Food Chain Magnate is my favourite board game of all time. I get physically excited when pulling this game off the shelf, and before the expansion was announced, I would have argued that it was a perfect game.
I’ve owned the Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas for a couple of years now, and I’ve had a chance to play through most of the modules at least once. I thought it would be fun to go through each of the modules and briefly talk about how they change the game.
Some of these milestones big and add several new components, while others are very small, perhaps only a single employee being added to the corporate structure. These modules can be mixed and matched as you wish, and the rule book offers some suggested pairings, such as “Nightlife: New milestones + Night shift managers” or “Asian Fusion: Sushi + Kimchi + Noodles + Ketchup”. One day I’ll play an epic game with every module included, but until then, here’s my thoughts on each module that comes in Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas
New Milestones
This was the first thing I saw in this expansion, and upon reading about the new milestones and thinking about the ramifications of the new milestones, I literally started salivating. The milestones in Food Chain Magnate are pivotal, the milestones you acquire will form your strategy, and utilizing the benefits that the milestones offer you. Because of the importance and power of these milestones, it’s pretty common to chase specific ones at the start of the game. The new milestones turn the game on it’s head. Toss every strategy guide you read for the first game, because they’re useless without the old milestones.
Some of the new powers include “Earn $5 for every good marketed”, and “May pay salary with food or drink”, or “No longer needs to fire employees if broke”. Every milestone is unique and could be the crux of their own strategy.
I like this module on its own. Because such a core part of the game is changed, it takes a lot of brain power to keep in mind all the new milestones and abilities they grant. I don’t know if these new milestones would fall into the same ‘problems’ as the original ones, but the new milestones also have the Hard Choices (mentioned below) baked in. If you feel like your gamers of Food Chain Magnate have fallen into a rut, adding in the New Milestones is the perfect solution.
Hard Choices
As I said above, the importance and power of certain milestones lead to some rote openings. Players bee-lined for the milestones that would give them the edge in the game, after all, earning an extra $5 on each good can take the sting off of a pricing war. The first to train someone and the first to hire 3 people in a single round are generally the two that my group chases right off the start.
In a 4 player game, players diverge their strategies fairly quickly and all the milestones get snapped up after just a few rounds. The Hard Choices’ module puts a hard limit on some of the milestones, locking them out after the 2nd round. If you want that milestone, chasing it HAS to be your first action. After round 2, four milestones are removed: First burger / pizza / drink marketed, and the first to train someone. After turn 3, the first to hire 3 people in 1 turn is removed.
I think this module is better suited for lower player count games, where someone could theoretically earn multiple of these milestones. By only allowing players to earn at most one of these milestones, they’re forced to explore alternate strategies. Again, I almost always play at 4 players (although that could soon change as Bigfoot was quite sour after our last game) so this module hasn’t been helpful for me, but I could see it being an interesting addition to a 2 or 3 player game.
6 Players
There are now enough pieces, so 6 players can compete for fast food domination. I don’t know how crowded the board would get with 6 players, but I imagine this would be a very long game. 4 players is the sweet spot in my opinion, but I wouldn’t turn down a 6 player game.
The only thing this really adds is the map is now 4 x 6 tiles, giving players lots of room to throw down new restaurants and making planes slightly more powerful, depending on the layout.
Coffee
Coffee is the most recent module we played with and it was a bit divisive. With the coffee module, you can hire baristas to produce coffee. Customers will stop by either your coffee shops or your restaurants to grab a cup of coffee on their way to their destination. Customers will consume a coffee at every opportunity on their way to their destination, but not consume coffee at their destination. Coffee is sold at the same cost as other goods, including bonuses from gardens or cards.
The baristas produce very small amounts of coffee (producing 1, 2, and 5 coffees as you go up the chain) compared to their cook and chef counterparts, but they can be very powerful.
In our most recent game, I was successful in using the luxury manager to increase the base price of coffee to $20, and sold all my coffee to houses with gardens or parks, earning $40 per coffee. I also happened to be the first player to hit $100, which gave me the CFO bonus, increasing my income by 50%. This meant that by selling only 3 coffees, I earned $180 in a round while the other players engaged in a pricing war that drove the cost of goods into the ground.
The other players complained that there was no good way to combat the coffee strategy, other than moving their restaurants or putting down new, lower numbered houses in the hopes to force me to sell to non-garden houses. The core idea of the game is that players are competing for the demand on the board, the coffee seems counter to the spirit of the game.
I argued that I barely won. Yes, I earned a lot of money from only selling 3 goods, but my ability to produce coffee is severely limited. I think the counter to coffee is to flood the market with demand tiles and make money with quantity over quality. The luxury coffee strategy worked well for the early game, but had the game gone even just one round longer, I wouldn’t have been able to maintain my early lead. Selling 8 pizzas and 10 beers for $7 each with a $5 bonus on the pizzas is a great way to leave me and my 3 coffees in the dust.
New Districts
The new district’s module includes 5 new map tiles that are fairly unique. 2 of the tiles include apartments that have unlimited space for demand, but the demand must be satisfied in full. Other tiles include a house with a garden prebuilt, and another tile features 3 lemonade supply locations.
This module is one that I’ve just shuffled into the base stack of tiles and don’t bother separating out. One of the tiles requires the lobbyist to be included, but that’s hardly important. I do like more variety in these map tiles that I’m happy to have them available in every game I play.
