Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
Special Ops: 2025's Noteworthy "New-to-Us" Games (ft. Tiff from @Tiffs.Board.Games)
We swap stories with Tiffany from Tiffs Board Games and share the best “new to us” plays that defined our year, from gentle family co-ops to solo epics and evergreen euros. The thread that ties them together is clean design, strong arc, and table moments that stick.
• Victorian engine-building and gossip in Obsession
• Family laughs and tension in First Orchard
• Trinket Trove’s turn-order bidding and quick teach
• Rebirth as a clean, scalable Knizia tile-layer
• Castles of Burgundy’s timeless flow and upgrades
• Card crafting and player counts in Ruins
• El Grande’s live-table edge over async
• Solo depth in Hoplomachus: Victorum
• Sandbox chaos and expansions in Western Legends
• Acquire’s stock-and-merge elegance across editions
• Fromaggio’s wedges and scoring nuance
• Blue Lagoon’s interactive routing best at four
• Critter Kitchen’s market mind games and roles
• The Hobbit roll-and-write’s chapter variety
• Old King’s Crown’s auctions and bluffing automa
• Yokohama’s point salad without the bloat
• Dominion’s base-box replay and on-ramp
• Sanctuary as a streamlined Ark Nova sibling
Go check her Instagram out @Tiffs.Board.Games. All of her posts are amazing.
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Welcome to the Operation Game Night Podcast. Back at Better Than Ever and with a very special guest this week. We have Tiff from TIFFS Board Games. How are you doing, Tiff?
SPEAKER_01:I'm good. How are you?
SPEAKER_04:Doing great. We are so happy to have you. We love the content that you put out constantly on your Instagram at tiffs.boards.game.
SPEAKER_00:Are you sure there's all those dots in there? Well, there's dots in the chat.
SPEAKER_01:Our friends make fun of it. They call me tiffs.board.games. Hey, get rid of the dots.
SPEAKER_04:It's distinguished. I love it. Dots are good. We are so excited to talk games that are new to us, but first I gotta introduce these other two buffoons. I've got Jared and Clayton. How are you doing, boys?
SPEAKER_00:Doing good, Travis. So strong.
SPEAKER_04:Are you guys ready to talk games that are new to us this year? So many new games. Yeah, we're gonna kind of go around the horn, just talk games that we played this year that we love. Does not have to be new games or games that came out in the year of our Lord 2025, but they are games that are new to us. We got to experience for the first time this year. I, if you are watching on YouTube, will try and go as quickly as possible to pull them up on screen so that you can see the game that we're talking about. Uh, if you're listening on YouTube or if you're listening to the podcast, uh, then I will try and explain the game, or we will try and do the best of our ability to explain the game.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Let's get going so I can stop talking. Let's start with our guest of honor, Tiff. Why don't you give us your first game that is new to you this year?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I chose all older games, um, and the first one is Obsession. Um, I don't know if you guys heard anything about it.
SPEAKER_02:Little bit, little bit.
SPEAKER_01:So basically, you're set in like Victorian England, like back in the olden days when they had servants, and you're playing your little tiles. They're uh I guess like little events, and you put your little what are they called? Servants on there, and then you play your cards, your handed cards. Um they're like your uh what are they called? Guests. So you're putting your servants on your cards, inviting your guests and getting your rewards. So you want to have like lots of reputation, lots of money. Um, and you're basically trying to court like a gentleman or a lady, and uh yeah, whoever has the most points in the end wins. I guess you get to get married.
SPEAKER_04:And you are like leveling up your mansion as you go along, right? You're building new rooms, you are enhancing your visitability.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so like the guests you invite give you money, and uh you can buy more tiles to host more events, and some of them are more powerful than the others. Like, that's how you get your money and your reputation.
SPEAKER_03:Nice. How similar is this to Sims, like the Sims uh video game that I used to do. Where are you?
SPEAKER_00:Where are you making that connection?
SPEAKER_03:I don't know. I was just I heard like bringing people uh growing your room and expanding your uh mansion. I I was getting flashbacks to the Sims. I don't know why. I just any connections?
SPEAKER_01:I've never played, I've never played the Sims.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, my bad. My bad. No babies on fire or people drowning in the pool.
SPEAKER_01:Oh my gosh. No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_03:You can get like a cake delivered and everyone gets really happy when that happens. So I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:But also in obsession, you can like invite uh people who like gossip, so they'll like take reputation away from you and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00:I love good gossip. Is this is this a 3.1 hard? I I've been scared of above three games this year. So is this is this too much for me right now, Tiff?
SPEAKER_01:No, it's approaching. We're gonna play it on yeah, we're gonna play it on BGA when we're done.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, all right. Bear with me then, all right. Whoa, yeah, okay. Because I've I've been intrigued by this one for a while. I think Bo came on our podcast and talked about it, and I was like, man, the Bridgerton vibes and yeah, so I I watched uh I rewatched all Downton Abbey after I played the game.
SPEAKER_04:Nice, so yeah, it's very thematic. That's great. Cool, good strong start from Tiff. Let's go to Jared. Let's see what Jared's got.
