“Odin” Wins 2025 As d’Or Awards

Posted on March 5, 2025 by huzonfirst

Last week, the jury of the Festival International des Jeux announced the winner of its As d’Or awards.  Games from last year are nominated in four separate categories and the overall winner is Odin, a climbing and shedding game designed by Yohan Goh, Hope Hwang, and Gary Kim.  Other winners include Operation Noisettes, in the Children Category, Behind, in the Intermediate Category, and Kutna Hora, in the Expert Category.  All the nominated games are given below, together with their designers and publishers.  Congratulations to all the winners!

GAME OF THE YEAR
Odin  (Yohan Goh, Hope Hwang, Gary Kim) – Helvetiq
Captain Flip  (Paolo Mori, Remo Conzadori) – Playpunk
For a Crown  (Maxime Rambourg) – Repos

CHILDREN CATEGORY
Operation Noisettes  (Emilie & Jerome Soleil) – Auzou
Spotlight  (Hjalmar Hach, Lorenzo Silva) – Loki
Mimose & Sam et le Voleur de Fruits  (Thomas Degenais-Lesperance) – Locomuse

INTERMEDIATE CATEGORY
Behind  (Cedric Millet) – KYF Editions
Harmonies  (Johan Benvenuto) – Libellud
Kronologic: Paris 1920  (Fabien Gridel, Yoann Levet) – Origames/Super Meeple

EXPERT CATEGORY
Kutna Hora  (Ondrej Bystron, Pavel Jarosch, Petr Caslava) – CGE
Daybreak  (Matt Leacock, Matteo Menapace) – CMYK
Sankore  (Fabio Lopiano, Mandela Fernandez-Grandon) Osprey

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Dale Yu: Review of Fives

Posted on March 5, 2025 by Dale Yu

 

 

Fives

Designer: Taiki Shinzawa 

Publisher: CMYK

Players: 3-4

Age: 8+

Time: 30 minutes

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4hXER5p

Played with review copy provided by publisher

Fives is a smart and tense trick taking game from Taiki Shinzawa. Fives is a modern twist on classic trick-taking games like Hearts and Spades. Instead of playing a card face up, you can play it face down as a 5! You’re trying to get all your winning cards to add up to 25: can you play your cards right without busting?

 

Fives is part of the new Magenta line of games from CMYK – per their press release… CMYK is thrilled to announce the launch of Magenta: a striking new collection of card games. In a world of increasing digital distractions, Magenta is set to revive a classic way we gather and play – making face-to-face connections through card game nights with family, friends, and new faces around the table. “The idea behind Magenta is simple: to bring people together through the world’s best card games,” says Alex Hague, founder of CMYK. “To do that, we’ve created a line of games that are both fun to play and beautifully designed.”

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Dale Yu: Review of Duos

Posted on March 4, 2025 by Dale Yu

Duos

  • Designer: Johannes Schimdauer-Koenig 
  • Publisher: CMYK
  • Players: 4 or 6
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 30 minutes
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/43gI4bB 
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

Duos is a cozy and collaborative team game from Johannes Schmidauer-König. Work together to create unique hands of cards. You might need a flush one round and all odd numbers the next. Your secret weapon is that your teammate can slip you cards at the perfect time to complete your goals!

Duos is part of the new Magenta line of games from CMYK – per their press release… CMYK is thrilled to announce the launch of Magenta: a striking new collection of card games. In a world of increasing digital distractions, Magenta is set to revive a classic way we gather and play – making face-to-face connections through card game nights with family, friends, and new faces around the table. “The idea behind Magenta is simple: to bring people together through the world’s best card games,” says Alex Hague, founder of CMYK. “To do that, we’ve created a line of games that are both fun to play and beautifully designed.”

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The Ascending Empires Strikes Back: A Review of the New Zenith Edition

Posted on March 3, 2025 by Mark Jackson

Back in the summer of 2011 – which, for those of you who don’t like to do math, was nearly fourteen years ago – I reviewed Z-Man Games’ “weird & wonderful cross between a dexterity game like Carabande or Catacombs and a space civilization game like Twilight Imperium or Starcraft: the Board Game.” (Yes, my exact words to describe the original edition of Ascending Empires.)

Unfortunately, the game went out of print pretty quickly – and it was relatively difficult to find. Meanwhile, I put Ascending Empires on my top 100 games list that I publish every couple of years… and it has sat somewhere between #23-#32 on every one of those lists – including the 2024 top 100 list. I really love the game.

And then last year Play to Z decided not only to reprint Ascending Empires, but to reimagine and tweak the rules and ratchet up the quality of the components via Kickstarter. Based on my aforementioned adoration of the original game, I was an easy mark for Zev Shlasinger (the head of Play to Z) and plunked my hard-earned gaming cash down on the new edition (and sprung for the single piece neoprene board add-on)..

When I did a rulebook comparison prior to the KS campaign, I noted that it looked like there was (in the words of Charlie Peacock) “a whole different, a whole lot the same.” * Now, with five plays of the new edition under my belt, I think that statement sums it up pretty nicely.

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Dale Yu: Review of The Lie [Essen SPIEL 2024]

Posted on March 2, 2025 by Dale Yu

The Lie

  • Designers: Eloi Pujadas, Eugeni Castaňo
  • Publisher: Devir
  • Players: 2-6
  • Age: 8+
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Played with review copy provided by publisher

In The Lie, all the cards lie! The cards show numbers from 1 to 4, and they are in four different colors. However, when you turn each card over, you will find something has changed: either its color or number. You must be clever in choosing your combinations in order to play a higher number of the same color. Whoever is able to play all of their cards first wins the match, and whoever has the most points after a certain number of matches wins the game.

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Dale Yu: Review of Combo

Posted on March 1, 2025 by Dale Yu

Combo

  • Designer: Ikhwan Kwon
  • Publisher: Happy Camper
  • Players: 2-6
  • Age: 10+
  • Time: 20 minutes
  • Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4hFzV4X
  • Played with copy provided by publisher

The competition is ripe! Play apples, bananas, cherries, and more to make a shared fruit feast. Low numbers are worth more but you score only if your card is part of the winning combo! Can you lure others to follow your juicy offer, or will they be tempted by the fruit of another? Win the most points and victory is yours for the picking!

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