I played Oranges and Lemons recently. It’s another new should-be-90min Euro that went 150 minutes. Or as I’m starting to think about these types of games, how many times can I go to the bathroom before it’s my turn again. In early rounds it was a 0-bathroom game but it became a 4-bathroom game by end-game.

When I started in the hobby, the gloried games tended long. Think Advanced Civ, 18xx, Avalon Hill, Die Macher, Roads & Boats, as well as grail games like Fugger, Welser, Medici and Das Verschwinden. These were niche though. With the rise of the SdJ games became shorter, simpler, and (being more accessible with more interesting mechanisms than roll-and-move) more popular. 45-60 minutes was the ideal. Think Settlers of Catan, Euphrat & Tigris, Ticket To Ride. Long became old-school.

But as the years go by, there’s only so much simplicity one can bear before getting jaded by same-old, same-old. The term JASE arose – Just Another Soulless Euro. Designers started blending Ameri-Trash and Euto in response.  The increased tolerance for longer games led to appetite for increasing Euro complexity. The big popular games nowadays are often seen coming in at 120-180 minutes.

Jeff Allers has an additional theory: the influx of digital gamers into the hobby seems to have led to an increased popularity in multi-player solitaire (MPS) games, which require increased complexity to maintain interest (ie to compensate for the reduction in player interaction). Jonathan Franklin also has us mindful of how external events may have shaped gaming as well. Big popular WWII games were effectively banned in Germany (ie the swastika laws) which contributed to the rise of Euros featuring more complexity than family and party games. Recently Covid resulted in a rush to BGA and a desire for more simultaneous and quickplay games (which work better in that milieu).

Recently I’ve been seeing gamers push back against playing yet another huge big thing, opting for smaller nights (think Spectacular, Guild of Merchant Explorers, Rebirth, Wyrmspan). In the past I’d say it feels like the wheel may be turning again except now I think the market is big enough to have it all – we each have the luxury of sticking with our own preferred adventure.

In a nutshell that’s how it’s felt the hobby has evolved. It was nice to be able to play every game of significance that came out in a year and be across the whole hobby. It’s so much nicer having no hope of that now the market is big enough for all game types to find a successful market – and to be able to avoid 180-minute games that should be 90 minutes without feeling like I’m missing too much given there are so many great games out there.

New-to-me games played recently include …

AZUL DUEL (2025): Rank 2812, Rating 7.0 – Kiesling

It implements changes to make it attractive enough to be different and more 2-player focused. In the former category, build your own colour goal board (from an open draft) and then collect the matching coloured tiles to cover it up and score per usual. In the latter category, when you take tiles, you’re encouraged to analyse the opponent’s board more closely than usual to determine the order the non-taken tiles will be stacked in (only the top can be taken from each pile from now on). Which slows the game down so much you stop caring after a while. It’s a nice variant to explore but the doubled play-length isn’t a big-league win.

Rating: 7

EUTHIA: TORMENT OF RESURRECTION (2021): Rank 1422, Rating 8.5

Setup, rules, first play, long turns, rules re-checks … 3.5 hours and I’d had 2 turns. It got faster though: 2 more hours and I’d had 5 more turns. The crux of the game is to move, reveal map, and either fight something, mine a mountain for a gem, or visit a merchant to sell gems and buy improvements to help you fight things better. Combat sequences took time, being attritional, with card-play options, and very dicey. Each turn involved trade-offs on whether to use the three action chips for their movement or their actions. This was nice. It will obviously play faster, it looked pretty, and the system was engaging enough that I’d be ok with an occasional play, especially given there’s a bunch of modes and scenarios. But you don’t get a lot of movement and the map constrains your options, and fights often devolve to getting lucky with the monster you draw and which player plays that monster (and what cards they have) so hope to get lucky. Especially if you’ve only got 7 turns.

Rating: 6

GREAT WESTERN TRAIL: EL PASO (2025): Rank 7909, Rating 7.1 – Pfister et al

I don’t mind GWT when requested but it’s not a game I reach for myself. This is a streamlined version. No costs when moving. A common pool of buildings, everyone’s guaranteed 2 building spots. No hazards. Stations are replaced with a new means of earning objective and bonus tiles. And maybe the biggest is that your engineers, builders and workers are now cards in your deck which are discarded after use – you need to cycle your deck and re-draw them to use again. Which makes for more luck. It still features the repetitive looping to improve your cattle hand, but now you’re also cycling cards to draw into your people cards (to buy cattle, buildings, bonus tiles). While the game is more enjoyable for those who don’t understand and love the original inside-out (getting rid of all the irritating bits and edge-case stuff), doing a simpler loop multiple times also feels less rewarding.

