The Manchester Board Game Festival is a recurring event in the city every 2-3 months, hosted by James Oxley of Dungeons and Flagons. These 3 day ‘weekender’ events provide the perfect opportunity to play old favourites as well as try out new games, with such a huge library available.
Just one wall of the games on offer
This summer’s event spanned the late August bank holiday weekend, providing a welcome respite from the practically monsoon levels of rain that decided to descend on Manchester. I attended each day with a slightly different group, and thought what better way to showcase the variety available than to document exactly what I played over the weekend.
Day One: Friday, 3pm - Late
The first day of the festival provided a pleasant reprieve after work, and always consists of more of a half-day unless you are planning to stay over in the hotel that is being used as the host. As I live locally, this means we tend to arrive roughly as the event opens and stay until around 10pm, which still provides plenty of time for gaming.
For this day, I was playing with my sibling predominately meaning that we decided to focus on two-player games but importantly to try things that we perhaps hadn’t had a chance to look at before that were still reasonably light-weight to wean us into a weekend of gaming.
Game 1 in this instance was Mountain Goats: completely new to us, low complexity but with a reasonable amount of strategy. By rolling your 4 dice each turn, you add the sums in any combination that you like and climb the mountains, gaining the relevant points as you reach the summit. However, if your opponent’s goat reaches the top as well, you are butted from the mountain and have to restart your climb all over again.
This felt like the perfect level of silly fun to start our weekend, and came with beautiful artwork as well as little goat meeples. This game can be played as 2 to 4 players, making it versatile for family groups as well as a fun 2-player game for us.
Game 2 was Toy Battle, again a gentle enough game with some strategy. Whilst we have played before, we chose a different map from the base game this time of which there are 8 different ones available in the base game. Here you place your toy characters with the aim of controlling bases and collecting stars to achieve victory before your opponent.
Personally, I find this a fun little 2-player with plenty of variety and it’s worth noting that rounds are reasonably short - this particular map only took us about 20 minutes and we definitely weren’t rushing our turns. For this reason, for us it is more of a palate cleanser between games rather than one we could settle to for a long time, but does appear to be one that we find ourselves reaching for often at these events.
Game 3 was Quixo, again new to us though I do rather love Gigamic’s ‘modern classic’ games. As you may be able to tell from the above, Quixo is a reimagined noughts and crosses game where the aim is to get a line of 5 noughts or crosses depending on which you are playing as. To play you take a blank cube from any edge, turn it so your respective mark is face up then add it to the end of the corresponding row or column, sliding the other cubes in that line whether they be face up or blank. This creates an interesting, moving strategy puzzle for 2 players, or 4 if playing as teams.
I will say right off the bat the the build quality of the components is beautiful - the cubes are tactile, clear and easy to play, with a good solid weight. This is also another game that whilst simply to pick up, takes a whilst to develop a strategy for and requires flexibility in said strategy to achieve a final victory. Definitely a new favourite in their range.
Game 4 for the evening was Art Society - another absolutely beautiful game, as you can see above, whereby players bid for canvases to add to their wall of art. The puzzle is quite a challenge when it comes to scoring and positioning optimally, giving a nice brain-scratch element to the evening.
This is one that I often find myself coming back to that sits nicely in the tactical but not stressful to play, as well as simply being something very beautiful at the end.
Our 5th and final game of the evening was Fog of Love, and for me this was the one dud out of those we played. I’m usually a big fan of any story telling game, however for me here the tutorial game felt far too clunky those I appreciate that some players would like the hand-holding that it offers.
I also struggle to find who this game is actually targeted to. For actual couples, I can see the questions and actions leading to very real arguments, whilst when playing as two made up characters (note: I played this with my literal sibling) there was no real drive and I feel there are games out there that do the guided roleplay gameplay in a far more cohesive way. Nevertheless, I’m glad to have sated my curiosity over a game I kept seeing.
Day Two: Saturday, 10am - Late
The Saturday is always the busiest day when it comes to MBGF, and this one was absolutely no exception. My sibling and I were joined by another friend of ours, and throughout the day we linked up with other players - something that the festival does help to promote through the use of green ‘players welcome’ signs and seat covers, along with players who wish to find a game being offered green arm bands.
Our first game of the day was Tiny Towns, a game where players collect resources - represented by the coloured cubes - and build various building within the 4x4 town to score the most points, with different buildings having different effects that aid your gameplay. Each player is also given a secret ‘special building’ they can make, as shown by the card in from of me on the table.
This was a very enjoyable game to play, albeit one member of the group did comment it was hard to follow exactly how to use the factories whilst I noped out of using them entirely because the instruction there felt unclear. A good starter game too, as it took up about 45 minutes to learn and play.
Next up, we played Disney’s Villainous using the main base game from the game library along with my expansion pack ‘Evil Comes Prepared’ to add variety as we have played this game so much. I will say straight up that I am both a big Disney fan as well as being very fond of asymmetric competitive games, so immediately this ticks the boxes for me.
The artwork, as you can see, is beautiful whilst the aim of the game is to achieve your villain’s objective (themed to their film) whilst preventing the other villains from achieving theirs through playing fate cards that sabotage them. Something I love with Villianous is that there are a variety of complexities amongst the different characters as well as a good variety on the strategies needed to be used. It’s no surprise when I see that this is a game that is frequently booked out of the library at the festival.
Game 3 was new to all of us: Long Shot, a dice-based horse racing game where you can buy horses, bet and sponsor to try to make the biggest profit across the races. Incredibly simple to pick up and follow, not necessarily something I think I would find myself reaching for often, certainly not as a 3 player group given there are so many more games that I feel more invested in.
