Best of BGG October 2026
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Transcript
All right, it's time for the best of BGG. It's SSC. Are we going into fall? Mikey,
let's do it, man.
Let's do it.
What's up everybody? I'm Mike. We are the brothers of Murf. It's time to once again talk about everything board gamedeed.
We are going to talk about the hottest games of the month largely impacted by the upcoming
uh Essen spiel uh which is the biggest convention for gaming worldwide every year where a lot of uh games come out. A lot of kind of the premier titles for publishers will come out. So is affected the hotness. We're going to talk about the hottest games of the month, some board game geek news, a couple of things that we really enjoyed on the site. So, let's hop right into it.
As always, we have a BG store update. There are some cool new promos. There is um a whole bunch of uh upgraded like bitties for like Return to Dark Tower. There is the Geralt in a bathtub mini for Unmatched. I've never watched The Witcher, but I know that's a thing. They made a whole mini for it. That's available. There's a really cool padded duffel bag from BG. Lots of cool stuff on the BG store. Make sure to check it out. There's also some important information about counterfeits that are out there that are in that post. So, make sure to check it out and get you some good stuff in the BG store. So, Esen Spiel is coming up as is the month of October. So, one thing we actually did a people's choice list about the Essen Spiel preview. This is something you can check out to see what games publishers are populating with uh games that are going to be on sale, games available for demo. It's a really great tool to kind of get interested in, you know, what games you might want to be checking out. If you're attending uh the fair for us who are staying states side, it's also really fun to kind of see like what games are coming out, what people uh are clicking on. You can sort by thumbs. You can kind of thumb games up, sort of create the hotness for the convention. So, the S&P preview is alive right now. Go check it out. That was a little bit of news. Let's go ahead and sit on down. Let's talk about the hottest games of the month.
Number 10. Duh. Tend. Tend is number 10.
Tend indeed. Tend is back in the hotness or was earlier this month. I saw that because it has a couple expansions on on uh one of the crowdfundings.
It did. Yes. It had uh two expansions on offer. Uh to attend as a big rolling right game from Ivy Studio and uh one of them was the hive expansion which added uh apiaries. You can basically build these apiaries and get honey, which is represent of an artisal good, a new type of good. And then the seller expansion also uses artisal goods, but it gives you the abil ability to build a seller uh and and the ability to basically refine the resources that you're producing in the game. There's things like eggs uh and milk and stuff, and now you can turn those into mayo and space cheese and stuff. You
turn like wool into like silk.
Silk. Yeah. So you can you can produce these higher value artisal goods uh and you can either put them into your cargo manifest because intend you're basically going around getting resources uh and putting a bunch of them into this cargo manifest which would be a a main way to score points
because you're working for like a shady organization basically.
Yeah. You're just going down and you're you're sending stuff up to the to the
who knows where it's going spaceship and who knows
the Zenith Corp.
Yeah. corporation, which we think is probably maybe okay, but we're
it's like the Joja Mart of 100%.
Um, and so now with the seller, you can basically refine these goods, get these more high value goods to put in your cargo manifest or put into this market stall
because the seller expansion takes 10 and puts it into a threeame campaign
where uh you're going to get individual scores in each of the three games that will go toward your overall score. But then at the third end of the third game, you score this market stall, which basically will
uh require you to fill rows and columns of these higher value goods, a lot of them, these artisal goods, but they're worth a ton of points, hundreds of points at the end of the third game, so you have time to work on them.
Yeah. And so it kind of takes takes 10 and builds it into this bigger uh kind of experience with this this kind of overarching uh market cell that you're working toward.
Yeah. We got to play um the Tend expansion and not the Tend the the seller expansion specifically. I know it's really fun. I I really like one my only kind of gripe with Tend
is I feel like in one game you
you finally get your engine up in hum and the game kind of ends. Whereas this one you can kind of work yourself. Each individual game is different but you can basically get things where you can start kind of a head start in the next game.
Yeah. In games two and three you can you you kind of can get some starting resource. So, I really liked it. I really like tend in general. Um I haven't played the the um hive one, but yeah, the seller one
solo that one is also really fun.
