If you like what you see, Cobra Paw is available to play in the Treehouse library where it has been a long-standing favourite. Or, you can get you hands on your very own copy from our shop using our shiny new ‘click and collect’ service… find it here.
This video was produced by Matt Turner, Jenny Garner and Patrick Lickman. Check out Patrick’s website here for more examples of his great editing work. Music courtesy of Sounds Like An Earful.
If this video leaves you with the urge to get your Indiana Jones on, Cobra Paw is available to play in the Treehouse library and to buy in our online shop, for UK-wide postal delivery or free click & collect.
This video was produced by Matt Turner and Patrick Lickman. Check out Patrick’s website here for more examples of his great editing work. Music courtesy of Sounds Like An Earful.
The game begins with players receiving their secret role card, determining whether they’re on team villager, trying to track down a possible werewolf in their midst before it’s too late, or team werewolf, trying to lie low and avoid detection. Certain village team roles come with special powers, giving players nuggets of information to help put them on the scent, while others act as instruments of chaos adding extra layers of intrigue.
Cue the night time phase: all players place their character cards face down in front of them and close their eyes. The various roles then trigger one at a time, letting the relevant players peak at other cards around the table, swap roles around, or perhaps lock eyes with a fellow werewolf. The game comes with a handy app to talk you through the steps, complete with (optional) spooky disco soundtrack. Then daybreak arrives, giving players a matter of minutes to exchange information, hurl accusations, and finally… decide who to lynch! If the majority vote for a werewolf, it’s victory for the villagers, but if not, the werewolves win the day.
This game needs 5+ players to shine, and the range of roles in the box leaves you with plenty of options for switching things up.
If you haven’t yet played this absolute blockbuster of a modern classic, consider your party plans sorted! There are no hidden roles here, just plenty of tension and occasional opportunities for feeling like a genius… or the opposite.
The game set-up is a five by five grid of word cards in the centre of the table, selected randomly from a sizeable stack. Players form two teams, red and blue, then each team selects a ‘spymaster’ who will be their clue-giver for the rest of the game. The two spymasters sit where they can both see a card which allocates each word in the central grid to either the red team, the blue team, a decoy beige category… or one final option which I’ll come back to.
Spymasters take turns to provide a clue to their teams in a specific format: a single word that relates to one or more of the words of their colour in the grid, plus a number which indicates how many words the clue links to. Coming up with the clues is fiendishly tricky, but once that’s done, spymasters simply sit back and maintain a poker face as their team members decide how to interpret their new information, and make a guess at which word(s) in the grid the clue relates to. Each word guessed correctly is covered by a card of the team’s colour, bringing them one step closer to victory. Incorrect guesses either end the turn (beige words), give points to the other team (words of the opposing colour) or, possibly… LOSE THE ENTIRE GAME, in the case of the one black word on the grid: the DEADLY ASSASSIN.
With so much at stake, there’s no shortage of tension here, and few moments in gaming are as satisfying as thinking up or cracking a particularly great clue… or as nerve-wracking as watching your team confidently take hold of the wrong end of the stick. This game works well with four players and brilliantly with six, and if you can’t get together in person there’s an awesome free online version here.
If you’ve mastered Codenames and aren’t put off by the idea of getting your head around a few more rules, we’d strongly recommend Decerypto – check out the review here to find out why.
Looking for a social activity that’s basically COVID-proof? Allow us to present… two-player board games! If you’re lucky enough to live with at least one other person of a game-playing age and inclination, this is a fun thing you can do without the leaving the house, inviting anyone round, or (once you have the game), even spending money!
Convinced? Great! Here are some of our favourite games for two to help you prepare for whatever comes along next…
Hive, aka ‘insect chess’, is a strong contender for my favourite two-player game EVER, which is maybe surprising given my complete ambivalence about actual chess. This neat strategy game packs bags of depth and replayability into a handful of tactile Bakelite pieces, and will fit in a handbag or even a (large) pocket if you buy the mini version.
The game itself has just a handful of rules, and absolutely zero set-up beyond tipping the pieces out of the bag and splitting them by colour. On a turn, either add a new piece to the playing area or move a piece you’ve placed already. Pieces feature different types of insects that move in different ways. In the basic version of the game there are just five species to get your head around: ants, grasshoppers, beetles, spiders and the all-important queen bee.
