GAME GURU RECOMENDATIONS

Welcome to the maddest ‘putting blocks on top of other blocks’ game you’ve ever seen. No two games of Junk art are the same as the box contains the rules for a dozen different mini games and in a single session you’ll play three accumulating points as you go. Go home Jenga!

Ready to climb a literal tower of Cards? Well nows the chance to don your superhero spandex and battle it out in the card balancing, dice chucking extravaganza. Good for people who enjoy FUN.

Something more serene this time as with care and a delicate touch you’ll stack ladders upon ladders trying to climb up to the shining night-time orb in the sky. Pretty and peaceful.

How to summarise this fantastic hit of a group word game? Simple... Team... Word association... Battleships.... Does that help? Two teams compete to interpret clues given indicating specific words in a grid... better? No?
Just play it already.

Build a deck of cards with letters and powers, shaping them into words to demonstrate your linguistic prowess and make the most of useful abilities. Worse letters couple up with better powers though, striking an interesting balance between making the best deck and more easily crafting words.

One team versus another stood at opposite sides of a street. The stakes? Letter tiles representing most of the letters of the alphabet. The aim? To claim as many of those tiles by including them in words of randomly determined categories. Can you name a cheese with as many G’s as possible?

Think Articulate with a couple of twists: 1) The only means of explaining the word is a deck of cards covered in a random assortment of words. 2) Both teams explain and guess at the same time, the first to shout the answer wins. May the best (fastest) team win...

Cash-strapped mafia-mobsters compete to walk away richest in a division of loot gone wrong. Guns will be pointed, bullets will be fired, friendships will be tested.

An idea so simple yet so brilliant it’ll make you wonder why it took so long to be made. Using nothing more than a board covered in a variety of symbols and a handful of plastic bits, players will attempt to describe people, places, expressions, animals, and so on. Relaxing, intuitive, and endlessly entertaining.

Limited information, a short period too negotiate, and a VIP to protect/kill/emulate. Lie, listen, and learn to make sure that after bullets fly and the dust settles your side still stands. Where did you say that assassin was again?

Beautiful, clever, and utterly unique. A Storyteller describes an abstract image as they see fit, and then players aim to identify it admits a sea of red herrings. The catch? The Storyteller only scores as long as at least one but not every player guesses their card. Deliberate vagueness, great art, and a truly incomparable experience.

Lying, bluffing, and secret information meet drawing in this ingenious (and very small game). We’re all cooperating in drawing one communal image, but who secretly has no idea what we’re supposed to be making?

Put simply, think reverse Scattegories. Name answers within a certain category, but the aim is to match answers with as many people around the table as possible. Who’s best tapped into the hive mind, and who’s getting booted from the hive?

The marriage of secret identities with word association. Players try and lead the blindfolded dreamer to a word in the centre of the table by naming associated words. Some players, though, are not on Team Dreamer, and are trying to throw them off the scent with bad clues.

We’re at the kingdom’s masked ball, but no one can remember who anyone is anymore! Swap identities, try and keep track, claim roles, and get rich by any means necessary. Wait, you’re the king? I thought I was??

As members of an underground resistance, players embark on a series of missions to topple a dystopian dictatorship. But not everyone is to be trusted... Spies have infiltrated the resistance, forcing players to lie, deliberate, and try and find who to trust.

The Telephone Game meets Pictionary in a game guaranteed to produce buckets of hilarity. Draw, then guess, then draw the guess, then guess the drawing of the guess of the drawing, and on and on it goes, getting more and more ridiculous with each iteration. A must play. Adults only.

Two rival civilisations compete in military, science, culture, economics, and wonders to reign supreme. A two-player iteration of the up-to-7-player classic that builds upon and improves its systems that raises it beyond its predecessor.

Two Scottish clans battle over rocks in this simple two-player card game. Play cards, create sets, manage your hand, and win in this simulation of an average Scottish Tuesday.

Codenames but for two people. A collaborative game of word association much akin to Battleship in its use of hidden information on a grid. Guide your partner to select words through turn-based clue-giving.

Abstract strategy for two-players (think chess with bugs). Use each bugs unique movement to shape the hive and surround your opponent’s queen bee. There’s quite a lot of buzz around it (it’s basically the bee’s knees) but we won’t bug you about it.

Two market traders compete to acquire, trade, and sell the best set of goods to acquire points. Small, simple card game with camels (and who doesn’t love camels?).

Who would win in a fight between a tyrant king and his bodyguard of elite knights, and a mob or rioting towns people masking the identities of three lethal assassins? Spend actions, move pieces around a market square, and claim victory.

The long peace between two ninja clans has been broken and now players must role dice, move ninja, and battle their animosity away to be named the victorious clan.

Card-based racing game with gorgeous art that pits two players against each other as Odin’s two ravens in an effort to get back to the Alfather. Use raven cards to move and the much more exciting Loki cards to tamper with the track to your own advantage and/or your opponent’s detriment.

This two player abstract strategy reminds us of a game of chess in which the movement options of the pieces switches back and forth between players… Every oppertunity you take is one immediately given to me... Tricky!

