Are there any new tabletop games from the past year or so (that you haven't made) that you've really liked?
I have to go by, what I tried within the last year, rather than when they came out. I looked through the reports and these are highlights:
Fabled Fruit: You have a hand of fruit, there are six action-locations to pick from, but it's worse to go where someone else is. Instead of doing an action you can turn in a hand of fruit that has whatever some location wanted... and then we take out that action card, and add a new one (though there are like 4 in a pile, so the original pile isn't immediately gone). So after the first time someone scores, there are 7 action-locations (and probably still 7 for a while then, because the new card you add also has 4 copies). After the game (someone scores enough times), you start the next game where you left off, with new actions. The actions of course all just muck with hands of fruit. It's a pretty light game, but the gamers enjoyed several games of it, and it's a good game to play with kids. I'm unlikely to play any particular not-being-playtested game all that many times unless I can play it with the kids, and they liked this one for a while, so I played this way more than the other games I'm listing.
London: You draw and play cards, and build up a tableau, which can be as big as you want, but punishes you for how big it is. The cards in the tableau just sit there, and then periodically you "run your city" and execute the cards (most things only execute once ever normally, though some keep doing stuff). There's economy and VP, and poverty which is anti-VP based on how much you have compared to other players. There's another card for your city that you can replace, that isn't part of the tableau and can keep doing things. The card mix needed work - it has pick-who-to-hose, like it's a game from the 80s, and also could have had more variety and combos - but uh it was fun. It may be too solvable without a better card mix or other variety-adding tweaks, but it held up for the games we played.
Istanbul the Dice Game: A light dice game. It copies the parts of Istanbul that aren't the interesting parts, but I liked it so I guess that was fine. You can go for rolls that build you up or that score various ways. You have to wait for your turn, but you know, it's the start of the evening, someone isn't here yet, you can chat while rolling dice. I've considered getting this one to try with the kids, but it would be competing for play time with King of New York (which they like).
Orleans: A bag-building game, reminiscent of both The Village and Eminent Domain. Your bag has vanilla chits representing people. Each turn you draw some and position them on your playmat, where abilities take certain sets of chits to activate (then those guys go back in the bag). The early abilities all both do something, and gain you a certain guy for your bag (this is the Eminent Domain part). One area of scoring is building and collecting on a map, like the outside part of The Village. You can send guys away forever like in The Village, to a mat where they give you some small one-time bonus, or complete a set of sent-away guys for a bigger bonus (this has a dots problem - you hope someone sets you up when you'll get first shot at it). There are special abilities to gain that no-one else will have. Each turn an event happens that messes with the game. There are a bunch of ways to score.
We played the base game and then with an expansion (I think there are multiple expansions and multiple options per expansion, and well we did not play with the hose-people stuff). The expansion did a few nice things. The event deck was still "randomly screw you over" but was more fun; the sent-away guys board gave bigger more interesting bonuses.
This game was fun, and for gamers this is my top pick of the year. But it needs work and I'm here to tell you about that.
- When you gain an ability (the unique ones), it's your choice from any of them. Well first of all, turn one, to figure out what to do, read this giant pile of, wait they're all icons, get out the rulebook. This is just ludicrous, I don't know what to tell you. It's fun to have a game where sadly you have to read 12 cards turn one, e.g. Greed, and 11 cards turn two, man I'll cop to it, but you know, this big pile of abilities, why would you inflict this on players. I think def. you want to either have a line to buy from and replace them as they get bought, or deal out some to each player at the start ala Agricola. The line to buy from has the problem of, maybe I want to wait to see what other people are doing so that I don't pick that action unless the thing I want will be there. But we tried one game with dealt out abilities and it seemed fine.
- Some of the unique abilities sure seem strong next to others. I would at least try, after you play, take out the winning abilities for next game, and keep that up until it doesn't feel like the abilities were the whole game (we did this for that one game). I would consider not letting you put cogs on them (cogs permanently fill a guy slot, so that that ability is cheaper).
- I would get rid of the complete-a-set-of-sent-away-guys thing, as it has a dots problem (you know, the kids game, dots, you put your initials in a square). It's already plenty good to send away guys, both to get rid of them and get the bonuses, again preferring the non-hosing expansion board. On late turns you can have to wait for someone else's playmat decisions (you always could but normally do not care and save time by all going at once), because maybe they will complete a thing ahead of you but you'll know if they're sending the right guys away. So, get rid of that too.
- The event deck is sure random. I would at least go through and pick out the best ones, from the main set plus expansion.
But I mean, it's worth fixing up, it was fun.
