Essen 2015 – Games Played
Here are a few ‘mini Reviews’ of the games I played at Essen 2015
Hack Trick
Hacking a Keypad.
Noughts and Crosses, but good.
You have a 3×3 grid and cards numbered 0-5.
One player is dealt 4, the other 3.
The player with the 4 cards discards one and each player says the total of their 3 cards out loud.
Then you play a card on top of the discarded card and put a token of your colour on the number equal to the total of the previous 2 cards. So if a 1 was discarded and you play a 4, you put a counter on the 5.
If the next person plays a 2, 4+2=6 so it goes on the 6.
You’re trying to get 3 in a row or 3 on one number.
You can capture your opponents’ pieces by picking a number they have a piece on and you can use these, and your own, for abilities.
It’s a fun light game that requires a rules check. Some timing issues and rules interpretations need clarification. But, it’s a good game.
Rubbish Auction
Bid for stuff no one wants and people will think you’re weird.
But you’re an avid collector and REALLY want it!
Everyone has the same set of cards with various amounts of cash on them.
You also get a character card showing which 2 items from the item stack you want to buy.
The start player chooses any number of money cards to bid on the item. The next player looks at one at random and does the same. This passes around the table until everyone has bid.
Everyone reveals their cards…
Whoever won, gains the card, loses a point per $1000 spent (reputation loss for wasting money on a piece of junk) and the largest card used to win the bid is out for the next round of bidding.
Whoever bid the lowest gets nothing.
Everyone else gains a point per $1000 spent for flashing their money around.
After all cards have been bought, you get 30 points for each item you won that you wanted to get.
Most points wins.
Firstly, the cards and VERY thin. Secondly, the gameplay is a little weird. I have no idea why you need to look at a random card plus the rulebook doesn’t explain too much very well.
It didn’t go down well so I will give it another chance before deciding what to do with it. But the idea behind the theme is great.
CS-Files
This is one I had on my wishlist for a while.
Concept/Mysterium meets Werewolf?
Role cards are distributed. In our 4 player game, we had a Forensic Scientist, 2 Investigators and a Murderer.
The Forensic Scientist reveals themselves, everyone else remains hidden.
Everyone has 4 cards showing the weapons and 4 cards showing something else… not sure what it’s supposed to be.
Everyone closes their eyes and the murderer points to 2 of their cards, one of each so the Forensic Scientist knows what they are.
The Forensic Scientist picks a few tiles, some set, some random, and places counters on each to point towards the murderers selected cards.
For example, I picked a Wine Bottle as the murder weapon so the Forensic Investigator picked Bar on the location tile.
Investigators and the Murder discuss where the clues could point to. Once ready, everyone can make a suggestion… You can cash in your token to have a proper guess to win the game, but for now, suggestions would do.
Then the Forensic Scientist draws a new tile and replaces one in play. This updates the clues giving people a fresh angle to work with.
This happens once more and players must then cash in their chip to make a proper guess.
If one of the Investigators is right, they win. Otherwise, the murderer wins.
CS-Chronicles Summary
This was a great game but probably needed a few more players. Like One Night Ultimate Werewolf, the more players means more roles and it’s the same here.
With more players, you can add the Accomplice (knows the murder and solution and helps them) and Witness (knows who is the Murderer and Accomplice but doesn’t know which is which. If the murderer is caught they can point out the witness to win the game anyway, like the Assassin in Avalon.)
Very good game, but I do want to play it with 6 people to get those extra roles in.
Favor of the Pharoh
Dominion meets Yahtzee.
It’s better than it sounds.
A bunch of tiles are placed in certain rows under a thin strip of card. This thin strip shows you what you need to gain that tile.
For example, you start the game with 3 red dice and roll them. You roll and ‘lock’ any number of dice and then re-roll the rest as long as you lock one before each roll, standard stuff.
If you lock a “3 of a kind” you take the tile under that roll, in this case, you have a “1” every turn.
The goal… get 6 of a kind or more.
