And that was April 2023

We go from being a quarter of the way through this year, to now being a third. Time, as always, moves fast.

With a wedding to plan for, and board games being a big part of the event (obviously), we’ve looked at adding some Party Games to our collection ready for the big day. As most of our collection is either 2-player only, or too complex for a teach at a party, we thought it was a good excuse to add some games we wouldn’t normally own. And, as we’re a few months away, we’ve started using my future inlaws as test pilots.

We’ve also stepped into the world of board game meet ups. I’m quite anxious when meeting strangers, so I was more than a little nervous about meeting strangers. But I’m glad I made the leap as it was great fun playhing with people as into board games as we are.

And thanks to a passing comment from a fellow Instagram board gamer, I’ve now somehow ended up on BGA.

With these three things converging on the month of April, it means a lot of new games were played outside of our normal 52×1 challenge. So this months new game coverage will be a little more epic than usual as I try to cover them all.

KICKSTARTER ARRIVALS

Not a bad month for arrivals. We have the super impressive SOLAR 175 from Cogito Ergo Meeple turn up. We absolutely loved their previous game, FLOATING WORLD, and I didn’t hesitate to back this one. It’s a sci-fi legacy game where corporations are trying to control the Solar System. I grabbed the noeprene mat, sleeves, and spin off game GONZA INDEX too. Can’t wait to try this one. The production is amazing.

Going the complete other direction with a super small card game, I also got FOR NORTHWOOD. I really enjoy ORCHARD from Side Room Games; it’s one of my favourite solo games. So I was intrigured when they announced their next game was a solo Trick Taking game. Could that even work? Yes. Yes it does.

Keeping with the small solo game theme, I also recieved my copy of NATUROPOLIS from ButtonShy Games. It’s the third in the ‘Opolis’ series after the smash hit SPRAWLOPOLIS and its followup AGROPOLIS. While it may have the same feel as the previous two with just a few twists, I couldn’t pass up the chance to tack on the ULTIMATOPOLIS and play with all three sets. Should be fun.

NEW GAMES OF THE MONTH (including our 52×1)

I’m a fan of The Mico’s artwork and his style led me into the North Sea games when I was getting into the hobby. But I also followed him to the Valeria series from Daily Magic Games. I now have all the games, but to date I still haven’t gotten round to playing every one of them, including SHADOW KINGDOMS OF VALERIA. This time you’re the creatures who are fighting to see who should lead their retaliation against the nations of Valeria. Shadow Kingdoms sees you drafting dice and completing assignments. It all looks amazing thanks to the art and design. It was easy to pick up and I like the dice drafting where the weaker dice give you other benifits for purchasing.

As I mentioned in the opener, we’re gathering a small collection of party games for our wedding next year, and this month we tried out our first with JUST ONE. The game sees you working together to produce clues for one player to guess. Trouble is, if you come up with the same one word clue as another player, they both get cancelled out. I’ve played at 4 and 7 and it’s been a lot of fun. Smaller player counts can see you being left with a single clue word, or even none at all, which is just hilarious when you’re supposed to guess out of thin air. Definitely works best at higher counts. We’ve had a lot of laughs with it.

My future inlaws suggested we try their copy of POETRY FOR NEANDERTHALS when we visited them. Another party game, this one sees players giving clues to their team but only being able to use single sylable words. You immediately sound stupid as you fumble for the right words to use while being against the clock. I took a few turns to get into it but we were all in sticthes for most of the game.

My friend lent me her copy of SPIRE’S END after I expressed interest in trying it out. It plays like an old school ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ book, but instead it’s cards. Big cards. With beautiful art on them. It’s solo, so one Sunday monring I woke up and spent a couple of hours experiencing an interesting story with a clever combat mechanic. It did however fall flat for me right at the end as a basic choice of A or B was all that stood between a bunch of interesting endings and a pretty crap one. And I got the crap one. It left a bitter taste in the play, not because of the sudden death, but because of the lack of any interaction in the choice, whether it be a skill check, or based on something gained or lost in the journey. Instead it was ‘left or right’. No hint, no leading or misleading. Just 50/50. I’m glad I played it, and, after reading the other branches, I would have rated it higher with any other outcome. But while the journey was interesting, the destination wasn’t.

I’ve mentioned GLOOMHAVEN just a few times here and there. Oh, and it’s my number one game of all time. So FROSTHAVEN has it’s work cut out for it. And what a game it is. Enough of the original for us to hit the ground running, but enough different so as to give us something fresh. I’ll admit, as the rule learner and game teacher of the Blue house, I was a little flustered in the early games, especially when that first Outpost phase rolled up. But getting through it (with some assistance from Paul Grogan’s excellent video) and we where adventuring through like old times.

Another game lent to us by my friend was BRASS: BIRMINGHAM. With all the chatter exploding when it hit the BGG number one spot, I decided it was about time we saw what all the fuss was about. I’ll put up the disclaimer that we’ve only played twice, and it was at 2-player. Overall I thought it was a good game. I liked the building of the networks but making sure you we’re in a good position for the second era when you lose all your connections and early buildings. I did like it, and while I would jump to play it at two again, I’d be very interested in playing a game of Brass at a higher count.

