Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
BGG Top Games – 1101 Through 1200 – Thoughts
Last week’s post talking about some of the games just outside of the Top 1000 on Boardgame Geek seemed to be a big hit.
Maybe not in terms of visitors to this site, but with friends of mine, sparking some discussion.
In the hopes of maybe converting that into more blog hits, let’s try the next batch!
This series of posts has been inspired by the This Game is Broken podcast, who recently did a game where they guessed “higher or lower” rankings of various games ranked between 1000 and 2000 on BGG.
Today we’ll be talking about those games ranked 1101-1200, keeping in mind that these rankings are ever-changing and some of these games may not be in this range if you’re looking at this post in the far future.
Like Saturday.
This is just going to be some random thoughts about some of the games; games I’ve played and games I haven’t and really want to.
So this post doesn’t become as long as War & Peace, let’s begin!
Read MoreBook Review – When the Moon Hits Your Eye by John Scalzi
I’ve been a big fan of John Scalzi’s books for quite a while now, ever since I gloried through Old Man’s War and its many sequels (I’m not even sure I’ve read them all).
There was also Redshirts, a book that highlighted those crewmembers in some Star Trek-like universe and actually made them people. I adored that one.
And Starter Villain, which I thought I had reviewed but I haven’t, but is probably my favourite Scalzi book.
(I should rectify the lack of review, but I’m not sure I can do a good review since it’s been so long since I’ve read it).
When I got the chance to read When the Moon Hits Your Eye, though, where the conceit is that the moon has suddenly turned into cheese, I had to jump on it.
The book was published in March 2025.
The interesting thing is that, while there is plenty of humour and hilarious situations, this is actually kind of a semi-serious take on how the world (and the people in it) would react if suddenly the moon turned to cheese and everything people thought they knew was turned on its head.
What a weird concept!
And a brilliant one.
Read MoreMaking Everybody Hate You – The Prodigals Club Review
Anybody who has followed this blog for any length of time knows that The Prodigals Club is one of my favourite games.
So this review may be a bit superfluous.
However, I’ve never really talked in detail about the game, so why don’t we rectify that?
The Prodigals Club was published by Czech Games Edition in 2015 (wow, 10 years old now!).
It was designed by Vladimír Suchý with wonderful artwork by Tomáš Kučerovský.
Suchý has gone on to design so many wonderful games, some of which are near (if not in) my Top 50 games that he’s close to my favourite designer (though I guess Shem Phillips and SJ MacDonald from Garphill Games probably steal that category).
This was an extension (not an expansion) of the wonderful Last Will, in which you are trying to blow all of your money, just like in the movie (both of them) Brewster’s Millions.
In fact, you can actually play Last Will as the Possessions module in The Prodigals Club! Though I’ve never tried it.
The Prodigals Club takes that basic premise and expands on it.
Not only are you trying to go broke (though you are), you are also trying to have everybody hate you in the political sphere (getting down votes) as well as your position in society (exemplified by your standing with four friends, two male and two female).
In classic Knizia fashion (or at least some of his games), these three spheres are all scored and your score is the most of the three.
Unlike Knizia, though, you want a low score, so the one you score is the highest.
Trust Suchý to turn even that on its head.
It’s hilarious that you are trying to engender the hate that others want to avoid.
How do you do all of this?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreBGG Top Games – 1000 Through 1100 – Thoughts
Recently the “This Game is Broken” podcast did a “Higher or Lower” game based on games in the Boardgame Geek rankings from 1000 to 2000.
(You should really check them out, by the way. Hilarious boardgame podcast)
During the Covid lockdowns, in order to get some actual articles posted, I did some posts about the Top 300, but I stopped there.
These posts were about how many I’ve played and how many I would like to play, but I didn’t really go into too much detail and I stopped at 300 so any games in this one will be new!
We talk about the Top 100, or even the Top 1000, but don’t always realize that there are some really good games down deeper in the rankings that we don’t really think about as often.
