Category: Interesting Stuff

Free advice! Normally you have to spend lots of franchise money on this, but I have no interest in franchising and consider myself lucky to do what I do and as such am happy to spread the experience. Bear in mind, our cafe is set in a downtown location in Victoria, Canada. What happened to us and works for us will not always be the same way you should do things where you are, but hopefully you can take something from it.

Handy dandy tips for running/opening a board game cafe.

1. Your job is to make sure people have a great experience in your cafe. Everything should stem from that. It’s not up to you to decide how they have fun, just to make sure that they have the best opportunity to do so. Great food, lovely staff, fun games (Game of Life, Cards Against Humanity or Agricola). Don’t push too hard but make sure they know you are available if they need you.
2. There are 7 billion different opinions on what a good game is and yours is just one. Ask questions to find out the best game for your customers and your game experiences are invaluable in helping them find it, but your personal opinion is really only relevant to one person.
3. So play as many games as possible of all types. While doing so, try think if it’ll work in your business and who for. Play or re-read the rules to Game of Life and Trivial Pursuit, you’ll be asked for help with those games far more often than the latest cool strategy game.
4. Open with a plan, but don’t be married to it. If something isn’t working, no matter how much you want it to, either let let it go or amend it. The game cafe business model is very young and it is still evolving.
5. When you are creating your plan, it is easy to get hung up on the small details (e.g. what do I do if a customer stays all day and doesn’t buy anything?), but don’t focus on those. Stay focused on the things that matter and that will be integral to the running of your cafe (scheduling app, food suppliers, food prep etc…). You will figure the small details out as you gain experience.
6. On the other hand be very aware and open to trying things you never thought of when you see the opportunity, they will present themselves, you just have to see them.
7. Games are fun and this is why you are opening the cafe right? Well it’ll only be a small part of the job, the usual stuff that comes with running a business will take up 90% of your time.
8. Your most valuable assets are your staff (they are people I know but I’m trying to sound businessy OK!). Their most important qualification is to be competent, lovely people. If they know a bunch a games then that’s a bonus (and if you create a nice environemnt they’ll learn as they go). They are the face of your business and will have the biggest impact on the people who come to visit you.
9. Trust them to do things, don’t try to micromanage them; it’ll a) drive you crazy, b) drive them crazy and c) inhibit them from coming up with ways to do improve things.
10. The library is there to be used. The games will get damaged and have to be replaced, accept that.
11. If you have the time/money prepare the most popular games for hard use. This is not so much to save replacement costs, but to improve the customer experience, it’s not fun to play with a ratty, falling apart game. On popular games we now:
    • sleeve all cards
    • tape the sides and corners of the lid and box to prevent spliting
    • varnish tiles
    • laminate all rules/cheat sheets
12. Remember 90% of your customer base will likely be casual/light gamers.
13. If you plan to charge an admission to play in your cafe, that’s your choice, if someone gets upset about it that’s their choice. But in the early days be clear to everyone that sits down about the fee as it will all be new to most of them.
14. The location is important. A few things to consider when choosing a spot:
    • Is it near students? They like Board Game Cafes.
    • Is it possible to expand? Many cafe’s have run out of space quickly.
    • Rent is a thing and will often scare you off of certain locations, but break the costs down by day. An extra $2000 a month is $65 a day, which is an extra 5 customers a day. If you think it’s the right choice don’t cheap out (too much).
    • Can you attract tourists?
15. You will need to make sure you give your customers some direction in the library. Employing people to teach and suggest games is the best way, but it is expensive early on. A well organized and labeled library can help, or just showing people a couple of appropriate games when they arrive.
16. Make sure you provide lots of sharable snacks.
17. Have good lighting and sound absorbtion. It can get very loud and it sucks to play games in a dark area.
18. Magic the Gathering is an excellent source of revenue but it’s hard to marry it with the casual crowd. Be careful if you choose to try and do both.
19. If you want to sell games, start with the most popular and don’t worry about the latest cool ones on BGG, most of that market has gone online.
20. Milkshakes sell well.
21. Oh yeah…lots of 2 player games…