You win the game if your opponent’s queen is completely surrounded by other pieces, regardless of whether those pieces are yours or theirs. There are just a couple of additional rules relating to placement and movement, but that’s basically the whole game (check out the Shut Up and Sit Down review here for a more complete run-through if you like to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s).
Once you’re under way, this simple set of rules magically transforms into a quick-yet-satisfying playing experience that will get those mental cogs turning just enough without causing total burn-out, and will almost certainly leave you coming back for more.
As if that wasn’t enough, sturdiness of the pieces and lack of a board make this a game you can play pretty much anywhere. We’ve played Hive in the pub, in the park, even on a picnic blanket at a festival. Admittedly some of these settings might not be immediately relevant, but a game this durable will still be going strong when they are!
Once upon a time, way back when we were taking our very first steps into modern board gaming, Andy went on a quest to find a great two-player game for us to take on holiday, and came back with a neat little box containing Jaipur. We hadn’t played that many Euro-style games by this point, and initially I confess that the Middle-Eastern marketplace theme and apparent excess of camels left me a touch sceptical. But, as soon as I got to grips with the carefully balanced back-and-forth of the gameplay, my scepticism dissolved, and even the quantity of camels began to make sense.
Jaipur is a two-player card game in which players compete for the approval of the Maharaja, which they can gain by becoming the richest merchant in two out of three rounds of trading in the city of Jaipur’s market place.
The game mainly consists of a deck of cards containing a mixture goods to be traded and a WHOLE LOT of camels. The options on a turn are simple: either take one goods card or ALL THE CAMELS from the market place for free; swap goods cards from your hand and/or camels from your herd with the same number of goods from the market place; or, sell a set of matching goods to gain victory points (the more cards sold at once the better in terms of gaining points).
It’s straightforward on the surface, but with a hand limit of seven cards there are quickly some difficult choices to be made, and the more cards you take from the market the more new ones will appear before your opponent’s next turn and the higher the chance of them being able to claim something especially nice and shiny.
Again this game is super-portable, and packs a lot of depth and replayability into a neat little box. Plus, the recently-released second edition has given it a fresh coat of paint, making it extra vibrant and appealing.
If you prefer your games to have an engaging theme, or at the very least to contain cute plastic animals, Ice Team might be right up your ice floe. The aim of this simple, two-player race game is to get your team of polar bears from one end of the board to the other as quickly as you can, acquiring as many fish as possible along the way.
The modular race course can be arranged in different ways and there’s some randomness in the set-up, so the obstacles you’re tackling will be different each time. The rules for movement are simple: pick a bear and hop it to an adjacent ice berg tile or swim in a straight line across open water. Bears can leap-frog over each other should the opportunity arise, and some of the ice berg tiles do different things, from providing you with fish to letting you satisfyingly surf to the next spot.
There’s a bit of chance involved in winning, with the number of fish you acquire being partly determined by dice rolls, but there’s plenty of strategy too, especially when it comes to making your adorable team work together effectively.
This is a great choice if you’re looking for a game to engage a younger audience (the publishers recommend it for ages 8+), but we’re confident most adults will find it irresistible and more-ish too, and the theme feels just festive enough to make it ideal for Christmas but playable all year round!
Sometimes the premise of a game is so awesome that it’s enough to convince you to give it a try all by itself. We’ve persuaded a whole lot of people to try out Raptor at The Treehouse pretty much on the basis of theme alone, but the good news is that the gameplay is excellent too!
Raptor is an asymmetric game where one player takes on the role of a mother raptor, quietly minding her own business in the jungle/ desert (the board is double-sided) while tending her brood of babies. The other player takes control of a team of scientists, whose aim is to steal at least three of those babies away before the mother can get them safely off the board.
If you’re anything like us you already want to give this a go, but before you dive in let’s talk about how it works. Each player controls their pieces using a small deck of cards numbered one to nine. On each turn, both players draw three cards to choose from, and place the one they want to play face down. The chosen cards are revealed simultaneously (a mechanic we always love, incidentally), and determine who can do what. Each card has a particular power (adding new scientists to the board, say, or letting the mother raptor call some of her babies closer to her), but in order to activate that power the card must have a lower number than the other player. Whoever played the higher number instead gets to perform a number of actions (again, character-specific) equal to the difference in the numbers on the two cards chosen.
Every game of Raptor is guaranteed to be packed with narrative and drama. If the game has a flaw it’s that it seems to be harder to win as the raptors than the scientists, but that only makes victory all the sweeter when you do manage to get your brood to safety!
