Tag Archives: ICECOOL

Boardgames in the News: Harshad Gothankar’s Flicking Amazing Feet

Harshad Gothankar from Mumbai was born without arms, so he does everything with his feet—including playing Carrom.  Carom is a flicking game played in south Asia that is similar to the north American/Canadian game Crokinole and more modern descendents like Flick ’em Up!, ICECOOL, Subbuteo and PitchCar (or Carabande).

Harshad Gothankar
– Image by Mumbai Games on facebook.com

Harshad Gothankar has always been a remarkable young man with a passion for playing the national sport of cricket and is now also a state Carrom champion.  He recently became an internet phenomenon, however, when cricket superstar Sachin Tendulkar highlighted his determination in a post on his social media feed.
– From twitter.com

Boardgames in the News: Another Five Great Family Games to Play at Christmas

Four years ago, we posted a list of ten great games that are ideal to play with the family at Christmas.  That list is still valid of course, but there are so many great games out there now that we decided to put together another list of ten – and these are just as good!  As before, they are all readily available online and/or in dedicated boardgame shops.

    1. ICECOOL & ICECOOL2 – This is a fantastic little chase game guaranteed to get kids of all ages involved.  Players take it in turn to try to catch the others who are flicking their “Weeble-like” penguins around the three dimensional board collecting fish.  The two versions can also be combined to give different layouts and play twice as many people for twice as much fun.
      Target Audience: Families; ages 6+
      Game Time: From half an hour up.
      Price:  Approximately £30 from amazon.co.uk.

      ICECOOL
      – Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312
    2. Boom Boom Balloon – This is a very silly, simple game, that is a huge amount of fun for kids and adults alike.  Essentially, everyone takes it in turns to push sticks into a balloon with stress levels rising until it inevitably bursts.  The balloons are slightly toughened so they take a huge amount of punishment, ramping up the tension…
      Target Audience: Friends & Families with ages 2+
      Game Time: 5 mins though it takes a little time and puff to set up the balloon in the frame.
      Price:  £10-20 from amazon.co.uk.

      Boom Boom Balloon
      – Image by boardGOATS
    3. Ca$h ‘n Guns – Nothing says Christmas quite like waving a foam gun at Grandma!  This is a fun bluffing party game where players are gangsters and anyone left in at the end of the round shares the loot.  The player with the most loot after eight rounds is the winner.  Hilarious fun, but nowadays, the involvement of guns (even foam ones) means its not really suitable for children under ten.
      Target Audience: Older children and adults; ages 10+
      Game Time: 45-60 mins
      Price:  Readily available for around £25-30.

      Ca$h 'n Guns
      – Image by boardGOATS
    4. Azul – This is one that is likely to appeal to those who like Scrabble, but lose because they can’t be bothered to learn a dictionary off by heart.
      Target Audience: 10 and up
      Game Time: 30-45 minutes
      Price:  £30-40 from amazon.co.uk.

      Dobble
      – Image by boardgamephotos
    5. Just One – This is a clever party game where everyone plays together to do the best they can as a team.  A sort of “word charades”, in each round one person guesses which of five words is the right one, while everyone else offers clues.  With everyone working together, this is a lot of fun with a family group and ideal for families at Christmas.
      Target Audience: age 8+ though they need good literacy skills
      Game Time: 20 mins per game plus a few minutes setting up
      Price:  approximately £20 from amazon.co.uk.

      Just One
      – Adapted from image by BGG contributor kalchio

Pink’s sPecial Party

It being a very special day for Pink, he decided he wanted to spend it playing games with friends and family at the Jockey.  The early arrivals set up PitchCar, including the new “Loop” expansion and others played Loopin’ Louis, Patchwork Express, Dobble and the surprise hit, Boom Boom Balloon.  Little-Lime won PitchCar (perhaps flicking talent runs in the family as Lime himself managed to complete the  loop at least three times), and almost everyone managed to lose Boom Boom Balloon at least once.  Late in the afternoon, a game of Scotland Yard was started with Pink as the fugitive, and finished almost before it was begun when he was quickly captured.  It was then restarted with Mrs. Lime as the fugitive and turned into an epic game that went on for a couple of hours with a brief break as people tucked into the buffet supper and amazing sticky-toffee pudding cake-desert provided by the Jockey Kitchen.

Boom Boom Balloon
– Image by boardGOATS

The evening continued with more games including No Thanks!, Finstere Flure (a.k.a. Fearsome Floors), Saboteur, …Aber Bitte mit Sahne (a.k.a. Piece o’ Cake) and Ice Cool.  The team of five eventually managed to corner Mrs. Lime, freeing up Pink to play his special request, Captain Sonar, which his team fittingly won, twice.  This was followed by a game of Ca$h ‘n Guns (it is always fun entertaining the bar staff by waving foam pistols about and threatening to shoot each other), before finishing with 6 Nimmt!, a game to match Pink’s socks.  It was a great day, and we all went home tired, but very happy, with Pink and Blue keen to thank everyone for sharing Pink’s sPecial day.

