One question I constantly see in board game forums is this: “What are the best travel-friendly board and card games?”  Whether you’re headed out on a business trip, visiting friends and family, or simply taking a vacation, it’s always nice to have something to entertain the group.  Yet board games typically come in huge boxes that don’t always fit in a backpack, purse, or suitcase with your other belongings.  This is the perfect time to have a travel-friendly board or card game that comes in a small package and/or takes up minimal space on a table.  

With those needs in mind, I’ve assembled a list of the Best Travel-Friendly board and card games for any occasion:

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Best Wallet Game – Sprawlopolis

 

Let’s get this one right out of the way.  Wallet games are perhaps the most travel-friendly games that money can buy.  One publisher, Button Shy Games, specializes in this type of bite-sized fun, and one of their best titles is Sprawlopolis or Agropolis.  This is a design we’ve recommended extensively between our Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games as well as our Top 10 Spatial Puzzle Games because it takes 18 cards and turns them into a delightful challenge best suited for one or two players.

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Best Standard Deck Game – Regicide

Even if you don’t own an official copy of Regicide, this is one that you can technically track down anywhere and everywhere because the design uses a standard deck of playing cards.  Then, all you have to do is download the rulebook and you are off to the races.

Of course, buying the official Regicide deck is a great way to support the creators for making a fantastic cooperative experience for 1-4 players where you struggle to take down the Jacks, Queens, then Kings.  This is one that comes with me to basically any game night because it slots so easily into my game bag and never fails to entertain for 10-30 minutes.

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Best Trick-Taking Game – The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, Ghosts of Christmas

 

Trick-taking games are a dime a dozen, and the cream of the crop always hits the spot at our table whether I’m playing with hobbyist gamers or non-gamers.  I’ll offer two suggestions here, both excellent and relatively new.  The Crew: Mission Deep Sea was just crowned as one of my Top 15 Games of 2021 for being an addicting crowd-pleaser where you work together to complete wacky round objectives.  Meanwhile, Ghosts of Christmas puts a twist on the formula by allowing players to play tricks into the past, present, and future in any order they wish; plus it’s the perfect game to take home for the holidays.

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Best Pub Game – Skull, Art Robbery

 

I constantly hear folks online asking about the “best game to take to the pub.”  My answer?  Skull.  Skull takes simple bluffing and makes it a riot of a time… whether you are inebriated or not.  Each turn is as simple as placing a disc facedown onto your stash or bidding how many of everybody’s discs you think you can flip without revealing a skull.  Just make sure your bartender doesn’t confuse the discs for coasters.

That said, many folks already own Skull.  So for those of you who want something new and fresh, my follow-up recommendation is Art Robbery.  This one features double-layered thievery—art robbers are splitting the loot with each other via forceful, sticky-fingered methods.  The card play is simple enough that there is no chance of overwhelming your brain, yet the gameplay features some clever twists and funny moments making it perfect for a casual, raucous atmosphere.

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Best Party Game – Insider, A Fake Artist Goes to New York

 

Need a small game for a big, boisterous group?  Look no further than Insider and A Fake Artist Goes to New York by Oink Games.  Oink Games are the masters of putting big, memorable moments into cute, tiny boxes.  Insider is their take on 20 questions with a twist: What if the 20-question limit was replaced with a sand timer, and what if one questioner was secretly a traitor who already knew the answer and wanted you to guess it without you noticing that they guided you to it so they can steal the victory for themself?  Meanwhile, a Fake Artist also has a traitor in that one person does not know the secret topic of the round and is trying to get away with artistic fraud and deception!  

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Best Table-less Game – Trophies

Portable party games are great for casual trips or gatherings, but what if your gathering place has no table to play upon?  In that case, your best bet would be something like Trophies.  Trophies is the simplest, most approachable game on this list, yet it’s also the loudest.  One player clutches a stack of trophy cards and displays one card at a time to the group—each card displays a single large letter.  The lead player then selects and reads aloud a category on the back of the deck such as “Something blue,” “Something slow,” or “Minor Ailment,” and the first person to call out a word that starts with the big letter and relates to that category earns the trophy card.  Once the deck is gone, the player with the most trophies wins.  Whether you’re the lead player judging and awarding the group’s words or a competitor wracking your brain for the first word that comes to mind, you’re bound to have funny time.

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Best 2-Player Game – Schotten Totten 2

This next recommendation is for those of you who think this list is starting to sound more like a party list than a travel-friendly curation.  Schotten Totten 2 is a recent release from one of the greatest 2-player (or any player count, for that matter) game designers of all time, Dr. Reiner Knizia.  Featuring asymmetric strategy, a delightfully zany theme of chickens vs. scotsmen, and characteristically elegant rules, Schotten Totten 2 is the excellent standalone sequel to one of the most widely revered 2-player games (Battle Line / Schotten Totten).  To top it off, the box isn’t much larger than a hen’s egg.

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Best Family Card Game – Startups, SCOUT

 

We’re back with more adorable Oink Games, namely Startups and SCOUT!  Both titles have been effortlessly approachable and addicting for my family members including siblings, cousins, parents, and more.  Both games possess the simplicity of evergreens such as Uno or Phase 10, yet they also provide a superior strategy and tension that will keep you satisfied throughout.  Startups is all about investing just a little bit more in companies than your opponents, while SCOUT sees players recruiting performers into their hand to help them put on a good circus show.

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Best Cooperative Game – The Mind, The Game, Hanabi

 

If your family or friends shy away from competitive settings, then perhaps a cooperative game is in order?  The Mind and The Game (yes, that is its title) are two peas in a pod of being games where players must collectively discard cards from their hands in ascending or descending order without saying anything.  It doesn’t sound like much of a game at all, but somehow it works and it’s thrilling!  Meanwhile, Hanabi is a beloved classic of holding your hand inside-out, meaning everyone can see your cards except you, and giving each other hints about the cards you can see.  Hanabi has had such an impact on me that it inspired the creation of our upcoming publication, Gussy Gorillas, which takes the inside-out hand concept and turns it into a competitive game of trading and bluffing.

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Best Social Deduction Game – Scape Goat, Durian

 

Speaking of bluffing, animals, and not seeing every card, Scape Goat and Durian have proven to be excellent games of deduction and deceit at our table.  Durian is another Oink Game, yet this one comes with a tiny bell and a whole bunch of fruit cards.  Every turn you and your fellow storefront apes must face a difficult decision: take another fruit order or tattle tale on an opponent?  If you think your fruit orders exceed your inventory, then you can call the boss with the ring of a bell and hope that your theory is right, because if you’re wrong then he’ll get mad at you instead!  Meanwhile, Scape Goat is all about throwing a fellow criminal under the bus without them even realizing it… the only problem is that poor sap might actually be you!

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Best Solo Game – Under Falling Skies

I fully admit that Under Falling Skies is the largest box and thus the least travel-friendly game on this list, yet I wouldn’t hesitate to toss it into my backpack or suitcase if I knew I’d have downtime for a great solo session.  This one has been featured a fair amount recently between my Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games as well as my Revisiting the Best Board Games of 2020.  To put it plainly, there is much to love about this solo game featuring difficult dice decisions and pesky alien invasions.

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Best Game to Take on Outdoor Adventures – Trailblazers

Now I could argue that Trailblazers also belongs in the Best Solo Game and Best Family Card Game categories, but today we’ll just focus in on its Outdoor Adventure compatibility.  When Ryan Courtney and I were initially hashing out the production plan of his puzzly card game, Trailblazers, we found ourselves facing two clashing possibilities.  On the one hand, Trailblazers could feature various modules or expansions that mix up the core gameplay and bring charming animal and traveler figures to the experience.  On the other hand, we could make a travel-friendly version that features purely cards and focuses on the rock solid standard mode gameplay.  The solution we settled on: Both? Both. Both is good.

While the Standard and Deluxe Editions of Trailblazers are best tailored for hobbyist gamers who want the most variety and content from a standard game box, the Travel Edition became our chance to really lean into the theme of hiking, biking, and kayaking with the packaging and material selection.  We’ve seen many creative packages for board and card games from button shy wallets and pseudo book covers all the way to banana pouches and stuffed monkeys, yet there is one type of package that I’m surprised has been largely overlooked by publishers up to this point.  To me, nothing says outdoor adventure and travel-friendly like a small clamshell case and carabiner, and thus our Trailblazers: Travel Edition was born.

Ryan admits that Trailblazers is his first published design that will appeal to casual and hobbyist gamers alike.  With the help of artist Seth Lucas, who as worked on everything from hiking patches to John Muir books, we knew we could craft a game fit for both friendly local game stores as well as national park gift shops.  

Beyond the ability to attach the Travel Edition to a backpack, we wanted to make sure the cards could hold up under endless plays and rigorous conditions.  So for those who buy the Super Travel or Deluxe editions of Trailblazers, your game will come with 100% PVC cards (durable, water-resistant, plastic cards).

So whether you want an affordable, portable game or a box crammed with content, you’ll be able to acquire the travel-friendly clamshell case, carabiner, and PVC cards via the Trailblazers Super Travel or Deluxe edition when our Kickstarter project launches this August.  You can subscribe to the Kickstarter pre-launch page here. And we absolutely need your help!  Bitewing Games is only made possible and kept alive by the support of backers and fans of our published games.   Thanks for your support!

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 Best Travel-Friendly Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

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.

Tis the season to buy more board games for your friends and family (and maybe even treat yourself)! Selecting the perfect gift can often be a Nightmare before Christmas, but worry not, Bitewing Games is here to guide you to some of the hottest games of the year for casual and hobbyist gamer alike.

Our selection criteria for this guide includes the following:

• The games have been tried, tested, and approved by us and/or trusted critics
• The games are generally available to purchase (links will be provided below to sites where you can purchase them)
• We won’t recommend anything from our past Holiday Gift Guides, but we still fully endorse those previous guides, so if you need even more recommendations then check out our 2020 Guide.

For your information, we receive no financial compensation, sponsorship, or advertisement money for this guide or these recommendations. The following are simply games we genuinely believe are great Holiday gifts. So why even make this guide? Well for one, we love to see this hobby grow. It means more games, gamers, and fun for everyone! Second, if you find value in our content, then we’d love to have you join our Bitewing Games newsletter! We use our newsletter to send regular updates regarding our latest content (like this gift guide) and publications (such as our Criminal Capers Collection of card games).

Let’s dive into the fun! Our 2021 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide is split into sections for your scrolling convenience (or you can click the link to jump to that section of the page):

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

Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer

Many people enjoy a good board or card game, but they don’t have the time or energy to invest in long/complicated games. The following games all play in roughly an hour or less and feature easy rules with stellar gameplay—perfect for any friends or family!

Kabuto Sumo – $34

If you’re at all familiar with coin pushing games found at the arcade, then you already understand the core mechanism of Kabuto Sumo. In this game, players are beetle wrestlers who try to push opponents out of the ring to win. This box is filled with chunky wooden discs and tokens of various shapes and sizes, and it features some of the most refreshing gameplay in years (click here to read my full impressions of the game).

