The Game Shelf Reviews:- The Lost Mummy from Lock Paper Scissors

Game: The Lost Mummy

Publisher: Lock Paper Scissors

Designer: Jason Stroud & Elliott Bailey

Year: 2018

Lock Paper Scissors promotes the concept of Do-It-Yourself escape room kits that you can print and play at home. Their creator, Elliott, is an adventure fanatic who dreams of being Lara Croft hunting for buried treasure. Since that career goal’s been taken, he crafts ‘Do It Yourself’ escape room kits for friends and family to enjoy together.

The Lost Mummy is a short escape room scenario for groups of children aged 10-12, set in Ancient Egypt. To play, you'll pay to download the game at a cost of $19.99 Australian Dollars and then print out the game on your home computer, making enough copies for all of your players. We'd like to give some information on what you should expect, without spoiling any content of the game.

Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Castell

Game: Castell

Publisher: Renegade Game Studios

Designer: Aaron Vanderbeek

Year: 2018

It’s not uncommon in board gaming to hear complaints about over-used themes – zombies, trading in the Mediterranean, generic fantasy. It is great to see new themes though, even though some range from the sublime to the ridiculous. Castell does seem like a somewhat ridiculous theme – building human pyramids, but it is a dare-devil tradition in Catalunya, Spain.

A unique theme is often enough to get me interested in a game, but the publisher, Renegade Games, has a marketing strategy that always gets me interested, as other reviewers begin to share thoughts on the upcoming titles. I heard some interesting things about how Castell might be a more of a brain burner than meets the eye, and this is certainly something that excites me, as we are starting to gravitate more and more to slightly more complex games.

The Game Shelf Previews:- Fire Tower

Game: Fire Tower

Publisher: Runaway Parade Games

Designer: Samuel Bryant, Gwen Ruelle

Year: 2018

As guards at the fire tower, it's your job to keep a watchful eye over the forest and protect it from danger. That said, you're also out to save your own backside, and when you see smoke in the distance it's all about your safety and you have complete disregard for the forces manning the other watch towers.

You'll use everything in your power to combat the blaze and ensure that yours in the last tower standing. Dispatch fire engines, order air drops of water, build fire breaks and pray to the powers that be to try and change the wind direction. In your panic, it's only your safety that's important.

All about the base:- Castell

Game: Castell

Publisher: Renegade Game Studios

Designer: Aaron Vanderbeek

Year: 2018


Castell is a 2-4 player tile laying strategy game in which you take control of a colles castelleres touring Catelonia performing at festivals to create the tallest and most impressive human towers. You will need to recruit new members to your team and train in various skills in order to have a chance of winning the many festivals that are taking place across the region. Even if you can't reach a festival in time you can always put on a show for locals in order to gain renown.


In Castell you begin with a handful of tiles each representing a person numbered from 10 to 1. You can use these to create your human towers, at the start of the game you are limited to a maximum width of 3, and each layer must all be of the same number and must have 1 fewer than the layer below. As you learn skills you can break and bend these rules. The mix skill lets you combined numbers on a row (tiles are different heights so only certain numbers can be combined). The strength skill lets you place a person on top of a layer of the same number (a 1 on top of another 1 for example). The width skill allows you to gain 1 width, so you can make layers with 4 people, while the base skill lets you have 1 layer with no limit to the number of people on it. Finally the balance skill lets you build a layer at the same width as the one before it.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 16th April 2018 at The Ludoquist

This blog is by no means my first impressions of The Ludoquist. We visit the board game cafe in Croydon quite a lot, with different groups of friends, and, of course, Amy works there. However, it's the first time we've been by ourselves and set aside a day for gaming. I've been keeping  a list of games on the shelves that I wanted to play and we managed to cross of quite a few. We identified some great new games as well as avoiding a few bad purchases.

I won't feature all of the games we played, but here's some of the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Sonar

Game: Sonar

Publisher: Matagot

Designer: Roberto Fraga & Yohan Lemonnier

Year: 2017

Sonar is a 4-player sequel to the game Captain Sonar from 2016. I've been really eager to try Sonar, because I had rel problems with Captain Sonar, despite loving the concept. Captain Sonar was a game I loved when we first played it turn-based, but it completely fell apart when I played a real-time game with a team who were just awful at cooperating. It was so bad that it forced me to leave a gaming group and never go back.


The concept of Sonar is the same as it's bigger brother, with some hidden movement and an elaborate take on Battleship. I was really excited to see a version that I could play with 2-players, so that I didn't have to relive the experience of poor communication and cooperation. At first Sonar was a Target exclusive in the USA, but now it's available in the UK and we've been giving it a try.

Torpedoes away! :- Sonar

Game: Sonar

Publisher: Matagot

Designer: Roberto Fraga & Yohan Lemonnier

Year: 2017

Sonar is a 2-4 player re-imagining of 2016's Captain Sonar. With a lowered player count and less roles, Sonar promises to be a quicker and easier to pick up experience. In Sonar you take the role of either the captain or the navigational officer of a submarine. As the captain you will navigate the submarine through the sea, avoiding islands and trying not to be predictable. As the Navigation officer you will "spy" on your opponents, trying to work out where in the ocean they are. Should you manage to hit your opponent with 2 torpedoes then you have sunk them and claim victory!

