It’s a fun game in the vein of Scotland Yard and Fury of Dracula. It’s weird how many games have you tracking down a criminal in London.
I haven’t played it yet but I am finally getting my copy of Unconscious Mind just a year and a half after I pledged for it 
The latest board game I picked up is Akropolis, which is a three-dimensional (tiles on top of other tiles, with only what’s on top at the end counting for score but higher layers scoring more) tile placement game.
To celebrate Halloween week I played my three versions of Horrified: the original Universal Monsters one, American Monsters and Greek Monsters. Won some and lost some but had a few very dramatic wins that came down to the final turn.
The original is one of my favorite games in my collection but I enjoy the others also. Decided not to get the new Chthulu themed one. Just don’t have space for games anymore and have to be selective.
I also played Horrified at a Halloween-themed board game party. We played the Universal one twice. The first time we lost badly. The second time we planned things better and had a last minute win.
I got Castellans about a month ago and have been trying to get that on the table. I finally succeeded this week.
I need to break out my copy of Patton’s Best. It’s a solitaire game from the golden age of Avalon Hill, which simulates being a Sherman tank commander in the European theater between D-Day and the end of the war, and each session plays out as a single day, from dawn to dusk, where you and your company are either advancing through France with minimal opposition, engaged in battle with a large German force, or opposing a German counterattack. There’s a big board with a representation of the French countryside that you move around on and a separate panel to represent the relative positions of your tank and your allies/enemies in battle, several hundred cardboard tokens to represent your tank and your allies and enemies and ground conditions and actions, and several laminated sheets covered with tables to consult to determine the outcomes of your actions. You roll a d100 (two d10s, actually) for everything from the weather conditions to what kind of German forces you encounter, and in combat you assign a task to each of your tank’s five crewmembers (commander, gunner, loader, driver, and assistant driver) and roll dice to determine the outcome. As the campaign progresses, you can upgrade from the basic Sherman to a number of variants, your tank or your crew (or yourself!) can die or be injured and have to be replaced, you can earn promotions or commendations, and you can encounter everything from a Tiger heavy panzer to a guy in a truck with a bazooka. It’s remarkably detailed - you can lay down smoke to reduce the enemy’s chance of hitting you while you move into a better position to attack them, have a crewmember attack lightly armored enemies or provide suppressing fire with the machine gun when they aren’t needed for their main task, rotate the turret and fire in one direction while moving in another, switch from armor piercing shells to high explosives depending on your target, and all kinds of other tactical decisions, while accounting for the fact that both yours and the enemy’s shots might be less accurate if it’s rainy or foggy, or more accurate if one or both of you is stuck in the mud.
It was because of a used copy of that game that my dad gave me in 7th grade that I developed an obsession with World War II all the way through high school, and about 10 years ago I tracked down an unused copy on eBay and paid $150 for it so I could relive those days, but after playing through a campaign when I first re-acquired it I haven’t opened it for years.
Terraforming Mars and Catan are the most played games for the small group I game with.
I know this is an old question but I couldn’t see that it’s been answered. I’ve played this version of cribbage -
I can’t vouch if it’s decent as it’s the only version I’ve played, but I’ve enjoyed it.
This is available on BGA now, and we’ve been playing it every day the last week. Very lightweight from a rules perspective, but it still feels a little burn-y as you’re actually working to arrange your week.
We’ve also been playing Namalia online, which is laying down animal exhibits in overlapping grids to achieve goals (if you know Chomp, this is a slightly more complicated version).
Some physical plays of Cities lately, which is like Namalia and Chomp, but now you’re stacking city floors like Manhattan to hit goals. Very quick and easy to set up.
I really like the look of that game, have you played it yet?
I played Gugong on Sunday. It’s a good game I haven’t played in a while.
I was hoping to also get a game of Wendake in but we were running short on time after finishing Gugong. Maybe next week.
Unfortunately I haven’t played Unconscious Mind yet. I unpacked it and it is gorgeous and I am chomping at the bit to play it and a few other games I got in the last month or two (Foundations of Metropolis, Lord of the Rings Duel, Civolution, Explorers of Navoria and an Expansion for Res Arcana) but family issues are taking up time right now. Hope to catch up during the holidays.
Wanted to follow up that I finally did okay Unconscious Mind and I loved it. It’s a pretty heavy game with a decent sized rules teach but it’s worth it. In fact are my top 5 games for 2024 (one is a 2024 release that became widely available this year):
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Let’s Go to Japan
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Unconscious Mind
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Raising Robots
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Forest Shuffle (especially with the Alpine expansion)
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Star Wars Unlimited
We often have a game night with a large group of people (8+) so we are always looking something that is easily learned and can accommodate that many.
We usually end up playing Presidents and Assholes or Hockey with two teams.
Recently we picked up Flip 7 which everyone seems to like. Super easy to learn and has enough press-your-luck, screw-your-neighbor, devise-a-strategy to keep it interesting.
We usually break up into two games when we have 6+ players.
7 Wonders with the city expansion plays 8
Take 5 (aka 6 nimmt!) plays 10
For a slighty 
longer game:
Mega Civilization (now named Mega Empires) plays up to 18… (8 is the max I will run)
Brian
Two games that work great with big groups are Green Team Wins and Just One.
I second Just One (haven’t played Green Team WIns). We also like So Clover for larger groups.
My wife & I received or mutually gifted for Christmas:
Bruxelles 1893
Kanban EV
Terraforming Mars card game version
Unmatched (Slings & Arrows)
Sagrada expansion
I play a ton of this on BGA, usually Alpine. I’ll be interested to see how it goes when they let the Alpine and the Woodland Edge expansions be played at the same time.
Played a bunch of games this holiday week. Some new, some old.
Res Arcana Duo. A two player stand alone expansion to a game we love but hadn’t played in a long time. We played it as self contained game and then shuffled it in to the base game as an expansion. Good times.
Spots. A fun light push your luck game with cute dogs.
Foundations of Metropolis. This didn’t land as well as I had hoped. It was okay. Might be better with more than two players. As a scaled down version of another game (Foundations of Rome) it has great production values in its own right.
SETI. A beautiful table hog that was tighter and harder to wrap my head around than I expected. Enjoying it though.
The guy who made that (Tomáš Holek) had never published a game, and he got 3 out in 2024, all of them at least pretty good. Very impressive.
Played Flatiron today. You and your opponent are different firms trying to make the most VPs in helping to construct the Flatiron Building in NYC. You gain points mostly by constructing pillars and floors of the building. You do this by selecting one of the 4 surrounding streets and do an action corresponding to the street, like “gain money”, “build a pillar”, or “buy a pillar”. You also have the option of buying a card, which you can add to the street. Each street has 2 base actions and when you buy a card, from then on when you go to that street you also do that action in addition to the 2 base actions. up to 3 cards per street, so if you’ve bought all 3 for that street (22nd street, 23rd street, 5th avenue, and Broadway) you’d take 5 actions instead of 2.
As such, it may be the first pure engine builder in my collection. Most of my other games that have engine building elements also have an income or deck building component.
The downsides are that the game is only 1-2 players, and that it seems too easy, since I beat the solo player 65-75 even on hard mode the first time. I can’t tell if it was because I misunderstood the rules, or I got lucky, or if the game is too easy in solo mode. Part of it was luck, because I got a very good bonus card without even planning for it, but even without it I would have handily beat the solo player.