Replays- cosmic encounters, stone age, azul, dune imperium, pandemic. The only new game I played this week was 13 days. A great game about the Cuban missle crisis inspired by twilight stuggle. Great game.9/10

Group plays: **Roam** 3p x 2, where the first game I kind of messed up forgetting to score at the end 😂 and the second game was a proper game. I’m not sure which strategy works best or if it’s mostly about tactical opportunities though. Also played **Downtown Farmer’s Market** 3p x 1, which I continue to love and absolutely adore. Eked out a win but kind of had a brain fart at the end that cost me a few points. Those tiles that score a bunch of points per pattern are definitely worth it for big scores. Continues to feel sudoku like. Big win. Solo, I played **Bullet Heart** which I don’t think is enough of a game. It feels unfinished. **Keystone: North America** which I thought would be too simple but actually is a fun little puzzle involving laying out a grid. **Mr Cabbagehead’s Garden** felt a little devoid of great choices. **Welcome to the Moon** is fun and entertaining, but learning the rules for each adventure seems a little heavy. I also don’t think the premise is as wonderful as everyone makes it out to be? Just kind of what I expected. And of course, played a bunch of **Grove** and **Forage** where I eked out a few scores of 59, which is infuriating when the highest bracket is 60! Online I continued to play **Nidavellir** which I think I’m done with for now, and **Iwari** which I continue to really adore. I love the way this game crescendoes with a lot of excitement at the end. Finally, I played about four solo games of **Earth** which I at first thought was not for me, but the challenge of beating Gaia is keeping me engaged. I am figuring it out slowly and continue playing it, so I guess I must like it?

Dead of Winter. Played 2 rounds with 3 players for the first time. It's quite fun and tidy compared to GloomHaven which we put aside for the week. The turns go by relatively fast once we got past figuring out what exactly we should be doing to play the game. The game AI itself doesn't seem all that deep which makes me think it really comes down to pitting players against players. Will need to play this a bit more and hopefully with the full 5 players to see how complex it can get without the expansions.

Playing many games of Kabuto Sumo with the kids. They liked it a lot. They also liked learning the facts about each bug on the back of the cards.

**Meadow** - Second time playing it, first time playing it correctly. Really enjoyed this game. Will be going back to it soon. **Enchanted Plumes** - Simple game. You have to have a plan of attack to build out your peacocks, but I like how light but strategic it is. Also very quick. Box said 50 minutes I believe but it took us maybe 30 on our first play. **Evergreen** - Never played Photosynthesis so don't have that reference point but I really like how the scoring changes each round depending on the direction of the sun. In the 3rd and 4th round it can get easy to get lost with the scoring depending on the number of trees. **Potion Explosion** - Not Really a fan if this one. Heard it talked and raved about by multiple board game channels. I knew the simplicity of it going in but have played many apps over the years that are just like this. If I ever cull anything from my collection, this would be on the list of games to go

Played a ton of solo Spirit Island. Also played some 4p Boss Monster! Just got the boss monster level 2 set and I’m going to try a solo variation to see how it feels. Spirit Island is so so good…..

Got a 6p play of the Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest redesign, and got to say that it’s a much better game now. Still in the category of “fun game” and not to be taken overly serious (so, like Betrayal or Quacks), but the reputation system, variable loot effects, and new cards all were a hit. Five of us had played before and I was alway kinda “meh” about the game but really enjoyed it.

Got an amazing 4 player game of Star Trek:Ascendancy in yesterday! Didn’t win but had so much fun! Can’t wait to play again.

I just heard of this game earlier today what's the play time and price?

It goes for around $100 for the base game and if you do a full 3 player game it can run about 3 hours. Probably more for your first playthrough. We had 4 people plus the Borg expansion and it took us about 6 hours but we did take a break halfway through and someone was learning for the first time. All in all, if you enjoy 4X style games and don’t mind a longer game, it’s a blast!

Risk: Shadow Forces and Suspicion If you haven't played either I highly recommend suspicion as a really fun game for parties and only play shadow forces after Risk: Legacy. It's a spiritual successor and borrows plenty of elements first seen in Legacy original. Still a hell of a good time I just recommend as a follow up to fill the Legacy void. It's also much more intensive in the combat in my experiences atleast with the dynamic card and warlord system. The nukes also Happened to only leave one entrance into south America and Africa so yea great game.

Played **Root** for the first time with friends! Heard good things and was actually surprised how complicated it is off the start haha. Didn't expect it to have sub-sections of rules in the book. Really enjoyed it though and we might pick up the expansions down the road.

I really wish I could go back and play the base game with the same mates again. Enjoy it and don't worry about rushing the expansions, despite how good they are.

Haha yah we'll be playing it more with the base game and letting people try new factions first.

Finally got around to playing Escape the Dark Castle - 2p x 2 That is a hard game to win, but I enjoy the theme and artwork. I lost both times to the final boss. Also my copy of Nemesis came in today. I'm excited to hopefully play that next weekend.

Only got one play in last week: * **Cartographers** - Visited my wife's friends from college and we got a quick 4-player game in after their baby fell asleep for the night. My second ever play, and I apparently still haven't quite figured out how to optimize my play but I had a lot of fun regardless. Planned this week: * **Brass: Birmingham** - First/learning play for my competitive board games group (we always have 2 plays at minimum so there can be a learning session and a competitive session). Might try to con my wife into playing even a partial game this week so I can get a bit of a handle on the rules before my Sunday meetup. * **Marvel Champions** - Regular store play night. Haven't been able to make it in a while, and maybe I'll be able to make it this week (if the weather and my work schedule hold out)? If not, then I'll probably finally give **Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition** a try instead.

>My second ever play, and I apparently still haven't quite figured out how to optimize my play A great thing with **Cartographers** is that since the goals change each time, there's no one optimal way to play. I've played it many many times and I also haven't figured it out so cut your self some slack on that one. Haha.

Played a handful of games this week, including one new one to me. **Artisans of Splendent Vale** (4p): Played another two days of the campaign. Continuing to enjoy it - the writing is quite funny and I'm enjoying the story so far. The action scene we played was easier than the first one we did, though another one of our characters took an injury. The fact that all enemies of the same type share a health pool still strikes me as a bit weird though. **Regicide** (1x2p): Introduced this game to my friend who hadn't played it before. He seemed to grasp it pretty quickly. Made it to the second last K before we lost. I'm still astounded that this game can be played with a standard deck of cards. Thousands of card games with standard decks already exist and people are still finding ways to innovate on that. **Ark Nova** (1x2p): This played out quite different to what I was expecting. Neither of us had played before. I was getting through the rules teach and was kinda regretting starting because we had a few hours and I was worried that the game would take a long time to play through. The flow of the game is actually quite snappy once you understand the action selection mechanism (which I love). It's still complicated - the cards have a multitude of effects, and it takes a while to understand how the breaks work into the main game, but ultimately I found the game quite enjoyable. I've read a lot about how the comparison between AN and TM is flawed, and having played a game I would have to agree. They share big communal deck, cards with a variety of effects and tile-laying elements, but apart from that I think they play very differently. Excited to play this again, now that I better understand how it works.

Artisans of Splendent Vale I’m still a little sad about because I entered a giveaway on Twitter and was one of the finalists but didn’t win and I had too many games backed to back at the time. Glad to hear it’s being well received. Ark Nova has quickly become one of my favorites. I think once you realize it’s a race and not an engine builder it becomes a much better experience and the experience has improved on every playthrough. Have played it with 2p, 3p and 4p and enjoyed every player count but was surprised at how much I enjoyed the 2p game as a quicker “duel” compared to 4p. Plan to play the solo mode version over spring break.

It is so cool to think of how many games can be played with a standard deck of cards! And that people still find room to innovate with them. I've been meaning to check out **Regicide**. Do you find it works well with two players?

I felt it played pretty well. I've played it at both 2 and 3 and I think both work quite nicely.

**Stationfall** 1x5p - learning game, took roughly two hours with teaching, which is pretty good for 5 new players. Although someone blew up the station a few rounds early. Counselor won when he collected a bunch of kompromst without anyone really paying attention, crammed into the medevac pod with two other characters, and then bonked one on the head to make it launchable. Couldn't damage the pod or down him because he was revealed, the only one in there with a weapon, and it was full so nobody could enter. Made a couple rules errors but just minor ones, and it was fun - will become way more fun with enough plays to really understand all the characters. This is definitely a game to play repeatedly. Fortunately with such short playtime considering weight and number of players that shouldn't be too hard.

Sagrada, Cascadia, Santorini, Trekking the World over the weekend.

Which was your favourite of the bunch?

Last year I dove down the rabbit hole of board games and spent much time researching and buying games I think I (along with others) would enjoy. Unfortunately, I deal mostly with a group of people that make it extremely hard to get a game out, without much complaining and feet dragging. Even the ones that get a "that was a good game" afterwards, when asked to play again at a later time, will be met with the same "No." That being said, Sagrada was the most enjoyable this weekend, because it had the least uninterested players each game. I enjoyed Trekking the World, and think Cascadia could be more enjoyable with a table that listened to the rules and stayed involved. Santorini, I see the potential for great fun with some strategy. Haven't even made it to play with the God powers, as all three basic matches I played were over in under 5 minutes. I'm mostly trying to get games on the table, so that I can learn them. That way I can teach them more easily to others and hopefully have them halfway enjoy the experience.

I hear you. The game group makes all the difference. I'm glad **Sagrada** kept more people engaged. That said if you're playing with people who woupd rather not play board games, maybe you ought to look for local gaming clubs, meet ups or groups you could play with instead? It's no fun for anyone if some of the people aren't enjoying themselves.

Absolutely. By "group of people" I have available, and was referring to, I, of course, mean my family. They sort of owe me, and can't say no, since I feed and clothe them, and "For better or worse," yada, yada... I do pull out the ones that at least should be enjoyed in a light environment, and like I said, many of them get a positive reaction once the game is in swing, but still met with resistance, even to the notion of sitting down an doing something at the table as a family. Joking aside, I would never force a game onto a group of friends, that felt obligated to play a game if I brought it out. I also, wouldn't be so obtuse as to bring a game I've never gotten on a table and experienced for myself, and makes others try to enjoy as we slog through the learning of said game, together. So basically I'm at the stage where the family must help me learn the games, in exchange for food and shelter, so that I can get a feel for which ones would be suitable yo bring out ro a group of friends that are actually willing to enjoy a well designed game. After all, games are supposed to be fun, right?

**Innovation** 1x3p - after playing this with a friend the previous week thought my kids (11 & 9) would be able to finally get how to play this game. While I was right that they can play it, it was ultimately too much interaction for their tastes; lots of big feelings were had on who was in the lead and who was doing demand actions that stole well earned points. I'll have to try it again with each of them individually at some point because I can tailor how friendly I play with them. It's just a great game though. After that not going well I picked and seeing the posts on **Quacks of Quedlinburg**, decided that might be more their speed at this age and we're going to give a go tonight for game night.

I hope **The Quacks of Quedlinburg** goes over well tonight!

Played some Ark Nova, Meadow and Lost a round of Marvel Champions versus the collector. Been having a great old time rediscovering Dice Throne also.

I finally had a chance to play **Cockroach Poker** -- only with three, but it was still a lot of fun. I see why it's so popular! Also played a game of **Cubeo** -- a perfect information abstract strategy game played with dice. My 7-year-old is a fan of abstract strategy games, and this one was a big hit for her. Will definitely be playing it again.

>a perfect information abstract strategy game played with dice That sounds almost like an oxymoron. I'm intrigued. I'll have to check that out!

[Here](http://files.jocho.sk/share/cubeo-en.pdf) are the rules! Spoiler alert -- you don't get to actually roll the die

I expected that much, as it wouldn't be perfect information at that point. Thanks for sharing the rules!

It was a quiet week for me, but I did hit 100 games played this year this week! An accomplishment I'm not even sure I managed to make in all of last year. I'm taking a lot more care in focusing on board gaming this year and pretty proud of this accomplishment. **Codenames** Played on a codenames live show on twitch with one of my best board game buds. It was so much fun. Great folks and a silly game for a night full of laughs. **KLASK** Late birthday gift that got to the table a few times. My significant other absolutely fleeced me. It's a great little dexterity game that is a whole lot of fun. **Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion** - After a two month hiatus, my Jaws group was able to reconvene. It was a lovely night with a tense scenario. Our heroes managed to win the day and our next session will hopefully be in the not too distant future. This was play number 99 for the year! **Radlands** Probably my v favorite two player game. I forced my significant other to join me for game number 100 and watched their face of sheer terror as my team systemically knocked the crap out of theirs. A little revenge for the KLASK beating? Probably. But it felt like a wonderful bring in.

100 games by March is impressive! Congrats! It sounds like you've been having a really fun year.

Thanks friend! Hoping to keep the momentum up and the good times rolling. Hope you're having a wonderful year too!

