And that was November 2025

A very cold and wet month, was November. Perfect for board gaming.

We got a lot of new games to the table this month. Part of that was a visit to the @getintogames household were we always get a lot of new games played. We also had a family visit that same weekend where my brother-in-law was hoarding a game he’d gotten for his birthday, one that I was very happy to teach.

And then there were the review games. Last month saw me join an Instagram review group. I also made contact with some games publishers to cover their products. This has meant a light flood of new titles hitting our table in recent weeks.

The other highlight of the month was our FLGS annual birthday bash. We spent the evening in a full-to-the-brim games cafe with friends, playing classics along side the odd new game, eating and drinking and having a lot of fun. And we had a ‘dark and miserable’ games day with friends that saw us go back-to-back with FROSTPUNK and DEAD OF WINTER.

THE WHITE CASTLE DUEL – This was a case of one side of my brain questioning a 2-player only version of a game when the original works just fine, with the other side screaming White Castle, White Castle!!! over and over. So I preordered it. Obviously.

RIVAL CITIES– Sometimes when you order a game, another ‘accidentally’ falls into the digital basket of whatever website you’re using, and before you realise it, you’ve ordered an extra game. Such was the case with RIVAL CITIES, a game I’ve had on my radar for a while now has become another 2-player only addition to our collection.

COVENANT – This is the latest Devir game that I’ve been drooling over. But, due to the disappointment that was TRANSGALACTICA earlier this year, I had some reservations. But, with the positive coverage out of Essen this year, I ended up scouring the interweb thingy until I found a trusted UK website that had preorders available. Shoutout to Chaos Cards. After that, it was just a long, painful wait, followed by a lot of punchboard, and then an insane reboxing puzzle.

TAG TEAM – Another case of a boardgame ‘accidentally’ finding it’s way into a preorder basket, this is also another game that I’ve been considering for a while. It has a lot of buzz, but comes as a small box and quick playing game, and one that I really wanted to try. So I just bought it.

ASCENDIA: SEASONS OF THARGOS – The first of a handful of games to arrive this month via the UKBG Review Circle, this one drew me in with its more simple approch to fantasy adventure games, and it’s hex board set up.

ICE & IDOLS – Another Review Circle copy turning up was this absolute beauty of a game. Upon opening the box I was blown away with the production level of the finished product. I’d seen prototypes and thought that looked good, but this final version is steps above. It’s a pick up and deliver game with an ever changing chaotic board state. And it has some of the best art across it’s components.

CROWNS AND CUTTHROATS – This is a small box Trick Taking game that comes with a gimick to take it above just winning tricks. Here you have a 3×3 grid of cards (made from the remains of the deck) set between the players. Each of you has a card that can be moved around the grid when you win a trick. The Crown needs to stay away from the Cutthroat who is trying to land on the same space to take them down. Adds an extra dimension to the basic Trick Taking mechanics.

FANTASTIC FACTORIES – Our visit to Dice Portsmouth’s birthday celebration saw us come away with a bunch of games. FANTASTIC FACTORIES was the only one of the bunch that I knew anything about before hand. A game where you use cards and dice to manufacture goods, it looks great and sounds fun.

FORGE – Another game off of the Dice birthday table was this Worker Placement game that drew my wife’s eye. It’s a bunch of blacksmiths, each operating their Forges, in medieval Europe. The wooden components looks decent, though the graphic design of the small cards, and the zero art white backs to all the boards give this game the feel of something from Kickstater 10+ years ago, and not 2023 release. We shall see how it plays.

ELO DARKNESS – The biggest box at the table, this one put most of my friends off due to having no information on the back of the box. A quick trip to BGG helped us discover a MOBA style game with a whole bunch of cards. I ended up with it and have watched enough videos to see that it could be interesting, but it could also be another Kickstarter dud. Time will tell.

