Scott

In Puerto Rico, players work to create an agriculture-driven “machine” where fields and factories produce exports which can be either sold (to buy more fields and factories) or shipped (to score victory points). When the resources run out, the player with the most VPs wins.

The deep strategy comes from successfully managing your resources and shifting back-and-forth between acquiring resources, allocating workers and shipping goods.

Might be frustrating for novice gamers, but the avid player will enjoy it immensely.

7 Wonders is a very good, fast playing resource building game. I’ve only played with 305 players and games were fast and furious. Each turn has players “sharing” hands by playing a card and passing your hand to the opponent next to you. In this way, you can never be sure that another card you want to play will still be there when the hand makes it around to you again. It also adds the interesting strategic element of knowing (to some degree) what cards your opponents are getting access to.

All in all, a great little game.

Lost Cities is about as easy to learn and simple to play as it gets. Even so, it provides significant replay value through the application of a couple of twists on traditional card gameplay that makes this one difficult to master.

Both players share a central game board with five discard piles, one for each colored card “suit” in the deck. Each colored “suit” consists of a run of cards from 2 through 9 and three “investment” cards. Simply build runs of numbers on your side of the board (much like solitaire). Because numbers must be played in order (i./e., you can’t play a “5” after you’ve already played an “8”), and you can only hold eight cards in your hand, each player is forced to use the shared game board as “temporary storage” for excess cards.

This results in fierce battles between the players, each one strategizing about which suit to go for and when to begin drawing from the shared discard piles. Be careful! If a run of cards in a single “suit” doesn’t add up to 20 points or more, you’ll be penalized. Were you bold enough to play a few investment cards at the beginning (and only the beginning) of your run? Great! Your points are multiplied. However, if you don’t make it to 20 points, an investment card will multiple your penality!

Confounding all of this is the fact that each player must first play a card, then draw a card. This simple reversal of the standard card game mechanic provides a nice added challenge to the gameplay.

A great little 2-player game perfect for a quick pickup match or two.

Dominion is an excellently designed game. Each game session generally operates in two phases. Phase one is “deck building” where each player acquires money and action cards which steadily increase their buying power. Once a player feels they’re buying power is strong enough, they can begin buying victory points. When certain cards run out, the game is over and the player with the most victory points wins. Simple, right?

Simple, but strategically very challenging. Start buying victory cards too soon and they will clog up your hand, reducing your buying power. Start buying too late, however and your opponent(s) may run the board on you.

There are myriad strategies and lots of expansions, yielding a very high replay value.

Highly recommended and destined to become a classic.