board games

Top 10 games played in 2025

Hey everybody,
As we hurtle towards 2026, I’ve been thinking about the games that I’ve played over the last year, and truthfully, there has been some corkers. I wanted to do a top ten list, because that’s what all the cool kids do, right? But also, I wanted to try to record how I’ve felt about gaming in 2025, so I could come back to this next year, and see if my top ten has shifted about at all. It’s not a top ten in terms of how many were played (though those stats are included, naturally!) and it isn’t really a top ten in terms of my personal rankings. It’s very much looking at the games played this year, and how much I like them based on that. Does that make sense? Who knows… let’s just take a look at the list, though, shall we?

10. Star Wars the deckbuilding game (17)

This game crept onto my radar at the tail end of 2024, and over the course of the year I’ve played it using the Leaders variant that allows you to effectively simulate an opponent and what they would be doing in the main game. It’s a really good game, and I love it for the slightly puzzle-y nature it has. The artwork is, of course, top notch. It has seen some love in 2025 with a Mandalorian expansion, and next year we’re set to receive another expansion of some sort – so I can definitely see this remaining as a firm favourite as time goes on!

9. Arkham Horror LCG (2 campaigns, 16 games)

I’m really not entirely sure how I feel about this game anymore. I have such fondness for the early campaigns, and it’s really tied up with a lot of good memories for me. This year, I have played through two full campaigns, starting with The Circle Undone in January, which felt like a bit of a chore at the time, despite the fact that it’s one of my favourites. I played through The Dunwich Legacy almost in a day, and really enjoyed that one. But despite picking up the two latest campaigns earlier in the year, I’ve found it very difficult to want to play this much in 2025. The new edition is coming next year, of course, and I’ve decided not to continue to collect it; as such, I’m currently feeling pretty bittersweet about this game. Maybe I’ll play it some more and rekindle the love in 2026, though…

8. A Game of Thrones LCG (second edition) (1)

This game sprung out of left field and has really grabbed me. I think the fact that it was familiar enough, but the second edition redesign is so sleek that I just love the look, so can’t help myself. I’ve got a lot of proxy cards that I’ve printed off, as the game had been dead for more than five years when I got into it in the autumn, and I’ve been so keen to try different decks and so on, that this has really taken me by surprise by being on this list at all!

7. Lord of the Rings LCG (7)

Oh, my! This used to be my favourite game of all time! Earlier in the spring, I played The Hunt for Gollum and had such a good time with it – this is kind of what prompted me to start thinking about this post. I’m not thinking about my all-time favourites, it’s just out of the games played this year. I’ve also played some of the Dwarrowdelf scenarios, and it almost felt like stepping back in time… This game has also been dead for about five years at this point, but there’s no denying the hold it retains on me. I’m genuinely thinking about playing some more games as I type this, actually…

6. Dune Imperium (9)

Back in January, I bought the Rise of Ix expansion for this game, and entered into what have been some of the most exciting games of the year. I already knew this game was a corker, but with that expansion it became really something special. I’ve since stripped the Ix stuff away and played core only games, and while they’re still great, I feel like Ix just adds so much spice to the game. Haha! I’m looking forward to trying the Immortality expansion soon, which has been waiting patiently in the wings. It also looks like a really great addition to a truly awesome game…

With the first five containing so many great games, you know the top five are going to be spectacular – though long time readers will no doubt already know what’s likely to come!

5. Outer Rim (9)

This was my Christmas present last year, and while I was in love with the production value of the game from the start, I think it was either my 2nd or 3rd game with Outer Rim that really cemented my love for it. It’s a really fantastic game where you’re not trying to fight against your opponent, but rather it’s a race to see who can become the most famous outlaw. I’ve not yet played with the expansion, but I have it ready to go. It’s such a fantastic, fun experience, and of course it’s Star Wars! I think the only thing that puts me off is the set-up time…

4. Ashes Reborn (6)

This has been quite the discovery! I seem to make a habit of getting into games at the wrong time, and I started to pick up this one just as the kickstarter for the new edition was drawing to a close. I’ve managed to pick up a lot of exciting stuff for it since August, though, and with the addition of the Red Rains series of expansions, I’ve been really enjoying the solo experience. It’s rare that a head to head game can feel so great with a solo mode, but this is exactly what we have here. The player decks function exactly as they’re meant to, but the AI deck works seamlessly as if it’s a real opponent. It’s fantastic to play, and now that I have had a decent injection of new stuff with the addition of the other dice, etc, I can’t wait to dive deeper into my collection!

