More Tabletop Games

This article is the list of more Tabletop Games that I haven’t written a review for. List of games that I have a review for can be found on this link.

Here I keep notes, impressions of each game and links to my play session reports on BGG Blog. I also upload about 10 pictures of each session report on my IG account. For more pictures in Slideshow, check out my TikTok account.

Hopefully, these notes can help me write my thoughts when I have the chance to write the review. Once the game gets a dedicated review article, I probably will move them out from here to that article.

List of Games

Here are the links to reports on BGG: 13th entry #70. 14th entry #71, 15th entry #72, 16th entry #73.

#15 March 2025 compilation. Weekly Breakdowns: 9th entry #66, 10th entry #67, 11th entry #68, 12th entry #69.

#14 February 2025 compilation. Weekly Breakdowns: 5th entry of 2025, 6th entry #63, 7th entry #64, 8th entry #65.

#13: January 2025 compilation. Weekly Breakdowns: 1st of 2025, 2nd of 2025, 3rd of 2025, 4th of 2025.

2024 Entries

Here are the links of Session Reports: Week 41, Week 42, Last of 2024.

September 2024 session compilations. Weekly breakdowns: Week 37, Week 38, Week 39, Week 40.

August 2024 session compilation. Weekly breakdowns: Week 33, Week 34, Week 35, Week 36.

July – August 2024 session Compilations. Weekly breakdowns: Week 29, Week 30, Week 31, Week 32.

June – July 2024 session Compilations. Weekly breakdowns: Week 25, Week 26, Week 27, Week 28.

June 2024 session compilations. Weekly breakdowns: Week 21, Week 22, Week 23, Week 24.

May 2024 session compilations. Weekly breakdowns: Week 17, Week 18, Week 19, Week 20.

April 2024 session compilations. Weekly breakdowns:  Week 13, Week 14, Week 15, Week 16.

March 2024 sessions compilations. Weekly breakdowns: Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12.

2024 February sessions compilations. Here is the weekly breakdowns: Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8.

2024 January Session Reports. Here are the links for the weekly post on BGG: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4.

2023 Session Reports from October to December. Here are the links to the weekly post on BGG.

2023 Entries

December: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Final Week.
November: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4
October:  Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4.

6×6 Tales (2020)

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report. Played as Human, got to the Water Spirit, Purple Portal and the Chaos Knight. Scored 535.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the 2nd play on the big paper.

Adulthood (2024)

This is a simulation game of someone’s life. On BGG, there are currently less than 20 games with this theme. As the title suggests, you don’t start from when you are a baby but when you are already a grown up. You are trying to get your best life. You try to make money and later, a better career. Find a date and spend time with them and eventually marry them while keeping your life in balance between wellness, leisure and give something to community.

When one player reaches the meeting point between happiness and contribution to the society, that will trigger the end of the game. Whoever score the most points wins.

In the game of Adulthood, every turn, you have 8 time tokens  that you can spend on 8 different actions on your player board. Every player starts with these same basic actions. 4 of them can be upgraded as the game progresses by getting Adulthood cards.

You can make money by spending time on Career action. Increase your contribution on Community action, your happiness on leisure action and getting energy by spending time on Wellness action.

The other 4 actions are Interview, Donate, Date and meditate. You won’t change any of these. Interview is either to get different Career cards or get promotion. Basically you either spend less time for the same result in career action or the same time but better result. Different careers have different result of action and different requirements to get the promotion.

Maybe you want to be a novelist which requires you to have some Fame or Creativity icons. You may get then from dealing with random Life Events or by playing certain Adulthood cards.

You can also get those icons from your date or partner from the DATE action. Spend money and time to get a partner. Each partner already has a job and specific life value. By having a partner, you have alternative way to spend those time tokens. If you marry the partner, you can unlock better version of that action. There is another requirement for getting married.

The Life Value must match and you need to show some interest in certain subject which could be related to your work or not. Alternatively, you can also choose a different partner, opening new sets of actions and requirements if you think that can help you get more fulfilling life. Maybe you get the Open Relationship card to have multiple partners. This does not increase the cost at all but you will only marry one of them.

The last action, Meditate, is to discover your life Value. At the start, every player gets 2 Value cards but they cannot see them yet until they spend energy to use the Meditate action. This is a bit different from the solo mode.

Adulthood game is mostly a card game, mainly the Adulthood cards. After assigning time, energy and money to do action as the first part of your turn, the next part is about acquiring Adulthood cards from the market. There are always 4 cards available in the market. One of them is free to take and one other gives you energy bonus. The other 2 have extra cost to take. You can wait until next turn for the expensive one to get cheaper or maybe the other player has taken it first.

After you take any of those cards, they go to your hand. You can immediately or in subsequent turns, play them. Some of them will change the 4 actions on your player board while giving better result plus certain icons. While the others can be either Experience cards or Trait cards for one time benefit or ongoing abilities. Some of these cards have a cost to play or icon requirements while some others can be free.

When you play them, they become parts of Your Life, usually about the icons. But there are ways that can force you to get rid of them. Maybe from Life events, you get fired and lose the career along with those extra icons.

Some of the life events and shady type experience can give you penalties. Either you lose happiness or you lose your contribution in the form of end game scoring. Your final score is the total of both contribution and happiness. Life events happen after either your happiness or contribution has reached certain points.

That is the game of Adulthood. The solo mode is slightly different. Both your contribution and happiness have to meet in the same position like playing Ark Nova. Then you also need to get certain number of icons according to the Solo Achievement card. Unlike the multiplayer that can go many rounds, the solo mode is always only 8 rounds. And at the end of each round, you will have to deal with Life Events. No need to count score, unless it is the Solo achievement based on scoring.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with playing the solo mode and got 2 sessions. Didn’t win either of them since both got bad tokens to push the two positions back so not enough to win. Even though in both cases, I got the lowest difficulty solo achievement.

In 1st session, 14 on blue and 13 on yellow but the yellow got pushed back by 4 tokens with The Most Connected as the Solo Achievement. The character became content creator and got married to a Homemaker. So those were 2 family icons and the other two came from events, the Elope and Baby on the Way.

In the 2nd session, got 12 on each track but both tracks got 3 red tokens each, with the Wealthiest as the solo achievement. The character became an Engineer, married to a Model and that was 1st luxury icon. Got a Home Gym as 2nd icon and experienced Shipping Trip as the 3rd. Event of Inherritance was the 4th and the 5th was from Video Gaming as their leisure activity.

Playing time took about 97 minutes for two sessions.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I decided to try the 2-player experience to see how different it is compared to solo mode. The end game was triggered by 1st player on their 9th turn so the other player got one turn as well which also could have triggered that end game.

1st player won with 40 points while 2nd player got 39. 2nd player got unlucky with the partner and took more time before they got the jewel icon, required to get married and they needed one more turn. Playing time took about 80 minutes for playing both.

Definitely more interesting than in solo because in multiplayer game, you need to find partner that match with one of your values in order to get more points at the end. You also need to explore the values and maybe replace them accordingly.

It feels like you can get lucky and every card you get just works out perfectly and you get better score. Even though I expect 1st player would have gotten significantly more points than 2nd. I think 2nd player did look for more career option but abandoned it anyway.

While the Adulthood cards cycle more with more players, it still feels like some icons don’t show up enough. In this session, both end up kind of competing for Family icons. Maybe removing the cheapest card at the end of turn helps. There was one card nobody took and just stayed there the whole game.

I was expecting the game would be long enough that you have a chance to change work or even partner to lose those promotion or marriage icons. In this session, 1st player focused on community while 2nd focused on happiness. Maybe with more players, the other players might take those cards that helped them with either track so the progress becomes slower but I am not sure about it.

