In many games of Carcassonne, the final turn feels less like strategy and more like geometry class gone wrong, just a lot of math at the end. Maybe it’s that big meadow that touches three or four cities and wraps around two more? Or maybe it’s corner counting which could change your adjacency and field … Read more
Every Catan game hits this tension point when the table falls silent. Someone has constructed yet another road, and players stare at the board, wondering who’s got longest road card. It’s a seemingly straightforward question, except the colored wooden pieces criss-crossed on the hexes make for some visual noise. You spot a long line and … Read more
With the Expedition Leaders expansion, the end game in Lost Ruins of Arnak feels more weighty. Every choice have more consequence. You are not just collecting victory points anymore. Instead, it’s about building a story across several tracks, and you must also try to keep deck efficient enough to survive until the very end. Trying … Read more
Heat in most racing games are simply another resource bar that depletes while playing aggressively, but out on-track it’s much less forgiving. Overspeeding into a corner or flooring it during a race generate immediate heat. Poor handling of your stress cards wont help either. You’ll need to plan the correct distance between you and car … Read more
Calico: Place your final tile, gather up your tokens, and you’re done with the game… But the board’s complicated layout hides its final score. Have you forgotten a tiny grouping of matches? Did you miscount one of those design goals surrounding the center tiles? With this little scorer, that visual clutter translate back into simple … Read more
Arithmetic panic happen in the final minute of every Everdell session. You glance around your city, tallying up its victory point total on your buildings, only to recall that there is also Newleaf. And then you’re frozen, contemplating whether building one more red critter would net you an extra dozen points from waiting visitors, which … Read more
In Pearlbrook, you’re balancing short term gratification against long term sustainability. With the new expansion, Everdell introduce sparkly pearl tokens that entice you into pursuing easy, fast wins. You build out a gorgeous-looking city. Then, when scores are tallied at the end, you realize you didn’t really consider what all those little points here and … Read more
