New-to-me games played recently include …

CAPER: EUROPE (2022): Rank 514, Rating 7.6

A nice little 2 player with multiple ways to score points, the tug-of-war at each of three locations being just one means. Each turn you play a card to one of the locations and then you swap hands (ie if there’s nothing ideal, play the card you don’t want your opponent to play). The card effects have more score conditions, or move the tug-of-war, or take a stolen good (for set-based points) and so on. Six rounds. Form a strategy based on the cards you see. It’s all over in 20 minutes, easy to teach, easy to play.

Rating: 7

CATSLE BUILDERS (2023): Rank 7601, Rating 7.5

It’s not a typo. The cat theme is thin. It’s a wonky trick-taker played over 3 rounds where you’re trying to take exactly the right number of cards in each suit (as designated when you take the first in each suit) and no more. The wonky part is that (in a 5p game), the player with the highest ranked card takes 1 card of those played, the 2nd highest takes 1 of the remaining played cards, the 3rd highest takes 2 of the remaining 3 cards and then leads to the next. Sometimes you want to take 2 cards but the penalty for going over a limit in a suit is harsh so more usually it’s a battle of securing anything but third in a trick. As the tricks progress this gets more random depending on the lead. Interesting but unconvincing.

Rating: 6

CHARCUTERIE (2024): Rank 6032, Rating 6.6

You have a private goal and six public goals to meet. Each round you choose a pile of tiles which variously represent charcuterie goodies. At the end of the game, arrange your stash of tiles in groups, adjacencies and separations to max your points via the 7 goals. AP inevitably increases as the rounds progress and the number of ways you can arrange your ever-increasing stash increases. While I didn’t mind the planning, the AP driven downtime for what is a simple game (your turn: pick up a pile) drives the rating downwards.

Rating: 5

CRY BABY (2026): Rank 12673, Rating 6.6

A bid-making trick-taker where all the cards are in play but because each card has two unique values (depending on orientation) only half the values are in play. At the start you can turn your hand up the other way depending on whether you want to shoot for more tricks or fewer.  Like Oh Hell (but even more so) you’re mostly dependent on people ducking tricks to help you make your own. The player who plays the lowest valued card to a trick can rotate a card (to help them hit their own goals) or take a point if they’re set. You’re mostly playing on a wing and prayer and surprises happen (oh, last trick no one had trumps but now someone does?) but at least you get points if your bid is out by 1. It’s in the vein of a Eurotrash trick taker … play for the ride.

Rating: 5

EXIT STRATEGY (2023): Rank 29993, Rating 4.8

A multi-player version of Quoridor where you can move (the first to cross the board wins) or erect a barrier to impede someone else. Like Quoridor, the key is using your barriers to secure your own route home in a way that can’t be lengthened or blocked, and hopefully not having to spend turns working to prevent others doing the same. Multiplayer means total king-making in this respect though – which (frankly) is not good.

Rating: 3

GOLDBLIVION (2023): Rank 6245, Rating 7.0

A deck-builder where you spend VPs to acquire new cards from the ever-changing draft. The continual question being offered: will sacrificing these points improve my deck enough to get me to the VP total faster than without. Which mostly depends on synergistic cards being available on future turns. I didn’t mind the synergy hunt but it did rather make it a repetitive lottery that seemed to go unduly long.

Rating: 5

PIES (2024): Rank 8406, Rating 6.3

Contract fulfillment using tricks to acquire cards. The player who played the top card picks one of the played cards to add to their collection, then the next player from those remaining, and so on. Each card features an ingredient and usually a power. The power you most want is a VP earning contract – pair, 3 different, 5 of a kind, etc – which gives you guidance on what ingredients to collect. Other powers allow stealing, protection, and card value boosts on future tricks. The trick to playing well however is to get three hands of high cards to select and immediately fulfil VP contracts before your cards are stolen. There’s not much thought to it other than that.

Rating: 5

SKARA BRAE (2025): Rank 1796, Rating 7.6 – Phillips

A potentially intriguing game. In each of the 12 turns, add a card from the draft to your tableau and collect its resources. Then do actions (which grow from 1 to 4 as the game progresses) to get more resources, do conversions, spend them to improve actions and gain VPs. Apart from the draft, the game seems a solitaire puzzle – everyone has 9 standard actions and one special action which you’d think should drive strategy – but it’s driven by the cards you collect which are tricky to value. I wouldn’t mind exploring this further to check out strategies and see if it has legs enough to improve the rating.

Rating: 7