Best of BGG September 2026

0:00 The leaves are changing. Fall is coming. And the best way to enjoy the fall foliage is from inside while playing a board game and looking out the window.

0:07 That's right.

0:52 What's up everybody? My name is Nick. I'm like, we are the brothers Murf and we are back for another best of BG. It's going into September. It's September. That means it's Christmas, basically.

1:02 You know what I mean? That's how it goes.

1:03 That's just how it goes, man. But it's also a big important exciting time for board games. Gen Con happened recently. Bunch of game releases. We're obviously leading up into Essen where there's going to be even more game releases. This is an exciting time of year that has affected the board gamegeeek hotness. So, what we're going to do is we're going to talk about everything board gamegeeek, including those hot games. But first, let's talk about some news.

1:30 This next bit isn't so much news as I'm sure many of you know that Game Night exists, but it's just a fellow reminder that Game Night is awesome. They are always cranking out uh new playthroughs. They did uh Dino Racer recently, which was super duper fun uh with Kristoff and Amanda Panda. Highly recommend that. There's also things like Game Night Live where you can go and chat with Lincoln and Nikki and and uh Derek in real time. Uh Lincoln also does painting streams and stuff. So just be checking out the YouTube regularly for those game night episodes. Hang out with us live and uh go, you know, pester Lincoln while he paints. You know, we got to have a store update. And this one is really, really cool because we have some artist series postcards. So they have put a lot of the artist series. If you don't know the BG artist series, it's where they take board game artists and they had them do essentially do reimaginings of board game covers and they're really really cool. It's my favorite thing that Board Game does. I love them so much. We talk about it every year. We gush about them.

2:26 But now they have in postcard forms and the postcards are like $2 for a postcard and you they get cheaper the more that you buy. And so they're really really cool thing. Another thing that's on the store is these extendable finger pointers. Here's the thing. Rusty, you know Rusty. Rusty is on game night very very often. Love Rusty. Rusty had one of these at BGG Spring and it's essentially a extendable finger so that when you're teaching games you can be pointing to stuff and you don't have to like do that board game lean. You know when you like lean when you're teaching board games and it like destroys your lower back. This really helps with that. I'll tell you this thing was so astonishingly useful when it came to um teaching games because you could point all the way across the table at very specific things. It was great. So have these extendable things. Get you some of that. Check out those postcards. I think they're super super cool. And that's a little bit of the Board Game Geek Store.

3:14 So, that was a bit of Board Game Geek news, but let's go ahead and sit down and talk about the hottest games of the month.

3:26 Number 10 is going to be Entropy, Mikey.

3:27 Yes, sir.

3:28 Yeah, this was uh maybe the hottest game at Gen Con last year. Not last, I guess, last it was last year. We're past it now, but a couple months ago. Yeah,

3:37 it's four years old now, man. Uh yeah, this was a uh from what we understand, Entropy and Maestro, the two kind of main titles that uh Board and Dice had at Gen Con sold out within the first like two hours of the whole convention. Sold out completely.

3:51 Yeah, they were gone.

3:52 So, probably should space that out a little bit more.

3:54 Yeah, you know, but that's I guess

3:56 or I wish they were probably like, man, I wish we brought like a thousand more copies of that game.

4:00 I guess you never know, right? Um but yeah, so Ent has been on the hotness. uh you know it was kind of on the hotness when it first got announced and has this really cool uh you know colorful evocative cover. Um obviously it's got you know a trio of great designers behind it. Uh and in this game you are you know basically creating solar systems adding planets to those solar systems. Um you know then adding cards and biomes and stuff. So it's kind of this multi-stage sort of engine build. Yeah. um where you are going to be trying to drive towards certain scoring markers and stuff. So you can build solar uh systems and have stars at them that are going to provide certain you know kind of types of life carbon and things like that. And then a lot of those cards that you're going to be playing there's um you know bacteria cards, plants, and then animals which are kind of from the least complex to the most complex. And to build those more complicated items, you're going to need to have, you know, kind of a foundation beneath that with some of those simpler uh life forms. You're going to be doing this to, you know, gain instant points, kind of build out of things so that, you know, this biome triggers when I do this specific action.

5:10 So when I, you know, get a new star, uh, I get to get all these bonuses over here and these resources which kind of level up into those higher level cards and stuff like that. So, this is kind of you've noted that there's sort of this trend of like colorful sort of, you know, strange weird alien planets that we're sort of studying or building.

