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Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2025

By Meeple Lady | December 29, 2025 | Comments 1 comment

2025 is coming to a close. How did the year fly by so quickly? It simultaneously felt like the longest and shortest year of my life. It was the best of times, sometimes the worst of times, but there definitely was a lot of board gaming. This past year, I attended a bunch of game conventions, wrote a gaming piece for The Guardian and continued to manage our all stuff, no fluff board game review podcast The Five By. Go subscribe and listen! And with that, here are the 10 games I played for the first time in 2025.

10. Neko Syndicate

Making sushi deliveries to please the boss and take over the syndicate.

This little tableau builder about delivering sushi so that you can be the top feline clan was a pleasant surprise for me. I barely just played it earlier this month, but I cannot stop thinking about it – and how many decisions I would’ve made differently! Each player begins with one card in their tableau, which gives you an option between two action choices. As you lay down more cards in a pyramid shape, the more actions you get with each round, but you’re limited to the action path you’ve created. Between collecting fish from your supply, transporting them along subway lines, and moving them up for sushi delivery – which sometimes requires rice for nigiri – it’s a hefty little puzzle that makes my brain work overtime. Highly recommend playing with sushi, of course!

9. Before the Guests Arrive

That frantic dance when people are coming over and clutter is everywhere!

I often joke that I love having people regularly because that deadline is what keeps me on top of cleaning and keeping the house tidy. In Before the Guests Arrive, this cute little Japanese card game, there’s an impending deadline to pick up all the clutter before guests arrive, and everyone in the household has to help – including the grandparents! The game is played out over a series of cards dealt out onto the table in an interlocking series of columns and rows. On your turn, you pick up all the cards in a row or column, and then you can use one family member to put items away. The puzzle though is that each family member is assigned only to tidy up specific types of items and limited by the number of hands on their cards. One thing’s for sure, this game is much more fun than tidying up!

8. Molly House

Avoiding the authorities so that we can party!

In Molly House, players take the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early 18th century London. This historical game theme about the queer community from that era is so unique that I never could have imagined it hitting store shelves. I’m so glad this game got published! I love everything this game represents, from the design process as a 2021 Zenobia Award Finalist to the message of the game: finding joy in your community, even if constables and others are trying to destroy it. Players draft cards representing gestures, desires and encounters frowned upon by society, so that they can host festivities with the help of their fellow mollies.

7. Galactic Cruise

Love the chonky pieces in Galactic Cruise!

This massive board game offers players the chance to go on a luxury space cruise! As a first-time company, you’re building cruise rocket ships, enhancing the company network, inventing new technologies and growing your workforce. So many things to juggle at the same time – but ultimately, you will need to achieve company goals and keep your customers happy. This game very much feels like it was designed by Vital Lacerda game, in which game play is composed of small actions in order to eventually do a grand action, but it’s surprisingly not. Even the artwork is designed by Ian O’Toole, a frequent Lacerda collaborator, so it has the look and the feel of a Lacerda game. It’s crunchy, heavy and full of iconography. Thank goodness each player gets a personal book player aide for the game.

6. Hot Streak

Racing school mascots! I’m always partial to the bear. Go Bruins!

Who knew a game about racing school mascots down a field – and betting on them – would be so fun? Who will win between the bear, king, hot dog or fish mascot? It’s anyone’s guess, kinda sorta! Players make bets but they also seed the deck of cards dictating actions for each mascot. When the game starts, each card is flipped over one at a time, and the mascots are off the races. It’s chaotic fun – especially when mascots get knocked down, and yes, you can also bet on that, in addition to who you think will win or place. The game is delightful and the packaging equally clever, with the grassy field they’re racing on unfurling from its game box like a giant paper towel roll.

5. Galileo Galilei

Does Bohemian Rhapsody enter your head when you see this? Just asking for a friend.

Galileo Galilei takes us to the Scientific Revolution where astronomers like Galileo were looking upwards to the sky and observing constellations and major objects, while lecturing at the universities and writing books for libraries. What I love most about this game is the use of the rondel, shaped in a quarter circle for this game using a telescope and its arc. Where the telescope points, players have access to a fixed action and a moving action, and when the turn is over, the moving action part is removed and slid over to the bottom of the arc, where it won’t be in play for a few more turns after a couple more moving actions are used. It’s such a clever rondel mechanism, forcing you to make decisions about how to best combo your next action. But be careful! Having too much knowledge will bring suspicion from the Church, and heretical ideas will be punished with an inquisition.

4. MicroMacro: Downtown Detective

MicroMacro: Downtown Detective. Find clues and solve crimes while on your phone!

MicroMacro: Downtown Detective is an app available at the IOS app store or on Google Play. It’s the digital implementation of one of my favorite games: MicroMacro Crime City, lovingly referred to as Who Killed Waldo? It’s a game played over a large map, where you get a birds-eye view of a bustling city and people going about their business. But if you look close enough, you can see the crime and mischief that residents are up to, and you have to solve the case by observing what’s happening. This app does the same thing, giving you three cases free, and then 22 more with the app purchase. I love solving these mysteries, and now I can do it anywhere on my phone when I have 5-10 minutes of down time. They even released a few more cases as a holiday bonus this month! I successfully found the escaped reindeer!

3. Cross Bronx Expressway

Working to house the vulnerable populations so they don’t end up in the Corrections system.

Cross Bronx Expressway is the third game of the Irregular Conflict Series by GMT. It follows six decades of south Bronx history from the 1940s-1990s, and how urban development and construction of the highway negatively affected the Bronx population, a shifting demographic with each decade. It has a collective loss condition so players need to kinda work together while working to achieve their objectives, split between the public, private and community sectors. The game is brutal – and there is so much history represented in the game cards. It’s a rich gaming experience that highlights how quickly people can fall through the cracks and neighborhood problems can compound so quickly. Much like real life, there are a multitude of challenges to overcome to keep vulnerable people off the streets and out of the prison system.

2. That’s Not A Hat

That cupcake is most definitely not a hat.

Quite literally the game I’ve played the most this year. That’s Not A Hat comes in a small box filled with cards that shows a black and white doodled item on the front and an arrow pointing in a direction on the back. This game is all about gift giving. Everyone loves gifts, right? And, naturally, if you’re receiving a gift, you have to give a gift, too, to someone else. The game is literally memory musical chairs. Cards begin face up in front of you, but as people start giving gifts, those cards go face down – and they start moving around the table in front of a different person. It’s hard enough remembering what’s in front of you, let alone what someone else has given you. It’s hilarious fun, in a brain-melty quick sort of way, especially if there are adult beverages involved.

1. S.E.T.I.

We found the alien race in S.E.T.I. There is intelligent life out there in the galaxy!

S.E.T.I., also known as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, is my top game of 2025. It has all the things I love about strategic games: multi-use cards, technology upgrades, space aliens and a rotating board to represent ever-shifting planetary positions, making timing a key game mechanism. You’re a scientist on Earth upgrading equipment to analyze incoming data more efficiently, boosting telescope signal capacity or increasing resources. The board is laid out with three sets of rings that rotate when technology is researched, making planets orbit across the board, potentially making them farther from where your launched probes need to get to. And as you move through the galaxy, alien races wait to be discovered – and then even more fun begins!

And that’s my top 10 games that I played for the first time in 2025. What have you all enjoyed playing in 2025? Here are also my previous top 10 lists that go way, way back. Thanks for making it down this far, and I hope you had a wonderful holiday season with lots of gaming and merriment. Here’s to even more adventures in 2026!