October 2013 and we’re open! But does anyone even know that we exist? A few for sure. Jack’s (my partner) old store was a staple of the local gamer community for 15 years and many of his customers were anxiously awaiting our arrival. We had a Facebook page and a local Reddit post a couple of months before announcing our upcoming birth, plus a couple of small articles in local papers had mentioned us. We still did a soft opening though, I mean we didn’t even have food except for a few pre-packaged chocolate bars, chips and pops until we got our food license. No advertising, just word of mouth while we ironed out the kinks. Kinks? That would be like calling Mt Everest a little hill, it was a this point we really had no idea what the $%^! we were doing. The retail bit we had down. We had both done that, the cafe part, not so much. The build out had taken so much time and effort I guess we had got lost in those details and almost forgot how we were going to run the day to day of customers coming in and playing games and paying money and stuff like that. At this point it was just me and Jack, plus a couple of guys who would help out in the evenings sometimes. We were open 11am till midnight everyday. That’s a lot of hours to cover but we did it. Let me remind you again that Jack was 62 at this point, plus I was a father of a 7 & 8 year old. For the first couple of weeks some people paid up front, others at the end of their stay. When they left the store we often had no idea if they had or had not paid and just relied on their honesty. Then Josh (one of the 2 guys) mentioned it may be a good idea to either make everyone pay up front or at the end…genius! We went with tabs, Josh quit in frustration a week later, but his legacy remains! I look back at those times and cringe at our absolute cluelessness and wonder how the hell we survived. Well, actually I don’t wonder, I know the two main reasons; it was because we were always willing to listen to our staff who saw things we didn’t and implement those changes and because we cared about them and our customers. We may have been nincompoops at the beginning, but we were nincompoops who cared.

3 weeks in and we got our food license! Finally we could serve coffee (actually we could serve that before, so long as it was black (adding milk was a line we weren’t allowed to cross), make panini’s and the thing that would come to define our business as much as the games we offer…milkshakes. If you read the previous article, you’ll know that the O.G. plan was to sell beer. Near the end of the process we were told, not a chance we were getting a license (at that point BC’s liquor laws hadn’t been updated for over 100 years and getting a liquor primary license, which we needed, was impossible). About 6 months into the initial planning my friend Chris from the UK had mentioned that milkshake joints had become a bit of a thing in England and maybe we should consider that as well. I told Jack this and he said that back in his hippie days on Saltspring Island he helped run a small pizza and milkshake joint (of course he had, did I say he has done every job ever). Jack loves saving a dollar, way more than he likes making a dollar, so what better way than to make our own ice cream! We bought a small (but very expensive) gelato machine that would make 1.5 liters of ice-cream in about 40 minutes. We experimented with recipes and got one that worked, found a second hand milkshake machine and bought some syrup to make strawberry, chocolate and vanilla. People liked them, but getting the syrups were a pain in the butt from the store, so we looked for a place to get them wholesale. We found one and saw they also had a lot more than three flavors, so we got a couple more. Next time we ordered we got even more, then after that A LOT more. Suddenly we had 30 odd flavors, enough right? Jared from Jagasilk, our supplier of Matcha/London Fog/Chai, was dropping off our order and asked if he could get a milkshake to go, but with some of his London Fog powder in it. Weird, but OK! Wow, that’s really good, add it to the list and while were at it what other hot drinks would work? Coffee? Give it a go…added! This is getting out of hand, we should stop. We did, mostly! Suddenly people were coming in asking for a table and saying to their friends…’Oh yeah and their milkshakes are really good!’ People were coming in and didn’t want to play games, just get a to go milkshake, so we ordered takeout cups. The final addition was when one of our staff, Robin, a non-dairy drinker asked if she could use the machine to make vegan ice-cream. She took it home but before she did she tried using it to make a dairy free milkshake…which now make up 15% of our milkshake sales. That little 1.5 liter gelato machine would be turned on at 10.30am and be churning away non-stop as much as possible till close. We were getting busier and busier, people were having fun and word was spreading and the ice cream (which comes out the machine soft) would only get a few hours to solidify and the milkshakes would sometimes become pretty thin. So a couple of years in we splurged and spent an almost 5 figure sum on a 5 liter gelato machine meaning we could do 3 times the production. It was a great day for the staff who’s every working hour wasn’t going to be consumed by making ice cream (for a while anyway). But that didn’t end our problems, the next issue was milk. We only had so much refridgeration space and we filled almost every inch of it with dairy. We were making 2 to 3 trips up the street every weekend with a dolly and 3 milk crates to the Market to get 12 gallons of milk. I was also making 2 trips a week out to the a wholesale store to get whipping cream and more milk but a solution eventually presented itself a year later…and oh yeah it turns out it is far, far more expensive to make your own ice cream than buy it

