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Overview of Great Western Trail, 2nd Edition

Great Western Trail web story poster
Megan Ferrell | September 2, 2022
Great Western Trail web story poster
Overview of Great Western Trail, 2nd Edition

Overview of Moonrakers

Moonrakers tabletop board game box
Megan Ferrell | September 2, 2022
Moonrakers tabletop board game box
Overview of Moonrakers

Overview of Mariposas Tabletop Game

Mariposas board game - poster for webstory
Megan Ferrell | July 31, 2022
Mariposas board game - poster for webstory
Overview of Mariposas Tabletop Game

Kōhaku Tabletop Game in 60 Seconds Overview

Kohaku board game story cover
Megan Ferrell | June 26, 2022
Kohaku board game story cover
Kōhaku Tabletop Game in 60 Seconds Overview

Tabletop Board Games to Celebrate International UFO Day

World UFO Day Poster
Megan Ferrell | June 11, 2022
World UFO Day Poster
Tabletop Board Games to Celebrate International UFO Day

Conspiracy: Abyss Universe Card Game in 60 Seconds Overview

Conspiracy: The Abyss Universe board game webstory poster
Megan Ferrell | June 9, 2022
Conspiracy: The Abyss Universe board game webstory poster
Conspiracy: Abyss Universe Card Game in 60 Seconds Overview

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    • Wingspan: Americas Board Game Expansion is as Sweet as Nectar
    • Reviewing the Board Game Leaf: Deluxe Edition by Weird City Games
    • Subduing Uppity Game Boards: Board Butler Product Review

  • boardgamematrix

    Board Game Matrix is a board game discovery web app created by tabletop game enthusiasts, Megan Ferrell and Nicole Aue, for tabletop game enthusiasts.
    While time has been at a premium lately, we had to While time has been at a premium lately, we had to make time to table the latest addition to the Wingspan birdiverse: Wingspan: Americas. Wingspan is a favorite in our household. We love the bird theme, we love the art and flavor text, and the game remains fun and replayable after years of play. It’s one of our most-played games of all time. So what’s new in Wingspan: Americas? The latest expansion introduces a deck of 40 hummingbird cards that players can attract to a new section of their habitat boards by drafting them from the hummingbird garden board. When players trigger effects in one of their 3 habitat rows that happens to contain a hummingbird, the hummingbird will give them one of 5 different abilities. New abilities include getting an egg, food, or card, or advancing a token on their hummingbird track. “What is this ‘hummingbird track,’?” I can hear you asking. Well, it is the new mechanism that is going to inflate your scores to new heights and give you happy feelings in your belly. Each hummingbird card belongs to a “suit” that is based on actual scientific taxonomical groups—because it wouldn’t be Wingspan without the scientific accuracy that gives this intellectual property such respectability. Returning a hummingbird to the hummingbird garden board will move the token matching its suit up the player’s hummingbird track. Don’t ignore any suits if you don’t want to lose points—meanwhile if you go all-in on a couple of suits, vast points riches await! The Americas expansion is both a more-stuff expansion and a new-mechanism expansion with the new hummingbird track. We played with only the new stuff—no cards or goals from the base game were used. We thought that would give us the best feel for the expansion. And what can I say? Wingspan: Americas is yet another excellent addition to the Wingspan birdaverse, comparable in quality to those that came before it. It was easy to pick up and learn, and we are looking forward to playing again. @stonemaiergames #firstimpressionsfriday🎲 #wingspanboardgame #wingspanamericas #boardgameexpansion #boardgames boardgamereview
    Well well! Things have been rather quiet for us on Well well! Things have been rather quiet for us on the crowdfunded board game front, meaning we haven’t ordered but a couple of them since the tariffs here in the US have made shipping/final fulfillment costs, uh, “unpredictable,” shall we say. But look! We just got this cool expansion from @snowdaledesign for Lands of Galzyr called “Dreams and Mysteries.” It features a new critter to play as, along with a ton of new content. Now when will we get a chance to play it, given that we have played maybe 4 or 5 games total in 2026, and given that we have only scratched the surface of the base game so far? I can’t wait to get back to regular gaming but this is probably going to have to wait a little while. Have you played the Lands of Galzyr expansion yet? What did you think? #boardgames #landsofgalzyr #boardgameexpansion #snowdaledesign #cooperativegame
