Artist Heiko Günther, Gabriel Laulunen (II), Walter Pepperle, Klaus Wilinski
Intro
I am not a gambling man. Back when I lived in Winnipeg, I had friends whose idea of a good night out is to go to the casino for a couple hours. They don’t mind losing money as to them, it’s just the price of admission for a evening out, not unlike going to a nice restaurant or out to a movie theatre. Sometimes, when they do win and I see them filled with an unmatched level of jubilation, you almost can’t help but see their point of view. After all, if it brings them joy and they aren’t going into debt, is it all that bad?
I didn’t hang around those friends long enough to answer those questions, but I did confirm that I don’t like going to the casino. It’s not the bright lights, or constant noise of chimes and bells, or the bright flashing screens in dark rooms that irk me. It’s seeing people just drop literally hundreds of dollars into a machine and watch their number of credits slowly plummet to 0. I’d watch as their shoulders would slump, they’d just gather their jackets and meander away. It breaks my heart to see others risk so much and lose it all.
The first time I went to the casino I put $20 into a machine. After 3 spins I won a minor prize, getting $400 back. I promptly cashed out then went to the bar and ordered nachos, which sustained me for the rest of the night. Each time I was subsequently invited to the casino I didn’t feel compelled to gamble again. I was already ahead, I had won and the money was in my pocket. I had no desire to put the money that was in my pocket into one of the machines where I likely wouldn’t be able to recoup my investment. When I sat at the bar and ordered nachos, at least I got something for my money.
Can’t Stop is a push your luck game that sets my heart a flutter. While I don’t gamble in real life, I grin ear to ear when pushing my luck, gambling my progress to get further and further ahead.
How to Play
Can’t Stop’s board consists of 11 tracks, numbered 2 – 12. Each track has a different number of spaces between the start and the top of the track (the 2 and 12 spots only have 2 spaces in-between the bottom and top, while the 7 track has over a dozen). On your turn you roll 4 die, and pair them up in any way you want. After pairing up your die, you can either place one of your three white pawns on the board, or move the white pawns up the tracks that match the number of the paired die.
It’s a long way to the top
After each roll and subsequent move, you have the option to stop your turn and save your progress, or roll again, hopefully advancing further up on the tracks. If you choose to stop, you replace the white pawns with ones of your colour and pass the die onto the next player.
If you roll your die that can’t be paired in a way that match any of the tracks your white pawns are on, you’ve busted. Remove your white pawns from the board, and pass the dice and white pawns to the next player.
3 and 9, 8 and 4, or 5 and 7?
The first person to get three of their coloured pawns to the top of the board is the winner. Only one person can summit each of the columns, so if you and your opponent are neck and neck near the top of one track and they get to the top first, your pawn is removed from that column, and no white pawns may be placed on those columns going forward.
Review
I, first experienced Can’t Stop on Board Game Arena. They use Can’t Stop as their demo for the platform, and it quickly became one of my most played games. I’ve played over 60 games over the past few years any my enthusiasm hasn’t waned this entire time.
The crux of Can’t Stop is that if you roll the die and the sum any of the pairs don’t match the columns you’ve committed to for this round, you’ve lost all progress for the turn. It’s a race, and one that can be won in a single turn if you’re lucky enough. More often, however, you’ll find that you push your luck one turn too far, and whatever powers that control the dice are swift in their punishment.
Ha, Green keeps busting! Wait, I’m Green…
Can’t Stop is a clever game that will have you shouting and egging your opponents on before long. You’ll be jostling the four cubes in your hand while biting your lip trying desperately to convince yourself that you should take another turn; you should push yourself one step closer to victory! Your friends will cry out for you to end your turn, or if they feel you’re in a precarious position, that you absolutely should roll those dice again. As soon as you choose to roll and the dice leave your hand, everyone holds their breath. The dice settle and you frantically start adding them together, desperately searching for any combination that will move at least one of your white markers and keep you alive for the turn.
