Preliminary rating after studying the introductory rules and three-handing a few turns. The introductory rules are delightfully simple and accessible just what I hoped for.

So far I am not convinced this is a game for me. After Hoplomachus Victorum, I had hoped this tiny solo card battler would be more my thing but again the dice are betraying me with their empty faces. I tried Red first and learned that it is the most difficult of the Tanglewood decks. I will give the other two a try before dismissing this.

Everything Zee promised. Loving the solo mode. Not sure I want to play this much multiplayer. Very good "everything" edition, well organized and good consolidated rulebook. Need to play more of the expansions.

Fun and somewhat chaotic game with a bit of a random mean strick that invites evil cackling that can quickly turn into groans as people think they get someone else to take a row that they then have to pick up themselves. Allows for high player counts. Have yet to play with any of the 25 year edition extras.

Drafting game that has become a bit bloated with age and expansions. Still good fun at a good range of player counts and because so many are familiar with it, needs little teaching.

Everything that makes the big parent great and then converted into a unique experience for two players. It plays very fast. We loved it. Our first game nearly tied with 63 to 64 points. I particularly love the card display/drawing mechanic. That's ingenious.

1-4. Played this several times but never managed to finish a game despite the saving mechanism. Wait that is wrong: we finished two games by losing aka dying. And then you have to start over. I feel like there is too little actual game and too much deadliness and having to do the whole thing over. And the saving mechanism is nice when you want to have dinner in between sessions but I have usually forgotten every detail by the next session and walk around the continent blindly. My rating is slowly deteriorating.

Watching what comes of this

More Sprawlopolis style city building with new goals and happy cows. Feels even more thinky than the original. I am curious to try the combination of both games with the Combopolis expansion.

Not bad, I just dislike the large box of the Pegasus edition. Why oh why? In any case we have played through a bunch of scenarios and it is quite interesting to develop schemes to lead the astronauts to the right spots. If you like deduction it's a nice one that works with two people. So far the scenarios didn't provide too much of a challenge but that's just the first 8 or so.

I keep thinking these are games for me. But this game has two things going against it: 2 player only and we're not much for filler style games. I don't think its bad, but it is a case of not being for me.

2-4, We have only played this a couple of times. The deduction is fun but can easily fail. One of those games with a lot of moving parts though and longish setup. I keep forgetting the rules between plays. Reminder: play the game not ONLY the deduction puzzle.

Largely undecided. I should have bought Blood Rage instead. I only played the one two player a year after acquisition and it was really smooth and it has good rules retention and is surprisingly fast for such a "big game". I really like the action selection mechanism. The conundrum which one to advance is really nice. And still I have a hard time getting it to the table among all those other games I want to play. I think it ends up being too abstract for my taste. I have not played a lot of Blood Rage either but I should have got that one for my Eric M Lang piece in the collection. Still, the ridiculous minis are staying for now.

Kickstarter. The solo mode seems to be a rather easy optimization puzzle which led to me underestimating the game in our first 2 player. Over 3 rounds you move along the fish market track to obtain fish for your aquariums or garner funds through advertising for your existing fish. After each move on the market track your employee moves around the aquarium to place fish and sometimes feed them. You win the game getting points for the fish you have. The tricky thing is how to optimally place them in acquariums to possibly get 1 of four achievements which give points and bonus fish. Advanced fish with special scoring conditions vary the game once we feel confident enough to include them. Not overly complex but enough game for a pleasant game.

Finally got to play this. It is very reminiscent to me of Terraforming Mars. Huge deck and cards that have prerequisites and combo of each other. The ground game is played on a personal zoo board. I also really enjoyed the action selection system that was previously seen in Civilization: A new Dawn (I hear, haven't played that). Here though you can upgrade the actions to make them even better. I like how conservation efforts have been integrated into the game as an opposing score and the game ends when one player has his score markers cross each other. Definitely want to play again, my shelves are full so I must rely on visiting our friends and their copy. Having played a lot of Terraforming Mars lately, I don't need to immediately own this, but I also hear there is a very good expansion coming out next year--talked to some play-testers at SPIEL.

1-5, SPIEL 2018, worker placement with a twist. Workers are never returned to pool unless they are arrested at the black market or for congregating in the woods planning a revolution or some such. Also interesting choice between being virtuous or evil. Auf Deutsch beim Schwerkraft Verlag!

Kickstarter

1-2 players. 85 points on first solo-play. 110 is supposedly the score to beat. Seems easier than Agricola, paying your upkeep isn't quite so crippling. Liked the theme. One of my 2 most heavy games - weighs about a ton! Looking forward to more plays though I wonder if I'll ever find anyone to play it with. I think now I should have got Feast for Odin instead. At least then I could try and offer it up on a game night edit 2024: I had to update my rating. It had over the years fallen down a little. But I recently played solo 4 games of this with the expansion and it just sang. It had been quite some time since it was on my table and in my memory it was just big and daunting. When I got the expansion it seemed even worse. But in the years since 2014 I have played a lot more Rosenberg games and having got this back to my table it turns out it is one of the very best. It plays very quickly as a solo, the differentiation in the worker spots between the seasons is ingenious. I really enjoy the sheep multiplication and the additions of tea and trade are just perfect.

2026: After 9 plays. I very much prefer the German title "Artengarten". This is my most recent acquistion and it has already been played a bunch. For me it combines a few of the best mechanics from Ark Nova with some hexagonal tile laying which is one of my favorite things since hexagons were invented. Rating 9

My first attempt is not yet finished, I am struggling with the difficulty of the fights and grokking what to do during the prep phase. Pretty much a disappointment. But it may have arrived at a bad time. The current rating is preliminary and may change if it ever manages to hit my table again. At least even the Ultimate Edition is a compact square box that is filled to the brim with content but saw no need to take up more space than absolutely needed on my shelves. Thanks for that.

More interesting decisions than the original (though that one has been so long ago I only remember it as „boring“ and „why am I playing a children‘s game“). So you want to gather the resources to build the 9 modules and finally the portal that will allow the citizens of Atlantis to escape. The resources are of course on Atlantis and the island sinks. I think the library cards are new and the helpers and additional workers. The worker spots on some of the modules are a nice touch as are the different methods of configuring difficulty… The materials are as beautiful as everyone said they are and for now this seems like a good—in the basic version— not too difficult coop. With the variable player count (1-7) makes for a game that is likely staying a while.

Very relaxed/cozy set collection style game about making plans for a trip to Japan. Need to wait for German language version to acquire however. Solo also plays nicely. So far all my plays were on BGA, I can't quite tell how much upkeep there is. Overall I've enjoyed my games. Rating 7.5 2026. After 8 plays. Now own the game. Simulating a week-long trip to Japan or rather to Tokyo and Kyoto has never been so cozy. I have only played it as a solo so far. It's a nice thematic set collection game with a good solo mode. A bit of a table hog. Set collection is not my most favorite mechanic but this may be my favorite game that is centered around it. It adds a good dose of combos that feel quite satisfying to pull off. Rating 7.5

2 player trick taker with some cards out in the open, some hidden. I definitely enjoyed this more than Fox in the Forest. Very niche occasions only for 2 player trick takers where I wouldn‘t rather be playing something else. Vacations… which is where we played this.

Collect tiles and place them in a beautiful pattern. It sounds so easy. But then someone else takes the tiles you needed to fill that one row and you have to take more and break some and... It is a quick medium weight abstract strategy that you can play with just about anyone because it is so easy to teach. It is not trivial to win however. The two follow up games that twist the formula and complicate it are also quite good.

I had high hopes for Hex-Azul. I really like hexes. And I like garden themed games. And maybe this would be good but Calico is better at doing hexes with colors and patterns and as an Azul this one has too much AP. My partner ended his first game in the penultimate round basically turning over the table and quitting because he found it so frustrating. Quite unforgiving unlike the other Azuls. This one makes me sad and disappointed. So much wasted hex-goodness.

Another Knizia tile layer where you struggle for dominance around the pyramids (or is it cities) on the map. The map is made so it scales with number of players, two player is quite tight and plays very quickly. Obviously, the theme is almost abstracted away.

I still prefer Space Base which has a more complex decision space. This has a solo-mode. You get fewer upgrades to your numbered gang members than you would get to your space ports in Space Base. The upgrades are much simpler: providing a single resource token usually. The addition of the police chase has not convinced me so far. This may change when I play multiplayer.

