New to Me – January 2024

It’s the first month of the year!

And it’s also almost the end of February.

Yes, it took so much energy to get my Top 50 games played of all time done, along with getting sick recently, that we’re into the last week of February and I still haven’t talked about the “new to me” games that I played in January!

I know, right?

With OrcaCon in January, I knew that this would be a long post.

I did not realize just how taxing it was going to be, though.

This one is going to be brutal on me, so I’m going to take some steps to alleviate the pain.

For all of the OrcaCon games, since I did talk about them in that retrospective post, I’m going to just refer you to that post.

I didn’t go into detailed “how to play” descriptions there, but enough that I think you should get a good sense of how the game works.

The Cult of the New to Me was certainly happy because while a few of the games last month were brand new, there were quite a number of older games there.

They were satisfied and content.

Which means that this month, they’re going to be really pissed off.

Actually, I’m not sure about that…because I haven’t played any new to me games in February.

Yes, it’s the last week in February and I will not have a post next month!

That doesn’t make them happy either.

Really, they’re terribly hard to please.

Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was stolen by some big furry guy who broke into my campground anyway), let’s begin!

I Found Bigfoot (2024 – Thing12 Games) – 8 plays

(There is currently no box picture on Boardgame Geek, so I made my own!)

Designer: John David Wood

Artist: Jeff Willis

Players: 1-4

This is the game I spent the most time playing at OrcaCon because I was helping my good friend Sean demo it to people who might be interested in backing it on Kickstarter.

It’s a really fun, easy to play so very family-friendly card game of trying to collect cards of certain cryptid types in order to score points.

It’s coming to Kickstarter sometime soon (Sean said the end of February sometime, but I don’t see it on Kickstarter yet. Maybe this week?).

(Edit: Sean has just informed me that because Matches came in earlier than expected, the Kickstarter for this one has been postponed to the end of March)

Otherwise, more description of the game is in my OrcaCon post.

Clever 4Ever (2022 – Schmidt Spiele) – 5 plays

Designer: Wolfgang Warsch

Artist: Leon Schiffer

Players: 1-4

The first of the non-OrcaCon games, this is another iteration of the classic “Clever” roll and write games.

Nothing really new here, except of course new ways to score the same coloured dice as you have rolled in the previous games.

It’s a roll and write, you’re rolling dice and recording points based on what you roll.

This one adds some interesting twists, like the “Platter” bonus (I forget what it’s actually called), which lets you spend it to add or subtract one from a die on the platter. This is really only useable when you are the following player (unless you are doing a blue/white one, in which case you can use it as the active player for the one die that’s on the platter).

It does add some interesting complexities.

I also like that the Pink scoring area, unlike all the other versions (except for the third game, which I don’t believe I’ve played) actually doesn’t care as much about the value you put in it.

Just filling in the box gives you the points. But depending on the value, you can get more points, or you can get the actual bonus (you don’t get the bonus unless you put a 5 or 6 in the space), which really does add to the decision space, as far as I’m concerned.

But yeah, it’s basically the same game with different scoring possibilities.

Which one you like best really just depends on which scoring mechanisms entice you more.

It’s fun, I enjoyed it.

Is it the best of the 4?

Hell, I don’t know.

I’ll willingly play it when we have 30-45 minutes at lunch, though.

Claim (2017 – White Goblin Games) – 4 plays

Designer: Scott Almes

Artists: Scott Almes, Mihajlo Dimitrievski

Players: 2

Another OrcaCon game!

Though this 2-player trick taking game enticed me so much that I recently acquired it in our local math trade.

I really enjoyed it.

For some reason, the ability to make a trick-taking game work with two players just really entices me.

And this one works like a charm.

You’re spending the first round trying to win or lose tricks to bolster your second round hand.

But winning Undead cards in the first round actually increases your score immediately!

And then the Dwarf faction, where in the 2nd round the losing player gets all Dwarfs, really makes this a game where you have to think a bit.

It’s not rocket science, of course.

It’s not Gaia Project or anything.

But it’s fun, it plays in 10 minutes or so, and it’s amazing for when you just have two players.

Sean and I played this a bunch while we were waiting for people to come sample his games, and there’s a reason that I went ahead and picked it up (my only math trade acquisition, getting money for the other games I put up for trade).

