I played the new Athena expansion for Akropolis recently which I thought elevated the game. The original is fine but it felt too old-school for me – draft and play tiles in scoring combos on your tableau, repeat X times. Athena adds public objectives which, if met, provide bonus tiles. It’s something more to shoot for and it feels like the extra layer to your decision making modernises the game.
New-to-me games played recently include …
51st STATE: MASTER SET (2016): Rank 425, Rating 7.6
I really liked Imperial Settlers but this progenitor suffered for me (which is why I guess they did a remake). If you don’t draw into production buildings early, there’s no way to catch up because there’s only a few rounds and you’ll be watching the other players exponentially explode for an hour. Draft cards, produce resources, build cards for their effect /resources / income, do actions to mostly turn resources into cards and VPs. I should like it and I enjoyed the resource juggle challenge but it wasn’t a lot of fun passing rounds early and waiting 5-10 minutes for the next round to start.
Rating: 6
CREATURE COMFORTS (2022): Rank 669, Rating 7.5
A seeming merging of push-your-luck with action spots, which include getting resources (they change each round), cards, and trades. You’re aiming to build cards for VPs over the 6 rounds. The resource spots require a specific die or combination and you only know 2 of the 6 dice when you put your meeples out! Usually it’s ok (with wibbles and such) but you need to be careful. It works well with 5 people because the putting out of meeples is simultaneous (there’s no blocking) and the action resolution is mostly simultaneous as well, barring the card drawing which is done in turn order. Look for card scoring combinations, dice improvement powers, etc, and hope the dice and the cards fall your way. It doesn’t have must-play-again drawing power but it moves along pleasantly in a light-ish way, doesn’t overstay its welcome, and is pleasing on the eye.
Rating: 7
GET ON BOARD: NEW YORK & LONDON (2022): Rank 1636, Rating 7.0
Flip a card. Depending on the colour, each player places a different config of track on the common board, building out their route from their unique starting spot. Over the 12 rounds you want to reach your personal objective’s 3 required spots, be first to fulfil the common goals, and specialise in scoring categories of your choice to max points. The board is SO busy though that you can’t move without tripping over a way to score and it’s work-like to find ‘best’ routes. Do your best to follow your plan given what the flips give you. You can deviate from the flipped card and use a route another player’s already put out but they cost negative points. In the end the game felt too much like a smorgasbord points salad while fighting the winds of fate to generate much replay interest.
Rating: 6
IBERIAN GAUGE (2017): Rank 1828, Rating 7.3
The third in the Iron Rails series and probably the one I like the best of those I’ve played so far, probably because there are no auctions and there is no selling of shares. Buy shares in the companies in which other players have bought, and therefore in which there’s a vested partnership interested in expanding, and will therefore multiply most in value. There are 4 investment rounds and 6 build-and-gain-dividend rounds, spending each company’s treasury to expand their lines on the map to connect cities (which drive up price and dividends). There’s some good-natured banter and encouragement along the way to build in such a manner as to help other lines get to places easier which can be met with a smirk or a smile depending on how much it helps you. It moved along at a quickish pace and was surprisingly more enjoyable than I expected for a shares game. The rating would improve if the game came with a permanent banker to manage all the money ins-and-outs from the company treasuries that happen every single move of the game. To say there’s accounting housekeeping is putting it mildly – it’s the entire game.
Rating: 7
MESOS (2023): Rank 4115, Rating 7.2 – Luciani / Kahana
It feels like Middle Ages – going on the action spot that gives more cards means you won’t have first choice of cards (but you’ll get more) and you’ll choose action spots last next round. Go on an early action spot, get fewer cards but get first choice now and first choice of action spots next round. The tricky part is balancing getting sets of scoring cards vs cards that get you food (to pay for the cards) vs building cards (more pts). It’s kind of agonising because you mostly want all of them all the time. And sometimes you’ll just get shafted when you go first but cards in the one type you’re really after this round don’t appear – it’s a card game after all and to that end it works just fine.
