5. Tsuro
Tsuro would have actually just made it on a five player list. Five or six players is where I think it works best as with more players the board can end up being a little bit tight and the action is forced immediately, and you run out of tiles immediately. With that five or six player count, you can play keep away, or you can push the conflict, the choice is yours. But Tsuro is a very strong large group game and what I would call an ice breaker game where everyone can understand it and play it easily.

4. Not Alone
I really enjoy this game, though I know it’s not for everyone, or at least my wife. In it, one person is a monster and everyone else is the crew of a crash landed spaceship. They are trying to survive and signal for help to get a rescue ship to show up, while the monster is trying to prevent that. I think with more players it adds in more strategy, at a lower player count, the crew of the space ship don’t have to plan out their moves, but if there are a lot of players doing a few actions, the monster and hone in on where they are going to be, and the action might not be as effective. It also has a fun mechanic, where the crew can discuss what they are going to do as much as they want, but they have to do so that the player playing the monster can here them.

3. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong
Now, I like this one with more than five as I think having a larger pool of investigators and getting the accomplice and the witness into the game really make it shine. Deception is a very good social deduction game where you have one person who is the forensic scientist who is handing out clues as to what the murder weapon and a clue at the scene of the crime were, but they can’t speak, so they are just giving it out as a report. Everyone else is trying to use the clues to figure out who the murder was, and what the forensic scientist is trying to point them towards. It’s a fun game, and having more players doesn’t make the game take longer.

2. Sushi Go Party!
This one is good at the higher player counts. I would say that I prefer it with five or above simply because you get to see more cards, not just rotate hands of cards around. Though I do think that can be interesting. But with a higher player count you are more often racing to try and find that last card that you need to complete your set, and you’re hoping that the person sitting next to you isn’t going to draft what you need. That tighter economy works very well in the game.

1. Ice Cool/Ice Cool 2
Now, you need to have the “expansion” for Ice Cool in order to be able to play it at the higher player counts, otherwise it’s just four, but this game is a blast with even the full eight players. You are having a silly time flicking penguins around, either as the hall monitor trying to catch the truant penguins or as the truants who are just trying to get a fish snack. The giant set-up for the game also gives you a ton of room so that you don’t feel like you’re trapped in by the hall monitor. The game goes fast, it works well with kids and adults, and it’s an active game. This one I’d highly recommend with the full eight players because turns go so fast, and you really get that party atmosphere with the high player count.

What are some of your favorite games with 5+ player counts? I know there are some not on my list that might surprise people, like Seven Wonders, but I prefer Sushi Go! Party to that. I also wanted to put Say Bye to the Villains on the list, but I actually think, while it isn’t bad at higher player counts, it is better with lower player counts as the down time can be a bit long. Still really enjoy the game though.

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This is a very pretty game as you try and get rituals started. The board has a ton of colors on it and while that can make things look busy on the board some times, in this case it helps keep things clear. There are also a lot of druid figures in the game that work very nicely in the game. Oddly enough, the fae creature artwork might be the best artwork of the game, but that artwork is hidden for the game because you don’t want people to know what color you want to get points.

There are a few interesting mechanics in this game. The first being the interaction of the hidden roles with scoring in the game. In a lot of games with hidden roles you score based off of that role and you’re trying to make it not that obvious who you are going for, and because the scoring happens for every color in a ritual. If you think that someone might be a certain color you could try and cut them out of rituals, and that guessing aspect is part of the game. But you’re also trying to hand out points evenly enough that people can’t guess which color you are. Also, if you can cause rituals to happen, you get points for kicking off the ritual.

Along with that part of the game, the action that you can take on your turn is interesting. All you do on your turn is move a druid from one location to another location until a group of druids is separated from the rest of the druids, and that’s when a ritual happens. However, things can go poorly in the ritual for the druids depending on certain conditions. If every color is present for the ritual you remove one druid of each color, so you have to think about that, but the more druids in a ritual, the more potential points that you can get. It’s a balancing act of giving out as many points as possible, creating the best rituals for your color, and trying to keep your opponents from scoring points on a good ritual.

Beyond that, with rituals, you have to think about where you are completing your ritual. There are certain bonus cards for rituals that you go through in order that adds points into the ritual. So you can add additional points to the ritual itself if it’s on the favored terrain, or bad things will happen if it’s on the cursed terrain for the various point cards. Those cards also give you more points at the end of the game, so you are trying to cause rituals to get a number of them, but you don’t want to cause rituals to happen that could potentially be bad for you.

For me, this game hits a nice balance of strategy and randomness. Because you, especially at the start of the game, don’t have any idea what color people might have, you can start out rushing for completing rituals to get the point cards, but you can also accidentally be setting someone up with that. And as you get further into the game, the turns take longer as your thinking through what might be happening and how to maximize your remaining points so that you end up ahead. The game has a good balance of pushing your color ahead while also causing you to give points to other colors at the same time.