Lobbyists
The Lobbyists allow you to change the map by adding roads and parks to the city. The parks act as communal gardens, attaching to several buildings at once. Every building near a park will pay double for their goods. If they have a park and a garden, they’ll pay triple. The roads allow you to make connections, at the expense of a road being closed for a whole round (road work detours, you know how it is).
The first Lobbyist played gives that player a whole extra map tile they can play along any edge of the map, extending it ever so slightly. In the last game we played, the tile was placed down, then a garden was laid on it, allowing a park to hit 3 different houses at once.
The Lobbyists feels more like a situational module. There are some games where I’m DESPERATE for an additional road, and others where I don’t feel the need for them at all. The inclusion of polyomino parks that can double or even triple the cost of a good is quite interesting!
Kimchi
Every dish tastes better with Kimchi, right? That was the logic behind this module, where a Kimchi master produces a single kimchi during the cleanup phase. Then, during the subsequent dinnertime phase, the Kimchi serves as a way to draw someone to your restaurant, bypassing the usual distance + price formula.
Basically, if multiple restaurants could fulfill a house’s demand, but one has kimchi available, that’s the restaurant they’ll choose to go to, no matter the cost or distance. Players can only employ a single kimchi master, so this is a powerful once per round effect, nearly guaranteeing that you’ll have SOME income during the round. This module pairs nicely with the luxury manager, and with coffee, as it gives a player some guarantee that someone will be willing to make the long trek past all their coffee shops to get their burger and Kimchi.
Sushi
Sushi is the ultimate luxury good. Houses with gardens will replace their demands with sushi at a one for one ratio (of both food and drink). This module is a way to stop someone from blitzing pizza to a bunch of garden homes and making out like a bandit. They still serve their low-class pie to the commoners, but the upper echelon of society that inhabit the homes with gardens will prefer sushi if it exists.
That said, houses without gardens will never want sushi, meaning the number of houses you can potentially satisfy after investing in sushi is vanishingly small. Unless you’re in cahoots with a local developer who’s throwing up houses around every corner…
Noodles
Noodles is the wildcard resource in this expansion. Basically, noodles can replace any food and drink, but houses will always prefer their actual demand over noodles.
I’ve played with this module once and saw it work very well. After a marketing blitz and several airplane and radio campaigns, the noodle master was able to satisfy the vast majority of their clients, pocketing them a hefty sum.
Ketchup
The titular Ketchup module is actually just a single milestone that can be added to any game. If someone sells your demand, you now have a -1 distance bonus for the rest of the game.
This can have some significant ramifications. If all else is equal, players will need to drop their prices by 1 just to compete with you. Forcing players to drop their prices to compete is a brutal strategy, as it can take multiple employees to drop the price far enough to ensure they’ll be the ones fulfilling the demand, choking their corporate structure, and they’ll be earning less money turn over turn. With enough pressure and the right mix of milestones, you could force players to start shedding their trained workers.
I don’t know how well of a ‘catch-up’ mechanism this ends up being, and I’m mildly disappointed there’s no ketchup tokens to play with, but it’s nice to know that if someone snakes a demand you generated, you’ll be rewarded with a bonus for the rest of the game.
Fry Chefs
The Fry Chefs are another employee you can hire. Unsurprisingly, Fry chefs goes great with Ketchup, as they work to mitigate price wars. When players race to the bottom on price, it’s nice to have a flat, fixed income that doesn’t drop (but doesn’t scale up either). A restaurant with a Fry chef employed earns $10 per house they sell to (they’ve added fries to their order). This bonus is a fixed income and doesn’t affect the unit price or distance equation in any way.
Night Shift Managers
The night shift managers are another type of managers that you can hire. Like the other managers, they can only report to the CEO (after all, managers managing managers is a ridiculous concept). Unlike the other managers, the Night Shift Managers have no slots, they don’t directly allow your corporation to have more workers per shift. What they do, is allow you to use all of your non-salaried employees twice in a single turn.
This is a great employee to have at the start of the game when your corporate structure is full of non-salaried employees. It’s effectiveness can start to wane as the game goes on and your employees become more specialized, but it’s still a fun employee to include.
Mass Marketeers
The Mass Marketers are relentless. Another single card module, the mass marketer employee triggers a second marketing campaign phase. Further to that, if multiple players play a mass marketer, every one triggers a whole other marketing phase.
This module has the potential to be absolutely bonkers. Demands flooding the market, which in turn, floods the board with cash and sends all players racing to hire enough chefs to satisfy the hungry hordes. Not only can several marketing phases happen within a single round, the duration for each marketing opportunity is only reduced by 1 at the end of the round.
Rural Marketeers
The Rural Marketeers adds in a highway off ramp and 4 giant billboards. A separate tile (called the rural area) is placed off to the side, away from the main map, and the only thing a rural marketeer can do is place a single giant billboard next to the rural area. The rural area acts as one giant house, sort of like the apartment buildings in the New District Modules.
The first rural marketeer played gets the honour of placing the highway off-ramp, which dictates where the rural area can enter the board (and the distance to other restaurants). Like the apartment buildings, there is the potential for the demand to grow so great that no one can satisfy it, which is mildly annoying.
Honestly, I haven’t found much purpose for the rural marketeers, but it might just be because I’m biased in that I like the new district modules and the apartment buildings they provide.
