As we all slowly melt away, we also cross the half way mark of this year.
This month finally saw the completion of our garage conversion (sort of) and so we’ve finally been getting back into gaming again. Of course the heat doesn’t help as all we want to do most nights is collapse on the sofa with a fan in our face while we watch TV.
But the month was still good with gaming. We got a lot of our new UKGE purchases played early in the month, and a weekend that saw us attend a loal game group coupled with heading out of Hampshire to visit family added a few more new games.
Going forward, we have a few gamer visits planned over the next couple of months, so lots more gaming resides in our future. But for now, lets see what turned up and what was new in the month of June.
SKARE BRAE – This one actually arrived with my neighbour while we were away at the UKGE at the end of May, but as soon as we got home on the Sunday afternoon (June 1st) and dumped all of our bags indoors, I popped next door to grab my latest Kickstarter arrival. We are big fans of a lot of the releases that come from Garphill Games and I was immediatly drawn in by SKARA BRAE with it’s large number of wooden resources. I also grabbed the Folded Space insert that came out at the same time, and it definitely looks to speed up set up.
CASTLE COMBO – We played this last year on a visit to Nick (@boardgamereviewuk) and thought it would be a great gift for the in laws. We’ve played it again a few times since then and I enjoyed it so much, I may have picked up a copy for us when I was in the Southampton Waterstones after we’d been to the cinema.
TENBY – We’d already had a play throughof this at UKGE, but this was us getting our copy to the table, and it was the first UKGE 2025 purchase we played. It’s such a chill card drafting game that sees you expand out a street (or streets) while paying attention to each cards scoring objective. It uses the same sort of drafting mechanic as KINGDOMINO. Really like this one and definitely glad we grabbed a copy.
SAKANA STACK – This had a lot of buzz at UKGE and we picked it up early on the Friday to see what all the fuss was about. It’s sort of like SCOUT in that your playing down cards in sets of numbers, but the next player has to go higher to beat it and claim cards as points. It took us a moment or two to wrap our heads around the concept (there are some great YouTube videos for this) and then another few minutes to get our head around the 2-player variant, which I think was added further down the line in the games develepment. This is usually something that doesn’t work out well, but a few plays in we both liked it. Of course, I expect the game is even better at higher counts, and I’m looking forward to trying it out as it was originally intended, but it’s still a great small box card game for us to enjoy.
TIC TAC TREK – This was the first or two new small tin games we picked up from AlleyCat Games. This one is a super simple variant on TIC TAC TOE. Here you are still trying to get that three in a row, but your choice of where to go is dictated by the terrain tile you draw from a bag. When you succeed, you place a camp fire down and this are what the scoring revolves around. What I think is quite clever is that you need empty spaces around your camp fire to score the most points. This means that you have to avoid tripping over your self and placing your own camp fires too close to each other, but it can also lead to players doing so on purpose to minimise your points. It’s a quick, easy to play travel game.
BARBECUBES – This is a varient on TINDERBLOX, but instead of buiding straight up, you’ll be placing small pieces of wood that represent classic BBQ food across a grill. It’s another tin box dexterity game that just plays on a flatter surface instead of stacking up, and I think I prefer it over the towering camp fire construction of the Tinderblox series. And though we didn’t get it, there is a Vegetarian version.
SAIL – Sometimes I have a game in the back of my mind that I’m very interested in, but I could not tell you why. SAIL is one such game, and it joined my Expo wishlist out of nowhere. It’s a clever little co-op Trick Taking game that sees you pulling a ship back and forth between the players while it carries on along the board to it’s destination. We’d tried co-op Trick Taking before with THE FOX AND THE FOREST: DUET, and while it was okay, it never really called out to be played. SAIL on the other hand is very interesting and it looks gorgeous. There are sceanrios to work through that get harder, and we might have been upsold the mini expansion and the very nice looking wooden upgrade pieces.
FLEET: THE DICE GAME – Since I managed to grab a copy of THREE SISTERS, we’ve been working though the Roll ‘n’ Write games from Matt Riddle and 25th Centruy Games. But FLEET: THE DICE GAME, the first in the loose series, had always been harder to track down. It’s maybe the simplist of the four games so far, but still complex compared to other games in the genre. As always, players can take different paths and still score close, and you can never spread across everything because there are a lot of places to mark of.
URBION – Although this is an older game in the Oniverse series, it’s been hard to get in the wild until it’s recent rerelese. Since I played CYBIRON, it’s been tough for any other Oniverse game to take that top spot, and while URBION doesn’t succeed, it plays well enough that it’s a possible top three contender for the series. You’re playing cards from your hand to balance out the numbers on the good cards with the numbes of the bad cards that sit on either side of the city cards There’s a nice risk / reward as you can save up completed cities to trigger them together, but on any card draw you could reveal a Nightmare card and make things worse, usually where you don’t want it. I’m definitely going to be playing this solo game more.
SKARA BRAE – The latest release from Garphill Games sees a whole bunch of resourses being gathered and spent. Players use different tiles to gather things and then use them to make more or upgrade worker spaces, but there is always the issues with limits on the storage that could cost you negative points at game end. I really enjoyed this one, and it plays smoothly. I like that you gain a worker each round, so your turns grow the further into the game you go. Another great addition to our Garphill Games collection.
RIVER OF GOLD – I jumped into a BGA invite for this one as I wanted to see if we should add it to our collection. Unfortunately, learning a game on BGA doesn’t always go well. For the most part I think I know what I was doing, though I missed on fullfilling contracts until about halfway through the game. I like the theme, the art, and the components (from review videos I’ve watched), but I’m not sure if I’d get it without another play or two.
SKYRISE – This was taught to us at the local game meet up by the couple we were gaming with. It was the retail version, and not the deluxe version, but I think it still looked really nice with the wooden building pieces. It’s an interesting game that sees you bidding by placing your buidings in a growing path from the starting piece each turn. All players have buildings of different values, and you can see these values. It adds an intesresting tactical level to proceedings because you know if you can outbid someone. But there’s also area control across the five sections of the city to think about with your placement.
OK PLAY – This was another game we played at the game meetup, but one I did not really enjoy. A simple game of ‘connect 5’ with pieces but no board, this had four of us placing our coloured squares in a growing grid trying to get five in a row. I can’t really say why I didn’t like it, but it didn’t really do anything and was more of an activity as we placed all of our pieces and then moved on to just resitting our pieces until someone won because we all missed that they would win on the next turn.
ROME IN A DAY – My brother-in-law picked this up at the end of 2023 and I’ve been wanting to try it since. So when, on our last visit, he asked what I’d like to play, it was the first thing I thought of. It’s a tile drafting game at it’s core, and one that is over in about 20 minutes. But it’s a lot of fun with it’s ‘I cut / you chose’ mechanic as you each try to gather tiles from the five different regions and place them within you area to score the most based on the buildings on / near the tiles.
- The final day (Sunday) of UKGE was absolute bliss.
- The first game session in our (almost) completed game room conversion.
- Appearing on ep126 of the Meeple2Meeple podcast.
Always Play Blue 