Our board games suggestions

Suggestions for board games to discover with family, couples or friends.

Pierre-Marc Durivage
Press

Castles and catapults

We are here halfway between the toy and the game, because the objective is to shoot down the opposing soldiers hidden behind their fortress using a catapult and a cannonball, literally! The game aspect is represented by cards that allow certain special actions such as repositioning its troops or rebuilding its defenses. The key to victory therefore lies in controlling the catapult, which is activated by a rubber band. Building a fortress worthy of the name is also worth its weight in gold.

“My favorite is that it’s a really tactile game, it’s very different from classic board games,” exclaimed our teenage tester. Insightful, his cousin points out that the end of the game is only to shoot balls. “I would have liked that to be able to take again cards to have more options of play and strategy, she maintained. But I liked it, you don’t have to worry too much, it’s fun to play with your family, with your cousins. ”

Calico

In a much more zen register, Calico consists of making a quilt with the aim of attracting kittens. A very original tile placement game, therefore, with different types of objectives, whether it is to constitute a series of tiles, to group together identical colors or patterns or to achieve certain patterns represented by objective cards. . Each completed objective is represented by a kitten token that is placed on the quilt, with different types of kittens granting different numbers of victory points.

“The game is wonderful, it’s nice to juggle the different patterns and possible challenges,” suggests one of our seasoned testers. It’s a balanced game, you don’t end up with disproportionate scores compared to other players, the actions you favor are at the expense of the other options that are offered. All the players however pointed out that it is a game which is played without real interactions with the other players, very quiet, perhaps a little too much for some.

King & Company

A simple little dice game built around the dynamics of Yahtzee, where you roll the dice in order to obtain the services of characters from a kingdom that is both wacky and fanciful. The more difficult the combination of dice is to achieve, the more victory points the character obtained in return is worth. Be careful, however, not to take too many risks, because you end up with a silly thief in your hand, which removes points from your final harvest.

“Sometimes the cascade of cards is just cards with hard-to-achieve dice goals, which happens mostly in the middle of the game,” notes our veteran tester. These cards are then concentrated and we accumulate negative scores. But having said that, this is the only slightly more negative element that I noticed. So you have to be able to endure disappointment and despair… Well, micro-despair, let’s say! ”