Note that there are other cards besides people that you can draft. Some reduce your food needs, and some get you (I forget official name) stone knives which can get you extra resources or VP.
Also note that each person as their own worker placement spots – the only competition is the card draft. Each player also has a special power.
Brian
One thing to think about, a convention like Essen doesn’t have a game library or open play area, it’s aimed at distributors and those seeking the new…so you can demo the absolutely newest/unpublished games, though you usually wouldn’t play longer games to completion. Other cons will have libraries and open play areas…it just depends on what you’re looking for.
The one I went to, Dice Tower Con, was focused on playing the games with others. There’s an entire full convention hall set up with tables, and you can either play games you have or borrow games from their library. You can either play with friends or put up a flag saying that players are needed and people passing by can just hop in.
The downside to that part, though, is that this particular con always tries some new digital method of finding players, i.e. you have an app or social media site that you look for other players and when you do find them, you then can meet up to play the face to face board game. So since the method always changes, you only have half the people using it, so half the games that are looking for players won’t show up on the app, and the other half will only show up with flags on the con floor, resulting in half as many games visible for each method.
I played Fromage for the first time at the con too. Didn’t win but came close. I like both of the unique mechanics of having 3 different ages of cheese, so that if you use a strong action, you won’t get your worker back until 2 full turns have passed, and the rotating board that has 4 different sections you can score on, each of which do different cheesy things like a fromagerie or cheese competition, which lets everyone play at once and also changes the game up every turn.
Stone ball cards get you skaill knives.
I have Skara Brae and I’ve been playing it, most recently last week.
I’ve also played two of the West Kingdom games, Architects and Viscounts, this week. And Finspan, Wingspan, Stamp Swap, and Paths of Light and Shadow.
Played a bunch of stuff lately (may have already mentioned some of this):
Received my copy of Earthborne Rangers. This was our first try at a campaign game. I really liked it but it’s a hard game to understand how to play until you actually start playing it. My wife was only so so on it so I may have to continue it solo.
We played Shackleton Base. I really liked this. It has multiple corporations that create different sub games so every game feels a little different.
We pulled Tiletum off the shelf because I recently got the expansion. I really fun underrated comborific game. Haven’t yet played with the expansion. We just played the base game to refresh ourselves on the rules.
My board game group has been really into Space Base lately. Each player starts with a fleet of twelve ships. On your turn, you roll two dice, and choose to activate either one or two ships, using either the sum of the dice, or the two dice independently. You get money from your ships, which you use to upgrade your fleet. When you upgrade, you flip the old ship upside down, showing a different value, which you score when any other player rolls that number.
We’ve played it a least once per gaming session since we got it, sometimes twice.
My wife got this for me for my birthday, and it’s just lovely: build an ecosystem for your creatures. My wife is super non-competitive at games, just enjoying the building of something aesthetically pleasing, so this works really well for her. My younger daughter is in it for the imagination; and my older daughter won the first game she ever played of it, because she’s a board game genius.
If you like Cascadia, I would suggest checking out Harmonies as well. It’s another game about building habitats and placing animals in them.
I avoided Cascadia because it’s artwork is close enough to remind me of the overly-simplistic Parks. Although the artwork itself of Parks is quite good, and Parks was worth a few game plays, and was definitely worth the meme points for taking selfies of myself with the cards from the game representing national parks at those National Parks.
Excellent–I’ll look for it!
A friend of mine just introduced me to Spirit Island. I understand the hype! He’s an expert at it, playing it solo almost daily for a long time–but he’s also a kindergarten teacher, so he’s expert at teaching games. It’s super-fun, and I’m hoping we can set up a semiregular game night during the school year.
Glad you like it! It’s one my family’s go-to games. It’s so easy to tune the difficulty and it replays differently enough each time.
I’m playing it on the iPad now, my little online gaming group is always looking for something new. Not sure it’s going to replace Terraforming Mars and Viticulture as our go-to game, but it’s okay so far.
Reminded me very strongly of AQUA: Biodiversity in the Oceans , which we’ve played FtF a few times.
My top ten games from 2025 (some are 2024 games that came out late last year.
- Galactic Cruise
- Civolution
- SETI
- Shackleton Base
- The Gilded Realms (a small Kickstarter I backed)
- Star Trek Captain’s Chair
- Endeavor Deep Sea
- Unconscious Mind
- Fate of the Fellowship
- Timelancers (another small Kickstarter)
Honorable Mentions to Earthborne Rangers which is. 2023 game but the second printing delivered this year and Marvel United which is several years old but after getting some additional content for it went from Fine to really good.
We just got this, it’s good for young kids (my 7 year old and 4 year old love it, our 2 year old is not far off from playing it) but it also enjoyable for grown ups…
I’ve only played two of these (Endeavor and Unconscious Mind), I need to get cracking!
What did I get for Christmas, you ask?
…I gave Barcelona and Caper: Europe.
…I got Compile, A Gest of Robin Hood, and Battle for Germany (the latter a nostalgic gift after my wife overheard me talking about it)
We finished Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West (2023) over the Christmas break.
If you have never played a Legacy game before, the game is played over 12 rounds with the play area expanding over time. The players permanently modify the board, tickets, and events and the game play/rules change between each round. At the end you have a board that is unique and very different from how it started.
At ~$100 it isn’t cheap. However, it took us about 25 hours to finish with 5 players. So the cost per hour of entertainment is pretty low.
Spending the New Year playing Speakeasy. A fun, heavy game that takes a picnic table to set up.
On our list! But at a convention, not on our table. We’ve played Kanban EV a few times in recent days though.