As the BGG Preview list keeps growing (currently with 619 titles), it’s time for me to randomly select eleven more games to chat about here, rather than comb the list for gems myself. As always, this list only encompasses games that are for sale and are not expansions (which actually takes the list down to 454).
Botanists (Violaine Mallé, Agie Games) is a game where you’re cultivating and selling flowers. Players go around collecting seeds, some of which you want to keep and others you want to sell to customers. The game looks pretty, and seems fairly interesting. I’d check it out.
Era of Tribes (Arne Lorenz, Black Beacon Games) is a civilization game where you build up Europe from the Neolithic period all the way through the High Middle Ages. There’s all kinds of stuff you’d expect to see in a civ game – expansion, trade, taxes, diplomacy, controlling morale of the population, making advances, and so on. Not being a big civ guy, I haven’t looked at it too deeply, but it seems like it has some good buzz around it.
Ragusa (Fabio Lopiano, Braincrack Games/Capstone Games) is a game about building a city in the 15th century. The city is now known as Dubrovnik, and is located in modern day Croatia. The game is a worker placement game where you’re putting houses next to different regions. These regions generate resources, which you can then use when unlocking other regions. Looks like a pretty solid Eurogame.
Karekare (Muntsa Corbella/Gustavo Mariano, Devir Games) is a game about the settling of New Zealand by…parrots. Apparently. It’s a tile laying game where players put out new land, which then triggers abilities of adjacent tiles. Could be interesting, but there’s a whole thematic description on BGG about the Maori settling New Zealand in the 13th century, and I can’t really understand why there’s all this historical setting with muscular and tattooed parrots on the cover.
Bruxelles 1897 (Etienne Espreman, Geek Attitude Games) is a kind of sequel to the 2013 game Bruxelles 1893, published by Pearl Games. It surrounds the introduction of Art Nouveau to the streets of Brussels just before the World’s Fair. You’ll be using architects to claim different actions over the course of four rounds in an attempt to score the most points. The original was a board game, and this is a card game. It looks very nice. I never got to play the original, but I did want to, so it’ll be interesting to see how this does.
Wurf & Weg (Andreas Schmidt, HABA) is a dice game from HABA. That’s about all I know at the moment – there’s practically no information about it, other than this description on BGG:
Dice are rolling fast and furiously around the table in Wurf & Weg. The player who’s luckiest with the dice, reacts quickly, and keeps an eye on their opponents will surely win this fast-paced dice-rolling game.
Vague enough for you? But it is HABA, and they have a good track record, so I’ll keep an eye on it.
Monster Party (Hajime Watanabe, KUA) is a Japanese game about collecting monsters and having a party. Basically, you either play a monster card in front of yourself (face up or face down), or try to start a monster party with one of each type of monster from those in front of any player. These little Japanese games are usually pretty quirky and interesting, and I’d check this out.
Babylonia (Reiner Knizia, Ludonova) is a rarity in Dr. Knizia’s catalog – an abstract style game with a theme set in an ancient civilization. Oh, wait, sorry, that’s not rare at all. From my understanding, you’re laying tiles, making routes, scoring points, and I’m bored just thinking about it. I know Knizia has a lot of fans, but he’s never done anything for me. I’m sure this is a solid game with great strategy, and I have no desire to play it.
Cat Blues (Reiner Knizia, Open ‘n Play) is proof that this list is random, otherwise there’s no way I’d have two Knizia games on the list, much less in a row. It’s a new edition of Knizia’s 1998 game Katzenjammer Blues, now published by South Korean company Open ‘n Play. It’s auctions meets rummy with a theme that is infinitely more interesting to me than ancient civilizations.
Fillit (Ryo Nakamura, radiuthree) is an abstract game from Japan that looks like it could really benefit from a better translation. As best as I can tell, you’re moving your pawn around a board, trying to get all your chips in play so you can win. I like abstract games a lot, so I’m interested to hear more, but I really want to get a better description.
Bees: The Secret Kingdom (Kamil Cleśia, Van Ryder Games/Awaken Realms Lite) is a bee game, and you know I have a special affinity for bees here at this blog (despite recently getting stabbed in the knee by a now dead wasp). It’s a fairly simple game where you’re gathering pollen in order to make honey. I do like bee games, so I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays.
And that’s another random preview in the books! Thanks for reading!
Boards and Bees 