For our June 7 session we will be exploring recent award winning games (and the two finalists and 1 recommended game we have…..Next Station: London, Dorf Romantik: the Board Game and the Jury recommended Akropolis for 2022.

Board Game Geek (BGG) has its own user voted annual awards, the Golden Geek.  2022 winners can be found at

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3080060/17th-annual-golden-geek-winners-2022

 

We’ve played: Splendor: Duel, Flamecraft, Cat in the Box: Deluxe edition, and Long Shot: the Dice Game. I have a copy of Heat: Pedal to the Metal arriving this week. Any requests? What have you missed?

Next Station: London

(led by Tim) 2022 flip & write puzzle game with a twist – colored underground train lines are drawn with different colored pencils that rotate among players each turn. Players score a line’s number of districts, a line’s number of stations in the most filled district, twice for each time a line crosses the river and for each tourist site station your lines reach.

Dorf Romantik

3x (led by K-ban 2x, Armando) 2022 co-op board game version of a very successful chill/relaxing PC game of the same title. Players work together to lay hexagonal tiles, creating a beautiful landscape and fulfilling the orders of the population, while at the same time laying as long a track and as long a river as possible, but also taking into account the flags that provide points in enclosed areas. The better the players manage to do this, the more points they can score at the end. In the course of the replayable campaign, the points earned can be used to unlock new tiles that are hidden in initially locked boxes. These pose new, additional tasks for the players and make it possible to raise the high score higher and higher. The bar has been set after 4 plays – 134 for Sandy, Nicole and Steve. Once all have had the opportunity to play, we will start a campaign. A round only takes 20-30 minutes so it’s a good opener/closer.

Thunder Road: Vendetta

2x (led by Sean) 2023 sequel to 1986’s Thunder Road. Players rocket their team (three cars and a helicopter) down a stretch of post-apocalyptic highway and try to either wipe out the other teams or outdistance them and leave them in the dust. Each turn consists of a dice roll to determine car movement and a combat phase where you try to shoot or ram your opponents. There are two pieces of highway and when the lead car exits the front piece of highway, the back piece is placed in front (after dumping all the wrecks and slowpokes off of it) thus creating a never-ending game board. Folks on this game seemed to be having way too much FUN….so they played twice adding new players.

New York Zoo

(led by K-ban) Uwe Rosenberg’s 2020 polyomino game set in a zoo with gorgeous wooden penguins, kangaroos, arctic foxes, meerkats and flamingos. The author has previously plumbed these depths through Patchwork, and the multi-player trilogy of Spring Meadow, Cottage Garden and Indian Summer. This time around, Uwe uses the movement mechanic from Patchwork with the goal to be the first to fill your Zoo board with enclosures and attractions. Animals reproduce offspring, with full enclosures resulting in free attractions used to fill in those troubling nooks and crannies.

The Estates

(led by Tim) 2018 reimplementation of 2007’s Neue Heimat, by the same author. Players take on the role of investors seeking to make the most money by developing buildings. They bid for the various building pieces and place them in The Estates to their benefit. All buildings in completed rows score positive points, while all buildings in incomplete rows score negative points. Reviewers call this game MEAN as it is a super brutal, super elegant auction game that lends itself to tons of negotiation, politics, and clever plays.

Blueprints

(led by K-ban) 2013 game where players are architects, who must use different colored dice (representing wood, glass, stone and recycled materials) to build three different structures from blueprints, with the dice providing different advantages to you. In each of 3 rounds players roll and draft dice one at a time to fill the 6 spaces on their blueprints. Points are tallied to discover who wins the gold, silver and bronze prizes (and their resultant VPs) as well as earning VPs for achieving four public objectives. After three rounds, players tally their awards and prizes to see who wins. A good 30-minute opener/closer.

Steve