5:29 Three that came out this year.

5:30 Yeah. And so, it's kind of this like weird mini trend all of a sudden. So, yeah, Entropy has has I think been something people have been seeking out.

5:37 I imagine it will be a big seller at the upcoming Essen.

5:40 They better bring a billion copies. That's how you

5:42 Yeah. So, uh yeah, it's really been all over the place.

5:46 Next up is be Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit. maybe like I don't know in terms of my ranking of games I've ever been most excited for, but this one's up there. Uh yeah, this is based off of Lord of the Rings, the Queens, not Lord, Star Wars, the Queen's Gambit. My gosh, it's so hard to get those names mixed up. Uh that Restoration is bringing back in conjunction with Space Cowboys. Restoration is doing kind of like the big Kickstarter version,

6:08 edition. And then um Asay and Space Cowboys are working on the more kind of retaily edition, but this is a game where just like Queen's Gambit, there's basically multiple battles going on. So Star Wars Queen Gambit was based off of Star Wars Episode 1. So you had like the Darth Maul fight is like one of them. You had a big space battle and then you had like the Gungan versus the droid army. Those are kind of the mid ones. Now you have like um the heroes like Aragorn, Gimly, and Legless are in like the great port trying to get to the Pelanor fields. You have the big Pelanor Fields battle.

6:41 Yeah, with the Roherim. And then you're in Gondor with Gandalf and then um the uh Administr also trying to destroy the ring. But it's it's mostly a onev one game where you're basically trying to get these various missions done.

6:57 Yeah. you're you're trying to manage, you know, these different battlefields and you're playing cards that will, you know, kind of focus in on usually one area or, you know, a type of squad,

7:09 these multi-use cards and things. And so if you're the shadow forces, you're trying to corrupt Frodo and basically give give in, you know, lose all willpower to the ring.

7:18 Um uh or you're trying to basically get to the top of Minister Tierth with more units than the Free Peoples. The free peoples are trying to destroy these encampments in uh the Pelenor fields or trying to destroy the ring. So, you each have a couple of ways of um accomplishing your goals and yeah, there's like these objectives you can be going for which will kind of you know build momentum in your favor. Um and yeah, and so you're you're you know what what a great rethe like if you're going to rethe away from Star Wars, you might as well go to something equally epic and Lord of the Rings and

7:51 the big fight at Gondor, which is like

7:52 Yeah. like Return of the King, the height of everything is like is the perfect, I guess, setting for a big game like this.

7:58 It's It's very very cool. Yeah, I I'm I'm so excited to see especially the finished version, you know, it's cuz again, it's very like big 3D stuff everywhere.

8:05 They had they had a display at Gen Con Restoration Games and, you know, stuff and like the minis and kind of the battlefields that kind of I I like painting minis, but I us like painting minis for the painting aspect of it. I I don't usually care about my board games being painted, but this is a game like when we eventually get it, I'm like, I'm going to paint this game. Like I want this game fully painted. I want this whole thing done. Um it's going to be a whole thing. But yeah, Lord of Things King's Gambit. Very very excited.

8:30 Next up is going to be World Order.

8:32 One of your most looking forward to games. I want to play it so bad.

8:34 I've seen it in stores and I've almost bought it so many times. And the only reason I don't is because I'm like I don't actually have a time in mind of like when we would actually get it played

8:44 with the player count. We probably want

8:46 the player count.

8:47 I still might just go buy it on instinct. Uh so World of Order is a follow-up to uh Hijgemony. It's from Hijgeminic uh project games

8:56 uh games. Um and this is kind of taking,

9:00 you know, the ideas of hegemony where we're all in the same country and we're different kind of social and and financial classes.

9:08 Y

9:08 um and now we're we're bringing it to a world stage where you are going to be different countries,

9:13 the world powers.

9:14 The world powers. So, you have, you know, the US and Russia and China, um, and a few others. I can't maybe, yeah, I can't quite remember all of them, but you're going to be playing as as one of them. And you're going to have your own

9:26 kind of direction, I guess, your own goals, your own, you know, strengths, things that you are known for and good at and stuff, and you're going to be kind of trying to shape the the direction that the world is headed. Uh, and ideally in a way that is going to benefit you the most. Um, and yeah, this is one that like Hijman has been so popular.

