I feel very mixed about his #boardgames but Cole Wehrle is always a superb podcast guest.

Lyme Regis

Fürstenfeld 1 hour engine builder where you're trying to build production in a confined area and then build over your production with game-winning buildings. It's all about timing. An interesting market manipulation battle for gamers. FF does this better than anyone. #boardgames

Khôra Exactly what it looks like. You push markers up beige recessed tracks. There is a theme but there might as well not be. Zero player interaction. Basically a solo game. I'm bewildered by the popularity of these games. I probably feel the same way my dad did looking at punk music. 😂 #boardgames

My son was diagnosed at 5 years old as autistic but now I say he is mentally disabled as he has little to nothing in common with people who I see being diagnosed as autistic. https://www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-learning/general/uta-frith-interview-autism-not-spectrum #autism

Quartermaster General Cold War Designed for 3 factions and it handles kingmaking brilliantly as the 2nd place faction has to give the fraction in last place VPs if they fall over 20 behind. Therefore it becomes a 2:1 fight. Always cagey and competitive. #boardgames

Tantony In an interview with Chris Wray at BGG, David Parlett recommended Tantony as one of his best games for four in partnerships. It's quite different from any other standard card game I've played. You have to decide whether to give tricks away or keep them. Highly recommended. #boardgames

Tantony In an interview with Chris Wray at BGG, David Parlett recommended Tantony as one of his best games for four in partnerships. It's quite different from any other standard card game I've played. You have to decide whether to give tricks away or keep them. Highly recommended. #boardgames

Chicago & NorthWestern Placement of track is unusually tight in this cube rails game because each company has to get its track to a home city and then to a western city in order to get bonus dividends. All track emanates from Chicago so there's a sprint, driven by players banding up with each other through buying shares, which gives more money to build track. Lots of subtle decisions and interaction. Cube rails should be way more popular. #boardgames

Dead of Winter I last played this in 2021. At the time I was grumpy about coops and ameritrash, but I've since got over that now that I'm bombarded with 4 hour worker placement point salads. It was a lot more fun than I remember. Quicker and simpler and super thematic. We couldn't complete a crisis and were overrun, but we were really close and it was very satisfying overall. #boardgames

Moon Colony Bloodbath Establish an engine of building cards to protect you from disasters that wipe out your space colony in slow motion. Last player standing wins. You can see this was created by the designer of Dominion in that it's light but there's plenty of strategy. #boardgames

Merv Fabio Lopiano recently made Shackleton Base which has been popular. I tried this earlier design because of the theme. It's a sophisticated mesh of tracks and worker placement. It's not a huge monstrosity at 2.5 hours and sticks to the theme tolerably well, but it leaves me cold #boardgames

Burt Lancaster is great in The Swimmer (1968). So much better than the brain-dead westerns he was usually in.

The Swimmer (1968)

A man spends a summer day swimming home via all the pools in his quiet suburban neighborhood.

#movies

Hallertau I love the number of resources and how you're trying to grow as much as you can on your fields. The separate sheep economy is also really clever. Impressive how Rosenberg has made so many games about farming which are similar in feel but really quite different mechanically. #boardgames

Feels good to see snowdrops. 🕊️

Southern Rails A connections game with no money. It's all about shared incentives. Fast and easy. I have seen it compared to Through the Desert or Blue Lagoon, but I might prefer it to both. Very similar to Iberian Rails but without the distraction of money. #boardgames

*Easy* win in Fate of the Fellowship #boardgames

Iberian Railways I love cube rail games but this one fell a little flat. You start off with €0 and have to take loans to do anything. 👍 Instead of the richest player winning, there are victory point conditions.👎 👎 Overall it's fine, but there are so many excellent cube rails games. #boardgames

Wyrmspan Exactly what it says on the tin. Slightly more complex version of Wingspan with pink dragons. (The dragon with the head of a pufferfish is laughably bad.) #boardgames

Power Grid Spain & Portugal I'm pretty sure this map was not tested properly. At step 2, weak windfarms are added and gum up the auction. No one wants them and only one is deleted each round. Ruins the game. 🤦‍♂️ What was FF thinking? #boardgames