Synopsis: Clank is an interesting deck building and press your luck game from Renegade Studios. You are playing adventurers delving into the mountain lair of an angry dragon attempting to steal his treasure hoard. However, you weren’t the only adventurer to heed the call. And boy are all of your just a little too loud rummaging around his lair. You’ll play cards from your hand to kill monsters that are in the tunnels waiting for a snack, acquire new items that will make your travels through the mountain easier, and occasionally trip over your own feet and alert the dragon to your presence. If you can brave the perilous caverns and depths and escape with the most treasure, you will be able to live out your life in fame and luxury.

My Take: Clank is a good deck building game that would probably not be rated this high if it weren’t for the push your luck style adventuring that you would undertake. If you’ve played Ascension, nothing in the deckbuilding aspect of this game will surprise you. The clank (noise) you create does wake the dragon some, but I consider that part of the push your luck system, which is really well done. The entire game’s tension is built around being able to steal an artifact, get as many treasures as possible and get out before the dragon awakes. Every round, you have to buy cards to improve your hand. As you do, more cards are drawn to the center of the table, but those cards can cause the dragon to attack. And those dragon attacks are what will get you killed as the clank you produce will be the tokens drawn from the dragon attacks bag. If your color is drawn, you take damage. Take 10 damage, and you’re dragon lunch.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Snoozes
As much fun as it was to run around and steal from a dragon, I got lucky to bypass multiple rooms and challenges through a lucky card draw and my friend had no chance to recover. The game lost some of its luster for me in those moments because the actual push your luck element was really well designed into the game and the gameplay was really smooth. I would definitely recommend this game for anyone who doesn’t mind high luck variance in games, but it was just something I couldn’t get past with my playthrough of Clank!

Synopsis: Concordia is a hand management, strategic action selection game from Mac Gerdts, originally published under PD-Verlag and republished under Rio Grande Games. In Concordia, you are playing Roman dynasties that want to spread their influence throughout Europe and around the Mediterranean. You’ll attempt to outwit your opponents as you develop your trade network and all for the chance to take home what every Roman dynastic family wanted in the days of Julius Caesar, victory points.

My Take: Wow, was I shocked to learn how much I really enjoyed this game. I hadn’t really given it a second though when I first saw it because Mediterranean economy games were so overplayed. But I was very wrong about what this game is. It’s a really tight action selection game where everyone starts with the same 7 action cards, and each one has a unique power. And from there, the choices are there for you to make. One card lets you move between cities and build cities up that will produce goods which you take when you play a different card. Another card lets you build your deck just a little by recruiting another worker to you, but these workers are unique and will only work for you once you’ve acquired them. And one of the cards even lets you pull all the cards from your discard back to your hand, so you never have to choose to take a bad action just to play rest of your cards in your deck as other games would do. But you get money based on how many cards are in your discard when you play it. So, do you get back that action that you really need but take no money or wait 3-4 turns when you can maybe get a nice payday. That’s what this game is all about, making the right choices at the right times.

Rating: 1 out of 5 Snoozes
The tension these choices create in the game really drew me in and kept me wanting more even when the game was complete. I went to bed dreaming about combos that I could have pulled off if only I had seen them coming and thought about the different ways my opponent could have tried to sneak and cut me off. I highly recommend this game for anyone that enjoys strategy games and really tight action selection processes where you feel like every decision makes you feel smart and at the same time, makes you feel like you could have done a little better.

Synopsis: As an up and coming sleuth, Sherlock Holmes has tasked you with solving cases as a consulting detective for the consulting detective. You are presented with the known facts of the case, some interesting people around town that know the goings on in London, and are sent out the door to solve the puzzle put before you. In the end, you’ll match your wits against Sherlock and try to best the greatest detective the world has ever known.

My Take: The components of this game feel like a crazy amalgamation of writings and maps from the days of yore, but everything makes you feel like you’re really in the middle of Victorian England tracking down leads and finding clues in the most ridiculous of places. I don’t want to give away too much here, but it is exactly what it says on the tin, mysteries in a box.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Snoozes
So, the only real issue I have with this game, and it’s not really an issue, is that it’s more like a shared activity than a board game. You’re chatting and solving this puzzle together, but it feels like the traditional board game elements aren't really there. That being said, it’s a really fun activity/game that I would suggest playing with anyone that enjoys going to murder mystery dinners or just likes dressing up in Victorian outfits and having a sip of tea and talking in your worst British accent.