Rating: 7

INDIAN CHIEF (2004): Rank 16199, Rating 6.2 – Carlberg

I had no idea Stven designed this in the year we played a ton of games together at the Gathering. The hidden lives we lead 😊

Using standard card decks and an 8-card hand, each round choose a scoring meld that suits your hand from the list of 7 meld types, and it must be a meld you haven’t used previously (Yahtzee style). Replenish and go again. Highest score after 7 rounds wins. When the cards come to allow you to score something reasonable in one of the big scoring melds it’s probably best to take it because the chance might not come again. Go with a low-scoring meld to help improve your hand otherwise. Straight-forward. Fine. No interaction though. It’s a multi-player solitaire luck-fest so the usual card-game synapses don’t get fired up unfortunately.

Rating: 6

LOWLANDS (2018): Rank 1056, Rating 7.4

Solid Euro where thematically Agicola’s sheep farming meets Hadrian Wall’s/Pandemic: Rising Tide’s need to build the dike, BUILD THE DIKE! to save (the value of) your sheep. The more the players spend actions to build the dike, the fewer dike points they get for that effort, but the value of sheep goes up, rewarding players who spent actions expanding their farm and breeding sheep. But if players then avoid building the dike, the points for sheep drop. It’s an interesting balancing act of doing just enough in what’s not earning points so as to ensure you get the points in the other. Getting a few buildings along the way (with other actions) for short term or long term benefit allow you to tailor a strategy. Turns are fast enough to keep me engaged so I’m happy to give this a few more goes to see how it plays out with different group-think.

Rating: 7

PUERTO BANANA (2024): Rank 8755, Rating 6.7

I laughed at the hyperbolic blurb “Bid bizarre amounts of bananas for yet more bananas” and wanted to play. Then I played. It’s not hyperbolic at all! It’s hard to believe there’s that much groan/laugh in such a simple concept. There’s a bundle of bananas up for auction, and you’re bidding your bananas to win more bananas. Reveal secret bids. What makes the game is the winner pays the difference between their bid and the second highest bid, with that difference being paid to the second highest bidder. What you bid has no correlation with how many bananas are up for auction (which ever rises) but everything to do with outthinking the groupthink. Bids started in their teens. Within minutes they were four figures. Hilarious. Bizarre. You likely won’t play it too often because it’s a one-trick pony but I certainly enjoyed all the smirks while bidding and the subsequent what-the revelations along the way.

Rating: 7

REBIRTH (2024): Rank 1416, Rating 7.8 – Knizia

It’s hard to make draw-1-play-1 feel interesting and worthwhile but here we are. Your bag consists of three types of tiles and each type is restricted as to where it can be placed on the board. This reduces path-overload and keeps the game ticking along nicely. Within that stricture there’s still an interesting decision each turn on whether to place for instant points by expanding groups or for later points by acquiring / fuflilling mission cards or winning the various races for castle and town majorities that gradually develop (but there’s a ton of them so if you miss out on one you’ll get the next). The Scotland map has private missions, the Ireland map has instant bonuses placing next to a tower and public missions. Same game, slightly different feel. You can’t take it too seriously because, well, it’s draw-1-play-1 – you get what you get despite how much you wanted one of the other tiles to win some race. But I’ll happily play more as it has nice vibes.

Rating: 7

REGICIDE (2020): Rank 593, Rating 7.4

I was astonished to find a co-op using a standard deck of cards in BGG’s top 1000. Really? So we played it, bombed atrociously, learnt a bunch of lessons on what and when to play, and were left with the lingering desire of rising to the challenge. It’s standard in concept: play cards to defeat the enemy deck (the court cards) where the card’s value is the damage dealt. The art is in the suit powers – you only draw cards if you play a diamond, you only replenish the deck if you play a heart, spades will diminish its attack against you, etc. You really want to kill it with an exact count so the defeated court card is added immediately to your deck rather than your discard pile. Every turn is usually a horrible decision of how much can you afford to hit it, what suit needs playing, and ensuring you have enough discardable card value to meet its attack at the end of the turn. It’s marked down a little because the only co-op aspect is making the best decision to put subsequent players in the best position, as well as its lack of theming, but I can see why it’s well-rated.

Rating: 7

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

Tery: I am a huge fan of regicide. I do agree with Alison that the theming is sort of slapped on, but I love it anyway, I love classic card games in general, and this has the feel of one, with just a little twist. It is also pretty hard, so when you succeed you feel like you’ve accomplished something,