Month: April 2024

We first played Flyin’ Goblin back in January, the day it was gifted to Mom, and we’ve played it many times since. This is mainly because there are catapults involved.

Yes, you heard that right. Catapults! The “Flyin'” part of Flyin’ Goblin is quite literal; gameplay involves launching your Goblin meeples into the castle so they can pillage the Rooms they land in. Coins are used to recruit more to the cause, be they more soldiers to fling, the Captain, to fling with doubled effects, or Robbers, who chill on Roofs and burgle a Diamond a turn. Diamonds are one of the victory conditions; your other option is to build all tiers of the Totem without your opponents knocking it down. (The Totem also sits on a rooftop, and costs Coins to build.)

The actual catapulting is a mix of accuracy and speed – you want to land in specific Rooms, certainly, but you also want to launch all your Goblins! Everyone starts this step at the same time, and continue at their own pace until all but one player have called out “Finished!” The last player then gets one more launch.

Alongside resource Rooms, there are a couple that have penalties, and several that simply have effects. Whether they’re good or bad depends entirely on what you were looking for! They are not, however, optional. If you land in the Pantry and you have two Coins, you must trade them for two Diamonds.

The “honeypot” of the arrangement is the King’s Bedchambers, which give you three Diamonds for landing there. If you gained the Balcony by knocking the King off it (not visible in my pictures, as the King has already been displaced and given his consolation prize of a lower Roof; at the beginning of the game, the Balcony balances over the top of his Bedchambers) you get five instead! Knocking the King down from his lower Roof will also gain you the Balcony, later in the game, but now you’re just bullying the poor guy.

If you’re not familiar with the serotonin rush of flinging little game pieces at the board for points, I highly recommend it. Good for the soul. Try not to hit the other players, though!

Scarf-N-Barf is a vomit-humored game from Steve Jackson Games, and both very simple and very quick. It’s exactly what it says on the tin; you’re going to (in card game manner, thankfully) eat lots of junk food, then go on crazy rides and try not to hurl.

For breakfast, lunch, and dinner each – you’ve spent all day doing this, vomit not deterring you – you’ll pick three of the six cards you’ve been dealt, representing the food you eat. Some of these sound really good: Cheese Curds! Some do not, like the Chowder Pop. All foods have a color-number combo associated with them; the more points its worth, the more of these criteria they have. After everyone has picked their meals, three Rides are dealt (with names like “Tilt-A-Hurl” and “Hork-A-Tron”) which all players will suffer together. One Ride at a time, the corresponding color dice will be rolled, and any food items that match both the color of the die and the number rolled are lost; you throw up straight into the discard. Any foods that survive all three Rides are successfully digested. At the end of the day, the player who’s retained the highest point value wins!

This is one of those games that’s about luck in a variety of ways. The cards you’re given. The dice indicated by the Ride cards. The way you actually roll. Doubles on your cards are a pain; doubles on your dice are a gift. There are several ways to strategize and none of them are guaranteed to work. The chaos is palpable. And your actual stomach’s contents are safe, unless the concept (or the cards) makes you queasy.