Undiscovered Games

What are your thoughts on ULM (2016)? After my first 2 plays I’m really torn. The Michael Menzel art is gorgeous, yet the board is sooo busy & difficult to see what’s going on. The gameplay is thinky at times, while being very obvious at other times. It’s a game I should like, & after 2 plays at 4p I certainly don’t hate it. But I’m not sure if I’ll play it again🤔 The game revolves around a very nice tile pushing mechanism. There’s a 3x3 grid of action tiles. Each turn you draw a tile from the bag & push 1 row or column in that grid. You get to perform the 3 central actions of the row you just pushed. The tile that got pushed off remains there, clogging up the grid for future moves. The actions are simple: take a coin, move your boat, get a card, place a seal, or take tiles from the “pushed off” spaces. In eurogame fashion, all these actions are important & you need to find a balance of what to go for & when. You need coins to place your seals. Seals are how you gain special benefits from the board. You can only place seals where your boat is, so you have to pace accordingly. Plus the river spots are worth positive or negative points at the end of the game depending on how far you paddled. One action lets you take the extra “pushed off” tiles, which are used to purchase cards. The multi-use cards offer lots of choices for immediate scoring or endgame scoring. There’s a little push your luck with the cards too, which adds a fun tension. Everything works together nicely & your turns are pretty quick. Sometimes it seems blatantly obvious what you should do, other times there are some thinky choices, & occasionally you have no meaningful plays. There are some ways to mitigate the tile draws, & I do like how you can place crests to give you bonus points when other players place seals in your areas. Again, I should like this game. All in all it’s a standard midweight euro that’s pleasant but nothing new. The board is cluttered & hard to read. The rulebook is horrid. Still, I didn’t hate it & I would happily play again. I’m keeping it for now, but I just don’t know how much table time it’ll get. Have you played? What am I missing? ⭐️First Impressions: 7/10

📺MOGUL (2015 ed.) by Michael Schacht is an absolute gem: New episode now on YouTube!! Mogul is a borderline filler game, but I consider it to be a top tier game in my collection. Episode 44: “No Thanks for Gamers” is now streaming on YouTube! In Mogul, players have a secret stash of bidding chips & some face-up cards representing shares of stock. At the beginning of your turn, you reveal the top card of the deck. That card color pays points to each player holding shares of that stock. Then that card is auctioned off using a “No Thanks” bidding system. Players pass a huge wooden bowl around & add 1 bidding chip to the bowl to stay in the auction. When you pass, you’re out of the round, but you take all the bidding chips in the bowl for use in future turns. Bidding continues this way until 1 player remains & wins the auction. The winner of the auction chooses to either take the card & add it to their face-up shares (bigger payouts later), OR they can use the bottom half of the card to sell shares or add a depot to the board. Whichever option they choose, the 2nd-place bidder from the auction gets to do the OTHER option. Cards have a main color representing a share of stock in that color, but then the bottom half shows a different color. This bottom color dictates which color you’re allowed to sell or where you place a depot (if you choose that option). The depots are endgame points using a compounding scale (more depots = more points per depot). Unsold shares are also endgame points (1 per card). And you’ll also get 1 point per 5 leftover bidding chips. Most points wins! This game packs a satisfying experience into 45 minutes. It’s clean & smooth in the best way possible! Plus, it uses one of my fav mechanisms: multi-use cards. Sometimes the card draw can saddle you for a round, but everyone is dealing with that same random draw & reacting to it. It’s a player-driven game, & you have to learn how to pace yourself! It can be tricky, so play it a couple times! If you like the games Biblios or Ra, I think you will love Mogul. It’s a totally different #boardgame , but the pacing, timing, & commitment decisions feel similar. 🤼‍♂️3-5p 🕰️45min 🧠Weight:2/5

