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Well, where do I begin? After 724 miles, (and that's just me walking around the halls) I am home from Essen. Coming to the end of something you hype in your mind for so long , always brings mixed feelings. I am very tired, and not 100% physically well with a little bug (not Covid!), but my mind is full of happy memories. Close to 150,000 people graced the 6 halls of the show over the four days. Over 1,200 new games were on display. Publishers from all over the world come to Essen to try and get a little bit of limelight shined onto their game. In this retrospective, I will try and give a flavour of how the show was for me. As well as sharing the thoughts of a few friends. The Logistics. Getting to the show and the overall logistics of planning are always difficult for me. I have been with and without my family before. And I don't want to do it again without them. But the show is early October now, so not in UK School holidays, which makes it tough to have my children with me the entire time. They are 9 and 7 currently. But I also don't want to force them and my wife around the halls for too long. So, going for a day on my own, and then to have them join me for a day seems about perfect. This year, I was kindly given a lift by Marie from @Burton_boards which allowed me to travel separately from my family, without much added expense. Thank you Marie! My wife is happy to drive there as she grew up close to Essen, and knows the roads, route, and likes the journey. But I would prefer to be with them for this. But having a day to myself before they arrived allowed me to do all the things I wanted to do, such as speak to some of my favourite publishers, and demo some great games. I book hotels in Dussledorf which is 25 minutes drive from Essen as they are way cheaper, and the city is awesome! I highly recommend it. Parking at the Spiel is fine. There are some queues, but it's cheap at 6 euros a day, and there are lots of spaces across nine huge car parks I believe. The Highlights With over 1,200 new games at the show, you have to be choosy! I created a short list using the BGG preview prior to going. The official Spiel App allowed you to mark your top games, and then it showed you where they were on the map too. Very cool. It would be nice if they could sync the BGG list to the Spiel app though. On my shortlist, I had 147 games. I knew I wouldn't have time to see them all but there you go! The heart wants what the heart wants! On the Thursday, I had back to back meetings with publishers to talk to them about their games, and so I found that with these diarised events, and a few stops for food and drink, I didn't have that much more time for other things on day one. Checking out Redwood from Sit Down! games was a highlight though. It's currently on kickstarter and it is stunning both in terms of looks and gameplay. I love how you move your characters and then use school math class like equipment to assess your current view. It has interesting scoring options too. One to watch for sure. My Day two highlight was meeting the design team behind The Red Cathedral and Walkie Talkie by Devir. Walkie Talkie is an awesome little card game that I demo'd then bought at the show. I love how simple it is to play, but how addictive it can be. Meeting Isra and Shei from Llama Dice was a real thrill for me. They were so humble and seemed confused at how excited and emotional I was to see them! In Walkie Talkie, you have six cards with either a single letter or a single colour on. There are two cards on the table. One showing a letter. One showing a colour. 30 seconds is available per player. You will all play simultaneously, trying to get rid of your cards by playing a letter on a letter or a colour on a colour. All you need to do when you play a card is say a word that matches the card you are playing. For example, if you play a W next to the colour blue you could say Water. If you played a Pink next to a letter F you could say Flamingo. You can say anything you like as long as it is not a colour and it makes sense. Get rid of your cards in the time limit to win. All the cards are double sided, with a letter on one side and a colour on the other. If someone says ROGER, then all players must flip their cards over. If someone says OVER, then all players must pass their card to the left. It's a bit like The Mind meets Boggle! Great fun! The Games I came home with 14 games and two expansions. I was able to play nine games over the two days I was at the show. And was able to get a demonstration of a dozen more. My pre-show big hitters were Tribes of the Wind, Revive, Sabika, War of the Ring, and Flowar. I came home with none of these and only played only one! Tribes of the Wind was the one I played. It was good. If a friend owned it and asked to play with me, I would happily do so. And I feel over a few games I could come to enjoy it a lot. But it felt quite abstract and the theme of rebuilding civilisation in a post-apocalyptic world was what draw me in. Sadly, feeling none of that as I played really put me off, despite the game being solid. I liked how the actions you could do were largely dictated by the symbols on the back of the cards that your neighbour had. Hence the card holders below, allowing you to see what everyone has on the back of their cards. The multiple ways to play and score was fun. I liked how the game ended by building your fifth treehouse, which could happen sooner or later, depending on each players tactics. But it was good, not great. And had no real new mechanic or clever moment, so without the theme, I was ok to move on. I left War of the Ring and Revive as I felt they were somewhat over priced at the show. 50 Euro for War of the Ring, and 80 for Revive. At least Revive has a lot in the box. War of the Ring is basically just some cards. But both felt over-inflated for the show based on hype, so I left them to more keen/rich buyers! But I am very excited to play them soon. Sabika and Flowar I would have got had I more budget! But you cannot buy them all, and as I didn't have time to fully demo them, I have left them for another time. Hopefully soon. Sabika in particular looks amazing. But here is what I did get. Please note, a lot of these are review copies and were provided by the publishers for review purposes. STG 2022 : A cool demo game showcasing all the cool developers from their area, kindly given to me by @zlaiannah.gameroom who is making @eyeofzamrock Scout by @oinkgms Walkie Talkie by @devirgames@llama_dice Something Wild Marvel by @funko_europe Sagrada expansion @floodgategames Kites by @floodgategames Ted Lasso by @funko_europe ET by @funko_europe Night of Frights by @funko_europe Toko Island by @helvetiq Skate Summer by @pandasaurus_games Vengeance Roll & Fight by @mightyboards Starship Captains by @czech_games_edition Wonder Book by @dvgames_official Carcassonne Ukraine Map by @hig_games Not featured in this picture as it was in the car somewhere at the time, after we played during the euro tunnel is Mada from @helvetiq The Halls I spent most of day one in Hall three. It was huge and had a lot of my favourite publishers located within it. Hall one and two was also very busy throughout and was full of amazing stuff. All three could be a full day, very easily. The Gallery connects to hall two, three, and four and five. Here, there were oversized games, children's entertainment including free mini buggies to ride, and lots of great food options. Hall Four and Five were a little smaller in comparison, but still huge! And full of great stuff, and hall six was a little quieter with some smaller independents, retailers, and peripherals. Everywhere you looked there was something awesome, and I honestly think you could spend over a week and still not see it all. But you need to keep your eyes peeled because it can all blur into one. It is hard to separate individual people and games. Well, it is at least for me. But in one glorious corner of hall 2, you could find the Serbian Tabletop Guild. A group of designers and publishers from Serbia, joining forces to create something amazing. They even had a free promo game they were handing out that promoted each of their individual businesses whilst being a playable card game. How cool! I was made aware of this by @zlaiannah.gameroom who I know from Instagram, who was promoting his upcoming kickstarter @eyeofzamrock It looked like Scythe on steroids, and I was instantly blown away! Just check out the scale and beauty of this! I cannot wait to see more. The Hype Some games get a lot of pre-show hype from the various outlets and channels that promote games. But Essen does not seem to have that many good deals anymore. Prices are normal costs. As such, the main reason to go for many is to get the hot games first. Others go for the spectacle, to see friends, network, or simply just play some games. But the queues for the hot games each day proves a large part of the show is about getting the new stuff first! Many games sold out, even at high prices, and it is great to see our wonderful hobby in boom time. I am sure many publishers, distributers, and designers suffered like most during lockdown, with distribution and parts being a real issue. But it seems we are nearly back to normal. Although there still seems to be a huge issue with importing games. So many publishers told me they had stacks of games stuck in customs, and were unable to demo or sell them at the show. This happens every year. Surely there is a better way? One game I missed out on but hope to try soon is The Wolves. Just look at how pretty it looks! This is a territory building area-majority game with a modular board that has a Cascadia look to it, but plays very differently. You can turn over the terrain tiles where you want to have your turn, to change what terrain is visible. This of course affects the options available to you on your next turn. You need to upgrade your Wolf packs abilities and control across each terrain type to win the game. It is a lovely puzzle that looks great, and seems to play very smoothly. Saying Goodbye Leaving Spiel after two days last year, I was left feeling sad and frustrated I couldn't stay for longer. I want to play more games. See more people. Try more new things. But this year, after two days I was ready to go home. I covered a lot of ground. Around 15,000 steps each day. And had seen so many great things. Yes, I missed so much, but I recognise that I cannot play every game, and anything missed this time, is a surprise and delight for another day. Still, walking out those doors, tired and sweaty,for the final time on Friday evening felt sad. My Spiel was over for another year. I loved every minute of it. I cannot wait for next year. But I leave with lots of new games to try. New friends to talk games with. And a real sense of hope and joy for our wonderful hobby. I sometimes get too caught up in the politics of our industry, but if you remove all that, you are left with a lot of people trying to do one of two things. Give other people a good time, or have a good time themselves. I need to get back to the basics that drew me in to this wonderful hobby in the first place. The Good, bad, and Ugly. I loved 99% of the show. The stands are so impressive. The people at the stands are all so friendly and welcoming and you get great demos, mostly! There