Can’t Stop pairs well with my morning coffee
I understand that I am a ris- adverse person and I’ve come to accept it. I’ll never win big at the craps table, and I’ll never win the lottery (after all, in order to win you have to play). For me, push your luck games such as Can’t Stop are a perfect distillation of what it means to gamble. The emotions in the room are powerful when you risk everything and pull off an against-all-odds roll, pushing your white pawns to the top of their tracks. Those are the glorious moments that I remember long after Can’t Stop has been put back into it’s box. Yes, it can feel frustrating when you roll 4 ones after placing all of your white pawns on higher numbers. However the sting of the randomness is quickly eclipsed by the excitement of a fantastic win. Can’t Stop is a great game that can and should be played with everyone everywhere.
Artist: Philippe Guérin, Chris Quilliams, Beth Sobel, Waldo Ramirez
Intro
In this wonderful hobby, lots of games exist with lots of different themes. Do you want to build a bear park? We’ve got a game for that. Feel like managing the fickle demands of fast food customers? Boy do I have an experience for you! We got several games about quilts, and a somewhat unhealthy obsession about sheep. You’d think that after experiencing great games in a wide variety of themes I wouldn’t be so quick to write off a game just because it’s artistic direction does little to incite wonder in my heart.
In Arboretum you are trying to build the prettiest tree garden. But don’t let the beautiful artwork get your guard down. In this Arboretum only those with the strongest botanical skills will survive!
How to Play
Before the game begins the deck is constructed according to the number of players. With 2 players the deck is 48 cards in 6 different suits, 3 players is 64 cards of 8 suits, and 4 players has all 10 species of trees totaling 80 cards. The mathematically inclined among you may have noticed that each suit has 8 cards, valued from 1 to 8.
The game begins by dealing each player 7 cards. You begin your turn by picking up two cards either from the face down deck, or from one of the discard piles (each player has their own discard pile). You then must play a card, and discard a card. When you play a card into your arboretum, it must be placed adjacent to an existing card, in any orthogonal direction. When you discard, it must be to your own discard pile. The next player can then proceed with their turn.
The game ends when the last card is drawn from the face down deck. That player finishes their turn like normal, then all players compete for the right to score. One by one you go through all the suits in the game and reveal how many of that suit you have remaining in your hand. Whoever has the highest sum of cards has earned the right to score the trees in their arboretum.
The player who earned the right to score counts up the number of cards that exist in ascending order, beginning and ending with the suit that is being scored. Numbers can be skipped, but the trees must always be placed in ascending order. If the start or end card is a 1 or and an 8 respectively, you earn additional points. If you have four or more cards in the row and they’re all of the same suit you’re scoring, then each card in that row is worth two points each.
Once all types of trees have been scored, the player with the highest score wins. If two players tie, whoever has the most tree types present in their arboretum is the winner. If the players are still tied, both players must plant a tree. Whichever tree is tallest after five years is the victor.
Review
Arboretum is a deception. The calm nature theme and gorgeous art does a lot to impart a sense of ease and calm before the game starts. There’s a couple of nuances that are often left uninternalized when explaining how the game works for the first time. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen eyes glaze over when I begin to describe how the scoring works. I’ve always emphasize that you have to earn the right to score, but more than once we’ve played a whole game only to get to the end and a new player didn’t realize you needed to hold cards back in their hand in order to score it, meaning their perfect row of 7 Blue Firs went unscored.
The mechanics of Arboretum pulls your heart in multiple directions. Cards in your hand are worth nothing if you don’t have any cards of the same suit on the table. Cards on the table earn you nothing if you don’t have enough left in your hand at the end of the day. You have a limited hand-size, but you also need to hoard cards of your chosen suit so you can not only build an arboretum worth scoring, but also have cards left in your hand that will win you the right to score. You’ll often be tempted to dump cards that you don’t need, but you know that every card you throw away has the potential to be incredibly valuable to the other players.
