While the term ‘Spin-Off’ might inherently sound like a lesser version of its source material, movies such as Creed (Rocky) and Logan (X-Men), TV shows such as The Mandalorian (Star Wars) and Better Call Saul (Breaking Bad), books including The Lord of the Rings trilogy (The Hobbit) and the Wax and Wayne Series (Mistborn), and video games including Super Mario Bros (Donkey Kong) and Super Smash Bros (Nintendo) would beg to differ.

The world of board games is also rife with spin-offs, whether a publisher is milking the cash cow of a popular IP or a designer is exploring their clever concept from another angle, or both!  Our consumerist society lives and dies by a constant blend of nostalgia and novelty.  The benefit of a great spin-off game is that often it can end up being even better than the source that inspired it! 

In celebration of our upcoming publication, Trailblazers—which is itself a spin-off of the critically acclaimed Pipeline—we’ll explore my Top 10 Spin-Off Games and how they iterate on their parent designs.  And be sure to stick around for the end where I’ll reveal new juicy info and images on Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney!

7 Wonders Duel

7 Wonders is a card drafting, civilization building game that took the gaming world by storm in 2010.  It went on to win dozens of nominations and awards including the coveted Kennerspiel Des Jahres.  Players love how quick and crunchy the decisions are as well as the various strategies one can pursue from crushing military to crafty science.

Five years later, the designer of 7 Wonders (Antoine Bauza) teamed up with another prolific creator (Bruno Cathala) to bring us a 2-player dueling version of his classic in 7 Wonders Duel.  Duel takes the core civ-building formula and turns the experience into a more tense, cut-throat, and interactive competition.  It’s why I haven’t played regular 7 Wonders in years.  While one player threatens to end the game immediately with a military victory, the other might be sneaking their way to a sudden science win.  Every card you draft from the pyramid display opens up another opportunity for your opponent.  And the expansions to this one add even more juicy layers to the strategy.

Blitzkrieg/Caesar

Staying on the topic of 2-player versions of beloved concepts, Blitzkrieg is a 2 player Paolo Mori design that shares much in common with his older 3-5 player game, Dogs of War.  Both games explore an interesting combination of worker placement tug-of-war where you’ll commit your piece to a region to pull a region marker in your direction, and the space you place your piece on top of will often grant an immediate bonus.  

Dogs of War remains one of my favorite games, but it really only works with 4 or 5 players.  Blitzkrieg manages to offer me a similar tension of dangling carrots and shifting momentum in a lightning fast 20 minutes that only requires one more player.  That’s why both of these games ended up right next to each other on my most recent Top 50 Games of All Time post.  We’ll see if 2022’s Caesar—the spin-off of this spin-off—manages to also reach such lofty heights, but so far it’s looking very promising.

L.A.M.A. Dice

L.A.M.A Dice is a 2021 release that is based on the popular card game L.A.M.A., yet it hasn’t officially made its way to North America yet.   Hopefully that will change soon, as we’ve found L.A.M.A. Dice to be a hoot at the table.  This is a particularly surprising redemption story for L.A.M.A. considering my initial impressions of the card game weren’t too enthusiastic.  I’ll be sharing my full thoughts on this game soon, but here’s a teaser for now:

While L.A.M.A. Dice plays out similarly to L.A.M.A. the card game, it also has some key differences that make it the more lively, loud, and laugh-inducing game of the two.  Where the card game is more about quiet, subtle, and private hand management, the dice game is about clackety rolls, foolish decisions, public humiliations, and occasionally glorious triumphs.  While there is of course a big old dollop of luck to the game of L.A.M.A., the dice game transforms that luck into a collective experience of laughs, groans, and cheers.  And because it comes in at a breezy 20 minutes, that means that you can get in, have a colorful little riot, get out, and be on to the next game in the blink of an eye.

Patchwork

One cannot discuss board game spin-offs without discussing the legendary duo of A Feast for Odin and Patchwork.  The legend goes that while esteemed designer Uwe Rosenberg was crafting and polishing his magnum opus—the dense and sprawling polyomino worker placement game A Feast for Odin—he began to toy with a smaller 2-player design that focuses solely on the polyominoes.  

In this case, the spin-off ended up releasing a whole two years before its source material, but the end result was the same.  We got two excellent games from a master chef who went on to craft many more polyomino designs.  While Patchwork and A Feast for Odin cater to very different crowds, you never know if these two might be the gateway drug for polyomino lovers into the realm of heavy Euro games.

Pandemic: Iberia

Pandemic is an industry phenomenon that likewise has a cornucopia of spin-off titles thanks to its monstrous popularity and approachability as a cooperative game.  While many Pandemic spin-offs would be great options for this list, I opted for my favorite of the bunch.  This one features the opportunity to develop rail lines for faster travel plus a preventative buffer action of distributing water.

2 new actions, a different board, and a few rules tweaks doesn’t seem like it would make a big difference.  Yet Pandemic: Iberia is the best version of any Pandemic spinoff or copy-cat that I’ve ever played.  The stakes are raised, the strategy is deepened, the tension is thickened, and our love for Pandemic is rekindled. 

Schotten Totten 2

I see many folks point to Battle Line / Schotten Totten as their favorite 2-player game and/or favorite Knizia design of all time.  Who can blame them?  This clever 2-player card game of forming poker sets across a battle line is ripe with tough choices, narrow defeats, and tight victories.  