If you do you get the ‘Favor of the Pharoh”, and a little wooden token.
Then, everyone has one roll to either get more of the same number as you or the same number of matching dice of a higher value.
Then it goes back to the player with the Favour… If they’re still winning they win the game. If not they get one roll to win but the Favour tile gives them one extra die of any side… a bit of a deserved advantage.
Favor of the Pharoh Summary
This is actually pretty good. You’re trying to roll and lock dice to get tiles to get abilities and more dice to build up to get 6 of a kind as quick as possible.
Some dice are custom and unique and not all the dice are going to be in each game, it depends on the tiles.
There is a TONNE of tiles so the games vary quite a bit. We played this 2-3 times over the weekend at Essen and enjoyed it each time.
Very good game, glad I picked it up.
7 Wonders: Duel
2 Player 7 Wonders.
I REALLY like 7 Wonders, will I like this?
So you collect cards and build them using resources and cash just like it’s older, fuller game…
But instead of drafting you’re selecting cards from a predetermined pile of face up/down cards. As you pick face down cards you may have to turn face down cards up for your opponent to pick.
War is done via a tug of war concept where if you reach the end of your track, you win the game automatically.
Science, instead of giving you insane points, will give you a token with a special ability if you match 2 symbols. You pick from 5 tokens laid out before the game from a selection of quite a few.
Apart from that, it’s quite similar… Discarding a card for cash and buying resources from your opponent works differently.
7 Wonders: Duel Summary
I really enjoyed this but again, 2 player games aren’t for me as I won’t play them.
But again, if I did, I would pick this up. It’s VERY good, keeps that core 7 Wonders ‘thing’ that I already like and makes it different enough that you can own both AND makes it playable with 2.
Another but, having said that, my opponent had a very strong Science token in the second game and I got destroyed… I did not enjoy that game. The first game we played I thought I’d won and I narrowly lost and that was much more enjoyable.
A very good game all in all.
Kenjin
Battle over battlefields.
Smash Up, but better?
We played a 2 player game so you lay out 4 battlefields from a stack of quite a few. Each battlefield has an ability…
Each player has a deck of the same cards of warriors and you take turns playing them out, assigning them to a battlefield. Some are played face up, some face down. Some have abilities you activate when you put them into play.
When all cards are played you go through each battlefield, reveal all the cards (some have abilities here) and see who has the most strength. Whoever does ‘wins’ that battlefield.
Image stolen from Board Game Geek
Each battlefield is worth points, you also have some Warriors that have end game scoring too.
Most points wins.
It’s fun… but in a 3-4 player game, you’re playing with 2 battlefields to each player wither side of you which I think will add a lot to the game.
Looking forward to playing with more players.
Kaleva
2 player abstract fighting game…
… with cards!
Simple one this…
You have 6 cards and you put them on the bottom of each row.
On your turn, you move a piece, like a King in chess.
If you move onto another piece, the defender flips the card over on the row it is in… the attacker flips the card from the column it moved from.
Highest wins, attackers win ties, the loser is removed from the board.
On your turn, you can bring a piece back into play in one of your corner squares.
Get 3 pieces to the other side to win.
A very good game, but may be reliant on a good card draw? You can play to force combat into columns with your higher cards to try and win more though.
I enjoyed it quite a bit.
The Big Book of Madness
You’re students in a magic school battling monsters.
If the games I’ve played so far are anything to go by, they lost.
So this is a cooperative deck builder where curses appear each round and you need to collectively get rid of them.
As the book opens curses are revealed and they show which elements you need to banish them. You can discard elements from your hand to do this but you can also borrow cards your classmates have available too.
If you banish them all you turn the page and summon the next monster. Fail and you get a penalty for each one.
These penalties involve you discarding cards from the madness deck if the deck expires you lose.
They also involve you discarding cards from the top of your deck which is fine. But each time you reshuffle your deck you gain a madness card from the madness deck.
Not only does this deplete the deck, but if you ever draw 6 into your hand, you’re out of the game.
