New to Me – November 2025

I knew that November was going to be huge for New to Me games, but I didn’t realize just how huge!

Between a convention (which, surprisingly enough, I didn’t play many new to me games at until the day Abi showed up) and multiple Sundays with Abi showing up (are you sensing a theme here?), there ended up being twelve!

Granted, one of them was mine and three others didn’t involve Abi, but still.

That was amazing, but also tough to write about, hence why this is so late.

However, with the huge variety of games on offer, the Cult of the New to Me was made very happy with some of the choices I made.

2017? Oh my god, 2000??????

That seemed to distract them from the fact that all 10 other games were either from 2024 or 2025 (though granted two of them were new editions of old games).

I get the feeling that they think 2000 was almost an eon ago.

With them being successfully sated for another month, rebellion avoided and everything, it was a good month!

This is going to be a very long post, so hold on tight and make sure your underwear stays on!

Without further ado (all of my ado was lost in some disaster somewhere anyway), let’s begin.

Lisboa (2017 – Eagle-Gryphon Games) – 1 play

Designer: Vital Lacerda

Artist: Ian O’Toole

Players: 1-4

Lisboa is another Vital Lacerda game that I have been dying to try for a long time but just haven’t gotten to it.

It’s come out to a few game days but I’ve always been playing something else, or time constraints made me not want to play it at that time.

I finally got a chance to play it at Bottoscon, though, and wow was I missing out!

First, I almost won, which is pretty much unheard of in a complicated game that I am playing for the first time.

(Ok, “almost” is doing a lot of work here, because I was 20 points back, but the others were even further back so I still felt good)

Anyway, Lisboa is about the rebuilding of Lisbon (Portugal) after the great earthquake of 1755, followed by a tsunami created by the earthquake and then multiple fires.

Players are nobles who are trying to use their influence to guide the reconstruction along the lines they want.

You are clearing rubble and using that rubble to help build shops and the like, all of which you will control, of course.

Each round, you will get one turn. You will play one of your cards to the top of your board, to the bottom of your board, or to the middle in order to perform an influence action.

Whichever side of your board you play it on, you will get the action that’s covered by the board and the revealed part will be beneficial to you in the future (or on an ongoing basis).

(of course, I didn’t get any pictures of cards tucked! But you can imagine by looking at the cards and then the player board above).

Using the noble actions will cost you influence based on how many courtiers you have in that noble’s office, but you will get one of his main actions and one of his side actions.

This may allow you to gain decrees (goals) or build shops, or whatever.

If you happen to have gained a favour with that noble, then you can even follow another player’s action with that noble for yourself, cashing in that favour.

That can be quite helpful as well.

Ultimately you’re trying to get shops out and hoping that they meet the goals that you and other players have placed on that row and column in the city.

When you a place a shop, if the column it is on (both purple shops are on the gold column, for example) match the requirement on the row or column, you will score points based on that column’s scoring tile (3 points for the column in the picture above).

Or, if no requirement tile has been placed yet, you will score your already-placed shop(s) when a requirement tile is placed.

(As an aside, the symbol for points is a “wig” on a bust’s head, but to me it looks like a cannon that’s vomiting out molten metal. You’re welcome for that image)

Anyway, you will be doing other things as well, like buying the rubble to help create those shops, or even selling the rubble (if you have access to a ship) to some foreign market. You will be gaining decrees that will help with endgame scoring, and you will be getting tiles from the cathedral that will either give you benefits (you can store four of them) or will get you points during cathedral scoring.

Like any Lacerda game, it’s a very complicated game with very simple actions.

Play a card, do the actions associated with it depending on how you played it.

What, how do I put all this together? Holy crap, my mind’s blown!

Yeah, like that.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this one.

Is it my favourite Lacerda?

Hard to say after just one play, but it’s definitely up there.

The Old King’s Crown (2025 – Eerie Idol Games) – 1 play

Designer: Pablo Clark

Artist: Pablo Clark

Players: 1-4

The Old King’s Crown is a gorgeous game about a king dying and the struggle to take power over his kingdom.

It’s also a hodge-podge of mechanics, with some betting, some area control, a little bit of deck-building, and asymmetric player powers.

It’s all wrapped up in an extremely attractive package!

You will start with a small deck of cards and you will have some of them in your hand.

(your deck has more than 2 cards in it, but that was the picture I took)

You will use these cards in a variety of ways depending on the phase you are playing them in.

First, you will be blind bidding to draft the round’s asymmetric cards that have come out.

These will be “protected” by the card you used to bid. You can hold two and they will be put on your player board.

