Dale Yu: Review of Gachapon Trick

 

Gachapon Trick

  • Designer: Daniel Newman
  • Publisher: Playte
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Preorder link: preorder.playte.com
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Oh boy! A Gachapon parlor! And here I am with a pocket full of coins! Look at all the cool toys! I MUST COLLECT THEM ALL!  In Gachapon Trick, the lead player may play any card they choose. The next player must follow that suit if they can, but may play any suit if they cannot. The following players must follow any of the suits already played if possible.

The highest rank of the most represented suit wins the trick. If there is a tie for the most represented suit, the higher rank wins. If there is still a tie, the later played of the tied cards wins. The winning player MUST purchase at least one card from the trick, but MAY buy as many as they want. The winner places the cards they purchased face up in front of themself. The winner MAY also buy the top card of the deck for Â¥500 – only once per trick.

 

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Dale Yu: Exit: The Game Advent Calendar – The Magic of Christmas

Exit: The Game Advent Calendar – The Magic of Christmas

  • Designers: Emely, Inka and Markus Brand
  • Publisher: Kosmos
  • Players: 1+
  • Time: 5-10 min/day x 24 days
  • Played with review copy provided by Thames and Kosmos
  • Amazon Affiliate link – https://amzn.to/4wLZ2tT

Advent calendars are a well-entrenched tradition in Germany.  Each October when I head to Essen for SPIEL, the stores are already jammed packed with Advent calendars of all types.  The first printed Advent calendar originated in Germany in the early 20th century with Gerhard Lang. When Gerhard was a little boy his mother made him a calendar with 24 small candies attached to cardboard, one for each day before Christmas.  Lang grew up to operate the Reichhold & Lang printing company where he printed the first Advent cardboard calendar with 24 little pictures. A few years later, the company printed the first calendar with the little doors that everyone loves to open.  The first chocolate Advent calendar appeared in 1958, but it was in 1971 that Cadbury joined the race and launched its own version in the UK. Cadbury produced Advent calendars intermittently from 1972 to 1986, but it wasn’t until 1993 that they finally became a mainstay.

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Ants Wins 2026 Jogo do Ano

The winner of the 2026 Jogo do Ano award was recently announced.  It’s Ants, designed by Renato Ciervo and Andrea Robbiani and published by Cranio Creations.  It beat out the other nominated games (Ada’s Dream, Galactic Cruise, Luthier, and Speakeasy) for the honor.

The Jogo do Ano is awarded every year by the Spiel Portugal gaming club.  It focuses almost exclusively on heavier designs.

Ants’ victory continues a recent trend:  award-winning games developed by Simone Luciani.  In addition to Ants, Luciani was the developer for Railway Boom, which just won the IGA Multiplayer game of the year.

Congratulations to Ciervo, Robbiani, and Cranio Creations for this honor.

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Dale Yu: Review of Jibber Jabble

 

 

Jibber Jabble

  • Designer: Cassie Sikes
  • Publisher: Allplay
  • Players: 3-10
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 15 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Your goal each round is to convey a secret word to the round’s guesser. You and your team gets to spell three words in order to do that.

Players spell one letter each. The catch? They aren’t allowed to discuss what clue they’re trying to spell. The first time you have a perfect clue in mind, but the person next to you says a letter you weren’t expecting at all… well, that’s Jibber Jabble.

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Dale Yu: Review of Grabble

 

 

Grabble

  • Designer:  Naoki Fukuda
  • Publisher: CMYK
  • Players: 2-6
  • Age: 6+
  • Time: 5 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Here’s how it works: you have a box of gloriously mismatched pieces from games that never existed—hogs, bananas, traffic cones, dice! On the count of 3-2-1-GO, everyone plunges a hand into the box, grabbing pieces as fast as they can, one at a time, and dropping them into their cup. The moment someone’s cup is full, they snatch the huge pawn and count down 5-4-3-2-1-STOP! Last player to slap the table pays them a piece.

 

Then comes the showdown. Players take turns calling out a piece from their stash and tossing it back in the box. Got one too? Toss it back in. Don’t have it? You’re OUT.

 

Last player standing wins! 

 

…and immediately demands a rematch.

 

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Dale Yu – Report from CapCon2026 (lots of new Essen games!)

 

Well, I just got done with a weekend full of new games at the local CapCon2.  This is an event run by Capstone Games – which just happens to be headquartered in my hometown.  It’s a wonderful event, free to participate – though the badges were limited, so you had to act quickly in order to secure a badge.

 

Capstone opens up their warehouse space with tables and chairs, and you can always also move into the adjoining store.  There were anywhere from 20 to 60 people there at the times I was there, and plenty of games to play!  Capstone had a full library of their previous releases, and they also had a handful of games that will feature at this year’s SPIEL fair in Essen.  Many of them will be done here in the US by Capstone, and others were here for a test-drive (so to speak) – and decisions on those will be made in the upcoming weeks.

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