This one features a kid-friendly mode, and competitive mode for adults, and works great from 2-4 players. In short, you can’t go wrong with making this Christmas a Kabuto Christmas.

Support the Publisher—Buy directly from Board Game Tables (this game is only available directly from the publisher)

Equinox – $40

Equinox is a fantastic card game from Reiner Knizia with a lovely presentation from artist Chris Quilliams. For those who aren’t aware, Reiner Knizia is the very same designer who invented our Criminal Capers Collection!

Here, players place bets on which mystical creatures they believe will last until the end of the game, and then they must play their cards wisely to keep their chosen champions alive! There is loads of replayability to be enjoyed here, as each session is crammed with cutthroat player interaction and uses only eight of the fourteen creatures and their unique abilities. You can learn more about why we love this game in my first impressions post.

Support the Publisher—Buy Equinox directly from Plan B Games

See current Equinox deals from online retailers

Hibachi – $30

If you’ve been looking to become a master chef, here’s your big chance!

Like Kabuto Sumo, Hibachi also features a mix of strategy and dexterity. This unique blend of mechanisms is one that I found to be quite engaging! 2-4 players take turns tossing their poker chips onto the large board, and they can buy or sell the ingredients that their chips land on. You can even aim for the smaller bonus spaces or knock opponent discs away from coveted spots. A precise flick of the wrist helps, but you’ll also need to play smart to manage your money wisely and outbid your competition.

All this is part of a race to complete three recipes first and win the game. It’s delightfully unique, it’s deliciously challenging, it’s Hibachi.

See current Hibachi deals from online retailers (this one is not available to purchase directly from publisher Grail Games)

Ethnos – $40

Don’t let the box art scare you off! Ethnos actually shares a lot in common with legendary family game Ticket to Ride. I admit that the visuals of this game could be more attractive and inviting, but what if I told you that I’ve introduced this game to dozens of people (friends, family, gamers, non-gamers) and ALL have LOVED it? It’s true! There’s a reason that Ethnos is in my top 50 games of all time!

Let Kyle share with you why this game rocks in only 7 minutes:

Support the Publisher—Buy Ethnos directly from CMON/Asmodee

See current Ethnos deals from online retailers

Chinatown – $45

I love a good game of trading and negotiation, and Chinatown is one of the best of this genre. Like Ethnos, this classic is a massive crowdpleaser. It features dead simple rules, wonderfully memorable player interactions, and satisfyingly clever possibilities.

The magic of Chinatown lies in the fact that you can trade anything however you’d like—property, tiles, money, favors, you name it! There is something so raw and satisfying about turning your worthless assets into profitable deals. But at the end of the day, the player with the most money earned from lucrative deals and businesses is the ultimate winner. This one is ranked #10 in my top 50 board games of all time, and it becomes an instant favorite for nearly everyone I show it to. Enough said.

See current Chinatown deals from online retailers (this one is not currently available directly from publisher Z-Man Games/Asmodee)

Gifts for your Significant Other

Want to give a game that says “I love you?” How about a game that you can enjoy together over and over again? We’ve got you covered with these recommendations:

My City – $35

If you follow Bitewing Games and the content we put out, then you understand that we are physically incapable of recommending My City enough. This masterclass polyomino legacy game from Reiner Knizia is featured in:

• My top 50 games list
• Our recent podcast discussion of games we’ve been playing
• My interview with designer Reiner Knizia himself
• My Top 10 Reiner Knizia Games article
• My deep dive article into what makes games refreshingly replayable
• My Battle of the Polyomino games article (spoilers: My City won)
• My top 15 board games of 2020 list
• Our top 10 Family Games podcast episode

…You get the picture. Now for a warning: don’t let the above list trick you into setting your expectations 300 miles high. The truth is that My City is simply an easy to recommend game, and it’s especially good for couples and families. My wife and I loved playing through it at 2 players, and this one scales all the way up to 4. I can think of few holiday activities better than cozying up to the table with some hot cocoa, a loved one, and My City.

See current My City deals from online retailers (this one is not currently available directly from publisher Kosmos)

Riftforce – $30

Riftforce is one of the few games on this list that I personally haven’t tried yet, but that’s only because it hasn’t yet been released to retail in the US (at the time of this writing). But worry not, this one hits stores in October and is available directly from the publisher today!

I’ve already preordered my copy, and that’s because Riftforce is already released in Europe and pleasing consumers and critics alike. It even earned itself a spot on my most anticipated games of 2021 part II list. This game takes some inspiration from the likes of Battle Line (Schotten Totten) and Air, Land, and Sea where two players duel across multiple rift spaces as they play cards onto their side of the rift. The interesting wrinkle here is that players assemble their own deck of four asymmetric guilds from the ten that come in the box.

Crafting and executing the right combo at the right time will be key to victory in this simple, strategic 30 minute card game.

Support the Publisher—Buy Riftforce directly from Capstone Games

See current Riftforce deals from online retailers

Royal Visit – $25

Who doesn’t like a good tug-of-war? Royal Visit is a gorgeous new version of a classic Reiner Knizia tug-of-war game where two competing players attract guards, a jester, a wizard, and the king himself toward their end of the board by playing cards of a matching type. Each figure has its own interesting traits and abilities, and the ultimate goal is to get the king into your castle.

We’re big fans of this game at my house… we even played it again last night, twice! I dive into the nitty gritty details of Royal Visit with my first impressions post here.

Support the Publisher—Buy Royal Visit directly from Iello

See current Royal Visit deals from online retailers

Summoner Wars (Second Edition) – $50

If asymmetric dice combat chess is more your gift receiver’s style, then Summoner Wars fits the bill. The second edition of this much beloved game is a more polished and perfected version that released this year. Play cards onto the grid-based board, slide them from one space to the next, line up to attack your opponent’s cards, and bring down their summoner using your unique abilities! My first impressions of the game have shown that this is absolutely the way to go for those who prefer meaty yet streamlined dueling.

Support the Publisher—Buy Summoner Wars (Second Edition) directly from Plaid Hat Games

See current Summoner Wars deals from online retailers

Caesar!: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes! – $30

Here we have another hotly anticipated, soon-to-be-released game that is indeed titled “Caesar!: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes!” This one comes at us from one of my favorite designers, namely Paolo Mori, designer of Dogs of War, Ethnos (mentioned above), and Blitzkrieg. Blitzkrieg is an especially notable one here, as Caesar is the spiritual sibling to this critically acclaimed game, and its real title is Blitzkrieg!: World War Two in 20 Minutes (see the resemblance? ;).

Now listen here, I know what some of you are thinking: “I have zero interest in war games.” I get it, I was thinking the same thing when I first encountered Blitzkrieg. But even more than being a war game, Blitzkrieg is a tactical tug-of-war game (much like Royal Visit), and Caesar takes much of the same DNA of Blitzkrieg and turns it into an area majority game.

The elegance of these games lies within their turn-by-turn structure… simply place a tile onto the board (from your three tile options that are hidden behind your screen), resolve the effects, and draw another tile from your bag. This formula makes for one of the most tense and engaging 20 minutes out there. It’s why Blitzkrieg is also in my top 50 board games of all time.

Support the Publisher—Buy Caesar directly from PSC Games

See current Summoner Wars deals from online retailers

Stocking Stuffer Gifts

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, with hopes that small games would be placed in there. These ones are both conveniently compact and blessedly affordable. And they pack a punch!

Durian – $23

You can never go wrong with a stocking stuffer gift from publisher Oink Games. Their tiny, charming rectangular boxes were practically born to be nestled in stockings and hung by the chimney with care.

Durian is one of the best new Oink game releases of recent years about taking fruity orders and calling the grumpy gorilla boss on your co-workers. It’s simple, it’s fast, and it’s hilarious. We’ve enjoyed it so much that it even made my Top 15 Games of 2020 list.

Support the Publisher—Buy Durian directly from Oink Games (note to US buyers: you’ll need to select the Japanese language option… it comes with an English rulebook as noted in the description)

See current Durian deals from online retailers

Schotten Totten 2 – $15

Whether you’re a fan of the original Schotten Totten (aka Battle Line) or have never heard of those wacky words, Schotten Totten 2 is an excellent little 2-player game that should be on your radar.

Much like its predecessor, ST2 is all about playing chicken against the player across the table from you by forming poker-style sets of cards from your hand (runs, sets, sums, etc.). This sequel is unique in that the competing players have asymmetric roles, objectives, and abilities. The defender must protect their wall and keep the attacker from breaking through. Check out my first impressions of this clever card game here.

Support the Publisher—Buy Schotten Totten 2 directly from Iello

See current Schotten Totten 2 deals from online retailers

Illusion – $13

From Wolfgang Warsch, the designer of many popular games including Wavelength, Quacks of Quedlinburg, The Mind, and That’s Pretty Clever comes another excellent little card game.

Illusion is a tense game of arranging a growing row of cards in sequential order by the amount of one color shown on each card. The moment you feel that another player has added a card to the wrong spot, you can use your turn to challenge the sequence and reveal the backs of the cards that quantify how much area each color takes up. If your challenge is correct, then the previous player takes a penalty. If your challenge is incorrect, then you take the penalty!

I can personally vouch for this as a great stocking stuffer of optical illusions, because it’s exactly what I received and enjoyed last Christmas! I’m a huge fan of its captivating core, brilliant rules, and dramatic reveals.

Support the Publisher—Buy Illusion directly from Pandasaurus Games

See current Illusion deals from online retailers

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea – $15

We here at Bitewing Games are massive fans of The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine. You can find both my written review and Kyle’s video review of this cooperative trick-taking masterpiece.

Mission Deep Sea is the standalone sequel to our 2020 darling, and word on the street is that this one is even better. You’ll be able to get a whole lot of game out of this $15 box when it hits stores this fall. We can’t wait to try it!

Support the Publisher—Buy The Crew: Mission Deep Sea directly from Kosmos

See current The Crew: Mission Deep Sea deals from online retailers

Parade – $20

Kyle and I very recently had a podcast discussion about this quirky little Alice in Wonderland themed card game called Parade. It features gorgeous art, tough decisions, and elegant gameplay. You’ll be adding a card from your hand to the back of the parade and strategizing which colors to avoid and which colors to claim. Much like the other suggestions in this category, this one is a treasured gem on my card game shelf.

Support the Publisher—Buy Parade directly from Z-Man Games/Asmodee

See current Parade deals from online retailers

X-Trayz from Game Trayz – $2.32

Here’s a little stocking stuffer bonus for you. If your gift receiver has any bitty games that they play frequently, these trays are perfect for convenient storage and speedy organization.

