Nick is joined by his lovely wife, Camille, as they discuss their Top 10 Board Games for Couples.  Whether you have a SO, a friend, or a stranger willing to play a 2-player game with you, we think you’ll find some killer suggestions within this discussion.

1:29 – Meet Camille
5:57 – About this list
7:53 – Cami’s 1st pick
11:29 – Nick’s Best Huge Sprawling Game
16:29 – Cami’s favorite no brain required game & Nick’s Most Prized Possession
20:46 – Nick’s Best Cooperative Game
23:43 – Cami’s next polyomino pick
25:08 – Nick’s Most Addictive Game
28:48 – Cami’s Chess-style preference
30:43 – Nick’s Most Polarizing Game
34:43 – Cami’s go-to card game
37:08 – Nick’s Best Non-Confrontational Game
40:31 – Cami & Nick’s Endlessly Entertaining Pick
44:17 – Nick’s Best AP-Inducing Game(s) + Cami’s similar alternative
50:13 – Cami’s favorite classic
53:21 – Nick’s Old Reliable Choice
56:03 – Cami’s final pick
59:00 – Nick & Cami’s Favorite New Game
1:06:11 – An exciting upcoming reveal… (Click here to follow along)

The post Top 10 Board Games for Couples — Podcast Exclusive appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Welcome back to my Top 50 Board Games of All Time! If you missed part 1 of this post, then head on over and check out games 50-26. Today, we’ll be finishing things out by discussing games 25-1. That’s right, the cream of the cream of the crop…

25. Camel Up (Second Edition)

Best suited for everyone

Camel Up might be the most reliable party game in my collection.  If there is any game that I can place before a random assortment of 4-8 friends, family, or strangers, and expect them to request a second and third play in a row, that game is undoubtedly Camel Up.  None can resist the allure of betting on chunky, colorful camels as they race around the desert.  Between the stacking camels, dice-dispensing pyramid, memorably dramatic moments, popup palm tree, and shoot-for-the-moon strategies, this one has it all.

24. El Grande

Best suited for everyone

While it doesn’t have the party pizazz of Camel Up, El Grande has been another crowd pleaser at my table.  This classic strategy game of competing for area majorities is unmatched in its elegant flow and potent interaction.  Many designs since have wisely borrowed from El Grande’s master class mechanisms, but few, if any, have risen to its level of grace and wit plus the drama of revealing the contents of the towering Castillo.  It’s not really worth considering outside of the four or five player count, but within that range you’ll find consistently satisfying area influence, auctioning, and action drafting to be had.

23. Renature

Best suited for everyone (but be ready for some mean moments)

El Grande designer, Wolfgang Kramer, also brought us last year’s Renature with the help of Azul designer Michael Kiesling, and this is a game that I’m loving more and more with each new play.  One of the quickest ways to my heart is down the path of simple, clever brutality, and Renature is indeed beautifully simple, wonderfully clever, and deliciously brutal.  This game sees its competitors placing one domino onto the board at a time, and touching domino animals must match.  But the placement of a domino also allows one to plant an adjacent foliage piece, and these plant tokens are used to compete for area majority or even cancel out other player’s plants.  I stand by my declaration that this is the greatest domino game OF ALL TIME.

22. A Feast for Odin

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

While it has dropped out of my previous top 10 games list, that’s more a side-effect of many other stellar games climbing their way up my rankings than A Feast for Odin becoming any less enjoyable over time.  I would label this a heavy worker placement polyomino Euro game with relatively low-interaction.  When there are roughly SIXTY worker placement spaces to choose from—like a wide sandbox of strategies one can use to acquire points—it is typically quite effortless to stay out of each other’s way and do your own thing.  While this blog is riddled with me bemoaning low-interaction games on a regular basis, mostly due to their commonly stale dynamics and limited replayability, I find that A Feast for Odin is one of the few exceptions to my preferences.  The numerous interlocking concepts and mechanisms here are perfect for a warm, cozy, lazy few hours of puzzling perfection that still satisfies after all these plays.

21. Bus

Best suited for cold-blooded strategists

Bus is a game about building bus routes and transporting passengers around town, yet this design is no flowery Ticket to Ride.  Imagine a world where all people were predictable creatures of habit.  They go to the work, then head to the bar, then go home, rinse and repeat… as long as a bus route can get them there, of course.  On and on they cycle through this unchanging lifestyle, with the only exception being when a greedy bus line decides to STOP TIME.  Suddenly, everyone in town decides to work another shift in a row, or pull an all-nighter at the bar, or play hooky from their jobs and kick back at home, and all the buses that were prepared to take them to their usual next destination are suddenly hosed and empty-handed.  With completely open information and not even a hint of luck, Bus is a pure strategy game that has players feuding over the tight economy of passengers in an effort to scrape just a few precious point morsels from this ruthless game.

20. Tournament at Avalon

Best suited for everyone

If you really want to know what this wacky trick-taking card game is all about, I would direct you to my full review from last year.  Here’s a sample of what I said:

“If the possibility of falling behind early and spending the rest of the game trying to claw your way back to the top while your leading opponents pounce on you like sharks to a bleeding prey sounds dreadful, then steer clear of Tournament at Avalon… Then again, perhaps you are like me.  Maybe you’re happy to roll with the punches and simply want to experience trick-taking at its finest.  In Tournament at Avalon, you may be completely fine with being the favorite piñata of the round because you see the fresh gaping wound in your side for what it truly is: a firehose of retribution.  You may be the type of competitor who loves to form shaky alliances with fellow weaklings to surround and beat down the mighty.  And when you are the current King of the Hill, you welcome the opportunity to bob and weave around targeted attacks and gleefully watch as swinging blows skim past your head to land squarely on your neighbor’s face.”

19. My City

Best suited for everyone

Perhaps you’ve noticed by now that I have a soft spot for great polyomino games.  In my Top 50 board games of all time, we’ve already covered titans from master polyomino designer, Uwe Rosenberg, including A Feast For Odin and New York Zoo.  Yet the game that claims the crown to world’s best polyomino game, and the title that makes a strong case for being the best Legacy design yet, is none other than Reiner Knizia’s My City.  We’ve played this one 24 times now—that’s as many episodes as the game contains, so we’re not likely to play it much further with the “eternal game”—but that’s more plays than most other titles on this list.  We’ll always hold a special memory in our hearts for the journey we took through My City

18. Ethnos

Best suited for everyone

Ethnos remains one of my go-to gateway games (games to introduce people to the hobby) because it never fails to entertain newcomers while continuing to engage me.  While the art direction could use a drastic overhaul to match the family friendly nature of the design, none of that matters once the cards are dealt and the fun begins.  Turns are as simple as drawing a card or playing a set known as a “band of allies” of matching colors or creatures.  The band will net you points while the card on top of your band (the “leader”) grants you a special bonus and a token placement on the map.  Much like El Grande, players compete for points via area majorities.  While some folks complain of “top decking” in Ethnos, where you spend your turns drawing a card off the top of the deck until you find what you want, I find this to be a hollow complaint thanks to a little wrinkle that Paolo Mori includes in the design: Whenever you play a band of cards from your hand, you must discard the rest of your hand faceup into the market for other players to feast on.  Suddenly, you have to decide whether the “top decking” strategy is worth it for that one extra card, because everything else you draw will simply help your competition.

