Monikers: Monikers-er – Andrew Lynch
Monikers is a great party game if you’ve got a group that isn’t afraid of getting silly. Monikers-er cranks things up, with a collection of obscure, seemingly impossible cards. All your new favorites are here: Mukbong, Washington Crossing the Delaware, Reiner Knizia. It’s the Monikers set for those who like their word selections eclectic, which I certainly do. The final endorsement: I’d rather play Monikers with just these cards than mix in the base set.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?:
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
Read more articles from Andrew Lynch.
Faraway – Andy Matthews
Faraway is a game about journeys—traveling through a magical land called Alula. Over the course of 8 rounds players will play cards in front of themselves in order to arrange resources and scoring conditions for end of game scoring. The catch is that you lay down cards from left to right, but score from right to left after first flipping all the cards face down. This means you have to constantly be thinking in two directions—setting yourself up with difficult scoring cards on the left side, while giving yourself things TO score on the right side.
Going into my first play I didn’t know much about the game. But after reading through the rules and playing once with my youngest son, we both knew Faraway was more than just the two simple decks of cards. You’re constantly on the lookout for cards that will power your previously played cards, but at the same time allow you to score future cards in your journey. I’m two plays into Faraway now and I’m eagerly looking forward to additional plays. Be on the lookout for my review in the next few weeks.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?:
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
Read more articles from Andy Matthews.
Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of The West – Jesse Fletcher
Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of The West is a game designed by a team of Alan Moon, original designer of the mega-hit Ticket to Ride, and the dynamic duo of Matt Leacock & Rob Daviau, most known for the critically acclaimed Pandemic Legacy series. Starting with a mostly basic set of standard Ticket to Ride rules, players will go through 12 sessions, introducing new game elements throughout. Like any good legacy game there are sealed boxes to unlock, stickers to be permanently stuck, and one particularly clever and thematic game component that I won’t spoil for you. Suffice to say, it made me smile.
I’m currently going through this campaign with two players. Games are snappy; we got through 6 out of our 12 games in a single 3-4 hour play session. I am very much enjoying the playthrough so far. The iterative complexities added thus far have been satisfying, adding new flavor and interesting decisions, without a ton of mental overload. I’m very much looking forward to my next play.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?:
★★★★★ – Will definitely play it again
Read more articles from Jesse Fletcher.
Wyrmspan – K. David Ladage
It is my impression that Wyrmspan is the sort of game you would design if you were someone who was a fan of Wingspan, but had a list of one or two dozen things you didn’t like about the game. Wyrmspan is a good game. It is one that has some great ideas (the Guilds, the two-step growth model that requires you to excavate a space before a new dragon can be enticed into your caves, etc.). But there are some things that were lost in the efforts to remove elements the designer obviously did not care for.
For example:
- In Wingspan, if there is a resource cached on a bird, or a card tucked under a bird, I know what that means thematically. This bird tucks cards because it is a predator and those cards represent its prey; that bird tucks cards because it tends to travel in flocks. Those birds cache resources that they tend to gather.
- In Wyrmspan, effects that tuck cards or cache resources have absolutely no thematic rhyme or reason. An effect from a card will often tell you to tuck a card under any dragon, or cache any resource onto any dragon.
With things so generic (for lack of a better term), the dragons cease to have depth. They are nothing more than a collection of mechanics with no bearing on the theme being presented. In the end, it is a good game that feels far more two-dimensional than it needed to.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?:
★★★☆☆ – Wouldn’t suggest it, but would happily play it
Read more articles from K. David Ladage.
Western Legends: Showdown – Justin Bell
Another game in the growing line of wallet-sized micro-game experiences published by Matagot, Western Legends: Showdown loosely takes place in the Western Legends universe. Two players go head-to-head by playing one of their nine cards to locations on the table, each of which has easy rules to determine who wins that stack of cards based on which player triggered the action. (The Ranch location is “won” when the sum of the cards played there exceeds 11.)
Each player’s nine cards are identical, with three in hand at any given time. There are some mildly interesting decision to make about when to play a card and where, and if a card (numbered from 1-7) is the exclusively highest card played at a location, the card’s power is triggered. Hopefully, this will lead to shenanigans and a combo that lets a player win a location, or maybe two on the same turn. When each player has played all nine of their cards, the game is over, with plays lasting about 10 minutes (much less than the 20 minutes listed on the wallet face).
Western Legends: Showdown was fine. It faces the same problem my wife and I had with the other wallet games I’ve tried from this publisher since SPIEL 2023 (Les Roy des Ribauds and Pan T’es Mort): 10-minute strategy games are simply too short. I love the idea of this series, but I’d rather play something that has more meat on the bone and takes longer to play. As it is, each of these games feel like they were designed to be played just once, maybe twice; I can’t see any scenario where I’m whipping out Western Legends: Showdown a dozen times or more, because there’s not much more to see.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?:
★★☆☆☆ – Would play again but would rather play something else
Read more articles from Justin Bell.
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