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Scotland Yard (Ravensburger): Same game as was released by Milton Bradley many years ago. One player plays Mister X and moves around a map of London while hidden. Other players team up and hunt him down. Mr. X must, however, indicate how he is traveling. This comes down to a complex logic puzzle that is stilted toward the detectives, but is a decent sort of game, especially if you have children. Ramses II (Ravensburger): A memory game crossed with a sliding tile puzzle. The board is covered with a series of plastic pyramids. Each turn, you flip up a card, and try to locate the item under the board by sliding pyramids to reach the item. The catch is that you cannot reveal a different item while sliding the pyramids around. Throw in some action cards that do things like rotating the board, and you have another cute family game. The memory element is much harder than it looks....trust me. Rivers, Roads, and Rails (Ravensburger): A game for 4 year olds. And one of my wife's favorite games, for some unknown reason. Each player has a "hand" of 10 tiles, containing a combination of Rivers, Roads, and Rails. You play them like dominoes on the end of a long chain. Object is to get rid of your tiles. Sounds awful. There is something there, however, and there is a fair amount of strategy. The game with adults requires hand management, and trying to block your opponents, while opening up positions for you to play. But the rules are simple enough for very young children. Dance of the Witches (FX Schmid): Imagine playing Pachisi while having to remember which pieces are yours. Now imagine that pieces are constantly being bumped around by an evil little movement rule. Each player in this game has 4 plastic witches hats with the color only shown on the bottom. Another of Sandi's favorite games, although this one makes me want to scream. Take it Easy (FX Schmid): Very simple and addictive game. Up to 8 players turn must play the same tile on a small hexagonal grid. Points are scored for extending a line of the same color all the way across the board. Problem is, not all of the tiles are used, and lines extend in 3 directions. Plays in 10 minutes, with very simple rules. (This is often considered an adult game, but I have had my butt kicked so many times by children that I had to include it.) My Haunted Castle (FX Schmid): One more accursed memory game, but I am rather fond of this one. The same basic format as concentration in that you have to turn up a match of tiles. The problem in this game is that the tiles keep moving around. The cute monster tiles are a definite bonus. Frank Branham is an avid collector and player of German, dexterity, and family games who runs a large translation archive (The Game Dumpster) which is all too often taken for granted by those of us who play (and sell) German games.
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THEN AGAIN, WHAT DO I KNOW? LOWENHERZ (Rio Grande/Goldsieber) 4 players - 2 hour playing time I’d be hard-pressed to call this Klaus Teuber (the designer of SETTLERS OF CATAN) creation an overlooked game, but Jay Tummelson, the head honcho of Rio Grande Games, recently said in an interview that this was the game that had most disappointed him in sales. That means there are a lot of folks out there who need this gem in their collection! As in many recent German games (KING OF THE ELVES and KNIGHTS OF THE RAINBOW, to name a couple), the king is dying and players are cast in the roles of princes vying for power. The focus in LOWENHERZ is on the acquisition of territory. The larger the area you capture, the more "power" (victory points) you receive. Silver mines and cities advance you even farther on your quest to inherit the throne. There are two mechanisms that I believe have caused this game to falter in popularity... both make it difficult if not downright impossible for new players to compete with experienced players. First, while the taking of territory is vital for winning the game (and keeping others from winning), it’s easy to "bite off more than you can chew." The penalties for losing territory (esp. having large sections of one of your kingdoms become neutral) is large. It’s easy for new players to find themselves losing more points in the last few rounds of the game than they gain. Second, the actual value of the choices you have each turn (buying intrigue cards, adding walls to the map, recruiting new knights, and expanding kingdoms) is difficult to judge until you’ve played once or twice. My advice? Commit to playing 2-3 games of this classic work before you make a final judgment. While simple on the surface, the game rewards multiple playings. One last note: the red player in the "suggested" first time set-up is in great danger from the yellow player in the lower left hand corner of the board. The red player must quickly build another knight to prevent himself from being trapped. (We use a variation on the basic set-up. The four corner kingdoms with their walls are placed on the board... then the next two pairs of castles & knights are placed as in the advanced rules. You don’t use the A cards when playing in this manner.) CANYON (Rio Grande/Abacus) 3-6 players (best with 4-6) - 1 hour playing time Dismissed at first as an "Oh Hell" variant with an unnecessary board, CANYON is one of the great hidden gems of family gaming. The recent addition of the free Grand Canyon expansion for this game adds a whole new level of Cosmic Encounter-like special powers to each round. (The last place player picks first from a roster of Indians who can do a variety of things: allow you to break suit, let you push another canoe, let you hop other canoes, change the number of cards in the next round, even miss your bid without penalty!) As well, there are extra pieces for making more choke points on the river. What started out as a simple (and overlooked) trick-taking game with an interesting scoring mechanism becomes a fun free-for-all. Our experience with CANYON/GRAND CANYON is that the scoring is tighter with the expansion and that it only adds about 10-15 minutes to the game. If you own CANYON, you need the expansion! If you don’t own CANYON, make sure you get the expansion when you order it. It’s an excellent game for gamers & non-gamers alike. FINALE (Kosmos) 2 players - 45 minute playing time Finally, this sports-oriented game from Kosmos two-player flat box series (which also includes LOST CITIES and the German version of the SETTLERS CARDGAME) is a much-maligned game which is actually great fun to play. I’ve heard it all: "I don’t like the photo-gooed pictures on the cards." "There’s too much dice-rolling." "There’s not any strategy." Yadda, yadda, yadda. I’ll give you that the artwork is odd... but very functional. The old saw about "too much dice-rolling" is one of my pet peeves... under that peculiar theory, AXIS & ALLIES, Avalon Hill’s THIRD |
REICH, and a host of other games are "bad" because you roll dice literally 100x more than you do in a 45 minute game of FINALE. Save the "dice-whining" for someone who cares! And the crack about "no strategy" misses the heart of the game entirely. Granted, you are subject to the cards you draw and the vagaries of the dice...just as any soccer coach is subject to the field conditions and the health & attitudes of his players. FINALE’s strength is not in it’s chance-free simulation of a sporting event. (By the way, there is no such thing as a chance-free sports event... just ask Tampa Bay fans about the calls made in the NFC playoff game last month!) Where FINALE shines is in giving you the opportunity to create a team and an overall strategy (via a simple deck construction system) and then play it out against an opponent, adjusting as you go for injuries, red cards, and the occasional lucky shot. Another factor that hurt FINALE was the very fuzzy rules translations that floated around after it was first released. Ignore the nays-sayers and call your team to the field! FINAL THOUGHT These aren’t the only ‘downtrodden’ games out there... Goldsieber’s EDISON & CO. and GALOPP ROYALE, Avalon Hill’s GUERILLA, Kosmos’ WETTSREIT DER BAUMEISTER, and Flying Turtle’s SINDBAD all could have easily pushed their way into this column. (I’m saving my thoughts on EDISON & CO. for another time.) My word of advice: don’t buy into the negative initial reaction about a game on rec.games.board or in a gaming magazine. Give it time... ask around... hear more than one opinion. I missed out on the joy of ENTDECKER for over a year because I took the word of one negative review. Don’t you do the same. But then again, what do I know?
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