Tabletop game

Cosmic Encounter – Improve your diplomacy

Leave a Comment

Create alliances, negotiate and bluff; in other words, practice diplomacy.  That's what's at the core of Cosmic Encounter, a 3-5 player game that plays in about 1,5 hours.  In this game you'll take on the role of an alien race battling for the supremacy of the galaxy. But don't mistaken this with a tactical game, you won't be a general here: you'll be a diplomat. The main game mechanics can be summarized and simplified as follows: Each player will take on the role an alien race with a special power and have 5 planets on which initially there will only be space ships of his race.  Also, each player will have cards in his hand which he will be able to use, primarily for resolving attacks, but also as special abilities.  The goal of the game is to have 5 colonies (ie. space ships) in other player's planets. To do this, players will take turns at attacking each other's planets.  At the begining of a player's turn, he will draw a card that will tell him which other player he will [Read full post...]

Neuroplasticity and tabletop games

Leave a Comment

Neuroplasticity is the attribute of the brain that enables us to change it; "it refers to how entire brain structures, and the brain itself, can change from experience" What implications does this have?  Well, below is a clear example of how doing something in one way for a long time reinforces this behavior in such a way, that even knowing you want to do it in another way, you will be unable to: But then again, we can change all that with practice (as Destin does in the above video).  But this does only apply to biomechanical activities, also to mental and behavioral aspects of ourselves.  As you might have noticed, the whole idea behind this blog resides on this principle:  I encourage the repetition of exercises, in the form of tabletop games, to improve in certain skills (mainly management and soft skills). If you want to know more of the possibilities of neuroplasticity, here is an astonishing video of a real case:

Castaways – Improve your teamworking skills

Leave a Comment

Teamworking in the frame of the prisonner's dilemma.  The game categorizes itself as a "semi cooperative adventure", and that's exactly what it is (and good at it).  Castaways is a 1-4 player game that plays in about 3 hours, but mind you, it's not just a game, it's an adventure. When you finish playing you'll be surely driven to reminisce a bunch of anedotes and discus with the other players on how you could/should have done this or that differently.  This post will be slighter longer than the previous, but I think the game deserves it. So what was that about teamworking, the prisoner's dilemma and semi cooperation?  I'm going to be more generic than in other posts describing the main aspects of the game since this one is more complex.  Here we go: All the players are stranded on an island after a shipwreck and must get rescued.  To be rescued, they must meet a certain criteria when they have finished exploring the whole island, which comprises things such as having built a [Read full post...]

Splendor – Improve your networking skills

Leave a Comment

Build momentum through asset acquisition.  It sounds simple enough and Splendor does a great job in making it easy, but being efficent at it is an art form.  This is one of those games that possesses the dichotomy of those brilliantly designed: the rules are simple and the layout is minimalist, but developing a winning strategy is far from easy.  It's a 30 minute, 2-4 player game easy to grasp by new players, but the complexity hidden behind the simple mechanics makes it interesting, challenging and will leave you wanting to play it again. Before I explain how the game mechanics follow the same principles as networking, let's have a look at these first: There are cards (assets), poker chips (gems), and noble tokens (victory points). During a player's turn, he may take up to 3 chips or buy cards (paying their cost in chips).  The chips and card prices are of different colors, and so to buy a particular card you must pay the correct combination of colored chips. Each card you [Read full post...]

Sheriff of Nottingham – Improve your negotiation skills

Leave a Comment

Negotiate, negotiate and negotiate.  Sheriff of Nottingham allows you to do one thing, but it does it really well!  This is a light, social and really fun game for 3-5 players.  The main game mechanic for Sheriff of Nottingham could be described as follows: Each turn, one of the players will play the role of the Sheriff, and the others the role of merchants that are trying to get goods past customs, of which the Sheriff is in charge. The game has 2 types of goods (represented as cards): legal and ilegal. In each turn, the merchants will put all the cards they wish (legal and/or ilegal) from their hand into a bag and give it to the Sheriff, who will decide if he lets the goods into the city without inspections or if he decides to open it.  If he inspects the bag, he will receive gold for all the undeclared goods, but if the merchant had truthfully declared his goods, the Sheriff will have to pay him for them and the merchant may keep them. Merchants are allowed to negotiate [Read full post...]

Citadels – Get better at doing your thing (and avoid being denied)

Leave a Comment

Backstab and watch your back while you do your thing.  And by doing your thing, I mean building your citadel; hence the title of the game, "Citadels".  This is a great game to play with 4-8 players; it's fun, easy and gives the impression of being fast paced due to players usually interacting socially during the downtimes. The main game mechanics could be summarized like this: Each player will have cards representing districts of a citadel in his hand, which he will be able to buy during his turn with the money he also has. During a player's turn, they will be able to get more district cards or more money, and build a district using the money.  A few special districts will give some special ability that will benefit you or hurt other players. But the spice of the game is that every turn, each players has the chance of exclusively using a character from a shared pool.  They are chosen secretly in turn, and each character has some special ability such as: stealing other [Read full post...]

Once Upon a Time: The storytelling card game – Improve your storytelling and listening skills

2 Comments

Get your message across, lead a "conversation" to your desired conclusion, listen up to detect your chance to jump into the "conversation" and be creative on the fly.  These are all things you'll do, skills that you'll develop, when playing Once Upon a Time: The storytelling card game. This is a peculiar game (and in my eyes, a stroke of genius) for 2-6 players.  It's not very competitive in nature, but surely very enjoyable.  Summarized, the rules are: Each player will have a certain amount of cards in their hand.  These cards show random objects, events, places, aspects, etc.  Also, each player will have one "ending" card, a sentence to finish the story: if you are able to get rid of all your cards and finish the story coherently reading your ending card, you win. A player will start narrating a story he will be making up as he goes.  He will try to fit in the best he can the things his cards say (objects, places, events, aspects, etc.); as he does, he will place down on the [Read full post...]

The Resistance: Avalon – Improve your people reading skills

Leave a Comment

Detecting lies, reading people's ulterior motives, negotiating, deducing, bonding a team and deceiving: that's what The Resistance: Avalon (from now on, just "Avalon") is all about. This is a great 5-10 player game for practicing you people skills.  Summarized, the game goes like this: Each player is dealt a random character (card), which will belong either to the Good or Bad team; each player will keep his character secret throughout the game.  The Good team members will not know to which team the other players belong to, but the Bad (which are a minority) do from the begining of the game. For several rounds (depending on the number of players), all players will vote which subgroup of players will go on a mission; then, that subgroup will vote if they make that mission a success or a failure.  The Good players will want to make the mission a success, and the Bad players a failure; but if even just one of the players votes the mission a failure, it will fail.  So the idea of [Read full post...]

Blood Bowl – Improve your planning and risk management skills

Leave a Comment

Evaluate the risk of taking actions, plan the order in which you will carry them out according to the risk involved and then execute the actions in that order.  That is the heart and soul of Blood Bowl. Blood Bowl is a board game for two people where two opposing fantasy teams (as in made up of elves, dwarves and such) play a "football" match. It has a very interesting game mechanic (summarized and simplified):  during your turn you can do an action with each of your players on the field, some of which will require a dice roll, and if you fail a roll your turn ends then and there automatically.  This implies that when you are going to play your turn, you have to have a clear idea of what you want to do (or the disposition of your players on the field at the end of your turn), and execute your moves in an order according to a "minimum risk - maximum benefit" principle. It's very tactical, but I've chosen it as a "make me better" game for the following reasons: Risk [Read full post...]