SPEAKER_03:Okay. Um where do you guys want to go with this one? Do you want me to go card game or do you want uh Gemma? Do you want a story about Gemma? Let's get Gemma out of the way. Yeah, let's get her, let's just get little gems done. Um, so my first pick, new to me and new to the family, is um First Orchard, uh Haba. Um, not one that we usually talk about here on Operation Game Night, but absolutely had to talk about this story. Um, cute, perfect little game for your two-year-old. Okay, you're rolling a die, trying to just pick little uh fruits off of your trees before the raven comes. Well, my daughter's just I think she wants to watch the world burn because she wants to see the raven come and eat these uh these little pieces of fruit. Uh yeah, my daughter straight up dropped the F bomb. She rolled, she rolled the raven. It was like, oh fuck, Raven! And uh I couldn't I couldn't help myself. I laughed and we kind of talked about square words for a second. I had a complete bat blast. This one has uh about 20 run like Jemmy run it backs, you know. We talk about Rachel run it backs um and Adri run it backs on this podcast. Gemma has her first run it back, and it is uh first orchard because she is obsessed with this game. She got it for one of her Advent calendar uh for Christmas, one of her days on Advent calendar.
SPEAKER_00:But I just this is this is a rite of passage, I feel like. I I started my two on for first orchard. I know the Spanglers started Jordan on First Orchard, so it it there comes a time in the youngster's life where they need to save the fruit from the raven and drop the F-bomb. And it sounds like Gemma's hit that moment.
SPEAKER_03:I I think Gwen needs this in her stocking. Um but I don't know if she's gonna be swearing as much as uh Gemma. Um did the boys get so excited about the Raven? I mean, I feel like the Raven's all the rage these days.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, we were we were on edge about the Raven, we weren't necessarily rooting for it. Um, we were trying to collect our fruit and prevent the Raven from getting to us, but uh yeah, so I don't know if Gemma's, you know, maybe she's a one versus many type player. She's a semi-co-op with a hidden goal there in First Orchard.
SPEAKER_03:I just had to get that one out of the way. It was it, I have a feeling like I'm gonna be playing this one for a while. And I you will. I love it, I do love it. So I'll say ask me again next week.
SPEAKER_04:That's how you know we're a serious podcast about serious board games because we have first orchard.
SPEAKER_02:That's right.
SPEAKER_04:I've been a little scared about weights over 1.0 this year. So is that can I get into this? Is that okay? I don't know, it might be tough. All right, nice. First Orchard, Clayton, what you got?
SPEAKER_00:Let's go Trinket Trove for my first pick. This is a new to everybody game, not just new to me. Uh, we were a little unclear about the rule, the ground rules here, so we're operating under different frames of reference. But Trinket Trove just came out in the game head suite of games released in their first set. And I played Trinket Trove the first time. I was like, eh, that's pleasant. It's nice to look at. But every time I keep playing it, I'm now up to like seven or eight times. And this game has become a go-to to introduce to people. It's just so dead simple. You have cards that, you know, there's six marbles in the deck, and then on the side of the marble card, you can see, you know, if I have three marbles, I get 20 points. If I get four marbles, I get 80 points. And basically the whole game, you're just trying to collect these different trinkets, maybe marbles, keys, little buttons, and they're so cute. And the way it all works is you have to bid for turn order by playing out trinkets from your hand. So maybe you had a bunch of feathers in your hand, but you're like, dang, I'm not seeing a lot of feathers. I'm gonna bid with these feathers so I can get first turn next time to grab the things I want, because out there's that thimble I've been looking for, and it plays so fast. It's probably 25 minutes, and this has been like the go-to game just with anybody, like people that don't play any games. You can explain it so fast, and I love it. Trinket Trove has only been rising in my esteem the more I play it, and that doesn't usually happen. Like, usually, the more I play a game, I'm like, uh, I'm ready for something new, but this one I just keep pulling out.
SPEAKER_04:And shout out to Game Head for just kicking in the door in the game in the board gaming sphere because they had a banger launch. Every game in that lineup is killer, and they have new waves coming next year. So Tricky Trove was their flagship, I would say, of this first launch. People are loving it online, it's getting a lot of traction. So uh, shout out to Paul Solomon and the game head crew because they are doing great work.
SPEAKER_00:Don't sleep on the rest of the lineup. I did talk to Paul at uh PAX Unplugged, and I was like, I think I knew the answer, but I was like, hey, uh, what game's been doing really well for you? And he said it's not even close. Like Trinket Trove has outsold the others by uh miles and miles, and you can tell just because everybody's talking about that game. But seriously, don't sleep on the other games. I know I just talked about the most popular one, but the other ones are good too. And it fit, and it's one of those little ones, one of those little I mean, it's a little square, it's not six by six, maybe.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I mean it's not a pocket, it's the back of a pocket one, but it's still it's very small, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_00:It's portable.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_04:All right. My first one is going to be uh The Good Doctor with Rebirth. Oh, yeah. This game came out kind of late in 2024, but I feel like I got a lot of plays of it in 2025. It showed up and I unwrapped it immediately, and it's so easy to introduce to new players. You just draw chips and you place them on the applicable squares and you score points based on the groupings that you can make. You are trying to kind of rebuild this island of uh was it it's Ireland, right? The first one's Ireland, Scotland. Scotland. There's Scotland and Ireland, right? Two sides? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:So super easy to introduce, super simple mechanic. Anyone can pick this up and play. You're just creating large groups of matching icons, and uh the simplicity and kind of the replayability of it. You can play a more complicated version on one of the maps, easier version on the other. Uh, yeah, I I love this one. Got plenty of run it backs this year. We played this one a ton. So rebirth is my number one.
SPEAKER_00:Tiff, real quick. What's your I I watch you on Instagram and I don't know, I don't know how your thoughts are on Mr. Kneetzia. I you know we are big Kenizia fans. I don't know if I see you posting a lot of Kenizia content.
SPEAKER_01:No, I haven't. I I've only played a few.
SPEAKER_00:Really?