90 seats is a lot of people. Victoria is pretty big, but it’s no major city. Luckily for me, during the last 18 years Jack had been selling Euro games and had indirectly created quite a large sub-culture of gamers in town as well as a good chunk who owned at least one modern Euro game (e.g. Catan, Carcassonne). People came, they played, bought some games and ate and drank some food and we were able to pay the rent and stay in the black from the first month. I was working a lot though. At first it was everyday and most nights. Then we hired a couple of people and I got a few nights off, but would always be there for the busy ones. If my wife went out to her dance or with friends, the kids would come to the cafe and we would stick them in our small store room on a couple of bean bags where they would watch a movie and have a milkshake (we’ve since found out they are a little lactose intolerant, so opening that door after an hour was like being hit with a hot, smelly desert wind). Those bean bags were also used for a few staff members to sleep off a hangover and by Jack to get a few Z’s. I was tired a lot and in those first few years I pretty much stopped playing games except for work. A new game would arrive, it would seem like a good cafe game. I would learn it, try it with my kids and file it in my mind’s game database as a game good for people who like ‘x’, is ‘y’ long and plays ‘z’ players. In the first few months I was also a little overzealous trying to preach the gospel of games to people. One day a lady and her daughter came in and were setting up Mouse Trap, I offered to teach something else better, she said she was fine. I was a bit more insistant, she still said no, so I left. As I walked away I saw her face and realised what prick I was being. Its not my place to tell people what to play or like. Now I and my staff always offer to suggest or teach someone something when they are done with their game if they want help…and if that lady is reading this I’m sorry for being rude.

Even though we were paying the bills at the start, we weren’t exactly rolling in it, so when people asked for reservations we would happily accept them to get bums in seats. Two in particular stand out in my memory:

• A group of about 10 came in and asked for one of the big tables at they back. It was winter so coats were being worn but a few of them had ears on and what looked like Goth-esque makeup. No big deal, we get all sorts in the cafe and everyone is welcome. I went to the back 20 minutes later to see how everyone was doing and there was only about 5 people at the table!? I assummed the rest were searching for a game at the library when I heard a yipping sound. I glanced under the table and there they were. On leishes attached to their ‘owners’ who were happily playing a game. I was a little taken aback, what to do? Well, other than the occasional bark or meow, they were doing no harm whatsoever, most other customers just seemed quietly amused, so I just let them be and said if they needed a hand with a game to just ask. They didn’t.
• The second group still makes me feel a bit queezy. A very well mannered man called in and asked if he could reserve the whole back of the cafe one night. It was for a group who played video games, but he wanted to warn me that occasionally people had protested his group, but assured me they wouldn’t be any trouble. He vaguely described what they did, but I was like ’40 people, dope!’ The staff asked who they were, I said they mentioned they were a group about women in video games. The evening rolled around and the man who booked arrived first, thanked us and set up in the back with a few pamphlets and flyers. Attendees came and milled around talking. They took up the space, but no-one was playing any games, just talking. Their main guest turned up; a lady who went to the back took off her coat and revealed she was wearing just a corset and a pair of knickers (that would be underwear in UK English) and suspenders. OK?!? This is awkward, let me look up this group…I grab a flyer and hit up Google. Oh Shit! They are a group that advocate for preventing the desexualization of women in video games. First thought, was actually ‘F**k these guys, they aren’t even playing bloody board games.’ Second thought; ‘When are they leaving?’ Thankfully it was only about 45 more minutes. They chatted a while and then drifted out. Most hadn’t been informed they were supposed to pay $5 to play, so a whole bunch just left without paying and the rest were pretty ticked off there was a fee. Sigh…not a highlight moment and lesson learned, when a group openly says people protest their meetings, look them up!

By the end of the first year I was working far more normal hours but our longest running (and still current) problem finally surfaced for the first time…we were full. That’s great! Well yes, but what do we do with the people wanting to get in? I knew this was going to be an issue. Snakes and Lattes had run into this early on and had used a waitlist and texted people when a table was free. Then they went to a reservation system, they stopped that after a few months and went back to calling. Some cafes now give reservations, but you get a specific time slot such as 6-9pm. We’ve been dealing with this for 5 years and still don’t have a perfect answer, but one thing will never change; you can stay as long as you want. If I’m playing a game, I don’t want to be rushed or have to pack up half way through, so I wont do that to my customers. The price is some of you will have to wait on busy nights (so when you leave a bad review because you waited, remember I am losing money doing it this way!).

