While we normally contribute more to full reviews, in the heady weeks just after SPIEL, everyone is playing as many games as possible – and frankly, spending more time playing games than writing! Our writers have been contributing to a document where they give anonymous small reports on the new games that they’re playing.
These blurbs are meant to be anonymous; in part because given the rapid nature of these things, many of the games may have only been played once; and all comments below should be read with that important caveat. Players will have changing reactions to games after multiple plays, and it certainly wouldn’t be fair to a game to write a review based on such small experience.
Of course, there is also benefit to see what some other gamers have thought about the games that they have already tried – and thus, we stick to this anonymous format of small first takes. We will try to do a final one before the end of the year.
This year, we’ll try to organize the games in alphabetical order:
For part 1 of the recap, click here
For Part 2 of the recap, click here
3 Ring Circus – lacked theme for me, the market stalls at lower player counts. Not for me.
Age of rome – a game on a rotating board, you play in your own quadrant each round and then it rotates based on an event card. Asymmetric starting abilities lead players in slightly different paths. Has some rough edges but interesting nevertheless. Weird random event card that literally removed one of the nine rounds from the game.
Age of Rome – really interesting mechanic at the heart of the game… but watch out for swingy event cards.
Alpujarras – a nice time-track fruit harvesting and selling game with a fairly abstract base, I am not sure there is more to see on subsequent plays, as it is quite tactical. Pretty pieces that are almost as nice as those in Finca.
Ancient Knowledge – I liked the idea, but it fell flat for me because I did not care about what anyone else did, except when one of the few take-that cards was going to be played and we decided to swap them out. It is a fine design but feels quite mechanical. The theme is solid, but it is forgotten in the first five minutes.
Ancient Knowledge – lots of card combos… and while there are some “take that” elements, I like a little bit of it in this design or it would be multiplayer solitaire. The decline mechanic is really neat. Recommended.
Arborea – The 4 spaces in the middle lead to 8 “trails” that are the actual actions. So you place a worker on a space (we called them moving sidewalks, though that’s totally not in-theme) and as the sidewalk moves you decide when to jump off onto a trailhead, with later trails having more/better actions. When activating a worker you get all the actions of the trail and the worker comes back – a couple go back to available supply while most go to a reserve that requires making them active again before use. The actions are all around collecting resources (from a common pool) and cards needed to expand your landscape and place creatures on it in ways to generate VP. That part is a nice, crunchy puzzle that rewards planning, but doesn’t feel brutal if you miss a step or change direction. Another clever element is that if you generate resources on your turn, they go into the common pool and if you don’t use them that turn you score VP. Then any player can use them to fulfill cards. So it’s a nice angst of deciding to take the score and see if they’re still available on your next turn or using them now to further your own plans. All-in-all a nice middle-weight with enjoyable crunch on top of a fantasy-creatures-in-woods theme that scores well on the “it’s pretty” charts.
At the office – a RAW from Knizia. It works pretty well, nothing spectacular but a RAW I’d be willing to play a few more times which is becoming a rarity. You write numbers on your employees in a pyramid, generally trying to have equal/larger numbers as you move up the pyramid; at the same time, you’re racing to fill in all the employees of a particular color for bonuses. You’ll also get bonuses for meeting a particular sum for each row of the pyramid, so you can’t be too chintzy with your number allocation.
Brass empire – it’s a deck builder with a bunch of good ideas but rough around the edges. Not helped by an atrocious rule book
Bubble king – a real time game where you try to make drinks (filling order cards) Half of the cards force you to play ingredients face down so you have to remember those, but weirdly they don’t necessarily pay off with a higher payout despite being inherently harder. Also, you might end up with two of them randomly to start the game while everyone else doesn’t. I’m not a fan of that, but I’m sure that you could change setup to fix it if you really wanted.. The best part about it was probably that we drank Costco jelly popping Boba drinks while playing.
Buffet Boss – a fun stacking dexterity game where you draft food pieces to place onto your plate. Each player has two possible end game scoring bonus cards from the start that gives you motivation to try to start particular pieces
Cabanga! – 6 Nimmt-ish, but when people leave a gap between the numbers, you can call “Cabanga!”, discard those cards, and force them to draw penalty cards. Lots of laughter. Highly recommended.
Cabanga – in theory, a fun, light time at the table. This is true as long as you don’t get hosed by the card draw. Unfortunately, during my first play…I got hosed by the card draw. When you end up with cards that create too large of a gap between the number on the other end of the range, other players will happily yell “Cabanga!” and toss cards your way. You almost can’t lose a game as fast as I did, but here we are. I’ll take the high road and thank Cabanga for the memories.
