Straight out of the festive period and head first into a cold, wet, and extremely miserable month.
But, when the weather is that bad, and the world outside our doorsteps continues to be horrific in unimaginable ways, it’s very easy to slink back to our hobby, exploring the shelves, and distracting our minds with plays of our favourite board games.
With a New Year, I decided to mix up the posts a little. As crowdfunding gets leaner and leaner for me, and purchases drop in consistency due to funds and space, I figured I’d save time and space by just having an overall First Impressions section. It was becoming reduncant when New arrivals were getting played pretty soon after landing on the doorstep, so the two sections (New arrivals and New Games played) where repeating a lot of titles. This is just more streamlined I guess.
And this revamped section has it’s belly full. This last month saw us get back into playing more new games after an abysmal December (just 2!). We really want to reduce that Shelf Of Shame, hopefully to the point that we have no need to run our annual 52×1 Challenge that helps us keep on top of things. Hopefully with more new games tried early, and less new games being purchased, this will happen.
But with all that said, let’s get stuck into what hit the table for the first time in January 2026.
LOST LUMINA
I missed this one on crowdfunding, but was glad to add it to my recent MUTAGEN purchase. We love pretty much everything from Dranda Games, and this 2-player only area control game looked like it could be another hit.
Saying that, it had a rocky start. Our first game ended incredibly quickly, with me going first and winning two battles. Due to my wife’s placement decisions, this saw her three starting meeples wiped off the board, giving me an instant win. It was a little bit of a shock and I was immediately concerned that I’d purchased a dud.
But a little bit of hope and a second play showed us two things about LOST LUMINA. First is that placement of your meeples is just one of several careful decisions you’ll be making that are more important than they appear. And secondly, this game is all about learning tactics. That first loss for my wife felt crappy, but showed us both how important placement was. Defeat becomes education.
It didn’t stop there. The third game saw my wife try a new tactic. She drafted a bunch of cards with high action totals. Instead of being her usual, aggressive self, she won the numbers game, putting a whole bunch of meeples out and only moving in when she was pretty much assured victory. I’ve now taken that on board as something else to focus on when drafting cards.
I have to say, that I’m quite impressed so far and am looking forward to delving deeper into this deceptively cute game.
EARTHBORNE RANGERS
I’d been on the fence for a while with this newish Living Card Game, but I finally took the plunge late last year. Unfortunately I was too busy to get it to the table over the Christmas period and only managed to carve out a couple of mornings at the start of 2026.
But it was worth the wait?
Yes. Most definitely. Sure, there was confusion with what I needed to do. And yes, rules mistakes arose, as did a change of my trait card by the end of the Prologue. But I’m already enjoying the discovery of both the mechanics and the game world.
It’s a game that has me thinking about it when I’m not playing, eager to jump back in when I have free time. I’ve been playing through an in-game day before I start my studies each morning. I put this on my 10×10 Solo Game Challenge for this year, and it’s already close to being the first game done at the tail end of the January!
Once I’ve finished the campaign and know the mechanics a lot better, the plan is to peel my wife away from ARKHAM HORROR LCG for a short bit and go through it again at 2-player.
ROOKLING HEROES
I got into the world of solo RPG’s a few years ago when I discovered COLOSTLE. The designer of that world had recently crowdfunded ROOKLING HEROES, a 2-player only card battling spin off and I was keen to support.
We got it to the table the day after it arrived, and that first play was . . . a bit of a mixed bag.
While I got stuck in and enjoyed the mechanics, joyfully working my three Rookling’s special abilites into my tactics, the game went on a lot longer than something of this ilk should. I convinced my wife to try the game on a Saturday night assuming that a cute, small box, card battler would be a fun way to spend 15-20 minutes. Unfortunately, reality (and the side of the box) disagreed. It was almost an hour later when I took down her final Rookling.
On top of that, the Rulebook is meerly a ‘quickstart’ and the promised online rules content is non exisiting at the time we played. Bad for a new release, but stranger still for a game that fullfilled two months later than promised. It made me teaching the game a little rougher than it should have been.
But there is hope. Beyond that uncomfortably long play time, the gameplay itself is quite fun, and offers a surprising amount of strategy considering you have just three Rooklings (and their asymetric abilities) and share a deck of Power Cards.
I remember thinking that my wife had a bunch of overpowered Rooklings at her disposal, but when I looked at my own powers from her point of view, it’s ‘unbalance’ is actually ‘balanced’.
Hopefully I can get more plays in, as there are more characters to try out, and combinations to mess with. It’s just a shame because if the runtime was even half, and the rules book was more complete, our first experience would have been just about the highlights.
SALTFJORD
I say it a lot, but some games sit on my wishlist, and it takes energy to not purchase them. Unfortunately, events can conspire (stress, tiredness) to weaken that resolve, and that is how SALTFJORD finally ended up in my collection.
That’s not to say I resent it’s presence or regret the purchase. As I said, it was on my wishlist. And after our first play, it’s very much a welcome addition.
Drafting dice, trying to be efficient with your resources, heading out to fish, and building up your village, are all tasks that you’ll need to balance well to make sure you bring home the points.
Our first play was interesting because it presented a game where we both played to different strategies. My wife went in on buildings and fullfiling orders, while I fished like my life depended on it.
The game definitely enduces AP towards the second half of play as you try to make everything count, but the flow and ruleset was easy to understand despite how complex I thought the game was going to be.
CASTING SHADOWS
I’m not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting much from this one. I’m not a big fan of the Unstable games, from there FOMO inducing crowdfunding campaigns to their basic gameplay designs that people constantly descrigbe as ‘untested’.
