A sincere thanks to Niko for making our group welcome for 111 consecutive Wednesday evenings of board games. And thanks to our group for purchasing a considerable amount of Niko’s remaining inventory as our farewell tribute to his generosity.

On Wednesday September 6, we begin a new chapter, moving our weekly sessions to the Uno Park Community Center in North Adams. The dark green free standing building is located at 157 River Street, alongside Uno Park, behind MassMoCA. There is limited close-in parking behind the basketball court and plenty of parking across the street by the playground. The community center has enough tables and chairs for up to 35, a full kitchen, living room area, 2 bathrooms and excellent lighting. I will email a more comprehensive set of instructions on the Community Center on Labor Day. Our new hours will be from 6:30 PM to 10:30 PM.

The first session at our new home will feature SPACE GAMES. Our table leaders are preparing from among: Terraforming Mars (and Ares Project), Cosmic Encounter, Moon, Wormholes, Moonrakers, Space Sphere, Roll (and Race) for the Galaxy, Tiny Epic Galaxy, Galaxy Truckers, Sternenhimmel and more!

Some exciting news – game author Peter McPherson will be joining us for our September 20 session….dedicated to playing his 3 published releases – Tiny Towns, Wormholes and Fit to Print – as well as playtesting two new designs that are almost ready for publication. Last October, Peter brought the prototype for Fit to Print to Purple Dragon Games – which had just dropped on Kickstarter the day before and raised $225,000… as well as teaching us Wormholes. I received my KS copy of Fit to Print last week. So, an annual tradition has been created with our designer neighbor from the Saratoga area..

Deep Dive (led by Sean) 2023 push your luck set collection filler game from the Point Salad/Cascadia/Verdant trio of Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin and Shawn Stankewich. Players have 3 wooden penguins who dive for food at 5 different ocean depths and try to avoid predators. 

Parade

(led by Tim P) 2007 Alice in Wonderland themed hand management and set collection card game

Point City

2x (led by K-ban/Sean) 2023 sequel to Point Salad from the same team of designers. Mix a dash of Splendor with a healthy dose of Point Salad for a very accessible city engine builder. The mechanic of drafting adjacent 2-sided cards (resource on one side/ building on the other) and their replacements being flipped to their opposite side is a new twist.

Gutenberg

(led by Tim) 2021 contract-fulfillment game of 15th century printing in which players bid on turn order in each phase of the game. Each player has a number of resource cubes that they secretly assign to the five different phases, and whoever assigned the most cubes gets to draft the associated items first. Things that can be drafted are two-part contracts, ink to enhance contracts, cards that let you move up on tracks to fulfill requirements for contracts, gears that provide rotating benefits, and either a minor bonus or a big end-game point card. All the contracts also require specific combinations of letter types, which can be acquired for increasing costs.

Sushi Boat

(led by Sean) 2023 set collection, worker placement game. Each turn, players perform their choice of actions, including taking plates of sushi off the revolving ‘belt’ on the board, paying staff tiles for effects, buying side dishes and more. As players eat, plates will be stacked in front of you. Points are scored by eating off matching Plates, and for eating a wide variety of sushi types. Pay attention as you never know when someone will start a Wasabi Challenge!

Powerline

(led by Armando) 2022 Dirk Henn (Alhambra, Show Manager, Metro, Shogun/Wallenstein) design that could have been a roll & write with laminated boards and dry-erase pens, but instead Queen Games decided to go ‘green’ and use hundreds of cardboard arrow pieces on player boards. Six different colored dice are rolled for all to use – either sequentially from left to right or right to left. The d6 numbers are used to complete power lines and earn scoring bonuses. The game limits how many dice one can use as well as penalties for skipping dice in a sequence.  

Steve