Author: Bill H

The games in this were released between October 2016 to the start of October 2017. So if your wondering where Azul is, it’s at #1 on the 2018 list!

1.Great Western Trail

First things first, let’s get this straight. This game is a beast and not for the faint of heart, a lot of rules, 3 hours of game play for 4 players and moments of true brain melting agony. That being said, this one won by a landslide and is truly a piece of genius. A mix of route building, deck building, engine building and a host of other ideas all mashed together into a cow herding and shipping dream. There are multiple strategies to employ and a host of tough choices a long the way. Alex Pfister, the designer is at the top of his game right now and I can’t wait to see what is next.

2. El Dorado

A deck building, race game from the man Dr. Reiner Knizia. I’ve written about this is previous blogs, but after further playing I find it gets better with age. The tension of the race really builds as you decide whether to hold on to get one more good card into your deck or go for the finish line. Expansions on the way, this could be an evergreen game.

3. When I Dream

Whoop, a party game up at the top. It also comes with a little plastic bed to hold the cards as well! A mix of all things popular right now, hidden roles, word games (well done Codenames) and pretty cards. It’s twist on all that is the sleep mask! The dreamer will wear one and be given one word clues to try and guess a word visible to everyone but them. Some players will be helpful (Fairies) others not so much (Boogeymen) and some will flip flop throughout the 2 minute round (Sandmen, not the Star Wars kind). Good guys get points for all the correct guesses, bad guys for the incorrect ones and the Sandmen for the number of Speeders they ransack (or for equal number of correct/incorrect guesses). The fun part is that the dreamer doesn’t know if they got them right until the end and will have to try and disseminate who is being helpful and not while blindfold. Very original and very fun.

4. Kingdomino

You haven’t heard about this yet? Are you dead? I’ve written many times already about this bad boy.

5. Sagrada

Its pretty, easy to play but makes for a devilish little dice drafting puzzle. Its great as a two player and up to four. So far demand has far outstripped supply of this game, but it’ll become more readily available and everyone will get to play this great title.

6. Magic Maze

When I found a copy of this real time, silent play co-op in the UK and put it in the library, not much happened. Then late one night after we closed, the staff were having their game night at the cafe and I came in the next morning and found that all our Magic Maze had been sold. They had played it the night before and all loved it so much they bought it all. I bought a lot more and they have been enthusiastically been singing its praises to all our customers since. Its not for everyone, some find it too stressful, but its so unique and if you like it, its more likely you’ll love it.

7. A Feast for Odin

Another game from the tail of 2016, this is a humongous game in size, taking up a lot of table and shelf space, and even though the 60+ actions spaces seem overwhelming the game play is actually very intuitive and smooth. Unlike many worker placement games you always feel you have choices even if your ideal spot is gone and the tile laying aspect (from which the game Patchwork was inspired) of your home board is a great puzzle that you can work on when its not your turn. Another Uwe Rosenburg classic and his last ‘big’ game for a while as he claims he is going to take a break from them as his kids are becoming a priority for a while….bless him.

 

8. Century – Spice Road

Take a card, take another, then another and another and then use them to get cubes, and use a different card to get better cubes and then trade the cubes in for a points card and then pick up your cards and use them again to get more cubes…AAAAARRRRGGGHHHH. That is the lay mans version of the game. It’s fast, cardy and cubey, but great. The second game in the series has announced, Century Eastern Wonders, due out later this year.

9. Yokahama

The heavier game, sleeper hit of Essen 2016. Its a little like Istanbul and looks as confusing as all heck when you set it up. It plays beautifully though, with just enough pressure from your opponents to make tough and tense game play and tonnes of variability with the variable board set and paths to victory. Plays awesome as a 2-player up to 4, highly recommended.

10. Flamme Rouge

So much fun. This streamlined bike racing simulation mimics all the great bits of a ‘Tour’ without over-complicating things and still maintaining those nail-biting finishes. It plays up to 4, but you can easily play in pairs and make it an 8-player game with no extra down time.

