For your money you also two copies of the game, one sent at the end of the auction and the other one of the new copies with the new bank notes. To find out more visit the TerrorBull website or just go straight to the ebay auctions:

• 5 million note
• 10 million note
• 20 Million note
• 50 million note
• 100 million note
• 500 million note

Dominion, Keltis, Zooloretto and Thurn und Taxis have been the winners for the past four years so you can see the award is not really aimed at the gamers game category. The purpose of the award according to the website is

… to promote the cultural asset games, to stimulate the idea of playing games with family and friends and to give orientation within the large choice of games available.

The translation is a little awkward but I understand the aims as being:-

• promoting the value of games as part of our culture to sit along side books, films and other artistic creations as valued works to be enjoyed;
• encouraging family and friends to get round a table and play together;
• highlighting the better games from the huge choice now available.

As a mission statement it could have been written for this site and I may well adopt it.

Of course game taste is subjective so you may not agree that Dixit was the game of the year, what would you have voted for? Add your comment below.

Overview

This is a beautiful game about giving verbal clues to help people identify your picture. The aesthetic joy of the game is in the 84 large cards each with it’s own unique illustration. I am not saying the illustrations are masterpieces and some people will undoubtedly dislike them but the work superbly for this game.

How do you win?

This is one of those games where only the kids will pay much attention to who’s winning. Each player has a hand of 6 cards. One player each round (“the storyteller”) secretly chooses one of their cards and places it face down on the table. At the same time she gives a clue – it can be a single word, a phrase, a book title, a name or a simple (and short) description. Anything really. Then every other player chooses one of their cards and places that face down on the table. The storyteller then collects these pictures together, shuffles them up and lays them face up.

Now all the players try to guess which card was the storyteller’s. If everybody guesses correctly (the storyteller’s clue was too easy) or nobody guesses correctly (the clue was too vague) then everyone but the storyteller gets a couple of points. Otherwise the storyteller and anyone who guessed correctly gets three points. The guessers can also get a bonus point for each player who incorrectly guessed their card was the storyteller’s picture. After the round everyone draws a replacement picture, another player takes the storyteller turn and the process is repeated.

Bits & Pieces

As you will have gathered I think the cards are excellent. Each one has many different features so even young children can come up with plenty of ideas. The cards are a good size and sturdy. There is also a scoring track which is built into the box. There are wooden rabbits for moving along the track to keep score. Unfortunately the poor rabbits keep getting knocked over and because the scoring track is in the box that is placed on the table causing some clutter. Not the most elegant or practical piece of game design.

Conclusion

This is a game I love playing. It has a real aesthetic appeal with the big cards and interesting multi-featured illustrations. It requires skill and imagination when giving your verbal clues as the storyteller. You need to think about your fellow players. With kids you need to adjust to their level but with adults you can get away with esoteric knowledge you share with just one other player to give a coded message, and hope of course they get it. Try and be too clever and nobody guesses your card, make it too obvious and they all get it – either way you suffer. The guessers have the simple but rewarding challenge of trying to decipher the storyteller’s clue.

This is a classic push-your-luck game rewarding and punishing risk takers in equal measure. Players are treasure hunting in the jungle. You share treasure you discover with the other players. However the adventure gets more and more dangerous and one by one players decide to cut their losses, get out of the place and bank what they have collected so far. This means fewer players to share any more treasure that’s found. But beware – things can go horribly wrong and those left in the jungle can lose everything.

How do you win?

There are five adventures during the game. Each one follows the same pattern. All players start in the adventure. A card is turned up from the pile. If it shows treasure then the number of gems shown (from as few as one to as many as seventeen) are divided equally amongst the players, any remainder are left on the card. Players keep these gems in front of them. Players secretly decide if they want to stay in the adventure and reveal this information at the same time. Players who leave share any of the gems left on cards between them. They can then bank the gems they have collected in this adventure. These gems will count to their total at the end of the game. Players who stayed in turn over another card and hopefully share more treasure between themselves.

So why would you want to leave an adventure? Well, instead of showing gems the card may show one of five different “bad things” – there are three of each of the five different kinds of “bad thing” cards in the deck. If one of the same type of these cards has already been turned up in this adventure then it’s catastrophe time. All the players who are still in the adventure lose all the gems they have collected in this adventure. The adventure is then over and the next one begins.

After the fifth adventure players count up the gems they have safely banked from the five adventures and the person with the most is the winner.

Bits & Pieces

I have the old version of the game known as Diamante but essential the game consists of a deck of cards, you can get an idea of the illustrations from the pictures.

Conclusion

This is a great game, top drawer. It’s great fun to play especially when you are the last one in and your risk taking is rewarded with a card with 15 gems on it – all yours! Or when you decide an adventure is getting a little too risky and you leave and see all the others who gambled groan as another “bad thing” card is turned over and the adventure comes to an end. The game plays well with plenty of players and is quick to play with no great cerebral effort required. Kids love the game, they get the idea immediately and they like to experiment with their own risk taking.

