Tabletop Day is a yearly day to promote games (thanks Wil Wheaton!). The old-y time-y board game type. Which I love (see the trip to the Essen Game Fair). So I invited my like minded friends and we played all day. My goal was to play as many Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) games as possible
Biggest hit of the night was Marrying Mr. Darcy, this was the first play as it just recently arrived off a Kickstarter. These folks laughed the loudest and so we will be playing this again soon! It has a touch of role-playing and knowing Pride and Prejudice is not required.
My goal was to play as many Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) or nominees as possible-it turns out we have a number of them that we haven't played recently.
First up, Hanabi, winner 2013
I love this one!! It is co-operative and is a little bit of memory and a little agonizing decisions of when to play and when to tell others information so that they can play!
Love Letter
This is a beautiful example of complexity in just 16 cards. Beware the Clown!
Carabande! Winner 1996 in the Dexterity category
You are racing your 'cars' (wooden disks) by flicking them along the track. Don't go off the track. Don't go too slow. Don't get blocked. This is fast and fun and light-hearted. Love this, should play it more often-can play up to 8 and yet is fast.
Villa Paletti winner 2002
Your grandfather left you the beginnings of a villa
Here are all the columns he built
And the first level
You are building it taller...by using those columns from the base. Easy because they are not all exactly the same height, so you just pull out the column and add it to the next level.
The first level is not too hard
There are even column still free on the ground.
But the next levels get smaller
And as you pile the columns up, it changes the balance of the levels, freeing up columns that used to be trapped.
We are great builders!
But it inevitably ends in tears.
We split up into small groups, including two tables of Pathfinder.
It is a base of D&D, you still role dice and it can be played in multi-session campaigns, but with a little more defined play. (that is the Puerto Rico table underneath-we didn't get to it today, but soon)
Dixit, winner 2010
This one is beautiful and the most creative. It helps if you know the other folks playing, though it is not necessary.
It is relatively fast and a playable by a huge age range. GreenEyed Girl took an early lead and won easily.
Hare and Tortoise, winner 1979 (!!!) We have the Dutch version, so it is Haas and Schildpad.
E- won this one, but the TRUE battle was for third and fourth between Katie and Sue-it was all wrong, still not sure exactly what happened!
This one is prone to post-play analysis. It has a small touch of math and some people are tempted to see if you can maximize the moves. I love that this is from 1979 and I haven't seen this mechanism in any other game (I'm sure it must exist somewhere, I just haven't seen it).
Everyone shuffled tables and now we are playing Marrying Mr. Darcy
and Village, winner 2012, Connoissers Game of the Year
This is a classic resource-limited strategy game. It takes a couple hours, but has the nice twist that you MUST consider that your family members will die. In fact they will add to your family prestige and help you win.
Frank won this one, even though he had to leave for the last couple rounds.
Run for your life Candyman!
Candyland gone horribly wrong.
Firefly, Out of the Black
This is new to us and we are still learning the rules. It will help if you were a fan of the show, but so far it is nicely balanced.
Big success for Tabletop Day! We still need to have a Dominion Day...and a Seven Wonders Day....
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