I’ve read a number of rule sets recently that used ‘he’ instead of ‘they’ when referring to what a player can do. It wasn’t in the context of examples, nor referring to male characters; they were rules. ’1989: Dawn Of Freedom’ was particularly egregious, even having card text using “he” when referring to a player. (The friend I was playing with was so embarrassed they started translating them to ‘she’ on the fly whenever reading card text that applied to me as the player in question.)

When chatting about it with girlfriends, there’s recognition of the casual misogyny (perpetuated by how English language is structured eg ‘mankind’) and a sense of exclusion, as you’d expect, but it’s laced with an undercurrent of “is this the hill we want to die on” given everything else going on in the world and wanting their gaming experiences (which is largely with guys) to be positive.

To be fair, most new rule sets coming out now are actually great in this respect. (Thank you!) For anyone out there working on or providing feedback on rules or card-text though, can we please continue being mindful, and give way on any dogmatic insistence that “they” should only be used as a plural form. Language changes with the times. I’m hoping the times are changing. Thanks for listening.

New-to-me games played recently include …

AGE OF INNOVATION (2023): Rank 74, Rating 8.6

It’s a long time since I’ve played Terra Mystica so I can’t really compare this to its ancestor, but it felt more enjoyable. Maybe not enough to give a higher rating though as the map play still feels a bit too cut-throat and determinative for me. But it’s the first time I think I’ve actually enjoyed engaging with the system, choosing a building path and its consequences (both the good and what you miss out on as a result), making this my preferred option for this system – probably because it felt simpler to understand those consequences.

Rating: 7

CHOCONNECT (2024): Rank 21389, Rating 5.9

Draw and slide a tile on to the board Gipf style; win if you have 3 dark tiles in a row, 4 milk, or 5 white (similar to Zertz scoring so you can see the inspirations). But this is multi-player. Be hyper-vigilant that the tile you draw and place doesn’t set up the next player for a win. Hope that the least vigilant player is on your right and they miss something that sets you up for the win. Not my favourite gaming scenario.

Rating: 4

THE GALILEO PROJECT (2022): Rank 3315, Rating 7.3

It’s a card-driven engine-building game. Choose an influence card in the display to gain influence and an effect. Then use influence to buy progress cards – they have a type and also move you along a score track. Each track scores differently and provides different benefits. Gathering cards of the same type gives other benefits. It’s a little like Khora, once you start down a path you want to continue buying the same type of cards and complete tracks for max advantage but this one thankfully is more flexible. There’s a cute mechanism whereby you only have influence in one of the 2 colours (and you can only buy cards in that colour) until you spend it all, or you pay to flip into the other colour. Which makes for interesting decisions from the mid-point on when a strategy has come together and you’re looking to max it, at which point it turns meatier than you might expect for a set collection game. I think you may be a little too much at the mercy of what cards people leave you for me to love it (I mean, that’s the whole game) but it’s engaging to play and I enjoyed it for what it is.

Rating: 7

HAVALANDI (2023): Rank 6641, Rating 6.7 – Knizia

Roll the die, move the big balloon around the edge of the hex-based map, place a tile on an empty hex anywhere along one of the big balloon’s two sightlines. Score for your groups within a coloured region, for spreading across regions, for placing next to pavilion spots, for meeting end-game goals. It’s hard not to score. You’re limited by the big balloon of course but you do have some special break-the-rules tiles to hammer the big points. No tension, no drama, no difficult decisions, but an easy-to-play tile-laying exercise and let’s see who’s in front after 30 minutes.

Rating: 6

MEN-NEFER (2024): Rank 1889, Rating 8.3

Heavy Euro with 5 major action types feeding 5 different areas/tracks on the map to score and accrue benefit. Where it differs from other point salads is the very cool action process – play an action tile and reserve a future action (which could be a completely different type), or later execute that future action, or later take an action tile for next round which gives different actions right now depending on where in the display it was. There’s a ton of different ways to get the needed food and ankh resources but it’s a continual struggle to pay for everything you want, compromises galore. I also liked that the end-of-era scoring is all there is – there’s no end-of game specific points – meaning anything you score in the first era will score in the second and third as well and this gives a nice sense of relative progress. You tend to specialise in a couple of areas to get max benefit so your game depends on being left alone, or successfully navigating alternatives without over-paying, which results in significant downtime at times unfortunately, especially 4p. But there are multi-layered exploration possibilities at least.

Rating: 7

POTIONS OF AZERLAND (2024): Rank 8530, Rating 8.0

Perform the same sequence of actions in each of the six rounds – spend potions for spell benefits, roll for ingredients, advance up spell tracks, buy more ingredients, spend ingredients on potions, spend potions on VP cards (which also have effects). The point of interest is you choose what your priority will be for each action – whoever plays the highest priority card against each action gets to do that action more. Start of game it’s all about the engine build, end of game it’s all about the VP cards – however players mostly ended up valuing the same actions the same way resulting in a continual series of tie-breakers throughout which made it more chaotic than expected. In the latter rounds downtime builds up as each player works out exactly (and I mean exactly!) what ingredients are needed so as to max out their potions. Despite all that it was still fine, just repetitive – it feels like each game would be much the same.

Rating: 6

SPECTACULAR (2024): Rank 3738, Rating 7.4

You’ve got your own set of tiles (in 4 colours) and dice (same colours), and then there are sets of tiles/dice that get passed along 7 Wonders style. Each turn you take one thing from each set, tiles go in your tableau, dice go on same colour tiles. You want high dice (they score pips), you want low dice (they provide score multipliers), you want lots of multiplier tiles, you want watchtower tiles (to double dice scores), you want to satisfy your missions, you want lots of different animals (to score diversity) and big contiguously connected areas in each colour. Each of your 15 turns provides a tricky decision re what’s the most important thing to take based on what else you’ll likely get, and no matter what you do you’re compromising some other score. It’s easy to teach, quick to play, you’re engaged throughout, and there are different approaches to explore, all of which is sufficient for a ton of replay at this weight.

Rating: 8

THE WHITE CASTLE (2023): Rank 105, Rating 8.0

You’re only getting 9 actions. How on earth am I going to get all this stuff out? Analyse the actions, be laser focused on your strategy, be fluid. I love how the available actions keep shifting all game, providing new opportunities, forcing changed approaches. And I liked the interesting decisions forced on you by what dice are available (they drive which actions are available, their cost, and potential bonuses). Every action feels important so you’re engaged, it’s meaty without being overly meaty. There are likely only a few real strategies but it’s how you go about it that makes the game and offers replay. Having visited the amazing Himeji Castle last year no doubt boosts my enjoyment of it as well!

Rating: 8.