When it’s your turn to choose (it’s done in order via the strength of the bid card), if somebody has a power you want and your bid card is stronger than their protector, you can steal it instead of taking one that’s on offer!

That’s cruel, but doable.

These are the areas that you hope to have area control over.

You will be putting heralds out in these areas to declare which one you want to gain extra bonuses in.

Though that could be a bluff and you don’t really need that area at all.

Because you are going to be playing cards (facedown) in the card area, along with supporters that you place in an area, to try to take control of them and take their benefits.

You will also occasionally have enough resources to add some additional cards from your available pile to your deck and these will be more powerful.

There are also once-per-game tactics (or one of them you can use three times) that are asymmetric and can really help you along towards victory.

There is a lot to this game, too much to go into here (I’m probably going long already), but it was an interesting game.

It didn’t grab me that much on its first play, however.

I think I would need to play it again to see if it wows me like it seems to be wowing everybody else.

Maybe I just need to try a second time.

Origin Story (2025 – Stonemaier Games) – 1 play

Designers: Jamey Stegmaier, Pete Wissinger

Artist: Clémentine Campardou

Players: 1-5

Origin Story is the rare trick-taking card game that actually has a decent theme around it, executed well!

In the game, each player is a hero who is building up their super powers to become the ultimate superhero (or villain, so let’s just say “being” and be done with it).

You do that over five rounds where players will be playing cards for tricks.

Each player has an initial power, like the above where Victor will gain 1 VP per stamina spent on his power (up to two) if he wins 2 or fewer tricks in the round.

What’s this “stamina” stuff?

At the beginning of each round, each player will draw three super power cards and add one to their character.

You then will also gain a stamina (in addition to what you started with) to power up one or more of these powers.

You will never have enough stamina to fully power every card, so you have to pick and choose each round what you want to concentrate on (and you can do that after seeing your hand).

Then the tricks start!

It follows normal trick-taking rules with a must-follow suit mechanic, with one suit being “trump” and taking tricks if they are played off-suit.

At the beginning of the round, after seeing your cards, you also decide if you’re going to be a Hero or a Villain this round.

If a Villain, you don’t want to take any tricks and then you get four points.

Otherwise you will get one point per trick that you win.

In Round 3, an event will happen that will change everything for that round.

It can be pretty devastating (or lucrative) for somebody.

In our game, the event was that somebody (it ended up being me but I don’t remember why) had to win more tricks than everybody else combined (or something like that).

If I didn’t, everybody else got 5 points (or some number).

My hand was shit, so there was no way I was going to do it.

In the 5th round, you reveal which of your two true super hero abilities you’re going to choose, and the results from that choice will be huge (except that they’ll be huge for everybody most likely, so it’s not really a catch-up mechanism).

I liked this game but it just seemed a little off. Maybe it was my hand (which was usually bad), but I do know that I did not like the way events were handled at all.

There’s a fairly full deck (I don’t know how many exactly) of event cards and you only use one during the game?

And that one could be devastating or really give somebody a boost?

It’s way too swingy to be a one-time affair.

That being said, I guess doing it multiple times leads to the possibility of somebody really getting ahead (or behind!) if it always happens to them.

I don’t know, but I do know that I didn’t like how it’s implemented now.

I’d like to try this again, though, just to see if my opinions change after another play.

Magical Athlete (2025 – CMYK) – 2 plays

Designers: Richard Garfield, Takashi Ishida

Artist: Angela Kirkwood

Players: 2-6

Magical Athlete is an old game that has now been revamped and rereleased by CMYK with the help of Richard Garfield.

It’s hilarious, because “roll and move” has been a long-criticized mechanic for games, where you are rolling a die to move around a board.

Totally random, right?

Let’s add asymmetric powers for your character.

How does that change things?

It makes a winner of a game!

Ostensibly, in Magical Athlete, you are drafting four racers to then pit against others in a race around an oval board.

There are four races that you will be running, and in each one you’ll be choosing which of your drafted racers to run (though they can only run once).

They all have powers that will make the game crazy and chaotic.

And oh so fun!

Then players start rolling the die to move their racer around the board.

Each racer will throw a spanner in the works, though.

The Skipper is a hilarious one.

Any time somebody rolls a 1 (including his player!), he goes next.

There were many times where the person to my left rolled a 1, meaning I went next and turn order just continued from there.

She was very happy!

The Coach gives everybody on his space (including himself, which means always for him) a +1 to their move roll.

That can bring even more chaos because if he lands one space from the finish line, there are times he can’t win!

He always has at least 2 movement and to cross the finish line, you have to hit it exactly if “The Stickler” is in play. If you end up in the last space, you can’t win!

