This review of backgammon was featured on Episode 85 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Raiders of the North Sea, Snow Tails, Banned Books and Orleans.
Every so often, I’m watching a movie or TV show and a backgammon set shows up. I immediately pause the program to examine whether they’re playing correctly or it’s just being used as a prop.
For myself personally, backgammon for many, many years was just a game that existed. A game that people always randomly had in their house, probably a gift from their grandparents or a friend. It’s a game I’m surprised that a lot more people don’t know how to play, considering how old it is. It’s ancient — with its roots tracing back to nearly 5,000 years in Mesopotamia. I finally learned the game as an adult, and it has been one of my absolute favorites ever since. I keep my set in my car so I can bust it out at any time. And people, I have.
Backgammon is a classic two-player game that combines strategy and luck. It’s played on a board, often built into a mini little suitcase, and two players sit across from each other. Each player has fifteen pieces, also known as checkers, two dice in their matching color and a dice cup. Players must move all their checkers around the board in one direction into their home area, which then they can start bearing off the pieces.
This is the opening setup for backgammon.
The problem is: your opponent is moving in the opposite direction and can hit you, forcing your checker to start its journey home all over again by entering at your opponent’s home board, which is the farthest area from your home board.
When you open your case, you’ll see the board is made up of 24 long points, which look like long skinny triangles, and the board is divided into four quadrants. For the purposes of this review, I’ll call the points spaces instead so it doesn’t sound like we’re constantly talking about victory points this entire time. Checkers sit on a space and move in a horseshoe pattern around the board. Your home board is the set of 6 spaces closest to you, and your opponent plays the mirror image of the same board. Each quadrant on the board has exactly 6 spaces each.
There is a standard setup for the checkers at the start of the game, then players begin by rolling one die each, and the player with the higher die goes first. They move their piece or pieces exactly according to what’s rolled, in one direction toward their home board. For example, if a 2 and 4 were rolled, the player moves one piece two spaces, and another piece four spaces, or they may move the same piece two spaces and then four spaces.
To be able to move into a space, it has to be empty, or have your checkers sitting in it, or just one checker of your opponent’s sitting in it. If there are two or more checkers of your opponents sitting on the space, it is blocked and you cannot land there.
This is the white player’s opening move, moving one piece 5 spaces and another piece 1 space.
If there is one checker sitting there that belongs to your opponent and you decide to move in, their piece gets knocked off and goes to the bar, which is usually the middle fold of the case. Your opponent must then roll into an open space in your home board, which has their starting spaces.
On future turns, players take turns back and forth, plopping their two matching dice into their own dice cup and rolling. Players continue until one person bears off all their checkers from their home board. A player cannot start bearing off their checkers until they’re all in their home board, and even then, the player must be able to roll high enough to get them off the board. The first player to complete that is the winner.
There is a lot of back and forth in this game, and while it’s true that a couple of bad rolls could set you far behind, there is strategy in how you move your pieces. You want to move them in pairs, so that no one checker is sitting by itself, practically inviting your opponent to come hit you. You also need to understand when to make a run for it, moving all your checkers past your opponent. Sometimes, it’s advantageous to keep a few behind so that you can hit your opponent when the opportunity presents itself.
There’s also something to be said about building a wall of defense in your home board, so that if you do hit an opponent’s piece, they will have a hard time rolling into their starting area because you’ve blocked off many of their opening spaces
There is also the thing about doubles. Rolling doubles will result in four actions of that same number. For example, a roll of two 6’s is very powerful because you get 6 points of movement — four times!
Most of the game you’re hoping for doubles, while taunting your opponent by rage-shaking your dice cup near their face. It’s very fun.
This doubling cube can raise the stakes on your game.
For those who want to raise the stakes, try using the doubling cube. The doubling cube is a marker representing what the two players are betting. It begins at 64 at the start of the game, and when one player is feeling lucky in their progress, they can move it to 2, meaning if they’re playing for dimes, the winner will now be receiving 20 cents instead.
The other player can agree to the 2 or just end the game and pay the 10 cents. The doubling cube’s sides double from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 to 64. Players have to take turns increasing the doubling cube; the same player cannot keep raising the stakes of the game.