Guild Academies of Valeria (2023 – Daily Magic Games) – 2 plays

Designer: Stan Kordonskiy

Artist: Mihajlo Dimitrievski

Players: 1-4

While I did play this for the first time at OrcaCon, I did get another play of it in at our Sunday game day, so let’s go into a little more detail.

This is a dice-drafting game similar in some respects to it’s Valeria cousin, Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria.

Instead of defending the Valeria realm from evil monsters (or, I guess, actually trying to take over the kingdom), you are the heads of various magic academies in Valeria, training your students to excel in their magic studies and then sending them out on quests.

All of which will get you points.

You have three workers (I forget what they’re actually called) that will be placed on one of the five docks where the students have arrived.

You’ll be taking a die for your academy and then doing the action that the dock will let you do.

This will be anything from recruiting professors to your faculty to letting you add classrooms to your academy, giving you more options for trading your students.

Once all of your drafting actions are done, you’ll send your students to the various classrooms you have, trying to increase their knowledge (dice score) above the “6” range so that they are ready to graduate.

Each classroom will require a professor to be assigned to it (some it won’t matter what colour, but some it will) and then assign the proper dice to it as well.

Doing so will then let you get magic, money, level up the dice, and maybe even victory points.

At the end of the round, your graduated students will be sent out to complete quests.

The thing is, though, that you have to have quest available for your graduates to take on!

If you have an extra graduate or two and no place to put them, they’ll go off on their own and they won’t benefit you at all.

They become free agents!

This is a really fiddly game, but it’s still quite intriguing. When we first looked at it and the score track, we were saying “how the heck would you be scoring 100 points?”

But then we played it, and the points really do add up.

We didn’t get close to 100 points in our two plays, but we were definitely in the 70s and 80s.

With more plays, those scores may accumulate!

This was a fun one.

If I can get one more play of it, I may even do a review.

For now, though, while probably not in my Top 50 (even if I had played it before I ranked all of my games played), it’s definitely something that I find intriguing and want to play again.

Hit Me! (2018 (original, but coming from Thing 12 Games later this year) – 2 plays

Designer: Daniel McKinley

Artist: N/A

Players: 2-6

Another OrcaCon game from Thing 12.

Not a whole lot to say that I didn’t say in that post, but I am looking forward to the tweaks to the characters (the original game had no minority representation at all, and Sean is fixing that for the rerelease) and it’s a fun battler that plays a bunch of people in a very short amount of time.

I will definitely look at this when the Thing 12 version comes out!

The original was self-published, I think?

Anyway, it was a fun one.

Splito (2022 – Blam!) – 2 plays

Designers: Romaric Galonnier, Luc Rémond

Artist: Maud Chalmel

Players: 3-8

This game is another OrcaCon game, but it came as a total surprise to me as I had never heard of it!

I do like the “you’re doing things with the people to your right and left, and you have to make sure both sides are pretty good because your score depends on both of them” mechanic.

In this case, you’re playing cards to the scoring area on both sides. The cards are both numbered cards as well as goal cards.

You have to make sure you don’t play a goal card to an area that can’t be fulfilled!

Unlike some other versions of this type of game, where the score you have is based on the best of the two options, in this game you multiply the two scores together.

That’s the one thing I don’t like about that mechanism. Usually the “high” score is a tie but then the tie-breaker is the players’ other play area.

That doesn’t happen here.

Instead, you are trying to build up good multipliers.

So if you get 60 points in one area, it doesn’t matter if you only get one point in the other area.

You only have 60 points and most likely somebody else has a “30 and 20” area or something (which would make 600 and beat you rather handily).

This was an intriguing one that I’d love to play again.

Nucleum (2023 – Board & Dice) – 1 play

Designers: Simone Luciani, Dávid Turczi

Artists: Andreas Resch, Piotr Sokołowski, Zbigniew Umgelter

Players: 1-4

Another non-OrcaCon game!

So there will be a bit more here about it.

This game has some similarities to Brass and Barrage, which is why I think one of my friends did so well at it in my one play of it.

This is kind of a Steampunk game in that it’s the late 19th century and yet nuclear power is becoming a thing.

It’s an economic game like Brass where you are trying to build up your factories, build buildings out on the map, and then flip them by powering them up with the power plants that you are also activating and building out on the board.

Your player board has a bunch of stuff that you are trying to place out, or at least qualify for.

The square buildings you are trying to put out on the board into various cities that you will be able to power.

The turbines on the right of the board, as well as the nucleum mines, will help you power up those buildings.