It's really really fun. So, I'm excited to get the finished product because it's a it's a good addition.
Number nine is be magical athlete. We'll talk about this in the most played games, but people are playing Magical Athlete a lot. And there's an expansion like standalone
standalone expansion. Second wind I think it's called. And I don't give more. Yeah. I don't know if it's out yet or coming out soon or by the end of the year. probably I would think so by the holidays.
Don't quote us. We don't know.
This is a a classic game that has now been redone by CMYK and uh it's really good.
It is a roll and move game. You are you are
going to go through four different races.
Uh and you are at the very beginning of the game going to draft your racers and they are all different. They all have game-breaky rules, silly chaotic stuff that they do. uh and you are going to choose one racer in each of those races and hope to be the winner or come in second place and there's other ways to potentially score some points and you just want to be the one with the most points after four races. So, it's all about the chaos and the way that these different characters will interact with each other.
They all have completely gamebreaking abilities.
There's like the rocket scientist where uh you can choose to move double what you roll, but then you fall over. So, the next turn basically you'll spend your whole turn standing up. There's like the ro romance person where it's like if two people ever end up on the same thing, they get to move forward.
Yeah. Cuz it's like cute or whatever. There's Sisphus where it's like you move forward uh and you start with like four medals, but every time you roll a one or something, you reset or a six or something like that. So, you're kind of all sorts of silly things like that. And I think that people have been getting and playing that against a classic game. Richard Garfield came in on a new one and uh kind of, you know, worked some stuff but kept the same chaotic like silliness that people love. Magical Athlete 4 and then now they announced this uh second wind standalone expansion which just means all the more characters and there's a ton of them in the game already.
It's like already like 25 or 30. Yeah, it's crazy.
So, it's going to be Yeah. So, I assume that kind of helped add to the the fervor, but this is a game that's like been perpetually sold out and then more and more people are getting it and then now it
Next up is going to be Gaudi. This is from uh Dve and Danny Garcia.
Uh this game with Gaudi with Danny Garcia.
That's true. Dan Garcia designed Barcelona which had track Gaudy track and stuff. It's a you know famous architect and artist. Uh and this one is sort of going through Gaudi's life
uh more specifically and the art that they made. Um and there's kind of three kind of pillars of their life. It's like religion, nature, and maybe art is a third one.
So yeah. Uh, and so you are balancing you're scoring between those three areas because at the end of the game
you only get to score your lowest two. If you zoom ahead on one, it's not necessarily that valuable for you.
So you need to kind of bring a balance approach. Yeah, I agree. Like I love
uh that you are are um kind of using your player board uh to create art. You're getting like these little pieces and it creates like a little mosaic. I think there's another word for it. Um, but it's basically like the in translations like a bunch of little broken things. And so you're kind of creating art kind of with your player board as you go. The art is really vibrant and beautiful and it's kind of
um not at all related to like in the steps footsteps of Darwin or Murray Cury, but that kind of game where it's like focus on a singular figure, their life's works,
uh, their accomplishments, the things that was important to, uh, to Gaudy and stuff.
It's really pretty. Uh, it's really really cool. Yeah. And I I I love the con my favorite game, Prodigals Club, does that where it's like you have these three scores and whatever your lowest is that whatever your worst is fun like challenge.
Yeah, it's always fun to be like you have to spin all three of these plates like you have to or else you're going to get a very bad score. I always really enjoy that. Um yeah, and Gotti looks really really cool. U really really pretty. I'm I'm really want to try this one.
Next up is a game by Sir John Declair. This is uh Electrify. Electrify. I think it's on crowdfunding right now.
Yes, I believe so. by AEG the classic, you know.
Yeah. This is an interesting game where it's um mostly simultaneous where you're
almost entirely. Yeah.
You're kind of building up this big engine of kind of cards in these various like kind of industries or like I guess various
I think there are industries. Yeah. There's like research and development and
Yeah, exactly. Then you have six different of these industries and then they're all going to kind of do like a base thing and then you can put in these cards into these industries and each turn you're going to choose secretly which one you're going to activate which kind of column of these things and then if you choose different ones from everyone you get to bump that industry forward. It's kind of got like an arc noa thing where like wherever that industry is that's the strength that it gets to do that.
