Fantastic Factories Live Play!

For today’s Alphabet Board Game Challenge I’m playing Fantastic Factories by Joseph Z. Chen and published by Deep Water Games. This is one of my favorite engine-building games and the solo rules are easy to understand and implement.

I’m set to livestream the solo game today, Monday, May 8, 2023, at 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern. Hope to see you in chat on my Twitch channel!

By the way, the link above (here it is again) will take you to my Amazon affiliate link to purchase the game at a discount (as of May 8, 2023). And to watch all of the games I’ve played for my Alphabet Board Game Challenge, they’re at my YouTube channel.

The Gaviola Cup

Last year we started awarding The Gaviola Cup to the winner of any game in our home. Michelle and I kicked off 2023 with games from our Shelf of Opportunity and we loved Quarto! This is an abstract strategy game with beautiful wooden components and it was the perfect way to begin our new year. Michelle won two of our first three games so she got to hoist The Gaviola Cup! Watch below:

Top 10 First Games for a Collection in 2022

I started sharing 12 (!) Gaming Gift Guides this week. I’m doing this every week for the next three months live on Twitch and exporting the edited versions to YouTube.

Each week will feature a different gaming-related topic. For my first list, I went with First Games for a Collection. These are games that I think are excellent choices to start a board game collection.

Watch below and tweet at me @RuelGaviola to share your favorite First Game for a Collection!

Moonrakers: Titan

Moonrakers is a fantastic blend of deck-building and negotiation and the three new expansions (and also a digital co-op mode) elevate the original’s game play. I love how easy they are to implement (new cards, boards, and tokens) and how much depth they add to the base game. Here’s the link to the Kickstarter (they’ve raised over $1m already!) and you can watch Becca Scott, Amy Vorpahl, Shea Parker, and me play the Nomad and Overload expansions below: