Shuffle and Swing – Andrew Lynch
When I read the manual for a new game, I can usually picture the experience that awaits me. I’ve played enough of them at this point that I can see the shape of the thing. Every now and then, though, I read a manual that leaves me with nothing. It’s not a function of the quality of the manual itself, nor does it seem directly tied to the quality of the game, but it usually indicates that something is off.
Shuffle and Swing was one of those times. I read the manual—which is a perfectly fine manual—and could not picture the flow of the game. I couldn’t understand what I wanted to do, what my goals were, what a good strategy looked like. The very idea of the game refused to cohere. When a game is using mechanics that are this familiar, that’s probably not a good thing.
And indeed it wasn’t. While there’s nothing wrong with Shuffle and Swing, there’s also little about it to inspire joy. There are no surprises, no joy of discovery. The systems are hard to grok, and they don’t pay off in a way that rewards the time and effort.
Ease of entry?:
★★☆☆☆ – Not an easy onboard
Would I play it again?:
★☆☆☆☆ – Would play again but will cry about it
Read more articles from Andrew Lynch.
Bunny Kingdom – K. David Ladage
Bunny Kingdom is a game that I have picked up a few dozen times in various game stores, but never purchased. It all stems from the fact that a friend of mine back in Iowa told me that the game was not very good. Still, I kept looking at that beautiful artwork on the box and reading the description on the back and wondering if this was a game for me? Was it a game for my wife? So, not too terribly long ago, I searched Meeple Mountain and found a wonderful review of the game. After reading it, I asked my wife if she would like to pick up a copy and give it a try. She noted that the game is on Board Game Arena, and suggested we start there.
It took us very little time to figure out what we were trying to do. Once we did, we were both enjoying the game immensely. For me, the game had elements of several games that I like: Kingdomino (for the multiplicative scoring system), Alhambra (for the intermediate round scoring system), It’s a Wonderful World (for how the drafting system makes me feel), and so on. However, it also feels unique in that, although it sometimes feels similar to those games, the thought processes and stresses put on for identifying a viable strategy were different. Especially the final round scoring, where hidden drafted cards can upend everything if you played well. So yea, my friend and I obviously have divergent taste. The next trip to my friendly local game store will include a purchase of Bunny Kingdom and its expansion, In the Sky.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★☆ – The odd bump or two
Would I play it again?:
★★★★☆ – Would like to play it again
Read more articles from K. David Ladage.
Penguin Party – Andy Matthews
25th Century Games has been on a roll lately. From a relatively small group of people come dozens of games a year, in part because they’re licensing and re-releasing older titles: Sausage Sizzle from 2012, Hamster Roll from 2000, and Jalape-NO! all the way back in 1998. It’s great because the older titles get a fresh coat of paint, and all of a sudden they’re getting seen by a brand new audience.
Enter Penguin Party, a small box card game from Reiner Knizia, originally released in 2008. The premise is simple: one at a time, players build a flat pyramid using 5 different colors of cards. The only catch is that as you lay the cards down on the table, each card (other than the most bottom row) must be supported by a card of the same color below it. And so if you picture it mentally, at some point the river of cards for one or more colors get cut off and players will no longer be able to place that color. If on your turn you can’t place a card, your round is over and you take a -1 point token for each card remaining in your hand. If you’re lucky enough to empty your hand, you can return two -1 point tokens. The goal being to have 0 points.
This game is fine, the components, what few exist in the box are fine, the gameplay is just fine. K3 does the pyramid and blocking off color chains much better, Knizia’s later work L.L.A.M.A. does the point return more interestingly. This one was a miss for me because it feels like this one didn’t need a reprint. So unless you’re a Knizia completionist, you can pass this one up with confidence.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?:
★★☆☆☆ – Would play again but would rather play something else
Read more articles from Andy Matthews
Nassau – David McMillan
Nassau is Game #7 in the Stefan Feld City Collection (SFCC). The SFCC is a strange beast which, for the first eight titles, followed the pattern of three revamped older Stefan Feld titles followed up by a fourth, brand new game. Nassau is a reimplementation of Feld’s second published game, Rum & Pirates (which is kind of a misnomer as it’s pretty much a brand new game with one aspect that’s heavily influenced by its predecessor).
In Phase 1 of the game, using the movement mechanics of Rum & Pirates, players move the captain pawn around the pirate city of Nassau in order to gather the resources they’ll need to sail the high seas in Phase 2. In Phase 2, the players will move their ship around the Caribbean map doing various things such as looting, plundering, fighting other pirates, killing monsters, and establishing trading outposts along the way. In Phase 3, players return home for some end-of-round scoring and will have the opportunity to bury their treasure end-of-game points as well as sit around the fire and tell the tales of their adventures for even more points along the way.
While I’ve generally been impressed by the SFCC games I’ve encountered thus far, this one fell flat for me. I didn’t dislike it, per se, but it didn’t really sing to me either. The Caribbean map just feels unnecessarily convoluted. Perhaps that’s because as I was playing Nassau, in the back of my head I was thinking about Rum & Pirates and how straightforward, simple, and charming that game is and, as such, couldn’t help but compare the two. While Nassau definitely feels like a Feld game, it’s one that I’m not keen to get to the table again any time soon. Maybe more time and another playthrough or two will change that.
Be sure to follow my Focused on Feld series for my future review of this game and all of his others.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?:
★★☆☆☆ – Would play again but would rather play something else
Read more articles from David McMillan
Ethnos: 2nd Edition – Thomas Wells
Ethnos: 2nd Edition (2025, CMON) is a 1-6 player counting exercise, and if you can’t tell from that description, I’m not a huge fan. It’s a game where you either draw a card from a deck or a pool, or play a group of cards that either share a suit or a color. The top card has powers. You put out little plastic bits in various area majority competitions around the board.
Ethnos is a beloved game, and I’m not sure my opinions about this change anything, but the game really demonstrates why hiding trackable information is one of the most boring design decisions a designer can make. Card counting is interesting in a casino because there is money at stake and you are battling a megastructure (the house). Pretty much everywhere else, who cares? I don’t find it particularly interesting or complex to demonstrate to my friends that I can count better than them, or that my memory is more robust, especially when the decision boils down to what is basically a yes/no decision.
In Ethnos you can play one of two ways: quickly, where the game is over in 30 minutes because nobody is really tracking everyone else’s hands of cards. So: Uno. Or, you can make it an onerous analysis open-hand endeavor where you bean-count everything into oblivion.
BORING.
This is the same rules as the previous game—see our (review of the original Ethnos here)—with a solo mode (yuck) and a small variant that makes the card market refresh faster if you want it to.
Ease of entry?:
★★★★★ – No sweat
Would I play it again?:
★☆☆☆☆ – Would play again but will cry about it.
Read more articles from Thomas Wells.
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