I guess it is up to players to balance both tracks but then again, nothing really forbid you to focus on just one more. It’s like you need to try experience the game instead of just working to win like a race. But it doesn’t really help unless all players agree to embrace that approach.

In this session 1st player actually got more happiness than impact. 2nd player managed to got more than 25 happiness while impact was at 7.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I already got 2 solo plays so that means the playing time is fast. About an hour per session but that can be faster since I was still learning.

While I like the game but I cannot help but thinking maybe the multiplayer variant is better. You’ll play longer session but you get more stories from dealing with more cards. On the other hand, even from just 2 plays, it feels like you already see most of the cards.

The game should come with more than 139 cards that you get from the base game. I think the variety comes mostly from different careers and different partners that you don’t explore much in solo mode due to limited number of turns. But then you’ll see the same Adulthood cards very soon with just small number of plays.

I know there is already an expansion for this but it introduces new element, the PETS. Still not sure about whether it improves replay value or not. I still need to try the multiplayer variant first.

There is definitely some randomness with the cards. In my first session, it seems I just got the perfect cards that work well with each other. The opposite happened with my 2nd session and I even failed to meet the two tracks.

While randomness can prevent you from winning the game, I can see how it can still create a good story. So, maybe it is not a big deal if you don’t care about winning. Definitely I will play more of this.

More unboxing pictures of Adulthood on Instagram.

Age of Galaxy (2nd Edition, 2025)

If I understand correctly, Age of Galaxy is a reimplementation of another game from the same designer but different theme and setting called Age of Civilization. Both come with small box and for a civilization type they have short time. I heard good things about these games and also good solo mode even though I didn’t know anything about the gameplay.

Then Age of Galaxy got wider distribution from Portal Games with the new edition which was released in 2025. The box is way bigger but based on my experience with 1 play, it seems, the experience is better with bigger components as well.

In Age of Galaxy, you are part of the colonization in space trying to create your own alliance, working with different factions to become Galaxy Overlord. Start with gaining resources and unlocking abilities with those factions, you build your military power, expand your reach by colonizing nearby planets In almost each of 5 rounds, you have to prove your dominance to other players by having more fleets. If not, at least, you need to make sure you have enough so the winner of the war doesn’t take over your colonies. You can also choose to develop one or more of your colonies to gain good reputation which allows you to nominate yourself as the Overlord.

The gameplay itself has simple structure. Each round you get 3 action discs, like action points but works like worker placement game. You take turns placing one disc to activate one of the 9 possible actions. Sometimes you have to pay resources first like money or innovation or even fleet.

Early in the game you want to increase your productivity. This determines your income in following round. Productivity itself will decrease so you need to actively increase it so your income stays higher, allowing you to do more stuff.

First you can spend money to claim empty nearby planets. You gain different sets of resources from it. Then another action allows you to develop that colony to increase the productivity and a chance to gain VP with another action called nominate.

Having colonies means you need Fleets to protect them. There will be war with other players at the end of each round from 2nd round. If you cannot have more fleet than the opponents, at least you need just enough to protect your planets, one fleet for each. There are many ways to gain fleet like from research, manufacture or one time supply from your alliances.

After the war phase, if you want to keep the fleet, you need equal strength to keep them or lose until you match the strength. In general you can keep up to 4 fleets and the excess is gone after you scare your competitors. Of course, you need to spend money again to manufacture them back if you want. You can also spend fleet to explore.

Some empty space between planets can give you one time resource bonus. You can claim them first before the other players but you will lose one fleet. A bit of risk since the reward is random.

Other than that, there are actions to TRADE, allowing you to trade different kind of resources. RETRIEVE actions to give you Relic which is basically 1 point at the end, and SCAVANGE to get you just 1 money.

RESEARCH action allows you to activate one of 9 actions on your player board. These 9 actions are just one time thing and some actions have to be used first before activating the others. All player boards have the same 9 actions.

What makes every player has unique starting setup is the Faction Cards. Players will get exactly 7 cards right from the start and they will get no more. 3 of them can be your alliances.  Some of them will give you one time bonus like resources. Others can trigger multiple times if you meet the requirements. Some can also have abilities that you can unlock with the research action.

Different faction cards also help you colonize different kind of planets. There are 6 of them and you want to make sure you have enough variety. While the 3 cards can stay as your alliance, the other 4 can be discarded for one time use only.

I think this is the main part of the game. You want to make sure you get a good set of 7 cards and assign them accordingly for one big long term strategy.

There are 5 different factions. At the end of the game, faction that has more cards as alliance will determine the ideology. This is basically extra scoring conditions.

If players then failed to work on that scoring condition, they can still use the other faction cards to determine a different major Ideology. So that can surprise the competitors.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with playing 2-handed. Final score was actually tied with 18 and the tie breaker was in favor for 2nd player for getting more planets.

2nd player was also the only one to trigger Golden Age twice while 1st player got nothing. So, it was more impressive for 1st player to score the same. 2nd player went with Green ideology and got extra 6 points. Both probably won the War phase twice each.

From this session, I still believe that this game is better with more player and it has to be at least 3. 1st player actually also invested on trade above the Scavenge. However, 2nd plyer then decided not to help them trigger that Golden age and instead went for the middle and trigger that one alone thanks to additional 3 turns. Had there been one more player, the 3rd might also contribute triggering the earlier Golden age and took some extra actions from the 2nd player.

I guess, getting to trade is essential to achieve that golden age. Considering that taking a turn just to get 1 credit via Scavenge is awful. Retrieve was also a bit expensive since you need a blue. The Manufacture was not bad but the trade initial offering is more lucrative. And 2nd player took that trade on their own.

Playing time took about 87 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 2nd play of this game and first time trying out the basic Solo Mode. In this mode, you take your turns like in regular game and after you have played all of your action discs, you resolve the opponent’s. To do so, you just flip 2 cards from the deck of Faction cards and  resolve one by one.

First, you colonize according to the symbol at the bottom right and each color will tell you how to resolve differently. Sometimes they just get more fleet, Other times they can remove your excessive fleet or even acquire your planets. Easy to resolve but unfortunately, they don’t contribute anything on trade or the other worker spaces to trigger Golden Age.

You still compare fleets during the War and can acquire their planets if you win. I started with the Military faction so it helped won all war phases. Final score was 34. So, I did manage to trigger one Golden Age, related to trade about fleet by myself. Got me extra 3 actions in the last round. The other 4 cards were just for one-time benefits.

I guess this game is really meant for 4 players. Not sure about trying the advanced solo modes. Maybe I should look into the fanmade solo mode.

Playing time took about 52 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First play, 2-handed. Definitely need more play as I scored very poorly to both. Even the initial card was poorly chosen because I didn’t know what to pick. Playing time took about 87 minutes with a lot of rules checking. 2nd player won with 26 while 1st only got 17.

Increasing productivity seems to be very crucial to generate more money. This could lead to more manufacture action which didn’t happen in the game. Obviously no Golden Age happened. Choosing card for various adaptation can give more flexibility which 1st player suffered in this one. 2nd player managed to build their military early and became very intimidating and won most of the War phase. They could have captured more empty planets, a rule that I happened to get it wrong. So, maybe 2nd could have scored even higher.

Still need to try the solo mode.

More unboxing pictures of Age of Galaxy on IG.

Aleph Null (2022)

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. It had been a while since my last play to this one and I decided to play the easiest difficulty again.