This tile tessellating, button making, time managing game sits close to the hearts of our guru teaching staff and is taught daily at the cafe. A great strategy title in 30mins with a unique theme and a puzzle that’ll scratch your brain box without imploding it.

We’re cheating here as Betrayal is what we call *SEMI* co-op. The group of you start as a team exploring a haunted house, think Scooby Do. Then the weird stuff starts happening and before you know it one of you is outed as a Vampire, Werewolf, Zombie Lord or Spirit, intent on wiping out the team. Thematic as all get go and with 50 scenarios in the box it’ll keep you coming back for more.

This Tolkinsque tower defence game sees the players fighting for survival as a hoard of malicious Orcs, Goblins and Trolls charges the walls of Castle PANIC! Only though preparation and teamwork will you survive the knight….? (Bu’dum-tsch)

A grown up version of the Choose your own Adventure books from the 90’s, this collection of mysteries puts you in the shoes of one of the great detectives apprentices as he pits you against a series of tricky cases, judging your performance. Best get your lateral thinking deerstalker on…

This co-op adventure puts you in the boots of a group of stranded adventurers attempting to assemble a flying machine to flee a fierce desert before the sandstorms claim you. Not for the faint of heart….

Not a typo, just Forbidden Deserts younger sibling. A cafe Favourite introduction to the wonderful world of co-operative games, Forbidden Island has you running around a sinking south-sea tropical paradise collecting treasures and pulling of daring heroics while avoiding the rising waters.

Time for a mad scramble against the clock! In magic maze the players collaborate to complete a heist, working on getting the thieves to their designated spots for the daring robbery. Three catches however. You’re against the clock with sand trickling away. You can’t talk to each other, better home they’re all paying attention! Finally, you don’t control a character, instead you can move any character… But only in one given direction! Madness!

Gather round for a ghost story everyone, for in this box the players take the role of psychics, solving a murder by communion with the deceased spirit. Except one person, that person plays as the ghost themselves, trying desperately to communicate information on the murderer via a series of beautiful but baffling images.  

A series of deadly viruses have spread across the globe and as the CDC (centre of disease control) your team is responsible for fighting their spread and discovering the cures. You’ll each get a role to play in the group only through planning and teamwork will everyone survive. Time to save the world.

Remember 90’s horror film the Cube? A more recent comparison would be the Saw series as in this game a group of desperate people attempt to escape a technological death trap where in each room a different messy way to get dismembered awaits. While this can be played as a co-operative or race experience WE recommend the ever popular ‘traitor’ game, can you really trust your friends?

In this game you play as rival architects, seeking to complete your part of a grand mosaic before everyone else. Plan your actions carefully however as in taking tiles you may inadvertently create situations that will benefit your opponents so you must keep an eye on their actions as well.

Various nations from around the world compete to create the most beautiful bear park. Starting from nothing but maybe a tree, a river or a park bench you must expand your park outwards fast and efficiently. Make sure to think ahead as careless actions will cost you dearly in the long run.

Spice Road is a simple and satisfying game about managing resources and building up a system to trade and sell with. Figuring out which of the variety of spices to gather at what stage of the game is crucial. Once you have everything you need; cash out for big points!

In Deep Sea Adventure you are all competing to gather as much treasure as you can while managing a shared oxygen supply deep underwater. Play too selfishly however and you risk endangering everyone. Play too selflessly and you end up empty handed. It’s up to you to push the limits of how selfishly you can play.

Players compete as rival architects in Ancient Egypt to make the most valuable contributions to a series of construction projects. Acquire more stone, load it into boats, and sail them to five different sites that each score players points in unique ways.

Four explorers in four colours line a beach before a jungle containing four temples of the same colours. The aim? Get each explorer to their matching coloured temple first by laying down tiles creating pathways through the jungle. Each player faces the same puzzle, so only the smartest (and luckiest) will triumph.

Kingdom-building meets domino-laying in this award-winning game. Quick to set-up, easy to learn, fast to play, but endlessly rewarding. Players take it in turns choosing tiles to take to add to their kingdom, but the tile that they take will also determine the order of choosing next turn: do I take the best tile now, or take a worse one and secure first choice next round?

Coloured dice represent stained glass, the numbers rolled represent the shade of the colour, and players take turns drafting (selecting) dice to fit into their window design, with the hope that theirs will get chosen to be used in the Sagrada Família temple in Barcelona.

Players race to own a set of cards worth 15 points first, taking turns either buying cards or collecting gems needed to pay their cost. Each card bought, though, reduces the cost of all future cards, creating an interesting dynamic in which players must choose between buying hordes of cheap cards for no reason other than making other cards more affordable, or spending a little longer to buy cards worth the big bucks.

Players must try and appease three characters in this beautiful game of action-selection and tile-laying: players compete to please the lofty emperor with a pleasantly arranged garden, the overworked gardener by growing bamboo in particular colours and heights, and the greedy panda by feeding it bamboo. Oh, and did we mention there’s a mini-panda in the box?

