9/16/2026 – Berkshire Gamers Session Report #26-37

23 at the UNO Park Community Center for an evening of dice games.
Welcome to Cady’s Mom, Annie, on her first visit.
9/16/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center
IN: Steve & Sandy, Amy & Ethan, Tony & Rachel, Norm & Hope, Jason & Sarah, Sean, Armando, Tim, Zach, Matt, Julie, Reimi, Kelby, Rob, Danny, Sean K, Cady & Annie
ON OUR TABLES:
Sky Team (led by Reimi/Tim)  2023 2-player game in which players are a pilot and co-pilot at the controls of an airliner. Your goal is to work together as a team to land your airplane in different airports around the world. To land your plane, players need to silently assign their dice to the correct spaces in your cockpit to balance the axis of the plane, control its speed, deploy the flaps, extend the landing gear, contact the control tower to clear your path, and even have a little coffee to improve your concentration enough to change the value of your dice. If the aircraft tilts too much and stalls, overshoots the airport, or collides with another aircraft, you lose the game…and your pilot’s license…and probably your life. Reimi was the flight instructor for Sean K to earn his wings at Montreal Trudeau Airport. They landed safely to the relief of the passengers aboard. 
Sky Team was the 2024 German Game of the Year winner.
Strike 3X (led by Sean) 2012 push your luck dice game. At the beginning, one die is in the arena. The active player throws another die into the arena. If both dice now show the same number, the player must take them out and end the turn. If not, the player can decide to throw in another die (possibly trying to overturn other dice) or end his/her turn. A die which shows the X face is removed from the game, as is any die which falls out of the arena. A player who holds no more dice is eliminated from the game. The last player who still has dice is the winner.
Backgammon 2X (led by K-ban) 3000 BC classic abstract strategy game where each player has a set of 15 checkers (or stones) that must be moved from their starting positions, around, and then off the board. Dice are thrown each turn, and each player must decide which of their checkers to move based on the outcome of the roll. Players can capture each other’s checkers, forcing the captured checkers to restart their journey around the board. The winner is the first player to get all 15 checkers off the board. A more recent addition to the game is the “doubling cube”, which allows players to up the stakes of the game. Although the game relies on dice to determine movement, there is a large degree of strategy in deciding how to make the most effective moves given each dice roll and measuring the risk in terms of possible rolls the opponent may get. It may be the first game to be mentioned in written history, going back 5,000 years to the Sumerians of ancient Mesopotamia. During the 1920s, archaeologists unearthed five boards from a cemetery in the ancient town of Ur. At another location, pieces and dice were also found along with the board. Boards from ancient Egypt have also been recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamun, including a mechanical dice box, no doubt intended to stop cheaters.The rules in English were standardized in 1743 by Edmond Hoyle. These remained popular until the American innovations of the 1930s.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2397/backgammon

Panda Royale (led by Armando)  2024 dice drafting and chucking game that can accommodate up to 10 players but is actually just a big bag of polyhedral dice in 7 colors with score sheets that indicate how each different color scores points. 
Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria (led by Matt) 2021 draftinand worker placement game where players are Wardens, hungry for the destruction of Valeria. You must outwit the other Wardens to earn the right to command an army for the Shadow Kingdoms. Visit dark Shrines to gain minions, magic, gems, and gold to fuel your war machine. Command monsters into battle to conquer the lands and earn Victory Points. The player with the most Victory Points at the end of the game will be declared the winner.

On your turn, you must move your Warden from its current location to a new location. When your Warden enters one of the 5 Shrines, you first take any available die from the Shrine and place it on your player board, then perform the Shrine action associated with the Shrine.

There are 5 troop types (die colors) in the game: Goblin (green), Orc (red), Skeleton (white), Gargoyle (purple), and Gnoll (brown). Players send their Warden to the Camp on their player board to use their minion dice to resolve battle plans and place Victory tokens on their Campaign board.

Roll for the Galaxy (led by Tim) The 2014 version of Race for the Galaxy is a dice game of building space empires for 2–5 players. Dice represent populace, directed to develop new technologies, settle worlds, and ship goods. The player who best manages their workers and builds the most prosperous empire wins!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/132531/roll-galaxy

Las Vegas/Vegas (led by Sean) 2012 Rudiger Dorn easy, dice-rolling, fun-and-luck game with a lot of interaction and ‘schadenfreude’.  The game includes six cardboard casino mats, one for each side of a normal six-sided die. For each mat, players draw money cards until at least $50k is showing, but the amount may end up being a lot more, making that casino more desirable.