3. Star Wars Shatterpoint (11)

This game… it’s just so good! I think I’ve really dived off the deep end with Shatterpoint in 2025, picking up so many new boxes of squads to play. While I haven’t actually been able to play as much as I’d have liked, I find that this game really takes over my life at times, and I’m obsessed with building lists and thinking of strategy! Of course, I’m not exactly a good player, so it doesn’t normally work out, but what I lack in skill, I make up for in passion and determination!! I’m going to make a real push to get more of my backlog painted in 2026, because I think this game deserves it.

2 Marvel Crisis Protocol (13)

Oh man, if I thought I was obsessed with Shatterpoint… MCP has definitely pipped it to the higher spot on this list, thanks to a spate of thoroughly enjoyable games that we’ve played. I think I’ve settled for the time being on X-Men, albeit with something of a rotating roster of characters. I’m really enjoying my games, regardless of win or lose (though the wins are pretty good!) I’ve been trying to think more about my tactics with this one as well, which somehow feels easier to do than in Shatterpoint…

1 Marvel Champions (43)

This should be a surprise to nobody who has read this blog. Marvel Champions has been my most played game for a few years now, and I think it will continue to be so, especially with the Daredevil content coming in 2026! It’s so good, the gameplay is excellent and, as a long-running LCG there is a huge variety to be had. Even if you’re only able to get in today with the current environment stuff, you still have a ton of replayability. I absolutely love it. A particular highlight from this year has been discovering the Jubilee hero pack, though I had some amazing games at the top of the year with Bishop and Magik. I picked up the Civil War box for Christmas, and have been really excited about the new heroes there, so I’m looking forward to diving into that in January!

So there we are! My top ten games based on what I played in 2025. I’m hoping that next year I can shake this up a little, as I’m very much intending to try out some different things. Star Wars Legion is hopefully going to be a major feature of 2026, but I’m also hopeful that I can dive into my game collection some more. I think I’ve added more games to my life in this year than I have for many years, now, so while 2025 has been something of a year of discovery, let’s hope that 2026 can be one of truly getting to know these things more.

Though I still think, if I do this again at this time next year, Marvel Champions will still be at the top…

DC Legendary!!

Oh my goodness, it’s happening!

Back in the dim and distant past we now refer to as 2012, Upper Deck released a deck-building game set in the Marvel universe, and at the time I seem to remember it was quite a big deal. For some reason, we didn’t get it over here in the UK immediately, and I’m fairly sure that I had my copy imported from the US the following summer. It was a great game, and a slew of releases over the following years broadened the initial scope of the game to X-Men, Fantastic Four, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more. I loved it, but I think after a while, it did begin to lose out to newer games, and with the two-part Secret Wars boxes, my interest had definitely begun to wander off. As is the case with many of these games, I eventually sold it off when I moved house, though for a while I did keep the core set and Dark City expansion, just in case I wanted to go back to it. (As a side note, the reason why my Arkham Horror LCG collection is sleeved the way it is, is due to the fact that I had originally bought those sleeves for Marvel Legendary!)

Over the years, Upper Deck released other games that used the Legendary system, such as Alien, Buffy and more. Each of these was compatible with each other, and I’m sure there have been some crazy games of Willow and Wolverine teaming up to defeat the Xenomorph, or whatever!

With any licensed game like this, the question is inevitably asked online, “when will x IP get included?” – and with a comics-based game like Legendary, it was perhaps natural to ask this of DC. Of course, Cryptozoic have their DC deck building game, so the point has mostly been moot all these years, but now it seems, that is all set to change.

