Boardgame Geek Meets Jules Verne

I am not able to attend BoardgameGeek's BGG.Con in Texas, but I am pleased to see them using a steampunk theme for their ad. A Jules Verne fan like myself can really appreciate this Journey to the Center of the Earth poster, and I hope you will, too:

Posted by Whatsits Galore.

New Door Mats

Even more awesome welcome mat designs. I wish I had more doors.

Come On a-My House Door Mat
by whatsitsgalore

Choose Your Own Adventure Door Mat: You See A Door Doormat
by whatsitsgalore

Role Player D20 Door Mat: You See A Door Doormat
by whatsitsgalore

Game Review -- Encyclopedia

When I heard the name of this game, I thought it would have to do with trivia knowledge. In reality, it's a dice-placement game.

As an assistant involved in the creation of the world's first encyclopedia, you travel the world researching animals and publishing your findings to earn prestige (and victory points.)

It took a few turns to get the hang of the game, but once I did, I enjoyed it. The dice-placement mechanic is structured so that you're torn between taking the die you really want and giving rewards to your opponents. Add to that the fact that the available dice get progressively worse and you have some really tough decisions to make. But there are so many choices on the board that you always have useful moves on your turn. If you can get animals with matching habitats or diets, you have a chance to score big, really big, in a single turn.

A few details my be off-putting to some, but they have less to do with game play and more to do with game design. For example, the cards feature pictures of animals without names, except for the Latin taxonomic name. That's no problem for my family of animal-loving encyclopedia-readers, but those who can't tell a wombat from a fruit bat might grow tired of calling every creature 'that thing.'

The names of the various sections (Expedition, Publication, Experts, etc.) should be printed on the board; it took me several turns before I could remember which was which. And the reference guides are so badly organized as to make them almost useless. But none of these things should stop you from having fun collecting your critters, sailing the world to study them, and then rushing to publish your findings, all in a mere six rounds of play. And, who knows? You might even come away knowing what a Monodon monoceros is.

By Whatsits Galore.

Game Review: Monopoly Ultimate

First, let me say that I hate Monopoly. It's light on strategy, it depends too much on trading (not my favorite game mechanic), and it benefits you after all the properties are bought to stay in jail as long as possible. But mostly because it's the game that never ends. I will only play if a time limit is set beforehand, player with the most money wins, game over.

All that changes with Monopoly Ultimate. It's your father's Monopoly, but with 3 added expansions that speed up the game and make it actually fun. Not my favourite game by any means, but fun. Here are some of the changes:

Every space is for sale, including Income Tax, Free Parking, and Go. Just Visiting now includes paying for the privilege.

The golden car (I forget the actual name and always call it the Cash Cab), which you can become temporarily, picks up properties it lands on for free.

As soon as every property is acquired, the game ends.

My favourite part: special power cards you can purchase or get for free create game chaos. With the right card, you can build houses without owning a full set of properties, or become the bank and pay fines with embezzled funds, or win the game by rolling three doubles in a row. These are powerful powers, but you lose them as quickly as you gain them to keep the game even. More or less.

The game I played still took two hours, and I didn't win, but it went by quickly because it was entertaining. And I no longer have to excuse myself when Monopoly is suggested, as long as it's the Ultimate.

Tales of a Tabletop Gamer

If you play as many tabletop games as I do, you are bound to encounter some surprising events in the course of game play. This one was totally on me.

I'm not a big fan of the game Pit, but I will play if called upon. On this particular day, I started the hand with multiple barley cards. So, no surprise, I went for barley. The surprise came when I actually filled my hand and went out.

Instead of acclaim, I received criticism. "You can't go out with the bear," I was told.

I knew that. "I don't have the bear, I have all barley," I replied. But when I fanned my cards better, I saw that I did indeed have the bear. The letter "B" in the corner of the card fooled me.

After an apology, we dealt again and started trading. I miraculously got a full hand (barley again), rang the bell, and went out.

