2026 Session Reports

7/15/2026 – Berkshire Gamers Session Report #26-28

23 at the UNO Park Community Center for a request night. 
Welcome back to Steve & Sandy’s friends, Jim & Cathy, from Suburban Philadelphia and Rachel’s dad, Stewart, from NJ
7/15/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center
IN: Steve & Sandy, Jim & Cathy, Tony, Rachel & Stewart, Sean, Tim, Armando, Zach, Nicole, Julie,Chris, Rob, Cady, Shon, Reimi, Sarah, Sean K., Matt, Ruth, Carol
ON OUR TABLES:
Biblios (led by Zach) 2007 card game…..The object of the game is to score the most Victory Points. Players gain Victory Points by winning any of the 5 categories: Illuminators, Scribes, Manuscripts, Scrolls, and Supplies. Players win a category by having the highest total number of workers (Scribes, Illuminators) or resources (Manuscripts, Scrolls, Supplies) in that category. This is determined by the numbers in the upper left corner on the cards. At the start of the game, each category is worth 3 Victory Points. As the game progresses, the values on the Value Board will change and some categories will become worth more or fewer Victory Points than others. The game is divided into 2 stages: a Donation stage and an Auction stage. During the Donation stage, players acquire free cards according to an established plan. In the Auction stage, players purchase cards in auction rounds. After the two stages, winners of each category are determined and Victory Points awarded. The player with the most Victory Points wins.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/34219/biblios

5ive Straight  (led by Sandy) 1958 card and pegboard game originally called The Game of 99.  The plastic board has 100 holes, numbered in an often reversing spiral with 1 in the center. A deck of numbered cards from 1-100 is shuffled and players start with 4 each. Players may either play a card and stick a peg in, or draw a card, the hand limit being 4. Players are trying to get five of their pegs in a row to win. Simple, except that playing a card allows a player to place a peg in that number, or any empty number above. So with a 60, a player can fill a space from 60 to 99, on the outside rows effectively, but with a 6, a player can play practically anywhere, especially the key locations in the center area. The game is for 2-3 players, but works even better when played in partnership for 4 or 6, as partner’s play of card vs location pegged can reveal important information to your partner. This is a wonderful game for playing with family and non-gamers.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/369/5ive-straight

Lightning Train (led by Matt) 2025 bag-builder with mechanically-unique chips that gives players changing options from round to round. Players steer their railway company through a land of strategic opportunity. From the creators of Clank! and Dune: Imperium. Players build their bag to improve their company’s resources, then place their chips to open stations and train lines across eight regions of North America.  The chips players acquire will shape their long-term strategy, so forward-thinking and clever planning are necessary to find a path to victory.  There’s a fortune to be made by delivering goods to the cities that need them…but players have the choice between working together or looking to cut out the competition? Which stations are needed to secure a route to victory? Can the powerful lightning trains accelerate you past your rivals?

Lightning Train | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Take 5 (led by K-ban) Wolfgang Kramer’s 1994 classic card game 6 Nimmt that accommodates up to 10 players – and the first game we played together at Purple Dragon Games back in June 2021. In all editions the 104 number cards are shuffled with four cards face-up dealt to the table to start the four rows with players being dealt a 10-card hand. Each turn, players simultaneously choose and reveal a card from their hand, then add the cards to the rows, with cards being placed in ascending order based on their number; specifically, each card is placed in the row that ends with the highest number that’s below the card’s number. When the sixth card is placed in a row, the owner of that card claims the other five cards and the sixth card becomes the first card in its row. In addition to a number,  each card has a point value. After finishing ten rounds, players tally their score and see whether the game ends. (Category 5 ends when a player has a score greater than 74, for example, while 6 nimmt! ends when someone tops 66.) When this happens, the player with the fewest points wins!
Splendor 2X (led by Armando)2014 award winning game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops—all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If wealthy enough, players might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which will further increase their prestige. On turn, players may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card—in order to make sure you get it, or, why not, your opponents don’t get it—you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem. All of the cards you buy increase your wealth as they give you a permanent gem bonus for later buys; some of the cards also give you prestige points. In order to win the game, you must reach 15 prestige points before your opponents do. 
Bus & Stop (led by Sandy) 2024 Saachi card game in which players compete as bus drivers bringing passengers to their desired destinations, while avoiding overcrowding. On a turn, players either pick up or drop off. To pick up, a player chooses all of the passenger cards of one color from the row waiting at the bus stop, then seats them in their bus — that is, the area in front of them, which can hold at most ten cards. Senior citizens aren’t going far, so you score them immediately instead of placing them on the bus.