Maybe I just got better with managing the Magic but as a result, I got too much left at the end and I didn’t know how to use them. There were still 6 cards in play by the time I summoned Mr. Baphomet which happened in Hour VI. So, I got negative score. Playing time was about 44 minutes.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another session with 2nd level difficulty with the Ill Omen, Reliquary and The Number of the Beast Interference in that order.

First time actually getting rid of Vitriol, using the Deck of Cards and Exorcised Water. I think I just realized that Wand of Power, the Key, actually has follow up effect after summoning it. I won this session but I was not sure about whether I could actually discard a card and then put it back to the top of the deck using Besom.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 2 sessions using 3 Level 2 Interference cards. Both lost badly. Playing time were about 20 and 30 minutes.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing with 1 level difficulty higher. Ended up getting one from each Interference Level. Either I scored 0 or -3 with a lot of leftover candles.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Lowest difficulty with 1 Level 2 Interference plus 2 Level 1. Still scored only 2.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Lowest difficulty but with 2 Level 2 Interference plus 1 Level 1.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Still with lowest difficulty.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the Full Session Report with the lowest difficulty. Apparently up to this point, I had been playing the GRAND CIRCLE card incorrectly.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 sessions with the lowest difficulty. I realized during the next play that I may have played it wrong this session.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing, got 3 sessions with the lowest difficulty.

More picture for the unboxing for Aleph Null on IG.

Aquamarine (2022)

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back with Map 1 scored about 87. I think I have been playing it wrong. About the rule of spending oxygen because of dice and because of depth. The bubble seems to work for both but the double only works for dice so the depth still applies.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or even more on TikTok. Solo play with Sheet #4, scored 131.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Sheet #2, scored 81.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Back with Sheet #1. Scored 83.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first time playing with the 4th Sheet. 2 sessions, scored 102 and 104.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With Sheet #1, scored only 54, normal difficulty solo variant.

Ark Nova (2021)

At the time of this writing, Ark Nova is the highest rated game of the last 5 years on BGG. Even to solo gamer community, this is already in the top 10 for a couple of years, even though many suggest using the fan made variant of the solo mode.

Thematically, Ark Nova is about running a zoo. Each player has their own player board with a zoo map, filled with hex spaces. You can either fill them with enclosures for animals, kiosks, pavilions and other kind of attractions.  Kiosks and pavilions are always size 1 while the other can go between 1 to 5. More space requires more money to build. There are also special kind of enclosures like for bird, reptiles or for petting zoos that can be used for different animals.

After you build the enclosures, you can fill them with animals by paying the cost of different animals. Some animals have further requirements like the enclosure must be next to stones or water spaces. So, building and providing the size itself is not enough. Other requirements could be like you need to have partner zoo from the continent where the animals are from. Or maybe you need to have that kind of animals first before you are able to accommodate the bigger ones.

By having animals in your zoo, most of the time, this increases your zoo’s appeal which translates to income. You also gain icons related to that animal that can work to fulfill the requirement of the next. Playing sponsor cards are another way to gain both or either of them. But having animals is just one part of the theme. The other part is called Conservation Projects.

Having (icons of) animals allows you to participate in different conservation projects. Some conservation projects may require you to release the animals to the wild. This may cause you to lose appeal but increases the Conservation level. The game ends when one player manages to cross their positions in the two tracks, Appeal and Conservation level.

I think the appeal of this game is not just the theme but also from the gameplay mechanism. Basically, every player gets a set of 5 identical action cards. The actions are ANIMALS, BUILD, ASSOCIATION, SPONSOR and CARDS. The last one is where you get animal cards, sponsor cards or conservation cards.

Each card is placed in space 1 to 5, one of each, and that number represents how powerful the action of the card you can do. Once activated, you move the card to space 1 while the rest move up one level.

Each card can be upgraded to 2nd level where you flip the card and use that card for the rest of the game. However, you cannot upgrade every card and you may want to upgrade one over the other first.

From my experience, this card system allows you to have longer planning. For example, you want to build an enclosure with the size of 5 so the Build card has to be at space 5 while currently at level 3. So, you have that plan and now you need to figure out what to do in order to increase that position by utilizing the 2 cards in between. Then, you start over with the next card to play at level 5. This way, your mind is engaged all the time, not just waiting for the right moment.

Sometimes you do need to consider playing action at the lower level while keep certain action at level 5. While it is nice that you can do more, but most of the time, depending on your situation, those can be just excess you eventually have to give up. The upgrade and the higher income as the game progresses do give you an engine building feeling and allow you to do more. However, since it doesn’t necessarily help you win the game, it feels more like how to make combo with whatever situation you are currently in.

There are also a lot of one time rewards, mostly from occupying certain spaces from your map. For me, the game reminds me of The Castles of Burgundy. Definitely more complex and heavier but in that similar experience of a rewarding game.

The game doesn’t use fixed number of turns and/or rounds. However, each action taken by any player will push the position BREAK token in varying degrees. Break is like end of round in other games where you reset some tokens, gain income, refresh market and so on.

The main criticism to this game from the majority of players is that the game can take long like 4 hours. Another one is that the card draw can be random and you just got unlucky even if you play the Card action at level 5, upgraded.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time, I decided to try playing 2-handed, just to know how different it is compared to the official solo mode. Got a couple of sessions actually.

First session with 2-handed took almost 4 hours. The end game was triggered incorrectly. Instead of getting 7 appeal points from filling the entire board, I moved the Conservation Points instead. So, it should have ended a couple more turns after, maybe even additional break. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until I put the game back to the box. I counted 6 breaks and about 34 turns until that wrong end game trigger.

After realizing that I played it wrong, I decided to play again but this time with the official solo mode again. But, instead of starting the game with 20 appeal points, I started with 0. After about 80 minutes, the appeal was 40 and the Conservation point was exactly 20, which got me 36 points with still a lot of empty spaces on my Zoo.

Still not satisfied with both plays, I decided to try the 2-handed again and this time, with correct end game trigger. 2nd player won with 65 appeal and 33 CP or 72 points with final score of 137. 1st player got 66 appeal but only 45 points from 23 CP.  2nd player filled their entire zoo and with animals while 1st still got like 3 empty spaces and 2 empty enclosures size 3. 2nd player got 2 attractions from sponsors and only one animal each to their Aviary and Petting zoo. 1st player actually managed to fill every space of their Reptile enclosures.

1st player managed to contribute to conservation projects 3 times while 2nd only got to 2. Both finally got a couple of more conservation cards in hand but none of them actually had the chance to play any of them. Or, so I thought.

I just realized while writing this that I made another mistake. The 2nd player couldn’t have kept increasing their reputation since they didn’t upgrade their Card Action card. That means, they lost at least 2 conservation points at least. That was the only card they didn’t actually upgrade. Not sure if they managed to get more appeal after 15. Also they lost 2 CP since the final scoring cards they chose was actually related to that reputation. So maybe they still won. Oh, well.

1st player chose not to upgrade the Sponsor card. I did feel like in the last few rounds, the cards in the display didn’t help 1st player. I remember a lot of sponsor cards actually. This session took about 3 hours 14 minutes.

I have to say, that official solo mode is significantly inferior to multiplayer. At least with playing with 2, the display refresh more often, especially if players focus on snapping instead of drawing blindly. Upgrading the Animal card was also very strong. It basically increases your hand size with cards on the display. Instead of just taking a card, you can immediately play animal. You just need to focus on increasing your reputation so you have more options.

Similarly, upgrading Sponsor card is also good but with extra cost. Maybe another error that I did with 2nd player and helped them somehow. Also good to generate money with double value after upgrading that sponsor action card. Upgrading Card action makes it less interesting then. The only reason for that is if you always low on money and you have to keep the card instead.

