Card game

Splendor – Improve your networking skills

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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

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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)

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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

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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...]