Your Last Played Game Volume 3

bort · 17 October 2026 08:37

Another day of great gaming! We had a guest from the US, so I had to dust off some 5p games, and wanted nothing too complicated.

Just One, always good fun

Pictures, we always enjoy this one. I think I came dead last, but does it really matter?

Horrified, our three monsters were The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein and The Bride, and The Mummy. It was looking like it was all going to be over, the terror track was nearly full and we hadn’t managed to kill any of the monsters. Somehow we pulled it together and made a game out of it, but we still fell short, just couldn’t finish off the last monster. We spent ages on the last couple of turns, but just couldn’t make it work out for us. So we lost when the monster deck was empty. One player was killed before he even took his first turn, which isn’t ideal. The Creature was the last monster, and we finished his player board (by moving a boat to his lair), but rolled a few specials, which move the boat back, meaning you can’t defeat him.

Tsuro X 2. So quick we had a couple of games. I was first out in the first game, but did a bit better in the second.

Skull, which we never play at 3p, but 5p is perfect. So easy to explain. And so satisfying when someone turns over your skull. I managed to get the win, so happy about that.

SteveB_uk · 17 October 2026 20:54

Played the end of the main campaign of Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth. It should be an absolute top 10 for me, giant dungeon (overland) crawl with upgrades and deckbuilding, LotR theme etc, but it’s just sat on the shelf. Rather than pay the same money again for the “expansion” (cheeky) I’ll just sell this now (somehow. The box is inconveniently shaped and heavy).

Then my partner got back in the evening and we played Year 3 of Cozy Stickerville. I was correct that this was the right game for them: they came in tired, but were immediately energised when it turned out we had enough flowers for bees, and could also build a pet shop.

SteveB_uk · 17 October 2026 20:55

Ooh, is that the anniversary Tsuro? It’s very pretty!

bort · 18 October 2026 08:18

It is indeed. The owner of the game didn’t think it was worth the extra money, but it is quite pretty

Brattyjedi · 18 October 2026 11:20

Not a game but wanted to share and this seemed a reasonable place:

My local library has been doing a jigsaw puzzle swap and speed puzzle competition for a few years. My husband and I were finally able to fit it into our schedule yesterday. We traded a handful of puzzles and joined the competition. It was teams of 4 on a 500-piece Halloween themed puzzle. We were partnered with another random pair, a mother and daughter. We finished in about an hour and 18 minutes and came in second, about 3 minutes behind first and ten ahead of third. It was lots of fun!

gmwhite999 · 18 October 2026 16:58

This weekend’s gaming saw a return to one of my favourites and another horror themed RPG-in-a-box Eldritch Horror. This game saw the spy Trish Scarborough and the shamen Akachi Onyele investigating the mysteries of the Lurker at the Threshold, Yog-Sothoth, who I don’t recall facing in previous games.

The adventure began with Scarborough in central Russia, Onyele in South Africa, an active expedition in the Pyramids in Egypt, an open gate to another realm in Rome guarded by some cultists and our heroines investigating the Beyond One mystery. Scarborough first travelled to Istanbul, acquiring some kerosene and developing a formidable willpower courtesy of a lengthy introduction to some ancient Islamic teachings. Onyele took more direct action, making the long sea journey to Rome, overpowering the cultists and then closing the gate from the City of the Great Race on the other side. A fortuitous mythos card empowered the adventures more, a teleportation spell for the spy and a spirit dagger for the shaman, before a new gate opened at Buenos Aires guarded by Goat Spawn. While Scarborough continued her improvement training, followed by a scrap to foil thieves breaking into the Turkish parliament, Onyele exited the gate near Chukotka in Russian to research a place of great arcane power, and further clues to the Lurker’s intentions. Another gate spawned, this time in Tokyo, guarded by a zombie.

