December's New Board Games
Here’s a stupid thing that makes me happy: managing to get a square number of games played in a month, one play of each, so the BGStats image is perfectly square and balanced! It’s mostly luck and only a tiny bit of judgment but I like it.
My achievement of the month was managing to avoid playing any trick taking games. Yay! It’s notable this month that the smallest and shortest new game I played, Deep Sea Adventure, was also probably my favourite of all of these. Perhaps that’s also mostly luck and only a bit of judgment?
Autobahn
This was definitely the heaviest of the new games I played this month and I enjoyed it a lot. However I think that might be down to the fact that nobody knew what they were doing and I accidentally picked a strategy that blasted the things everyone else tried out of the water. Don’t let one player build the majority of the petrol stations! It worked really well.
You’re building up the German road network in three separate phases. In the first two phases you can only build in what was then West Germany; and when you’re all set up with that Germany reunifies and you can blast roads through the east at the end of the game. I really liked that twist, the sudden expansion of territory was fun. The major mechanic of the game is to build up a network of lorries that take goods and deliver them to Germany’s neighbouring countries. In the final reunified era you get access to goods from Berlin that are worth big points.
There’s also a nice mechanic where everything you do is worthless unless you work your way up a track to be able to score points from things. I did very well out of this at the end of the game and was able to capitalise on what I’d done through the game.
Although I think I was pretty lucky in this game it seemed like a game with a lot of different strategies to try and I’d happily have another go at it.
Dinosaur World
I enjoyed playing Dinosaur Island last year and this is a sequel to it. They are both thinly disguised generic Jurassic Park games. I bought a copy in a used game sale earlier in the year and then I read some reviews saying this one was terrible and haven’t got around to playing my copy. But when another player brought a copy along to a game day I jumped on the chance to try it out. And it turns out I really liked it.
It’s got strategy and it’s very silly. If you want a more serious game then I would agree Dinosaur Island is probably a better choice (though it’s not a very serious game either). But I liked the fun stories we made up as we built up our parks and sent our guests off in jeep tours around them. It’s definitely one to play and have a laugh about how the Triceratops has just eaten the guests while performing tricks. I like the way your guests get bored with the exhibits you set up after a while which makes for a nice story; that really exciting roller coaster is no longer flavour of the month in round 4, and perhaps you forgot to save a staff member to run it anyway, nothing to see here guests!
Also in this version you need to think about how you lay your hexagonal exhibits out so that your jeep tour can optimise the path through them, and I like that kind of spatial puzzle which Dinosaur Island doesn’t have. One improvement on Dinosaur Island is the game lasting a fixed number of rounds this time.
In the copy I played the owner had replaced the tiny fiddly number tokens that keep track of the boredom level with small dice and that’s a worthwhile upgrade. I’ll be looking for some tiny dice for my copy and trying to get mine played this year!
Space Base
I’m surprised this game hasn’t come up on my radar before. I’ve liked the designer since he made Mystic Vale. It’s an easy to play game with a bit of strategy and a bit of luck. I feel like playing it more would bring out the strategy now I know what all the icons do. We played a five player game with three new players, including me, and I think we all enjoyed it.
You have a range of cards from 1 to 12; and each of them earns you money, points, income or perhaps some special action such as being able to manipulate the dice rolls. On your turn you get to use either both the numbers you rolled from two dice, or the sum; and by upgrading the cards you can also do the same kind of things on other players turns. It was nice that everyone had something to do every turn so there wasn’t the long wait there often is in a five player game for the action to return to you. Definitely something I’d be happy to play with new gamers or a group of five again.
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest
I played this at three players and suspect it would be better with more, it goes up to six players. Everyone gets a hand of cards that are different every time but the same as everyone else’s; and then you each secretly pick a character to go off pirating with. Each character has a different ability and each player is trying to manipulate the order that the characters get to choose treasure in in order to maximise their own points. It didn’t really gel with me; perhaps it would be better on another play when I had more idea what I was trying to do.
Quest for Eldorado: Golden Temples
In this game each player is a character who is trying to get from the same starting point to collect three different treasures from different places and get back to the start. There’s a basic deckbuilding mechanic where you find gold and buy cards from a market to improve upon the basic ones you start with. It felt like quite an old fashioned game; I’m surprised to see it was published in 2019 (actually it’s an expansion to a 2017 game but still). And also surprised it’s designed by Reiner Knizia, though he’s designed so many games that that feels like it should never surprise me. I feel like he’s a designer where I rarely like his games that much, they are very much games that I’m happy to play once or twice but would never suggest to be played myself.
Deep Sea Adventure
This is a 2014 game which the people I was playing with were surprised I’d never come across before. It comes in a very small box from Oink Games, the only problem with that is the tiny size of the meeples. Again it’s a let’s go and look for treasure game, this time it’s under the sea. I liked it a lot better than the game above. You dive down to the depths, the further you go the more chance you have of finding good treasure but the less chance you have of getting back before the oxygen runs out. It’s a competitive game but a bit of cooperation helps you get back to the surface easier which is a nice point. Short and easy to play but fun decisions to make, or rue. One I’d be happy to play again.