    Co-op Root? Blasphemy! Who ever heard of such a th Co-op Root? Blasphemy! Who ever heard of such a thing? Is this some kind of sick joke? Well, the rulebooks for Root: A Game of Woodland Might and Right and for Root: The Clockwork Expansion may be a sick joke, but after you’re done rage-throwing the rulebooks over their maddening inadequacy, playing co-op Root can actually be pretty fun! We hardly ever play Root because it takes so long, it’s a table hog, it’s very combative, we get frustrated with the rulebooks (why are there two rulebooks? And why are they still incomplete? Whyyyyy??), and we typically play 2-player which means we don’t get to play with the additional factions for which Root is famous. The Clockwork Expansion remedies two of the above-listed reasons we don’t play Root very often: it allows us to play as factions we wouldn’t normally play while the bots represent the other factions, and it allows us to play co-op against bot players instead of against each other. By the end of our game, after we had devised our own house rules where necessary, we realized we had really enjoyed teaming up as the Vagabond and the Woodland Alliance to defeat the Eyrie and the Marquis. As the Vagabond, I sniped bot warriors with my crossbow and battled them with my swords, while trading cards to the Alliance in exchange for their crafted items. As the Alliance, my partner baited bot attackers and defeated them by leveraging dice rolling probabilities. We attacked our opponents in their weakest territories to keep their point production at bay. We beat them in the nick of time, using the middle challenge level. Were we playing “right”? Who the heck knows? But we did our best with interpreting clunky rules and implementing rather involved bot actions. Root: The Clockwork Expansion had been sitting on our shelf unopened for a few years. I am pleased we finally got it played. Have you played co-op Root? #rootboardgame #roottheclockworkexpansion #boardgamereview strategygames tabletopgames
    Proof of life! Not enough time for board gaming ar Proof of life! Not enough time for board gaming around here lately. But! I have asked my partner to play games with me all day for my birthday this week. Per the usual formula, I have chosen some old (and newer) faves that don’t get played often enough as well as some new-to-me games. I selected mostly light-midweight games so that we can get a variety played in a single day. Even so, I realize these won’t all get played. But a girl can dream, right? If you were me, which of these games would you prioritize getting played? Pictured are: Tranquility: The Ascent published by @luckyduckgames Vye published by @vyegame Land vs Sea published by @goodgamespublishing Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game published by @fantasyflightgames Carcassonne: The Castle published by @riograndegames The King Is Dead published by @ospreygames Lands of Galzyr published by @snowdale_design Have a happy week everyone, and enjoy your gaming. #boardgames #boardgamesnight #boardgameaddict
    Needless to say, I am not normally bummed when a b Needless to say, I am not normally bummed when a board game shows up at my front door. But today I lament that my copy of Fate of Witches, which I backed on Kickstarter last year, ironically arrived two weeks after Halloween. I don’t know about you, but I have no interest in playing spooky games any time of year other than September or October. I also don’t play Christmas themed games any other time than the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas. To each their own, but that’s me. How about you? Does the thought of playing a seasonal game out of season make you recoil? #fateofwitches #kickstartergames #cardgames #spookygames
    Witchcraft, a board game we rented from @portlandg Witchcraft, a board game we rented from @portlandgamelibrary, is a good example of iterative design improvement. Witchcraft is essentially a redesign and retheme of the solo game Resist. In Resist, the player drafts a ragtag guerilla team that will fight the Francoist regime following the Spanish Civil War. Witchcraft replaces the guerilla fighters of Resist with witches, and the Francoists with wicked supernatural beasts, while also introducing mistrustful villagers who must be convinced that the witches are beneficial. Like Resist, Witchcraft is essentially a deck deconstruction game. The player begins with a small deck of witch and curse cards. Curse cards simply clog up the deck. Witch cards can be used for their powers against evil beasts, and to accomplish missions. Witch cards can get used up pretty quickly as the player tries to balance mitigating the punishing effects from