GYRATING HAMSTERS – People weren’t so keen on the last few gifted games, so I ended up with GYRATING HAMSTERS solely because nothing else left in the pile appealed to me. Unfortunately, when I got this NSFW version home and opened it up, I found ‘humour’ and ‘artwork’ that would make Beavis and Butthead feel like inteligent accedemics. It looks so bad, I am not sure if we’ll ever get it to the table, and I’d feel bad ‘gifting’ it to anybody. I hate to say it, but this might go in the bin.

SIEGE STORM – This was the final game left on the table. It’s a card battler with all three expected modes (solo, co-op, and competative). I’ve read enough to know that competative might be the place to start due to unbalanced design in the solo and co-op modes. We’ll give it a go, but I’m not holding out hope. It can’t be worse than the hamster game, right?

TRICKY LANDING – I really enjoyed our play of this super fun Trick Taking game while visiting friends and was lucky that the designer contacted me so that I could beg for my own copy. That’s right. I have no shame.

20 STRONG: TANGLEWOOD RED – I will admit that this purchase came out of nowhere. I was somewhat aware of the game series from Chip Theory Games, but didn’y really have it on my radar. But, a downer of a week saw me browsing the web and I realised that I’d not purchased anything from new board game website on the block, Boardgamist, and within 15mins, this gorgeous looking solo game was in my basket and winging it’s way towards me.

THE WHITE CASTLE DUEL – Duel games are a dime a dozen at the moment, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. While some fall flat, others are a worthy addition to their series (TOKAIDO DUO for example). But I was suspicious of THE WHITE CASTLE DUEL, mainly because the original game works perfectly at just 2 players. Was a Duel version needed? Well, it might not have been a version we were crying out for, but it’s different enough to be a game that can definitely stand on it’s own. It does enough to be familiar, while changing things up so that you’re not wanting to rush back to the original. Gone are the dice, resouces feel harder to obtain, and there is a multiplier puzzle to aim for in order to gain those points. I’m finding it crunchier than it’s bigger brother, funding it harder to get stuff done. It’s still early days, but I think this one comes just under THE WHITE CASTLE, but is interesting enough to remain in our collection.

ARKHAM HORROR LCG – THE CIRCLE UNDONE – I don’t normally cover expansions in these sections of the blog, but we have spent 2025 really getting into the campaigns, and this month saw us step into THE CIRCLE UNDONE. It’s all witches and mysterious groups trying to solve a mystery. And it opened with an interesting Prolouge that took us through a senario different to anything we’d experinced to date. We’re four parts in and really enjoying it.

ASCENDIA: SEASONS OF THARGOS – So this is a game that is basically a very light fantasy themed adventure game. You’re trying to get voted in as the village’s next top dog, and you do this by gaining renown and then spending 10 of that to be elected. But you can try to win with less than 10 renown, leaving it to fate (a dice roll) to get you over than vote limit.

So, to give yourself the best change of success, you’ll want to adventure around the hex map and gain as much renown from fighting monsters and completing quests so as to not need much luck. Adventuring is quite simple (this is a more family friendly adventuring game) but it gets repetative real quick. You can’t really focus on more than one of your three stats due to their increases being tired to equipment. If I grab the bow to increase my fighting stats, this means I can’t also hold the tools needed to increase foraging. You need to specialise, but this came back to hinder me when I couldn’t find anyone to fight.

You see, finding one of the games limited pool of bad guys (rats, bandits, tree creatures, and a troll/ogre if you choose to include) is all random based on tokens you ‘explore’ (flip over). In our last game, I went fighty mcfighty, after watching my wife take this successful path last time. She was killing things left, right, and centre, and gathered the required amount of renown fast. But did it work for me? Heck no. I only found one bad guy, and when I fought it, I rolled the one symbol that meant I lost the fight, and another, stronger bad guy spawned one hex over. My wife took a different path this time and . . . won another short playthrough.

I have more to say on this game, and while it’s not terrible, it doesn’t work for me due to it’s simplicity.

OATH – My god! I’ve had this since it fullfilled on Kickstarter in Q2 of 2021. But it’s a very tough game to get to the table. The teach it tough. It appeals to a limited type of gamer. And it’s one that requires investment if you hope to not have it join the list of one and done games in the collection.