You don’t have to defeat the first 5 monsters, just survive to the 6th one and beat it.
But as I said it’s VERY hard and we haven’t got by round four with 2 or 4 players.
Need to check the rules and keep trying 🙂 But for now, I’m enjoying losing.
Code of Nine
From the maker of Tragedy Looper…
…something just as crazy.
So this is a very simple worker placement game.
Everyone has 2 secret goals and 3 action pawns.
There are a TONNE of actions on the board but the board is divided up into sections. Each round, a new section is available to everyone so while it looks complex at first, you learn each section a bit of a time.
The goals each player has will show you how to score at the end of the game, but each of the 8 (in a 4 player game) effects everyone…
So not only are you collecting resources and stealing them from other players, but you’re also taking actions to look at other players goals.
After several rounds you flip over all the goals and go through them, work out your score and the most points wins.
But it’s not that straightforward. Some of them can prevent you from winning by either not having enough of something or even having too much.
It’s very interesting and surprisingly quick.
The goals are going to change up the gameplay a lot. Like Argent: The Consortium and similar games, you need to watch other players to see what they’re doing and try and work out their goals. There’s a big sheet (like Tragedy Looper) showing all the goals to remind you what you’re doing.
So yeah, pretty good game and I hope to play it again.
Nyet!
Negotiate your terms of the game…
…then play it!
So simple one this…
You have a board that shows the terms of this trick-taking game.
Players take turns ‘covering’ options with their tokens so you end up picking your partner for the round, the value of winning a trick, the trump suit, the super trump etc… AFTER you see your hand of course.
Then you play a regular trick-taking game and score points.
Like I said, very simple.
It’s like ebbes in a way but in that, you work out the terms of the game during play.
We only got to play this with 2, but I’m looking forward to playing with 4.
Joraku
Trick Taking AND Area Control?
Could go either way.
Spoiler: It’s great.
The board is divided up into 7 sections. You get a card numbered 1-6 to show where your Daimyo starts on the board.
Everyone draws 4-5 cards depending on player numbers and passes 2 to the left.
Then each player plays a card in a typical trick taking way. Must follow suit if possible etc
But the card you play will allow you to either add Samurai to the board, move your samurai or kill samurai if they are in the same area as your Daimyo. The number of the card played gives you that many action points to do this.
The winner of the Skirmish, or trick, gets the Kachidoki card and scores the area their Daimyo is in, area control style.
After players have played all their cards you score each zone on the map.
But, the rightmost zones are worth more points early in the game and nothing towards the end. The zones towards the left are the reverse of this.
So this way you see a migration of Daimyo and Samurai across the board from right to left as the game progresses.
It’s a very pretty game with good unique gameplay. Glad I picked this one up.
Samara
Build buildings and grab tools.
Some are quite high up so you may need to stand on someone’s shoulders.
Next to a grid of buildings are two boards showing 6 months on each. The starting month is placed to the ‘now’ space on the board… What is the starting month? Well, October of course, because it WAS October when we played it. 🙂
I loved this game from that point on, review over 🙂
So this game works like Tokaido, in a way.
A turn
The active player is the player who has their workers on the leftmost portion on the ‘now’ space. You move them up to whichever month in the future to whichever row you want to take an action and take it.
When the Now space is empty, you scroll the boards down until you reach someone’s workers and that month is now the active month.
So unlike Tokaido (and Antarctica) here you’re moving guys forward, you’re moving the board backwards. Same thing, a different way of doing it.
What are the actions?
Well, you can grab tools which help you build buildings or recruit workers for abilities.
The buildings are up to 3 rows deep and you need to have 1, 2 or 3 workers in a stack to ‘reach’ those higher up buildings. You can take an action to stack people too.
You can also gain a worker by moving a ‘female’ meeple to the end of the calendar track and adding another meeple on that month.
The buildings you collect are worth points and after they’ve all gone (I think) the game ends, most points wins.
