Overthinking by The Yellow Meeple - Top 5 Board Games of 2016

This year I feel as though we’ve struggled to play many hot new games. We definitely get fewer opportunities now that we’ve moved house and don’t have any regular gaming groups. There’s still a huge list of popular titles from 2016 that I’m really keen to play! So, to be clear from the outset we’ve not played a comprehensive list of games released in 2016, but I’m actually pleasantly surprised that we’re pretty much on a par with the number of 2015 releases we’d played at the end of 2015.

In the spirit of full disclosure, these are the games we’ve played; Quadropolis, Knit Wit, Yeti, Onitama, Dingo’s Dreams, Captain Sonar, Secret Hitler, Imhotep, Mystic Vale, The Networks, Automobiles, Tatsu, Ice Cool, Animals on Board, Oceanos, City of Iron (2^nd Ed.)

So here’s the Yellow Meeple’s Top 5!

The Yellow Meeple Starts a Board Game Group at Work - Week 4

If I was disappointed by the number of people for week 3, then let’s say that I found week 4 pretty devastating. There was just me and 2 other people. The other two people are people in my team at work so as much as I’m super happy they’re playing games, I’m not sure if they are really that interested.

Nevertheless, we played a good number of games and I think they both enjoyed it, even though it was shorter than our normal nights.

Week 4

Number of Attendees: 3

Games Played: Rhino Hero, Coloretto, Dobble, Forbidden Desert

Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding Game

Game: Legendary: A Marvel Deckbuilding Game

Publisher: Upper Deck

Designer: Devin Low

Year: 2012

We first played Marvel Legendary at a board game club over 1 year ago and it really wasn’t a hit for me. I’m not sure I quite got my head around how we were both co-operating to defeat the villain at the same time as trying to gain the most points and win on an individual basis. I’m also not sure I understood how to make combos using wither colours or allegiances rather than specific character types. We also tried Legendary Encounters: Alien at the same time, which I definitely preferred from a gameplay perspective but having never seen an Alien movie, the theme didn’t grab me. So why have we ended up with Marvel Legendary on our shelves?

Marvel Legendary is a semi co-operative deck building game in which you pit a group of Marvel superheroes against a villain of your choice. Apparently for Marvel fans (I’m not really one of them) it’s a great opportunity to create mash-ups of different heroes and see how they combine together. As with most co-operative games you are in essence battling against a deck and a time limit. The villain deck contains not only villains which you need to stay in control of throughout the game but also scheme twists which throw curve balls and story line into the mix to make a bad situation works.