SAGGYHEAD is touring the bright lights of London and NYC this month with TTR London, NYC (and a bit of 6 Nimmit for the ride!)
Ticket to Ride London
Alan R. Moon ~ Age 8+ ~ 2-4 Players ~ 10-15 mins
I really like Ticket to Ride, I enjoy the simple set collection and route making. It reminds me of a game I used to play as a kid called Travel the World where you had to travel between cities according to some little ticket cards you collect. However my partner in crime does not like it at all, so it does not see much table time. But the ten minute version is a lot easier to get to the table than its bigger brother and it’s not much to ask to play a ten minute game.
This is a bus game rather than a train game, and in terms of the gameplay it is pretty much exactly the same as the big box game but quicker, smaller and cheaper. For me I think it might be more fun too. Definitely it is a better way to teach modern board games to parents. They need to get a taste of the game but slogging through a 90 min full game where you are playing your own game as well as advising them on theirs is a tough call. This even if it is extended will still be a quick game. This version is definitely sticking on my shelves for a while, it can be played with little brain power and when time is short.
6 Nimmt
Wolfgang Kramer ~ Age 8+ ~ 2-10 Players ~ 45 mins
This is a card game about not collecting Bullheads. The cards run from 1 to 104 and all the cards have at least one bullhead icon on them. The multiples fives and tens have more and doubles like 22 or 33 have more still. The pesky 55 has seven bullheads so once that sucker is in play, you’ll be trying to seriously avoid picking up that pile.
The way the game works is pretty straight forward, you play a card and it must be placed in a pile in ascending order, so higher than the card before. But crucially you must also place it on the pile that your card is closest to, so if you play a 58, and the top cards are 80, 78, 42, and 12, then you will need to place the card on the 42 stack. This is resolved from lowest played card to highest. If you place the 6th card in the row then you have to collect the row and with that all those pesky bullheads. If you are unable to, or don’t wish to play a high card, you may play a low card and swipe a stack of your choice, leaving your card available to start a new stack. All you’re trying to do is collect as few bullheads as possible over each round. The loser being the first to 66.
This type of game usually doesn’t appeal to me as it involves thinking ahead and playing cards out for the longer game which are games I tend to lose. But yet this is a fun little one, pretty easy to get on the table and teach with only a few rules to grasp. This little box of cards will be on my list of “travel games” for a while.
New York Zoo
Uwe Rosenberg ~ Age 10+ ~ 1-5 Players ~ 30-60 mins
Uwe to me usually conjures up the idea of farming to feed your people and more complex games, however that is only part of what the great Rosenberg has designed. New York Zoo is the spiritual successor to Patchwork and uses a similar polyominal tile selection mechanic to take it in turns selecting animals and tiles for your zoo and trying desperately to fill your zoo as quickly as possible. It is a race and you’ll need to use your spatial smarts to get ahead of the competition in this one.
When I was introduced to Patchwork it was an absolute decimation by someone who had played it hundreds of times over years and years and I will admit that it was not fun. So my enjoyment of New York Zoo was a huge surprise for me. I loved it, there is a little more think to it as you need to populate your enclosures with enough animals to get yourself a few bonus tiles, whilst also making sure that you keep your toe in the race game of covering your zoo first. It’s a delicate and delicious balance. If you are a fan of cute themes and tetris style games then you can’t go wrong with this. I think it snips Barenpark at the post for me.
