Loads of 7 Wonders: Duel – sometimes 3-4 games a day. My wife really caught on to it and seems to be focused on burning it down or something 😉 (we were up to 130 plays of Progress: Evolution of Technology before, this looks to become the next big thing with already around 70 plays). Luckily I got the expansion for it at Essen and so am prepared for the onslaught …

At Essen I got to play Camel Up: Cards (really liked it, fast and funny card based racing game), Quadropolis (which I liked quite a bit more than Suburbia or Among the Stars, because the scoring was much simpler and it just felt better to play to me – but the components really felt super-cheap, sadly) and Five Tribes (the game mechanics are fun, but the theme isn’t even pasted on, it’s sitting on a card board aside from the game and just points at it 😉 ).

Other than that some Red 7 which I got at Essen, but only played it afterwards. Perfect game for waiting for food at the restaurant and with the modular rules a really nice choice as a have-allways-with-you game, because you can adapt it to lighter or more thinky situations.

Loads of 7 Wonders: Duel – sometimes 3-4 games a day. My wife really caught on to it and seems to be focused on burning it down or something 😉 (we were up to 130 plays of Progress: Evolution of Technology before, this looks to become the next big thing with already around 70 plays). Luckily I got the expansion for it at Essen and so am prepared for the onslaught …

At Essen I got to play Camel Up: Cards (really liked it, fast and funny card based racing game), Quadropolis (which I liked quite a bit more than Suburbia or Among the Stars, because the scoring was much simpler and it just felt better to play to me – but the components really felt super-cheap, sadly) and Five Tribes (the game mechanics are fun, but the theme isn’t even pasted on, it’s sitting on a card board aside from the game and just points at it 😉 ).

Other than that some Red 7 which I got at Essen, but only played it afterwards. Perfect game for waiting for food at the restaurant and with the modular rules a really nice choice as a have-allways-with-you game, because you can adapt it to lighter or more thinky situations.

Paperback is my go-to game for those situations, because I can have it with me all the time (it’s just a deckbox full of cards) and it is really easy to get people into. And it prepares people for deck builders, which is one of my favorite mechanics. But the real plus for this game when played with non-gamers is that everyone feels like they can contribute and do something, because it boils down to build words out of letters. So even if they at first don’t get the deck building and the power of some cards, they still do things where they feel they achieved something in the end.

Paperback is my go-to game for those situations, because I can have it with me all the time (it’s just a deckbox full of cards) and it is really easy to get people into. And it prepares people for deck builders, which is one of my favorite mechanics. But the real plus for this game when played with non-gamers is that everyone feels like they can contribute and do something, because it boils down to build words out of letters. So even if they at first don’t get the deck building and the power of some cards, they still do things where they feel they achieved something in the end.

And it’s spiritual predecessor Imperial Settlers if the post-apocalyptic is off-putting 😉

Actually they are a bit different in that 51st State is much more in-your-face, since everything can be razed and probably will be razed if your opponent doesn’t like your engine, while with IS you can usually build your faction-specific card engine without too much hampering.