New to Me – May 2026

There were no conventions attended in May, but there was a 14-hour games marathon where a bunch of games were played.

So I knew this would be a lengthy post!

This month, I actually played more new to me games than I did in March after a 3-day convention, which really surprised me.

Part of that was the marathon (six), but there were also a couple of games days where multiple ones came out.

And even one work lunch!

It is!

Even better for my standing as leader of the Cult of the New to Me, many of them were older.

There were even two which weren’t from this century.

Even the ones from this century, there were games from 2008, 2013, 2017, 2018, and more.

There was a lot of partying going on at cult headquarters.

Don’t worry, I didn’t let them get too out of hand.

So without further ado (all of my ado was destroyed in an airplane crash due to bad dice rolling anyway), let’s begin!

Sky Team (2023 – Scorpion Masqué) – 4 plays

Designer: Luc Rémond

Artists: Eric Hibbeler, Adrien Rives

Players: 2

A wonderful “no talking” 2-player game about trying to land a plane.

Played so much this month, I actually reviewed it!

Monopoly Deal – Card Game (2008 – Hasbro) – 2 plays

Designer: Katharine Chapman

Artist: None credited on BGG, but most of it is from the original game, so maybe lost to time?

Players: 2-5

This is a game that a relatively new coworker brought to the office as she was invited to join our lunch time games group.

The highlight of Monopoly Deal: Card Game is that it’s very short and quite viciously funny.

The downside is that while it is all that, it’s also not very exciting.

Players are dealt cards that will either be property cards, money cards, or action cards.

On your turn, you can take up to three actions.

You can play a property card – for free!

You can play a money card (or action card for money, like the below action card which is $3 million) down onto the table.

This is money that you can use to pay rents and other things.

If money is in your hand, it’s worthless.

Or you can play an action card.

Action cards can do anything from charging the entire table rent on one of your property sets, to outright stealing property!

The idea behind the game is to get sets of the same colour properties.

Because as soon as somebody has three sets, the game is over and they win.

Red has three properties in it, but I was only able to get two of them.

However, as with real Monopoly, the more of the same set you have, the more you can charge when you collect rent.

This game has a lot of laughs, and just like Cover Your Assets, if you’re not laughing as somebody sticks the knife into you and steals your stuff, then you’re probably in the wrong business.

I do worry a bit about what happens if you run out of cards before somebody wins, which almost happened to us both times we played at 5 players.

There’s no rule that says what to do, but unless somebody had to discard down because they had too many cards in their hand, the only cards available to reshuffle are the action cards. All the property and money is out on the table already.

It’s not a game that I would request much, but it’s fun if you’re roped into it.

Circus Flohcati (1998 – Amigo) – 2 plays

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artists: Heiko Günther, JBJ, Yusuke Mamada, Łukasz Silski, Franz Vohwinkel

Players: 2-5

The first game from the 1990s on this list!

And my first Knizia this month too.

Circus Flohcati is a push your luck card game.

In fact, the card game with that name is actually about a flea circus, but we played the Japanese version which is about summer activities.

That is…quite the change.

Anyway, the game play is the same.

Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures!

So here’s one from Boardgame Geek.

You have a hand of cards and you can either take one of the cards in the discard row to add to your hand, or you can flip the top card and add it to the row.

If the colour is the same as a card in the row, you bust! Turn’s over.

If it’s not, you can then make that choice again. Flip or take.

If you have three of the same number in your hand, then you can place it down as a trio.

At the end of the game, each trio is worth 10 points.

The game ends when either the last card is drawn from the deck, or somebody has at least one card of each activity type in their hand.

If you have the latter, you declare it and you get 10 extra points.

Then, each player scores the highest value card of each colour/activity and adds up their points.

Thus, playing a trio of sevens could cost you points, since instead of 7 points apiece, you would be getting just 10 points.

But trios of lower cards could be pretty good, and placing trios protects those cards from being stolen by one of the action cards that could come up.

This was another fast game that we played twice (and I didn’t get a picture either time…what is up with that?).

It’s a good one!

I’d definitely play it again.

The artwork on the Japanese version is very appealing and it’s just a colourful game.

Quick and easy to explain, yet also interesting.

Auztralia (2018 – SchilMil Games) – 1 play

Designer: Martin Wallace

Artist: James Colmer

Players: 1-4

When Auztralia was first announced, I was really eager to play it because while the game itself didn’t wow me or my game group, I was a big fan of the concept of A Study in Emerald.