We got some temporary relief in late 2017 when we received some inside information that our neighbours Meat & Bread (M&B) were closing. In 2015 we had considered taking the other empty half of the building, but ultimately passed. A hot shot restaurant from Vancouver decided to move in. They had been going gangbusters over there and swept in creating a beautiful space and were packed for the first few weeks. Then, well Victoria happened. We’re a very fickle bunch when it comes to food and the novelty seemed to wear off and they weren’t so busy any more. After just under 2 years they decided to cut their losses. By lucky happenstance earlier that year BC updated it’s liquor laws and we could apply for a Liquor primary license (19+ only, but people can stay as long as they want as oppossed to food primary which is all ages but you can’t hang out after the food is finished). Should we take the space? It would mean taking on an 8 year lease (that is a long time), plus we would have no guarentee that we would get the license and we couldn’t apply without the lease. If we didn’t get it, we would be barely breaking even on the extra space on a good day. As an aside, rent is a huge cost. On our block its around $25 per sq. ft (FYI, every block closer to the Inner Harbour and you go you can expect to pay around $10 more). On top of that you usually pay triple net which can be anything from 30-70% of your lease again. Taking on the extra space would put us up around 4700 sq. ft…you do the math! We were very unsure about making the leap. 8 years, no license guarentee, a tonne of extra rent and M&B wanted a bunch of cash to pay for the work they had done to the place and we had to renovate the place to repurpose it for our needs. We had waitlists every weekend and most nighta to get in, but enough extra people to fill another half again? Who knows. The waitlists won and we made a move. M&B had better offers than us, but the fact that the our landlord was willing to let M&B give us the lease in full won out (the others would be sub-leasing, I’m guessing to other restaurants, so if they went bankrupt M&B would be back on the hook again and restaurants don’t have a high success rate for lasting 8 years). We began the renos, applied for the liquor permit and waited.

In 2 months we opened our new half and fairly soon had a waitlist again, but this time it wasn’t so bad. We also now had a walk-in fridge. Remember the milk thing, well we could get it delivered by the pallet load! We also realised that we could just put the beer (if we got licensed) right in the fridge and the taps directly on the outside. That’s right; Victoria’s shortest beer lines. You don’t know what you have till you have it. When I look back I can’t believe we almost didn’t take the extra space, bizarely it meant we were in a strong negotiating position because we we’re quite happy to walk away and stick with what we had, but I couldn’t imagine life without that extra space and the fridge.

1 year later after navigating the labyrinth that is the BC Liquor Board, we got it. No-one tells you the licensing path to take and there is no clear place that tells you what to do in what order and where to take what where and when. We took 3 months longer than we needed because of all the oopsies we made! Our initial licensed hours we requested for were shortened because people complained that the Tap House Bar up the road made a lot of noise at night, ergo…we shouldn’t get a license (AirBnBs + complaint = palm on forehead). We started with 3 beer taps, then quickly realized that in BC nowadays that is unnacceptable and quickly upgraded to 6, which is fine…I suppose. We added the roll a D20 for a shot, I made the staff start doing them with no training and barely any warning…didn’t go that well, may have got a few angry messages from them that night.

So we are mostly up to date. We have a slightly smaller 19+ side and an all ages section which suits us perfectly. We max out at a 150 person capacity and have started selling fresh cooked pizzas. What’s in the future? I occasionally get to go into schools to do game nights and I am planning to try do more of that next (school) year. Games are fun and have the ability to be used in so many ways to engage kids in story telling, planning, math and just plain old thinking. Teacher’s and parents just don’t know these games exist unless someone tells them. So that’s the plan for me. I have a tonne of great staff who run the cafe magnificently and much of it can be left to them.

What about Jack? Well he’s 66 (I think). He hasn’t taken a day off since we opened, that’s 1984 days straight at the time of writing. He’s come in to the cafe everyday, including Christmas Day and New Years when we are shut. He’s an invincible beast, although one day he says he will retire, I have no idea when though…I guess that will be the next challenge.

One more post after this. It’ll be quite a bit shorter I promise.

Part 1 is here

It’s been over 5 years since we opened…dream job! Well I try to remind myself everyday how lucky I am, but like any dream job, once you get there it’s just a new set of problems and things to worry about (staffing, stocking, how does this place even exist and will I have a job next year?!?).