17. The King’s Dilemma

Best suited for a regular group of 5 players

Aside from My City, The King’s Dilemma is the only other legacy design that made my Top 50 Board Games of All Time, or even came close, for that matter.  The concept of a legacy game—a game whose rules and components permanently change over time based on the outcome and decisions of each play—is a fascinating, alluring, and popular feature in the industry.  But our experience with some of the more popular options has uncovered it’s ugly side-effects including rules & component management fatigue, forced narratives, messy productions, and unwieldy scheduling requirements.  Burnout is real within this genre, but The King’s Dilemma has soared over these common traps across our many plays by staying focused on the addicting core concept of political negotiation and bribing.  As you’ll soon find out with even higher rated games, I’m a sucker for a good negotiation game, and The King’s Dilemma hits the spot.  I love how the secret incentives can have me championing the cause of the good people in one game and sacrificing their well being for my personal gain in the next like the greedy posterity of a heroic monarch.

16. Wavelength

Best suited for everyone, especially groups of 6 or more

And here we arrive at my favorite party game, Wavelength.  Between Kyle’s video review and my own written review, we’ve covered the entire spectrum of reasons why we love this game. The simple truth is that Wavelength effortlessly captures the the feeling of a gameshow and generates engaging conversations and hilarious memories that last far beyond the party.  It was the first game I backed on Kickstarter, sending me down the rabbit hole of thrillingly creative possibilities.

15. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine

Best suited for everyone

Now we are onto my top rated cooperative game, and not only that, but this is one of only two cooperative games that made my Top 50 Board Games of All Time.  Don’t get me wrong here, I dig a solid cooperative game such as Pandemic, Mysterium, and Horrified.  Yet those types of games obviously don’t quite hit the spot for me as all the competitive ones on my list.  So what makes The Crew so special?  In this mission-based trick-taking game, everyone’s turns matter and nobody can quarterback them through it.  The only communication allowed between players is a single token that lets you signal or imply information about some of the cards in your hand.  Each new challenge and each new hand of cards presents an obstacle that can often seem impossible to overcome, yet it feels amazing when your crew finally triumphs.  It’s an addictive challenge that takes players on an unforgettable 50-mission journey.

14. For Sale / For Sale Autorama

Best suited for everyone

We’re talking about my two favorite card games back-to-back between The Crew and now For Sale.  For Sale consists of two phases: auctioning coins for houses that become your hand of cards, then selling that hand of cards one at a time in a closed auction.  When I pass on the auctioning of the first phase, I have to pay half of what I’ve bid up to that point and take the lowest value face-up house.  So there is a game of chicken between players when nobody wants to take the grungy outhouse card, and thus the bidding war ensues.  Yet the outhouse card might be a great one to claim with a pass in a particular round if the other options aren’t that much better and spending your precious coins to avoid it will merely land you a slightly higher card.  The second phase becomes a game of predicting your opponents’ plays, as the bidding becomes a closed auction where everyone plays a single house card facedown and reveals their bid at the same time and the values of the money cards are dispersed to players according to who bid highest, who bid lowest, and everything in between.  Nothing feels worse than wasting your best card on an auction that everyone else played low for.  Conversely, eeking out the best money card of a round with a measly house makes you feel like a mastermind.  And that roller coaster of emotions is the magic of For Sale.

13. Root

Best suited for a regular group of hobbyist gamers

Root has to be one of the most aesthetically charming games on this list.  Screen-printed, wooden animal tokens and their more detailed card and board illustrations are all brimming with personality.  Rich colors of the woodland span from deep orange hues to refreshing green shades.  Card suits consist of mice, birds, foxes, and rabbits.  There is no shortage of warmth in the presentation of Root.  Yet this art direction was intentionally chosen because of the stark contrast it presents against the savage gameplay.  These woodland creatures are at war, and a negotiated alliance in one round can quickly become a callous betrayal in the next.  No animal is safe from a sudden beatdown, and only one faction will triumph.  With the consistent release of more expansions including animal factions over these past few years, and at least two more in the pipeline, it feels as though I could explore Root’s fascinating asymmetry for dozens upon dozens more plays.

12. Babylonia

Best suited for everyone

This may not be shocking to you, but Reiner Knizia’s Babylonia at number 12 feels like a bit of stealth ranking to me.  It’s one of the more recent Knizia’s which flew under my radar as I was gobbling up his most popular and revered titles.  Yet when I finally came around to Babylonia, I found it to be a rock-solid game that grew on me with each and every play.  This is a fast-paced, 45-minute strategy game that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed at the 2, 3, and 4 player counts.  Everything about picking up the clackity wooden tiles, slotting them into my rack, and deciding which ones to place onto the board and where makes for a deeply satisfying ritual.  My deepest thanks is owed to Space Biff, whose eloquently written review talked me into trying this brilliant jewel.

11. Inis

Best suited for everyone

While it is no longer my #1 game of all time, Inis remains an outstanding area-control experience of careful drafting, crafty cardplay, elegant combat, and sneaky intentions.  Because there are three different conditions one can aim for to become the victor, I’ve rarely seen a game that didn’t come down to the wire as players wrestled to become King of the Celtic Hill.  The production is a mesmerizing masterclass in capturing the mysterious theme thanks to Jim Fitzpatrick’s alluring illustrations and Dimitri Bielak’s lovely tiles.  Ultimately, Inis is as much about playing your opponents as it is about playing the game, and that subtle politicking is what makes it consistently satisfying for me.

10. Chinatown

Best suited for everyone

Out of all the games that made my top 10, Chinatown is the dark horse the snuck its way on here.  This pure negotiation experience beat out dozens of other personal favorites thanks to my many fond memories of it that match my enthusiasm to play it again.  I’ve found Chinatown to be a surprising hit with non-gamers that delightedly brings out both the best and worst in them.  The most generous and thoughtful of folks can immediately transform into vicious traders who see the hunger in your eyes for their prized possessions, so they seize the opportunity to milk you for all you are worth.  

