Chavez

I bought this since I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic settings. This game will take a while to figure out, the rules aren’t completely clear at the beginning, but once you figure out the game, this turns out to be a deep, intricate game with a great theme around it. I found it really helps to think in terms of narrative – You’re using ‘mutants’ to travel via ‘sewage tunnels’ to take over the ‘gas station’ – the cards have a lot of different abilities and dos/don’ts – and of course like every neuroshima game they are crammed with icons. It takes quite a few plays to figure this game out but once the rules become clear the game is fully enjoyable.

Carcassone stands on its own as a fun game to play, and is also perfect for introducing new people to more serious gaming than Risk and Monopoly. I bought the anniversary edition with plastic meeples – so far I’ve had quite a few friends play it and everyone seems to enjoy it. Definitely a light, fun game but it does require some luck and thinking.

I wanted to like this game desperately, but I found it to be way too fiddly. A million different things to remember each turn, and the rulebook isn’t much help – usually when I’d turn to a specific section for an answer, there’d be a note to turn to another page within the rules to explain another part of the game and that’s where you might find the answer. This plus the sheer setup and number of cards on the table made this too fiddly to bother with. I traded my copy in after a month or so.