Board Games Hitting My Table - 2nd Half February 2025

hey everybody and welcome to another edition of board games hitting my table this is where I take a look at all of the games that I have played over the last couple of weeks this episode covering the second half of February 2025 now I don't have to many games here to talk about and the games I am talking about are fairly light so it's going to be a quicker video than usual uh but before we get started I want to give a shout out to the show sponsor kendra.

co.uk who are my goto online retailer and if you use the link in the show notes or the QR code then you can get 5% off your first order but let's start with foundations of metropolis so if you're not aware with this game and it's basically a reprinting of foundations of Rome but in a much more sensible size with much more sensible uh components but I believe the game play is um identical so we played this one at four players which I think is the uh the optimal Play account because you play on a a bigger grid and it's much more interactive so super streamlined little economic game as you are claiming these different units on the board by drafting these cards I it's simple slide row system so you know the the newer the cards the the more expensive they are um and then you are basically plotting those pieces of land with your markers and then you can build your little polyomino buildings on those spots to generate you income uh generate your population and even placees these uh these Civic buildings that will piggy back off the other buildings surrounding it now uh I didn't really get much momentum in this game a couple of my opponents got some really good deeds down early and managed to get some really big buildings down which gave them a huge jump um especially when it came to the population and it was hard for me to make any ground up um but still thoroughly enjoyed this one so smooth easy to play definitely has that wide net in terms of who it can capture and who would enjoy this one because you know more seasoned Euro gamers are going to enjoy it as well as complete Gateway gamers in my opinion so thoroughly impressed um with foundations of metropolis and that one definitely going to be uh sticking around in my collection uh moving on then we played a I played a two-player game of kahuna classic from the cosmos line abstract strategy game as you're trying to control these different Islands playing these cards and building these Bridges if you have the majority of bridges surrounding an island you'll kick the other player off which could have a kind of chain reaction uh the game is actually really interesting but I think the scoring system is a little bit off because you play three rounds which is three times through this deck uh the winner of the first round as in the player who had the the most presence on those islands will get one point the second round is two points but the third round is the difference between the two so I I think I managed to win the first two rounds which meant I was obviously three points up at which gave my opponent a huge mounted decline which they they couldn't overcome um I think this game is actually um although I really enjoy it I played this with um a close friend of mine not too long ago and we had probably the most competitive and thrilling game of kahuna that I've ever played and since that point I've not really been able to reach those highs again so I think I might move on from this one despite me you know enjoying and appreciating it I think I don't really want to tarnish my opinion on it so that is Kahuna some smaller card games now we played a three-player game of cabanga lovely little shedding game um you know I spoke quite highly of this one and I still do the game does pretty much play you but it's something about it that has um that has a lot of fun to offer basically it's a game you're shedding your cards by playing these numbered cards of different colors and then the on the gap between the two cards the other players can throw their cards away which will give them a little boost that was fun on that same session we played a three-player game of Trio and also a three-player game of scout uh we play true so we played two uh games of Trio um I didn't do very well on that one either I think my memory was a bit frazzled and the yeah it's nice to get Scout back to the table you know I always speak highly of scout I think it's a really well-deserved um game in terms of how popular it's become and how well received it is um but for some reason I don't really play it very often and I can't quite answer why I don't play it as often as I should do it just seems to always lose out its its table time but nice to get that one back after so long yeah enjoyed my game of that one uh we played a four player game of bomb Busters so introduce this one to my girlfriend the first time she she played it um so we did start again from the beginning um a little bit rough to start with but after that we started to um play the game quite well I went through the first few scenarios and it was nice to uh to play something with without a Competitive Edge for a change I suppose um nice that this game is fully cooperative and the stakes still quite low in this um deduction game where you're trying to um snip these wires by finding pairs between all the different players using some very simple deduction methods um so I'm not sure if I enjoyed it as much as I did the first time but it's still a really nice design that I can certainly see why so many people do enjoy it we played a four player game of rays so this was actually my I think my Hidden Gem of 2024 when it came to my my Chairman's Choice Awards uh this one interesting little kind of a a chicken style card game as you are wagering on yourself to to have the most of a certain type of card in your hand but the value of these cards changes based on these dice that are rolled and then you can basically try and drop out of the round or you can keep on fighting to be the last player remaining which will give you a nice bunch of points but you'll also gain points based on the cards that other players have donated so again sometimes if you're going to fight it might be worth fighting to the end so you win them all but you know the more you fight and if you lose the more points you're giving to your opponent so cool game uh we played a two player game well I played a two-player game of lost C's so this is quite an interesting game actually because I bought this game as a kind of a basket filler really just so I didn't have to pay shipping and since then this one probably is played more than any other bigger game that I've played so it's a it's a a puzzly Style game as you are building up this kind of um frame of these different scoring conditions you got a vertical and obviously a horizontal axis here and then you're drafting these tiles to populate them and trying to score based on the on the wants and needs of these different objectives so some might say I'll have exactly I don't know more boats or have more boats than any other symbol or have no waves and so on and it's one of those games where obviously the more you