Suzie-Q

Posted on December 2, 2020 by xitoliv

Designer: Hisashi Hayashi
Artist: Ryo Nyamo
Publisher: OKAZU Brand
Players: 2-5
Ages: 8+
Playing Time: 20 minutes
Times Played: 4 with a purchased copy

Suzie-Q an auction of game of sorts, though it feels a bit odd to describe it that way. More specifically, it’s an interpretation of a “unique bid auction”, where bids are made blindly, but it isn’t the highest or lowest bid that will win. Rather, it is the “unique” one. What is the best known example, at least to me, is something like a “Guess the lowest number” contest for hundreds or thousands of people (or convention attendees). Of course it isn’t just the lowest, it is the lowest unique, and that’s where the barbecue spices are.

What Suzie-Q does is, well, a few things. Firstly, you’ll be writing three digit numbers and, to score, each of your digits will need to be unique from the other players, not just the number as a whole!

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Toraja (Preview)

Posted on December 1, 2020 by xitoliv

Designers: Hamzah Alfarabi, Vicky Belladino
Artist: Aulia Azziawaty
Publisher: Congkak Fun Factory
Players: 1-5
Ages: 12+
Times Played: 4 on my demo copy

This will be a different sort of post, as this game isn’t available…yet.  This is one of the titles that was being demoed at the Indonesian booth at Spiel 2019, but this year’s events have delayed me talking about for a bit. As I understand it, the game is still in development, so everything I say below could be different if you have a change to play.

Toraja is a game about managing a coffee plantation in the eponymous region of South Sulawesi in Indonesia. Mechanically, it is at home in the “roll & write” genre, but rather than being dice based, it uses a card draft.

You’ll be planting coffee trees, reading up on the latest scientific literature, building a road to transport your fruits, planting clove trees to enhance the flavor, irrigating your trees, and a bit more.

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Dale Yu: Review of Cloud City

Posted on November 30, 2020 by Dale Yu

Cloud City

  • Designer: Phil Walker-Harding
  • Publisher: Blue Orange
  • Players: 2-4
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 30-45 minutes
  • Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Blue Orange

cloud city

Cloud City is another Phil Walker-Harding game that I pretty much loved from the get-go (the others were Cacao, Gizmos and Barenpark).  For some reason, his designs just hit my sweet spot.  They tend to be on the simpler side, yet they offer enough depth to remain interesting for multiple plays.  In Cloud City, players are competing architects, trying to come up with the best plan for the skyscrapers that poke up through the clouds.

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Gloomhaven: Does it live up to the hype? (Review by RJ Garrison)

Posted on November 28, 2020 by RJ Garrison

Gloomhaven

Designer:  Issac Childres

Publisher:  Cephalofair Games

Artists: Alexandr Elichev, Josh T. McDowell, and Alvaro Nebot

Players:  1-4

Playing Time:  60-120 minutes (I’ve also seen 30 minute/ player)

Ages:  12+

MSRP: $140.00

Photos provided by Cephalofair Games

In December of 2017, Designer Issac Childres took the #1 spot for board games on the world’s #1 board game site, www.boardgamegeek.com (BGG), with his massive “Euro-inspired tactical combat” game, Gloomhaven.  Gloomhaven knocked Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau’s Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 out of the top spot and has been holding steady since.  

Gloomhaven’s first kickstarter in 2015 raised over $386,000 and the kickstarter for the second printing raised nearly $4 million!  The upcoming sequel to Gloomhaven, riding on the coattails of Gloomhaven’s popularity, Frosthaven broke records for crowdfunding and raised close to $13 million!  To date, over 200,000 copies of Gloomhaven have been sold.  That’s a lot of people owning a lot of Gloomhaven.  The game has a rating of 8.8 (out of 10) on BGG with 39,366 ratings as of the printing of this article.  Over 15k gamers have rated the game a perfect ‘10.’  But does the game live up to expectations?

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The Opinionated Gamers’ Holiday Gift Guide for Gamers

Posted on November 28, 2020 by Dale Yu

Well, it’s that time of year, the annual struggle to figure out what to buy a gift for the special boardgamer in your life. I’ve been on both sides of this dilemma, and trust me, it’s hard to know what to get. To try to help you out, we’ve assembled a list of gifts that you can consider.

Surprisingly, we’re not going to include any games on our list. Why? Honestly, it’s incredibly hard to know what games are already in the collection, what sorts of games are preferred (or avoided), or which games might have already been owned but traded away quietly…

So rather than focus on games, we’d thought that we’d make a list of accessories and accoutrements that can be enjoyed by gamers of all kinds. There should be links for each off the recommendations. Amazon links are affiliate links for our blog.

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Let Me Off

Posted on November 26, 2020 by xitoliv

Designer: kino (@kino211)
Publisher: [none](EN Rules, JP Rules)
Players: 3-4
Playing Time: 30-45 minutes
Times Played:

Let Me Off is a trick-taking game that was originally submitted to kumagoro’s “Trick Taking Party” design competition in 2017. I’ve played a handful of the games that were submitted, and this is the one that most sticks out to me (though there are several of the finalists and special award winners that I haven’t had a chance to try yet.) 

The games typically are playable with little more than a standard deck of cards, and, well, it’s no coincidence that I’m posting this at a time when many people are spending time with their family or will be soon, as that seems like a good time for this one.

It’s simple. Feels folksy. And has a sliver of malevolence.

The jury for the 2017 contest awarded several types of prizes, such as a grand prize and semi-finalists, which each of the jury members voted on, but there were also individual prizes handed out by some members of the jury, and Let Me Off received recognition from Taiki Shinzawa, saying, among other things, that it was among the most eccentric submitted.

While I said it is simple, and I think you’ll find it is, any description has to begin with one of its three notable eccentric twists: each player has 3 hands of cards, and two of those you share with your neighbors -one on the left and one on the right, and the third you hold traditionally.

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