Patchwork

Patchwork

Uwe Rosenberg is well known for his deep, complex games like Agricola, Glass Road or Fields of Arle. But those are not all he does, he’s equally skilled at small and deceptively simple looking games. In this one, you don’t have to feed your starving farmers, you don’t work and pray in a monastery, you don’t even sell your vegetables at the gates of Loyang. All you have to do is simply make a patchwork blanket.

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Valley of the Kings

Valley of the Kings

Death is when your life really starts. That, at least, was the belief of the ancient Egyptians, and they prepared for the afterlife by taking everything with them, plus the kitchen sink. If you thought the way your mother packed for a three week vacation was over the top, then you haven’t seen an Egyptian burial chamber. In Valley of the Kings, your goal is to stuff your tomb with more things than the other players, meaning that you’ll be richer than they are in the afterlife. And that’s all that counts, isn’t it?

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Onitama

Onitama

There once was an onmyo master, a teller of fortune and summoner of spirits. This onmyo master had two children, both thinking only they deserve to inherit his title. And so the two children fight, with the spirits they summon, over who is the greater summoner and thus deserving of the title. That’s the short story behind the Onitama, an abstract game that barely takes longer than telling its story.

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Illegal

Games let you play different roles and do things that you wouldn’t do in real life. At least I assume most people playing necromancers in a fantasy RPG, for instance, don’t mess around with the dead in real life. I’ll also assume that most people playing Christope Boelinger’s Illegal don’t really deal with drugs or weapons. That’s the role you take in this adults only party game: that of a distasteful criminal trading his illegal goods for other goods.

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Machi Koro

City building games don’t have to be big and complex, Machi Koro proves that. All you need to build your city are two dice, some cards and about half an hour of time. You couldn’t take anything away from this game and still call what is left a game. But even being that light, Machi Koro is published and popular in more countries than most games ever see.

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Orleans

Orleans

Thing-building games are still going strong. Deck-building games are the most popular of the bunch, but dice-building games and bag-building games have lots of fans, too. With Orleans one bag-building game has made the Kennerspiel des Jahres nominations this year and it really represents the cream of the genre. To become the most successful leader in medieval France, you need tight management of the followers in your bag.

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Five Tribes

Five Tribes

Bruno Cathala and Days of Wonder take us to Naqala, a magical kingdom straight out of Arabian Nights if Arabian Nights had included meeples. Which it should have. Five Tribes is one of the most talked about games of the last year, and after testing it extensively we understand why.

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The Staufer Dynasty

The Staufer Dynasty

A huge Empire without a permanent capital is something that is hard to imagine today. But in medieval Europe, the Staufer emperors had their itinerant court, they would travel around their empire and rule from wherever they just happened to be. That way, everywhere in the empire could have the glory of hosting the emperor, and he would get first hand knowledge of what was going on everywhere. In The Staufer Dynasty, you are a member of the court of Henry VI, working hard to get members of your family into influential offices all over the empire.

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Greenland

Greenland is a pretty hostile environment for human beings, and survival is at stake there every day. Not so much nowadays, but people have been living there since long before packaged food and electric heating. The game Greenland gives you some idea just how dangerous the place is: careful planning and good tactics will go a long way, but a bit of bad luck can still wipe out your people.

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AquaSphere

AquaSphere

Stefan Feld is back, and he’s taking us on a trip under the sea this time. Because it’s better down where it’s wetter. But you won’t have time to watch the singing and dancing crustaceans, there’s science to be done. You only have two people working for you, an Engineer and a Scientist, but together with their swarm of robots they will do science, collect crystals and catch invading octopodes.

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