2026 Session Reports

9/23/2026 – Berkshire Gamers Session Report #26-38

25 at UNO Park Community Center for a request night. We honored Nicole’s epic Pacific Crest Scenic National Trail adventure – 225+ miles over 16 days finishing at Mt Whitney’s 14,505 elevation before returning home – with a couple of games about climbing and hiking/camping.
9/23/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center
IN: Steve & Sandy, Tony & Rachel, Norm & Hope, Jason & Sarah, Fred & Janet, Tim, Armando, Matt, Zach, Nicole, Julie, Reimi, Chris, Amy, Carol, Rob, Danny, Sean K, Kelby, Sam
ON OUR TABLES:
The Climbers (led by Tim) 2008 wooden game where the player’s goal is to climb to the highest level of the structure. To help with the climb, players may move and rotate blocks. Ladders can be used to climb large distances. Blocking disks will prevent other players from using a specific block. Wise use of one’s tools and timed judiciously makes for the best possible moves in one’s adventure to the top! Massive deforestation, but excellent table presence.
Vivo (led by Chris)  2024 trick taking card game, where each round starts by revealing a harmony type (Solo, Duet, Trio, Quartet). The harmony determines how many suits must be played in the trick—not being able to is considered playing “off-harmony,” making that player ineligible for points. At the end of the trick, the player who played the highest on-harmony card scores two points, and the lowest on-harmony card scores for the value of that card (those bass notes are so important!).

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/420242/vivo

Gemblo 2X (led by K-ban) 2003 abstract strategy game with translucent, colored pieces, each of which is made up of one to five hexagons.  The goal is to get rid of all of your pieces by placing them on the hexagonal game board. Each piece that you place after the first cannot touch previously-placed pieces of the same color; instead each piece must be a distance of “1” from another piece of the same color, where 1 is the length of a side of one of the small hexagons. Another restriction is that the distance being measured can’t directly cross another player’s piece, but it can lie at the junction of two pieces. Once all players have placed as many pieces as they can, they count the number of hexagonal units in the pieces they couldn’t place, and the player with the lowest score wins. This is the Korean answer to Blokus….but can handle up to 6 players.
Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria (led by Matt) 2021 drafting and 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.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/285036/shadow-kingdoms-of-valeria

Parks (led by Nicole/Tim)  2019 worker placement and track movement/turn order game where players will take on the role of two hikers as they trek through different trails across four seasons of the year. While on the trail, these hikers will take actions and collect memories of the places that their hikers visit. These memories are represented by various resource tokens like mountains and forests. Collecting these memories in sets will allow players to trade them in to visit a National Park at the end of each hike. Our intrepid quartet played using the Nightfall expansion which adds new Park Cards that feature new rewards and all new artwork from the Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series, including the 17 parks not represented in the base game. This expansion also includes New Year Cards and Bonus Scoring opportunities, and allows players to experience the trail in a brand new way with the Camping mechanic.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/266524/parks

Completto (led by Sandy) 2015 German import. Race to complete your 22-tile row of wooden numbered tiles in ascending order. The game plays like Rack-O on steroids.
Blueprints (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.
Sagrada (led by K-ban) 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. 
Architects of the West Kingdom (led by Armando) 2018 drafting and worker placement economic city building game that is set at the end of the Carolingian Empire, circa 850 AD. As royal architects, players compete to impress their King and maintain their noble status by constructing various landmarks throughout his newly appointed domain. Players need to collect raw materials, hire apprentices, and keep a watchful eye on their workforce. These are treacherous times, and rival architects will stop at nothing to slow your progress. 

The aim of Architects of the West Kingdom is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game’s end. Points are gained by constructing various buildings and advancing work on the Archbishop’s cathedral. Throughout the game, players need to make a lot of moral decisions. However, only at the game’s end will their virtue be judged. A few underhand deals here and there might not seem like much, but fall too far and you will be punished. The game ends once a set number of constructions have been completed.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/236457/architects-of-the-west-kingdom

Stephenson’s Rocket (led by Zach) 1999 Reiner Knizia game about colliding railroads in early 1800’s England. There are seven different rail companies that players can expand. Each time a player extends a rail, the other stockholders can veto that action, but it might cost them their shares. When two companies’ rail touch, the railways merge to become one. The game is over when only one company remains or there are no rail tiles remaining, and the winner is the player who earned the most money over the course of the game.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/204/stephensons-rocket

Traxx 2X (led by K-ban)  2015 flip & write (Dutch import) as players draw their path to reach as many of the 10 target treasures as possible, while visiting as many hexes on their erasable board as possible. Full points for being first to reach a target, half (rounded up) for subsequent arrivals. One point penalty for every hex not visited on your board. 
Steve

25 at UNO Park Community Center for a request night. We honored Nicole’s epic Pacific Crest Scenic National Trail adventure – 225+ miles over 16 days finishing at Mt Whitney’s 14,505 elevation before returning home – with a couple of games about climbing and hiking/camping. 9/23/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Tony & Rachel,…

25 at UNO Park Community Center for a request night. We honored Nicole’s epic Pacific Crest Scenic National Trail adventure – 225+ miles over 16 days finishing at Mt Whitney’s 14,505 elevation before returning home – with a couple of games about climbing and hiking/camping. 9/23/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Tony & Rachel,…

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