Humans have the Tour de France. Animals have the Tour de Zoo! A menagerie of animal cyclists from around the world have come to test their mettle with their pedals! Five mountain summits stand between you and the coveted Leader of the Pack jersey.
Velonimo is a modern twist on two classic card game elements: climbing and card shedding. The goal is to get rid of all your cards. You’ll do this by playing a card or combinations of cards that are higher than the ones previously played. Velonimo is five races up five mountains, each higher than the next. The first player to shed their hand in a round, finishes in first place and gets the leader’s jersey.
Velonimo allows players to combine cards across color or number. It also introduces powerful single cards – some with special abilities (the tortoise) and some with very high values (the hare). This means you have many different ways to stay in the race.
Strap on your helmet and tune in. Before you know it, you’ll be at the summit, riding along side Major Fun.
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.
You are a stamp collector and your obsession is for one particular set of stamps featuring wild animals.
Driven by this animal passion, you’ll do almost anything to collect the whole set, including messing with other collectors that get in your way.
But remember the Collector’s Code. Play fair, no stealing! Just trading. Swapping one for one.
Stampede is a game of card swapping and set collecting. Using each animal’s special action, can you build the best album? It will take stealth, planning, and a bit of luck to collect the most dangerous… postage!
Designers: Romain Caterdjian and Théo Rivière Artist: Fran Collado Publisher: Devir 2-5 players 10 min ages 5+ MSRP $10 Time to Teach/Learn: 3 minutes Written by: Doug Richardson
You and your friends are out in the desert and everything is blooming, especially the cactus. You shouldn’t touch… but they have so many pretty flowers! Risking a little prick, you can’t help but pick a few.
Ouch! is played with a deck of 44 cactus cards. 36 of these cards have only cactus flowers. Eight cards also feature an animal: either a helpful snake or a cute fennec fox.
The back of each card will show the whole cactus plant, as well as a number of flowers, ranging from one to three. The more flowers, the better. But be careful! The more flowers a card has, the more dangerous it is. The back of each cactus card has thorns covering one to three sides.
To set up a game of Ouch!, simply shuffle the cards and deal out six of them to the table, back side facing up. Players will now take turns going clockwise, starting with the youngest player.
The goal in Ouch! is to pick the most flowers. Extra points will be added for having sets of flowers of the four different colors as well as having the most red flowers.
What you are trying to NOT do is to get pricked. Remember, cactus plants have sharp thorns!
On your turn, you will choose one of the six cards on the table. Then pick it up by one side of the card: top, bottom, left, or right. Now turn it over quickly and see what you got.
If the side you chose shows no cactus spines, congratulations! You have picked flowers successfully. Put the card in front of you in your collection.
If you picked up the card by an edge showing the cactus, then shout “Ouch!” and drop it quickly. Discard this card. It is out of the game.
Red cactus cards carry extra risk and extra reward. If you pick a red cactus and it stings you, you must discard a card from your collection. That’s the risk. The reward is, at the end of the game, the player with the most red flowers will score five extra points
You may also encounter some helpful animals in the desert. If you collect a card with a snake, watch the next player’s turn. If they are pricked by the card they choose, you get to add that card to your collection.
If a card you collect shows a fennec fox, you may choose to take another turn picking flowers. But be very careful! If you’re stuck by this card, you lose it, and the card with the fennec.
Whether you picked flowers, or got stuck by thorns, after your turn, draw another cactus card so that there are always six cards for the next player to choose from.
The game ends once someone has collected eight cards, or when there are no more cards in the draw pile. Then everyone adds up their scores.
You get one point for each flower on your cards.
You get 4 additional points for each bouquet of four different colored flowers you can make.
The player with the most red flowers gets 5 points. If tied, each player gets this bonus.
The player with the most points is the winner!
People play games for so many reasons. Some of us enjoy the thrill of competition. We get a charge out of besting our fellow players.
Or maybe it’s the challenge of building up a tabletop empire – a kingdom, or business, or farm. We revel in creating a beautiful, efficient, or productive machine.
Others love the challenge of playing cooperatively to solve a mystery, or beat back a pandemic. It’s us-against-the- game. Surviving or solving as a team is the reward.
Whatever the game, fun should be the ultimate prize.
