We were on vacation for a while, so mostly played smaller games such as splitter, qwixx, agropolis.

Since we got back we started with Aeons end future and past, where we had a really cool play to win the game. Everything just came together perfectly. We also received our kickstarter for Borderlands, and played 1 game of it. Really enjoy the gameplay, they managed to capture the BL soul really well :D

Wait this has been out for a while now, hasn’t it? In the Netherlands we already could purchase it for 2 years now. Or am I missing something?

Skip the movie! It is a horrible attempt to make it cooler. All of a sudden he is a prof football (soccer) player and they get many details wrong. It was a horrible watch for me :p

I dont know if this really fits what you are looking for, but we had a Dutch writer called Thea Beckman who wrote the book Crusade in jeans (kruistocht in spijkerbroek). No clue if it was translated, and if it isnt too teensy, but I liked it when I was younger. It is about a boy from our time being sent back to the medieval times, and how he had to deal with the crusade he found there.

I hate it when the “and this is where we end the session for tonight” part happens 10 minutes in… once had a high level party teleport to the complete opposite side of the map 10 minutes after starting… That is when I learned what high level really meant.

I am not fully familiar with the term quarterbacking, but I assume it is where somebody effectively plays the whole game and tells everybody what to do?

I think if you are aware of it, it is easier to stop quarterbacking. When I play it I try to give advise on hotspots for problems, but I wont plan somebody elses turn. But they decide. But the game can be prone to it. You could always play with your cards closed, then people have less information, which prevents 1 person from figuring it all out, but might complicate the game some extra as well

We have had some busy weeks last weeks, so the amount of games is liwer compared to normal. This weekend we finally had some time again ^^

We played 2 games of good ol’ pandemic, which we horribly lost. Mostly due to the lab expansion, which we hadnt played in a while and forgot the proper strategy for.

We also played a game of Theotihuacan, but it isnt my game. We have played it a couple of times now, but I am tense the whole way through, as there are so many actions and every single one counts so much. If anyone has some experiences with this game and can tell me your experiences I would love to hear. It is a game my fiance loves, and I would like to at least like it as well…

Dixit is also a good fit! It is a very easily explained game, where you have to say a word or short phrase describing a mystery card. The rest then places a card they think that matches the description as well, and then a voting round starts. It is really fun, and playing it would do more justice than this explanation :p

Yeah it is one of those games that I wouldnt play without the expansion anymore. We really like the legendary dungeons, which adds quite some difficulty and allows for multi classes, which can create some cool and strong combos.

Sprawlopolis is very light weight and offers a lot of replayability.

We have laminated (I believe that is the english word) clever, qwixx, knaster and knister so that we can bring 1 set of dice and play those all.

We really like regicide, which is just 1 pack of cards.

Lastly you have some (card)games with a small footprint, such as The Crew, or Cahoots, or Pickomino.

Some that I havent heard but love are Pandemic and Spirit island.

And as a hidden gem: Heroes of Tenefyre and sprawlopolis. Heroes is a deckbuilder dungeon crawler where the new cards in your deck are the monsters you slay. Sprawlopolis is a city builder the size of a small wallet, which you can easily take with you. There are 3 challenges out if 18 which decide how the game will play, which asks for different tactics every time.

Cool setting! I hope you have a blast!

Is there a pirate booty that most crews are secretly looking for? Any tunours to set them on the right/wrong path?

What is the signature drink of the isles?

Are there any safe havens where they can take a rest from the government and its goonies?

What is their main export/import, as this will drive new people to the isles, and might bring some news or opportunities.

You might want to look at some laminated games with erasable pens. We really like Welcome To, and recently discovered Aquamarine as a 4 dollar game.

5 minute dungeon is a quicktime game that is coop, but was hard to get in Europe.

Picomino (regenwormen in Dutch) is a dice push your luck game that has a small footprint. I know you said no dice but still wanted to give the tip :p

Lastly you have walletgames such as Sprawlopolis (coop) which might be worth looking at, they are meant to be small.

• Light: cartographers/aquamarine
• Medium: Isle of cats
• Heavy: Spirit Island
• Most played: Gloomhaven, I think we have close to 150 games played.
• Favorite: I think this is a tie between Gloomhaven and Spirit island. I like campaign games a lot, but spirit island is such a wonderful game. SI always manages to give you that “how are we gonna do this” feeling, and then you stabalize (most of the times). Every game is tense.

We played a lot of the Isofarian guard last week, finished chapter 2 from the first campaign. They announced a couple of changes to the rules last week, and we really like them.

We also had our first introduction to Arnak at some friends. I like it, but I feel that you have to do too much, without becoming good at anything.

Lastly we finally git around continuing our alphabet challenge with Noria and Onirim :D

The crew! Both versions of it allow for replayability as you have different objectives every game. It is a trick taking game, so they might be a bit familiar with it due to other games like bridge. And it is cheap. Only thing that might take them a bit to get used to is that it is coop.

Another simple one would be take 6 (nimmt 6).

7 wonders duel is such a good basegame. The focus on the limitted ways to victory is its main strength, and the toght card pool. It is difficult to add something equally strong, without adding too many side focusses, or inbalances. We play mainly the base game due to this.

We spent most of our week discovering 2 kickstarters that just landed, The Witcher and Isoforian guard.

The Witcher is very easily becoming a slog when playing at higher levels. We played a 4 player game that lasted 3 to 4 hours. It is a lot of fun, but the sweetspot for the game feels around 1 or 2 players. Lastly we are thinking anout adding some extra homerules, as you can now win the game by only fighting lvl 1 monsters. This is also something I see a lot of on BGG forums.

The Isoforian guard is so much fun! Really like the bag drafting gameplay, and the story. The game is tougher than we thought. We wanted to continue with the story, but we got our asses kicked and learned that grinding might be needed to get some better equipment and abilities.

Apart from the above mentioned, I really love Tainted Grail. Really cool setting, good storytelling, and a nice exploration mechanic. I am curious what the 2.0 version will do to iron out some of the kinks.

I think the half tiles can add an extra dimension to the tile laying subgenre, but I dont think I will need another tile laying game :p Or it will have to do something extra apart from just adding the half tiles that we haven’t seen before in (his) other games.