Samara Summary
This was an enjoyable game. It puts that movement mechanism of ‘last player goes next’ into a pretty fun and simple game.
I think it might be TOO simple though and I worry about re-playability but I’m glad I got a chance to play it.
Kamisado Pocket
Another abstract 2 player game.
But, this one you can play standing up!
The goal of this game is to get a piece to the other side of your opponent’s board.
Each player has a row of pieces of 8 different colours on an 8×8 board that has squares the same colour as the player pieces.
Your pieces move like a Queen in Chess…The start player can move any piece.
Then, the opponent can only move the piece matching the colour square that piece ended its move on.
This continues until a player gets a piece to the other side of the board. When they do the game resets, the ‘winning’ piece gets flipped over to a ‘Sumo’ and can now push pieces.
You play until you get 3 points… or at least we did.
This simple game reminds me of Mijenlief where you move determines your opponents move.
You also have to attack AND defend on every move which makes it fun to play.
A good filler.
Pinata Party
Collect the sweeties!
I should be good at this.
This is essentially an abstract puzzle game…
You have a board covered in Candies and two tiles that tell you how to move…
On your turn, you select a piece and move it twice, once with each action on each movement tile.
You need to get candies next to each other if you do you pick them up to score.
When no one sees any legal moves the game ends and you score based on the scoring card for the candies you have collected.
Most points wins.
But, the best thing about this game is that the two movement tiles and the scoring tile each game are randomly drawn from a big stack, keeping things different.
We played two games back to back and each one was similar yet very different.
Did I like it? Well, I bought it so yes. 🙂
That variety adds a lot to the game so I’m looking to try different combinations.
Bloody Inn
Queued for what felt like forever to play this!
Was it worth it?
So this is a game where you run an Inn, but you realise that killing the guests and stealing their stuff will make you more money than one night’s room rental.
But, as the police are visiting your Inn you have to make sure you’re hiding the bodies so you don’t get caught.
It’s a hand management game where you’re using those cards in your hand to do ‘something’ with the hotel guests.
Each guest has a value and you can recruit or kill them by discarding that may cards from your hand. If you recruit them they come into your hand, any cards used to get them that have the “recruit” icon return to your hand, the rest are discarded.
Killing
To kill you place the now dead guest face down in front of you and discard the cards used unless they have the Kill icon.
Cards in your hand can be put in front of you and turned into places you can bury bodies, same card actions apply. Some of these also have abilities and endgame scoring conditions.
These ‘annexes’ are places you can bury bodies (same card play again) and you get the money the bodies have.
You need to bury them because when everyone has finished playing actions, and any law type men are left in the hotel they will investigate you. Then, lose any unburied bodies and have to pay 10 gold each to have them taken them away… oops.
You then gain money for people staying in your room if anyone is left, then you lose 1 money for each card in your hand. If you can’t pay you lose them so be careful.
So you’re managing your hand and bodies until the game ends, most money wins.
Bloody Inn Summary
This is a very good game with lots to it. You don’t always have enough time to do everything… You only get 2 actions per round so if you kill someone you either need to bury the body that turn, or hope/know there are no Police investigations that turn.
Also, you can only hold 40 money (French Francs) so you have to spend actions cashing it in for tokens, or cashing tokens in for money if things go really bad. As money is points you need to do this so you don’t lose out by going over 40.
Very good game, worth the wait 🙂
Sherlock
A memory game.
A small game.
Quickly…
There are a bunch of tiles. Each row contains one of each different picture, or suspect if you will.
You flip over one in a row and one in a different row, if they match you flip over a third…
If they match you remove them, if not you flip over a book.
Get rid of all of them, you win. Get to the last page of the book, you lose.
That’s it really.
Fun for kids maybe… although we did celebrate when we won 🙂
Monster my Neighbour
Hidden roles with cards.
Read the cards properly though!
So each player gets 4 cards and plays on their turn.
Most of these cards are Gossip or Rumour or Fog… these involve players shuffling and redistributing cards or passing cards around etc
But there are Friends, Hunters, Hiding Places and of course, a Monster.