One person on BGG responded to my question about this to say they had a game where literally everybody was in the last space with the Coach and the Stickler was in play.

The Stickler just waltzed to the win because nobody else could move forward.

In a “serious” game, that would be almost sacrilegious.

In something like Magical Athlete?

It’s part of the fun!

Races don’t last that long and, even with a 4-race game, our game took 45 minutes.

Perfect for a lunch or something!

This was a great break between serious games at our convention this month, and I can see it being a big hit no matter what the setting.

This one is definitely a winner.

Oddland (2025 – Allplay) – 1 play

Designer: Dan Schumacher

Artist: Cam Kendall

Players: 1-5

Oddland was not really a big hit for us, partially because I think we played it wrong.

You are basically cooperatively creating a habitat plateau of cards, except that it’s not really cooperative.

Instead, each player has one piece of each species, and you are trying to create the best habitat for your own species.

Each species will score based on its criteria on its card.

On your turn, you will place one land card down so that it is adjacent to at least one square on an already placed card (or, you can cover up to two squares on a card).

You then have to place one of your remaining species tokens on it.

As you’re playing land cards, you want to make sure you have a good place to place one of your remaining species but also want to improve the habitat of ones you already have out there.

Or make the habitat for one of your opponent’s worse.

We ended up playing with the expansion that has extra species, and you’re supposed to remove some (which we didn’t), so we did not play this in the most optimum manner.

That being said, even with that error, there was really nothing in this game that made me want to play it further.

It’s just way too chaotic with not enough benefit to that chaos. Chaotic games can be fun, but not in this manner.

Fromage (2024 – Road to Infamy Games) – 1 play

Designers: Matthew O’Malley, Ben Rosset

Artist: Pavel Zhovba

Players: 1-4

Fromage is a game about cheesemaking!

And yes, they are very blessed.

Fromage has a really interesting system of placing your three types of workers.

The board is a Lazy Susan that will turn at the end of each round once each player has gone (which is simultaneous, and thank Brian for that!)

When a section of the board is in front of you, you will place one “worker” to gather resources and one worker in the Cheese section of your board that will hopefully get you points (if you want, you can only do one of those actions if you’d rather save the worker, though).

The strength of your action will determine the direction your worker is facing.

When the board rotates, the first thing you will do is take back any workers who are facing you (like the blue one on the left above).

Basically, for resource gathering, if you you only take one resource, you will get it back next turn. Two resources will be two turns to get them back. Three resources will be three turns.

As far as making cheeses, though, the type of worker matters because each worker does a specific type of cheese.

Also, depending on the cheese age, it will be 1,2, or 3 turns to get them back as well.

Age 1 (pointing right) will get you the worker back next turn. Age 2 (facing away from you) will get it back in two turns.

Age 3 (facing to the left) will get it back to you in 3 turns.

That’s the really cool thing about Fromage: you are trying to make sure you have at least one worker to place each turn, but sometimes what you need to take won’t let you do that.

Each area on the turntable also scores different types of cheeses differently.

The Villes area above scores you area majority points depending on who has the most cheese for a specific region.

The Bistro (way above) scores you based on the colour of the tray that you have cheeses on, combined with how many tables where your cheese is in both spaces.

You also have a player board where you can use some of your resources to do various things.

The cows will give you access to certain types of cheeses without placing a worker, which is really cool!

But you have to get cows to do that.

There are also cheese goals (which I neglected to get a picture of) that will score based on how many you’ve completed (which is on the bottom right of your player board).

This is a very quick game with some real meat to it, at least in the sense that you have to plan out your actions carefully so you are scoring points in a good way but not depriving yourself of workers.

I like this one a lot and it would be a great lunch time game (except I’m not sure how much our lunch time people would like it).

It’s definitely one I would play again, but it is very light so be aware of that.

Ivanhoe (2000 – GMT Games) – 1 play

Designers: Reiner Knizia, Andy Lewis

Artists: Juan Carlos Arenas, François Bruel, Rodger B. MacGowan, Kurt Miller, Mark Simonitch

Players: 2-5

Ivanhoe is a simple Knizia classic card game from a long time ago (25 years!) where you are basically playing cards in an attempt to win 5 different tournaments in medieval…Europe? (Not necessarily England, though it is called Ivanhoe, so maybe?)

Each hand is a tournament and the first player to play puts out a card of a certain colour.

All other players must follow that colour, unless they play a colourless action card.

When you play, you have to build your played cards to a total that’s higher than what’s out there already (or white, colourless cards can also be used).

If you have a 4 out there and somebody plays a 5, you can just play a 2 to put you at 6.