Upper Deck is primarily a trading card company – I think they’re famous for baseball cards? So they now have the license to make DC trading cards and, apparently, this extends to using DC within its Legendary system. How this impacts on Cryptozoic’s game, which is still going strong after almost as many years as Legendary, remains to be seen.

However, given my recent resurgence of interest in DC, this news has definitely piqued my interest. Maybe it’s just the rose-tinted specs or something, but I definitely enjoyed Marvel Legendary, especially when I had the option for maybe a couple of expansions to mix things up. The opportunity to play a DC version of this, again with maybe a couple of expansions over time to keep things from getting too stale, is just too good to pass up.

But there’s more! Apparently Upper Deck have also been talking about a second edition of the Marvel version, so if that’s true it could be fantastic to add this game back into the collection!

I think this is going to become my mission for 2026. I’m still keeping an eye out for the Cryptozoic version in case I can relive those memories as well, but getting back into Legendary would be amazing…

Fantasy Flight Games and the Vault

Hey everybody,
Back in November, Fantasy Flight announced “the Vault” at their In-Flight Report, which has seemingly set many gamers here on the internet abuzz with what exactly it could all mean.

At the announcement, the Vault Series was described as a service, operated via crowd funding, that would look at out of print or hard to find games and bringing them back, maybe with some quality of life changes such as the rulebooks may be overhauled, updating the art or graphic design. It was very clear that this is not a new edition of an older game that is being introduced.

The excitement for what this could actually mean does seem to have grown arms and legs, though, and we’ve seen so much stuff being talked about that I don’t think is what the team actually meant when they made the announcement. Of course, all of this is just classic FFG because why be clear when you could be vague, and generate hype that will go in the wrong direction which will, ultimately, lead this whole endeavour to fall flat?

The big thing that I keep seeing is that “they could use the Vault to reprint all of the Arkham Horror or Marvel Champions content that is out of print”. I mean, they could. But they announced this strictly within the realm of board games – hell, the Director of Board Games was the one making the announcement. This is likely not going to cover card games, no matter how much I would love to finally complete my Star Wars LCG or L5R collections! I think if there was going to be any way that they would extend this to cover the LCGs, they would have probably said something, given how 2025 has been the Year of Fear for so many of these things.

Another thing that I’ve seen a fair bit, though admittedly not as much as for the LCGs, is suggesting they reprint licensed games such as Battlestar Galactica or one of the many Warhammer games like Diskwars. If they no longer have the license to make these games, I would like to bet that they could not reprint those games, no matter how it could be dressed up. Games Workshop in particular took the license back because they wanted to make board games with their IP themselves, if the internet is to be believed, so unless they have been able to renegotiate to release those games, which is of course possible, I don’t think we could see anything like Chaos in the Old World coming back.

Games like X-Wing and Armada are tricky, because they were FFG designs, and FFG still has the Star Wars license, but Asmodee moved both games over to Atomic Mass Games, who chose to let them end. I feel as though AMG would need to be involved if they were going to try to re-publish either of these games, and it just doesn’t seem likely.

The long and the short of it, I think, is the Vault is explicitly designed to publish board games via a crowdfunding platform, so FFG can gauge the interest in what they should bring back. To this end, I think the safest bets are games like Runebound and Descent, which are FFG owned properties with no other company involved. I think the most exciting thing they could do from my perspective, and I should probably start saving for this now just in case, is to republish Imperial Assault. I had this game when it first came out, and picked up quite a few of the expansions before I had a moment of clarity and realised I was just buying something that I wasn’t playing. It wasn’t until after I had sold it that they automated the Overlord player, and made it possible to run solo campaigns. I think if Imperial Assault came back, I would be in a very difficult spot!

It’s definitely going to be interesting to see what they decide to offer when this series launches in 2026, but I have the feeling that there will be a lot of disappointed people when they realise it’s going to be limited to purely FFG-owned products from the past.