So what does a sequel to this masterpiece possibly have to offer?  Surprisingly, a lot.  Schotten Totten 2 approaches this tactical card game with a few interesting wrinkles that dramatically change the overall experience.  Both players have asymmetric objectives and abilities as one defends their wall while the other tries to break through.  Furthermore, each section of the wall features a unique formation requirement to keep you on your toes.  This one continues to grow on me with more plays, which is why it’s absolutely worthy of this list.

Brass: Birmingham

Here we have another spin-off that seemingly split it’s fanbase right down the middle as to which one they prefer.  But more than anything, I typically hear that fans of Brass are happy to play either Lancashire (the original) or Birmingham (the spin-off), and that’s the mark of a great spin-off based on a solid classic.

Birmingham offers a few twists to the Brass gameplay including a new scout action to obtain wild cards, several new industry types, and an additional commodity—the ever precious beer.  It seems that folks who like more flexibility opt for Birmingham while those who glutton for punishment prefer Lancashire, but you really can’t go wrong either way.

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea is perhaps the only spin-off on this list where many fans claim that it makes the original game obsolete in their collection.  That’s only because Mission Deep Sea possesses a more elegant mission structure that provides infinitely more possibilities.  This is another one I’ll be discussing further soon (in an upcoming first-impressions post), but since you’re here I might as well spoil my conclusion:

Much more than The Quest for Planet Nine, Mission Deep Sea feels like a game I can endlessly revisit (even after beating all the missions) because I’ll never see the same combination of objective cards.  Essentially, you can astutely consider Mission Deep Sea the Toy Story 2, the Spider-man 2, or the Shrek 2 of card games.  It takes a bona-fide classic and does it even better.

Yellow & Yangtze

Tigris & Euphrates is one of my favorite games of all time thanks to abyss of layered strategy and brilliant interactions that exist in its box.  While T&E has existed as a holy grail game for decades now, Reiner Knizia boldly decided to create a sister design to it only a few short years ago.  

While I consider the original to be a perfect experience, it seems as though every T&E complaint that someone might have regarding luck of the draw, value of the tiles, usefulness of leaders in the late game, brutality of the conflicts, etc., has been considered and addressed in one way or another here in Yellow & Yangtze.  Between the low-key enormous shift to hexagon spaces (from squares) and the shocking addition of yellow tiles (providing wild points), there’s an entirely new pool of possibilities to explore.  It’s so brilliantly distinct that I consistently have a commitment crisis just deciding which of these two favorites I should play next.

Tournament at Avalon

Some designs just understand how to embrace chaos and capture its essence within a ruleset that still manages to make you feel strategically clever.  Tournament at Camelot is one such design, and this trick-taking card game is further improved upon with the spin-off: Tournament at Avalon.  I haven’t even played the original game, but I understand enough to know that what Avalon adds to experience is something I couldn’t live without.  These improvements include more strategic flexibility for when you can play your wild cards plus even wackier powers that help make the most of this zany premise.  Check out my full review of this spin-off here.

Honorable Mentions

• Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion
• Pandemic Legacy
• Ra: The Dice Game
• The Quest for El Dorado: The Golden Temples
• Undaunted: North Africa
• Curious Cargo

Trailblazers—An Exciting New Spin-off

During my Most Anticipated Games of 2022 post, I shared how Trailblazers is to Pipeline as Patchwork is to A Feast for Odin.  Some might cry that I’m doing Curious Cargo a disservice by not including it in this comparison, as it is technically another spin-off of Pipeline that is even exclusively a 2-player game (similar to Patchwork).  That said, designer Ryan Courtney approached the design of Trailblazers in a dramatically different way from how he designed Curious Cargo.  So let’s explore a little bit more of what makes Trailblazers unique from its windy pipe siblings.

From day one, Ryan has approached the creation of Trailblazers with two priorities in mind:

1. Make the game rules as simple and approachable as possible (contrast this to Curious Cargo which was intended to cram as much brain-burning, decision-making complexity into a small-box as possible)
2. Develop compelling solo modes to make this a solo-friendly game as much as it is a family-friendly game

These two design goals have been like a guiding North Star through the entire development of Trailblazers.  We’ll save the discussion of that second priority for next month, but for now let’s explore what makes Trailblazers approachable for anyone yet satisfying for everyone.

Many folks will point to the spatial puzzle aspect of Pipeline and Curious Cargo (the windy pipe domino tiles) as their favorite element of those designs.  That’s because there is something inherently satisfying about finding and fitting the perfect tiles together to establish an elaborate network of routes.  Pipeline utilizes this puzzle to fit into a larger economic challenge where the spatial puzzle aspect simply becomes: “build your pipes as long as possible to help you refine oil.”  Curious Cargo cranks the spatial brutality up to eleven by giving you less flexibility in your tile options and more demands in what exactly needs to connect to where in order to ship and receive cargo of the curious kind.

Trailblazers features the same type of domino tiles (albeit these are cards, not tiles, and trails, not pipes or conveyer belts), yet this time the game steps completely out of the way and gives you a wide open field of endless possibilities.  Gone are the economic considerations and shipping demands.  Cast aside are the brain-melting conversions and pesky rules restrictions.  Here, you’ll simply be drafting two cards from a hand of options and arranging and layering them however you’d like.

The other side of the coin that really gives Trailblazers a distinct flavor is the objective of the game: to construct loops that start and end at a campsite of the matching trail color.  Like I mentioned previously, Pipeline asks its players to build long networks, Curious Cargo demands that they establish very specific and deliberate connections, but Trailblazers simply requests that your adventurous routes return back to their square camp card eventually.  Yet between that time period of now and eventually (or more specifically, before the end of the game), you can blaze your trails however you’d like.  

