September 2024
Welcome board game fans! This month we invite you to explore the deep jungles in search of the Lost Ruins of Arnak, build sustainable natural habitats with Cascadia, relax with a spot of quilting in Calico and put our colour mixing skills to work with Swatch.
Happy board gaming!
Have you thought about starting your own board game club?
Whether you're a seasoned board game enthusiast or just looking for a fun way to bring friends and neighbours together, a board game club is a great way to bond over a shared activity.
1. Start by garthering a group of friends, family, or like minded people who who share your interest in games.
2. Pick a regular day or night to meet up that fits your schedule (weekly works well for our group but biweekly or monthly may suit others better).
3.Choose a venue. Friends and family groups could gather at each other’s homes on a rotating basis. Otherwise, the local pub remains a popular option - most pubs are happy to let groups take a corner for playing on less busy nights (just remember to buy drinks/snacks in return for the use of the space). If your gaming community grows, school or church halls will cater for larger groups.
Your club is that can be as casual or structured as you like. You might focus on competitive strategy games one week and party games the next. Keep a league table to see who wins the most games or have fun prizes for showing up - any format will do as long as everyone is having fun!.
Online forums such as MeetUp or NextDoor can help you advertise and manage your event and attendance. Rental services like My Board Game Library can help keep things fresh and ensure a wide selection of gaming experiences for your community.
Renting games for a fraction of the cost of purchasing them is a great way to try out new games. It also lets you experiment with different genres and styles of games and avoid getting stuck playing the same games over and over.
My Board Game Library offers a curated Board Game Crate service for venues and communitiy clubs so you’ll never run out of new games to play. Click on button to learn more about renting games from My Board Game Library.
Review:
Lost Ruins of Arnak
Mín & Elwen
1-4 Players
90 minutes
Lost Ruins of Arnak has players exploring the mysteries of a deep forgotten jungle in a thematically rich and strategically challenging game.
Voted one of the best titles released in recent years, the game cleverly combines deck-building with worker placement as players try and take key positions on the board while accumulating cards to provide them resources to venture ever deeper into the jungle and conduct important research activities.
Points are earned for advancing research, acquiring items and relics and overcoming the various guardians of the jungle.
Strategic decisions and tactical card buying are key to success as the market shifts from basic tools to powerful artifacts as the game progresses. With only five rounds, the pace is fast. Each turn, players take one major action (like placing an explorer on the board or using an item or relic) as well as any available free actions.
Rounds end when everyone has passed and after five rounds the final scores are calculated to determine the winner.
The game offers many routes to victory and there simply isn’t enough time to do everything you’d like to do. It is easy to get find yourself having so much fun collecting treasure, exploring and defeating guardians that you neglect vital point scoring actions and suddenly find the game almost over. The key is to make the most effective use of the limited turns you have.
Lost Ruins of Arnak is a beautifully designed game that combines elegant mechanics, stunning artwork, and an engaging sense of exploration. Play is smooth and the game offers a great challenge at any player count (averaging about 30 minutes per player).
The Expedition Leaders expansion elevates the base game to greatness, introducing six unique characters with special abilities and two new temples to explore. It’s a fantastic addition that makes an already excellent game even better!
My Board Game Library rental subscribers will receive The Expedition Leaders expansion to rent included in their rental of the base game!
Review:
Cascadia
Randy Flynn
1-4 Players
45 minutes
Cascadia is a tile-placement game that combines the simple pleasures of puzzle-solving with a natural environment theme.
Players compete to build an ecosystem that will provide the best habitats for the wildlife of the area. The core gameplay involves choosing habitat hex tiles, paired with wildlife tokens from a central display and placing them into your environment in the most optimal way to meet the requirements of wildlife scoring cards, which vary from game to game.
Each animal has specific placements it wants to have met in order to score. Bears, for instance, don’t like other bears nearby, while elk need to be arranged in long, straight lines. As the you draw additional animal types the challenge of accomodating them according to their needs grows. Additionally, points are scored for connecting matching habitats, like forests, rivers, or prairies, adding another layer of strategy.
The beauty of Cascadia is in its simplicity and the satisfaction of creating your own nature-filled world. The game is a great entry point for newcomers to the hobby, but it still provides enough challenge to keep experienced gamers interested.
The minimal setup, simple rules, and gorgeous presentation make it an easy game to pull out and play with a wide range of players. Overall, we give cascadia 4 meeples out of five and recommend this tranquil, puzzle-focused game to anyone looking for a relaxing yet engaging challenge with a nature-theme.
Review:
Calico
Kevin Russ
1-4 Players
45 minutes
Calico is a delightful game that will help you get in touch with your inner cat-lady and have you crafting quilts for your feline family. The cute cats, calming colors, and cozy quilt-building theme all combine to create an atmosphere that's hard to resist.
In Calico, your goal is to craft the most attractive quilt to lure in various types of cats. This is achieved by placing hexagonal tiles on your quilt board. You're matching colors and patterns to attract cats, and completing challenge tiles by surrounding them with specific sets of quilt tiles.
Despite its calm theme, Calico can get surprisingly competitive, especially as your opponents take the exact tile you needed from the shared market pile, preventing you from completing a challenge or luring in that cat you’ve decided you just had to have!
(For a more relaxed experience the game also has a solo mode with plenty of achievements to strive for.)
While it may not be purr-fect, Calico is a solid game that delivers a satisfying experience with high-quality components, vibrant artwork and of course, loads of adorable cats. It’s a simple concept done well and definitely one to try out.
Review:
Swatch
Scott Lowe-James
1-4 Players
45 minutes
Swatch is a clever little game that brings the satisfaction of mixing colours into an abstract, card-driven experience.
Players race to mix colours and complete their individual colour scheme cards by creating the right combinations of paints.
Players start by gathering foundational cubes in cyan, magenta, and yellow, which can then be blended using Mix Action cards to create reds, greens, and blues. Having produced and collected the necessary colour combinations a player will be able to finish the swatches on their colour scheme card. The first player to complete all three of their colour schemes wins.
Each turn, players draw a card from the deck and pick another from a central grid, then use those cards to add, trade, or mix colors. It’s satisfying to figure out the most efficient way to create the needed colours. Even though the game is technically a race, it has a calm, almost meditative vibe.
If your group enjoys abstract games with a bit of strategy and a lot of color, Swatch could be a great fit.
Setting up a Rental Playlist on My Board Game Library lets you play many different games without spending a fortune! It’s wafantastic for adding variety to your board game group without having to invest the full cost of a game.
Renting our board games is a great way to try games before deciding if you want to buy them. That way your personal collection contains only the games you really love!
Renting from My Board Game Library means you’ve no need to store a large (and mostly un-played) game collection. You just return the games when you're done playing them, revclaiming that storage space for your home!
If you have any questions, suggestions or would like more information on any of the games mentioned in this newlsetter just drop us a mail and we will be happy to help.
It’s all part of our friendly service!
support@myboardgamelibrary.com
“When playing a game, the goal is to win, but it is the goal that is important, not the winning.”
– Anon.
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