This last weekend I headed to New Hampshire to play some games. My friend Kimberly is one of the organizers of the Granite Game Summit, and with BGGCON exiting my annual schedule, it would be a nice way to support her and visit with friends from the New England area (and I’d been meaning to go for a few years.)
As intended, it’s a sort of BGGCON-lite, with everything shrunk down to about 10% of the Texas-sized con.
Tournament at Avalon is a new trick-taking game, well really a trick-avoiding game, from Wizkids – it is a standalone expansion to Tournament at Camelot – a game which we reviewed here about 18 months ago: https://opinionatedgamers.com/2017/09/15/tournament-at-camelot-game-review-by-chris-wray/
The publisher describes it thusly: In the game, you play as a legendary character, battling opponents with weapon cards: arrows, swords, deception, sorcery, and even alchemy. The more you injure your opponents, the better you fare in the tournament. However, even the most injured characters can make a complete comeback with the grace of Godsend cards and the aid of their special companions. This trick-taking game ends when one opponent has been injured to the point of death. The player with the most health is then declared the tournament victor!
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I never was very good at 2D fighting games. I was one of those annoying button mashers who just moved the joystick all around and hit every button that they could in hopes of pulling off a combo at some point and maybe, just maybe, winning a match, it rarely happened, but I usually had a good time trying and annoying my opponent. So it’s kind of needless to say that I mostly skipped over the board game versions of these classic arcade style games, until Ultra Deluxe 2D Arcade Mega Fighter landed on my doorstep.Â
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Catacombs Cubes (Catacombes Cubes)
Catacombs Cubes is a new game which is set in the universe of Cimathue (from Catacombs). In this game, players strive to complete buildings found on their blueprints – the end goal being the completion of construction in the Village of Stormtryne.Â
There is a Planning board which is placed in the center of the table. Around the edge is a score track. Below this is where the Village tiles can be found – these show different buildings which can by built. Then, at the bottom, you’ll find a Palace tile and an area for the players to jointly build this particular Palace. There is a secondary score track in the center of the Planning board where players track their contributions to the particular palace. Finally, the town hall tile is placed on the table – it serves as the starting point for all building in the Village. There is a Quarry board, which is also set aside, to be used later.
Silver Coin is the third game in the hit Silver line of fast-playing card games designed by Ted Alspach. Based on the system from Cabo, each game in the Silver series is a hand management and set collection card game with a werewolf-themed twist.
Each game in the series features a different namesake relic, and as probably guessed, this one is a silver coin. Consistent with this coin theme, this game is all about flipping cards and building combos.
Silver Coin is my favorite of the three games released so far. Clever card interactions allow for a variety of ingenious strategies. People who love Silver Amulet or Silver Bullet will naturally love Silver Coin, but for experienced gamers, this could also serve as a great introduction to the series, as this has some of that combo-licous-ness that gamers seem to love.
About the Series
Silver (a.k.a. Silver Amulet) and Silver Bullet were released last year, and Silver Coin was announced today. The games can be combined, so sort of like with Dominion, you can mix different sets to make custom decks. Ted Alspach has hinted at other forthcoming games in the series. For the uninitiated, there is a free iOS app available to show you Silver Amulet. For those interested in the game’s development, I highly recommend Ted Alspach’s Designer Diary over on BGG, which he updated for Silver Bullet.
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Brandon Kempf – Surviving the Purge 11
Over the next few months, instead of going with my Three Games articles, I am going to take a look at my collection and try to discuss why certain titles survived the great purge of 2019. During this process I may take a look at some games that didn’t survive, but only as a measuring stick for what did survive. Since I am silly, like a lot of gamers, I use Ikea Kallax shelves to display the games that we own. This makes it pretty easy to break things down cube by cube, so that’s what we’re going to do, twenty-four cubes, plus a top shelf for games that don’t fit in the cubes, over the course of a few months. I hope you enjoy!
If you are a BoardGameGeek user, you can also follow along on the Geeklist I created.
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