are some queues for some hot games, but there is always something to do, some game to play. Or some person to say hello to! The few things I don't enjoy are the queues outside at the start of each day. Arrive 20 minutes late and you walk right in. But if you want to get in for the 10am start, you will gather outside in a big crowd, waiting to get through a narrow door, and have your ticket scanned by one of three people. Other doors are better, but this is the entrance to hall one where I always go in as it is closest to the car park I use. It's a bit stressful for me, and I feel they could have a more orderly queue, a lot more people scanning tickets, and maybe even start scanning in the queue before the doors open to avoid the rush. The worst bit about the show though is the noise and hustle and bustle. There is no chill area, and it is all a bit intense. Sure, I chose to go for two days, 10am through to 7pm, I could break it up. But it would be nice if they had some area to chill in. You can get outside through a few doors, but there are no seating areas, and it's mainly full of people smoking. There must be hundreds of people like me that want to stay the full day but find it very hard to do so. I think Spiel needs to accommodate for this a bit more. Airecon does this best I feel, with lots of side rooms, chill areas, and break areas. Maybe the two organisers could chat! If you want to check out my top tips for surviving Essen, I ran through that last year, you can check that here. For now, let's do my Best of Awards. Best game I played This has to be Walkie Talkie. I absolutely loved it! Best game I bought I am not sure as I have not played them all yet, but Starship Captains has my eye! Best Small box game If I cannot pick Walkie Talk again, I will go with Kites. So frantic. So fun! Best Party game Again, I want to pick Walkie Talkie! So, I will! Best Kickstarter coming soon There were so many, but Eye of Zamrock pips it for me. Best Stand For shear scale and accessibility, it has to be Devir. They had great games. Nice tables. Great staff. A large but simple area to play with comfy seats, then a separate place to buy. Well, enough of what I think, let's hear from some other visitors. Marie - @Burton_boards My highlights of Essen Spiel? I should probably say something about games. There were definitely games. Games as far as the eye can see. 18,000 steps a day worth of games. It was incredible and immense and overwhelming all at once. But today the thing that I find myself most craving is the sociality of it all. I’ve got a stack of shiny new games in front of me but I’m missing the people to play them with. Last year I joined a queue to buy a game and found myself next to an insta friend who lives 3000 miles away from me. This year we passed each other walking opposite directions and it was pure joy seeing each other again. On Friday I met another friend who lives in Serbia. There have been multiple times that I’ve written to them ‘I hope we get to meet in real life,’ whilst never really believing it. Now I hope to one day also meet his wife and I actually believe it’s possible. You can go to dinner, notice the people next to you have games and before you’ve finished eating there are plans in place to meet the following year. You’re tired, you’ve walked the better half of a marathon over the weekend but still you find yourself in an apartment with new Dutch friends playing games until midnight. I talked to a couple who told me they don’t sit down at the demo tables to play games because it’s too busy and noisy for them to concentrate on learning rules but I really think that’s the best thing about conventions: sitting down, playing games with multiple strangers from around the world and communicating fine because everyone there speaks a common language. So go to Essen for the games but my highlight is the people. It’s an effort wandering around amongst 147 000 of them, but they’re all board-gamers and when you sit down and start playing you can’t help but feel that everyone there is your friend. Anne - Dice & Dishes Spiel ’22, FINALLY, after Covid and a burnout in 2021 we're finally able to attend Spiel again. I have been preparing for months, reading through the Spiel preview on BoardgameGeek and watching YouTubers chatting about their most anticipated games for this year. Making a list, trying to make a shortlist, setting budget, making sure we would meet people, booking a hotel close enough and eventually packing our bags to drive eastward to Essen. I kind of forgot how immense the Messe was and how busy it gets with all these crazy board gamers, but wow isn't that just amazing, all these people loving board games? At least you’re not the only weirdo hauling bags full of games around. As we both needed some time to adjust we just started walking around a bit to ease into the Spiel vibe and immediately buying some high anticipated games, until I soon spotted some familiar faces. We started looking for free tables to play some games and it surprised me we found those quick enough. Spiel is not quite the open gaming convention but this year I played more games than previous ones. With over 800 games releasing (I have no clue how many exactly since a lot of games come out in different languages) the Messe is packed with booths and people and enough to see and experience for weeks. Sure we just went 2 days but I am sure I could’ve found new stuff everyday! Could (or should?!) Spiel get even better by turning hall 7 into a huge open gaming area? Probably. Should they have more (veggie) food options and more space to properly sit down, looking at your fresh loot and chill a bit? Probably. But man is this a fantastic place to be. Of course I brought some games home as well. Many of my list and some we got to play and liked immediately. I forgot to find three of the most anticipated games on my list (Marvel Remix, Cat in the Box and The Wolves) and by the time I realized I forgot about them, they were sold out. Oh well, I’m sure I have a few games to play until these are delivered.. But THE highlight of this year was the absolutely amazing community of board gamers. Some I met prior to, some I met at Spiel. They truly made this year unforgettable. We had lovely dinners, played many games, and girl did we laugh a lot. I really DO think we are the friendliest people. And it just wouldn’t be the same without you. I am impatiently waiting to meet again. And already looking forward with the utmost anticipation to Spiel ’23. John - @TrywinGames Essen Spiel is a gigantic cornucopia of people, games and food. On one hand it’s “just” a huge games fair. On the other it’s a delightful blend of curiosity, wonder, shared experiences, meeting people and dodging speed-walking games fans! Preparation really does help make the most of the, surprisingly, short time of the event. I even printed the show guide beforehand so I could prepare. Got to love reading real print, right?! So what was my first Essen Spiel experience like? As a budding tabletop game designer my relationship with board games is probably a little different to tabletop players. I met with publishers, manufacturers and distributors. Events like this are great to work out who you would like to work with, and who you might not! I looked to see how games and stands were presented and which tricks were used to excite potential players. It’s also great to talk to fellow designers to share insights and experiences. Of particular note was the team at Nomnivoregames (@nomnivoregames on Insta) where we chatted about font selection and design to promote visual inclusivity. The chat started when I nerdily recognised a dyslexic font they use in their game. It was fantastic to share the passion for being able to welcome anyone to the gaming table. I also met lots of brilliant Instagrammers too – many of whom I had never met in person before. It was simply amazing to link up with people who had, up until this event, only been online friends. We shared chats, photo’s, food and a few laughs too. Of course, there are games at Essen too! I love how tabletop games have the ability to inspire wonder and pleasure, and seeing the joy on so many faces was a marvellous sight. I did manage to squeeze in a few demo’s; my highlights were Kites and Run Animals Run. One inspires chaos while you try to keep kites in the air, the other challenges you to claim enough resources for your chosen animal before the landscape becomes over-developed and your critters die. Yes, there is an animal graveyard where you score negative points for each animal that doesn’t make it. I guess the theme is a little morbid, but I really liked the interpretation in the game of environmental challenges for (endangered) animals. Is it possible to summarise Essen? It’s a tricky feat! The sheer scale of Essen makes everything so much more rewarding, including the size of the memories made. It’s one giant heap of amazing, and I’m so grateful to have shared it with so many wonderful friends.

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong WBG Score: 8 Player Count:4-12 You’ll like this if you like: Night of the Ninja, Werewolf Published by: Grey Fox Games Designed by: Tobey Ho By Steve Godfrey If you live in the UK and are well versed in home grown detective shows then you’ll assume that a small town, village or island are probably best avoided due to the high crime rates which, weirdly enough never seem to affect their tourism stats! Anyway, if you’ve ever felt like you want to join a long line of quirky detectives that get everyone in a room together to solve a crime which is increasingly ludicrous, ridiculously elaborate for a normal person to have come up with on the spot and, let be honest, going to be really difficult to make any of the “evidence” stick in court, then Deception: Murder in Hong Kong may just help scratch that itch. Scene of the Crime Each player will get a badge token, four “means of murder” cards and four “key evidence” cards which they display in front of themselves in sight of the whole table. Then give each player a secret role. The player who received the forensic scientist role reveals their role and who’ll be running the game. They then lay out the cause of death tile, a randomly selected “location of death” tile and then four random scene tiles. All these tiles are made up of six words each relating to the subject of the tile. For example “weather” or “duration of crime”. Everyone will close their eyes and the forensic scientist or FS as I’ll now call them because it’s easier to type!, will call for the murderer and the accomplice, if being used, to open their eyes. The murderer will then point to one means of murder card in front of them and one evidence card, they’ll then close their eyes. If the witness is in the game they open their eyes and the FS will reveal who the murderer and the accomplice are. The FS will then place one bullet token onto a word on each of the tiles that best points to the cards that the murderer chose. At this point the group can start a discussion as to who they think the murderer may be based on the clues given. After a brief period, the discussion will stop and each player will have 30 uninterrupted seconds to give their pitch on who they think the murderer is. After every player has been. The next round begins. The FS will draw a new tile and replace an existing tile with