Actually Cool

Two nice links from Robin Sloan at Snarkmarket: baby hippo picture, and a review of the best boardgames of 2004. I agree with Robin that Hansa sounds Ubercool, but other, more silly sounding ones, I want to try are Cranium Hoopla and Loco: Maybe what you really want is a game with just one rule. Ladies and gentleman, I give you Loco. Play a card (valued zero to five in one of five colors) onto the discard pile for that suit, then take any poker chip (of the same five colors) from the table—that’s all you do on a turn. When the game ends about 10 minutes later, each chip a player owns is worth the value of the card on the top of that color’s discard pile. Even though you can explain all the rules for Loco in a single lungful of air, it’s massively fun and unaccountably addictive.