It’s fair to say that being transgender isn’t easy. No one willingly chooses a life of repression, depression and constant crushing loneliness; which beforehand takes the form of not being able to be open about yourself to anyone – ever – and afterwards takes the form (for the unlucky ones) of losing family and friends and having no one to turn to for support. I’m one of the lucky ones.

There are some neat things about being transgender though that begin to crystallise once life’s circumstance, opportunity and comfort levels align and you finally take the steps to open up and let go:

–          The world is a much warmer place than you imagine. Gaming buddies, friends, work colleagues, people I’ve never met before … all, without exception, have said no probs, be who you are, we’ll support you. My boys gave immediate acceptance. Their age group has already normalised trans socialisation far more than any other and they ‘get’ it. Compare back to 10, 20, 30 years ago where it felt your only chance of avoiding hate and rejection were by being perfectly passable from the get-go. I do realise this is still the case for many parts of the world so I count my blessings I live where I do.

–          When you get to that point that body dysphoria is diminishing, and your presentation dysphoria is diminishing, when people start seeing you and treating you as the gender you’ve always aligned with and valued, when the experiences of gender ‘rightness’ increases with every passing day, and you realise what normal people mean when they say they’re happy. Wow. So cool. So THAT’S what it means to be happy.

–          Realising that despite the new burden of continuous acceptance anxiety, you no longer need to feel alone and depressed for the rest of your life. It’s a trade-off you happily accept.

–          Realising that opening up to people is a virtuous circle. They open up to you in return and the deeper connections built with friends is so rewarding – it makes me want to be a nicer person. It feels good to want to care about other people again when all you’ve felt able to do is wallow in your own issues.

–          Realising how much hormones mess with your mind, comparing how differently you react to situations now compared to when your body coursed with testosterone. It’s eye-opening. I only wish I knew back in the day what I know now; I would have been a better husband, father, son, friend.

Ok, all good, but more importantly how does this affect my gaming!? Well, here are the current tropes within the group:

–          Transitioning is just a long-term strategy to win more games by introducing major distraction to the table. As a rider to this, playing pink now (because pandering to stereotypes in a fun way helps seed comfort with change) after 25 years of playing blue is doing heads in, furthering the distraction master plan.

–          Losing can now apparently be explained away by my wearing a more revealing top than usual.

–          Major gaffes on my part can be explained away as hormones messing with my mind

–          I now get massive numbers of vetoes on take-that and conflict-driven games without askance

In all seriousness, it’s impossible to express how deep my gratitude is to my gaming buddies for their acceptance. Change isn’t easy, nor is helping take on the burden of normalising trans socialisation, but they’ve provided a supportive environment in which I’m finally starting to feel healthy and happy. And for that I can never thank them enough!

Amidst all this, and probably of more interest given the blog we’re on here, I did actually play some new games as well recently so here we go. Some things never change.

FAIYUM (2022): Rank 1096, Rating 7.5 – Friese

You play cards to variously places or remove all sorts of things (resources, towns, farms, roads, etc) on the board, all of which are then collectively available to everyone to manipulate with their cards. Your base cards provide you money to buy more powerful cards, and you try to buy an engine of placing certain resources out and then removing them for VPs, repeat your engine. Once you’re out of resources/money, there’s a nice retrieval of a set number of your cards in the reverse order to which you played them, and having to pay if you want more of your cards back (which may allow you to play longer before refreshing again) which made for interesting sequencing decisions. But mostly the game was about having enough money at the time any really useful card appeared in the draft, because it almost certainly would be gone shortly. That high engine-luck factor, combined with the downtime of having to work out every card’s symbology as it flew through the draft (it felt like it should be a 1hr game rather than the 2hr it is) led to a certain ennui about its chances of coming out again soon. A review from a few years back…

Rating: 6

KUTNA HORA: THE CITY OF SILVER (2023): Rank 670, Rating 7.8

I think I appreciated this heavyweight Czech Euro for its endeavour more than I enjoyed it perhaps. The appeal is exploring how everyone’s actions impact the economy – the worth of resources varies depending on what’s bought and what’s built, which then changes what becomes good value to buy which in turn will change things again and so on. Working out how the economy will play out and taking advantage of that requires more than a single play though. There’s a bit going on over the two boards (a mining board for resources and a town board for VP buildings which has lots of wibbles on costings). I’m sure I’d explore it and enjoy it more if I owned it but it’s not a game I’m chasing as its opaqueness left me wondering just how much my fortunes were hostage to the winds.

Rating: 7

MLEM: SPACE AGENCY (2024): Rank 1432, Rating 7.2 – Knizia

A dice-rolling push-your-luck game that seems more mechanically social than the norm because, rather than each player playing their own thing on their turn, everyone’s in the group mission and each may have different aims, urging the leader in different ways. Your first decision is seeing what cat power the leader takes, which generally gives an indication of how much risk they might take this mission, and then choosing your cat power accordingly (aiming to bail out early or late, and be sabotage-y or helpful appropriately). There’s quite the banter along the way then, with the next major decision being when to bail out and take the points on offer for progress so far. In the end, the dice will rule but there’s just the right number of missions to feel you’ve made meaningful choices towards your score. It’s nicely replayable, especially with a bigger group of 5 players (even if a little long maybe at the bigger player counts).  A Rick Thornquist review?!