Today we’ll be talking about numbers 1001-1100. (keep in mind that BGG rankings do change and it’s very possible that one or more of these will not be in this ranking group if you’re reading this blog a year from now)
Of course, considering there are 1710 pages of games on BGG and this range is on page 11, I think it’s safe to say that even these games are well-regarded.
I’d like to highlight a few and bring them to your attention.
Just to give me something new to write other than reviews!
Let’s get started!
Read MoreHave Fun Storming the Castle! – Doomlings-Castle Glass Bolster Pack Review
In a lot of card games where cards just keep getting issued and issued and issued and issued and…
Oh, sorry. Thank you for that.
Anyway, in a lot of card games that keep getting cards added to them, it’s not always that you get a brand new mechanic added as well.
Doomlings – Castle Glass, however, is that bolster pack that does it.
Castle Glass is another 37-card bolster pack (like the Shadow Puppets one) to the whole Doomlings card game franchise.
That’s because, for the first time in this game system, set collection has become a mechanic.
If you read all of my Doomlings reviews, you’ll see my concerns about deck bloat and adding too many cards.
Castle Glass just takes that to the extreme.
I’ll try to be less dense about it than Inigo.
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 42 – Rumanian Defiance
One of the main rules of Combat Commander is “Anything can happen, so don’t give up.”
Obviously the caveat to that is “unless all hope is lost,” but in Combat Commander, that “lost” level is much higher than in many other games.
My November ladder game is a testament to that old philosophy.
But let me start the right way.
Welcome to another tale from the Combat Commander ladder, the monthly tournament of one of the greatest games out there. The ladder is administered by the stalwart Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame.
In another rare occurrence, I actually did play this game twice this month, doing a training scenario with my good friend Zilla Blitz on November 1.
The meat of the matter, however, was on Saturday, where I faced off in a scenario that I’ve played before, just over 2 years ago.
I lost that one, but would this be different?
My opponent this month was David S-P, a guy who I’ve played once before, three months into my Ladder career back in 2021.
I lost that one, but would this time be different?
The scenario is from the Stalingrad battle pack and features some feisty Rumanian troops (I kept the old spelling of the scenario) against an oncoming horde of Soviet troops as they were in the middle of routing the Germans after the Battle of Stalingrad.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
The Rumanians (greenish – Me) set up first within 12 hexes of the left map edge, and they are also using the Italian deck of cards.
There are a couple of setup special rules which are handy.
First, the Rumanians can give up the Initiative to use German machine guns instead of Rumanian ones.
They will still break easy (the Italian deck breaks weapons a lot more easily) but they are easier to repair and have a bit more firepower and range.
That was an easy decision for me to make.
Secondly, they get any combination of 7 Wire and Foxhole counters.
I used one Foxhole and then put the 6 Wire as shown, slowing down the northern Soviet force (which I knew would be coming).
The Soviets (brown – David) set up last within 2 hexes of the right edge.
The other special rules are that it’s Winter time, so fields don’t exist and the orchards are -1 hindrance instead of -2 hindrance.
Oh, and I get some reinforcements at Time 4.
Anyway, let’s see what happened!
Read MoreCreating a World From Scratch – Ecos: First Continent Review
There was a farmer had a dog and Ecos was his name-o.
E..C..O..S….Uh, Mr. Clair? We need another letter please?
Thank you.
Why do I reference this old children’s song?
Are you a fan of Bingo but think you need something a bit more cutthroat that doesn’t involve old grandmothers “accidentally” knocking their neighbour’s bingo chips off of their card?
(Really, Grandma was ruthless)
Ecos: The First Continent may be the game for you.
Ecos: The First Continent is a world-building game (or continent-building, I guess. Maybe the other continents are already there, whose inhabitants are just waiting to exploit this one once it’s complete? Is that too dark?).
You are playing cards in front of you, having elements shouted at you, and then when the card is full, implementing the card.
(Hopefully they’re not actually being shouted at you).
The game was designed by the incomparable John D. Clair with artwork by Sabrina Miramon. It was published by Alderac Entertainment Group in 2019.