SPEAKER_01:I've only played a few, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:He's only he's only uh designed a few, so it's that's okay.
SPEAKER_01:But I feel like he's been popping off lately with all stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he's popped off. You need to get your hands on some rebirth, Tiff. Yeah, just because I'll make sure I know the rules. Oh shoot. That's a that's a cut. I confessed that the other night. We actually just played this and I was teaching it to somebody new, and I was like, listen, I got this rule wrong for like 10 plays, and I got corrected live on the air um by one of my co-hosts about the rules being wrong. So um we're getting it right now. Castle Castle control is under control in my house now.
SPEAKER_04:Uh nice Tiff, back to you. What you got?
SPEAKER_01:Um I'll say the castles of Burgundy. The first time I played it was in March.
SPEAKER_03:What?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I know.
SPEAKER_03:Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um everybody knows how to play it, I feel like on here, so I don't need to explain it much, but I just like picking the little tiles, and like it feels so satisfying, like finishing your little section and getting all your castles on that board and collecting those tokens. Um so after we did buy, we bought the like the original version, and once the special edition went on sale, we bought that too.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, nice. It's worth it. It's so good. Yeah, the upgrade is so nice.
SPEAKER_01:The little It's so much nicer.
SPEAKER_04:The little honeycomb thing that holds all your chips in place. Man, the upgrade is worth it.
SPEAKER_00:Uh, what's your strategy? Are you uh do you like to go for the animals? Are you like a brown tile person?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I like the animals, but I feel like I've been hate drafting like the yellow ones because it's all the like end game scoring.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, we play this a lot with our neighbor. He lives across the street, and yeah, there's a lot of like hate drafting involved. So I'm just going after whatever they need.
SPEAKER_04:Dang. Is your preferred way to play like everybody has the same map, or you like the variant maps?
SPEAKER_01:No, like I'll ask Google, hey, pick a number one through whatever. Okay, that's how we'll do it, and then we'll shuffle them up and just handle mouth.
SPEAKER_04:Nice, that's a good way to do it. Good shout out. Uh, and a phenomenal production with the special edition version from Awakened Realms.
SPEAKER_00:That's a 9.1. That's crazy high.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's too low. It needs to be higher.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I and I and part of that is like the Kickstarter boost, right? Like everybody on Kickstarter, because they spent the money, feels obligated to enjoy it, and so they they bump that number up. But also, Castles of Burgundy is probably warranting a nine plus. Like, yeah, it's that game is so clean, it's it's great.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's like an evergreen, pretty much.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, yeah. Uh Jared, bless you. Over to you.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, thank you. Um, I'm gonna go big with uh a little John D. Clare card game, card crafters, uh ruins. Um, if you could please. Uh I just love the idea of a five-person uh card game. I've I've never played it at five. Definitely thoroughly enjoyed it at three multiple times. But I am gonna get this one to the table at a work function this week at five. I know I will. Uh if I don't, I will be very sad, very, very sad. Um, because people are giving me crap like you don't have any five-person board games, that doesn't exist. I'm like, excuse me. Wait, just one second. Uh love card crafting, love trick taking, and the Great Del Moody, of course, which I could also talk about the Great Del Moody, because that was an incredible little card game um that is not new at all. But um this one's super, super fun. And it's a new, it's a new boy too, this year. Um yeah, and the boys picked it up at the um World Series of Board Gaming, and uh they never looked back. And I had I lagged behind. I was like, I don't know if I really want to spend the money on this, and I played it and I'm like, damn it, I went and bought it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, if Jared buys a game, you can pretty much call that game a 10 out of 10.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Big time. So love ruins. But Tiff, you played this one?
SPEAKER_01:I have not.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, it's super good because you're essentially taking like making groups, like either pairs, triplets, or even quadruples, or way ever more, like however many you can. You're laying them down, and the other players have to like either match it or go over it. But you can also between rounds flip the card over, um, and it changes the numbers, and so you're like, I think it's like one through ten initially, but then you could get cards that go into like the 20s. You start having to do a little bit of math, uh, which is fine. But uh so you're like, okay, I have a card, it has eight on it, but then you actually can sleeve things into these cards. So now this eight becomes a 14 with an extra ability, which lets you draw an extra card and swap something out or make another pair, or I don't know. What a great game. And the box, nice and tiny. I like it.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it is in their small box, and I I kind of looked through AllPlay's publications this year. This was like definitely a highlight, a highlight from their publications this year. They didn't have a ton, not a whole lot of like other big box ones. They had like Kabudo Sumo expansions and stuff like that, but this one shines amongst the ones that they published this year. So shout out to AllPlay for another killer one from John D. Clare. I'll play them all. Clayton, over to you.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Uh, you guys are gonna have to bear with me here. I'm flying off the cuff a little bit. I tried to push myself in this episode because I want to talk about just all the games I've been playing lately because those are the ones that are top of my mind. I was like, you know what? I've played more games this year than just those. I need to dig back a little bit and give some love to some of the ones I played earlier in the year. And one of those was El Grande, which is an old game that was new to me. Um, a classic in the I'm not gonna say it right. It's either area majority or area control. I don't know. There's people that care about this that distinction, but I'm not one of them. So essentially, you're just jockeying for position on this map of I guess it's Spain, probably. Um, yep, it says Spain right there in the description. And you have this evil, yeah, you have this interesting bidding phase where you decide what turn order you're going in, and the earlier in the turn order you go, the less of these caballeros you can add to your pool, and your caballeros are what you have to send out to gain control of these regions. And then there's this sweet little Castillo that's like a hidden little meeple tower, and then at the end of the round, you get to reveal who had the most meeples in that meeple tower and send them out to places so it gets all kind of random and crazy. Um, it's just a super clean cutthroat game. I think I designed in the 90s. You can tell it was designed in the 90s, it feels like it. You know, there's no lovey-doveiness there, like trinketrove. This is like, you know, just trying to take over other people's area, and it's a great design. I am glad I picked it up after hearing the decision space podcast go on about it over and over. I am easily convinced that things might be good by hearing other people say something. So uh they were right, and I need to play this some more. I was hoping to play it with you guys when we were together, but yeah, it didn't. Didn't come up, or I forgot about it. I can't remember, but uh great game.
