There are dog shows and cat shows, but have you ever heard of a fish show? Goldfish fans from across the land compete each year to display the most sensational swimmer. It takes talent and planning to create the most pleasing arrangement of colorful scales. Can you win Best in Show with your finest fish?
Steam Up is a restaurant known for its sumptuous servings of Dim Sum. Magical creatures come to sample the best bite-size gourmet dishes from bamboo baskets stacked high. Luckily, each animal arrives with an appetite and an agenda for their ideal meal. May the fullest stomach win!
The goal of Steam Up is to collect Hearty Points. You do this by eating dim sum from steamer baskets you rotate to your part of the table. Track the dishes on your board and score according to the rules for your animal. But watch out! Fate and Fortune will play a part in each meal as well.
Listen in to explore the game and discover why Steam Up is a feast for anyone with a hankering for Major Fun!
Steam Up: A Feast of Dim Sum
D: Pauline Kong, Marie Wong, Haymen Lee A: Tim Cheng, Grace Tjahyadi, YDXArt P: Hot Banana Games | BGG Link 2-5 players 45 minutes ages 8+ MSRP $49
Designers: Patrick Rauland Artist: Shirley Gong Publisher: Left Justified Studio | BGG Entry 2-4 players 15 min ages 12+ MSRP $16 Time to Teach/Learn: 5 minutes Written by: Doug Richardson
Broken and Beautiful honors the art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with golden lacquer. In Kintsugi, breakage and repair are beautiful facets of an object’s unique history. In the game, you’ll draft pottery cards, manage their breakage, and repair them to increase their value.
Broken and Beautiful is played with a deck of 46 game cards. These represent pottery, gold, serving trays, and storage boxes, commonly found in many Japanese homes. Both sides of the pottery cards are important in the game. One side shows the unbroken object; the other side shows the repaired side, with golden veins connecting the broken pieces.
The cards also have an icon which tells you what class of goods it depicts: cup, saucer, plate, bowl, tea jar, vase, teapot, serving tray, or storage box.
Each card shows a number of gold ingots in the lower left corner. This is the cost to repair the item, should it break.
In addition, there are 4 player reference cards, 14 gold ingots made of wood, and a First Player marker.
To set up a game of Broken and Beautiful, you’ll orient the cards unbroken side up, and give them a shuffle.
Pick a start player for the first round. The player who most recently washed the dishes would be a fitting choice.
Now deal a group of pottery cards to the table equal to two times the player count, plus one. In a 3 player game, this would be 7 cards.
(Hint: It is helpful to lay out the pottery cards each round with like items grouped together. This way, everyone can clearly see how many of each are available.)
Now you’re ready to play Broken and Beautiful.
In Broken and Beautiful, you choose pottery cards to keep as part of your collection or to sell. Then certain pottery cards will break and players will have an opportunity to repair them, provided they can pay enough gold. Each type of pottery scores in a different way and this score can be enhanced if pottery is repaired. The goal to amass the most beautiful collection of pottery and score the most points
Broken and Beautiful follows a simple four-step round structure:
1)Prepare for the Draft 2)Draft Cards 3)Pottery Breaks 4)Repairing Pottery
During the draft, each player will select two cards. The start player selects one card, followed by the player to the left
When you select a card, you have two options. Either you put the card in your collection, or you sell the card for gold. If you put the card in your collection, place the card, unbroken side up, in front of you on the table. If you sell the card, take the number of ingots shown on the lower left corner of the card.
Once the last player takes a card, the order of play reverses. The last player selects their second card, followed by the player to the right, and ending with the start player. In game terms, this is known as a snake draft.
After each player has taken two cards, one card will remain unchosen. This card and the card on top of the draw deck will determine which pieces will break.
Remember both sides of the cards are significant in Broken & Beautiful. The top of the draw deck will display a piece of pottery, just like the card that was not chosen.
If a cup and a bowl are the remaining two cards, then all cups and all bowls in every player’s collection will break. Turn these cards sideways to show they are now broken.
But don’t despair! The game is all about celebrating the repair of everyday objects and making them more beautiful.
