we went to a fun local indie game developers meetup where we playtested alpha phase board games and then got some free board games as a result!
We also purchased a couple, so the Commune picked up:
Lagoon: Land of Druids
Medieval Mastery
Alliances
Seas of Iron
Bohnanza
Hive Pocket
Love Letter (replacement copy because someone ruined my last copy)
City of Horror
Mascarade Expansion
All in all, a pretty great haul. I'm really stoked to try out Bohnanza and City of Horror.
We only got to playtest two games. One was called 'Tourist Trap'. Everyone worked running a tourist stall on the same highway and we had to bid/compete over customers. We set up exhibits that had various point values and categories to attract customers. Customers were one of twelve different meeple types that had various bonus effects if you combo'd them well. Everyone bids simultaneously then you pick them up in order, 1-2-3-4-5, so sometimes other people can throw off your bids. There were also power tokens that let you shuffle/rearrange the rows of customers, but we didn't play that, since he wanted to focus group the bidding portion of the game pretty hard. We had some really good ideas, I think. There's definitely a game there and it could be pretty cool.
The other one we played was 'Jinx!'. It's a pretty simple social/party game... flip a card, then two people go "3...2...1..." and have to say something in that category. If they match, say something not in the category, or screw up in any other way, you lose the round. If they both name different things, you go up 1 on the points track. You keep going in a circle and can bank at any time. Game objective is to get 100 points before you draw too many cards from the penalty deck and spell out "JINX!" on the board. It was... simple. Something we really don't need a game for because you can play it without any components or pieces. But a fun little game regardless.