We started this month with another board game meet up, this time with @getintogames and @mrsgetintogames so a lot of new games got played. I also got to teach them DEAD OF WINTER, one of my favourite games, which was nice. I nearly got my first ever Traitor victory in that, but the pesky dice decided to let all my people move around unhindered in the final round.
Two weeks later we returned to the same part of the country for MollyCon 2025. This gathering, organised by @getintogames and @mrsgetintogames, sees a bunch of us Instagram gamers get together and play a whole bunch of of games. As always, we played our annual game of SCYTHE with @boardgamewaffle and this time we finally managed to have the 7-player game we’ve been chasing for a few years now. It was a lot of fun and time flew by.
We also enjoyed a games day with a couple of our D&D group where I finally got to try AEON’S END at more than 2-player (spoiler: it was fine, but I’d never do it again), and then rounded out the month with a visit from @board.game.family.uk and @boardgamingwithmyfamily
Suffice to say, I’ll be covering a lot of games in this month’s blog. We managed 90 plays across 65 games during August, one of our highest for the year. And September looks to be just as epic.
MEN-NEFER – We really, really enjoyed our first play of this when @boardgamemeeple taught us on a visit last month, and we were looking around to grab our own copy when a good friend informed us that he had a spare copy to sell. Needless to say we immediately accepted, and even managed our first 2-player game the day after it hit our shelves.
The South Tigris Expansions – Due to the lack of a job, our Kickstarter backings are few and far between. But a company that I don’t hesitate to support are Garphill games, and we have been looking forward to this collection of expansions for the South Tigris games. One expansion for each game, plus the Moonsaga expansion that allows you to play the trilogy back-to-back, in the same way as the RuneSaga and TomeSaga boxes. Using these is something we’ve not tried yet, but I’d really like to soon.
PRET-A-PORTE – Like a lot of board gamers in the UK, I didn’t hesitate to jump feet first into the epic Kienda sale that sprung up from no where at the end of July. I used the opportunity to grab a couple of games I had been semi keen on for a long while now. The first, PRET-A-PORTER, is a Worker Placement game set in the fashion industry. My favourite Genre paired with a unique theme.
RAGUSA – The second game I grabbed in the Kienda sale was this building and trading game. It has a unique mechanic to its resources, and the slow building of the city. I’ve watched a few How To Plays, and I can see that the resource mechanic might take a few turns to grasp how it works, but it does look interesting, and comes recommended by @kayplaysgames
GALILEO GALILEI – We played this at MollyCon 2025, and by the next morning I’d ordered if from Magic Madhouse. It was a really good first play leaving a great impression on us both. We had it back to the table five days after that first game.
MESSINA 1347 – Following a mention from @midlandmeeple, I took a harder look at this game and was hooked from the first How To Play video. But, returning to the Kienda sale almost two weeks later, I worried it wouldn’t be there. Thankfully it was and now we have our own copy.
ADVENTUROUS – I backed a handful of ButtonShy games this year so far. Last month saw CASINOPOLIS and now we have another overlapping card placement game. This time though you’ll be following a route and trying to cover certain icons to claim cards.
DIONYSIA – Delays in delivery meant that the ButtonShy game I backed before ADVENTUROUS (see above) turned up two days after it. This time round it’s a 2-player Ancient Greek themed game set around putting on dramtic plays. It constantly amazes me what designers come up with when contained by only 18 cards.
FORKS (2nd EDITION) – Mere minutes after arriving at the home of @getintogames and we were sat down being taught this small card game. It sees you drafting and passing cards, all while trying to manipulate a market of cards to give each of the five colours a positive or negative point value at the end of the game. Why are you doing this? Because you’ll also be selecting cards to keep and these will be worth plus or minus points at games end depending on how that market finishes.