If your opponent wins the game, and you haven’t taken a single checker off the board, you’ve been gammoned, and this doubles the stakes. If your opponent wins, and you still have a checker on the bar or in the home board of your opponent, then you’ve been backgammoned — and this triples the stakes. I’ve seen some epic games where someone had been backgammoned and paid a hefty sum to the winner!
I’ve had my backgammon set for years and it shows! I must’ve purchased this for less than $10 at Target many, many years ago. It has been great to me.
In all, backgammon is a quick, fun 2-player game that’s easily transportable and you can pretty much play anywhere. It has a self contained playing area with its suitcase setup. It’s also very easy to find an inexpensive copy, and chances are there are even a few sets at Goodwill. Just make sure all fifteen checkers are included.
And that’s backgammon. 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. May you always roll doubles, and I’ll see you at the bar! Thanks for listening. Bye!
This review of Push was featured on Episode 78 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Ingenious, Deep Space D-6, Vindication and Legendary Encounters: Alien.
At first glance, Push looks like an Uno deck. And for full disclosure, Push was a giveaway at BGG 2018, and I didn’t pick it up because it looked very similar to an Uno deck. At the risk of sounding like a board-game snob here, I’m definitely not playing Uno with you. There are plenty of better card games out there, for even the most inexperienced gamers.
It wasn’t until about 6 months later that someone introduced me to Push, and I enjoyed it so much that I immediately purchased a copy. Push, a short card game published by Ravensburger and designed by Prospero Hall, is a game I often travel with because it’s essentially a thick deck of cards and one 6-sided die.
This 25-minute game works well with a midsize group of 2-6, and I love busting it out with new and older gamers alike. The deck has cards ranging from 1 to 6, in five different colors, as well as Switch cards and Roll cards, which I’ll explain later what they do.
The three types of cards in Push — and that very mean die.
On your turn, you draw one card at a time from the deck until you want to stop or you bust! When you draw a card, you must play them into one of three stacks in the middle of the table. The rules for placement in the stacks is that you cannot have the same number or same color in any of the stacks. If there’s a blue 2 already face-up in the center in one stack, you cannot place a 2 of any other color or another blue card into that same stack. As the active player, it’s up to you how you want to build out those stacks. You can even keep them all in one stack if you follow the rules of placement correctly.
The stacks are important because each card contains victory points based on the number on it. If you decide to stop before busting, you select any one of those stacks in play and sort them into your bench in front of you by color. The next person to your left grabs the second stack if there is one, and so forth.
The Switch cards that are drawn during this player’s turn change the direction of who picks the stacks next. Instead of the stack selection going to the player on your left, it now goes to the player to the right and so forth. Switch cards aren’t placed into stacks either; they’re just shown on the side for reference during that active player’s turn.
Cards on your bench as worth victory points at the end of the game. They are, however, not completely safe from the dreaded Push die. If the active player draws a Roll card, they must place it into one of the stacks that already doesn’t have one in it. Roll cards also follow the placement rules like all the other cards.
Which stack do you want? Are you willing to push your luck?
When a player grabs a stack with a roll card in it, they must roll the 6-sided die. Each side of the die has exactly one color on it, and then a black square. Whatever side the die lands, the player loses all of those matching colored cards from their bench. It’s quite devastating when you lose a bunch of points this way! If you roll the black die, all your cards are safe — for the time being.
Also, if you keep drawing and flip over a card that you cannot place, you bust. You also roll the die and you don’t get to pick up a stack. Instead, the next person gets first choice.
Lastly, on your turn, you can choose not to draw cards but instead bank one pile of your colored stacks. If you decide to do this, you flip over those cards and then it’s the next person’s turn. All those cards you’ve flipped over will be safe from the dreaded Push die.
Might be a good idea to bank this yellow pile in your bench on a future turn!
Game play continues until you finish the entire deck. Players calculate their VPs based on the cards that are both in their bench and those banked faced down, and the person with the most VPs wins the game.
