Mush! Mush!

December saw another full month of boardgaming:

Avalon: I hate this sort of game.

Bohnanza: An excellent game which I hadn't played for ages. I was too quick to open up my third beanfield, which I never really needed. I love the no hand sorting mechanism.

Codenames: Another really good game, only spoiled by the imbecility of one's teammates.

Condottiere: A card game with a board. It's a sort of wargame that always goes down well, even with those that don't really like wargames.

Discoveries: The dice version of Lewis & Clark, full of opportunities to make the wrong choice.

Fresco: Similar in theme to Pastiche, and probably about as good. It's perhaps a little bit easier for the colour blind.

Game of Trains: Nothing to do with trains, but good anyway. It's a abstract number sorting game where I never see the end coming.

Ice Flow: I wish people would stop beating me at this.

Lancaster: The Hundred Years War theme is not that deep, although I understand the need to go to France to fight is stronger in the expansion, which I would like to try.

Mush! Mush!: My preference is to play a wide variety of games and a bit of husky racing never fails to entertain. It has a very simple mechanic and it's always amazing how with the same resources the various competitors can achieve such very different results.

Pi mau Pflaumen: A German card game about fruit and π. It sort of makes sense when you play it.

Quartermaster General: Playing as the Soviets I only ever had armies on Moscow, Ukraine and Eastern Europe, but I bled the Germans dry. There was an unusual amount of action in Asia, proving once again that every game is different.


Red7: The thinking man's Fluxx. Don't let that put you off; this is good.

Roll for the  Galaxy: We played the Ambition expansion, but frankly it didn't seem to make much difference to what was already a good game.

Sail to India: None of the others had ever played this previously and to a man employed strategies that I'd never come across before, all of which did better than mine. Bastards.

Shadow Hunters: An interesting game - despite being based on hidden identities - for which there seem to be a range of winning strategies. I suspect that the frenzied bloodbath will always be the most fun if not the most successful.

Skull: An excellent bluffing game, at which many of my regular playing partners are very bad.

String Railway: I loved this. It basically involves laying out railways with, er, string. Fantastic.