For Sale is a classic game of two halves. In the first half players use their starting money of 14 coins to buy properties. The properties are on cards and range from a value of 1 to 30, with one of each value. A property cards are turned face up – one for each player in the game. Players bid for the cards. When it’s your turn to bid you can drop out and take the lowest value of the remaining face up cards and pay half of your last bid (that can be nil if you decide to bid nothing). Alternatively you increase the last bid and stay in the bidding. The last person bidding pays the full value of their bid and takes the last card which will be the best of that particular deal. This process is repeated until all the cards have gone – each player will have the same number of cards.

How do you win?

By having the highest value in cheques at the end of the game. You get the cheques in the second half. Cheques have values from zero to 15. They are dealt face up – the number of cards matching the number of players. Players then simultaneously reveal one of their property cards collected in the first round. The player who played the highest value property card takes the highest value cheque, the next highest gets second choice and so on, every player will get one of the cheques. Then more cheques are dealt and the process repeated until all the cheques have gone. Everyone adds up the value of their cheques to any left over money they have from the property buying round and the player with the most is the winner.

Bits & Pieces

Some of the property cards

There are two decks of cards with the properties and the cheques. They are reasonable quality and the properties are well illustrated with kids particularly enjoying the pictures (“I want to live there ..!”). The money is represented by small cardboard coins which win no prizes for quality.

Conclusion

A good filler. No downtime as all cards are played simultaneously and the bidding rounds go quickly. Not a huge amount of strategy but you don’t start the game with much money so you have to be careful what you buy in the property round. Some luck involved say when you get zero cheques and 15s in the same deal – they are the deals to save your big properties for. Six property cards are taken out of the deck at the start to limit the ability of card counters. A popular game with kids and perfect to play whilst waiting for stragglers to turn up for the bigger games.

Carcassonne is a hugely successful tile laying, gateway game. The game starts with a single tile face up on the board. Players take turns which consist of drawing a random tile, laying it next to at least one that is already on the table and (optionally) placing one of his/her meeples onto the tile just laid.

When you place a tile its sides must exactly match the sides of any and all tiles it is placed next to. So if a tile side has a road then the tile you put next to it must also have a road, city tiles must match other city tiles and so on. If a tile you lay touches more than one tile then all the touching sides must match.

Get the iPhone App at Carcassonne – TheCodingMonkeys

How do you win?

The player with the most points when the last tile has been played wins the game. Players start the game with 10 followers represented by meeples in their own colour. One of these is put on the scoring track at zero and moves along during the game as the player scores points. The other nine are available for placing on tiles. After placing a tile on the board you can place one of your followers on the tile you have just played. You can place it on one feature of the tile. The possible features on each tile are:

• 

  A follower on a road outside a city

  road

• city
• monastery
• field

Followers placed in a field (a farmer) stay on the tile until the end of the game. Others stay on the tile until the road, city or monastery is completed. Roads are completed when neither end can be extended further. Cities are completed when they have walls all the way around. Monasteries are completed when they are completely surrounded by other tiles. As soon as the feature is completed the follower is taken off the tile and the owner scores the points (this can happen on another player’s turn). Completed monasteries score 9 points, roads score 1 point per road tile and cities 2 points per tile plus 2 points for each blue shield on any of the tiles in the city.

Players score points throughout the game. It is important to keep scoring so that you can take followers off the board to place them again – if all your followers are on the board then you can not place one on any tiles you place.

At the end of the game any unfinished roads, cities and monasteries are scored (cities only at 1 point per tile and shield). Then the farmers are scored. Farmers score three points for each completed city in their field. Farmers can therefore score lots of points but at the cost of not being re-usable during the game, once placed they stay on the tile until the end of the game.

Bits & Pieces

The tiles are solid and attractive. Part of the enjoyment of the game is the gradual building of the scene as tiles are added each turn.

Conclusion

This game is easy to teach (although the farmer rule takes a bit of getting used to). It plays quickly – particularly if players draw their next tile immediately after finishing their turn so that they are ready when their turn comes round again. Tile draws are random which adds an element of luck to the game. It creates some tension as you hope to draw just the tile you need. There is little downtime as often you will be watching other players place their tiles to see what problems or opportunities they create for you and turns shouldn’t take long because there is not that much to think about and you can’t really plan ahead.

There is some strategy involved because you are not allowed to place one of your meeples on a feature which already has another follower already on it. However you can place followers on features which at a later time, following the placing of another tile, will become linked. This is a useful tactic to help you share the points with other players. But be careful, of one player has more followers on the feature than anybody else then that player alone scores the points.

Carcassonne really is an excellent game which has spawned many expansions. Highly recommended.

You can download the rules from Rio Grande Games.