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Continuing our 12 part #rainbowboardgames series (created by super Instagrammer @unicorns_and_boardgames) showcasing games featuring certain colours every month, December is all about red games!
Here at Zatu, we are eagerly anticipating Christmas (and orange is basically red-eve right?? haha) So we are going all out for Santa and his iconic colouring.
To help you up the festive ante even more, here are 5 top game suggestions from David and me that put red at the centre of the games to play in December.
Lacrimosa: Favouritefoe
Lacrimosa was our Valentines night date game because Mozart’s widow seeking to complete her late beloved husband’s final movement of his acclaimed Opus Requiem is super romantic. The red connection is also undeniable when you see the game in all its glory. And like Santa’s scarlet sack, it stuffs so many mechanics into one game!
It is a crimson tinged box of euro-game goodness. In it we play Patrons willing to fund her passion project and be remembered in her memoirs for our contributions. 5 rounds (“eras”) with 4 turns in each turn this into a 20 turn combo-craving grab for VPs! Each turn you'll be taking one action and reserving one bonus. Hand Management, engine building, drafting, end game bonuses...so much squeezed in!
In Lacrimosa, everybody can form their own strategy and focus on specific elements. And, whilst there are lots of ways to gain VPs both in-game and at end, they all take planning! Mrs. Mozart also features by offering bonuses, but don’t be so beguiled that you miss out on lots of other great stuff. There’s a genius-level hand management/action selection mechanic where you use multi-use cards for immediate actions or end round bonuses, not to mention jubby upgrades. The area control aspect of the requiem section is also music to my own ears. Ooh and there are fabulous double layer player boards that have been made look like song books. Nice!
Zombicide: David Ireland
I love Zombicide. The perfect excuse to grab a bunch of friends, work together as a team and carve up, quite literally, hundreds of Zombies. It’s intense, it’s relentless and it is a lot of fun. Zombicide is a cooperative game for 1 to 6 people (potentially more with add-ons) where the objective is simple, survive! There’s a little more to it than that. The creators at CMON have created a series of missions that have assorted objectives to complete along the way. Once those objectives are complete the survivors generally have to escape.
Sounds simple enough? Not quite. The zombies just do not stop coming throughout the game. There is a set of spawn points scattered around each mission and every zombie phase, a fresh set of Zombies spawn at each point, each turn. As the game progresses and you kill the zombies, this triggers an adrenaline level surge in the survivors that increases the intensity the zombies spawn at, and they never stop coming. So, you, as a team of survivors just have to keep on battling, it is a blood bath, hopefully just Zombie blood. Survivors have unique abilities that help them through. As their adrenaline increases, these skills and abilities are added to better equip them to get through the increasing horde. It isn’t the best plan to hang about. You will get the chance to pick up equipment along the way, this will aid the team in the battle for survival. Be careful of the dreaded Abominations. Zombicide is a wonderful cooperative game and ever present on our table. I cannot recommend it enough.
Outfoxed!: Favouritefoe
The red name on the box must mean we are at risk of being Outfoxed! But this Christmas, you and your fellow slick chicks are on the case! Outfoxed! is a wonderful family co-op game for 2-4 players aimed at age 5+ . In it, you’re working together to hunt for clues to eliminate suspects from your enquiries but beware the wiley fox hot on your tailfeathers! Sniff out the correct pie pilferer before he reaches the end of the path! Player turns are simple. You decide if you are going to search for clues by moving your chicken around the board to claim clue tokens. Or you can or flip over 2 suspect cards and use what you know to keep or remove them from your shrining circle of possible thieves! Be careful though – finger the wrong fox and you’ll be left red-faced!
Outfoxed is a lovely game and will bring your younger gamers to the table. Although you take individual turns, everyone can help decide whether it’s the right time to search or reveal, and having more than one chicken on the board means you can each target different clue squares. Thus the space isn’t overwhelming. Search or reveal, that’s it. Both options are manageable and mean that young gamers can follow and control a complete turn which is great for agency and confidence building. The artwork is also utterly delightful, and makes for a charming way to spend a little bit of time working together on Christmas day!
Marvel Remix: David Ireland
Whenever Marvel gets thrown into a board game, I get incredibly excited! The prospect of playing yet another Marvel themed game is just great, and the game instantly has my full attention. Marvel Remix is no exception. A game for 2-6 players, the contents are simply 61 cards forming the main deck and 18 red villain cards. Every card is unique and can significantly impact the game. Critically, every card has a score printed on it, and the key to victory is the highest score.
Players are dealt a hand of 7 cards from the deck which can include heroes, equipment, locations, allies and more. Play is simple; draw a card, then discard a card into a pool for all to see. The next player has the option of drawing a new card or taking from the pool. When 10 cards are discarded the game ends and scoring begins. Critically you will need a villain in your hand to not be severely penalised. Ideally you make aligned combinations with the cards in your hand to make the best possible score through the bonuses available. It almost has a rummy/poker feel. But all the unique attributes add significantly more depth to what you want to achieve, and these are so accurate for the Marvel elements they represent. Drawing a new card can instantly change your mind on strategy if there is the potential of better combinations from this card. It is a very clever game in this respect. Plus, the comic art is excellent and right on point. My brother introduced this game to me and it is high on my wish list. It’s a simple game with great depth that plays very fast. So you can get many games in a short time period. I need my own copy!
Sagrada: Favouritefoe
We have loved Sagrada ever since we first started making stained glass windows with those pretty rainbow dice! And with red being one of the colours, it had to feature in the list for December!
Primarily focussing on dice rolling and pattern matching, the objective in Sagrada is to fill your window in ways that best match the public colour and number based scoring conditions (as well as max out on your personal colour objective). You’ll have a few tools to help mitigate the randomness of the draw. But as matching colour/number dice cannot be placed adjacent to each other, this is no walk in the parque! Plus with a snake-style draft, you’ve got to keep your eye on what others may be collecting as well as the dice you want! Once you are familia with the gameplay, you may want to add in one of the expansions to spice things up even more (or expand the game to 6 players).
My husband and I take 5 minutes every day to play the online daily challenge in the Sagrada app, but nothing beats rolling and placing those pretty dice in real life.
So that’s it for red games season and for #rainbowboardgames in 2024! We hope your December games fest is full of Christmas fun! We hope you enjoyed this year’s choices and we look forward to giving you more colour based game inspiration in 2025
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