For non-heavy gamers, I like to play a variant I created for this game. Instead of placing the Roll card into one of the stacks in front of you on your turn, the active player just rolls the die and faces the consequences. That sense of impending doom adds to the experience, as everyone can relate to that Jack in the Box feeling of will this next card wipe out the 12 points of Red cards you have sitting in front of you. Why, yes, it will. It most definitely will. I like to reserve the option of placing the Roll card into a pile for more experienced gamers.
Even though this looks like Uno, it’s nothing like that game! Push is actually fun!
Push is perfect for a chill night with friends, whether you’re gathering around the bar or dining table chatting. It has a very small footprint so it’s easy to transport. It unfortunately isn’t very color blind friendly, as there aren’t any symbols on the cards to differentiate the various colors.
Other than that, it’s a fun game that is easy to jump into and create lots of laughter and merriment when you egg on the active player by saying, no, no, there’s no way you’re going to bust. And then they do!
And that’s Push! 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!
Happy 2020, folks! Hope you all have recovered from the hectic holiday season! I know I have! I took one of the longest work breaks for a while as I traveled to Tennessee and Los Angeles to visit family, and then spent a few days at home recovering from all of that. Last year was a year of personal and professional milestones, as well as experiencing joyful memories of seeing friends and loved ones happy and healthy. And, of course, playing lots of board games with all those people!
Without further ado, here are my top 10 board games that I played for the first time in 2019.
10. Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917 – 1947
Gandhi is Volume IX from GMT’s COIN series, which stands for Counter Insurgency. I do love my COINs, and this one especially stands out. Gandhi takes us to India for a detailed look at the final decades of the British Raj. This is the first COIN to include nonviolent factions, which offer a unique perspective to these types of wargames.
Gandhi is the latest COIN game from GMT Games.
The are four factions: the British Raj, the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the Revolutionaries. The Congress and the Muslim League are the two nonviolent factions, and like most other COINs, factions somewhat work together until they don’t in order to meet their win condition. The map is beautifully done, and the game allows wargamers to study this historic period of European imperialism.
9. Gugong
I did a review on Gugong on Episode 58 of The Five By. It is one of those games that caught me by surprise early in 2019 by having a little bit of everything. It has hand management, set collection and worker placement, and plays 1-5 people. In Gugong, the emperor is working hard to ban corruption within the country, and the highest officials of the Forbidden City would pretend to uphold that ban on corruption by accepting gifts from petitioners instead, and returning a gift of a seemingly lower value. Players do this by playing a card from their hand to activate a location on the board.
I love using cards to activate locations in Gugong. It makes you to manage your hand well.
Players in Gugong also have to manage their supply of workers with the general supply, which replenishes at a different rate each round. The components are great, and the game scales for all players, with its two-sided board and solo variant. The game also comes with all sort of meeple shapes for various locations on the board.
8. Just One
Just One is my party game of the year. It’s so simple to jump into, it’s co-op, and it plays up to seven people! You never quite know if word games will be a hit with various gaming groups (I’m looking at you, Codenames), but Just One has never failed me. In Just One, the group is trying to get the active player to guess the clue on the card by writing a single word associated with it. Before the active player opens their eyes, the group reveals their word, and if there are duplicate copies of a clue showing, they are eliminated from being shown to the active player. The active player then opens their eyes to see the remaining clues and tries to guess the word.
Can you guess the clue in our Just One game? If you guessed pole, you’re correct!
I particularly enjoy when the group starts finding their groove after a few clues, and the game evolves into a metagame because people start assuming what everyone else will write based on their personalities. And everyone totally loves having their own dry-erase marker and nameplate to write answers on.
7. Escape Plan
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.
Your mission is to escape the police in three days!
Welcome to Escape Plan, designed by one of my absolute favorite game designers Vital Lacerda. 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. This is by far Lacerda’s lightest game, but it’s still just as tense as his other games — and you never, ever have enough actions to do what you want to do. Just remember: don’t get caught.
