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Kirsty Hewitt
This month we have been playing some older favourites. You know, the games which over time move to the back of the cupboard. I love shiny new games too, but sometimes it's nice to give some older games some love!
Riverboat has some nice choices but also a great flow. The different phases of each round are clearly set out. They also make sense - you plant crops, harvest them, and use the income to hire boats. I like the small decisions that you have to make and the impact they have on your strategy in the game.
Village is a game which didn't gel with my family. But when I moved out, I "acquired" it, and it's never going back! Village still feels a lot different to a lot of other games out there. Taking actions by taking coloured cubes which can then be used in other actions later is a neat idea. I also like the consideration of which workers you age, trying to get the most out of them before they leave the board. But not leaving it too late there are no spaces left in the village chronicle!
Wingspan has also been on the table quite a bit this month. Wingspan is always enjoyed as a five player game when we visit my family. But we hadn't played it as a two player game for a long time. This month we righted that and ended up playing back to back games. Wingspan with five is good fun, as you get a lot of things from other people. Whilst there is not so much interaction with two players, it plays quickly and, especially with the European expansion, there is plenty to do.
I have enjoyed my month of older games. Looking forward to seeing what June brings!
Jacob Dunkley
Spring is in the air, which means our dining room isn’t quite as cold or dark in the evening and so it also feels like this month has been a bumper month for games. I’m also a really big fan of the BG Stats app and use it to log all my plays. I started on the first of January last year and it’s a great way to ensure I play as much of my collection as possible, know exactly what I’ve played to help me write this, but also see how bad I am at most games.
On the campaign games front, a friend and I finished our Undaunted Normandy playthrough with me snatching victory in the final scenario to take the final campaign score to 7-5. Having played through Undaunted North Africa with the same friend last year, it was good to revisit this game knowing how to play it from the off. Our Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion group has taken a bit of a backseat and we only managed two plays over the past month, completing scenario 8 by the skin of our teeth and tackling a rather tricky side scenario involving a bunch of chaos demons. Solo wise, having completed the Mad Titans Shadow campaign for Marvel Champions back in March, I cracked out the Sinister Motives campaign this month and am having a blast with it. Gwen and Miles are really fun to play with and if you’re a Marvel Champions fan I would definitely recommend picking this one up!
I played a few new games that I hadn’t played before including the hot new game, Earth. Other notable new plays for me included Bunny Kingdom, Cat in the Box, Village Rails and Banish the Snakes. Earth lived up to the hype, it reminded me a little of Wingspan but felt tougher in its decision making and also quicker to play at higher player counts and I can’t wait to play it again. Cat in the Box does something truly unique with the trick taking genre in that no cards have colours but you choose the colour when you play the card. If Scout was the trick taking game of last year, then I think I have a winner for this years’ entry. Village Rails is the spiritual successor to Village Green which I also adore, and this felt not quite as mean but just as tough on the brain, a lot of in a very small box. Bunny Kingdom has been out a while but was new to me and I can’t believe I haven’t played it before. Draft cards and play bunnies to try and create large fiefs, it was simple to pick up yet had a lot of strategic decisions. Banish the Snakes had echoes of Pandemic but instead of curing diseases you are converting pagans, so maybe not quite the same thing…
From my collection, I had a couple of excellent games from the Everdell Complete Collection with my wife, using Bellefaire and New Leaf. I find New Leaf to be an excellent addition for two players as it provides a higher turnover of meadow cards as well as new cards at the station without ramping up the complexity of the game. Ark Nova also hit the table this month at four players which actually took under two and a half hours, plus I recorded a positive score which was nice. Hansa Teutonica was added to my collection as a birthday gift from my wife and we had an excellent five player game of that following a game of Heat, which I don’t own but am quickly racking up plays of. I told you this was a bumper few weeks for me, I mean I also played Architects of the West Kingdom (which is always brilliant), Love Letter, Flamecraft, Radlands, Hadrian’s Wall, Dominion, Railroad Ink, Hanamakoji and Wingspan so this is going to be a tough month to beat!
Rachael Duchavony
This month has seen a fair few new games to experience and it’s been fabulous! I finally succumbed to FOMO and grabbed myself a copy of Heat. 4 plays with a player count of 2, 3, 3 and 6 I have to say this game was thoroughly enjoyable at every play count. And you can have very different strategies to factor in with low to high player counts and with different race tracks. I found the basic ‘learn to play’ games just as fun as the more ‘advanced’ game but with each game came some new awareness, some new element to try.