9:46 Um, for very good reason. It's fantastic. And so seeing world order kind of build seemingly on, you know, kind of what they did with Hijgemony

9:56 is what has me excited. Like Hij is really great. And so I'm like, well, I want to see what else they're working on over here.

10:01 Well, and it's like also like these games. Hijgemonity is very much this way and I'm assuming we have not played world order obviously um very much assuming it's the same is like in hegemony if you're like the working class or whatever you're the middle class like to get to make the things you want to have happen happen you usually have to like give the other players a little bit of what they want right and so you have to like work together a little bit and so on the world stage it's I'm guessing there's going to be a lot of that too you're like you're kind of conceding certain things like yeah you can have that but like let me have this and d it's going to be a lot of that kind of stuff I don't know all the ins and outs of world order, but it's not like a war game where you're going to go and like I'm going to

10:37 destroy your entire civilization. So, it's about that kind of

10:41 we're all going to be gaining and benefiting, but how do I make sure I get out further ahead? Um, which I just think is really interesting and obviously it's something that is playing out in in across the world all the time. So,

10:52 I wish it wasn't to be completely honest. Get along honestly.

10:55 Yeah. But if you are interested in World Order, there is a designer diary on Board Game Geek right now for you to check out and something I want to read to to hear more about like that process of of how they kind of

11:06 uh you know from Genesis to to now it being out there and getting into people's hands. Um I want to see more. Next up is going to be the Raiders of Cyia. So Raiders of Cyia right now has an expansion on Kickstarter, which is one of the reasons why it's probably back in people's minds. This is essentially a kind of rethe with some tweaks of Raiders of the North Sea, which is also by Garfield Games, but this one is now set in their ancient anthology. Um,

11:33 this is the first ancient anthology.

11:34 I believe it was the first ancient anthology game. That was a whole bunch of them. Yeah. So, there's a Kickstart out there for an expansion for this and I believe Scar Bray. Um,

11:41 it's a a kickstart with Yeah. expansions for both those games.

11:44 Uh, which is their first expansions they've done for their ancient anthology games. They have so far not had expansions to this point. Yeah. So, Uh this is I believe it's Omen's is the expansion. Uh and yeah, kind of just adds on

11:59 that's more stuff and and different ways. There's like a new board as well. Um and so there's just kind of more stuff with some extra um spicy things going on as well.

12:07 Extra spicy stuff. Yeah, the omens I think are kind of like foretelling like bad things that can be happening. So you're trying to adjust and make use of the uh opportunities that are coming up and stuff. So, Raiders of Cyia, kind of similar to Raiders of the North Sea, is a worker placement game where you're going to be placing workers into different areas of the board, taking an action, and then pulling a worker back off of the board and taking the action of that space as well. So, it's kind of dual action system in a worker placement game, you only have one worker, but that worker changes throughout the game.

12:35 Yeah. And still to this day, like one of the most elegant worker placement mechanics that still is weirdly just not been board games like and this is a good thing. I want to make this very clear is a is a world of copying. You're like, "Oh, I really like this mechanic in this game. I'm going to put it in my

12:49 Yeah. You're inspired [clears throat] by something and want to do something."

12:50 That's outstanding. That's a very good thing. I'm just astonished there's not more worker placement games that do this because it's so you place a worker, take a worker, like out of your turn should have one worker. That's it.

13:00 Yeah,

13:00 it's kind of beautiful. Yeah,

13:01 it's it's really really cool. Raiders of Cyia. Uh yeah, I mean again it's just like you're making that game um Raiders NorC tweaking it probably making it a little bit better and now it's got a little expansion which is also super super cool. I'd love to see expansion for other um of the ancient anthology games.

13:14 I don't know if that's like now in the works or or what but it seems like they've opened the door to that possibility at least.

13:21 Man, some board games are just a hell of a deal.

13:23 I was making the exact same joke.

13:25 This is hell of a deal. Uh this is a cooperative poker style game

13:30 uh where you're going to be playing Texas Holde against the devil himself.