Starting with the first player, each player may repair an item. The cost to repair your first item is shown in ingots on the card. A broken cup may be repaired by paying one gold, for example. Simply return that ingot to the general supply, and flip the card to its repaired side.
When you do, you’ll notice the repaired cup is now worth more points than before. On its normal side, a cup was worth one point. Broken, it is worth nothing. But when you repair it, it now is worth 3 points. It has become both broken and beautiful–and more valuable!!
After all players have had a chance to repair their first broken item, everyone has a chance to repair a second item, but the cost goes up! Repairing your second item costs one gold more than the price listed on the card. Your third repair costs 2 gold more and so on.
When all repairs are done, pass the start player marker to the next player in turn order, and set up for another round. The game ends when you can no longer deal out enough cards to hold another draft.
Now everyone will total up the points for their collection. Each item scores in its own unique way.
Cups score one point.
Saucers score nothing on their own, but when paired with a cup, double the cup’s worth.
Plates are worth 6 points,but only if you have a pair of them. A single plate scores no points.
Bowls are worth the number of them in your collection. That is, if you have 3 bowls, they are each worth 3 points apiece.
Tea jars will score you 6 points, but only if you have the most tea jars.
Vases are worth 1 point if you have just one, 5 points for two. Collect all three, and you get 15 points.
Teapots are worth as many points as you have other pottery with a matching pattern.
Finally, there are the wooden storage trays and storage boxes. Trays just score 2 points. Storage boxes are worth as many points as you have left over gold.
But that’s only half the story. The scoring for every item is enhanced when they are repaired. For example, pair a regular cup and saucer, and you’ll score 3 points. But if both have been repaired, the cup is now worth 3, and the saucer triples that to 9 points.
The key concept is that every object has value, but repaired objects enable new or enhanced scoring opportunities. In the end you’ll add up your points, remembering that broken pieces score nothing. The player with the most points is the winner!
Broken and Beautiful presents us with a paradox: a simple set of choices with hidden depth and complexities. The game is easy to learn, but in the playing, thoughtful challenges reveal themselves.
Every choice you make is both a choice of taking and leaving. You take a card to add to your scoring possibilities, but what are you leaving for others?
Do you concentrate your collection on one or two items, or spread it out among a wide range, hoping to maximize your scoring chances by fixing your items that break?
And what card will ultimately be left to break at the end of the round? Can you plan for this, knowing that some of your goods may break? With each choice, you play a little side game of “What will everyone else do?” Can you foresee the consequences of their choices?
How will you manage your gold, knowing that you’ll need to make repairs, and enhance the value of your collection? All these questions spin out from one choice: take a card.
The simple act of selecting a single card is actually two choices in one. Do I take this card for my collection or for the gold?
By themselves, gold cards can’t score you points. But you need gold to repair your broken goods. Or maybe you should leave the gold, as a gold card left at the end of drafting allows everyone one free repair.
And you should always be mindful that the game will be over more quickly than you think.. As soon as four short rounds. As few as eight not-so-simple choices packed into a 15 minute game
Broken and Beautiful is a game which will surely provoke someone to say, “Let’s play that again.”
Broken and Beautiful celebrates everyday objects. As they are, they serve as humble vessels for food and drink, making our daily existence easier.
But these everyday objects can break and become useless. Rather than toss them out, the philosophy behind Kintsugi says to honor them for their utility by repairing them.
Something artful and important happens when you take the time to mend a broken thing. The act of repairing a common object reveals an inner beauty, a hidden beauty we might never witness. Kintsugi says a broken thing is more beautiful and more valuable for its uniqueness.
The same is true of people. Some of the wisest, most interesting people are those who have been damaged and sought repair. An addict now turned counselor. A life, once riddled by hatred, now dedicated to peace. A cancer victim inspiring hope in others.
As players, we all come to the table with flaws and imperfections. Playing a game like Broken and Beautiful can help us appreciate our own brokenness, and the beauty which lies beneath, waiting to be discovered.
