2-6 players attempt to build the best realm in the form of their seven-card hand, collecting cards that create the best combinations. Other games by the designer: Baseball Highlights: 2045 | Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper | Wyatt Earpīruce Glassco's Fantasy Realms may be familiar to fans of the card game Rummy, offering similar draw-and-discard gameplay. For a sequel featuring an ever-fluctuating market, check out Faux Diamonds.
Suit actions are taken when the player cannot follow suit, wins a trick with the lead suit, takes the most cards in a suit at end of hand, or takes zero tricks in a hand (for two diamond suit actions). Each crystal is collected into a player's vault (secret from other players, cannot be stolen, and are worth double at endgame) or showroom (displayed in front of their vault, and can be stolen) through suit actions: from supply to vault for diamonds, from supply to showroom for hearts, from showroom to vault for spades, and an opponent's showroom to showroom for clubs. Featuring 60 cards ranked 1 to 15 in the four classic poker suits, with no trump. In Diamonds, 2-6 players vie to collect the most diamond crystals over a number of hands. I had a few ideas for a trick-taking game, but there was one that went beyond bidding predictions or avoiding certain cards: Mike Fitzgerald's Diamonds. Other games by the designer: Agricola | Cottage Garden | New York Zoo | Nova Luna | Patchwork After the deck is exhausted and shuffled three times, most coins wins! Players are only limited to their two or three fields. Any player may harvest at any time, but harvesting must be done if a bean must be planted that does not match any of the fields' existing beans. There are 104 cards with eight kinds of beans, each card having the kind of bean, how many of that bean is in the deck, and how much coinage can be earned for harvesting. On a turn, the active player must plant (or extend the column of cards) the first one or two cards from the front of their hand into their fields, reveal two cards from the deck and trade cards (the two revealed and in hand) with other players, (all players) plant/extend all traded cards and untraded revealed cards, then draw three cards from the deck to the back of their hand. Bohnanza is no exception, with 3-5 players planting and harvesting bean cards in order to earn coins. Uwe Rosenberg is best known for his farming-themed games. Other games by the designer: Downforce | El Grande | Linko! | Savannah Park | Tikal Since its original release in 1994, alternate rules and several nimmt! spin-off games have been released. Rounds continue until a player reaches 66 bullheads, which then the player with the fewest bullheads wins! A simple game that is all about hand management and the timing to play cards. A player who plays a card lower than all the rows' highest number claims all the cards of a row of their choice before starting a new row with their played card. The player who places a sixth card in a row claims the other five cards and the sixth card starts a new row. Each round consists of ten turns with players choosing one of their cards, then simultaneously revealing them and adding them in increasing order to the one of four rows closest to its highest number.
Each card has a number 1 to 104 plus a number of bullheads. In the card game 6 nimmt! by Wolfgang Kramer, 2-10 players avoid taking too many bullheads. (And it's usually the case the higher ranked games have a lot to offer other than being recently released.) Lastly, I'm limiting to games that can play three or more players and those that I own and/or have played. These games are also ones that are not among my favorite games of all-time moreover, I feel they should be ranked higher on BoardGameGeek. As the title of this post suggests, each of these games are mathy in some respect, good for families, comes in a small box, features no dice (including no roll- or flip-and-writes) and plays in under an hour.
That and I felt each of these games needed to be on this list. Why 17? Because three plus fourteen equals seventeen. In this article, I would like to showcase seventeen tabletop games that I have been introduced to during my seven years in the hobby.
If the link does not work, here is the full list. Amazingly, this article is still up in my long defunct blogspot account and can be accessed here. It was a simple blog post that featured a small summary talking about each game, along with a few links for further perusing.
These games were primarily classic and commercialized games that were easily purchasable and accessible to everyone. Ten years ago (about three years before I joined the strategy game hobby), I made a list of over 31 math games and puzzles for Pi Day (March 14th) that year.