New to Me – January 2025

Another year and another month of new to me games.

It’s 2025 now and things are still going strong on the new to me front, with four whole new ones this last month!

No first impressions posts this time, though, so I’ll be talking about all of them here.

And they were all good!

Or at least intriguing.

However, the Cult of the New to Me was not really happy with me.

The oldest game was from 2022!

I heard rumblings of a revolt coming.

Hopefully next month will be better for them and they’ll quiet down.

Being a cult leader can be hard work…and dangerous.

Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was blasted to smithereens by some weird-looking spaceship anyway), let’s begin!

Arcs (2024 – Leder Games) – 1 play

Designer: Cole Wehrle

Artist: Kyle Ferrin

Players: 2-4

Arcs is all the rage right now, getting tons of plaudits from a lot of people (though some people aren’t fans, of course).

I’ve been dying to play this game since I had an opportunity at Dragonflight last August but I was just getting ready to leave so I couldn’t.

Essentially players are members of space-faring species who are trying to project influence into a really interesting sector of space.

I mean, that’s really interesting.

There are obstacles that will block you from moving from cluster to cluster.

Instead, you have to go through the inner ring gates in order to reach them (so kind of down and around).

Talk about speed bumps!

It’s hard to describe Arcs generally, though.

It kind of has some trick-taking mechanics (it’s not a trick-taker, though), but with also some area control, some dice-chucking combat, some action point mechanisms and even others!

Literally, there are 11 Mechanisms listed on the BGG page.

The “trick-taking” elements are actually really cool and well-implemented, though.

The player with Initiative (the Lead?) plays a card and can do certain actions outlined on the card. They can do actions a number of times equal to the number of action pips on the card (the diamonds under the number).

The available actions for each card are shown (sideways) under the number.

Then, subsequent players have to decide whether they want to Surpass it (play a card with the same suit but higher number), Copy it, or Pivot.

Surpassing it lets you do a number of actions equal to the pips on the card you played.

It also gains you Initiative next round unless somebody Surpasses you or somebody seizes the initiative (more later).

Copying allows you to play any card face-down and then you can take one action using the available ones on the lead card.

Or you can Pivot, which allows you to play a different suit. This can be any card number, and will let you take one action from the suit you played.

You can also “Seize the Initiative” by playing two cards (one card face down). This will allow you to gain Initiative next round and it doesn’t matter what anybody else plays.

However, you will have fewer cards to play during the round if you do this.

The other way to do that is by Surpassing with a 7 card, but that’s only available in a 4-player game.

Of course, the map’s there for you to move your ships on, build cities and ports on, and then blow each other up as much as possible.

Combat is just a series of dice rolled by the attacking player.

Depending on the type of attacking you want to do, you choose one die per ship you’re attacking with, and they can be Assault dice, Skirmish dice, or Raid dice (but only if there’s a building on the planet).

Some dice are riskier than others, as they can do some damage to you as well.

Skirmish dice don’t have that, but then you’ll only do damage to your opponent 50% of the time anyway, so that’s not good!

Finally, to score points you have to fulfill Ambitions (and also declare during card play that you are going to that round).

These Ambitions are basically goals that are out there, and the more often they are scored, the more points they are worth.

Not all of them are based on combat, of course, though that’s how you get Trophies (the Warlord Ambition)

A really cool part of the game is the Court, where you can influence certain cards and then later Secure them (and you capture any opponent envoys that were on the card as well for the Tyrant Ambition!). You can only Secure if you have the most influence, of course, hence the “area majority” mechanism.

These cards will have some bonus, either ongoing or immediate, and can be taken if somebody attacks you and raids you!

The games goes to 30 points or 5 Chapters. Whoever has the most points at the end of that round is the winner!

Of course, there is much more to the game than that, but I don’t want to get too down into the weeds.

The map and pieces are beautiful.

And there’s a campaign mode too!

From what I understand, the campaign mode changes a lot, so keep that in mind if you do decide to take the plunge.

I really would like to play this again, just to see if I still like it. But my first play was very positive.

Akropolis (2022 – Gigamic) – 1 play

Designer: Jules Messaud

Artist: Pauline Detraz

Players: 1-4

Akropolis is a game I’ve heard so much about but have never had the opportunity to play until last month.