The need to keep cards in your hand is directly at odds with earning points from your cards on the table. While it might seem obvious that you could just keep an 8 in your hand and be confident that that you’ll win the right to score, Dan Cassar saw you coming from a mile away; if someone has the 1 value of that species in their hand, it turns the value of your 8 card to 0. This twist encourages you to keep your eyes on the cards that have been played. If the one is already on the table, suddenly the 8 is more powerful. On the other hand, if the 8 has been played, holding the 1 in your hand means almost nothing. And when hand space is a valuable resource, you don’t want useless cards clogging up your hand.
My copy of Arbortetum is the 2018 deluxe edition published by Renegade. This edition boasts stunning art by Beth Sobel and impressive holo-foil cards. The way the light reflects off the foil faces feels at odds with therest of the aesthetic; the gaudy reflections feel audacious and unnecessary. Speaking of unnecessary, this edition comes in a wooden box at least three times too large. I pulled the deck, rulebook, scorepad, and velvet bag out of the strangely nice smelling box and tossed all the components into a plastic photo box. With a smaller footprint, comes portability. Arboretum is now a top pick when I’m packing games for travel.
One of the best features of this game is the unique scoring mechanism. It creates a tense push-your-luck element that makes the decision to place and discard every card significantly more stressful. In my experience one of the suits ends up being the universal junk tree that everyone is happed to jettison from their hand, and in doing so, the remaining suits are much more sought after and hotly contested. The final reveal of cards left in your hand at the end of the game is a tense chapter. While you usually have one suit for which you have counted cards in such a way that leaves little doubt you will be able to score, the other suits are more of a mystery. It is always exciting when someone has just the right cards to deny the other player a big scoring line (unless, of course, it was you that was the one denied). This chapter of the game elicits cheers and groans from everyone at the table as each person is invested in the outcome of each scoring.
Arboretum’s end game always approaches much faster than I expect. On average, the number of cards in my tableau normally sits around 11, not leaving much room for error, especially if I diversified and now need to have 3 or 4 different suits in my hand. On the other hand specializing in just one or two types of trees is only a solid strategy if you want to be in second place. Fortune favours the bold, after all.
Because Arboretum is just deck of cards, I pick this game to travel with me almost every time I embark on some kind of adventure. The complexity of the scoring mechanics causes me to hesitate when it comes to teaching new players. I have absolutely no issue teaching this to someone who professes themselves to be a gamer, but Arboretum is not a game that I would push on people whos gaming experience lies entirely in Rummy and Spider Solitaire.
Arboretum is the kind of game that gets lodged into your mind and keeps you thinking about it for hours after the deck has been packed away. You are left wrestling with the idea that if you had just done this one thing, or discarded that other card, then everything would have been different. I love when a game sticks with me after I’ve left the table, and in my experience most people are itching for a second go after they have had time to stew about their first experience.
In 2016 I had been into hobby board games for a couple of years and was rapidly searching out the heaviest games I could find, and players to sucker into playing them. I quickly descended from the fresh faced kid walking into a game store for the first time saying “wow, these board games are kind of neat” into a contemptous snob. “I only play heavy board games. Anything under two hours is a waste of my time.” Trust me, I was insufferable.
Luckily, one of the people who I regularly play with was the anthesis to my snobbery. Where I was aspiring to get into deeper and heavier games as I was sure the key to lifelong joy was buried under complex rulesets, he kept pulling me back, asserting that simpler, fast to play games have a spot at my table, whether I was willing to admit it not not.
I’ll admit that I had some serious doubts when Kingdomino was about to hit the table for the first time and it was pitched with: “They’ve taken the tile matching from dominos, and made an actual good game out of it!” I honestly didn’t think I’d hear that statement in my lifetime. As a kid, we played Double-Eighteen Mexican Train Dominos and I have vivid memories of having dozens of dominos in front of me, not being able to play any of them, and just drawing a new domino, and passing my turn. Over and over and over again.
