Qwirkle Board Game
- 2-4 players
- ages 6 and up
- 45 minutes
- Games Magazine Award: Best Family Game Runner-up 2007
- Mensa Best Mind Game Award Winner 2007; Major Fun Award Winner 2007
Our tactile wooden block game combines the logic and strategy of Set® with the creative multi-maneuver game play of Scrabble®. Easy-to-learn rules mean you’ll be creating columns and rows of matching colors and shapes in no time! Look for opportunities to score big by placing a tile that touches multiple pieces and matches both shapes and colors; the player with the most points wins. 108 blocks.
List Price: $ 34.99
Price:
The Settlers of Catan
- All new 4th Edition!!
- New Graphics!!
- New Card Art!!
- New Packaging & Tiles!!
- Full Color Rules Book
One of the most successful games of all time, Settlers of Catan is a trading and building game set in the mythical world of Catan. Players roll dice to determine which resources are generated each round and then must strategically trade those resources with other players to get what they need to build their settlements, cities, and roads. With multiple ways to gain victory points and a board that changes in every play, Settlers of Catan is a game that can be played hundreds of different ways. The base of a hugely successful franchise, with multiple engaging expansions, Settlers is the core game of many collections, and is a wonderful way to spend time with family and friends. For 3 to 4 players.The Settlers of Catan from Mayfair Games is an award-winning strategy game where players collect resources and use them to build roads, settlements and cities on their way to victory. The board itself is variable, making each game a little different from the next. Each round of The Settlers of Catan is intended to keep three or four players ages 10 and above engaged for up to 90 minutes.
 The game map changes every time for an endless variety of play. View larger. |
 Settlers of Catan engages both children and adults, garnering best-seller status in both Germany and the US. View larger. |
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On the Road to Settlement
The game rules and almanac booklet sets out four pages of guidelines for getting started. Don’t worry, the rules are straightforward and the four pages include plenty of illustrations. There’s a starting map that shows a well-balanced set-up for beginners to follow and directions that allow more advanced players to lay out the map of the island at random. You’ll have to pop the die-cut components of the game out of their cardboard holders before you play your first game.
The almanac portion of the booklet is laid out alphabetically, so while playing you can find answers to specific questions quickly. Useful entries remind you exactly what role pieces like the robber play, how actions like maritime trade work, and how to set up the board or finish the game.
Exploring and Developing Catan
The board consists of 19 terrain hexes surrounded by the ocean. Each type of terrain produces a different type of resource: brick, wool, ore, grain or lumber. There’s also a desert hex that produces no resources. As the game progresses, players use resources to build roads along the edges of these hexes and settlements or cities on the intersections where three hexes meet. Each player begins the game with two settlements and two roads.
Each player’s roll of the dice causes certain hexes to produce resources, which you collect if you have a settlement on one of them. On your turn, you’ll use various combinations of the resources you’ve acquired to build new roads and settlements, upgrade settlements to cities, or purchase development cards. The ability to trade resources with other players adds a new level of strategy and ensures that the game includes lots of interaction between players. You can also trade without worrying about other players using an unfavorable maritime trade rate. Elements including a robber piece that lets you steal from other players and a variety of development cards add intrigue to the game.
The objective of The Settlers of Catan is to be the first one who collects 10 victory points. Each settlement is worth one victory point and each city is worth two victory points. You can also earn victory points by holding the “Longest Road” card, the “Largest Army” card, or special victory point development cards.
Best-Selling Game of the Year
It’s easy to see why The Settlers of Catan has been recognized as a best-selling Game of the Year in both Germany and the U. S. We found this game to be fun and engaging for both children and adults, and the variable nature of the playing field really made us want to play again and again. When we started pausing to contemplate our opponents’ strategy and factoring the probability of different dice rolls into our moves, the game sometimes took longer than expected, but we were so engrossed we didn’t even notice until it was all over.
Due to the widespread popularity of the original game, several expansion sets (sold separately) are available that allow you to explore new aspects of the game or add more players. The only downside to this game is that you need to have either three or four players to play, so it’s great that expansion sets are available that will allow you to add players.
What’s in the Box
Six sea frame pieces, 19 terrain hexes, nine harbor pieces, 18 circular number tokens, 126 game cards, 16 cities, 20 settlements, 60 roads, two dice, a robber and a rules and almanac booklet.
List Price: $ 49.99
Price:
Vintage Go To The Head of The Class board game Series 11 1962
 | US $11.99 End Date: Thursday May-23-2013 16:04:34 PDT Buy It Now for only: US $11.99 Buy it now | Add to watch list |
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6 Responses to Qwirkle Board Game
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Go Bananas
Gamewright Go Bananas Card Game
- Matching card game
- Contents: 48 cards and rules of play (English, French and Spanish)
- Players: 2 to 5
- Age: 6 and up
List Price: $ 6.99 Price:
Love it for all ages,
As a mom with 6 kids of different ages, I look for games that my younger ones can play but that don’t make me crazy with boredom (ie CandyLand, Chutes and Ladders) My 4 year old can only make it through 1/2 a game, the end gets too complex for him, but my 7, 10, and 12 year old boys love it, as do my in-laws and everyone else who has played it with us. I like games that only take minute to explain and start playing but that have enough strategy to keep the mind occupied. Also at 30-45 minutes a round, it’s enough of a distraction but doesn’t take hours to play. The game consists of wooden tiles with 6 different shapes and colors and that’s it. Very durable, my 4 year old loves to build Qwirkle castles. I recommend this game. My other favorites are Blokus, Othello and Rummikube, all the same genre, fun, easy to explain and play and yet a challenge.