SPEAKER_04:And a ranked number 100 overall. Look at that.
SPEAKER_00:That's a good ranking.
SPEAKER_04:That's a pretty good ranking. And I will say, you you mentioned like BGA might not be the way to play this one. I feel like BJA asynchronous play is not the way to do this because if you played it like you streamed it, you put it all together, and you all sat down and played it online. It would not be so hard to pay attention to. But between the rounds, I'm like, I don't know if people put stuff in like the little hidden tower. I don't know where people put their meeples out. I don't know what cards they drafted. So, like being able to pay attention to that stuff as you go along definitely impacts the strategy. So we should sit down and play this one, maybe stream it. We should do that.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. All right, Manchester. Okay, I'm gonna Manchester. We we've been talking about okay. Oh, did you just oh my gosh, me Clayton?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, oh my gosh, here we go.
SPEAKER_03:We have been talking about doing a live stream for so long.
SPEAKER_00:Tiv, what are you doing right now? Yeah, what do you shut this one down? What if we just turn this one off?
SPEAKER_03:Turn on a live stream. What do we think about that?
SPEAKER_01:Let's go.
SPEAKER_04:All right, all right. Jared, the the early 2000s called They Want Their Manchester back. All right. Uh is it is it me? Is it yeah, it's you. It's me. Oh my goodness. Um, okay. I'm gonna close this guy, and I want to share with you one of my favorites this year. Chip theory has really come through, and this hoplomachus sweep really tickles my fancy. It is kind of similar to like too many bones where you're upgrading your character as you go along. This hoplomachus victorum is specifically a one-player version of Hoplomachus, which is like a gladiatorial combat set in ancient Greece. I think it's Greek mythology, and you are going through these different chapters, fighting mythological creatures and other warriors, and chip theory has like just the right amount of complexity where I can still keep up and get immersed in the game. I love upgrading my characters. They have different champions that you can choose. This one has been kind of like eating at my brain a little bit, and I really want to get back to it, but the playtime is a little long and I don't have 60 to 90 minutes to sit down all the time. So uh this is one that I might break out over Christmas break when we are off and don't have any school because I really want to play more of this, and I really enjoyed the couple of sessions that I did play. I have not made it through all of the chapters, I have not made it through all of the scenarios, uh, but man, Hoplomakus Victorum Victorum has really been a cool one to get into this year.
SPEAKER_00:I'm glad you're you're on the call because you're probably the only one of us who would shout something out like this. So we're getting a diverse taste of games. We had first orchard, now we got this heavy chip theory solo game.
SPEAKER_04:I think this is the one the heaviest one to boot right now. Maybe we'll see. Oh, yeah. Yeah. All right, Tiff, back to you.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so an oldie but goody, you guys like this one, Western Legends.
SPEAKER_02:Oh yes, we do. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So we played a couple times over the summer, and it was just a lot of fun just playing poker, robbing people, arresting people. I don't think that's the only one gets so mad in a board game. And um, one of them got robbed for all his stuff, and he just just mad the entire game. Nice. But that one was a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_04:What inspired you to pick this one up and play it?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, this was a husband purchase.
SPEAKER_02:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So I got dragged into it, but yeah. It was a lot of fun. But some of the upgrade cards like are just unfair. So I feel like I think it was called like the holster or something. I can't remember what it did, but some of those cards make it a little unfair. But it was a lot of expansion.
SPEAKER_00:Some of the weapons and stuff do.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Just one. I don't know what it's called.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. Some of the expansions are awesome. Like the blood money, and there's the one that has like the you have like the general store that you can go to to purchase things, but there's also like a traveling caravan. There's one that like puts a train that goes around the outside of the map that you could go and rob. It gets crazy real fast. So uh highly recommend checking those. Yeah, check some of those out. And they actually have Western Legends stories coming out this year, which I'm really looking forward to. I think it's more of like a scenario-based Western Legends, so uh keep an eye out for that one.
SPEAKER_01:Nice.
SPEAKER_04:Awesome.
SPEAKER_03:Uh Jared, back to you. Um, we've been kind of talking about this a lot lately, I feel like, but Blue Lagoon is a new to me, even though I've had it for more than a year. I finally ripped a silophane off this one. Uh, from last year, you should definitely go listen to one of our one of our greatest ever produced podcasts. Uh the head-to-head uh competition, uh Blue Lagoon, another great Reiner Kenizia. I am questioning whether I should attempt to bring this one out to Adri tonight, but I feel like it's too much confrontation, you know, slithering past each other and cutting each other off head-to-head. It's not a good move. I mean, maybe if there's a third party or a fourth party in there, but you know, you got this beautiful uh Polynesian island set in front of you, and uh you're just hopping along, picking up little resources, trying to get your sets and groupings of uh the different resources, connecting beautiful lines of um like canoes and warriors as they walk across the land. Uh, it's so easy. Pick one up, put it down, but then you have to have a strategy where you're going. And it's in two phases where the second phase really builds off of what you did in the first phase. So it's like um rebirth, but like extra layer of like thinking on top of it. It's not it doesn't have the castles and stuff, though. So that's a little bit different than that. Not as many resources in my now that I'm thinking about it. But huge fan of it. I love it.