evil beasts with using the witches’ greater powers—which will reveal their witchiness and result in their imprisonment. Accomplishing missions will award points toward persuading villagers/jurors of the witches’ good deeds. When players have lost most of their deck and thus suspect that no more missions could be accomplished without losing the game (by failing to save villagers from beasts), they will need to reveal the verdict cards. If the verdict card numbers are equal to or lower than the numbers on the juror’s persuasion track, the juror is convinced the witches are the good guys. If 2 of 3 jurors are convinced, the witches go free, though they continue to live under a cloud of suspicion. If all jurors are convinced, the witches are celebrated by the community. If only one villager is persuaded, then, well… that’s real bad. Witchcraft is difficult to win. But at least winning is the goal, which provides impetus to play. Resist doesn’t have win conditions so much as it has varying levels of losing. Resist ends with a whimper, like one of those old songs that just fades out at the end rather than having a real finale. Do you have a favorite deck deconstruction game? #witchcraftgame #witchcraftboardgame #resistboardgame #boardgamereview #sologames #25thcenturygames
    Meadow is the most visually stunning board game in Meadow is the most visually stunning board game in our collection. But it’s a Disguise—this week’s #topictuesday🎲, hosted by @ataleoftwomeeples and suggested for @getintogames’ #boardtober2025 by @shanana.in.pyjamas. I find Meadow remarkably frustrating for a game so frequently categorized as “cozy.” When I play Meadow with my partner, I find that somehow, out of 16 card choices, there is never anything available to draft that will combo with what I already have, let alone with the goals on the hiking board—and if I am forced to plan 3 turns ahead just to get a base going for a future card draft, my opponent drafts the cards before I can. And so I am thwarted again. But you know the saying: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! We rented Meadow: Adventure Book from @portlandgamelibrary and played the solo variant of each module together as a team. With my partner working with me instead of against me, I got to experience winning Meadow. The Adventure Book comes with 6 mini-expansions to Meadow. It’s packed with potential gameplay. We played all 6, and would return to nearly all of them again. Themes included windmills that are spun to determine goal combinations each round, hot air balloons that take players up bonus and point tracks, bridges that divide your tableau into two separate scoring sections, and several more. Each module comes with new pieces to play with, which often include more of the beautifully illustrated cards that we love so much about Meadow. But! Curmudgeon that I am, I gotta ask: why is the marmot card part of the cave module? Marmots are mountain dwellers, not cave dwellers. Semantically, the marmot belongs in the lookout tower module. Why would an otherwise scientifically accurate game misrepresent marmots, which are indisputably the World’s Greatest Mammals? Whyyyy? 😂 Anyway, Meadow Adventure Book is a great expansion for a beautiful game. I recommend trying it solo—the automa is very simple to operate and the Goldilocks amount of challenge. #meadowboardgame #meadowadventurebook #cozygames #tableaubuildinggame #boardgamereview #workerplacementgame
    That Time You Killed Me is a great example of a bo That Time You Killed Me is a great example of a board game whose box cover belies its contents. With art evoking 1960’s jazz album covers and a provocative title, one might expect a richly thematic game, maybe containing some characters and narrative elements. In actuality, it’s a 2-player positional abstract game. And yet, would you believe me if I told you that it’s still thematic? Players move their pawns “through time” across 3 boards representing the past, present, and future. When a pawn moves from the future to the present or from the present to the past, another copy of the pawn is left in its place. These copies are key, as players’ pawns will be getting “killed” by being “pushed into the wall” by the other player’s pawns. Pawns that are killed are removed from the game. If one player’s pawns are eliminated from two of the boards or if they are eliminated from the board that they have committed to playing on the next turn, that player loses and the game is over. The game gets more interesting from there. The game includes several modules that add new elements with new rules. In module 3, players will add pink elephants to the board. Players can “train” elephants by putting a hat on them. Then trained elephants can “stomp” their opponents! (I got stomped a few times…) Modules 1 and 2 come with neat little trees and statues. Module 4 contains a bunch of variants using the pieces introduced in the previous modules. This game is cool, in the alluring and unconventional sense, though not what we were expecting when we rented it from @portlandgamelibrary. I enjoyed the rulebook, which was very artsy and humorous, as much as I enjoyed the game itself. Worth checking out if you like games with a unique perspective. #thattimeyoukilledme #boardgamereview #abstractgame #twoplayergame #pandasaurus_games
