I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

NMBR 9 was an instant favorite last year with my gaming buddies, non-gaming friends, and family. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with a little math thrown in for scoring.

The numbers 0-9 are represented by funky shapes and there’s a deck of cards with two copies of each number. Each turn a random number is drawn and you have to place it in your playing area. You want to build your puzzle as high as possible since you’ll get more points the higher a number is.

In tonight’s solo game picture above, the number 9 is on the third level, so I scored 27 points since you multiply the level times the number you placed (the first level of numbers is worth nothing, the second level is multiplied by 1, the third level is multiplied by 2, etc.).

The only rules of placement are any piece you place must be adjacent to a piece already placed, and when you build anything on level two and above, your piece must rest on at least two different numbers. This is tricky since the numbers are so oddly shaped that you’ll often have spaces in between some and you can’t have any empty spaces below your pieces. When you go place the current number you’ll find yourself trying desperately to follow the placement rules, then grumbling when you have to place it one level lower than you wanted and then scoring fewer points.

So, it’s basically multi-player solitaire, but that’s fine by me. I love the challenge of trying to score optimally based on what tiles are randomly called out. It’s like bingo, but with far more satisying game play.

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

Almost two years ago I played Azul for the first time. It was insta-love: Azul was an abstract game with simple rules, a quick play time, and more strategy than expected. According to BG Stats, I’d played the game 55 times before today.

In Azul you’re a tile layer decorating the king’s palace walls. The theme isn’t relevant to the game play, though. Just know that those solid plastic pieces that look like Starburst aren’t meant to be eaten and you’ll be okay.

On your turn, select a single color of tiles from one of the coasters (aka “factories”) and add them to your board. You and your opponents repeat this until there are no more tiles, then you’ll move to the scoring round. If you’ve completed a row, then slide one Starburst, er, piece, to the right on its designated spot on your wall. Discard the other tiles.

You’ll score one point per tile you’ve added to your wall, gaining more points if they’re adjacent to previously placed tiles. Continue playing rounds until someone finishes a horizontal row. At the end of the game you’ll gain bonuses for collecting a complete set of one color and any rows or columns you’ve completed.

The best part of Azul is its simple turn structure and depth of strategy. At first you’re simply gathering tiles, hoping to line them up and/or collect enough for bonuses. But then you realize you can hate draft against your opponents, taking tiles that help you, but also hinder their own walls. You’ll also start figuring out ways to connect rows and columns that’ll earn you more points.

Until today I hadn’t played a solo game, but thanks to this solo variant I found via BGG, I was able to knock out a game by myself in 15 minutes. The dummy player uses a simple set of rules that neatly mimics a human opponent. And since the game lasts only five rounds, you’re hard-pressed to maximize your scoring opportunities during each turn.

Do you play solo variants of board games? Let’s talk about them on my Twitter feed!

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

Tonight I just had to play a solo game of Shards of Infinity tonight since I reviewed it for the most recent episode of The Five By (go here to download). While the base game didn’t have a solo option, the Relics of the Future expansion added solitaire rules.

Like other deck-building games, Shards of Infinity follows the basic script: each player has their own starting cards, plays five on their turn and spends resources to gain more cards from the display or deal damage to their opponent. What Shards does so well is get to the heavy action right away: instead of a slow churn to improve your deck, Shards gives you a chance to start hitting those big combos after only a few turns.

Go listen to the episode to learn more about the game and hear my thoughts. I’ll be back tomorrow with another post about another game.

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

Last month my buddy Daryl introduced me to Spirits of the Wild, a two-player game by Mattel. Yes, that Mattel. The company known for toys, but not for board games. They release popular games like Uno and Apples to Apples, which are perennial big sellers, but not the type that hobby gamers are too interested in playing.

With Spirits of the Wild, my opinion of Mattel has changed. This two-player set collection game reminded me of the excellent Herbaceous, which I absolutely loved. Like Herbaceous, you’re trying to collect different types of sets, like all gems of one color, all gems of different colors, pairs of colors, etc. Each are worth different points depending on how far you get in completing them.

The theme is something about animals and their spirits, but it’s secondary to the solid game play of Spirits of the Wild. You and your opponent each have the same set of action cards. Choose one and perform the action, which can be taking a stone to add to your scoreboard or adding stones to the supply, or a mix of the actions.

After you’ve taken three actions, you may reset your actions and take one of the special actions that cycle through the game. I like the action that gives you an immediate extra turn.

When one of the “bad” gems shows up, you can add that to your board, thus blocking off that section, but also giving it double the points at the end of the game. When the fifth bad gem shows up, the game ends.

I liked Spirits of the Wild from the first turn I played. It reminded me a lot of Herbaceous, with its style of set collection and that little bit of push-your-luck. This game, though, has a little take-that, especially when you place the coyote on your opponent’s board. The coyote is triggered through certain card actions and it blocks your opponent from placing gems in one of section of their board. To move the coyote, you have to use one of those card actions.

It plays in about 15 minutes and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Games that are easy to learn yet provide a deeper experience than other 15-minute fillers can go a long way in establishing Mattel as a quality board game producer.

Spirits of the Wild is sold at Target for $15 MSRP and you can get it for cheaper since Target regularly discounts its merchandise. No matter what price you pay, though, Spirits of the Wild is a bargain.

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

I was bummed when I missed the Oaxaca Kickstarter last year. I loved the theme and I’m a fan of dice-chucking games, but for some reason I didn’t back it. Thankfully, my buddy Ben was kind enough to trade a few games with me and Oaxaca was one of them.

