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.

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. This time, I finally addeud the expansion, the Pet Project. With about 47 cards and 24 tokens, this expansion introduces 2 new things.

The first one is, of course, the pets which is part of the Adulthood deck. Usually, when you get a Pet card, you can play the card by paying the cost and it will become a worker spot, mostly to generate the new heart tokens.

Different animals or pets allow you to do different things to acquire those tokens and what you get from those tokens at the end. Maybe for one pet, you can spend the Time token while for other pets, you have to spend energy. There are also some animals that will generate heart tokens when you actually activate other cards with specific symbol. Like Parrot when you use time tokens on cards with communication icons.

Most of them will give you happiness at the end. There are others that I’ve encountered that allow you to ignore some of the red tokens, some for the unhappy and others for the thumbs down.

The rest of the new cards are just more of the existing type with some of them allow you to interact with the pets. Maybe some require you to have pet before you can play. There is a Veterinarian job where you will add tokens to your pet so you want to get pet early.

The 2nd new thing that they introduce is the action space that you can trigger multiple times as long as you can afford to pay each cost. Usually, for career, as an example, you can spend time tokens maybe 3 or 4 to gain money. With the new cards, if the card has infinite symbol between the cost and the reward, instead of just one way arrow, you can trigger the effect multiple times in a turn.

As my initial impression after one play, 2-handed, I do think this expansion improves the gameplay of the base game. At least, with the Pets, they don’t give you happiness right away, which means it won’t trigger the end of the game faster. While doing so, you also divert some of your resources to the pet and makes the game play longer.

Why do you want it to be longer? Because you can feel more story happening to your characters. Last time, I think I triggered the end of the game after both players got like 9 rounds. This one got both to 11 each.

Unfortunately, the game will get longer which some people may not like it. My session took about 2 hours running both sides. The good thing is that you still have control and just play like usual for faster game as if there is no expansion.

The new action symbols where you can trigger it multiple times by paying the extra cost also makes the decision more interesting. Instead of forcing you to spend the time tokens elsewhere, you can choose to accumulate them in one action space.

There was a time in my session where I needed a lot of money that turn and I managed to get them just because of the new system.

While I definitely enjoy my play more than just the base game, part of it is because I decided to mostly play the new cards. I placed them mostly at the top of each deck so I got to use them more. At some point the whole market was about the Pets which was not that interesting.

So, I definitely need and will play more of this and see the difference when I mix the cards from each deck more.

More unboxing pictures of the Pet Project Expansion on my IG.

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.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. While I did another 2-handed session, after finishing the game, I just realized that I made another mistake. Still about you cannot do things because you haven’t or didn’t upgrade the card. Last time was about the Card action card while this time was about Build action card.

Apparently, I built the Reptile special enclosure too early on both sides. Both players got good starting cards related to that so I just built it right away. On the same spot even. The thing is, I think for me, upgrading Build Action Card is something that more likely than not I would do in this game.

I guess that is the kind of disappointment you can get in Ark Nova. You are so focused on what you are doing and you just assume everything is correct, finishing the game without realizing you made one impactful error. Which is the reason a lot of people prefer playing them digitally.

That play took about 3 hours and 30 minutes.

So, because I like playing this game enough even with that long time to play, I decided to play again. Hopefully I didn’t make any mistake again this time. First player got 76 appeals and 36 points from 20 conservation points with a total score of 112. While 2nd player got 75 appeals plus 39 points from having 21 conservation points with a total score of 114.

2nd player upgraded 4 cards while 1st only 3. Only 1st player managed to completely fill all of their zoo spaces to get 7 appeals. Their last action was to participate in a conservation project and the bonus was to get enclosure size 2 which was enough to fill the last 2 spaces.

I think 2nd player got lucky that 1st player was too slow to play their conservation card. 2nd actually got 2nd conservation cards to play and 1st couldn’t contribute anything to those 2 projects. Also, for some reason 2nd player didn’t try to contribute on one initial project related to Australia icons which they definitely could have done.

So, even though the score was close I think 2nd played better. They were also just 2 spaces away from completely fill their zoo spaces. 2nd also played more animals, especially with their aviary and reptile with only size 1 enclosure that was empty. While 1st player still had a size 5 enclosure with no animal.

Also, I chose the final scoring card for 1st player poorly. It was either connecting different terrain with buildings or contribute to projects. I picked the latter and only enough to get 1 point. As it turns out, the other final card could have generated 4 conservation points. To be fair, even at that time I was not sure that they could finish filling their zoo.

It was only later in the game that they got sponsor with free enclosure for hyena. While 2nd already got a free aviary for playing a large bird, Emu.

That 2nd play took another 3 hours, 12 minutes.

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)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Got 2 sessions, both 2-handed still using the predetermined side of the board. In the first one, first player won with 90 points while 2nd player only got 72. Both completed 2 colors and 1 column. The winner got complete 2 rows while the other only got 1. 2nd player actually tried to claim the first turn order a lot so they took a lot of penalties as result.

In the 2nd game, 1st player who lost previously, got 97 points now while the other got only 45. The winner suffered penalty for having 4 tiles twice while the other got 4 tiles once, and 5 tiles once. 1st player completed 2 colors, 3 columns and 2 rows while the other only got 1 color, 1 column and 1 row.

Total playing time was about 3 hours for 2 sessions. Got one more session in between where I placed the same color on the row that already had that. Decided to just reset. So, maybe not exactly 3 hours, about 50 per session.

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)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back to playing 2-handed. Scored 64 with 2 of the piers were completely explored and gave me extra 5 points. Five windmills were completely explored and got me only 5 points as well. Total 29 tiles were completely surrounded. I think I discarded like 5 tiles or so. I definitely enjoy this session more than the previous solo play.

Playing time was about 52 minutes.

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.

b

Bullet♥︎ (2021)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 sessions boss fight between Young-Ja Kim vs the Yakuza.

First one, I almost won until I realized that Yakuza dealt one last damage at the end. That means, your health point is lower when facing against this boss. So, I played again and it was rather easier since I already knew the pattern of this boss.

No damage to the boss in first round. Only one shield for round 2 because I only sent 8 bullets her way. No damage again in 3rd but got exactly 10 bullets to destroy 2 shields in 4th round. Then in final round I sent 6 bullets to break that final shield and took my 3rd damage.

Maybe it was the Boss pattern that made it easy but this time I spent a lot of action points just to trade my pattern card. If I cannot send red and blue then I need to swap cards that move bullets to the left. Same with pattern that prevented Yellow and Pink. A bit tricky when it was Blue – Green or Green -Yellow.

Playing time was about 90 minutes for 2 sessions.

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)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Another Office Job with The Hawk and the Peterman using the wall setup from the app. Both floors seemed to have a long corridor. On top of that, some bottleneck rooms happened to be some alarms.

The Hawk happened to find the stairs first so she went up. Unfortunately for her, that 2nd floor room was exactly within the narrow corridors and she had no choice but to lose her stealth since the Patrol just got to her right away.

Not far from that stair, she actually found the safe of 2nd floor first. Meanwhile, the Peterman found the safe room right after revealing all rooms on that floor. He opened that safe 3rd round after discovering it. Found a Painting as loot and the Crystal Ball as the Tool. With the Painting, he could no longer enter service duct and secret doors.

Unfortunate for Peterman, he had to wait for the Patrol to get away to a different corridor away from the stairs. Luckily that tool allowed him to see the next 3 events and plan accordingly.

The Hawk, decided to take advantage of the Buddy System event. She could moved the Peterman to her location so now both were on 2nd floor, in the safe room. They had not figured out where the next stair was.

The Peterman moved first to the other end of the corridor on that floor to find the stair. Finally, the Hawk opened that 2nd safe while next to the Patrol of that floor. She found Gemstone as loot and Donuts as tool. Of course, she immediately use that Donut to cancel the next patrol movement while she moved away towards the stair.

The Peterman reached the top floor while the Hawk had to trigger the alarm next to that stair. Patrol got to her location and she only had one stealth point left. Well, she got to the stair in the next move and the job was complete.

Playing time was about 45 minutes.

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.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. After finishing all of the solo achievement scenarios, I decided to just randomize the setup. For the cats I got Rumi, Cira and Gwen and the 3 goal tiles were the all unique, AAA-BB-CC and AA-BB-CC.

At the end, I got 2 patterns for Rumi at the top right corner. Gwen took the spot at the bottom right while the left colum was for Cira. Only got 3 buttons, Red, light blue and Green. Two goal tiles scored both color and pattern while the all unique one was only for pattern. Final score was 71.

While it was not a great score but I enjoyed it. Not too stressful because there was no specific rule but I did try to score a lot, especially from the goal tiles.

Playing time was about 34 minutes.

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.

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I thought about playing multi handed but went back to just solo play. There are a lot of varieties for the buildings this time. Got 3 mines, 1 ranch, 1 church, 1 Town hall, 2 Banks, 1 Salon and 1 Blacksmith with a couple of houses and hotel plus 10 characters. As usual, I got the Undertaker and the guy that scores characters differently based on whether you can activate their ability or not.

Final score was about 141 for me while the other 3 were 118, 113 and 107. An idea for my next play is that maybe I should try making the city from the cards that the 3 opponents were collecting. I am curious if they can actually give better scores.

Playing time was about 53 minutes.

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)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, and Tumblr. Continuing my solo campaign with the 9th Achievement Scenario. I think this might be the hardest one so far. Not because it is hard to score but you need to score well in most things.

In order to win this one, not only you need to score 90 points, but you also need to score 10 points per animal and 5 points per terrain. That means, you really need to plan ahead and not focusing on just one scoring. Even though I managed to complete this one, it felt like you need the entire 20 turns to achieve that.

In the end, I did get only 90 points. All terrains got exactly 5 so no bonus from either of them. I got 18 points from Elk A, with line of 2 and line of 4. From Fox B, I got 1 Fox with 2 pairs and another with 3 so 12 points. Salmon D got me 11 points with a run of 4 Salmon and 7 animals around it. Hawk C got me 12 with 3 hawks in triangle shape plus one. While the Bear C got me exactly 10 from 2 families of 2.

Playing time was about 48 minutes.

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.

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still with the same setup and got 2 sessions. Maybe this was the first time for me to click with this game. Apparently, making horizontal lines to reduce damage from the traitor is super beneficial as you need to discard less number of tiles and you get more control as when the disaster would occur.

That was for the 4 spaces out of 6. It seems that the other 2 should be for just bastions, preparing for the last ordeal. Not sure if the tower is even useful at that point but if it is possible without ignoring the main strategy, why not. There is a chance you cannot fulfill the 3rd ordeal anyway. Which is why it is better to just make Bastion to reduce the impact. The thing is that you may not have enough time to build them. After you know that there is no more traitor, then you can just change the positions from those horizontal lines to make bastions instead of making new one. For that, you might want to plan more which color for those horizontals to mix later.

Playing time was about 81 minutes for 2 sessions.

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)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I played 2-handed again. Got 2 sessions and both failed on the 3rd floor. In the first play, I made a mistake by moving backwards while the enemy almost reached the last space on the 1st floor. And that kept going down afterwards.

So, I played again. While everything went well until the 3rd floor, on that 3rd floor, the enemy moved 5 spaces because of the random card. So, I had no choice but to use 3 move actions to reach the stairs. But then I let the minions up to 5 of them. So, Chocobo already took a lot of damage because of them and was defeated because it landed on a trap. Then I realized, I was playing on Normal difficulty with less starting cards and spells.

With that unsatisfying play, I decided to just play again but made it the Boss Fight. I tried playing against the other Boss, the Robot. Apparently, this was not as difficult as I thought. Well, assuming you have a good hand of cards but I did try twice, the Easy and Normal difficulty.

With this Boss, there are no Minions so you can just focus all of the attacks for the Boss. 25 points means with value 5, you just need to do 5 attacks and in one round you can do up to 3 times. Less attacks you need if you have a Fire spell. The downside with no minions is that nothing gives you the spell so before entering this boss fight, you might want to save some. With a good amount of cards, you only need 2 or 3 rounds to defeat this.

The challenge is, depending on where the enemy stops, they can force you to either lose some cards collectively or you have to play the bonus card face down. Otherwise, you just take damage. I played this boss fight twice and in both times, Chocobo only took like 4 damage max.

Total playing time for all those 4 tries was almost 3 hours.

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 TikTok. Got 2 solo sessions. First one only scored 44 but the 2nd one scored 54. In that 2nd game, I took 3 more scoring cards which was more than I usually did. I just realized that from every additional land I probably only feed 1 dinosaur or more but worth like 3 points total. If I can get like 5 or more with scoring, than I should just take them. Even one of the starting goal cards only gave me 4 points.

February 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 3 solo sessions. First one scored 47, 2nd one scored 42. The third one I thought scored over 50 but apparently I chose card without solo symbol as the starting setup.

October 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2 solo sessions. One scored very poorly 43 and the other was 59. However, after evaluating the last turn, I could have scored 66 by choosing one of the Goal tile instead of expanding the land for just 5. This made me realize how significant to have more option as the last turn.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 3 solo sessions. First one turned out to be not using starting 3 cards for solo but I scored 56. The 2nd session scored poorly with just 27 after failing to feed carnivore and dealing with a lot of Tar Pits. Last one actually scored 62, could have been 66. In those 3, I didn’t take any additional scoring cards.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or even more on TikTok. 3 solo sessions, scored 43, 48 and 52.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. First time playing with the official solo variant. Got 5 sessions, scored 64, 31, 45, 47, 33. A bit of first impression about this variant.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first 4 sessions, 2-handed. Some rules error for the first 3. This entry was a bit first impression.

Here are more unboxing pictures for Chomp game on IG.

Coral (2022)

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First time playing with rotating tray from IKEA. I think this made it better even though the score didn’t seem to get better. Got 2 plays, both started with Cliffs configuration.

In the 2nd game, scored 4 from red, 5 from white, 4 from beige and unfortunately only 2 from yellow. I guess I got better since the total was 15 and highest from the white but the yellow suffered. Scored only 13 from the 1st session. Playng time took about 47 minutes total for both.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. I was going to try the multiplayer variant but backed with just solo, still with the same scoring cards and got 2 sessions. Playing time was about 38 minutes for those 2 sessions. Both time I still only scored 13. At least on 2nd play, I got maximum score of the red.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another solo plays and got 3 sessions. All of them scored the same, 12 points, not getting better.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First couple of plays, all with the official solo variant. Haven’t tried the multiplayer mode yet so a bit of first impression entry.

Got 3 sessions. First one definitely got the rule wrong as how you Grow according to the pawn. Maybe even in the 2nd one.  Hopefully the 3rd play I got it right.

More unboxing pictures of Coral game on IG.

Corps of Discovery: A Game Set in the World of Manifest Destiny (2025)

This is a game based on a historical fantasy comic from Image Comic called Manifest Destiny. It retells the story of the 2 historical figures Lewis and Clark and their expedition to explore the land of America where they encounter and trying to survive various threats.

The main selling point that got me interested in this game is when some people say that this is like Minesweeper. That game you play in computer back then where you have a grid filled with landmines but you don’t know where they are. You start from one spot and you will find hints as where they are and how many of them nearby from one point of the grid until you figure out all of them.

Corps of Discovery took that idea and made it a survival, exploration, deduction cooperative game. In this one, you still have a grid with a map showing all various resources. But as part of the setup that map will be covered by tokens. Depending on the scenario, they will tell you all of the different things you may find on the map and where you start.

Each space in the grid may show water, wood, stone, mud, skull and other things. Then the map will tell you the rules like Wood is always orthogonally adjacent to at least a Water space and vice versa. Maybe there is a rule like sudoku where there is only one Wood in every column. There is also a rule where if you find a Stone, you cannot explore farther in that direction and you need to explore from different side.

What you are trying to do is usually trying to find resources to complete the next challenge. Maybe the challenge needs you to have a fire and to have fire, you need 2 of either stones or wood. Each challenge has a timer based on how many spaces you explore from that grid, usually a 5 for the first and then 2 or 3.

When the timer is up, then you have to resolve that challenge, either pass or fail. Pass usually will give you reward while fail usually means more punishing penalty. If the penalty says you need to spend water and you don’t have any, you lose the game.

After 3 challenges, that marks the end of the day and you need to have food in order to survive and continue exploring the land. Exploring one space is your main action on your turn. Before and after that action there are 8 other free actions you can do like activating your character ability or activating your gear or item. There is also shared ability called Destiny card that all players can use.

You might also want to build Fire or Shelter so you don’t suffer fatigue when you are bringing too many items. There is also an action to defeat the Monster for the Monster related scenarios which could have been the goal to win.

The game itself comes with 2 different scenarios and each has a couple of maps, plus the training missions. Beside expansion, the publisher occasionally share free maps for limited times that you can download from their website.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I finally gave a chance to play the complete game, starting with the Fauna chapter where you need to beat 3 Minotaur to win.

Honestly, I still have the same feeling like in the Training mission, even though now you have bigger map and more resources. While the training only asks you to survive 2 days, here you need to keep going until either you complete the goal or you lose. On top of that, you also will encounter additional threats that sooner or later will deplete all of your resources, which is already tight.

From just one play, I only managed to beat one of the Minotaur. Two came out already and I lost on the night of 3rd day because I didn’t have food. Then I checked the whole map. It feels like you barely have enough just to survive even after doubling the resources thanks to Lewis’s power and the Training gear. Even if it was enough, when you need to deal with the challenge every 3 or sometimes 2 steps, you may not have the time to get the resources you need, and that is assuming you know where they are.

This makes me think about the comparison to either Minesweeper game or Sudoku game. While those 2 and this game have a logic deduction element, there is something that this game is missing compared to the 2 puzzles. Both sudoku and minesweeper games allow you to explore from many different positions. Maybe you pick one spot, explore any adjacent space with whatever clue you can use until you are stuck. Then you move to a different position doing the same and you keep doing until eventually, you come back to the first position. At that point, you may have additional clues to deduce the remaining spots.

That is what is missing from this game. You can only explore from one point, expanding your reach. That means some clues become useless. Like there is a wood in every column. So what? Not like you can explore that side yet. But that makes it a frustrating experience. On top of that, there is also a chance that some resources are not spread enough, collected in one area where it was the opposite of your position. And maybe the challenge requires you to have them but you just don’t have enough time.

Of course, skipping a challenge, taking the penalty just so you can work on the next challenge is also an option. Unless the penalty triggers the elimination.So, unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to work for me. There are still things I want to try but I doubt it will feel better in my next play. Playing time was about 90 minutes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This is my first time playing and I only tried the Training Mission 3 times.

Honestly, I am kind of disappointed with my experience. Maybe the full game with bigger map can fix this. It’s just in my 3rd play, after got frustrated with not winning in the first 2, I ended up looking the map, removing the deduction part. If I understand correctly, there is a good chance you cannot win, not just because of bad luck.

The available resource is so limited in this map where if you start from wrong position, you cannot win. Not only you need to start correctly, the Challenge cards seem to only work in specific order, if you want to win. Otherwise, it is impossible, unless I misunderstand something.

For now, I still assume that the Training Mission is just to introduce you with how you should play. On the other hand, the full game also add more challenge so I am not convinced.

The deduction part is also a bit underwhelming, again, in this mission. They don’t give a clue for other things and this can lead you to just guessing and take the risk. It becomes worst considering you technically should not keep retrying the same map as you can just remember where is what.

So, as my initial impression, I don’t like my experience so far. Hopefully the full game can change my mind. We’ll see.

More unboxing pictures of the game on my IG.

Creature Caravan (2024)

This is one of the game designed and illustrated by Ryan Laukat from Red Raven Games. So, it is set in the world of Arzium like his other titles.

The story in this one is you are travelling through dangerous lands of southern Arzium with your Caravan. Along the way you may recruit up to 12 different characters or creatures that can help you reach the Eastrey through various different terrains. There will be attack from Ember zombies so you might want to get more help to combat them. You will also trying to do various trades using coins and bags mainly to get more breads that you can offer to recruit other members.

The game is played over 12 rounds and ideally you have to reach Eastrey by then to get the most points. Or maybe you want to focus on dealing with zombies or doing trades instead of just moving. Players are doing all of that with the dice placement mechanism, starting with 5 dice per round to activate their action.

Maybe you want to move through a plain space, you need to spend a die with a value of at least 3. You can get 2 breads if you have a die with a value of at least 5. For dealing with zombies, the value of the single die will determine how much damage you can deal to them. And there are other starting actions on your player board like getting cards, bags.

Cards represent the characters you can recruit. If you think they don’t work well with your situation, instead of recruiting them, you can discard each of them to get a bread so you can spend them to recruit other characters.

Recruiting characters give you various unique benefits. Sometimes they can give you extra worker actions, maybe something better than on your player board. Other times, it can give ongoing abilities that you may activate once per round like increasing a dice value by 1 or 2. Or you can get extra resource when you do something. Like one character can give you extra coins everytime you make a camp, where you end your turn, on canyon.

Each character also gives you points or scoring conditions and they have a set of attributes. Attributes can be something like Machine, Folk, Shy, Deadly, Tiny, Magic, Nocturnal and maybe others. If they have scoring conditions, usually they require you to get more of the same attributes. Like an Engineer wants more Machine so you get extra point per recruited characters with Machine attribute.

Some characters will only give you points after getting the set of those attributes. Others may even give you penalty for failing to get that set. Some benefits can also affect how you recruit the other with the same attribute. For example, one Giant may decrease the number of bread required to recruit any subsequent Giant.

With all of that, you may see how the story revolving around your caravan journey may develop over the course of 12 rounds. Sometimes, you just recruit them just to get pass certain terrains while avoiding the zombies. Then maybe later, turns out, that character can contribute to the scoring from characters you found later.

From the starting position to the Eastrey, the destination, it takes linear movement of 25 spaces. The first 24 spaces are created by 4 double sided modular boards. While the starting position always uses the same double sided board you can switch the position of the other 3 boards in between to create more variety.

The trading of coins or bags into bread is an interesting one. It is almost like bidding with limited time. Assuming you have enough bags or coins, you can start the trading with the maximum level possible. The other players then can choose to follow on their next turn to match the value to get the same trade. Eventually, that specific exchange rate will close down and when it happens, no players can trade for that rate again.

The trade can go up to 8 coins or 8 bags. If you cannot match that value, you can still choose to trade with the lower ones, assuming they are still available. So, you may choose to not engage with the low trading but you keep building your resource for bigger trade later, ideally when no other players can follow. At the end of the game, you get points for each trade you made. Bigger rate means bigger points.

This bidding for trading mechanism also works for attacking zombies. If you are attacked by a zombie after moving to a dangerous space, you need to assign a die with a value with 5 or above to attack space action. You may even add more die to a different attack space, usually from characters to increase it up to 12. Then, you kind of make a bid with the same value as your attack or lower. This represents the how strong of zombie that are attacking at the moment and may affect the other players.

The other players, if they are also attacked by zombies, they can choose to match the value or any available lower ones. If they don’t follow, that specific bid will eventually close. In that case, any subsequent attack must be made with a value different than the closed ones. At the end of the game, whoever made the attack bid for that specific value, gains points. Similar to trading breads, you get higher with more powerful attack.

That’s the general idea of how you play Creature Caravan. All of that are done by all players simultaneously. The game is mainly and criticized as multiplayer solitaire. Other than participating with the bid of trade or attack, you don’t really affect the other players. On the main board, multiple players can move and end their movement in the same space, no blocking whatsoever.

The game also comes with a solo bot that you can include in multiplayer game as additional players. They will mostly affect the trade and attack but they will keep cards you might want to recruit to your caravan.

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Another solo play and this time with the 2nd recommended starting cards for the opponents, with Nizra the Witch and Plain Wagons.

I think I got a good set of starting cards myself. At least 6 of them were recruited at the end. First recruit was in 2nd round for Grasskin Grower which allowed me to get 3 breads with one 5. Also got an ability to spend a bread to turn 2 dice into a 6 which I didn’t use it at all.

I actually forgot about entering a space with Ember Zombie so from the starting position, moved 2 spaces to the right and I already got 1 Zombie I couldn’t kill. Focusing more on the two trades.

In round 3 I only focused on getting more bread to recruit a Hungry Cyclops. That one could help me move 2 spaces in any type of terrains by one 6.

So, in round 4, I had to discard 3 cards to get a coin because the Cyclops asked for it plus 11 breads. Stopped at a space with fruit and I applied to that Giant. The Cyclops doesn’t like Folk and I can get 11 points if I add no Folk. Not exactly an easy task. The opponent took the 2nd coin trade.

In round 5, I had to deal with another zombie. Got more bread from the Grasskin and moved to a space with treasure. Also did 2nd trade with the bags. The opponent followed that trade.

In round 6, I recruited another Grasskin but this one was Desert Grasskin. They helped me get more bread for every fruit I could find. Next round, I had no choice but to enter another Zombie land and I didn’t have enough attack power to deal with it.

So, unfortunate for Cyclops, I had to recruit the Copper Empire Scouts just for an extra attack space. Had to spend 11 breads, losing 3 cards. Moved to another space with treasure. The opponent finally got enough Nocturnal members and was looking for more Shy characters.

Round 7, thanks to the Cyclops, I managed to just moving straight and ended in another space with treasure. Made another trade with the bags but recruited no one. Instead, those scouts found other potential members.

Round 8 and I recruited White Tower Stewards, another tiny creature. With 13 bread, they gave me 6th die and I could add 2 to a die each turn. At the end, score one point per Giant in my group. Only had 1 so far plus another potential from scouts.

Round 9 and I was about to enter another Zombie space. I thought maybe I would encounter more in later rounds so I decided to recruit another combatant and this time was Rat Swarm. Unfortunately, I could lose 5 points unless I had 4 Nocturnal creatures. Those rats were the 3rd and I also recruited another Grasskin, a Cook this time, which was also Nocturnal. So, I was safe and I could use the Coins from these Cooks.

The opponent actually found a very powerful character, the Zoological Scholar. She would give them 12 points for having all kinds of creatures. Apparently, they already did and it was an easy 12 points.

Round 10 and I only had 7 members. I needed more Delver and more Giants to score. Luckily, the scouts found Pack Tortoise as my potential 3rd Delver so I could score 8 from those Scouts. The cost could be 0 had I already recruited 4 other Delvers but not a chance. So, I finally recruited Hogfolk Archeologist with 5 breads and 2 bags. He also helped me find more talent and get bonus for every trasure.

Round 11 and I was 2 spaces away from the destination. Finally recruited the Tortoise as 3rd Delver and secured 8 points as 9th member. The Hogfolk found Snail Rider, another Giant for me to recruit. So I could make it work with the 2 Giants and maybe one more. Spent every last resources I got to generate bread while defeating another Zombie.

Final round, Recruited Cloud Dragon, Snail Rider and the Ancient Root Hunter that I just found for 3 more giants. Total spending was 13 breads, 1 coin and 2 bags. Only had 1 die left so I just moved to the destination for 5 more points.

Final score was only 91 for me, which was already better than my previous play. However, the opponent got 98 even after getting a lot of zombies and this high score was mostly because of that Scholar.

Playing time took about 124 minutes.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First play and I immediately tried the solo mode. Got 2 sessions plus one that I reset immediately after realizing my error. The error was that you only trigger the bonus location if you make a camp in that space, not just passing through. Zombie, however, will attack you the moment you move into the space.

So, my first play was definitely an error and I made the game easier for me. However, it was the one I actually lost with 71 vs 84. Then after the 2nd play, I got 84 while the opponent got only 69 so it felt like a swap.

Playing time of the 2nd session took about 85 minutes. I didn’t reach the Eastrey but close like 2 spaces away and definitely farther than my first play which helped the score a bit. Recruited 9 characters in 1st play, 11 in the 2nd.

The opponent got stuck in the same spaces multiple times in that 2nd play so they didn’t even cross the 2nd board. In the 2nd play, the opponent actually got 12 characters including their 2 starting ones while in 1st play they got total of 11.

So, the score difference in the opponent is mainly because they got more cards that worked together in 1st play than in 2nd. Really felt swingy and I felt it too for my own progress.

While getting cards that helps your engine or abilities to do more in the game is not that hard, trying to get specific attributes seems to be more problematic. In that 2nd play, I immediately play a card that requires about 4 total nocturnal characters or I lose 5 points. Since I already got 2, I thought maybe it is not that hard to get 2 more in the course of 12 rounds. That is not the case though.

I found my 3rd Nocturnal card like in the 11th round. Then I got 2 more in the 12th round. So, I got lucky not to lose those 5 points. Even then, I almost unable to afford the last one. Another luck got me to decrease the cost of the 4th card after recruiting 3rd Magic character.

Also got lucky with the card that lets you draw 1 and discard 1 card per turn. That has proven to be one of the more valuable power even if you lose 2 points at the end with the Cursed Warrior. You want to have characters that helps you generate cards more since you have no hand limit. More cards at least more bread and access to various attributes.

In this specific case, the game feels like playing Wingspan. You kind of want to improve your engine for more cards but as soon as you get a good card, then you move your attention to score more. The problem with that is when the other players can just get good card synergy right from the start without even recruiting more.  Again, I’m specifically talking about aiming for specific attribute, not necessarily about what action or benefit the card gives you.

Of course, this can also affect the other players. Maybe even another point of interaction is when more than one players are aiming for specific attributes. In my 2nd play, I don’t think the opponent got more of the Nocturnal cards but they did draw a couple of them during their turns and they just discarded them because it didn’t work for them. I was kind of hoping that maybe the game can allow players to trade cards.

I guess, you can say that it was my mistake to invest on that specific card right from the start. But it was like 2 cards more. How hard can it be?

Besides that, I do love the theme. Those attributes in each character really creates the story of your caravan journey. But then, what if you don’t get one? In the game where you get specific number of rounds if not specific turns.

I also don’t understand why the game seems to incentivize you to reach the end more and keep moving farther. At least, at the end, you get to see the trail of your camps. But in my opinion, this kind of distracts you from enjoying the game more.

So, you need to move a total of 25 spaces in 12 rounds. In average you have to do about 2 spaces linear move which already take like 2 dice out of your 5. Some cards, of course, can give you bonus movement without using dice but in limited way like only to specific terrain type or going up. Well, assuming you do get them, you may make a plan but chances are, you get cards that require dice to activate. While I did get 6th die in 2nd play but the cost was like 12 breads and 2 bags. That was in 8th or 9th round.

And this is my complaint for Creature Caravan. I was hoping this to be a great dice game, a great dice placement game. Unfortunately, this is not its strongest suit. Maybe like the weakest one.

Not only you are already restricted with the number of dice, but the dice placement action can also feel very repetitive, like a very basic worker placement. Unless, of course, you get a good card. Then again, you can only play 12. Not like you can afford to get more or even get the card. Until you do get an interesting card with better action and recruit them, you have to rely on your board which doesn’t change at all. So, you will keep waiting for a good card then maybe in one round you get to play multiple cards.

I was hoping that how they use the die for the attack applies for other actions as well where the value determines different outcome. As it is, as long as you have the required value or higher, you get the same. Also, there are not many active dice manipulation as well.

As I said I love the theme but a bit disappointed with the gameplay, especially the dice. But this is just first time playing. Maybe eventually I can enjoy the game more by knowing more cards and what’s best to synergize.

More unboxing pictures of Creature Caravan on my IG.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine (2019)

This is a trick-taking game where players have to play cooperatively with limited communication. In general, players cannot tell each other which card they have.

After players get their hand of cards, the first thing they do is to distribute task cards. These are smaller cards to determine which card that each player has to win. Maybe a Yellow 1 or Blue 5, Pink 9 or Green 2. Sometimes one player may take more than one, depending on scenario missions on the back.

The one with the highest trump card acts as the captain and pick the first task followed by the next player in clockwise order until all task cards have been taken. While players don’t know the cards in hand but they know which card should be won by which player. That limited information might help the player decide which card they should take first.

Just like trick taking game, one player leads and the other have to follow by playing cards with the same suit if they have it. The one with the highest value of that lead suit wins the trick and take all of the played cards, unless somebody else plays their trump card.

If the winner gets the matching card as their task, they flip the task card. On the other hand, if the required card was won or taken by different player, all of them lose the game immediately.

Randomness in hand of cards can definitely make the game very difficult to the point, the game could end in the first round. There is one way to let other players know one card in player’s hand using the Radio token but it can only be used once per game per player. There is also a way to exchange one card which has to be done by every player in the one and the same direction.

That is the basic idea. The mission book on the back may add extra requirements besides the number of tasks per game. For example, the mission may ask to win the task in specific order like Pink 5 first then Pink 2, followed by Green 1 or something like that.

Some missions forbid each player to win too many tricks, more than the other players. There are about 50 different missions in that book.

The game was designed mainly for 3 to 5 players but there is an official rule for 2 players where the Captain will make decision for the 3rd player.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played mission #39 with 2-player variant. You get 8 tasks and the first 3 have to be in that specific order but the communication is interrupted.

2nd player who was not the commander immediately had to put that communication token on Green 3 which was required for the commander. Jarvis had Green 4 as both their starting hand plus the objective. Hopefully, that was enough to indicate that 2nd player had that as the lowest card.

Jarvis got first objective with Green 1 completed in 3rd trick. It was from 1st player. In the 4th round, Jarvis finally revealed that they had that Yellow 7 which was required to be completed first out of the 3 in specific order. So, Jarvis completed their 2nd task in 5th.

Exploring Jarvis hand continued while helping 2nd player and the next task in order, Pink 9. 2nd player had that 9. Jarvis played 5 and first got a 1. 5 tasks left.

No blue task required so 2nd player started dumping blue with Blue 5. Apparently, 1st didn’t have any Blue so they used this chance to play one of the rocket cards. No more yellow needed so Jarvis threw Yellow 9.

Commander wanted to keep the lead so they played Rocket 3 and they knew 2nd player had the Rocket 2. Jarvis played Pink 2 so Commander could take it as their 3rd task. 4 tasks left.

This was the time they needed to swap one card. Commander took Green 4 from Jarvis while giving Green 2 to 2nd player. 2nd gave Green 3 to Jarvis. Commander then played Green 5, followed by Jarvis with Green 3 and 2nd player could play Green 2 that they just got. 3 tasks left, one on each.

Commander played Green 4 that Jarvis needed, followed by Jarvis with Green 8. So, 2nd had to lose and they got variety of green. Green 6 and 2 tasks left.

Jarvis played the Pink 3 which was the Commander’s last task. 2nd had Pink 7. Commander had Pink 8. One task left and it was on 2nd.

Another exchange had to happen. 2nd had both Green 7 and 9 and they needed the 7 to complete the last task. So, 2nd gave that 7 to Commander while taking any yellow from Jarvis. Commander gave Pink 4 to Jarvis.

Commander played the Green 7, Jarvis with Yellow 1. 2nd won the trick with Green 9 and that was the last task.

Playing time was about 32 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Played mission #37 and #38. #37 is probably for 3 players or higher. With 2 then the non-commander has to take the tasks but they can still say no. So, you probably have to reshuffle again until the 2nd player can say yes. #38 was nothing special. Just more tasks and communicate only after 3rd tricks. Got lucky enough that I didn’t need to use them at all. Playing time for both session was about 30 minutes.

February 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 2-handed session with mission #35 and #36. Won both, with #36 required using distress signal right away.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2-handed sessions with mission #34 and #35. Both won after learning about how to use distress signal feature.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 6 plays with 2 -player variant but 2-handed. One for Mission #33 and won and all 5 losses with Mission #34,

Curious Cargo (2020)

Curious Cargo is initially a 2-player only game. This is a tile laying game about creating conveyor lines to help move cargo to the truck for shipping or unload cargo from incoming truck.

All of the tiles are domino tiles with 1 x 2 size with conveyor line between 1 up to 3 colors.  Players need to connect their machine of their factory to the empty space of the truck for shipping or the loaded space from the receiving.

Each player has 6 goods of each color to ship. From one player shipping side, the truck will then arrive to their opponent’s receiving side. Most of the time, the opponent just need to prepare the receiving line with the same color in the same numbered dock as the player’s shipping.

Players don’t need to catch every shipment but if they can receive all 4 of one color first, they may instantly win the game. Unless, one of the players has triggered the winning condition first in different way like making 10 active connections. Loading and Unloading can lead to getting tokens that players can spend to get extra action.

The trucks themselves are determined by truck cards by either player. Those trucks can be in different sizes between 2 to 6. In those size, not every space is available to be loaded by cargo. Where the truck parks on the shipping or receiving side will change where the docks that the cargo space land on.

One player may have developed a conveyor line with blue color connected to dock number 5. However, the blue goods on the truck was in space on dock #6. At that point, player has to modify their conveyor line configuration by overlapping the existing tiles with a new one.

The challenge is that overlapping the tile might affect the adjacent connection of the different color. If then, there is currently no incoming goods of that color, maybe the player should let the other connection get ruined or inactive.

While having active connection can lead to instant win but it is more difficult and less rewarding that pursuing to unload the cargos.

There is a storage element for the tile where we can keep tiles in two spots which can hold any number of tiles. However, player can only play the tile from the top most or just the recent one from that space. This makes the game a bit more strategic as we can hold tiles with certain shapes for later use.

Curious Cargo was supposed to have an official solo variant with the expansion. Unfortunately, the publisher decided not to work on publishing it, for now if at all.

The designer shared the PnP file with opponent deck of cards to play. In this variant, the deck of cards will determine where the opponent will make connections and for which color. The card will also tell where the opponent will play the truck. While those cards do a good job to simulate the other player but it is not that easy to interpret.

There is also another solo variant with just a single board. In this one, the player will only play with their side of the board. The truck from the shipping side will move to the receiving side of the same player. However, each dock can only receive goods once per game.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Solo play again with board #3 and still just 2 colors and with the lowest difficulty.

I actually finished the game after 6th round when during trucking phase I shipped the 9th goods from my part. At that point, the opponent only got to ship 4 and none had received anything. So, I got like 14 points while they got only 4. Maybe with that rule I didn’t really need 4 countdown cards.

So I continued the game until I managed to get a Star after receiving the 4th red goods. It seems it took another 7 rounds to reach that. I shipped every goods on my part. The opponent still had 1 and already received one of each. I guess shipping as fast as possible when they were still busy with countdown really helped win the game even in this way. That means with less countdown, they could have received something and scored more.

Playing time was about 73 minutes or about 32 until the real end game trigger.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo play again with board #2, using just 2 colors of goods. Played with the lowest difficulty and playing time was about 65 minutes.

After 7 rounds since the last countdown card, I triggered the end game after shipping 9 goods. Scored 39 against their 11. Got a lot of luck since they did a couple of build action just to take tiles. They also only managed to ship one goods.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back to board #1 for official solo play after learning I got the end game trigger wrong. I still lost 20 to 24 points with the opponent triggered the end game first. One more round and I could have scored over 30 points.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo play back with board #2 and just 2 colors. I just realized that I ignore an end game trigger about shipping 9 cargos.  I have been playing with only ending the game when one player gets their Star. This means the game should have ended sooner and I scored very low instead of winning by getting a star first.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Official solo variant with 2 board, board #5, lowest difficulty. Opponent won by points after a tie. Both got a star both in the same phase for receiving 4th goods of the same color.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo variant single board, using 3 colors.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report using the official solo variant, with the lowest difficulty mode. Won after receiving the 4th of the same goods.

April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session report using the official solo variant, lowest difficulty mode, 2 types of goods, Board #2. Won after receiving 4th of the same goods. Some error in upkeep for the opponent’s.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Official solo PnP variant using Board #1, lowest difficulty and won after receiving 4th of the same goods.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write (2021)

This is supposed to be the Roll and Write version of Dinosaur Island Board Game from the same publisher. The main idea is players are going to build their version of Jurassic Park and run the park in 3 seasons.  Each season consists of 2 development phases and one Park Run phase.

During the Park development phase, players will be doing dice drafting, taking turns to pick 2 dice. Each die has resources on their faces like money or DNA to build dinosaurs. They can also show some park elements like connecting roads, attractions, buildings for small businesses and securities.

Players might want to get some money early so they can spend them to hire Specialists. These Specialists can generate more resources or do more actions during the Park Run phase. Besides 3 regular specialists that are always included in every session, as setup, there will be 3 different specialists. Taking advantage of their specialties might shape the overall strategy differently.

Players can also spend the money to start building one of 3 special buildings. However, they cost a lot of money and mostly will give higher score at the end, depending on how the Park was developed. Once paid, players have to make sure they have enough space on their board to place the building, and probably connect them to other buildings.

Each player has a 16 x 16 space to develop their Park minus 2 x 2 for the HQ or the starting position. This is basically a polyomino tile placement game but instead of placing, players will have to draw the shape.

They can place the building anywhere on the board but there is a restriction. Buildings cannot be placed directly adjacent to each other.  They have to leave at least 1 space away. That one rule alone makes this tile placement unique, combined with the weird shapes and various sizes.

Another consideration is that players might want to place buildings connected by road in one line from the HQ and ideally to one of 6 exit points. The idea is that the visitors will ride jeep and visit each building one by one but in one direction.

After the dice drafting, players will then do Dice Worker Placement game to take more actions. This can be taking more money or securities, taking more DNA, doubling the resources on the dice, building some attractions or building up to 4 dinosaurs based on the DNA that the player has.

Players can place their die on the same space as other players’ dice by stacking the dice. However, they might take some penalties in the form of threat or danger level from the die right below theirs. More threats or danger level is generated by buildings certain carnivorous dinosaurs. This can lead to some casualties and some destructions of the Park element at the end of the Run Park phase.

In that case, not only the player will lose points, they might also lose their efficiency to do well the next round. Destroyed buildings stay so less room to develop. Making sure to have enough security higher than the threat is the point here.

The Run Park Phase is basically activating any resources in specific order. Starting from attraction buildings like Merch Store, Restaurant and Park Ride. After that, players will activate their hired Specialists. Then, the actual running the park happens creating a route from HQ through those park elements and ideally ends in one of the exit point.

For every building in the park visited for the first time during the Run Park part, will increase the Excitement Level. The Excitement track is where players will get resources based on their achieved level right from the starting point. In Subsequent Park Run Phases, players will activate them again and the additional achieved bonus.

Players can also increase the excitement level by building specific dinosaurs. The more dangerous the dinosaurs, the higher the excitement level and the threat as well.  Certain Specialists can also help like the PR team. The Lawyer can even give more benefit from more casualties.

Player Interaction mostly happens during the dice drafting and dice placement part. Other than that, the other parts are almost multiplayer solitaire. In the solo mode, they use opponent deck of cards just to determine which dice they take and which worker placement they occupy.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This solo play used Security Hub, Deluxe Break Room and Goat Pen as the 3 buildings. The 3 specialists were Senior Scientist, DNA Mixologist and Ride Operator. For the 3 solo objectives, I needed to build the 3 buildings, hire all 3 specialists and have 4 restaurants.

With the 2 Scientists, I should have focused on building a lot of dinosaurs. Unfortunately, I got to a point I didn’t have enough DNA even for those that didn’t increase the threat. Built 4 Rides so a lot of money from the 3rd specialists and all restaurants.

In the first tour run, I only got 1 Ride connected to the next exit to the right. So, for the 2nd run, I tried to build a line to the bottom left or even bottom exit depending on the number of buildings I could afford to build and connect. In the 2nd run, I got 1 new ride, 2 new restaurants and 2 enclosures for dinos, one herbivore and the other for large carnivore. All of these were connected to the bottom exit, leaving an empty space enough for one more large carnivore at the bottom left.

That left me with space from HQ moving downwards to the bottom right as the final route. However, I tried to connect some buildings at the top right that I built in 1st run. Got 2 more rides, 1 more restaurant, the Deluxe Break Room and 2 more enclosure for the other 2 herbivores plus one for Large Carnivore.

While I had more empty space and enough to build the other 2 buildings, unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to connect everything. Not at least for the 3rd run. I got 9 buildings I needed to connect with HQ but only 7 roads. So, I had to ignore two of them but got to the bottom right exit.

I ended up only making 4 dinos out of those 2 scientists. Only 2 total large carnivores in the enclosure connected to Goat Pen. While the rest was just herbivores as I couldn’t afford more security. Got the exact matching number between security and threats at the end.

Final score was 137 points. Playing time was about 93 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Solo play again with Ptrosaur Aviary, Pterivaki Grill and First Aid Hut as the buildings. The 3 specialists were Architect, Social Media Manager and Mascot.

This was my lowest score so far with only 113. Didn’t even hire the SM Manager while I did build the 3 buildings. Even the 2nd Dino Tour didn’t end on any exit. Only built 8 dinos total. Maybe I did add too much attractions which led to too many roads to connect. On top of that, only 1 restaurant so I only got 1 money per tour.

While I did get a lot of money in 1st round, I was not sure about 2 of the specialists so I didn’t double the money. Unfortunately, no money in the next 2 development phases. Usually in the last development phase I build 4 dinos but instead here, I had to make more roads. At the end I still had 24 DNA that I could have used to gain more points from those dinos. potentially got 3 or more excitement level for extra 1 coin plus 5 points.

I did destroy one Ride attraction to take advantage of the Architect but at that point, I already built one building so only got 4 maybe even just 3 coins.

Playing time was about 74 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Solo play again with Main Gate, Triceratops Ring Toss and Camp Compy as the 3 buildings. I had Mad Scientist, PR Guy and the Cloning Expert as the 3 specialists.

Final score was 149, highest so far and for the first time, I managed to get more than the excitement track can offer. This is thanks to both the PR Guy and the Cloning Expert. Got interesting way to play the Mad scientist himself as it allowed me to optimize the security and the threat in flexible way.

I managed to build the 3 buildings, 4 restaurants and 3 small carnivore paddocks as the 3 solo objectives. One important note for me. I should have paid attention to the immediate bonus for constructing some buildings. That could have given me better decision. Like the Main Gate and the extra road to connect to more paddocks and attractions. Playing time was about 1 hour and 23 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. More solo play with Clone Zone, Hot Spring Mud Spa, Welcome Center as the 3 buildings and Herbivore Researcher, Large Carnivore Handler and Master Chef as 3 specialists. Scored 146, my best score so far with only 2 of 3 buildings were built. Not enough money and space for the 3rd since one of the solo objective was to have 2 sets of all attractions.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo play with DNA Archive, Monorail Station and Colosseum as the 3 buildings, Jack of All Trades, Paramedics and Lawyer as the Specialists. Lawyer was completely useless  after got lucky with a lot of security from Paramedics. Scored only 125.

