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A Gaming Life
New to Me – August 2026
After last month where I said that my “new to me games” list was slacking off a bit in 2026, August managed to bring six new games to the table!
That still only puts me at 46 new games where last year was 84.
I have a feeling I’m not going to make it!
But they have all been fun anyway.
If I can manage 6 of them per month on average for the rest of the year, I’ll do better than 2024.
August’s new to me games managed to squeak a final one under the wire on August 30, and it’s also the one that saved my job as cult leader.
Yes, the Cult of the New to Me wasn’t happy that every new to me game was published in 2026.
Until August 30 hit and I had a 2022 game!
They were still a little miffed, but they put down their pitchforks and torches.
I did see them flicking their cigarette lighters aggressively, though.
I should probably be better about that in September.
Who knew a cult leader was such a dangerous job?
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado went on a trip to many lands without me anyway), let’s get started!
The Crew: Journey to the Ends of the Earth (2026 – Kosmos) – 2 plays
Designer: Thomas Sing
Artist: Fiore GmbH
Players: 2-5
The Crew is one of most popular cooperative trick-taking games out there, or at least it was before Lord of the Rings hit.
I have played The Crew: Mission Deep Sea before but not the original.
The third version is now out and I have to say I definitely like it better than the second one.
It’s a bit more structured.
It’s still a trick-taking game where players can’t talk about what’s in their hand or what others should play, but the missions are actually much more interesting.
You’re moving your expedition along a path where you are trying to get to the end before time runs out.
Each hand of the game will have a requirement, some harder than others.
The harder ones will move you further forward on the mission map, while failure of any requirements will keep you stranded while the timer moves up one space.
Some of them are brutal, like the right one above.
One player has to win the two specific cards they looked at?
That can be difficult (though I think we actually passed that one).
Otherwise, it’s the usual must-follow trick-taking format with four “tent” cards that will win any trick (except if a higher tent is played).
Some requirement cards will make use of the swords or bicycles that are on some of the cards, but we didn’t see those.
It is a sort of campaign in that if you succeed in the mission, then you move on to the next one, trying to find Charlemagne’s hidden treasure.
But it’s easy to just play a mission for fun.
We did two of them.
I liked this one a lot. I definitely see the appeal of these.
Dark Pact (2026 – Trick or Treat Studios) – 1 play
Designer: Thomas Lehmann
Artist: Dug Nation
Players: 1-4
What do you get when you cross Dominion with ultimate evil?
That’s what Tom Lehmann has explored in Dark Pact, and he lived to tell the tale!
Dark Pact is a deckbuilding game very much like Dominion, except that it has an ever-changing market of cards instead of stacks of pre-selected cards, and you actually choose your own win conditions.
Conditions? Plural? And you choose?
What the heck does that mean?
Much like Dominion, you will be playing cards from your hand: first an action (and more actions if the action you played gave you more actions) and then the treasures to give you money to buy cards.
There are definitely differences, though.
First, there is a card market rather than card piles, so you never know what’s going to be available.
Secondly, some cards have Insight Points or Curse Points, which can matter for some cards but also can matter for your chosen game end conditions.
That’s right, the game end conditions come out in the market too and you have to buy them.
Some of them only trigger if they are in your hand when you meet the condition, like Moon Aspect above. You have to have all of those curse points in your hand. You can’t have played them yet.
Other pacts are placed in front of you and require that you meet the conditions with cards played.
Those usually have higher requirements (like having played 20 gold worth of treasures rather than having 13 gold worth of treasures in your hand).
As soon as you fulfill the condition, you win!
You can have multiple pacts out, so you can be going for one or the other. Or both! And see what happens.
Our game took about an hour, so not much more than Dominion itself.
But this adds a lot of variety and nuance to the game that I really enjoyed.
If you enjoy Dominion, then you’ll probably like this one, unless you don’t like something minor like a changing market (why wouldn’t you?).