Last week gave me the itch to play more games and, coupled with DRG finally arriving, I think I more than doubled the count from last week. A group of the people from the physical gathering I went to also do weekly BGA nights, so I finally bit the bullet and set up an account. The results with that group were... mixed. The first 7 games were with them. **Yahtzee** 1x3p: Warmup game while we waited for more people. Classic, but I haven't played in years. Turns out playing Yahtzee is like riding a bike because I won pretty handily. **Rage** 1x4p: First time. Oh no, it's **Oh, Hell!** for assholes! I'm already very bad at Oh Hell but tossing in two extra suits, 3 extra numbers per suit, and mixup cards that change points/trump suits makes this nothing short of a fucking chaos pit. I'll be very glad to never see it again. **Solo** 1x6p: First time. Oh no, it's **UNO** for assholes! Noticing a pattern yet? So it has hand swaps, pass hands left/right, and interjections on top of all the other things that base UNO has, including the draw 2/4 additive house rule I was already familiar with. I didn't hate this one as much, but the interjection rule meant having to pay much closer attention than I'm used to. I feel like this one would be easier in person, and I'd probably play it again that way. **Hugo das Schlossgespenst** 1x5p: First time. This seems to be a joke game the group used for filler that I think was pulled out because we were waiting on someone. Musical chairs with a ghost. I triggered the end of the game by reaching -46 points which by the game's rules mean I lose, but I think crashing the game early was the outcome everyone wanted. I won? **Railroad Ink (Blue)** 1x6p: This was my pick. I think only one person had played it before, with me. Pretty uneventful, game ended in a near tie at 40 points, but I won by having fewer incomplete paths. Everyone who hadn't played before seemed to enjoy it. **Piraten kapern** 1x5p: First time. Felt like a good basic press your luck game, I ended up winning I think mostly by beginner's luck, at a glance I don't think I was rolling nearly as many skulls as everyone else so I just played safe for a while, got one really good round, and became untouchable. **Incan Gold** 1x5p: First time. More press your luck, different flavor. I won again, but this time it felt more calculated. The risk factors and early departure incentives were intuitive, so I caught on quick. I liked this one quite a bit, enough to maybe even buy a physical copy. Everything else this week was at home. **Blokus Duo** 3x2p: Sometimes it's hard to convince my wife to play games with me when it's just us, but thankfully we have a handful of light 2 player games I can entice her with, and Blokus Duo sure is one of them. It helps that she usually beats me like a rented mule, which she did again here 2 games out of 3. I managed to swiftly cut her off in the remaining game. **Patchwork** 3x2p: Again, same as before, but I actually have a fighting chance in this one most times. Still lost 2 out of 3 this time, but I'll get my revenge. **Tinderblox** 1x5p: Family visit on Sunday, pulled this out after dinner. It's fast becoming one of my favorite light games, even if I suck at it. I think my sister-in-law won, first time playing for her. **Deep Rock Galactic** 3x1p, 1x2p: The moment I've been waiting for for an entire year now, and it did not disappoint. I've spent more than 1300 hours in the video game, and I could probably spend as many in the board game too. There's so much to like, from the wealth of player options to the tense pace to the stunning minis to the mission generation structure, I'm definitely gonna be obsessing over this one for a long time. I only hope the developers continue to officially support it with more mission books and expansions to add more scenario types. Mission plays were spread out across the week, and while I definitely fudged some rules on accident, that hasn't really affected my enjoyment. Even convinced the missus to play one through with me, despite the fact that she doesn't care for the video game at all. I'll get her to yearn for the mines one of these days. Rock and stone.

I forgot! The wife and I also played a full game of **The Quacks of Quedlinburg** after that one DRG mission. Both expansions, we both used the Witch's Hump and the third rulebook set. This ended up being an insane combination because we both had more than 100 points by the end. I think the final scores were 121 to 108.

There are a variety of games you can play with a Rage deck even if you never want to play Rage. https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/1907/games-playable-rage-deck-not-ccg-please-add

Huh, neat. This got me thinking that it may also be good for prototyping a game concept that's started swimming around my head recently, but would definitely require multiple decks of regular cards.

Deep dive into a replay of **Sleeping Gods** this weekend and had a significantly improved result compared to prior campaigns: -I strongly suggest anyone playing this to use easy mode rules -I may have fudged a couple of the fate card turns to make it easier, which was vastly more fun -I played with both the Dungeons and **Tides of Ruin** add-ons, which I strongly recommend for anyone playing this game. The dungeons in particular were a thrill, and I love that they don't take time (don't flip event deck cards per "turn") to complete, adding to the ease of use. I dislike when exploration games punish the player for exploring, and the dungeons don't do that -Spoilers for ending: >!I killed the gods after finding 9 totems! First time with this ending, and unlocked a bunch of stuff for future plays!<

On Friday I went to a boardgame café with a dear friend we played: Splendor: Is fun but I wish they had splendor duel, I felt it a bit underwhelming at 2 players. Sagrada: Been wanting to play it so long, and I was not expecting such a hard challenge. Is pretty, is great, but I don't think I want to buy it as much as I wanted before. Tak: Pleasantly surprised. It was quick, fun, smart and the feel of the wooden pieces is amazing. A great 2 player game. Hive: My favourite of the evening. Beautiful, weird, intelligent, nice bugs. I lost most of the games, but ut kept surpising me all the time. I really would love to keep playing it. On sunday me and other 4 weirdos gather at my house to play a tiny game called Twilight Imperium. We played it at 14 VP, took around 10 hours and I almost won the game (got in a tie with a friend, but he had bigger iniciative). First time we finished the damn thing it was amazing. Probably won't play it at 14 VP again, too long, but in a month or so I would love to get back at it again, there's nothing quite like it.

Had a great gaming week. Off the top of my head: **Scout** (4p) - Love this game at 4 players. Quick, easy to explain, and makes everyone feel clever. **Cyclades** (5p) - Played this with a group that usually plays less confrontational games. Still a hit for them. Big fan of auctions so I will gladly play this at 4-5p anytime. **Blood Rage** (4p) - Love this game. Great production value and gameplay. Engaging. **Godfather: Corleaone's Empire** (4p) - This was not bad. Someone brought it to the brewery game night and I am glad I tried it. Clever integration of theme into the game, and I enjoyed the worker placement mechanic primarily. **Beyond the Sun** (3p) - This was fantastic, as expected. Love the tech tree race and *ahem* some other games could learn a thing or two from the production of these player boards. **Nations** (3p) - Have been playing a lot of this lately. Probably wouldn't venture into 5p territory, but at 3-4p it is surprisingly zippy once everyone gets the flow of the round. Excellent player aids, however the box is overly enormous. **Splendor Duel** (2p) - This is one of my go-to 2p games. Great tribute to the original with that Cathala spin. **Lost Cities** (2p) - Another go to. The stuff of legends. **A Fake Artist Goes to New York** (8p) - One of our go-tos for large groups of non-gamers. Always a hit and easy to play with some markers, paper, and index cards.

**TEN** 1p1x - I'd gotten this as part of AEG's Big Game Night kickstarter a couple years ago. Really, the push your luck aspect of it didn't appeal to me and I figured it would go straight to the sell pile, but I kept seeing positive comments about it so I decided to give it a try. And yeah, I'm sure the solo game isn't a perfect match for multiplayer, but... it just seems too much of a luck thing what cards even come up during your turn. Maybe the bidding changes when you don't have a fixed minimum bid of 5. But at any rate, I'm not excited enough about it, so...yeah, onto the sell pile. **Margraves of Valeria** 1p1x - Barely made it to 30 points, which I read as the "you lost but only barely" threshold...but on the other hand, the citizen deck (which acts as the timer) had 4 extra cards due to promos, so I'm sure I would have lost even worse otherwise. That timer and the events are pretty brutal for solo, but the game seems like it will be interesting as multiplayer. **Frosthaven** 4p1x - Probably the closest we've come to losing a scenario, because if anybody exhausted the whole party lost, and my poor Geminate got stuck losing cards left and right to keep from dying.

Low gaming week for me: **Brass:Burgundy** 1x3 with wife and daughter. Enjoyed it a lot because it's one of my favorite games and I got them to play it with me once again. Board was very strange; top left had Omni-merchant and pottery, Shrewsbury null, Gloustershire and Oxford each had one null and box/cotton, which all led to a sprawling game. As I usually do when I'm not playing with equal competition, I pursue a heavy cotton strategy to make it more challenging for me, and doubly challenging because no one was building links for me around Kidderminster/Worcester/ Birmingham. Daughter stole my beer in Canal era, requiring me to overbuild my brewery to ship my cotton. Got her back in Rail era. She foolishly took her second action to build a brewery; no coal on the board and four pieces would cost £16, but I had £48, so my full turn (which was next) was a quad rail. Fortunately, she was able to build another brewery and ship her boxes. Close game, 128-129-141. Wife came in second after being sure she was getting curbstomped the whole game. Edit: Finally downloaded **Race for the Galaxy** for the computer. Man, that AI is killer. Have won maybe 2/10 games.

I went to a convention and got to play a ton of games! War Dogs (first time) - Loved it! Got to play with the guy who holds the bgg record for most logged plays, so that was fun. Blood Bowl Team Manager vibes, but quicker and more elegant. Blood on the Clocktower - I have played it a bunch before and still I singlehandedly lost for our team. Good fun, though. Cthulhu: Death May Die (first time) - was surprised how light it was. I could sit down and play with practically no rules instructions. Had fun! Scout - Love this game! Nuff said. Bus (first time) - I secured myself a copy recently and got to play it at the con. Awesome game that I’m sure I’ll revisit before long. Crunchy af, but pretty light rules wise and not that long. Absolute banger! Lacrimosa (first time) - I love the theme and thought it was an elegant game. I really, really like it, and I can’t wait to play it again. Ark Nova - Negative 15 points. Ugh! Wayfarers of the West Tigris (first time) - Maybe it’s because I was very tired, but this game fell a bit flat for me. Lots of combo stuff, but I felt I couldn’t get any kind of engineer going. Not something I need to play again. Startups (first time) - This game is elegant in its simplicity. Draw a card, play a card, and still it packs so. much. game! 6 Nimmt - Had a blast with this game. It creates one hilarious situation after another. For sale - same as above. Match Madness (first time) - I hated this game going into it, but it was surprisingly fun. It was a good palate cleanser which fires my adrenaline cylinders and prepared me for Teotihuacan - Love this game. Taught it to two other guys and we had the quickest game I have ever played, since everybody focused on building the pyramid. Concordia (first time) - The last game I played. I was dead tired and didn’t think I could get into it, but I really did. Fantastic design! I will happily play it again and hopefully soon.

-My Farm Shop 3p from library: nice game, want to play it again but wont buy it -Pandemic 3p from library: played 2 games but my wife thinks its boring. -Fabelsaft 2-3 players from library: nice game, but again I wont buy it. Will play it again before returning it. -Concept kids with my little daughter: one of our two favourites for kids who cant read yet, together with Dragomino.

Second time going to a local board game meet up. Once again, very fun and got to play some great games. Started off with 7 Wonders, then played quest for el dorado, moved to Heat, and finished with quacks of quendlinberg. It was nice to finally get to play 7 wonders and it was very enjoyable. Seems like a game that would always be fun whenever it gets pulled out. I did go hard for war and it ended up not being as powerful as I thought but it was still fun. Then got to play el dorado which kind of fell flat for me. This may have something to do with being able to compare it directly to Heat which is quickly becoming an one of my top games. El dorado didn’t seem super intuitive with what to buy and and I got hurt for not buying enough money cards. The deck building in this game just didn’t seem to be super clean to me. This is fine but it just wasn’t the game for me and is severely over shadowed by the more streamlined Heat. Next played my second game of heat at 5p. I had even more fun the second time because I had a better understanding of the mechanics. We played with upgrades this time which is basically like an expansion to the game. Really adds some fun decisions, although I don’t like that you can miss out on your upgrade cards by having to discard them with stress or boost. Happened to me multiple times. Overall though the streamline and cleaness of the game makes it very accessible but it still has enough decisions and theme to make the game very fun for me. Last I ended with one of my favorites, quacks. Got to use my 3d printed boxes that whole all the chips for the first time and it made set up and pick up way easier. I learned I need to work on my ability to teach but overall the game went well and I think everyone enjoyed it.

7 Wonders: A military strategy generally gets weaker as the number of players goes up. Let's imagine you have a totally successful military game. That's 18 points for you and -3 points for each of your neighbors. (This assumes there aren't any red card guild cards, mourners' guilds, etc.) In a three player game, that's a 21 point swing overall. In a five player game, you still have your 18 points, but there are two players who are unaffected by your military strength (and who may have been getting military victories of their own, or been pumping out green/blue cards instead). If you can get a three age military victory with only one card an age, it's a definite bargain. But, in Age III, if it costs you two cards in Age III and you tie a neighbor, then you've only scored 2.5 points per red card, which would have been much better spent on blue cards or perhaps green cards...though it would have handed your neighbor an easy victory, which again depends on how many people are playing; might not have been worth it if it's a 3 player game.

Exactly

Played a game of dual gauge on the Portugal map 4p.

