Category: Medium games

The ultimate battle… who will rule Manhattan?! Or would you prefer… say… Hong Kong? In Manhattan you are playing buildings to try to have the biggest buildings, the most buildings per city, and tons and tons of buildings.

You are frequently battling over buildings, as you place pieces on each other’s pieces. This helps you achieve the goal of highest building in the world. Whoever has the piece on top at the end of the round owns the building and earns points for it.

You place pieces by playing a card. The grid of spaces is always on the bottom of the card. You play the card in front of you, and, depending on your position, may play on a building in any city if it is in that position. This way, what would get you a building in the top right of a city could get me a building in the bottom left of a city.

At the end of each round, points are awarded for each of the categories listed in the first paragraph. At the end of four rounds, when you’re out of building pieces, the person with the most points win.

Geeky Idea: Put a Godzilla figure on the board when you’re done and let him knock down the board. Either that, or a cat.

I would recommend this for people with lots of gaming experience who aren’t afraid to lose.

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Watched Nightmare Before Christmas? Played Munchkin? Like both? This game is for you!
I know I’m starting to get a little excessive about Munchkin, but this week I’ve decided to write my post about Munchkin Nightmare Before Christmas.

If you haven’t read my previous Munchkin posts, please do so now.

Like in my other posts (told you you should have read them), the main difference is gear and monsters. However, this edition also adds rides. For example, the Wind-Up Polar Bear. You can only have one ride at a time.

You could fight the Platinum Dragon in regular Munchkin, who, while he does breath fire, is sort of cute, or you can face the Oogie Boogie, which is definitely a tougher monster. You can fool around with that Eleven-Foot Pole you never quite figured out how to use, or you could try something more efficient. How about say, hmm, a Guillotine?

I’ll try to keep this short: I’ll play this with my parents and convention friends.

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In Floating Market you are Ama’s little grandchildren. The first grandchild to collect 5 different types of fruit wins. Each turn you will have 3 customer meeples who will do assorted tasks for you.

There are a wide variety of tasks that you can have the meeples do. First of all, you can have them go onto one of the boats that have the fruit. Second of all, you can have them go to the Fruit Stand. The Fruit Stand allows you to take a fruit if one of the boats adjacent to you scores.

You can also send them to the Boatsman.  The Boatsman allows you to retrieve all of your out of play dice that turn only. You can build a Dock, to improve your chance of collect coins. Or perhaps you would like to visit the Artist’s Hut to add a surprise to the Dice Pool. If you please, you may stop in the Temple, to send a Fixed Tile to the Dice Pool. There’s also the Woodworker’s Stall, the North and South Traders, and the famous Tailor. Of course you can’t forget our other 2 friends, the Fishmonger and the Office. And then there’s the Market. You can place meeples on 3 of these places each round.

In addition to the loads and loads of places the meeples can go, you must also place at least 1 of your dice into the Dice Pool. This die will contribute to the roll that decides which boat of fruit scores. Under each boat there is a range of numbers printed on the board.  This range of numbers shows which fruit boat will score depending on what the dice in the Dice Pool roll. If you have a meeple on the boat that scores, you get one of that type of fruit.

I would play this with my family and convention friends.

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In Labyrinth, you are trying to be the first person to land on all of your magical objects and characters and return to your starting square. Simple, right? Sorry, no. Why? Because the magical objects you need to find, and the paths you follow, are always shifting.

At the start of your turn, you look at the top card on your personal draw pile. This is the current goal you are trying to reach.

Each turn you place the spare path at the end of a row and push. The piece that comes off the other end of the board becomes the next spare path. Once you have shifted the paths, you may move your piece anywhere that a path connects to your tile. At the end of your turn, place the objective back on top of your personal draw pile.

When you land on the symbol on the board that matches the symbol on your card, lay your card face up to show you’ve completed it.

I would play this with my family and friends.

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I first tried Evolution in November at a convention with Mom. I loved it. While Mom went to the art show and the dealer’s hall, I stayed and kept playing over and over again.

Recently, Evolution’s first expansion* came out. In the original, you have species cards with little cubes that say what the population and body size of that species are.

Each turn you play trait cards on your species. For instance, you could have a Horned species, which means that if a Carnivore tries to attack you it must lose one population. You have a maximum of three traits on each species. So, for instance, you could have a Climbing Horned Carnivore. After you play traits, you feed from the watering hole or food bank.

In the expansion, you can have flying species and several new traits. They also introduce event cards. So now you could have a Horned Avian (flying) species with Quills.

In addition to the watering hole, there is also the cliff. Avian (flying) species can take from both the cliff and the watering hole when feeding, but land species can only take from the watering hole. The expansion also adds length to the game because of the additional cards.

I would play this game with my convention friends and my parents.

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* Our copy was purchased through Kickstarter.

“Cassandra and I first played DiXit a couple years ago when we went to a gaming store for International Tabletop day. Silly me… I thought we could stay for an hour or so after lunch and then head home. It was closer to three hours later when we left, having played a variation or two of Fluxx, DiXit, and an assortment of other games. The game quickly made it onto our game shelf, but somehow sat unplayed until recently….“ (Mom)

DiXit is an interesting way of describing pictures. On your turn, you play one card from your hand and give it a quick description. For instance, in the  picture shown at the bottom of the page, the clue was “Light.” After you make your description and play your card face down, everybody  else plays the card from their hand that they think best fits the description. You then shuffle all of the cards together and play them all face up.

Next comes the voting. Everybody takes their voting tiles and chooses the one with the number of the space where they think your card is. The numbers of the spaces are written on the side of the score board.

Finally, we score.^* You reveal which card was yours. The scoring is quite possibly the trickiest part of the game. If everyone found your card, than you don’t get any points. If nobody guessed your card, you still don’t get any points. You want some people to figure out which one was yours, but not all, or you will not gain any points for that round. The first person to reach 30 points wins.

I would play this game with my immediate family and convention friends.

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* Well, everyone else does. If you look really closely at the picture, there are 3 little painted rabbits. I was the blue, way back on the 4.