New Game Round-up: Drawing with Sticks, Filling Pastries, and Traveling from Ankh-Morpork to Nanty Narking

Nanty Narking is a Victorian board game of wit and podsnappery that reimplements the well-known Discworld: Anhk Morpork board game. Immersed deeply in the world of Dickens' and Doyle's literature (which inspired Sir Terry Pratchett in his Ankh-Morpork-themed novels), the card events in the game are now tied to real and fictional characters and places in London, and the more than ninety miniatures are based on true London characters.

More specifically, following a scrupulous analysis of Sir Terry Pratchett's inspirations that were found and identified in historical English literature, all game locations, events and characters have received new identities, corresponding to the ones found in the Ankh-Morpork game. This way the game retains its attractiveness to the already established audience, but expands its reach to a wide range of people generally interested in human history and literature of the Victorian period.

Nanty Narking also includes more player goals than in the original game, allowing for more variety during play.

In Filler, players employ multi-use cards and a blend of simultaneous action selection, time and resource management, set-collection, and hand-building to collect ingredients needed to fill tasty pastries on their way to becoming the Star Baker.

Starting with a hand of three cards with various start times and basic ingredients, players choose a card to reveal along with other players to determine the turn order. The earliest player to show up for work goes first and so on around the table. Using cards from their hands (i.e., their pantry), players may use ingredients they have acquired to fill recipes from a central row of available cards (the recipe book) or restock the pantry by picking up all of their previously played cards. Each recipe filled provides new start times and ingredients to use in future rounds and may earn points that are represented by money, customer reviews, or critical acclaim at the end of the game. The availability of bonus points and cards containing special actions help to direct players' choices in the kitchen, add depth of play, and provide variety and replayability.

In Pikto, you want to draw pictures so that whoever is guessing this round might be able to identify your drawing — but will you go for a simple image that the guesser might have first crack at (and miss), or a more detailed image that might have you waiting to see whether someone else's image is guessed first?

In more detail, each player receives a dry-erase board and a pen. One player is the guesser for the round, and they step away from the table or hide their eyes while everyone else draws a word or phrase. To choose what to draw, roll the twelve-sided die, then consult the appropriate number on the card that you drew. (The box has 46 double-sided cards, with twelve words/phrases on each side, or 1104 total answers.) Show everyone but the guesser the word to be drawn.

Everyone then draws their own image on their dry-erase board, but you can use only straight lines and circles in your drawing! Nothing else! No wiggly lines, half-circles, or anything else other than straight lines and circles. If you want to draw a triangle, you must draw three straight lines and connect them. After you complete your drawing, count how many objects you drew, write that number in the lower-right corner of your board, then set your board face down on the table.

Once everyone has finished, everyone announces their numbers, and whoever has the lowest number is the first player to reveal their board to the guesser. (In the event of a tie, whichever tied player finished their drawing first wins the tie.) If the guesser identifies the image, the guesser scores two points and the drawer one point; if the guesser is wrong, then the drawer with the next-lowest number reveals their image, now giving the guesser two images with which to identify the secret word. This process continues until the guesser has said the secret word or all drawers have revealed their images.

After everyone has been guesser one or two times, depending on the number of players, the game ends and whoever has the most points wins!