Gourmet Food Critics
The gourmet food critic is a new type of marketeer. While the other marketing abilities are based of proximity to the marketing event, the gourmet food critic simply markets to every house with a garden. Parks, apartment buildings, and the rural area do not get marketed to.
Movie Stars
In the base game, ties are frequent, making player order and hiring a brigade of waitresses to lure customers into your restaurant. The Movie Stars allow you to control the ties more effectively. Each player can only have 1 movie star in their employ, but when playing a movie star, you’re able to choose your play order before any other player. In addition to that, during the dinner time phase, if there’s a tie that has to be broken by the number of waitresses, the tie is automatically won by the player with the highest tier movie star.
This is one of the few modules I haven’t played with. I can see why where they’d be useful. Quite often players may be tempted to leave a couple slots empty so they can go first or last, as being first can be crucial when breaking ties. Now, as long as you have a B-list movie star signing autographs at your tables, you can be sure of your preferred order of play.
Reserve Prices
The reserve prices module replaces the initial bank reserve cards. In the base game of Food Chain Magnate, the bank reserve cards allow players to seed the bank with $100, $200, or $300, theoretically allowing them to plan for a short or longer game. In reality however, most games end around 8 or 9 rounds regardless of the status of the bank. Several players putting in a high number MIGHT extend that game by a single round.
The new reserve cards now modify the base price of goods, either slashing them in half, or doubling them entirely. knowing which way the base price is going to go can be massively powerful. Flooding the market with demand and ensuring you have the chefs in place to satisfy demands from every corner could be the key to victory. Of course the opposite holds true, if you and another player are in a pricing war, lowering your costs $3 or $4 per good, having the base price of the item plummet to $5 can kill your strategy. You can’t make payroll on a handful of $1 hamburgers!!
Final Thoughts
I really love Food Chain Magnate, and I love the variety of modules this expansion offers. I adore exploration, and this enables me to play my favourite game in a dozen different ways. A big challenge is that the base game was so tight, so finely tuned that adding in these modules can upset the balance. Before playing with any of the expansion modules, I rarely saw the luxury manager come into play. But now she’s become a common card in our games. In a similar vein, with alternate ways to make money (like coffee, fries, sushi, noodles, and kimchi), pricing wars have all but vanished.
I think Food Chain Magnate: The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas is an excellent expansion if the base game is something you absolutely adore, but are tired of rote strategies dominating the meta of your table. If you have a gaming partner (or partners) who are equally as enthusiastic about exploring the strategies of each module, and how they interact with each other, this is a must buy. If your group is only humouring you and playing Food Chain Magnate because it’s your birthday, then these modules are probably better left for another day.
As of this month, my blog will be 2 years old, so I think it’s time I start looking back and revisiting some of the games I talked about in the beginning. As time goes on, our gaming tastes change and I feel value in looking back at what I was keen on, and how much staying power a game actually has. It’s one thing to say ‘this game is eminently repayable’, but how does it actually fare when the rubber hits the road? When put to the test against all the other games, and it no longer has that ‘new game shine’, does it come back? Did my interest wane? Here’s where we find out.
Now, not all of these games came out in 2021, but they were new to me in 2021. So, here we go!
#10 – Regicide
Designers: Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale
What made it special: An engaging cooperative game that uses a standard deck of 52 cards.
Thoughts over 2022:Regicide came to Board Game Arena, and I played it about a half dozen times during my lunch breaks. It’s amazing how a game using a generic deck of cards can evoke strong feelings of tension and peril. I love the ebb and flow of cards as you crush through the royal family, sending each one to their grave.
Regidice is also on Board Game Arena, which is an interesting take on the Regicide system. I found Regidice to be a bit less interesting, but still fun none-the-less. Both games require that you maintain a sense of momentum. If you stumble and falter, you’ll be overwhelmed quickly.
#9 – Project L
Designers: Michal Mikeš, Jan Soukal, and Adam Spanel
What made it special: Polyomino puzzles plus Splendor-like engine building puzzle, with candy-like pieces
Thoughts over 2022: I played this once with my mom in May, and we both really enjoyed it. It’s a great little game with great production quality. The little pieces are super colourful, and satisfying to slot into the double layered tiles.
One thing to note, I had hoped to pick up the expansion(s) for Project L, but following the crowdfunding campaign of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, publisher Boardcubator announced they were shutting down. I don’t know what that means for the future of Project L, or the availability for expansions, but I suppose we’ll see!
What made it special: Cooperative trick taking with limited communication
Thoughts over 2022: During 2021’s Black Friday sale, I picked up the follow-up The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, and I found I enjoyed that version quite a bit when playing with a group that doesn’t gather together regularly. The Crew: The Search for Planet Nine is a game that I look forward to playing with my regular group as we plod our way through the quest book, but not one that I would necessarily pull out for a casual game night.
#7 – Cascadia
Designers: Randy Flynn
What made it special: A lovely tile placement, pattern building, hex grid, drafting game.
Thoughts over 2022: I haven’t revisited Cascadia since September 2021. I have played Calico a few times (which my mom said was her favourite game that she played when she came to visit) and I think I still prefer Calico, although it seems I’m in the minority.
Cascadia has received a lot of acclaim over 2022, including winning the prestigious Spiel des Jahres! Congratulations to Randy Smith and Flatout Games!