Rating: 7
SETI: SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (2024): Rank 92, Rating 8.4
It has lots of things I love in a game – inviting theme, navigating an ever-changing board, lots of cards to lean into, tight resources, a wealth of options on how to go about things. It boils down to two major thrusts – launch probes and travel out to planets for VPs and effects, or ‘scan’ to win area majorities in space sectors for VPs and effects. Twice midway through the game it stops while you learn new alien rules (new ways to earn VPs and cards) but it’s a two-edged sword – thematically immersive to discover aliens, sure, but learning new rules mid-game breaks immersion (euro, euro, euro, break for narrative, back to euro). Your strategy (and cards) drives how fast to push for tech advances and in what order. This should be enough to differentiate your games. It has the Terraforming Mars model of a round being as long as it takes to spend all your resources but nearly all your turns affect other players on the map so there’s no ‘just play out’, even though you’ve got your next 4 turns planned. And turns get longer as the game goes on due to the high number of free actions available as you collect more cards and energy – it was 3+ hours for 4p. Having said all that, it was good to have all these options and I’m keen to play again – I can live with the downsides given the upsides are so good.
Rating: 8
SHACKLETON BASE: A JOURNEY TO THE MOON (2024): Rank 1946, Rating 8.0
This is a really good game that I don’t want to play again. It made me feel stupid. There are only 3 rounds. At the start of each round you pick the mix of coloured meeples that define what resources you’ll pick up this round plus what actions you want to get bonuses for. If other players take your resource spots, you’re struggling and now you’ve got the wrong mix. For the whole round. A third of the game. Make do. (But feel stupid.) You need buildings on the board to get cheap resources and win majorities to populate and activate your building powers. But getting pipped on every majority count by different players, accidently, means you’re likely unable to fix it because buildings are really expensive. Which means your income expectations at end of round are now stuffed. (Stupid.) Deciding to concentrate on just one of the three corporations (because learning the unique rules to all 3 feels like overload) sees you get deservedly swamped by the players who invested energy into understanding and taking advantage of all of them – but feel stupid for just wanting to enjoy the game by specialising in one. Focus on gathering the resources needed to build your headquarters because surely that’s going to be rewarded, only to realise by the third round that it’s a folly, worth nothing near what you’d get for spending those resources on other things. (Stupid.) For those who frame its unforgiving nature as a reason it needs replay (to learn and master), go for it, however I just don’t want to go back to something I associate with feeling stupid.
Rating: 6
SURVIVE THE ISLAND (2024): Rank 2187, Rating 7.4
I haven’t played the original Survive in a long, long time and this recent remake reminded me why. I have no idea how different (if at all) this is but it felt the same – an hour of striving to slowly move people from the disappearing island towards the corner safe spots only to see them killed off by other players, random whirlpools, sharks, et al, punctuated by the occasional success. The biggest cheer came with the revelation of the 3rd volcano signalling the end of the game. If you enjoy whacking other players and laying down smack-talk you’ll rate it higher. For those who say well just try and target everyone equally to allow everyone to enjoy it, I say let’s play something that doesn’t require the players to enforce hit-the-leader sentiments using non-determinable perceptions of success (given the VP value of each meeple is unknown).
Rating: 5
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Larry: I think SETI is really good, but I’m not sure I’m willing to give it a Great rating just yet. I think the thing holding me back is the lack of an innovative central action selection mechanism. Basically, you’re free to do anything you want and I found I wanted something to tie it all together. But I have enjoyed it, so I can easily see raising its rating once I play it a bit more.
With Shackleton, I like it more than you do, Alison, but not as much as I hoped I would. There were a lot of little things I think could have been better, but the big one is the frustration with the meeple draft. There’s not much choice in what is available at the beginning of each round and that has a huge effect on how you carry out your actions; I found myself chafing at those restrictions. Like you, I also felt overloaded with the rules to the three corporations. I thought they would be straightforward, but even the simplest ones added quite a few rules, so you almost need to identify which you’ll be using ahead of time, so that you can properly review them prior to beginning play. Both of those things knocked the game down for me quite a bit. I would be willing to play it again, but there’s been a bunch of other attractive games that have been released, so I’m in no hurry to get back to the Moon with this one.
Mark Jackson: I liked my one 3 player game of SETI – though it was long – and it’s been a great long-ish (90 minutes or so) solo game.
Tery: I, too, enjoyed my one play of SETI. I had been told a lot of negative things about it, and I didn’t find any of those things to affect the one play I had. I definitely look forward to trying it again.
