Free-range thoughts about design, writing, and play
One of the best things about a convention like Board Game Bash is that you get a chance to play games you’re not sure about yet. That was the case on Sunday morning, when I got a chance to review Navegador by stumbling in just as a group was setting up to play it. I…
We played a bunch of micro-games at our June library meetup, and Eight Minute Empire was arguably the hit of the afternoon. That takes nothing away from Sail to India, though, which packs a meaty economic game into a few cards and cubes. In Sail to India, you are a Portuguese noble out to better his fortunes by…
For the last two or three years, I’ve been fascinated by cooperative games like Hanabi. I’m not absolutely sure why this is, but there are some good reasons. My elder daughter is old enough to play complex games, but would rather play with Daddy than against them. My day job involves a lot of work…
My elder daughter is developing a sinister chuckle, and she’s getting a lot of use out of it playing Love Letter. Simply put, the nine-year-old is cleaning my clock. That’s a surprise, because I wasn’t sure she would take to it at all. Yes, there’s a Princess in charge, and for my daughter that’s definitely a point…
Several people have asked what my favorite game from BGG Con was, and I’m not sure. There were a lot of good ones. However, the most pleasant surprise is an easier question to answer: Caverna: the Cave Farmers. Caverna is the latest game from Uwe Rosenberg, who is most famous these days for Agricola and…