Even not being a huge fan of it, it’s still an interesting take on the whole deckbuilding genre.
Into the Machine (2026 – Alderac Entertainment Group) – 3 plays
Designer: Kasper Lapp
Artist: Len H. Nicholas
Players: 2-5
This didn’t look like much when I first saw it, but playing it was actually fun!
It’s an action selection, engine-building racing game, so you have to be aware of things.
Like you should be aware that I actually reviewed it, so you can read more there!
Hanami (2026 – Keymaster Games) – 1 play
Designer: Reiner Knizia
Artists: Lisk Feng, Ichiraku Shinhanga Seisakusho
Players: 2-4
Hanami is a beautiful reskin of Reiner Knizia’s classic Samurai game, where players are placing strength tokens around the various goal tiles, trying to win them with the most strength.
The theme is really bright and colourful, but it still makes no sense.
You’re a group of picnickers during the Hanami celebration, trying to stake out places to lay your blankets and do your favored activities.
I mean, ok?
Anyway, the theme isn’t what’s important.
The game board is a map of Japan (I think the other side of the board is Tokyo? I didn’t look) with various activities dotted around the landscape.
Each turn, you will have three of your picknicker tiles and you will choose one to place next to an activity.
Once an activity is surrounded, you total up the strength of each player’s tiles around it that have that activity on them, or the wild cat (apparently you are armed picknickers) to see who actually gets to see that activity (or something, I don’t know).
In game terms, whoever has the most strength for that particular activity around it will take the token.
There are special boat tiles that will let you sit offshore and watch the activity, and other action tiles that will let you move some of your tiles around (or replace them, anyway).
It also has the classic Samurai scoring system.
If somebody has the majority of the tokens of two different activities, they win outright.
Otherwise, if you don’t have the majority of any of them, you can’t win, no matter how many actual tokens you have.
The remaining players remove the activity tokens from the one(s) they have the majority in, and then count up the rest of them.
Whoever has the most tokens remaining is the winner!
I really enjoyed this one, and it’s made me rethink Pollen a bit (as mentioned in last week’s BGG Century post).
The theme is hilarious and at least it’s not violent!
Got Five! (2026 – Blue Orange) – 1 play
Designer: Yoann Levet
Artists: Mathieu Clauss, Simon Douchy
Players: 2-4
Got Five is a very simple deduction game.
Each player will have one tile of each colour, facing outward so that they can’t see them but the other players can.
You are trying to deduce what your numbers are for each!
Your first clues are what the other players have.
If they have them, then you don’t.
Then some tiles from the supply are turned over, so you know you don’t have those either.
This is where the deduction comes in.
On your turn, you flip a tile from the supply, so you also know you don’t have that one.
Then you take one of the flipped over tiles (there should be six) and either place it in front of your rack to ask the other players to place it between the numbers surrounding it (so the 35 will get placed between your 30 and 45, for example)
Or you place it behind a tile and ask whether the number of dots on the tile is the same as the number of dots on your tile.
If so, it is placed straight. If not, then it’s placed pointing toward your rack.
So in the picture above, both the 5 and 27 have the same number of dots as my tiles.
You’re filling out your known tiles on your sheet, which will then help you determine when you know your tiles, and the sheet shows both the numbers and the dots, so if the dots don’t match, you know which ones to cross off.
On your turn, you can state that you know the tiles and you have to name all of them.
If you’re wrong, you’re out of the game.
If you’re right, you win!
The game takes 5-10 minutes, so it’s a really nice filler while you’re waiting for others to finish up their games.
It’s only light deduction, so even those who don’t feel like they have a deductive bone in their body can still play it.
It was a fun one!
Federation (2022 – Explor8) – 1 play
Designers: Dimitri Perrier, Matthieu Verdier
Artist: Miguel Coimbra
Players: 2-4
Finally, we get to Federation, the last game played in August and the saviour of my job!