I was expecting that maybe with 2 players, one of them can propose a new conservation project. It didn’t happen. Sponsors, especially those build some attractions really helps fill the space. 2nd player got that Engineer so they managed to build a lot of kiosks twice per turn. I didn’t expect that, even with some errors, playing 2-handed was manageable. The only problem for me is that I don’t have enough table space for 2 to see all cards that the players have played. This could lead to missing some final scoring bonus. Like that 2nd player failed to get a couple of CP for missing 1 continent.

Maybe I should just try that ARNO solo variant or keep playing 2-handed. Hopefully, less and less error in subsequent plays.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was first time playing the game I only played the official solo mode so far. Got 3 sessions but the first 2 with a lot of errors.

Unlike the multiplayer mode where the game can keep going unless the players try to trigger the end of the game, the solo mode has fixed number of turns and rounds. After about 27 turns, you need to score 100 or more in order to win.

In the 3rd play, hopefully with the correct rule, I scored 21 from Conservation and 69 from the Appeal, so only 90 points. The zoo still had 6 empty spaces left. That 3rd play took about 90 minutes.

I can see why many solo gamers prefer the fan made with longer play to this official one. Maybe I just played poorly but I didn’t feel I had enough chance to do the Conservation. Not even playing a card for it. That 3rd play, I only got a chance to participate in twice from the basic project.

I think the randomness is also bad in this one since you are the only one to take cards from the market so the market cycle less. Not to mention, with limited turns, you don’t really want to waste actions just to get cards. With just you alone, you only use a portion of zoo cards. You can get final scoring cards where the zoo cards may not be in the deck you use. Maybe I should really try that fan made variant.

Despite my criticism, I do enjoy my play. The fact that I am willing to play multiple sessions in a row should tell you how I am invested in the game. Even how you place buildings in your zoo gives interesting challenge. You might end up not building any size 5 enclosure because the leftover spaces don’t support that shape. So, you have to give up that card you just take even though it works perfectly with your previous played cards.

Which space you want to cover first and for what bonus? You want to save some bonus for later while stretching out to get more workers at the opposite end early. How you can make sure you can build your next Kiosk for more income. Combine those spatial considerations while working with the card cycle system.

So, even still just initial impression, I enjoy my first plays of Ark Nova and definitely will play more.

More unboxing pictures of Ark Nova on my IG.

Arkwright: The Card Game (2021)

This is one of the heavy economic games set in industrial era but plays quite fast compared to other economic games in similar weight. Also very cheap.

It has official solo variant against 2 opponents with very easy upkeep. In this game, we will have to manage money from start to finish, even take a loan to run up to 4 factories, deciding whether to hire workers or automize the process which can affect the wage for all players.

We have to decide how many goods to produce, improve the quality and do marketing to affect the demand. Higher demands lead to more sales but if the price is too low, we may lose money in the process or have to figure out how to sell them internationally.

How well we run the company can lead to higher value of company’s stock price. We can even buy those stocks early where the value is low when there is no good action we can take to improve the operation.

There are only 12 turns, one action each from about 8 possible actions. However, each action has a degree or parameter we can choose. For example, we can choose to open or upgrade factories. This can be done to just one or up to 4 factories in a single turn. Or we can hire workers adding one or two cards to one up to 4 factories in a single turn.

The impact of our decision may take effect within the next four turns. We may open the factory in the 1st turn or round but the factory itself will operate every 4th round. Poor decision may lead to higher cost without being able to sell any produced goods. That is where the heaviness and the depth of the challenge comes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I was thinking about trying the 2-player variant but ended up playing another solo. This took about 60 minutes.

Scored very poorly with maybe 12 shares, 28 pounds each. So I got only 336 while the 2 opponents got both 378 each. I even kind of cheated with the Stock Action. Instead of buying 3 shares, I ended up changing several turns later with just 1. Started with Clothes and Cutlery and opened the other 2 in 2nd decade.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session, started with Clothes and Lamp Factory, using my variant. Scored 351, still the lowest among 3. I had to take Emergency funds twice.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Started with Bread and Cutlery factory, opened 4, scored 338, the lowest among 3.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Started with Bread and Cloth Factory without any additional factory, scored only 315. 85 minutes.

April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report for solo play with expert variant. Opened 3 factories and scored 384 while the other 2 got 441 and 437.

Azul (2017)

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First time playing this game and it was this mini version. Got 3 sessions, 2 with 2-handed and I also tried 4-handed once. All of these were using the color side of the player board.

In one of the 2-handed sessions, the winner was the 2nd player with over 60 points while the loser only got less than 30. The winner completed a row and column plus all 5 of one color while the other player didn’t complete anything but diversify working on multiple colors. The game ended in the fifth round.

Then I tried the 4-handed and the scores were 27, 59, 43 and 60. The winner completed 1 row, 1 column and 1 color while the lowest one failed to complete anything. 2nd highest got one column and 1 color. I think there was a moment when one player managed to almost trigger the end of the game earlier than anybody else. At that point, the other 3 decided to not let them win and took all the required color away from that winning one. So, the game got one more round and that player that got screwed by the other 3 was in 3rd. I think the one in 4th place never took 1st player at all. The game also ended after 5 rounds.

I realized that the game was about filling a row with exact number of tiles so you can clear them out and make a room for next round. At the same time you also want to have the bigger row to be empty so you can take colors from the middle should it has 5 or even more tiles and you don’t get further penalty. Which is why, finishing or completing rows before the end is kind of crucial or you lose the flexibility. Although not necessarily you are going to suffer. Maybe you still can make it work with carefully draft your tiles.

So, you always want to be the first to claim a set of 2 or 3 from the fresh factory. Haven’t seen one with 4 tiles of one color from the draft yet but if you can fill the 4th row for that, assuming the color still works, you always want to go for it. Fill to clear right away. Every round, there is always the same number of tiles played. You may not take the same number from those but if you have less room, then possibly have to take penalty.

None of the winners from these sessions always took the 1st player marker. However, being the last one of each round sucks. Maybe if you play and sit in position before the player who always try to take 1st player, you are not going to win.

Triggering the end of the game doesn’t mean you are going to win. So, working on sets of colors should be your focus very early. Not to mention, if you choose to diversify, some colors might not show enough tiles towards the end when you actually need them. Paying attention on what is available and enough from the fresh market might help you make a plan.

In general, I was surprised that I enjoyed this game more than I expected. Although, the game being this cutthroat may not give the same appeal when I actually play with other players. I haven’t even tried playing the game with screwing the other players through drafting as the main strategy. It seems on deeper level, you can try to do so.

A bit rant about the production of this mini. They expect you to use the bag as the container of the game. But at the same time, you also need to use the bag for the tokens. Maybe it is better if you can provide a smaller bag inside it. And of course, I would rather use the box to keep the game.

The tile itself is cropped at the bottom so it can fit the extruded plastic inlay. From my experience, this makes the tiles easier to be pushed away and make it even jump off your player board. I prefer a complete square tile and the inlay with just square space to fit. Maybe they try to reduce the amount of resin that way. At least, the score track is better but still not perfect as how it points to the number.

More unboxing pictures of Azul Mini on my IG.

Bamboo (2023)

This is part of Devir’s Kemushi Saga series that includes Bitoku. The game is about decorating the house using tile placement mechanism. We buy a square tile and place it in one of 3 sections of the house. Then, we have to draw the scoring tiles, specifically for that section. The scoring tile will have requirement that we need to achieve in order to gain the score.

For every decoration we put in the house, by the end of each of 4 rounds, we have to have the same amount of food. Like feeding the Spirits that will stay in the house along with the occupants.

