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Daniel Hilton
This month has been a busy one for me. Not that any other month is quiet. Gosh, I wish some months were quiet. Being back at uni though and being back to seeing uni friends has meant I have managed to get more games to the table than usual.
With my uni peeps, I have managed to introduce them to a couple of games. Viking See-Saw went down well, but then who doesn’t love silly dexterity games? One of my friends enjoyed Factory Funner, whilst it burned another’s brains. And then I managed to play Fluff for the first time with them (Liar’s Dice), that one ended up being more fun than I thought it would be. I still prefer Skull though, which is pretty much the same game.
Me and my partner have also managed to play a couple of games this month. I bought her Canvas for her birthday, which we both enjoyed getting into. We also played Mercurial which was a Kickstarter that arrived recently. It has incredible component quality and plays well for sure.
I was also at a house party this month, pretending as if I was still a teenager by playing some drinking games. Do or Drink finally got played after gathering dust on my shelf for a few years. We quickly moved on to the classic ring of fire though. Sometimes a deck of cards is all you need!
I have also managed to play a ton of new games online. These include Space Base, Next Station Tokyo, Chromino, Break the Code, Tranquillity and 7 Wonders Architects. I really enjoyed each of these in different ways, besides Architects (I haven’t enjoyed any 7 Wonders game). Space Base was definitely the stand-out game though, it was a lot of fun!
That’s it for me folks. Like I said, busy month. I need to find time to sleep next month. Maybe.
Favouritefoe
With Halloween all around, some spooky themed games hit out table this month! But being the big fraidy cat that I am, it was more about the funny than the fearfully freaky! But that’s okay because with a growing number of spooky themed games, there’s something for everyone at Halloween!
PATCHWORK HALLOWEEN was first up on the pumpkin-spiced roster. We love the original and battling over eyeballs for some seriously wicked looking patches made our month of gaming extra special! I’ll never tire of sneaking the one patch that my own favourite foe has had his eye on for ages! But the feeling is fleeting. For it’s never long before my opposing ghoul gets his revenge. With a penchant for pretty expensive patches, my husband always manages to earn enough eye-ball currency to make a killer quilt!
Next up we had DEAD AND BREAKFAST which we played with our 8 year old son. This is such a fun tile laying, monstrous motel building game where we are trying to score points by matching guests and their ghoulish phobias. Not to mention stringing fiendish flowers along vines growing out of the front door! It’s sneakily strategic and has a brilliantly interactive drafting mechanism. The Scooby-Doo esque cartoon artwork is brilliant too. Just what the Dr. Jekyll ordered for the season!
Another of our son’s favourites is MAGIC MARKET and this month he absolutely smashed us at it! Negotiating prices like a boss and using his super sharp memory to pinpoint the perfect visitors to his stall, he was able to sell, sell, sell and leave both of us in the dust! We couldn’t finish the month without some GHOSTS LOVE CANDY TOO which is a super fun game about ghosts stealing Halloween hauls of candy from the kids going trick or treating. Again the artwork is brilliant and there’s a real salty moment when you can combo abilities for even sweeter effect!
Arnaldo Amaral
The month of October was a month of going back to the basics. I had a guest over for a couple weeks who knows basically nothing about the hobby but enjoys a classic boardgame (their favourite is Scrabble). Obviously, as a good preacher of our holy religion, I had to get some gateway games on the table!
Started really simple with Bananagrams, which was a hit as he already loves Scrabble. We played a couple of rounds and for the first time ever I somehow managed to be a rotten banana! (I blame it on the scotch). Another day, I brought Azul to the table, and he really enjoyed the open drafting and pattern building experience, which I believe was a first for him.
After a couple more days, I brought another classic with a twist: Risk - Game of Thrones! I’m a sucker for a strategy game and he had never played Risk, so we had to play it. He did find it a bit too long but overall, we had a good time getting destroyed by all the sixes my wife was rolling (she completely dominated with house Baratheon, the fury is real!).
The final game I introduced to him was Catan. And again, I don’t know exactly what was up with my wife this month but she was just on a roll! (literally, she kept rolling everything she needed). We got obliterated again but it was a really great time on a very rainy day!
Once he was gone, my wife and I still managed to play Point City and Splendor Duel, which we very recently purchased. Both have amazing gameplay at two players and we highly recommend it for couples who don’t mind being competitive!
Rob Wright
Well, it seems to have been raining forever and doesn’t appear to be showing any signs of stopping (oh. It stopped). This, of course, sucks, but does mean plenty of table top time. Yay.
First off, I managed to do what I couldn’t quite pull off at Zatucon – Dune Imperium with all the trimmings! Dune Imperium is a delightful combination of Deckbuilding and Worker Placement that has been designed specifically for me, but is also pretty popular with other folk too. The base game is not too shabby, but the two expansions, Rise of Ix and Immortality make it sing like Placido Domingo in the shower, adding so much more to do in the game and providing so many different ways to score those precious victory points. Naturally, I lost.
Less table dominating, but just as much fun is the small box game Sea Salt and Paper. Hand control, set collection, drafting, push your luck… and all presented through the medium of beautifully crafted origami sea… things. On cards. It is as simple as 6Nimmt, as pretty as Everdell and as deceptively strategic as Love Letter. My only criticism is that it only plays up to four, which, let’s face it, is now becoming a restrictive player count. It does not detract too much from the fact that this is a beautifully crafted and straight up beautiful game.
But the game that has been hitting the table most this month is the dog-based dice game, Spots. To summarise: dogs have spots; dice have spots; put the dice on the dogs and win the game. Game play is intuitive and fun, the artwork is adorable and, for a small box game, there is a whole load of play variety here in the different ‘tricks’ that you get your dogs to perform. Fido fun for all the family!