Every now and then I remind readers that all my snapshots are stored in BGG as comments – that’s roughly 3450 games and 270 expansions and counting. My username is alzsara.
One approach to get easy access to these is to make me a GeekBuddy. Then, anytime you’re interested in my take on a game, access the GeekBuddy analysis at the top of the game page and if I’ve played it (chances are) you can either take my mini-review as gold or as a bucket of tripe depending on how well our game tastes correlate. Hopefully you have a feel for that by now after this many years.
New-to-me games played recently include …
ATIWA (2022): Rank 1075, Rating 7.5 – Rosenberg
No cards, no competitive advantage, no strategic differences. Just 7 rounds of worker placement actions to alternate between expanding your tableau space and then filling it up with people and resources. Everything gives income. Everything scores. You need to feed your people every round. Naturally. It’s very friendly, there’s always another action you can do, and our 4p game took just over an hour so it’s really quite mid-weight. I enjoyed romping through, trying to balance everything, seeing how it all panned out, but there’s not enough there to really want to explore and work out how best to min-max things.
Rating: 7
EMBERLEAF (2025): Rank 2617, Rating 8.0
It may still be Euro in the telling re gather resources (via gather or fight actions) and build buildings, but the interest is in the card management process. Your starting hand is unique and weighted towards a strategy, and you gradually supplement that with chosen cards from the display to accelerate it. You play cards for their immediate effect onto your board and once a few have been played, you slide them all to the left implementing all their slide effects in order, returning the leftmost 2 to your hand. Getting effects that complement each other and getting them into an effective order, while racing for building spots on the board, is quite engaging. It’s probably too simplistic for mass replay but variety will come in the different strategies to explore and it has a refreshingly low rules barrier.
Rating: 7
HUTAN: LIFE IN THE RAINFOREST (2025): Rank 4028, Rating 7.0
Pick a card from the display and place the coloured tiles shown on the card onto your grid, orthogonally adjacently from a previously played tile. You’re trying to fill each area with the same coloured tiles and each area wants filling a second time for bonuses. By the ninth round and 18th action, the game feels pretty much played out. The best card often picks itself, and if it’s all much of a muchness, take something the next player might want instead. It’s that type of game, pretty same-y. The points can be swingy at the end when you’re trying to complete your final areas (ie whether a desired card is available or not) but at least it goes fast enough to be playable.
Rating: 6
OSTIA (2024): Rank 1883, Rating 7.9
It all centres around an Interesting rondel mancala, where the number of meeples that leave a space is how many resources that action gets, but they’re saved for later because the action you do is where you drop your last meeple. Solving that is the game. That, and making effective use of all the bonuses you get by moving your boats out along tracks (one action), buying more boats (another action), buying buildings for resources or ongoing effects (another action), or buying cards (two more actions). Standard stuff but totally engaging while you’re in it, and there’s obviously replay in mastering the rondel and knowing the most effective use of actions. Not sure I need to master it, but I can see the allure.
Rating: 7
PANDA SPIN (2024): Rank 3111, Rating 7.1 – Chudyk
Tichu type combos to shed cards … but with 33% added chaos. The twist is that cards start white side up and, once played and beaten, return to your hand blue side up. These get powerful – like multiple numbers on a single card (helps with bombs) and icon powers (wild numbers, points, card spins). So your hand evolves – you’re now choosing which cards to play out first based on what they’ll turn into and combine with when spun. And because you can’t rely on the normal big combos to go out (bombs are likely to get out-bombed), more care is required with your going out plan. Not sure it’ll be a staple as it plays slower than equivalent card games due to its wider range of considerations but the more I played, the more I grew into it.
Rating: 7
PATRICIAN: TOWERS OF INFLUENCE (2024): Rank 9231, Rating 7.1 – Schacht
Remake of old-school Patrician and it shows. Play a card that allows you to place a piece in an area. Pick up the card from that area and add it to your hand. Draw and place a new card in that area for the next player. Continue until all the areas are filled. It’s obvious you want to take cards for just the areas you aim to score in and play them when you can pick up a card for one of your areas in future. It’s all over in a dull and straight-forward 15 minutes which didn’t have me wanting 2007 back all over again.
Rating: 6
RAINBOW (2024): Rank 4393, Rating 6.9
Each trick is a climbing trick, be it sets or runs as determined by the lead player. Highest gets the highest card in the display (which is now points) and so on down to lowest. The kicker is that the cards just played to the trick then turn into points cards in the display. So don’t play a really high set unless you’ve got another to come out next trick to win those cards. And then another. Which of course means that the winning moves around the table and things pretty much net out. Unless you have a crap hand and you’ll be getting nothing but scraps all game and wondering why you’re here.
