From Lost Cities: Roll & Write, to Welcome To…, to Cartographers, the roll & write genre of games is one of the hottest tabletop gaming genres around. Tracing the genre’s roots back to Yahtzee, modern games have taken its foundation and built many cool new games around it.
One game to carry the torch is Qwixx. This dice game takes the core concept of Yahtzee and freshens it up with modern mechanics that add strategy while also keeping all players engaged throughout.
You ready for another serving of sushi? This time, in dice form! Sushi Roll is the dice adaptation of the hit game Sushi Go and the third entry in the series. But with the first game being such a gem and its follow-up Sushi Go Party improving things with more cards and support for more players, is there anything meaningful that dice could add to the mix?
From Sushi Go!, to Sushi Draft, and now Sushi Dice, it’s hard to ignore the emerging trend of sushi-based tabletop games. At this point, I’m all for it, as long as the games are good. Sushi Dice is a frenetic dice game where sushi chefs work to prepare dishes faster than their rivals. Should your next board game night menu feature this one?
Dungeons & Dragons is one of the most influential games of all-time. It’s also one of the most intimidating. The game features a ton of rules and requires a group of players to have at least one that’s designated as Dungeon Master, which is a very difficult role to fill. To this day, I’ve never played actual D&D before and I’m not sure if I ever will.
With that said, that doesn’t mean I’ve been deprived of the dungeon crawling experience. D&D might be the original, though its core concepts have been streamlined, simplified, or just straight-up copied a countless number of times. This Board Game Night Playlist features dungeon raiding games that are fine-tuned for casual players to get their fix. Now let’s gear up and head into this introductory dungeon crawl playlist!
Whether it be on the silver screen, Saturday morning cartoons, or lunchboxes, superheroes have existed outside of the comic book pages for almost as long as they’ve existed. I, for one, knew of Spider-Man and the X-Men first from their cartoon exploits, while my first real exposure to Batman was from the Michael Keaton movie back in 1989. Superheroes have also had a presence in the board game space for decades, though the vast majority of these efforts were shoddy cash grabs.
Some of the modern superhero games still are poor titles that are excuses to make a quick buck, though both DC and Marvel have made honest efforts to improve their board game portfolios to the point where they both have games that are great by any measure. If you’re in the mood to live the superhero experience in tabletop gaming form, try these ones out!
Making its debut in 2014, the Dice Masters series of games won me over in a huge way with Marvel Dice Masters: Avengers vs. X-Men. Once I got a hang of it, I found the game to be fast and entertaining while keeping the spirit of the characters intact through their card abilities and generally-excellent dice designs. It also didn’t hurt that the game is generally sold at a very attractive price point. That said, I also had a few problems with the terrible paper bags that are used to contain dice and the fact that only one playmat came with the game as a centrefold in the manual.
Next in the lineup is Marvel Dice Masters: Uncanny X-Men. Fully compatible with all Dice Masters games, this starter set has the same general pros and cons of the original, including those crappy bags and only one playmat in the middle of the manual. The key difference is that the game comes with a new set of basic action cards, character cards and character dice.
Up until this very moment, I never really thought about all of the different meanings that “family game night” can entail. There’s a difference between parents playing board games with their young children versus adults playing board games with their even older parents, which is where I’m at now. The definition can vary even further, as there are a seemingly endless number of family configurations out there.
Trying to approach a family game night to fit every family configuration is a lost cause. However, coming up with one is a bit easier if you’re looking for games that are fun for all ages that don’t have any sort of objectionable content within them. Hopefully this isn’t too late for the holiday season. Here’s my Board Game Night Playlist that may work wonders for your next family game night!
This edition of the Board Game Night Playlist is designed around two-player competition. Drawing from my own life for inspiration, my brother and I used to play video games together all the time. Growing up, the games we’ve played together were competitive in nature, from Goldeneye, to Mario Kart to Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Now that we’re adults and don’t live together anymore, this happens less often, but we still make time for it where possible. Once or twice we’ve also put the controllers aside to play some analog games. Next time we get together for a one-on-one board game night, here’s the games we would play. If you’re looking to host or partake in a two-player board game battle, try these out!
Welcome to the Board Game Night Playlist! In what will hopefully grow into an ongoing series, I put together a playlist of games that you could use for your next board game night. Ideally, each playlist is created with the thought that all of the games on the list could be played within an evening of gaming. Also, I’d like for each playlist to contain some sort of thread that ties them together. For instance, I want to make playlists that are tuned for specific player counts, themes, gameplay mechanics or other logical through lines to make the most out of your next session.
This first playlist was inspired by a board game night we had with Mat and his now-fiancée Liza. Neither of them had played board games in years, with most of their experience coming from playing mainstream hits like Monopoly or Scrabble. What set of games could we pull together that were equal parts fun and accessible? Our picks out to be excellent choices, as we had a great night and inspired Mat and Liza to seek out more great board game experiences for themselves. This first playlist is the exact lineup of games we played that fateful night. If you’re hosting a board game night with newcomers, or are new to the medium yourself, try out this introductory playlist!
Throw on your Hazmat suits, kids. The smash-hit board game about curing four deadly diseases before they ravage the world returns as a dice game in Pandemic: The Cure. As such, both games follow the same premise and are similar in many respects. However, making the transition from a board game to a dice game has turned The Cure into a faster and somewhat more casual affair. Hoping that this game will surpass its legendary predecessor may be asking for too much, but does it stand out on its own as a fun and unique take on the tried-and-true formula?
In Third Person 