On the brink of Immortality

Hey everybody,
Back in February, a new expansion for Dune Imperium was released, Bloodlines, which mainly functioned as an expansion for Dune Imperium Uprising. Uprising is sold as “a sequel” to the original Dune Imperium, with mechanics that were slightly tidied up and so on. I haven’t picked it up, but I’ve been thinking about it, if only to see what I’ve been missing! Among other things, Uprising comes with a sandworm mechanic that involves sandworm meeples, and could be a wonderful addition to the game!

I’ve been thinking about Bloodlines lately, having seen it for sale at the local game store, but I’ve not been entirely convinced because of this strong connection to Uprising. However, it is sold as an expansion for both Uprising and the original game, which is the version I have, so I’ve been doing some digging to see just what it has to offer for me.

The general consensus online is that roughly two-thirds of the box is compatible with the original game, so it’s not too bad. There are leaders, including Duncan Idaho and Piter de Vries, who all come with interesting new mechanics. There are rules for Sardaukar Commanders, special types of soldiers who you can hire into combats and who come with their own abilities. There is also a new implementation of the Ixian tech tiles from Rise of Ix, which essentially allows you to play with those mechanics without needing that expansion.

Personally, I love Rise of Ix and have been missing it terribly when playing just base game Dune Imperium recently, but Bloodlines does still sound like it could have some stuff for me that would make it worth getting. I’m not 100% sold on the idea just yet, but don’t be surprised if I end up posting about the game here soon enough!

That said, I still haven’t played with the Immortality expansion. I picked this up back in the spring when I was worried that things seemed to be selling out quite a bit, so got it along with the expansion for Outer Rim – which I also have not yet played with. However, I think I was initially a bit confused by how Immortality is meant to work, with its Tleilaxu research track and Graft cards. Upon leafing through the instruction booklet earlier in the week, however, it actually seems to be a pretty straightforward expansion, so I’m planning to get that to the table some time in December, and to start investigating what it has to offer.

All of this is very exciting, of course, but there’s more! One of the things that prompted me to write this post is that I’ve seen a video on youtube at the start of the week about another upcoming expansion for Dune Imperium, which has been talked about in vague terms by the team at Dire Wolf Games since June! The only things we have concrete evidence of right now is that the expansion is expected to be released digitally first, which will allow the team to see if it balances well before printing a physical copy, as it is expected to be quite complex.

This is very interesting, because of course the next Dune movie (based on Messiah, if what I’m reading is true) is scheduled for release in December next year; given that Dune Imperium certainly draws inspiration for its graphic design from Denis Villeneuve’s movies, it is possible that the physical release of the expansion would tie in to that, which is very exciting indeed!

I haven’t played Dune Imperium half as often as I’d have liked, but right now I am certainly in the mood for getting more games in, especially with the Immortality expansion.

The Ones that Got Away

I always seem to get quite reflective at this time of year. I suppose it’s all tied up with the end-of-year mood, looking back and all that. Recently, though, I’ve been thinking about all the games and miniatures that I’ve bought and sold over the years. I mean, I dread to think of how much I must have spent on that stuff, none of which was exactly flipped for a profit!

Games like Android Netrunner have been reconstructed via proxy cards, whereas X-Wing has probably gone forever. I’ve already bought and sold two Tau armies; recently reading some 40k novels, though, has got me thinking about how much fun I’ve had with building and painting stuff like the AdMech, and Deathwing.

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I’m kinda thinking about doing a miniseries about these things, though I’m not sure if doing so could be a bit dangerous. Hopefully I won’t end up buying a Tau army for the third time, though…

August 2025 retrospective

Hey everybody,
August has been and gone in something of a blur, and the weather has definitely started to decline here in the UK, which is probably just as well given how hot it has been of late. I’m certainly not built for this kind of heat, so I definitely appreciate the cooler temperatures, although getting soaked in the rain is not exactly my idea of a fun time…

In terms of the blog, things have been a bit all over the place this month. The big thing about August is that Warhammer 40,000 has made a return. It’s been almost two years since I was seriously thinking about the game, and while I had painted a few models here and there, I’d been thinking that 10th edition just wasn’t for me, and so had been sitting things out, with the decision made back in April to kinda get out of the game entirely. However, the grim darkness is clearly in my soul, and after some thinking about things, James and I played a game of Combat Patrol and it was actually pretty good! I won, which always helps, but I think it’s interesting to see how Games Workshop seem to use this as a way to on-board players into big 40k. The rules are exactly the same, you just play a specific list at a low model count, but even after one game, I think it’s clearly meant to work as a first step into a larger universe.

