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Continuing our 12 part #rainbowboardgames series (created by super Instagrammer @unicorns_and_boardgames) showcasing games featuring certain colours every month, November is all about black games!
Here at Zatu, we love it as the days get shorter and the black nights creep in. December-Eve is here, and nothing provides a better excuse to snuggle up and play a board game than when its dark and chilly outside.
To help you make the most of the month, here are 5 top game suggestions from David and me that put black at the centre of the games to play in November.
It’s a Wonderful World: Favouritefoe
One of our favourite close drafting, hand management, engine building games, IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD is indeed wonderful! Set in a dystopian future, your job is to build a better world. Using a variety of construction cards, you choose whether to recycle them for their resource value, or build them for their ongoing bonuses and victory points.
The cards you get to use will come from your hand which is formed by picking and passing cards between players. As such, you know that each card you give up could be the one your opponents need or wants. And with few resources to begin with, you need to quickly decide whether to get your resource engine running by going hard on recycling, ort banking higher VP cards for later. And that’s a tricky choice, as they will only score later if you have been able to build them by end game! Once resources are allocated, they cannot be moved. And once a construction is built, the card and the resources on it are removed from your area ready to produces goodies at round end/points at end game.
Black military cards and black energy cubes are an integral part of this game. With bonuses linked to majority resource production, as well as needing black cubes to building black and other types of card, It’s a Wonderful World fits perfectly in this list! And if you love it as much as us, there are expansions you can add in as well as an exclusively two player version (It’s Wonderful Kingdom!)
Catan Starfarers: David Ireland
I love a good game of Catan. The game for me hasn’t dated and brings so much laughter to our table top. Playing Starfarers takes the game to another level, another galaxy even! With
the entertainment being fully maintained. I was first introduced to Starfarers in the early 00s and was fully in awe of it. The massive black space board, planets scattered across it for exploration and your model ship, like a game dashboard. It is incredible.
The principles are the same as Catan. Start with a couple of colonies on the starting planets as well as a spaceport. You also gain one colony ship to start your space exploration. You can move your ship to new planets and colonise them, to gather more victory points. First to 15 victory points wins. You do not just build new colonies or ports, you build ships first to take the colonies off through space. Not so straight forward. There is a lot more though. There are missions and events that take place. You have to upgrade your ship throughout the game to remain competitive. Within these situations there is the opportunity for more victory points, however you can also lose points and the adventure is fraught with risks along the way. You do not know quite what will happen next and so for me this version of Catan has significantly more depth than the original. You also have the usual trading opportunities, a significant feature within Catan. There are alien trading ports to invest trade stations on and gain favour with alien races. This is also another avenue for victory points.
If you are a fan of Catan you must give this a go. If you are not a fan of Catan, still give it a go as it is a greater game than the base set, and I love the base set.
Bandido: Favouritefoe
One of the best small box games from Helvetiq, BANDIDO is a card laying, maze game where the pesky Bandido is trying to dig an underground tunnel to freedom. Working together, you are laying the very tunnels he is trying to use, but that also means you have the power to close them off! The game ends in victory if each of the black tunnels is closed off before you run out of cards. And you can decide the difficulty level at the start – 5 or 6 possible routes out! Communication is key in BANDIDO, and a keen eye for spotting open exists is essential. Whether you play solo or as a team, you’ll have your own hand of cards, and each turn you’ll have to decide which one to lay down. A fast playing, super portable game, BANDIDO will have you hunting through those black tunnels like a cop chasing a….well, robber!
Illuminati: David Ireland
This is probably the most ruthless and backstabbing game I have in my collection. It is such a cold blooded game, not for the faint hearted, maybe more a black heart. Players take control of an Illuminati group (all different) in an attempt to dominate and control the known world. Players have to gather other groups from the deck and attempt to control them, to enhance their power, wealth and influence which will aid them in achieving their goals. The pool cards are also completely unique, no duplicate cards within the game which makes sense, no 2 groups are the same.
There are two avenues for victory. The first is a generic global goal that applies for all illuminati. Control an X amount of groups, determined by the amount of players sat around the table , the rules dictate the amount required. Each Illuminati, being unique, also has an individual victory condition. So players do need to pay attention to this detail on what the opposition is up to. Turns are reasonably simple in that each player is allowed 2 actions. There’s a set of different options here you can utilise for an action. The significant actions are attacking to control, neutralise or destroy. This however is not just the groups in the pool in the middle but also the groups your fellow players have acquired. A bit of mental maths is required initially based on powers vs defences vs other group attributes to determine the number required on 2 dice (or lower) to get the result. The ruthless part though is every player can chip in with their money to influence up or down on the target number required. Some players will pay to support a player and others (which is more common) spend money to stop a player trying to achieve their goal. Alliances and allegiances can change in an instant as deals take place in the darkness and the shadows.
It is so much fun and can often lead to some heated debates on what is happening, but when played in the right spirit is a highly engaging and enthralling challenge. It has been a huge family favourite with my brothers and I. We haven’t fallen out yet.
Ganymede: Favouritefoe
Fast playing, euro style, tableau games are a sweet spot in our collection, and GANYMEDE fits that space perfectly. Set in the blackest of deep space, you are each trying to colonise a barren planet ripe for development. But to get your settlers from Earth to Ganymede, you’ll need shuttles that travel there via Mars. Actions are straightforward: each turn you either take an Earth or Mars settler tile (card) to recruit a settler (and maybe do something extra on top!), use a shuttle to move your settlers, or discard cards to perform a basic action. The set collection element also strengthens your abilities as you collect more tiles of specific types. But to take the settler tile you want, you must already have the settlers the tile demands. When your settlers are ready to reach Ganymede, you will exchange them for a ship that will launch them to their new forever home. The game ends as soon as one player has launched their 4th ship and the winner is the player with the most VPs!
So that’s it for black season! We hope your December Eve games fest is full of fireside fun!
