July has 2 parts with 20 total new to me board games. This, of course, is on my way to 1000 board games rated on Board Game Geek. I doubt that I make it this year, though, if I were to keep the pace of 20 games per month I’d ready 100 for the rest of the year and that would get my close. But I doubt that pace continues. So let’s see what the last 10 board games that were new to me in July were. And then I’m moving my Top 5 July board games to their own article tomorrow.

July Board Games (Part 2)

Sheep Boom Bah

A dud of a game. Two sheep board games this month and neither of them were that fun. You wanted to get your sheep to your barn but were moving blindly around a board. Plus you could mess with other peoples sheep. It’s a simple concept for a game but is one of those things where it just doesn’t fall into the category of fun for the amount of randomness in the game.

Perch

Perch is, in theory, an interesting game. I say “in theory” because the game works well for what it’s trying to do but just fell flat for me. You are playing birds to different locations. Depending on the location you score points if you have the most, middle, or fewest, and you might get extra perks. The interesting twist is that you play some of your birds and some of your opponents so you can try and mess them over. In theory that is fun, in execution it’s just okay.

Flip 7: With a Vengeance

A new version of Flip 7, this one with more mean cards. But I will say, I think that it works. Now, do I need to own this and Flip 7, absolutely not. And Flip 7 is simpler math and easier to teach. For that reason it’s going to stay in my collection versus this new version. But if you like the chance to be a bit more take that, Flip 7: With a Vengeance is going to be a solid choice for you. And it’s light and fast so it doesn’t feel bad.

Quartz: The Dice Game

Quartz might be a game that I demoed at Gen Con previously and hadn’t rated. But it’s a mining game. And then you roll dice to see what extra actions you get. You can get rid of the bad things that you didn’t want to mine, save gems you have mined for points, or dig more. It’s a game that works. And that’s kind of negative sounding. I don’t mean for it to be that way, it’s just a simple filler sort of game that some people will want and for me was a pass long term.

Magical Athlete

Magical Athlete is a game that I did a review on already that you can read here. The simple version is that this is a roll and move racing game with powers. But it works for what it is. You draft racers and then you roll dice and see what happens but what happens is generally a lot of silly fun times. And each race doesn’t take too long.

Droles de Zebres

I’m sure there is an English name as well, but this is what it is on BGA if you want to find it. It’s a two player area control game on the African savannah. You move a safari guide, I think, around the edge of the board and that determines what column or row you can place your next animal in. If you have majority in an area you get the points. But the crocodiles and lions can mess with placement. It’s light and pretty fun for a game like this, but not a two player game that I need.

Jackpot: Set the Reel

Jackpot is the second slot machine game that I remember relatively recently. This one you are trying to lay out the best combination of 3 cards to get coins which lets you buy more and better cards and score points, if you play out three of a kind. But you can’t change where the cards are in your hand. This is not a hard game to play as you improve your hand and pull cards into your hand to set-up future turns. But it’s also not that fun.

Liberatlia: Winds of Galecrest

I haven’t played the original Liberatlia so Winds of Galecrest is my first play of it and I think it’s a solid game. It isn’t a game that I love as you try and play out characters which then give you a benefit and you guess what your opponents might be playing. On BGA this maybe suffers from the downtime as you play asynchronously. That said, I just felt like it was a good game not a great game.

Name The Thing

This is a party game where the person who is it flips over a card that says something like “A 90’s Boy Band” or something like that and the other players use cards in their hands to create names. The person who is it picks their favorite. This is the type of game that has been done a million times. And it’s the type of game where sometimes you have something great that you can play from your hand and something you have nothing. So just a normal party game.

5Pairs

Final game for the month of July is 5Pairs. This is a game played over multiple rounds of creating pairs of cards either by color or number and scoring points. If you get both color and number to match you get double points. This is a perfectly average game. Mainly because there aren’t many decisions to make. You either have a pair and you take that or you don’t and you draw two cards adding one to your hand and one to the middle to make a pair again. Of course by the time it comes around you might be stuck because you have no pairs or no cards in the middle. A lucky game.

Is there one of these games that you’d like to learn more about, let me know in the comment section.

Send an Email
Message me on X at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here
Support us on Patreon here