which are free or paid actions you can take during your turn at any time. The more of certain actions you complete, the more locations on your player board unlock, thus increasing your capacity to hold all these various items.
Your income goes down goes the more locations you visit, as you drop off a cube from your player board to indicate you’ve done an action there.
There are also various locations on the board that assist with movement (the subway stop and helipad), the convenience store (where you can purchase equipment to evade the police or you can raid lockers for money if you have a key), and the clinic and hospital (where you can heal your wounds.) There’s also the chapel where you can decrease your notoriety.
Notoriety is a huge element of the game. Doing just about anything will increase/decrease your notoriety, which re-calculates after every single action round. Notoriety is a track that allows you possibly get more money at the lockers and unlock asset tiles, but it essentially puts a target on our back because when you cross certain thresholds on the notoriety track, all the other players will move the police toward you. And that’s not good in this game.
Notorious!! Having the most notoriety is good and bad, but probably mostly bad.
Also not good is getting caught by the police. When you enter a hex with police on it, nothing happens. But when you leave that hex, you will get wounds.
Players can also employ biker gangs to help evade the police or reduce notoriety as an executive action.
Lastly, if you decide not to move on your turn, you can rest. Resting means you flip back your contact cards and equipment tiles on your board, as well as the First Aid tile. Those items are now all available again. And you can only rest once per day, a total of three times in the entire game. But since you have so few actions, I wouldn’t advise taking this action unless you absolutely have to.
The game does an excellent job of making you feel the weight and pressure of being hunted. There are so few actions in the game, about 12-15 actions total, that every single step has such huge effects on the game.
You’re constantly looking over your shoulder and wondering if another player’s actions will send the police over in your direction.
Everyone starts at the center of the board, but the city isn’t built out yet.
Do you risk looking for more loot or just run over to the exit as soon as you can? Well, if you delay, once someone exits, each action will cost each player one more dollar, and depending on when you exit, that costs more as well. The first person to exit pays nothing.
If you don’t exit the game, you’re just out of contention from even potentially winning the game. For those who escaped, they count their cash in hand and money they’ve collected from visiting locations, and the person with the most money wins the game.
The game board is double sided and scales differently for player counts. For fans of Kanban, the character of Sandra shows up in Escape Plan and is the automa for the 1-player game. I just realized that Sandra is Lacerda’s wife’s name, and that made me chuckle. Cool beans, I think.
A sampling of the contact cards and equipment tiles. And some gas cans when you really need to hoof it through the city.
Overall, I just love this game, and probably his lightest to date, but, and that’s a big but, it’s still a Lacerda game, which means it’s still a heavy game and there are a lot of rules to remember. The rulebook is written well and clear and the iconography is great, so it’s just a matter of if you want to invest time in learning this game, which plays in about 60-120 minutes.
The first time I played this game, it was over in about 90 minutes, and it felt really short for one of his games. But the more times I played this game, the richer game play has become. The game shines when people are actively trying to send the police over to your opponent’s neck of the woods when the options are there for placement.
The theme for Escape Plan works well for the mechanisms, and because of that, it seems more intuitive and easier to pick up than his other games. I also love the variability of each game because the board will be built out differently each time.
And that’s Escape Plan! Thanks, Eagle-Gryphon Games, for giving me a copy of this game. This is Meeple Lady for the Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as meeplelady. Or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!
Arizona Game Fair took place recently at the Mesa Convention Center, and I can’t even begin to tell you how awesome the convention was! Now in its third year, the con had over 1,200 attendees. That’s pretty fantastic! Convention founder Andrew Long said the first year had over 300 gamers and the second had 785. I am constantly in awe at how wonderful the Arizona gaming community is.
The convention was one I had been excited about for many, many months. For starters, I never thought I’d ever in a million years meet the designer of one of my absolute favorite games, Lisboa: Vital Lacerda himself! I mean, dude is from Portugal and attends a lot of overseas conventions, which I obviously don’t attend. And they say never meet your heroes because they’re sure to disappoint, but, my friends, I was not disappointed at all. Lacerda is passionate about gaming, friendly, humble and just lovely to be around. He is all about making sure gamers have a good time playing his heavy, intricate games.
It was so freaking hard not to fangirl scream every two seconds when Vital Lacerda was teaching his game. You should all be proud of me, folks!
I arrived Friday afternoon at the convention after working a half day, and I had scheduled a game at 3 p.m. with Chris, Julie, Ken and me to learn On Mars, Lacerda’s upcoming game.
Here we are playing it cool as Vital Lacerda teaches us On Mars.
On Mars is by far his heaviest game, in which astronauts are trying to settle the red planet. This game is nothing like Terraforming Mars, other than the location of the game. Players are collecting resources to explore Mars, build buildings, improve their technologies and gathering scientists. There’s an added element of moving back and forth between the space station and on Mars – for free on the rocket ship that moves as the game progresses or using one of your ships, which can be expensive – which then enables you to take any action on that side of the board. The actions in itself are not hard; the challenge is figuring out how to make your actions work together, in a puzzly interconnectivity that is Lacerda’s signature style. I cannot wait for this game to come out!
I naturally had to bring out the giant tweezers for On Mars. I am so excited for this game!
Chris and I then ordered some Vital LaCider from @CiderCorp and attended a Q&A on Lacerda, with the wonderful special guest Suzanne hosting the panel. She asked some really cool questions about what it’s like to be a game designer all the way to what his favorite pie is. My favorite part of the conversation was when Lacerda said that he’s always learning about new stuff about designing games and that he doesn’t feel like a game designer completely yet. I beg to differ, sir!