13:34 Uh and uh as it as it says in the tagline, and to win, you're going to have to cheat like hell. Uh so this is a game where you are going to be playing uh largely Texas Holdem style uh poker. You're going to have three cards in your hand to start. You have an ace up the sleeve kind of vibe, so you have a little more choice. Uh, and in this game you are are each going to there's going to be some sort of target hand they have to beat. So you have to beat a pair for example um and things like that and you are each you know all the members of the team are going to have to collectively try to beat their you know the objective ahead of them. But there's all sorts of ways you can cheat. Yeah.

14:10 Uh you can do things to manipulate the cards and get make sure you have the hand that you need to survive. However, the more you cheat, the more you're maybe making future problems for yourselves because you're going to, you know, you're be you're dealing with corruption.

14:27 Yeah, of course. The devil

14:28 temptation and things like that. So,

14:30 I love the idea. The art style is very cool. If you're familiar with Cuphead, uh that kind of rubber hose,

14:36 uh animation style, um you know, it's kind of got that vibe.

14:41 A deal with the devil is Cuphead like that. Yeah.

14:43 You know what I mean? It's it's got a it's got a a look and a feel and stuff and and then poker games have been kind of like uh back and you you have the gang, we had uh Decos coming out. There's, you know, different kind of poker uh style things. It's something that people are familiar with the kind of hands of poker. Uh but I love the idea of here's all these levers you can pull. Here's how you can make sure you win this.

15:08 Maybe you're going to have to pay for it down the road, but maybe we have we got to survive, right? you got to get that kind of idea of of temptation uh corruption and stuff also with the theming of the game seems really cool. So, it's something I'm I'm super excited to try. Uh I think it's about to release. I think it's I think it was I think I think you can get it at Gen Con, so I think it was on sale there and I think the wider release is maybe this month. Um don't quote me on that, but I I believe it's imminent.

15:34 Yes. Uh so yeah, I really hope to see it in the store sometime so we can try it uh real soon because I think the theme and everything is just super duper cool.

15:43 Next up is be Avlon the Riven Veil. Uh this is made by Shadowbor Games who also made Oath Sworn although this game is not really anything like Oath Sworn but this was their next big because Osworn I think was their first game. Uh and then they had been working on this. The Kickstart for this was god years ago now but it's it's hitting people's hands at this point. People are really getting a chance to play it. Um, and yeah, this is a kind of a big monstrous game, um, set in the kind of Arththeran legend world where you're each, uh, taking on kind of a a faction and like one of them is like Merlin and all this different kind of stuff

16:16 and you are playing over a number of different seasons and you're in this big kind of like circular board where there's a whole bunch of these different like regions that are all faced down. They're all like foggy and stuff like that. you have to kind of keep exploring these regions. And one thing that's interesting is basically as you explore these regions and do all this stuff, you can put like settlements down on these spots.

16:36 And then every round though, all the tiles that don't have settlements

16:40 get taken out of the board, get shuffled in with all the other things and then get put down fogside down. So you have to kind of keep exploring and it's going to be different as you do it, which is really really cool. Um, especially in a big like area control game where it's like you can't really plan as much for like, oh, I need to go to like this region cuz this region is going to be great. You kind of have to find out as you go.

17:03 You better get there while while you know it's there.

17:05 Yeah. And it's got this really interesting kind of card play where every um every turn basically everyone's be choosing a card to play, but each card will also usually at least require you to discard other cards kind of to pay for that card. Um, and but you're kind of hiding what you're playing because if people can see what you're discarding, if you're discarding like four cards, they know it's a super super strong card, which I think is cool. And they're going to allow you to different stuff. They're allow you to like deploy troops out onto the board. They're allow you to like move around. They're allow you to put out those settlements. And then there's these kind of red cards which are going to be used during fights because of course you're fighting all this stuff. There's also a certain thing where there's like monsters around and you can like bid to take control of them and stuff like that which is like really interesting way to kind of do monsters where like Blood Rage was that thing where a monster would show up. and then one person can get control of it, which is really really cool. And then yeah, and you're battling and you're playing out those red cards. Um, but with those red cards, you're also doing like a bit of a push your luck element to them where like you have to like flip over these other cards and then if you bust the card you played is only adding like half of its actual strength. So, there's like some push your luck. There's tons of different stuff going on in this game.

18:10 Big game.

18:10 Um, and it's got big minis, crazy art. It just looks very, very cool. Um, it's a game that I really would like to try someday because of the fact that it just looks

18:19 like massive and ostentatious and just and it's got a cool theme. I always like Arththeran Legend.

