Some production shortcuts notwithstanding, Fate of the Fellowship is perhaps the finest Lord of the Rings game I've played, a tremendous adaptation that captures Tolkien's masterwork in under two hours. My review: spacebiff.com/2025/12/01/f...

What have I been consuming in 2025? Let's all head down to the KIOSK and find out >> kiosk.substack.com/p/hot-wrecks

Caesar's Empire I'm surprised this hasn't been more popular. You set up trading routes across the Roman Empire collecting trade goods to make sets. It's family friendly, looks good on the table and there's plenty of skill. Maybe it's because there's no luck? 🤷 #boardgames

Fjords This multiplayer semi-abstract feels like a throwback. It's easy to learn and it takes half an hour. It's a far better game than Carcassone, although it has some of the nastiness of Hey, That's My Fish #boardgames

I am encountering yet more men on testosterone having huge heart attacks. Bear in mind I’m only on call 1/12th of the time (ie my rota has 12 consultants) and yet I’ve now seen 5 men in the last couple of months who’ve had STEMIs in their 40s and 50s. All very fit and *externally* in great shape

Cardiologist seeing young, fit men on TRT having massive heart attacks. Not proof, but... www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPsK... @medcrisis.bsky.social

Big Shot I bought the Playte reprint of Big Shot by Alex Randolph. The small box unfurls into the board. Check out their eBay store which ships from Korea. It's an excellent, tight 30 minute mix of auction and area control. Reminds me of For Sale or High Society but with area control. #boardgames

Here's a quick deals round-up, including some direct links to deals I haven't had a chance to write up yet (but will do soon): www.eurogamer.net/tech-good-af...

A couple more frosty friends. #cataphracts #vanitera450

My set of 100 of Ruben's Mini Chips showed up. #boardgames

Long and great day yesterday at Age of Steam UK (ageofsteamuk.com) 30 people showed up in St Albans and played AoS all day. I managed 3 games: Portugal, Mexico and France 2078. Such a great system.

An otter swimming next to my rowing club on the Thames.

Werewolf We had a dinner party and as the UK has been gripped with Traitors frenzy I decided to run a Werewolf game. I printed this version off BGG and it worked brilliantly. Voting is too structured and the cards aren't much good, so I bought Ultimate Werewolf for next time. #boardgamegeek

The highlight of Handycon was playing Blood on the Clocktower on Halloween. Werewolf for gamers. I had a blast. I was the Slayer and killed the Demon - just based on his body language. Playing with 15 excited people and an experienced moderator was superb. £116 for a copy is steep. #boardgames

Struggle of Empires Old-school Martin Wallace. Everyone bids for alliances at the start of each phase - which varies the game flow cleverly. Also, the top VP position in each area is shared so there's little incentive for spite. A rare 5 hour game I like. #boardgames

Pax Porfiriana Had an awesome play of Pax Porf at Handycon. Both of knew the rules, so we were straight into it. One of the cards is of Caryl Ap Rhys Pryce. A a 24-carat chancer. A real-life equivalent of Flashman in Pax Pamir. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caryl_A... #boardgames

Silos Beautiful production, plays quickly and plenty of skill. Unfortunately it's abstract and unintuitive. Maybe better if the theme was completely stripped away in favour of the most usable production? @[email protected] romped home with the most societal power emblems. #boardgames

“Jimi would play Risk on acid, and I never—and me personally—ever beat him at all. He was unbelievable at it. He was a military man, you know, he’s a paratrooper, and I don’t know whether you know that about Jimi, but no one ever beat him at Risk.” -Graham Nash (h/t Knut Osmo via FB)

A hastily typed post after I got jokerfied by the Boston city council meeting andymasley.substack.com/p/please-ple...

We beat Fate of the Fellowship last night on the 7th attempt. Such an amazing game. I think it's streets better than War of the Ring, which feels turgid in comparison. I have done a total 180⁰ on co-op games. They can be superb experiences. #boardgames

Trains This game with an ungoogleable name is very solid. Play cards to make a simple rail network. Build your deck as in Dominion or Clank. I got the 2014 AEG Black Friday Box edition, which is usually cheaper than the original. #boardgames

Pax Porfiriana I played a solo game to refresh my rules as there is no way I could remember how to play such a messy game otherwise. I still love it. Steeped in theme but interactive and fast-playing. #boardgames

Orbit A race to visit all planets but they are moving around on orbits, propelled by player cards. This has been a big hit in the club. We think it might be the most consistently replayed game we've ever hard - definitely among middle-weight games. #boardgames

Panda Spin We enjoyed this Carl Chudyk climbing game very much. Every time your combo is beaten, you get it back and spin the cards 180⁰ to a more powerful rank. It's complicated and might be too difficult if you've never played a climbing game before. #boardgames

Battle of Hoth Simplest, cleanest version of Memoir '44 possible. You cannot go wrong with this system. I need one of the series in my collection. #boardgames

Fishing Trick-taker by Friedemann Friese. You keep the cards you capture and draw from them for next hand. If not enough, you draw from the deck, which get more powerful. Doing badly means your next hand will be stronger. It's fun, but I'm not convinced there's much skill. Not sure it's a keeper.