6. Abomination
Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a worker placement game that’s strategic and fun, and, surprisingly, oozes with a unique theme that even a sometimes curmudgeonly eurogamer like me can appreciate. In Abomination, scientists are working in Paris to “collect” muscles, organs, blood and bone, and the occasional animal part when really, really needed it. And I say “collect,” because what you’re really doing is raiding hospitals, morgues, cemeteries and other suspicious Parisian locations for the freshest cadaver parts required to create your very own monster!
Just collecting some body parts in the lovely city of Paris!
The game is great for horror fans and heavier gamers alike but even though the box says 60-120 minutes, I cannot imagine ever getting through a game in under two hours. The 12 rounds take a while — even though there are events or cards that can move the round marker meeple forward — and there are a lot of difficult decisions to make, with decomposition of body parts creeping up on you.
5. The Quacks of Quedlinburg
Quack, quack! And not the bird variety. In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, quack doctors are conjuring up potions by blindly pulling ingredients from their potion bag and adding them to their cauldron. If you don’t bust during a round, you gain VPs as well as the option to purchase new ingredients to throw back into your bag and play a new round.
We are all quack doctors drawing ingredients from a bag to make potions!
This push-your-luck game is super fun and super addicting, and, surely, you won’t bust when you have a 1 in 10 chance of drawing the one ingredient that will cause your cauldron to spill over. But of course, you manage to pull out that exact piece EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I love this game so much that I even purchased the cloth bags and plastic bits for it via the BGG Store even though I rarely deluxify my games. This game is just delightful.
4. Wingspan
We can’t talk about last year without adding Wingspan to this list. This game for me — and what is represents — is peak 2019 inspiration. Seeing a female gamer design her own game based on her own interests with a well-known publisher hit the large stage, take flight and soar — pun intended — is exactly what the board game industry needs more of.
Wingspan is just so lovely to play and look at it. The giant blue bird is something I added to my game though as a first-player token.
Representation 100% matters, and I’m always beaming with pride when I show this game to casual gamers and explain Wingspan’s backstory. The game has enabled me to invite even more casual games to take the next step up in strategy games because of its presentation, subject matter and play style. I’d love to see more success stories like this. Plus, OMG the eggs!
3. Watergate
Watergate, a historical subject that’s near and dear to my heart, is one of my favorite games of 2019 and I believe the best 2-player of the year. In this day and age, there is something so supremely satisfying about stopping Nixon. But what I particularly love about this game is that you and your opponent can play a game and then switch sides and play another game immediately — and it still hasn’t taken up your entire evening.
Watergate is my favorte 2P game of 2019.
Watergate fits in a small box and can easily be set up and taken down. I love seeing all the historical figures brought together in this tug-of-war game that is easy to get into. The rulebook and the text on the cards are well done, and there’s even a lot of supplemental information about the presidential scandal in the back of the rulebook.
2. Dead Man’s Cabal
Skulls, skulls and more skulls! While Dead Man’s Cabal comes with a giant sack of bones, it’s the clever and unique game play that makes this game one of my favorites of the year. Players are working to collect and perform ritual cards that score VPs by collecting required skulls at various locations in the game.
Look at all these awesome skuls!
During a player’s turn, they take a private action and everyone else can take a public action based on skulls in play. Also, you can only activate locations on the board based on what skulls you have in your supply. It’s this midweight interconnected puzzle of skull collection in a 60-minute game that scratches my Vital Lacerda itch. The game has fantastic components, and did I mention it comes with a bag of plastic skulls? What else do you need?
1. Pax Pamir
And now we’ve hit No. 1. Pax Pamir was absolute love at first play at Consimworld. Oh. My. Goodness. Look at those gorgeous components. I’ve played other games in the Pax realm, Pax Porfiriana and Pax Renaissance, and while I enjoyed both of them a lot, the game ALWAYS seemed to take so much longer to explain than the actual game itself.
I can’t say enough good things about Pax Pamir. And look at how gorgeous that is!
But that’s not the case with this second edition of Pax Pamir. The added map and individual player dials make this game much, much easier to visualize which faction is dominating. During the game, players are buying cards to expand their tableaus. These cards allow them to take actions to strengthen their factions and armies. Players score points when a dominance check occurs. The game comes with so many cards, which keeps each game fresh every time. Pax Pamir (second edition) is my game of the year, and my only regret is not securing a copy for myself. It is, sadly, sold out. Someone hook a lady up!