September 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. The 3 buildings were T-Rex Jet Ski Park, Prehistoric Garden and Casino. While the 3 Specialists were Rent-A-Cop, Union Boss and Small Carnivore Trainer. Scored 142, probably my highest so far and managed to fill the board.  Built that Jet Ski even if it was not part of the last Tour.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. The 3 buildings were Camp Compy, Carnivore Colosseum and Clone Zone while the 3 Specialists were Cloning Expert, the DNA Mixologist and Mad Scientist. Scored only 120.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 17th solo play. The 3 buildings were Goat Pen, Main Gate and T-Rex Jet Ski Park. For the Specialists, 1st one was Jack of All Trades, Architect as 2nd and Paramedic for the 3rd. Scored 132.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 16th solo play of Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write. The 3 buildings were Casino, Welcome Center and Hot Spring Mud Spa. For Specialists, Large Carnivore Handler, Small Carnivore Trainer and Social Media Manager. And for the 3 solo objectives, 3 Large Carnivore paddocks, 4 Merch Stores and 3 Small Carnivore Paddocks. Scored 121.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo variant with First Aid Hut, Security Hub and Prehistoric Garden as the 3 buildings and Union Boss, Mascot and Herbivore Researcher as Specialists. Scored 138.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo Variant with Pteriyaki Grill, Triceratops Ring Toss and Velociraptor Culinary Experience for the 3 buildings, Senior Scientist, Ride Operator, and Master Chef for the 3 Specialists. Scored 133.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report. Solo play with Pterosaur Aviary (cost 7), Monorail Station (10) and DNA Archive (10) as the 3 Buildings. The 3 new Specialists were PR Guy (5), Lawyer (3) and Rent-A-Cop (4). Scored 122.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. Solo Play with Security Hub, Casino, Prehistoric Garden for the buildings and Ride Operator, DNA Mixologist and Senior Scientist as the 3 Specialists. For the 3 Solo Objectives, 3 Large Carnivore Paddocks, 3 Herbivore Paddocks, and 1 of each 3 different Paddocks. Scored 132.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo session and the three buildings were T-Rex Jet Ski Park, Hot Spring Mud Spa, and Welcome Center. The 3 Specialists are Small Carnivore Trainer, Social Media Manager and Master Chef. Scored only 115.

Dog Lover (2021)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Like in my previous play, I swapped a couple of dogs from the set just for 2 players with the set for higher player counts. First player started with Magnum, big dog meant for 4 players and the 2nd player got Joey which was from the standard setup.

I really thought 1st player didn’t play as well as the 2nd. But the final score was 48 for 1st and only 43 for 2nd. The second player actually got 6 dogs, all fed, mostly small dogs because they adopted Nutmeg that gave them 2 points per small dogs.

On the other hand, 1st player only got 4 dogs, 2 big and 1 small, all fed. They actually got 1 medium dog that they couldn’t afford to feed. Actually, they were struggling a lot with feeding their dogs. None of them were from adoption center. Even Magnum didn’t get any trait card at all. Their biggest points came from having 3 bones, and a set of 4 favorite things plus one.

The second player got a set of 3 favorite things and 4 of their dogs got traits. Unfortunately, none of them got a lot of points from the traits. Only from 2 cards with total of 5 points. Besides Nutmeg, they also adopted Bailey.

Playing time was about 63 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Since I had to play with 2-handed, someone suggested an idea to exchange some of the dog cards for higher player counts so you can play with more variety. In general, with 2 players, the deck will have 3 dogs for each size and for every extra player, you add one for each size.

For some reason, I’m not sure it works. Somehow they have different value for the same size. For example, Mutley Crue, one of the big dogs for 2 players scores you 6 points for just feeding him with 1 of each type of food. Then there is Magnum, a big dog for 4th player, you’ll get 9 by feeding him 3 canned foods. The other big dog for 3rd player scores you 8 for feeding him 1 dry and 2 canned foods. It’s not like they have to come out later in the game. Maybe because blue food is rarer?

I only exchange the dog cards without considering whether the different type of food would be enough. Maybe I could have also traded some trait cards if there was any? So, I’m saying maybe the balance of this game is not as simple as playing different dogs of the same size. Unfortunately, somebody already asked this question on BGG but the developer seems to have given up on this game.

The session itself was won by the 1st player. Both players actually scored 58. They were also tied with the first tie breaker which was the number of dogs. 1st player won since they got more dogs from rescue center.

One thing that I noticed from this play was that if you put the Guard dog in the middle row or column, it might prevent players to use the bigger than size 3 trick cards. As it happened in this session, most of the time, both used only the starting trick and it was the straight line one. It also got worse since both trying to avoid taking trait cards that they cannot use but they were on edges of the grid.

Playing time was about 60 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 3rd play, playing 2-handed. 1st player won with 63 and 2nd player got 57. 2nd player didn’t even buy a new trick or use the fetch card.

1st player got 5 dogs, two were from adoption while 2nd only got 4, one from adoption.  2nd player took 3 bones while 1st player got 1 but tucked it for Tripod, the Dirt Monster.

I thought 2nd player actually did better. Until the 1st adopted Laddie while having Best Friend trait card which got them extra 9 points and won the game. I still have a feeling that there is 1st player advantage. It seems you need to get more dogs from adoption but then again, you don’t know when adoption card will appear.

Playing time was about 56 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 2nd play and still with 2-handed. 1st player won with 71 points while 2nd player got only 54. Both got 5 fed dogs but 2nd had one without any trait.  First also got 3 bones while 2nd managed to convert it to one of the traits. Maybe 2nd player should have used fetch card more instead of just once.

Not sure about how to resolve when the market didn’t have enough cards to refill after the end game cards.  Luckily that empty space didn’t affect what the last player was going to take. Playing time was about 62 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing this game, 2-handed. The winner scored 65 while the 2nd scored 51. It seems the winner won because 5 unique toys vs 3.

A bit of first impression but I feel one player can get lucky by getting training cards early while the others could get stuck. This can lead to more items to take with new trick cards. At least any player needs to be aware about it and secure them very early when they can.

More unboxing pictures of Dog Lover on Instagram.

Dorfromantik: Light Luggage (2025)

This one started as video game from 2022 which then became popular enough to get board game version released in the same year. Actually, there is already 2nd standalone box called Sakura and the Duel version. This Light Luggage is a smaller version compared to the main board game. The designer said it is not just the same game but smaller. I haven’t played the original version so I couldn’t say how different they are but it seems the gameplay is the same.

In this game, you are going to cooperatively expand your territory by placing hexes that show different types of terrains. The terrains could be the forest, housing, field of wheat, or line of rivers. Line of rivers must be connected or extended by another line of rivers while the other types can be placed to any other type.

At the start of the game, you will reveal 3 task tiles. These are basically similar to the other tiles but you will place an objective on it, according to what the tile is showing. Most of the task tiles will say 4, 5 or 6 but with either color of the terrains. What you are going to do is to expand that type of terrains, including the tile with the task, until you reach the exact number of tiles with connected terrains.

After you have 3 task tiles, you then continue with the regular tiles. When you complete one of the task, you then have to draw back another task tiles. You just keep doing it until you run out of regular tiles first.

There are also 3 tasks that are about having adjacent tiles to that one with the task. At the end of the game, the numbers you completed becomes points plus the number of tiles in the longest river you created.

The hallmark of this Dorfromantik games is the unlocking features. In this version, after you play with those standard tiles, if your score is above 60 points or so, you can add one or more random goals and/or special tiles. They will give more chance to score even higher and allow you to include more components. If you can reach 180 with all special tiles and goal cards, there is an envelope with more tiles and cards to include.

That is the basic idea of Dorfromantik game, particularly this smaller, Light Luggage version. At first, I thought you can just complete the goal as long as you reach the required number no matter how many more tiles. This is not the case.

By forcing you to hit the exact number, it will force you to not keep expanding one area over and over again. Ideally, you want to complete the lower requirements first but there is no guarantee you get them in specific order because of randomness. Waiting will get you run out of regular tiles first before finishing the other tasks. So, there is a balance between progressing, completing the task and preparing for the other tasks that haven’t come out yet.

Specifically about the river, you can also create two separate lines but you have in mind how to connect them later. The other terrain types don’t matter but there are other special tiles that may require them.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Only one solo session this time. While last time I scored 112 and I could have used the 9th level achievement, I decided to just move up one level from my previous play.

So, instead of additional 6 tiles and 3 goal cards, I set myself with just 4 tiles and 2 goal cards so just one additional card. The 4 tiles were the Hiker, one multicolored flag, one heart and the double color with 7 points like previous play. While the 2 cards were both new, Small Areas and Task Sequence with River.

Hiker will score any task tiles that are up to 2 spaces away from where the Hiker tile is. I managed to get 5.

The heart tile was not actually used but instead you have to place a heart token sometime during the game. What you want to do is to place the token where the tile is surrounded and with the matching terrain on its edge. You score one point per matching edge. Usually, you just choose a tile with the most tiles adjacent to it, then you check the matching edges. Got 5 points from it as well.

This time I failed to score anything from the flag considering it showed up pretty late. Scored 7 for the double tile with the house.

The Small Area goal card requires you to have size 2 closed of 3 types of terrain to score 10 points. I only got 1 for the wheat field. Already prepared for the house but I just forgot and eventually forgot about the forest. More like not enough time for it.

For Sequence with River goal, you can score 10 as well. To do so, first, you need to create a river with size 6 or more. Then you complete either the surrounded task or wheat task, followed by forest or village task. It has to be in that 3 order and nothing else can be completed in between. The river doesn’t necessarily have to be the task but I managed to complete size 6 since it came out early. Then I got the wheat and the Forest. Scored 10 about half point through the game.

From regular task I failed to score the last wheat field size 4. So, I got 71 plus 13 from River. Then I got 10 from one goal card, 5 from Hiker, 5 from heart and 7 from double color tile. So, final score was 111 which was actually lower than my previous score by 1 point even though I got additional card.

Regardless, my next play will still just one above this setup so I get 5 tiles and 2 goal cards. I have to say that this session is much more relaxing than my initial impression of adding those special tiles in previous play.

Playing time was about 39 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This one I got 3 sessions, 4 even that I abandoned one session because of bad decision very early. Last play got me 85 points so based on the score chart I got to add 4 Special Tiles plus 1 Goal card.

The goal was to create a loop of river with the size of at least 6 to score 10. Two of the special tiles were the Flags while the other two were both the size 7 and I got to choose between 2 types each.

First play got me only about 90 points with 2 task tiles unrevealed and two more failed to be completed. 2nd play got me still only about 90 with 3 tasks left.

The last play got me at least 100 points from all but one task plus a river size 8. I think I also completely surrounded both special tiles with flags but I am still not sure how to score that one. If I understand correctly, I should get like 6 points or nothing per flag so my score was probably 112 which was 2 level above current threshold.

However, I am not sure about keep adding more goals and tasks in this game. While they make the game engaging and more interesting, it feels like they are no longer in cozy territory. I usually like a game where you have to work on multiple goals at the same time. Maybe postponing one goal while working on the other one then come back to finish the earlier one is something that I am looking for in board games.

However, in this case, there is a good chance that while waiting for one objective, you can end up sabotaging the other on going goal. This is mainly because of your tile placement and that you have to be precise in completing the next goal. I feel like I got lucky with my last play since I got the low target tasks first where finishing them can be used for the bigger goal.

So, I am not sure about keep adding more. Maybe I shouldn’t care too much about failing one goal and just complete what you can and see if I can keep increasing my score. I will try again with the 100-point threshold next which adds 1 more special tile and 1 more goal card.

Playing time of the last play took about 23 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I already got a couple of solo plays with just the standard components but most of them were wrong. I didn’t realize there is a rule about the exact number to complete the objective and made the game way easier. Some people say this game is in the relaxing kind so I didn’t think there was such rules until I read a thread on reddit about this.

So, I played another one with the correct rule and it was of course, not as relaxing as before. In fact, it was so close between my last task and I had like 2 or 3 more tiles of the regular ones left. From that I still got about 85 points or so.

Well, I like this tile laying games in general. At first, with the incorrect play, it felt like a good replacement for A Gentle Rain. But after that, I am not so sure. Maybe I should try replaying the game again before including additional tiles or cards. I can see some people can enjoy it regardless. Definitely I will play this more.

More unboxing pictures of Dorfromantik: Light Luggage on my IG.

The Dungeon of D (2008)

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Started as Ranger only up to 4th Level.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Played as Dwarf, reached 8th floor.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing, using the Ninja. Reached the 6th floor.

Final Girl (2021)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I think this was my 3rd play with just the content from Madness in the Dark with Heather against the Ratchet Lady.

All of the victims immediately started with tendency to Scratching and Biting so when you save them, you have to roll dice. For every nonsuccess roll, you take 1 damage. The Ratchet Lady started in the Solitary Confinement along with her 2 minions while Heather was at the entrance.

After getting herself to focus, Heather went to the bottom left room where there were 2 victims and immediately brought them to safety. One bite from one of them. The Rachet Lady didn’t move but the Minions did. Fueled by Madness but the lady found no victims nearby.

Heather continued to the left wing where she found 2 more victims near the left exit. The Ratchet finally moved to the main hall but she was looking for Heather but Heather was 2 rooms away. The 2 minions followed the Ratchet.

Heather got 2 more victims to safety from left exit. They tried to bite again but Heather managed to get away. Heather continued exploring the left wing and found one more. She brought the victim along to hide in the operation room. In there, she found a red pill and took some rest after taking those bites.

The Ratchet told the minion to keep looking for Heather. “Keep her busy”, she said while she began killing one of the 4 victims in the main hall. While the other 3 got panic, they didn’t get out from that hall.

Heather, while in the operation room, noticed that 2 minions were approaching. From behind that door, she managed to calm them both. So, she took that chance to bring those 2 into safety through the left exit again. One of them scratched her.

One victim was still in operation room. Heather heard from outside that the victim was craving for their meds. From the direction to the hall, she heard other victims screaming. “GIVE US OUR MEDS!”. Heather got scared. Instead of giving the pill, the Ratchet lady, killed 2 of victims in that same room. The last victim ran away in panic after seeing their friends got killed.

Heather got scared. However, she noticed that the Ratchet was alone, she took the chance to beat her. All she got was weak attack but the Ratchet was shocked. Then she moved away from her to rest a bit and took a blue pill.

The Ratchet then tried to attack Heather. Heather retaliated and took 2 damage. Instead of another attack, the Ratchet actually approached one of the corpses and started drinking their blood. “BLOOD JOLT”, she said, recovering her wounds. Heather got even more scared.

After a bit of improvising, Heather managed to get away through the right wing where she found 2 more victims. While dragging them both, she sprinted right to the entrance. She told them both to get away. None of them tried to bite this time.

Still in the main hall, the Ratchet noticed that there was a victim hiding behind the door to the north wing. The Ratchet didn’t open the door but instead she made a whisper. That was enough to turn that one into a Maniac and started approaching Heather. The Ratchet was so pleased with that and that started Manic Burst, inspiring the maniac to be more active.

Heather started thinking about taking that Ratchet down. This time, she looked to the right wing and found herself in the medical storage room. She stayed there and started searching anything that can help her defeat this killer.

Not long after that, somebody entered that storage room. It was a victim. But Heather was not sure by their look. She tried to make them stay away. “WE ARE HELPING”, said that victim that kept approaching Heather.

Heather found another pill from that room. After making a bit distraction to that suspicious victim, she got away to the other door. Unlucky for Heather, she found another similar victim. She decided to calm them both.

Before Heather got to do anything. Another person came into that room. It was the Ratchet Lady and she immediately started attacking Heather. Heather retaliated again but she started to get crazy. “WHAT IS THIS PLACE DOING TO ME?” Heather started considering taking those pills. The Ratchet noticed and reminded her, that those are powerful meds. There will be more side effects.

Heather got furious and started improvising and attacking the Ratchet Lady. Apparently, that was enough to put the Ratchet down. Heather then managed to calm the 2 victims and but she couldn’t move. She decided to swallow the blue pill. Heather got some brain fog but she got boost that allowed her to move along with the victims to the storage.

Heather thought they were safe now. But after closing the door behind her, she started hearing things. The Ratchet got back up. She got a bit panic and started looking for other things. Heather found a tranquilizer gun from that room. She took it with her and moved with the 2 victims to the entrance.

She told them both to run but one decided to stay and wait for her. Heather decided to take 2 pills this time. Lucky for her, only one side effect got her, a panic attack.

The Ratchet was still recovering and started calling her leftover minions. FEED THE MADNESS!

Heather took a sprint and got back to where the Ratchet Lady was. From there, she took 2 shots of the tranquilizer gun to the Ratchet. That paralyzed the Ratchet. Heather took this chance to unleash her furious strike before the Ratchet got back up again. She kept hitting that killer. After realizing that she finally managed to put an end to this killer, she stopped. The Wolfe Asylum was safe.

Playing time was about 83 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with Sheila vs the Dream Doctor but this time in Creech Manor. Sheila started from the entrance while Dr. Fright started in the closet. The Doctor killed 5 while Sheila only managed to save 4 with one stayed clinging to her according to the starting event.

This killer pretty much stayed at the top while Sheila moving from floor to floor at the bottom half of the manor. Eventually, Sheila decided to sleep, leaving that clingey victim alone at the entrance while she faced the Doctor upstairs. After a couple of hits and luring the killer upstairs, Sheila managed to get to the attic where she found a Shotgun. The Shotgun put the Doctor down but it was not enough. Sheila took a 2nd shot and 3 hits to the killer. That was like the next round after the finale was revealed with no terror card skipped.

Playing time was about 78 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back against Poltergeist but this time, for the first time I used different location which was the Maple street. Alice was the Final Girl. Technically the game should have ended way faster as I found Carolyn right in the first house I searched on. But I continued and not only I found Mr. Poppy but also until all victims were out of the scene either dead or rescued.

Made an error with the Stiff Wind Dark Power. Instead of reducing the movement by 1 I did it like always just 1. So, kind of made the game harder myself. I also noticed that I couldn’t used the bike after finding Carolyn. Honestly, it didn’t feel great with this one. Playing time was about 85 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. A new feature film, the Marrek Murders from Season 3. This has Tormentor as the killer and the Marrek Warehouse and it is based on Saw movies. The 2 Final Girls are Mandy and Cassie.

Got my first play which took 105 minutes. The killer introduced the idea of Traps which can happen to either Final Girl or one or more victims. If you don’t save the victim, every killer phase they will get closer to being killed and some penalties for you. However, if the final girl herself got into a trap, they have to free themselves first before rescuing the victims.

To rescue them from a trap, it requires multiple steps. Most of the time, you just need to spend time, which means losing chance to buy cards. This feels the biggest impact to the gameplay as you have to choose to either buy more cards or take penalties. Some others will force you to deal a damage multiple times or movement action to pull them out of the trap. So, you are not just buying cards for you but also have to consider when to spend them for rescuing.

The location itself introduces the idea of something like ceiling areas. In order to enter this, you need to discard a movement card in order to get a Climb card, then use that cards with horror rolls as usual. From one ceiling area to another, you can just jump, with a new card, with the same way to get them. Sometimes you can fall from them and take damage, also as part of the Killer or terror card action.

I have to say that from my first play, I didn’t use this idea that much. Maybe only once I got to those ceiling areas. The problem is that it competes with the amount of time I lost due to trying to rescue victims.  From the location, the 3 exits also got locked at start and either you wait for the terror card to open one of them or find an item to break it.

Overall, from the other 3 films that I have played, this feels unique. The killer doesn’t show up until the last time and those traps really add the tension, thematically.

It can feel frustrating, not sure if it’s good or bad. I got lucky that only one time when there were 2 trapped victims. Got multiple and each can make saving the other harder. So, they really encourage you to immediately rescue them. instead of ignoring them and let them die, knowing the minimum penalties. I’m excited to play more of this one.

More unboxing pictures of Final Girl: The Marrek Murders on Instagram.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played with just the content from Madness in the Dark, 2nd play for that feature film but this time as Veronica. Still got some error and this time about the Ratchet Lady actually healing when reaching certain bloodlust level. Instead I thought they injured the Final Girl.

Regardless, this was probably the 2nd best experience so far for me. Even the cheating part was a bit lower than usual.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Playing just the contents from The Frightmare on Maple Lane, using Sheila as the Final Girl.

It seems I still got the Boiler Room idea wrong. You are supposed to just do one room at the end of each Killer Phase unless the Terror card says otherwise. If you want to get out from the dream, then it has to be done during the Action Phase.

I thought I got the movement of Killer right this time but somehow, Dr. Fright failed to killed that many, only one victim exactly. Even if I cheated a lot, but I didn’t expect it to be that slow.

October 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back to playing with just contents from The Haunting of Creech Manor. Selena against the Poltergeist. Not exactly an amazing experience. I even ended up a bit customizing the last few Terror cards just to make it more interesting.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was actually a full session report playing with the new feature film, Madness in the Dark. Playing as Heather against the Ratchet Lady. On BGG, I shared a bit of first impression for that feature film.

More Unboxing Pictures of this Final Girl: Madness in the Dark Feature Film.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or even more on TikTok. Nancy vs Dr. Fright the Dream Doctor at Maple Lane.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Alice vs The Poltergeist of the Creech Manor.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Another game with Sheila vs Frightmare on Maple Lane. Boyfriend, bicycle.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing with the Frightmare on Maple Lane Feature Film, using Sheila as the Final Girl.

Here is more unboxing pictures of the Frightmare on Maple Lane Feature Film box on IG.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First 2 plays of the Haunting of Creech Manor with Selena.

This is a couple of unboxing pictures of both the Core Box and the Feature Film on IG.

Finspan (2025)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Another solo play but before that, I just realized that I made a significant error when running the opponent. I was supposed to flip egg token into young fish up to 4 in most of the opponent’s card. What I actually did up to this session was instead trading 4 eggs into a young.

This means, that I probably had made the game way easier that it should by decreasing their potential score. In this one, I only realized that error since after the first round. As a result, the opponent scored 125 points and should have been more while I only got like 98 using the Level 3.

To make things worse, this was also the session where I triggered a lot of brown actions that gave the opponent one token. I didn’t realize I played very poorly, at least compared to my previous play. Maybe I focused too much on getting more eggs turned into young and then schools. Previously I got only 3 while this time I got 5.

And I did try to play it like Wingspan where in the card column, I put fish that gives me both eggs and hatch action so I could trigger them a lot. For some reasons maybe it actually overwhelmed me a bit with too many cards. Definitely not as interesting as my last play with the end of the game chain of actions.  While I did get a lot of those yellow power cards, it was already late in the game when I got them. If anything I might have sabotaged my previous plan and chased the other cards.

I didn’t even try to make it work with cards in the discard pile since I got a lot of cards. So, maybe getting too many of those could be a trap instead of trying to recover the cards from the discard pile and synergize just those.

Playing time was about 94 minutes.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play but this time was first time using the side B of the end of the round goal. At first, I didn’t realize that those scoring tiles were specific to one week, but thanks to how the Nautoma scores, I noticed my error at the end of 1st round so I corrected it.

So, I filled 13 spaces of the ocean board. Two of them were done twice with the predator fishes. An interesting one with Angelshark that I needed 3 fishes below it in order to gain 10 points at the end of the game. But the fish itself doesn’t have tucking ability on its own. So, I needed another predator fish to eat 2 fishes first before this Angelshark devour that one. Poor Pennant Coralfish.

Another interesting moment was during the end game ability, I got to play a fish but had to be at the bottom row. The bonus fish that I played also allowed me to play similar fish with the same criteria and I was lucky to have that, That final fish also got one time bonus. So, the chain of actions you can get in this game can be that interesting if you prepare well enough for the end game. Almost like playing Oh My Goods! in the final round where you can trigger every factory. Of course, you need to be lucky enough to get those cards first and keep them ready by the end instead of in the discard pile.

Final score was 123 vs 78 from the Level 3 Nautoma, I think. Playing time took about 90 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Playing time of this one learning session, solo mode, took about almost 2 hours. By the end I played 12 fish cards with one eating the existing at the bottom. Got 4 school tokens and 7 of either young or egg tokens.

While this was for learning, I was expecting about an hour play instead of being close to 2 hours. It seems I accessed about a third of the cards in the game with some portion taken by the Nautoma.

As initial impression of just one play, it feels a bit underwhelming. It seems you want to turn a lot of egg into young and then turning them into School tokens. However, I had to rely only with the left column to hatch the egg just twice per action. I also only had 1 card with one time ability for that hatching. While I did get other card with one time ability for that when played however, there was no other space at that time to play that fish.

Didn’t feel like I used enough moving some youngs so they could be school faster. So, if I understand the strategy correctly, maybe I still need to build enough engine to draw cards first with the left column just like in Wingspan. This way, I had more options. Then even if I had to discard them later, I could take them back from the discard pile.

About fish that eats smaller fish to occupy the space, I also didn’t get that many. Like probably 2 cards and one was played. I thought about playing smaller fish first to be eaten later but didn’t really happen like that. More like I played just what I got and wherever I could.

Final score was 101 for me against the opponent’s 63 using the static objective side. I still will try to explore this again. Just sadly that one play didn’t leave good impression.

More unboxing pictures of Finspan on my IG.

First-Class Letters (2025)

This is my first word game from modern board game. There are other word games that I’m interested in but this is probably the cheapest one and it has solo mode while still being a party game.

In this roll and write game, you will roll 3 brown dice and 1 red dice with various letters on their 6 faces. The red die contains letters that you cannot use for the round while trying to make word using the letters from the brown dice as many times as you can in a single word.

Everytime you use the letter from the brown dice, you score 1 point. If you manage to use all 3 letters in a word, you score double. For example, maybe you roll F, T and U and you make a word FORTUNATE. From one F, 2 Ts and a single U you score 8 points. If turns out, the red die shows an A, you score 0.

That is a single round and the game is played for 7 rounds. You also have to write those 7 words in alphabetical order. At the end of each round, you give your sheet to the next player and they will check whether you use the red die accidentally or if you make series of words not in alphabetical order.

In multiplayer game, after one player finishes writing their word, they are expected to flip the included sand timer so the other players have to finish theirs within 40 seconds. If you play solo, you flip the sand timer right after rolling those dice.

The rule says that only use English words and a single word. They even encourage you to look at dictionary.  As part of the setup, you will seed 2nd, 4th and 6th row with a letter by rolling those 3 dice. Words you choose for those rows have to start with those starting letters.

The rule also comes with different game modes. You can try the Breezy mode where you don’t use the red die or the more challenging one, the Priority mail where you roll one brown die and that letter must be included for that round. There is also a way to play cooperatively where players will make their own word and discuss which word to use to make the collective 7 words

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was my first time playing the game and I already got about 5 solo sessions. Unfortunately, I have to ignore the timer and I have to look up words in dictionaries online while playing. I used the one from Merriam Webster.

Without dictionary, I scored only 21, which was just 1 point above the lowest solo threshold. Even with dictionary, my highest score so far was 43, which was 3rd highest threshold.

I think the main reason I bought this game is because it seems to work for non-English speaking players. Not sure if it helped learning new vocabulary. But I can see it improves your play because you probably roll similar set of letters. Although the restriction to make words alphabetical is still going to make it challenging. In fact, that become one of the criticism of the game. You probably will roll the same after a couple of rounds.

I can see why this is probably not interesting enough for those who speak English as their first language. In this one, you can just write words you know without using all letters for lower points. You can try finding a longer words but you can accidentally use the red die. So in a way it’s like a built in push your luck and the red die is a trap.

It feels like you can do better by memorizing or getting used to certain letters that tend to be used multiple times in a word. Like in “inaccessible”, “uncontrollable”, “grammar”, etc. Again, the red die is the obstacle. More vocabulary you know, more flexible. But then, can you fit those words in the remaining empty rows?

As my initial impression, I enjoyed this game. Not sure if I can get better at this and when that happens, whether it can stay interesting for me. Production wise, I kind of hate rolling those wooden dice. They are too big and don’t roll well. I think I prefer rolling them one by one.

It is also kind of hard for me to recommend people to buy this product. While the game has audience like me, it feels you can make your own components by examining videos or pictures about this game online. You can even use blank sheet. I also don’t think it is that hard to write an app just for the dice. Like there is not much reason to buy the product itself. This feels more like a criticism for the publisher instead of to players.

I can see this product works well in English class or something similar. If you have a group who like to play games like this, then maybe not a bad idea to buy.

More unboxing pictures of First-Class Letters game on my IG.

Flamecraft Duals (2025)

This is a direct sequel to Flamecraft, a worker placement game from 2022 with same designer and artist. Flamecraft is about human living and doing businesses with the help from mystical dragon pets.

This dual version, with completely different gameplay mechanism, is more an abstract game for one or two players. On their turn, players will be placing one random dragon chips to create a pattern according to their Shop cards into one space of the same shared playing area.

You can even stack the chips up to 3 per space. After you have placed the chip, you may trigger its unique ability depending on the color of the dragon or chip. For example, the Red allows you to move adjacent Dragon into any space while the Purple allows you to swap two chips.

All of these are to help you complete your pattern. The pattern may be 3 chips of 2 reds and 1 blue in straight line or maybe all 3 green in triangle position. Because it is done in shared area, you might complete your pattern while accidentally ruin the other player’s progress.

There is a randomness by drawing the chip blindly from the bag. Each playeralso starts with 3 coins that they can spend to draw 2 cards, hopefully can fit the pattern in the current situation.

The game continues until either no more chips from the bag or no more cards from the deck. Then players count their score from completed cards and leftover coins. That is the general idea of Flamecraft Duals.

The game also comes with 2 additional modules to play with 2, the Fountain and the Fancy Dragons. There is also solo mode but you have to use the Fountain right away but you cannot use the Fancy Dragons.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got another solo session and only one this time. Completed 17 shops and of course, the 6 Fountain cards. I even continued after that until I run out of chips and got 7 more shops.

Final score was 18 from Fountain plus 39 or 57 total, which was still just Crafty Cutie, 2nd lowest threshold. The extra 16 could have gotten me 2 ranks higher, the High Score Hottie.

What surprised me this time was that I didn’t spend any coin until after 9 shop cards. Eight shops plus Fountains later I had to spend my 2nd and another 4 for the 3rd.

I definitely enjoyed this play more than my last session. Even though there was a moment between the last 2 fountains that I thought I couldn’t afford to finish it. As it turns out, I didn’t make any error again with the height. Although, there was a moment I forgot that I already had 3 chips on one spot and I was still planning to place another one.

Playing time was about 57 minutes.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. So, I immediately tried the solo mode for the first time and since a lot of people say that the 2-player variant is not great due to randomness.

In the solo mode, your goal is to complete all 6 Fountain cards which is usually a pattern of 4 chips of the same color in straight line. The challenge is that in solo mode, on every turn you have to fulfill a pattern card, either Fountain or the Shop cards. Fail to do so, then you have to spend 1 coin to keep going or you instantly lose the game.

Because the setup only has one chip per color, usually it is impossible in the first few turns to complete anything. So, you pretty much will spend those coins right away. There is even a chance that the coins may not be enough to complete the 2 shop cards and 1 fountain. But an easy fix for this is just to draw a couple of more shop cards but then keep only 2 available onwards.

I got 2 plays and both completed all 6 Fountains. To my surprise, after a couple of turns, placing the chips, it seems it is always possible to complete at least one card. Sometimes you may even have multiple cards ready to be scored but then of course, you save them for later while making sure not to mess the other. In the 2nd play I scored 14 shop cards and got 32 points from them. Got 15 in the 1st play.

There is also another element of timing, specifically for the Fountain. Every time you complete a Fountain card, you then move the Fountain to any space, returning the chips to the bag but one. You then have to place that one chip instead of drawing more. Because of that, you might want not just to stack 3 chips but to include the double or dual dragons to give you more flexibility later.

Since the Fountain starts in the middle, you want to move it right away to help you score pattern easier with bigger room. So, where you stack chips and ideally on the edge should help you play better and longer.

So, my first impression? I like this solo mode, even if that possible randomness might get in the way. I guess that is the cost of demanding player to score every turn. However, that pressure somehow force you to figure out how to keep going. After you have enough chips on the board, then more likely than not, you may find a way to keep scoring the shop even if not the Fountain. Of course, getting stuck for just bad random next card still suck.

This kind of reminds me a bit of A Place for All My Books, mainly about the stacking and maintaining what to score later while being a faster game. I think you will find yourself in situation where you already made a pattern somewhere without you realizing it.

Maybe one other complaint from me is that during the game, I accidentally placed the 4th chip on a stack without realizing it. Only after a couple of turns or even when I tried to get rid of the stack using Fountain then I realized the error. In that case, you then end up cheating and there is no way to reset the situation unless you keep track by taking pictures. Also, you probably make a plan of adding more chip to that stack a couple of turns later even if there were already 3 on that stack.

The stack also gets more obscure when surrounded by other tall stacks. This doesn’t happen in A Place for All my Books since the book tokens can be rotated a bit to show the difference while in this one the circular doesn’t help as much.

This happened once in each 2 sessions I played. I think the reason for my situation is that I played on lower table so I almost always look it from the top. It is worse when you also don’t stack the chip in neat way to show how many of them in the same stack. Especially with the dark blue color at the bottom where it slide a bit away from my point of view and I thought it was a shadow of other stack.

So, I definitely will play this again. Not sure how many solo plays it will get since it becomes just beat your own score. Still not sure about the 2-player variant but maybe I should still try it once and plus the Fancy Dragons.

Playing time took almost an hour for one solo session.

More unboxing pictures of Flamecraft Duals on my IG.

For Northwood!: A Solo Trick-Taking Game (2021)

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still no scenario again and the 4 allies were Prince of Leaves, Queen of Eyes, Jack of Claws and Lady of Flowers. I have to say, even though I kind of forget that I had this game, this was probably the best experience I got so far.

Best moment was when I had to win 4 times, I already won the 5th with 2 cards left. Then I drew back to 8, move the target fief to win 5 times and I managed to lose all cards without making more win. I had to do similarly when trying to win 7 times but that one was easier. Also during winning 3 times. I was down to 2 cards left with only 1 win. Drew back to 8, managed to keep the winning to 3. Possibly the longest round ever. For the last challenge, I should have brought King of Claws right away.

Playing time was about 60 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Still no scenario. The 4 allies were Baron of Flowers, Jack of Leaves, King of Eyes and Jack of Claws. I don’t remember anything interesting from this session. Baron of Flowers helped significantly and the King of Eyes a couple of times. Playing time was about 41 minutes.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still not playing the scenario. I forgot about only using one ally ability before the statement instead of doing combo. A couple of rounds where I was forced to draw more than I needed but I got the right number of wins.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram. Full game setup and no Scenario. Started with King of Flowers, Baron of Eyes, Baron of Leaves and Lady of Claws. One round started with 1 card too many.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Full game setup and no Scenario. Won all but a bit cheating. Mostly thanks to King of Claws.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or even more on TikTok. Full game setup without Scenario ended with very bad result. Hopefully learned the rule properly this time.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Not using any scenario again. Managed to win everything, a bit cheating maybe. Got mixed up some ability related to Leaves or Yellow.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Without using any Scenario, random setup for 4 allies, one for each suit and for fiefs, 2 for each suit.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Playing with the Summer 2 Scenario. I still didn’t realize that I could only use the substitute once per game so I won but cheating.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was with the Scenario 1 of the campaign, without the extra challenge.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2nd play not the campaign and with the Advanced variant first time.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing the game with the basic mode.

Here are more unboxing pictures of that game on IG.

FORAGE: A 9 card Solitaire Game (2022)

August 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. The usual 4 sessions with just the basic mode. First one was bad with just 29 minus 2 from one die, then minus 5 from the big rat and minus 1 for a die on a half space.

Second one was much better. Got a 15 plus 2 10s, 4 3s and 2 1s with 2 -2s, and the big rat. That got me 40 still which was good. Then the 3rd one might be my best score so far with 45, which was the 2nd highest threshold. Got a 15, 2 10s, a 6, a 3 and 5 1s with only 2 of -2s. Nothing on half spaces.

After that, unfortunately, the 4th one was not great. Still got a 15, 3 6s, a 3, 3 1s and with 4 of -2 and another -1. So, only 27, still better than the first one. Total playing time for 4 sessions was exactly 60 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 4 sessions but still without recipes. Somehow I scored on average worse than my previous plays. The highest one was only 36 from the 4th and the 3rd. First one scored 35 while the 2nd scored 32. I almost got the last one 37 but one rat die was on half so I lost 1 point there.

Playing time was about 65 minutes for 4 sessions.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 4 sessions, still without the recipes. 1st one scored 43, 2nd got 29, 3rd got 34 and the 4th one got 40 again. Playing time was about 65 minutes for those 4.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Got 4 sessions again with just the basic mode. First one scored poorly with just 32 minus 8 from 4 rat dice.

2nd one scored 38. Only one die with value 15, one with 10 and the rest were 3 or lower. Only 2 rat dice. 3rd one scored 43 with 2 dice value 15 and one with 10 and only 2 rat dice.

Then the 4th one scored 39 again and this time Edward made appearance. No dice value 15 but 3 with value 10. Playing time was about one hour for those 4 sessions.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. I got 4 sessions still just the basic mode. First one I actually forgot about the minus 2 die and I only made 1 penalty. Not sure I got better than previous plays and the score was still between 30 to 45 or less.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 4 sessions just the basic game. Highest score was the 3rd play with 38 after getting 2 dice value 15. Still got some rule wrong about not supposed to add a die if only one card shows the food.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing this game and already got 4 sessions. Probably some rule errors. Similar game structure as the previous 2 games in the series.

In this one, the land on the cards has 3 different types. It can be overlapped by different terrain but it leads to penalty by placing the die of that color with minus points. After that, that spot can no longer be upgraded.

This means making mistake is less unavoidable compared to Grove where you can only make wrong move once. In fact, maybe you need to approach it while not preventing you to keep increasing the value of existing dice. Every mouse dice or minus dice is minus 2 points but if you can flip several dice and upgrading it by 2 or more, maybe that is not a bad deal.

More punishing and definitely harder to score. Got about 40 on 4th session which was my highest so far. Maybe no longer a relaxing game.

There are recipes on the back of those 18 cards that I have not tried yet.

More unboxing pictures of FORAGE: a 9 card Solitaire Game on IG.

Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor (2025)

Forest Shuffle is a game about building ecosystem of your forest. You first need to have a tree or terrain cards. From there, you can add either animals or plants around them. Every species you add to your forest might give you points at the end with possible extra requirements you need to meet. Some need more unique species of the same type while others need to work with different species.

Title: Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor
Year Released: 2025
Designer: Kosch
Publisher: Lookout Games
Artist: Toni Llobet and Judit Piella

Genre: Nature, Multi-use Card, Animals, Hand Management, Official Solo Mode, Additional Component Required for Solo Play, Competitive Game, 2-4 Players

Learn more about the game from Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor Review.

Friday (2011)

This is a solo only deck building game. A very popular and accessible game for solo player. You are playing as Friday trying to help Robinson Crusoe to survive the island against various threats.

On your turn, you can choose between 2 challenges and the bonus power for overcoming it by adding that hazard card to your deck. To beat the hazard, you need to reach certain amount of value with a number of cards. First few cards are free to draw but after reaching the limit set by the hazard, you need to pay extra life points to draw more.

Hopefully you get enough power or value to beat or get the card with certain power to draw more or heal. You can always choose to just lose the challenge by paying more life points equal to the difference between the target value and your total from cards. By doing so, you have a chance to cull bad or lower value cards so the stronger cards can appear more frequently to help you win more.

You’ll be going through the Hazard deck 3 times and each time the challenge is getting more difficult. By the end of 3rd time, assuming you are still alive, you have to beat the 2 Pirates with the remaining cards, life points and your ages.

People mostly find this one very hard but some others say that there is specific strategy that allows you to win. Some even consider it solvable game because of that strategy. Even though they had a good time, they move on to enjoy other board games.

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Back to the easiest difficulty again and I got 2 sessions. First one was a loss right in the first challenge of the Phase 3. Then using that same setup I reset the game and beat both of the Pirates, the one with 6 starting cards and 20 points and the other one that counts only half of all cards.

So for the final score, I got 41 points from just the fighting cards value, 30 from beating both pirates, 20 from 4 leftover life points, -15 from the 3 Aging Cards and -18 from the leftover challenge cards. Total was 58 points.

Playing time was 42 minutes just for the 2nd session.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Got 4 sessions with Level 4 plus one with lower level. Kind of hurt my enjoyment. Playing time was about 27 minutes for the one where I didn’t lose early.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was several attempts at Level 4 with only one win.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. One session still with Level 2 against Pirate 40 and 52.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 2 sessions actually and a bit of cheating, lost the first very early and won the 2nd.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single session, level 2 against Pirate 16 and 25. Won with about 53 points, no more cards in the deck and no more aging cards.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions, Level 2, against Pirate with the Leftover Hazards and the Pirate based on Aging Cards. All ended in lost.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, Level 2, against Pirate 22 and 20 for the first and Pirate 25 and 30 for the 2nd. Scored 56 and 36.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, Level 2 difficulty, against Pirate 52 and 40.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 sessions with Level 2 difficulty, against Pirate 40 and 52.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, Level 1 difficulty against Pirate 40 and 52. Lost the first, scored 73 for the 2nd.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, one lost and one won with the easiest difficulty.

May 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report with Level 1 difficulty vs Pirate 30 and Pirate *.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions, Level 1 difficulty. Lost in Green, lost in 1st Pirate, lost in red round and finally won against both pirates in 4th game. Pirate 22 and 25.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing the game. Played 2 sessions with the easiest difficulty vs Pirate 16 and 20. Lost the first in Yellow Phase but beat both Pirates in the 2nd.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Friday on IG.

Frontier with Brownies (2022)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. More solo play and with the advanced scoring cards again. The 3 for me were Secure Vacant Lot, Discover Heart-Shaped Land and Gather Woods.

For the first one, if the vacant lot has 3 tiles, I get extra 4 points per lot. As for the 2nd one, I got extra 8 if I could get all 3 types of terrains, the water, the field and the villages. Similar to that, the last one gives me extra 10 if I can get trees completely surrounded in all 4 terrains, water, farm, villages and grasslands.

As for the opponent, they got Build Ideal Settlement, Clear Fields and Build Villages. Luckily, for them to score the village, each village must contain 4 houses and I got them all at most 3 houses or incomplete. After reading the translation, the clear field scoring must be about mixing fields not the same type. They still got 2 sets but not 4. For the ideal settlement, I think there was only one enclosed area with 4 or more resources.

In the end, I scored 66 but the opponent took about 24 points from that. Playing time was about 34 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play and this time I decided to try the advanced scoring cards. I thought about using just one of these while the 2 from beginner cards. Apparently, the advanced cards are the variants of the beginner ones so I just used 3 of them.

At the end, I got 28 points from Develop Fishing Grounds with 3 enclosed lakes. Then 31 points from Put Sheep out to Graze with 4 enclosed grasslands. One of them got me the extra 5 for having 7 sheep. The last one, the Survey Island only got me 14 since there were only 3 dividing lakes.

The opponent only took 2 points from me since I got 2 villages connected. Cler Fields and Cattle Ranches were not difficult to avoid.

Playing time was about 38 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 3 solo sessions, still using the Silver scoring cards and I used the same set of cards on all sessions this time. I got Build Ideal Settlement, Build Roads and Clear Fields while for the opponent, Develop Fishing Ground, Put Sheep out to Graze, Secure Vacant Lots.

Last session got me 132 minus 12. 2nd session got me 107 minus 30 with the first one only 50 minus 12. The biggest increase, especially in the last one was from the Ideal Settlement score. Got 4 completed Grassland areas with total of 21 objects. One of them had all types. Also got 5 heart shape areas and 4 roads connecting villages with 4 completed villages. The opponent got score from 1 vacant lot that I couldn’t do anything about and got a lot of scores from Sheep.

I have a feeling that build Ideal Settlement scoring is not exactly good for solo play? That scoring alone got me almost 90. Unless I misunderstood the rule. The other 2 got me around 20 to 24. Then again, it was probably the hardest one.

Playing time was about 87 minutes for 3 sessions.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. More solo plays, still with the Silver scoring. Got 2 sessions. The first one I was not sure about the scoring of one card for the opponent, which was the one to have all resources on greenland. So I couldn’t score that one but it got worse since I got the Sheep with Black while the opponent got the Sheep scoring as well.

2nd one got easy win with 60 points and no score for the opponent. They wanted the heart shape scorings plus connecting villages. I managed not to connect any villages with roads.

Playing time was about 49 minutes for 2 sessions.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First couple of plays of this game all with the solo mode using just 6 beginner order cards. Got 4 sessions and I misunderstood the idea of completed area and about empty tile being water space. This was a first impression entry.

More unboxing pictures of Frontier with Brownies on IG.

Frosted Blooms (2026)

As you can see from the pictures of this entry, this game has beautiful table presence. They use huge chunky figures of windmills, barns and workers, surrounded by polyomino tiles, showing 3 different flowers and 2 water spaces.

Polyomino tiles might not be a correct term as there is only one size for the tiles. Every tile has size 5. However, the game encourages you to create those enclosed gaps that form up to size 4 polyomino tiles.

Frosted Blooms is played over exactly 10 rounds and on each round, players will have to play 1 of their identical deck of 10 cards to score. You first are going to draft a tile from a rondel market. Either take the tile next to the flower figure or you can skip a tile by paying 1 coin. There are always 5 tiles in the market around the scoring board.

Like standard tile laying game, after drafting the tile, you then have to place them to expand your field of tulips, ideally to help you score the chosen card. The card usually will say score 1 per white flower and 1 per red flower as example, for cards that score 2 objects. Or it can score one object but worth 2 points each.

You only score the group of adjacent flowers or water spaces connected to the tile you just picked. Maybe on that new tile, it shows 3 white flowers on one space and then you can connect it to existing group of 2 white flowers. And you want to score the next card where 1 point per white flower and 1 for red. However, because of the weird shape, the red on that new tile may not be connected to your existing group of red so it only scores the depicted number on that new tile. So, maybe that is not the best location to place the new tile? Or if you have coins and you can pick a different one, maybe there is a better option?

Alternatively, you can also consider scoring different card for the round. You always have up to 3 cards to score before drawing the next one out of 10 from the deck. So, as you play the game more, maybe you can memorize them and build up by saving certain cards before scoring in later rounds.

As mentioned earlier, because of the weird tile shape, you probably will end up leaving some gaps between tiles. In that case, you might even try to prepare for a bigger gap up to size 4 or like shapes from Tetris.

For single space gap, you have to place worker in between as improvement. You also gain a coin along with that worker. For size 2 then you have to place Barn but no coin. For gaps with size 3, you have to place both, a barn and a worker plus a coin for you.

To place the giant windmill, it has to be size 4 with 2×2 shape. For other size 4, you have to place 2 barns. or just for the T-shape size 4, barn plus 2 workers. At the end of the game, you gain 3 points per worker, 10 per barn and 25 per windmill.

Beside scoring your cards, another point of interaction is to be the first to score objective for each object, including the figures. Each object has possible 3 objectives but not everything will be used in a game. You remove a number of them based on player count.

Maybe in one game, there is only one objective for white flower. The first one to have 8 white flowers gain the objective tile worth 10 points. On the other hand, the red flower has 2 objectives, one for 6 flowers worth 3 and the other for 10 flowers worth 25.