Sub Terra Simple co-op where you escape from a cave pursued by horrors. The twist is that it's designed to be played in the dark under UV light. Was a lot of fun but hard not to get sleepy. #boardgames

Ticket to Ride: Asia Partnership Ticket to Ride is good. You share some but not all of your tickets and contracts with your partner - so you can't be sure what they are aiming for. #boardgames

Taj Mahal More confrontational than I remember. It is often called an auction game but they are are really small battles like in Ivanhoe/Condottiere. The area control reminds me a lot of Web of Power. This is less intuitive than a regular Knizia. Not one of his best but memorable. #boardgames

Splendor Pokemon Regular Splendor is smooth and intuitive so I was a bit concerned that this might be gilding the lily. I shouldn't have hesitated. This version just replaces the nobles with upgrading (evolving) cards (pokemon). It's a nice thematic twist on the original. #boardgames

Rebirth I finally won this. Classic Reiner Knizia. Fast and smooth playing but tons to think about. #boardgames

yup #boardgames

Star Wars: Rebellion This is longer than I usually like and I don't often play 2 player games but I love Star Wars - at least the first 3 films. Fury of Dracula for two is a good summary as you're hunting for the rebel base around the galaxy. #boardgames

"Maybe don't say “maybe”: How and why invitees fail to realize that they should not respond to invitations with a “maybe”" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Power Grid: The Stock Companies An expansion for Power Grid that turns it into an 18xx-style stock management game. Seems like a significant improvement. There's none of the turn-order rubber-banding. The English translation is poor. Should be smoother next time. #boardgames

I have played this a couple of times at BGA. It's good. If you like the original you'll like this. Not sure you need both. As a Brit, I prefer this one.

Original post: mastodon.social/@CTD/1151572...

Fate of the Fellowship I couldn't resist this in the shop. It's thematically brilliant. Better than War of the Ring because the characters are so important. Punishing. Played 3 times and only came close once and that was because I got a lift from the giant eagles to Mt Doom. #boardgames

Elevenses Sweet little half hour tableau builder from 2014 about serving tea to the ladies. The white cubes used for scoring are sugar cubes. #boardgames

Uh oh, cleaning my home office floor and got distracted with crayons and colored pencils 🧙‍♂️

🎲🤩 #boardgames

Fist of Dragonstones This one divides opinion. It's in that uncomfortable spot of being more complicated than a pub game, but not really meaty enough for a regular games night. It's also got blind bidding which you either love or hate. I love it. It's classic Bruno Faidutti. #boardgames

Luthier Not my kind of game at all. Took us 4 hours. It's a classic crowd funded modern worker placement game. Tons of incredible components and art. 30 pages of rules. Tons of tracks and counters and ways to score. Minimal player interaction. Good for what it is, but I'd rather not. #boardgames

This podcast about a woman retracing the fate of her family who were murdered by the Nazis in Poland is touching. www.economist.com/podcasts/202...

It seems like there is not enough of a policy response to the existence of self-driving cars, with 57M miles of data, Waymo’s autonomous vehicles experience 85% less serious injuries & 79% less injuries overall than cars with human drivers 2.4 million are injured & 40k killed in US accidents a year

Sure, you could use AI to summarize papers and explain them at a level anyone could understand... or you can turn the abstracts into music videos for no reason. The tools are obviously not perfect yet, but the disparate elements (consistent characters, lip syncing, etc.) are evolving fast

Marvel Remix Receive 7 cards. Every turn draw 1 from deck or table and discard 1 to make a higher scoring hand. Game ends once 10 cards discarded. That's it. This Fantasy Realms reboot has much nicer art but also slightly fiddlier scoring and doesn't have an scoring scanner app. #boardgames

Wonderland's War This is a good game for Sunday morning at a convention. It's not too hard to learn and play but there's plenty going on and you don't mind about it taking 2.5 hours. Sometimes the production values of modern board games are jaw-dropping. #boardgames #handycon