Auztralia’s theme is that the Cthulhu monsters, defeated in that game (though maybe they weren’t????), have run to their secret base in Australia, which is beginning to develop its rail network and starting to bump into these monstrosities.

The game has an interesting concept because it is kind of a rail game, combined with fighting monsters and building up infrastructure on the board.

It’s also kind of, in a way, semi-cooperative.

Not really, but slightly.

That’s because there are monsters on the board, and you can contribute to defeating them (if you attack but have to retreat before it’s dead and somebody else finishes it off) and in the sense that if somebody’s home port is ransacked by the monsters, everybody loses.

And the Old Ones actually will score points as well, so hopefully the players will do better than them!

Your player board shows the actions that you can take on your turn.

These will cost resources and time and let you do things such as build two railroad tracks (more expensive if any of them go through mountains), mine a space that you have a track connected to, hire a character card, build your military, place farms (which will score you points), or even attack if there’s a monster in a space you’re connected to.

You can take the same action again if you want, but it costs additional cubes to do that.

The final action is to reclaim all of your action cubes, cleaning your board to allow you to do the actions again without paying extra.

Players are spreading across the map with their track and farms, until they end up encroaching on monsters and that’s when you can attack (or even be attacked, maybe).

The game has a really interesting player order mechanism, similar to Tokaido and other games, where each action costs time, which moves you up the Time Track.

The player in the back goes next. So if everybody else has jumped far ahead, you can do multiple actions in a row.

See that purple marker, though?

That’s the Old Ones. Once everybody passes them, then they start acting too, until the endgame is reached (everybody’s reached a certain point on the Time Track).

That could involve monsters moving, which will have them moving towards farms and ravaging them.

There’s no defense against that!

Farms are your lifeline because they will give you points (as long as they’re not destroyed, which will give the Old Ones points).

The characters you can hire will give you interesting abilities, maybe more points or special effects when you are fighting.

Combat is really cool because you have purchased military forces previous, and you choose which ones to commit.

Then, when you attack, you decide which of your forces are in play (the more there are, the more Time it takes).

You draw a card where the left side shows which types of unit does damage and the right side shows whether damage (or sanity loss) is done to the player.

Then, do you keep going? Or retreat?

Certain types of units will hit more often against certain types of monsters, so you have to keep those percentages in mind as well.

The game all comes together really well.

I enjoyed it a lot, though we ended up playing a bit of an easy set up and there wasn’t a lot of tension (though one player did have three farms destroyed).

I’d like to try it again with a bit more difficulty.

I like the fact that there’s fighting but you’re not fighting other players.

I don’t think I need to own it, but I do think I need to play it again.

El Grande (1995 – Hans im Gluck) – 1 play

Designers: Wolfgang Kramer, Richard Ulrich

Artists: Doris Matthäus, Stefan Sonnberger, Franz-Georg Stämmele

Players: 2-5 (but really, just 5)

The second game from the 1990s!

El Grande is an area control game that plays 2-5 players, but as I say above, it’s pretty much just a 5-player game (though some people do enjoy it at lower player counts, I’m sure).

One of the reasons for that, I think, is that in a 5-player game, the King is guaranteed to move, which will affect scoring and meeple placement.

Oh, I guess I should start at the beginning.

Players are Spanish nobles vying for control of various provinces as the king’s power is waning.

The game goes over 9 rounds, with a scoring round in between 3-4, 6-7, and at the end.

Each province is worth points, with the highest points going to whoever has the most influence (meeples) in the province, then the second most, etc.

When placing meeples, you can also place one or more in the Castillo (at the bottom right). Those are placed in the tower, so you never know (unless you have great recall, as you have to announce how many you are placing in the tower when you do it) what the meeple spread is.

When scoring happens, the Castillo is scored first (dumping the meeples out of the tower, which sounds painful) and then those meeples are then placed in the province you secretly selected.

But first, here’s the round structure.

Each round, players are bidding for turn order in deciding what action card to use.

The lower numbers will have you going later in the round, but will give you more meeples to add to your supply to put out on the board.

If you bid 12 or 13, you won’t get any meeples! Hope you already have a bunch.

Then, in the bidding order, players choose which action card to use.

There are 5 action cards available each round (which is why this works best as a 5-player game).