#6 – Beyond the Sun
Designers: Dennis K. Chan
What made it special: It’s a big, interesting tech tree! That changes every game!! That you get to control!!!
Thoughts over 2022: Beyond the Sun is another game that I keep playing on Board Game Arena, which is really exciting. I’m impressed with the variability of each game, and playing it again in person during Cabin-con was one of my highlights of the weekend!
I’m eagerly awaiting an expansion to Beyond the Sun to ratchet up the asymmetry and give us more excuses to return to this wonderful game!
#5 – MicroMacro: Crime City
Designers:Johannes Sich
What made it special: It’s Where’s Waldo, but you can follow people’s actions backwards and forwards through time! Everything is happening all at once!
Thoughts over 2022: My partner and I have played through MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House, and thoroughly enjoyed it. There’s no way around it, it’s exactly the same, just, more of what you’ve already seen. I just got game #3 in the series, MicroMacro: Crime City – All In. I do enjoy this system, and I continue to be invested, if only to see what the whole city will look like with all 4 maps stitched together.
What made it special: A tile placement, pattern building, hex grid, drafting game. BUT WITH CATS!
Thoughts over 2022: Calico remains one of my favourite pattern building tile laying games. It’s simple to play, but has sharp teeth that can make you regret the very first tile you place in your double layered player board. I like how bright and colourful Calico is, and the variety in the patterns you need to build and the objectives that are slotted right into your board.
I played Azul: Queen’s Garden in 2022, and halfway through reading the rulebook I looked up at my friends and said “This is kinda like Calico!”. That framing helped learn Azul, but as soon as we were done, I think we all agreed that we would much rather play Calico.
What made it special: One of the few legacy games we’ve actually completed.
Thoughts over 2022: The first few chapters of My City filled me with excitement and wonder. Just what would we be discovering in each of the envelopes. As the chapters wore on, mechanics came and went, the forest got cut back to make room for more tiles, and we delved too greedily and too deep.
In the end, My City was a great game, but the campaign ended on a whimper. No great climax, no revolutions to the gameplay, just small twist after small twist until the engine sputtered and finished.
I enjoyed my time with My City, but I just wish then ending was a bit more exciting. A bit more impactful. Nevertheless, I’ll be playing both My Island and My City Roll and Write as soon as they become available to me.
#2 – Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
Designers: Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen
What made it special: Lots of discovery and humour sprinkled throughout the gameplay
Thoughts over 2022: Near the end of 2021, we played Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporatedfour times in a single day. Early on, it becaome clear that my goal wasn’t to win any specific games, but to hit as many story encounters as possible. I mourned when I failed to complete a goal before it’s time limit was reached and we had to read the ‘failure’ text.
Over 2022, Bigfoot chose to bow out of the campaign. Fair enough, he wasn’t enjoying himself, and our hobby time is too precious to waste on playing games we don’t like, even for the sake of the group. So Clank! Legacy has become the game we play when Bigfoot is unavailable to us.
We still haven’t finished it, but we’re close, I think only 2 plays remain. I’m hoping the campaign ends on a very exciting note, but playing a game once every three months makes it hard to remember the narrative continuity.
#1 – Bullet❤️
Designers:Joshua Van Laningham
What made it special: A very clever push your luck, puzzle-y, pattern matching game with an excellent solo boss battle mode.
Thoughts over 2022: Suzanne Sheldon said it best when she said “some games spark“. A spark game is one that captures both your mind and your heart. They feel fresh and excite you!
Now, I might be struggling with burnout, but sometimes, it can feel like board games sort of, blend together. Nothing stands out, nothing really elicits that joy that I felt when I was really getting into this hobby. Bullet❤️ is a game that sparked for me.
In 2022, I picked up Bullet⭐️ and mixed both sets together. This has become one of my go-to solo games. The evenings where I don’t really want to sit in front of a screen, or if I only have 30 minutes to kill before moving on to something else. Every character is unique, and each character doubles as a boss mode to crash against. I love exploring this puzzle and this system.
I did play the multiplayer game a couple of times, but found it a little lacking. It’s real-time and tense (which I love), but it’s extreamly heads-down. During the real time phase of the game, I have no idea what my opponents are doing. Not until I pop my head up and see the mound of bullets they sent my way.
If someone was equally enthusiastic about Bullet❤️, I wouldn’t hesitate to play it with them over and over and over again. Until that person makes themselves known in my life, I’ll be content with the solo mode.
It’s the start of a new year, and with every turning of the calendar comes a deluge of people taking this opportunity to set goals and challenges for the coming year.
As board gamers, I believe something we share is a love of creating rulesets and then trying to excel within the rules we’ve made. With that in mind, there are various challenges that people partake in. Things like the 10×10, the 5×10, the 1×100, the H index, The Alphabet challenge, the Play a game every day of the year, and playing a set of games that share an attribute, such as publisher, designer, or even publication year. We use these challenges to encourage ourselves to interact with our hobby in different and interesting ways.
Some of the challenges available on the BGStats App
I think many people who would call themselves board game enthusiasts or hobbyists have identified a problem with our hobby. We love discovery, we’re always ‘chasing the new hotness’, we fall victim to the ‘cult of the new’, terms which showcase our desire to play the latest and greatest games. An unfortunate side effect of always chasing the newest games, is many great games fall to the wayside. Games that we spend our hard-earned money on, expend the effort to learn the game, only for it to languish with a single play in our statistics.