2026. I have yet to figure out how to win this. I thought I won once but I had made a mistake. In this game you try to close off all the escape routes of the Bandida with deadends or circular routes. I have tried it a bunch and I think this is not meant to be played solo. In multiplayer there are definitely more cards in play and the rules do not forbid you from discussion as much as some other games, so my thoughts are that with maybe 3 players there are 9 cards in the hands of those players and one might say: let me handle this corner... and so make it more likely that routes can be closed through circles because there just aren't enough deadend cards and too many cards just opening new crossings. As a solo this seems incredibly difficult. In other games like One Piece Nakama the solo player gets more cards in hand to counteract this effect. I might houserule that. Or actually try multiplayer. The game is super-simple and the concept of closing of the routes is unique in my collection and rather fun--just very frustrating up to now. Rating 6/10

For all how much I like polyominoes this one never quite managed to capture my interest. The base game is too easy and if the contracts were any good: I never found out because it seemed a hassle to learn them. I really enjoy Uwe Rosenberg's polyominoes games more. My favorite small one is Cottage Garden.

The premise didn't quite hit with me: more tile laying. I have so many tile laying games. And the art didn't quite speak to me. But it came with a recommendation and I am so very glad I got this. I have only played solo but it is quite addictive a puzzle. It is it's very own thing of finding the next spot to place the tiles you have so that you can sail there with your boat. Because while you build up a nice "map" just like Carcassonne, you cannot just place tiles anywhere they fit, you have to place them where your boat is. And it moves with the tiles you place. I hear it also plays well as multiplayer. This is the type of "filler" game I can get behind. There is enough meat and thinky moments here that I can play multiple times in a row. Rating 8 2026 After 27 plays. This is a fun quick tile laying game that produces satisfying North Sea landscapes and interesting decisions consistently. This works fine at all player counts and even at playercounts higher than the game actually allows. It gets a bit chaotic then but who cares. It is a game though not an activity. I wouldn't want to play without the expansion boats anymore. Their unique abilities changes up the game play to make each game a little bit different. But the game is already very good without the expansion and it is definitely not a "needed" one. Rating 7

I don't think stock market games are for me. Mostly this does not get played because it is not a good fit for my table.

Two handed learning game was not uninteresting but so far haven't found an opportunity to bring it to multiplayer. Should be teachable.

It may look overwhelming at first but in the end this game is quickly explained as it has very clear iconography and only a handful of action types. It plays quite fast with a bit of practice. In their turn players, place their action token on one of the action slots, execute the action and then produce some resources. It is exactly that simple. Even though the tech tree is the larger board, the area control of the planet board is half the game. Resources are finely balanced and require some careful planning or you will find yourself repeatedly executing the Verlegenheitsaktion (the basic action that just gives you some resources). In my experience you need to push for both a level 4 tech and 4 colonies or you have no chance of winning. Definitely my GOTY for 2020.

Bought just before SPIEL, couldn't resist the beautiful colors and the space board that takes the mechanism I loved from Solenia one step further and adds a more complex game. Also: AI theme. After 2 solos and one 2 player game: worst rulebook in a long time, plays like 3 different games rolled into one. Lots of fiddling with the actions in space. This game half wants to be semi-cooperative but it isn't. Thoroughly disappointed. Keeping to try out 4 player.

Yet another big box Rosenberg worker placement. This is not Glassroad even though it is the same setting and the resource wheel. I enjoy the worker rondel quite a bit. But I have to balance this against all the other big box Rosenbergs I have. At some point this year (2025) I will have to play them all against each other--solo of course ;) But it is a solid game. It'll likely loose against Arler Erde, Kanal and Nusfjord in a direct matchup.

Why did I buy this when I don't like realtime games much? Because I like word games. I didn't even do to badly. But I doubt this will make it back to my table.

There is probably a strategy somewhere that lets you win this game. But I have made several attempts and only finished playing this once and I lost. I guess the other attempts were losses, too, that I just failed to record. I bought this after reading a review of it and it sounded so enticing but it sounded good for reasons other than gameplay. The review was talking about the statement the game makes and that is fine and all but I am not having fun playing it. Everything I did felt very futile and I kept making mistakes. Both rules mistakes and strategy mistakes. The actual gameplay just didn't give me any satisfying decisions, it is far too restrictive for that. The forum for the game suggests that it is me rather than the game. But the frustration is worse than Ghost Stories and we mostly lost that one. The game fails to pull me in thematically. I push a few cubes here and there. This is one where I like the idea but not the play.

I played a single game of this so far as the imp and as it was an asynchronous online game it became very intense. Still, having an active GM with some decisions left to them, makes for far more interesting character abilities than most werewolf clones. I am glad I preordered this so I get to GM. Being evil is a lot of stress.

Legendary negotation game about beans. Even if I never play this again I have to own this. This edition includes the 2 player version and has much better packaging then the original.

We played the first few scenarios and it was quite fun to get the numbers ordered. So far we were mostly able to deduce numbers but a few wild guesses were included. Can't wait to see how this plays with more players or more advanced scenarios.

Great strategic route planning and technology development with beer! With this younger sibling of Brass: Lancaster the danger of maneuvering yourself into a corner is far lower.

Enjoyed my first play of this a lot. The "interface" and handling on the table is easier than expected. The gimmick packaging is something I wish they'd just not done. I will not use the two story set up and just put the floors next to each other. Definitely looking forward to more plays and the "campaign"--my partner however is scared of this game for some reason. He thinks it will drown him in AP. I do not concur. It is not an easy coop but definitely not as complex as SI. More along the lines of The LOOP.

One of my favorite solos. A hex tile laying game where tiles score off certain süstial conditions either from their color or from their pattern or both. This may look like a harmless family game but it can be a brain burner if you tend to get hung up on optimization. I have only ever played in the easiest mode (beginner goals and cats) and it remains a fun puzzle challenge.

Luck-based, chaotic racing game. I had fun but this has very little game. The teenager at the table left, because he thought it was too dumb to play. I think I might prefer Kalimambo (which I gave away)

Need more plays. 2 player drafting game where you fight for loot and dominance in 3 "caper" locations while drafting alternates between crew and equipment cards for 6 rounds. Production is very nice, play is smooth and fast. Easy teach.

2-6 players (w/expansions)

Cascadia is one of my favorite games after I initally balked at acquiring it because I liked Calico so much. But Cascadia is more relaxed and it seems like these days I very much like that. I like the way it builds up my landscape and the various solo challenge modes a lot. It also plays very nicely multiplayer. I will not play with a full 6 players (with the expansion) again. That just takes forever. Highly recommended game that can be played with anyone--including 5 and 6 year olds! Rating 8.5 2026 After 89 plays. I initially dismissed this because it was less brain burny than Calico. Oh, how I was wrong about this game's decision being boring. This is one of my very favorite cozy games that I can play anytime. I prefer solo or small player counts. We once played with 6 with the expansion and it became this huge, long game... not recommended. I like to play some of the challenges that are at the back of the rulebooks of the base game and the expansion. They force you to adapt to some additional parameters and give you specific setups which ups the replay value of the game even more than it already is. As a bonus it is super quick to set up and the solo plays in under 20-30 minutes. I always play with the expansion tiles but I vary everything else. The expansion is very good but not needed to complete the game. Can't wait for Alpine Lakes. Rating 9

Excellent iteration on one of my favorite solo games. It really manages to do somethings differently enough that it becomes a real choice. - the longest road is the strip and only the biggest blocks on the strip are counted - escalating points for the 3 goals which makes it easier to focus on the important one - getting 3 symbols in a row on a road can really net some good points. It seems easier than Naturopolis due to an additional source of points. Rating: 8 2026 This is the 4th entry into the Sprawlopolis franchise and the first one to do something really different with scoring and as such I adore it. 1. the three goals are ordered and weighted, 3rd one scores 3 times as much as 1st. 2. Jackpots -> consecutive symbols on streets give super-extra points. There are also only 3 terrains as opposed to the usual 4. Overall this makes the game much higher scoring than the 3 predecessors. But the fun puzzle remains and is changed sufficiently from the others to make it into its own game. Rating 7

Another trick taker with the color gimmick. It feels gimmicky. You need to bid for tricks before each round. It seems very likely that a lot of rounds end in paradox. There was a lot of hype around this one. But I feel it is just average as a trick taker. Or maybe I am just not buying the whole trick taking hype (except The Crew of course)