In Oaxaca you’re a craftsperson making goods to sell to the tourists. You do this by rolling dice and either gathering raw materials or to crafting goods. When you gather, you’ll draw cards that match the good you’ve rolled. When you craft, you’ll get one step closer to crafting a good that gives you victory points and either ongoing or one-time abilities.

This is a light dice-chucking engine builder and tonight I solo-ed it for the first time. I appreciated the different ways you could mitigate dice rolls by either using a special ability or by using two dice to set one to the side you want.

The solo game caught me off-guard with how fast it played. It’s no more than a 15-minute game that adds a few solo mechanisms while keeping the game play intact from the multi-player game. Some people don’t like the beat-your-own-high-score style of solo play, but I’m fine with it. While the game isn’t a brain burner, it is certainly a solid engine-builder that should appeal to a bigger audience.

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

I had a great day filled with gaming yesterday, playing 7 Wonders Duel: Pantheon, Shards of Infinity: Relics of the Future, Troyes, Point Salad, and Tapestry. Today I didn’t game until the very end of the day, after a fun day date with my wife as we celebrated Philippines Cultural Day at the USC Pacific Asia Museum. It was a wonderful event highlighted by performances from local music and dance groups. We’re big fans of cultural events like these, especially when they’re focused on our shared heritage.

Two other highlights from our day: I scored a brand new copy of Time of Crisis from a local gamer I’d met on Facebook. This is a wargame I’ve been wanting to play based on a recommendation from my friend Meeple Lady. The other highlight was meeting up with our friends Geraldine and Mike, who are known as To Live And Dice In LA on Instagram. They’re a lovely couple and Michelle and I instantly bonded with them when we all hung out earlier this year (I’d met them last year at Strategicon). We caught up with each other over delicious fried chicken at Crack Shack, which is one of my favorite restaurant names ever.

Back home I caught up with some work before playing a quick game of Mint Works. I’ve loved this worker placement game since I snagged a used copy two years ago. The game fits in an Altoids-sized tin and your workers are little wooden pieces that look like Altoids. There are action cards that you place your worker on to perform the action. Basically, you’re trying to buy plans for buildings, then constructing them in your neighborhood to earn points. The first player to seven points wins.

It’s an extremely fast game (my solo game lasted all of five minutes, in a loss to one of the AIs), and I love how it feels like a bigger worker placement game. Everything is stripped down to the basics, but there’s still some of the feeling of the bigger worker placement games and you can plans to block your opponents from spaces.

I love the idea of small-box games like this (and Deep Sea Adventure from Oink Games and Tiny Epic Galaxies from Gamelyn Games) and I’ll never turn down a play, thanks to their quick play time and solid design.

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

Tonight I solo-ed Architects of the West Kingdom. This game surprised me last year; I’d liked Raiders of the North Sea (even better with the expansion) from the same designer and artist team, but Architects is the better game. The solo game features an Automa-style deck, which does a good job of simulating an opponent.

What appeals to me most about Architects is its wide-open feel. You’re never really blocked from any space and the more workers you have on a space, the more actions/resources you get. One of my favorite mechanisms is related to this: you can capture your opponents’ workers and hold them hostage. If you want you can then send them to prison for money, where your opponents can waste an action to bust them out. Or, if they can’t wait, they can rescue them from your player board by paying the cost.

It’s a solid worker-placement game that one was one of my favorites last year. For new gamers I’d recommend Raiders of the North Sea (without the expansion), but for veterans I’d play Architects.

The photo above is from a game I played with my friends Amanda, John, and David. We got together one warm summer afternoon to help David get closer to his goal of playing the Top 100 BGG games in 100 days. That’s a lot tougher challenge than blogging every day for a month.

I’m posting about a game every day in September! Here’s a link to yesterday’s post.

I backed the Gentes: Deluxified Edition Kickstarter last February and after a few delays, the game arrived earlier this year. I’d never played the original non-fancy version, but knew of Stephen Risthaus’ reputation as designer of Arkwright.

Tonight I played a solo game in about 45 minutes, which is about how long it usually takes me. In Gentes (apparently the Latin pronunciation uses the G sound like “giant,” but here in Southern California my friends and I use the H sound from the Spanish word for people) you’re building your civilization through three eras, with points coming from various sources. You’ll train your population, build monuments, and establish cities throughout the Mediterranean.

The game is a solid midweight Euro for up to four players and I like it all player counts. At its heart Gentes is an action selection game and I love the use of time as a resource in Gentes. For every action you take you’ll usually pay some money, but you’ll also pay time, which is represented by little hourglasses. These take up space on your player board so that you’ll eventually run out of room to perform actions each age due to the action tiles and hourglasses clogging up all of the spaces.

To me it feels like a reverse worker placement mechanism. You take the action tile and if you’re the first one to do that particular action you get the better “price” for it while others that follow you have to pay either more money and/or time. You’re not blocking your opponents, but in a way you are since you can take the cheaper actions and force them to spend more time/money, leaving them fewer open spaces for more actions.

Like other Euros you’re trying to be as efficient as possible, unlocking ongoing abilities that get you cheaper actions, either in price or hourglasses or in being able to take the action without using one of the tiles. There’s a lot more to the game, but it’s this time and money management that I really enjoy trying to balance.

The game has flown a little under the radar, probably because it originally came out in 2017. Everyone who’s seen the Deluxified version loves it and I was impressed by it as well. There are chunky wooden meeples to track your population, metal coins, and an awesome Folded Space insert to keep everything organized.

I was fortunate to play Gentes with my friends John and Monique at Strategicon last weekend and even though I hadn’t played it since the last con in May, I was able to get through the teach and the game ran smoothly. Gentes is such a solid design and every one of my gaming friends has picked it up right away and enjoyed it. I was happy that John and Monique did, too.