In the words of James Brown, these are family games where you can ‘Teach(hit) it and quit.’ In other words, give the rules explaination in 10 mins or less and walk away in FULL confidence the table has it and they will make no rules mistakes. I wish, but we’ll do our best to get as close as possible. They also need to have a modicum of strategy/tactics involved and be ideally around 30-40 minutes. These are the type of games you want use to introduce people who are new to gaming without blowing their mind.

Now a bunch of you will think, ‘This game should be on the list!’ Before you comment though, think have you actually ever taught it and left them to their own devices, or are you at the table to guide them. We have a lot of experience of doing this and its the mark of a truly great game that can be fun and so simple it can be played by 4 novice people who have never read the rules and only had 10 minutes teaching.

-Strategic Depth – this is relative to the lighter family game genre not Agricola.
-Mistake level – odds of a group screwing up the rules after being taught, 5 being quite likely

10. NMBR 9

 

Teaching time – 2 mins
Game length – 15 mins
Strategic Depth – 2/5
Mistake level – 2/5

Flip a card, it’ll have a number on it. Everyone takes that number and places it in front of them. Repeat that 19 more times, making sure that the number tiles touch each other, either next to each other or on top. However, its only the tiles that are on top of other tiles that score points (their number value, a 1 = 1pt). Those number tiles are awkwardly shaped, making it very tricky to try and create solid platforms to place other tiles on top of them.
Very easy to teach, the downside is that it’s a very short game, but most people usually play it 2 or 3 times. A little lacking in depth, its more a puzzle, but a very enjoyable one to try.

9. Barenpark

Teaching time – 7 mins (setup with everyone helping 7 mins)
Game length – 40 mins
Strategic Depth – 4/5
Mistake level – 3/5

What hurts this game most is that it’s a Bear to set up. You need to place a tonne of tiles on their correct spot on the board in the right order. Many hands make light work, and it’s pretty easy to explain to others how to do it (as opposed to say Pandemic). Another tetris style tile laying game. This time you are making a bear park and attempting to put down a wide variety of bear related tile shapes to efficiently fill your park as quickly as possible. When you cover certain spots on your board you get to take more tiles, some of which are worth points. Harder ones to place are worth more and tiles of the same type are worth more the sooner you take them. When you fill sections of your board, you get Bear Statues, which are worth points and again the sooner you do it, the more they are worth. It a simple, fun little puzzle. It does lack a little bit of interaction as you are mostly just doing your own thing. Having played it a lot, I can attest that the more you play the better you get. Plus…bears!

8. Hanabi

Teaching time – 10 mins (5 mins of rules plus 5 mins of hand holding)
Game length – 20 mins
Strategic Depth – 4/5
Mistake level – 4/5

This teeny little co-operative card game is a score based game. The perfect and almost impossible to get, best score, is 25. All you need to do is to lay down 5 different coloured runs of cards from 1-5, placing the cards one at a time in order. The twist is that you have to hold your hand outwards so you can’t see your own cards, only those of your team mates. You are allowed to give hints (represented by tokens) to each other, but after a while you will run out and the only way to get more it to throw cards away. The deck is the game’s clock, so when it is gone, its game over. Also, if you make 3 mistakes (e.g. putting a red 3 down, when you have a red 1 on the table), you are done. It’s tough to do well at first. The rules are easy, but you need to help people through a few quick turns for the new ideas to settle in. Even still, I’ve seen people accidently cheating a few times with a mis-understood rule.

7. Kingdomino

Teaching time – 8 mins
Game length – 20 mins
Strategic Depth – 4/5
Mistake level – 3/5

Much has been written about this game, so so I wion’t bang on about how to play. The main knock on this one is the game length vis-a-vis the time to teach. Again, usually people play a couple of rounds and there are a couple of varients to mix things up. It is surprisingly deep and offers some really fun little choices as you try to value to choice of the tile to take now against the possibility of a better tile next round. It is a little prone to people getting confused about the scoring and also the tile placement but as it’s so short if you do mess up you can always play again correctly.

6. Qwirkle

Teaching time – 4 mins
Game length – 40 mins
Strategic Depth – 2/5
Mistake level – 2/5

Colours, shapes, dominos and a crossword mashed together. You are laying wooden blocks onto the table to add to a run of similar colours or shapes. Every line in every direction must mainatin ORDER. You can’t put a blue in a yellow line or a diamond in a square line. Then score the length of the new line, 5 pieces = 5 pts. People can get a bit confused when you add to 2 lines and score both and accidently cheating is pretty common in first games when someone puts an illegal piece in. Strategic depth is a little limited as it basically comes down to finding the ideal spot for the pieces you have, but when you find a huge move, it is very satifying indeed.