A really quick Rosenberg "farming" game. There is no farming and no sheep multiplication but it belongs to the same family. I bought this for the solo-mode. Do not buy the big box! It is mostly filled with air and I have yet to go for the longer game that the expansion promises. Otherwise this is a good game but it only has the advantage over Arle + Nusfjord by being very short. Normally I would rather play either of those 2 for similar feels. Rating 7 2026 After 6 plays. Every time I play this I have to relearn the number of rounds. This year I messed up and played a game of just 4 rounds and insert "surprised pikachu" looked at my score, compared it to previous ones and said "that's a really bad score". The second game over the full 8 rounds was better. The thing that irks me most about this game is that I bought the stupid big box that is Carcassonne sized and has a lot of air inside. It is a very quick playing solo if one plays the short 8 round game. I kind of like it and it is somewhat unique among my solos except of course that I have a ton of Rosenberg games that are similarish. Except of all the farming ones this one is the fastest to table and play. Does it get a guaranteed place on my shelf? I have not played the big Caverna and have a big Agricola edition incoming. And while among my "quick" small solos there is nothing like it, if I go up to medium sized solos there is Nusfjord and while those two are very different the mood I have to be in to play them is similar and I think in many cases Nusfjord would win. I really need to play the long game with the Iron Age at some point to see if the challenge suits me better. Rating 6

Keeping for Nostalgia. We used to play this when we were just the age of most of the characters and it was hilarious. But a good game it is not.

Too much like Sprawlopolis et al and not enough. You play cards, with different terrains they may overlap. Dinosaurs want to eat plants or other dinosaurs. And you get various goals along the way. It is not different enough from the masterpieces that I have played dozens of times… Rating 6 --- 2026: I am always hunting for the next Sprawlopolis. Well, this wasn't it. I got it from crowdfunding. Played it twice. It does not compare favorably with Sprawlopolis at all. This is probably a bit unfair to the game, or is it? I decided to give it another chance. But it is just not as captivating as some of my other small tile laying puzzles. The decisions are not as interesting either. Having to decide about scoring cards and when to take them... might be fine if you wanted to play this competitive. But for competitive tile laying I would still vastly prefer Cascadia or Harmonies or Carcassonne if I actually wanted competition. Rating 5

Only a single 2-handed trial game. This is a 2 player only shedding game where you get rid of groups of identical cards and play goes back and forth with each player having to play a same-sized set of higher cards. Until one person passes. The other person leads the next "trick". Cards are numbered from 0 to 9. Each number but the 0 which appears once, apears (10-number) times in the set (I think). You play "hands" until one person scores their 31st point. A player's hands is 15 cards. There are 16 cards in a drawpile. Players can take a "writ" to draw two cards. Card numbered with 3 and 6 have special powers including counters and counter-counters. To me there seemed to be a variety of strategies to determine how to get rid of cards the fastest. Whoever empties their hand scores as many points as the opponent still has in their hand plus number of writs they took. There are a few other scoring opportunities in the game. But mostly points come from being out of cards first.

Enjoyed my first play. I like the new additions (Star Realms like faction bonusses), the possibility to trash cards in the market row and that trashing cards from my own deck is harder. The 2 part „code“ you have to complete to enter the vault is a clever pacing mechanism that forces some map exploration as well. My biggest criticism so far that the map has a lot of „blank“ spots that do nothing special. But this was a first game with the most basic map parts and no expansions.

2025: 3 games in, I like some of the new mechanics that are legacy independent (aka that are going to be in the finished game). Can't say what. No spoilers. This one much more like the previous one feels like it WANTS to be played with full 4 players. We are just two and two-handing is not on option for my Mitspieler. The game is as generous with the story and changes as the previous one. I don't like the personal quests much when playing with just two. They certainly help that one person can do something specific without interference. But with just two it feels overly protective. Still very good game so far. Rating: 8.5 2026: We very much enjoyed the first Clank! Legacy and so getting this was a no-brainer. Then after 4 games at the start of 2025, our campaign stalled. The reasons: * We had begun with 1 character each and it became obvious we should have been playing 2 handed each to experience the full story * The game barely fits our table and setup takes a lot of time * The games run long because the story aspects just take their time * The competitive nature of the game and our shared desire to experience the best story clashed So we decided to just pull the other 2 characters "up" and start playing 2-handed. I am well practiced playing multi-handed and despite my partner sometimes stating that this is my hobby more than his... "more" is the keyword here. He can do it just as well. We were unable to do anything about the other aspects. Adding up the setup, character changes, game prep, playing and epilogue of the game we probably spent something like 6+ hours on the game on Sunday. A typical Gloom-/Frosthaven scenario has nothing on this. It plays a lot faster. And that is saying something. Nevertheless we enjoyed it including the rules-twist introduced in the 5th game that players of the campaign will surely remember. Our inter-player conflict was also much reduced in this game and we both feel somewhat optimistic that we can now start playing this again regularly. Playing 2 handed helps with this aspect as well. Rating: 8

If you like Clank! you will like this. If you like deck builders with random markets and a map this is a great example with a neat story and a lot of nice map personalization throughout the game. Rules are introduced gradually nothing that strays too far from the known Clank! formula as far as I am aware. Also so far our only legacy game that is still fun to play after the campaign (we do not own other Clank! games but I hear the Fantasy stuff can be integrated).

Apart from the legacy iteration being a tremendous campaign, this is my favorite Clank! now. I am a little sad that I bought all the SF stuff which cannot be combined with this and likely will never see the table because the variable map makes this one shine so much brighter. All the rest is Clank! as usual. Except it feels there is more clanking in this one than the others? Whatever. It‘s great fun.

Always good fun with any group size. The recent online implementation at codenames.game works beautifully and revived this one for me. No setup plays well over voice chat.

2 player Codenames? Give. It. To. Me. We played 2 games so far and lost both. But of course this being codenames even losing was fun. The gameplay is a pretty good twist on the base game for two people or teams. Also the cards from both games can easily be used together.

Got it learned it, figured out this was another 2 player game nobody would want to play with me. Also I am disappointed that there is nothing "compile"-y about it, at least not from my perspective as a software dev. But it's very pretty. Radlands stands a slightly better chance being less abstract.

3-12 Fun, quick game. Not a lot of depth but good for non-gamers as well. And it is just great to pick apart idioms, sayings and references and find abstract representations to help others guess.

Concordia is a great deck and network building resource management euro game with tons of different maps for all player counts. Most of your VP are gained from the cards you buy that you also need to play the game and expand so beware which gods you worship and control the right cities.

3-7. My group didn‘t seem to gel with this. Too much freewheeling interaction is necessary to make this shine. We lack the nostalgia to make this worth getting to the table. Because I bought all of the available expansions with it I am having a hard time letting go of it.

While my partner is surprisingly bad at stacking games apparently I am surprisingly bad at flicking games. Nevertheless this is a quick one that proved to be lots of fun and it looks just ridiculous when set up.

We played about two thirds of the campaign in the (much easier) two player mode. We enjoyed the new “contracts” a lot they are far more varied and give the game exciting new twists. I had not expected to enjoy more of the same quite this much because it is an rather different flavor. Rating 8.5 2026: Still my favorite trick taker. The only one I actually want to play. I own a whole bunch from the wave of recent years but this cooperative version is "it" for me at least. I prefer this with the dynamic puzzle goals over the original also this one introduced the two player mode. We started a new campaign during vacation and got till Mission 11 or so. I hope we keep it going. We downloaded a campaign sheet here from the BGG Files section that should make it easier to track where we are at. Good fun. I prefer the 2 player mode over every other 2 player trick taker I tried (Awimbawe and Sail come to mind). Rating 8.5

Love the reverse trick taking. Will always play this. Sometimes card distribution will prevent a success but it is always fun. Can be hard to teach to players that don't already know all the trick taking tropes.

SPIEL 2018, very fun sounding deduction game, each player has a single clue where the cryptid is hiding on the board and players mark locations where - according to their clue the creature can or cannot be

Playing solo is probably not showing this off to its greatest advantage. I just really wanted to play a COIN game. This will not be easy for me to table for a multiplayer but one day I will. Until then I really enjoyed my time with history. Also it is very compact on the table for the amount of history in the box.

Dice throwing fest! Sadly, the race could be more interactive. However the dice deck building aspect is quite fun and the dice have good quality. This one screams for an expansion introducing more interaction.