It seems almost too loose and free to be interesting, but the tension of the game is quickly uncovered when you must decide how far you wish to push your luck.  How long and elaborate and winding are you going to make your trail before you focus on connecting it back to camp?  How many loops are you going to invest your precious turns in before the final round of the game sneaks up on you and demands you complete them all?  A loop that is 99% complete is a loop that will score zero points at the end of the game.

Yet this push-your-luck pillar of Trailblazers is exactly why a game with rules as simple as “draft two cards and place them however you want” is still satisfying for more ambitious and experienced spatial puzzlers.  I consider myself a relative veteran, having played Ryan’s spatial puzzlers—including Trailblazers—many times.  Yet I’ve managed to lose the game to complete newcomers because I flew too close to the sun and got burned by my lofty ambitions while my opponents played smarter and safer.  And for a game that is over in the blink of an eye—usually about 30 minutes—I’m able to laugh at my failures rather than painfully regret my poor decisions or resent a stroke of bad luck.

That’s the beauty of Trailblazers for me.  It provides all the juicy spatial puzzling and brain-burning strategy that Ryan Courtney fans (such as myself) have come to love, yet it’s also a game that I can introduce to anybody and not completely crush them at thanks to its press-your-luck simplicity.  For a hobbyist who still can’t get enough of Pipeline (and its zesty new expansion) and Curious Cargo, Trailblazers is absolutely my kind of spin-off game.

Want to follow Trailblazers all the way to its Q2 Kickstarter launch? Be sure to subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter where we’ll continue to reveal more art, components, and details over the coming weeks.

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 Spin-off Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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

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

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

Welcome back to Tabletop Tastes: My favorite flavors in board games! This is a series where we spend each episode diving deep into an essential element of game design. For hobbyist gamers, this series will help you to explore your own tastes in the hobby and perhaps discover your next favorite game that fits those tastes. For game designers, this series will offer you more tools to add to your utility belt and metrics to measure your projects by.

If you missed the previous episode, then go on and check out Tabletop Tastes #11: Filling Turns.

Shameless Pride and Questionable Diets

Have you ever been unreasonably proud of an accomplishment that you should instead be ashamed of?  

For me, these pitifully proud accomplishments would include things like breaking 150 hours of playtime on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, eating some form of ice cream every day for a week straight, and being only 6 minutes late to work.

Another shameless accomplishment that I remember fondly occurred during my years in Junior High School.  It was seemingly a day just like any other until I found myself snacking on s’mores ice cream late in the evening and realized something truly magical had happened that day: I had consumed FOUR different kinds of s’mores flavored products in a single day.  Kelloggs s’mores cereal for breakfast, a s’mores Chewy granola bar for a snack, a s’mores Pop Tart after school, and s’mores ice cream for dessert.  Now before you go judging 14-year-old Nick, you need to understand that s’mores cereal contains ELEVEN vitamins and minerals.  I’m sure that completely changes how this all looks to you…

So while I got away with such a sweet treat feat back in my glory days, one can presume that this diet would quickly wreck an average human’s health and energy, even after only a few days.  I still love me a good s’mores flavored treat, but I try to keep a more balanced diet from one day to the next.  It’s amazing how different your body can feel when eating constant junk food compared to fresh, hearty, healthy food.

Cooperative Design – A Balancing Act

Balance is likewise important in board games, where an experience can quickly feel wrecked by a lack thereof.  Last episode, we talked about how Pandemic provides filling turns while another Pandemic-like game, Flash Point, struggles to satiate.  Well, Pandemic is again a great example to explore within the context of balance, particularly when compared with its younger sibling, Forbidden Desert.

Forbidden Desert has a combination of a fun theme and simple rules that plants itself firmly in the family-friendly, gateway game category.  It brings out the theme well as players thirstily, blindly, & desperately search the desert in a scramble to assemble a rescue machine before time runs out.

With this Forbidden series, the designer, Matt Leacock, shamelessly recycles the mechanisms of his legendary classic, Pandemic, to morph the system into a different theme.  Of course many cooperative designers do (and rightly should) take inspiration from Pandemic, so you can’t blame Mr. Leacock for doing this very thing.

The issue with Forbidden Desert is that it copies Pandemic’s recipe but leaves out one critical ingredient: difficulty balance.  In Pandemic, the game gets increasingly harder as time passes because more infection cards are drawn per turn.  This is mitigated by the cycling infection cards being predictable and by players being able to get stronger and increase their turn efficiency: they place buildings, eradicate diseases, and increase the cards in their hands.  Meanwhile, in Forbidden Desert, more “bad” cards per turn are drawn as the game progress, but players are not able to proportionally mitigate these problems.

Every experience that I’ve had playing Forbidden Desert follows the same course of multiplying piles of sand tokens that increasingly bog down each player’s turn effectiveness until they are finally put out of their misery in crushing defeat. With Forbidden Desert, what you end up with is a poor Pandemic copy-cat that much more frequently spirals out of control because of luck of the draw.  In Pandemic, you can usually blame yourselves for losing the game.  In Forbidden Desert, you’re usually blaming the game for losing the game; and more often than not, you’re losing the game.

Balance for Blandness

I’m perfectly fine with punishing games and challenging experiences, but Forbidden Desert just feels broken and unbalanced when compared to the superior Pandemic.  Yet there is something to be said for having too much balance in a diet—devoid of indulgent entrees or divine desserts—or too much fairness in a game.  Cole Werhle explains this issue best in his GDC talk about Kingmaking, his Ludology podcast interview about fairness, and his Dicebreaker interview about prioritizing “good” over “fun” in game design.  

In short, games that are devoid of “unfair” moments are games that frequently lack memorable, dramatic, and interesting experiences.  Cole explains further: 

“So a lot of event decks, the more you play, the more they are in development, they get milder and milder and milder. Because what they’re doing is they’re optimizing for fun and they’re optimizing against ‘feel bad’ moments.

“From my own design aesthetic, both of those things are horrible things to optimize for. Whenever I am working at Leder, we have friends in or people are visiting or working on games, if ever people start talking about ‘fun’ or ‘feel bad’, I’m like, ‘No, you can’t use those words.’ Because we’re not trying to make the game fun. We’re trying to make the game good. So ‘fun’ to me is this word that doesn’t really mean anything. Games have this massive emotional range – why would you want to make the game just about the giggles?  You could do that too but, when you’re optimizing for it, you’re going to remove a lot of the character of the project.”

Dicebreaker interview with Cole Werhle

The Merits of External Balance

So how do games keep healthy balance in harmony with dynamic character?  Cole’s most famous design, Root, is a great place to look.  This woodland war between deeply asymmetric creatures is an emotional roller coaster packed to the brim with overpowered maneuvers and unfair situations.  Despite this frequently unstable game state, the design allows for players to keep runaway leaders in check or boost lagging losers upward by forming enemies and forging alliances.  Root puts its own balance into the hands of the players and allows them to dictate the scales of favor.  The beauty of a highly interactive game is that internal balance (within the design and rules) can move to the back seat and let external balance (player influence and interaction) do the driving.

One game that I’ve found to severely lack and desperately need external balance is Tapestry.  During our first few plays with it, we had a blast igniting its many combotastic chain-reactions that result from the endless combinations of asymmetric Civilizations, unique tapestry cards, diverse technology cards, and varied advancement tracks.  Yet the cracks began to show as these combos proved to be highly variable in their effectiveness and all too dependent upon luck-of-the-draw.  Furthermore, the design teases players with the idea of interaction on the large central map of the board yet sucks the bones of the area control mechanism dry until it feels like a crumbling afterthought.  

Imagine what a truly dynamic map could do to mend this seemingly broken design… A map where wars and alliances matter and lucky runaway combos can be kept in check by crafty adversaries.  The thought of what might have been saddens me for a game that has so much going for it.  I ultimately found that the more I consumed Tapestry, the more it made me feel sick to my stomach and long for more substantial games.  Much like an all s’mores diet, it fails to provide the proper balance of nutrients that my hobbyist cravings demand.

Of course, something as potent as a sugar infused s’mores feast can hit the spot when properly timed and expected.

Tune in next time for Tabletop Tastes Episode 13: Purposefully Potent Meanness.

Other great games that contain balanced diets:

• Balanced strategy games: 7 Wonders, 7 Wonders Duel, Concordia, Brass: Birmingham, Beyond the Sun, Babylonia.
• Balanced cooperative games: The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, Horrified, Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, The Mind, Sprawlopolis.
• Games with heavy external balance: Pax Pamir (Second Edition), Inis, Tammany Hall, Cosmic Encounter, Lords of Vegas.

What games have you found to be finely balanced? Share with us in the comments below!

Article written by Nick Murray. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Tabletop Tastes #12: A Balanced Diet appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Welcome back to Tabletop Tastes: My favorite flavors in board games! This is a series where we spend each episode diving deep into an essential element of game design. For hobbyist gamers, this series will help you to explore your own tastes in the hobby and perhaps discover your next favorite game that fits those tastes. For game designers, this series will offer you more tools to add to your utility belt and metrics to measure your projects by. If you missed the previous episode, then go on and check out Tabletop Tastes #10: A Dynamic Arc.

Columbus, Ohio is a fantastic city for foodies.  Back when our family first moved there, we were constantly venturing out to interesting, unique, and popular local eateries.  We slowly discovered an entire collection of favorite restaurants that kept us returning for the four years we were around.  That doesn’t mean that every spot we tried was a hit…

I remember a couple hipster restaurants in particular that provided interesting cuisines but forgot that they were supposed to feed us!  We would order a standard item on their menu, pay the full price of a meal, and then receive a pitiful snack.  There are few worse feelings in this world than that of paying for a full meal and walking away still hungry.  Unsurprisingly, we never returned to these restaurants.

Just as important as a menu with filling meals is a board game with filling turns.  It’s one thing to leave players hungry for another session at the conclusion of a game.  It’s something entirely different to leave players unsatisfied from one turn to the next.  I recently touched upon the topic of fresh downtime and shared examples of Pax Pamir and Root as games that typically come with a lot of downtime but merit that long wait through satisfying turns and engaging downtime dynamics.  These games are comparable to waiting in a long line at a popular restaurant, but the wait is all worth it when you’re finally seated at the table having a King’s feast.

One game that recently struggled to provide me a similar turn feast between stretches of hungry downtime was Dune: Imperium.  From the creators of the smash-hit deck builder, Clank, Dune: Imperium blends together both deck builder and worker placement mechanisms in exciting new ways.  The brilliance of the game is how it often pits the rewards of deck building against the rewards of worker placement.  It may cost me a valuable card to place a worker into a matching, powerful space.  But if I don’t spend that card to place a worker, I can instead use it to acquire an even better card or other advantages at the end of the round.

