Two weeks passed again. Time flies. Stuff I’ve played recently (as reported on the Google+ page, which is worth following if you ask me), rated using the Avoid, Indifferent, Suggest, Enthusiastic scale described by Brian:
- Dobble. Also known as Spot It!, this is a ridiculously entertaining card game. The round cards have bunch of icons and the trick is that each pair of two cards contains exactly one shared icon. There are five different games included, all which revolve around recognizing the shared icon. Either you try to collect cards or get rid of them. Simple, really easy to teach, tremendously entertaining. This one gets high marks from me. The game comes in a small tin that’s perfect for carrying along anywhere. Rating: Enthusiastic.
- Pantheon. The latest from Bernd Brunnhofer. He has a really good track record and Pantheon doesn’t fail. The game’s very good. The game’s a bit complex and hard to explain briefly, but it’s basically about tribes expanding around the Mediterranean. However, the tribes are played one at a time by all players. The goal is to collect demigods and place pillars that score points. You can also collect gods to get useful powers like extra resources. Looks like this game has a decent dose of luck, lots of possibilities and plenty of excitement. Very good, like Stone Age before. Rating: Suggest+.
- Kissenschlacht. Fun little dexterity game for kids. Try to toss small pillows to the game box using a simple catapult. Controlling the shots is tricky, so it’s a fairly lucky game, but if you allow the kids to shoot from short distance, it’s not hard and the game is quickly over. Rating: Suggest, but will drop down to Indifferent eventually.
- Ubongo 3D. I hadn’t tried this one before. So yeah, it’s a bit difficult. The four-piece puzzles can be very, very hard, actually. I tried to solve one, just to see how well that two minutes works out. Ten minutes later or so I had to check the guide to see if the puzzle can actually be solved. I’ve owned all the other Ubongos, but have since got rid of them. I’m afraid this will meet the same faith, especially as the box is so huge, but I just might keep it — it’s certainly the most interesting game in the series. Rating: Suggest-.
- Kings of Mithril. My relationship with Mindwarrior Games started badly with Atlantic Triangle and I wasn’t terribly impressed by Odin’s Table either, but I was surprised at how much I like Kings of Mithril. It’s a simple game of tile-laying and die-rolling, there’s plenty of luck and sometimes fairly little control, but it’s also quite quick (45 minutes or so) and just fun to play. Rating: Suggest.
- Monte Cristo. This is the game with marble action track, where the player whose marble is on the bottom of the track gets to be the active player. The marble is then moved on top of another track. Clever, but it doesn’t rescue the game. Monte Cristo is a ho-hum euro game, where players try to get area majorities and try to have the right sacks at the right time. Nobody liked the game. Rating: Indifferent-.
- Blood Bowl: Team Manager. Ooh, Ameritrash! In this case it means “annoying, chaotic tug of war”. I dislike tug of war, and thus the game doesn’t work for me. I might be interested trying this with just two players; that way it might work. Our four-player game took 90 minutes, which is way too much for a game this unpredictable and frustration. Rating: Indifferent-.
- The City. Here’s a game that was pretty much exactly as I hoped it would be. Fast and fun game in the San Juan family. The game plays really fast and has just enough decisions to make it worth the time and the effort. Lovely. This one I must have, and I’m really hoping I’ll find one in the BGG Secret Santa box I have waiting for me. If I don’t, I know I’ll be buying one. Rating: Suggest+, maybe even Enthusiastic.