There is one really good idea in this game: the workers grow and evolve throughout the game by gaining colored seals making them able to take more and different powerful actions. Other than that I found it a fiddly, overproduced worker placement game with some kickstarter sickness. I had trouble learning the game from the rulebook and could not on my first play/s find out how each piece interlocks with other game systems. (Caveat: this arrived at the same time as Revived and Distilled and may have suffered in contrast) Needs more plays. Rating 7.5 2026 After 5 plays. I backed this late at night during the pandemic. And I shouldn't have. Me and the modern Euro are not the best of friends. This is a complex worker placement game that thematically tracks Darwin's Journey through the Galapagos Isles. The key idea here seems to be that you "grow" your workers by giving them more color seals to allow them to go to spots that require more of those seals or make them more versatile. This is the thing that made me back the game. But this is embedded in such a variety of systems that for me it never becomes a cohesive whole but rather disjointed tracks and mechanisms that accidentally sometimes lead to super-turns with lots of bonus actions. I consistently lose against the bot as well and I cannot imagine having to teach this, the people, I play with when I actually play other than solo, wouldn't enjoy this amount of rules getting thrown at them. This game is just not for me. This last game was on BGA where I had hoped the automation might help me enjoy this more but it was the opposite. I was unable to track what the automa was doing and lost even worse than usual. I have fallen out of love with this type of rules-complex modern euro. I have several others I also don't get along with. Rating 5

This is my GOTY for 2024 and it has been since about 10 plays in. I doubt anything will come along and topple it from the throne. 1) I love the theme and how it transports it, this works so surprisingly well, I still can't believe it. Corollary: I can tell you a story about my last game and I won't need a single rule to explain to you what happened. 2) it is just so fun to play. The combos are not endless because the cards are not but it feels fresh every time and I am over 60 games in--about half of those solo, the other half with 2 players. I have also played with 4. 3) If there is one criticism: it's too easy even with challenge cards to save the world. But the theme can do with some optimism. 4) stellar production, beautiful art, no plastic. Highly recommended. Rating 10 2026: After 200+ plays. This game broke into my personal favorites instantly back when I got it. These days I mostly play with two players on BGA. I enjoy this at all playercounts. After over 200 games I know all the cards by heart. And still we lose quite a few games. We always play with both player and group challenges and it keeps the game varied enough. Without those we would surely win every game by now. Rating 10

We've been having a lot of fun with this game. Although sometimes it can be a bit too random to pinpoint the murderer. Still the discussions and accusations around the table are great and it doesn't overstay its welcome. The variable player number makes it a great game in many contexts.

Need to play more but my first game was a bit on the "what am I doing" side. More opaque than I had hoped for. Also a bit fiddly.

This is a little weirdo. Cooperative deduction is not a huge genre and this one fully lives up to its' subtitle "A Game of Passive Aggressive Cohabitation". Only played 2 player so far. Not unlike Cryptid every player gets conditions that must be fulfilled for the solution of the puzzle (these are precalculated and put in envelopes in campaign style for 2 player, and scenarios for 3 and 4, there is now a web generator for more puzzles apparently). On your turn you get to change the 4 room house a bit and the other players let you know if they think the changes was good/bad/neutral and you need to figure out their conditions while putting the house in a state that fulfills all yours. The action you can do is paint a room, remove or add an object or replace an object. All objects have one of 4 colors and one of 4(?) styles and it is certainly quite tricky to get everything right. Of 4 games we managed twice! Communication is very limited and we already had to have a debate what constitutes a positive, neutral or negative change... definitely want to play more. This is a good game to train yourself out of "needing to win" btw :)

More difficult to teach than Codenames but not difficult to play. Just the tip-giving becomes more and more treacherous as you try to avoid giving similar clues for the same word to prevent the other time from guessing them round after round while at the same time making sure your own team "gets it". Like many such games it helps if you have either played several rounds with a group or know the people reasonably well that they will associate similar words. Definitely need to play more.

Solo learning game convinced me that I am not bringing this to a multiplayer table near me--too many other games I'd rather spend time with on my rare multiplayer occasions. And too many other solos clamoring for my attention. Haven't been motivated to get back to it since. Another review I feel for that sounded better than it was probably meant to be.

A mix of the Dixit formula with a dose of Spyfall. Everyone gets a clue except one person and then everyone needs to play their cards and people have to vote for whose card didn't fit. But one person has to be the clueless one and that can be stressful for some.

One of the last Roll & Writes I bought before I tired of the genre. I tried this once and noped out. It is probably not that bad, I just have genre fatigue.

Good thematic game, overall very well executed. Bought this on a whim for the theme and am pleasantly surprised to find a good game inside. Over 7 rounds players distill spirits from water, sugars and yeast in their distillery. There is a thematic push your luck element here that feels quite nice. Depending how your filled your "vat" you might make moonshine, vodka or any of the other recipes you know. It is easy to learn, has a good rulebook (+ tutorial game), a working insert, a good amount of depth and a small modicum of interaction via the card markets. I thought this was a good game to introduce some of my more casual boardgame friends to hobby games. I had underestimated the complexity of the game somewhat and the game ran forever. The solo mode is very good and unique. You have a tree of goals you need to complete to win a bit like the 7 Wonders Duel tableau with some lines hidden and others open. Personally enjoy very much. Will not play with too many newbies again.

Of all the association games this one remains my favorite because of the beautiful card art and because it has yet to turn to the ugly kind of humor that some of the text based ones are known for. It does lend itself to insider jokes so group composition is key for this. It is not fun to have one person who doesn't get all the references because they will feel left out.

Why did I buy this game? It should have been obvious to me that I have no occasions to get this played. I am not at uni anymore.

A very cozy tile layer just like its predecessor. The new additions make it a little more complex. I really prefer Pink Dorf now both because of the looks and because of the new special tiles, and all the unlocks. My favorite ones being the three types of little buildings that just stand out so nicely from the tiles. We're almost finished with our first campaign at 13 games in. Rating: 8.5 2026: I was missing something from my soloing. And I looked through my games and noted I had not played this since late 2024. The campaign was almost finished. But I didn't remember all the rules for the unlocked details. So I reset the game and started over. It's so addicitve I played 11 games in 3 days. I have played the computer game which I don't really enjoy this much and I have played the OG Dorfromantik boardgame and I prefer this one. It has taken some lessons from the first and improved both gameplay and table presence and yes: I like pink. Highly recommended. This is the only implementation of a computer game where I very much prefer the boardgame. (Not that I have tried many such games, I usually avoid them because computergames are all about automation... I have more than a few apps I prefer over the original boardgames). Rating: 10

Worked surprisingly well and quick as a filler that doesn't need a lot of teaching. Hilarious but does not necessarily lend itself to playing multiple rounds in a row.

Still waiting to ever get this to the table. I keep buying the expansions. Because it's Dune.

This game despite a number of systems feels like I could teach it in 15 minutes. The deck building directs where you can send your workers and the workers help with the deck building. The different mechanisms merge to make one good game. The deckbuilding aspect has most of the usual tropes: buying cards each round, deck destruction, combos, card drawing... the fighty part is very straightfoward and gives each round a nice goal. As the rewards increase it certainly helps along the arc of the game.

Feels like a more complete iteration than the original base game. It is less fiddly than playing the base game with both expansions. I like the additions of spies, contracts and worms quite a bit. The card selection also seems to be improved from the original base game. As is often the case 2nd iterations are just better. I do like the original enough to keep both of them for now even though I won't be able to fit everything into one box. But if I could own only one I'd definitely go with this one.

This is not a bad game but it is smaller than the box it resides in. If the box were just a standard square box like Spirit Island I would rate this higher. As it stands I have only played with two and the combination of worker placement and fighting on the map fell a little flat. This is a case of me coming in with very high expectations from the KS. It is only a mild disappointment, still hoping to get in a larger game at some point. Keeping it as a lesson to stay away from this type of KS.