5. Incan Gold

Teaching time – 10 mins
Game length – 25 mins
Strategic Depth – 2/5
Mistake level – 3/5

This is a game where it is easiest to just explain how to win and then just jump into a sample round without explaining the rules. The fiddly parts of the game are best demonstrated rather than told. After that everyone gets this fun little push your luck game. Strategy is fairly limited to how conservative/risky do I need to be at this point in time. However, the excitement generated by the flip of a card, whether you are still in or not is fantastic. Groans and cheers abound as people score a big payday or come head to head with a snake.

4. King of Tokyo

Teaching time – 8 mins
Game length – 30 mins
Strategic Depth – 3/5
Mistake level – 3/5

Yahtzee with monsters is the easy way to describe this. However it’s really nothing like Yahtzee, except for the rolling dice 3 times, keeping and re-rolling what you want. Once the objective of the game has been explained, its just a case of knowing what the different sides of the dice mean, 3 of which are effectively the same. Some of the cards can be confusing, but there are so many and you’ll only see 5% of them in any given game, we just tell people to discard it if they don’t understand it. Being a dice game, it’s obviously pretty luck driven, but there are tricky choices to be made depending on the game’s current state. Player elimination is a thing in this one and it’s worth spending an extra minute, emphasizing that although bashing everyone in Tokyo is fun, you need to know when you’ve taken your licks and get out of there before its too late and you are destroyed.

3. Ticket to Ride

Teaching time – 5-15 mins
Game length – 60 mins
Strategic Depth – 5/5
Mistake level – 4/5

Most of you who have played this will have a hard time reaching back into the memory banks to the first time you tried this out. It seems so easy now, but trust me, to new players there is a lot going on and quite a few rules to remember many of us take for granted. It’s also prone to ‘assumption rule making’, wherein players add rules to the game because it seems like it must be a rule (e.g. that they have to lay trains next to previously played trains or there is a hand limit or their red trains can only go on red tracks). Even though I often explicitly state them, I will often come back and find people looking through the rule book for a hand limit. Why so high on the list then? Well it doesn’t take long to explain and when they get it, well, people just love it. It’s possibly the best family game of the last 20 years. For new players, it can go as long as 90 minutes which is a ding on it, few ever complain about that though.

2. Splendor

Teaching time – 7 mins
Game length – 40 mins
Strategic Depth – 5/5
Mistake level – 3/5

You could easily flip flop this with TTR. It wins out on the fact most people get it on first teach and rarely make mistakes. It’s quite a bit quicker as well, clocking in at aroiund 40 mins for a first play. Its a little bit dryer than TTR, but the tension is still there as you race to those 15 points. Some go for the big points early and take a big lead while others build up an engine of cards and hope to surge through in the late game. The tight economy of limited gems make it surprisingly interactive with 4 players.

1. Las Vegas

Teaching time – 5 mins
Game length – 30 mins
Strategic Depth – 3/5
Mistake level – 1/5

Let’s be clear, this one is not even close for us here at IBGC. This game is grossly under-appreciated and should be in every families house. It’s so simple, but the choices are beautifully elegant and the dice create incredible moments of drama which recreates that Vegas feel so well. I have taught this game to ESL students who speak barely a word of English and through gestures and the odd words they know have taught them it and they have played it correctly. The Ghost player varient is a fantastic alternative way to play it as well. Supply of this game is very spotty in Canada though. Target now have an exclusive on it in the USA (called ‘Vegas’ there) in a snazzy new box. So if you see it, grab this great, great game.

Our resident game experts wander the cafe floor spreading their wisdom and knowledge like cardboard Gandalfs. Ever wondered why they suggested that game for you, well maybe their top 5’s will give you some insight (or not, if any of them tries to teach you Mage Knight, they are insta-fired!).

Teresa

5. Scythe – A big, beautiful game that on the outside looks like a bash ’em up, but in reality is an economic, engine builder, where you try to improve your clans abilities as fast as possible, while spreading over the board, being a popular dude…and occasionally bashing someone.

4. Hive Mind – a cafe party fave. So simple, but so fun. Its like Scattegories, but in this case you are trying to give the same answers as everyone else. No winner, just a loser, kicked out of the Hive for being too different.

