Last week, I was invited, along with my husband, to join a group of board gamers from our local Iowa City area on their annual gaming retreat. For this event, they gather at the Gamers Ranch, for day after day of board games and fellowship. If you’re not familiar with the Gamers Ranch , it’s a short term rental/vacation property in the countryside, nestled among farms and open pastures, just outside of Bland, Missouri. The site can accommodate groups of up to 20 people at a time and offers activities for indoors (frequently updated board game library with thousands of games including the BGG Top 100, arcade, LAN gaming pc area, Lego library, MTG library, miniature painting workshop area, reading nooks, and several large screen tvs for streaming) and outdoors (disc golf course, miles of hiking trails, a lake with boating, geocaching, fire pits, etc). The sleeping areas inside are well appointed with linens, toiletries, and wifi. Bonus for foodies: the kitchen is fantastic, offering a
Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game. Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board. A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is a