Some More Musings on Boardgames and My Yearly Hobby Goals

 This is a long, rambly introspective post about how the years been going. I've decided to leave the bulk of the post below the break so for those of you who aren't interesting in the boardgame/blog stuff can skip it easier.

Top 5 "New To Me" Boardgames of July 2025

Believe it or not, it's that time again. July saw 33 games played, bringing the yearly total up to 187. I played a few favorites, (Toy Battle 4 times in a row for example) Scout, Ark Nova, Ironwood. I also played a few unplayed titles. As you can tell I'm sure, the pendulum has been swinging back towards wargaming though to me, its all linked. So as usual, let's begin with;

Honourable Mentions

Black Sonata

Black Sonata is a solo deduction and hidden movement game. If you're a solo gamer that sentence either sold or stopped you from getting this one. Mechanically (though it took me one completely messed up game to figure out) the game is really sound and super interesting. It feels like a very real game. I did something very different with this one. I downloaded the free Print and Play version and spent weeks cutting, gluing, holepunching and sorting stuff. It was worth it for the experience and to ultimately say "I won't do that again"

Top 5 of July 2025 

5. Galileo Galilei

A dry euro from Capstone, designed by the same designer of SETI, sign me up. This is a game that I saw on several Origins haul posts. When it arrived at my FLGS I grabbed a copy and it hit the table pretty quick. There's not a ton to this game in terms of innovation but it is a solid Euro experience and it does what it does very well. The iconography was a lot to process at first but by the end I was quite impressed. A very solid game.

4. Farm Hand

The first of two Kickstarter games on this months list, Farm hand is a small box trick taker. In a ever evolving world of "Trick taker games with a list of twists to the formula," Farm Hand sure is a "trick taker with a list of twists to the formula." I happen to love these but YMMV. In short, this is a trick taker that has things like, increasing number of cards each round, if two players play the same number they're out for the hand, and bigging on number of wins. Its also a solid experience and one I'd break out at any chance. 

3. Rome In a Day

This is a classic I'm told. It uses a "I cut, you choose" mechanic which is pretty unique. It fits my usual theming, tile laying interests. There's not a ton to say about this one but I found it super enjoyable and different from most of what I've played lately. Each turn you take your tiles and split them. Each player then chooses to take either the large pile or the small pile from their neighbor. You keep what they don't take. It leads to a lot of interesting decisions in a very short time. 

2. Twinkle Twinkle

This is the latest kickstarter from Allplay to deliver. Twinkle, Twinkle is a tile laying tableau builder. Much like River Valley the game is simple but offers some fun "high score chasing" gameplay. Its quick to play and has rather nice clear tiles that allow for all sorts of placement. Theres a rather large expansion and my only real criticism of this one is that the core box is too small to fit the expansion content. 

1. Tango

Two player trick taker. Trick taking games typically need more players or have some sort of core change to the rules to allow for two. This is a purpose built two player trick taker. The main mechanic involves what is effectively a dummy team mate but it all just works so well. I really enjoyed this one and it fits in my "break it out and get in a quick game on a school night" box. It's rather simple but the game is real snappy and I enjoy trick takers. 

So there you have it. The games this month all fell on the simpler side but it was a nice batch to try out. The pendulum has been swinging hard back towards wargaming and painting lately so even though I've been keeping up on the board games my main interest is gravitating towards painting again. I've nearly got the dwarves totally done and am nearly ready to get in some games with them. I managed a horus heresy game as well as a barons war one. Lots of exciting stuff.

Wroth Game Review

 Again, I am fully in my "area control" era. This is Chip Theory's take on the genre. I had looked at the KS originally and decided to back out before pledging for one reason or another. 2 things swayed it into my collection though. First, I saw an update for this and 20 strong that said they were probably shipping in March, and with the late pledge open took the plunge. The second reason was something about the metal troops upgrade being unsustainably cheap. I ended up doing the late back and ironically received this before some of the guys in the group I game with. The wife and I played it once and I thought it was alright, pretty good but not amazing. Then I brought it to a more "war gamey" crowd. Absolute hit. The design is simple but incredibly tight. We played 3 games in a row with everyone switching factions between games. It was easy to pick up and teach, the components are lovely.  

 

Gameplay Thoughts

I've waxed lyrical about Warhammer as a concept to almost anyone I've chatted with about design but I'll repeat my mantra here. Warhammer is a well designed game where the designers never stopped. The core concepts (roll to hit, roll to wound, roll for save) work great and in moderation the design space (specials rules are exceptions that allow for flavor) is great. The problem comes when in order to introduce that flavor you need so many convoluted rules tacked on top of each other. As a brief totally hyperbolic example, if you normally roll one die a model for melee, a good addition would be something like "I roll two attacks when I charge because of my blood rage." A bad addition would be something like "I roll 2 attacks for blood rage, at plus 1 because of my priest. My captain has a rule that allows me to reroll but only if I spend blood points. Each blood point I spend allows me to double move." I digress. My point, as long winded as it is, is that Wroth isn't Warhammer. 

Your core gameplay is very clean. Roll and draft dice. Spend a die to do the action on the die. There's an action to get Corra, the games resource, a couple actions to add troops or move them and one action to attack. Attacking is either into a space you occupy or a space adjacent. That is hyperbolic simplification but honestly the core is really that simple. There's some nuance in the economy and the variable objective tokens but generally, if each faction was the same we'd be playing it already. 

