board games

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:

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:

50 Games of Summer

I’ve written about past challenges here and here so I decided to track my newest one here: it’s the 50 Games of Summer. Yes, I’m playing 50 different games on 50 different days this summer!

I started on Tuesday 6/21/22 (first day of summer!) with a sponsored solo livestream of Wormholes, the new game by Peter McPherson. It’s a pick-up-and-deliver game that I really enjoyed. The game starts simply enough as you lay wormholes around the board and try to deliver your passengers to their various destinations (planets). The wormholes let you travel farther and faster than standard movement, which is one space per energy spent.

Once you enter the mid-game there’s a real puzzle element to Wormholes as you try to find the quickest routes to travel. You can use your opponents’ wormholes, but you give them 1 VP every time you do — which may be worth it sometimes since every passenger is worth 2 VPs and there are end-game scoring goals, too.

Check out my runthrough below. I’ll be updating regularly to highlight other games played during my challenge.