It’s always satisfying when a setup merely consists of removing game trayz from the box and opening the lid. I love to fit these trays into my favorite game boxes including Concordia (for the wood resources), Dogs of War (for the cardboard tokens), and Yellow & Yangtze (for the point cubes). For games where I can’t fit the trays inside, I usually have some spare ones on hand to make for a cleaner table presence during play.

Check out all the X-Trayz options at the BGG Store.

Perfect Games for your Holiday Party

While people can never be replaced as the life of the party, a good game can help take that party to the next level. Here are our suggestions to help make your party fun and memorable…

Don’t Get Got – $22

Imagine a game where each player (up to 8 total) is given a wallet containing six secret missions they must complete. These missions challenge players to creatively trick each other without drawing suspicion.

You see, Don’t Get Got is one meta game that can be played in the background during a party, a game night, a holiday get-together, you name it! If someone calls you out on your mission attempt, then you fail it, but you’ve got six objectives total and the first person to complete three wins! I personally can’t wait to try this game of harmless and hilarious pranks… just waiting for the right occasion!

Support the Publisher—Buy Don’t Get Got directly from Big Potato Games

Skull – $20

Alongside our own upcoming Soda Smugglers, Skull is one of my favorite bluffing games thanks to its pure, tense gameplay for 3-6 players. It even earned itself a spot in my Top 10 Filler Games list (as well as the previously mentioned Parade and The Crew).

The rules are as follows: either add a coaster to your own stack facedown, or place a bid for how many coasters you think you can flip over without revealing a skull. Raising the bid sends out a signal to your opponents that your stack is safe and free of deadly skulls, but is it a false signal? If others call your bluff and leave you high and dry as the winning bidder, then your planted bluffing bomb can backfire!

It’s loud, funny, and fantastic. Just like any good party should be!

See current Skull deals from online retailers (not currently available directly from the publisher)

Bristol 1350 – $25

Bristol 1350 is a gorgeous game of wagon racing and Black Plague dodging from our friends over a Facade Games. This is the fourth game in their Dark Cities series featuring magnetic book boxes and social deduction in a grim period of history that allows 2-9 players.

I had the chance to help play and test Bristol 1350 back when it was a budding prototype, and the final production certainly packs a punch!

Support the Publisher—Buy Bristol 1350 directly from Facade Games

See current Bristol 1350 deals from online retailers

Sidereal Confluence – $70

I’ve got to be honest with you here… this one is absolutely not suited for your average Holiday Party. Sidereal Confluence is best for a tabletop gaming party where everyone comes expecting a meaty, strategic board game experience.

But boy, this one makes for a heck of an experience. Like Chinatown (recommended above), players will dive deep into simultaneous, real-time negotiation of anything and everything on the table. Only here, things are much more sprawling and complicated. Sidereal Confluence plays with up to 9 people, which is why it landed a spot on our Holiday Party board game recommendations. Just make sure you have an extra large table if you’re gathering 9 to play.

Support the Publisher—Buy Sidereal Confluence directly from WizKids

See current Sidereal Confluence deals from online retailers (I recommend you get the remastered edition pictured above, not the older version)

Decrypto – $23

Word clue games, such as the mega-hit Codenames, are all the rage these days, and for good reason! They’re usually social & casual, and they allow for creative personalities to spill into the gameplay.

Decrypto is one such game that is among our Top 10 Family Games and absolutely worthy of any party game collection. Two teams face off over multiple rounds as one player from each team crafts a code of clues that is easy enough for their team to decipher yet too tricky for their rivals to decode.

I’ve played it on over a dozen different occasions and still find it to be a killer experience. It even currently reigns supreme as the #1 ranked party game on Board Game Geek.

See current Decrypto deals from online retailers (not currently available directly from the publisher)

Rorschach – $30

Not two weeks ago I had the pleasure of trying Rorschach, the new family-friendly party game from Capstone Games and Deep Print Games. I’ll be sharing my full first impressions of this amusing little box next month, but here’s a little teaser for now:

In Rorschach, players are divided into two teams, and each team takes turns offering up a test subject who must connect three words to three inkblot images.  This is performed by placing tokens facedown onto the image cards that match the tokens which designate each topic card.  Then the group must guess which images the test subject connected to which words.  

At first, the inkblot images almost look roughly the same.  Merely a symmetrical smudge of black ink with some corners here or some squiggles there.  But thanks to the three face-up word cards which players are forced to use, the mind begins to fill in the blanks with details and silhouettes and settings that transform an incoherent mess into a tangible topic.  And it is within the cycle of these inkblot images starting out seemingly meaningless, irrelevant, and unrelated, but slowly coming to life with the help of one’s imagination that we find the magic of Rorschach.

Support the Publisher—Buy Rorschach directly from Capstone Games

See current Rorschach deals from online retailers

Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer

Finally, we arrive at the meatiest section of all. No holiday board game gift guide is complete without solid recommendations for hobbyist gamers. If your gift receiver knows their Langs from their Knizias, their worker placements from their tableau builders, or if one of their favorite things to read is rulebooks, then these are the games for them…

Oath: Chronicles of Empire & Exile – $120

Much like Cole Wehrle’s other designs (Root, Pax Pamir, etc.), Oath is a game that is best suited for 4 or 5 gamers who love diving deep into a single design to explore its intricacies. If your gift receiver is one who never spends more than a couple plays on the latest hotness, then I suggest you keep on scrolling.

With the right group, Oath is a fascinating exploration of political powers, dynasties, and historiography. Players will spend sessions as Chancellor, citizens, and/or exiles competing to gain control of the kingdom through various objectives. Beyond the stunning production and whimsical artwork on display, every decision made by players has innovative ripple effects that influence the current game state as well as future plays. After only a few plays, this has quickly become one of my all-time favorite games.

