We’ve started a tradition of writing a group document with very short takes on the games that we play.  Of course, you’ll not get as much info as in a full review, but as our reviews likely won’t start for awhile, you can at least get a glimpse into what we think about certain games.   The OG writers can leave their initials at the end of a comment if they want attribution…

We’ll post this to the blog every few weeks to give some thoughts on each game.   Here is the first installment on what we think about the games from Spiel 2025

• 1975: White Christmas – Quick to learn card drafting game about rescuing people during the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War (a theme I’ve never seen outside a war game). As with all Looping Game titles, this one plays bigger than the box would suggest. Interesting tactical decisions over 4 rounds. I Like It (DG)
• A Wild Venture – a 2p game about exploring and making card combos.  The game really needs about double the number of counters that you get; we kept running out.  Some interesting card interactions, but this game felt too long for what it delivered.
• Amanite – a game with a mushroom theme where you’re supposed to intuit or deduce the values of the six different mushrooms in the game.  You are given a bit of jumbled information at the start and then get two concrete pieces of evidence in between the 3 rounds.  Not enough to make me want to play again

• Ants – Big deck of cards game, where you get to draw for free when you take an action, which I appreciate. I love the ideas of the game, but don’t love the stuff around the edges. It feels very all in on food production – the other resources need some alternative form of spending. Also the game is very snowbally in scoring because of the strange star system. Again, really like the mechanisms, but would have loved some different decisions around that to make it a keeper (RAP).
• Ants – I enjoyed this more than most. I liked the planning and the growth phase of the ants. Probably more keen to play this in the near future.
• Aquaria – Surprisingly light, but also a very enjoyable Delicious game.The dial mechanism is definitely the star of an otherwise fairly familiar set of mechanisms. It’s not a Suchy design, but it feels like him – action/bonus pairings and freedom of timing that I’ve come to love about this company (RAP).

• Arnak: Twisted Paths – “advanced” maps for experienced Lost Ruins of Arnak plates… both are excellent additions to the game system. (Also highly recommended for those who have all the Arnak expansions – the Adventure Box which has a great storage system.) (MJ)
• Ayar – More Merv than Sankore. A very weird mechanism on moving shared meeples down tracks, one of which dies at the end of the round and their scorings will no longer be available. Almost like a voting system, where doing your own thing means everyone else at the table will tank your scoring. That’s all fairly intriguing, but the point salad actions built around that, are all very dull. I also actively disliked how the boat board worked. Probably the game after one play that I am the least sure on where I stand. Update: After a 2nd play, I don’t think I need a 3rd. (RAP)
• Balconia – Fun 2 player connection game with a good bit of randomness. It makes a nice puzzle though. I’d mark it slightly down for poor components-works but flimsy. I like it. (Lorna)
• Big Sur – construct your own portion of the Pacific Coast Highway with cards.  Each card has multiple uses, and you make the best display you can. A little bit of engine building, a little bit of end game bonuses.  It’s a pretty game. It’s just fine.
• Boss Fighters QR – This is a phone app (free) that you get a 30cm box to essentially provide you with health trackers.  The bulk of the game is on the app.  It’s actually not bad as a game, but I like my board game nights to be about board games, not phone apps.
• Clickety Clack – roll dice, remove one from the pool, tap it onto another one to get a sum, write the sum down on your sheet (following specific rules for each of the five lines on your sheet).  At the end, score points for your last number – but beware that some spaces don’t have any score value.  Worked fine, but maybe lasted twice as long as I wanted for this kinda game
• Coming of Age – Another lighter euro, with a forward focus on theme. If you like pushing tracks (and I do), I would recommend trying this one. The push and pull of the same track is interesting. I could find the dice mechanism a bit frustrating, especially that last round when you have one D10 and are looking to hit a specific action to finish an objective (RAP).
• Covenant – First play was rough. By the end I was sort of getting what you need to do. Interesting enough to play again, not sure it’s a keeper. Somewhere between neutral and I like it at the moment. (Lorna)
• Covenant – HEAVY and another less than clear ruleset at times, but there are some very good things here. The first game was overwhelming, but by game 3 our 2-player games were running just over an hour. Not sure it needs to stay on the shelves, but I’m glad we played it. I Like It (DG)
• Covenant – It’s strange when the game is so complex for the sake of being complex or it just feels so alien to you that even base actions seem strange. After a round, I was ready to move on. (DJ)
• Cross Bronx Expressway – If you are interested in urban power dynamics, you owe it to yourself to try this. For exactly three player, playing public, private, and community interests, the game leads you through an excellent tutorial and then lets you loose for a 2 hour game. Really, a GMT game with a clear vision and a limited playtime. The variability comes in the cards that you use for the two decades of play, so each game will be very different. I am not sure why they made it competitive, but it does add an edge. At the same time, it means players don’t do what is best for the city, duh 🙂