it and place a bullet on a new word. This will go on until the end of round three. At any point a player can try and solve the crime by holding their badge up and stating “let me solve the crime” (this is also the only way you can interrupt a players pitch) If they guess correctly then the game is over. If one thing they said was wrong then the game carries on. They hand in their badge and can no longer make a guess but they are still in the game and play as normal. If, after round three no one has guessed the murderer then they and their accomplice win. If the Witness is in the game and the murderer and their cards have been correctly guessed then they have one last chance at freedom and victory. If the murderer can correctly guess who the witness is, then the witness mysteriously fails to turn up to court that day and the murderer, sorry, wrongly accused citizen goes free. Gather everyone in a room together, I want to show off. I love a good social deduction game, especially with the right, fun group. But there are two things that I find can be a bit of a barrier when it comes to new players to the game and both of these are things that I think Deception does a really good job at attempting to mitigate. First, being a new player and having to face that panic inducing moment when you realise you’re the murderer/traitor etc and realising that you can’t ask the question “so how does the murderer win again?” for fear of rousing suspicion can be pretty stress inducing. Well here you don’t necessarily need to be good at lying, you just need to know how to weigh up the evidence in front of you and make a convincing argument for someone else. It’s a mechanism that uses a different skill set and one that I think more people will be comfortable with. You could even bluff people and admit that, yes they do make a good case and that you could be the murderer. It’s a classic case of “yes, but….” At any point you could also even accuse someone else and throw people off that way. This gets better with the accomplice in the game because they’ll be there backing you up with your arguments. Second is the random accusations. There’s nothing worse than in games like Werewolf, where someone is calling you out as a the werewolf purely because you screwed them over in another game, or because you were the werewolf that one time or just because she’s your sister and god forbid you can ever actually be civil to one another in a game like this…..ahem. Needless to say we don’t get a lot of One Night Werewolf plays in our house these days. So, yes, you can still get that here, however, since this is pretty much evidence based, those types of accusations don’t usually stick unless the cards and the clues line up against you. But more often than not there’s going to be an equally good case to be made for someone else as well. Again this takes the pressure off of anyone who doesn’t like lying. Both of these things could easily bring some bad feelings to some social deduction games but I love the way that Deception has tried to navigate around this. I don’t know if this was deliberate or just a happy accident but either way I’ll take it as a win. A likely story! I love how this game takes social deduction and throws in some twists that elevate it beyond that. The idea that you have one player that has perfect information but has limited communication is brilliant but the way they communicate is what really opens up the game. Just having a few vague words to go on really lets players tell a story and be creative when they're making connections. The mix of sometimes dark and sometimes bizarre cards really add to that. Have you ever thought about how you could kill someone with a games console? If you answered yes then don’t be surprised if I decline your invitations to come and play PlayStation with you! But those bizarre stories you start to weave together, just from a few generic words is one of the things that really make this game stand out. But not only for everyone trying to solve this thing, but for the forensic scientist as well. You now get to sit there and be entertained by your friends as they conjure more and more ridiculous theories of how this thing went down. How can you not be entertained by the idea of a jilted lover being murdered in the pub by having been administered poison by a cat (if any showrunners from Death in Paradise are reading this, I am available) It could easily be frustrating if the words you have don’t really align with any of the two cards, but because things tend to escalate you can't help but sit back and enjoy the ride. The only thing you need to remember is to not get too wrapped up and keep the game moving. As a starter game (or lower player counts) it tells you to only use the Forensic scientist, murderer and the investigators and that’s probably good advice. However, I would say to try and get the witness and the accomplice into the mix as soon as possible. They’re not difficult roles to integrate and they really make the game, especially at larger player counts and it tips the balance back to more of an equal footing for the murderer. The accomplice provides some much needed back up especially with bigger numbers and with a group which are leaning heavily to one player, It may be some much needed relief. The witness brings a much needed second win condition. Being the murderer could easily feel like you’re in a no win situation if the clues and the cards align against you. Having the witness not only gives you a way to sneak victory, but also gives you your own deduction game to play on the side. You’re Nicked. Like similar games, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is group dependent. If you get a group that aren’t really willing to take this in their stride then it could easily fall flat. Also, you do need a forensic scientist who can control the game. If you let the discussion go on for too long then the game can run for longer than it needs to. If I’ve got new players in a game then I’ll volunteer myself as the FS or see if anyone wants to take the role. Since we tend to play this at least twice in a session then I’ll just shuffle it in for the second game. The highest player count I’ve had for this is 10 players and if the game is under control then it still moves along at a good pace. Probably about half an hour per game at that player count. Deception has been around for nine years at the time of writing this and it still holds up as one of the great social deduction games for me. If you want a social deduction game that relieves pressure for new gamers, lets you tell stories and find out ways that your friends are secretly plotting to murder you, then this is the game you need.

Cake of Doom is hitting Kickstarter on 10th March. You can find more information about the game here or follow the kickstarter here. Social links here: Twitter: @CakeOfDoomGame IG: @CakeOfDoomGame Facebook This game was proved for free for purposes of this preview. As a preview, rules and components are liable to change. The free game does not affect my opinion. I am not that cheep. ;) Cake of Doom is from first time designers Amar Chandarana and Pearl Ho. If you want to give it a try yourself, head to Tabletopia, Tabletop Simulator or Screentop.gg. The game is set during an Alien invasion. You play the role of one Alien race trying to take over the human race, trying to bribe the hungry inhabitants with cake. The most obvious invasion technique. Although, I do feel it would be more effective in the U.K. than other countries. Set Up Give each player one asymmetric alien race card. This will be their character for the game and it will also give them a cool power to use as they play. Then give each player three blue and pink mischief cards and five green cake cards. If you prefer, you can let players choose their own cards with any breakdown of mischief or cake cards, up to eight. Place the remaining cards in two face down decks. Next place the Doom card into the centre of the table along with the region cards. Five for a three player game, seven for a four player, nine for a five player, and eleven for a six player game. You are now ready to play. How to Win To win a game of Cake of Doom, you need to claim the Doom card. But you cannot get this until you have at least two region cards. You can win these cards by playing your cake cards. You can see how much each needs as a minimum on the card itself. When you win them, they will reward you with a control bonus. How to Play On your turn, you can play as many blue grab and steal cards as you wish. These will allow you to boost your cake supply. Then, you can try and make a bribe and win a region. You can play as many cake cards as you like. But the other players may then collectively play a sabotage card, so you may want to play a few more cards than you need to counter any negative effects coming your way. You can always block these with a suitable block card though, so having one spare could be very useful at this point. You can either try and bribe a region currently not controlled by anyone, or a region that was previously won by another player. If you win, be sure to keep your cakes that you used in front of it, so that if another player tries to steal it from you in a later turn, all players will know how many cakes you used to win it. This is so they know how high they have to go to beat your bribe. Some of the cake cards will give you a bonus as well as simply adding a cake to your bribe. Certain cakes will be better at targeting certain regions that others, based it seems, on their country of origins. Americans love their Apple pie! (more crumble for us brits. With custard, obvz!) After a players has played their cards and attempted their bribe, they will then draw cards based on the current round. In round one, you draw one card. Round two, two cards. And so on. This creates a great pace to the game. As players hand's become more powerful as they game progresses, giving you all the chance to steal from each other, keep other players away from being able to attempt to get the Doom card, whilst trying to do this yourself. If you started with too many cards, the game would be over too quickly. If you ended with too few cards, you wouldn't ever be able to outbid other players previous bribes. It's a lovely build. Cake of Doom is a fun, family-friendly card game, that has a delightful theme, and simple ruleset. I can see this being popular with young families, looking for a game to play on weekends, after dinner, and our at restaurants when waiting for your food. It has that classic card game feel, with an easy to understand strategy, but enjoyable take-that swing of mid-game leader. Players will steal regions from each other, with card going to-and-fro between people around the table. There is a strong attack-the-leader vibe to this, as collectively, you cannot let anyone go for the Doom card before you. If anyone ever gets two regions, all players will then go after them, trying to bribe one of their regions from them. As such, younger players may not enjoy having their cards taken from them. Take-that as a mechanic is always harder for those under eight years old to accept I find. And older children may be looking for a game with a more complex strategy. So, I would say this game has a perfect sweet spot of eight to twelve year olds, who I think would really enjoy this game.

