Catan Zip!

• Designer: Klaus Teuber
• Publisher: Catan Studio
• Players:  3-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 60 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4tVMLCs
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Welcome to the unexplored island of Catan!

As you and your fellow explorers gaze across the uninhabited landscape of hexagonal tracts of terrain, you quickly realize that this unique land arrangement provides ample space for each of you to put down roots. You race off to establish your respective communities by gathering resources from nearby terrain, building your infrastructure, and nurturing trade relationships.  Watch out for surprises – your rivals can block your path or send the robber to plunder your wealth.  Good luck, explorers!

In this portable edition, the island of Catan is created on the pad in the center of the table. Different island layouts ensure that every game is new and full of possibilities. Players draw their roads, settlements and cities directly on the map as the island develops. 

Trade remains the key to success. Instead of cards, you use resource tokens to trade with other players. Some resources you will have in abundance, while others are scarce. Exchange wisely to complete your building plans.

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Bare Bones

• Designer: not listed
• Publisher: West Coast Bias Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 20-30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link:  https://amzn.to/4vhW0hg
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Bare Bones, players each begin with an identical base set of 7 cards + 3 additional cards they choose. Cards come in two varieties, Dice Cards and Action Cards.  Dice Cards come in 7 colors. Every Dice Card played entitles the player to roll 1 die of the corresponding color. The different colored dice have different values representing points. White dice provide the currency needed to acquire new cards to build your deck. Action Cards grant powerful abilities players can use to multiply scores and enhance other cards in their decks. There are many paths to victory through card and dice combos, but it all comes down to how you build your deck and the luck of the dice. Seven different Action Cards are used in each game, but 20 are provided. After 12 rounds, scores are tallied to determine the victor.

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BoardGameGeek has just announced the winners of their Golden Geek awards for 2025.  There are three Game of the Year categories, for best Light, Medium, and Heavy games.  Here are the top three finishers in each category, together with their designers:

Heavy Game of the Year
WINNER – Galactic Cruise (T.K. King, Dennis Northcott, Koltin Thompson)
2nd – Speakeasy (Vital Lacerda)
3rd – Luthier (Dave Beck, Abe Burson) Continue reading →

A recent entry in the excellent Solo Hero series by Renegade Game Studios, Unstoppable is a unique combat-focused card-crafting game set in a dystopian future. It is a combat deck-builder where the focus of the game is to damage enemies or purchase upgraded cards to defeat more enemies in the future. The “hook” here lies in how the cards are used. Cards are “created” in sleeves – each sleeve is filled with a player-side card and an enemy side-side card. When a new player card is bought, it is placed in a sleeve with an enemy back, creating a unique double-sided card. During the game, up to two upgrade cards can also be added between the two sides to make the card more powerful to use (and to fight.) Few cards are drawn. Instead, players must defeat the back side of a card to draw its front side into their hand. With four heroes (with slightly different starting hands) and three unique bosses to fight, there is a considerable amount of boardgame space to explore in a relatively small box. If this particular dystopian future isn’t your jam, there is a crowdfunding effort to bring about a sequel featuring Dungeon Crawler Carl, the protagonist (along with his cat) of a series of books set in a planet-wide survival dungeon televised for galactic viewers. There’s obviously a following for it as the campaign for the new card game, along with a new RPG in the setting, is currently pushing $10 million raised.

Unstoppable
Designer: John D. Clair
Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Players: 1-2
Ages: 14+
Time: 30-90 min (depending on boss)
(review copy provided by publisher)