Negotiation is one of my all-time favorite ingredients in tabletop games.  It’s a mechanism that steps out of the way and lets the players do the talking, literally.  For me, one of the most satisfying elements of this hobby is the above-the-table interaction that happens between opponents and/or teammates, and negotiation offers this in spades.  Not only that, but it often allows individuals to bring their own personalities into the competitive experience.  

Are you the generous type who offers favors out like candy at Halloween, all the while earning good karma that will pay off in the long run?  Or are you a greedy wheeler and dealer who tries to milk your competition for all they are worth?  As long as participants are open to making deals and hearing offers, then you’re bound to have a blast with a good negotiation game.

With Bitewing Games soon launching a crowdfunding project for not one but two negotiation games, I’ve been playing and exploring many of the all-time greats in this genre.  We are finally ready to reveal our own publications, so in celebration of that reveal I’d like to share my personal Top 10 Negotiation Games.  Be sure to stick around after perusing my list, because I’ll have some exciting new details to reveal for fans of this mechanism.

Chinatown

What better way to start this list off than with the 1999 classic, Chinatown?  Chinatown has become one of my all time favorite games to introduce to anybody (gamers, non-gamers, family, friends, you name it) thanks to its smooth approachability and lively antics.  Players are seeking to establish the most profitable businesses on the block by acquiring connected lots and building certain businesses on those lots.

Negotiation is at the beating heart of this game, as each round you’ll secretly choose to acquire a few lots from the hand of cards that are dealt to you.  You’ll also draw business tiles from a bag that range from take-out to laundry to flowers and more.  Then, you’ll reveal your lots and tiles and let the wild rumpus begin!  In real time (no clockwise turn structure here!), players simultaneously make offers and negotiate trades of their lots, business tiles, and money.  The rules offer complete freedom in what you offer, how you trade, and how you earn the most money to win the game.  The real fun comes in figuring out how to wring lot 43 from an opponent’s grasp or in realizing how desperately your neighbor wants your dim sum tile and basking in their desperation.  Chinatown never fails to be a hit at our table.

The King’s Dilemma

From a decades-old classic to the second-newest release on this list, The King’s Dilemma features an exciting mix of legacy role-playing, epic kingdom politicking, and tense auction voting.  This one is admittedly not quite as easy to get to the table as Chinatown, as it requires (ideally) 5-players who are willing to assemble semi-regularly and play through roughly 12-20 sessions.  But if you have the right group for it, then you are certainly in for a romp!

This one sees players acting as influential advisory houses to the king.  Together, your council faces an endless stream of dilemmas that have long-term consequences on the military, culture, economy, and moral of your people.  You will use your power (through voting auctions), your money (through bribing), and your wit (through persuasive conversation) to decide the fate of the kingdom as you seek to fulfill your house’s secret agenda.

Cosmic Encounter

Might as well keep the time period whiplash going by jumping back to the oldest game on my list: the legendary Cosmic Encounter.  This is one that I’ve labeled “the pizza” of board gaming, and I stand by that comparison.  The real draw of Cosmic Encounter, and the reason why it has stayed relevant and seen updated versions since its 1977 release, is the fact that it offers an infinite combination of wacky alien powers for players to explore.

Yet the element that keeps its old gears greased is undoubtedly the opportunity for negotiation.  It doesn’t matter that one player’s alien ability is infinitely more powerful than any other, because that simply means the opponents must team up to overcome the galaxy’s Goliath.  While it’s a competitive game at its core, Cosmic Encounter allows its players to collectively dictate who crosses the finish line and victoriously colonizes five planets—resulting in one or multiple winners.

Sidereal Confluence

Let’s continue along the space theme with my next pick, Sidereal Confluence.  While this one also features asymmetric alien powers, like Cosmic Encounter, its gameplay is actually much closer to Chinatown.  If Chinatown is the simultaneous negotiation game made for anyone and everyone, then Sidereal Confluence is the hardcore hobbyist version.

This one is so outlandishly ambitious that I still can’t believe how well it comes together.  I’ll tell you what: the first time I heard about this game I was immediately running in the opposite direction.  Featuring 268 cubes, 9 alien factions whose names simulate a spelling stroke, and multiple hours of resource conversion.  No thank you.  Yet beneath this rough exterior hides one of the greatest negotiation games ever designed.

Here, you’ll find all the chaotic fun of Chinatown with infinitely more layers of strategic possibilities.  All deals are binding and virtually nothing is off limits—you can promise a share of the profits from your convertor to the player who helps you fuel it, or even lend the convertor itself to a neighbor when you find it useless to your needs.  You can exchange planets for ships, ships for food, food for protection, protection for research—the list goes on!  While this sprawling game initially appears alien and unwieldy, it’s surprisingly straightforward, laser-focused, and entirely engaging once the rounds get going.

Quo Vadis?

From the new hotness to another old classic, let’s now examine Quo Vadis.  I never try to hide my biases on any post, but fair warning, I’m definitely biased and personally tied to this game (more on that later).  But even if Quo Vadis was completely unrelated to Bitewing Games, it would still be on my Top 10 Negotiation Games list.  That’s because this one is a playground of pure, zesty politics from one of my favorite designers, Reiner Knizia.

Believe it or not, Quo Vadis is now over 30 years old and among the very first notable releases from Dr. Knizia.  It is certainly starting to look its age in board game years, yet the core experience is as spicy as ever.  The game is a race to squeeze one or more of your senators into the Inner Sanctum before it fills up, because only those who have reached the Inner Sanctum qualify for victory.  The only problem is that it is extremely hard to get there without the help of your opponents.  Through bribing, voting, exchanging favors, and sometimes even backstabbing, only the most cunning players will rise to the top of the Roman Senate.  But you can be the last to cross the finish line—getting in by the skin of your teeth—and still claim the victory for yourself!  That’s because the winner will be the Inner Sanctum player who earns the most laurels from successful campaigns and lucrative deals along the way.  It’s simple, it’s fast, and it is incredibly thrilling.  One must balance the pressing urgency of reaching the Inner Sanctum with the lucrative opportunities to hang back and milk your opponents and the game board for laurels.

As much as I love this game, I’ll be the first to admit that has a few flaws.  Most notably, the board loses some of its tightness and the table some of its tension if you’re playing with 3 people instead of 4 or ideally 5.  And if those people are new to the game, then getting them excited about this grungy old box and bone-dry board is usually a challenge.  Finally, those who enjoy a broader trading sandbox from games like Sidereal Confluence will obviously feel a bit more restricted here.  It’s understandable for some players to come away from the relatively dry Quo Vadis being thirsty for a little more juice in their negotiations.  To that end, I’m thrilled to share that Bitewing Games and Reiner Knizia have worked to address every major flaw in this classic game—so stick around to hear about Quo Vadis evolved.  But for now, let’s pay our respects to the original Quo Vadis and continue on to my next pick…

Root

Root is one of a few picks on my list that features negotiation as a secondary or supplemental mechanism to the core experience.  In fact, the best place you’ll find negotiation in this game is actually within the first expansion thanks to the Riverfolk Company faction of profit-seeking otters.  This commercial crew offers their services to the other woodland critters by displaying their hand at all times and setting prices on their offerings.  Not only can opponents buy cards from your public hand, but they can also use your riverboats to get around the board easier and utilize your mercenaries to bully their targets more effectively.

Being a good merchant otter is not only about setting the right prices for your services, but it’s also about keeping your finger on the woodland’s pulse and enticing your opponents with offers they can’t refuse.  Yet negotiation can even be found outside of the Riverfolk Company as players can form an alliance with the Vagabond or collaborate with enemies to destabilize an even bigger threat.  Designer Cole Wehrle is known for embracing the memorable meta that can arise from a board game, and Root is all about gaming the players.

Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile

If gaming the players is the kind of thing you are looking for, then Mr. Wehrle’s later design, Oath, might be an even better fit for you.  Oath was my favorite release from last year—I’m now 11 meaty plays into it and still having a blast.  But that doesn’t mean it’s for everyone.  Nooooooo way, you better know what you’re getting into with Oath before you take the plunge.

If you too want to have a blast with Oath, then you ideally need a regular group of 3-5 players.  Your group needs to be totally okay with a lengthy rules explanation, a cloudy first play (or more), an unwieldy labyrinth of strategic possibilities, a wide range of emotional highs and lows, and the ever present possibility of kingmaking looming over each game’s outcome.  In many ways, Oath is less about reaching a competitive conclusion and more about charting a civilization’s journey.  But if you’re here for the negotiations and politicking, then you’ll find plenty to love.

Each result of a play of Oath has a direct effect on the setup of the next—like a pseudo legacy game that is constantly morphing and never ending.  The winner of one game always becomes crowned (or continues) as Chancellor in the next.  This Chancellor’s goal is to hold their new oath (a unique victory objective) while keeping the Exiles of the kingdom in check.  Often, the Exiles and their followers can become so dangerous and unwieldy that the Chancellor may be compelled to offer citizenship to a lowly Exile in a desperate attempt to retain control.  The problem is that this Exile-turned-Citizen will do everything in their power to succeed the Chancellor as they cooperate together.  