It’s also a game that we’ve been talking about getting to the table for a long while now, and it finally happened.
I tried playing this on Boardgame Arena a couple of times and couldn’t make heads nor tails of it.
I was completely lost.
Now I kind of understand it!
Not enough to actually do well, but enough to actually enjoy it.
Federation is a worker placement action selection game where you have four ambassadors to the Federation council.
You place one of your ambassadors on your turn to do that space’s action.
There are 5 planets where you will be trying to increase your influence and do an action there, and many of these council spaces will let you do that.
You can place your ambassador down as a voting ambassador or a funding one.
A funding ambassador will move the projects above the column forward one at the end of the turn, as well as letting you open up the special mission regarding the space you took.
Voting ambassadors will affect the end of round scoring bonus and also will get you points at the end of the round if you have the most votes in that row.
The planets have various action possibilities, such as the market place where you can set up a stall to spend resources to get different resources (and if you bump it up to level 2, you spend that resource to get three!).
The blue planet will advance you along and get you a token that you can place on one of your ambassadors in the future.
Three other ones have other bonuses, and all of them will give you influence on that planet.
Your own player board will have special missions for each space that, if you have a ship and the proper Authority level, you can complete which basically lets you do that action as a separate action.
Other Ambassador spaces will let you do other things, like take First Player (and gain a medal) or gain a space ship to do missions, or whatever.
Once all ambassadors are placed in the round, you have to pay for your Authority level, then collect your “income” (some of it’s income, some of it is an action) from the green planet spaces you’ve influenced, and then you process the Council Chambers.
Each column’s project will move forward for each funding Ambassador that is in that column.
For each row, whoever has the most voting power gets points equal to their Authority level.
Then, there are two sides of the chamber, and each one will have a tile that will give you points for how much influence you have on a certain planet.
But only the tile whose side has the most votes will get that.
So placing your Ambassadors is not only strategic for what action you want to do. It’s also strategic for how many points you might want to gain.
But endgame points are based on whether a project funded or not.
So you can have boatloads of influence on the red planet, but if the red planet project doesn’t fund, it’s wasted (other than the in-game points it might have given you).
It’s all quite intricate and really interesting.
The game goes over 5 rounds and while BGG says it’s a 1-2 hour game, our game took almost 3 hours.
It was the first game for three of us, so that could contribute to that.
But it was an interesting game where you have to decide where you want to focus, at least a little bit.
I’d definitely like to play it again, and now that I understand it (at least a little), playing it on BGA will be fun too!
There you have it.
Six new to me games for August, not bad!
What new to you games did you play in August?
Let me know in the comments.
New-to-me in August, sorted by how many times I played them…
dnup – Big hit with my group as a time-wasting filler at the end of sessions. One coworker has already bought it. Overwhelming opinion of the group is that it’s far less confusing and easier to play than Scout.
Dragons of Etchinstone – Big hit with… well, me, as it’s a solo game. I was hesitant to pick this up because the designer was the same as Gloomhaven Buttons & Bugs, which I strongly disliked, but our mutual buddy Arrow-Oddr convinced me to give it a shot. Glad I did. Turns out the designer wasn’t the problem with Gloomhaven B&B; it was the lack of a competent instruction book, and me not jiving at all with the battle designer. Etchinstone is a *solid* 20-card solo puzzle and I’m looking forward to the expansions.
Enchanted Ivy – Five plays deep, it seems fine as a solo puzzle, but I’ve bashed my head against the second plot scenario three times without really coming close to winning. I had a moment like this early in the Conservas campaign and the rest of the game was better balanced, maybe this one will be as well? Or maybe the scenario scores are way too tied up in which guests you draw. We’ll see. I’m not giving up on it yet.
Souvenirs from Venice – I had no idea this game existed until I saw it at Half-Price Books for $1, and when you see an Oink game for $1, you buy it. It’s a decent little set collector / race. Someone has run out of time in every game I’ve played, so there’s definitely tension. I’ve already played it four times and I think it’ll hit the table a bit more.