Kingdomino

2017’s Game of the Year. A 15 minute kingdom building game that borrows ideas from dominoes (King-domino). Each round player’s auction off tiles to add to their kingdom using turn order for the next round i.e. if you take the best tile you will pick last next round. Try to connect land type to land type to make a big area, but they only score if they have crowns on them. More crowns, more points. Great price point, a real winner.

Queendomino

Take Kingdomino and add an extra land type, special buildings and a few more meatier decisions (and a Dragon). You can combine this with Kingdomino to play a 7×7 4-player game or a 6 player 5×5 game.

Photosythesis

Blue Orange have had a heck of a year as publishers of all the games on this list so far. Photosynthesis absolutely knocks it out of the park with production. By the end of the game you have a multi-colored 3D forest on the board that looks quite stunning. The game itself is a no luck abstract game that actually manages to incorporate the theme into the mechanics. During the game the sun will rotate around the board giving you sun points. Bigger trees get more points and they also shade out the trees behind them. You use these points to drop seeds and grow your trees to their full size and eventual death (which score you game winning points, but loses you sun points needed to grow more trees). Unique and beautiful and again at a price point way below what you would expect for the production levels. A strong contender for 2018 Spiel des Jahres.

Sagrada

A game about building stained glass windows, where have you been all my life? So pretty, see through dice add an extra touch of class to the fabulous game. It’s a multiplayer puzzle where you draft dice to try and fill a window using placement rules on your personal window and in general. You can’t place like numbers or colours next to each other and certain colours and numbers on your board. There are some ways to manipulate your board using certain actions and every game will have different ways to score. Plays in about 30 mins and will have you cursing the new and old Gods when you don’t get the dice you need in the last turn or two.

Magic Maze

This game is CRAY CRAY. 15 minutes of pawn banging silent frustration. Up to 8 players can partake in this madness as well. You are trying to help a Wizard, Barbarian, Rogue and Elf steal some equipment from a mall and when they all have what they need make a mad dash for the exit. The tweak(s) is you don’t control one of them, but all of them only doing one or more actions (like moving North, exploring, taking an escaltor). You do this in silence and can only communicate by banging a large red pawn in front of someone to tell them they need to do something (not what it is however). This is all done in real time. When the sand timer runs out, you lose, get them all out safely, you win. There are 17 ‘missions’ of increasing complexity and difficulty to play through.

El Dorado

A deck building, race game from IBGC cult fave Dr. Reiner Knizia. Players draw cards from identical starting decks and then either play them to move accoss the board’s different land types or to purchase new improved cards to add to their deck. However, if your buying, you’re not moving and this is a race game. The board is modular and double sided, so you can make lots of different race terrains with varying levels of difficulty, plus 18 different types of card to have in your deck. A great game that takes two common ideas (races and deck building) and slaps them together to make a unique game.

Azul

We’ve had a game about making windows, how about one where you put tiles on a wall! Oof, steady on, I’m racing at top speed to excitementville. The components are awesome though. Bakelite tiles of different colors and patterns reprenting the azulejos you put on your wall look amazing and are incredibly tactile. The gameplay is simple but leads to very tricky tactical decisions about what to take. It is essentially an abstract game at heart and with 2 players is very cut-throat, less with 4. On your turn you either take all of one type of tile from the factory spots, putting the rest into the middle. Or take all of one type from the middle, in both caes placing them on one of your rows. If you fill a row you add one tile to your wall and your are trying to make connected rows and columns to score ‘Qwirkle’ style. You must take some tiles on your turn, however, and if you can’t place them, they become negative points. Trust me, it’s great, next year’s Game of the Year? It’ll be nominated at the very least.

Flamme Rouge

Bike racing games have been tried in the past, but they have over-complicated things to try and include all the nuances of the sport. This one did the opposite. It streamlined the game to the essential parts, drafting and cutting the wind plus hills and straights. Everyone takes two cyclists, their sprinter and rouleur. They play a card for each cyclist and move them that many spaces and throw the card out of the game. You all have the same decks, but the guys at the front will add exhaustion cards to their decks which will slow them down later in the race. Hills need to be times perfectly to do well and if you can make a breakaway with both your cyclists you can win from the front. It also has a modular board for different styles of race and if you play in teams of two (taking one cyclist each) you can play up to eight people. It’s a little pricey, but for the bike fans, a perfect, streamlined simulation of team bike racing.