3. Qwixx – great little dice game that was nominated for game of the year a few years back. Players get to take turns on each others rolls and try to score as many points as possible.

2. Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle – A Co-operative deckbuilding game in which you cosntruct a deck as one of the 4 main protagonists to defeat the villains before you lose control of certain locations. It plays with a legacy feel, where you start at book 1 and once you defeat it, move to 2, through to 7, adding rules as you go. Once you’re through you can add difficulty and play again.

1. Indigo – beautiful, easy and works really well for 2,3, or 4 players. The lazy description is Tsuro with gems. With 3 or 4 players you actually work together in part to exit the gems off your section for the board. It’s another Knizia game…he should visit Victoria so we can give worship to him.

Rob

5. Nations – A civilization game without a map. Instead, players purchase cards and then put resources towards completing them if they things like Wonders, or put units on them for technologies or warfare. The cards progress in quality as you move through time. On easy mode, you are so starved for resources it’s a struggle to do anything. I can’t even conceive playing it on hard. Brain burner, but very satisfying.

4. Mage Knight/Star Trek Frontiers – Rob loves him a solo game and this is the best of the bunch. Another game not for the faint of hearted, the rule book is huge but the depth of gameplay is outstanding. Both games use the same core ruleset, it really comes down to wheather you like orcs or Klingons.

3. Stronghold – A 2-player castle defence game where you are…well…defending a castle. One of you has a finite number of troops, but loaded with spells and other trickery. The other player infinite troops slamming up against the wall. Hold out for 7 turns and the defender wins.

2. Concordia – A classic Euro by our boy Mac Gerdts. Almost the deinition of an elegant game, just the right amount of rules to provide strategic depth, a great length that leaves you wishing you had one more turn. Lots of board expansions add great replayability. Highly recommended to people looking for something with a bit more than Catan.

1. Gloomhaven – Currently the #1 game in the world and one of the most ambitious designs in board game land ever attempted. The box is huge, the game is huge (90+ scenarios) and the world is huge. If you love this kind of game, its probably the best there is.

Del

5. Breaking Away – the cycling game for bike fans before Flamme Rouge came along. Luck free, you control a team of 4 cyclists and assign movement to them determined by your position in the race. Guys at the front get low values, ones at the back (drafting) get higher ones. You get extra points if you win sprints at the front though.

4. Tigris & Euphrates – Heeeeeeere’s Reiner (Knizia) again. For many this is the game that will be on his epitaph. It looks like your usual dry Euro on the surface, but in reality it is one of the most cut-throat, confrontational games you will ever play. As it’s a Knizia,  it also has weird scoring…

3. Troyes – The forefather of the many dice drafting games that exist today. Players draft dice and then use them to obtain cards they can place workers on to gain fame through the civil, military or relgious parts of the city. Another classic Euro with tight mechanics and tough decisions.

2. El Grande – Still the best area control ever 30 years after it was released.

1. Tragedy Looper – I can’t believe someone even came up with this game, you have to play it to get it, but here’s the game blurb to at least try:

“a scenario-based deduction game for two to four players: one mastermind and one to three protagonists. The game consists of four location boards and a number of character cards. Each scenario features a number of characters, hidden roles for these characters (serial killer, conspiracy theorist, friend), and some pre-set tragedies (murder, suicide).

Each “day” (turn), players and the mastermind play three face-down cards onto the characters, then reveal them to move the characters around or affect their paranoia or goodwill stats. At the end of each day (turn), if the scenario has a tragedy set for that day, it happens if the conditions are met, i.e., certain characters have certain stats or are in a certain location together (or not together) with others. As tragedies happen, players loop back in time, restarting the scenario from the beginning and trying to deduce who the culprit was and why the tragedy occurred.

The players win if they manage to maintain status quo — that is, if no tragedies occur to the key individuals — for a set number of days, within a set number of loops. If not, the mastermind wins”

Chris

In Chris’s words:

5. Kingdom Builder – played it over 50 times live (which is a lot), and easily my favourite game to teach folks looking for something beyond Catan and Ticket to Ride, without taking hours to explain.

4. Magic Maze – That this didn’t win the game of the year 2017 for the Cafe was a travesty. Great co-operative game, with puzzle elements and the big red dobber of shame to remind you gotta do… something.