For a story game this one is pretty good. I keep forgetting to read the story parts and it still works. The setting is far brighter than Arkham TCG and the gameplay far smoother than both Sleeping Gods and 7th Continent. But 4 games into the campaign the deck construction is not that exciting. Discovering the world is interesting but slow and I feel pressured to remain on the move a lot and so hurry from place to place barely exploring. Because the world is quite dangerous. I‘ll keep playing for a few more games at least and hope some of those emergent story pieces I heard about will come together…

2026: After 4 plays. I bought this on a recommendation after avoiding it despite the SdJ Kennerspiel win. In recent years Kennerspiel and me weren't always a good fit. Having seen pictures of the game also didn't entice me. But when I heard it had a solo and a cooperative mode and was about exploration more than anything, I decided it might be a good fit to play with my partner and it is. After 3 solos and one 2 player cooperative game, I think the competitive mode is probably where it is at. Solo could get boring. I think the goal and the problem cards don't have enough variety to make a real difference. And I think more sea tiles would also be good although how much variety can you have... Rating 8

Played on BGA. Outside of the solos, I played 1 two player. It is terribly solitaire and has so much upkeep in later turns that I think I'll stick to digital. Though I would like to try and play a copy on a table just to see if the upkeep is less than I think it is. Huge card-stack is reminiscent of Terraforming Mars and Ark Nova. But the game is really nothing like either of those. Just a small 4x4 tableau with some point salad scoring. Good but not near as great as those others.

Played with 8. Obviously the aliens won even after one vengeful (hungry) alien turned on its fellow aliens. The point of this is obviously not that it is a balanced game of hide and seek, it's just chaos. I was a human and kept drawing red cards, there was nothing I could do to prevent getting eaten. Would definitely play again in a large group. Smaller group may start to try and turn this into an actual competition and that might be less fun. Also it plays quicker than one might think even with everyone taking turns after one another!

The big box is too much. Quite overwhelming when all I want is a quick dice rolling casual game. Unless I have a very specific occasion I doubt I'll bring this to the table. I should have stayed away like I did so many years ago at SPIEL. It is not bad as a game. But this giant iteration is not helping me play this. I also failed at solo-ing this. Will give it another try sometime. Buying this at SPIPEL 2023 was a case of FOMO in action I guess.

Only played a few turns and I can already see where this is going. It’s got a bit of the same feeling as 6 nimmt. Gleeful laughter at the misfortune of others that can turn into groans about your own at any moment. This is an auction game for building parts that has you slide into negative points quickly as all players try to wrest the most money from the new neighborhood they are building „together“ (not a coop game!)

I really enjoy this iteration of Everdell. It takes care of several of my gripes with the original basegame. * double cards aren’t discarded but stacked on the market * Moving into a location for free is now only tied to the color of the location/critter and everyone gets 3 ankers to do that a maximum of 3 times in a game. This seems far less random and is a huge improvement. * Also there are little round goals that if you play matching cards allow your ship to advance on its track for both points and treasures which can be used as a joker resource or points. * Contracts are replaced by map tiles which you can claim if you have the right symbols. There is less variability here but more scoring opportunities and the bot almost beat me because of those (maps have values between 0 and two to add to the multiplier what each map is worth). Overall very nice. I think I made the right choice (for me) getting this version. Friends have been playing the big box a lot and switching all the expansions and they are loving it. I was just overwhelmed. Now everyone is happy

Soloable puzzle with shadows (is this an actual follow-up to Photosynthesis—I have not played that). Each turn you draft a card with a biome and an action on it. You plant or grow trees in that biome on your plan. Then you execute the action which can be more plants or growth or lakes or bushes. The leftover card from the draft is put aside and end-game points are calculated from that. At the end of each of the four rounds you check where the sun is, calculate which trees get sunlight and get points for your biggest forest. At the end of the game trees in each biome score from the cards you put aside. Puzzly, quick and solo that is easy to run (the bot just takes a card according to some rules, it doesn‘t score)

The (solo so far) puzzle is harder than I thought it would be. Love it. Place machines, connect color inputs with color outputs, use reservoirs or color producers. This is all I wanted.

Better solo than at two. Meditative luck pushing route building forest festival. Good to train pattern recognition skills. May also be good for people who enjoy knitting as this is basically a giant tangle of two colors of yarn. Rating 8 2026 After 13 plays. A small box that could be even smaller, this tiny tile laying game has a satisfying thinkiness to it. I once played it with my partner (it is actually also for 2 players) and he complained about the brain-burn. As a solo it's more of a cozy puzzle but with a bit of a heft to it because one really wants to not use up all the cards to place all the fairy stones. There is a certain similarity in how it feels to play this with A Gentle Rain even down to how you want to solve the puzzle with as few tiles/cards as possible. But this one is far easier to solve than A Gentle Rain and less dependent on lucky draws or knowledge of the tiles. I like knowing this is part of my collection. But it has to compete against a huge number of other solo games of equal weight and play-time. Rating 6

Deckbuilder with a „numbered market“ (cards will slide into the market according to their natural ordering). Your deck will not automatically return to your hand, you get to have recover actions and it is a „last in first out“ stack with payment needed for more than 3 cards. So whatever is at the bottom will stay there. With those cards you build up the shared map with fields, cities, roads (no boats) and production. Yes, there is also some resource management. I felt the general idea of the stack quite interesting, the cards themselves and the map buildup was a bit boring but I have only played solo. Like most FF games I have played, it feels as if this one could do with a bit more polish.

Just about the only drawing game I enjoy. If the pens were any better I would enjoy it even more. One person gives everyone something to draw and then they draw something collaboratively--except one is a Fake Artist and doesn't know what to draw and has to try and stay hidden. Lots of fun in a small package.

Only played solo, cannot find anyone who wants to play a long evening of multiplayer solitaire. I think I could maybe convince someone to play the shorter and simpler Hallertau instead which is still neither short nor simple just by comparison. I like the polyominoes but I prefer the city building in Nusfjord or the resource production in Hallertau. Update 2022: I have now played a few 2 player games online and a solo with Norwegians. Both are awesome. Online helps make this into a quick game of action selection that plays surprisingly fast. Norwegians streamlines the action selection, adds that fascinating „last action in a round“ column and improves 2 player and solo modes by reducing slots. There are a lot of interesting things to try and do. I like the open relaxed nature of this. Even when the action you wanted to take is blocked there is always something to do. I don‘t know that I would want to play this with more than 2 though and the card play is far too random to be actually useful most of the time.) Definitely will never play the paper version without Norwegians again (also: I somehow managed to pack all the needed materials of the expansion with the main box!

2026 After 1st play. As a fan of both the original show and space exploration games, when this went to crowdfunding I had to get it after initially dismissing it as "yet another badly implemented media franchise game". But it came with recommendations from other fans of the space exploration genre and so I bought the Firefly-coffin-box. This was actually the first full play after receiving it a good while ago. I had always planned to play this with a specific group of fellow Firefly fans but this play never materialized and so I made do with a 2 player session instead. We played without any of the expansions. The similarities to Star Wars: Outer Rim (especially with the expansion) are unmissable and that game and Xia are definitely the biggest competition for Firefly. We enjoyed our session and it renewed my hopes of getting it to the table at 4 players sometime soon. As much as I like these space exploration games, they are all similarish concerning the gameplay and have pretty big rulesets for what amounts to very light games. There is more story-telling in these games than fascinating gameplay mechanics and that needs to be taken into account when deciding if this is a game you need to play/own. I usually avoid story-driven games but Firefly somehow manages. But it lacks the puzzly bits I enjoy most about boardgames. Definitely an outlier in my collection. The thing I like least about this game is that once again the box is bigger than it strictly had to be. Yes, the playmat is nice and the box dimensions certainly have to do with this. But this thing eats table and shelf space as if it didn't matter (space is big!). And the big plastic could certainly have been made with less air remaining inside. This definitely costs the rating a point. Rating 7

2-4 players. Unsurprisingly the material is very nice but it comes with a big price tag like all DoW games. Surprisingly the part I liked most about the game was the turn bidding and I usually dislike any bidding elements. The random elements in the game just provide set-up so there's very little luck involved. The rest of the game was - after 1 play at Essen - too open for me. Too many choices and the chaos of all the meeples on the board just blinded me. Could lead to lots of AP. I guess that on more plays interesting strategies would emerge but right now too many other games are vying for my attention and with 60€ it's a not-buy. But I wouldn't mind playing again.

2026 I bought this rather spontaneously at SPIEL because I liked how the building slowly rises up. But it turns out to be a small engine builder for 1 or 2 players with a rather fiddly set of iconography that interrupts the flow of playing. The engine building is not that spectacular. Sure you get 4 different actions on your tableau that you slowly build up by up to 3 additional bonusses and nothing immediately comes to mind that does this in quite the same way but it does not feel so exceptional. The iconography is what does this in. In a bid to have as little text in the game itself as possible too many similar-ish icons were introduced on too many different game elements and I just can't deduce the meanings of them easily. In each set of icons there are a couple that just aren't intuitive and when they come up I either ignore those options or I have to go look for the right table in the rulebook. It might be that with repeated plays this would flow much more smoothly. But I have too many games in my collection that appeal more to me as a solo and for small 2 player engine building I am more likely to be going for Splendor Duel and similar games. And for big engine building I have Terraforming Mars. (For some reason this game keeps reminding me of Furnace and I cannot explain why. I like Furnace better anyway. It's smarter.) Rating 6

I noticed that I am really bad at flicking games. I think I prefer stacking. Also the pieces are all over the room. Can't take this anywhere else or stuff might get lost. Two player was fine. Hoping to get this to the table with more.

