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A Gaming Life
Trading Against the Tide – Tides of Trade Review (Wayfarers of the South Tigris Expansion)
The recent Kickstarter from Garphill Games with all of the South Tigris expansions recently showed up on my doorstep, so apologies for the fact that you’re going to be inundated with South Tigris content for a little bit!
After getting through the Scholars of the South Tigris expansion, it was time to get into the second expansion, Tides of Trade (for Wayfarers of the South Tigris).
Tides of Trade was released in 2025 (if you’re reading this in the future) and designed by Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald.
It was published by Garphill Games and (maybe) eventually by Renegade Games Studios.
My review of the Body of Books expansion mentioned that some expansions “fix” things that are wrong in the base game (though there weren’t any in that one).
Tides of Trade does fix something that some players really didn’t like about the original game, though I didn’t mind it that much.
Granted, I’m happy with the “fix”!
But I’m not sure it needed fixing.
Let’s explore what we have here.
Read MoreDefiance or Appeasement? – Bell of Treason Review
There’s something about a meaty game that plays in 45 minutes that just appeals to me.
It makes for a nice lunch but it still exercises the brain a bit.
Adding historical flavour is just the icing on the cake.
I really enjoyed Mark Herman’s Fort Sumter back in the day, though I never did actually get around to reviewing the next game in “Final Crisis” series.
Today, that changes!
The latest in the series, The Bell of Treason: 1938 Munich Crisis in Czechoslovakia, was just released (in 2025 for those of you reading in the future) by GMT Games.
(And from now on, it’s just Bell of Treason).
The game was designed by first-time designer Petr Mojžíš with graphics by Tomasz Niedzinski and plays 1-2 players.
(Note: I haven’t tried the solo game yet)
The system has evolved through a couple of games now and I’m liking the changes.
Read MoreBury the Nose – Body of Books Review (Scholars of the South Tigris expansion)
Sometimes expansions comes out and they fix something that may have been a little off in the base game.
(Wayfarers of the South Tigris expansion, I’m looking at you a little bit).
Sometimes, though, an expansion just gives you more stuff to think about and maybe new avenues to approach how you do things in the game.
Body of Books (the expansion for Scholars of the South Tigris) is one of those types of expansions.
The expansion was published by Garphill Games and (eventually) Renegade Games Studios in 2025
Along with the base game, it was designed by Shem Phillips and S J MacDonald with art by Mihajlo Dimitrievski.
The base game is already in my Top 10 so it will be interesting to see what the expansion does for it.
(oh, I guess that’s why you’re reading this, eh?)
Body of Books adds a new science track (Medicine) which is cool in its own right, but the addition of “Pages” that you can tuck under your player board is actually what makes this expansion really sing.
Let’s talk a little bit about what’s under the hood.
Read MoreHow Big is Your Camel? – Resafa Review
Sometimes games with historical themes throw in as much as possible regarding that theme, even when they might be unrelated.
Overcompensation?
Maybe, or maybe they just want to make sure there are enough things to do to keep the game interesting, and at least mildly thematic.
There’s a little bit of that in Resafa, the latest game designed by Vladimír Suchý with art by Michal Peichl.
The game was published in 2024 by Delicious Games/Rio Grande Games and plays 1-4 players.
Players are traders in 3rd Century AD Syria, namely the city of Resafa, trying to establish a trading empire along the caravan routes of the ancient Near East.
They are building up their camel caravan size, moving from city to city and trading goods, establishing workshops and gardens in Resafa to make their businesses even more prosperous.
Since the city of Resafa had no local sources of water, they are also building canals and wells to help keep the city watered.
This last bit makes me give Resafa the side-eye a little bit.
Wouldn’t canals be public infrastructure built by the Roman government and/or its army?
Individual ownership of the various avenues of water distribution seems a little off in my mind.
Still, I can’t find anything definitive that says this, or that confirms the game’s conceit of individual businesses building these canals, so let’s just say that I’m concerned about this and then move on.
Because the game, just like most of Suchý’s output, is very good.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 27 – Carentan Causeway
After getting my July Combat Commander game done on July 1, July was a long month to wait for another one!
I was going to set up another one in July but ended up not doing so.
Thankfully my August game was also done slightly early, so it was only 5 weeks in between games.