    Many tabletop gamers don’t really dig word games ( Many tabletop gamers don’t really dig word games (or so I am told; I am not among them). But what if a word game was also a deckbuilder? Does it then qualify as a “gamer’s game”? Paperback, a game we rented from @portlandgamelibrary, is basically a love child of Dominion and Quiddler. Like in Dominion, letters with varying card abilities and procurement costs will be drafted from a central trade row of cards; like in Quiddler, players will construct words from the letters in their hand of cards. Making words will earn bucks to spend on more letter cards with more abilities, such as trashing a card from your deck, drawing additional cards on your next turn, or doubling the $ value of an adjacent letter. As the game progresses, words get longer and more challenging to conjure as wild cards become a diminishing proportion of your deck. If you get stuck on making a word, no bigs—your buddies/opponents will be happy to help you use your letters in exchange for a cube that can later be traded in for $. While making cool words is a reward unto itself, the ultimate goal of Paperback is, as usual, to have the most points. Points can be earned by making long words, buying a pulp novel card (like the VP cards in Dominion), or creating a word that meets the theme drawn for that game (e.g., Western, Romance, SciFi, etc.). So, this game is boss. It hits many notes—a little engine building by way of deck-building, a little creativity, a little player interaction. It also plays in a reasonable amount of time and takes a minimal amount of table space to play. As an aside, some people are likely to want to play with a timer—I am a patient person but my gaming buddy was testing my demeanor with 15-minute turns. So glad we rented this one. It’s the game I have most been wanting to play more lately. #paperbackgame #wordgame #boardgamereview #deckbuildinggame #fowersgames
    As part of my personal mission to play all of Uwe As part of my personal mission to play all of Uwe Rosenberg’s polyomino games, we rented Cottage Garden from @portlandgamelibrary. Cottage Garden was Uwe Rosenberg’s first entry in Stronghold Games’ Great Designers series, published back in 2016. In Cottage Garden, players draft a polyomino from a column or row of a 4x4 grid to place in their personal garden boards. When one of a player’s 2 boards is full, it is scored and the player grabs another board to fill. Players score by counting the number of cloches and pots showing on their board when it is filled. Cat tokens can be used to fill a single square to finish off a board, though they don’t score on their own. (The game rules describe the cats as “helpful” but anyone who gardens amidst cats IRL knows this is an ironic joke.) Scoring is a particularly unique element of the game. Players have several scoring cubes on two different tracks (pots and cloches). Players can score multiple cubes, but the track ends at a specific score. The catch is timing the movement of individual cubes at each scoring opportunity so that they pass the end of the track with minimal excess/lost scoring potential that could have been allocated to another cube instead. Cottage Garden is enjoyable and original (though it shares many characteristics with others in its trilogy). Did it hook me in the same way as Patchwork? Nope. But hey, is improving on perfection even possible? Ok, well… even Patchwork could be improved with some aesthetic upgrades, despite its perfect mechanisms. Do you have a favorite Uwe Rosenberg polyomino game? #boardgamereview #cottagegardenboardgame #uwerosenberg #polyominoes #boardgamenerd
