Today's adventures took me to the town of Shaftesbury, which contains a street called Gold Hill:
![]()
British readers of a certain age might recognise this location as the setting of one of the very early (and well-beloved) works of a certain Mr Ridley Scott:
Youtube Video
Though, just in case any casual passers-by were unaware of this connection, a suitable monument has been erected at the summit:
![]()
![]()
In commemoration of my visit to this major cultural landmark, today's top 5 topic will be:
Awesome board games which feature bread!
1. Agricola. And that moment where you look at your hand of cards right at the start of the game, and realise "Yes. This is the game where I'm definitely going in big on baking bread". Only to have your dreams and ambitions crushed about 6 rounds in, when you realise that at least 2 other people at the table are also"definitely" going in big on baking bread...
2. Le Havre. Obviously. Whenever I think of the word "Bakery" in the context of a board game, my mind immediately leaps to Le Havre, and its little french loaf resource chits. To be fair, I could probably fill up an entire bread-based top 5 with the works of Mr Rosenburg ... in which case, slot 3 would probably go to Ora et Labora ... except, we always seem to play the Irish version rather than the (bread-featuring) French deck (It's the lure of the Whiskey), and I should probably give some other designers a look-in on this list, so...
3. Trajan -- A game in which the people frequently demand bread (and circuses. But often bread). The second-best Feld-that-I-don't-actually-own. Yeah, I know that Trajan was a precursor to the present-day glut of "throw a dozen point-salad mini-games at the wall and see which half of them sticks" school of game design ... but, I can cut Feld at least a little bit of slack for getting there first. And the mancala is a very cool action-selection mechanism. Brain-scramblingly-hard-to-do ... but cool.
4. Oh My Goods! ... which is, I think, a triumph of design; you've really got to take your hat off to Mr Pfister's ability to cram a complex resource-conversion game into a single multi-use deck of cards. I need to get this one back to the table; I haven't played it nearly enough.
5. The Colonists -- though It's maybe dipping a little bit lower in my affections than it once did. I went through a spate of (very enjoyable) solo plays, but had a 3-player, 3-era game not so long ago, which seemed to drag on just a little bit. Anyway. It has bread. Klemens Franz bread. Actually, thinking about it, 4 out of 5 of these picks was illustrated by Klemens.
Klemens is, truly, the king of bready board games!
* * * * *
Over to you... what did I miss?
British readers of a certain age might recognise this location as the setting of one of the very early (and well-beloved) works of a certain Mr Ridley Scott:
Youtube Video
Though, just in case any casual passers-by were unaware of this connection, a suitable monument has been erected at the summit:
In commemoration of my visit to this major cultural landmark, today's top 5 topic will be:
Awesome board games which feature bread!
1. Agricola. And that moment where you look at your hand of cards right at the start of the game, and realise "Yes. This is the game where I'm definitely going in big on baking bread". Only to have your dreams and ambitions crushed about 6 rounds in, when you realise that at least 2 other people at the table are also"definitely" going in big on baking bread...
2. Le Havre. Obviously. Whenever I think of the word "Bakery" in the context of a board game, my mind immediately leaps to Le Havre, and its little french loaf resource chits. To be fair, I could probably fill up an entire bread-based top 5 with the works of Mr Rosenburg ... in which case, slot 3 would probably go to Ora et Labora ... except, we always seem to play the Irish version rather than the (bread-featuring) French deck (It's the lure of the Whiskey), and I should probably give some other designers a look-in on this list, so...
3. Trajan -- A game in which the people frequently demand bread (and circuses. But often bread). The second-best Feld-that-I-don't-actually-own. Yeah, I know that Trajan was a precursor to the present-day glut of "throw a dozen point-salad mini-games at the wall and see which half of them sticks" school of game design ... but, I can cut Feld at least a little bit of slack for getting there first. And the mancala is a very cool action-selection mechanism. Brain-scramblingly-hard-to-do ... but cool.
4. Oh My Goods! ... which is, I think, a triumph of design; you've really got to take your hat off to Mr Pfister's ability to cram a complex resource-conversion game into a single multi-use deck of cards. I need to get this one back to the table; I haven't played it nearly enough.
5. The Colonists -- though It's maybe dipping a little bit lower in my affections than it once did. I went through a spate of (very enjoyable) solo plays, but had a 3-player, 3-era game not so long ago, which seemed to drag on just a little bit. Anyway. It has bread. Klemens Franz bread. Actually, thinking about it, 4 out of 5 of these picks was illustrated by Klemens.
Klemens is, truly, the king of bready board games!
* * * * *
Over to you... what did I miss?