📺 INTRIGE (1994) by @stefan.dorra has a reputation for being one of the meanest #boardgames ever made 😂 It certainly isn’t for everyone, but wow, what a memorable & hilarious gaming experience packed into 45 minutes! Check out “Episode 43: Big Bucks, Brutal Bribery, Bad Blood” to see if this untamed negotiation game is right for you! 🔗Link in bio to watch on YouTube! Intrige is a very simple game for 3-5 thick-skinned players. The goal of the game is to make the most money. Sounds simple, right? Well, from a rules standpoint, yes. There are just a few basic rules that create the framework. But from a gameplay perspective, it’s a free-for-all of unfair negotiations, bribery, deceit, broken promises, backstabbing, & menacing misconduct with money 🤑 Each player owns a palazzo with 5 jobs available to the other players. You each have 10 family members who are skilled in certain professions, & you’re trying to get them hired in other players’ palazzos to earn you money. By bribing the landlords, you hope to secure the highest paying jobs for your family members. The bribery is soooo good in this game. Before the landlord assigns jobs, each job applicant bribes that landlord in an open-ended negotiation. The landlord can make all sorts of empty promises; then they pocket the bribe without any requirement to keep their word. Then they turn to the next job applicant & take a bribe from them, etc. Only after receiving all the bribes does the landlord actually assign the jobs. Each palazzo can only employ one of each profession & there are only 5 jobs available. So there is lots of competition of players trying to out-bribe each other in hopes they’ll be hired. This game almost feels more like a social experiment than a #boardgame , but I love the experience it creates! The players at the table bring the game to life. It’s truly a memorable game, one that will never leave my #boardgamecollection ! There are several printings, but my OG edition by FX Schmid is gorgeous 🤩 📺 Link in bio to watch! ⭐️Rating: 9/10 🧠Weight: 2/5 🤼‍♂️3-5p ⏰30-45m #boardgamereview #boardgameaddict #iloveboardgames #bggcommunity #tabletopgames #tabletopgamer #tabletopgaming

I mentioned ALADDIN’S DRAGONS (2000) in my last episode & then realized I’ve never reviewed it here on IG! 😱 So here you go! Aladdin’s Dragons (originally named Keydom & recently reprinted as Keydom’s Dragons) is often considered the world’s 1st worker placement #boardgame . I consider it more of a blind bidding game, but it counts as worker placement. At the start of the round, you flip a card to see which resources enter the dragon’s den at the bottom. Then players take turns placing 1 worker disc at a time face down on the board. Each player has a set of numbered worker discs which are used to bid secretly for action spaces on the board. Once all players have placed all their discs, you resolve the board from bottom to top. Section by section you see who bid the highest (that player gets to do the action). The bottom of the board allows the top 2 bidders to collect resources. The middle section has special abilities like gaining a card, converting resources, taking start player, etc. The top of the board involves defeating the palace guard’s hidden strength & then visiting the palace to spend resources & gain tiles for points & abilities. The blind bidding is fantastic because your number spread is 1-9: lots of bluff bids, mind games, shoring up, etc. But the rest of the game lacks depth & falls a bit flat IMO. Aladdin’s Dragons has 2 ways to play. The simpler way removes the cards, which I prefer because the cards are overpowering & chaotic. In the simpler game, it’s just a race to collect tiles. This is my favorite way to play the game, but it seems overly simplistic for the game length & large board. The advanced game with cards offers much richer decisions because the tiles now offer special abilities, complicating which palace room you want to visit. However, I hate the cards in this game! I have a soft spot for this game because I’ve had it for so long, but honestly I prefer Doge for a blind bidding game (see episode 42). My main complaint with A.D. is I feel it’s caught between being too simple in the basic game & way too chaotic in the advanced game. It needs a “Goldilocks” variant to appeal more to me. Any ideas? ⭐️MY RATING: 7.7/10

FIRST IN FLIGHT (2023): Game provided by @gotgeniusgames . These words are mine: This Mensa Select winner has a unique mix of deckbuilding, push-your-luck, & a 1-way worker placement track. Thematically you’re aviation pioneers competing to perform the longest flight, represented by a card deck you modify over the course of the game. You can improve distance, add help from people or tech, & deal w/ design flaws which clog your deck & make you crash! But it’s not a typical deckbuilder. Here you don’t keep cycling through & re-shuffling each turn. Instead you add cards to your deck by taking actions on the worker placement track. You only use your deck when you actually perform a flight. Performing a flight is the heart of the game. From your shuffled deck, you’ll flip 1 card at a time to see how long you can stay in the air. Most cards just add length to your flight, but red cards mean danger! If you flip 4 red💥logos, you crash (forcing you to end your flight & waste your next turn healing). The push your luck is funnn! Whenever you choose, you can descend to end your flight, BUT you must play 2 more cards after that! So you’re always at risk of crashing. It mimics the tension & excitement of the early days of flight. I will say later in the game we saw significant downtime as players took longer & longer flights, but the whole goal of the game is to perform the longest flight, so it makes sense thematically. I like how you can take a turn repairing your design flaws to lessen the damage from red cards, or you can ignore that & choose to fly risky! You can also get ability cards to combo together & improve your odds of longer flights. I do wish the action track were a bit more exciting. It uses the GlenMore idea (last-place player jumps as far ahead as they want). I just wish the later spaces were more enticing; I never felt the temptation to jump really far ahead. The bonus cards combo for satisfying payoffs, but I could see the text & icons being a lot to keep track of for newer gamers; like any deckbuilder, it has some fiddly turns. I still DEFINITELY recommend this if you like push your luck #boardgames w/ solid themes & great art! ⭐️8/10