While we have talked about playing more Combat Patrol missions, we also started talking about a Necromunda campaign again, and eventually moved back to Marvel Crisis Protocol… the circle of life…

I’ve had two games of MCP this month, firstly I was playing Criminal Syndicate against Web Warriors, then I went back to X-Force (again, versus Web Warriors). The Criminal Syndicate idea was primarily because I wanted to play with my Wrecking Crew that I’d finally made a push to paint, and it was a lot of fun, but I kept forgetting Daredevil’s leadership – he also whiffed on so many rolls that he may as well have not been on the table. Carnage has been a lot of fun since the update, though, so even though the game resulted in a loss, it was still a fun match overall. X-Force was a bit different, and I’m pleased to say that I remembered Cable’s leadership throughout – but again, he whiffed on so many of his rolls as well… I’m not sure I was playing him to his full potential, though. X-23 was a real standout when she used her attacks to drive up the board, chipping some damage off She-Hulk, before KOing Ghost Spider, to move up and make a Frenzy attack on Miles Morales to KO him as well. She’d been somewhat unremarkable up to that point, but I think seeing the potential for that has made me want to play her some more.

I was also using Sunspot in this list, but he was completely unremarkable for the whole game. I’ll probably swap him out for Bishop when I next play the roster, anyway. I have the feeling that Sunspot is much better in New Mutants… All that said, though, these two games this month have allowed me to reach my target of 10 games of MCP this year as well, so that’s both Shatterpoint and MCP where I have met the target now!

While there have been some great games this month, the actual number of games played in August has dropped significantly – just 7 games played in the whole month! As we know, though, it’s not all about the numbers, and those seven games have been some really good ones. In addition to 40k and MCP, I’ve finally kicked off the Forgotten Age campaign with Daniela and Trish, which has been a bit rough so far as I’ve found myself almost disinterested in playing. I don’t know if it’s some kind of campaign-remorse, but I felt similarly in January with The Circle Undone – having planned out to play it for weeks, as soon as I started out I almost immediately felt like I should be playing a different one! I have all ten campaign expansions for the game, of course, so I guess that doesn’t help!

I have also – finally! – got round to playing with the Agents of SHIELD box for Marvel Champions, and had a game with Maria Hill and Nick Fury against the Black Widow scenario. I find it interesting how it feels to break into a new box like this, because there is a lot going on with both heroes, and there’s a lot going on with the villain – almost too much, if I’m honest! This definitely felt like a step up from cracking open the Age of Apocalypse box back in January! However, it was definitely a lot of fun – Nick Fury was great, but Maria Hill clearly has a lot going on as she moves those counters between her helicarriers. Black Widow herself needs a lot of management, too, and ultimately I lost because of threat, but I am looking forward to trying all of these cards out some more. Perhaps just not with each other…!

There are two bits of slightly bigger news for August though. First of all, after talking about it in a Throwback Thursday post, I’ve been printing off “cards” for Call of Cthulhu LCG as I’m thinking it might be fun to play some of that again sometime soon. Last year’s arts and crafts project was Netrunner, but this time I’ve gone for the ancient ones instead! That said, the quality of the card images is not as good as that for Netrunner, so I’ve printed them out myself instead of paying for a professional finish – and I’m glad I’ve done so. The images are from cardgamedb and all have the FFG watermark, which is fine, but the quality just isn’t there for the most part. I’m going to dummy up some decks at some point and will have a run-through, I’m thinking Agency/Syndicate against maybe Shub-Niggurath and, perhaps, Cthulhu? I suppose we’ll see.