This was also an exciting month because after, quite literally, years of anticipation Darwin’s Journey finally arrived on my doorstep. This game was everything I imagined it to be and more. I’ve only just scratched the surface of our relationship together but I already know I’m going to have hours of fun!
And my final new game to arrive was Illiterati. Now I’m not a huge fan of ‘word’ games like scrabble and the likes but I will play them because other players in my group, namely my husband and his best friend, enjoy them. I have to say I was curious to see a cooperative word game in action, not least because my husband’s bestie is quite frankly the WORST co-op player I have ever met. Even when he wants to help he hinders and usually he’s just playing to mess with you. In a traitor game you can not count on the social deductions of his actions because he’ll play like a traitor even when he’s trying to win with lame excuses like; “I wanted to see other people’s reactions because if they were the traitor they’d have looked confused at my move”.
And that brings us on to the Shining… we nearly died because the bestie just can’t be trusted even when he was an innocent caretaker. A wrongful accusation sent us all a little Psycho… no wait that’s another movie. Survival was hard when we’d all, quite frankly, gone mad! But I’ve digressed away from Illiterati which was an enjoyable experience I know I’ll happily play again. The artwork is lovely and the gameplay was simple and fun.
Speaking of fun… an older game that brings joy to my scribbling heart got to the table quite a bit this month. Patchwork Doodle. I find the game play a little more simplistic than other versions of Patchwork and the colouring in of squares is so therapeutic during this stressful exam seasoned life of a teacher.
I’m in a book club where we read apocalyptic novels so I felt it fitting this month to match my story with Hit Z Road a fun survival game that I’ve found a struggle to win so far. It’s quick, it’s fun, but those zombie attacks in the last round are quite frankly BRUTAL! Especially when you’ve forgotten their coming and wasted all your resources and gathered extra people along the way. It’s like Dead of Winter taught me nothing about helping others in zombiealyptic times!
So finally with all that death and carnage on the road I end with Dice Hospital! Another older game but new to me as I only got hold of a copy during AireCon last month. I have to say colour me impressed. I love the use of dice as patients and as long as you trust your opponent/s not to cheat healing your patients at the same time as each other makes for quicker game play and less time staring into space whilst you wait for your opponent to make their move. I guess someone could still take a little longer, especially if they suffer from AP, and I do need to make and print my own reference cards to quickly see what each of the wards and specialists do but I can’t wait for this to hit the table more often.
My May recommendation, after going to a local board gamers club/meet-up whatever you’d choose to call it I definitely recommend doing this if you can as a way to socialise and play games you may not have tried before. Last week we played our first game of Tiny Towns (not photographed because I don’t own it… yet) which instantly made my wish list. Last time we went to this games meeting we instantly added Space Base and Dice Throne to our collection. So as soon as you’ve found the games you love be sure to check them out on Zatu!
Luke Pickles
This month had a well needed week off with my partner, so when we made the trip to the forest cabin we’d rented, we had to include board games. The main game we had set up and played repeatedly during our stay was The Adventures of Robin Hood. Specifically, we were exploring the Friar Tuck in Danger expansion. For those who don’t know, The Adventures of Robin Hood is a story driven game with a really intriguing movement system and advent-calendar style board where you flip over different tiles to reveal rewards, enemies, story elements and the like throughout the game. We had already played through most of the story, so we had the chance to finish our campaign and dive into the next chapters of the expansion. Friar Tuck in Danger picks up from where the original story left off, and has you replace some tiles and add on a secondary board to give more of the forest. There’s not going to be any spoilers here, but I’d highly recommend picking up the expansion if you want to see more of this adventure.
The other game I managed to tick off my bucket list was Tales of the Arabian Nights – something I picked up at AireCon in March. I’d seen this a few years ago and was saddened to find it wasn’t in print anymore, so when I saw two copies for sale, I had to snap one up. And it did not disappoint. In the game, you’re running about to complete quests in the world of Scheherazade and the 1001 tales. As you move about the board, you run into all sorts of situations which require you to react. There’s a whole book of different scenarios, interactions and reactions you can take, which can either go well for you or, as was the case for me, can leave you disfigured and trapped in a loveless marriage that really limits your movement. Despite this, I had an absolute blast at the insanity that took place, even with some problematic themes included. That said, I’m really looking forward to the follow up game, Tales of the Arthurian Knights, coming later this year.