The Yellow Meeple’s First Impressions 2nd – 14th October

A few new games have hit the table this week, although we’ve also bought a couple of new games, so we’re only maintaining the status quo with our unplayed games pile. Our gaming success for the last week was introducing some new games to some friends last weekend – who particularly loved Looney Quest. The new board games we’ve tried have mainly just been with the two of us playing at home and one return visit to a gaming group on Wednesday.

Here are Yellow Meeple’s first impressions;

·        The Networks is a game all about the theme of running a TV network. You’ll win the game by having popular shows in the right timecslot with the right combination of starts and adverts, but also knowing when to drop the shows after a couple of seasons when the ratings just aren’t that good any more. Each round you can chose to grab from the central pool different combinations of shows, stars or adverts to suit your needs. Most of these cost money, which you’ll primarily earn from advertising revenue. I’m not sure if the Networks is going to be a hit in our collection – it seemed to work well with two, had a strong theme but the mechanics are nothing special. Hopefully the theme will give it the legs to remain a game we play often.

·        Pairs of Pears is a game we picked up very cheaply on sale because its tag said it was by the makers of Bananagrams – a great hit in my family as a holiday game. Each player is dealt a selection of letters where the type-face is one of four different types. You must simply create 4 pairs of intersecting words in a matching type-face before your opponent. It’s an OK idea, but it’s not that interesting and is over very quickly, normally with you making rubbish 3 or 4 letter words. Sadly not the hit that Bananagrams is!

·        Mystic Vale was one of the games that appeared to be ‘the hotness’ at the UK Games Expo this year and one I was really disappointed not to try. Here AEG have tied to define a new mechanic of card crafting. You have the same deck of cards for the whole game, but you can add to the cards by buying upgrades over the course of the game. These go together with a really nice combination of sleeved cards and see-through acetate cards. The game is pretty themeless, but we really enjoyed the deck-building mechanics enough to make this one a hit. Our only complaint was that either our decks were too big or the game too short so that the game ended before we really thought we’d got going to a state where we were achieving combos from our deck. I can’t wait to try it again and see it this gets better with experience!

·        6 Nimmt is a little card game filler that I’d heard of but never come across before. It’s essentially a bluffing/push your luck card game where you’re trying not to be the one forced to take cards by playing the 6^th card on one of the 4 rows. Each turn, players simultaneously select a card and play it face down. They then reveal and cards are played in ascending order closest to their nearest numerical neighbour on one of the 4 rows. The game is pretty simple, but there’s some fun choices to be made and a lot of interaction as a result. A great ice-breaker for the start of the night that will suit a high player count!

We’re still struggling to find new local people to play with, but trying different tactics. Further from home I work in an office of around 800-1000 people, so there must be some people out there who want to play. I’ve already got a game of Catan scheduled in 2 weeks time!