Tag Archives: tiles

Review of Dairyman

Posted on April 5, 2017 by

Roll Dice! Milk the Cow! Make Cheese & Ice Cream!

Dairyman is a push-your-luck dice-rolling game in which players compete as dairymen trying to collect fresh milk everyday, fulfilling orders, and making cheese and ice cream. Players take turns rolling, locking, and re-rolling dice to create sets of two or three dice with a total value of 10 to produce milk and then use it to claim milk tiles for points. Failure to produce milk may result in spoilage and the loss of a previously earned milk tile. There are opportunities to flip a tile to turn the milk into cheese for extra points or to freeze it into ice cream. This action provides an extra ability that can be used each turn. Flipping a milk tile also prevents it from being lost. The player with the most points on their milk, cheese, and ice cream tiles at the end of the game is the winner. Continue reading →

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Review of Codinca

Posted on February 22, 2017 by

Rival treasure hunters (i.e., players) have discovered the Temple of Codinca while exploring the Yucatan rain forests. To open the Temple and find the great treasures contained within, players must use various mechanisms to manipulate a grid of sixteen carved Symbol Tiles to match specific Key Patterns. The first player to match their own Symbol Tiles to their four Key Patterns will unlock the secrets of Codinca.

Codinca is an abstract strategy game that combines skill and chance. Players take turns using various actions (e.g., flipping, swapping, and shifting) to manipulate a common grid of tiles to create patterns that match their individual Key Cards. The game is meant to be fast-paced and tactical.

Codinca was first available as a pre-production release at the Essen Game Fair (Spiel) in 2012. Only 150 copies were available and it sold out. A Kickstarter campaign was launched in September 2013 to fund a full production release, but it failed to reach the necessary goal. The game largely disappeared until it re-debuted at the 2016 UK Game Expo in new pocket edition. According to the announcement from the publisher, “the mechanics have been streamlined, the tiles made substantially chunkier, the rules include six languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish & Polish), and it all comes in a very pretty pocket sized magnetic closing box.” This review is for the new 2016 release of Codinca. Continue reading →

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