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Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2025 (Part 11)
I played the new Athena expansion for Akropolis recently which I thought elevated the game. The original is fine but it felt too old-school for me – draft and play tiles in scoring combos on your tableau, repeat X times. Athena adds public objectives which, if met, provide bonus tiles. It’s something more to shoot for and it feels like the extra layer to your decision making modernises the game.
New-to-me games played recently include …
51st STATE: MASTER SET (2016): Rank 425, Rating 7.6
I really liked Imperial Settlers but this progenitor suffered for me (which is why I guess they did a remake). If you don’t draw into production buildings early, there’s no way to catch up because there’s only a few rounds and you’ll be watching the other players exponentially explode for an hour. Draft cards, produce resources, build cards for their effect /resources / income, do actions to mostly turn resources into cards and VPs. I should like it and I enjoyed the resource juggle challenge but it wasn’t a lot of fun passing rounds early and waiting 5-10 minutes for the next round to start.
Rating: 6
CREATURE COMFORTS (2022): Rank 669, Rating 7.5
A seeming merging of push-your-luck with action spots, which include getting resources (they change each round), cards, and trades. You’re aiming to build cards for VPs over the 6 rounds. The resource spots require a specific die or combination and you only know 2 of the 6 dice when you put your meeples out! Usually it’s ok (with wibbles and such) but you need to be careful. It works well with 5 people because the putting out of meeples is simultaneous (there’s no blocking) and the action resolution is mostly simultaneous as well, barring the card drawing which is done in turn order. Look for card scoring combinations, dice improvement powers, etc, and hope the dice and the cards fall your way. It doesn’t have must-play-again drawing power but it moves along pleasantly in a light-ish way, doesn’t overstay its welcome, and is pleasing on the eye.
Rating: 7
GET ON BOARD: NEW YORK & LONDON (2022): Rank 1636, Rating 7.0
Flip a card. Depending on the colour, each player places a different config of track on the common board, building out their route from their unique starting spot. Over the 12 rounds you want to reach your personal objective’s 3 required spots, be first to fulfil the common goals, and specialise in scoring categories of your choice to max points. The board is SO busy though that you can’t move without tripping over a way to score and it’s work-like to find ‘best’ routes. Do your best to follow your plan given what the flips give you. You can deviate from the flipped card and use a route another player’s already put out but they cost negative points. In the end the game felt too much like a smorgasbord points salad while fighting the winds of fate to generate much replay interest.
Rating: 6
IBERIAN GAUGE (2017): Rank 1828, Rating 7.3
The third in the Iron Rails series and probably the one I like the best of those I’ve played so far, probably because there are no auctions and there is no selling of shares. Buy shares in the companies in which other players have bought, and therefore in which there’s a vested partnership interested in expanding, and will therefore multiply most in value. There are 4 investment rounds and 6 build-and-gain-dividend rounds, spending each company’s treasury to expand their lines on the map to connect cities (which drive up price and dividends). There’s some good-natured banter and encouragement along the way to build in such a manner as to help other lines get to places easier which can be met with a smirk or a smile depending on how much it helps you. It moved along at a quickish pace and was surprisingly more enjoyable than I expected for a shares game. The rating would improve if the game came with a permanent banker to manage all the money ins-and-outs from the company treasuries that happen every single move of the game. To say there’s accounting housekeeping is putting it mildly – it’s the entire game.
Rating: 7
MESOS (2023): Rank 4115, Rating 7.2 – Luciani / Kahana
It feels like Middle Ages – going on the action spot that gives more cards means you won’t have first choice of cards (but you’ll get more) and you’ll choose action spots last next round. Go on an early action spot, get fewer cards but get first choice now and first choice of action spots next round. The tricky part is balancing getting sets of scoring cards vs cards that get you food (to pay for the cards) vs building cards (more pts). It’s kind of agonising because you mostly want all of them all the time. And sometimes you’ll just get shafted when you go first but cards in the one type you’re really after this round don’t appear – it’s a card game after all and to that end it works just fine.