Chris and I running away from the chaos that was 2025. Happy New Year, everyone!

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2024

By Meeple Lady | January 8, 2025 | Comments 4 comments

So it’s 2025, and I know I’m a little late with my best of 2024 list, but hey, it’s still early January! That’s got to count for something! 2024 was another memorable year. I attended two conventions for the first time – Granite Game Summit and Circle DC – enjoying some touristy stuff while I was there. I also attended my usual ones – Consimworld, SDHistCon and RinCon. Last year, I also rejoined a weekly gaming group, so I’ve been fortunate to be able to get in more gaming than I had done so in the past few years. Without further delay: here are the top 10 games I played in 2024.

10. Chicken

Chicken! is a fast dice-rolling game that plays 2-8 players in about 20 minutes. It’s a dice-rolling, push-your-luck game that comes with 4 white dice, 4 orange dice, 4 yellow dice, 8 player tokens and one very snazzy cloth board. All these things fit into a tube canister adorned with yellow orange retro chicken artwork.

Are you chicken?! Chuck some dice and count your chickens before the foxes arrive.

The goal of the game is to chuck your dice to get a bunch of chickens before rolling 3 foxes, ending your turn. As you roll dice, you may spawn even more dice for your next roll, doubling the reward but also increasing your chances of getting those pesky foxes. If you don’t bust though, you count your chickens and then roll all those dice to the next player. It’s pretty fun seeing them sweat with the handful of dice you hand over. They can roll their dice or just forfeit their turn, which can prompt some playful “are you chicken?” teasing. The first person to get 25 chickens wins the game.

9. Bonsai

In Bonsai, players take on the role of bonsai masters growing their own tree. It plays 1 to 4 players in about 40 minutes. It’s a charming card-drafting and tile-laying exercise in tranquility, with a bit of puzzle play. The game comes with a slim horizontal board to hold a deck of zen cards, and each player begins with a pot tile and a seishi tile. There’s also over 156 bonsai tile, which will be used to create individual bonsai trees.

Enjoy some peace and tranquility as you build the best bonsai tree.

On your turn, you do one of two things: either meditate or cultivate. If you meditate, you choose one of the face-up cards from the board. Depending on which spot you take the card from, you may receive one or more types of bonsai tiles in four varieties: wood, leaf, flower and fruit. Each type has a distinct placement restriction and scoring value. If you instead decide to cultivate on your turn, you can build as many bonsai tiles in your tree as seishi growth cards allow. As you collect more tool cards from the meditate action, you can potentially drop a lot of bonsai tiles all at once when you take the cultivate action. The game is so zen and it’s so fun seeing the fruits of your labor in the bonsai tree in front of you.

8. Let’s Go to Japan

I got a chance to play Let’s Go to Japan right before my own Japan trip this year, and the game pretty much mirrored my life leading up to the trip because I am an insane trip planner! I mean, how can anyone stay organized without spreadsheets and lists? In the board game, players draw activity cards to strategically place them on different days of the week during their weeklong itinerary. Players must decide if which attractions they have to go to

If you love planning trips, Let’s Go to Japan does just that!

In Let’s Go! To Japan, you are a traveler planning, then experiencing your own dream vacation to Japan. The game consists of thirteen rounds in which players draw activity cards illustrated by Japan-based artists and strategically place them on different days in their week-long itinerary. These can’t-miss tourist attractions will have you bouncing between Tokyo and Kyoto as you try to puzzle out the optimal activities to maximize your experience while balancing your resources. The game ends with a final round in which you ultimately go on your planned trip, activating each of your cards in order along the way. The player who collects the most points by the end of their trip wins, and it’s so fun reading over the cards of the trip you planned in front of you.

7. White Castle

In White Castle, players are working to become the most influential clan in Japan’s Himeji stronghold. It’s a Euro-style game where you take three actions in each round, a total of nine actions in the entire game, but of course, you may be able to combo actions depending on which of the dice you choose for your action.

Trying to train warriors and schmooze my way up the castle doors in White Castle.

The red, white and black dice (equal to the total number of players plus 1) sit on these dainty cardboard bridges in ascending order, and you may have to pay to place a dice on an action slot or receive money depending on what dice is sitting there already. Overall, players can tend the gardens, defend the castle or progress up the social ladder of the nobility. The economy is extremely tight and if there’s a bad roll, everyone is choosing from less-than-ideal dice, but I love how crunchy the game is for a game that’s under 2 hours, even shorter with 2P! There’s an expansion that just came out for this game, and I’m totally looking to buy a copy when it’s back in stock.

6. Raising Robots

Part Wingspan, Part Race for the Galaxy, Raising Robots is a delightful engine builder tableau builder where players are young famous inventors attending school, getting good grades and creating robots. In each round, players secretly and simultaneously assign two of their five phase cards to two energy cards they’ve drawn. When everyone has picked their phase cards, they’re revealed and those selected phase cards will be the only phases in play for the round for everyone. Additionally, if an energy card has a cube printed on it, that cube goes onto the main board to show that action is available for everyone should they do those to do it.

We’re building robots in our tableau in Raising Robots.

Then players on their own go through each of their phase areas, activating actions they’re allowed to do this round, whether collecting resources or building robots in various rows on their personal tableau. Gameplay continues for eight rounds, and if you’re an efficient tableau builder, you’ll have a whole army of cute little robots pumping out resources and victory points for you. The artwork is just adorable and lots of punny names for the robots themselves.

5. Fromage

Fromage is a delightful cheese-wheel of a game! Players are simultaneously making, aging and selling cheese blocks (yep, little plastic pieces) by placing them onto inlaid spots on the quadrant of the cheese wheel that’s facing them. When players have completed their turn, the circular board rotates, and another section of the board is now facing you for you to take your turn.

This cheese player board! Fromage is such a clever game with its aging/timing mechanism.

I love the timing element of this game, a less brain-burnery version of Tzolk’in. You only have three cheese pieces for the game, and you don’t get that piece back until it’s facing you again on the board. Placing your workers in high-return slots will delay their return to you for possibly up to three turns, so planning your moves is a huge part of this game. You don’t want to start a turn without any workers in your hand. The game plays under an hour and pairs perfectly with cheese and crackers, of course!

4. Rock Hard: 1977

Rock Hard: 1977 came out in 2024 and is designed by a real-life 1970s rock star, Jackie Fox. In the game, players are up-and-coming musicians and are working hard to practice songs, play gigs, get a record deal and become a famous rock star of 1977. Turns out, the road to stardom is a challenging one as players need to balance working an actual job and collecting money in order to follow their dreams. Players can dabble in “candy” to accomplish more each day, but too much “candy” will land you recovery.

Do you have what it takes to be a successful 1970s rock star?

I love the entire retro look of this game as well as its top-notch components of this game, including dual-layer cardboard to place the character you’re playing, the groovy music dials that represent your various tracks, and cardboard candy and guitar picks. It’s one of those rare cool euros that oozes with theme!

3. Red Dust Rebellion

Volume 12 of GMT Games’ COIN series takes us to an unexpected place: Mars, more specifically the Martian revolt and revolution in the 2250, 200 years after Mars was colonized. This setting is quite the departure from previous COIN games, a change that I wholeheartedly can get on board with. Each faction — Martian government, Corporations, Red Dust Movement and Church of the Reclaimer — have their own different win condition, with a fifth non-player faction, the Earth Government, also in play.