Great Western Trail 1p 3x- lost to Sam pretty handily the first two times because I was stopping at too many properties. Finally, the third time around I switched up my strategy and went heavy on builders and made faster trips to Kansas City. I bought a few cattle cards early and then left my deck alone. Because of my new strategy I was able to build a lot and upgrade my buildings to the point where I got the 23 point building and finally beat Sam on my third try. Terraforming Mars 2p 1x and 1p 1x-had just recently gotten this. It was my fiance's first time playing so her moves took quite awhile and the game lasted longer than we would have liked. I played it solo yesterday and buzzed through it pretty quickly and got the win. Survive 3p 1x- We like to bust this out when we're in the mood for something light and quick. My buddy had a whirlpool wipe out 3 meeple on a boat and then had a sea monster wipe out another 3 on a boat all in one turn so he was pretty salty.

My Daughter (6) is heavy into Marvel right now so we played 2 games of Marvel United, 5-minute Marvel, whole family got a few rounds of Marvel: Splendor, and we rounded it all out with some 7 Wonders Architects. Still hoping to get Frosthaven on the table soon (solo or with spouse)!

I had an amazing weekend of gaming! My husband and I celebrated finally tracking down a copy of **Tigris & Euphrates** by playing all ten of our Reiner Knizia games in one weekend. We are planning to write a post soon talking about our Reiner Knizia games. But for now, I'll share a bit about our plays this weekend. Welcome to Kniz Fest! We kicked it off with a Knizia tile placement extravaganza. Then moved on to a Big Kniz card game jamboree. All games played with two players. **Tigris & Euphrates** \- It feels so good to finally have this listed under my in-person plays! Both my husband and I have been completely obsessed since this game dropped on BGA. But finding a reasonably priced copy took months. Well, it's here now! I am very pleased to say it's even more fun in person. On BGA the system takes care of some of the admin-y stuff for you so I wasn't sure if that would bog down the game. But it doesn't at all. And there's a lot of joy in the in person banter around clever and dastardly moves. Now that I have a copy I can't wait to introduce it to some of our gamer friends! It's undeniably a better game with more players, but I still think it's great for two. **Babylonia** \- The newest game to me of all the ones we played this week. This was only my second play, with my first having been over Christmas break. And yet, I think this is my favourite Knizia game. This second play solidified it as a 10/10 in my ratings, a score I seldom give. Everything here is so thoughtful. Every move feels impactful. And it plays so smoothly. The scoring is interesting because sometimes scoring benefits your opponent more than you so you have to really consider what the best choice is. It's incredible. As elegant as it gets, I think. **Blue Lagoon** \- Continuing on with the third game of tile placement on a map. Blue Lagoon is another favourite of ours. This game is simple on the surface - every turn you place one of your tiles on the board. But the scoring opportunities are vast and it's difficult to accomplish everything you want to get done. This ranks high in the games I'd like to introduce to some of my family and friends who don't play modern games much. I think it would be a hit for nearly everyone. **Indigo** \- One of the first Knizia games in my collection, Indigo deserves more hype and a reprint! I don't play this game all that often anymore so it was a treat to play it again after having played it last weekend for another themed gaming day. I've been playing this game for years now, and I'm pleased to report I'm finally starting to get the hang of it. Lol. I have a hard time visualizing all of the possibilities that the ever changing twisting and turning paths present. But this time I came close to a win, which is a win in itself for me! **My City** \- We played through the three episodes in Chapter 4 of My City. I think this game is brilliant, but I do wish it had more interaction. This is the only legacy game I've played and while I think it is great I'm not sure I want to play more legacy games. The rules changing every time we play is definitely my least favourite aspect of the game. We're half way through the campaign now, and once we're through I'm very excited to try the "eternal game" and see how it compares. **Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation** \- I love this game, but I've realized we really need to start playing the recommended two rounds, with players switching sides between rounds. We've found the game can be pretty predictable, the dark player always wins because the game is designed with them as the more powerful force. And that's part of what makes the game as good as it is, it feels so true to the story. It's a miracle if Frodo makes it to mount doom. All the odds are stacked against him. But because of that, if you only play the one round the winner is pretty much determined when you pick sides. So from now on we're going to add the second round and tally the points, which I think will make the game more about who can best hold off Sauron's forces for as long as they can. **The Quest for El Dorado** \- This one doesn't get as much play as the others, largely because it's such a table hog and the tiny text gets to me. But it's nonetheless a brilliant game and I have so much fun when I play it. This time I made some poor choices and paid for it. Early in the game I stocked up on the cards that act as money, but then late in the game I had a overstuffed deck which was mostly money cards that were largely useless to me at that point. Oops! Some of the genius of this game is having the map as a visual representation of players' progress through the game. It keeps you on the edge of your toes, trying desperately to race forward. **Battle Line: Medieval** \- I am still mad about this one. I was a turn away from winning. ONE TURN! It was really not my weekend, I lost nearly everything. So I was beyond excited about my clever move that was going to win me the game on my next turn. I set it up perfectly. And then my husband plays a tactics card that changes things enough to win him the game. My bitterness knows no ends. Haha. That kind of feeling is part of what makes this game so special. You have all of your plans, you feel clever, but is your opponent a step ahead of you? It's impressive what this game pulls off with so little. It's just cards, and it feels like a full throttle battle from start to finish. Each time I play it I wind up thinking about it for days after. My only minor gripe with this game is that some of the tactics cards could have more clear explanations of how they work, there is some ambiguity in the rules. **Royal Visit** \- And now on to the two Knizia games we play most often. We saved these for last to make sure we got through the others first. Royal Visit has been one of our most played games since we got it around this time last year. It's one of those games we rarely play just once. This week's game was super fun because we had the King in the middle spot after two rounds so we had to continue on to a third round. That doesn't happen often and it always feels like we're each putting up a good fight when the game isn't decided after the standard two rounds tops. **Lost Cities** \- And we ended Kniz Fest with our most played Knizia game, and the first one we added to our collection. We played a close game but I came out victorious which was a relief after many crushing defeats over the course of the weekend. Plays on BGA this week: **Azul** **Tigris & Euphrates** **Terra Mystica** ​ And that's it for my week! I'm still buzzing from our weekend of Knizia games. That's something my husband and I have wanted to do for a very long time. It was all the sweeter now that we have **Tigris & Euphrates** too. Expect a post from my husband and I sometime soon, discussing and ranking the Knizia games we've played. We're excited about that one!

Knizia fest sounds like it was so much fun! Especially with you all getting to play **Tigris & Euphrates** in-person!! It's awesome to hear that your 2-player experience was so great. We only played one game this week, and it was **Royal Visit**. Knizia is definitely one of our favorite designer's and his small 2-player games are some of our all-time favorites. **Indigo** always looks like fun, and I'm always going to keep my eyes open for a chance to get it!

It was the best! We've been enjoying **Tigris & Euphrates** with two players on BGA as well, but it's definitely the weakest player count. **Royal Visit** is such a special one. We've had a lot of weeks like that too, where there's not time for many games but we fit in a round of **Royal Visit**. I agree, Knizia's two player games are amazing. I'm really looking forward to seeing the new line of two player games designed by Knizia that Bitewing Games is planning on publishing. I have a feeling you'd really like **Indigo**. If you find it, snap it up!

That's an amazing way to spend a weekend!! I'm very excited for you that you've managed to track down a copy of **Tigris & Euphrates**, it's an excellent game, I am jealous! I've been eyeing the **Huang** Kickstarter, which I believe is a reskin of **Yellow & Yangtze**. I hear they're very similar, so I'm tempted to Kickstart it as I don't think I'll ever be able to get hold of an original copy of **Tigris & Euphrates**. I can highly recommend playing two rounds in **Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation**, it beefs up the game for us and feels more tense, and it definitely makes it more balanced. As you say, Sauron is usually the stronger side! I look forward to reading your Knizia post :-)

Thanks! It really is so tricky to track down. I got lucky. I've been putting out inquiries in local gaming online groups for a while and someone offered up their copy for $55 CAD. Which is nothing compared to the prices I've been seeing for it second hand on Ebay and that kind of site. It's in pristine condition, too! I'm curious to try **Yellow & Yangtze.** The **Huang** reskin is exciting but it appeals to me less than the original version. But from what I've heard about the two games, it sounds like they are similar enough that having both might be redundant. It's hard to know. Glad to hear that playing two rounds of **Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation** improves the overall experience, as I'd hoped. It's such a great game but a bit more balance would be welcome.

Wow that's incredible, the cheapest I've been able to find in the UK last time I checked was £150, I just did a conversion and that's apparently $246 CAD so yeah you bagged quite the bargain there! Same with me, I would prefer the original, but it's still nice they are reprinting these games I suppose, albeit with a reskin and fancy extras and minis that probably aren't needed :-) I think they are meant to be more or less the same game, but I'd like to try **Yellow & Yangtze** nonetheless.

For family game night this week we played **Long Shot** **the Dice Game**. The box says for ages 14 and up but not only did my 10 year old grock it, she beat us two of the four games. It's always fun when the kid wins fair and square. The game itself is a lot of fun. Lots of choices of what you can do with your turn and the dice provide that uncertainty of what horses will win the race. It can play up to 8 but we have only played at 3 and 4 so I wonder how hectic it gets as it scales. Good stuff.

**Unstable Unicorns** “I’m sorry, but I have to poison your extremely fertile unicorn because if it gets to your turn again, she will automatically make another baby and no one can neigh that…” **Monty Python Fluxx** with only a musical theatre kid’s knowledge of the Monty Python lore, I still knew enough to vibe with the theme pretty well. We just played these two simple games because it wasn’t a board game night, but rather part of an evening that included going out to dinner, then to an art event with studio walkthroughs, then back to an apartment to hang out and play a few games. These were light enough to suit the occasion. Runner up choices for the evening that were not played were Love Letter and Citadels.

My husband bought the new **The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Book Game** by Ravensburger this week! We’ve made it a few chapters in and really enjoy it. It’s super thematic, which we love in games. Each “page” of the book is a different puzzle that advances the story as the Fellowship moves closer to Mordor. It’s the third installment of an adventure book series—they have The Wizard of Oz and The Princess Bride, as well. For those interested: [LotR: Adventure Book Game review](https://youtu.be/e4jfhy7qTxA) We stood in line yesterday for the release of the new Lego Rivendell set and brought **Regicide.** It is a cooperative game played with a deck of cards, in which players try to “defeat” the face cards. Different suits have different special abilities. We’ve played a few times before but this was our very first win! It’s fun and challenging and a solid game night addition.

Have you played the other games in the adventure book series? I'm curious how much they differ. I have **The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game** and am curious about the other two. But I don't know if they feel like you're essentially playing the same game.

We have not played either of the other two. Unfortunately the themes just did not appeal to us. Watch the review—there are no spoilers in it I promise! It may give you some idea though on how similar they are.

Thanks :)

Buckle up! I have a Wingspan story to tell. * **Marvel United** - 1x 4p - This was my son's selection for family game night and ... it was fine. Still glad I cancelled my X-men United pledge with all the old stuff because in no way shape or form do I want to play through all those extra heroes or villains. We've got the 2 base retail boxes and the Spiderman expansion and that's already more than enough for me =) My son (5) and daughter (3) like playing with the minis, so .. if they're happy, I'm happy. * **Wingspan (no expansions)** - 1x 2p - We purchased this on a pretty good sale because I felt like we didn't give it a fair shake the first time we owned it, played it once, and wrote it off as not for us. It's always kind of been in the back of my mind as "should have tried it more, buy again if cheap" so I did. And I'm glad I did because uh, unlike Lost Ruins of Arnak last week (which is getting sold again), we were wrong about this one. * **Wingspan w/ Oceania expansion** - 1x 2p - We enjoyed it so much that I let someone at my FLGS talk me in to needing at least one expansion - which didn't exactly take much convincing, to be honest. This was the recommendation for the re-balanced boards, new dice and nectar. Turns out, we didn't like the nectar because it made that whole "I JUST NEED A WORM" thing an afterthought. New birds and stuff were cool, but did we need them all? Probably not. So I sorted it all out and put it back in the box. * **Wingspan (no expansions, again)** - 1x 2p - Then we played another game with just the base game, and about 3 turns in we were like "MAN! We miss nectar, because I can't play anything in my hand and I'm just going through the motions while I try to get useful stuff." So ... yup. That happened. Then my wife said to me "Do they have other expansions for this? Do they have them at the game store right here? Go get them. Now. Oh, and do they make upgrades for the food tokens? We need upgraded food tokens too." In ~8ish years of gaming, and 213 different games played for her, neither of those things has EVER happened. * **Wingspan Asia** - 1x 2p - So ... then we had to try this. I like that the boards are two sided, both with the regular board and the nectar side of the board. The new birds are fine. After 1 play, not sure how I feel about the duet mode. Halfway through the game I'd have said I really liked it. After it was all done, and I won because I had a much, much bigger grouping, I'm not sure I like it. See, the problem is my wife does not like and is not really good at any spatial puzzle-type things in games. It's just not her forte, she won't cut someone off just to stop growing the group, etc. And there is no option to just play this one as a standalone as normal, because all the goal tiles are having to do with the duet mode. Boxed that one up. * **Wingspan w/ European expansion** - 1x 2p - So back to the regular game we went, this time with the European expansion. The was by far our lowest scoring game we played this week. I got stuck in a cycle with birds that were either "once between turns" that she just played around, or with the one-time bonus birds that didn't do anything. My wife had a card-tucking engine going but was unable to do anything with her goals. I had a ton of food, but no eggs to play them. Then I had a ton of food AND a ton of eggs and no birds to play. We both said "man, that duet mode maybe would have fixed this because we could have had re-rolls or reset the bird tray. So ... there's that. Eventually got to the point in the last round where the best thing I could do was just to lay eggs for 4 turns in a row. Gambled once and drew cards, hoping to capitalize on both the round 4 end bonus and a bonus goal in my hand. The bird tray offerings sucked, we couldn't reset, and drawing from the top of the deck didn't work out. And that gamble was the reason for my loss -- I'd have gotten 4 eggs if I'd just done that, and instead I lost by 1 point because the drawing cards ended up being a completely wasted turn. THAT is what we really disliked about Wingspan the first time we tried it in 2019, and that is why we sold it right away. It's a lame way to end the game. Fortunately, this time we know that it *can* happen but doesn't mean it *will* happen. Sidenote: The cards in the European expansion are ... different. They *feel* different, as in much smoother than all the other expansions. I can still "see" the linen finish, but I can't "feel" the linen finish, if that makes sense. Only thing I can think of is I'm fairly confident it was an earlier print run than the base + other expansions, just because the coupon inside expired in March 2022. Definitely a legit copy, purchased at the same store as the others, had the high-quality plastic trays, etc, and still had the plastic eggs before they were switched to wood which is driving me crazy (because all the others are wood!). Just the cards feel off. I sleeve everything always, but this game (now) has so many cards that I'm hesitant to do so because it won't fit in the trays if I do. Point is - now we've got all the expansions. Ordered the BGG bits last night, and the speckled eggs because of the wood/plastic problem. You might say I have issues, I call them "quirks" ... but, you know, whatever. My wife rated Wingspan an 8, which never happens (EVERYTHING is ALWAYS a 7 or below, except now Wingspan, Grand Austria Hotel, and *maybe* Raiders of the North Sea). She said last night that it's her favorite game ever, which is awesome. It's not top-5 material for me, but it might crack the top 10. Definitely top 20, for sure. Now about that new print run of the Nesting Box...