Now where this game really shines, and I truly mean shines, is the asymmetry. Each faction has access to special troops represented by dice. Each special troop (between two and three per faction) usually only has one line maybe two of rules. The overhead is near nonexistent. The only other asymmetry comes from a one time use Feat card (each faction chooses 1 of 3 unique to their faction.) So let's look at one faction up close

These are the Koda, the Viking like berserkers. If we look at their player board we can see they only have two special troop types. The gentlemen on the left are basically werewolf types. Big angry dudes with a ton of health. First, one thing to note here is that even though they have a ton of health, they only count as one troop for the purposes of controlling an area. If we look at their special rules, they get to punch on the way into a territory and when they attack an area they are already in they do an extra damage. Let's look more in to this. First of all on first read you'd be right to think "beat stick." Those abilities are both about damage right? Drop guys in to the fray and spend your attack dice on them. Its subtle but one of the real draws is if you don't get any attack dice, now all of your maneuver dice are effectively attack dice too as long as you have one of these guys in the move. Add on to all of that that these guys will score you some victory points each turn and it makes sense to scatter them to the wind and let them tear your opponents apart.

Now lets look at the trappers. These are a "follow the ball under the cup" type of mechanic. When you place a trapper (into an area you occupy, not your off map deployment area) you choose a face for the die. When an enemy moves into its territory you flip the die and spring a trap (steal Corra, deploy two more troops or attack for 2.) These are pretty simple in terms of rules overhead but the potential for shenanigans is there. If you come in to my area and i flip this, maybe your guys die, maybe I steal a precious resource. 

Now for the icing on the cake. Lets look at a few of the feats. The Koda persistent ability is to make the trappers score VP each turn. Couple this with the face that allows you to drop more troops when revealed and suddenly you can potentially score mountains of points each round as you scatter deep into the board. Alternatively, you could use the feat that allows you to mutate three troops into werewolves. Now the tight economy isn't much of a concern as you have this ace up your sleeve. 

Each faction has its own tricks and abilities and its all achieved with very simple tweaks. Take the Ooglan Karn troops. Their rule allows them to drop into an enemy controlled region. That's it. Everything else reinforces areas you own but the Karn pop up out of no where. The Venna have some rules where they can reinforce from their discarded troops where the other factions generally cant. Lots of very very simple tweaks and exceptions to that base core ruleset that really vary the factions. 

We had a game where I played the Guild who have a one time use ability to take 10 Corra to their bank to spend. One player had the Paldeyn, who every time they would gain Corra, they can deploy a die instead. The third player had the Eldan, an elven faction that could spend Corra to fire arrows around the map. As the guild i had access to more or less the whole bank of resources, my troops stealing from the Eldan. The Paldeyn never took Corra opting instead to deploy their whole suite of troops. Just the faction choices dictated a completely different economy for that game. The round with Koda, Eldan and Ooglan devolved into a slugfest over the one extra Corra each round that resulted in the Koda taking off with the lead by virtue of their cheap traps. Very minor changes resulting in a very different landscape. 

Component Thoughts

Now let's talk about Chip Theory, Price and Components. 

So first of all the elephant in the room. My late pledge included the Core Game, the Venna and Paldeyn expansions as well as the addon for the metal troops upgrade. The price tag for all of that with shipping was just shy of $140. 

If you aren't familiar with Chip Theory I'm sure you can tell from the photos that their production is incredible. No boards, all neoprene mats. High end poker chips for tokens. Custom nice dice. PVC cards that are much more durable than usual. This all makes for a beautiful product and if you like this art style it really can't be beat. It's an expensive buy in but I do think it was well worth it. 

Now, on the subject of the metal troops. I bought these because they mentioned somewhere that the retail cost for the troops would be significantly higher. I did not realize when i bought them that the plastic pieces included were also the unique faction sculpts. The plastics are totally acceptable and the metal actually weigh the tray insert down enough that it makes me a little nervous when people grab it by the middle. All this to say, metal cool, not necessary. 

I do however think the Paldeyn and Venna expansions are totally necessary. In a game that really thrives on that asymmetry adding more factions is kind of a no brainer. The Venna in particular are just so cool. They play like zombies but look like fae wood elves. I lost horribly but the mechanics they add are super cool. 

Overall I am really into Wroth. The game plays very quick managing a teach and 3 games in just over 3 hours. Once the initial teach and play is through, the overhead to learn a new factions basics is very minimal. Compare to a game like root wherein you could spend a half hour just trying to figure out a new faction only to lose horrible because you never really got it. Our games haven't gone past round 5 yet and the game is very snappy. I have yet to dive in to it but there are also 3 solo/coop scenarios per faction to play through. Overall an absolute winner. 

Top 5 "New to Me" Board Games of June 2025

 June has already seen an uptick in gaming. Sadly we missed Origins this year but spent that weekend gaming anyway. Not at all near the normal number of games played that weekend but a nice dent in the pile. Before I get into the honorable mentions though. I got Yokohama (massively on sale) and Bus (Birthday present). Both are very good. Yokohama is a solid euro. I don't think I'd have paid full price for it but as a sale game its super solid. Bus is brutal but a lot of fun. I was interested in this as an intro to Splotter games and before I put it on to a list I think I need to play another game or two of it. Lots of honorable mentions this time because I managed to swing not one but two new games (actually 4! plays of one) right on the last weekend of the month

Honorable Mentions

Slambo

I got Slambo as part of the medallion redemption from the Kabuto Sumo Kickstarter from Allplay. It's simple, its fun. We played at 2, though it looks like it goes up to 4. Very simply game. Play numbered cards to a central pile and keep the running total between 0 and 10. Very small footprint. Just a great quick little game. I found the other tiny box game in this run (For the Emperor) much less interesting but Slambo is a keeper

Black Orchestra

Cooperative board game about the plot to assassinate Hitler. Very themey. The game is very luck driven which is thematic and works well. We came close several times to winning but ultimately were thwarted in the final phase by the "auto-lose" card. Normally I'd be upset about an automatic lose condition, however it feels very thematic and in theory is something you can plan around. I did the Kickstarter that includes the Valkyrie standalone and Resistance expansion. Its a lot of fun and a good coop game. Would definitely play again.