And that’s my top games of 2019. What are some of your favorites that came out last year? And what are you looking forward to playing in 2020?
Every year, my BGG recap gets later and later. Sorry folks! It’s so hard to rebound after Thanksgiving as I end up hitting the ground running for the holiday season. Anywho, I had a great time at BGG Con this year, especially since it moved into a new location in downtown Dallas — at the Hyatt Regency.
We are definitely in the state of Texas.
The new hotel is larger, with convention activities spread out across multiple floors. The vendor hall and BGG library are downstairs in the basement, the main ballroom is way larger than last year’s, and on the Atrium level and third floor are rooms that people can rent out for group gaming. There are also tables sprinkled across those floors for people to drop in and game. I personally love that this downtown location makes it much, much easier to take a rideshare in search of non-hotel food. Texas BBQ, anyone?
Look at the size of the BGG Library! And this photo shows just about half.
I volunteered again, which is always a great experience. And I was fortunate to meet new folks and game with old friends. This post will be a quick recap of each game I played at the convention.
Tuesday games
Woof Meow Biscuits and For Sale. Woof Meow Biscuits is a card game in which cats and dogs are trying to steal biscuits by playing numbered cards to get to exactly 14. These biscuits are so snazzy! For Sale is always a great filler for a group of 6 people.
Wednesday games
I played Heul doch! Mau Mau, a cute card game about crying onions. On your turn, you must play a card down that matches the color or number of a card that’s face up, but, of course, if you play it onto your opponent’s pile, they will get the points for it. But collecting a number of certain onions will count against your pile as well. My colleague Ruth on The Five By recently covered this game.
These poor, poor onions!
Shibuya is a small puzzle game about a Japanese crosswalk. Players are placing tiles on a grid to move their pedestrians across to their destinations. On each turn, a pedestrian can only move along one specific attribute — either all circles or squares, or all whites or black spaces.
The first of a few pedestrian-destination games I played during the convention.
Signorie is a strategic dice-drafting game from What’s Your Game in which players are trying to gain influence in Italy. I really like how you’re limited to actions based on the number of pips on the dice you select — or else it gets really expensive and you never seem to have enough money for the game anyway. I didn’t like though how the women were basically just there to get married off, and how the crests that folks were trying to gain were randomly placed in. I ended up not completing two sets of crests. Alas.
I finally got a chance to play Airship City. It’s a strategic worker placement from a Japanese game company, so it’s not widely available in the U.S., which is a bummer! This game is so neat! You move your airships to tile locations on a board to gain resources, and build and/or sell ships, but there are some locations that allow you to move those tiles around. I love the spatial puzzle of this! Thanks Matt Wolfe for teaching us this game!
I then taught a 6P game of Sidereal Confluence, one of my favorite games to run during a convention.
I love the chaos of Sidereal Confluence. And my giant tweezers make an appearance.
I ended Wednesday night with a chill game of QE, well as chill as it can be when you don’t know what exactly folks are bidding. QE is a set collection game where you secretly bid for tiles. The thing is that the person who bids the most during the entire game will immediately get knocked out. Such tense fun!
Sky’s the limit for bidding in QE! Just don’t bid the most money overall!
Thursday games
I wandered into Unpub Protoalley to play Matt Wolfe’s Squaring Circleville, which is coming next year. I love the historical background of this game, of a town in Ohio that was built in a circle but had to make way for modernity by squaring its streets and entire town.
This is the prototype for Squaring Circleville.
I really enjoyed the rondel mechanism in this game, which allowed you to do one action, and then a second action, based on the tile that’s sitting on that piece of the rondel pie. That tile then gets placed into your player board, which then strengthens your action powers. I’m so excited for when this game comes out!
Had a great time playing with these cool people!
Chris and I picked up Spring on a String after seeing players on a nearby table in the main ballroom looking like they were … sewing. Wut?! In Spring on a String, players are threading a shoelace through flowers on this felt board and scoring VPs based on the number of flower petals they’re passing through. The game gets surprisingly brain burnery though based on the number of flower cards per game. These flower cards place restrictions/extra rules based on which flowers you can pass through. It’s a charming little game you can play and chat around the table with — as long as there aren’t too many flower cards in play, in my opinion.
