6/12 Session Preview

Hello!

This upcoming Friday, 6/12, is our regularly schedule session at 6:30 PM.  Remember, our game night does not meet every other Friday, but rather specifically the 2nd and 4th Friday of the month.

This upcoming session will be on the same evening of the premier of JURASSIC WORLD.  Now, I'm super excited about this movie and as such I thought we should theme are games around it.  Unfortunately there aren't a lot of specifically dinosaur games (in fact the best one, Dominant Species (which ironically doesn't have actual dinosaurs), I don't own) so I thought I'd expand it to games that involve animals.

As with all of our other sessions, this is a great time to bring friends and invite new folk, so get the word out that we're having a fun game night!

Below are some of the games we'll be playing, presented in the form of my top ten favorite animal-related games.

10.  Hey! That's My Fish

Okay I'm not going to lie, there were only about ten games I own that directly involve animals.  This is a fine little game, but normally one so light wouldn't make any top ten list of mine.  That being said, this is a cute little fifteen-minute filler game that has players taking control of adorable penguins who want to eat the most fish.

9.  Zooloretto

This is a very popular gateway game - in fact, it won the Spiel de Jahres.  Players take control of a zoo and fill it with various animals, receiving points for the different combinations of animals in their pens.  It's cute and great with kids.  It's also very easy!

8.  Takenoko

If any one of these games is going to be described as 'adorable,' this is it.  It has gorgeous artwork, complete with a little painted panda miniature.  In the game you are trying to earn the most points by moving the panda, moving the gardener, and creating a beautiful farm of bamboo.  The game is very simple and does not take particularly long - the real draw here is the gorgeous components.


7.  Evolution

This game was put out on Kickstarter last year by North Star Games who famously produce party games.  Their first foray into strategy games was very successful.  While Evolution wasn't a smash hit, I thought it was a great little card game - particularly since I got the kickstarter rewards which include very cool dinosaur boards and a brontasaurus miniature as a start player token (see, dinosaurs!).  The game play is very fun - you create species of animals and give them various traits in order to be the one that ends up on top.

6.  Agricola

Agricola spent some time as #1 on BGG's ranking and has been in the top 10 for as long as I've been into gaming.  It is Uwe Rosenburg's breakout hit that launched several similar-ish games (one of which is on this list).  In this game you take control of a 14th century farm (15th? 13th?  It's old).  You're trying to create the best farming operation via having active livestock, developed structures, and viable crops.  It is challenging game that can be somewhat puzzly.  It's a superb game and is very worthy of playing!


5.  Camel Up

We have featured Camel Up before as it is a fantastic game.  It won the Spiel de Jahres last year and I think it was very worthy of that.  If you're into gambling at all, then this will be a fun experience for you - in this game you're betting on a camel race!  It's basically as exciting as American Pharaoh winning the Triple Crown.  It's crazy and silly and the camels on occasion
are known to jump on each other.


4.  Dungeon Petz

Dungeon Petz belongs in a category of games called "games I love but never play."  It is a tragic group.  I really enjoy Dungeon Petz.  My wife got it for me for my birthday last summer.  We played it three times in a week.  We haven't played it since, which is a shame.  Despite its cutesy theme - each player runs a pet store that sells monsters to the evil villains who own dungeons - it is actually a relatively intense Euro-game.  It can be very thinky but I think it's wonderful.

3.  Ultimate Werewolf


I'm not going to lie - I look for any excuse to put Ultimate Werewolf on this list.  I love moderating it.  I enjoy putting together interesting character combos and watching everything unfold from an omniscient eye.  In werewolf, players secretly are either villagers or werewolves.  Villagers want to find and lynch all of the wolves - the wolves want to systematically eat all of the villagers.  It is very similar to games like Mafia and does involve player elimination, which is why I like to save it for the end as it gives players a chance to pack up and leave when they've been eliminated.  We'll try and get a game or two of this going around 10:00 PM.

2.  Robinson Crusoe

This is our only cooperative game on our list and it is my absolute favorite of that genre.  Robinson Crusoe is loosely themed on the novels but really it takes simply the 'stranded on a deserted island' format and applies to many scenarios.  Different scenarios include spin-offs of King Kong, Indiana Jones, Swiss Family Robinson, and of course Robinson Crusoe.  On the island the survivors are constantly harassed by calamities, including the wildlife.  Often they will also go hunting the wildlife (see how it's connected to the theme?) in hopes of survival.  It's a challenging game that is just dripping with theme.

1.  Caverna

Caverna is my favorite Euro-game and is one of my favorite games of all time.  It is the sequel
to the aforementioned Agricola, however in his game rather than being boring people-farmers the players are Dwarfs-far
mers.  They have free reign to build of their cave and their farm as they see fit and score points at the end for the most flourishing.  Unlike Agricola, which is more like a puzzle, Caverna is a sandbox.  All options are always available.  Each game I pick an interesting route and run with it, occasionally allowing for opportunities to mold my plans.  Sometimes I love the puzzle games, but in this case I find the sandbox nature such good fun.