Well, last month was hot enough to melt me out of exsistence.
August also had some of that evil hot, hot, hotness, but the rains eventually came. And not a moment too soon.
But, as always, gaming was done, come rain or shine. We had the IG meetup, MollyCon, one of my annual highlights for board gaming. There were games days with friends, and games days with family. Enough in total to hit the second highest of monthly played games with a grand total of 80.
Let’s look at what games were new to me, and what other highlights were had.
Near the beginning of August, Worgan Games put out a call for people to request prototype copies of their upcoming Kickstarter game.
I put my hand up and said “yes, please.”
Their previous game, SNEAKY GOOSE, is a new favourite small box card game in our collection, so I was keen to see what they had next.
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT is a game that sees players bluffing their way through a number of rounds in the hope of being the first player to capture souls and win.
You do this COCKROACH POKER style; draw a card, pass it to another player, and decide at that moment how honest you feel like being.
The cards offer healing, stealing, fighting, rituals, and most importantly death.
But it’s okay. You’re a cat and you have 9 lives.
It’s a fun party game, one I’ve played across all it’s player counts (it was surprisingly more fun at 2 than I expected), though the constant healing and reach for souls can see some games going on a little too long.
The prototype itself, while something that shouldn’t normally be judged against a finished product, shows real promise. If the components here are hand made in house, it bodes well for what the finished version will end up like.
This new Trick-Taking game was taught to us at this years MollyCon. It sees players picking a suit each round that they ‘Can’t Win’ with.
After you’ve chosen this weakness, you then bid on how many tricks you’ll win that round.
What makes this one juicy is that, while your winning hands get totted up each round to make up part of your score, if you don’t bid correctly for the whole game, you’ll get zero points.
You see, your end score is the sum of multiplying your won tricks by your acurate bids. At the end of the round, a correct bid will be worth 1pt (unless you successfully bid zero tricks, and then it’s 2pts!!!).
This leads to games where someone winning less tricks but planning correctly can out score someone who wins tricks into the double figures but never guesses their bids.
It adds an extra layer of thinking at the start of each round that I really like. And the pixal art style is really cool too. Definitely a game I want to play again.
Another new Trick-Taking game, this was my favourite new game of MollyCon this year (I ordered a copy the next day).
The game has four suits, but each round will see you playing tricks based on a performance card. This limits the number of valid suits per round. So if the top card is Solo, players will have to follow the lead card. But if the round is Quartet, then you’ll all want to play something different.
On top of this is the interesting scoring mechanic. The highest valid card played goes to the winner face down as 1pt. The lowest valid card goes back to who played it face up, being worth it’s value in points.
Most of the time these will be low cards, but I ‘lost’ two turns back-to-back with a 4 and a 5, and another player ‘lost’ the final turn of that round with an 8!!!
I really like the performance mechanic and how it changes things up each round, keeping players on their toes.
I have wanted to learn and play CAPTAIN SONAR since I stepped into the hobby. It seemed like a crazy idea for a board game, but it’s not an easy one to get to the table, especially as we don’t own it.
The game plays best at 8-player (four on each team). You form two submarine crews and then go into battle, hunting each other down in real time, like BATTLESHIPS on steroids.
Each crew member has an ability to aid the mission. One looks after the submarine, fixing broken parts by advising the captain on dirrections that will help.
The Weapons specialist keeps track of the defensive and offensive tools that slowly build up before being able to be unleashed.
The Sonar operator is listening to the opposing teams captain calling out directions, using an overlay with a map and trying to deduce where the enemy are.
And then there is the Captain, a chair I found myself in by accident. I had to take in everything, piloting the sub around the map, calling out my directions, listening to the other three crew members, and making critical decisions.
All. In. Real. Time.
It was intense, that’s for sure. Any pause to whisper to my teams mates was giving the enemy free turns to track us down.
But somehow I’d been gifted the best sub crew ever. Other than a single indirect hit we brushed off, we fired twice . . . and hit hard twice, to take the victory.
It was a fantastically fun way to end this year’s MollyCon.
While I was aware of this (almost) card only version of WINGSPAN, it wasn’t really something that was on my radar. Althrough we still own the original for sentimental reasons, we’ve moved on to WYRMSPAN as our preferred ‘Span’ game.
But we were perusing a WaterStones while visiting family and I spotted a few copies left on the shelf. It was hard to get hold of according to some folks on IG. Couple this with the £10 voucher on my loyalty card and I figured I’d give it a go.
