Removing a card to reveal the card below it often leads to another face-off directly after, creating a vibe of intense expectation punctured by hectic bursts of sudden activity. If any two symbols around the table match when a card is flipped, those two players are in a “face-off” whoever says an example of something in the category on their opponent’s card takes the card and wins that point. Gameplay continues with each player flipping another card face-up in front of them, covering the previous card. The categories can be everything from “Rock opera” to “Last name” and are broad enough to lead to debates at the table (“Do sea monkeys really count as pets?”). Each card has one of six colored symbols and a category. How it’s played: Players pick one of the included decks, and each flips a card face-up in front of them. But if you do get bored with this version (or, more likely, once your game group has memorized all of the cards), there are other editions, including Anomia Party and Anomia X, that add all-new card decks while keeping the same gameplay dynamic. Anomia is also replayable because the rounds usually take less than half an hour and there are almost 100 cards that can come up. Yet in practice it develops dramatic tension as cards are flipped, symbols are revealed, and players race to come up with an answer before someone else does. Mechanically, it’s a simple word- and pattern-recognition game. Anomia is firmly in the latter category, and I’ve often worried that my more-competitive friends would lose their voices after playing. Then there are games that are so quick, with such engaging energy, that if you play them too late at night, your neighbors might end up filing a noise complaint. Why we love it: Some games require sharp focus, advance planning, and subtle strategy, and this can lead to a lot of intense, furrowed-brow looks around a silent table. Whoever collects the most gold (earned mostly by acquiring land) throughout the game wins. This continues for a number of rounds, depending on the number of players. And on their next turn, players pick a new race/power combo to use. As players expand their empires and come into conflict with each other, they eventually run out of useful tiles, which they can then turn over (the game calls this “going into decline.”) The pieces stay on the board and can still accrue points (but they can no longer be used to gain new territory). Once a player picks their characters, they get a set of tiles representing their troops during their turn they use the tiles to take over land on the board. For instance, if you pick up Wizards with a Flying power, you get bonus gold for occupying magic spaces (the Wizards feature), and you can send your troops anywhere on the board (the Flying feature). Each race is paired with a separately shuffled stack of powers, which modify what the troops of that race can do. How it’s played: At the beginning of the game, every player gets to select a fantasy race to control from a shuffled stack.

Hard west board game