A COIN game that place on Mars! I appreciated the theme of this game.

The Marvian government, Corporation and the Earth Government are friends with each other, creating the counter insurgency mechanism of this game. The Reclaimer faction, however, behaves unlike any other faction in any COIN game I’ve played. They can actually discard asset cards to move forward on initiative. Your turn in a COIN has always been at the mercy of initiative on event cards, so this is a neat addition. I love the dusty red look of the board and am amused by the dust storm markers, called haboobs, in the game. In Arizona, we, too, call dust storms haboobs.

2. Arcs

I’ve been talking a lot about Arcs toward the end of last year and teaching many, many games of it, so it was a tough choice between No. 2 and No. 1. Ultimately, I placed Arcs at No. 2, because the top game edged out Arcs a little bit more for the types of games I most enjoy playing. Arcs is epic, there’s no denying that. It’s a card-driven space opera, a sci-fi strategy game of multi-use cards, initiative and declaring ambitions.

Arcs is equally gorgeous and enjoyable. Take down your enemies in space!

The board and components are just gorgeous, and each game I’ve played feels fresh and engaging, because for better or worse, you’re at the mercy of the hand of cards you’ve been dealt. With each card that gets played, a menu of actions are available to that player. But that hand of cards forces you to make tough decisions about surpassing the lead card, copying, pivoting or seizing the initiative so that you can play a lead card first in the next round. The game continues for five chapters, or if a player reaches enough points, which can happen as early as Chapter. 3.

1. Windmill Valley

And my top game of 2024 is Windmill Valley! This crunchy euro is about tulip farming and selling tulip bulbs and enhancing your windmills. What makes this game stand out is that each player has a windmill board, made up of two different sized-wheels that rotate at different speeds, which then determine what actions you’ll be doing on your turn. It’s such a clever mechanism, one that requires you to really plan out your turns!

Windmill Valley has many of the elements that I enjoy in a crunchy euro.

At the start of your turn, you can choose how to set the floodgate markers, which determines the number of action spaces your wheel turns for your turn. Most of the actions take place on the main board, where you’ll be taking farm enhancement cards, windmill board upgrades, visiting the market, building windmills and conducting foreign trade. Meanwhile, you’ll also be planting tulip bulbs in your personal board to score points, and as you get more windmills off your personal board, different sets and colors of flowers will score. I’m a sucker for beautiful games, as this has lovely wooden windmills and tulip pieces, and it being a crunchy euro as well sold it for me as the top game of 2024. And now I just want to tiptoe through the tulips …

And that’s a wrap for 2024! Thanks for making it all the way down here through this list. What are some of your favorite games you’ve played last year? And even though it’s almost mid-January, I, and my dog, want to wish you a very Happy New Year! May this year be filled with lots of gaming!

It took a lot of treats for my sweet boy to pose like this.

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2023

By Meeple Lady | December 29, 2023 | Comments 1 comment

Hello, friends! You’ve made it to the end of 2023. Pat yourselves on the back for surviving the year! I feel so lucky for all that happened this past year, including going back to the Philippines and attending several gaming conventions! And of course lots of gaming in between. Here are the top 10 games I played for the first time this past year.

10. Scout

I often keep Scout in my purse because it’s such a compact game and easy to each others.

Scout is a delightful ladder-climbing game in which cards have two potential values, players may not rearrange their hand of cards, and players may pass their turn to take a card from the current high set of cards into their hand. At the start of the game, you receive a hand of cards, and you can decide if you want to play the values on the top of the card or the bottom of the card — but you must rotate the entire hand, not just the individual cards. When it’s your turn, you must play a card or set of cards (without rearranging your hand) in order to beat what’s already been played, or you’re out of the round. The game plays up to 5, it lasts about 15 minutes, and not at all difficult for new gamers to understand. Plus, the box fits neatly in your purse so it’s easy to travel with.

9. The Gods Will Have Blood

The Gods Will Have Blood is such a unique solitaire gaming experience.

The Gods Will Have Blood, a solitaire game from Dan Bullock based on the book by Anatole France’s 1912 Novel “Les Dieux Ont Soif, The Gods Will Have Blood” is such a unique and grim gaming experience. As an appointed magistrate in 1793 France, you are presiding over show trials of accused royalists and counterrevolutionaries, with the goal of elevating your reputation without tanking the legitimacy of the court. You make some tough decisions in deciding who is guilty and not guilty, and dealing with the consequences — and court momentum — of those choices. The game is artfully designed and comes in a small box, making it easy to bust out a solo game almost anywhere.

8. Voidfall

Voidfall is a beast of a game, one that I’ve enjoyed playing time and again.

In all honesty, I kept going back and forth about adding Voidfall to this list. I’ve enjoyed each game of Voidfall I’ve played but the overwhelming giant-ness of the game can be a turnoff for some. First off, it comes in a giant square box, it takes possibly about 45 minutes to set up a scenario, and there’s endless amounts of icons, which over several plays become more intuitive. What looks like a classic galactic space 4x game really plays like a euro. As the leader of a Great House (complete with house-specific abilities), you play through three cycles, each with a game-altering galactic event, a new scoring condition, and a set number of focus cards that can be played. On each focus card, you select two of the three actions printed on it. You can advance your civilization tracks; manage your sectors’ infrastructure, population and production; or conquer new sectors with your space fleets. It’s an epic game that I’m glad a friend of mine owns and sets up when we decide to play it.

7, Revive

Revive is a game that I want to play over and over again.

Revive features a lot of game mechanisms I enjoy: multi-use cards, tech trees, card-tucking and deckbuilding, all while using dual-layered player boards. The game is set 5,000 years after the destruction of Earth and tribes are now exploring the frozen earth in order to repopulate it and survive. The game is for 1 to 4 players, with each tribe having its own asymmetrical powers. The game is a table hog though, with the main player board, and each player’s tribe board and player board, which holds giant tracks of various machines. Play cards into your board, manage your resources, go up on machine tracks for bonus actions, unlock your tribal abilities and collect artifacts, which counts down the end of the game — there are multiple paths to victory and lots of options to combo your actions, making your turns extremely satisfying.

6. Ark Nova

Building my zoo requires the perfect combination of animal cards and conservation projects.

I’ve logged countless games of this online at Board Game Arena and in person. In Ark Nova, you’re working to build and design a zoo, and support conservation projects around the world. The game consists of five actions, and the strength of the actions depends on where the card is placed in your tableau. The game comes with 255 cards featuring animals, specialists, special enclosures, and conservation projects. As you specialize in partnerships with world zoos and increase your reputation, you’ll be able to increase the strength of your core five actions. If you’re looking for an immersive zoo game, this will not be for you, but as a dry euro fan, this puzzly game is worth checking out.

5. Planet Unknown

Planet Unknown is a fun puzzle where players pick the pieces for you, unless it’s your turn.

I’ve only played Planet Unknown on Board Game Arena but have greatly enjoyed it. Planet Unknown is a competitive game for 1-6 players in which players attempt to develop the best planet. Each round, each player places one polyomino-shaped, dual-resource tile on their planet. The tiles are situated on a Lazy Susan, in which there are two concentric circles holding the various shaped tiles. On your turn, you rotate the Lazy Susan so that you can have the option between two types of tiles – and force others to take the two tiles that result from your spin. When you place the tiles on your planet, you’ll go up the resource track of the type of the tiles you lay down. The Lazy Susan is such a neat mechanism, and the puzzly gameplay keeps everyone engaged at every turn.

