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Trio: Jacob Dunkley
I usually love heavy complex games that take hours to play. I love the challenge of learning a new big game and working out what the best strategy might be for me to do the best I can. Since our new daughter came along at the beginning of the year, my capacity and brain power for learning and dealing with big and complex games is perhaps not quite at the peak where it should be. When some board gaming friends came over last week to watch one of the England games in the Euros (not to be confused with the board gaming ‘euros’, the other football based variety), they brought over a quick trick taking memory game called Trio to play after the match. We were all hooked from the beginning, playing 5 games in a row and then another few games after the following England match which prompted me to pick up my own copy.
In Trio, your goal in the basic version of the game is to collect 3 sets of three matching cards, or in the advanced version 2 sets of the same number. On your turn you can flip one of the face down cards, or ask a player, including yourself, what their highest of lowest card is with the aim of getting three cards the same on one turn. If you fail to match three cards, play moves to the next player who now has some information based on what you’ve either flipped or asked. I absolutely adored the simplicity of the game, but also the fun it brought to the table. Howls of laughter when a player repeatedly asked themselves what their lowest number was to complete a set, or forgetting where a particular face down card was located turn after turn.
Not all games need to be big and complex to be enjoyed, and Trio is the perfect game to round off the evening taking at most 10 minutes to play. I believe it’s based on a hard to find Japanese trick taking game but now Trio is available as a reskin of the Japanese game 'Nana', I highly recommend adding this small box to your collection.
Michael Strogoff: Graham Silvanus
Sometimes, it’s fun to take a punt on a game and try something a bit different, a little further from the beaten path if you will. This, along with a bargain price, lead me to acquiring Michael Strogoff, a game based on a Jules Verne novel that I knew nothing about, but with a striking box cover that lured me in. Not only is Michael Strogoff not bad, it’s my game of the month.
Michael Strogoff sees the players racing across the expanse of Russia, from Moscow to Siberia, in order to stop a traitorous plot to eliminate the Tsar and take over Russia. This is done by expending energy to move to the next stage, playing cards to eliminate threats that arise on the journey and, er… lots of resting. The resting is important to gain energy and get more action cards in hand.
When you arrive at your destination, you must confront the traitor in a final showdown. Defeat him and you win. Fail and the game continues, with the remaining players trying to get there and confront the traitor.
I was struck by the push your luck aspect of deciding whether to journey on, or deal with the problems (journey cards) currently afflicting you. One of any particular icon is not a problem. Two the same however, and all sorts of negative effects trigger, including loss of cards/energy and will have you wishing you’d just sorted the problems you had in the first place.
This leads the game to have an interesting cadence, where managing your condition is as important as racing onward. After finding out more about the novel, this fits in very well with the theme of the game.
There is a helpful summary in the rulebook explaining who the characters are and an overview of the plot of the novel. I played the game solo (the solo mode is excellent and basically the same as multiplayer) afterwards and was thrilled when I defeated the traitor, whilst down to my final point of energy. Any game that provides this sense of dramatic conclusion, along with being easy to grasp and teach, is well worthy of being game of the month. I’m delighted I discovered this unusual gem of a game and can’t wait to play it again.
Sand: Tom Harrod
I know I’m about three years too late, but at last I got around to watching Dune. Why the sudden urge to watch it? Not because of Timothee Chalamet or Zendaya (who had a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo!). Not because of the allure of Spice, nor because of Hans Zimmer’s imposing soundtrack. It’s because of Sand.
Sand is a new title from Ariel Di Costanzo and Javier Pelizzari, from Devir Games. They’re fast becoming one of my favourite publishers for creating medium-to-heavyweight Euros. The action in Sand takes place in a desert for 1-4 players, where you ride a giant worm (you see?! Dune!). It’s a pick-up-and-deliver game. This means, in a nutshell, you aim to grab goods at various locations, and then drop them off elsewhere for a profit.
There’s three things that I love about Sand. First is the fact that you have to nurture, level-up and look after your giant worm! Besides: trekking through the desert is going to make it thirsty, hungry, or even result in an injury. Dual-layered player boards (awww yeah) see to this. A series of tracks monitor your worm’s current state.