I’ve played a few games like this, and it’s not really a mechanic I enjoy. The almost random nature of the final market positions and how quickly things can be undone for you just because a player is getting rid of a card at random, means it’s hard to have any strategy. But for some reason I really liked how it worked in FORKS. The drafting and passing means there’s a tight little decission space because you’re going to be giving another player the cards you don’t take.
Probabaly not one I’d own, but I would definitely play again.
PINA COLADICE – A mix of ROLL FOR IT! and YAHTZEE, here you’re rolling dice to claim tiles. The differences here are that 1) the tiles stay put, 2) a second player can also claim the same tile, and 3) there is only one set of dice between the players. It was a lot of fun to play. You’ll start working together to block players on tiles you may not want because four in a row is another victory condition. The game comes with more tiles than needed in a game so there is a nice amount of replayabilty. There is also an extra thing you can add that gives you a positive or negative outcome on a turn when you can’t place a token on a tile. Overall it’s a good game, the only negative being that it can take a while each turn to see where you can place your dice each roll because you have to check 16 different placement conditions.
DEEP REGRETS – There had been a lot of back and forth on this game following it’s release. In some corners of the internet it was the next big thing and everyone seemed to be raving about it. But on the other side, people we’re complaining about it’s lack of agency, it’s repetativeness, and asking why it was showing up a lot in the second hand market if it was so good.
An odd one, indeed. After just a single play, I can easily say that I did enjoy the playthrough, enough that I’d play it again if there was a space at the table. But it also went on quite long at 4-player (our game of DEAD OF WINTER was only 10mins longer) and I don’t think I’d ever need to own it. I feel it could be short, and I’d maybe alter the shop phase to be a standard action at the end of each round as opposed to making it an entire round.
ZOO VADIS – I’ve been wanting to try ZOO VADIS since I saw the SU&SD review. It’s a clever game where you’re all playing agauinst each other, but you’ll need to work together on occasion. Each player has an asymetric ability that they cannot use on themselves. Instead it is used as a bargening chip when making deals to get votes. The aim of the game is to reach the top of the board and get into the star enclosure while having the most points accrued throughout the game. If you don’t have at least one animal meeple in, you get zero. And there are only five spots, so you could block other players out if you get more than one of your animals in there. It’s clever, and doesn’t outstay it’s welcome. The only issue with it is that you need the right players. Similar to something like CHINATOWN, if a player doesn’t want to make deals, it can stall the game for several other players and not work at all.
FRACTURED SKY – This game has the production values expected by something put out by IV Studios. It sees player blind bidding on various locations on the board in the hope of gathering small chunks of moon rock. But, at the start of the round you don’t know where most of this precious material has landed, and so you need to use resources to peak at certain cards that give you information to help deduce. You can also spend resources to improves your attack power and gathering prowess. Production wise it’s a thing of beauty, and it’s a game that I’d join if another player was needed, but I’m not sure I’d chase to play again. It’s an interesting game, but not one for me.
SHALLOW SEA – Every now and then a game comes along that threatens to break my brain. SHALLOW SEA is the latest in the long line. Each turn you draft a reef tile and a fish token, very much in the style of CASCADIA. You then place these on your personal sea board in the best way to eventually score the reef tiles you are gathering based on the colours of the fish that surround them and the scoring conditions they display.
It was a lot for my head to take in. To be fair to my elderly grey matter, it was the six game learnt that day, but I was really struggling with understanding the scoring rules around tile placement and I ended the game with a lot of unfullfilled tiles on my board. Part of the frustration came from what was available to draft. While you can use star fish tokens to draft a non paired tile and token (again, like CASCADIA), if the colour fish you need doesn’t come out the bag each refill phase, you’re just “treading water” and still taking on fish and tiles you might not want.
Overall I can see a good game in SHALLOW SEA, one that I understand people enjoy. I don’t think it’s a bad game. It’s just not one that works for me. Glad to have tried it though.
