2026 Session Reports

6/10/2026 – Berkshire Gamers Session Report #26-23

26 at the UNO Park Community Center for a Request night. A sincere thanks to Sean for leading this session while Steve heals.
Welcome to Chloe & Leone (referred by Cady) on their first visit.
6/10/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center
IN: Sean & Wendy, Tim, Matt, Armando, Cady, Ethan, Sean K, Carol, Julie, Julie (Julie’s mom), Nicole & Gus, Chris, Zach, Tony & Rachel, Reimi, Danny, Hope & Norm, Anna, Peter and Feryn, Leone, Chloe
ON OUR TABLES:
Root (led by Matt) 2018 asymmetrical area control game with a cute animal façade. It is a game of adventure and war in which 2 to 4 (1 to 6 with the ‘Riverfolk’ expansion, 2-6 with the ‘Underworld’, or ‘Marauder’ expansions) players battle for control of a vast wilderness.  Every faction is genuinely unique in how it operates and scores points, The woodland conflict is very immersive and amusing as each player has unique capabilities and a different victory condition. 
 
NMBR9 (led by Tim) 2017 tile placement/layering game where 20 cards numbered 0-9 twice are revealed one at a time bingo-style and eighty tiles numbered 0-9 with each number tile composed of squares in some arrangement.  When numbered cards are drawn, players take a number tile matching the card and place it on the table. With each new card drawn after that, each player takes the appropriate number tile, then adds it to the tiles that they already have in play, with each player building their own arrangement of tiles.The new tile must touch at least one other tile on the same level along one side of a square. A tile can also be placed on top of two or more other tiles as long as no part of the new tile overhangs the tiles below it; new tiles placed on this same level must touch at least one other tile, while also covering parts of at least two tiles and not overhanging. Scores are calculated by multiplying the number on a tile by its level on the table.
 
Hike (led by Nicole) 2011 card game where each player receives seven cards and plays one on their turn. When a player cannot play a card, they are eliminated from the hand. The player with the fewest cards leftover wins the hand, and a player can earn a bonus by playing all of their cards.
 
Century: Golem  (led by Wendy) 2017 re-themed version of Century: Spice Road set in the world of Caravania. Each turn, players perform one of four actions:
  • Establish a trade route (by taking a market card)
  • Make a trade or harvest crystals (by playing a card from hand)
  • Fulfill a demand (by meeting a victory point card’s requirements and claiming it)
  • Rest (by taking back into your hand all of the cards you’ve played)

The last round is triggered once a player has claimed their fifth victory point card (6 cards with 2 or 3 players), then whoever has the most victory points wins.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/232832/century-golem-edition

Scout  (led by Tony) One of the 3 finalists for the 2022 SdJ award for best family game. It is a shedding/climbing card game with unique double numbered cards that can be flipped. Cards have two potential values, players may not rearrange their hand of cards, and players may pass their turn to take a card from the current high set of cards into their hand. More specifically, cards are dual-indexed, with different values on each half of the card, with the 45 cards having all possible combinations of the numbers 1-10.  Once each player has been dealt their entire hand of cards, they pick up that hand without rearranging any of the cards; if they wish, they can rotate their entire hand of cards in order to use the values on the other end of each card, but again they cannot rearrange the order of cards in their hand. On a turn, a player takes one of two actions:

• Play: A player chooses one or more adjacent cards in their hand that have all the same value or that have values in consecutive order (whether ascending or descending), then they play this set of cards to the table. They can do this only if the table is empty (as on the first turn) or the set they’re playing is ranked higher than the set currently on the table; a set is higher if it has more cards or has cards of the same value instead of consecutive cards or has a set of the same quantity and type but with higher values. In this latter case when a player overplays another set, the player captures the cards in this previous set and places them face down in front of themselves.

• Scout: A player takes a card from either end of the set currently on the table and places it anywhere they wish in their hand in either orientation. Whoever played this previous set receives a 1 VP token as a reward for playing a set that wasn’t beaten.

Once per round, a player can scout, then immediately play.

When a player has emptied their hand of cards or all but one player have scouted instead of playing, the round ends. Players receive 1 VP for each face-down card, then subtract one point for each card in their hand (except if they were the player scouted repeatedly to end the game). Play as many rounds as the number of players, then whoever has the most points wins.

 
Looot (led by Sean) 2024 tile and worker placement game where players are Vikings on the Common board, conquering a new territory, which allows them to recover resource/building/objective tiles.

