Some quick impressions on my first experiences with a couple of new games.
Century: Spice Road
This is a decent little engine builder where you use various acquired cards to get and swap “spices” (colored cubes) in order to get the proper combinations to trade them for victory point cards.
Not much to say positive or negative about this one. It’s accessible and solid but a little bland for my tastes and nothing about it stands out enough for me to be in a rush to play again. Would likely be a good gateway game though, and what it does it does well so it’ll definitely appeal to a fair number of gamers more than it does to me.
I’ve heard this compared favorably to Splendor, but I personally can’t speak about that as I’ve never played the latter.
Einstein: His Amazing Life and Incomparable Science
That full title is a mouthful. Einstein is a quick, fun game that’s simple to play but has a nice sense of depth. Each player has the same number of four set shapes to play (representing different academic disciplines) but unique “ideas” (compound shapes) on cards in their hands that they are trying to create in the central play area. The catch is any basic shapes of your opponents’ that you use give them bonuses. The shapes fit together well and in interesting ways and a general pool of “major idea” cards that anyone can complete add nice options. Cool little light abstract.
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Will be back with more soon. 🙂
Derailments of Thought 