Istanbul the Dice Game

• Designer: Rudiger Dorn
• Publisher: AEG
• Players: 2-4
• Age:
• Time: 30 minutes
• Times played: 5, with review copy provided by AEG

Istanbul (the regular board game) is one of my favorite strategy games in recent years.  I am not alone in this opinion as the game was named the winner of the 2014 Kennerspiel des Jahres.  In that game, there is a modular bazaar of market tiles where players race to collect rubies. Following the recent trend of successful games, the complex board game has been minimized into a dice version.

This dice game has a small board which is placed on the table, and there are multiple tracks on this board.  Place rubies on the spaces on the track based on the player count. Each player gets a small player aid card which summarizes the possible actions in the game.  There is a deck of Bazaar cards – they are shuffled and placed as a face down deck near the board. Finally, the Mosque tiles are shuffled facedown and a display of 6 tiles is created. Continue reading →

Scarabya

• Designer: Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc
• Publisher: Blue Orange
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 15-20 minutes
• Times played: 4, with review copy provided by Blue Orange (USA) and 6 solo games

Scarabya was a game that kind of flew under my radar – and I don’t say that in a disparaging sense, but one meant to reflect the large number of games that have come out this summer combined with the huge distraction of moving to a new house this summer that has severely cut down on my time available to keep abreast of all the new games…

When I arrived at Gencon, having done almost no research, Scarabya was one of the games that was constantly on the lips of the convention goers.  When I arrived at the Blue Orange stand, it was mobbed. I’m sure that some of this was due to the excitement over the two main releases – this game as well as Blue Lagoon – but there was also a long line wrapped around the stand as folks waited to meet Bruno Cathala and have him sign their new Scarabya box!

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• Designer: Jeff Lai
• Publisher: Blue Orange Games
• Players: 2-6
• Ages: 7+
• Time: 10-15 minutes
• Times played: 5+, with review copy provided by Blue Orange Games

Cover posted by Eric W. Martin on BGG, credited to the publisher

Let’s start this review like so many that have come before, with a walk-through of the game’s indisputable facts. Maki Stack is a dexterity game. Two teams play, cards are flipped, wooden bits are hurriedly stacked, and a point is scored by the fastest correct team. If a red card comes up, one player from each team races to make a stack while wearing a blindfold as their partner tells them what is on the card. If a yellow card comes up, two members of a partnership use one finger each to lift the blocks and form the stack shown on the visible card. The first team to collect six points wins.

By description there’s nothing wrong with any of that. A short wacky dexterity game with blindfolds sounds like a can’t-miss proposition. Frankly, it was why I took on this review. My wife and I have a soft spot for the genre, so at the very least Maki Stack seemed like it would be easy to get to the table in a variety of situations.  By and large, this was true. We did manage to play it enough times to get a taste for its merits. Continue reading →

Kariba

• Designer: Reiner Knizia
• Publisher: Helvetiq
• Players: 2-5
• Ages: 6+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Helvetiq

Kariba was the second Knizia game that I found in my recent care package from Helvetiq… This tiny game comes in the same small format as Hippo and Bandido – two games that I had the chance to play earlier in the year…

In Kariba, play focuses around an African Waterhole.  The animals in this particular safari are very orderly, and each type of animal only drinks water at their assigned place around the octagonal waterhole. The animals in this part of the world are numbered 1 to 8.  There are 8 of each type of animal in the deck – this is shuffled and each player is dealt a hand of 5 cards. The rest of the deck is placed on the table as a draw pile.

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