But, our friends picked up a free copy and so we thought it needed to at least be tried.
And . . . it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Sure, the Deluxe copy they own has too much stuff going on with unnecessary player mats and an oversized board to hold the map tiles. But the simple mechanic of rolling dice and using the results to power your actions is easy to pick up.
It does have more problems like the hex powers being on a single sheet that you need to memorise or refer to constantly. And the game stops just as it’s getting started. And there isn’t much in the way of luck mitigation. Several turns had me waiting for three other players to do stuff before getting rolls and rerolls that meant I didn’t even use up all my action points.
Would I play it again? Maybe. If a friend was really keen on it.
QUORUM
This game was gifted to us by a friend a few months ago. It’s taken a while to get to the table, mainly because the 2-player game wasn’t how I wanted to experience the game for the first time.
And I’m glad we waited. While the players I taught had some trouble getting their heads round the different end game scoring rules, the game overall is really good. Turns are pretty quick as all you’re doing is drafting a card, playing a card, moving up on a track.
But each decision is crunchy. That one card you pick from five is important to your end game scoring on several ways. At four player it was a great first impression for me. Having three other players taking cards I needed, manipulating the wirth of the six regions when playing God cards, all of it needing me to pivot, but not too far.
And while I’m happy to try it at two in the future, I’m pretty confident that this one sings at 3-4. But it’s brisk playtime means it’s a smallish box game I’ll hold on to for those rare chances to play at the better player count.
SNEAKY GOOSE
A small box card game that our friends brought round to teach, it was a really pleasant surprose.
You have four face down cards valued anywhere between -1 and 14. The aim it to end the round with the lowest score. So far, so SKYJO. You can sneak a look at two cards at the start of a round, but from then on it’s a memory game.
Draw a card, discard it or swap it out for one of your four.
But wait, there’s more. If you draw a card and discard it immediatly, it might have an ability to use. One that can gain you more information about your hidden cards, or you opponents. Or maybe let you swap cards.
The round ends when a player thinks they have the lowest score. Reveal everyones cards and score the points.After five rounds, the lowest score wins.
It’s mix of memory and card manipulation works so well, and the adorably funny goose artwork on all the cards adds an extra layer of charm. I think we need a copy of this in our collection.
OUTRUN
We won this game in a raffle a few years ago and, after a read of the awful rulebook, it just got left on a shelf.
Trying to reduce the Shelf Of Shame, we decided to give it a go towards the end of January and it was pretty much as expected.
Each player has a matching hand of cards with symbols on them. A route card is revealed that displays all but one of the available symbols in a certain order, and players race to lay their cards in the same order. The faster you do it, the more spaces you move on the map board to escape the monster chasing you all.
A deck of cards introduces bonuses and negative affects to gift to your opponents, used to make the card selection process harder or easier on furture turns.
The rulebook was tough to decipher, the gameplay was boring. Nothing about the game screamed ‘must play again’.
Straight onto the For Sale pile.
The first gaming highlight of January, and thus of 2026, didn’t come from board games. It was a return to TTRPG’s, namely that most famous of them all; D&D.
Due to my studies, I’d had to drop out as DM to a campaign set in the Land Of Eem. I was so busy that I struggled to even find time as a player, and didn’t have the capacity to focus on a campaign of anything.
So when a couple of friends popped round on a cold, wet, Saturday for a One Shot, it was nice to step out of this world and into one with problems I’d be better at handling. Our DM took us on the an adventure within the Infinite Staircase, and after playing a goody two-shoes Paladin for 18 months, I decided to do the ol’ Critical Role campaign 2 flip, and go in the opposite direction.
And that’s how my cranky bitch of a Goblin Ranger was born. Of course, fate would have the other players create the nicest folks for their characters, so I came across even meaner than intended. It was a fun session, one where the dice gods finally let me have fun with my absolute ninja of a character, rolling multiple crits for attacks and hiding. I only took damage once and that was from a falling statue that a ‘teammate’ pushed over.
It was a good day.
Next up, blending TTRPG’s and boardgames, was our return to FROSTHAVEN.
In an effort to regain shelf space, and to get back to a campaign we barely started nearly three years ago, I decided that I could put it off no more. Our early experience of the much anticipated sequel to one of our all time favourites was ‘frosty’. Thus, we didn’t rush back into it after our original weekend opener back in April 2023. After that, each passing month became a barrier or remembering rules and story that eventually became too much and so the game box gathered dust.
But, in an effort to regain shelf space, I knew that we could put it off no more. The original GLOOMHAVEN is still my favourtite gaming experience ever. Sure, there is an additional 20% of new stuff to get to grips with in it’s frozen sequel, but the core of the game is the same. I wanted to continue the story. I wanted to dig through bundles of unlocks.
Of course, in the time since, more roadblocks have reared their head. I discovered that there was a miriad of errors with the first printing, and I’d have to gorge on a hefty errata before we got stuck in. Marker pen in hand, I went through the contents of the behomoth box and marked everything I’d have to refer to so as not to cause us more problems capable of another derail.
Want to know my thoughts of our re-entry? Then check out the video over on the channel where I discuss my return to FROSTHAVEN.
We ended the month with an epic games day with friends. Usually we use meetups to get bigger games to the table and experience them at higher counts, but Saturday, 31st was all about small box card games. It also meant that laughs we plentiful.
We got through gems like FLIP 7 and SPICY, learnt a brilliant new to us game called SNEAKY GOOSE, and rested on classics like ROLL FOR IT and 6 NIMMT.
And that was January 2026. A fuller lookback will be up over on the YouTube channel shortly.
Al that’s left now is to get stuck into February.
Always Play Blue 