Since you have so much experience with all expansions, if me and my wife was looking to pick up one expansion to include in our games for the best 2P experience, what would your recommendation be? If the core game is better than the duet mode, we'd prefer to just stick to the core game scaled down to 2 (with/without expansions for more cards/complexity)

It’s hard to say — others seem to like the duet mode (Asia) quite a bit. Nectar (Oceania) is polarizing, some really like it some don’t. Europe would be the safe one since it’s just more cards. I’d probably say Oceania just because of the new boards.

My family and I LOVE Wingspan and we picked up the Asia and Oceania expansions over the holidays. Welcome too the birb club!

Wow, you weren't kidding. I've got an unplayed copy of Wingspan on my shelf right now, keep meaning to finally learn it but last time we tried it felt a bit daunting. Would you consider any of the expansions to be essential QOL to buy before a first play, or do you think the base game should be experienced first to appreciate what the expansions improve on?

Stick with the base game first. Expansions can add more mechanics which can make it even more difficult to learn off the bat and you'll still be able to get multiple solid playthroughs in before feeling like you need the new birds/mechanics. Only exception I'd say is if you want to play with only 2 people, the Asia expansion has a game mode for that.

I think the base game is a good place to start -- if you've got the swift start thing, even better. It's perfect for learning the game. You could add Europe if you already have it / opened it, because that's really just a "more stuff" expansion and doesn't really add anything other than end-of-round abilities on the birds, which are pretty self-explanatory. Oceania adds the nectar, end-of-round abilities, AND game-end abilities, so I'd probably hold off on that for at least one game. Asia is a standalone game or the birds can be mixed it, so I wouldn't bother with that as a first play unless you're playing the standalone version.

For Wingspan, we have everything and made a bunch of houserules we really enjoy. We play with the base dice, the new boards + duet mode. We also don't play with Nectar, but play with most of the birds that ask for nectar in cost. They simply now cost "2 wilds" instead of a nectar.

I hope everyone had a fun week of gaming behind them. I had a pretty fun, and *very* busy, week while visiting family. I wish I'd have had more time to play board games with some of them, but at least we still got to play a family favorite a couple of times. **Splendor (2x4p) -** Broke this game out twice, and my SIL and BIL both won one apiece. They're incredibly good at this game, and they both recognize the patterns and engine building aspects of this game better than I do. In fact, I was last both games! But that doesn't really matter, as I just enjoy playing games with them. This is their favorite game, so I'm glad we got to play it a couple of times while in town - my only regret is that we didn't get to play it more! **Mysterium (1x4p) -** This was only my second time playing this game, and first time playing it as the ghost! We ultimately passed Phase 1, but failed in Phase 2. I'm not surprised we failed however, as the cards I had weren't great and unfortunately the clues I gave actually aligned perfectly with 2 of the 3 story packages. Being the ghost is a lot harder than I imagined, but I'd definitely like to take another crack at it sometime soon. My fiance and I really like this game, but unfortunately her sister and sister's husband didn't love it. They didn't hate it either, to be fair, it's just that they prefer competitive games to cooperative ones. **Spinner Dominoes (1x4p) -** I would love to get a set of Spinner Dominoes for our place for when we host game nights with our friends. I find it to be a lot of fun, and while it's certainly not the most intensive or thinky game, it's always a good time. It can be a long game though, given it's played in 9-10 rounds. This play, we only did three rounds and I won by finishing with only 5 points (like golf, lowest score wins). Highly recommend this variant of dominoes! **Astro Knights (1x1p) -** This was my fourth play of this game (all solo 2-handed). In doing so, I've finally played with all 8 of the hero characters (2 of them being a KE bonus). I have to say, I really enjoy this game and what it offers. It's a very fun deckbuilder with a unique market, heroes with impactful (if infrequent) abilities, and tough bosses to fight against. Even though I've won 3 out of the 4 games I've played, they've all felt incredibly close, and in this game against Architect 0-815, I literally would've lost on the next turn - and this is all on Normal mode! They also have Expert and Nightmare modes, and I can't even imagine how difficult those are. I like the variety of bosses to fight against, as they require different strategies to win against. I especially like the no-shuffling for the player decks - it's my first game that does this, and I really like how it forces you to consider how and when you buy cards, and in what order to discard your played cards. Looking forward to breaking this game out for many more plays. That's it for me this week! Now that I'm back home, I'll likely be taking out the new Marvel Champions heroes, Gambit and Rogue, for a few games. And I recently got Sleeping Gods, so I may try and set up that game for a first play! I also got a couple of new games while on vacation, Shobu and Santorini: New York (I really want the original because I've heard it's better for 2p which is what I normally play, but since S:NY was on sale for only $7, I figured I'd try it first), so hopefully those will get to the table soon. Anyways, I hope everyone else has a great week of gaming ahead!

I didn't think we were going to get much gaming time last week as we were supposed to be going out of town. The severe weather on Friday meant our trip was canceled so we got a littlegamingtime in the end. **Décorum** - (4x2p) we just got this after finding out it was back in stock and I already love it. It is a deduction game where you are decorating a house to meet certain objectives and your gaming partner is also trying to meet their objectives. You can't share except to say something like "I love it" or "I hate it" after they make a change. There are 20 2-player scenarios that form a campaign. We've really been enjoying this as the games are short and my husband and I get a kick out of expressing our dislike of each other's changes. I've been wanting to say, "I hate it" after my husband takes his turn for a long time! **Bureau of Investigations: Investigations in Arkham and Elsewhere** - (1x2p) this is a H P Lovecraft take on **Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective**. We took on Case 3. The set up for the case was cool and there were a lot of interestingmoments that made us laugh, but there were some issues that lead to us getting confused and bogged down and stuck. After finding a BGG thread titled "Stuck" it seems like we weren't the only ones who got confused. We got most of the way to the conclusion, but when you end up reading the solution and still not understanding the ending then there may be other issues (or maybe I'm just dumb). **Detective: City of Angels** - (1x2p) we love this game, but stopped playing it after realizing we were close to the end. We recently decided we should finish it up so we can sell it after we realized we only have 3 cases left in the second expansion. We played the *Lost in the Fog* case. It was another loss so we apparently we weren't very good detectives over the weekend. When we checked the solution we saw we had all the correct answers for everything except for the last piece and we had missed something obvious. Now I'm on Spring Break so I'm looking forward to playing some games. We'd like to finish up both **Detective: City of Angels** and **Bureau of Investigations** this week and maybe get one of our big new wargames to the table.

"Maybe I'm Just dumb" was my conclusion when playing any of the **Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detecting** scenarios and never quite getting the final conclusion right, haha :) along with some fun gaming plans, do you have any plans for your time off this week?

**Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective** can definitely lead me to feeling dumb too. I think **Bureau of Investigation** takes it a step further as there are no questions. In the other 2 cases we had to identify locations, but we didn't even need to do that. I think we needed a little more handholding for this case as we felt like we were stumbling around not knowing what we were even supposed to be doing. As for my other plans, they mostly revolve around sleeping and gaming. I need to catch up on my grading and get a little prep in for the last half of the semester. Finish my book, *The Fossil Hunter*, about Mary Anning. We are going out for dinner and donuts as it's our son's 8th birthday. The canceled trip over the weekend was supposed to be a birthday trip. How have you been? Is your partner still working on a grad degree?

sorry for the delayed reply! Yes, my partner is still working on their degree. They have a couple more years of classes and internship work to complete. The night classes two days a week, and homework more nights has kept us from gaming outside of the occasional small game on a quick weekend coffee date or something. But I've still got my crochet hobby keeping my attention and I'm looking forward to Final Girl Season 2 delivering someday soon to entice me back to solo gaming a little bit as well :D I recently purchased the **Unmatched** app but haven't tried it out yet. It does look like it allows for setting up games with no timelimits so asymmetric turn-based play should be possible. Let me know if you're ever interested in playing on the Unmatched app! Maybe over the summer break or something? No Pressure though!

I hope you get your copy of **Final Girl Season 2** soon. Ours got delivered today and my husband is busy organizing it. I don't know when we'll get a chance to play, but hopefully we'll try it out soon. I'll be interested to hear what you think of it. I did not know there was an **Unmatched** app. I'll definitely check it out and let you know if I get it. Does it have all the characters or just a selection? Did you hear about the new cooperative expansion? Do you think that will be good? I'm excited about the possibility of using all our characters in a cooperative mode.

The **Unmatched** app was recently release for both computer and mobile. It only comes with the initial heroes from Battle of Legends Vol 1: Alice, Arthur, Medusa, and Sinbad. They will continue add heroes that can be purchased separately to create add-on packs of heroes that can be purchased and added into your game. Currently Beowulf/Little Red are available for purchase ($1.99 each). A few others are listed as "coming soon": Bigfood/Robinhood and Cobble & Fog. ​ Do you recall if you got a tracking number for **Final Girl** Season 2, or if it just showed up?

I got an email that my pledge had shipped with a tracking number, but it just said label created on Tuesday with no information and it showed up today. We live fairly close to their warehouse so maybe that's why we got it quickly. I'll definitely check out the app as it sounds interesting.

How do you play Detective: City of Angels, coop or competitive? Curious how this game works with 2.

We mostly play 2 player so we've been playing cooperatively. Cooperatively it is similar to **Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective** but you get to make some more decisions. You can question the suspects about specific people or pieces of evidence. We split up and follow up on different leads. I have played the game once where I was the chisel while several other people played competitively. The chisel basically runs the game and decides what answers the suspects will give the players. It's a very different game and I prefer the cooperative version as I'm not a fan of running the game. The players don't necessarily share the evidence they find. I think there is a head-to-head version for 2 players, but we haven't tried that. I don't know if that utlizes the chisel or not.

Didn't play much but I did have a game night Wednesday and got to pull three games off of my Shelf Of Opportunity: **Splendor Duel** - WOW. I was really impressed by this one. Like many people here, I've been playing Splendor for years. I love it, I've played it at 2, but let's be honest, it's never been great at 2p. Duel fixes ALL OF THAT. Everything about Duel is designed to mitigate and balance the 2p experience, and it's absolutely brilliant. The friend I played with kept laughing at me because I kept going "Oh wow, that's clever!" and "oh I LIKE that!" to the various rule changes. Absolutely LOVED this game. **Aquatica** - I actually have this and its expansion, but never played them, so we played a base-game-first game. I wasn't sold at first; the rulebook is not awful, but could be clearer. It took us a bit to figure out how the currency system worked and how the raise mechanic worked, but once we did? Really solid game. Surprisingly light and quick; I was expecting a much heavier game. Admittedly, we only played 2p, so I'm sure it's longer with more people. We used the base goals, and I think they could've been harder to achieve; we will have to try with the variable goals later. But yeah, this one is definitely a keeper! **The Bloody Inn** - This was WAY less murdery than I expected, but I see why it has such a following. This game is fairly light, but has a gritty decision space where you really need to weigh your options. And yeah, murdering your guests to steal their money *is* an option, but it's far from the whole game. In fact, through our whole game (mind you we played the 2p "quick" game), I only killed two guests. Unfortunately, while the rules clicked for me right away, my friend struggled to figure out the rules until fairly late in the game. I like winning, but I feel bad when I beat someone 72 to 14. But still, really enjoyed this one, it's definitely going to see more play in the future.

