At this year's GAMA Expo I had the opportunity to play Symbiosis with some industry folks. I was charmed by it's artwork and card size, and delighted by the simple decision space and speedy game play. I brought home a copy and reviewed it for you. Check it out!

What is Symbiosis?

In Symbiosis players are growing and improving their pond in an attempt to earn the most points. They start with a 4 x 2 grid of face down cards, 1 of which is turned over at the beginning of the game. An additional 4 cards are turned face up in the center of the table, and serve as the market.

On your turn you select a card from the market and do one of two things:

Replace one of your face down pond cards with the card you selected from the market. Your pond card is placed face up into the market and becomes available for other players to select.

Alternatively you can take one of your face up cards and swap it with a face up market card. If you do this, you must flip one of your remaining face down cards face up.

“Why”,…

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Threaded is a game about sewing Bargello-patterned tapestries. Well, sort of. You are using cubes as thread, after all. You may not come out of this game with a new afghan, but you will come out of it with your brain slightly aching from the puzzle you must solve. 

I grew up in the 1970's, seeing these groovy geometric patterns everywhere. My grandmother was a whiz with a needle and made all kinds of textiles featuring these stripy, blazing patterns, but I just figured it was a trend of the times. Little did I know that they were called Bargello, or that their origin dates back to the 17th century in the Bargello Palace in Florence, Italy. Right out of the gate, Threaded taught me something. 

[caption id="attachment_331060" align="aligncenter" width="1125"] My Bargello baby blanket, made by my grandmother[/caption]

Between having a strong nostalgic pull toward Bargello patterns and enjoying all kinds of needlecraft myself, it was a no-brainer for me to agree to review Threaded. It doesn't hurt that other needlecraft-themed games like Patchwork, Knitting Circle, and Calico have been big hits in my house. So does Threaded compete? Let's see. 

As I was reading the instructions, Threaded reminded me of Istanbul, and not in a…

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Tabling Tableaus

I once asked W. Eric Martin at GAMA Expo, “What’s your favorite game?” He replied instantly: Innovation. I hadn’t heard of it at the time, but I quickly tracked down a copy and have since played that wild tableau-building civilization card game many, many times. It has shot up to become one of my favorite games, so keep an eye out for my review of Innovation Ultimate in the near future.

But this isn’t Innovation—though it’s close in some very interesting ways. I was handed this review copy by fellow mountaineer Justin Bell at Gen Con last year, and I went in with absolutely no context for what to expect.

To my surprise, there’s a lot here that feels reminiscent of Innovation (and even Dominion), but with enough twists to make Citizens of the Spark one of my favorite new-to-me games of 2026.

Regular readers may know that tableau building is one of my favorite mechanisms, so when a game is built around that idea, I’m already interested.

Spark Plugs

Citizens of the Spark includes 30 different citizen sets, with 7 to 10 used in a given game depending on player count. Players collect sparks, which serve as points, and the game…

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The Crew: Mission Deep Sea - Joseph Buszek

Despite my aversion to both cooperative and limited communication games, I really enjoyed The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine when it was released, mostly because I love new innovations on the trick-taking mechanic, and it definitely delivered in that aspect. However, I didn’t get it to the table that much because, despite the clever gameplay, I found it worked best when you could play through several missions with the same group of players, following the recommended mission difficulty progression. For me, trick-taking games are usually more enjoyable as a quick filler game. Once you pass a half an hour, most at the table have had their fun and are ready to move on. This is where The Crew sequel, Mission Deep Sea, comes in.

While The Crew: Mission Deep Sea still has a mission-based logbook and follows the same standard rules as its predecessor, it’s the task cards for each round that are, literally, game-changing. In the original, the task cards were all the same difficulty­: some combination of color and number, which you had to win in a trick. The difficulty was ramped up by the number of tasks and task tokens (which changes the order to win…

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An unpopular war. Protests in the streets. An authoritarian US leader sending troops to a major American city, employing violence against its own citizens. Obviously, I’m talking about the events of 1968 in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, which happens to be the theme of Chicago ’68, a game from designer Yoni Goldstein and published by The Dietz Foundation.

Running south on Lake Shore Drive, Heading into town

I hope you’ll spare some time for a little personal context before I get into my review. When I moved to Chicago in the summer of 1998 to attend film school, the only thing I knew about the city was that the Bulls had just won their 6th NBA Championship in the last 8 years (side note: they haven’t been to finals in the 28 years since). It was in one of my classes that we watched Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool, a movie that takes place (and was partly shot) during the 1968 DNC riots. The film had an enormous impact on me and, along with the book Boss by legendary columnist Mike Royko, was my introduction to the modern history of the city I have called home for nearly 30 years.

Boss is the unauthorized biography of the late…

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This is the first part of a three-part series on getting back into board gaming after an extended absence. (If you want to skip ahead, you can go to Part Two to read about rebuilding your gaming groups, and Part Three to see the games that brought me back to gaming.) Today we're looking at ways to re-build your gaming muscles (thinking strategically and logically, understanding mechanisms and how they interact, puzzle solving, etc.) that may have atrophied during a long hiatus from gaming.

My long hiatus began with Covid cancelling all in-person gaming and then swan-dived into three years of caregiving for my parents. When the storm abated, I looked around and realized that I had barely touched a board game in five years. Between having no time or mental bandwidth for games, my game shelf was covered in dust and, even more worrying, my gaming skills had atrophied.

I first tried to play Trollhalla, one of my favorite games. I felt stupid and slow. The game isn't difficult, but my ability to remember the rules and work through a strategy was shot. Five years of too much doomscrolling, constant stress, and lack of sleep did a number on my ability to think clearly. I tried other games with much the same results. It was depressing and…

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