Rating: 5
TWINKLE STARSHIP (2020): Rank 6104, Rating 7.1
A quirky Japanese trick-taker where the numbers are displayed in digital format and you can modify a number on a card you play by spending sticks (eg add a stick across the middle of a 0 to turn it into an 8). Which makes taking tricks unpredictable if you’re not playing last. The catch is that the sticks you end up with has to equal the number of tricks you win, otherwise you’re not scoring – it’s harsh digital scoring ie lots of points or no points. But it’s clever and you can usually engineer it. Except when you can’t. And that’s the challenge.
Rating: 7
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Jeff: I generally like Michael Schacht games and I finally got around to playing original Patrician a few years ago. I don’t remember it getting a lot of attention when it first came out in 2007, and although I like the simplicity in the design, I too found it dull and so did my non-gamer opponents. I’m puzzled by the reprint, honestly. Schacht has so many better games that are out of print. And there are games from 2007 still worth playing, Alison
Alan H: I introduced Atiwa to some players recently and it reminded me how smooth I find the system. Mid weight Rosenberg but extremely good for the most part.
Like Atiwa, I seemed to enjoy Emberleaf more than you, Alison. The problem solving of the blend of card placement, timing and sequencing was very clever while the consequences on the board were less novel I am glad that it’s available for replay sometime.
Larry: The first time I played Atiwa, it was hard to ignore that this is a game centered around bat poop. Plus, it seemed pretty similar to his other harvest games and seemed a bit lighter than I usually like. But it turns out I quite like it. Even though there are plenty of options and a good deal to think about, the game has a nice open feel and some innovative touches. It’s just fun to play. It’s probably one of my favorite recent Rosenberg designs. Plus, it’s nice that the theme does a good job of publicizing the efforts being made to improve the environment of Ghana. Still not crazy about the picture of a bat on the cover, but I’ll overlook it.
The only version of Patrician I’ve ever played is the 2007 original, but it was a supremely dull game. No innovation, no spark, and just a drag to play. It wasn’t even that short. It was at this point that Schacht kind of jumped the shark for me and very little of his stuff following this point has been at all interesting to me. I have no idea if the new version is any better than the original and I have no interest in seeing if it is.
Fraser: GeekBuddies are one of the great, not quite as well known as it should be I suspect, features of Board Game Geek. Highly recommended.
Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2025 (Part 28)
Every now and then I remind readers that all my snapshots are stored in BGG as comments – that’s roughly 3450 games and 270 expansions and counting. My username is alzsara.
One approach to get easy access to these is to make me a GeekBuddy. Then, anytime you’re interested in my take on a game, access the GeekBuddy analysis at the top of the game page and if I’ve played it (chances are) you can either take my mini-review as gold or as a bucket of tripe depending on how well our game tastes correlate. Hopefully you have a feel for that by now after this many years.
New-to-me games played recently include …
ATIWA (2022): Rank 1075, Rating 7.5 – Rosenberg
No cards, no competitive advantage, no strategic differences. Just 7 rounds of worker placement actions to alternate between expanding your tableau space and then filling it up with people and resources. Everything gives income. Everything scores. You need to feed your people every round. Naturally. It’s very friendly, there’s always another action you can do, and our 4p game took just over an hour so it’s really quite mid-weight. I enjoyed romping through, trying to balance everything, seeing how it all panned out, but there’s not enough there to really want to explore and work out how best to min-max things.
Rating: 7
EMBERLEAF (2025): Rank 2617, Rating 8.0
It may still be Euro in the telling re gather resources (via gather or fight actions) and build buildings, but the interest is in the card management process. Your starting hand is unique and weighted towards a strategy, and you gradually supplement that with chosen cards from the display to accelerate it. You play cards for their immediate effect onto your board and once a few have been played, you slide them all to the left implementing all their slide effects in order, returning the leftmost 2 to your hand. Getting effects that complement each other and getting them into an effective order, while racing for building spots on the board, is quite engaging. It’s probably too simplistic for mass replay but variety will come in the different strategies to explore and it has a refreshingly low rules barrier.
Rating: 7
HUTAN: LIFE IN THE RAINFOREST (2025): Rank 4028, Rating 7.0
Pick a card from the display and place the coloured tiles shown on the card onto your grid, orthogonally adjacently from a previously played tile. You’re trying to fill each area with the same coloured tiles and each area wants filling a second time for bonuses. By the ninth round and 18th action, the game feels pretty much played out. The best card often picks itself, and if it’s all much of a muchness, take something the next player might want instead. It’s that type of game, pretty same-y. The points can be swingy at the end when you’re trying to complete your final areas (ie whether a desired card is available or not) but at least it goes fast enough to be playable.
