Author: Damion Schubert (Page 6 of 125)

Designers: Simone Luciani, Daniele Tascani

Tzolk’in is a worker placement game where you play as Mayan chieftain running a tribe. You will place workers in order to fish, farm, mine, build buildings and wonders, and erect temples to the gods. It would be a fairly straightforward worker placement game except for one thing.

Interesting Game Mechanic: The Wheel of Life. The game board is made up of six interlocking gears, which happen to be where you place your workers. The central wheel controls the pace of the game. The rest of them are where you place your heroes. During your turn, you must do one of two things: place one or more workers, or remove one or more workers, onto the wheels of life. When you place them, you must place them on the lowest possible slots for that wheel. When you remove them, the rewards you get are based on where you remove them. If you let a worker ride a gear for a couple turns, you’ll get a much larger reward, but wait too long and he’ll be crushed by the wheel of life!

Tzolk’in gains my favorite praise for any game – it breaks your brain in interesting ways. Mastering the timing of the wheels takes practice, and optimal slots are highly competitive. Also, the game looks gorgeous on the table – most gamers will want to play this game at least once. I will say that the balance isn’t perfect – a couple of strategies seem stronger than others – but this is still a good, solid euro game with a unique twist.

Also, if you’re really bored, check out some of the customized gears that fans have made for this game.

(Photo Credit: Metagames)

Designer: Tory Neimann

You lead a corporation colonizing a new planet. To do so, you’ll need to mine the nearby asteroid belt, gather some solar rays from the nearby satellite array and occasionally crash a spaceship into the planet and tell its inhabitants to suck it up, plant your flag and start farming potatoes.

Interesting Mechanic: Aggressive Dice Placement. Alien Frontiers is a dice placement game, similar to Kingsburg, which is coming. =) However, this game varies  in a couple of ways. The first is that it looks more at patterns of dice – straights, or three-of-a-kinds for examples, which makes more dice viable on a given turn. But the second is more aggressive. There are only about 8 locations to place your dice, but multiple people can place their dice there. However, there are a limited number of slots, and the dice rolls may block your opponents — you can only mine if the die you are placing is equal to or higher than all other dice already placed.

This core mechanic makes for a quick-moving resource management game that still has a lot of player interaction, which is to say, don’t hoard your resources, or they won’t be yours for very long.

(Photo Credit: Pixel Vallee)

Designer: Hisasha Hayashi

Possibly my favorite new-to-me game of 2017, this game casts you as a businessman in Yokohama as it transitions from being a tiny fishing village to a major modern city.

Yokohama is an intimidating board, to be sure, and more casual gamers may be spooked, but it’s a real treat for more hardcore Eurogamers. I should note that one player at the table called the game “Istanbul on crack”. Not having played it, I can’t comment on that, other than to say that I guess I’m going to have to go try Istanbul now!

Yokohama is a dense, busy, and yet surprisingly approachable worker placement game. On one level, it is similar to Lords of Waterdeep – you place your worker, gain resources, and use them to complete orders (i.e. quests) cards you have collected.  But the assistants mechanic makes it far, far deeper.

Key Mechanic: Placing Assistants and Powering Up Action Squares. During the player’s turn, he either (a) places three assistants on three different squares or (b) places two assistants on the same square. He then walks from where he is to any other space that is connected to where he is – but every square he walks through must contain an assistant!

He then takes the action in that square, but the strength of the action is based on how many pieces are in there. For example, if there is one assistant, he takes two fish. If there are four, he takes five! He then picks up all assistants at that location, so they can be placed in future turns. In this way, he can plan ahead to power up to a big move – and his opponents can get a good sense of what he’s planning to do.

Here’s the catch, though: a player can also build structures throughout the gameboard – similar to houses and hotels in Monopoly. The primary effects of these structures is that they replace an assistant in ‘powering up’ a square, effectively allowing the player to lean into certain strategies.

(Photo Credit: Gameosity)

Designer: Stefan Feld

King Arthur is dead! And you are one of the ambitious sycophants vying to replace him as king! This game is one of Stefan Feld’s latest games, and also happens to be one of his more accessible! Players will roll dice, and use the die rolls to move to action spaces, which can be used to buttress their defenses, gather resources, curry favor with local lords and other actions.

Interesting Mechanic: The Round Table. At the start of each round, each player will roll four die – one white die and three dice in their color. On each turn, players will choose one of those die. The colored die can only be used to move their knight clockwise, whereas the white die can be used to move Merlin in either direction. Which order you choose to use the dice is crucial, and in the case of Merlin, you may want to wait to activate him until someone else has put him in a more interesting location for your plans.

Merlin is new in 2017, but I loved it. It was controversial at the games con I played it at – some players felt that it was too random. That being said, the game comes equipped with the tools necessary to mitigate the randomness (specifically with apples and banners, which can help manipulate the dice or their results). Still, it’s a beautiful game and should be pleasing to anyone who likes Eurogames with a hint of randomness.

(Photo Credit: Board Game Geek)

Designer: Touko Tahkokallio

Want to play an epic 4X Space game, but don’t have 8-12 hours to play Twilight Imperium?  Eclipse provides most of the ambition of Twilight Imperium, in a game session that usually only runs 2-3 hours.

In Eclipse, you play as the leader of a great space civilization.  You initially start on a planet in isolated space.  You will need to explore (i.e. flip tiles) in order to find resources, find other civilizations and to find the center of the galaxy.  Along the way, players will fight NPC aliens, find ancient artifacts, discover new technology, colonize new worlds, and build their fleet in preparation for final combat.