It’s a tile-laying, city-building game where you are trying to score points based on the colours of districts that you are joining together.

Scoring only happens if you have a star of that colour in your city, though, and each star will score that colour once.

So you can score it multiple times if you have multiple stars.

Each turn, you’ll be drafting a city tile from the row, having to pay a stone per tile if you want one further down the row.

What’s interesting, though, is that the first player each round will choose two tiles, getting one of the two remaining after everybody else has gone.

Each colour has different scoring and benefits too.

Quarries don’t get you any points, but if you cover them (oh yeah, it’s kind of a 3-D game in that you can cover individual tile districts with other tiles, as below), you get a stone.

Yellow (market) scores for each market that’s alone in your city, not adjacent to any other market. Red (barracks) must be on the edge of your city, with at least 3 sides open with no tiles adjacent to them), and so on.

During the game, there are goals that you are trying to achieve too, each of which will get you one piece of the statue of Athena (which actually is in the expansion, so I guess we played the expansion!)

Each one will give you a bonus one-piece tile for your city, and if you do all four (hence assembling the statue, you get points!

I was the only one to do that!

And I lost miserably, so maybe don’t make that your sole focus?

This is a great game, perfect for a lunch (so maybe I should buy it?). It took 36 minutes, but it’s probably a 20-30 minute game when everybody knows what they are doing.

I really enjoyed it and would love to play again (and it is on Boardgame Arena!)

Castle Combo (2024 – Catch Up Games) – 1 play

Designers: Grégory Grard, Mathieu Roussel

Artist: Stéphane Escapa

Players: 2-5

Castle Combo was one of the big hits of 2024, making many people’s Top 10 list, but I never had the chance to play it until January.

And it’s a pretty good game!

Very light, very quick, mainly just tableau-building and matching VP-scoring goals for each card you play.

Each turn, a player will draft a card from whichever row the Messenger is on. Or you can pay a key to move the Messenger to the other row.

You then place the card in your 3×3 tableau, paying attention to the scoring conditions at the bottom of the card.

For example, the Judge gets 3 points per pair of different-coloured cards in your tableau.

Some of them will give you immediate benefits (the Doctor gives you one gold per green symbol and one gold per yellow symbol that’s already in your tableau when you place it).

Or, if you can’t afford any of the cards (the cost is on the top left, though many cards will give you discounts if they’re in your tableau) or don’t like any of what’s on offer, you can choose a card and flip it face down to get 6 gold and two keys.

Keys are important to move the Messenger, flush a row if you want new cards, or will get you a point each at the end of the game.

Not to mention that some cards will score big off of keys.

The thing to keep in mind is that some of the cards will score based on where they are in your tableau. So make sure you position them correctly!

That’s all there is to the game. It will take you minutes to play, really.

But the tableau-building is kind of cool and it makes another perfect lunch-time game that’s very easy to understand so can be played by non-gamers if you can entice them to your table.

The artwork is a lot of fun too.

It’s also available on BGA and I’ve played it a bunch on there since my first play on the table.

Panda Panda (2023 – Allplay) – 1 play

Designer: 宮野 華也 (Kaya Miyano)

Artist: 別府さい (Sai Beppu)

Players: 2-4

Panda Panda is a (kind of) card-shedding game where you aren’t exactly trying to run out of cards.

Instead, you want to shed all of the chaff from your hand so that your hand only consists of the cards that meet one of the goals!

The cards are really cute panda drawing in different letters/colours.

On your turn, you either draw a card (from the deck or from somebody’s discard) or you discard a card to your discard pile.

Or, at the beginning of your turn, if your hand meets one of the goals, you can declare “panda panda!” and win the round.

Whoever wins two rounds is the winner!

This is a cute game, but hard to win (at least for me) because you have to be so exact in what you keep! And those “A” cards get really annoying.

If somebody discards an “A” card, then everybody has to pass a card from their hand to a neighbour.

You could have the winning hand and then boom! You don’t.

Kind of annoying, but I’ve only played it once so I would definitely like to try it again.

There you go!

A kind of lean month, but there was definitely some quality in there.

February’s looking good with an all-day game day with new people, so that should be interesting.

What new to you games did you play in January?

Let me know in the comments.