Overall, I think this is a very well done game and one that is quite pretty to look at. The only thing that I very odd about the look is that the board wraps, and I don’t mean that the board goes the pacman run from one side to the other, I mean that the paper on the cardboard on two sides doesn’t have a border to show the edge of the board, but instead wraps around the edge of the board. It made me feel like it was missing another board or so. Beyond that, though, the game has a nice blend of strategy and deduction to it. If you can figure out what colors other people might have, then it becomes purely strategy, but really, you’re going to have a best educated guess. When I played it, both the other person and I thought each other was the same color so that adds to the fun of the game, trying to guess. I also like this game because there aren’t that many rules and while it could be an abstract game, the theme doesn’t add much to the game play, but adds to the look of the game. This game ends up being one that is easy to sit down and learn or easy to pick up and teach to people who might not be heavy into board gaming.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: B+

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PS. I should mention that this is a re implementation of Clans. Basically the same game.

Nefertiti Overdrive is a story driven game where the more  you describe, the better chance you have. The game was advertised as kung-fu in ancient Egypt, and after having played, I think it could certainly be described that way. It could really be anything and be described any way, and that makes it an interesting game to play. The characters are set-up to be in ancient Egypt and as the title suggests the source material is set-up that way as well, but it is something that could be played across any setting from high fantasy to over the top sci-fi.

The game is driven off of four core skills.These skills have specifics under them, so I had a character who was an assassin and a child of the streets, so as I described things, I would have to include on of those things. So I’d describe how I’d attack and I had hit each of the four categories. Depending on how well I did, that would determine what sort of dice I would get to roll. Some of the categories would start with a d6 (six sided die) and would go up to either a d8 or a d10. So the better you did, the better your results could be. My theory was generally to keep talking until I couldn’t come up with more, and I generally got the higher dice. These skills are really only used for combat and there can be social rolls that you can do, but they didn’t come up all that often in the game we played, except for when we interrogated some assassins that tried to kill the princess. It would be interesting to see if in a longer game more of those social rolls would happen.

Combat had another interesting feature. From the pool of dice that you’d roll, you’d use some of the dice to see if you’d act or be acted upon by the bad guy, then you’d see how many times you got hit, and finally you’d see how well you could defend yourself. It meant that you had to really keep track of your dice. When we started playing, it was kind of slow, we didn’t know exactly what we were doing, but as it went on longer and we figured out the math faster, it ended up being a good way to keep the stress in a combat. It definitely did take some time, so it wasn’t until the last combat or two that the nice stress of the system actually really set in.

Finally, the coolest feature was kind of a bonus system that as players you could give to the other players. The GM (Jim Dagg) had a stack of poker chips that we used. So when we described something extra cool, a fellow player would give you a poker chip. With that chip you could invoke one of your other abilities to roll another die or to reroll a die. Once you’ve used it, it goes to the GM. The GM is keeping track of whenever you roll a 1 and it creates a pool of dice that they an use to make the bad guys even stronger. So the GM would then spend a poker chip, giving the players access to it again. It made a really fun and fluid way to help yourself as a player make really awesome moments and then would make it a bit harder again.

I would definitely consider this game again. There is something that is really fun about rolling a handful of six or more dice. It makes the game go all over the place and makes some really epic stories. You really feel like you are a hero and it makes for a fun time. I wonder what it would be like to play the system in another setting. I think that it could make some really cool and zero gravity would allow a ton of kung-fu style action, and I think beyond the GM, it would be easy for anyone to pick up quickly.

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Just Ask: This is the simplest and most obvious solution. If the person you are buying the gift for is a close friend, significant other, or family member, it is okay to just ask what they might like for the holidays. Even if you get them something directly off their list, you know they are going to appreciate it, because they asked for it.

Pay Attention: Believe it or not, people talk about what they like or find cute or fun. With Kristen, I try to pay attention to what she is interested in, so that when I’m looking for a gift, I have some good ideas to choose from, or when my parents come asking what they can get her, I can give them a list, even without asking Kristen. Kristen is into books, knitting, crocheting, writing, drawing, and baking, and if I’m paying any attention, I notice that she has dropped dozens of hints throughout the year (and when I say hints I mean that she’s said she likes something, not that she’s indicated I should store this information away and remember it).

Be Willing to Ask the Experts: When I was getting into comic books and wanted to start reading them, I was very overwhelmed at first. I knew that I wanted to read them, and I knew the stories and characters interested me, but I didn’t know where to jump in. So I asked people what comics they thought were interesting, I researched online to see what the experts were saying were the best ones, and I talked with the people in my favorite comic shop. Many of them were a wealth of information and would recommend new stuff that was coming out that I hadn’t heard of before. The same goes for when I go into a board game store; many of the employees know much more than I do, and are more than willing to offer suggestions and help explain a game I don’t know.