The really cool thing about this game is the action mechanism, where you have a certain number of action tiles and you can buy more as well.

You have to choose whether to use the action tile on your player board. If you do, you get both actions.

Or, you can put them out on the board to connect the cities together.

This will give you the connections you need to score the buildings but those action tiles are then gone for the rest of the game.

You can take an income turn which will give you all of your action tiles back (only the ones on your player board) as well as the income from where all of your markers are (but only as far as the number of action tiles you’ve played! Which is very important).

Yeah, if you have income past your last action tile, you don’t get it! You only get up to your action tiles.

You get points a lot of ways, from flipping cities on the board to placing as much of your stuff out as possible, and many other ways as well.

My first play of this, I was not in a good mood, I wasn’t feeling the greatest, and the game just didn’t trigger with me that much. I started out doing really badly and it cascaded from there.

I really want to play it again just to see if my initial impression changes because I’m in a better mood.

That being said, I’m not a huge Brass and Barrage fan, so my opinion might not change that much.

We’ll see!

I hope to play it again soon, while it’s fresh in my mind.

Vanuatu – 2nd Edition (2016 – Quined Games) – 1 play

Designer: Alain Epron

Artist: Konstantin Vohwinkel

Players: 2-5

Friday evening of OrcaCon, Sean, a friend of his, and me played this game that’s not so much as a knife fight in a phone booth, but a knife fight in a tropical island food kiosk or something.

It’s a beautiful game!

But it’s just brutal and you can really screw your opponent over if it works out that way.

And they’ll be trying to screw you over!

You are natives trying to prosper on the island of Vanuatu, by either leading tourists around by the nose, or maybe fishing and selling them (the fish, not the tourists), or maybe recovering lost treasures from the coral reefs!

Each round, new ocean tiles are going to be situated around the lagoon, allowing more fish production, more sunken treasures, and more islands that you can fob off the tourists on.

If you fish or collect other resources, you may be able to sell them as well, as the demand tiles will change each round.

At the beginning of each round, players draft one of the available characters that they want to be that round.

The character will give you some kind of bonus, which will often give an indication of what you are ultimately trying to do that round.

The crux of this game are the action tiles that you are placing your people on at the beginning of the round.

You will be placing your markers on them in three turns, placing two, then two, then one (you have five).

You don’t have to place the two markers on the same action. You can split them.

These are the actions you plan to take on your turn.

However, once all of the markers have been placed, only the person who has the most markers on a tile can actually do that action!

Ties go in player order, so if you’re first player, you always break ties.

In turn order, each player decides to do one of their actions, removing all of their markers from that action.

If they don’t hold majority in any of them, they just choose one of the actions and remove their markers, not doing anything.

If you had a set order that you wanted to do things during the round, you’d better hope that either you have all of the majorities, or that the person who does have majority in the action you want to do next actually does that action first. Because once they remove their markers, you may have majority at that time.

If not?

Your intricately planned turn will go to shit.

That happens!

You can use an action to move your boat around the harbor tiles, finding new islands to exploit gather resources from, you can gather resources or find treasure if the tile your boat is on has that, or many other options.

There is one action that will let you look through the Rest tokens and choose one, to either give you resources or, potentially, the 1st player marker.

What I was so proud of was that in the first three rounds, Maggie (Sean’s friend) did that action and took the resources. But as 1st player, I kept breaking ties and doing actions first, screwing them both over a little bit (though I got screwed a couple of times too).

On the 4th round, I went to the Rest action, and had majority in it. So I was able to do that first.

I grabbed the 1st player marker.

Then Maggie did the Rest action. She looked through the tiles, and glared at me hard enough that it could have killed me…because she had finally decided it would be good to be 1st player.

Nope! I retained that.

And every time anybody went to the Rest action, I made sure I was first.

I won the game, so it must have been at least somewhat right!

This was a fun game.

Not necessarily one I’d like to play a whole lot, but it was good.

If you don’t like vicious games, though, stay far away.

You will make some enemies if they aren’t up for it.

Xia: Legends of a Drift System (2014 – Far Off Games)

Designer: Cody Miller

Artists: Cody Miller, Steve “Coolhand” Tyler, Peter Wocken

Players: 3-5

Another OrcaCon game!

Xia is what they call a sandbox game, in a way, as you are travelling the space lanes, exploring the galaxy, and doing…something.

You could play it as a pick up and deliver game, trading goods around the galaxy.

You could become a bad guy and just start attacking everybody.