Cyclades

I am fully in my "Dudes on a Map" Era. Cyclades is really more of a bidding game than a straight area control game but I really liked it. The auction mechanic works supper nicely and forces you to sort of adapt to the changing state of the game without it totally locking out the choices to choose how you want to approach your strategy. Nice components. My only criticisms from the first play were that the Miniatures upgrade was probably a waste of money (no one bought any for the overwhelming majority of the game) and that the game overstayed its welcome by just a hair. Would play again. I just backed the KS for the Inis rerelease as well and am looking forward to this series hitting the table more. This was originally in the number 4 slot but a few last minute games kicked it out

 

Let's go to Japan

The best way I have to describe this one is that it is Faraway without the backwards scoring and puffed up to be more of a full game. You draft cards and build a tableau and then score from left to right. Having the right symbols increases scores and allows for objectives to be completed which gives more points. We all scored low due to distractions but I think there's a surprisingly high ceiling and a good amount of decision space. We actually went to a board game lounge in Grand Rapids and tried this there. It was a little difficult to learn and teach while eating and drinking and in a bar effectively but I've added it to my pickup list if I see it for a good price.  

Top 5 of June

5. SAS: Rogue Regiment

A WW2 themed dungeon crawl of sorts. I have the Kickstarter all in pledge for this and man-oh-man is it dripping with content. There's just so much in the box. We played the first two scenarios back to back and had a great time. The themeing is British SAS doing sneaky operations against the Axis. It's more or less your standard Action Point game, with a decent AI and patrol system. My one criticism is that it is very difficult to re enter stealth mode with the way the system works. That said, once I started to treat it more like WW2 and less like Metal Gear Solid it clicked a little better. One thing I want to call out though. The game uses cardboard tokens for everything instead of a pile of plastic miniatures. At the very very beginning i found myself wanting for figures just from a readability standpoint. However, once I was into it, I found no real difference. One thing of note, the use of cardboard counters allows for way more. This means that for every operator for example you end up with a token representing each of the following; Standing, Crouching, Spotted Standing, Spotted Crouching. Each of those is unique art work representing what the "figure" is doing. For the Germans, the art changes from shouldered rifles to firing poses. It's a very minor detail but its a great use of the media.

4. Leviathan Wilds

This is such a cool game. The game is basically Shadow of the Colossus the board game. Players climb, scale and smash crystals on giant lumbering beasts. As someone who loves the concept of "playing within a design space" there's just so much potential in the box. The components are just wonderful. The Kickstarter came with wood and acrylic upgrades. The box insert is so carefully designed that there's room for the spiral in the spiral bound book that serves as the map. There's 17 monsters to scale as well as the expansion, multiple difficulties, multiple characters, something called "the mutation deck." There's just a ton to explore and I really like the puzzle of the game. 

 

3. Galactic Cruise 

This is an interesting one to say the least. I was pitched this one as a "Lacerda lite." Having never played a Lacerda game I thought this might be a good way to dip my toes in. It's heavy game for sure. It took me a little over an hour just to punch and organize this one. I watched a how to play video twice and read the book two or three times before playing. In hindsight the game seems relatively straight forward but is very much so a turn optimization game. In some ways it reminds me of a White Castle where it feels like there's only barely enough time to get things done. I have to say though, components, layout, themeing, all absolutely superb. Its an all day experience but boy did I enjoy it. I wouldn't be surprised if I ended up with an actual Lacerda game soon

2. Toy Battle

In stark contrast to the previous game, Toy Battle is a 15 minute 2 player lane battler? Area control? Honestly it seems like a mobile game more than anything else. Turns are dead simple, place a guy on a space or draw two more guys. You can cover any empty space or a space with a troop valued lower than the one you're playing. Some troops have powers. For example the highest value has no special rules, the lowest lets you draw some extra troops. That's more or less it. Very quick, very clean, very replayable. It's rare we play a game twice in a row but we did here. 

1. Wroth 

I liked Wroth so much, I wrote a whole separate review of it. That post will drop tomorrow and you can read all about how much I loved this one. 

Overall, this was a wonderful month for gaming. Coming soon to the blog, Silver Bayonet, a new Historical project begins, and possible a secret third project. Thanks for reading.

Top 5 "New to Me" Board Games of May 2025

    This has been another slow month. Nearing the end of the school year means a lot less gaming. Painting continues and I'm feeling almost nostalgic that I have a work bench with 3 or 4 ongoing projects again. I'm trying to get a historical project on to the table for a possible Cabin Con in August as well as a small scale historical project I'm dabbling in. I have Barons War 2nd edition to crack open as well as some Horus Heresy stuff to finish up for a Hobby Goal. On the boardgame front, we managed just 16 plays this month only 1 of which was played more than once (Tether). Of the 15 games we played 12 of them were brand new to me. We did manage another game of Heat, and Hadrian's Wall. With just one play on each of the games in this list, I'm going to probably single out singular things that jumped out to me that made me want to table the game again.