play it or the longer the game goes on the more difficult it is to complete each of those objectives because sometimes they're conflicting sometimes it's super narrow the chances that you'll get them done but there's something about it that works it's remarkably smooth and um we you know with a two-player game you normally are playing with a variance which means that you are I think when you choose a tile you get rid of another one before your opponent gets there go I I do away with that I just put one more tile than the number of players and then just do a simple drafting system which I think works a lot better and it doesn't feel as nasty um but you don't see as many TOS which can affect the balancing but the game is so fast that it doesn't really bother me so that is lost ciz played a two-player game of uh fairy ring this is actually the first time I've played this game at two players is and I have to say I don't think it's the the optimal player count in fact I think it's the weakest out of the the three different player counts you can play two three or four players but it's still fun but I think it's more fun when you are jumping on um with other players because this is quite an interactive game where you're drafting these cards and moving your fery based on these mushrooms that you play and you move not only on your own cards but you also move on your opponent's cards and depending on where you land they'll get a bonus and also you'll get a bonus it feels like a I don't know like something like matchi Coro or something like that and the more players you interact with just the more the more fun it is but still it works well I think I did quite I did quite well because I managed to play these um these spring cards really early in the game and because there were fewer players only two of us uh these cards score when when fairies fly past you and of course with fewer cards in the mix I was getting flown past quite a lot that managed to get me quite a few points so that is fair ring again I'll probably not table this as much at two players from this point on but I wanted to see how it worked staying on the lighter games uh we played again on that same session we played a two-player game of Captain flip now this is a game that scales really well because it is multiplayer Solitaire essentially the only thing that will affect the other players is how quickly you populate the board which will mean that you can end the game on your terms rather than your opponent's terms but very simp set collection methods you're just drawing a tile from the bag you can choose to keep that side or you can flip it over without looking at it and then not have the ability to flip it back so it has this very small little hook like a pushy luck hook and um yeah all these different characters will score in different ways um I actually managed to draw a couple of these bombers really early which are like these they're really good for points but if you get too many of them you automatically lose unfortunately I managed to get the monkeys that will flip them over um and manage to make up for that but still wasn't enough my opponent played really well and managed to score loads more points through I think it was mostly the chefs that will score based on the uh based on the rows and also each round they had the map which means you're getting passive points but if you haven't played Captain flip um I suppose if you don't like really like games you might you might bounce off of it and not appreciate it but if you are always kind of hunt for accessible family weight style games that anyone could enjoy this is a really good one one and I highly recommend looking at it so that is Captain flip and the final game for my own collection here is spectacular so one of my favorite games from 2024 I love this puzzle tile and dice drafting game um as you are building up this little zoo I mean the theme is is really pasted on um but basically you are trying to create groups of certain terrain types and they're multiplied by these Towes that have these little hearts on but each tole needs a die on it that you are drafting from your own pool but also from these um these boards that will pass around amongst the players in kind of an open drafting system that you only have access to that round and because you can see what your opponent chooses you can kind of have a good idea about what's coming up next so it's not like a a closed draft it's like an open Clos draft because you can see what's coming up rather than just speculating which I think is a really underdone way of using that passenger draft system now I think out of all the games I played of spectacular this one might have been the the tightest in terms of not getting many points didn't really seem to work as well as I would have liked um mainly because of the objectives I had were really difficult but um still thoroughly enjoyed this one I think it's such a fun game and I think the the ratio between the the decisions you're making um and the uh you know the length of the game because it's only like 20 to 30 minutes is is fantastic so probably one of the richest filler style games you'll find and it doesn't feel like a filler despite being so fast and yeah continues to impress me and I wonder if they're going to support this game more with um with future material and I hope they do because it is so much fun and I like this I like the system of the game so that is spectacular and the only other game that I played that is a friends copy is that we played um smartphone Inc so we played smartphone ink with the I think it's called like the 1 one upgrade um which is the the first expansion um which makes the game a lot tighter with lower player counts we' played a three player game in this area control Eurostar game with an economic Edge now I really do like the action selection system in this game as you are overlapping these two um discs or these two tablets I suppose and that will show the actions you can take and those actions will be things such as investing in new technology and traveling around the map to go into new regions I'm just producing mobile phones and so on I think that's really neat but I don't know I think the more I play this one up the more I'm struggling to find the fun factor of it I mean I think a big part of the game that I didn't really enjoy as much is because I got absolutely smashed but that's that's fine um still yeah this one I don't know I don't really look forward to playing it and when I'm playing it it's it's fine it's a little bit I don't know it's just a little bit too zero some I think and one thing I will say it doesn't really out stay as welcome either it's pretty fast and Punchy good ideas but I think it could have done with a little injection of of fun I don't know maybe that's just me that's uh smartphone uh Inc so that's it really that's all of the games that I have uh played hopefully something on here has has caught your attention and uh you've enjoyed the video if you have please be sure to hit like And subscribe to the channel and check out my other content too and for everybody else I'll see you next time on chairman of the board but what