by Surya Van Lierde is pure Eurosnoot and proud of it!
Rajas of the Gangestl;dr quite good indeed
The Brands have been a bit hit-and-miss for me, but the last couple of years they've had more hits then before. And this game definitely is a hit.
This is a dice placement game. Certain actions require certain colors of dice, others requite certain values. So good die management is essential. But that's not just an interesting mechanism in a shell. No it's been integrated into a very good, tight game that appears to offer a good variety of different strategies to explore.
On top of that it has a rather unique scoring mechanism with 2 different makers moving in opposite directions. When they cross, the distance between them determines your score. But the way you move them (and witch one to move) is what the game is all about. Lots of choices!
Initial rating: 7.4/10
BGG scale: 7/10
Memo Dice
tl;dr: not that good
Roll dice, cover them up with cups and when all cups are placed or none can be placed, start guessing what is under the cups. Very, very basic. OK, this is a game aimed at families with kids. But the box says 8+, so it's not aimed at really young games. The main problem is: if the player starting has a good memory, the other players never get the opportunity to score. In our game we had a player like that, and he also happened to be the player who also got to start guessing. Well, let's just say the score was not close.
I think this is easily fixed: have players guess one die each. It would probably improve the game a bit, but this will never be a great game. It's just too basic and not that engaging.
Initial rating: 4/10
BGG scale: 3/10
Le Havre: The Inland Port
tl;dr: quite nice, but don't expect the full, juicy original
The original Le Havre is in my top 2 ever. It also happens to play very, very well with 2. So why a 2 player only take? Because it takes many of the mechanisms and discards many of them as well and distills it down into a more accessible, sorter game. You can still use each other's buildings of course, but it also adds a new aspect that doesn't appear in the original: the way resources are added and used is now the core of the game. And it leads to very hard choices. How to best combine the buildings to get the resources you need?
I never expected this to be the full Le Havre experience in a small box and it is not. But it is a solid little game with nice choices. Good stuff.
Rating: 7.2/10
BGG scale: 7/10