📺 DOGE (2000) by Leo Colovini: New episode now streaming on YouTube! This blind bidding game is beautifully beige and surprisingly thinky for how simple the rules are. In Doge, players secretly cast votes in different districts of Venice in hopes of winning the elections. Winning an election gives you the opportunity to add houses to the board & take control of powerful advisors who give you more votes in other elections, which allow you to spread out your influence. Placing houses allows you to eventually build palaces, which get progressively harder to build as the game develops. But the ultimate goal is to build palaces faster than your opponents. The key mechanism that drives your decisions is the shifting order of the elections each round. Each round, players can clearly see the order the elections will be resolved. This adds so much depth to your decisions because now, not only does it matter where you vote, but also WHEN you vote there. The game offers so many subtle layers to hide your motives behind. But it’s a mind game at its core. This game has bluffing & blind bidding, so you have to make lots of decisions based on hidden information. Some of you might not like that, but in this game, that’s the driver of the excitement & tension. I think it works really well in Doge. There is a dense, opaque, & thinky game hiding behind a very simple ruleset. The quirky game board & CHONKY wooden pieces offer so much old-school eurogame flavor. Is it the perfect game? No. But it’s extremely unique & it has tons of personality! 📺 Check out “Episode 42: Beige Blind Bidding” to see if Doge is an undiscovered game for you! ⭐️ Rating: 8.5/10 🤼‍♂️ 3-4 players (best w 4) 🧠 Complexity: 3/5 #boardgames #boardgamereview #boardgaming #tabletopgames #tabletopgamer #tabletopgaming #tabletopgame #boardgamer #eurogames #tabletopgame #boardgamesofinstagram #iloveboardgames #boardgamepodcast

DOMINANT SPECIES (2010) by @gmtgames is not an “undiscovered game,” but I wanted to log my first impressions! For a 4/5 complexity on BGG, this #boardgame felt very approachable. It’s definitely a heavy euro by all accounts, but it wasn’t too much overload. The rulebook is thick, but it’s exceptionally written & organized. After 1 read I was ready to dive in & play. The graphic design on the board is top notch. It’s easy to see what you need to see without straining your eyes. The aesthetics are awesome: EXCELLENT color choices w/ a large board. I’m a big fan of the wooden cubes, cones, & cylinders too. Everything is functional & not fiddly whatsoever. The gameplay is deep, interactive, thinky, & highly competitive. It’s worker placement w/ 2 area majority mechanisms, so there’s bound to be some cutthroat play! Each round, players take turns placing 1 worker on an available space to choose an action. It’s a queue, so you don’t trigger the actions right away; instead you wait until all workers are placed & then resolve them. I like this type of worker placement (see Caylus). The actions can improve turn order, adapt your animal to be more dominant in different areas, add more earth tiles, spread glaciers, migrate species to other tiles, score tiles, etc. It’s a deep & crunchy action queue w/ TONS of great choices. One part I loved is how you sometimes want to score a tile even if it’s dominated by an opponent. You might be able to get more points, but your opponent will get a powerful card. It’s a fun balancing act. Each player has asymmetrical abilities to represent the animals. Typically I avoid games w/ asymmetrical starting abilities because I’m always skeptical if they’re actually balanced. But here the asymmetry is subtle & didn’t bother me. Each animal needs certain resources to survive & you can adapt your animal over the course of the game to survive in more areas, all while the glacier creeps across the earth & threatens your survival. It gets a bit fiddly at times to keep checking the ever-changing dominance, but thematically it makes sense. We may not play this as much due to the 2-4hr length, but it’s a keeper. #boardgames #boardgaming

