Author: Bill H

This game was nominated for the Game of the Year back in 2007 and imagined a   couple of very unique mechanisms which caught the eye of the gaming world. One of those ideas has been used fairly frequently since in games such as Tokaido and Patchwork.

In this game you are archaeologists travelling around Europe looking to obtain knowledge about 5 historical sites and use it to try and dig for ancient artifacts to put on shows in the classiest joints around town. In this game you have 2-3 years (depending on # of players) to do this. The actions you take cost time, better actions cost more time and the player on turn is the one who is furthest behind on the time track. They will keep taking turns till they overtake someone on the track, who will then take turns and so on (this is the one copied by Tokaido et. al.)

There are 3 main actions that you can take:

• take a card form the pool of 4 cards. They give you knowledge to help you dig (more about that later), the ability to travel quicker as well as a host of other abilities. Each card has a time cost as well as a location which you have to move to to take it, which also costs time. Managing your time is a huge part of the game (and life I’ve been told).
• take part in a dig. This is where you put all that knowledge to good use. Each of the dig 5 locations is represented by a bag. In that bag are a bunch of artifact tiles worth a variety of points, joining them in there are a large quantity of dirt (tiles, not literal dirt, gamers are way too anal to cope with dirt in their games), worth between 0 and 0 points. Each player has a very groovy time/knowledge wheel calculator thingamejig. They input their knowledge and the wheel tells them how much time they can spend to pull tiles from the bag. Lots of knowledge means you can spend less time to pull a lot of tiles and vice versa. When you take the tiles, you keep the artifacts…and the dirt? You throw it back in the bag, so later excavations at the site have a poopier good stuff to bad stuff ratio, bummer man.

• put on a show. If you have the right combination of pretty things, you can put on shows to impress your peeps for points. Everybody loves old, shiny stuff right?

Keep going till everyone runs out of time. Most points wins. That’s it. It’s really a pretty simple and fun game. So why have most of you never heard of it?

Well, like many things in life, luck and timing are a factor. There are a lot of games in this world and you often need the right set of circumstances to rise to the top, but I think that bag draw, which in many ways is a brilliant mechanism hurt the game. Luck is great in some ways, but in others it can wind you up like a watch. Serious gamers can easily get their knickers in a twist and when they put all that thought into a game only to lose because of some bad bag pulls. And when they get mad they write bad reviews. Yes, that can be infuriating if you go into this game with the attitude its a more serious game than it is. It is a family game though, and should be treated as such. The nice thing about this game is that you can play with your kids (10+) or your non-serious gamer friends and try your best and still lose even though you are in general a better gamer than them. You’ll still win more often than not, but you don’t have to tone it down so you don’t crush them and make them never want to play with you again. Not only that, the components are amazing, that wheel is so cool and in my opinion the bag draws are exciting. Its hilarious when someone draws a big pile of dirt and exciting when you get a haul a great artifacts. So, suck it up and smile when the reverse happens to you, its all part of the fun of the experience. Many games in this world have fairly pasted on themes, but not this one. It goes all out to try and capture that feeling of archaeological exploration (I imagine anyway, having never archaeologically dug before).

Its in our library and available to try, so lets dust it off and give it some love again.

Kids and games; it can inspire passions, guilt, fun, frustration and a myriad of other emotions and feelings for parents. If you’re reading this and have kids or are an uncle/aunt etc… you are probably already willing and playing with kids. This is more for those who rarely to never play games with them. Its not an admonishment or me trying to be preachy because I do something you don’t. I understand if you don’t play with them, its not easy, but if you decide to give it a shot its worth it. I have 2 kids aged almost 11 and 9. They are full of life, lots of fun and can be annoying as all hell. I run a Board Game Cafe, so its not surprising they have played a tonne of games growing up.

They also play plenty of video games, it’s part of life nowadays and for a kid living in North America to try and avoid it is next to impossible. But there is time for both, but they are fairly mutually exclusive forms of entertainment. They are both a type of game, but really that is where the similarity ends, I don’t think they should be fighting for the same time slot.

Playing games with kids is tough. Unless you have the paitence of a saint or a genius child with the concentration of an adult, they can be frustrating little monkeys at the table. As I previously mentioned, my kids can play fairly heavy Euro games, but its a different experience to playing with other adults. With them I am the adult and entirely responsible for keeping the game moving and them on task. In other words, when I play with them, I’m still a parent and not wholly able to play for my enjoyment of the game. Lets be frank here, playing with kids has the following issues:

• They don’t pay attention and often have to be told its their turn (like 30 or 40 times a game).
• When they are young, you have to play super easy, fairly random games with them, which can be a little boring.
• They get into fights with anyone around them during the game when they don’t think things are being done correctly.
• They can turn into vessels of pure rage and injustice when they lose, utterly impossible to be reasoned with.
• If you play anything with a reasonable amount of strategy you just end up crushing them leading to previous bullet point.
• They won’t learn the rules to games and expect you to have to do it.

