Halfway through the boardgaming season...
With the family I played Ticket to Ride which everyone enjoyed, King of Tokoyo didn't go down too well with one member of the family though. We had the most fun with Skull (aka Skull and Roses) which is an incredibly simple bluffing game. We played this on Christmas night by which time most of us were a little rough round the edges and it was really good fun.
Father Christmas was very generous in giving games this year and we were having two meet ups with friends where we'd probably end up playing lots of games, therefore myself and the other half trialed a couple of Santa's gifts. We played through Pina Pirata (by Donald X Vaccarino of Dominion fame), Splendor and Camel Up (SdJ 2014 winner). Camel Up worked ok with two players, but Pina Pirata was a bit meh.
The former is a very straightforward racing/betting game where you're trying to win money by guessing the winner or loser of a camel race as well as trying to manipulate the race order. It comes with a nice dice tower for determining which camel moves and the race is always close due to the mechanic where camels in the same space always move together. Its also a pretty quick game which can allow up to 8 players to join in.
Pina Pirata is a game of matching suits (of different Pirates), the hook is that when anyone wins a round a new rule is drawn at random so every game is going to be a bit different. We had a rule where whoever had played the most cards containing a single suit didn't have to pick up cards if they couldn't play. So it quickly degenerated into one of us getting down to a couple of cards while the other picked up loads of cards until they could play. Still I won the first two rounds and the other half won four on the trot to win the game outright. It might play better with more players. Splendor was the real hit out of those three, we quickly picked it up and decided to play it again straight away because we enjoyed it so much.
Splendor is typical Eurogame fare, you can do one thing each turn, pick up gems (which come as nice casino style chips), buy a card, or reserve a card and get a joker. You need gems to pay for the cards, which act as a gem in subsequent rounds and mostly give you VPs. In order to get the more valuable VP cards you need to build up a decent gem engine. Lastly there are a number of limited one off cards which are not that difficult to get, but can have a significant effect on the victor. For us Splendor was one of those rare 2-4 player games that is actually fun with 2 (the other being Thebes).
We had our first games day yesterday and got to play Evo, Palazzo, Spin Monkeys, Camel Up, Skull, Bunny Bunny Moose Moose and Unexpected Treasures. Spin Monkeys was the only one that I wouldn't want to play again. Evo and Palazzo were the stand out games, although Bunny Bunny Moose Moose was something else!!
Evo is a good Euro dressed in a cool dinosaur theme, however unlike most Euros it does have the advantage of direct player conflict which I think helps. You are trying to expand your dinos range in order to gain more VPs, the map has four different terrain types. Each turn those different terrain types can become safe, too hot, too cold or just plain lethal as the climate changes. Every round some new genes appear that make your dinos better able to survive the heat or cold, move faster, fight better or produce more babies. There are also unique traits like killer babies that allow you to invade other players territories when adding new dinosaurs. So there are lots of options for players to pursue, my dinos ended up being fairly fecund, another player became flying super fighters and so on. Good game.
Palazzo is another Euro, however auction is the central mechanic in this game which was new to us as a group. Each turn you get to do one thing, either take money, buy or auction bits of buildings or rearrange your existing buildings. You're trying to put together stacks of tiles in ascending order and preferably of the same suit (marble, brick or stone). However, each tile has a number of different windows on it and the total point value of each building is determined by the total number of windows with bonuses for 4 or 5 floors and for being all of the same type. If you choose to collect money then you get the best choice available, but everyone else also gets some cash as well. Likewise if you go for an auction you have the chance of getting a lot of tiles in one go, but your opponents could also benefit. The money in the game comes in three different suits as well and you can't mix and max currencies when you buy stuff, so again there is lots to think about on each turn. We replayed this one straight away, it takes 30 to 45 minutes.
Although Spin Monkeys was quite different to anything else I did find it a little tedious, and only one of us thought it worth playing again. You are all monkeys driving bumper cars and go around picking up fruit with different values, if you pick up a banana you leave a skin behind which can then trip other players. Each turn you choose a card from a hand of five which depicts an angle. You then go in this direction for as many cards you have already played (i.e. one in the first go, two in the second, etc. etc.). The only way you can lose speed is by hitting the side of the board. If you run over banana skins or hit other players then you pick up a random card from the deck and travel in the direction instead. Writing this it feels like it should or could have been fun, but for whatever reason it didn't gel with us.
Bunny Bunny Moose Moose is a game from Vlaada Chvátil who designed Dungeon Petz which is probably our favourite worker placement game. This game is patently ridiculous, but was good fun once we'd worked out how to play it properly. Each turn one players acts as a narrator and reads out a poem while drawing cards which have pictures of rabbits and moose on them with different shaped ears or antlers on them. The players have to try and match the shape of the ears/antlers with the hands held up against their heads, once the narrator draws a hunter card everyone has to freeze and the narrator then gets to decide whether the players have matched the cards successfully or not. Each card has a positive or negative value on it and this determines whether their bunny or moose token moves along the board or not. Once the poem has been read twice by each player the game ends and whoever has got both their tokens the furthest wins the game. Leave your shame at the door before playing... When you get to play the narrator and see your friends lined up in front of you with the hands up against their heads pointing in all different directions is pretty much impossible not to laugh!