That’s where the concept of a challenge comes in. In a “Play X Games Y Times” challenge, you pick X number of games you enjoy but want to play more, and set a goal. Maybe it’s a game you recently got and are really excited to explore, or it’s an old favourite that just hasn’t hit the table very much, this is a good way to lead your decision-making when it comes to your hobby time. Instead of hemming and hawing over your entire board game collection trying to pick one game from the dozens that you own, you now have a pre-vetted list of games you want to tackle.
I attempted a 10×10 challenge (play 10 games 10 times) a few years back, and while I was unsuccessful, I saw the value in attempting it. Getting a game to the table 10 times gives you the opportunity to see depths that you may have missed before, and there’s a joy in plopping a game down that everyone already knows how to play and is comfortable with, especially if you’re always learning and exploring new games.
My current pile of unplayed games
The H-Index challenge is similar to a “Play X Games Y Times”, in that you’re trying to play games a number of times, but the values are linked. Like, for an H-index of 8, you’ll play 8 games 8 times. I’ve had an H-index tracker on for a few years, and I’m currently sitting at 23. One more game of Crokinole, and I’ll achieve 24, then I’ll need to play my top 24 games again to push it up to 25. It’s an interesting way to view your games played, but a bit more nebulous than a hard value, such as a 10×10.
For some, they want to explore games that they might not otherwise pick. That’s where “Play all my Unplayed Games” challenges, or “Play Every Game in my Collection” come in. Games that you bought years ago that you always wanted to get back to, but always end up slipping just shy of actually getting played, this is their time to shine. This challenge is also great as a preface to a great cull. Maybe a game that you loved in 2016 just isn’t doing it for you anymore, and it’s time for that game to leave your collection.
Games that are leaving my collection
For some, setting a challenge might be for them to refocus their attention on the hobby they once loved. Setting a “Play a Game Every Day of the Year” challenge is about intentionally choosing to play a game, instead of wasting hours mindlessly scrolling through social media or otherwise squandering your time. A similar challenge is to pick a friend to play X number of times with, this can encourage you both to prioritize spending time together, and gives you an activity to engage with.
All of this to say, challenges can be a fun way to interact with your board game hobby, but it’s important they’re approached with intention. Just throwing 10 random games onto a 10×10 challenge can become a drag, and it’s important not to prioritize the challenge over your enjoyment of the hobby. If playing board games is something you do for fun, or to relax, it’s important not to turn your play time into a grind. Setting a challenge can be a great way of getting you out of a rut, or to discover games that you may have forgotten about. Whatever you choose to do, just have fun!
I have this “want to play” list that is constantly growing. As new games come out and catch my interest, I put them on the list where they languish until the opportunity to play them comes along. Unfortunately, with my current gaming habits, the list grows faster than I can play them.
Perhaps a game has gotten a lot of media coverage from sources I enjoy, or reading about mechanics just gets me excited. Here I’ve listed the 5 games that currently have my attention, and why! Be sure to let me know what games have caught your attention in the comments!
Wonderlands War
This is somewhat of a controversial pick for me. In general, I don’t like direct conflict games, I’m not particularly keen on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and I’m not the biggest fan of the Quacks of Quedlinburg. Even with all that stacked against it. Wnderlands War by Tim and Ben Eisner and Ian Moss and published by Druid City Games has topped several “Best of the year” lists and has gotten quite good reviews throughout the year, and I can’t help myself but feel pulled to at least try it for myself!
The cover and art direction of Wonderlands War is absolutely striking. The black and purple box cover of the wild Cheshire Cat’s grin instantly draws my attention. The asymmetric characters piqued my interest, and the production looks unique at the very least.
Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition
If you had asked me at the start of the year if I liked trick taking games, I probably would have shrugged and said “Yeah, they’re alright”. But as the year wore on, trick taking as a mechanism has become more and more appealing to me. Between The Crew and Brian Boru crashing onto the scene, SCOUT stealing my heart, and the impending Arcs tempting me far more than it should have, trick taking as a mechanism in board games is my new darling.
Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition by Muneyuki Yokouchi and published in North America by Bezier Games is the trick taking game where all your cards are suitless, until you play them on the table. In a mind-bending concept, all the cards are black and white. When you play a card to the table, you get to declare what suit you’ve observed it to be. Should someone play a card and proclaim the same card that has already been played, then a paradox occurs (and I’ve read enough science fiction to know that’s a bad thing).
Floe
Listen, I know that I’m susceptible to marketing, but it’s not often that a board game announcement gets me frothing at the mouth excited with literally no details. My introduction to Floe by Henry Audubon was via a tweet: “Taking inspiration from classic Super Nintendo RPGs like Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger, FLOE has each player guide a character on a unique heroic journey across a snow-covered fantasy world”. Instantly my curiosity and attention was secured.
Reading more about Floe after the fact, gameplay starts by expanding the map by placing tiles, then taking actions with your heroes, or with the shared boats. Actions are to move and interact with locations. Heroes will power up throughout the game by equipping items, eating noodles, learning skills, finding treasure and constructing buildings. When you complete a heroic challenge, you place one FLOE stone to mark your achievement, and the first player to place all their Floe stones is the winner.
I’m very curious to see how Floe turns out. I was raised on SNES RPGs, and they still hold a special place in my heart (specifically and especially Final Fantasy II). I know Floe won’t be exactly like Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger, but if Henry Audubon manages to capture the feelings of those games, then we might be in for a special treat.
