Play Every Game As If It's Your Last
One of my favourite activities is playing board games. I grew up with your typical games - Monopoly, Sorry, Scattergories, etc.. Those games followed me to university and into my adult life. During the holidays, we always played board games and it become a tradition to have a full day/night of games. Over the last couple of years, my boyfriend and I started getting into more modern games. In the beginning of our relationship board games never really interested him because he was traumatized by Trivial Pursuit (and honestly, if that was my memory of board games I wouldn't want to have anything to do with them either). Since we have quite the board game collection between the two of us I decided to start blogging about my favourite games and give a personal rating as well as a small description of how to play each game. The ones listed below are some of my current favourites!
Villages of Valeria ★★★★★
1 - 5 players
30 - 60 minutes
14+
Villages of Valeria is a village building game in which you build your village by using resources to build buildings (all from the cards in your hand) and bringing adventurers (by recruiting based on the buildings you construct) to your city. Each turn a player can either tax, harvest, develop, build or recruit (their choice will depend mostly on strategy). What I love about this game is that after the player is finished every other player has the choice to follow that player's action (for a higher cost of course but many times the extra cost pays off in the end). In addition to the resources you gather you are also able to pay any other player 1 gold for any of their resources AND it blocks that player from using their own resource until their next turn. Be warned though - there is only so much gold in the game and it can run out quickly depending on the number of players. Gold is always needed to use resources even if they are your own. However, at the beginning of your turn you remove all gold from your resources and keep it. The game ends when the first player to build/recruit 10 building/adventurers. The winner is the person with the most points for their buildings/adventurers and remaining gold.
Patchwork ★★★★★
2 players
15 - 30 minutes
8+
I was pleasantly surprised by this game. Online reviews rate this game as the best 2 player game but before playing it I just couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Patchwork is a quilt building game but before you judge it let me explain. Each player is given a 9 x 9 blank square in which there are quilt pieces in various shapes (think Tetris). The time tracking board is in the middle with all these quilt pieces surrounding the board. You are only able to pick up the next 3 quilting pieces from the marker (aka spool). You have to purchase the quilt pieces with buttons (you receive 5 at the start of the game). Once you pick up your piece the spool is moved to that spot. On each quilt piece there may be buttons and there is also a time tracker in which you will move your time token on the time tracking board. The time tracker also has spaces that you pass to collect buttons (determined by your quilt pieces that you are continually picking up). The goal is to have as much space on your 9 x 9 blank square covered in order to have the most number of buttons at the end of the game (once the time trackers reach the end of the board). For every square that isn't covered you lose 2 buttons so your buttons can be taken away quickly!
Forbidden Desert ★★★★★
2 - 5 players (co-op)
45 minutes
10+
Forbidden Desert is a co-op game where we try and recover parts for a legendary flying machine (a foreign flying object) buried in the desert. In order to survive, all players need to stay hydrated and survive the sandstorms that seem to never stop. Tiles are explored by the players to uncover parts to the flying machine, hydration, caves or resources to aid in the adventure. Once all parts of the flying machine are uncovered all players must find and go to the launch pad to escape.
Seasons ★★★★★
2 - 4 players
60 minutes
14+
Seasons is exactly as it sounds. The games plays for "3 years" going through all 4 seasons each year. The players are wizards with the ultimate goal to collect crystals (the person with the most crystals at the end of the game wins). The game consists of cards and dice (+1 to the number of players). In the beginning, 9 cards are separated into 3 different piles (each pile containing 3 cards) of your choice. Each deck will be given out at the beginning of each year with cards accumulating each year if not played. At the beginning of each player's turn the season die will be rolled. The season depends on where the marker is at the time of the person's play. Starting with the person who rolled the dice, they will choose a die and (in order) all reminding players will also choose a die. Each die offers various actions: increase gauge (max number of cards that can be played), harvesting energy (needed in order to play cards), crystallizing the energy (aka trade in your energy tokens for crystals), or drawing new cards. The extra die at the end of the turn is used to determine how many spots the marker moves which ultimately changes the seasons and moves the game forward. The cards played have a crystal value point that are added up at the end of the game. Be cautious, because for every card that isn't played there is a penalty of losing crystals as well.
Dice City ★★★★
1 - 4 players (I prefer it with 2 players)
45 - 60 minutes
14+
Dice city is a dice game where you are able to collect resources, points and army in your city depending on the colour and number on the dice rolled. Each player has his own board (or city) in which you use to accumulate resources in order to purchase cards to build your city up to increase your changes of obtaining more points OR to purchase points. The person with the most points at the end of the game wins.
