What I've been playing lately

I’ve been racking my brain for the last week thinking about what I’d like to write about, and I’m getting close on a number of different ideas. But this week (yesterday, in fact!) is my son’s first birthday, and that’s way cooler than anything I can tell you about today. I mean, just look at him.

A year! It feels not so long ago that I was talking about how this kid was on his way, about how I was nervous and excited. He’s obviously not quite to gaming age, but I did buy him a copy of Animal Upon Animal recently. It’ll just be a couple years before he knows that. (I might open it up and play it. Don’t tell him.)

So, I thought I’d take a break from the usual longer-form, more-involved newsletters today and just talk about some games I’ve been playing lately. There are a ton of good ones to consider, and between Board Game Arena and playing in-person games, I’ve had some great gaming experiences.

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River Valley Glassworks

I love a little abstract drafting game — Azul, Splendor, Sagrada, you name it — and River Valley Glassworks is a nice entry into that particular canon. I backed it on Kickstarter, but rather than waiting for backers to get their games for player experiences to start rolling in, AllPlay did something a little different: They released the game on Board Game Arena. Unusual, right? Development of the game ended some time ago, and printing takes time. Rather than wait for the long boat ride to bring the game to players, they’ve taken an alternate route, and they’ve done it in a way that doesn’t feel underhanded or unfortunate.

As a result, I’ve played this game a ton. It’s about to bump my H-index (the number of games (N) I’ve played at least N number of times — it’s a term copped from scholarly journalism, which is fun), and I just achieved my highest-ever score today. Er, last night. I mean, today. You get it.

The premise behind River Valley Glassworks is a pretty simple one. You’re collecting glass pieces of various colors and shapes and placing them on your board. There are varying levels of rarity for every color. Glass is placed along a track, flowing like a river. You’ll pick up glass by placing another piece of glass on the river according to its shape by finding a corresponding part of the river, then picking up glass from either side of it. If you have two pieces of glass of the same shape, you can use them to place and pick up from any location on the river. Following that, you’ll place that glass on your board, moving pieces into columns. If glass of the color you’re placing is on the board, you are obligated to place in that column. If it’s not, you have your choice of placement order.

You’ll earn points for glass based on the grid on your board. Rows earn points for unbroken placement starting on the left side, and you’ll further earn points for your two tallest columns, with the tiebreaker going to the less valuable columns.

Like I said: It’s a simple game, but I think it’s real neat. And it’s on Board Game Arena in beta, and it’s available at free tiers. That’s a killer marketing strategy, because it’s basically guaranteed I’ll be getting this game to the table and introducing people when it shows up. (I think that might be soon. Neat!)

Hive

I still haven’t beaten Michael, in case you’re wondering. I’m still loving it. I’ve been playing with some other friends, too. Great game.

Six great small-box board games

Large-box board games are, in many ways, the things that drive the board game hobby. In my nascent days in the hobby, I was drawn to those Euro-sized square boxes. I wanted the games that had weight to them, and that was a signal to me. I think that’s changing these days — the perception, I mean. There have long been great games that come in small boxes…

Don't Eat the MeeplesMatt Montgomery

Crisps

I haven’t talked about this game yet, but I’ve really been loving it. It’s a two-player climbing/shedding game by Shreesh Bhat, the designer behind the very cool team-based (at four players, at least) trick-taker Aurum, published in 2023. Crisps hasn’t found a publisher yet, or if it has, there hasn’t been an announcement to that effect in any of the usual places. It’s another game I’ve been playing on BGA.

The game is great. It’s got the usual elements of a climbing game — runs, sets, runs of pairs, that sort of thing. You’ll probably start with a hand that feels pretty great, and you’ll think you have a good shot at winning. It might be true. But after each trick, the winner will choose between drawing a card from the deck or drawing a face-up card, and the loser of the trick gets the other card. If you’ve played a long run — maybe you have each card 3 through 9 — you’re left with fewer cards, fewer options, and then you’re getting another card into your hand. Whoops! Now you’re stuck with a 2 you drew from the top of the deck, a 5, and a 9. What are you going to do with that? Nothing.