Players can only score objective of each object once. So, they can choose to get the lower objective earlier or they can keep going and aim for the biggest objective. Paying attention of how their opponents are progressing becomes part of the tension in this game.

Maybe you can tell from their field, they are not working hard on objective for one flower so you don’t need to rush as well. Also, in order to score the objective, the new tile has to be part of that scoring as well. So, if you aim for an objective late in the game, make sure you still have a card to score as well at that point.

That’s the general idea of how you play Frosted Blooms. After 10 rounds, whoever score the most points wins. There is also a solo mode with the opponent using their own deck of cards. Their card shows the field they are expanding. So, the opponent remove the tile so you cannot take them but make progress using just their cards.

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. This time, I finally tried the solo mode. In the solo mode, you play like in regular game, drafting tiles and placing them then score a card per round while always being the first player.

For the opponent, they will get a deck of 15 cards that you will use 10 of them, randomly chosen. Each card will tell you which tile that they will remove from the market and which improvements that they get along with the scoring they do this turn. On the left edge of each card, you will see 5 square spaces. Three of them for each flower and the other two for water spaces but not every card will have everything and instead it will have 2 blank spaces.

The way it works is, the next opponent card you draw, you overlap the previous card so only these square spaces visible. This will become their garden, similar to using tiles for regular player. The 2 blank spaces on each card will be the interrupting part of the group of flowers or water spaces.

So, when the card says to score a flower and a water space, you just check the number of flowers and water spaces to the left until it hit the blank space. There is a chance the cards managed to create a group of red flower with 5 spaces but then interrupted by the blank and they score after the blank so they get nothing.

This is a good input for the solo player when competing for the objective. By default, the opponent always aim for the higher objective for the same type. You can then try to get the higher first or you can choose to get the lower while assuming the opponent won’t reach the higher threshold.

At the end of the game, if you take the higher or not at all and the opponent reaches the lower threshold, the gain score from that lower objective. So, this is the one that is a bit different from multiplayer mode.

I already got 2 sessions. In the first one, I scored 163 while the opponent won with 178. They got only 3 objectives while I got 4. It seems it is easier for the opponent to win the improvement. They got total 9 objects including 3 windmills and I only got 2 barns and 3 workers.

So, I played again. This time, I scored 226 while the opponent got only 207. For that score, I only got 1 Worker as improvement, no barn, no windmills. The opponent got 11 but only 1 Windmill. Both of us got 3 objectives each.

I honestly thought I lost even worse. This experience confirms my previous suspicion. That those improvements might be a trap while you can always get higher score by focusing on the group of flowers. Especially if you also can get the higher objectives related to those flowers.

Playing time was about 80 for 2 sessions. So, it was not really that short even if you only get like 10 rounds. Resolving the opponent cards is easy so most of the time is still about you evaluating a lot of possible tile placement from maybe more than one tile if you have coins.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. As first time playing, I played 2 sessions 2-handed. Someone criticized that while they loved the game, they feel 10 rounds are too short, considering in other tile laying games you get at least 15 and can go over 20 turns like Calico or Cascadia.

So, I thought, as part of learning, maybe it is better to play 2-handed. After the first game, 1st player scored 199 while the 2nd scored 196 which 200 as the maximum score based on the score board. That play took about 50 minutes for running both sides. Maybe I got things wrong with the scoring.

Then I played 2nd game. This time, 1st player scored 179 while 2nd player scored 171. This session took 48 minutes so it was about the same.

What surprised me was that in the 2nd play, I actually tried to get more improvement tiles than in 1st. So, my conclusion is that those improvements might be a trap while you can keep building your score from expanding the same group over 10 rounds. Of course, if because of the weird shape and placement, you end up creating gaps, then maybe you can go even bigger.

But creating them right from the start may not be the best way to score. Unless, maybe, if there is an objective for those improvements. I still assume unless you get the highest, you should still just focus on expanding your field. Which is a shame because those figures are the main draw for players.

For some reasons, the coins and how you should skip tiles don’t happen that much. There are times where you just don’t have the coins or even if you spend a coin, it doesn’t really help. Let’s say the next tile gives you more flowers of that color that you want to score now. However, they may come in different shape and may not fit with your situation. So, you still spend time checking whether you can fit more tile with the current situation, but it may end up just taking the first one. That means, the game can be longer but not in better way.

While I like this kind of tile laying game, I am not sure how much staying power or replay value this game can offer. You always play out the same 10 cards but in random order and you may find the best way to score them. The only thing making different experience between plays is the weird random shape you have to take.

Definitely beautiful and great production. Let’s see if I change my mind after playing it more.

More unboxing pictures of Frosted Blooms on my IG.

Gardlings (2024)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 3 solo sessions using just the basic mode. I got the 20 points trophy after having 17 tiles in my back or about 10 rounds in the 2nd game. Third game, I got 18 tiles or 11 rounds. This means I got Silver Medal for both.

This is one of the nice surprises for me. I bought this game mostly because of the designer. Never had or played any of his games previously until this one and yet a lot of people consider him to be one of the top designers. By the look of it, I was expecting a game more for a kid.

I didn’t know that pulling a tile from a bag randomly could be that exciting. Never played Quacks or something like that before. I got a couple of push your luck games but most of them are cards. None of them really feels like this one.

Sure, you get bust like any other push your luck game. But here, you kind of embrace it. Mostly because, in the basic mode, the penalty is not that bad, especially in later rounds.

Let’s say, you already have 19 gems so you just need one more pull but there are already 4 or 5 gnomes out there. Then you got unlucky and draw the 6th gnome. In that case, you just lose 3 gems. That means, you probably can still buy the 14, the most expensive one. On top of that, you probably have been collecting coins.

So, the reward outweighs the penalty in that case. To me, what makes it even more exciting is when every time you are about to bust, you get lucky. Not only you get not the gnomes but a good tile where you can match at least on 2 sides. That feels like a jackpot.

On top of that, you don’t add more gnome tiles in this game. So, the more tile you add to your bag will definitely dilute it to a better draw for you.

And this is not just a random thing. You buy tile and add them to your bag. While the color and price are similar, the animal and what kind of gems are on either end of the tiles may even help you to get much better result. For example, that Birdie with 3 wilds on one end is definitely one of the most powerful one.

On the other hand, the cat with 3 gems in one spot is definitely the harder one to make it work as you need another cat. Assuming, of course, you get to draw both of them before you get bust. At the same time, more expensive tiles with cats usually have the other spot with 2 gems which can work with other animals. Chances are, when you place the first cat tile, you probably prioritize to match the side with 2 instead of 3.

The placement of each tile itself can be strategic. You don’t just match wherever you can and get the best value at the moment. Instead, you try to make sure that the current placement still open for future placement. Especially with the cheaper tiles that have empty spots. I haven’t gotten to situation where you cannot place anywhere but it is possible. Still, even just matching one spots of those 6 doesn’t feel great either, especially later in a round when you get closer to bust.

In a way, maybe the player with good memory can do better here. You buy tile that can work with previous tiles you bought, even if there is still no guarantee that you will pull them all out. Not to mention, the specific order. I personally don’t feel the need to do that but maybe it is what you need to get the Gold Medal in solo mode.

The good thing is that you buy tile at the end of the round after, ideally, you have pulled out like 90 percent of your bag. You can just dump the rest out if you still have any left. That means, at that point, all tiles are visible and you can buy your next tile accordingly. Maybe not really perfect match but at least if you aim for the 3rd dragon or another cat, that can be a good consideration.

I like the Mushroom because it is easy to get extra gems. For unicorn, I moved them a couple of times but later in a round, they are probably already stuck. I haven’t had a chance to pull or even buy the 3rd dragon. Cats are mostly hard to pull, like I mentioned earlier. You definitely have to bust just to get one more pig to give you extra coin.

For those who love A Gentle Rain or other relaxing tile laying games like Dorfromantik or Beacon Patrol, I can say that Gardlings is a good addition in that genre. What you will be doing after drawing the next tile is just to scan all of the possible placement. Then if you find one, you then evaluate whether that is a good spot or try to find another. The only possible stressful moment is if you are about to bust. And still, more likely than not, with very easy calculation, maybe it is not a big deal to go bust.

I haven’t tried the advanced variant. Maybe that will change the experience a bit since you can affect other players with one of them.

So, my initial impression is that I love Gardlings. Definitely will get more plays while I’m still not sure how many more plays it will get.

Playing time was about 46 minutes from the last session only. A bit faster than the 2nd which was 51 minutes.

More unboxing pictures of Gardlings on my IG.

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs (2024)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another switch to a new character and this time with SILENT KNIFE, back in scenario 6, before jumping to Scenario 9.

From this game, Silent Knife is the first one to use the Invisible condition. While being invisible, the enemy won’t target you at all. You lose the condition after the end of next turn. Maybe better to use it for the long rest right in the middle of enemies but I didn’t use it that way.

She also has a card to get extra damage while being invisible so I used it for that. It had been a while since I played Gloomhaven and I kind of forgot that you can lose a card while using. Without realizing, I played that Backstab card very early.

Some of her attacks also has poisons. At least one side of her card has multiple steps with 2 attacks so the advantage from the other attack can be handy. Also, some attacks on the bottom half of some cards. Turns out, she also have some mind control, even if just to adjacent enemy to move one space. The other new ability that I learned from her is the ability to negate damage so I guess, she can avoid traps. And a bit of ranged attack by throwing knife really makes her a good set of cards.

Overall, I enjoy my play with this much, much better than Mindthief. I think she is strong enough to deal damage and avoid them. In this session, I had to take long rest right next to the enemy, without invisibility. Looking forward to her specific scenario on my next play.

Playing time was about 50 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was 3rd play using Mindthief and this time with Scenario 7 against 2 Sorcerers and Gloomtoad and this was specific scenario for Mindthief.

I have to say, maybe I don’t really like this one as much as Bruiser. While the Mind controlling is interesting but it doesn’t feel good enough to just attack enemies. Technically I probably have lost this scenario, mainly because Mindthief got too much damage. The character itself doesn’t have ranged attack and in this scenario, 2 enemies can hit you from 3 or even 4 spaces away. Regardless, I have decided to play a different class for next play, which is Silent Knife in Scenario 6. Playing time took about 48 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Continuing my play with Mindthief and this time was with Scenario 5, the Button’s Arena. I technically lost the game after had not finished the last enemy before running out of cards.

It seems, Mindthief doesn’t have that many damage or not as much as Bruiser. You probably have to use the mind control aspect to deal damage, not just to move them away. Playing time was about 64 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. This time I decided to try new character and went with the skipped Scenario 4. I chose MINDTHIEF and for the first time ever in playing any Gloomhaven game, I had to play the mind control mechanism.  Still not sure how it works when the mind control part also has negative condition.

February 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Scenario 5 with Bruiser vs the King Button. Got 2 plays since the first one, the camera failed me. Somehow I played the 2nd one with standard difficulty.  This is the first time where the enemies generate and use elements.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 3rd play with Bruiser as he jumped right to Scenario 4, still the same difficulty.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Continuing with Bruiser in Scenario 2 still with Very Easy difficulty.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First play, using Bruiser with the 1st Scenario, Very Easy difficulty. This entry was more about first impression.

More unboxing pictures of this Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs on IG.

Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion (2020)

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Continuing the campaign with Hatchet and Red Guard and this time in Scenario 17, Red Twilight, the last boss of this box. This one requires some preparation where every character needs to be able to move 4 spaces in order to reach the other side of the location. Red Guard has a couple of cards but Hatchet needed the specific Boots.

Other than that, beside the boss himself, there are only 2 types of enemies. One is the Imp which was rather weak in health while the Monstrosity has significantly higher.

Hatchet completed his personal objective as OPENER but failed the one to get less coins. Red Guard became the CLOSER as the one finished the final boss but failed to kill nonadjacent enemy while being adjacent to a different one.

Defeated the boss in the 6th round after entering the final room. One Blood Monstrosity managed to get to the door while Hatchet killed it. Both characters only earned 3 EXP each.

When they went back to the City, there was an event related to Red Guard (#19) which opened a new mission, #22.

Playing time was about 188 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Same campaign with Hatchet and Red Guard on Scenario 16. I probably should have read the special rule for all 3 phases right from the start as they affected which card to let go. Preferably, ranged attack for Phase 1, any card for Phase 2 and more ranged attack for Phase 3.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Same campaign, playing with Hatchet and Red Guard on Scenario 15.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report with Hatchet and Red Guard on Scenario #13.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report with Hatchet and Red Guard on Scenario #11.

Goblin Vaults (2023)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time, I decided to play 2-handed. First player won with 37 points while 2nd player scored only 29.

Maybe not the best way for me to play 2-handed. There were moments that it might be better to swap the warden card but too much for me to think both ways.

Playing time was about 42 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 sessions, both with solo mode. The first one ended unsatisfyingly because I randomly chose the non suit goal. Scored 41 against the opponent’s 24. Then I got 2nd play where I swapped that goal card with other suit. This was probably my best experience with the game.

Scored 54 while the opponent only got 38 using the lowest difficulty. That means, they got 42 for normal and 46 for even the highest difficulty.

This time I did a lot of swapping between the card to bid and the warden’s to help my card as trump suit. I even chose to underbid a couple of times with still 5 gear tokens left. Based on this experience, it seems you really don’t need to worry about drawing from the deck to exchange cards at all. No need to keep track but still try to focus on getting the card to score, denying the opponent. Also, I just realized that you can work on any chamber not just from the leftmost.

Playing time was about 32 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still with solo play, with 3 objectives and 3 suits for them. Scored 45 against the opponent’s 41 on easy difficulty.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another solo session and first time I lost the game in the easy difficulty. It seems including the suit related to 3rd goal made the opponent a bit more challenging.

Also, maybe it’s better to evaluate which goal to pursue and focus on that, instead of trying to get everything. Then again, depending on starting cards and random cards in all places, you may not get the chance to do well for the easier goal.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. Another solo variant with the neutral objective, the Black one and Green one. Failed to score anything with the neutral. Still won the game with Medium difficulty, lost by 1 point in Hard Mode. I made an error with the setup and ended up playing one extra card for everyone.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. First time playing with the solo variant, easy difficulty and the recommended 3 objective cards. My final score was 52 with Glavrun got between 30 to 40, depending on the difficulty.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first time playing so this was more of a first impression than the session report.

More unboxing pictures of Goblin Vaults game here.

Grove: A 9 card Solitaire Game (2021)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got the usual 4 sessions. First one was with Tutti Frutti and Lime Cordial recipe with target score of 65. While I got both recipes, the total was only 64 after one green 3 was on glade.

2nd one with Fruit Punch and Orange Marmalade with 66 as target score. Got  both recipes as well but the total score was only 65. The color with lowest score was orange with 15. 16 for Green and 18 for Yellow.

For 3rd one, the recipes were Lemon Soda and Lime Pickle with 56 as target score. Got the wheelbarrow out for green and 5 yellow dice and the score was 56 just from the dice and wheelbarrow plus 1 and 5. So I won this time.

4th one was not great with Orange Liqueur and Lime Jellyo. Target score was 75. No wheelbarrow, not even a single 10. Got 73 from dice and recipes but lost 3 points for the Squirrel. Not that far, apparently.

Playing time was about 72 minutes for all 4 sessions total.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. It’s been a while since my last play before this one. It seems I had to figure out again how to play well. From 4 sessions, I lost 3. None of them got me a wheelbarrow.

1st session scored 49 with Lemon Curd and Orange Juice with the target of 56. 2nd one was 48 with Fruit Punch and Fruit Salad, with 68 as the target. 3rd one scored 71 but the target was 75 with Orange Jellyo and Limoncello. Last one got 80 with the target of 79 using Tutti Frutti and Orange Liqueur. Even the last one I thought I failed.

Playing time was about 63 minutes for those 4 sessions.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Only played 2 sessions again. 1st one scored 57 with 1 Wheelbarrow, 2 dice with value 10 using Orange Marmalade and Lemon Curd (52 target score). 2nd one scored 77 from target of 73 using Key Lime Pie and Lime Cordial recipes. No Wheelbarrow and only 1 value 10 which got doubled.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got only 2 sessions. One scored 66 from target 54 using Orange Marmalade and Fruit Salad. The other scored only 51 from the target of 57, after got the basket wrong, failing to complete the Fruit Basket recipe. I manage to play all 5 Green completing the Lime Cordial.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 5 sessions after lost in the first 4. Two of the losses were even just 1 or 2 points away. Scored 57 (58) for the first, 59 (70) for the 2nd, 59 (60) for the 3rd, 56 (58) for the 4th and 73 (70) for the 5th.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2 sessions, using the similar set of recipes. First one with Orange Jellyo and Orange Marmalade while the 2nd one used Lime Jellyo and Lime Pickle. Both have the same target score of 57 and I got 46 and 63.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or TikTok. 2 sessions. First one scored 88 from the target 74 (Lime Cordial + Orange Liqueur). 2nd one scored 53 from the target 59 using 2 recipes, Fruit Salad and Lemon Meringue Pie).

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions all failed to reach the target score with 69 (75), 71 (73), 53 (54), 59 (61).

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Played 4 sessions, scored 53, 46, 38 and 66.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 6 sessions, using the same set of 9 cards, ignoring the recipe. Scored 45, 41, 48, 54, 46, 52.

May 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions and this was the Full Session Report. Scored 43 (56), 59 (59), 59 (70) and 48 (55).

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions, scored 56 (61), 65(75), 48 (65), 63 (59).

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions, scored 30 (51), 49 (56), 53 (57), 83 (70).

The Guild of Merchant Explorers (2022)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play using the Avenia map. I think I got 184 points at the end but maybe off about 10 extra points asI may have accidentally added another 10.

I managed to complete the first objective at the end of 2nd round but after the opponent took the higher value. The objective was to discover a village from a region with size 5 or bigger. Then the opponent also took the higher value of 2nd objective where I had to discover 2 towers. Got only 1 at that point but I already completed the 3rd objective to discover 3 ruins on the edge of the maps.

This time, none of the 3 investigator cards were the whip kind of exploration. The first one was just to explore 4 green areas but double the coin value which was very strong apparently. While the other 2 allowed me to move 5 spaces of various terrains. Maybe this is also one of the best session for me with this game.

Playing time was about 69 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with Cnidaria Map with crystals in solo mode. This time I only scored 143. Didn’t get the tower at the top left and the 2nd objective got 0 point. Playing time took about 81 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Played the Kazan Map again. Scored 185, probably the highest so far. That was even after failing to score the first objective to discover ruin A and J. The other 2 got scored early. Playing time was about 58 minutes.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played with Aghon Map as a solo session, scored 165. I got an error again exploring from explored ruins.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Avenia map, solo session scored 155.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Cnidaria Map, solo session, scored 154.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Kazam Map again and solo session. Scored 167 completing all 3 objectives. Forgot about not to start from the tower.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Kazan Map, solo session, failed to complete the first objective, scored 138.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Aghon Map, scored 157.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was with Aghon Map.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG.  Avenia Map, scored 147, solo play.

May 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. Solo play with the Cnidaria Map. Scored only 149.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Cnidaria map, scored 149.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Cnidaria Map, scored 149.

Harmonies (2024)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 solo sessions and this time I finally tried adding the Nature Spirit . Both plays were using the Turtle card where you get 2 points for every water token.

The nature spirit itself only has one cube, using a white one and like other animals, there is a pattern as where to put that cube. However, the scoring might be different. Instead of higher score for more sets of the same pattern, depending on the spirit, either extra score per landscape or extra score per group of landscape. This is additional points while still counting the landscape themselves without animal.

Nature Spirit will occupy your maximum of 4 animals at a time. Like the other animal, you can choose as to when to place the cube and make room for more animal.

In either play, I got less than 130 points but still above 4 suns. I finished only 3 animals in 2nd play but got 4 in the first. Playing time took about 101 minutes for 2 sessions.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 solo sessions, still not playing the nature animal but this time with the water side of the player board. The difference is when playing blue tokens, you are not trying to make the longest line possible but you want to create multiple islands by separating group of spaces using line of water.

The first play only got me 132 points. After realizing that maybe red or buildings should be in the middle, I played again and the 2nd play got me 159. Just missed 1 point to get the 8th sun.

Got 3 islands with one just 1 space. Three buildings, 2 scored mountains plus one that got 0. Got 3 trees and only one of 4 groups of yellows that scored. Finished 7 animals and the hedgehog had one cube left.

Playing time was about 96 minutes for 2 sessions.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 solo sessions with still the basic mode. For the 1st one I scored 149 while 2nd one got only 107. 1st one was because I looked up the next couple of cards to make sure the synergy while I didn’t do much with the 2nd play.

2nd play played to score any buildings at all even though there were 2. Also realized that I couldn’t finish 2 cards because they occupy more land while I was kind of misunderstood and played not optimally. 2nd play ended shorter slightly than 1st. 4 cards were completed in 2nd while 1st play got 6 with 1 remaining. Playing time was about 71 minutes for 2 sessions.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Got 3 solo sessions and the highest score I got was only 110. In the last session, I didn’t make any red or buildings and it didn’t score very well. Also, I noticed that there is a chance to change the situation after completing an animal by making higher stack. Mostly for rocks or mountains for different animals. As long as you don’t put any cubes on the rocks early. I still hate the drafting random tokens. Playing time was about 102 minutes for those sessions.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First 2 plays of this game. One with 2-handed and the other with Solo Variant. The multiplayer got 81 and 68 score with the winner finished almost 3rd card but the loser didn’t finish anything. Also, the loser took 4 animal cards only of 2 colors.

As first impression, I like the game. Maybe even love it. However, in that first play, it feels stuck not getting any Mountain tokens from the bag at all. That losing player also didn’t get the right chance to draw animals of different colors since both already got 4. So, maybe better with more players or at least the market for cards has to be more dynamic.

More unboxing pictures of Harmonies game on IG.

Hibachi: Fired Up! (2025)

This game is about running Japanese Restaurant with hibachi style where the chef cooks right in front of the customers. What makes this stand out is that there is a dexterity element where players throw poker chips to manipulate the market prize and the economic element where you want to sell high and buy low.

Originally the game is called Safranito, which was about Indian Food. Then it became Hibachi. This Fired Up! edition feels like a new version with significant change to the rule of Hibachi. Since I haven’t played the previous edition, I don’t know whether it makes it better or not. I think it does make it more streamlined.

In this game, each player has up to 4 poker chips with a value of 100, 200, 400 and 600. They take turn throwing one of them to the main board which is essentially the cooking area showing 9 bowls of ingredients and 4 spaces of special actions.

The chip has a hole in the middle. If you can see the illustration of the main board through that hole, that means the chip can activate that action. You can throw any chip in any order and it is advised to make them face down. Each player take turns and they can choose to bump the previous chips with theirs.

After all players have thrown their chips, you flip the chips to reveal the value. Then, players take turn activating those chips and the actions to remove them from the board.

This is a race game. The winner is the first to fulfill 3 orders. Each order requires 3 different ingredient cards that you need to get first by activating the chip.

If the chip landed on empty space, that player can choose to get a Chili card. For every 2 chili cards, they become a wild ingredient to fulfill one order. In case you already have too many of them, you can also choose to sell 2 chili cards for double the value of that chip.

For the ingredients, players can choose to buy ingredients or sell them if they already have the ingredient from previous round. The price of the ingredients to buy is determined by the chips that were on the bowl. So, buying right away while there were multiple of them cost more than later. Each player starts with 1,200 yen.

To sell, you can return the corresponding ingredient card for double the total value of the chips on that ingredient. You definitely want to sell right away but maybe there are other chips you want to activate first. So, there was a tough decision there of letting the other players get away with certain actions.

Players can also aim their chips to land on one of 4 special actions. This special actions allow you to get any ingredient, get private order that only they can fulfill, get tips, triple the value of the chip or move the other chip to any space. Of course, maybe you accidentally land them on any of those.

Instead of activating the chip. player can also take the chip to fulfill one order or recipe. They don’t get the action on that board. Every round there are always 3 orders that players can compete on.

The game continues however many rounds until one player has fulfilled 3 orders. if there is a tie, the one with more money wins the tie breaker.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. So, I finally got to play this game again. Instead of 4, I played with 3-handed. With 4 I only throw 3 chips while with 2 or 3, I throw 4 per player.

All 3 players completed their 3rd recipes in the same final round. Although, the 3rd actually had a chance to complete it before but decided to make the game longer. Unfortunately for 3rd player, the 1st player won the tie breaker which is based on the remaining money. First player still had 3,200 yen while 2nd and 3rd got only 1,000 and 2,400 yen respectively.

1st player got a huge amount of tips at the end like 1,800 while 3rd only got about 300. Very mean for 1st to knock that 2nd player’s chip from getting tips to nothing. 2nd player almost got that 1,800 instead of 1st and could have won the game.

While I had more fun with this session than my previous play, I’m afraid that I still come with the same conclusion. By combining the cooking recipe phase as part of the action from pulling out chip, players become less flexible. No chance to sell ingredients. There was a thought to sell chili but then I needed the action to do something else and got the money from other things.

Since ingredients are always available for the most part, then, the game loses one random element compared to the original. That means, the game really relies on the chaos from throwing the chips and players seem to be expected to make those errors. Or just bumping each other.  Like somebody has to make a mess. Otherwise, the most efficient player in throwing chips and getting the right recipe will have more chance to win.

Like I said. I had fun but really need other players with that messing around mind set.

Playing time was about 78 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. This was my first play and my first impression. I thought the game was better with more players so I immediately tried 4-handed. Unfortunately, I already got the rule wrong since you only throw 3 chips per player per round with 4 players. Instead, I threw 4 of them. It took 5 rounds to finish the game with that incorrect rule. Maybe it is longer with less chips per player?

When I saw the playthrough of the original Hibachi, it really looks fun. There is chaotic element of throwing the chips poorly or luckily but also some standard economy management game. I mean it is nice to have something different with dexterity while most of your games in your collection don’t have this. So, I thought maybe I should try this one.

I guess playing this 4 handed is not the same as playing with 4 players. It feels like you want other players to think and aim differently. Maybe also throws chips differently to make it more chaotic. Someone who actively trying to just mess with other players instead of actually reaching the goal. Or maybe someone who do care about the goal and just trying to prevent other players from winning.

From my first play, sometimes the throwing was so easy. Especially if you get a recipe where the ingredients are all close to you, In that case, it can become a bit repetitive. Which is why the chaotic from other players knocking your chips may really spice up the experience.

I don’t think playing with 3 chips per round like the official rule for 4 players is fun. You basically do less in a round. If 2 of them are to get ingredients, then you only have one more just to fulfill. In the first edition, I think they seperate the phase of buying / selling with fulfilling orders. So, you still can get at least one fulfilment but as many trading as the chips.

In my play, one player already had 2 fulfilled orders while the other 3 were still only one. But those 3 had the chance to fulfill 2 in a round but only if they had 4 actions instead of 3. Of course, you can say that they were playing poorly. But then they can tell, that somebody else already got 3 orders and it felt like no point for them to finish the current round. A bit anticlimactic.

There was also a moment where one player managed to throw perfectly on ingredients in a round. But then the other player knocked that player’s chip to gain tips which was crucial to buy the ingredients. That player ended up not doing anything for the whole round and got the last placement.

At least, in that case, you can mitigate it by throwing that chip to make money in the last chance. But still, the knocking could happen right after that. You also want to do it early and maybe a 2nd chance if the first one failed.

So, I thought that this new version actually gives players a lot of chance to gain money. But from my experience, it doesn’t feel like that. Beside tips, to make money you have to sell something. In that game, selling chili happened probably once or twice. Selling ingredients felt like a waste. Mainly, a waste of action if not the ingredient itself.

Even getting the right one is already hard. In the previous edition, if I understand correctly, the ingredients is not always available like this one. But it kind of forced you to get anything available right now and just sell them later. With the scarce aspect, you even have to compete with other players to get them. Then there is also a chance to get one random ingredient out of a number of drawn cards equal to the chip value.

So, maybe in this one, you have to purposefully trying to gather a lot of resources first, whether ingredients and/or money just to avoid getting stuck. Then again, I don’t think the winner really did anything like that.

Somebody said that how you take chips and trigger the action, makes it more like worker placement game.

That was just my first impression of one play. I actually felt like I had fun, except for that one round where you failed to do anything. But somehow, knowing the difference between edition got me to overthink it a bit and somehow made it less exciting. Also not sure that you play with less chips per round. So, I still want to try more to make sure how I feel about this game. Sadly, the dexterity aspect of it and playing it with more players might prevent this to get more play.

More unboxing pictures of Hibachi: Fired Up! on IG.

Horizons of Spirit Island (2022)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr.

 

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First time playing with Lure of the Deep Wilderness spirit from the expansion. This one was fast, got a good offense and I finished the game even during Terror Level 2 against Level 3 Prussia.

This Spirit has 2 Growth options and for each option, there are 2 possible growths to choose one from. Both sides may generate energy. The unique thing about this Spirit is that you cannot place your disc on Coastal Lands. The disc itself will give extra defends against explorers. One of their starting card lets you gather explorers, town, Dahan and the beast tokens to where your disc is. So, a lot of control but slow power.

One of the 2 innate powers can also only attack the inlands and to use the more damaging power, you need to gather green element. One of the growth option can give you one so you can accumulate. While the other Innate power can target one space away from the disc which is useful to target the Coastal. With this innate power, you don’t deal damage or destroy invaders but you get to replace them with the smaller one. Like replace town with 2 explorers or with more element, replace 1 city with 3 explorers.

So, while not generating fear from destroying, it can still help you win or at least give you a lot of control. The downside of these 2 innate powers is that they need different sets of elements. One with moon, air and animal while the other requires fire, plant and animal.

If I remember correctly, in this play, I didn’t get to take new power card as often as I usually do with other Spirits so far. All of their starting cards are incredibly useful so I kept reclaiming and using them again. For some reasons, I did feel short on Energy though, especially when the Blighted island forced me to pay 3 Energy or add more Blight to the island. Not enough to get any Major Power card. Maybe I didn’t even use the last Minor Power card I took.

Got blighted because of the Event that increased the damage from Town. 3 Dahan got destroyed.

I won the game in the 6th round, right after the Fast Power phase and got 2 Fear cards ready. Also, this was first time for me using a Spirit where they generate a lot of beast tokens and I finally understand the use of it with the event.

Playing time took about 108 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time, I decided to just play back with Spirit from Horizons, Devouring Teeth Lurk Underfoot. I still kept cards mixed with the expansion, trying to beat the Prussian Level 3. Somehow I forgot to add a couple of starting tokens from the Jagged Earth but with events and other stuffs.

Somehow I managed to end the game in 4th round, Slow Power Phase. Didn’t even get to Terror Level 3. Even at the end of 3rd round there was only one Town left, no other invaders. Only got 2 power cards, both were Minor powers. I realized that even if I had the chance to pick cards from the expansion, it feels like the cards from Horizons are more obvious.

Honestly, it feels like I got better understanding the game or I got something wrong with the rules. Even then, playing time took about 91 minutes. I was expecting about 60 minutes or less, especially since usually I played like 6 or 7 rounds.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 4th solo play with Jagged Earth. This time with one Spirit still, the Volcano Looming High, against same adversary as before, Level 3 Prussia.

This Spirit is unique in the sense that you can only add presence to Mountain Lands. As part of their Innate abilities, you can choose to destroy a number of your presence discs to deal damage or generate fears, in addition to providing the required elements. The other part of their Innate ability allows you to get back your destroyed disc by having 3 Earth elements.

More over, if the disc got destroyed you then can deal damage to both invaders and Dahan. So, I thought about utilizing this ability but I didn’t realized was that you still have to add Blight token to the land. During my session, it got to a point where I would have lost the game if that happened as there was only 1 more Blight token.

Two growth options generate energy for the Spirit so maybe it’s better to focus on the bottom track. Maybe the top until 2 Energy per turn plus Earth element. The starting cards all have cost, up to 3 even so while generate a lot of energy, the Spirit also exhausts them not long after.

Somehow in this session I took a lot more Major Power than usual. While 2 growth options give you additional cards, I ended up not getting many. Playing time took about 157 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 3rd play with Jagged Earth expansion and this time with one Spirit, Stone’s Unyielding Defiance. Same adversary as before. Finished the game by destroying all cities and got all of the Fear Cards in the same round. Maybe 1 Invader card left.

Compared to the first 2 spirits, this feels more like the Spirits in Horizon box. This generates and heavily use Earth element tokens. One unique thing about this is in order to play more cards, you need to reveal the top track while the bottom only gives you more Earth elements. Almost lost the game because I ran out of Blight tokens.

This one also generates a lot of energy like 6 after removing all tokens from the first track. However, their innate power allows you to spend energy to get additional blight tokens. So it feels short of energy still, especially if you have to rely on Major Power with those energies.

I think I didn’t play their power correctly. Maybe it’s actually better to reveal the bottom track and got more Earth tokens to activate the counter after taking a damage. The thing is that their special rule allows you to not take any blight as long as the blight outnumbered the presence, not even cascading. Combine that also with the card to make Dahan durable from Ravage.

Playing time was about 174 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd play with Jagged Earth expansion and this time with Many Minds Move as One Spirit. Also using Prussia adversary level 3. This took about 3 hours and first time winning the game by getting all of the Fear Cards with 2 Cities left.

This Spirit really needs attacking cards. It seems the Minor Power cards included in the expansion are mostly for the new stuffs. I have decided to combine all power cards for next play, hoping to get something better. This one also struggles a lot with generating Energy so even if you get Major Power, you will have trouble paying the cost.

It seems going to top row for more energy is better than going at the bottom to get stuck playing at most 3 cards. I also need to utilize moving and adding Beast tokens more.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing with the Jagged Earth expansion content so this was more about first impression about jumping from Horizons straight to this one.

Played with the Shifting Memory Spirit, including the Blight, Event, new tokens, and Level 3 Russia Adversary. Still got a lot to learn from the new mechanisms but so far it is manageable.

More unboxing pictures of Spirit Island: Jagged Earth expansion on IG.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played with single spirit, Fathomless Mud of the Swamp, using standard drafting and the slightly harder variant.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was with single spirit, the Devouring Teeth Lurking Underfoot, using the drafting standard game and the slightly harder variant. Won the game at the end of 7th Round.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or on TikTok. 2 Spirits, Sun Bright and The Eyes, with drafting and more difficult variant. Still got it wrong with some power’s target location.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single Spirit, Sun-Bright Whirlwind, using the drafting and the more difficult setting. I won but incorrectly with the Powerstorm card. I have to try again.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single Spirit, Sun-Bright Whirlwind, using the Power progression card and the more difficult setting.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single Spirit play as Eyes Watch from the Trees, using the Power Progression card, and the more difficult setting.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report. Single Spirit play as Eyes Watch from the Trees. 2 sessions, one with Normal and the 2nd with the more difficult setting.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report with 2 Spirits, the Rising Heat and the Sun Bright Whirlwind.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report. Playing with 2 Spirits, Rising Heat and Fathomless Mud, standard difficulty and Progression card. Made a mistake with only single Stage 1 Invader card.

May 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first time playing the game after the learning session. A Full session report playing 2 Spirits, with the Devouring Teeth and Eyes Watch from the Tree, using the Progression card and the normal difficulty.

Here are more unboxing pictures for Horizons of Spirit Island on IG.

Hunted: North Pole (2021)

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok, Playing time was about 38 minutes.

Back with solo again as Clarence. There was nothing special happened. Got Wynonna and Suzie to help beat Jack Frost. Also already had the Sword Cane and Maple Syrup. Jack Frost was defeated in one round.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Back with playing as Becky. Reached Jack Frost with 4 times left. Got a Candy Sword thanks to Wynonna and with the help from Suzie, beat Jack Frost on 1st attempt.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Cancelled my plan to try the cooperative mode of this game. There were some rules that are not clear to me. It takes a lot of table space and basically playing two games side by side if you do solo.

So, back with playing as Becky. Nothing special compared to previous. Just somehow, the d4 rolls were not as annoying as usual. The card draw was still though.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. First time playing as Clarence. Apparently he is the easier character with an ability to just get weapon from the row.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Only one session still using Becky. This was one probably the best and most enjoyable session so far. Got a good order of cards even if I didn’t get any weapon. I still kind of cheating a bit since I had very low chance to win unless I got weapon or new elf. Got the item to get an elf but I was not supposed to get that if I drew the next 3 cards without cheating.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2 sessions using Becky. First one ended badly still stuck on 2nd Map. 2nd session was very fast thanks to bonus movement from Events twice.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. First time playing the game with 2 sessions. Played as Becky, got 3 elves from those 2 but no weapon. Reached and beat Jack Frost with a lot of cheating.

Here is more unboxing picture of Hunted: North Pole game on IG.

IKI (2015)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still playing 2-handed again with my own variant. This time, the 3rd player’s decision was done by the controlling player each round, in the order according to fire track.

In the end, first player scored only 86. 20 of them were from building Well and maximum level on fire track. Failed to get the last type of character which was the Red. They also only bought one fish and only one tobacco pouch.

2nd player, the winner with 118, got 26 from building the Kabuki Theater during the new year. They got all character types, also only 1 fish and a couple of tobacco pouches. The neutral player only got their fire on level 6.

Playing time took about 111 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played 2-handed with my own variant where the 3rd player stays longer not just placing character. This was definitely better than the official variant for 2 players. I think for my next play, I will try that each player fully controls the 3rd on their round, for all actions. Not using the blocking tile.

One player managed to make 2 buildings but still lost, 84 against 90. The winner somehow got a lot of orange characters.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Using the fan made solo variant. I won with over 70 points while the opponent got less.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or TikTok. This was my first attempt to house rule the official 2-player variant where the neutral player also uses their pawns for movement and store placement. As first impression, it was better but need more thoughts on some details.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Another play of solo fan made variant. Scored only 89 while the opponent got 101, hopefully correctly played. The opponent got 6 points from Harmony twice, at least.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo Fan-made variant. I won but I run the opponent incorrectly by always placing their movement on 1 to 4 spaces after I blocked the necessary minimum movement. The opponent should have more chance to pick the lower option and spend their sandals and hire more characters.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report using the fan made solo variant. Scored 86 to opponent’s 89.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With Fan made solo variant. Scored 112 vs opponent’s 122.

The Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw (2022)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. The usual solo play with giving 3 points per lesson to the opponent as the Advanced Solo lesson. So, I cannot take too many unless I can score at least that value.

I would also be giving the opponent 2 points per cat from my largest family so I had to grow 2 families not just focus on one. Then 5 points per color that doesn’t touch the edge of the board. So, any color I didn’t have at all is giving them 5 points. From those 3, the highest scoring one scores twice as the final regular lesson.

Right from the start, I picked a Blue cat, some treasures and lesson number 6 which was 2 points per visible rats. So, if I didn’t cover at all, I effectively gain 1 point. But that means, I had to lose points from not filling the room.

First cat color was purple, followed by green. I got a chance to pick a Red, another treasure and lesson number 12, which gives me 7 if I have exactly 4 families. Then 3rd color was yellow, so I was lucky to pick the best 2 colors first. But I had to pick yellow anyway.

I had to stick with the 4th column again since they gave me 2 rare treasures and lesson number 19. Get 10 points if I have exactly 16 cats. Then the 4th one was Red and there was a column with 2 blue and one onyx. The 2 blue cats started the blue family and I used the first of one-time abilities to draw the onyx twice as red.

Three rounds left. I chose to use the 2nd ability to pick one more card from different column. There was one with 2 cats, a red and a blue while the chosen column got me 4th blue cat, first yellow and the Onyx as 2nd yellow. Got 11 cats at this point.

Two rounds left and I had no choice but to pick the 4th column again. No lesson but 1 Onyx and a Blue. Unfortunately, since I stretched the placement, cutting the boat in top and bottom half by treasures and the blue family was already out of space at the bottom. So, I decided to start a new Blue family with that Onyx. at the middle top.

Final round, using the ability to pick a card per row, I got 2 more cats, a blue and a yellow plus rare treasure. So, I managed to create a 2nd blue family, first time ever in playing this game with Yellow also as family. Unfortunately, not enough to get 16 cats so that lesson was 0. The other 2 got me 29 with 11 visible rats and 4 exact families.

Final score was 62 for me and the opponent got 64. I don’t know what else I could have done to beat them. I even managed to get only 2 not full room, including the middle.

Playing time was about 60 minutes.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Same as usual, solo play with 1 extra advanced solo lesson. Final score was 83 for me, 52 from 7 lessons and the rest were from 3 families and penalties. Got the lesson to score 1 per lesson and 2 per visible rat really helped. At the end, the boat still had 10 rats.

The opponent scored 70, with 32 from 4 lessons and the rest were from cats. This was a very lucky session for me. I didn’t need to use the one-time ability to pick card one per row until the final round since there was always a good column.

Playing time took about 60 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Still solo play with 1 extra advanced solo lesson. Scored 73 while the opponent only got 42. 0 points for them since I had no lonely cat and 0 points since I had exactly 9 treasures. I realized that in order to get exactly 6 regular treasures, involving those from treasure cards, you probably need to use the double treasure ability. While they scored again from the biggest family, it was the lowest value for them and they only got total of 12.

Playing time was about 62 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still solo play with 1 extra advanced solo lesson. Scored 63 vs 54. Got a lesson that gives me points for having visible rats so that helped. 35 of those points were from 3 lessons, 20 of them from those rats. Got 4 families with either only 3 or 4 members.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another solo session with 1 extra advanced solo lesson. Scored 48 to opponent’s 27 where they failed to score any of the lessons.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still with the same solo setting with 1 extra advanced lesson. Scored only 62 while the opponent got 80. If I ignore that extra lesson, the opponent loses 14 so they still won with 66 but closer to my score.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session still with the same 1 extra lesson. Scored 56 while the opponent only got 48.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo session still with 1 extra advanced solo lesson. Scored only 43 against opponent’s 45 with only 3 basic lesson or 65 with the 1 advanced.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Still with 1 extra advanced Solo Lesson. Scored only 67 to Sister’s 75.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo play. Scored 63 for me and the Sister got 70 using 1 Advanced Solo Lesson or 61 for just 3 solo lessons.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo play with 1 extra advanced solo lesson. Scored 60 vs the opponent’s 66.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo play with 1 extra advanced solo lesson. Scored 86 vs 85 for the opponent.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report for Solo Play using 1 extra Advanced Solo lesson. Scored 47 vs 35 for Sister.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. Solo Play with the easiest difficulty. Scored 52 to Sister’s 48.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored 61 to opponent’s 37 with just 3 standard solo lessons.

Isle of Trains: All Aboard (2023)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. The next solo campaign with Chapter 6.

Before that, I previously mentioned about delivering passenger. Apparently, while the rulebook states an action to deliver one passenger, but there is a follow up rule where you can also deliver multiple of them. So, I was not wrong after all.

I realized this after my first session of this chapter where I got nowhere close to the target. In this chapter, to win, I need to complete both primary and secondary contract of 3 locations, including one from the additional Research Station. First one was a failure that I only completed one primary contract.

Also, somehow, I didn’t load as many passengers like usual. As a result, I didn’t get a lot of VP that I could use to return cards at the end.

So, I tried again immediately and this time, I only got so far to getting the primary contract of 3rd location. I finished Alpine Lodge and Devon City. My mistake was that I built Caboose 5 that discounts the cost of additional car afterwards. On the other hand, the other Caboose, #3 where you can load cargo of 1 type, just one item was very helpful so I don’t trigger drawing more cards. I think there is another Caboose that I could use. The Caboose 7 let you deliver a passenger as if they are part of the Cargo required. Although, I didn’t have any of them on board either by the end of the game.

Playing time took almost an hour for that 2nd session.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Continuing with the solo play and Chapter 5.

I just realized that I have been making an error with this game, including all of my previous plays. The mistake was about delivering passengers where you only deliver one not all even if they are going to the same destination. This is different than delivering cargo. I thought about why not altogether but then I realized just because they were going to the same place it doesn’t mean at the same time. So, I guess I have been making the game slightly easier, depending on the bonus.

Particularly for this chapter, I had to complete 5 tickets which means I have to focus on train cars that give me extra passengers. So, I had to also start looking at Caboose. Some of them helps deliver one extra passengers to different destination. I also realized that you might want to get Hooper as well because loading Coal gives you extra action with drawing less cards.

Didn’t build any building at all and at some point I got VP tokens worth over 30 VP that I had to spend most of them to return cards. In the end, I still got 18 VP from those tokens but I only got total score about 40, got 5 tickets though. Also getting 5 x 3 passengers means you use all of the passenger tokens probably. Well, it doesn’t matter that I won since it was incorrect. Maybe I just continue with the campaign.

Playing time was about 60 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Continuing with solo play and this time with CHAPTER 4: SHOW TIME! scenario. The objective for this one is to have 13 train cars. After a couple of turns, I realized that I had to rely on all of the Level 1 Coach cars since they have no load and I threw them away. That was also not enough and you have to build other type of cars but with level 1 so with one load per car.

I beat it but with a bit of cheating by swapping cards at the end with those Level 1 Coaches I already discarded. Also, that Caboose to discount the cost to build was very helpful as well. I even managed to build 1 building.

Playing time was about 68 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 1st attempt with the Chapter 3 solo scenario where you have to score 60. I got over 70, completing both contracts from Devon City.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 1st attempt with the 2nd solo scenario. Either I lost but close or I won.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 3rd try with the first solo scenario and hopefully a success.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd try with the first solo scenario. Failed and only got to primary contract of the 2nd city.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or on TikTok.  First time playing with Scenario Solo, Chapter 1. Failed, only completed both contracts for one of them.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report. Solo play using the Challenge Mode, scored 60 points.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo session back without the scenario. Made mistake with triggering Load Bonus.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing with the solo variant. 3 sessions without Scenario.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first play with 2-player as learning game.

More pictures for the unboxing on IG.

Juicy Fruits (2021)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play against Full Fruit. Final score was 97 for me againts 104 for them. I triggered the end of the game in round 23 while Full Fruit almost got one more boat to score.

It felt like the opponent got to pull the boat a lot by being on the right side of the inner circle bonus action. I got the green ice cream cart making all of the green ice creams and smoothies plus the alligator big square tile. Unfortunately, it was not enough.

Playing time took about 43 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Still the same, solo mode against Full Fruit. Got 25 turns. Scored 128 while the opponent got 114. Got score from Blue Ice Cream but not the Milkshake and the Villa. Playing time was about 47 minutes.

January 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session again against Full Fruit. Got 27 turns and after some errors, I could have won by about 3 points with 113 while the opponent scored 110. Accidentally skipped one turn for FF.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still solo session against Full Fruit. Won this time but of course with Ice Cream strategy. Scored 96 to opponent’s 90, triggering the end game myself.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo session against Full Fruit again. Made some error, scored only 86, tied to the opponent but the game should have continued. I had enough time had I gone with the ice cream.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions against the FULL FRUIT.