Synopsis: The Crew is a cooperative trick taking game from designer Marco Armbruster that has you and your friends take on the role of astronauts going on space adventures and looking into rumors about an unknown Planet Nine. Along the way, you will be tested through 50 exciting missions where you’ll have to work with the crew to overcome challenges and determine if the rumors of the planet are true.

My Take: The theme of this game, you’re space travelers, gets completely lost in this game. It could be themeless and the game wouldn’t be any different. The cards are basic playing card quality, the game is essentially a game of spades where you’re just trying to accomplish a small set of goals for each mission. The small package this game comes in really shows how few items they put into this box so you are left with relatively few items trying to accomplish quite a lot.

Rating: 0.5 out of 5 Snoozes
Yeah, disregard all of that, this game is amazing. It’s the absolute most fun I’ve had with a trick taking game in years. The ramp up in mission difficulty means you can find where you are skill-wise and just play that mission repeated. There is something for everyone in this game. I don’t think I have the words to do this game justice, but it really is a tremendous game. It is rated as a half star off of perfect because of the fact that its component quality is just meh and the theme is paper thin, but seriously, don’t let that stop you from playing this game, one of the best games of 2019/2020/all-time really, if you love co-ops and trick taking games.

Synopsis: Marvel Champions is a living card game published by Fantasy Flight Games that lets a group of friends team up to battle supervillains as some of the most iconic comic book heroes in history. With great power comes great responsibility so when the villains come calling, will you protect the ones who can’t protect themselves?

My Take: Living card games are ones where you create/build your decks outside of the game with new cards that you usually purchase in packs or boosters, and Marvel Champions is no different. However, the individual decks you buy and ones that come with this game are designed to be used as the purchased deck. Advanced game play abilities and synergies can be found when you combine parts from different decks, but that isn’t required to play this game. The goal of the game is to defeat the villain before either every hero is defeated or the villain’s main scheme is completed.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Snoozes
This game lets you feel like a super hero really going after a villain, and it added in a new mechanic to flip into your alter-ego form to stay invisible and regroup. Some of the mechanics in this game are unique and fun to mess with, but I find that the difficulty is too unreliable. The game’s aim is to have the game be playable with the decks you purchase straight out of the box. However, since powerful combinations can be made by combining powers from decks and allies, a lot of the bosses feel overwhelming with the base decks. This feels a design flaw with the game and really knocked it down a few places for me. Overall a solid cooperative hand management variable power game that lets you feel like a super hero!

Synopsis: In The Castles of Burgundy, you take on the role of a high lord in the Burgundy region of Medieval France. Your goal is to grow your kingdom by building silver mines, shipping goods along the rivers, building castles, and expanding your farmlands, and creating small towns. In doing so, you’re attempting to build the greatest princedom in the land. The game utilized dice rolling and tile placement to let you expand your area of influence in the hopes of, again, like most European historians will tell you, garnering the most Victory Points!

My Take: Boy was I shocked by how smooth this game played. Yes, you’re rolling dice to select actions, but you’re giving ways to modify your rolls throughout the game that I often found myself both using different numbers than the ones I rolled anyway, and feeling like I wasn’t doing enough if I wasn’t utilizing those roll modifiers at every opportunity. There is very rarely a time when you have nothing that you can do to improve your standing and the game balances out multiple strategies very well.

Rating: 0.5 out of 5 Snoozes
Wow! I know I don’t want to spoil things too often, but this was the best game I played in all of January. The turns are fairly quick, the game is easy to learn, the gameplay is super tight, the artwork was decent, the theme was there even if it isn’t perfect. And the most impressive part is that after nearly 2 hours, 186 points scored by the winner and the person in last got 181. In a game with 180+ points scored by a person, the winning and last place scores were 5 apart. That just blew my mind with how well it was all put together. Very well done, Mr. Feld.

Synopsis: Star Wars: Imperial Assault is a tactical miniature combat campaign game where you are thrust into the middle of the Galactic Civil War. One player takes the roll of the Empire forces trying to snuff out the last remnants of the Rebellion while the other players take on the role of the Rebel Alliance as they work to stop the Darth Vader and his troops from conquering the world.

