We review some exciting table-top games – brought to you by Asmodee – for you, your family, and friends to enjoy this summer
Asmodee is a tabletop games developer and publisher and one of the largest in the world. They have developed variations of board games, card games and role-playing games – some of which we will review here! Their most popular games include Catan, Exploding Kittens, and Pandemic and they also hold licences for an array of Star Wars, Marvel, and Pokemon games
Contents
– Catan
– Carcassonne
– Taco!Cat!Goat!Cheese!Pizza!
– Bananagrams
– 7 Wonders
– Ticket To Ride: Europe
– Hint
– Dixit
Catan – Klaus Teuber – 1995 – Players 3-4 (more with expansions) – RRP £49.99
Catan is a board game all about building settlements, cities, roads, resources, and accumulating development cards to score points. The first to ten points wins the game. In Catan each player takes it in turns to roll dice and collect the resources that correspond with the value thrown, they then use those commodities to build settlements and roads around the board. If you don’t have enough of an individual commodity, you can trade with other players – but be careful not to offer the opposition the keys to their victory!
It’s a simple game to understand, and after an initial play through the game becomes a lot quicker to complete. There are certainly tactics and strategy involved which is why we love the game, you can jeopardise the plans of your opposition by building intersecting roads, or blocking their incoming resources with a “robber” to prevent them from scoring. Another interesting factor is the setup of the game, the board is made of separate hexagons and roll numbers which you build together before you start, this makes for a unique board every time you play.
The more players you have, the busier the board will get, and the harder it will be to satisfy your strategy, it makes for more fun but also more contention!
Carcassonne – Klaus-Jürgen Wrede – 2000 – Players 2-5 (more with expansions) – RRP £36.99
Carcassonne is a tile building game where players pick a tile from a central pile and place it by a tile where the sides match in the vein of dominoes. The sides of each tile will include either roads, cities, cloisters (monasteries), or fields. The side of the tile picked must match an adjacent tile which has already been placed. Players also start with 7 meeples (counters) which need to be placed on roads, cities, or cloisters to score points. The more cities, roads and cloisters players build, the higher the points tally accumulated.
It’s an easy game to learn, but expert players will learn to use tactics to steal cities and roads as well as disrupting plans for their opposition, limiting the points available. Strategy becomes a huge part of the game after a few run throughs, and adds an extra dimension causing players to think ahead and play defensively.
The variation on how points are scored will also cause players to think carefully about placing their meeples, for example completed cities when placed will result in 2 points per tile, however if the city is left unfinished or unfortified, at the end of the game when your points are tallied, the cities tiles will only count for 1 point each. So do you build multiple small cities, a couple of large ones, or concentrate on the longest roads – there are several ways to win so play wisely!
Taco! Cat! Goat! Cheese! Pizza! – Dave Campbell – 2018 – Players 2-8 – RRP £10.99
Taco! Cat! Goat! Cheese! Pizza! Or TCGCP as we called it is like the famous, most basic of card games SNAP but on steroids. The setup is the same whereby players will share the shuffled deck out between them, each player then proceeds to place a card from their own deck on the central pile whilst announcing the first option; Taco. The next player places a card from their own pile and calls out Cat, the following player does the same but calls out Goat, and the game continues in that fashion. Eventually a player will call the correct word as it corresponds to the card that has just been played after which all players slam their hand onto the top of the pile and whoever is last must take the pile and add it to their own.
The deck also contains three unique cards (much like a joker) where players will have to complete a task like beating your chest like a gorilla, slapping the table with both hands, or slapping your hands above your head – all with the aim of avoiding picking up the central pile.
The cards themselves are well designed with nicely designed caricatures on the face-up side of either a Taco, Cat, Goat, Cheese, or Pizza. It’s certainly a game that can be played by families with young children able to get involved and enough interactivity to keep them laughing and entertained. What’s more is that it’s essentially like carrying a deck of cards, easy to take with you on your travels and holidays.
Bananagrams – Rena Nathanson, Abe Nathanson – 2006 – Players 2-6 – RRP £14.99
Bananagrams is an anagram tile game, a bit like playing your personal crossword or Scrabble game in a quicker time frame than competing players. Each player is given a set number of tiles which they have to arrange to create their very own crossword grid. Players will have to take additional letters, exchange letters, or rearrange their entire grid with the aim of using all of your tiles. Once tiles have been used and the first player has completed their crossword grid they have to shout “bananas”, and other players will review to ensure that they’ve not made any mistakes, if they have they are eliminated from the game, but if they’re successful they are then crowned “Top Banana”!
As long words, or words with uncommon letters are not scored any higher than short or basic lettered words, this game is more about speed of thought than having a dictionary for a brain ,meaning any player with a quick mind and hands would be able to challenge their old English professor and still come out on top.