None of that was a thing almost 8 years ago when we started planning all this. I was working at a tech company and Jack (the other half of IBGC), your qwirky game store guy, was running Interactivity Games and Stuff, a store on Fort Street that sold novelties, puzzles and over time an increasing number of games. I came to Canada in 2005 and popped into his store in 2006, we chatted and he invited me to play games at the store after hours. Cut forward a few years and Jack mentioned his previous attempts at opening a board game cafe, usually when we all popped out to get beers from the liquor store or coffee from Starbucks. Wouldn’t it be great if we could play games and not have to leave all the time to get food and drinks? Unbeknownst to me, Snakes and Lattes, had just opened in Toronto, at that time I think it had about 40 seats and was the first of the modern game cafes. I wasn’t overly happy in my job at that point and was talking about it with my wife one evening and mentioned the board game cafe idea and she said I should just do it. That was it. We talked about it for a few minutes and made the decision. I’ve always been a great believer in the Yoda mantra, ‘Do or do not, there is no try!’ Next game night I told Jack I was going to do this and would likely put him out of business, but I would rather tell him to his face and he was old and probably ready to retire anyway…right? Within two weeks we were partners, not sure how that happened exactly, but it was something he had always wanted to do but at his age (he was 60 at that point) I’m guessing it had felt like a lot to do on his own, however with a middle aged stud like me on his side he was up for it.

We started looking for a spot. I pounded the streets for any available space. It’s hard as $%$& to find the perfect location. After a few months places that you thought were turdy a while ago looked amazing and I was gung ho to open in any of them, thankfully Jack’s (extremely) cautious nature prevented us from choosing them. Eventually we found a spot on Fort St. near the corner of Blanshard that we thought would work (see above). It had an area up front for retail and in the back enough space for 40 seats. We scratched out some numbers, felt we would make enough money to pay ourselves to get by and put in an offer. It was provisionally accepted so we drew up plans with the architects etc… and were ready to go. Our offer just needed the final dotting and crossing. We got it back from the landlord’s agent and they had made a couple of changes. Out of the blue they had just rented the space next door as a coffee shop, and part of that lease deal meant that we couldn’t sell coffee or food. ‘But, we’re partly a cafe?’ we pointed out, ‘it’s in the name of our business!?’ We had already sunk $10,000 in fees at this point and maybe they thought we we’re in too deep to back out. I was tempted, this had taken months and I had already quit my job in preparation, but thankfully Jack was too pissed off to accept the deal, so we walked away and had to start again. By the way it was Brown Bros who did that to us anyone looking to open a business 🙂

Back to pounding the streets looking for another vacancy (my wife had a pretty good job in case you were worried I wasn’t penniless at this point, it was annoying but my family weren’t starving). There was a place on Yates St. I had passed hundreds of times but always ignored because it was huge, almost 5000 sq. ft. Out of interest I looked it up online and noticed the plans had a big dashed line down the middle of it stating they were willing to split the place in two! 2500 sq. ft was way bigger than what we planned for but it was a possibility. We asked about the smaller of the two sides (currently our licensed half) and got a positive response, so we started planning. Making a layout for a business takes ages and a tonne of thought. There are a million regulations about what can go where as well as what must and cannot exist in your space. Jack did most of this on the downtime while running Interactivity Games and Stuff. We didn’t do architectural plans yet (lesson learned) but were ready to go. The landlord then changed his mind and felt that if he rented the side we were on, it would be impossible to rent the other side, so he wanted us to take that half! (insert Guinness World Record of expletives in one week here).

New plans, this time we had to get really creative because the back space wasn’t high enough, the area up the 3 stairs (fire code regulations I won’t bore you with, but it’s to do with their big fire helmets). Those pony walls between the tables at the back are there for a reason and it’s the big helmets! Landlords, they want a lot of money and can be total pratts. Thankfully ours is lovely, yes they made us change, but were willing to take a small cut in rent and once the lease was signed helped us by investing a lot in renovating the spot which was a shell at the time. By this point we were about 15 months in. It had been a grind and a half and were in a spot way bigger than we ever intended to have (almost 100 seats as oppossed to the 40 we initially bugeted for).