GO WEST (2005) by Leo Colovini has potential, but I give it a ⭐️5/10⭐️ after 3 plays. I’ll share my review because it does some unique stuff + I like Colovini. It’s a card-driven area majority game where players take 1 action per turn: 1. Play a card 2. Sell a card 3. Trigger scoring Playing a card allows you to place influence in regions & move the wooden wagons west. Cards cost $ to play them, so you often need to waste a turn selling a card to get some money (lots of boring turns). Each player has a limited pool of money tokens (these tokens are also used for influence on the board, so more influence = less $ in your pool). I’ve never seen that; it’s neat how you exchange all money w/ your own personal “bank.” When you place influence, there are only 7 spaces, so eventually you start bumping out whoever was there first. It’s like a “first in/first out” thing which I’ve also never seen. One action is simply paying $ to trigger a scoring round. Each region gets scored based on majorities of influence tokens; however, the # of wagons limit how many points get divvied out per region. It’s unique but I wish the wagons had another function. I SHOULD like how players control when scoring triggers. The problem is all regions get scored, so you have to count points for each region (which takes awhile) & THEN decide if it’s even worth your while to trigger scoring. It also makes players want to stall on their turn & try to time the scoring just right. A major gripe is the game felt totally out of my control at 3p & 4p. You only get 1 action, so maybe you have a good move; then the board changes SO much by the time it’s your turn again. Your good turn was just rendered useless. It feels like you should get 2 actions per turn. 1 action prevents any meaningful strategy. *You do get a 1x double action pawn, but once you use it, it’s gone until everyone uses it. This feels flawed at 3-4p. BGG says it’s best at 2p. At 2p you just try to position yourself to net 1-2 points over your opponent. Each scoring round is like “12 points for me 11 for you. All that for 1 point? Now go again.” Better than 3-4p, but not great. Some interesting stuff, but I can’t recommend😢

📺 Bonus episode! STONEHENGE (1994) by Reiner Knizia is an abstract filler game for 2p that only takes 5-10 minutes. There wasn’t any video content, so I decided to give this one a mini-episode on YouTube! Link in bio. Each player starts w/ some wooden bits in their color: 9 numbered discs & 8 rectangular stones. The goal of the game is to be the first to get all your rectangular stones placed! Players take turns placing 1 numbered disc onto any open gray circle. The gray circles are linked by yellow lines leading to green circles. As soon as all the gray circles in a straight line are filled, then whoever has the larger combined disc value gets to claim that line w/ their stone (placing it on the green space of that row *on their turn). Since the discs count toward multiple lines, sometimes you can set up a waterfall turn where you claim multiple lines w/ one placement. If both players’ disc values are tied in a row, the player who did NOT place the last disc gets to claim that row. Furthermore, since no information is hidden, you can claim a row as soon as it’s guaranteed to be yours. So there are times when you can place a stone before the row is even filled. That simple rule elevates the game because it becomes an efficiency battle where you can try to claim rows before they fill up. Sometimes you can even to bait your opponent into wasting their high numbers on undesirable spaces. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not some crazy deep game (quite the opposite), but the staple Knizia nuances are there for you to explore. This #boardgame is sorta like “advanced tic tac toe.” It’s purely abstract, but it’s classic Knizia elegance. Is it a must own? No, especially because the box takes up too much shelf space for a game this short & simple (it could be played on a sheet of paper). But I’m absolutely keeping it in my #boardgamecollection solely for its charm. It’s satisfying to place those chunky wooden pieces & watch Stonehenge take shape around the edge of the board—such a neat little production, especially being 30 years old! This is a perfect cozy 2p filler game w/ @thewifethatwins . ⭐️9/10 for a filler 🤼‍♂️2p 🧠1/5 Complexity #boardgames #boardgaming

📺MERCHANTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES (1999) by Wolfgang Kramer & Richard Ulrich. New episode streaming on YouTube! Whoa this game is NASTY (definitely not for everyone) but certainly unique! Watch “Episode 40: Budget, Barter, Backstab” to see if it’s right for you! The core mechanism is pickup & deliver, but it has shared incentives, 2 different auctions, special abilities, cutthroat negotiations, & backstabbery. Peak player interaction! Each round has 7 steps: Step 1: Buy goods. Each player buys up to 3 goods to store. Each city can hold 3 types of goods. When you buy goods, you can store them in any of your warehouses, as long as that city holds those goods. Step 2: One of my favorite parts! Blind bid to become the loading master! The loading master gets to load goods for free, while the other players must negotiate w/ the loading master to load their goods. The negotiations are brutal because the master loader has a TON of power. Step 3: Move wagons. Take turns spending a movement token to move 1 wagon. This is where some more screwage happens. You can move a mostly empty wagon & leave the others in the dust who didn’t load. You can choose a path to cities that will cut opponents out of being paid. Very cutthroat! Step 4: Price wheels. Fun! Each player turns their wheel in secret to determine the prices of each good. This affects the payout scale BEFORE payouts are given! Step 5: Unload wagons & get paid based on the payout chart. Also, certain goods generate bonus payouts based on the city. Step 6: More auctions! Bid on powerful special ability cards that balance out the power & give you more flexibility (more movement, cheaper goods, etc). The cards are POWERFUL! Step 7: Social status. This is all that matters for winning! Each player first pays upkeep to maintain their status. Then you can pay to bump up 1 or 2 spaces (it gets progressively more expensive). The game design is brilliant, but it’s not for everyone (even not for me ALL the time). The pace drags & it can be AP-inducing even with a simple ruleset. But after 7 plays, I still can’t stop thinking about this #boardgame . Check out Ep40 to see if it’s right for you! #boardgames

