Uno Stacko and Ra

Competitive board games involving wooden pieces.

Uno Stacko

While I don't enjoy the card versions of Uno, this is one I don't mind at all. It involves creating a wooden tower with three planks making each floor in a cross thatch design, then on your turn removing one from "not the top" and then placing it on the top, without making the whole thing fall. The last person who successfully does that is the winner!

Does that sound like Jenga? Because it is Jenga, just with a few uno rules. Each plank has a color and a number and on your turn the piece you move must either be of that color or same number (and there are a few special tiles thrown in). Quite a fun little dexterity game that comes with a cardboard thing to help you restack the tower faster. Recommended!

Ra

This is a highly lauded bidding game where players simply bid on lots to increase their claim of ancient Egypt before time runs out. And does time run out REALLY FAST. On your turn you can do three things: pull an auction tile from a bag to add to the lot, use a previously won god tile to take one tile from the lot, and call "RA" (though some auction tiles call RA for you, and advance the timer).

Once RA is called its auction time. The person to the left has one chance to bid on the lot or pass and so on until it gets back to the RA caller who gets a final bid or pass (though if you called RA and everyone else passed, then you must bid). Your currency are predetermined sun disks which you then leave on the auction grounds for the next lot as part of the prize, which means in the next epoch (out of 3) one of your opponents might have won that to use against you!

Adding extra things like, "if you don't have any of these tiles or have the fewest of these tiles you lose points" and "all these tiles won't score unless you have this tile" adds spice. Especially since those tiles go away / are lost at the end of each round / Epoch, after you score. Good design, but I still need to play it more... currently it seems like newbies will always get thrashed with no way to recover.