I think the implication of a 7 rating changes the longer you’re in the hobby. When I started back in ‘99, I needed to own all the 7’s and I wanted to explore all of them. Now that there are so many 8-10’s in our world with the explosion of the hobby, these 7’s are still perfectly fine but the bar for what I prefer to play is now set higher.  I’m happy to play a 7 and I’ll enjoy it (especially because I like variety and exploring new things) but it’s not something I need to own or explore further because, hey, it’s time to play this 8-10 we haven’t played in ages and then let’s explore this other new 8-10 again!

Speaking of 8-10’s, one of my favourite light card games, Texas Showdown, was finally re-released this year as Seas Of Strife. We’ve been playing it a lot this year so I thought I’d give it another mention. The new theme is ridiculous but at least now I’ve been able to roll it out to all my gaming groups and, yep, everyone loves it and they’ve bought more copies in turn to play with their families. It’s got just the right amount of card counting to reward you, without being onerous, and then sometimes it just doesn’t matter anyway, you get what’s coming. But always fun. The author’s variant is surprisingly enjoyable as well – it changes the feel because no non-top card is safe anymore, generating more ‘what the, wow, really’ laughs when a trick is won by a stupidly low card. Anyway, recommended if you like light trick-takers.

Here’s the latest batch of new-to-me games over the last little while.

ARCTIC (2024): Rank 16112, Rating 6.2

Each player builds their card stack and at the end of the game scores their longest consecutive group of cards in each of the 6 animal types and for how many groups they have. It has the same feel as Mamma Mia (but with personal stacks). The last card played each turn defines which super power you get, how many cards to draw (with penalties if you exceed hand limit) and how many cards you’ll play to your stack next turn (with penalties if you don’t have enough). Getting this right is a juggling act which slows down the game. You’re often playing 3-5 cards, and the non-replenished draft is 6 cards, so the chances of getting long streaks is a luck-fest which is game determining. It’s also random whether you keep your super-power until next turn (especially 4p) and whether it will be useful or not if you do. This one left us cold.  A more positive review from Dale here.

Rating: 6

AURUM (2023): Rank 4003, Rating 7.1

A trick-taker with a few twists. You use one of your cards to set your bid. You can only play to a trick in a suit that hasn’t been played yet. Whoever wins the trick gets a point, whoever loses the trick gets a VP card. These more or less balance out points wise at the end. Double your trick score if you hit your bid. You can also use those ‘last’ VP cards to trump in at any time or change your bid. The 3p game felt broken because the last player has 2 suits to choose from and can usually keep going last until they don’t want to (due to the rule of ties are broken in favour of the player going second) and then trump whenever they want so it can feel futile to the middle player. It’s more interesting 4p, making sure you hit your bid and then trying to engineer failure on the other team, but the slow game-play and the ever-present uncertainty over how each trick would fare regardless of what you played didn’t win me over.

Rating: 6

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CHANDIGARH (2024): Rank 7555, Rating 7.3

It’s an abstracty Euro where you either take a card showing tile patterns for VPs (colour, spatial relationship) or move your meeple around the board laying down tiles that fit your patterns. The cards also provide you new tiles (inevitably in colours different to its pattern) and movement points (the more movement, the less it’ll score, the fewer tiles you’ll collect). Like Harmonies, the trick to doing well is to luck into cards that score well because the patterns already exist on the board. Unlike Harmonies, because it’s a common board, everyone wants the same cards as soon as they appear, to the increasingly weary resignation of those who miss out. It’s a one-and-done multi-player abstract with weird dressing – how this relates to 1950’s urban planning for the capital of Punjab, or how the theme was dreamt up at all for that matter, bewildered all at the table.  A full review here.