My Take: This is about as close as you’re going to get to playing a board game version of Star Wars D&D. And, if you and your friends enjoying playing as a team together without having to DM the campaign, you can get an app that will run the Empire side. That’s how I played it with my friend and we had a blast.

Rating: 1 out of 5 snoozes
Seriously, it’s as simple as moving around a map and blasting stormtroopers, but really, that’s all I need from a Star Wars RPG. The downside is that there’s not really much in the way of powers as you’re playing regular people in the Alliance so at times, it can get repetitive. Move, shoot, move, repeat until enemies are dead. However, the theme is all over this game and shooting a stormtrooper is still fun. Also, hearing Darth Vader’s breathing through the app as they tell you he’s entered the battlefield in front of you…it was a real jaw dropping moment for us. I absolutely loved this game.

Synopsis: In 7 Wonders, you will lead your ancient civilization as they create some of the greatest wonders the world has ever seen. Utilizing card drafting as its main mechanic, players will draft new resources to their civilization, learn new scientific discoveries, gain military might, build economic hubs, and build wonders to create the most advanced and greatest civilization in the world.

My Take: 7 Wonders is one of THE gateway games for a lot board gamers. The card drafting is simple and elegant, but every decision you make will influence both your future decisions and decisions that those who are playing with you will make against you. It can play pretty quick and is a game you can teach in minutes to friends and family that want to understand what all the board gaming fuss is about.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Snoozes
However, none of that is how I feel about the game now. I feel like there’s quite a few games out there that have similar mechanics but add more to the experience and make the game feel like a fuller game. Additionally, if you play this with people who have problems with analysis paralysis, this game can feel like a slog when you’re selecting a card in 30 seconds and then waiting for 5-10 minutes as others make their decisions. About 6-7 years ago, when I was first getting into gaming, this game was a 1 snooze game easy, but now, there’s just too many other choices and it’s starting to show its age.

Synopsis: Like being thrown directly into the middle of a HP Lovecraft story, Eldritch Horror from Fantasy Flight Games allows you and a group of friends to try to protect the world from one of the Ancient One, elder beings with god-like powers. You’ll be tasked with find Clues about the horrors that are gripping the world and solve its mysteries all while fighting off monster and closing otherworldly gates. If you can keep your sanity and remain healthy enough, you might be able to unravel the mystery that’s going on and keep the Ancient One from devastating the world.

My Take: I love being able to play games like this with friends. The theme is wonderful; the artwork is tremendous. As far as actions go, the game is boiled down to 3 phases with only 5 actions to choose from in the action phase. This keeps the turns free flowing and keeps the game moving towards its conclusion.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Snoozes
As you might expect with games this old, there are some warts that show and keep it from being one of the greats. It’s got a ton of cards and pieces that make setting up and taking down last too long. It can run around 3-4 hours with analysis paralysis gripping all of your friends. Being in the cities is really powerful so you spend a lot of time just jumping from one to the other and forgoing a large chunk of the world. For instance, I’ve played this 10-15 times in my life and I have almost never traveled from south America to Antarctica. Once things go there, they just sit there the whole game. But the epic feeling you get from winning this game and celebrating that with your friends. The moment when you have to roll 1 die and get 1 success (a 33% probability), and it happens. Those moments of joy and bliss are really what this game is about and keep it up there even when the game can feel too clunky at times.

Synopsis: In A Feast for Odin, players are transported to the world of long boats and Vikings with each player given the role of king of their own Viking clan. As king, you will constantly recruit more tribes to your clan and will be able to send those tribes out hunt, whale, trade, craft. Utilizing worker placement, you will be given the choice of how you want to acquire high end goods. Will you craft those goods using the resources gathered from the mountain or will you use those resources to make boats and raid and pillage the countryside? Once you’ve acquired those goods, the game makes a turn and you’re asked to put your polyomino skills to the test to fill up your coffers with the spoils.

