As I sit and write this I am looking out my patio doors watching the snow melt away from the first big snow fall right before this coming holiday season. The snow and the cold always reminds me of staying in doors, drinking hot chocolate, and playing a good game with friends or family while keeping warm from the chilly elements. Since I play a lot of tabletop games this got me to thinking. What is going to be hot this holiday season?
The more games the merrier if you ask me. I prefer designer games over the mass produced ones by Hasbro or Milton Bradley that you can find in your everyday big box retailer. And I love teaching someone a new game. So this year I want to recommend a few by way of a top 10 list of designer games for the holidays. Something new & different for the family to get into.
#10. The Settlers of Catan:
Settlers of Catan
This is the game that started the world wide obsession with Euro games. This game is published by Mayfair games & has been winning awards since 1995. Settlers of Catan was also one of the first designer games that I was exposed to. Settlers of Catan is a dice rolling, hand management game with a bit of player networking involved to get specific resources during the game. With its modular tiles it makes it easy to change up how the game is played. You are a settler on the island of Catan & you need to collect resources to build up your settlements, cities, and roads. The player to hit 10 points first wins the game. And don’t worry about spicing the game up a bit in the future. There are several expansions out in the market place. Most of the big box retailers now carry The Settlers of Catan & most carry the expansion that take this 3-4 player game to a 3-6 player game. Look for this game to be on sale around Black Friday.
#9. Manhattan Project:
Released in 2012 & published by Minion Games. This is definitely one of my favorite games from this publisher. You play as a nation building up your atomic weapons, looking to control global dominance over all other nations. In this game you assign workers to certain tasks. You will buy facilities or use facilities controlled by neighboring nations. You will build bombs to take out your opponents facilities or use spies in an attempt to steal valuable information from those opposing nations or sabotage them. This is a low-luck worker placement game. So you must be good at managing actions.
Minion Games has two expansions for The Manhattan Project. One is called Nations. It is a 7-card expansion those gives you the choice of controlling one real life super power. The other expansion is called Second Stage. This is actually four mini expansions. It contains Nations 2, which works like the first expansion but gives you seven new countries. Rocket Technology, which allows you to build rockets during the bomb making action of the game. H-Bomb Technology, which gives you a new bomb making resource & the ability to make an H-Bomb. And finally Personalities, which gives access to seven personalities to actual people that worked on the real Manhattan Project. This add extra benefits to your managing role as you play through the game.
#8. Power Grid:
I recently played this game for my first time at my local game store & wow did I have a lot of fun playing. Power Grid was published by Rio Grande Games, one of my favorite publishers, & released in 2004. In Power Grid you take on the role of providing power to various cities on a map by buying power stations & fuel resources. In each round you take place in an auction, bidding on variety of power stations. As time goes by newer & better stations are put up for auction. You must try to out bid your opponents to replace your old power stations with newer more efficient ones while trying to manage money you are making from the cities you are powering. To win you must make sure that you are the one with the most profit at the end of the game.
This is another game that has won many awards throughout the years since it was published. Power Grid is fun & can be played by the whole family. Rio Grande Games has released more than twenty expansions for Power Grid. Most are newer maps of various countries & or continents that may or may not add new mechanics to the game. In Power Plant greener energy doesn’t make the most efficient way to win.
#7: Five Tribes:
For the last month or so I have played Five Tribes, from Days of Wonder, at least once a week. Five Tribes has a modular board made up of thirty tiles. At the beginning of a game the tiles will be laid randomly in a 6×5 grid. Three meeples are then placed randomly from a cloth bag onto each tile. Each round players bid on player turn order. Highest bid goes first as lowest bid will go last. As the game goes by you will move, place, & remove meeples on the tiles to take resources, buy djinns, taking over an empty tile by placing your camel, or taking gold. The game ends when there are no legal moves left in the game or a player has placed all of their camels.
After playing a few nights ago we tried to figure out as to what type of game this is. We decided that is is more of a worker displacement game. Not sure if that is an actual game term but for now we will make it one. Once you learn this game it’ll play in around 45 minutes to an hour. This is also a game that can be played by the whole family. Five Tribes has a single card expansion.
#6. Qwixx:
Lets talk about family friendly games. Qwixx is definitely one. Qwixx which is published now by Gamewright Games was originally released in 2012. This is a fast paced dice game where everyone gets to play in every round. And really the only thing extra you need is a pen or pencil. Each player will receive a score sheet to keep track of what numbers in each row will be marked off. Players roll dice each turn. The active player may mark off two separate numbers represented by a combination of the two white dice & then the combination of one white die & one colored die. The other players then get a chance to mark off a number represented by the combination of the white dice. Object of the game is to lock out two of the four colored lines. The game ends when two of the colored lines are completely locked out or a player can’t mark off a number legally four times. The player with the highest sum of points wins the game.
#5. Love Letter:
Right in the middle of things I will have to propose to you the card game of Love Letter from Alderac Entertainment Group. This is one of many card games by AEG in their line of 5-minute games. This is such a fast & easy game to play for a small group of people. Can be played on break or lunch at work. It is a game of risk, bluffing, & deduction. You play as an eligible suitor trying to get his love letter to the princess of Tempest by way of the others in the game.
In Love Letter each player starts off with one card. The active player draws a card & plays a card taking the action listed on it. If the action is to guess a certain character card & you are right, then that player is out. If it is an action the compares hands & you happen to be the lowest number then you are out. Pretty simple to follow. I taught it to a non-gamer a few nights ago & she picked the rules up after the first play through.
