board game extravaganza 2 (April)

I went to Mind Games in April, at which judges play at least 30 games and vote on their favorites. On Sun­day morn­ing, votes are tal­lied, and five games are her­ald­ed as win­ners with the right to put the Men­sa Select seal on their game. This was my fourth year going, and it was a lot of fun to see old friends, meet new peo­ple, and play LOTS. OF. GAMES. The win­ners this year were Amal­gam, Around the World in 80 Days, Clank!, Har­ry Pot­ter Hog­warts Bat­tle, and Imag­ine. I did­n’t play Clank!, and I had played Hog­warts Bat­tle at the oth­er con­ven­tion (and it was­n’t on my bal­lot this time), but I played so many oth­er games. I promise I like more games than just those I win. I know you’re curi­ous about my thoughts on the games, so here goes:

  • Amal­gam: Play­ers amass col­lec­tions of cards by mov­ing around the out­side of the “board”, made from cards. We did­n’t do much back­stab­bing of each oth­er, but there is that ele­ment to it. I enjoyed the game, and the art was real­ly nice. It was one of the win­ners, and I think that was in part due to how easy it was to learn and play.
  • Around the World in 80 Days: In this game, you walk a fine line between get­ting mon­ey to move for­ward and mak­ing sure you get rid of most of your mon­ey by the end. I did­n’t find it par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, but oth­er peo­ple seemed to like it a lot, as it won.
  • Imag­ine: This is kind of cha­rades with cards. On your turn, you get a phrase, and you then take trans­par­ent cards with images on them and try to get oth­er peo­ple to guess it. This was a win­ning game, but I did­n’t think much of it. Maybe I was play­ing with the wrong peo­ple, but we real­ly strug­gled to get the phras­es.
  • Betabotz: Each play­er starts with a robot that has cer­tain char­ac­ter­is­tics, and you build up your bot with com­po­nent cards. There is a mis­sion phase where play­ers either team up or try to accom­plish it alone. This was one of my favorite games of the week­end, in part because of the com­pet­i­tive ele­ment where you can try to screw oth­er play­ers out of their mis­sion.
  • Har­ald: This is played with cards, where every play­er has a vil­lage in front of them, and the king’s coun­cil in the mid­dle. Each turn, you play a card in the mid­dle and a card in front of you, and you can take the action on your card, which manip­u­lates cards in var­i­ous places on the table. I enjoyed this game; it seemed like a light filler game.
  • Salem: A social deduc­tion game, kind of like Clue with more play­er inter­ac­tion, where you try to fig­ure out which 3 of 7 char­ac­ters are witch­es. We played with five play­ers, which was not ide­al, because the rules did­n’t spec­i­fy how the game was sup­posed to end (it said how it was sup­posed to end with six and sev­en play­ers). But it was fun enough. One guy who played with us for­got which of his char­ac­ters were witch­es, which threw me off, and I teased him about it the rest of the week­end.
  • The Net­works: In this game, play­ers are TV net­work exec­u­tives, try­ing to have the best line­up. Over five rounds, play­ers hire stars, accept ads, and buy shows. At the end of each round, you get points based on income. Now that I’m writ­ing it out, it’s very sim­plis­tic, but it was mod­er­ate­ly fun. We only played two sea­sons of it, which was plen­ty.
  • The Great Drag­on Race: This game is pret­ty, but… it’s like Can­dy­land with cards. The goal is to get to the end first. There are safe zones where you can’t be stolen from or moved, but it’s just too sim­plis­tic for me.
  • Grav­i­ty’s Edge: This is a spa­tial rea­son­ing game! There are always one or two of these each year, and they’re a nice change of pace. This one has weight­ed bird-like pieces that start in bas­kets. On each turn, you take a bird and put it high­er up on a branch. The one who makes it fall over los­es. The birds are dif­fer­ent sizes and weights, so it’s a fun physics puz­zle.
  • Gene Pool: In this game, you’re a genet­ic researcher try­ing to do research. You’re both manip­u­lat­ing the same series of cards rep­re­sent­ing bases in DNA. A and C are on oppo­site ends of a card, and T and G are on oppo­site ends of anoth­er card. Each turn, you can take a research card or gene card or manip­u­late the cards in the mid­dle. It’s a pret­ty easy game, but it is cute and can be fun.
  • Rocky Road a la Mode: Total­ly not creepy, play­ers are ice cream trucks try­ing to serve cus­tomers. On your turn, you draw cards and/or ful­fill orders for cus­tomers. Vic­to­ry points are gained by serv­ing cus­tomers and get­ting the right col­lec­tions of ful­filled orders. It’s cute, though it lends itself to a lot of awk­ward jokes. And the pic­tures of the ice cream truck own­ers are a lit­tle creepy.
  • Wel­come Back to the Dun­geon: This game pits heroes against mon­sters. You have a col­lec­tive hero who has weapons and side­kicks, and on your turn, you add mon­sters to the dun­geon, or you dis­card the mon­ster and a weapon/sidekick. Even­tu­al­ly, the play­ers pass, and the last one stand­ing goes into the dun­geon alone with the remain­ing weapons/sidekicks. The game ends after a play­er has a cer­tain num­ber of vic­to­ries in the dun­geon. We played with two play­ers, and it was­n’t awe­some. Might be bet­ter with more play­ers.