Importantly, the implementation on BGA is great. If there’s no way you can win a trick, and you can know that with solely public information, the game will pass for you. It reduces the time spent waiting for turns considerably. I like that a lot. More of that, please. Sure, it reveals something if a player hasn’t been paying close sense to public information, but I think that’s alright.

Designed by Shreesh Bhat.

Spring Cleaning

Another climbing/shedding game! Neat. This one has a couple neat ideas going for it. First, it has the now-common can’t-rearrange-your-hand concept baked in, which we’ve seen in Scout in this context, and importantly in Bohnanza way back when. (Still a great game, if you ask me.) Second, it features one of the cooler ideas I’ve seen in a climbing game: You’ll offer cards up for your opponents (and yourself) to use. After you’ve been dealt cards, you’ll put one of them in front of you as an offer. (Thematically, it wraps offered cards in a garage sale theme. Nice!) When you follow another player’s lead, you can use those offer cards as if they were in your hand in any position. I’ve only played a couple games of this one, but I really like it. It’s also available for preorder from New Mill Industries through its imprint, Little Dog Games. (Tangent: Little Dog Games is a neat idea — basically, New Mill coordinates production, but they’re pretty hands-off otherwise.)

Designed by Jonathan Cox, published by Little Dog Games. Jonathan Cox posts on YouTube as JonGetsGames, where he does great game tutorials.

Sky Team

I've still got a regular game of Sky Team going with a reader I met through this very newsletter. We’re on to the red-level difficulty levels. They’re tough! I mean, wow. It feels a little like every turn has to be perfect. I don’t mind that particularly, but it has led to a lot of failures. We got close recently, but the dice — they just weren’t in our favor. Could we have solved it anyway, I wonder? Maybe! That’s part of what makes Sky Team so compelling for me. I’m still thinking about that great-game-turned-loss from earlier today.

Some first plays

Those games I thought were talking in some depth about, but here are a few games I played for the first time recently.

• Tapas, an abstract two-player game in which you’re pushing your opponents pieces off the board (a surprisingly common conceit these days.)
• Labyrinth, which I know is a classic, but I thought it was just fine. I dunno. Maybe it’s not for me.
• Rafter Five, a dexterity game played with cards, treasure chests, and little wooden folks, and it’s published by Oink Games. You know I’ll be talking about this one more soon.
• Looot, another game I’ve played a fair amount of on BGA. Pick up tiles, fulfill contracts on other tiles that depend on the tiles around them. Neat stuff.
• Nokosu Dice, widely regarded as one of the great trick-taking games out there. It has an unusual dice-as-cards mechanic that I really loved.
• Overboss: A Boss Monster Adventure, which takes the Boss Monster theme and turns it into a little grid-dungeon-building exercise. Nice game, pretty quick to play.
• In Front of the Elevators, a great little card game about having members of your family cut in line to get on elevators ahead of other people. Rude, but the game’s nice.
• Sea Salt & Paper, a breezy set collection game where you draw one to two cards on your turn, keeping only one. Pretty cards.

That’s where I end this week. Thanks for reading, folks! I really appreciate that you come back week after week, or that you’ve tried this newsletter out for the first time. (How do I know you come back? Well, you wouldn’t be reading that sentence if you hadn’t. Aha!)

I’ll soon be at a family reunion in Yellowstone, and I sort of suspect there’ll be a bit of gaming involved. I might write about that ahead of time as I make my board game packing list. (I should also make a not-board-game packing list, but that’s neither here nor there.) If you’ve been to Yellowstone, any recommendations? Is Old Faithful really that old and that faithful? (Note to self: Games to replace Checkers. Get that ready to drop while I’m on vacation.)

Hey, we’ll talk next week, alright? See you then.

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