We started the renovation around March and finished in early October, it felt like forever. Jack likes to take things slow and tried to do as much himself to save money (he has had every job imaginable in his life including carpentry). To be fair almost all the money we put in was his, he had pretty much invested his retirement into the place and was naturally concerned about costs. I on the other hand hadn’t worked for quite a while and was desparate to get the place open. We had discussed the model we were going to go with, but final details still had to be agreed upon and he had his vision and I had mine. At this point Snakes and Lattes (S&L) had been open about 18 months and had already expanded. One other BGC had also opened in Toronto, but we were pretty much flying blind as to how to do this. I had read every review people had written about S&L, looked at every picture I could find and every news article on them. I used as many of their good ideas as I could, and came up with solutions to the things people would criticize them about. Initially our dream was to have a gamers paradise of people playing Catan, Agricola and Dominion. When I saw a tonne of 5* reviews of people saying how much fun they had playing Jenga and Monopoly again, my vision of the place started to change course. Luckily around that time we were fortunate enough to have an employee of S&L come to Victoria to take part in the Opera (he was also a singer) and he popped into Jack’s old store, in its last couple of months at that point. When we found out where he worked we invited him to play games with us for the two weeks he was in town. He gave us a tonne of input and made us change our mind about a whole slew of things we would have done differently if not for him e.g. Jack wanted our coffee operation to be done by an Aeropress, he politely told us that was utter madness. He also helped us get a much better idea of the type of customer we should expect and how to treat them (so many thanks JP).

With about 2 months to go and things dragging, it started to get tense. I was envisioning a Victoria hybrid of S&L, Jack was still more into a gamers paradise and was reluctant to give up selling his staples from his old store (puzzles, slot cars). I had heard that opening a business with a partner was similar to going through a divorce and I can tell you from experience that is pretty true. Except that this divorce would lead us to getting married for a minimum of 5 years (the length of our lease)! We argued constantly, Jack got mad, I got mad, I would go home and rant at my wife about how unreasonable Jack was, she would try and point out his view was just as valid and I would tell her to stop being reasonable and let me rant so I didn’t explode. But seeing rooms get built, walls getting painted and shelves go up was always cathartic as the end (or beginning) seemed that bit closer.

Then on October 11th, 2013, we we’re 98% ready to go and Jack decided to sell a puzzle (yes we had them then) and a copy of Hey that’s my Fish to Kim, my wife’s friend who randomly was our first customer. It wasn’t a grand opening, hell, I thought we were opening the next day and wasn’t even there, but Jack doesn’t worry about things like that. We didn’t have our food license yet, so we couldn’t sell food or drink. We had planned to get a liquor permit, but the BCLB had told us we couldn’t get one a couple of months earlier (we had been told over the phone earlier in the process we could), so we had to go with our backup plan…milkshakes. But we were open, we really had no idea how this was going to work exactly, but we were open…

TO BE CONTINUED….(Running a board game cafe)

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So if your thinking of opening a Board Game Cafe or any business, what should you take from this? One thing; there is a tonne of luck in any venture like this. We ended up in a place we didn’t want to be, doing things we didn’t intend to do (because a random guy had an Opera in town), making drinks we didn’t intend to sell because it’s really hard to get a straight answer out of the liquor board. Also to quote Harvey Dent; ‘The night is darkest just before the dawn.’ (like pitch black, but the light does come).

You may find it on our shelves as Tres Fute (The French version), it basically means ‘Very Clever’ in English, whatever the name, the game is just fantastic and has taken the staff at the cafe by storm. If you walk by in the afternoon recently you may have seen Natasha in the window playing it on her own, trying to break her own cafe record score of 293.

It’s designed by game designer wunderkind of the last couple of years, Wolfgang Warsch. He also created last years mega-hit ‘The Mind’ and Kennerspiel winner ‘The Quacks of Quedlinburg.’ His thing is making games that create moments of excitement, whether it be pulling a chit you really need from a bag (Quacks), putting down a 23 then a 24 (The Mind) or in this case chaining a whole bunch of bonuses together to get mega points and feel very clever.

At it’s heart this is just a dice game. You roll 6 dice, pick one and dice lower than that go on the silver platter. Repeat 2 more times and then your opponents get to pick one of the dice on that silver platter for themselves. You cross out boxes or put in numbers in one of the 5 scoring areas. They all score in different ways and will eventually give you bonuses in different ways. In the first 2/3’s of the game it feels like you’ll barely score anything, but then suddenly your score will explode in the last third, which is where the magic happens. You’ll get a bonus for filling out a row, which will allow you top put an X in the blue section, which completes a column, which lets you put 6 in the purple area which gives you a Fox. What does that even mean?!?! It doesn’t matter, what matters is when it happens, your like ‘BOOM! Eat my Points!’ It feels awesome!