    Ark Nova is the kind of board game I generally pre Ark Nova is the kind of board game I generally prefer to rent rather than buy. It’s packaged in a weird sized box that is awkward for storage, and takes a long time to play. If I rent it, I don’t have to store it, and I also don’t have to watch it languish on the shelf because of the impractical playing time requirements. But we wanted to at least try it, so we rented it from @portlandgamelibrary (a board game home delivery service which, if you live in the Portland metro area, we highly recommend). In Ark Nova, players are competing to build a zoo with the most combined appeal and conservation. Players will have 5 actions to choose from each turn, which vary in strength from round to round. Players can build enclosures for their zoo by placing tiles on their zoo map, draft cards to play into their zoos, build partnerships and make donations, play animals into their zoos, and play sponsors for ongoing benefits. Many of these actions are comprised of several actions themselves. Then those actions will sometimes cause events that trigger yet additional actions, and there you go down the combotastic rabbit hole. Ark Nova boasts many attributes of the games we often love: animals, tableau building, tile placement, engine building, and lots of choices. It also has an enormous deck of unique cards—a promise of continued discovery that I adore in a game. Our game took 5 hours not including time spent reading the rulebook and watching how-to-play videos. We were totally engaged for the whole 5 hours. Afterwards, I wanted to play again to discover more of the game and try new things. It’s a very good game, even though the production quality is meh (floppy player boards = unhappy face). While we enjoyed Ark Nova, we are glad we rented it rather than bought it. It simply takes too long to play given our schedules. I envy, but do not begrudge, those who can regularly table games of this length. Maybe in retirement? #firstimpressionsfriday🎲 #arknova #boardgamereview #heavyeuro
    Like any decent red-blooded American (insert joke Like any decent red-blooded American (insert joke here), I love a good polyomino game. The best I have played is Patchwork. It’s not a looker, but dang—what a game. So I have begun a mission to play all the Uwe Rosenberg polyomino games. In pursuit of this mission, we rented New York Zoo from @portlandgamelibrary. In New York Zoo, players race to complete their zoo board with polyomino tile exhibits. Each turn, players proceed around a track and choose between drafting polyomino exhibits to place in their zoo, or drafting animals to live in the exhibits. As players pass breeding locations on the track, they can add more matching animals to their exhibits for free if they already have a pair in their zoo. Completing an exhibit with animals earns players free tiles to fill in their zoo boards faster. These small tiles are essential at the end of the game to fill the last couple of spaces that will not accommodate full-sized exhibit tiles. The real rub of the game is the delicate balance between drafting exhibit tiles vs. acquiring animals. You want to get the most bang for your buck, and at varying points drafting tiles or animals provides diminishing returns, but it is not transparently obvious what those points are. This element of the game is similar to the time track in Patchwork—deciding exactly what “time cost” is reasonable to pay for a tile is a fun challenge for us non-mathematicians. I love “shopping for a good deal” in a game. New York Zoo doesn’t use currency to gain tiles like Patchwork does, but its choices still give me that satisfying sense of shrewd consumerism. The game moves quickly but not too quickly. Turns are fast, and breeding affects all players so there is often action even between turns. New York Zoo is a great game… still, nothing has dethroned Patchwork as the superlative polyomino game for me. But I have to say, playing with meerkat, penguin, flamingo, arctic fox, and kangaroo animeeples is way more fun than playing with the cardboard buttons of Patchwork. Do you have a favorite polyomino game? #newyorkzoogame #polyominogame #animalgame #uwerosenberg #boardgamereview
    As avid Wingspan aficionados, we were curious abou As avid Wingspan aficionados, we were curious about Wyrmspan. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to rent it from @portlandgamelibrary and get a sense of its place in the ‘Spaniverse. Similar to Wingspan, players draft and play dragon cards into a tableau of 3 rows representing different cavern habitats. As in Wingspan, these dragons are attracted to the habitat by resources players have collected—milk, crystals, meat, eggs, and of course, gold and coins. Also as in Wingspan, resources are collected by visiting a habitat row. In Wyrmspan though, as players start collecting more dragons, the resources offered in each row become more plentiful and varied as players begin collecting more stuff via the “dragon guild” board, an additional, indirect means of collecting resources. Wyrmspan adds a few other things. Before placing a dragon, a cave must be