Here at Boardgaming Central Headquarters, we're busy hammering out a schedule and events, which we'll slowly be releasing here over the next month or two. Let's lead off with:
Deck-building games
A deck of cards: possibly the most ubiquitous form a game can come in. You draw from a deck into your hand, you play from your hand. But in recent years, games have arisen with a novel twist on this old idiom : you construct your deck as you play the game. Interested? Come along, let us teach you how to play examples of this genre, or just watch a demonstration. Lets look at a few examples:
Dominion
This is where it all started. Each player starts with an identical and very small deck of cards. In the centre of the table is a selection of other cards they can buy on their turn, to add to their deck. Whoever has the most victory points at the end of the game wins. Simple.
But it's not so simple. The cards you buy have interesting powers. Some can be used to "buy" other cards. Some can be used to get another action. Some can be used to draw more cards from your deck. Some will interfere with other players. With the market of cards to buy from being randomly selected from at the start of the game, there's a huge variety of tactics and it all starts to get very tricky ...
Dominion won the 2009 BoardGameGeek Game of The Year award, the 2009 Games 100, Best Family Strategy Game award, the 2009 Spiel des Jahres award and others. More information about it can be found at: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/36218/dominion
Sentinels of the Multiverse
Sentinels recreates colossal comic book battles. Players are various superheroes (all with their own impressive powers and abilities) trying to defeat a supervillain and their cornucopia of sidekicks and evil schemes. Mad scientist! Invading aliens! Rampaging robots! It can all happen in Sentinels.
Sentinels is a cooperative, game where the superheroes, supervillain and even the environment (where the battle takes place, e.g. city, moon, etc.). are selected randomly at the start of the game. The villain and the environment are represented by decks of cards that "play themselves" during the game, generating hazards and attacks on players. The scientist has launched a set of killer robots! And that cable-car of innocent civilians is about to crash! Players in their turn must use their own cars to attack or defuse the hazards. Freeze the giant lizard! Prop up that falling building! If the villain kills all the heroes or achieves their dastardly plan, the world is lost.
More information on Sentinels can be found here: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/102652/sentinels-of-the-multiverse