What the hell am I talking about?
Welcome to the latest tale from the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament where you get to play one of the best games in the universe!
Even better than Chog-Larok-Pugh, which is the best game developed on the planet Rigel 3.
(Note, that’s a game you don’t want to lose…unless you can run really fast).
The ladder is run by the electrifying Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame.
His renown is actually international!
This month’s scenario is from the Paratroopers battle pack and has a cascading army of US paratroopers attacking a thimbleful group of elite Germans across a wide-open space broken up by a few hedges.
My opponent this month was Andrei F, the first opponent who I have now faced three times, the last time of which was in November 2023.
It was old home night!
Again, both of us live in the Lower Mainland (last month’s opponent is in same actual city as me) so coordinating was really easy.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up).
The Germans (grey – me) have to set up their piddly three squads, one crew, and two leaders within one hex of any of the objectives except Objective 1.
Since Andrei would have to run across the board and he wouldn’t get his radio until Time 2, I set up the HMG with a great leader and squad, in foxholes at Objective 3 in the front. There they could command the entire board.
Another squad went up at Objective 5 and a squad with leader and LMG went down in Objective 4.
My spare set of foxholes went on Objective 2.
In this scenario, both Objectives 4 and 5 are worth 10 points, so a 20-point swing (I control them to start).
The Americans (green – Andrei) have to set up within 2 hexes of Objective 1.
The game starts with the Germans having 30 VP.
The other special rules are that Andrei gets reinforcements on Time Track 2 (with radio) and Time Track 4. He also gets a third order on Time Track 2 and a fourth order on Time Track 4 and his Surrender level goes up by 3 each time.
The only other special rule is that roads do not have a negative cover value, which is helpful.
Surprisingly, the Americans have no machine guns but do have three light mortars once everybody’s on the board.
This came up with a Suppressing Fire event, which is when we realized that it would have no effect since Andrei didn’t have any MGs.
Before we begin, let me say that luck played a large part in this one, and brought the game down to the wire, but I’m not going to tell you who benefited from it.
You’ll probably be able to guess.
With that, let’s begin!
Read MoreHow is This Acceptable?
(8/8/25 Edit Number 2: CGE has now put out a statement apologizing and pledging that all profits from the Harry Potter Codenames game will be donated to trans rights charities, in discussions with those most affected by Rowling’s evil.
J from 3 Minute Boardgames put the entire statement on BlueSky since the original is on Instagram and many people may not be on it. You can read it here.
With both of these statements and efforts to make amends and rectify their mistakes, I have a feeling that the review moratorium for both of these companies may be over soon. I’m sure they will be watched to make sure they follow through on what they are saying they are going to do.
(8/8/25: Devir has issued a very strong statement about this, apologizing and outlining concrete steps they are going to take to rectify this situation, even going so far as recalling all copies of the game that have been sent out to retailers, removing all social media promotion until they have made the needed changes to the cards, etc. You can read the statement here.
Assuming they follow through on these actions, that is great. We’ll see going forward what happens and so far I haven’t changed my reviewing stance. If they do follow through, then that will likely change)
Regular readers of this blog know that I typically don’t involve myself in some of the many controversies in the boardgaming world, especially when it involves cultural or racial issues.
And there is a lot of it out there, unfortunately.
The reason for that is because, being a straight white man, I often feel like I don’t have anything to contribute, and what I would contribute could be seen as superficial or not helpful.
But over the past week or so, two issues have come up that made me push pass that hesitation because things need to be said.
Even if what I end up saying seems superficial, I want to let it be known that I consider this wrong.
Today I saw this post on BlueSky and it really angered me, especially after reading more about this issue.
There are a great many more, but this is the first one I saw.
(I’ll be posting an image of some of the cards below that will definitely offend you if you have any sense, but I apologize if it also triggers you)
Of course, that image itself isn’t the horrible image, but let me put a break in here first in case you want to avoid the truly bad one.
Read MoreNew to Me – July 2025
It’s funny, but no matter how bad a month might be as far as playing games, I usually get a decent number of “new to me” games played.
I thought July would be slow, but it ended up being pretty normal.
I also thought, the way it started, that it would be slow on the “new to me” game front, but I actually ended up with six!
Add to that one being online with a couple of awesome friends and July turned out to be a very good month.