3. Steam – I love train games, and considered going for the hipster-gamer option of 1925 (unit 2 and 3). But Steam is better on most counts, with a cut-throat auction, economics, route building and many interesting decisions every turn.

2. Caylus – The grand-daddy of worker placement games. Agricola is probably more fun, but Caylus has more long term strategy and deep analysis available. it can take a little too long, but as a two player game with equal skill, it’s a fascinating struggle.

1. Race for the Galaxy – I’ve not got any tattoo’s, but played this game live 200+ times, and on various online sites close to 3000 times. It always feels fulfilling to build up a stellar empire, even on games you lose, while crushing your opponents with the right card combination feels even better.

 

 

 

 

We are focusing on some of the lesser known titles here, games like Azul are obviously amazing and will win lots of awards, but we’ve already waxed lyrical about those ones and it’s nice to highlight some of the other great games that don’t get as much press.

2-Player

Tao long: The Way of the Dragon

This is a game about 2 dragon’s dog fighting each other until one or the other has been defeated. Players control one of these beasts and move them around the board by using the ‘Bao’; a mancala like system, where you pick up stones from an action spot and drop them one at a time on successive spots taking the action on the last spot you drop a stone at. There are 8 possible actions (move west/north etc… breath in fire/expel fire), but not everyone is available due to the current configuration of the stones. Hence the main part of the game takes place on the Bao as you try to set yourself up to get into a position to attack your opponent while trying to prevent them from hitting you by leaving stones in certain ways.
Gameplay is around 20-30 minutes and there is a slight learning curve if you haven’t played mancala and figure out the symbology for the dragons’ moves. The theme is very nicely implemented and the artwork is lovely. It also comes with a couple of advanced varients to try as well.

Family

The Grimm Forest

This is a contender for most over-produced game of all time! Where there could have been cardboard tokens there are giant minis. Instead of an empty box, a plastic custom game tray that puts everything away neatly in its own three tiered system. Due to humongous amounts of money raised via kickstarter creating economies of scale this game is now remarkably affordable for what it comes with.
What about the gameplay? You need to build 3, 3 part houses (wood, straw and brick). You get the resources by going to one of 4 locations (straw, wood, brick or one of each). Each player starts a round by secretly picking a location to go to, if they go there alone, they get all the stuff, if other join you, you have to share. The game gets really interesting when you add in all the friend and attack cards which grant you special abilities to mess with each other.
Light, fun, incredibly interactive and visually stunning. A great family game for the family that likes to get up in each others’ grills.

Dexterity

Menara

Check out the size of that thing! This is actually a co-operative game, where a team of builders are trying to build a tower to a certain height when the game ends.
It actually requires a lot of planning to do well at this. There are four colours of column available, yellow (loads) to blue (hardly any). A players turn mainly consists of taking a card and doing what it says. From finishing a platfom to moving one. You only have 6 columns in front of you to use and platforms have specific spots where you most put the columns of specific colours. This may mean you cannot complete the card in front of you, If so, you must build another level higher to win the game (starts at 4-5). You may find that the tower needs more support ,  so you decide to add another platform at the base – if so, you must add another level! This is a game not so much about not letting the structure fall like many dexterity games (you’ll almost certainly lose if it does though), but careful planning and efficient building (non-wobbly hands will help though). The resultant tower is huuuuuge, love it.

Strategy

Castell

Winner of the most original theme as well. This a game about putting on shows of human towers in Catalonia. You’ll move your troop around the region learning new skills that break the core rules of human tower building and creating the towers demanded by the people.

It’s very much a puzzle game as you try to collect the different numbered castellers and alter the teams skills which all have to be done in different places, while being in the right place at the right time to do the shows. It is immensly satifying when it works out and you show of the massive tower of humans that you have created. Plus the bag to put the castellers in is big enough to put some peoples head in! Awesome!

Kids

Outfoxed

This game was nominated for last years Kinderspiel des Jahres and although it took us a while to get round to picking it up, we are really glad we did. It’s like Clue crossed with Guess Who? A Fox has stolen a pie and is fleeing town, but in a town of foxes, who is the culpret? In this co-operative game players will move around the board picking up clues which they stick in this cool little slider that reveals whether the pie-stealer had that item on them (scarf, glasses, umbrella). You slowly narrow down the list of 16 till you make a guess. If you’re correct you win, if you’re wrong you lose. However, on their turn a player will nominate whether they want to look for clues or suspects. Clues let you move around the board. Suspects allows you to turn over cards to reveal pictures of foxes and what they have on them so you can figure out if they are innocent or not. To do the action they roll 3 dice, 3 sides are clues and 3 are suspects. You have to roll 3 of the thing you choose in 3 rolls (you can keep successes), if you don’t the fox moves towards the exit and your turn is over adding pressure to figure things out as fast as possible.
I played this with my 11 and 12 year olds and they loved it, but have also taught it to kids as young as 6 and they also had a great time and were able to figure out the deduction parts. Highly recommended.