Ouch! delivers fun at its most basic level. This is fun we know deep in our bones – fun we can see and hear and touch.
The fun is in the look of relief on someone’s face when they pick a card and don’t get pricked. It’s in hearing a loud “Ouch!” from a smug opponent. You see this fun in the look of real apprehension as someone fearfully flips their card.
Which is silly, really. After all, those aren’t real thorns on the cactus plants. They’re just playing cards. And yet, you will find yourself smiling, and cringing, and shouting “OUCH!” as you play!
Here’s why.
The game is just an object. But when it becomes an object of play, it becomes something more – an invitation to a world of imagination. We invest the cards in Ouch! with a power beyond mere cardboard. The game invites us to make believe, and the more you buy into that small illusion, the more fun we make the game.
A game can invite its audience to stop the “real” world. Come play and let’s find the fun.
Most of the time, fun is hard to describe or know. The simple genius of Ouch! is that it helps us create fun we can recognize and surrender to in the blink of an eye… or the turn of a card.
Ouch! allows us to lose ourselves in a simple lie and be silly for a few moments. The fun it gives us permission to find is evergreen – anyone of any age or background can find it. Ouch! delivers an experience far beyond a deck of cards. If you let it, the game will drop you off in a land we call Major Fun.
Seven fruits, seven feathers. The birds are playing a colorful game. When a red apple is eaten, a feather turns red. Eat a lime, a feather turns green. Can you be the first bird to collect all the colors and display them in your pretty plumage?
Aves is a card capturing / set collecting game with roots in the classics. It shares common ancestry with games like Gin Rummy and Scopa. It is also a game of simple, subtle, and sneaky strategies . Tune in to learn why we think Aves is a wonderfully accessible invitation to a lighter and brighter kind of fun.
This show also marks the 400th review episode of The Spiel!!
To celebrate, we invited Spielers from around the world to host seven different segments that have been part of the program over the past 16 years. This super sized show is filled with fan favorites, lots of laughs, and a ridiculous amount of board game hijinx. We hope you have as much fun listening as we did putting it together.
The best way to travel is boomerang style. Pick a place to start and go! The farther you wander, the better the trip. Grab a bus, or train, a plane, a bike, or a boat to see and do as much as you can before your vacation ends. Spot native animals, collect souvenirs, hike the great outdoors, and experience fine dining. And don’t forget to take some great pictures along the way!
Boomerang is a draft-and-write card game. Pick a location card, mark sites you visit on your map, and pass your hand to the next player. Try to build the best trip over a series of seven cards balancing multiple ways to score with each new destination
The Boomerang family of games covers Australia, Europe, and the United States.Each game provides a common core of rules with surprising and fun continental differences.
Tune in to explore the game and learn how the entire series earns BOTH awards!
Pocket Paragons is a what-beats-what card dueling game. Select a card; play it’s ability and try to anticipate your opponent’s next move. Duel one on one or in teams of three characters.
From Mata the Paladin to Sadoh the Ocean Queen, this is a world of high fantasy and high stakes. Seven cards separate you from glory or defeat.
Pocket Paragons is a duel distilled down to its very essence. A long game might take ten minutes! But don’t be fooled into thinking speed means lack of strategy. There are fun and challenging decisions at the heart of every turn.
Listen in to explore the game and learn how the game earns BOTH our awards.
Ten is a press your luck card game with a twist. The goal is simple: assemble the longest runs of consecutive cards in four colors. How many cards are you willing to draw as you push two different totals closer and closer to ten? Use currency cards to buy from the market or win auctions for wild cards. Be careful, though! If you bust, everyone else may cash in.
Engaging, interactive, and filled with tough decisions, Ten is great for all ages. Listen in to explore the game and discover how Ten delivers on its promise of Major Fun.
ALSO in this episode… a Game Night Grab Bag segment featuring Brenna Noonan and Doug! The challenge: games where you build the board as you play.
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.
It’s a garden party in Neverland.You came for the tea and cookies, but the Mad Hatter has other plans. You are swept into a game gathering wondrous and colorful hats, a hurricane of haberdashery a maelstrom of millinery. The clock is ticking… in eight short turns, by swapping cards on the tea table, can you assemble the most cherished collection of chapeaus?
Tune in to explore this card shedding, set collecting game and discover why Hats is Major Fun!