Thankfully, we found friends who were actually as keen as us to get it to the table and finally, after all these years, I played OATH.

And I’m impressed. It was a loose first session as we all got to terms with the mechanics. It’s a game where you might not know what you’re doing for most of that first play, but everything starts to click once you’re done, and future plays will have more structure. It’s also a game that we talked about a fair bit afterwards which is always a good sign. Hoping to play with the same group again on our next visit and seeing how everything works across it’s chronicle (legacy style) format.

TRICKY LANDING – I didn’t know what to think of this when it was brought out to cleanse our pallettes after OATH. I like Trick Taking games, but every single one these days seems to come with some convoluted twist to make it stand out, and for me, they rarely land.

Funny then that this ended up being my highlight of the visit. It’s Trick Taking, but instead of placing your cards, you throw them, aiming for the target, or later, the pile of cards. It’s such a simple idea, but one I’d have never have thought of as a Trick Taking mechanic. I think this will go everywhere with me from now on.

RATJACK – We can’t visit Get Into Games without a slew of new games being shown to us. This game was fun and simple to learn. It’s basically the love child of Black Jack and LOVE LETTER. You’re trying to get your face up card total to 25, but other players can intervine and screw up your plans with the actions of their own played cards, and these annoying poker chips that mess up the total you’re working on. It’s a lot of fun, and the production is way better than it needs to be.

MOON COLONY BLOODBATH – I’d heard good things about this one. I’ve been eager to play it since it arrived on the scene and was quick to jump in when offered a chance to play. It’s a game where you are all going to die, but it’s the last person to do so that wins. All you can do is build an engine that helps you stay afloat longer than anyone else.

I enjoyed the play, and would absolutely play it again, though I don’t think I’d ever own it. The luck of the cards is a little too frivilous. While the chaos of the event deck is great with throwing things at you when you least expect it, I think that the cards you end up with can win or loose you the game before you can do anything yourself. A player getting better cards at random will just have it a little easier.

COVENANT – I’d been excited to try this one for a while, and even though my own copy turned up two days earlier than our visit to friends, my first play ended up being a 4-player game with their copy. It was a tough, slightly messy, learn, but I’ve never had such a cohesive learning experience with other players all taking on roles within the teach. We all became experts in different mechanics and helped each other along. It made the overall experience really stand out.

The game itself is great. It has White Castle vibes with a limited amount of turns needing you to maximise each turn to really benifit. You’ll have actios that feel wasted because you weren’t able to chain, but it’s all about planning around resources and dwarf strength to get the most of a single dwarf. A game that I’m looking forward to diving deeper into.

ROLLER DISCO – A fun little card game from Huff No Mre, this sees players chaining cards to shed their hand. Unfortuntely, after what I thought was a good turn, my wife pulled off a mega turn, emptying her hand out in one round, and bringing to an end perhaps the shortest game of ROLLER DISCO on record. More plays needed.

THE ART PROJECT – A PANDEMIC style co-op game where players work together to beat back the rising tide of virus/the cold/carbon emisions/art thrieves (insert necessary antaganist). It does everything so well, and it is a vast improvement to the Pandemic system because of the amount of group planning that goes into the start of a round. And the ‘curing’ gets progressively harder following each success. It really ramps up. And despite us losing, is was so down to the wire, that we all still felt great afterwards.

WYRMSPAN – After our visit with friends came a visit with family. And I finally got to try WYRMSPAN, the second ‘Span’ game from Stonemaier. Like many, I wondered if these reskins were necessary. But that all changed after a single play, and I can absolutely say that this is currently my preferred version. I love every single change that it makes to it’s bird based forebarer and would swap it out from my collection in a heart beat. From the act of clearing out caves before putting dragon cards down, to the control you have over the amount of actions you take per turn, it just feels improved upon. And the art and theme are much more my thing.

I wants it.