There's many card effects and things that will reference basically which column you're in. So the further right you can be the generally stronger that will be.
Exactly. And then you're getting all these different kinds of fuel because you're basically making you're electrifying. You're basically making power. So at the very very bottom is like fossil fuels and then there's like natural gas and then there's like bofuel and then there's you know windy electric and wind and solar.
Solar of course is the top one. But that's a lot harder to make. You would have to basically have your things all the way over. you can um transmit things or you can move things around and kind of like upgrade your power and you're basically trying to do these like I guess public objectives where you basically have to turn
public demands like they need they need this much power of this type of stuff
five electro five hydroelectric ones and three like fossil fuels and that's like one of them and you can complete that to get points in the game but it was really fun we haven't had have had a chance to play it and I really like it like you can get it's kind of got the space based thing John Declar tends to borrow from himself a lot which is not a knock on him I think it's a good thing to borrow um from yourself when you're a genius. Um and so a lot of the cards you're putting there have arrows to other cards and so you basically can sometimes create these these crazy combo wombos where you're activating this but it has an arrow point to this one. So you get to activate that and then that has an arrow pointing down to this one. So you can create this big crazy line of things turns.
It's nuts
where you're producing a bunch of uh cubes doing develop action to move them to higher levels. uh you can buy cards and stuff you to buy you need to spend uh cubes basically a certain amount of energy uh and then to meet those demands it's nice to have the energy but you actually need to transmit it that's you sending the energy to the grid essentially to to the people uh to fill these demands uh over 12 rounds. Yeah. So, it's if you like kind of that idea of the puzzle of trying to build,
you know, a super turn where you're going to chain this into that into that into that, uh, this game gives you opportunity for sure to to pull off some like pretty nice stuff.
Next up is a big boy. This is Lord of the Rings: The King's Gam. I've been talking about this over the last few months, but it's officially on crowdfunding as of right now.
I think as of today, it's got like 1.3 million raised.
This is a reimplementation of Star Wars the Queen's game. It's by Restoration Game. So they'd actually they bring back games that had some really cool stuff in it, kind of make them into modern board games, but this one is based off Lord of the Rings. Uh we've also got a chance to play this one and it's really really fun. I like I have not played Star Wars Queen's game so I have no like the direct comparison that we can make, but yeah, we have played this one.
It's fun. There's basically like three different battlefields and then well kind of four if you really think about it, but there's basically like the the great ports of Gondor. So that's where like Legless, Aragorn, and Gimy are. They're fighting against um the Corsaires. There's a big battle at Pelenor Fields with like the Roherim and a bunch of orcs and like trolls and stuff like that. And then there's a battle in in Minister Tierth and this big giant 3D thing. But then on the very very end there is also of course Froto and Sam trying to destroy the ring.
They're trying they're sneaking their way into Mordor.
Yeah. And each side it's mostly a two-player game, but each side basically has two objectives they can do to win. And uh the first one to do one of their objectives wins. But it's this big crazy. It's got like um multi-use cards and stuff like that. Dice rolling, dice chucking. I really really enjoyed it a lot.
Yeah, it's really fun. Uh balancing, you know, your strengths and weaknesses in in the different areas. You don't want to let anything go necessarily, but
if you're trying to get to a certain objective, like I was the shadow when we played and like one of my objectives is to get more of my units at the top of minist. And so I was doing all these things over here to try to, you know, get that done. And I overextended a little bit. Then Nick wiped out my forts in the Pelanor fields. And that was one of the ways you could win. You could also win, of course, by destroying the ring. I could win by essentially corrupting uh the ring bearers.
Um I think their names are Gan and Clint or something. I don't remember what the names are.
Jean and Clint.
Um and uh
I made a promise. Jean.
Jean.
I made a promise.