Broken and Beautiful is like that thoughtful, practical gift you received long ago. That favorite mug, which became chipped. Those sewing scissors, now worn. The favorite hammer you’ve had to tape together that still fits your hand so well.
Every time you put it to use, you’re reminded of the hidden beauty in everyday items. A beauty which emerges over time, even as the objects wear down from use.
A game like Broken and Beautiful contains hidden pleasures you’ll only discover when you play. It seems humble and simple on the surface but there are subtle and beautiful strategies waiting to emerge and available to all.
It is an honor to place Broken & Beautiful in our collection, an elegant reminder of the hidden beauty you can find in Major Fun.
Designers: Tony Miller Artist: Kwanchai Moriya Publisher: Boardgametables 2-4 players 15 min ages 6+ MSRP $44 Time to Teach/Learn: 3 minutes Written by: Stephen Conway
If you listen closely you can hear it… KLONK! The mighty Kabutomushi, the magnificent Rhinoceros beetles are knocking heads, sumo wrestling. Their epic duels in the World Insect Wrestling Championship are the stuff of legend! Now, you and a swarm of challengers are here to contend for titles and your place in history. Position is everything. It will take balance, steady hands (and maybe a little luck) to push and pivot your opponents from the ring!
Kabuto Sumo is a beautiful game. First, artist Kwanchai Moriya creates an enticing colorful world full of flamboyant insect heroes worthy of any professional wrestling circuit.
The play surface, the wrestling ring, is a raised cardboard platform in the shape of a tree stump. A separate cardboard pushing platform butts up against the stump, allowing each player to introduce new pieces to the ring.
Chunky smooth wooden discs in three sizes and three colors will populate the board. Each player will begin with a few discs in their personal supply.
Each player has a wooden insect wrestler token and a special move token in a shape that reflects the insect’s species. Each wrestler also comes with a reference card outlining their abilities. For younger or new players, Junior league cards outline rules for a simpler and slightly faster game.
To play, discs and wrestlers will be arranged in a pattern on the stump according to the number of players. Choose your wrestler, gather your discs, and get ready to rumble!
The goal is simple: push your opponent’s wrestlers from the ring OR run your opponents out of pieces to play.
Kabuto Sumo draws great inspiration from old school coin push arcade games.
On your turn, you will select one of the discs in your personal supply and place it on the pushing platform. You may place the platform anywhere around the wrestling ring. Then, using one hand, push the disc from the back of the piece until it is completely in the ring. You can push your disc at any angle as long as you push in a straight line. If discs fall out of the ring as you push, you collect them into your personal supply. Then your opponents take their turns, selecting and pushing discs until someone’s wrestler falls or runs out of pieces to play.
NOTE: While your goal is to push the opponent from the ring, you constantly need to replenish your supply of discs by knocking some from the ring. Lose sight of this and you could find yourself scrambling just to stay in the game!
Kabuto Sumo is a great example of inclusion in game design. Signature moves add depth and strategy. The Junior League makes the game approachable to anyone.
Each wrestler has a set of superpowers. Some are triggered when their signature piece is pushed. The Stag Beetle’s mandibles can capture opponent’s discs. Others are triggered when certain conditions are met. If the Blister Beetle’s wrestler is touching another wrestler at the end of your turn, that opponent must give you a piece. Ouch!
But these powers come with a catch. They must be earned during the game! You’ll be forced to discard discs, stack some on the board, or even give discs to your opponents in order to use your powers. Suddenly the game operates on an entirely different level. Planning how and when to trigger your powers will likely be the key to victory!
At the other end of the spectrum, the Junior League option provides a quick and easy way for anyone to join the fun. Each wrestler starts with their signature piece and other discs. No special powers, just push and push and let the wrestlers fall where they may. The concept is so simple. There should be no barriers to entry in a game like this. No matter your interest or experience level, there’s a version of Kabuto Sumo to fit the way you want to play.
Kabuto Sumo teaches its players to savor and play with balance. Mind and body are all called to action. Planning and pushing pieces to making them fall is a primal kind of Major Fun, even when your plan goes sideways.
