I often find myself quoting Stellan Skarsgård’s reading of the line “When is a gift not a gift?” from the 2021 adaptation of Dune. I don’t know why. It’s lodged in the folds of my frontal lobe, popping up at the strangest moments. When considering Water Dragons from HABA, for example, I find my inner self hunching over, adopting gravelly tones, and bubbling, “When is a race not a race?”

Cards and Dice

Each player controls a dragon making its way along a private swimming lane towards a nest on land. The bulk of your dragon is hidden beneath the waves, but it emerges in three sections: the head, a nebulous middle, and the tail.

To move your dragon, you roll a die. In lieu of numbers, each side has either a color or a symbol. Four of those colors correspond to spots in the card market on the board. If you roll red, you take the card on the red space. Each card moves some combination of dragon parts a given number of spaces. As you might imagine, the body parts cannot pass one another. If the full movement value of a card would move your dragon’s tail past its middle, for example, you can still select it, but the tail stops short of passing.

Water Dragons (Wasserdrachen) Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Boy, how do I explain this one? Cactus King is a bit of an odd duck. Put simply, it’s a trick-taking game for families. Described in full, it’s stranger than that.

Here’s the short version: Each round, players simultaneously play anywhere between one and three cards—each player decides for themselves—facedown on the table. Then, everyone flips their cards over. The strongest card in each suit wins a point for the player who played it. Any losses subtract a point. Players who have a positive score for the round take a corresponding number of (absolutely adorable) bandages. The first player to collect eight or more bandages is the winner.

Simple enough, right?

Right?!?

Spine Doctors

In the box, there’s a spinner with a wooden crown on top, representing the Cactus King. His head has 24 sections, four of which are colored to match one of the four suits in the deck. Line the sections up with the numbers along the outside, and you have what we can think of as the chain of command for each of the suits.

[caption id="attachment_292526" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Your Majesty[/caption]

How does that work? Each colored section points to a number. That number is considered the strongest card in…

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Fast forward with me into a future when tourists can hop aboard a Falcon X and visit the moon. Perhaps you have come to the moon to check out the Tycho crater, which you have seen from afar, or the Sea of Tranquility that Neil Armstrong walked upon decades ago. Like him, all of us astro-tourists are jumping and leaping around each other weightlessly. Well, here we are and now we are all vying to get as close to the most coveted craters.

[caption id="attachment_280458" align="alignnone" width="768"] The game box and board partially opened. It's so neat![/caption]

Space flight has been achieved! Which crater shall we visit?

The objective of the game is to score the most points by securing the most advantageous spots on the single-lane raceway made of up craters. Winning points are calculated by multiplying the number on the token with the value on the crater space.

Game play is simple; after each player has chosen their token color, the game begins with the youngest player's starting roll. Players place and move their tokens on the board by matching them with the number on the dice roll. Each astronaut's initial move begins on any of the available red starting craters. In consecutive moves astronaut tokens that match the…

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This is Not A Game

Since we are a board gaming family, it has been on my mind that my kids should learn some classic fundamental games that have withstood the test of time. I wanted to teach critical thinking skills and strategies in game play, and there came a point in my parenting journey that I decided to teach my kids to play chess. But how? It does not stand out as bright and colorful. What is the point in moving the pieces around like so?

If you have kids, you know that theme is everything. You could make kids try really difficult things by putting their favorite character on a box. But how do you get children's buy-in to a "theme-less" abstract strategy game? You reel them in by building up their affection for the chess pieces. You weave a story together that is silly and cute and sometimes ridiculous so that the kids play with the game pieces, very much like they would play with their make-believe toys. That is what Story Time Chess has set out to do with a lot of success.

This is not my first attempt at trying to teach my kids chess. I have an older child who learnt how to…

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I would imagine, to a game designer, each of life’s moments presents an opportunity. They simply must for a game like Paku Paku to exist. How else does a disheveled pile of dollhouse dishes end in shouting panda-themed madness? 

Panda, fill thine belly!

Each of the five wooden dice in Paku Paku contains some combination of green smiling pandas, red dish icons, and/or the numbers one and two. At the outset, these dice are passed out one at a time until they are all out. With up to eight players, some may begin empty-handed. In the center of the table are twenty four plain white Barbie dishes (plates, bowls, and cups), a handful of penalty markers, and a Table board. 

One…two…three…Paku Paku! Simultaneously, players begin rolling the dice in front of them. When a number comes up, they roll again. When a smiling panda comes up, that die is passed left. When a red dish comes up, a single dish must be added to the stack in the center of the table board before rolling again. If at any time a player is rolling more than the allotted limit of dice (which changes, depending on the player count) or if they knock over the stack of dishes, someone yells Paku, Stop! The offending player then rolls the dice in…

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Right now, the Bell household is knee-deep in the world of Harry Potter.

My wife loved the Potter books. Now that my daughter is reading-age, she has pounded her way through all seven of the books herself. We took her to Universal Studios in Orlando last fall and she had to be physically ripped from the park by the end of our vacation there. Every time we go somewhere that has Harry Potter toys, Harry Potter LEGOs, Harry Potter clothes, Harry Potter school supplies—you name it; she wants it all.

It should be no surprise, then, that a board game featuring wizards trying to get to a wizarding school before a ghost catches the players would be a massive hit in our house.

Enter Wizardry to the Power of Three (2016, Pegasus Spiele), a game that casually borrows from the world of Hogwarts then adds the element of the game Memory to the proceedings. With flavor text like “to…see the flying brooms…they heard the grown-ups talk about”, referring to “wizard students”, I don’t think anyone is confused about where we are.

And that works. Games borrow liberally from other worlds all the time, and for a light, 15-minute affair, Wizardry to the Power of Three (Wizardry for short) landed well with the family.