The Your Majesty card is always out there, allowing you to move the King to a new province, but there will be four additional random cards.

Some will let you move meeples around, some will let you score a region, or score all regions of a certain point value.

Placing meeples just involves you placing up to 5 (all cards are different, but the King’s card will let you place 5) onto the board, but the caveat is that you can only place in a province adjacent to the King, and you can’t place in the King’s province.

It’s not just anywhere!

Thought the Castillo is always an option.

Scoring provinces involves who has the most meeples there, but you also do have opportunities for two bonus points.

If you win the King’s province, or if you win the space where your Grande is, you get that bonus.

That’s basically all the game is, placing and moving meeples around (and possibly having some removed due to various action cards), jockeying for control of as much as possible.

But you only have so much you can do. You have to concentrate on a few province rather than spreading out, because that way lies madness!

And losing.

But you can’t concentrate too much or you may jump out to a big lead, but then fade at the end.

I was consistently winning 2-3 provinces but I wasn’t getting many second or third place points.

I was doing really well until the last couple of rounds where somebody else jumped ahead of me and I couldn’t catch up.

This is definitely a 5 player game, but I would always be willing to play it.

Florenza: the Card Game (2013 – Placentia Games) – 1 play

Designer: Stefano Groppi

Artists: Valeria Gobbi, Stefano Groppi, Paolo Vallerga, Ivan Zoni, Daniele Zurla

Players: 2-4

This is a card game (duh!) where you are Italian noble families trying to hire the best artists to embellish the monuments in the city of Florence during the Renaissance.

You can also build workshops and houses, join guilds and basically just try to increase your prestige as much as possible.

The monuments that you are trying to embellish come out into the center row each round, and they all require the right resources, money, as well as a certain type of artist.

Artists are worth a certain range of points but you never know exactly how much until you hire them.

You can gain resources from a central market as well.

You have a hand of cards from which you can also build certain workshops, homes, or even personalities that will give you bonuses.

The buildings and shops and stuff are worth points, and may require artists as well.

The artists will add their point value to whatever they’ve helped with, which is a cool way to get some random points.

After five rounds, you total up all your points to see who wins.

We played this at two players and it was fine. Nothing earth-shattering, but I enjoyed it.

I can see it being better with more players, but it’s a nice and light game where you’re still having to make decisions on how to acquire the resources you need to do what you want to do.

I’m not 100% sure it will work as a lunch time game at work, because our 2-player game took just under an hour and more people will add to that.

But it’s still fun and I’d definitely play it again.

Nusfjord (2017 – Lookout Games) – 1 play

Designer: Uwe Rosenberg

Artist: Patrick Soeder

Players: 1-5

Yay! Another Rosenberg “feed your people” game!

I kid, but only kind of.

In Nusfjord, you are owners of a fishing company in a small Norwegian fishing village and trying to become the wealthiest one.

It’s a worker placement game where you are putting out one of three workers to do various things like clear out some of the woods on your player board, or building new buildings to place onto these newly-cut spaces.

You will lose points at the end of the game for any clear cut area that doesn’t have a building on it, so you definitely want to keep building.

Besides, buildings help you!

They all have different effects which can be very helpful.

You’re also trying to build up your fishing fleet to bring in more fish between rounds.

And you need fish, because you have to use that fish for various things at the beginning of the round, like paying off the elders that you enlist to help you, or maybe pay off the shares of your company that other players have bought.

One thing I found very cool (and also frustrating at times) is the whole “Reserve” and “Supply” concept for your fish and wood and gold.

Resources you earn go into your reserve at the top left of your board.

However, it can only hold 8 fish, so any excess fish you gain goes away.

It can hold unlimited wood, though!

But your supply can only hold 12 wood.

It’s an interesting push-pull mechanic for resources, because you have to spend an action to move resources from your reserve to your supply (though sometimes you can get that action for free with a building or something) and you can’t pay for anything out of your reserve.

Being worker placement, of course there are spaces which are mostly exclusive (only one player can go there in a round) but where occasionally multiple people can go (though usually not everyone).

The other unique aspect of the game is the shares in your company.

You have to issue shares, because each unissued share will cost you points at the end of the game.

After issue, anybody can buy them for a gold (though you have to buy all of the available shares, so if you don’t have enough gold, then you can’t buy any of them).

If you buy your own back, then that helps you get fish into your personal supply directly from your fishing!