Honourable Mentions

Molly House

The latest offering from Wehrlegig Studios (John Co, Pax Pamir) Molly House is a super bespoke looking board game with a wildly unique theme. This one makes the honourable mention list because to be honest, I don't know if I get it. During the teach I found myself saying something to the effect of "I understand every moving part but have no concept of how to turn it into points or form a strategy." As we played I found myself warming to it quite significantly but will need more plays before forming a final verdict. It was not an instant hit with me like John Co, but it is a great example of a Semi-Coop done right. 

Bebop

 This was an offering from a Bitewing Games Kickstarter that I did not back. At the time the price point scared me off but look at me now, doing stupid shit like buying the Trickerion Collectors box. Bebop is a Knizia inspired tile layer, I'm told. So was Rebirth. From what I can tell, not being super familiar with what that means, is that you place a tile on the board. That's the game! More seriously, both this and Rebirth felt the same to me in that, I read the rules and thought "ok, I'll figure it out as we go" when it comes to scoring. My wife is not a "figure it out along the way" type so these are not her kind of game. This one was great (to me) and a lot of theme drips through. The rulebook has a selection of recommended Jazz albums to play depending on the board you choose to play on. This raises a super interesting point too about the deluxeification of games. The rulebook references the expansion (separate purchase) and shows photos of the deluxe (separate purchase) tokens. I opted to pick up the boards but not the tokens. It comes across as "this is a 100 dollar game that you may shave parts off of to pay us less" and conceptually I think that's kind of neat.

My Favorite Things

Party game done right, though not a "fun" "game."  This is a trick taker where each of your cards is actually a thing ranked by another player. You give them a prompt like "favorite Marvel Movie," they secretly write down (and rank) their top 5 of that category then give those cards to you. Then you play a trick taker with those cards, guessing at that players interests. With the wrong group this sounds like absolute hell. With the right group you can use a prompt like "favorite fighting video games" and clean house because no one else at your table knows what the hell your talking about.

Top 5 of May 2025

5 Veiled Fate

Veiled Fate is from IV Studios and was sold to me under the premise that it is a "Social Deduction game that doesn't just bog down into people yelling accusations at each other." It is. I think its actually a super super interesting game. It possibly overstays its welcome a hair and it is very luck driven. Our game came down to the final flip of a coin. Though it was the 2 hours of decision making that led to the circumstances that resulted in the board positions and subsequent coin flip so YMMV. The production (like all IV games) is really really gorgeous. Was the game probably too expensive? Yeah. Will it see the table a ton? Probably not as much as I'd like. But it was a great game for a large group. 

4 Rock Hard 1977

 Worker placement games with 1 worker are kind of an odd duck. This one was really fun though. It makes me think of the old game Life but with significantly more agency and a game to play to boot. Players are rockstars trying to become bigger rockstars. There's a mechanic for taking "candy" to have more actions and a "sugar craving" mechanic for if you eat too much "candy." Cool kids will know what's up! Tongue in cheek jokes aside, mechanically the game is fun. It does emergent story telling right. In particular you begin the game with a day (or night) job. Miss 3 shifts and your fired. Eventually you say "f it" and get fired because now the music is more important. Discard your job to reveal that the "job slot" on your board said professional musician the whole time. You had it in you all along.

3 Ostia

Like many a FOMO based Kickstarter, Ostia came and went and I didn't learn about its existence until long after it was "out of print." This one was pitched to me as a Roman Trading themed game with a mancala mechanic. We got this one to the table and I really enjoyed it. Its a bit of a brain burner in the sense that almost everything you want to do needs to be planned a couple of moves in advance and that's just if you want to do an action. If you really want to capitalize on that action and run it to its full effectiveness you need to plan even further. My one point of contention with it is that the end game is player triggered and it can be difficult to assess who is winning. I thought I had for sure lost as my opponent had purchased 4 of the 5 end game bonus cards but the score ended up flipping wildly in my favor once we worked out the math. Would play again. 

2 Iberian Gauge

Apparently there are "Train Games" (this) and "games with Trains" (Ticket to Ride). I set out to find out the difference and purchased this, Wabash Cannonball, and Shikoku 1889. This was the one that hit the table first. Despite all of us feeling like "wheres the game? How do you win when were all working together?" one player (who we were fairly certain lost) ended up miscounting her money and actually won by a very significant margin. I like mathy games. I used to adore Power Grid. Conceptually I don't even hate Monopoly. This was good. It played in a little under an hour. I would gladly play it again. Also and this seems minor but, its kind of pretty. I looked at the back of Wabash Cannonball. That game is not pretty. I think it may be the ugliest board I own actually. This isn't, so kudos to that.  

1 Seti 

Originally this post was just going to be "top 5, Seti, Just Seti." I did not want to want Seti. Another Euro I thought. Blah, I said. I already have Euro at home. I even bought the metal coins for Kutna Hora. Brian from one of the game groups said it was great. I found it on sale. Brian was right. 

SETI is just another Euro dripping with theme but you know what, its great. I won't bog down in it right now but the short version of what sold me on it so well was that your primary scoring conditions appear on the alien races that don't show up until players collectively discover them. Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. Those aliens have neat game mechanics and sub systems that interact with the game in neat ways. The actual puzzle of what to do on a turn is engaging, the long term planning is there but importantly its the kind of game where you say "I would like to do a thing, how do I get there?" then work your way backwards until you've puzzled your way to the goal and I love that. 

