Author: Damion Schubert (Page 3 of 136)

“Woodland rulers engage in debate in this tactical solo trick-taking game.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/334590/for-northwood-a-solo-trick-taking-game
Playing Time: 20 mins
Weight: Light
Genre: Solo Tricktaking
Designer: Wilhelm Su
Players: 1

I’ve played a lot of solo games this year, and there was a lot of interesting experimentation, but the standout for me was For Northwood, a small, elegant game that is a relatively lightweight and interesting puzzle. The player plays as someone who must curry the favor of 8 nobles in 8 fiefdoms, where each fiefdom is a mini-tricktaking game.

Making ‘solo tricktaking’ work is no small feat. When the player visits a liege, he will try to hit an exact target of tricks to take, where the noble is flipping cards off the top of the deck and the player is responding with cards in his hand, a task that continues until the player’s hand is empty. All of this is enabled with an ‘ally’ system, where players bring four randomly chosen allies. Each ally vastly changes the capabilities of the player, which adds a lot of the variety to the game. They can also acquire additional allies along the way, which is vital for taking down the nobles that require taking 7 tricks (out of 8) or somehow taking none at all.

#20 may seem kind of high for a small card-based solo game but I noticed that this was my go-to mindless game, and I’ve played it dozens of times this year. And that’s a pretty good indication this is about in the right spot.

“Move assassins, elders & builders through Naqala to claim oases & control djinns”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/157354/five-tribes-the-djinns-of-naqala
Playing Time: 40-80 Minutes
Weight: Medium
Genre: Chaos Mancala
Designer: Bruno Cathala
Players: 2-4 Players

Five Tribes is basically a giant freeform Mancala. A 5×5 grid of locations are laid out, each with 3 workers (chosen randomly from 5 different colors). On a player’s turn, they will pick up all the workers on a location, and distribute them one at a time on a path to a different adjacent location, in such a way that the last worker placed is placed with another worker(s) of the same color, at which time their meeples are removed and the action associated with their color is activated.

On top of this, if picking up the workers results in an empty location, players can claim it and score the victory points. The end result is a highly interactive, thinky puzzle. It is not a great fit if you have players at the table prone to Analysis Paralysis – there are a ton of options and the changing nature of the board makes it hard to plan ahead – but if you have fast players who like thinky brainburners, this game is going to hit squarely in their strike zone.

“Construct buildings, vie for city lots, and compete to shape the city of Rome..”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/284189/foundations-of-rome
Playing Time: 60-90 minutes
Weight: Light
Genre: Economic Territorial Control
Designer: Emerson Matsuuchi
Players: 2-4

The first thing that you notice about Foundations of Rome is the mammoth box size. In recent years, I’ve become more skeptical of games with huge box sizes – even with my relatively decent income and McMansion life existence, shelf space is at a premium and a game with a box has to justify its existence. And Foundations of Rome does, and does it in spades.

Which is amazing because the game is light. What’s included in the box is a full palette of buildings in each of five player colors (as well as a tray of wonders), which players will take turns building on a central map. You’ll buy lots – hope to acquire adjacent lots, and when you do, build buildings that (usually) take multiple lots but (hopefully) offer big benefits. The end result is a quick and breezy game reminiscent of a deeper Acquire but with a final game result that looks like a beautiful model of a bustling roman city.

Could Foundations of Rome work without the big chunky pieces? Possibly, maybe. This year, the same designer released Foundations of Metropolis, a modern take on the game only with cardboard tiles designed to fix in a standard-sized box. And while the gameplay is undoubtedly great even if its at all similar to Rome, I just feel like once you play with the big, chunky pieces, there is probably no going back.

“Play as the Fellowship or Sauron and attempt to determine the fate of Middle-earth.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/421006/the-lord-of-the-rings-duel-for-middle-earth
Playing Time: 30-45 Minutes
Weight: Light
Genre: Card Drafting
Designer: Antoine Bauza, Bruno Cathala
Players: 2

7 Wonders Duel is one of the best lightweight two-player games on the market, and the designers reworked it to create this little gem, one that both expands the original game as well as streamlining it, making a game that both speaks to fans of Lord of the Rings while losing none of it’s thinky charm.