Cabanga – what fun this one is.. Four colors with two cards surrounding each. Play a card to set the two bookends for the color. If anyone has a card between the boundaries, they yell Cabanga, discard the card, and you draw a penalty card into your hand for each Cabanga. Hand goes until one player is out of cards. The rules definitely did not convey how much fun this one is on the table.
Carry me plz, a pig hinders the party – well this wins for most inventive name. A read my mind game where the group has to exceed a total for anyone to collect good cards but the players who help the least are rewarded the most. Interesting but missing something.
Christmas tree – A set collection game where you take one row of cards at a time from the tree, and an interesting timing mechanism where other players have to discard cards of the same type as what you score; thus causing you to sometimes score sooner than you want in order to catch someone out.
Color gangster – play a trick taking game and then the winner can play a marker into a tic tac toe grid based on the characteristics of the trick. Win automatically if you make a tic tac toe. Wonky rules that potentially change trump after each trick really prevents me from liking this as control level is quite low.
Come Sail Away – It is like Yokohama meets Mancala in 30 minutes. You travel from location to location dropping off people in one of five colors based on a card. The goal is to fill rooms that meet the conditions, which moves you up a track and earns you points. I was glad to have played it, but it did not scratch an itch.
Earthborne Rangers – a happy Arkham Horror: LCG. Pre-game deck building then explore. I liked enough to set up a future gameplay date to start the real campaign.
Evacuation – felt good with 3p – might be tighter with 4p, as we could not find scaling on the new planet. If you like logistics and a medium-heavy game, give it a whirl. It did not excite me, but I appreciated the challenge of evacuating a planet using three colors of cubes. Also, the game would have been 33% longer with 4p for no benefit. We all played different strategies and ended up with scores of 37-37-36, so not sure if everyone will always be close. One cool feature is that there are four different sets of tech tiles that are used to make a 3×3 grid. Because they are placed randomly, the tech trees are different even if you have the same set of tiles.
Evacuation – I’ve played several games of this and always limit it to 3 players maximum but it also worked very well at 2 players. We have only played the race game version and so it generally concludes more quickly than the full 4 years.
Evacuation – my favorite of the new “heavy” games… the shifting of resources from one planet to another is an intriguing puzzle. We played the race game – I’d probably choose to play the “full” game next time.
Evacuation – we played four player race mode. Try to move people and factories from your dying planet to the new one. Lots of little intertwined mechanics. Cool system of balancing production as you have to make and spend resources on the planet where you do things. So many different little mechanisms in play here, but thematically it ties together well and is surprisingly easy to grok. Would definitely try this again.
Faraway – very clever little card game that plays in 10-15 minutes… and there’s a lot of game packed into that tiny time frame. Highly recommended.
Five towers – others tell me they really liked it. I’ve now played it three times and just don’t see it. I never feel like there is enough uncertainty in bidding so most rounds seem perfunctory.
Flamme rouge bmx – a great slimmed down version of the bike racing game. It’s only a single lap so the game takes fifteen minutes. It also has an absurdly large die which is pretty cool.
Footprints – an ice age game that looks like a race but it isn’t. Play cards from your fourteen card deck, one per round, get bonus resources or extra action cards from the board. Also you can get track bumps on four tracks that allow you to move further. The color scheme is grey, olive, drab, and whiteish gray.
Forest Shuffle – a game about card combo scoring as you build a forest. I still really like this one, and there are so many cards in the game – i’m on play 5, and I discovered an animal which I don’t think I’d ever played before.
Forest Shuffle – drafting game with Race for the Galaxy-ish card payment & lots of card combos.
Havalandi – a Knizia from a small publisher. Place hot air balloons on the board, setting fleets into the air for points. There is a hot air balloon figure which I have thrown out because it obstructs your view of the board which goes around the board, changing where you play your balloons. Varying end game cards change your strategies each game.
Imperial Miners – 30 minutes of simultaneous play with some nifty puzzle elements. Good super-filler game.
Imperial Miners – if you don’t mind simultaneous solitaire, this is a lot of game in twenty minutes. We did find a couple of event cards that were a bit harsh, but they affect everyone the same.
Ito – what is you mashed together wavelength (I love it) with the Mind (not for me). An activity that is completely not for me.
