The first week of going through the board game library is almost done! We started out strong when I pointed out that there are some games that are alot harder to both learn and play and the fact that we maybe won’t be playing every week for different reasons.
My wife is in the lead with 5-3 wins. Which hurt alot more in Red Rising after I had to banish a card and she could take 2 banished cards and add to her hand in the end and by that won with 6 points…After playing these 8 games we have realised:

The gambits for Star Realms are too swingy (2 ongoing gambits that are better than every other gambit)

Wingspan is still beautiful and a calming game to play.

Hadrians Wall is an amazing game. But about as solo as a game can be. Once you got the resources you bow your head and only lift your head to look at 2 cards with a very low impact on the other players.

Red Rising is a really interesting game that is lifted by having read the books.

Reykholt is oh so beautiful and farming is a theme that we both love.

Suburbia is simple and relaxing to play with some thinkiness to it. And the metalcoins are amazing but does not fit the game…

Welcome to… is one of my favorite Flip and writes. So simple, so good looking and quick but rewarding.

Luxor is one of my favorite games to show someone who wants to go into the hobby. It has many different mechanics to show you and to make other games maybe a little bit eaasier to grasp.

And that one of these games sadly is going out of the library…

After the first week this feels pretty good! Aside from the losing part… But still, we said that whoever wins decides where to go on a weekend trip and we are pretty much synced up in where we want to go. But even more we got a running start on this thing! The idea was to play Feudum today, but when we got upstairs she took out some other games instead. So good that we have more time for the little heavier games that are coming.

What is your hopes of getting done this gaming year? 

Play more games!!!

It’s been a …time. Alot of things happened, happens and will continue to happen so why not take some time off and do what makes me happy?

My vision for this year will come first and then the parts that are a little bit personal, not boardgamey and not in detail, will come later in the post. Since that is probably not why tyou are here.

My vision for 2022 is to be more outgoing and be more online and talkative. If you are swedish, I am part of Mindy Bräd och Rollspelspodd. Where you can find me in different ways, where I also stream atleast once a month. Which is also something I would love to do more! If I find time for it, I will do my best to make my own stream in english, because if I am really, really lucky I will be able to play with some of the wonderful people in this hobby. And that is alot easier with a language that is… well, ALOT bigger than swedish.

I am basically starting over from scratch to do this, since I’ve been focusing on other things over writing or even taking a quick photo of the game I am playing. As a part of Mindy I have only been doing things that other people are dependent on me for being done, which is how I started streaming and playing with people all over the country and hopefully in the future, the world. The ease of it today makes it almost better than playing the game on the table. You can play with someone anywhere in the world,you can play games you don’t own, you don’t even have to be able to play at the same time (even though that is preferable). But it does have it’s downsides. You don’t get that tactile feeling that I love. But still hopefully something I will start with during this year.

Another thing that I will be doing is going through and play all of the games in our board game library with my wife. It was her idea and I am not qomeone who would turn that down! We have played 3 games so far and will have to play atleast 3 games a week to be able to do this. Really looking forward to this! Especially since it was her idea and I get to see her play some of my absolute favorites that she hasn’t played yet.

Other than that I will just try to continue with what is going on and take some pictures of the games we play.

Now for the not specific and not so fun part. Basically the past 16 months have been really rough. And after a while I decided not to try anymore with things that I didn’t have to do. Basically just existing and going to work, was what I had the strength to do. I am not nearly where I want to be, but I also think that I need to start somewhere and do things that are things that I want to do, for myself. Because even though there is no obligation to do this, in any way, it started to feel like a job that was overwhelming, just to take a picture for instagram. And since I didn’t have to do it, I just stopped. Even though it was something that I liked doing and started to be a part of a community that I have loved from the outside for years.

Hopefully I will have the strength to continue and have the will to be much, much better and evolve into something that people would like to take part in.

So for the first time in way to long.

Play more games!!!

I am trying to learn my ABC:s in board games. For me that means that I, on my instagram, will ask people for their favorite games on a specific letter. I call it #alphabeticalboardgaming

So far I have done A,B and C.

A is for Arkham Horror the Card Game. And it went superbly! Well not playing the game… but in enjoying the game. Before I finished the three parts of the base game the first expansion was already on it’s way. But man is it punishing! AH:tcg is a story driven deckassembler with a token bag that will be forever in your… not so favor. But man is it fantastic. I will write a longer post on it later on.

B is for Battlestar Galactica. After the suggestions got calculated and someone had suggested BSG and I said that I actually had it, the votes changed. The rules are that if it is too expensive or too hard to get a hold off, it’s gone from the list. But as I had it, the votes were different in the end. In BSG you try to get from one place to another while solving problems on the way there. And there might be a traitor or two working against you… this is a wonderfully crafted game where you trust no one. Not even yourself! Because you can become a traitor halfway through the game and start working against all the others. A great game I am looking forward to playing again. Will ofcourse write a longer post about this later on.

