New to Games? 7 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Have you ever had the desire to walk the streets of Victorian London with Sherlock Holmes in search of Professor Moriarty? To search the docks for the giant rat Sumatra? To walk up Baker Street as the fog is rolling in and hear Holmes cry out, “Come, Watson, come! The game is afoot!”? Now you can! You can enter the opium den beneath the Bar of Gold, but beware, that may be Colonel Sebastian Moran lurking around the corner. You can capture the mystery and excitement of Holmes’ London in this challenging and informative game. You, the player, will match your deductive abilities against your opponents and the master sleuth himself, Sherlock Holmes.

In Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, you are presented with a mystery to solve, and it is then up to you to trace the threads of evidence through the byways and mansions of nineteenth century London. You will interview suspects, search the newspapers for clues, and put together the facts to reach a solution.

Why were two lions murdered in Hyde Park? Who is responsible for the missing paintings from the National Gallery? Who murdered Oswald Mason and why? These are just a few of the cases that will challenge your ingenuity and deductive abilities.

This is not a board game: No dice, no luck, but a challenge to your mental ability. The game has been thoroughly researched for Holmesian and Victorian accuracy so as to capture a feeling of that bygone era.

The Mandala: the symbol of an ancient and sacred ritual. Colored sand is laid to create a symbolic map of the world before the pattern is ceremonially destroyed and the sand cast into the river. In the two-player game Mandala, you are trying to score more than your opponent by collecting valuable cards — but … Read more

Wavelength is a social guessing game in which two teams compete to read each other’s minds. Teams take turns rotating a dial to where they think a hidden bullseye is located on a spectrum. One of the players on your team — the Psychic — knows exactly where the bullseye is, and draws a card with a pair of binaries on it (such as: Job – Career, Rough – Smooth, Fantasy – Sci-Fi, Sad Song – Happy Song, etc). The Psychic must then provide a clue that is *conceptually* where the bullseye is located between those two binaries.

Stockpile is an economic board game that combines the traditional stockholding strategy of buy low, sell high with several additional mechanisms to create a fast-paced, engaging and interactive experience.

In battle, there are no equals. Unmatched is a highly asymmetrical miniature fighting game for two or four players. Each hero is represented by a unique deck designed to evoke their style and legend. Tactical movement and no-luck combat resolution create a unique play experience that rewards expertise, but just when you’ve mastered one set, new … Read more

Lead your clan of rabbits to glory by gathering resources and building new cities across the land! Draft cards and pick the right ones to position your warrens on the 100 squares of the board, provide resources to your colonies, build new cities to increase your influence, and plan your strategy to score big at … Read more

The KLASK game board is shaped like a ball field with two deep holes functioning as goals in each end of the field. In the middle of the field, three white magnetic pieces serve as “obstacles” – do NOT attract them to your own gaming piece! Your gaming piece is a black magnet. You control it by holding a large magnet under the board. This magnet is connected to a small magnet placed on the field. The purpose of the game is to push the small, red ball around on the field with your magnet/gaming piece, shoot the ball past the obstacles and your opponent and into the goal hole (Klask). It’s so much fun when your opponent suddenly is covered in white obstacles or you drop your gaming piece into the goal – something which might happen if you get a little too eager!

Do we really have free will? Who decides this? Are we controlled by what we hear and what we see, even while thinking we decide freely? Insider is a game that deals with these questions. While communicating to others, you have to find the right answers to a quiz or find the “insider” who is manipulating the discussion. The insider will do everything to hide their identity while misleading the others.

In more detail, players are assigned roles at random. One player is the “master”, and they secretly select a word from a set given in a deck of cards. (In a variant given in the rulebook, they can freely select and write down a word.) The “insider” player, whose role is not known to the other players, will then secretly view the word. The rest of the players are known as “commons”. The commons then have approximately five minutes in which to ask the master “yes” or “no”-type questions so that they can deduce the secret word. The insider attempts to secretly lead the commons towards the correct word. If the commons fail to guess the correct word, everyone loses.

If, however, the word is correctly guessed in the allowable time, the master flips the sand timer, and the commons and master have until the sand runs out to discuss the game and deduce the identity of the insider. If they guess correctly, they win the game together; if they do not, the insider wins.

Nickelodeon’s Splat Attack! is a 2-4 player game which puts players in control of teams from different brands as they fling food, fight for control of areas, use special abilities to come out the cleanest and avoid getting knocked out. The base game includes 16 highly detailed miniatures of your favorite characters and a whole plate filled with game components and card board elements. Designed by Jonathan Ying (Doom and Imperial Assault) this game is made for miniature games fans and new gamers. SpongeBob and Patrick taking on Tommy and Angelica for control of the food court is what this game is all about!

There’s confusion among the Yōkai! These Japanese spirits have become intermingled in Yōkai, and to calm them, you have to group together members of the same family. They’re hiding, however, so to carry out your task successfully, you have to be clever and not make any noise to avoid frightening them…

Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective

Mandala

Wavelength

Stockpile

Unmatched: Battle of Legends

Bunny Kingdom

KLASK

Insider

Nickelodeon Splat Attack

Yokai

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