Battle for Manhattan!

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.Manhattan

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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No soups, no salads, no entrees… Just Desserts!

There is a wonderful game called Just Desserts. It is a Looney Labs game and I first played it with none other than the wonderful Kristin Looney. The Looneys were the gaming guests of honor at Windycon (see my previous post). I also played Seven Dragons and Looney Pyramids, but that’s a different tale.Just Desserts

In Just Desserts you are trying to match desserts to what your customers do and do not want. You start with 3 desserts and 3 guests. On your turn, you draw another dessert and flip a guest card to walk into the restaurant. The first step is to try and match a favorite. The card says what their favorite dessert is. If you succeed in giving them their favorite, the guest card becomes yours and you draw a card as their tip.

If you don’t have a guest’s favorite, you can look at the components, for example, vegetables, fruits, and spices to complete Nature Girl. Nature Girl doesn’t actually have a favorite. Let’s pretend your hand had Baklava (pastries and nuts), Pineapple Upside Down Cake (cake and fruit), and Rhubarb Crumble (pastries and vegetables). For convenience, let’s pretend you drew Cinnamon Rolls (pastries and spices). You could combine Pineapple Upside Down Cake (fruit), Rhubarb Crumble (vegetables), and Cinnamon Rolls (spices) to win Nature Girl.

Now let’s pretend that instead of drawing Cinnamon Rolls, you drew Ambrosia Salad (fruit and marshmallows). You could not get any of the guests in front of you. In this turn of events, you would draw another dessert and play would pass. You may satisfy up to 2 guests per turn.

In this game there are 7 different families, illustrated by the color of the guest card. You win the game by winning either 3 of one family or 5 members of different families.

I like this game because it is some strategy, some luck and all fun.  I would play this game with my family and friends.

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Portable games

Need a game that you can play on the go, that doesn’t take much time, and is easy to play? Here are some of our personal favorites.

Pass the Pigs; Chupacabra; Easy Come, Easy Go

Easy Come, Easy Go is a fun math and logic game that requires you to be paying close attention. You roll dice to try to get certain number combinations so you can claim a goal, like Exactly 7. The game ends when someone has 3 goals. Plus, John Kovalic drew it!
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Chupacabra is a very appetizing game where you roll and eat dice with other dice. Chupacabras can eat cows, chickens and goats. (When you eat dice you acquire them.) For every chupacabra, you can eat 1 goat or 2 chickens. It takes 2 chupacabras to eat a cow. The goal is to have all of the dice.
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Pass The Pigs is a “dice” game where you use pigs instead of dice. Depending on the position they land in (like razorback, which is when the pig lands on his back), you get points. The goal is to be the first to reach 100 points.
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Would you like a role in Deadwood Studios?

Deadwood Studios is a brilliant acting game where you can do some minor acting. On your turn you move to another room, or, if you have already taken a role, you can act. If you move into a room you may flip the scene and then chose whether or not you want a role in it.

Deadwood StudiosOnce you have a role, you may rehearse, where you earn a token that will remind you of the rehearsal bonus (+1 to your roll for each token), or you could act. When you act, you roll a die. If you roll the number of the scene’s budget or higher (indicated in the upper right of the card), the movie progresses a scene. Otherwise, you receive money (unless you have an “On card” role) and the scene doesn’t continue.

In the end, the person with the highest collection of rank, fame and money wins the game.

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

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Everybody hail to the Munchkin song!

Munchkin Nightmare Before ChristmasWatched 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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Make Your Own Mixels

Before I start, I will clarify: I am effectively advertising the Lego Club Magazine. The most recent issue had a little game that I thought was adorable. You roll a 2×4 Lego piece to see how much you move. Each turn you pick up anywhere from 1 to 5 Lego pieces depending on the square you land on.  On one square you even have to put a Lego piece back, and there are a couple squares where you can lose your turn.  (When you lose your turn, we flip the Lego mover token – a piece picked at the beginning of the game – upside-down to remind us.)Mixels, a game from the Lego Club magazine

When you reach the end square, called the New Year’s Party, you start building your Mixel. The person with the Mixel voted best by the players wins.  Our house rule is that you can’t vote for your own.

Question: Which of the Mixels below do you like best? You can send me your answer by commenting on this post!

Mixels

I would play this with most people I know because it’s all creativity and luck.

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Takenoko

There’s a great game named Takenoko. In Takenoko, the emperor has received a panda. He leaves his panda in his gardener’s care. Your goals are plotting the land in specific patterns, growing certain amounts of bamboo, and having the panda eat certain amounts of different types of bamboo.Takenoko

These actions please different people. The emperor wants the land to be in specific patterns, the gardener needs to grow certain amounts of bamboo, and the cute and cuddly panda (who certainly didn’t eat the bamboo) needs to eat certain amounts of the gardener’s precious bamboo.

On your turn, you start by rolling the weather die. Each side has a illustration representing types of weather. Each type of weather has a certain benefit you can use that turn only. Once you’ve rolled the weather die, you place special tokens on each of the actions you plan to do. You do this so that you cannot change your mind after your first action. You get 2 actions a turn, unless you roll a specific condition on the weather die.

There are 5 actions you can choose from on your turn.  One option is that you can place new land tiles. To do this, you chose 3 face-down land tiles and chose which one you want to play. The other 2 get discarded.

You could also choose to move the gardener. He and the panda can move any direction in a straight line. If the plot of land the gardener moves to is irrigated, it receives one bamboo of the corresponding color. Every irrigated plot of land of the same color next to the one the gardener has just tended also receives a piece of bamboo.

The panda moves similarly. However, when he moves, he only eats from the plot of land he is physically on. The player takes 1 piece of bamboo from the bamboo plant and places it in their personal “stomach”. When the player has a specific amount of certain colors of bamboo in the “stomach”, they achieve 1 of their panda goals.

If you like, you could spend an action to irrigate a plot of land. You do this by taking an irrigation stick and placing it along the edge of any plot of land. The last option is to draw a goal card. You can chose from the 3 different types.

The game ends when someone achieves a certain amount of goals, depending on the amount of players. Once someone hits that certain amount of goals, it initializes the final round. At the end of the final round, the person who initiated it gets the ‘Emperor’ card, which is worth 2 points.

Now everyone counts the victory points in the lower left corner of their goal cards. The person with the most points wins!

I would play this with most of my friends and family due to it’s simplicity and peacefulness (except for the gardener… he’s upset with the panda).

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To the Floating Market!

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 Floating Marketwho 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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Munchkin in the world of Oz

Another Munchkin variant! Munchkin Oz, like Munchkin Legends (see previous post), mostly varies from the regular Munchkin because of the monsters and the equipment. However, in Munchkin Oz, everyone needs allies, just like Dorothy. So now allies are another wonderful object you can find!Munchkin Oz

In my previous post, I compared Munchkin gear and monsters to Munchkin Legends gear and monsters. As I said then, regular Munchkin gives us the Eleven-Foot Pole (2 handed item, plus 1 bonus to combat). Munchkin Oz provides us with Oil Can (1 handed item, plus 1 bonus to combat) instead. For monsters, you could fight the Platinum Dragon (*Yawn*), or you could fight the Nome King (“Aaah!”).

Please note that a lot of the references are from the books, not just the movie. Therefore if you have not read the books and are playing this game and don’t recognize something, that’s why.

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

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How am I going to escape this Labyrinth?

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.Labyrinth

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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