My Take: This game is a great example of what epic saga type board games can be like. The quality component is very high and the game play offers interesting and fun choices throughout the game. The board has approximately 60 options on it and players will take, at most, approximately 6 actions per turn. That means, in a 4 player game, more than half the board won’t be used on a given turn. This type of action diversity allows players to feel like they always have a great choice. And the polyomino part of the game is a fun little puzzle as you attempt to fill up the board with items so you can get free goods and more income every round. The best part is that you can use money and ore to fill in single spaces so again, you’re never really limited too hard by the choices you make.

Rating: 1 out of 5 Snoozes
This game was the best way to start Uwe-palooza. The choices are brilliant. They make the player feel smart and because of the size and scope of the board, your opponent doesn’t feel personally attacked by any one action. If you try one game from Uwe-palooza, please make it this one. It’s charming, it’s good fun, and the best part for a non-fiction type person as me, it comes with a book of historical facts about Vikings, their culture, their leaders, and their vocabulary. For instance, I learned playing this game that Viking assemblies are called “Things”. It’s little touches like those that make this game shine in my eyes.

Synopsis: Agricola sees players take on the role of a new farmer fresh off his honeymoon who’s looking to start up a farm. Every round, you and your family members will be given chores to do such as fishing up food, chopping down trees, or building fences in order to keep your family well fed and the gather the resources needed to start farming crops and growing your ranch. Additionally, you can get upgrades to your house and take on secondary occupations that can make you a Butcher as well as a Farmer/Rancher making slaughtering your animals more profitable for you. In the end, the player who has built the best farm with the most victory points, wins.

My Take: Oh boy, the game that started it all, Agricola. This game is one of the cornerstone games in the worker placement category. And it is a beast. The game will span multiple hours of gameplay with every decision meaning so much as you have only 2 actions a round and your farmers will need precious food to sustain themselves but will also need fields and fences and animals to raise and crops to grow. And let’s not forget about the children. They can give you more actions, but also require more food to survive. And the feeding penalties are harsh as every missed food needed is a -3 point penalty. And in a game that good players score around 45 VP, taking a token cuts deep.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 Snoozes
If you’re looking for a very heavy worker placement Euro game where every action you need to squeeze every last drop out of that action, this is the game for you. It’s a shining example of how tight and streamlined a game can be, but for me, it was just a touch too unrelenting and unforgiving. And it’s not just the penalties for not being able to feed your family. I often found myself playing the game wanting to do something cool and just missing out on one resource or having to take an action to make food instead. So, instead of feeling cool or interesting, at times, it just felt rote.

Synopsis: In Le Havre, you play traders that are attempting to build up the French harbor city of Le Havre. The player takes their turn either scooping up resources from the Offer spaces or sending out a worker to do a task in the city. At first, the city starts small with only a few construction companies. But as the game progresses, both the players and the city will construct some buildings with the players also having the option to purchase or build boats. The player who has amassed the largest fortune, in both acquired assets and cash reserves, wins.

My Take: This game is a very simple to learn worker placement, resource management Economy builder that will take many playthroughs to be even halfway decent at. The demands from Agricola are still here, but the action economy is even more strained. Due to this, the economy aspect of the game is really important. You can now take out loans that count against you if you still have them at the end of the game, but you’re given multiple ways to rid yourself of them. You pay interest on the loans, but the amount of the interest (1 coin) is the same no matter how many loans you’ve taken out. So, you are encouraged to take multiple loans if you have one. But, will you bankrupt your business by pressing your luck too much with that system and be unable to repay them when the game ends?

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Snoozes
This game just doesn’t do it for me. The game is actually quite brilliant, but there’s just so much going on and with only 1 action, I personally felt like I had overloads. This was probably my least favorite experience of the weekend, even if it wasn’t the worst rated game because it took over 4 hours before we got it finished. And it wasn’t really a close game. The last 3rd of the game, the winner was known and we were literally just going through the motions to end the game. Not for me and I probably will never pick it up again, but it’s still a masterclass of Economy building from a technical standpoint. And if you do decide to play this game yourself, for God’s sake build some boats ASAP. You will get crushed if you try to feed your people without the help of boats, full stop.

Synopsis: In Patchwork, you and one other player are attempting to design the most aesthetically pleasing quilt this side of the Mississippi. You’ll accomplish this by purchasing patches for your quilt with buttons and sewing those patches into your quilt. The player who has created the most complete quilt and acquired the most currency by the end of the game is the winner.