Party

Decrypto

This game is so much fun. It fixes some of the issues (very, very minor issues mind you) I had with Codenames, namely the downtime and people freezing up and unable to think of a clue. However, it is one of those games that is really hard to try and explain to people, you just have to play it and after 2 rounds you will have your ‘Ah-ha’ moment and realize the genious of this very inexpensive title. It’s like Codenames crossed with Mastermind the code-breaking game. You win if you intercept your opponents codes twice, but lose if your own team fails to get your code with the same clues. There in lies the tension. Your own team can see your words which will never change throughout the game (each of the 4 words is associated to a number 1-4). One player on your team will receive a code card with three numbers e.g. 2-4-1 and give clues to help the team guess the code e.g. you may say ‘egg’ to help your team get the word ‘bird.’ The other team will hear all this and will be told the answer i.e. that #1 has something to do with ‘egg’. In the second round they will start trying to intercept the code. If they crack it they get a point, crack it twice the win. So saying a word like ‘nest’ for further clues to #1 is not a good idea because they know that egg and nest probably go together, so maybe say ‘high’ because birds fly high, but is that too vague and may cause your own team to get the code wrong (remember there will be 3 words said associated to 3 of 4 possible words), if they get it wrong twice you also lose. The tension really ramps up once the opposition has cracked the code once and you really have to be obscure. The opposition is also going throug the same travails at the same time and the person giving the clues rotate through the team, so everyone gets a turn or two to give clues.
The first half of your first game will be a fiddly mess, but as the rules say, just follow the step by step instructions and it will quickly make sense and an amazing time will follow. Highly, highly, highly recommended.

This continues our list of staff faves:

Jack and Bill’s can be found here

Arlo, what can you say about him? He will play a lot of games, but most will just float on by, fogotten forever. Those he loves, he loves and will play 10’s to 100’s to 1000’s of times. These enter into the Arlo pantheon at a rate of about 2 a year. I feel those games should have a sticker on them like the Mensa award, but just Arlo’s face with a thumbs up.

10. Las vegas

A cafe classic. Players compete to earn the most money by placing their coloured dice on 6 casinos representing each side of a dice. Who ever gets the most on the casino gets the best cheque. The twist is that any ties (i.e. 2 players each have 3 dice on a casino) cause both players dice to be removed leading to unexpected winners and crys of pain.

9. Isle of Skye

Winner of the 2016 KSJ, its kind of like Carcassonne, but instead of drawing the tiles you buy them off each other to build your own mini kingdom. 4 random scoring tiles from a selection of 16 are used each game meaning you have to re-evaluate the worth of the tiles every game. Its also in Scotland so there are some cows and whisky and castles and stuff.

8. Eight Minute Empire: Legends

You can play this game in eight minutes (if you don’t think and just do random stuff). Otherwise it takes about 20. An area control game with a modular board set up. You draw a card from a row, cheap on the left more expensive on the right, using a fixed set of cash. What you start with is all you get for the entire game. You then use those cards to manipulate the board state to try and control the different areas to get points. Designed, produced and drawn all by the same uber talented Ryan Lauket.

7. TransAmerica

Arlo won’t play Ticket to Ride, even if you bribe him with West Coast IPA’s, but he loves this game. A simple route building game, where you try to connect 5 secret cities with your track pieces, which eventually become other peoples’ track pieces when you join their network. Another teach in 3 minutes but play for life classic.

6. Stone Age

The classic worker placement game where the number of shaggy haired guys you put down equals the dice you roll which then translates into resources. You can gain tools to get improve rolls, send them to the ‘Love Hut’ to gain more people or to the fields to grow stuff so you don’t have to keep hunting bloody meat. Beautiful board by Michael Menzel and various strategies to try out. It even comes with the Stone age’ish’ dice cup.