Knarr – drafting game with nice artwork and clean playing
Knarr – explore with your Viking ship. Play cards and get the action on the card and for every other card of the same color you have played previously. At some point, discard those played cards to get an Expedition, which scores lots of vps and grants bonuses. Pretty quick and nicely crunchy for the 30 min
Ku ka Konig – a game when you throw out a number 1 to 7 with your fingers. If you choose a number on your own, you get the card pile associated with the number. If you tie, a card is removed and then you throw again, now taking the leftovers. Cards are used in set collection game. It’s fun, and totally surprised me.
Kutna hora – everything works here in this game where you develop the city and mines in kutna hora. Right at the edge of my complexity barrier, but with an experienced teacher, it went swimmingly. I am not sure how I feel about the system where there are six tracks but only two of the four players can affect each. It’s just weird in that sense and i never wrapped head around it. I just looked at the tote board when it was my turn to do things, shrugged my shoulders without understanding truly how we got there and took my turn.
Lunar Laser Frogs – someone rolls 6 dice in three rounds (no re-rolls) to reveal icons on the dice. Other players race to make a single bid on which faces will be shown at the end. The catch; if a color has no faces at the end of the rolling, ALL of the dice end up with it virtually. A surprising amount of fun
MLEM – many have compared it to Cloud 9/Celestia. The comparison is fair, but there are some twists that make it worth playing if you like the genre. The lack of cards and special powers of the catstronauts are amusing.
Monumental – enjoyable with 2 players or solo… I’d avoid with 3-4 players due to downtime.
Mundus Novus – revisiting a slightly convoluted old friend.
Nanatoridori – a shedding game where you can’t arrange your hand and when you play, you can take the combo you beat back into your hand. There is something there in the game but at the same time, it leaves me wanting there to be more
Nana Toridori – people really like it. I think I prefer a bit less flexibility. In addition, with more players, the game can run quite long.
Nucleum – I have played Nucleum twice. Love it. It’ll be interesting to see how the asymmetric starts go. In one of the games one faction was quite strong and lucked out with the final scoring tile matching their strong point of track building. It’s a big heavy Euro game. Feels a little like Brass with some Barrage-like logistics. Love it.
Nucleum – This is a beast. Not mechanically–there’s only three options on your turn and there’s only five basic actions you can take (only one of which is at all complicated). But the wealth of possibilities is so vast that I was almost paralyzed at how to begin. There were many early mistakes, but by midgame, I had gotten into the flow of things and could see the game’s potential. The twin inspirations of Brass and Barrage are readily apparent, but Nucleum doesn’t particularly feel like either of them. There’s a ton of details and the rules could definitely do a better job of highlighting some critical aspects. But now that the fog has (mostly) lifted, I liked what I saw in my first game. With a better appreciation of the strategy, there’s a very good chance that a second play will raise my I Like It rating to an I Love It. Hopefully, that will happen soon.
Oh my orchids – a quick drafting / set collection game. Fifteen minutes to collect seed cards to convert into flower cards. Perfectly fine for the genre, and good to play with flower lovers
Path of Civilization – worked very well with 4 players and solo… set up was a bear the first time, but once you’ve done it, it’s pretty easy to do. Rules feel heavier than they actually are – game is very straightforward (and interesting) after you’ve learned it.
Perspectives. A cooperative discussion game where I have cards that I have to describe but I can’t show you. We work together to solve a mystery. This felt like work rather than fun. Totally not for me as I’m not a fan of this sort of communication game; but I know plenty of folks who would probably love this.
Pirates of Maracaibo. Unlike White Castle, and like Evacuation, people took very different paths. The game is shockingly short, but has the same timing issue, albeit less than Maracaibo. Slow engine builders beware!
Planta Nubo – complicated game about growing and shipping flowers to generate oxygen (victory points). The rules are a bit of a mish-mash, not organized well, and with some possible typos/mistranslations. We got off to a bad start as we struggled to learn the rules from the rulebook, and while everything in the game worked, it just felt churny and clunky – and we’re not sure if we were even playing the same game as specified in the rules. This is one of those games where I would have liked a full companion booklet explaining all the icons and tiles.
Prey Another day – I have played a few times, and I have actually won the game once while just choosing my cards randomly. I suppose it’s the best way to make it hard to read my mind
Rebel princess – a hearts variant which gives each player wacky powers of variable strength. If you like a lot of randomness thrown into your hearts, try this.
Rebel Princess – hearts w/o shooting the moon, but five rounds where each round has a special rule, such as pass 2 cards left and trump is brown. The default is no trump & must follow. In addition, players each have special powers that they keep for all five rounds.
Robot Quest Arena – Fun. And one now played all player counts and several set ups. The more chaotic the set up, the more fun was had. I’d like more character power variation.