One of my most recent plays of this game saw one exiled player forcing his citizenship upon me, the Chancellor of the session, and convincing me to share my war bands and power with him to help maintain order in my Empire.  And each time I trusted him with my resources, he immediately stabbed me in the back by revealing secret plans and motives of his own.  Fortunately, the other exiles proved to be a large enough threat that he was compelled to concede his ulterior motives for the next era and help my Empire maintain its grasp on the land.

Inis

Interestingly, Cole has cited that one of his main inspirations for Oath was in fact Inis, by Christian Martinez.  That’s more due to the fact that Inis and Oath both feature multiple paths to victory within a tumultuous power struggle—yet they both possess elements of negotiation as well!  Ironically, the only place that you’ll really find negotiation in Inis is within the conflicts between warring players.

The thing I love about conflict in Inis is that it is completely devoid of things like combat dice and power cards.  These tropes are replaced by a simple question: “Would you like to stop fighting?”  If the answer is no, then players will continue to slap valuable troops out of each other’s armies or precious cards out of each other’s hands until one retreats or is wiped out.  But if the answer is yes—and both players can agree to stop before one or both are virtually annihilated—then the conflict is over.  Simple as that.  The different bands will simply coexist on the same board space.

Inis remains a brilliant game of political power grabbing that is further improved by several of the modules in its expansion.  I’m all ears for the recently announced second installment in this “political trilogy” from designer Martinez and publisher Matagot titled Galactic Renaissance.

Lords of Vegas

Speaking of one game being the inspiration for another, Lords of Vegas actually owes some of its DNA to the previously listed Chinatown according to the designers of this next game on my list.  It certainly makes sense when you look closely enough.  Both games see players taking control of lots on a square grid and seeking to erect businesses across connected lots in order to gain the most profits.  Yet where Chinatown is pure, unadulterated negotiation, Lords of Vegas is a game of cutthroat casinos ripe with entrepreneurial gambling and sprinkled with the opportunity for trading and negotiation.

In this 12-year-old fan favorite, players are constantly risking their hard-earned cash on ambitious endeavors.  These pursuits include everything from building, upgrading, and spreading owned casinos to hostile takeovers of the competition or even high-stakes gambling to steal each other’s cash.  With all of these thrillingly thematic possibilities, it can be easy to forget the advantageous opportunity to trade at any time.  The ability to trade most anything—including money, lots, dice in casinos, and actions—can really help tip the scales of luck in your favor.

Bohnanza

We’re going to close this Top 10 out with another classic trading game that has long been a favorite of many gamers across the world.  Apparently the gateway to becoming a legendary German game designer is by starting with a simple negotiation game.  As Reiner Knizia began his design journey with Quo Vadis (among others) so Uwe Rosenberg started his ludography with the bean-trading card game, Bohnanza. Many frown upon the garish art style of this game, but I personally find it to be quite charming and iconic.

While I personally gravitate toward games that offer more strategy and flexibly in their negotiation possibilities, Bohnanza remains a worthwhile and amusing classic thanks to its unique locked hand card play.  Here, you are not allowed to rearrange any cards in your hand, and you must play them into your fields in order.  This forces players to give up beans to their opponents in hopes of receiving others, as you’ll score more points if you are able to play multiple beans of a single type in a row.  For those who are curious, Bohnanza sits as the most family-friendly negotiation game on this list. If you’re wanting to get gamers or non-gamers hooked on this genre, then Bohnanza, Chinatown, and Quo Vadis are the three best entry points.

Honorable Mentions

No top 10 list is any good without a handful of honorable mentions, right?  At the very least, these mentions help to dampen the outrage of passionate fans who saw their favorite negotiation game shafted on my list.  So let’s get into them!

• John Company: Honestly, I have no doubt that the second edition of this game was merely a few months away from making my Top 10 list and pushing off another title listed above.  Cole Wehrle is a favorite designer of mine (if you didn’t notice from Root and Oath being mentioned above), and John Company is his most negotiation-focused game of all.  I can’t wait to dive into this one when it finally releases in Q3!
• Rising Sun: I’ve heard two main things about Rising Sun.  1) It claims to be a negotiation game but many detractors say that’s a weak claim at best.  2) Many folks also say that this is the weakest design of the Eric Lang / CMON trilogy (Blood Rage, Rising Sun, Ankh).  So will I ever get the chance to try it?  Who knows.  But here it is.
• Twilight Imperium: These next two games are probably the ones that will get me in the most trouble with negotiation fans (because they are on my honorable mentions rather than my Top 10).  I’m still not sure whether I would enjoy this 8-hour extravaganza or simply be annoyed that I didn’t spend an entire day playing 4-10 other games that I know I love instead.  But from the sound of it, those who enjoy TI are hooked from their first play and ever hungry for more plays.
• Diplomacy: Another beast of a game (roughly 6 hours) that apparently must be played at exactly 6 or 7 players who will likely enter as friends and leave as mortal enemies.  Diplomacy apparently takes the back-stabbing part of negotiation and makes it a glorified feature in this epic game of military might.
• Dune: Dune, like TI and Diplomacy, has been around for decades, although it recently received a facelift.  These games also share the common problem of possessing many barriers to entry and requiring the perfect group (in this case 6 players hungry for a heavy 3-hour game).  Dune features deeply asymmetric factions, shakey alliances, and secret treachery.
• Pax Pamir: While Pax Pamir is one of my all-time favorite board games, I couldn’t justify fitting it onto my Top 10 list when negotiation is such a light feature compared to the other games in contention.  The most negotiation you’ll find here is mostly in the table talk—convincing others to join or support your faction and work against opponents.  Of course, you can also waive the forced bribes present in the game if a player is seeking to help your cause—but most often those bribes are enforced because the economy is so tight here.
• Genoa: I’ve come close to tracking down a copy of Genoa, and perhaps that’ll happen before too long.  This one seems to be a bit more polarizing—either you love the dynamic gameplay that Genoa provides, or you hate it for being too long and dry.
• Moonrakers: This is undoubtedly the hottest negotiation game at the moment as Moonrakers is currently having its second smash-hit Kickstarter campaign featuring all kinds of expansion content. What happens when you combine negotiation with deck-building in space? Only Moonrakers can answer that question.
• Panic on Wall Street: I rarely hear about this 2011 game, but it still has its fans.  This one is about loudly negotiating and trading stocks for 3-11 players in only 30 minutes.
• Catan: “Two sheep for a wood?” How could I not mention one of the most popular trading games of all time?
• Spartacus: A Game of Blood and Treachery: Like Quo Vadis, Spartacus is also about competing for power in Ancient Rome.  Only the competition here plays out in gory gladiatorial arenas rather than dignified senatorial committees.  Apparently this one got a somewhat recent reskin as well.

Introducing Zoo Vadis and Gussy Gorillas

I started this post by sharing how negotiation is one of my all-time favorite ingredients in tabletop games.  So of course, as a publisher, I’m eager to keep this genre alive and contribute to the list of legends which include the games noted above.  For my tastes, this might be the most exciting project that we’ve had the privilege to work on.  Let’s dive into the next two releases coming from Bitewing Games… 

Zoo Vadis

When I reached out to Reiner regarding Quo Vadis, I had a vision for what the game could become.  We weren’t interested in simply painting over the cracks in the design.  Rather, I dug through over 30 years of data (thanks BGG) and presented my analysis to Reiner including several development goals for the game.  Then off he went with his decades-old design to give it new life—like a phoenix reborn from the flames.  I’ll be sharing a full publisher diary before too long on all the nitty gritty details behind the evolution of Quo Vadis to Zoo Vadis, but for now let me simply explain the end result, Zoo Vadis:

What if the animals were the ones who ran the zoo?  

…Presumably, this wild government would be built upon the support of fellow creatures and fueled by the fame, attention, and prestige of wide-eyed visitors.  Naturally, the most aspirational beasts would lobby for a position in the star exhibit, and the lead star would be elected Zoo Mascot.  

In order to join the star exhibit, each species must campaign its way up the hierarchy of enclosures with the majority support of animal voters.  And the lead star will be the species that has earned the most laurels from both raving fans and jealous rivals along the way.  

How does one gain support and earn laurels?  Through crafty politicking, clever negotiations, and ruthless schemes.  There can only be one Zoo Mascot, after all.

Where are you going?  That is the ultimate question of Zoo Vadis.

Zoo Vadis is an evolution of Reiner Knizia’s cult-classic negotiation game, Quo Vadis?.  It retains the elegant, political gameplay that fans have come to love while introducing many innovations and improvements by:

-Enhancing the 3-player game and tailoring the board to all player counts through neutral, bribable figures—roaming peacocks

-Widening the player count with a second game board for 6-7 players

-Expanding the possibilities for strategic negotiation with asymmetric animal abilities 

-Increasing tactical opportunities with new special laurel tokens

-Broadening the appeal of the theme and presentation with vibrant zoo art by Kwanchai Moriya and Brigette Indelicato

-Enlivening the production with chunky animal figures and functional player screens

Like the original design, the game ends immediately when the Star Exhibit is full.  Only the animals who have reached the Star Exhibit qualify for victory, and the winner is the player with the most laurels.