Embarking on this project, and seeing all of these cards again, has really brought back some fun memories though. The card art is shared throughout the Arkham-sphere, of course, and it’s quite funny to see how they used an image in each game. Random nobodies in one game will be storied heroes in the other, and such. Characters will have different names where we have the art from an actual investigator re-used in the earlier LCG, as well. I hadn’t realised how much of the artwork from Arkham Horror LCG comes from Call of Cthulhu LCG though – for some reason, I had been under the impression that the later game had much more new artwork.

However, this isn’t the only arts & crafts project that I have going on right now. Come back later for something that has really fired up my imagination over the past couple of days…

Finally, I have discovered that the game Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn can be played solo, so have been gobbling up packs of cards for this to finally experience the game! First launched in 2015, Ashes was discontinued shortly before the pandemic when Plaid Hat Games was bought up by Asmodee. The CEO, Colby Dauch, wasn’t happy with that so actually bought back his company and the rights to some of the games they made, including Ashes, which was relaunched in 2020 as Ashes Reborn. In 2025, a kickstarter was launched for a new version, Ashes Ascendancy, and the future is looking particularly bright, it seems! I’ve been able to pick up Ashes Reborn and a few packs of Phoenixborn – the game is an LCG-style expandable game similar to Marvel Champions in that the card packs are playable decks of new hero characters. In 2023 they launched the Red Rains, a solo/co-op mode where players go up against a Chimera in a boss battle. I’ve bought two of these Chimera packs (there are seven in total, reflecting the seven magic types in the game), and fellow blogger Dave has kindly sourced the main Chimera across the seas for me, so I’m looking forward to getting more Ashes games in with this mode once that box arrives on these shores!

There’s certainly a lot on the gaming horizon, at any rate!

Game Night

I shouldn’t complain, but the UK right now is like the molten pit of hell, and I for one am certainly not built to cope with such weather! Last night I was just lying in bed getting increasingly irritated that it was the middle of the night and the temperature was still mid-20s. So to combat that, tonight I’ve decided it’s gonna be a Games Night!

Not sure what I’m gonna be playing yet, though I have a few contenders. The idea is that I’ll be updating this post with my endeavours from probably around 8:00pm BST, so why not pop by and see how poorly I’m doing (or not, you never know!) Always happy to have a chat in the comments!

Some, none or fewer of these may make an appearance…

Update #1: 19:20h

The kids have fallen asleep much quicker than I’d expected, must be the heat. So we’re kicking off this night of gaming goodness with some Marvel Champions, I think! Been plotting a few game ideas for this one recently, so I’m going to try out some of the mutant scenarios and give Psylocke another outing!

Update #2: 20:35h

Had a great game, Psylocke & Iceman vs Morlock Siege. I haven’t played with Iceman before, so that was fun to see how he works. Psylocke didn’t seem to do a lot of work for me, though, not sure if it was just bad draws or maybe some work needs to be done on the deck.

Next up, though, is this classic! Runebound, with a couple of card packs shuffled in, as well as the promo hero Truthseer Kel. She’s one of my favourites for this game, I think it’s because she was such an early favourite when I was collecting these things. Looking forward to this one!

Update 3: 22:05h

This was a really good game. I don’t play Runebound all that much these days, I think partly because it does kinda show its age now. But then, don’t we all? It’s definitely a product of the 2000s, and while sometimes that can be fantastic, sometimes you do start to grow tired of it. I mean, it’s still enjoyable, but I did find myself pondering things like, wouldn’t it be good to have an encounter based on the type of landscape I’m in, not just based on difficulty? So, if I’m in the depths of the forest, it feels like I’m there, rather than just fighting some random monster who could equally have turned up on the road if I’d stopped at that adventure jewel instead?

I do find, though, that if I’m in the mood for it, then it’s a great time. A big part of that is nostalgia though, but even so!

The temperature is coming down – it’s now 24 degrees, though upstairs is like a furnace so I’m gonna keep playing for the time being… 🥵

Update 4: 0:05h

It’s now 21 degrees, so things have definitely cooled down now, to the point where I think I might be able to get some sleep if I try! I’ve had a bit of a break and watched some YouTube videos, then I moved on to the third game of the night, Elder Sign!