18:24 I'm always down for Yeah.

18:25 Yeah. It just seems cool. Um, and I I really want to try it.

18:28 Next up is going to be Drillers.

18:30 It'll probably be here for a while until through Essen. Yeah, cuz is available at Gen Con and then it's

18:35 available at Gen Con and and Super just Yeah. announced that they sold out of their first uh wave

18:42 Yeah.

18:42 of printing and stuff. They're obviously printing more and stuff with Essen coming up and everything like that. But that initial printing they did gone. Uh luckily they have their local printer there so they can I'm sure they're running 24/7. This has been suffice to say popular

18:57 uh since they kind of debuted at Gen Con and and the you know CG has been on a roll lately. I really I really

19:04 feel like I mean not that they ever weren't really on a roll but even you know they hit Lost Runes of Arnack in 2020 and have just kind of been just flying.

19:12 Yeah. every year they've had either a big big game or big expansion for one of their big games.

19:17 Yeah. So, it's very cool. So, this one is a game where you are drilling down and kind of exploring these kind of different levels of this mine that you're all kind of collectively building out, right?

19:27 Uh and extracting these resources and it's through card play kind of like deck building. Um, and there's this kind of whole interplay with when are you going to surface again, which you know helps you get your cards back, uh, so you can play them again. But,

19:44 you know, it takes energy and time to get down to these lower levels. So, you ideally want to stay down there doing stuff and getting these resources for as long as possible. So, there's some ability to send, you know, the things that you're digging out uh, up top and stuff while you can stay down. But I kind of enjoy any game that gives you that option where it's like I want to try to eek out as much as I can out of this, you know, kind of sequence that I'm doing. How do I how do I extend and get as much out of it before I have to surface and come back down as possible? And you're uh you know, getting in delivering these these res these gems and things that you're getting. So, um yeah, super excited for like the card play. It seems like a game where you know the mechanisms, the actions you're doing are fairly straightforward,

20:27 upgrading your mechs and stuff. Yeah, you're getting more asymmetric. Yeah.

20:31 Yeah. And everyone is kind of working on this. So someone might you might dig down and open up this area, but now I can make use of it. So there's kind of that shared infrastructure as well, which I love.

20:39 Um yeah, anything CG does, they again usually have a big game a year and I'm always going to be interested

20:43 pretty much. Yeah.

20:45 Next up is be Gunson the Battle for Toshi Rambo. This is uh not Rambo. Rambo, not Ram. Rambo's in this game.

20:53 This is set in the Legend of the Fried rings universe.

20:55 Yes, this is uh the newest game. Uh,

20:57 last one was I guess the last one was uh River of Gold, huh?

21:00 I think so.

21:01 Yeah. Yeah.

21:02 Which also is set in that universe and is such a good game. My gosh.

21:06 Yeah. So, this is a game. This is a an area control uh style game. You're really racing to complete seven objectives. So, it's not just pure battle, but there is going to be battling happening. Uh, and each turn you're going to be drafting a card from this market and most of the time playing it down onto kind of your player board, which has these four columns of actions, these kind of color-coded

21:30 uh actions. And so what you're going to be doing is adding a card to its matching column and then triggering all the actions in that column top to bottom. So there's a great kind of sense of engine building here where obviously the more you invest in one color, the more actions you're going to do. You're going to be gaining resources. is you're going to be uh uh kind of putting out these heroes that have extra powers. You're going to be moving your armies around uh battling of course when you uh run into each other. And then at the middle of the board is Toshi Rambo, and you can gain an objective the first time you reach Toshi Rambo. And then if you hold Toshi Rambo, you have another objective out. So you can have that one's kind of floating

22:09 King of Tokyo style.

22:10 Kind of King of Tokyo style. And then there's a bunch of different um objectives based on these kind of tactic cards and stuff and you're trying to get seven of them done first. So there's all these kind of different ways you can go about uh about this. So again, it's a game with battle and everything, but it's sort of a racing game to kind of build up that engine uh you know, race toward these certain objectives, kind of get a direction and go as quick as you can. Um and yeah, in the in the Legend of the Five Rings universe, which is just beautiful and stuff like that. So,

22:40 it's cool that they continue to do different games and different styles of games. Like River Gold is very different from this game,

22:46 but all set in that kind of same shared universe. Uh, yeah. So, this one is just getting out to people and uh I hope to try it soon.