The tiles come in an easy to carry (and easy to pack) banana shaped pouch, it’s a great game to take with you on your travels this summer, all you need is a flat surface to build your grid.
7 Wonders – Antoine Bauza – 2010 – Players 3-7 – RRP £44.99
The aim of the game is to build up your ancient civilisation of which there are 7 to choose – this will become your “wonder board”. The game is set during 3 Ages where players have to acquire cards to develop their wonder, build structures, collect gold, and build armies.
The interesting mechanic in this game is that during each age, once you finish your turn you pass the same set of cards to the player next to you, that way you will have a different hand to play with each of your turns. This results in players knowing what cards you have available to you, advanced players can use this to their benefit to sabotage plans of other players.
Players will be able to rack up points depending on the structures they’ve built and the resources they’ve accumulated as well as the strength of their armies. There are several point-scoring elements to 7 Wonders and it will take a couple of playthroughs to understand the full mechanics, but once you have the hang of it, playing tactically becomes a lot of fun. Some of the unique gaming mechanics really made this game different to others we’d played recently and the ability to play with a different Wonder Board each time will keep things fresh during future runs.
Ticket to Ride: Europe – Alan R. Moon – 2005 – Players 2-5 – RRP £44.99
This is an alternative version of the original Ticket to Ride with some extra point scoring mechanics and of course a different map to play on – Europe as opposed to the original United States of America. The aim of the game is to accumulate points by fulfilling the routes given to them on their “Destination Cards”. Players will obtain railway car cards of 9 different variations and have to use these cards to satisfy the previously mentioned routes.
It’s an easy game to get the hang of and after a single play through it becomes straight forward. When testing the game, we played with 3 players and found that it wasn’t as combative as the likes of Catan and allowed you to play your own game without actively trying to ruin the strategy of others. It is a game however that will become more competitive the more players are involved as there are only a finite amount of routes and sooner or later your opponents will be taking the routes you planned on building on.
Ticket to Ride: Europe is an excellent tabletop game where various methods can be utilised to score the most points. It won’t cause havoc and family break-ups like Monopoly, but it will encourage lots of enjoyable and repeat play time.
Hint – Jesper Bülow, Jonas Resting-Jeppesen – 2014 – Players 4-10 – RRP £29.99
Hint is a party game that becomes more fun the more people are involved. Players will be split into teams and have to either draw, talk, mime, or hum clues so their teammates can guess the answers on the card. It’s a mix of traditional classics such as charades, Articulate, and Pictionary all rolled into one.
Each card selected has a category on it as well as the action required to give the clues in 90 seconds, for example players might have to hum various songs about cats, or mime Meryl Streep films. Points are gained for each correct guess, however on each card has a “Forbidden Object” which if guessed the team will lose 2 points and these are normally common options related to the clue.
The setup of the game is interesting as it’s played within the box it’s packed in and the counters move around the rim as points are added. There is also a wheel in the centre where cards are placed and offers additional point scoring mechanics.
Hint is well known and the most popular party game played in Scandinavia – as it states on the cover – but has yet to gain similar traction in the UK, after a couple of playthroughs though it’s obvious that this will create some hysterical and embarrassing moments between friends.
Dixit – Jean-Louis Roubira – 2008 – Players 3-8 – Various editions available
Do you know the way your opponents think? Dixit will test that. The idea is to play cards and score points based on what your opponents are thinking. Each player is given a set of cards with beautifully illustrated images on them – all completely random. One player then selects a card but without placing it, makes a statement relating to the imagery shown. The other players then select a card from their own hand which best matches the phrase or statement given earlier, all the cards played are shuffled and laid out face up, all the other players will then decide which card was the main player’s card. The idea is for the main player to be vague enough so that a few but not all of the players choose the card they played, if they are too obvious everyone will select the card they chose and the player will get 0 points.
This is a great game to get you thinking about the ways your opponent’s mind works, using in-jokes, or subjects only a few are knowledgeable can play to your advantage. The card imagery is well designed and each card has enough talking points to think of a unique statement to get other players thinking. The game certainly tests your imagination, where being creative will place you in good stead.
Verdict
Tabletop games have always been a fun way of interacting with those close to you, they provide entertainment while not involving watching a screen, and whilst movies, TV, and video games hold great value, tabletop gaming is something we could all benefit from. The games we tested all provide a unique playing style and none would be considered boring. Some provided more laughs like Taco! Cat! Goat! Cheese! Pizza! or Hint, while others require strategy like Catan or Ticket to Ride: Europe. Some of these games can also be played and completed in less than half (Bananagrams, Dobble) an hour and are great for filling time with a quick distraction.
Be sure to check out Asmodee’s website (https://www.asmodee.co.uk/collections/) for more details on these games and an array of others, plus details on special editions.