Scarborough travelled to Egypt and joined the expedition to the hidden throne room, recovering The Flute of the Outer Gods from deep within the tomb, while Onyele made it across the sea to Tokyo, defeating the zombie and venturing through the gate to the Great Hall of Celaeno, where her recollection of ancient sigils and confidence to the mystic library texts allowed her to close the gate, and travel onwards to Buenos Aires. The southern oceans became shrouded in mystery, with rumours of a hidden sect in the South Atlantic and investigation tip-offs of clues to be found among the South Pacific islands. As Onyele defeated the Goat Spawn in Buenos Aires and travelled through the gate to return to the City of the Great Race once more and translated some alien texts in their library to close the portal, Scarborough followed a clue into the Heart of Africa, narrowly escaping from cultists in a hidden village but gaining enough information to complete the first mystery, revealing the next challenge “Where The Old Ones Broke Through”.

Scarborough retreated to South Africa for some rest and fended off thieves who were trying to steal a strange puzzle box, while Onyele took the long sail to Arkham to encounter the new gate there, guarded by Shoggoth, who she evaded with the Mists of R’yleh spell. After closing the gate she sacrificed her remaining spells to complete the second mystery, opening the final trial of Arcane Understanding, before emerging in the middle of the South Pacific in search of another clue. A heat wave severely weakened the heroes while a new gate in Shanghai brought a zombie into the city.

While Onyele’s clue hunt resulted in strange forces pushing her ship to Sydney, Scarborough sailed into the South Atlantic to infiltrate a secret sect, succeeding in dismissing the rumour. As a Deep One emerged from the Shanghai gate to accompany the zombie there, Onyele discovered the Necronomicon in the middle of Sydney. She began her study to acquire more spells, and held talks with the local Theosophical Society who rewarded her with training on a healthier lifestyle. Scarborough crossed the Pacific Ocean to reach Buenos Aires, where she opened the puzzle box to find the Ruby of R’lyeh, before the world was threatened by a new danger: rumours of an unknown infectious outbreak from southern India.

Onyele prepared herself for the long voyage from Sydney to Shanghai, steeling herself with a newfound Blessing spell and refusing to a new weapon from the local constabulary. During this, Scarborough travelled up the Americas to Arkham, and used her Flute of the Outer Gods artifact to banish Shoggoth before learning Clairvoyance from one of the local asylum’s patients. As the world’s population rallied against the otherworldly threats and a new gate opened in San Francisco, the Vatican sent a missionary to aid Onyele, so they ventured to Shanghai together as Scarborough popped to the Bay Area to defeat the Dark Young guarding the gate and close that gate after tense negotiations with the ghouls surrounding the Tower of Koth. In Shanghai, Onyele defeated the zombie and Deep One with help from the missionary and the maniac’s trusty axe, exploring the gate into Lost Carcosa. There, she passed the insane visions of the waters of Lake Hali, before recalling the incantation required to seal the portal and close the gate. The final Mythos card forced a double dose of Bombay Belly for the heroines, and forced Onyele to cast her last spell to protect her ailing health. As the Flesh Ward saved her life, it also completed the final mystery - leading to a defeat for the plans of Yog-Sothoth and a win for the heroic duo, with the doom track only half way to its end.

Another lovely story game, if a little jumpy at times with its episodes and encounters. If I get to play it more then I might consider buying one of the expansions, although I’m not that bothered by extra maps and areas to explore and would be perfectly happy with some extra godly entities to confront and maybe a few more heroes to use.

COMaestro · 18 October 2026 23:20

Good to hear about Jisogi, as I was interested in it after Matt’s review. On the Christmas list it goes.

Marx · 19 October 2026 02:13

My buddy Nick had his birthday celebration today.

Now, full disclosure for any of you unaware, but I don’t have kids, and I don’t particularly like kids. I don’t understand them, they’re loud and intrusive and I can’t rationalize with them. Partially this is due to my upbringing (my parents were… traumatic, might be a good word to describe it… possibly “traumatizing”), partially it was years of working at my mom’s daycare, but regardless, I don’t “get” kids. I don’t judge my friends who have them, I know there is a wire in my head that’s not connected right, but yeah. Nick has 3 sons: Edward (6), Malcom (4), and James (2).