By Steve Godfrey Top Ten (new to me) Games of 2022 Well here it is folks, the list that no one was waiting for, it’s my top ten games of 2022. This is my top ten “new to me” games of 2022. As much as I’d like to populate this list of purely releases from this year, the fact of the matter is that I don’t get to play many of them. Sure I could probably muddle together a top ten from them but there’s so few of them that a lot of the list would end up being games I didn’t really get on with and are just there to make up the list. I want this list to highlight my very favourite games that I played this year and got excited about. Luckily enough I’ve played some really great games over this year with two of them even making my top ten games of all time! 10. Village Rails There was something about Village rails that appealed to me the minute I saw the cover and that tag line. When the game finally chugged its way to my doorstep it didn’t disappoint. A really fun game of building up a grid of tracks and each time you complete a line you get points based on the different scoring conditions on it. I love the drafting system that has hints of Smallworld and century spice road and deciding when to sacrifice points for money is a great brain burn. It fills that sweet spot of being quick enough to play before you get into a bigger game but it’s by no means a filler so you can keep your brain engaged. My full review here. 9. Downforce In Downforce you ideally want to win the race, but it’s not necessary for you to win the game. I love the idea that it’s entirely possible for you to be right at the back of the pile but still be able to win the game through clever betting and manipulation through the cards you play on your turn. It’s simple to learn and makes even mechanics like betting accessible to everyone without the downsides. If you bet on a car to win and it’s falling back you can use your cards to give it a boost and help you win big money. So many race games can suffer from a runaway leader and while that can still happen here, Downforce goes some way to stop that from hindering your victory. Plus it’s tense and a ton of fun and you get to go brum brum on your turn. My full review here 8. Libertalia : Winds of Galecrest A game about anthropomorphic animal sky pirates, what’s not to love! I love how, even though players have the same hand of cards at the start of the game, watching each person's thought processes play out through when they chose to play which card is fascinating. It’s a lot of fun trying to get into your friends' heads as you try and figure out which cards they might choose so you can get the best loot or avoid getting your card wiped out by theirs. The later rounds are even more fun as you’ll get more cards in your hand, but some will be left over from other rounds so your hands of cards start to differ from everyone else’s. This is one I need to add to the collection and is a lot of fun even at the full six players. Jim’s full review here 7. Cascadia Cascadia is a wonderful tile laying, drafting game. On your turn you pick a combo of tile and animal token. Place down the tile and put the animal token on a tile with that animal on it. Animals score depending on the scoring cards. So for example salmon score points if they are in a continuous run, the more in it the more points. It’s really simple to teach but trying to puzzle out how to maximise scoring from each animal certainly gets the cogs whirring. It could well have been an easy puzzle but the random tile and animal combo gives you those fun and tricky decisions. Also included in the box are different scoring cards for each animal to give the game a lot of replayability. 6. Great Western Trail (2nd edition) So this one is a bit of a cheat but I figure that “doing a cheat” on lists is becoming a trend and who am I to buck a trend! I’ve already played the first edition, once, a few years ago and I’ve been wanting to try again ever since. Now I know that, bar a few tweaks, that these are the same game but this year I got to do a proper dive into it both physically and on Board Game Arena and it solidified how much I enjoy this game. Each game you can employ a different strategy and each one will give you a good shot at winning. I love that this game is a huge cow rondel (is anyone else picturing small cows slowly spinning on a Lazy Susan? Nope, just me?) You want to be able to do all the actions on it but you know that doing that isn’t the most efficient way of doing things. It’s all about deciding the most efficient path for that round. Couple that with a bit of a race element and you’ve got a game with some fun, interesting decisions and multiple paths to victory. 5. Terraforming Mars The annoying thing about TFM is that I had a couple of opportunities to play this game way before this year. Now, having played it a few times I really regret not having played this sooner. I love the card play system, the build up of your economy and the fact that you semi-cooperatively work to Terraform Mars. It's a lot of fun trying to puzzle out which cards you need to play in order to play others so you can then get the most out of the cards you kept at the start of the round. This is another one I need to get in the collection and rest assured that when I do I’ll be ordering Prelude alongside it. 4. Lost Ruins of Arnak At the time of writing I’ve only played this once but that just goes to show just how much I enjoyed this one. I love the adventure theme and Indiana Jonesyness of the whole thing. The combination of deck building and worker placement works so well. It gives you so many options to think about. Speaking of combos, the combos you can trigger on your turn are so satisfying and give your turns some heft. Especially when you’ve read the rules and your initial thoughts are “huh, doesn’t seem you get much to do on your turn” This is another game where you can change your path to victory each game and still be in with a good chance with winning. 3. Cantaloop: Book 1 It’s number three on this list in terms of games I enjoyed but in terms of a pure nostalgia trip this is number one. Cantaloop threw me right back to my childhood and is just a fantastic adaptation of the old point and click adventure games. It encapsulates the humour, the tone and the clever interaction of those games. I can’t wait for the third in the series (the sequel was good but didn’t quite reach the highs of the first one) but what I’m most looking forward to is when enough time has passed and I can go through these games again. My full review here. 2. Ark Nova Much like a lot of this list, here I am having missed the initial hype train and end up running frantically after it. To be fair I’m much closer to this one as I am with most of these ex-hotness games on this list. I was convinced to take a harder look into this after playing terraforming mars. I knew the card system was similar so at least I knew it had something I liked in it. It didn’t disappoint. The action card river system gives this game its edge and brings with it so many great decisions and the need to put all of your planning abilities to good use. Yes the luck of the card draw is sometimes a frustration but if you go into it knowing you have to take an adaptive stance on your strategy then this game is such a fun experience. The fact that the solo mode is ridiculously easy to use and also punishing means this game gets to the table way more often than I expected. My full review here 1.Marvel Champions There was a bit of back and forth over these top two games and ultimately Marvel Champions does what its subject matter does best and fights for justice. This game spent a lot of time in and out of various online baskets until I was lucky enough to receive it for review on the site. Since then a lot of my gaming budget this year has gone on more decks and my first campaign box for this game. I initially gave this game an 8.5 and as predicted it's gone up to at least a 9 now. I love how quick it is to pull out a couple of decks and get playing. The experimentation with different characters together is a lot of fun and each one feels thematic to the characters. Deckbuilding is a simple process but again is a lot of fun putting something together that works for each specific character. It’s brilliant fun being able to put your favourite characters against some iconic villains. This definitely deserves my top spot this year. Of all the games that are sitting on my shelf this is the one that I keep looking at and thinking “could I sneak in a quick game” but that may be my fault for having it in my eyeline while I’m trying to work! My full review here. So that’s my top 10 new games to me this year. Are there any here that you’ve discovered this year? Or any that you really want to try or are excited to play?

Wormholes WBG Score: 7.5 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Venice, In the Hall of the Mountain King, Explorers of the North Sea. Published by: Alderac Entertainment Group Designed by: Peter McPherson It is not proven if Wormholes are even a thing yet. Worm holes are. They help aerate your garden soil. Warm moles are. That's why their burrows are known to be so effective. And WORMHOLES certainly is. Look, there is a box right there! Set Up The main thing to decide in Wormholes is which side of the boards you want to use. There is a basic side, and a fun side. I think it's obvious which one we suggest! Even from game one, go with the fun side. They introduce a lot more features on the boards for you to interact with. More stuff equals more fun! The game suggests to randomise the sides, but just go all in on the fun side I say. Once you have done that, lay out the boards as per the rule book. There is a different positioning recommended for each player count. But really you can do what you like. The game suggests you don't let planets get too close together, so orientate the boards so that is the case. But we have played a few games with planets only one space away from each other, and it's actually quite fun. You can build some cool combos this way by delivering to two planets without moving in-between. It certainly affects the balance, but either way, make your choice and set them down as you wish. Then distribute the player pieces with the ten wormholes and ship in each player's chosen colour. We bag them all up separately so it's a simple case of giving each player one bag. In this bag, we include the three energy tokens each player needs and the reference card. It makes set up a breeze. Why they game doesn't give you enough bags for this and suggest doing this, I do not know? Next, set the exploration stacks with the exploration tokens numbered from one to eight, or up to ten for a higher player count game. Then under this, place the 'planets connected' token, and the three, two, and one round countdown token's, in that order. All in one tall stack. Then form the passenger deck, removing any cards not needed for your current player count and give each player one card. The second and third player will get a second card, the forth and fifth player with get a second and third. Finally, lay out the point tokens to form a general supply. You are now ready to play. How to Play On your first turn, you need to lay your first wormhole, inactive side face up, on a space adjacent to the starting location around the space station. This can be seen in the central space on the bottom left tile above. Each player then has three energy tokens to flip to carry out three movement actions, moving one space each time. However, there are a lot of ways to increase your movement as you play. First, you can move from a wormhole to another for a free action if those wormholes match number and colour. This can allow you to move any distance at no cost, as long as the wormholes match. Second, you can move from any space on the orbit of the space station to any other space in the same orbit for one action. Third, you can move from any space on the Nebulae (colourful cloud of dust and gas in a line on the board) to any other Nebulae space or adjacent space without spending any energy to do so. Forth, you can warp from each wild wormhole on the board for free to any corresponding number on an active wormhole on the board, irrespective of the colour. Fifth, when you move into the black hole space, you can warp to any space adjacent to the planet shown on the top passenger card that you flip as you do this. And finally, you can move onto the photon cannon space and launch yourself in any direction, as far as you like in a straight line, moving through any obstacles or gaps on the board! You really can get around in this game! This may sounds like a lot to remember, but it is all clearly shown on the handy player aids. Now handily photographed for your convenience below. In the game, you are looking to move around the board, dropping off passengers at planets that match the passenger cards you have. Each time you do this you will score two points per successful delivery. If you manage to deliver passengers to more than five planets, you will score three additional points for each planet. When you are at a planet, you can refill your hand back up to four, being sure to discard any cards you pick up that match the current planet you are at. Another way you can score is by placing your wormholes down when you are next to a planet in any adjacent space. If you were the first to do this at this current planet, you can take the top exploration token which will reward you with one or three points at the end of the game. This also serves as the game clock. When all planets have a wormhole next to them, either eight in a one to three player game, or ten in a four or five player, the countdown to the final end game begins. You will have three more full rounds, and then the game ends. The most efficient way to do all this is to use your and your opponents wormholes to zip around the board at maximum speed. Each time you use a wormhole this counts as a free action, and you can over a lot more ground this way. So, you will be encouraged to do it. And each time you use another players wormhole, you must reward them with one point from the general supply. Placing your worm holes in locations useful to yourself and also the other players is crucial to your success in this game. Is it Fun? Pick-up-and-deliver games are not for everyone. I think a lot of bad games that used this mechanic in the 80's and 90'w ruined it for all games that came later. If you are turned off by pick-up-and-deliver, I don't think this game will be for you. It adds a lot of new features and elements to this type of game, but the fundamentals remain the same. However, if you do enjoy this mechanic, then I think you will love this game as the twists really bring a lot to the table. Moving around the board in a pick-up-and-deliver game is generally what makes the game fun or boring. If you have a lot of ground to cover and cannot do that quickly or efficiently, it just isn't fun. I sense this was at the heart of the design for this game. It strikes me that designer Peter McPherson wanted to find a way to make the most important part of a pick-up-and-deliver game work, and do this is the most enjoyable way. "What if people would warp from this place on the board to this place, for free?" I hear him in my mind asking himself this question. And coming up with the wormhole solution to fix that And his idea works. It works really well! Being able to jump from one end of the board to the other is very satisfying. Making this move a free action is even better. And then rewarding your brain with either the sense of achievement by knowing it was your forward planning that created this path for you in the first place; or by giving you a nice juicy point when other people use your wormholes. It's a stroke of genius. It makes you want to create the most useful and convenient wormholes possible. You want other people to use your creations. You want to create a network of accessible wormholes positioned in the most convenient locations. They help you, they help others, which in turn helps you. And all the other players are thinking and doing the same thing. So, by the middle of the game, the board generally opens up and becomes very easy to navigate for all players. However, this is not a coop game. Creating this network becomes a race! And as you can only take one exploration token per planet, you want to build your wormholes first. But to get to the locations quickest, you need a good network of wormholes to get there. And, you cannot randomly move around the board, for fear of falling behind the points scoring options available from dropping off passengers at their required destinations. Your movement needs to be calculated, efficient, and ruthless. Focused on the mid game network you are creating, but also the end game points scoring targets, and also the opening game rush to build in the premium locations whilst all the time, dropping off passengers as often as possible. If all this sounds like a lot of fun, then I think you will enjoy this game immensely. I have found it to be highly rewarding and this is not really my type of game, so maybe this can convert a few people who were otherwise turned off pick-up-and-deliver games from past experiences. The art is quite simple, but on a dark background like my play mat, it really pops. This helps you clearly see where your wormholes are. Separated by colour, the bright primary colours can be easily spotted. And they look great. Wormholes is so easy to get to the table. It is quick to teach and play, and rewarding from game one. It has hit the table a lot over the last few days and I can see this getting a lot more plays when I am looking for a quick simple game with three to four players. I think that is the sweet spot. Two players is a little too simple. Five is a little too busy. But with three or four there is a lot of fun to be had with this game.