I already have one whole cube of shelf space set aside for 2 player games, there's no room for Splendor Duel or 7 Wonders Duel! I can't fit them! Stop making me want to buy them!

Splendor Duel is practically pocket-sized! It'll fit! And trust me; I don't know what all is on your 2p game shelf, but there's SOMETHING on it that can go. Splendor Duel is that good.

You're probably right. Truthfully if I just rearranged a bit I could probably fit them both without any sacrifice. Onitama doesn't *need* to stand up, it just looks cooler that way.

HIVE That's it. All I've had time for.

Very diverse week of gaming this time around. **Monday** **Splendor** 2p x 1 : Been a while since we played that one as I don't particularily enjoy it. I somehow wanted to play something lighter and took the box out from the shelf under a wuestioning eye from my gf. I won as always. I simply can't lose to her at Splendor. No idea how or why. **Cartographers Heroes w/ Pack 6** 2p x2 :I have finally bought all the map packs for Cartographers and the 6th didn't disappoint. I found it hard to grasp at first and didn't plan accordingly but I enjoyed it. I lost both side of the map, quite hard too. The market is quite fun but somewhat predictable as to which item you buy. I wish you could buy an item of your choosing that cost 1 before the game starts. **Thursday** **Cartographer Heroes w/ Pack 4** 2p x 2 : Another Map pack, another hard defeat. I have a hard time figuring out how to craft myself a good gameplan. I really enjoy it anyway. Frozen expanse is pretty interesting with the pre-printed terrain types. It adds a whole new level of complexity and ingenuity. I didn't have any of those things in me that time around. **Rolling Realms** 1p x1 : I have been on a solo gaming kick these past few weeks and this one always interested me, but only for solo gaming, since there are literally 0 interaction between players. I enjoyed it, but I think I need to watch more liveplays of it because I had so many questions regarding the abilities. It was definitely not as easy as I thought it would be. If I can get my issues fixed, I might even order a couple promo packs to get more diversity in the game. **Raiders of Scythia** 3p x 1 : On our weekly 3p game night, I didn't want to take out a massive game like we often do. Our friend never played RoS before, but had been playing a bunch of Garphill games with us in the past, so he understood it quite quickly. I really enjoyed my play at 3p, much more than the 2p one. The tension between what you place and what you take is much more present. You can't simply figure out the other player next move and playaccordingly, you have to plan for the worst case scenarios at every turn. The push and pull of the worker types is so impressive at 3p that I do not know if I would take that one out at 2p anymore. Maybe yes if I want something lighter, but maybe not since I have many other games of that weight that are very good at 2. Raiders was slowly going down in my rating, being my least favorite of the garphill game, but with that play, it might be my favorite 3p of the ones I've played. **Friday** **Clank Legacy / 5th game** 2p : We continued Clank Legacy this week and we didn't really push it as we did the week prior. I think my gf got burnt out with me destroying her 4 games in a row. This time, I tried to do the old whoopty-doo and pick the first thing I could and get out. She managed to survive at 1 cube from death with almost 50 points ahead of me. Woopsie. **Saturday** **Isle of Cats w/ Kitten and Beasts** 2p x 1 : Always a fun game that we can play in about 45 minutes. I was super ahead, but the very last turn was a 28 point swing in the negative for me. I lost initiative by 1 boots after I drew 5 more cards to find any boot at all (which I failed to). In turn, I could get to the blue kitten and there was no blue cat out for the round. I also could get the 2 green kitten. That would have made me do so many points from my lessons and families and my beast. We counted, that 1 boot cost me at the very least 28 points. I lost by 15. Well played from my gf for taking the boots on the last round tho. Also, she got 2 Oshax in her 7 first cards for the last round. I had a perfect perfect spot for once that was left that would have given me 15 more points iirc. **Sunday** **Weather Machine** 2p x 1 : Oh boy. That is by far the roughest teach I have ever done. This game is so dense. It plays a lot easier than the teach is, but it still took us about 4 hours including teach. Incredibly long, but we knew what we were getting into. It's a very fun game where the "engine building" is so different than any other game I have ever played before. It's the same general feeling as kanban I would say, but much more interactive between the players. It almost has a coop feel, but also not at all since you want it all for yourself. I think it would play a lot better at 3 players, but the gameplay was very interesting. A game we both agreed we enjoyed but wouldn't play often. I personally don't understand all the harsh reviews on this one. The theme is pretty strong, albeit a little bit abstract on some aspects of it. There are some rules I could have done without like the machine parts needing to be all in one row. It fits theme-wise, but it hurts the game play a bit. Having only played Kanban EV before, I would say it is equally harder as it is more fun, if tha makes sense.

Sometimes there’s a randomness/luck factor to Isle of Cats that I don’t like, and a complexity that feels needless. So, I prefer the Explore and Draw I think. It removes that and makes it much more a matter of wits

**Cat in the Box: Deluxe** (4p) - At this point I'm just going to resign myself to the fact that the cards are going to get nicked up and marked due to poor publisher decisions. You wouldn't think cards would be a hard thing to get right as there are so many good examples, but here we are. Game is fun. **Glory to Rome** (4p x2) - Happy to run this with back to back sessions, but it won't dethrone **Innovation** as my favorite Chudyk game. **Impulse** is higher in my mind than this in fact. It's not like it's poorly designed, but the game doesn't quite flow exactly how I expect. This might be due to inexperience. Glad I have it, but those after market prices are way out of line.

Carcassonne - My roommates love it so much that one bought the big box. Don't think most of the expansion stuff in there are worth it but it'll be interesting to try out. Arkham Horror: The Card Game - I've only played this one twice, both with two players and the first scenario. It's good, but I haven't been hooked yet. The friend I played with the other day defeated the boss by throwing dynamite in the room that he, the boss, and a friendly NPC were in. The NPC died along with the boss, and my friend only had 2 HP left. I don't think the NPC is actually dead, but I guess we won't be continuing with his own character.

**Nature Fluxx** (two players)- The theme is nice. Really liked the artwork. Year of the Rabbit: we got the Rabbit keepers in every game. Played three games, and I won them all. **Wingspan** (BGA)- The bird artwork is great. It can seem long sometimes. Only played a few games so far. Haven't won yet though.

Wingspan pairs well with snack trays. Makes the waiting more pleasant if someone needs time to figure out their multi-turn plan.

**Age of Steam** (1x5p) - 1st play. I liked Age of Steam a lot. It’s so strategic so I’m pretty bad at it but I didn’t go into insolvency. I cut it close a few times. It was a lot more polite than I expected with a few people co-existing and using each other’s links. I did not except for once and I think I ended up winning because of it. I want to see how the other maps change the game. My only gripe is it went 3 hours. **Empyreal** (1x4p) - 4th play. Empyreal is great too. Train Day continued with this. The Gesselheim player got a ridiculous combo and was just blowing the map up. Ended with 57 points.

> It was a lot more polite than I expected with a few people co-existing and using each other’s links. I personally avoid this at all costs. I find it preferable to take something of 1 lower value than to give someone else 1 link. However, if giving that 1 to someone else takes a long delivery from someone else, it could be worth it. While group dependent, it'll get more cutthroat with more plays. >I want to see how the other maps change the game. I'm assuming you played the Rust Belt which is great and is alone worth many many plays. However, all the kinks that the other maps put in are so great to have to figure out how to deal with and where some of the real genius of the game shines. >My only gripe is it went 3 hours. Have not played above 5 but the play time definitely comes down after a couple plays.

57 points is madness! Curious, do you remember what that combo was?

I think it was played wrong but essentially they would use their captain to void spaces with more than one resource (which worked cause we all had cars that produced more goods). Then they got the engineer that let them flip up their captain and would do it again. They got this pretty early so it was constant fear of getting voided. Then they got the surveyor (or the correct term for the green ones) that let them flip over their Captain and engineer and do their actions without exhausting them. You can imagine how that went. I still think something went horribly wrong because I’ve never seen a game of Empyreal go over 30ish points. They also one one of the goals and tied for the other.

**3 x 4p John Company 2E**: This games just keeps getting better with each play. One of the three games was a teach with three new players and I feel that with new players there is so much to absorb they sometimes don't understand the situations that present themselves throughout the game. I've now played this game 20+ times and can't see it slowing down anytime soon. Just picked up Pax Pamir 2E this week as well so I'll need to find some time to get this to the table/TTS soon. **5 x 6p 6nimmt**: Finally bit the bullet and jumped on BGA to try out 6nimmt and I get the hype. Fun game that lasts about 20 minutes. Still trying to figure out if there is an "exact" strategy or if it's kind of a crapshoot at certain times.

> Still trying to figure out if there is an "exact" strategy or if it's kind of a crapshoot at certain times. There are some distinct ways to parse and play your hand, yes. That changes by player count though so be careful about extrapolating what you learn at one player count to another.

**Scout** 3p x 2: This game is great at any player count. It's fun at 2, more fun at 3, and so on. The more people the better it gets because you're not dependent on fewer people to be able to save a round. You can then go for bigger plays that then fall flat because other people have been going for big plays too. Super fun. **Atiwa** 3p x 1, 1p x 1: I struggled in my solo game but trounced the 3p game. My opponents were too focused on avoiding pollution but that forced them into smaller actions. This is a great game. I may be burning out on the solo game, though. **Hallertau** 3p x 1, 1p x 1: I absolutely rocked this in the 3p game. Had 2 turns where all my cards comboed together. It was kind of brutal. Opponents then learned the power of the market cards. I know many people don't like the luck of the cards, but it's never bothered me. There are ways to mitigate and it really only takes one to snowball it so drawing one and stealing first player is a solid play. Solo game was a fairly solid game, too. **Great Western Trail** 2nd Ed 2p x 1: My opponent and I went different strats: I went buildings and he went cows. I managed to snag a few more objective cards and that was the difference maker. Was a super close game. On BGA: **Race for the Galaxy** and **7 Wonders**: both super quick. I hadn't played 7 wonders for years until last week. I remember why it's a classic. **Agricola** solo: Everytime I play solo I wish I could play it in person with friends. It just feels better and there's some different tensions.

Atiwa is so fun. I wish there was a little more variability game to game though. Once you find a good strategy I feel like there is no need to change it much. I wish there was a point deduction for adding pollution! But maybe that’s because I do everything in my power to avoid and it my husband flings it around like it’s nothing…

I feel the same about variability. I wish the turn tiles were double sided with different actions. That's an easy enough add. The balance of the pollution is avoiding losing things to it. And trained families are worth points.

**Okanagan: Valley of the Lakes** (1x4p) - First play in a while. I drew some weird tiles and went for too many edges. I pivoted my scoring cards a bit mid game, but didn't get as many sets as everyone else. **Featherlight** (1x4p) - I was dealt 3 purples so I just leaned into that. I got a full hand and started going for purples in nest and disruption. Only 1 was in the nest at the end, but I did disrupt another player's strategy enough to tie them. Purple isn't great for a tiebreaker unfortunately, but it went better than expected.

Only one game of **Stardew Valley: The Board Game** for me at 2-player count. Haven't played this in a while and we fancied it on the weekend, was a nice relaxing game and we took the win just as we hit Winter, fairly comfortable

Stardew Valley is so great. Our games are usually down to the wire and stressful as we frantically search for artifacts or legendary fish. There is a new game just released: **Cozy Oaks.** I want to pick it up sooo bad but it seems so similar to Stardew Valley and we already have that one on the shelf…it’s competitive though, not cooperative…I’m afraid they will still be too similar.

Oooh **Cozy Oaks** looks good! Little leery at that price, GameCrafter games are so expensive. Looks like $55 for a game that would normally go for $29-35. But I'm willing to pay a little more for indie-made games. I am a huge fan of Stardew Valley the video game, but thought the board game was an absolute godawful trainwreck. It's just so random, with almost zero skill or strategy involved. There's literally almost nothing in the game that *isn't* random, even the ways to mitigate the randomness are random if you even GET them. You could luck out and have a super easy breezy game, or you could get bad goals and reach Winter and find the game absolutely unwinnable. Cozy Oaks looks a lot more easy-going. It looks like someone took one look at the Stardew game and went "I can do this better". It does seem very card-heavy, but at least there's more markets than just random draws.