This time the reproach came in a less-friendly tone: "You can't go out with the bear!" Sure enough, I had the bear card hiding among all that barley.

I apologized again and took up the cards to deal, determined not to make another mistake. As I dealt, I tossed a card to myself and saw it begin to flip face up. In that split second, I considered that it didn't matter if everybody saw one of my cards, we could still play out the hand.

Then the card fell. It was the bear, the one card that, if anyone knew who had it, the hand could not be played.

That darn bear.

Disney Magic Kingdom Game Gltiches

There are always more bloopers to be seen in the Disney Magic Kingdoms Game:

It seems that Merlin and Mim are having their wizards' Duel a little too close to Snow White's Scary Adventures.

Ah, the infamous Invisible Hunny Pot concession!

Tales of a Tabletop Gamer

If you play as many tabletop games as I do, you are bound to encounter some surprising events in the course of gameplay. Here's a sample.

If you haven't played The Totally Insane Card Game, you are totally missing out. It's like Uno on steroids. Besides a host of insane cards too many to name here, there are more familiar cards like Skip and Reverse. This particular story involves the Take 2 card, just like the Draw 2, except you take from your opponents, diminishing their hands while you increase your own. In Totally Insane, when a Take 2 is played on you, you have the option of playing another Take 2 on top of it, thereby passing 4 takes to the next player.

The game in question started with a Take 2, played by my brother-in-law Tim. I played a Take 2 on top of that. The next player, instead of taking 4, played another Take 2. Cries of, "Take 8," "Take 10," and "Take 12" rang out as everyone played their Take 2 cards, going around the table more than once.

Finally, somebody was out of Take 2 cards. It was Tim, the guy that started it all, who had to take 36 cards from the rest of us, emptying all our hands and ending the round. We each scored zero. Tim scored enough to end the game on turn one. We all won, he lost.

The most amazing part is that the very same thing happened again on a different game night. We played all our Take 2 cards first thing, Tim took all the cards from our hands, lost the game in one turn, and gave the rest of us a shared victory.

Disney Magic Kingdoms Game Glitches

I still love playing this game on my phone. And it still provides glitches to enjoy, like these:

Once you finish leveling up a character to the 10th level, their tokens are no longer available. So where did this extra Zero token come from?

Same thing happened with Olaf.

For those players who want more room for buildings in their parks, look how my churro stand is overlapping Mudka's Meat Hut.

And here we have two park guests in Rebel helmets trying to occupy the same space.

Tales of a Tabletop Gamer

If you play as many tabletop games as I do, you are bound to encounter some surprising events in the course of game play. But none, I'll wager, stranger than this one.

I brought my favorite party game, Time's Up, to a church picnic and taught it to an interested group. The conversation with a teen I'll call Tony went something like this:

Me: You have to get your team to say the words on the card. It can be a movie...

Tony: Like Titanic?

Me: Right. Or a song or a book. Give clues to your team...

Tony: Like, "The movie where a ship hit an iceberg"?

Me: Yes. But don't say any of the words on the card.

Tony: Like you can't say, "In this movie, the Titanic started to sink"?

Me: Right. Okay, let's start. You go first, Tony.

(Tony picks a card)

Tony: Okay, it's a movie about a ship, and it hit an iceberg and sank.

At this point I leaned over to the player next to me and whispered, "Freaky."

Top 10 Best Dice Games

Dice and games, games and dice...they just go together. Here are my nominations for the ten best dice games, in no particular order:

Qwixx

Fun to play, hard to spell. You move higher on 2 tracks, and at the same time lower on 2 tracks, hoping for the right die roll in the right color. And you can even score on your opponent's turn.

Rattlebones

In Rattlebones, you actually create your own dice, thanks to an ingenious method of replacable die faces, and then use them to collect tokens in a creepy carnival.

Sorcerer City

You choose which tracks to advance in order to score. Sounds simple, but since one track affects another, it's really a fun and challenging mechanic.

