Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Friday Night Shots – Cooperative Games
No, you’re not drunk or stoned or just seeing things.
Yes, this is the third week in a row for a Friday Night Shots post.
The bar is now open weekly!
At least for now.
Maybe not next week.
I’m glad you happened to be walking by noticed me working in here.
I’m not sure why nobody else is?
Oh, maybe it’s because the Open sign is malfunctioning.
That could do it.
That’s what it’s supposed to look like! The contractors told me they fixed it and I guess I never checked.
Probably might have had some customers this week if not for that.
Anyway, why don’t you have a seat and we’ll talk about some boardgames.
Don’t worry about the lack of music. It was still stuck on Justin Bieber’s Greatest Hits so I took a hammer to it.
It’ll get better.
Just like last week’s post, I can’t believe that I haven’t talked about this one yet.
What are your opinions on cooperative games?
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – How Important is Art?
Has it been five weeks yet?
No, it hasn’t!
Welcome back to the bar, only a week later.
You must have seen the lights on in the window, or maybe the fire that’s in the corner.
We should probably put that out.
Anyway, it’s good to have you back. Have a seat and I’ll get you something to drink.
Anything you want.
Except Dr. Pepper, because while I like the other 22 flavours, I’m morally opposed to prickly ash.
(Thanks, AJ!)
So now that you’re here, and we literally have no other customers, let’s talk about board games!
I can’t believe we haven’t talked about this before, but just how important is good art to you in a boardgame?
Read MoreThe Beauty of Northwest Tiles – Cascadia App Review
(this is going to be a review of both the game and the app, since I’ve played the tabletop game a bunch too)
There’s something peaceful about a good tile-laying game where everybody is creating their own habitat for God’s natural wonders, both flora and fauna.
It’s especially peaceful when it can also be done in a lunch time at the office!
Or, in digital form, in about 15 minutes.
Cascadia recently came out in app form for iOS/Android/Steam.
Published by Dire Wolf Digital (with the boardgame itself published by Flatout Games and Alderac Entertainment Group), the game was designed by Randy Flynn with excellent artwork by Beth Sobel (said artwork looking gorgeous on the iPad as well).
The game plays 1-4 players, as does the app!
The app just came out a couple of months ago while the game itself was published in 2022.
What can be bad about laying out a bunch of tiles until you have a large, beautiful panorama with a bunch of animals on it?
Read MoreSalty Origami – Sea Salt & Paper Review
As I spoke about on Saturday, the word “filler” for a game is often seen as derogatory, when it really shouldn’t be.
Some fillers are really great!
Many card games are filler games, and one really juicy one (though it does feel a bit papery for some reason) is Sea Salt & Paper (oh, that’s why it feels that way!) published by Bombyx Games (and Pandasaurus Games over here in North America) in 2022.
The game was designed by Bruno Cathala and Théo Rivière with artwork by Lucien Derainne, Pierre-Yves Gallard and plays 2-4 players.
And it’s cute as hell, if you like origami.
Sea Salt & Paper is a simple set-collecting card game that adds a bit of a push your luck element.
Well, maybe not push your luck.
More like “do I declare now and risk the others being ahead of me? Or do I wait to see if I can score more points but they may jump ahead of me and I don’t know how many points anybody has right now?”
Ok, that was long-winded.
Let me catch my breath.
The rules of the game are simple to teach and you will be be done in 20-30 minutes.
The perfect filler!
Read MoreFriday Night Shots – Filler Games
Welcome back to the bar! It’s been a whole five weeks, so sorry about that.
One of the kegs exploded and we had beer all over the floor.
Spent a number of weeks trying to save as much as possible rather than cleaning it up, until we realized that’s probably unsanitary!
So here we are, though, and I’m glad you noticed the Open sign in the window while you were walking by.
Nobody else has.
It’s even a Saturday!
Have a seat and I’ll get you a drink of your choice.
Completely debris-free!
Let me turn off the jukebox.
For some reason it’s stuck on the MacLeod Clan playing the bagpipes 24/7.
Nobody can stand that.
So what are we going to talk about?
How about filler games?
Read MoreEvolution is Legendary! – Doomlings: Legends of Enderas review
One of the very cool games that came out in 2022 was a neat little card game called Doomlings.