KINGDOM OF MIDDAG (2019) is an obscure game that I’m torn on after 2 plays. On one hand, I like the mechanisms & the compact nature of the box & bits. On the other hand, it feels like it needs to be a bit bigger physically. The board is very cluttered w/ fluff artwork, which makes it difficult to see what’s going on. The worker meeples are tiny & fiddly. The gameplay is solid, but honestly it’s just kinda forgettable. It’s not a total flop; it has some stuff I really like. It’s worker placement mixed w/ area majority & resource management. You’re trying to hunt animals & place your little dudes on the board to build up your ability to hunt better or convert those animals to points. The animals are like currency, which you’ll use to pay costs to place workers. But you also need animals to convert into points. There are some shifting “markets” & majority scoring goals that shift each round. Sometimes you’ll get points for having the most workers in a certain area, having the most or least of a certain animal type, etc. It feels like the changing scoring goals are almost there to hold your hand (or ONLY there to add replay value), & it seems a bit detached & random to me. Maybe I’m missing something 🤷🏻‍♂️ I feel like I should enjoy this #boardgame more than I have so far, but I just can’t get excited to play again. Like any good worker placement game, it does pull you in many directions & feels like you want to do everything but can’t. It has some interaction & some engine building where you get better at being able to hunt & generate bigger turns. I like the mix of worker placement vs. area control, weighing where to put my guys based on those scoring goals vs. what I actually need to accomplish, etc. Still, it felt like more of the same stuff I can get from other games. I just don’t know why I would choose this over other worker placement or area control games. For a similar feel, I’d rather play that little filler game Flock, which I featured a lonnnng time ago on my IG. Flock combines worker placement & area control into a nice little 20-minute filler game. Have you played Kingdom of Middag? ⭐️RATING: 6.5/10 🧠Weight: 3/5 🤼‍♂️2-4p

PANDA ROYALE (2024) from @lastnightgames might be the perfect dice-chucking filler game 👀Yeah I said it! It’s a pure & clean dice-drafting game where players build up an increasing pile of beautiful dice to roll. The dice come in all sizes/colors & the colors dictate how you score. Each player starts w/ 1 yellow D6 & everyone rolls simultaneously. Whoever has the highest yellow roll gets the Panda token. The lowest roller gets the pity die (pink D12 to balance out bad luck). Draw random dice from the bag & place them in the center. Starting w/ the Panda & going in order of yellow rolls, each player chooses 1 die to add to their supply. Then start the next round, where each player rolls ALL their dice. Highest yellow gets the Panda. Tally your scores for all your dice (lowest roller for the round gets the pity die). Add new dice & draft them in order of yellow rolls. Repeat! 🐼BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! 👉Where the game shines is how each color scores & how that affects your drafting decisions. A few colors score their face value, but purple dice are always doubled! A glittery blue lets you double ALL your blue dice. Red dice have a multiplier w/ positive AND negative values to add some risk. Clear dice are used to swap for an opponent’s die of your choice! Yellow dice help you get the Panda & improve your position in drafting order. ⚖️You must weigh: Draft low-scoring clear/yellow dice to give you more power & selection? Play it safe with high rollers like green or purple? Go for lots of blue & try to double w/ a glitter? Risk it all with red? Maybe “hate draft” to prevent someone from getting a die they need? So many fun choices each round! It feels like deckbuilding w/ dice. Late in the game you roll a TON of dice! Those rounds can get mathy & slow the pace a tad, but it’s so satisfying (& great math practice for kids)! Panda Royale might be the perfect dice filler game: simultaneous turns, multiple viable strategies to try, meaningful player interaction, simple rules, quick setup & length, gorgeous & satisfying dice… We’ve played 19x in the past week! Instant classic! ⭐️10/10 for a filler 🤼‍♂️2-10p ⏰20min. Review copy provided. These words are mine.