We know that for some people, competitiveness is a real barrier to enjoyment when it comes to board gaming, and probably never more so than when you’re stuck in a house together with no variety of opponents. Cooperative games offer a neat solution to this: all players work together to defeat the game, so you’re all on the same side and can rage or gloat as a team. The absolute classic of this genre is arguably 2008 release Pandemic in which players race to save the world from viruses, but although this saw a surge in popularity at The Treehouse back in March, we suspect the novelty of this particular theme has probably worn a little thin by this point!
Forbidden Desert was created by the same designer (Matt Leacock, in case you’re interested) and sees players stranded in the desert, racing to assemble a magical air ship from parts which have been scattered across the sand dunes, in order to escape to safety before their water supply runs out. So a bit like going on holiday somewhere hot, if you focus on the right bits!
Players take turns performing actions to bring everyone closer to their goal, moving around the board and excavating spaces to search for airship components. All the while, the sun beats down and a raging sandstorm roams the board, burying everything deeper and deeper under a layer of sand.
This game involves a bunch of really neat mechanics not to mention some great components, and can be played by up to five people if you have them available, although (like most cooperative games) it works beautifully with just two.
If all the options above sound a little too strategic, or if you’re up against some extreme board game scepticism, Tokyo Highway might be the answer. Ever since we added this to our library, we’ve been getting questions along the lines of “what’s that game they’re playing with the tiny cars? It looks so cool!”, and we can only agree: yes, it really does.
To be good at Tokyo Highway, you’ll need spatial awareness, a little bit of strategy, and perhaps most importantly, fine motor skills (don’t be fooled by the plastic tweezers that come with the game – they don’t help as much as you think!). The aim of the game is to place all of your tiny wooden vehicles on sections of your very own highway system, but in order to do this you’ll have to make it cross over and under your opponent’s roads in very specific ways, guaranteeing the creation of an urban planner’s nightmare!
This game is truly unlike any other we’ve come across, and has been known to lure in even the most doubtful gamers. Just make sure your table doesn’t wobble before you begin!
In Betrayal, players take on the role of characters exploring a spooky mansion. You begin the game in the entrance hall, comfortable in the knowledge that you’re all on the same side, and feeling ready for an adventure. The mansion slowly reveals its secrets as you explore, which (spolier alert) pretty much always include some truly daft architectural choices, given that the room tiles are drawn at random. Some rooms contain items (often useful stuff like weapons, etc), while others trigger creepy little events or, most excitingly, reveal omens. Each time an omen is appears, six dice are rolled, and if the total number that comes out is lower than the number of omens you’ve encountered so far… then it’s officially SPOOK TIME, because The Haunt is about to begin.
This is the point at which Betrayal really comes into its own. The basic game comes with a book of 50 different scenarios which can trigger at this point. Which one you end up with is determined by the number on the omen card that tipped the balance, and which room it was found in (who’s to say a scary plot line can’t begin with a look-up table? Certainly not us!). The only thing the scenarios have in common is that they will pit one player (the traitor) against the rest. Who becomes the traitor is determined by the scenario, but whoever they are, they will now become the keeper of the Traitor’s Tome which will provide them with their new, secret win condition and let them know their new spooky powers.
We’ve played a few games of Betrayal ourselves and had a LOT of discussions with people who’ve playing it at the Treehouse, and are always astonished at the variety of plot lines. Yes, some of them are better-designed from a gameplay point of view than others, but we’ve never been disappointed with the narrative that develops: this game has genuinely produced some of our favourite board game storylines. If you’re up for some super-nerdy viewing, check out this episode of Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop, which does a great job of demonstrating just how funny and unpredictable Betrayal can be!
Pretty much the only downside to this game at the moment is that you do need at least three people to play it, and ideally 5-6 to experience it at it’s best. If you’re lucky enough to have the player count right now, we strongly recommend giving this one a go.
Chella:
“We are still enjoying online games with friends and family, including improvised Just One using pen and paper; a little rough and ready homemade web version of Telestrations coded by a friend; a phone-based version of Cards Against Humanity called All Bad Cards, and most of the Jackbox games (repeat faves are Quiplash, Drawful, Fibbage and Trivia Murder Party). We’ve also been meeting our friends in Board Game Arena to play Hanabi which is nice because they live in Hamburg.
I’m lucky enough to be researching design fictions on my PhD so I’ve been able spend time playing some old and not so old text based adventures and narrative games (in the name of research!) on Steam and Itch.io, some of which I grabbed in the latter’s ‘Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality’ a while back.