But if somebody else buys your share, then you will have to give them your fish.

Also, bought shares are worth a point to whoever owns them, so it’s good to buy your own if you can.

Anyway, after seven rounds of all this, you total up your points (and subtract your negative points) and see who wins.

For a Rosenberg worker placement game, I did enjoy this one.

You’re not penalized for not getting enough fish in the fishing phase (that just means you won’t get any additional fish into your reserve) and it’s pretty easy to increase your catch anyway to hopefully keep on top of that.

With only three actions, it can be tough to decide what you want to do, which is why elders can help with that (but they cost fish!).

Their actions are usually more powerful and sometimes they can give you two actions.

This one was enjoyable and I’d definitely play it again.

First Giants (2026 – Space Cowboys) – 1 play

Designers: Matthew Dunstan, Brett J. Gilbert

Artists: Maud Chalmel, Jessica Cognard

Players: 2-5

Way back in the day, I saw Elysium being played and thought it looked intriguing, though I didn’t understand what exactly was going on.

I never actually was able to play it.

First Giants is a reworked and streamlined version of that game, this time about dinosaurs instead of Greek gods.

This is a game of set collection and card drafting where you are collecting different types of dinosaur bones and then displaying them in your museum.

There are four regions where you can dig, but you can only dig in a certain region once before you recall all of your archeologists.

When you take a fossil card, you put it above your board and do the effect.

However, some fossils will actually have ongoing effects.

For example, the orange 1 above will just get you two amber when you collect it.

However, the blue 3 will get you two amber every time you take a card whose colour is not currently above your board.

At various times (like when you collect all of your archeologists, or when a card allows you to), you can spend amber to display the fossils in your museum, which is the set collection part of the game.

You won’t be able to use their abilities anymore, so be careful!

A fossil can be placed in a collection of the same number but different colours, or the set can be a 1-2-3 set of fossils with the same colour.

You have to decide when you display it!

As you add to your sets, you can see the roped off section markers between each card.

These give you 2 points at the end of the game, but if you manage to complete the set (like the set above the 3’s), you flip each one over and it’s now worth 3 points.

Getting a set first can also give you bonus points, even if you haven’t completed it yet.

If you have the most of a certain set, you collect the corresponding bonus tile, though if somebody ends up getting more than you, they take it.

But if you’re the first to complete the set, nobody can get higher and you will keep it.

The game ends when all the set tokens (the 2-3 point rope tiles) are gone, or when the fossil deck is completed.

So you do get an idea of how close the game is to ending.

I enjoyed this one!

It’s a really short game, but it also has the cool set collection aspect that I really like.

It’s agonizing when a fossil you need to complete a set comes up in an area where you’ve already dug.

Do you bring everybody back even though you haven’t put them all out yet?

Or do you hope you’ll get another chance?

This is one I’d definitely play again.

Heckmeck am Karteneck (2021 – Zoch Verlag) – 1 play

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Doris Matthäus

Players: 2-6

This is another Reiner Knizia push your luck card game, but this one is about birds eating worms!

It’s based off of the classic Heckmeck dice game, also designed by Knizia, and published in 2005.

In this one, you’re playing cards of different values to try and secure the juiciest worms for your friends.

Each turn, you can play any number of cards of the same value, as long as you haven’t played that value yet in this round.

Players are vying for one of the Worm tiles that are out on the table.

However, you can’t claim a worm tile if at least one of the cards you played doesn’t have a worm on it (like in the card picture above).

If you don’t have a worm, then you can bow out at any time instead of busting, and you take the lowest value worm tile.

If you do have a worm, though, then your value stands and is compared to everybody else’s once everybody has passed.

Passing players also draw 2 cards, except the last player to pass.

Also, you stack the new tile on top of the old, so if anybody gets that exact value in their cards (like 24, 42, or 39) when they pass, they can just steal yours, and then they’ll get one of the other worm tiles that are on display as well!

Another fun little Knizia game, one that I greatly enjoyed.

I have the dice app (from the 2005 game) and playing this inspired me to fire it up!

DNUP (2025 – Asmodee) – 1 play

Designer: Kei Kajino (梶野 桂)

Artists: Gilles-Romain Fonteny, Shohei Asaoka (浅岡昇平)

Players: 2-5

What a weird name.

This is a card-shedding game with some similarities to Scout (including the same designer!) but there are some crucial differences, of course.