Sometimes you can play an action card which will let you do something, either maybe take an opponent’s last card played and put it in your display (which will definitely increase it!) or maybe even force them to discard it so that you can then play a smaller card that will still let you beat their number.

Some action cards will even let you change the colour of the tournament.

That can come in handy because if you win one tournament from each colour (purple is a colour, but if you win another purple, that can be any colour you want it to be), you win!

So if somebody’s leading a blue tournament and that’s all they need to win, changing the colour will mean that winning the tournament is useless to them.

This game is very fast (our 3-player game lasted 25 minutes) and it definitely has an interesting card play mechanic.

It’s not Knizia’s best, but it’s pretty solid.

I’m Out (aka 13 Leaves) – (2025 – CMYK) – 1 play

Designer: Masato Uesugi

Artists: SMLXL, Elina Zhelyazkova

Players: 3-6

I’m Out is a card-shedding game, really quick, where you are playing cards either lower or higher than the cards that are on the table.

You can play to the left or right depending on whether you have a higher or lower card.

You can even play multiples of the same number!

That means that anybody else (including you) must play the same number of cards to the left or right of that set in order to play.

Above, you must play three 2s in order to play

If you can’t play, you pass and take one of the available cards in the sequence.

This may make it easier for others to play!

They then can’t play for the rest of the round.

Once all but one player has passed, players can start playing cards again in a new sequence.

The game ends when somebody has played their last card.

The cards are really bright and pretty

This is a really light, fluffy game.

Nothing to really recommend it but also nothing to go against it.

We played at 3 players, so maybe it would be better at more? It plays up to 6.

Anyway, if you get the chance to play it, try it!

Tag Team (2025 – Scorpion Masqué) – 1 play

Designers: Gricha German, Corentin Lebrat

Artist: Xavier Gueniffey Durin

Players: 2

Tag Team is a 2-player battler that emulates those old Street Fighter games, where you have two warriors fighting against two other warriors in a match to the death!

Ok, maybe just defeat. Video games couldn’t be that brutal (he says, forgetting Mortal Kombat and somebody’s spine being ripped out)

Each player starts with two fighters who are on a team against the other player.

Each fighter has a starting card, and you choose in what order those two cards are in your deck.

You play through battles, turning over the top card of your deck and facing them off against your opponent.

Maybe the card you played has a shield and your opponent’s has an attack?

Yay! You defended against that attack!

But if you both have an attack, then you both do damage, to the fighter whose card has just been used (that’s your “active” fighter that turn).

The cool thing is that this is a deck-building game, but only in a sense.

At the end of each combat round, you will draw three cards from the combined deck of your two fighters (so 20 cards, 10 for each fighter) and add one to your deck.

However, you never shuffle that deck.

Instead, you decide where you are going to put that card in your deck.

During the next fight, your deck will play out in the same order as previously, except now there is that extra card in it.

Each fighter has health and as they take damage, they will lose it.

If a fighter is KO’d, then the game is over. Doesn’t matter if your other fighter is at full strength.

Each fighter has special abilities that will trigger off of some of their cards.

Ching Shih has ships that will increase in power, affecting how some of her cards work.

Terror of the Seas (above) will do something depending on how many ships she has in play.

This game really intrigued me with how much the Dice Tower people were talking about it, and then me watching a couple of different playthroughs.

It’s an “auto-battler,” which means you’re just turning over the top card of your deck and doing something with it.

But the way you build that deck, by placing your card wherever you want in it, is just so cool.

I have now bought this game and it’s only awaiting the Combat Commander 20th Anniversary set to arrive and ship from Boardgame Bliss before I have it in my hot little hands.

Until then, it’s Boardgame Arena plays, which unfortunately are not optimal.

The game play is great there, but it’s really hard to track how your cards are interacting with your opponents, so it’s hard to determine just where you should put that newfound shield card (to name one example).

It is still a great game, though.

Assyria 2nd Edition (2025 – Garphill Games) – 1 play

Designers: S J Macdonald, Emanuele Ornella, Shem Phillips

Artist: Sam Phillips

Players: 1-4

Assyria is a game that was originally published in 2009, with the folks at Garphill Games doing a major update with the designer (Emanuele Ornella) to bring out the 2nd Edition on Kickstarter this last year.

It’s now in my hot little hands and we actually managed to get it played!

In an almost brutal 3 hours, not counting the teach!

And I don’t know why!

It’s supposed to be a 90-minute game. While these play times are usually wrong, they’re not usually that wrong.

Which tells me that a full 4-player game where nobody has played it before is not optimal!