Roll For the Galaxy

Your dice give you choices of actions, from exploring new worlds to shipping planetary resources. The trick here is guessing which actions your opponents will pick so you can piggyback on their dice.

Super Skill Pinball

I've never been a pinball fan, but I like using dice to decide which bumpers to hit for maximum ball time. More fun than actual pinball.

Sagrada

Sagrada wins the prize for most beautiful game. Draft the jewel-colored dice by color and number to try to create the highest-scoring pattern on your stained glass window.

Pirates Dice

Yes, it's just Liar's Dice with a Pirates of the Caribbean overlay, but the barnacle-encrusted cups have a cool texture, and the classic gameplay is still fun. Get yourself two copies and play with eight people for an awesome experience.

Dice Town

A Wild West overlay makes this game interesting as you choose which of the six stations on the street to try for. You need to roll the most of one face to become the Sheriff, pan for gold, have a shoot-out...

Martian Dice

The Martians are the good guys here, trying to roll and capture chickens, cows, and humans without being overpowered by tanks. A push-your-luck game.

Dice City

Not to be confused with Dice Town, players buy cards to lay out in their town grid, creating mines to roll resources, public buildings to roll special powers, and armies to roll attacks on other towns.

Plants vs. Zombies High Score

I'm sure it's not a world's record, but I'm pretty proud of my high score of 43 rounds in the Vasebreaker Endless puzzle in the original version of Plants vs. Zombies. I'm still not sure how I managed it. I've been trying to break that record for years with no success, but it's something to shoot for.

Games For Sale on Board Game Geek

Whatsits Galore now sells tabletop games in the Geek Market at Board Game Geek. Not only can you find entertaining content and useful reviews about games, but you can shop there as well. Find your new favourite game today!

Game Review -- Choose Your Own Adventure: House of Danger

I received this cooperative tabletop game for my birthday. It would seem to be the perfect gift, since my siblings and I so enjoyed the Choose Your Own Adventure book series when it was a brand new thing.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with them, the CYOA books told a story in the second person, so that "you" were the protagonist. Then every few pages would end with a choice: if you open the door, turn to page 27, if you go back to the library, turn to page 42. You would make a choice, turn to the appropriate page, and continue the story. This went on until you came to an ending, but then you could go back and read the story again, make different choices, and wind up with a completely different ending.

This was amazing! A book with choices you made that turned out differently every time. And the board game does a good job of replicating that vibe. Through the use of numbered cards, you make choices that take you through different scenarios to the five stages, stopping places, really, of the story, all in your quest to solve a mystery surrounding a strange house.

It's certainly not a game of complex strategy. Some choices might be logical, but many are purely random as to whether they turn out well or badly for you. But the fact that "you" are the protagonist makes it easy to immerse yourself in the story, giving it a tingle of anxiety when you send yourself into a dangerous or frightening situation. At least it does for me as I try to imagine what I would really do if I was there. The ease of play also makes it perfect for game nights that include younger players, though we played with strictly adults.

The original book series that began so wonderfully soon degenerated into a ho-hum experience, due to many of the subsequent titles that lost sight of the elements that made the whole idea so appealing. Later books contained overlong narratives with fewer choices and unnecessary gimmicks, like endless loops, teaser pages you could never reach, and lack of bad endings. As if we kids couldn't take it when our character died from making foolish mistakes! And copycat books from other publishers were even worse. It's like they didn't "get" the appeal of the original.

And that is the one real problem with the CYOA game. It includes several failsafes to ensure that you win, that you avoid the bad endings and come to a good one. When you come to an ending where you die, and the game does include some, you are instructed to immediately go back to your last card and choose again. Why? If we die, we can take it, just like we could take it back when we read the books. Just like we can take it if we fail in any cooperative game.

Not only that, but if you happen to succesfully reach the end of a stage without having found every useful item in the game, you are given a chance to go back and search some more. Really? Why then give us choices at all if you're going to micromanage us into picking the right choice in the end?