Gussy Gorillas

Before Bitewing Games had ever reached out to Reiner Knizia or Ryan Courtney, we had a couple designs of our own that had survived the gauntlet of playtesting and were games that we were eager to share with the community.  One of those is Gussy Gorillas, and we’re jazzed to finally be publishing it alongside Zoo Vadis in our upcoming negotiation games crowdfunding campaign…

Gussy Gorillas are a peculiar group of primates that strive to keep each other gussied up and well-groomed. Through social grooming, these apes remove dirt, insects, and debris from the difficult-to-reach and difficult-to-see places of each other’s fur. Reciprocation is expected and awarded in this kind of monkey business! The player who acquires the most diverse and exotic collection of groomed goods will earn the respect of their fellow primates and be awarded the golden banana of victory.

In Gussy Gorillas, players start out with a personal deck of face-down cards. Without looking at the card(s) in their hand, players simultaneously trade or keep their hand, one or two cards at a time, to form a personal collection. Once all cards have been traded or kept, players tally their collections and the highest score wins — but pairs can cancel out and special cards are not always helpful, so trade carefully!

Similar to the popular game Hanabi, in Gussy Gorillas players hold their cards facing away from themselves…but instead of being a co-operative memory game, this is a competitive negotiation and bluffing game. Things get even more interesting once players realize that every card can either be very good or very bad for one’s collection, depending on the context. You’ll have to convince your opponents to keep bad cards for themselves and give great cards to you if you want to swing away with the win…

There are still plenty more juicy details to share over the coming months and we hope to have your support when Zoo Vadis and Gussy Gorillas launch this January!  The best way to help Bitewing Games and not miss out on these upcoming releases is to subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter. Bitewing Games is only made possible and kept alive by the support of backers and fans of our published games.   Thanks for your support!

What is your favorite negotiation game?  Share in the comments below!

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post Top 10 Negotiation Board Games + A Bitewing Games Publication Reveal! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

It’s almost April, which means that I’m properly late to the party in revealing my favorite board games of 2021!  Why wait so long?  Because I’ve been holding out for a few last-minute games to make their way to our table, particularly if my hunch tells me that they have a shot at my Top 15 Board Games of the year.  I’ve also spent the past few months revisiting many of these new releases with third or fourth or sixteenth plays to discern exactly how they compare against each other.

I’m not the type who shies away from including reimplemented designs on my list, but this year I decided that reimplementations must feature gameplay changes to qualify for my Top 15.  This includes anything from slight balancing tweaks to additional content, but those also tend to come with a new coat of paint (in theme and/or art style).

Ultimately, my list is a celebration of excellence in game design, illustration, and publishing.  The board games that made my Top 15 earned their place by bringing innovation, excellence, and (most importantly) enjoyment to our table and the industry.  2021 was a killer year for tabletop gaming; let’s explore 15 reasons why…

15. Cryo

Cryo is a well-oiled machine of a worker placement sci-fi game.  What it lacks in exciting new ideas, it more than makes up for in slim, trim, focused gameplay.  Each mechanism is tightly interconnected to the overall objective of scavenging the catastrophic wreckage of your space ship and rescuing your colony’s faction on a cold, threatening planet.  

Using only 8 unique cards and a small assortment of tile options, Cryo provides a wealth of strategic possibilities for customizing your engineering platform as you race for the most points.  Much like the experience of gliding down fresh powder with your well-worn skis on a snow-day, the smooth system that Cryo provides is endlessly satisfying to glide through, despite its familiarity.

14. MicroMacro: Crime City — Full House

This list contains a couple of standalone sequels to excellent original designs—sequels which merited their way onto my Top 15 through sheer enjoyment factor.  But these sequels certainly would have been even higher on my list if I hadn’t already played their predecessors dozens of times.  At any rate, MicroMacro: Crime City — Full House is the first such sequel.

While Full House features a little more nuance to its criminal cases and visual trickery, it doesn’t really bother to shake up the formula established in the original game.  Yet, that’s perfectly fine in this case.  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  Full House simply offers more of what we’ve come to love in this cooperative Where’s Waldo murder mystery bonanza: kills and thrills.  I maintain that MicroMacro is one of the best 2-player cooperative games money can buy, especially for couples.

13. So Clover

I was initially dubious at the announcement of yet another word game where the objective is to get players to guess some words using another word as a clue (see also Codenames, Decrypto, Just One, and a gazillion others).  Yet, as Cryo’s reliable worker placement system and MicroMacro’s proven search-and-solve formula have shown, just because you’ve seen it before doesn’t mean it can’t delight you.

The important thing here is that So Clover manages to stand out from its crowded (and seemingly perfected) genre by engaging everyone for every second of its lighting fast 30-minutes with a novel production featuring donut cards and dry-erase clovers.  It wastes no time getting straight to the beating heart of what makes word games fun, and it uniquely does not require a large group of players to provide maximum enjoyment.

12. The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

And here is that other commendable sequel I was hinting at.  Do you like yourself a tense card game?  A clean cooperative design?  A solid trick taking challenge?  The Crew: Mission Deep Sea might just be one of the very best games IN ALL THREE GENRES, ever.

I’ve found that with the cooperative genre in general, the key to my heart is through limited communication, low upkeep requirements, tense challenges, and meaningful variety.  The Crew effortlessly checks all of these boxes and keeps me unabashedly addicted to its gameplay loop from one hand to the next.  That’s why I’ve played 111 rounds of The Crew (between The Quest for Planet Nine and Mission Deep Sea), and I still have no intention of stopping.

11. Kabuto Sumo

Speaking of games that I’ve played a ton of, Kabuto Sumo has proven to be another perfect 2-player game for my wife and I.  Having backed the Kickstarter campaign, we were among the first to receive and play it, and it was an instant hit at our table.  Thus, I’ve been frequently surprised to hear so many polarizing opinions on this one as the months have gone on.

Some folks, like us, are having a blast with this gorgeous little game of beetle wrestling and disc pushing.  Others have merely shrugged their shoulders and wondered what all the fuss is about.  Certain people have even come away claiming that there is nothing here in terms of meaningful decisions or strategic momentum.  I’d like to formally invite you naysayers into my home where we will show you the true ways of the Kabuto.  You must learn to wax on and wax off before you can master the art of the Sumo.

As far as dexterity games go, the disc-pushing of Kabuto Sumo is certainly more peaceful and nuanced than that of flicking discs or stacking blocks.  Yet if you’re willing to invest in that nuance and get lost in the weeds of predictive physics—where wood pieces of various shapes, weights, and sizes collide with one another as you try to direct and control this gentle chaos on a raised platform—then and only then will you uncover the alluring magic of Kabuto Sumo.

10. Brian Boru: High King of Ireland

Trick taking games have long explored and experimented with various incentives for both winning and losing tricks.  Few have gone as far as Brian Boru in grafting the clean mechanism of trick taking onto an entire board game and asking the question: What if both winning and losing a trick had unique, impactful consequences in an area majority game?

Brian Boru is a resounding success in its experimental combination of mechanisms.  Hand management remains impactful as players must decide which cards to draft, when to play them, and how to use them to gain the upper hand in this gorgeous depiction of old Irish culture.  This one is ripe with ripple-effect decisions thanks to its strategic flexibility and potent player interaction.

9. Mille Fiori

Thus begins the Reiner Knizia hot streak.  What do I mean by that?  Well, Knizia had one 2020 release (My City) that made my top 15 games that year with a second game (Schotten Totten 2) later earning a place among my ‘keepers.’  Not that my list actually means anything, but I’d call that a killer year for any designer.

Enter 2021… in terms of hot streaks, this year might rank among his very best in his 30 years of published games.  Mille Fiori is my first reason why.

There is something so undeniably joyous about the ramp up in tension, points, and combos that Mille Fiori provides from start to finish.  Yet where many point salad designs fail to have teeth within the competition, Mille Fiori is a real biter.  Both the drafting of cards and claiming of board spaces are deliciously interactive in this glass game of ornate opportunism.

8. The Siege of Runedar

I tend to not click with big box cooperative games unless they are focused, streamlined, and high-pressured.  Of course, keeping a design focused, streamlined, and high-pressured is Knizia’s specialty, thus The Siege of Runedar has been a good fit for our table.

What I love about this cooperative, deck-building, fortress defense game is that it strains and stretches you and your companions across several different wants and needs.  You want to acquire a stronger weapon, but you need to stop the approaching orcs.  You want to dig your way to victory by removing rubble, but you need to address the newly arrived catapult.  The “wants” can help you in the long run, but the “needs” will lead to failure if neglected for too long.

This type of tough trade-off is common in solid cooperative games, but Reiner takes things a step further through interesting deck management decisions.  And the icing on the cake is an ambitious production by Ludonova that brings the experience to life with raised walls and towers.

7. Whale Riders

Perhaps the only thing more breezy and joyous than Reiner Knizia’s Whale Riders is actually riding whales in real life.  Either way, you’re in for a great time when whales are involved.  Whale Riders makes for an excellent filler game in a gorgeous package.  Nothing here is necessarily new or innovative, but the quick pace and tense tempo of this action efficiency game is what makes for a fresh experience.

I’m still amazed that I’ve been able to teach and play this game in under 25 minutes, considering the large box and plentiful tiles and cards.  At such a short playtime for 2-6 players, Whale Riders is both highly flexible and endlessly approachable, making it easy to squeeze into any type of game night.  The various different play styles it offers—from meandering along the coast for cheap goods to rushing to the pile of pearls at the end—have all proven to be viable strategies.  There is something to be said for good, clean game design that pays no mind to trending gimmicks or excess bells and whistles.