22:53 Yeah.

22:54 Next up be another game that's hitting people's hands right now. This is Horror on the Orient Express. This is a game by Chaosium who made like Call of Cthulu and stuff like that. They do a lot of these big spoopy games. Um, yeah. And this one is this big crazy game. We covered it when it was on Kickstarter years ago now. Yeah.

23:09 Um go like probably like three years ago now. It's it's been a big big project. Um and yeah, this is um based off horror in the Orient Express. So basically you are on a train. It's a cooperative game and there is a whole bunch of horrible stuff happening on this train of course and you're basically trying to survive. You're basically trying to get as the game goes on. The train is basically just moving and you're trying to get to the end of the line before

23:32 you're kind of moving through this nightmare essentially this

23:35 kind of. Yeah. You're basically trying to get to the end before one of the endgame things that lose you the game happen. Basically, there's like all these like rifts that are like opening up and stuff like that. If a certain amount of those open up, you basically run out of these tokens, you lose the game. If too many people die, you lose the game. All this different kind of stuff. But on top of us being these kind of various investigators that are like moving because there's like a physical train and you're like moving up and down the train, all this different kind of stuff. There's like horrors and monsters outside the train that are like you're trying to fight and all this different kind of stuff. There's a vampire that's literally hanging on the outside of the train and there's like um

24:09 horrifying people. There's curtains and stuff. So

24:11 there's curtains. So the curtains you want closed because they're open. People can see the horrors outside the train. They start freaking out like

24:16 but if the curtains are closed and the vampires around it's like sort of worse because there's like what's out there, man? You know, there's all sorts of things you're dealing with.

24:23 Crazy. But then on top of you being on the train, there's all these passengers on the on the train and uh some of them are cultists. And so one of the things you're also trying to do is if you get to the end of the game and you're still alive, um you need to have found who all the cultists are, right? And so you're basically like doing these things to be able to flip over these tokens. And there's certain tokens that make these um these characters cultist. So like one's like a bloody fez. If one of them has a bloody fez, they're automatically a cultist. And so you're trying to like find out who is cultist. You're trying to like make the passengers feel better because again they're freaking out. Yeah,

24:57 it's just so much stuff going on in this game. It's crazy.

25:01 Yeah, there's a it's a big old

25:03 game with a ton of stuff going on. U but in a again a very fun setting for a game uh

25:10 called Cthulhu Worlds. Very very

25:12 like nightmarish things of course

25:14 very fun storytelling in the game. But yeah, there's just tons of mechanics, tons of stuff going on. And then I I think I've added expansions and stuff to it. So it's like it's just bonkers. But yeah, it's a really really cool just massive scary game.

25:28 Number one is Dewan. This is a game that's been getting some like really good ratings. I feel like that's propelling.

25:34 Yeah. And I know Actual Actual just did a video where he was kind of claiming it was like the best gateway game.

25:40 Gateway game of the future. Yeah, I think that helped.

25:42 It's such a pretty cover and stuff like that. I've always really I believe it's by Face Cowboys, I think. Right. Yeah.

25:48 But you played this game before.

25:49 Yeah, I played on BGA, so it's on board game arena. uh if you're if you're a user of that, you check it out. Uh and I I agree with with Actual Lol's kind of

25:58 thesis of it being a great gateway game because it feels kind of like Ticket to Rideish.

26:04 Um where you are going to be drafting either drafting cards or playing cards on a turn. If you're drafting cards, you'll take two cards that are adjacent to each other. Uh and they're going to show one or two kind of land types on them. They might uh have symbols and things as well. Uh, and when you go to play your cards, you are trying to play cards to cover the different regions that are showing on the map because you want to ultimately kind of if I want to get to a mountain space and I have, you know, kind of plains and water between me, I need to play a water card and a planes card to to sort of show my traveling over then a mountain card to actually play my tent down onto the mountain. And you're trying to place out your tents in such a way that you can complete these, they're called story cards, sort of the story of your people. And these cards are going to require that you have camps, uh, you know, on certain types of terrain or on terrain showing certain types of resources. Uh, so there's a kind of like a engine build to it. Very light, um, ultimately, but I want to make sure I'm on these uh, you know, certain terrains to be able to complete this story card, which will give me this, you know, bonus and this your main hit of points. And then as you're placing out these tents, you're going to have opportunities to tuck cards under your player board, which will give you an additional permanent

