The season is upon us! The smell of burnt chicken and charcoal is in the air along with the cries of couples arguing about who’s the true BBQ King or Queen. Spring brought with it some early sun meaning everyone with a garden or balcony or large windowsill was suddenly lighting fires and chargrilling meats every weekend they could! With summer on the horizon BBQ season will be in true swing and what better way to celebrate than to gather round the garden furniture and play some games in the sun!
Barbecubes
Following the huge success of Tinderbox, a tiny dexterity game that sees you picking up coloured cubes in order to build a campfire, comes the next big, or should I say tiny, cube based dexterity game, Barbecubes. The best thing about this game, despite literally been named after the classic summer namesake, is that it comes in a small tin allowing you to just chuck it in your back or in your pocket and take it with you, wherever the smell of charcoal leads you. The tin is packed to the brim with little wooden food tokens from steak to fish as well as a small wooden grill to place on top of the tin. On your turn you will flip over a card which will tell you what piece will need to be added to the grill next, as well as how many bars of the grill it is allowed to be touching. Then using tweezers you complete that action. However if any pieces fall through the gaps into the tin or off onto the table you take a card, two cards and you are out! It is a very simple game but offers a lot of fun. Add into the mix, a beer or two and you are in for 15 minutes of chaos while you are waiting for uncle Rob to burn the chicken drumsticks!
Bites
Eating outdoors has never been my favourite thing to do. There are just too many creepy crawlies around, trying to ruin my mood. My biggest memory about sitting at a picnic bench when the sun is out, is the rows and rows of ants everywhere making my skin crawl. Now as a 6 six foot six adult, I still can’t handle creepy crawlies. Unless of course, in game form! Bites is a gorgeous looking stock market game at its heart but is presented through a line of ants eating their way back to their tree. You start by making a long line of foodstuffs that include red apples, yellow cheese, brown bread, purple grapes and green peppers along with chocolate and wine. There are then ants matching the colours of the foods. On your turn you are moving ants to the next food matching their colour and taking a foodstuff from either directly behind or in front of them. Once ants get to the end they take their place on their tree podium and depending on when they reach the end will dictate the points awarded to the player with the most of that food type. The real fun here is figuring out when to push an ant forward in hope that you have the most of that type but being careful not to get stung with a handful of pointless peppers. There are also a series of scoring tiles that give the wine and chocolate different powers or scoring possibilities offering lots of replayability. It’s a really simple game, but with a fair amount of bite!
Sushi Go Party By Pete Bartlam
It’s certainly Barbecue weather now and whilst most lean towards the staple grilled meats and prawns other sophisticated options are available – like Sushi! OK, IKR, I’m not necessarily suggesting this for your outdoor feast but what I am suggesting is when the sun goes down and the sundowners have been quaffed up to 8 of you gather round building exotic menus in Sushi Go Party! Why? Because it’s fun, easy to learn, doesn’t take up much space and has lots of lovely little cartoon faced Sushi. What’s not to like? Starting with a hand of cards depicting items from the menu board, everyone lays a card face down and then, after they’re all revealed, passes their remaining cards on. This is repeated until all the cards are played ending the Round and points are scored for your cards played. All bar the dessert cards are then picked up and re-dealt for the next Round until you play 3 Rounds. It’s as easy as that. Remember you’ll only play 1 card from your original hand. The rest depends on what is passed to you, just as they depend on what you pass on, on the Sushi convoy carousel of delight!
Food Chain Magnate By Tina Evans
Burgers, Cola, Lemonade? What do all of these remind you of on a warm summer weekend? That’s right, it’s Fast Food advertising of course! But speaking seriously for a moment, summer is one of those times we get to host events with our friends, have a few laughs, games and some good food along the way, and there is nothing more traditional than having a board game out which will ruin your relationships along the way with some ruthless strategy. And before anyone thinks of another game which does that, this is instead Food Chain Magnate, currently a long time member of BGG top 100, and all about running your very own Mc…Fast Food Franchise business. And with none of the randomness of that other game (it even says on the box 100% dice free!). Instead you get cards, lots of cards (be careful about playing this one outdoors on a windy day!), and a modular map so no two games are ever completely the same. You will build your restaurant, advertise to the helpless residents of the board and sell, sell, sell those burgers, pizza and drinks using your corporate savvy. Along the way you will need to manage (and pay) employees, manipulate your market and out manoeuvre your rivals to earn the most money. A huge box of modular expansions awaits for those who fall in love with this strategic sandbox, but the base game alone shines already with a timeless albeit minimalist aesthetic.
Sosig By Favouritefoe
Aah barbeques. The scent of charcoal in the air and a sudden blistering 24 hour sunny spell must mean it’s al fresco sausage season! Whether you go for the full works or just a smattering of sauce, it’s hard to beat a flame-cooked hot dog. Burgers try to muscle in, as do wings, drumsticks, and other wannabes. But everyone savours that snap in a way that no other outside offering can beat. Sudden downpours be damned. Nothing stands between a Brit and their BBQ. And although the sausages in this wee box are admittedly more cocktail sized than banging bratwurst, they are determined to be meaty…or should that be meany?! A tiny box holding wee cards with funny illustrations, Sosig is a fast playing family game that you will want to chew up and not spit out. In Sosig, you will be drafting cards and trying to build champion chorizo. But, as well as making your own tasty torpedos, you can mess up your opponents’ beefy bangers and leave them with nothing but the memory of a promising porker! A fun mix of drafting, set collection, take that, and bonuses to gain, Sosig is a sizzler that is perfect for a barbeque!
Fungi By Roger Bell-West
BBQs are dangerous places for vegetarians or vegans but for those who avoid meat then what could be better than a chunky portobello mushroom burger? After all, fungi are a vegan’s best friend! This two-player set collection game by Brent Povis (also known as Morels) sees you gathering mushrooms on a walk in the woods. You’ll start with three cards each and an eight-card Forest queue, from which you take turns collecting cards. You can always choose from the nearest two, but ones further away need you to expend foraging sticks, and you can’t discard cards you no longer want. Baskets add to your hand limit, while Destroying Angels force you to discard cards. You can cook a set of three or more in your Pan (optionally adding Butter and Cider cards), or trade in a set of two or more cards for more foraging sticks (thematically you’re trading them to local mushroom fans in return for tips on where to look)/. Whether or not you took a card, one card falls off the end to the Decay pile where it will briefly remain available, remaining cards slide down, the Forest is refilled, and the other player takes their turn. The game ends when the Forest is empty, and highest points wins. On the surface this is a gentle, pastoral game (and readily portable, since you can play anywhere with a flat surface and the only components are cards). But there’s brinkmanship here as you decide how many sticks to spend to get that last card to complete a set before your opponent does, not to mention trying to work out what sets they are building and what they’ll allow to go past. Although there is a one-player variant on BGG, this really shines as a face-to-face competitive game, even though you never directly attack the other player—you just take cards they might want. Every turn matters, and the most common reaction from a first-time player is that they want to try it again.
So whether you are up for a quick party game or something a little meatier, hopefully there are a few options to help elevate your barbecue into a burger flipping good time.
