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New Year Games
Dec. 31st, 2024 11:22 amA few new games I've played over Christmas and New Year!
Stella:
This is a game in the Dixit universe, though it's quite different to the traditional Dixit format. You have an array of cards and a nominated word (determined by a car, rather than thought up by a player) and you have to decide how many of the available cards potentially match the word. Then players indicate one card in turn and get points based on how many other people also picked that card. I really like it (even though, based on two games, I'm terrible at it!) and I think it massively improves on the standard Dixit format - because it's got more layers of strategy and also nobody has to spend ages trying to think up a clue. Also, there's a deck of 84 new picture cards - and some of them are wonderful!
Savanna:
This is a game that's in a series I've played others of - you draft cards (in this instance with African animals and landscapes on them) to build a 5x4 grid and you get points at the end based on the placement of different cards in the grid (eg zebras score three points if they're next to grasslands or elephants score 6 points as long as they're not next to any other type of animal, etc). I love games where you have to build patterns to fit specific scoring conditions (eg Sagrada, Ex Libris, Let's Go! to Japan and many, many others), so I enjoyed this. I did badly because other people were more successful in their placement than I was - but, in these types of games, I rarely pay attention to what other players are doing and focus almost entirely on my own area of the game. And I was very happy with how my animal grid turned out, so yay!
Cheesonomics:
In this game, you produce and sell different types of cheese (denoted by country and type of animal - including yaks and reindeer), and get varying amounts of money, based on the state of the market when you make your sales. The art on the cards is absolutely adorable and it all looks very silly - but there's actually quite a lot of strategy involved. I'm not sure it entirely worked with only two players (though it may have also been affected by neither of us having a clue what we were doing) but I thought it definitely had potential and I'd like to play again with more people and a bit more understanding of how it works.
Stella:
This is a game in the Dixit universe, though it's quite different to the traditional Dixit format. You have an array of cards and a nominated word (determined by a car, rather than thought up by a player) and you have to decide how many of the available cards potentially match the word. Then players indicate one card in turn and get points based on how many other people also picked that card. I really like it (even though, based on two games, I'm terrible at it!) and I think it massively improves on the standard Dixit format - because it's got more layers of strategy and also nobody has to spend ages trying to think up a clue. Also, there's a deck of 84 new picture cards - and some of them are wonderful!
Savanna:
This is a game that's in a series I've played others of - you draft cards (in this instance with African animals and landscapes on them) to build a 5x4 grid and you get points at the end based on the placement of different cards in the grid (eg zebras score three points if they're next to grasslands or elephants score 6 points as long as they're not next to any other type of animal, etc). I love games where you have to build patterns to fit specific scoring conditions (eg Sagrada, Ex Libris, Let's Go! to Japan and many, many others), so I enjoyed this. I did badly because other people were more successful in their placement than I was - but, in these types of games, I rarely pay attention to what other players are doing and focus almost entirely on my own area of the game. And I was very happy with how my animal grid turned out, so yay!
Cheesonomics:
In this game, you produce and sell different types of cheese (denoted by country and type of animal - including yaks and reindeer), and get varying amounts of money, based on the state of the market when you make your sales. The art on the cards is absolutely adorable and it all looks very silly - but there's actually quite a lot of strategy involved. I'm not sure it entirely worked with only two players (though it may have also been affected by neither of us having a clue what we were doing) but I thought it definitely had potential and I'd like to play again with more people and a bit more understanding of how it works.