I live-tweeted some of the conversation. You can read the whole thread below:
After the panel, there was a Hungry Hungry Hippos tournament. My blue hippo was defective, and I got knocked out in the first round. I did not win one of these cool meeple trophies. Womp womp.
Everyone’s getting ready to chomp down some marbles!
There were plenty of tournaments at all game levels happening throughout the convention, as well as a contest for miniatures painting.
Here’s Andrew, Lord of the Board, sitting with some of the cool meeple trophies for the tournaments.
On Saturday, Chris and I hit the ground running with a 6-player game of Flamme Rouge. These guys placed some chocolate eggs on the track so that we passed them, we got a candy treat.
Benjamin and Steve both run g3gamenight in the northwest Valley, while Scott and Mike live down in Tucson.
In Flamme Rouge, players simultaneously draw four cards and pick one to play for both of their cyclists, their Rouleur and Sprinteur, and you go through the course dealing with inclines and other areas, while utilizing slipstream and avoiding exhaustion if you’re in the front of the pack. I started out strong, but my cyclists lost steam halfway through the game. Super fun!
Flamme Rouge is a fun simultaneous-card-selection and deckbuildng game!
Next up, we played Imhotep. My buddy Mark loves to 3D print things to deluxify his games, and it was really satisfying dropping cubes into these structures. He found these files on Thingiverse.
These structures hold all the giant cubes. I probably should’ve taken a better photo from the side so you can see how they all stack up. Next time!
I then taught a game of Teotihuacan, which meant I busted out my giant tweezers. I’ve taught this game a few times, and I finally feel like I got the hang of this teaching this beast. We ended the game by building the pyramid, and Chris nearly lapped all of us. The worst.
We finished our pyramid, which ended the game a few rounds early.
We then played a quick game of Catch the Moon, which is always a hit with gamers!
Catch the Moon is another great filler that always looks great on table.
Afterwards, I joined 10-player game of Welcome To. I’m pretty bad at this game, but it was still fun to game with all these cool peeps.
My Welcome To neighborhood wasn’t well developed. People trigger those objectives so fast!
Chris and I got asked on Friday to take some photos in costume for a live game on Saturday of The Usual Suspects, hosted by the Game State Show. The suspects’ photos were all lined up in the hallway after their show. Who looks the most suspicious and is guilty? Indeed it is not I.
Look at all these suspicious people! I do love having giant mugshots at home now.
I then took a break to get ready for one of my favorite things to do at a convention: run a ginormous game of Sidereal Confluence. I was able to gather 9 players for this game, which uses ALL THE ALIEN FACTIONS. I had never run a game this large before, but luckily, a few had played it before I had some help in answering questions. There’s a trajectory at the start of the game where I start explaining the rules and then I get a lot of puzzled looks about this game, which makes me worry that I’ve accidentally dragged folks into a 2-hour grudge match, but then once the first round gets underway, things start sorta clicking and people embrace the absurdity of the game, and we just all start yelling at each other for cubes.
Here are all nine players for Sidereal Confluence. Everyone is still pretty relaxed since we haven’t started yet, except GloryHoundd and me, who are already uber excited.
Luckily, we were seated in the far end of the convention floor, as we were all pretty loud, and lots of folks stopped by to see what the game was all about. And they’d see me standing with giant tweezers in hand counting down which players can take a colony they’ve successfully bid on. One person said it sounded like a craps table was happening on the convention floor. That is exactly what it look like – yelling, people throwing cubes, and hands going everywhere on a giant table with a million cards on it.
This game by Peer Sylvester is a neat twist on trick taking. I wish it was widely available!
On Sunday, we began the day playing Passing Through Petra, which is a neat puzzly tile/trading game from J. Alex Kevern, who has designed crunchy one-hour games like Gold West and Sentient. Traders travel on a caravan through the desert, and you can welcome various traders into your market and facilitate trade with people who have the goods they want. But filling your market happens in a specific order, so timing your market with the appropriate tiles at the right time for maximum trades is just delightful. I just wish the caravan on the board wasn’t so fiddly though.
I enjoyed the puzzly aspect of Passing Through Petra but not the fiddly caravan mechanism.
I then taught a game of Mexica, which is always a hit with people and has such table presence that people stop by to take a look at the game.
I love how Mexica gets all kinds of mean!
I ended Arizona Game Fair chilling with Kevin Russ and Suzanne, and we played a first games. First up was Krass Kariert.
Chris, Kevin, Suzanne and I all hung out until it was about closing time on Sunday.
Krass Kariert is a quick fun card game in which you’re trying to beat what’s already played, through a simple hierarchy of singles, pairs, runs and triples. But you cannot rearrange your cards! If you need to play a pair, they have to be sitting next to each other. But as you pull cards from your hand, naturally, the gap closes, and you can find new combinations with the cards remaining. Super fun!
Krass Kariert is a fun quick card game from Amigo where everyone wins except the last player to clear their cards.
We of course played some roll-and-writes, too! I did spectacularly horrible in Metro X, but won Cartographer! Suzanne said there’s a bunch of roll-and-writes out there, and it’s all a matter of finding one that you resonate with. I guess I do better with placing tetris tiles and completing objective ones than filling numbers on subway routes.
Cartographer is a puzzle style roll-and-write set in the Roll Player world. It has four objectives for each game, with two scoring during each of the four seasons.
