The Opinionated Gamers

Chimera

• Designer: Ralph H. Anderson
• Publisher: Z-Man Games
• Players: 3
• Ages: 13+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Times played: at least 5 – with review copy provided by Z-man and with copies at Gathering of Friends

Chimera is a fairly complicated card game which I was first introduced to at the Gathering of Friends in April 2014.  One of my all-time favorite card games is Tichu, and it’s the kind of game that you will see constantly in play at gaming conventions.  While it is one of my favorite games, it doesn’t get played much at home (Actually, almost never!).  Tichu is a partnership game which plays specifically four players.  Additionally, there is a pretty decent learning curve to the game that keeps non-Tichu players away from learning it.

Having played many a late night game of Tichu with Ralph Anderson, I know how much he loves the game.  While there is 3-player variant ruleset of Tichu, the somewhat cleverly named “Three-chu”, it just doesn’t seem to capture the same fun as the base game.  Ralph took it upon himself to come up with a similar climbing game that is meant for just 3 players – the result is Chimera. Continue reading →

7 Wonders: Babel

• Designer: Antoine Bauza
• Publisher: REPOS (distributed by Asmodee)
• Ages: 10+
• Players: 2-7
• Time: ~40 minutes
• Times played: 5 (twice with review copy, three times in playtesting with Mr. Bauza or REPOS)

7 Wonders: Babel is the most recent expansion to the 2011 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner, 7 Wonders.  While I would expect that most of the readers of this blog would be familiar with 7W, if you aren’t – take a minute to go read a wonderful review of the base game written 3-and-a-half years ago by Larry Levy:

http://opinionatedgamers.com/2011/02/09/review-of-7-wonders-believe-the-hype/

There, now that we’re all on the same page – let’s talk about this new expansion – which is actually two separate expansions in one box, and they can be played either independently or together.  I will describe them separately…

TOWER OF BABEL EXPANSION Continue reading →

Deus

• Designer: Sebastian Dujardin
• Publisher: Pearl Games
• Ages: 14+
• Players: 2-4
• Time: 60-90 mins

[This game was originally previewed on 9/10/2014 for the blog, but now that we’ve had a chance to play it… now we can do a full review!]

Times played: 3, with review copy provided by Pearl Games Continue reading →

Spyfall

• Designer: Alexander Ushan
• Publisher: Hobby World
• Players:3-8
• Ages: 12+
• Time: ~10 minutes/round
• Times played: 2 with review copy provided by Hobby World

Spyfall is an different sort of social deduction game.  The game is played over a number of rounds, and in each round, one player is designated as a spy while all of the other players are not.  The game consists of 26 mini-decks of cards.  Each of these decks corresponds to a different location – one card in this mini-deck is a spy card (and all it says on it is “SPY”) while the rest of the deck tells you the location as well as your “role” at that location. Continue reading →