It’s take a little learning to get your head around the scoring and bonuses (it was nominated for the slighly more complicated game of the year and lost to The Quacks), but its very straighforward once you understand it.

It’s also great as a solo game, for real! I’ve played it around 60 times now, I’ve even had to buy a new score pad cos I used all the sheets in the game…when does that happen!

Trust us on this one, it’s so good.

 

Here we are in the run up to the holidays, another year’s worth of games have arrived which we have parsed through the all to find the best available for you guys to consider.

I’ve separated out these into categories to help you narrow down your choices to just a few games. Some categories are blank because we didn’t feel there was a standout game this year (traditional 2-player). A couple of games that would have been on the list have been left off because they are currently unavailable until another print run happens (Root). So, let’s start with:

Family strategy

Azul

This year’s SDJ and DSP winner. It’s fabulous as a 2-player and deceptively cut-throat. Players draft tiles onto their boards, once rows fill they move one of their pieces onto the scoring section…blah, blah, blah. Sounds boring, its not. It’s tough to explain but easy to love. (Good with 2-players)

Blue Lagoon

A full redesign of a game from 15 years ago called Through the Desert. You are placing tokens and huts over a South Sea map to get majority on islands, link them together and pick up resource tokens -> many ways to score points. In the second half, you must place tokens from your huts, which leads to lots of blocking and swearing. In other words another cut-throat game, but one with lots of options, so even if the one you wanted has gone, you have plenty of others. (Good with 2-players)

Majesty for the Realm

The next game by the ‘Splendor’ guy. It also has the little poker chips (although smaller). You pay from your supply of meeples to draft cards which you put under a row of buildings to get points and various abilities. Quick, fun and a nice varirty as the building cards are double sided.

TOP GAME – AZUL

Medium/Heavy Strategy

Lowlands

It has the feel of an Uwe Rosenberg farming game, you are indeed making a sheep farm. But the twist is the dam that must be built communally to prevent all your wolly critters washing away. If dam holds, the best sheep farmers do best, if it fails those who contributed most to the dam will do better. A very clever push and pull game as you try and do just the right amount of each to maximize your points.

Heaven and Ale

Nominated for the KDJ, this game of making beer with monks is about resourse management and timing. Its got a very different end game scoring that throws a lot of people off in their first game, but it really packs a punch with a lot of interlocking mechanisms.

Rajas of the Ganges

The uber couple of board game design Inka and Marcus Brand have done it again (can we call them Inkus going forward?). A worker/dice placement game, where the winning condition is when you get your prestige (going clockwise on a track round the board) to cross over your money going counter clockwise. It plays really smoothly, has lovely translucsent dice and is dope. (Good with 2-players)

TOP GAME – Rajas of the Ganges

Party Game

Decrypto

This one definitely riffs off of Codenames, it also suffers from ‘I don’t get it’ syndrome till you complete the second round, then everyone goes…’Ooooooh, I get it’. It’s so great though and worth the patience. A Codebreaking, team based word game.

Bob Ross – Happy Little Accidents

Everyone draws a little doodle and then passes it into the middle. They are shuffled and handed out again, where you have to then turn the doodle into a specific thing, a car for example. Do it three times and choose your favorite. Its just lovely and jolly.

Pantone

This takes pop culture figures and asks you to create them visually using coloured rectangles, similar to those paint colour swatches. Everyone gets a turn to guess and if no-one gets it they are given a clue, repeat until someone guesses the answer and gets points.

TOP GAME – DECRYPTO

Dexterity Game

Drop it

This has been a hit in the cafe as it’s so easy to learn. Drop your wooden pieces into the screen a la Connect 4 and try to make sure they don’t come to rest touching pieces of the same colour or shape. The higher they are up the screen the more points you will get. It’s a lot trickier than it seems. (Good with 2-players)

Menara

One for the Engineers! In this co-op game you are attempting to build this temple of columns and floors up to a certain height. You will draw cards that will tell you what to place and the floors tell you what colour. Every time you can’t or don’t want to add a colmun you must build one floor higher. (Good with 2-players)

Klask

It’s air hockey with magnets. You control your ‘Striker’ that sits on the playing surface with a strong magnet that resides under the play area. If you are too aggressive you’ll lose your connection with the striker so more subtlety is required. A real game of skill, very addictive. (Only with 2-players)