Lastly, there was a special tribute at the entrance for my buddy Tom Wells who had passed away recently at an all-too-young age of 50. I had fond memories playing Arkwright and The Colonists with him in previous conventions, as well as gaming with him on the occasional Saturday morning. His badge was hanging up all weekend.
We’ll miss you, Tom. I still can’t believe you’re gone.
And just like that, three games of gaming came and went. The chill atmosphere, friendly volunteers and wide open space made the convention a pleasure to attend. There were also vendors there such as Eagle-Gryphon Games and Gamelyn Games, as well as wood workers and artists. The convention also had a designated women’s space, which is pretty fantastic, and a separate area for RPGs. There was plenty to do for all the different types of gamers!
There was a lovely space for female gamers who were more comfortable away from the main convention floor, and lots of games scheduled in the space, too.
Thanks again Arizona Game Fair for having me as a guest. I can’t wait to see what’s in store next year. And folks, save the date for next year’s convention: March 20-22, 2020. Hope to see here! We’ve got sunny skies, perfect for outside gaming, and giant cactus!
Chris and I visited the Desert Botanical Gardens after the convention. Fun times!
I initially was unsure if I was going to be able to attend the inaugural Dice Tower West convention due to the impending birth of my niece, but when I found out she wasn’t going to make an appearance until after the convention, I decided to make a quick stop to Las Vegas.
I arrived just after midnight on Thursday night, enough to basically head over to the Westgate Resort (the former Hilton on the north side of the Strip for those familiar with Vegas) and go to bed so that I could hit the ground running that morning. I had a list of four games I wanted to play, and ended up playing three of them, so I was pleased with myself. They were Captains of the Gulf, Wingspan, Forum Trajanum and Passing Through Petra.
Ran into Suzanne and Mandi of the Dice Tower first thing on Friday morning. These ladies are truly inspirational and bring so much to the hobby.
I checked in Friday morning and received a super cool swag bag with the Dice Tower West logo on it. Inside was a free game, a Dice Tower Pin and Dice Tower dice. I also liked that the lanyards were of the thick variety, so that I could decorate it with my Meeple Lady pin as well as all the cool flair I’ve collected from various conventions. Dice Tower West had a decent library, and I particularly enjoyed the section on the convention floor that featured large games like Giant Azul!
Squeee! Look at this Giant Azul! You definitely will not mistake the pieces for Starbursts.
My first game of the day was Captains of the Gulf. @boardgamegeekCA taught me this game, designed by @jasondingr and on my list of to-play games, which is about fishing in the Gulf. The game has multi-use cards and a rondel for actions, which can affect the pacing of game. It has a very Glory To Rome feel to it, where the strength of your actions are based on various upgrades or licenses you have on your fishing boat. And man, overfishing the Gulf has some negative consequences, which made our game resource poor toward the second half. And as I’ve mentioned before, I love how Jason designed this game in honor of his grandfather who was a fisherman in the Gulf. Had a great time playing this!
I was so happy I got a chance to play Captains of the Gulf!
Next up was a bird-themed card game that was surprisingly a little mathy: Piepmatz. @Nettersplays taught this game, in which you’re trying to match sets of birds and collect the most seeds from the bird feeder.
It’s me and the lovely @Nettersplays!
Sounds simple, right? Well, you have to play stronger birds than what’s displayed in the main tableau, which then you’ll receive into your personal tableau the bird you just knocked out, all the while avoiding squirrels and crows. Nobody likes these guys because they will take your cards! The mathy part comes from playing certain cards to overtake the birds in the middle tableau while avoiding the predators.
Piedmatz is not the only bird-themed game I played this at this convention.
I then played a game of Push, which is a fun, quick push-your-luck game that I regret not picking up at BGG Con last year when it was offered as convention swag. I do love push-your-luck games and egging others on by saying, what’s the worst that can happen? Well, you can lose all your points in one particular color! You keep drawing cards and placing them however you want into three columns, with none of the same color or number in each column. If you can’t place a card, you bust. If you don’t bust, you can pick up one of the columns for points, and the next player takes the second column, and so forth. There’s also a card that forces you to roll a color-sided die, and if that color pops up, you lose your entire stash in that color.
Push is a fun push-your-luck card game that anyone can play. It’s a much better Uno.
I then played The Estates. Played it for the first time back at BGG Con, and I most enjoy screwing people over in the game! It’s super cut-throat bidding on blocks, developing the streets and building high-rises.
The bidding in The Estates is so tense and brutal!
Next up was Obsession: Pride, Intrigue and Prejudice set in Victorian England, a deck-builder and worker management game, which was super neat. This particular theme is usually reserved for lighter games and/or card games, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a substantial game set in this era, which, if we’re splitting hairs, the Jane Austen books were actually set in the Regency era, but I digress. I had never heard of this game before so I was happy that @erykmynn taught it to me!
These dapper dudes would probably be fun at your party!
You build your deck of fancy ladies and gents, and sometimes the occasional selfish cad who will just ruin your parties! Each turn, you choose to host an event and play the matching cards from your deck and worker meeples to activate the location and/or the cards, and gain resources. The cool thing about this game is that in addition to managing your deck, you’re also managing your worker meeples as they rest up one round until they’re available again. Unless you spend your turn and reset, in which case, all your cards and workers are available again.
These workers are so exhausted from working your events that they need to rest for one round.
