Category: Interesting Stuff

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.

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

1.Great Western Trail

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

2. El Dorado

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

3. When I Dream

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

4. Kingdomino

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

5. Sagrada

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

6. Magic Maze

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

7. A Feast for Odin

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

 

8. Century – Spice Road

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

9. Yokahama

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

10. Flamme Rouge

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