It’s also tile-laying as you build the continent with grasslands, oceans, and deserts (Oceans? So maybe those other continents don’t exist yet? It does say “first continent,” after all)
Confused?
You won’t be, after the next episode of…wait, sorry, wrong segue.
Let’s just get on with it, shall we?
Read MoreEvolving in the Shadows – Doomlings- Shadow Puppets Bolster Pack Review
Card games, when given a bunch of expansions, can inevitably suffer from that bloat of having a deck of cards so massive that even God himself could not shuffle it.
Doomlings is getting to that point, but the good thing about this game is you can decide what cards you want to include and what you don’t, because each expansion or booster pack is clearly marked so you can remove what you don’t want.
The Shadow Puppets bolster pack for Doomlings is a set of 37 cards that can be added to the base Doomlings deck, adding three different factions of cards that build on each other.
It also adds a new Catastrophe and two new Age cards (as well as a foil card and five player aid cards) that can be added to your Doomlings round deck.
It’s not much of an expansion, but it certainly can add some heft to one of the other major expansions.
Read MoreBottoscon 2025 Retrospective
This past weekend was the 19th annual Bottoscon convention at the Inn at the Quay in New Westminster, Canada.
We’re almost at 20!
The con is run by Rob Bottos, a great guy who has taken to heart what many of us Canadians have thought about crossing the border for US conventions in these strange times, and decided to hold not just two conventions a year (starting in 2026) but three!
Yes, there will be a Bottoscon Winter in late February and the same Bottoscon Spring in June like there was last year.
While I don’t think I’m at the level of considering Rob a friend, I’m honoured to know him and have chatted with him a few times. He runs a great convention, he and the staff of volunteers who help everything go smoothly.
Also many thanks to one of those staff members, Allan, for working to get us a table that worked for our open gaming desires after a bit of an initial mix-up.
He went all out to try and help us, and it was greatly appreciated.
That, and the New West quay is simply beautiful, especially in the morning when we’re heading over to Angelina’s for a wonderful breakfast on Saturday morning.
The convention started as just a wargaming convention and there are still a ton of wargames played, but it has morphed into “regular” (i.e. Euro and other types of games) games as well as some role-playing games.
Just like last year (which was the first year of it), the Boathouse restaurant (attached to the hotel) offered tableside service so we could order a meal while not having to leave our table, which was really cool.
Unlike last year, they had a roaming server so that you could just order a snack or a beer or whatever, even between meals.
I took advantage of that and had more beer this weekend than I have had in quite a while (which only amounted to three, so you know how much I’ve had recently).
There’s also a possibility to sell some games, and for the first time I actually chose to benefit from it. I got to sell 6 games and basically financed my meals for the weekend!
I sometimes play wargames and would like to play more, but this year it was all about the non-wargames for me.
Four days (Thursday-Sunday) of gaming goodness!
What did I play?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreIt’s Moving Through the Vents! – Final Girl – Into the Void Review
One of the classic horror movie franchises is the Alien series, or at least the first one.
The second one, I would almost count as an intense action movie with some horror elements.
And then things got silly.
Anyway, it’s not surprising that the Final Girl solo game franchise was going to come out with a feature film based on that series, and it only took them until Series 2!
Into the Void is the feature film with the terrifying Evomorph as the killer aboard the USS Konrad starship.
You know the crew are sitting ducks, right?
This feature film was designed by Evan Derrick with art by Tyler Johnson.
It was published in 2023 by Van Ryder Games.
Much like Ellen Ripley in the movie series, you are the final girl tasked with taking on this monstrosity as it appears and disappears without warning, viciously eviscerating crewmembers at every turn.
There’s even a Final Girl named Ellen!
I have yet to see the Evomorph emerge from one of the meeple’s stomachs, though I wouldn’t put it past Van Ryder’s ingenuity to somehow make that happen.
Is it the best one in the series that I’ve played so far?
Let’s take a look.
Read More