After dinner, which we then discovered our hotel rooms varied WILDLY, we hung out in our friend’s room, which had THREE BATHROOMS. Oh, and a pool table, vintage Playball pinball machine and decor that immediately sends you back to your grandma’s basement.
In case you were wondering what it was like to party in the 1970s.
We played a quick game of Push, and then we launched into my favorite game of the whole convention: Wingspan. Oh. My. Goodness. This game is so darling! It’s a lighter game than I usually would bring to a table, but man, HAVE YOU SEEN THESE EGGS? it’s a chill, short engine builder with gorgeous artwork, and I’m so happy that Netters taught this game to me.
Wingspan is just darling. I can’t wait until I get my copy!
The game plays over four rounds, with objectives that’ll score each round, and you use your allotted set of action cubes to play bird cards on different terrains, collect resources, lay eggs or gain more cards. As you build out on you tableau, when you activate that row next time, you’ll get to activate each card that’s already placed in that row. Bird cards come in various VPs and abilities, and the whole game is just delightful to play.
I love the scientific look of the cards, especially with all the information on these birds.
Next up, I played Mayday! Mayday! It’s a 45-minute drawn-out hidden-role in which good and evil players are trying to make their way into an airplane cockpit. The first group will take 4, and then it gets whittled down to 2, and then one last vote. Each player has three cards, and if you have more broken hearts than whole hearts, you’re a bad guy. I pretty much laid low the entire time and refused entry anyone because I was suspicious with everyone! And guess what? Us baddies won. Woot!
GloryHoundd, Dr. GloryHogg and I are the best cylons ever.
After that, I entered exactly one round of Just Two, a variation that @whatseplaying created using two sets of the game Just One. Instead of writing clues for one word, there’s two words in play, and the rest of the folks just get to pick whichever one they want to give a clue to. Per the usual rules, when two clues match, they’re discarded, and the guesses has a chance to look at the leftover clues. Epic, especially when the guesser picked the correct two words!
We all then went grabbed a nightcap at the casino bar at 2 a.m. and hung out for an hour or so. Good times with all these fun people!
Drannnkkksss with all these cool people!
I began early Saturday with a mind-melting game of Forum Trajanum. My buddy Karlo, who I had met when he lived in Phoenix for a brief period, taught one of the new games from Stefan Feld. Players are working together to build a monument on the main board, while developing their own Colonia on their player board.
Forum Trajanum is one of Stefan Feld’s newest games and it’s super heavy!
The cool mechanism in this game is that you remove two action chits on your player board, pick one and give the second one to the player on your right. Then, you have two actions to choose from, or if you want to do both, then you have to spend workers from your pool. So many agonizing decisions!! But figuring out how it all works together, while trying to score objectives during three periods, was something I couldn’t wrap my head around until way too late into the game. I would definitely play again, probably on more than a few hours of sleep. It’s definitely Feld’s most complex game to date, in my opinion.
Making agonizing decisions about which chit to pass to your neighbor and which one to keep for yourself.
Next I played Gugong with @ruelgaviola and @geekygaymerguy, who I met for the first time and is just as fantastic and friendly in real life! Theo taught Ruel Gugong, and the game immediately went onto his to-buy list. Gugong is set during the Ming Dynasty, and officials want fancy gifts in exchange for favors. On their turn, players use cards in their hand to activate various locations on the map by playing a card in higher value than what’s sitting there already. You place your card down, pick up the old card and put it into your discard pile. Your pile of discarded cards will then become your hand of actions in the next round.
I had a blast playing with all these wonderful people! Insert all the heart-eye emojis!
The game has an added element of managing your cubes from the general supply to your personal supply, a mechanism that I personally love, as well as moving up various tracks on the board and getting bonuses for picking up the right card for the round. I heard the KS version is just gorgeous but I think the base game is just as beautiful, and really, you can just spend a few bucks buying glass beads to replace the jade on the board.
Gugong is such a great midweight euro, and I totally want to add this to my collection.
I then purchased the only game at the con: Targi. Targi is a tense, puzzly 2-player game that I just learned the month before, and it definitely has moments where you can be so mean. I love it! A grid of cards are laid out on the table between two players, and they take turns placing one of their meeples on action spots on the outside border. Where their three meeples intersect can create a fourth and fifth action for the round. But you can’t place your meeple in front of your opponent, so they can block you from gaining resources or collecting cards, and forcing you to take a less-than-ideal action because that’s the last space left. Meanwhile, you’re also building your tableau of tribe cards you’ve collected, which gives you VPs from the cards itself and how you arrange it in front of you. I highly recommend this game! (Even if my buddy Mark is all kinds of mean.)
Mark plotting to take a mean action against me in Targi.
Next, I checked out Drop It from the library, and boy, am I horrible at this game! It’s a light, dexterity game in which you’re dropping various pieces into this plastic contraption, and you get points based on where it lands, a la Plinko. But if your piece lands and touches a piece of the same color or shape, you get zero points. Fun for the kids and light gamers!
I could not for the life of me drop my pieces in a way that they would score!
I then ran into Kevin and showed taught me his new game Calico, which is planning to be on Kickstarter out in the fall. This quilting game that features cats is a puzzly tile-laying game. Players have two hex tiles in their hands, and they place one on their turn into their player board, which starts with three objective tiles on it. The objectives will score points based on what surrounds it as tiles come in various colors and patterns. There are also cat tokens you can gain based on pattern requirements or clusters on the board as those pretty things keep the cats happy.
Calico is a tile-laying game in which you’re scoring objectives and keeping cats content.