Secret number. A logic puzzle that uses mathy deduction. Be the first to identify the hidden card out of ten possible after you see math equations made be other players from two of the cards. Not for favorite logic puzzle turned into a game. Also not my favorite mathy deduction.
Sensu – a set collecting game where you draw cards into a hand of max size 5, play cards when you have a set that equals exactly 20, and then collect cards out of that set, bonus cards if you make pairs or have 3 of the same color. Those cards are used to build fans, and you need 2 complete fans to win.
Sunrise lane – a new version of Rondo but now on a board. Graphics are nice but perhaps a bit more difficult to play ergonomically. The end game bonus scoring is an improvement.
Surfosaurus MAX – another clever card game that reminded me a bit of Trendy with some poker elements thrown in
Surfosaurus Max – still one of my hits of Spiel. Competitive and cooperative play to generate a single poker hand on the table out of 9 to 12 total cards. You score points for your cards that were part of the best hand, and you score more points for lower ranked cards – though these are obviously harder to get included in a winning poker hand
The academy – a quirky trick taking game where each player has a role, which may include setting trump suit or adding a special rule to the round. If you accomplish your goal in a hand, you get a medal. You win the game if you have 3 medals and you win a trick with the purple 7 in it. I loved the idea but the special rules were a bit much for me personally.
The White Castle – 9 actions with chains, a. pick one of six dice (2 in each of three colors), place it on one of ~15 spaces. Do what the space says, which often lets you trigger something else. The game is broken into three seasons of three dice each. I really enjoyed it, but I can see that it could be played as a massive min-maxing game, but I played it as ‘well, that is what I want to do’ and it was fine. Need to play again to know if there is a there there or if it is just twiddling dials.
Time collectors – roll 4d10 and arrange to make a year, travel in time to collect cards which you play on your board for some set collection and some tile laying. A nice twenty minute game
Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City – appreciate the rubbery cars and pads on the bottom of the road portions.
Town 77 – a logic puzzle that’s been gamified. It works ok and only lasts ten minutes.
Town 77 – I get why this exists, but it is not ‘fun’ – I’d rather it were a game that was cooperative or on a computer, so it could say ‘you have no available moves’ rather than having someone stare at their rack for 5 minutes or showing everyone the tiles and effectively making it a co-op to determine if any can be placed.
Tucana builders – still a nice path game but very random in the tile drawing. If you draw good tiles you’ll win. If you never get paths that fork, you’re cooked. I have a lot of problems scoring the game (always recounting) and I’ve found that I must play this with a bucket of plastic cubes nearby, placing a cube on my board for each scoring animal and thus not having to recount multiple times to make sure I have gotten it right.
Tucana Builders – tile-laying take on the same kind of route-building as the flip-n-write Trails to Tucana
Unmatched: Tales to Amaze! – Restoration Games managed to make a very enjoyable co-op out of their incredibly successful head-to-head fighting system.
Unmatched tales to amaze – fun for a Beat em up coop. Bonus points for having ohio-ish myths, the Mothman and Loveland Frog. I would never request it, but a rollicking fun time. For me, the experience is often driven by the moderator, and I had a good one
Urbify – a worker placement meets city building game. Pretty solid. The iconography on the tiles isn’t great and that was frustrating. You place workers to get resources or to build buildings; you get them back when you collect. The game only allows you to do certain actions when all your workers are out though, and the timing of that is the crux of the game.
Verplant & Zugestellt – a flip-n-write about interior design… with some tough choices to make and lots of scenarios!
Verplant and zugestellt – a game about architecture or interior designing. Pretty clever system with cards that give you multiple options each turn. As the game progresses you likely can’t do a perfect design and some of the art of the game is figuring out what you can afford to leave out. Surprisingly good.
Waterfall park. The new Chinatown, now with 4 rounds instead of six and tiles that have 6 neighbors instead of 4. To me, the game is much more open and trading is more likely to happen. The board also allows for more interesting trades. I am not sure I like the new plastic marker system, but it’s no worse than the player circles from the original.
Waterfall Park – Chinatown with more flexibility and less length. I had owned and sold the original Chinatown due to the way the trading could lock up due to structure… this is better.
Yaburo quest – an odd Japanese game where you get a sheet of paper with all sorts of icons on it and then you tear out little strips of paper to form scoring combinations. It should not be as much fun as it turns out to be.