Century: Spice Road

Splendor 2.0 it was dubbed when first released. That’s understandable as there are many similarities between the two games, but this does stand apart as it’s own game. Like Splendor, you take stuff to then trade them in sets for point cards. This game has an intermediate step though. You can also take cards which you play to upgrade your stuff (in this case cubes representing spices) into better stuff. You usually end up with 4 or 5 of those cards which you combo into a little engine to get the spices needed to trade in for the contracts (point cards). Great components, with metal coins, huge cards and bowls to put the spices in.

Majesty for the Realm

Did someone mention Splendor? Well this is the next game by Marc Andre, the designer of Splendor. This one is nothing like it, except for the compact 30 minute time frame with tough choices. There are 7 character cards in the game and you draft them into your kingdom from a row of 5, where the first one is free, the second one costs you 1 meeple which you place on the first card, the third two, placing one meeple on the first and second etc…When placed they activate and give you money (points, which are like the chips in Splendor, huzzah) or more meeples, or attack other players, or defend against other players, or bring back cards from the hospital because they were attacked by other players. Holy moly is this game interactive. On almost every players turn, they will do something that helps or hinders the other players. The game ends when everyone has taken 12 cards. Players get money for the majorities in each type of cards and that is it. Great fun, quick and tough, tough choices. Highly recommended.

NMBR 9

A wonderful Tetris style puzzle game. You are placing numbers in front of you, trying to place them on top of each other to score points. A number 7 on the ground scores nothing. On the second level, 7, on the third, 14 and so on. Your pieces must always touch, can never overhang empty space when placed on top and can never be placed directly on top of just one tile (i.e. on the second level up they must be placed on to two or more tiles). The order the numbers come out is determined by a communal deck of cards, so everyone will place the same number at the same time. It’s ultimately multi-player solitaire, but really fun as you try to decide whether to put that number 9 on the second level early or use it as a base to build a large platform to place stuff later. Takes about 15 mins to play and playable by all ages.

Spiel, or as it’s often more commonly known in North America, Essen, after the German town it takes place in,  is really huge. Around 180,000 people attend the fair over 4 days and over 900 games are released. It’s often a bucket list dream for the hard core gamers of the world to make the pilgrimage to Essen at least once.

When I mentioned I was going to Essen to some German people, there response was, ‘Why would you go there? That place is a hole.’ It is indeed a little rough around the edges, set deep in the industrial heartland of Germany, but like most towns it has it’s funky areas, more importantly though it has the largest convention center in Germany. 65,000+ square meters of gaming goodness. That’s about 13 football fields for those who measure things in football fields.

When you arrive on the Thursday morning you have two choices 1) run to a table to try a game before they all fill up or 2) run to buy the hot new games before they sell out. 2) has become less of an issue in recent years as game companies are now turning up with much larger quantities, but games do still sell out. This year the first to go was Altiplano, sold out in 3 hours. 1) is still a problem though. Trying to find a table to play the hot new games is very, very difficult. The only realistic way to get a table is to hang around a game like a bad stink  until they finish (up to 20-30 mins) and dive in the moment the final score is tallied. If your happy to play anything though, finding a game to play isn’t too hard, you just wander around until you see a table and sit down. There are always loads of people at each companies booth happy to teach the rules, we were even taught by the designers themselves three times! Indeed you’ll find a lot of gems hidden in the quieter (read really busy, just not crushworthy) areas from the smaller companies.

A couple of highlights from smaller companies were Tao Long a 2-player Dragon battling  game that is like a cross between Mancala and Snake the video game. It’s being released in January and we’ll be all over it here at the cafe. New York 1920 is a little stock market game from a small Spanish company that uses a lot of very clever mechanics in a tiny little box.

We tried Majesty for the Realm, the new game by Marc Andre, the designer of Splendor. Don’t worry it has those poker chips, but uses a drafting mechanic and card interplay in another 30 minute gem. We really liked it, hopefully it’ll be out in December.