MIDDLE AGES – I’d heard a bunch of things about this one. A lot of people love it, but there is a mix of thoughts on the take-that side of things. I think if you have the right people, it can be super fun. But I was also surprised by how little takethat was in the game, and how impersonal it is.
This is a good thing. No one is getting purposely targeted. You can see who’s likely to be losing out if/when someone takes a certain ‘negative’ tile. So it’s more up to the players to avoid being a target than feeling like it’s a personal attack.
The game has a KINGDOMINO style draft (taking stronger tiles puts you later in turn order for the next round). As with KINGDOMINO, you can also see what tiles are coming up next. The tiles you draft are placed on your kingdom board with a satisfying neatness as each type is cut a certain way to fit nicely together. The aim is to gain the most coin, but if you can’t manage that, the other aim of the game is to only take your money in 1’s and 5’s until it drives all the other players (especially your wife) absolutly crazy.
BLACK FOREST – This one had been on my wishlist for a while, and I finally decided to grab a copy at UKGE this year. But it still took a couple of months to get it to the table. The first play had a little hiccup as I got a small rule wrong regarding the wheels on my player board (and although we undid most of it, the hiccup soured my wifes’s enjoyment of that first game a little). However, another player a few days later had us experiencing the game properly and perfectly and it was absolutely amazing. Players gather resources to build and expand. But the wheels on your player board make resources their own little puzzle, one where a free gift from another player can end up being a negative. It’s a great game, one that is better than I’d hoped.
DINOSAUR ISLAND – We own all four of the Dinosaur Island games, but it’s taken us five years to play the first one the series. We dusted it off and got stuck into the rule book, made much easier due to our familiarity to the other three games we knew quite well. It was odd yet plesant to slip back to the original because it’s almost the simplist of the set. It follows the same sequences as its follow ups with players gathering DNA, creating dinosaurs, and making sure their security level is high enough so as not to suffer any ‘accidents’. I think it might be my favourite of the four, making DUELSAUR ISLAND almost unnecessary now (the original plays just fine at 2), and making DINOSAUR WORLD the hardest of the four to teach to new players. We’ll have to see if the series remains intact on our shelves.
PRET-A-PORTER – Unfortunately, just half way through our first play, I began to regreat this purchase. The game is brutal. The economy can be great for you if you’re doing well, but any falter can see a player not being able to get back in the fight. I watched a playthrough of the game that saw both players coming in over 300pts and not too far apart. In our game, my wife crossed 200pts . . . while I didn’t pass 40.
Now, I know what I did wrong. In order to come back stronger in the third quarter, I passed on the fashion show for quarter two. I didn’t know how much debt that would incur, a debt I was unable to crawl out from. Multiple turns saw me need Credit, fail to pay things off, and be forced to take loans. The worst part about these is you only have a short window to pay your debts back, and trying to do so will consume your actions, probably leading to more debt.
I’m willing to play again, hopefully with the knowledge needed now to avoid such costly mistakes. But if it’s still not working for me, this might be one of our quickest turnarounds ever.
IT’S A WONDERFUL KINGDOM – I’ve had this on my Shelf Of Shame since December 2021, and I have no reason for not playing it until now. But like a lot of games that gather too much dust, it was well worth the wait. This 2-player only version plays pretty much the same as it’s multiplayer big brother, with the main change being how the cards are drafted. Instead of taking cards and passing them like SUSHI GO!, you’re placing cards above and below the board with an ‘I split, you choose‘ mechanic. You also have a limited number of trap tokens that allow you to place a card face down, allowing mind games akin to TUSSIE MUSSIE.
Once this phase is over, you’re into IT’S A WONDERFUL WORLD territory as you decide which cards you discard to gain their immediate resources, and then lay out those you want to construct so as to improve your engine. What takes both games in the series up a notch is the order in which resources get claimed. Because it’s a constant set order, you’ll have to plan your actions so that you don’t build a card after it’s resource gathering would benifit you. This brings the games only real negative because it will really challenge AP prone players (like me). But it’s such a good game, one that I want to play a lot more.