• Depot – a shedding game with an Amazon packaging theme.  Worked fine, but very similar to other shedding games
• Dewan – a surprisingly quick game (20-25 min) about resource management, hand management and contract fulfilling.  Have only played the base game so far, and I’m quite interested in seeing how the advanced modules work.
• Epochs – We only got through the first Epoch (it’s a long game with 4), so i really haven’t given it a fair shot yet.  But my first impression is that while it does some very interesting things, there’s a healthy amount of luck designed in.  Maybe too much for me, given the game’s length.  But I do need to play an entire game to determine if I like it or not.  (LL)
• Faust vs Mephisto – Another good 2 player trick taker from Geonil. As with Jekyll vs Hyde, the strength of the suites switches during the game. I’d rate it higher but some of the novelty has worn off. I like it. (Lorna)
• Ghost Lift – Ladder climbing with a twist, the ghost elevator will change direction quickly so might need to take additional cards to shed faster. Yes, you might need to take extra cards in a shedding game to win. Light card fun. (DJ)
• Ghostbumpers – a game that suffers from claiming it’s a trick taking game, when really it’s not. It’s more about choosing the correct bid.  Once you get over that misconception, there might be a nice challenge here.  If you can’t get past this being a Trick-taker, you’ll be disappointed, because it’s not good at that.
• Glorious Guilds of Buttonville – my current pick for Kennerspiel.  A tableau game where you draw cards into your hand and then try to play sets; when you play, you then get the action on the cards.  Use 9 different villager types in each game, I have 25 or 26 different options in the box, so there’s a bit of Dominion-ness to it, both in the setup as well as the Turn 0 strategizing.
• Glyphics – a pictionary like game that uses plastic pieces for you to make your drawings.  That idea is fine.  The words on the cards?  So ridiculous.  Some are super easy while others are super hard, and they don’t seem to be distributed well.
• In a Nutshell – party game about guessing answers to questions that are revealed one word at a time. It was just fine.  The questions are all over the place, so your opinion/enjoyment may depend on what random sampling of questions you get.
• Kilia – one of the few 2025 releases that upon playing, I want to play again.  I don’t think it will be a keeper without a house rule, but – I can work with that.  (Of course, to be a keeper I’ll have to actually _acquire_ a copy in the first place.)
• Layer Puzzle – a flip and write game where you use transparent boards, each time focusing on a particular quadrant of your area.  At the end of the game, place them all on top of each other and hope you have covered as much as you can.  Surprisingly hard on the memory part for me.
• Layer Puzzle – Fun filler with a memory component. The basic version is easy to keep track of but when you throw in the difficult patterns plus the relative randomness of which shape and quadrant your opponent is choosing, exact memory is less important – having a vague idea of where you need to fill is helpful. I like it. (Lorna)
• Movie Tricks – called a trick-taker, but like Honshu, this is a game where you play cards into a trick only to determine drafting order.  Then the cards played this round become the draft market for the next.  The movie theme is cool, and we had fun trying to identify the movie quotes on each card
• MySeven (or DoubleSeven) – A new Michael Schacht title? YES PLEASE! Great family game with tactile tiles that’s quick to learn with some fun chaining of actions. I Love it! (DG)
• Natera – a very well designed Euro with Arnak vibes – lots of choice and only some of it is worker placement – you can do multiple things on your turn, including placing a worker, building a card, hiring an ally, building a house, etc.  Quite crunchy and the decision space is quite open once you have 12 spaces on the board, 10 cards in hand, and options to reuse allies for a cost.  Chainy McChainerson.
  
  
• Ninety Nine – a small card game from Kendi, seemed promising from the rules but felt more tedious than fun.  The discard piles are an interesting idea, though all the players in our group continually tried to make illegal plays (wanting to play the same rank).  
• Orbita – I love 2 player trick takers. This one is interesting as the cards have no suits. Instead they move markers on the board to give the suits strengths. Whoever played the higher strength suit wins (you cannot play the same suit your opponent did). At the end you compare the majority of each suit, if you had the most you earn points for the number of cards in that suit your opponent took. I love it.(Lorna)
• Orloj – enjoyable and pretty, but loads of aspects to check out. It’s will be replayed again, but there are others ahead in the queue.
• Orloj – Kind of a middleweight mechanism soup, but if you like euro soup, this is a really good soup. It starts slow with the inability to spin the rondel far and not having items to build, but it definitely picks up as you advance the tracks. The workers as a currency you have to maintain is my favorite part – racing to an objective might be great, if you are willing to lose a worker permanently! My one concern is how much players can control the length of the game. I’m never a fan of games where one player can speed it past the point where everyone else was wanting it to go – it’s smart, but it’s also deflating (RAP).
• Orloj: The Prague Astronomical Clock – This heavy euro actually has at its core pretty simple actions. It is the core interconnectivity of the tracks and worker actions that give it a unique feel. Although the main building of clock scoring feels weak because of the random placement of scoring areas at set up.  (DJ)
• Peanuts! Talent Show – a one-suited trick taking game with a little bit of a deckbuilder twist. I have actually played a previous unthemed version of this.  Still works great, and it is so short that it doesn’t outstay its welcome (and almost too short for real deckbuilding).  It’s always fun to say that my Peppermint Patty is gonna beat your Woodstock.
• Phantom of the Opera – I believe there were some slight tweaks to the rules from the first edition for balance but even without them this is a fun asymmetric 2 player tricktaker with a great theme which is still a unicorn in my experience. Love it. (Lorna)
• Phantom of the Opera – If you like your 2 player trick takers with more theme check out this one. I wrote a review of the first edition here https://opinionatedgamers.com/2024/04/27/review-the-phantom-of-the-opera/. The new edition has some tweaks to balance but the theme and game play holds. I love it. (Lorna)
• Pondscape – a nice game in the mold of other recent build-a-grid games. More advanced than Castle Combo, but I am not sure it is better because of it.