Ark Nova WBG Score: 9 Player Count: 1-4 You’ll like this if you like: Terraforming Mars, Meadow, Cascadia Published by: Feuerland Spiele, Capstone Games Designed by: Mathias Wigge By Steve Godfrey Have you ever stood in your local zoo, looked around and thought. Yeah I could run one of these? Yeah me neither, I’ll leave that up to Matt Damon. But if you did ever get the urge to fill your back garden with a petting zoo, an elephant and a sun bear then you can instead save some money and avoid the headache of planning permission and give Ark Nova a go…..I mean, I know the board is big but I’m fairly sure you don’t need planning permission to put it on the table! Zoo map. If you're new to Ark Nova then give players Map A, a sized three enclosure and a kiosk and set them in the indicated spaces. Every player then places their animal card in slot one and then shuffle the rest of the cards and place them at random in the other spaces, blue side up. Give everyone 25 money, one association worker and eight cards from the deck from which they choose four to keep, but probably let them sit through the rules before choosing. If you’ve played before then players can choose any of the map boards they like. On your turn you will play one of the five action cards in front of you. It’s position in the line determines how strong the action will be. Once you’ve carried out the action place it in space one on the track and push the others up one space. The actions will let you play animals into your zoo, build enclosures, play sponsor cards, take an association action and get cards. The animals card lets you play an animal card as long as you have the required symbols present in your zoo, you can pay for the animal and you have an empty enclosure to put it in. These will have one off powers, appeal (victory points) and will also give you symbols to count towards future cards. The build action lets you put new enclosures into your zoo. You can only build a size of enclosure up to the space your card is on the track. So if your card is at space three you can only build a size three or less. These will also trigger bonuses if you cover those spaces on your board. Sponsors cards work similar to animal cards. You play them and they will give you either a one off ability, an ongoing bonus, an end game scoring condition or a combination of them. The association action lets you take partner zoos (which helps with card requirements and makes some cards cheaper to play) gain universities, reputation and let you complete conservation cards. If you complete requirements for these cards you can place one of the cubes from your board on the card and gain conservation points (also a type of victory point) You can even place a conservation card from your hand and score it. Once it’s out other players can score this as well. The card's action will get you……well cards. Certain cards will move the break token along a track and as soon as it reaches the end then there will be a break where each player nets income, discards and removes two cards from the display and places out new ones. Ark Nova has two main tracks. The appeal track which will move your marker anti clockwise round it and the conservation track which will move a separate token clockwise. Once one player's tokens share the same space then the game will end with each other player getting one more go. Points are determined by how far each player's markers are from each other once they’ve crossed each other. This will give you positive points. If your markers haven't crossed then you’re essentially in negative points. River of dreams. I’m just gonna jump straight in and say that I love the card action system. For me this is the mechanism that makes this whole game. It will bring all your frustrations and all of your triumphs throughout the game but it will also provide you with a ton of interesting decisions, because you see ark nova is all about careful planning. Which is pretty convenient since you're building a zoo! The big challenge is getting each card where you want it and when you want it. You’ll find yourself puzzling out how to get your build card high enough to get the enclosure size you want, but also trying to figure out which cards in the higher slots to use to move down to push that card along and I’ll tell you something, that choice isn’t always that easy. You’ll often find yourself in a situation where the other cards in the higher slots are there for a reason and you really don’t want to play them just yet. It’s a system that is a ton of fun to try and navigate and will keep players constantly engaged. I’m sure if the great David Attenborough was to look in on a game of this he’d be commenting about gamers in the wild spending our time contemplating and muttering to ourselves before we quickly strike and take our turn, only to go back to muttering to ourselves looking annoyed. I’d watch that. BBC executives, David, if you’re reading this, and I’m sure you are, get in touch. Also did I mention the fact that you can upgrade these cards? The upgrades really open out your options. Per game you’ll only be able to upgrade a max of four of them, as far as I know anyway. I’ve not yet found a way to get all five of them flipped. All the upgrades are good, but deciding which ones to flip at the time is going to give you some other fun choices. Especially when you realise that some areas across the boards can only be accessed when you’ve upgraded certain cards. The great thing is that these upgrades are not necessarily late game flips. Just scoring a couple of conservation points will let you upgrade your first card and who doesn’t love getting new powers to play with, especially early game. Superhero Zoo Ark Nova is a big mish mash of popular mechanics, card play from terraforming Mars, scoring from raja’s of the Ganges and even a tile placement game. But putting a few big mechanics doesn’t necessarily make a good game. Much like the big superhero team up movies, just throwing it all together because it’s cool without finessing and you could end up with the board game equivalent of the Justice league. Take some time and thought however and you’re looking at The Avengers. (Feel free to swap those team ups around to your particular taste). It’s a shame though because both JL and Ark Nova both have bats in them! Bats. That’s the beauty of Ark Nova though, it all flows together so well. It’s like these mechanics were always meant to be put together and now they’ve found each other at a summer camp and realised they were split at birth because their parents split up and decided to take a kid each and move to different countries……...or is that the plot to the Parent Trap? Regardless, everything integrates together so well and works to serve the others so nothing feels like it’s arbitrary. Everything is worth doing despite what strategy you decide to focus on. Just because you’re not focusing on sponsor cards for example, it doesn’t mean that it’s not worth playing one. A good card like that at the right time could easily help you grab a couple of bonuses or help boost your income. The designer has done a great job of making it flow together so well that you’ll be using a bit of everything for most of the games you play. Even though you’ll have your hands in everything the game still gives you lots of avenues to try different things each game. There’s a wonderful balancing act when it comes to scoring points and also a fun ramping up as the game progresses. You’ll find appeal points are easier to come by, but as you build up your zoo engine and upgrade your cards you’ll start racking up the conservation points. It starts to get so tense as you see everyone’s tokens edge ever closer to each other and you try and eek out those last few points before final scoring kicks in. That leads me onto one of my favourite things in Ark Nova….combos! Now and again you'll play a card or move your reputation marker and it’ll trigger this cool chain of events that will see you flipping a card and getting more points and getting a couple of bonuses in a row. In my case these are usually accidental but I think that’s actually a plus point. The idea that these can happen to anyone round the table is really fun, it gives new players a chance to experience the same high as someone who has played before and probably set up one of these combos. These combos happen just enough that you get that fun high from it, but not too often that it adds to the game length. There’s nothing worse than having to sit while people are constantly taking elongated turns and you just play one card. When they do kick off though it soooo satisfying. Can a Zoo be too big? Ark Nova comes with a huge deck of cards, so big that even at four players you probably won’t get through the whole deck. With such a huge deck there’s going to be more randomness than in most draw decks. It means that playing to a particular strategy in ark nova won’t necessarily serve you well. If you play a sponsor card that gives you money based on reptile cards then getting reptiles in your zoo is a good play….but I wouldn’t hinge your entire game on it. With a deck that big you may find that you won’t see that many reptiles. I know that this sort of randomness and the lack of control won’t be for everyone and that’s completely understandable, things like this can be a frustration and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t annoy me sometimes as well. However if you can accept that this is a thing (and I tend to let new players know before we get started) then you can take a more adaptive approach to the game which I personally really like. It keeps me on my toes and I like that you can play with different strategies during the game and not have to wait for the next one to change track. I like that you can be playing with reptiles and then all of a sudden decide that you want a petting zoo next to the crocodiles! This also, weirdly makes the game a bit more thematic. Most zoos have a wide range of animals so having to populate yours with a variety makes some sense. I’m not sure if this was the intention or not by the designer but it works either way. It’s probably worth nothing as well that this is not necessarily a short game. My first two 4 player games, both with all new players, ran at around three hours each. Long games aren’t something that bother me but it’s worth knowing what you’re potentially getting yourself into. Once everyone knows the game then you can definitely get this time down and I’ve actually found that turns can go pretty quick once everyone’s up to speed. All the small things. There’s so much more I could talk about for this game but to keep from this getting too unwieldy I just want to touch on a few of the small things that I love. Objective scoring. I love that you start with two end game scoring cards and you don’t have to choose which one you want to keep until one player gets to a certain point on the conservation track. It’s usually about a quarter to halfway through the game. It gives people time to see which one has a better chance of scoring some decent points before chucking one and doesn’t pressure new players into picking something at the start of the game before they’ve got a chance to understand the game and which one is better for them. It’s brilliant, every game should add this sort of thing in if they can. The solo mode is great and is, to coin a phrase “super easy, barely an inconvenience” The A.I. Phase is simply, slide a cube. Done. After all the cubes have been moved you take a break, remove one cube, reset and carry on. You keep going until you have two cubes left. At the end of the round, if your scored at least zero you’ve won. You can scale the difficulty by where you start on the appeal track. There’s no big upkeep getting in the way of your turns and it really makes you play as efficiently as you can and it gives you a great challenge. I know it’s a big game to set up but the solo mode can be so quick that I’ve even reset and started again on some occasions. Some of the cards (mostly the snakes) do have some take that elements (not the popular 90’s boy band) but if you’re not feeling particularly venomous then you can easily avoid these by using the solo rules for these which are on the card. I always like when games give you this sort of option when they can. Ark Nova brings in some big, well known and unique mechanisms to create something unique, engaging and a heck of a lot of fun that is certainly worth the hype. Right, I'm off to complain about the lack of Otters in the game and insist on their inclusion in the expansion.

