Card Games are games that utilize cards as their sole or primary component. Mechanics run the gamut, including: trick-taking, deck building, card drafting, set collection and more. Play times typically run from 10-15 minutes to 60-90 minutes.
Many awesome games never make it across the water to the United States, despite being in print for 20 years or more in Germany. Now two of them have been bundled together for release in the U.S. under new names.
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On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Four Games for Two, three Dice Sets, two Letters to Santa and a Hanabi co-op card game. 4 Games for Two While snuggling on the couch together in front of a roaring fire can make for a warm Christmas, playing games together can make for a fun Christmas. Here are […]
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On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me Two Letters to Santa and a Hanabi co-op card game. 2 Letters to Santa Letters to Santa is a game of risk, deduction, and luck for 2–4 players. Your goal is to get your letter into Santa’s hands so he puts you on his Nice list and fills your stocking with games […]
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Christmas is just around the corner and I’ve got board games on the brain – again. I like to give and get games for Christmas. This morning I woke up with a variation of the classic Twelve Days of Christmas playing in my head, so I put together this little ditty, followed up by a few details on the games […]
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Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind Should auld acquaintance be forgot and games of auld lang syne. It’s so easy to focus solely on the latest releases when choosing games to review, that I thought I’d change things up a bit and reflect on some of my favorite games of auld lang syne. I have so […]
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Anything goes on Halloween. You can walk down the street in your pajamas and call it a costume and no one will blink an eye. So when it comes to hosting a Halloween game night, any theme goes, too. Finding good board games to suit that theme might be more of a challenge, except that I’ve done all the work […]
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Unexploded Cow was the first Cheapass game I ever played. (It always gives me a little thrill to say that. Then in the face of a shocked response, I grin and explain that Cheapass Games is the name of game’s publisher. Unexploded Cow is a unique and hilarious light-hearted card game designed by James Ernest, owner and founder of Cheapass […]
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Midnight at the Oasis, send your camels to trade… Every play you make in Jaipur, the two-player set collection game of trading and selling goods and camels, is itself a trade. Sure you get something good, but every move you make also provides an opportunity for your opponent. Perhaps that’s why my husband Tim and I love it so much. Let’s […]
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Lost Cities is the first Euro card game my husband and I ever owned. My husband picked it up at a thrift store in San Diego and put it in our game cabinet, where I’m ashamed to say it remained until after we moved to South Carolina. It wasn’t until we played it at another gamer’s house that we realized we had a […]
Read moreIn Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers vs. X-Men and Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men you play a mastermind controlling a team of Marvel characters. Your goal is to use your team of superheroes and villains to take out your adversary, another mastermind team leader. Reduce his hit points to zero and you win! As in most deckbuilding games, each player starts with […]
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Bohnanza, the classic bean-trading card game by Uwe Rosenberg who later would design Agricola, has had almost 30 expansions and spin-offs published in Germany since its debut in 1997. A relative few have made the voyage across the ocean to the United States. One of the newest immigrants, La Isla Bohnita, comes bundled with a partner in Rio Grande Games’ Bohnanza: […]
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Cloud 9 is a quick, push-your-luck style card game. You earn points by daring to stay in the basket of a hot air balloon as it rises. Your points increase as the balloon climbs higher from cloud to cloud, but so does the risk of the balloon crashing. Should you jump ship to save your points or trust that the […]
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I propose a new classification of board games: nobody can play just one. It should be applied to games that you immediately want to play again, even after just finishing a game. I first remember experiencing this phenomena after losing a game of Pandemic. We all immediately wanted to play it again… and we did! It’s perfectly understandable, we lost […]
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The Builders: Middle Ages is a sweet little micro game in which players vie to be named First Builder of the Kingdom by earning the most victory points by game end. To achieve this, players must combine wise choices of construction sites with recruitment of appropriately skilled workers. As you complete construction of buildings you’ll not only earn renown (victory […]
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While looking for some new games to bring into the store, I ran across Rise of Augustus, one of 2013’s Spiel des Jahres nominees. Spiel des Jahres, for those of you who haven’t heard of it, is a really important gaming award. It translates to Game of the Year. Spiel des Jahres nominations typically only go to the cream of […]
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