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Opinionated Gamers First Takes on SPIEL 2023 Games (Part 3 of 4)
While we normally contribute more to full reviews, in the heady weeks just after SPIEL, everyone is playing as many games as possible – and frankly, spending more time playing games than writing! Our writers have been contributing to a document where they give anonymous small reports on the new games that they’re playing.
These blurbs are meant to be anonymous; in part because given the rapid nature of these things, many of the games may have only been played once; and all comments below should be read with that important caveat. Players will have changing reactions to games after multiple plays, and it certainly wouldn’t be fair to a game to write a review based on such small experience.
Of course, there is also benefit to see what some other gamers have thought about the games that they have already tried – and thus, we stick to this anonymous format of small first takes. We will try to do a final one before the end of the year.
This year, we’ll try to organize the games in alphabetical order:
For part 1 of the recap, click here
For Part 2 of the recap, click here
3 Ring Circus – lacked theme for me, the market stalls at lower player counts. Not for me.
Age of rome – a game on a rotating board, you play in your own quadrant each round and then it rotates based on an event card. Asymmetric starting abilities lead players in slightly different paths. Has some rough edges but interesting nevertheless. Weird random event card that literally removed one of the nine rounds from the game.
Age of Rome – really interesting mechanic at the heart of the game… but watch out for swingy event cards.
Alpujarras – a nice time-track fruit harvesting and selling game with a fairly abstract base, I am not sure there is more to see on subsequent plays, as it is quite tactical. Pretty pieces that are almost as nice as those in Finca.
Ancient Knowledge – I liked the idea, but it fell flat for me because I did not care about what anyone else did, except when one of the few take-that cards was going to be played and we decided to swap them out. It is a fine design but feels quite mechanical. The theme is solid, but it is forgotten in the first five minutes.
Ancient Knowledge – lots of card combos… and while there are some “take that” elements, I like a little bit of it in this design or it would be multiplayer solitaire. The decline mechanic is really neat. Recommended.
Arborea – The 4 spaces in the middle lead to 8 “trails” that are the actual actions. So you place a worker on a space (we called them moving sidewalks, though that’s totally not in-theme) and as the sidewalk moves you decide when to jump off onto a trailhead, with later trails having more/better actions. When activating a worker you get all the actions of the trail and the worker comes back – a couple go back to available supply while most go to a reserve that requires making them active again before use. The actions are all around collecting resources (from a common pool) and cards needed to expand your landscape and place creatures on it in ways to generate VP. That part is a nice, crunchy puzzle that rewards planning, but doesn’t feel brutal if you miss a step or change direction. Another clever element is that if you generate resources on your turn, they go into the common pool and if you don’t use them that turn you score VP. Then any player can use them to fulfill cards. So it’s a nice angst of deciding to take the score and see if they’re still available on your next turn or using them now to further your own plans. All-in-all a nice middle-weight with enjoyable crunch on top of a fantasy-creatures-in-woods theme that scores well on the “it’s pretty” charts.
At the office – a RAW from Knizia. It works pretty well, nothing spectacular but a RAW I’d be willing to play a few more times which is becoming a rarity. You write numbers on your employees in a pyramid, generally trying to have equal/larger numbers as you move up the pyramid; at the same time, you’re racing to fill in all the employees of a particular color for bonuses. You’ll also get bonuses for meeting a particular sum for each row of the pyramid, so you can’t be too chintzy with your number allocation.
Brass empire – it’s a deck builder with a bunch of good ideas but rough around the edges. Not helped by an atrocious rule book
Bubble king – a real time game where you try to make drinks (filling order cards) Half of the cards force you to play ingredients face down so you have to remember those, but weirdly they don’t necessarily pay off with a higher payout despite being inherently harder. Also, you might end up with two of them randomly to start the game while everyone else doesn’t. I’m not a fan of that, but I’m sure that you could change setup to fix it if you really wanted.. The best part about it was probably that we drank Costco jelly popping Boba drinks while playing.
Buffet Boss – a fun stacking dexterity game where you draft food pieces to place onto your plate. Each player has two possible end game scoring bonus cards from the start that gives you motivation to try to start particular pieces
Cabanga! – 6 Nimmt-ish, but when people leave a gap between the numbers, you can call “Cabanga!”, discard those cards, and force them to draw penalty cards. Lots of laughter. Highly recommended.
Cabanga – in theory, a fun, light time at the table. This is true as long as you don’t get hosed by the card draw. Unfortunately, during my first play…I got hosed by the card draw. When you end up with cards that create too large of a gap between the number on the other end of the range, other players will happily yell “Cabanga!” and toss cards your way. You almost can’t lose a game as fast as I did, but here we are. I’ll take the high road and thank Cabanga for the memories.
