Carcassonne fans and newbies alike will love this stand-alone addition to the Carcassonne family of games. Carcassonne: South Seas features gorgeous artwork depicting an island paradise, new Islander meeples, and 60 wooden wares (bananas, shells and fish) in two sizes. As in the original Carcassonne, up to five players can build the landscape, tile by tile, placing meeples to claim features. […]
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Glass Road, designed by Uwe Rosenberg (best known for Agricola and other worker-placement Euro strategy games), commemorates the 700-year-old tradition of glass-making. The Glass Road is a 150-mile path through the Bavarian Forest near the border to the Czech Republic, a remnant and reminder of the great days of glass production. In the game Glass Road, your job, should you […]
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Pandemic Legacy, designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau, is scheduled to hit game stores worldwide October 8. Each group of gamers that plays the game will write their own Pandemic Legacy as the game unfolds, campaign-style, in literally unique ways based on how each session ends. Because Pandemic, with the On The Brink Expansion, is my favorite cooperative game, I’ve been avidly […]
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With Pandemic: Legacy set to make its debut October 8, I thought I’d visit an old friend, the purely cooperative game that started it all: Pandemic designed by Matt Leacock. In Pandemic, you and your friends play the role of scientists trying to prevent a pandemic from laying waste to the world. There’s only one way to win: find the cure […]
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Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar is a worker placement game with a unique time element. The theme revolves around the Tzolk’in Mayan Calendar wheel in the center of the board that, when turned at the end of each round, rotates the five smaller wheels where you actually place your workers. As in most Euro games, your goal is to acquire the most […]
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Blue Orange Games, publisher of the award-winning Spot it!, has created a real-time dice game, reminiscent of Yahtzee, that plays in a flash! Oh, and that’s its name, too: Flash! In Flash!, players each take six dice and place the scoring chips in the center of the table. One player chooses a challenge: Six-of-a-Kind, Three Pairs, All Odds, All Evens, […]
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Lewis & Clark: The Expedition is a unique racing game utilizing resource management and an interactive mechanic for acquiring those resources. As explorers, players race up the Missouri river, through the Rocky Mountains, and on westward to Fort Clatsop on the Pacific Coast. The first player to set up camp at or beyond Fort Clatsop, wins the game. Of course, […]
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Dimension is a real-time puzzle game in which players, racing against the clock, attempt to build an 11-ball pyramid without breaking any of the current 6 rules. The player who’s the most successful at this over 6 rounds of play, wins the game. Players begin the game with a rule reference card, their own trivet, and 15 colored balls: 3 […]
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“Working in the Coal Mine, Goin’ Down Down…” Coal Baron is a medium-light worker placement game in which your goal is to become the richest Coal Baron. To accomplish this you’ll need to acquire and fulfill orders for specific combinations of four types of coal: yellow, brown, grey and black. I’d never thought about there being different types of coal until I […]
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Aim to Misbehave as a captain of your very own Firefly class ship. Hire some crew, take on jobs and keep flyin’. That’s the aim of Firefly: The Game. Firefly: The Game is a highly thematic game with heavy pick-up-and-deliver mechanics. Five Contact decks (Amnon Duul, Badger, Harken, Niska, and Patience) provide the jobs you can take on: some are […]
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Carcassonne: The Phantom is my favorite mini expansion for Carcassonne. I consider it a must-have, though it’s now out-of-print and hard to find. The Phantom shadows your followers. With Carcassonne: The Phantom Mini Expansion, when you place a meeple on a tile, you may also place your Phantom (if not already in play) on the same tile, but on a […]
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Now is the time for all ye wizards and would-be wizards to grab your wands and don your pointy thinking caps for some spell-casting, deductive fun in Abracada…what? In this family-friendly game, you and your fellow wizards take turns casting spells on each other. It’s a strange contest. You all know the same eight spells, inscribed on ancient stones. There’s one number 1 spellstone that can summon the Ancient […]
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Since its debut in the year 2000, Carcassonne, the classic tile-laying game, has received numerous awards and had many expansions and mini expansions created for it: 40 and counting. The latest large expansion, #9 Carcassonne: Hills & Sheep, hit shelves July 2014. Each expansion adds one or more new tiles and special rules which enhance play and increase replayability. Here’s a quick […]
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The tile-placement game Carcassonne just got a new expansion in 2014: Carcassonne: Hills & Sheep. This full-sized expansion for Carcassonne adds shepherd meeples, sheep and wolves, hills and vineyards, and 18 new Land tiles (identified with a little sheep icon). To add the Hills & Sheep expansion to your game, all you need do is shuffle the new tiles in […]
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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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