SPEAKER_04:Um I want to get it to the table. I would not recommend this one at two. You need a little bit, especially with your spouse, like you need a little bit of plausible deniability. Like I had to cut you off there and take your resources because they were going to outmaneuver me here. Yep. I head to head with the spouse on this one is uh a little contentious.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I see best at four. I like it. Okay, I'll try and get another couple. Okay, uh, yes, Clayton.
SPEAKER_00:Just pick one right now, Jared. Rebirth or Blue Lagoon?
SPEAKER_03:Blue Lagoon.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_03:But rebirth is probably a lot better to do head to head with my wife, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, probably. I think you can scale the map down too in rebirth. Um blue lagoon would be pretty wide open at two. I don't know.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, rebirth, you have like the little blocking chips that you can put out there and you can like scale down the map so it plays just the same as a multiplayer, multiple three, four player. Yeah, Clay, back to you.
SPEAKER_00:What else did I tell you? Not just pull something up and surprise me.
SPEAKER_04:Uh, one of these guys. Let's go with something with an AQ. Uh uh oh my goodness. How about some critter kitchen?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, yes, critter kitchen. This was another one I'm digging back on because I played this hot and heavy probably like eight months ago. I probably played it like ten times in two months, and since I moved, it's just been sitting on the shelf. I it's like I forgot about it. But I loved this game. I loved having, I mean, basically, you're just trying to make meals and earn points by making meals, but you have these little chefs, and one of them, this little tiny mouse chef, and they can only carry one piece of food. Then you got this big chef that can carry a lot of food. And before the round starts, you have to say which little market you're gonna send all your chefs to to pick up the ingredients. And everybody does this secretly, so you don't know where everybody's sending their stuff, and all the mice get to go first. So if you sent your boar, your big guy that can carry a lot of stuff, he can bring back like five things. You send him to a spot that has like three mice there, he might walk away with nothing but a little thing of soup. So it's all yeah, it's horrible. Uh, so it's so cool. I love that trying to figure out where to send your people. The rest of it, like it. I mean, it's kind of just uh almost boring. The rest of it, you're just like scoring points for the amount of carrots you have in a meal. It's not that novel, but I loved those different chefs and their different abilities and trying to figure out where to send them to get the most bang for your buck. And then inevitably it goes wrong, and you you have to make do with what you got left over. Uh, so Critter Kitchen is a great little family game. Loved it with my kids, loved it with my gamer friends, and I am glad I pushed myself to talk about a game I haven't played in a while because this one can't be forgotten. Oh, yeah. Good shout out. Tiff, you play Critter Kitchen, right?
SPEAKER_01:I have it. Yes, I love it. That's good.
SPEAKER_00:See, more love for Career Kitchen. This isn't just me, it's approved by Tiff.
SPEAKER_04:Uh from new games, new games this year to the very oldest of games. We played Acquire. We have talked about this at length on this podcast, but we got to play that World Series of Board Gaming. Uh, it was published in 1963. It is a very, very old game. It's been published a bazillion times, but this new edition is super clean, super nice. We learned it from one of the best in the world, and that kind of stock market manipulation mixed with I don't know, area control type jockeying for positions, placing out the little hotels uh was super clean. And man, I had such a good time playing this one. I'm not gonna belate it too long because we've talked about this enough on this podcast. But if you have not played a choir, go check it out. It's great. Tiff, back to you.
SPEAKER_01:I'll talk about a new game since we can do that. Umaggio. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:I was quick on the draw with that one. Boom.
SPEAKER_01:You knew it. So that's the sequel to Fromage. You can actually mix the boards together to get more of a variety, but with Fromaggio, it introduces wines. Um, what are those little Italian boats? Um there's a new special tea spot instead of I think because you can age it like three turns, there's one spot on each section, you can age it four turns. So it's like the special tease. Um the only thing I don't like about that is you can get cards and you can't really complete those cards towards the end because everyone takes the good spots because there's only one on each section.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:But it plays very similarly to Fromage. This new rules you have to learn for each little quadrant.
SPEAKER_04:And this one was a expand alone. You said you could mix it together, but it also stands as its own.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Have you played it more separate or have you mixed it in with the old stuff?
SPEAKER_01:No, we've been playing it separate.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. I'd be interested to know like how cleanly it integrates.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Does it have you feel like it would?
SPEAKER_04:It has its own like turntable, like the original, correct?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Like if you mix them together, do you pick one turntable or the other, or is it like Yeah, it's all the same stuff. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yep. So you can just throw anything you want on there and it'll fit. Yes, Clay.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, thank you. I raised my hand. I don't like um there was one section, one little cheese wedge, that I read the rules over and over to try and figure out how to score the thing, couldn't figure it out. I had Mary read the rules to this cheese wedge, just absolutely baffled. It's the one with like the rows and columns. I meant to play it just with the Fromagio, and we couldn't get a grip on the one cheese wedge, and so we just put an old one in.
SPEAKER_01:The first time we played that one, I got that one messed up. Okay, so like the cheese has to like be right underneath of each other for it to score. But yeah, I got it wrong too.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, all right. I was like, is this just a me thing, or is like something going on in the gable house? We can't figure it out. But the rest of it, the rest of them were cool.