Anyway, I hope to get it to the table again with a much shorter play time.

This is a game where you are shepherding your civilization, trying to build ziggurats that will stand the test of time (because your people’s huts certainly won’t!), all while paying tribute to neighbouring civilizations, digging wells, and worshiping the gods.

You are establishing huts out on the board, huts that will either score you points or give you a number of camels to spend on actions during your turn.

The way of establishing turn order in the game is very cool, as you are bidding on it, even at the beginning of the game.

In previously-established turn order, you are bidding on cards (two food cards and an action card). The higher cards aren’t as good (except the action cards, which are completely random) but they do mean that you will go first in the subsequent phases until the next round.

One thing that’s been added in the new edition is that there are three slots in each row. If you go for a slot that doesn’t cost you any points, then you could be outbid for that row by somebody else. The 1-point slot can be outbid by the 3-point slot, but that last one can’t be outbid.

Even scarier is that you have to pay the VP to go there.

So if you go to the 1-VP space, you have to pay the point. Even if somebody then pays 3 VP to outbid you!

Each round will have a certain number of huts that you have to put on the board that round, though you can put any in your personal supply out as well.

However, you have to spend those food cards to feed them based on the hex they are in.

You can see the different food costs for each space in the picture above.

Once you place your huts and have fed them, then you score points for the huts and ziggurat pieces off of the rivers, and you get camels to use for actions from your huts on the rivers.

Your player board covers pretty much everything you can do, including all of the ziggurat pieces that you can build, the benefits building each piece gives you, a way to track your camels as you’re spending them, and so on.

During your turn, using camels, you’ll be building ziggurat pieces, worshiping, and paying tribute to neighbouring civilizations, which will change each round!

The top civilization will disappear at the end of the round, the rest move up, and a new one will go on the bottom.

These civilizations will give you a bonus action possibility when you pay tribute to them.

The game goes over 6 rounds, with a flood after round 3 that will remove all the huts on the river (even if you’ve been able to feed them all this time).

Hopefully you’ll be building some ziggurats and wells, because depending on your worship level, you will get points for those!

Plus, ziggurats will never be removed and will score each turn as well as after the floods.

You gotta get those out!

I did mostly enjoy this one, but I need another play or two just to see if I like it and if we can get the play time down.

I think we had a lot of “WTF are we supposed to do?” feelings as we were going through, really slowing down the game.

Definitely want to give this one another shot.

Sanctuary (2025 – Capstone Games/Feuerland Spiele) – 1 play

Designer: Mathias Wigge

Artists: Dennis Lohausen, Christof Tisch, Felix Wermke

Players: 1-5

Fun variation on Ark Nova, but you can just check out my First Impressions post to see how I really feel about it.

It’s fun!

Courtisans (2024 – Catch Up Games) – 2 plays

Designers: Romaric Galonnier, Anthony Perone

Artist: Noëmie Chevalier

Players: 2-5

Courtisans is kind of a stock market game without the stock market, if that makes sense.

Instead of stocks being up or down, it’s royal influence being up or down.

Each player will have three cards in their hand. They will play one to their own tableau, one to the center, and one to another player’s tableau.

What’s the “stock market” mechanism?

Each family (colour/type of card) is represented in the centre row, with cards played either to the bottom or to the top of it.

If the majority of cards (keeping in mind that some cards are “+2” so represent two cards) are above, then that family is in ascendance and will get you 1 point for each card you have.

If the majority is on the bottom, they are in decline and each card you have is -1 point.

Some cards have special abilities.

As I mentioned, some are x2 cards, so count twice.

Some are assassins, letting you kill any card in the area where you play it (except if that other card has a shield, in which case it can’t be killed).

If you play a “mask” card, then it goes face-down in whatever area you put it in, meaning nobody knows what it is until the end of the game.

Once all players are out of cards, you see who’s in ascendance, who’s in decline, count your cards for each type, and then look at your bonus cards that you chose at the beginning of the game.

Those will give you points too.

Whoever has the most points is the winner!

This is a very quick filler game with some really interesting decisions.

We played twice because it was so quick. The first game, I didn’t really know what I was doing and got negative points.

The second game, I won with 13 points!

I’m not sure how often I would want to play this, but it is pretty cool, a stock market game without the stocks.

I kinda liked it.

The artwork is truly beautiful, which definitely helps.

There we go!

Almost 5200 words later, I am exhausted.

So I will just say I hope you enjoyed that. Let me know whether you’ve played any of these, or what other new to me games that you played in November.

Next month (or this month, I guess, since we’re in the middle of December) will be much lighter, I guarantee it.

Until then, adieu!