Become the most famous collector of art and jewelry… Concoct the best perlimpinpin powder on the market… Build a vast and welcoming castle… This is the program for our Games evening for the month of November.
All the practical information (price, duration, difficulty, etc.) on the games of the month are in the box at the end of the article.
“King and Junior Company”, dice to initiate
Damn, a child. Under eight years old at that. Young Louis wants to play a board game, but at 6 years old, he doesn’t yet know how to read well enough for most interesting games. And it would be a shame to break your momentum towards games with something trivial… While there are plenty of games for children aged 6 or under, there are few that allow you to introduce your little ones to more expert games. Let’s try King and Junior Company, kids version of a very clever dice game. It involves building a castle with actions unlocked by dice. You need a little luck, of course, speed too, but above all knowing the benefit-risk ratio of each new throw. It seems like nothing, Louis is taking to the game well. You don’t even have to let him win for him to ask for more. If he continues like this, next time he can try the “from 8 years old” version of the game, King and company, Conquering new territorieswhich allows you to learn about stage and resource management…
“The Charlatans of Belcastel”, simmering a potion without explosion
Little Louis is gone. We will be able to move on to a “big” game. Literally. The Megabox version classic The Charlatans of Belcastel brings together the base game and its two expansions. For the evening game, we introduce Abel (11 years old) and Syméon (8 years old) to the simple version of the game, without the Witches and Alchemists modules SO. Even without that, the game takes up a lot of space on the table. There are plenty of tokens, a central board, and a cauldron for each… The goal of the game is to concoct a potion from various ingredients to scam customers at the Belcastel fair. The danger ? Explode your cauldron. The real risk? Being too cautious and letting others win through their audacity. In addition to the classic “stop or again” system, The Charlatans of Belcastel offers resource and “hand” management. After a lively first part thanks to the game’s theme, very well rendered graphically, the children immediately want to try the extensions. It will be for another time. A game between adults is about to begin…
“The Great Split”, the battle of the collectors
Manue (40 years old) and Steph (43 years old) join Benjamin (44 years old) for a game of The Great Split. If the luxurious individual boards are unanimous, the Belle époque style design of the game divides. The graphic bias allows us to stick an original theme to an otherwise rather abstract game: we play rich collectors who seek to complete their collections, to enrich themselves according to the market, but above all to gain prestige… Card game and track management, The Great Split is quite classic except for one – crucial – detail. Each turn, players must divide their hand of cards into two packs, as they see fit, then give them to their neighbor on the left. In exchange, you receive the cards of your neighbor on the right. You must then choose one of the two packages and return the other to its owner. We thus recover one of his packages. After this manipulation we play our cards which move the tracks forward. After explaining the thing two or three times, the players are accustomed to it and the game speeds up, perhaps a little too much. We arrive quite quickly at the end of the 6 rounds without really having implemented a strategy… Fast and ergonomic, The Great Split still seems to allow devious tactics. We therefore have a good feeling that the game could become a classic of our lunch breaks.
King and Junior Company
From 4 years old, 2 to 4 players, less than 15 minutes, 16 euros.
The Charlatans of Belcastel – Megabox
From 10 years old, 2 to 5 players, games of less than an hour (even with all the extensions), 55 euros.
The Great Split
From 8 years old, 2 to 7 players, games of around 30 minutes (unless you play with kids), 40 euros.