Players wander leisurely down the famous Tokaido Path between Edo and Kyoto seeking cultural enrichment by making friends, painting vistas, chilling in hot springs, and eating fine cuisine. It’s all about the journey, not the destination, as players leapfrog across the board until they finish their travels.

In this role selection game, players compete to establish trade networks throughout the Roman Empire. The simple mechanics conceal limitless strategic depths, with the innovative scoring in particular rewarding careful planning. The cover art may not be the most beautiful, but the game design is gorgeous.

Bag-building is the central mechanic of this marvellous game, players adding new tokens representing medieval folk to a bag that they draw from at random to determine the actions they can take. Recruit new characters into your bag for one-off powers whilst also maintaining a good distribution to allow for productive turns.

Mars needs terraforming, and you can help, playing the role of a mega-corporation, competing to contribute the most, and reap the most prestige. The huge diversity of cards supports a wide range of strategies, whether you prefer seeding the planet with greenery or bombarding it with asteroids.

Travel back to the heart of the Industrial Revolution. This new version of Martin Wallace’s classic features his signature multi-use card mechanics. Build up infrastructure and industry to score points as first canals then railways spread across the country. Now with added beer.

Gorgeous art, fascinating theme, incredible production value, and stellar game design are married in this depiction of an alternate 1920’s featuring world powers commanding towering mechs. Seize land, win battles, and compete for the affections of the people to come out on top.

As the head of a household in Portugal’s historic university town of Coimbra, you must accrue influence with the towns various factions to triumph. Players draft dice which they then place as workers, to build a tableau of citizens, and indulge in such noble pastimes as pilgrimage, and funding voyages to the new world.

This game of cattle-herding provides multiple avenues to victory: players are able to construct new and powerful buildings, acquire new and more valuable cows, recruit characters that augment their actions, and advance their train for freebies and points. Players can focus on one, or work on multiple, travelling along an ever-changing path that demands a combination of flexibility and forward-planning.

You're a spy, hiding out in one of six countries, the opposing agents are trying to track you down, gaining more information about your location each turn. The catch, they must remove one country from their list each turn. Can they discover your hideout before they eliminate it from their investigation and you escape?

Perhaps the most innovative trivia board game of recent years. A map of the world, a timeline, a ruler and a number track. Questions about anything and everything under the sun. Placing tokens on the right spaces gains you 7 points, being adjacent gains you 3, wrong placements temporarily lose you tokens.

Quick, portable, replayable, educational. This small card game packs a punch in our Trivia category and sees play every day at Thirsty Meeples. Knowing exact dates isn't necessary, just correctly place your cards in relation to others. So what came first, Thriller or Ghostbusters?

As different to Trivial Pursuit as a trivia game could be. You can win this game knowing nothing other than how to play the odds. A question is asked and everyone writes an answer which must be a number. These are placed in order, then everyone bets on the answer they think is closest without being over. Easy!

Giant monsters battling for control of Japan's capital city. Played like Yahtzee with a twist, this modern classic combines strategy and luck and is great for kids and adults alike. Godzilla vs King Kong, eat your heart out!

Translated from German as literally "Pretty Clever", this elegantly simple roll-and-write game is aptly named. Roll dice and use some of the numbers to fill in the blanks on your score sheet, but be careful of which numbers you leave as they could be used by your opponents.

Coloured dice represent stained glass, the numbers rolled represent the shade of the colour, and players take turns drafting (selecting) dice to fit into their window design, with the hope that theirs will get chosen to be used in the Sagrada Família temple in Barcelona.

In this dice drafting game, players create character sheets for a generic fantasy role playing game, that never gets played. Given a set of criteria to aim for, players fill their boards with dice depending on value and colour, and purchase cards granting abilities and bonus scoring conditions.

Capturing castles in feudal Japan has never been so quick, or random, or fun! Controlling castles gives you points, controlling all of one set gives you a bonus and secures them from being stolen again. When all castles are under control, the daimyo with the most points wins.

Condensing 2014's Kennerspiel des Jahres into an easy to learn dice game, without losing the depth of the original is not an easy feat. But they did it! Roll dice, manage resources, earn permanent power ups, collect rubies, win!

The quintessential worker placement board game. In the fabled D&D city of Waterdeep, send your agents to recruit adventurers who will complete your quests, earning you VP. Just don't forget to use your intrigue cards to foil the plans of the other Lords.

Vikings earning glory through battle and heroic deeds is a theme as old as, well, Vikings. In the second "North Sea" game, players not only place a worker each turn, but also recover a worker from another space, granting two unique actions a turn.

Running a vineyard is one way to spend your 40's. You'll learn about the impact of the seasons and the importance of irrigation, and you can watch your wines mature throughout the years; or you could simulate that experience in around 90 minutes.

Istanbul blends worker placement with a unique path selection mechanic. Using action spaces requires an assistant, tokens that get dropped off or picked up as you travel around the city, and you can only travel so far from the last space you used. It makes for a very pleasing experience, and even more fun with the expansions!

Uwe Rosenberg is the last word in strategy board game design and this, perhaps his most renowned title, sees you as Central European farmers in the 17th Century, notably not an easy time for farming. But just look at all those animeeples!