27:20 uh you know, terrain that you have or resource uh showing on that card. And then you'll be drafting additional story cards. So ideally, if I already have sort of mountains established, I hopefully will get more story cards that have mountains. So I'm already kind of feeding into what those cards do. But it's really light. It's it's again it feels ticket to riders because the idea is like gather cards, gather cards, gather cards. Okay, play some cards and I'm you know playing out my route even though you're sort of just hiking across land and putting these tents down. So I do agree that it is uh a good game in the sense of uh being gateway level. Like those things are easy to understand. It's easier to understand how I would traverse across the map, but you can be clever in the types of story cards you get in the way you can try to, you know, complete them efficiently. gives you a lot of fun without being so good and I wouldn't be surprised if it does become a popular gateway level game for a lot of people. Uh and it's one that if you're like an established hobby gamer or whatever that is, it's still really fun to play. It's not like it's,

28:25 you know, a [clears throat] nothing burger of a game.

28:27 There's a lot of fun stuff to still do.

28:29 Well, the best gateway games aren't that. If they're just like light with no depth, that's not a good gateway game. Yeah. It's like,

28:34 yeah, you want something that's easy to get into, but then you can explore. Yeah.

28:37 You know, deeper levels of strategy and stuff. So, I think Dwan hits that nicely. Uh, and that's number one on the hotness, I think, from that from that, you know, positive buzz, word of mouth.

28:46 Um, it's really kind of helped it help it propel.

28:49 All right, so now we're going to get into the, uh, top 10 most played games. Make sure to log your plays on BG. You can connect them with your BG stats, with your BGA, all that different kind of stuff to make sure your games are getting logged. Um, so we'll go through the top 10 most played games in the last month. Number uh 10 is going to be Wingspan with 7,136. Seesaw and Paper with 7,137. Whoever played Whoever played Seesaw one time. You You made it beat a span.

29:17 Wow, that's wild.

29:18 That is kind of crazy.

29:19 I don't think we've ever had that.

29:20 No, not one away. That's pretty nuts. Yeah. Uh Castle Combo with 7,250. Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring, Trick Taking with 7,674. Again, I'm curious if we're going to see Two Towers pop on there because at this point, Two Towers have been out for a year.

29:34 I kind of I feel like it will, but I mean, yeah, I don't know.

29:37 Yeah, we'll see. But LSP still play the Fellowship one, which is great cuz I love those games. Uh, Take Time has 7,85. Uh, that's not surprising at all. That's one of those games you can kind of play over and over and over again. Aranova has 8,838. Marvel Champions, which I actually played for the first time this last weekend, um, with 9,195. Harmonies with 9,353. Bombbusters has 11,316. And of course, Flip 7 is number one with 12,257.

30:06 Wow. Very nice. So, yeah, you played Marvel Champions, so you contributed to that number. Again, that's all the more reason to log your plays. Whether it's your first game, a play of a game, the hundth play of a game, log those plays because it affects this list. And speaking of lists, there's an Adie coming.

30:43 My mer pick is going to be a uh post by a board game designer uh in Vietnam uh named Plum Tran and they uh have been publishing games since 2019 which I think is super cool. They've mostly done the kind of like lighter family fair, but they've just uh published their first kind of more modern midweight heavy euro. Uh and they were just sort of introducing themselves to the hobby because they were, you know, trying to kind of extend their reach, especially as a woman designer in the hobby. Uh wanting to reach out and find other uh you know, women designers and and kind of get outside of the bubble. uh as she describes, you know, being in Southeast Asia, sometimes it's hard, unless you're, you know, traveling a lot to these different conventions to get your name out there and stuff. So, just a post I thought was super cool. They have a really active Facebook group uh in Vietnam. I think there's like 23,000 uh members, which is super cool. So, it's just awesome to hear about other designers, publishers, uh community members in different parts of the world from at least where I live here in America. uh in seeing, you know, that there's just this active robust hobby all over the world. And if we can help uh give some love uh to Plum and and help spread the word about gaming going on in, uh Southeast Asia, all the better. So, uh welcome Plum. Awesome job on uh designing all these games. Can't wait to hopefully try one and see you at a convention someday. Uh and uh let's just keep on gaming, everybody. Okay, you know, if you watch a lot of these things, you know a lot of my Mer picks are like cool things that people made for board games. And this month is