The Monster is randomly picked from a selection of 5 and if you hold the Monster card, you are the monster. Each is different with a different ability that you need to read carefully or you mess the game up like I did 🙂
The friend cards win if the monster wins.
Hunters can catch the monster.
Hiding places can help the Monster hide from the Hunter.
If the Monster plays their card the Monster player, and their friends, win.
Otherwise, the Hunter wins.
It’s very fun and simple and just random enough that it requires tactical play. But as I mentioned you do have to read the cards properly to play it right.
I picked this one up so will be playing it more.
Alien Wars
A game that comes in a metal UFO tin MUST be good.
AND it’s a dexterity/memory game too! Oh goody!
You put cards on the table and flick your shooter disk on to other cards.
You have to put your little finger on the shooting card and flick your card onto your target.
Eliminate your opponent to win.
Not a fan.
WWE Superstar Showdown
A programming, wrestling card and miniatures game?
Where was this 15 years ago?!
So yeah… Pick a guy, shuffle their deck, draw some cards.
You program 3 out and simultaneously reveal in order with your opponent.
Each card is a type and they work in a Rock, Paper, Scissors fashion with manoeuvre beating Grapple, Grapple beating Strike and Strike beating manoeuvre.
The winner activates their card. There are various things a card lets you do like move, use the ropes, climb the turnbuckle and, of course, attack.
You have block cards to block with but damage comes off your deck…
When you pin someone it’s fun. You can play a block (kick-out card from your hand if not you reveal them from your deck trying to find one counting one at a time One, Two, Three.. It’s tense and fun.
The game overall is fun, and fairly thematic considering…
But who will play this with me? Sadly it’s a great game 15 years too late for me.
Terra
Quiz time!
Get the answer right, or be close enough.
This gives you a question along with a map and a few bars of numbers.
The question will generally ask for a location and a few number related ones such as Year as well as length, height, volume etc
You take turns putting a cube on any of the answers you think is correct. No two players can put a cube in the same place and you can guess as many times as you like until you run out of cubes.
You do this until everyone passes.
Then you reveal the answers. 7 points if you’re right, 3 points if you’re adjacent and you lose any cubes on incorrect guesses.
You go back up to 3 cubes at the start of your turn so don’t worry about having a terrible round.
It’s good for a quiz, with plenty of questions that are actually interesting.
Fog of Love
Roleplay a couple of a year of their relationship.
Try not to fall out!
For starters, great name for a game and a lot of people were talking about it. 🙂
In this, you each play one half of a couple. You have a rack where you add mini trait cards to give your character a background then you describe yourself a bit so your ‘other half’ knows more about you… This is key to the rest of the game.
The main part of the game is to move stats on a bar to match the traits you have picked…
To do this, you’ll be playing story cards and letting the other player pick an option leading to a change in these stats, or simultaneously voting on choice and resolving depending if you picked the same one or not.
This is where the character development from earlier comes into play. You’re not picking what the other player might do, but what the other players character might do.
You also have a personal stat (can’t remember what it is) and you need to keep that up too… So like real life, you may need to sacrifice something personal to help the relationship. Nice touch.
Fog of Love Summary
It’s hard to describe this game due to it being as much an experience as a game but it was a lot of fun. You make choices that can mean selecting cards from future decks and putting them on top meaning you will affect your future, things like that make this game really nice.
Now, this is clearly not going to be for everyone and for me it’s a 2 player game so it’ll be tough to justify spending money on it…
But it’s being Kickstarted on Valentines Day 2016 and if it sounds interesting you really should check it out.
Antarctica
Send your boat out to build buildings.
Just erm… gotta wait for the sun to melt the snow!
This is essentially an area control game on a giant rondel type board.
The sun will move around the board, segment to segment and the player who has their boat closest to the sun will take their action. You take an action by moving the boat forward to any space and doing something…
Every boat on the space the boat vacated moves up one meaning they go next when the Sun comes back around.