We then played Carpe Diem, another Feld game that I really, really like! You’re building a district onto your player board by picking up a tile on the main board at one location. Then, you can only move your meeple into two different spots from that location (making a five-pointed star on the board), so getting somewhere may require a few turns. But by then, the tile you need might not be there. At the end of each round, which there are four of them, you are required to fulfill two objective on the side board. If you cannot fulfill an objective, you get negative points. Each objective intersection can only be scored by one person during the entire game, so it’s also a race to score them first if you can. The game itself is plagued by some production issues (the green and dark green are very hard to distinguish), but overall, it’s a smooth Feld game that plays in about an hour.
I’ve played Carpe Diem twice and have won both times! #winning
Lastly, I taught a game of Newton. It has been about 6 months since I’ve played this so I was a little rusty on the rules, but it’s a fun midweight tight euro game that plays in about two hours. You play cards onto your player board, which allow you to take a specific action depending on the symbol of the card. If you play another card with the same symbol in the same round, then that action’s strength will increase — either moving farther along your route or accessing more powerful cards or covering harder-to-reach bookcases. It’s really satisfying when you make some good combos!
Newton always ends so quickly, and I can never fill up my bookcase!
And then just like that, two days in Las Vegas were over. I’m pretty surprised that I didn’t even hit up the casino because in a previous life pre-board games, I went to Vegas a lot! And like growing up in Los Angeles, it was an easy weekend getaway for fun and some debauchery. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, right?
I got a chance to meet Rahdo. What a nice guy! He said the top of my head was really warm.
Before the drive back home to Phoenix, I also visited Meepleville Cafe, but I’m planning to write a longer piece about that cool place next time. Stay tuned! All in all, Dice Tower West was a chill and fun convention. I had a wonderful time hanging out with friends and meeting lots of new gamers! I can’t wait to go back next year, hopefully for longer than two days, as there were lots of other folks I wanted to game with but just didn’t have time for.
Until next time, Dice Tower West! Thanks for creating an inviting and fun gaming space.
This review of 1846: Race for the Midwest was featured on Episode 54 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Otys, Wingspan, Lanterns: The Harvest Festival and Gizmos.
If the world of 18xx is something you’ve been interested in but never knew where to start, check out 1846: The Race for the Midwest.
Published in 2016 by GMT Games, 1846 is a great introductory game into the world of 18xx.
The rulebook for 1846 is a little daunting to go through on your first go-around. I’d highly recommending finding someone who can teach and run the game so that your first experience is as smooth as possible. There is quite a lot to keep up with, and having a game of all inexperienced players could potentially turn you off from these types of games. And that would be unfortunate, because 18xx games are fantastic.
Well, fantastic if you love super crunchy, math-heavy, puzzly and economic games that manipulate the stock market and can be sometimes kind of mean. There’s a whole bunch of 18xxes in the wild, and if you learn one 18xx, many of the other games are built upon similar concepts with slight tweaks in gameplay, so really, you’ll be ready to jump into all the other train games soon enough.
We are building routes and collecting incomes! Choo-choo!
In 1846, 3-5 railroad tycoons are competing to earn money and build the best stock portfolio by investing in and operating railroad corporations within the Midwest during 1846-1935. Players begin the game with $400 and begin first drafting private corporations that may provide some income for the first part of the game. The drafting here is important because many other 18xx games start with an auction, and if you’re not a player with any 18xx experience, a misstep at this starting auction can be brutal.
In 1846, each round consists of a stock round and two operating rounds. Game play continues until players break the bank, and the person with the most cash in their personal stock and the value of their stock shares wins the game.
A large component of 1846 is that each corporation has their own treasury, which is used to lay down tracks or upgrade tracks and purchase trains, and this treasury is completely separate the player’s personal stock portfolio and bank. The crux of the game is balancing when to infuse money into your corporation to do actions, or pay fully yourself and other stockholders out, either action affecting the stock price of the corporation.
During a stock round, players taken turns buying stock from the stock market or a share from a corporation’s treasury, paying the market price for it.
Taking the Grand Trunk, or as affectionately like to call it “Grand Funk,” Railway to victory!
Players can also purchase the President’s certificate, which is two stocks of a corporation, and launch that corporation and put it on the map. You can get to select its initial stock value. Each corporation has exactly 10 shares. The person holding the most shares is the president of the corporation.
Then comes two Operating Rounds. Each operating round consists of issuing share to the market to raise capital, and then laying down one yellow tile onto the board. The player can also lay down a second yellow tile or upgrade one tile. All tile lays and upgrades cost money, depending on the cost printed on the empty hex or the preprinted which it replaces. Upgrades must be done in a specific color order: yellow, green, brown and gray, and the new tiles must preserve its type (city or not) and the orientation of the previous tracks laid out.
City tiles have spaces for tokens to be placed by corporations for a cost. These tokens have the potential to block other corporations from going through your city, which is bad news for running your route.
What is running your route? Depending on what type of train you have at the start of the operating round, this determines how many hexes you can reach and how much revenue you’ll be receiving for that operating round.
Next comes the payout. To pay full dividends, divide revenue by 10 and pay this amount to each shareholder for their personal bank.
To pay half dividends, divide total revenue by two. Round this amount down to the nearest $10 and retain it in the corporate treasury. Divided the remainder 10 and pay this as dividends to each shareholder.
1846: Race for the Midwest in all its glory. Those cubes aren’t part of the game; we used them to more easily calculate our routes.
