Last one from me for the year so let’s cover some 2025 stats:
– 310 new-to-me titles
– 424 different titles
– 818 plays
– SETI was played for the most minutes
– The Crew: Mission Deep Sea was played the most times (all on BGA)
– Faraway and Harmonies were played the most f2f (these are also available on BGA)
New-to-me games played recently include …
ARIGATO (2025): Rank 8159, Rating 6.8
12 rounds of simultaneous play. Each round you place one card in your 2×2 tableau, balancing its placement rules (replacing a card you haven’t built yet isn’t good), the effect you’ll get while it’s there, and the build costs to score it. Finding synergistic effects is handy but there’s a lot of luck in the cards you get (with a completely new hand each round). The decisions each round over to what to keep and what to discard for resources (needed to build the cards you keep) is engaging, as is the need to be constantly planning ahead to achieve as many of the round-based objectives as you can (you know them all from the start). The game is extraordinarily solo though – everything is simultaneous – which won’t be for everyone. There’s also a bit of railroading with the objectives (you can’t afford to ignore them), but the striving to achieve them is the game.
Rating: 7
IMPERIAL STEAM (2021): Rank 951, Rating 7.7
It felt like a simplified Nucleum but with the weight of Russian Railroads. Instead of races to worker placement spots (because they’re all always available), you prioritise what race on the board you want to win – first to build that track, place that factory, deliver that good, obtain a contract you’re aiming to complete. I went in thinking, urgh, yet another heavy rails game but a few rounds in I could see strategy unfold, what I needed to shoot for, what actions I needed to take, and a plan came together. Despite the potential downtime of action free=choice, restricted resources keep the decision tree very manageable, making it all rather simpler than I envisaged from the rules. I enjoyed it.
Rating: 7
LUTHIER (2025): Rank 1268, Rating 8.3
In many ways this is a game of hope. Hoping the cards revealed this round match your contract (patron) requirements. Hoping that you placed meeples in an action zone with enough strength to get the cards you need (to satisfy your contract) – not many cards come out each round and there’s no replenishment. Hoping other people don’t need to collect the same things as you. But it’s also straightforward. Collect contracts. Get resources. Spend resources to build instruments (3 actions to collect, frame, build) or repair instruments (one action) to help satisfy a contract. Or roll dice (a performance action) to help satisfy a contract. Everything delivers points along the way, and there are private and public goals to give direction. But downtime is a factor – there’s so much risk with each action re what you’ll get, you need to be very careful with the planning phase (where meeples are assigned to actions but strength is hidden), ensuring you have alternate plans if things don’t pan out how you’d like. But somehow the downtime didn’t bug me as much as other recent games – partly due to the theme (which I adore), and partly because each action has weight rather than just being one of many churn actions. I enjoyed the game but that 3+ hour timeframe may well hinder replay.
Rating: 8
REALLY LOUD LIBRARIANS (2023): Rank 10767, Rating 6.1
One team draws a topic and says as many related words as they can within the time limit, starting with any of the three letters linked to their position on the track. Each time a word is said, you move along the track, continually changing the letter mix. Then the other team has a turn. Whichever team says the most words wins the round. While it did generate some laughs, I really don’t enjoy real-time pressure games and this doesn’t sway me otherwise.
Rating: 4
THAT’S NOT A HAT (2023): Rank 1145, Rating 7.0
A simple memory game where you memorise everyone’s picture card, turn them face-down and then track each card as they move around the table. If the sender claims it’s something and the receiver thinks it’s something else and calls it, a penalty point is awarded to whoever was wrong. You’ll remain perfect if you concentrate, which for me makes it work, a test, rather than a game. The only fun is if some players wilfully not remember and attempt to bluff their way through the game, which makes for a thankfully much shorter playtime.
Rating: 3
VIRTU (2022): Rank 3244, Rating 7.3
Having your own rondel of actions that you can morph into different actions, different order, and strengthen, immediately strikes one as engaging. It’s all done thru the purchase of cards – and there’s a lot so there’s quite the strategic choice. Cards can also be placed in resource slots and tapped to be used (and untapped by circling the rondel). There are two actions to capture cities on the board using different symbols (ie tap cards to spend symbols), one to advance on a track for points, and support actions to get stuff. The question is how much effort do you invest in building your engine vs just getting on with the main actions to advance your board position. Issues are that competition on the board feels non-engaging – responsiveness is limited as you’re bound to your rondel constraints. It’s hard to know the leader to attack because so many points are hidden with symbols, cards and tiles. And on principle I just don’t want to play games where you’re rewarded for attacking people and where you’re rewarded for investing in religion.
Rating: 5
VIVA CATRINA (2025): Rank 6747, Rating 7.0
Collect a tile from either end of two rows of tiles in the common display and add it to your tableau. Apart from the paths (that must lead back to the starting tile for a tile to score), there are lots of different icons to score – different stalls, race in each balloon colour, butterflies, people, yellow areas and so on. Which is all easy and fine. Except when you get to the big-scoring altar tiles and you’re forced into a “take a lesser tile to avoid making the altar available to the next player” decision. Eventually someone succumbs, someone falls into a ton of points, and the scores get away from you. Unless you’re the lucky one. Which tarnished it a little for me.
Rating: 6
WINE CELLAR (2025): Rank 3899, Rating 7.1
Simul-reveal game, highest to lowest in order take a “wine” card of their choice from the display, and then the cards just used in the bid form the display that’s up for taking next. You’re after three things – wine type and country per your bonus card, and a high score for the rank where you’ll place the card. If you snag a card that scores max for first rank, then you’ll want future cards to score higher in middle and late ranks and place them after your first one in your rank order. Play a second round with new bonus cards where your hand is all the cards you won in the first round. Like all simul-reveal games, you get what you get and you don’t get upset. A certain ennui developed as players often enough found they lucked in to the card they wanted despite being lowest bidder. It’s light and decent but not engaging enough to fire up replay desire.
Rating: 6
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Larry: I love Imperial Steam! It was my Game of the Year in the year it came out (2021), beating out Ark Nova. It has a very long teach and setup time, so it’s clearly not for everyone, but it’s a unique take on train gaming and requires a lot of good strategy and the need to plan and time your actions properly to succeed at it. Plus, you absolutely need to consider what your opponents are doing. My old game grouped loved it; I haven’t yet introduced it to my current game group, but when the time is right, I’ll be happy to do so and hope they’ll love it too.
I enjoyed Luthier more than I thought I would. It’s a very good game, with a strong and attractive theme. The “blind” worker placement system works well and is not as capricious as it first seems. As Alison says, it isn’t a short game, so it might be better with only 3 players. But I can definitely recommend it for those who don’t mind longish games and who like the theme.
Tery: I have only played Luthier once, but I loved it. I thought it did an excellent job of marrying theme to actions and sure, there was luck involved, but you still had plenty of options and actions you could take. It was definitely long, but I felt engaged the entire time. I played my friend Bob’s copy, and he had sprung for the fancy dice tower that plays music when you roll the dice. I normally don’t care about chrome, but that was pretty cool.
Doug G.: Shelley and I REALLY loved both Arigato and Viva Catrina. These were the first two games we got on our pre-Essen adventures from a Paris game store, so they may be tainted by rose-colored glasses, but Arigato is a fun card game that moves quickly with some interesting decisions. Viva Catrina’s colorful theme (Day of the Dead) and fun tile drafting makes it a solid family-style game. Finally, we got Wine Cellar to the table over the summer and its best aspect is that it scales well from 2-8 players and as wine lovers, we enjoyed the straightforward theme. We discussed all three on both our audio podcast and in individual videos on our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/@garrettsgames)
