Barker's Row (2018)

About this game

Barker's Row is a 2-4 player game in which you are a carnival barker trying to fill your 3D chipboard seats with "rube" meeples by playing the most fantastic attractions. You draft these barker cards from a community pool and play them into the midway. Then you use those cards to play one of fifty or so attractions that will amaze and delight the rube meeples in your seats while giving you a special power to use later in the game. Stay tuned for some drafts of these attractions, such as Lobster Boy, Goose-Necked Girl, and the Fiji Mermaid. Each time you play an attraction, you climb higher on the strongman tower, making the next one harder to play, serving as an elegant and thematic catch-up mechanism. The player to first fill all their seats wins!

Does it fit your group?

• Group size. Works with 2 to 4.
• Rules load. At 1.6/5 this is a light game — explain it in a few minutes, good for a table that has not played much.
• Age. The publisher suggests 12 and up. That rates the rules rather than the artwork, so judge the box yourself for younger players.