King of Monster Island WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: King of Tokyo, Aeon's End, Horrified. Published by: IELLO Designed by: Richard Garfield Richard Garfield has created some of the biggest games in the industry. Netrunner, King of Tokyo, and Bunny Kingdom to name just three. When he puts his name to something, it usually generates a lot of buzz. More so when it is a cooperative follow up to the huge hit, King of Tokyo. Even more so when there is a giant Volcano in the game! Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Place the main board into the centre of the table. Put the Volcano together, (it takes but a moment) and place this into the centre of the board. Next, choose a boss to fight against. Place your chosen adversary next to the board, choosing which side you want to face. There is a normal and hard mode for each. Make sure the star dials are set to zero and the heart dial is to the health shown on the bosses sheet. Then set aside the number of red dice as specified on the boss sheet you are using and place the boss figure matching the sheet into any zone on the main board. Then make a pile of all resources. The Crystal and Pylon tokens, monster dice, the bag with the minion tokens, the energy cubes and lighting tokens, the 12 support tiles placed face down, and the eight flamelings, if you are fighting against the Lava Lord boss. Next, shuffle the power and event cards together and create a face down deck. Flip over three cards to create a market. Replace any event cards if they come up at this point. Then draw a random minion from the bag and place it into each zone, starting with the bosses zone. Then, each player chooses a Monster figure to play as taking the matching figure and board. Set your points to zero and health to ten and add your figure to the board, ensuring you are in a different zone to the boss. Finally take one random ally sheet equal to the play count plus one and place them face up by the board. You are now ready to play. How to Play The game plays similarly to King of Tokyo, except the cooperative nature of the game. In this game, all players are working together against the boss, rather than the battle royal seeing in King of Tokyo. If you can get the bosses health down to zero, you all win. If ever you have to draw a minion from the bag and there are none left, or if a player begins their monster phase with no health, or if three pylons are built; then all players loose. On your turn, players will first check any active powers from the boss, according to their current star level, and then roll the bosses dice inside the volcano. That's right! It's not just decoration, it's a full on dice tower, spreading the dice randomly into the six different areas of the board. If any roll off the board, just re-roll them again. After multiple games, chucking dice into this volcano has not got old! It's a great fun part of the game. Where the dice end up determines where the boss will now move too. Which ever adjacent zone has the most dice, this is where the boss goes. If there are no dice in these spaces, simply move the boss one space clockwise. If the space that the boss is currently in has the most, activate that space and leave the boss where it is. Then, all minions in the bosses location activate. Either damaging all monsters in their zone if it is the Soldier minion shown here on the bottom right, or building a Crystal, if it is the Builder minion shown here on the bottom left. The Crystals build up and turn into Pylons. When the board has three Pylons you lose the game. If it is the Cannon minion shown in the top left, they will attack every Monster in every zone. The shield Minion in the top right has no affect. This minion just protects the other minions when it is your turn. They must be defeated before any other minions or bosses can be attacked. Next, each dice in the bosses zone will activate. Depending on it's current face up value, more minions will be added, the boss will be rewarded with star points, increasing its base skills, or a crystal will be built. Any dice activated at this point will be removed from the board to be thrown back into the volcano in the next round. After all this is done, it is finally your turn to fight back! You will roll six of the monster dice, and just like King of Tokyo, with up to three re-rolls, to determine your actions. The hearts give a monster in your zone one health back. The Lightning give you one green energy cube to buy power cards. The footprints let you move any monster in your zone to an adjacent zone or deal one damage in your zone. The claw lets you deal two damage in your zone. The star lets you gain one fame on your monster board. And finally, the spanners work in three or four. If you manage to get this many, you can draw a random support boat from the supply and place it face up on the board in a space in your zone, as long as there are no pylons present. At any point during your turn you can activate a support or recharge a previously activated boat. Activating a support boat either gives you an energy cube, or an extra dice face. Once activated, simply flip the boat over. If you get any dice you cannot use, or don't want to use, you can lock them into the zone you are in for a monster to use on their turn, later in the game. This is a great way to get to three or more spanners and use all dice, even when they don't quite work for you. Once your dice are all resolved or locked, you can then spend any available energy cubes on power cards. Then resolve any end of turn effects, pass all available dice to the next player and they will have their turn. Activating the boss and rolling their own monster dice. Play continues until one of the end game triggers are activated. You can play the game multiple times against the various bosses and difficulties for each one. Then the rules suggest when ready, for you to try the ultimate challenge, facing all three bosses, back-to-back in one epic game. This really is the way to play King of Monster Island. Defeating the bosses on their own is quite simple, and the sense of satisfaction wears thin quickly. But taking all three on at once is a real challenge and very rewarding when successfully completed. Is it Fun? Playing King of Monster Island feels very similar to King of Tokyo with two main differences. One, this game is cooperative, which means no player elimination. Being knocked out of King of Tokyo is frustrating, especially if playing with more than two other players, and their subsequent battle takes a while to finish. In this game, you are all in, or all out together. That is a good development. The second major difference is the fact that sometimes, you cannot fight the boss. If they move away from you and you do not roll the required feet symbols, you cannot catch them up. Some powers allow you to damage the boss in adjacent zones, some cards help with this too. And you can of course use support boats and locked dice to help other players. But once per game at least, there will be a time when you are chasing shadows. That can be frustrating and never really seen in King of Tokyo. The support boats are a nice addition to the game, as is the ability to lock and share dice with other players. Similar to King of Tokyo, the cards are too expensive and/or you don't get enough energy cubes, so we start the game with one random card each, and five energy cubes. I just don't get a game that has so many cool cards that you rarely ever get to own, let alone use. So, house rule as you see fit to have more fun with the cards. They are awesome. The ally sheets are a nice addition too. Once you have at least one star/fame point, you can choose one of the available sheets to place next to your monster board. This will grant you bonus powers and actions as you gain more fame in the game. This is a nice variation and allows you to do some exciting new things. Moving the boss this way is particularly useful. I would recommend this game to anyone who enjoyed King of Tokyo, and wants to have a cooperative version of the game. It feels like this could have been an expansion to the base game in the same way Viticulture World was, to reduce the need to re-produce some of the shared resources, like the dice. However, I like the ambition with this game, the size of the new board, and the 3D volcano is a great statement on the table. It looks great, functions in the game well, and justifies this games' presence as a stand-alone game. I think I will always reach for this now over King of Tokyo, simply as I enjoy cooperative games so much more. More so when the competitive version has player elimination which just doesn't wor well for my group. Ultimately, that choice is down to you based on what you prefer. Coop or competitive. But don't tell me you are not dying to chuck some dice in this volcano!

This is a preview copy provided for free by the publisher. It does not represent the final published copy. The game is being crowd funded soon. For more information, read here. 21X is from Naylor Games, the team behind the brilliant Magnate: The First City. It's a bit of a change for the team behind the huge box experience of Magnate. Going from a sea of plastic to a simple deck of cards. Publisher James Naylor said, "It’s very different to our other titles. It’s a super quick, maths puzzle game you can play with anyone from children to university maths professors." Well, lets take a look ourselves and see how it plays. In 21X players are trying to get there cards to add up to 21. The game plays just like Blackjack, but the cards are very different! Set Up The first thing to do is decide your desired difficulty. The cards are all marked in the top right and bottom left corner with either a Triangle, a Triangle and a Square, or both of these and a Pentagon. Level one with just the triangle has simpler easier equations with whole number cards with addition, subtraction, and multiplication. Level two has more complex equations with divisions, brackets, indices, and powers. Level three brings in negative numbers in divisions and even more difficult equations. Take out any cards you don't want to use and then shuffle the deck and deal each player two cards, just like normal Blackjack. Place the remaining deck face down between the players along with the player aids. You are now ready to play. How to Play All players simultaneously reveal their cards and the round begins. Each player will now try to work out a value for X that makes their cards add up to 21, or as close as possible without going bust. This means by scoring over 21. The value of N is determined by the number of cards they have in their hand. So will change if they get more cards. X can be whatever they want but must be the same across all cards if they have more than one X present across multiple cards. X can be positive or negative but must be a whole number and cannot be zero. Any players may decide to twist in order to draw another card. You can do this up to three times for a maximum of five cards. If you cannot get to 21 exactly you can stick by calling out the number they can get to. After which time, all other players now have a maximum of one minute to carry on playing, trying to get closer to 21 than the player who just stuck. Once you stick, you cannot change your number. You cannot stick on 20. And once one player sticks, no other player can now also stick. The first player to make 21 correctly wins. If no one makes 21, the player who can make the number closest to 21 without going over is the winner. The winner must always show their solution. If they have got their math wrong, the winner is the person with the next highest value and so on. You can play multiple times, in a race to three, five etc, or however you see fit. Publisher, James Naylor said, "I have high hopes there’s an educational angle here as well as being a great stocking-filler gift for the mathy friend in your life. The teach takes less than 1 minute and it being just a single deck of cards, you can take it anywhere. It takes less than 5 minutes to play. It has adjustable difficulty too, so you can tailor it really well to group." James continues, "I personally love it and felt compelled to sign-it the moment the designer Leo Samson first played it with me. It’s just one of those things that felt like it should exist already. If you like math puzzles or mental arithmetic, I think you’ll really like it. If not… it’s almost certainly not for you." Is it Fun Some of the cards blow my mind, I am certainly not a mathematician. However, I have loved playing with my son (nine). He loved the concept and trying to work out the best way to get as close to 21 as possible. Which he did, quite often! More than me. Some cards are pretty simple. Just a flat number, or negative five for example. Others are more complex and require a lot more thought. The N concept was very clever. As this changes when you get more cards. You could get to within one or two of 21 with the cards you have. And then twist to try and get to 21 exactly but of course, any N card you had is now a different value. Getting to 21 is very satisfying. If you like working out math problems then you will love this. If not, I would still consider it to try with your friends and family who do. I have introduced this to a few (very clever) non-gamers who were blown away by it and are now looking at what other modern games may be for them. It certainly is unique in that aspect. I don't see many other games brining in scientists and mathematicians to the hobby as much as this! For more information, head here.