4. People Power

I never thought I’d see a board game on a pivotal moment of history for my people.

In one of my most highly anticipated games of the year (for the past few years actually, since I wasn’t sure when this was going to come out!), People Power is a game about my people and the insurgency in the Philippines during 1981-1986. People Power plays in about 2 hours, which is fairly short for a COIN. And you know what that makes it? Accessible to more people. Seeing people of color in a board game as well as not needing a 30-minute video to explain the battle action are some of the very things that would help diversity this very niche area of board gaming. The actions in People Power are streamlined, the player aides are very easy to follow, and, with such a small map, it makes the game tense and fast-moving game to play. This is a COIN that I can actually teach to others — I could not have said that with previous COIN titles.

3. Fit to Print

Feel the pressure of reporting and assembling a front page of a newspaper!

In Fit to Print, players take on the roles of editors-in-chief assembling the front page of the tiny town of Thistleville’s newspaper to be balanced with news stories, photos and advertising. All of these items are represented in over 130-plus unique block tiles, which are placed in the middle of the table face down. The game goes through three rounds: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with each subsequent newspaper front page getting larger. Fit to Print captures the stress of a daily deadline when laying out your newspaper, all wrapped up in a cutesy theme of woodland creatures. When I brought this to a game night recently with some journalist friends to play, one lady said she had stress dreams later that night about missing the deadline. It’s an enjoyable real-time puzzle for 1-6 players, but it’s up to you how fast-paced you want your games to go.

2. Lacrimosa

This gorgeous euro is trying to continue Mozart’s legacy.

The theme drew me into Lacrimosa and it’s the gameplay that has me coming back to this game again and again. Mozart is dead and his final wish was to finish composing the Lacrimosa movement of his Opus Requiem. Players work as Mozart patrons helping to sell or exhibit his works, commission missing parts of the requiem and travel across Europe to various courts and theaters. Lacrimosa is a deckbuilder that isn’t a true deckbuilder but instead filled with multi-use cards that you can upgrade later by buying stronger cards. You draw a few action cards each turn and decide to use them for actions or rewards based on how you tuck them into your dual-layer player board. It’s a gorgeous board that beautifully merges a strong theme and euro-style gameplay, something that doesn’t happen too often in board games!

1. Votes for Women

Did you guess my top game of 2023 was Votes for Women?

What can I say about this game that I haven’t already? I am constantly talking about this game and bring it with me to every convention I go to in order to teach it to whoever wants to play it. Votes for Women is a card-driven game in which each side has its own set of cards. The goal of the game is two-fold. The suffragists want to push to Congress the 19th Amendment and campaign to have 36 states ratify it. The Opposition will try to prevent Congress from proposing the amendment or if they fail to do that, have 13 states reject the amendment. Votes for Women is a game that I can see myself in (a rarity in this hobby). It’s a game that new gamers and experienced gamers alike can play. I like it best as a 2-player but it can be played 1-4 players, with various team options for the suffrage side and the opposition. The game is beautifully done with awesome components, with lots of history in the cards as well as replicas of historical documents relating to the historic moment in women’s rights.

So that’s my top 10 games that I played for the first time in 2023. Which ones have you played? And what is on your top 10 list? I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, and here’s to a wonderful 2024. Some of my new year’s resolutions include playing more games more regularly, and possibly attending a convention that I have yet to attend.

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2022

By Meeple Lady | December 28, 2022 | Comments 4 comments

The end of 2022 is almost here! Dang, that went by so quickly! In all honestly, this was the first year that it felt like life in general was returning to a somewhat new normal. I feel so fortunate that I got to travel and attend multiple game conventions, where I played a lot of games and hung out with some good people. Here are the top 10 games I played for the first time in 2022.

10. Dune

The spice must flow! But watch out for the storm and sandworm — they’re both pretty treacherous.

This Dune is a streamlined version of the 1979 game that many people grew up playing. I played this game for the first time this past Consimworld, and I had a great time. It’s definitely a convention game because it can run a little long, depending on how experienced the gamers are, but it’s a great implementation of all the different warring factions in the source material (for me, it’s just the 2021 movie — I’ve never read any of the books. Don’t take my nerd card away from me). There’s treachery, secrecy, negotiations, battles for spice, an always-moving storm and the most dangerous thing of all — the sandworm! I would definitely love to play this again at the next con I go to.

9. Project L

Project L is a Tetris-inspired engine builder that comes in a small minimalist box.

I love puzzles, and Project L is a Tetris-inspired board game that is also an engine builder. Pretty cool, right? It comes in a sleek little black box, with lots of plastic tetromino pieces and decks of thick-cardboard puzzle cards, in which you place those plastic pieces to complete a puzzle. When you complete a puzzle, you gain victory points and/or new puzzle pieces, enabling you to complete more challenging puzzles that require more pieces for more VPs. Placing all those colorful pieces to create a mosaic puzzle feels just so satisfying, as does the stack of puzzle cards you accumulate throughout the game. It’s a great short game, one that I’ve played a lot throughout the year.

8. Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road

There are literally many paths to victory in Merv but you’ll need to do it in 12 actions.

Merv is a crunchy, city-building economic game, one that follows a trend in the past couple of years where the entire game comprises of very few actions — 12 to be exact in this game — but many things will happen as a result of that one action, making the game both brain-burnery and fulfilling. Players make their way around the board three times, and on each side, they take a turn, first by placing a building on a location in the row or column where you decide to place your meeple or activating a building in that row or column if there’s a building already there. Buildings will net resources, and then you can choose a site action (caravansary, palace or marketplace), gain a favor or deploy a soldier. If you move ahead on your turn farthest on a side, you’ll start as the last player on the next turn, unless you pay camels to bump ahead. The goal of the game is to gain favors with the palace, collect resources to fulfill contracts, move along the Silk Road to trade and build city walls to avoid the Mongol destruction that happens at the end of the second and third year, which is the last round of the game.

7. Heading Forward

The days are counting down on your rehabilitation process in Heading Forward.

I never play solo games but was intrigued by Heading Forward. Based on designer John du Bois’ own experience, in this game you assume the identity of someone embarking on the long road to recovery following a traumatic brain injury. This solitaire card game mimics the choices one must make while rehabilitating, deciding which skills to relearn or which will atrophy based on non-usage, while under a deadline pressure before your medical insurance will run out. It’s a unique experience that offers a glimpse into rehab’s long and difficult process, and the uncertainty of recovery, the result of which could be uplifting or heartbreaking.

6. Stonewall Uprising

Lots of support tracks in Stonewall Uprising that could have dire consequences for the Pride side.

I got a chance to learn how to play Stonewall Uprising at SD Hist Con with the designer Taylor Shuss himself! Stonewall Uprising is 2-player asymmetrical deckbuilder in which one side plays as The Man and the other as Pride and they fight each other for or against civil rights. It is a notable moment in board game design when a game with this subject matter that’s near and dear to the designer can be published by a wargaming company. Taylor told me about all the research he did on the various historic people who helped the Pride movement get to where it is today. Each side starts with a basic deck of cards, and the game eases you into building your deck. It plays through the 1960s-1980s, which leads into the catastrophic losses the gay community faced with the AIDS epidemic. There are also rule twists that set this apart from a standard deckbuilder. When folding early, which will give your opponent some traction on one of the support tracks, but you’ll be able to draw more cards the following round.