6. Equinox

It was a tough toss-up to rank all these great Knizias against each other, but I ultimately found that Equinox just barely won out on my list by being the most deliciously cutthroat of the bunch.  Equinox gives me feelings similar to Reiner’s best card games including Lost Cities and Schotten Totten in that often I don’t want to play any of the cards in my hand—somehow each card feels like a golden opportunity waiting to be unleashed if I can just manage to hold onto them a bit longer.

Thanks to the poignant creature betting and elimination, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this tense hand-management game at every player count.  Equinox also features a couple key improvements over its predecessor, Colossal Arena.  One improvement being the two additional creatures that bring the total creature count up to fourteen and the setup combinations beyond three-thousand.  The other key improvement is found on the cards themselves, where Equinox uses clear graphic design to denote a creature’s ability rather than small, pesky text.

Where most betting games fall back on the convenient racing formula, Equinox stands out by honing in on interactive card-play and devastating creature elimination.

5. Ark Nova

A Feast for Odin has occupied a comfortable niche in my collection for the past few years by being a sprawling sandbox game perfect for long, cozy game nights with my wife.  When I started to learn about Ark Nova, I wondered if this hot new game could manage to scratch a similar itch.  After only one play, and continuing on through several more, I’ve been delighted to find that Ark Nova does exactly that.  This is especially impressive when considering the fact that my wife loathes most games that are heavy-weight in their complexity.

I don’t believe Ark Nova has one secret ingredient that makes it a success at our table.  Rather, I find that this epic zoo-builder is more than the sum of its parts.  Thanks to a brilliantly interconnected system of action selection, tableau building, tile placement, economic juggling, and hand management—all of which provide lovely thematic touches—Ark Nova keeps us fully engaged from start to finish.  It’s competitive Zoo Tycoon brought to our tabletop, and rarely is this board gaming hobby much more exciting than that.

4. Kemet: Blood & Sand

Kemet has long been a favorite of many area control connoisseurs since its initial release now one decade ago.  I was quite tempted to jump into the design and see what the fuss was all about, but I instead decided to wait until the release of its evolved version: Kemet: Blood & Sand.  The wait was worth it, my friends.

Kemet: Blood & Sand is essentially Kemet 2.0, with many changes and improvements brought to the system including a redesigned map, balanced powers, upgraded components, and fine-tuned gameplay.  The joy of Kemet remains the hyper-aggressive gameplay mixed with a buffet of powers and creatures.  No two plays of this game have ever felt alike as each player cobbles together a terrifyingly unique army.  The ever-present challenge is to discover and exploit your opponents’ weaknesses while avoiding their strengths.  The cherry on top is a tight combat system that is full of strategy and surprises.

3. Ankh: Gods of Egypt

2021 was a great year for Egyptian area control, apparently, because Ankh manages to be just as compelling as Kemet: Blood & Sand, if not more so.  Ankh brings so many brilliant concepts to the table that it’s hard to know where to start.  The action selection tracks are a fascinating feature that can strongly influence one’s tactics, particularly when an action reaches the end of its track thereby ending a player’s turn and triggering the next event.  The conflicts present exciting opportunities for scoring points, building monuments, weakening opponents, and replenishing your hand.  And the experience follows a dynamic arc where the two weakest players eventually combine into one insanely strong faction as everyone races to the end of the point track.

While Kemet kicks the doors open with an immediately impressive array of strategic opportunities, Ankh has been more sly and subtle with a streamlined system that grows on you from one play to the next.  Each session has revealed new challenges to overcome and new strategies to explore, making it an alluring experience that rewards repeat plays.  I haven’t tried Eric Lang’s other games, but I would be surprised and impressed if any of them were better than Ankh.

2. Radlands

While I’ve tried a good number of popular dueling games over the years including Dice Throne, Unmatched, Blue Moon Legends, Funkoverse, Riftforce, and Summoner Wars, I’ve never been majorly impressed with the genre.  Something about the overly tactical “I slap you, you slap me” nature of these games never fully satisfied compared to other 2-player games and genres.  But with Radlands, I’ve finally found an addicting and satisfying dueler.

Not only does Radlands raise the bar with a stunning art style and production, but it also hits the sweet spot of being blazingly streamlined yet surprisingly deep.  The water economy is balanced on a knife’s edge, as are the huge variety of card abilities.  

The flexibility allowed in the gameplay is perhaps Radland’s strongest feature… You can aim to hit hard and fast and hope to knock your opponent out before they have time to retaliate against your weak defenses, or you can carefully play the long game and slowly undermine your enemy while keeping your camps well protected and repaired.  You can invest in new characters and store a little extra water for a later big turn, or you can junk your cards and blow your water for instant gratification from powerful but fleeting effects.  Thanks to a brilliant system of action timing and event triggering, you almost always have time to anticipate and prepare for your opponent’s next maneuver.  

Rather than leaning on cheap tricks and random surprises, Radlands confidently plants its feet on more strategic soil without losing any of the drama and fun of overpowered abilities and asymmetric dueling.  

1. Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile

In an industry that cranks out thousands of new releases per year that makes hobbyists feel like they’re drinking from a firehose of recycled mechanisms and themes, it is rare to come across a game that brings true innovation to the table.  Yet when those rare gems emerge, and when one can manage to assemble the right group to properly embrace the experience, these games are transcendent.

Oath flips the conventions of tabletop storytelling by turning the players from the audience into the story tellers.  This game is not about recreating or reliving history, it is about writing it.  It’s not about discovering tactical paths or uncovering strategic ripple effects, it’s about paving paths and creating ripple effects.  It’s not about deciding the best player at today’s table, it’s about determining who will rule the next generation and how that kingdom will evolve or decay over time.

Oath demands much from its participants—namely a regular group of players who are willing to embrace both the highs and the lows of the experience—yet it gives even more in return.  I never know what my next play of Oath is going to become… a joint quest to overpower and overthrow the tyrannical Chancellor, a covert operation to undermine the empire as a traitorous citizen, a ruler’s mad scramble to put out the fires started by pesky exiles, a struggle for territory or favor or secrets or relics… the possibilities are seemingly endless.  In a game where the decisions of one play carry over into the next in an endless transformation of land, peoples, and power, I doubt I’ll ever grow tired of Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile.

Oath also wins my vote for Best Art and Best Production for having delightful art by Kyle Ferrin and excellent components (including top-tier rulebooks) from the team at Leder Games.

Biggest Snubs

Art Robbery

Art Robbery is another delightful Knizia design that ended up just outside my Top 15.  It’s not the deepest card game out there, but Art Robbery does hit the spot in terms of quick simplicity and clever thievery.

Coffee Traders

I really enjoyed my first play of Coffee Traders. But that’s the problem, I haven’t managed to play it since.  Unfortunately, this one requires a very specific type of group and a huge chunk of time to get to the table.  Due to its sprawling, complex nature, Coffee Traders possesses far too many barriers to entry to have seen enough plays or earn itself a spot in my Top 15.

Best Reskin

Royal Visit

Royal Visit instantly became a household favorite among our 2-player collection when we tried this new reskin last year.  And what a reskin it is!  While the original game was amusingly themed after some drunk folks in Times Square, this new one feels more fitting for the tug-of-war mechanisms of attracting the king and his court to your chateau.  The production is colorful, blocky, and serene.  But most importantly, the gameplay has aged like a fine wine.  This one would absolutely be in my Top 15 Games of 2021 if any part of the design was new.

Best Games I Didn’t Love

Mind MGMT

I still hope to revisit Mind MGMT eventually.  Perhaps with a few months time or a different group of players it’ll finally click for us and become a hit as it has with so many others.  Whether or not that happens, I still admire and respect this hidden-movement deduction game for the interesting tricks and clever twists that it has up its sleeve.

Riftforce

As I shared in my 1st impressions post, Riftforce does everything right save for committing one critical error in my book.  I’m referring to the flat game arc where the start, middle, and end of the game all feel roughly the same.  But even so, Riftforce packs a heck of a punch as a 2-player dueling game with neat asymmetry and tasty combos.  

Worst Games I Adored

Family Inc.

My goodness, whose idea was it to make this game box so offensively large?  This is one of the few times where I’m actually considering defiling the box and cutting it down to a proper size or replacing it entirely with more sensible packaging.  The gameplay of Family Inc. isn’t the most revelatory either, but Knizia knows how to make even the dumbest of concepts amusing.  This experience boils down to “flip a random tile and hope for the best,” yet it still manages to entertain a jaded gamer like myself.

L.A.M.A. Dice

I also get a kick out of Knizia’s other “dumb fun” game, L.A.M.A. Dice, and this one even comes in a properly small box!  I almost feel bad putting this one under the “worst game I adored” category, because I actually think it’s a very smart design appropriately wrapped in a silly package.  Most hobby gamers would likely shrug at it, but for us it is a blast of a filler game.

Best Expansion

Pipeline: Emerging Markets

Emerging Markets is the perfect expansion for Pipeline in that it brings impactful market variety to the experience.  It’s a great one to jump into after a few plays of the base game, as it will keep you from getting too comfortable with a specific strategy.  For being an expansion that I would never play Pipeline without, Emerging Markets takes that cake as my top expansion of 2021.

