Pictomania and Kingsburg are featured in this edition of Game Night Report! The latter is a modern classic and the former definitely earns its manic name!

Pictomania

Pictomania is a very different take on the readily available supply of drawing games on the market. Pictomania adds an exciting element of speed and chaos. Players are not only responsible for drawing their item, but also guessing what the other players are drawing. There’s more still; the speed at which a player makes his guesses factors into the final score. Players are given color-coded number cards and each player keeps a stack of these, which represent other players’ guesses.

In the picture above I quickly drew the world’s most life-like dry erase marker shark, and then made my guesses for the other players. The small, black token with the two stars was taken from the center of the table. At the top left you’ll notice a stack of cards. The yellow player was the last to guess my drawing and the cards beneath her’s are the other players’. The earlier cards will score more points if correct.

Speed is measured in Pictomania and carries great reward in the form of additional points, but only if coupled with accuracy. The game rewards incorrect choices harshly and points gained can count against a player’s total at the end of a round.

I sat down with 5 friends recently and played Pictomania at The Jester’s Court. Sergio, Nicolle and 3 other new friends played with me. It was a lot of fun and the stress was through the roof, but in a good way! We drew frantically and cards were flying across the table as we raced to make our guesses before the others. I thouroughly enjoyed Pictomania and look forward to playing again soon. We started a little too close to the end of Board Game Night so we only had time to play 2 of the 5 rounds of the game.

Outcome – I won by 1 point with Nicolle coming in second. But to be fair, though, I was sort of destined to win. Just look at that mind-blowingly awesome shark!

Kingsburg

As stated earlier, Kingsburg is a modern classic where players build their cities and roll dice in order to gain the favor of the king’s advisors. Players use their dice rolls and the numbers presented to activate spots on the beautiful game board. Dice can be used individually to claim the smaller rewards given by the advisors, or combined to reach loftier spaces. Once a space has been claimed (with a few exceptions) it can’t be used again during that round, called seasons in the game.

Certain buildings and tokens on the player boards can affect the dice placement. In the picture above, for example, the green player has put his 3 dice all on one space. Though his roll totals ‘6’, he activated the number 7 space due to a constructed building’s ability. The black dice totaling ‘9’ and the yellow die with ‘2’ remain unaltered and placed on the appropriate spaces.

Kingsburg is a wonderful blend of city building, resource management and worker placement mechanics. In typical Fantasy Flight form the game contains quality components, and the game play is engaging. Brian, Alex, Trudi, Jeremy and I recently played a game of it at our BGN. The game was close until the bitter end, despite it being the first time playing for most at the table.

Outcome – Alex won with Brian and I right behind him. Alex went with a church-heavy building strategy. The religious buildings award a lot of victory points so he managed to defeat us heathens.