So “the plan” was to show up around 9am, when the kids would be heading out to a park with Nick’s wife for a couple hours, and then Heather would pass the kids off to three of their grandmothers (Heather’s mom, Nick’s mom, and Nick’s stepmom). Meanwhile, Nick invited me, Aaron, and Jared over to play a game during that time. That was “the plan.”

All of this to allow us to play Arydia until the cows came home. Three wrinkles immediately appeared:

The children were absolute terrors. Screaming, running around, ignoring Nick and Heather, grabbing things, and generally being a massive disruption as poor Heather tried to bundle them out the door for almost a full hour.
Aaron, for reasons I continue to not understand other than selective social blindness (and I want to be clear: I like Aaron) invited his wife, Kim. Arydia has a very firm 4 player limit, and Kim is… hmmm. She’s… disruptive when she’s not playing games? That’s not quite right… she’s disruptive when she is playing games, and very disruptive when she’s not. Asking questions constantly, starting stories while people are trying to take their turns, interrupting me while I’m trying to explain rules… Kim is… not my favourite person, but I do try to be nice to her since I like Aaron a lot and because Nick has asked me to be nice(r) to her since he also likes Aaron a lot. But why would you invite your wife when you know she can’t play the game and she’ll be as bad as the kids… gah. GAH! Gah. It’s FINE. It’s fine.
Nick originally invited Gavin instead of Jared, but Gavin never responded and so he invited Jared. And then, about ten minutes after the kids finally left for the park, Gavin shows up. Because of course he didn’t bother to respond and just showed up 2 hours late.

SIGH.

Okay, fine, it’s not my party, I’m just there to try and teach Arydia (which Nick bought years and years ago but has never gotten on the table). And we did manage to play for a couple hours… we didn’t get very far (basically out of the Tutorial Camp and to a nearby town), and didn’t get another fight after the Tutorial Fight (in which I was knocked unconscious)… but… hmmm.

I’m not sure Arydia is good. It’s flashy. It’s got great bits and the paper doll/Diablo way of putting on armour and stuff is kinda neat… but… a lot of it seems like faff for the sake of faff. Like, we found an inn, and rather than the inn just being on the card, we had to pull out a different card and put that on top of the first map card to show the inn inside, rather than the roof… but why? There was no reason to do that. And then there was a ghost in the attic, but the attic was a different card AND when we cleared out the ghost there was, you guessed it, another different card for the “now there’s no ghost here” attic.

I was… happy I didn’t buy it. It might be good, but Nick pointed out that it’s probably best with 2 (or in the words of the great designer Daryl Andrews: “The game works best with lower player counts. Ideal player count… zero.”)

Nick, being the sensitive and compassionate man that he is, declared we should stop playing Arydia and loop Kim and Gavin into games. Which we did. We pulled out Quacks of Quedlinburg, which we added Alchemists to, and it’s just so gosh darn good. Aided somewhat by the nice plastic tokens, but just a solid game in which I was thoroughly trounced (I think I finished around 60 or 70 points in last place, and first was around 120).

Then Gavin had to leave, but then Heather returned and managed to shuffle the kids off to their granmas. One of which (Nick’s mother) decided to park in the neighbour’s driveway… without telling the neighbour… or anyone else… or leaving her keys so that they could move her car. Boomers, man… (Not ALL Boomers, obviously, but SOME Boomers…).

Right, so then we played a bunch of Green Team Wins which was spectacular and simple fun, and then we played a final game of Magical Athletes which the group was… well, it started with Kim announcing authoritatively that a reviewer she trusts says the game is awful and unfun, so that was a great foot to start on (have I mentioned I’m not a huge fan of Kim? And Aaron is such a good guy, I just don’t see what he sees in her… she’s a joy-vampire), but by the end of the first round when the Scooter, Duellist, and the Sludge were all present (Sludge is -1 to all rolls, Scooter moves 1 space whenever somebody else’s power triggers, so somebody would roll, subtract 1 from the roll, the Scooter would move onto the space with the Duellist, Duellist would shout “DUEL!”, roll against the Scooter, win, and then the Scooter would move 1 space because of the duel… just a riot), oh and we had a round with the Centaur (move back opponents 2 spaces when he passes them) and the Banana (knock down opponents that pass him) AND the MOUTH (which missed eating lone racers like, five times, but always JUST barely)… anyway, by the end everyone was laughing and having a great time.

