Six of us were there for the warm up game and I was lucky enough to get a new game through the door that morning that took up to 6 players. So Om Nom Nom it was.

This is a game about food chains, there are three food chains in play each of which has three levels, and every player has six cards which represent the top two levels of creatures in those food chains (the predators). Fifteen dice are rolled which provide the prey on the lower 2 levels of all three chains (the middle level being both Prey and Predator).

The board set up before first selection of cards

Each player now selects a card, these are all played together and placed on the boards, players now collect prey from the level below their played predator – however this starts at the top so a middle rank predator may be eaten as prey before it gets to eat itself. Uneaten prey dice gets left for the following turn where everyone selects their next card, if several predators of the same type are played they share the prey evenly.

Play continues through all 6 cards before the dice are rolled again. Three rounds of die rolling complete the game. It was a quick fun game of out-guessing your opponents.

We then split into 2 tables for the heavier games, table 1 played Hyperborea which seemed to go down very well, all three players looking forward to the next play of the game.

My table played Evolution the game that table 1 played last week. It is essentially a card collection game. The aim of the game is to gain victory points through food collection by the creatures you create. Each creature is a different species and may have up to three different traits to help them gather food or help them in defence against carnivores.

Two of the species in my line up towards the end of the game.

Each turn the players get dealt a hand of cards with which they can buy a new species or help the species grow in size or population or they may use the cards to add a new trait to any of their species, in this way their creatures grow. Next players visit the food pool to collect algae to feed their creatures, carnivores of course do not eat algae and must attack any creature that is vulnerable to their attack. At the end of the turn all food eaten by creatures gets added to a food bag and becomes victory points at the end of the game.

A species with 2 traits at the beginning of the game. — A species with 2 traits at the beginning of the game.

The game ends when the deck is depleted, the turn is ended and scores added up, on top of the collected food players add the number of traits in play among all their creatures. The game was interesting and played quite smoothly, I felt something was lacking to make it an excellent game but I do not know what so I will be playing it again before making a final judgement.

As table 1 were still playing Hyperborea we moved on to Alhambra: The Dice Game This game has been covered a couple of times before, suffice to say it is a nicely balanced game with sufficient dice rolling to minimize the luck factor.

Alhambra at the end of a round just after scoring

The last game of the evening was played on table 1 and in the absence of Sushi Go they re-visited Om Nom Nom.

This was my draw after a complete change of tiles - just one non-double and yes I was after red and blue.

I am starting a picture quiz, each week I will show a photo of part of a game that I have played during the previous 7 days, you just have to guess what it is. Answer next week with the next guest photo, an easy one to start with.

Medway Area Boardgamers