9. Ra

Best suited for everyone

Perhaps Ra is so high on my list simply because I’ve been waiting to acquire my own copy for far too long.  Yet maybe it has made its way here due to the perfect blend of auctioning and push-your-luck that it provides.  How long will you wait to spend your best sun disks?  Wait long enough, and you’ll be one of the only ones left to bid on all the lucrative tiles.  Wait too long, and you may find the round ending before you’ve put your sun disks to good use.  Is this auction really worth fighting for?  Surely you aren’t going to let another opponent claim these tiles for so cheap, are you?  This game is jam-packed with tough decisions.  As a fan of auctioning games, it doesn’t get much better than Ra.

8. Age of Steam

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with thick skin

I just barely shared my thoughts on Age of Steam: Deluxe Edition in my last Candid Cardboard: New Release 1st Impressions post.  This train game rewards careful and opportunistic economic planning and punishes a lack thereof.  Yet players don’t only have to account for their own budget and round-to-round plans; they must also account for the plans of their opponents.  All it takes is for one player to steal away your goods cube, or build track on your planned space, or claim your needed bonus action, and you may suddenly find yourself losing a lot of money and points.  But the arc this game takes—from scraping by with a few meager deliveries, to prospering with massive gains in income and ambitious rail developments, to shrinking opportunities for points as the cubes diminish from the board—is a supremely satisfying experience.

7. Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy

Best suited for hobbyist gamers with a big table… and maybe a side table, too

Last year, I sold my fully deluxified, mostly expanded, legendary boxed copy of Scythe and put some of that money toward a copy of Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy.  After spending several good hours playing multiple sessions of Eclipse, I have no regrets in swapping these two games.  That’s not a knock against Scythe, which I played and enjoyed a solid fifteen times.  But the change to Eclipse reflects a change in my personal gaming preferences.  Eclipse not only presents a wider range of freedom across its various actions and engine upgrades, but it also embraces a more interactive and tense 4X experience.  The memorable moments of war and betrayal are strong with this one, as I shared in my recent Board Game Birthday Marathon Musings.

6. Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

Continuing on with the theme of epic space games, Sidereal Confluence features up to 9 wildly asymmetric alien factions cooperating with each other through chaotic cube-tacular negotiation.  Take the simultaneous trading concept of Chinatown, crank it up ten-fold, add in a couple thousand chunky cubes, and you’ve got yourself Sidereal Confluence.  The sheer amount of soulless components and icons in this game scared me off from trying it for the longest time.  But I was sorely mistaken to avoid this game, because all those bits and pieces are mere cogs in a system of player-focused deals and negotiations which are the beating heart of this excellent experience.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the remastered edition has given it a welcome makeover.

5. Hansa Teutonica: Big Box

Best suited for everyone

Despite Hansa Teutonica being over ten years old and looking even older, it remains undeniably refreshing amid the onslaught of sluggish, overly complicated, low-interaction Euros because it is fast-paced, streamlined, and wonderfully interactive.  The new Big Box version provides even more content to explore—it makes for an incredible package value that is not big in size, but big in content.  Quinns of Shut Up & Sit Down recently proposed that this might just be the greatest Euro ever, and I’m inclined to agree.   That’s why the big box version was my number one release of 2020. 

4. Brass: Birmingham

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

Brass hasn’t moved an inch in the rankings since I posted my Top 50 Games of All Time last year.  Even after several more plays, it remains just as engaging and enjoyable as the first time I tried it.  It’s solid at all player counts from 2-4, and I’ve yet to introduce it to a hobbyist gamer who didn’t enjoy it.  Brass: Birmingham makes a strong case for reimplementations considering the look of the original design and the reach that the new versions of Brass have had within the hobby.  If you are a hobbyist gamer looking to add a long-term, well-loved gem to your collection, you’d be hard pressed to find a better bet than Brass: Birmingham.

3. Tigris & Euphrates

Best suited for strategy gamers

The deeper I get into this hobby, the more I appreciate games that contain a wide dynamic range within a narrow rules space.  Reiner Knizia is more skilled at creating these kinds of games than any other designer in the industry; that’s why my Top 50 is crammed with his masterpieces, and that’s why Tigris & Euphrates, his magnum opus, is my number three game of all time.  Most turns simply involve placing a couple tiles or leaders onto the game board, but the points those tiles can earn, the ripple effect their positioning can have, and the wars and revolts that they can trigger are where things get incredibly meaty.  For an experience that appears to be abstract strategy through and through, it’s surprising how thematic of a civilization game this is.  The rise, prosperity, and fall of dynasties and kingdoms are epic arcs that most civ games can only dream of providing.  The many opportunities for clever moves and brilliant plays are what continually keep me coming back for more Tigris & Euphrates.

2. Crokinole

Best suited for everyone

Crokinole straddles the fence that separates board games from competitive sports and rides that fence to the moon and back.  Darts, billiards, foosball, and Jenga are perfectly fine indoor activities, but Crokinole takes the cake for me.  Like a meaner, faster, sexier version of curling, Crokinole sees its participants flicking discs to the center of a large, slick board as they ricochet off a center ring of posts and collide with other discs.  There’s far more strategy here than simply aiming for the center hole.  With enough plays, you start to realize that the planned positioning of your disc after you hit an opponent’s disc is just as important as knocking them off the board.  Crokinole works as both a 4-player party game and a 2-player showdown, and my board will remain a family heirloom for decades to come.

1. Pax Pamir: Second Edition

Best suited for hobbyist gamers

When every aspect of a game oozes with deliberate thought and delicate attention to detail, it’s hard not to be attracted to such an experience regardless of its theme or genre.  From the deeply intricate gameplay to the opulent multi-sensory production, none could call Pax Pamir: Second Edition anything but a labor of love.  Pamir transcends the level of consumer product and cements itself as a historical, philosophical, and strategic sandbox for participants to lose themselves in as they explore its nuances over the course of endlessly engaging plays.  To boil this game down to its mechanical pieces—a political area control tableau builder—is a disservice to its greater whole.  The vast card market, oscillating coalitions, tight economy, and unstable alliances all combine into a supple, historical harmony between musical chair loyalties and tug of war gameplay.

This concludes my Top 50 Board Games of All Time! I hope you’ve enjoyed this journey with me through some of the world’s greatest tabletop games, and if you’re still hungry for more gaming goodness then stick around with us here at Bitewing Games!

We are thrilled to be launching a Kickstarter campaign this summer featuring a bundle of three 20-minute games, including two zesty Reiner Knizia designs! Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter so you don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle. Speaking of which, the upcoming May email will feature a concept art reveal for Reiner Knizia’s Soda Smugglers!

Article written by Nick Murray. If you found yourself nodding in agreement to some of his favorite games, then keep an eye out for the three upcoming games that he loved enough to publish! Nick’s first published design, Social Grooming, which will debut in a Kickstarter bundle alongside two games—Soda Smugglers and Pumafiosi—from critically acclaimed designer, Reiner Knizia!