Take that, Kim.

Yes, yes, I’m petty and small. But…
(shakes fist)

Anyway. We then played a final round of Sushi Go Party (Maki, Soy sauce, Sashimi, Bento Box, Nigiri, Miso Soup, Fruit, and Dumplings), which was a nice way to finish the evening.

Overall, a very good time despite the hurdles and… unexpected elements (but not my party, so I will officially stop complaining about it now). And I’m glad to have tried Arydia and to be pretty sure that I’m very glad I don’t own it.

lalunaverde · 19 October 2026 04:30

After not playing games for like nearly 3 weeks(?), I went back playing two good ones

Container - 5 players. Now taht I’ve been playing with the offshore bank island several times now. I think it’s a terrible idea. The whole idea of Container is that you have to go through this multi-stage process without any vertical integration (meaning you can’t just buy your own stuff to progress it through the logistics chain). So you have to rely on other people for this. And the offshore bank pretty much allowing you to bypass that.

Hey guys! We have this game where there’s a lot of intricacies and depth on moving containers from the factories to the island. On and we have this intro version that we totally recommend you should play with that pretty much flattens those intricacies and depth. Oh and it adds more rules. Enjoy.

Puerto Rico - 4 players. Good fun. The OG edition seems to be the best for your money, the expansions are just bad.

Phil · 19 October 2026 12:08

Way off-topic for the thread, but I just wanted to say there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with not wanting kids (or “getting” them in general, which I suspect would go hand-in-hand for most people). Many people choose to have them; others do not; and I think it’s an excellent thing to know with certainty which side of that particular fence you’re on. I’d also say the only argument for “mis-wiring” is from a purely genetic standpoint of “successful genes must propagate” – but I think our accumulated knowledge and ability to understand and consciously override that programming is something which most likely sets humans apart from other species. You may be “wired differently” to many, but I’ll fight anyone who insists that you’re “wired wrong”. You’re good the way you are!

pillbox · 19 October 2026 15:58

I’ll add that “it takes a village to raise a child” really applies here. I’m not an expert, but children often exist in places and situations where they are rewarded for being children. Eventually, their cuteness will wear off and having interactions with people where the other party is not willing to forgive their awful behavior simply because they are cute and/or genetically linked is likely key to developing socially- because some day, they’ll be teenagers and the cuteness will be waning and their awful behavior will simply start being “repugnant and, possibly, borderline illegal”.

Whether you wish to be the poignant counterpoint to the child’s otherwise overly-permissive existence is entirely a different matter- avoid it at all costs if you like, but please know that every child needs to encounter someone that won’t put up with their BS, eventually… and you may be doing society a solid.

malkav11 · 19 October 2026 16:31

That was definitely my sense of Arydia, and I don’t know that I have been terribly impressed by their previous games either. I do enjoy some fancy production (outside of when it means minis,and Arydia definitely has those - including limbs you can detach so they have the right gear on the mini) and some of what Arydia is doing on that front seems nice but, I don’t want to be digging through trays or decks for purely cosmetic changes and I don’t want it to slow the game down. It should make the game feel nicer and smoother to play.

(On the cosmetic changes front, the Awaken Realms game Tamashii is a huge offender. There are like 20-something bodies you can fairly casually swap between and they are certainly mechanically different but that’s all on the card. There’s no reason to have standees for every single one of them or, horrifically, an entire regular game box worth of minis for every single one of them. They could and should have done like they did in ISS Vanguard where you have four generic poses of mini that represents any of the hundred odd crew members you could actually be playing.)

Marx · 19 October 2026 20:14

i rather like Xia, but there are a few too many half-baked ideas in that one… a lot of the concepts are great, but then the practice of them gets fiddly, or slow, but at its heart I still think it’s a pretty solid sandbox (probably the best sandbox-style game I’ve ever played, but that’s not a super extensive list… I’d say it’s better than “Merchants and Marauders” by a fair margin, and lightyears better than “Seafall”… and maybe better than “Western Legends”).

