Boardgames

[Hot Heart]

Just a small update because I've not really played anything new. The only new thing is Concept. I remember a lot of buzz about it a few years back and it sits in that "clever party game" style mould, but just never had a chance to try it and never sought it out.

 

(Not my image because you're actually really busy during gameplay since it's got a "who guesses it first" scoring thing)

 

Essentially, it's charades but with picture aids instead. Each round, two neighbouring players will become the clue-giving team who draw a card and then select one of the 9 options, ranked in groups of 3 across "Easy, Hard, Challenging". These cover a wide range of categories and I could see how difficult it would be trying to get across certain phrases and expressions that are marked as "Challenging" (we struggled with "got up on the wrong side of the bed"). The clue-givers then use the green ? to signify the main concept (aha!) whether it's an object, person, country, saying, etc. and then use the other !s and coloured cubes to tie together other elements that might clue in the other players guessing what you're trying to convey.

 

There is obviously difficulty since certain icons cover a few possibilities (e.g. the skull = death, evil and... something else) making what should be straight-forward clues a little ambiguous. It's a lot of fun though since you get to be creative as a clue-giver or feel proud at nailing a concept so quickly or just have fun watching the clue-givers react (in exasperation) and readjust as you guess (they are allowed to give verbal acknowledgement if you're on the right track).

 

For example, in one team we chose Luc Besson and so went for the obvious Man, Real/Historical connected to film. Then we both started trying to "describe" his films. I matched coloured cubes across the water, fire, wind, earth and heart symbols while my partner was trying to do Leon with death and weapons and a plant and a young girl. It took them a while so I started trying to add Leeloo by linking woman, head and orange but that wasn't helping. Of course, later on when I was helping to describe a baguette I realised I could've added in the Country/Flag icon and used the "tri-colors" but then again that may have also been American (I couldn't tell them I would add in a star if so at the time).

 

Anyway, highly recommended as I think many people would enjoy it.

[Hot Heart]

Battle for Rokugan

 

Played this with the full 5 players, all new to the game, last night. It was great fun. So much that they're desperate for a re-match this week.

 

Very simple area control where you take turns placing down combat tokens with armies, navies, shinobi or other stuff like raids, diplomacy and bluffs. Since this is all done face-down and revealed at the end of each round, it creates so much tension as you're not sure what tokens your opponents had available and how much they've committed (if even at all). There are elements of tactical manoeuvring as most attacks can only come from adjacent provinces, and only one token per border, but you can make illegal placements just to trick people as well.

 

There were so many funny and shocking moments like when three of us all looked to be invading a poor player's province from all sides... only for it to be revealed that all three tokens were bluffs. Or when one player burned down my 6-point capital when I thought he was trying to capture it. Or when I got him back with a shinobi ploy (can be placed anywhere, enjoying adjacency) to accompany a raid and torch his 5-point region. Or when the Unicorn Clan switched a couple of tokens at the end of a round, as is their clan power, which torched a region and invalidated all the attacks coming from it. Or, since I had an objective to get loads of points for controlling the fewest provinces at the end, I was trying some masterful manipulation to make that true... which failed spectacularly as the Lion Clan was left with 1 province to my 5.

 

It's so vicious but so hilarious.

[deanb]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/geekon/the-ultimate-boardgame-backpack

I saw this on Facebook. Watched the video, it all looked kinda neat. Turns out it's $170+. Now boardgames aren't exactly cheap, but a bag for life is much cheaper, and same with the old granny trolley we used to wheel stuff around in.

 

[Mister Jack]