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Board Game Review: Tapestry Plans and Ploys Expansion

I was so excited when Jamey Stegmaier’s Plans and Ploys expansion for Tapestry (published by Stonemaier Games) showed up in the mail. I’d played a lot of Tapestry games with my social isolation pod (see my review for Tapestry here ) over the summer and I was eager to explore the new Tapestry cards and civilizations promised in the expansion. Beyond these updates, the Plans and Ploys expansion also includes a new game element (Landmark cards), new space tiles, a handy bag for drawing exploration tiles, and landmark place marker tokens which offer an easy way to identify which landmarks have already been claimed just by looking at the central board. As soon as we unboxed Plans and Ploys , we invited a few of our friends over to give it a go. Our previous social isolation pod had disbanded with the spike in new COVID cases in our state (Iowa: ground zero for the pandemic once the fall semester of school started) and none of the members of our newly formed pod had ever played the

A Tale of Two Towers–Part One (A Review of Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time)

Six months ago I didn’t even know what a tower defense game was and now I’ve played two of them several times and have some strong opinions on each one. In this post, I want to talk to you about one of them - Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time . The good folks over at Lucky Duck Games sent me a review copy of the game, designed by Helana Hope, Sen-Foong Lim, and Jessey Wright. Now I mentioned that this is a tower defense game, but what exactly does that mean? In games using this type of mechanic, one of the primary objectives is to continually defend your assigned sector of the board (i.e. your home base) against incoming threats. This is managed through the use of armed towers, which reign down violence and death on any malicious parties approaching. This mechanism got its start in 1980's video games (source: Wikipedia ) and is one of the most popular mechanisms in modern game apps on cell phones and tablets. More recently, it's crossed over into the tabletop board game industry, wit

Board Game Review: Artsee

Before the pandemic trapped us all in our homes, I spent many an hour at our local United Action for Youth center in Iowa City volunteering as a board game coordinator. Every month, I’d bring a few games with me and introduce them to the teens who hung out at the center after school. One of the games that got rave reviews from the group is Artsee . Designed by J. Alex Kevern, and published by Renegade Game Studios , it’s an easy to learn, quick playing card game with a small table footprint for up to five players. Each player takes on the role of an art gallery curator, attempting to build the most prestigious gallery in order to win the game. Galleries are built from individual exhibits (cards) that depict two or three paintings from different categories (abstract, landscape, portrait, or still life). In addition to the paintings, each exhibit also indicates a featured category. Each time an exhibit is played to one of the four columns in a gallerist’s tableau, all opponents of the

Board Game Review: Tokyo Sidekick

Earlier this summer, Tokyo Sidekick arrived on our doorstep from Japanime Games. I knew absolutely nothing about the game before it showed up. Turns out, it's a big game, with a big board, in a big box. Unpacking everything, I was pretty impressed with the breadth of inventory. Check out the pic below from the publisher of the core game components beyond the board and cardboard standees. My copy also included a comic book giving the origin stories of the heroes, as well as upgraded acrylic standees. The components are well made and I particularly like the acrylic upgrades; you’ll want these for sure if you can get them. Perusing the rulebook, I started to get a good understanding of Tokyo Sidekick . It’s a cooperative game designed by Yusuke Emi where 2-4 players take on the role of heroes and sidekicks who battle against villains, supervillains, and menaces, while also navigating around the central board to deal with incidents as they crop up. There’s a lot going on at once for

Board Game Review: Hues and Cues

Last week we received Hues and Cues from The Op Games. We recently finished playing through Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion (a fantastic game in The Op Games catalogue designed by Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, and Kami Mandell that you should absolutely pick up to play with your family) and wanted to give another game from the same publisher a go. I picked Hues and Cues because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by other “test whether our minds think the same way” games such as The Mind and Wavelength. In Hues and Cues , players gather around a large central board comprised of 480 graduating colors of the rainbow surrounded by an x-y axis and scoring table. White and black (which are technically not colors) are conspicuously absent as are shades (mixtures of color + black; e.g., grey) and tints (mixtures of color + white; e.g., cream). On each player’s turn, they draw a card with four colors and the x-y axis codes of those colors depicted and they select one. They are in the

Board Game Review: Wingspan European Expansion

I was really looking forward to playing Wingspan:European Expansion since I enjoy the base game so very much (see my review for Wingspan ). According to the publisher, the expansion encompasses all of this: In this first expansion to Wingspan, we increase the scope of the world to include the regal, beautiful, and varied birds of Europe. These birds feature a variety of new abilities, including a number of birds with round end abilities, abilities that increase interaction between players, and birds that benefit from excess cards/food. Along with the new bonus cards, they’re designed to be shuffled into the original decks of cards (and cards from future expansions). The European Expansion also includes an additional tray for storing the growing collection of birds (past, present, and future), as well as 15 purple eggs, extra food tokens, and a colorful new scorepad designed for both multi-player and single-player scoring. It's designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and features birds ill