Don’t worry, if you are destroyed, you just respawn, but you lose all of your goods and stuff.

This is one of those space games where you explore by putting a new tile out that connects to the tile you are currently on.

You can spend time safely exploring by stopping and scanning the next sector. This will let you situate the tile however you want.

Or you can just travel, and who cares what you are flying into!

This means that you have to line up the symbols on the tile you are placing, meaning you have no choice in how it’s situated.

Or it could just be bad news regardless.

You can find jobs to do that will give you points, or you can do pirate type things.

Or, if somebody is wanted by the authorities, you can try to destroy them and reap the rewards!

The choices are really endless.

Whatever you do, you are trying to get reputation points, or prestige, or something like that, and the first one who gets to the set level (we played a short game, so just to 10 points) is the winner.

I have to say, that this game wasn’t played in the best conditions. It was late Saturday night, we were all tired, and Maggie and Sean’s co-worker bought us drinks from the hotel bar, so my mind wasn’t totally on the game.

It was fun, and I’d definitely like to play it again, but it didn’t really make much of an impression on me the first time.

Russian Railroads (2013 – Z-Man Games) – 1 play

Designers: Helmut Ohley, Leonhard “Lonny” Orgler

Artists: Martin Hoffmann, Claus Stephan

Players: 2-4

I tried Russian Railroads on Boardgame Arena many moons ago and I bounced right off of it.

I think some games just can’t be learned (at least by me) electronically.

I need the board in front of me.

A friend brought it out last month, offering to teach it to me on the table.

And it actually worked!

It will never be my favourite game, but it makes so much more sense and I actually really enjoyed it.

We played with the German Railroads expansion, which doesn’t add a whole lot, so it wasn’t too overbearing for a new player.

Each player has their own board with three railroads that they are trying to extend.

On the main board are the actions that you are going to be putting your workers on. This will allow you to either move your locomotives spaces on your board, or move your tech track, or maybe add engines/factories to your board!

This is at heart a worker placement game, as you are blocking the spots where you place your workers so that nobody else can use them this round.

It’s basically an efficiency puzzle as you are trying to maximize the effect of either moving your trains, or perhaps moving on the tech track.

At the end of each round, once all workers (and money, if you want to use a coin as a worker) have been spent, all of your trains and tech track score.

There are so many scoring avenues to explore in this game! Your trains, if you’ve extended them enough and gotten into the silver and gold tracks, can get you a bunch of points.

But you could concentrate a large part on the tech track, even possibly getting a second marker to move along it. Reaching the end of it will get you 30 points a round, and if you manage to do that with both markers, 60 points!

I like how the trains work, and how reaching certain spaces will get you stuff, but other spaces, you have to actually have enough engine power to power that space before it gets you anything.

So the middle track powers up to 7 spaces, the bottom only to two. The top to 4.

This is a really interesting, high-scoring game.

Again, it won’t be up in my favourites, but I did really enjoy it and now it actually makes sense when I play it on BGA.

I’d play this one again, definitely.

Quantum (2013 – FunForge) – 1 play

Designer: Eric Zimmerman

Artists: Georges Bouchelaghem, Kieran Yanner

Players: 2-4

Another game that I played with Sean and a couple of his friends at OrcaCon was this one, a game that is pretty old and never really caught on for some reason.

It’s a space game where your ships are dice and while you roll the dice when you bring them onto the board, the number that they are determines what type of ship they are.

The lower value ones are faster but don’t attack as well.

The big ones are lumbering but pack a punch.

You are trying to establish a number of colonies on the various planets on the board, by moving your ships around, possibly attacking the other players (they can respawn the ships, but it will really stop them from doing what they were doing!).

You can modify the ships by rerolling or adjusting their number somehow, and each ship type also has its own ability that will let you do special things with it.

You can also gain new abilities that can really enhance what you are doing.

Overall, it’s a pretty fun game. It wasn’t amazing, so maybe that’s why it didn’t catch on?

But I definitely enjoyed myself.

It’s on Boardgame Arena, so maybe I’ll check it out there now that I actually understand how to play.

What I said about trying to learn Russian Railroads above on BGA also happened to me with Quantum.

Kompromat (2020 – Helvetiq) – 1 play

Designer: Rob Fisher, Adam Porter

Artist: Felix Kindelan

Players: 2

Another OrcaCon game played with Sean!

