{"id":8412,"date":"2020-04-30T10:23:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-30T14:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=8412"},"modified":"2020-06-18T10:57:34","modified_gmt":"2020-06-18T14:57:34","slug":"gingerbread-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/30\/gingerbread-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Gingerbread House."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Phil Walker-Harding is probably my favorite game designer right now, one of the only names that would get me to buy a game just because I saw it on the box. Silver & Gold<\/a> was my #2 game of 2019, and Imhotep the Duel<\/a> was #6. Gizmos<\/a> made my top ten for 2018. Cacao<\/a> remains a favorite, and I think his Sushi Go! Party<\/a> is one of the best games for 5+ players. Imhotep<\/a> itself was nominated for the Spiel des Jahres. I’ve never played a PWH game I didn’t like, and still have one unplayed game of his (the first Adventure game).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gingerbread House<\/a> came out in 2018-19, and I think it’s slipped a bit through the cracks because he’s released several better games in the last two years that overshadowed it. I suspect the goofy theme and art might lead people to think it’s a simpler game than it is, although Broom Service<\/a> had very similar art and that’s definitely more complex than this game is. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gingerbread House is like a kicked-up Kingdomino<\/a>, or a better reimagining of Kingdomino than Queendomino<\/a> is, asking you to place two-square tiles on your 3×3 house card to gain tokens based on what you cover up. You’ll then collect those tokens and use them to buy points cards, while also gaining up to three bonus cards for each level you complete. There are specific twists to the rules beyond that, but that’s the framework of the game – you place one tile on each turn, collect two things (or maybe three), and then buy a card if you can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are four colors of tokens in Gingerbread House, and the\ncards you buy, which represent humans and monsters you’re trying to ‘trap’ by\nenticing them to your house, can require as many as eight tokens and can\nrequire tokens of just one color or up to all four. You’ll cover two spaces on\neach turn and take tokens matching those spaces, although if you cover two\nspaces showing the same symbol, you get a third one as a bonus. There are other\nspaces that give you an extra stairway (see below), or let you swap one token\nfor another one, or let you reserve a card to try to pay for it later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re mathematically inclined, you probably caught on to the\nfact that you can’t cover a 3×3 grid with two-square tiles. You start the game\nwith one ‘stairway’ file, which is a square ring that allows you to see what’s\nbeneath it. You can place that for free at any time, but you must cover it with\na regular tile on the same turn. You also get a one-square wild tile whenever\nyou pay for a card, and must place it immediately, taking whatever token or\nsymbol you’ve covered; if you later cover the wild tile, you can take any color\ntoken or treat it as if it were any of the other three symbols.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When you complete a level of your house, you get to take a bonus\ncard that’s worth points at the end of the game. In the basic game, you just\ntake the highest-points card still on the table. In the advanced game, however,\nyou choose one of the bonus cards, which are dealt out at random at the start\nof each game, and can thus tailor your strategy afterwards to maximize the\npoints you get from the cards you obtain. Individual character cards are worth\n4 to 10 points, but bonus cards can be worth as much as 12 points, so if you\nplay your cards correctly (pun intended), you can gain the equivalent of\nanother character card or more from each bonus card. There are some bonus cards\nthat only give you two points, but instead reward you with tokens based on\nwhat’s visible on your board at the time you take them.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That interplay between bonus cards and character cards is what makes Gingerbread House more than just a basic family game. You could certainly ditch the bonus cards and play with younger kids, but the bonus cards are what make this fun for adults. What Gingerbread House lacks is any real interaction between players. Unless two of you are gunning for the same card, and maybe one of you uses the ‘cage’ symbol to reserve it, you’re mostly working on your own. That’s fine – Gizmos is like that, Silver & Gold is like that, B\u00e4renpark<\/a> is definitely like that – and the game is fun enough for a couple of plays, but I don’t know that this has the same huge replay value as his better games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Phil Walker-Harding is probably my favorite game designer right now, one of the only names that would get me to buy a game just because I saw it on the box. Silver & Gold was my #2 game of 2019, and Imhotep the Duel was #6. Gizmos made my top ten for 2018. Cacao remains […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[582,60,544,1172,768],"class_list":["post-8412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-board-games","tag-boardgames","tag-family-strategy-games","tag-phil-walker-harding","tag-tile-laying-games","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8414,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8412\/revisions\/8414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}