Quick. Clint, I don't remember. Strawberries. I think that's how the movie goes. It's been a while. Um, I don't. But yeah, it's fun. The multi-use card is card of it all is really cool. Essentially, you're going to be playing cards out
and then there are these multiplier tokens. Uh, and what you're going to be doing is on your card, there's always two options. You're essentially going to cover up one of those options with the multiplier. And the multiplier will affect some aspect of the action that you choose. It might be
put out X troops and the X's
get bonus X bonus dice to roll and stuff. And that is like really fun. a choosing like which of the actions do I want to do? Which of my multiplier tokens do I want to use here? Do I really want to use my strongest one? There's a lot of really cool uh stuff like that. You also have specific objectives you're trying to go for which can give you
kind of momentum uh and such. It was really really fun.
I really liked it a lot. Yeah, it's cool. It's it's uh I've always wanted to play Queen's Gamble but still love to play because I love to see I like the three different battlefields. It's super fun concept is like
it's our jam, right? Yeah, it's our favorite thing. Super fun. Absolutely loved it. Um, yeah, it it was a good time. Next up is a game that one I was surprised it's turned into a game and then also was very surprised at what it actually ended up being. And this is Baba is You.
Yes. Uh,
so Bobby is You is a deduction video game.
Yeah. Very. This is a puzzle game.
Yeah, it's a puzzle game. If you have like a Switch or a Steam Deck, it's probably on mobile, too. It's a great logic deduction game. Super
where you basically have these blocks that you're pushing around and those blocks are like rocks, flags, keys, whatever. But there's also text and those texts will make up rules for the game. So one of the texts might be like rock is push. So Baba who's like this little bunny that you're controlling because Baba is you. You are Baba. Um if you then push the push against the rock it'll push it along. But if you mess up that text where you push the thing the the rock away from rock is push that then rule disconnects. It doesn't exist anymore which means you'll move right through the walk. So one of the things usually is something like something is win. Usually it's flag is win. So that means if it says flag is when you can get Baba to the flag, you win. But this game breaks your mind because there's all these puzzles, all these different levels where you have to figure out what you need to do. Well, you need to move this here. So you actually need to make it so it says rock is win so that you could go to the rock and that's how you win. All these different crazy things.
You're like navigating a space, but then also
uh changing essentially the rules of the game to create a win condition for yourself. And this now does it in a board game competitive form,
but it's competitive, which is crazy. Like, it's so interesting. So, it's it's on like a grid. Uh, one person places Baba. There's also sometimes another little character named Kiki that you can control. So, one person's Baba, one person is Kiki. And you're basically moving around the board putting in these elements like the various like rocks and flags and stuff. And then also the text elements that are like Baba is you, flag is win, all those things. And you're constantly pushing these things around trying to create a wind condition and then getting whatever is you because you could also make it where rock is you and then all a sudden now Bob is just sitting there and you're moving around a rock cuz now you are a rock and so you're basically trying to like maneuver around each other create a wind condition and then get whoever you are to that wind condition and there's all these different levels which I think
seven worlds which in the video game you're going into kind of different worlds and stuff. just assumed it was like a cooperative thing. Like I
kind of even it's like kind of like an abstract game. Yeah, it is. Like I mean the game is abstract, but like the fact it's competitive and you're each like jockeying and changing the stuff and trying to find the flag. I need to push away flag is win. So now Mike can't win when he gets to the flag and yada yada yada.
I was like, oh, I did not expect that that's what that would be, but that actually sounds really cool.
It sounds really fun. Yeah. I'm not really super into like competitive abstract strategy games cuz I'm just not very smart. And so it's just like, but I'm very curious about this one. Um, and I'm curious if someone will out there will make a cooperative or solo thing. Although I guess you can play the video game, but I love the concept. I think it's super cool way to do it. Um, yeah. I was very surprised when I saw that they were making a video game, a board game out of it, and then was very surprised at what it was.
Yeah.
Next up is going to be a a Civ simultaneous Civ game.
Uh, I'm going to be more excited for this game coming out of S than like any other game.
It's called Time Span. This is a game where uh you are, you know, like a lot of SIB builders, you're going to be building wonders of the world and stuff like that, but this game
uh will be played largely simultaneously action
and it will do away with any of the warfare aspects. It's a that's a common thing in civ games.
That's a thing that civilizations have been known to do is uh go to war.
