The Yellow Meeple’s First Impressions 3rd July – 26th July

We’ve made a list. It’s our list of guilt.

I think there’s about 20 board games on the list, 75% of which we have own but have never played and another 25% that have only been played once and need to see the table again to justify their place in the collection. It’s time to tackle the guilt, so hopefully we’ll be sharing a few more first impressions in the coming weeks. This week we started on the list but also attended our first gaming group near our new house, giving us the opportunity to try a couple of extra games.

Here’s are Yellow Meeple’s first impressions;

 ·        Waggle Dance is a game I’ve been keen to try for some time and was excited to get the opportunity to try this British designed and made game with Croydon Board Gamers. Waggle Dance is a dice worker placement game with the theme of making honey. Based on the dice (bees) you roll you can achieve different things on your turn such as extending your hive, collecting or hatching eggs, or collecting different colours of nectar. When you have 4 nectar pieces of one colour in a segment of your hive you can flip over that hive tile and you need 5 flipped tiles to trigger the end of the game. Waggle Dance is a really nice weight of game, with a unique but well integrated theme. We’ll definitely try to play it again, even if I’m not sure it’s strong enough to earn a place in our collection.

               

·         Dixit Origins is the first expansion we’ve tried for Dixit. It doesn’t add any new rules or additional players, but it’s just a whole new set of cards with art that is centered around animals. It was the cute animal art that made us choose this expansion and we were not disappointed and neither were the friends we played with. It definitely brought fresh life to the game, especially for those who admitted burn out on the original. We’d happily play with just the new cards or mix them together, but are very happy with the Origins expansion!

·         Ghost Blitz 2 was a charity shop pick-up, which I wasn’t really looking for, but I have no problem trying a game for 99p. Ghost Blitz is a quick party game where speed and mental agility are the name of the game. You’re essentially looking either for the component that is pictured on the card in the right colour, or if there is not on in the right colour then the component which isn’t pictured and whose colour isn’t pictured. It’s a game of speed so whoever snatches the correct component first wins the card. For me Ghost Blitz is a fine game, but for this style of game I’d simply rather play Dobble, as it just seems a bit more clever in its design.

·         1^st and Goal is a game I picked up on impulse based on good reviews and a cheap price on eBay. Unfortunately when I started to read the rules, it became very apparent that the game is aimed directly at football fans and a lot of the rules explanation is a lot harder to understand if you don’t understand American football. We found that the game was almost entirely luck – we each selected a card which seemed to be pretty much at random. The match of the two cards led us to roll certain dice and the results of those dice decided if the ball moved forward. Maybe it’s better if you understand American Football and you can play more tactically by knowing what kind of moves are optimal in different situations and when to take timeouts etc. but I’d definitely warn those who know nothing about the sport to give 1^st and Goal a miss!

After meeting a handful of people at our first game group in Croydon, we’re keen to do more, so will probably head there again next week. We might also try a group down in Brighton soon. It’s a shame there’s nowhere a little bit closer to home, but it’s worth travelling to try a few more games and more importantly start being social gamers again!