Cabanga – what fun this one is.. Four colors with two cards surrounding each. Play a card to set the two bookends for the color. If anyone has a card between the boundaries, they yell Cabanga, discard the card, and you draw a penalty card into your hand for each Cabanga. Hand goes until one player is out of cards. The rules definitely did not convey how much fun this one is on the table.
Carry me plz, a pig hinders the party – well this wins for most inventive name. A read my mind game where the group has to exceed a total for anyone to collect good cards but the players who help the least are rewarded the most. Interesting but missing something.
Christmas tree – A set collection game where you take one row of cards at a time from the tree, and an interesting timing mechanism where other players have to discard cards of the same type as what you score; thus causing you to sometimes score sooner than you want in order to catch someone out.
Color gangster – play a trick taking game and then the winner can play a marker into a tic tac toe grid based on the characteristics of the trick. Win automatically if you make a tic tac toe. Wonky rules that potentially change trump after each trick really prevents me from liking this as control level is quite low.
Come Sail Away – It is like Yokohama meets Mancala in 30 minutes. You travel from location to location dropping off people in one of five colors based on a card. The goal is to fill rooms that meet the conditions, which moves you up a track and earns you points. I was glad to have played it, but it did not scratch an itch.
Earthborne Rangers – a happy Arkham Horror: LCG. Pre-game deck building then explore. I liked enough to set up a future gameplay date to start the real campaign.
Evacuation – felt good with 3p – might be tighter with 4p, as we could not find scaling on the new planet. If you like logistics and a medium-heavy game, give it a whirl. It did not excite me, but I appreciated the challenge of evacuating a planet using three colors of cubes. Also, the game would have been 33% longer with 4p for no benefit. We all played different strategies and ended up with scores of 37-37-36, so not sure if everyone will always be close. One cool feature is that there are four different sets of tech tiles that are used to make a 3×3 grid. Because they are placed randomly, the tech trees are different even if you have the same set of tiles.
Evacuation – I’ve played several games of this and always limit it to 3 players maximum but it also worked very well at 2 players. We have only played the race game version and so it generally concludes more quickly than the full 4 years.
Evacuation – my favorite of the new “heavy” games… the shifting of resources from one planet to another is an intriguing puzzle. We played the race game – I’d probably choose to play the “full” game next time.
Evacuation – we played four player race mode. Try to move people and factories from your dying planet to the new one. Lots of little intertwined mechanics. Cool system of balancing production as you have to make and spend resources on the planet where you do things. So many different little mechanisms in play here, but thematically it ties together well and is surprisingly easy to grok. Would definitely try this again.
Faraway – very clever little card game that plays in 10-15 minutes… and there’s a lot of game packed into that tiny time frame. Highly recommended.
Five towers – others tell me they really liked it. I’ve now played it three times and just don’t see it. I never feel like there is enough uncertainty in bidding so most rounds seem perfunctory.
Flamme rouge bmx – a great slimmed down version of the bike racing game. It’s only a single lap so the game takes fifteen minutes. It also has an absurdly large die which is pretty cool.
Footprints – an ice age game that looks like a race but it isn’t. Play cards from your fourteen card deck, one per round, get bonus resources or extra action cards from the board. Also you can get track bumps on four tracks that allow you to move further. The color scheme is grey, olive, drab, and whiteish gray.
Forest Shuffle – a game about card combo scoring as you build a forest. I still really like this one, and there are so many cards in the game – i’m on play 5, and I discovered an animal which I don’t think I’d ever played before.
Forest Shuffle – drafting game with Race for the Galaxy-ish card payment & lots of card combos.
Havalandi – a Knizia from a small publisher. Place hot air balloons on the board, setting fleets into the air for points. There is a hot air balloon figure which I have thrown out because it obstructs your view of the board which goes around the board, changing where you play your balloons. Varying end game cards change your strategies each game.
Imperial Miners – 30 minutes of simultaneous play with some nifty puzzle elements. Good super-filler game.
Imperial Miners – if you don’t mind simultaneous solitaire, this is a lot of game in twenty minutes. We did find a couple of event cards that were a bit harsh, but they affect everyone the same.
Ito – what is you mashed together wavelength (I love it) with the Mind (not for me). An activity that is completely not for me.