The post Top 50 Board Games of All Time — 2021 Edition — Games 25-1 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

In this podcast-exclusive episode, Nick and Kyle discuss their top 10 family board games. With Nick having a million cousins and Kyle doing nearly all his gaming with siblings, parents, and his spouse, we’ve put plenty of titles to the test with our “non-gamer” family members.

Find out which board games are guaranteed to please at your next family gathering!

If you like what you hear, why not subscribe to the Bitewing Games Podcast through your favorite Podcast app?

1:10 – What do we mean by “Family Games?” 
4:12 – Blokus
5:18 – Camel Up (Second Edition)
8:00 – Bohnanza
10:05 – Chinatown
13:18 – The Mind
15:15 – For Sale
18:03 – The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
21:57 – Crokinole, Klask
24:52 – Ticket to Ride
26:05 – Condottiere
28:52 – On Tour
30:25 – Wavelength
33:27 – Ethnos
36:28 – Kingdomino
38:05 – Love Letter
41:02 – 7 Wonders, Sushi Go Party
42:57 – My City
47:26 – Between Two Cities
50:26 – Codenames, Decrypto
52:10 – Another teaser for our upcoming publications!

That’s all for our Top 10 Family Board Games! We’ll be back next week with our regular blog post & podcast episode! What are your favorite games to play with family and friends? Share with us in the comments below!

The post Top 10 Family Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Digitálna éra priniesla nespočetné možnosti zábavy priamo do našich domovov. Jednou z najpopulárnejších foriem sú interaktívne online platformy, kde hráči môžu skúmať rôzne hry a využívať špeciálne ponuky. Tieto prostredia kombinujú zábavu, súťaživosť a možnosť okamžitých odmien, čím oslovujú široké spektrum používateľov.

Platformy, ktoré ponúkajú bezpečné a prehľadné rozhranie, sú kľúčové pre pozitívny zážitok. https://www.slovakiaplay.sk/online-casino-paysafecard/ poskytujú hráčom transparentné podmienky a jednoduché možnosti platby, čo je základom dôveryhodného prostredia.

Pohľad odborníka
Podľa odborníka na digitálnu zábavu, Martina Kováča, je dôležité, aby si hráči vyberali platformy, ktoré kombinujú bezpečnosť, intuitívne ovládanie a rôznorodosť hier. “Efektívne využívanie týchto platforiem si vyžaduje vedomý prístup, ktorý minimalizuje riziká a maximalizuje zábavu,” hovorí Kováč.

Štatistiky a trendy
Nedávne prieskumy ukazujú, že viac ako 70% používateľov trávi pri online hrách 3–5 hodín týždenne. Rovnako až 60% hráčov preferuje platformy, ktoré ponúkajú flexibilné platobné možnosti a bonusové odmeny. Tieto čísla ukazujú, že dôvera a pohodlie sú pre používateľov kľúčové faktory pri výbere platformy.

Kľúčové kritériá pri výbere platformy

1. Bezpečnosť a licencie: Overené platformy s regulovaným prostredím minimalizujú riziko podvodov.
2. Prehľadnosť a jednoduchosť: Intuitívne rozhranie zvyšuje komfort a umožňuje lepšie sústredenie sa na zábavu.
3. Rozmanitosť hier: Široká ponuka hier uspokojí rôzne záujmy používateľov.
4. Bonusy a odmeny: Spravodlivé a transparentné odmeny motivujú hráčov a zvyšujú ich spokojnosť.

Tieto faktory pomáhajú používateľom vybrať si platformu, ktorá najlepšie zodpovedá ich potrebám a očakávaniam.

Typy hier a interaktívnych aktivít

• Hry s okamžitou výhrou: Ponúkajú rýchle odmeny a jednoduché pravidlá.
• Súťažné turnaje: Umožňujú porovnávanie zručností s inými hráčmi.
• Odmeny za vernosť: Platformy motivujú pravidelnú aktivitu prostredníctvom bodov a exkluzívnych ponúk.
• Tematické akcie: Sezónne alebo špeciálne udalosti pridávajú novú dynamiku a zvyšujú zábavu.

Správnym kombinovaním týchto možností môžu používatelia maximalizovať svoj zážitok a získať najviac z každého zapojenia.

Výhody používania renomovaných platforiem

• Jednoduché porovnanie dostupných ponúk a odmien.
• Prístup k detailným analýzam a trendom.
• Zvýšená efektivita pri rozhodovaní a zapojení.
• Bezpečné a regulované prostredie znižuje riziko problémov.

Používanie profesionálnych platforiem umožňuje účastníkom sústrediť sa na zábavu a zároveň optimalizovať svoje rozhodnutia.

Odporúčania odborníkov

1. Vyberajte platformy s jasnými a transparentnými pravidlami.
2. Venujte pozornosť licencovaným a overeným zdrojom.
3. Kombinujte rôzne typy hier a aktivít pre maximálny zážitok.
4. Sledujte nové trendy a aktualizácie, aby ste využili najnovšie ponuky.

Implementácia týchto odporúčaní zabezpečí, že každý používateľ dosiahne spokojnosť a zábavu s minimálnym rizikom.

Záver
Digitálna zábava prináša možnosti, ktoré sú flexibilné, zaujímavé a odmeňujúce. slovakiaplay.sk/online-casino-paysafecard/ poskytuje používateľom profesionálne prostredie, ktoré kombinuje bezpečnosť, prehľadnosť a rozmanitosť aktivít.

Vďaka platformám, ktoré poskytujú odborné porovnania a detailné analýzy, môžu používatelia optimalizovať svoje rozhodnutia a zažiť zábavu na najvyššej úrovni. Transparentné podmienky, flexibilné platobné možnosti a rôznorodosť hier sú kľúčom k pozitívnemu zážitku a dlhodobej spokojnosti.

Správnym využitím dostupných nástrojov a odborných odporúčaní môže každý používateľ zvýšiť efektivitu svojich rozhodnutí a dosiahnuť lepšie výsledky pri digitálnej zábave. V konečnom dôsledku tieto platformy transformujú spôsob, akým ľudia pristupujú k online zábave, čím zvyšujú jej hodnotu a kvalitu.

The post Moderné možnosti zábavy online: komplexný pohľad na digitálne hry appeared first on Bitewing Games.

So how is this board gaming industry still even a thing?  Is there more to it than… winning?  Of course there is!  You know that, I know that.  Perhaps in games of pure luck, there really is nothing fun about losing.  But when we begin to mix other elements into the game… the interesting friends, the dynamic strategies, the dramatic moments… that’s when the finish line fades and the journey prevails.  Let’s take a look at some of the many games that hurt so good.  In other words, let’s explore games that are fun to lose, and most importantly, why:

Close, Intense Battles for Victory

These kinds of losses are perhaps the most fun, at least for me.  When I feel that victory is within all of our grasps, and even when I’m not crowned champion, I love a good battle to the death.  I’ve encountered it time and time again in tightly designed titles including Inis and Pax Pamir (2nd Edition).  It’s what puts these games among my all time favorites.  You can never count a player out, because there is always a route for them to make a wrecking-ball comeback.

