My September Gaming

During September, most of my gaming was playing Roll and Writes. They just fit well into limited time and space needs while still giving me a full gaming experience.

I learned the following games:

Knaster

Trek 12

Super Slopes

Not a big month for learning games but there are some good experiences there.

Knaster is really a revision of Wurfel Bingo and one that does improve on the design. That said, it doesn’t really bring a new experience to the table. It does its job but it doesn’t sparkle.

On the other hand, Trek 12 did sparkle for me. It took the act of writing numbers on the board, which I may well have done in a hundred different games at this point, and made it feel new again. A number of ways to manipulate the numbers and reasons to consider connections. And the different boards really did feel different.

I printed off boards from the publisher’s website so I could play the basic game. And their clever plan worked because I am now seriously thinking about buying the game.

Super Slopes is an 18-card game from Button Shy which isn’t a Roll and Write. It’s a tile-laying game about building ski slopes. I need to play it more to get a real opinion on it but I do think it has promise and I like the solitaire option. It’s biggest ‘flaw’ for me is that you’re building a map brick style and other Button Shy games like Insurmountable and Wild River have covered that ground. That made it harder for me to judge Super Slopes on its own merits.

I also revisited Tanuki Matsuri, a game that I played during lockdown back in 2020. At that time, I quite liked it. And, going back to this simple game of cascading effects, I still find it engaging and it’s back on my regular playlist.