D: Laurent Escoffier A: Simon Douchy P: Blue Orange 2-4 players 15 min ages 8+ MSRP $28 Time to Teach/Learn: 3 minutes
Once home to a single very shy sea monster, Block Ness is now teeming with long bodied serpents! Each one is looking to stretch out and claim as much of the lake as it can. By twisting your monster’s undulating body over and around the others, can you create the longest serpent from head to tail?
Table presence is a relatively new term in the world of games. Think curb appeal when you hear realtors talk about houses and you get the idea. Block Ness has table presence. It will grab your eye from across the room!
The game is played in the box which represents the lake.The thick lake board has a grid pattern of holes punched into it and these holes will be filled by very large and colorful segments of sea monsters.
Each player has ten different arching segments with pegs that fit snugly into the holes in the board. Some segments arch high while others are low. Some are long and others are short. Each player also has a serpent head and tail piece which can be attached to the top of any body segment.
While playing, the game board will look like a tangled mess of serpent segments with monsters’ bodies intertwined.
To set up, each player snaps their starting serpent segment into the center of the lake board and places the head on one end and the tail on the other.
The goal in Block Ness is to create the longest serpent you can on the board before you run out of space in the lake. When playing with four players you use the entire lake board. When playing with two or three players, you use a smaller portion of the lake.
Each turn, in clockwise order, players will select and place a new serpent segment to extend either the head or the tail of their beast. The holes in the lake board are arrayed in such a way that there are six legal spaces where you can add a new piece. One directly in front or behind your serpent and two to each side at the front or back. Diagonal placement is not allowed. After the new segment has been added, you will move the tail to the new end of the creature or the head to the new beginning.
Play continues in this fashion with each serpent taking up more space. When no more pieces can be played, the game ends and the player who has placed the most serpent pieces on the board wins. In the case of a tie, the player whose serpent head is the tallest is the winner.
Block Ness asks its players to think in multiple directions at once because the lake is so small. Even after the first turn, it will be clear just how fast this lake is going to fill up.
You have to think about how to fold your serpent back against itself and how to extend each arching piece over yourself or others to find open water for your next move. You may never go under other pieces, even your own, and your piece may never pass over the head or tail of an opponent’s serpent.
As the game winds forward, you may only have a few starting spaces open because other serpents have slithered up next to you. And you have to keep a close eye on the length of each piece to insure each end of the segment you want to place has a open hole to land in.
Think sideways. Think up and down. Think head and tail. The challenge and fun in Block Ness comes from keeping your options open as long as you can in as many directions as possible.
Block Ness is fast and wonderfully tense. It might seem simple, but there is subtle depth in action. A good abstract strategy game presents each turn as mini-puzzle a player must unravel. Small victories linked together help you create a strategy and push your opponent to do the same. Each small puzzle you solve links to the next in a very visual way. Nessie herself remains a mystery, but in Block Ness, we can witness Major Fun made manifest, rising from the waves of its cardboard lake.
Designer: Shaun Graham, Scott Huntington Artist: Natalie Behle Publisher: HABA 2-4 players 15 minutes ages 5+ MSRP $25 Time to teach & learn: 2-3 minutes
Sparkle mountain stands before you, its caverns filled with glittering gems. You and your crew of gnomes are ready to fill your wagons with riches, tapping rubies, diamonds, and emeralds loose from the walls with your trusty hammer. There’s just one problem. Dragomir the Dragon sleeps under the mountain. Make too much noise and he will chase you away!
Hammer Time is a sparkly sight to behold. 90 brightly colored gemstones in 6 different colors will be strewn across the game board. The game board is very unconventional; it’s the bottom of the box turned over, so it forms a mini-table. There’s a large mousepad-like sticker illustrated with cavern walls and Dragomir the Dragon sleeping in the corner. You will permanently attach this to the box bottom.
It’s no surprise the chunky wooden hammer is the star of the show.
There are two types of cards in the game: task cards (which can provide a bonus gem) and wagon cards (each player has four).
Finally, there’s a color die used for the Master variant of the game.