Ask Friends: This is the non-threatening version of asking an expert. Your friends, whom you already know quite well, can be a fount of information when it comes to nerdy ideas. For example, a couple of former co-workers of mine are still the people I go to when I’m bouncing an idea for a Magic: The Gathering deck around in my head. And they have helped me find out about games, movies, and books that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Mainly, it is about being willing to learn. When you want to find someone a nerdy gift, reach out to the people around you and research on the internet (just be careful not to get lost down a rabbit hole) for a lot of amazing ideas. And be willing to take risks — for example, if someone you know likes Lord of the Rings, be willing to give them another fantasy series that they haven’t read before. Or if you like a certain movie and you have a friend who likes most movies that you like, be willing to go out on a limb and give it to them to try. Really, in the season of giving, it is often the thought that counts as much as a gift. And, on the opposite side, if they don’t end up liking the gift, don’t take it personally. Maybe they don’t get as much enjoyment out of a television series as you do, but they still like you, and that is the important part.

So, happy gifting, and have a great nerdy holiday!

I leave you with a quick-pick list of nerdy comics to get your gifting creativity flowing:

• Hawkeye (Matt Fraction)*
• Saga (Bryan K. Vaughn)*
• Civil War (Marvel)
• Blackest Night/Brightest Day series arc (DC)
• Powers (Brian Michael Bendis)*
• Daredevil (Brian Michael Bendis)
• Marvel Secret Invasion
• American Vampire

*Not for young readers.

———

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I was originally introduced to this game on TableTop, Wil Wheaton’s tabletop gaming show. My view of it then and my thoughts after playing it myself are actually surprisingly similar. This game can best be described as one that’s similar to Pictionary, but instead of drawing something, players use a board that shows several dozen images with certain meanings attached to them to express a word or phrase on the card they’ve chosen.

The game uses different colored tokens; using the large green question mark means that you are explaining the main concept of the person, place, thing, phrase, or idea that you’ve chosen from the card. There are also exclamation points that are used to signify sub-concepts, and small colored cubes that can be placed beside other squares to describe an item even more specifically. So, for example, if I picked an easy clue like “teacher,” I would put the question mark down on the occupation square. Then, using the small cubes, I would expand on that idea by placing the cubes beside other squares, such as the one that signifies the arts, or the one for math and science.

This game is very interesting in that it forces the player to think outside of the normal realm that we are used to in games. You have to combine seemingly random clues to express something like Sonic the Hedgehog (male, fictional, and blue could be enough to get the players to guess it), or to try to describe a more complex concept like “absent-minded.” The game does a really good job of challenging the players to think outside the box and figure out how to combine different concepts into a single focused concept.

It does have some of the flaws, however, that come up a lot with party games. Players tend to pick the easiest term, or the funniest, and this will eventually lead to repeats. Also, the game play is very much the same turn after turn. When you get a male character, either historical or fictional, the main concept goes on male, the second one goes on one of the other two, and you end up with a lot of guesses along the same line.

Now, when I played the game, we only played through a limited number of cards, so the pool of ideas would likely expand over time, but just from the handful of cards I saw, you’d almost always start with thing, person, female, or male (or a combination thereof) to describe most concepts. The other flaw I noticed is the fact that sometimes you just get stuck. Sometimes a person has a single way of thinking of something, or feels like they’ve already defined the term well enough (and probably have) even though no one can guess it, and you just end up with the players going in circles, and the person who is trying to make them guess what it really is starts scrounging through the different options to see how they can expand upon it or focus it back in. As they did on TableTop, we played with a “shame” meter — if you felt bad enough about not being able to get people to guess your concept, you would give up at that point. The issue with this is that it doesn’t add any real urgency to the game play, and there’s nothing else really tying people into the game, so it can lose focus from time to time.

Overall, the best way that I can describe how much I enjoyed this game is that it is one that I would like my friends to have so I can play it sometimes but don’t have to invest in it myself. It’s a fun game to play once in a while, but like many party games, it ends up being somewhat repetitive and could lead to a stale playing experience if it’s played too often. This is a good game for applying a mindset that Kristen has and has taught me to think about — the idea that it’s best to quit while you are still having fun. This is the kind of game that could drag on and become boring if you aren’t careful, but if you quit while you’re still enjoying it (which is easy to do, since, with the way we were playing it, there wasn’t a real ending to the game) you’ll have a good time playing it.

Overall Grade: C

Gamer Grade: D

Casual Grade: B