Competitive Races

Along the same lines, I love a close race.  When the winning objective is clear—reach El Dorado first in The Quest for El Dorado, or fill your mat first in New York Zoo—yet the competition is tight.  The games I just mentioned have provided multiple instances where opponents were one good turn away from claiming the victory.  It’s the kind of roller coaster of tension that I love taking again and again.

When You Are Proud of what You’ve Built/Accomplished

I love it when a game allows the players to approach its challenge in unique and creative ways.  Often times, the path you pave can be even more satisfying than reaching the finish line first.  You see this all the time in games like Junk Art, where players must stack wildly different shapes as they build their own teetering works of art.  Men at Work is another obvious example, as one player may not win the overall game, but they’ll pull off the most challenging task of all (to the “Ooos” and “Ahhhs” of their opponents).  More recently, I experienced this with our first play of Curious Cargo.  My wife ended up kicking my trash (nearly doubling my score), yet I was still mighty proud of the tricky network I had built and the maneuvers I had pulled off.

When the Strategy you Execute Plays Out Beautifully, and Somebody Still Outwits You

Pax Pamir (2nd Edition) is one of my absolute favorite games.  It quickly rose to the top of my list despite me losing the game over and over again.  I believe it took me 6 or so plays (even with less experienced people) to actually win the dang thing.  Despite my struggle, I loved every session of it.  Pax Pamir is the kind of game where the strategies and tactics are seemingly endless, and I’m always scheming up new plots to swoop in and win a dominance check (a scoring phase).  Often, I can get at least one of these schemes to pay off each game, and thereby position myself in the lead.  Even when my crafty opponents manage to snatch the victory from my salivating jaws, I still have a satisfied belly from the tasty schemes I hatched.

When an Opponent Shoots for the Moon and Wins Against All Odds

You have to respect the moon shooters of our hobby and the games that give them those tiniest of windows to hope and victory.  When I see an opponent, fresh out of reasonable options, shooting for the moon, I always give them an internal salute.  Everyone knows that they have the slimmest shot of victory, but the key is that they still have a shot… and you can’t help but root for the underdog.  Speaking of Root, this game’s Dominance Cards are a great example of shooting for the moon.  You’ll see one player just barely cross the 10-point mark as their opponents are closing in on the 30 point victory.  Suddenly, the 10-pointer plays out a Dominance Card, removes their score marker from the track, and declares that they will win on their next turn if everybody else doesn’t stop them.  Respect.

My utmost respect also goes to those folks who bet on the camel in last place winning the race of Camel Up.  To those in Lords of Vegas who choose to gamble all of their money at the enemy’s casino in a desperate attempt at a comeback, we salute you.  To that one wild Space Base card that is extremely hard to complete, but when completed it automatically declares its owner the winner (throwing out the whole points-based objective), I tip my hat to you and the player who lassos you up and rides you into the sunset of victory.

When You Set a Perfect Trap and They Still Manage to Escape

Two of the greatest dexterity games on the planet include Crokinole and Klask.  Perhaps one of the most underrated features of these games is the ability to set traps for your opponent.  In Crokinole, that involves planning and positioning your discs in the hardest to reach spots for your opponent, who must at least touch your disc in order for their shot to not be a scratch.  For Klask, that involves nudging the magnetic biscuits onto your opponent’s half of the board, surrounding them with booby traps that are hungry to latch onto their pawn.  Putting my opposition in these situations never ceases to delight me.  Yet I’ve seen people pull off mission: impossible by executing the perfect shot and turning the tables on me.  Touché, good sir/madame.  

When the Players are the Most Entertaining Part of the Game

It’s hard to be mad about losing a game when your friends harnessed its mechanisms to surprise and entertain you.  Games such as Wavelength (my all-time favorite party game) and A Fake Artist Goes to New York never fail to provide this type of experience.  Even when our team is falling hopelessly behind in Wavelength, I can’t help but laugh when our group ranks black licorice only slightly less unpopular than child labor.  Even when an innocent teammate is epically failing at proving their innocence in Fake Artist, I can’t help but appreciate their pitiful attempt at drawing a meaningful line.

When a Game Lets You Feel like a Genius

Deep down, I think I only ever wanted to be a wheeler and dealer.  Chinatown gives me what I’ve always wanted.  Chinatown is game where I get to dangle carrots in front of my opponents, carefully selecting the right carrot at the right time, to lure them in to my schemes.  Those moments when I can use the hot garbage under my ownership and convert it all into golden geese through crafty trades and clever negotiations make me feel like an absolute genius.  After that, it doesn’t matter all that much whether I win or lose the game, because in my heart, I’ve already won.

The same can be said of Decrypto, a game where players must give clues to their teammates that are neither too easy for their opponents to crack nor too hard for their comrades to misunderstand.  As the rounds march on, players are forced to be increasingly creative to keep the opposing team swinging and missing, and this game of cat and mouse can be even more satisfying than the victory.

When You Feel Yourself Improving

I love a great cooperative game that teaches and strengthens a group through their failures.  Games like The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine and The Mind are perfect examples.  Typically, when friends gather around the table to give one of these a go, everybody is out of sync, inexperienced, and/or rusty.  But after fumbling through a few rounds, the collective skill level at the table rises and the team finds a nice groove.  Things get even more interesting as the challenge ramps up and the players must increase their focus and determination to succeed.

I get the same feeling of growth and improvement from sprawling titles such as A Feast for Odin and deep puzzles such as Curious Cargo.  These games provide plenty of new paths to explore to help keep one from getting too comfortable.  Even when the scores are tallied and my total isn’t at the top, I love seeing the progress in my strategies and abilities from one game to the next.

When Rounds are Quick and Addictive

It’s hard to get salty about a loss when you only have a minute or two to wait before you’re back into the next round of play.  This is what makes Love Letter and Skull such addicting fillers, aside from being great fun, of course.  Shortening the playtime is one of the best ways to compensate for a high-luck or high-punishment mechanism (such as player elimination or luck-of-the-draw).  Eliminations and poor hands become funny instead of painful.

When Losing Earns You a Meaningful Pity Prize

Nobody likes being the loser of the group, but everybody likes prizes.  A meaningful pity prize can be a great way to dampen the blow of losing.  In My City, a competitive, polyomino legacy game, the player(s) who lose the round are often awarded with a bonus that permanently improves their board or tiles.  This functions as both a catchup mechanism and an exciting opportunity.