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|Fantastic, smart game,
I purchase this for a six year old nephew, and the whole family joined in to break in this game. It was easy to understand, but challenging. My nephew really enjoyed the game, but it was hard for the adults not to be competitive when playing. The game is fun, and it makes you want to out-think the opponents.
From what I hear, my brother’s family has been playing the game almost daily since my nephew received it. What better reception could there be for a game?
This game is money well spent. I believe that it will help my nephew develop logical thinking skills and strategy development. The fact that he is smiling all the while, is icing on the cake.
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|So happy to find this game,
I was trying to find a game to play with a client who has dementia and ran across this in an article. After I bought it I tested it out with my kids (25, 24, 19 and 11) and myself (47). We had so much fun!! It is one of those games that can be played at different levels. We started getting quite inventive on where and when to play to maximize our points and block our opponents.
I then played with my client. She and I did not keep score. We just made the chains with either shapes or colors and added wherever she first recognized a play. No trying to strategize where to build for future etc. We also played with both of our tiles up so we could talk about the best places to play. She likes this game and actually remembers having played before and wants to play again. The ‘rules’ have to be re-learned but the fun remains.
For one more note, we had a group of my daughters friends over and four of us played Quirkle. They were all 19 – 22. That got pretty cutthroat <lol> They all want to play again.
I HIGHLY recommend this game. I think I’m going to buy a 2nd one so more than 4 can play together (We played with 5 first night and it does work too).
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|Nice updates,
The primary, and best, addition in this 4th edition of Settlers is a very nice interlocking border which is placed around the game tiles. This replaces the individual hex tiles of previous editions. No longer will your tiles/pieces scatter/split apart when someone accidentally bumps the playing surface! One side of the border has the ports “built in” but you still get a bit of randomness when assembling the pieces. The flip side of the border is blank “sea” on which you can put the included port tokens for a truly random placement.
The updated graphics are nice and colorful but take a bit of getting use to if you regularly play with an older edition.
The box has a vacu-formed type insert designed to hold all the pieces and keep everything neat.
All-in-all a nice upgrade to the 3rd edition.
It’s a simple sounding premise: You gather resources in order to build roads and settlements to earn points.
However, there is a wonderful randomness which lends complexity to the game as the layout of the game board tiles differs with each play right down to the number on the dice needed to harvest a resource from a given tile. This makes *every* game unique. Strategy comes into play as you must determine the best location for your settlements and roads to get maximum value/points.
If you’ve never played Settlers, find someone who has a copy and give it a try. If no one you know owns a copy, go to your local comic shop. Odds are someone there will have a copy readily available and delight in teaching the game to a new player! It’s easy to learn, difficult to master, and quick to play with a typical game lasting only an hour or less.
This is one of the truly classic games and belongs on the shelf of anyone who enjoys board gaming.
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|Fantastic family/strategy game in a new edition with more useful accessories,
Settlers of Catan is an absolutely fantastic family strategy game. I won’t belabor my discussion of the game, except to say that my wife (only a ‘casual boardgamer’, not as hardcore like me) and two boys (ages 8 and 10) have been playing it for over a year, many dozens of times, with continued enjoyment. I have successfully hooked other gamers in my family (brother in law, father) on it as well, so that it shares equal time with Monopoly in our family game marathons over the holidays.
The big point to take away about this new edition of the game is that, without changing any rules, the edition includes some very handy extra pieces, esp. an interlocking set of holders to fit the tiles into, which helps prevent incidental dislocations of the pieces on the board (so common with the older edition). For those of you who have the Seafarers of Catan extension, the holding tiles are much those included in that extension (except shaped to fit the Settlers hex board).
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|Stick with the 3rd Addition,
We are avid players of Settlers (and love it), but this newest addition has some flaws that make us wish we would have bought the 3rd addition. We have had the game for about 8 months, and the interlocking border (instead of the regular hexagon pieces in the 3rd addition) have never fit right. It takes three people to get everything into place, and even then the border warps and the pieces pop out. They interlock like a puzzle piece, and they are starting to wear out, so we have finally given up on getting everything together correctly. If you were worried about the 3rd addition getting bumped and jumbled, you simply had to set up the game on a tablecloth or piece of fabric. This newer addition is impossible to setup correctly, especially as it ages.
Also note you cannot use your old expansion packs with the newer addition, as the pieces are different. You now have to pay for all the newer versions of the expansion packs, how convenient.
We still love this game and will play it regularly, it just seems the “advancements” were not tested or well planned. It is also bothersome that they made the newer additions incompatible with the old expansions, you can easily spend $150 on this game and the expansions, and you would expect that investment to last… it is a board game after all!
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