One advantage of playing shorter games is that I get to play more games in one session. This week I was able to play 3 different games, as well as talk with the developer of the one we were playtesting.
Medici
During the first day's scoring. Photo by Teena. I forgot to take photos during this game and during Head Chef.
This was the first time in a long time that I've played this, and the first time with the more recent version that has updated art work and components. Fundamentally though nothing has changed with the game and it is still a really good bidding game.
It has an interesting mechanic where on your turn, you turn over 1 card at a time, before putting the group of 1-3 cards up for bids. There is a pit of push your luck here, where you may not want to put a 2nd or 3rd card with that first one to make it worth more/less to other players. You also only have 5 spaces to fill in each round (day), and if you can't fit the entire group in your ship, you can't bid on it, which can lead to players getting some nice cards cheaper just by waiting. You could also just wait until everyone else has all their goods and get the next cards off the deck for free, but you have to take what you get.
You also have to balance between buying cards with higher numbers on them, and buying cards of the specific types you want, as getting more of one type can be worth quite a lot of points, but having the highest valued shipment is also worth a lot of points.
Splendor
The three rows of cards available for purchase.
I've always liked this game, and have played quite a bit of it. It's pretty easy to learn, and makes for a good game to teach people that are new to the hobby. Turns consist of either taking some resources, which are some really nice quality poker chip style counters; buying a card with the resources, which provide you with a reusable resource of one of the 5 types depicted on the card; or reserving a card from the face up cards, which gets you a special wild resource.
Usually the game involves 2 rounds of resource collection to start with, since no one has any resources to start with. depending on the cards available after that, players may start buying cards or collect more resources up to the maximum of 10. Each resource is limited in supply also, with just 7 of each type in a 4 player game. Due to this sometimes there won't be any of what you need available and having the ability to adjust around that is important.
This player has 3 Green and Black, and 4 Red available each turn. And has claimed a noble for having 3 of each of them
There is also 5 randomly selected nobles, which represent some achievement goals to direct your desired purchases. Given they're worth 3 points and the game only goes until someone gets 15, they can be a pretty major influence in your play. They aren't always decisive though and don't need one to win.
2 other players areas, with the right way up on having ended the game by passing 15 points
It does have limitations, and I think there are really only 2 strategies that work, but which one will in any particular game depends on how the other 3 players play and the order that cards turn up for purchase.
Head Chef
Not much to see of the game here. Photo by Teena
This game is currently on [kickstarter(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/462640246/head-chef-the-tabletop-card-game-of-food-fame-and) with about 2 weeks to go (at time of publish). The game of this I played was with the developer and 2 other players, and the components we were using weren't necessarily the final components the game would come with. The rules booklet was also not the final version, but we were using the most current rules based on changes the developer has made from prior playtesting.
This is a set collection game aimed at families. The style of artwork leads me to think it would be best for early to middle primary school kids and their parents. Each player has a individual skill that changes how they will play the game, and all players have 6 single use skills available to them.
On your turn you start with 4 actions which are used to do all things. You need to balance spending them on drawing cards, spending them using your single use 'power cards' (skills), and using them to either cook food or sell pairs. These last 2 being the ways of scoring points (as well as 1 of the power cards) for most characters.
One of the neat things this game does is that half way through you are stopped at 10 points, even if you'd have scored more with the current action. You then have to spend your next available action to upgrade from the food truck you start with, to a cafe. This action is actually spent permanently, and for the second half of the game you only have 3 available. This is a nice catch up mechanism, without it being exceptionally unbalancing. However one of the things I didn't like so much about it was that to win the game you had to get to 20 points and then spend 2 actions at once to upgrade your cafe to a restaurant. I didn't like this as the first player to get to 20 couldn't spend 1 action to start his upgrade, and thus effectively wasted 1 action. He was then pummelled by the next 2 players using one of their power cards each to drop him back a total of 4 points. Then another player made it to 20 points and couldn't win because of the lack of actions. So the third player to make it to 20 points won because they could get to 20 on their first action of their turn instead of the second or third. Certainly a case of hand/action management, but it felt like it detracted from the game a little. Certainly wasn't a deal breaker for me, but it added the problem of ganging up on the leader that many games have, along with the random deck making it harder to plan to manage your hand and actions properly at the end.
I also found that some of the power cards weren't always useful and ended without having used one of my 6 in the game. but other players used all of theirs.
Overall I don't think I'm the target audience, and won't be buying a copy, but it was certainly a decent enough game, with some nice theme and art work. Was also a better game than it sounded like it would be from reading about it.