TOP GAME – Klask

Deduction/Escape/Story Game

House of Danger

It’s a classic Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) gameified with a few more choices. You work through 5 chapters, pick up some items which will help you as well as open up specific paths through the game. Great for that 10-14 yr old range or adults who love a bit of nostalgia. (Good with 2-players)

Chronicles of Crime

This game uses an app on your device A LOT. But in the best of ways. You go to a crime scene and hold then phone up and move it around to look for clues. Each clue/person/location has a QR code that you scan to get information about. You can QR code a person to talk to them and then QR an item to ask them about it. It works really smoothly with great plots. Highly recommended. (Good with 2-players)

Legacy of Dragonhalt

Another kind of CYOA game, but this one is set in a more classic D&D environment and is a much bigger story. You will create a character with traits (Strength, dexterity etc..) and develop them through the game. Certain traits will allow you to progress to certain choices as you go through quests. (Good with 2-players)

Fog of Love

Described as a Romantic Comedy Board Game. This is for 2-players, where each of you will take on the role of one half of a relationship (your choice of identity) with certain personality traits, goals and desires. To succeed you must make the relationship last a year and meet it’s own needs. You do this by answering scenario based questions (this things happens, do you A…, B…, C… or D?) Role playing your character is encouraged. (Only with 2-players)

TOP GAME – Fog of Love & Chronicles of Crime

Kids Game

Outfoxed (5-10 years)

This one is like a co-operative Clue. Players roll 3 dice hoping to match all 3 by showing either clue or sustpect symbols. If they are successful they get to reveal suspects or search for clues. If they fail, the pie stealing fox moves towards the exit. You use simple logical deduction to narrow down the suspects till you have your fox. (Good with 2-players)

Emojito (5-100 years)

Another co-operative game, but this time it involves pulling faces. A player grabs a card which will show a cartoon animal pulling an expression and then attempt to mimic it. They will mix the card in with 6 others and everyone has to try and guess the cards they were mimicing (the team gets a point for every correct answer, the game for every incorrect one). There is also a great ‘Telephone’ varient where you must show one person your expression, who then passes it to the next person around the table. Yes it can easily double as a drinking game…

My Little Scythe (7-100)

A father and daughter combo took the orginal Strategy game and made a kids My Little Pony varient, putting the files online for people to print and play. The original designer saw it, tried it and decided to make it into a full retail version (minus the Ponies, cos law suits). It’s really, really good. Keeping the core idea of Scythe and simplifying it while maintaining a good level of strategy for young kids.

Stuffed Fables (6, with adult help – 12)

From the designer of Mice and Mystics, this game sees you taking on the roles of stuffed toys trying to save the child they love from the evil mastermind. The game uses a storybook, which tells you the intro to each tale, the rules and the game board. Again it has tinges of D&D (all the rage people) in it, but importantly the narrative is about things that matter to and are scary to kids (wetting the bed, creatures under the bed). Beautiful game.

TOP GAME – they are all so good, it was an amazing year for kids games…but Outfoxed.

Co-operative

Rescue Polar Bears

You are working together to collect data to try and convince governments that the ice is melting and to stop using fossil fuels. However, at the same time you have to rescue the polar bears that are sinking into the water. Get enough data, you win. Too many bears sink, you lose. Everyone has a unique boat that can do different things. Note, this game is hard to win and its even harder to not spend all your time saving the cute bears, but you need that data to win the game. The rulebook isn’t perfect, but get past it and you’ll find a real winner here.

Spirit Island

You’ll take the role of a spirit defending its island from those bloody colonising humans! You have a wide variety of spirits to choose from and they vary wildly in what they can do. Combo-ing with your team mates is key to doing well in this hugely successful, but hard and fairly complicated game. If you want a challenge and variety, you’ll struggle to find a better more unique game.

TOP GAME – Spirit Island

This don’t fit in any category, quickfire round

Unstable Unicorns – Exploding kittens-esque with Unicorns

Potion – Totally random, like rock, paper, scissors, but so funny anyway

Organ Attack – Anything the Oatmeal can do, I can do better said the Awkward Yeti.

Sword Crafters – everyone makes a big sword and the innuendos doth flow…

Fireball Island – it’s back, with more game, but still has the marble of doom…

You made it all the way to the bottom, awww bless you. Hope you found it useful 🙂