Games don’t get much simpler than No Thanks!, published by Z-Man games and designed by Thorsten Gimmler. But simple doesn’t mean a game isn’t fun, and No Thanks! will quickly earn a reputation as an enjoyable filler game after just one appearance at the game table.

The game itself consists of a deck of cards numbered from 3 to 35. Each player receives an allotment of tokens, each worth -1 point once the deck has been exhausted. The top card of the stack is turned over and each player in turn can either pass on the card by placing one of their tokens on it or accept the card (and any tokens already on it) and the points it represents. Once the card has been collected the next player turns over the top card and the process continues. Each card is worth its number in points, minus however many tokens a player has, and the lowest score wins.

That probably sounds incredibly easy, and it is. However, the game has two twists that keep things interesting. First of all, if you manage to collect a run of sequential cards, then you only score points for the lowest card in the run; for example, collecting 10, 11, 12, and 13 will only penalize you 10 points rather than a whopping 46. Most of the time it’s worth it for the other players to automatically pass you a card that fits into a run you’re constructing rather than take the often significant points attached to it, which results in “free tokens”. That is, assuming they all have tokens to use; many attempted runs have been sabotaged by the presence of a player who can’t “afford” to refuse the card that’s supposed to be coming to you. While that is an obstacle, the second twist is what makes collecting runs truly risky: at the beginning of the game, nine cards are randomly removed from the deck. Is the card you need to bridge the gap in your run one of them?

You can probably pick up No Thanks! for around ten bucks. That’s a bargain-basement price for the amount of entertainment packed in those 33 cards and plastic tokens. It will never be the “main event” of a game night, but it’s a great ice breaker, warm-up, or filler that will see play time and time again. 

The goal of Witch’s Brew is to concoct the most potent potions from the traditional ingredients of wolf’s blood, snake venom, and herb juice. Each player begins with one drop of each, plus two nuggets of gold. More importantly, each player also receives twelve role cards which form the real meat of the game.

Each card represents a specific role: witch, wizard, druid, assistant, fortune teller, alchemist, cutpurse, begging monk, warlock, wolf keeper, snake hunter, and herb collector. Every round each player selects five of these roles. Whoever goes first (usually whoever claimed the most recent role) announces one of his selected cards, and then each player who also selected that role has a decision to make. Every card has a reward associated with being able to assume that role; this ranges from brewing a potion, doing something gold-related, stealing/begging gold/ingredients from other players, casting each round’s randomly-determined spell, or collecting ingredients. The trick is that only one person can get to assume a given role each round; only the final player to announce a role actually receives that honor, and everyone else who tried to claim it gets nothing. However, each card also has a lesser assistant’s bonus (“so be it…”) for which a player can opt if he suspects a later player will try to usurp the role (the starting player of each hand has no such luxury). 

The strategy in Witch’s Brew comes from trying to out-guess and bluff your opponents while simultaneously managing your ingredients in order to brew potions. Do you go for the big reward of the role and risk getting nothing, or do you take the sure thing at the risk of nobody else claiming the role that could have been yours? Potions become more difficult to brew — and thus more valuable — as easier potions of their type are collected, further constraining your decisions. Extra points can be earned for vials, which are obtained either via the Fortune Teller role (at the cost of a gold), via three of the Warlock’s spells (at the cost of a specific ingredient), or when brewing a potion (at the cost of an additional ingredient of your choice) via either reward of the three brewers’ cards. The game ends at the end of the round when the fourth potion cards depicting a raven has been collected.

Witch’s Brew is a quick-playing game for three to five players. There are some basic reading and math skills required (the begging monk role collects 1/4th of each other player’s ingredients, rounded down; the cutpurse is similar but 1/3rd of gold). There is occasionally some confusion as to which role brews which potion, but other than that the artwork on the cards is well-done. My biggest problem with the game has nothing to do with the game at all: Rio Grande Games apparently has an issue when it comes to providing primarily card-driven games with boxes that aren’t twice the size required for the materials (Race for the Galaxy had similar issues). Aside from that, Witch’s Brew has won several awards for designer Andreas Pelikan and would be a great addition to any gamer’s collection.

One of the mass-market games that you can pick up at any random store’s “game aisle” is the classic Mattel/Parker Brothers definition game Balderdash. While Balderdash is a great game that has withstood the test of decades, there are few issues with the emphasis on reading, writing, and even etymology that keep it out of the reach of some potential players. French designer Jean-Louis Roubira has taken the basic Balderdash model and removed all of the reading and literal elements, replacing it with more universal images and imagination in the form of Dixit.  

At the start of the game, every player receives six numbered voting tokens and is dealt six oversized cards, each containing a dream-like image painted by Marie Cardouat. Each round, one player is the “storyteller”, who chooses one of the cards in his hand and puts forth a description of it; this description can be pretty much anything, form one word to one sentence, or even a little music or sound effect. Each other player selects a card from their hand based on that description and puts it face-down in the middle of the table; the Storyteller then collects all of the cards and randomly displays them face-up, using his numbered tokens to distinguish each one. Each other player then secretly votes on which one of the cards belongs to the Storyteller (unlike Balderdash and other games, you cannot vote for your own entry).

Scoring is usually straightforward; each player who correctly identifies the Storyteller’s card earns three points, as does the Storyteller. Additionally, any votes that go to other cards earn that card’s owner a point. However, there are a pair of wrinkles; if everybody or nobody correctly identifies the Storyteller’s card, then everyone but the Storyteller scores two points and the Storyteller gets nothing (in the event of nobody guessing correctly the points for votes are still awarded as normal). This is to ensure that the clue given by the Storyteller is neither too obvious nor too obscure. There is a possibility of inside references and other personal obscurities being used by players who are familiar with each other, but it is a minor problem in the grand scheme of things, especially as the number of players increases (to the maximum of six, although there’s no reason to prevent more from playing as teams).

 At the end of the round, each player draws a new card to replace the one used and the next player around the table becomes the new Storyteller. Play continues in this manner until the deck has been exhausted, at which point the highest score wins. The box itself serves as a scoring track, with rabbit-shaped meeples running around a path of stones surrounding the storage space for the cards; while probably unnecessary (and a much larger box than this game would otherwise require), it helps to add to the whimsical nature of the game and can be somewhat forgiven.

What makes Dixit truly fun, aside from the exceptionally surreal artwork, is the creativity factor. There are countless ways to describe the 80+ images contained in the game, whereas 80ish words only have so many potential (plausible) definitions. Dixit can be enjoyed by anyone with an imagination (recommended for ages 8 and up) with language skills not really being much of an obstacle.