Rating: 7

NUCLEUM (2023): Rank 221, Rating 8.2 – Luciani / Turczi

In years past this would be an auto-8 and a purchase. There are only 5 actions but the domino-tile action system is very cool – first navigating the choices on their acquisition, then the decisions on when to play them to your board (to allow you to re-use them) and when to use them for the last time and deploy them as rail (to build your position on the board). Without which you can’t build the buildings (you’ll need to gather resources first!). Then you need to power the buildings up to earn their VPs which requires a whole bunch of other planning and prep work. And every game has a different set of VP goals to achieve with its own weird star-economy you need to understand and conquer. It’s a strategic and tactical minefield to walk through which understandably garners a lot of love. Each play I get halfway through the game before it all comes together in my mind again – there’s a TON of rules – and a master plan forms on how I can make everything work out. Which is challenging and rewarding, but that initial hour of semi-floundering is perhaps a little brake on my enjoyment these days and the dry theming doesn’t help.

Rating: 7

PIXIES (2024): Rank 3509, Rating 6.9

You’re picking cards valued 1-9 from the open draft and placing them in their appropriate slots in your 3×3 grid. You score based on having a big same-coloured group, collecting VP symbols, and overlaying same-numbered cards to score their face value. The ideal card is one that does both but you’re at the mercy of the draw. Continue until someone fills their tableau and repeat this simple game several times. The decision on what to take is usually straight forward, taking what the next players want if nothing is overly helpful. It seemed that you nearly always want to take any high card though as they’re always worth it. Once we got to that point in our understanding we moved on.  Dale liked it a bit more….

Rating: 6

ROBOTRICK (2020): Rank 4442, Rating 7.5

A 3p trick taking game where the 4th hand is open and played by the robot’s rules (when following does it play high or low, what to lead, etc). You want to win your designated number of tricks and it’s quite the challenge to parse how the hand will play out and what best to play given what you can see, how the robot will play, and how the remaining cards might be split between the other two hands. The downtime of course is the downside because every hand has different rules that need parsing. Still, I’d probably grab a copy if it were easily available as it was quite cool.

Rating: 7

SPELLBOOK (2023): Rank 3733, Rating 6.5 – Walker-Harding

Each player starts with the same set of 7 spells (which differ each game). Keep drawing stones until you have enough in the same colour to build that coloured spell at the level you want, and then you get the power of that spell (draw more stones more selectively, store stones for VPs faster, etc) for the rest of the game. I’ve enjoyed assessing the spells for their value vs the stones available and charting a short-term path to get going faster and a long-term path to maximise VPs. The game takes a while to get going – not so much an issue online when it zips along ok, but it seems like it’d be more an issue f2f, having to pass a bag of stones for draw and do a board replenish every single turn. Conversely the end of the game slows down online when everyone has multiple spells to work through, whereas in f2f you can start your turn while the previous player works through theirs. Everyone has the same set of spells so eventually it probably comes down to who draws what they want more, but that’s ok, it’s a nice mid-weight Euro with just enough variety to see enough replay.  A similar review from last year

Rating: 7

THE VALE OF ETERNITY (2023): Rank 677, Rating 7.6

Each turn you’ll draft 2 cards (Catan style). As you go, decide which cards to place into your tableau for their engine build effects (in resources and VPs) and select others to sell for the right currencies to pay for them. This is the tricky part because the 3 currencies all have different values and there’s no change. The draft makes it a challenge to get exactly what you want so you’re continually re-assessing and doing the best with what’s available when it gets back to you. This type of game is normally right in my wheelhouse, and it was interesting, but some really impactful take-that effects soured me on it a little last game and we haven’t gone back.  A longer review from Spiel 2023

Rating: 6

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

Matt C.: I played MLEM and it was fun. It reminded me of Cloud 9 which is a great communal push-your luck game. MLEM has far more razzle-dazzle to the scoring and special powers but the core push-your-luck mechanic of staying in with the pilot or jumping out is similar in both. I’m often a fan of special powers, etc.. but I slightly prefer Cloud 9 as it plays faster and comes in a much smaller little box.

Mary P.: I would rate Faiyum a 6.7. Alison has some fair points. After playing several times with just my husband, we got to know the cards so game play was not as long. I think I only played our first game with 4 players – it was longer than we would have liked but it was a first play. It’s also more chaotic with more players. I prefer it with 2 – it helps mitigate luck since you’re only competing with one person for better cards.

Ben B.: Nucleum is a 9 or 10 for me. We have played dozens of games now (with and without the expansion) and it has really become a fine and go to heavier game with a lot of replayability. It comes out as often as any other game. Faiyum for me rated higher because I love route building and find it can be played in 90 minutes slowly. I find the expansion cards an excellent (but not necessary) twist on the game. 

Alan H.: I’m with Ben on Nucleum. I think it is a superb design and deserves all the awards that are coming to it. I enjoyed MLEM having been introduced via BGA then found the physical copy just as delightful. Spellbook looked more interesting on paper, but I have not brought it back to the table after one play as I was disappointed in the gameplay and more gaming choices means if a game doesn’t shine, it’s at the back of the maybe one day queue. I really didn’t enjoy The Vale of Eternity on BGA, so BGA served its purpose for me in avoiding a sale. I found it far too frustrating and if I play again it will be on BGA when I’ve forgotten all about earlier games.

Michael W.: Another fanboy for Nucleum here. We played 6 times in the first week after getting it (so mostly 2-player). The Aussie expansion is good, but I slightly prefer the base board. Really looking forward to the Court of Progress expansion.

Larry:  Yup, I’m also going to pile onto the Nucleum bandwagon.  It’s my 2023 Game of the Year for all the reasons the others have mentioned.  It’s definitely challenging, but not as rules-heavy as many other games of its weight.  Terrific game and absolutely reaches I Love It status.  I’m also a big fan of Faiyum.  It takes a few plays to know how to prepare for the lucrative cards that come up later in the game, but I think it’s Friese’s best game in quite a while (although I’m also very fond of FTW?!).  And yes, making sure you have enough cash to take advantage of the cards which show up in the display is part of the skill.