The biggest vendor there was Asmodee, which took up half a hall all to itself (Halls are humongous) and had some spectacular booths and displays. To compare that to some of the tiny companies that had the hot games was pretty hilarious. One tiny stall had both Charterstone (the next game from the Scythe designer)  and Gaia Project (the follow up to Terra Mystica) and the line-up to buy copies went literally further than the eye could see.

After each day finishes, most people head back to their hotels which usually open up their dining rooms or bars so that people can play their new goodies.

In the end we were there 2 days, which was probably enough. Walking around fighting the crowds is pretty exhausting and unless you get there a few days in advance jet lag will play a part in your energy levels. Was it worth it, absolutely! It’s like the Grand Canyon, its hard to understand just how massive the thing is until you get there. You’ll meet lots of designers and board game celebs (I bumped fists with Tom Vassel and a bunch of others) and generally be utterly overwhelmed by what to do for the first few hours. That’s OK though, there’s a stall in there that sells beer as well 🙂

Its been a busy year for us here at IBGC, but we’ve still got a lot of gaming in and we’d like to fill you in on what we’ve loved so far this year as well as some developments in the world of board games.

Biggest Surprise – Sagrada

A game about making stained glass windows, dope! It really is dope though! A 30 minute puzzle game, where you draft pretty translucent dice to create a window following simple but brutally tricky placement rules to score points. Currently sold out everywhere, we have it to play in the cafe and hopefully to sell soon. This is a c(g)lassy little game.

Best Family Game – Kingdomino

The 2017 Spiel des Jahre. A 15 minute game where you make a little KINGdom, using DOMINO style rules (King’domino’! Where do they come up with this stuff?). You create a 5×5 grid (7×7 for an extended 2 player game) by bidding on tiles using your turn order. This little mechanic is the genius of the game and is so simple it can be played by kids as young as 6 if they a precosious little tykes. Tremedous price point too.

Best Light Strategy – Flamme Rouge

I really love me some Snow Tails, a husky dog racing game, it tended to get a bit bogged down by overthinking though. Flamme Rouge, a bike racing game, streamlines a lot of what was in Snow Tails and adds a great slip-streaming mechanic. It lasts about 40 minutes and although it says its 2-4 on the box, we’ve played it up to 8, by playing in teams of two with one cyclist each. A really fabulous game.

Best Heavy Strategy Game – Yokohama

You know those games where you get some stuff, turn that stuff into other stuff and then that stuff into points. Well this is one of those games. It has a variable board, similar to Istanbul, loads of ways to score points and a core ruleset that is very simple, even though all the extra bits around it seem a little overwhelming. It plays so smoothly once you get it, with a lot of player interaction that doesn’t directly attack you, just annoys you when they get in your way. It is really, really good.

Party Game of the Year – Hive Mind

Consideration was given to Joking Hazard which we thought was pretty hilarious, but long term Hive Mind is better. Think Scattegories in reverse, where instead of trying to think of unique answers you want the same as everyone else. ‘Name three large animals?’, don’t be too clever, say elephant, surely everyone will put that? What about the other two? I would go Hippopotamous and Giraffe…! Did you? You put a bear? Hmmmmm. There is no winner, just a loser! It’s by Magic the Gathering creater Richard Garfield, who has still got a little magic left in him (and his bank account). Try it, you’ll be shocked how fun it is. Plays up to 12 as well.

Best Expansion – Interactivity Board Game Cafe

Drops mic..leaves room…

Trends of the Year

1. Escape Games

An Escape Room in a box. The two mains ones are the the Kennerspiel winning Exit series and the Unlock series. They are both very good and create puzzles and gameplay in different ways. People are pretty split down the middle in terms of preferences and both are worth trying to see what you like best. They are a fun evenings entertainment for $20.

2. License Everything and turn it into a game

Such as: The Godfather, Buffy (again), Big Trouble in Little China, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, Fallout, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Star Trek, Dark Souls, Breaking Bad, Bob Ross, Rick and Morty, and so on and on and on…
Some are good (Godfather), others are terrible (Labyrinth). People will buy them because they love the license, but we advise to do a little research first.

