Favorite Board Game for December 9th

#16 Botanik

Botanik is a two-player only tile laying game where players work to arrange tiles in order to form groups of pipes of matching colors. The trick to the game is how the tiles are drafted. There is a player board between the players. Across the middle of the board are five tiles placed randomly to start the game. On my side of the board there are five spaces, one in front of each of those tiles across the middle of the board. My opponent also has five spaces on their side of the board.

Each turn three tiles are drawn at random to create an offer. On my turn, I need to select one of the tiles from the offer to place in one of those empty spaces. In this way, I am able to take ownership of the tile. However, I can only place a tile in a space if the adjacent center tile shares something in common with the tile that I am trying to claim. 

I have to match a center tile's shape or its color. If I can match one of those things, I can place the matching tile in the empty space next to its neighbor. If I can't match a tile, I can always place a tile in the center row without restriction.

Once a tile has been placed in an empty space on a player's side of the board, it is locked there. That tile will stay there until it is released. A tile is released when any tile is placed in the center row that causes it to become mismatched with its neighbor. Once a tile no longer matches the center tile, it falls free and becomes a resource for the player who had originally trapped the tile on their side of the board.

A freed tile is placed in your pipe matrix building puzzle. Sets of colors and pipes with flowers will score points and will help a player to win the game. There's a lot of interesting strategy here, figuring out how to release your own tiles without giving tiles to your opponent, or alternatively releasing a tile on your opponent's side of the board that you know they aren't ready to place in their matrix (but they still have to do it.)

Botanik is a cool, thinky 2 player head to head puzzle game and one of our favorites.

Favorite Board Game for December 8th

#17 Finspan

In Finspan players are Marine Biologists exploring the ocean from the sun lit shallows to the darkest depths in order to study various forms of aquatic life. Each player has a board that represents their area of exploration. The board is divided into a grid of 3 columns and 6 rows. The cells created by these rows and columns are sized to fit cards. Cards represent fish, and players want to fill their boards with as many cards as they can.

Every action you can take is right in front of you on your player board. Right at the top, in a section of your board that spans all three columns is the ability to place a fish card. It's the first thing on your board and the first action you'll probably take on your first turn. Everyone starts with a hand of cards and you'll want to get a few of those down as soon as possible.

Playing cards onto your player board costs resources. These resources can be cards in your hand that you will have to discard (but don't worry, the game gives you many opportunities to reclaim discarded cards) or they might be little fish, or eggs, or cards that are already on your board, that you must cover up to show how one fish eats another. (You can't get these "eaten" cards back, but they will be worth points at the end of the game.)

Most cards will provide some addition benefit when played to your board. The card may allow you to play another card, add little fish tokens or eggs to your board, or may give you special benefits of additional points at the end of the game. There's a lot tied to this one action, but everything is spelled out on the cards, and everything is intuitive and thematic.

Some cards provide an ongoing benefit that is triggered each time the card is activated. That has to do with the column actions. Each of the three columns on your player board is associated with an action that you can take. The column powers allow you to draw cards, add egg tokens to some of your fish cards, hatch your fish eggs into little baby fish tokens, and move fish around to form schools. The strength of these actions depend on what fish you have discovered in that column. 

Your player board has different zones representing depths of water. There's a shallow region, a middle region, and a deep region. Each region has a special power that can be triggered when you activate its column, but only if your explorer has discovered at least one fish (placed one card) in that column's region. Your player board has one fish pre-printed in a different region of each of the three columns. So, at the start of the game, every column will do something even if you haven't placed any cards.

You'll want to place cards in unexplored regions to allow more actions to be triggered in each column. You'll also want to try to place fish that have ongoing actions on them that you can trigger that will compliment the actions that are already there. It's a little engine building puzzle that is quite satisfying, 

There's enough to think about to keep the game engaging, and I really enjoy it. Also, the fish cards all contain beautiful illustrations and fun fish facts about the specific fish featured on the card. I didn't know how much I liked fish, or how interesting they were before I played this game. Finspan is awesome!

Favorite Board Game for December 7th

#18 Wild Gardens

This is a vibrant set collection/recipe fulfillment game where players are wandering forager chefs who travel from place to place gathering delicious ingredients in the wild and then cooking and sharing their skillfully prepared meals by having picnics with strangers that they meet along the way.

As silly as that theme sounds, Wild Gardens is great fun. Each player has a set of worker tokens with numbers on them. You place the worker token on your player board at one of three locations that represent the actions that you can take on your turn. You can forage for ingredients at one space, cook or serve your prepared food at another, and either gain a new ability by reading a book you borrowed from the library, or you can save a recipe from the market to prepare later.

