Without my realizing it, Looping Games have been in my head for the last few years. Their 19xx series of games have snuck onto my most anticipated lists (both in 2021 and 2023). They have shown up in conversation. But I had never actually played a game or even seen a box to lock the series into place mentally. 

As a friend was telling me how excited he was to finally get hold of 1987 Channel Tunnel, all the pieces clicked and I realized how this collection of titles in their novel-sized boxes belong one and all to the same publisher. I’m sure there’s a fun conversation around the origins, size, and hopes for this series of 20th century historical outings. For the time being, I’m happy just to give them my attention. 

The Cotton Club was formed in, you guessed it, 1923 by bootlegger Owney Madden in Harlem. A racially segregated clientele were often entertained by the legends of the jazz age in the presence of famous gangsters, politicians, and celebrities. 1923 Cotton Club is a worker placement game that sets players as club owners in the days of prohibition, building up their wares in an attempt to build the best establishment and draw a notable (regardless of nobility) crowd. 

Riding the icon train

The central…

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Exuding a spirit of generosity, the review copy of Vinyl: Jukebox arrived with a bonus gift inside: a copy of Vinyl: Holiday Edition. Because there are enough puns to go around when it comes to the music of the Christmas season, Eric Alvarado and the team at Talon Strikes Studios have put together an entirely new game in the spirit of everything Vinyl that has come before.

The heart of the Vinyl series is record collection. Whether it’s the original Vinyl, the Big Band edition, the Metal or 80s expansions, or the distinct and aforementioned Jukebox, each title abounds with slightly knocked off album covers and an affinity for hunting matching icons. Toss in a few colored lights and ornaments and you’re set for the Holiday Edition. 

There’s no place like home for the holidays?

In Holiday Edition, players are building shared Christmas trees to their left and right using cards that feature playful album covers and wintry icons. Each tree begins with a single card at the top, with rows of two, three, four, and two again below (because you need that trunk or the tree won’t stand upright).

Most often, a player turn involves placing one card into position on one of their shared…

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Despite my love of the music born of the original vinyl era, I just don’t have money for a vinyl collection. No, that money is reserved for books and board games. Thankfully, the fine folks at Talon Strikes Studios have seen the possibility of such a disconnect in humanity and decided that someone like me might be more likely to spend money on a game about vinyl than I would be with actual vinyl. 

Designer Eric Alvarado brought his original Vinyl concept to Kickstarter in 2018 with success. The original set collection game had several expansions that punned on various genres and gave the game a more personal style. Most recently, the Big Band expansion added yet one more flavor to the collection.

Vinyl: Jukebox—crowdfunded alongside Big Band—is an adjacent title, a two-player bag-building, coin-dropping race to assemble the best collection of records. The verbal puns are out, but there’s enough Jake Blues in there to know the personality lives on.

Sleeve

Duelists sit as jukebox owners, collecting the coins of their patrons, which also seem to function like wishes in a well. Each coin bears the markings of the sorts of records they might like to see in the machine: genre, decade, and relative obscurity (A-side/B-side). These coins are shoved in a bag, used and reused…

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A Nearly Verbatim Transcription of the Author's Most Recent Teach of Lacrimosa, Which It Is Not Necessary to Read in Its Entirety (Feel Free to Skim) but Does Offer Illuminations Regarding the Author’s Issues with The Game

Pt. I: Tutto è disposto

Alright, everyone. Tonight we’re gonna play Lacrimosa. It’s got a lot of Euro stuff, it’s got a bit of deck building, I think this group will like it. First thing, yes, it’s a beautiful box. Devir does a wonderful job with the production of their heavier games.

[caption id="attachment_265248" align="alignnone" width="768"] The box is beautiful, and makes an immediate impression.[/caption]

Before I explain this, we should get it all on the table, that’ll make the teach easier. I’ve got jobs for everyone, if you don’t mind. Mary and Susan, can you help me separate these cards by, I think the game calls them Eras, by the little roman numeral on that red shield in the middle of each card? Look out for the player crests, too. We'll each get a set of those as our starting cards.