SPEAKER_04:Between bottles and cheese, you gotta get it together, man.
SPEAKER_00:And I thought the player boards were cooler too. Like the um the the little houses you could build, I thought they gave more interesting um benefits than the the base game or the first version, whatever you would call it.
SPEAKER_04:Nice, great shout-out.
SPEAKER_03:Uh Jared, you're on to your last one. My last one. I I'm still riding the high from talking to Nick Murray, which you guys might not know this uh if you listened to last week's podcast. Nick and I are both alumni of the same high school. We walked the halls, the halls of Skyview together, but I'm still riding my Kenizia high. And the quest for El Dorado was graciously um given or you know, discovered to me through Clayton. Um, and I just ate it up, just gobbled it right up. Um, had an absolute blast playing this one at three um deck building to race your way across a uh a long forgotten South American jungle. Um sorry, my Trump impression is coming up. Um I'll back it up, back it up, back it up. Uh and I had a super super great time playing this, and uh we I mean we can't get much cleaner deck builder than that, like drawing up, building your hand, investing in your future hand. You can see the path that you want to take, and then your other players are cutting you off here and there, and you know, you're making some key decisions about how you're gonna get to the end quicker than your uh the uh other people that you're playing against. And I mean it's it's pretty uh straightforward, light, you know, under two um on the weight there, and it's pretty quick too. And every time you play it, you can switch up the uh the different um pathways and you can make new adventures, new races. Um, no wonder this thing's number 20 in the family there. I'm just saying. So I I might have to get this with my birthday money that I still haven't spent. So yep.
SPEAKER_04:It'll cost you about$20 because really this has been republished a bazillion times. Yeah. Oh my god. Yeah, that's not that bad. It's like buying a classic copy of Castles of Burgundy, like they are out there and they are just waiting for you to spend your birthday money.
SPEAKER_03:Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_04:Well, anyways, Quest for Eldorado. Absolute legend. Great, no, Clayton. On to you.
SPEAKER_00:Is this my last one?
SPEAKER_04:I think so. Yes.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. This will be another new game. Travis is pulling up. The Hobbit there and back again. I had sworn off roll and rights until Mr. Kenizia made this one. And uh, this came out in 2025 by Office Dog. Essentially, you're playing through the story of the Hobbit over these eight little chapters in this roll and right. You're rolling dice, you're drafting them against your opponent, and each chapter introduces like different little tweaks to the game. You know, sometimes you're making the pass, like I said, sometimes you're drawing like Tetris polyamino type shapes and trying to you know fill out areas in the map. So each little bit of the journey was just like a new fun little twist. That I mean, we played this several times a week until we finished it. And I it's one of a core memory because Mary wanted to play it with me and she didn't fuss when I asked to play it. So uh this was great. I liked, and again, recency bias, but some of the later ones were definitely more interesting than some of the earlier ones. So if you play the first couple and you're like, eh, it's all right, just keep playing through, but it takes like 20 minutes to get through one of the chapters, you know. Yeah, just keep rolling through. And the last one with the smog house smog the dragon. Yeah, you're fighting you're fighting smog, and it it's cool, you know. It's a roll and right, so you know the but they did a lot with the theme for a little roll and write. So yeah, I very much appreciated this uh as a as a Hobbit fan.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, I will I will say solo is not the way to play. I talked about this on the podcast, but you basically just roll all the dice in front of you, and then you could you kind of join them together based on how they landed in relation to one another, and then you've got one two sets of two, and then one that's solo by itself, and you're just taking one from each of those groups, not the correct way to play, not the preferred way to play, rather. Um, but yeah, I I thought the same thing. I got through the first two chapters, and I was like, man, how far am I really gonna make it through this thing? It's kind of samey, like I get it. You're drawing routes based on the on the shapes that you draw, and then thing they throw a curveball at you, and then it gets more interesting and more interesting and more interesting as you go through it. So, yeah, this was a uh definitely a highlight this year from Office Dog. Okay, it's my turn. Is it my last one? I think so. I think it's my last one. I'm gonna go with Old King's Crown. I talked about this a couple weeks ago, also a relatively heavy game. Um, plays at best at three, plays up to four. I played it twice solo and once uh with two players. Probably not the preferred way to play, but man, that like auction drafting, kind of jockeying for position. This game has really kind of been eating at my brain, and I want to play it more. I played it probably three times, four times, like back to back to back in one weekend. Um, just kind of left it on the table and got to play it as many times as I could before I had to clean it up. But this game has kind of been like eating away at my brain, and the the solo mode is actually pretty well implemented. It doesn't feel like you're just like blocking positions. They kind of introduce that unique twist where like the solo variant or the solo, like the automaton that has a deck of its own is kind of lying to you on what it actually wants to do. There's cards that say, like, I'm gonna go to this position, so you better block me, but then you flip it over and it's not what it said it said it was gonna be. So stuff like that is pretty cool. I have not seen that in a game before where the automaton solo variant is kind of like trying to play game. With you and like mess with your mind a little bit. So yeah, Old King's Crown was a highlight for me this year. And uh this might be a little bit of recency bias because I played this maybe a month ago, but this one is cool. It's number one on the BGG hotness right now. So I'm really loving this one, Clayton.
SPEAKER_00:Who did you convince to play this with you at two?
SPEAKER_04:Rachel played it.
SPEAKER_00:Really? What'd you think about that?
