Starting Friday, I'll be playing games for ~10 straight days.

Expect a ton of session reports and a few game photos.

LIVE Tonight!

Growing up a Board Gamer, 17 years of Gaming with Gwen

Main Topic:
Gwen shares her favourite games growing up.

Reviews:
Survive the Island (Zygomatic Studio and Asmodee Canada )
Oros (Aesc Games and Lucky Duck Games)

8pm Eastern at https://www.twitch.tv/tabletopbellhop

So. Fertig.

#HobbyGamesRecce
A broad knowledge of game mechanics can serve as a resource when designing our own #boardgames and #wargames. Original ideas remain key, but we shouldn’t hesitate adapting elements from other games when they, in a modified form, might improve our own games.

https://hobbygamesrecce.blogspot.com/2025/04/emulation-as-inspiration-strategy.html

Stand in my way* and I'll become stronger than you can imagine.**

*block my route in Ticket to Ride
**get a load of extra points by going a different, longer way.

Seit Aeonen mal wieder "Village" gezockt, diesmal in der Neufassung incl. Port.

Immer noch ein ganz phantastisches Spiel & auch in Vollbesetzung erstaunlich schnell gespielt!

#Village
#boardgames

Had a nice round of patchwork doodle with the kids followed by two tense attempts to land a plane in mega busy Heathrow in sky team. The latter is a cooperative game where one person is the pilot the other the co-pilot, both responsible for flipping switches, regulating the speed and clearing planes to successfully land a plane via dice placement.
#boardgames #boardgame #brettspiele

Ok, the Automatons variant for #Revive, posted on #BoardGameGeek is boss. I can't ever see myself going to the out of the box solo method. It feels so much more natural not having a limit of a combination of card plays and hibernate.

Sure, it has more upkeep but it wasn't horrible and if you've any design from the Automa Factory, you'll find this similar.

I played on the easier difficulty and won by 8 points so I think I will keep that difficulty while I try other tribes. #BoardGames

And I’m caught up with #BoardGames blog posts about the first tranche of new games I played this year. Though I covered them in alphabetical order this post gets the lion’s share of the duds. I did like #Vinhos I think, I want to play it again to check anyway!

https://nocto.com/posts/mycelia-vinhos/

We played our first 3p #game of #Harvest with our 9 yo tonight. Lindsey won (of course) by a few points. My 9 yo thought it was hard, which surprised me, because she has learned more complicated things. But I think that the planting/tending/harvest action was a little hard for her to grasp at first.

This evening I got to play the second edition of #7Wonders for the first time, with two expansions (Leaders and Armada). Enjoyed it (and won! Mainly due to some lucky card synergy.) I do like the slightly cleaner look of the second edition. Can recommend, although don't add multiple expansions if you have players who are unfamiliar with more than one of them, like me - although I still clinched a win! #boardgames

Have you ever wondered what those #EloRatings on #BoardGameArena are and what they mean? I've explained them at exhausting length in my latest blog post: https://blog.recommend.games/posts/elo-ratings-explained/ #BoardGames #Elo

The American Tabletop and British Arts awards took place last week. See who won the top prizes on each side of the pond. Also the latest on Marathon, the Switch 2 and so much more. Subscribe today! #GamingNews #BoardGames #Gaming https://thegamesletter.com/who-won-2025-the-american-tabletop-awards-and-baftas-marathon

New comic! Remember, kids, stress management through creative outlets is important for mental health! … to a certain point.

You can read this week's blog post here:
https://www.semicoop.com/comic/stress-relief-spiral/ #boardgames #warhammer

Sort of finished my #Kallax'es. Two compartments that are sort of in the middle of the left one will get a door each, that I've ordered, because I want to hide a bunch of small games and other game related stuff in those. Top left two spaces will hold #AwakenRealms' #NemesisRetaliation once it gets here.

A good weekend of board games.

My Meetup's library event was on Saturday morning, featuring a learn-and-play of AZUL. Another attendee brought DICE KINGDOMS OF VALERIA, which is a fun roll-and-write that focuses on chaining together actions; it's a bit like HADRIAN'S WALL, but not as complicated. I may need to consider getting it.

Back home, we continued our Clank! Legacy 2 campaign with game 11 -- one game is left. And we played some smaller games: the card game DRAGONKEEPERS, and the bag-builder GARDLINGS.

Sunday we brought out WILD GARDENS (shown), published by Rose Gauntlet, for the second time; the last time we played it was in October. You're foragers wandering along paths to collect ingredients such as mushrooms, bark, aquatics, and fruits, and using them for recipes like Elderberry Lemonade that award points. Guests want specific combinations of recipes, like (a main dish) + (a drink), or (dessert) + (anything), and they grant additional points plus an immediate benefit or an ongoing ability.

This library board is from WILD GARDENS. You can take a Study action to check out the book matching a particular ingredient, and also collect the skill token next to it. The skill token goes on your personal board and improves one of your available three actions.

How about a nice comforting square arrangement of tiles, still seamlessly tileable, for your every day Carcassonne wallpaper needs.
#Carcassonne
#BoardGames

Didn't get very far in the new Clockmaker's Labyrinth map of 52 Realms... Might need to give it another try with the Tinkerer instead of the Jailer
#boardgames

I played a four player game of Freedom Five: A Sentinel Comics Board Game yesterday, a first play for all of us. I forgot to take a picture, but I can at least share some thoughts:

My friend had bought the version of the game with miniatures, and...well, "miniature" isn't quite the right word for it when it approaches these sizes. Really makes for a great presence on the table, and overall the game looks pretty great.

Mechanically, the game is mostly good. While the amount of dice chucking that happens might bother some, the game usually does have ways to mitigate bad dice rolls or alternative card actions to avoid them.

That said, our game took us four hours, only ending when everyone at the table agreed to call it a loss. Having our first game be against a villain that heals all damage taken if you don't take them out in one go is demoralizing if you're one or two successes short, knowing that it would probably take another 20-30 minutes to prepare for another shot at them.