Wining About Boardgames

  Great Western Trail + Rails of the North Expansion PINK POST-IT Series (games from my shelf of shame)   About game : Great Western Trail (and the expansion, Rails of the North, which I'll also be discussing here) is a game by Alexander Pfister.  In it, you are a running a cattle ranch and transporting your "goods" to Kansas City.  From there, the cattle will be loaded on a train and delivered throughout the United States (and in the expansion, Canada).  The main mechanism is deck building, as the deck is filled with a wide selection of cattle worth varying amounts.  But, a bit of the game is rather like worker placement games, as your rancher stops in various locations along the trail and takes actions on upgrade-able building tiles.  There are several different strategies to take in this game, so no two games will look alike. Review : We played the base game in early February, and WOO YEE Doggies!!  It was hard.  I watched videos and read ...

WINGSPAN OCEANIA EXPANSION PINK POST-IT Series (games from my shelf of shame)   About game : Wingspan Oceania Expansion is created by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games. This expansion to Wingspan adds some new mechanisms and food sources.  Bring on the nectar!  These new pink goodies have required new dice and serve as a wild food, of sorts.  The science behind this game, as always, is amazing!  Elizabeth Hargrave has taken so much time and effort to make this as scientifically accurate of a game as possible- which has endured it to those of us science nerds that love birding, too.  I really believe it's one of the most amazing crossover games.  I have known a few birders that have started playing board games because of this game!  New bird cards, nectar as food, and a new scoring category that involves nectar are all parts of this game that have been added to the base game. Review : When you take something sweet like Wingspan a...

About the game : Under Falling Skies is a purely solo game. There is a customizable base game that can be enjoyed in many different configurations and a campaign mode included in the box. I have personally only played the base game in the easiest mode so far (Roswell as the city and the easier sky tiles).  The game is a dice placement game with a couple of fun twists. You roll two white and three grey dice. If you place a white die, you roll the remaining dice again. That makes for a thinky puzzle that added some push your luck fun to the game. Another twist is that the mothership changes things as you go- so even if you've "excavated" to open new spaces to place your dice, the mothership can take those spaces away later. I have yet to play the campaign. My goal is to play ten times with just the base game first. That way I hope to feel really comfortable with the game before adding new rules and twists to the game. Review : I really enjoy this gam...

I promise, the fun stuff is coming. But here's another "set-up" post, about post-its! As I mentioned in my introduction post, I have collected games for the last year. I wasn't able to play all the games I collected as they arrived, so my shelf of unplayed games (sometimes called the "shelf of shame" or "shelf of opportunity") grew. I decided that in 2021 I was going to try and play my unplayed games. I decided to mark them with a bright pink post-it note so they would sit on the shelf and taunt me until I played them. It's working! Yesterday we got two pink post-it games played! I'll make a post about those on a different day. But how exciting that those two post-it notes have been removed and will no longer taunt me!!

"Life is a game board.  Time is your opponent.  If you procrastinate, you will lose the game.  You must make a move to be victorious."   -Napoleon Hill Using the quote of a potential conman from the early 1900's is possibly a shady way to start a blog.  However, the quote kind of fit in the place I'm at right now with board games.  I won't exactly say I'm new to the hobby any more.  I've been purchasing and playing board games since 2018.  I've backed several Kickstarters.  But, the above quote was how I recently started amassing a huge collection of games over the past year-- I felt like I was running out of time.   My name is Kate, and I buy a lot of board games.  Most of which I play- some of which are still in the shrink wrap they came in.  There, got the introduction out of the way. Because of Covid-19, the entire world stood still for a brief amount of time last March.  Everyone will probably remember where...