Depending on what the corporation pays out, this will determine if the price of the corporation stock goes down one, stays the same, or jumps once, twice or three times.
After you complete a corporation payout, you may purchase trains to use for the next round, if your corporation has money, as trains get very expensive, very quickly.
And thus begins the brain-burnery dance of running your corporation so that others will invest in it so you have money to do things and increase the price of your stock, while making money for yourself so that you can purchase stock in the hopes that it’ll become valuable later in the game.
GMT Games’ 1846: The Race for the Midwest is a great introductory game into the world of 18xx.
Game play continues until the bank breaks, and 1846 usually takes 4-5 hours to play. Each player cashes out their shares at the current stock value, and adds to their cash on hand, and the person with the most money wins the game. Money left over in a corporation’s treasury does not count toward anything in the end.
If you like route-building and economic stock games, and have more than a few hours to devote to a game, then 1846 could be for you. And you really, really have to not care about what the board look like as well. Because, more often than not, the board and hexes for an 18xx are really boring looking and plain, and 1846 is no exception. This game however has excellent components, all thanks to the high quality production of GMT.
And that’s 1846! Choo-choo! And this is Meeple Lady for the Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as meeplelady, or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!
I recently made a jump back into deck-building games, rediscovering old classics like Dominion and playing new favorites like Paperback. It’s not that I disliked deck builders, but rather games with other mechanisms would often hit the table first. For those unfamiliar, a deck-building game is a card game where construction of a deck is the main focus of gameplay.
Another deck builder I recently checked out was Promenade from game designer and artist Ta-Te Wu, who also designed Cat Rescue. Promenade, which is coming to Kickstarter on April 9 from Sunrise Tornado Game Studio, is a fun and interesting twist on deck builders.
Promenade will be coming to Kickstarter in April!
Promenade is a deck-building game about the Impressionist art market. Players are purchasing and exhibiting artwork, while working to increase the market rating of various types of paintings. As players acquire cards for their deck, the rating increases for that painting genre that was just purchased. There are five genres, represented by five different colors: portraits, landscapes, animals, seascapes and abstracts. The Impressionist style artwork is colorful and elegant. My personal favorite is this kitty cat.
Who ya calling Chubby?
Each player gets a player board with marked locations for a draw pile, two spots for their actions, and a discard pile. There is also a track on the player board so that players can easily see the market rating of the genres.
On a player’s turn, they can do two actions: haggle, acquire or show. Players may do the same action twice and in any order. When you haggle, spend a card to draw two more cards from your deck.
The different actions are displayed on the player boards.
When you acquire, players spend cards to purchase a card from the Promenade area, which is filled paintings or gold cards. Each card costs a different amount depending on where it’s sitting.
And this is where it gets economically interesting — gold cards in your hand are worth their printed value, but the value of the paintings in your hand is worth their current market rating, which is represented on a separate board that sits next to the main board.
As you spend cards from your hand to acquire a new painting, that painting genre goes up in its market rating. The gold value doesn’t increase but purchasing gold cards moves the gold marker up the board as well, but this marker only matters at the end when you calculate the end-game value of the gold cards in your deck. Players can also spend their gold card’s one-time special ability and remove the card from their deck.
As players purchase paintings, the genre of that painting goes up in market value.
So if players are just buying just the abstracts, the value of abstract cards in everyone’s deck will skyrocket.
Lastly, you can show. To show a painting in an exhibition in the museum, you must spend the cards in your hand to display it, and the cost of displaying your painting depends on which exhibition you want to place it in. Furthermore, the exhibition must be seeking that specific genre of painting, as depicted by the randomly placed invitation cubes at the start of the game in the exhibition space. Some invitation cubes are black, which means any genre can be shown there.
Only certain genres of paintings can be shown in each exhibit based on the invitation cubes.
When you decide to show your painting, spend your cards to place your painting there and you immediately receive victory points. Naturally, you get more VPs if you show a painting at the exhibit first, and you place your meeple on the card so people know whose painting was shown where. And of course, the market rating of that genre increases as well.
After your two actions, place the two piles from your action spaces into your discard pile and draw more cards from your draw pile. If there aren’t any cards in your draw pile, shuffle the discard pile and place it into your draw pile area and draw your cards. This is the fundamental mechanism for deck builders.
Paintings come out at specific locations in the Promenade.
As painting cards empty from the Promenade, the cost of each location increases with each refill of cards. The game ends when one or more of these conditions are met: 12 or more paintings are shown in the museum, the painting deck is empty, or any marker on the market rating board is at 70 or higher.
Players then calculate the value of their decks based on the paintings’ market values and gold ratio value. There are also end-game bonuses based on the cards in play, which five are randomly displayed out at the start of the game. The player with the most VPs wins the game!
What’s unique for me about this deck builder is the manipulation of the market. I also like the variety of having different end-game bonuses with each game, and how the exhibition invitations — what genre each exhibition is looking for — are also variable for each game.
Players begin the game with their starting gold and five random painting cards.
If you’re a fan of economic games and deck builders, or just love games about paintings, check out Promenade. The game plays in about an hour and adds an artful twist to your standard deck builder.
Thanks Ta-Te Wu for providing a copy of Promenade for review.
Happy New Year, friends! Can I still say Happy New Year when it’s clearly halfway through January? I had a lot of post-holiday personal events going on through last weekend so I haven’t had much time to game, but there’s lots of gaming ahead scheduled for the next few weeks. Woot!