But we aren’t here to talk about Mexican Train. Let’s talk about Bruno Cathala’s 2017 Spiel des Jahres winner, Kingdomino.
How to Play
Kingdomino begins with a single tile, which your kingdom calls home. In the centre of the table, sits a row of player meeples, indicating the turn order. Each round, a new set of domino tiles gets laid out in numerical order, lowest on top to largest on bottom.
Next, a new set of tiles is laid out numerically, and going from top to bottom. Each player takes their meeple off the old tile, and places it on a tile that just came out. Each player then takes the tile they moved their meeple off of, and places it in their kingdom.
Following the laws of dominos, when you place a tile in your kingdom, one of the two sides must touch a matching tile (or your home tile, which is a wildcard). When placing tiles, you must not exceed 5 squares wide, or 5 squares tall, so that at the end of the game, if you’ve done everything correctly, you’ll have a perfect 5×5 grid of tiles.
Once all the tiles have been claimed and laid, it’s time to score. First, each player counts up the number of squares of each terrain type that are connected to one another. You then multiply that score by the number of crowns present in that terrain type. Hopefully you got at least one crown, because anything times 0, is a recipe for a sad time.
Review
The production of Kingdomino is charming. The tiles are wonderfully thick and glossy, and just the right amount of heft. The art on the tiles is bright and cheery, with charming details sprinkled throughout (like a panicked sheep staring up at the shadow of a dragon, or the shadow of a lake monster tearing up fishermen’s nets. The four king meeples are cute and unique, but my major qualm is that my preferred colour red has been replaced with pink. In reality, it’s the most minor of squabbles, but I still feel compelled to mention it. To those who have been yearning for pink to replace red in games, I have found your champion.
Kingdomino plays quickly, almost criminally so. You’re just getting into the groove of the gameplay loop when suddenly you notice there’s only space in your tableau for three more tiles and somehow all your careful plans are crashing down. that last tile you put down just made your kingdom 5 squares tall, but you were also counting on putting another tile along the bottom! Now you’ll have a single square gap that you just can’t reconcile.
Because all the tiles are numbered, and get sorted from worst to best, it creates a interesting decision. Do you take the better tile with a crown on it now, but select a tile later in the turn next round? Or do you pick the top most tile (which will likely just be two terrain tiles without any crowns) but guarantee the ability to go first next round? That clever design is what makes the game interesting.
Because Kingdomino is so fast, it’s the kind of game that can be used to start or end an evening. It is a perfect palate cleanser of easy mathematics and simple rules that feels refreshing after a game with a dozen interlocking mechanisms and three different rulebooks. If one game ends and you have time for something fast and easy, Kingdomino is an obvious pick.
As I said in the beginning, when Kingdomino first hit my table, I wasn’t in the mindset to give simpler games the time they deserve. Since then, I’ve given Kingdomino as gifts and used it to introduce games to my family, and have even requested to play it on occasion.
There is elegance in the simplicity of Kingdomino. I played Kingdomino’s sequel, Queendomino when it was first released. Queendomino adds layers of complexity to the core gameplay of Kingdomino, but in doing so, loses some of the charm of the original. Perhaps one day I’ll seek out Queendomino again to reassess my opinion, but until that happens, Kingdomino is my domino game of choice.
Board game expansions come in two flavours. One type adds small twists to the existing gameplay, enhancing the existing mechanisms and perhaps addressing some of the complaints of the base game. The other type of expansion makes huge changes. The mental toll of the game is re-worked entirely, making it feel almost like a different game. Isle of Skye has two expansions, one of each flavour.