All the pretty flowers! But Spring on a String can be quite challenging!
We also picked up Brikks, a fun roll and write Tetris game. The active player rolls dice to determine which piece is in play, and you fill it out on your player sheet. You can also spend energy, which are hard to come by, to change the piece to another one instead, based on the piece chart. You score VPs and energy based on how you fill out your board. The higher rows are worth more, and closing out multiple rows at once nets more benefits.
Roll-and-write Tetris! Now realizing I wasn’t very good at Tetris as child.
I picked up a copy of Pret A Porter, a game I had never played before but was super excited to own and play. It’s a worker placement game about fashion shows! Squee! And I love this version designed by Kwanchai Moriya. It’s gorgeous. This game is intense! You have two quick rounds to gather cloth, designs, models and/or buildings until your first fashion show. And each show is unique in what it’s looking for, either trendiness, PR, etc. You win ribbons by winning these categories, which will net you VPs and income later. But the bigger your fashion company is, the bigger upkeep you have to pay for models and buildings. So good!
Fashion shows are stressful! But man, what a great game.
The next game I played was Draftosaurus. It’s a light drafting game with tiny little dinosaur meeples! So adorbs! Players grab a handful of dinosaurs, pick one to place in their animal park, and then hand over the rest to the player on their left. Rounds continue until there are no more dinosaurs to pass along. And your VPs are based on fulfilling requirements in your animal park.
Look at these cute dinosaurs! You literally place these guys in your hand when you draft.
We then played Randy Flynn‘s prototype, Rolling Up Roses, a roll and write where you’re collecting various flowers to make bouquets. I like how you’re choosing from a personal supply of rolled dice, as well as the rolled dice in the middle, to maximize the amount of flowers you get. Order cards are also phased in, so hanging onto those expensive roses might come in handy later!
I forgot to take a photo when we started playing, but I enjoyed the Rolling Up Roses prototype.
Friday games
I started Friday by teaching Lisboa, one of my absolute favorite games ever, to Marlene and Randy. It’s a heavy game to start the morning with, but I think everyone had a great time. I know I did!
We started Lisboa at 11 a.m. I love this game so much that I’d be happy to teach it at 8 a.m. — and I’m not even a morning person.
Chris and I then took a trip up the Reunion Tower to see a bird’s eye view of downtown Dallas. The tickets were $17, and it was a fun experience. We picked a time right before the sun started setting so we were able to see some daylight and the nighttime skyline. But man, it was freezing up there because of the wind!
It was so windy and chilly up here! You can see the grassy knoll where JFK was assassinated.
The Inside Voices meetup was next, and I absolutely loved being able to hang out with such awesome folks in a small conference room. We even had a bunch of snacks and prizes! I ended winning Horticulture Master and Netterplays Felt Trays in a raffle. James Nathan said it best on his blog when he said it felt like a home-style game night.
Had a great time with these folks during the Inside Voices meetup.
I played a fun 5P party game called Pictures. You’re secretly assigned to a photo on this 4×4 grid and you’re trying to get the rest of the players to correctly guess which photo is yours. The trick is that you’re given a random set of materials for the round. You either receive a deck of emojis on cards, string, an assorted set of 9 cubes, sticks and stones, or wooden blocks. Once the round is over, players move their supplies to the next player and the next round continues. It’s so unique! But also randomly fun.
Using sticks and stones to convey one of the photos in Pictures.
We then played Silver and Gold, a fun flip and fill where you write on the cards themselves and score victory points. There’s also a race to get the gold based on the squares you cross off.
I then got to play Aquatica with the wonderful Beth Sobel. Best described as Concordia light, Aquatica is this gorgeous underwater engine building game. It did come with plastic manta ray bits, which had symbols on them that were a wee bit hard to see. But otherwise, the game had great components, such as a cardboard tableau where you actually slide cards into, and it plays quickly at about 30-45 minutes.