To play, spread out the gems on the box. Each player shuffles their wagon cards and flips one face up. It’s hammer time!
Hammer Time is a game about knocking gems off a box with a hammer. The first player to fill four wagon cards with gems wins the game.
On your turn, you will take the hammer and tap along any side of the box. You can knock gently or with great gusto BUT the goal is to tap just hard enough to knock the right combination of gems off the edge of the box.
If you knock even one gem off the box, stop hammering! Your turn is over.
Count the gems you knocked off. If there are 8 or less gems, great! Compare the gems to your wagon card. Each wagon card has a specific combination of colored gems. If any of the gems you knocked off match your wagon card, place them on the card. Diamonds are wild. When the wagon card is full, set it aside, flip over a new wagon card, and return the gems to the board.
If you knock off nine or more gems, watch out! You made too much noise with your hammering! Dragomir wakes up and all the gems are returned to the board.
While hammering a box might sound easy, it is tricky to find just the right touch. Tap too light one turn and the next you will send half the gems flying!
Task cards provide another incentive. After knocking off gems, check the task card to see if you complete it. A task could ask for a certain number of gems or a certain type of gem. If you fulfill this requirement, you complete the task. This task card can be used as a wild gem to fill any spot in a wagon.
You can only fill one wagon and one task per turn.
Once you’ve collected the gems you can, return uncollected gems to the board and pass the hammer to the next player.
The first player to fill all four wagons walks away from Sparkle Mountain, the richest gnome in the realm!
The Master variant to Hammer Time adds another layer of craziness. Each turn a die is rolled and the player will have to hammer the box in a wacky way.
You might have to hammer with your eyes shut, or use your fist instead of the hammer at all. You might even have to lay your head on the table as you hammer. Each turn builds to another fun crescendo with the roll of the die, followed by laughs and groans based on the result.
It’s dangerous describing a game that operates on this level of playfulness. It can easily kill the fun. It’s like over-explaining a joke.
Hammer Time is a reminder that the simplest kind of fun can often be the most lasting.
The pleasure that comes from whacking the side of a box and seeing what happens, unlocks a joy that we can all share regardless of age or experience.
The brilliance of Hammer Time is that is doesn’t try to cover up this experience with too many rules. It embraces the core element (the hammering!) and celebrates it. Win or lose, the real pleasure comes from playing. That is the heart and soul of Major Fun.
D: Steffen Benndorf
A: Christian Opperer
P: NSV, Pandasaurus Games
2-4 players 20 min. ages 8+ MSRP $15
5 minutes to learn
Written by: Doug Richardson
Cherry blossom season is about to blanket Zen gardens with their resplendent wonder. Water, vegetation, stones, and sakura trees must be placed in perfect harmony in order to become a Master Gardener.
Over three rounds you will carefully select or reject the elements for your next garden creation. Do you have the skills to craft the best Zen garden?
Ohanami is played with a deck of 120 cards, numbered from 1 to 120. Each card depicts one of four elements: water (blue), plants (green), stones (grey), or cherry blossoms (pink).To help score your game, a handy pad of scoresheets is included.
Ohanami is a card drafting and set collecting game. Over three rounds, players will hope to be the most masterful gardener by drafting and scoring sets of elements by skillfully adding these to their three gardens.
Each round starts by dealing ten cards to each player. Then players select two cards to keep for their gardens.
Once you’ve chosen two cards, you will pass the remaining cards on to the next player. Before you look at any new cards, all players will reveal the two cards they’ve selected, and place them into one of three gardens or discard them.
These two cards may go into the same garden or into separate gardens. Either way, you’ll only have three gardens for the entire game. And you’ll find the cards you place define the limits of your gardens.
Let’s look at an example. Let’s say you’ve selected the blue 68 and the green 75. You decide to put this water feature and that bit of shrubbery into the same garden. From now on, only cards numbered higher than 75, or lower than 68 may be put in this garden.
In other words, you may never place a card with a number that falls between two other cards into a garden. Such a card will have to go into one of your other gardens, or be discarded from the game.
