The DWP writing team is back for another week of play reports! Billy C starts us off:

This week I was lucky enough to table one of my favourite games—Hadara. Hadara is a lovely civilization building game that feels like a drafting game but works at any player count. Similar to 7 Wonders, you’re purchasing cards that will be worth points as you attempt to cobble together the highest score you can – points from culture and war and cards and economy. It is crisp. Like a tasty, tasty apple.

Hadara’s economy is lovely – every choice you get to make in the game feels good, and there is just enough pseudo interaction to make me care about what the others are doing. If you at all like tableau building games or card drafting games, play this one. It’s phenomenal.

Scott M:

Coco and I have made a weekly event of Carcassonne (in the app) with her parents- it’s one of my original favourite games, and I was excited to introduce it to them. Her mother has quickly become an unbeatable stone-cold killer. It’s a lot.

And also I finally got to play Pandemic: Rapid Response with Joan last night! I usually have no affinity for stressful real-time games, but it was fantastic- great visual design, excellent gameplay, and a short game length that doesn’t burn out my adrenaline.

Kimberly T:

My week of gaming has been very exciting! I’ve been playing The King’s Dilemma (a nominee for expert game of the year) and a new release on Kickstarter: Project Elite. Talk about emotional games! The King’s Dilemma is a legacy-style game run by the Dilemma Card system. It’s fantastic for a group of 4-5 gamers that want to live out a rich narrative story world through clever negotiations and well-timed voting. Project Elite is just stinking exciting. My first game was comprised of lots of shouting, dice flying off the table, and an insane swarm of aliens charging at our heroes. So much fun! I can’t wait to play both of them again.

Steve T:

I’ve been playing a lot of Potion Explosion this week. It’s a great combination of puzzle and short term engine building game. I’m playing online, so I don’t get the tactile experience of picking up the marbles and watching them drop down the ramps, but I look forward to playing the physical game one day.

Matthew R:

I got to play a bunch of games during Virtual Gaming Con, but I will be writing about that in a separate article. I did get a remote game of Mansions of Madness, a co-operative, horror-theme game that has an app.

One of my friends who owns the game set it up at his place. He shared the online Steam app via Discord, so we could all see it and also talk to each other. It sure seemed like a lot of work for him, as he was sending us pictures via Discord to update the board situation and any items we found, but we all had a great time, despite failing to win. Mansions of Madness is a great game and a few of my friends and I have been trying to figure out a way to play it during the lockdown and are glad we found something that worked.

Jon-Paul D:

I had the pleasure of revisiting Nexus Ops, a light dice-chucking war game that has previously been described as a “Risk Killer”. Scattered around the board are mines which players use to gather currency to bring more units onto the board, and take advantage of secret mission cards to earn victory points. The dice rolls can be uproarious and heartbreaking, sometimes in the same roll! 

Dale of Merchants fell into my life this past week, and I in turn fell in love with the game. Taking some of the familiar tentpoles of the deck building genre, players are also in a race to complete their stall, which involves building 8 stacks of cards in ascending values. The art is adorable, and the game offers multiple strategic paths. Animalfolk for the win!

And that wraps up another week of play on our end. What games have hit your table in the last week? We’d love to know! Give us all the juicy details on Facebook or Twitter!