Best New To Me Game

Yellow & Yangtze

I thought this would be a much harder decision, but once I realized that Yellow & Yangtze was a “new to me” game last year, my choice couldn’t have been easier.  While this list is already littered with far too many Knizias (I’m fully aware ;), I’m not about to leave off one of the very best designs in his massive ludography.  Yellow & Yangtze is a triumph of a strategy game that I will never get enough of.  Now who’s going to pick up the rights to this one and give us the expansion?

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Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post Top 15 Board Games of 2021 appeared first on Bitewing Games.

My latest first impressions of new board game releases span from ambitious epics to Knizian comebacks… Let’s jump right into it!

Disclosure: Bitewing Games is publisher of Reiner Knizia (and eventually other designers) games, and any opinions shared on other games are subject to possible personal bias. As with all our content, we do our best to share our honest personal experiences & opinions as fans of the hobby, and we leave the rest for you to decide whether a game is a good fit.

Equinox

3 Plays

I was hesitant to experience my very first play of Equinox at only 2-players, but it turned out to be far more interesting and aggressive than expected.  It turns out that this one works well at any player count.

When I think of betting games, what first comes to mind is loud, bombastic, social activities such as Camel Up.  Equinox is none of these things, but what it lacks in noise and showmanship it makes up for in cutthroat cleverness.

Eight creatures, known as “Champions,” are competing to become legends, but only three will avoid fading into oblivion.  Players take turns adding one creature card to the current row from their hand, and the moment all the spots are filled in, the creature with the lowest value played into that row is eliminated for the rest of the game.  Then play moves down a row, rinse and repeat.

On top of that, you can start your turn by placing one of your five precious betting stones on any space in the current row that does not already contain a stone.  The higher up rows will pay out bigger points to the bets on creatures that survive to the end, but big early bets also make for big easy targets.  If you place a couple big betting stones high up on a cute little creature, you might as well be putting a giant target on its back and a hefty bounty on its head.  So it’s obviously best to save your bets for safer rows, right?  Well… not exactly.

Each of the creatures provides a unique special ability to the player who has the biggest bets on them, and that’s typically the player who bet earliest.  So every time I play a Funguy the mushroom card, he activates the power of another creature who has been eliminated—powers that are normally lost forever as their poor champion fades into a forgotten limbo.  Other creature powers include discarding a card that is currently in competition, claiming a card back into your hand, shifting cards around, pulling back your betting stone… basically all kinds of things to save or sabotage the creatures that you and your opponents have bet your precious stones on. 

With only eight of the fourteen creatures and their abilities utilized in a single game, there is loads to explore and agonize over in this colorfully cutthroat playground.  I find myself getting so invested in the success of one creature and the downfall of another that I sometimes forget that I still have more betting stones to place.  I feel so enticed by the champion’s abilities that I have to remind myself to save some of that creature’s cards for later rounds.  I get so greedy with saving the great cards in my hand for the best moment that I put the very safety of my own champions in jeopardy.

All this juicy goodness, and we’ve only scratched the surface of all the brilliant wrinkles in the gameplay including secret bets, wild chameleon cards, impactful tree cards, and more.  I could toss out some minor production complaints including the functionally pointless and confusing cloth bags (they’re merely used to identify a player’s color, not for storing the tokens in the box or touching ever during the game…), the far too large and unwieldy cards (this game takes up the whole table and requires thorough shuffling and sorting during setup and teardown), the wordy rulebook with a lack of succinct player aids, etc., but at the end of the day I still love Equinox.  

This is a beautiful betting game whose whimsically indulgent production expertly disguises the pile of daggers lurking underneath—meant for plunging into each other’s backs after using them to flay the adorable creatures who just want to be loved.  A fine game, indeed.

Current Rating: 8.5/10

Stellar

1 Play

Stellar is the tagalong younger sibling of The Search for Planet X in that they both came from publishing parent Renegade Games in the same year and they share a similar theme of astronomy.  Yet this quick, 2-player card game is not at all a deduction game and its drafting and set collection gameplay is entirely abstract.

The interesting challenge of Stellar lies within the turn structure where a player drafts a card into their hand and then plays a card from their hand into either their telescope or their notebook, and whatever number they play at one of those two locations determines which other card (from the drafting slots) must be played into the opposite area.  So if I play a 5 card onto my telescope, then I must take the card in slot 5 and play that into my notebook.

The notebook and telescope each contain their own restrictions and objectives.  The notebook is the more straightforward of the two, where you are simply trying to build a run of each card’s suit.  Each run will become a score multiplier for the matching cards that are played out onto your 12-space telescope.  Matching suits must be adjacent on the telescope, and the high value cards compete for majority points against your rival while the low value cards grant more star points for your multiplier.

The game becomes a puzzle of which card to play where and when to maximize points.  Every turn boils down to a very mathy exercise of sums and multipliers to find the optimal sequence of drafting and playing.  While mathing out efficiencies can certainly make for an engaging game, Stellar almost relies on it too heavily in hopes of disguising its dull arc.

The setup starts players on completely different trajectories, where each person has two different suits from their opponent in their notebook and telescope.  While I can certainly spend my turn snatching away golden opportunities from you, those types of drafts often accomplish nothing substantial for my own score.  The only tangible tension here comes from the majority competition for three separate sections of your telescope where the highest sum of card values in each section wins ten bonus points.  Otherwise, you’re simply drafting and playing what’s optimal for you and I’m doing the same for me.  Eventually we’ll get to the end and simply find out who had the more optimal options across their turns.

Any competition, tension, and push-your-luck card play here all taste too bland for Stellar to provide a distinct or addictive flavor.  Unfortunately, the recycling optimization puzzle of each turn isn’t strong enough on its own merits to keep us hungry for more.  We already have plenty of incredible 2-player card games to feast upon, and so I struggle to find a reason why I should reserve room on my plate for Stellar.

Current Rating: 5.5/10

Kemet: Blood & Sand

2 Plays

Kemet: Blood & Sand rounds out my journey through Matagot’s legendary trilogy of “troops on a map” games, and this journey of mine has certainly ended with a bang!  My introductory game was Inis, which quickly became my absolute favorite game for many months, and it remains in my top 15 of all time.  My next exposure was with Cyclades, which I certainly played and enjoyed a few times but ultimately purged from my collection due to the many other options that do area control or auctions even better.  But I was all in on Matagot’s updated version of Kemet when the Blood & Sand kickstarter launched.

With the long wait finally over and the game spread out on our table, we were instantly impressed with their ambitious vision now come to fruition.  Large chunky miniatures are complemented by interlocking pyramids, personal reference guides, convenient trays, and useful side boards.  As I shared in my Kickstarter Case Study, this campaign had it’s fair share of bumps and bruises along the path to funding.  And the final product isn’t without its flaws (significant rulebook errors and unimaginative game board art in particular), but the entire package still comes together extremely well, especially thanks to the juicy experience at its core.

Kemet remains a titan among area control games thanks to its slick, streamlined turns mingled with sprawling power tile possibilities across a relentlessly aggressive sandy canvas.  I’m not familiar with all the changes here, but I understand that the Blood & Sand reimplementation improves the end game victory condition, the turn order determination, and countless balancing aspects to make for a tighter gaming package.  Plus it includes parts of the original’s expansions, so what’s not to love here?

Unlike the passive-aggressive slow-burn strategery of Inis, Kemet opts for blinding, popping, crackling, and booming conflict like a relentless fireworks show of battles.  The fate of conflict isn’t left to mere chance… there’s not even a single dice to be found in this box.  Rather, players must outwit their opponents by navigating their identical hands of battle cards most efficiently with the help of purchased tiles, summoned creatures, recruited troops, and drawn divine interventions.  Blood & Sand includes a most welcome score board of growing permanent points and shifting temporary points as competitors inch their way to the finish line of 9 or more points.

The massively enticing spread of power tiles is blessedly accompanied by an exciting personal menu where players browse their purchasing options before claiming any of the wonderful abilities that always feel uniquely, terrifyingly overpowered.  One tile comes with a giant scorpion who acts as a your personal wrecking ball against other troops.  Another comes with the freedom to recruit as many units as you want at no cost—a mind-boggling ability.  From extra strength to extra mobility to extra actions to extra discounts, players quickly diverge and specialize into powerful factions bred for Egyptian dominance.  This endless array of combinable technologies means that no two games of Kemet will ever feel alike.

In our most recent game, I found myself gunning for a brutally defensive strategy. Early on I acquired a tile that let me look at the battle card my opponent would commit to a battle before deciding which card I would play. This made for a delicious combo with another tile that gave me an invaluable point for winning any battle as the defender—something that’s normally not possible. I also welcomed in a beastly snake to one of my troops that canceled out the powerful abilities of my opponents’ beasts. Finally, I acquired the freedom to recruit as many units as I desired for free whenever I took that action. This strategy meant that I could completely abandon my valuable pyramids and go on a hunt for the easiest points while not worrying about the massive target I was putting on my back. Players would frequently have to throw multiple battalions at one of my troops to break down my defenses, scoring me points for every attack they lost. Furthermore, blasting me off the map just meant that I would be right back on the board with my full force next time I recruited.

