SaltCon 2021 End of Summer Fun

“Back in the Game”

That was the bold statement on the winning t-shirt design for SaltCon End of Summer 2021. And it couldn’t have been more appropriate!

It was awesome to be back at SaltCon this past weekend playing game after game for a couple of days straight.

SaltCon is the big board game convention in Utah, USA and it’s packed with gaming goodness. The event is typically held for 4 days in March each year, so I was sad when it was announced last Fall that the March event would be canceled. But, the news a few months ago that they’d hold an “End of Summer” SaltCon for 3 days at the end of July got me excited again.

Let’s dive in!

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Best Games of 2020! – The Dice Tower Awards

The best board games, card games, dice games, family games, and party games of 2020 have been awarded!

The Dice Tower recently announced the winners of The Dice Tower Awards — the annual crowing of the best board games published last year.

With thousands of new games published every year, there’s never a shortage of great new board games to play.

Top board game reviewers, podcasters, and industry contributors from around the world participated in the nomination and voting process.

Now, let’s see The Dice Tower Award Winners for 2020:

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King of Tokyo: Dark Edition game review

In 2012 we reviewed one of the hot new board games that year, King of Tokyo.

King of Tokyo is a push-your-luck board game where you get to play “king of the hill” using dice, special ability power cards, and cool monsters.

It’s no wonder why it jumped to “hot game” status because it’s easy to play and a lot of fun for up to 6 players.

iello quickly published an expansion for the game, King of Tokyo: Power Up. And a couple of year later released King of New York.

Last year, they published a collector’s edition of the game called King of Tokyo: Dark Edition and we’re excited to share our thoughts about it.

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Cubitos – a fun dice-building, racing game!

It’s time to get your race face on.

Because today we’re sharing all about this dice-building, dice-rolling, power-upping, push-your-luck, racing game!

It’s a new game by AEG called Cubitos.

And if you think you’re staring at SpongeBob SquarePants on the cover of the Cubitos game box, you’re not. What you are staring at though is a really big chunk of cheese wearing lederhosen!

Why? We have no idea.

But it definitely grabs attention. And if you’re like us, it makes you very curious about what’s inside. So, let’s dive in!

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We’re on The Learning Life Podcast!

The board game hobby continues to smash through boundaries. And we’re excited to be a part of it!

Today we made another such breakthrough on a podcast targeted to business leaders — The Learning Life Podcast with Jon Tota.

As you might guess from the title, The Learning Life focuses on the learning industry. They have weekly guests sharing new insight, new stories, and best practices to help organizations take their learning to the next level.

But when Jon saw our 2020 Board Game Gift Guide, he thought it would be awesome to take a break from the weekly corporate learning talk and talk about something fun — board games!

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Board Game Gift Guide 2020!

It’s that awesome time of year again when we look for great fun ideas for gifts for family and friends.

With this crazy year, we know many families have already been grabbing a lot more board games to pass the time together throughout the year.

But it’s always nice to get some ideas for fresh games to play too.

This marks our 10th annual Board Game Gift Guide and we love sharing great gift ideas!

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Reign: The Final Battle Royale Game Review

“Four factions of warriors battle to survive on a doomed land that will be destroyed piece by piece, taking its occupants with it. You must strategize to survive—by fleeing, fighting or sacrificing your weakest members—whatever you must do to be the last one left standing when the land around you has been annihilated.”

Reign is a skirmish battle royale style board game, from PlayMonster, where 2 to 4 try to eliminate all the other players’ troops to be the last one standing.

Players not only have to watch out for each other but also the impending disasters which destroy different sections of the board and with it any troops and Power Stones that have the misfortune of being on that section.

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Back to the Future board games Comparison

What are the chances that two different companies would publish cooperative board games based on Back to the Future in the same year?

Well, it is 2020 – and anything can happen.

Seriously though, we’re big fans of cooperative board games families can play together. So of course we were up for reviewing both Back to the Future: Back in Time by Funko and Back to the Future: Dice Through Time by Ravensburger.

We posted our review of Back in Time in June and posted our review of Dice Through Time this week.

So now it’s time to give you our take on the how the games compare!

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Back to the Future: Dice Through Time game review

Last Wednesday was Marty McFly Day – October 21 – the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to the future (the 2015 future) in Back to the Future II.

You may not have even noticed. And that’s okay, because it means the space time continuum hasn’t been disrupted!

And even though we’re just now posting this game review, let’s do a bit of time travel of our own and pretend we’re back to a few days ago, October 21, taking a look at Back to the Future: Dice Through Time by Ravensburger.

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All aboard the Disney Jungle Cruise!

“This secluded elephant pool has never before been seen by civilized man. And looking at everyone on this boat, it still hasn’t.”

“Bamboo can grow to be six stories tall…although this bamboo looks about seven stories tall. But that’s a whole other story.”

These jokes probably sound very familiar if you’ve spent time aboard the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland or Disney World. And playing Disney Jungle Cruise Adventure Game, you’ll get to tell a whole bunch more!

But telling jokes isn’t the crux of the game, it’s just a by-product. Instead, the game pits players against each other racing along the river, collecting cargo, and keeping their passengers safe.

Ready to captain your boat to victory?

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