Playing – Winter Family Vacation 2024 pt. 1

A quick list of board games that got to the table while I was visiting family down in California over the December holidays.

• Mantis
  Set making card game with The Oatmeal art & humour. On your turn, you can score your cards in hand or attempt to steal cards to make those sets. The twist – the back of the card shows three possible colours of shrimp the card might be. More fun than I expected, quick play, and up to 6 players.
  – Will play again.

• Marvel Villainous
  I had played Disney Villainous a couple of times a few years back, found it decent. The Marvel version in some ways felt better balanced but also changed the mechanic of sending cards to the boards of other players or optional events / crisis cards affecting one or more players. I liked that it made it feel like a Marvel comic book crossover, but it also made things more complicated than they reallly needed to be. We played a second time without the option events / crisis cards and that went better but there were some weird outcomes from some of the card & villain boards that made me want to try it as Disney had it where only YOUR enemy and problem cards were interacting with your board. The problem with that was one of the villains needed to send cards to other players as part of their victory conditions.
  – Still willing to try again with some tinkering.

• Karen
  A social game of guessing and creativity, a direct descendent of games like Balderdash, Cards Against Humanity, Applers to Apples, and Dixit. On your turn, you read from either the review side of the card or the fill in the blank side. The review side had things like “This came unassembled and I had to put it together. Would not buy again” (the product was LEGO) and other players would write down a product or service, sometimes going for the correct answer and sometimes just writing down the funny one that would get all the votes. The fill in the blank side would have a partial review, like “There was (BLANK) in my soup” and other players would write down answers like flies, feces, etc. Then all the other players submit their answers to be read off by you. Points are scored for a) being correct and b) getting others to vote for your answer.
  – I’m getting a bit drained by some of these games, Cards Against Humanty in particular, though I’m still up for more Dixit and it’s been far too long since I played Balderdash.

• Power Hungry Pets
  It’s Love Letter with an Oatmeal reskin. Players start with one card and on their turn drawn another card cad choose which one to play and then follow that action. Part of it deducing what cards the others have and the other part is figuring out how you will make it to the final card with the highest value of card. Play multiple rounds until someboday has won a set number based on the number of players.
  – Will definitely play this or another Love Letter game that plays up to six.

• The Crew – Mission Deep Sea
  I haven’t played the original The Crew but apparently several things were changed from it in this spiritual sequel. It’s a co-operative trick taking game. There’s a narrative of missions, each one specifying how many mission objectives of a certain difficulty that need to be completed before the mission is a success. These objectives might specify “I will win exactly 4 tricks”, “I will win only the first trick”, “I will win a trick with a 5 card”, and so on, dealt out to the number of players as per the mission. We played it twice, more to get a feel for the game than advance the plot. As a game with random objectives, the challenge is a little swingy and might need some more active “Pick three out of 5 drawn” house rule to make sure it would be fun and challenging. It also gave us an excuse to introduce trick taking games like Wizard* and Hearts.
  – I’m willing to give it some more play and that it plays up to 5 makes it easier to bring to table. The specific mission goals add an interesting twist I’m looking to explore.

*Wizard is excellent as it plays up to 6 players but takes longer than most card games as it is played over several rounds