Didn't realize its been 6 months since I posted here, but I've still been keeping notes.


Wyrmspan. I really didn’t want to play this game. If you’ve seen some of my other posts, you know I’m not really a fan of Stonemaier games. This game is a re-skin/retheme of Wingspan. It’s about 80% the same game, with the other 20% being different ways to do the same thing. And I’m not exactly going out of my way to play Wingspan these days because of the usual Stonemaier balancing issues (seriously, they’re releasing a FOURTH balancing pack for Tapestry. ) It seems like a lot of their success is being able to sell a theme, and this game exists because the Apiary designer pitched it to them, and I guess that game did well enough to warrant a look at this. But I think it’s another way to get people to buy Wingspan for a second time (sold 2+ million copies btw). First game we played, I managed to fill up my entire board with dragons and still ran into the usual Wingspan problem of the endgame being an optimization math problem. 7/10. (edit - still have only played this once, and in retrospect I would rate it lower because I really go out of my way to not play it)


Shipwrights of the North Sea (redux). Never played the original, but I guess this is like a 10 year anniversary remake. It’s by Garphill games (south tigris, west kingdom, raiders, etc) and they might be lowkey the most constantly great game publisher. I’m not sure if I’ve raided a single game of their below like an 8, and this one is really good too.

It’s a fairly simple game, moreso if you’re familiar with all the reused Garphill Games iconography (and resources and meeples.) 5 round drafting game. The closest comparison is It’s A Wonderful World, and honestly, it’s a pretty good comparison.



Skull king. Wizard, but with a fixed trump suit, and 3 different types of wizards that rock-paper-scissor each other. There’s also various bonus points you can get if you make your bid. Scoring is slightly different, as if you bid zero, you either get points = to the round *10, or lose. It’s a lot of fun. (edit - we’ve played this like 40 times in the 4 months that we’ve had it. 10/10)


Robo Rally. Ancient move-programming game by Richard Garfield. On the surface, nothing to dislike too much, until you start getting seasoned players arguing about upgrades, and also mixing up edition-specific rules. 6/10


Cat in the box. Trick taking game. The deck is 5 uncolored suits, 45 cards, 1-9. When you lead a trick, you declare which suit it is. Red is always trump. There’s only 4 actual suits, and you can’t duplicate cards. If you want to play a different suit, you have to get rid of a marker, indicating that you can no longer play that suit. If you make your bid spot on, you get bonus points for how many adjacent markers you have,(4,5,6 red, and then 5,6 blue for example, would be 5 extra points) Round ends when someone does have a legal move (such as playing a 5th 4), they create a paradox, and they don't get any points.


Architects of the west kingdom 6p expansion. Makes the game a bit more like some of the other Garphill games. Some extra action spots, and adds in cards that attach to the top and bottom of other cards, giving points, production, or stronger actions, etc. Still an approachable game for someone looking to get into heavier games


Skyrise. A mix of Ra and Acquire, with the overproduction of Foundations of Rome (at least for the kickstarter version.) Each player has pawns(like 12? I think) in 3 heights, with unique values. There's a colored city grid and bonus objectives. When you place a pawn with a value, the next player can place their pawn of a higher value in an adjacent spot, this keeps going (basically like a bid) until everyone passes or theres no legal spots to go. And this continues over 2 rounds, until everyone has placed all their pawns, so also like in RA, if you're the last person to go, you have free reign a bit. Theres various scoring objectives. It’s one of those light, but occasionally thinky games, but sort of unremarkable despite the production quality. 7/10


Wayfarers of the south tigris (surprise replay). Had a lot of fun replaying this, though it had been slightly long enough that it took some relearning. Not an easy game to teach, even if you’re familiar with Garphill Games.


Eclipse: third play. We played a 6p game of it without any of our problematic slow players, and we finished the whole thing in 2.5 hours (not counting setup/teardown), which is kinda of impressive since we play it like once every 2 years and always need a refresher of the rules. From a technical standpoint, it’s not that complicated of a game, though we haven’t played with the advanced aliens yet, which might raise it up a bit, and there always seem to be various edgecase rules. The random rewards for flipping tiles can still kinda ruin the mood though. Sometimes you have to kill a ship, sometimes you get a ship, kinda dumb, so whoever gets luckier gets a big advantage.


Space Station Phoenix. Been following this KS for awhile, didn't realise someone in my group actually got it. It’s got a neat mechanic where you’re slowly salvaging your ships, which are worker placement spots, to pay for the construction of your space station, so its a neat push-pull mechanic. Not a terribly complicated game (theres only 5 different actions which vary in strength) aside for the third tier station components I guess, but they’re all explained on the player aid. 8.5/10


Trailblazers. 4 round drafting game where you have square base cards that you tried to build long, matching color paths to, while fulfilling shared objective cards to get points. Some of the objectives seem impossible, but it is satisfying to complete a path. You also get points for each segment on a path (each card has like 2-4 different paths on it, think how Tsuro looks, so you want all your cards to pull double or triple duty to get good points) 7/10


World wonder. Every round, you get $7 and on your turn, you spend it on roads or a colored district (in 7 different sizes/shapes) to place on your map grid. There are also wonders which cost all your money, that have some requirements to place (such as needing to touch 2x purple district and a road). So there’s some tension, as even if you are watching what the others are doing, it’s still easy to get them swiped from you, but its also fun knowing you will get your wonder for $1 uncontested. Each district also advances a colored track which in turn advances your population track which gives victory points. Simple, easy game, but fun. 8/10