What we're playing - July 2018

As this blazing hot summer continues, sometimes you just need to get out of the sun and get around a nice air-conditioned games table with a long cold drink. Here's what we've been drubbing each other at this month:

1. Unstable Unicorns. Another game made possible by Kickstarter, with fun art and design that makes it an attractive, if sometimes frustrating game. Try and build a stable of 7 unicorns while preventing the others from doing the same. Takes some getting used to and the art lies in getting a few unicorns with effects that allow you to borrow or steal more of other people's cards. Also some really funny descriptions of the cards themselves.

2. Monopoly Ultimate Banking. Monopoly is a dirty word for many 'serious' gamers, and is lampooned for its roll & move mechanism and for its general corporateness! But I still like it and this version dispenses with the tedium of houses and hotels and automates all the adding and subtracting through a credit card machine, which also manages all the fines. It even tots up all your property and tells you who's won at the end (which kicks in when one player has gone bankrupt). This means you can get a full game done in about an hour and for me makes it a lot more accessible than the original version.

3. Codenames. Love this, and it's a really good filler (15 minute) game that everyone can play, but that still really makes you think. Game variations (pictures, words and an advanced version of each) mean you can calibrate the game according to the capability of your players, or change it to make it more or less complex as the game session progresses. So you can make it more complex when the kids have gone to bed, and simplify it back down again when everyone's had too much wine...

Happy gaming!