Those are the 4 actions that we can do but to do so, we need to have a Bamboo token with the corresponding icon for the action. Each round, players take turns by choosing 1 color that can have up to 4 Bamboos. We can activate actions stated by those Bamboo as long as we have the incense stick per action.

The 4 colors represent the temple to pray for the Spirit. For example, if we choose the Green Bamboos, and we have 3 incense sticks, we can activate up to 3 actions and place those incense in the Green Temple. By the end of the round, players with the most incense sticks in a temple win the favor of that Spirit. In a way, this is like the bidding part of the game.

Different spirits can be activated to do different additional actions. Once activated, we do have to pay the cost to wake them back before we can activate them again at the end of the round.

Officially, this doesn’t have solo variant but there is already fan made one with deck of cards for the opponent. The box size is smaller than standard TTR box but it is heavier than game with similar size. The table space required is small which is appreciated, but I feel the small components kind of hurts the setup and tear down, adding some fiddliness.

The gameplay is very tactical, especially in higher player counts. This is not a game where the amount of actions will change drastically from game to game. For the most part, the idea is about collecting bamboos of one color to win specific Spirit while trying to be flexible in action for that color. We are not going to activate all of them.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played 2-handed again using the advanced side between Green family as 1st player and yellow again as 2nd. The winner was Green with 43 points while Yellow only got 38.

1st won 1 more unique spirit. Both took penalty for not providing enough food. 1st got perfect balance for both sides of their house while 2nd was slightly heavier on right. 2nd managed to completely scored every balance tile but only half of all points while 1st player managed to score their starting middle balance tile for full points.

Playing time was about 104 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. More play of 2-handed session with advanced side of each board. Yellow family as the first won with 47 while Green family as 2nd only scored 44. Green could have scored 2 more had the Yellow didn’t steal that one Spirit from them. Playing time was about 97 minutes.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 2 handed session, both using the advanced side of player board. Panda as the first player got only 40 or even less while the Human as 2nd player got over 40. Both forgot to place their sticks once and ended up doing more action.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played 2-handed. First player ended up scoring 46 while the opponent only got 44. This was using the Advanced variant.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed session using the expert variant. Scored 34 and 39. Made an error of forgetting to place the incense stick to one player.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first time trying the expert player board variant with 2 players, scored 44 vs 46.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo fan made variant. Scored 51 against the opponent’s 36.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo fan made variant. Scored 35 vs the opponent’s 53. I think I resolved the opponent action incorrectly. First time playing this solo variant.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report with 2-handed. Both scored 50. Green won the tie breaker for having more comfort points.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first time playing the game 2-handed. Scored only 24 vs 15. Probably a lot of rules error.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Bamboo on IG.

Beacon Patrol (2023)

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Previous 2 plays were the cooperative mode 2-handed and this time I got back to solo mode. This play reminded me when I thought that Beacon Patrol was not that good. I guess playing 2-handed gives me better experience overall, mainly because I have 6 tiles to work with for up to 2 different areas where the 2 boats are.

In solo, or at least in my recent play, the random luck of the draw kind of bothered me more. I still scored 64 or so and got Captain with only 7 points from the 2 modules. Only 1 pier gave me score and 4 windmills got me just less than 5. Playing time was about 51 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another attempt with playing 2-handed and with both extra modules. This time I scored 59 and got the Captain title. Scored nothing from the Windmill and only 4 from the Piers.

Playing time was about 50 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Finally got to try the multiplayer variant with 2-handed. On one hand, it made the game more strategic as you get access to 6 tiles instead of just 3 at a time. However, the challenge is trying to focus on completing just one area instead of keep spreading.

I think I only got like 46 points and with the 2 extra modules I only got 2 extra points from it.  Got a hole almost in the middle that took away a lot of points. 3 movement tokens per player is also the limit. You might got the right tile but not enough to reach there. So, not sure this was better experience than just solo but I want to try again one more time at least.

Playing time took about 57 minutes.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Finally got to try both mini expansion modules included in the game as part of the solo play. So, this had a bit of first impression regarding those modules. Maybe they make the game easier since you play with more tiles. Scored about 70 which was the 2nd highest group.

December 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still playing with no additional module, one session. Scored 55, as usual, a fair amount of cheating.

September 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. One session only without additional module, scored 45.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2 sessions, one scored 52 and the other only scored 40.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 1st time play, 3 solo sessions with just the base module, scored 25, 47, 45.

More unboxing pictures of Beacon Patrol on Instagram.

The Blob that Ate the City (2022)

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 1 session scored 152.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 1 session, scored 129.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, Scored 109 and 111.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time play, 2 sessions, scored 124 and 108.

Bruxelles 1897 (2019)

This is the card game version of Bruxelles 1893. The main mechanism is worker placement with cards as your workers or your Architects with some bidding and Area Majority element.

Bruxelles 1897 is set in the historical time when Art Nouveau, artistic style was on the rise of popularity in different industries, including architecture. Players are going to send their Architects in the grid of the city or the Art Nouveau area. The goal is to collect materials to build buildings, collecting art sculptures to show in exhibitions while managing money, convincing Nobles to help them.

At the start of each round, the city grid is filled with cards from all of those elements. On their turn, player can place one of their worker card to claim that element, occupying that space on the grid. The worker card itself has a value between 1 to 5.

This indicates the cost that player has to pay but becomes the power to win the column majority at the end of each round. There are 4 columns to win the majority from, each with different benefit. One will increase the architectural value of buildings that the player has built. The 2nd one is to increase the player’s influence to different nobles on their side, giving more chance to activate them later.

Another one is to help player release their worker from prison and the player can immediately use them in the same round. The last one is to increase the value of different area majority scoring, created by 4 adjacent worker cards in 2 x 2 space. Players with the most workers out of each 2×2 grid gets more score by the end of each round, regardless of their bidding value.

Getting each element itself doesn’t give instant point. In fact, players might have to work on it a bit. For example, getting art sculptures will only give points if players put the unique one in exhibition before other players.

Getting building materials is not worth any point except for the last round but very low or they are spent to build buildings. The building themselves are worth points based on the architectural track. Same goes with Nobles. By the end of it, players have to pay cost for each Noble at the end in order to gain points.

Besides sending out workers to occupy space, there are 3 more spaces in the Brussels area. Usually this is to get more money, benefit from Nobles on their side and getting resources or elements not presented on the Art Nouveau area.

For this, players don’t need to pay the cost. However, once a space in this area is occupied by worker, the next player has to assign 1 worker more to go to the same space. At the end of each round, player with the most workers in all 3 spaces will get 1 of their workers sent to jail. So, that is another majority aspect.

Even while trying to write this entry, it is kind of hard to explain the game but the gameplay is a way simpler. It’s just how to work on getting score in this game feels a bit complicated, even if the explanation makes sense thematically.

This is definitely a deeper game, even in mid weight complexity. Every action you can do may affect other things later. You need to consider what to take, how much to bid and where to place or prioritize the position. Sometimes, players have to consider what their opponents is going to take.

That can help them bid lower to save more money for other things. While not directly confrontational, this one is one of more interactive Euro-style game.

I think Bruxelles 1897 does offer different path to scoring and wins. However, it is not really determined by different player power but more because of what happen very early.  In this turn-based game, maybe one player is chasing the architecture part, then the next one in art exhibition one so the later players have to work with what’s left.

