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It’s been a long time since I’ve post­ed some­thing on a Fri­day, and there have been a num­ber of games I’ve played recent­ly. I’ve been to two board game con­ven­tions and have played a lot of games with friends. This is a long post, but here goes (in alpha­bet­i­cal order):

• Adven­ture Time Munchkin: Munchkin has expand­ed to many dif­fer­ent uni­vers­es, and as my hus­band real­ly likes Adven­ture Time, I thought he would be most amenable to this ver­sion. Munchkin is a nod to role-play­ing games in a more acces­si­ble for­mat. Once you get into it, it’s a fun game, but the start can be a lit­tle rough. Carl liked it, but I’m not sure how much he’ll play it with me.
• Atti­la: I brought this home from a con­ven­tion (yay game give­aways!). It’s a sim­ple 2‑player game with just knight move­ments from chess. The board can be set up in var­i­ous con­fig­u­ra­tions, and on your turn, you move a fig­ure and then block a spot. The game ends when some­one can’t move any of their three pieces. It’s a sim­ple game with a dif­fer­ent kind of strat­e­gy from chess.
• Bring Your Own Book: I also got to bring home this game from a con­ven­tion. It involves pulling quotes from books you choose with an Apples to Apples mech­a­nism after that. It can be quite fun. We’ve played with nov­els, fem­i­nist essays, a guide­book, a text­book, and a book about horse breed­ing, among oth­ers. It’s fun, the vari­ety of lit­er­a­ture makes it inter­est­ing.
• Car­cas­sone: This is a sta­ple of a good board game col­lec­tion. In it, play­ers place tiles and claim dif­fer­ent fea­tures. You try to build cities, monas­ter­ies, roads, and farms and claim more than your oppo­nents. It’s a great starter game to gen­tly intro­duce new play­ers to the con­cept of board gam­ing.
• Citadels: This plays 2–7 peo­ple, and it’s a card game where you take a char­ac­ter each round and build a dis­trict out of your hand. The game ends when some­one builds their eighth dis­trict, and points are based on the cost of your dis­tricts. With two play­ers, each per­son gets two char­ac­ters each round. I think it’s most fun with 5–6 play­ers, because with two, if one per­son real­ly gets their econ­o­my going, it can turn into a blowout.
• Din­go’s Dreams: This is a game from the same guy who made Above and Below, a won­der­ful game on its own. Din­go’s Dreams has you cre­ate pat­terns to dupli­cate the pat­tern in the mid­dle. It requires plan­ning out a few steps, but there is luck involved. I’m not ter­ri­bly awe­some at puz­zle games, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. And the Aus­tralian ani­mals are cute. 🙂
• Domin­ion: A clas­sic, Domin­ion is a deck-build­ing game where you per­form actions and buy a card. The cards can be more mon­ey, action cards, or vic­to­ry points. The trick is to not let your deck get to heavy with vic­to­ry points, while still stay­ing ahead of your oppo­nent. Each game is dif­fer­ent, because you don’t play with all the cards each time. Such a good game, though we don’t have any of the expan­sions (which are numer­ous).
• The Duke: This is a two-play­er chess vari­ant where the pieces flip every time they move, and they move dif­fer­ent­ly based on which side the tile is on. It’s got more luck than chess, because you draw out tiles from a bag, but there’s still strat­e­gy involved. We end­ed up going through most of the tiles, and my duke was even­tu­al­ly trapped. I real­ly enjoy this game, though the feel of the bags that come with it is super gross, and I made my own bags.
• Fias­co: This is a light role-play­ing game where every­one gets a chance to cre­ate a num­ber of scenes and have things go well or poor­ly. We played with three, and I’m not sure we got it entire­ly right, but we cre­at­ed a fun sto­ry, shoot­ing var­i­ous peo­ple. I got to wing Carl. 🙂 The idea is that it’s like a Coen broth­ers movie, where things go wrong a lot.