Placing the token in a spot lets you perform the "either/or" base action in that spot plus any actions that you have added to that worker spot by reading library books. The number on the tokens are how much you must move your player pawn on the central board. This is important, because you will need to be in the right place to gather the ingredients that you want, or to cook and share your wonderful bounty.

The folks that you share your meals with are represented by cards and each person on a card likes certain kinds of foods, giving the person what they like wins you the card and scores you victory points. There's also a secondary victory point track in the form of jars that appear on some people cards. I think it represents folks that like your food so much, that they put some in a jar to take home. I'm not sure, but in our last game, collecting jars made a big difference for Julie and she won!

Wild Gardens is so cozy and funny and while it's theme is kind of nonsensical in that "I could definitely see this as the plot of an anime." kind of way, that is actually among its strengths. I love every thing about this charming vagabond chef's adventure board game!

 

Favorite Board Game for December 6th

#19 A Universal Truth

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." — Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (1813)

In A Universal Truth players use multi-use cards to try to win the favor of their chosen suitor. This is one of three board games that I own with a theme inspired by Pride and Prejudice, and one of two in my top 20. I suppose these games come the closest to the "relationship sim" aspects of computer games that I like, such as Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon.

In this deep, strategic card game, players choose a suitor early (ideally) in the game and then collect different qualities to make themselves appealing to that chosen future spouse. The cards do all the work here. Every card does everything. Each represents your income, your skills, your friends, your relationship with your intended, as well as displaying that potential intended. Every card is a person that you can focus on to create your game's ultimate objective as well as everything else. The entire game is just one huge deck of cards, some pawns and some dice.

Each time you choose to use a card for one thing this means you are giving up using it for anything else, and that decision can feel agonizing in the best possible way. It's a brilliant game, and the most diverse use of cards that I've seen in a game. Sadly, it's also self-published on GameCrafter. I say, "sadly" because GameCrafter is a print-on-demand service for board games and can be quite expensive. However, A Universal Truth is worth it, and proof that self published works can be genuinely fantastic. And this game certainly is.

Favorite Board Game for December 5th

#20 Radlands

In Radlands players are warring gangs in a post apocalyptic wasteland each trying to destroy the other over their world's most precious resource — water. Radlands is a head to head 2 player card game where each player tries to defeat the other in order to win. I don't normally like "battle" games, where the goal is to eliminate your opponent, but Radlands is my favorite among those few exceptions.

There are two main types of cards — the cards that you play from your hand, which will become resources like: gang members, special timed events, and single use special effects, and the cards that represent your gangs' various headquarters, called: bases. Each player begins by choosing three bases from among six choices. There's a whole deck of cards that represent the different bases, and each one is unique.

Each base provides a special benefit to it's player and these vary greatly in usefulness and utility. To balance swings in power between one base and the next, each base shows a number of cards that the player who owns that base will be get to draw into their hand at the start of the game. More powerful bases grant fewer cards (as few as zero). Players must weigh the benefits of more powerful base effects versus starting the game with more cards in hand.

The bases provide asymmetry for the players, informing each players strategy and game play. Choosing your three bases provides a sort of deck construction element, but because it's hyper focused to only three cards, it can be accomplished quickly at the start of every game. Once bases are chosen they are placed in a row in front of the players and actual card play can begin.

Each player's goal is to destroy the other player's bases. A successful attack against a base will force its player to turn that base card sideways to indicate that it has been damaged. A successful attack against a damaged base will force its player to turn that base card face down indicating that the base has been destroyed.

Cards are played from a players hand on their turn. These cards are drawn from a shared central deck. Most cards are gang members that can be played in front of a player's bases to provide a line of defense as well as other special "when activated" abilities that the cards are able to perform while in play. There's a lot of variety here and awesome synergies to be discovered that keep game play varied and exciting.

Cards are paid for when played by flipping tokens that represent the players chief in game currency, water. Players only have three such tokens available on each turn. They start the game with three and end the game with three. There are some cards that might provide more water, but cards in play are all vulnerable to attack, and your opponent won't allow you to keep such a powerful advantage for long.

Its tight in game economy makes for tense, quick and balanced game play. Radlands is a nearly perfect game play experience and one of my favorite games.

Favorite Board Game for December 4th

#21 Planet Unknown

Planet Unknown is a space themed tile laying game where players place tiles on a "planet" board in front of them to "terraform" the planet. As you place tiles, symbols on the tiles allow you to move up different tracks gaining points and triggering special actions. (One track lets you move a little land rover around the planet which is a fun little game all by itself.)

Tile selection is done via "lazy Susan" and when it's your turn, you get to rotate the lazy Susan around so that the piece you want is facing you. Other players are then required to take the pieces that are facing them, even if (as sometimes happens) they don't want the pieces available to them.

