Cards and Cubes

I had avoided trying Eclipse, because I had concerns that the game might be too aggressive for my liking. I’d say the most interesting thing about it for me was the ship customization aspect, as well as actually having an ability to turn ships into carriers (a la Scythe) – a mechanic which I’ve recently […]

Medici is a decent set collection auctioning game from Reiner Knizia’s auctioning trilogy. I feel just OK playing it. It’s pretty straightforward, and I feel like a large part of why we picked to play it was because it goes up to 6 and it does so gracefully – unlike other games which explode in […]

First Contact is a weird Codenames-like game, which features Aliens communicating with Humans. Unlike Codenames, where spymasters simply give clues according to a concept, aliens have to give clues using alien symbols which the humans had previously taken turns to try to learn. The game is a thought-provoking commentary on the ambiguity and difficulties of […]

Tasty Humans fulfilled my expectations exactly. It’s a uniquely-themed, light “stomach management” game with some simplistic but fun drafting decisions. It has Dr. Mario – like polyomino piece drops, where they break apart and individual squares fall to the bottom. Very fun, very straightforward, easy to teach, and moves quickly. I’m not sure how well […]

Seeing Michael Kiesling as the designer made me interested in Miyabi despite it being published by HABA. Unfortunately, while the game is clever and feels good to play, my concern about it was justified – it is a bit too light for my taste. It faintly reminds me of Sanssouci; unfortunately, I think I might […]

Luxor: The Mummy’s Curse is an expansion to Luxor. It changes up the base game with modules, which can be added piecemeal. We opted to play with all of them. There are doubled-up tiles for the first 8 spaces so that the start of the game is more persistent, perhaps encouraging less rushing forward, asymmetric […]

Mandala is an intriguing 2 player color collection game. Of the games driven by playing colored cards, it just might be the best that I’ve seen so far. It’s fast, light, clever, and… it comes with a beautiful cloth you play on instead of a board. I’m still not sure how much luck there is, […]

Glen More II: Chronicles was my gift for our Christmas gift exchange which ended up with Matt and Justine. We’ve been haphazardly playing through the “Chronicles” which are just modules for the game, and it’s been a highly pleasant experience. The game weight is moderate, but it has really interesting decisions, culminating with probably the […]