32:14 exactly the same, baby, because we're talking about this um storage solution for The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal the Second Age Betrayal of the Second Era by Matias Ale. This is so cool. I mean, this is just beautiful. They look like they look like like suitcases, like kind of like briefcases that you would see in in some kind of like Indiana Jones, if you open up, there's treasures inside. And there is treasures inside. It's a great board game. They're really, really cool. They have kind of one for the main game and then they have the various regions, you know, like Valonwood and Skyrim all stuff kind of broken down into these smaller boxes. And they even put up another picture of one of the things inside the box. They're so cool. They're like colorcoded. They have like special boxes inside the smaller ones for like enemies and stuff. These are so cool. I love, again, I love board games.

33:01 Board gamers nerding out about their nerdy hobby. It's my favorite thing to do. It's why we do this as a job. I love nerding out about this wonderful hobby and I love people blinging out their games, doing stuff like this, being like, "Look, I love this game so much that I'm going to spend time and money making it this way because I just I don't know. I find it to be all these things to be just a big love letter to board games and the way they make us feel and how much we love them." And this one is really, really cool. This one is both practical and just very, very cool looking. I want this in the corner sitting there like, "What is that?" Like, that's a board game, baby. I love it. This is a great story solution. So, those are a couple of Murf picks for you. And at the end here, we always talk about a personal uh favorite thing we've been playing last month. Uh I've played a couple games of Tend recently. This is from Ivy Studio. Big old rolling, right?

33:48 You have a bunch of different markers and you're stamping stuff.

33:51 Start valley coded almost.

33:52 Kind of starting valley coded because you can go and explore in uh the woods and dig in the mines and you're actually have these little scratch offs and you're discovering stuff so you truly don't know what you're going to find. You're also uh taking care of animals. You're all on this alien planet, animals and plants.

34:06 Uh through farming, you can go fishing. Uh it's just super fun. It's just fun to have all these kind of

34:11 kind of sandboxy sand. Yeah, there's there's a lot of like things you can do and try to maximize and focus uh as you go to kind of complete metals and different things. There's a whole bunch of stuff to explore. So,

34:26 uh that's been I've been kind of back into that one. It's just a big uh ostentatious production and I love it for it. Yeah, it's it's very very fun. I like T a lot. My best month is going to be Underwater Cities. Underwater Cities. I don't know if anyone else is out there. Please put it down in the comments if you are. There's a couple games that I will if it's been like a year since I played it. I start to convince myself I don't like it. I'm that way with Five Tribes and I'm that way with Underwater Cities and they're both great too.

34:49 Recently we're hang I was hang with our friend Jimmy and we wanted to play a game and he was like, "Hey, I want to play Underwater Cities." He hadn't played it in many, many years and so I was like, "You know what? Let's play it because I know I'm going to have that thing where I'm like, "Oh, that's right. It's very good." And guess what? It's very good. Um, we played just the base game and it's just very very fun. It's one of those games where it's an engine builder game where you're getting like a a hand of cards and um you're doing some action selection. You have to play a card with that action selection if the color of that card matches the color of the action which is either green, yellow, or um red. If it matches that, you also get to do the thing on the card. So, there's a little bit of like that's kind of dictating where you want to do actions. I want to play this card, but to play this card, I have to also do a yellow action. And so, it's really really fun. But you're building out these underwater cities, kind of making a network, kind of engine building. It's really, really good. And upon teaching it to our friend again, I was remembered like, oh yeah, this game like in terms of its rule set is really not that difficult.

35:42 No,

35:43 the difficulty comes from like how do you want to build that engine? How do you want to work your strategy? It's so good. I want to say if you haven't tried it, give it a shot. Don't be like me and and convince yourself you hate it. You don't, Nick.

35:53 You can also get some Geekup bits for the game. That's true, which we did have. And they make the game great. So, I'm just saying you can get that from Board Game Geek. Uh, everyone, that is it for us. That's another month of Board Gamegeeek in the books. Make sure you are logging those plays, rating games, engaging with what you enjoy on the website because that helps it pop up for other people. Uh, and uh, we hope that the weather is turning nice for you. And we will see you all next month. Bye, everybody.