Biggest ‘knickers in a twist about nothing’ of the Year

Knickers in a twist is a phrase that needs to be used A LOT more. Gloomhaven was a very expensive game that was designed, developed and kickstarted by one man. It was very successful and a lot of people who missed the kickstarter wanted a copy. Around 80,000 people in fact. However, he only printed around 8,000 extra copies, because, that was all the money he had and he didn’t feel like mortgaging his house, possibly making his kids homeless to pay for extra copies, fairly reasonable IMO. However, online stores started selling his game through pre-order, assuming he had an extra 80,000 copies to sell (he never said he did). When stores only got 10% of what they hoped for, the internet exploded as people who had paid for a game in advance were told they were not getting it. The designer was blamed, stores were blamed (I was also blamed!). There were tales of people driving upwards of 500 miles on rumors of stores with a copy. The game was selling for $500+ online at one point. People forgot that they could actually play another game in the mean time and wait for the second print run, but thankfully the game is almost back. The tears and blood have dried, the bile cleaned up and you can pre-order the game at your FLGS…or so we hope.

 

Kennerspiel is the connoisseurs choice of game of the year. Basically, the more complex games. Think 7 Wonders or Stone Age level of rules. Sometimes they pick a game a little lighter, other times a little heavier. If your looking for:

Scythe
Great Western Trail
A Feast for Odin

they are all way too complicated. Occasionally they will get recommended, but have no chance of winning. This year is pretty open and a game not on this list is pretty likely to get nominated, that never stopped me from guessing anyway.

Captain Sonar

Original, check. Great components, check. Awesome gameplay, check. Easy winner then!?! You need a minimum of 6 and ideally 8 to play this properly. So no, it won’t win, but this real-time battleships style game is so good it will get some love from the jury. No other game does what it does. Odds to win – 16/1

Mystic Vale

This is the game with the clever card-building mechanic. You acquire cards which are partially see-through and place them in sleeves to make one supercard. It has a nice theme about building the best Valley, filled with beautiful art. The game lacks a little longevity and needs to be expanded fairly quickly to provide variety. The judges don’t grade the game with expansions, so unlikely as well. Odds to win – 24/1

Kanagawa

This game is the definition of a ‘solid’ game. It does everything right. Beautiful art, interesting theme, good gameplay…but it’s just solid. It doesn’t blow you away and really shouldn’t win. However it’s just the sort of game they go for. Its has a very good chance IMO, but he’s also probably up for Kingdomino, so they won’t give him both awards, would they? Odds to win – 8/1

Via Nebula

Space Cowboys, who made this game, can do nothing wrong right now. They teamed up with Martin ‘I make your brain melt’ Wallace to make a game that just make’s your brain singe instead. It’s like a more expensive version of Kanagawa in that is does everything right, but doesn’t really blow you away. It’s looking like one of those years. Odds to win – 10/1

Cottage garden

This one could win either category, the SDJ or KDJ. It’s already in that post, but it’s  got a better shot at this one. Odds to win – 16/1

Roll for the Galaxy

This game came out 3 years ago, what the heck dude! Well it only just got released in German, so now it can win this award. A great game that re-implements Race for the Galaxy with dice. On the heavier end of the scale, but this one could be a surprise to many people. Odds to win – 16/1

Adrenaline

It’s a first player shoot-em-up in game. Move, shoot, get cool guns and then ammo to shoot some more. It uses a clever area majority mechanic to encourage everyone to shoot everyone and is just the right weight for this award. The award panel in general really don’t like this kind of theme though and it’ll get penalized hard for it I’m afraid. Odds to win – 32/1

Terraforming Mars

Work together to terraform Mars, do it better than everyone else and win. The theme is brilliantly integrated into this game, which uses real science theory by a science guy.  You have 200+ unique cards to play with and every game feels different. It’s initially a little overwhelming, but once it clicks it’s very straightforward. In a perfect world, this is the winner, hands down. It may just be too complicated though…Odds to win – 6/1

First Class

A follow up to the award winning Russian Railroads. This is slightly more family friendly and uses modules that can be added to games to create variety. It’s a nice time span, around 60 mins and has trains (what is it about trains?). This will be nominated for sure (probably). Odds to win – 6/1

Nominated:

First Class
Captain Sonar
Terraforming Mars

Winner:

First Class