This is merely one of the infinite power tile combinations a player can pursue in this aggressively epic game. Every aspect of Kemet: Blood & Sand reeks with proud ambition, yet this arrogance is justified in every regard.  Kemet is the ultimate “troops on a map” game that all other flamboyant, miniature-based war games so desperately try to be.  It makes its players feel both insanely powerful and dangerously vulnerable with all the grace and ease of a strategic Euro.

Current Rating: 9.5/10

Tutankhamun

2 Plays

After our first session at two players, Tutankhamun wasn’t quite doing it for me. Fortunately, I was also able to try it at four players, where we found more of the magic within. This new reimplementation of an older design contains a similar core concept as Knizia’s Sumatra and Whale Riders in that it utilizes a one-way track for collecting sets of tokens.

Here, players are cruising along the Nile, picking up artifacts along the way to offer to the deceased Pharaoh’s tomb for points.  First person to hit the set number of points wins.  Player turns proceed in clockwise order, and you can either move your boat to the tile immediately behind you or as far forward as you’d like, and whatever tile you stop on is the one you’ll claim.  The proceedings are precisely as simple as you’d expect from the good Doctor.

Set collection scoring is a contest of majorities, where whoever has the most tiles of a type once the last one comes off the Nile will score the designated number of points, second place scores half, and ties go in favor of whoever is furthest behind along the Nile.  While there are three different types of artifacts that contain an 8 on them, this number means that there are 8 of that unique artifact and the majority possessor of each will score 8 points.  The same is true for the 6, 4, and 2 value sets.  So the big point tiles take longer to trigger their scoring and require more effort to claim majority over.

There are of course some interesting wrinkles here including ring artifacts that only score 1 point each but do so immediately when claimed and grant 5 bonus points to the person with the most.  There are also God Idol tiles which trigger an immediate ability when claimed, usually good for manipulating the position of tiles along the Nile or trading or discarding a tile.  Also, any tiles that get left behind by all players will end up in the Underworld which can trigger immediate scoring if the last tile of a type leaves the Nile.  The game even includes an essential 2-player variant where the Underworld tiles compete with the two players for majority points.  

Yet with all these interesting wrinkles, our initial experience with Tutankhamun was sadly too dull, too loose, and too slow.  This becomes even more blindingly apparent when contrasted against the similar 2021 release: Whale Riders.  

This is going to sound ironic, but Whale Riders maintains a tense tempo and a rapid pace due to the movement restrictions, while Tutankhamun features grinding gameplay and sluggish speed due to its movement freedom.  In Whale Riders, I’m not all that worried about which exact tiles my opponents want next because I don’t even know what contracts they are trying to fulfill; rather, I’m simply focused on maximizing my own action efficiency at my current space or the next one while applying a tangible pressure of pace on my rivals.  In Tutankhamun, I have to count the number of each tile type that I have, the numbers that my opponents have, and survey the entire river of tiles to determine where the next best spot is for me.  This makes Tutankhamun two-to-three times as long while being mechanically more basic than Whale Riders.  

That’s not a good look for what is otherwise a very good-looking game.  25th Century Games has done a nice job with the production and table presence, whether you have the basic or deluxe version (although the components do get pointlessly overindulgent in some areas). The use of score markers that slot along the box bottom and circle Tutankhamun’s tomb with the winding river tiles leading up to it make for a delicious table presence. The art is lush and vibrant, yet some of the clarity between different artifact tiles is sacrificed in favor of saturated colors, leading to more time spent surveying and differentiating the tiles. Whether the overall look is worth the extra hassle and cost will depend on one’s personal preference.

Perhaps the biggest surprise to me is how the God Idol tiles have floundered in our plays. The Kickstarter version came with eight different types of God Idol tiles, and in both games they have been largely ignored inconveniences. I label them inconveniences because they offer no visual aids or reminders to their unique and specific functions. Each tile is simply a god’s face, and these faces are also found across two different reference cards, one of them being double-sided. It becomes a hassle to look up the function of a particular God Idol multiple times in a game when it shows up once early on and again much later by scanning three different surfaces of cards and re-reading the paragraph of rules for the matching god. One might wish that the majestic faces of these gods could have been replaced with helpful iconography to circumvent the frequent reference card reading.

But the bigger problem here is how the God Idol tiles have been largely ignored. Perhaps there’s a deeper layer to them lurking beneath our current strategies, but at the moment it seems almost always a better move to simply take an artifact tile that will help you gain more points rather than take a tile that merely causes a minor manipulation of the board state. What results is a growing pile of neglected God Idol tiles in the Underworld of shame.

So I was reluctant to devote more precious tabletop time to Tutankhamun after an underwhelming start. But another opportunity presented itself in the form of a 4-player game with my sister and brother-in-law joining my wife and I. As I should have predicted, there was certainly more here than our maiden voyage presented. We found with four players that tile majorities and boat movement offered far more tense and interesting decisions than at two. Within this play, I could see why 25th Century chose to bring back Tutankhamun as a solid offering in the family game genre, even if it doesn’t click for us at two players..

Despite a pleasantly surprising comeback, the harsh reality is that Tutankhamun and Whale Riders are both family-weight 2021 releases about sailing along a watery route to collect sets of tiles and score points. Whale Riders presents a better tempo, tension, range, polish, and flexibility within a speedier package that makes it difficult for Tutankhamun to compete for attention in our collection. I suppose playing Tutankhamun feels a tad too much like I’m slowly meandering down a river with nothing extremely interesting to look at besides endless piles of sand… but at least it’s warm and sunny!

Current Rating: 6.5/10

Oath

4 Plays

Leder Games has removed the leashes from designer Cole Wehrle and artist Kyle Ferrin and let them run amok with the creation of Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile.  Fortunately, both of these legends of the industry knew exactly what they were doing when they concocted this strange beast of a game.

Oath takes the colorful, cutthroat charm of Root and mixes it with the vast strategic possibilities of Pax Pamir while amping up the narrative volume to eleven.  Cole Wehrle stays true to his design philosophy and even doubles down on it here by tossing out the industry playbook of maximizing fairness and fun in favor of broadening the game’s emotional range.  Collusion, cooperation, betrayal, kingmaking, savagery, politicking, secrecy, gambling, deflecting, destruction, thievery, prosperity, and more are interwoven with the gorgeous components of Oath.

There are plenty of hurdles to overcome if gamers wish to immerse themselves in this wacky, wonderful world.  A steep upfront price, a daunting learning and teaching experience, an astute rules referee, the perfect selection of compatible gaming friends, a clear opportunity for regular plays, and a collective enjoyment of the journey over the destination.  It’ll take a lot of sheer willpower for some gamers to find the pot of gold at the end of this rocky rainbow.

But Leder Games is one of the best in the business when it comes to giving broad appeal to a complex game.  Rulebooks, walkthroughs, references, and guides galore go a long way in smoothing out this game with intentionally rough edges.  Thoughtful, zany, hilarious, and mesmerizing art remind you that it’s ok to have a knife plunged into your back every now and then by those you once thought friends.  Screen-printed characters, masterful interlocking metal coins, gorgeous blue books of secrets, and a sprawling kingdom across a breathtaking neoprene mat make every penny spent feel unflinchingly worthwhile.

One can’t possibly pin Oath down to a single core mechanism, especially when every game is unbelievably unique.  While one play feels like an auctioning tug-of-war, the next feels like an exploration adventure.  The world can be ablaze with battles in one game before pivoting into a passive-aggressive game of chicken in the next.  The empire may grow into a seemingly insurmountable power with an endless reach after one session yet be completely obliterated by an exile-concocted apocalypse merely one generation later.  There is simply no predicting what will happen next in this game with so many impactful sites, and exciting cards, and devious relics, and tangling victory objectives… and that prospect of a genuine sandbox experience with dynamic ripple effects should make every other board game on this planet tremble in fear.

In Oath, players don’t recreate history, they write it.  They don’t follow a pre-planned trail, they pave it.  Legacy games hide their faces in shame as Oath provides true consequences for its actions and organic adventures for it participants.

Current Rating: 10/10

You’ve probably noticed that we explore and enjoy a lot of games by the legendary Reiner Knizia here, even if we don’t absolutely love all of them. Yet there are three Knizia designs that we’ve loved so much that we decided to devote our time, energy, and resources to bring them to life for YOU.

Next month, we are launching a Kickstarter project for Reiner Knizia’s Criminal Capers Collection featuring Soda Smugglers, Pumafiosi, and Hot Lead. We hand picked these three 20-minute card games from a treasure trove of fresh, unpublished Knizia designs because we love to play them, and we think you will to. But the only way these delightful games are getting published is with your help!

Subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter so you don’t miss out on the upcoming Kickstarter campaign. We deeply appreciate your support in helping us to create and share classy board games that bite.

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post Candid Cardboard: 1st Impressions of Oath, Kemet: Blood & Sand, Equinox, and more! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Not much of a reader? You’re in luck! This post also exists in podcast form shown below. Happy listening!

It’s about time to kiss (or more appropriately, kick) 2020 goodbye! As we hopefully look forward to a new year of long-awaited returns to normalcy, what better way to get hyped than to peek behind the curtains and get a glimpse of the most exciting board games to come!