We’ve had a few breaks in play, but when we can get everyone together we continue roleplaying using Discord and Foundry Virtual Tabletop. We are about six sessions into the Enemy Within Campaign from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
We’ve also recently discovered that Airbnb now offers online experience tours, so we can finally realise our literal board game name location challenge: we’ve been saving two bottles of Jaipur IPA so that we can play Jaipur while drinking Jaipur, and now we can have a complete date night of that plus an online tour of Jaipur, India!”
Patrick:
“In our house we’ve been enjoying online card games like Magic: the Gathering Arena and Legends of Runeterra. They’re not quite the same as sitting opposite an opponent to duke it out, but they both scratch a strategic itch! Magic in particular is in a good place right now, and it’s great to just drop a game or two over the course of an afternoon.”
Then, last but very definitely not least… Ella:
“I’ve been making board games into drinking games (Cobra Paw) and I’m going to make a huge Battleships board to put drinks on in place of ships, then if your opponent hits your boat you neck whatever drink is on that square 🤪”
Slowly but surely we’re getting a clearer picture of what’s in store for us over the festive season at the end of this weirdest of years. It’s looking like getting family together around a table will be ‘a thing’ this year in our part of the world, but with pubs shut in a lot of places and household mingling still limited, Christmas merriment might still need a bit of a helping hand.
That’s where (you guessed it) board games come in! Long a traditional component of Christmas for lots of families, board games have come a very long way over the past decade or so, and have never offered so many effective ways to get the fun started. Here’s our Christmas Games Guide 2020 to help you navigate these crowded waters and find the perfect family game for Christmas…
The period covered by Baltic Empires saw the Ottoman Empire at the absolute height of its power. The steppes of southern Ukraine and Russia were controlled by the Tatars of the Crimean Khanate, who were vassals of the Ottoman Empire, while the southern border of the Poland-Lithuania was inhabited by semi-independent Cossacks federations. Tartar raids to capture loot and slaves were a common problem along this border. Most of the time the Tatars served as a buffer between the Ottoman Empire and Poland-Lithuania. The Ottomans generally had no direct interest in this region, as their attention was primarily focused on the Habsburg and Polish lands to the south and west of the Baltic Empires map, but Polish and Russian reactions to Tatar raids at times forced the Ottomans to come to the aid of their vassals which resulted in large scale wars between Ottoman and Russian or Polish forces in the region.
Mehmed came to the throne of the Ottoman Empire at the age of only 6 after his father was overthrown in a coup. He would become the longest reigning sultan in Ottoman history after Suleiman the Magnificent and was known by contemporaries to be a particularly pious ruler. In a Baltic context he is mostly known for his wars against Poland and Russia in the 1670s. The greatest of these was the War of the Holy League or Great Turkish War of 1683-99, which saw the legendary siege of Vienna in 1683 and the equally legendary relief of the city by allied forces led by the Polish king Sobieski with his winged hussars. Mehmed would be overthrown in 1687 by soldiers disenchanted with the course of that war.
Getting the Mehmed IV card into your court in Baltic Empires represent your Power securing an alliance with the Tatars and/or the Ottoman Empire. He thus represents not only himself but also the Ottoman Empire and other associated peoples more generally. By later discarding the card, you are calling on the Ottomans to intervene in the region with a major army. Placing three Independent units at once and allying with them all for one turn (as well as with any other units that might already be in the Ottoman & Tartar Lands) can be truly devastating for the unfortunate target. But once the blow has been struck the effect is over and the region might then be filled with Independent units that anyone can ally with, which can cause of lots of problems for both the Poles and the Russians. This card is obviously of major value for both the Russian and Polish players, but can be just as valuable for any power fighting against Russia and/or Poland as it allows them to devastate their enemies or at least force them to spend scarce resources to defend against Mehmed. Indeed historically the Swedes allied with the Tatars on several occasions and Charles XII even sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire after his disastrous defeat at Poltava in 1708.
As the card is lost when used it is worth considering the timing of its play, as there can be many circumstances where the continued threat of unleashing Mehmed can be at least as useful as actually using the card.
