Roux Dat: Gulo Gulo, Wingspan Pocket, Disney Villainous – Success At Any Cost

Here in Louisiana, the summer vacation starts early but ends early, too. Kids are heading back to school in just a couple of weeks. The good news is that the vacations are out of the way and most of my gaming buddies are in town, so we’ve been able to get a lot of our post-DTCe and pre-Gen Con release games to the table. I’ll get to some of the big games we’ve played recently next time, because I wanted to recap some of the lighter, family weight games we’ve been playing lately. 

First up, my oldest grand bug wanted a sleepover at our house with her friends to include some swimming, some karaoke on my trusty Shure SM-58s, and of course, for pop to teach the girls a new board game. Luckily for me, a package from Pandasaurus Games had just arrived: a review copy of a game I’ve been wanting for almost 15 years. I used to hear Tom and Eric from the Dice Tower talk about Gulo Gulo, a dexterity game designed by Jürgen P. Grunau, Wolfgang Kramer, Hans Raggan, and Daryl Andrews and originally published twenty years ago but pretty hard to find here in the States since then.

It’s a simple game about moving your little nutria through the swamp to try and steal eggs from the egrets and save the baby nutria. (Well, at least that’s what I told the girls the game was about, and since they are all from Acadiana, they bought it). 

Pandasaurus brought Gulo Gulo back with some gorgeous artwork from Jennifer L. Meyer.. and an absolutely stunning production. It’s got a thick sturdy nest / bowl. It’s got a pile full of colorful eggs in all different sizes. It’s got the vulture’s warning signal, and a beautiful cloth bag. Plus, there’s even a very handy insert. But it’s not just a pretty package; the game was a hit all weekend. I taught it to the girls, and then watched as they played it over and over for the sleepover. Even after they left, the birthday girl challenged her pop to another game — and beat me. I think that’s the best part of this game. It’s one of those rare games where kids the age of 8-10 years old have just as good a chance — if not better — of besting the adults. Thumbs up for me on this one. 

Next up, the birthday girl wanted some game time just with me and SneauxBunny. She loves animals, and Wingspan Pocket designed by Elizabeth Hargrave had also just arrived from the Stonemaier Champions deliver, so we tested it out. I played the advanced game at Dice Tower East — would the basic game be appropriate for a pre-teen? I am happy to report that it very much is. In fact, the game is worm simple. Players either lay three eggs (and eggs are points, just like in the main game), or play a bird to their one single tableau (paying the egg or food costs), or draw two cards (from either a deck of food cards or bird cards, but ingeniously, the food symbols are on the back of the bird cards, meaning the game has shrunk it’s footprint a lot.) Once that’s done, players then run their tableau engine from left to right, activating any brown bird powers. 

It was so easy to play that the birthday girl picked it up right away and identified a little engine where she was constantly getting the yellow food cards, which gave her more cards and allowed her to get more food and birds. Then one of her birds liked tucking and the other liked doing what SneauxBunny’s right most card does (which is also tucking). Away she went! By the end, she had almost doubled our score. Not bad for her first engine building experience! And there’s that lagniappe — once she is comfortable, we can throw in the advanced variant of choosing the starting cards and playing with the optional goal cards, which also score points. 

And finally, we tried the brand new Disney Villainous Success At Any Cost set, designed by Mike Mulvihill and published by Ravensburger Games. This one is a standalone expansion that brings out two new villains: Ernesto de la Cruz from Coco and Prince Hans from Frozen. I know I sound like a broken record, but I am not a fan of Villainous with more than two or three people. But if you have two or three gamers that know the game, it plays fast and there’s lots of interaction with the fate decks. A game of Villainous with gamers who know what they are doing always has a lot of tension as you race to complete your goals before the other players do. 

Luckily for me, my nephew Jake is an excellent gamer, and he was game to try the new expansion a few times. We both took turns at each character, and to be frank, I like the Ernesto character much better. Nothing against Prince Hans, but tossing ice tiles on all of the regions, then flipping them over and doing it again all while trying to find the sisters was just not as much of a puzzle as trying to flip all six pieces of the photo showing Hector and his family. But they are both very challenging decks that bring in some interesting new twists to the base game. Thumbs up for me on this one. 

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** Complimentary copies of the Villainous expansion and Gulo Gulo were provided by the publishers. We purchased Wingspan Pocket. **