In Coimbra, most games do not end with huge sweeping plays. In fact, they ends in small margins; the kind where a single coin or a single guard token makes all the difference between first and second place. After several hours of coordinating three separate action tracks, it’s easy to forget such small numbers. So … Read more

And then, click, the last action card is played. And it’s over. At that point, the game changes into something else. The tile laying strategy come to an end. The busy resource management stop. You’re faced with a board littered with achievements, strewn across table. There are tokens and half-finished tracks. They appear less like … Read more

The final minutes of a Hadara game often feel like your economy collapsing. Three eras of colonizing, statue-carving, and increasing influence have come down to this: who has the most points? Calculating it out is complicated, so doing it in your head usually result in a mistake. Gold sets, silver medals, and color bonuses all … Read more

Ginkgopolis eventually hits a point where the supply of tiles depletes and the game changes. Instead of a puzzle about space placement, it becomes an exercise in bookkeeping. You can place your buildings and trade away all day long, but winning will require understanding what’s beneath those physical pieces: How many points do they represent? … Read more

Scoring in the final round at Yokohama is a bit of an accounting exercise. There’s no real strategy here; instead it’s just a matter of translating whatever mess you’ve left on the board to some amount of victory points. It’s important to stay locked down at this point because mistake can be costly. First, you … Read more

Suddenly the chatter stops and the table fall silent as one of the players hits ten points. You’re getting good, but who has how many? Trying to settle up while people argue is no way to win. Just use tool above to get answer. It’ll do all the calculations for you. Now you can think … Read more

There’s something strange about how tense the last few minutes are during a game of Gugong. Four days ago, you were moving envoys through Silk Road and swapping silk for tea. And now? It’s time for some math. Scoring doesn’t happen all at once, though; it happens as a series of events triggered by one … Read more