Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2026 (Part 16)
New-to-me games played recently include …
216 (2026): Rank 25178, Rating 6.0
Roll three dice. If you can fulfil one of the 4 contracts in the open draft, score it. If you can’t, roll once more and if you miss, take a help card that allows you to do dice wibbles to help fulfil contracts later. That’s it. Your strategy? Roll well. There’s nothing interesting, and nothing to do on opponent turns. At least it goes quickly enough.
Rating: 5
APE TOWN (2025): Rank 7890, Rating 7.3 – Knizia
Uninspired Knizia. Your turn is to pick one of the tiles in the queue, paying for those you skip. Its position in the queue dictates what coloured area it can go in, so a turn is spent parsing enough of the look-ahead tiles to determine their best scoring possibilities so as to find a best choice. Downtime, tick. Some tiles give instant points, some count for area-majority points when an area completes. They’re your choices. The area majority rules are a little OTT given they involve multiple area vs area comparisons – a step too far for those who don’t care but they’re probably needed for those who love themeless abstracted tile placement games to help elevate it.
Rating: 5
CITADELS DUEL (2026): Rank 14417, Rating 6.6
This 2p version has you receive 4 or the 9 characters. They’re much the same – discounts in the 5 colours plus thief, assassin – the magician is gone (of course) and the queen is added. There’s a new character to help gain control of the council (which is new) and control reaps extra money/builds. You keep 2 characters, pass the other 2 to your opponent, and discard 1, keeping 3. The game is now even more dictated by success with the assassin and thief, because big swings in a 2p game are often game determining, which becomes basically a 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 shot. This Is kinda fun while you’re playing, and appropriate for the game-time (20 minutes or so, which is good), but it becomes repetitive and guessing games don’t have a lot of staying power.
Rating: 6
CREW, THE: JOURNEY TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH (2026): Rank 4919, Rating 8.0
This third iteration of The Crew has you doing the occasional one-person task but it’s mainly group tasks (eg never play three odd cards in succession to a trick). Succeeding means you advance along the stage track (the more difficult the task, the further you move) aiming to get to the end before the clock does. The campaign score (mostly) sums up the differences between your progress and the clock for all 25 stages. It has the same co-op trick-takey feel but the group dynamic makes it more important than ever that everyone is in step – there’s rarely a hand you can play on auto. This is both a downside (more fragile with weaker players) and an upside (more challenge with stronger players). I like the change. It’s going to see a lot of play.
Rating: 10
DRACONIC DICE (2021): Rank 19980, Rating 6.3
A dice game with literally no decisions. The first to get rid of their six dice wins. One die side kicks the die out of the game, one passes it to a player of your choice, and one puts it in the middle – if you don’t roll any of the latter, you pick up all the dice in the middle. I really shouldn’t like it but it was quick-enough mindless fun at 5 minutes, cheering along with however it plays out.
Rating: 5
KING OF THE DICE (2017): Rank 2607, Rating 6.8
Roll 6 dice (1-6 with 3 different colours on faces), with 2 re-rolls, to fulfil and score one of the 5 contracts in the open draft. If you miss, take a penalty card for minus points. Don’t miss. Your strategy? Roll well. There’s nothing interesting about it except to decide what to keep and re-roll (which surprise surprise has been done before), and there’s nothing to do on opponent turns other than gossip and wait.
Rating: 5
NO LOOSE ENDS (2025): Rank 3966, Rating 7.5
There’s an interesting bidding process where you take turns spending a card from your hand, stating that you will win a trick with either its colour or number. Having a strong hand with lots of trumps is super good. There’s little compensation for middling hands other than to hope for a better hand next round. But a weak hand allows you to go misere which can provide game-winning points. Our first game saw this easily achieved twice and dominated the scoring. The game all seemed a little too unbalanced with not enough compensating hand management features (or rounds) to overcome but I wouldn’t mind exploring again to better find out.
Rating: 6
YOKAI PAGODA (2023): Rank 2593, Rating 7.4
Card shedding game carrying small undertones of Ole. Play same suit or number to the top card on either discard pile and donate a card from your hand to any opponent. (Which turns out ok because everyone gets hit roughly equally.) Play a high card, bad, draw a card. Play a low card, no pain. When someone goes out, add your remaining cards to your score pile. After 3 rounds, your score is the lowest in each of your suits. So keeping a bunch of cards in the final hand that you’ve already kept low cards for from previous hands effectively scores zero. Which makes for incalculable leader perceptions and surprising results … and marks this otherwise fine, easy and well-timed game down a little.
Rating: 6
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.
Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2026 (Part 16)
Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2026 (Part 16)
New-to-me games played recently include …
216 (2026): Rank 25178, Rating 6.0
Roll three dice. If you can fulfil one of the 4 contracts in the open draft, score it. If you can’t, roll once more and if you miss, take a help card that allows you to do dice wibbles to help fulfil contracts later. That’s it. Your strategy? Roll well. There’s nothing interesting, and nothing to do on opponent turns. At least it goes quickly enough.
Rating: 5
APE TOWN (2025): Rank 7890, Rating 7.3 – Knizia
Uninspired Knizia. Your turn is to pick one of the tiles in the queue, paying for those you skip. Its position in the queue dictates what coloured area it can go in, so a turn is spent parsing enough of the look-ahead tiles to determine their best scoring possibilities so as to find a best choice. Downtime, tick. Some tiles give instant points, some count for area-majority points when an area completes. They’re your choices. The area majority rules are a little OTT given they involve multiple area vs area comparisons – a step too far for those who don’t care but they’re probably needed for those who love themeless abstracted tile placement games to help elevate it.
Rating: 5
CITADELS DUEL (2026): Rank 14417, Rating 6.6
This 2p version has you receive 4 or the 9 characters. They’re much the same – discounts in the 5 colours plus thief, assassin – the magician is gone (of course) and the queen is added. There’s a new character to help gain control of the council (which is new) and control reaps extra money/builds. You keep 2 characters, pass the other 2 to your opponent, and discard 1, keeping 3. The game is now even more dictated by success with the assassin and thief, because big swings in a 2p game are often game determining, which becomes basically a 1 in 2 or 1 in 3 shot. This Is kinda fun while you’re playing, and appropriate for the game-time (20 minutes or so, which is good), but it becomes repetitive and guessing games don’t have a lot of staying power.
Rating: 6
CREW, THE: JOURNEY TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH (2026): Rank 4919, Rating 8.0
This third iteration of The Crew has you doing the occasional one-person task but it’s mainly group tasks (eg never play three odd cards in succession to a trick). Succeeding means you advance along the stage track (the more difficult the task, the further you move) aiming to get to the end before the clock does. The campaign score (mostly) sums up the differences between your progress and the clock for all 25 stages. It has the same co-op trick-takey feel but the group dynamic makes it more important than ever that everyone is in step – there’s rarely a hand you can play on auto. This is both a downside (more fragile with weaker players) and an upside (more challenge with stronger players). I like the change. It’s going to see a lot of play.
Rating: 10
DRACONIC DICE (2021): Rank 19980, Rating 6.3
A dice game with literally no decisions. The first to get rid of their six dice wins. One die side kicks the die out of the game, one passes it to a player of your choice, and one puts it in the middle – if you don’t roll any of the latter, you pick up all the dice in the middle. I really shouldn’t like it but it was quick-enough mindless fun at 5 minutes, cheering along with however it plays out.
Rating: 5
KING OF THE DICE (2017): Rank 2607, Rating 6.8
Roll 6 dice (1-6 with 3 different colours on faces), with 2 re-rolls, to fulfil and score one of the 5 contracts in the open draft. If you miss, take a penalty card for minus points. Don’t miss. Your strategy? Roll well. There’s nothing interesting about it except to decide what to keep and re-roll (which surprise surprise has been done before), and there’s nothing to do on opponent turns other than gossip and wait.
Rating: 5
NO LOOSE ENDS (2025): Rank 3966, Rating 7.5
There’s an interesting bidding process where you take turns spending a card from your hand, stating that you will win a trick with either its colour or number. Having a strong hand with lots of trumps is super good. There’s little compensation for middling hands other than to hope for a better hand next round. But a weak hand allows you to go misere which can provide game-winning points. Our first game saw this easily achieved twice and dominated the scoring. The game all seemed a little too unbalanced with not enough compensating hand management features (or rounds) to overcome but I wouldn’t mind exploring again to better find out.
Rating: 6
YOKAI PAGODA (2023): Rank 2593, Rating 7.4
Card shedding game carrying small undertones of Ole. Play same suit or number to the top card on either discard pile and donate a card from your hand to any opponent. (Which turns out ok because everyone gets hit roughly equally.) Play a high card, bad, draw a card. Play a low card, no pain. When someone goes out, add your remaining cards to your score pile. After 3 rounds, your score is the lowest in each of your suits. So keeping a bunch of cards in the final hand that you’ve already kept low cards for from previous hands effectively scores zero. Which makes for incalculable leader perceptions and surprising results … and marks this otherwise fine, easy and well-timed game down a little.
Rating: 6
Share this:
Like this:
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.