April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session repot of solo play against the Fit Fruit. Scored only 80 while the opponent got 119.

Keep the Heroes Out! (2022)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First time playing scenario 8 The Mermaid Lounge. In this one, the Mermaid is performing in the Sewer room of the dungeon and they attract both Monsters and Heroes. So, while the treasure is still in the Sewer room, you draw more cards at the start of your turn but you also have to resolve one more Guild card during Heroes invasion.

When you draw the Mermaid event card, you also get to draw one card but you have to resolve one Guild card. If the treasure of that Sewer room is taken, you then draw 4 cards at the start of your turn instead of 5 but no longer need to resolve additional guild card. However, if the event happens after the treasure was already gone, you have to resolve two guild cards.

After evaluating my plays, it seems it is better to let that treasure taken as soon as possible. Considering there is a chance that you may throw that event card to jail anyway. On top of that, there is one type of room where both rooms are next to each other and right beside the Vault. Reinspiring can happen from those directions.

So, I got 2 plays and in both I was playing with just the Poltergeist. First, I played with the normal mode where I have to resolve 2 guild cards during 1st phase and then 3 in 2nd phase. But that’s the general rule. In this scenario, I have to resolve 3 and 4 respectively.

For some reason, the threat from the sewer direction was never a problem  while the other 2 directions got overwhelmed more often. In my first play, I already lost even before entering the 2nd phase.

I thought maybe this is too hard and I decided to play again but with easy difficulty. Then I forgot that I was supposed to resolve additional card. So, in the 2nd play, in earlier rounds where I resolved mostly just 1 card, the deck building aspect runs smoothly and like every hero was dealt completely.

Eventually it feels too long. I’m talking about if I actually play this way in other scenarios instead of with additional card to resolve, resolving just one card is horribly long.

Then, after realizing my error, I decided to go back and continue with correct rule and resolve additional cards. That happened before 1st phase. That was the point that the increase of difficulty felt very significant. From when I got everything under control to get overwhelmed like within one or two rounds later.

This means I still can lose in very high rate with this easy difficulty and all extra advantages that I had accidentally given to myself.

Honestly, this kind of ruins my appreciation with this game. You may say that I played poorly without proper plan. Sure. But with the easy difficulty? Really? I even thought maybe I didn’t play the Poltergeist correctly but after checking the forum, no, I was right. Even the designer says that Poltergeist should be treated as support character.

So, because of this experience, I don’t know how to proceed with this game further. Not even sure about trying all of the different factions. Should I actually play with more than one or stick with true solo or what? I started playing with multiple factions and then decided maybe better to play single faction but it doesn’t seem to be the best way either.

I think I eventually will come back to this game again but who knows when.

Playing time of the 2nd play was about 82 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 2nd play with just 1 clan and this time with the Slime in Scenario 6, the Wolf again.

Well, I got lucky a couple of times when choosing where the Wolf was. Even in the last one I already got bones all over the places so it was not a challenge. I have to say, being a defensive clan is still not as fun as the other clans. So, my experience with just 1 clan is still similar to playing with 2.

In the last round, one guild card left and I knew it was the Wizard. I thought by throwing him into jail, I could survive. I was wrong. So, with just limited cards because of the defensive nature, I managed to survive by letting the guild card played as regular attack. Only 2 heroes managed to get to the Vault with 3 were left behind opening the chest in the library.

Playing time was about 104 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. For the first time I played with just 1 Clan and I chose the Dragon. Initially I planned on playing the easier difficulty but chose the standard instead and I think I made the right choice. Back with Scenario 7.

Got 2 sessions but the first one I forgot about reactivating Rogue when they showed up in the Dungeon. So, I played again and won. I guess Dragon was just too powerful. Like every turn, they just removed almost every Hero in the Dungeon. I think I prefer playing single clan over 2. The deck building is much more impactful and satisfying since you have more turns so more chance to play that card.

Playing single clan is definitely shorter than 2-handed. I think I will continue playing this game with just single clan for now. Playing time was about 64 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. First time with Scenario 7 which is about the Rogue. In this one, everytime the Rogue enters the dungeon even from jail action, they activate all Rogues in the dungeon, including inspiring the other heroes. It makes throwing heroes to jail riskier and you want to beat rogue as fast as possible. On the other hand, the event itself will remove any treasure beside the last one with Rogue in the same room. However, if there is no rogue then they will throw 2 heroes to jail which can be Rogues or Mages.

I somehow played with the Skeleton and the Gnoll which both start at the same type of rooms. While the Skeleton managed to turn those heroes in Vault into other skeletons, getting additional beast was hard. Those heroes always managed to wipe any character from Prison to Vault. I think I only managed to play beast cards starting from the 2nd phase.

Technically I already lost a couple of times after cheating. Even the last draw was almost a fail. While figuring out a way to survive is still interesting but not sure it’s fun to keep getting wiped out like that. This made me rethink whether I like this game or not. Maybe I should just play the easier variant to make it more enjoyable. Playing time was about 99 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time with Scenario 6, the Werewolf and back with Imp and Witch.

Forgot to randomize the event last time and to deal damage from Archer after the treasure triggered the jail action. Maybe I forgot more about the 2nd hit to Witch a couple of times, even though they do have defense cards.

More enjoyable scenario than the library but still challenging. Actually I cheated once and reshuffled the guild deck after I knew that next one would have instantly made me lose the game.

January 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Retried the Scenario 5 with Librarian but this time with Ratkin and Poltergeist. Got the room wrong between Eye and Bone. This scenario was tough still. Technically already lost a couple of times.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing with Scenario 5, playing with Lizardfolk and Ratkin. A bit unsatisfying scenario for being unable to make portal. Finally understand how to resolve the 2 heroes of one Guild Card.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was also a Full Session Report, playing as Red Dragon and Slime in the Scenario 4, the BullFrog King using normal difficulty, first time with this scenario.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was a full session report playing as Witch and Imp clans with normal difficulty. I probably made it harder by not using health for the Witch.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Played with scenario 3, using Gnoll and Poltergeist. Still one error of pushing the hero one step more when they should have ended. Forgot about discarding a card to reset the loot.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2nd Scenario and easiest difficulty using Ratkin and Lizardfolk. Still one error resolving the Hero Invasion phase.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2nd Scenario using Red Dragon and the Skeleton with the lowest difficulty.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First play, 2 sessions. One with 2 characters, the Slime and the Poltergeist, using the normal difficulty. 2nd play with just single character, the Imp with the easiest difficulty.

For more pictures of the unboxing on IG.

Keyside (2025)

This is one of the “Key” game series from Richard Breese, after Keyflower, Keyflow and other titles. It seems all of his games are well received but usually they are only available through crowdfunding so not accessible for me. This one is no different but unlike their previous games, this one has solo mode. I noticed that they are sending copies to backers in the same country as me so I decided to give this one a chance.

The box is quite heavy because most of the components are cardboards, no card or wooden pieces. They even give you an insert for those tokens. After punching out those cardboards, construct the boats, the box is already full. So, that gave me the impression that this was going to be a heavy Euro game.

So what is this game about? Even I had a hard time understanding it. Only after I finished the first session, I got a better idea. Not only that. The overwhelming feeling I got initially, got reduced by half. Right now, in my opinion, this is closer to mid weight Euro game instead of heavy. It’s just everything is a bit obscure.

In Keyside, you are running a business, managing up to 18 workers on this small island with 12 harbors. The goal is to score the highest VP from various scoring options after 3 rounds.

You want to put your workers in certain position or location on that island so when any player activate that location, you also gain the benefit.

The main actions are on those 12 harbors, along with modular end game scoring. From actions to generate various resources to actions for spending them, actions to move workers and actions to activate the inner side of the island.

At the start of each round, every player will get 6 dice, one of each color and each value. Players then take turns using one of these to move the boat from one location to another. You can only move the boat with sailor of the matching color and the value determines how far the boat can move from one harbor to another in either direction. The sailor then landed on the harbor and that player can move one of their worker to that harbor.

Choosing a color also allows you to move up in the corresponding track on your player board. Each track has 4 levels and each level has its own one time benefit.

Yellow track is related to wheat and building cottage or houses. Gren track for getting livestock or move them to farm. Red track is to generate more workers in town and move them. Blue is to get fish and skill tokens. Purple is to get gems and Orange to generate either Wood or Stone.

At the top of each track, player can build up to one building with the same color. Usually this becomes a VP or another way to score with the related resources. You can never replace a building but there is one time upgrade just to get better ratio of scoring.

After choosing a color dice and move the boat, to land the sailor, the other players can choose to follow by placing additional dice and move their worker to that same harbor. The reason to follow is to gain access to the action of that harbor. You cannot move other boats and sailors to that harbor again. So, either you follow now or never. This is just mainly for 1st round. In subsequent rounds, maybe you still have workers there so you don’t need to follow again and use the other dice to move to other harbor. Unless nobody else is moving the sailor and boat there in those rounds.

The other reason to follow is to run out the dice faster. If on your turn, you run out of dice to move the boat, you begin activating any harbor with a sailor and your worker. It is possible that the other players are not done placing their dice. While they need to continue until they use all of them, you can keep taking turns activating the other harbor.

So, this is one of the main interaction between players in the game. Let’s say you get to activate some harbors, maybe the one to move livestock from your board to any farm on the island. You and 2 other players have workers on that harbor. But only you are the one with livestock while the other 2 players were planning to get them first from other harbor. You then activate your harbor, move your sheep or cow or pigs while your opponents lost their chance.

The downside of following and get a chance to activate harbors first is that you lose a chance to move up on associated track. There is a chance you end the game without moving up on a track because you keep following for that color. But there are other ways to move up your position on track, like the yellow track, using skill tokens or activating one of the market.

I mentioned earlier that each harbor also has modular scoring tile. This can be score points for every set of animals, or for every leftover wood / stone/ wheat. Score points for every buildings or headlands and many other. You only get the score at the end of the game, multiplied by the number of your workers in that harbor. Depending on player count each harbor can only have a number of workers there but one player can use all of the capacity.

Remember that those tiles only score at the end of the game. If you move your workers there, you have less flexibility throughout the game to activate actions on other places.

So, what other places you can move your worker to? There are a couple of farm hexes. Each hex can give you one resource if you send your animal there. However, any player can claim that farm by sending a worker and only one worker can take that farm. At the end of the game, any animal on that farm belongs to that owner of the worker. It is possible that the player moves that worker before the end and leave the farm stay vacant. Any player then can take them.

There are also several markets, mostly to trade resources. Any player can place their one worker on each market. To activate the market, in addition for having worker on that specific market, either activate one of the harbor for it or move up on the blue track.

One market allows you to trade one pig for 2 fishes. There are others to trade wheat, or gems or to spend some resources to do more actions. Here is another point of player interaction. For markets to trade, after any player activate that space, you flip that market tile. This will change the exchange rate between the two objects. So with the example above, the market is now 1 fish for 2 pigs. You can also choose to flip those kinds of market first by spending a Fish. So, this is why having fish is important.

Having a worker in a market with certain colors of those tracks also allows you to take one of the associated skill tokens still available. Each track has 3, with value 5, 3 and then 1 VP. So, you might want to get your workers there first and activate that action to take the token. You can choose to keep the token for its VP value or you can discard them to move on the corresponding track one level. This encourages you to have multiple tokens of one track so you can spend the lower value one.

There are still some details but that should be enough to give you the basic idea of Keyside game.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was my 3rd time for the game and 2nd time for the solo mode. The 3 objectives were to have 3 adjacent headlands, retain 4 skill tokens with the same value and get 12 point multiplier in 2 harbours. Honestly I was not sure about the last one but I think I managed to get the other 2.

Unfortunately, I scored only 106 from the minimum of 120 to win. Actually, I was expecting even lower score. Honestly, I cannot say that I enjoyed this play. Like I spent a lot of time just trying to get those 4 skill tokens. Should have aimed for the value 3 right from the start instead. Busy moving workers to market just to trigger the skill token action. Well, I did trade gem into 3 stones from the purple market.

Getting 3 headlands adjacent to each other was easy, just needed to make sure I got the resources. I probably should have built the 3 for scoring. Got 4 buildings but mostly because I reached the top of 4 tracks. One of them scored 0 even. Got score from 7 scoring tiles.

Playing time was about 103 minutes. I think I will go back to playing with 2 players.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First time playing with the solo mode and I already know where I got it wrong. Apparently, you are supposed to use 3rd keyple colors for the Pirates. This way, the main opponent’s keyples are mainly to block harbors.

Beside that incorrect part, running the solo opponent is not that bad. However, it is different from the regular mode and affect how you play to, I guess, a small degree. When the opponent have to choose harbor to occupy, they don’t need sailor like normal player and solo player can just follow placing the dice with normal rule.

However, when resolving harbor actions, the opponent can resolve what the human player can do in normal game, harbor with your keyples and a sailor. Or, alternatively, they can also resolve harbors with their keyples and just their dice. In that latter case, the solo player cannot resolve that on their turn but can still get benefit assuming you have your own keyple on that harbor.

This leads into 2 things. One, you will run out of space to resolve first while the opponent still have multiple harbors. Then 2, you will use this chance to either get 2 resources of the same type or advancing in any track. These 2 are significantly different from when I tried 2-handed.

So, it is almost its own game which is different from normal mode. That means, you probably cannot use the solo mode as learning to play the multiplayer mode. In order to win the solo mode, you also get some objectives to complete, in addition to scoring at least 120. In every session, you have a set of 3 objectives. For normal difficulty, you need to complete at least 2 or for harder, 3.

In my recent play, I managed to score 132, completing 2 of 3 objectives. Got 9 or more jewels and built 2 of 3 headlands A, B or C. The one that I failed was to score over 35 from harbor 8 and 9. I only scored about 24. One harbor was filled by the opponent’s keyples and I couldn’t add more.

I don’t think the error that I made actually lowered my score or giving me some advantage, even though maybe almost. I thought by playing with these objectives, it can help players shape their overall strategy or focus. Definitely will try again and see if with correct play, it changes my experience.

Playing time was about 138 minutes. Still a lot of checking the rules so maybe that is why it took that long.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 learning sessions with 2-handed. First one scored 79 and 65 while the 2nd one scored 97 and 85. So, I definitely got better with the game. I haven’t tried the solo mode yet but from what I read you need to score 120 points while fulfilling at least 2 out of 3 objectives.

This requirement is similar to Spectacular. But it seems the solo mode requires playing 2 colors as opponent which is why I was hesitate to try them out right away before the basic game. No solo playthrough as well at the moment unfortunately.

As my first impression, I actually love the idea of this game. In fact, maybe I’ve been looking for a game like this. A game where you populate a city with citizens and you can kind of see they move from one place to another as if like a real city. Other games with worker placement mechanism, you just place worker and then the game tells you to remove it later which feels mechanical.

As for the gameplay itself, I mentioned earlier that it doesn’t feel like a heavy game like what I thought initially. Using BGG complexity rating, maybe about lower than 3.5 out of 5. Closer to midweight. Maybe a game like Coimbra is a good comparison.

Like I also said, the problem is just everything is obscure. Unlike other games, here the actions are on the main board, on each of those harbor tiles. And those tiles are modular. You can place them randomly. As a result, first time player might get overwhelmed because they don’t know where things are.

This is still a resource management game. So hopefully a good suggestion from me is to think like other games. You first need to find an action to generate the resources and depending on the goal find a way to convert them into points.

The rulebook even has recommendation for first time playing where you get to take one building right away and place your worker on the associated harbor for the related scoring. That is how I played the 2nd session. Just focus on that and try to generate resources related to that one how to convert them into points.

This is still a point salad game but unlike the Castles of Burgundy, it is not clear of what to do. In Burgundy, at least you get an idea to fill up your board with hexes. Maybe you soon learn that you need to fill the same type as soon as possible because the player board gives you that idea. Keyside doesn’t have anything like that. In standard game, you don’t have building right away. The moment you build your first one, you have to choose one of 24 options to evaluate which to build your plan on.

On top of that, the game feels fluid in terms of your progression, Where you place the worker determines your access to action or scoring. You may place them now but then the game will force you to maybe move it somewhere else. In that case, you then kind of lose that part of progression. Nothing is set in stone yet.

Does it sound like a heavy game because a lot to think about? Maybe but I said not as heavy as you might initially think. Definitely not a light game as well. I’m sure with more play, become more familiar with the standard 12 actions of the harbor, you can eventually get your plan going faster. There are not that many variety afterwards.

In fact, this is probably one negative points of this game. While the game has a lot of setup variables, apparently you use like 85 or 90 percent of the components in one play. For some variables the only different from game to game is their position. For some components you use the other side for different player count and some others you flip them in every game.

Building are always those 24. The only part that I haven’t tried is the other side of 12 scoring tiles. That would be the only thing to differentiate after a couple of plays.

I guess different position is meant to challenge you to spend more movement on your workers to reach different places. Even that it doesn’t seem to be that different. Although maybe in the 2nd game, either I forgot the 3 spaces movement limit or I just got lucky to move everything within reach. I feel like there is not much chance to also move your workers other than to use the action at that moment. In my opinion, moving for end game scoring has to be done early and you just forget about it while keep working on it.

If anything the different position can make things more obscure. You may forget that that thing is there on that opposite side of where you sit.

There are some potential combo that can happen but you need to get those skill tokens. Especially maybe the yellow to move up the other track.

So, that is my initial impression of Keyside. As mentioned earlier, I like the game and the idea of the game but maybe it is not perfect. Maybe I’ll change my mind with more play and I still need to try the solo mode.

More unboxing pictures of Keyside on my IG.

Kimono Memories (2024)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 sessions, one with solo and the other 2-handed. The solo play took 22 minutes. I won on all 4 tracks except for the last one. The opponent got more cats while I only got one.

Not really a satisfying play which is why I played again with 2-handed. Throughout the game, I thought the winner would be the 1st player. Apparently, 1st scored 33 while 2nd player got 39.

First player even got one card at 4th level. They won Blue and Pink tracks but got only one cat and one property. Second player won 2 tracks as well, the purple and Green leaving the yellow in neutral. This one took the rest of the property cards but got 2nd cat. Even from properties, they scored at most 2 items or 2 sets which apparently was enough to win.

The 2 cards not in the deck were both blue and the last 2 cards were both green. None of the bonus helped any player to gain more wins on subsequent tracks. 1st got lucky that nobody took the yellow so by winning last track, they still got bonus. Unfortunately, not enough to win.

Playing time was about 33 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Playing time was about 32 minutes for a 2-handed session. 2nd player won with 38 while 1st player only got 31. Both only won 1 track. 1st actually had a chance for one extra card from winning one more track. However, their previous winning didn’t help them change the position of following track. So, 2nd player managed to put one of their winning to neutral position with the card they took.

1st player also took 1 property card, the flower while not having any kimono card with that property. On the other hand, letting 2nd player took it would have given 2nd player even higher score. So, 2nd player really did well, even if, none of them really prepared for taking advantage of the last 4 cards.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was 2-handed again. 2nd player won after dominating all tracks and scored 61 while 1st only scored 46. 1st player got 4 cats and 3 property cards. Playing time was about 37 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 2 sessions with 2-handed, with the full game or expert mode.

First one scored 57 vs 33 with the winning player won the first 3 tracks and the bonus got them to win also the last track. That alone was 25 points so the rest was slightly lower than the opponents. It seems really focusing on the lower tracks were crucial to win.

2nd play was closer, 40 vs 38. The winner won 2 tracks while the loser only got 1 so the rest were tied. Based on those 2 sessions, I had to say, while this is an easy game to play, the expert mode could be very tricky and intense between the 2 players. Both just need to know how that scoring works. On the other hand, maybe beside competing on the lower track, there is not much different approach.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first time playing the game. Got 3 sessions, one with 2-handed and the other 2 with solo variant. This was kind of first impression entry. Apparently, I misunderstood how they differentiate between the basic and expert mode.

More unboxing pictures of Kimono Memories game on Instagram.

Kinfire Delve: Vainglory’s Grotto (2023)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back playing against Vainglory’s Grotto and this time with 2 characters, Asha and Feyn, the bard from 2nd box. I didn’t realize that the session ended that fast with only 3 exhaust cards. The 3rd exhaust card happened during the boss fight.

However, it seems I made an error. Apparently, one of the Gauntlet will punish you if you discard some challenges by 2 damage and I removed 2 using Asha’s lantern. Another Gauntlet also dealt 1 damage per discarded challenge but luckily, that one was defeated within 1 turn with that lantern. I think it is still possible that I actually survived but with 1 hit left.

Playing time was about 49 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. So, I bought the 2nd standalone box of this series, the Scorn’s Stockade and I decided to combine the entry into a single game instead of separating them.

I played this once with 2 characters. Playing time took about 102 minutes. Didn’t realize it took that long.

In this one you also get 2 characters as well, Naz and Feyn along with Scorn as the Final Boss and a set of Well cards to go through. As my initial impression, I think this box, overall, the puzzle is stronger than the first box. There are a couple of enemies where you want to hit them with exact value. If you hit more, then they become attached to the final boss.

Naz has the ability right from the start to move this progress tokens. She even has a card to redistribute them which was super helpful. This is also true against one of the Final Boss where you only have 3 shots to beat or you lose the game immediately.

Her lantern could be very powerful as it can remove any identical challenged that you have beaten using the lantern. I wished I knew that from the start and I would have immediately used it. Instead I got it like last challenge before the final boss so it was kind of useless.

One thing that I noticed from Well cards in this box is that there is no enemy that will heal you. On the other hand, Feyn has one card where you can heal more if you choose to discard blue cards.

After that one play I started to have doubts about the mix and match potential between boxes. While it is possible but it seems like the characters in the box is designed specifically for that box and not the other. Of course I could be wrong and I hope I am wrong. It’s just that was my initial impression after first play. Maybe I should try mixing them up in my next play. We’ll see.

More unboxing pictures of Kinfire Delve: Scorn’s Stockade on my IG.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 2nd time playing this game with just 1 session. Played with both Seekers again. I almost lost because of 2 Exhaust cards. One of them almost got 4 progress tokens which then got removed. The other almost got the 3rd copy of that card.

Well, I forgot once about not rolling for a card. The boss part was not so bad except that I needed certain cards to draw to remove the dangerous exhaust card. Maybe I could have just take more time.

After this 2nd play, my impression of this game remains the same. Interesting gameplay but not great in variety even if it is worth the price. Maybe I really should consider buying the other 2.

Playing time was about 68 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. This was first time playing the game. Got 2 sessions and both using both seekers immediately. This was a bit more first impression entry.

More unboxing pictures of Kinfire Delve: Vainglory’s Grotto on IG.

Let’s Make a Bus Route: The Dice Game (2021)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with playing 2-handed using the Mars Map. 1st player won with 87 while 2nd player got 86 so it was close. Both suffered almost the same penalties even though 2nd definitely got into more traffic jam. 2nd player didn’t even touch the bottom right corner area. Both kept giving each other either green, orange or red for expanding the route. Somehow, 2nd got more luck and didn’t suffer anything from it. So, I thought 2nd player did better but I was wrong.

Playing time was about 58 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. More solo play with expert mode and Mars map. Scored even lower than previous one. Got 85 and 69 which was 2nd lowest of the ranking. 2nd one collected a lot of students but only 1 school. Delivered not a lot of tourist. This time I also used a lot of the special power which could have been incorrectly. So probably my worst play so far. This took 70 minutes to play.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back with solo expert mode and the Mars map. Scored poorly, 85 and 84. A lot of traffic jam during the 2nd part, didn’t plan for the route very well.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played 2-handed on Mars Map. First player scored 102 while the other scored 75. It seems the losing player lost a lot of points for not getting color to move, -12 points from that alone.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 2-handed session using the City Map. One scored 93, the starting player and the other scored only 85.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo expert with the City Map again. Scored 181, 89 and 92. Not much different from previous game.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo Expert Variant using the City Map. Scored 88 + 91 or 179 total.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo variant using the Mars Map and expert mode, scored only 161.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo variant with Mars map and first time for expert mode. Scored 166,

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed with the Mars Map. Blue scored 73 and 99 for the Pink.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report. Played with the Mars Map for the first time in solo mode. Scored 173 with the normal difficulty.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo mode with the City Map, scored 81 and 89.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full session report and first game with 2 players using the City Map. Scored 78 vs 88. After that a solo variant first time with the city map on IG.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Let’s Make a Bus Route: The Dice Game on IG.

Level 10 (2016)

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 sessions, playing 2-handed. First one was a loss where I had to use reset on 2 colors in 7th column. 2nd play got a win. Even though early in the game, the yellow color had to use both resets right away. Playing time was about 33 minutes for the 2nd session.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got more than 3 sessions but at least 2 were 2-handed and one was solo. Solo was as usual, easy even on hard and lower hand size. The 2-handed got unlucky.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 3 sessions. First one was solo but with 7 cards in hand and won. Then finally got a good way to play 2-handed. Two sessions and lost both after playing reset cards in the same column.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Planning to play the lower hand size for solo variant but ended up playing 2 sessions with the official rule, both without any Pause Cards. First one was a bit cheating by reshuffling the deck in early round but the 2nd one was not a big challenge.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or even more on TikTok. Got 6 sessions, trying out solo variant with 7 cards hand size in 4 of them. Failed all of them, probably impossible to play. Back using standard rule for the other 2 sessions.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. 3 sessions, 2 2-handed and one solo. Failed both 2-handed won the solo.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing, 3 sessions, 2 solo and 1 2-handed. A bit of first impression here.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Level 10 game on IG.

Long Shot: The Dice Game (2022)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, and Tumblr. Still more 2-handed session. I just realized I missed an important rule that I just realized from this playr. Apparently, in order to cross the finish line, the horse can only cross it by the main or secondary movement. They cannot cross the finish line if they move using bonuses. I don’t how much I did that in my previous plays but I assumed it happened.

In this session, second player won with 115 points with 50 points from bets, 20 from leftover money, 20 from jerseys and 25 from one horse on 2nd place.

While 1st player got only 95, 50 from 2 winning horses, 30 from jerseys, only 2 from bets, and 15 from leftover money. Second player bought Horse number 1 and 3 while First bought number 2 and 4.

It feels like Horse number 1, Row Your Boat gave a lot of scores for the owner. They did take advantage the extra 2 money from completing all 4 rows. Dollar Menu power from number 2 didn’t get used at all. Same for number 3 and 4.

While it definitely helped the player made their decision early, if we ignored about 8 points from it, the second player still won. Not only the money helped but the player focused on concession. Two $3 bonuses definitely became the score from the bets. On the other hand, First player only completed 2 rows and 2 columns. They didn’t make additional bets other than from the setup.

It made me realized that even if you cannot use the bonus movement to cross the finish line, you can still use them to move other horse into the line before that. That’s what 2nd player did. They moved number 5 to cross the blue line using bonus and they got extra 4 points and it was initial bet from the setup.

Playing time was about 64 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another 2-handed session. 2nd player won with 84 after buying #1 and #7 which both won 1st and 3rd spot. 1st only scored 78 who bought #2 who won 2nd place and #3 who managed to be at 4th. Both managed to add some bids in their opponent’s horse. #1 won very early like in 8th round, then in 13th and 14th for 2nd and 3rd.

Playing time was about 45 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back to playing 2-handed. 1st player got starter bid on #1 and#8 while 2nd player on #1 and #6. 2nd player bought #1 and #5 while 1st bought #2 and #8. 1st player won with 142 and 2nd player only got less than 100.

2nd player should have won the game. I forgot about the abilities of their horses and it messed up the gameplay. On the other hand, somehow I got a couple of rolls on 8 and it won 3rd place while #1 and #5 got pushed back near the finish line. Well, it was not really an honest match.

Playing time was about 56 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Another solo play and still with some error. I won by 20 points with owning 2 horses that won the race while the opponent’s won none. The opponent managed to keep betting on the winning horse though. I didn’t even use any power from the horses.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first time playing the solo mode and, in this entry, a bit rant about how the solo mode was not designed by the original designer which led to FAQ not being released. Maybe even like an abandoned game.

I made a couple of errors with the solo mode, especially about the opponent buying a horse first. While I won with about 133 points against about 124, the opponent could have won with 148 had I resolved their action correctly. On the other hand, I actually had a chance to buy the winning horse instead of them. Checking what the opponent is about to do on that turn and try to mitigate that seems to be crucial.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was my first play, 2-handed instead of using the solo variant to understand the game better so a bit of first impression. First player actually lost by 70 points because none of their horse won while the winner got all 3 with them.

More unboxing pictures of Long Shot: The Dice Game on IG.

The LOOP (2020)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time, I tried one of the other game modes and I picked SAYAN SUPA CLONES. The difference to SABOTAGE is that in addition to completing 4 missions, you also need to destroy these Supa Clones. Depending on the difficulty level, they can be 3 or more.

The Supa clones are essentially the same as regular clones. It’s just when you destroy one of them by sending them to the correct Era, you then add 2 regular clones to that Era. On the other hand, now that Era will have blue cube which is essentially the same as Energy cube but you don’t remove them after spending them.

My mistake was that I decided to get rid of the Supa Clones immediately.  Instead, I should have just moved them so they were close to their Era and just finished the missions first. Or, if I wanted to destroy them early, it’s better to choose the Era that already got attacked in that phase.

I still won, using my house rule about dropping those cubes. But there were already 3 Eras with vortex. At the end, two of those vortexes had already full of red cubes.

I played the Robo Finisher, V-Girl and Prowler. Maybe their decks don’t have enough to get rid of clones so the problem got even worse. If I remember correctly, I had to do multiple loops for the cards that get rid of clones because of that situation.

I finished the game with 2 cards left of the 2nd phase and a lot of moment where I should have lost. I also only picked the easiest difficulty of this mode. So, definitely already more challenging compared to just the Sabotage. Not sure if it offers different experience though.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played the standard SABOTAGE mission again solo with Mr. Time, Prowler and Cztwyzzek. Finished the 4th mission with 2 cards left of the 2nd phase, already with 3 vortexes. Hopefully I didn’t forget anything like last time.  Playing time was about 80 minutes.

Playing time was about 129 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Another SABOTAGE mission and another error. This time, I forgot to add Clones on every turn. I realized it made the first phase easier and I continued from that point by immediately adding equal number of missing clones.

In the end, V-Girl, Mr. Time and The Prowler managed to complete 4 missions but already with 3 vortexes and 4 rounds left. Playing time was about 120 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still with SABOTAGE mission after major error last play. Played with Time Prowler, Robo Finisher and the V-Girl. I completed the 4th mission during 2nd Phase with like 2 Era cards left.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played the SABOTAGE mission again with the Orange, Blue and Pink character. I thought I won but I completely forgot about completing a mission has to be done by ending the turn on that specific era.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was my first play, using 3 characters with the official solo variant and the standard mode so a bit of first impression entry.

Got 2 sessions where the first one got beat up badly due to hard objectives right from the start. Then got better with the 2nd play. Probably played all characters in those 2 sessions.

More unboxing pictures of The LOOP on IG.

The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship (2025)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played the next recommended set of 5 objectives. This time I had to use Boromir and Faramir plus the Hobbits again.

It seems I made an error during this play. I forgot to reshuffle the Shadow discard pile right after one of the Skies Darken card, which I think was the 2nd one. Possibly made the game a bit easier but not sure by how much. Finished the game with still 2 Skies Darken cards left in the deck.

First Skies Darken card showed up very early like in 3rd turn. First time playing both Faramir and Boromir. Faramir was very useful as he could just move with a troop and trigger an attack which helped control the Eye a lot. On top of that, Fararmir also reduced the number of tokens required to move pass special path. This helped moving inside Mordor a lot.

First objective, Unseat the Denethor happened rather quickly since both Faramir and Boromir were already in Minas Tirith. Actually, before even the first Skies Darken card. Unfortunately, with Faramir’s specific objective and Infiltrate the Minas Morgul objective means that both of them couldn’t move away too much from there.

As a result, the Hobbits were having trouble moving away from Shire. In addition to that, the starting 9 Shadow cards posed a threat to Rivendell and possibly taking down Shire along the way as well. So, instead of just rush to Mordor as soon as possible, they had to prepare some troops first at the top left area.

After lucky rolls getting away from the Nazgul, they managed to reach Rivendell, gathering some armies. They brought them to the Tharbad to stop enemies coming from Dunland.

Faramir was still waiting to get more Sword to capture his target mission. While doing so, he helped Boromir to get into Minas Morgul. There was only one shadow troop at that moment and after clearing it, Boromir completed the 2nd objective, turning Minas Morgul into a haven.

Second Skies Darken happened and it added 3 troops to Tharbad where the Hobbits were already leading a fight. Overwhelmed and put Frodo in danger since the Eye was there so they decided to fall back to Bree. The Hobbits tried to gather more troops from Grey Havens.

After bringing more troops to Bree, the Hobbits decided to leave the battle and continue their journey to Rivendell. While the battle at Bree was a win but the enemies kept coming from Isengard to Dunland. Skies Darken happened again and now there were 3 troops at Hollin, approaching Tharbad. At the same time, there was a threat approaching Woodland Realm and Erebor.

The Hobbits decided to go to Woodland Realm and prepared some armies to engage in battle against Shadow troops. Faramir, leaving Boromir alone with some troops in Mordor, decided to clean up a bit Haradwaith area. The Eye shifted there. Boromir with 3 friendly troops was attacked but managed to survive.

Frodo and Sam decided to move on their own to reach Mordor faster. Leaving Merry and Pippin to lead the battle at Mirkwood. They both reached Rhovanion. The Eye shifted there, along with a couple of Nazgul while the battle at Woodland Realm began.

While that happened, Faramir finally had the necessary resources for his special mission. He secured the crossing of the Anduin by capturing Osgiliath and turning it into a haven.

Merry and Pippin, still in battle at Woodland Realm, started an attack, distracting the Eye away from Frodo. The battle at Bree also continued and the Elves managed to survive.

Frodo and Sam took that chance to keep moving. Using Elven Cloaks and Rope they managed to meet up with Faramir in Ithelien. Faramir then got them to enter Mordor and meet up with Boromir at Minas Morgul.

Boromir decided to accompany Frodo and Sam to reach Mount Doom with just one friendly troop. At Plateau of Gorgon, they were attacked. All troops were eliminated. Boromir reclaimed his honor. Frodo and Sam had to continue on their own to Mount Doom.

The Eye finally realized that the ring was in Mordor and shifted their attention there along with some Nazguls. Luckily, Merry and Pippin kept distracting it by launching another attack at Woodland Realms.

While there were still some Nazguls, Frodo and Sam had enough to destroy the One Ring and survive.

Playing time was about 135 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Playing time took about 176 minutes using the suggested first heroic setup with 5 Skies Darken Cards and 5 objectives. I played the 2 hobbits, Eowyn and Eomer. I finished the game with 2 cards left in the deck. Well, I guess the reason it took a bit long was because Frodo and Sam were stuck for a while between Dale and Mirkwood. The other 2 had to fulfill the objectives while these 2 areas were the big target of attack.

Freeing Theoden’s Mind was completed first by the two Rohirims. Followed by the Shieldmaiden No Longer and those 2 Nazguls were the only ones she took down for the entire game.

Third one was Ride with Eored to be completed by Eomer after defeating one enemy in Ithilien. After that the Freca’s Heirs was next by Eomer. This was why he couldn’t help protecting Dale and Mirkwood where Frodo and Sam got stuck. Eomer had to move from right most to left side of the map.

So, what was left was the Frodo’s mission and they were still stuck at the top of the map. Because the 4th objective had to turn an area into haven plus one for Dol Guldur to stop adding enemy approaching Dale and Mirkwood, the Hope track remained at the top. Unless I got things wrong, I only lost 1 hope at the end of the game so finishing the last objective was rather easy.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played the next recommended sets of objective with the Balrog, Oathbreakers, Subdue Umbar and of course, the Destroy one Ring. So, it had to include Gandalf and Aragorn. As the 3rd one I picked Merry and Pippin again. Still with the Introductory difficulty level, 4 Skies Darken.

This time, just realizing that you can use the heart token to ignore the search die using Sam. Aragorn was very strong to defeat armies. Somehow Merry and Pippin didn’t get to generate tokens as much like previous play. Gandalf was also not particularly useful. Maybe once to muster before the Balrog event.

I was planning to turn Dol Guldur into a Haven using Gandalf. Somehow Merry and Pippin got better chance turning Udun into one. Not really useful though aside from getting 2 hopes. On the other hand, the Haven next to Erebor was taken down since the only Elf there was not enough.

The Oathbreakers objective was essentially made the Umbar one very easy as long as you complete it right away. That location was empty so having 3 sword tokens ready was very helpful. In general, not as exciting as the original set of objectives.

Playing time was about 138 minutes.

August 2025 2nd session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Still with the same introductory setup. After reading a strategy post, I was inspired to play the game again. Hopefully I got the rules correct this time. Not feeling overwhelmed like my first game or got mixed up with the resources between the 2 hands. This time it feels much better. Maybe even amazing.

Technically, I probably lost because somehow the Shadow troops were almost took down Shire with no Guard. I had to play an Event card just to avoid it. I still had not used Legolas’s abilities much other than getting green token. Everything else is manageable and the only randomness is the dice. Looking forward to more play of this. Playing time took almost 3 hours, or about 160 minutes.

August 2025 1st session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. This was a new game to me and a new game of this year. It is a Pandemic game iteration with The Lord of the Rings theme. I have not played any Pandemic game before this one so this was my first game in both system and the theme.

Just like in the theme, you want to move Frodo and Sam from Shire to Mount Doom in Mordor to destroy the One Ring. Along the way, you have to avoid Shadow army or Nasguls to avoid losing hope too much or lose the game. They’ll be meeting and accompanied by different characters to help them reach there and accomplish the other objectives as well.

Each player will be controlling 2 characters that share the same of resources pool and hand of cards. You need those resources in order to survive the game and complete the objective. On your turn, you have to assign 4 actions to one character and 1 action to the other character. The generic actions are travel, attack, capture, muster, fellowship and prepare. Each character has their own action and unique abilities.

Frodo and Sam, as single character has to be the one to destroy the ring so they have to be played in every game. Before completing that final task, you also need to complete 3 other objectives in any order. There are objectives that can be played by any character or you can use objective that requires specific character to play. A lot of variety to change the experience between game to game, except for Frodo, Sam and that one Ring.

Other than making you lose hope, the Shadow troop will also try to capture haven and turn it into their stronghold. That happens when the shadow troop reach that Haven but no friendly troop to defend. So, you still need to make sure while advancing Frodo with his objective but also prevent shadow troop from capturing major cities.

There is a deck of Shadow troop cards that will tell you whether you have to add more enemy troop at various location or move them closer to the haven they are trying to capture. You start with 2 cards per end of player’s turn but later it becomes 3 or even 4 the longer you play.

There is a 2nd deck of cards and this is to help the players. At the end of their turn, player has to draw 2 cards with hand limit of 7. Most of these are resource cards but there are also a couple of Event cards which is helpful. But there are also what in Pandemic game called the Epidemic cards. Basically it signifies threat intensified. If you have not finished the game but you cannot draw anymore, you will lose hope.

The game comes with a huge dice tower that you need to construct first. This is to roll 2 types of dice. One type is to determine the outcome of battle between troops. The other type is to determine Frodo’s safety from the enemy when Frodo has to move to the same region as the enemy. You can use the Ring resource to reroll those dice but they are also precious to win the game.

This first and learning session took about 3 hours to play. While playing solo, I didn’t use the official solo mode but 2-handed, controlling 4 characters. Clearly I made a couple of errors and probably some rules I was not sure. Like who can actually spend resources. The game is about having a character in the same space as other so they can share resources or move along using one action. The active player can carry along if the other player agrees.

As an initial impression, I think the theme is definitely there, maybe even strong one. It seems like this is not a game you can just finish it as fast as possible. Of course, you want to finish it sooner than before or else the enemy will do more each turn and makes it harder.

This is not just about completing the 4 objectives but also preparing to secure the Havens from the incoming enemies. Towards the end, you might be just one or 2 actions away from winning but then those enemies capture haven first and may make you lose the game.

Clearly there are some randomness. Not just from the dice but also from your hand of cards. You need specific resources but you just keep drawing the wrong ones. Your teammate may have them but giving it to you requires moving to specific location.

I can see that it can be very frustrating. Especially the one controlling Frodo and towards the end of the game while in Mordor. To be fair, that is how it feels in the movie though. You can feel stuck waiting to get the right resources while the situation keeps getting worse.

Well, the rulebook has suggestions of playing with the lower difficulty and starting characters. Maybe I just need more play and get better at it.

This is probably the biggest board from the game that I own. Well, I don’t even get to use the tower since my table is not big enough. A lot of people say the board is busy and hard to read. Reading how to resolve the enemies are easy. The problem is that you want to be aware with a lot of things in different locations, mostly for defending havens.

Sometimes you just want an ally troop there but these meeples of troops are so small compared to the board. You probably forgot that it was there until you start putting the game back to the box. Maybe using translucent cubes is actually better for this. The brown and gray meeples don’t stand out as much as the blue or green or red.

I guess it also gets harder to read when small locations got crowded with those meeples. You will also keep knocking on those nasgul figures when trying to move things on the board.

Specifically when playing solo but multihanded or 2 sets of 2 characters. Some people like me, might get overwhelmed with the information. You might get mixed up between who has what and who should do what action.

I’m interested in playing it more but I really need to be prepared. It is not as light as one may expect even if not really a heavy game. Just a bit taxing for solo play.

More unboxing pictures of The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship on IG.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick=Taking Game (2025)

This is another cooperative trick-taking game based on the popular The Lord of the Rings trilogy books. Players can pick a scenario and choose a character related to that scenario. Each character will have their own objective like if you play Gandalf, you need to win at least one trick while the other playing as Pippin has to win the fewest trick.

Players win the scenario if they manage to complete every objective. Every subsequent scenario follows the story in the book and may introduce more characters and additional gameplay mechanism. After you are done with the campaign, finishing all 18 scenarios, there is a variant to play without those scenarios. Or you can buy the next standalone boxes with the story from 2nd and 3rd book.

The trick-taking element is pretty standard. One player leads and the rest has to follow if they can with 4 suits and 8 cards each. With the twist being that there is a 5th suit or the Ring suit with just 5 cards. This is not the trump suit except that if the Frodo player chooses that Ring 1 is a trump. You also cannot lead the trick with this Ring suit before somebody activates it.

Title: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings – Trick-Taking Game
Year Released: 2025
Designer: Bryan Bornmueller
Publisher: Office Dog
Artist: Elaine Ryan, Samuel R. Shimota

Genre: Cooperative, The Lord of the Rings, Trick-Taking Game, Optional Campaign Mode, Scenario Based Game, Official Solo Variant, Stained Glass Art style

Learn more about the game from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring – Trick-Taking Game Review.

Lux Aeterna (2019)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. This time I tried to make as many systems operational as possible so I started from position +5.

In the 4th round, I got rid of the first Glitch card. Then in 5th round I made the pink System fully operational and as bonus every card I assigned to speed afterwards always had a value of 1.

Removed the next Glitch in round 8. Then in the following round the Green system became fully operational. The benefit was any system with die value 4 or 5 will not get damage. Only 1 system at that point.

Removed the 3rd Glitch in 10th round. Then in round 11, the Yellow system completely collapsed. As penalty, I could no longer transfer the value of dice between systems.

Then in 13th round, the gray system became fully operational. This actually allowed me to use the card in cache as second action but would have pushed the starship one space towards blackhole everytime I did so. Should have been the first system I repaired.

So, final score was only 28. Playing time took about 32 minutes, not using the timer.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Started from the +51 position again or 6 spaces from black hole. I only managed to repair 2 systems but none of the rest collapsed. Final score was 66 thanks to one blue system that got fully operational gave more points for each system under repair. I guess I spent too much time removing the Glitch. The last one only disabled the Cache. Playing time was about 30 minutes.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another play with the closest starting position to blackhole. At least got one system fully repaired and scored 102. This time, I didn’t even remove any Glitch so all 4 hit. Got lucky since none of them pushed the spaceship 4 spaces.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back to playing with the farthest starting position. Scored only 28, with 3 fully functional systems and 2 under repair, 1 was destroyed. It was even 1 space away from the Blackhole.

July 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session with +91 position still, scored only 77 after one collapsed system pushed the starting position away from the Blackhole. No operational system still.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single session with +91 position, scored 91 points, one collapsed system and all others were under repair.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions with the +91 position. Lost the 1st and won the 2nd with 79 points.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report with +51 as the starting position. Scored 71 points.

Marvel United: X-Men (2021)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Near the time they release the new Spider-man Movie, the Brand New Day with Scorpion as one of the villains. So, instead of playing X-Men, I decided to have both Spider-man and Scorpion in this play, along with Morbius and Miles Morales.

The first unique thing about Scorpion is that he has starting Masterplan. He doesn’t move but the card says, everytime he triggers BAM!, he triggers it twice until that card is cancelled. To cancel that card, you need to complete the Clear Threat Mission. Scorpion has no henchmen, so you need a lot of heroic actions to clear them up and focus on defeating thugs more than saving civilians. In terms of adding Civilians and Thugs, Scorpion seems to add them evenly.

I have a feeling that these 3 characters that I chose were lack of Heroic actions. Spider-man has his Great Power card but I used it to beat the Scorpion.

The challenge is, if you do get overflown, you have to return one of those Threat cards back. This will make defeating Scorpion later harder as the threat card gives him extra protection to that location if the location has thugs / civilians.

This could lead to impossible to win if all locations got their threat cards back and no way to move Scorpion accordingly. Scorpion himself was rather weak with just 6 hit points and luckily, I got Spider-man with that Great Power Card plus 3 Attack tokens to beat him in one turn.

When Scorpion triggers BAM!, he just deals 1 damage to the Hero plus a Crisis token. Having crisis token means that Hero will not use the icons from previous player as part of their action. Then you remove all the Crisis token as compensation. While playing against Scorpion doesn’t feel much threatening like other villains, it will make your progress slower. I defeated him with 3 cards left.

Scorpion also has the tendency to target hero with the lowest number of Crisis token. Even if you put multiple heroes in one location, he gets to choose with that preferences. Well, this makes Morbius’s ability to stun easier to plan and use effectively to prevent damage.

One last thing about Scorpion is that you lose the game if you get KO 4 times. In my play, I got KO once and it was Morbius while Scorpion was still doing BAM! twice.

Playing time was about 50 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back to the Maximum Carnage boss. This time playing with Gwen, Miles and Morbius vs Scream, one of the Symbiote. So, it was like the Sony-verse Spider show.

Got 2 sessions. First one with the easiest difficulty. While making some error, I think it was pretty doable to beat Scream. Scream had 5 other symbiotes as her Henchmen plus just one regular threat cards. The challenge is that none of these threats can be removed, except for the Venom henchmen.

