Our last game night was a logistical back and forth of number of attendees, which made game planning tricky! Despite the anxiety that caused the planner in me, it ended up a successful evening and even featured a game celebrating (early) World Ocean Day! Read on for the details!

At a Glance…

Snack

We had a celiac attending, as well as someone allergic to cinnamon, so after a quick poll of a few options, I landed on these Snickers Snack Bars from Vegan Richa! I’ve been on a bit of a snickers / date caramel kick lately, but I can’t help it; it’s so good! This one is super easy and just needs a bit of planning ahead for the freeze time. And a large enough space in your freezer after you’ve inevitably doubled it. Sorry bread, back to the top of the fridge you go! This treat has a delightful peanut buttery-y crust, lovely chunky peanuts, and that aforementioned date caramel, topped by just the right amount of chocolate to not be too overwhelming. Give it a go; you won’t regret it!

Strategy

While the main game of the evening was actually the Fox Experiment, I wanted to talk about The Spill first. I was excited to get it played and celebrate an early World Ocean(s) Day. This was the first game I thought of when I heard about this holiday. While we have other aquatic themed games, this was so perfectly exemplifies the spirit of the holiday.

In it, you are trying to rescue marine animals from an oil rig spewing oil. In some ways it’s a traditional cooperative game where you get action points to do good things, then the game does bad things (aka spews more oil at you and the animals). But a few things about this one makes it stand out for me and still glad I kickstarted it. First of all, the obviously eye-catching table presence makes it a great one to welcome people to the table. While the oil rig can be a bit finicky and probably not the purest and evenest way to distribute dice, it’s got a certain je ne sais quoi about it that I love. Also I love the cool mechanism of tower-attacking (instead of ‘tower defense’), and the way things quickly escalate. The variable win conditions makes it super replayable and gives each game a different flavor. If you love cooperative games and haven’t tried this one, you should!

I’ve previously talked about the Fox Experiment here. It’s on our 10×10 this year, so you’ll probably see it pop up a few more times at different game nights in the next few months. In a nutshell, you’re replicating the actual experiment that took place in Russia years ago that attempted to domesticate foxes. It has such a cool combination of dice chucking, engine building, interaction, and simultaneous play that makes it great at all the player counts. I always love to name my pups after a theme for the whole game; the last game I went with all names from Schitt’s Creek since we’re currently rewatching it.

All in all it turned out to be a fun evening!

Want to buy these games? Check out your friendly local game store (FLGS), Amazon [here], or get a first-order discount at Board Game bliss [here].