Freshly added to BGG, February 9, 2022

Way too many games? No, Way Too Many Cats! Who can disagree with that? If you’re curious about it, it’s a “competitive drafting spatial puzzle game” about cats that you adopt, while trying to avoid to be overrun by kittens. A bit like your regular Gremlins I guess.

When some speak about cats, other will reply “dogs”. Or Underdogs in this particular case. Actually it still features cats, alongside krakens, wizards, aliens, and werewolves. It’s a deck management game featuring an exciting Fantasy sport that, like most sports, revolve around a ball that must be put in some place.

Which makes it a competitor for Basketball Legends I guess. This game sure looks dry (maybe it’s a prototype?), but at least it’s statistically accurate, so who cares about the looks when you get the numbers right. It’s a dice rolling game, if mechanics also matter. Maybe it would be thematic if you were awarded bonus points each time you manage to throw them through a ring when you roll.

OK, let’s be serious for a minute here, and focus on what sport really is about: Envelopes of Cash! You play as the manager of a college football team and do your best to hire the most promising players. You can also pursue alternative scoring routes, for example by funding culture programs, but I guess they’re only included to teach you what really matters in high school management.

Anyway, why bother with good culture programs, when all you need is to be the most successful Art Thief? In this game you build a maze card by card, moving your thief across the newly made rooms while trying to dodge the guards. It’s a tin box game whose availability is rather dubious.

If you succeed in thieving whatever valuable stuff you were after, maybe you can lie low for a while and spend the money to make a trip around the world for some year-long Globetrotting? The game features bingo mechanics, shared objectives with your neighbors, an overall race against your competitors, so, you can surely expect a solo mode that seamlessly blend in.

Anyway, while you’re at it, stop over in Damascus and join a Weaver Guild in Damask, a game about weaving some nice and pretty silk-made patterns. The goal is to make the most beautiful ones, so you can make money and continue your trip at the same luxurious pace of spending as before.

Keep on much further East up until Bangkok, where you can start a new career as entrepreneur and try to keep afloat a barge market. Draft, complete secret objectives to baffle the AI who didn’t see that coming at all (I have no clue whether the solo mode really features an AI or not), and most importantly, make lots of money to grab the victory. It’s a French game, again, but entirely language independent (and I can translate the rules to English and post them on BGG if any of you ends up being interested, purchases it, and somehow manages to remember my fleeting promise).

But really, you should think to retire in France so I can flood you with French games without remorse, and incidentally also so you can start your own Age of Champagne. Another French game, this time with an English edition (bilingual actually). It’s a worker placement game about becoming the Cellar Master of the decade.

And since I now made you all secretly yearn for making booze instead of playing stupid board games about failing starships or gardening, I am suggesting you Wine Management, a roll and write PnP about, well, making wine. Harvest, process, complete orders, hire workers, and all this purple liquid gold will flow under your undisputed authority.

Now that you’ve all got what you really wanted, I’ll end the tour with two expansions, starting with VENOM Assault: Evolution. In 2071, the Master Vampires emerge from a 600 years slumber and side with VENOM, a global terrorist organization that subverted the use of alien technology. To face this threat you can enhance your Recruits. They can even become a Pack Master who will control battle-trained snow lynxes – because you never can have way too many cats in a board game.

Last, a new expansion for Spirit Island has popped up on BGG, Feather & Flame, but apparently no one talks about it yet.

#WayTooManyCats #Underdogs #BasketballLegends #EnvelopesOfCash #ArtThief #Globetrotting #Damask #Bangkok #AgeOfChampagne #WineManagement #VENOMAssaultEvolution #SpiritIsland #FeatherAndFlame

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All images taken from the respective game's pages on BGG.