The central engine is identical – players draft cards from a central pyramid of cards. The twist is simple, players can only draft cards that are fully uncovered, so drafting decisions center not only on what you’ll get but also what you leave exposed for your opponent to take. To further muddy the waters, the cards that are still partially covered may be face-up or face-down, meaning sometimes you’ll know what you’re giving your opponent and sometimes you’re flying blind.

The most welcome change to this addition is the replacement of the very abstract wargame with a very simple political map, where players can plant troops and towers in hopes of winning via dominance in Middle Earth. It’s very simple – this is no wargame – but still far more evocative of a true military battle and much more tangible for players to understand. It FEELS meatier, but it’s not, and that’s kind of where you want your light dueling games to live.

“Exchange gifts, send servants, and visit the Emperor in a luscious 1570 China.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/250458/gugong
Playing Time: 2018
Weight: Midweight
Genre: Worker Placement Friend Ender
Designer: Andreas Steding
Players: 1-5

Every year, I make this list, and every year, I struggle to figure out how to explain Gugong in a couple short paragraphs. It’s a weird game, but it’s also the game where you are more likely to screw over your opponents accidentally – by far. Which is to say, it’s one of the most inadvertently hilarious games in my collection.

Gugong harkens back to an era of Chinese history where political corruption was how things got done, and once the government tried to ban the practice, civil servants found a workaround. Giving bribes is illegal, but exchanging gifts? That’s fine. Whose going to notice if my gift is just a teensy bit more expensive than yours?

Gugong is broke into three rounds, and they’ll start each round with four cards. They’ll use these cards to activate worker placement spaces, by taking a gift in their hand and replacing a lower-value gift on a space they want to activate (1s beat 9s and reset the gift process for a stack). The card they picked up will be part of their hand on the next round.

The reason this creates hilarity is because your placement options are limited by the gifts in your hand. If you place an 8 on the spot I wanted to go to with my 6, it’s hilariously frustrating – and even moreso if you’re replacing a ‘2’ and could have easily placed a less valuable card. And yet, almost every transgression is accidental in nature, which just piles onto the fun.

“Rehearse, play gigs, get a record deal and become the most famous rock star of 1977.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/402679/rock-hard-1977
Playing Time: 45-90 mins
Weight: Light-Medium
Genre: Worker Placement Rock & Roll Simulator
Designer: Jackie Fox
Players: 2-5

A fairly lightweight worker placement game where players take the role of a struggling musician working hard to quit their day job and work their way up to playing their first colosseum gig. Designed by formers “Runaways” bassist Jackie Fox, this rock and roll life simulator just oozes authenticity.

The ‘day job’ element is definitely novel – each player starts with a job, which earns them a modest amount of money — assuming they go to work. But you can’t do everything you need to do if you lose time to work – and you can only skip work 3 times before your fired. By then, your rock career needs to be moving.

But the real element that your table will be talking about is managing your drug — sorry, ‘candy’ addiction. Sometimes you need to take two turns in a row, which you can totally do if you indulge your sweet tooth. Candy gives you a variable number of extra actions (usually 1 but sometimes 2 and sometimes 0 – your dealer gave you some bad sweets). But also, every time you use ‘candy’, you do a die roll, a roll that gets riskier every time you do it. This press your luck element can result in you losing a turn as you dry out in rehab. It’s an artful, thoughtful acknowledgement of how drugs impacted the music culture back then, and how its risky.

“Plan, trade, and build your Burgundian estate to prosperity and prominence.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/84876/the-castles-of-burgundy
Playing Time: 30-90 minutes
Weight: midweight
Genre: Economic Dice Manipulation
Designer: Stefan Feld
Players: 2-4 players

Many people consider The Castles of Burgundy to be Stefan Feld’s greatest game. I disagree – you’ll see him again on this list. But Castles is VERY good, especially if you can get your hands on the Special Edition And in particular, it’s one of the few eurogames out there that can handle 4 players but still excels (and by many accounts, is even better with just two).

