Author: Damion Schubert (Page 6 of 136)

“An immersive game of combining tea flavours to make your perfect blend!”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/253185/chai
Playing Time: 20-60 Minutes
Weight: Light
Genre: Order Fulfillment
Designer: Dan Kazmaier, Connie Kazmaier
Players: 1-5

In Chai, you are a tea merchant managing a tea shop. Your job is to fill orders, which requires you to acquire differentkinds of tea (green, black, etc) as well as different kinds of flavoring (milk, honey, vanilla, etc) meant to disguise the fact that most tea tastes like swampy grass clippings.

It’s a small simple game, with a simple yet devious market mechanic that gets it on this list.  The market is a tile board of 18 tiles (3 rows of six) that get more expensive left to right. You can only buy one KIND of item from the market, but you can buy all instances of that tea on the market that touch each other orthagonally. So you can luck into being able to buy massive amounts of what you need in bulk. But your purchases also risk making similar opportunities for your opponents.

Chai is a relatively fast and lightweight game. It’s got a warm cozy feel and is quick and easy to set up and play. But it’s also capable of being quite cutthroat, and it’s always funny when this game shifts into that gear, because when it does so, it still never loses that cozy vibe.

“Draft dice and purchase skills, traits and equipment to create the perfect RPG hero.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169426/roll-player
Playing Time: 60-90 Minutes
Weight: Medium
Genre: Dice Drafting
Designer: Keith Matejka
Players: 1-4

When I was a kid, I spent a lot more time rolling characters for D&D than actually playing it, so Roll Player is a game that really speaks to me. This is a dice drafting game – a handful of dice are rolled, and each player then selects one and adds it to their character sheet. While doing so, they’ll be trying to hit target scores demanded by their class (Warriors want Strength, as an example), getting bonuses for matching dice colors, managing their alignment, and earning gold to do a little light shopping for that special piece of gear that helps your newly minted character truly shine.

If this sounds appealing to you, it probably is. And if you find you like it, look into one of the two expansions (I have Monsters and Minions ) which gives you some very light RPG-like challenges to test your character against.

“Rival chaos gods send forth their minions to spread corruption and destruction.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43111/chaos-in-the-old-world
Playing Time: 60-120 Minutes
Weight: Midweight
Genre: Assymetric Territorial Control
Designer: Eric M. Lang
Players: 3-4

You are one of the Elder Gods, and time has come for you and your compatriots to turn the Old World into a smoking ball of ruin. But such devastation is not a cooperative activity. No, indeed, power comes from such destruction, and who can instill the most destruction will emerge as the greatest of the Elder Gods.

Chaos in the Old World is played out simply with each player playing cards which enable their actions, which may result in spawning soldiers or destroying territories. Each God is highly assymetrical with different strengths and weaknesses – Nurgle prefers to kill with plague and corruption, whereas Khorne prefers a more straightforward approach – blood for the blood god!

Eric Lang is one of the industry’s most well-regarded game designers, especially for dudes on a map games, and Chaos in the Old World is his finest title. Unfortunately, its out of print, and licensing rights means its unlikely to come back anytime soon. If you see this in a thrift store, be sure to grab it, you won’t be disappointed.

“Win the payout from various casinos by placing the most dice on them.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/117959/las-vegas
Playing Time: 30 mins
Weight: Light
Genre: Dice Chucking
Designer: Rudiger Dorn
Players: 2-5

An incredibly simple filler, this delightful dicechucker can be taught in about 60 seconds, and is incredibly fun. You start off by seeding the casinos with cash – each casino is dealt a variable amount, meaning that some are more valuable than others.

After this, people start rolling dice. You roll all the dice in your color, and once you do, you choose a die and all of your other dice that share a number with it, and put it on the corresponding casino. People go around the table until no one has dice left, and then the casinos pay out their money – whoever has the most dice gets the most money from a casino, but if your dice count is tied with another player, you’re both skipped. It is common – and hilariously so – how often bottom feeders end up walking away with first-place cash.

Unfortunately, Las Vegas can be pretty hard to get ahold of. The most recent printing was called Las Vegas Royale, which basically adds a whole bunch of minigames and other activities to beef it up. Which is fine but unnecessary – if you’re reaching for Las Vegas on your shelf, you’re probably doing so BECAUSE of the simplicity. Still, you may have to go to the geekmarket if you want this one (although I note the rules are so light picking up a foreign language version is probably fine.)

“Ragnarök has come! Secure your place in Valhalla in epic Viking battles.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/170216/blood-rage
Playing Time: 60-90 minutes
Weight: Midweight
Genre: Card Drafting & Territorial Control
Designer: Eric M. Lang
Players: 2-4

In Blood Rage, players play as competing viking clans, each fighting to curry favor of the gods and take control of a rapidly decaying Midgard, earning precious victory points before the world is destroyed by the flaming Armageddon that is Ragnarok.

The game basically alternates between a drafting phase and an action phase. In a drafting phase, players start with a hand of 8 cards, choose one and pass to the left, repeating this until they have a hand of six cards (the remainders are discarded). Cards may be battle cards, or unlock more powerful units – or even mighty beasts and monsters to fight on their behalf, or provide strategic conquest objectives for the round.