The second is how you pick your action-selection options on your turn. Four coloured dice get rolled at the start of each round. The values of the rolled faces dictates the strength associated with that colour. You can trigger dice to perform a variety of actions (including boosting your worm stats). This reminded me a lot of the system used in Lorenzo il Magnifico (if you love that game, you’ll enjoy this, too!). Low numbers are bad, but there’s ways and means to increase them.
Third: Sand is part of the Kemushi Saga of games by Devir. This means it takes place in the same universe as the likes of Bitoku, Silk, Bamboo, and Yokai Sketch, to name but a few. Sand’s rulebook even presents a timeline, showing the chronological order in which this series of games flows. Not needed at all to play any of the titles, mind – but it’s a wonderful touch, adding a grander sense of scale.
Oceans: Callum Price
I’ve managed to play many, many games this month – it’s been incredible! But one has stuck in my head as THAT game. The one that embodies itself as a stand out amongst the others. Oceans is a game set within the realm of the Evolution line of games but sits as a standalone. You create creatures, evolve them to take on an increasingly competitive environment and score points based on their survivability!
Oceans’ main appeal is its dynamic card effect trigger elements: you create creatures that can benefit from others – both yours and your opponents. As the sea grows with its diverse and, putting it bluntly, freaky creatures, so do your options. You can invest evolution cards into sea life that benefit from others’ attacks or their foraging, or make use of their wildly overpopulated creatures and make them fodder for yours. Slap some tentacles on your beasties and attack again and again!
The aim of the game is to collect the most victory points by having creatures age. Before the Cambrian Explosion – triggered by a VP pool emptying – creatures get generic mutations that let you set off some simple triggers. Creatures in this time age one population per turn. Your beasts can’t overpopulate or will have their total population drop massively, so there’s an art to balancing that. Also, all creatures age whether they foraged/attacked or not. However, as soon as that nuke of diversity sets off and the Cambrian Explosion occurs, then things get really weird! You can evolve your little fish into massive beasts of the depths, give them shells to make them impervious to attacks, or even focus them on being parasitic little parasites that take from creatures adjacent to them. The diverse number of choices is unreal!
In Oceans, the Cambrian Explosion is supposed the be the “midpoint” of the game, however it feels more like the trigger for the main chunk of it. No end of options are at your fingertips and you can really get spicy with how you mix your fish up. What’s more is how a well crafted set of beasts can really benefit you through an excellently planned combo. At times, it feels akin to an engine builder in its play – which is right up my alley! If you haven’t checked out Oceans or the other Evolution games, do so. I took a punt on this beauty, and it’s now my most played game of the month!!
Furnace: FavouriteFoe
Summer is fast approaching, or at least that’s what the calendar says. The weather outside would have us think differently. But, in the hope that the sun will suddenly appear, we have been concentrating on big feel games that play fast!
FURNACE by Hobby World Games is an engine building game set in the burgeoning industrial age of the 19th century. Coal, steel, and oil are all potential money pots, and getting rich is what this game is all about. But to get from dirty to dollars, you need to not only get the goods but also process them! And thankfully, with the simultaneous play in this game, our engines start cranking straight out the gate!
Phase 1 is a bidding war (which is tweaked perfectly for 2 players with the introduction of a super simple dummy player), where you are tying to gain buildings that will process your raw materials. But that presupposes you have coal, oil and steel to use. So winning might actually mean losing, because players who don’t place the highest bid are compensated with goods! And with each card in the bidding row being resolved in turn, with a bit of planning (and luck!) your compensations could be synergising like a boss!
Phase 2 is production and that is where we simultaneously decide how to run our engines. With one upgrade available each turn, the processing power of at least one of your buildings could be boosted. But you can only activate each one once, so order and timing is again crucial!
We love everything about this game. And the 2P mode works brilliantly. And that’s rare for an auction game! With just 4 rounds, it’s finger tinglingly tight, and it gets our synapses sizzling. And given the cold, damp weather we are experiencing, I’m glad that Furnace is so hot!