What are these action you can take?
Well, you can build buildings, get new Scientists, advance on a research track… Pretty standard stuff.
Scoring is done via area control with the person with the most scientists winning, scoring points equal to the number of buildings and scientists of all colours plus 1. Second place gets a point for each scientist of the colour in first place etc…
Like I mentioned with Samara, this has again taken that Tokaido type thing and put a decent game to it. But you have the added risk, if you put your boat second (or third) in a queue on a section that boat will have to wait until the sun goes 2 or 3 times around the board!
There was a time in our game where my opponents took 10-11 turns before I got back in the game… a lot of waiting but completely my fault.
This is a nice game with plenty to think about.
Automania
One I ignored on Kickstarter.
Did I make the right choice?
In this, you’re producing cars and shipping them off to either North America or Asia to gain points and/or money.
To do this you have a board of your factory lines with each model of car at the top. Conveyor belts show you the way the manufacturing process runs through your factory and as you run that car through the factory it will pick up upgrades and increase it’s reputation.
How do you get those upgrades? You buy them with workers…
The bits you can buy, which include staff that give you abilities, are laid out in a random grid. You place a worker either above or to the left of the column/row of the item you want, pay for it and take it. If you want something else from that same column/row you must use more worker meeples that the precious player to pick something. Like bidding in Keyflower.
You put that token in your factory and when you make a car, if the conveyor belt for it runs through that item you increase its value. The value of these items will change each round.
North America and Asia both have their own ‘demand’ section that increases the value of certain bits on your car. These rotate around from a track so you can plan ahead.
When you put a car for sale you take up a certain space and only one car can fill a space so you need to produce early to get the more valuable ones, but your car will be worth more if you buy those add-ons.
Automania Summary
It’s very simple and easy, no Kanban that’s for sure 🙂
One that will appeal to families and part-time gamers who like strategy in their games.
Eko
Battle for buildings on a board with counters.
It’s very pretty!
In this game you’re moving around, building buildings, killing opponents and destroying their buildings.
We randomly scattered our disks over the board but once you know what you’re doing you can take turns tactically placing them.
To move a disk, it can freely move around as long as you can trace an empty path from where they are to where they want to go.
You can jump on top of another token to make them bigger, and stronger. A larger stack can move into a smaller stack to ‘take’ them. A stack can be as big as 4 but a stack of 4 can be destroyed with a ‘Kamikaze’ move by a single disk, destroying both sides.
You can sacrifice disks from a stack to build a building or destroy an opponent… when you get up to a certain number of points via buildings, you win.
You also have ‘leader’ who is more powerful than a regular piece but can still be killed by opponents. Usually, if you kill an opponents piece they get them back to put on a board later. If you kill a leader you put it in a little prison on your player board and you can only get it back by capturing their leader and doing a kind of ‘hostage exchange’.
It’s pretty good, not great as it kept reminding me of Quantum which I don’t really like.
It’s too combat orientated for me to enjoy the abstract part, It’s pretty though.
Rush & Bash
Driving and Shooting.
Mario Kart the board game!
This is a first past the post game, it’s a pure race…
You use cards from your hand to move down the track in a straight line. Some cards let you move left or right, drop bombs, fire missiles, give you bonus power etc
Get hit by a missile or run into a bomb or rock (randomly placed on the board) you take damage. Take 3 damage and you go back to a checkpoint.
Each round turns are taken from first to last, then you draw. What you draw it depends on what position you’re in. The further back you are, the ‘better’ cards you like the catch-up mechanism you see in these computer game versions of combat racing games.
Each car has different abilities and you can activate it by spending bonus power.
Some parts of the track have events that can be triggered like a Volcano for example.
It’s really good fun. It’s hard to describe how much it was and that was with 2 players, with 6 players it will be insane!
The Curse of the Black Dice
Semi co-op dice placement with Pirates.
Where too much treasure grabbing could sink your ship.
You have 6 mission tiles in a row, each represented by a side of the black dice.