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It is true. I am guilty…guilty of sleeping on such a great, great game.

You see, I saw the news in 2020 about the recent Spiel des Jahres winner Pictures, designed by Daniela and Christian Stöhr and published by Rio Grande Games. I had never heard of the game but since it won a major award, I figured, what the heck? Let’s pick up a copy.

Then Pictures arrived at my home and I could not get anyone to play it. Pictures looks like a family game, and many of the gamers in my playgroups look upon family games with disgust. (“Meh, the rules are only on one sheet? Probably won’t be hard enough.”)

But even one pass at the rulesheet told me this was going to shine with anyone creative who decided to play Pictures. And now, many months after buying it, I schlepped Pictures to a family holiday gathering and everyone loves it.

What took me so long to experience the joy of Pictures? How many other jewels do I have on the shelf of shame???

The 5-Minute Teach

Pictures has an incredibly simple rule set. My 7-year-old loved the first play we did of Pictures so much that…

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On my first day at Gen Con 2021 I spoke with Dave Schultze, the owner and founder of Gridopolis Games. Dave’s game system Gridopolis caught my eye because it looked like checkers, from space!

The system, a 217-piece set that looks very much like a building toy at first glance, is branded as a science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) game for kids of all ages. This feature is both the best and worst thing about Gridopolis; it looks like a toy to seasoned gamers and it appears to be a game that might be too daunting for a younger child like my two kids, ages 5 and 8.

However, Gridopolis is officially a 2021 Mensa Select winner, one of 10 games awarded the seal of excellence last year for challenging and original gameplay. That shows in both the incredible decision space and the production.

But getting Gridopolis to the table was a challenge across the game groups I play with, and my kids were often more interested in using Gridopolis as a cool-looking base for their Legos than playing it with their dad. Clearing these hurdles with both audiences is a story within itself!

Let’s Start with Checkers

No…

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There are a whole slew of cat games that have flooded the market in recent years, so you might be over that, but have you played one where you are the cat? Or perhaps I can whet your appetite with some fish instead? Are your kids fans of sushi or sashimi? Then, this might tickle their whiskers too!

Overview

Cat’s Tsukiji is a real time, set collection game for a clowder of 2 to 4 cats. Players take on the role of cats who are pawing at the freshest fish that has come to the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, Japan. In this game, the felines will have to see who is the fastest to get the most valuable fish since only the alpha cat who has had its fill first wins the game.

Set Up

The game is simple to set up. All the cards are shuffled to form a face down draw pile and the Market of fish is set out within reach of all players, equal to all the players and one more. A three player game will have four cards in play and a four player game would have five cards and so on. Players put on their cute little Cat Paw finger socks and they are ready to play!

[caption id="attachment_245402" align="alignnone" width="1024"]Cat’s Tsukiji Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Overview

Sheepy Time is an area movement, push your luck, racing game for one to four players. Players take on the role of the Dream Sheep and over the course of a few rounds, players race to jump the fence as many times over in order to help everyone have a good night’s rest before the Nightmare threatens to rudely wake everyone up.

The game is set up like so:

Buy Sheepy Time on Amazon

The game plays on a circular board upon which the Fence token sits. Players' Sheep tokens, the Nightmare token, and the Web token, if used, are placed on the board. The score board is set up with the corresponding Pillow Reference card for different player counts. Each player places one Wink token at the start and one Pillow token at the end of the scoreboard. The Wink token keeps track of how many Winks…

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Well fret no longer. Tonight you shall sleep well for I have the answers you seek. Remember the lesson that Frankie and Benji mouse learned in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, however. Sometimes the answers you seek aren’t always the answers you want. Sometimes the answers make about as much sense as the questions themselves.

This is just my long-winded way of saying that the story that lies at the center of Armonia makes about as much sense as the story lying at the heart of Sagani which is not much sense at all. The players are fantastical creatures moving through the various landscapes trying to find the most pleasing sounds before forging them into Sound discs by completing tasks at the temple. Now that you know the answer to your burning Armonia questions, I bet you’re kicking yourself, aren’t you? It’s so obvious once…

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Most board games include an attempt—often in the rulebook—to tell a story. Some travel that extra mile to craft one or several worlds of depth and circumstance in which the game takes creative shape. Still others include a tricked-out digital app to narrate said story complete with a bevy of accents and sound effects alongside a mood-inducing musical score. 

Only one that I’ve seen includes a quirky micro-comic about the occasional annoyances of receiving the diplomatic gift of a very hungry panda. 

Takenoko, the ten-years-young creation of Antoine Bauza (7 Wonders, Tokaido, Draftosaurus), tells just such a story, dropping folks into the charming scene of a Japanese imperial bamboo garden. The gardener, rather than experiencing the tranquility of his labors, must contend with an adorable oversized eating machine. 

In this now-classic selection from Bombyx Games, players attempt to juggle the arrangement and growth of a beautiful bamboo garden while satiating the voracious appetite of a giant panda. The Chibis expansion even adds a mate and a burgeoning family for everyone’s favorite black and white critter. All that’s missing is the giant panda cam livestream.

The comic beginning sets the stage for a light-hearted, charming experience that might even…

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Random mortal considerations aside, I’ve mustered the courage to board a sinking ship with a bunch of rats to see if they could properly entertain me amid the rising waters.

RATS: High Tea at Sea is a print & play roll-and-write adventure in which some high society rodents are attempting one last fancy party before their wounded luxury vessel gurgles its final breath. Joshua Debonis (Dice Miner) and Eric Zimmerman (Quantum) brought the design with charming illustrations from Lucie Ebrey and a touch of help from Matt Lees and the folks at Shut Up & Sit Down. 

Take only what you need to survive

…

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