New to Me – October 2024

As I mentioned the other day, October as a month really sucked, especially for gaming.

Being sick, missing three game days, I was totally surprised that I actually managed to play any new to me games!

Much less three.

I even managed to placate the Cult of the New to Me members by getting an older game in there.

I am getting a bunch of new games and want to get them played, so it’s becoming even more imperative that I get some older ones in there too.

Or I might have a riot!

Or a president chastising me.

Funny, I didn’t even realize he was in my cult.

Who knew?

Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was stolen by a raccoon and buried in a tree anyway), let’s get started!

Forest Shuffle (2023 – Lookout Games) – 2 plays

Designer: Kosch

Artists: Toni Llobet, Judit Piella

Players: 2-5

Forest Shuffle is a combo-riffic card game where you will be drawing forest cards (trees, fungus, plants, or animals) and playing them into your forest to get the best combination of points amongst all players.

All of this before Winter sets in (i.e. drawing 3 Winter cards) so the timer of the game is a bit uncertain.

Each animal and plant card is split into two, either vertically or horizontally.

Before you can play any of them, though, you have to have trees to put them on!

Each card is going to be worth a certain number of points, sometimes dependent on other cards in your forest.

You will always pay to play cards by discarding other cards in your hand to the center row.

If you pay for some of the cards with the correct type of cards, you will get a bonus!

For example, the salamander, if you discard a yellow card to play it, will allow you to play another animal with a paw symbol for free, though you won’t get any immediate bonuses or anything.

I first played this game on Boardgame Arena, quite a few times, actually, but was having trouble quite getting the best way to play it.

Now that it’s hit the table a couple of times, this is a really cool game with lots of different combinations (some of which some people claim are broken, but what can you do).

I can see why this has turned into such a big hit and I look forward to more plays of it!

Sandbag (2024 – Bezier Games) – 2 plays

Designer: Ted Alspach

Artist: Greg Bartlett

Players: 3-6

Sandbag is a really interesting trick-taking game, which for some reason I seem to have taken a liking to recently (not Sandbag, but trick-taking games in general, which I talk about here).

It’s also one of many games that I hate Edward at Heavy Cardboard for introducing me to.

That man has cost me so much money recently!

It’s yet another “trick-taking game with a twist,” which is becoming a genre in itself, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

In fact, it’s quite good!

There are the five suits (or just colours in this case), eleven cards in each suit, and then five Rocket cards.

And this time, points are bad!

The game goes three rounds, and at the beginning of the three rounds, players toss one card to each of their neighbours, then have a couple of decisions to make.

They have to put one card face down as their “sandbag.” This is the safe card, which will never win you a trick.

They also put two cards facedown in front of the sandbag, until everybody has chosen.

Those two cards are then flipped and available for other players to use.

These are your “baskets.”

Instead of playing a card from your hand, you may be able to place a card facedown in front of a player and use one of their basket cards.

You can never use your own basket, though.

There are also Rocket cards that give -5 points (remember, points are bad!) but you can’t win a trick with a Rocket, so you’ll never win a Rocket that you played (except one very unlikely scenario where everybody plays a Rocket.

If you really don’t want to play a card into a trick, you can throw your Sandbag into it, which will mean you won’t win the trick at all.

The really cool catchup mechanism in this game is that, in rounds 2 and 3, for every multiple of 10 points you have, you get to place another Sandbag out, meaning you have fewer cards in your actual hand!

At the end of the round, you score one point for each card you’ve won in the tricks, one point for each face-down card you have in your basket, and the face value of any unused basket cards you have.

So make those basket cards attractive!

I won’t say anymore since a review will be coming once I’ve played this a couple more times, but I do like the way trump is determined (i.e. which colour card will win the trick).

It is based on the available basket cards, so can actually change within the trick!

You may think you’re safe, but then somebody switches cards and suddenly the card you played is actually trump and wins the trick.

That’s depressing.

But fun!

I really enjoyed this one and it will be a staple trick-taking game in my quiver.

Spyrium (2013 – Ystari Games) – 1 play

Designer: William Attia

Artists: Arnaud Demaegd, Neriac

Players: 2-5

After a bunch of actual new games (which the Cult never likes), it was refreshing to play a new to me game from 2013!

Spyrium is another game that I bounced off of very hard when I tried to learn it playing it on Boardgame Arena.

It just didn’t make any sense!

But we managed to get it to the table in October and wow, this is actually pretty good!

Not an awesome game by any means, but a very interesting take on worker placement.

Each round, a display of cards will be put out, characters, buildings or techniques that you may want to use, or even buy so that others can’t use them!

On your turn, you will place a worker between two of these cards.

Alternatively, you can pass which will take you into the next phase, where you will be using and buying cards.

You can then take back a worker and get money equal to the remaining workers around the card (you choose which of the cards your worker was next to).

You can also use the character, though you have to pay to activate/buy any cards, money equal to the number of workers still around the card.

Characters can be used the number of times equal to the number of counters on it (you remove a counter when you use it). Then you get the effect of the character.

Buildings you can buy for their printed costs (plus the activation fee mentioned above) and place the building in your tableau. For each building space after the first, you have to pay another money as well, though you can overbuild a previously-built building. This would ignore the extra space cost.

Technique cards are just taken and placed to the left of your start card (though again, you have to pay the activation fee).

This technique card let me ignore the “other workers around it” cost for one card use/purchase per round, which really came in handy!

Nothing like taking a card that has 6 workers around it and not having to worry about paying 6 pounds.

You can also use that round’s event in either the first phase or the second phase.

This was a really interesting game with very cool decisions.

Money’s really tight in this game and you have to make sure you get buildings or the like that get you extra workers, because you don’t start with many.

If you don’t get more workers, you will lose.

I enjoyed it and would definitely play it again.

So those are the new to me games I played in October.

Quality over quantity!

That’s what I always say.

November has a convention in it, so this post will probably be a lot bigger next month.

What new to you games did you play in October?

Let me know in the comments.