5. Long Shot: Dice Game

Which horse will win? It’s anyone’s game! But make sure you bet on the right one.

Who knew betting on horses would be so fun? Long Shot: The Dice Game manages to capture the chaos and excitement of a day at the races — all in a compact roll-and-write package that plays 1 to 8 people. With each turn, the active player rolls two dice, one that pushes a specific horse and the other one by how many spaces along the race track. Players then take one action based on the horse die, and they can either take a concession, mark a helmet on a horse, mark a jersey on a horse, bet up to $3 on a horse that matches the horse die, or straight up purchase a horse. The helmets enable you to make bets on that horse after they pass a certain point on the track, and the jersey allows you to attach a second horse to a primary horse to move one spot after the primary horse moves. The concessions action allows you to get bonuses when you cross off a row or column. The game is fast-paced, and you’ll never know whose horse will cross the finish line! The person with the most money at the end of the game wins.

4. Akropolis

Akropolis is a short yet strategic tile-drafting and tile-laying game.

Akropolis was a total surprise for me. It’s a game that was introduced to me at the end of a game night when we had about 30 minutes left before calling it a night. What I thought would be a quick filler is an elegant, streamlined drafting tile-laying puzzle, a game that plays in under 30 minutes. On your turn, you choose a tile from the construction site; the first one costs zero, but if you want to get one farther down the line, it’ll cost you one stone each spot. You then place the tile into your city. The tiles themselves are one large shape made up of three hexes. When you place the tile into your city, it must border at least one edge of another city tile, or you can place it on another level as long as it covers three hexagon tiles underneath it. The three types of construction: quarries, plazas and districts. Quarries don’t score points but get you stone when they’re covered. There are five types of districts, which score differently and have their own placement rules. Lastly, the plazas are multipliers for these various districts. But a district won’t score any points until you get a matching plaza of the same color into your city. The result is tense drafting and an enjoyable city-building puzzle.

3. Paint the Roses

This is the deluxe version of Paint the Roses, where the tiles are made of acrylic.

I am not the best at deduction games, but there’s something about Paint the Roses and its semi-cooperative deduction gameplay that makes this game so worthwhile. The theme is Alice in Wonderland, and you’re all trying to finish the Queen’s garden before she cuts off your head. On your turn, you choose one of the four tiles face up and place it in the garden next to other tiles. Each tile has a colored flower and a shrub behind it, one of the four symbols, a heart, clubs, spades or diamond. You and others then place cubes to determine if the placement satisfies the secret objective card in each of your hands. After each turn, you have to make a guess about someone’s objective, based on the cubes on the board. They can either be colors or shapes, or both, as objectives get harder. If you guess wrong, the Queen starts chasing you across the board — faster and faster as the game progresses — and you need to win before she gets to you. And because nobody exactly knows what everyone’s individual objective is, there’s no problem of one player taking over the game and making decisions for everyone.

2. Honey Buzz

The bees are buzzing along and collecting resources to complete orders.

Honey Buzz is an excellent worker-placement economic game, all packaged together in the cutest way possible: bees, flowers and whimsical animals. This game is delightful and crunchy, and you place your beeples on the board to collect various tiles to place into your hive. If there are already beeples at that action spot, you must place exactly one more beeple to take a tile. When those tiles create a pattern, all the symbols on the tiles activate, either producing nectar, coins or more beeples; selling items to the market or completing an order; or activating any other symbol in the pattern if you have a wild symbol. As various types of nectar are sold to the market, their price drops and multiple nectars drop too low, the market crashes, triggering the end of the game. There are also objectives that players can claim throughout the end or at the end of the game. Honey Buzz is a fantastic combination of economics, worker management and puzzle-laying. This game is definitely buzzworthy!

1. Twilight Inscription

The most epic of roll and writes: Twilight Imperium. Everything about this game is just so slick.

And here we are at No. 1: Twilight Inscription. I seriously have not stopped talking about this game since playing it for the first time. It’s the most epic of roll and writes, an ambitious project set in the world of the galactic classic Twilight Imperium. It feels so much more than a regular roll and write, while maintaining the feel and characters of the TI4, all in a game that’ll last about 2 hours. The game can also look intimidating upon first glance, but once you get started, the symbols are all easy to interpret and gameplay feel sintuitive. The hardest part of the game is deciding which direction to go and which boards to invest in. Each player has four boards: Navigation, Exploration, Warfare and Industry, and each round begins with an event. There are 25 event cards in the game. During an event, there are dice rolls preprinted on the event card, and each player can choose to cross off those symbols on one board of their choosing. Once everyone is done, the dice are rolled, and players must cross off those new symbols to the active board they’ve already chosen from the event card. This is how everyone’s game can branch off in different directions. Should I explore more systems, or should I invest in warfare? Or maybe it’s worth unlocking these technologies and collecting bonuses for later. So many choices! There are also bonuses for reaching Mecatol Rex first, naturally, and other game objectives scored at the end. Overall, Twilight Inscription just looks so slick, especially with the fancy orange shiny markers that really pop against the blue backdrop of each sheet. Plus, the big chonky dice feel good to roll.

And that’s my list for 2022. Thanks, friends, for making it all the way through this list. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season, and here’s to bigger and better things in 2023! What are some of your favorite games you’ve played in the past year?

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2021

By Meeple Lady | December 30, 2021 | Comments 11 comments

We’ve made it to the end of 2021. Give yourselves a big pat on the back! 2021 was by far not an easy year for many, but I was thankfully able to play more games this year in person with close friends and family. Here are the top 10 games that I played for the first time in 2021.

10. Red Cathedral

The resource wheel in Red Cathedral, where you can pick up jewels, bricks and other materials.

Players in Red Cathedral are working to construct portions of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. They claim sections of the wall, and then later deliver goods to complete construction. Players can also decorate theirs and other player’s sections with decorations, in an attempt to gain area control majorities along each column of the cathedral. The mechanism that I adore about this game is the resource wheel where you collect resources based on where the die’s pips on the wheel. It’s a neat puzzly addition to your typical resource collection and delivery. Plus, it comes in a box half the size of your typical euro game.

9. Villagers

Villagers is a chill drafting game where you’re building out your village.

This darling card drafting game had been on my radar for a while but I never got a chance to play it until this past year. In Villagers, you are refugees who have survived the Great Plague working to start your own village again. You get to decide who can come set up in your village, whether crafts people, tradespeople, etc. The artwork is just so adorable, and it’s a chill low-stakes game of city building and manufacturing VPs. The game plays 1-5 players, which fulfills many game-night player combinations.

8. Angola

I got a chance to play Angola! this past summer at Consimworld.

Angola! is probably one of the most unique wargames I’ve ever played — it’s played in teams and you pre-program your commands, one of which must be a dummy command. Bonkers! Two factions are backed from the U.S. (FNLA and UNITA), and the other two are backed by the Soviets (FAPLA and MPLA). It’s a neat element I have not encountered. Also, if more wargames were team-based, I can see people being less intimated to jump into these types of games.

7. Beyond the Sun

I’ve only played Beyond the Sun on Board Game Arena, but it totally made my top 10 list.

