For most of my life, there was no tile placement sub-genre of board games. There was just Scrabble. This all-time great won me over at a young age and continues to be a favourite. Once I discovered the world of enthusiast board gaming, I discovered that there were many other games that use the concept of tile placement in very different ways. In this installment of the Board Game Night Playlist, we’re doing nothing but quality tile placement games. Let’s go!
card games
HUE Review
Ever since Love Letter became a smash hit, game designers and publishers have been cranking out micro games at a brisk pace. HUE, as part of the Pack O Game series of titles, is one of the smallest yet. Featuring only 30 cards in a box the size of a Juicy Fruit pack of gum, this little game can easily fit in your pocket for gaming on the go. Form factor is great, but who cares about its size if the game isn’t good. Does HUE deliver beyond the gimmick of its size?
Gamewright Announces Sushi Go Party!
The makers of the hit game Sushi Go! have announced the upcoming release of Sushi Go Party! This super-sized sequel mixes things up by allowing players to customize each game with a set of over 20 different types of sushi cards. Also, this new game supports 2-8 players, versus the 2-5 of the original.
I like Sushi Go!, so the name alone was enough to catch my attention. While I do have a bit of concern that choosing what sushi is in each game could take away from the original’s light and quick appeal, but support for player counts as high as eight is a huge plus. Might be wishful thinking, but I hope the game also has a better two-player solution, as two players in the original game wasn’t that great. Will certainly be keeping an eye out on this one, which should be out at some point later this year!
My Problem With Cards Against Humanity
Cards Against Humanity stormed into my life in a big way years ago. I was the first in my social group to have a copy, so for a good few weeks, it was a game that was played all the time. Then one day not long after that, it just stopped.
I bought a number of expansions and supported many of their holiday campaigns, but the magic that first came with the game disappeared and never came back. What happened?
Spyfall Review
From The Resistance to Werewolf, ferreting out the bad seeds in a group is not a new concept. However, deduction games of this style continue to make waves by adding meaningful twists to the core formula. Spyfall by Cryptozoic does this in a way that’s extremely tense for everyone sitting at the table.
Refining My Board Gaming Palette
When I first discovered the joys of board gaming, I felt like a kid entering a candy store for the first time. With so many games and no real concept of taste, I sampled many different flavours of board games. Some were fantastic, opening my eyes to a whole subsection of games that I enjoy today. Others were not so delicious, leaving me to shy away from titles of a similar nature. Through it all, my taste in gaming has been refined to a point where I have a good sense of who I am as a board gamer and what I like.
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Core Set Review
Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Core Set puts you in the cockpits of some of the most iconic ships in the galaxy. Whether you’re piloting an X-Wing or a TIE Fighter, you’ll be whizzing around in space, blasting enemy ships while evading oncoming attacks. Looking a a full setup of the game with a number of separately sold expansion ships is a sight to behold, but you’re only getting three ships in the base set. Is a three ship battle still one worth fighting?
Flip City Review
At first glance, Flip City looks like a city building game along the lines of Machi Koro. Both share city building as a backdrop, along with similar art styles and colour palettes. What sets Flip City apart is that it’s not really a city building game at all. In reality, it’s a press your luck game with some deck-building thrown into the mix. However you want to classify it, is this small title worth your time?
Codenames Added to the List of Awesome Board Games You Should Play
Codenames is part Guess Who?, part Battleship, and way more awesome than those two games could ever hope to be. Working in teams, players will take turns deciphering their spymaster’s clues in order to correctly identify their fellow spies in the field. Guess wrong and you might identify an enemy spy, or worse yet, an assassin that will immediately end the game, causing your whole team to lose.
Playing as an operative, it’s a blast to try and guess the names based on clues that might be amazing or horrible from your spymaster. Being the spymaster takes the experience to another level, as it really takes some thought to craft one-word clues that apply to multiple names. Besides being a fantastic game in both roles, the game scales well to almost any player count beyond four, so it’s something that everyone at the party can (and will) enjoy. This one is fresh in my brain right now from having played a ton of it recently, but I really believe that this one is fantastic and one that will have staying power. Whatever you need to do to play Codenames, do it!
Check out the full list of Awesome Board Games You Should Play!
Codenames Review
Working in the field right now are spies from rival sides, civilians and an assassin. Two opposing spymasters must help their field operatives spot their fellow agents with one-word clues before the other team can do the same. Meanwhile, an assassin is looming in the crowd, ready to prematurely end a mission if he’s outed. This is the challenge that awaits you in Codenames.
In Third Person 