Arydia is just all half-baked. At least as near as I can tell. Content for the sake of content, not because it makes the game better. Definitely a sacrifice at the “Awakened Realms” altar of “We want to make money, not games”.

I want to be clear that I think both Heather and Nick are good parents, as near as I can tell. He doesn’t do the whole “Raising children is woman’s work” thing, he does legitimately do chores and parent the kids and they’re a team (as near as I can tell).

But my parents and I… specifically my father and I… had a very different relationship. I’m going to spoiler tag the following bit because of some physical abuse I received when I was 7 or 8, feel free to skip it: So when I was around 8 years old, I did something that my dad really didn’t like and to teach me a lesson, he broke my arm. I don’t remember what the lesson was supposed to be… if I had to guess I probably talked back to him, because he hated that, but that’s a guess. I just remember he took me to the hospital to get a cast on my arm and sat with me while the doctor was inspecting my arm and didn’t say anything the whole time. I told the doctor I fell down the stairs because I knew, somehow, that you’re supposed to say that when you don’t want the doctors to ask too many questions. That was the worst of it, but he was a very, very angry man when I was young. The moral of the story is that I am constantly amazed that Nick’s immediate response isn’t to smack his kids. Like, I don’t think about it at the moment, but there’s a part of my brain that is always saying “Huh. You’re… you’re just talking to them? And disciplining them, and setting boundaries, but without inflicting serious physical trauma? I didn’t… I didn’t know you could do that…”

Why, yes, my therapist and I have talked about that several times.

Anyway, I do my best to be an adult with his kids, to talk to them how I think I’d have wanted to be talked to, but you can’t really rationalize with a 6-year-old (or at least I can’t). I try to set boundaries and a lot of the time I’ll push off the question to Nick (“Can I have a treat?” “What does your dad say?”) so that I’m not letting the kids have things his parents wouldn’t want him to have, but yeah.

Thank you, everyone, for the positive responses like this. I was always terrified that I’d be a parent like my father, and when I realized that I could choose to just… not… that was a good, good day. Like a weight of expectation was lifted off of me.

The fact that my father and brother both say that I would be an awful father, strangely, helps. Because I know the kind of dad they are, and I know the damage they inflicted on me (and I can now see my brother inflicting on the first of his kids he’s stuck around for). So the fact that they think I’d be bad at it…

In the words of Shepherd Book:

“Coming from you that means… almost nothing.”

malkav11 · 19 October 2026 20:44

That isn’t how I would describe Awaken Realms, who have made a preponderance of my favorite boardgames of all time and whose projects I would still be backing consistently if they got over their love of LLMs and I had any space, but to each their own.

Really the only people who have a higher hit rate for me are Into the Unknown and that’s partly because they’ve shipped all of two games so far. (But I couldn’t handle them making stuff at the rate AR do.)

SteveB_uk · 19 October 2026 21:05

Just to stay off-topic on the kids thing for a second: I too was born without the wanting-kids gene.

And there’s a clip in Season 1 of comedy detective show “Lucifer” where the adorable six year-old runs up to him and hugs him around the waist, and Lucifer reacts by freezing in panic, bringing his arms up out of the way while stammering, then saying “Er… fetch!” and throwing a toy.

It has been remarked that this is how I am around kids.

MarkSP · 19 October 2026 21:54

I was playing Pipeline over the weekend, and had a similar feeling. I really wanted to like the game, but as a boardgame experience it’s pretty terrible. 4 players apologising to each other for hours because playing pipemania under time pressure when everyone is waiting for you is hard. Would love an electronic asymmetric version, but it feels like a game which is theoretically perfect, but the act of playing it with other players is painful.

