New to Me – October 2025

October was a really lean month for new to me games, with only two getting done!

That will change in November with Bottoscon coming up, but October was almost a wasteland.

However, the Cult of the New to Me was happy because, while one of them was a brand new 2025 game, the other one was from 2013.

That’s back when people were writing on parchment scrolls, isn’t it?

(of course, it’s been reimplemented this year as another title, but who wants to play that, am I right?)

The cult was so happy with me (they could only be happier if both games had been over 10 years old) that they bought me a new car!

I don’t think any of them are experts on cars, but the thought was nice.

Or maybe that’s what they think of me as a cult leader?

I may have to ponder that one.

And while I do that…

There, that’s done.

Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was stolen to build some canal anyway), let’s begin!

Bruges (2013 – Z-Man Games) – 1 play

Designer: Stefan Feld

Art: Michael Menzel

Players: 2-4

We start the month with an old Feld game!

That definitely made the Cult happy.

As with many Feld games, this creatively uses dice to give a variety of actions that players can do on their turn in order to gain as many points as they can.

Theme?

What theme?

Ok, you are trying to build canals in (or around?) the city, building houses for prominent people to stay in and give you more prestige, increase your reputation, etc.

The action selection system is actually really interesting.

Each player starts the round with 5 cards.

On your turn, you will play a card for an action of some kind, and there are a bunch (all of them are shown on the right side of the card)

The action has to be associated with the color of the card.

For the Charcoal Burner (blue lower right) card, you could do the following.

You could just gain two blue workers, which could be handy in the future.

You could gain money equal to the value of the blue die (in the above dice picture, that would only be one gold, so probably not a good thing to do).

When the dice are rolled, each player gets a “threat” marker of each colour in which a 5 or 6 was rolled.

You could play the Charcoal Burner to get rid of a blue threat marker.

You are also trying to build canals around the city, stretching from your starting area in both directions.

So if the blue player played a red card, they could spend 3 guilders to build the next canal space.

Or, you could spend a blue worker to play the card as a building to house one of your other personality cards (played on a later turn).

Alternatively, if you already have a house down (colour does not matter), you could pay the price on the card (3 in the case of the Charcoal Burner) to place him in that house.

These personality cards will give you either a free action (assuming you have a proper worker), or an ongoing effect, endgame scoring, or maybe even an immediate effect.

They’re also worth points at the end of the game.

Each round, when the dice are rolled, players can also spend money (dependent on the dice rolls) to increase their reputation in the city.

At the beginning of each round, players all draw up to 5 cards if they don’t already have 5. There are two roughly equal decks (at least to start with) and you can see what colour each card is before you draw it.

So you can choose your colours, though you won’t know the personality on each card until you draw it.

But if you need to build a red canal, or get red workers, or whatever, then only the colour matters so you do get some agency in what you draw.

The game ends at the end of the round after both decks are empty (there are cards removed from the game which can be used to draw further cards if needed).

Then players tabulate all of the points they received from a bunch of different places (classic Feld!) and whoever has the most is the winner!

There is, of course, a bunch I left out above. Like each round checking who has the majority of canals, people, and reputation, how the threats can affect you if you get too many, the boats that come out to be used as a free action, etc.

But overall, this is a perfectly legitimate Feld game.

It’s fine, very Feldian, though maybe not quite as much of a point salad game as his games can be otherwise.

It’s not of the “every action will get you points” genre that he’s known for.

I liked it fine, wouldn’t mind playing it again.

But it’s not one I’m clamoring to.

Fliptoons (2025 – Thunderworks Games) – 1 play

Designers: Jordy Adan, Renato Simões

Artist: Diego Sá

Players: 1-4

Fliptoons is a deck-building game, of sorts.

It’s not one where you’ll be playing all of the cards in your deck and then reshuffling, though.

Let me explain.

You start with a deck of 6 Toon cards.

Each round, you will shuffle your deck and play out 6 (or sometimes more, depending) cards in a 2×3 grid in front of you.

Then you total up the “fame” (money, essentially) that you earn. On your turn (done in the order of who has the least fame on up), you have two actions. You can buy a card with the fame you have, or you can spend some of that fame to dismiss (i.e banish) a card that’s in your tableau.

You want to be getting rid of your starters.

The cards that you buy will be added to your deck, but then each round you will be shuffling the entire deck and dealing out six cards.

None of this “play until your deck is empty and then reshuffle” crap.

These cards you buy can have a bunch of different effects and all of them have the capability of giving you more fame than your starters do.

Some cards will force you to flip a card in your tableau (making it useless that round), but other cards can’t be flipped even if another card tells you to (like the Rabbit above).

That’s a win! Because you get to ignore the Flip requirement and still get the effect from the card.

Others have other effects, like the Rabbit (again) who is played on top of another Rabbit or on top of a previously-flipped card, meaning you get to deal out more cards.

Rounds continue like this until somebody deals out a tableau that gets them 30 or more fame.

Once that happens, cards are purchased as usual, and one more tableau is dealt out.

Whoever has the most fame in their final tableau is the winner!

Whoever triggered the endgame does get a card that will give them extra fame in the final round.

That’s actually the really cool part about this game.

It doesn’t matter who triggers the endgame (except them getting 3 extra fame).

If they shuffle their deck and deal out a really crappy tableau in that final round, they will lose.

Ostensibly you’re building a deck that will maximize your fame no matter in what order the cards come out, but sometimes they may come out in the exact wrong order and actually not give you as much as you might have gotten otherwise.

As long as you’re keeping pace in building your deck, you can steal the win.

That’s actually what happened in last Sunday’s game (our second play, but since it was in November, it doesn’t count for this post). Abi triggered it but his last tableau was terrible compared to mine.

The game is very fast (our game took 30 minutes), so it would be perfect for a work lunch.

It’s random as hell, so keep that in mind.

But it’s just plain hilarious.

I really liked this one and would definitely play it again.

Wow, that was short.

But still fulfilling!

One game I wouldn’t mind playing again and one that I really enjoyed.

What new to you games did you play in October?

Let me know in the comments.