Support the Publisher—Buy Oath directly from Leder Games

See current Oath deals from online retailers

Hansa Teutonica: Big Box – $50

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the shiny new Oath, here we have a tried and tested classic game which was recently reprinted in a regular sized box but titled Hansa Teutonica: Big Box. Despite its drab appearance, this game resides among the very best Euros thanks to its quick tempo and poignant player interaction. It’s so good that when I ranked my top board game releases of 2020, Hansa Teutonica: Big Box was number one!

On the surface, you’ll be placing out your merchants and establishing trading posts. But beneath it all you’ll be trying to outfox your opponents and take advantage of every little opportunity they give you to become the world’s greatest trader. This big box version provides plenty to explore with more game board maps that provide their own interesting wrinkles to the compelling core.

See current Hansa Teutonica: Big Box deals from online retailers (this game is not currently available directly from the publisher)

The Search for Planet X – $45

Perhaps your gamer prefers puzzly deduction over sprawling campaigns or classic Euros? Well then The Search for Planet X might just be perfect for them! Here you’ll use the help of a phone app to dole out clues to players in a smooth, flawless system where you can only blame yourself for any deductive errors.

Another benefit to this game is that each player can start at different difficulty levels (with more or less clues), thereby evening the playing field against more experienced players. It’s a fun puzzle to crack that comes highly recommended by yours truly.

Support the Publisher—Buy the Search for Planet X directly from Renegade Games

See current The Search for Planet X deals from online retailers

Beyond the Sun – $85

If there is any game on this list that is least likely to disappoint your gamer, it’s Beyond the Sun. That’s because this game has been the most popular new release I’ve shown all of my gaming friends. This futuristic, sci-fi game lets players develop technologies, colonize planets, and build an incredibly satisfying economic engine.

It was number fifteen on my top games of 2020… but since making that list, it has only gotten better with each play, and an updated version of that list would rank Beyond the Sun much higher. Between the collaborative tech track and aggressive planet board, there is something here for everyone.

See current Beyond the Sun deals from online retailers (this game is not available directly from the publisher, and it is expected to have a retailer restock in October)

Iberian Gauge – $40

It’s hard to resist the allure of a good box cover, and artist Ian O’Toole knows how to bring out best in a cube rails game. Iberian Gauge comes to us hot off the assembly line from the creators of Irish Gauge (illustrator O’Toole, designer Amabel Holland, and publisher Capstone Games). For those who aren’t familiar, cube rails games tend to feature simple rules (only 1 sheet of paper), shared incentives, stock opportunities, and network building goodness.

Iberian Gauge features an interesting balance of railroad investments and expenditures where the money you pay for stock becomes that company’s budget for expansion. The mix of strategy and tactics within this Iron Rail series (Iberian Gauge being the third in the series) has never failed to engage me. This one will surely make for a slim & slick gift.

Support the Publisher—But Iberian Gauge directly from Capstone Games

See current Iberian Gauge deals from online retailers

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 2021 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Dice Throne Adventures + Season 1 ReRolled

1 Play

I’ll start this off with a bit of a caveat: I enjoyed Dice Throne more back when the DTA kickstarter launched.  I enthusiastically backed the project for the second set of fighters (the Season 1 ReRolled battle chest) and tentatively backed this Adventures box as well because it looked like a fun way to mix up the formula with cooperative campaign dungeon crawling instead of head-to-head combat.

The Dice Throne team certainly delivered on their promise.  This is a gorgeous production, jam-packed with unique tiles, enemies, scenarios, and encounters.  People who really love this are going to get a lot of mileage out of this box.  Yet I found this expansion spoils an experience that was already trending downward due to my morphing tabletop tastes.

We’ve played and enjoyed our Dice Throne Season 2 battle chest over a dozen times, but most of those plays occurred in 2019 and really dropped off over the past year and a half.  With King of Tokyo, the Yahtzee mechanism was one of our favorite entry mechanisms into the hobby years ago, and Dice Throne was an evolution of that concept.  But over time, the weaknesses became more apparent when contrasted against other mechanisms.

The main area where the Yahtzee mechanism struggles to satisfy is when a player has horrible luck with the dice.  When a person’s entire turn amounts to absolutely nothing due to a bad roll, both players feel bad and the fun is dampened.  It was easy to overlook this weakness when Dice Throne had so many other things going for it.  Fast forward a few years, and the competition is much more fierce with game systems like Unmatched.  

Both Dice Throne and Unmatched fill the same niche of light 1v1 combat with a diverse cast of characters wrapped in a gorgeous production.  Dice Throne gets bogged down by a slow pace, frequently anticlimactic turns and endings, and an on-the-rails decision space.  On the other hand, Unmatched doesn’t overstay its welcome and has more diverse, interesting, and thematic fighters.  After dozens of plays between both systems, a long span of time spent refining my gaming preferences, and finally revisiting Dice Throne, those key differences are much more apparent to me, rendering Dice Throne obsolete within my collection.  I still get why Dice Throne has its fans thanks to all the love and care that has gone into this system, but I have to accept that it is no longer for me.

Within that context, I find Dice Throne Adventures to be an expansion that weakens the core experience.  It simultaneously doubles the playing time while cutting individual player engagement in half.  Dice Throne always worked best as a 2-player game where everything your opponent does has a direct effect on you, yet this expansion plays to Dice Throne’s weaknesses.  Players now spend each turn directing their combat and effects towards an NPC (non-player character); so while one person mulls through their hand, selects cards to spend and dice to re-roll, resolves effects, etc., the only external engagement that occurs is when one other player has the brief privilege of mindlessly rolling dice for a NPC.

