These days I don’t get a lot out of playing games I’m not that excited about. If I’m in danger of being dragged into multiple games of Flip 7 for instance, I’d rather stay home and read a book, or clean sewers or something. As a result, I find I’m putting in more work prior to each gaming session to organise what I’m playing and who I’m playing with (especially if it’s a public event). Let’s call it directed gaming for sake of a term.
With 3500+ titles under my wings, my directed gaming aims at getting games to the table that are either new-to-me or which have something special that’s begged for exploring. With nice people. Who are experienced gamers. Who play fast. It’s a beautiful world when it all comes together!
And other days I read a book and am just as happy. But I do love gaming for the social. As long as it’s directed, not just gaming for the sake of gaming! 😊
New-to-me games played recently include …
AMALFI: RENAISSANCE (2023): Rank 2185, Rating 7.7
It’s worker placement but the workers are also used as resources, meaning you use an action to get resources and then spend those resources asap to get those workers back for more actions/resources. Resources are spent getting more workers, better actions, and on cards for points and bonuses. There’s a card engine to be built and end-of-round scoring conditions to strive for. The first round was quick and interesting. Second round fine, engine coming together. Third round went too long with the influx of new workers and new action slots. The 4th round went forever, churning your workers over and over and over. The rating dropped with each churn.
Rating: 6
BURGER JOINT (2009): Rank 11044, Rating 5.9
Each player has a board showing different colour combinations to build things for VPs. Each round, pull colour cubes from the bag, players alternate taking them, build things. Repeat. Your strategy is to get lucky with the cubes that come out, otherwise try and build publicity to steal a cube or trade 3 for 1. Everything else is pretty obvious as to what cubes to take, either because you need them or to deny them to your opponent. Cubes in. Cubes out. Cubes in. Cubes out. It’s a lot of cubes.
Rating: 5
LORD OF THE RINGS: FATE OF THE FELLOWSHIP (2025): Rank 727, Rating 8.2 – Leacock
It’s a really interesting mix of Pandemic and Defenders Of The Realm, with the dark forces marching across the map (driven by the deck), needing to be killed off. The prime difference from DotR is that you have multiple cities to defend. Your cards are now symbols rather than locations, and are used (to mention just a few) to travel safely, kill off dark forces, and turn dark places into light (ie curing a disease, to stop those marches!). The aim is to get ring cards into Frodo’s hand as he travels from Hobbiton to Mordor, throwing them in for the win before the Hope track hits 0. I like how each player has 2 characters that they must balance actions between. This a very cool rendition, thematically rich, lots of scenarios and character mixes, and I’d be all over it like a rash if I hadn’t been playing Pandemic non-stop for 15 years.
Rating: 8
PERFECT WORDS (2023): Rank 4584, Rating 7.0
In the vein of So Clover and Just One. Put out tiles containing clue words like a crossword puzzle. When you’ve got 10 rows / columns of 2+ words, for each row/column each player writes down a single word that the clue words invoke, aiming to match with all the other players for points. It’s a nice challenge, first trying to come up with row/column pairings that invoke something obvious for everyone and then working out what everyone else is thinking for each matching. It doesn’t have the emotional horror investment of So Clover where the words are thrust upon you but it holds interest.
Rating: 7
PREY (2024): Rank 6694, Rating 6.8
A little trick-taker where you roll two dice and you get a point if you win exactly the number of tricks indicated by either die. The charm is that the cards are flipped half-way thru the hand, and what were middle cards now become winning cards. There are no trumps so win your tricks early because getting stuck with the lead at the end can spell doom. You’ll want to be card-counting in the suits you care about. I like the fact that everyone can get a point on the first round, and then everyone can get a point in the second round and its game over and everyone wins to shared smiles.
Rating: 7
WENDAKE (2017): Rank 1321, Rating 7.5
There’s a neat action availability mechanic: your actions are on 9 tiles in a 3×3 grid and you pick 3 in a row tic-tac-toe style. Each round the bottom row is shuffled and moves to the top, and you get a new souped up action tile of your choosing, tailoring your grid towards actions you most need at this point. Picking the best 3-in-a-row isn’t easy. To complement, actions are pretty quick – move out on the map to claim resource spots, produce resources, and move up the 4 points tracks (you want them balanced) which reward spending resources, owning areas on the board, having things return to home base, and card collecting. The map is tight so there’s inevitable loss of area thru the game as other players expand to get various things but then that loss helps your home-base scoring so it’s all about finding balance between expansion and contraction. I was engaged throughout, time flew, and I do like how the tension for map space is more for temporary benefit rather than capriciously permanent but is still feels just a little too conflicty for me to rate higher.
Rating: 7
WINTER COURT (2024): Rank 9795, Rating 6.7 – Lehmann
A push-me-pull-you 2p competition over 10 sites, the first 4 worth bigger points, the other 6 offering a point or a one-use special action. You win a site (pulling its pawn to your side) by playing a card in its required colour. Your opponent then has to win it twice by playing higher numbers (pawn back to the middle, pawn to their side). Using a site for its power also re-sets the site’s pawn to the middle, losing that point, so make sure you get full use out of it. The big scoring sites are where the action’s at but the powers will help you win them (adding two cards together for instance) so there’s some interest there. But you’re very beholden to whatever you draw (higher cards in the right colours are useful!) so … make the best of what you get, hope for the best.
Rating: 6
TOWER UP (2024): Rank 1760, Rating 7.4 – 3+ designers
An abstract game of either collecting tiles or adding them to stacks on the board. The trick is to place one of your roofs on a high stack (for more points) by placing on the last empty spot next to it as then your roof can’t be overridden (with loss of points). There are public goal distractions as well (have a roof in 5 diff districts, on each colour, etc) which provides tradeoffs to consider. The exploration was fine as a one-off – turns were fast enough, it ended in an appropriate time-frame – but it’s too abstract and there doesn’t seem to be enough learning curve to invite further play.
Rating: 6