excavated, meaning first a cave card must be procured, then later it must be played. However, this extra work is rewarded with an instant payback of goodies when the cave is played. The number of turns players can take is generally limited by the number of coins in their possession, since most actions require one or more coins. When all players run out of coins or otherwise pass, a new round begins and players receive 6 new coins, similar to the action cubes in Wingspan. The round-end bonus goals board is still present, while a new in-game bonus section with which players can interact via reaching certain locations on the dragon guild board allows players to choose from among several benefits. The largest overall difference between Wyrmspan and Wingspan is Wyrmspan’s increased opportunities to chain actions and combo. In Wyrmspan, players might be able to swing playing several cave cards in one turn, for example. This leads to a better end-game crescendo than Wingspan offers. Wyrmspan is a great game, and dare I say just as beautiful and nearly as thematic as Wingspan (loved the “dragon fact book”). Yet, I would most often likely choose to play Wingspan for its elegant simplicity and faster play time. #firstimpressionsfriday🎲 by @kay_plays_games #wyrmspan #wingspan #boardgamereview #stonemaiergames
    Finally got to try Barenpark. We rented this one f Finally got to try Barenpark. We rented this one from @portlandgamelibrary and played out on the patio—because outdoor gaming is the best gaming! Barenpark is a light polyomino game in which players individually build bear zoos in various locations around the world out of tiles drafted from a central board. Placement of tiles over certain emblems on players’ individual boards determines which tiles they can draft from the main board for playing on future turns. Tiles range from 1 square of coverage to 5 squares, and come in a range of shapes, each conferring different point values for final scoring. A wide variety of end-game bonus goals can be incorporated to change up each game. My favorite attribute of Barenpark is that completing coverage of players’ personal zoo boards is heavily incentivized. Players will receive a lucrative bear statue every time they complete a section of their zoo board, and messy holes and empty spaces are ultimately not rewarded. The zoo looks finished by the end of the game, which provides satisfaction win or lose. It’s a cute and fun game, but for one quibble: the greenery tiles are difficult to distinguish from the koala tiles. Ok, just one more quibble: koalas are not bears, ok? They’re marsupials! Good gawd. 😂 #firstimpressionsfriday🎲 by @kay_plays_games #barenpark #familygames #tilegames #polyominogames #philwalkerharding #lookoutspiele
    Like positional abstracts, area control games have Like positional abstracts, area control games have waned in popularity in recent years. I posit that this trend is driven by declining attention spans; positional abstracts and area control games invite analysis paralysis, which few people in the current epoch can tolerate. Rebirth, designed by the prolific Reiner Knizia and published by @mightyboards is an area control game for the modern era. Rebirth’s brand of area control manages to appeal to the modern gamer palette with its incredibly snappy gameplay. Each turn, players draw a single tile from their personal stack to play. Only that tile can be played, and it must be played. There is seemingly always someplace advantageous to play a tile on the board. And somehow, it usually doesn’t take long to find the optimal location, even though choices are abundant. Rebirth is supposedly about competing to build utopian societies in Scotland (or Ireland, depending on which side of the board you prefer). Like with most Knizia games I have played, the theme is pasted on. But the board and components are nice and it works as a package. As a side note, the castles made from recycled materials are actually more aesthetically pleasing to me than plastic—I prefer their matte finish and finely textured appearance. Points are scored for occupying castles, controlling settlements, creating contiguous food or energy farms, and personal bonus goals obtained by building adjacent to a cathedral. Because there are so many options, there is always a goal to work toward. Much of the game’s tension is in gaining—and keeping—control of castles around the board. Players can elect to aggressively play in their opponents’ regions to block them or take over their castles, or work more proactively on placing and defending their own castles. A couple of contested castles are inevitable but it is not necessary to spend the entire game fighting over them. We enjoyed Rebirth quite a bit. It’s competitive, tactical, balanced, a fun puzzle, and perhaps most importantly, it’s snappy! #rebirthboardgame #reinerknizia #mightyboards #boardgamereview #areacontrolgame #eurogame