Also played:

Queens Dilemma

Slightly less of a shine than the original, simply because of how overbaked it is whilst keeping the arbitrary decisions the same. At one point there was a sequence of overwhelming votes for order and stability (against my wishes) which resulting in a very anarchic story ending. Kind of checked out there story wise. Enjoyed it, but only because I played with 5 other decent people who I would have enjoyed playing anything with. Honestly, just played Arabian Nights if that’s your thing. Must admit I loved coming up with names again. In the Kings Dilemma I was Budley Chuddington, and now it’s the turn of Elinor Bovril.

Factory Funner

Just great fun. Quick, light but thinky and everyone laughs at the terirble pipe contortions. This is a good game.

Marx · 20 October 2026 17:43

I am curious about this.

Let’s start with the basics: yes, any board game company leaning into LLMs for any reason is a travesty. Or… what were those stupid digital art things… bitcoins? No… whatever, everyone knows what I mean, and they are awful and stupid, let’s move on.

Awakened Realms designed the (IMO) legitimately good Nemesis. Obviously just Aliens with all the labels covered by masking tape, but still… neat.

But: did the infection cards really need a transparent red plastic “scanner”? Did fire and slime and broken need acrylic tokens? Did you need a traitor mechanic that specifically prevented attacking other players? Was the randomized layout of the ship an important gameplay mechanic, and if so why wouldn’t you change the setting to make it make sense (rather than hyper-specific amnesia that only affects your memory of the map)? And the token bag… gods, what a mess. Pull out a token, compare it to the chart on page 17 and nowhere else, maybe put the token back in the bag, maybe not, maybe spawn a baddie or two, maybe not…

And, to be clear, I like Nemesis. Even the tortured campaign system was a neat idea. But there was so much… half-baked-ness? Ideas that were still unformed. And then the expansion came out, and then more expansions, and then more plastic, and then they needed rules for all the plastic, and then ANOTHER expansion…

Okay, fine. One example, a pattern does not make.

Lords of Hellaw was… okay. Confused, a bit muddled in what you are trying to do and how the game wants you to do that, but I didn’t hate it.

Lords of Ragnarok was awful. There were three victory conditions and one of them was mathematically impossible even with perfect draws, perfect information, and ideal circumstances. I think they fixed it in an errata? I dunno, no need to play it again.

Tainted Grail punished you for exploring, which the game was nominally about. Explore the world! Interact with the NPCs!.. oh, you took too long and you lose. Played once, never again.

I think at this point I concluded that AR was all about big, shiny games that gave you lots of stuff, but they didn’t have an actual game designer on staff any more. Which, to be completely fair, I would say the same abour Games Workshop and they are the biggest game company on Earth, so from a pure capitalist perspective I get it. And there are lots of people who obviously love GW and their products, and I suspect there is a fair number of people who love Awakened Realms.

But it’s one thing to say you enjoy a flawed product, and another thing to say that the flawed thing is actually not flawed. I love “Star Wars” and almost all of its cinematic glory and television shows! But I would never argue that Empire Strikes Back has a coherent plot… and the Force? Such a cheat. I love the stories, but I can also look at them objectively enough to realize that they aren’t well-written 98% of the time.

I feel that Awakened Realms games must fall into that category. I’m not saying you are “wrong” to enjoy them, but surely… maybe?.. you can see how the company’s goal is to make madsive piles of filthy lucre by selling mountains of plastic, and then stapling on the most barebones of rules to those?

Maybe it’s just me! Also possible. And I want to be very clear that I am not trying to belittle or insult your tastes if you happen to like Awakened Realms, even if they are your favourites! Just a bit bewildered.

EDIT: I forgot that I also tried to play Etherfields and we all hated it and gave up before finishing, except for the super-rich dude who bought it who insisted he was having a great time and it would get good “in one more turn.” Maybe he was right! But yeah, no.

malkav11 · 21 October 2026 17:24

I feel like a lot of this is simply subjective taste. I haven’t played Lords of Hellas except once in the perfunctory solo mode or Ragnarok at all, so can’t compare there. But Tainted Grail was incredibly rewarding to explore in our experience and we did basically everything that was possible given the branching nature of some of the storylines. A really cool narrative with lots of tough decisions and lots of narrative, and an interesting and unique combat system albeit not enough to sustain a game experience all on its own. Top 3 for me easy. Some of the resource stuff was a little under tuned, we were absolutely flooded with Reputation and nothing to spend it on (even Beor’s cards burned it less than we got per fight). And advancement kind of ran out of steam before the end of the game. But minor quibbles.