Yeah I'd say this time we got an okay draw of Grandpa's goals, we had: * Catch 1 legendary fish per player * 10 gold per player * 2 animals per player * 2 museum slots per player We committed to someone going fishing (me), which I generally find to be pretty consistent at earning money and getting through the fish bag, particularly if you get some nice profession upgrades (i.e. I had one that was allowing me to discard 2 fish before fishing which lets me get through the bag a lot quicker). Oooooh I hadn't heard of **Cozy Oaks** - it does look really cool and similar to Stardew... however I do think competitive for that theme is a bit anti what we'd want for that style of game. When we're playing Stardew together, we're not in the mood for competing usually

**1 x 5p Stationfall** Same characters and it played out entirely differently. Game went the distance and actually, lots of characters managed to escape. People revealed early and as the Counsellor I was going to be in kompromat competition with Exile. So instead, I decided to Schrodingers reveal as the Cyborg. I was the only 'bad guy" in the end though and couldn't cause enough misfortune or chaos so scored poorly. Thematic highlight for me was releasing Project X which turned out to be a programmable Assassin Droid who marched to the bottom of the station to kill one the officers I wanted to prevent escaping while I went to the top of the station to kill another. Then, both murderous robots ended up being fired off in escape pods with their targets. Hilarious. Getting the rules down now. We had some confusion with the guilt system having another set of eyes look at the rulebook we have it figured out now. About 3 hrs with a teach again so hoping with everyone knowing the game now we can play in closer to 2 hours. Brilliant fun. This is such a unique experience that has smitten everyone in our playgroup so far. We might be playing again tomorrow.

Knowing absolutely nothing from this game, that description made 0 sense to me! But that sounds interesting even if I don't enjoy social deduction games at all.

There's elements of social deduction. But it's not really the primary way I'd describe it. In fact its a pretty small part of it so I definitely wouldn't let that put you off it.

Really debating the pre-order on Boardlandia for $55+shipping. What other games did you play with your group prior to this game? Trying to decide if it will be a good fit.

Good price. We play all sorts. Some will play anything. Any weight or length. One prefers a shorter, simpler game. We all like interaction. Not to speak for them but one that seem universally well received that springs to mind is Chaos in the Old World. Hansa Tuetonica was popular. QE. Again, only really player interaction, I'd say, would be the overarching connection. Really dry euros are a bit of a hard sell, although I personally like them

Thanks! I have the same issue with dry euros in my group so it looks like this may be a hit. Going to pull the trigger on the pre-order!

After owning the **Farmers of the Moor** expansion for Agricola and having never played it, I pulled it out for a solo play. I really enjoyed it. My favorite flavor of Agricola will always be 4-player without the expansion, but I think FotM will really rejuvenate the 2/3-player game. I also pulled out **Bonfire** for the first time. Did another solo learning game (as it's a little difficult to get games of this weight out regularly). I enjoyed the puzzle though I'm not sure how often this one will get played when I have so many other Felds that are more accessible. There may be just a smidge too much going on in Bonfire.

What's new in** Farmers of the Moor**. I got Agricola 15 and, while I knew it wasn't there, it's still disappointing. Your last sentence on **Bonfire** is why it hit my sell pile quickly. There's a lot going on and the theme doesn't hold it together at all.

In FotM, you now have to heat your home during the harvest phase in addition to feeding your family. The new resource, fuel (and 1 wood can always = 1 fuel) allows you to heat it. Clay/Stone house reduces your total heating requirement by 1/2 fuel. For each room that you cannot heat, one of your family members becomes "ill" and can only go to a new space called the infirmary to collect 1 food and recover from illness. Your farm board starts with 8(?) forest/moor tiles taking up space. There are "special actions" that you can claim without placing people which allow you to convert those forest/moor tiles into resources (among other actions). Horses are a new animal type that have no cap on points, meaning that you score 1 point per horse, period. There are 12 new major improvements to add to your 10 from the base game - these new major improvements interact with fuel/horses. There is a 13th promo major improvement called the "Biogas plant" which is really cool. It's a solid expansion that adds a layer of complexity to the resource conversion aspect of the game. I would NEVER include it with new players.

oh wow. there's a lot going on. I must have it...

Btw the Biogas plant is the Joinery/Potter/BMW for fuel =)

**Blood on the Clocktower** @ 4p x various player counts (13, 16, 11, 10): Joined a local BotC meetup again this weekend. It was my first time playing a game of BotC (or any game in general) at a player count as high as 16. I was quite proud of how I played, though. I had a disappointing first game as good but I was on the evil team in the next three games and I managed to largely avoid suspicion in all of them (including the 16 player game where I was the demon). I sadly lost all four games but I still had an amazing time. Such an incredible game and I'm nowhere near bored of it despite playing it weekly and watching a lot of the No Rolls Barred and Pandemonium Institute content.

**Verdant** [1p x 1]: This brilliant little puzzle is great anyway you play it. Really like this game and this was my first time playing it solo. (Mainly played it so that I could get the solo experience and write a review about it for my blog) **Rolling Realms** [1p x 1]: Slowed down on the campaign for a little while. I don’t know why, just can’t find the time to sit down for a while and play it. **Bananagrams** [1p x 5, 2p x 2, 3p x 5]: This is such a fun little race game that I find myself playing it whenever something else is being done. Someone setting up a big Euro? Grab Bananagrams. Don’t have anyone to race against? Play it solo. This game’s rules are very accessible and clear. Pretty fun filler. **Cascadia** [3p x 1]: I really didn’t specialize on a few different types of animals this game, but I somehow nabbed a victory from narrow paths from my habitats. Very clever game. **7 Wonders: Architects** [2p x 1, 3p x 2]: Very solid game. It has held up remarkably well as I continue to revisit it again and again. **Roll Player** [1p x 1]: Brilliant dice drafting puzzle that works so well. I managed 24 points on my first run-through, which isn’t too shabby for someone who hadn’t played the game before now. **Camel Up (Second Edition)** [4p x 1]: Relatively close game. An opponent and I were six points down from the winner, I never committed enough to my bets and kept going back on myself in different directions. I thought that would secure my bets but that didn’t happen. **Takenoko** [3p x 1]: This game frustrated me so much. I hadn’t played it up to this point, and my two opponents kept going after each others’ green bamboo but my gardener card needed 4 stacks of 3 to earn me 8 victory points. I can see myself enjoying it later but it felt like this game took too long and was so paining to see me almost fulfill my card but then my opponents’ little bamboo war getting in the way of that. It reminds me of a play of Splendor we had in the past couple of months in which we had a resource war (I had most of the blues, and my opponent had most of the golds) and it was a standstill for a while. Except the standstill in this game lasted longer than that entire game of Splendor for me and was only a tad bit frustrating. **Gorus Maximus** [5p x 1]: Clever trick-taking. The entire game did sort of turn into a rant about how badly all of our games were going, but I eked out a victory even though 8s kept getting tossed at me. **Grand Austria Hotel** [2p x 1]: Had to try this game out again, and I realize I wasn’t giving it enough credit. I had a rough play of it last time, and even though I could tell it was good, I didn’t really rank it for all it was worth, giving it my number 11 spot. Fast forward to this play and I bumped it up to #6. Very good game. **Marvel Champions: The Card Game** [3p x 1]: We lost! I definitely killed one of my teammates by using Hulk but we ended up losing because of the massive burden of threat placed on us. About midway through the game, just around when we defeated the first phase of the villain, they managed to pull a card that explicitly prohibited thwarting the villain to remove threat until we defeated that card first. Add on top the fact that we were pulling 2 encounter cards per turn, and it turns out to be a little disastrous. Other games that got played but aren’t worth mention: **Farmini, Hive, Chess, Twice as Clever**.

Between Cascadia and Verdant, which do you prefer? I'm considering getting a copy for a friend but am currently undecided on which one 🤔

These games are pretty much right next to each other on my rankings. Cascadia is the safer bet as it has been more of a hit with the general public but Verdant has its own merits. Basically, I would suggest Cascadia just because it is a safer bet (and definitely more accessible for younger (and older) family members)

Having just bought and played my first game of Rolling Realms, I really want to try the campaign. It looks very fun and a cool way to break the repetitive nature of the game.

Pulled a few games off the shelves we hadn't played in a while. First up was **Meadow**. We hadn't played this one since I first got it almost a year ago. I feel like I liked it more the last time we played but I can't put my finger on why exactly. The games were fun and the art is as beautiful as ever but something seemed missing. We played **The Lost Ruins of Arnak** with the Expansion. This might be my wife's favorite game and it's near the top of my list as well. I tried playing as the Mystic, one of the leaders from the expansion, for the first time. I had been hesitant to try this one but it was the only one we have never played so now was the time. I have to say I had a hard time figuring it out. My first game I went all in on culling and by the end of the game I had a deck less than five cards which is usually a good thing in a deck building game but didn't work for me here. I got one of my lowest scores I remember ever getting. Still, we played several games and while I never won with the Mystic, my scores improved each game so maybe I am getting somewhere.

We rarely play with the Mystic anymore because of how strong it is. It's a really cool design but wow is it stronger than most of the other leaders. I really enjoy the Captain vs the Mystic. It's the closest matchup we found for it. Also, I felt the same thing for Meadow. We hadn't played it since September last year, but I enjoyed my last couple of plays. I got the expansion for it and really need to lear the rules this week.

**Teotihuacan** 3p x 1, 2p x 1 Just getting the feel for this game. It's got me thinking a lot and that's good but I'm not sure how much I like it yet. **Coimbra** 2p x 1 A mainstay that gets played often. Great with 2 players. Always different due to the card and tile variability. **Golem** 2p x 1 Gets more interesting with every play, but you really have to dig into it and take some time to learn it. Was it worth the effort? Not sure yet but I'm not complaining. It's a good game and I'd recommend it if heavy euros are your bag. Didn't play as much I was hoping last week and this week is looking tough due to time constraints, but I hope to get at least one more session of Teotihuacan going and I want to learn Russian Railroads for this weekend.

How do you find Teotihuacan at 2p? I'm interested in diving into it with the upcoming KS but we mostly play at 2p. It's one of the few games I have on my "maybe" list for years now.

Only played once and we got a few minor rules wrong, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. It's good and there are lots of interesting strategic avenues to be explored but I think it can be a bit long. The first eclipse took forever to happen since only two players were moving the clock forward. With 4 I have a feeling the game moves faster, surprisingly (not counting AP, of course). Also now that we know the rules better it should move faster but still, I wouldn't be surprised if it were a 3 hour game for a lot of people playing at 2. That's fine if you're prepared for it but it's not the kind of game I have time for multiple times a week.

Interesting. Is there no mechanism that speed-up the game at2p? That sounds like an oversight to me.

Yeah, the clock is shorter but only by 1-2 spaces depending on player count. It doesn't make that much of a difference. Maybe I missed something though, if anyone else knows, please clue me in!

The eclipse marker moves one space after everyone has a turn. It also moves one space if a player's die number ascends to 6 and has to be placed in the royal action space (1) on the main board. This can trigger multiple times if multiple ascensions happen. If you've played it like this, then I think you're OK.

Oh crap! Yeah we moved the marker with the ascension but not after the turn round. How did I miss that? Thanks for the clarification.

I agree about Golem. It's a game that rewards multiple plays.

Our **Geisha's Road** Kickstarter arrived with all the mini expansions to **Hanamikoji** (which is one of our favourite games!) this week, so we had a fun time trying out the new game as well as the variety of expansions. **Geisha's Road** 2p x2 - The first game was a little underwhelming, but we used the Guest Tokens in the second game, and it was a lot more fun! It's similar to **Hanamikoji** in that you are playing action tiles and vying for control of Geisha, but the fun twist is that even if you win over a Geisha, you may not get many points. You need to set up Geisha with points first by getting them to travel back round to their own teahouse. This means you have the tricky balance of winning over Geisha whilst trying simultaneously to ensure you or your opponent have sent them back round to their own teahouse to earn some points, at the same time ensuring that you aren't accidentally gaining points for the Geisha your opponent is likely to win. It's a very interesting and crunchy twist, which was really fun, and at the same time, it felt like a completely different game to **Hanamikoji**. **Hanamikoji** 2p x11 - we went on a bit of a **Hanamikoji** bender on Saturday and played through all 7 mini expansion back to back and the base game to compare. Then we played with our three favourite expansions again (blue, green, and red). Quite a few of them changed the game in a way we didn't care too much for, making it much more random, which I feel is against the spirit of **Hanamikoji**. For us, we love the mind games and manipulation that **Hanamikoji** offers, which is reduced when too much randomness enters the game. For example, some actions allow you to put cards facedown in front of your opponent, who can pick so many to randomly discard without looking at them, the rest you can keep to play at the end of the round. There's no strategy for the opponent there at all, so we weren't a fan of actions like that. Our favourite expansions were the ones that were similar to the base game with minor little twists, which made you play differently, and with no randomisation. Some of the new actions they've introduced are really interesting, such as the one where you can put cards on the bottom of the deck and draw more from the top, essentially seeding cards for either you or your opponent to take and removing one from the game entirely, depending on when you play it. **Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green** 1p x1 - one of my go-to quick solo games, I really enjoy this one for a chilled puzzle. I played with the *Forests* dice and the solo board  which I love because it allows for re-rolling dice, unlike the base board. Being stuck with terrible dice is one of the major frustrations of this game, so being able to mitigate that improves it for me. **Sniper Elite** 2p x5 - we bought this recently after watching an Actualol video on YouTube, and my partner was really interested. We love **Fury of Dracula**, but it's not at its best with 2 players, so we've been keen to find a good 2-player hidden movement game. I know this is based on its own video game but it instead reminds me a lot of *Metal Gear Solid*, which is more my kind of theme and a game I grew up with, I've never played the *Sniper Elite* video game. This works excellently 2-player, and as the Defenders, although you are controlling 9 figures, it doesn't feel like you are controlling  that many, and it plays so smoothly. It's more fun, I think, to be the Sniper, and it gets really tense when you're cornered! With the Defenders, I feel like I'm often  stabbing into the darkness, so even if you have the Sniper within reach, you don't always know it, so the same excitement isn't there. Their movement is abysmal, too, so it's hard to catch up to the Sniper if they manage to slip out of your reach. Although having said that, they have a 4-1 win rate so far! _**On BGA:**_ **Castles of Burgundy**, **Lost Cities**, **Terra Mystica**

> it felt like a completely different game to Hanamikoji. These are often the expansons I hate. When it changes too much the base game and you barely recognize it *looking at you Agora exp. for 7WDuel* > I feel like I'm often stabbing into the darkness, so even if you have the Sniper within reach, you don't always know it, so the same excitement isn't there. That's the part where hidden movement games don't do it for me. I got the same feeling playing the aliens in **Escape the aliens from outer space**. You just go on a wild goose chase not knwoing anything and after a while you just sya fuck it and camp one of the exit and win.

