Granted, I’m not sure that all of these games are actually brand new, but I’d not played them before… and after last weekend there’s one I won’t ever play again either. So here’s how Sunday night went down:
Formula D – I’m glad we started with this. Sure, I don’t drive. Sure, I have generally terrible luck with die rolls. I don’t care: The Beginner and Advanced rules renditions of the game we played were a complete hoot. The game board is a circuit track (one of two selections, flip the huge two-piece board over for the other track) with two or three lanes of car-piece-sized rectangles marked along, and red-lined corners that you’re required to stop within a certain number of times or face penalties. Too many of those penalties and you’re out of the race. The skill comes in when you decide carefully which gear, each corresponding to an X-sided die with a limited range of numbers, you want to shift into at every turn (pun intended). Fun, fun, fun. I want to play it again.
Modern Art – The goal here is to both sell and buy pieces from a limited number of paintings by five different artists in such a fashion that you end up with the most money at the end. Usually the trick is to have the most valuable paintings at the end of each of the four rounds of play, but you can win by being the person who sold someone else those paintings at a high enough price. I tend to detest “bidding” games, but this one’s a pleasant surprise. I recommend it as an occasional bit of fun. The rules aren’t too complex, though the concept takes a few minutes to grasp.
Acquire – Take the worst elements of Monopoly and Scrabble, combine them in such a way that you have to be able to track a half dozen or more metrics in your head to stay competitive, and season with a bit of “luck of the draw.” Bonus points if you end up competing against a known card-counter, but I can’t imagine this game being fun even among purely casual gamers. Hated it. Lots.
