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Luke Pickles
December is a funny old month, isn’t it? Everything goes by in a flash leading up to Christmas and then you have a week of “wait, what day is it?” before New Year comes and ruins your time off. The bonus of the extended break though is you get to play games and I used that week wisely. You see, I’m getting married in March and we wanted to have some games dotted about so that people could play during the weird lulls in time and if they don’t feel like dancing, as I’m sure I wont after a while. (IT’S MY DAY TOO, LET ME PLAY GAMES!) However, we needed to make sure the games we chose were easy enough to pick up by anyone, so to the party games we went. Christmas Day was covered by Herd Mentality, a game where you’re trying to be in the group and avoid getting the pink cow. Grandad really enjoyed it, though I’m not sure he understood that the cow was a bad thing. Fun Facts, a game where you write a secret numeric value as an answer to a question and order it with everyone else’s answer, has potential, but with people who don’t necessarily know each other, might be a bit lost. That’s Not a Hat, a contender for Game of 2023, is a bonkers memory game, which I absolutely adore and has no right to be as fun as it is. Honourable mentions to Doodle Dash and Green Team Wins, speed drawing and another game about fitting in. And finally, Similo, which is kinda like cooperative Guess Who but with a lot more vibe checks.
Of course, these are only the party games, I had a few other gifts I opened and played like Evacuation, Kanban EV and Ex Libris (Revised edition) which were all good fun to try out during the weirdness that is the Christmas break.
Arnaldo Amaral
Ah Christmas! The most wonderful time of the year. The weather and temperature invite us to stay in, grab our cozy blankets and join around the table with hot cocoa and a pile of tabletop games. And that is exactly what we’ve done throughout the month.
A lot of Lost Cities was played, a 2 player only hand management and set collection game with elements of push your luck by Dr. Reiner Knizia and published by Kosmos. I have the post 2019 version, which includes a sixth optional colour that I always had to my games. And I managed to break my all-time high score in one of the plays, reaching a whooping 519 points!
Another game that saw table time was Fox in the Forest. Yes… another 2-player card game… surprise, surprise. I love them all! This one is a classic trick-taking game with a twist, some cards have special effects that will affect how a trick plays out and the objective is to win tricks but not too many, so you got to play it smart. Lovely little game!
Father Christmas was nice to me and got me Cascadia! Been wanting it for a while so was absolutely buzzing. Only got to play it once to try it out, but it was A-MA-ZING. It has beautiful artwork by Beth Sobel, great theme, great playability and super strategic without being too complicated to get into. Must have in anyone’s collection!
Another game that got me buzzing was, of course, Honey Buzz! And yes, I have been watching way too many Chaz Marler videos… We have the deluxe edition, and I got it out to write a review for it (check it out!). The game combines very well different mechanics like worker placement, order fulfilment, action planning and tile placement without making it too heavy. Beautiful game with great table presence, definitely recommended as well!
Dan Street Phillips
I hadn’t heard much about the Oniverse line before. A series of solo/two player, card driven games by Shadi Torbey and his publisher inPatience. However this year, I saw a lot of bloggers and reviewers raving about their newest addition to the series, Cyberion. After getting it for Christmas I have been playing it non stop.
This means my husband is happy that I am no longer nagging him to play a game with me every day! The premise is simple, some Evil Cogs have been sabotaging the machines in your factory and everything is about to explode. You have to use the trusty robots in your deck to fix the machines whilst upgrading them as you go to do more efficient work before the entire factory collapses down around you. It is a game of hand management, figuring out when to play certain cards to be most effective and when to trash cards to gain potentially powerful upgraded powers. The production is just wonderful, with gorgeous artwork by Elise Plessis and the game comes with four mini expansions that really spice up the gameplay. It is not an easy game. I don’t think I have managed to beat it yet but that’s what makes a great puzzle game.
