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Gabrielle was right when she reminded us all that “dreams can come true…..”. Whether you are heeding Tom Hardy’s advice that “we mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger darling”, or imagining something more modest, dreams are where we have no limits. And that feels like board games. There seems to be no restrictions on what you can do in them! So here are 5 suggestions for letting your imagination and dreams run wild at your next game night!
Catch The Moon
CATCH THE MOON from KOSMOS is a delightful dexterity game where clouds, dreams, and erm…hardware combine! The aim is to try and build high enough to reach the moon by placing little wooden ladders into a vertical stack. To gain ladders, you roll a dice. If it shows a 1 ladder face, you have to pick a ladder at random. Then, using only one hand, you must add it to the existing ones so that it’s only touching one other ladder. Roll a 2 ladder face, and you’ll do the same but your piece will need to touch two existing ladders. Roll a crescent moon, however, and you must place your ladder so that its highest point is loftier than any other ladder in the pile! If you drop your ladder or any ladders fall off onto the cloud base or the table, they are removed from the game, and you receive a raindrop. The game ends when either (a) all the ladders are used or (b) all 7 raindrops have been taken. And the winner is the player with the fewest raindrops in total! This is such a lovely, dexterity game. Everything about it is charming; the components, the theme. We popped the lid with our son and his eyes lit up like two full moons! It’s an ideal mix of instant action, nervous anticipation, and wild relief!
Sheepy Time
Don’t be fooled. SHEEPY TIME is cute looking, but it can be as sharp as a wolf’s tooth! It’s a push-your-luck racing game where you are competing to be the dreamiest sheep of all by keeping your human in a dream state for as long as possible. But there are nightmares lurking. Played over two phases, your first job will be to try and get your sheep around the track and over the fence as many times as you can in order to score wink points. You can choose to play one of the two sheepy cards in your hand, but if you draw any nightmare cards upon pick up, they must be played on the next round. And they cause the nightmare meeple to move around the track. Push your luck and race ahead of the scaries, or let others overtake and risk falling behind. Nightmares are never far away and could steal all your wink points for the round. In the resting phase, all zzz tokens you have collected going around the track can be spent on buying or activating bonus dream tiles which trigger actions if you land on them on the next racing round. Think ahead and you can place tiles in such a way that cause dreamy cascading combo actions!
Draft & Write Records
Do you imagine forming a band and rocking out for the rest of your life? If you do, then this game is going to make your wildest dreams come true! DRAFT & WRITE RECORDS is a great flip and write game where you will be going combo-crazy, or at least you will need to be stacking up those cascading bonuses, if you want to win.
With different parts of being a successful band represented on your sheet, the card you take will allow you to cross a box. A really cool element are the “harmony” bonuses that give you the chance to gain extra chances to gain stuff if you can pair up matching colours. With a Sushi Go style draft, the cards you don’t take get passes to the next player. As such, you’ll always have that niggling feeling that you could be handing your favourite foes the keys to victory. Personal and public objectives are never far from your mind. Beware going too heavy on one zone too soon, however. The penalties for not being able to use a card can lead to nightmarish negative points. I love this game solo as well as multiplayer, and it’s definitely part of my dream game day!
Dream Home
Okay so this is a little lateral, but everyone has a dream home, right? A Grand Design in your mind that gets bigger and more elaborate every time you close your eyes. With unlimited time, money, and energy, the house of your dreams is only a nap away! In DREAM HOME, you have the chance to draft your dream. Picking cards and slotting them into your tableau to form your dream des res.
But with limited rooms on offer, and everyone’s development projects in progress for all to see, will you prioritise your own build or mess up your opponents’ designs? With light gameplay and rapid rounds, your house will be turn-key before you know it. Will it have the hot tub and aquarium lined bathroom of your dreams though? And if it does, are they in the right place? With restrictions on how to build, and points based on how well the rooms have been placed relative to each other, this is a great game to inspire even more dream DIY!
Sleeping Queens
SLEEPING QUEENS by Gamewright is a dream of a family game for younger players. Low on rules, high on fun, it’s a set collection game all about, yep you guessed it, snoozing royals! For 2-5 players age 8+, a dozen sleeping beauties need waking up. And it is a great way to sneak some numeracy practice in without anyone knowing!
It’s a racing card collection game combining light tactics, memory, fast thinking and a dash of good luck that lasts around 15-20 mins. You need 4/5 Queens or 40/50 points to win depending on player count. Shedding number cards is part of it, but the juicy bit is the actions. And you can only hope to pick up some of these action cards if you are discarding singles, pairs, or “equations” e.g. 2,3,5 from your hand. The superior cards let you take or manipulate the 12 queens starting face down on the table – Kings let you take one, Knights let you steal one from another player (unless their pet dragon stops you!), and there are more ways to meddle with these mellow monarchs. The addition of a pinch of friendly take that is also a great touch and the artwork is lovely – like something from a children’s book.
So there we go! Some brilliant games that won’t put you to sleep but will feel like a dream to play! Sweet Dream Day!
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