Hilarious late-night push-your-luck game that induces people to just take another card because "what could go wrong". Some people are just unlucky enough to pull both 2s in one hand.

Somehow I expected more from this. It is pretty though. But is pretty enough? I should really stop falling for pretty games. Rating 6 2026 This is a very simple set collection game with very beautiful cards. I don't think I'll ever play this other than solo because I have too many other multiplayer games and probably better set collection like Let's Go To Japan or even Sushi Go. Why play this one? It's quick to set up and play. But it is also not super interesting and the bot makes for a lot of entropy in the decisions that would probably also happen in multiplayer. I have never had a really high scoring game with a good combo of sets. The arc just falls a little flat. Rating 5

2021: A garden building, set collection card drafting game with two lovely twists: you pass cards to both your neighbors each turn and a ton of cards score of your neighbors gardens. Add a few interesting modules that add more scoring mechanisms f.e. Spatial and majority, beautiful cards, a variable player count (1-7), a neat solo puzzle and even a coop mode and this is a good game to bring to many different tables. Rating: 7 2026: I had not played this in the last 5 years despite knowing that this is a very well done cozy solo drafting game or an alternative medium length game for a higher player count that provides an alternative to the ever present 7 Wonders for these plays. I prefer this over Floriferous not least because setup is so fast. Deal 12 cards to the bot. Deal 6 cards to yourself. Use any other scoring device than the provided (I really hate scoring wheelies) and play. Decisions are interesting because you just know that the cards you pass to the bot will come back to bite you. The game is quick, their is a pull between points now and points later. In just 3 rounds of 3 cards each and a final 3 card scoring round, the garden is finished and because it is fun, you can play a second game. Rating: 7

1-5, Kennerspiel 2019. Beautiful, nicely thematic, medium complex tableau/engine building. Probably good as a gateway game. Good mechanic with fewer and fewer actions towards later rounds in game where things become more complex Do not buy expansions though. Or at least keep them separated and optional. It is nice to have all those birds like collectibles but the expansions complicate a good game needlessly. I've been playing less since I have the expansions. It is much more difficult to build an engine with such a vast array of abilities and cards.

I really like the addition of the 2 player sideboard and the revised goals. Makes the two player a bit more competitive and interactive and rekindles my interest in playing Wingspan. (Could have helped that the friend I played with is a huge fan of the game and quite enthusiastic)

A nice little solo puzzler that does not provide enough of a challenge once you ha0ve figured out how to play it. The variability with the different animals does not give this the same replayability of varying goals as Sprawlopolis. But it is satisfying to play every once in a while. Rating 7 2026 At some point I thought this might become rote. But as I keep losing this year, I don't think it ever did. It's one of those "I have a short break and need to get my mind somewhere else" games like A Gentle Rain. Rating 7

I am not sure I will ever get this to the table. But one day...

Having trouble grokking the solo-mode from the rulebook, so it is on the unplayed stack more or less. Need to play this multiplayer first I think.

Worker placement game about tea production in Taiwan. Played over six rounds that each end with a historical event. You need to harvest the tea leaves, bring them to the factories for green, black and oolong tea and then produce the tea with your tea masters over a series if refinement steps. You get to advance your mastery of each type of teach and sell tea on global and local markets fulfilling valuable contracts. It took me 2 reads of the manual to grasp how the production engine works in this game. I find it plays quite relaxed with some beneficial interactivity and very little getting in each other‘s way. Has a good table presence with a beautifully composed color scheme and an intriguing looking board. Just enough crunch to stay interesting. I think the time is closer to 90 minutes for 2 practiced players and higher for more than 2 players.

2026. I bought this blind because of the cover (I like tulips and never bought any of the other tulip games like Windmill Valley, Gift of Tulips or Tulpenfieber) and only later noticed that it was a polyominoes games (a very favorite mechanism) by one of my favorite designers (Bruno Cathala). The game is very beautiful with very pretty glittering tiles and very nice chunky wooden pieces for the improvements. The solomode is elegant to handle, one of the more unique ones I have seen with the cards themselves creating an analog to the landscape the player is building. If I was only to rate how well the solomode was done this would easily be a 10/10 game. But... it is too short. 10 turns is probably great for a quick multiplayer à la Kingdomino. With games like this I am looking for just a bit longer experience. Cascadia's solo has 20 turns. Harmonies has a variable length but probably takes ~15 turns. Even Sprawlopolis which has just 19 cards has 15 turns to play. The landscape you build is not very satisfying, the game mainly asks you to try and build improvements and it is not very satisfying to me to build a landscape full of holes which is where the improvements are placed. This may be personal preference and YMMV. Anyhow games like Cascadia, Harmonies or Planet Unknown provide a more satisfying final result on the table. If this were any less pretty I would quickly let it go. As such I am shallow and it will get more chances and possibly improve my opinion through multiplayer. Rating 6/10

Really more of the same as Gloomhaven. Love the new content, we've enjoyed our return to the system so far. Love the new characters. Love the "allies" mechanics. Hope there is lots more of that. Minor gripes: * Lots of pieces obsolete after beginning to use the app. * Separate app for the voice over * The village building phase is great but takes a lot of time and my table doesn't have enough space to manage this without shuffling everything back and forth all the time * More of a built-in insert and yet doesn't really work out. Also box doesn't close anymore, can't fit the standees... the usual

Pretty neat duel game that actually works for us. Possibly the one "hidden movement" game that might stay in my collection. Others tend to not see the table at all.

Played a couple of times on BGA and once on the table. All with the beginner setup. I prefer it on the table. It does have all the tropes of trick taking including having to play "null" games and "taking all" the tricks, bidding for which number of tricks you win, trumps and following suit... The special powers from your helpers help you manipulate your hand so you can actually win the precise number of tricks. The opponent just plays cards from the draw deck randomly. I did not think it was possible to have a solo trick taking game but this definitely evokes the mechanic quite well. Have yet to see how much variety there is to be had with different setups. Plays pretty long overall and almost overstays it's welcome every time I play. The tension and overall arc are middling. But this is on the lowest difficulty setting there is with the basic powers available.

A quick fun engine builder & auction mashup. Over before you know it.

1-4, Great complex strategy and engine building. Definitely improved on several of Terra Mystica features especially the knowledge track.

Excellent filler game that plays with the same magic as Hana-Bi and The Mind. But it has more game than the latter and can be played and iterated on more quickly than the former. It's been said this might be a good introduction to modern games for non-gamers. But don't underestimated how well the magic works for experienced players as well. It does seem to give an interesting insight into poker hand valuation. Most hands are terrible. Since everyone always shows their hands you can truly see how terrible. In poker lots of hands are not revealed.

I have been unable to enjoy my copy because it is misprinted and with the circles you have to fit together being off center the 3 "red/orange" colored flowers become so hard to match that it is a challenge and not the challenge the game wants to pose. edit: I got a replacement copy that is marginally better. The 3 red colors remain hard to distinguish. In any case after a few games this has grown on me as a very relaxed little tile laying puzzle for those moments where I want something on my table that isn't terribly taxing. Rating 7 2026 After 30+ plays. I first saw this recommended on various solo gamers' lists. But it was OOP at the time and so when it reappeared I eagerly snatched a copy. Only to be very disappointed by the gameplay. Because there is almost no gameplay. Just put tiles together. It is more of a meditative exercise with a cup of tea than a game. But it has grown on me somehow. I now consider it an essential solo in my collection. It is a comforting game I play when I need to just get my thoughts together or away from something that carries over from my day at work. I do not rate it as high as some other games I have because it really is not much of a game-game. But it is so very satisfying to plop in the last flower. Rating 6

1-4 players, hardest cooperative game I own Update 2022: still one of the coop games I have lost the most. I will keep it forever because Nostalgia but I am not sure I need this difficult of a puzzle for coop. The RNG is high in this one. I think if I am honest these days I prefer games to be either a little less difficult or less random.