Rating: 6
OSTIA (2024): Rank 1883, Rating 7.9
It all centres around an Interesting rondel mancala, where the number of meeples that leave a space is how many resources that action gets, but they’re saved for later because the action you do is where you drop your last meeple. Solving that is the game. That, and making effective use of all the bonuses you get by moving your boats out along tracks (one action), buying more boats (another action), buying buildings for resources or ongoing effects (another action), or buying cards (two more actions). Standard stuff but totally engaging while you’re in it, and there’s obviously replay in mastering the rondel and knowing the most effective use of actions. Not sure I need to master it, but I can see the allure.
Rating: 7
PANDA SPIN (2024): Rank 3111, Rating 7.1 – Chudyk
Tichu type combos to shed cards … but with 33% added chaos. The twist is that cards start white side up and, once played and beaten, return to your hand blue side up. These get powerful – like multiple numbers on a single card (helps with bombs) and icon powers (wild numbers, points, card spins). So your hand evolves – you’re now choosing which cards to play out first based on what they’ll turn into and combine with when spun. And because you can’t rely on the normal big combos to go out (bombs are likely to get out-bombed), more care is required with your going out plan. Not sure it’ll be a staple as it plays slower than equivalent card games due to its wider range of considerations but the more I played, the more I grew into it.
Rating: 7
PATRICIAN: TOWERS OF INFLUENCE (2024): Rank 9231, Rating 7.1 – Schacht
Remake of old-school Patrician and it shows. Play a card that allows you to place a piece in an area. Pick up the card from that area and add it to your hand. Draw and place a new card in that area for the next player. Continue until all the areas are filled. It’s obvious you want to take cards for just the areas you aim to score in and play them when you can pick up a card for one of your areas in future. It’s all over in a dull and straight-forward 15 minutes which didn’t have me wanting 2007 back all over again.
Rating: 6
RAINBOW (2024): Rank 4393, Rating 6.9
Each trick is a climbing trick, be it sets or runs as determined by the lead player. Highest gets the highest card in the display (which is now points) and so on down to lowest. The kicker is that the cards just played to the trick then turn into points cards in the display. So don’t play a really high set unless you’ve got another to come out next trick to win those cards. And then another. Which of course means that the winning moves around the table and things pretty much net out. Unless you have a crap hand and you’ll be getting nothing but scraps all game and wondering why you’re here.
Rating: 5
TWINKLE STARSHIP (2020): Rank 6104, Rating 7.1
A quirky Japanese trick-taker where the numbers are displayed in digital format and you can modify a number on a card you play by spending sticks (eg add a stick across the middle of a 0 to turn it into an 8). Which makes taking tricks unpredictable if you’re not playing last. The catch is that the sticks you end up with has to equal the number of tricks you win, otherwise you’re not scoring – it’s harsh digital scoring ie lots of points or no points. But it’s clever and you can usually engineer it. Except when you can’t. And that’s the challenge.
Rating: 7
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Jeff: I generally like Michael Schacht games and I finally got around to playing original Patrician a few years ago. I don’t remember it getting a lot of attention when it first came out in 2007, and although I like the simplicity in the design, I too found it dull and so did my non-gamer opponents. I’m puzzled by the reprint, honestly. Schacht has so many better games that are out of print. And there are games from 2007 still worth playing, Alison
Alan H: I introduced Atiwa to some players recently and it reminded me how smooth I find the system. Mid weight Rosenberg but extremely good for the most part.
Like Atiwa, I seemed to enjoy Emberleaf more than you, Alison. The problem solving of the blend of card placement, timing and sequencing was very clever while the consequences on the board were less novel I am glad that it’s available for replay sometime.
Larry: The first time I played Atiwa, it was hard to ignore that this is a game centered around bat poop. Plus, it seemed pretty similar to his other harvest games and seemed a bit lighter than I usually like. But it turns out I quite like it. Even though there are plenty of options and a good deal to think about, the game has a nice open feel and some innovative touches. It’s just fun to play. It’s probably one of my favorite recent Rosenberg designs. Plus, it’s nice that the theme does a good job of publicizing the efforts being made to improve the environment of Ghana. Still not crazy about the picture of a bat on the cover, but I’ll overlook it.
The only version of Patrician I’ve ever played is the 2007 original, but it was a supremely dull game. No innovation, no spark, and just a drag to play. It wasn’t even that short. It was at this point that Schacht kind of jumped the shark for me and very little of his stuff following this point has been at all interesting to me. I have no idea if the new version is any better than the original and I have no interest in seeing if it is.
Fraser: GeekBuddies are one of the great, not quite as well known as it should be I suspect, features of Board Game Geek. Highly recommended.
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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.