Pin-Point - Made by Oliver Games (of Kent). A simple strategy game for 2 players, using colourful pieces made like very big pills! You know, those two-tone capsules. One half is black, the other half is one of 4 colours, green, red, orange or purple. The board is a big black plastic tray thing, with 10 x 10 bung holes (like a peg game) and faint marked hatch lines. There are 25 pieces of each colour (100 in total) and you take one of each colour and plug them in colour side up, to make various patterns. You score on the patterns you make. The problem is, as you make a line or a cross or a square, you set up a better pattern for the other player, who scores higher! I've only played it a little, but I like it. It is colourful and the picture on the box belies the size of the board. It surprises me though, that the makers have only thought of one game to use this set-up. It cries out for 100 black & white pieces to play Reversi (Othello to you mate), Draughts, Fanorona, even a simple Go etc. Or peg solitaire games, like Fox & Geese. Bought half-price for £7.50.

The Fishing Game - Made by Anglepen-Jones & Co. Ltd. (of Somerset). A beautifully made game, but not a lot to do. It's a faithful recreation of angling, using d6 and cards, which means it is just as dull as real fishing. Well, that's a bit hard, but there is no real input by the players, which is a shame. The board is big, 79 x 54 cms (folds in three, like good old games) and shows a lake with a bank and path round it, trees, reeds, ripples and so on. You have 6 excellent pewter figures, yes pewter statues of anglers (with plastic rods) and little pewter boats, little cards with a fish on one side and a weight on the other, three decks of big cards with beautiful paintings of trout on the back. The lake has a grid and you put as many fish as you like down, cast your bait, draw the cards to see where the fish runs, what hazards occur and so on. When you get a fish on the bank, you discover its weight. Either play for weight or number of fish caught. The makers included a book for keeping records of your game and an order form for accessories and future boards. It is all so well made it is shame it's not much of a game. Bought half-price for £15.

13 Dead End Drive - Made by MB Games (of Hasbro!). A kids game but we liked it. Well made, die cut cardboard backgrounds and plastic bits are assembled before play to make a house of death! There are 8 character pawns, the gardener, tennis coach, chef, the cat etc. In secret, you are dealt matching character cards and try to get one of your pawns in a winning position and bump off the others. The great trick in this game is that any player can move any character. So if you are too obvious, the other players can quickly identify your people and kill them. There are two other decks of cards. One has pictures of each character and these go in the picture frame over the fireplace. When you roll a double, you can put the front picture at the back, revealing a new heir to the fortune. There is a detective advancing to the house's front door. You roll the special dice, move 2 characters, draw from the deck to collect cards and use them to kill. There's a falling chandelier, a falling suit of armour, a tumbling stairs, a flipping fireplace and a bumbling bookcase. You win if your pawn makes it out of the door or if the detective arrives when its portrait is in the frame or if it's the last alive. It's a fun game and could do with a few twists to interests adults. But it's still amusing, very well made and good for children. Bought on sale for £9.

20 Questions - Made by MB Games. Actually twenty answers. You place tokens on the numbered board, hear the answer off the card and guess the place, person or thing. If you're right, you get the remaining tokens and the reader gets the tokens played. So the sooner you get it right, the more you score and the less the reader scores. Clever! The board has a long track and you move your marker the number of spaces you scored. Players can interrupt with a guess token which they get back as the pas along the track. The 3 decks have 133 cards each. An excellent version of an old game. Bought half-price for £10. A BARGAIN!

Noteability - Made by Spears Games (of Middlesex). This game includes a little plastic GRAND PIANO! You put in 3 AA batteries and play by numbers on the keyboard. A simple game of guess the tune, it actually works. It's a little tricky getting the tempo right, but many of the tunes are easy to guess (though it helps if you like musicals). There are 3 tunes on 224 cards. Excellent value at £10 full price.

Balderdash - Made by MB Games. A book I have (The Family Book Of Games by David Pritchard) gives a brief description of a word game Spoof Words, aka The Dictionary Game and says it is a popular TV show.This is a packaged version of the word game. The usual deck of cards (500) has 5 words on one side and 5 correct definitions on the other. A player reads out a word, each player writes down their definition (making it up usually). The definitions are read out dead-pan to be fair and the players vote the best, the writer scoring points. If you actual know the definition, you score as well. The game requires some imagination! It is described as a hilarious, bluffing game. They reckon they researched 2 million words. But not the word hilarious. Bought half-price for £10.

Wicketz - Made by RDA Marketing (of Surrey) although it seems to have been made by someone else before and since. Claims to be an authentic game of cricket, with a quarterboard pitch including a spinner, little white plastic cricketers, a deck of 246 cards showing results of the various deliveries and a pad of cricket scoresheets (very useful for playing Howzat!, a cricket dice game). I haven't had a proper go at this one yet, but one player controls the batting side, the other the batsmen (never, ever batters!). The board is marked in zones and you set your field, choose the type of bowling using the spinner, the batsman selects his stroke, you draw the card to find the result and so on. Bought expensively for £16 (now £30!).

And now, onward to more games reviewed; Bought 02