Knarr – drafting game with nice artwork and clean playing
Knarr – explore with your Viking ship. Play cards and get the action on the card and for every other card of the same color you have played previously. At some point, discard those played cards to get an Expedition, which scores lots of vps and grants bonuses. Pretty quick and nicely crunchy for the 30 min
Ku ka Konig – a game when you throw out a number 1 to 7 with your fingers. If you choose a number on your own, you get the card pile associated with the number. If you tie, a card is removed and then you throw again, now taking the leftovers. Cards are used in set collection game. It’s fun, and totally surprised me.
Kutna hora – everything works here in this game where you develop the city and mines in kutna hora. Right at the edge of my complexity barrier, but with an experienced teacher, it went swimmingly. I am not sure how I feel about the system where there are six tracks but only two of the four players can affect each. It’s just weird in that sense and i never wrapped head around it. I just looked at the tote board when it was my turn to do things, shrugged my shoulders without understanding truly how we got there and took my turn.
Lunar Laser Frogs – someone rolls 6 dice in three rounds (no re-rolls) to reveal icons on the dice. Other players race to make a single bid on which faces will be shown at the end. The catch; if a color has no faces at the end of the rolling, ALL of the dice end up with it virtually. A surprising amount of fun
MLEM – many have compared it to Cloud 9/Celestia. The comparison is fair, but there are some twists that make it worth playing if you like the genre. The lack of cards and special powers of the catstronauts are amusing.
Monumental – enjoyable with 2 players or solo… I’d avoid with 3-4 players due to downtime.
Mundus Novus – revisiting a slightly convoluted old friend.
Nanatoridori – a shedding game where you can’t arrange your hand and when you play, you can take the combo you beat back into your hand. There is something there in the game but at the same time, it leaves me wanting there to be more
Nana Toridori – people really like it. I think I prefer a bit less flexibility. In addition, with more players, the game can run quite long.
Nucleum – I have played Nucleum twice. Love it. It’ll be interesting to see how the asymmetric starts go. In one of the games one faction was quite strong and lucked out with the final scoring tile matching their strong point of track building. It’s a big heavy Euro game. Feels a little like Brass with some Barrage-like logistics. Love it.
Nucleum – This is a beast. Not mechanically–there’s only three options on your turn and there’s only five basic actions you can take (only one of which is at all complicated). But the wealth of possibilities is so vast that I was almost paralyzed at how to begin. There were many early mistakes, but by midgame, I had gotten into the flow of things and could see the game’s potential. The twin inspirations of Brass and Barrage are readily apparent, but Nucleum doesn’t particularly feel like either of them. There’s a ton of details and the rules could definitely do a better job of highlighting some critical aspects. But now that the fog has (mostly) lifted, I liked what I saw in my first game. With a better appreciation of the strategy, there’s a very good chance that a second play will raise my I Like It rating to an I Love It. Hopefully, that will happen soon.
Oh my orchids – a quick drafting / set collection game. Fifteen minutes to collect seed cards to convert into flower cards. Perfectly fine for the genre, and good to play with flower lovers
Path of Civilization – worked very well with 4 players and solo… set up was a bear the first time, but once you’ve done it, it’s pretty easy to do. Rules feel heavier than they actually are – game is very straightforward (and interesting) after you’ve learned it.
Perspectives. A cooperative discussion game where I have cards that I have to describe but I can’t show you. We work together to solve a mystery. This felt like work rather than fun. Totally not for me as I’m not a fan of this sort of communication game; but I know plenty of folks who would probably love this.
Pirates of Maracaibo. Unlike White Castle, and like Evacuation, people took very different paths. The game is shockingly short, but has the same timing issue, albeit less than Maracaibo. Slow engine builders beware!
Planta Nubo – complicated game about growing and shipping flowers to generate oxygen (victory points). The rules are a bit of a mish-mash, not organized well, and with some possible typos/mistranslations. We got off to a bad start as we struggled to learn the rules from the rulebook, and while everything in the game worked, it just felt churny and clunky – and we’re not sure if we were even playing the same game as specified in the rules. This is one of those games where I would have liked a full companion booklet explaining all the icons and tiles.
Prey Another day – I have played a few times, and I have actually won the game once while just choosing my cards randomly. I suppose it’s the best way to make it hard to read my mind
Rebel princess – a hearts variant which gives each player wacky powers of variable strength. If you like a lot of randomness thrown into your hearts, try this.
Rebel Princess – hearts w/o shooting the moon, but five rounds where each round has a special rule, such as pass 2 cards left and trump is brown. The default is no trump & must follow. In addition, players each have special powers that they keep for all five rounds.
Robot Quest Arena – Fun. And one now played all player counts and several set ups. The more chaotic the set up, the more fun was had. I’d like more character power variation.