The end result is a while, chaotic free-for-all with the tight balance we’ve come to expect from Eric Lang and the gorgeous miniatures that CMON is famous for. Many regard this to be Lang’s finest work. I disagree, as we’ll see soon.

“Bid ANYTHING to bail out companies, but just don’t bid the MOST!”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266830/qe
Playing Time: 45
Weight: Light
Genre: Auction Game
Designer: Gavin Birmbaum
Players: 3-5

The most absurd auction game you’re likely to play. You play a nation in the midst of a financial crisis. You can bail out companies that are near the edge of ruin. To do so, you must outbid the other players at the table, but all of you have the ability to print money at will, meaning you can bid anything you want. Any number you want. $10. $100. $100000000. Keep adding zeros until your pen runs out of ink.

The trick is that at the end of the game, all of your bids are added up, and whoever bid the most money gets a score of zero! So bidding huge only pays off if people decide to outcompete you.

QE is a lightweight little filler game built on a schtick. That schtick doesn’t have the longest life, but it is very, very good.

“Determine the location of a hidden treasure and race your opponents to it.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/42215/tobago
Playing Time: 60 minutes
Weight: Light
Genre: Logical Deduction
Designer: Bruce Allen
Players: 2-4

A treasure hunt, which basically works as a logic puzzle in reverse. Players will find clues to apply to each treasure, and then traverse the island in hopes of grabbing the treasure before their opponents.

Each treasure has a series of clues as to where it can be, such as ‘next to water’ or ‘in the mountains’. Each player also has a handful of clues they can apply to a treasure. Applying a clue eliminates a handful of locations that a treasure can be hidden, and once a treasure can only be in one possible location, a player can retrieve it. Assuming he can get there before his opponents.

“Competing factions must scavenge the wreckage of their colony ship to survive.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/330608/cryo
Playing Time: 60-90 Minutes
Weight: Midweight
Genre: Worker Placement
Designer: Tom Jolly, Luke Laurie
Players: 2-4 Players

Your colony ship has crashed. Now you need to guide your faction of colonists out of cryosleep in the wreckage of the ship and into the interior of the planet before y’all become popsicles.

Cryo is at its core a worker placement game. Each player has a collection of drones that they can send to the ship wreckage. There, they can rescue their colonists, gather resources, and find ways to upgrade their drones to get more powerful. Once they collect their colonists, they can work their way into the interior of the planet, which is where the bulk of the scoring comes.

Like many other worker placement games on this list, Cryo is simple to teach and quick to understand. The novelty of the game is really focused on the drone upgrade mechanism, which primarily acts as modifiers to the players’ income for a round. It’s also got nice production values and a fun, vibrant and attractive aesthetic, albeit one that contrasts somewhat with the bleak, frigid hellscape of the world you’re fighting over. Still, Cryo is a winner, don’t sleep on it.

“Complete challenging tasks by running through the Andes and more!”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/368975/cuzco
Playing Time: 75-120 Minutes
Weight: Heavy
Genre: Dice Activation & Placement
Designer: Stefan Feld
Players: 2-4

Once upon a time there was a game called Bora Bora, where you manage a small pacific tribe competing against other tribes. To win, you’ll need to outperform them by doing crucial things such as building huts, praying and, um… collecting shells and getting really dope tattoos. Stefan Feld wanted to reprint this but couldn’t land the rights I guess, so instead we have Cuzco, where you manage a small mountain-dwelling tribe competing against other tribes by building huts, collecting shells and getting really dope tattoos.

The dice placement is really the engine of the game. At the start of a round, everyone rolls three dice. They can place them on one of 7 potential locations. The benefits an action space gives is based on the number on the dice. So you get less resources if you place a 1 on a die — but it still may be advantageous! Because you can only place a die on a spot if that space is empty, or if it’s lower in value than any dice already on the space. This means that all die rolls have gameplay values: high rolls earn you more benefits, but low rolls are optimal for blocking opponents.

Bora Bora was on my list for years but fell off due to the fact that, frankly, the teach is brutal. But this reprinting reminded me – there’s a really good game in here, and the juice is worth the squeeze.

“Create a travel itinerary and go on your dream vacation to Japan.”

Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/368173/lets-go-to-japan
Playing Time: 45-60 Minutes
Weight: Light
Genre: Tableau Building & Set Collection
Designer: Josh Wood
Players: 1-4

A simple and somewhat meditative experience. Each player is trying to plan their perfect trip to Japan, and in doing so must find a way to balance their stress, energy, mood and cash flow, all in an attempt to earn Unique Experiences.

Players do this via card drafting – taking a hand of four cards, picking one and then passing the rest to their neighbor. Afterwards, they’ll start building their itinerary for the week, until they have three activities planned for each day. Cash and mood have to be managed, as well as managing train travel between Tokyo and Kyoto.

It’s an odd premise for a game but it really works. It’s also light and breezy and, more than anything else, really makes me want to take a real-life Japanese vacation.