Dead Man's Draw

The last few days have been a frenzy of driving around, preparing for the coming month and playing as many new games as possible in order to complete the 200 different games in one month challenge. The list is getting rather extensive now, even with the occasional interruption of a few cheeky games of Imperial Settlers and the like, I believe we have played 174 different games and there are still some days left to complete it - it shall be done! Hitting Draughts, Thirsty Meeples and Marquee Models in the past few weeks was fantastic, as I have discovered so many new games through this.

In order to play 200 different games in one month, whilst maintaining work and a home has been a challenge in itself. It has been made easier, though, by great little filler games, Such as Dead Man's Draw. This piratical push your luck card game is published by Mayday Games and was originally released as a digital game by Stardock. It is all about plundering bountiful loot, without going bust and losing it all; a game about taking risks and reaping rewards. 

Players take it in turn to draw cards from the deck. You keep flipping over cards to reveal the loot, or peril, and lay them in a row by the deck if they are safe. Some cards make you immediately go bust, causing you to lose all the cards you just drew. On your turn, you can bank as many cards as you wish, providing you have not gone bust. You stop flipping cards and declare you have stopped, taking the cards you drew and keeping them face-up in front of you. How do you go bust, you ask? If you pick up a card that you have already revealed in that suit then you go bust! If you draw the Kraken card then that forces you to draw two more cards - which puts the rest of the cards you just drew at stake! Luckily, if you draw the Anchor card then that saves you a little, as it allows you to keep all the cards you just drew before it, even if you go bust afterwards. 

Much like a pirate, you are making a gamble with your treasure if you get too greedy, and you are doing dastardly deeds to try and come out on top. The Cannon card allows you to destroy an opponent's banked card, and the Sword lets you steal a card from your opponent. You may additionally use cards to combine abilities in order to source more or destroy more cards. The game ends when the deck is depleted, and whoever has the most points after totalling up their card values wins the game.

There is a simpler version and a more advanced one, but as we were on a time limit with stacks of games to play in the cafe we stuck to this version.   

Dead Man's Draw is a fun, fast-paced card game with beautiful illustrations and fine quality cards. It is simple to play, yet still involves some careful strategic thinking. In my endeavour to play as many games as I can, I have come across numerous pirate-themed card games and board games, and this game (along with Cartagena) is one of the best I have encountered so far.

Thanks for reading

Marisa xx

A Trip to Draughts

This week I ventured up to London to visit the board games cafe, Draughts, to see how many games I could rip through from opening to closing. The cafe is situated in Hackey, a short walk from Haggerston station, so locating it was fairly easy. On weekdays it opens at 5pm, so we made sure we were there early, loitering around outside - even though I had a table booked in advance, because I am silly like that.

Draughts is a really unique place, it was a very fun experience and reasonably priced at £5 each to play as many games as you can handle. The food and drink were quite affordable too for a London venue, and amid the mass rounds of pear juice and Jalapeno pretzels we got quite a few games in. At the back of the cafe there is a library of games to browse through, over 500 games of all genres under one roof like a treasure trove. The staff were friendly and keen to recommend games, then demonstrate how to play them. We started off with something light to warm up; Elk Fest. This is a simple little dexterity game where you and your opponent flick counters from either end of the table. The counters act as stepping stones for the wooden elks who balance upon them, and you must move them across to the other side without the elks falling off.

After settling in with the elks, we moved onto Machi Koro, which I have wanted to play for a while now and was happy to finally crack open the box. It is a city building and dice rolling game, and it is very addictive. You build up your city by collecting various cards through dice rolls and coin counters. Some cards give you extra benefits and hinder your opponents, I had a cheese factory stolen by my opponent! As soon as it was over I was ready to go again, but other games were calling so I relented and moved on to Imperial Settlers.   

       

Imperial Settlers is a civilisation building game, where you are playing as early settlers from major continents, collecting resources to build and trade with. The concepts and mechanics of this game were not ones I was too familiar with so I found the first round rather daunting but I soon adapted and was racking in the apples and meeples. This game is fantastic, and I ended up going home and ordering it for next day delivery.

The next game up was Agricolam as it was highly recommended by the staff at the cafe. This echoed some of the themes in Imperial Settlers, but is more of a worker placement game. You collect resources to build upon your farm and land. and take a number of actions depending on how many people live in your farm. I was so focused upon growing obscene amounts of carrots that I forgot to reproduce, so I had less people in my farm and less actions to take!

We managed to squeeze in three versions of Timeline towards the end. Timeline is an educational card game where players must use their knowledge (or guess, as I do a lot) to pinpoint when certain events occurred throughout history, and place their cards in chronological order in a row. As the hours flew by, it was so tempting to stay until closing at 11pm but the thought of missing the last train and having to wait for the night bus was too traumatic, so leaving at 10,30pm was preferable. But I must admit, on the way home we played a few games on the I-Phone...and perhaps more games upon arriving home. We have problems!  

Thanks for reading :) 

Please feel free to recommend games to me or just talk about games to me at

kookycherry@hotmail.co.uk

Marisa xx