Sorry…

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The smash hit Vinyl, which already came with a wave of expansions after its Kickstarter success, is heading back to Kickstarter with a new one. Vinyl: Big Band trades the electric guitars and cowboy boots of the original for the smooth jazz and sultry swing of an earlier era. So what exactly makes Vinyl: Big Band so much bigger and...bandier?

Jazzing It Up

If you’re not familiar with Vinyl, I strongly recommend bopping over to the Vinyl review I wrote last year for a lengthier look at the gameplay and theme. The basic idea is that players are record collectors crowding the aisles of their favorite record store. Each player uses their lone meeple to occupy locations on the board where, among other things, they can gather cards with various icons and spend those cards to buy albums for their collection. What made the original Vinyl such a rockin’ good time (besides Talon Strikes’ high fidelity to the theme) was the bump mechanic that allowed players to claim an already occupied spot at the cost of giving the bumped player a free action. All of those elements are still intact in this new version.

[caption id="attachment_22891" align="alignnone" width="730"] Same old store, brand new records![/caption]

…

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Basic Gameplay

I’ve been looking through the records
An hour or two
And I’ve about decided
What I’ve got to do
-Tom Tall, “Stack-a-Records”

Vinyl, from Talon Strikes Studios, puts a funky spin on worker-placement by turning it into customer-placement. Each player has a single customer marker, which can be placed at any location on the board to take the corresponding action. There are…

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With On Tour, you are getting first-hand experience in what it feels like to be on tour with a rock band… as the band’s manager. That’s right—rather than revel in the glitz and glamor of the rock and roll lifestyle, you get to revel in Excel spreadsheets and Google Maps. While your rock band colleagues get to party and relax until the sun comes up, you are frantically trying to handle incoming requests and book out the most optimal route. Admittedly, managing someone’s calendar does not sound like the most compelling thematic material on the first pass, but I can assure you it’s more engaging than you might think.

Get the Show on the Road Road

On Tour is a quick, 20-minute game for 1-4 players, but can scale up to 12 or more players (yet still…

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Tabletop games have seemingly covered every theme possible: spacecraft vying for dominance of the galaxy, farmers working to have the most plentiful harvests possible, colonizing Mars, rebuilding destroyed cities, running auto plants, you name it! Surprisingly, until I played Big Easy Busking, I hadn’t come across a game where the theme was street musicians vying for control of the crowd, the love of the city.

Area control games are a particular love of mine, but I do grow weary of the various iterations of soldiers/creatures/ships that can seize power of designated locations after a while. Having played the alto sax most of my life, and having a deep love of jazz and street music in general, it is with great pleasure to play a game that marries the area-control mechanic with the concept of musicians competing against each other for various blocks of the city.

The Game

As I’ve noted, Big Easy Busking is an area-control game, and will involve 3 rounds where you must judiciously apply the resources available to you in order to achieve the maximum love from the crowd. Each player takes a band with an associated meeple color; your band is represented by your band card with 3 musicians: the sax player, the drummer, and the trumpeter. Every musician starts with 4 energy cubes…

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Some artists play guitar, or drums, or piano, still others play brass or woodwind instruments. But there’s a segment of the musical population that use samples as their instrument, mixing and remixing sound, both common and uncommon, with oft times sublime results. Layers and loops of sound, swirling, solid and pumping, rising up in crescendos, then crashing down to barely a whisper.

In Dropmix, from Hasbro and Harmonix, players are given the tools to make their own genre bending mixes, using samples from decades worth of songs, and artists from all over the musical spectrum.

Does it work? You bet it does, and stunningly well. Read our review of Dropmix to find out more about this unique game / musical experiment.

Dropmix Overview

So what IS Dropmix? It’s part sampling kit, part musical instrument, part game, and ALL awesome. Dropmix is the brainchild of Hasbro Toys and Harmonix (makers of Rock Band, Dance Central, and the original designers of Guitar Hero). You might say that Harmonix knows a thing or two about music, specifically licensed music. And that last bit is an important distinction because in Dropmix players will be mixing sound clips from some of today’s…

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