On a player’s Personal board: they build their village with the tiles previously recovered from the Common board unlocking victory points. The game rewards optimization logic, favoring the best combinations in this race for victory points.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/410991/looot

 
Cities (led by Tim) 2024 drafting collaboration between prolific Australian designer, Phil Walker-Harding and Bostonian Dr Steve Finn. The game is played over eight rounds. Each round, players use their workers to collect 1 scoring card, 1 city tile, 1-2 feature tiles, and 2-4 building pieces. City tiles are made up of park spaces, water spaces, and building spaces. Building pieces are placed on building spaces of the same color to form buildings, which can be 1-4 stories high. Whenever a player fulfills an achievement, they place one of their wooden rings on the achievement board. At the end of the game, players add up the points they have gained from all of their scoring cards and achievements. We played with the Lisbon achievement board with payoffs centered around parks and neighborhoods.
Blokus x2  (led by Nicole) 2000 abstract strategy game with transparent, Tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to their other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one corner of pieces already on the board.

The goal is to fit as many of one’s 21 pieces onto the board as possible. The number of squares on leftover pieces is one’s score with low score winning.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2453/blokus

 
Charms (led by Peter) 2014 Japanese trick-taking card game with two decks, one for numbers and one for 4 suits. The decks are shuffled together and players are dealt a hand of 13 cards from the mix. Players need at least 3 suit cards and 3 number cards in their hand to begin. Then players play a trick-taking game with trumps, after first predicting how many tricks they will win. After 12 tricks players score plus or minus points depending on their prediction. It is recommended to play out 8 hands to get a balanced match.
 
Molly House (led by Anna) 2025 deduction, bluffing and negotiation card game where players take the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early eighteenth century London. Throw grand masquerades and cruise back alleys while evading moralistic constables who seek to destroy the community. Be careful, there may even be informers present. Players draft hands of vice cards representing the different gestures, desires, and encounters that were frowned upon by the Society for the Reformation of Manners, a citizen group that sought to stamp out any behavior it deemed deviant in late 17th and early 18th century London. These cards allow players to host festivities with the help of their fellow mollies and create joy. But, those same cards can also lead players to be arrested and to the ultimate ruin of the molly house.

As players encounter the Society’s enforcers, they will often have to pay bribes or may be coerced into becoming informers for the Society. Informers must try desperately to undermine the community around Mother Clap’s Molly House without being discovered by their fellow mollies.

 
Camel Up  (led by Tim) 2014 SdJ winner where players bet on five racing camels, trying to figure out which will place first and second in a quick race around a pyramid. The earlier you place your bet, the more you can win — should you guess correctly, of course. Camels don’t run neatly, however, sometimes landing on top of another one and being carried toward the finish line. Who’s going to run when? That all depends on how the dice come out of the pyramid dice shaker, which releases one die at a time when players pause from their bets long enough to see who’s actually moving!
 
Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition (led by Rachel) 2018 multiplayer puzzle game where the player’s goal is to connect as many exits on their board as possible. Each round, a set of dice are rolled in the middle of the table, determining which kind of road and railway routes are available to all players. Players have to draw these routes on their erasable boards to create transport lines and connect their exits, trying to optimize the available symbols better than their opponents. The more exits connected, the more points scored at the end of the game, but players lose points for each incomplete route, so plan carefully! Will you press your luck and try to stretch your transportation network to the next exit, or will you play it safe and start a new, simpler to manage route?
 
Castle Combo (led by Tony) 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. 

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

 
Rebirth  (led by Sean) 2024 Reiner Knizia tile laying game with a double-sided mapboard (for both Scotland and Ireland). Each turn, players draw a tile from their supply and place it strategically on the board. These tiles represent your clan’s contribution to rebuilding the land. The game rewards strategic foresight and clever tactical play, with tougher decisions emerging over the course of a relatively short game that tends to elicit repeat plays. Points are scored for chains of food farms & energy farms, residences, castles controlled, as well as private goals achieved through cathedrals. We played the Scotland side of the mapboard.
Sean & Steve

26 at the UNO Park Community Center for a Request night. A sincere thanks to Sean for leading this session while Steve heals. Welcome to Chloe & Leone (referred by Cady) on their first visit. 6/10/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Sean & Wendy, Tim, Matt, Armando, Cady, Ethan, Sean K, Carol, Julie, Julie (Julie’s mom),…

26 at the UNO Park Community Center for a Request night. A sincere thanks to Sean for leading this session while Steve heals. Welcome to Chloe & Leone (referred by Cady) on their first visit. 6/10/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Sean & Wendy, Tim, Matt, Armando, Cady, Ethan, Sean K, Carol, Julie, Julie (Julie’s mom),…

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