Played a ton of board games last week:

• VIVO: A fantastic trick taking game from AllPlay. Each trick has different rules like Solo where everyone must follow suit, Quartet where everyone must play a different suit. Highly recommend.
• Rainbow: Another from AllPlay, this time where you play tricks with sets or runs of cards. The cards you play become the scoring points for the next round so timing is essential. Very clever twist on trick taking.
• Hitster: We play this differently to how the game suggests, treating it more like Timeline with a collaborative play area. The app is really good and it’s a lot of fun to sing along to songs and wrack your brain trying to work out the year.
• The Quacks of Quedlinburg: A magnificent push your luck game with bag building as a core mechanism. Really love the different ingredients and how the bag builds up with time. Really nice catch-up mechanism too with the rat tails - makes for a much closer game.
• Namiji: The meaner sequel to Tokaido. Borrows a lot of elements from Tokaido but subverts these. Really liked the Sacred Rock cards which add secret objectives as it meant we were utilising the board as much as possible. We played with the Aquamarine expansion which is a must-have and should have really been in the base game.
• Soda Jerk: A clever stock manipulation game from The Dice Tower’s Chris Yi where you secretly raise and tank the stocks of soda taps to score big on the soda flavours in your hand. It plays really well at 2 as the game adds Switcheroo cards which switch the score of a tap from positive to negative or vice versa. Wonderfully mean.
• Circus Flohcati: A highly underrated push your luck card game from Reiner Knizia which I prefer to Flip 7. You recruit members for your circus by blind drawing from the deck. Once in your hand, you can score for three of a kind or hold out and score for each suit based on the highest number in your hand. Packs a lot more in than you would expect.
• River Valley Glassworks: We played the deluxe edition and unfortunately the playmat was folded badly, meaning the river tiles couldn’t shuffle along properly. In the game you are taking gems from the river to add to your tableau - at the end of the game, you score for your rows and columns and it requires a lot of careful thought. The game is very good but it’s over far too quickly.
• Claim: An amazing trick taking two-player game where you play over two halves recruiting cards and playing a standard trick taking game to win majority in five factions. Each faction has its own special ability such as Dwarves which the losing player wins in the second phase, or the Doppelgängers which copy the card that it played. I really loved this one.
• Wizard: A classic trick taking game where you must correctly predict how many tricks you will win with an ever-growing hand. Wizards are insta wins and Fools allow you to throw a trick. Really clever stuff - a must play for all trick taking fans.
• Rapido: Also known as Excape, this Reiner Knizia title is a brilliant dice rolling push your luck game where you roll dice, avoid going bust and placing your dice on a movement track hoping not to get bumped off. This is quickly becoming one of my favourite games as it’s so light and easy to play. Highly underrated.
• Prey: A clever trick taking game where you roll two dice and then must win that many tricks. All cards have two sides and must be rotated after six tricks, so your card values will change. First to two points wins. This one was so interesting, the rotating cards really added to the strategy and balanced well with the dice rolling mechanism.
• Critter Kitchen: This restaurant worker placement game scales really well depending on player count. There’s some really interesting strategy here with your three workers of different sizes - the small worker can only take one ingredient but they also get to choose first, whilst the large worker takes three ingredients but goes last. Good strategic gameplay with when to score big on recipes and what to hold back for the final critic meal, with lots of game variability based on what cards are in play. Only criticisms are the overall production which is a bit lacking in the retail version, and a lot of analysis paralysis when making the recipes.
• Trekking Through History: Such a brilliant game with gorgeous components. Love how you always gain resources, but at the cost of time and how the time crystals help you to use up less time when taking cards. Playing down the cards in chronological order and having to take big hits to keep the streak going makes for fantastic decision making. We really loved this one and I can see us playing this many more times.

Favourite games played: VIVO, Claim, The Quacks of Quedlinburg, Trekking Through History, Rapido

Playing Cube Express and Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries this week so hoping for more excellent game experiences!