With that in mind plus the fact that nowadays we often have two income families and a million after school activities; is it any wonder we end up turning on the TV when we get the bit of free family time at home. It is so much easier. No judgement here, I do it and I often have to force myself to grab that game and play with them.

Once in a while though, try to play games with the kids. C’mon, dig into that energy reserve, you can do it.

One reason is because most of you who played games as a kid have very fond and powerful memories of it. The games were different back then, the distractions were also different, but playing with your family in a setting where everyone is genuinelly together and focused on doing something together is pretty special and quite a rare thing. There really is nothing else that brings you into an environment when you are focused on one thing as a social unit, that forces you to interact directly with one another for an hour or so. Meal times are quick, TV is passive, hikes and family outings have lots of other distractions. They are all great in their own way and we need them all, but none of them do what board games do.

Is it good for their brains? Probably, there are lots of articles out there arguing this way and that (mostly this way), but I assume board games promote learning/understanding of the following things:

• thinking: as in take your time, strategic thought.
• patience: sitting still for a while seems harder than it used to be (or maybe that’s just the perspective of the old).
• comprehension: you have to learn the rules to play after all.
• rules: no you can’t do that… why? The rules say so! I’m sorry, welcome to the real world my child.
• systems: that’s what most modern board games are. A series of interlocking systems that relate to each other in a variety of ways. Many jobs involve the understanding of systems (computers and every trade job out there).
• sportsmanship: they may not always display it, but they are slowly learning it.
• interpersonal skills: ugh, that sounds very ‘resume-ish’ but negotiating, talking and listening are kind of important.

Just remember this one thing though. Kids love games. So when you think about buying one, don’t buy for them, buy a game you like the look of. If you want to play it, they get to play it, and kids will play anything, they are just grateful you will play with them. There are a lot of great kids games out there nowadays if you know where to look. They are quick, have some simple but interesting choices and fun bits (see here for some examples). Also the sooner you play with them, the better they get at understanding rules and strategies and before you know it you are playing adult games with them. Their brains are sponges at that age and they pick up new ideas a lot faster than you. That Age 8+ on the back of the box is more for how difficult you will likely find it than them. You have to learn the rules though, which is the tricky part. YouTube, however, is a great resource for the visual learners out there. Almost every modern game has a series of videos on the internet, where someone has taken the time to learn a game and then explain it to you, so no excuses there. Just get out there are grab the game you want to play

So if this inspires you and you want to play a game with your family, please do me one last favor. Put the cell phone in a separate room (it will distract you, you know it will) and be there with your family, I promise you, you won’t regret it.

1906 – The Landlord Game is released, created to show the negative aspects of concentrating land into monopolies

1935 – Monopoly, a variant on the Landlord Game is released by Parker Brothers, it went on to sell a few copies and become the complete  antithesis of the Landlord Game.

1938 – Scrabble is released, it is a relative flop until the President of Macy’s played it on Vacation in 1952 and placed a large order for the game. 150 million copies are estimated to have been sold.

1944 – Cluedo/Clue is released in the UK, deduction games are born.

1959 – Risk is released, a French game designed by Albert Lamorisse who also won an Oscar for best Original Screenplay!

1962 – Acquire, for many the first major European style game (invented by Sid Sackson, an American ironically) is released.

1968 – the first Gen Con is held. Organized by Gary Gygax (yes that one), it was originally a war games get together, now its an everything games place and has over 60,000 attendees.

1974 – Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson published a game called Dungeons & Dragons and changed the world forever.

1977 – Cosmic Encounter, one of the most influential games in recent times. It used the idea of giving you special powers to offer variability and is still to many the greatest game of all time.

1978 – Spiel des Jahres announces its first winner, Hare and Tortoise. Winning this award, typically boosts sales by anything up to 500,000. It was more influential in Europe till recently, but in the last 10 years it has had an impact on the English speaking world.

1979 – Trivial Pursuit, a Canadian game is released. It has gone on to sell 100 million copies and make people who know random stuff feel great.

1983 – the Spiel, the World’s biggest game fair in Essen, Germany begins in a school hall. 5000 people showed up and shut down local streets, today it’s attendance is around 150,000.

1993 – Richard Garfield released a game called Magic: the Gathering. It was the first trading card game and he never had to work again. Thankfully he did and made other games like Netrunner and King of Tokyo.