You’re dealt a hand of cards, but in this case you can reorder them in your hand but you can’t actually flip them (they are still cards with two difference values depending on which side is up)

On your turn, you place down a set of cards (no runs this time).

They can be one card, two cards, three, etc.

However, if there’s already a set of two cards (for example) on the table, then you can’t place two unless your set is higher than theirs.

If it is, then they have to take those cards back into their hands, after flipping them!

If you can’t (or don’t want to) do that, you can play one card to somebody else’s set. This will get rid of your card but otherwise not do anything.

Finally, you can take somebody’s set into your hand, though you have to flip them first.

You might do this if doing so will help you develop a better set for next time.

You can also just waste the turn flipping your entire hand, which usually isn’t optimal.

If your set is still on the table when it’s your turn again, your cards are discarded and you get the same action choices.

Whoever plays their last card(s) first will win the round and take two letters.

Then play continues until somebody else plays their last card(s), in which case they will take one letter.

What does that mean?

There are four letters in DNUP, and you win the game by spelling DNUP.

That’s it. That’s the game!

I’ve found that I’m loving card shedding games almost as much as trick-takers, so this game was right up my alley.

It also takes a very short amount of time (our three-player game took 20 minutes), which makes it perfect for lunch.

I’d love to play this one again.

Gang of Dice (2022 – Mandoo Games) – 1 play

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Odang

Players: 2-4

It’s a literal Knizia fest!

This is the third Knizia game on this list, and it’s probably the least of them in my estimation.

In this game, you are gangsters vying to take the position of the retiring boss.

All with rolling dice!

Each round, a warning card will be pulled and then each player decides how many of their dice they want to roll.

The warning card will give you the restriction on your dice this round.

The above warning card means that you can’t have 5s, 3s, or 1s in your final group of dice.

You can reroll any number of dice up to two times.

The goal is to have the highest value of dice kept without triggering the warning card.

So in a way it’s a push your luck game, with the side bonus of trying to roll highest.

Because some warning cards make that difficult!

Especially if it’s an explosive card, which means that it will trigger after every dice roll rather than at the end of your rerolls.

These are deadly.

If you do trigger a warning card, then your dice remain out on the table but you can’t win the round.

Whoever has the highest value will gain all of the dice on the table.

If you need more dice than you have, you can always give somebody chips (one for each die you need).

Since chips and dice are equal value at the end of the game, it’s not like the person giving you the dice is losing anything.

After 12 rounds, whoever has the most dice (and chips) is the winner.

This isn’t a bad game at all, but I just didn’t feel as enthused about it during the game as I did the other ones we played that day.

I do like how you choose the number of dice you want to roll, so if the warning card seems more difficult (like the total value of 10+!), you can always just choose to roll one or two dice (though ties are broken by whoever rolled more dice).

I’d definitely play it again, but it’s not one I’m clamoring for.

Farm Hand (2025 – Gémklub) – 1 play

Designer: Craig E. Somerton

Artist: Samuel Bouvant

Players: 1-5

Finally, we’re at the end!

Farm Hand is a really cool trick-taking game with some novel concepts.

This game only has 21 cards, but it plays 2-5 players!

It plays over six rounds, and each round will have a different number of tricks in it.

The suits are also unique because each one has only

Not only that, but the card backs have their colour on them, so you know what the possibilities are for the cards in each players hand.

Each round, players will bid on the number of tricks they will take.

Then tricks are done, with somebody leading a colour.

You must follow the colour if you can, but otherwise you can play any card in your hand.

The highest number wins, regardless of what was led.

However, if somebody plays the same number as somebody else, both are eliminated.

That’s so cool!

After all tricks are done, check bids.

Whoever met their bid gains points equal to the current round.

If you didn’t make your bid, you get negative tokens equal to the difference between your bid and how many you actually won.

After six rounds, highest score wins.

This is a really novel game, especially for a game with only 21 cards in it.

I love that you can get an idea of what players might have by seeing what suits they have, especially when a suit only has one or two numbers.

I really enjoyed this one. It’s fast (our 4-player game took 17 minutes) so it’s another game perfect for lunch time.

And it’s a trick-taker, so what’s not to like?

There you have it, folks.

Almost 5000 words later (sorry about that), that’s a ton of new to me games.

What new to you ones did you play in May?

Let me know in the comments.