You may have noticed it’s been a bit slow around here for the last few months. We took a break from reviewing board games to focus on our family, job changes, and home projects. But just because we took a break from writing posts doesn’t mean that we took a break from board games! To launch us back into regular posting, here are our 5 favorite games we discovered while on our content break!
Since we couldn’t agree on a ranking, games are in alphabetical order.
Beyond the Sun
Okay, we are cheating a little bit with Beyond the Sun in that we played it for the first time just last weekend. Technically at that time we were still on our content break so we’re counting it!
Beyond the Sun is a tech tree game with a side order of area control. Players build up their faction’s technology by choosing different topics to research (military, economy, etc) while simultaneously bolstering up ship power to terraform and claim planets in space. Planets terraformed give points, resources, or ongoing abilities to the planet owner. Additionally while all this is going on, players must be mindful of the achievements that serve as both the end game trigger and award a decent chunk of victory points for completing specific tasks.
The gameplay is relatively simple in that players have just one action on each turn and many actions/research cards just involve reading the text on the card and following directions. The weight of the game comes from trying to optimize the research areas, time both your expansion in research as well as expansion into space at the right time, all while monitoring the marathon of the achievements for the end game.
We enjoyed the unique way area control merged with action selection to create a game experience we’ve never had before. We don’t often put huge importance on re-playability just because we rarely play a game frequently enough for it to matter, but this one has so many different combinations of every card type that there would still be a ton to explore even after playing many times.
Brian Boru: The High King of Ireland
As soon as our game group finished playing Brian Boru for the first time, we all sat there for a moment and agreed “that was weird, but in a good way.” Brian Boru is a funky mashup of trick taking and area control. In this game, you are a noble family trying to extend your influence in neighboring cities, court royals for marriage, and not get overtaken by Vikings. The game has elements of card drafting, hand management, area control, and typical euro “go up the tracks” to get specific bonuses or abilities.
The trick taking aspect is very interesting, as there are benefits both to winning and losing a trick, so for each hand you need to think about whether you want to win (and get more area to control) or whether you’d rather lose (go up a track to get bonuses).
Despite the weird hodge podge of mechanisms, the rules are not overly complex. The area control aspect adds a lot of tension and interaction and the game does so many unique and interesting things that we can’t help but want more plays.
Bunny Kingdom
Even though this isn’t a numbered list, if we were forced to choose, Bunny Kingdom would be our top pick just for the most times re-played since learning it a few months ago. We’ve brought this one out with several different gaming friends, and played two player a few times, if that’s any indication for how we feel about it.
Bunny Kingdom is a card drafting area control game. On each turn, players draft two cards to claim spaces on the map, build cities, and expand resources to create scoring areas. The scoring in Bunny Kingdom is unique in that players must have both cities and different types of resources to score and going hard on any one thing generally doesn’t go well.
Card drafting games always have the ability to make someone salty if a card they were banking on gets sniped by another player. This is ESPECIALLY true in the two player game in Bunny Kingdom where players draft 2 cards per turn, but trash one. Yeah, that one single building you needed to be able to score your mountain area…I’m going to just trash it. It can be brutal. But we love it.
Carnival of Monsters
Carnival of Monsters shares a game design lineage with Bunny Kingdom so when our friends brought it along on a board game cabin weekend we were excited to try it! Played over a series of 4 rounds, players draft cards trying to acquire high powered monsters worth big points. Each round (season) has a bonus monster type that can earn extra points. At the end of the round players must survive a danger check by rolling dice. If their monster cards have more monster symbols than the dice roll shows, they must pay three coins per symbol. And if you don’t have the coins you take a loan, which is negative points at the end of the game. Yay!
Okay, so that last bit sounds scary, but that’s part of the charm of Carnival of Monsters. It’s not meant to be a serious game. You laugh and badger your friends for taking your monster cards or competing with you for land types. We’re generally not big party game people, so something like this that’s silly fun works great for us to get that party game feel.
Pipeline
Pipeline has been on our radar for a couple of years now and we finally had the chance to try it. Weighing in as the heaviest game on this list, Pipeline mashes together all sorts of game mechanics from economic action selection to engine building and spatial elements. Players take turns buying, selling, and refining oil while also expanding and improving their pipe network.
We like that Pipeline pushed us to get creative with strategy. It’s a tight game in that everything is limited: money, time, actions, rounds. You have to be incredibly thoughtful about what contracts you try to fulfill and when, while also keeping an eye on what your opponents are doing.
Pipeline was a super fun brain melter, and we’ll be itching to try it out again very soon!