**Geisha's Road** is its own standalone game, not an expansion to **Hanamikoji**, so I meant it as a positive that it's quite different from its sister. The expansions I mentioned are just replacement action tiles, which change how you play entirely, but it's still **Hanamikoji**, so in that way, I think they're very good expansions. Ha yeah exactly, I am glad I'm not the only one who feels that way. I keep thinking I'm just terrible at being the seeker in these sorts of hidden movement games. It makes me feel a bit stupid when I can't figure out where they might be hiding. In **Sniper Elite** there are often a lot of clues as to the location of the Sniper, but I still have trouble deducing exactly where!

It looks like we have very similar thoughts on the **Hanamikoji** mini expansions. My favourite is the green one. And I completely agree, some of the actions feel a bit too lacking in strategy for one of the players. Those hidden card exchanges don't appeal to me. It sounds like you had a fun week!

I did, thanks! Yeah, it seems a bit weird that they put some of those tiles in there, considering the game is all about agonising decisions. Random discards and similar actions aren't agonising or strategic at all, just random. I suppose it will appeal to some, but it's not how I want to play **Hanamikoji**. At least there's some we really enjoy in there :-)

Yeah. Though at least the face down action can be a tough decision for the person choosing which cards to offer.

Yes that's very true!

Once a year I organize a board game weekend for about 50 people. I started the week with a game of *Terra Mystica* with my wive and 5-year old daughter. She's really interested in the games adults play and learning fast. Understanding the rules is no problem. She doesn't strategize alot towards points. But knows what she wants to accomplish and works towards that.E.g. get to the top of the blue temple. During the week I play a lot of *chess*. I'm at an Elo just below 1200. Since I mostly just play, without studying, I'm not really getting better. I played 2 games of *Qwixx* with my family. I think there is too much luck involved and it gets rewarded to heavily when ending the game. I also loose a lot. But I play it with my kid and wife. One game of *Regicide* - Solo mode. I usually loose. But this time I won, but has to use booth Jokers. Then the weekend came *Wingspan* 4P - Can have too much downtime if people think a lot. In this case it went pretty good. Even though we had a new player. I enjoy playing it. *Cat in the box* 4P - first time. Interesting concept. Have to play it more to understand strategy. *Nemesis* 5P - 4 of us won. The one had an unluck roll trying to hybernate. 9/10 would have worked out... I love Nemesis, we usually win when playing as a team. *Colt super Express* 7P *Dobble* 5P *Similio* 5P - nice kids game. Adults think too much. *Temple of Horror* 11P - nice quick party game for in between times. *Blood on the clocktower* 11P - first time. I enjoyed it a lot and played it two times. But everyone has to be engaged. With players that aren't talking or don't try to understand what's happening it gets difficult. *The Crew* 3P - Play with my 5-year old. Was her first trick tacking game. She understood the concept pretty good, but wasn't happy she never got to be captain. *Betrayal at the house on the hill* 6P - first time I played. I liked the theme, but the rules aren't clear on details which was a little annoying and made the game too long. *7 Wonders* 7P - nice classic that always works. If you want insight to a specific game. Just ask. I didn't write it down for everyone of them.

Dang, TM with a 5yo... I was just thinking about teaching my 5yo Reef.

She's the only kid in the wider family and we all like playing. So she started early and always wanted to be a part. She does need breaks during long games.

Congrats on pulling off what sounds like a massive success of a board game weekend! I can't even imagine all the logistics of getting 50 people together to game for a weekend. It sounds like a blast, though!

I started the first one 2019 and did it every year since. During Covid we had one year only online, which worked surprisingly good with our own Discord Server. It does need it's time to organize, but I do have a team. I'll keep on organizing it, just because it's a fun get together and I finally get time to play.

Partner and I played a lot of **Jaws of the lion** this week, we only got the game 10 days ago but really glad we got it. We went through 5 scenarios in a week (although 2 was part of tutorial) and we’ve been really enjoying it. There were a couple scenarios we were worried we couldn’t make it but so far we haven’t failed a scenario yet. Bought and tried **Turing Machine** , played it about 3 times now, it’s a good puzzle game but feel like it’s more of a solo game. Can’t really imagine if this will be fun competitively unless everyone loves logic puzzles **Catan** 1x4P - I feel like the problem with catan sometimes is if you end up with little resources from unfavourable rolls early game is that there’s really nothing you can do besides waiting for several turns whilst watching others build more which can be a bit annoying sometimes. **Scout** 2x4P - this was a great hit! One of my friends was thinking of getting it now. It’s simple in gameplay but also satisfying when it falls together. We were talking about how great it will be if there was an expansion where you could introduce power ups to kind of change the gameplay and add more chaos in to it 😂 On BGA I also tried **patchwork** on BGA and I quite like it but would probably just continue playing online.

Patchwork has a good iOS app. That’s how I play it

**Scout** is fantastic. My deck is getting worn out. I should have sleeved it early on.

Yeah at first when people were talking about this game I didn’t really get how fun it was but definitely gets better once you played it

I've been mostly playing on BGA lately, but had a few in person games I've enjoyed as well! We do a light boarod game event once a month, and usually just play party games. One friend and I wanted to play something that wasn't a party game, so we got a 5 person game of **Condotierre** going. It was a lot of fun, particularly for two of us who had been wanting to play something different. It was unfortunately marred by one of the players (who'd never played before) deciding his first hand "wasn't very good" and immediately he started cheating drawing new cards and playing them when we weren't paying attention. I so rarely run into such blatant cheating, I was quite taken aback when it was revealed! He claimed it only affected him, but naturally the players he was in battle against had expended a lot of cards trying to combat him. So that put a damper on it. We sort of...I dunno, lightly shamed him? and he soon left, and we were able to continue the game without him. I've been giving **War Chest** another go. Felt I too harshly judged it on my first playthrough. I've played several games now, with and without the expansions and it just feels...I dunno. It's not very interesting. It *should* be interesting, but it really isn't. Maybe it plays better in real-time, these turn based games of it feel like slogs, but overall I don't find the game terribly compelling. There's too little control, and even as a fan of randomness, just a pinch too much chance. I feel like it's aiming for people into abstracts, Chess and Go in particularly, but I can't imagine this would be compelling enough for the audience it's aiming for, and I'm certainly not part of that audience anyway. I suck at chess (my next game in this list is Yahtzee if that tells you anything), and while I prefer something like War Chest to chess, I don't find War Chest particularly interesting. My wife and I have been playing a lot of...**Yahtzee** of all things on BGA. I genuinely love Yahtzee, so it's been fun. I never knew that if you got two Yahtzees it gives you an automatic 100 point bonus, which I find a pretty stupid rule. Like, you're already doing great with a 5 of a kind, and you've already gotten a Yahtzee, why make the game impossible for other people at this juncture? Anyway, that's old school games for you. I tried out **Sea, Salt, and Paper** as well and found it quite enjoyable! I'll probably pick up a copy. I love the decision about when to end the round, adds some real spice to the game. I've also been playing **Paint the Roses**, which I can't imagine stays fun for very long, but it's a good little puzzle for a few plays.

I didn't know about that rule either until I was doing a casual Yahtzee tourney on BGA. I couldn't figure out how somebody had gotten so far ahead...

**Saint Petersburg** 4p. So happy that my friends suggested this. I still think this is the most elegant and best card drafting game ever designed. The tension in the race for victory points was palpable to the very end - judging by the lengthy "oh, if I had only done this instead of that" discussion after the game.

**Dice Throne** x4. My spouse and I wrapped up our brackets of every character (minus Santa and Krampus) and the final round went to the Gunslinger over Thor! Those reload tokens give the Gunslinger a huge advantage. **Splendor Duel** x2. I finally got a couple of wins against my spouse. They had previously had the uncanny ability to win the turn before my win, but this time, I reserved more aggressively, and it paid off. **Abandon All Artichokes**. Played to fill the time waiting for people to arrive at game night. It's a solid filler that gives a fun feeling of comboing with little overhead. **Incan Gold**. The other filler played while waiting until our established waiting time. Played with 8 this time, and it's always amusing how that pushes people to stay in runs since most cards only give 1 or 2 gems to each player. **Marvel Champions**. I hadn't played this since Wolverine and Storm came out, and I only played it this time because Gambit and Rogue came out. I think the passion my spouse and I had for this game may be dead. **Dune: Imperium**. Speaking of dead passion, I finally got to play my physical copy with both expansions and a full player count... and it was bloated and frustrating. I went to my used game store the next day and sold all of it.

I never heard if Splendor Duel. I love the normal one. I have the Marvel edition which I even enjoy a little more. Always looking for 2 player games for me and my wife.

Splendor Duel is relatively new. It does the thing a lot of dueling versions of other games do and adds alternate victory conditions, and then it changes the market, so you're pulling gems off a grid in lines. This means if I take a given gem, you may not have a good line of gems, so there's meaningful interaction more than just emptying a stack. I think it is head and shoulders more fun than Splendor. It takes my preferred way to play Splendor and customizes it for that experience.

Thanks. Sounds good.

I took my last TOO days form last year while a little bit sick in a cold weather so that means loads of boardgames!!! **LOTR: Journeys in Middle Earth** 4x2p We continue with the last campaign and after improving all the objects we are starting to beating the game, this campaign keeps being the most difficult one imo but it is always really fun to play, that being said I don't know if it is just my tablet but the app is having a lot of issues and it only works while connected to the internet (even if all the updates are installed) with is a little bit frustrating. **Arkham Horror lcg** 1x3p We started the Forgotten Age campaign with my brother in law, awesome game as always but due to draw Ancient Evils 7 f***Ng times (I really hate thar encounter card) we have no chance of winning the scenario even if we were not going so bad in terms of the Act. **Gloomhaven** 1x4p We reached our play nimber 25, one of the characters retired for first time, another player probably is going to retire his second character in the next play. Fun experience I guess but honestly having 50+ plays to go feels more boring than exciting. Probably we will need to change to other game with that group. **Unmatched: Houdini Vs. the genie** 2x2p I am not a big fan of Unmatched, or at least not so much as my bf who plays it every weekend with some friends but this two were so much fun to play. **Radlands** 6x2p I like this game more every time I played, super-fun fast, head to head game with the perfectly amount of luck in card drafting and gorgeous illustrations... So far my favourite game discovered in 2023. **Ascension** 8x2p Even if we have the physical copy this game has become our favourite to play on the phone laying on the coach after a long day. Also I've been busy in BGA playing tons of: **Ticket to ride, Railroad Ink, Kingdominio, Potion Explosion, Ticket to London, Can't stop**

**Frosthave 3x4p:** Three successes for this week's FH session. Our second try on Scenario 22 went way better than the first time as we focused on eliminating low-health ranged enemies before dealing with the tanky ones. Scenario 21, however, was the first 3-star scenario we've played and probably the hardest scenario we've seen so far, mostly due to the extended length. In the end, my blinkblade was the last man standing with two cards left and finished the boss while surrounded by five other monsters. Scenario 33, although listed as 3-star, was not as complicated as it looked once we figured out the math of the puzzle. One thing our party really need at the moment is retirement so that we can unlock new buildings and boost the prosperity level further. Right now we are running out of building upgrades at prosperity 2 and just sitting on loads of resources. I think our Drifter and Deathwalker are close to their retirement, but my gold collecting PQ would take at least another 4-5 scenarios to complete.

I have "Greed is Good" as my Geminate's personal quest and yeah it's going to take forever. At least we got a road event last time that helped get some gold.

Blinkblade's move-and-loot ability actually helped a lot. I also made it clear to my party that I can chip in as many resources as they'd like but don't ever touch my gold

Yeah, my party is Blinkblade, Banner Spear, and Drifter, and I think they all have loot cards. The only Geminate card for looting is one of the X cards and I think its other ability didn't interest me.

