Don't forget Homeworld. I've gained an interest in board games. I'm eyeing Roll for the Galaxy, Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, and Blood Rage.
Roll for the Galaxy (2-5 players, best with 3) is a dice game in which you roll dice. Dice are nice. There are brightly colored dice. Everybody gets them and gets to roll them a lot. You play as a civilization in space. You collect planet tiles and technology tiles to build a space economy. Planets give you dice. And you win by shipping out your produced goods (dice) with your little ship dice. There are military dice and science dice and normal dice. Guys, I think I like dice. It even comes with good quality dice cups, and it has good explanatory text on the tiles and components so that you don't have to memorize all the rules.
Deception: Murder in Hong Kong (4-12 players, best with 6) has you playing as either a forensic scientist or one of the detectives visiting the forensic scientist. A murder happened and the forensic scientist knows who did it, and how he did it, and what clue was left behind. But he can't tell you any of it or the murderer, one of the detectives present, will kill him. Instead he has to do his job and describe the corpse's condition through cards that he draws. Was the act of murder drawn out or not? Is the clothing on the corpse gone, neat, or ruined? What day did he die? Meanwhile the detectives try to figure out who at the table is the one who committed the crime, with what weapon and what clue was left behind. Everybody has one shot to accuse someone else, and all the forensic scientist will say is "you are correct", or more likely, "no".
Blood Rage (2-4 players, best with 4) is a viking game from CoolMiniOrNot. They make real pretty components. But it's not all about graphics, and they know it. You play as a viking clan, bashing your friends' heads in, while pieces of the island around you explode because of the Ragnarok, a viking apocalypse. It features one of the best board game mechanics to date: card drafting. It ensures that you have seen almost all the cards that will be played in one of three rounds, while also allowing you to set up a good hand with a strategy for that round. There is almost no luck to this game, but a lot of tactics, and ways to play the game. Losing people is not necessarily bad. Oftentimes it's actually part of the plan. The dead go to Walhalla, and each round they will be pulled back out to bash some more heads in. You can plunder the island, you can fulfill quests, recruit monsters and develop your clan. It looks like a really fun game.
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