New Games to me in Recent Months

Amerigo - A big box game of island exploration. There are seven phases in five turns. Each phase you toss wooden cubes into a tower and the number and color of cubes that make it back out the bottom determine the available actions for all players in the phase. Each player can only pick one of the available actions, which is typically decided by what benefits you the most at that point. However, achieving good island positions or acquiring the better bonus ability cards lead to some strategic decisions. It's a good game, with the downside of some phases near the end of the game being very limited in available useful options. A gamer's game for 2-4 players (3-4 is better).

Among the Stars - A card drafting, civ building game ala 7 Wonders, but with square cards that you arrange into a space station. The distance you place each card from other cards (color or type) affects its cost and/or value. Played over 4 phases. Seems pretty nice, with the usual luck of planning to get certain cards and then not getting them. 2-4 players, good game.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig - I played this after playing Suburbia (see below), and I think whichever game you play first is the one you like most. It's actually nearly as good as Suburbia: better because of the interesting rearrangement mechanic for the tiles each round, but worse because this rearrangement, and the oddly shaped buildings, are less elegant. Some of the rules were hard to figure out on the first play. Gamer's game for 2-4 players.

Dixit Odyssey - Dixit is an incredibly good game for non-gamers, and also enjoyed by gamers as a break from stratgeic thinking and an outlet for creativity of a different kind. This game is simplya copy of Dixit, with brand new but equally good cards, and the ability to play up to 12 people instead of 6. No better or worse than the brilliant original.

Ergo - I bought this with the assumption that I would like it after using the fixes suggested by gamers, but even with them the game seems to be unplayable as more than a teaching device. There must be some way to do something with it. Too bad.

Exploding Kittens / NSFW Deck - An exceedingly bad game. This game offers amusing pictures and stunningly bad gameplay, unfortunately like so many other games that come from non-game designers. On the other hand, after I quit the game, I heard many of the other players laughing while playing. That's because it is a straightforward "take-that" game of randomly drawing cards and playing them on other people, who have to randomly draw cards to counteract the attacks. When they do or don't, this amuses people. 3-5 player, not for serious gamers (best enjoyed with alcohol).

Five Tribes - A meaty game from Days of Wonder, this is a nearly all tactical game of moving pieces around the board and taking off sets of them to score points. It's pretty and interestingly balanced, but the long-term strategies (Djinns) don't always work as planned: you have to constantly work out how many points you are spending and receiving for each play, and how many points you're leaving over for the next guy. 2-4 players, gamer's game but suitable as a second gaming experience (after Ticket to Ride, for example).

PDQ - A light and quick word game on par with Anagrams. Flip three cards and place in order; take the cards if you call out (first) a word that used the letters in order. The official rules allow you to use the letters in either direction, but I don't find that to be necessary. I also don't know why you can't just play with Scrabble tiles. Any number of players. Fun game for those who like word games.

Suburbia - See Castles of Mad King Ludwig above. This is a nifty civ building game that seems to have been designed for a computer rather than as a board game. As a board game, you have to take care of checking the effects of each tile you place against every other tile in the game, which is not as bad as it seems, but still a bit of a hassle. Other than that, this is an excellent gamer's game of placing tiles and scoring for each. It's mostly tactical, but you can invest in certain types of tiles and hope you get first crack at them when they come up. This makes it similar to all of the other card based civ building games, like 7 Wonders and Among the Stars, as mentioned above. 2-4 players.

Dixit: The Right Game for Non-Gamers

Dixit is a very light social game for 3-6 players (5 is the ideal number, I believe). It's easy to explain, requires minimal "game skill" or concentration, fun, imaginative, and plays in a short time. The components are pretty.

A natural Dixit comparison is to Apples to Apples, but I think a more apt comparison is to Once Upon a Time. Or Barbarosa. I will explain all of them.

Dixit: Each player holds a hand of six cards, each of which contains an imaginative picture with several elements, colors, emotions, and typically a dreamy fantastic scene (like something out of a Dali painting). Players take turns being the active player. On your turn, you lay one of your cards face down and say a phrase, or a word, or a sound, or act out a pantomime that invokes some element of the card. Each other player lays face down a card from his or her hand that also matches your word or phrase. The cards are shuffled and revealed. Each player (except for you) then votes on which card they think you played, or in any case best matches your word or phrase. You cannot vote for your own card.

