Games we played over the holidays

Silver Collector's Edition card game — We played a bunch of Silver Collector’s Edition.

Happy New Year!!

We hope you all had a fantastic year-end with many holidays to celebrate with family and friends.

In our family, we celebrate Christmas. And we had a wonderful couple of weeks with plenty of gatherings where we could all be together. We visited a lot, had plenty of laughs, and watched a couple of fun movies. We also enjoyed time with extended family eating lots of food and catching up on all the goings-on.

And among the celebrations, we were able to play a handful of games.

Landmarks
Silver – Collector’s Edition
The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth
7 Wonders
Between Two Cities
Dice Forge

Landmarks

The game we played the most was Landmarks. We got a copy of the game in November and played it for the first time in December. And boy did we play it.

Over the course of two weeks, we played Landmarks 15 times!

Landmarks can be played cooperatively or competitively in teams. We played both ways plenty of times because we couldn’t just stop at one play. It begs to be played again and again.

Landmarks game — Landmarks was a great hit for group play.

The game is about exploring an island for treasure while staying away from curses and traps. But the way you explore the island is through single word clues. One player writes a word on a tile and the other players have to determine where they think that player is trying to direct their path on the island.

Since the new word needs to be placed adjacent to words already on the island, they must decide if the new word should be placed next to a single word tile or between multiple. It’s all about figuring out what the clue-giver has in mind.

In a way it’s like Codenames by giving a single word clue to your teammates. But because of the premise, it plays out very differently. And we’ve really enjoyed playing it with both family and friends.

Silver Collector’s Edition

The next most-played game over the holiday break was the new Silver Collector’s Edition. We reviewed Silver and a couple of the expansions in 2022. So, if you’d like to know more about how to play, check out our full review.

Because I love playing Silver so much, I jumped in on the Kickstarter campaign for the new Silver Collector’s Edition of the game. And we had a blast playing it!

The Silver Collector’s Edition includes 2 new expansions, Silver Eye and Silver Fang, as well as a full Collector’s Edition deck of cards. Also, it includes additional cards for existing sets to now allow for 5 and 6 players to join in the fun.

Plus, this edition comes with neoprene play mats for every player’s village that include artwork and characters found in the various game sets.

We first played through every Silver set on their own, then started mixing them up. And once you start randomizing which cards you play with from the various decks, the possibilities are limitless!

I’m so glad I took the plunge and got this conglomeration of Silver.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

Another new game we played for the first time over the holidays is The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth. It’s a new game based on the game play of another game we really enjoy, 7 Wonders Duel.

Over 3 rounds, players take turns drafting cards from the central display. Some of the cards begin face down and others face up. Players can only claim face up cards if they can pay the appropriate resources for them. As they uncover face down cards, those cards are flipped face up. So at the outset, you can see some of what’s coming, but the rest is unknown until revealed.

In this Lord of the Rings version of the game, there’s also a territory board where players vie for control of different regions as well as a Ring track, where the Fellowship player is trying to get the ring to Mordor while the Sauron player is trying to catch them. Thus, there are multiple ways to win and the first player to achieve one of those conditions will win the game.

It’s a great implementation and fits the theme very well.

Oldies and Goodies

The other three games we pulled out and played over the break were three games we enjoy but haven’t played together in a long while: 7 Wonders, Between Two Cities, and Dice Forge.

Mom loved playing 7 Wonders again and was reminded why she has it on her Top 12 Games list. Since up to 7 players can join in, it’s a great one to play with our family. And since players are drafting cards simultaneously, it plays pretty quickly. And the best part was that even though it’s been a while, we could remember the iconography at a glance.

Between Two Cities is another game that plays quickly because of the simultaneous play. There’s not downtime in this tile-drafting game as you work with the people on your left and right to build a combined city that will score the most points. But the real caveat is that your final score will be the lower score of your two cities (on your left and right). So you can’t neglect one in favor of the other. You must try to get a great score with both of your cities.

We dusted off Dice Forge earlier in December for my monthly friends game night. And teaching it again to new players reminded me how fun it is. So I left it out to play over the break as well. It’s a game where players have two dice that they can change the die faces on. You roll the dice to collect different resources and then spend those resources to get additional benefits. Some of those benefits include purchasing new die faces that grant better or more resources. Popping off a die face to replace with a better one is so satisfying. Then you just have to hope that your new die face comes up when you roll in the future.

We hope you had a great time with your family as well!