New to Me – April 2026

This post took me a lot less time than last month’s did.

That’s because there were no conventions in April!

Instead of 10+ new to me games, there are only four in this month’s post, but they are all pretty good!

The Cult of the New to Me was very happy to see a 1999 game on there.

So happy that they didn’t seem to care that the other three games were from 2025 and 2026.

One of them actually came into my office and said…

But he had that look in his eye like I’d better keep this up.

Good thing that the first new to me game I played in May was from 2017!

I think I’ll be safe next month too.

(I know what you’re thinking…the head of a cult has an office? Welcome to the 2020s)

Anyway, enough about all of that.

You’re here for the games, right?

Without further ado (all of my ado was sold on the currency market for a small amount of bitcoin anyway), let’s begin!

Money! (1999 – Allplay) – 2 plays

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artists: Anne Heidsieck, Paul Niemeyer, Cristal Portau, Marek Szyszko, Franz Vohwinkel (almost one artist per currency!)

Players: 2-5

This has come out in a new edition from Allplay, and that might be the version I have. I’m not sure. My friend who gave it to me would know.

Money! is an interesting set collection card game where you are spending cards that your collecting in order to get other cards that you are collecting, making sure that what you spend isn’t giving up more points than you are taking!

It’s somewhat the same concept as Trinket Trove is (though this game is much older), or even, to a lesser extent, the various Fantasy Realms games (a review of the newest game is coming up soon).

In all of these games, you have cards in your hand that you are collecting, but you’re also bidding to take cards from the table (that’s why Fantasy Realms isn’t a 100% version of this mechanic, as in that one you’re just drawing a card and discarding a card rather than bidding).

In Money, you are collecting some of seven major currencies in the world, all beautifully illustrated by…a large number of great artists!

In classic Knizia fashion, the scoring in this game is unique and will dictate which currency cards you’re willing to give up and which ones you aren’t.

That’s because collecting 100 value or less in a currency will get you zero points.

Even having 110 – 190 will only get you limited points, as you have to subtract 100 from the score.

It’s only if you can get 200 or more that you will get full value for them.

Gold and silver are face value, so that’s always valuable.

You will also get 100 points if you have a full set of 20s or 30s in a currency (even if you don’t get the actual value of them) or if you have a set of three gold or silver cards.

How do you do this?

Each round, there will be two sets of four currency cards each put out on the table.

Each player will secretly bid cards from their hand (possibly including a worthless “0” card, which is there to maybe make others believe your bid is higher than it is).

Whoever has the highest value bid gets to choose first. They will either take one of the two sets on offer, or maybe they’ll want somebody else’s bid more! So they can take that, making that bid’s player the next one to choose (since they now have the highest bid).

If you take a set, you replace it with yours, so you could be replacing four cards with one or two.

Those sets are now available to choose for the other players.

If you are near the bottom of the bidding order and there is nothing you want out there, you can just take your bid back.

Nobody will judge you.

The sets are filled up to 4 again (keeping the cards that were already there) and the game is over after the round where the sets can’t be filled anymore (which will likely result in at least one smaller set to choose from).

Then you just score the currencies in your hand and whoever has the highest points is the winner.

This was a really interesting game and for a random card game, the decisions can be agonizing.

You’re keeping dollars, but your hand is almost full of dollars and gold/silver. What are you going to bid with?

Having just one currency is not likely to win you the game, unless you dominate it and have every one of them (which I believe is something like 500 points).

The artwork on the currency cards is wonderful and it’s a very quick game. Our two games took 15-25 minutes each.

I’ll get it played a couple more times and then hopefully review it.

If a 1999 game needs a review.

But this one is good!

Secret Societies (2026 – Garphill Games) – 1 play

Designer: SJ Macdonald

Artist: Julie Pain

Players: 2-5

Another bidding game!

This one is a bit more intense than Money and also takes a lot longer.

I’m sure it will be faster once we get used to it, but the box says 90-120 minutes and our first 4-player game took upwards of 3 hours.

But it was interesting!

The conceit is that each player is a secret society, vying to take over the world by having influence in a whole bunch of different things and countries.

Over 7 rounds, players are bidding on a set of country cards that are on offer, using their own society’s bidding cards.

Some societies have special bidding rules or cards, but mostly it’s just the cards themselves.

Each player can make two bids in the round, on the same or different cards, and one of them can be face down if you wish to hide it.

You can also add your own gold to the bid, though that gold is lost whether or not you win.

You will regain the card if you lose the bid.

You then add the card(s) you win to your tableau, either at the top or at the bottom, getting a certain resource (either land or industry) depending on which side you place it on.

After all of that, and after any events that might be taking place that round, each player simultaneously spends resources to grow their secret empire, whether it’s to build improvements or investments or whatever.

Each of these costs population, or land, or industry (and many times a combination of two of those).

You’re also working to get sets of different coloured countries on your top and/or bottom, but you’re also trying to get sets of the same so that you can get monuments, which will also get you points.

When you have 3 black cards, for example, you get the black 3 monument…if nobody else has first! (though you can then try to get one of the other black ones by getting more of that colour, as you can only get one of each colour).

At the end of the 7 rounds, just total up all your points and see who wins!

The bidding mechanic in this one is really interesting, where for most of your bidding cards, you get a little bit of compensation for not winning the bid, the fact that bids are face-down, and that you can add gold to it so people will have at least some idea of how much you’re willing to pay.

