11/21 Featured Games

Hi everybody!

Tomorrow (November 21st) FND will be hosting its regularly scheduled game night!
We will be featuring (per my beautiful wife's suggestion) games that involves ANIMALS!
What could be more fun, right?  I mean, look at those two cutiepies to the right.  Okay, so in most of the games you'll end up turning them into lambchops and bacon, but they're cute while they last, right?

Anyways, the games we'll be playing are a fleet of highly regarded games that haven't seen much table-time at FND yet so I'm quite excited.  Let's look at 'em!

Agricola/Caverna

Both of these games, Agircola and Caverna, are by very highly regarded designer Uwe Rosenburg.  In Agricola you're normal 14th century peasants trying to raise a farm.  In Caverna you're dwarf adventurers.... trying to raise a farm.  Caverna is essentially Agricola's sequal and they're quite similar.  Personally I like them both a great deal and I've heard good reasons for preferring either over the other.  Either way, these are some of the best games the hobby has to offer - both are in BGG's top 10 with Agricola taking the top spot for a spell a few years back (it has since been dethroned).

In these games you're trying to successfully raise a farm - it sounds boring, but it's quite fun as there are tons of things to do and never quite enough time to do them.  Most importantly for our theme's sake, part of this means raising a whole host of animals!  Doggies, sheepies, piggies, cowies, donkeyies.... Yeah, you end up eating them sometimes, but sometimes you don't!  Yay!

Evolution

Evolution is a brand new release by North Star Games and involves players guiding the evolution of various species and trying to come out with the most flourishing animals.  You develop different
traits, making hunters, herbivores, scavengers, and all sorts of different creatures.  North Star did a wonderful job with the components and I own the Kickstarter version so I have some different cards and fancier player board AND a fancy plastic brontosaurus so what more could you want?

Dungeon Petz

Dungeon Petz has been featured before but is yet to actually be played.  It is a rather amusingly themed game where players are taking control of a pet store.  The pet stores don't have puppies and kittens, however... They raise monsters and creatures used by the villains who run dungeons.  So you m
ay be raising a dragon or a gollum or any other kind of creature with more eyes than legs.  For being such a light-hearted theme it's actually a somewhat complex game but it is great fun.  I've really enjoyed it each time I've played and not just because there are cubes that represent animal poop, though admittedly that's part of it.

Takenoko

Takenoko is a very light game that is great for new gamers or people who want something not super heavy.  In it you are simply a bamboo farmer trying to please the Japanese Emperor.  There's a big painted panda trying to eat your bamboo.  He's cute.  He's panda-y.  Its nothing super complex but the art is absolutely gorgeous and it is a pretty fun little game.

Robinson Crusoe

This one somewhat loosely involves animals, but its an AMAZING game and we're still yet to play it at FND so I'm sticking it on here more out of stubborness than anything else.  Players are stranded on an island (where they have to eat animals and not be eaten by animals - see that loose connection to the theme?) where they must survive.  It's a coop
erative game that is brilliantly thematic and, again, one of the best board games in existance. 

I think that's all of the animal games we'll be bringing, but others are certainly welcome to bring some - particularly games like Dominant Species, Zooloretto, and more.