Even that, you need to complete one mission first, either rescuing civilians or beating thugs. The last mission is replaced by her special mission card. If any of the henchmen got 2nd crisis token, you then start placing one token on that mission card. You lose when you place the 4th crisis token.

With this situation, you pretty much cannot rely on the location bonus, except for one. If you play with Gwen, you probably will use her ability to swap Venom, ideally on location that gives you a lot of bonus. It feels like these 3 that I played with were lack of movement. Or maybe I already spent them to chase more thugs to beat in various location. Scream is mostly adding 1 thug plus 2 civilians, sometimes the opposite way.

You definitely don’t want to stop your hero where Riot is as he deals 2 damage per BAM. Lasher on the other hand deals damage to both adjacent locations. Some of the Henchmen say that their damage was unpreventable. Not sure how it works to Miles’ and Gwen’s special card. Maybe I did make it easier.

For the 2nd play, I played with like not using the Wild actions but eventually I needed them just for the movement. Scream can also get accelerated with the overflow. Scream was defeated after her 10th or so card.

Playing time took about 100 minutes for 2 sessions.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. After 2 plays with Spider-man expansions, back with X-Men but I brought Spidey to join Wolverine and Beast to take down Juggernaut.

For some reasons this was not as challenging as I thought even if playing with higher difficulty with no wild cards. Of course, I am aware about how to keep healing using the Xavier School location so maybe that helped with Wolverine kept self-healing. Nobody got KOed, no overflow. I heard from the designer that Spider-man is one of the most powerful character so maybe that helped?

Juggernaut was defeated before his 8th Masterplan. Playing time was about 44 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First play with the Maximum Carnage expansion, retail edition. Played with the 3 from Spider-verse against Morbius. Morbius has all 6 identical threat cards which if the location has 2 thugs or more, you will take additional damage during BAM, Morbius himself will turn any civilian into thugs or like vampire while he increases his health even above the starting health.

Obviously, you will not have that many civilians to save so the progression is more on the other 2 missions. Morbius also has the tendency to just move to where the next hero is. Maybe it’s better to have at least 2 heroes in one location just to have options as which one to take damage. Otherwise, he can just keep KO hero one after another.

Everytime he activates his BAM, the hero takes damage and Crisis token. You lose when the team has certain number of tokens depending on the number of characters. While you also take more damage when the hero has 2 tokens or more, I think I got it wrong and played it as when you have token at all.

The expansion only has 4 new locations so you need 2 more from the other boxes. There is a new feature with the location. Some will have restrictions like if you save more than one civilians from there, you take damage. Also, it seems that expansion box’s insert cannot hold all cards with sleeve. I have to keep the Morbius as hero cards in the Spider Verse.

Playing time was about 48 minutes.

More unboxing pictures of the Maximum Carnage Expansion box on IG.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Got the Enter the Spiderverse expansion, played with the 3 heroes and villain from that box.

Green Goblin as the villain is considered one of the toughest. I won but playing with the easiest difficulty with 2 wild cards per character. This one is interesting because the threat cards don’t show up until their BAM. You lose when all 6 locations got threat cards. Even if you beat the mission or threat cards, it will just randomly show up again.

So, you are encouraged to use the location bonuses very early. Most of the locations from this box will give you extra tokens. Even tokens just to move can be very handy.

Two special cards from Spider-man can also generate some tokens. The other 2 characters have cards not to take any damage. Gwen can swap threat cards and defeat all thugs. Miles can hit villains hard or delay their turns.

Overall, I enjoy this one. But as expansion with only one villain, you have to rely on other boxes. My plan is to buy the Maximum Carnage. It would be nice if Sinister Six is available in retail but sadly no. The other option for Spider-man is the Spider Geddon box.

Playing time was about one hour.

More unboxing pictures of Marvel United: Enter the Spider-Verse on IG.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 1st time playing against Sabretooth. This one requires more Heroic actions since Sabretooth tends to add more civilians and all threats require those type as well. The tricky part is just taking a lot of damage to the hunted heroes.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing against Mystique using Magneto, Prof. X and Beast. Interesting boss where you can instantly lose. Not because of the Boss but because one of the Henchmen did damage to Senator.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another attempt to stop Juggernaut. This time with Magneto, Cyclops and Jean Grey. 2 cards left from Juggernaut deck.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Magneto, Prof. X and Mystique vs Juggernaut. I made one rule error and I might have failed with no more Masterplan card to draw.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Wolverine, Beast and Storm against Magneto without using any Wild cards. Won after 6th Masterplan cards. This was a full session report.

Played 2nd game using the same team but against Juggernaut. Lost on that one.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and TikTok. This was a full session report using the same 3 heroes against Magneto, using the hard mode, without Wild cards. Still got some rules wrong.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was first time playing this core box. Played against Magneto with Cyclops, Jean Grey and Professor X, removing all Wild cards. Got the rule wrong about 2 Threat cards that prevented Magneto from getting damage.

Here is more unboxing pictures of Marvel United: X-Men on IG.

Meadow (2021)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play, still not opening any envelope. So, in my previous play, I even stated about taking and playing card with double icon early is not a great idea. Well, it seems this session has a different thing to say about that.

What if, apparently, one of the double icons is very rare to get but require a lot in later round like in deck N? On top of that, what if you also miss another icon so not just one. Getting in this situation is so bad that you probably can take a card in the last round but you don’t have enough icon to play.

Not only did I miss my chance to get that cherry icon, I also missed my chance to get butterfly. Missing icon is one thing. You also have the chance to lose them. Like my situation with a tree. At least, the tree is still available from Deck E. But at that point, I could no longer add any ground card and if I could it was worth 0.

This made me check the whole 4 decks. Just how many exactly those icons actually show up in card? Especially as requirement for Deck N in later round. I may have to check them again before the start of my next play.

In the end, I think I scored 49 and the opponent got 50. Even the opponent got lower score compared to my last 2 plays. Well, at least I did place all 3 tokens on the campfire board. I think I had to discard 2 cards once just to cover one missing icon and it was for the Cherry icon. Stupidly, the one I discarded was starting card from deck N with cherry icon requirement. I was really under impression to get that cherry later and I was disappointed.

Playing time was about 72 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still solo play with official rule and this time I won, 63 to 60 so it was not really an easy win. I failed to score one of the tile on campfire board because I accidentally covered the mushroom icon and I only had 1.

Relying on cards with 2 symbols on one card was not a good idea to get early. Covering that one card means losing both symbols and this led me to keep postponing playing certain cards. As a result I kind of failed to score that campfire goal tile. I should have scored at least one right before the hourglass and for taking 2 landscape tokens.

Playing time was about 89 minutes. There was also a slight error where I skipped one of the opponent action which could have affected how I took subsequent cards. Luckily, this happened in the last round so not much different.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played solo again with the official rule. Well, I lost to the opponent with 55 points to their 57 so it was close. Maybe I spent too much action just to get more Ground Cards, columns. One column was exactly just that ground card. I had only 2 cards left at the end. And that 1 Ground card was for other cards that I ended up not getting. Only to realize this at the end of 2nd to last round.

Playing time was about 82 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. This was not a new game to me as I played it before in a board game cafe. Recently finally decided to purchase this game.

The reason I didn’t purchase immediately was because I wish that the game is just small box card game. That would be an easy sell, especially for this complexity weight. Instead this game comes with standard TTR size box which to be fair, with an amazing production value and of course reflected in the price and also the tablespace it occupies to play.

The game itself is about trekking through a meadow where you can find different flora and fauna related to each other. Start with one type of land on your starting card. Maybe it has some grass which then attracts some bugs or flowers that attracts some butterflies which leads to attracting frogs.

You can say it’s like creating food chain from this one ecosystem. So, you pick the next card in that chain from the 4×4 grid and place it on the table in front of you to create the tableau. You place the new card so it covers the existing card with the related icon.

Now, your meadow has changed. First it only has that fauna icon but now it only has the butterfly. The next one you want to pick also can eat that butterfly but it also needs something else. Other icon.

Instead of taking that card, you then have to provide it with the required icon by taking other card first. As the game progresses your meadow will get more icons and attracts a bigger animal like foxes or eagles which worth more points.

You can also extend your meadow into finding another landscape or houses. Sometimes they need certain icons similar to those animals before you can add them to your tableau. Or maybe they just need a free landscape token. Then, inside the house you can find interesting items for more points.

After 6 to 8 rounds of 5 or 4 turns each, the game ends and the one with the highest score is the winner. The game is that simple but some may say has strong theme to it. Great for casual player but also good for hardcore gamers who want some relaxing experience.

Each player will have 4 or 5 PATH TOKENS that they use once per round to take card from the grid. The token will have a number between 1 to 4 or wild that indicates which card from row or column you can take. So, you place the token first in the chosen column or row and take the corresponding card from that grid. Assuming, nobody else has taken that spot in that round.

After you take card from the grid, it goes to your hand. Then, in general, you get to play one card from your hand and add it to your tableau. So, you can secure some cards first but play them even in the last round.

Each token also has alternative use to do one special action. If placing on the grid doesn’t work great for you, you can use place it on another board, the Campfire to activate those special actions. The problem is that there is a limited number of times that actions can be used per round.

Every player has the same set of tokens so advanced players can maybe predict which remaining actions that they can do. The player interaction doesn’t stop there.

The campfire also has communal goals that one player can meet to score bonus tokens. Every player can complete the objective but only the first one can get the score.

The game is very beautiful with water painting style artwork. Nice plastic insert and card holders made of cardboard that you need to assemble but fit with the insert. Of course, that helps the setup time.

This solo session took about an hour to play with some time to refresh the rule. It is light weight but you are still for the most part scanning for icons. I scored 57 with 4 landscapes filled and the opponent got 47.

More unboxing pictures of Meadow on my IG.

Mind Space (2023)

This is one of the games in Allplay’s Small Box line, square shape that includes Chomp and Sail. If I understand correctly, the designer already released this game in Japanese only about decorating your Japanese Home. A couple of years later, Allplay gave it a wider release with a change of theme and artwork.

In a game of Mind Space, players are going to fill their mind or brain space with polyomino shapes of various colors. The various colors represent different subject like Green about Money, Orange for Friendship, Pink for Romance, Purple for Hobbies and Blue for Self-Improvement and each of them has their own way to score. Any shape with the same color cannot be adjacent to each other.

For Orange or Friendship, more shape with that color gives player higher score. Purple or Hobbies score for every purple space adjacent to orange. So, thematically, you want hobbies connected to friends. Pink or romance means that you score if there are other colors with the same shape as the pink. Like you are trying to match with potentially compatible partner.

Green doesn’t give score but it gives you money. Money is the way to mitigate the dice. You can spend 1 coin to just fill 1 x 1 space. Spend 2 coins to use any shape with any color. You can spend 3 coins to make additional shape. In general, you play 12 rounds, drawing one shape with one color each. This allows you to get more which is good because less space you fill gives you more penalties.

Blue or Self-improvement helps you avoid penalty by having the color on each section of your mind. Your player board or mind space has 5 sections. As long as there is a space in each section with blue color, you get less penalty up to 0. At the end of the game, you’ll get penalty for the section with the most empty space. Filling a section completely gives you point and money.

In every session of Mind Space game, there will be 3 different objectives. While the main game is like a Bingo where every player can choose the same pair of shape and color, the objectives is a race. Whoever complete the objective first gets the higher score. Everybody else after that will get the lower one.

That is how you play. Mind Space is basically a Flip and Roll and Write game. Every round there will be 5 face up cards plus one face down. The face up cards will show different polyomino shape from size either size 4 or 5. Player Aid card will tell you all 17 possible shapes but one of them started face down so one is not going to show up. The face down card, showing the back of each card has the same size 1 x 2.

If somehow you cannot draw any shape in any space because of the adjacency rule of the same color, you can always draw size 1×2 in black. This shape with its color itself doesn’t give you any point but helps you fill space and maybe complete objective.

After you set up the cards you then roll all 5 d6 with different colors. The number indicates which shape the color will be pairing with for that round. Any number of colors can be in one shape. At the end of the round, the rightmost face up cards will be turned face down and you reveal a new card to the leftmost space of face up cards.

So, you can see that some shapes can stay longer and maybe a chance to get a different color in subsequent rolls. While other shapes might left the market in one or more rounds.

That is it about Mind Space. The game comes with several cards for each of 3 decks of the objectives and your player board has two sides for variety between your plays for 1 to 5 players.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was my first time playing the game and I already got 3 solo sessions, all using A side of the player board. Each play took almost 40 minutes. Somehow it was longer with more plays. Maybe because I started to think more about aiming for a better score.

As you can probably tell from my explanation of the game above, there seems to be more theme at least for the color even if not the shapes themselves. For some reason I was so obsessed with matching the pink shape with other colors, which is about romance.

You can just wait for pink to roll lower so the shape that just came out can stay longer. So in 5 rounds, maybe you get to roll other colors before the shape leaves the market. That feels like I was being so insecure and trying to do too much to impress this potential partner.

In reality, you can just wait for the other color to roll low and then afterwards, maybe a pink can get to that shape. That feels more like being yourself and waiting for the perfect potential partner to come. I feel so attacked in a funny way.

Not sure if I can completely agree that you need hobbies and friends together but at least that makes sense for me. Blue or about self-improvement is interesting mechanically. This will be the color that you want to play the least but reach for more sections. That means, you can end up with a weird shape in the middle of a section just because you try to stretch out that blue. Which is the opposite of how you play Tetris where you try to put the shape in empty space neatly.

Somehow, Green is the one I didn’t care much about. Unfortunately, it seems like you really need to get more green. At least, to a point where it allows you to get additional shape out of the 12. Somehow I also forgot about getting money after completely filled a section. Additional shape means less empty space so less penalty for you. Potentially, it can help you with other subjects which is of course, thematic.

The challenge is that you need to pick a different color from the one you already used in the current round. Hopefully there is an enough space for that shape. So, a bit of good timing might help instead of just waiting for last round.

Some combinations of the objectives might not be possible to complete everything. There is someone who said that they are not giving significant point for you to chase while you can just focus on filling more space.

Overall, as initial impression, I really like Mind Space. Another hit for tile placement as my favorite genre. It forces you to really evaluate every possible pair of colors and shapes. Which is why it can take a bit longer or even AP situation as you try to complete a lot of ways to score.

If I have any complaint, maybe a bit about production. Even after just one play, I can see that your player board will leave marks of your drawn shapes. Also, they only give one marker for each color and I don’t know how long they will last.

More unboxing pictures of Mind Space on IG.

Mobile Markets: A Smartphone Inc. Game (2021)

This is a game about running a Smartphone company. Shared some similarities with the board game version from the same designer. Players will be making plans for 5 years or 5 rounds about what kind of phone they are going to produce based on the Customers on the market.

Each customer might ask for specific price and/or specific set of features on their phone. If players can fulfill that demand and be the one to sell to them first, they make the sales.

At the start of each round, players will make a plan using two tiles that shows 5 icons on each side. They have to overlap them and the shown symbols will determine their budget for Technology, Marketing, the number of phones and the price of each phone for that round.

The player with the lowest price will sell to customers first. However, from that price, player has to pay the base cost and each additional features on the phone might increase the cost. It is possible the player may reach negative points even if they sell more phones. Instead of making profits or points, they lose it. However, that might prevent other players from even selling theirs.

This game has a feel of economic game. Unlike heavy economic game, in here, you don’t manage money from the start to finish. Every round may feel like a fresh start. So, thematically, players are running the development team of a smartphone company, not really the entire company.

While there is a benefit and risk for selling low and go first, other players might take advantage of going later if not last. They can wait until the player with the cheapest phone was done selling theirs and see the leftover customers. The next player can then build their phone, add features accordingly.

For the one that goes last, they just have to make sure to gain the most benefit even if they only sell the least number of phones. They can also invest in Private Customers. These are loyal customers and they will wait for that player to build the phone that is perfect for them. However, the player must sell their phones to these loyal first before trying to compete for customers in the market.

Another reason why this is not a heavy economic game, if the player failed to sell their phones, they will not suffer some losses. They just don’t produce the phones and make profit while producing and selling could end up losing profit.

Every round, each player can buy 1 Technology card, any number of feature cards and 1 Marketing card. This is like the hand building mechanism. Players may use them in the subsequent rounds.

The game comes with official solo variant where the player will play against Steve Jr. There is a deck of cards for Steve Jr. that works as a simplified simulation of one other player.

Since the game has almost open information, and with each player has 2 decision-making points each round, player’s turn can take a while. Especially when they try to calculate everything and keeping track on what their opponents have to develop phones.

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Solo play again against 2 Steve Jr. and the final score was 143 for me, 87 for the first bot and 125 for the 2nd bot.

I thought about trying out the expensive phone and private customer focused strategy. Decided to abandon the strategy in the 3rd round after seeing a lot of blue customers and a good tech card that I needed to buy right away. Apparently, the 2 bots followed but I was still the first to sell. Managed to take all blue customers from the market with my cheap phone that only had NFC feature. After that, Red or 2nd player didn’t sell well while the 3rd managed to do better.

In the 4th round, Blue started to monopolize the market by selling super cheap. Red didn’t sell as much while I managed to get the same number of customers as blue but with better profit.

The 5th round was the surprising one. Blue went first and took 11 customers with them, leaving just 8 for me and the Red. I went next and only got to leave just 1 customer for red. Red couldn’t even take that one. Only one from their 3 privates took the offer.

The difference in score from 4th round between me and blue was 31. Blue managed to lower it to 18. With those 11 customers, they also got better profit per customer and earned a lot of bonuses.

Playing time was about 128 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. More solo play and still against 2 opponents. For the first time I lost this solo mode. Scored only 173 as 2nd place, while the 1st one scored 188.

Unlike the usual, I only got 1 End Game Tech card. This opponent really got lucky with multiple cards that gave them extra scoring during profit while the one in last place didn’t have any. Last player got only 147. Maybe I should distribute those types of Steve Jr. cards more equally. Playing time was about 115 minutes.

February 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still the same solo session against 2 opponents with hard difficulty. Another attempt of high end strategy. I almost lost without the 2 Game End cards. Also forgot that Blue customers have different price points and first time setting price at 8.

October 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another solo session, hard difficulty against the 2 opponents. I also tried the selling high end product strategy by accumulating and curating the private. Thought about excluding end game bonus card or otherwise, it was an easy win.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. First time playing solo against 2 Steve Jr. suggested fan made variant. A bit more thoughts about this variant and why this feels like improvement to the official variant. I won but only by 1 point against one of the bot.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo, Hard Difficulty, scored 161 vs 111.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, 158 vs 139.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo play, tried to tweak the rule a bit. Scored 161 to opponent’s 126.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report of Solo play using the Hard Difficulty. Scored 155 vs Steve’s 126.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. Solo play vs Steve Jr. with Hard difficulty. Scored 140 for me and 129 for Steve.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo variant, with Hard difficulty. Scored 156 to opponent’s 134.

Moving Wild (2024)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. So, I retried the 2nd difficulty of solo mode where the Collector got 4 Frogs right from the start.

Apparently, I managed to score 106 minus 12 while the opponent got 77 plus 12 from those frogs. So, I won. Got a bit lucky with 3 hippos and 2 elephants and I only failed to accommodate 1 hippo. Total habitats were only 6 with the starting camp and only one didn’t fully filled but got the Observatory. So, next I should try the 3rd solo difficulty.

Playing time was about 41 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still with solo play but for the first time with the next difficulty settings. In this case, I have to give the opponent the 4 frog cards which gives them 12 points and preventing me to take them. I actually am not sure if I was supposed to count that score. In the end I scored 97 minus 16 or 81 while the opponent scored 96. So, even if I didn’t include those four frogs, I still lost by 3 points. Playing time was about 29 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Solo play again, still with the lowest difficulty after the error from last time. Got 2 sessions. First one I failed with only 69 points vs 82. I feel like the first round only had 1 habitat card out of 20. So I had to give the opponent a lot of animals while I failed to have space for 2. The opponent got 17 x 3 just because of that first round. I lost total of 18 points.

Then the 2nd game got much better. I scored 81 minus 10 while the opponent only got 66. Well, the opponent scored 14 x 3 from that first round, while I got 11. I also managed to get 3 lions in one habitat which happened on a Lake, improved by a land. Playing time was about 40 minutes for the 2nd session.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo play again, just one session with the easiest difficulty. Scored 92 minus 16 while the opponent got 62. I just realized that most predators require size 3 while friendly animals require 4 spaces.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first play of this game, playing the official solo variant, easy mode. A bit of first impression entry and I got 2 sessions, 1 possibly with one rule error about the improvement lock. Last one scored 88 to opponent’s 73.

More unboxing pictures of Moving Wild game on IG.

Nautilion (2016)

The 4th game of the Oniverse series with roll to move as the main mechanism. Each turn, the player will roll 3 d6 and has to assign one die value to the Nautilion, the Phantom and the Darkhouse figure.

The goal is to move the Nautilion from the starting position to the other end along a single path first before the Phantom does in reverse direction. This single path is made of circular tokens.

The tokens might show a Crew that the Nautilion will have to fill their submarine with, in tile laying mechanism. There is an adjacency restriction as where player can place those crews.

The Phantom will do similarly, either just remove them so the Nautilion cannot pick later. Phantom may also add the crew to the Phantom ship that might help the Phantom to attack the Nautilion when both of them meet in the middle.

Player has to make sure that Nautilion has at least the same or more fighting power with their crews than the Phantom’s to survive.

Ideally, player might give the highest value to Nautilion while the lowest goes to Phantom as the value determines how far they can move. Depending on what the Nautilion still need to collect, the decision can be a bit trickier.

In addition to that, player also has to give 1 die value to the Darkhouse. The Darkhouse might take some tokens from Nautilion if player gives certain value to the Darkhouse. Depending on the expansion module. Darkhouse might affect how player can move any figure or assign dice regardless of what player gave to the Darkhouse.

Since the board or the single path is made of these tokens, they can be setup in any form, making it probably the most beautiful game of this series. Even though some may find it fiddly to setup.

And since those tokens are laid out right from the start and face up, the player can see and make a long term plan. Making priority what to get early and what to get later.

The game offers a couple of ways to mitigate the randomness, either from the dice roll or the placement of those tokens. Player can collect Reserved tokens and spent them later to change dice or state of the board.

Nautilion also comes with different player board or the shape of submarines, each with different restriction of Crew placement. It has spatial aspect in both the main board and the player board.

While Nautilion may not offer the deepest game in the series this may be the best overall design.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still using all modules but just the easier variant and back with the 1st Nautilion board. As usual, the heroic modules really hurt my experience for this. It really didn’t feel helping. Without them, it was an easy win, I think. Playing time was about 46 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Retried the previous setting since I failed last time. This time, I was lucky since one of the Darkhouse card pushed the Nautilion backwards. In the last round I got lucky. Either the Phantom reached the Happy isle first or they landed on mercenary and I had to lose something.

I just realized in that situation I could lose something from the Mage board. Got lucky to lose just the numbered crew from it and won the game.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Using the last Nautilion board and the 5 red Darkhouse cards. I think I could have won by ignoring the 3 Heroic cards module. Otherwise, not only I had not enough time and the Phantom reached the Happy isle first.

October 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played with the 2nd to last Nautilion board, the green one, using all of the modules. This time the Darkhouse used 5 red cards for harder difficulty. Somehow it made it easier or maybe just got luckier this play.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing with the Circular shaped Nautilion (first of the C), still using all expansion modules. Also first time using Darkhouse cards that use 3 dice twice, allowing Nautilion to move twice a lot.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or TikTok. This was first time using the Nautilion 2nd B board, still using all of the expansions. Forgot to add token according to the Darkhouse card. Probably could have lost the game.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Still with the same setup as previous session but won.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing with the 2nd Nautilion board. Completed all objectives except for the last Heroic card module.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This is using all of the expansion, the standard Nautilion board, easier side of Mercenary board and normal difficulty for the Darkhouse module.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing with the last expansion. All others were included.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the Full Session Report. Played with all expansion except for the last one. Normal difficulty of Darkhouse. Played twice.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing with the Darkhouse expansion plus all previous modules.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report with the first 3 expansion modules.

Next Station: London (2022)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. More solo session with both modules. Final score was 182 minus 20 points so I still reached the highest threshold.

The main reason for this high score was that this was the session where I flipped all cards for all 4 sessions. Even the branching part happened in all 4 rounds. Red line was first, followed by Purple, Green and Blue as the last one. No station with more than 2 lines intersected but there were 7 with 2.

It had been a while since my play before this one. I actually forgot that you might want to connect the same tourist station multiple times instead of just 5 times like the public objective. Then again, maybe I also didn’t have much chance. The other public objective was to connect all 13 districts.

Playing time took about 49 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. I was planning to back with just basic module but I ended up playing with the 2 modules again.

Scored 168 and minus 10 for using those modules. Somehow I got better score than usual. It didn’t feel like that though during the game. Completely the opposite. Highest score was 39 from purple line, connecting two corner districts at the bottom and with extra connection power of the same type. Connected 13 districts and crossed the river 6 times. Playing time was 29 minutes.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first time playing with the advanced modules, both so a bit of first impression entry. Scored 133 after deducting from both.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. One session only scored 144 still without using any extra modules. 3 rounds revealed all cards.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo scored 143, no extra module.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 solo sessions, scored 127 and 132. This time, instead of revealing card one by one, I revealed all cards for a round until 5 underground cards had been revealed.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions, solo just the base game, scored 117, 111, 125 and 125.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG.  4 sessions, still just the base game. Scored 103, 117, 97 and 124.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions with just the base game, no extra module. Scored 113, 110, 125 and 131.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions, scored 103, 132, 89 and 119.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 solo base game sessions, scored 136 and 143.

April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report for solo session without the extra module. Scored 120.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, scored 137 and 120.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was first time playing the game. 4 sessions scored 96, 105, 94 and 108.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Next Station: London on IG.

Next Station: Paris (2024)

This was the 3rd game in Next Station series after London and Tokyo. For availability reasons, I chose to skip the 2nd one and went with the 3rd.

In general, this is the same flip and write route building game as the predecessors. You play 4 rounds, each with one color, trying to connect stations from the starting station with the matching station. Then you pass the color pencil to the next player while playing with different color in subsequent rounds. The goal is to get the balance of reaching as many districts as possible while connecting as many stations as possible within one district,

So, what’s the difference? You got a different map but still just one variant using a different set of 4 colors. There are still 13 districts and the same shape of stations but there are some new features from this Paris Map.

The middle district is like a giant stadium that works as a single station with all 4 shapes and multiple connecting entries. So it works as a wild station and you can easily extend the line to the opposite district or any other districts, excepts the 4 corners.

The 2nd difference is that there are crossing tunnels. Usually, once you have drawn a line, no other line can cross it. But between certain stations, there are these crossing tunnels. You can even use them both for single rail line. In fact, you are encourages to do crossing as it gives you more points. Only 2 points for using that tunnel once but 6 with crossing. London map has water space for this but it was replaced by this with Paris.

The last difference from the map is the Tourist spots. All tourist spots on this map are wild stations. What makes it different is on the Wild card you flip. If you flip a Wild card and use it to connect to the Tourist spot, you get a chance to extend it one station farther with any shape. Otherwise, the card works as usual, as wild station. This one feature allows you to connect more and score higher.

Besides that, you of course, get different shared objective cards and special ability for each pencil.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still playing with the basic game, solo and only 1 session. Score was 204 which was already more than the highest threshold at about 180.

I didn’t even get any station to connect with all 4 lines which was usually in the middle district. Somehow the Green line forgot to connect at all. Highest score per round was 52 from Purple, followed by 50 from Green. Of course, both got all 10 cards out while the other 2 got only 8 and 9. The last one, orange with 9 cards was actually the lowest and only scored 27. It did feel like very constricted during the final round and with only connected 5 districts showed that.

Playing time was about 34 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 sessions with just the basic module. I think the rulebook is missing the part where you calculate the overall score. First session got me 153 while 2nd session got me 207 which was already the top of scoring chart.

It made me think maybe I got some things wrong or the game is really that swingy in term of scores.  In the 2nd one, even just from the 4 metro lines, I already got 168, Between drawing all cards or just some of them. For 2nd session, at least the last 2 rounds got all cards revealed. Actually, only 1st round got 8 cards while the rest were 10 or 11.

Total playing time of both sessions was 86 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was my first time playing this version and I got 2 sessions. First one scored 143 while 2nd one scored 150. with I think, over 180 points as the highest threshold.

Some people say that this is an easier entry than the London version. I think, more accurately, this gives you a lot more flexibility in order not to get stuck. However, I would argue that this may not be an easier one to score well compared to London.

From my experience, those flexibilities can either be a distraction or a trap. At first, it feels like I can go anywhere. Even connecting two opposite corners is very possible. The thing is, you still score the same way as the London version,  a balance between a number of districts multiply by the number of stations connected. Not to mention, the round still can end early.

Sure, you have flexibility not to get stuck. But it doesn’t mean it will increase your score. As I said, it could be a trap, preventing you from scoring higher.

Also, I mentioned about feeling you can go anywhere. That can still prevent you in subsequent rounds to cross that space, especially in the final round. So, there is a feeling where in first round, you feel the freedom but as it goes on, you feel tighter. Again, the flexibility will help you connect stations, but it doesn’t mean it will increase your score.

So, it is as if the London version is the one holding you back for good reason while in this one it’s like you have to be the one to do self control. At least, that is my first impression. Definitely have to play more and see if my view will change. This version is not just an easier variant but might be a good alternative.

Playing time was about 34 minutes for 1 session.

More unboxing pictures of Next Station: Paris on IG.

Obsession (2018)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. More solo play, back with Asquith family but first time for new opponent, the Boleyn. The base score was still just 85 to beat them.

I feel like this might be the best session so far for me. Not only I scored 158, I also got maximum reputation. While I did use special actions, I didn’t use it as much as my usual play. The reputation just kept coming up to the point after the National Holiday, I still managed to play one purple tile with reputation of at least 6. The Lionheart suite got me to draw Albert from Thornhill and got double the favors which were 2 VP cards and 8 reputations.

I didn’t expect for that reputation at the end and I actually got an objective for that, that I got rid right from the start of the Courtship. The Court themes were 2 for Service, 1 Sport and one Essentials.

Formal Dinner at North Dining Room happened during National Holiday. Six gentries were invited and one of them was the Fairchild Lady. Three rounds before that, 5 gentries were invited for that initial dinner, mostly just to raise funds. Charles Fairchild even accompanied Lady Eleanor twice within the same courtship timeframe, so I did pass on one round. Hired two more valets which I thought was impossible or unnecessary. The mother also got rid of one lady that was introduced during the national holiday.

No money at the end. I had to spend 800 just to buy the Gabled Conservatory that came out in the last round. The Boleyn did take one Monument and it was the only one that came out.

Playing time was about 87 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still playing solo against Seymour family and this time with York. This was my first play where I managed to buy the only Monument that came out and I had 1,000 pounds left. But also, first time I failed 3 of 4 Courtship, aside from the 3rd one. As a result, the opponent scored 100 total. I scored 106 so I still won but too close for this easier opponent.

It seems 2 themes of Essentials was more challenging to beat. The other theme had some tiles to give you a lot of points just by buying them. Most of the essentials had to be played in order to get a jump from 0 to 5. I had the chance to buy more of these brown tiles but not enough to play. Not just the turn but also the Gentry and the servants.

Playing time was about 105 minutes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 7th solo play, back with Ponsonby but against Seymour family.

This was my first time switching between taking the two Fairchild. Especially because I got an objective to get more Prestige Guest and I had to rely on the Lady. Won all for Courtships even with the last one with all 4 being different themes. Scored 110 at the end while the opponent got 80 plus one Monument. I couldn’t afford to buy the last Monument. In fact, I think I could have scored higher had I chose to not buy any tile in the last round.

I just realized that maybe I forgot to take 2 more Prestige Guests during the holiday for maybe 4 more points. Playing time was about 90 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 6th solo play, the Cavendish family against Seymour. During the game, I really thought I didn’t do well this time. Or at least. not as much fun as previous play. Mostly maybe because I was conflicted with the action to do. I was planning to hire more workers but not sure the correct timing.

I didn’t end up doing it but luckily, apparently, I didn’t need to. Lost the first 2 Courtship but won the other 2. During holiday I managed to host the State Room, inviting 6 Gentries, including Mr. Fairchild himself, accompanying the daughter and 3 other Prestige Guests. It felt like the best event ever.  From Reputation level 2.1 up to 5.5 as the result.

In the end, I scored 121 while Seymour got 80 plus 5 from one monument and 8 from 2 VP cards. Got no money left, reputation at 6.3. I think I only did 1 special action and it was to help buying tile during Builder’s Holiday. Playing time was about 90 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 5th solo play. Back with Asquith Family but for the first time against Seymour family.

I feel like this was a much better experience compared to my previous plays, especially the last one before this. Got a good amount of money and reputation with prestige guest that requires still lower reputation. I managed to invite them to event not just during holiday. The service tile to keep pushing one exhausted servant per round definitely helped a lot. I also managed to invite the Fairchild twice during a season with one round just taking the cards back in between.

Only failed to win the 3rd season.  Scored 35 from tiles, 5 from only 1 VP card, no money left, 16 from servants, 15 from Reputation level 5, 25 from 3 objective cards, 25 points from 21 Gentry cards with 6 of them were negative points. Total score was 121 vs 85 from Seymour.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 4th solo play with the Ponsonby Family still against Simpsons. I made a mistake of refreshing the servants during Courtship. Scored 128 but with that error. I feel like besides the Gentleman from Fairchild, I didn’t get enough guest that gave me reputation or not enough chance to use them. Tried to take advantage the Barn and focusing on ESTATE but I did like twice probably.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 3rd solo play and this time using the Cavendish family, still against Simpson. Scored over 139 even though I was not very honest with the tile draw. Maybe I shouldn’t be very worried about it. Significantly more enjoyable game. A couple of Services tiles at the start really helps.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd solo play using the Asquith family against the Simpson. Won with 107 vs 83, but a bit of cheating when revealing the next Courtship theme and when they were about to remove Monument. Got frustrated when looking for clarification in the rulebook or glossary.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first play and with the solo variant, standard 16 rounds. A bit more of first impression.

More unboxing pictures of Obsession game on Instagram.

Old Town Road (2021)

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Scored only 70 points. Another for Ace Sheriff combo at the end but he got killed as part of Straight Flush.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Scored 78. Managed to score a couple of 7s in great sets. The Sherrif at the end made powerful combo.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Failed to get the Straight Poker Set and scored only 35.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or TikTok. Scored only 67. An error of placing a character with train icon, placing them on right instead of left.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored 78.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored 69 points.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored 70 points, got all of the poker sets.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored only 56 points, missing the Straight set.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored 53 points.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report. Scored 48 but probably got the scoring wrong.

Oliva (2025)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 solo sessions. One was with standard setup while the 2nd played with the advanced setup with different starting resources and one special action card.

For the first play, I only scored like 29 which was just slightly above the lowest threshold of the scoring chart. It really felt random and swingy that I only got to buy 3 nation cards plus 2 global cards. The rest was to buy special action and scoring cards.

In the 2nd game, I managed to score 41, which was not enough for the highest threshold of 45. This one felt better but still only 3 flags plus 3 global cards. It seems the only difference in score between both plays was the global cards, 16 from 3 cards vs 8 from 2. So, aiming for value 6 to buy seems to be mostly the better option than taking flags. Like use the flags just for the action.

Playing time was about 120 minutes for 2 sessions.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I finally got the answer about which card to follow and why they are different between solo and multiplayer modes. The correct answer is you do activate the other player’s cards with the matching symbol in multiplayer mode. However, the solo mode was done from different designer and the designer already clarified that you just repeat your own card.

With that in mind, I got another solo session with standard setup. I scored 52 which was already the highest threshold of the chart in the rulebook. Honestly I didn’t feel like I did that well. Oh, another thing that I just realized was that when you do Disposal action, turning cards into olive pomance, you also count them as remaining resources, 1 point for every 3.

I only got flags of 3 countries, 2 each. Spain had 5, Greece had 4 and Turkey had 3. Got 14 from selling to 3 countries. Only one scoring bonus card which gave me 1 per flags so I got 6. Also got a lot of coins I failed to spend.

Playing time was about 82 minutes. I didn’t realize it took that long.

September 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. This was a new game to me and about to be released in Essen of this year. Oliva is 3rd game in the series of games from the same publisher and designer team after Cafe and Lata. It comes with the same size box but this one has vertical cover.

If Cafe is about processing coffee beans, delivering them to shops and Lata is about canned fish, this is about processing Olive into Olive Oils. Here are a couple of notes as my first impression.

Essentially, this is a deck building game. Every player starts with identical set of 9 cards with 6 different actions. One action gives you black cube / olive. Another allows you to convert them into green cubes or olive oils. Then you also have cards that gives you coins. The next action type is to buy cards using those resources from the market. Coins let you buy better version of action cards just like any deck building game. In later rounds, you can also buy special scoring cards that works just for you.

With Olive oils or green cubes, thematically, you are selling them to either a country or global market. In either case, you spend the cube to take those cards. Global market means just one time point. When you sell to a country or buy a card with a flag, the value depends on the Nation bonus card that affects all players.

At the start of each round, you flip a Nation bonus card of 5 different countries. Either Greece, Italy, Morocco, Spain or Turkey. During the game, any player can choose to remove a card with a flag from the market to add to this nation bonus in play. At the end of the game, the number of cards for one flag you have, you multiply with the number of cards of that same flag in play as nation bonus cards. So, there is a market manipulation element in Oliva.

What stands out as a deck building game?

When you choose to activate a card of 2 you chose simultaneously, if there is one or more cards showing the same symbol on your or other player’s board, you can activate the action more than once. Let’s say you play a card that gives you a black cube. You check all player’s board including your previous cards, and maybe you find 3 other same symbols. So, instead of getting just one black cube, you have extra 3.

The game encourages you to piggyback what you or the other players have played just previously. Since you can choose to activate the order of one of 2 chosen cards, you can kind of wait for one action just to increase the chance that maybe the other players play the same type as the first one.

The downside to this idea is the problem with most deck building games. You don’t know when you actually draw that specific type of cards. It is even more challenging here. So, you draw 5 cards and choose to play only 2, discarding the rest. You don’t keep the other 3 for later but instead you might have to wait until you replenish your deck.

To be fair, a lot of times, you also buy card that gives you only score and those flag cards that you add to the deck. You cannot use any of them for your action. So, while they give you points to win, they also clog your deck.

There is a specific card / action to remove them though with the same trigger multiple times mechanism like the other action. You only remove the card from the deck but still get points. There is even a scoring card that gives you more points based on the cards you remove from the deck.

Regardless of the player count, each player will get exactly 24 actions. Ideally, you want each of them to trigger multiple times but either you just don’t get the card or you don’t have the resources.

So, definitely you can feel stuck if you rely on the deck as your engine. But your goal is not to make that engine. This is not a game that keeps going until someone triggers the end game. You have exactly 24 turns.

What you want to do in this game is to focus on where you can make combo actions. That is by targeting a row of market and take advantage of multiple flags. Each row of market can have up to 3 cards which can be all one time score or all those flags or any combination of the two.

Why do you want to focus on these? When you choose to remove a flag, instead buying them by spending green cubes, in addition to add them to nation bonus, you can get one-time bonus. The bonus can be getting directly a green cube or even another action where you then buy a special action card. It is kind of like The White Castle, just not as deep. When you choose to do this, not only you manipulate the market but you don’t have to pay anything. Just make sure that the Nation bonus doesn’t help only your opponents.

With the right cards in the market and the right bonus, you can start feeling a better flow of the game. At that point from feeling stuck you action can feel rewarding or that you accomplish something.

So, after having maybe just one or two green cubes, you wait. Wait until one row of market has multiple flags you can take advantage of. While waiting, you then focus on getting better action cards. Maybe focus on cards with alternative symbols so you can hit multiple markets with that card and match different symbols from other players. Eventually you get to play that cards and get the combo going.

After my first play with hopefully the correct rule, where I focused on getting better action cards, I only scored like 20 or so points. According to the scoring chart in the solo mode, which applicable to multiplayer as well to determine how well you are doing, it is the lowest level achievement.

Then I played again, focusing on the main market with green cubes and flags, I managed to scored 36, which was the lowest threshold of the 2nd level achievement from the top. At first, it still feels like getting stuck and like boring turn. Then you finally get the right moment, you start evaluating the best combo you can get in that situation.

A couple of various more notes about the game.

Playing time was about 30 minutes for solo. Maybe longer with each player. Somehow this takes a lot more table space than what I expected from a small box game.

Solo mode is great but I only played once. The Automa or your opponent is there just to remove cards. Technically, it is a BYOS but you can compare score to the chart. Easy to run the opponent and you don’t count their score.

When playing with 2 players, you add a 3rd hand just to match the symbol so you can get more actions. But this 3rd hand doesn’t affect the market at all. If then both players choose to play action cards that doesn’t affect the market, like getting cubes or coins, the market stays like that.

Not official but I believe that instead of adding 3rd hand, using 3rd set of player’s deck, you can use the Automa deck for playing with 2 players. The automa will always remove at least one card from the market and sometimes one of each row. It feels that their cards also shows more symbols so better chance to match. Otherwise, the game is better with more players.

Cards have only 1 size but weird size, 60 x 80. Not sure if there is a sleeve for that. Even if there is, I have a feeling that it is not going to fit in the box. While there is extra room but not for additional deck of cards, just for the tokens and smaller stuffs. Unfortunate for a deck building game and you shuffle a lot.

Because of being a deck building, different types of cards have the same back of the cards. A bit confusing when trying to sort them out initially. There is a subtle difference with the background color.

Not sure I like the player board, made of just cardstock folded. It doesn’t lay flat and just take some space when playing just to show 4 cards. I think you can just play without them.

The theme about farming the olive oil is less than their previous game, Cafe. This is more like a light economic game than about producing and processing olive oil. It feels like it can be replaced by other theme.

There is an advanced variant that I have not tried yet. Basically instead of the same starting resources, each player will get differently plus a bonus action card. So, you may get a better start. I assume that this variant doesn’t work in solo.

Overall, I like the game. Definitely better gameplay than Cafe even if the theme is not as interesting. But that is just my first impression. Looking forward to more play and see if it can change my mind.

More unboxing pictures of Oliva on IG.

One Deck Galaxy (2022)

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Still with Plumplim the Botanist and this time against The Optimization Calibrator. Also still with the highest boost.

This was probably the easiest and fastest play so far. It feels like I may have gotten the rule wrong. Maybe a combination of the Botanist and how this Adversary keeps dice helped it a bit. Ended the game with only triggered the Event once. Also didn’t get a lot of encounters, except for the first one.

Even if you have to kind of cache or let go of the dice, eventually they will let go 3 of them when they have 4 influence points. With the correct timing, you can take advantage of that to just store a 6 in the previous round.

Playing time was still about 99 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Plumplim the Botanist again and this time against Preservation Authority. There was a moment when I thought I already lost the game when the deck ran out and I had no Adversary token to save me. Apparently, by not taking action that takes cards from the deck, I managed to get extra round and eventually win. Still with the highest boost.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back with Plumplim the Botanist against the Neeble Woober, still using the biggest boost. Won after 10 rounds.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or even more on TikTok. Back with Plumplim the Botanist vs the Hungry Nebula.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. PlumPlim the Botanist vs the Optimization Calibrator.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Against the Preservation Authorities. First 2 games were a lost with Felisi the Scientist. 3rd play a won with PlumPlim the Botanist.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Plumplim the Botanist from Brumigum vs The Neeble Woober.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Timtillawink the Explorer vs the Hungry Nebula.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First two sessions of this game. Timtillawink the Explorer vs the Hungry Nebula. This was a Full session report but probably made a lot of rules error.

Here are more unboxing pictures of One Deck Galaxy game on IG.

Onirim (2nd Edition, 2014)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still playing solo with almost all of the modules.

The session started with a good luck where I got a lot of Happy dream cards very early and disabled those premonitions. Like 3 of them even before my first door. Then I got a set of 3 whites for my first door, followed by 2nd tower which was already had a white and then a blue.

At that point, I already discarded enough cards and I had to swap red door with green as 2nd one. Got a set of 3 green to open the door. Not long after, I also completed the blue door with a set of sun, glyph and sun as the 3rd. After that, the final premonitions was disabled so I got less to worry.

Completed 4th door which was blue again after swapping with white and it was using set of 3 blues again. Then 3rd tower which was Red showed up. followed by removing a couple of nightmares using keys. Then, completed 5th door which was the 2nd white using 2 white card and a wild sun.

More nightmare got removed and I found a denizen that allowed me to play a card with the same symbol in a row. Started a set of red with sun after sun. So, I got a green glyph and when I discarded it, I found a Green door. So, I swapped the next door which was a red and followed by another red with a green. This way, I could still continue the set of red.

Found another denizen to store my wild sun. At this point, I got 3 dead end cards so I removed them along with a red and a blue to get fresh hand. Luckily one of them was the red moon to complete the 8th door.

Played another glyph and found no door but the last tower, the green one. Completed that and I had one less trouble to deal with, after casting a spell to pull that card back to the top of the deck.

I already started a set of white and I got a wild moon. So, I finished the set using the wild sun stored by the denizen. Next, the 9th door was supposed to be green but I had cards to complete blue set, final door. After wasting cards just to get enough to swap position again, I got the blue door.

Then, lots of red in my hand which was perfect for the next door and I completed that 10th. Last 3 doors, a red, a white and green. Using the key, I knew that a glyph and white door were coming but I didn’t have enough to swap position again. So, instead, I used the white glyph to make the set while waiting to get enough cards to cast that spell.

Finally, I found the last wild sun and to complete it and enough to make the swap. After a lot of discarding cards, I got enough cards to make set of 3 reds and greens. However, both had 2 suns so I needed a different one or a moon in between. Luckily, I had denizen to swap one card to anything from the discard pile, traded one green sun with a key. That key itself opened the last door.

This was very tight. I probably didn’t have enough cards to make a hand before getting all cards for the dreamcatcher. That swap with the final key also needed to track the discard pile and make sure I didn’t use it to cast spell and had to be done earlier.

Playing time took about 74 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Same setup using all of the modules in the box except for Incubi. Got hit by one Dark Premonition card for having 3 door cards in which I had to draw a new one. 2nd hit for having 2 Blue doors which I had to lose 2 key cards while the other 3 got cancelled.