The game is officially for 2 to 4 players. There is a fan made solo variant, playing against one of different Nobles.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still more 2-handed session. The winner was 2nd player with 70 points while 1st only got 67. Both were competing for Architecture and 2nd player had to build 2 duplicates of 2 types. They even failed getting 3rd material card to build the 5th.  Unfortunately, 1st player with 4 unique buildings, didn’t win the majority for that column while both got exactly 20 points. Playing time was about 92 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another 2-handed session. 1st player won with 68 while 2nd player got only 55. 2nd player only got tied on 3 majority bonuses while 1st player won all of them.  Still not enough for 2nd to win even if they were also tied for the 4th. I guess they wasted a couple of turns just to win majority.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2-handed session, none of them focused on Prestige. Ended with tied score and the Blue player won for having less card in jail.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Another attempt against Victor Horta. Scored 73 vs his 45.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo with fan made variant against Victor Horta. Scored 45 vs the opponent’s 51.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing with the fan made solo variant. Scored only 68 to opponent’s 75.

Bullet♥︎ (2021)

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 3 sessions. First 2 were Young-Ja Kim vs the Fanged Sun which I won both. I just realized how useful trading your Pattern card for a new one with a cost of 1 AP. Like you don’t want to run out of cards and AP to give you that flexibility. Then I played 3rd one against the Yakuza. That one was a loss after I failed to finish her in the 2nd to last round. Playing time was about an hour each session.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Young-Ja Kim vs Fugue in D Minor. Got 3 sessions and technically I lost all 3. It was really hard when the Blue card of this Boss came out in the last round as Young Ja Kim probably doesn’t have enough way to move them. Possibly one of the worst experiences and match ups.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Young-Ja Kim vs the Mecha Mary. Well, I guess I kind of cheated in this one during the last Shield.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Young-Ja Kim vs The Bauk and the Fanged Sun. Failed with the latter. Some rules error.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Another attempt with Young-Ja Kim character with the Score Mode. Got 3 sessions, between 7th to 9th intensity level.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing with Young-Ja Kim, the one with wheelchair. 3 sessions all in Score mode. However, after the game, I realized a major mistake in the rule for this character. I mistook the Empty required space as the target space.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 sessions of Rie Akagi vs Ghost in the Machine. Won the 3rd one.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions of Rie Akagi vs Ekolu. Lost all 4 of them.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. Solo Boss Mode between Rie Akagi vs Fugue in D Minor and vs Hell on Wheels.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Rie Akagi vs Mecha Mariel, solo boss mode.

Burgle Bros. (2015)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still with Office Job with The Raven and the Hackers with the wall layout generated by the app. 2nd floor had 2 long corridors and a central area in the middle, making it very challenging. On top of that, the room to one of the corridors was deadbolt.

Got lucky that one of the room in the middle was Service duct connected to first floor. The Hacker should have been great for that 2nd floor but I let him finished the 1st one. Then I realized that the Hacker himself was a poor option to distract guard since he cannot trigger any alarm. It got worse after he got Stamp as the loot which would trigger the event if he only did 3 actions.

Raven herself was very useful with using her raven to slow down guard. Sometimes it was also tricky as where to put it. Either it could slow down the guard twice if you place it in the middle of the route or at the end. Sometimes you want the guard not that slow. Raven got Bust so the tool was useless.

The game ended after about 72 minutes, both with 2 stealth tokens each left.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another Office Job and this time with The Rook and first time with the Spotter. Didn’t use the Spotter’s ability at all and the Rook got it once or twice. Also first time using different layer of walls. 2nd floor had a dead end hall which took 5 spaces to get out but luckily, the guard didn’t go to any of them. A lot of events happened. The 2 managed to steal Painting and Mirror. Playing time was about 42 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Playing time was 65 minutes with 2 characters and only the Office Job again.f

This time, the characters were the Peterman and the Raven with Isotope and Persian Kitty as the Loots. Hopefully I got the rule right, probably the best experience so far. This was first time using some of the hacking actions. Very useful even if just to avoid Event.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another solo play with 2 characters and using the Office Job variant again. This time using Hacker and Juicer, first time for both.

I think I made a mistake related to the TIARA loot and I probably should have lost the game. Luckily, I could figure out how to fix the play by using the tool that I didn’t use during the game. Also, I just realized that I got it wrong about the Computer room. I thought it was just to disable the sensor but apparently, you need the other character to stand by there.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd play, 1st time with the Office Job Variant, also first time playing as Acrobat and Rigger. One major error with the rule I made was about the temporary speed of Guard. They didn’t change even after disarming the alarm. I also should have read the rule about different types of alarms.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First play using the Rook and the Hawk in the Bank Job. Not a great final act on the 3rd floor.

More unboxing pictures of Burgle Bros. game on Instagram.

Calico (2020)

Calico is a tile laying game about making a quilt with different patterns and colors to attract cats. Different cats like one pattern with specific number and configurations of hexes tiles and each cat is worth different points.

Each tile itself has one of 6 colors. If we can place 3 of the same color adjacent to each other, we get a button for that color worth 3 points. Besides those 2 scoring conditions, each board will have 3 goal tiles with its own requirement. Each goal tiles require specific combination of patterns and/or colors. For example, the tile may ask for AAA-BB-C.

That means we need 3 variants, one with 3 tiles, one with 2 and the other with 1 tile. If we can complete with just one either color or the pattern, we get the lower score and if both, we get higher points.

The gameplay itself is very simple. Each turn, player will get 2 tiles in their hand and place one on the board. After that, they replenish their hand by picking 1 out of 3 from the market.

Because players will try to score all conditions, they may lead themselves trying to get specific tile. In that case, they should start abandoning some of the scoring conditions and work just on one with the best chance to complete it, considering the randomness nature of it.

Otherwise, they may find the game a bit cutthroat when their opponent took that tile they want. More likely than not, that was not the opponent’s intention. Some people may not like the game because there is no control of which tile to keep or not from the market. It feels too random for them.

For the solo mode, Calico comes with a number of Scenario Achievements. The player has to reach a number of points and completing certain conditions using 3 specific cats. Using the variant with less variety of tiles, and no other player to take the tile, the solo mode becomes very strategic.

Player just needs to keep track on which tile they have discarded. Also, focus on just one pattern for each cat and ignore the other. This will give a bigger number of tiles to be safely discarded.  However, with the more challenging scenario, the player might want to assign the pattern that the cat is not using for the other objective.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time, I finally tried the last solo achievement scenario and I managed to figure out the best placement to complete all of the objectives on 1st try. Even though I almost failed, especially about the AAA-BBB. Scored 83 points. Playing time was about 40 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 3rd attempt of Scenario #9. Did more proper planning before the start of the game using paper and some markers. Two yellow goal scores but not the AAAA-BB.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd attempt with Scenario #9. Similar as before, failed to score the 2nd yellow goal tile. Either try to score the other or be more careful with AAAA-BB.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time with Scenario #9. Scored 81 but failed to get both scores from 2 goal tiles. Only got 1.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Scenario #8 scored 84 points, completing all objectives.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First try with the solo scenario achievement #8. Scored 72 from the target 66 but failed one requirement to score the yellow from Goal tile.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the solo scenario achievement #7 and won.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the Full Session report. Solo play using the Scenario Achievement #7. Scored 71 but only 3 cats from the required 5.

Cartographers (2019)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 4th solo play and this time I got the lowest score so far with just 62 points total, minus 80. A Dimwitted Doodler was the title, the 2nd lowest threshold.

The lowest score of a round happened in the 3rd one where I got only 5 points after losing 6 from the 3rd ambush while not getting enough houses for Greengold Plains or single empty spaces for the Cauldrons. 2nd lowest was in the 1st round with 0 points from the Treetower.

