PAX Unplugged 2019: HABA Games

When we were at PAX Unplugged, Andrew got together with T. from HABA. They told us about several of their new games.

We always think yellow box, but that’s not true of every HABA game. Let’s learn about a few from their family game night series:

Miyabi – tile placement, drafting game for 2-4 players, designed by Michael Kiesling. Each player is building a layered Japanese garden. Draft tiles from the center, but pay attention to where you can place the tiles. The object on the tile needs to go in a specific row; every column can only be used once per round. And don’t forget to fully support tiles when you’re building them on top of each other! There are even five more variants to increase the complexity of the game, if that’s not enough.

Mountains – “Go Fish meets Clue” for 2-5 players (our favorite count!). Each player has a hand of cards, picturing hiking equipment. The difficulty of a hike determines how many pieces of equipment you need for that hike. You can “borrow” equipment from another player, but you need to remember who you borrowed from! For more advanced players, you can bluff about what equipment you have, or what you need. Complete hikes to get more favor tokens and get stamps (victory points).

Boom Bang Gold (this is a “yellow box” game) – silliness for 2-4 players. Throw “dynamite” into the box, which will cause tokens to hop around or flip over. You want to grab revealed gold, but there are special items that will cause other players to slow down or drop their gold.

Valley of the Vikings – Kinderspiel des Jahres winner! Bowling/cricket with cute Viking children.

Adventure Land – which we just recently reviewed.

The Hearmees – which we’ve also reviewed. While it has drawbacks, it’s a unique game, and we love that it game-ifies “engaged listening”.

Find more about HABA at their website and on social media: @HABAUSAgames on Facebook, @HABA_USA on Twitter, and @HABAUSA on Instagram.