5. For Sale

Steffan Dorra’s ‘triffic little auction game. Players buy properties numbered 1-30. First to drop out of the auction takes the worst property, paying half their bid. Keep going till one player is left who has to pay full price for the best card. Once all the cards have been bought (5-6 rounds), cheques are distributed ($0-15000). Players see the cheques available, one per player, and then play a property from their hand face down. Best property gets the best cheque, next highest gets the next best cheque and so on. Such a great game…plus every card has a little animal hidden away on it (except the 30).

4. Puerto Rico

See both Bill and Jack’s lists! You must be a little intrigued now if you haven’t played this game!

3. No Thanks!

Do you live in Victoria and have played or own this? Chances are you have met Arlo at some point in your life who has either sold or taught you this. Each player gets 11 chips, randomly remove 9 cards from a deck of cards ranging from 3-36, then flip the to card of the deck. If you don’t want the card put a chip on it, else take that card and all the chips on it. Least points wins (a 24 card is 24 points), chips left in your hand reduce your score by 1 per. The dilemma is that you don’t want cards, but if you keep laying chips you’ll run out and have to take a card. Great camping or end of the night game.

2. Agricola

Build a farm and feed your family. Do it better than everyone else and you win…huzzah (this is also on Jack’s list).

1. Race For the Galaxy

I rememeber a Bill Hick’s show when he talked about the American press scaremongering in the run up to the first Iraq War. They said Iraq has the 4th biggest army in the world, but he pointed out that there was a biiiiig drip off between the 3rd and 4th armies. This is kind of like that but between 1st and well…the rest. We could have put most of 2-10 in any order I’m sure, but this one sits in the sky like are star in some far off galaxy looking down on all other games. His total plays in person and against AI is well into the several thousands. Heck he even has 2 RFTG tattoos (how many do you have of your fave game?).
The game has a very tough learning curve (I remember my first play melting my mind), but once you get past the game’s symbology the sheer variety of strategies available (especially with expansions) is absolutely astounding for a fixed card pile. If you like heavy card games, this ranks as one of the best.

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Natasha, one of our younger staff, famous for her job interview at the cafe (Orders something at the till and asks ‘Why haven’t you given me a job yet?’, excellent point! So we gave her a job) has a more modern take on games. However, she is surrounded by grumbly old men who drivel on about the good old days and as such has been exposed to a few of the older titles which have managed to worm their way into her list

10. Lost Cities

Reiner Knizia’s 2 player belter has been around for over 15 years now. At it’s heart its a colour and numbers, play a card, pick up a card game (CaNPaCPuaCG for short). You lay cards by colour in front of youself, always playing higher than the previous card in that colour (range 1-10). Once the draw pile runs out add the total value in each colour. Anything over 20 scores positive (i.e. 25 gets you 5 points), under 20 is negative. You can choose to not player anything in a colour suit though for 0 points. High risk and reward in this game that can be a cruel mistress with bad card draws, but its played over 3 rounds to balance out the luck.

9. Codenames

The best party game ever? Natasha thinks it’s only the second best…!

8. Blood Rage

One of CMON’s first  Kickstarters and arguebly their best game to date. It’s a mix of Sushi Go drafting, with  area control and lots of special powers…oh and it’s CMON, so over the top minis (that’s not a bad thing FYI) Planning your RAGE points and timing of card play are vital to doing well. It looks like a big old dice chucking mash and bash type game from the box art, but at it’s heart its very much a meaty Euro.

7. Isle Of Skye

See above

6. Dungeons and Dragons

Technically an RPG, but deserved of a mention because a) it’s dope b) it’s totally cool again (not sure if it actually was ever cool, but it certainly is now). 5th edition is a lot easier to play than previous ones, don’t be shy, watch a couple of YouTube playthroughs and see what all the fuss is about.

5. Concept

This is the #1 party game ever! We describe it as charades on a board, but it’s about linking together conceptual images to make other concepts e.g. man + movie + green + fantasy = ? (Shrek/Hulk/Green Goblin). It really strains the right side of the brain and creates a lot of light bulb moments when it all suddenly comes together in your brain with a flash of inspiration.

4. Magic Maze

Co-operative, real-time game played in silence (except the banging of a large red pawn). 17 scenarios of inceasing difficulty add challenge to this SDJ nominee from last year. More info here.

3. Sagrada

Those translucent dice take this game to another level. They got everything right about the production and when you throw in a devilish little puzzle of a dice-drafting game you have a winner. More info here.