Unfortunately, Dune: Imperium demands a level of downtime that I feel it doesn’t merit, at least at 4 players.  These dual layered mechanisms give participants twice as much to analyze, and it gets even slower when somebody claims the spot that another’s entire plan was built upon.  And even when my entire plan wasn’t blasted to smithereens, I often found myself waiting ages for play to go around the table only for me to do something as minuscule as place a worker and gain 1 water token.  When I already know this pitiful action is my best move at the end of my previous turn, that only makes the wait worse.

At least with Dune, I can see myself enjoying the game much more at a lower player count or with fast, experienced players where the downtime hunger is minimized.  I’m not sure I can say the same thing for Flash Point: Fire Rescue.

Flash Point is another off-brand Pandemic that paints a nice thematic picture but ultimately fails to justify its existence among the competition for me.  I get that this was one of the earlier Pandemic clones, but the formula is so overdone at this point that many cooperatives in this genre struggle to age well, including Flash Point.  My experience with this firefighting game revealed a messier design where players are much more likely to encounter useless turns.

A turn in Pandemic earns you extra cards into your hand as a bare minimum; furthermore, it allows you to improve the efficiency of your turns by building research centers, or you can prepare and plan ahead by trading cards or removing infection cubes.  Meanwhile, Flash Point tries to compensate for wasted turns by letting players carry over up to 4 unused actions, but that brings little comfort when you wait for play to go all the way around the table only for it to finally get back to you as you realize that the most useful thing to do is skip your turn.  Often, there is little space for strategic actions when the negative events are completely random (unlike Pandemic which is strategically predictable).

Furthermore, we played Flash Point at 6 players and that is the WORST idea the publisher ever had for this game.  Does the game work at 6 players?  Yes.  Does it work well?  Not at all.  If you want the game to be more difficult to win, then sure, have at the 6 player option.  But it’s a hollow challenge bump because everyone’s impact on game is reduced relative to the objectives.  This is where you get even more frequently useless turns that are even more punishing due to the increased downtime.  There is often no point in setting yourself up for your next turn as the game state is going to completely change by the time your next turn crawls around.

What’s the maximum player count on Pandemic?  FOUR.  It’s because the team behind Pandemic realized that any count higher than four made their game worse in every possible way.  Flash Point had the entire cheat sheet to work off of and yet it completely missed the memo.

Speaking of classics that struggle to be filling, Catan deserves a mention here.  Most of us have played Catan and can recall the painful rounds where Lady Luck leaves you high and dry and the dice rolls earn you nothing useful.  So when it finally comes back to your turn, you have almost nothing to show for all that downtime and nothing you can accomplish that round.  Fortunately, in the 25 years since its release, many games have shown us a better way than Catan’s inconsistent methods.

Concordia is my favorite Catan-killer.  Both games see players utilizing routes and building little wooden settlements onto a map.  In both cases, these settlements will earn players more resources from the map to help them build, expand, and compete for victory.  They are both rather easy to teach, yet Concordia contains much more depth to enjoy and explore.  Best of all, I can always expect a filling turn from Concordia.  This design rips control of the resource production from Lady Luck’s grasp and gives it to the players.  When an opponent decides to trigger production in the green region, that will also trigger production for you if you’ve built settlements there.  And whenever the quick, slick turns come back around to you, there is always an interesting and useful action to choose from your hand of cards.

Like a big, hearty meal that sends you home with a belly full of food and an armful of leftovers, the best games ensure that each player enjoys filling turns.  Of course, filling turns are better than empty stomachs, but the things you consume won’t don’t you much good if they aren’t part of a balanced diet.

Tune in next time for Tabletop Tastes #12: A Balanced Diet

More great designs that serve filling turns:

Critical Turns: Brass: Birmingham, The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, Age of Steam, Babylonia, El Grande, Undaunted, Bus.

Combotastic Turns: Curious Cargo, Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade, Blitzkrieg, That’s Pretty Clever, Five Tribes, Wingspan.

What are your favorite games with filling turns?

Article written by Nick Murray. To follow his designs as they come to fruition, subscribe to our newsletter and follow Bitewing Games on social media!

The post Tabletop Tastes #11: Filling Turns appeared first on Bitewing Games.

New to the hobby of board games? Welcome! A seasoned vet looking for ways to get your friends and family into the hobby? You’re in the right place.

The worst thing you could do is introduce your friends/family to the wrong game, making them erroneously decide that board games aren’t for them. So what makes a good board game for beginners?

It needs to be fun!

Obvious right?!?! But seriously, what ingredients are guaranteed to provide an experience that will make the players hungry for more? The best board games for beginners need:

• Accessibility – short, easy to learn rules. No one entering the world of games wants to sit through 20 minutes of instructions before actually starting a game.
• Meaningful Decisions – how fun is it to have the person next to you tell you the best thing to do every turn of a game? I’ll answer for you – not fun at all! A game should allow players to make decisions on their own, where there isn’t necessarily a right or best choice.
• Memorable Moments – this can come from those decisions we just mentioned. Or they can come from unique mechanics of the game or intriguing player interaction.

Enough theoretical chit chat – lets get to the list!

