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Nemesis - Callum Price
So 2021 is here and January has surprised us all by lasting more than what feels like 80 days. Like it does every year. However, we've taken this time to tap into lots of new games, and one old game. Something big, dark, suspenseful and scary. Nemesis! Nothing beats the thrill of deception, aliens and a tonne of action! The reputation of this game makes it one to be reckoned with, and one we weren't sure would work with just the two of us... but it did! And it worked so, so well!
If you aren't aware, Nemesis is a highly rated, medium/heavyweight game for 1-5 players. It runs a system of choosing whether to play cooperatively or semi cooperatively, adjusting personal goals accordingly. The premise is the ship you're on, The Nemesis, is now infested with "Intruders" (alien beings hungry for you). You awaken from cryosleep to a ship in disarray. From here you need to discover rooms to find key locations, fulfil objectives and survive. This may entail setting a destination, repairing (or sabotaging) engines, initiating a self-destruct sequence, or jumping into escape pods. All whilst managing a personal goal that may require you to blow up the ship, set it to go to Earth, or "prevent someone else's escape"... and avoiding alien horrors who are hungry for your flesh!
There are a fair few games that people play which have a lasting impression overall. Maybe one or two key moments that make the game memorable. Every game of Nemesis has left us with something exciting to talk about. Whether it's because the Intruder Queen rocked up immediately and chased us down for the rest of the game, or because the Engineer's escape was dashed when an Intruder Larva burst out of his chest whilst in an escape pod. It's all so incredibly exciting and tense! There's so much to this game which makes it great. It's one of those games where you won't want to pack it away because, if you leave it out, you can play it again! A tremendously welcome rediscovery that I'm excited to get to the table again soon.
The Brainbox Collection - Nathan Coombs
Despite receiving new games at Christmas, there always remains a soft spot for some “golden oldies”. With homeschooling and lockdown set to continue for many more weeks in the UK, we have been using some games as revision aids for our children. Every parent in the UK at the moment is facing the dilemma of how to help their children learn and understand school subjects that they themselves never really knew in the first place!
Our rediscovered game is more of a collection. The brain box collection has made a welcomed reappearance and, for us, the history and Shakespeare boxes have been very helpful. There is a huge range of titles. Some are more suited to infant and primary school children, others more useful for teenagers. A full review was written on the Zatu blog last year.
The history box contains 55 information cards. Each card takes an event (for example the fall of the Berlin Wall) and has pictures and key points of information printed on one side. Think of them as cue cards. One player has just 10 or 20 seconds to read and memorise the information before passing the card to the next player. There are eight questions on the reverse, specific to that event. We modify the rules to ask all eight questions and then roll the bonus D8 dice. A point is awarded for each correct answer and an extra point given if the bonus question was correct.
Each card takes about two minutes to view, memorise and answer. In the 30 minutes after supper, these brain box games help give a quick overview of some of the topics studied at home during the day. I’ve certainly learnt some new facts each time I’ve played against my daughter.
Who says learning cannot be made fun?
Bärenpark - Craig Smith
I love Bärenpark, it was one of the first games I bought as a gateway into this wonderful hobby. The problem is that when you don’t have many games to choose from, you do run the risk of overplaying some. In the Smith household, that was the fate suffered by Bärenpark.
As the board game collection continued to grow, certain ones were forgotten about, especially if they had been played to death in the first instance. Bärenpark had now become a barren park as it sat in the cupboard out of the light. Every now and again I would suggest we play it again, and the response would generally be quite muted. Those poor bears (and one marsupial, which the rule book does address in fairness)
That is until a few weeks ago. My dad was taken by the seemingly endless amount of football that’s been “gracing” our TV of late, and my sister was at work. My mum and I decided to get a couple of games out, one of which was the box filled with bears (and one marsupial). We played it through a few times and I fell back in love with it all over again. Then, Barenpark became my rediscovered game of the month.
The thing is Bärenpark scales really well, whether it be for two or four players. The addition of the awards variant adds another level, rather than it being just a simple tile placement game. Plus… bears! (and one marsupial) The playing pieces are cute as well as being robust, so you definitely get a lot of bang for your buck.
Whilst I wait patiently for my copy of New York Zoo to arrive, Bärenpark will firmly remain my favourite “animal-themed tile placement inclusive of marsupials” board game. Though you might be surprised to know that there aren’t actually many out there.
Deep Sea Adventure - Lauren Harrington
My rediscovered game this month is Deep Sea Adventure. Deep Sea Adventure was one of the first games I bought from Zatu in lockdown 1.0. It’s a fun, pocket-sized game for 2-6 players that is semi-cooperative in nature yet also competitive. Players start as cute coloured meeples that have gone sharesies in a submarine to go diving for treasure.
The submarine provides the divers with oxygen, which reduces for everyone as players collect treasure. If the oxygen reaches zero before you make it back to the submarine, the round ends. You must drop your treasure and return with nothing. One by one, you roll 2 dice and move that many down the treasure tiles. You can choose to collect any treasure tile you land on.
On the underside of each tile is a number denoting the value of that treasure. You cannot turn it over to reveal the value until the end of the round. The value increases the further down your venture. But alas, the chances of making it back to the submarine fall with every step you take. You must minus the number of treasure tiles you have from every proceeding roll, drastically slowing you down. At any point, you can turn around and take your loot back to the submarine, but you can only turn back once.
Naturally, I continued adding to my collection over lockdown 2.0 and 3.0, and slowly Deep Sea Adventure was replaced by bigger, longer play games until this month when looking for a quick filler before bed Deep Sea reared it’s sleepy head and said ‘Hey!’. We all forgot how much we loved this game.
It’s so easy to drown as you’re always so confident you can make it back before the oxygen reaches zero. You forgets everyone else thinks the same. Greed often ends up drowning most of us! Hilariously, we continue to make the same mistakes almost every time. We start swearing “next time, I will play it safer and turn back earlier”. Alas, this never happens, and we drown yet again.
El Dorado - John Hunt
I have really enjoyed Reiner Knizia’s Quest for El Dorado this month and once it started to hit the table again it hasn’t really stopped...
There is really so much to love about this game. It’s a pacey race and a simple but satisfying deck builder combined. It has just the right amount of tactical play and player interaction to make it hotly-competitive without it feeling desperately mean.
I very much love the fact that the eponymous race happens over a modular board of hexes depicting a cross country pell-mell of varying difficulty. This makes for a manageable learning curve and also plenty of replayability. I like the fact that carrying out your turn - playing cards to move and then playing cards to buy more cards - is simple, but makes for some really crunchy decisions.
There’s a good variety of cards on offer throughout the game and this provides a range of strategies to pursue. You can go for big specialised moves across different terrain types; you can go for trying to be flexible; also, you can go for bigger and bigger card draws, or you can thin your deck down to the barest minimum. I really appreciate the last of these as I feel too many deck builders neglect to offer this in a deliverable fashion across the course of play.
El Dorado plays well with all player counts, it plays fast and it is done in about 45 minutes. It is family-friendly but thinky enough for experienced gamers, which is a plus. The art and production are absolutely fine and best of all it has a brown cardboard fedora to mark the first player. Can’t recommend this highly enough – go and grab a copy, Dr Jones (bullwhip not included).