To get us started, I don’t do a 10×10 challenge, because, frankly, it kinda stresses me out to have that kind of deadline. For those who don’t know, the 10×10 challenge is to pick 10 games and play them 10 times during the course of the year. So instead, I have an informal list of games I eventually want to play for the first time this year. And yes, I totally know it’s not the same thing.
Petrichor: I don’t know much about this game, other than that players are clouds. Pretty, fluffy, pillowy clouds. The artwork and board are just so soothing and delightful to look at that so that’s pretty much all I needed to be intrigued by this game. Plus, there are colorful gems.
How soothing and peaceful does this game look?
Captains of the Gulf: I personally love the backstory behind this game regarding game designer Jason Dinger and his relationship with his grandfather. I had the pleasure of meeting and gaming with Jason last BGG Con, and, knowing what type of games he enjoys playing, I have no doubt that his game will be right up my alley.
The Golden Wilderness: This game has been unplayed on shelf FOREVER. It’s made by the non-board-game folks who created Leaving Earth, which, by the way, is a fantastic game, and the game is about the history of California. @idontknowrules has been not-so-gently pestering me for the past few years to learn this game and get it on table, and I’m committed to doing that this year, hopefully sooner than later.
As a Californian, it’s cool to see a game about the state’s history.
Tokyo Metro: The games in the Tokyo series are just adorable, and this auction/bidding worker placement seems to be the heaviest of the bunch. I have a couple good friends whose recommendations I trust, and they really enjoyed this one.
Wingspan: This new release from Stonemaier Games is a medium-weight, card-building game featuring gorgeous bird artwork and eggs. Yep, pretty, pastel egg miniatures in a variety of colors. It’s been getting all sorts of praise online, so hopefully I’ll be able to find someone who owns the game so I can check it out.
Caverna: Cave vs. Cave: I’ve also had this on my shelf for about a year. I bought this because I love Caverna and wanted to explore this quick 2-player version, even though I rarely ever play 2P games. But, in light of recent life changes, it looks like more of my 2P games will get on table this year, and I’m so looking forward to it.
I love me some Uwe! This 2-player game has been sitting on my shelf for some time unplayed.
Ticket to Ride New York: This 15-minute version of the classic game is sold at stores like Target, and it’s pretty cut-throat from what I hear. Ticket to Ride was the game that introduced me to the hobby, and having an even more accessible, streamlined version of the game on the mass market just makes me happy as I know it’ll introduce more gamers to the hobby.
And that’s my short list of games I’d love to play soon. Let me know which games are high up on your to-play list!
When I started writing this post, I looked back at my 2017 list, and I had to laugh because I was so optimistic that 2018 would be less rage-inducing than 2017. This past year was still rage-inducing in regards to the outside world, but there definitely was plenty of moments of pure joy for me personally and within the board-game world. I have fond memories of the experiences I had in 2018, the friendships and relationships that grew, and most importantly, all the games that I played.
So without further delay, here’s my top 10 list of games I played for the first time in 2018.
Despite the cones, this is not Cones of Dunshire. Dominant Species is brutal and punishing.
This game from GMT Games is a classic. And by classic, I mean 2010, which by board-game standards, is pretty ancient. I played this game for the first time back in January, and I honestly couldn’t believe I haven’t played this game sooner. It’s brutal, mean and literally a game of “survival of the species.” And for such a punishing game, the components itself are quite colorful and cheery: cones and cubes among a sea of bright-colored environments.
Players take on the role of one of the major animal classes (mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid, or insect) and they’re all trying to survive and thrive on various terrains with their asymmetrical powers, all while the impending Ice Age is coming. Players compete to have the most of their species on various hexes as well as being dominant, which is determined by your animal class. Dominant Species plays like a typical worker placement but built from a war-game foundation. Just watch out for glaciers!
This was another game I played early in 2018, and OH MY GOSH — look at all these pink dinosaurs!! I came into this game thinking it would be all kinds of kitschy, but it’s a solid worker placement that comes with variable end-game conditions. Players can pick a short, medium or long game, and the game ends when scoring objectives are completed. And similar to Food Chain Magnate, you can only score objectives in the same round that everyone else does. Once an objective has been scored, the objective is closed for others in future rounds.
Players in Dinosaur Island are competing to build the best dinosaur amusement park. The game plays through several phrases in each round, from collecting DNA combinations to create dinosaurs, upgrading technology and building park attractions, to having actual visitors visit your theme park, and hoping for the best those visitors don’t get eaten. Sure, exciting carnivores will bring more visitors to your park, but if you don’t ensure security gates are at a high level, well, we all know how that plays out in those Hollywood movies, don’t we?
Squee! Let’s have a pie fight! These figurines are way adorbs.
This new family game from Stonemaier Games is just darling! I got a chance to play it for the first time during Gila Monster this summer, and it truly is delightful! The game was created by a father who wanted to game with his daughter, and Stonemaier ended up publishing the fan-made version a year later. My Little Scythe comes with these chibi figurines of the original Scythe characters. ADORABLE.
The game also takes elements from Scythe — choose one of the actions on your player board, but not the same one you just did — and players move across the board, picking gems, apples or quests, and working to score objectives. And instead of combat, the game incentivizes you to drop resources where other players are, because that moves you up the friendship track. In the end, friendship is magic!
Bruxelles 1893 has these dapper gentlemen meeples with top hats.
