Recent boardgames
Jan. 10th, 2017 10:54 amCamel Up
Played at Alex's. Quite silly and sometimes fiddly, but I really love the way it works. Camels race round a camel racing track. Each round, each camel moves once (1,2, or 3 spaces) according to a die, but the moves are spaced out as each player can either make a bet or move a camel, and the round only ends when all the camels are moved. Then the per-round bets are resolved. When a camel crossed the finish line, the per-game bets are resolved.
The camels are lovely: they're little camel meeple pieces which stack, and when multiple camels are in the same space on the track, they stack up, the top one considered in front. And when any camel moves, all the ones on top of it move along with it.
The way the bets work works fairly well, there's a token for a bet at various payoffs, and the first player to take one for a particular camel gets the best payoff, etc. So there's no "just bet as much as you want", you have to eke out small incremental advantages, which feels more in the spirit of the game.
Hogwarts Lego game
Belonging to Ms 8 (I think?). It works really well at capturing the feel of both lego and of hogwarts.
There's an arena of 4x4 lego rooms with room for four lego people to stand, which slides freely if an adjacent room has been lifted out. Four classrooms with relevant stuff to collect (potion, familiar, divination crystal, and spellbook), and the rest corridors, either straight, L-shaped, or T-shaped.
Each turn you roll a die and it gives you one of several different move types. Usually you pick up a corridor, and rotate it, or pick up a corridor and slide one to three other rooms around. You can slide classrooms and rooms with people in, but not pick them up. Then you move your meeple from one room to an adjacent room (assuming the doorways match up).
Each player controls a student from one house, and needs to collect the four collectables in their colour, and get back to their common room to win.
I don't know how well the strategy holds up, but it did very well at capturing the feel of lego: you build the arena and different rooms first, and the meeples and collectables have just the right lego bumps to click onto in the rooms and back in the common room. And also hogwarts: it's not scary, but it does feel like the layout is just constantly new to you.
The rules had a few weird omissions near the beginning (Do you need the room to match up with your common room before you first move into them?) But they also had several sections about suggestion rules modifications and additions, and had several extra pieces for them, and encourage you to experiment, which is a very lego approach to a board game.
Pandemic Legacy
C+K have pandemic legacy, Pandemic where you play a series of a dozen or so games, and each one alters the board and rules in a permanent way (good and bad). They've played about half the games and we joined on the most recent one. I'm carefully not talking about what happens, because most people who are interested probably want to play it for themselves. (But if you're curious and don't care about spoilers, feel free to ask me.)
But even knowing the general principle, it was really exciting to play a particular game and see what had happened and what happened this game. Some of the changes were about what I'd expected, but others were really interesting.
Played at Alex's. Quite silly and sometimes fiddly, but I really love the way it works. Camels race round a camel racing track. Each round, each camel moves once (1,2, or 3 spaces) according to a die, but the moves are spaced out as each player can either make a bet or move a camel, and the round only ends when all the camels are moved. Then the per-round bets are resolved. When a camel crossed the finish line, the per-game bets are resolved.
The camels are lovely: they're little camel meeple pieces which stack, and when multiple camels are in the same space on the track, they stack up, the top one considered in front. And when any camel moves, all the ones on top of it move along with it.
The way the bets work works fairly well, there's a token for a bet at various payoffs, and the first player to take one for a particular camel gets the best payoff, etc. So there's no "just bet as much as you want", you have to eke out small incremental advantages, which feels more in the spirit of the game.
Hogwarts Lego game
Belonging to Ms 8 (I think?). It works really well at capturing the feel of both lego and of hogwarts.
There's an arena of 4x4 lego rooms with room for four lego people to stand, which slides freely if an adjacent room has been lifted out. Four classrooms with relevant stuff to collect (potion, familiar, divination crystal, and spellbook), and the rest corridors, either straight, L-shaped, or T-shaped.
Each turn you roll a die and it gives you one of several different move types. Usually you pick up a corridor, and rotate it, or pick up a corridor and slide one to three other rooms around. You can slide classrooms and rooms with people in, but not pick them up. Then you move your meeple from one room to an adjacent room (assuming the doorways match up).
Each player controls a student from one house, and needs to collect the four collectables in their colour, and get back to their common room to win.
I don't know how well the strategy holds up, but it did very well at capturing the feel of lego: you build the arena and different rooms first, and the meeples and collectables have just the right lego bumps to click onto in the rooms and back in the common room. And also hogwarts: it's not scary, but it does feel like the layout is just constantly new to you.
The rules had a few weird omissions near the beginning (Do you need the room to match up with your common room before you first move into them?) But they also had several sections about suggestion rules modifications and additions, and had several extra pieces for them, and encourage you to experiment, which is a very lego approach to a board game.
Pandemic Legacy
C+K have pandemic legacy, Pandemic where you play a series of a dozen or so games, and each one alters the board and rules in a permanent way (good and bad). They've played about half the games and we joined on the most recent one. I'm carefully not talking about what happens, because most people who are interested probably want to play it for themselves. (But if you're curious and don't care about spoilers, feel free to ask me.)
But even knowing the general principle, it was really exciting to play a particular game and see what had happened and what happened this game. Some of the changes were about what I'd expected, but others were really interesting.