FOR NORTHWOOD is a solo Trick Taking game with cute animal art and a clever way to play the genre at just one. It has a vibe of THE FOX AND THE FOREST where it’s less about winning all the tricks, and more about winning a specific number of them. And at one location, none at all. My first play was a bit haphazard as I floundered through the mechanics. But the game slowly shows you that the character abilities are key. When and how to use them each round can make or break a game.

We’ve had SEASONS in our collection for a couple of years and it’s slowly been shoved to the back by newer games and never played. But with my #30DaysOfDice coming up in June, I needed more dice games played and this one definitely fit the bill. Resource managment and card playing, this game is a lot of fun and a little bit cutthroat as you try to end the third year of the contest with the most prestiage. The couple of games we’ve played have been won with a specific card, so I’m intetrested if we can have a vcitory without it shopwing up. I could potentially grab one or both expansions to add more cards in.

We’ve wanted to get BOOP as soon as we spotted it. A big chunk of our collection is 2-player only, born from the early days of the Pandemic, and this cat themed, checkers like game look right up our street. We have been waiting (im)patiently for it’s UK release, which looks right round the corner now, but in the meantime, it was one of the first games we tried out on BGA and it was as fun as we’d hoped.

LOCO MOMO was another game we tried on BGA. This one was picked by fiance, most likely based off of it’s cute looking cover. It’s drafting and placing for points. I think it’s pretty simple, but to be honest, I had no idea what I was doing and lost before I knew how the game ended. People seem to like this one, but I’ll be avoiding it from now on. Don’t think it’s for me.

At our Saturday board game meet up we met some amazing people who we’d never met in real life before. Two of these, Sam and Kirsty, were kind enough to teach us ATLANTIS RISING. I didn’t know too much about it, but it quickley became apparent that it was FORBIDDEN ISLAND on steroids. I really liked the risk reward of going for a lower required roll, but being at risk of that tile flooding and you losing the action.

After that, we went into SPYFALL, a game that reminds me of A FAKE ARTIST GOES TO NEW YORK. All players take a card that shows a location, except one player whose card just says Spy. Then players ask each other questions based on the shared location, while trying to work out who the Spy is. It was quite fun, though I was the Spy on the first round, which is funny when you have no concept of how to hide. Apparently I thought it was okay to hang out in a Supermarket for two weeks. Lesson learned.

Big thanks to @boardgamereviewuk for letting us try out a prototype for upcoming Kickstater MYCELIA. It’s a sort of area control networking game where your trying to spread your Mushrooms out and carry them through their lifecycle while other players are getting in your way. I did struggle to get going after being hemed in, but my partner kept out of the conflict across the growing board and did well enough to win.

We played a demo of GONZA INDEX with the designers last year at UKGE. It was a lot of fun, but the finished product is way more impressive. Big chunky dice. Metal credits markers. The game itself is all about market manipulation. You’re trying to control corperations, and then make them worth the most. My partner is very good at this one, with a mix of lucky rolls and clever placement. I think I went agressive too late and it left me with little wiggle room. Great game, and we can’t wait to settle down soon and get stuck into its big brother, SOLAR 175.

I just missed out on the HEAT: PEDAL TO THE METAL hype towards the end of last year, so I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for reprint news. As soon as I saw it pop up in stock I grabbed a copy. A mix of FORMULA D and FLAMME ROUGE, players use their deck of speed cards to race around one of four tracks, all while trying to control the Heat building up in their engine. It looks simple, but take a few gambles and then try and undo the damage, and there’s some nice tactics in play trying to get around the track. A big plus is the AI deck which is super smooth and lets us enjoy the game at just 2.

We’ve enjoyed SPRAWLOPOLIS and AGROPOLIS from ButtonShy Games, so why not add recent Kickstarter NATUROPOLIS to the collection. It’s more of the same, with a few extras like Camps. It looks the prettiest of the trilogy though, and I can’t wait to try an Ultimopolis mega game with all three together.

SPACESHIPPED is another ButtonShy solo game and one I keep meaning to add to one of the many Kickstarters I do. Instead I just went on their website and ordered it. It’s a really clever game where each card has five uses, meaning that the 18 card rule for these wallet games is circumnavigated to make the game feel more intricate than you’d expect. I enjoyed the market manipuation and the random events to keep you on your toes. I managed a win on my first try (skin of my teeth), but I don’t expect that to be the norm.

And finally we end with another game we’ve bought for our Wedding day gaming. DEATH BY COCONUTS is all about betting on death statistics. Each turn you’ll have three random stats to decide with you think is the biggest killer. You place between one and three of your tokens on the one you think is highest, and when revealed, you move as many spaces as you bet. And if you are wrong, you’re moving backwards. Most of the fun in this comes from the discussions and disbelief around the statistics. Should be a lot of fun in a big group next year.

20×5 CHALLENGE

Powering through the challenge and, with the fifth play of GANZ SCHON CLEVER, we hit the 50% mark. We also ticked off AKROPOLIS as complete too. We’re planning a Bank Holiday gamathon for May where we just pick of 20×5 games to play, so we should make great progress before the next post.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Starting our Wedding Party Game shopping.
• Finlly beginning our FROSTHAVEN campaign.
• Falling into BGA at last.
• First and second ever board game group meet ups.
• Getting my first victory at FINAL GIRL.