First, a caveat. I’m not really ‘into’ expansions. Usually when I’m coming into a new game, or introducing a game to someone who hasn’t played it before, I want to showcase the original game. If I’m looking for a game for myself, I’m pulled to the boxes that offer wholy new experiences, rather than building on the ones I’ve already had. So rarely is an expansion released that I feel I need to own it. Part of that apprehension comes from the fact that I find most base games pretty great on their own, I don’t need more content to elevate some parts of the game, or inject some much needed replayability or variability. For the games whose depths I have thoroughly plumbed, I’m usually more content in seeking out new experiences.
I get a feeling of trepidation when I consider adding in expansion content to my games. I worry that I’ll ‘burn’ or ‘waste’ a play if the expansion content doesn’t live up to the hype of the base game. In my scenario where a single game rarely gets more than half a dozen plays, I want to enjoy each one. Don’t fix what isn’t broken, as some would say. In the case of Isle of Skye, the game is quick to set up and is over within 30 – 45 minutes, I decided I shouldn’t have the same apprehension and should be more cavalier in introducing the expansion content. What a fool I was.
Just going for a hike in my kingdom!
The first expansion, Journeymen, introduces new tiles that go into the mixed bag and gives each player their won player board. On that player board are 3 different tracks, each with icons of various things that you might see in your kingdom. On your turn after placing all the tiles you bought, you can now place some cubes on your board, moving your player pawn around your kingdom so he can visit the various tile features and advance the tracks on your player board, giving you additional benefits throughout the game.
This addition to Isle of Skye turns the act of placing tiles from a interesting decision into a absolutely brain breaking chore. Trying to figure out how the tile best fits in your kingdom so you can maximize the points you’ll get from the scoring objectives, as well as placing a tile in such a way do your Journeyman can reach the specific feature you need is a task that my poor little brain isn’t always up to tackling, and I’m not alone. My regular play group has often opted to leave Journeyman out and play just the base game Isle of Skye more than once.
That’s… a lot of information to parse
The special powers you obtain from finishing any one of the tracks can feel overpowered and game-breaking. One of the abilities allows you to buy a tile from anyone, and have the bank pay them, effectively making money a moot point for you. Another removes your requirement to axe a tile, giving you more opportunities to play tiles to your kingdom, or sell for more money. The final one allows you a second buy phase. While getting to the end of the tracks is difficult, and likely only happen in the last round or two, these modifications feel like they take the spirit of the game, and throw it out the window for the player who achieves them. And because these powers are so strong, it feels like the only way to win Isle of Skye: Journeyman is to chase the aspects that this expansion added.
Isle of Skye: Journeyman takes Isle of Skye from a game that I would bring out and play with almost anyone, to a game that I only want to bring out with people that I know won’t be paralyzed by the indecision that I laid out above. Isle of Skye: Journeyman multiplies the number of decisions you need to make and takes Isle of Skye from a fast, easy to play experience into a slow, calculating slog. The crux of my criticism about this expansion is while it multiplies the number of decisions you need to make, they don’t feel more satisfying. Instead, you’re left with additional mental load and nothing really to show for it.
Do I place the tile to finish off the bottom lake to double the scrolls, or in the column to earn points for 3+ tiles per column scoring objective, or close to my Journeyman so he can visit the broch? and in what order do I place my cubes? Do I go up all 3 tracks equally, or do I focus on one track? The amount of decisions I need to make has compounded!
Isle of Skye: Druids On the other hand, adds a secondary board aside the main board that holds 6 special purple backed tiles. After the normal tile purchase phase, a second tile purchase phase happens where you buy the tiles from the Druid board. Tiles are progressively more expensive to purchase the further down the track they are, but as tiles on the right get purchased, the rest slide down the track.
I found Isle of Skye: Druids quite easy to incorporate into the base game. The secondary buying round happens quickly and accents the gameplay. The Druid tiles can be expensive (anywhere from 0 to 8 coins with up to an extra 4 coins depending on how far to the right on the the Druid track it is), they’re generally more useful than the regular tiles that come out of the bag, but not obscenely so. The stone tablets you can acquire give you an extra leg up on the competition, but not so aggressively that chasing the components added by the Druids expansion is now the only way to win.