Each player has eight dice of a different color, which they take turns rolling. When you roll your dice, you can choose to place them on the relevant casino cards; for example, a die showing a 1 will be placed on the casino mat marked “1”. You must place all dice of one number on one casino in your turn. All players take turns doing this until all the dice have been used. Finally, the player with the most dice on each casino card takes the money associated with it. In case of a tie, the next non-tied player takes the highest-valued money card at that casino.

Blueprints 2X (led by K-ban) 2013 game where players are architects, who must use different colored dice (representing wood, glass, stone and recycled materials) to build three different structures from blueprints, with the dice providing different advantages to you. In each of 3 rounds players roll and draft dice one at a time to fill the 6 spaces on their blueprints. Points are tallied to discover who wins the gold, silver and bronze prizes (and their resultant VPs) as well as earning VPs for achieving four public objectives. After three rounds, players tally their awards and prizes to see who wins. A good 30-minute opener or closer.
Cubist (led by Tony)  2014 game that uses dice in unique ways. Players are architects building a grand new Modern Art Museum including its interior sculptures or “installations”. The building materials are represented by dice subject to placement rules. Dice with identical numbers can be stacked on top of one another to give your sculpture elevation and grandeur. Dice with adjacent numbers go next to one another to construct unconventional footprints of modernism. Pairs of the same numbered dice can be used to enlist the aid of masters of modern art like Juan Gris, Franz Marc, and Olga Rozanova. Each installation that players complete allows them to contribute dice to the building of the Museum itself. 
Crystal Palace (led by Zach) 2019 set collection and worker placement game where players take on the role of a nation at the time of the first World Fair in London (1851), trying to create a buzz with spectacular inventions and the support of famous and powerful people.

It is a dice-placement game in which the players themselves determine the stats of their dice at the beginning of each round. The higher the number, the better — but it comes at a price. In the course of the game, dice are placed on eight action locations (Patent Office, Reform Club, London Times, Port of London, Waterloo Station, British Museum, Bank of England, Westminster) in a competition for the best resources, patents, and brains.

In a world of slightly weird inventions, you will meet people like Phileas Fogg, Levi Strauss and Amelia Edwards, and invent gadgets such as the Thinking machine, the Beer glass counter or the Climate changer.

Chicken! (led by Armando) 2023 push your luck dice chucker, where players will be rolling dice each turn—pressing their luck to score more Chickens while avoiding foxes.

On a turn, a player must choose to roll all the dice passed to them or “Chicken Out” to roll fewer dice. Players will score points from the Chickens they roll, but they will bust (and score no points) if 3 or more foxes appear across their dice.

For each Egg symbol rolled, a die is hatched from the Coop and then the active player will choose to reroll all of their blanks, eggs, and newly hatched dice, or they may score their points and pass the dice to the next player. If a player chooses to “Chicken Out” at the start of their turn, they lose a point for being a chicken, but they get to place all Yellow and Orange dice back into the Coop.

The first player to reach 25 Points from their Chickens wins the game!

Diceland/WurfelLand (led by K-ban) 2018 roll & write game where players are racing and nothing has to be calculated. Every player marks off hexes each turn based on the same roll of the dice, with the player on turn choosing a color and re-rolling (or not) the 6 color dice, with the other players choosing from among the colors that were rolled but not chosen. All players are racing to be the first to reach nine treasure fields and complete a territory of one chosen color. The game includes four double-sided wipeable playing boards for variety. An excellent 20 minute introduction to roll & write games.
That’s Pretty Clever (led by Tim) 2018 dice drafting game  where players choose their dice cleverly to enter them into the matching colored areas on their score sheet, putting together tricky chain-scoring opportunities, and racking up the points! The dice a player doesn’t use are as important as those they do, because every die with a lower value than the chosen one can be used by the other players, keeping everyone in the game at all times.
K-ban

23 at the UNO Park Community Center for an evening of dice games. Welcome to Cady’s Mom, Annie, on her first visit. 9/16/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Amy & Ethan, Tony & Rachel, Norm & Hope, Jason & Sarah, Sean, Armando, Tim, Zach, Matt, Julie, Reimi, Kelby, Rob, Danny, Sean K,…

23 at the UNO Park Community Center for an evening of dice games. Welcome to Cady’s Mom, Annie, on her first visit. 9/16/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Amy & Ethan, Tony & Rachel, Norm & Hope, Jason & Sarah, Sean, Armando, Tim, Zach, Matt, Julie, Reimi, Kelby, Rob, Danny, Sean K,…

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