Tiletum
My enthusiasm for Simone Luciani and Daniele Tascini’s games has only grown overtime. For a long while, I was sour on Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar, and I wasn’t a fan of Teotihuacan: City of the Gods. I could take or leave The Voyages of Marco Polo, but since playing Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan and Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun, I’ve really come around to these games. Tiletum is the latest game by the Simone and Daniele duo, and honestly, at first I wasn’t that excited. Another complex game with a hard to pronounce name, I mean, I have several of those to pick from already. But the more I read about the mechanisim, the more my desire to play Tiletum grew.
Much like Tekhenu, Tiletum is a die management game where the dice serve a dual purpose; they gather resources, and they preform actions. The dice are rolled and arranged on a circle, then on your turn, choose a die to gain the number of corresponding resources equal to the value of the die, then perform the associated action. The power of the action is inversely proportional to the value of the die, so the fewer resources you gain, the more powerful the actions you take and vice versa.
I really enjoyed the dice management in Tekhenu, so seeing the mechanism again excites me. While the theme of being rich merchants, travelling throughout Europe, fulfilling contracts and gaining the favour of nobles does little to draw me in. In fact, I’m excited to play Tiletum despite that bog-standard theme.
Turing Machine
When I first saw Turing Machine by Fabien Gridel and Yoann Levet, I wasn’t really interested. It looked like a light party game, and I’m rarely in a position where we have enough of the right kind of people where a party game is the best choice. But seeing it hit the top of a few peoples best games of 2022 list encouraged me to look a bit deeper into this game. It turns out Turing Machine is a logic deduction puzzle, featuring an analog computer!
Side story, my mom used to buy those Penny Press Variety Puzzle books. I’d flip through them from time to time, not knowing how to approach any of the puzzles. The one category of puzzle that I did really enjoy were the logic puzzles. Using the conditional rules and statements to suss out who ate which dessert (or whatever the theme of the narrative was for each puzzle) was always something I enjoyed.
Not many board games employ logic puzzles, and even less include an analog device for providing the answer. I haven’t delved into the nuances of the rules, so I don’t quite know how Turing Machine works as a competitive experience, but I find myself tempted to buy the game, even if just to play it solo!
And those are the 5 games I’m most looking forward to playing in 2023. Some honourable mentions that didn’t quite make it into this list: Flamecraft,Lacramosa, Weather Machine, Endless Winter: Paleoamericans, and Spire’s End: Hildegard. All for various reasons, but at the end of the day, I can say I’m looking forward to all the gaming goodness that 2023 is sure to hold!
It’s no secret that I love discovery. I crave new experiences, and will choose to explore a new game over a game that I’ve played before and know I like 9 times out of 10. For some, this character trait is annoying, but I am who I am. in 2022 I played 105 different games 235 different times, and of those 105 different games, 41 were new to me. I’ve compiled the games that were new to me in 2022 that I enjoyed the most
Now, these games may not have been released in 2022, but I played them for the first time this year. While it’s tempting to be seduced by the new hotness every week, it’s a reminder that sometimes you should look back a bit and see what gems you missed.
#1 – Bullet⭐ (2022)
This one is a bit of a cheat in that it’s kind of an expansion to my favourite game from 2021, Bullet❤️ . And by expansion, I mean that it’s the full game again, just with 8 different heroines and bosses that can be mixed and matched from the original game.
If you’ve somehow missed my myriad of posts about Bullet❤️ and ⭐, here’s a quick rundown. Bullet⭐ is a push your luck pattern matching game for 1 – 4 players. Players pull bullets out of their bags, and assess the colour and number. The bullet slots into the column of the matching colour, and moves down the number of open spots. If the bullet hits the bottom row, BANG, you lose a life. Lose all your life, and game over!
I’ve exclusively played Bullet⭐ solo, which has become my favourite way to play. I love the symmetry of the bosses and characters, and I love mixing and matching, discovering which bosses are a cakewalk against which characters, and I love the push your luck gameplay. The multiplayer mode is also quite fun, if you’re a fan of real time games. It’s fast and exciting, but also, isolating. When the game is on, you are 100% focused on your own board, and all the interaction you get is flinging bullets back and forth between your opponents. It’s a fine experience, but the solo boss battle mode is where this game really gets to shine.
#2 – 6 Nimmt (1994)
6 Nimmt by Wolfgang Kramer is brilliance in a box. A mere 104 cards manages to contain a world of tension and excitement. 6 Nimmt pits players against 4 growing rows of cards. Everyone plays a card simultaneously, then they’re slotted into a row in ascending order, placed next to the card they’re closest to. If someone’s card would be the 6th card in that row, they instead take all those cards into their play area as their score. The catch of the game is, score is bad. The first player to hit 66 points triggers the end game, and once the game is over, the player with the least points is the winner.
6 Nimmt achieves what many much larger and more expensive games aspire to, generate tension and excitement and audible groans as the gameplay unfolds. I love the double-think as you desperately try to figure out what your opponents will be doing. If you’re successful, and you sneak in the 5th card in a row just ahead of someone else, it’s immensely satisfying. If you’re wrong and end up taking a terrible handful of cards, the jeers from your opponents do nothing to ease the sting of failure.