So, on one hand, you’ll be selecting cards based on their number to fit into your gardens. BUT, you’ll also choose cards to play based on how each color group scores.
At the end of the first round, only the blue water feature cards will score. Count the total number of blue cards in your gardens and earn 3 points for each of them. None of your other cards will score in round one.
In round two, both your blue water cards, and your green plant cards will score. Blue will again earn you 3 points apiece. Green will be worth 4 points each. Note: you are scoring for all the blue and all the green in your gardens, not just the cards you added during this round.
At the end of round three, all your cards will score one more time. Blue 3 points and green 4. Now your grey stone cards will score, and you’ll get 7 points for each of them.
Finally, your pink cherry blossom cards will score.
If you have one lone pink card, you’ll get 1 point. Two pink cards get you 3 points, 3 pink cards are worth 6 points (1 + 2 + 3 = 6, etc.)…all the way up to 120 points for 15 or more pink cards.
So, let’s review. Draft two cards each turn. Choose to either fit them into one of your three gardens or discard them. Draft and pass through ten cards per hand over three rounds. Score the relevant elements of your growing garden each round. Highest score wins and becomes the Master Gardener!
First, some context, in Japan a Hanami is a planned excursion, a sort of picnic and stroll under the blossoming cherry trees. Life slows, and time is taken to appreciate the beauty of rock and water, bush and flowering trees.
People use Zen gardens to disentangle themselves from the cares of everyday life, and engage with nature. In the same way, Ohanami the game allows us to engage with the nature of play itself.
When we sit down to play any tabletop game, we accept the fact that we are fooling ourselves. We haven’t really become kings commanding great armies, or builders erecting a city, or farmers growing the best crops. We are merely players, abiding by a set of rules, and using simple items of paper and plastic and wood to depict our imaginary world.
All games are abstractions. Some games refuse to put on airs. What is the theme of checkers? Doesn’t matter; just capture your opponent’s pieces and win.
Some games go to elaborate ends to try and convince you of their made-up “reality”. These are usually found in gigantic boxes crammed with elaborate carved pieces and fantastic terrain. And generally with a fantastic price attached.
By comparison, you might think Ohanami isn’t even trying. 120 cards and a scorepad? Really? Well, hold on, I think Ohanami is one of the most thematic games around.
Who are we? Clearly, we are gardeners, assigned the task of creating three Zen gardens. The pieces we choose for these gardens must both fit (numerically) and add up to a pleasing whole.
Each turn you sort through the goods on offer and select two candidates to take back to your workshop. Hopefully, you’ve chosen well and can fit these new pieces into your expanding gardens.
Of course, you’ll keep an eye on what your rivals are doing. No sense leaving all the choicest pieces to them! Which means you view each small decision with both an eye toward your gardens, and a glance over the fence at what is happening next door.
Because your concern is with both the numbers on the cards and the types of landscape they represent, both the mathematical and aesthetic parts of your brain are involved in every decision. In a very simple way, this mimics why people enjoy zen gardens: engagement.
Because the rules are brief, you are playing within moments. Even with your first choices, you are setting the constraints of your three little worlds. In a flash, a round is over and scored. Repeat twice and the game is done.
And yet Ohanami never feels rushed. The lightness of rules allows you to notice the smallest detail: to appreciate the gardens around you and compare them with your own – to feel the world stop for 20 minutes and appreciate the joy of play.
Ohanami creates a pleasing challenge out of mere pasteboard and ink, which replicates the experience of enjoying a well laid out garden. A subtle experience, but yet one available to anyone old enough to know their numbers and colors.
Finding a game which plays quickly is easy. Finding one which plays quickly and deeply and with a structure which supports the theme of the game is much rarer.
Ohanami is a short, but evocative game. It is accessible to almost anyone. The gift it gives us is time: leaving us to look forward to many years beneath the cherry blossoms in quiet, playful contemplation.
A game with such humble beauty and quiet pleasure needs no fanfare. Exactly the reason we find it so worthy of both our awards.
A mysterious grid of 9 ancient stones lies before you. Rearrange them to match your pattern cards and score points. The challenge is, these pattern cards may either be used to move/flip the stones or score points… but never both!