  • Exeo Duo: This was the only strict­ly two-play­er game I played. It’s a straight-up strat­e­gy game where you move pieces on two sides of the board and try to get them to mir­rored spots in the same turn. You can “push” your oppo­nen­t’s pieces in some cir­cum­stances, which gives a good defen­sive strat­e­gy to think about. It’s a think­ing game that can be played fair­ly quick­ly.
  • Kana­gawa: This is such a pret­ty game. Play­ers are painters in their stu­dios, and you paint parts of a work or add skills. You get points based on fea­tures on your paint­ings, how many parts of the paint­ing you have, and vic­to­ry points on the cards. It’s fun, fair­ly quick, and pret­ty.
  • Kar­ma­ka: This game is about achiev­ing tran­scen­dence. Play­ers play cards either as “deeds” (for the num­ber val­ue) or for their actions, which are fre­quent­ly attack cards. When a play­er has enough points, they are rein­car­nat­ed at the next lev­el. The first to get to the final lev­el wins. It’s a fun enough game, depend­ing on the amount of back­stab­bing.
  • Sea of Clouds: Real­ly enjoyed this game, sur­pris­ing­ly. The theme was great (sky pirates), and it played quick­ly enough. You try to col­lect cards that are objects, rum, pirates, or arti­facts, and you engage in bat­tles peri­od­i­cal­ly through the game. It was fun, though per­haps that’s because I won.
  • Nin­ja Camp: This was a cute themed game with cards laid out in a grid and places  their nin­jas on cards. Play­ers get points by mov­ing their nin­jas around (accord­ing to cards in your hand). The game ends when there are no legal moves left. The idea is that you are try­ing to improve your nin­jas’ abil­i­ties by gain­ing cards which allow them to move in dif­fer­ent ways. It’s fun, but it plays a lot faster than you would think.
  • Grifters: Each play­er has a team with which they try to do jobs, get­ting bonus­es for doing mul­ti­ple ones of the same type. When you use a mem­ber of your team, or mul­ti­ple mem­bers, they are out of com­mis­sion for three rounds (three nights). Each card has a sym­bol on it which is nec­es­sary for a cer­tain job. It was one of the more fun games over the week­end. I think I’m doing a bad job of explain­ing it.
  • Hoard: In this game, you try to get trea­sure before the drag­on wakes. You move around the board after rolling a die, look at a card, decide whether to take it, and, if you do, replace it with a new card that you look at first. You can play cards to wake up the drag­on or put it back to sleep. It’s played over a num­ber of rounds. Points are award­ed based on col­lec­tions of trea­sure cards and drag­on cards. I enjoyed it.
  • Hon­ey­combs: This is kind of like Banana­grams with hexag­o­nal tiles. We played the basic game, where you match up each side of a tile to a match­ing icon on anoth­er tile. Points are gained by match­ing pairs and com­plete­ly encir­cling a tile. It’s cute, but though I won, I’m not sure I’d want to play much more of it.
  • Sedis: This was kind of sim­i­lar to Hon­ey­combs, but with more of a chal­lenge. Each side has a pos­si­bil­i­ty for five pips, with a max of three filled in. You get points by match­ing up pips on sides. It was a long game, and it could use a timer, because both of us spent a long time try­ing to get more than three points in any sin­gle move. Our scores tracked each oth­er pret­ty close­ly, get­ting no more than three points apart, and I’m not sure whether that was because of the nature of the game or the thought we put into it. I don’t know how much replay val­ue it has, but I’d like to try it again.
  • The Refuge: Zom­bies! Are zom­bies still cool? Play­ers try to get across a field while avoid­ing zom­bies and try­ing to screw over oth­er play­ers by spawn­ing zom­bies near them. It’s pret­ty sim­ple, and win­ning was­n’t very sat­is­fy­ing.
  • Exposed: This is a sim­ple, quick game where play­ers try to take wal­lets from pas­sen­gers and avoid being found out. The char­ac­ters are laid out in a grid, each one gets a wal­let piece on it, and a cer­tain num­ber of char­ac­ters are des­ig­nat­ed as “marks”. On your turn, you can move char­ac­ters around, take a wal­let from a char­ac­ter near yours, or accuse char­ac­ters of being thieves. It’s an okay game, and it moves quick­ly, which makes it bet­ter.
  • Pyra­mid Arcade: 22 games in 1! The pieces are 24 sets of 3 nest­ed pyra­mids each. We played the Vol­cano option. In that one, you force “erup­tions” and cap­ture pieces by stack­ing the same size pyra­mids on top of each oth­er. It was fun, and I wish I had had more time to explore the oth­er games. I liked the con­cept.
  • Rhi­no: This is a trick-tak­ing game where the hand size decreas­es and then increas­es. Play­ers bid on how many tricks they will take, and they can use tokens to mod­i­fy their bids and gain addi­tion­al points. It’s themed to be a pho­to safari, and the tokens are dif­fer­ent ani­mals. I like the hand size changes, which increas­es the chal­lenge of get­ting the right bids, but it was­n’t a ter­ri­bly inter­est­ing game.
  • Pups: Like Rhi­no, this is a trick-tak­ing game where play­ers bid on how many tricks they will take. The only thing that real­ly sets this game apart is the art­work. I think Kick­starter back­ers sub­mit­ted pic­tures of their dogs for the art, and I know the mutts were the game design­er’s dogs. It was cute but not orig­i­nal.