Designed by Nicolas Bourgoin and Jean-Franรงois Rochas
Published by Blue Orange Games
Players: 1-4
Playing time:ย 15-45 minutes
While crowds at Essen might convey a different impression, boardgaming remains a niche hobby compared to watching football, fad dieting, or criticizing politicians. Within our niche, there are smaller niches: wargaming, trick-taking games, and so on. Then, there are truly tiny niches. The small genre of โheavily themed dexterity gamesโ is one of these. 2010โs Catacombs combined flicking pieces with a dungeon crawl, and 2011โs Ascending Empires did the same with spaceships to win galactic dominance. In 2019, Slide Quest combines RPG elements with a tilt maze. Yes, RPG elements โฆ with a tilt maze.
Halloween is not my jam. This polaroid is the only picture I could find of me in any sort of costume as an adult, and it’s just a few things from the lost-and-found at a house I was living in for a semester during college while Mike was in Bulgaria.
Yet, I’m writing you this “Happy Halloween” post because, well, there’s a Halloween themed trick-taking game I wanted to share, and my love of theme-based gaming is stronger than my Halloween ennui.
It’ll take me a bit to get there, but ๅธธๆๆฌกไบบ hid as a sort of Easter Egg (err…, Halloween Treat? Is there a “treat” synonym that starts with an “h” so that we can keep the alliteration?) in a deck of cards the rules for a trick-taking game.
ๅธธๆๆฌกไบบ is one of my favorite designers, and you can read about several of his designs in Joe’s 2017 list of his Top 189 games. One game he doesn’t talk about there is Sweets Stack. I briefly mentioned it in a Heavy Con post, but Sweets Stack is a trick-or-treat themed pass-and-write(?) game where you are dropping polyomino shaped pieces of candy into the bag of the player on your left, Tetris-style, hoping to play tricks on them and bust their bag.
One of the things that has happened, is that ๅธธๆๆฌกไบบ has released a standard deck of playing cards with the Sweets Stack art assets. If you buy it, you’ll find a QR code inside that leads you to the Japanese-language rules for a Halloween themed trick-taking game you can play!
Editors Note: I was supposed to post this on the Saturday of the fair, but due to some “technical issues” (i.e. I completely forgot), I didn’t get this uploaded until I got back home when the technical issues were resolved (i.e. I remembered). Keep your eyes posted for a bunch more quick recaps as we get the games played! DY
Expedition to Newdale – I was slightly unsure of this: a Pfister game but capitalising on Oh My Goods which I felt had already run its course in terms of expansions. Very pleased to report that itโs an excellent game, with plenty of new parts to it while keeping the basic simple engine building with multi-use cards alive. A thinky enough game to deserve the Pfister and Lookout badges, not too long, and meaningful decisions. I bought a copy.
I’ll have mini-reviews of lots of games in the coming days, but this is a sort of wrap up post, just quick thoughts on the Geekbuzz and Fairplay lists.
The big news on the last day is that attendance topped 200,000 for the first time. The attendance is turnstile attendance, and the initially reported number is 209,000.
Sunday morning, rain is falling Steal some covers, share some skin Clouds are shrouding us in moments unforgettable You twist to fit the mold that I am in
It’s raining and we are on our way back home. A Starbucks coffe at the airport waiting the flight to Bologna.
I wasn’t especially productive today, instead spending considerable time wandering around the used game stands. So today’s post just has quick coverage of the Geekbuzz and Fairplay lists, then some thoughts on Die Crew, which we did get some plays in of.
Essen 2019, Day 4: Quick Wrap Up (Chris Wray)
I’ll have mini-reviews of lots of games in the coming days, but this is a sort of wrap up post, just quick thoughts on the Geekbuzz and Fairplay lists.
The big news on the last day is that attendance topped 200,000 for the first time. The attendance is turnstile attendance, and the initially reported number is 209,000.
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