The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 21st - 30th August 2017

It's been a challenge to try new games this week because we had my parents visiting for the long weekend. They're happy to play games, but prefer something simple and it's definitely best if we teach a game that we know inside out and aren't looking at a rulebook whilst they're becoming impatient at the table. We were actually so bus sorting out new board game shelves and new shelves for our retro video game collection that we hardly played anything over the weekend. Nevertheless, I have a few games to talk about, so, here are the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

• Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small is a two player version of Uwe Rosenberg's Agricola. Having recently reviewed Caverna Cave vs. Cave, we were keen to try out All Creatures Big ans Small because it focuses on the animal rearing elements of the Agricola and Caverna games. The game is short but satisfying, starting slowly with few resources, but very quickly ramping up to allow you to have big, successful turns. We really enjoyed the tactile elements of the game which were lost in the over-streamlined Cave vs. Cave, with the fences to separate fields and the ani-meeples that we never had in our older version of Agricola. Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small does a great job of worker placement for two players.

• Codenames Duet is the new two player version of the very popular party game, Codenames. Codenames Duet is definitely not a party game, it's definitely a more 'thinky' game for two players who really want to get inside each others heads. You are cooperatively trying to find your agents and trying to avoid five(!) combined assassins on the board. On first impressions, this game is much more challenging than the original and the box contains plenty of ways to make it even harder. It's not just the extra assassins but we're really finding the words a lot more challenging to connect too. We'll be doing a full review of this one next week, by which time I'll need to decide if I think the Duet version really works for us.

• Ticket to Ride: Germany is a game we've been excited for since the UK Games Expo. It's a complete game, not an expansion, and I understand it takes some ideas from the rare and out of print Ticket to Ride: Marklin. There are a few tweaks to the original game, with a choice of long or short routes available to you throughout the game, but the main extra mechanism is passengers. When you place a route you can claim a passenger from either end and at the end of the game there are points available for the player with the most and second most of each colour. We really enjoyed how the new mechanisms brought out a different strategy in each player and how it also meant that there were fewer turns where you felt you were just wasting time. We loved this new version, but I'm not sure yet where it will fit in the collection because it is a whole new game in a crowded world of Ticket to Ride expansions.

So many new games arrived last week that I want to get to the table! Top of the priority list is to play some more Codenames Duet and then break into Dice Forge and our copy of Ice Cool. I'm hoping we get the opportunity to play them. We have visitors this weekend, but they're definitely happy to play lighter games and that's my plan!