Art Robbery WBG Score: 7.5/10 Player Count: 2-4 You’ll like this if you like: Plotalot, Tucano, 6 Nimmt. Published by: Helvetiq Designed by: Reiner Knizia When Reiner Knizia puts his name to a new game usually people sit up and take notice. The man behind four Deutscher Spiele Preis winning games and a Spiel des Jahres, two of the most prestigious awards in the industry; the Knizia name comes with some serious credibility. His latest game, published by small box advocates Helvetiq, Art Robbery brings some interesting ideas to the take-that card game genre. Using Knizia’s intricate knowledge of mathematics, Art Robbery pits players against each other in a daring heist. Aiming to steal the most valuable pieces, players must track what their opponents are taking and importantly wining, all whilst ensuring they don’t have the least valuable alibi scores at the end of the game. In Art Robbery, there are four rounds, called raids. Players are focused on the attempted robbery of four different types of art. Sculptures, Paintings, Sketches and Antiques, represented by circular tokens separated at the start of the game. In each round, players will be playing cards to take the most valuable works of art placed in the center of the table. The art tokens have a score ranging from zero to five. You may want to take the zero’s and lower scoring tokens due to these pieces offering alibi scores as well. The raid ends when all the tokens are taken. Players keep any token they have stolen that round, bank them, and then next round starts. The person at the end of the game with the most points wins. But the person with the lowest alibi score will be caught by the police and eliminated. The game is a delicate balance between acquiring the highest prized pieces of art without neglecting the lower scoring pieces that will provide the alibis you need to stay in the game. The game starts with each player being dealt five cards. On your turn, players will choose one of these cards to play. The cards will come from one of four main categories: Boss cards: Each round of Art Robbery will see new art tokens placed in the center of the table to collect. There will always be at least one token with an image of ‘the boss’ on it. This token is worth 5 points at the end of the game. However, the twist being you have to have another token worth four or five in order to keep the boss token at the end of the raid. If you don’t have another token with this amount, then the boss token is discarded scoring you zero points. Number cards: Each card, numbered zero to five allows you to take the token of the equivalent value from either the center of the table or from another player who has already tried to loot this piece of art. No piece of art is safe until the end of the raid. Thief cards: This card allows you to take any token of your choice from the center of the table other, than the boss token. Guard dog cards: This allow you to either take the guard dog from another player if they have it, or the center of the table if the guard dog piece is still unclaimed. This token can then be used to protect you from later attacks from other players when they play a numbered card to steel one of your other tokens. Art Robbery is a constant back and forth. The game often starts with people playing nicely. Taking what they can from the center of the table and not thinking about affecting other players own scores. Inevitably, one player will be left with a situation where their only legal play is to take a piece of art from another player. The gloves are now off! This is not a co-op game after all! It’s every robber for themselves! If you have the boss card and your opponent has the only available four token, and you have the number four card, its time to rob your friends! A sense of jovial back-and-forth is created from this tit-for-tat play. It doesn’t have the often “mean” feeling created by take-that games. Everything happens so quickly and there are multiple chances to get back what was once stolen from you, this is not a game that will create enemies at the table. Just laughs! Each time I have played this game I have witnessed a lot of giggles, cries, and screams. Trying to take a token from an opponent, that is blocked by a guard dog, which is then followed up by a second attempt moments later to take the same token, when the same card is played, but now not defended by the guard dog, is just hilarious! This sort of interplay happens often. It's fast, funny and very satisfying to both be a part of and watch. Art Robbery plays quickly and has the end-game scoring surprises and joys seen in games when no one really knows how they have done! Or how they have scored in comparison to the other players. The final reveal of your own points vs. the other players, as well as the check on who has the lowest amount of alibi’s is a suitable end to a Knizia game. It feels like an event, despite all being over and done with within 20 minutes. If you are looking for a light, fun, family friendly take-that card game, this could be the one for you.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Fire Nation Rising WBG Score: 8 Player Count: 1-5 You’ll like this if you like: Thanos Rising, King of Tokyo, Hit Z Road. Published by: The Op Designed by: Patrick Marino, Andrew Wolf There have been a number of "Rising" games. I covered the history and the Batman Who Laughs version here. The latest version from The Op who provided this game for review is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Based on a huge franchise that has made films, tv shows, and hundreds of comics, like the other games in this series, Avatar comes with a big following, but does it live up to this? Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up First place the main board, made up of three pieces together at the centre of the table. Let each player choose a character to play as, taking their player board, token and card, and placing it in front of them. In a solo game, take two for yourself. It works as a two player. Then decide on the difficulty and place between ten and 13 Villain cards into the deck to suit your desired game style. Now shuffle this deck and place one card in each of the nine spots around the board. Place the fire nation statue into the central spot, along with the fire nation cards shuffled and placed next to the board. Place the Pai Sho and damage tokens into a central location on the table, along with the dice pool and final battle cards for later use. Finally take the balance and ruin tracks and decide which difficulty you want to play. This is marked by the symbol on the bottom left of the balance track. Place the balance and ruin markers on the bottom spot. You are now ready to play. It should look a little like this, colourful huh!? How to Play Players will now take it in turns to place their character token into one of the three locations on the main board. Players are looking to recruit new characters to join their team and increase their powers and take out the villains that could end their game. If you ever loose all characters from the same team, or any ten then the game is lost for all players. In order to win, you need to build up your team during the first phase where the balance and ruin tracks advance, and then win the three final battles. On your turn, you will place your token into one of the three locations on the main board, and then flip the top fire nation card. This will determine if the fire nation statue will stay in it's current location or rotate one space either way. It will then tell you to move the ruin marker up either zero, one, or two spaces. Then, all Villains in the current location of the fire nation statue will activate, simply carrying out the actions on their card. Generally this will heal other villains or attack other characters. The fire nation statue itself will also attack, adding one damage to all hero's in its current location, including those in front of the active player if they placed their token into this same location. Players then have the chance to fight back, by rolling dice. This is what this game is all about, and there are a lot of dice in the game. They feel and look great on your fingers and eyes with their embossed edges and bright colourful design. As players roll dice, they are looing to match the symbols on the characters they want to recruit in the sector they are in, or on the villains they are looking to fight. Each character has its own set of dice to roll, and as you recruit new characters they will brig new dice to roll in this phase, offer re-rolls, or other useful powers. After you have rolled all your dice you must assign at least one to one card or action. Either fighting a villain, recruiting an ally, activating a power on your player card, or moving on the balance track. You can see some of the spots on the balance track need certain dice faces to be rolled in order to progress. More so on the harder tracks. When you assign dice to villains, if you manage to get one dice for each face needed, you can add one damage token to this card at the end of your dice rolling phase. Most cards have two to six damage spots, sometimes more. You need to fill a track before that card can be defeated. So, for the Pirate Captain below for example, it needs one water and one fire dice face to add one damage, and two damage to defeat it. As you assign dice, you can then re-roll any un-assigned dice. This continues until all dice are assigned. If ever you cannot assign a dice, the dice is lost. One dice must be used each round. But remember you have four positive ways to use them, and re-roll to use. So I would say 90% of dice can be used in the game. But of course there is some luck here and a wasted dice is frustrating. One way you can mitigate this, other than the re-rolls, is by using the Pai Sho tokens. These are gained via different character powers, or you can take one if ever you cannot use any of your dice to fight a villain, recruit an ally, or move on the balance track. Often you can flip two tokens, and choose one to take. You can then spend these tokens at any point to replace a dice face you haven't rolled yet, add an extra dice, re-roll dice, or remove damage. Once all dice are assigned and activated, any villains defeated or characters recruited will be moved either off the board or into your play area. These cards are replaced from the top of the deck, and the next player will take their turn. This will continue until either side of the balance or ruin track reaches its summit. At this point, at the end of the players turn, all character's or villains with the black sun marker will be removed from play. If you reach the top of the balance track before or at the same time as the ruin track, the villains will go. If the ruin track gets to the top first then the characters will go. Any hero's lost this way are considered defeated and count towards the end game tally of ten or more. It is possible to still win the game if the ruin track gets to the top first, but it is a lot harder. Focusing on moving up on the balance track in the first phase is important. Once all cards of either type are removed, the balance and ruin track is also removed from the game. You will now enter the second phase of the game. The three final battle cards are placed into their locations on the main board, and the game will continue. Now, when the statue moves, the ruin track will no longer be activated, but the final battle cards will trigger. Players need to try and roll the dice faces shown on these cards when in the right location, and when there are no villains present. Each battle needs two damage to be defeated. When this happens, the card if flipped and an immediate bonus is awarded. If a player can flip all three final battle cards before they loose too many hero's, they will win the game. Is it Fun? Playing Avatar feels very much the other Rising games. However, the balance and ruin track does add a new element to the game, with a new way to split the main phase and the end game phase. But the reason people will buy this game is the theme. With a Star Wars, Batman, and Avengers theme already out there, the designers of this game are staying firmly in the fantasy/comic book world. But I think that is because they know gamers are collectors as well as players. Hence this game being beautifully produced, and just like the other games in the series, coming with a real stand out miniature. If you already have one of these games, you probably want the others too. Hence the themes coming from similar genres. This is a Pokémon situation. And I want them all! The art on the cards is bright, clear, and stunning. Fans of the show/comic will be very happy to see all their favourite characters beautifully and accurately represented here in the game. The whole production is incredible, and I would want to keep this game even if I didn't enjoy playing it. But I do. However it is very similar to The Batman who laughs and the other games in the series. So, I can see why not everyone would want to have all of these games. You either need to pick the theme you like the best, or accept the fact that they are similar and just enjoy collecting them all! But do you even want one? I would suggest yes. If you enjoy dice games then you will enjoy this. It's fun to be able to roll lots of dice, get more dice, be able to manipulate your rolls a little, and grow you powers as you build up your armies. The game has a lovely build to it, and it is incredibly simple to teach and get into. And the pay off is rewarding if you win. I would recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of the Rising or Avatar series as a must have. For anyone else, this could work for you if you enjoy dice games, and want some theme to go with your rolls. Just check the many different games in the rising range to see which one works best for you.