Briefly I also want to shout out Czech Games Edition and Tabletop Merchant. I needed a replacement card for SETI because the sleeve holding the cards ripped open in transit. They have an awesome parts replacement program and it came very quickly. Tabletop Merchant was the only shop that I could find that had both Bebop and Shuffle and Swing in stock. The order shipped quick and came with a hand written note talking about bebop and telling me to enjoy. That's pretty cool to me.

I have about a 1000 figures to base next and then we can resume some drip feed wargaming content. 

Top 5 "New to Me" Boardgames of April 2025

 April has been a super slow month for gaming for me. I've actually gotten a ton of painting done, more on that at the end of the post. Between that and the house getting sick a couple times, gaming itself has been slow.

Honorable Mentions

Empires End

This is a strange one. I was initial very excited to give this game a try. It was described to me a bit as a "reverse engine builder" which fascinates me as a concept. Your engine runs fine at the beginning but you bid to avoid taking on disasters that will smash your engine. It's in theory all about carefully choosing when you can handle taking on the problems. I compare it to Arkham Horror in terms of how it feels but being competitive instead of coop, there's no shared misery as things break or go wrong. It plays much like Space Base (also from this designer). In the end I liked it but it wasn't "fun." I don't think I feel the need to get a copy but would probably play again.

Top 5 of April 2025

5. Skara Brae

This month is all about Kickstarters delivering. From Garphill games I got the Skara Brae and the Anarchy KS in. This is a resource shuffling game with the twist that there are debatably too many resources to manage. I thought this was interesting as I love the shuffling back and forth this style of game delivers but I want more plays to make a final judgement. Its probably my least favorite of this publishers games but I've become a bit of a Garphill fanboy lately so that isn't to say its a bad game. 

4. Deep Regrets

The main praise for this Kickstarter has to be given to the transparency from the creator of the game. He has been straightforward and up front about every issue and decision that went in to the campaign. The game itself is sort of a push your luck eerie fishing game with a cthulu theme but I was impressed that there was more depth than I was expecting. I'm reserving as bit of judgement for now as we only played once and out play took significantly longer than anticipated due to baby but the art work and components are 10/10

3. Minecart Town

This is the second (of 3) resource shuffling games to make the list this month. This is a little game from japan. Another Kickstarter, this one was described to me a bit like Furnace with the added wrinkle of logistics. Though I think that is an accurate description, the end result was a bit lighter than I was expecting. Its a cute, one-step-above-filler game I can see myself playing quite a bit more of. 

2. Hadrians Wall

The third and final resource shuffler is actually a roll n write. Well a flip and write technically but a bit of a resource shuffler nonetheless. I had heard this was similar to a full blown euro game just distilled down into a roll and write format and to be honest that's a fair assessment. I'm not normally a huge "... and write" fan but this one swayed me. It feels like a good high score chaser, with a theme I enjoy. The smartest move as many before me have mentioned is the inclusion of physical resources which make the tracking from box to box much less cumbersome and add the tactility I feel the genre is missing. I'd like to play through most of the solo campaign before I move on to The Anarchy but I have quite high hopes for that title as well. 

1. Tether

Oddly, both my most played and favorite this month is a short little two player only card game. One player plays runs vertically, the other horizontal. The cards are flipped on each side. So one side might say 17, the other 71. On first play I wasn't smitten but we managed 7 plays of this last month and with each game I feel the strategic depth growing. One particular thing is the game has three end game conditions. Whether the largest configuration reaches 14 cards, the draw deck runs out, or one player leads by 6 points. It feels like each time we play this one I can see new strategic wrinkles to the system. An obvious one maybe but if I play the 17, the 71 is out of the pool for me. Real simple but a lot of fun.  

On to the check in, We managed to play a game of Halo Flashpoint. Photos of painted figures soonish. The game is ok. Typical Mantic fair where I think the game is fine but nothing spectacular. I decided after we played, I'd paint what I had but was not going to preorder the other large box coming out. 

I've also been hammering away on 3 different historical projects that I am excited to share with you all pretty soon.

Top 5 "New to Me" Boardgames of March 2025

 This is probably going to be a reoccurring thing if that wasn't clear.

So March saw me fall just a bit shy of the pacing I've had for the year so far. I think were still fine for the total goals at year end because there should be more gaming this summer. I played 27 plays across 22 different games. Of those, 12 were new to me not counting new expansions for games I've already played. 

Honorable Mentions

An Age Contrived

 This was played at the monthly "lets play those kickstarters" game group I've been attending. Same place we played Last Light last time. I could best describe this one as "a euro game with ameritrash sensibilities." I have this game on my wishlist but to be honest I haven't decided if I will actually pull the trigger because I haven't decided if I actually liked it. I'll republish the texts I sent to a friend that sum up the experience pretty succinctly. 

"It would be like if I told you to make a cake and instead of giving you a recipe I just told you what every individual ingredient tasted like. So you taste the raw flour and rightfully spit it out and that's the moment I tell you well, that ones there for structure not flavor. So you smash together some version of a cake based on all the cake youve eaten in your life and its bad and only then do I tell you that you needed specific quantities of each ingredient"

A bit hyperbolic but it summed up our first game well.