Compared to the Maritime Powers and the Ottomans the interests of the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg dynasty that controlled them were mostly defensive in nature when it came to Baltic matters. The religious divide across Europe in general, and Germany in particular, caused by the Reformation just prior to the start of the game was however a cause for conflict, as the Catholic Habsburgs wanted to restore the true faith throughout the Holy Roman Empire (as well as centralizing Habsburg power in the process). These religious conflicts culminated in the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, which became intertwined with Baltic affairs as first Denmark and then Sweden saw an opportunity to expand their realms into the wealthy German lands by intervening into the war on the Protestant side. As Sweden was simultaneously fighting a war with Poland, who was allied with their fellow-Catholic Habsburgs, and Prussia-Brandenburg was being steamrolled by the armies of both sides, Northern Germany had suddenly become the focal point for most Baltic rulers.
The period from the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 to 1721 (the end of the period covered by Baltic Empires) saw Sweden entrenched as a major power in Europe with holdings in Germany, and with a firm alliance with France – the Habsburg’s main rivals. This situation naturally led to more Habsburg involvement in Baltic matters, such as when an Imperial contingent was sent to Denmark to fight against Sweden. In Baltic Empires the Independent provinces in Northern Germany are very attractive. They mostly start the game with their full complement of Cities and Workshops and several of them produce rare Goods or even, as is the case for Hamburg, contain one of the three super valuable Trade Centers. Compared to the similarly rich, but completely undefended, Independent provinces in the Livonian region (the modern day Baltic states) the provinces of Northern Germany are not easy pickings, however, as most of them start out with enough Fortresses and other Independent units to rival the starting strength of most of the player’s armies.
Elected in 1658, Leopold became the longest ruling Habsburg emperor, and the first to understand that the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 meant a marked decrease in importance of the role of Holy Roman Emperor. To compensate he sought to strengthen Habsburg authority within their own lands along absolutist lines. His reign saw many large wars against both France and the Ottomans, but in the Baltic context he is mainly known for the direct Imperial intervention against Sweden in the Northern War of 1655-60, which saw Imperial troops campaigning as far as Denmark as part of a Danish-Polish-Imperial coalition army. The infamous “Habsburg jaw” was most prominent in Leopold, and after his jaw was depicted unusually large on a 1670 silver coin, he was nicknamed “the Hogmouth”.
In Baltic Empires Emperor Leopold I represents the advantages of securing a firm alliance with the Habsburgs and their network of vassals and/or rulers within the Holy Roman Empire. You get to produce Independent units in Independent Provinces each Production Phase, an ability otherwise restricted to the Prussian player. You also get to ally with a unit in the Habsburg Lands for free during the War Phase, so by using the ability to place in the Habsburg Lands you in effect get a free unit you can throw after the other Powers each turn if they cause trouble for you. This is obviously very powerful if you are involved in securing Provinces for yourself in the area, but can also be used by Powers such as Russia, who are normally far removed from the Habsburg Lands, as constant attacks from the Habsburgs can be a great way of distracting other players who would otherwise cause trouble in your lands.
A Bohemian military entrepreneur, Wallenstein was Born into a poor Protestant noble family but converted to Catholicism in 1606 and married a rich widow. Wallenstein made an enormous fortune and a name for himself as a mercenary captain in the service of the emperor in the early part of the Thirty Years War, where he was awarded confiscated estates for his services. His massive armies were instrumental in first defeating the Danish, and then slowing the Swedish, during their interventions in the war. His meteoric rise to power and growing independence from the emperor would prove to be his undoing as he was assassinated in 1634 by army officials with the emperor’s approval.
Technically speaking Wallenstein didn’t intervene directly into Baltic affairs but only fought against Danish and Swedish intervention into German affairs. As this happened within the area covered by the map of Baltic Empires, he is however included in this article and the game.
In the game, as in history, the coming of Wallenstein will pose great problems for whoever is trying to take control of the independent areas in Germany. The player who gets Wallenstein into their Court gets to place a total of five Independent units within the German lands (as defined by being adjacent to Hannover). As befits Wallenstein’s historical conquering army these units can be placed in any of these areas and not only in friendly or Independent-controlled areas, and can therefore really set back an opponent who has spent lots of effort and expense to carve out an empire in Germany. As in history Wallenstein only works for the Emperor (and himself) and not for the player who got him in their Court, so he won’t directly help the player gain a foothold in Germany. On the contrary, the second part of Wallenstein’s card text even specifies that no Protestant powers may ally with Independent units for the rest of the Round, as well as the next, so the arrival of Wallenstein often shuts down players’ ambitions in Germany for some time.
