This Saturday I joined the Dallas Area Boardgame Meetup Group for a few hours. I had a blast meeting everyone and learning a bunch of new board games that I’ve promptly added to my Funagain wishlist (hint: I would LOVE to get games off this list as a gift!!

If you enjoy board games as much as I do and live in the Dallas area, check out their site and join me at their next get together. I’m going to try to start going regularly.

One game was called Diamanti. Like most great table games these days, it was of German descent. The instructions were in German, French, and Italian. Luckily someone there already knew the rules. You’re a group of miners exploring caves for gems. It basically has a gambling mechanic: do I go for broke and keep going, or fold now and take what I have. Fun, simple game. The American version is Incan Gold.

Another great game was Wicked Witch’s Way. You are racing in a broom race. To get ahead you have to cast the right spell. The basic mechanic is a very novel one: memorization of patterns and colors of dice. You have a limited amount of time to decipher the dice before you pick which spell component cards you’ll try to use to move ahead in the race. Again, fun, quick, and really good for improving your focus and memory! Unfortunately it doesn’t look like you can buy this one new any longer, but BoardGameGeek usually has links to people reselling old copies of games.