Tournament at Avalon takes a similar approach, but in a much more dramatic way.  This is the type of trick taking game where one person usually becomes the piñata of the round that everyone else takes a big swing at.  Only when this player-piñata is struck in Tournament at Avalon, instead of spewing out candy from their gaping wounds, they end up spewing out vengeance.  You can explore my review of the game for further details, but the long story short is that whoever is in last place (or close to last) from round to round gains more abilities and powers for them to gleefully unleash on their enemies.  Sometimes it pays to be in last.

When You Take Down Others With You

We’ll conclude this topic by looking at two more games: one that is still in the oven and one that has stood the test of time.  Bristol 1350 is a game that I had the pleasure of previewing through many play testing sessions during its development.  It’s a roller-coaster of a social deduction game where a few select players secretly start with the black plague, doomed to succumb to its wrath, and they are striving to bring down every other healthy player with them.  While it is absolutely thrilling to make it through the game healthy and unscathed, the opposite end of the spectrum is plenty of fun as well, even when you catch the plaque mid-game and must pivot to a new objective.  This is one form of losing that I look forward to experiencing more when it officially releases next year.

But when I think of losing with dignity—going out with bang, if you will—perhaps the best example that comes to mind is the battle mode in Mario Kart 64.  Yes, you know what I’m talking about.  That moment when you lose your last balloon and transform into a mobile bomb.  Few things in life are as good for the soul as when you kamikaze your bomb into an unfortunate player and their last balloon.

This concludes our exploration of games that are fun to lose, and why! Which games do you enjoy, despite your losses, and what keeps you coming back for more pain?

Article written by Nick Murray. To learn more about his tabletop gaming tastes and preferences, check out his blog series: Tabletop Tastes: My Favorite Flavors in Board Games. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Hurt So Good: Games that are Fun to Lose appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Tis the season to buy more board games for your friends and family! Our 2020 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide is here to guide you to some of the best options available. Whether you’re looking to get your significant other the best surprise or hoping to find the perfect game for your holiday party, we’re here to help you find the cream of the crop!

Browse all the lists by clicking through the page numbers at the bottom, or use the links below to take you directly to the most relevant list for your needs. If any game mentioned catches your eye, click on the provided link (on the game’s title) to find some options for purchasing it.

Note: This is a completely unsponsored article, and none of the information or links provided generate a profit for us in any way. This article is written purely as service to you from genuine fans of board gaming who love to share this awesome hobby. This list has been carefully assembled to be ultimate gift guide, whether you’re looking to buy the hottest new game or find a reliable classic. We sincerely hope we can help you and your gift receiver find your next favorite game.

• Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer in your life
• Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer in your life
• Gifts for your Significant Other
• Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)
• Perfect games for your Holiday Party

Continue on to Page 2: Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer

The post 2020 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide appeared first on Bitewing Games.

We all have our own preferences for how to have a good time.  Some prefer to savor the peaceful moments of serenity, while others hunger for the rowdy and wild.  For many, our appetite consists of a wide spectrum that allows room for variety and mood.

Hobby gamers likewise have their own individual palates for tabletop games.  The more games they sample, the further their taste buds develop. With enough exposure, one can begin to recognize a pattern between their experiences.  The bitter taste of a dud becomes repulsively discernible, and the sweet familiar aroma of a hit can reach the nostrils of hype before a cardboard box even hits the table.

After basking in many blasts and enduring some busts myself, I’ve begun to identify what exactly makes one game sing and another game flop for me.  The most recent board game taste I’ve acquired, or perhaps more fittingly discovered, is that of objective tension.

Spicy – Tension of Objectives

I love when a game provides a framework that allows for spicy tension.  This framework can take many forms…

• The end-game elimination of the highest overall bidder in Q.E.
• The suspense of needing to remove your opponent’s disc from the board while strategically placing your own in Crokinole
• The round-ending emergence of the third dragon card from the draw pile of Ethnos
• The game-ending placement of a player’s sixth star in Scythe
• The anticipation of drawing the perfect tile in Carcassonne
• The pressure of earning more points in your weakest category of Tigris & Euphrates.

To me, games that completely lack tension feel less like games and more like activities.  There’s nothing wrong with gathering a group of friends for a tension-free activity, as such things can foster creativity, strengthen relationships, and make memories… but none of those things are unique to gaming.  Indeed, the thing that sets a game apart from most other activities is the tension.

Now on the surface, it may seem like a game requires player interaction in order to have tension.  How can the rope be taut if there is no tug of war? Well, it’s funny, because I didn’t notice my preference for tension until I recognized it in one of the most solitaire genres of all: the Roll & Write.

I discovered my need for tension after trying Cartographers and coming away underwhelmed from the experience.  This is a solid game that has received plenty of positive buzz from many gamers that I usually agree with. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed trying the most popular roll & write style games from Railroad Ink to Welcome To, from That’s Pretty Clever to On Tour.  Cartographers appeared to have all the right ingredients plus even more: some player interaction, variable scoring objectives, variable setup, etc. Coming into the game, I figured these unique elements would make it stand out among other great games in the genre, but my hopes were dashed after giving it a go.

What do Railroad Ink, Welcome To, That’s Pretty Clever, and On Tour all have that Cartographers doesn’t?  I believe the answer is: TENSION.

Railroad Ink, Welcome To, and On Tour all have the tension of pushing your luck, adapting your strategy, and straining for the “just one more” of objectives or bonuses.  This tension is palpable thanks to the balance between obvious risks and tempting benefits. That’s Pretty Clever has the tension of selecting one die for yourself while giving up other dice to your opponents, of deciding when to save or spend your abilities, of being enticed to do everything.

Cartographers somehow lacks this similar tension. It trades tension for a continual stream of points across a too wide canvas of options and possibilities.  Where players quickly understand what to predict, what to bet on, and what to desperately hope for in the above mentioned games, Cartographers was too random and unknown for us to really take risks or bask in payoffs.  I don’t mean to put down a clearly well-made game. But, I’m always interested in defining and discovering the reasons why a game does or doesn’t work for me. Ask me about any of my top 50 games, and I’ll describe to you the fiery tension it provides.  I might also be able to tell you about memorable wins and salty losses with family members or friends, especially if the game is highly interactive.

Click on to explore the next episode of Tabletop Tastes: Salty Player Interaction

Looking for more tension-filled games? Check out one of these:

• Cooperative Tension: Mysterium, The Mind, Hanabi
• Bluffing Tension: Skull, Tortuga 1667, Treasure Island
• Dexterity Tension: KLASK, Junk Art, Men at Work
• Quick-Thinking Tension: Trophies, Magic Maze, Insider
• Strategic Tension: Brass: Birmingham, Viticulture, El Grande
• Conflict Tension: Inis, Root, Pax Pamir (Second Edition)
• Deduction Tension: Love Letter, Cryptid, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
• Racing Tension: The Quest for El Dorado, Downforce, Clank!
• 2-player Tension: Jaipur, Combo Fighter, Onitama
• Push Your Luck Tension: Ra, King of Tokyo, The Quacks of Quedlinburg

Tell us about your tabletop tastes!