World Wonders (Mundo expansion)

 

Last year we played our way through the legacy game, My City with some friends of ours. In short, My City is a tile layer with tetramino shapes and requires some spacial awareness. About one or two games in my wife as well as one of our friends were over it. 2 of us loved the experience until about the final 6 games of the campaign. We all thought by the end that the game overstayed its welcome and the consensus was "I'm over this genre" 

Depsite the wifes protests, I picked up the spacial awareness tile layer World Wonders and its Mundo expansion at Origins last year. I'm glad I did. There are some neat twists to the formula in the open shared market, the "buying out of the round" that comes with purchasing wonders and the actual spatial puzzle. Many of these games work by asking you to fill the grid out more or less completely but this one doesn't. I'm also obsessed with nice Chonky Wood parts. 

This is an honorable mention because we've played the base game a few times but just added the expansion in recently.

Apiary 

Apiary makes the list because I would play it again but it didn't leave a solid first impression. Unfortunately I blame that on the starting faction I drew at random which pointed me towards a specific resource that was difficult to get and shoehorned me into thinking I needed a specifc strategy to compete. This is the most points I've lost a game by with this group probably full-stop. I'd play it again buy I did take the expansion off my wishlist.

Top 5 of March

5 - Power Vacuum

 This was a kickstarter that just delivered. Billed as a trick taker mixed with social deduction. I don't think that's quite what delivered but the game is super unique. We only got one 3 player play in and I would be very excited to play this one again. There are some twists to the formula wrapped in a nice production that make it a good fit for the shelf. There is a much larger discussion on what hidden role and social deduction does for a game but in short, adding a mechanic that allows you to reveal your hidden role early makes for its own subset of mechanical interaction that is super interesting to me.

4 - Black Forest

 

I liked this. I mostly want to talk about the resource "clock."  This is a euro game about making glass. Every time you recieve a basic resource (the resources to the right of the top facing "clock hand") you slide the token representing that resource one space clockwise. You'll notice the number tracking quantity around the center of said clock. Whenever there is an empty space to the right of the clock hand (i.e. there are no tokens in the "0" space) the clock hand must be moved over. This has the effect of increasing the resources to the left of the clock hand while simultaneously depleting all the resources to the right. This happens automatically and is mandatory and will happen mid action. You either understand what I said and it sounds neat or you didnt and this game is probably not for you.

The meat of this is wrapped around a sort of worker placement type mechanic and involves you trading the resources back and forth to have the right resources to buy what you need at that moment. My only complaint so far is that those clocks are dual layer and curled right up. I was the most into the game in our group but I don't think anyone hated it.

3 - Hands in the Sea (2nd ed)

This is A Few Acres of Snow rethemed to the Punic wars. I adore Few Acres so this was a natural fit for me. I think the changes and additions of things like the naval combat and the event deck make it different enough that if you enjoy one there's room for both. I think Few Acres is slightly more polished and is arguably more accessible. 

2 - Joyride Turbo

I have a lot of car games for someone who spent a long long time self describing as "not a car guy." Briefly; Thunder Road, Formula D, Heat, Rallyman GT, Rallyman Dirt, Downforce. Of these, I've become obsessed with Heat for my racing fix. Rallyman is solid though more simulationy and less hollywood. Thunder Road captures the chaos well. 

Joyride is really fun. It brings enough to the table to make it worth keeping. It is ultimately a mario kart style game with the win condition being the race part. It isn't as easy to teach as thunder road but it isn't as hard as something like a wargame like Gaslands. I had been itching to get into gaslands again but this is much easier to table.  

1 - El Grande

Area Control. I love it. I like dudes on a map games. I like twists to genres. This has everything to make me feel like it is a "classic" game even from play one. The actual mechanics are easy enough to follow but the Castillo and accompanying rules add just enough rub to make the game stand out. It wasn't long enough to overstay its welcome but had more depth than a filler game. Just a super solid game all around. I was incredibly disappointed in Ethnos last month but this was a welcome surprise hit.

 

For housekeeping. Were close to a wargame post. I'm nearly done with the Halo Flashpoint starter. After that I've got some Flashpoint Wave 2 to paint and then I've got my eye on something historical for a little bit. I've been painting a bit here and there but need to do a day of just basing soon to actually finish this stuff off. 

 

 

Top 5 "New To Me" Board Games of February

 I've been hammering away on playing the unplayed games in my collection and wanted to highlight a couple of the better ones in a post. 

Honourable Mentions

Fellowship of the Ring: Trick Taking Game

    We play a lot of trick taking games. (My current favorite is Fishing). FoTR:TTG is a co-op trick taker similar to the crew. It has a campaign that introduces new mechanics slowly. We played the first 4 chapters in one go. Each chapter has you playing a relatively basic trick taker with the catch that each player has specific objectives. As an example you may need to win a specific number of tricks or not have won the most tricks. Its quick, its snappy, the art is great. 

Rallyman Dirt

    I will do a full write up some day on the Rallyman games but I really adore them. Push your luck racing games that offer a fair amount of strategy and a non-overwhelming amount of luck. I do see a place for both Rallyman GT and Rallyman Dirt and I quite like some of the additions to Dirt from a bookkeeping Quality of Life perspective. Solo mode works great but without a "par" track time I have no idea if I'm doing well unless I play a race multiple times. I prefer this one with people but the staggered start times make me want to put GT on the table instead. 

