Takenoko

In Takenoko, you are a member of the ancient Japanese court to the Emperor who has entrusted you with caring for a gift from the Chinese Emperor, a giant panda. You will do this with the help of the imperial garderner and possibly the weather.

Takenoko is a fun stragery game where you try to gain points by growing bamboo, feeding a panda and cultivating land.
The main concept is that you have a board with a selections of things that you can do: lay a plot, collect an irrigation tile, move the imperial Gardener, move the panda or collect a card. You can do two of these each turn.

Laying a plot:
If you pick this action, you get to draw three plot tiles choose one and place it so it joins up with two other tiles or the starting tile. At the start of the game, you will be using this action quite a bit, to grow the game board.

Collect an irrigation channel:
These are important as they help you irrigate things. You need to irrigate plots as with no water supply, bamboo can't grow. Once you have collected your irrigation channel, you can save it or place it. Plots only count as irrigated if they are next to the central tile or have an irrigation channel running down it.

Move the Imperial gardener:
The Imperial gardener will help you grow bamboo. You can move him in straight lines for as long as you like and where he stops, that plot and all irrigated plots of the same colour next to it grow one bamboo piece.

Move the panda:
You can choose to move the panda on your turn, the panda moves the same way as the gardener but instead of growing bamboo, the panda eats one piece of bamboo on the plot it is in. You then put the eaten bamboo piece in the pandas stomach on your board.

Collect a card:
You get 3 cards when you first start the game, but you will soon want to get more when you run out. When you get to this stage, you will have three cards to choose varying in difficulty and worth. The first type is the panda card, in which you have to eat certain amounts of different coloured bamboo, the second is the plot card in which you have to have a certain arrangement of plots that are irrigated. Finally there are the bamboo cards were you have to have certain stacks of different coloured bamboo.
For advanced players, there is a weather die which you roll before your turn and each outcome lets you do different things.

I think Takenonko is a fun game that is quite complicated until you get to know the rules, so playing it with  a six year old might not be advisable. I really like the panda and the gardener pieces, which my family have affectionately called Tony and Frank. All in all, I would give this game a 8 out of 10.

Rivet Wars

In Rivet Wars, you are a commander of a army of soldiers and steampunk machines on one of either 2 sides, the Allied and the Blight waging war to decide the fate of the world.

Rivet Wars is a war game that has one special feature that makes it stand out. This is that you are constantly getting more troops, no matter how many die. You gets these renforcements by spending deployment points on various troops at the start of your turn.
The mechanism for killing an opponent is very simple too.

Depending on which type of troop is attacking and which type of troop is defending, you get to roll a certain number of dice. Any 5's or 6's count as a hit and will do one damage and quite possibly kill the target. Every troop has it's own stats so choosing which ones to deploy adds a layer of stratergy to the game.
The way you win is by holding strategic odjectives and completing secret missions to gain victory points. Each different scenario will require you to get a different number of these victory points to win.

I really like Rivet Wars as you don't need to use any measuring tapes to figure out how for you can go, making it very simple. It also stands out to me as you don't get sad when one of your guys dies as you can always get another. For these reasons, I think that it is a great game for getting people into war gaming. It also will be a good choice if you are trying to get a kid into war gaming based on the mini figures' cute apperance. So all in all, I would give Rivet Wars an 8 out of 10 and this is definately my favourite war game.

Dobble

Dobble is a simple game all about matching symbols on cards. You think it sounds easy, well think again.

The main concept of Dobble is that you need to match the symbols on any given card (there will always be one) and name it. This is the rule that carries out through all of five mini-games provided. This is great as playing the simple game (match the symbol on a card and claim it) gets quite boring after a while. My favourite variant is one where you have to match the symbol on another persons card (that key mechanism popping up again) name it and give it to them. This means they have to get rid of those cards to someone else. At the end the slowest person is left with all the cards therefore losing.

Dobble is a great game to pull out when you have a spare moment or to play with less experienced players. Although it isn't the most engaging game ever, it is simple and fun (but tricky to master). Basically it is a good game to start a gaming session with, and it's a good game to start people who are new to hobby games in their gaming career. I would give at 7 out of 10.

One more thing to mention, is that I got the pleasure of playing Dobble for the first time at a games club at my school. We had only just got this game as part of a starter set from Esdevium Games. So thank you very much to all those lovely people at Esdevium Games.

Spot the matching symbol