Now AEG has a variety of games based on Love Letter. The Tempest version is the second in the line of Love Letter games, where as the first was designed by Seiji Kenai. The Kenai version has a few different characters with different actions. It roughly plays the same. Steve Jackson released one last month based on his Munchkin game called “Loot Letter”. AEG just released another based on the same game called “Letters to Santa” & next year “Love Letter: Capture the Inmates of Arkham Asylum” comes out.
#4. Splendor:I have been playing Splendor since it was released here in the United States this year. This is another recommended family game. It was up for the Spiel des Jahres, Game of the Year. Unfortunately it didn’t win. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful game & is the first game I have played by their publishers, Space Cowboys. You take up the role of becoming a merchant in the Renaissance period trying to buy up gem mines, transportation, & shops which will earn you prestige points.
During the game you will collect chips that represent different gem stones. Each chip can be turned in during turn to purchase a card that represents a mine, shop, or transportation. Each card throughout the game will also represent a gem. The more cards you collect the less chips you have to take to purchase a card. The more expensive the card the more prestige points it is worth. The first player to fifteen points wins the game. A game usually runs around thirty minutes so it is very quick. However it does get addicting so it does have a high replay value.
#3. Carcassone:
We are getting close to the end of my list. I thought long & hard on the #3 spot. It was definitely a hard decision. So here is my #3, Carcassonne by Z-Man Games. A simple tile laying game for up to five players. On a turn a player draws a tile, featuring landscape from southern France, & places it face-up on the table. Each player will connect each tile by road, field, or city wall. Players may also place a meeple in a city, field, or on a road depending on the tile they place for their turn to earn points throughout the game.
This is the type of game that can stand alone or can get wilder with every expansion you add to it. I will say that there are so many expansions I am not even going to try to list them all. There are several different versions of the original Carcassonne. The base version usually comes with the River expansion, while five “Big Box” versions contain the base version & various expansions. There are also several children’s versions; Carcassonne: South Seas & My First Carcassonne. Two stand-alone versions can be found; Carcassonne: Gold Rush & Carcassonne: Winter Edition. Z-Man games did just announce that their more updated version of the base game will be released in early December with better and brighter artwork. This can still be played with all of the expansions.
#2. King of Tokyo:
Would you like to be a king among monsters? Well look no further than the game of King of Tokyo published by Iello Games & designed by the “King” of all card games Richard Garfield. In King of Tokyo you become a giant monster bent on becoming king of all monsters by taking over Tokyo & dominating the rest of the monsters vying for the mantle of king. This is a dice rolling game with player elimination. Each turn you will roll six dice to determine if you will heal, deal damage to an opposing monster, gain points, or energy that can be used to by cards that can modify how the game is played. Be the first to twenty victory points or the last to survive the onslaught of the other monsters to win the game.
Iello has published two full expansions, Power Up! & Halloween. In Power Up! you get an extra monster to add to the game, Pandakai, a giant panda bear. You also get to add power up cards designed specifically for each character. And in the Halloween expansion you can add in two new monsters, Boogey Woogey & Pumpkin Jack. Halloween also allows you to add twelve new power cards to the original deck that can be purchased as costumes for your monster to wear. These costumes give you modification bonuses to your monsters. Halloween also comes with a special promo card for the new Richard Garfield game, King of New York.
#1. Sushi Go!:
And here we are, finally at the #1 spot. It was a long journey & a tough decision to make but I am absolutely sure that Sushi Go! by Gamewright Games is the game to get this holiday season. It is small enough & quite inexpensive enough to be a stocking stuffer. Sushi Go! is a card drafting game. Everyone starts the game with a set number of cards & there are only three rounds. Everyone takes a card from their hand, places it face down, passes their hand to the player on their left, then everyone reveals simultaneously the card they placed face down. This is done until all the cards are done. The cards that remain in front of each player have a set number of points depending on how many specific cards of that type a player has. Do this same thing for three complete rounds. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.
When I was introduced to Sushi Go! I thought it was silly. It is & it is also a lot of fun. I recently taught it to the church youth group I am a part of. None of them had played before & they really enjoyed it. Gamewright Games has so many great games out on the market & this by far is my favorite of all of them. In October Gamewright did release their first expansion for Sushi Go! called Soy Sauce. It is just a four card deck that can be shuffled into the base game. The soy sauce cards give 4 bonus points for the player with the most cards with the most colored backgrounds. It can be found in the store located on BoardGameGeek.com.
I hope this gives you some insight at what to look for this holiday season. Keep your eye out on your black Friday ads as some of these games can be found at Target, Walmart, & Meijer. Also be sure to check online for Cyber Monday ads. Some online tabletop gaming stores like Miniaturemarket.com, Amazon.com, & CoolStuffInc.com will be sure to feature sales on some of these great tabletop games.
Please visit your local game store on Saturday November 29th as it is Small Business Saturday. Do this to support & show them that you care. Without local small businesses we would have to completely shop at big box stores or online. I love my local game stores & I hope they can stay in business for a very long time.
I want to wish everyone of you a very happy a fun filled Thanksgiving holiday. Don’t eat too much of that wonderful turkey & mashed potatoes, don’t get up too early to shop on black Friday, keep warm, & of course game on!
-Christopher Richter
Twitter: @Boardgaming_FTW
Board Game Geek: Anime_Guru
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