10 Best Board Games for Beginners

1. Ticket to Ride – Forge a path across the country by collecting colorful train cards.
2. Azul – The tiles are beautiful, the decisions are interesting, this is a surefire hit.
3. Kingdomino – Lay domino-type tiles in a grid, striving to earn more points than your competitors.
4. Splendor – Collect and spend beautiful gem tokens to buy victory points and attract nobles.
5. Carcassonne – Connect square tiles to grow and build a kingdom – careful or others may sneak in and share or steal those points.
6. Catan – Roll the dice to earn resources to grow your settlements. Hoarders beware: the robber will show no mercy.
7. Wavelength – A group/party game that is sure to leave you with lots to talk about, and maybe even sore sides from laughter.
8. Bohnanza – A game of negotiation, trading, and bean farming, great for up to 7 players looking for fun interaction and strategy.
9. Pandemic – A cooperative board game where you’ll find you and your friends working as a team to save the world from an impending infectious doom.
10. Majesty: For the Realm – A quick game of collecting cards and taking actions, Majesty is one of the best board games for beginners.

1. Ticket to Ride

In an online poll, this game is by far the highest rated “gateway game” to get people into the hobby.

Ticket to Ride has you collecting train cards to forge a path across the country completing objectives. But each path can only be taken by one player – who will get it first?

Alan R. Moon, the board game creater himself said “The tension comes from being forced to balance greed – adding more cards to your hand, and fear – losing a critical route to a competitor.”

Lay your cards too early and give away exactly where you are going. Hold onto the cards for too long, and discover another player has stolen your path. Ticket to Ride stands out as a best board game for beginners for a reason! While it is easy to learn and play, it still heavily features meaningful decisions – where there isn’t one right way to do things.

Ticket to Ride America is the classic, the Vanilla. Feeling a little more adventurous? Check out one of the other versions – Europe and Africa are my 2 favorites.

2. Azul

This game checks off all 3 of my boxes for best board game for beginners.

Accesibility – Short rule book. Quick to teach and learn. Anyone can pick up the rules lickity-split.

Meaningful Decisions – You are collecting tiles from center draw piles. But each time you take tiles you are also making other tiles more availble for other players. Simple actions, with meaningful decisions attached.

Memorable Moments – Choose carefully which of the 5 rows of your player board you will lay these tiles on. The order and timing of where you lay the tiles is the crux of this game.

A perfect game for the newbie and the old-timer alike. More detail on Azul here. There are two additional versions of Azul beyond the original…so once you’ve gotten into one, you have more options to choose between down the road.

3. Kingdomino

This game uses tiles with two sections, similar to Dominoes. Each turn, each player will select a new domino to connect to their existing kingdom, making sure at least one of its sides connects to a matching terrain type already in play.

Select the cream of the crop tile now, and get stuck being the last one to choose your tile the next round. Talk about meaningful decisions each round!

Each game will provide unique objectives – ways to earn more points based off of which tiles you lay where. Kingdomino is easy to learn and fun to play. And it literally will play in 15 minutes.

4. Splendor

When it comes to the best board games for beginners, Splendor tops my list. While it may not top my list of all time favorite games, I have yet to teach it to someone who doesn’t instantly love it.

Splendor has amazing little poker chip style tokens; gem tokens. You will use your turns to collect these tokens. Upon growing your collection, you can now spend them to buy development cards – which give you points and also award you a bonus gem – a permanent discount on any future purchases.

Maybe there is one card out there that is really calling your name, but your neighbor almost has all the gems needed to buy it before you… No problem! You can reserve the card so no one else can take it.

Splendor is one of the easiest games to learn, and offers fun decision making.

5. Carcassonne

This game has a few unique concepts for the beginner to wrap their minds around, but that doesn’t mean it is difficult to learn.

Players will take turns placing tiles in the center of the table. Unlike most games where you play pieces on a board, you are actually creating the game board as you go, laying more and more tiles to create a French landscape.

Connecting roads to roads, cities to cities, players will grow and shape this central “playing board,” earning points along the way.

Not only will you lay tiles, but you will also play little wooden people (meeple) on the board, claiming stake of that road or that city. And here is where it gets really interesting – you can join or close off cities depending on if you play your tiles right – getting more points for you, or stopping another player from completing a city and earning any points at all.

Full of great decisions and introducing unique mechanics, Carcossonne is one of the best board games for beginners!

6. Catan

At what point does a game hit the status of “a classic,” cause Catan may be there. Catan, previously known as Settlers of Catan, gives players the opportunity to build settlements around hexagagonal tiles. New settlements and roads don’t appear out of thin air, they require lumber, ore, brick. Players will gain resources if they have a settlement built around a tile that has its number rolled.

This is a great board game for beginners because there is such a fun sense of growth as the game progresses. While there are decisions, they are not overwhelming so it is easy for the new player to catch on quickly.

7. Wavelength

I was torn putting a party-style game on a list of games for beginners…isn’t that like one step back? I wondered. But hear me out. You’ll split into 2 teams, one person will give a clue based off of a card, and the team will twist a dial to make their guess. While it is basically your classic 2 team party game, Wavelength stands out in its freshness. There isn’t quite as much riding on the cluegiver – making players less prone to dread the idea of being the cluegiver.

Wavelength also has a nice spinner and markers to keep score, not totally unlike other party games, but I think these things really get non-gamers more comfortable with tallying score and having more on the table than just a deck of playing cards or clue cards.

8. Bohnanza

If you ask me what strategy game the whole family can play – I’ll point you to Bohnanza. This easily makes it on my list of best board games for beginners. As a bean farmer you are trying to collect beans – the more of a type you collect the more they are worth.

The catch, you can’t reorder the cards in your hand…and you can only have 2 types of beans at a time that you’re collecting. So how do you get cards that you want? Negotiation! And that is where this game shines. Some games are played on the table – Splendor for example. I feel like there isn’t much chit chat going on in Splendor, just a bunch of people staring at the pieces of the board game. Bohnanza is the opposite – you will spend more time looking at and talking to players than you will looking at the cards on the table.