The red wants to be spread out and connected to 3 different terrains. I somehow chose the yellow over red from those exploration cards, especially since I still had a lot of mountains. Red had to be connected but the no color one was asking for a hole in between. Green also wanted to be surrounded on all sides. While I like the result of my drawing but not the game session, especially that final round.

Playing time was about 71 minutes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 3rd play and I feel like I got the worst matchup of scoring, especially between the red and blue/yellow. Shoreside Expanse doesn’t want blue and yellow to touch each other and they also cannot touch the edge. Red with Great City doesn’t allow to touch mountain. It feels very constraint and I didn’t enjoy as much.

Scored 113, minus 89 so I still got 24 or Master Mapsmith. Playing time was about 82 minutes with the drawing.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 2nd play, also solo mode. I just realized that you are supposed to subtract your score with the number at the bottom right corner of the 4 scoring cards. Got 14 left and the title of Journeyman Topographer.  First 3 seasons got no enemy card and finally got 2 in the last one with the last one was not possible to be drawn. Totally forgot about surrounding Mountains for coins so I only got 3. Playing time plus drawing time was about 84 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. First time playing the game with Sheet A, of course and just the solo mode. This is a polyomino flip and write game where you will be filling maps with either cities, forest, water or plains.

Each turn, you flip a card and it will tell you the polyomino shapes you can choose to draw and the type of terrains. The drawing can almost be anywhere within that 11 x 11 grid except for a couple of Mountain spaces. Those shapes can be mirrored, flipped or rotated.

In every session of your play, there will be 4 scoring cards, one for each of those terrain types. The challenge is that in every round of 4, you only score two of them in specific order. So, you may not flip a card with a terrain that scores this round. However, you can still use that chance to build up score for the later rounds, assuming it is not the last one for that scoring.

Every round, you will also add an ambush card where you have to draw spaces for monsters that will take score from you. Unless, you completely surrounded all adjacent spaces of those monsters. If it doesn’t come out during that round, it may appear twice in the later rounds with 2 different cards.

Each card also has a timer value between 0 to 2 and each round has maximum value. So, you only flip until you have used the maximum value with the last 2 rounds having a decreasing value. The game comes with 100 sheets, each with 2 variants of maps.

Cartographers is very popular for solo or multiplayer. I think the popularity is some part because it allows players to draw maps on those sheets. My first play took about 74 minutes including the drawing part. I think I still prefer the exploring and discovering aspect from 6×6 Tales better but this one is definitely shorter.

More unboxing pictures of Cartographers on IG.

Carson City: The Card Game (2018)

This is a city building game, using the Splaying and Melding mechanism or overlapping cards like Sprawlopolis. The cards have a 2 x 2 grid that shows different types of buildings in the American West setting or they can be an empty lot.

When placing the card, we cannot rotate the card and it has to be that one orientation.  We can overlap but only if the bottom or existing part of the grid is either empty or has the smaller version of the one covering it.

Most of the buildings will get better score by being adjacent to any housing, even diagonally. There are some exceptions like Ranch that will score better among empty lot or Mines which is better next to mountains. Also there is a limit of overall size for the player’s city.

To get the card, players will play a bidding game using their poker hand with a value of 1 to 9 or up to 11 for higher difficulty. Player plays one card each turn and the highest value will get a chance to pick one card first.

Other than building cards, players can also try to win Characters. Each character can either give better score overall or for specific buildings. Some doesn’t give extra score but can help during the bidding.

The game has official solo variant where player will be trying to get better score than 3 other 3 opponents. It is not that hard to resolve each of opponent’s action as we just flip their shuffled deck of bidding cards. The problem with this variant is more about keeping track of opponents’ score.

In the multiplayer mode, the game still has to be played with at least 4 players so with less than that, players must add a number of bot opponents until the number is at least 4.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Still solo play with standard difficulty but I tried counting score of all 3 opponents every round. Not sure if that affected my decision though.

I somehow scored 178 while the opponents got 115, 103 and 100. About 114 of my score was from 13 characters. So only 7 tiles for the city building. I think I just got lucky getting characters in the right order. Playing time was about 60 minutes.

January 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Scored 128 and the 3 opponents got 86, 95 and 115. I just realized, I have been playing the Mayor rule wrong up to this point.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. I scored 165 while the highest from opponents were 109.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored 149 against opponents’ best, 122. Made a lot of buildings in this session.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored 160 points vs the opponent’s 112 and 103 from two other opponents. Still with standard setting using card 1 to 9 per player.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the Full Session Report. Solo play with standard set of cards. Scored only 100, the lowest.

The Castles of Burgundy (2011)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play from the Special Edition variant. I just realized that if I want to play with the medium difficulty, I need to use at least one modifier which I didn’t for this and previous session. Even without them, the score was pretty close.

Played with the player board #6. Final score was 202 for me and the opponent got 182. I think I should have gotten extra 5 more points after completing all ship spaces. Completed the mine first, then the Castle and the Livestock. The opponent didn’t finish anything but the Castle was close in the final round.

This time, it felt like I spent a lot more turns just to get workers. No monastery that helped me take tiles or to put them into duchy. I was planning to stay as first player by keeping one ship. But then I forgot and the opponent advanced 2 spaces. In the end, I managed to take over but only in the last Phase.

Playing time was about 104 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. So, I finally got a chance to try the solo variant from the Special Edition using the copy of Alea’s Anniversary Edition. You need fan made cards and opponent board to play that you can find on BGG.

This solo mode is meant to replicate the experience in multiplayer variant. However, instead of a duchy of giant Hex filled with smaller hexes, the opponent will get 9 County cards. They will take tiles and fill these cards with them and score points when completed. Like the regular game, after completing all spaces in one color, they get to score bonus tiles. The Solo mode also comes with 3 different difficulty settings. Basically just different score when they complete those cards.

While resolving the opponent action is simple, you also need to resolve each tile differently, even each unique building tile. So, you might want to print the Special edition rulebook as well, specifically the solo mode.

I played with the recommended medium difficulty and the final score was 184 for me against 180 for the opponent. So, it was very challenging. Especially since I scored most of the bonus tiles first while they got none. I used map 5 and only sold goods once (?). Maybe the map didn’t force me to take that many ships and I did twice only.

Playing time took almost 2 hours and the majority is about checking how to resolve a tile for the opponent. So, it was almost the same but instead of me making decision for 2nd hand, I spent time learning how to resolve this opponent.

I’m still not sure if I played it correctly since they seemed to get a lot of tiles in their reserve. Even though they do count it for their scoring. Overall, I like this variant so instead of playing 2-handed, maybe I just keep using this variant.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 3rd time with multiplayer mode, 2-handed. This time, 1st player got board #3 and the 2nd player #4. 1st player won with 204 while 2nd got only 166. Maybe I forgot extra 5 for 2nd player for completing the Pasture hexes.

This was mostly because the board #3 forced the player to fill the yellow hexes very early. From those, they got 3 extra scoring which they managed to take advantage. 2nd player managed to stay as first player and got to complete all mines while 1st only got 1. Previously I thought pastures would be the deciding points but I was wrong.

Playing time was about 120 minutes.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd time with multiplayer mode 2-handed, this time using player board #2. One scored over 190 while the other scored less than 160, probably because the winner focused on animals. I still forgot about having different building in the same area.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing the multiplayer mode, 2-handed. One scored 152 and the other scored 120.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 3rd attempt with the solo variant, 13a. Failed to fill 5 or so more spots. Forgot about getting additional action after reaching the score goal but also got wrong, very minor.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or TikTok. This was a Full session report with the official solo variant. A lot of errors of taking extra actions, forgot to trigger bonuses and early Silver income.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or TikTok. This was first time playing and a solo session. Got one rule wrong about completing a color.