Eclipse is a great game, although it’s not without it’s flaws.  The technology tree is great, for example, but requires moving around the table to examine.  Also, it is possible to be screwed by bad explore actions and be left in a relatively resource poor corner of the galaxy.  But overall, the game is by far my favorite in the space 4X genre.

Key Mechanic: Efficiency.  Many of these space games have a runaway winner problem, where players who claim early planets end up getting an insurmountable amount of momentum from the additional resource flow.  Eclipse has very nearly solved this problem by with their efficiency system.  Claiming a planet removes a cube from the playmat in front of you, which results in you paying higher upkeep costs per turn.  This system helps put the breaks on expanding too fast, in a way that is very easy and transparent to understand to the players.

(Photo Credit: Polyhedron Collider)

Designer: Matt Leacock

The goal of Forbidden Desert is pretty straightforward: Build an Airplane. Wait, what?

Forbidden Desert is a coop game where the party is trapped in the desert, and seeking the remnants of an airplane in order to escape. Each hero will have abilities that helps the party manage their water, search for the parts, move quickly around the board, and ultimately escape.

Interesting Mechanic: A Shifting Board. In most coop games, the board is relatively static. However, in this one, where you can go is limited. There may be too much sand in a location for you to traverse. On top of this, the board itself can shift – at the end of the player’s turn, he draws a Sand Storm card, which adjusts the board by moving around the tiles, and possibly reburying those tiles under sand (which players may need to adjust.

Interesting Mechanic: Part Clues. Players have to dig randomly to find the parts they need, but they don’t find the objects themselves. They find clues – one clue will give the horizontal position and the second will give the vertical, which allows you to triangulate on the part’s position. This works well with the grid-based foundation of the search.

Forbidden Desert (and it’s little brother, Forbidden Island) is a lot of fun, and provides a simpler and yet crazier coop experience than Pandemic, and is a game I find ideal for introducing new gamers to the concept of coop gaming.

(Photo Credit: Board Game Duel)

Designers: Thomas Vande Ginste, Wolf Planke

In Yedo, you are the patriarch of a powerful Japanese house, attempting to curry favor with the new Emperor. Yedo is often referred to as ‘Lords of Waterdeep with Ninjas’, as mechanically they share a lot in common. You send our your agents (i.e. ninjas) to gather resources and kill people, which are used to satisfy quest cards you’ve picked up.

Yedo does have several advantages over Lords of Waterdeep, though, including a much richer theme and much more gorgeous production values. It also differs on other key ways, including an auction system to grant some initial resources each turn, and which helps to keep the gap between the leaders and the laggers somewhat close.  It also plays much longer.

Favorite Mechanic: the Watchman. Yedo is a worker placement game, but any space the Watchman is in, your Ninja is arrested. Watchmen have a predictable movement pattern, but action cards you can acquire can allow you to manipulate the Watchman, making this one of the most aggressive worker placement games you’re likely to play.

Yedo games tend to go a little long, and it often feels like the auction portion is too rewarding compared to the worker placement portion of the game. Still, if you like Lords of Waterdeep, this is a good step up.

(Photo Source: Red Meeple)

Designer: Uwe Rosenberg

Do you like Agricola or Caverna? Are you lacking in friends? Well, Fields of Arle is a Uwe Rosenberg game built for two.

Players play as farmers in northern Germany. During each turn, they will farm, grow animals, harvest peat, move dikes, as well as produce craft goods, craft tools and wagons and engage in trade, in an attempt to earn the most victory points.

Interesting mechanic: half-years. Each turn plays over a half-year. which means odd-numbered turns will happen in the spring and even-numbered turns will happen in the winter. Each season has an entirely seperate action track – the spring focuses more on farming, whereas the fall is more towards producing goods. However since it’s a worker placement game, this means it is too easy for you to block the player. So once per season, one of the players has the option of playing on the OTHER season’s movement track. However, doing so gives the player control of first player the next turn.

If you like farming simulators like Agricola, but more frequently than not play them with just two people, Agricola is pretty perfect for you. It is tightly balanced to provide tension at two players that frankly isn’t there with the cames designed for larger crowds.

(Photo Source: er, here)

Designers: Michael Kiesling, Wolfgang Kramer

You are an architect in a medieval italian port city. In Porta Nigra, you’ll be building towers, which means you’ll also be spending a lot of time down at the brick market buying all sorts of exotic bricks.

Interesting Mechanic: 3D building. The game is fun because of the visual appeal of building the towers, which is fun for stacking buildings. There are various ways they leverage this mechanic – players get bonuses for every three levels they build in a city quadrant, and there are missions, effectively, that act as building goals for any player to try to accomplish.

Porta Nigra is a game that I feel is overlooked. Relatively simple to play, deep to master, and with a board that just gets beautiful as the game progresses. It is prone to some last turn analysis paralysis if you’re playing with those kinds of people, but still worth it in my opinion.

(Photo Credit: Pimp My Board Game)

Designer: Jamey Stegmaier

In an alternate earth, World War I didn’t quite work out the same way. You lead a nomadic tribe attempting to rebuild civilization, wandering the earth with your furry companion. Also you have mechs, but if you play this game like a wargame, everyone will hate you.

Scythe is a worker placement game that just drips with theme. Gorgeous art, wonderful miniatures make this a triple-AAA production. Players will claim territory, generate resources, build mechs and send their hero off to explore the world and try to reclaim the Mech factory at the center of the world.

 Interesting Mechanic: Action Selection. On a player’s turn, he selects one of four action space. However, each has two parts – a top half and a (usually more expensive) bottom half. Once a space is activated, the player can do one or both actions. Lining up your turns so you can take advantage of both halfs of the action is the key to greater efficiency and, by extension, success.

Just don’t play it with someone who plays it like a wargame.