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Do You Know the Way to E-ly-sium?

Elysium

“Elysium”

designed by Matthew Dunstan and Brett J. Gilbert, published by Asmodee Games & Space Cowboys

Call upon the powers of the Greek Gods and build your legends! Yes, it is a resource management game, and yes, it is a set collection game, but never done like this.  Choose from a variety to different gods to start the game: some gods have attack powers, while others are far more peaceful.  Each round, draft a card from a central pool and knock down one of four pillars, but make sure the pillar you knock down doesn’t stop you from taking a future card.  Then use card powers, but only score them once you transfer them to your Elysium…and then you score points by sets. And it’s maddening in you only get five turns to do all this!

Hard to wrap your head around the mechanic at first, but once you figure out, it’s an elegant system of drafting and building.  The variable god powers will set the level of player interaction as well.  That’s a good thing.

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Play the Pax Romana

Concordia

“Concordia”

designed by Mac Gerdts, published by Rio Grande Games

Build your trade empire during the height of the Roman Empire. Using a hand of cards, send your traders out, collect resources, and sell those resources to buy more cards that gives you better versions of those beginning actions. In other words, build a more powerful deck of cards.  The resources on the board are randomized at the beginning of the game, so you never know what each city will have. Like “Settlers of Catan” on steroids: more decisions, less randomness, and at times, achingly slow at the beginning as you watch your opponents range across the Mediterranean and you barely get out of Italy.

Quite the brain burner as you try to maximize your very few actions.  One of these games where it seems like there’s always more to do then you’re able.  But fun.  Still fun.

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Like “Bang,” but with Anime

“Shadow Hunters”

designed by Yasutaka Ikeda, published by Z-Man Games

Players take a hidden role of either Hunters, Shadows, or Neutral characters in this anime-themed card game. Each role has a specific win condition: Hunters must eliminate all Shadow characters and vice versa while Neutral characters will have unusual conditions. Roll dice, move around the board, and play cards to deduce the identities of the other players before you attack them and utterly kill them. Or get killed yourself by an anime girl armed with shotgun, rusty axe, and chainsaw.

Love the art, love the theme, and the deduction cards make the game more focused and less random than “Bang.”

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Space, the Final Frontier…

“Xia: Legends of a Drift System”

designed by Cody Miller, published by Far Off Games

Outfit your spaceship with engines, shields, and guns and go exploring the galaxy tile by tile. Roll dice to move, attack others, do pick up and deliver missions, mine, and make money to upgrade your spaceship to earn fame points! Earn fame points by doing almost anything: including rolling a natural 20. Lots of choices, but subject to a kind of wonky randomness as you depend on dice for moving, defending, shooting, mining, traveling through space barriers, and blowing up on your second turn after a bad roll.

Almost a sandbox game with great-looking components.  Seems complicated, but flows smoothly and quickly, but that gosh-durned randomness…

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Better than Indiana Jones! Better than Indiana Jones?! Better!

thebes

“Thebes”

designed by Peter Prinz, published by Queen Games

Race around the world uncovering valuable archeological finds from Greece, Rome, Palestine, Egypt, and Mesopotamia! Spend “time” to travel around Europe as you pick up knowledge and assistants and tools to unearth artifacts from the five different sites. Spend even more time to improve your chances as you “dig” up the artifacts. “Dig” for the artifacts by making blind pulls from a bag filled with good, point scoring stuff and dirt. Lots of dirt. The more knowledge you have and the more time you spend, the more pulls you get, but be careful, you might just get dirt, lots and lots of dirt.

There is a great metaphor about “spending time” in this fun, fast-paced game that can get really, really frustrating.

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Conquer the Iron Throne in 15 Minutes or Less!

GoTWesteros

“Game of Thrones: Westeros Intrigue”

designed by Reiner Knizia, published by Fantasy Flight Games

A quick filler featuring images from the Games of Thrones TV show. Be the first to get rid of all the cards in your hand by placing them in a pyramid shape: but be careful, cards on subsequent levels of the pyramid must match the color of one of the cards underneath. Bland with two, but with three, the action gets tight pretty quickly as your color options disappear.  Last player out wins the round, and then the oddball scoring takes over: each card left in your hand is worth one point, low score wins.

Just enough thinking to make this game interesting, but loop the theme song from the show to make it more thematic.

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Attack on DC Deckbuilding

“Attack on Titan: Deck-Building Game”

designed by Matt Hyra, published by Cryptozoic Entertainment

Strap on your Air Gear and get ready to fight off some titans!  Two great tastes in one: based on the very popular anime and using the Cerberus deck-building engine, which is the core of the DC Superheroes Deck-building game. Defend the wall from rampaging Titans as you use new Thrust cards to scoot along the wall buyin’ cards and fightin’ Titans! Great wound system and an excellent spatial component: surely the Reeses Peanut Butter Cups of deck-building games.

Just the right balance between challenge and difficulty in this light to medium deck-builder.  Plus, it’s Attack on Titan!

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Coal, Glorious Coal

“Coal Baron: the Great Card Game”

Designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, published by Stronghold Games

Become a coal magnate in industrial Germany! Mine the coal, transfer it onto waiting coal cars, attach engines to the cars, acquire contracts, and deliver coal for victory points. All done with a clever worker placement that uses numbered cards! Play cards up in sequential order in order to do a task: the more people want to do a task, the more workers it will take. Since the worker cards have to be placed sequentially, careful planning is a must. Then watch one player destroy everyone else’s careful planning by blindly buying endgame bonuses.

A tricky, brain-burning, card-driven, worker placement game, where you feel like there’s a flurry of activity, and then you say, “that’s all I did?!”

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Cave Paintings Good

“Lascaux”

Designed by Dominque Ehrhard & Michel Lalet, published by Mayfair Games

Explore the wonders of Lascaux in this set collection card game. Cards are set out and each player secretly decides which cards they want. Bid stones to stay in and get first choice of cards: pass, and collect the stones in the pool, but you go to the back of the line in terms of choice! Force your opponents out, get first pick of cards, but you’re out of stones to stay in the next round! But, remember, you only score points if you have the most or tied for the most of one image: one point per card. It’s like “No Thanks,” only you’re bidding to stay in, and man, am I horrible at bluffing. Just. Plain. Horrible.

In short, this is a next level “No Thanks.”  Like that one, like this one.

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Racing and Steampunk: Two Great Flavors

“Steampunk Rally”

Designed by Orin Bishop, published by Roxley Games

Take the role of a turn-of-the-century inventor or scientist, ranging from Nikola Tesla to Ada Lovelace, and then proceed on a wild road-race in your crazy steampunk vehicle. Draft cards to build energy, add parts to your vehicle, or get special powers. Use dice to power your different vehicle parts and fly down the course. But be careful, the faster you go, the more likely you will damage your vehicle and have to slough parts. And go limping across the finish line with literally only your cockpit left…

Draft, build, race: go for a spin!  I mean that both literally (that’s what you do in the game) and idiomatically (give it a try).