This is another older board game, circa 2013, but I can’t believe so few people have ever mentioned this game! Bruxelles 1893, a colorful game in the Art Nouveau style, is crunchy worker placement that has a clever puzzle element to it. Workers are collecting resources to build buildings, and buying and selling artwork to gain money.
The game also comes with a dial, which players can adjust to determine which resources are needed to build a building, and players can affect how much pieces of artwork will sell by moving this square across a board. The game continues for five rounds, and it’s another one of those games where you definitely cannot do most of the things you want to do. And at the start of each round, the worker-placement sections of the board are selected, which is another neat element of the game, so the building you built might not even be in play for the round. This game is totally underrated!
I played this new edition of this older card game for the first time this year. Arboretum is gorgeous and unassumingly brutal. At the start of each turn, players take two cards, play one into their arboretum and discard another card. You’re building paths of beautiful trees in order to possibly score that path at the end of the game. But you can only score that tree species if you have the highest sum of those tree cards your hand.
I love balancing that push and pull between keeping cards in your hands versus playing them down into your arboretum. You can also prevent opponents from scoring large paths by hanging on to certain tree cards. The card game is inviting enough to introduce to new gamers but strategic to engage heavy gamers like myself.
Players place ladders in Catch the Moon, and each game has been a masterpiece!
Catch the Moon is such a beautiful game. I just purchased it in November at BGG Con, but it’s already risen to one of my most-played games in 2018. And yes, I know it’s only a 20-minute game, but it’s one that people immediately want to play over and over again. The table presence of this game also draws curious passers-by, and more often than not, they take a seat at the next game.
Catch the Moon is a dexterity game in which players take turns adding wonky ladders to a main centerpiece that sits atop a cloud. Roll a dice, and the dice tells a player to either place a ladder that touches exactly one or two ladders, or the new ladder must be the highest point. If any ladders fall or touch the base, or the player doesn’t follow the dice’s directions, they get a tear drop because the moon is super sad. Try to get the fewest tear drops, and don’t get the last tear drop, and you’ll win the game. Each game of this has been different; some creations go up super high, while others stay really low, just barely hanging on and not scraping the cloud base.
Sidereal Confluence is a live negotiation and trading game with asymmetrical alien factions.
Sidereal (which rhymes with ethereal, and, believe me, it took me some times to figure out how to say this word correctly) Confluence is a bonkers real-time negotiation and trading game that plays up to nine players who are asymmetrical alien factions working to research and run various technologies. The kicker is that they often don’t have the resources to run those technologies, hence they need to find the resources from others.
This is one of my favorite games to run at the convention, because you can assemble a large number of participants, as I think a larger player count works best for this game. There’s yelling, trading for future favors and making less-than-ideal trades because you really, really need that one last blue cube, and the time is running out. (I set each trading round to 10 minutes.) And when you have an alien race like Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl (complete with a pronunciation guide), you know the game is gonna be insane.
Teotihuacan was my favorite game of BGG Con this year.
I had the pleasure to play Teotihuacan at BGG Con, and it did not disappoint. In Teotihuacan, each player is a powerful noble family working to build the temple of Teotihuacan. You’re using your workforce of dice to move around the board like a giant rondel. Depending on the value of your dice, you receive various resources at each location, and then at the end of your turn, your dice levels up.
As with its predecesor Tzolk’in, the game is a lot about timing your actions correctly. Instead of the giant wheel cogs in Tzolk’in, the game is all about moving your dice in a way so that it levels up at the right moment, so that you can get resources to build temple steps and gain technology, among other things. Dice are moving in one direction in order to ascend to 6 pips, and then you get a reward and start over again at one location.
Picking between No. 1 and No. 2 was super difficult as these two last games are equally exceptional, but for the purposes of this list, I had to pick which game belonged in which spot. For No. 2, it’s came down to Feudum. Feudum, despite its whimsy artwork and endearing behemoth, is quite a beast to learn and equally to play. But it’s definitely worth it, in my opinion.
Feudum combines elements of Concordia with using card play for taking actions, but adds area control on the board and maintaining influence in various guilds to gain benefits for various actions. It’s one of those games like Lisboa where all the actions itself aren’t difficult per se, but the interconnectivity of those actions and guilds is what makes the game truly shine. This game is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, as I saw some criticisms online about this game being unnecessary complicated instead of complex, but I don’t agree with those assessments. It’s hefty, crunchy and pays off when you find that group of people who enjoy these type of games and are willing to put in the time to peel away at the game’s layers.
I love love this game, even if I’m not very good at it.
And we’re at No. 1! What edged Coimbra a bit past Feudum is its accessibility. Coimbra is an equally crunchy game, but when it’s just four rounds and plays in about two hours, more people will likely dive into this game than Feudum. Plus, people love brightly colored game boards, and there’s lots of dice! But the dice isn’t used for chucking!
In Coimbra, the dice are rolled each round, and players take turns selecting dice in which pips matter for the first half of the round, and then the color of the same dice matters for the second half of the round. In the first half of the round, players collect character cards the give them special abilities or end-game scoring points. Character cards are mostly selected from higher to lower pips, and paid for with either money or military resources. On the second half of the round, the color of the dice will give you that income resource based on there you’re sitting on one of the four tracks. Tracks galore in this game, and I always enjoy balancing all the different resources and having two different incomes. What a fantastic game!
And that’s the end of the list! Let me know what some of your favorites were this year, and what you’re looking forward to next year, either with board games or life happenings.
Happy New Year, and hope everyone has a wonderful 2019!