1995 – Settlers of Catan is released in Germany. Over the last 20 years it has slowly filtered into millions of houses in North America and changed what a board game is to many people. Sales are estimated at around 25 million.

2000 – Scott Alden and Dirk Solko start Boardgamegeek.com. It contains all the board game knowledge in the world and was fundamental in spreading the word of designer games.

2001 – Carcassonne becomes a thing and is followed by 7,676 expansions.

2001 – Munchkin also becomes a thing and is followed by 7,676¹º expansions.

2004 – Ticket to Ride makes trains cool again.

2005 – Caylus becomes the first real worker placement game, a mechanic used by half the the World’s modern games.

2008 – Dominion is the first deck building game, a mechanic used by the other half of the World’s modern games.

2008 – Pandemic, the game that popularized playing cooperatively starts it journey into thousands of homes.

2009 – Kickstarter opens its doors for people to make games without a game company doing annoying things like telling them ‘no we won’t make this game it’s a pile of poop, have you heard of playtesting?’ Thankfully quite of few games turned out to be good, arguably the first to really use the medium was Alien Frontiers.

2012 – Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day begin Tabletop, and online TV show where you watch people play games. Season 4 is hopefully on its way.

Medium weight Euro games, they often have a few things in common:

• They love to use old stuff as their themes, Egyptians, Romans and the 15th-18th centuries are special faves
• Having a middle aged dude staring out from the front of the box is a must.
• Sticking some camels, sheep or wheat in there as a commodity is an unwritten law

I guess if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but they are never going to capture the youth market with such selling points. Still they are pretty awesome things IMO. Low luck, interesting choices and clever mechanics all packed into around 90 mins. They are probably my favorite type of game and in the store we’ve had three crackers hit the shelves recently you may be interested to learn a little about. None of these games are crazily complicated and if you’ve played Catan, Takenoko, Ticket to Ride (lighter Euro games), you are already 2/3’s of the way there. If you want to know more watching Mr. Rahdo wax lyrical about these games on YouTube is a good way to learn the rules and strategic levels available. First up…

Isle of Skye

In a Nutshell: It’s Carcassonne with an auction and variable scoring.

Gameplay: There are 16 different ways to score in this game, however each game you will pick just 4 of them, which will be labelled A, B, C and D. Over the course of 5 or 6 rounds, they will each score 3 times. A and B in the first round, B and C in the second A, C and D in the third etc…

A game consists of the following:
Drawing three tiles from a bag and then pricing them in secret. The tiles can be seen by everyone, but behind a screen you will price two and axe a third which will be tossed from the game. When everyone is ready, you all reveal your pricing and starting with the first player you each get to buy one tile off of anyone except yourself. However, you set the price with your own money, which can’t be used to buy tiles. If someone buys the tile you get that money back and the money they bought it with. Any tiles that were not bought, have to be paid for buy you, so set them too high and you are buying them yourselves. You then all place your tiles Carcassonne like in front of you. Water must connect to water, grass to grass and mountains to mountains. Where you place them and what you buy will be driven by the scoring tiles of that game. You will receive some more money at the start of each round to spend again, but only so much money will leave the game so prices will go up fairly fast.

Why its awesome?

What price to set is crucial. Sometimes you want your own tile so you set it really high to put people off, but that leaves you poor to buy other peoples tiles. Add in the puzzly nature of the tile laying and the fact every game plays very differently depending on the scoring tiles and you have a really jam packed game in a 45-60 minute time span at a reasonable price point.

The Voyages of Marco Polo

In a Nutshell: Get a crazy power, roll some bones and stick ’em on the board to do stuff.

Gameplay: Over 5 rounds you will try to collect resources to fulfill contracts as well as voyage around the map to set up trading posts to expand your options and get more stuff. You do this by rolling 5 dice and then placing them on the board in different spots to do a variety of actions, such as move, get money, convert stuff into other stuff and obviously get camels. Sounds very dull, but its really not!

A game consists of the following:

At the start the game you will receive a character with a special power. In many games these are nice but fairly minor in the big scheme of things. In Marco Polo, they are game changing so that your game will be entirely different because of that power. One example would be the ability to not have to roll your dice, just set them to whatever the heck you want. In the game, the first player to get from Venice to Beijing gets a big point bonus. One charactr lets you start already in Beijing, with the full point bonus already with zero competition to get to the local towns and cities as everyone else is on the other side of the globe! It is very cool.