So, this one's focusing kind of on like peace and prosperity and like the technological advancements of your civilization asymmetric. You're going to have like asymmetric technology boards and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah. So that you're going to be kind of uh doing that, but you're going to be going through and drafting cards uh these wonders. Uh you're going to be building uh building those wonders and you can actually send kind of your camels, your people over to other players wonders to get benefits and things like that.
Knowledge probably. Yeah. Right. Like
Right. But most of the game is played simultaneously. So it kind of does, you know, a lot of these Civ games are are longer and the idea is that it kind of condenses it down to about 90 minutes. Um, but like all the things that they're saying about it, I'm like, "Yes, please."
Check, check, check, check. Yeah, it it looks really, really cool. Um, I know Roto came out with a review of it. He said it's like his favorite civ game. He's also kind of like us. He's kind of like a Care Bear, as he says very often. Doesn't really like fighting. I like civ games. I don't like tearing down other people's civs. I just want my civ to be better. So, the fact that there's like no warfare in this one is like really up my alley. I understand a lot of people like that about games. I think that's great. It's just not really for me. So, this one just seems great. It's like focusing on that. I love the simultaneous play. I love asymmetric stuff. I like civ stuff um as a whole. I'll talk about it when I talk about my favorite game of the month. Um I really enjoy I was just playing Civ 7 this weekend. Like I enjoy civ themes and civ games and stuff. And um Time seems really cool. I'm really really excited to try it. Um the second we get a hold of it, I'm going to be I'm gonna be buying it.
Next up is going to be Queen Alice. I really want to try this game. Don't tell me art doesn't matter in games. This is why I'm mad. It's incredible. I completely agree with that. Like the art and style of this is really cool. This is uh a game set in the Alice and Wonderland universe, you know, through the looking glass.
Queen Alice, are you the white queen or the red queen?
Yeah. Basically, Alice is going to be anointed queen, and it's not necessarily determined what side she's going to go for. Maybe she'll go for both.
Uh and you are going to be taking actions ultimately trying to make sure that the stuff you do is as valuable as possible. And that's usually going to come down to focusing on stuff that will benefit you more. If Alice becomes the white queen or the red queen, there are there's a chess board in the middle that has white and red pieces. You are going to be discarding cards from your hand to to gain some resources and things. you're going to be taking uh playing cards to move one of those chess pieces in a way that
as they move in chess
chess pieces move and then take actions and stuff and that will you know the actions you're doing will advance there's basically two alyses on the board up the red side or the white side
as you kind of go and then if again I've been doing things that give me these uh you know achievements and stuff on the you know the white queen side you'll get more points if Alice becomes the white queen so I enjoy like the card play uh you know there's again multi-use like sometimes you're playing stuff just for a discard ability just for their main ability. Uh the mixing of like actually moving the pieces in chestlike ways and you can capture uh other pieces and things.
Uh having that is like really interesting in kind of you know contract fulfillment for lack of a better word uh and trying to complete these goals and stuff.
Uh and these kind of like four mini gamess that are based on
the suits of the cards. So, what's kind of cool is like when you move a piece on the chessboard, it's going to end up in a row and column. The row will typically give you resources and then the column will be the suit uh that will dictate kind of what area of your player board you're working on. So, it's like all these things I'm like all this stuff seems so interesting and fun and the art is really
it's so good,
really cool. Um yeah, man. I'm like this is one I didn't know about,
you know, a few weeks ago and now I'm obsessed. I don't know when it'll be available here, but I'm like please come over here cuz I really want to try. I know it's a crowdfunding, so I assume it's going to get a wider release, but um yeah, I really really want to try Konis. It looks really cool.
Next up is going to be uh -60 degrees, Alexander Fister and Peter Peter Prince. Another Alexander Fister game. It's been a little while I feel like since we've gotten like a new Alexander Fister game. Yeah, we were talking about this in uh our Essen uh preview people's choice video and
last week's video. Yeah.
Uh but yeah, so this is this is a game where uh we're all in Antarctica game. Yeah.
Yeah. We're all
two to three hours. It says like
Yeah. Have you ever like
put out there like this is 120 180 minutes. It's like I appreciate the honesty. Thank you. First of all, and also it's going to be a big game. Yeah.