Planet Unknown belongs to a group of games known as "polyomino" games. These are tiles that are shaped like Tetris pieces and you have to do your best to fit them all together. These kinds of games go over really well with folks who are looking to scratch that jigsaw puzzle itch.

Of course there's more here than just fitting the right pieces together, players are looking to optimize the choices of the pieces that they pick for themselves while mitigating for the pieces they get "stuck" with on other player's turns. You want to both fill up your planet board and move up the various tracks as far as possible. It's cool, thinky, space themed fun, and I love it.

Favorite Board Game for December 3rd

#22 Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu

So, there's this game called, Pandemic. It's a very popular (arguably the most popular) cooperative board game. In that game players work together to cure diseases. Pandemic never really hit with me. I didn't like the theme or the game play all that much. Until ... 

In Reign of Cthulhu player work together as paranormal investigators trying to stop a cabal of cultists before they succeed in summoning the great old one. In this variant of the game, the board is tighter, play is quicker and the theme is spooky and cool. Plus Reign of Cthulhu comes with great minis.

If you are familiar with Pandemic, then you know how this works. Players work together to stop the ever growing tide of evil cultists and Cthulhu monsters. Players have unique thematic powers and everything looks fantastic on the table. This is one of my favorite cooperative adventure games.

Favorite Board Game for December 2nd

#23 Luxor

In Luxor you guide a team of archaeological experts through a forgotten temple to catalog lost treasures. This is a simple "roll and move" style game, but you are not actually rolling dice. You are playing cards from your hand, and ... oh, yes. There's a twist.

You always have five cards in hand. You cannot rearrange or organize the cards in your hand. You must keep them in the order that they are dealt to you. When it comes time to play a card, you must play one of the cards on the "outside" of the spread, either the first or the fifth cards only. Then (with four cards remaining) when you draw a card to end your turn, you must insert that card into the center of your spread, between cards 1-2 and 3-4.

It may sound tricky, but it's actually really simple and intuitive. Choosing when to play from the left side of your spread and when to play from the right side of your spread creates an interesting puzzle. The game board itself is a spiral filled with tiles with the temple's master chamber at the center.

Playing a card moves one of your explorers a certain number of spaces. Landing on tiles may allow you to claim the tile, but many require you to have more than one of your explorers there at the same time. Figuring out when to move which explorers to claim the best treasures is key to winning the game.

This is a great game to play with folks who are more comfortable with those "roll to move around the board and get rich" kinds of games like Monopoly. But, Luxor has so much more going on. As tiles are claimed, those spaces are removed so playing pieces coming through later just skip over them. This keeps the board tight and makes the game really fast.

Because players control multiple pieces, there's always a few options on your turn. You choose which card to play and which piece to move. You aren't a slave to the roll of the dice. Luxor is an awesome game, and it's by the same designer as another one of my favorite games: Karuba (#33 in my ranking of favorites, if you're interested.)

It has just occurred to me that Karuba and Luxor have complementary themes. In Karuba players are adventurers hacking their way through a jungle searching for a lost temple. It might be cool to play Karuba and Luxor back to back one night. First to find the temple, and then explore it!

Favorite Board Game for December 1st

#24 Hamlet: The Village Building Game

In Hamlet players work competitively to add buildings (represented by tiles) to a growing village. The hamlet (which is apparently what a town is called before it has a church) is a shared puzzle on the table. All players work to contribute. The goal is to add structures to the hamlet to strengthen it's infrastructure. You need a woodcutter and a stone mason and stuff like that.

Building resources are limited. If I have built the only woodcutter's hut in the hamlet, then other players will have to come to me to get the wood they need to complete their buildings. This gives me points. But, while I might have the edge in wood production, I may have to go to my opponent to get stone or coal.

The shared resource economy is really interesting and the game play feels like many of those real time strategy city building video games that you might have played. I love that.

The buildings and other structures are all irregular shapes that fit together in different ways. So, our little hamlet is different every time we play. The end goal is to complete the construction of a church. Once this is done, the hamlet is now a town and the game ends.

Players get points for the buildings they completed and for how much they contributed toward the completion of the church, and the player with the most points is the winner.

Board Game Christmas Advent Countdown Top 24

So, it's kinda of a thing among board game hobbyists to list and rank their favorite board games. I've done it several times. A lot of these kinds of lists are posted around the end of the year so as to include all the best new games played that year. I had this great idea that doing a top 24 board game list Advent Calendar style could be a lot of fun, but I had this great idea 3 days late.

So ... I'm doing it anyway. 

I'm going to post my games for December 1st - December 4th all today, and that will put me on track for tomorrow. These are my top 24 favorite board games, counting backwards from 24. I'm going to list each game as a separate post.

Hopefully, you'll discover your new favorite board game.

That would be cool.