All barely bigger then a pack of tissues (pictured for size, not fun factor) and we have played all of them many times.
Sushi Go: Card drafting, set collection with really cute sushi art. This one always goes down well.
Fuji Flush: This is a card game where you try and empty your hand. It plays really well with 3-4 but also supports up to 8 players. The general principle a bit abstract, but can be explained in 2-3’ and is really fun once it clicks:
Gloom: The most unlucky families try to outdo the mishaps that happen to other families. Really neat system and fun storytelling around the table.
Bohnanza: Classic card game where you plant and trade beans to get the most money by the end of the game.
Istanbul packs down remarkably small for a game of its weight. The “board” is just a bunch of card-sized tiles, so you can easily pack everything into a much smaller bag or box. We bring it on vacation regularly.
Among games that are just plain small, Welcome to the Dungeon is a favorite travel pick for us.
Incan Gold doesn’t come in a super-small box, but you can toss everything in a sandwich bag and it qualifies! I’d also recommend Red7, which Tom introduced me to.
I keep looking at this and thinking it looks fun and has a lovely box. The price is a bit exorbitant ($25, I think?). Worth it?
I think we sell it for 18 but yes it’s expensive! It’s a fun little press your luck game that takes up very little table space. We often play it at restaurants while waiting for our food. I love it.
Finally got to try CO2: Second Chance, revived early Lacerda, the same day as my Kickstarter copy of Escape Plan, the latest Lacerda, arrived. Like a lot of Vital Lacerda’s games, at first it seemed completely incomprehensible and crazy complicated, but once we’d taken just a few turns it revealed itself as having quite simple turns (one of three main actions each turn, but two of which require legwork of other main actions; 3 secondary actions that can optionally be taken once each turn) with a bunch of different things you should ideally factor into what to actually do. A second full round into our inaugural game, which we’d chosen to play using the competitive ruleset that was the original design, it also revealed itself to be an absolutely brutal cooperative puzzle that happened to have some points where you can jockey for a bit of points if you don’t all die. We all died.
It’s one of those things - some games where there’s a shared fail condition but you’re still supposed to compete for points, the former is just kind of a background element that you have to manage and can maybe deliberately tank if you’re spiteful and losing, but not anything that needs to be a major part of your plans. CO2? If you’re not immediately fighting to keep carbon emissions down, you’re gonna lose. One suspects that’s a bit of a pointed message for the world. If only we’d listened when it first came out.
Next time we’ll probably play the cooperative ruleset, which is actually the main and front-loaded ruleset in this edition of the game. I thought for sure it would be a tacked on extra given that it was new in this edition, but it really does seem to be the primary mode, and I think only once you have a handle on the puzzle of not dying with a good score would you be likely to be able to keep afloat while jockeying for position in PvP.
Oh, and it’s flipping gorgeous, of course.
Edit: We actually missed a rule about how regions build fossil fuel power plants (namely, that they’re only looking at the current decade and so if there’s green power in that space you’re fine.), so it’s not quite as hard as we thought.
18Chesapeake just launched on kickstarter – the first mass-produced game by Scott Peterson and All-Aboard games! For those who aren’t familiar with him, up until now, Scott is well-known in the train community for his hand-made 18xx games on demand. Really hope that this kickstarter goes well so we more easily get a hold of more 18xx games. Also, this game looks streamlined compared to many other 18xx available, which should be good for beginners.
That said, he doesn’t seem to know much about marketing, and it shows in his campaign. Showing prototype components without saying that they are not final, little information on the game (though there are draft rules), no stretch goals yet, and he originally didn’t even write shipping costs. Luckily, he seems to be communicating well through the comments and on BGG, and is learning from his mistakes.
TUAG’s entry level is the Game Changer. That’s the one I’m waiting delivery on, as a topper not a table. If the topper works out I may buy a bigger table from them down the road
See, that’s the kind of thing I would do, but since Brooski is a high and mighty DOCTOR, I somehow suspect that such crudities would not be considered satisfactory.
At last, boardgaming talk instead of furniture talk!
I’m really curious about that game. I love a good post-apocalypse. Could this be one worth playing? It’s a second edition that includes an expansion, so that means two things: 1) the base game was good enough for an expansion, and 2) the second edition has fixed any issues the game might have had previously. Right?
Kickstarter for a new Terraforming Mars expansion just launched, FYI:
I’m a little surprised to see what as far as I know was a conventionally funded and published tabletop game turn to Kickstarter, not just for expansion content but after having also expanded it a few times the standard route. But here we are.