RISKY WHISKY – This was the first game we played at MollyCon 2025. It’s an upcoming reskin of the ButtonShy classic, IN VINO MORTE. Here though, it’s whisky instead of wine. And there is also the addition of Antidotes to keep people in the game just a little longer.
We ended up playing at ther miximum count of 10. This produced a chaotic game where strategy need not apply. It’s an odd game because only one player has the real infomation at the start, but there is nothing you can do to gain anything else as players. It’s just guessing and double guessing what you think is the current game state.
GALILEO GALILIEI – Our first play of this was 4-player. It absolutely blew me away, so much so that I ordered our own copy the very next morning. You’ll use your telescope as a quarter rondel to take actions. Search the skies for objects and constellations. Write down your observations at the universtity. And do your best to convince the Inquisition that you’re not a bad person.
It’s this Inquisitor mechanic that is perhaps the most daunting and complicated at first glance. From what I knew of the game before hand, I thought it would be something you would really have to focus on so as to not scupper your game. But getting the Inquisitiors happy didn’t prove to be too challenging in the end, and this carried on over the next three games we played.
But it’s a great game. Quick actions. Easy to teach. And a definite contender for a place in my top ten come the end of the year.
COATL – This game was recently gifted to us by @getintogames and it’s one I’ve always been interested in trying. It playsd a little like AZUL in that you’re drafting pieces from a central board with certain scoring criteria in mind when it comes to how you use the pieces. I found the game to be pretty enjoyable at 4-player. There is a mix of actions as you take body pieces to score but must include a head and tail to complete the Coatl. You can take more cards as you go, and placing down cards and pieces can by a bit epic if you have a whole bunch. The only limit on how much you can place is how much you’ve got. However, I did found the game dragged a little. It plays longer than it feels it should. I don’t think I’d choose it over any of the Azul games, and it can be a little fiddly for first timers. We’re going to try it at just two and see if it’s a zippier afair.
AEON’S END: WAR ETERNAL – We love the original version of this game series, so when our friends bought their copy of one of the sequels round I was super eager to not only dive in, but teach them how to play. Everyone sat around opening the decks and punching the components as I directed everyone to what we’d need for our first play.
This was the first time my wife and I had played an Aeon’s End game higher than 2-player, and I’d always wondered how it would flow. Coming out of this one, it’s a lot slower due to each player only having one turn per round. The chances of having back to back turns drops dramtically compared to a 2-player game, but you could find yourself not doing anything for ten turns depending on the shuffle of the Turn Order deck.
Apart from that, the play was fun. We held our ground but drew a lot of minions and couldn’t spare enough attacks to trouble the Nemesis. But there is such a lot of content in the box that our friends will have hours of fun working through it together.
At the now recommended 2-player only count.
VAST: THE MYSTERIOUS MANOR – Another game our friends bought with them was this entry in the Vast series of games from Leder Games. It’s one I’ve always wanted to try so I was full of excitment when they suggested it. So eager in fact, that I was happy to learn it from scratch.
That excitment faded quickly. We were all constantly frustrated by the poor rule book that forced us all online regularly during our turns to find answers for the large amount of fringe questions we had. Being a foully asymetric game meant that we were trying to each learn our abilities while not really understanding our opponents. And while I don’t want to take anything away from my wife’s victory, it may be slightly telling that the person who won the game had the least requirements for interatction with other characters to accomplish said victory.
We all agreed to never even look at VAST: MYSTERIOUS MANSION or any of it’s brethren again.
- Three seperate games days with friends
- Getting ELDER SCROLLS: BOTSE back to the table
- My Kienda Sale box arriving with a whole bunch of goodies inside
- Rebooting my YouTube channel that’s been gathering dust for 3+ years
- MollyCon 2025!!!
- Our first 7-player game of SCYTHE
Always Play Blue 