April 2023 Staff Picks!
- Posted on
- By Wes | he/him
- Posted in Staff Picks
Looking for recommendations that will put a spring in your step? Here are the picks blooming for our staff this month!
Every month BHG staff pick out 1-2 of their favorite games to share! We strive to highlight a diverse range of tabletop games!
What would be your top pick this month?
Josh's Pick
Airship City - Grid Movement, Sci-fi Theme, Set Collection, Transportation Theme, Strategy Game, Worker Placement Game
Airship City is a new metropolis high above the ground. By building massive airships, people have created a new floating utopia. But as a new city, it lacks many resources common to ground-based urban areas. It’s up to the high-flying engineers to create these vital buildings. In the end, one will be hailed as the most honored city-builder of them all.
In Airship City, players take on the role of engineers crafting new airships to add to the city’s infrastructure. They will travel around the tiled grid, collecting resources in order to build the ships back in their warehouse. Once completed, they can be sold for money, which is then used to upgrade their workshops, or donated to the city which creates goodwill with the citizens. The engineer with the most victory points at the end of the game is the winner.
-description by publisher
Kyndra's Pick
Rolling Heights - Crowdfunded, Area Control/Influence Game, City Building Game, Dice Game, Push Your Luck Game
Roll Your Meeples, Build the City.
It’s the 1920’s and your career as a general contractor is about to take off. You have just started your business in a rapidly expanding city.
In Rolling Heights, players roll workers in the form of meeples. Standing meeples work hard that day and provide special actions and building materials, while face-down meeples provide nothing. You can always push your luck for better rolls, but you might lose valuable materials you need to construct new buildings. Completing buildings gains you prestige, as well as new workers to help you construct even larger buildings, including skyscapers.
Will you construct the next famous landmark?
Jeff's Pick
Dizzle - Dice Rolling, Roll-N-Write, Dice Games
Draft dice to fill up your scorecard in order to collect gems, connect puzzle pieces, and activate hazards!
In Dizzle, players want to fill their scorecards with dice collected each round. Players take turns selecting dice from the center of the table, and the next die they collect must match the others. At the end of a round, mark all boxes on your scorecard filled with dice.
Soby's Pick
Gloom - Horror Humor Themed, Storytelling, Layering, Hand Management, Take That Game
In the Gloom card game, you assume control of the fate of an eccentric family of misfits and misanthropes. The goal of the game is sad but simple: you want your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. You'll play horrible mishaps like Pursued by Poodles or Mocked by Midgets on your own characters to lower their Self-Worth scores while trying to cheer your opponents' characters with marriages and other happy occasions that pile on positive points. The player with the lowest total Family Value wins.
Printed on transparent plastic cards, Gloom features an innovative design by noted RPG author Keith Baker. Multiple modifier cards can be played on top of the same character card; since the cards are transparent, elements from previously played modifier cards either show through or are obscured by those played above them. You'll immediately and easily know the worth of every character, no matter how many modifiers they have. You've got to see (through) this game to believe it!
Aidan's Pick
Wildstyle - Area Majority/Influence, Real-Time, Set Collection Game
Welcome to Wildstyle, where the city is your canvas and the streets belong to the people. Rock to the beat of your favorite pirate radio station while you and your crew tag the city. Make sure your rivals know where their turf ends and where yours begins. Watch out for the man though, because not everyone in the city appreciates your artistic endeavors and they might call the fuzz on you!
Wildstyle is a competitive game for 2-5 players played in real-time. Quickly grab the cards you need to claim different districts of the town. As your crew takes over train stations, residential blocks, and industrial wastelands, try to complete objectives and maximize your score. This fast and frenetic game is sure to be a hit with gamers of all ages.
- description provided by the distributor
Wes' Pick
Hammer Time - Dexterity, Family, Kids Game
Let‘s get to the mine, it‘s Hammer Time! Players knock the shiny stones off the box in this set collection game. To complete their tasks, they need to collect the right number and color of gemstones. But be careful – anyone who knocks too hard will wake Dragomir the Dragon and lose their loot! The first player to completely fill all four of their wagons wins the game.
Sophi's Pick
Nine Tiles Panic - Pattern-Building, Real-Time, Tile Placement Game
Think Faster!
Race to create your town to the best of your ability as the conditions keep changing. Just completing the town is easy enough, but quickly satisfying all the conditions is enough to make your brain go crazy. From kids to adults, Nine Tiles Panic is a speedy and exciting puzzle game for everyone!
Brendan's Pick
Dragon's Breath - Dexterity, Fantasy Theme, Set Collection, Kids Game
On an exploring adventure, young dragons Mira, Feo, Luna, and Diego discover an unusual column of ice with sparkling stones frozen inside it. They want to bring this treasure to their cave, but the ice column is too heavy to carry. When they try to breathe fire to melt it, they can only manage to make hot air. Then they have an idea: they’ll get their dad to help.
And it works! Dad's fire breathing starts melting the column of ice. Little by little, the sparkling stones start falling out. The dragon children quickly collect the valuable treasures to take them back to their cave. With a little luck, even Dad will get a few of the gems! Which young dragon will collect the most sparkling stones in their cave by the end of this fun dragon game for kids? - description by publisher
Jordan's Pick
Labyrinth - Modular, Map Deformation, Tile Placement, Route-Building Game
Labyrinth (formerly The aMAZEing Labyrinth) has spawned a whole line of Labyrinth games. The game board has a set of tiles fixed solidly onto it; the remaining tiles that make up the labyrinth slide in and out of the rows created by the tiles that are locked in place. One tile always remains outside the labyrinth, and players take turns taking this extra tile and sliding it into a row of the labyrinth, moving all those tiles and pushing one out the other side of the board; this newly removed tile becomes the piece for the next player to add to the maze.
Players move around the shifting paths of the labyrinth in a race to collect various treasures. Whoever collects all of his treasures first and returns to his home space wins!