6 Nimmt!
– Image by boardGOATS

Deutscher Spiele Preis – 2017

In 1990 the German magazine “Die Pöppel-Revue” introduced The Deutscher Spiele Preis, or German Game Prize, which is now awarded annually at the Internationale Spieltage, Essen.  While the Spiel des Jahres rewards family games and is awarded by a panel of judges, the Deutscher Spiele Preis is awarded based on votes from the industry’s stores, magazines, professionals and game clubs.  For this reason the Deutscher Spiele Preis tends to reflect “gamers games” and is usually more in line with the Kennerspiel des Jahres.  This year the award went to Terraforming Mars with the winner of the International Gamers Award, Great Western Trail, as runner up.  The 2017 Spiel des Jahres winner Kingdomino was joint sixth with the Kennerspiel des Jahres nominee Raiders of the North Sea.  Ice Cool, winner of the this years Kinderspiel des Jahres, also won the Deutsche Kinderspielepreis.

Terraforming Mars
– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312

In Terraforming Mars, players take the role of giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, to initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment on Mars is habitable. Players then buy project cards into their hand and later, when they have the resources needed, they can play the cards and ultimately place tiles on Mars itself. There are three different types of cards: Red cards provide actions that have an instant effect and are then discarded until the end of the game; Green cards have a one-off effect but their “tags” are retained, and Blue cards have an ongoing effect and/or an action that can be activated once per round. It is building these card combinations that is at the core of what we have found to be an interesting game.

Terraforming Mars
– Image by boardGOATS

Spiel des Jahres Winners – 2017

The 2017 winner of the coveted German Game of the Year or Spiel des Jahres award is Kingdomino.  Kingdomino is a simple little tile laying game with elements borrowed from other games, in particular, Carcassonne and Dominoes.  These are combined to make a well presented family game where players taking it in turns to add to their kingdom by placing dominoes that depict different terrains types.  We have played Kingdomino several times on a Tuesday evening and everyone who has played it has enjoyed it.  Discussing it among the group, everyone has felt that it is a fun, light filler that is very accessible and is a worthy winner.  The Kennerspiel des Jahres was awarded at the same time.  This honours more challenging games and was first introduced in 2011 to make up for the fact that the main, Spiel des Jahres award had moved away from the slightly more involved fare (like El Grande and TIkal) towards lighter, more family friendly games (like Dixit and Qwirkle).

Kingdomino
– Image by boardGOATS

Unusually, this year the Kennerspiel des Jahres award went to a series of games:  EXIT: Das Spiel.  These are cooperative games that reproduce the experience of an escape room by providing a series of puzzles inside a game box.  There are currently five of these games, though the award is for the first three, The Abandoned Cabin, The Pharaoh’s Tomb, and The Secret Lab.  Unfortunately, as a group we rarely play cooperative games and are not huge fans of the modern trend for social deduction type games, which  means we are unlikely to play this soon on a Tuesday evening.  The Kinderspiel des Jahres award was announced last month and went to Ice Cool which is a beautiful dexterity race game with cool little “weeble” penguins and wooden fish pegs.

Ice Cool
– Image used with permission of punkin312

Spiel des Jahres Nominations 2017

Today, the Spiel des Jahres Award nominations were announced.  There are three awards, a children’s game award (Kinderspiel des Jahres) and the two that interest us more, the “Advanced” or “Expert” Kennerspiel des Jahres and the main award, the Spiel des Jahres (which is often interpreted as the “Family Game” award).  This year there are three nominees in each category:

We’ve discussed the possible nominations a couple of times within the group, but nobody really had much idea this year.  Part of this is because we’ve not really engaged with many of these, though Kingdomino did come up and we are planning to play Terraforming Mars on 30th May, so we will be able to make our minds up about that one then.  Fabled Fruit, Captain Sonar, Great Western Trail and The Grizzled also came up in our discussions and these were recommended by the Jury.  The winner of the Kinderspiel des Jahres will be announced in Hamburg on 19th June, with the Spiel and Kennerspiel des Jahres a month later in Berlin on 17th July.

Spiel des Jahres
– Image from spieldesjahres.de

 

Boardgames in the News: The Monthly Game Guardian

In recent years it has become increasingly acceptable to play boardgames, so much so that there are now regular articles in the national press – in particular The Guardian who have had a dedicated boardgames area in their “Lifestyle” section for some time.  They now also have a regular monthly guide designed to help people “find the best games” and “steer clear of disappointing duds”.  This is written by Owen Duffy who writes for the Guardian on a range of subjects and until recently ran the tabletop gaming blog Cardboard Sandwich.  The first article showcases four games that even some dedicated gamers might not be aware of:  Ice Cool, Ticket to Ride: Rails & Sails, Mystic Vale and Sneaky Cards.  Owen has a real love of playing boardgames and is genuinely knowledgable about them, so the “Boarders Hoard” is definitely worth keeping an eye out for.

Ice Cool
– Image used with permission of BGG contributor punkin312