Wingspan Pocket – It’s fine? I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Wingspan – it’s WAY too long for what it is – and this solves that problem. The Automa seems good, I played it once and lost a close game. I’m sure it’ll come out more.
Ostia – Magnificent game. Very glad I crowdfunded it even though I’m peeved at how Crafty Games handled themselves around this game’s availability and Gen Con. It’s one of the most expensive games I’ve ever bought, but I think it’s a keeper that I’ll be playing for years to come. The mancala action element combined with the variable setup looks like it’ll keep this one fresh.
Crits & Tricks – Solid trick-taker-with-a-twist. Neither my group nor my wife like TT games that much, but this one has already hit the table 3 times at home with my wife, for two reasons: 1) rolling dice is fun!, and 2) the 2-player mode is very, very functional. Most 3+ player games that have a 2P variant are… not great at 2. They add extra upkeep, or a bot, or some other nonsense to simulate market action of nonexistent players. This game says, y’know what, instead of doing a draft for private goals, all the goals are on the table and you’re in a knife fight over the goals from the first card play. I think it’s a fantastic way to vary the gameplay without making the game more difficult to play.
Regicide Inferno – I love Regicide. It’s easily in my top 10. This isn’t as clean but it’s definitely put a different, more thought-filled spin on the formula. Can’t just toss out a high Spade and rest on your laurels anymore, as bosses power up each turn. But to compensate, it’s easier to play pairs/sets, and the fifth suit flips several elements of the game directly on their heads, and also makes Hearts far more important than they were in base Regicide. I’ve only played three times but I look forward to more.
Cat Earth – silly kill-your-neighbor game where giant cat meeples push houses off the flat earth. It’s very cute but it didn’t land with my family like we thought it would.
Limes – You already know all about this one since we’ve played on Yucata several times. I have a physical copy now and have knocked out a few solo games. It’s just as good in person.
Got Five! – hey, someone else has played this! My wife won a copy at the Blue Orange booth at Gen Con, for winning a game in under a specified amount of time. Simple enough deduction filler that my kiddo can play too.
Manhattan – I kinda don’t get this one. But, see Crits & Tricks, I think it’s built for 3+ and we only played with the 2P variant. Looking forward to giving it another shot at 3+. I’m sure it didn’t win SDJ for nothing.
Next Station Berlin – I think this puts a great spin on Next Station London. Like Regicide, I still prefer the original and think it’s cleaner, but I was skeptical that this series had a fourth game in it, and after a couple plays I think I like this one more than Tokyo or Paris. Splitting the map into East and West and having the round-end condition be *one* of them hitting five cards, instead of a *specific* one of them hitting five cards, changes the game in a subtle but substantial way.
Yay, a comment finally came through!
I love Got Five, I have bought it and am waiting for another pre-order to come in before it ships. The same with Wingspan Pocket, and DNUP!
Limes is definitely cool.
Crits & Tricks sounds intriguing. I don’t know if our resident game-buyer actually has it or not. Probably not.
I’ve wanted to play Ostia for quite a while. Maybe one day!
Thanks for persisting. I love comments here. Makes the blog look like people are reading it. 🙂
I played Versailles 1919, which is probably better at three or four than two, but it was an interesting experience anyway in how detached from the subject matter of the issues brought to the table you are – your first thought is to win the squabble over them, and if you can damage somebody else’s position, so much the better. I hope to play it again!
I also played A Very Civil Whist, which packs the English Civil War into a very small box… but I felt the Whist mechanisms were a bit artificial. One can see the game’s origin is a design contest with its restrictions on what materials can be used.
I have Versailles but haven’t been able to get it to the table. I want to, though!
Interesting about A Very Civil Whist. I hadn’t realized it was part of a design contest.