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There’s nothing wrong with just being good friends. While it’s nice to have a bit of competition in our games and have some way of determining a “Winner” it’s nicer still when everyone helps each other and all do well. I’m not talking about actual cooperative games but games without a cut-throat edge where everyone tends to chip in ideas for good moves. Here’s 5 of the best from our gentle games group.
The Quest For El Dorado
This is the latest edition to our games circle and to say it has been an instant hit is an understatement of as legendary proportions as the fabled city itself. Arriving from Santa it got played solo by me several times before trial running it with a couple of friends who declared it the best game they’ve played. Then at the full group we played it three straight times in a row, the first time that has ever happened!
So what’s it all about? You’re off on an Indiana Jonesesque adventure hacking your way through jungles, paddling up rivers and bartering with tribal chiefs for passage through their villages. This is done by playing from your ever-changing hand of four cards, either using them to move or for buying better cards.
You plot your route across a concatenation of half-a-dozen double sided boards laid out across the table. With thousands of different combinations no two games need be the same. Nothing really bad ever happens to you (no snakes Indy!) except maybe being blocked in. Every turn you have lots of little decisions to make and we found it fun to show your cards and solicit advice from the others. Enjoy!
Camel Up!
I couldn’t possibly have a feature on good fun games without including Camel Up! Whilst you definitely have a winner in the person who makes the most Egyptian Pounds off the bookies you are not competing directly against the interests of everyone else. Also everyone tends to make a bit of money and you can rejoice in the unlikely bets that came in whilst quietly forgetting the “dead certs” that didn’t!
The trick is nobody owns a camel directly, you are all just speculating, spectators at this desert classic. The camels all move, once per round by the number that’s rolled when their die comes out of the magic pyramid. Then there’s the hitching a ride on the back of another camel, or several. Also the oases, dried up or full, that can move you on or back.
It is possible to work out the odds on any particular move, if you’ve got a mind like Stephen Hawkings! It’s much easier though to have one more die roll to simplify the permutations. Ah, but then the best betting slips may have been taken. Still you can be sure you’ll get plenty of advice from your fellow punters around the betting booths.
Takenoko
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Takenoko is the lovable panda, munching bamboo game. When you throw in the stooped sculpt of the Japanese gardener who is the very epitome of weariness, you’ve got a game that’s a joy to be involved in. With a straightforward set of game mechanics and three different ways to get Victory Points you’ve got something for everyone.
Do you focus on building the tiles of your garden to match key patterns on your cards? Do you grow veritable forests of bamboo: red, yellow and green to match other cards or do you just send your happy, chubby panda around to munch said grassy stalks and get your VPs that way? Well, probably a bit of all three.
Again there’s little in the way of “take that” tricks that you can pull on your opponents. Except for moving the playing characters out of the way or getting the panda to eat that carefully cultivated bamboo stalk or laying a garden tile that interferes with another’s pattern.
OK! There is a little bit of player interaction, but it never seems too intense or unpleasant and you can always give suggestions of what would be a really good move!
Cascadia
Lovely, lovely, lovely. The serenity of building a natural wilderness paradise in the Pacific North West of the US and Canada and filling it with wild animals, birds and fish. Each player has their own little patch of heaven to build and populate so no despoilation of another’s territory.
You can take tiles from the selection available to you that you feel might be crucial to another’s enterprise but that sort of mean spiritedness is usually absent as budding environmentalists tend to concentrate on engineering their own habitats and so maximising the points they can gain.
Points? What’s that you say, there are points at stake? Well, yes there are. You get points for the largest contiguous land masses of the different terrain types. There’s also points for siting wildlife in particular ways, either gregarious groups or solitary specimens, as described on whichever bonus card you are playing. So there is a winner to be crowned but surely the joy of Cascadia is in the beauty of the landscapes laid out by your own fair hands.
Yak
Yakkety Yak, Don’t talk back! But don’t forget to look back behind you because your little yak cart may soon be trundling back where it came from at the whim of the clouds that come down the mountain. What? Well let me explain.
Yak is a game of trading goods and building walls, set in the high Tibetan mountains. There are four delightful chunky yak carts being trundled around in a circle pulled by powerful dark black Yaks. On your turn you can take goods: meat, milk and bread from the carts and/or the central market and put them in your Yurt. You can trade these goods for building blocks of 8 different colours also off the carts. Said blocks will go to build your 2D pyramid shaped wall which you will aim to get to the 5th level.
At this point the game concludes after a further round and points are scored. You get points for the number of large groups you have and also points for the total number of groups you have. The values for these grow exponentially. I have yet to work out whether it is better to have a large number of small groups or go for a smaller number of really large groups. Perhaps you can work it out
Of course it all depends on what colour blocks come your way. The carts move around each turn – a day – and, as mentioned above, may turn around and change direction upsetting your careful wait for that all important key stone.
The carts are well-made, the wooden goods,too and the Yaks themselves are a delight, especially the little baby Yak, surely the best turn marker meeple in the business.
So, there we have it. Five games that you can play as friends without too much acrimony and a lot of joy.
Isn’t that what we all want?