This week’s comic is about the game “Abandon All Artichokes” and is a small reversed deckbuilding game by Emma Larkins. What? A reversed deckbuilding game? Yes, sort of! You start the game with ten artichokes in your deck and the first player who draws a new hand of cards without a single artichoke is the winner! We bought it a few weeks ago and have played often since! It’s quick and quirky and the art is adorable.

Last week, we were spoiled to bits and received a lot of games from Pandasaraus Games and Czech Games Edition! So far, we’ve played Ctrl, Lost Ruins of Arnak, and Under Falling Skies!

Ctrl is an original 3D game in which players try to the most points by having the most blocks of their color visible from the four sides views and top view at the end of the game. At the end of their turns, players can stick a flag pole in one of their blocks to block the other player. We really enjoyed that with just two players, both players get to place two colors on the cube, but can only score with one of them at the end of the game and that information is secret (they’ve drawn a card at the beginning of the game). So both players don’t actually know what the other player is planning and that gives it a neat edge. We don’t know how often we will play this game, but we did figure that this might be an excellent couch game while watching a series or movie. We’ll try that soon. 😀

We’ve only played the introductory level of Under Falling Skies and the first level of the campaign, and there’s a lot in this box! We didn’t realize there was a campaign and even comic story in there so we were really surprised by all of this when we opened the box and are looking forward to exploring more of the game!

Yesterday we’ve also played Lost Ruins of Arnak and that game is something! In a positive way! It’s also one of those games in which you’ll get better and you have to accept that you won’t be able to do everything that’s possible in the game. The completionist in me had to learn that the hard way. 😉 Curious to find out how this game is after playing it a few times!

What else did we play…? Yes, of course, Meeple Land! Another success! We didn’t own any theme park games and this one hit the right note. It’s a delightful puzzle. You’re trying to get all the different rides in your park but the roads also have to connect correctly. Oh, and of course you get extra income if you place a certain service like food or gift shop or toilet next to some rides. And then there are the visitors! The player who passes first during a round, gets to pick the first bus of meeples. Since tiles only accommodate specific colors of meeples, it’s important to get the right bus for your park. Well, all in all, there’s a lot going on to make this game challenging and a delight to play.