This is a game where each player represents a doomling civilization on some distant planet (or is it an alternate Earth? Only Kang can know for sure).
As a civilization, you are playing trait cards to upgrade and evolve your doomling race, but as ages pass, the world will inevitably end in world-wide catastrophe.
I promise no existential angst in this review (unless you like Trinkets).
The latest expansion (kindly provided to me by Doomlings LLC) is called Legends of Enderas, and it provides more stuff.
Yes, more of that too!
One of the previous expansions, the Upgrade Pack (unless you bought all of them individually), offered some doomling variety in the form of Mythlings, Dinolings, and Techlings, and multi-colour doomlings.
Another one, Imaginary Ends, added some more types along with Fuzelings that combined those types.
So what does Legends of Enderas give you?
More Mythlings, Dinolings, and Techlings! Along with some multi-colour and Fuzelings of these three types.
Also coming for the ride is a new mechanic, which is much better than the Trinkets in Imaginary Ends: Treasures.
Read MoreNew to Me – April 2025
While April wasn’t a really full month of games, it was surprisingly full of new to me games!
Six new to me games out of the fourteen I played is actually a really good ratio.
I love it when months come together like that.
Of course, it helps when Abi shows up at Sunday game days consistently, as there’s always something new to play! Four of the six were from him.
One day I will get some of my new games to the table too.
However, I love months like this because I always enjoy games that I haven’t played before!
Especially when some of them are actually kind of old.
That keeps the Cult of the New to Me happy too.
Hell, when they saw that one game was from 1999, they were extremely happy!
I need to do more of that, because they were starting to get antsy.
No rebellions on my watch!
Until next month, anyway.
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was shipped off to Germany for some evil Nazi ceremony anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreApril 2025 Gaming
As expected after last month’s post, where March had a huge number of games because of a convention, April came back down to earth with a much fewer amount of games.
However, it was much better than February!
Which means it was a good month.
Especially because I got a few older games that I haven’t played in quite a while
Would have been better without missing a Sunday and a couple of work lunch days, but still.
Two of the games, it had been 2 years since I played them.
In April, I played 16 games a total of 20 times (so the total plays was the same as February, but a couple more games).
Here’s what I played last month.
And here it is in grid format.
Many thanks to the wonderful BG Stats app, which lets me keep track of all this and produces such beautiful work!
There were also some great new to me games played, but those will be in another post.
Let’s take a look and see what was out there.
Read MoreStriking From the Dark – In the Shadows Review
Seldom has a game become so relevant to modern times between conception and final production as In the Shadows – Resistance in France 1943-44 has become (I’m assuming it’s been in the planning stages for numerous years, anyway).
This game is a 2-player, 45-60 minute (BGG says 30-45 minutes, and maybe that’s true once you’re familiar with it) game about the French Resistance in World War II fighting against the occupying German forces.
It was designed by Dan Bullock and Joe Schmidt and published by GMT Games in 2025.
In the game, the Occupation side is trying to remove Resistance units from the map as well as transferring French resources into Germany.
The Resistance is trying to undermine German authority with acts of sabotage that make things harder for the Occupation to win.
Only one side will be able to accomplish their objective.
Read MoreNew to Me – March 2025 – Part 2
Wow, it has been a spell, hasn’t it?
With so many new to me games in March, I broke the usual monthly post into two posts, thinking I’d get them done a few days a part.
Yeah, I think I got into one of my funks again, feeling daunted by the sheer number of games I had to write about.
Imposter syndrome’s a bitch, ain’t it?
Anyway, finally two weeks later, here’s part 2 of the list.
Part 1 can be found here.
Thankfully (for blog-writing purposes anyway), April hasn’t been nearly as full of games, making next month’s post a lot easier.
Two of these games, I have an online streamer to blame for, because I wouldn’t have bought them without actually seeing them in play first.
My wallet really hates Edward right now.
But I love him!
Speaking of love and hate, the Cult of the New to Me wasn’t too unhappy with this second part of the list, with three games that are actually older than a couple of years.
That’s, like, almost half!
So, without further ado (all of my ado was lost when the train flipped over anyway), here’s part 2 of the March list.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 