In fact, because there is only one story in the game, the failsafes completely take away the game's replayability. And who wants to buy a game you can only play once? Oh, there is a die roll involved at times, to get you out of a dangerous situation. And it is possible to fail enough times to die. But, hey, just go back to the previous card, right? Wrong! Better to lose and then vow to play again tomorrow to show that game who's boss.

But fear not, reader. There is a simple workaround to fix this. When you die, ignore that return-to-the-last-card stuff. Dead is dead, no do-overs. And if you neglected to find the sword or the flashlight, that's your tough luck. Save it for your next trip to the House of Danger.

You'll still eventually go through every possible scenario in the game, but at least you'll have multiple plays before you do and get your money's worth of a simple, fun game to pass an hour with.

All contents are strictly my humble opinion.

My Top 10 Card Games

Ever since publishing My Top 10 Favorite Tabletop Games, I have been dissatisfied with the result. There are just too many fabulous games that had to be left out of the list. To solve that problem, I've divided the world's greatest games into categories. Here's the second: my Top 10 card games.

Dragonmaster is out of print and highly sought after. The trick-taking and not-taking mechanism resembles Hearts but is infinitely more satisfying, due to the strategical necessity of choosing the right time to play Staff of Power. And when you're through playing, you can just gaze at the artwork on the cards. Or try some of these Game Variants.

The Crew also features the strategy of taking some tricks and leaving others, but this time it's cooperative. As the crew of a space ship, you are required each mission to make sure certain players take certain cards. It's up to you to see that they do so by throwing point cards away as often as you take them. As long as you throw them to the right crew member. Nerve-wracking fun.

In Sushi Go, you pass all the hands around the table, taking one card from each. To get the right amount of tofu, you might have to pass on the eel or the tempura. Be sure to buy the Party version of the game, as it comes with more entree choices. Maki or sashimi? Decisions, decisions...

There are multiple versions of Boomerang, each representing a different part of the world. I have Boomerang Europe, so that's the version I'm going to talk about. Try to collect every country in Scandanavia before anyone else to score the bonus. Or maybe one card from every geographic area instead. But can you do it while also grabbing up the right transportation cards? You might have to sacrifice one to score the other. And then there's that final card, over which you have no control, which gives you your 'boomerang' for the round. It can make you or break you, depending on the secret card you stashed before the round began.

In 7 Wonders, you need a lot of resources to build your Pyramid, or Hanging Gardens, or one of the other Wonders of the World. Not to mention the smaller cards you build to get points. That Town Hall is so tempting, but you really should have more glass and cloth, or you'll end up buying them from your neighbor, the same guy who's going to pulverise you if you don't build up your army instead.

Don't let the gruesome theme stop you: Guillotine is good family fun. Sure, you're lining up nobles to have their noggins removed, but with cards like, "After You" and "Was That My Name?" to move victims forward or back, you'll laugh your head off.

Trumpet is out of print, but worth searching for. There are six different suits, and you decide when you win the round which one is trump. Too bad for you that the guy who wins the next round places a suit above yours. Now there are two trump suits, one higher than the other. And soon there will be three, and four, and finally, all six trumps in play. But wait, there's more. Now you can switch the suits around to try to give yourself the best hand. Better hurry and play those trump cards before somebody else relegates your stars to the bottom of the heap.

In Nimalia you lay your cards down to form a grid of animals. Each round has its own rules for scoring, so you place your cards strategically to cover certain animals or place some in pairs or rows. As the rounds progress, it gets harder and harder to score well, especially when you have three rules to follow at the same time. You'll have to make some sacrifices to get the best score.

I couldn't leave out the Totally Insane Card Game. Think Uno on steroids. Alongside the familiar Reverse and Skip cards you'll find the Totally Useless Card, the This Hand Is Dead card, and everybody's favourite, the This Is Not My Card card. Fun, frenzied, and frustrating, play can take hours or, and this really happened, about a minute and a half. And it's only sold on their official website.