What are your favorite tension-filled games? Do you like the spicy heat that tension can provide, or do you prefer a cool, chill experience? Comment below!

The post Tabletop Tastes #1: Spicy Tension appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Introduction

I dove into the deep end of the board game community over a year ago. With helpful guides including Shut Up & Sit Down’s recommended games, The Dice Tower’s Top 100, Board Game Geek (BGG) rankings, Geekbuddy comments, and more, my hunt has led me through the “Cult of the New”, Cult of the Classic, and many games in between.

I’ve played and purchased more board games in the past year than I have in my entire life, and it has been a blast! The true catalyst that launched me into the hobby was when I discovered a passion for designing board games during the summer of 2018. My experience learning and playing new-to-me tabletop games has been one of both research and adventure, discovery and inspiration. As I’ve sought to feed my creative drive, I’ve also uncovered an explorative hunger and developed a personal palate. Playing board games and creating board games are cyclical interests for me that have consumed much of my free time since they began.

So while I feel my understanding of the board game industry is well researched and experienced on one hand, I realize my complete amateur status on the other. Perhaps my perspective will offer you something new to consider, and I certainly hope you won’t hesitate to offer me suggestions as well.  

If you feel we may have similar tastes, and you have a BGG account, please feel free to add me as a Geekbuddy! I’m always eager to hear what you fine folks think of any games I am curious about, and I’ve found the Geekbuddy tool to be invaluable in narrowing down my wishlist. It’s also possible that your suggestion for me is already on my wishlist, so check out my most anticipated new-to-me games list!

So without further adO, I present to you my current Top 50 Games!

#50 Roll for the Galaxy

Recommended for: Gamers

I seem to like this game more every time I play it. Always engaging and interesting with loads of variety. The rules and symbols can seem intimidating at first, but the player shields contain basically all the information you need to play the game (and remember the rules). Very well done production.

I realize how popular Terraforming Mars is, but Roll for the Galaxy is my preferred space engine builder thanks to its zippy play time, better production, and higher fun factor.

#49 Skull

Recommended for: Everyone

Skull is a game of bluffing filtered down into its purest form. I love those moments when I can get on a roll and make my opponents feel like I am reading them like a book.

If you enjoy bluffing games like Poker, but you want a game that throws out everything but the good old bluffing, then Skull is for you!

#48 Takenoko

Recommended for: Everyone

Fantastic family game. We absolutely love the theme and components; the presentation is a home-run. The feeling of watering bamboo tiles to build bamboo towers and moving the Panda to eat bamboo comes together so nicely.

The event die is interesting in how it encourages players to adapt their strategy on each turn.

There is definitely a significant amount of luck involved in drawing the right or wrong objective cards (especially late in the game). This can make some plays quite frustrating for competitive players.

The Takenoko: Chibis expansion helps with mitigating some bad luck and adds some really interesting mechanics to the game, so I would suggest getting the expansion if you enjoy the base game.

#47 The Quest for El Dorado

Recommended for: Everyone

There’s something about this game that is so slick, streamlined, and satisfying. Perhaps the obvious answer is: Reiner Knizia. I love how this deck-builder makes you plan ahead and consider the long-term consequences of buying all those machete cards when a dense area of water and villages lie ahead in the distance.

There’s also something to be said of a game that contains all the essential rules on the thin rectangular player boards, making for an easy-breezy teach leading to an epic, tense race.

The Quest for El Dorado has served as a major case-study and inspiration for the snowboarding deck-builder that I’ve been designing myself.

#46  The Fox in the Forest

Recommended for: Everyone

I grew up playing Rook from time to time with relatives. Having an auction based on your hand of cards always felt like such a clever way to mitigate luck in a trick-taking game. It never occurred to me that losing a trick could be just as much fun as winning a trick.

Enter The Fox in the Forest. I love how players can spend early tricks baiting their opponent, testing the waters, while late tricks find them desperately struggling to balance their wins and losses. Man, I need to play this again.

As I’ve been designing a trick-taking game inspired by hot air balloon competitions, The Fox in the Forest has been instrumental in helping me refine the mechanisms of my design.

#45 Startups

Recommended for: Everyone

I picked up Startups very recently (thanks to the fine folks at SU&SD), and found it to be delightfully similar to Arboretum. Both games reward clever hand management among calculated discards and well-timed plays. Startups is certainly the milder of the two, but still a solid card game I’m hungry to play again.

Startups is also my introductory game to Oink Games; their minimalist design and production is actually quite charming, in my opinion. I stumbled across Startups in a random board game store while out of town, and now Insider is next on my list to try. I’m also quite familiar with the famous A Fake Artist Goes to New York, although I haven’t played it, as it shares some similarities with a party game that my wife and I have in the works.

#44 Dominion (Second Edition)

Recommended for: Everyone

Dominion reminds me of a good bowl of vanilla ice cream. It’s nothing flashy, but it’s a fine-tuned base of deck-building that seemingly goes well with almost anything. Sometimes it’s just nice to go back to some smooth, quick simplicity and bask in Old Faithful.

To me, this game has plenty of tension within the decision space of cards to purchase and cards combinations you hope to draw; but for those looking for more player interaction, it seems that the later deck-builders it inspired fill this need better. I’m particularly enamored with Arctic Scavengers adding in the option to save a card for combat (even as a bluff) rather than play or discard it; this particular mechanism fits perfectly into my snowboarding deck builder design of storing cards as a snowball stash.

#43 Watergate

Recommended for: Everyone

Watergate captures and streamlines the element of tension that I’ve so come to love in my favorite games. This is the only game that I don’t own and haven’t played multiple times (yet), but it left a massive first impression with its novel historical theme and focused gameplay. I love that the cards have multiple uses and provide a deeper decision space beyond just deciding which card to play but how to play them.

#42 Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Recommended for: Everyone

Deception takes the ever popular Werewolf/Mafia style of social deduction gameplay, combines it with the basic premise of Clue, and gives it just enough mechanical framework to satisfy everyone involved. The cognitive deducers can feel clever as they narrow down the probable weapon and key evidence, and the social influencers can steer the discussion and cast suspicion.

#41 Decrypto

Recommended for: Everyone

Decrypto blows the ever popular Codenames out of the water for me. I love how the clues you offer contain long-term consequences. The game forces you to think outside the box by avoiding new clues that are to closely related to old clues. One of my favorite moments is during a tie-breaker when teams must guess the exact words of their opponents.

If you enjoy Codenames, you have gotta try Decrypto!

