Sure, the name has drawn a few chuckles when people have glanced at it on the shelf, but Meat Master is a competitive game where players try to use their knowledge of the nutritional properties of different types of meat.
In years past, we have compiled some quick takes on SPIEL games. This year, we’ve asked our writers to give a very small summation of their thoughts after playing games. It takes awhile to write up reviews, and by making this list of quick takes, hopefully you can get a feel for what we’re thinking of the new games in a quicker time frame.
Reviews for almost all these games are coming soon, but for now, you can read these. They are in alphabetical order. A second set to hopefully come out in the week following BGG.con!
Every year, Fairplay magazine conducts the a la carte award, in which their readers choose their favorite card game of the year. It’s one of my favorite of the gaming awards, as they’ve consistently rewarded excellent designs over the last 30 years. The results for 2022 were just announced and the winner is Scout. It’s been a very good award season for Kei Kajino’s excellent climbing game. The game was originally released in Japan by One More Game! in 2019, but the multilingual version from Oink Games had its worldwide release in October of 2021 and made an immediate impact. It received an SdJ nomination, finished in the top 10 in the DSP award, and also got a recommendation from the IGA’s. And now, it has an a la carte win to add to its trophy case. Congratulations!
Here are the top 10 finishers in the voting, together with each game’s designer:
The a la carte is the last of the 7 gaming awards that I follow closely to be announced, so let’s summarize the results from the past few months.
As you can see, the two dominant titles of the year are Ark Nova and Cascadia. Both feature animals, but other than that, they are about as different as two games can be!
I’ve had the pleasure of playing a variety of games over the past two months so I thought I’d combine a few thoughts here into a collection of mini-reviews. I’m splitting the games into three buckets: new-to-me, old favorites, and kids gaming. As usual, I have a few games that I heartily recommend and a few that I’d rather never play again. Here’s some quick thoughts on some recent games played.
New-to-Me
The subtitle of the game is: “The Game of Extra Turns!” In Triggs, each player gets their own scoresheet; the numbers 1-12 appear on the sheet 2-5 times, and you want to cross them all off first in order to win. There is a deck of 108 cards, with 9 each of ranks 1 to 12. Each player gets dealt a hand of 5 cards to start the game. The remainder of the cards is split into 3 decks; one is placed face down in the center of the table, and one face up deck is placed on either side. Make sure that only the topmost card is visible on the two face up decks. The rules ask you to make sure the center deck has more cards then the outside decks.
Echoes is a growing franchise of puzzle games by Ravensburger. They remind me a lot of the Adventure game series from Kosmos (also designed by Matthew Dunstan). For both, I am not sure if I classify them as games, they feel more like interactive fiction to me – but in the end, they are games on BGG, and I enjoy both of them regardless of which classification box they get smushed into….