And Bohnanza plays up to 7 players, so for a bigger family or larger group of friends – Bohnanza is my game of choice!

9. Pandemic

Like Catan, Pandemic at this point is a Classic! Pandemic is a cooperative game – that means you are playing as a team trying to beat the game. The deck of cards and the clock are working against you as your team tries to cure a deadly disease that is threatening all of mankind…and womankind. Humankind?!?

Each player has a special ability, and if you can work together effectively you will be able to eradicate the disease by moving your characters around the board sharing information and curing disease outbreaks. This game works wonderfully with new players, because if they are confused they have no information to hide – you’re on a team, they can ask any question they like.

Just beware of the alpha-gamer. You know the kind, that one guy who knows what is best for everyone and isn’t afraid to tell you exactly what to do. Pandemic is a great board game for beginners!

10. Majesty: For the Realm

One of the most underrated games I have ever played. I said you don’t want to take 20 minutes to teach a game to a new player. In Majesty you can explain AND play this game in 20-30 minutes.

Each turn is as simple as take an available card. That is it! Each card you take will award you points for the character card you take, along with the combination of other cards you have already acquired. The points earned are straight forward and easy to tally – no degree in accounting needed. And don’t be decieved. Just because your only option is to take a card doesn’t mean that the game is simple or boring – plenty of meaningful decisions here!

Like I said, Risk, Monopoly, Uno…that’s just the tip of the iceburg. These 10 games are surefire hits for you as a new gamer, or your friends who aren’t (yet) into the world of board games. Now, stop reading and start playing!

Article Written by Kyle. With 7 siblings, all with varying interest in board games, Kyle is well acquainted with what games work well for “newcomers” in the board game hobby.

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Starting to feel a little stir-crazy? Need something to entertain yourself and your household? You’ve come to the right place! Read on to discover 10 games to enjoy amid a quarantine…

Now that 2020 has been canceled, you might find yourself like me wondering what the heck you are going to do with all this free time! Of course, you could write a random blog post to keep yourself sane (e.g. this one). Or if you want to make things really interesting, you can find yourself a fun new activity to enjoy with a small group of fellow humans in hazmat suits.

Seeing how going out is getting to be a bit taboo at the moment, I’m going to present to you a list of games that can be delivered to your quarantined doorstep by the brave souls of Amazon’s delivery service. Just make sure to submerge the package in bleach for 1 hour before opening it.

My other criteria for selecting games included things like: plays well a lower player counts, easily accessible for almost anyone in your household, currently in stock and affordable, especially fitting for a quarantine, and some newer games that are flying under the radar (for those of you who have already played everything else).

Right then, let’s get started!

#1 For Sale

Oh baby. This one makes me giddy with hype just thinking about it.

Is there still even hype for this 1997 game? There absolutely should be. For Sale is one of the best fillers to hit our table in a very long time. I recently highlighted the crunchy meaningful decisions it provides in another blog post. The tasty combination of bluffing and bidding morph an appetizer game into a fantastic feast of fun.

In my opinion, the box art does this game a huge disservice in looking generic, cheap, and flavorless. It’s even more surprising to contrast that with the charming card art and solid quality of components (I’m referring to the normal version linked above, NOT the travel version with the thin paper coins).

For Sale reaches the loftiest heights thanks to its dead simple rules, zippy play time, meaty strategy, and tense gameplay. This is one you can break out anybody… your parents, your uncle, your kids, your neighbors that you trust when they say they’re not sick… and it is guaranteed to be a blast!

#2 Mandala

The world has a serious problem right now, and that problem is that Mandala is flying under everyone’s radars! I honestly believe Lookout Games has an evergreen classic on their hands if they can just get some belated hotness momentum going with this one.

The game is beautifully simple: either play a set of cards onto your side or a single card into the middle. But from that simplicity bursts a wicked ride through your rival’s mind as you battle in a contest of wits and risks. This 20-minute thrill ride will have you repeatedly coming back for more.

Mandala joins the ranks of other great two player classics in our collection (Jaipur, Hanamikoji, Patchwork, Fox in the Forest, etc.) thanks to its addictive elegance, speed, and tension.

#3 Baba is You for Nintendo Switch, PC

Now hold on, I know what you’re thinking: “What the heck, this is a board game blog?!” That may be true, but what you haven’t considered is that your poor friend, Charley, who is locked in his apartment all by himself with nobody else to gather around the table doesn’t like to play board games solo! What about him, eh?!? Well, I’ll tell you what. He’s gonna have the time of his life playing Baba is You on his Nintendo Switch (or PC).

This one’s for all you brave souls out there who don’t back down from a brain melting puzzle. The game is extremely easy to play, but completing all of its 200+ levels is a disgustingly tasty challenge. To play, simply move good old Baba around (up, down, left, or right) and solve the endless vat of delightful mysteries. You see, our friend Baba here can push things around like they are sliding blocks. These pushable things are literally ANYTHING you see on the screen from the word “Key” to the key itself… of course, if the words line up into a rule, then Baba (and the level) must abide by those rules.

As you can see in the image above, “Baba is You” means that when you press right, Baba moves right. “Flag is Win” means that you (Baba) simply need to touch the flag to win. “Door is Stop” means that Baba can’t push the door, but “Door is Shut” means that the door can be opened. Hmmm, I wonder what happens if Baba starts pushing that nearby “Is” around… Even more, I wonder what happens when something else gets pushed in front of “is You.” **heavy breathing intensifies**

Baba is You is easily one of the best puzzle games ever crafted in the history of Puzzlization. You owe it to yourself to give it a try! Just don’t expect to beat it completely before this “Corona is You” thing is finished.