So, your like rival kind of uh scientist teams in Antarctica and basically a meteor has come in and hit and there's maybe like some weird mystical stuff going on. And so, you were kind of going out and digging down into the ice and trying to get to uh this meteor and kind of setting up your bases and things along the way. So, it just seems like an interesting subject. And then of course being that you're on Antarctica and it's 60 below.
Uh survival is going to be a part of this is you need to be safe and actually stay alive because it's a harsh world out there with bad storms and stuff. So just again interesting game uh setting.
Antarctica is obviously like one of the more unique places that we have on on this earth. Yeah.
Uh and then adding in
big the biggest desert in the world.
Yeah. Yeah.
Which is it's a weird way to think about it, but it is.
It totally is. Not a lot growing there.
Yeah.
Um
it doesn't rain a lot. Yeah. That's true. Very aid. Yeah, that's so true.
That's what makes a desert, right? So, it's like Yeah, I think I don't quote, but I'm pretty sure it's considered to be the biggest desert in the world.
You blow my mind, right? That's crazy. Um, but yeah, so like mixing all those things together seems really interesting. Uh, that it being like this big game, so I imagine it's, you know, highly
explorative and you're pieces. I'm Yeah, I'm very excited for it.
Yeah, the camps and stuff. Yeah, looks really neat.
A whole day to do this one, I feel like to do it for the first time, right?
But yeah, it's got a really cool kind of evocative cover, which I think helped kind of put it on the map. It's always a good place to start if you're like, "Whoa, what is that?" Uh, and it kind of pulls you in from there. So, yeah. I can't wait to try this one.
Well, a new Stonemire game got announced, so you know, it's number one hottest,
you know, it's just a foregone conclusion.
This is Braided Skies.
Braided Skies, man. This is uh Yeah, Stonemire Games. Uh, and also has uh kind of the world story and art by Andrew Bosley. So, that also helps.
It's a It's a power It's a power group. Yeah, you're going to have a cool looking cover stone attached to it. Interesting world. This kind of sky ships and you run like a tourism company uh in this world.
Galactic cruise is that too. Like I I enjoy this like here's this
fantastical you know uh tourism companies hospitality businesses. Yeah. It's like okay cool. Uh yeah. Yeah. So, in this one, um, you know, they start just started bringing out information, uh, about this one, and I watched, uh, Jamie Stagmire did kind of a going through a example kind of turn examples to show you some of the things they'll be doing in the game. Uh, and this is a game where you're going to be placing out your airship, uh, getting people onto those and then I think harvesters.
Um, and you are going out to the board to do bonus actions and stuff, but there's this kind of area of the the board that's covered in clouds and you can actually kind of dive into the clouds and reveal,
right,
more um, action spaces. And then some of those even have a secondary you can dive deeper in and kind of change the game state for all players.
That part I think is like super cool. It's just like you don't quite know what actions you're going to have from game to game.
Yeah, it's interesting. This is nowhere near similar game, but Avalon is kind of similar where it's like the Avalon uh through the discovering through the mist.
Yeah. You're kind each turn you have to like kind of discover what's there.
Is mist the new thing? Is that the is that the new anthropomorphic animal?
Is this frogs? Yeah, frogs are hot. Frogs are hot right now. frogs right now.
But yeah, it seems really cool. Yeah, I'm always interested in Stonem games as are many people. Hence why whenever it gets announced, it's always like number one on the hotness. Yeah, I really like that discovery mechanic. Oh, that's kind of interesting. And then and
it's it's always fun to like
even like in a game like say like Kverna where like you know what the actions are going to be, but you don't know what order they're going to come out in because every round in Kverna a new action is is revealed.
Um
and I just I find that to be very very fun. Yeah.
And so I I think it's cool.
Yeah, I agree. and and uh you're getting these like wonder cards. Uh so I guess wonders are also a thing right now.
Amen. People love the wonders.
Bumping up these these tracks which are sort of different areas and things as that you're showing off and taking people on these grand adventures. So yeah, it's like one that like seems like a really cool world. Andrew Bosley definitely is able to create really cool worlds,
especially like kind of fantastically.
