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Continuing our 12 part #rainbowboardgames series (created by super Instagrammer @unicorns_and_boardgames) showcasing games featuring certain colours every month, August is all about purple!
Violet, plum, lavender, orchid, and Amethyst…..the regal shades are beautiful and, in deference to the royal link, one of the more rare colours when it comes to board games and their components. Beyond player tokens, purple exists on and within all those boxes but we just need to spot it. And so here are 5 top game suggestions from David and me that put purple on the podium for winning games to play in August!
Arboretum - Favouritefoe
Don’t let the beautiful, lilac coloured jacaranda on the cover of Arboretum fool you. We call this game Rage Trees for good reason; it’s a battle between 2 – 4 players for botanical greatness, and it will burn your brain in the best way! A deck of cards with 10 species of tree numbered 1 – 8, (and scaled to suit player count!), the objective is to create paths of orthogonally adjacent cards which increase in numerical value and begin and end with the same species. The more trees in your path, the more potential points.
The prickly twist is that you will only earn anything for those in your arboretum (i.e. tableau) if you are holding the highest value of the same species at end game. Not only that, if you have 1s or 8s in your hand, or paths of a single species, they change up the scoring rules on you and enrage others around the table! Haha As such, you desperately want to draw, keep, and lay every card you get! But of course you can’t. You must take two into your hand and then place one, discarding another ready for other players to use. Every single turn in this game presents a decision dilemma and it makes me so mad I love it!
King of Tokyo - David Ireland
It’s noted that a purple sky can be a warning to a Hurricane coming. If only that was the case for Tokyo in this monster sluggathon, where only one can be triumphant. A game for 2-6 players (I would recommend at least 3) King of Tokyo is incredibly fast paced and driven by the results of your dice rolls. Players make 3 dice rolls with 6 D6 per turn. Ordinarily I am not the biggest fan of games that revolve so heavily around dice. But here, after your first roll, you can pick the results you would like to keep and then reroll the remainder in an effort to better your situation. Or you may totally change your approach after 2nd and 3rd rolls and pick the best
combination in the moment. There are multiple routes to victory. You can choose to beat up the opposing monsters and take them down, or you can go a more civilised route of victory points. Likewise, combinations of both can hit the spot. There are energy points to pick up to purchase enhancements and better your position. Really, no dice roll is necessarily a waste. If you choose to enter Tokyo then you have a chance of gaining additional points and other bonuses, however, you are the prime target as well for others. Question is: can you hold on? 20 victory points is the target - simply get there first to win, or knock everyone else out before they reach this score. The box art is iconic for this game. The backdrop of the purple sky where classic giant monsters duel it out to be King of Tokyo. What is not to love?
Overboss Duel - Favouritefoe
The Overworld is in desperate need of some serious control again. And this time there are only two candidates for the job! Each playing a Boss Monster, the fight to be el capo de tutti capi of this pixellated-art inspired tile laying game is a fierce but fun one between two players! Tile laying, placement optimisation, and sheer audacity come into play in this reworking of the original Overboss. However, sabotage should really be the name of this game as you will be trying to build your kingdom and disrupt and demolish each other’s chances of success. The terrain types you lay, the abilities you trigger, and the monsters you release are going to create havoc for your rival. Your job is to turn that chaos to your advantage and steal the seat at the head of this purple hued table!
Whilst the OG can be played at two, that can sometimes feel a little relaxed at lower player counts. In duel, however, the game space is smaller and on a shared board which racks up the tension in terms of placement and power potential. This is a head to head battle to be the Omnipotent Overlord and one that OG fans and newcomers will love!
Marvel United: Season 2 - David Ireland
After the huge success of the first season of Marvel United, this season makes complete sense to introduce the X Men into the universe. The concept is very straight forward. It is a classic battle of good versus evil in the Marvel Universe. You can customise your teams of heroes to stop the villains from completing their master plans. Players work cooperatively using the heroes to work against the game which controls the villain. I love a good cooperative.
The minis within are some of the best I have ever seen in any game. Our heroes are blue, and our villains are red. A classic colour battle. What is brilliant with Season 2 is we see the introduction of the Purple Anti Hero. CMON have made one (of many) improvements as they recognise these conflicted characters. These iconic Marvel characters can be utilised for the heroes or as the villain purely because at times in the Marvel story they are good guys, and other times they are the bad guys. In this base set we see Professor X, Cyclops, Jean Grey,
Beast, Storm and Wolverine make up our team of heroes to face off against Juggernaut or Sabertooth. The purple Anti Heroes included are Mystique and Magneto who very much switch sides, pending their interests at any given moment. I’m so pleased the game introduces this third type of character,, and it feels like they missed a trick in the first season.
This is a simple game with easy to learn mechanics that you get to play with your favourite heroes. It is a relatively light game that I purposely picked up to enjoy with my young family. My wife and I will keep playing until our kids are old enough to join us, and I can see this being a huge amount of fun.
Wingspan European Expansion - Favouritefoe
Beautiful birds – how many more does Wingspan need? Lots! And these ones perch in a very special place as some of them I can see looking out of our windows every day! This is an expansion to the original base game with new species, new powers, and new purple eggies. It doesn’t flip reverse the rules or the gameplay but it is a brilliant addition for Wingspan lovers. And it is so lovely to see some homegrown feathered friends make it on to our tableaus.
The artwork is more of the same gorgeous illustrative work by Natalia Rojas and Anna Maria Martinez, and the new abilities on some of these birds are fun and interesting. Featuring new blue round end abilities, new specialist cards, birds which create more interaction between players, and birds which benefit from collected resources, this was a must for us. And not just because of the Northern Shoveller…..although that is definitely my favourite! Haha