Therein lies the maddening but simple genius of the game. Shifting Stones is a light game but not a slight game. Familiar, yet full of surprises, this is a game for players from all walks. Play with your kids; play on a lunch break, or at the pub at the end of a long day. Deep enough to offer a challenge, but approachable enough to allow space for fellowship as you play.
Tune in to discover why Shifting Stones is a modern classic and most certainly Major Fun!
Designer: Phil Walker-Harding Artist: Fabrice ROS Publisher: Blue Orange Games 2-4 players 30 minutes ages 10+ MSRP $35 Time to teach & learn: 3 minutes
You are an architect creating a layout for a network of interconnected skyscrapers. Up and up, higher and higher, the city rises! The City Council will select only one architect’s plan – the most ambitious expansion will gather the most votes and become a blueprint for your very own city in the clouds!
Houses have curb appeal. Games have table presence. Cloud City’s 3-D elements are fun and engaging and will draw attention whenever it is played.
There are 96 plastic buildings split evenly between 3 different colors: green, blue and sandy brown. All buildings of a single color are also a single height. Sandy buildings are the tallest, green buildings are medium, and blue are the shortest.
Each color building has a set of 31 matching walkways. The walkways come in 5 different lengths.
48 square city tiles depict different configurations of colored buildings rising above the clouds. Each tile is split into four grid squares and each tile has a mix of two open cloud spaces and two spaces with a green, blue, or sand colored building.
There are also some start tiles, one for each player and some special request cards that add more scoring options.
To play, each player takes a start tile and places matching colored buildings on the corresponding spaces shown on the tile. The remaining city tiles are shuffled and each player receives a hand of three tiles. Three tiles are also flipped face-up for all to see. Give yourself enough room on the table to build around, since your city is about to expand!
Cloud City is a game about building bridges. The more bridges and the longer bridges you can construct to connect buildings of similar height, the more votes you will secure from the City Council. The most votes wins the game.
The game is played over 8 turns with 4 players or 11 turns with 2 or 3 players.
At the end of a four player game, your city will be a square – a 3 by 3 grid of 9 city tiles with buildings rising from each tile and bridges connecting some.
At the end of a 2 or 3 player game, your city will be a rectangle – either a 3 by 4 or a 4 by 3 grid of city tiles, again with buildings and connecting bridges.
Each turn in the game you will do two things and have an option for a third.
You will pick one tile from your hand and add it to your city.
You will place matching colored 3-D buildings on the corresponding colored spaces on the tile.
Last but not least, you now have the option to build bridges between buildings.
The bridges come in five different sizes spanning 1,2,3,5 or 8 spaces. The top of each building is made in such a way that the point of each bridge will nestle down snugly into the roof.
There are a few restrictions to keep in mind when building each bridge.
A bridge can only connect buildings of the same color/height (always a flat walkway – never any ramps).
A bridge cannot pass over an open area without a city tile under it.
A bridge cannot cross over a building of the same color/height.
A bridge cannot lay across another bridge of the same color/ height.
And last but not least, each building may only have two bridges connected to it.
You are welcome to build as many bridges as you like on a given turn, provided you follow these restrictions.
That said, you are never obligated to build a bridge. You always have the option to wait and build on a later turn.
After playing a tile, placing buildings, and deciding whether to build bridges, you draw a new city tile into your hand either from the face up row of city tiles or the top face down tile from the draw pile.
Play continues until each player’s city is complete (9 tiles in a 4 player game, 12 tiles in a 2 or 3 player game).
Scoring is simple. Each bridge has a number of points listed on it. Add up all the points on the bridges you have built. This is the number of votes you receive. Most votes wins the game.
Each choice allows your city to expand – every new tile offers new buildings and possible connections. But each choice also begins to set the boundaries for your city – giving shape and limits to what you will be able to build in just a few short turns. This means you have to have pay attention to how your city expands and contracts with every choice you make.
