New-to-me games played recently include …

FORESTRY (2025): Rank 3336, Rating 7.8

You only get 10 turns, and each turn you use your actions points (which can grow thru the game) from a menu of actions, Tikal-style. These are to variously move around the board to collect trees, get resources, get and fulfil contracts, satisfy tasks, build buildings, fill up your bonus effect board and so on. You can’t do it all and those decisions are the game. Once you’re on a board location you’re immune from other players so you can plan next turn safely which I liked. There’s downtime while people explore different ways to get things via bonus effects and that’s my main knock on the game. It’s relatively easy to get into (which was refreshing) and I look forward to exploring different approaches.

Rating: 8

THE HOBBIT: THERE AND BACK AGAIN (2025): Rank 1891, Rating 7.6 – Knizia

Roll and write that doesn’t do anything much interesting but it does at least provide a number of different maps which represent different challenges along the journey, with different rule sets and consequently different resource valuations. Everyone takes one die in turn order, and the active player then gets the last one (ie the one not taken). Next turn. Usually you want to take a movement die and cross off your path along the map (it’s a journey after all) but you’ll need to collect other resources from the dice along the way to enable movement and trigger scoring. It’s standard stuff but done nicely, with beautiful maps.

Rating: 7

INSIDE JOB (2022): Rank 2111, Rating 7.0

Just one normal trick-taking hand. With a secret traitor who doesn’t have to follow suit. Each trick has its own mission (eg all odd cards, each card must be played in ascending order). If the traitor wins enough tricks they win. If it gets to the end and not enough missions have been won, and the traitor is not picked in the public vote, they win. It’s a bit more stressful being the traitor as you need to disguise that you have more options, but it’s nowhere like Spyfall type stress. Which allows me to enjoy this little 10 minute romp of accusation and counter-accusation in the acceptance that you mostly must simply play what you’ve got.

Rating: 7

INTARSIA (2024): Rank 2928, Rating 7.1 – Kiesling

Multi-player abstract of building patterns on your personal board, playing X cards in a colour to play a piece of size X in that colour to the board. The trick is that you then draw X-1 cards which must be in a different colour. Be mindful of what others are building, racing to be first to complete patterns to claim public goals, managing your cards across multiple colours all the while. It can be unclear whether shooting for goal points vs end-game points is best – that’s the game because otherwise everyone gets the same resources, do with them what others aren’t I guess. Pleasant enough but too repetitive and abstract for me.

Rating: 6

KINFIRE COUNCIL (2025): Rank 4120, Rating 7.8 – Wilson

Semi co-op – which is usually the devil’s work but things seem more transparently workable here. Those who get a good VP engine will continue on, as it’s possible to get good VPs whilst keeping the cultists in check. Those who don’t should start working towards getting cultist influence (and ignoring VPs) to meet the winning condition if the cultists take over, meaning fewer people keeping cultists in check making for a theoretically balanced game. There are a LOT of actions but they’re all pretty simple – target the resources you need – so the game flowed even with 6 players. Which means I’d happily play again just to see if the game really does balance out with competent players.

Rating: 7

LACRIMOSA (2022): Rank 612, Rating 7.6

Each turn you draw action cards from your deck and choose which to play for its action and which for its resources. There are only 5 types of action but this draw-into-what-you-want restriction is what makes the game interesting. In each of the 5 rounds you spend all your resources to improve your deck, buy symphony cards for VPs, perform/tap them for more VPs, move around the board to gather more stuff, or invest in area-majority and earn an ongoing effect which you aim to leverage as much as possible. And the cards you put aside for resources shape what actions you’ll be doing next round; be mindful, be careful. Good decisions. It rock and rolls along nicely. There’s maybe not huge replay but it’s enjoyably playable.

Rating: 7

PICTURES (2019): Rank 1151, Rating 7.2

Get allocated a secret picture from the 4×4 display and try to imitate it using (in different rounds) cubes, strings, blocks, cards, or sticks. It’s dixit scoring – points for guessing correctly and being guessed correctly. It’s not always easy but it’s often surprisingly gettable with some cleverness. Fun enough for the occasional play.

Rating: 6

SPEAKEASY (2025): Rank 727, Rating 8.5 – Lacerda

There’s a huge pre-investment required to enjoy the game because it flows asymmetrically – there are different numbers of rounds between when stuff happens that you MUST be ready and prepared for. The action selection is tight and unbalanced, turn order is important – some actions are straight-forward and will always be wanted, others are of dubious merit which you need to build towards to take advantage of. Each turn seems dwarfed by the number of chain effects that get triggered. Icon overload is rife. Downtime can be ridiculous. It provides an interesting challenge to build and sequence in such a way as to do well, and it may be thematically rich, but nostalgic celebration of crime in a foreign country is not a theme I care about or want to explore.

Rating: 6

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

Larry:  Lacrimosa is a gorgeous game and the theme is unusual.  Mechanically, though, I didn’t think it did anything that innovative.  It was enjoyable enough and I wouldn’t refuse to play it again, but I won’t be seeking it out, either.  I give it a Neutral rating.

Fraser: I can see that Pictures could be OK, but my first play was not and I doubt I will go out of my way to try it again.

Tery:  I am really enjoying Forestry so far (4 plays); I prefer it with the “advanced” individual powers, but the base game is fun, too.  I’ve played with 2, 3 and 4 and all work well. You have interesting choices and limited time to implement your plans, and every play has been slightly different.

I played Lacrimosa a lot when it first came out and I really enjoyed it, but after many plays it sort of fell off my radar. I need to get it to the table again soon to see if it was just the novelty or if there is enough there to make it a keeper.

I am really torn on Speakeasy.  It takes a LOT of time to set up and then a lot of time to play, and there was a lot of downtime even with just 2 players. I enjoyed the actions and the general mechanics, but I am not sure the return on investment is there with the amount of time setup and play takes.