SCRAWL – A fun party game that I was aware of, but have never played. This was a lot of fun, a game that’s less about winning and more about laughs. We scribbled some absolutely weird stuff. You basically choose a word, draw it, hand it to the next player who writes what they think you mean, pass to another who draws what that word says, before a final drawing, sees extreme Chinese whispers produce some crazy interations. And amongst it all, we somehow managed some exact matches, which was mind blowing when you see what was drawn. I hope this becomes a new family favourite because its a real chuckle fest.

CROWNS & CUTTHROATS – A trick taking game with an extra mechanic set between the two players. Here there is a 3×3 grid of cards on the table. At either end are the Crown card and the Dagger card. If you win a trick you get to move your card. If you lose you get to replace a card from the grid with one from your hand, activating it’s power as you do so. This will include things like making the lowest number win the next trick, or moving either player card. If the Dagger ever lands on the crown, the player controlling it automatically wins. Otherwise it’s all about winning points per round to reach twelve first.

The idea is interesting, but the game fell a little flat after the first couple of plays. I didn’t think that the powers were interesting enough when playing them, and the chase around the grid can get quite back and forth. It’s also odd that one player has an extra win condition (the dagger killing the crown) outside of the race to points. It’s good, but doesn’t call to me when I want a trick taking game.

DICE THRONE: SEASON ONE – The only new game we played during our Dice Portsmouth Birthday evening was DICE THRONE. We used to own the Marvel version, and despite my high rating of it, the game quickly feel out of favour. I chose it on this night because we needed 6-player games and I knew I could teach it quickly.

But it still bores me. More so at 6. I had several turns where I didn’t manage to fire off a single attack, while geting pumbled from both oppnents on either side. And the card art in this version is worse than the Marvel version, mainly because there isn’t any. I really thought DICE THRONE would be a great game based on what we like, but it’s quite stale.

DAYBREAK – A co-op game in the vein of PANDEMIC (same designer) that sees you fighting off carbon emisions instead of viruses. It’s big change here is the card action phase of the game. Not only can each player work on their turn at the same time as everyone else, meaning it doesn’t slow things down, but the way you have to choose how to play a card which makes for quite crunchy actions. A fair number of cards require you to discard another card, meaning their first use could be a simple sacrifice. But then you can choose to play a card just for it’s symbol so as to make one of your five existing actions stronger. Or perhaps one of your actions no longer servers a purpose, and so you can place a card over it to gain a new action.

It’s really good, and I enjoyed our first few 2-player game games.

ICE AND IDOLS – As soon as we opened the box, we were wowed by the production value of this game. The art across the components, the clear plastic tiles, the modular board, all look amazing when set up on the table.

The game is pick up and deliver as you grab idols from certain spots and then drop them off at their matching idols to unlock parts of your player board. Or not. Maybe, instead, you cash it in to get a cube on the research track for points. Choices, choices. Add to this the tiny matter of asymetric powers, a board state that is constantly changing via players and event cards, and it’s a thinky yet chaotic game that doesn’t outstay it’s welcome, quickly calling you back for more.

And then fact that my wifes’ first words after our first game were “we need to own this” means it’s done a great job at first impression.

TAG TEAM – This game has come with a lot of buzz, and it pulled me in with all that hype. But is it any good? Well, in a word – yes. A super quick card battler that has you taking two fighters into a puch up with your opponent, trading blows with a deck that remains in the same order but slowey grows after each round. It’s all about getting the attacks in while trying to remember the best place to add that defence card.

KING AND PEASANT – Another small card game we have for review, this is a mind games puzzle as you face off and try to trick or avoid being tricked. The Peasants are trying to sneak their Assassin card somewhere on the table, be it the draw deck or their face down cards, hoping that the King will be forced to take it. It’s got that TUSSIE MUSSIE feel to it as you bluff and counter bluff your way to victory, and best of three wins. Unfortunately, it’s not really clicking with us so far.

• Finally playing OATH!
• Completing our 52×1 challenge
• Dice Portsmouth Birthday!
• Getting FROSTPUNK back to the table after 18 months