• Pyradice – a challenging 2p game where you remove dice from a 3D tower and place them on your 2D board. Variable special actions triggered when you place the die and each game has 9 changing scoring conditions.  I liked the game a lot.  
• Recall – My favorite so far. Combining tribes and gears to create variability is clever. It’s in your starting faction, but also the factions that show up midgame that you can use. Similar system for actions – your keycard and action box combine to give you a lot of choices. With 10-11 non-income turns, you wonder how you’ll ever get anything done. But then on turn 10 when you are chaining 3 actions with an upgraded keycard, and activating 3 gear abilities and your tribe ability, you feel like you can do everything. Oh, and we played without the variants, 2 of which sounded super fun and am looking forward to trying those asap. Update: I definitely recommend the variant to pick your own upgrades, it helps diversify the table and also cover what aspects your tribe is lacking. It’s definitely my favorite at 80 games now. (RAP).
• Recall – this was equally good. I currently think this is better than Revive, though I’ve not tried the Revive expansion yet. It certainly has a look of Revive, but felt entirely different. My second 4 player game was only 3 hours despite having 3 new players. I’m very pleased with the game as my second game was totally different from the first and allowed me to double my score by activating a completely different plan.
• Sanctuary – a slimmed down tile laying version of Ark Nova.  I’ll never play Ark Nova willingly again once I own this
• Shadow Cards – a trick taking game from Amigo where you bid on how many points you think you will win; points coming from the rank of one card from each trick you win.  The scoring rules are super complicated and the confusion from those rules made the game less fun than it could have been.  Yet, I’m compelled to try it again because there are some interesting concepts going on here.
• Sweet Lands – Fantastic heavy Euro style game. It’s a challenge to establish resources and make advancements. Hand management is also key. The wooden bits are so cute! Love it (Lorna)
• Sweet Lands – I’d played a solo game to get some knowledge and it helped in my first multiplayer (4 player) game. This was about 4 hours as there was a lot of learning to do, but it was a great experience. The players were guided by the benefits provided by each character and the way the game options were provided was very interesting to consider. I’m very keen to play again, but probably it will be a 3 player game by virtue of the space and time required.
• Sweet Lands – Very detailed land development game.  You really have to work hard to get things done and it’s dangerously close to “feels more like work than fun” territory, but I need to give it another chance, as it was reasonably enjoyable.  Probably best with 2 players due to the length.  Cutesy theme is more of a hindrance than an attraction, IMO.  Right now, it’s a marginal “I Like It”.  (LL)

• Take Time –  it’s definitely not for me, but I can see that this is at least a game (unlike The Mind) with some interesting deduction moments or at least educated guessing moments…  We failed on a couple of scenarios, and we played them again, and we managed to succeed in all cases – some due to our experience and some due to dealing ourselves better cards to start with.
• Tax the Rich – Not an interesting trick-taking game.  Doesn’t succeed at any of the things that make a new trick taking game worth playing.
• The Druids of Edora – Feels like an old school, classic Feld. Unique central mechanism, built into a point salad. A nice mix of things to consider all on just one action – the action itself, surrounding a fire, area control with highest dice, and creating a path between doldrums. The point salad parts are just ok, but all are enjoyable. Solid mid-tier Feld (RAP).
• Tornado Splash – Fun race game where your cute racers, with asymmetric starting boats, ride the waves. You place wave cards around the course for your movement. Nice filler. Gets a plus for components. Love it. (Lorna)
• Toy Battle – clever but not particularly compelling… it’s a new variation on the classic two-player battler games (MJ)
• Waddle – a new penguin themed version of Gipsy King.  A bit simplified, also now only one pass through the lakes.  I still love the game, and I like that it is now accessible to everyone. My only wish is that the bonus point font on the lakes was actually legible.
• Where is That Europe – a surprisingly interesting game about European Geography. You place cards next to each other so that the latitude and longitude of places are in the right order.  You end up with this wacky non-Euclidian form of Europe at the end.  I’d play anytime if I’m asked, but I have no need to own this.
• Yum Yum Trouble Gum – a game about playing candy criminal cards to a bank and just trying not to be the only loser in the game.   At least it has kinda cute art?

We’ll be back with more in a few weeks!