Leaders is a 2 player abstract game played on a hexagonal board made of hexagonal spaces. You each start the game with just one game piece - your leader. In the first few rounds of the game you will get to recruit minions from a market of three options. Every minion in the game has a unique ability. You will eventually have four minions, after which you do not recruit any more. Your goal is to

Recently Hilko informed me about a game of Snow White and the Eleven Dwarfs being played in a BoardGameGeek.com forum. It is hosted by Dave Peters, and the players are from different countries, including from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, and even Australia. I certainly have never imagined my game being played in this format, so I am watching this game with curiosity (link to thread, item 3).

I was back in my hometown Kota Kinabalu during the Christmas period, and met up with an old friend to play some boardgames. We did a four-player game of Brazil Imperial. I have played this once before, but quite some time ago. This is a very pretty game.  These were the three objectives I chose. Originally the plan was to play Clans of Caledonia. Then the plan changed because it

Draft & Write Records is a paper and pencil game. Your put together a rock band, bringing together not only the musicians, but also producers and stage hands. You release albums and singles, you do shows starting with local pubs and hopefully eventually progressing to prestigious stadiums. Every player does this on his own player sheet. You check boxes off to mark your progress in the

Karakorum is a title from Reiner Knizia about mountain climbing. It is a game about evaluating and taking risks, and knowing when to rest and claim progress. At the same it is also a race on several levels. The mountain climbing theme is pretty much pasted on. Story-wise you have three climbers each working on a different peak. You help them climb as far as possible, and you will score

I must say this game is gimmicky, but it does work and it's certainly eye-catching. Talk about creative use of dice!  Dice in the game represent different cooking ingredients. They come in five colours, representing five different ingredients. At the start of the game, you roll them all and randomly organise them into a slab like this. Players then take turns using that cardboard

I didn't know this was an Uwe Rosenberg game until halfway through the game. It being a polyomino game should have tipped me off. The polyominoes in this game are animal enclosures in a zoo. Everyone starts the game with an empty zoo. You collect enclosure tiles to place in your zoo. You also collect animals to place in these enclosures. Animals will breed. Whenever an enclosure is fully occupied

Just One is a game from 2018. It was nominated for many awards, and it won many too, the most prestigious one being the Spiel des Jahres (2019). This is a party game and a cooperative game. The idea is simple. Every round one person plays the active player and needs to guess a word. That word is known to everyone else, and everyone must give a one word clue to help the active player guess

I continue my ongoing online games of Innovation with younger daughter Chen Rui, who is now away from home. We have moved on to playing with the expansion Cities of Destiny. I'm sure later we will cycle back to the others. Although the latest rules for Innovation have been implemented on both Yucata.de and BoardGameArena.com (available if you participate in early testing), we are still

Shackleton Base is a heavy eurogame about developing and operating a moon base. This is a worker placement game in which you build domes, attract employees, mine resources and make money. Every game there will be three corporations out of seven in play, and they determine the human enterprises happening on the moon. Working on projects for these corporations is how you

Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game with the same concept and structure as Werewolf. It is an improved, more complex and more strategic version of Werewolf. In Werewolf you don't really have much basis for discussion or deduction. You rely on observing the facial expressions and reactions of your friends. In Blood on the Clocktower every town resident has a unique

Steam Power is Martin Wallace’s magnum opus Age of Steam simplified to become a family game. Well, not exactly. Indeed much is simplified, but some elements in Steam Power are just different. Some are a little like Brass.  In Steam Power, you build your own rail network. You also build factories. Every city allows one specific factory type.

The biggest change at my boardgame blog in 2025 was the quantity. Since starting this blog in 2007, I have never written this many blog posts. The number of posts is more than double of the next highest year. This is mainly because of the many new-to-me games I played on BoardGameArena.com. Together with my long-time gaming buddies Han and Allen, we started playing asynchronous games

Catan: New Energies is a variant and a standalone game in the Catan universe. 95% of the original The Settlers of Catan is still here. Some elements have been added. The additions are a social commentary. This game explores the concept of sustainable development. In order to do well, you must develop your cities and towns in an environmentally-friendly way. Otherwise you will be

Fishing is a deck-building trick-taking game from mad scientist designer Friedemann Friese. The game is played over eight rounds. Every round you score points based on the cards you win. These cards are shuffled, and they go to the bottom of your personal draw deck. In the next round, you draw cards from your personal draw deck. Your draw deck starts empty. In the first round, if you don’t

Little Fighters 2 was a hit digital indie game released in Hong Kong in 2000. It was remastered and re-released in 2025, its 25th anniversary. Together with the re-release, a novel was published, and the deluxe version of the novel comes with a small box card game. This is that small box card game.  This is a game for 2 to 4 players. You play one of four characters in the digital

The first thing 5 Towers reminds me of is Lost Cities. You have five suits, and you must play your cards in a specific order, with no turning back. However there are several important differences, so 5 Towers delivers a different play experience. You can build up to five different towers, each a different colour, and you most likely will. Building a tower means playing cards of the same suit

The Gang turns Texas Hold 'em Poker into a cooperative game. It's a great idea. Most of the cards in the game are just standard poker cards. Unknowing passers by will probably think you are just playing regular poker.  Your goal as a team is to guess the order of your hands based on strength. You need to guess who has the strongest hand, then the second strongest, and so on. You

This is Han's game, and it has a ton of miniatures. This box you see is just for the basic components, including the game board, the player boards and the player markers. However you cannot fit the miniatures into this box. There are at least two other huge boxes needed for all the miniatures in the game. When you need to bring this game to game night, you'll be carrying several bags like