M635 J520

Back in the days before rediscovering modern tabletop games we played classic card games quite a bit. One of the best features of those is, obviously, their travel-friendliness. Literally hundreds , and possibly thousands, of games can be played with just one standard deck of cards. (I should really revisit some of those, I realise!) Problem Even games that consist mainly of cards come with their own deck of specially designed cards now. (This is pretty obvious, as how/why would people buy these games otherwise?) For immersion and rules recollection that is neat, but for travelling this adds unwanted bulkiness.  Solution Lately I have compressed my travel gaming by bringing one tiny game that allows for playing several others, namely " 6 nimmt! ". Great games that work with this relatively small deck of cards are: 6 nimmt itself, obviously. An amazing game that plays from 2 to 10(!) players with increasing degrees of haphazardness - two player is an ...

Second batch of rented games tested on the kids!* Monza Monza (as in the Italian F1 race track) is a classic dice-based racing game from Haba. Overview Players control cars racing around a colourful three-lane oval track using handfuls of colourful dice. The goal of the game is to, well, win the race. Each round a player throws 6 dice - each with the same six colours on its sides. Any dic result lets you move to an adjacent place on the board of that colour, as long as you move forward, forever forward. It's up to the player to chose the order in which their dice are spent. And that is where the game manages to introduce basic concepts of tactics. Rare stuff in a game for 5 year olds, but it works well here. Components Nice wooden race cars, efficient wooden dice. Nice, big enough player board. (Maybe it could have benefited a double sided board (ala Automobiles from AEG) for longevity?) From what age? Box says five, and I tend to agree. Some tactical thinking is ne...