Etherfields for me absolutely nailed the dream logic feeling it was going for (which I desperately love) and had a lot of really cool scenarios. I didn’t love the card mechanics and again advancement ran out of steam before the end but they’re adequate to a setup that needs to be really flexible as to what you’re actually doing and is certainly way more fun than the mechanics in say Betrayal at House on the Hill, which similarly needs to accommodate insanely disparate scenarios.

ISS Vanguard really nails exploring a bunch of different and imaginative space sci-fi scenarios and the ship management phases are really satisfying until, once again, you kind of run out of stuff to do in it (I think the big thing is AR doesn’t sufficiently account for completionists like us). The dice mechanics aren’t the most innovative thing in the world but they stayed fresh enough for the campaign.

Nemesis I have played very little of but delivers by far the most compellingly thematic version of that sort of sci-fi Alien-inflected horror of any boardgame I have played and imo the mechanics all click along quite well. (With the caveat that I hate traitor mechanics so we have only played it coop with the coop goals, though I did run a forum game with the semi-traitor original mechanics and nobody had a chance to betray anyone because the situation was too fucked, so I concluded it wasn’t really that additive anyway.)

I have done like four or five scenarios of Dragon Eclipse and it’s very cute and has fun lightweight exploration and Pokemon style tactical combat.

Grimcoven’s asymmetric characters and dice placement mechanics have been fantastically tense and enjoyable to explore although I think the high difficulty is likely to be an issue for many.

Tamashii on limited exposure has a neat theme and cool body swapping and grid manipulation mechanics.

The Great Wall’s combination of player powers, worker placement, and tower defense was a lot of fun both in semi and full coop (I obviously prefer full).

Stalker really captured everything I have enjoyed about the videogame over the seven or so missions we played.

Just better, more deeply thematic experiences than so much else I have encountered and often very cool themes compared to the generic fantasy or bland real world themes many other companies resort to.

Not completely perfect generally, and I think people who are mostly invested in mechanical design and don’t rate theme would find a lot of their work very frustrating, but I am mostly the reverse while still generally wanting a certain level of depth and complexity. I also am extremely annoyed by their love of minis and certainly think that’s a big driver for both them as a company and many of their fans, but at least past a certain point they did offer (and I got) standee versions.

Acacia · 22 October 2026 14:09

Well, I would recommend some of the alternate buildings. Many of fhe OG buildings are just dead space on the board. Unfortunately, the alternate buildings are rarely that much better, but they do make the market a little more diverse.

I’ve likely mentioned this before, but a broad study of violent criminals found just one similarity between all of them - a lack of unstructured play. Either no play at all or tightly governed activities.

Now, sometimes I watch my kids fighting and know I could help them sort it but… you just gotta let it ride…

Man, it’s a skill that takes practice. Just like learning TI4. I spent two summers as a camp counselor and at the time I thought maybe I’m just goofing off, trying to be a kid for a bit longer. And I was. But as a parent I also look back and think about how valuable those cycles were. You get 5-7 kids, try to do well by them, make a lot of mistakes and then after two weeks … miracle of miracles … they leave. And you get to take all those lessons learned to a completely blank slate and try again for another two weeks. That fail/reflect/start over cycle was an amazing gift.

And I’m so glad that, when I had a 10 year old utterly melting down and I did all the wrong things that it was someone else’s kids, and now I can do a bit better on my own.

Acacia · 22 October 2026 14:21

They have this - it’s in BGA alpha. I don’t know how close to beta it is but I’d love to play with literally anyone. There’s also an unofficial but Courtney-endorsed automa on BGG named Ludwig which is quite good.

Pipeline is 100% a game that needs to grow on your. The pipe puzzle gets faster and also your scores may increase by a factor of 5x as you figure out the economy.

I’d agree that my first play was underwhelming. It grew from there to permanent collection with a few cycles.