Previous Article:
Foreign Intervention in Baltic Empires: Part One
The Women of Baltic Empires Series:
The Women of Baltic Empires: Part One
The Women of Baltic Empires: Part Two
Other Baltic Empires InsideGMT Articles
At the moment, pretty much everyone in the world has got more than usual to deal with when it comes to mental health. Since the start of the pandemic, we’ve all had some learning to do on what it takes to keep ourselves sane when our usual routines are disrupted and many sources of enjoyment aren’t available to provide a pick-me-up, and that’s just those of us lucky enough to have avoided major trauma or bereavement.
I suspect most regular board gamers would be willing to at least speculate that the hobby was doing their brains some good. It turns out there’s plenty of real life science to back this up, at least in certain areas (abstract strategy games and dementia, for example). I’m not qualified to say anything clever about the research, although a lot of it does ring true for me: this post is a reflection on how board gaming has helped my mental wellbeing over the past twelve months and why I think that is.
This is a personal subject so I’ll introduce myself for a change: Hi, I’m Ruth. For the last three-and-a-bit years I’ve been running the Treehouse with my other half Andy. Unless stated otherwise it’s probably me writing the social media and blog posts and behind the camera taking the pictures. Things I’ve learned about my mental health in the last twelve months: being below a certain level of busy is bad for me; even small amounts of random chitchat with other humans is good for me; I’m still capable of experiencing boredom (genuinely a surprise); houseplants are so beneficial for my mood that it’s almost weird. Big things I miss: sitting round a table with family and friends; working with the rest of the Treehouse team. Small things I miss: the sound of the Treehouse full of people having fun; live music (this one might belong in ‘big things’ actually); PINTS.
Maybe what you’re craving isn’t escapism at all, but a way to engage with each other on a deeper level. These (potentially dangerous!) games encourage you to get right into each other’s heads… who knows what surprises you’ll find there?
A quick aside: both of the following games are really designed for larger groups, and I wouldn’t claim that two is the ideal player count for either. However, during lockdown we’ve all had to make our fun with what’s available, and we’ve had an enjoyable two-player time with both of these. Playing with just two makes them a lot less raucous and a little more intense, but arguably no less satisfying than the larger group version, and you’ll get to have a whole different type of fun with them once party days are here again!
Medium. The first game in this weird but potentially wonderful category is Medium, in which players become mind readers trying to pluck words straight out of each other’s brains (not as gross as it sounds!). Each of you begins with a hand of word cards, and you take turns starting each round by choosing one to play face-up in the middle of the table. Then, the other player follows with a card from their hand, ideally one that they think creates an obvious connection with the word already chosen. You both count down from three then say the word that you think most directly links the two cards. If you both said the same word, great! You just scored the maximum points for the round. If not, you repeat the process up to twice more using the words you just said instead of the words on the card. This super-simple game has some genuine magic to it, and never more so than when you can look each other in the eye and just KNOW that you’re thinking the same thing!
Wavelength. Ah, Wavelength. I’ve used a whole lot of words waxing lyrical about this phenomenal game since it became available to buy again recently, but I can always find a few more! Wavelength is remarkable in many ways: you can play it in team or cooperatively, by video link or in person, with a large group or with just two players. It’s simple to learn, has some of the coolest components around, and can get you thinking about things as strange and diverse as “who on the Treehouse team is the most Slytherin?”, “which colour does my sister think is the sexiest?” or “what is small but not tiny?”.
The rules of Wavelength are simple: the player whose turn it is to be clue-giver draws a card which defines a scale, e.g. famous to infamous, pointy animal to round animal, or nice smell to disgusting smell, and tells the other players what it is. Then, they spin the Wavelength Wheel of Wonder* (*not its real name) and take a peak behind the snazzy turquoise screen to find out where on the scale the target has landed, without showing the other players. They then concoct their clue, which can be whatever they like as long as it’s not too complex, to help their team mates (or all other players in the cooperative version) to guess where the target is by adjusting the red needle. Once the decision is made, the screen slides back to show the answer, and points are awarded if the needle is within the target area. It might sound a little abstract without the game in front of you, but as soon as you’ve got to grips with the (literal) mechanics of the wheel, all will become clear!
A small safety note to finish: with just two players, we’ve found that this game can go one of two ways: either you’re so wondrously in sync that you become increasingly thrilled at your collective cleverness, or… you’re so at odds that you begin to wonder how you’re even friends. In the event that you find yourself in the latter scenario, don’t panic – treat it as a conversation starter and explore how you got there, and you’re bound to find out something about each other that you didn’t know before!