You'll never catch me alive, copper!

18. Scotland Yard

by Manfred Burggraf, Dorothy Garrels, Wolf Hoermann, Fritz Ifland, Werner Scheerer and Werner Schlegel

Players: 3 - 6
Ages: 10+
Time: 45+ minutes
Type of game: Deductive / Hidden Movement

Reccomended?: Yes

"Chase me! Chase me!" I called as I ran, laughing through the streets of London. Jumping onto buses, using the tube to cover long distances and using taxis to get myself lost in the back streets.
Meanwhile, my opponents did their best to figure out where I was, aided by my odd need to reveal my position every 5 moves or so.

Scotland Yard is a 1 versus many game. One person plays the mysterious Mister X whilst the other players are the police trying to track X down.

The police move openly. I can always see where the are and plan my moves as X secretly. They also start with a limited supply of tickets for the various transport types which, when they use them, become part of my supply widening my options as theirs decrease.

X moves secretly. He'll start in the open and then, as soon as his first move is decided, will disappear leaving just the ticket that he used to make the journey behind as a clue to where he could have gone.X writes his destination and covers it with the ticket he used to get there. Using a black ticket? That'll get you on anything obscuring your possible destination even further.

Like most good co-op games this is difficult for the many and to really be sure of winning would involve some clever mapping. This kind of shenanigans while making an interesting logic problem would also be quite a fun sucker. Which would make the game a puzzle rather than a game.

The other issue with this is, as it's one versus many rather than many versus the game it feels unbalanced. You don't mind losing to the game, but losing continually to whoever has the role of Mr X makes it way less enjoyable.

I'd read a lot of good things about this game on BGG but, ultimately, it's not for me. While I'd still recommend it this ones destined for eBay.

5 in 4

Pop quiz, hot shot! You've got 5 two-player games and an afternoon to kill. What do you do? What do you do?

The answer? Go and visit David Q. Smith of Mondo Comico fame and play the heck out of them. So here are 5 games we played in (just under) 4 hours.

13. Star System

by Walter Obert
Players: 2
Ages: 9+
Time: 30+ minutes
Type of game: Deductive Card Game
Recommended?: No

 A Cluedo/Guess Who? type game. Be the first to work out which 5 of 20 stars are featured in your opponents movie. Although why he's trying to keep it a secret is beyond me. Not my favourite hidden information game which is why it's now on the shelf of Mondo waiting to be sold!

14. Lord of the Rings: The Duel

by Peter Neugebauer

Players: 2
Ages: 10+
Time: 45+ minutes
Type of game: Hand management
Recommended?: Yes

The fight between Gandalf and the Balrog played out with cards. Exactly turn you must play a card. You shall not pass! Ahahahahahaha! How funny I am.

This is fantastically over produced with Gandalf and Balrog represented by odd little wooden pieces and a lovely cardboard bridge is included to walk them on to represent who has the upper hand at any one time.

Each card has four slots on each side. An filled slot is an attack, an empty one is not. Your opponent plays a card and them you must answer it. Any filled slots that are unanswered by another filled slot means 1 damage to the opponent.

You will play with every card in the deck during the game so you need to make sure you don't use all your best cards up-front.

15. Pick & Pack

by Simon Hunt

Players: 2
Ages: 8+
Time: 20+ minutes
Type of game: Light Abstract Strategy
Recommended?: Yes
A fun little apple collection game where you and your opponent operate a claw grabber like in those fairground machines that contain awful stuffed toys that you can never win because the machine is fixed (or for readers in Japan - UFO Grabbers that contain cool toys and actually give you a very good chance of winning.)

The twist is that one of you controls the horizontal movement on their go as the other moves vertical on theirs. So you've got to try and get something good while denying them on their turn. Or... do you set them up with something so appealing that they'll set you up for an even better tile on your next go.

Beyond the core tiles you have action tiles that can be triggered by landing on an empty space. These can increase the value of your apples or decrease the value of your opponents allowing you to pip them to the top spot.

I've run out of apple gags now.

16. Strike Dice

by Michael Andresakis and Alexander Argyropoulos

Players: 2-4

Ages: 8+
Time: 20+ minutes
Type of game: Random Abstract Strategy
Recommended?: No

Gah.

Full disclosure: I play-tested this game and helped to re-write the rules (as in, make them clearer not change them).

That said, despite being emotionally invested in this and having real respect for the visual attention that these guys have given Strike Dice and their other game, Eragra, I struggle to say many positive things about this game.

An abstract strategy game with pawns of random strength. This unbalances the game so much that it becomes way more about luck than strategy.

The rules are still wilfully obtuse and over-written making a relatively basic game seem complicated and deep at first glance.

Good luck to them but I won't be keeping it.

17. Stratego: Star Wars

by Jacques Johan Mogendorff / Uncredited

Players: 2

Ages: 8+
Time: 30+ minutes
Type of game: Secret movement
Recommended?: No

Classic Stratego with a twist of Star Wars Episodes 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. That's what happens when you make a game midway through a prequel trilogy.

Yours and your opponents pieces are hidden from each other until one attacks the other. Then the pieces involved in the combat are revealed to decide the outcome. The loser removes their piece from the board and tries to remember the location and type of piece in order to make a succesful path to the enemies hidden goal piece.

With certain pieces that work against each other best (think you've found a bomb? You need a droid to defuse it) your brain will be twisting and turn to keep track of what's where.

Unless you're me with my limited patience for abstract strategy games in which case you'll kamikaze charge your way to certain doom.

And yet... I think this might stay. David Q. Smith talked very fondly of playing this as a child and a game like this would be good to have in the house when I finally have children. Because surely I'll be able to beat them at it!

I've weirdly forgotten who won what... Perhaps David remembers.

This is how we do it European style

12: Ticket to Ride: Europe

by Alan Moon

Players: 2 - 5
Ages: 8+
Time: 60+ minutes
Type of game: Family / Route building

Reccomended?: Yes

A slightly friendlier Ticket to Ride variant with the addition of stations. These cool little things allow you to ride your opponents train from 1 city to another allowing to complete that difficult journey.

Each station you don't use is worth an extra 4 VP though so you've got think carefully about when and if you should use them.

At the end of the game the player with the longest unbroken route of his own trains gets an additional 10 points.

The board can also look very crowded after a 4 player game as above so, even with the addition of the stations, 5 player games can still get a little nasty!