    I asked my partner for Emberleaf for my birthday. I asked my partner for Emberleaf for my birthday. Because she is the world’s greatest partner, she acted immediately and bought it. While she was at it, she bought a few other titles. I am excited about all of these games. The problem? My birthday is not until December! So these puppies are going to be stuffed in a closet for 5 more months. (Maybe I can conjure some sympathy over a stubbed toe and finagle one of them early—wish me luck!) Board games pictured are: Bomb Busters, published by @pegasusspiele and designed by Hisashi Hayashi, is a co-op deduction game about defusing bombs. Beacon Patrol, published by @pandasaurus_games and designed by by Torben Ratzlaff, is a co-op tile-laying game about ensuring the safety of the North Sea Coast. Emberleaf, published by @cityofgameshq and designed by Frank West, is an engine-building game about building a home in the forest. Race to the Raft, also published by @cityofgameshq and designed by Frank West, is a co-op tile-laying game – set in the Isle of Cats universe – about rescuing cats from a fiery island. #bombbusters #beaconpatrol #emberleaf #racetotheraft #isleofcats #boardgamesaddict #boardgames
    At what point does a board game overstay its welco At what point does a board game overstay its welcome? Forest Shuffle has inspired a lighthearted debate on this subject in our household. I love Forest Shuffle. I bought both expansions, though I have only played with the Alpine expansion so far. I would have bought it just for the adorable alpine marmot cards, but I didn’t have to buy it for only that reason because the game is just so freaking fun I want more of all of it. In Forest Shuffle, players procure myriad trees and tuck species of flora and fauna cards around the trees for scoring combos. There is a huge variety of cards and scoring abilities in the big fat card deck. And the expansions add even more. My partner likes, but does not love, Forest Shuffle. By the end of a game she is antsy and beyond ready to call it a day. And she really hates scoring it even though she’s a math nerd. But the way I see it, if the game ended any sooner, the opportunity to obtain cards that suit one’s tableau scoring options would be preempted. My partner is not alone. I have read and heard many complaints about Forest Shuffle overstepping its bounds. I have been trying to figure out what it is exactly about this game’s length that agitates some people. If a game is fun, wouldn’t I just want more of it? Unfortunately, adding in the expansion seems to have been a bridge too far for my partner. Somewhere in that beautiful deck of cards is the threshold of Unfun and we apparently crossed it, unbeknownst to me. What was the tipping point? At what moment—which card draft, which tableau deployment—did it go from fun, to decidedly unfun, and why? It is still a mystery to me. It seems that the game’s greatest strength—its huge deck and varied scoring paths—is also its Achilles heel, depending on the orientation of the player. Are you all-in on Forest Shuffle, or is it a yawner for you? Are there other games that are fun for you… until they are not? #forestshuffle #forestshufflealpine #boardgames #cardgames #lookout_games
    Whenever I play an engine builder with my partner, Whenever I play an engine builder with my partner, her victory is assumed—even if it’s our first time playing. If the engine builder is fun, I will always want to play again anyway. Such is the case with the board game Earth. In Earth, players build a 16-card tableau of flora and terrain cards that provide resources such as dirt, growth, sprouts, and points. One of 4 types of cards can be activated each turn. Players are almost always occupied, because their opponents’ turns may trigger activation of some of their own card abilities. “Growth” is a cool and weird feature—flora cards can have 3d trees built on them, which add more points. They don’t look anything like trees, but nonetheless they are colorful and pleasing and their structure is semantically appropriate. Players also race to score end-game bonuses. The first player to complete their 16-card tableau scores a 7-point bonus as well. Earth is a pleasant tableau building, racing, engine building game with a decent-sized decision space. I rarely feel analysis paralysis in this game though—I typically know what I am doing on my next turn by the time my partner is finished with her turn, making the game snappy for both of us. The production