This is a really intriguing blackjack-type game where you are trying to capture various cards that will give you points or perhaps abilities (or both!)

Each player has a deck of cards of various values. On your turn, you will put cards down to try and capture one of the cards.

Your first card has to be face-up but then you can play further cards on top of it from the top of your deck.

You are trying to get as close to 21 without going over, by drawing another card from your deck if you want to hit (just like Blackjack) or standing.

However, your opponent won’t know if you busted or not until cards are revealed, so they are still forced to try and guess how much they should push their luck on that card too.

When cards are revealed at the end of the round, whoever has the highest value without going over 21 gets the card for their score pile (though some abilities can actually be used too).

If you busted, you get a bust (suspicion) token.

Those are actually worth a point at the end of the game as well, though if you get too many bust tokens during the game, you will automatically lose.

I really enjoyed this one a lot. I am loving these 2-player card games, and if I can get my hands on this one, I would like to.

It’s reasonably short but packs quite a punch considering.

Port Royal (2014 – Pegasus Spiele) – 1 play

Designer: Alexander Pfister

Artists: Klemens Franz, Atanas Lozanski

Players: 2-5

Another push your luck game from OrcaCon!

This one plays 2-5 players, but I only played it at 2.

Does it shine better at more than that?

Maybe? I don’t know.

I do know that it is pretty cool as you are trying to take cards into your scoring tableau that will either give you points, or abilities, or both!

You are turning over cards into a row until you either want to stop or you bust by getting two of the same type of ships that you don’t have enough swords available to fight off.

You can take cards from the display based on the number of unique ships that were revealed. You can take a ship for its gold value, or you can hire one of the people revealed.

After all of that, each other player can pay the active player one coin to take one of the cards using the same rules.

This is a really cool game! For a push your luck game, anyway (if you like that kind of thing).

I think it would shine at more players but it played pretty well at 2.

I’d definitely play this one again.

Matches (2024? – Thing 12 Games) – 1 play

Designer: Daniel McKinley

Artist: Gustavo “Goose” Gutierrez

Players: 2-6

Another OrcaCon game that I don’t have a lot else to say as it’s very simple and explained there.

A card game where you are trying to match numbers rather than trying to win tricks, it’s very simple, very quick, and yet very engaging.

Sean showed me the new production of it and it looks really cool!

Puppy Pile (2023 – Thing 12 Games) – 1 play

Designer: Mike A Pratt

Artist: N/A

Players: 2-6

Another OrcaCon game!

Who wouldn’t be dazzled by a game where you have a bunch of puppy tiles and you are trying to get yours to the top!

Without letting anybody know which puppy is actually yours.

You have a secret puppy, you are trying to get it to the top of the heap when the scoring card comes out.

You play action cards that will move puppies along the lineup.

Hopefully you’re not being obvious which one is yours!

This is another winner from Thing12 games. It’s cute as hell, the tiles are very tactile and feel good when you are moving them, and it has some bluffing as well.

A quick game, it’s cute and who can say no to those faces?

I couldn’t criticize this game if I wanted to, after looking into those eyes.

Tricky Dicks: The Richard Measuring Game (2022 – Wryknot Games) 1 play

Designer: N/A

Artist: N/A

Players: 3-6

This was another OrcaCon game, and there’s not a lot to say about it that I didn’t say in that post.

Between writing that OrcaCon post and this one, however, I think I did have a bit of a revelation.

In my Bottoscon post, I complained about “adult” versions of games, and why even bother playing them unless you’re going to a swingers party or something.

However, that’s mainly about “adult” versions of already-published (and enjoyed) games.

Tricky Dicks is a full-on adult game, and yeah, it’s juvenile.

Maybe my adult, sophisticated brain shouldn’t have found this funny.

But for some reason, trying to claim that I had the widest Richard in my hand compared to the other players, just made me laugh.

Am I hypocrite?

Maybe, but I think that I’m more like Walt Whitman.

“Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”

There’s something to be said about a group of guys sitting at a table in front of the main elevator of a hotel proclaiming that they are holding the biggest dick.

Anyway, this is a fast game that may bring out a bunch of laughs (especially if one of your female players is claiming to have the biggest one!), or it may offend you like nothing has offended you before.

Either way, it’s fast!

So that’s all of the new stuff I played in January, almost 5000 words later.

Many apologies for how long you’ve had to wait for it.

I hope you weren’t holding your breath.

What new to you games did you play in January?

Let me know in the comments.