Board Game Review: Wise and Otherwise

Wise and Otherwise is the intellectual elite big brother of party game Balderdash. But instead of words, you deal with proverbs. One designated Reader each round reads the first few words of a proverb, along with the country of origin. Everyone else then writes down an ending to the proverb and passes that to the Reader to be read aloud, along with the correct ending. For instance, an example proverb would be “There’s an old Croatian saying: ‘Those who eat porridge…’” So it’s your job to come up with a convincing ending! Once all the endings have been read aloud, everyone guesses the right one. You get points for being correct, and points if people guess your answer. I really enjoy creative games like this. It can be a little mentally exhausting, and ego bruising if no one ever chooses your proverbs, but it can also be hilarious. There’s always one person in the group who writes the most ridiculous, laughter-inducing phrases. Then there’s always those rounds when the actual proverb is so unbelievably weird and funny that no one votes for it! I recommend the game, especially if you’re looking to trying to spice up your party game repertoire.

My biggest criticism of Wise and Otherwise is that there’s a board included, which is just dumb. It helps with scoring, so the player who reaches the end of the board first wins the game. This just seems wasteful – it’s just as easy to keep score on a piece of paper (or smart phone) and announce when the first player has reached 20. The inclusion of an unnecessary board seems like a ploy to make you think this is a bigger, more expensive game than it should be. Lose the board and shave ten bucks off the price and now we’re talking.

THE BASICS:

Play Time: 45 minutes

Number of Players: 2-6.

Suggested age: 12 and up.

Published: By wiseandotherwise.com, 1997

Buy: I found it on Amazon for $42. Internet pickings seems slim. Board Game Geek doesn’t rate it very highly, so I’m wondering if this game just kind of died out. Don’t forget to check your local friendly board game store.

Wise and Otherwise is a great game for the collection with lots of re-playability. I recommend it if you're looking for a fun, intelligent party game

Board Game Review: Carcassonne

Carcassonne was one of my own “gateway” games that got me into Euro board games and it remains one of my favorites. It’s an easy-to-learn tile laying game named after a medieval French town. You lay down one randomly drawn terrain tile each turn. You may place it wherever you like, as long as it’s adjacent to an existing tile and all the sides match up so that roads connect to roads, fields to fields, cities to cities, etc. Then you may place one of your seven followers, little wooden people affectionately known as “meeples,” on one of the tiles to claim a city, road, field, or cloister. On to the next turn. It’s really pretty simple. When the element you claimed gets completed, you can remove your meeple and gets points based on what the element was and the number of tiles it took up. If it never gets completed, your meeple stays on it until the tiles run out and you get your points then, but you may not get as many. A lot of the game is dictated by luck from the random tiles. But strategy is still very important. You may choose to conserve your meeples for bigger claims down the road, or you may wickedly try to take over another player’s claim.

THE BASICS:

Play Time: 40-60 minutes

Number of Players: 2-5. I haven’t played it with more than two very often, so I can’t say what the ideal number is. But BoardGameGeek users voted 2 as the best.

Suggested age: 8 and up.

Designer: Klaus-Jürgen Wrede

Published: 2000, Rio Grande Games (English version) and Hans im Glück (German version)

Buy: This game is widely available. It looks like you should be able to get it in the $15-20 range online. Or you can skip the shipping charges but pay a little more and support your Friendly Neighborhood Game Store.

There is also an awesome iPhone version out now. You can play it online or locally with a friend who has it, and includes a great solitaire game, with which you can challenge your friends to beat your high score. There is at least one big game-changer I noticed about this version though: it gives you the ability to see how many of each kind of tile are still left in the virtual tile bag. When I played with my firend, I felt this gave both of us a new advantage we never had before. Sure, you could conceivably figure out how many of each tile are left in the original game, but it would take a lot of keeping track and counting. I’m not sure if I like this new feature, but either way, I very much recommend BOTH the original and the iPhone versions. There’s even an Xbox 360 arcade one if you’re interested!

Love Carcassonne! Highly Recommend it!

Board Game Review: Pandemic

Pandemic

Pandemic is a cooperative game in which you and your fellow players team up to eradicate the threat of four deadly global diseases. Each teammate plays one of 5 randomly chosen characters, each with their own unique abilities: Dispatcher, Scientist, Medic, Researcher, and Operations Expert. Every round more disease spreads, as you race to discover cures by traveling the world, using a simple system of cards and tokens A lot of luck is involved, but it’s up to you to come up with the best strategy using your team’s given abilities and situation. The game is fun, but HARD. I’m sorry world, but we regularly succumbed to pandemic while playing leisurely over the last few months. Fortunately the game is fast enough that a loss isn’t too discouraging. Instead it would embolden us to try again, until we were victorious. I sometimes dislike co-op games because they don’t feed my competitive hunger, but the ease and quickness of this game make up for that.

THE BASICS:

Play Time: 60 minutes

Number of Players: 2-4. I would recommend 4, though 3 and even 2 is fun too!

Suggested age: 10 and up.

Designer: Matt Leacock

Artist: Joshua Cappel (graphics and illustration), Régis Moulun (cover painting)

Published: 2008, by Z-Man Games, among others.

Buy: I found it on Amazon for $27.