Pax unplugged6/10/2023 I was playing as a sexy merchant with a dog and lots of muscles so, while I wasn't the most useful of characters, I nonetheless had a very good time. In short, our party sought to break a curse based on a small town that doomed all of its inhabitants - save the baron and his family, suspiciously - to dance endlessly until dead. Having played it for four hours on the last day of Unplugged, I found it to be a fertile staging ground for the kind of grim tales of intrigue that so hooked me into The Witcher 3. The Witcher seeks to bring Andrzej Sapkowski's dark, brooding fantasy world to the tabletop with all the monsters and weird sexual energy you might expect from the novels and video games. Quick enough to not out-stay its welcome but fun enough for a series of just-one-more rounds, Scuttle has already taken a place alongside Coup and Codenames in my roster of easy games to bring to the pub. The action is fast-paced and extremely silly but, crucially, it doesn't feel arbitrary like some other games (I am looking at you, Fluxx). This might be a lookout card that enables you to steal another player's treasure, for instance, or a spyglass that forces all opponents to play with their hands face up on the table until that card can be removed from play. On your turn you play a card from your hand either directly in front of you - where its treasure value contributes to your score - or into the middle of the table, whereupon the action written on the bottom of the card is resolved. Scuttle is a preposterously simple game about being a pirate, acquiring treasure and, of course, screwing over your rivals. Tabletop games don't always get it right when trying to represent a film or video game - often becoming a flimsy reskin or getting mired in complexity for the sake of one more reference - but The Thing strikes the balance between authenticity and fun cooperative experience just right. It's similar to other games you might have played such as Avalon, The Resistance or Ultimate Werewolf, then, but the facility adds a welcome layer of strategy and misdirection (a bit like the Battlestar Galactica board game). Everybody, of course, is going to be acting like one of the good guys, but the need to complete missions and proceed through the facility forces those players to cooperate even when they're certain that person is working against them. As players explore the facility from John Carpenter's iconic film, they'll never be entirely certain which one among them is secretly a terrible monster (unless they themselves have taken on that role). The Thing: Infection at Outpost 31 is, at heart, a social bluffing game. All of this is wrapped up in a gorgeous art style that really helps emphasise that while you are an entrepreneur with a near pathological need to grind your competitors into the dust, you are also an adorable raccoon. Knowing when to push up the price of a particular good and when to crash it through the floor by selling up, thereby rendering your opponents' stock temporarily worthless, requires a keen eye. With only five possible things to do on each turn it's a very quick game to pick up, but the vagaries of being an enterprising trash panda (and the overwhelming desire to hobble your opponents at any given opportunity) add a substantial tactical layer that made this my favourite game of the entire show.įor example, you manipulate the market by playing cards which both drive up the value of certain items and net you more of those commodities. Raccoon Tycoon is a cutthroat game in which you, an entrepreneurial raccoon, manipulate the prices of various goods at market in order to make your fortune and buy more railways and towns than any other player. Crucially, I also played loads of tabletop games - here are the five best things I played.Ģ-5 players, out in 2019. It was my first ever board game convention, and I had a great time - they keep the lights on and you can hear yourself talk and everything. Last week I attended PAX Unplugged (which is operated by our new owners, ReedPOP).
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