Top 5 of February

5 - Hansa Teutonica

    Hansa Teutonica (acquired through that collection) is more of a "dry euro" than what I tend to table. On the surface it's a route builder like something like Ticket to Ride, though theres a lot it brings to the table that make it a much meatier game. Each route will contribute points and help with a players overall strategy but specific routes will allow players to upgrade their player boards to make each turn more effective. Couple that with a super simple but effective "route blocking and player bumping" system as well as a scoring system that rewards players for being near the action, this is an incredibly interactive game for its looks. This did not go over at all with my usual group but I'd play it again in a heartbeat with players into this sort of thing. 

4 - Wayfarers of the South Tigris

This is one of the Garphill Renegade Games Historical "Worker Placement" Games I've become very obsessed with. Our 10 x 10 includes the ...West Kingom Trilogy this year but this is the first of the ... South Tigris set. Mechanically this is quite the step up from our last foray of Paladins of the West Kingdom but I found the game super interesting. It's effectively a tableau builder with a game timer of a central board that includes a sort of "race to the finish." Your turn consists of placing a single die, placing a single worker, or resting to recover your played dice. It has the usual Garphill feel of passing the same tokens back and forth but I found this one considerably more involved than Architects, Raiders of Scythia or Legacy of Yu. I'm excited for the expansions as well as the other two in the serious (which i believe on bgg have even higher weights.)

3 - Last Light

Last Light is a 4x with a promised play time "a fraction of Twilight Imperium." I've never played a board game 4x but I have some familiarity with the genre. After watching How to Play videos I was worried the game looked quite uninspiring on the table. The board is quite bland and it has quite the "pile of plastic" look to it. 

In practice the game was a heck of a lot of fun. We played twice in a row. The game is simultaneous (which frankly I don't like at all) but it capture the essence of a "big game" without all of the hassle of getting a "big game" to the table. I think of the headache of tabling the Blighted Reach Campaign for Arcs and some part of me just wants to put this on the table instead. 

All of my positives of this are what I love about gaming, the puzzle, the trash talk, the comradery, the physicality (the board literally spins around the center at differing rates) and the shared experience and emergent story telling. 

All of my cons come down to the same time play. I quite literally had no idea what the player on the other side of the table was doing until it was too late. I would love each player to say what theyre doing but it all just sort of happens and then its too late. The scoring is incredibly tight and it has some ability to recover from a bad start. I was the one who hit the 20 points to trigger endgame and I ended up losing by 3. It does "suffer" a bit from "bash the leader" mechanics but I think the right (communicative) group can over come this.

I played a friends kickstarter deluxe copy but already have the retail edition on my shelf of shame from last year which means I don't need to run out and get this one haha.

2 - Slay the Spire

Aside from having to sleeve 500 cards before I could play, Slay the Spire (the boardgame) mimics Slay the Spire (the less board game) so very well. Adding a coop mode as well as rebalancing the numbers a bit to make it a bit more accessible without needing to bust out a calculator makes this a great table presence. I enjoyed it a bit more than my non-video game playing wife did but I think it was a solid enough deckbuilder that she enjoyed it enough to start act 2. I really am impressed with how well the game translates to the table and am looking forward to playing more. The unlocks and upgrade system are solid and seem to allow for a full reset which I appreciate. The components are wonderful and the core gameplay loop is fun. I really really love roguelikes and roguelite games so to see it translated so well is just wonderful. I felt similarly about Dorfromantik but this really takes the cake.

1 - River of Gold

This reminds me a lot of when I first started board gaming and all I knew was big Fantasy Flight component heavy monster games but I didn't yet know there was a lot more to the hobby. I mean that positively I think as I remember those days with a fond nostalgic glimmer. River of Gold sees players sailing down a river based of a die roll and either building new buildings, moving their ships, or deliver orders. The single roll of a die each turn means your options are limited but not in a way that made me feel that my decisions were locked. The components are really lovely and although the iconography was a bit dense at first it clicked pretty early on. There actually a lot of meaningful decision making but the turn by turn choices are not overwhelming at all. I definitely want to play more of this. It was on my wishlist but out of stock everywhere when I tried to pick it up late last year, so when I saw stock I jumped on it. 

I have not done much in the way of painting this month or non board game hobbying. We did a fair amount of cleaning and reorganizing this month though and I partially blame that. I did paint crossbones for MCP and got most of the way through Clea. I also got most of the way through one of my first Display Kits for the year, a Troy McDevitt Dr. Doom figure. I did pick up a couple of historical things in the form of Nam 68 and a few 3d prints from 3D Breed as well as some stuff for Chicago Way. 

End of January Check In

 Checking in for the end of January

Shame Golf - 

Nice and easy so far. Im up to positive 13 points. I purchased Spectre Mythic and painted Master Chief for Flashpoint

 

Hobby Goals -  

So far, not a ton of progress. I'm a hair over halfway on a cabinet piece, the McDevitt Chibi Doom Figure purchased at Wonderfest who knows how long ago. I was showing a friend Marvel United and debating whether or not im going to start painting my collection when I remembered I might have something that would scratch a similar itch. 3 somethings actually. I have Doom, Hulk and Black Panther from this series. Base coats and the base are mostly done, on to highlights and shading. The biggest roadblock on this is just that its awkward to handle. 

I have been doing good on the board game related challenges but more on that in a bit. 

We managed to play a game of Trench Crusade (I enjoy it quite a bit and am looking forward to more) and I have most of my starter list at least base coated with a few figures just waiting for basing. 

I've somewhat cemented a more scheduled plan for the year to get in some  more regular gaming so hopefully that will help.

On the non hobby side, I've already read 2 books and am halfway through a third. Perhaps 5 books was a low bar.

Alphabet Challenge - 

Alphabet Challenge is going fantastic. 