You have to consider how to line up like colored buildings in order to build bridges. Small connections are easier to line up, but they yield fewer points. In order to leave large gaps open for longer bridges to be built, you will most likely have to focus on one specific level and not try to optimize every possible path. The pressure of building in such a small area makes every choice in the game meaningful, challenging, and fun.
Something as simple as the layout of the colored buildings on each tile in your hand becomes extremely important when considering how to keep each level on your city open for longer bridges and higher scores.
This makes the choice of what tile to take at the end of each turn significant. If you don’t think ahead to your needs beyond the current bridge, your city will fill up and leave you with buildings in the way, preventing longer bridges.
What tile to place is important, but when to place bridges is just as critical. Early on, you can bank on points by connecting smaller, obvious paths. But there’s also risk involved. Because each building can only have two bridge connections, you might close off larger scoring potentials. Wait too long, though, and another building might go up, blocking your path.
And even when things don’t go according to plan, the game goes so quickly, you’ll be left wanting to try again and make better choices next time. Cloud City condenses the quiet, contemplative fun of a much longer and more involved game into a brief encounter. A short story instead of a novel. No less moving or interesting for its brevity, but certainly more accessible.
Cloud City is Major Fun because it is condensed, refined. Play a tile, place buildings, build bridges – rules easy enough for players from mid elementary age to retirement to grok the basics and learn by doing.
It is also hard to overstate the powerful draw of creating a 3-D map of your own to marvel at when the game is done. Your choices make something to be admired and studied whether you win or lose.
Francie enjoys her city after a game.
Cloud City earns our Spiel of Approval because it offers an even deeper level of strategy and gameplay through the addition of special request cards.
These cards provide additional ways to score.
Some cards deal with bridges: points for building many separate paths, or closed loops, or a path with the highest total value.
Other cards focus on buildings: points for building the most of a given color, or the most buildings with a single bridge connection.
There are even request cards that take points away! Negative points for crossed bridges or freestanding buildings without any bridges at all.
The rules and flow of the game remain completely unchanged – but the goals you strive for and HOW you play each turn make the game completely new and different.
The suggestion in the rules is to play with two request cards at a time. We could not resist adding more request cards to our games until eventually we were playing with every request card and every new scoring rule in effect. You will want to work up to this level, but in just a few games, my guess is you will want to take on the challenge of scoring as many possible ways as you can within the same pressure packed small set of turns.
Does the Cloud City need these extra layers to be enjoyable? Not at all.
The game is open to such a wide range of players and experience levels – this makes Cloud City a lovely introduction to the quiet fun that is possible through strategic thinking and thoughtful play.
Does Cloud City benefit from having these advanced options available? Absolutely!
The game itself builds bridges to deeper and more nuanced decisions without adding complexity. Each decision has more consequences to predict, making for a greater challenge to assemble a winning plan.
Most of the time, a player must move on from an open and accessible strategy game to find an experience with more layers and depth. It’s a remarkable achievement for Cloud City to house both in one box.
No matter what level of strategy you enjoy, there’s a simple, beautiful elegance to the dance your mind does when you play Cloud City. There are so few turns in each game, every one matters in surprising and fun ways. We don’t need to build this game up. Cloud City, for all its headiness, has set down deep roots in Major Fun.
Let’s take a bike trip around northern Taiwan. So much to see!
The night markets in Taichung, the great Buddha statue in Changhua, the Hakka Round House in Maioli, the Science Park in Hsinchu, Da Xie Old Street in Taoyuan, Cape Santiago in New Taipei City and Liberty Square in Taipei City just to name a few….
Play scenery cards to visit as many sites as you can over the course of nine stops. The traveler who plans the best and pedals great distances will score well and create a memorable trip.
Ubike Tours: Taiwan draws inspiration from two beloved modern classics: Six Nimmt and the 10 Days In series. It combines familiar mechanisms with a clever press-your-luck element to create a lovely balance of strategy and chance.
Grab a bike, explore each option and be ready to pounce when opportunity presents itself. There’s a fun world waiting for you in Ubike Tours: Taiwan behind the flip of every card.
Tune in explore the game and discover why it is Major Fun!