After 5 doors, all Towers were finished. One Nightmare hit before I started any of the Tower. Finished the game exactly with 5 cards left in hand while all dream cards were captured. Playing time was about 56 minutes.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still with the same setup using almost every module in the box. I failed this time but it was close. Completed all doors but failed to capture all Dream cards. Then again, I got the set of 3 wrong, another error because of using the Wild along with the other color.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another play with all of the modules except Incubi. This time I let one of the Dark Premonition got triggered which led to drawing 1 more that got triggered as well. Completed the game with one card in the deck left. Honestly, a bit of cheating this one.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or on TikTok. Still using the same setup. The Dark Premonitions prevented me from completing White Doors until they were the last 3 goals. Still got enough cards in hand.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. All expansions except the Incubi Pawn. I won but somehow made the game a bit harder with one error.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. All expansions except the Incubi pawn.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. All expansions except the Incubi pawn. This was the Full Session Report. A major error early in the game.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing with the Door to Oniverse expansion plus all other modules except the Incubi pawn.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. First time playing with the Crossroad and Dead-End module plus all expansions before it.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2nd play with Dark Premonitions and Happy Dream modules plus any expansion up to that point.

Pandoria Merchants (2020)

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo session again and still lost horribly.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing the game with solo variant.

Photograph (2016)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I only got one play, 2-handed this time. 2nd player won with 35 while 1st player only got 28. I could feel during the game that 1st player got a lot of disadvantage. I had to play very slowly with just mainly taking 1 card while usually I could go with 2.

At the end, both got the same number of error cards, which was 3. 1st player even got 2 on one color and made the entire color worth 0. However, 2nd player won because they got 2 more Good Shot card than 1st and they managed to get 6 cards in the correct order of 1 color. I think 1st had a chance to get another Good shot card but still not enough to make them win.

Playing time took about 55 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 4th time playing with 2-handed, just one session. 2nd player won with 53 while 1st player only got 43.

2nd player won 3 of the Good Shot. While they had only 1 color with sequence of 6, the rest 4 colors got exactly 4 each. 1st got 1 bad shot while 2nd got them all perfect. Unlike my previous play, this time I really took time just by playing 1 card a lot to both. I actually thought 2nd player got disadvantage since they always was the one to reset the market.

Playing time was about 46 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 3rd time playing with 2-handed. Got 2 sessions after the first one was one sided victory, almost double the score, 28 to 53.  The next one was better with 40 to 43.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd time playing. I think I still forgot about anticipating scoring the next card with value more than 3. This was 2-handed, one scored 49 and the other only 37 with the winner made no mistake at all while the loser had to take a couple of cards they couldn’t use.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First play, 2-handed. Got 3 sessions. First play definitely got the rule wrong. This was a bit of first impression entry.

More unboxing pictures of Photograph on IG.

A Place for All My Books (2025)

I got to follow this project when it was on Kickstarter campaign. This game got about 18 thousand backers, almost the same as one of the Marvel United campaign without being a game with miniatures or related to certain IP. So I guess the theme appeals to certain audience and I saw a lot of people buy this game just to give it to their book lover friends.

The game is about introvert who loves reading and collecting books. Now you try to store those books as multiple stacks in various rooms in your apartment, determined by your Little Project cards. Maybe your card wants you to have multiple stacks on green books in the Kitchen area or not having Blue books at all in Bedroom and Bathroom.

So, you try to rearrange them not manually but using certain actions in worker placement mechanism. One action allows you to take just the top book but can be from multiple stacks and creates a new stack. Another one allows you to take a stack and distribute them on top of multiple stacks. If you need to take out a specific book from the stack, there is an action to take just one and place it on your nightstand. part of your bedroom.

After you fulfill your Little Project requirements, there is an action to ADMIRE them. This can give you points for each completed project and bonus either Social Battery energy or other Objects you can collect. Ideally, you want to admire multiple projects at once to charge your social battery to maximum level of 20.

As an introvert who doesn’t like going out too much and socializing, the social battery allows you to visit Village by spending 5 of them. Then in the village, there are other worker placement spots that require more social battery just for you to get more books and or collectibles.

You can Exchange books you had on your nightstand for specific color. So you want to make sure you have some books that before going out. Or you can go to LIBRARY to get random books and add more to the bookstore. In the Bookstore you can buy one of 3 sets of books and a project card, either the small one, medium one or the biggest sets. Everytime you get a book from village, you place them into your backpack which has limit. When you get back to your home, you will move that stack from the backpack to one space in your home.

You can also buy more collectibles. The collectibles can give you end game scoring or some rule breaker abilities when doing certain action. The village is the only way you interact with other players. Some actions can only take one player so if it is already occupied the previous player will get nudged out to the Park which gives them 2 social energy, allowing them to do more instead of going back home.

Eventually you have no more energy and have to go back home to start completing more projects. Maybe take a rest action to get 2 more project cards but you can only keep 5 after that.

The game continues like this until the end game is triggered which is by the number of times any player visited the village, like 4 in 2 players. Then you get one more round before you start counting scores. Whoever scores the most points wins.

There is also communal objectives and only the first 2 players to fulfill it gets a score, higher for being the first. The game also comes with solo mode with opponent deck where you compete against Penelope.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back to playing 2-handed because I find it more relaxing. This time between the Blue Girl and the Red Boy.

Blue as the 2nd player scored maybe over 140 points while Red as the first only got 81. It feels like Blue got a lot of luck not just from getting the Display Case, but also a lot of little projects that got her more other neat items. That display case alone got her 18 points so even if she lost it, she still won.

Both only managed to get 2 of 3 Major accomplishments. Blue completed 17 little projects with no leftover cards in hand. Red got only 13 cards and had still one left in hand. The number of books were close, like 28 for blue and 26 for red. Maybe even the same since 2 of the books from Blue were both purple.

So, I think the biggest scoring factor that made that much different between the 2 players was the Other Neat stuffs. Red only got 7, less than half from the Blue. On top of that, the things that Blue got had a lot of end game scoring. Also, while both actually visited the village 3 times, the last time for blue was actually after the end game was triggered and she moved back right away as the last action.

Playing time took about 120 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First time playing the solo mode. I actually got 2 sessions since the first one ended very fast and I lost to Penelope. So, I played both with the lowest difficulty. In the 2nd one I scored 88 while Penelope got 83.

A couple of notes about this solo mode. First, I think you should keep track of Penelope’s score from time to time instead of calculating at the end. There is a chance you yourself can drag the game as long as possible without anybody triggering the end of the game. Both then just keep getting score while in reality, maybe you can just win sooner. In that session I tried to score all the Major accomplishment before trying to end the game.

Secondly, this solo mode doesn’t feel cozy like in multiplayer mode. You are constantly being pressured by Penelope to the point that you feel bad spending too much time at the village. The only way you can slow down Penelope is by staying and working at home. While being super thematic but it doesn’t feel the coziness that I got from my previous play.

You even have to make a plan as when to do admire instead of admiring multiple projects at once. If anything, before leaving your apartment, you might want to prepare admiring things as the additional action when you got home. So, there is an extra consideration for when is the perfect time to get to village, even if, you end up getting more battery than you already can have.

The 2nd time I went out, it was just to buy 2 cool things because one major accomplishment said so. I went back home right after that without getting additional books.

So, not only you need to choose the easy project cards but also diversify them so you have more control to Penelope’s action. I didn’t even get to use the Rest action at home to get more project cards that often. Which means, I got very lucky.

As for my initial impression of this solo mode, I still like this one. Really great spatial challenge. It was just I didn’t expect that kind of pressure. Definitely won’t recommend this as a cozy game. Cozy theme, maybe but not really about how challenging it is.

Playing time took about 90 minutes and I counted 33 turns for Penelope.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I got my first play and as learning, I decided to play 2-handed since the solo mode seems to require more resolving the opponent steps.

In that game, 2nd player won with 102 points while 1st only got 70. 2nd player was the one to trigger the end of the game after visiting the village for 3rd time. They run out of social battery while 1st got maximum.

You definitely can get stuck trying to admire multiple projects all at once as it happened to the 1st player. For that, you probably need to remind yourself whether you need to do it all at once or not. Maybe you already have enough energy with just a couple of them.

The first challenge when learning the game is to understand the action to manipulate those stacks of books. Combined that with efficiency exercise as where to do least movement to complete projects. Also the fact that you cannot do the same actions in a row means you need to plan at least 2 steps ahead. I think that took a while but after you get the hang of it, the game plays smoothly and it happened in just one play.

I think there are definitely some randomness where you can just get project cards that works well with each other. While other players might get cards that contradicts with each other like have multiple tall stacks vs lonesome books.

As for the special ability from the collectibles I don’t think I used them as much if not at all. Also rather hard to chase certain collectibles that require multiple of the same type. Not like you can choose to ignore the bonus but getting them are either from completing projects or you have to buy in the village. For the latter, the other players can take or even remove them.

I’m curious if you can actually just stay at home and keep progressing. Some projects do better with less books and you can still get project cards at home. The only reason to get outside is to get more books.

Thematically, specifically about being introvert and social battery, I can definitely relate to that. Not sure about rearranging the books though. Luckily for me, the game is more about the spatial puzzle. For some reason, you can play well without using the Read action at all. Maybe the 1st player did once or twice. Only 2nd player got to exchange and that happened just once.

Playing time with 2-handed and a bit learning was about 90 minutes.

As initial impression of the game, I definitely like this game and will play more. Still not sure if I am happy with buying the deluxe version. Not like there was any of the regular version left in local stores. Definitely don’t care about the box being like a Book and using Box Sleeve.  I will try the solo mode in my next play.

More unboxing pictures of A Place for All My Books Game (deluxe) on my IG.

Pocket Master Builder (2022)

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Another 2-handed session, probably the best experience so far. I always thought about focusing on the Orange type building but this time, the Green one got me to do more combo which helped with the position on Walls.

Final score was 41 for 1st player against 40 for 2nd player. The 2nd player was the one to do the cool combo and even won both Oracle cards. 1st player reached the end of the Wall first and both got the Donkey in the last space. It felt like 1st player was stuck but turns out they won. 2nd player still had more rewards left.

Playing time was about 86 minutes.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 2-handed session. Got to 10th round as the final one. Black player won with 42 but only 6 buildings while the opponent got 7 buildings and 2 Oracle cards but only 40 points. This White as 1st player got buildings for 2 discount that effectively they didn’t use.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session, scored only 33, ruined both the Oracle cards right from the start.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo variant, scored only 37. Forgot again about the rule of placing worker only on side with adjacent cards.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed solo, 43 vs 38 points.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-player, ended in a draw with 43 points.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo play, scored only 41 points.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo play, scored 41.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo play, scored 40 points, minus the flipped cards on the border.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full session report of my first play. Solo mode, scored 36 but probably a lot of rules error.

Point City (2023)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. After a good session from my last play and surprisingly viral post on one social media account, I thought about revisiting this game. Got 2 solo sessions.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy any of these. In my first game, I scored 46 points while the opponent with hard mode got 51. At least, it was close. Got 3 Civic tokens while the opponent got 1 right at the very last turn. Actually, they already had one plus 3 lucky draw of wild cards.

Then I played again and I got possibly the worst session. There was only one Civic building showed up which I took. The thing is that I was preparing to get other tokens and built my engine accordingly. Another thing that made it worse was that at some point, most of the available building cards require 2 ore more Green resources.

I had none. No building with permanent resource for that. My only option was to use the wild card. But of course, the opponent could take them without any issue. In the end, with hard mode, the opponent still got 51. I only got 42.

Playing time was about 104 minutes for 2 sessions.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I thought I didn’t enjoy my previous plays of Point City that much but somehow, this was the best experience so far. Initially I was going to play 2-handed again but decided to play the solo.

I guess, this time I really focused more on building engine and it worked well instead of just preventing the opponent from taking Civic token. This time, I got 46 points while the opponent got only 27 and I got 5 Civic tokens. By building engine a bit, it lets you to take multiple building cards more instead of being stuck with just one resource plus one building. Even if you have to let the opponent get a bit more Civic token early.

Playing time was about 45 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Got 2 solo sessions. First one I scored 41 and the other I scored 43. For the first play, I managed to get a good engine with a lot of permanent resources but only 1 Civic token. While the 2nd one got only 3 permanent resources total but with 4 Civic tokens.

I started to feel that the game shouldn’t have scored based on permanent resources. That 2nd play I took only few building with permanent resources not because I didn’t want to but it was either useless or only for score. Maybe there should be an extra step for the setup. Like, you need to make sure that in those number of cards in each phase, each resource must have the same number of cards.

Playing time was about 88 minutes for both.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Two more plays with the solo variant, hard difficulty. First one was a tie with 38 while the 2nd one, I thought I won easily. I misunderstood that those 2 Civic tokens worth 7 and 5 were just one time value not value per Civic Tokens. So, what I thought was an easy win, actually got horrible lost.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 2nd play and first time trying the solo variant. There is a bit of unclear rule of how you do scoring, especially medium and hard mode. Between scoring per card of each type or just one score per type.  Unfortunately, no official response from the developer.

From how I interpret the score, I got 50 vs opponent’s 52 in hard mode for my first play. 2nd time I got wrong with the rule where I am not supposed to use building resource in the same turn as when I built it.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First play, 2-handed. One scored over 40 the other scored only around 20. This was a bit of first impression entry. I think there is an issue with permanent resources not showing up but stayed as resources only. Making certain Civic tokens a bit of risk to invest on.

More unboxing pictures of this Point City game on Instagram.

Point Salad: Eevee Edition (2019)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got about 6 sessions of playing 2-handed, first time playing this game. One thing that I realized compared to the other games trying to reimplement this mechanism is the idea to turn a scoring card into Pokemon or the Veggie card. This doesn’t exist in either Chomp or Point City and made Point Salad more strategic with the multiuse card mechanism.

So, if you find yourself not liking any of the 6 cards or even the 3 scoring cards, maybe the other side of scoring card might be useful for you, now or later. Picking that one up instead of 2 useless one might be a better choice.

From my 6 plays, there were definitely times when I thought I could work on the scoring cards I chose early only to find out that I failed one type to score for it. Luckily I could use it for something else. Sometimes the scoring cards can still work but then you need to evaluate how much points you lose vs gain by switching.

The score between the 2 players can be very far, between 1 point and up to maybe 17 from my plays. At first, I thought you need to take scoring cards first because on its own, the Pokemon or veggie cards don’t score anything. But it doesn’t mean a good scoring card will show up on your turn. You may take a risk and collecting various types to diversify but maybe the good scoring cards is not even in the game.

I have a feeling that the best scoring card is the one that involve 3 types for 8 points per set. Not 8 per 3 of one type since there are only 6 cards per type in 2 players. Especially if you can avoid the type where your opponent was focusing on. That best scoring type makes each pokemon worth almost 3 points each. Then the other scoring conditions you need to take should generate more points for the same type you are collecting.

I am still not sure about taking cards with penalties, especially on 2 types. It is possible to avoid one type but still you get less flexibility. And if the other players pay attention, they may take advantage of that. Of course, you can just choose to turn that scoring into pokemon.

And that what makes this game a bit weird for me. On one hand, this is supposed to be a quick turn game. In reality, depending on your scoring cards, you might end up reevaluating the score that often which slows the game for everybody. Well, it gets worse since I have to translate this Korean only game.

While I like the game where you have to constantly consider changing your scoring and set collecting, it is a bit swingy. Some players might get a good scoring cards while the other may not get a chance to take at all.

Playing time was about 18 minutes per session for 2. Maybe less since I played both sides. I have a feeling that maybe this is better with more players? As you play with more cards. It seems very easy for one player of 2 to just hoard one type which can further affect the scoring the other player may get.

Hate drafting can be the main thing in this game. Not just denying the players for the Pokemon card but also the scoring. Maybe I should try with more players at least once.

Unfortunately, the Pokemon theme doesn’t really make the game more interesting. Even with adding the 2 Wild cards.

More unboxing pictures of this Point Salad: Eevee Edition on my IG.

Puzzle Dungeon (2019)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played as SNEAK this time. Sneak has no specific prey. After defeating regular enemy and trigger the effect, you get to take one card from the discard pile and add them to your collection as gold. In order to win, after defeating a regular enemy, you need to have 15 or more gold.

What I didn’t realize until later in the game is that this means, you are supposed to beat all 3 regular enemies of every type forcing the last one of each type to become the harder variant. It might take longer than the other character with specific prey.

The session actually went well or at least better than my previous play. Well, until I could no longer use any card which happened after about 10 gold. Then, I started using the treasure chest cards. In fact, I had to use 4 in order to win the game.

Also in order to win, I relied on the Overseer who can keep coming back to the dungeon as long as it is still the regular form. By allowing it to return to the dungeon, it allows me to trigger the other regular monster effect which helped me to get certain cards. If I understand the way it works correctly then the Harpy was a good use to be triggered multiple times by Overseer.

At the end, there were two monsters left, both from Demon type, like the Overseer. I guess it was not a bad idea to treat your first dozens of plays of this game as training mode with those treasures. That can really help you get familiar with certain combo. This play managed to restore my enthusiasm in playing Puzzle Dungeon more.

Playing time was about 57 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 sessions. First one was Bodyguard where everytime I do Deal action I have to exhaust one enemy at the front. If I understand correctly, if all 4 enemies at the front were already exhausted, I had to do the 2nd cost, which was to discard the top of the deck. As a result, I ended up just discarding cards and only defeated like 5 or 6 enemies. Worst experience ever.

Then I played 2nd one with ROOT FARMER. With this one, I only needed to target 4 preys, but everytime I defeat any of them, I have to redo the dungeon setup, spreading the enemies everywhere again. At least this one was not bad. I managed to defeat up to the 3rd of those preys with 9 enemies left including the last prey and it was already the front of one column. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough card for it. So, incorrectly, I played one of the Treasure that worked for that situation to bring back the bottom 4 cards of the discard pile and beat it. Sadly, my first session really soured my experience with this game.

Playing time of the 2nd session was about 35 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Played with WARLORD this time and no extra modules. Maybe I should have. With this one, I only need to hunt the Lion type monsters. However, right after setup, all 4 monsters at the front were immediately upgraded and everytime I beat any of them I had to flip the target monster.

Technically I got stuck very early with no cards that I could use to beat any of the front monster. So, I just kept reshuffling until it was possible. I also was not sure whether I resolved those flipped monsters’ effect correctly. I won after moving a couple of monsters to one column without the target thanks to resolving the flipped effect of one serpent.

Playing time was about 35 minutes.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 2nd visit to this game. With no extra modules, I played with SORCERER, the basic side. With this, I had to defeat 4 demon type monsters. The problem is that everytime you beat a non prey monster, those demons move back one space. So, eventually they got to the back of each column.

The trick was to beat Earth Wyrm to push one of them to the front. Same for GREMLINS as you may swap position of monster one space for every 4 cards in discard pile. So, you need to beat some first. One of the demon, the HOMONCULUS also allows you to rearrange 3 front monsters of any column.

Still not sure if I played everything correctly but hopefully I did. Completed the objective after 37 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was new game to me so this is a bit of first impression rather than session report. Tough rule to start learning, even from picking the first character to play. Maybe a bit of randomness and requires understanding the entire monster deck to play well.

More unboxing pictures of Puzzle Dungeon game on IG.

Rafter Five (2023)

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Initially, I was going to try the solo mode with the advanced variant but I’m still not sure about the rule between joint and nail lumber. If I understand correctly, it will become meaningless as the game progress since you cannot really see the whole lumber card.

So, I went back with just the competitive and solo regular variant. In the competitive game, the 2nd player destroyed the raft and got eliminated on the 2nd fall. That was like 7 tokens per player left. Then I played again with the solo mode and while I got everything on board, I guess there is nothing more to find here. Those 2 sessions took about an hour to play.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got one play only, same as before. Started as if I played 2 players, 2-handed and proceeded as if I play solo. Somehow I managed to place everything perfectly and got maximum score.

I guess I have to try the advanced variant next and see if I can make it more challenging but enjoyable. Also, I think I got better understanding of how to use each rafter for their characteristic.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first couple of plays of this game so the report was about my initial impression, mainly for the solo play. Not an official variant but it is possible to play this cooperatively and possibly makes it a better, deeper than just chaotic party game.

More unboxing pictures of Rafter Five game on IG.

Railroad Tiles (2025)

This is the board game version or tile laying version of the roll and write, route building game called Railroad Ink from 2018. Usually I would prefer the smaller, cheaper version of the 2 and the Ink version had 4 editions which sadly were not available locally. Then this version got crowdfunded and I decided to go with this one instead of waiting again.

I cannot make any comparison with the roll and write version so I’m just going to describe this one. In Railroad Tiles, players will be drafting sets of square tiles to build their own cities connected by either highway or railroads. You play like 8 rounds, drafting different number of tiles each round while changing the turn order. The player who picks the least amount of tile per round goes first in next round.

Each tile will show one or both types of lines among either a City or a landscape. When you take a tile, you must place it adjacent to previously placed tile and you much connect the same edge or lines. There are a couple of things you want to pursue when placing the tiles.

First, you want to create a compact area. At the end of the game, you score the biggest rectangular shape you can find on your board without any hole. Using terms from urban design, basically you want to avoid urban sprawling where your roads just keep expanding.

Second, continuing with the first idea, you also want to create a loop. Because at the end of the game, you lose points with leftover open lines starting from 5. So, if you have 18 open roads you lose 13 points.

Third goal is to create and connect a lot of cities. Tiles that show buildings are city blocks. If 3 or more of these are connected adjacently, you score 5 points each. There is no point on having bigger city, except when you play with the solo achievement.

Those 3 are the main ways to score. In addition to that, each tile may show one or 2 types of pinpoints. Some railroad may show train pinpoints while highways may show blue ones for cars. There is also a red one for travelers or people who walk in either types of lines.

What you want to do with these is to put the same types of pinpoint in the same network. A network is lines of the same type that are connected to each other instead of being cut by city block or landscape. At the end of each round, you may place one or two of corresponding pawns in the matching pinpoints. That will immediately give you score.

The way they score is 1 point plus 1 per same type of pawns within the same network up to 5 points. In order for you to place the pawn, you must get the tile with that pinpoint first. Not all tiles have them and that encourages you to take other sets, maybe in earlier rounds just to prepare for it. Sometimes you have a plan to connect existing lines but you have to place those pawns early before you connect them so you lose a bit of points.

Those are the basic module of the base game. The base game also comes with several objective tiles. If you play with this variant, you will use 3 different objective tiles per player, all the same sets of objective. Each objective will have their own requirement before you can score 5 points each. Like to score a Temple, you cannot have any pinpoints in any of the adjacent tiles. Or the Gas station must be connected to highways of 8 or more segments.

The timing to place the objective tiles are random at the start of each round. Players can choose which tile to place first. On top of that, Railroad Tiles already have many boxes of expansions. Each expansion is a module with its own theme like energy, countryside, canal, lake, desert, forest and may increase the complexity ratings. However, aside from the World Expansion, you can only mix one module to your game.

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Solo plays again this time and I was trying the TRANS EUROPE EXPRESS Challenge. To win this challenge you need to create a continuous Railroad path with a length of at least 14.

I got my first play and I scored 66. Got 3 cities and the biggest rectangular was 3 x 7. Then I played again for the same challenge and I only scored 42. After realizing that to measure the length, the designer said that you have to move along the line without going to the same tile. In either session, the most I got was 12.

So, I played my 3rd time, hopefully with the correct understanding of the rule. I scored 70. Only 2 cities, exactly with length of 14 for the railroad with 5×4 as the biggest rectangular. Somehow, I managed to have only 4 openings so no penalty at all. Unfortunately, the next challenge requires 3 or less openings.

Playing time was about 25 minutes just for the last session.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with playing 2-handed and the 3 objectives: City Hall, Metropolis and Central Station.

To score the first one, you need 2 tiles on each of all 4 sides of City hall. For the 2nd one, the tile has to be connected to a city with 5 tiles. The last one requires connecting 5 stations through one railroad.

Final score was 66 plus 2 stars for 2nd player while 1st only got 62 points, no star left. Both managed to score all 3 special objectives. 2nd managed to get ideal rectangular shape size 18 and even if 1st got weird shape but they still got 16 so it was very close. 1st player got 18 openings while 2nd got like 17. 2nd player took the lead 4 times while 1st got 3, including the 1st one.

Playing time was about 106 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time, I decided to try the solo mode again with the achievement, just the base game. In the first achievement, I had to have a city block with the size of 10 tiles. While in the 2nd one, I needed to create a highway network with 14 tiles. I completed both in separate sessions and got the highest scoring threshold for both.

I realized that in these two sessions, I always picked either the middle or the biggest sets out of 3. Maybe I also did the same with 2 players because bigger size of your city means bigger chance to score better, assuming you can utilize the tiles. But with the solo, that means, I got no star at all to use them to get different pawns which is dangerous since there is a chance I don’t have the tile for whatever the last pawn is. In 2-player, maybe I got lucky to draw a set with a star instead like in this one, a VP. So, there is some random element that might frustrate players in either mode.

I remember in the 2nd play, there was a moment where I might score better if I chose to not play one tile. How much better? Maybe just extra 2 points by having less exit point. Maybe I should consider that in my next plays.

Playing time for both sessions was about 80 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I played the basic mode once, 2-handed and then I played the solo mode. After that, with the objective, I played 2-handed again twice. That 3rd play was an error where one side didn’t correctly connect the line and I didn’t notice until the end.

The last one took about 51 minutes. 1st player scored 61 and the other scored 51. This was using Temple, Gas station and Airport Objective. 1st player won mostly because they managed to make bigger rectangle, 5 x 5 vs 5 x 3. So, the rest was almost the same score. 2nd lost more scores due to openings but got bigger combo of points.

Since this was just the base game, I was expecting something lighter. With the objective and maybe because I played 2-handed, it is quite thinky, actually. It reminds me of Trailblazers because you also want to create a loop. The difference is, in the latter, unless you close the loop, you don’t score. Not in this case, so it is more forgiving.

However, here you have other ways to score. So, even if you have accepted the penalty, you still want to score higher for other things. Maybe complete a rectangular or maybe just extra points for the pawns. So, instead of easier or lighter game, you get a different challenge to work on.

I think both suffer the same issue with random tile draws. Here, there were moments where only one player got tiles with pinpoints in a round. Although, it doesn’t mean that player can score it well but they did have better chance. Maybe that is the point of the turn order but there is still no guarantee.

So, as my initial impression, I like this game. This is my favorite genre. Definitely will get more plays and we’ll see if I actually need more expansion box. I already have the World one but I suspect I will only get one more.

More unboxing pictures of Railroad Tiles on my IG.

Remember Our Trip (2019)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still with 2-handed and this time back with Singapore map, removing one column. The finals score was 48 for 1st and 39 for 2nd. This was even after 1st player had 3 more mistake tokens. 1st player got 2 of the purples, blues and greens. 2nd failed to get 2nd purple and the orange didn’t add much.

Somehow it felt like 1st player got a lot of luck when drawing things. Most of the confirmations were done by 1st player first and 2nd mostly just followed.

Playing time was about 36 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 2-handed session, back with the Kyoto Map and without the last row. Score was 40 with 2nd player as the winner against 38. This was with the winner had 4 mistake tokens while the other player only had 1.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2-handed session with Singapore Map. Scores were very close, 38 and 37.  Blue, the 2nd player lost. Even though they managed to lead a couple of confirmation first.

Red even suffered penalties for having more mistaken tokens, losing 5. The reason Blue lost was because they didn’t get one photo spot filled while Red got more. Somehow this map feels harder than the Kyoto.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or on TikTok. 2-handed with Kyoto Map again. Just realized one major rule mistake about only scoring when placing an associated tile but not later. Both scored was tie with 47 but could have been different if I realized that rule from the beginning.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, with Kyoto Map, expert variant. Scored 52 and 51.

April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report, expert variant. Scored 42 vs 46.

Rescuing Robin Hood (2021)

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Played with Little John, Will Scarlet and Alan – A – Dale using the express variant. Failed to rescue the last row with not enough brawl, losing 2 Gold and 2 Bronze characters. In 2nd day, only 2 bronze characters were failed to be rescued against 2 blue guards left. Ultimately rescued Robin Hood but didn’t even try to beat the last row before Sheriff. Had brawls left and it was not enough. Playing time was about 82 minutes.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played with Maid Marian, Much the Miller’s Son and Friar Tuck with the express variant. Only Scouting tokens no food during the 2nd day but got like 7. Not sure if it is valid but I changed the order of players during the last day.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Maude Lindsey, Little John and Lady Christabel led the 3 bands to rescue Robin Hood. Beat the Sheriff even. Got a good combo between using Scouting and the Stealth.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With 3 characters again, Alan A-Dale, Lady Christabel and Maid Marian. This time, managed to save Robin Hood and beat Sheriff.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With 3 characters: Much the Miller’s Son, Friar Tuck the Wandering Priest and Maude Lindsey The Illuminator. Robin Hood was rescued.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With 3 characters, Alan A-Dale, Little John and Will Scarlet.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo but with 2 characters, Lady Christabel and Maid Marian. Managed to break into the Nottingham Castle but failed to save Robin Hood.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first time playing the game with 3 characters,

Here are more unboxing pictures of the game on IG.

Roll Camera!: A Filmmaking Board Game (2021)

This is a game about running a movie production house company. Players will be working together to shoot 5 scenes based on the script within the budget and the time limit. Players lose the game if they have not shoot 5 scenes before they run out one of those 2 things. After they shot 5 scenes if the quality is acceptable, then they can win the game.

Each player can choose a different role like Director, Producer, Cinematographer and many other and each role has their own special abilities that only that role can use.

Players then take turns making decision of what the 6 Crew Dice should do in dice placement mechanism. These Crew Dice can be a Cameraman, an Actor, Sound, Lighting, Artistic or VFX which works as wild or any icon.

Each turn starts with roll of those dice and 1 Problem that the player can choose to resolve it now or let it stay for next couple of turns. The longer and further away, the more difficult to resolve it later,

To shoot a scene, the Scene card will tell the requirements. This could be which dice required for shooting and how to arrange them in set.

First, they need create a set piece by assigning 2 identical dice. Player can pay the cost and do a mini game of tile placement. Each tile is a square tile with 2 x 2 grid, has a decoration or the blue space. The blue space is the only space to place the dice so placing the tile has to follow the Scene card. There is a way to rearrange the placement of set pieces later for different scene.

If the player has everything on set they can shoot the scene. Depending on the position of the Scene cards in the pool, the cost, quality and time might be different.

Another action that the player can take by placing 1 die is Meeting. Each player starts with a hand of 3 Idea cards that they cannot tell the other players. During the Meeting, they can submit one of them. One idea will be executed immediately, one will be kept in to do list and the rest will be discarded.

Just like running a business, this brainstorming concept is very important to prepare mitigation for every problem in the game. Digging through that deck of idea cards to finally keep a good one and play at the right time might be the main part of this game.

There are ideas for getting more money, more time in schedule, increasing quality, make it easier to shoot a film or to resolve multiple problems at once.

The player board for each role also has 2 unique actions that can be activated using dice and one more to replace idea cards in hand. Player can also hire intern which is basically spend 1 die to change the other unused die to any face. But using this will add more problems.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with Director role and mostly because the company was QUICK BUCK ENTERTAINMENT.

The rule for this company is that if you don’t shoot a scene, you lose one extra time in the schedule. Otherwise, it was Normal, just advance one time. The flipside to that is the cost to shoot a scene is 0. You also can solve any problem by paying $2. The director role is good for this because you can exchange 3 money or 3 quality for 2 extra time. In fact, maybe if I have to play again, I will definitely only use this role.

The script for this one was THE WACKIEST, MEMORIES. For every 2 purple scene, you get 2 quality and for 3 yellow scenes in a row, you get 3.

Playing time took only about 40 minutes which was half from my previous or regular session. This was understandable as you just shoot any scene as soon as possible.

The last scene was shot in round 8. I even stop getting more Problem cards as I got lucky that the 3 existing ones were not bad to stay around. I also still played with just the easiest difficulty from both starting schedule and money.

While the result of the movie was good, I cannot really say I enjoyed this play. If anything, it felt like I needed a lot of luck and somehow got them from various aspects. It was too restrictive. I think I used that Director’s special action, COMPROMISE, twice or so. Not sure if the other role can even do anything without that kind of power.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Editor role in solo mode for a company called Pilfer Pictures and their motto was “Mediocrity is Profit!”. To win with this company, you have to keep the quality at the Starting Point by the end of the game. In addition to that you also need at least half of the starting budget where more money you start makes it harder.

I was kind of lucky that the starting problem was losing 2 quality points everytime I shoot a scene but it will go up 1 space if it is already below the starting point.  Kept that until the end. Starting script was “SHOCKINGLY OUTRAGES SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET” with both increasing the quality for every green scene.

So, if you want to win, you kind of need to have several ways to both increase and decrease the quality. Shooting the cheapest scene is better and works well with saving the budget. Most of the time, you probably can keep the quality below. However, you sometimes need to have certain amount of quality for certain actions, like the Playback action from Editor.

I guess this is probably one of if not the hardest one so far and I still played with the easiest setup. Finished the game after 14 rounds, got exactly 7 money left and one round left. Having 2 green scenes helped and I think I actually managed to ignore the effect of the first problem without resolving it in order to get that right quality. This was already prolonged thanks to the idea to give extra time. The bottom part of the script was also changed to MORONS.

Playing time was about 86 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Playing with the Artist Role for Yes We Care Film Production. The script was MINDBLOWING LONG-LOST COUSINS.

The company for this one forced you to give up one kind of resources at the end of each round. Could be money, schedule, a die for one turn, quality or even a Set piece or To do List. At first you can just choose to lose quality since you can get back again if you are below the START. Then, after the first scene was shot, you have to give up the other part. As the result, the movie got only NOT BAD.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Playing with Production Designer role for Pot O’ Gold Production company with the easiest difficulty. The starting script was CHOCOLATE & HEARTACHE.

This was probably my fastest session. Finished the movie with just 8 rounds. I really got lucky with this and very minor cheating if I recall correctly. The production company demands strict order of scene like yellow has to go first before green and then blue. I even got the idea card to rearrange them that I didn’t use. Just got lucky with the correct scene cards. Playing time was about 44 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Using Producer role and Bungle Bros. as the company, made a movie about the Wackiest Unbearable Anguish. Interesting company where you will always have 3 Active Problems but will get resolved in order eventually.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. The company card this time was GOLD STANDARD CO., playing with the Cinematographer role, still with the easiest variant and solo play. Made a movie about UH OH! INCOMING GRANDMA. Finished in 13 rounds.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing with the Production Company card. This time using director role of Seppuku Films. Made a movie about A PARTY WITH MR. & MRS. HEARTACHE.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session as the EDITOR role, easiest difficulty. The WACKIEST KNIFE WIELDING MANIACS. Fun TikTok content.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo session using THE STAR as the role, with the easiest difficulty. Got wrong dice placement during shooting the 4th scene, got them mixed up with other storyboard card.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single role as the Production Designer with the Easiest difficulty.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single role as the Producer.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single Role as the Cinematographer.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the Full Session Report, using just the Director Role, no company.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Easy difficulty with 2 roles, Director and Cinematographer. Failed to shoot the last scene.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing the game. Using the Easy difficulty solo but 2 roles, Director and Producer. The Movie became Critical Darling.

Here are more unboxing pictures for Roll Camera!: A Filmmaking Board Game on IG.

Rolling Realms Redux (2024)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Another solo play with standard mode and no new realm. First 3 realms got me 12.6 with Onirim, Biddy & Walter and Legacy of Yu.

Then the 2nd 3 also got me 12.6 from Rock-Paper-Scissors, Meadow and Planet Unknown. Apparently, the final 3 got me also exactly 12.6 from The Guild of Merchant Explorers, Poker and Wonderland’s War.

So, final score was only 37.8 which was not great, probably one of the lowest so far. Playging time was about 55 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still with standard play of solo mode with no new realms. First 3 realms were Flamecraft, Tidal Waves and Dog Park which I scored 4, 6 and 4 respectively and 2 leftover resources.

2nd set of realms were Spaceshipped, Planet Unknown and Wonderland’s War which I scored 4, 5 and 4 respectively plus 3 resources. Then the last 3 were Tigome, Atiwa and Meadow which I scored 6, 3 and 5 plus 6 leftover resources. I shouldn’t have finished Tigome too early and put more effort for Atiwa but I just didn’t like it as much.

Playing time took about 68 minutes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Didn’t add any new realms this time. First 3 were Legacy of Yu, Wonderland’s War and Onirim. Scored 11.4 with only 3 stars from Legacy of Yu. For the 2nd part I got Dog Park, Planet Unknown and Tigome. Scored 13.6 for that with the highest of 5 stars from Planet Unknown.

Then the last part was Poker, Rock-Paper-Scissor and Biddy & Walter realm. Scored 14.6 with the highest from Biddy & Walter with no grumpy cat. Poker only got me 3 stars. Playing time was about 71 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Added a new promo pack and this time was the Biddy and Walter.

This one is interesting in terms of design. At the start of each round you total the value of 2 dice and that will determine which resource that the cat is going to take. Then if you choose to fill that realm, you are just making sure one of 3 types of resources are available for future rounds.

You actually start with 6 Stars. But everytime you fail to have the resources available for the cat, you lose one Star. Compared to other realms, this one feels different because you don’t feel bad as much for not playing with it. Playing higher roll is definitely better. Other than that, you don’t do much different. Got possibly the highest score of the round with 16, maybe because of this realm. Final score was 39.1 points. With Atiwa and Wonderland’s War in the last round made very low score. Playing time was about 71 minutes.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 3rd play and this time I added Onirim Pack to the play. Apparently, there is a push your luck element that if you guess correctly, you get to beat one of the Nightmare to get a Star which you can do that 3 times. While the other 4 Stars can be earned by creating the door using alternating 3 symbols just like in the Onirim game. You need to commit for 8 rounds to get all 4.

Scored 35.7 with the 2nd round being the lowest score, 10.9.  Lowest score per realm came from Wonderland’s War with only 2.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd play, started with the last 3 that I had not tried before. Final score was 35.6 and I think I got it wrong about spending 3 pumpkins to play on the same realm.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok.

First play, standard game but solo only so a bit of first impression. With Spaceshipped, Atiwa and Meadow in first round, Flamecraft, Dog Park and Wonderland’s War for 2nd. 3rd one was using Planet Unknown, Legacy of Yu and Rock-Paper-Scissor Score was 11, 14.1 and 12.8 with total score of 37.9.

More unboxing pictures of Rolling Realms Redux on IG.

Rush M.D. (2020)

This is one of the Real Time game. A game that is timed and use a timer for action in the form of Sand Timer. Players will be running hospital cooperatively using sand timers as their Nurses or Doctors.

They will place these sand timers in the different room to treat patients from restocking medical supplies, doing laboratory tests to do some surgeries. Until all of the sands has fallen down, players cannot move or use it for other actions.

Within 4 or 5 minutes per round, they have to treat all patients that have gone through admission process. Failing to do so will end with losing medical points and losing all medical points will instantly eliminate all players.

Some actions can only be done by Nurses and some other by Doctors. Only a few can be done by both. One or two of them may require both at the same time.

This is a very thematic game. The theme doesn’t lose in game abstraction and some goods conversion like in Euro style game. Gain points for successfully treating patients and lose Medical points for not following ethical conduct.

Patients will first come through admissions done by Nurses. They might be Outpatients or hospitalized that requires extra process to treat. Doctor and Nurse can treat the Outpatients but only Doctor can send the hospitalized to one of 2 Wards.

Hospitalized patients usually requires some lab tests like blood, MRI, X-Ray, which can only be done by Doctor. Some may require multiple tests.

In addition to placing the Doctor sand timer on the lab, players also have to complete additional physical mini games. This can be flipping tokens, using tweezers to pick up components, look for specific symbols on a card or stack the Doctor sand timer on the patient’s bed.

The result can show very easy treatment or it can lead to surgery, maybe involving organ transplant.

Some patients may bring some outbreak that can affect all patients in the same ward. In that case, each of them may require extra treatment. Failing to treat the patient and their condition gets worse from Mild to Severe to Critical.

Patients already in critical condition can no longer wait until the next round or they die. Players might be challenge to stop taking more patients since there is a risk that they may not have enough time to treat them completely.

The decision space is not very deep. It is mostly about how to execute the plan physically within that time constraints.  The challenge is about coordination with other players, trying to avoid bumping hands while taking stuffs from the table and completing tasks.

Players can discuss their plan before each round as what they are going to do next. Each player can agree to focus on certain task but each has their own Doctor Sand timer that only the owner can use.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. It has been about 6 months since the last time I played this and I didn’t realize that I got so bad at it. Maybe I was really not fit at the moment. Back then picking up those small drugs you put in the syringes was not so hard. I even forgot to treat one hospitalized patient and that was even after the timer was over. I remember I had to do more planning as which type of patient for admission and I didn’t do much here.

Playing time was about 42 minutes for one solo session. Got 2 and the first one was more for the content. 2nd game was where I focused on just playing and that was when the error actually happened.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 2 solo plays, back playing strictly with the 5-minute timer. A lot of cheating for the first one but it felt like more challenging as some hospitalized patients that required the same tests came out at the same time.

Significantly less challenging with the 2nd play. 1st play with 9 hospitalized plus 5 Regular goal while 2nd play with the 24 total patients with 5 of them being hospitalized.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Only single session, ignoring the round timer and just trying to complete the game.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or TikTok. 2 sessions. First one was heavily for taking more pictures each session. Still not sure how much timer I should add to record. This one I added like 7 minutes. Scored about 61 points. The 2nd play was almost just regular play. Scored 61 with 10 MP from the starting 9.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 solo sessions, scored 55 and 58.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 Solo sessions, scored 59, 61, 59 with 8, 5 and 16 Medical points, respectively.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 solo sessions. Scored 56 and 6 MP left using Normal in 1st game, 55 and 6 for the 2nd, and 62 plus 12 for the 3rd.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 4 sessions with 2 different solo objectives. Lost twice and won twice, Scored 58 and 61.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 solo sessions, 1st scored 57 plus 10 MP and 2nd scored 57 but only 1 MP left. Both failed the hard difficulty but won the Normal.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 solo sessions, scored 51, 58 and 52.

May 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Lost due to Medical Points.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, scored 61 and 63.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 3 solo sessions, scored 52, lost the last 2.

Sagrada (2017)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I tried playing the solo daily challenge mode and I was not sure I like that one. So, after that, I decided to play 2 usual sessions, one solo and another 2-handed.

For the solo I used the Firelight pattern. I believed, using the new edition scoring, my score was 41 while the opponent still got 63. So, I proceeded to playing 2nd game, the 2-handed. First player got the Firelight still while 2nd player was with Lux Astram.

Maybe not a bad idea to stick with the good tools from now on. I used the Lens Cutter, Grinding Stone and Flux Brush.

Final score was 60 for 2nd and only 51 for 1st. 1st already spent all of their favor tokens while 2nd still had 2 left. 2nd had 5 dice matching their private color while 1st only got 4. Both managed to get all 5 columns having 4 different colors. 1st only got 2 pairs for the Light Shade objective while 2nd had 4. That means for Shade Variety objective, 1st player was stuck with just 2 sets. Unfortunate for 2nd, they also only got 2 sets.

Playing time was about 26 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. As usual, one solo play and one two-handed. Like usual, the solo play only scored 34 vs 59. 2nd play was won by the 2nd player with 49 vs 43. This was the first time I managed to use the tool that moved existing dice to other spot in meaningful way. Both even used all of their Favor tokens. Mostly because the tool allowed you to increase or decrease the value by 1. But there was also a good moment for 2nd player to take 2 dice right away.

Playing time total for both was 44 minutes.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was the usual 2 sessions, one solo and one 2-handed. The solo mode scored poorly about 40 vs 70 while the 2-handed scored very close.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2 sessions usual. The Solo with Shadow Thief and the 2-handed one was Battlo. Scored only 32 against opponent 55 for the solo since I failed to have variety of values. The 2-handed scored 46 and 48 or around that. For the first time I had to use the Tool right from first round.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2 sessions, as usual. One for solo using Fulgor del Cielo card, scored 45 to opponent’s 61. 2nd session with 2-handed and the 2nd card was SHADOW THIEF. Fulgor del Cielo scored only 32 while the Shadow Thief scored 45.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions as usual, one solo and the other 2-handed. Solo session scored only 29 with Ripples of Light card while opponent scored 40 or more. 2nd session with the other card being Fulgor del Cielo, scored 41 and 38.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo session with Virtus, scored only 30 vs opponent’s 52. 2nd session was 2-handed, Virtus vs Ripples of Light, scored 51 vs 33, respectively.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, one solo, using Gravitas card and the other 2-handed, Gravitas vs Vitrus. Only scored 39 in solo vs opponent’s 58.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Played twice. One with the solo variant. Scored 34 to opponent’s 36, 15 minutes. Another with 2 handed. Red got 30 while Green got 37.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report for the Solo Play with the lowest difficulty. Actually the IG pictures were the 2-handed session and here is the short report.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, one solo and one with 2-handed. Scored less than 30 in solo vs opponent’s 60. The other session was 42 vs 44.

Sensu (2023)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Recently, the publisher of this game, released a new edition. In that edition, you play to make like 5 different colors of folding fans. Another difference is that the card value is only up to 7 and in order to play a set you only have to reach total value of 15 instead of 20. Also the scoring threshold in solo mode is a bit different.

So, I thought about maybe it was just some change that I can implement in my older version. Maybe that is not really the case so I went back to play with the rule of my version as it is.

Got 2 solo plays. First one only scored like 26, with only the green one was finished. Then I played again and this time I managed to complete all 3 fans. That gave me total 33 points plus 1 card left from the deck. That was probably my highest score so far. So, it was still just Samurai class threshold, 3rd from the top. Well, maybe I just got lucky with kept getting perfect draw.

Playing time was about 41 minutes for 2 sessions.

September 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Got 3 solo sessions. The 2nd one was a disaster and didn’t close any fan. 1st one scored 30 while the 3rd one scored 31, not much better. I think the reason for failing in the 2nd one was stacking too many cards in one column. More than one actually. What I thought was a good idea, ended up barely using them at all. Playing time was about 48 minutes for 3 sessions.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was my first time playing the multiplayer game, just the basic mode, 2-handed.

Took about 40 minutes running both hands and about over 30 turns to win. I eventually got it wrong where the winner accidentally took one more card, worth 1 stick than they should have and led them win prematurely. Probably needed 3 extra turns before they could actually get that win, assuming the opponent is not getting in their way.

January 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 4 solo plays, scored 29, 30, 24 and 29. I thought the last one I managed to complete all 3 fans with 1 card left from the deck until I realized I redeemed the wrong one.

September 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. First play and first solo play so this is more about first impression entry. Got 4 solo plays and scored 3rd level from the top for the first 3 but lower in the last one.

More unboxing pictures of this Sensu game on IG.

Shallow Sea (2025)

Some say that Shallow Sea is like Calico, Cascadia and Verdant combined with aquatic theme. On your turn, you have 10 possible pairs to draft. One part of the pair has to be a fish with one of 4 different colors while the other is either Sealife Tile or Coral Tile. Like in Calico, you will then use them to fill your player board with 20 or so possible spaces.