Gameplay is simple. Players roll a pair of dice, and then take turns using those dice rolls to build their little duchys. The meat of the interactivity is using a die to draft different location types, either for you to build or deny to an opponent. Then another die is spent to place the die in their little vineyard, where the tile fires off special effects based on the location and/or is scored. Players are also trying to complete terrain types – filling in three connected water tiles gains you some victory points, as does completing all water tiles on your map, for example. These incentives encourage players to chase different play patterns to win and, remarkably, they all seem viable.

The result is very thinky and more interactive than you think, and yet the whole game can be taught in less than five minutes. As such, Castles of Burgundy is a constant reminder that sometimes, the simplest game designs are in fact the most elegant ones.

“Serve guests and prepare rooms to be the best hotelier in the Viennese modern age.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/182874/grand-austria-hotel
Playing Time: 60-120 minutes
Weight: Midweight
Genre: Dice Drafting & Order Fulfillment
Designer: Virginio Gigli, Simone Luciani
Players: 2-4

Players play as hotel managers, and are tasked with attracting guests, feeding them their favorite foods, and then sending them to a prepared room. Different guests are worth more points, but players are also rewarded for filling up color blocks of rooms.

The engine of the game is a dice drafting one. A whole bunch of dice are rolled at the start of the round, and each die corresponds to a different action. Picking a ‘1’ lets you replenish your strudel supply, whereas a ‘5’ lets you recruit. But the number of dice on a spot determines the strength of the action – if there are 4 ‘1’s, then taking 1 will give you 4 strudels. Each player will end up choosing two dice in a whipsaw fashion – the first player will take the first and last pick, whereas the last player gets the benefit of two picks in a row.

If you like the idea of strudels as a game resource, this is the game for you.

“You alone must survive and defeat the horror movie killer.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/277659/final-girl
Playing Time: 20-60 minutes
Weight: light-to-midweight
Genre: Solo Dice Manipulation
Designer: Evan Derrick, AJ Porfirio
Players: 1

In Final Girl, you play as a woman in a horror movie, desperately trying to survive and/or take down the boss. Along the way, you’ll need to manage your own health while searching the grounds for weapons and clues necessary to beat the big bad that’s chasing you.

You’ll also be dealing with other survivors. You’ll level up your character if you can manage to help these survivors escape (get to the edge of the map) but frankly, sometimes people die, and there are definitely times you’ll happily throw them in front of a chainsaw wielding maniac to buy yourself some time and distance.

Final Girl is kind of the Cadillac of solo gaming. To play, you’ll need to choose a heroine, a villain and a location. The villains are all cheap knocko– sorry, lovely HOMAGES to horror movies you know and love, as are the locations and most of the heroines. Each represents a unique set of challenges and offers unique tools to deal with your problem. You’ll only need a core box and one scenario box to play, but once you get a taste, you’ll almost certainly want more.

“Build an interstellar civilization by exploration, research, conquest, and diplomacy.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/246900/eclipse-second-dawn-for-the-galaxy
Playing Time: 60-200 minutes
Weight: Mid-to-Heavy
Genre: Economic-focused space 4x game
Designer: Touko Tahkokallio
Players: 2-6 players

This is still my favorite space 4X game. Yes, yes, Twilight Imperium is fine, but frankly sometimes you want to build a space empire in less than ten hours. Eclipse delivers on this goal with a game that focuses on economy and exploration, although certainly there’s a good chance your game devolves into war.

The beauty of Eclipse is the way it self-balances against size. Each system you conquer will grant you more resources but it will also increase the upkeep of your entire system, and there’s definitely a point where you can overextend, and be left with a frustrated, dying economy. As such, the game rewards the player for being picky – choosing truly strategic targets for expansion and defense and then letting your opponents squabble over the scraps.

The primary difference between Second Dawn and the first edition of Eclipse is literally a tray. Tech advances are unfolded over time and often had to be off on a side-table so everyoen could visit and access when they got a tech upgrade. With Second Dawn, the revealed available techs are kept in a tray and are easily passed around the table. Believe it or not, this upgrade is worth the expense.