Play cards in numerical order or different colors to try and match the dice in the center of the pile. Do you take the pile now or do you keep it going to score more when you do take it?
In Dice Words, each player begins by choosing a set of seven letter dice that each represent a different iced beverage. When the timer starts counting down, players attempt to form the longest and most valuable word possible.
Don’t have the letters you need? Don’t worry! You can re-roll any of your dice up to two times before the round ends — but in addition to your individual letter dice, you must also try to incorporate the most “target letters”, that is, the letters revealed on four ice cube-shaped letter dice that are revealed at the beginning of each round. The colder your drink thanks to the incorporation of ice, the higher your score!
Strategically place your penguins to form groups and claim fish to score the most points! Turn order matters a lot; in Waddle, it’s tracked by marbles on a two-column track!
On your turn, you’ll have two options:
How players “Scout Ahead” will be massively important! Going earlier in the future could allow you to grow or connect into a large waddle (group), claim a big fish, or block an opponent’s important play.
Take your Qwirkle strategy in a whole new direction! Tiles with three different backgrounds create surprising opportunities to score diagonally. Points add up quickly when you place even one tile that scores in multiple directions. Adjust your focus from foreground shapes to background colors for the thrill of next-level maneuvers. How flexible is your Qwirkle strategy?
It’s Halloween night, 1986, and the all-night Spooktacular Film Festival is running in full swing in the midst of a wild thunderstorm. Suddenly, lightning strikes, overloading the theater’s power circuits and releasing a hundred years of cinematic monsters from the silver screen. As one of those monsters, YOU are now free to wreak havoc. Terrify and devour unsuspecting moviegoers in a race to become the most terrifying monster of all time!
In Spooktacular, play as one of twenty movie monsters, each with their own way of playing the game. Easy to understand rules are the base of the game, and everything else you need to know is right on your monster board. Tons of variability and devious monster abilities to discover will keep you coming back to the theater.
Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2025 (Part 27)
Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2025 (Part 27)
A while back I had a rant about the casual misogyny found in rule books in relation to using he/him (not examples, but in the actual rules and card effects) and how that creates feelings of exclusion for women in our hobby. Thankfully it’s getting better but I’ve recently watched a number of rules videos where the rules presenters kept referring to meeples as he/him. Eg “You place your meeple here and he gives you …”. Urgh. Really? Yet another drop of exclusion in our lives. Add it to the list.
This wasn’t just one video. It was three different games over 2 days. The first I let slide. The second was what, again? Third, hmm, this is really bugging me now. I mean, you’re casually watching, eager and excited to learn a new game, and then you get the “he”. It’s so easy to say “You place your meeple here and it gives you …” or any other of 20 variants. The presenter can then feel good about being inclusive and won’t it be nice that women don’t have to suffer urghs, eye-rolls and turn-offs as they watch.
New-to-me games played recently include …
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