The theme? I still really have no idea why a themeless Euro would go for setting a game in 16th-century Prague with Golems—Golems which may be best off dead, thanks to a “Kill a Golem” mechanic!! And the idea that the marbles are the eyeballs that go into slots on a player board…I don’t know, the theme just didn’t work for me.

The Italians have done it again. No, not the Mario Bros. Not the Corleones. I’m talking about the group of Italian game designers who’ve been churning out quality Euros for several years now. Golem’s designers, Simone Luciani, Virginio Gigli, and Flaminia Brasini, have contributed to standout games like Tzolk’in, Grand Austria Hotel, Lorenzo il Magnifico, and Barrage in various combinations, along with a few other compatriots, such as Daniele Tascini.The top two tiles contain the four, all-important Golem locations where you can trade the right combination of crystals for the points-gaining Golems. All the rest are workable. Up to half of these start covering up.

So that’s three extra rules cards, extra bonus cards, new and different location tiles and a new set of golems. I haven’t played any of the combos yet (and I’m not sure if you can mix Golem and original editions) but it’s all there if I want it. Own Golem Final Score: 4.5 Stars – Crunchy engine-builder with a unique theme and a satisfying, human-like solo bot. Actions are building Golems, writing books and discovering artefacts. Which are all paid for by the matching resource, clay for golems, knowledge for books and gold for artefacts, as well as the action you may perform an upgrade in the matching area of your player board. You will often want to do both but only be able to afford one which creates a nice tension of choices. Knowledge is one of three main resources in the game. It not only pays to control the Golems, but is also used to study adding books to your player board for bonuses and scoring. Clay is used to build your Golems, and upgrade your Golem making facilities, while gold coins are used in the building and upgrading of artefacts. I appreciated that playing Grand Austria Hotel—and understanding how the “power” of an action is tied to the number of marbles left in any given row—helped me plan turns.When you gain a Golem card you can also take a bonus tile. You may have a choice of two and can have up to three in total. These either give straight points, points for set combinations at game end or move traders from your reserve to your active pool. Golem Scoring The card market, which is the book market in Golem, was fun and timing when to buy the right cards was great. Then putting those cards in certain columns to activate everything in a column can yield a resource bonanza, which can take the place of a good income engine if played right. The combos in this game, the big moments where you chain a solid move into another great play, are awesome. I mean, fantastic. I had a turn where I took an action to activate a couple of my Golems on a single turn. The way I made this move work out: do a Golem action to buy a book at a 5-Knowledge discount (Knowledge is one of the resources in the game), which slots into one of the columns on my player board with 3 other books already there, to give me a one-time bonus that gets doubled because I’ve already activated another power…just describing it all and rethinking how I pulled off this move is exhilarating. This recommendation comes from my wife, to whom I can only apologise because asking her to choose just one game is basically a form of torture. If your idea of family bonding is not saying a word and squinting intensely at each other instead, The Mind is for you - and it's a lot more fun than I've just made it sound.

The game plays exactly the same way as Spice Road, but for those out of the loop let’s catch you up. You start the game by laying out a row of five goal cards, and six merchant cards. Goal cards offer you victory points for trading in various crystals and the two leftmost cards have lovely metal coins placed above them for anyone game enough to grab those cards.

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Weight-wise, the Century/Golem games come in at around the gateway, gateway-plus category. They’re easy to learn… but difficult to master. As a game in its own right, An Endless World provides a pleasant array of variety with every play. But an appealing add-on with the Century games runs tue with the Golem Editions, too. This series can intertwine with one another to create hybrid games. You can combine any two of the Golem games to create a blend of gameplay. Or you can integrate all three for a giant (or should that be golem-sized?) game! The Automa chooses to take a rabbi action either when the rabbi meeple icons match up to create a complete picture, or when the leftmost action selection column dictates. In either case, the Automa again has a tendency, preferring one of the uppermost action tiles, because it wants the first player position. At the beginning of each round, the players will shuffle the colored marbles into the 3D synagogue that will split them into five lines corresponding to the five main actions available in the game: Another recommendation from my wife, who it turns out was physically incapable of being limited to one board game, Dixit is something a little different and is sure to bring out your creative side. On each turn in Dixit one player is the storyteller, and they must choose one of the six cards in their hand, make up a sentence based on that card's image, and say it out loud without showing the card to the other players. It’s hard to define what makes a game qualify to be hot, but Century: Spice Road has definitely had it. Maybe it’s the promise of gateway goodness, pretty components and fast play. Maybe it was the comparisons to the lightweight accessible darling of the board game scene, Splendor, or maybe it was just the certain je ne sais quoi.