Yeah, kind of steampunky, you know. Um it it's just evocative. So it's no surprise that it shot up to the hotness straight away. It does look very cool. Um, and so that is number one on the Honda.
Indeed. Mike missed my that thing you do reference, but whatever.
Oh, what did you say?
I said, "Yeah, man. I love the Oners."
Oh, ridiculous. Give you that.
No, no, I shouldn't. One knuckle. Boom.
Theers.
All right. So, that is the end of the hotness there. Um, the Oners. Shouts out to um
Kevin Pollock.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah. All right. Um, we're going to go into the most played games of the month. So, you can always log your games on BG and you should do that. You can link like your BGA account. link your board game stats account, all this different kind of stuff to it to log your game plays because it will change this list. So Mikey,
um number 10 of the most played games of the month is Sea Salt and Paper with 5,619.
Wow. Kind of impressive. It's been doing it for a long time. Like it's so way up there.
So easy to play, you know? It's so quick and easy to play. Wingspan has 5,953. Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Rings Trick Taking Game uh has 6,96. Still going strong.
Magical athlete. We talked about I mentioned that was going to be on this list. Um, and people are playing this a lot. Yeah.
64 uh 31 for that.
Wow.
Maybe because it's getting colder and people are just inside more.
I think we're going to see a a sort of an uptick in
games played overall because like again the big releases are, you know, Gen Con has happened. Some of those releases are hitting stores. Essence's happening. Those releases are going to hit stores. We're heading into the holidays. People are getting games on and on and on. It's getting colder.
So, yeah, I think we're going to see a general update.
Yeah, I love it. Uh, Castle Combo has 6,433. Marvel Champions has 7,823. Arc Nova has 8,090. Harmonies is again also stayed strong. Like, it's a great game, don't get me wrong, but like I just figure it would have gone down the list eventually. People be loving Harmonies. You did get expansions. I guess two expansions coming out for that, too.
Harmony had 8,222. Bomb Busters, um, always up here as 8,674. And Flip 7 has the most, but usually it's the most by a couple thousand. Uh, it has 8,696. So, it actually only has 22 more plays than Bomb Busters. Wow.
So, maybe we're going to see Flip 7 get dethroned here.
Well, and now you have Flip 7 with a vengeance and stuff. So, that might be splitting the plays a little bit. I wonder if that might Yeah. cause it to dethrone itself. But, if you were to consider all versions of Flip 7 at all times, I think probably that gap would be a little higher. So, uh, but those are the most played uh, games. I want to talk about some Murf picks. But first, you got to check this out.
My Murf pick is going to be from Nicholas BG. It's not me. I promise. Even though Nicholas, if you're watching this, you spell the same Nicholas the same way I spell Nicholas. Do you It doesn't have an H in it. Do Does everyone spell your name wrong, too? Because everyone throws an H in my name. It's a lot weirder. But nonetheless, Nicholas BG made horrified batified. They made a insanely cool version of horrified like Batman theme and particularly like very like Batman kind of theme. It's it's not like the modern Christopher Nolan ones. It's kind of like old school stuff. It looks really really cool. They're using like hero click miniatures for the miniatures, which is such a good idea because any kind of superhero out there is going to have like hero click miniatures for them and they tend to be pretty cheap, which is nice. Uh, but it's this really cool fullmadeout version of horrified batified. And so it's Batman themed. They provided the assets so you can make your own horrified batified if you want to. I think this is the coolest thing ever.