This is a preview using a porotype copy provided for free by the publisher, Comet Games. The fact that I got the game does not affect my opinion. I'm not that cheap. Bye Bye Dice is from Comet games, a small independent UK publisher I am quickly becoming a big fan of. They make games full of charm and personality. Bye Bye Dice will be their second game when it comes to Kickstarter April 2022. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Find the Token card and one My Turn card for each player. Give the My turn card to each person around the table and lay the Token card face up by the side. Then take the rest of the cards and place them face down and give them a good tornado shuffle. Give the dice to the first player and you are ready to go. How to Play The first player will now start the game by rolling the dice. If they roll a six they can start flipping over cards. If they don't roll a six they will pass the dice to the player to their left. If you roll a six you can flip one card at a time. You are looking for a card with a one on it. If you find that card, place it face up in front of you. If you don't, place the card back, face down and flip another card. You can keep going until the next person rolls a six and takes over your spot at the table. You are looking to build up a run of one to eight with the final Winner card. The first person to do this wins the game. You will notice there are lots of different colours on the card backs. For a harder game, you need to get all your numbers in the same colour. For a simpler game, you can use any colour and also reduce some of the numbers, taking out the higher cards, and making the race a first to five, or six, of whatever works for you. As soon as someone completes their set with the final Winner card, they win the game. This can happen within minutes, or depending on the roll of the dice and the rules you are playing, can take a little longer. But either way it will be frantic! Some of the cards have special powers. They will either help or hinder you. Everyone starts with a My Turn card. This can be played at any time to take over at the table and start flipping cards without rolling a six. There are more My Turn cards in the deck. The Steel Any Card lets you take a card from another person. They will then need to replace that card when it is their turn before they can carry on their their sequence. For example, if another player has a One and Two and you take their One, they need to take another One of their next turn, rather than carrying on from Two. The blank card works as a wild and can replace any number you need. There is also a card with a hand on that if you flip over, means you have to stop flipping and join the rest of the players rolling the dice. The most entertaining card is the Bye Bye Dice card, which means you can throw the dice away to stop the other players from being able to roll it! You can house rule this however you set fit, big throw, small throw. In the room. Within view. Whatever works for your group. But it's hilarious either way and I am all in for it! The cards are all very bright and easily marked. You will be able to see what they are quite quickly. I am unsure how easy this will be for players who have colour blindness though. They may need to consider different style fonts or backgrounds for the final copy. I am not an expert here and this is just a prototype version Is it Fun If you like real-time games then you may well love this. If not, it may be a little stressful for you! I love it as it reminds me of a game I played each birthday when I was a child. We had to roll a dice, and if we rolled a six, we could start putting on layer upon layer of winter clothing. When done with the clothes, and this included thick winter gloves, you could then start eating a chocolate bar, but you had to use a knife and fork to do so! At any point, if another player rolled a six, they would rip the clothes off you, start putting them on themselves, and take over eating. Or at least trying to! It was a real treat for me, and a lovely memory. And this game takes me right back to that feeling. I may introduce a chocolate bar to this game! Just for nostalgia sake of course. For young children and families, this is a great game. Perfect for a young children's party vibe, the same that my old family chocolate bar game was used for. When it arrived in our house my kids wanted to play it non-stop all evening. And this was without the chocolate bar expansion! The game is quite simple, and there is not much strategy to it. Although you can place the cards back wherever you like, and try to remember where you placed certain numbers and cards. But this is mainly about acting and moving fast. A true race game. If you enjoy that kind of tension, pressure and the frantic nature of a game it creates, this well could be for you.

Velonimo WBG Score: 8 Player Count:2-5 You’ll like this if you like: Tichu, Scout, Lama. Published by: Studio Stratosphères Designed by: Bruno Cathala Road cycling seems to be hugely popular now-a-days. So are cute animals. I can see what they did here! I love card games. Simple, family-friendly games, perfect to get out after dinner for some quick fun. So, as someone who likes cute animals and getting out on my bike, I am all in for this. Let's get it to the table and see how it plays. Set Up Buckle up. This is a tricky one. Set aside the Award Jersey card, shuffle the rest of the deck and deal out 11 cards to each player. You are now done! Woah! Time for a rest How to Play Players will now play in turn, either playing a card or not. Attacking or passing. This is a ladder climbing game, so it's all about trying to beat the cards on the table. When you attack, you can either play a single card or a group of cards. When you play a group they must have the same value or colour. When you play any card it must beat the current active set on the table. You can do this by playing a regular card or combination of them, or one of the higher value Hare cards. Play will continue like this until all players pass after one player attacks. They will do this as they either do not want to or cannot beat the current set. Cards are scored by their numerical value for a single card, or by the number of cards plus the lowest value number for a combination. Whenever you play more than one card, each card immediately becomes worth ten points, and you will add a bonus of the lowest number. So, three blues that are a Two, three, and four, would score 32. Ten for each card and then plus two for the lowest value card, the two. The player with the wining cards will then score points equal to the round, based on how many players are still in play. For example, in a three player game, in round one, the winning player will score two points. One for each player. One as it is round one. So two in total as there were two other players. For round four in a four player, the winning player will score 12 points. Four for each player. Four as it is round four, and 12 as there were three other players. The game will run for five rounds, but the rules suggest you can modify the number of rounds for a longer or shorter game to suit your own desires. At the end of each round, the winning player is awarded the below Carrot Jersey card. This is a bonus plus ten card that can be played once in the subsequent round, to increase the value of any card or combination of cards. Some have suggested that this just helps the winning player but the idea behind it ,as explained by the designer himself in the comments in this video, is to help the leader out. As the leader will most likely become targeted in the next round using the final group of cards, the Leaders. Therefore they need some help in the shape of the Carrot Jersey. The Leader cards are the Turtles, all with a value of one. For each Leader than you play, you can take a random card from an opponents hand. For each card that you take this way you must give one back, but you can choose which card this will be. It could even be the card you just took if you don't want it. It's a great way to get rid of cards you cannot or do not want to use. And as shown, a good way to target the leader to slow them down. There is a two player variant where there are just a few changes. The Carrot jersey is not used and the water carriers, the number two cards, have a special power. When any Camel card is played, you must add the top card from the draw pile to your hand. If you play more than one Camel card at once, draw one new card for each card played. Each time you win an attack you must draw the top card again, but this time, either take it for yourself, or give it to your opponent. Is it Fun? Velonimo is a simple game. It takes a round or two to get used to the scoring. Ten points per card plus the lowest card number is a simple concept but as you will also be playing single cards with their face value too, it will take a second to let it click. But when it does, it flows very quickly, and is just so much fun. Velonimo is one of those card games that you play that feels so familiar. Like it was a game you played in your childhood. And you are now reliving all those memories again for the hundredth time. Even if ladder climbing is new to you. This has a homogeneous feeling as you play it that warms your heart. The art on the cards is wonderful and certainly helps with the charm of this game. This, added to the simplicity and familiarity of play, plus the smooth and fast gameplay, has all combined to make this a firm family favourite in a matter of weeks in our household. There are some games that you just reach for over and over again as you know they will deliver. Velonimo is one of those. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys simple card games that offer a come-back-and-play feeling. Simple rulesets. But high in interaction and fun. Velonimo joins a large group of great card games that can be enjoyed by anyone. But also a small group that offer high levels of fun every time you play it.