And I’ve ended up liking it. It’s a briefer version of the game with a player getting their sixth bird being the game end trigger.
Every time you do one of the three actions on your turn (play a bird, grab eggs, gain cards) you move left to right across the birds you already have, triggering their abilities as you go. It’s quite the pacey engine builder.
The cards are double use as well, with one side being birds and the other side being food tokens (single or a choice of two).
It feels less random than it’s bigger brother and doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.
This is my first and, to date, only MindClash Games game. It was a last minute impulse purchase at UKGE 2025. It is a gorgeous looking and interesting sounding 2-player only game that looked like it was right up our ally.
However, it’s taken just over a year to get it to the table, for reasons I can’t explain. And, more importanly, once we did try it, we were both a little disappointed.
The game has asymetric factions trying to obtain their own win conditions. It’s a race basically. But we found we were just doing our own thing, not understanding our opponents, and not knowing our own decks of action cards to formulate anything close to a plan.
It was this not getting in each others way that led to a game that just ticked over until my wife pointed out that she’d won. To be clear, I knew what her goal was, to get three fortrersses built. But in working on my own goal, I wasn’t really spotting where she was in her process until the end arrived.
We had a rare moment afterwards of reflecting on the game. We dicected what had happened and what we’d do differently. The game requires defense as well as offense, and I feel this is a fine line that we’ll need to tread more carefully next time.
So, a disappointing first impression, but one that partly falls on our shoulders. Time will tell if this is really for us or not.
We had an evening on BGA with our friends and the first game we played was PONDSCAPE. I don’t think I’d have been intertested in it if it wasn’t for the designer, Thomas Holek.
The game sees players draft cards and place them in their 3×5 grid. Each card will score differently based on it’s placement and, more importantly, the cards that will end up around it. On top of that, if you can form groups of the same frog species, the cards will effectivly multiply your score.
I find learning games on BGA a little tougher than real life. The teacher can’t just point across the table when you ask about something. So I went in pulling leavers and seeing what happened.
And by the end of the game, it all clicked. And there is a fun game to be had. Would I buy it? I’m not sure. While we’re big fans of Holek’s first three games, this doesn’t have the same wow factor. But I enjoyed it enough that I wouldn’t hesitate to play it again.
I’ve always wanted to play YOKOHAMA, but I’ve heard it’s not too great at two.
My hopes were that I could get the same vibes with YOKOHAMA DUEL, a 2-player only version instead, and and so I ordered a copy not too long ago after spotting it in a sale.
It’s Worker Placement (my favourite) with cards representing your workers. They have different strengths, going from 1-4 at the start.
This strength is used when determining the level of an action when you visit a location. 1 strength won’t get you much (or even anything at all with some spaces!), while 4 allows greater volume of resources or more flexibilty.
But there’s a catch. When you take a turn, you have to play your weakest available Worker. This makes it frustrating when you want to grab a whole lot of fish, but have to wait three turns before you can accomplish this, leaving the placement space you need available for your opponent the whole time.
Nerve wracking stuff.
There are ways to make your Workers stronger. At the end of each of the first three rounds (of the four round game) you can pay to upgrade one worker. They all increase by one, but the better workers cost more to train.
You can also obtain +strength cards during the game, adding them to a placed Worker to make the better. And you can obtain Foreign Agents, who affectivly give you an extra go on your turn and also can reach spaces blocked by yourself or your opponent.
Overall the game is a tight one as you gather resouces to complete orders, while also purchasing technology cards to help you, and church cards to score big.
I enjoyed the game, despite doing pretty badly, and I’m eager to get some more plays in.
Meeting up with folks and having a gaming day came in the form of MollyCon this month was definitely the biggest highlight. It’s an annual gathering in a small village hall run by Craig (@getintogames) and Becky (@mrsgetintogames) and it’s an event that I always look forward to.
As always, we played a whole bunch of new games (the first four list above), and I ended up teaching a 4-player game of UNDERWATER CITIES (two new players!), which went really well.
Find out more about the games I played here . . .
I continued my ‘5 Great Games . . .’ series with two videos this month. One about Solo only games, and the other about Small Box Card Games.
I also managed one review video, and it’s the first for an expansion on my channel. I absolutely love ACE OF SPADES, and it didn’t take me long to try out the CALL OF THE ZOMBIE pack that changes up a few things.
Check out my thoughts here.
Always Play Blue 