#4 Sagrada

Looking to change things up from the legendary Azul (our top recommended game that everyone should try)? Sagrada makes for a scrumptious substitute! This gorgeous game of crafting a stained glass window from colorful dice has been one of my wife’s absolute favorites from the moment we first tried it. Sometimes it feels nice to just sit back and craft your own window.

#5 Trophies

This one’s for all you barbarians out there still throwing underground party game nights with illegal OUTSIDERS. Trophies comes in an affordably stunning tin and tests your quick wits against others in a quick and engaging experience.

In the game, the judge holds the deck, reads a topic from the back card, and shows the group a random letter on the front card. Be the first to say a relevant word that starts with the letter and fits the topic to win the trophy card! Best of all, the player with the most trophy cards at the end of the game earns the exclusive right of hoisting the tiny metal trophy high above their head in sweet, glorious triumph.

Some day I will be the Lord of the Trophies. Some day….

#6 That’s Pretty Clever

Well, well, well. You think you’re pretty clever, eh? We’ll see about that.

That’s Pretty Clever (also known as Ganz Schon Clever) is a smash-hit Roll & Write game from 2018. On your turn, simply roll 6 different colored dice and select one to write onto your scoring pad; rolling the dice and selecting one is performed 3 times each turn. What’s so clever about that, you ask?

The catch is that if you select a die that had a super good roll (like a 6), then you have to discard every other die that had a lower number. This means that you can’t roll those dice and select them during your second and third rolls of your turn! Worse still, any dice that you didn’t select will end up on the (literal) silver platter for your opponents to cherry pick one of for their own sheets! Being clever is not just about choosing the right dice at the right time, but it’s also about keeping the best rolls away from your opponents.

This quick cornucopia of clever combos has brought us to the table many, many times. Even with relatively low player interaction, the game is one that I’ve found to contain plenty of tension to satisfy my gaming palate.

#7 Arboretum

Needing a little more nature in your life? Why not try out my favorite nature game, Arboretum (coming in strong at my 14th favorite game of all time)? You’ll feel much more refreshed after taking the opportunity to stab 1-3 other people in the back with this cutthroat game of palpable tension and leafy fun. Don’t be scared off by all my knife talk; this one is beautifully simple and fast.

#8 Animal Crossing: New Horizons for Nintendo Switch

Come live your best life on your very own deserted island courtesy of Tom Nook’s Deserted Island Getaway Package. We still have a week to wait before this game releases on Nintendo Switch, but after that, I won’t blame you if you secretly wish for a little more quarantine time thanks to this delightful little experience.

#9 Watergate

If you’re anything like myself, you might take a glance a this historical/political game called Watergate and think to yourself, “That looks cool, but it’s probably not for me.” Now you just hold it right there. Give me one paragraph to change your mind:

From a first glance, Watergate looks intimidating and complex, but that is FAR from the truth. This game is so smooth and streamlined, that you’ll be fully engaged within no time! In this thematic two-player game, one person will play as the Nixon Administration and the other will play as Journalist seeking to bring them down. In simple terms, players are fighting for control over tokens on a tug-of-war track that will either help to block or create paths on the pin-board. The asymmetric tug-of-war gameplay makes for a deliciously tense experience as Nixon tries to bury the evidence that the Journalist continually digs up. Perhaps best of all, this recently released hit plays in roughly 45 minutes and only costs $30.

#10 Pandemic

You knew it was coming. No quarantine entertainment list is complete without the legendary Pandemic itself. The link above simply takes you to the search results for “Pandemic Board Game” on Amazon, but let me offer you a little more direction…

If you have never played Pandemic, then the best place to start is with the old reliable vanilla version. We’ve recommended this cooperative classic before, and for good reason. There is something so satisfying about clearing those disease cubes off the map and finding a cure as a team.

If you want to try the hottest of the bunch, then Pandemic Legacy Season 1 is it. This game starts out as your classic Pandemic, but it incrementally adds layers and drama over the course of 12 sessions as you unveil stickers, pieces, and cards to be added to the components and rules. My wife and I have had a blast taking on the challenge each and every time (we’re currently more than half way through the sessions).

If you really want to change things up, then I hear Pandemic Iberia (pictured above) is a knock-out spin-off. This one keeps things fresh by requiring players to develop rail networks and distribute purified water.

Bonus Fun

10 Cloverfield Lane, Contagion

These obviously aren’t games, but they’re thematically appropriate entertainment none-the-less. I’m not sure how many quarantine-style movies exist in this world, but 10 Cloverfield Lane has gotta be one of the best; it’s perfect for an evening of sweaty palms and clenched cheeks. As for a movie to help you feel extra anxious about COVID-19, Contagion is is your best bet. Happy viewing!

How are you planning to spend your time cooped up? Share with us in the comments below!

The post 10 Games to Enjoy Amid a Quarantine appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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

KYLE – SUSHI GO PARTY!

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

 

NICK – THE MIND

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

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

 

KYLE – DOMINION

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

NICK – TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES

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

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

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

KYLE – DIXIT

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

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

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

 

NICK – WAVELENGTH

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

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

KYLE – WACKEE SIX

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

NICK – CONCORDIA

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

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

KYLE – COVER YOUR ASSETS

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

NICK – CROKINOLE

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

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

 

KYLE – WELCOME TO…

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

NICK – EL GRANDE

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

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