Rating: 6

EVACUATION (2023): Rank 1011, Ratin Jo g 7.6 – Suchy

I love the theming on this one – you have 4 years (rounds) to buy starships and move everything from the old dying planet to the new planet and get production up and going there as best you can. Your first decisions are about what production to forego on the old planet, and then the best order in which to get energy, food, and steel producing on the new because they’re each important but in different ways. I really like how the best actions move you the least on the progress track, the least powerful actions the most. You really want to have motored along the progress track to give you access to better spots on the new planet by the third round, but … tough decisions. It feels like you want to do a similar sequence of actions each game, which worries me, but you do alter things each game to account for your personal goals and bonus actions and that seems to be enough. After 5+ plays, I’m still not quite sure what the best approach/sequence is. Which keeps bringing me back. I’ve only ever played the points mode but there’s a race mode and multiple module variants that encourage replay as well.  A similar review here.

Rating: 8

GALACTIC STRIKE FORCE (2014): Rank 14962, Rating 5.7

A build-your-deck co-op aimed at enhancing (and repairing) your ship to beat off the myriad of enemy ships and then beat the boss ship. It sounds attractive in principle but it bogs down with a hundred million effects on a hundred million cards (to paraphrase Demi Lovato). There’ll be 9 unique effects to buy at any one time – that’s a lot of reading – and every time one is bought everyone needs to know the newly revealed effect so that as a team you can ensure all the effects go to the players who can make best use of it. And then there might be 10 different effects in play on enemy ships which all need to be continually reviewed and actioned to ensure nothing is missed. And these are ever-changing as well. All of which makes it the slowest unfolding space battle in gaming history which is a shame because there were some interesting deck-building ideas in there.

Rating: 5

INORI (2024): Rank 9296, Rating 6.6

A light worker placement Euro to collect resources in 6 colours. The worker placement spots come on cards (which change each round) and each card also shows a VP colour. Having a worker will give you VPs for resources you’ve collected in that colour, but only if that card is filled with workers. Which means you want to be tied first or second in a bunch of colours so that other players will help fill cards. Which means everything stays roughly balanced all game. Working out how to engineer that is ok but not that exciting either. There are other wibbles and end-game VPs to plan for but it wasn’t enough to draw us back.  A full review here.

Rating: 6

LOOOT (2024): Rank 3895, Rating 7.1

An interesting mid-weight Euro. Each turn you can choose one of the goal tiles and add it to your board and it’ll score if you surround it with the tiles the goal requires. You get those by placing meeples on the main board and taking tiles that match the spaces you claim. There’s a race/timing element because everyone can build off anyone and you want to be careful about making prime spots available to the next player. The most challenging aspect is choosing the right goals so that your tiles can score for multiple goals. As I’m playing I’m envisaging everything I need to gather and where it’ll go and continually building and re-framing that picture in my head, reviewing new goals with that frame in mind. It’s only 12 or so turns which feels appropriate. I think your experience may differ based on the main board configuration though – we had a fun game with a square setup but a very average one with a long thin configuration because our options felt more limited.  A full review here.

Rating: 7

ODIN (2024): Rank 4514, Rating 6.9

Seemingly the love-child of Llama and Tichu. Play a set of cards (same colour or same number) that has the same number of cards (but higher face value) or a set with one card more than that previously played, and then add one card from the previously played set to your hand. If you’re aiming to go out first you might not want to play even if you can if the card you’d pick up doesn’t fit into a set in your hand and will be tricky to get rid of. If your hand’s a mess then you might want to slough off anyway to minimise the point loss and live to fight another day. Light, nice, simple.  Full review here.

Rating: 7

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

Larry:  Evacuation (2 plays) – I like this one a lot, although it’s almost too challenging.  In my first game, I flamed out rather spectacularly (many citizens sadly died) and even in my second game, I had to really work to get a decent score.  Still, it’s fun getting there and the theme and game mechanics are plusses.  Definitely a game where there’s more that you want to do than you can do.  Like Alison, both of my games have been with the Points mode and I suspect that’s the game’s sweet spot for me, but it’s nice that the quicker Race mode is available for those who want something a bit more streamlined.  I think Evacuation was one of 2023’s better games.