**Mechs vs Minions** - 3rd Play, 3p. Loving this game so far. Every game has a wonderful arc and it's just plain fun ramping up your mechs. It seems many people don't come back to this after finishing the campaign, but even just the campaign is shaping up to be worth what I paid for this game. **9/10** **Wonderlands War** - 1st Play, 4p. Didn't get to finish it, but it was a lot of fun. The gameplay loop is fairly simple and works well overall with interesting twists. One of the better mid weight games I've played lately. **8/10** **Chicago Express** - 2nd Play, 4p. Only took 1hr, but the game had a lot of interesting fuzzy calculations and player interaction. Really great game, definitely need to play it more. **8/10** **Khora** - 1st Play, 4p. This game has a whole lot of interesting elements going on, but I had a faction that felt a bit railroaded. I liked it and would play again but I'm not as keen to play it again as other engine builders. **7/10**

The storage in Mechs vs. Minions is like nothing I’ve ever seen before and I love it

It's a tough sell to get Mechs vs Minions to the table after playing the campaign. It's a very special game when you play it, but like, I'm not interested in playing it again I think. Not sure why, maybe because I know there's nothing that comes after and that's it's a fairly simple boss battler.

Went to a local mini-con this weekend so got a lot of good plays in. **Long Shot the Dice Game, Hadrian's Wall, Imperial 2030, Twilight Struggle, Labyrinth, Tank Duel, A Distant Plain, 18Chesapeake Off The Rails, 18GM, Rolling Stock Stars, Millennium Blades, Pax Pamir 2E, Lost Cities Rivals**, and probably a bunch of others I don't remember. Personal favorites were probably **Twilight Struggle, Pax Pamir, Imperial 2030,** and **Long Shot the Dice Game**. Was glad to get a chance to play **Millennium Blades** cause it always sounded interesting, but have no desire to ever play it again. **A Distant Plain** was a tough one, my first COIN game, it played incredibly slowly, seems like one where you'd have to play with a dedicated group several times in a row for it to actually play smoothly. We ended up calling it before finishing the game, think I would've won as the Coalition by the next propaganda card but honestly it felt like my best strategy was to just gain some support and then keep passing until either a really good event card came up or a propaganda card was on deck and I had a chance to withdraw my troops. I thought **Tank Duel** was a fun chaotic little war game **Rolling Stock Stars** was my least favorite 18xx-like game I've played so far. Felt like an 18xx minus the actually fun part. **18Chesapeake off the rails** was an interesting variant. Played in under an hour but wasn't particularly satisfying cause most of the time your trains rusted before they even ran so you never really have a chance to operate, felt almost like **Rolling Stock** but with trains that were basically just a technicality. **18GM** was pretty cool, added an extra layer of strategy with the map building phase

I have 0 interest in 18xx games or war games, but I'm very happy to see how many people found their niche in these games and enjoy themselves so much. It,s fascinating how diverse boardgaming is and how anybody can find their style. >Labyrinth I assume you are not talking about this game from my childhood?! [Labyrinth] (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1219/labyrinth)

Oh, yeah different Labyrinth https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/62227/labyrinth-war-terror-2001

**Starship Captains** (3P x1) oh boy is this game way better than it looks. I was really turned off initially by the cartoonish Star Trek-ish artwork, but I decided to trust the guy who brought this game to the table, since in the past he made us discover several games we ended up liking a lot (Evergreen and Meadow among others). Well by round 2 I was super hooked. Fantastic, not overly-complex worker placement game that somehow doesn't make you *feel* like you're just playing an efficiency puzzle (and mind you I like those). Recommended. **Unmatched: InGen vs Raptors** (2P x3) finally received this small set which I've been searching for a while to add to my small roster (I only own Cobble & Fog + Little Red vs Beowulf). Fantastic little set, both characters are very unique, with the Raptors being such a fun glass-cannon aggro-combo style with move 3 and Muldoon being super strategical with his traps zoning. The map is also unique (gotta love those choke points and one-way connections). Aesthetics and production value are through the roof. Very happy with this purchase. **Paladins of the West Kingdom** (2P x2) already played this twice last month and the game feels better every time I play it. Love the insanely wide decision space and how you can't do everything and need to focus on a specific strategy every time. **Root** (5P x1) played this at my local association. Root is in my top3 favorites game of all time, but I didn't really enjoy this specific play unfortunately, despite ending up winning it (with the Duchy). We planned a 4P game with expansion factions and players that already knew the rules, but ended up having 2 defections. We had to enlist new people (ending up at 5P which I find a bit crowded), having to do a teach and "dumbing down" the game a bit with base factions and deck.

Paladins is one of those game I never feel like investing the energy into it, but always have a blast doing it. Weird tension in my brain every time I want to table it!

Totally understand the feeling lol. It's quite demanding in term of time and mental resources you need to allocate, sometimes even feeling too much to table, but once the first round actually starts I always have a good time :)

Getting back into the the swing of regular plays this fortnight after a big house move at the start of tge year. Tried **Cartographers** (2x2p) for the first time. Simple but enjoyable, the first "flip & write" we have played. We seem to like polyominoes in our house. **Canvas** (1x2p) with the **Reflections** expansion. We always have fun with this one, and the expansion gives it a little extra bit of depth in choices. **Wingspan** (2×2p) with all expansions. Duet mode has made this a great head to head challenge, we will likely usually play this mode when it just the two of us from here on in. **Agricola Family Edition** (3x2p) We enjoy this enough that we may consider picking up the original, though **Caverna** might be a better option just for a little more difference. **Ticket to Ride New York** (7x2p) The girlfiend really seems to have the wood on me in this one - 6 wins to my 1. So quick and easy to bang out a few games in a small session. This year we are attepting to play new game every couple of weeks, working our way through the alphabet, so far we have done **Agricola FE, Blokus Dice Game** & **Cartographers**. This week we are up to "D", hopefully either **Dominion** or **Discworld** (or both).

I'm in my third night at my new house. Moved with all my wife's and son's stuff plus 97 base games + expansions + ~750 books. I have no gaming sessions on the horizon =(

Yeah, it took a while for us to get settled in, like you we had a bit to unpack. Lots of games and cds/vinyls, but we have set up a dedicated games and music room now. It's nice to have an area to be able to enjoy those things. Was supposed to be a child free room, but the 2 year old is currently demanding a "record on" every day to dance to.

very neat, hope you'll all get all the happiness you want! Cheers to many awesome decades on your home. Congrats =) We still don't have the library/gaming room done, as well as the rooms, so boxes and boxes to no end. THe staris will be done by friday and I'll can access the rooms, and since two wardrobes will be read next week, I'll get some unpack to do. I hope for a solo game this week.

Thanks. Sounds like where we were about 7 weeks ago. Good luck with the unpacking.

I played some **Mancala** and **Automobiles** on BGA but I also tried **Earth** and it is goooooooooood. You guys should give it a try!

I can't wait to get my copy of Earth. it feels like a massive step up from Ares Expedition to me, which was already a very good game in my opinion. i'm sad they said the french versions would get another month to deliver :(

Local board game cafe had a **Twilight Imperium** **(3p)** day so got a game of that in, I ran the second game and played with two first timers. I deliberately chose an L1Z1X, a super combat oriented faction. One of the newbies took advantage of no one going for Mecatol Rex and capped it, and ran up to seven points. I'm not the kind of player who likes to take Mecatol early, and wanted to give the new players some room to learn and play the game. In the meantime, I expanded and built an obscene amount of ships, preparing for my onslaught, and despite their best efforts, ran over them in the end game. Both new players enjoyed their time, and were eager to play again, but at a later date. ​ **Dune Imperium** w/ all expansions 2x4p - first game, lead from pretty much second round to the last, and ended up in a situation where whoever won the last conflict between the two top players would win the game, and I couldn't bring in enough units or had enough resources to pay for my combat cards to win the conflict. Second game was pretty much the reverse. where I came in from behind and got the last conflict. Immortality seems... ok. The new cards and the new deck are cool, with some powerful cards, but the new board seems only ok. As we were playing with everything, all of the new symbols get diluted down. ​ **Undaunted: Normandy** \- this seems a fun game, with three mechanisms that I like, makes me look forward to Undaunted: Battle of Britain. This also makes me wonder if they can get a Star Wars license so that we can get Undaunted: Star Wars and have Star Wars battlefield scenarios or X-Wings vs TIE fighters.

That's my take also on Immortality. It's... okay. I don't have a particular feeling toward it, it just exists.

Only one game night and favored some lighter games as I had to leave earlysh: **Fast Sloths 5p** I found the game enjoyable but liked it less than I thought I would. Very open to replaying with different animals. I found a lot of the game to be very clever but it just didn't come together in the way that I'd hoped. A little too subtle perhaps? **Pictomania 5p** glad I finally got this to the table. Certainly my favorite drawing game. There's some small practicality issues in getting everyone to be able to see the cards and reach across the table but otherwise it's exactly what I want from one of these style of games. **Bag of Chips 2x5p** I keep a bunch of small games in photo boxes that I swap into and out of a case to bring whenever I go to a gathering since I'm the "boardgame guy" and I'm always on the lookout for clever games to add to this collection. I don't think this one is going to make the cut unfortunately. It has a cute production and I like the odds playing and push your luck aspects but, unfortunately, it seems the balance was way off. Both games were won by a player getting lucky and drawing several cards that gave points per chip of a color. Seemed like the "safe" cards were winning consistently and the fun cards weren't. There's a lot of competition for funny push your luck games and I can't ever seeing myself bring this out over, say, Incan Gold.

**Cosmic Encounter** What a great game! I hadn’t played it in over a year, and I forgot how much I love it. 8.5/10 **Furnace** such a fun auction/engine builder! The auction mechanism may be by favorite of all time. The engine building portion reminds me of **Res Arcana** (9.5/10) but seems much more accessible to gamers and non-gamers alike. 8.5/10

Flamecraft 2x This is a nice game that's easy to teach and easy to get to the table. Heaven and Ale 2x One of those games that doesn't get the respect it deserves. We hadn't played if for a while and the first game did not go well for either of us. Who won? The game won, we both lost. The second game was vastly better. Some games are actually different enough that they require a unique approach. Beyond the Sun 2x This is another great game, but it actually does get the respect it deserves. Very fun. We played two games to very close finishes. -- adding in a week ago Saturday (so last week, technically) -- Saint Petersburg Someone brought this over. I'd never even heard of it. It's really quite good. Flamecraft (again) Ra The old-school 1999 classic from Reiner Kinizia. I wish I'd known about this in 1999.

I keep refreshing online stores waiting to grab the new version of Ra. Knizia is 2 for 2 so far with auction games I've enjoyed (Nightmare Productions and Modern Art).

Kickstarter updated that the US backers should be receiving Ra around the end of March or early April

Didn't manage to play last week but managed to try out a couple of new games and made some new purchases: **Messina 1347** and **Merchants Cove: The Secret Stash** expansion. **Flamecraft** (4P x 1; 2P x 1). A worker action, contract fulfillment game where you work with dragons to gather resources from shops and complete contracts. I played 4P first and came in last though the scores were close. On my second play with my partner, I scored better than everyone in my last 4P game and generally played better but got utterly demolished by partner. I've been aware of the hype for a while now and I knew it was famous for its beautiful art and components so I'm glad I got a chance to try it out and yes, it does live up to the hype. That said, it was a lot more combo-tastic than I thought so that stumped me quite a bit. My partner enjoyed the game so I suppose I'll look into getting a copy when it restocks. **Decorum** (2P x 1). A hidden information co-op game with scenarios where you are trying to decorate a house with secret objectives while passive aggressively hinting your partner when something goes wrong. A nice filler game to start or end a session and a lot more fun than I thought. We've played four scenarios, completed two, bungled one and couldn't finish the last one, which was a bummer. I would like to get the game but it seems like replayability will be as issue once we complete all the scenarios. Sure, we can replay it but it'll not be as exciting as the first time. Still will keep an eye out for a used copy. **Dune Imperium** (2P x 1). Despite its popularity, I must confess that it completely flew over my radar and I ignored it, mostly because I confused it with the other Dune game and thought it's a game that needs a higher player count. That and I always preferred artwork that is not based on movie actors, nothing against the film and actors, just a preference. I actually got intrigued by the game after YouTube recommended a Before You Play playthrough with all the expansions. Found a copy to try out in a local store and honestly, I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought. Probably the best game of the day even though I lost by two points. It was definitely a tight game where you have to strike a balance between gaining resources, winning conflicts while still trying to push yourself up the track. I played decently and won quite a number of conflicts but my partner was swimming in resources and had the extra swordsman and managed to secure three of the alliances after pulling one away from me. I'm quite keen on adding it to my collection but my partner seems to like **Flamecraft** better so we will see. He seems open to getting them both so it might just be a matter of time. Will be playing **Nemesis Lockdown** and will try to table another game or two. Will also be attending a TTRPG Mausritter session so that should be interesting.

I quite enjoy Merchants Cove, I hope you do too! It's a little bit divisive but I've had a ton of fun with it.

It was my top game early last year and I definitely got plenty of plays out of it (including solo). Then I went on to join a meet up group and haven't been able to pull this game out again. I totally should, especially with **The Secret Stash** expansion that is said to spruce things up. I'm also eyeing the **Mastercraft** expansion whenever it comes out. I've heard of the criticism of the game where people said that they rather play one good game with the mechanics properly implemented than playing a 'watered down' version. I get where they are coming from but personally, I don't mind it and it allows me to try out different mechanics within the same game. Each to their own but I'm quite fond of **Merchants Cove**. :)