I’ve cooked up quite the list with a variety of promising titles that might just deserve a spot on your wishlist. Several of these games were also explored in my Kickstarter Case Study: How to Win Backers and Fund Projects. Let’s see what’s on the 2021 menu…

Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile – Q2/Q3 2021

We might as well start off with my most anticipated game of 2021. Cole Wehrle’s magnum opus is right around the corner. With the publishing passion of Leder Games, the artistic flex of Kyle Ferrin, and the design chops of one of the industry’s hottest designers, we’ve got a recipe for success in Oath. Along the lines of Root and Pax Pamir, Oath is a highly strategic, cutthroat, and political game that best suits a group of regular players.

This title innovates upon legacy and campaign designs by taking the results of one game and integrating them into the objectives and setup of the next. Nothing is scripted or predetermined, rather the game organically follows a meta narrative controlled entirely by the decisions of the players. The ripple effect of players’ actions will be felt by all for games to come, and they can even keep record of this fascinating history in the Chronicle Session Journal (included in the kickstarter copies or likely to be available directly from Leder Games).

Kemet: Blood and Sand – Summer 2021

The area-control darling, Kemet, has been an established favorite for nearly a decade now. In 2021, Matagot will be releasing version 2.0 with a completely revamped presentation, improved rules, and new gameplay. Matagot’s legendary dudes-on-a-map trilogy has proven its worth to me with the incredible card-drafting Inis and solid auction-style Cyclades; Kemet is the remaining classic that I have yet to try, and Blood and Sand appears to be worth the wait.

Hibachi – Fall 2021

Hibachi flew a bit under the radar when it recently launched on Kickstarter, but it appears to be firing on all cylinders as a family-friendly set collection dexterity game. The design is a reimplementation of 2010’s Safranito that retains the core fun it presented.

Players toss poker chips onto a large board in an attempt to center the poker chip’s hole over ingredients and bonuses that will help the fill orders. The catch is that your poker chips are also used as a sort of blind auction for drafting order and other privileges. The value of your chips will stay face-down as you toss them onto the board, so a combination of skillful tosses and wise chip selections will ensure that you come out on top when the chips are flipped and the ingredients are claimed.

Grail Games promises that the leftovers from this Kickstarter will go to retail (or you can late pledge here), so keep your eyes peeled come Fall 2021 if you’re hungry to jump in on this fun feast.

Coffee Traders – May 2021

Capstone Games has gone all out with their debut of Coffee Traders. This heavy economic Euro from the makers of Wildcatters boasts over 650 deluxified, colorful components including wooden donkeys and plastic coffee beans! More importantly, the design promises a meaty, interactive competition within the sprawling coffee industry of the 1970s.

While we’re likely to see a more affordable, standard version of the game down the road, it’s hard not to get behind such an ambitious, beautiful project spearheaded by a highly capable publisher. If you can’t get enough sprawling Euros in your life, then this one is a no-brainer for any group of 3-5 players.

Whale Riders – Spring 2021

Dr. Knizia is on another hot streak spanning back to 2017 with the likes of Quest for El Dorado, Babylonia, My City, and more. Whale Riders brings us another team up of old faithful designer Knizia, ever stalwart artist Vincent Dutrait, and the consistently solid publisher Grail Games.

In this economic race, players must decide how to spend their 2 actions each turn as they ride whales along the arctic coast. You can sail ahead to claim the greatest treasures for yourself, but you’ll be missing out on golden opportunities along the way.

Next year, if you find yourself in need of a simple strategy game with enough subtle tension to satisfy everyone at the table, then you’d be hard pressed to bet against Reiner Knizia.

Undaunted: Reinforcements – August 2021

For fans of the Undaunted series, Reinforcements is the modular expansion you never knew you always wanted. This title will include new scenarios, units, and rules to keep the fun rolling. Compatible with both Undaunted games, this expansion even provides 4-player and solo modes for owners of either version. While the details are still sparse, this series already earned its right to the title of Undaunted when it initially debuted among the top board games of 2019. Undaunted will go down as one of my all time favorite deck builders thanks to its elegant flow and painful decisions. I’m thrilled to have more reasons to dive back into this excellent system.

Anno 1800 – Q1 2021 (English Version)

While the game setup isn’t exactly easy on the eyes, Anno 1800 doesn’t need to look amazing when it boasts the design talent of Martin Wallace, creator of Brass: Birmingham and Age of Steam.

Anno 1800 is based on the popular PC game from Ubisoft, but I’m more interested in what Mr. Wallace has done to create a city building tech-tree game. The German version is already on the market, and early buzz around this medium-weight Euro is positive.

Switch & Signal – 2021 (English Version)

Speaking of German games that have yet to make it overseas, Switch & Signal is a cooperative train game from one of the designers of Undaunted: Normandy. This game is as simple and accessible as Pandemic, yet thankfully it is not another Pandemic clone. Switch & Signal sees players guiding trains across a map of Europe or North America to deliver cargo to its destination before time runs out. Each turn involves deciding how to spend your cards to move trains, adjust signals, and switch tracks to keep engines along the most efficient paths possible.

There’s no official date for when this game hits North America, but we can safely assume that Kosmos is planning to localize and release it sometime next year, as it debuted in Germany just a few months ago.

Don’t Get Got: Shut Up & Sit Down Special Edition – Apr 2021

Don’t Get Got is a clever party game that has been around since 2018. It received high praise from popular critic site Shut Up & Sit Down in their highly entertaining review. Thereafter, Big Potato Games reached out to the funny folks at SU&SD and pitched a collaboration for a special edition which successfully funded on Kickstarter this year.

Don’t Get Got is a meta-game that can be sneakily tucked into the background of a game night, group party, or work environment. Each player receives a small wallet with unique objectives that typically require harmless but ridiculous tasks. These tasks span from “Get a player to compliment your hair” to “Make up a word and get a player to ask what it means.” The catch is that if players suspect foul play, they can call you out on your odd behavior and cause you to fail that mission. The first player to complete three missions wins the game.

I’m hoping to receive this game while I’m still at my General Practice Residency program with 7 other dental residents, where the setting is ripe for getting got!

Ra (New Versions)- 2021

Ra, one of all-time greats of the auctioning genre, has been criminally out of print for years. It’s a game that perfectly mixes agonizing auctioning with precarious push-your-luck mechanisms. 2021 is the year where that changes. Dice Tree Games is a South Korean publisher known for its deluxe productions of Knizia classics including Modern Art and Winner’s Circle, and they have a version of Ra ready to release seemingly any day (the game is listed as a 2020 planned release).

25th Century Games, best known for its Splendor-like 2017 release, Space Explorers, is a US-based publisher planning to release an English version of Ra in Summer 2021 as well. Details are sparse, but this release will be one to keep an eye on for anyone looking to jump into this masterclass design. I reached out to Chad (25th Century Games) and learned that he’s aiming to “create the nicest quality and visual art version of the game to date.”

It sounds like a fantastic way for new fans to jump in or old fans to update their copy. Although for those who already own a copy (Alea, Rio Grande, or Uberplay versions in particular), Board Game Geek will be offering delectable Geek Up bits in the spring! All hail the year of Ra!

Tutankhamun – Jan 2021

Speaking of 25th Century Games, they’ll be releasing another Knizia design that has been refreshed and revitalized in Tutankhamun. Players travel down the Nile and collect artifacts in a race to 30 points. The rules are easy enough for any friends or family, simply move your boat downstream and collect the tile you stop on. The key is to have majority in artifact types and lunge for the special power tiles when the timing is right to end up on top.

Dead Reckoning – May 2021

Dead Reckoning is nothing short of ambitious. This mega-project from AEG and John D. Clair (Space Base, Mystic Vale) takes their card crafting concept to the next level. Transparent cards will be combined, flipped, and rotated within sleeves to create a deck-building experience that sends players on a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXtort, eXterminate) journey through piratism.

It also features a wildly creative combat system where cubes are dropped onto a battleship that sends them cascading across a battle board, giving a cannonball-like effect that determines the result of the attack by where the cubes land on the board.

This game has so many mechanisms and pieces crammed into it that I’ve opted to leave it on my radar and wait to strike if the reviews come in overwhelmingly positive. It won’t be simple or cheap, but it promises quite the epic adventure.

Kabuto Sumo – June 2021

BoardGameTables.com is back at it with another novel design and gorgeous production. Kabuto Sumo is inspired by coin-pushing arcade games and real-life rhinoceros beetle wrestling. That’s pretty stinking awesome if you ask me.

Players will be shifting the push platform around the sumo ring to line up their move of pushing a piece into the ring in hopes of shoving opponent beetles off. This combination of physics, tactics, and dexterity promise to be a breath of fresh air for any game night. The world can never have too many refreshing dexterity games, and Kabuto Sumo is teed up to be the next one.

So, You’ve Been Eaten – 2021?

That’s right, the game is titled So, You’ve Been Eaten. With a name like that, it has to be good!…. Right?…

After initially rearing its head and riding high on the hotness wave of BGG, news on this title seemingly vanished… like it had been eaten. But more recent updates indicate that they’ve been quietly cramming even more tasty content into the game as they prepare for a Kickstarter launch.

The game claims that it is for 0-2 players. You read that correctly, zero players. A bold miner takes on a massive beast by burrowing into its intestines for crystals as the beast’s immune system fights back. Players can take on the role of either the miner or the beast… or neither?… in a 1v1, 1vGame, or GamevGame showdown.