Each player rolls 5 black dice and put them next to their corresponding tile. This is the number of dice you need to put on that mission to pass it.
Players roll and assign one type of dice to one of the missions to try and match or exceed the number of black dice to complete the mission, but also try and get a majority on a particular mission to get a reward.
This sees players trying to put more dice on the ‘get treasure’ mission (most treasure wins the game) and potentially ignoring a mission to prevent the ship from taking damage.
If the ship sinks, the game ends and everyone loses. The same happens if all the crew die… crew have abilities you can you to re-roll dice etc To use them requires Rum, too much Rum and they’re out for the count.
The Curse of the Black Dice Summary
I thought this was going to be a pretty standard, boring dice placement game but it’s actually very fun.
If you’re winning you have to make sure the crew survive to get to the end game but then you’re not getting the treasure. If you’re losing you need treasure, to hell with the ship! The winner will be the player who gets this balance between greed and heroism right.
There are plenty of different mission tiles too.
Shame we spotted this last thing on a Sunday as I was out of Euros… But I will be buying this once it’s available.
King’s Forge
Dice placement! Get cards that give you abilities.
Then give them back?
To win this game, you need to be the first to ‘Forge’ these 3 special cards.
To do this, you roll your black dice and use them to take actions. You can buy cards that give you actions which you can use your other dice to activate.
Some actions give you different colour dice to use with other different actions.
But at the end of the round these cards you use get returned to the middle…
You get 5 dice and you can use 4 of them just to buy a card and activate it… so it has to be worth it.
We only played a part of the game but so far from what I’ve seen, I’m unimpressed. I am willing to try a full game though as maybe these early action choices will have a point.
Poseidon’s Kingdom
This game has a tidal wave in it…
…but did it make a big splash (Groan)
You’re sea creatures trying to rescue little tokens, your little friends, and fulfil hidden goal conditions.
You do this by building a reef in front of you which shows the actions you can take. You build your reef upwards and the higher the level the action is on, the more times you can take it in a turn.
The main part though is putting dice onto the tidal wave which you tip forward, scattering dice around the board.
You collect these dice to do things…
There is a shark moving around a designated path and he can eat your characters if you’re in the way.
It’s a very pretty game, probably aimed at a younger audience. But the hidden goals are REALLY hard to look at so you really don’t know what you’re trying to achieve by the end of the game. Of the 10 (I think) available, we only saw 3 between us…
Still, it’s fairly unique.
New York 1901
Building up New York.
Ticket to Height?
Nothing special here really…
Draft locations, build building tiles into those spaces. later you can upgrade your buildings…
I didn’t really see more to it than that.
You have a mini of a guy you use to hold down a space on the board you have claimed…
We learned this out the book as we were playing and while the book is quite good, the game seemed kinda empty. But people seem to like it.
I just saw Ticket to Ride with buildings, and not as much fun.
Burger Boss
Build and sell Burgers.
Let your customers wait first!
This is a dice placement game where you use dice to buy ingredients, create burgers and sell them to fulfil orders.
Customers (on cards) queue to buy food and the longer they wait the more they spend but if they wait too long they leave.
Each player represents a corny named Burger company each with a grill and cold storage.
You roll dice and place them on action cards to buy ingredients to put in your cold storage. Your cold storage only holds a few items so you can add stuff to the grill to put it to use and make room for new items. While on your grill it will slowly move down a track until eventually it’s binned if you don’t use it.
While on the grill you can trade it in to get money from customers, money is the point of the game.
This was a lot of fun and I like dice placement games so it’s all good.
I like the little ingredient disks that let you actually build your burger, it’s simple but looks nice.
One issue is that turn order is lowest to highest from the total of your dice and this is important as players can rip an order out from under you, ruining your plans.
Another is the box… While putting the game is plastic Burger is fun, and each layer of the burger makes for its own storage tray is GREAT… it’s not practical to store on my shelf.
But, apart from those things, a very fun game.
Jesta ThaRogue
