Ben Bruckart:  Review of Golem

Posted on May 30, 2022 by brbdc1000001

Golem

  • Designers:  Simone Luciani, Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli
  • Artist:  Francesco Ciampi, Roberto Grasso
  • Publisher:  Cranio Games
  • Players:  2-4
  • Age:  14+
  • Time:  90-180 minutes
  • Times Played:  5

Golem is a new euro-game from my favorite designer group in Italy: Simone Luciani, Flaminia Brasini, and Virginio Gigli. This is a pretty big box game, rivaling the box size of Barrage from Cranio. Brasini is known for her involvement in games like Lorenzo il Magnifico, Coimbra, Egizia, and Alma Mater. Gigli co-designed Grand Austria Hotel, as well as many games with Brasini. Simone Luciani has touched greatness with such masterpieces as Tzolk’in, The Voyages of Marco Polo, Council of 4, Grand Austria Hotel, Barrage, Darwin’s Journey, and more. I have a special affinity for Italian designed games because of the tightness in scoring in games where there just never seems to be enough turns and efficiency must be squeezed out of every choice. This is a true gamer’s game. 

Theme

Thematically it struck me as a bit odd as I haven’t played anything with this theme before. Pretend for a moment, if you will, that it is 1584 in Prague and that Jewish tradition allows Rabbis to build Golems (famous clay automatons). The Rabbi and the students manage their coins, clay, and knowledge on three tracks but must keep their Golems in control. The game has Hebrew style lettering, menorahs, gold forges and books. I have played thousands of games with Catholic priest, farming, and Viking themes, but never this theme before. The artist really does convey a lot through the imagery and fonts.

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Dale Yu: Review of Zapotec

Posted on May 26, 2022 by Dale Yu

Zapotec

  • Designer: Fabio Lopiano
  • Publisher: Board&Dice
  • Players: 1-4
  • Age: 14+
  • Time: 60-75 minutes
  • Played 3 times with review copy provided by Board&Dice

zapotec

Well, I’m still catching up from the 2022 releases from Board&Dice, a game company I once thought was known only for their super long, super crunchy games.  However, I think I need to change my stance after some of the releases I have played this year – Zapotec, Founders of Teotihuacan and The Book of Rituals.  There are clearly more things on offer than 120-180 minute super heavy strategic games!   But, while we’re on the topic of familiar things, the designer of this game, Fabio Lopiano, does keep to form, offering us a neat action selection mechanic that uses a geometric grid, similar to that in some of his earlier games: Calimala and Merv. 

In a game of Zapotec, you build temples, cornfields and villages in the three valleys surrounding the capital to generate resources needed for building pyramids, making sacrifices to the gods, and performing rituals. “The Zapotec were a pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence reveals their culture going back at least 2,500 years. Remnants of the ancient city of Monte Albán in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs, and finely worked gold jewelry testify of this once great civilization. Monte Albán was one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica and the center of the Zapotec state that dominated much of the territory that today belongs to the Mexican state of Oaxaca.”

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Dale Yu: Review of Marvel Remix

Posted on May 25, 2022 by Dale Yu

Marvel Remix

  • Designer: Bruce Glassco
  • Publisher: Wizkids
  • Players: 2-6
  • Age: 12+
  • Time: 20 minutes

marvel remix

Fantasy Realms remains one of my favorite games, especially in the filler niche.  Back when we first reviewed Fantasy Realms in 2017, I didn’t love it then… but with repeated plays, it has become a mainstay of the collection here.  There have been a number of games that are riffs on the original – we looked at Star Trek Missions a few months ago, and now there is a cousin set in the Marvel Universe. 

Marvel Remix is not just a reskin of the original, the cards here are different, and there are a few rules changes as well.  In the box, you’ll get 79 cards – split up into a 61 card Remix deck and an 18 card Villain deck.  (The original game had a single deck of 53 cards, 10 suits of 5 cards each and three wild cards).  

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Patrick Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2022 (Part 3)  

Posted on May 24, 2022 by pfbrennan

77-holden-torana-a9x

This is apparently the iconic Aussie muscle car. A Holden Torana.

The introduction of A Feast For Odin on BGA led me to bring my physical copy out to much acclaim in a return to face-2-face gaming love. The thought of optimising a 100 different polyominoes on personal tableaus online gave us the willies – much better physically when you can all go at it simultaneously at the end of the round. Which still isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it’s a sin we’ve been forgiving given the game offers so much space to explore.

 

I’ve actually played lots of excellent new games recently to fill my new-game coffers before this upcoming federal election sucks up all my free time and drives me into yet another gaming hiatus, however we still have a backlog of chaff and warnings to wade through, so onwards …

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Congratulations to the 2022 Spiel des Jahres nominees!

Posted on May 23, 2022 by Chris Wray

The Spiel des Jahres jury announced their nominees and recommendations this morning. Congratulations to the nominees!

We’ve listed the nominees below, but we’ve only put in the names of the German publishers (or what we assume is the German publisher).

We did pretty well with our predictions this year, listing all of the SdJ nominees and 2/3 of the KdJ nominees. The one we missed was Cryptid, which came out a few years ago in English.

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The Opinionated Gamers (Try To) Predict the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres – 2022 Edition

Posted on May 20, 2022 by Chris Wray

For the past few years, our group of gamers has taken their best guess at trying to read the minds of the Spiel des Jahres jury members.  The nominations for the Spiel des Jahres and Kennerspiel des Jahres will be announced Monday, and the award winners will be revealed this summer.  

As has become our habit, we will do this in two parts.  This first survey is done prior to the actual release of the lists, when just about any game was open for consideration.  Once the lists are out, we will then do a second round of voting, limited only to the actual nominees.The usual caveats still apply.  It’s hard for us to know which late releases in 2022 make the cut for eligibility, or if the jury somehow warped the eligibility period because of the pandemic.  Also, there are probably a few games that are big over there that we simply don’t know about as there is no English version.  We did not really generate a list of games and have people pick from it; OG writers were just told to vote for five games.

This year, we used a similar system to what we’ve used the past five years.  Each OG writer was invited to rank up to five games that they feel will win the SdJ and KdJ, with the most likely game receiving 5 points, the next likely 4 points, and so on.  Totals are below.

If you’d like to see the official information on and criteria for the award, please check out the Jury’s website.

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