C is for Cartographers. Cartographers is a flip and write game that is just beautiful to me. You are a mapmaker that makes a map as you see fit to get more points. A kind of wierd theme to me, but I still feel the game is supercozy and fun. A big critique for the game has been that it takes too long to play… We took out the colored pencils and just went wild. Don’t want to write too much before this game gets it’s own post.

I had already played BSG before but the other two were just amazing and I really feel that this experiment is going really, really well. I am looking forward to play more games that I have not tried yet and since the tips this far has been this good, I can’t more than be happy for how well it’s going.

Play more games!!!

A friend if mine did an experiment a couple of years ago. He only listened to music from musicians and bands starting with the same letter for a month. Starting with “A” going all the way to “Ö”, which is the last letter of the swedish alphabet.

I wass thinking about doing something similar, but alot different. Trying to play a new game from every letter instead of playing only from that letter each month.

Every other week I will ask my followers on Instagram what game they think I should play. Of course it has to be a game that I can get a hold of. And hopefully something new. I was thinking at first which game and then from that list ask again and the one with most votes is thr game that I will play.

Hopefully this will be a fun little thing that people will like. I might find a real gold nugget and maybe someone who sees it will find one too.

This is atleast the goal.

Just so I am clear. If you have not played Clank! Legacy and wish to do so. Do not read any further if you don’t want any spoilers. If you have not played it and Don’t wish to do so. Do as you wish, but it is a good game and we had super fun!

On to talk about the game! I never played a Clank! game until I played this. I knew what it was and knew roughly what to expect. I did take a chance though on buying the legacy version. But I wanted a legacy game to play with my fiancé. And a legacy game that actually wasn’t too long. This was perfect for that!

After we played a game of “regular” Clank!, with just the starter cards and so on she was intrigued. And so was I. After we played it with the story… It did not leave the table until we played atleast 2 games of it, often more.

Clank! is a deckbuilder in which you also have a huge board on which you move your characters and try to get treasuers and go back to you tavern, and in this game expands ALOT of the board and change what happens on different locations. Some towns are destroyed, other places become volcanoes and the board becomes a mess. But a good mess! There is so much to do and so many different things that happen.

I’ve read some of the negative things about this game, that when something happens you have to stop, read and sticker up the board or cards. But honestly, that is a small thing compared to what you get out of it. The story is pretty fun. I listened to the Acquisitions Incorporated adventures many years ago when they started and I did follow alot of what Penny Arcade did, so to me this was also a welcome trip down memory lane for me.

Expanding the board was super fun and expanding the other side of the board was even more fun! We met, elces, dwarves, vampires, ghosts, dragons and unknown horrors. Regular Clank has the big dragon as their “nemesis” and Malathrex in this game wreaks havoc on the towns and players. But… after awhile there is someone new introduced. Zrog Mogolth. A horror from another dimension that wishes to destroy our world. He has mind control powers and wishes to engulf our world. So the mission becomes a little different. We have to stop him!

I loved it! As I said before, I have not played regular Clank! before. But they have shrines in thisbgame that gices youba permanent boost in some way, you always have one step, one gold, don’t have to fight monsters on the road and more. That was really interesting. To be honest, there is not much new and or revolutionary about this game. But it is damn good. It will be interesting to play this without the story behind it. But maybe not as fun. I will playbit with new people and see what they think. But to me and my fiancé I think there will be something missing from now on… But we will always have Thormiel Thunderclap and Dianthe as our characters. But now… there will be more of a struggle in the game. We wanted to unlock as much as possible, so we played pretty nice. I did try to kill her the last two turns, because she was stealing my spotlight (literally). But she always managed to get in with 1 or 2 life left…

Oh! I forgot to tell you that. You lose life by drawing cubes from a bag. If you make Clank! You put your colored cubes on a board and when the dragon attacks, by drawing a card with the dragon on, in the buy row, you put all those cubes in a bag and draw from it. Some cubes are black which do nothing unless all are drawn and the game ends. Otherwise there are white cubes, if you raid a haunted place, the white cubes hurt all players and go back into the bag. Then youbhave purple cubes in this game that are interns, you can chose to chuck an intern instead of your own cubes in the bag, which means he dies but you do not get hurt.

It all fits the Acquisitions Incorporated world so well. We had a blast and I am really happy I bought the game. It is a big box, but there is alot of fun in there. 11 missions may not sound as so much, but you will probably finish this game! That was, atleast for me, a good thing.

What legacy games have you conpleted?

Play more games!!!

Well. Like I said up there… skip the next paragraph to get to the board games.

There has been a lot going on in the world since I last wrote here. And what tjat has done to the world is making it somewhat harder to do our hobby. I love in Sweden where the restrictions are pretty easygoing because of the rulesystem we have. You cannot order the public to stay at home but our politicians are very apparent that they want us to stay at home and have done what they can within the ruleset they habe to work with. Then there are the people that I think are in every country, the idiots, that still go on vacation and wpnder why there is such a problem coming home. Having parties, one party hade 70 people and 50 came out having corona… Sooo… yeah… not brightest bulbs in the kitchendrawer.