This is actually kinda significant because it’s my 50th game of Elder Sign, something that I’ve been aware of for the last few weeks. I’d sorta planned to have a big game to celebrate, incorporating Gates of Arkham as I did for my 40th game back in 2023, as well as elements from Unseen Forces.

It was great, I had a really close game, where for most of the time I actually thought that the great old one might actually wake up after all, but somehow, through sheer dumb luck (and the sacrifice of Wilson Richard’s along the way), I was able to seal Yog Sothoth away for all eternity… I think…

I had been considering going for Omens of the Deep for my 50th game, as that is still an expansion that I haven’t yet played, but I’m gonna keep that for a bit longer.

I think on that note, then, I’ll call it a night. My youngest has just fallen out of bed, so that was an unexpected distraction… hopefully I’ll be able to get some sleep and tomorrow won’t be quite the raging inferno that today was… we’ll see… 🥵

Dune Imperium insert

Happy Father’s Day! This year, the kids got me the Folded Space insert for Dune Imperium, after I enjoyed the insert for Outer Rim so much!

The insert only holds the base game, plus Rise of Ix, along with the deluxe upgrade components. I had seen videos where some folks have been able to fit the Immortality expansion instead of the deluxe components, though, which is perfect for me! As I don’t have those upgrades, but I do have the third expansion to fit in there somewhere!

It’s a bit different to the Outer Rim insert, in that there are a lot more small trays, rather than being larger, multi-compartment trays.

I’d been looking forward to getting this, not just because of the fact they make storage so much neater, but Dune Imperium is one of those games that feels like it takes so long to set up, because of all the bags of pieces, and so on. Having these trays will, I hope, really make things a lot easier, plus they can help to keep the table tidy while playing!

It’s so pretty!!

There is a minor problem in that this thing is now, well, very full. There is the latest expansion, Bloodline, which I’m not sure how I would store… hmm…

Interesting game stuff…

Remember a few years ago, I was interested in Malifaux? Well, it didn’t really go anywhere at the time, which is probably just as well. Back in April though, Wyrd Games announced 4th edition is coming this year, and it looks like some interesting changes are coming to the lore. More models of course, so that’s always nice, and the game still uses a deck of cards instead of dice, so it’s still keeping that USP. Might be one to keep an eye on, to see if Rasputina gets a new model…

A few years ago, I also talked about Zombicide. It’s the flagship game from Cool Mini Or Not – or that should be, it was. CMON have apparently been struggling due to the tariffs, as their business model is of course based on Kickstarter and getting stuff made in China. Turns out, using a future campaign to fund production of a completed campaign doesn’t work out when you didn’t account for the import duty increase in that completed campaign. So Asmodee have bought the IP. What does that mean? Well, Atomic Mass Games are the miniatures studio under the Asmodee umbrella, so maybe AMG will now have to make Zombicide stuff as well as Shatterpoint, MCP and Legion..? Unless it remains marketed as a board game, and is put under Fantasy Flight? Time will tell. If it’s moving away from the Kickstarter model though, and instead will be produced like a regular board game, it could be interesting enough to take the plunge…

Finally, Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a co-op, story-driven card game! I’ve recently been thinking a lot about Netrunner again, so I’m kinda interested in this idea. Not enough to pre-order it sight unseen, but it’s probably something worth keeping an eye on… it sounds almost like the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game, which would be lovely!

April 2025 retrospective

Hey everybody,
Another month has come and gone! April feels like it has been a really good month for me. Easter is of course my favourite time of year, and I’ve had a bit of a break from work that was full to the brim with Star Wars stuff, which is always a great way to spend it. I’ve been rewatching a lot of the live action Star Wars shows, having started almost twelve months ago with a rewatch of Mando s1, and I have to say, I have enjoyed a lot of this stuff so much more the second time around. Of course, we’ve also seen the start of Andor season two, which has been suitably excellent so far…

There has been a lot of Shatterpoint, which is always such a pleasure to see – sadly, I was supposed to go to a tournament last weekend with James, but my youngest was sick (literally) so I ended up staying home to help look after her. It would have been my first event for the game, and while I was a little bit nervous, I was also looking forward to it. Hopefully there will be more in the future, though!