More unboxing pictures of The Castles of Burgundy board game on Instagram.

Cascadia (2021)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was solo play with the 8th achievement scenario. For the first time there is a rule about two different animals not being adjacent to each other. In this specific case, between the bear and the elk. Also, I had to score 5 points from the pine tokens. Which means I needed to collect and not use them during the game until I got more.

Final score was 99, which was higher than the minimum threshold of 90. Highest scoring from the animals came from the Fox with 18 from 2 sets, followed by 17 from Salmon with a line of 5. Got 2 areas with 7 hexes or more from prairie and forest while the river was missing one tile. I actually got 7 pine tokens so I got lucky enough not to spend them much. Maybe once or twice I did.

Playing time was about 38 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played the 7th achievement solo scenario where I had to score at least 90 and 20 of them had to be from Hawk D. Got 10 from Bear B, 12 from Salmon C, 14 from Elk C, 6 from 2 Fox C, and 25 from 3 pairs of Hawks. Only the water terrains got 7 plus 2, only 4 from prairies, 3 mountains, 6 forests and 5 wetlands plus 2 tokens. So final score was 96. Playing time was about 50 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 6th achievement solo scenario. Playing time was about 51 minutes. Scored 102 with highest animal score from the Fox, 18 points and only 2 terrains got 7 or more.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another attempt with the 5th achievement scenario. Got 99 points and all 3 foxes had maximum score. Only one terrain got 7 or more bonus. Playing time was about 44 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. More solo plays but this time with the 5th achievement. Failed the first one because the 3rd Fox was not scored completely. Then the 2nd one was also failed because I misunderstood the Hawk scoring. While I got all the 3 foxes to get full score, I failed to get 85 points.

January 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo play with the 4th Achievement Scenario. A bit unclear with the word pair, especially for FOX variant D. The score could have been 105.

October 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session with the 3rd Achievement scenario. Completed but only with 84 points, almost failed. Initially I thought that each wildlife card is not different enough from each other. However, this made me realize, some of them are enough to encourage you to play with longer term strategy,

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session with the 2nd Achievement Scenario. Scored 103 points.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first play with the physical game. Solo session with the 1st Scenario Achievement scored 93, completing the objective.

More unboxing pictures of Cascadia game on Instagram.

Castellion (2015)

This is the 3rd game of the Oniverse series. The main mechanism of this one is tile laying or tile placement. Each turn, player has to draw 1 random tile and place it on the tableau with the maximum size of 6 x 6, starting from the bottom.

The tile has 4 different colors plus the traitor and each color has either Circle, Square or triangle shape. In general, tile with the same shape cannot be next to each other, with the exception of the 1st row at the bottom most.

What we are trying to do is to create a tetromino shape of one color. This can be a horizontal line, vertical line or square shape with the size of 4 tiles, like in game Tetris.

What makes it interesting is, what counts as the complete Tetris shape is if we only have 4 tiles attached to that group in the exact shape. Any additional tile with the same color adjacent to the intended shape invalidates the shape.

Every session, there will be 3 Ordeal cards. Each card determines the shapes and their number that we need to complete using those tiles before they are triggered.  Most of the time, they are triggered by a number of played, not discarded Traitor tiles.

After drawing the tile, instead of placing the tile on the table, we can also choose to discard the tile to trigger the special power. Different color will have different power like red can switch position of two adjacent tiles.

Green can be replaced by another color with the same shape from the discard pile. Discarding blue can reveal the next 4 tiles we need to play and Purple can discard a tile on the board and move another tile to any space at the top most.

That is the basic mode which is very strategic as we have to plan right from the start how to complete those 3 faceup Ordeals. It is really hard to change from one shape to another without spending a lot of tiles. There is an Expert mode where we don’t know the Ordeal unless we create the vertical shape first to reveal 1 card.

Unlike the basic mode, when we have to trigger the Ordeal, we won’t instantly lose the game for not completing the objective. However, it will still remove some tiles. The horizontal shape and the square shape will decrease the number of tiles we need to remove.

So, the expert mode becomes like a Tower Defense game where we are defending by creating shapes and not attacking at all. We just need to survive the attack.

Compared to other games in this series, this one play very fast and very easy to reset and play again. Unfortunately, in terms of contents like the expansion modules, this one offers the least for replay value.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Still with the same setup. After avoiding the game for too long, I have to say, this was probably the best session or so I thought until I checked the rule.. Unlike my previous play, I didn’t cheat at all!

Previously, I usually always try to build Towers so I was prepared. This time, I tried making defense lines first to reduce the amount of tiles from discarding traitors.

1st Ordeal happened which wiped out my 10 tiles so far. Couldn’t avoid them at all. After reading the rules again, I was supposed to lose the game because apparently, I needed a complete foundation after the penalty in order to survive. Oh well. But then again, there was really nothing I could have done.

So, I just continued and I managed to get 2 towers and 2 defense lines. Luckily, 2nd Ordeal asked me to get 3 towers so I only needed 1 more. Got it and no penalty. But the last Ordeal demanded 5 Bastions.

Somehow, I managed to get them. Maybe very lucky not to draw too many traitors too early. Even the 2 defense lines only reduced the penalty once or twice. 8 tiles left and I got a blue to reveal the next 4. 3 were traitors but one of them was the last red I needed to complete my 5th Bastion. I guess the 4 Bastions were not enough to make me survive the penalty.

Playing time was about 35 minutes.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still with the same setting, but only 1 session. Of course, still some cheating. It feels like in this one I did a lot of swapping colors and position even good use of the purple to mitigate traitor.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 3 sessions, lost the first 2. 3rd one was fun switching up from Horizontal lines to Towers.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or TikTok. I actually played 2 sessions with the first one ended very early. 2nd one, using Expert mode still involved some cheating.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, expert mode.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 sessions of the Expert Mode. Won only the 3rd one using all of the same Ordeal cards.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions of the Basic mode and 1st time trying the Expert mode.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions of the Basic Mode.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 sessions of the basic mode ended all with losses.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first time playing the game. A couple of sessions with Introductory and Basic Mode.

More of unboxing pictures for Castellion on IG.

Chocobo’s Dungeon: The Board Game (2024)

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 4th play and I decided to try the official solo variant again which was considered the normal difficulty. Definitely more challenging and I don’t know why there is a rule to limit the hand size. That is a huge disadvantage. Not like you can afford to generate that many cards anyway. I think only once I got over the limit and discarded just one card during the play.

Playing time was about 2 hours.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 3rd time playing and got 2 sessions with 2-handed, still with all easiest difficulty settings. First was a loss and the 2nd was a win. Even if I played as if it is open information.

I realized that maybe the main strategy to play well is to play long game. Only move when you have to move but other times just keeping the options open by managing resources and try to get rid of enemies as soon as possible. It took 23 rounds to beat the game.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 2nd play, using the official solo variant with the easier boards. Ended badly. Misunderstood some rules about Spell Books and how to resolve Reaper during boss fight.

September 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. First play, so this entry was a bit about first impression of 2-handed experience.

More unboxing pictures of this Chocobo’s Dungeon: The Board Game on IG.

Chomp (2023)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 solo plays. First one scored 49 while 2nd one only scored 39. During 2nd play, I didn’t take additional score card because either they didn’t work well or I was still working on other things like feeding Dino and I had to take the tile that removed that scoring. Not very enjoyable session.

In the 1st one, I took 3 more scoring card. Even one of the starting scoring cards was a failure and I scored 0 from it for not having 3rd egg.

Playing time took about almost an hour for those 2 sessions.

June 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on