SPEAKER_04:Uh it's actually not quite as difficult as you think. I mean, she dragged her feet a little bit, honestly. Like, this is not sitting down to play the Hobbit where you're like drafting a die and just drawing a shape. This one takes a little bit of thinking, the cards all play off one another. But really, like once you get going, the flow of the game is designated by the different seasons that are clearly highlighted on the board. You are bidding kind of the same way every time for the different positions, you're earning the resources. That type of stuff is pretty simple to understand once you get into it, but it does take a while to understand the concepts of this game. Like the way that all the cards and like you have your, you know, um location of power for your faction, and all the factions play differently, and all this stuff. There's a lot to this game, and it would definitely benefit from a group that gets together to play this regularly and understands the factions intimately. But if you just pick it up, I think it does a good job with the iconography and the kind of just design of the board itself and the cards to tell you what you need to know. There's some serious complexity if you really start digging into this with the cards that have like different abilities based on like their archetypes and stuff. But to get the like the core mechanics out of the way and like flow through the game, you don't need to understand all that stuff. So I have really been enjoying this. I I think it's great. I think if I had a tighter group to play this with regularly, I would be pumped because I would play this all the time. That's King's Crown by Eerie Idol Games. Uh Tiff, why don't you?
SPEAKER_00:I think there's a couple extras. Extra endings.
SPEAKER_03:Rapid fire. Bonus rounds. Maybe it was Yoga Hama.
SPEAKER_00:Hit us with your Yoga Hama.
SPEAKER_01:Um, this one's hard to explain. It's like a worker placement, but like point salad. You just put your little workers down. You can put three in three different spots or two on one spot, and you move your little president to each section. And the amount of workers you have there is like the power of what resources you can get. And you can like put little houses down, uh, and everything just gives you points. I don't know how else to explain it.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I keep seeing this one, and I'm like it was$20.
SPEAKER_01:So we were like, heck yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, 152 overall. It's got, I mean, it's got some juice, it's ranked 152 overall on Board Game Geek. So that's must be good. That's saying something. That's pretty good.
SPEAKER_03:Are those little dye too? You get to roll those dyes for research.
SPEAKER_01:No, I don't think there's any dye in there.
SPEAKER_03:No, those cute I see in the pictures off the right little colors, those must be the resources. Sorry to I always go into Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:They're they're they're just the little resources. Yeah, like you you're completing orders, and there's like area control.
SPEAKER_02:Well, this looks kind of intimidating.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's not, it's not. I'm not explaining it very well, but it's easy to learn.
SPEAKER_04:How how difficult was it to pick up the iconography? Because there's a lot of like numbers and symbols and stuff going on on these cards. For those that are not watching the YouTube, it's like a pyramid of cards that have like a thousand different colors and different symbols and roads and arrows and all sorts of stuff going on.
SPEAKER_01:So that's that's not a very good picture of the game at all. I don't I don't know what the what is that picture?
SPEAKER_00:That's not Yokohama. I mean Tiff's dot. Well, there I think there's two different would never post that. Yeah. Yeah. This is below dot games. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:No, I think there's two versions, so I think that's the first version.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01:I have the nicer one.
SPEAKER_04:Recently streamlined in double the five.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah. But one I played is just way like easier to look at.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. Easier on the eyes. Love it.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:All right, hit us with your last one.
SPEAKER_01:Which is Dominion. I'll go with okay, Dominion.
unknown:Dominion.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, I'm sorry. Did you have another one that you wanted to shout out?
SPEAKER_01:No, I just have a stack of games. I was like, what am I gonna pick? Dominion. It's an old one, right? 2008. Um, we played it for the first time this year. It's just like an easy deck builder um with like a thousand expansions.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:But I just think that it was very fun and easy to pick on, pick up on, and anyone can play it. Um and they they also did Moon Colony Bloodbath, the same designer, and that one was really fun too.
SPEAKER_04:Um that one's been getting a lot of traction. I've seen that one everywhere.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Tiff, have you played the Star Wars deck builder?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_03:How does it stack up again on this against this one? Oh, I'd I'd rather play Star Wars than the Wave to Dominion, but I probably should have talked about new to me Star Wars Deck Builder because that game was awesome. I played that one at the World Series of Board Gaming 2, but like Yeah, I like that one. Oh, yeah, that one's super clean, super fun, and every nerd's you know uh dream. Um so that going up chair.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, the uh the the decision space podcast did a big one about Dominion and like its impacts over the years, and that one was it was really interesting to listen to their analysis of the like very rudimentary deck builder and how this came about and how people took that and said, like, here's how I can spin that off and make it my own and improve the mechanics. Dominion's got like 187 different expansions, and you don't know which ones to play with, and what makes it better, and what makes it harder, and what makes it longer, and like and it's difficult to sift through all that stuff. If I'm somebody that's like, I'm gonna check out Dominion, I've heard a lot about it, and then I look it up and I see that there's so many expansions out there. Do you have like a preferred expansion, one that you go to? Did you just play the base game?
SPEAKER_01:No, just the base game. I think the base game's enough to just get into it.
SPEAKER_04:Nice.
SPEAKER_01:Um, and if you like really love the game, then I could see you get in like a whole bunch of different expansions for it. But I think there's so many cards in the base game that you can really like have a lot of plays out of it.
SPEAKER_00:Nice. Where do you see this fitting into a modern board game collection? Like, do you are you did you play this as like a novelty or are you gonna keep playing this?
SPEAKER_01:No, we're gonna keep playing it.
SPEAKER_00:You're gonna keep playing it instead of Arnak, instead of Star Wars the deck builder. When are you pulling out the minion?
SPEAKER_01:Do you see how many games I have? When am I pulling anything out?