Sealife tiles are scoring tiles. They will tell you to create a pattern with certain requirement of completed Coral Tiles with fish on each. As an example, one SeaLife tile will tell you to surround that tile with 3 completed corals either with the same color or all different. Another Sealife tile may as you to surround it with any Coral but the fishes on it has to be either different or the same. Once you have fulfilled the requirement, you flip the Sealife tile and it will show the higher score value with the beautiful sea creatures like Hammerhead shark.

Coral tile will give you points only if you complete them. To complete them, you need to have 4 fishes at all 4 corners. Then you flip the tile and put one of the surrounding fish on it. Just like fish, the Coral has one of 4 colors. There is a challenge though. These Coral tiles has requirement or restrictions as the fish that you can place at the corners.

All 4 corners may require different kind of fishes for one tile. Another tile may ask maybe only at 2 corners with different colors or only 3 but 2 of them have the same color requirements. The restriction of a tile itself is not a problem. But when then the adjacent tile must share the same color at the corners pointing at the same bubble space where you place the fish.

The challenge is that from the market, we cannot tell what kind of color combination that the coral tile might have. While it may work for one corner but the other 3 corners might need other colors. In addition to that, you also need to take fish that is paired with.

Usually, in that case, you can also choose to take the scoring tiles or Sealife tile instead of more corals. Sealife tiles doesn’t have color requirements.

In Cascadia, you have pine tokens that you can use to take different pairing of tiles and animals. Similar to that, Shallow Sea has Seashell so you can get better pairs. You can also spend 2 of these tokens to move one fish.

Once you complete a coral, a fish will occupy that coral. This means, the adjacent coral has one empty corner that needs a fish. Moving fishes from one place to another to prioritize completing certain corals is one part of the game.

You do that for 17 turns and the game ends. Whoever score the most points wins. Beside scoring from completed Coral and Sealife tiles, you also gain score from the 2 public objectives. Another points from having unique SeaLife tiles and fishes not on Coral but adjacent to completed Coral tiles.

The game also has its solo variant, with almost similar play as in multiplayer where they allow you to keep moving fish but you lose points. Like those Flatout Games, the rulebook has a lot of solo achievement scenarios.

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Solo play again and instead of using the predetermined solo achievement setup, I made my own using the guide on the back of the rulebook.

Final score was 170, which was still 3rd from the top threshold, not even better than the previous play. I think I did refresh the fish market once by spending the shell. Got and completed 6 unique Sealife tiles but 2 were not part of the Radiant Caves. Only got 4 purple fishes for Symphony of Fins. Lost 2 points from the Lionfish.

Playing time was about 58 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was another solo play and still using the same set of Sealife tiles but different public cards.

I just realized an error I made during my previous learning session which made the game harder for me. Apparently, you don’t always need 4 fishes in order to complete a Coral Tile. If the Coral tile has empty corner, that corner doesn’t require a fish while I thought I still needed one but with any color. Not sure the rulebook actually specified it and most pictures where kind of obscure. Except the one on the last few pages where they show bigger pictures of it.

Also, this time I definitely paid more attention with long term plan right from the start involving more Sealife tiles. In the end I scored 171, which was still not the highest threshold from the scoring chart, the 3rd one actually. There were times that I accidentally put a coral tile where I already made a plan for Sealife tiles. I managed to complete every tile I took and I only needed to discard one fish to the Lionfish, so no penalty for me.

Playing time was about 55 minutes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Playing time was about 44 minutes.

This was my first time playing the game and I got 2 solo sessions and this is my initial impression. Definitely looks beautiful. You even get insert that works for the expansion as well and 3 draw bags.

As for the gameplay, I didn’t have trouble learning and immediately got to the game in first play. Is it easy to score well? I don’t think so. Not for me apparently. The solo chart in the rulebook suggests that players can score over 190. I think in my 2nd play I got less about 130 which was the lowest in the chart.

Since you have to fill all 4 corners to complete a Coral tile, maybe it is better to place them in the middle. Sealife tile then could get into the outer spaces while pointing the coral to the middle. This way, the fishes can work for multiple tiles.

I do think this is more challenging than Cascadia and even Calico. Mainly because you need to plan ahead right from the start and it is dictated by what is available from the Sealife tiles. Ideally you also want to do long term planning involving multiple Sealife tiles to create bigger ecosystem instead of one by one fulfilling them individually.

It seems knowing what is included in the game can help you plan better. There are always 10 types regardless of player counts and there is a copy of each tile equal to the number of players. While one player can take the same, the scoring encourages players to pick differently.

With multiplayer, maybe you can expect the other players to help you find specific Sealife tiles. In solo, there is only you, so you have to work with what you see initially, even if they are duplicates.

Compared to those 2, I think Shallow Sea is also significantly punishing. One part is like in Calico, for poor planning, you can end up getting stuck unable to complete one of the Sealife tiles. Then the 2nd reason is it is also punishing when trying to complete the Coral tiles using fishes. You can end up pointing multiple colors to the same bubble space. By doing so you need to do a lot more steps before you can complete all of those involved tiles.

Choosing which fish to occupy the Coral without losing the chance to complete the neighboring tile while completing the objective is the main part of the game. In addition to that you also want to consider having flexibility. Instead of picking coral with highest value but with colors at all corners, maybe try different tiles with less value but blank in one or more corners.

I think the fun part of the game is when you are able to do combo. This happens when you can complete a Coral that can lead to you complete the other Coral and eventually the Sealife tile. You get a Seashell token everytime you complete a tile. Spending 2 of them allows you to move fish which then can complete the other tile.

Unfortunately, unlike Cascadia, that combo is not going to present themselves. Even with proper planning, who knows when you can get a good pairing or even the item you need. Usually the fish. In that case, you may not have a satisfying experience, In fact, this could be worse than Cascadia or Calico if you just play casually.

While you have Seashell tokens to refresh market or pick different pairing but at the same tiles, you need those to move fishes later for more combo. It’s not like Cascadia where you can just get more tokens by choosing the corresponding tile and place the right animal. In this one, you need to work harder just to get one token by completing a tile.

Again, this is just my initial impression. Maybe with more play I can get better and see more potential for better aquatic ecosystem. For now, it feels like if you play even just casually, it is very limiting and punishing.

While the theme might suggest something cozy, I think Shallow Sea is really for gamers, not just casual gamers. Especially for gamers who love and have explored different kind of tile laying games with restrictions. If you want something more challenging, then Shallow Sea might be for you.

Who knows? maybe eventually you can get good at it and find this becomes a cozy game like in Cascadia. I definitely need to play more.

More unboxing pictures of Shallow Sea on my IG.

Shipwrights of the North Sea: Redux (2024)

The first game from Garphill Games that I bought. The North Sea was their 1st big trilogy and I heard Shipwrights was considered the worst game of theirs. Ten years later, they released this Redux version and some people consider this as an improvement, while some others disagree. At least this got a good recommendation among solo players. I never played the original, so I won’t be making comparisons.

Thematically, players are competing to build the greatest Viking Fleet for the Raiders of the North Sea over the course of 5 rounds. In order to do so, they need to first gather resources like Oak, Wool and Iron along with specific Craftspeople with their unique required skill. At the end of each round, they can attract heroes to give them extra temporary abilities which can be taken by other players.

Players do that by managing 6 multiuse cards they got at the start of every turn. These Village cards from a single deck can be the craftsman or townsfolk that player can recruit, the Jarl, the Longship or Building that they can build.

Every round, players have to use all of their cards. The worst they can do with each card is to discard them for one time resource which they can carry to the next round. Maybe they can get a different card for different resources.

Buildings have to be built right away with the resources they got at the moment. To build Longship, players can save them on their board, along with the craftsman while gathering resources. However, the sooner you build the ship, the sooner you get the one time benefit or income every round. And there is a limit of space up to 5 cards at a time. Bigger ship with bigger points also requires more resources and skill sets.

Building buildings gives player extra worker placement spots to gather more resources, as long as they have the workers. You can recruit some townsfolk and place them under a building, one building per townsfolk. This way, when you use the worker spot from the building, you can activate the townsfolk as well. Usually they cost something. Or you can just discard them and use that ability one time.

You can also recruit Craftsman to put them on a building so you have access for the skill. Otherwise, you lose them the moment you build a ship. Ideally, you want to keep building ships with the same set of skills so it will be worth it.

But to recruit the Townsfolk or craftsman and place them on a building, you need to pay 1 Gold. You can only get Gold mainly from the Jarls. Some buildings and Longship can also provide you with Gold if you get those cards and build it. You can also put those Jarls in the building and they help you move up on certain tracks.

Building buildings and ships usually also moves you up on those tracks, either Military, Trade or Reknown. Reaching certain level of the tracks allows you to get the corresponding bonus. Trade cards can give you one time bonus or extra income. Raid cards can give you target you can raid by spending workers to gain one time benefit. The Reknown track will upgrade your starting cards, either starting ship, starting boat and starting Laborer for better abilities or income. If you win on that track, then you attract the heroes at the end of each round.

That is the whole point of the game. You do card drafting to get those 6 cards at the start and then you have to utilize those cards in any number of actions as long as you have the card. Whoever scores the most point wins.

Each round also has different rates to trade resources. Sometimes you can pay 2 coins for an Oak. Other times maybe the Oak is cheaper but the Wool is more expensive to buy.

So, the gameplay is mostly multiplayer solitaire with some comparing position at the end of the round. In solo mode, you have to beat the total scores from each round cards with as low as 50 points. There is also an option to add up to 4 Nemesis to make it even more challenging.

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Another solo play against one Nemesis but this time it was against Freyja. Freyja started with 1 red, 4 Blue and one yellow on the tracks. The additional rule from her was that you need to pay extra resource in order to construct a building. My hut got one Blue as a start.

I got 2 sessions and in both of them I scored the same, 47 while the opponent got 56 just from the Round cards. In the first session they also got Svend while in 2nd session I got all 3 heroes on my side so at least just closing the score.

I think the main reason I didn’t score well was that I didn’t have any big boat for the higher score. In the first one I made one longboat with end game scoring but that scoring require a set of every icon of the heroes. Unfortunately, I got none from Svend or red.

In the 2nd play, I guess I really tried to do well in red track and even got 2 villages to raid for free. Since I only got Svend in the last round, no additional workers from reaching 2 blues and 2 yellows. I built only 4 longboats which worth only 5 or 6 per boat. Had one ready to be built but I run out of workers still.

Playing time took almost 3 hours or 174 minutes for both sessions and the reset in between.

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April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play and this time, I decided to add one of the nemeses. The one I played forced me to pay a silver coin in order to use the heroes’ ability and the laborer. They also started with 2 each of the 3 tracks, making it harder to win those heroes.

In the first 3 rounds, I managed to win Frode to my side. Thyra joined in the 4th round. After the fifth, Thyra was taken but I got Svend to my side. Only the yellow track got me the bonus point, 2 bonuses from red and only one from blue.

Unfortunately, final score was 60 for me vs 63 for them. I should have focused on getting more blue instead of more yellow. Had I gotten at least 2 more blues, I could have scored extra 6 plus Thyra on my side, lowering their score. Not saying that I would have succeeded even with the right long boat card.

Playing time was about 94 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got another solo play without any nemesis. I wasn’t sure I played correctly but I managed to score 73 points and the opponent only got 59.

Built 5 long ships, 2 of them were Skeide. Got 4 buildings with 2 Gold characters underneath, one with skill and one that gives me resources by discarding cards. Thanks to 2 Skeide, the red track got to 2nd to last place. Only the first card of blue and 2nd card of yellow track.

Got 3 raid cards and I only raided them in the last round when I didn’t need to spend any workers. The 2 Skeide ships were built in the last round. Building the 1st got me the 3rd Raid cards and the resources from those 3 got me enough to build another Skeide. I guess I was lucky to get another copy of that ship which helped me just to use the same skills required. Also, I did purchase a lot of resources in earlier round when one of them was cheap. Since I got a lot of Silvers, I also had to purchase the expensive one later. Only 1 Gold left and 2 Silver at the end.

Unlike my previous plays, I didn’t get a lot of Village cards that allowed me to get cards by discarding them until the last round. Played half of the deck just for this one play.

If I managed to keep winning like this, then maybe playing with 1 or more Nemesis makes sense. We’ll see.

Playing time was about 83 minutes for 1 play.

November 2025 1st session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I got 2 sessions, one for learning and another solo play after that. Playing time took about 78 minutes per session.

As my first impression, this feels like it could have been a smaller card game. But unfortunately, all games from this publisher is set to 60 USD as MSRP. You got one board just to place the cards and the track. Each player got their own board just to place up to 5 cards or so. Of course, a good amount of wooden tokens and the silver cardboards for up to 5 players. Without that nice insert, the standard TTR box could have been rather empty.

Even from just one solo play, you probably played almost every Village card even just to discard them immediately. You, of course don’t see very Raid or Trade cards. Not that they will make it different significantly.

My first play I only got like 26 points. Then with 2nd one, I got 41 which was still not even close to beat the minimum.  After watching the designer’s video of solo play for this, I realized a mistake. I should have gotten my workers back instead of relying on new workers every round. Maybe I could have done better then. Definitely no need to draft cards just to get more workers. But it seems you still lose workers if they are required to build something, you only get them back if they are on worker spots.

I guess this explains the worker spots to get workers. You get more for it then. Also, apparently you also start not from the 0 space on your track. Your hut will give something different.

I actually like the theme and the Multiuse cards mechanism. Building a bit of engine to potentially get more cards and just keep pushing your luck for better ones and better outcome is fun.

While the point is to do your best with what you get, tactically, you can slowly shape your long term goal. Unfortunately, what if you don’t get those cards that gives you specific resources? You built some worker spots but got no worker at all. When you do, of course, it’s fun but no guarantee.

For the other type of resources, they are at least interchangeable even if not for a good rate. This means, the combination of 6 cards you draft and the resources you get is very important. You have to consider all possible ways to use them not just the one time benefit.

I realized my error in my first time playing. So, I probably would change my initial impression after I play it again with the correct rule. We’ll see.

2nd session. I actually got 2 solo plays which significantly improved my score. One scored 56 but the opponent scored 64. Then the 2nd one I scored 58 with the opponent scored 60. The 2nd one had Blue track reached 3rd space from the last which got me 2 points.  Unfortunately, I may have cheated in that 2nd play or at least I made an error. There was a moment where I went back and forth because I couldn’t afford to pay one ship. It got lost with the trading when I tried to redo the actions.

So, as my initial impression, I definitely had fun. Not sure if keep losing may or may not affect how I enjoy this for long term. I might as well just ignore it unless I scored 60 or higher.

More unboxing pictures of Shipwrights of the North Sea: Redux on my IG.

Siege of Valeria (2022)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. So, I was not expecting to have this much fun with this session. Instead of just playing the base game again or using all of the expansions, I decided to just use some of them. I added the Boss and the Duke.

The Duke was the Oracle which was super helpful in this case since he allowed you to draw 2 event cards and resolve only one. Then the Boss was Raging Giants which showed up like the 4th card from the bottom of Siege deck. Maybe I should keep it that way.

Apparently, I did it so well that the time the boss showed up, they immediately at 2nd row. So, I had no choice but to attack immediately since they required twice. I was not sure I could survive since, in addition to that boss being at Vanguard, there were still 3 other engines at that front. Got lucky with Lady Ozwin showing up at the right time to bring back 2 red dice.

That was 2nd to last round and I still had 2 siege engines left to deal. I had only 1 card left to use plus the random one from the event which gave me another Red Witch. At the end, the Fortress suffered 6 damages. One turret almost got sealed off.

Playing time was about 52 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Back to just playing the base game. Won but in the last round, 1 blue die left. Somehow I still accidentally skipped the Event phase in one turn so I had to resolve it in subsequent round. Playing time was about 60 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back with playing the expansion, all modules but not the campaign. Although I gave myself one Bonus card as if I won first session of the campaign.

In this entry, I said I am convinced that without changing the setup, specifically the number of Siege Engines, you probably cannot get full win, playing full game. I managed to beat the boss along with 10 engines but I probably made some errors. Those bosses themselves have to be hit twice and their ability to make troops stronger make them worth like 3 engines.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram. Still playing just the base game but with events. I managed to destroy 3 Siege Engines during the last round and still had a couple of Archer cards to get me more red dice.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back with just the base game. Apparently I accidentally removed a Siege Engine without actually destroying it so there is a chance I didn’t actually win.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played with the expansion modules but not as campaign. Added the bonus as if I have won previous game of campaign. Played with the Resurrectionist, Vermithrax as the Boss and the Conjuress as my Duke. Failed miserably.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. With all modules from the expansion but not the campaign bonus or penalties. Forgot one Event card, curated heavily the deck but finally managed to beat Pharaoh, the Boss and Extractor as the Commander. Using Priestess of War.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Using the campaign content, a new session. Played with Cavalier against The Extractor commander and the Pharaoh Boss. Lost horribly.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first time playing with the expansion content, just a single session.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was just base game only.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report, after failing twice and won the 3rd with just the base game but with events.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time playing the base game, 4 times, 2 with events, 2 without.

Here is more unboxing pictures for the game on IG.

Skoventyr (2023)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still solo play and this time I decided to try the first of 2 modules. If I understand correctly, thematically, with this module, the minions managed to deceive Lygtemand, a different folk. Before you can get rid of the minions, you need to sober up these confused folks guarding the minions so the folks join our side and allow us to deal with the minions.

In order to do so, you need to save each Lygtemand with specific ally. You play the card of the required ally and put it at the bottom of the deck. So, you don’t lose them but you might need to wait before you can get them back. Even still, you might need that specific ally to help you survive. Or, maybe you have enough ally ready to beat the minion but no right ally card to save the Lygtemand.

As bonus for saving Lygtemand, you can spend one of them to put an ally card at the top of the deck. You reveal cards until you find one. If you have 2 of this folk, you reveal until you get 2 allies and 1 adversary. The ally or allies are placed at the top of the deck while the rest, usually the adversary go down to the bottom. Except if you play 2, you get rid of the 1 adversary.

The rest is the same as the basic mode. So, even if you get some extra hurdles to deal with minions, the bonus action with Lygtemand is actually very useful towards the end of the game as there are more adversary than your ally.

It does make the game more challenging. Even I had to use 8 Tree Cards and it was down to 4 with one burned already. I checked the remaining cards and I got exactly 5 allies to get rid of the 2 lowest minions. The 2 Nisse took down one while the other was taken care of by Trold and Formskifter. That leaves me with Ellefolk and the rest of the adversary. I think I managed to get rid of 2 adversaries.

Playing time was about 55 minutes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Basic mode again with normal difficulty. Got lucky with 4 tree cards left and the last minion required 3 to beat. I did remove 2 Adversary cards instead of running after defeating minions very early. It felt like I didn’t get to use the allies’ ability that much. Maybe twice per character, more for the Shapeshifter. Even Nisse was used once to return 2 cards.

Playing time was about 38 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Still with the basic mode and normal difficulty. Got first play and noticed I made a mistake with Huldre taking 3 cards instead of 2 when I discarded her. So, I reset the game.

Beat the last minion with 4 Tree cards left, 2 of them were already damaged. Technically I probably already lost the game numerous times. Mostly because I had no choice but to Risk Draw and got the Adversary to move 2 spaces closer.

The way I play was when I had to put cards at the bottom, I placed them face up. This does two things. One was to help me count the cards, especially the adversary. 2nd was when I chose to Risk Draw and got the Adversary and lost the game, I reshuffled the cards but only the remaining face down cards. That way, I just continued the game.

With this hopefully correct rule compared to previous session, I finally had to use the Nisse cards to return allies from discard pile a lot. I noticed that maybe the best time to activate it is right before defeating the minions so the returned cards got shuffled back to help the Risk Draw. Maybe I won because I just got lucky.

Playing time was about 35 minutes. With the correct play, I don’t think this changed my impression. Still wished it was a bigger game. Towards the end when the remaining cards were mostly Adversaries, the tension was there but sure it was fun. Instead of evaluating various options to be clever, more like waiting for a good card to give that an option at all. To be fair, when I actually got a good card then it became very interesting.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that game on Instagram and on TikTok. This was new game so first plays and I got 2 sessions, both with solo variant. First one using 8 Tree cards but with major error. I thought the Risk Draw is to take the card while the correct way is to take the already face up cards.

Then I played 2nd time, both still using just basic module. I won but the remaining cards in the deck was not going to let me progress further. Got lucky with enough cards. I don’t really remember using Nisse’s discard ability. Maybe once or not at all.

As first impression, with just the basic mode, a bit underwhelmed. Clearly I should try with the 2 modules. It also feels a bit mechanical even though there is a promising theme.

More unboxing pictures of Skoventyr on IG.

Sky Team (2023)

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 sessions, with the fan made solo variant. First one was landing at Haneda Airport, green variant. No additional module but the track requires specific orientation to go through some spaces. Reroll happened very early like in first round because the 2 black dice added extra in the next 3 spaces.

After clearing out the other planes, kept moving 2 spaces. Co-pilot didn’t even start working on their side until the 3rd round from the last. Even the pilot had to help with the radio. So, reached the airport very early and only then both pilot and co-pilot could start finishing their tasks. Pilot even got the 3rd brake. They had more time to make coffee at the end.

So, I played another session and this time landing at PRG Vaclav Havel. In this one there is a kerosine module but you also get 2 special actions. The one that says CONTROL where you get coffee for playing dice with the same value on Axis has been very helpful. Unfortunately, the other one, MASTERY, while I did played once or twice, dice with the same value on Engines, that happened when I haven’t used any of the reroll.

At the end, the kerosine level was at 3 remaining. A lot of coffee remainings and the Pilot also got the 3rd brake.

Playing time was about 66 minutes for 2 sessions.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Two more solo sessions using the same variant. First one I played with the Haneda Green. In the 2nd to last round, I had to reroll for the last 2 dice each. Only activated 1 brake so had to get cups of coffee just to get both dice a 1.

Then during 2nd play, I played the ATL Jackson where I had to include the intern module. Finished assigning all interns during 2nd to last round. Activated all 3 brakes since the last round, the Pilot didn’t have anything else to do. I guess skipping the space with black dice by moving 2 spaces made this easier.

Playing time for both took about 70 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 3 sessions with the solo mode where 2nd hand rolls 2 at first. First 2 plays were with the Green OSL airport that introduced the Kerosine leaking. In this scenario, you want to move 2 spaces a couple of times since the track is longer than the altitude. Playing time was almost 30 minutes per play.

Then I tried another one, still with green, the ATL airport. This one has Intern, Black die and longer track. I had trouble using the radio near the end since rolled no 2 or 1. So the plane reached the airport early and had to stay there while making some coffee considering the intern was useless for it. Especially the last two was a 5 and a 6. Eventually it forced me to use the reroll token just to get lower speed. This one only took 18 minutes with taking pictures significantly less.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Got 3 sessions playing the solo more where the 2nd hand rolls 2 at first. First play was a retry of Heathrow, yellow modules. I think I almost failed and this forced me to use the reroll. Got lucky with the last brake that the speed was just 2.

After that I tried the Haneda airport, green variant and failed. This introduced the idea of tilting the plane purposely when advancing certain space. Also, longer distance where you need to get rid of planes but also advancing 2 spaces multiple times.

For 3rd play, I tried the OSLO airport which introduces the Fuel module. You start with 20 fuels and each round, either you lose 6 of them or you can place a die with lower number to lose that amount of fuel. You hit lower than 0 fuel and you lose. I think I won with just 1 fuel left. There were a couple of times I forgot about that fuel track. I have to retry this again.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 2 sessions, using solo variant where the 2nd player rolls 2 dice first and add 1 subsequently. Retried the Heathrow Airport again both green and yellow variant once each.

The yellow introduces the Intern Module so this entry is about my first impression of that. I got the rule wrong again with this new module. Apparently you cannot use the intern to make coffee and I did it twice.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time trying one of the Solo variants. This one where you roll 2 dice for the 2nd role, first turn and add one in subsequent turns. Played the Montreal and then Heathrow airport, Green, using this variant.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First play, kind of with 2-handed, got 2 sessions with the introductory mode. A bit of first impression.

More unboxing pictures of Sky Team game on IG.

Spectacular (2024)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time I played the Zebra map, still with the sun for solo play. The 3 missions were A-1, B-11 and C-17. I thought the first 2 were rather easy. Four Breeding tiles adjacent to each other and one animal with dice at least 12.

The starting set of Zebra already had 4 breeding tiles and with the starting placement, I could make them adjacent to each other while still in the same group of their own colors.

For the Mission B, I only need 2 tiles with the same animals but both had to be around a Tower and with a 6. Otherwise I needed one more. This was possible for Zebra set using the 2 Dolphin tiles and I knew I could make two towers with them. Already had one Blue 6 so I still needed one more Blue 6 and there was only Blue 1 on the market. Got blue 5 on my own pool as well so at least I could just change with worker.

I wasn’t so sure about the Mission C as I needed to know which more colors I got from the market. So, I was initially going to abandon it.

At the end of first round, I got 3 towers, one of each. Scored only 27 for the entrance. Almost completed Mission A, just needed to place one green die for the breeding tile. I already used one worker for grey to change a 3 into a 2 for breeding tile.

Finished Mission A right 1st turn of Round 2. The Market had the 2nd Blue 6 so I finished Mission B on 2nd turn. For Mission C, the only way to make it work is to get additional blue tile plus a die and compared it to green group with just 3 tiles.

In the final turn, I actually managed to complete that mission. The thing is that I had to spend worker in order to decrease the Green total value, the one from breeding tile from 2 to 1. So, its total was 11. Blue with 5 tiles and got total of 24 with a change from 5 to 6 using wild worker. That made the difference between both colors to 13. I already spent the blue worker to cancel the opponent’s drafting of blue dice.

So, I got all 3 missions completed and the final score was 219. 46 from 3 missions, 21 from 12 animals, 27 from entrance, 51 from 3 towers and the rest 74 were from 17 dice. Only one breeding tile with dice for each color.

Playing time was about 47 minutes.

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March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play and this time I only scored 158, lowest possible score so far. My biggest mistake was thinking that I needed to complete all 3 objectives in order to win instead of just 2. And this made me realized that some objective really didn’t work well together.

From the Mission A, I needed 4 dice with a value exactly 3 and none of them could be adjacent to another. This means if I use a 3 in one hex of the Tower, I cannot use another value 3 from surrounding that tower. Mission B was where I needed a group of 5 hexes from the same type adjacent to another group with 5 hexes. This one was not a big deal and I used the entrance  as part of the 5 blue hexes.

This actually become a problem with the Mission C where I needed total value of at least 12 for each color. So, one of the dice already had to be a 3 while I needed some with a 2 for breeding tiles. Having total value of 12 means if I had 4 hexes, all of them must be at least a 3. With 2 colors already demanded 5th tile, aiming for breeding tile for any of them ruined this mission C. I think ideally, you want to focus a bit on one color while working on multiple things but this mission forces you to diversify.

This was the one that I failed. I missed one point from the green and I failed to get 18. Still not enough to win the solo mode with 200 points requirement. Also forcing me to diversify already got me to get 2 separate groups of green. Both had breeding tiles but didn’t contribute to the other.

Also, I had to say. Because this setup was too tight, kind of ruined my enjoyment of this game since I ended up chasing too many specific things. My fault for chasing the 3rd instead of ignoring that mission.

Playing time was about 67 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play with #4 of Mission A, last of Mission B and 5th of Mission C. Using the African Wild Dog board, sun side. I did a lot of rerolling the dice and replacing tiles as part of the setup.

Scored 29 for the tickets, but probably -2 since that one die value 2 on the right was alone, instead another group. But the entrance did have a 6. In the 2nd round I had to spend the 2 workers to prevent them from taking tiles. Only got 12 animals. Highest habitat score was the grey with 52 with 6 hexes. Final score was 235 or minus 2 if what I mentioned above was correct.

Playing time was about 39 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Solo play again with 3 missions. This time, I definitely started using the chance to reroll and refill the board. Apparently that really helped me achieve the minimum to win the solo mode. Even though I only scored exactly 200.

On the other hand, I am not sure about me rerolling. It just increased my chance of cheating. it’s a good thing that the game still has interesting puzzle, even if after that. Playing time was about 42 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. More solo play and another error. This time I forgot to flip the opponent tile while still just drafting without removing. Luckily, it was not that hard to fix. While I managed to complete all 3 objectives, I only scored 187.

Forgot how important to have multiple breeding tiles to multiply the score. Also forgot that in order to score the tower, you need to have 3 tiles with 3 dice surrounding it. Got 3 towers and only scored 1 for that aspect. After reevaluating my options with how I used the worker, I think I had a chance to score extra 16 points or so by completing dice on one tower.

March 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was my first time playing this game. Got to play the solo variants twice after making error with the drafting twice and I had to reset. A bit of first impression for this entry.

Scored about 188 for the first but only 1 mission for first session and the 2nd got me 198, completing 2 missions. So I still lost.

More unboxing pictures of Spectacular game on Instagram.

Sylvion (2015)

This is the 2nd game in the Oniverse series after Onirim. Sylvion is the typical tower defense style game where you will be defending one line while the enemy will keep approaching from the other side in a 4 x 4 grid.

Aside from the dream Oniverse setting, the theme in this one is about animals trying to defend their Forest home from Ravaging Fire. If you and the Forest survive until the last attack from the enemy, you win. You lose when the Forest takes too much damage or you fail to revive some damaged tress at the end.

The component of this game is still just cards but they separate between the card you use and the enemy deck. On your turn, you can play Forest cards. Each of them has a cost and you can pay by discarding the other cards in your hand. You are mostly going to deploy Fountains to defend or Trees to heal the damage or animals, usually for one time ability.

For example, Hawk allows you to draw more cards, Fish allows you to get water to pay the cost of other cards. Hedgehog will cancel enemy’s ability and some others.

At the start of the round, before your turn, the enemy will do their action first, revealing 1 card from each deck for each row. Most of them are Fire cards from Level 0 to 3. They will just move one space closer to the forest and when they cross that defense line, you take damage.

However, some of them can upgrade those Fire cards, making them harder to get rid of. Another can push them one space farther. Then there are 2 more to mess with your hand management, forcing you to discard your hand or even remove cards completely from the game.

Those are just from the basic game. The expansions give you four more enemy abilities as well as one-time abilities or instant win conditions for you to use from specific animals. You can also play with the drafting variant where you have to choose Animal cards you put in your deck while letting the other will not be used in the game.

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I didn’t realize that this session took longer than usual. Maybe because I didn’t take any Dove to remove cards from Ravage deck. On the other hand, I got a lot more squirrel so I had more chance to mitigate their attack.

Still only about 32 cards total with 2 from the extraordinary feats. One of them was the Owl so I got a good use for that in the last round to get 2 of my regular owl cards. Got elephant to remove the Ravage from one of the elemental and enough cards to add the most powerful fountain. With one Whale, I moved some elemental on that row.

A lot of hedgehogs were used to cancel the 2nd B card or the Blaze. Row 3 had 2 acid lake so I was worried that the Ravage pawn might hit from there. It seems 4 geysers came out after about half point in. In the end, 2 forest cards were damaged but I managed to plant a Tree with a value of 3.

Playing time was about 76 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. More play with the same settings. The Forest took a lot of hit with almost 5 hits left before I lost. Got lucky draw with the cheapest trees to actually help healing with Stag. Playing time was about 57 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. With the same settings again, full game but standard difficulty. Didn’t track the drafting but I got probably all of the Owls. Made a good use of Dove and Squirrel combo. Hedgehog mostly blocked the Demobilization. Got 2 Extraordinary feat cards for instant win conditions that I already failed from that drafting.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still using full game, same settings. Probably my best session so far even by taking a couple of traitors and not removing them all the time. Got a lot more cards from drafting than usual, like over 40 cards from usual around 30.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Using full game, I managed to make it shorter by using Doves 4 times. Only got 1 Owl from the drafting but luckily I got the Owl from Extraordinary Feat. Somehow the Desiccation really bothered me in this session more than the other.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Got hit like 8 times, surviving the entire game with just 4 or 5 health left. Wrong rule about Geyser as they should have been destroyed after interacting with an Elemental card. Almost lost instantly when the Ravage token on card almost hit the forest.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With all expansions, failed to recover 2 trees. Learned how to avoid Demobilization using Traitors. Actually this is forbidden.

January 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With all expansions again. 5 hit but 7 Trees.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With all of the expansion, including the Ravage pawn. Lost horribly.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With all of the expansions but not the Ravage pawn.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. With the drafting and the Extraordinary Feat expansion.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. With the 1st expansion and advanced drafting mode. Failed to get 1 extra tree planted.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions with the drafting phase but no expansion.

April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report for the Introductory Mode. First game after the learning session.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Sylvion game on IG.

Tenby (2025)

This is another city building game where you are travelling through a seaside town of Tenby in Wales. Similar to Burano, all of the buildings are colorful and the street is connected to piers. You can find different businesses on the city or piers, and maybe some landmarks.

In this game, players draft town section cards and add them to one or more streets. The cards can be the inner part of the town or the pier part or the part in between. Ideally, you want to end the pier section of both ends of the street with the sea section to get the full points.

In a way this is a one-dimensional spatial puzzle game. You just keep adding cards to left and right to your existing street or you can start a new street.

Players start with their own Resident card, which is basically the final scoring card. Based on that you may want to add a card with specific object in certain minimum number to either a single street or multiple streets.

Each town section card itself has its own scoring. Maybe in one card, you can score any red building adjacent to that one. Another card may say, you score every cloud or bench up to 2 spaces adjacent to it. Some landmarks will score the entire street but each street can only have one landmark.

This is essentially a drafting game, an open drafting game from 4 different decks of cards. Three are parts of the town you can build but one is for scoring cards. However, players cannot just draw the card freely. Instead, they need to pick a set of cards and their turn order.

Maybe one set says, you get turn order #6 but you only draw one yellow or landmark card plus 1 token. The other might say turn order #12, but you draw 3 cards, 1 terrace, 1 pier and 1 resident card. In the next round, whoever with the lowest turn order number gets to pick first.

What’s interesting about these Tenby town cards is that they are from different tiers. Yellow or the Landscape is considered the highest, followed by the Blue or pier deck then the Terrace or Gray as the lowest. When you get to draw from the highest tier, you can choose to draw from the lower ones. That means, for the yellow you can instead choose to draw blue or the gray. While the face up cards on the market will have less number of cards for the higher tier, you still get more option for picking that tier. This will affect how you choose those sets and their turn order.

The game is played over 10 rounds. You pick the sets and turn order, resolve them by drafting cards and tokens, then you place the cards to build your city. Once every player has done resolving their action, you start another round and after 10 rounds, you calculate the score. Whoever score the highest wins.

There is official solo mode where the opponent will just take cards from the market before or after you while you are trying to score the highest you can. In addition to that, you can also add Accolade cards which is basically the public objective so players can try to complete to get more points.

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 solo sessions as my first play of this game. First session scores 125, which was the 2nd highest threshold of the scoring chart. While 2nd play, I managed to score 140 which was exactly the top threshold of scoring chart.

In both plays, I only made 3 streets and got 2 of them to be completed. Each street has its own landmark. I think in 1st play I accidentally added 2nd landmark to the 3rd street.

I definitely used a lot more of those tokens in the 2nd play. Having the ability to just move cards to any position on your town can give a lot of scores. While in first play, I mostly just to go first and replenish for the opponent. It is very rare that I would go first before the opponent. If it happens it is more like I got 2 cards with lower numbers while the opponent got big number.

Not very sure that I would have that many tokens just to get extra action. Especially the blue and yellow card. To reveal extra card? Sure.

Most of the time, I prefer getting more resident cards for scoring. Unless, maybe in the last 2 rounds, I want to close down the street and getting more from blue deck is better. More variety of card types is also better since you can then choose the lower-level cards. Even if the cards got taken by the opponent, you can always draw blind or the always available options. At the start of the game, you probably can always make the card work after you draw blindly.

That huge deck of cards, up to 101 for the terrace type can feel random, especially if you play with lower player count. You might need certain object but they just never show up. Or, maybe it did show up but not for the correct position or orientation of the town and you cannot use it. Sometimes I just forgot that I still have a card that hasn’t gotten the object for their scoring. Or those objects did show up but along with other objects and I ended up using it for the other card.

Some cards you get points for the adjacent card but it is common that those cards themselves generate 0 point. After 2 plays, that yellow or landmark deck run out of cards. Only 18 landmarks and I already saw and played at least 6 of them.

Maybe the game is better with multiplayer? At least in terms of turn order and maybe more options of sets. With more than 2 players you definitely will see more cards and that drafting options. But maybe too long for more than 3. Also it will take a bigger table space even with just 2.

Other than the randomness, I enjoy the relaxing experience of Tenby. The scoring is not as bad as I thought. Maybe I need to start adding the Accolade cards to my play which is more like public objective.

Playing time was about 40 minutes for the 2nd session.

More unboxing pictures of Tenby on my IG.

Ticket to Ride: Berlin (2023)

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was first time playing 3-handed. The difference compared the 2-player variant is that the double track can be claimed by 2 players instead of 1. Not every route is double track so one player is still about to miss accessing some locations.

Also, accidentally, I tried each player to stick with one strategy that is different from each other. First player tried to work on 3 routes at a time, 2nd with 2 and 3rd only focused on 1 at a time.

3rd player won and they were the one to trigger the end of the game. They won only because the other 2 players had 1 route that they failed to achieve. 1st player actually had a chance to connect their last route which they actually got first time. However, they didn’t have enough time. If anything, 1st player still had a lot of small car pieces. On the other hand, 2nd player while having one car left, they couldn’t finish also their last route Not enough car anyway.

First player finished their last route and it was their 2nd to last piece. They got one more turn and just claimed the best with the cards they had left. So, either it’s better to just play and focus on one route at a time or maybe even just one route during the setup. Even 2nd player had a good network from their initial 2 routes. If anything, the winner got completely separated routes between the first and the subsequent one.

Final score was 48, 45 and 40. So they are not that far to each other. Playing time was about 86 minutes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. 2nd play, 2-handed. Playing time took about 70 minutes with 27 rounds total.

2nd player won with 60 points completing 6 routes while 1st plays scored only 57 with 8 routes. 1st player still had 2 player pieces while 2nd already used all of theirs. I thought 1st player won after getting some luck drawing route cards that they already fulfilled a couple of times.

There was a moment when both needed Yellow cards but they couldn’t get one. Not even the bicycle cards. Had to wait until the deck run out of cards and got them back from discard piles They were used for gray routes very early and didn’t come back until then.

2nd player did play the regular train first while the 1st player played the other one. Both started from the left of the board so they had hard time reaching the right. There was also a moment when both players could or did cutoff the other’s chance to gain specific route in the middle.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. This was a new game to me and my first time playing any of the Ticket to Ride Game. This is the mini box city series and Berlin is the 4th entry.

Ticket to Ride is known for amazing production where they give you plastic miniature train cars. Berlin is no different. A couple people suggested this one instead of the other city in this series because this one uses two vehicle, the subway and the regular train. I heard that the train cars being limited is another twist from the regular rule but I am not sure.

The gameplay itself is super simple. Basically you just keep taking cards or discard a number of cards with the same color to claim a route. You get a map of berlin with various points of the city, connected by one or more route.

Each route shows a color and a number of cards you need to discard. Players will also get destination cards. Basically cards that tells you which 2 locations in the city to connect in order to score points. It doesn’t matter how you get there but as long as you can see continuous routes connected by pieces of your color, you complete the destination scoring.

Each player starts with 11 regular trains and 4 subway trains. If you have enough cards to claim a route but not the pieces, you cannot claim that route. So, this kind of force players to be more strategic and have longer plans instead just claiming the shortest route possible.

In 2-player game, only one player can claim the same route. Maybe it can become a bit cutthroat, blocking each other. You can keep adding more destination cards but if you don’t complete them, you lose points instead.

When one player has one or no train miniatures again, the end game is triggered, followed by everybody getting one more turn. Then players calculate the score and determines the winner.

Here is my first impression after 1 play. I like this one. Figuring out how to connect different destinations is interesting to me. I have one problem though. Maybe this is a language issue and being not familiar with the city itself. It can be an issue of accidentally revealing your goal or destination because you try to read and connect them on the board. Especially if you sit on the opposite side of the board looking at it upside down. Spots at the corner are easier to tell but those in the middle could be challenging as they are very close to each other.

During my 2-handed play, the first player who got destination card connecting two spots in the middle got significantly lower points. They failed to completely placed all of their pieces. Not to mention losing points for not completing some routes.

The 2nd player won over 50 points, more than the board actually allowed. This is probably because they started with the destination cards connecting outer locations. They worked on the subway first and so they got more flexibility connecting the middle with the regular trains for the rest of the game. It feels like that was the better strategy. Maybe this plays differently with more player but I have to try it first.

The playing time is expected to be 10 to 15 minutes. But if you are like me, have trouble reading the board and how to connect them, maybe it can take longer.

I can see how this game or the other Ticket to Ride game can be amazing and appealing to casual players. On the other hand, for experienced gamers, maybe there is not enough depth to keep playing this over and over again.

More unboxing pictures of Ticket to Ride: Berlin on IG.

Tiny Epic Dungeons (2021)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Since I already tried all of the final bosses, I decided to switch one character. This time, Sir Gamelyn accompanied Clotho to fight the Dragon and it was my first time playing him. He has similar dice stats as Sir Lanon. Instead of healing, he has Inspiration where he can spend 1 focus to increase 1 focus of other characters.

For his main ability, you can choose to spend 2 focus to increase the attack by 1 and defense by 1 while doing melee attack. I have to say that Sir Lanon’s Divine Might is much more useful and effective by increasing the attack by 2 instead of defense. Especially against the Dragon with very high defense.

Even then, it was still not enough. Eight is just for the shield value. I actually tried to take advantage of one of the Lair spaces that gives extra 2 for the attack. In this session, Sir Gamlyn even got 2 equipment from Bear set which already increased his attack by 1. He also took Spiked Buckler. With the highest possible roll, he could get 6+2+2 and then up to 2 from loots and 1 from his Zeal ability. That was 13 minus 8 so 5 damage at most per attack.

The fight with the Dragon dragged until the last moment. Dragon’s Inferno and a Goblin attack managed to knock out both characters. Clotho had to focus on healing using Holy Abundance, leaving the attack to the Dragon just to Sir Gamelyn. Sir Gamelyn even had to use Giant’s Strength spell to increase the damage by 3.

I know that this was my first time playing Sir Gamelyn so maybe I didn’t play him well but it was not a fun session. Maybe I should go back playing that Grok Ull again. He has similar power to increase the damage by 2 even if with 3 focus. Even his standard attack already increases the value of the die by 1. Unfortunately, he only has 4 focus max. But having a character that can deal heavy damage seems to be very crucial to eliminate enemies here. Being on Defense like Sir Gamelyn helps but not to win but to survive longer. We’ll see.

Playing time was about 109 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another pair of Sir Lanon and Clotho against the last boss I had which was THE MIND LASHER. Well, another error and this time was I was not aware that I used the torch track of part 2 at the start. I only realized after checking the bonus for beating one of the dire enemies. Hopefully, it didn’t change the game that much.

There was a moment when Clotho used the torch ability to reveal 3 rooms and all of them had 3 Goblins. This was dangerous as the next turn I had to reveal the 4th Goblins. Sir Lanon even got knocked out by one of them. I guess I should be more careful when using this action.

As usual, Sir Lanon had to be the one to beat both dire enemies. Especially the Ooze. Clotho’s Phoenix Staff couldn’t do any damage. This was my first time both characters had to do rest action. Clotho got knocked out either by Goblin or the Boss.

This was also first time where I finished the boss in the Lair. The boss only needed one altar and it was very close to the lair. Another error was when I used missile attack by Clotho in that lair. Apparently, I had to do it from another room. Then again, the boss was already their last health. So, Clotho could have stepped out of the Lair and beat it anyway.

Sir Lanon got 3 of the Lion Set while Clotho was between Phoenix and Viper set. Also, I just realized that there is a rule in the setup about the limit to include just 4 sets for the loot. Maybe I should check the deck more.

Playing time was about 129 minutes.

December 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still with Sir Lanon and Clotho but this time against THE TINKERER. I somehow made it more challenging because I got sets of equipment for both that actually made them weaker. I gave Scarab set for Sir Lanon while Clotho got Viper.

So, I had to discard some of them and retrieved other loots. I think I switched loot incorrectly with multiple items with one bonus instead of one. Because of that, this one took longer to finish.

Playing time was about 149 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Back with just 2 characters, Sir Lanon and Clotho again but this time against the Hydra, the boss which required 3 altar tokens.

Clotho got all Panther set and did some damage with bows while Sir Lanon with Lion. Having all 3 items of each set really helped make things easier.

I think I just realized that I got the rule wrong. Initially I thought to do Melee damage, you use the dice differently from when doing skill checks. Apparently they are supposed to be the same. Pick only 1 and unless the other has plus sign, you only use them for resource.  The way I have been playing is that you use all dice during Melee, regardless of the plus. Maybe there are other rules I still got them wrong.

Playing time was about 98 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was my first time playing with 3 characters. In addition to Clotho and Sir Lanon, I added Zezili, the Human Monk for his Speed. The Boss was the PHARAOH.

As initial impression of playing this with 3 characters, I’m not sure I like it. It feels harder but mainly in the Boss phase, especially towards the end. With more characters, it takes longer to get back to your best character while activating the enemies happen more often. That means, if you rely on one healing character, you get hit twice before getting to that character again. This also led to longer playing time.

On the other hand, maybe this felt harder maybe because I finally played correctly, especially related to any counter. Also got a lot of knocked outs multiple times, especially when I couldn’t handle the goblins.

I just noticed also that I made extra movement again after doing heroic actions to Clotho very early.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still playing with Clotho and Sir Lanon combo and this time against the Dragon.

Errors I made was about the defense from enemies, especially against the spell. Also miscalculated an attack, defeating the boss sooner. Apparently, taking extra rounds after defeating Minions could lead to more actions from the Goblin and even hurt the heroes.

It seems by playing super efficiently, you have more than enough time to really explore the dungeon. The game ended like after 10 rounds, 5 per character.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back with Clotho and Sir Lanon but this time against The Goblin King. Hopefully less errors but I just realized that you gain time after defeating each Minions.

September 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played with Clotho and Sir Lanon against Gorgon. Still a lot of major errors that made the game both easier and harder. The worst one was probably not getting any reward for defeating Goblins. Hopefully I learned enough for my next game.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first time playing this game, solo with 2 characters. More about my first impression than the session report itself. Made a lot of rules error.

More unboxing pictures of Tiny Epic Dungeons game here.

Tokaido Duo (2022)

This is the 2-player version of a game called Tokaido from 2012. After buying the IP, Stonemaier Games, the new publisher, released their version that includes solo variant made by Automa Factory.

Some people say that this is a better game, especially for 2, while still having a low complexity, perfect for family level. The smaller footprint and smaller box is why I decided to go for this instead of the bigger version which I haven’t tried yet at this point so no comparison here.