Avant Carde
Bloc by Bloc
Cat in a Box
Distilled
Earth
Fishing
G
Hoplomachus Victorum
In the Footsteps of Darwin
J
K
Lords of Vegas
Moving Wild
N
O
P
Q
River Valley Glass Works
S
Trailblazers
U
V
Whirling Witchcraft
X
Y
Z

 

Percent of unplayed games - 

I am ecstatic to announce that I have finally crossed the 40% Threshold and am sitting at 39.87 percent unplayed as of this post. This was from what I can tell mostly due to adding expansions in this month. We played 2 Marvel United expansions as well as expansions for Arcs, River Valley, Cubitos and Lords of Vegas.

Total Games Played - 

This is also going well. 29 Games so far for January with one or two more planned hopefully. At this rate it should be no problem at all to get in the 372 I am shooting for.

Cool Board Game Stats

 Happy new year all. 

As mentioned in the previous post I have a few hobby goals this year related more specifically to Board Gaming. I thought I'd take a second to talk about and break down some stats. 

First of all I put three challenges in my list for this year. I'd like to by year end play 372 games, Complete and alphabet challenge, complete a 10 x 10, and get the percent of my unplayed games down to 20 or less

Quantity challenge:

Last year I set out to play 365 games. The numbers were looking ok until my daughter was born and I discovered that I actually enjoy solo gaming quite a bit. One game in particular caught my attention and that was Legacy of Yu. This is a solo only campaign game from Garphill Games and is basically a resource management worker placement type game. I'm about halfway thru the campaign and am expecting to finish that out this year. Unfortunately I got super sick the week of new years eve and had to cancel not 1 but 3 different game days we had planned and as a result I fell just 7 short of 365 plays. Hence the 372 this year. With solo gaming I think this is definitely possible. 

Alphabet Challenge:

This one is pretty straightforward. Play 1 game starting with each letter of the alphabet. Were only 2 weeks into the new year and have already played A, D, F, H, L, M, R and W. I expect this one to be fairly easy as well and want to take advantage of it to play some games on my shelf of shame/opportunity. The more difficult letters are all already accounted for so this should be actually kind of easy. 

The 10 x 10:

This challenge is super interesting to me. The idea is you play 10 games 10 times each. Originally the wife had no interest in joining me on this crusade saying that "I cant imagine there's a game I'd want to play 10 times." Conversely though (and ill touch on this more in a second) I need to slow down on purchasing new games and enjoy the ones I have. A good friend of mine made the point that there's so many games he truly enjoys on his shelf that he doesn't have time for already so why cloud the collection with just "ok" stuff. I'm inclined to agree to a point although if you know me you know that the collecting itself is half the fun. This is a strange hobby and in participating in forums there is a real divide when you ask "how many games is too many"

I ended up picking games that fit a fair amount of the same criteria that would be easy to justify tabling. 

Furnace
Earth
Arcs
River Valley Glass Works
Everdell
Architects of the West Kingdom
Marvel United
Quacks of Quedlinburg
Tiny Towns
Crokinole

All of these games have expansion content I haven't played except crokinole. In the Everdell and Architects categories, we're including the spin off games Duo and Farshore and for architects in particular we're counting any of the three games in the Medieval trilogy as well as Tomesage itself. (More on that when it hits the table)

For Marvel united I'm also going to count DC United which should be delivering this year I hope. 

In spirit of all this I went back and forth before finally deciding to purchase a tracker off etsy. It was expensive, (70 dollars) but ultimately worth it. All the labels as well as the meeples are magnetized and its just a super cool premium product that makes this a little more fun. I discovered a lot about myself last year in that Data and tracking things is an amazing motivator for me to follow through on stuff. 

Finally Played Percentage:

Even prior to the collection purchased mentioned last post, my wife and I have been keeping a spreadsheet of our game collection to make sure we dont buy anything we already have. We use BGG but this was a quick way to sort by player count or double check if we were in a game store if we saw something and were unsure if the other owned it. I added a column for whether or not we had each played each game and last year we had weekend dates to each pick a "new to one of us game" and try it out. 

I spent a little while learning excel and discovered I could write a basic formula to determine what percent of our collection we had actually played and to be honest it isn't pretty. As of this post 40.48% of our games I've never played. 

Now some of this is easily explained. My wife came with a lot of party games which aren't my favorite and since the pandemic large groups still havent bounced back. She also has a fairly large collection of Game of Thrones and Harry Potter games so even though I've played Scrabble in my illustrious career, I've never specifically played Harry Potter Scrabble.

The other half of this coin is that I conceptually like expansions. A lot of the list is expansion content. Something like 100 of the games by rough count are expansions. So even though I've played a ton of Furnace, we havent actually had Interbellum hit the table. Lords of Vegas was a wonderful addition to the collection but I have yet to touch Americana. 

Finally a fair amount of the problem is we keep finding games that arent on the list in addition to me picking stuff up. There are 2 specific games still on my short to buy list (Wayfarers of the South Tigris and Ezra and Nemiah), 1 additional game will be an impulse buy if i see it  (kickstarter game that I'm unclear whether it will be retailed) and then I have my eye on just two KS coming (Black Orchestra and the South Tigris expansions and Moonsaga) but other than that after a great Boardlandia Sale I'm taking an extended break from buying more. I have a ton of Kickstarters delivering this year and frankly just too much stuff. 

I have been starting to trim the collection a bit though through facebook marketplace and will continue doing that throughout the year.