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Micro Reviews of Board Games From a Non-Competetive Perspective

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mouser:
Today's Micro-review is for the 2-player-only card game "Lost Cities":


https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/50/lost-cities

Lost Cities is highly recommended on board game geek as a fairly casual and easy-to-learn, but strategically rich, two-player card game.

I found the recommendations were well warranted.  We learned it during the first game and were excited to replay it immediately after.  Gameplay is simple and fast.  We were both quite intrigued by the strategic decisions during the game and felt compelled to talk about them afterwards -- always the sign of a good game.

Gameplay is simple and fast.  I would definitely recommend this to couples looking for a different kind of card game to add to their collection.

mouser:
Another quick micro-review for today, Tides of Time:


https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/176229/tides-time

This is another two-player-only card game -- but it's a tiny one -- only 18 cards TOTAL in the game.

If you've never played a game with a "card-drafting" mechanic, I can't think of a more wonderful condensed example than this.

It is a surprisingly rich/deep and thinky game, and at less than $10 this is a fantastic candidate for a stocking stuff.

Essentially, players take turns choosing a card from a set until they built up a collection of interacting cards which score different points based on each other.

Very cool unique micro-gaming experience.  The only caveat I would give is that it is about optimizing a numerical score based on interacting cards, and so you have to be able to get into that if you are going to enjoy it.

Here's Rodney from Watch It Played to teach you how to play (no one, but no one teaches better than Rodney):

ayryq:
I would definitely recommend this to couples looking for a different kind of card game to add to their collection.
-mouser (December 03, 2015, 11:43 AM)
--- End quote ---
My wife and I played this occaisionally. I liked it, she didn't. But she won every time. So annoying

mouser:
This christmas day we played two great board games that I would highly recommend to casual gamers.
The first was Tokaido:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/123540/tokaido


Tokaido is a very casual, stress-free, beautiful board game where players travel along a famous road in Japan and choose from a few basic activities.  The activities are things like eating at a restaurant, visiting a souvenir shop, etc.  It's a very relaxing experience but with real strategic elements, and it was enjoyed by a new gamer who was scared of complicated rules.  It's a very atmospheric experience and feels like traveling in a foreign land.  Perfect for non-gamer families.

I'm not sure it would hold up to dozens of plays, but highly recommended as a gaming experience for a non-boardgame family looking for a relaxing but engaging experience.  The art design is incredibly elegant.

mouser:
The second board game we played this christmas day was "Evolution".
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/155703/evolution

(note: we actually played with the FLIGHT expansion).

I have played this game before with my nieces (12 and 20), with great success.

This is a game where players evolve species and struggle to feed them (or each each other).

There are few games I've played that do as good a job of capturing an engaging theme as this one..  It is a wonderful experience that everyone I've played with is captured by and quickly embraces.
Very fun to see how your creatures struggle to compete with each other.  We had some great moments in the last game where a bird evolved to become a carnivore predator and killed off a bunch of us and then quickly found itself in the unfortunate position of having to canibalize its owners other species.  Great fun.

This is more of a gamer's game, with a higher learning curve, but one that is extremely engaging and thematic.

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