Tech tree — the game! It kind of floors me that somehow a game designer managed to make a board game with a space theme that is incredibly dry, and I should know because I’ve played my fair share of crunchy yet incredibly dry eurogames. Most of the space games I’ve played are dripping with thematic epicness, and this game manages to turn that theme into cube-pushing in space. But, Beyond the Sun is oh, it’s so much fun! There’s something really satisfying about moving up the research tracks and managing your resources as you unlock portions of your player board. And sure, you’re “exploring” and “colonizing” in space over on this side of the board, it all just comes down to how many more ships do you have than the other player to collect these resources. Full disclosure though, I’ve only played this game on Board Game Arena.

6. Unfathomable

In Unfathomable, you’re on a cruise ship trying to survive the Deep Ones and all sorts of bad stuff.

Nope, this will never replace my beloved No. 1 game of all time Battlestar Galactica, but this reskin is worthy enough to hit my top 10 this year. Unfathomable is now set in the horror mythos world of Cthulhu and H.P. Lovecraft, with characters sailing across the Atlantic on the SS Atlantica. The game is immediately out to get you, and you don’t know which of your fellow boatmates have been turned into Deep One hybrids. While this game does not streamline the original BSG game (as some gamers had hoped for before Unfathomable was released), it’s still an immersive and haunting experience worth playing.

5. Mercado de Lisboa

Mercado de Lisboa is like Lisboa without a million steps in between action.

Lisboa is one of my absolute favorite games, but sometimes you just do not have the bandwidth to play such a long and complex game. Enter Mercado de Lisboa, a short puzzly brain-burner that clocks in at about 30-45 minutes, co-designed by Vital Lacerda himself. Players are building stalls and restaurants in order to bring in customers looking to pay for those goods. And like the storefront building portion of the original game, you’re trying to open in a location that will score up to three times.

4. Cascadia

The wooden tokens and hexagon terrain tiles make Cascadia such a gorgeous game.

This game was a surprise hit for me this year. Cascadia is just absolutely gorgeous, a tapestry of the Pacific Northwest. Players are building out their habitats and placing animals on hexagonal tiles in order to score objectives, either for the animal and/or largest continuous habitat. The dual drafting of the tiles and animals (players one of the four sets) adds strategy and depth to an otherwise basic tile-laying game. And its artwork is sure to lure nature lovers in for a game.

3. Dominant Species: Marine

We’re under the sea in Dominant Species: Marine.

I had been anticipating this sequel to the original GMT game and it did not disappoint. Dominant Species: Marine is a more streamlined game than the original, and while gameplay is also similar, a big difference is that your special abilities are not tied to your species (there are only four in this game), and they can be replaced as cards come into play. I also like the special action pawn spots that players can accumulate when they’re dominating in a habitat. Calculating domination is easier to do in this game, making the game less fiddly than the original, and the striking artwork makes this game a draw to the table.

2. The Field of the Cloth of Gold

You get a gift, I get a gift, everyone gets a gift in The Field of the Cloth of Gold!

Quite absolutely my favorite 2-player game of this year, The Field of the Cloth of Gold is simple to learn and quick to play, yet completely agonizing and just plain maddening! Every time you take a turn, you present a gift to your opponent, the random tile that’s placed on that action spot. This very thing creates an unbelievably high tension between you two, a strategic dance to avoid giving your opponent the tile they need, which often sits on the action you truly want to take. It’s an absurd gift-giving mechanism that forces you to hand over a gift while you smile through gritted teeth. It’s so unbelievably good.

1. Praga Caput Regni

Yes, this game looks super busy, but eurogamers will catch on quickly in this game.

Here we are at the top of the list! Praga Caput Regni was an instant love from the first play at Consimworld back in September. Not enough euros incorporate a timing element to game play (Tzolk’in is one of the few that come to mind), and this game does not disappoint. Various actions that players take on their turn cost more money or hand out victory points, depending on their point in time on the Action Crane, which rotates every turn. It’s very clever! In Praga, players are working to improve New Prague City by building city walls, bridges, the cathedral or other civic projects.

And just like that, we’ve reached the end of 2021. Where exactly did 2020 and 2021 go? It simultaneously feels like a blur and an eternity all at the same time. I feel fortunate for having been able to play a lot of new games this year, enough to craft a top 10 list. And for those who aren’t on social media, I also celebrated a personal milestone this past fall and married this wonderful gent.

Here’s to a wonderful 2022! May we all be safe and healthy, and play a bunch more games! What are some of your favorites of the past year?

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2019

By Meeple Lady | January 10, 2020 | Comments 2 comments

Happy 2020, folks! Hope you all have recovered from the hectic holiday season! I know I have! I took one of the longest work breaks for a while as I traveled to Tennessee and Los Angeles to visit family, and then spent a few days at home recovering from all of that. Last year was a year of personal and professional milestones, as well as experiencing joyful memories of seeing friends and loved ones happy and healthy. And, of course, playing lots of board games with all those people!

Without further ado, here are my top 10 board games that I played for the first time in 2019.

10. Gandhi: The Decolonization of British India, 1917 – 1947

Gandhi is Volume IX from GMT’s COIN series, which stands for Counter Insurgency. I do love my COINs, and this one especially stands out. Gandhi takes us to India for a detailed look at the final decades of the British Raj. This is the first COIN to include nonviolent factions, which offer a unique perspective to these types of wargames.

Gandhi is the latest COIN game from GMT Games.

The are four factions: the British Raj, the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the Revolutionaries. The Congress and the Muslim League are the two nonviolent factions, and like most other COINs, factions somewhat work together until they don’t in order to meet their win condition. The map is beautifully done, and the game allows wargamers to study this historic period of European imperialism.

9. Gugong

I did a review on Gugong on Episode 58 of The Five By. It is one of those games that caught me by surprise early in 2019 by having a little bit of everything. It has hand management, set collection and worker placement, and plays 1-5 people. In Gugong, the emperor is working hard to ban corruption within the country, and the highest officials of the Forbidden City would pretend to uphold that ban on corruption by accepting gifts from petitioners instead, and returning a gift of a seemingly lower value. Players do this by playing a card from their hand to activate a location on the board.

I love using cards to activate locations in Gugong. It makes you to manage your hand well.

Players in Gugong also have to manage their supply of workers with the general supply, which replenishes at a different rate each round. The components are great, and the game scales for all players, with its two-sided board and solo variant. The game also comes with all sort of meeple shapes for various locations on the board.

8. Just One

Just One is my party game of the year. It’s so simple to jump into, it’s co-op, and it plays up to seven people! You never quite know if word games will be a hit with various gaming groups (I’m looking at you, Codenames), but Just One has never failed me. In Just One, the group is trying to get the active player to guess the clue on the card by writing a single word associated with it. Before the active player opens their eyes, the group reveals their word, and if there are duplicate copies of a clue showing, they are eliminated from being shown to the active player. The active player then opens their eyes to see the remaining clues and tries to guess the word.

Can you guess the clue in our Just One game? If you guessed pole, you’re correct!

I particularly enjoy when the group starts finding their groove after a few clues, and the game evolves into a metagame because people start assuming what everyone else will write based on their personalities. And everyone totally loves having their own dry-erase marker and nameplate to write answers on.

7. Escape Plan

We’ve all watched countless heist films. A group of skilled individuals lay out a plan, execute said plan and grab the loot. And then what’s the saying? The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Well, then shoot, Plan B. Hide the loot and lay low — for now. But now the time is up, and we’ve all got to grab our hidden loot and get out of the city.

Your mission is to escape the police in three days!