• Inno­va­tion: The box is real­ly bor­ing, but the game is great! It’s a most­ly bal­anced game where play­ers build their way through dif­fer­ent ages of his­to­ry. Some cards are very pow­er­ful if you have the right econ­o­my built up, but there is some luck in get­ting the right cards. Some­times you strug­gle to get any cards in your score pile, and some­times some­one can take all your good cards away. Once we learned it, it became one of our favorite games. The first time was rough, but per­sis­tence paid off.
• Killing Dr. Lucky: This game is kind of the oppo­site of Clue. Instead of try­ing to dis­cov­er the mur­der­er, you’re try­ing to be the mur­der­er. You have to think a few steps ahead to try to be in the same place as Dr. Lucky while keep­ing him alive until you can kill him. It’s a fun game, with more strat­e­gy than I expect­ed. We played with four play­ers, and it was pret­ty well-bal­anced.
• Mar­ry­ing Mr. Dar­cy: Okay, so this one first gave me pause, because if it took things seri­ous­ly, it could be super awful. How­ev­er, it’s sar­cas­tic, and I think Jane Austen would be proud. Each play­er takes a dif­fer­ent hero­ine and tries to improve her beau­ty, wit, friend­li­ness, or rep­u­ta­tion to attract a suit­or. The suit­ors have dif­fer­ent require­ments, and the hero­ines all have dif­fer­ent goals. Event cards include skills at the piano and oth­er “accom­plish­ments”, as well as par­ty cards. It’s a great game for a Pride and Prej­u­dice fan, and there’s an Emma expan­sion that I may have to acquire as well.
• Orleans: This is a work­er place­ment game, in all the best ways. We played with the deluxe Kick­starter ver­sion, with met­al coins and stuff. Very nice. We played with peo­ple who had played a lot before, so we did­n’t stand a chance of win­ning. But it was fair­ly easy to pick up and play, if you under­stand the basic mechan­ics of work­er place­ment games.
• Paper­back: I love word games. Carl won’t play them with me very much. Paper­back is like Scrab­ble and Domin­ion mashed togeth­er. It’s a deck-build­ing game with let­ters, and you cre­ate words to gain points and buy addi­tion­al let­ters and vic­to­ry points. I want this game. Real­ly bad­ly. But I’m not sure I’d have any­one to play with.
• Patch­work: This is a 2‑player game where each per­son builds a quilt. It involves spa­tial rea­son­ing and some strat­e­gy in bal­anc­ing but­tons (mon­ey) against time. It’s a great 2‑player game, easy to learn and fun to play, though I have yet to beat Carl. He just rocks at the game.
• 7 Won­ders Duel: A vari­a­tion of 7 Won­ders that is designed for two play­ers (and thus much bet­ter for two play­ers than the orig­i­nal), it’s sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal with a lit­tle dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy, in that cards are laid out on the table, some upside-down, and they are revealed grad­u­al­ly. It is fair­ly bal­anced, and I enjoyed it both times I played it (with dif­fer­ent peo­ple).
• Too Many Cin­derel­las: Cute game, not ter­ri­bly sex­ist, though a lit­tle bit. Play­ers sub­mit rumors that can be denied by oth­er play­ers, and every­one tries to have at least one eli­gi­ble Cin­derel­la for the prince to mar­ry at the end of each round. A lit­tle like Love Let­ter, in that the rounds are quick, and a play­er wins by win­ning mul­ti­ple rounds, but it’s not as fun, and it’s more frus­trat­ing than Love Let­ter.
• Tsuro of the Seas: A vari­a­tion from Tsuro, this involves sea mon­sters. Unlike Tsuro, if you run into oth­er play­ers, you pass through each oth­er. You die if you go off the board or get eat­en by a sea mon­ster, which move fre­quent­ly, swal­low­ing tiles. You can play reg­u­lar Tsuro on it too, so this seemed like a good choice, though the plas­tic ships are not as cool as the col­ored stones in the orig­i­nal.
• World’s Fair 1893: This was one of the win­ning games at my board game con­ven­tion, and it was one of my favorites as well. Play­ers try to make exhi­bi­tions in var­i­ous cat­e­gories and col­lect tick­ets. It’s not ter­ri­bly com­plex, but it is a fair­ly strate­gic game. Lots of fun.