On the topic of Shatterpoint, I’ve finally finished painting the Ewoks! Earlier this month, I had decided to move away from 40k and instead focus on the games that really bring me joy. However, while Shatterpoint definitely counts as that, it also has a significant backlog of unpainted miniatures! Fortunately, the Ewoks are all reasonably similar enough that I could paint them en masse, and while they probably aren’t going to win me any awards for painting, but I am still quite pleased with them! I tried to make them look reasonably different from each other, though watching Return of the Jedi again recently has shown just how alike a lot of these murder-bears are. I have tried to paint one like Kneesaa from the Ewok cartoon series from back in the day, which was fun, but otherwise they’re all just generic troops and so have a fairly basic scheme. The bases had originally caused me some issues as they’re the standard Shatterpoint fare that looks a bit too urban for the forest-dwellers, but I’ve tried to make them suggestive of the forest by using different greys and tans, then random washes and contrasts to create a brown/green messy look, which I think works fairly well. Otherwise, we’ve got the likes of Wicket scampering off a branch that is randomly coming out of a concrete floor…

April is also my blog anniversary month, and this time around I hit 11 years on the site. That is a lot of nonsense that has been spouted, isn’t it?

Having picked up the game earlier in the year, I finally introduced the Outer Rim expansion, Unfinished Business, though was a bit disappointed that my plan to sleeve all of the cards caused the insert I had bought to break. Thinking about it a bit more logically though, I haven’t sleeved other board games, and something like Eldritch Horror has survived pretty much intact for well over a decade now, so hopefully the sleeves will not be required.

Unfinished Business completes (for now, I hope!) the game line for Outer Rim, and also this month I was able to pick up Under Dark Waves for Arkham Horror third edition, completing that line as well. Putting aside the fact that the game line doesn’t really feel all that complete, I’m really pleased to have that box now as well, as I had been after it for at least a year, but it was either completely out of stock or else the price was upwards of £90, much more than I had really wanted to pay for it. Having snapped it up for £43, it has once again doubled from that. I don’t really know why, as it’s a big box expansion sure, but the game itself has always struck me as one that has struggled for supporters, and it’s not the sort of thing I’ve seen much talk about online. I’ve so far played just one of the expansions, but I do think it’s an excellent addition, so I’m chuffed with this!

But don’t get me started on the Gamegenic token silo I bought to organise all of the tokens for it! That thing is nothing short of spectacular, and I am a huge fan! Huge, I tells ya! If only I had more games that I could buy one to organise…

I’ve had some really good games in April, including a game with DungeonQuest that completes the goal of playing one game with each of the Terrinoth games that I still have. I’ve been enjoying the Star Wars deckbuilding game so much that I picked up the Clone Wars version of it, and have continued to play the Leaders variant for that edition as well. If that had been one of my games for 10×10, I would have hit the target there as I’ve been playing it so much…

Perhaps my favourite game of the month, though, was the solitary game of Marvel Champions that I had yesterday. After picking up the Silk hero pack, which admittedly wasn’t a pack that I had been looking forward to per se, I sleeved her up and went against the Sinister Six and had an absolute blast! It’s a multi-villain scenario, but perhaps the one where the designers have really done this right.

I had an absolute blast, anyway, and it has made me a bit thoughtful about all this living card game stuff. Back in February we had the news that FFG were going to introduce a rotation of sorts for their LCGs, and I think a lot of us were taken aback. As someone who has a complete collection of these games, it’s recently got me thinking about the future though, and I’ve come to the decision that I’ll most likely end my Arkham collection with the recent Drowned City expansion, unless something pretty spectacular happens. While Marvel Champions has certainly taken a bit of a dip for me lately, ultimately I enjoy this game far too much, and it’s something that I think I will keep buying so long as they keep pumping out the content.

I’ve been trying to think of some interesting match-ups that I can get, to essentially combat the decision fatigue of knowing which heroes and which villains to play, now that there are so many of them. Having said that, I enjoyed playing Silk so much that I think I’m going to attempt the Sinister Motives campaign with her at some point…