Complex trick taking game with bidding where 3 (or 4) tricks (past, present, future) are played at the same time. Tricks are resolved in timeline order from past, present to future. First card played to a trick determines which suit has to be followed. For present and future the trick is resolved using the color played by the person who won the previous trick in the timeline--so at resolution time the color may change. There is a fixed trump suit. Everyone has a hand of 12 cards, so it is played over 4 (or 3) rounds. Only who guessed "mostly" correct how many tricks they will take will get points. Difficult teach, best play 1 round of tricks openly to show how it works. Needs players that have a solid grasp of basic trick taking rules.

Tile laying to extend the city either upward or outward but you need enough resources and the higher numbers to build upward for the truly profitable turns. In the meantime maybe play for drawing more tiles or generating resources. Whoever builds over s tile gets to keep the relevant card and hopefully that makes your next action more powerful. Great arc because the more you build the stronger you become.

2 players. Keeping for Nostalgia.

We're 5 missions into the campaign and the more I play this game the more I want to play this game. It is way more than a dungeon crawler, I love the actual game that is hidden in those dungeons! Update Mid 2021: we got much further into the campaign in 2019 but have played almost no new scenarios since the start of the pandemic. Cannot wait to free up enough brainpower to get back to this. By 2022 the digital version is also a very good option to enjoy the complex gameplay of this masterpiece—provided you are willing to reload after making a stupid mistake, because mistakes happen all the time and the game has no undo.

November 2021

Pretty neat solo dice and card laying puzzle. Very portable. For those times where I want a quick solo puzzle that is not Sprawlopolis. Rating 7.5 2026 After 20 plays. I never really played the predecessor (Orchard, I believe). I like this one fine. It is not as good a tile laying puzzle as Sprawlopolis but sufficiently different to keep it on my small games shelf. It also shares a bit of the "Oh I didn't spot the pattern" issue I have with A Gentle Rain when I am tired or cannot concentrate for other reasons. So it is a good gauge of my current stress level. It forces more concentration than a game like Sprawlopolis which I play by feeling my way through. Rating 7.5

Of my big Rosenberg boxes this is my favorite. The worker placement here works that each action has three slots which becomes more and more expensive. There are four different decks of cards helping the player build up the best hops producing little village. Workers don't need food in this game but sheep age and die. This is less convoluted than A Feast for Odin and more streamlined than some of his other worker fests. As usual has a great solo mode that is easy to handle. This one needs a few extra cards that decide where to free up worker slots each round.

A limited communication cooperative game that wants you to learn through repeated play how to communicate through actions instead of words. Very good. Recently rebought. Sometimes when the learning process is complete, one needs to take a break from this to reset or play with a different group. No need to sell though. For a similar but quicker and more teachable experience try The Gang.

—-Preliminary rating. Need more plays. Really cool route building game but I have no idea how the dynamics would play out.

SPIEL 2018, deckbuilding with letters - writer themed, too bad this is an English alphabet with English weights/distributions for letters so hard to play here. 2021: turns out my English is good enough to play this all the time--I have a German paper copy now but I play on BGA in English. It's addictive fun. And it is even possible to discover new strategies 20 games in. Also feels like there is a not small skill component in the letter selection.

How can it be that I have played this 40+ times and have not written a comment how much I like this game? For me it scratches a similar patternfinding-tilelaying itch as Cascadia, except it plays even faster. It is also very pretty and can be played with almost anyone. Highly recommended. Rating 8.5 2026 After 76 plays. I bought this game because of the beautiful cover. And then I instantly fell in love with the game. It's beautiful on the table and very tactile: the wooden pieces are so satisfying to put on your board. The puzzle is really good, too. The variability is just a bit less than Cascadia (but Cascadia got an expansion and this does not). I play this a lot on the table but also on BGA because the solo on BGA takes less than 15 minutes which is perfect for a short coffee break. My biggest complaint is probably the card quality. I would pay good money for cards that do not look "bent". Maybe sleeving would help? Rating 9

Nice racing game, I think I need to learn the more advanced rules with the modifier cards. It works very well at full player count as well as as a solo. Box seems prepared for an expansion for 2 more players and probably more race courses. Would take to game night again.

Very good first game. It entered my collection at a bad time and was relegated to the back-shelves. But that doesn't mean it won't get played in the future. I like 7 Wonders Duel a lot and this is sufficiently different and equally fun.

Classic game of pissing off other players or so I am told (have yet to play). Nice small box!

A quick and often hilarious auction game where you want to buy status symbols to gain points but you also do not want to be expelled from society for being poor…

As a sequel to Tetrarchia, it is of course quite similar. But this time the opposing armies are not “babarians” coming from the borders to attack the Roman empire, but the Romans are attempting to conquer Hispania and the locals are fighting back. Rating 8.5 There are a bunch of newish mechanics: * Roads allow for faster travel * Fleets move with the transported general * Rebellion stacks up to 3 height and so do my own garrisons * Garrisons defend against attacking armies (at least a little) * Armies stick to their own province until it is secured (movement priorities are no longer on the board, it is easy to handle though) * You can spend money (actions) to make your own attack stronger * You can spend money to uproot a garrison again * After each round one rebel token is put on a track counting the years of attrition Overall this got me thinking. The Roman conquest of Hispania took 200 years. I imagined living in a place that is slowly being taken over like that. It seemed quite awful overall and it made me feel like I was playing the antagonist in this game. I never had such thoughts playing Tetrarchia. Despite feeling like the bad guy, I enjoyed the game quite a bit. Sufficiently different from Tetrarchia to keep both boxes on my shelves. They are tiny for the amount of game they provide. If you missed out on one of them, I would still say no need to “have” to hunt down the 2nd one--unless you really really love the one you have and absolutely need more. They aren’t that different. I think I’d recommend Hispania over Tetrarchia (after 1 game of Hispania) because I think this is a good evolution that improves on some of the mechanisms in Tetrarchia by putting the game on a timer for example. 2026 After 4 plays. When I saw that Tetrarchia was getting a sequel of sorts, I had to back it. I enjoy both games quite a bit. I have not played either as anything but a solo. I feel they are too small and quick to play with more players. There are some significant changes from Tetrarchia and I think I will need to play both back to back to really appreciate the differences. Hispania may currently be the one I favor. I really like the roads setup as that varies gameplay even more than the random setup. Rating 7.5

German Edition. Sure there are other genres. But why would I want those? We know this one best. I dislike that it needs Spotify and that we don't have Spotify. And that other streaming services are not supported.

Very portable abstract 2 player game without a board where you place hex pieces that each have their own movement rules adjacent and try to surround the opponents Queen.

—preliminary need more plays, but the mixture of spatial puzzle, economics and action selection is quite tasty, so much so I immediately built an insert to help keep order in the bee hive.

I love the arenas. I hate the dice. I want to like this game. I want to very much. It is quite beautiful and has great production (except for the little camp map at the bottom where paths are not always clearly visible). In this game you play a campaign over 4 acts. Fighting your way through opponents to get to 3 chapter bosses and one final boss. You get to choose where you go and you upgrade your character, your army and your dice over the course of the 4 games (I played each act as a single game). Each arena is sufficiently different to make it exciting to discover new tactics. The opponents have interesting abilities and trying to evade them also makes for interesting decisions. And this would be a great game if not for the empty die faces. No matter what dice I roll there always seems to be a majority of empty faces coming up especially when I roll dice for me and not the opponent. The game also has quite the difficulty level. It might have helped if I had chosen to play with an easier hero for the first game. (It was actually my 2nd attempt at finishing a campaign). It might have helped if my first "boss" wasn't at the opposite end of the map more or less. It might have helped if I had checked for some tactics on the forums first (that helped from act III onwards). But I cheated my way through this first campaign, rerolling until fewer empty faces showed. I will try again with a different hero. And I will probably just choose the champions I will face until I get better at it, because then I can make the path through the map a little less restrictive and the game should be easier. I may try to figure out some houserule where I count the empty faces I roll and every 10 or 20 I may give myself and the opponent a small bonus or something. Because otherwise the frustration of rolling nothing just ruins my fun. I rarely houserule anything because most of the time the games are not worth changing the rules: if it is not fun I usually just don't play them. This is a special case, I want to play this game because I think if I can take away the desire to see something other than empty faces, there is a really great tactical fighting game here. And maybe if I get there I will get good enough at it that I don't need any crutches. (But I doubt it, this is too involved to play often enough, but it would be nice.) PS: I should really have got the deluxe health chips the plastic ones are cheap and slippery. I have been using my own pokerchips instead.