My Take: Patchwork is a complete 180 from every other Uwe game we played this weekend. The box is small, the rules are simple, literally 3 pages long (for reference, Le Havre is 16 pages long). The game is played by purchasing patterns for your quilt using buttons. Those patterns can have buttons on them, and at certain intervals, you’ll cross over a button icon on the board getting you money to purchase more patterns to get more money. Additionally, you’re placing polyominos onto a board and trying to have a few unused spaces as possible by the end of the game. It runs really quick and really smoothly for a 2-player game.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 Snoozes
*record scratch* Do you feel the rug pulled out from under you at this point? I get it, everything up until now sounded great, but as a game, I just had nothing to pull me in or keep me there. It’s essentially a game of chess where you have to look multiple moves ahead, and I’m terrible at chess. I have a hard time seeing more than a move or two ahead, and even then, I still miss the obvious moves. And that same problem rears its ugly head in Patchwork. It looks light and fun, but it felt to me more ruthless and aggressive as you are constantly wanting to leave your opponent with no choices after you make a move. Just not my personal cup of tea.

Synopsis: Uwe Rosenberg is back at it, this time with Caverna: The Cave Farmers. Caverna sees you play the role of a new DWARF farmer fresh off his honeymoon who’s looking to start up a farm. Except this time, the farming will be done above ground while the Dwarves will live in the caves and mine the caves as well. It uses all the same mechanics as Agricola did with some added twists of cave expeditions where you dwarves can find resources to be used above ground or even furnish your caverns.

My Take: Honestly, I am kind of taking the piss out of the synopsis here because it is literally Agricola 2.0. This time, though, you also have caves to worry about digging out and ore to mine. Additionally, your occupations and farm improvements have been upgraded to be rooms that you can furnish your cave with. The board you are dealing with is twice the size, there are fewer turns and you have to feed your people essentially every turn instead of every 2 or 3 turns. So, you can probably guess where this rating is going.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Snoozes
Gotcha again! If you’ve read my synopsis of Agricola above, you can guess that I was not super excited going into this specific game. The thought of playing another 3+ hours of Agricola this deep into the weekend was not something I was looking forward to. However, this game is not the heavyweight bout that Agricola was, but it is a middleweight fight. Your actions and decisions will make a huge difference, but not choosing the exact right choice every action won’t cost you the game early on. You’re given more air to breathe and more space to explore the world that you’re playing in. Some people say that Caverna is too open and the player is given too much freedom, but I’d much rather be allowed to feel clever cause I found a fun combo than feel restricted and told I can’t do something awesome with my turn. Caverna allows you to feel clever due to making the right decisions instead of feeling dumb cause of your wrong ones.

Synopsis: In Fields of Arle, players take on the role of farmers in the town of Arle in East Frisia. The flax grown in and around the region have made it a very profitable place to work. Over the course of 4 and a half years, you will guide your family (father, mother, and two children) as they attempt to grow their farmlands by reclaiming the marshes and pushing back the dykes to dry out the lands. In addition, you’ll purchase buildings and vehicles to allow you process goods more efficiently and take them to markets in and around Germany. Again, the player with the most victory points at the end of the game wins.

My Take: This game takes the original worker placement mechanic and adds in the idea of seasons, a mechanic made popular in another worker placement game that will be coming up later in the year, Viticulture from 2013. The idea that you have actions that are limited to only half the year, except for the rare exception, really makes you think ahead and plan out a strategy. At the end of the half years (1 round), you’ll have different things that occur. In the fall, you can harvest your crops and milk your animals. At the end of winter, you can shear your sheep and your animals get it on. This mechanic allows for the individual rounds to feel different since the end of the rounds have different actions that occur.

Rating: 2 out of 5 Snoozes
I really enjoyed the changes that the multiple seasons made to Uwe’s formula. The fact that you’re wanting to make sure your fields are sown by the end of the Fall, but in the winter, you want to make sure you have the animals set up so they can mate and make baby animals really keeps the game fresh throughout. And while there are 30 actions available, 15 are available for most of the season and of those, you’re going to want to take 6 or more in a given round. The choices feel rewarding, the game is lighter and more fun for me, and the aggression towards other players is fairly neutralized.