Welcome to our regular round-up of the best new tabletop games. This month we’re expressing our artistic flair through classical Japanese painting, engaging in audacious competitive boasting competitions and running amok in an anything-goes futuristic gunfight.



Adrenaline

Adrenaline is based on first-person shooter video games, but it’s far more thoughtful than its gun-toting theme might suggest. Photograph: Owen Duffy/The Guardian

3-5 players, 30-60 minutes, RRP £47.99

Designer: Filip Neduk



Based on shooter video games such as Doom, Quake and Overwatch, Adrenaline pits players against one another in a deadly futuristic arena. As the struggle plays out, you’ll sprint through cramped corridors attempting to annihilate your rivals using an arsenal of machine guns and laser cannons.

It’s a bloodthirsty premise, but Adrenaline takes a light-hearted approach to the conventions of violent video games. It comes with a collection of colourful and cartoonish plastic miniatures to represent player characters, and with slain combatants reappearing on the board to fight again on their next turn, death isn’t much of an inconvenience.

In fact, taking punishment has its benefits. Suffer damage at the hands of opponents and you’ll experience adrenaline spikes, making your character faster and more effective in battle. Die in combat and you’ll be worth fewer points to anyone who attacks you once you return to the game, ensuring that the most dominant players become the most attractive targets and preventing one fighter from becoming everyone else’s whipping boy/bipedal lizard/sentient robot.

There’s also a broad selection of weapons to acquire, each of which takes different tactics to wield effectively. The sledgehammer does massive damage to a single target within striking distance. The tractor beam pulls an enemy close before delivering a painful jolt of electricity. The furnace cannon sets entire rooms ablaze, which is bad news for anyone caught inside one of them.

It’s aggressive, but Adrenaline requires proper tactical thinking. It’s fierce, fun and fast-paced – worth a look even if you’re not a fan of digital shooter games.

Kanagawa



In Kanagawa, aspiring artists compete to create beautiful traditional Japanese prints. Photograph: Owen Duffy/The Guardian

2-4 players, 30-45 minutes, RRP £24.99

Designers: Bruno Cathala and Charles Chevallier



Where Adrenaline revels in action and excitement, Kanagawa is a far more tranquil affair. Set in 19th-century Japan, it casts players as aspiring painters competing to become the most-respected artist of their generation.

Each round, a selection of cards are dealt on to a beautiful tatami mat board. Players can take a card and play it immediately, or wait for more to be dealt, which presents the chance to take multiple cards at once. There can be some interesting decisions: do you grab a potentially useful card straight away, or wait for more to be revealed, even if this risks another player snatching the one you wanted?



Once you’ve claimed some cards, you will have multiple ways to use them. Each shows part of a scene, and you can add them to your painting, gradually expanding it as the game goes on and scoring points based on the different elements it incorporates. But cards can also be used as lessons, letting you paint new types of scenes or take advantage of new abilities. It means that you are constantly balancing the need to improve your skills as an artist with the necessity of scoring points towards victory, and while there is little direct interaction with other players, you’ll need to keep an eye on their strategies to give yourself the best chance of winning.

It’s serene and simple, with a Zen-like emphasis on quiet optimisation. It’s also ridiculously pretty – the kind of thing you could happily leave displayed on your coffee table between plays.



The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen

Storytelling game The Extraordinary Adventures of Baron Munchausen challenges players to improvise improbable tales of swashbuckling heroism. Photograph: Fantasy Flight Games

3+ players, 20-60 minutes, RRP £19.99

Designer: James Wallis

First published in 1998, this storytelling game of competitive exaggeration casts players as 18th-century nobles clamouring to tell ludicrously self-aggrandising tall tales. Its rulebook has recently been published in a new hardback edition, and it has built a cult following over the years among players with a silly, creative bent.



On your turn, another player provides a prompt for an improbable adventure story. This could be anything from: “Tell me, my dear Baron, of the time you discovered the lost kingdom of Atlantis concealed beneath an East End fishmonger’s shop,” to: “How was it that you revealed the king of Bohemia to be an automaton constructed by bored schoolchildren?” You’ll scramble to improvise a suitably impressive story, preferably incorporating perilous voyages, scandalous romances and at least one sword fight.

To make matters more complicated, other players can interrupt you mid-flow to challenge aspects of the narrative. “But Baron, how could you possibly have battled the deadly sabre-toothed chinchilla, given your overpowering allergy to rodents?” You’ll have the option of incorporating their new detail into your story, coming up with a plausible explanation, or curtly informing them that they are mistaken and continuing with the tale.

This quick-witted improvisation is at the heart of Baron Munchausen, and it’s the one aspect that’s likely to make you either love or hate the game. It creates real pressure as you try to fire out a seemingly effortless response, and while it makes for some hilarious moments, it’s likely to be uncomfortable for anyone who doesn’t like to be put on the spot.

To get the most out of this game, you need the right circumstances: expressive, outgoing players with a bit of dramatic flair; surroundings where you can engage in silliness without fear of embarrassment; possibly a couple of alcoholic beverages if you’re playing with grownups. With those elements in place, it’s magnificently daft fun.



And finally...



With board games reaching an ever-growing audience, it’s nice to see people working to make them accessible to all. Meeple Like Us provides comprehensive accessibility information about games for people with a variety of physical, cognitive and sensory impairments. Nice work, folks!