The Cult of the New to Me wasn’t too unhappy either.
Only one was from 2025 and there was even a 2019 game in there!
That’s what I figured. 2019 is almost ancient nowadays!
Maybe I’ll make them happy in August by playing a 2012 game!
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was overrun by a bunch of fascists anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreJuly 2025 Gaming
Being off for almost the entire month of July, I wasn’t expecting much on the gaming front.
However, I managed to attended a Wednesday night meet-up a couple of times, which greatly helped take the place of our normal lunchtime games at work, at least for the most part.
Of course, my number of games and plays was always going to be down compared to June, since there wasn’t a convention this month.
However, it was very comparable to May, so that’s great!
I was also expecting fewer than normal “new to me” games, but actually ended up with a lot, so that post may be a bit delayed considering I’m still kind of in my posting lull.
I ended with a total of 23 plays of 20 different games, so not bad!
Here’s what I played last month.
And here it is in grid form.
Many thanks to the wonderful Boardgame Stats app for this data!
There were quite a few highlights this month, with some plays of games I hadn’t played at all yet in 2025 (trying to pump the “unique games” number up!).
Let’s take a look at some of them.
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Summer Movies
Welcome back, everyone!
I know it’s been a while, not just for a Friday Night Shots post (almost 2 months) but also for any posts in general (my last news post notwithstanding).
I’ve been off of work since the beginning of July, ended up getting a new computer and having a bunch of stuff to do to get ready for that.
Not to mention just having “endless days” and having trouble finding the motivation to write something.
I was determined to do so when the vacation began, but with the new computer stuff, things just cascaded so that I lost my motivation.
This is my attempt to get it back, by starting with a nice frivolous post about what we’ve been doing in July.
So have a seat at the bar and let’s chat.
The jukebox is still on the fritz.
Why is it playing Disco Duck non-stop?
I have no idea, but I’ll have to get somebody in to fix that.
One Rick Dees song is already too much.
Anyway, what have I been doing in July?
Along with resting and recuperating from all of the technological bullshit going on at work, we’ve been watching movies!
Not just watching…actually going to them.
We have a cineplex very close to our place, so a large part of our movie desire for July was “we can leave the apartment very shortly before it starts and go see it while still missing all of the ads.”
As of this post, we have seen every movie at our local cineplex.
Quite an accomplishment.
So let’s see what I think of what we’ve seen!
Read MoreCivolution – Acceptance Letter expansion for Fall 2025
Long time no see, everybody!
Sorry for the radio silence, but I’ve been moving computers and on vacation and just basically not in the mood to write for a while.
But something cool coming up will always make me write something, and today I saw it!
One of the best games of 2024 (and a game that’s swiftly jumped into my Top 50, even if it’s just a “rough and ready” version of it) was Civolution by Deep Print Games.
I did a “first impressions” post, but after playing it a number of times, none of my thoughts in that post have actually changed, so I haven’t reviewed it.
Today I saw an announcement that there is an expansion coming for this really great game!
Civolution: Acceptance Letter doesn’t have a lot of information posted about it yet, but it does sound pretty cool.
It’s not listed on Boardgame Geek yet, but according to the Deep Print web site, it will add a few nice touches without adding a bunch more pieces that will have to be fit into the already intricately-stored box.
The conceit of the game is that players are in a “school” of some sort, testing out how to create the best civilization.
Acceptance Letter takes place after that final exam, and contains three mini-expansions.
As part of your Hunt action, you will be able to tame certain creatures, which will give you bonuses, including the option to keep the creature and have it give you more bonuses1
There will also be additional starting attribute boards that give more initial advantages.
Finally, Level 4 upgrades will allow some modules to be improved even more!
The components part of the page shows that there won’t be too much added to the game as far as pieces you need to store.
That’s always a good thing when the box already comes with an optimum way to store the game.
There literally isn’t anything else about the expansion on the page, other than that it will be released at Essen in October.
Will this be a really cool expansion?
Does this game, which already has tons of ways to score points, so many that it’s sometimes hard to concentrate, really need more stuff?
All of that will be answered when we find out more about this.
In the meantime, I am pretty excited to hear more.
Keep an eye on this space (well, this blog, as I probably won’t add to this post).
Dude! Take Your Turn! 