Aquatica is just gorgeous and plays like a lighter game of Concordia.
ClipCut Parks is a neat roll-and-cut game! Dice are rolled to determine how much you’re clipping from your main parks sheet toss segment plots of land, in order to satisfy card requirements that have terrain and shape restrictions. If you can’t place your segment or a large strip of paper falls off your main sheet, you must CRUMPLE. It’s equally disheartening and satisfying! And the game includes scissors!
Snip, snip. ClipCut Parks is a neat roll-and-cut game!
Cinecitta 1936 is a game based on the real-life Italian movie studio of the 1930s. Each player is working to hire directors, producers and actors for their movie, as well as produce the highest-quality movie. The hiring of employees has a similar mechanism to Ponzi Scheme, where you secretly offer another player a worker and an amount of money. If they want that card, they’d have to pay you the same amount back, or if they don’t want the card, they can just take the money and add that worker to their movie.
Making secret deals in Cinecitta 1936. You have to pay your workers at the end of the game.
We purchased Imhotep: The Duel, which is the 2P version of the solid midweight game Imhotep. It has the same tense mechanism as its original where you don’t want to set up the other person to sail away with the boat. But this time, goods are randomly loaded in 6 boats, which are docked at the end of a 3×3 grid. Each player takes their turn placing a cube onto one of the 9 Harbor Spaces, and if there are two workers of the same color in any column or row, they can choose to unload a boat instead of placing a cube, and gain the goods for their player tableau.
Face to face, loading up boats and goods in Imhotep: The Duel.
Nokosu Dice is such a thinky trick-taking game that involves dice drafting. At the start of the round, players draft dice, which can be used like a card — color and pips included. But the last dice remaining determines which color/number is trump. And as you use you cards and dice during game play to win tricks, the last dice you have left in your pool marks your bid on the number of tricks you aim to win that round. You get a point per trick won, but lots of points for making exactly making your bid. So many tough choices!
I really liked this trick-taking game! Since you can see everyone’s dice, you have some information about what they can play, since dice act as cards — suit and number included.
Queenz: To Bee or Not To Bee is a light pattern-building game about bees and flowers. The beekeeper moves around the board collecting orchids, which you later use to fill a polyomino fields in play. As you fill in more fields, you score more points for connecting orchid flowers. You can also use these hive structures to fill in a spot for a field, which then score points for bees surrounding them at the end of the game.
Working hard to be the Queen Bee.
One of the best things about going to a convention like #BGGCon2019 is being able to try games you normally wouldn’t have access to. I got a chance to play Electropolis and just found it darling! It’s a tile-laying city-building game that has a clever turn order mechanism built in. You have to take a certain number of connecting tiles on your turn, and the earlier you go in turn order, the fewer tiles you’ll be able to take.
Electropolis incorporates some elements of Patchwork when collecting tiles for your city grid. But if you decide to go earlier in turn order, you get fewer tiles.
There are parameters each round about where on your board you can build those new tiles, and you score points based on how you place those industry tiles on your board. It feels similar to Quadropolis but more strategic and gamey!
Always a great time with Netters and Mitch!
Saturday
Chris and I did some exploring on Saturday afternoon to visit the Dallas Eye Sculpture. We found it.
Feeling watched in downtown Dallas.
And we ate some BBQ at Pecan Lodge. The BBQ was excellent, but the sides were meh. I need to have my sides yummy, otherwise, what’s the point. We walked around downtown Dallas and Deep Elum, which was a nice change of pace after being cooped up inside for the past few days.
All the meats! They were yum, but the sides were meh. And Chris was mad that the collard greens were sweet.
Bus was one of my must-play for the cons! Brian Frahm taught it to me, and it did not disappoint. Players are trying to deliver passengers to various locations by building connections, and the passengers will go to whichever destination they need to go. It’s brutal, cut-throat and a typical Splotter game, even though it’s been republished by Capstone Games this year.
Passengers riding the Bus, not caring which route they take but that they just get to their destination.