Luckily, 6 Nimmt only lasts for ~15 minutes. Once it’s done, you sweep the table and go again, no harm, no foul. If you like card games, especially simple to learn and easy to break out at the local pub, than 6 Nimmt is an excellent choice.
#3 – Viticulture World (2022)
One of the best things about having friends who are just as enthusiastic about board games as you are, is that when you buy them a game as a gift, they’ll generally play that game with you. It may be a little selfish, but it makes it really easy to buy gifts for your friends when that gift will facilitate a couple nights of hanging out.
Viticulture World designed by Mihir Shah and Francesco Testini is the cooperative expansion to Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone’s 2013 game, Viticulture. In Viticulture World, each player is still managing their own farm, and each player must reach 20 victory points by the end of the game, or the players lose the scenario. In addition to those personal goals, there’s another track that all players can contribute to that also needs to be pushed to its limit to claim victory.
I’ve complained about Viticulture‘s luck before, and how getting the right cards at the start of the game can launch you into a powerful position, and while that still holds true in this expansion, a player doing well benefits everyone. The goal isn’t to try to catch up to the leader despite the luck, but to take the situation the game throws at you and form a winning strategy out of it.
If I’m being honest, I don’t really want to go back to base Viticulture after playing Viticulture World. Now, I don’t always LOVE cooperative games, but this one is pretty special. There are great moments of collaboration, but players still get ownership over what they can contribute to the team.
If you want to read more, I did write a full review of Viticulture World, which you can read here
#4 – So Clover (2021)
As a seasoned gamer, I can often dismiss party games as not for me, as the vast majority of the games that I play are in serious settings. Four grown men silently sitting around a table with furrowed brows, pushing cubes for 2 hours until a final exclamation of emotions at the very end, is my idea of a good time. So when these word association party games show up, I’m perpetually tempting to crush them under the very weight of a superior game, such as Scythe.
I’m only kidding. I’m actually super impressed with how great a game can be with so little. So Clover has a few decks of cards with 4 words, one on each side of the card, and a handful of plastic clovers, so you can align the cards easily. Your goal is to connect the two words on the outside of each wall. What I like about So Clover over other great games like Codenames or Just One is that everyone is involved for a lot of the time. In Codenames, players sit and wait while the codemaster hems and haws over the clue they’re going to give. In Just One, the active player sits with their eyes closed as all the players write their words and compare notes. In So Clover, all players prepare a clover at the same time, then, players go through the clovers one by one, keeping everyone involved and engaged.
I had a blast playing So Cloverat Cabin-Con this year. The next time I go to visit my family, I’m going to pick up a copy of this excellent game, as I know it’ll be a hit anywhere I pull it out.
#5 – Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun
I’ve had a bit of a complicated relationship with the T-series of games (Tzolk’in, Teotihuacan, Trismegistus, Tiletum, etc). Initially, I didn’t like Tzolk’in at all. Then, I disliked Teotihuacan even more. Upon revisiting Tzolk’in, I found myself enjoying it much more than I remember. Then, I got my hands on Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun and found myself really enjoying the game.
If you haven’t played it before, Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun is a big and complex game, but the crux of the mechanics is an obelisk sits in the board and casts a shadow over some of the action spaces. Die are rolled and placed into each of the 6 action spaces, and the colour of the die dictates if that die is pure, tainted, or forbidden. When taking an action, the pip value and colour may affect the action, and the purity dictates where that die goes onto your scales of karmic balance. There’s a lot to consider in every action of the game, and the player who can balance all these aspects the best, will emerge the winner.
Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun has an incredible table presence. A plastic spire rises off the table, and chunky dice lie around it, displaying all the options available to you. There is much more to do than you could ever hope to achieve in a single game. I only got a single play of Tekhenu in this year, but it’s one I’m keen to return to.
#6 – War Chest (2018)
Once upon a time in cold, bitter Winnipeg, I had a roommate. This fellow and I were both avid gamers, but our time together was prior to my discovery of board games. We’d play Gears of War 3 and Borderlands 2 and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game into the wee hours of the morning. We also played a fair amount of Chess, Magic: The Gathering: and Yu-Gi-Oh together. Xel was the perfect opponent, we were both equally enthusiastic, evenly matched, and both grew in our strategies, developing a meta unique to us and figuring out how to counter that meta.
It’s my great regret that I left Xel behind in Manitoba before getting into the world of board games. He installed a deep love for two player direct conflict games in my heart that I still hold to this day, despite not having a gaming partner with the same proclivities over nearly a decade now.
War Chest by Trevor Benjamin and David Thompson is the kind of game that Xel and I would have dove deep into. It’s an abstract game with a hex map. Each player has a different set of units available to them, each with their own unique abilities. Your units are represented by chips, and you take actions by pulling chips from a bag, and spending them. Some actions can be spent by using any chip, while others require chips matching the unit you want to use the action with. The goal of the game isn’t necessarily to wipe out your enemy forces, but to control certain points. While attacking and removing your enemies can be very helpful, I’ve won games without attacking a single time and while sustaining heavy losses.
As soon as I get a gaming partner who enjoys these two player direct conflict games, and we start playing games more regularily, I’ll be picking up my own copy of War Chest and any expansions that are available. I really enjoyed my plays of War Chest and can’t wait to explore it further.
