17 at the UNO Park Community Center for a request night. Our sessions run from 6:30 PM to 10:30 PM every Wednesday.

IN: Steve, Sean, Tim, Armando, Zach, Tony, Chris, Julie, Nicole, Sean K, Danny, Rob, Matt, Cady, Lauren & Elliot, Carol

Take Time (led by Tim) 2025 limited communication cooperative game where players must strategically play 12 cards facedown around a Clock, following specific rules for each Test. Players can work together through a series of games to pass all 40 Tests available in the game.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/440540/take-time

Tipperary (led by K-ban) 2023 tile laying and drafting game where players are challenged to create their perfect vision of an Irish county by placing polyominoes and thus collecting sheep, castles and whiskey. The linchpin is a ‘magical stone circle’ that decides which of the tiles you can choose from. After twelve rounds, one player will be named chief of Tipperary.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/378983/tipperary

Business Mogul (led by Chris) Chris Warren prototype where players are the leaders of a rising corporate empire, competing with their peers to amass the most power. Game play is centered around building an economic engine, and uses a bidding mechanic where players must balance bids to get the good stuff and to avoid the bad against the actions needed to build their empire, while saving high bids as much as possible to convert to cash at the end of each season.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/159240/business-mogul

Arborea (led by Sean) 2023 worker placement euro game where time, and planning ahead, is key. Players are Patron Spirits, guiding their villagers to heal and grow the landscape around them by sending them on pilgrimages and building their personal Ecosystem.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/371077/arborea

Ave Caesar (led by K-ban)  1989 classic game set in the Roman stadium Circus Maximus. Players use cards to move their chariots around a track that has several bottlenecks and lane-changing restrictions, which make the race interesting/nasty for the racers. Players are required to race three laps, and they must stop to ‘Hail Caesar’ before they can finish the race. The game is light, but tactical card play and taking the shortest path usually pays off handsomely. We played on the 2022 Korean DiceTree Games edition that features the best of Ave Caesar and Ausgebremmst. The game was reprinted with slight modifications in 2006 and 2022 and was also re-themed and revised for car racing in Ausgebremmst (1993) and spaceship racing in Q-Jet in 2004.

Hutan: Life in the Rainforest (led by Tim)  2025 drafting and tile placement game where all players have their own rainforest patch, where they will plant sprouts and flowers that over time grow into towering trees. When a habitat is created, an iconic forest animal arrives: the orangutan, the sumatran tiger, the rhinoceros hornbill, the cassowary, or the sumatran rhino. The game plays over nine rounds, and all players have two turns each round. On a player’s turn, they take a flower card from the shared market pool and place the flowers into their rainforest. If a flower is placed on top of a matching flower, a tree grows. When an area is completed with trees, the last tree is replaced by an animal. At the end of the game, the player who grew the best rainforest and attracted the most animals will score the most points and win.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/419130/hutan-life-in-the-rainforest

Castle Combo (led by Danny) 2024 tableau building card game. Each player will spend coins to draft 9 cards from 2 open markets on the table, with the messenger pawn, determining which market is open this turn – creating a 3×3 square of people interacting with each other to trigger instant effects and end-of-game bonuses. Each turn, players add a character to their tableau—a seemingly straightforward action that packs a punch regarding strategic decisions. Carefully managing one’s keys will be needed to carefully manage one’s Keys to influence the Messenger pawn at critical moments, as it controls which characters are available for recruitment from two different areas – peasants and nobles. Balancing one’s gold reserves is equally important, ensuring a player can afford the characters that best suit their strategy throughout the game. Selecting the right characters is crucial to maximising their immediate effects and the points they will contribute at the game’s end. Finally, carefully arranging these characters on one’s 3×3 board is key to unlocking their full potential. 

A new expansion,  Out of the Oubliette!, has just been released, adding 12 new cards and a new rule: padlocks allow players to delay some card effects until a later turn, creating even greater combos.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/416851/castle-combo

Magical Athlete (led by K-ban) 2025 racing game of pure chaos! Roll a die and move your racer that many spaces — but all the racers have wacky, game-breaking abilities. Race four times, then whoever has the most points wins!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/454103/magical-athlete

The Gang (led by Chris) 2024 cooperative version of Texas Hold’em where players bet on how good they think their hand of cards will be relative to the other players, then try to make their predictions a reality. Early in a round, without talking to each other, each player chooses a chip indicating how good they think their hand is. Then they begin dealing cards into the middle of the table and have a chance to reassess their hands as more cards are revealed. At the end of the round, players see whether they correctly evaluated their hand. If all players did, you get to open one of the bank vaults! If not, you trip the alarm! If you manage to open three vaults before you trip the alarm three times, your gang wins! Our Gang is eager to explore some variants – this time substituting Omaha for Texas Hold’em.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/411567/the-gang

Steve