Next Page: Games 40-31

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They may not be universally loved, but everyone should at least try a cooperative game, and Pandemic is the one that has stood the test of time. It pits you and your friends against the game itself. Will you find a cure before time runs out and humanity is doomed?  You may find that you prefer a bit more tension and competition between players, but you might just discover that you enjoy the experience and dynamics of working as a team.

KYLE – SUSHI GO PARTY!

An adorable game that is simple enough everyone can play, but interesting enough that few people will turn it down. Sushi Go Party introduces the mechanism of drafting – each player has cards in their hand, selects one card, and passes the rest onto their neighbor. And that is the game. You select and pass cards, with the goal of creating unique collections of Sushi. Different types of Sushi provide different point combinations. It is fast to learn and to play, and did I mention how adorable the little Sushi are? Go find out for yourself!

 

NICK – THE MIND

The Mind is less a structured game and more a thrilling experience with lots of tense and exciting moments. Super easy and entertaining to teach and introduce to others.  Kudos to Wolfgang Warsch for creating such a brilliant and innovative activity!

This simple game throws out everything you’ve come to expect in a standard board or card game (strategic planning, calculated maneuvering, etc.) and boils down the fun to the purest essence of playing by gut feeling.  Everyone must cooperate to play their hand of cards in ascending numerical order in increasingly harder rounds without communicating ever.  The Mind is surprisingly basic, but you will be shocked by how addicting it is.

 

KYLE – DOMINION

A unique type of game called deck building. You are certainly accustomed to traditional card games with a center draw pile that each player gets to draw from. How about a game where each player creates their own “center draw pile” that only they get to draw from during the game? This is Dominion, the classic deck building game. This game has personally provided me with hours and hours of entertainement, and is a game everyone should try!

NICK – TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES

This classic was first published in 1997, but the design was so rock solid that it didn’t come with an expiration date and it has seen many reprints since!  I’m not a huge fan of Chess, but that is perhaps the best thing to compare T&E to.  The difference is that T&E is a 2-4 player civilization-building tile-laying game with a little bit of luck and a lot of hidden information thrown in to keep things interesting.

There is an astounding amount of cleverness and depth to be found within T&E. I’m still a complete novice to it, but there’s no denying that this game is legendary. It’s designs like this one that have influenced my strong preference toward games containing low-complexity rules with high-complexity consequences over games containing high-complexity rules with low-complexity consequences.

What a bang for your buck! Love Letter is nothing more than 16 cards and a few red cubes, but boy can this game entertain. Love Letter lets you use your deductive skills to see if you can outwit your opponents by guessing which card they may have, or at the very least outplaying them by playing one of the 2 cards in your hand. The game plays in under 10 minutes, but it creates an amazing experience and is so simple to learn. This certainly is a game everyone should try, I’ve got a feeling you’re going to love it!

KYLE – DIXIT

Whether you love Apples to Apples due to its party-style fun or hate it due to its tiresome 2000’s popularity, we think Dixit might be the game for you.  With gorgeous whimsical art (instead of bland words) and a cleverer scoring system, Dixit is the Apples to Apples killer for us.

One player is the “storyteller” each round who plays a secret dreamlike image from their hand while giving a clue that relates to this image.  Next, all other players mix a card of their own among the storyteller’s image, and then the images are revealed and players must vote to determine which card is the storyteller’s.  The catch is that the storyteller’s clue can be neither too hard nor too easy, as they only score points (along with the players who guess correctly) if only some but not all of the players vote their card.

If you want to try a cooperative version of Dixit, we also whole-heartedly recommend Mysterium!

 

NICK – WAVELENGTH

For me, Wavelength beats out other party classics including our very favorites (Decrypto, Codenames, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, etc.) because of its consistent and simple one-two punch of memorable discussions and exciting reveals. To me, it earns a perfect 10/10, a score which I have never given a party game. Maybe 10 or 50 or 100 plays from now I’ll feel differently about it, but it’s genuinely hard to imagine myself enjoying it any less thanks to its tantalizingly endless possibilities.

This is the kind of production that the designers crafted with the end in mind. They knew that in order to get the most of out of the concept, they needed a device that allows approximative gut-feeling guesses for teammates and dramatically climactic reveals from the psychic. The device is a genius component worthy of Wolfgang Warsch’s brilliance.

KYLE – WACKEE SIX

Wackee Six is a game of speed, where you are trying to lay cards in ascending order in the center of the table…but everyone else is doing the same, so you have to be quick. Think Skip-Bo, but without turns. My mom loves it and my dad hates it. Are speed games for you? You’ll never know till you give one a try.

NICK – CONCORDIA

It still shocks me how short and simple the rule book is for this game. If elegance is a living being, then Concordia birthed it. Your deck of cards are used to their full potential in an impressive Eurotastic way. If you haven’t played this one before, you have no excuse not to.

I’m excited to see my design partner, Kyle, explore Concordia’s core hand-management mechanism in his blossoming family game design, Three Ring Circus. Concordia is the only game I’m very familiar with that has this satisfying hand-builder idea of adding multi-purpose cards into your hand and periodically up-taking your entire discard back into your hand to play again.

KYLE – COVER YOUR ASSETS

Take That! That is the type of experience you are having as you sit to play Cover Your Assets. And that isn’t for everyone, some people just want to play nice and don’t want to steal cards from another player. And others love nothing more than meniacally laughing as they steal the assets, or cards, of another player. You may find that you like to play fair and not hurt any feelings. But you may find that you like the playful banter and competition that Take That games have to offer, and Cover Your Assets is a game everyone should try to decide for themselves.

NICK – CROKINOLE

I have never played Crokinole before I asked for a Tracey board this past Christmas. After watching Quinns’ excellent SU&SD review of the game, I knew that this one was right up my alley and so I took the plunge.

Crokinole is without a doubt one of the sexiest games in existence. From the flicking and gliding to the ricochet clacking to the strategic positioning and jaw-dropping maneuvers… this is as supple as it gets. If there is any game in my collection that I will be playing until the day I die, it will surely be Crokinole.

 

KYLE – WELCOME TO…

Usually in a game you get mad cause you didn’t pick the right card and your neighbor did, right? No fair!!! Well, in Welcome To each player has a piece of paper showing a neighborhood. You will write house numbers on the houses to form a nice neighborhood. Is this sounding boring? It’s not! Just stick with me. 3 cards are laid out on the table, and each player selects one of the numbers to use and writes it on their paper. Each player has the same cards to choose from throughout the game so there is no “I didn’t get the right card.” Everyone had the same cards. This is called a “Roll and Write” game, and is certainly a style of game everyone should try.

NICK – EL GRANDE

El Grande is the Grand Daddy of area control games, and its buttery smooth gameplay hasn’t aged a day. It is an intense game that I can get almost any group fully invested in. We haven’t even touched the included expansions yet as the base game continues to satisfy. Area Control games have quickly become one of my absolute favorite mechanisms, and El Grande is the epitome of why.

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