Welcome to Escape Plan, designed by one of my absolute favorite game designers Vital Lacerda. Escape Plan picks up right this moment of the heist narrative: players have three days to evade the cops, get their money and get the heck out of the town. This is by far Lacerda’s lightest game, but it’s still just as tense as his other games — and you never, ever have enough actions to do what you want to do. Just remember: don’t get caught.

6. Abomination

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a worker placement game that’s strategic and fun, and, surprisingly, oozes with a unique theme that even a sometimes curmudgeonly eurogamer like me can appreciate. In Abomination, scientists are working in Paris to “collect” muscles, organs, blood and bone, and the occasional animal part when really, really needed it. And I say “collect,” because what you’re really doing is raiding hospitals, morgues, cemeteries and other suspicious Parisian locations for the freshest cadaver parts required to create your very own monster!

Just collecting some body parts in the lovely city of Paris!

The game is great for horror fans and heavier gamers alike but even though the box says 60-120 minutes, I cannot imagine ever getting through a game in under two hours. The 12 rounds take a while — even though there are events or cards that can move the round marker meeple forward — and there are a lot of difficult decisions to make, with decomposition of body parts creeping up on you.

5. The Quacks of Quedlinburg

Quack, quack! And not the bird variety. In The Quacks of Quedlinburg, quack doctors are conjuring up potions by blindly pulling ingredients from their potion bag and adding them to their cauldron. If you don’t bust during a round, you gain VPs as well as the option to purchase new ingredients to throw back into your bag and play a new round.

We are all quack doctors drawing ingredients from a bag to make potions!

This push-your-luck game is super fun and super addicting, and, surely, you won’t bust when you have a 1 in 10 chance of drawing the one ingredient that will cause your cauldron to spill over. But of course, you manage to pull out that exact piece EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I love this game so much that I even purchased the cloth bags and plastic bits for it via the BGG Store even though I rarely deluxify my games. This game is just delightful.

4. Wingspan

We can’t talk about last year without adding Wingspan to this list. This game for me — and what is represents — is peak 2019 inspiration. Seeing a female gamer design her own game based on her own interests with a well-known publisher hit the large stage, take flight and soar — pun intended — is exactly what the board game industry needs more of.

Wingspan is just so lovely to play and look at it. The giant blue bird is something I added to my game though as a first-player token.

Representation 100% matters, and I’m always beaming with pride when I show this game to casual gamers and explain Wingspan’s backstory. The game has enabled me to invite even more casual games to take the next step up in strategy games because of its presentation, subject matter and play style. I’d love to see more success stories like this. Plus, OMG the eggs!

3. Watergate

Watergate, a historical subject that’s near and dear to my heart, is one of my favorite games of 2019 and I believe the best 2-player of the year. In this day and age, there is something so supremely satisfying about stopping Nixon. But what I particularly love about this game is that you and your opponent can play a game and then switch sides and play another game immediately — and it still hasn’t taken up your entire evening.

Watergate is my favorte 2P game of 2019.

Watergate fits in a small box and can easily be set up and taken down. I love seeing all the historical figures brought together in this tug-of-war game that is easy to get into. The rulebook and the text on the cards are well done, and there’s even a lot of supplemental information about the presidential scandal in the back of the rulebook.

2. Dead Man’s Cabal

Skulls, skulls and more skulls! While Dead Man’s Cabal comes with a giant sack of bones, it’s the clever and unique game play that makes this game one of my favorites of the year. Players are working to collect and perform ritual cards that score VPs by collecting required skulls at various locations in the game.

During a player’s turn, they take a private action and everyone else can take a public action based on skulls in play. Also, you can only activate locations on the board based on what skulls you have in your supply. It’s this midweight interconnected puzzle of skull collection in a 60-minute game that scratches my Vital Lacerda itch. The game has fantastic components, and did I mention it comes with a bag of plastic skulls? What else do you need?

1. Pax Pamir

And now we’ve hit No. 1. Pax Pamir was absolute love at first play at Consimworld. Oh. My. Goodness. Look at those gorgeous components. I’ve played other games in the Pax realm, Pax Porfiriana and Pax Renaissance, and while I enjoyed both of them a lot, the game ALWAYS seemed to take so much longer to explain than the actual game itself.

I can’t say enough good things about Pax Pamir. And look at how gorgeous that is!

But that’s not the case with this second edition of Pax Pamir. The added map and individual player dials make this game much, much easier to visualize which faction is dominating. During the game, players are buying cards to expand their tableaus. These cards allow them to take actions to strengthen their factions and armies. Players score points when a dominance check occurs. The game comes with so many cards, which keeps each game fresh every time. Pax Pamir (second edition) is my game of the year, and my only regret is not securing a copy for myself. It is, sadly, sold out. Someone hook a lady up!

And that’s my top games of 2019. What are some of your favorites that came out last year? And what are you looking forward to playing in 2020?

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2018

By Meeple Lady | December 31, 2018 | Comments 10 comments

When I started writing this post, I looked back at my 2017 list, and I had to laugh because I was so optimistic that 2018 would be less rage-inducing than 2017. This past year was still rage-inducing in regards to the outside world, but there definitely was plenty of moments of pure joy for me personally and within the board-game world. I have fond memories of the experiences I had in 2018, the friendships and relationships that grew, and most importantly, all the games that I played.

So without further delay, here’s my top 10 list of games I played for the first time in 2018.

10. Dominant Species

Despite the cones, this is not Cones of Dunshire. Dominant Species is brutal and punishing.

This game from GMT Games is a classic. And by classic, I mean 2010, which by board-game standards, is pretty ancient. I played this game for the first time back in January, and I honestly couldn’t believe I haven’t played this game sooner. It’s brutal, mean and literally a game of “survival of the species.” And for such a punishing game, the components itself are quite colorful and cheery: cones and cubes among a sea of bright-colored environments.

Players take on the role of one of the major animal classes (mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid, or insect) and they’re all trying to survive and thrive on various terrains with their asymmetrical powers, all while the impending Ice Age is coming. Players compete to have the most of their species on various hexes as well as being dominant, which is determined by your animal class. Dominant Species plays like a typical worker placement but built from a war-game foundation. Just watch out for glaciers!

9. Dinosaur Island

I hope that T. Rex doesn’t eat my park visitors!

This was another game I played early in 2018, and OH MY GOSH — look at all these pink dinosaurs!! I came into this game thinking it would be all kinds of kitschy, but it’s a solid worker placement that comes with variable end-game conditions. Players can pick a short, medium or long game, and the game ends when scoring objectives are completed. And similar to Food Chain Magnate, you can only score objectives in the same round that everyone else does. Once an objective has been scored, the objective is closed for others in future rounds.

Players in Dinosaur Island are competing to build the best dinosaur amusement park. The game plays through several phrases in each round, from collecting DNA combinations to create dinosaurs, upgrading technology and building park attractions, to having actual visitors visit your theme park, and hoping for the best those visitors don’t get eaten. Sure, exciting carnivores will bring more visitors to your park, but if you don’t ensure security gates are at a high level, well, we all know how that plays out in those Hollywood movies, don’t we?

8. My Little Scythe

Squee! Let’s have a pie fight! These figurines are way adorbs.

This new family game from Stonemaier Games is just darling! I got a chance to play it for the first time during Gila Monster this summer, and it truly is delightful! The game was created by a father who wanted to game with his daughter, and Stonemaier ended up publishing the fan-made version a year later. My Little Scythe comes with these chibi figurines of the original Scythe characters. ADORABLE.