At the start of a game of Sonar a large screen is placed across the center of the table, separating the two teams. Behind the cover of fold-up cardboard each team is handed 2 maps of the area you are fighting in, one dry-erase pen per player and a sheet of cellophane. Teams will take turns, each turn the team captain will announce a direction of travel or one of the 4 actions. The opposing navigation officer will draw any movement on their cellophane sheet, over time the pattern of movement should narrow down or even completely reveal the enemy's location. To aid in finding them the navigation officer can move their cellophane over their copy of the map, testing out potential routes that the other team took.

The Game Shelf Reviews:- Spires

Game: Spires

Publisher: Nevermore Games

Designer: T. C. Petty III

Year: 2017

From the publisher: A royal family with a penchant for towers has decreed the builders of the kingdom – the players – to perk up the kingdom's skyline with new spires. In answer to their call, players compete to catch the eye of the royal family and ultimately, the title of Royal Builder. Players must be careful though. If they build a spire taller than the royal palace, they'll be penalized instead of praised.

Spires is on my radar thanks to listening to a podcast (I think it was Draft Mechanic) who said it was one of their favourite trick taking games. We've been exploring the world of trick taking games recently, with the goal of finding out what people actually mean when they use the term (!) and so I was delighted to find that Nick from Board Deck & Dice managed to get hold of a copy of Spires from the USA. Spires combines a few different mechanics and has its own twist on tick-taking, so let's take a look at how it plays.

Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- High Society

Game: High Society

Publisher: Osprey Games

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Year: 2018


High Society is a reprint of Reiner Knizia's classic auction game, coming from Osprey games. Players must bid against each other for luxuries, while avoiding going bankrupt in the process. This reprint is a great upgrade to the games artwork with Art Nouveau-inspired illustrations by Medusa Dollmaker. Is a new coat of paint enough to elevate High Society to compete in a market that is now crowded with many more games than when it was first published back in 1995?

In High Society, each player has an identical hand of money cards in different denominations. On each round, one luxury card will be drawn from the deck and players will bid for this card. The bid must increase with each player and at least one card should be added during your bid. The bid continues around the table, but you can drop out of the bid at any time and reclaim all of your cards. the last player in the bid winds the luxury card but has spent all of the money cards they used and will not get this money back. Luxury cards range in value up to a value of 10, but there are also cards with negative effects.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 5th - 9th April 2018

On Sunday we had the chance to go along to a friend's board game group in Crawley which is always a good time to try new games as well as share some recent acquisitions with other people. Alan's Dungeon Crawley event is one of a list of regular meetups that have started to appear around our local area and we might have the chance to attend a different group in Reigate for their first event on 20th May or to head to Mid-Sussex Meeples. It's great to have so many gaming opportunities and chances to meet new people - we've even made our first very local gaming friend in the last couple of weeks!

But, back to the board games - here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

A certain je ne sais quoi:- High Society

Game: High Society

Publisher: Osprey Games

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Year: 2018
 


High Society is a 3-5 player card game in which you spend your money in auctions in an attempt to gain the most trappings of wealth and become the most renown member of  high society. Of course there is a catch, only the wealthiest people can be part of high society, so if you spend too much of your money in the auctions you may find yourself being kicked out of the social club for the unforgivable crime of being poor!

Gameplay in High Society is simple enough to be taught to almost anyone, each player starts with a hand full of money cards varying from 1,000 francs to 25,000. Each round a single trapping of wealth will be drawn from the deck and players will begin to bid for it. To bid you place down money cards from your hand to become the highest bidder, the next player gets the option to outbid you, or to pass. Once all players pass the highest bidder gains the trappings card at the cost of all of the money cards they played.

The Yellow Meeple's First Impressions:- 22nd - 30th March 2018

March has turned out to be a great month for playing new games and it's been great to review more games, as well as playing some of the games on the shelf of shame. The long weekend here in the UK also gave us the opportunity to game with friends on Friday so I've managed to play quite a few new games.

Here's the Yellow Meeple's first impressions;

Thoughts from the Yellow Meeple:- Ilôs

Game: Ilôs

Publisher: La Boite de Jeu

Designer: Frédéric Guérard

Year: 2017

Ilôs is a newly discovered archipelago, full of resource-rich islands, which are so far unexplored. Rival naval forces have encountered these islands at the same time, but as you all begin to explore, you'll also be in competition to raise the value of the different resources and to hinder you rivals by launching pirate ships and taking advantage of their resources with trading posts.

I initially noticed Ilôs when it was released at Essen 2017. It had some early positive reviews and then completely fell of the radar. I still had it in mind when it was released in the UK. As well as looking really inviting, with great art on the box, it comes from a good publisher pedigree too - with Outlive probably being the biggest hit to come from Boite de Jeu.

So, let's take a look at the game of Ilôs.

Dying for some Dyes:- Ilôs

Game: Ilôs

Publisher: La Boite de Jeux

Designer: Frédéric Guérard

Year: 2017

Ilôs is a 2-5 player tile laying card game in which you seek to raid the islands of Ilôs for gold, dyes and spice. Of course these treasures will always be worth money back home, but with clever use of exploration, piracy, and market manipulation you can ensure that you will be the richest of the explorers of Ilôs.


 At the start of a game of Ilôs you create a stack of island tiles that will be used throughout the game, at the start of the game each player will select one of the 3 face up tiles to add to the island map along with placing one of their boats along an island's shore. During the game every time someone plays an explore action they can choose to expand the island map by adding a new tile. Tile placement is very clear, you simply have to match land to land and sea to sea in order to create a functional, and rather pretty, island chain.