I respect how difficult it is to craft an expansion without giving into power creep. After all, if the expansion content doesn’t build on the base game, or offer something stronger or more compelling, why would anyone want to buy it? My thoughts return to Food Chain Magnate’s The Ketchup Mechanism & Other Ideas expansion, that included 16 modular components that could be mixed each game. I shudder at the thought of adding every expansion simultaneously, but adding a couple different ones each game is a great way to inject some new life into a game that I’ve played over and over again. None of the modules change the core of Food Chain Magnate, rather, they offer exciting new twists and variations to the gameplay. And that’s an idea I can get behind.
Number of Plays: 13 (since I started recording games, I’m sure actual number of plays is 50+)
Game Length: 5 minutes – 3 hours (however long your group feels like playing
Mechanics: Real-time, Card game
Release Year: 1960
Designer: Werner Ernst George Muller
Intro
Pst. Hey, kid, come over here. I know you’re interested in that hot new game that everyone’s talking about, but check out what I’ve got for ya. Dutch Blitz is a classic, a real gem I tell ya. You gotta get in on this action while you can. After all, a game that continues to get sold and played after 80 years has to be good, right?
When I say the words ‘Dutch Blitz‘ to a group of people, there’s at least one person who perks up and gets excited. Whether it’s the game they played endlessly with their family, or spent playing all summer at camp, or even played in college instead of writing that boring term paper, Dutch Blitz has touched the lives of many.
How to Play
This section is going to be a little tricky as house rules for Dutch Blitz are rampant, like most games that manage to survive the relentless passage of time and get taught via word of mouth. Everytime I teach Dutch Blitz to a group that has at least one other person who has played before, a difference in rules comes up. So, here’s how my family plays:
Each player is given a deck of 40 cards, numbered 1 through 10 of four different colours. To begin the game each player shuffles their deck, and deals 10 cards face down. This is their ‘woodpile’, and their main goal is to reduce their the number of cards in their woodpile down to 0. They then deal 3 more cards face up in a row as their ‘posts’. The remaining cards in their deck get held in one of their hands.
I’m gonna need a bigger table
Simultaneously, players shout “GO!” and flip the top card of their wood pile. In real time, players are searching for cards they can play to the center of the table, creating piles of cards of the same suit in ascending order (beginning with 1, going to 10). If they see a pile with the top card being a red three and they have a red four in front of them, they can (quickly) take their red four and put it on top of that red pile, face up.
Should your woodpile and posts all be inelegiable for play, you can turn the top three cards from the deck in your hand onto the table, showing you a new card you may be able to put out onto a pile. When you have flipped through all the cards from your deck, you pick up the whole pile (do not shuffle) and start again from the beginning.
You must alternate boy-girl-boy-girl in descending numbers when stacking on your posts
Should you choose, you may also place a cards on your Posts, as long as the cards descend in sequence, and the suits alternate. If you’ve ever played Solitaire, then many of these mechanics and goals will feel very familiar, but with a lot more speed and stress. If you don’t like the word ‘Blitz’, feel free to use my title for the game: “Stressey Speedy Multiplayer Solitaire–y“.
The first player to drain their woodpile of cards shouts “BLITZ!” and all other players either simultaneously groan, or mutter their thanks to a deity of their choice. All players count up the cards left in their woodpile (these cards are -2 points each, for a maximum of -20 points in a round), and all the cards that made it into the common centre area are worth 1 point each. Seperate all the cards back to their owners, wipe the sweat from your brow, tally the score (or don’t, scores are arbitrary), and set up for another round!
Review
I can’t remember how Dutch Blitz came into my family, but I can recall late nights at my Aunt and Uncle’s cabin, young teens and adults alike frantically playing, roccus laughter, and a flurry of bent cards. Later in life, I introduced it to my college class during some down time, and it took off spectacularly. Initially, only one other person in my entire class had played Dutch Blitz before, but after a week of playing it every day during lunch, suddenly four other decks had been purchased and three tables were now dedicated to Stressey Speedy Multiplayer Solitaire–y every day from 12:30 to 1:30.