In Fantasy Realms, you pick a card, discard a card to collect the most points in your hand. Every card has some point value, but they also have qualifiers. Like, that Mountain card earns an extra 50 points if you also possess a Smoke card. But the Knights are minus 8 unless paired with a Leader. The combinations are infinite and you are continually rethinking your strategy. Is it worth it to keep the Wildfire that just blanked your Rangers? Maybe you should concentrate on Army cards instead...

My Top 10 Party Games

Ever since publishing My Top 10 Favorite Board Games, I have been dissatisfied with the result. There are just too many fabulous games that had to be left out of the list. To solve that problem, I've divided the world's greatest games into categories, the first of which is presented here as the Top 10 party games.

Time's Up is a long party game, but the progressively harder rounds make it well worth it. Start out by describing a famous, or not-so-famous person, progress to giving only a one-word clue, and end up with sounds and body language only. There is also a version where you have to guess titles instead of names, and I enjoy it, but the original is still my favourite. Take a look at the elusive Fourth Round of this game.

Tags is probably the best 'see-how-many-you-can-name' party game I've tried. The changing letter tiles ensure the game is different every time, while the ability to pick up unguessed words after your friend has failed makes for lots of bragging rights. And unlike some games, this one is not dumbed down enough to exclude the tough letters. Can't think of a villain who starts with Q? Too bad, I can!

When you first try Puns of Anarchy, you may think it's impossible. But don't give up; you'll soon get the hang of it. Alter your cards by writing over parts of the song title, movie, celebrity, or whatever is written there to create phrases that fit the categories. This is easily the best of the "choose-the-funniest-answer" genre, probably because actual creativity is required.

Dixit is a very popular game, and deserves to be. The bizarre but beautiful cards are open to limitless descriptive phrases, but you have to come up with one that only some of your friends will guess. Make it too hard, and you score zero. Make it too easy and you score, you guessed it, zero. Bluff other players with a great card on your opponent's turn and you steal his points. And when the game is over, you can spend a long time just looking through the cards. One caveat: this game has a load of expansions, but some of them have better cards than others. You might want to search the internet for a preview before choosing your expansion.

Wise and Otherwise repeats the game mechanic of Balderdash, but is a lot more fun. Instead of a word, you get a phrase to complete in order to bluff the other players, always beginning with, "There's an old Croatian saying..." Or Swedish, or Jamaican, or whatever. Maybe something gets lost in the translation, but the results are head-scratchingly hilarious.

This is an older game, but I've always liked it. The highest-scoring clues are the ones that use the fewest letter. You really have to stretch your mind to shrink your clues and still leave them guessable. Besides which, the other team can steal. And the write-on, wipe-off board with doors that open and close is cool.

Yes, it's pictionary. But having to incorporate cutout cats in your drawing sets The Cat Game above the rest. Cats are always funny.

Another impossible game, until you get the hang of it. You must give a three-word clue to the word on your card. But you must use the random word you get from another card. To get players to say 'bone,' you might have to start with "kid," as in, "kids eat this." Then the other players each throw out a one-word guess, one of which, say, "candy," you use in your next three-word clue. Thus, "candy causes these," can lead to "cavities hurt me," can lead to "pain when breaks," can finally get you to "bone." Whew!

That great old stand-by Taboo would've made the list if not for Banned Words. It's the same describe-the-word-without-saying-that-other-word mechanic, only the other team chooses the words you can't say. And you don't know what they are until you say them! Really!

In Funglish, you give clues by picking them out of a pile of tiles and showing them to the guessers. It's a mad scramble to find "dangerous," "European," and "dead," and hope they get "Dracula" from it.

No list would be complete without Honorable Mentions, in this case, Chronology, Sketchy, Codenames Duel, and Artbox. I haven't tried Pictures or Draw Your Own Conclusions, but I have high hopes for each of those.