Bristol 1350 – April 2021

The Dark Cities games have always taken the bones of a classic social deduction game and dressed them in various thematic mechanisms. From witch trials to pirate mutinies to wild west bank robberies to now escaping the Black Plague.

I’ve already played Bristol 1350 plenty of times leading up to my written preview of the design. The timing of this plague-themed game is uncannily coincidental, but the design has been a blast ever since I first tried it two years ago. I’m looking forward to experiencing the full vision that Facade Games had in mind for this quick, engaging gem of a deduction game.

John Company (Second Edition) – 2021?

Wehrlegig Games, the publisher of Pax Pamir (Second Edition), is cooking up their next project in John Company (Second Edition). Designer Cole Werhle’s most recent update reveals that the design has received a complete overhaul to help streamline the rules, focus on the game’s strengths, evoke the period art, and presumably deluxify the production. This heavy political economic romp is sure to be a strategically engaging and historically informative exploration of the British East India Company.

Railroad Ink Challenge – Q1 2021

One of our household’s favorite roll & writes makes an explosive return with Railroad Ink Challenge. The Shining Yellow and Lush Green editions promise player interaction, special structures, and new dice to help keep the puzzle fresh and interesting for series veterans. The development team has also cooked up a cornucopia of extras from an Epic game board to loads of expansion dice.

Iberian Gauge – Summer 2021

Like the previous two games in Capstone’s Iron Rail series, Iberian Gauge already exists among many other cube rails options. These cube rails games possess a common thread of stock investment, railroad expansion, and shared incentives. The key differentiator with the Iron Rail series is that publisher Capstone handpicks a solid design from the many options, gives it the Ian O’Toole makeover, and brings it to the masses. These slim, gorgeous boxes contain a single sheet of rules but pack a huge punch in roughly 1-hour of fun.

Sleeping Gods – Q1 2021

Sleeping Gods was on our most anticipated games of 2020 list, and it’s back again for another round of hype! The good news is that this cooperative exploration adventure is right around the corner, with fulfillment planned to begin in January. Players will be chipping away at this epic adventure a little bit at a time, and they can save their progress and pack it back into the box at any time. I spoke more about how Red Raven convinced me to back their project in my Kickstarter Case Study: How to Win Backers and Crowdfund Projects.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea – March 2021

Ooo baby, designer Thomas Sing is dipping back into the well in an effort to satiate my unquenchable thirst for more of his brilliant cooperative trick taking. All we know thus far is that we’re going from space to sea, but hopefully Mr. Sing still has a few more tricks up his sleeve to mix up the formula. Either way, I’m all in on this sequel to one of the greatest cards games of all time.

Publishers To Watch

That’s right, we’re not done quite yet! Many publishers like to play their cards close to the chest, meaning that there are surely more hype-worthy games waiting to be announced and planned to be released direct-to-retail than the 19 we’ve already covered. We’ll point you toward a handful of publishers that have been on hot streaks recently and show no signs of cooling down.

• Capstone Games: At the time of this writing, I’ve had the chance to try ten of Capstone’s releases of 2018-2020, and they have all been killer games. 2021 releases will include Coffee Traders, Iberian Gauge, Pipeline Emerging Markets (expansion), and more.

• Leder Games: Most famously known for the deceptively charming and deeply asymmetric war-game Root, Leder Games is banking on their next mega-hit being Oath. But with Oath development wrapping up, they’ve shared that their next big project will be another Root expansion featuring militant factions of a Rat warlord and Badgers (expect a Kickstarter in Q1)! Patrick Leder is also working on his own spin on Twilight Imperium known as Void Lich. And who knows, maybe we’ll get a Fort expansion as well…

• Boardgametables.com: I’ve found that the best approach to take with Boardgametables.com’s publications is to expect the unexpected. They’ve brought us a band touring roll & write, an unchained auctioning game, a thinky pirate treasure deduction game, a trio of pretty fillers, and soon a coin-pushing style dexterity game. Whatever they cook up next, it’s sure to be unique and well-produced.

• Eagle-Gryphon Games: With recent killer deluxe versions of Rococo and Age of Steam, heavy hitters like On Mars, on upcoming refreshes such as For Sale Autorama, Eagle-Grypon games is not a publisher to be dismissed.

• WizKids: WizKids has been bringing their A-game recently with the incredible Sidereal Confluence: Remastered Edition, spicy Tournament at Avalon, and juicy Super Skill Pinball 4-Cade, all from 2020 alone. I’m hoping they have just as good of a lineup for 2021.

• Grail Games: This Australian publisher has earned a spot on my radar because of their ability to dig up and dust off the underdog games of yesteryear. Thanks to them, I’ve been able to discover and enjoy Knizia classics including Stephenson’s Rocket and Medici, and I’m excited to try Yellow and Yangtze and Whale Riders. Outside of Hibachi, they have many more exciting plans in the works for 2021 and beyond, including a Yellow and Yangtze expansion, an updated version of cult fan-favorite Fjords, and a two-player climbing card game known as ChuHan from the designer of Race for the Galaxy.

• Osprey Games: This publisher is based in Great-Britain and has drummed up at least 1 killer title every year for the past few years. Those games include Cryptid, the Undaunted series, The King is Dead (Second Edition), and more. They certainly deserve our attention for whatever else they have in mind for 2021 besides Undaunted: Reinforcements.

Designers to Watch

We’ll top this post off with a list of designers that, much like the above mentioned publishers, are on hot streaks of their own. Whenever I catch wind of a new release coming from one of these creative folks, my ears always perk up:

• David Thompson: I’ve talked plenty about David’s upcoming Undaunted Reinforcements and Switch & Signal, and that merely scratches the surface of David’s designs that are hitting the market in 2021. Others include War Chest: Siege (an expansion to Undaunted-like abstract game, War Chest), Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms (a WWII inspired solitaire game), Sniper Elite: The Board Game (a hidden moment design based on the video game series of the same name), and Dire Alliance: Horror (a cooperative/competitive tactical deck builder). And those are just the ones we know of. Needless to say, he’s certainly one to keep on the radar.

• Paolo Mori: We’re big fans of Ethnos, a family-weight area majority game that was #8 in my most recent top 50 games of all time list. We’ve also been digging 2019’s Blitzkrieg, a 2-player tug of war game that made a fantastic 1st impression and still holds up after several more plays. There’s no telling what Paolo will do next, but odds are it will be amazing.

• Alexander Pfister: This is the legend who brought us the excellent Great Western Trail, Isle of Skye, Maracaibo, and much more. His latest release, CloudAge, should probably be among the list of games up above seeing how the North American shipment appears to be delayed into the new year (thanks for nothing, Covid!). Regardless, the man is a machine who continues to impress with his designs. I expect to see another big one from him in 2021.

• Wolfgang Warsch: From The Mind to Quacks of Quedlinburg, from Wavelength to That’s Pretty Clever, you know him, you love him, he’s Wolfgang Warsch! After seemingly bursting onto the scene in 2018, Wolfgang has been on a design rampage ever since. Hopefully he hasn’t run out of steam for 2021. You can do it, Wolfgang!

• Kramer & Kiesling: Like Peanut Butter and Jelly, Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling have been tearing it up together for years with classics such as Tikal or Mexica and more recent releases including our Holiday Board Game Gift recommendation, Renature. Not that they actually need each other, as Mr. Kiesling is the genius behind Azul and Heaven & Ale while Mr. Kramer is mastermind behind El Grande and Downforce. Indeed, these gentlemen should already be on your 2021 watchlist.

• Cole Wehrle: I started this entire post out with Cole’s upcoming design, Oath, and quickly followed it up with his returning hit, John Company (Second Edition), so you already know where I stand here. He’s both a lead designer/developer at Leder Games and he runs Wehrlegig Games with his brother, so anything coming from either company is going to have his fingerprints on it. Why do I appreciate his handiwork so much? Aside from him owning two spots in my top 10 games of all time, I’ve found Cole to be more interested in creating immersive experiences than tossing out gimmicky, shallow designs. He’s churning out arguably the most fascinating designs in the industry with the help of many talented colleagues. Keep it coming, Cole!

• Ryan Courtney: Ryan is the newest published designer among those on this list. In fact, his first game, Pipeline, was categorized as a Lover in my recent revisit of the best games of 2019. His other design, Curious Cargo, continues to impress as well. The man takes “thinky” to the next level, and I’m there for whatever he cooks up next.

• Uwe Rosenberg: It’s breeding!… It’s polyominoes!… That’s right, it’s Uwe Rosenberg. Uwe is one of the all time greats in the industry, and his most recent hits, including New York Zoo and Nova Luna, prove that he’s still got it. He’s always a safe bet when heading into a new year of releases.

• Reiner Knizia: Alongside Cole Wehrle, Reiner Knizia is my absolute favorite board game designer. I own and love more games from Dr. Knizia than any other designer (15 and counting)! He’s best known for his decades old evergreens including Tigris & Euphrates, Lost Cities, and Ra, but he’s been on another hot streak with recent bangers including Babylonia, My City, and Quest for El Dorado. This man is the Willy Wonka of board games, with over 600 titles to his name. Of course they’re not all going to be amazing at that kind of output, but the sheer number golden designs that have come from this one mind is staggering. I’ll take three more decades of Knizia releases, please and thank you.

Hungry for more board game hype? Then continue on to PART TWO of my Most Anticipated Board Games of 2021!

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!

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