Rating: 7
SETI: SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE (2024): Rank 92, Rating 8.4
It has lots of things I love in a game – inviting theme, navigating an ever-changing board, lots of cards to lean into, tight resources, a wealth of options on how to go about things. It boils down to two major thrusts – launch probes and travel out to planets for VPs and effects, or ‘scan’ to win area majorities in space sectors for VPs and effects. Twice midway through the game it stops while you learn new alien rules (new ways to earn VPs and cards) but it’s a two-edged sword – thematically immersive to discover aliens, sure, but learning new rules mid-game breaks immersion (euro, euro, euro, break for narrative, back to euro). Your strategy (and cards) drives how fast to push for tech advances and in what order. This should be enough to differentiate your games. It has the Terraforming Mars model of a round being as long as it takes to spend all your resources but nearly all your turns affect other players on the map so there’s no ‘just play out’, even though you’ve got your next 4 turns planned. And turns get longer as the game goes on due to the high number of free actions available as you collect more cards and energy – it was 3+ hours for 4p. Having said all that, it was good to have all these options and I’m keen to play again – I can live with the downsides given the upsides are so good.
Rating: 8
SHACKLETON BASE: A JOURNEY TO THE MOON (2024): Rank 1946, Rating 8.0
This is a really good game that I don’t want to play again. It made me feel stupid. There are only 3 rounds. At the start of each round you pick the mix of coloured meeples that define what resources you’ll pick up this round plus what actions you want to get bonuses for. If other players take your resource spots, you’re struggling and now you’ve got the wrong mix. For the whole round. A third of the game. Make do. (But feel stupid.) You need buildings on the board to get cheap resources and win majorities to populate and activate your building powers. But getting pipped on every majority count by different players, accidently, means you’re likely unable to fix it because buildings are really expensive. Which means your income expectations at end of round are now stuffed. (Stupid.) Deciding to concentrate on just one of the three corporations (because learning the unique rules to all 3 feels like overload) sees you get deservedly swamped by the players who invested energy into understanding and taking advantage of all of them – but feel stupid for just wanting to enjoy the game by specialising in one. Focus on gathering the resources needed to build your headquarters because surely that’s going to be rewarded, only to realise by the third round that it’s a folly, worth nothing near what you’d get for spending those resources on other things. (Stupid.) For those who frame its unforgiving nature as a reason it needs replay (to learn and master), go for it, however I just don’t want to go back to something I associate with feeling stupid.
Rating: 6
SURVIVE THE ISLAND (2024): Rank 2187, Rating 7.4
I haven’t played the original Survive in a long, long time and this recent remake reminded me why. I have no idea how different (if at all) this is but it felt the same – an hour of striving to slowly move people from the disappearing island towards the corner safe spots only to see them killed off by other players, random whirlpools, sharks, et al, punctuated by the occasional success. The biggest cheer came with the revelation of the 3rd volcano signalling the end of the game. If you enjoy whacking other players and laying down smack-talk you’ll rate it higher. For those who say well just try and target everyone equally to allow everyone to enjoy it, I say let’s play something that doesn’t require the players to enforce hit-the-leader sentiments using non-determinable perceptions of success (given the VP value of each meeple is unknown).
Rating: 5
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Larry: I think SETI is really good, but I’m not sure I’m willing to give it a Great rating just yet. I think the thing holding me back is the lack of an innovative central action selection mechanism. Basically, you’re free to do anything you want and I found I wanted something to tie it all together. But I have enjoyed it, so I can easily see raising its rating once I play it a bit more.
With Shackleton, I like it more than you do, Alison, but not as much as I hoped I would. There were a lot of little things I think could have been better, but the big one is the frustration with the meeple draft. There’s not much choice in what is available at the beginning of each round and that has a huge effect on how you carry out your actions; I found myself chafing at those restrictions. Like you, I also felt overloaded with the rules to the three corporations. I thought they would be straightforward, but even the simplest ones added quite a few rules, so you almost need to identify which you’ll be using ahead of time, so that you can properly review them prior to beginning play. Both of those things knocked the game down for me quite a bit. I would be willing to play it again, but there’s been a bunch of other attractive games that have been released, so I’m in no hurry to get back to the Moon with this one.
Mark Jackson: I liked my one 3 player game of SETI – though it was long – and it’s been a great long-ish (90 minutes or so) solo game.
Tery: I, too, enjoyed my one play of SETI. I had been told a lot of negative things about it, and I didn’t find any of those things to affect the one play I had. I definitely look forward to trying it again.
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About Dale Yu
Dale Yu is the Editor of the Opinionated Gamers. He can occasionally be found working as a volunteer administrator for BoardGameGeek, and he previously wrote for BoardGame News.