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Quacks of Quedlinburg - Will Moffat
Winner of countless awards including both the prestigious the Kennerspiel des Jahres and Golden Geek Best Family Board Game in 2018, Quacks of Quedlinburg, or simply “Quacks” as it is affectionately known, finally entered my household on Christmas Day!
I had heard all of the buzz when it came out – breakout designer Wolfgang Warsch created a lot of buzz in 2018 thanks to this game and his psychological mind reading experiment of a card game, The Mind. I played and bought The Mind, but I resisted Quacks until earlier this year, just before the first lockdown, where a friend brought it to my games group.
It was an intensely satisfying experience, drawing ingredients out of a bag and stirring them into my potion, but the more ingredients I drew, the greater the tension rose as more and more cherry bombs came out of the bag – once cherry bombs to the value of 8 or more come out of the bag, your pot explodes!
I knew this would be a sure-fire hit with my family and we played on the 29th with my eldest daughter coming out victorious, and then again the next day, with the same result! I went for a walk on New Year’s Eve and got home to a raucous house – yes, they were mid-way through a game of Quacks!
Yogi - Tom Harrod
December was a tough, stressful, hectic month for us here in the UK. At one point we weren’t sure if we were going to have to put Christmas on ice. I had the good fortune to see other households on Christmas Day. To spread some much-needed cheer, we played games that produced proper belly laughs!
With that in mind, Yogi is my Game of the Month. If you want a game that produces the highest amount of LOLs per box ratio, look no further than Yogi. This is a simple card game by Gigamic, where players tie themselves up in literal knots! On your turn, you pick up a card and have to obey the instructions. Cards come in two categories. You either have to hold the card somewhere, such as ‘under your chin’, ‘on left elbow’. If ever this card stops touching said location, you’re out!
The other type of card is an ongoing action you have to perform. This could be ‘middle finger touching palm’ or ‘keep one hand above the other’. If ever you break out of this pose, you’re out! The hilarity snowballs when you have to accomplish these in an ever-accumulating fashion. Sometimes the hardest part of Yogi is the simple act of picking up your next card!
We had three generations of my family playing Yogi, from ages 5-70. This isn’t a kids’ game, though. Far from it. And the great thing about Yogi is it works if you want to play it in a remote manner, over Skype or Zoom. Only one of you needs to own the game. Everyone else needs to have a standard deck of cards to hand. You (with the copy of the game) read out the instruction, and the player obeys, with one of their cards. When I played this over Skype with my friends it had us all in stitches!
Deep Blue - Tom Gorner
December has been a tough month for me to find time to game, however, I was lucky enough to have time off work after Christmas and used this time incredibly wisely! I made a conscious effort to try out games that had sat on my shelves for over a year, unplayed. One such game was Deep Blue and after playing it, I rediscovered its fantastic appeal!
This push-your-luck, card/engine builder has you take control of two vessels and a team of divers, intent on scoring the biggest haul of treasure possible. Players explore the waters around the map and can decide to dive on a location on their turn. The dive is managed by gems in a bag, where the dive leader blindly draws gems, one by one. Some of the gems are treasure and will give VPs to the players engaged in the dive.
Be warned though as there are also blue and black gems for the hazards the divers come across. While diving, you also have a hand of cards which can be used to maximise the returns on the treasures discovered during the dive and really make or break your game! If you encounter hazards you can’t play cards to mitigate, then you must resurface and lose out on the treasure!
I thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering Deep Blue. It is very competitive and the blind drawing element during the dives makes for some very tense moments! We’ve played it countless times in the last few weeks and it just shows, it’s always worth diving into your collection as you will always find some hidden gems!
This War of Mine - Nathan Coombs
Twenty-two hours played in just two weeks for one game! What other game has been as involving or gripping?
This War of Mine is not colourful or fancy. It is not glamorous. Instead, it gets players to immerse themselves in the individuals affected by war. My sons and I have experienced (to a tiny degree) the struggles faced by civilians during the Balkan conflict. This game is based on the thoughts and writings of a civilian caught up in one of the sieges during Yugoslavia’s break up. You play a character living in a bombed-out building. Each day is a struggle to find food and water.
With luck, you might collect a few items to barter and trade, and perhaps be creative enough to build a workbench. You need to fashion traps for rats or a rainwater collector for water. This is earthy stuff. As the temperature drops so you and your friends will sicken. You now rue the missed opportunity to upgrade the heater to a more efficient stove.
Every night is a risk. Someone must go out to scavenge the city, hoping to fill their backpack with enough meagre resources for the next 24 hours. However, where should you visit? There will be plenty of parts and materials at the military outpost but you risk injury and death from snipers or soldiers. Is it right to steal some medicines from the supermarket? Should you have taken the axe or would it have been better to leave that weapon at home so that Marko could defend your squat looters?
This is not a “feel-good” game. During our first run-through (about 12 hours) we ran out of food, our water collectors froze because it was winter, we chopped up our furniture for fuel and couldn’t get to a hospital because of fighting on the streets.
If ever a game shakes you from your comfortable, centrally heated existence- this is it.
Playing this game in stages over several days allowed us to plan and reflect on each day’s activities. It might be a game but it does not feel like it. You want to survive, but it opened our eyes to the realities of war. It started conversations and has made us think. This War of Mine is not just a game!
Fossilis - Joe Packham
The great Indiana Jones with his trusty whip and fedora. Dr Alan Grant scaring kids witless with his Velociraptor claw. Tony Robinson unearthing manky old pots in muddy fields with the Time Team. Who hasn’t dreamt of the adventure-filled life of an archaeologist? Well in December I got to do the second-best thing, play a board game about archaeology! Well, Paleontology to be precise.
Now, this might all sound a little gimmicky, maybe it is, but there’s no denying this tactile 3D element is immensely fun too. Once you’ve unearthed your prehistoric treasures you’ll use them to score various Dino cards from the market. Here the game shines as more than just a family weight dexterity jaunt. Point scoring strategies are surprisingly varied and rewarding. The set collection element is bountiful and highly competitive.
The skill tokens and events keep things interesting and fresh. Having bought the game for its unique aesthetic I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed the euro-style mechanics beneath. With top quality components and smile-inducing gameplay, Fossilis is easily my Game of the Month!