I call this the "travel edition" :) If you have a big wooden box of all of Spirit Island, this smaller one is easier to take along to play somewhere other than your own table. Other than that, this is just 4 new easy Spirits to complete the collection.

2026: After 2 plays. It's not a race game and no it's not for 4 players. It's a fun betting game that surprises with how engaging it is. I got this as soon as it was available in Germany. I had people tell me how much fun it was for half a year... At my table however these "fun" games have a tendency to fall flat. My local Mitspieler are not usually the ones to jump up and down around the table and be super-engaged. I would never try Read-Set-Bet with them. Camel-Up was not as much fun as this one. Someone said: "This is the much better version of Camel-up" and people were laughing and shouting. We had sufficient entropy in our first games to ensure this. I have heard someone say that it might be best to pre-create a chaotic deck if people are playing for the first time to make sure a mascot walks backwards, a mascot swerves off the map. Rating 8

I have only played this once so far. But: 1) this is the prettiest of all the pandemics I have (played) by far. Beautiful cardbacks, pretty map… and 2) the most difficult (compared to OG/Rome/Clone Wars). The railroad building gives the traveling a whole new strategic dimension and I like the water mechanic that protects adjacent cities quite a bit. Despite including way too many event cards accidentally (who knew they would have sooo many in this box), I lost this first game by running out of turns. Might make me get rid of my OG Pandemic.

Spieleschmiede

Deckbuilding civilization game. Lead your tribe from barbarians to nation. This avoids the tech tree trap by ending much earlier than most civ games. Each civ plays quite distinct. A few observations: 1) setup takes a bit but tear down really takes the cake. I need to sleeve the cards or they‘ll be damaged from the shuffling of the main deck (4 types of cards get mixed hier, but since the market has small decks for 3 of those types they have to be sorted and mixed every game) 2) The deck building in this is tight. You want a small deck in most cases and this does much better at continuous deconstruction than Dale of Merchants. Awesome. 3) Great if fiddly solo mode. I believe I have yet to play a game without making half a dozen mistakes for the bot player 4) Interaction on this is quite light. The shared market of course and a handful of minor „take that“ cards. Other than that it‘s a race to one of several game end conditions.

I've been enjoying the new Civilizations this brings to the table. What actually also helped my game was the big solo-playmat. Makes everything a bit more ordered. I still do not want to play this other than solo. Great civilization / deck-building thing. But very involved, it takes a lot of time to set up and play and the rules are quite intricate if I don't play several games in a row, rules retention is mediocre and then I make mistakes and that spoils the fun a little.

The legends have much more unusual types of strategies that diverge from the classic gameplay in „Classics“. I have yet to try the Utopians who win by a completely different set of rules. But then every faction has their own rules, these are just a little more crazy.

Only played at 2 players for now. At two, it is all about blocking the other player from certain card combos. Love the drafting in combination with the dynamic board with each land having its own ability.

Recced by susd forums. Great comboing civilization game with interesting splaying mechanisms. I love how the different directions give you new symbols and how you ,arch through the eras. It pays a lot to know the cards. Need to play more.

A neat little engine builder that is very portable. And that is probably the only reason to keep it. After 3 games I feel like I‘ve seen through this and what it can do. I might not always win but the variability of gameplay is finite and I have far better engine building games that I prefer. But those are usually far bigger and travel badly. Would not rebuy but probably won‘t sell straight away.

1-5 players. Never played it after we beat it. Keeping for nostalgia. (Also it is small). Legendary: the mono filament wire killing everyone.

An easy area majority game with an interesting area scoring mechanism. Firstly each area scores for whoever has the most tents in there. But hold it: more points the more tents so maybe do not put in the last tent to give someone else points. Then you get points for contiguous placements to form villages from your tents and lastly the totem stacks score across area borders. It plays quick and with the cards forcing your choices in certain directions. The CE has quite a few maps and there is are both good 2 player and 1 player modes to make this one a keeper. It also helps that the material in this iteration (it's a classic) is qquite beautiful.

Kickstarter

played at SPIEL 2019. Fast paced plattformer style fun with tetris puzzles. Good filler or intro game

My trial solo taught me that I don't want to be teaching this game. As a historical artifact it is probably of less interest here in Germany than over in the UK.

Cooperative word guessing with a twist. No two people can give the same clue. So do you give the obvious or the obscure clue? If playing with younger children one may have to help out with some of the words. Some reading skills required. Great fun and it's hard to stop. No need to actually play for points.

Interesting. And that's all that comes to mind. I've only played at 2 and I have not won a game. I guess I just don't play enough at 2 right now and so after the initial testing games this has sadly languished.

Turns out I am really good at seeing through my partner's bluffs or not bluffs.

This is a lot of fun because people just cannot keep four different vegetables apart in their mind and which ones they are allowed to say while they play a card featuring a different one. I like Veggie Uno a lot. Great filler.

2-4, Relaxed play, quite beautiful. Good, quick gateway game, sadly player numbers limited.

It may look like it is a pure area control game but the technology tree plays am important role. I have only played with two so far but enjoyed the back and forth of controlled locations a lot. You can easily be ahead one turn only to lose control of the temples and the game in the next.

In my opinion the best version of Kingdomino. And so after giving my first copy away (as a present) and later making friends buy it, I just reordered myself a new copy.

Needs almost no explanation and it's hilarious to see how oddly shaped a tower of Knuffies can become and still remain standing. Great fun. I had no idea I liked this kind of game. Way better than Jenga! Much faster setup and Knuffies are just better than wood blocks.

2026 After 2 games. This is a game of building up custom tracks and combo-ing between them when activating them on your turn. The tiles may look like dominoes from afar but they are not. Neither are they Mahjongg tiles. I bought this for the solo but so far I am not sure if I am playing things right. I definitely made mistakes in my first game. The solo bot seems to put up a high tempo in gaining recognition tiles for the tracks. And once it has gained a tile for a track, the player cannot gain one. Once 5 recognitions are gained by a player, the game is over. There are 5 track recognitions to gain and 4 animal figure recognitions. The bot is super fast: the second or third time a player activates a track and gains a tile during that turn, the bot will gain the recognition for that track. And once the bot has it, the player who needs to have at least 4 tiles to gain a recognition on a track, can no longer get one. What I am unsure about is wether the actual tracks and combos are going to be satisfying to build up in a solo. The only actual combo-ing I see is going up the animal tracks. I have a lot of doubts about multiplayer. The variety of tiles and actions on them seems low to me. But I have no intention of putting multiplayer to the test anyway. Rating: 7

Drawing but abstract. Everyone has a board with lines already on it and you need to visualize the word you are secretly given (from a predetermined stack of cards, not freely defined by players) to the best of your ability. Quite hilarious but I also noted that my images were always guessed correctly. Not sure if it survives endless plays with the same group but easy to teach filler in any case.

Similar to Krazy Wordz but you have to make "pictures" from symbols and colors.

This is a small negotiation game where each player represents a country at the conference. At the start you get some money, some prosperity cards (like SUVs, Coal Plants and other „great things“) and 3 lobby cards of which you keep 2. The game is played over 10 negotiation rounds or until the earth is destroyed. If the game ends and the earth is not destroyed the person with the most points is declared the winner (aka the richest) if the earth is destroyed they become the scapegoat („You did too little“) and the person with the second most points becomes the winner. The earth has 3 gauges of 5 that signify possible destruction: temperature, air quality and animal diversity. If one gauge reaches 5: game over. In each round the presiding country gets to present 1 of 2 study cards that have costs of money and require either CO2 removal or certain measures that might anger your or someone else’s lobbyists. The consequences for inaction are on the card though half of it is hidden and only the presenter knows the full range of problems. So you may think that killing off another animals species is not a problem because the presiding country didn‘t tell you that the hidden cost is another rise in temperature. Add to that, that each of the air and temp gauges have tipping points where other gauges are increased as well… and each negotiation becomes quite tense. The negotiations last 90 seconds and every country can add as much money or prosperity cards to the pool as they want or you can even bribe another country to take back a card if that card would for example anger one of your lobbyists. The presiding country can choose which cards and whose money to take. Cards are added to the display of „measures“ where you can see which lobbys are particularly unhappy. So how to come out on top? Points are awarded for the most money, for each prosperity card you kept and for how happy your Steel and Pharmaceutical (or other) lobby is at the end.