Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2025 (Part 6)
Bridge had god-like status as a card game when I was growing up. My grandparents played Solo, my generation played 500, but my parents played Bridge. The house had shelf upon shelf of Bridge books explaining conventions and the like. Until they stopped. I ventured to ask why one day but never got a straight answer, just walk-away mutterings about idiots, bidding mistakes, and imminent divorces. I believe the second most common reason for divorce in the 70’s was Bridge. The house certainly became less tense for the stopping, which the kids were all grateful for. I think the death-knell was wrapping their new sporty red Holden Torana hatchback (which Peter Brock was slaying Bathurst with at the time) into a tree late one night on the way back from Sydney after a Bridge fight-night, sending both parents to hospital for short stays.
Which is why I’ve never played Bridge (even though I’m sure I’d love it) and which likely laid the first seeds of my distaste for personal conflict tension in games.
For anyone wondering what I look like now, this is me after finding a new 8-10!
Anyway, let’s stride forward to the current day. New-to-me games played recently include …
AGE OF RAIL: SOUTH AFRICA (2011): Rank 5072, Rating 7.7 – Bohrer
In one sense it’s just another Bohrer shares game (they all blend in my mind) but the worker action spaces and the consequent limitations on how often shares are auctioned and how often you can do it elevate this over similar versions like Chicago Express (which seemed to reward share value dilution for the petty sake of it from memory). I’m not sure there’s a ton of replay here because the game is going to repetitively ask you to buy into a company, expand it, get money, invest further, etc, but the timing decisions on what to invest into so as to gain advantage makes the game for those who love this kind of thing. For mine, it’s still too mathy and too much of my fate relies on other players’ decisions though.
Rating: 6
AXIO ROTA (2019): Rank 8452, Rating 6.6 – Knizia
The baby sister game to Ingenious/Simply Ingenious. The tiles are square this time and have different colours in each corner. You score points by placing your drawn tile next to same colours, your end-score being your worst colour, highest score wins. 12 turns dragged. Too abstract, too dull, nothing of interest, glad to move on.
Rating: 5
COAL BARON: THE GREAT CARD GAME (2016): Rank 2131, Rating 7.1 – Kiesling / Kramer
Well for starters it’s a good card game, not great – we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt re the title being self-mocking and in the spirit of the era. It’s surprisingly not that dissimilar in weight to its progenitor and runs longer than you expect. You’re collecting all types of cards from different piles – carriages, engines, destination, goals, deliveries – with the aim of building sets which satisfy VP goals for colours, icons, etc. I loved the action mechanism – you can take a pile if you spend one more action point than the previous player. Do you take lots of cheap actions or spend big on something you desperately need? Good choices. Different piles are more valuable at different points in the game and this addresses it perfectly. I’m not sure there’s too much inter-game variety though – you’ll be doing the same thing, hunting for and hoping that the cards you’re after appear at the right times – but it was engaging, no doubt.
Rating: 7
FLIP 7 (2024): Rank 2271, Rating 7.3
Flip a card. If it repeats a number you already have you score nothing this round. Do some quick odds assessment of repeating a number, pass if your current score (the numbers you’ve already collected) is not worth risking. Oh what fun. This game has a niche – drunken family nights. It can be fun if everyone hams it up and gets into it but it’s never going to be a staple on gaming nights (mine at least).
Rating: 5
NANATORIDORI (2018): Rank 5297, Rating 6.8
This remake of Hachi Train is a shedding game where cards can’t be re-arranged (Scout) and when you play the obligatory higher valued set you have the choice of picking up the set you’ve beaten (almost Odin) and placing it anywhere in your hand to make even better sets and fix up your hand. Going out requires significant sets so you’re mostly dependent on the players to your right feeding you cards that will help. With cards only ranged 1-7, it’s easier to get things out than its peers though, making decisions easier, so it doesn’t rate quite as well despite it being easy and quick to play.
Rating: 6
REBEL PRINCESS (2023): Rank 2143, Rating 7.5
It’s Hearts but with each of the 5 rounds featuring a different passing rule and a different card-play rule. Each player also has a super-power they can use once each round to get them out of trouble. All of which is fun (I like Hearts) but it’s now wildly random re assessing your hand and … well, I can play Hearts for free anytime.
Rating: 7
SUPERSTORE 3000 (2024): Rank 11225, Rating 6.6
Buy a tile from the queued display, place it in your tableau, aim to have the biggest contiguous collection in each colour and win as many in-game races as quickly as possible. Just like 1000 other Euros. This has the wibble of customer tiles where you want to place the customer’s store-type within 3 spaces (for biggest collection and in-game races). Pass and get money if you don’t like your tile choices. It rolls along just fine but the rules teach is surprisingly longer than the game-play warranted and nothing stands out enough to draw me back.
Rating: 6
WONDROUS CREATURES (2024): Rank 2139, Rating 8.1
Collect resources using the funky map system where you place your meeple across two hexes and pick up the resources from the spaces around your meeple. The hexes also have bonus actions you can lean into to make for some really interesting turns, pulling rabbits out of hats when all was lost. Use resources to build your Everdell-type cards which have all the usual types of effects. But often you’re icon-hunting (a la Terraforming Mars) to win the in-game races for trophy points. With games of this pedigree in its nature, despite being a little derivative and prone to AP at times with all the effects and bonuses, it’s easy to like and makes for engaging replay optimism.
Rating: 8
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Larry: I didn’t learn Bridge until I was in my 20’s, so I have no experience with Bridge-related parental stress, like Alison has. But I have observed a lot of terrible behavior between married couples during Duplicate tournaments and I was always shocked at it. I wouldn’t dream of ever treating a perfect stranger like that, much less a loved one, but it was sadly commonplace. Very unpleasant to see and I could easily see a couple giving up the game because of it.
As for the games covered, I’m a big fan of the Coal Baron Card Game and feel it’s considerably superior to the board game it was derived from. The action selection system is indeed excellent and the game seems a good deal tighter than the board game. I’ve played it over a dozen times and it seems to have enough variety to hold my attention for all of those. It’s probably the last Kramer/Kiesling game that really clicked for me.