As soon as I get to the end, usually with one or two machines left to be fixed, I just reshuffle and get stuck into another attempt. I have really gotten into solo gaming in the last year but many of the games I play can take a while to set up, but this is straight out of the box and ready in a matter of minutes. I can’t wait to start exploring the rest of the series!
Jacob Dunkley
I had quite a bit of time off over the festive period, and combined with the terribly wet weather we had I had nothing better to do than play an awful lot of board games and watch Christmas films. I’ve just checked my BG Stats entry for the past four week and I amassed 52 plays of 29 different games which is definitely a record by quite some margin and I definitely had a fun month of board gaming!
There were a few games that have been new to me over the past few weeks, one of which is the long out of print game Ankh-Morpork (although a reskin has been made in Nanty Narking). Ankh-Morpork was excellent and hilarious, and we played two back to back games of it. Other new games I played were Twilight Inscription which was a long and complex roll and write, which reminded me of Hadrian’s Wall but with a very different theme, and Twilight Inscription was way shorter than Twilight Imperium while still managing to capture some of the feel of playing a giant space epic. Forest Shuffle and Obsession were gifts to myself from myself over the Christmas period. Forest Shuffle is fantastic and we played it three nights in a row which is something I don’t think we’ve ever done with a game before. Obsession is just delightful and I was well and truly beaten by my wife when we played. The first game of Obsession took a while but once we got the gameplay down it really sped up and I think future games will be quicker and hopefully closer in score.
Other new games to me were Senjutsu: Battle for Japan which was a swift but fun skirmish game, Star Wars: Clone Wars which takes the Pandemic system and find some really nice new ways of innovating it to still feel fresh and Lacuna which was so beautiful and calm to play that I rushed out and bought a copy straight after playing a friends copy. I also finally got around to playing Summoner Wars which I was destroyed at but was a lot of fun and quick to learn and play. Finally the last new game I played was Virtu on New Year’s Day. Virtu is a long and complicated game about Renaissance Italy which I wasn’t very good at but now I know how to play, I would be keen to play again.
That was an awful lot of new games in a short space of time but I also managed to play a fair few games I’ve played before. I’m currently working my way through two different campaign games, Undaunted Stalingrad and The King’s Dilemma and I played two games of each over the past month and won all four games! My house had been doing terribly in the King’s Dilemma so it was good to make up some ground and I feel bad for my friend in Undaunted as it’s currently 6-1 in the campaign to me so far. We have played 13 games of the King’s Dilemma so it will probably be wrapping up in the next few weeks.
Out of my collection Dominion, Iki, Dune Imperium, So Clover, Sea Salt and Paper, My City: Roll and Build, Rajas of the Ganges: Dice Charmers, Cascadia, Brass Birmingham, Welcome to the Moon, 7 Wonders Duel, Brian Boru, Wingspan Asia, Splendor: Marvel, Spirit Island and Judge Dredd Helter Skelter were all played! That’s a lot to bring to the table over 4 weeks and the highlights were definitely Brian Boru, Iki and Dune Imperium which were all so much fun to play. Finally I played a friend's copy of Terraforming Mars with Prelude on Monday this week which marked my first victory in the game!
Hannah Blacknell
This month has been great in terms of playing games with friends and family, we have played with over 25 different people! When we play in bigger groups we tend towards shorter and quicker games a lot of the time. As such there has been a lot of That's Not A Hat and The Fuzzies being played. We love this kind of game because of the experience and the people we get to game with. Both are definitely worth your cash if you've not played as they have been incredibly well received by all we have introduced them to.
Another game that we have been giving a lot of love this month has been Sagrada. This is an old faithful for us for the past few years and we often play the app version daily challenge. But it's been great fun to get this to the table in real life recently.
This game has its roots in Sudoku type challenges as you try to fill up your window obeying all the placement rules of no matching colours or numbers orthogonally adjacent to each other. You fill your window with dice that you will snake draft, there is an option for hate drafting if you are so inclined (I tend to avoid this). You also will wanting to try to achieve your own personal objectives and the public objectives today which change game to game. The player with the most points wins.