8 New Board Games - August 2023

hey everybody and welcome to August's edition of board game Buys so in this series I take a look at all of the board games that I've acquired over the last 30 days or so now before I get started on these eight new games I want to give a shout out to the show's sponsor keyienda dot Co dot UK who are my go-to online retailer and if you use the link in my show notes or the QR code then you can get five percent off your first order but let's get started with ingenious by Reina kanitzia I have actually already touched on this in my latest edition of um board games hitting my table now normally I don't do that until I've revealed the games on my board game by series but that was just a mistake um from me but this one is a kind of a pure abstract very family weight game as you're playing out these um these kind of double-sided tiles which are actually hex shaped onto this big map here and you're trying to create these chains of um of certain colors and shapes and basically for every other symbol in that in that line or column or row whatever he wants wants to say and you're going to move this Peg up your um your little score sheets and at the end of the game whichever color is your lowest scoring one will be your final score so it does have that um Tigris and Euphrates scoring system in a much simpler game I'm very accessible I have played this one a few times as I mentioned before and seems to scale very nicely because the the board simply gets a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller depending on the Play account and um yeah you know spoil that it's a lot of fun and I like it a lot and I'll probably cover this one pretty soon in a review series with some other abstract games so that is ingenious now staying with Riley konitzia I took a chance on royal visit now this is a pretty much a pure tug of war Style game and if you watch my content regularly you might know that those starter games aren't generally my thing but this one did appeal to me um not only because I love the look of it this is actually a really gorgeous looking game with some amazing production choices it's actually a um a reprint of a game called Times Square from many years ago this was purely two players you are basically trying to pull this court which is like the king um and the two guards next to him over to your side of the board if you kind of get the king into your region you'll win and if you get this Crown piece into your region you'll win and the crown moves depending on the positioning from round to round off the different pieces on the map but there are different little tricks you could do in this game and you're essentially managing a hand of cars to move each of the pieces you could do different things by combining cards together and kind of um you know teleporting things across the board definitely some quirky rules going on here and that's as far as I'm going to mention with this one at this time um because again I will review this one pretty soon um with some other two player only games but that is royal visit one that I've kind of had on the backbend some time because it's always intrigued me but I've been a little bit apprehensive due to my previous kind of you know non-success with tug of war games next up we have another two-player only game with a pinata so I remember pinata and being on my radar when I first got into the hobby actually it seems to have fallen off a cliff since then um not not terribly popular game and it's another reprint of a game called uh balloon cup I believe um this one is actually a pretty nasty little game it's a it's kind of a tug of war game but one that you're playing on your side um cards on your side of the board and you're either trying to have the highest numbers total or the lowest numbers total depending on the orientation of these kind of um these donkey boards or these pinata boards here but the Twist on this one is that as soon as you play finish playing your three cards which are color coded and will have to match these kind of candies in the center of the board as soon as you finish playing yours then you can start playing on your opponent's side to sabotage them she was spinning a few plates here and um you know it can get pretty confrontational when you end up tanking your opponent's score and then what you're doing is you're collecting those candies to try and trade them into completely these different contracts and the first to get um I think it's three out of the five contracts win so you're just simply collecting these colors through that card hand management system I mean a very simple I have paid it I think only once so far so we're gonna have to get some more plays and before I kind of make my definitive review but it's very light but it still has those little twists on there and again I will cover some more deeper thoughts on this later but that is pinata uh something else I've acquired is framework by Ube Rosenberg so actually my before playing framework my favorite game of uber ridenberg was Nova Luna an amazing puzzly game as you're stringing these tiles together trying to um combo essentially by completing as many requirements of these tiles as you can now this is almost a carbon copy of Nova Luna but there are some minor changes and spoiler alert I do think they are all for the better um except for one thing number one I think Nova Luna is more attractive as a game um the tiles are a lot brighter this one's a bit more difficult to just look at a glance and see what each thing is but the few little rules twist in this one I do actually prefer um for example some of the um some of the tasks have multiple colors on and some of them people have like three or four on which is a lot more interesting when trying to string these tiles together and some of them even have like requirements that you need to complete one before the other so there's just a few little more wrinkles here and my favorite thing about this one um again there should be a review series really but is the fact that um the drafting system is much more streamlined so in Nova Luna you have the kind of um patchwork drafting system where the player who's spent the least amount of time will go again and this one it's simply draw a number of tiles plus one um you know equal to the players and then just take your turn and picking them and the first player gets two tiles so in fact it's the identical drafting system as one of my favorite tile placement games called um Acropolis um but um but there we go that's um that's framework again I will probably cover this as part of a um a series of reviews um but you know if you know I like Nova Luna which you guys do then I'm pretty much guaranteed to like this one which which I do so that is a framework and the last three games here are kind of linked with each other um because they're all from the same publisher and the first of which is um herbaceous so herbaceous very simple set collection game um As You Are kind of drawing these cards from a deck you can either put them in your own personal Garden or you could put them in the communal garden and then at any time you can kind of choose to Cache them in to complete these kind of set collection cards but it's got this kind of pushy luck system in the game because the more you build up this card in the center it means that your opponents are going to get first dibs on taking those cards so it has a slight Twist on that biblios system which the designer here Steve Finn is most known for but that is um herbaceous very simple and straightforward game and again still from petzl first we have delicious now this one I probably know the least amount here so I've not played this one yet this one is still in shrink as you see because it's literally just how it turned up but this is a roll and right Style game um which I hadn't seen from pencil first yet I think they have got another game like that which is the herbaceous Sprouts um version but I've not played that one yet um and yeah that's I know it's got some kind of again more simple set collection things as you're planting these different um little gardens here I'm trying to get set so that's all I know about this one so far but um you know because I've enjoyed other pencil first games um I wanted to try them all and they find the one again still from pencil first is the what not cabinet so this one I've actually heard some positive things about over the years or you know it's not been that entirely long maybe the last year or so I think it's a bit of a cult favorite and people seem to be enjoying this one um I don't think it does anything terribly new I think it's a simple kind of spatial puzzle um they're drafting things putting them in order to score different different ways and orientations um but I actually had some people recommend this to me after I recently reviewed um in the footsteps of Darwin which is another very simple entry-level family weight set collection game which I was you know luke warm on to say the best I thought it was far too light and the decisions were obvious and a few people said you know if you like the idea of that one then try this one and again considering I do like some other games by petzl first that I wanted to try for myself because um you know these kind of games are kind of um you know hitting the spot for me at the moment so that is the whatnot cabinet actually really excited to try uh this one now another game I want to mention is when I don't have the physical copy here anymore um that is Mycelia which was sent to me by the publisher and I have reviewed this one already it was a prototype version of a very abstract um Style game as you're putting influence on the board by I'm sporing these mushrooms trying to get the most points um as you can so check out that review if this one interests you because it is launching on Kickstarter fairly soon I'm at the beginning of September I believe so um yeah I have got a full review of that one out there but I've had to send the Prototype up copy off to the next reviewer so um yeah so it can be looked up by more eyes but that's it really that's the eight games that I've covered on this episode hopefully you have enjoyed it and let me know which of these games you intrigues you the most and there certainly are the lighter variety of games and which seems to be what I'm acquiring more at the moment because I'm finding it a bit more difficult to play um those more involved games and um you know I'm kind of in more focusing on playing my existing heavier weight games at the moment so I can re-rack those plays up and experience you know what that game has to offer in its entirety but if you have enjoyed the video please be sure to hit like And subscribe and check out my other content too but for everybody else I'll see you next time on chairman of the board bye-bye