I can’t stress enough that any kind of downtime in a game like this is bad downtime.  Dice Throne is a game that requires minimal planning and strategizing, you’re simply rolling dice when it’s your turn and deciding what to reroll thereafter, so all time between your turns is spent floating in a void.  The card play certainly helps ease the chronic pain, but it’s more of a thin distraction than a cure.  By lengthening the turns and reducing external engagement, Dice Throne Adventures only serves to amplify this issue.

While there’s an interesting cornucopia of rewards, surprises, and variety that comes with this campaign-style dungeon crawling expansion, those things are collectively overshadowed by the dramatically extended playing time.  Where a standard game of Dice Throne usually takes an appropriate 30 minutes, our first Portal Crawl scenario blew far past two hours (and that’s not even including the setup, teach, and teardown).  It’s impossible to justify spending so much time with something so light and unsubstantial, especially in the same universe as Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion.

And here is where I arrive at the two nails in Dice Throne’s coffin.  On one end, I have the consistently more satisfying Unmatched to scratch my light, asymmetric dueling itch, and on the other end I have Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion as an accessible scenario-based dungeon crawler to keep me fully engaged.  Nothing within this expansion gives me a solid reason to pull it off the shelf, or even keep it there for that matter.

Current Ratings

Dice Throne Season 1 ReRolled: 6/10

Dice Throne Adventures: 5/10

Renature

3 Plays

Renature blooms from the dream-team assembled.  Planted by designers Michael Kiesling (Azul) and Wolfgang Kramer (El Grande) and cultivated by Capstone Games’ Simply Complex brand (The Estates), we have a game bred for one purpose: tabletop domination.

Those looking for the next highly accessible game with a depth to satisfy all and a presentation to back it up need look no further.  Renature is as simple as place a domino, add a plant next to it, and draw another domino.  The design has the perfect amount of animal variety and hand size where your location options for placement are neither too overwhelming nor too restrictive.  

Which plant to place where and when is the ultimate hinge upon which the points swing.  Hotly contest areas gain late plants easy, immediate points; yet early, imposing plants can be great investments that discourage competition and net big points later.

What starts out slow and meandering quickly becomes tight and crafty.  Domino placements must be carefully considered and deliberately planned.  But the sneaky complexity really rears its magnificent head within the neutral plants and cloud abilities.

Surprisingly, this cuddly nature game is as nasty as Capstone’s meanest (The Estates, Stick ‘Em).  That moment when you realize that a well-timed neutral can erase your opponent from an area and net you an easy batch of points is unrivaled in games of this weight.  Neutral trees also bring a critical, zesty layer to the 2-player game that would be too predictable without.  Moreover, the simple bonuses that spent cloud tokens can provide open up delicious opportunities.  Blowing your cloud supply to pounce on an unsuspecting opponent or lock down a valuable area can be the difference between victory and defeat.

Renature is the complete package.  It’s a beautiful game that I will happily bust out with all types of players at any count of 2-4.  It bears an elegant pace with its heaping of classy dominoes and chunky foliage across the threshold of greatness into evergreen fields beyond.

Current Rating: 9/10

Under Falling Skies

3 Plays

“I don’t solo often, but when I do, I prefer video games.”  

-The Most Interesting Man in the World

That’s just the way it is for me.  Growing up on Nintendo does that to a man.  Yet these days, I get much more excited about board games than video games.  Perhaps I’m jaded by all of the generic shooters, soulless open-world adventures, and cash-grabbing mega-publishers, but tabletop games usually contain WAY more value and payoff for me thanks to their tactile, social natures.  A few exceptions to this rule include big-budget Nintendo games (Zelda, Super Mario, etc.), god-tier indie video games, and solo tabletop games.  Any of these reasons will cause me to leap from the chair & table to the couch & screen.

So it’s all the more impressive when a tabletop game manages to reel me in and get me playing all on my lonesome.  I’ve determined that a solo game will only work for me under the following conditions:

1) It is designed to be played primarily solo.  For me, playing a board game solo that is intended to be experienced with others is a game not worth playing at all. 

2) It is quick and easy to break out and play.  Setting up a sprawling game for only myself is just too dang exhausting.

3) It offers interesting variability between each game.  When you are playing against the game instead of players, that game better have a lot of tricks up its sleeve or it will get bland & predictable fast.

Under Falling Skies checks all of these boxes and has me eager to explore it more.  The production and design are a full-course meal of fun.  With clever dice allocation and manipulation, painful trade offs, sliding plastic ships, rising tension, and thoughtful replayability, Under Falling Skies is a solid solo game for me.

Current Rating: 7.5/10

Hadara

1 Play

Hadara takes a lot of inspiration from 7 Wonders, even going so far as to use eerily similar symbols, tokens, and color coding.  Hadara feels like the faster, more streamlined, and less interactive version of 7 Wonders.

While Hadara is quick, simple, streamlined, and slick, it’s also completely devoid of soul, personality, theme, and meaning.  This game might be the closest I’ve ever felt to managing a spreadsheet.  It’s just a merry-go-round (minus the merry) of cards, points, and coins.  Anything and everything grants points.  Each new card nudges one of your tokens up the designated color tracks.  Purchased cards become these ever growing columns of colors in front of you.  Everything melds into a bland pile of stuff that costs stuff but earns you more stuff and scores you lots of stuff at the end.