Very often I'm constantly just shouting out people who make really cool things for board games. I think it's my favorite thing in the world is someone who is so passionate about something, whether it's board games or not. If you're so passionate about something that you make something like this, I just I love that about people. It's my favorite thing about humanity and people is that kind of stuff. and it's all over BG, so I tend to highlight it a lot. Nicholas BG, we're we're named brothers. Um, and this is such a cool version of horrified. My mer pick is a post from Caroline Black, the dislexic gamer. It's weirdly hard to say. Uh, who did a post uh about games that have great recall turns. So games that have, you know, worker placement in it are often going to have uh, you know, a cadence of placing, you know, your workers out, doing actions, and then at some point needing to get those workers back. Now, for some games, like Vidiculture, it'll be sort of at the end of the year, you get all your stuff back, but a lot of other games will do sort of a kind of throughout the game, you're going to take turns to recall those actions, and some of them might be very straightforward, uh, where you just sort of take a turn to get your stuff back and not much happens. There's other games like Tapestry where that's kind of representing you moving into a whole new era and there's actually a lot of things that happen. You get turns uh you know, you get actions and resources and all your kind of points from the game. And I really like games that give you interesting uh things you can do. Like one game that uh we played recently was Andromeda's Edge. And in this one, when you're recalling your ships and things, you're going to be activating a whole bunch of modules on your board. It kind of is the time you're going to run the
engine that you are building. And I really enjoy how kind of active that feels. You know, you feel like it's a quintessential part of your strategy and your game and not just a throwaway turn. So, it's something I really enjoy. There's several examples cited in Caroline's piece about, you know, games that go from really basic to really involve kind of recall turns. It's just something I'm like, yes, I love games that have interesting recall turns. I think it's an underutilized uh mechanism and I want to see more of it. As always, we like to end here with best of board game geek talking about what we've personally been enjoying playing because that's what we're here. We're all board game fans.
U for me, it's gonna be Col.
Uh we played it in person recently at a convention. It's just hit uh board game arena. Might still be in alpha on there, but it's, you know, getting played. So, I've actually been playing it a lot recently, which is
uh this kind of civ simulation simulation game where you're uh creating a world, going out and exploring. You're mutating your people. you're you're procreating, you're taking all these different actions using two dice at a time.
Yeah.
Uh from Sepheld. And so this is a game that just feels like a big old sandbox and gives you a ton of room to explore. And so it's been fun to be able to play on board game arena and actually play a bunch and actually get a chance to finally
explore some areas and strategies and things that I have not tried prior. It just seems like there's more and more things you could try to do in this game. So I'm really enjoying kind of digging into it.
Yeah, it's that game where you can play so many times. You can just every time you can try something different and just see what happens. It's I I love Colution. My favorite game could be Evolution cuz I really enjoyed our play of it. But I'm going to choose Imperium Horizons or really any of the Imperium games cuz I don't remember I don't think the faction I play was technically from Imperium Horizons, but that's the newest one. The Imperium games.
The Imperium games. Um yeah, I I' I love Imperium. Uh I love it so much. I particularly prefer to play it solo. This is a game where you're going to take on a ancient civilization. Um including some fantastical one. There's like Martians and cultists and stuff in there, but a lot of times it's like you're the Romans, you're the Greeks, you know, you're the uh you're, you know, the the Chinar, lots of different stuff.
Atlanteanss.
Yeah, the Atlantanss is one of like the magical ones. And so you choose them, they all have a completely unique deck. They play very differently. They all play in a way that that um you know, civilization play. So if you're playing the Romans, they were very expansionist, right? They play. So a lot of it's about getting a bunch of regions and getting those cuz they're like constantly out there expanding their empire. So, they all play very very accurately and it's just really really fun. The solo is great. You actually play against another um civilization and every civilization has like a little card for that solo bot which works really really well. It's super easy because it really just allows you to kind of get in and learn that civilization. I'm so bad at this game. I think my score got doubled up and I was playing on the easiest difficulty. So, I'm constantly trying to get better at this game. But one of my problems is this is a game where like you want to play the same faction again and again because you really need to learn that faction and every time I just keep switching it up because I want to play this
fun though, right?
I'll play the Minowins this time. I'm going to play these people this time and so I just keep doing it. But I'm having a great time. I was so inspired by that I I uh designed and made a bunch of 3D printed inserts for our copy of the game. I spent like a whole Saturday doing that. I love Imperium Horizons. Uh it's just super super fun. That is our picks everybody. Let us know what you have been playing in the comments below. Let us know what games from SN you are excited to find out more about. Go check out that preview. Let us know what you think about the games that are on the hotness. Are they on your personal hotness list or not? Get all those in the comments below, everyone. And we will see y'all next month. Bye, everybody.