Each round you roll your 5 dice, low rolls get compensation. Then in turn order you start placing them on action spots to gain resources, get contracts and move. When you move you have to pay lots of money, because in those days you couldn’t take a Westjet flight. Where you stop you get to set up shop, this means getting a bonus at the start of every round or earning the ability to do new actions. In most cases you can take the same action that someone else took, but if someone else is already there you have to pay some money. The higher the number on the dice, usually means a better action, but you have to pay the number on the dice to do that action, bummer. During your turn you can pay camels to get another dice, re-roll them or just up them a pip in value. Once everyone has placed all their dice, the round is over and you take them all back. Re-fill contracts and roll again.

Why this game is awesome?

Unlike a lot of worker placement games, where if someone takes a spot its blocked; in this one, in most cases (but not all) you can still go there, you just have to pay to do so. That makes for some really tough decisions, because all the choices are there, but cash flow will limit your choices, not who goes where. Movement is really tough. Its costs a small fortune to get anywhere, so deciding where to go is tough and a lot of your points will be determined by that. Many locations on the board offer an action, but only 9 out of the 30 or so available are used each time, so lots of variability in the map set up. Finally those powers, so powerful, so game defining, but yet balanced and they make each play oh so different.

Orleans

In a nuthshell: draw guys from a bag, stick ’em on the board to get more guys, which you then throw in the bag. Lather, rinse, repeat…

Gameplay: 17 rounds. At the start of each round an event happens. You draw guys from your bag and then everyone simultaneously places them on their own board to do actions and/or gain workers. When everyone is ready, the start player does one action, putting their guys back in the bag, then the next player and so on until everyone has completed all their actions. Resolve the event and start the round again. You are trying to earn points by collecting resources (wheat is one of them), set up trading houses around Orleans and earn money, all of which translate into points.

A game consists of the following:

Each player has their own personal board with which they can do stuff. No competing here. You always get to do what you want(ish). An action usually requires 2 or 3 different guys to complete it. When you draw from the bag you may not necessarily get the ones you needed. That’s fine. You don’t have to use all your guys, they can be saved from round to round until you get what you need. There are two major types of action, the moving on the board actions and the getting more guys actions. At the start you need more guys. Depending on the strategy you decide upon, you will need more of certain guys than others. When you obtain a new follower you get to put him in your bag and also receive a bonus by moving up a track of that follower. The further up the track you go, often results in better bonuses. For example gaining a Knight means you can draw more guys from the bag. A monk can be used as a wild card in place of other guys and the craftsman enables you to automate a space on your board, so it is essentially always filled for the rest of the game. A merchant enables you to take a trader tile and add it to your board, expanding the number of actions available to you. The board actions move your pawn around the communal board which depicts a map around Orleans. Doing so enables you to collect goods and as another action place trading stations which are worth points at the end of the game. The last key choice is the ability to send your people to the beneficial deeds board. This is a way to clear unwanted follwers from your bag as they stay there, never to return.

What makes this game awesome?

As my wife would say, ‘you can’t mess with my stuff!’ It’s a pretty solo game. There is a little bit of a race to be the first to get something in there, but its a pretty minor part of the game. There are tonnes of choices and the bag draw forces you to make the best decision you can with what you get, which may not always be what you want. Everyone makes their major choices at the same time, which is great, so there is very little waiting around for others to take their turn. Finally the choice of strategies available is massive, you can go down a tonne of different routes in order to claim victory and the merchant tiles offer some nice extra options to give you extra options. Plus the bags are made of a very nice, bright velour!

Imagine – Concept crossed with Gloom, as you use transparent cards to help people figure out the word/phrase you are trying to get them to guess, see here for an overview:

Munchkin Marvel – Its Munchkin plus Marvel. A match made in Heaven? I think so. We may lose half the World’s rain forest trying to make enough copies of this one.

Stone Age Junior – now this is not one that I expected to happen, still its nice that they are focusing a little more on kids games. However, in my humble opinion, the best kids games are the ones that were intended as a kids game from the start, rather than trying to force a known title into something easy for young people.

Legendary: Firefly – per episode, has any show had more impact on Geek culture? This looks fun. If you haven’t tried the Legendary deck building system and like the show, I strongly recommend the game.

Deadpool Board game – Upper Deck, generally make good games, so I have total faith(ish)…

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Agricola: Regular, Family and Deluxe edition – after the current print runs, the game will be getting a make over. Regular base game will be 1-4 players (its 1-5 at the moment) with one set of cards selected from the current 1000+ available, with a 5-6 player expansion available. A cheaper family version without the cards will also be released (pictured). A 10 year anniversary (10 YEARS!!! ALREADY!!) edition with 1000+ cards is also being planned.

Star Trek-apalooza – Star Trek Panic is first up, followed by Star Trek: Frontiers, a re-skin on Vlaada Chvatil’s Mage Knight.

Onitamia – Finally,  for the abstract 2 player fans, this little Japanese game looks like an absolute beauty!