The game also takes elements from Scythe — choose one of the actions on your player board, but not the same one you just did — and players move across the board, picking gems, apples or quests, and working to score objectives. And instead of combat, the game incentivizes you to drop resources where other players are, because that moves you up the friendship track. In the end, friendship is magic!

7. Bruxelles 1893

Bruxelles 1893 has these dapper gentlemen meeples with top hats.

This is another older board game, circa 2013, but I can’t believe so few people have ever mentioned this game! Bruxelles 1893, a colorful game in the Art Nouveau style, is crunchy worker placement that has a clever puzzle element to it. Workers are collecting resources to build buildings, and buying and selling artwork to gain money.

The game also comes with a dial, which players can adjust to determine which resources are needed to build a building, and players can affect how much pieces of artwork will sell by moving this square across a board. The game continues for five rounds, and it’s another one of those games where you definitely cannot do most of the things you want to do. And at the start of each round, the worker-placement sections of the board are selected, which is another neat element of the game, so the building you built might not even be in play for the round. This game is totally underrated!

6. Arboretum

I played this new edition of this older card game for the first time this year. Arboretum is gorgeous and unassumingly brutal. At the start of each turn, players take two cards, play one into their arboretum and discard another card. You’re building paths of beautiful trees in order to possibly score that path at the end of the game. But you can only score that tree species if you have the highest sum of those tree cards your hand.

I love balancing that push and pull between keeping cards in your hands versus playing them down into your arboretum. You can also prevent opponents from scoring large paths by hanging on to certain tree cards. The card game is inviting enough to introduce to new gamers but strategic to engage heavy gamers like myself.

5. Catch the Moon

Players place ladders in Catch the Moon, and each game has been a masterpiece!

Catch the Moon is such a beautiful game. I just purchased it in November at BGG Con, but it’s already risen to one of my most-played games in 2018. And yes, I know it’s only a 20-minute game, but it’s one that people immediately want to play over and over again. The table presence of this game also draws curious passers-by, and more often than not, they take a seat at the next game.

Catch the Moon is a dexterity game in which players take turns adding wonky ladders to a main centerpiece that sits atop a cloud. Roll a dice, and the dice tells a player to either place a ladder that touches exactly one or two ladders, or the new ladder must be the highest point. If any ladders fall or touch the base, or the player doesn’t follow the dice’s directions, they get a tear drop because the moon is super sad. Try to get the fewest tear drops, and don’t get the last tear drop, and you’ll win the game. Each game of this has been different; some creations go up super high, while others stay really low, just barely hanging on and not scraping the cloud base.

4. Sidereal Confluence

Sidereal Confluence is a live negotiation and trading game with asymmetrical alien factions.

Sidereal (which rhymes with ethereal, and, believe me, it took me some times to figure out how to say this word correctly) Confluence is a bonkers real-time negotiation and trading game that plays up to nine players who are asymmetrical alien factions working to research and run various technologies. The kicker is that they often don’t have the resources to run those technologies, hence they need to find the resources from others.

This is one of my favorite games to run at the convention, because you can assemble a large number of participants, as I think a larger player count works best for this game. There’s yelling, trading for future favors and making less-than-ideal trades because you really, really need that one last blue cube, and the time is running out. (I set each trading round to 10 minutes.) And when you have an alien race like Kt’Zr’Kt’Rtl (complete with a pronunciation guide), you know the game is gonna be insane.

3. Teotihuacan

Teotihuacan was my favorite game of BGG Con this year.

I had the pleasure to play Teotihuacan at BGG Con, and it did not disappoint. In Teotihuacan, each player is a powerful noble family working to build the temple of Teotihuacan. You’re using your workforce of dice to move around the board like a giant rondel. Depending on the value of your dice, you receive various resources at each location, and then at the end of your turn, your dice levels up.

As with its predecesor Tzolk’in, the game is a lot about timing your actions correctly. Instead of the giant wheel cogs in Tzolk’in, the game is all about moving your dice in a way so that it levels up at the right moment, so that you can get resources to build temple steps and gain technology, among other things. Dice are moving in one direction in order to ascend to 6 pips, and then you get a reward and start over again at one location.

2. Feudum

Picking between No. 1 and No. 2 was super difficult as these two last games are equally exceptional, but for the purposes of this list, I had to pick which game belonged in which spot. For No. 2, it’s came down to Feudum. Feudum, despite its whimsy artwork and endearing behemoth, is quite a beast to learn and equally to play. But it’s definitely worth it, in my opinion.

Feudum combines elements of Concordia with using card play for taking actions, but adds area control on the board and maintaining influence in various guilds to gain benefits for various actions. It’s one of those games like Lisboa where all the actions itself aren’t difficult per se, but the interconnectivity of those actions and guilds is what makes the game truly shine. This game is definitely not everyone’s cup of tea, as I saw some criticisms online about this game being unnecessary complicated instead of complex, but I don’t agree with those assessments. It’s hefty, crunchy and pays off when you find that group of people who enjoy these type of games and are willing to put in the time to peel away at the game’s layers.

1. Coimbra

I love love this game, even if I’m not very good at it.

And we’re at No. 1! What edged Coimbra a bit past Feudum is its accessibility. Coimbra is an equally crunchy game, but when it’s just four rounds and plays in about two hours, more people will likely dive into this game than Feudum. Plus, people love brightly colored game boards, and there’s lots of dice! But the dice isn’t used for chucking!

In Coimbra, the dice are rolled each round, and players take turns selecting dice in which pips matter for the first half of the round, and then the color of the same dice matters for the second half of the round. In the first half of the round, players collect character cards the give them special abilities or end-game scoring points. Character cards are mostly selected from higher to lower pips, and paid for with either money or military resources. On the second half of the round, the color of the dice will give you that income resource based on there you’re sitting on one of the four tracks. Tracks galore in this game, and I always enjoy balancing all the different resources and having two different incomes. What a fantastic game!

And that’s the end of the list! Let me know what some of your favorites were this year, and what you’re looking forward to next year, either with board games or life happenings.

Happy New Year, and hope everyone has a wonderful 2019!

Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2017

By Meeple Lady | December 27, 2017 | Comments 4 comments

Two thousand seventeen was wonderful, eventful, insanely busy, sometimes rage-inducing, and now peaceful and calm because I’m really looking forward to 2018 — on to better and bigger things, right? I’m grateful for the support of my friends and family, and the board-gaming love from all you guys! Thanks for being amazing and for letting me share my board-gaming adventures with all of you.

But before we get started on my top 10 list of games I played for the first time in 2017, I do have two honorable mentions: Whistle Stop and Fire in the Lake. Both were worthy contenders — for different reasons — in a year very full of gaming. Whistle Stop is a pick-up-and-deliver train game that is strategic yet won’t burn your brain, like with some other train games. And with Fire, it’s a gorgeous and highly strategic war game that’s my new favorite COIN by GMT Games. So now on to my top 10 list …

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Top 10 games I played for the 1st time in 2016

By Meeple Lady | December 28, 2016 | Comments 0 Comment

We’re almost at the end, folks! 2016 is coming to a close. It’s been one of my most interesting years, for sure. I’ve met so many new folks in the board-gaming world, and I myself have gone through a lot of personal and professional changes. I’m glad to move on to bigger and better things in the upcoming year, and to leave behind 2016, aka “celebrity killer” year (I’m still super bummed about David Bowie, Prince, George Michael and Carrie Fisher — and hopefully nobody else). So without further ado, I’m counting down the best games that I played for the first time this year.

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