Get that blue four on the pile, stat!
It started friendly enough; multiple games would be played with the same people, with the first player to accumulate 100 points winning for the day. If if we ran out of time, so be it. Eventually a round robin style was adopted to accommodate a dozen players. After each game we’d rotate one seat to the left, introducing new players to each group (now that there were 4 simultaneous games happening) and we abandoned the idea of accruing a growing score over multiple games. Competition became fast and fierce, elbows flew, and other classes learned to avoid the cafeteria when those rowdy culinary kids were playing their little card game.
A few years later I was hanging out with some co-workers from the restaurant we worked at. I pulled out Dutch Blitz, and one other person had played it before. Two others joined in and after a quick introduction to the rules (and a small argument on house rules), we were off. The other experienced player and I were quickly flipping from our decks and slapping cards into the centre of the table, while the other two chefs sat and stared at our fury. Turns out, while this game is fun to play while getting inebriated, it’s difficult to learn when you’re already in that state.
It’s good manners to put the 10 card face down to indicate that pile is ‘finished’
Like most real time games, a level of familiarity and history does give experienced players an edge. Dutch Blitz can be really intimidating to new comers, especially when playing at the full player count. When three other people are quickly scanning their cards, and slamming their cards into the center stacks, the information available to each player is changing rapidly. By the time you notice that one of your cards could go out onto a stack, it’s entirely likely that someone has already beat you to it. The most dramatic moments of Dutch Blitz are when two players try to put the same card on the same stack at the same time. Either one will get there a moment faster, slipping their card under the other persons and shout victoriously, or the cards will collide and bend, and the owner of the game winces as the players argue over who arrived first.
While I’m all for keeping my games in as nice condition as reasonably possible, there are some games that you just need to accept their damage. I have 3 copies of Dutch Blitz all in varying levels of condition. It’s a game that gets played enough and is enough fun that I don’t mind needing to buy a new deck every 4 or 5 years.
Playing Dutch Blitz with the full complement of four players is a joy. The stacks in the centre of the table grow quickly, and if you miss putting a card out you can be sure another stack of the same colour will grow quickly. While it can be frustrating to watch others play cards while you’re stuck with a 10 card on top of your woodpile, your bad luck can be offset by playing other cards into the centre of the table. While the person who goes out ends the round, they aren’t always the person with the best score.
My wife loves Dutch Blitz and for a while, we’d play together, just the two of us. Unfortunately at the minimum player count of two, it’s not uncommon for both players to get stuck in a rut, just flipping cards, unable to play any to the centre at all. We played that if we both were stuck and agreed to do so at the same time, we’d flip the top card from our deck to the bottom, giving us a new set of cards when flipping through our decks. While it’s still a fun and fast paced game, it’s left wanting at two players.
Heaven forbid they use different colours. Or different icons…
At the other end of the spectrum, I also own the expansion pack, which allows up to 8 players to join in on the action. I’ve only played a few games at 8 players, we all found it to be a tedious experience. The table size required to fit 8 people was expansive enough that people seated on the end of the tables were unable to reach all the way over to the other side, or, if they got excited, dove across the table sending the other piles flying. It wasn’t long before we decided breaking into two 4 player groups was the better way to play.
Overall, I recognize that Dutch Blitz is not the game for everyone. If you prefer your board game nights to be quiet, civilized affairs, I’d recommend giving this a pass. If real time games tend to stress you out, Dutch Blitz isn’t going to change your mind. Nonetheless, Dutch Blitz has been a hit with most of the people I’ve introduced it to. There’s a special kind of excitement that grows in your heart when you find another kindred spirit who has Dutch Blitz in their history. It is joyful to find an opponent to test your skill against and to reminisce about how this little green box made its way into both of your lives.