SPEAKER_04:That's true. That's true. True that, true. And you do you do play more games than probably the other three of us combined? So this is true. Um this one, this one could be in the rotation, and you'd still have plenty of time to play the other games. So yeah, that's great. Awesome. Any other shout-outs, Tiff?
SPEAKER_02:Any like any other game shout outs?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, honorable mention. What about new new new new games that you want to shout out just off the top of your head?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, I just got it from PAC Sanctuary. It's like Arknova's baby.
SPEAKER_04:Cool.
SPEAKER_01:Um that's probably my current favorite game.
SPEAKER_04:Did they uh did they like I know that they streamlined it, they made it easier to understand, easier to get into condensed rule book. Like, how are you finding how familiar were with were you with Arcnova versus Sanctuary?
SPEAKER_01:Well, like the icons are all the same, like the countries and the animals.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Um, so you basically can just play the game. Like this one is just laying, you're laying tiles, and the tiles have the iconography on the top. Like you're still trying to meet the objectives of like placing five like gorillas, um, and you still have the cards down the bottom, which are your actions, and you move them around. So it it's very similar but different.
SPEAKER_04:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:So I'm gonna keep them both.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. Uh that was gonna be my next question. Like, do you ditch Arc Nova now or you stick with the sanctuary?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, which would be Michael said Michael said he's uh ditching Arc Nova, but I'm keeping both. Okay, they're both really good games. I don't think that they like clash and you need just one or the other. Yes, Clay.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, um, what does it make easy? Is it actually easier? Because I really like the idea of Arcnova. I just couldn't get through the three-hour game.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so real quick, there's tiles on the board. There's like six tiles. Yeah, you have a power one through five. You can so wherever your little like action card is, say it's on five. Okay, so you can take from five down, and then you pick a tile, and then your actions are placing a tile. So you pick a tile, place a tile.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, and then like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah, so like but then like the points is like comboing off of each other, so you want to place them strategically, so you'll get the most points.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so is there a huge deck of cards still?
SPEAKER_01:It's like a it's a deck of tiles. I love that because I hate big decks of cards, and they it comes in, it comes in like a sleeve, like this big a sleeve with tiles. Okay, you just draw them out.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, this might be my entryway back into the Arc Nova universe because I all right, I will. Sanctuary, I'm gonna get that next time I'm out and about.
SPEAKER_03:Is it is it like you just don't like to have to shuffle a giant deck of cards? Well, is it about a giant cards?
SPEAKER_00:They just write so many words on them, and it's like too many things to try and juggle in my mind.
SPEAKER_04:If I'm like new to board gaming and I'm like, oh, this there's a game about building a zoo, that sounds interesting. And I open up Arc Nova, my brain is gonna melt because there's like you're building the enclosures which are separate from the animals, and like it's just so much to wrap your brain around the iconography, the different the research, and the and the uh yeah, you're like funding humanitarian missions, and yeah, you're always running out of money too.
SPEAKER_01:And in in Sanctuary, you don't need money.
SPEAKER_00:No money, no money required. I love it.
SPEAKER_04:I love that. Great. That's your that's your top game right now.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, okay.
SPEAKER_04:Wow, nice. I love it. Well, we have taken a lot of your time this evening, and I appreciate you running through all the games that are new to you or some of your highlights.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_04:Uh, before we sign off, do you have any sort of like shout-out that you want to give? You want to give some props to your social media? This is your time to shout out anything you want.
SPEAKER_01:Um, yeah, let me um shout out Michael at Barrowin plays games. Oh, yeah. I think that's yeah, for getting me on here. Like give me that little nudge.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, here you are.
SPEAKER_01:Um yeah, that's it.
SPEAKER_04:Okay. That's it. Yeah, he was not specifically requested that you come on and talk more games. He knows that you are an expert. You two play more games than probably anybody we know.
SPEAKER_01:So yes, Michael is I feel like we like a lot of the same games, um, as well as you guys too. I feel like we all like the same kind of games. Um so yeah, I lost my train of thought.
SPEAKER_00:But no, he's good. You're just you're just a humble person, Tiff. Don't let her humility get in the way. She is a freaking rock star on the Instagram. I see her posts, I'm like, dang, look at the lighting on these things. I mean, it's just above and beyond. Another bot.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I try my best.
SPEAKER_00:Your best is good. Your best is really good.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like I don't know what I'm talking about, but if I can make it look good, it'll look like I know what I'm doing.
SPEAKER_04:But like it's interesting being that you talk that you say that because like we had uh what Tay from Tay Eat T, Tay Eat T um come on and he talked about like all natural lighting. I take all the phone, all the photos with my iPhone, like, and I'm just trying to make the best content I can with the limited resources that I want to expend. I'm gonna save all my money for board games and stuff, and I just want to tell people about the games that I'm playing. I feel like since we started this podcast, we've met so many people that are just passionate about board games, doing a homegrown thing where they just say, this is a hobby that I'm passionate about. I want to put this content and this love out in the world. You're doing it, Tay's doing it, Mike from Bearwin Plays Games is doing it, empty nest board mama's doing it. Like we have met so many amazing people. You are included in that group, and we are so thankful to have you in the OG and family. Thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for continuing to do what you do for the board game sphere. And these two guys, I guess they're here too.
SPEAKER_03:So uh Yeah, you know, there's us.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Uh did we do it? Are we good? We did it. All right. This has been Operation Game Night. She has been the one and only Tiff from TIFFs.board.games. Go check her Instagram out. They're great. All of her posts are amazing. I've been Travis, he has been Jared, he has been Clay, and we are out.
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