is passable but nothing special. While the photography is nice, we agree we would have preferred to see artwork on the cards, like in Wingspan or Forest Shuffle. The right illustrations would augment the thematic immersion for us. We are Earth fans. The enormous amount of variety in the card decks, the snappy pace, and the constant engagement keep us wanting more. Have you tried Earth or its expansion(s)? What did you think? I would have backed the recent expansion crowdfunding campaign, were it not for my trepidation over tariff unpredictability at the moment. Maybe we can pick one up in retail at some point. #earthboardgame #boardgamereview #enginebuildinggame #tableaubuilding #boardgames #cardgames
    Photosynthesis has been one of the longest residen Photosynthesis has been one of the longest residents of our board game shelf of shame, living there since 2017 or 2018. I still can’t figure out why it sat there for so long, but it is now finally free of the shackles of shrinkwrap. The idea behind Photosynthesis is to plant 3d trees on the board, strategically positioning them to receive light from the sun and block opponents’ trees from light. The sun frequently moves around the board, changing the direction of light. Each rotation of the sun, players score “light points” for all of their trees that are not in the shadow of other trees. Light points are spent on buying and deploying seeds and trees, while graduating trees from seeds to behemoths, and from behemoths to points, is the primary method of scoring. Photosynthesis is the type of game that has largely fallen out of fashion in recent years. It is a positional abstract in which blocking opponents is a prime feature. I still enjoy this sort of game, especially when it has a proper theme like Photosynthesis, though I typically have to beg my partner to play them. After playing a couple of games, I started to see a favorable tree placement pattern that I wanted to fully test in my next game. However, I’m probably not going to get to practice said pattern as I am unlikely to get to play again. Predictably, I enjoyed this game, and my partner not so much. Just think of it: This poor game sat on the shelf for so long, only to return to the shelf probably indefinitely. A board game tragedy! …But at least we still have Boop, another positional abstract in a clever disguise. No one will turn down a game of Boop. #photosynthesisboardgame #boardgamereview #blueorangegames #abstractgames
    Like most board gamers, I am basically a big kid s Like most board gamers, I am basically a big kid stuck in an adult’s body. So obviously, when I saw Tesseract’s gimmicky cube tower that spins on a lazy susan, I knew I wanted to play it. Also attractive to me were the game’s core mechanisms—like Sky Team, Tesseract consists of co-op dice drafting, manipulation, and placement. However, Tesseract feels quite different from Sky Team. While each player is responsible for their own turn, communication is encouraged. Tesseract is about disarming a dangerous alien artifact known as—wait for it—the Tesseract, which manifests for us as a rad cube of dice. Turns consist of drafting dice from the Tesseract, using cards and actions to manipulate their face values, giving dice to other players, and playing them to a central “containment” board in which all colors and values will need to be played to win. After each player’s turn, the lowest die on the cube will be rolled to see which slot it will reside in beside the containment board in the “primed area.” If three of the same value dice accumulate, a “breach” has occurred. At 7 breaches, the Tesseract explodes! Well not literally, but you do literally lose. Tesseract is a fun efficiency puzzle, and I am lucky to have played with my partner, a logistics genius. But having someone that good on your team ironically makes the game feel a little too easy—we didn’t feel the tension that we might lose which is a big part of the fun in this breed of co-op. Now, we have only played with dice mats 1 and 4, and difficulty goes to 8, so it’s possible our sense of invincibility may evaporate upon playing the 8. Replayability is up in the air on this one. I would have liked to see more variation in the required board state at the end of the game. The variation relies mainly on asymmetrical player powers and varied negative effects of exposing the base layer dice mat under the Tesseract. Are we spoiled by the astonishing variability designed into co-op campaign games like Sky Team and Dorfromantik? Maybe. #firstimpressionsfriday🎲 by @kay_plays_games #tesseractboardgame #diceplacement #boardgamereview #boardgames #smirkanddagger
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