The twist: The active player only gets points if SOME but not NONE or ALL players vote for his or her card. Each other player gets points if they voted for the active player's card or if someone else voted for their card. Actually, this mechanic is not new (it derives from other, similar games), but it's effective. For example, in Barbarosa, players had to sculpt clay objects for the other players to guess, but they couldn't be too abstract or too easy to guess.

Play is to 30 points.

Every group I have introduced to this game has liked it or loved it. Kids especially love the license to be creative and the challenge of giving clues that point to your card while still allowing the possibility that another card might be chosen.

Apples to Apples: Each player holds a hand of seven red cards, each of which contains a noun: a person, place, object, event, or idea. Players take turns being the active player. On your turn,you turn over a green card, which contains an adjective. Each other player places one of their red cards face down. The cards are shuffled and revealed. The active player selects the red card they think best matches the green card; they can also select the card they think least matches the card or any card that they want (if you play "Claudia Schiffer" on my turn, I will pick it regardless of what the green card says). The person whose red card is selected takes the green card to represent a point, and play is to a pre-determined number of points.

There are a dozen different versions of the game, for different age levels and some subcultures. Most groups like this game the first few times, but tire of playing it with the same people over and over.

This mechanic of players submitting entries from a limited and humorous hand of cards or other items was reused in several games, most notably Cards Against Humanity.

Once Upon a Time: Each player has a hand of 5-10 plot element cards and a story-ending card ("And they lived happily ever after" or similar). The active player tells a story, trying to incorporate the cards in his or her hand, which are played as they are used. If the storyteller rambles, or passes, another player can jump in with his or her own card to continue the story. The player who plays his or her last card and the story-ending card wins.

Mechanically,  Dixit is similar to Apples to Apples (and other games that used the "hazy clue" mechanic) with the card play, rotating active player, best matches etc. The crucial difference is that the creativity in Apples to Apples lies with a) the players selecting a red card that matches the active green card, and b) the selection of the winning card, which can be done with little to no creativity, or even arbitrarily. In contrast, Dixit is similar to Once Upon a Time with the active player required to exercise creativity in order to "play well". Apples to Apples is essentially "closed": the green apples is picked for you and the red apple is chosen from exactly 7 choices. Dixit and Once Upon a Time require open-ended creative expression from the participants.

Dixit scores over Once Upon a Time in many ways, and in fact I can't stand Once Upon a Time (Note that many people disagree with me about this) and I love Dixit. Once Upon a Time is simply a bad concept. The creativity that is required is restricted by the cards you receive, which are cliche fantasy elements. The fun in true creative indulgence works against the goal of winning, which is to narrowly move from card to card in order to end the game and win. Winning, in this case, puts a damper on the process. If you take out the "game" from the game, and just have fun with the story-telling, it's much more fun, and that's what toys like Rory's Story Cubes are all about.

Dixit, in contrast, rewards you for a single bite-sized burst of free-form creativity, and you don't have to be all that creative: the cards make it relatively easy. The amount of creativity required is accessible even to those who are uncomfortable at the thought of having to tell an entire story. All you need is a word, phrase, movie title, sound, etc. Luck plays a factor with any reasonable clue, since the cards played by the other players determine the likelihood that your card stands alone; by then you are no longer in vested in having to sweat. Dixit provides space for elaborate creativity, but doesn't force it.

As a game, Dixit should suffer the same problems that Once Upon a Time does. If you focus hard in Dixit, you can probably cheat your way to victory by simply naming a color. This clue will probably be on some but not all of the played cards, which is exactly what you are hoping for with more elaborate, fanciful clues. But this doesn't happen when you play Dixit. Maybe it's that there is no time limit for giving the clue, and the clue is a single creative act, not an entire story. Maybe I simply played Once Upon a Time wrong.

Both Apples to Apples and Dixit provide all players with options on all turns, which is nice. Dixit provides points to multiple people (multiple wins) on each turn, which is nicer and friendlier. Both games are playable by non-gamers - i.e. people who consider taking games seriously or investing thought in strategy to be a waste of time. Apples to Apples is funnier, because people's red cards often poorly match the green card. But it's all game; the mechanics are everything. Dixit, by providing that element of play - along with some super interesting cards - is more generally likable.

A single box of Apples to Apples is replayable - the replayability suffers if you play repeatedly with the same group, more so than if you play repeatedly with the same components. Dixit is highly replayable with the same group, but needs new cards to keep it fresh (so get some expansions). Without the expansions, the game is still replayable; certainly more replayable than the typical trivia game where the card is useless once it has been seen.