#7 – Canvas (2021)
Canvas, by Jeff Chin and Andrew Nerger was a bit of a surprise to me. My wife and I went down to our local board game cafe and plucked this game off the shelf simply because it looked pretty. I vaugely knew that it featured plastic transparent cards. What we discovered was a pretty puzzle game about creating works of art and trying to satisfy the conditions of score cards to earn points.
Now, the actual artwork on the cards is unnecessary to the gameplay, the only thing that really matters is the icons along the bottom. Players take turns drafting plastic cards into their hands that feature different icons. They can then stack 3 plastic cards and slot them into a plastic sleve to create a masterpiece and submit it for scoring. Once all players have submitted 3 artworks, the player with the most points is the winner!
I know I just said that the artwork was unnecessary, and from a gameplay perspective, it is. But it gives the game lots of charm and a lovely theme, even if the composition of some of the artworks feels like it leaves a bit to be desired.
#8 – Pandemic: Rising Tide (2017)
I would never call myself a Pandemic expert, but i’m also no slouch. Playing on the normal difficulty on the app, I have about a 70% win rate, and I haven’t lost a game of Pandemic: Fall of Rome yet. So maybe I had a little bit of hubris when I pulled out Pandemic: Rising Tide by Jeroen Doumen and Matt Leacock. I strode in, expecting another easy Pandemic experience but with a different coat of thematic paint. What happened was I got lulled into a false sense of security thanks to plentiful dykes, then when they broke and water flooded all across the map and I started to panic then promptly ran out of water cubes and was left a broken shell of a person.
I’m being dramatic, but, this version of Pandemic thumped me good, and I’ve been thirsting to go back to it. If you haven’t played it before, Pandemic: Rising Tide is set in the industrial age in the Netherlands, tasking players with building modern hydraulic structures that will prevent the country from being swallowed by the ocean. The feature that sets this version apart from other Pandemics, is that there is only one colour of cube to battle against, and water flows across the map. If a section of map has 3 cubes on it, all adjacent sections will get 2 cubes, then regions adjacent to those regions will get 1 cube each. Luckily, dykes are in place to prevent the water from freely flowing across regions. Unfortunately, dykes break and the torrents of water are relentless.
It’s great, it’s hard, and it’s really hard to pronounce any of the dutch regions. I hope to play more soon so I can figure out where it sits in my personal rating of Pandemic games!
#9 – SCOUT (2019)
I think… I like card games. It’s not something that I logically find myself particularly drawn to. When I’m pursuing the shelves at my FLGS, my eyes are naturally pulled to the big impressive boxes. More and more I find myself charmed by little games that can do so much with just cards!
Enter Scout by Kei Kanjino and published by Oink Games. In Scout, players are dealt a hand of double sided cards, and are explicitly told, under no circumstances are they allowed to rearrange the cards in their hand (I absolutely love this mechanic). On their turn, they can either ‘Show’ or ‘Scout’, and once per round you can ‘Show and Scout’. If you show, you need to take cards from your hand and place them on the table, either a set of cards (cards of the same value), or a run of cards (cards with sequential ascending or descending value). If there is already a show on the table, your showing must be stronger than that’s already there (meaning more cards, or, if tied, a higher value). If you can’t, or don’t want to show, you can ‘Scout’. This allows you to take one of the cards from the current show and add it to your hand. Finally, once per round you can ‘Scout and Show’, where you do both actions on a single turn
The round ends when someone runs out of cards, or, when someone plays a show, and all subsequent players scout. Points are tallied and the player at the end of the game with the most points is the winner
Scout is a little delight. It’s so frustrating looking at your hand and seeing how close some of the cards are, and it’s immensely satisfying when you’re able to scout a card and place it in the perfect spot in your hand. The box for Scout is literally the size of the cards, making it easy to travel with, and the gameplay is fast and easy to teach. I think Scout is the kind of game that could live in my travel bag forever, and would be a hit at every pub I pull it out at.
#10 – Ultimate Railroads (2021)
Much like Bullet⭐, Ultimate Railroads is a bit of a cheat. This version by Helmut Ohley and Leonhard Orgler is the ‘big box’ edition with all the expansions for 2013’s Russian Railroads. If you haven’t played Russian Railraods before, it’s a worker placement game in which players are trying to build a rail line to earn the most points. Unlike most other train games, in Russian Railroads there is no central map or pick up and deliver aspect. Instead you have tracks of varying grade, and as you build the weakest track you unlock the ability to build better tracks over the ones you’ve already build. As the grade of track goes up, so does the amount of victory points you earn.
One of my favourite aspects of Russian Railroads is how the amount of points you earn each turn pretty much doubles throughout the game. On the first turn, earning 5 points is reasonable. Then in turn two, you’ll earn another 10 points, then 20, and by the end of the game you’ll be earning 135 points and riding that locomotive to victory!
The only module of Ultimate Railroads we played with this year was German Railroads, which introduces coal (a module I wouldn’t bother with again), and a modular player board, letting you choose how the rail lines develop and what kinds of benefits you’ll earn from those tracks. I quite enjoyed that playerboard, even if I came in dead last by a wide margin.
And those have been the top 10 new to me games I played in 2022! What were some of your breakout hits? Any games you’re looking forward to playing next year?
Honourable mentions: The Red Cathedral, Acquire, Unsettled
Dishonourable mentions: Maglev Metro, In the Hall of the Mountain King, The Pillars of the Earth, Azul: Queen’s Garden