Secret number. A logic puzzle that uses mathy deduction. Be the first to identify the hidden card out of ten possible after you see math equations made be other players from two of the cards. Not for favorite logic puzzle turned into a game. Also not my favorite mathy deduction.
Sensu – a set collecting game where you draw cards into a hand of max size 5, play cards when you have a set that equals exactly 20, and then collect cards out of that set, bonus cards if you make pairs or have 3 of the same color. Those cards are used to build fans, and you need 2 complete fans to win.
Sunrise lane – a new version of Rondo but now on a board. Graphics are nice but perhaps a bit more difficult to play ergonomically. The end game bonus scoring is an improvement.
Surfosaurus MAX – another clever card game that reminded me a bit of Trendy with some poker elements thrown in
Surfosaurus Max – still one of my hits of Spiel. Competitive and cooperative play to generate a single poker hand on the table out of 9 to 12 total cards. You score points for your cards that were part of the best hand, and you score more points for lower ranked cards – though these are obviously harder to get included in a winning poker hand
The academy – a quirky trick taking game where each player has a role, which may include setting trump suit or adding a special rule to the round. If you accomplish your goal in a hand, you get a medal. You win the game if you have 3 medals and you win a trick with the purple 7 in it. I loved the idea but the special rules were a bit much for me personally.
The White Castle – 9 actions with chains, a. pick one of six dice (2 in each of three colors), place it on one of ~15 spaces. Do what the space says, which often lets you trigger something else. The game is broken into three seasons of three dice each. I really enjoyed it, but I can see that it could be played as a massive min-maxing game, but I played it as ‘well, that is what I want to do’ and it was fine. Need to play again to know if there is a there there or if it is just twiddling dials.
Time collectors – roll 4d10 and arrange to make a year, travel in time to collect cards which you play on your board for some set collection and some tile laying. A nice twenty minute game
Tokyo Highway: Rainbow City – appreciate the rubbery cars and pads on the bottom of the road portions.
Town 77 – a logic puzzle that’s been gamified. It works ok and only lasts ten minutes.
Town 77 – I get why this exists, but it is not ‘fun’ – I’d rather it were a game that was cooperative or on a computer, so it could say ‘you have no available moves’ rather than having someone stare at their rack for 5 minutes or showing everyone the tiles and effectively making it a co-op to determine if any can be placed.
Tucana builders – still a nice path game but very random in the tile drawing. If you draw good tiles you’ll win. If you never get paths that fork, you’re cooked. I have a lot of problems scoring the game (always recounting) and I’ve found that I must play this with a bucket of plastic cubes nearby, placing a cube on my board for each scoring animal and thus not having to recount multiple times to make sure I have gotten it right.
Tucana Builders – tile-laying take on the same kind of route-building as the flip-n-write Trails to Tucana
Unmatched: Tales to Amaze! – Restoration Games managed to make a very enjoyable co-op out of their incredibly successful head-to-head fighting system.
Unmatched tales to amaze – fun for a Beat em up coop. Bonus points for having ohio-ish myths, the Mothman and Loveland Frog. I would never request it, but a rollicking fun time. For me, the experience is often driven by the moderator, and I had a good one
Urbify – a worker placement meets city building game. Pretty solid. The iconography on the tiles isn’t great and that was frustrating. You place workers to get resources or to build buildings; you get them back when you collect. The game only allows you to do certain actions when all your workers are out though, and the timing of that is the crux of the game.
Verplant & Zugestellt – a flip-n-write about interior design… with some tough choices to make and lots of scenarios!
Verplant and zugestellt – a game about architecture or interior designing. Pretty clever system with cards that give you multiple options each turn. As the game progresses you likely can’t do a perfect design and some of the art of the game is figuring out what you can afford to leave out. Surprisingly good.
Waterfall park. The new Chinatown, now with 4 rounds instead of six and tiles that have 6 neighbors instead of 4. To me, the game is much more open and trading is more likely to happen. The board also allows for more interesting trades. I am not sure I like the new plastic marker system, but it’s no worse than the player circles from the original.
Waterfall Park – Chinatown with more flexibility and less length. I had owned and sold the original Chinatown due to the way the trading could lock up due to structure… this is better.
Yaburo quest – an odd Japanese game where you get a sheet of paper with all sorts of icons on it and then you tear out little strips of paper to form scoring combinations. It should not be as much fun as it turns out to be.
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About Dale Yu
Dale Yu is the Editor of the Opinionated Gamers. He can occasionally be found working as a volunteer administrator for BoardGameGeek, and he previously wrote for BoardGame News.