The Games I played at Expo Part 1

I’ll be playing the games that came home with me from the expo a few times more before reviewing them, so if you’d like to hear more about any of the games pictured here please subscribe to the blog.

That said I played a dozen or so games at the expo that I didn’t pick up that I’d love to tell you more about. There's a lot of them so I've split this up into two posts

The TL;DR

Snowman Dice - lightweight filler dexterity game
The Artemis Project – clean and layered dice rolling engine builder
Sanctum – great and simple design with massively intuitive character progression
Bosk - the placid forest hides a deeply strategic gem
One Key - not enough to tempt as I already own Dixit and Mysterium
Pandemic: Rapid Response - Adding real time tension to this classic co-op

Snowman Dice

A simple real time dice chucking game where you rush to roll your dice looking for the right results to let you stack up your snowman. Once that’s done you must attempt to slide the stacked dice to the North Pole to win, but the other players will be throwing (flicking) snowballs at your snowman. Looks like a fun light filler, but chasing flicked dice around the floor might prove a little frustrating.

The Artemis Project

Dice placement games are completely my jam and the Artemis Project has some great twists to add to a game based on this mechanic. Players compete over the resources to keep their arctic research stations working, placing dice to claim resources or their place on an expedition.

It has a great mechanic where players who place early can be cut out of gaining anything, but balancing that they get a rebate for dice that they don’t otherwise get anything for. Alongside this you build an engine recruiting workers to power your buildings and complete expeditions, and then manage the resources you need to keep them alive. The project rushes to completion with a shift in gears half way through the game from engine building to producing victory points.

This one definitely goes on my buy list.

Sanctum

Upcoming from Czech Game Editions, Sanctum is a dice based fantasy adventure. Players collect enemies from a communal adventure board and then choose when to fight them and offered rewards for being brave and pushing their luck. As they defeat enemies they are offered the choice to collect coins, gain experience or to investigate the items they find on their foes.

Money and items are traded in town while experience immediately gains the character improvements. The experience system is intuitive and players can see clearly what future improvements will gain them and are able to plan ahead. I’m very much looking forward to picking up a copy when this one comes out.

Bosk

A simple forest, with the autumnal leaves delicately fluttering across the mossy woodland floor. It sounds like a simple story, but in this arena players engage in a ferocious battle for victory. Players plant trees in turns vying for control of the vertical and horizontal lines across the forest.

In the second phase of the game players scatter leaves in the direction the wind is blowing trying to control districts of the woods. I really liked the clean and balanced mechanics where tree placement early in the game becomes vital for the second phase.

The fact that they ran out of stock early on in the show is the only reason I didn’t pick up a copy.

One Key

When Libellud have a new image game I can’t wait to try it. One Key is a coop that sits somewhere between the simplicity of Dixit and the complexity of Mysterium.

A simple and clean game, while they’ve tried to add some theme it’s largely irrelevant to the gameplay. After laying out a bunch of possible keys the team leader pulls three images of different sizes and shapes and in secret assigns each either a green (strong match), yellow (partial match) or red (no match) token. The team choose one of these images and reveal the token. They then use the information gained to guide them as they eliminate several keys each round, but must be very careful as eliminating the one key early will result in an instant loss. As the rounds continue they must eliminate more incorrect keys until they have identified the one key.

As I own Dixit and Mysterium there isn’t really enough here that's new to justify adding it to my collection, though if I’d had the choice at the time I might have bought this over Mysterium.

Pandemic: Rapid Response

What could make Pandemic more stressful? A timer and real time dice chucking? Et voilà - that is exactly what Rapid Response adds to the juggernaut that is Pandemic. Not one I'd want to play a lot but definitely adding something new to the Pandemic experience.