To drop off, choose a group of passengers on your bus that match one of the available destination cards and then remove these passengers and place them under the card. Players score points for each card depending on how many people you delivered at once. Whenever a player drops off, everyone else can make one of their matching passengers ‘skedaddle‘, removing them from the bus and placing them in a personal scoring pile with their senior citizens.

When the bus stop can’t be refilled with passengers or only a certain number of destination cards remain, the game ends. Players then tally their score, earning 1 point for each single card and the listed points for each destination card.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/418581/bus-and-stop

Modern Art 2x (led by Zach & K-ban)  Reiner Knizia’s 1992 auction game masterpiece. We used both the standard cardboard set and the fancy DiceTree Korean edition with metal coins, actual paintings (modern or renaissance) and a wooden gavel. Five different artists have produced paintings and it’s the player’s task to be both the buyer and the auctioneer/seller, hopefully making a profit in both roles. This is accomplished by offering a painting from one’s hand up for auction each turn. The auctioneer keeps the coins bid if another player buys it, but must pay the bank if bought by the auctioneer. After each round, paintings are valued by the number of paintings of that type that were sold. The broker with the most cash after four rounds is the winner. The Knizia twist here is that there are several different types of auctions involved as dictated by the cards played. 
Parfum (led by Nicole) 2015 dice, drafting and set collection game of fragrances by the team that designed Fresco and introduced to Steve by Herb & Lynn Lamb Levy at a Long Island Gamenite.  Dice represent ingredients like vanilla, lavender, or violets, as the players distill precious essences in order to create unique perfumes. The tension here is how turn order is handled….go early in the turn order and receive fewer actions, go later and you have more actions but fewer choices as fragrance notes and customers don’t get replenished until each round ends. Only players catering to their clientele’s preferences will be able to sell their perfume for VPs. 
Ticket to Ride : Poland Expansion (led by Tony) This 2019 expansion to the classic Ticket to Ride challenges players to create connections between Poland’s neighboring countries, such as Germany, Ukraine, and the Czech Republic. The extra rules (beyond those of the base game) allow you to draw point cards from country stacks each time that you create a connection between neighboring countries.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection 6½: Poland | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Sagrada (led by Nicole) 2017 puzzle game where colored dice representing stained glass windows are drafted in serpentine fashion and placed onto a 4×5 grid with restrictive placement rules on color and number. Players have both public and private objectives to score their VPs. 
Keyflower (led by Zach)  2012 Richard Breese (Key series of games) auction, set collection, tile placement, engine building and worker placement game where workers can be used to take actions or to bid for tiles. Balancing one’s actions between bidding, upgrading, shuffling resources, and simply trying to bog down opponents are what makes the game shine as the same resource is used for all options.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/122515/keyflower

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.

Pixies(led by Rachel K) 2024 drafting, set collection and connections card game, where players move through the seasons to meet little creatures emerging from a flower or sheltering in the hollow of a tree. Choose one of the revealed cards, but be careful which ones are left to your opponents! Place that card in your playing area according to its number. Cards placed one on top of another are validated and earn players points at the end of the round, as do the largest color zone and spirals. Easy…yet you’ll find that the other players won’t be short of bad advice.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/411875/pixies

Trinket Trove (led by Armando) 2025 drafting and set collection card game where players are collectors – a cute little critter living in the margins of the human world. Players trade and collect sets of trinkets to decorate their burrow. One begins with a hand of 4 trinket cards, and each round new trinket cards will be drawn face up into the center of the table. All players will take turns bidding for draft order, by offering up trinket cards from their hand. Then players will take turns claiming the trinkets on the table, including the bids offered up by other players, and placing them in their hands. At the end of 5 or 6 rounds players score their hand of trinkets and the player with the most points wins!

Trinket Trove | Board Game | BoardGameGeek

Steve

23 at the UNO Park Community Center for a request night.  Welcome back to Steve & Sandy’s friends, Jim & Cathy, from Suburban Philadelphia and Rachel’s dad, Stewart, from NJ 7/15/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Jim & Cathy, Tony, Rachel & Stewart, Sean, Tim, Armando, Zach, Nicole, Julie,Chris, Rob, Cady, Shon, Reimi,…

23 at the UNO Park Community Center for a request night.  Welcome back to Steve & Sandy’s friends, Jim & Cathy, from Suburban Philadelphia and Rachel’s dad, Stewart, from NJ 7/15/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Jim & Cathy, Tony, Rachel & Stewart, Sean, Tim, Armando, Zach, Nicole, Julie,Chris, Rob, Cady, Shon, Reimi,…

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