It’s been a few years since my last play of regular 7 Wonders, but I do recall the drafting and strategic paths being much more meaningful.  The spiritual sibling, Hadara, isn’t guilty of being a bad game, yet it is all too forgettable.

Current Rating: 5.5/10

Schotten Totten 2

4 Plays

So far it’s an interesting twist on the original Schotten Totten / Battle Line card game thanks to the asymmetry.  This series of games pits one player against another, gives them each a hand of 6 or 7 cards at a time, and challenges them to commit one card at a time onto their side of the battlefield at 9 possible locations of battle.  It’s a game of keeping your plans as opaque as possible for as long as possible.  Once a card is played down at a location, it is committed there and the best set of 3 cards will claim the location.  These sets have poker style rankings (sum of the numbers being the worst rank, a run of a single suit being the best) that will determine the victor at each site.  

Schotten Totten 2 puts a spin on this concept by giving the 2 competitors unique victory objectives and abilities.  The attacker must win at three total sites or twice at the same site to claim the victory.  The defender must last until the deck is empty or complete all of their formations to win. Another major change is that the defender can use up to 3 oil spills to wipe out one card of the attacker’s (before they achieve a winning formation), and the attacker can retreat an entire formation to commit something even better to that section. And finally, the sections contain more variety with some limiting the types of sets you can play and others requiring more or less cards in a set.

After our first two plays, it seemed incredibly hard to win as the Attacker. Both games saw the defender annihilating the attacker. But of course, this is a Reiner Knizia game, so there’s a lot more nuance to the asymmetric strategies than what we discovered within our first two plays.

For games 3 & 4, we decided to add the tactics cards into the mix. Armed with these new opportunities and a deeper appreciation for how the game plays, we soon witnessed the attacker becoming the back-to-back champion.

Clearly, there’s no huge issue here with the balance. And even if there was, the best way to play ST2 is twice in a row, switching roles each game, and the rules provide a method of determining the winner if the victories are split.

ST2 is a very interesting twist on the original Schotten Totten / Battle Line thanks to the asymmetry. As for a main downside: it tends to be more AP inducing than the original, resulting in a slower game. But Knizia knows how to make a solid head-to-head card game!

Current Rating: 7.5/10

Loot of Lima

1 Play

Loot of Lima is nothing short of an amibitious project from the team at BoardGameTables.com.

The self-assembly dual layered player shields with rotating hands are excellent components that make things especially easy for when players ask you questions about your own location tokens. The player sheets have a layout that is extremely functional and well thought out. The dice are satisfyingly large and the tokens work perfectly for what a careful deducer needs.

The production is not without its hiccups, though. In the dark cafe-like setting that we played, players often struggled to differentiate the colors on the dice and player mats. This sometimes resulted in critical mistakes of writing notes down in the wrong rows. Fortunately, those mistakes were usually caught… usually.

I worry that Loot of Lima’s rulebook is going to keep a lot of players from discovering the juicy goodness of this game and sharing it with others. The strict adherence to 4-pages is a detriment to rule clarity, experience smoothness, and player sheet potential. Within the brief rules, I failed to find any information about several different tokens and how to use them (the record tokens, the question marks on the backs of the player tokens, why the location tokens should be face down on your shield instead of face up, etc.). The rules could have even used instructions for how to fit the components back into box, which I and others seem to be struggling with (hint, you have to make a pair of hands overlap and face each other on the maps).

I also had to dig into the depths of the internet to figure out the basic principles of using your player sheet. The rulebook shows an example of a player sheet, but explains nothing about what all of it means (besides recording a player’s question and answer in the bottom section). I get that there may be a desire to not pigeon-hole players into one way to take notes, but the lack of direction left half of my group floundering. What do the X’s and O’s mean? Why box in some squares? What are good ideas for notes to write to the sides? Some simple player aids could have gone a LONG way to ease newcomers into the game.

I managed to figure out some of the basic ideas of how to use the player sheets, and I explained these tips and suggestions to my opponents, but without any kind of player guide or formal rules I saw multiple opponents get completely lost and underutilize their player sheets. This of course wasn’t something I could correct mid-game, as these sheets are kept secret, so they instead had to just suffer through an hour+ of floundering.

The game also requires an unprecedented level of discipline, care, and attention to detail that severely increases its fragility. One person giving a wrong answer can break the game for everyone, or recording information into the wrong column/row/box can break the game for one’s self. The opportunity for victory-crumbling mistakes are high, higher than I’ve ever seen in another board game.

All of these rough edges unfortunately rubbed all 4 of my opponents a little too raw, and it seems like none of them has a desire to try Loot if Lima again. That’s a heart breaker for me, because this game is incredibly good if you manage to survive the barefoot run across the coals.

I think the best litmus test for a good candidate for this game is a person who LOVES Cryptid and is quite good at it. I would place myself into this category, and I am certainly hungry for more Loot of Lima. I nearly deduced the two correct locations, as did one other player. Yet nobody truly won the game, and most didn’t seem to care for the bumpy journey either. If I can just manage to find a few compatible candidates, I have no doubt that Loot of Lima will be a killer game for experienced players.

Current Rating: 7/10

Article written by Nick Murray. Keep an eye out for his first published design, Social Grooming, which will debut in a Kickstarter bundle alongside two games from critically acclaimed designer, Reiner Knizia! Don’t miss out on this killer filler bundle coming in 2021! Subscribe to the Bitewing Games monthly newsletter to stay in touch.

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