2. Pandemic: Reign of Cthulu

Pandemic is really, really great. The balance is so perfect (who hasn’t played a game that came down to the flip of a card). Add Cthulu to the mix and, well…you have close to Natasha’s perfect game. It is quite a bit different from the original (the core is the same) so if you have Pandemic you WILL feel like you are playig a different game. I also prefer this one to the original as well!

1. Mysterium

Another co-op, this time one player takes the role of a ghost trying to communicate with mystics about a murder that happened. They do so by handing them Dixit style art cards (they are very weird, the designers are Russian if that explains anything) which (hopefully) will aid the mystics figure out which of the weapon/location/suspects  is the actual guily party. The mystics can talk but the ghost must stay silent and rage internally as they listen to the incompetant mystics totally miss their amazing links. It’s also my 12 yr old daughters #1 too.

It’s a quiet time of year on the game front, so here are some top 10’s of our staff. Everyone loves a good top 10 and its a great way to discover some games you may have never heard of. We are going to start with the Cafe’s big guns. The two owners, Jack (older guy with the beanie hat) and Bill (English guy who always wears baseball caps).

 

Let’s start with Mr. Jack. He’s been a gaming stalwart in Victoria for 20+ years now, running Interactivity Games and Stuff on Fort street since the mid 90’s. His gaming peak was in the early to mid 2000’s, so a lot of these titles are classics of that time, which he played into the 100’s of times (because back then you only got 30 or 40 new titles a year, not the 1000’s we get now):

(Hover over the titles to go to  boardgamegeek.com for more info about them)

10. Princes of Machu Piccu

Mac Gerdts (Concordia) title, with alternate game end conditions. 2 hrs, heavy Euro with the lots of llamas.

9. Princes of Florence

Kramer and Ulrich classic from 2000. Used the tetrahedral pieces before Patchwork made it cool. Brutal auctions and a system where you pays for points. The earlier in the game you do it, the better the return, but the less you have to spend…the dilemma.

8. Village

Inka and Marcus Brand’s (Exit series) worker placement game, where your workers slowly die off during the game.

7. Lancaster

Mattias Cramer’s 2011 game, where you send Knights off to win areas for points and (kind of) resources, some of which you use to push through laws to benefit you.

6. Serenissima

2006 game of delivering goods by boat around the Mediterranean, but keep them well guarded so pirates don’t pinch it all.

5. El Grande

Another Kramer, and over 30 years old. The ultimate area control game with a clever card mechanic that chooses turn order and your turns special power.

4. Railways of the World

Martin Wallace’s streamlined pick up and deliver train game, with a MASSIVE board.

3. Agricola

Make a farm with Uwe, you all know this one.

2. Puerto Rico

Andreas Seyfarth’s classic role selection game from 2002. Apparently it took 15 years to perfect.

1. Imperial 2030

Risk meets the stock market in another Mac Gerdts game. You don’t own the countries, they are just there to be milked for profit baby.

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Next up, is Bill, he got into modern gaming around 2005, so his tastes are a bit more recent. He’s the head of game acquisition at the cafe and as a result has played a lot of games. He also has 2 kids, so if they like the game it also gets a bump.

10. Flash Point: Fire Rescue

Co-op with a strong theme about rescuing people from a burning building.

9. El Grande

Crossover with Jack, it’s criminally underplayed nowadays…TRY IT EVERYONE!

8. Santorini

15 minute abstract with 30 seconds of rules, but the 30 odd asymmetric powers you start with make it endlessly replayable.

7. A Feast For Odin

So many choices and ways to play this game and I’m so bad at it, but I still love it so!

6. Dominion

The Grandaddy of deckbuilders, playing it is like eating spaghetti bolognaise, just warm and comforting.

5. Railways of the World

More crossover! It’s also one of those stand-up games, where you hope a more vertical perspective will help you figure things out more…

4. Egizia

Impossible to buy, but there are rumours of a reprint. It uses that jump down the road mechanic like in Tokaido, but way more cut throat.

3. Ascending Empires

Flicking space ships in space, crossed with an engine building game.

2. Amun Re

The auction in this game is so awesome. However, its one that gets better with more plays, so don’t give up on it too soon. Knizia is a God among us mortals.

1. Galaxy Trucker

Build a ship in real time, then watch as bad space stuff destroys it! Then design Codenames and make millions.

Just missed the cut: RA, Codenames, Puerto Rico, Imperial 2030, Liar’s Dice, Tzolken.