There are 11 different societies, so all of the asymmetry will make for some really interesting games.

I was intrigued by this one and tried to get it to the table at least a second time, but was unsuccessful.

That will change soon, I’m sure.

In the meantime, here’s an auction game that I don’t actually mind. And one other player also said he hates auction games and he really enjoyed this one.

So take that for what it’s worth.

Recall (2025 – Frostbite Games) – 1 play

Designers: Helge Meissner, Kristian Amundsen Østby, Kjetil Svendsen, Anna Wermlund

Artists: Gjermund Bohne, Reese Keefe

Players: 1-4

Not an auction game!

Recall is in the same family of games as Revive (my #29 games of all time this year), but there are definitely enough differences to make this a distinctive game.

It’s still after some apocalypse and you’re having to rediscover the land and everything.

But this time the only tracks you’re moving up are on the board itself.

You are essentially exploring and settling lands, trying to accumulate knowledge and culture.

Instead of tech tracks, you are instead moving up knowledge tracks, which will give you benefits when you reach certain levels, and will score at the end of the game.

The action selection system in this game is really amazing.

It’s not card-based like in Revive, but instead based on using keycards to activate action spaces on your board.

You start with two white ones, but you will accumulate more throughout the game, and those are worth points!

Your player board is going to be where you track everything, along with the actions that you will be using your keycards for.

The main thing is those columns of buildings that you will be spending actions and resources to build onto the board.

Building them will not only get you stuff and points during the game, but instant bonuses as well, like another keycard or resources, or movement up a knowledge track.

There’s always something.

It’s just a really intricate game with so much to talk about that this overview won’t do it justice.

You can even upgrade your actions when you get to a certain point total!

Which upgrade comes out at which point total is totally random, so you may end up having an improvement come out last that would have been really useful earlier in the game.

Them’s the breaks.

The other interesting aspect of the game is reclaiming your keycards and gaining income.

Unlike other games, income is not a “get everything” kind of thing.

When putting out buildings, you will be opening income spots, so you may have a bunch near the end of the game.

You get all of your used keycards back when you take the Recall action, but you can only activate income spots equal to the number of keycards you took back.

So you don’t get them all! And you can only activate each one once, so you can’t get one of them multiple times.

It adds some depth to the game as you have to decide which income you actually need for your future turns.

And also it makes Recalling early just to free up an action space a bit less appealing, because that will limit your income.

Just to add to all of this are the in-game scoring cards.

Not that you score them in-game.

No, at the end of certain rounds, each player has to decide which of the two goal cards they are going to score extra at the end of the game.

You are committing to that one, but you also get the bonus of whichever card you choose.

So choosing the right one above will get you a knowledge track bump, while choosing the left one will get you 2 points.

What did I mean by “score extra?”

All players will score all cards. What you are committing to is scoring the bottom section of the card.

That’s the “extra” I’m talking about.

For example, everybody will score their keycard values (the ones you earn will have point values).

However, if you choose that goal, you will also get 2 points per each keycard that you have earned (not the two you started with).

There is definitely a lot of stuff here that I haven’t touched on, but this is definitely a great game.

It’s only been one play, but I’m still more partial to Revive.

But I would definitely like to play this one again.

Eternal Decks (2025 – Tricktakers Games) – 1 play

Designer: Hiroken

Artist: MUJUNSHA

Players: 1-4

Finally, we get to a cooperative card game that’s kind of deckbuilding, but you’ll only go through your deck once, and hopefully not to the end!

If you can’t take an action (which is playing a card), the game ends.

It’s also a modular game in that you are including different sets of cards, depending on what stage you are playing.

You’re going to be playing a card to areas of the board (or discarding a card to take an action), and these things follow certain rules.

Playing the card to a row means you have to follow the rules on the left side of it.

The middle row, the card has to be a 1,2,3,4, 8 or 9.

And it can’t be the same number or colour that was played before it.

You also can’t talk about what you have in your hand, so you have to indicate (perhaps) where you want to play next, to tell everybody else not to play there (unless they have to, or if they have something that could be even better).

The reason for these rows is that the player who plays the last card in a row will get a new stack of cards tied to one of the Eternals in the game.

This will build up your deck and make it so you can remain in the game.

Each Eternal’s card will tell you what cards are in its stack, including their colour and if there are any wild cards.

It will also have a penalty that’s in effect going forward, unless you take the discard action to nullify it.

The Medusa, for example, will not allow red or red/green cards to be played.

The Ghost prevents 5s and 7s from being played.

You can nullify these with discard actions.

For example, you can discard three equal numbered cards to cancel one.

Or three unequal ones.

But you can only do each one once!

It will make your life easier, though.

If you can’t do anything else, you can play any card to the River. Once the River fills up, it’s emptied and you get a bonus card.

If there are no bonus cards left, though, then the game ends!

Essentially you are trying to achieve four tasks (stars in the first stage and keys after that) before you reach a point where there are no more River bonus cards or if somebody can’t take an action.

There are six stages in the game, all with different card layouts and stuff.

We only played the first level, but it was a lot of fun!

Abi really likes this game, as it got played multiple times at Terminal City Table Top Convention, and after playing it, I can see why.

It’s worth taking a look at!

There you have it.

A much shorter post than March, but some pretty good games!

What new to you games did you play in April?

Let me know in the comments.