We are back for another snapshot of the games that our Daily Worker Placement team has been tabling! Before we share their experiences, let’s take a look at the 10 most played games on BoardGameGeek from last month, August 2020:

1. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine (22661 plays)
2. Wingspan (8896 plays)
3. Marvel Champions: The Card Game (8181 plays)
4. Terraforming Mars (7576 plays)
5. Gloomhaven (7228 plays)
6. Azul (6323 plays)
7. Kingdomino (4965 plays)
8. 7 Wonders (4939 plays)
9. Cartographers (4917 plays)
10. Spirit Island (4747 plays)

Over 22,000 plays for The Crew last month! Nearly three times as many as the second most-played game from August, Wingspan. What a feat!

Let’s take a look now at the gaming feats of our DWP writing team…

STEVE T:

We had our bubble over on Saturday evening and we played Cartagena, a delightful light strategy game about pirates escaping from prison.

Also, I recently acquired a gently used copy of Alien Frontiers from Billy C, so I taught my wife how to play. She would play it again, which is pretty much the highest praise she ever gives a new game!

SCOTT M:

I spent a week with my brother, who I hadn’t seen in six months, was full of games at every opportunity. We did: Cartographers, Eminent Domain, San Juan, Lords of Waterdeep, and a whole ton of Star Realms.

DAVID W:

I tried out the new (and much waited-for) co-op multiplayer mode for the digital version of Gloomhaven. It did not disappoint. It was a seamless experience–the computer takes care of all the fiddly bits and it’s great not to have to deal with the setup, takedown, and card shuffling and just concentrate on gameplay. I did get kicked from the session once for no apparent reason, though. If you’re playing on Steam it’s super-easy to invite your chums to join a session. We both agreed that two heads are definitely better than one when it comes to playing Gloomhaven no matter whether you’re on the tabletop or the screen. If you haven’t tried it yet I think now might be the time.

JON-PAUL D:

Something old and something new found their way to my table last week. San Marco is a well-respected design from Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weissblum, which is an area control game powered by an interesting I-Split-You-Choose mechanic. The action cards that get split allow players to add their tokens to specific regions, but the real fun is in the special action cards that allow for region scoring and redistributing tokens, which can be downright mean. Highly interactive and streamlined before streamlining was cool.

The other game I want to mention is Titanic, a new game from Spin Master designed by the Canadian design duo of Daryl Andrews and Adrian Adamescu. I was absolutely convinced that this was going to be a cooperative game, but instead it’s competitive with the potential to be cutthroat, as players race to be the best at saving passengers from the sinking ship. It’s a bit more complex than I’d expect from a mass market publisher, but still very approachable for non-gamers.

MATTHEW R:

I got the new online version of Wingspan and it’s amazing. First off, just like the boardgame, online Wingspan is beautiful. The game play in the app worked smoothly and I did not notice any glitches or hiccups in the few times I have given it a whirl. The one thing I did notice was that I was not paying as much attention to the other players. You can easily check to see the other player boards, it’s just not something I found I was doing as much as I do when playing in person. I actually found that beneficial as it reduced analysis paralysis and I focused more on what was best for me, instead of trying to time my actions to limit other players. Consequently I got my highest score ever.

And that brings us to the end of another week of DWP games played! If you need more DWP in your life, make sure to read about some super popular games with awesome theming, the focus of Kimberly T’s article from earlier in the week!