In Tokaido Duo, both players are running their 3 characters in an island of Shikoku in Japan. Each of these 3 characters, the Artist, the Merchant and the Pilgrim has their own way to increase your score and trigger the end of the game. Like playing 3 mini games.

In general, this is a dice drafting game. The active player of the 2 rolls 3 dice, each representing a character. Then the active player takes 1, the 2nd player takes 1 and the rest goes to the active player again. After that the 2nd player becomes the active and they continue in this way until one of their characters triggers the end of the game.

Each d6 rolled represents a value between 1 to 3. In general, this is how far each character has to move.

Let’s start with the Merchant. The Merchant will move mainly in the middle of the board. They first have to visit one of 4 Towns to get items, randomly drawn from the bag. The items could be 4 of the different souvenirs. Each Merchant can draw as many items as the town allows but they can only keep 5.

Usually you want to get the same type of items. The Merchant then has to bring it to specific Coastal Town to sell just one type of items for coins. They can sell in bulk so it is more efficient. However, maybe that Coastal town to sell it is too far. So, maybe not a bad idea to have other items so you can visit the closer Coastal town first. Everytime you get 10 coins, you exchange them into a Gold. After earning 6th Gold, you trigger the end of the game. Each Gold you have will increase your points at the end.

Next is the Artist or Painter. If the Merchant moves following the road connecting different towns, the Artist has to move crossing that road. The area between the road has specific type of landscape for the Artist to sell their painting.

The artist can sell up to 10 paintings, represented by faced down tokens on their board. However, they first have to paint them by going to where the crowd is. If the Artist goes to an area where there are other characters, including your opponent’s, the artist flips a number of painting tokens equal to the number of nearby characters. It can be one of 4 types of landscapes.

After that, the painting must move to a location that depicts that same landscape to giveaway their artwork. However, this must be done in order from the top. So, the more you reveal, the more you can make plans. Like merchant, more paintings that have been given away, more score for you. After all 10 have been given, you trigger the end of the game.

Last one is the Pilgrim. Unlike the other 2 characters, the Pilgrim can only move clockwise in the outer ring of the board. Within this Outer Ring, the Pilgrim can visit 4 different types of location, including the Coastal town where the merchant would sell their items.

If the Pilgrim lands on empty Coastal town without Merchant, they will just generate coins to help the Merchant faster. They can also land on one of the Seashore locations. By visiting this, the player can take one of the 3 Wave Tiles, one tile for each character. Basically having these tiles alters a bit of how the character works.

Depending on which side of the tile is used, Merchants can sell higher price or gain more item per Mountain. The Artist can paint one more paintings or they can give away not just at their destination but at their starting position and pass through. The Wave tiles for Pilgrim can either add 1 or reduce 1 from what the dice is showing. So more flexibility to these 2 characters.

If there is no more available wave tiles to take, then you take them from your opponent, removing them from the benefit.

Another type of location that the Pilgrim may land on is the Hot Spring. By stopping at this, the player gets the Hot spring tile which allows them to use a dice twice. It was returned to the board after one use and the opponent can also steal from you if they land on that location.

The other 2 types of locations for Pilgrim are Gardens and Temple. These two are how Pilgrim generates score and triggers the end of the game. The Pilgrim has two tracks, one for each for these 2. Temple has 8 spaces while Garden has 5 and everytime the Pilgrim visits the location, you move on the track to its next space. When you reach the final space of either track, you trigger the end of the game. Each next space of either track has increasing value and you score the multiplication of both values.

So, that is the entire game of Tokaido Duo.

For the solo mode, they give you several sets of 3 cards, one for each character of the opponent. Each card has track with increasing score for each space which becomes the priority of drafting the dice. Unless, the Pilgrim is about to take Wave tile and they will prioritize that which will move one character additional space so they get higher score faster.

Their characters movements are simplified so you can kind of predict what they will take. And there are some spaces where their characters won’t score at all so it becomes a chance for you to take advantage of.

Different sets of cards are basically just different difficulty for each character from Level 1 to level 6. So, you can play against Level 1 Merchant, level 3 Pilgrim and Level 6 Artist as an example.

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Another 2-handed session this time. Second player won with 91 points while 1st player only got 78.

All of the 3 Pilgrim tiles were taken by 1st player while 2nd only got one of them once and if I remdember correctly, they didn’t got a chance to use it at all. After that, there was no chance to take it back while 1st kept using them.

Their Merchant was the one to trigger the end of the game. But their artist was also just one painting away to be given away. Even though they still needed to flip it first. That means, their Pilgrim scored the lowest with just 12.

Second player still needed 2 more Gold or about 15 coins with 3 paintings left and only one was face up. They did focus on Pilgrim and got to 28 points, also 2 steps left from triggering the end of the game, from either color.

I had a feeling that 2nd player spent too much their attention to prevent the 1st player from using their Merchant power. As a result, they failed to focus on Artist which they actually started with.

Playing time was about 68 minutes.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with solo play and I was right to choose the next level of difficulty which was 3 for all characters. I think I made mistake in my previous play in that the solo opponent focus on Pilgrim to take Wave tiles but not the Hot spring tile.

Final score was 67 for me, 7 from Artist, 15 from Pilgrim and the Merchant even got their 7th Gold after 45. The opponent only scored 50, with the Artist 2 spaces away from triggering the end of the game, while their Pilgrim still needed 4 and 6 for Merchant.

Apparently, there were a lot of moments where any of opponent’s character would not increase on either track so I took advantage of it. I was planning to focus more on Pilgrim but I guess the Pilgrim themselves helped the Merchant more so I won with that. Only 2 wave tokens were taken, one for Merchant for me and the opponent got the Artist.

So, unlike my first solo play, this was more enjoyable. Maybe because I understand the game more. I didn’t even get the chance to use the Hot spring token.

Playing time took about 52 minutes in my 11th turn to lead.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another competitive play, 2-handed. 2nd player won with 84 while 1st player only got 64. 1st player triggered the end of the game first with their merchant but in the same round, 2nd player also triggered their from the Artist.

Despite the fact that 1st player got the extra actions multiple times and took all of the blue tokens, they didn’t do as much as 2nd player. So, I guess that extra movement could be a trap. Like unless you can use the additional actions to keep progressing, maybe not much of some help. Maybe you really need to use it on just one, focusing to trigger the end of the game as fast as possible. In this play, I kind of diversify on both sides. 2nd player also almost got the most point from the Merchant.

Playing time was about 63 minutes.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I got 2 sessions. One for the 2-player variant and the other for solo. For some reasons, both took almost the same playing time which about an hour. I guess, in either mode, you really consider the plan for both.

The solo mode with all Level 2, I scored 84 vs 68. Somehow with the multiplayer, one score 89 and the other scored 94. The score can go as high as 150 on the back of the board.

For some reasons, it feels like the game is not meant to be in competitive mindset. What I mean by that is I had more fun when I was not focusing so much as to deny the other player for the dice they want. like in the Solo mode.

One thing to keep in mind is there is the dice roll, a random element. There will be moments where your rolls don’t help you but help the other player. In that regard, it makes sense to start hate drafting because there is no other choice. It’s just when you play the solo mode, it feels like you have to deny the opponent constantly which then, IMO, takes away the joy a bit.

And this is from Level 2. I can’t imagine playing against all Level 6. Maybe I could have actually played a bit loose and still won in that difficulty. Then again, in that play, their Pilgrim was almost triggered the end of the game. I was expecting maybe level 3 to be in relaxing play but still win mostly.

It also feels a bit long and repetitive towards the end. Maybe a combination of just bad rolls for you and just stalling your opponent. Other than the wave tiles themselves, there is no character building. They are still mostly the same as the characters at the start. Well, this is not the game for that kind of complexity.

While the game has a couple of variables for the setup to change between session, I don’t feel like they change the game a lot. The only difference is probably how you try to focus on different characters. Usually, you focus on one and your opponent on one of the other 2. Then the competition is about who does better for the 2nd character.

This was just my initial impression after 2 plays. Maybe with more it can change my views but also maybe not. We’ll see. For now, my conclusion is that Tokaido Duo is a nice, well produced game for family level but maybe doesn’t have legs for more plays.

More unboxing pictures of Tokaido Duo on my IG.

Trailblazers (2023)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This time, instead of the usual solo mode campaign, I decided to revisit the Adventure mode that involved the Animal expansion as well.

In this mode, you only play with 2 camps, start like regular game. In the 2nd round until the end, after you are done placing 2 cards, you get to move your character from both camps along the loop you are creating.

They have to move exactly 3 spaces. If they cannot reach that number, that character reached a dead end and will no longer move until the next round. Each card has 2 spaces but if there is an animal token that was new for that trail, that animal took one movement space. However, you cannot overlap the card with animal tokens.

If the character can keep moving until the end of the round, they get to place a campfire token, standing up. This is worth 5 points at the end. To get the score, the trail has to be in a completed loop, even if your character didn’t reach back to the camp. Instead, you still get points with the remain number of spaces back to the camp from where your character is at. From animals, you gain more score with more unique animals on each trail.

Unfortunately, I prefer playing the standard game than this mode. The fact that you will be focusing on just extending two loops, one for each camp, makes it very swingy with the card. Exactly, like the experience in standard game but towards the end of the game where you are so focus on completing a loop that requires exact shape.

Unlike the standard game, there is no point on creating a different loop. Being creative with the shape will just hurt your progress. What’s worse is that when you try to fix the current shape, your character might be in the way. So, a lot of limiting factors got introduced to this mode and made it not very enjoyable for me. So, I guess, I just continue with the standard game.

Playing time was about 37 minutes.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Next solo challenge was with Metro Park and Confined Quarters and I got 2 sessions.

First one I scored over 50 but I didn’t realize that I failed the Confined Quarters as only 1 camp was completely surrounded. So, I played again 2nd time and I only scored 44 while completing both objectives. Not only I covered too much but making straight loops doesn’t mean score higher as I didn’t score the extra smaller lines in between.

Playing time was about 63 minutes for 2 sessions.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Continuing with solo mode but with 2 objectives. This time was the Hiker’s Quartet again and Wildlife Whisperers. I just realized after playing this game over 20 times that I was supposed to complete the In Game Goal before the start of 4 rounds. That means, some or maybe all of my previous plays have been invalidated. I think I just keep going with the incorrect rules because, even if I made it easier, I barely won. Those extra cards in the 4th rounds really helped me complete those goals.

Anyway, I scored 10 from 3 blue loops, 15 from 2 red loops, 30 from 4 brown loops with 16 animals showing. Total was 55 but as I said above, incorrectly. Playing time was about 33 minutes.

August 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Solo play and for the first time playing with 2 objectives instead of 1, Hiker’s Quartet and Wanderlust. Not only I need 4 Brown loops but the total value of them has to be 35 or more.

Got 2 plays. First one was a failure, 4 brown loops but worth only 26. plus 21 from red of 3 loops and 11 from blue of 2 loops. Then in 2nd play, I got 4 brown loops worth 36, plus 2 reds worth 8, and 2 blue loops worth 10. Maybe not having the other camping cards too close helped in the 2nd one.

Playing time was about 25 minutes for the 2nd session and 30 for the 1st.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Using the SIGHTSEER objective, last of single solo objective. Got 27 points from the main objective loop and another 27 from both other camps, 3 for hiking and 1 for bike.

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Using the SAUCY CYCLIST solo, single objective. Scored only 50. Technically probably lost the game since I relied too much to get specific shape, even though it was possible.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Using the TRAIL HUGS solo, single objective. Scored 54. So far, this is probably the hardest one. Also, first content that got over 500 views on TikTok.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Using the COURSE COASTER objective, scored 66, probably the highest one so far.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Retried the FOREVER FLOAT objective, 3 times. First one was stopped mid game. 2nd time only scored less than 40 and the last one scored over 50.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Standard solo with FOREVER FLOAT objective. Made one error of drawing 1 card too many in one turn. Scored slightly over 50 but need to try again.

March 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Standard solo session with only WANDERLUST objective, scored 59 points.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Single Standard solo session with HARMONIZER objective.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Standard Solo variant with the METRO PARK objective.

November 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Standard Solo variant with the LOOP JUNKIE objective, 2 sessions.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Standard Solo variant with the WILDLIFE WHISPERERS objective, 3 sessions, lost twice won the last one.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Scored 58 for the HIKER’S QUARTET objective, 16 minutes and scored 56 for the CONFINED QUATERS.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the full session report for solo standard mode without any objective. First time playing, 2 sessions, scored 52 and 40. Not long after that, I played again with the Animal and Adventure Solo expansion.

Here are the unboxing pictures for Trailblazers, the Deluxe Travel Edition on IG.

Tranquility (2020)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. After not playing this game for a while, I decided to just go back with the basic mode, solo play.

Nothing special happened, obviously. I only discarded 24 cards plus 8 from the Start card when I played the Finish card. One Finish card left and it was on my hand.

Playing time was about 34 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Got 4 sessions and this time trying out the Stormy oceans and Compass modules. Failed everytime. With one or 2 empty gaps, even in the last one with me tracking the discard pile.

Nice challenges but feels a bit frustrating to what is supposed to be a relaxing experience. It feels bad because the moment you realize you cannot win, it is because you already discarded the exact cards very early in the game. Luckily, the module is adjustable. I’m starting to appreciate Onirim more because of this.

The 3 yellow will just decrease the hand limit. Purple will block a row. While Orange will force you to play only next to existing card. That last one can force you to just discard your entire hand right from the start which happened in one of my sessions.

Maybe on their own, they are fair challenges. But when all of them happened at the same time, more often than not, you probably have to lose essential cards. it is also challenging to find the right timing as when to discard the whole hand to get the compass. Not sure I will play with all of them again.

Playing time was about 2 hours for 4 sessions.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Still playing solo, got 2 sessions, first time trying out the Sea Monster expansion. First play without removing any card while the 2nd play removed 6. Finished the 2nd play and won but no cards left in the deck. A bit of first impression about that expansion in this entry.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Played the solo again with just basic module once and then played another solo session by adding the Jagged Rocks module. It doesn’t seem to change anything.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first couple of plays of this game and a bit of first impression entry. Accidentally played 2 games with 5×5 grid instead of 6×6. Then I played with the correct rule solo variant.

More unboxing pictures of Tranquility game on IG.

Under Falling Skies (2020)

July 2026 session atnd more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Back playing with Washingto D.C. module and flipped one of the sky board to the harder side. Last time I picked the lowest so I tried the middle one this time. There was a damage icon when the Mothership reached that level.

I finished the game in 8th round. Only took 2 hits. I put a Robot in the size 3 research room. Maybe placing in the middle room was a better idea but I put the first robot on the right. The bottom most of the 2nd column had a fighter jet room with plus 3 value which could be useful for lower roll.

Then I got the chance to place another robot on Energy generator room of column 1. But after 2 activations, I made another robot, taking the die from the energy room and placed the new one in the middle room of size 3 research room. At first, I wasn’t sure that I am allowed to have both robots in the same room but I didn’t find any rule against it.

Of course, that helped a lot. Got total value of 12 from 3 dice in that room which was just above the requirement of the last space for research to win.

Playing time took about 64 minutes. Somehow this was longer than the usual which is about 49 minutes.

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still not playing the campaign and this time back with Roswell City. However, I flipped the top sky part to make it harder. It is definitely more challenging. Usually I can win without taking any damage or just one with all easy sky sides. This time, I had 3 hit left and 2 rounds before I lost. I guess I wasted a bit in earlier rounds not pushing the excavator more while at the same time, the harder side pushed the excavator backwards more.

Playing time was about 49 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Another play with New York variant hopefully correctly played this time. Don’t remember anything special, other than I think I put that robot in the wrong space of the double research room. Should have been in the 2nd column instead of 1st.  I did use a lot more of the top rooms compared to my previous plays. Got one hit and didn’t even need to let the mothership descend to avoid losing research progress. Playing time was about 49 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Back to playing with the Washington D.C. variant, all the easier sides of the board. Previously, I didn’t notice the rule to set one white die to 6 instead of rolling it. I managed to win but got 1 hit left before I lost with 4 rounds remaining.

March 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another retry of New York City variant after a major error previously. Still with all easier side of the boards and I won with 2 or 3 rounds remaining. There was only one moment when I thought I didn’t like the reroll result but a good roll mostly. Also, maybe a bit of luck with higher result near the end allowed me to push the research track very fast.

Actually I forgot to move white enemy ship one time that triggered Mothership descending. Maybe minor error but the result could have been different.

January 2025 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing with the New York city. I just noticed there is an extra rule for the 2 cities after Roswell. Also for this session I forgot that you cannot move excavator twice in a round but I did it a couple of turns and obviously made the game easier.

September 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. 2nd play with Washington DC and the Robot Room. I think I got it right this time and the Robot made the game still easier, even just to keep generating Energy. Finished the game way faster since the 2nd robot helped with the triple research room twice.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time playing with the Washington DC and the Robot Room. Got the rule wrong as I moved the robot every round while they should have stayed in one. Made the game too easy.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or on TikTok. Still with the recommended starter setting since the last time I made the error. Hopefully this was played correctly. I found that placing the dice on the column first, not exactly the room helped, making mistake of only 1 die per column.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Using the Roswell city and recommended setting for new player. Forgot about spending 1 energy for Excavator. In one round, even forgot to update the energy track and made the game easier.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first 2 plays of Under Falling Skies using the standard recommended setting. Lost the first one and won at the 2nd. A bit of first impression entry.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Under Falling Skies on IG.

Unmatched: Hell’s Kitchen (2022)

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. This was my first time playing an Unmatched game and I started with this set mainly because of Daredevil. Playing 2-handed which was of course, not ideal but good enough to learn and I got 2 sessions between Daredevil vs Bullseye.

Daredevil lost in the first session and it was not close. Even the 2nd one Daredevil almost failed beating Bullseye. Daredevil already run out of cards from the deck while Bullseye had one or 2 strong attack cards left in the deck.

In general, the main idea of the game is to know your entire deck of cards. You will mostly play those cards once for the entire game either as main action or to boost something. Daredevil, however, comes with less cards than other characters because he has a couple of cards to bring cards back from discard pile so there is a chance you play more cards than other characters.

From my limited experience, you have to make a plan around those retrieving cards. I read that other more experience players even said that you need to play long game. While burning out your other cards and dealing damage to your opponent here and there, eventually you need to keep those retrieving cards at the end. Then, you just keep recycling those cards over and over again, hopefully when your opponent no longer has enough cards to do much.

He also has blind boosting ability which is apparently dangerous as you can end up discarding any of those retrieving cards instead of drawing and playing them. Another one is his healing cards which also discard cards randomly from the deck. You definitely need them but you need to be extra careful.

On top of those, against Bullseye as ranged attacker, Daredevil’s melee style means you need to catch up with him. Bullseye can just attack you from 5 spaces away and you can defend, but not counter from a far.

For some reason, even the map has a couple of “corridors” around the corners and can trap Bullseye since he can only move 2 spaces per action. Unless, of course he uses cards that let him move after an attack. Or, he can also just boost movement using other cards in hand.

Bullseye is more straight forward in terms of making a plan around his cards. One of the idea is to win the fight with one action and then play another card on 2nd action with the better version after you gain that previous win. So, sometimes you do need to save those cards to make sure you can attack twice and win. Some of the better version can be very lethal. Opposing players have to be aware of that.

So, it seems, knowing not only your entire deck of cards but also your opponent can really help you win the game. Especially if you can keep track on how many of some specific cards are in the deck and how many of them have been played. Experience players may even go further by reading the situation whether their opponents take advantage of situation or choose to abandon it, implying that they don’t have those good cards at the moment.

Not understanding how to play your character optimally can lead to a frustrating experience. Such is the case with Daredevil. Even I didn’t know Bullseye well during the first game and he won one sided.

At this point, Unmatched is the only dueling game that I have where the entire idea is to deal damage to your opponent until they run out of health. While I enjoy learning the cards and how to play the characters well, which is, these 2 cases, very thematic, dueling game like this is not really something I am looking forward to. It can get into a situation where you are just bullying your inexperienced opponent.

Maybe this is one of the sets for more advanced players. Other boxes may offer a more beginner friendly characters but I don’t know which. I know what I am getting myself into when I bought this game and from this, maybe I won’t seek more sets. Still not sure about the 2 cooperative boxes but maybe it suits me better.

Sadly, this is the only good game so far with Daredevil character in it. Playing time took about almost an hour per session but mainly because I had to play both hands.

More unboxing pictures of Unmatched: Hell’s Kitchen on my IG.

Unreliable Wizard (2022)

In this solo only game with only 30 cards or so, you are playing as an Unreliable Wizard, adventuring across various locations in rather linear way before reaching the location of Final Boss, Terra. Along the way, you may encounter different enemies and if you can beat them, you can either get better spell  card, a companion or a better set of spells.

As a Wizard, you start with basic 3 spells, a Red, Blue or Green, dealing 2 damage each to the enemy. However, the location itself may give extra defense to the enemy so you might prefer using certain spell over the others.

The basic system for the battle is deck construction within the game and push your luck. Before the battle, you can bring up to 5 spell cards each and draw up to the total number of cards minus 1. So you bring a deck with 2 reds, 1 Blue and 2 greens face down, shuffled. Then you reveal cards one by one. Every reveal cost a life point.

To cast a spell certain combination must appear. Red 2 cannot be used on its own but you may need at least Red 1 first. However, because you are unreliable, you may draw Red 2 first. In fact, you may even fail to draw the Red 1 from those 4 cards. So, what you bring and how far you reveal or stop becomes the main point of the game.

After revealing all cards, you inflict damage to the enemy. If the enemy is still alive, depending on how many life points they have, they may deal counterattack at you with different value of damage. You might want to deal as many damage as you can but then the enemy hit you back just as much. Alternatively you can also just deal weaker damage but they don’t hit you back that hard. That consideration is how you determine whether to keep going with the reveal or stop.

Companions are characters like Hero, Princess, Monk, Paladin, Porcupine that will increase your certain spell type attack permanently. Each character also has special abilities, like Princess will discount the damage when revealing more spell cards while other characters are stronger against certain type of enemies.

Random order of how you get these bonuses is the main replay value of this game. You might start getting all spell cards first or all companions first or in between.

While this micro game with less than 40 cards managed to offer a full big adventure game experience, it doesn’t really offer replay value that much. Even the shorter variant feels unbalance. You will fight the same final boss, has the same set of spells and arguably a combination of spells you will always choose over the other. The map has obvious best path.

There is already an expansion but it offers a different game mode rather than different content for the same game structure. The original Japanese version also doesn’t have proper box other than a tuck box for the cards while the game uses at least one pawn.

At least the gameplay is fast, after understanding the rule properly. So, it is a smart design for just a deck of cards but ultimately it needs more contents.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Started with the Hero and the white spell. Monk had to be sacrificed as usual. Playing time was about 38 minutes.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Started with a Monk and a White spell. Got most of the companions very early, making the game rather on easier side.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Started with Princess and Paladins, followed by Monk, Hero, and the Porcupine. After all of the characters, got 2nd Blue first, 2nd green, the white,  2nd red and the Grimoire 2 was the last one. Took 3 rounds to beat the final boss. Playing time was about 30 minutes.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or on TikTok. Started with Hero as companion and the 2nd Blue spell card. The Hero and Monk sacrificed their life.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Started with Princess and Porcupine companions.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Started with Porcupine companion and the 2nd Blue Spell card.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Started with Monk companion and the 2nd Blue Spell Card.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. First time tried the shorter variant. Lost in the first fight. Started with Monk and the Spell Book.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Started with 2nd Green card and the Princess. The Monk got killed.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG for 2nd session. and 1st session. This was my first time playing the game. I also wrote a bit more as first impression. Here is the Full session report. Probably with a lot of rules error.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Unreliable Wizard from the original Japanese publisher on IG.

Walking in Provence (2019)

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Playing time took about 75 minutes for 2-handed session. Red or first player scored 79 while the Green or 2nd player scored 87. Both managed to score every Photo. The extra score that gave the winning was having 2 wheat groups with 2 x 2 for the Green. Green also finished the Photo the turn before the last one while Red almost failed the last one.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok, Tumblr and on Instagram. 2-handed session as usual. Playing time was about 65 minutes. Red or first player only scored 78 while Green won with 93. Green got all of the photo goals and Red failed to get one, missing 6 points. Another 6 points after Green got both majority bonuses.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. 2-handed session as usual. Red won with 93 points while Green only got 81. Not only Red got all of the objectives, they scored them all first time while Green got stuck a couple of first rounds and failed to score the last one.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. 2-handed session. One scored 81 and the other scored 78. Both failed to complete all goals, one for the winner and 2 goals for the other.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG and on TikTok. Still playing 2-handed. Nothing new. Green scored 94 while Red scored 92, very close. Both got all Photo objectives.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, Red scored 93 while Green only 76.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Played with 2 players, 82 vs 97 points.

September 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was my attempt making a solo variant for this game. Scored 70 while the opponent scored 68.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2 sessions, trying out solo variant. Scored 62 for both.

July 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, scored 100 vs 80.

April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report. 2-handed, with Red scored 80 while Green Scored 84.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, both scored 81.

February 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was first time playing the game, 2-handed, 2 sessions, scored 90 vs 94 and 83 vs 75. A bit of first impression.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Walking in Provence on IG.

The White Castle (2023)

July 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and Tumblr. Back with solo play and this was probably my highest score so far for this game. I scored 64 points while the opponent got 46.

Maybe I just got lucky because I started with 4 foods and the personal domain action was Gardener action. Not saying I used the personal domain action right away. But with the first lantern bonus being another food, it was obvious that I had to focus on that.

My first action from the left was actually to the Well. This was to get the 3rd Iron so I could send a warrior to that 2nd space and that 2nd space allowed me to do a Gardener action.

So, that was my next action. Got my first warrior and gardener out. For the Garden bonus, I took the 2nd highest valuable space with 4 foods and by spending 3 I could have gotten another Courtier action.

For my 3rd action, I picked another lantern bonus die and my food was already at 4 again. This time, I sent it to first floor, middle room to activate two white die actions. One of them was Courtier. At this point, the opponent also already sent out 1 of each.

I had my garden bonus even if I had to pay 3rd coin using Seal for the Courtier action. While I could afford all of these, it seems there was a chance that I miscounted the coins and forgot to pay something.

2nd Round. I was still first player and I did another Well action again. Then 2nd die was a white again for the middle room. The courtier action sent out my 3rd Courtier to the gate while moving one of them on 1st floor to the 2nd. I had to lose 2 Seals for the 2nd Pearl.

Then last die was the combo with black dice for 2 Pearls and action to Warrior. The action with 3 irons got me another Garden action for the highest value, if I spent 4 coins to activate any die action in the castle. Maybe I actually activated another Courtier which required a Seal to move my 4th Courtier and took another card on 1st floor.

At the end of this round, I managed to activate both Garden bonus even if I had to spend total of 7 coins. One was Courtier action and I moved up the one on 2nd floor to the top to get lantern bonus and 2 seals. Not sure which die action I chose but I got 3 more seals. I think it was another Gardener action for the left side, required just 2 food that got me 2 seals.

3rd Round. I started by using my top personal domain row. That was to get a lot of food for the last Garden action. 2nd die was white for the middle room again. Got me the 2nd pearl and activate Courtier with the last Courtier out to the gate.

Last one was white for well action on 2nd floor since that was the only option to spend the food. Sent the 4th Gardener to the middle right card with 3rd highest value. This allowed me to spend 4 coins to activate my personal domain. I activated the middle one to get a lot of irons and unfortunately didn’t have any pearl for more Courtier action.

While there was a chance I probably did something wrong but this made me realized that you really need to focus on getting the higher score from one of the actions instead of diversifying everything. This was my rare time moving the Courtier to the top.

Got 24 from 4 Gardeners, 20 from Courtiers with one at the top and only 8 from Warriors. The rest was from leftover resources and I managed to get to the 2nd part of the turn order track.

Playing time was about 67 minutes.

May 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I think this was my first time playing 2-handed instead of the usual official solo mode.

First player won with 41 points while 2nd player only got 36 so, not that far off. The thing is that first player managed to deploy 11 figures so, 4 left while 2nd player only got to deploy 7. All 5 courtiers and 1 of each from the other 2. There was also a chance that 2nd player could have scored a bit higher by different courtier actions but maybe just 1 or 2 point difference.

1st player on the other hand was focused on Gardener and Warrior, each with 1 figure left while Courtiers had 2 left on their personal domain. Another note for why 2nd player lost was because there was a time when the board had not enough Courtier action inside the castle. Both players even had to use both spaces outside. So, the setup itself was not in favor for 2nd player.

So, does this mean that the number of figures you deploy is not an indicator of how good you play? Does that also mean you still need to focus on one path instead of multiple? This is interesting as playing solo against the bot doesn’t give me this kind of information to compare. Now, maybe I want to keep trying this 2-player variant.

Some more notes about this play. 1st player only got 3 cards in their lantern bonus so they chose to take higher dice more often instead of from the left. The dice at the start of the round also don’t come with good value if I remember correctly.

Playing time was about 81 minutes.

January 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play even though I was thinking about trying 2-handed after the rare win last time. Still with the easiest mode, I scored 45 and the opponent got 72. Only one room on 1st floor where there were only 2 dice colors. I still managed to deploy all figures but 3 left with 1 Courtier and 2 Gardeners.

The highlight of this play was because of the setup, I got a lantern starting bonus of 1 seal right away. That way, I managed to get one time more than the maximum. Constantly traded them for either money or any of the 3 resources. So, I still think I did quite well but the opponent just got lucky with a couple of double actions and probably only one time where their Courtier part of their actions did nothing. Playing time was about 72 minutes.

September 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Only one session and I think I finally beat the solo mode. Hopefully I didn’t make any mistake. The score was close, 52 for me against 50.

I think the highlight was that I managed to send warriors to the highest value ground as bonus for sending a Gardener. This allowed me to activate an action with black die. That got me to send another warrior to 2nd ground while converting 2 Seal for 3rd iron. The bonus got me to activate any action space which I sent the last warrior to the cheapest ground with my 2 Seal for an Iron. Possibly the best combo so far.

I also remembered that choosing the starting resources can be crucial while depending on the setup. While I had a choice to pick total resources of 3, I took 2 pearls and 1 iron, no food, instead of spreading them. I knew I could get more iron from the lantern, By the time I needed to send gardener, I already sent a lot of courtiers so I activated my personal domain to get those foods.

None of the player got to the top level of Courtier. The opponent possibly got 2 actions a turn either once or twice.  I even managed to win the first player order before starting the 3rd round. Run out of cards for the first level of the Castle so I didn’t take the last one. Also as setup, all 3 rooms on 1st floor had 2 of the same color. I think this was also my first time using the outer action since I couldn’t afford the seal at the time.

Playing time was about 52 minutes.

June 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Got 2 solo sessions, still just with easy more. None of them scored great. Weirdly, the opponent’s score scaled accordingly.  First one got me 37 vs 53 while 2nd one got me 38 vs 56. Not sure if I actually enjoyed my plays.

March 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another solo session and only got 1 play which took longer than usual. I managed to deploy almost every meeple but 3. Scored about 73 while the opponent still won with 83.

My best score so far. I assume I got the rules right now which led to improvement of score significantly. Then again, maybe I got advantage by having 2 actions in every room with one color on 1st floor.

December 2024 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. Got 2 sessions, both played the solo easy variant. First one scored poorly with just 30 vs opponent’s 58. The 2nd one scored 43 but the opponent got over 63.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. This was a Full session report of solo mode, easy difficulty. I learned something a bit related to the Courtier that you can actually do 2 actions. Got 2 sessions, one was a win and the other was a loss.

August 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. First time solo sessions, got 2 games. Tried the Normal difficulty first and lost horribly with 30 points against 59. 2nd one with Easy difficulty was still a lost with still just 30 and the opponent got 45.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 1st time play, 2 sessions playing 2 handed. One game scored 19 and 29 and the other session scored 40 and 42.

More unboxing pictures of The White Castle game on Instagram.

Wingspan Asia (2022)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. I didn’t have any strategy I would like to try like last time but I tried to focus on the bonus card this time. For this play, I chose PELLET DISSECTOR over ENDANGERED SPECIES PROTECTOR. The reason was that 2 of the 5 starting bird cards actually helped this bonus card.

Basically, I need to cache either fish and/or mouse tokens in order to score, ideally 4 or more tokens. And the 2 starting birds that helped this bonus were EURASIAN KESTREL and RHINOCEROS AUKLET. Both of them require only one food to play so I got to keep one more food token as my 5 starting resources. In the end, I only got exactly 4 of those tokens cached because the dice roll just didn’t give me that many.

The 4 end of round goals were tokens on nest type for 1st round, on bonus space for 2nd, on green area for 3rd and the most in horizontal line for 4th. Apparently, I didn’t read that the 2nd one was about the FEWEST instead of the most so I kept chasing those bonuses. In the end, I won the last 2 while the opponent took the rest.

This was also the first time for me to play a bird with Yellow power or end game scoring. The COMMON TAILORBIRD allowed me to put an egg to bird with the same nest type in contiguous group which includes the wild nest type. Got this card randomly in the 3rd round and I realized that I made a good group of nest with a lot of egg icons. Total, including that yellow card I got 7 birds in contiguous group.

I also played 3 bird cards with white color or instant benefit after playing. Filled the first and second row completely while only 2 in the 3rd row. Unlike my usual play, I didn’t get a lot of cards. Maybe discarded one for extra food and one card left at the end. So, I guess I was kind of lucky with the draw.

Final score for me was 102. Fifteen from eggs, 9 from cached food and tucked cards combined, 6 from one bonus card, 9 from end of the round goal, 12 from all duet tokens connected on duet board. That means, the other 51 points came from the 12 birds. The opponent only got 59 or so as I set it the easy difficulty.

Playing time was about 103 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play and still with the easiest difficulty for the opponent. This time, I decided to focus on the well-known egg spamming strategy. Well, it didn’t really work that way and I ended up trying to play more birds. I only did the egg action twice in the final round.

Mostly because I was trying to get the best score from the private goal. The Grassland Rangers got me 8 points for having descending value of birds in the 2nd row. I got Indian Peafowl for 7 points as the first, then Black-Nape Oriole for 5 points as the 2nd Third one was Olive-Backed Sunbird for 3 points, followed by Desert Wheatear for 2 points. The last one was Fire Fronted Serin that got me only 1 point plus 1 egg for every bird on its left at the end of the round.

Playing those 2 birds got me 3 points while losing 4 eggs, plus 5 points from the goal and plus 1 from the duet token. I did all of that with 3 actions with 2 playing bird actions and one for get food action. If I chose the egg spamming action, I could have gotten 9 points and I could have gotten more by discarding some food. So, the egg spamming works better and definitely easier. Maybe even better if I already got 5 birds before that final round.

This was also the first time for me not to be able to place the duet token for one bird since there was no valid space left. Also the first time giving anything to cache to the opponent. Usually I would have picked other birds.

Final score was 84 vs 64 for my win. I guess the opponent was not lucky enough this time like my previous plays. They did play 13 birds and won the first and last end of the round goal.

Playing time was about 110 minutes.

November 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Still with solo play again using the lowest difficulty. Playing time was about 90 minutes.

Somehow I managed to get a lot of wasted food. I could have spent and converted some of them had I sticked with the Egg spamming strategy. Instead I kept trying to do the 4 different action each once just to get end of round bonuses, Final score was close within 10 points.. The automa got 10 birds while I only got 9. I had to use 3 d6 to get additional eggs. I guess this happened because I pursued the Egg strategy since the last goal was for the middle row.

July 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. Solo play again and still using the lowest possible difficulty. I think this was the best play so far after realizing the error of navigation for the opponent. Still scored only 75 while the opponent got 64. Even then I have a feeling that this was because I got lucky with early cards. Playing time was about 100 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo play and I think I lost horribly with 64 vs 70 points. The opponent won all of the end of the round goals and they were in the easy mode.

It felt like I wasted a couple of turns just trying to draw cards and I probably shouldn’t have cache foods early instead of keeping them to play. On the other hand, the opponent managed to play 12 birds by the end of 3rd round.

I guess I kind of understand the criticism about the random cards.

January 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. I just realized a mistake I’ve been making with the Automa, specifically the duet mode. Apparently, the way you resolve navigation between playing a bird and drawing a card is different. The former only use the map and works towards the goal while the other use all 3 steps.

September 2024 session and more pictures of that session on TikTok and on Instagram. This was solo mode, using slightly more difficult bonus card for the automa but still with the easy difficulty. The automa managed to play 12 birds and scored 84 while I only got 66.

July 2024 session and more pictures of this session on Instagram and on TikTok. Another solo session with the lowest difficulty. Hopefully did the navigation correctly this time but with one minor error still. Scored 75 while opponent got 73.

May 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram or on TikTok. First time playing the solo variant with Duet Mode. Got the Navigation rule wrong a bit but it doesn’t seem to affect the game that much. Didn’t use any of the ability involving the Cache for either side. Scored only 67 to the opponent’s 62 using the lowest difficulty and easier bonus.

April 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was first time playing, 2-handed with Duet Mode board. Scored 95 and 103. A bit of first impression for the game.

Here is more unboxing pictures of Wingspan Asia on IG.

Wispwood (2025)

This was one of the games from CGE with solo mode but not the usual big heavy game. Wispwood is a tile laying game which is also a game where you take smaller square pieces to create different polyomino shapes. In that polyomino shape, one of the squares will have a colored wisp of 4 that will determine how you score and how you build your tableau.

The game board will display 8 spaces for 8 wisp tiles. Between those spaces, you can find different polyomino shapes. As you can probably guess, the way it works is, if you take any of the wisp, you can make the polyomino shape next to it.

Let’s say you take a green tile and one of the two shapes next to it is an L shape, size 4. So, you take that green and take 4 other face down tiles or the trees to build your forest. You can mirror, rotate or flip the shape however you want to fill your own grid.

You will be playing 3 rounds and each subsequent round, your grid will get bigger. Start from 4×4 in 1st, then 5×5 in 2nd and 6×6 in the last round. Your own board also starts with a cat tile. Any placement afterwards has to be adjacent orthogonally to the existing tiles.

Each of 4 different colored wisps scores differently. Like Red will score every face down or tree tile in the same row or column. Blue wants to score every different wisp nearby of that blue wisp. Yellow wants sets of 2 yellow wisp but not adjacent to other yellow sets while green demands to be placed only in the same row or column as the cat. Those are just example of how each color score and the game comes with like 5 for each.

There is also a scoring of how you laid the trees. Maybe only score the row or column if they have 3 or more trees. You will score at the end of each round using all of those 5 scoring conditions. Maybe you don’t finish the set of one color in 1st round but you have in mind a plan when the grid gets bigger.

So what happens if you cannot use the shape to fill the gap? You can flip your cat tile so you can choose the shape not adjacent to where you took the tile in which the cat becomes exhausted or hidden. Alternatively, you can also choose not to take a wisp but instead take up to 3 tree tiles which is great to fill gap. In this 2nd option, it also enables the cat back again.

Another way to use the cat is to refresh the market. Maybe you really need certain color but the market has none of it. You can wait until somebody else refresh when there is only one type on the market or use this cat action.

The round ends when one player manages to completely fill their grid and then the round continues until everyone gets the same number of turns. Whoever completely filled their grid, gets bonus score.

For the next round, you remove all of the trees while the wisp stays. You can grow your grid in any directions you want but knowing that those wisps stay, you might want to make a bigger plan right from the start. Also, in between each round, you get to move your cat to one of the trees before removing those trees. Another thing you need to consider when you start the game.

That’s how you play Wispwood. You count the score according to those cards and add them to your score from previous rounds. The one with highest score wins.

There is also a solo mode where you can compete against solo opponent. The solo opponent will take wisp in favor of the highest value for them. They don’t make any polyomino shape or fill the grid just add up tiles while removing them from you. The game also comes with 4 difficulty levels for this solo opponent.

One gimmick or selling point from the production is that the wisp side of the tiles are glow in black light. It doesn’t have any impact to gameplay but it does add the look of it. Especially when those wisps are among the darker tree side of the tiles, you can see their color really pops up.

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Got 2 sessions, one solo and one 2-handed. Both were using the same scoring cards. Fur the Win for Green, Sliver of Hope for Red, Sign of Light for Blue, Oh My Gourd for yellow and Lower Branch for the Tree.

For solo, I scored 168 while the opponent, using the board with 2 paws got 114. I was surprised with the Yellow scoring. You get points for every group of wisps with at least one yellow. So, I managed to make like 3 or 4 until the end of 2nd round. However, in the final round, I didn’t realize that I accidentally combined some of them by placing another different wisp in between. So, then 3 of them eventually became one and I scored lower.

Also, somehow, the cat tile made it a bit harder to tell the groups apart. I thought it was part of the group of wisps.

So, I played again and tried the 2-handed way. First player only got 150 while 2nd player got 188. Made the same mistake again for First player as I accidentally combined 2 yellows into one by placing a green in between. Effectively losing 11 points.

Both were pretty close at the end of 2nd round with 175 and 178. I actually tried moving the cat before the final round to make sure the separation of those yellows. Unfortunately for 1st player, they still combined them in other part.

Another similar element was the Tree. For this one, you only score from the 2nd biggest group of 3. Second player managed to separate them equally with 9 tiles and 7 tiles. While first player got only 3 tiles as the 2nd biggest.

Playing time total for 2 sessions took about 2 hours, 52 minutes for solo.

April 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. So, I had 3 plays, 2 solo and one with 2-handed. Other than somebody else taking the wisp you want, this is pretty much multiplayer solitaire. Even if you try to hate draft, then there is a chance it will ruin you own situation if you cannot fill them into the grid.

This kind of reminds me of Cartographers but instead of drawing, you just place tiles to make polyominos. Unlike cartographers, you know the shape but no guarantee you’ll get the exact color. Instead of scoring every 2 cards you score everything every round here. And instead of 4 rounds and the same size of your area, you’ll get bigger area but only in 3 rounds.

Of course, Cartographers game has additional interaction where they ask your opponent to place the goblin shapes but you can always play the solo mode. Wispwood is definitely faster because no drawing just placing tiles.

For some people, maybe both games are too similar and maybe prefer drawing terrains instead of placing tiles. But if you don’t care about drawing, then maybe this could be an alternative. I’m not even sure which one is better for me. Cartographers is already out for a while and it is already proven to be a great game for a lot of people.

Wispwood is simply different from Cartographers. I personally don’t mind either game but with Cartographers, maybe I like it when I draw on the sheet. This one is surprisingly faster to play and also fast to reset but takes more table space. I can even play 2-handed here.

Definitely will play more of this and see which one I like better. Playing time was about 37 minutes per session.

More unboxing pictures of Wispwood on my IG.

Witchdom (2024)

June 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Another solo play against Ostara, one session only. Final score was 87 for me and 68 for Ostara. I took 4 of the objective tiles and let Ostara took the double yellow potions objective. Didn’t even see yellow potions until right the last few rounds.

I took no animal but 3 tools while Ostara got Cat and Crow. Maybe I got lucky enough that Ostara failed to score some potions and witches in the last few rounds. She got both potions and the matching witch but not the ingredients. I was going to get the 4th tool but then I realized the last potion didn’t need any tool so I abandoned that idea.

Playing time was about 53 minutes.

March 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with just solo mode and got 2 sessions. First one was a loss and not with the highest difficulty. I scored only 66 vs her 69. With the hardest the opponent could have gotten 24 more since I only finished 1 objective.

So, using the same set of objective again, I replayed. This time I got 85 with 4 objective while Ostara got 81, including the last objective which made it the hardest difficulty. So, not an easy win. It felt like I got lucky with easier potion to brew that matched with the witches and objectives.

Playing time was about 49 minutes for the 2nd session only.

October 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. First time played 2-handed. 1st player won with 64 while 2nd only got 54. The game ended after about 13 rounds with 1st player took 3 objectives, 2 of them were the easy ones while the rest went to 2nd. It seems both players only did Rest action once each during the game. However, the 2nd player did too early, returning only a couple of cards. As a result, not getting good options towards the end of the game.

May 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and on TikTok. 3rd play and still with the solo variant, hard mode. Scored 102 againts 87. I got 3 of the 5 hard objectives. I guess I got lucky since Ostara took 3 turns just taking resources which one of them was just 1 resource. This time I used refresh market actions way more than previously.

 

February 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 2nd play with the solo variant, hardest mode. I thought I won easily and about to suggest how to increase the difficulty. Apparently the score was close 84 to 80 and the opponent, with a bit of luck could have scored extra 5, making them won by 1 point.

November 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was first game using the solo variant, straight with the hard mode. I won but the score was close.

More unboxing pictures of Witchdom on Instagram.

Yin Yang (2019)

February 2026 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram, Tumblr and TikTok. Back with just the solo play. Got all 7 temples in the right order and all 4 lines of goods. Somehow I had to forfeit 3 actions just to increase the yin and/or yang to get the last two pieces. Playing time was about 40 minutes.

April 2025 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. This was 2-handed session. First player won with over 80 points while the opponent only got lower than 75. I actually thought the result was the other way around. First player won for having more goods, activating more bonus even after destroying 1 temple just to reroll.

October 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session. A bit slow at start and still managed to build 7 temples in order and got the 4th line of development in the last round. Lucky to get the right gifts.

June 2024 session and more pictures of that session on Instagram and on TikTok. Solo session but got very lucky with the order so that objective was completed even in the 4th round. Just realized an error regarding getting white or black over 8 but didn’t seem to change the game that much. Even after fixing them with the correct rule, I still managed to accomplish the objectives.

February 2024 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Solo play, managed to get 7 temples and 4 lines. Randomized using temple once.

December 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was with 2-players. Blue scored 84 while Red only scored 69 after Blue managed to score all tiles even though Red won a lot of the majority.

October 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. Played 2-handed. Red Player won with 69 points while Blue only got 54 points.

August 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. 2-handed, scored 57 vs 54.

June 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a full session report of Solo Play. 6 Kingdoms and 4 Lines, Immortal Status.

April 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was a Full Session Report with 2 players. Scored 30 for Blue and 41 for Red.

March 2023 session and more pictures of that session on IG. This was the first time playing the game with solo variant. A bit of first impression.

Here are more unboxing pictures of Yin Yang game on IG.

Final Words

So, those are all of the games I played. Hope that entertains or helps to give some idea what kind of tabletop games we can find on the market.

Some are new and some are older games. The complete list of the older games and my reviews about them can be found from this list.

I keep saying that these tabletop games can be a good way to spend some time without looking at the screen of our gadget. If we do have someone close, that we can play with, there are other games where we can play cooperatively or competitively but with a lot of player interaction.

The game can be very fast or like a filler type or it can take hours to play. Some games can also be played in solitaire mode and they are still more engaging than other entertainment activity. Some may say, it’s like a workout for the gray matter of our brain.

Thanks for reading.

 

Mark M.