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Board games Conventions Larp Tabletop role-playing

A week of new games!

Last week I was away at an informal roleplaying con with a group of old friends. There were a couple of dozen of us in total, and 18 different games (mostly playtests) were run – an impressive variety and range. Games that I played Bluestockings is designed and was run by Liz Lovegrove, of Rise […]

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Board games

Psychism and whaling

Have played a couple of great boardgames recently! Mysterium So this is a coop game, for 2–7 players, in which one person is a ghost and the others are psychics trying to work out who killed them (by Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko). The original Polish version came out a few years ago, and then […]

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Board games

Sentinels of the Multiverse, Darjeeling, Saboteur

The day after Dragonmeet I met up with friends and played some boardgames. Just capturing a few impressions here. Sentinels of the Multiverse A co-op card game in which a troop of superheroes battle a villain plus cohorts. You each choose which hero you’d like to play (from a cast of several), with each having […]

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Board games

The Works

If you’re in the UK, the remainders chain The Works currently has a sale on a load of Rio Grande boardgames. Both on their website and in the shops themselves. I picked up this bunch (Unexpected Treasures, Havana, Spin Monkeys, Fürstenfeld, Darjeeling):   for about fifty quid, free delivery. I’ve not previously played any of […]

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Board games

And a scoring tweak

Did a bit more playtesting of Rainbow Skyscrapers over the weekend, and people seemed to find it fun: lots of cussing and laughter! This was with casual gamers: I haven’t tried it on a hardcore mob yet. (Or with kids.) Players quite quickly hit on the tactic of placing blocks deliberately wonkily on other players’ […]

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Board games

Rainbow Skyscrapers (as it’s now known)

It seems that the ancient kids’ game Rainbow Towers is still remembered and even available, so let’s try Rainbow Skyscrapers instead for this new one that I mentioned the other day. After a bit of testing it turns out the the 2-player game doesn’t work very well as written. Because the players’ block pools are […]

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Board games

Dexterity game idea – Rainbow Towers (working title)

A while ago I got a bunch of coloured wooden blocks, for a project which ended up not taking place; and having stumbled across them again just now, I’ve been wondering about the possibility of turning them into a game. An early place-and-score type idea ended up converging towards (the excellent) Totemo, but last night […]

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Board games

Redesign

Back in May I entered the Redesign competition being organized at UK Games Expo by Leisure Games, Surprised Stare, and Playtest UK. The idea is that you’re given the components of an existing boardgame, and asked to design a new boardgame using them – bearing no relation to the original. The date for submission of […]

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Board games Card games

Playtest again

I went to another meeting of the Playtest group in London yesterday (like last month), and again had a jolly good time. Despite the trains still being buses and most of the tubes non-existent. It made for about a 3-hour door-to-door journey, which is a bit much I think for a 75-mile distance. But hey […]

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Board games Card games

Playtest meetup

On Sunday I went into That London, which was no mean feat as the trains weren’t running thanks to works on the line. But I persevered because I wanted to get along to a Meetup group for people that design boardgames. It’s run by Rob Harris who some of you will remember from Consequences/Peaky. And […]