Nevertheless, this was a nice casual game for mid afternoon, and made a good space-filler for us between having lunch at the venue and taking a walk around the stalls at Manchester Pride - MBGF is always hosted in a large hotel in the middle of Manchester city centre, making it incredibly convenient to both get to and for those attending to venture out for a wander if they wish to.
Our 4th game was Poetry for Neanderthals - a party game where players try to guess as many words/concepts being described to them as they can before the time runs out. The only catch here is that you must talk like a neanderthal - that is, you are only allowed to use simple one-syllable words.
This was fun, though I definitely do feel it is something that would benefit more from more players as opposed to our 3-player version. It adds a nice variant to the casual guessing games we have previously encountered, and even comes with a free inflatable mallet you can use to punish players for their incorrect guesses. I can see this working very well for families or student groups.
Game 5 was a 3-person game of Symbiosis. This is a reasonable quick and easy to pick up game that we regularly play at the festival. You start with 8 face down cards in front of each player in a 2 x 4 grid, as well as 4 in the centre of the table, and each turn you choose to either flip or swap a card in your grid. However, the two left most cards score based on what your left neighbour has in their grid, and the two right most cards score off the right neighbour, with the middle four scoring for your own cards.
Whilst a gentle enough game to play, there is a decent amount of strategy involved with the every changing balance of cards in front of you. Something I really do like is the simplicity of the cards and the bold designs help to make it an accessible game too.
Our 6th game was new to us on this weekend, yet has gone on to become a firm favourite - Calico. This was suggested to us by one of the ‘Library Bees’ - volunteers looking after the games and teaching them - as a cosy puzzle game, and I was immediately very taken by just how cute the cats are. As someone who is also a stitcher, this game kind of got me pinned down on most of my interests.
The puzzle gets increasing challenging with each hex you put down, and whilst there is some jostling with your opponents for the right piece, the competition never feels mean as it’s impossible really to win by playing someone else’s game. The artwork, as you can see, is beautiful through and through, and I think across the entire event this was my favourite new-to-me game.
For game 7, we introduced our friend to Mountain Goats which we had played the previous day - i won’t bore you with another recap, but safe to say this is just as much fun with 3 as it is with 2.
Lastly for our 8th and final game of the day, we were joined by another friend for a 4-player game of Doomlings. This leans more into the party game territory but still has a reasonable level of strategy, whilst not feeling overly competitive. Again, this is something we reach for again and again as a palette cleanser and - as with on this evening - when our brains are feeling just a little fried from a long day of gaming.
Day Three: Sunday, 10am - 8pm
To start off our final gaming day, I brought along my copy of Pounce that I was kindly given to review for Zatu (said review is already up if you wish to read a longer overview). We were again a 3, and I think it is fair to say that with ages in the group ranging from 35 - 60+, we may not have been quite the target demographic for this one.
That said, we still had fun with this word game, and I like the nod to keeping it accessible for anybody who may be colourblind or have vision struggles as all the letters in play are bold and clearly bordered. It is also a reasonably quick game to play, allowing for it to be a palette cleanser if wanted or multiple rounds played to create a longer play time.
Our next game, alongside a 4th player, was A.R.T Project - a game that my sibling and I have played many times before, but the other two players were less familiar with. In this co-operative game, players endeavour to find and recover stolen art pieces from various locations on the map whilst handling the increasing threat of the thieves. It can be a major challenge to keep everyone alive, find and get to the stolen pieces, and also prevent locations getting locked off.
We tried the Japan map this time as it was one we were not familiar with, and it definitely gave more of a challenge compared to the base map yet was still manageable with the right strategy. A good thinky game taking around an hour to place, and one that we do find ourselves coming back to reasonably regularly.
Third, another beautiful puzzle game - Wispwood. As you can see from above, the game components are stunning. The puzzle itself grows over the 3 rounds - first a 4*4 grid, then 5*5, then 6*6 and given all coloured tiles that you place remain in place the entire game, it can get harder and harder to score unless you are prepared to be adaptable in your strategy.
We tried different rule variation for the symbols this time, and were pleased to find just how balanced this game is whichever combination is chosen. There is also a reasonable challenge to the growing puzzle without the game actually becoming stressful.
Fourth, one of the lovely hosts from Hachette Games introduced us to one of their newest editions - Ipso. Elements of push your luck and puzzle strategy coexist here to try to score the most points in the most efficient way.
This was a reasonable straightforward and quick game for us to place, and as always with Hachette the production quality is high with super clear cards and rules. It was easy to pick up and I can see us reaching for this again at the festivals.
Our final game of the weekend was Hues and Cues, where one player provides a clue to the exact colour they have been given on their card. This, for us, fell a little flat as we found that several shades we so close to a match yet spaced too far from each other to be able to accurately guess. That said, for those who may have higher colour perception or alternatively just want a chill, pretty game this could well be a winner.
Weekend summary
However one chooses to spend the weekender, I hope it has become clear from the above that MBGF provides a huge range of options for games to play. There are also events running throughout the festival, such as the hugely popular Geek Fayer selling various artwork, games and other crafty items; social deduction games like Blood on the Clock Tower; Charity Bingo and a raffle.
If one chooses to game all weekend, then there are options available for every liking. This weekend in total, I played a total of 18 games, with Mountain Goats being the only repetition, with a good mixture of new and familiar games within that. It is an event I never miss, and definitely a highlight of the gaming calender.
Their next event is the Halloween special at the end of October, and promises to be just as enjoyable with the added bonus of a themed Immersion Pavillion featuring Mysterium, as well as daily costume competitions for those who choose to dress up for Halloween.