But still! There has been times where some board games have seen the light of day. I bought Clank! Legacy, Aqcuisitions Incorporated, which has been the game we have mostly played when we come home from work. This has made my instagram pretty empty too, because as it is a legacy game, it’s hard to take pictures and talk about it without spoiling it. But man is it fun! The game is aalmost everything I want. The only downside for me is that it is a legacy game and not a campaign game. I am one of those people who don’t like ripping my cards or burning witches and stuff like that, so we keep everything but away from everything else. But why not make a campaign game where you have the option to exchange cards instead of burning or ripping them?

Well I got try out a game with one of my childhood heroes in it that is just that, yesterday! A friend of mine told me a coupele of hisbfriends are working on a game that is coming out on kickstarter may 1st. The Phantom the card game. That is a campaign deckbuilder for 1-2 players that lets you build your deck and takes you through some adventures on the way. I will talk about that more in the coming week, since I only had time to try it once so far.

I also played some It’s a wonderful world. This game is so easygoing and I was reeaally happy that my fiancé liked it, because I am an all-in backer for the heritage edition on kickstarter… I love building things. I am just that simple. Give me a gale where i build, or even better, build an engine and I am Hooked! There is almot always a good puzzle in there for the brain to figure out. But this game also have enough cards that it makes it interesting enough to play again and again. There are so many different cards, some of which there are only one, in the deck of 182 cards. So that is really fun and replayable.

I played more Monumental, a game that is so much fun but still some funky things tonwork out. It is so beautiful that you almost forget it though. But I have not decided if I should buy it or not when it comes back on Kickstarter… It really is that fun and beautiful either way.

Between al this I have played Final Fantasy remake so there has been some time going in to that also.

Next time I will write about some fun stuff instead of just doing an update of what i played. But today you get what you got… sorry.

What have you been playing during these special times?

Play more games!!!

But back to the point. I prefer to go to the shelf, pick out a game and spend minutes setting up the game, play one game, if I want to play more, do another setup, then pack everything down and put it back on the shelf. Instead of double clicking on a game and then play it, stop playing and then do to something else.

I have been thinking about this for a while. I have always played games. But it’s only the last 3 years that I have really been getting into board gaming. Before that I have been gaming on a computer or on some kind of console. But lately I have even started to prefer to play solo in a board game rather than a computer game. There are of course exceptions to this, when there comes a game I have been looking forward to for years, I might actually play it. Or even just do that for a couple of days…

But back to the point. Instead of double clicking on an icon on my computer, I find myself going to the shelf, pick out a game, put it down on the table, spend minutes to do a setup, play a game, maybe do another setup, play again and then pack everything up and put it back on the shelf. Why is that?

I understand it when we have friends over or even if we are just playing the two of us. The social interaction is worth so much to everyone, whether we knownit or not. A little anecdote. A couple of years ago, a friend and I talked about what we were going to do that day, he had not met a friend in over a week and I had not been in a room alone for over 2 weeks. He invited me and some friends over for some board games, I declined because I desperately needed to be alone when I had the chance. The next day we met up, both renewed. Both were smiling and happy. For very different reasons, but still. You need social interaction in your life (and in my case, sometimes you need to be able to be alone too).

But solo? Some games I play solo doesn’t even have a regular solomode! I find some player made online.

So this made me wonder. Why? I think it may be the ritual of it. Taking something out. Placing everything on the right spot, dealing out cards, do the things that need to be done and when you are done you put it away. There is something calming about that.

Or maybe it is the thing I love about sunday breakfasts. Sitting down and having time to do something. Or really just having time. Not taking it.

Or is it because there is some kind of order? You need to know the rules when playing a board game. In a computer game you abide by laws you cannot read. They are just there. You don’t need to learn them, just trial and error.

I would love to know what you like or love about board gaming! Write a comment and tell me.

And as always. Play more games!!!

So… I have been pretty cautious about kickstarter for a long, looong time. I actually just recently bought games for the first time. I both like and dislike it. I really like getting exclusives and I really dislike not getting them… I can’t possibly buy every game I want to on kickstarter, which is fine.

But it kinda sucks when a game wont even come to retail at all afterwards. Even if I do get it. I recently played a game that I really loked that was… lets just say, more than expensive. But even if I wanted to buy it, I can’t. It wont ever come out to retail and looking at the prices of second hand editions is just making me sad. This is such a non problem really. But if I find something I really like, that I can’t play… it’s frustrating.

I have been looking for a game that have been out of print for a while. Then I saw that a store took it in. I had no money at the time… as a student, it is sometimes hard to find the money for some games… but when I finally got the money, it was sold out. They got 7 copies of the game and it was sold out in a couple of days…

But then again. It’s a non problem in way. But When I see a game as “kickstarter only”, it looks more like an investment than something I should play. And that’s not right to me.

Just needed to vent a little bit. 🙂

What is your stand on Kickstarter only games?

Play more games!!!