I next played giant Container. I love, love this game. It’s a closed economic system in which you’re producing goods, setting a price for them to sell, loading them onto your boat, putting your boats up for auction and all to get those goods onto the island. The problem is that you can never buy from yourself, and a huge part of this game is pricing goods so that people will purchase it. Our game went completely bonkers, and we were so broke by the end of it.
The Container island is very full. We all spent way too much money to load it up.
We ended Saturday night playing a quick game of Werebeasts, which is a werewolf-type social deduction game but with bidding, and For Sale.
I got outted as a WereGhost. Womp womp.
Lastly, we played an adorable game of Fast Sloths. In the game, you’re trying to be the first sloth to collect all your leaves on the board, but being slow and sloth-like, you only move by jumping onto the backs of other animals. On your turn, you collect cards of various animals so that you can activate them for their animal powers — they’re all different — so you can travel around the board. The game lasts for about 45 minutes, but then it kinda slowed down a bit in the end. Nonetheless, we had loads of fun making random animal noises. Like for whenever we summoned the eagle, we all yelled, caw caw!!
Fast Sloths! The box for this game is just adorable.
The last game of Saturday is On The Underground: London/Berlin. In our 3P game, players are in charge building out their 3 different rail lines, hoping the tourist will take your lines to the closest destination and give you VPs. The pawn doesn’t like walking to stops or changing lines, so it’ll embark on the route that’s easiest for it. This version is a reprint of an older game, which I heard only has slight differences in game play and on the map. I do love the box art style though.
Another game where the passenger must make it to their destination, not caring which route they’ll take — just the easiest one for them.
Got a chance to play Pictures with these cool folks on Sunday. Explaining this game is so funny because you’re immediately met with incredulous looks, but after a round in, you start seeing everyone finding their groove.
One last game of Pictures. Fun times with Ross and Emma.
The last game I played for the entire con was Bruxelles 1897. This is the card game of the beloved board game, and it manages to feel just as tense in a small box format! To take an action, you play one of your architect cards, which has a cost value on it. Players are taking action to collect art, sell art, collect supplies or build buildings. Players can also take free actions, but then those architect cards go to prison, which means they won’t be available in your hand to take actions with later.
And just like that, five days of gaming was done! Next year’s BGG Con is the same weekend as Pax Unplugged in Philadelphia, which is causing many gamers to pick one over the other. It seems that more folks are picking Pax Unplugged. Sigh. Thanks kind folks who made it all the way down here! And let me know which game you’d most want to play!
Hello, friends! I know I’m totally super duper late with this post, but immediately after BGG Con, my family came to visit for Thanksgiving (which was an awesome time!), and I’ve been taking some time to catch up on life events. So, without further ado … grab a drink and settle in, it’s gonna be a long recap. But that’s cool, right?
My friends got me Dairyman about five months ago during their trip to Japan. They were drawn in by the cute artwork, and they thought that I would enjoy it. (Side note, my friends are the best!) This cute little push-your-luck dice game is all about milking cows in the barn and making cheese and ice cream. Plus, who doesn’t love ice cream?
Man, where did the time go? It’s already mid-July, and it’s still hotter than hell. I’m so ready for the Phoenix summer to be over! I’ve been staying inside a lot, playing board games naturally. Even amid all the Pokemon Go excitement (yes, I totally downloaded the game), I’m still not venturing outside too much, unless I really have to. And with that, there are two new games I’ve played in the past two weeks, and a couple oldies but goodies …
I am part of an Arkham Horror gaming group that meets up once a month. Arkham Horror is one of my uber-favorite games, but it’s hard to find people who are down to play it. Until I connected with these Arkham folks this past summer, I would play it about once a year. Yeah, pretty sad for a game I adore.
Arkham Horror, a cooperative game for 1-8 players.
Arkham Horror is a cooperative adventure game set in the world of H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos. Who is H.P. Lovecraft, you ask? Lovecraft was an American horror fiction writer from the early 20th century. He didn’t see any success during his life, but his works later influenced many writers such as Stephen King and Neil Gainman, and various works of pop culture, such as Batman and HBO’s “True Detective.” In Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos, Great Old Ones exist, and humankind is unable to to comprehend their cosmic horrors should a Great Old One (also known as an Ancient One) awakens.
