I could really go for some liquorice allsorts …
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Luck, yes, but a lot of it is about gut, intuition, instinct, and solid card-counting skills.
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The east wing of your game collection photobombed there.
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Sounds fascinating. But gosh, I think this might work a lot better as an online board game than a cardboard one, just to eliminate the “locate the two hexes matching my card” factor?
Also, that seems like a fun title, but I couldn’t find what “tchu” might mean/refer to in Korea. Anyone?
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This is what some Googling found:
츄 is an expression of the sound of kissing. chu~
Or the name of the Korean girl group “LOONA” Kim Ji-woo is 츄(chuu).
So I expect it’s just phonetic, and although usually associated with chu as a kiss sound, it’s used in the title as the train sound, maybe going for a “cute” image.
EDIT: Here’s a wiki entry you can run through a translation engine if you like, it basically confirms the above:
https://namu.wiki/w/츄
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I’ve played Tchu Tchu Train! In 2022, apparently.
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I found the map easy to parse than I thought. The numbers are arranged from top to bottom and next proceeds to the next hex column. So the Ace of Hearts is on the left-most bit of both Heart regions
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Well, we went old-school!
Our long-time family favourite, Coup. And two games we haven’t played for literally years - For Sale and Dixit.
And you know what? They’re all great. Like, really, really good fun.
You can keep your cult of the new; Hooray for the oldies but goodies!
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Revisited Bear Raid
Much better with a) 4 players and b) having played it once before.
I won, but only because John did something utterly ridiculous by accident (but too late to change it) and bankrupted the company that I had 12 shorted stocks in.
One share split twice and I ended up with 32 shares.
It actually flowed nicely and everyone did something different.
Still very, very opaque and weird but something I’m not rushing to flog (yet)
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Played our second game of seven wonders dice. Only played 2 player to be fair but it’s kind of boring. Architects is better imo even though it’s less of a game.
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Played a second game of Beyond the Sun. Had an even better time now that I somewhat knew what I was doing. Very enjoyable.
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Eldritch Horror - Ameritrash is alive and well in 2025. We took on the roles of paranormal investigators to check out these weirdo fishies causing trouble all over the world. It turns out it was Cthulhu who is the main culprit. Travel around the world and roll some dice. Great fun!
Citizens of the Spark - another card tableau game. I didn’t hate it that much mainly due to how quick it is and how relatively interactive it is (the owner intentionally chose the “interactive” set). It’s just okay.
Castles of Burgundy classic CoB. For a modern Euro, I prefer this to 95% of whatever Euro slop that showed up in Essen SPIEL this year.
Merchants of Andromeda - reimplementation of Merchants of Amsterdam hmmmm they made it more complicated, for a 1 hour game max. “Modernised” would be the word. This game is almost trash level but the foundations of the game remains rather Knizian. So it was tolerable. I would rather not play it again though.
Food Chain Magnate - this game remains top tier, but the more I play the “Splotter 3”, the more i feel that FCM is the weakest. The Great Zimbabwe and Indonesia are way more dynamic.
Stick Em - a good closer
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Cthulhu: Death May Die – Fear of the Unknown,unfortunately we lost. We were so close to disrupting the ritual, but one of us died.
Dorfromantik: Sakura, a much better performance this week, our highest score so far.
Escape: The Curse of the Temple, always a laugh
Fishing, we only had time for a couple of rounds, but it was good fun. Definitely interesting.
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Yesterday, Ashes (never mind the subtitle). I’m trying out the Adventuring Party decks (groups of characters all built from a single large box of cards such as I have) as a step on the road to deckbuilding.
Yes, all right, the coin capsules may be excessive, but they’re very satisfying to play with and they’re lot cheaper than metal tokens would be. (If they even exist.).
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Coin capsules! What an excellent idea.
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These are Leuchtturm 19.5mm which are a perfect fit. They don’t fit the Red Rains gem tokens, but hey. 
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I use them with Orleans. They’re fantastic
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I use them for Quacks. Sadly, the ones I got aren’t thick enough to work with Orleans.
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Yesterday I managed to get Sekigahara on the table again… gosh what a banger of a game. Tense, elegant, with big swings and a glorious, chunky table presence that just feels utterly satisfying.
My opponent, Justin, crushed me (Tokugawa rushed Kyoto early, slowly retreated back to Edo, but managed to grab a bunch of castles on the way that I wasn’t able to reclaim as wave after wave of loyal samurai were obliterated in order to try and improve my hand of cards). Just a fantastic game…
You can see the stack of loyal… dead… Ishida troops to the right… it’s the massive pile next to the much smaller pile of Tokugawa dead.
Anyway, it was great. 9.5/10, continues to impress and delight me every time I’m lucky enough to get it on the table.
Then we played a really quick game of Robo Rally, in which I crushed Justin and Andy. T’wasn’t close.
Then today we played Mission 12 of Descent Legends of the Dark, which was a doozy. 3+ hours long. I continue to love the game, but 2 of our players (Andy and Jen) have run out of “Feats” (the game’s way of recording progression, kind of like “Missions” that improve your character). I’m still loving the game, and there are now a few ways to roll more than 1 die at some times for attacks and defence, but gosh I hope there are a few more in Act 2. Rolling 1 die is just… unsatisfying.
And then a game of Cubitos, which was great. I lurched to a quick lead, but at the end we were all within a few spaces of each other and Jen managed an unlikely victory due to pushing her luck with 2 Rollosaurs dice (each a 1-in-6 chance of moving 4 spaces, and 5-in-6 chance of nothing). She needed to get at least 1 success, and she got it! Very satisfying.
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What is the game length for Sekigahara?
Been tempted for a long time
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