2026 Session Reports

4/29/2026 – Berkshire Gamers Session Report #26-17

17 at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams for a request night.
4/29/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center
IN: Steve & Sandy, Sean, Tim, Armando, Zach, Tony, Chris, Amy & Ethan, Nicole, Julie, Reimi, Danny, Sean K, Cady, Matt
ON OUR TABLES:
Sky Team (led by 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 & Tim successfully landed their plane at HND Tokyo. 
Sky Team was the 2024 German Game of the Year winner.
Mottainai (led by Zach) 2015 mostly 2-player set collection card game that utilizes multi-purpose cards. Each player is an acolyte in a temple who performs tasks, collects materials, and sells or completes works for visitors. Every card can be each of these three things.

Players choose tasks to allow them to perform actions, keeping in mind that other player(s) will get to follow up on the task on their next turn. Clever planning and combining of one’s works’ special abilities is key, as is managing which materials one sells.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/175199/mottainai

Expeditions (led by Sean) 2023 sequel to Scythe. It is a competitive, card-driven, engine-building game of exploration. Play cards to gain power, guile, and unique worker abilities; move one’s mech to mysterious locations and gain cards found among the tiles; use workers, items, meteorites, and quests to enhance one’s mech; and use power and guile to vanquish corruption.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/379078/expeditions

Take It Easy (group led) 1983 puzzle game that is a true multi-player solitaire, in which each player individually completes a hexagon-shaped board with spots for 19 hexagon tiles. We played 2 rounds of the base game There’s no limit to the number of players provided there are enough copies on hand. One person (the caller) draws a tile randomly and tells the others which of the 27 tiles featuring colored/numbered lines crossing in three directions, with numbers from 1 to 9, it is. “The 9-8-7,” for example. Each player then chooses which empty spot on their own board they’ll play the 9-8-7. This is repeated until the boards are filled.

The idea is to complete same-numbered lines across one’s board. Scoring is calculated by multiplying the number on the tile with the number of tiles in the completed line. A complete column of three 9s is worth 27, for example…but a lot of players will hope for five 9s to fill the big column down the middle. It is often compared to Bingo because of the familiar pattern of a number being called and then everybody looking at their cards to play it, and then scoring if a line is completed. But that’s as far as the comparison goes. Bingo is sheer luck; Take It Easy is a game of skill. 

One of Steve’s Mom’s favorite games – we played it to honor her on what would have been her 96th birthday.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/128/take-it-easy

Claim (led by Tony) 2017 trick taking, auction and area majority/influence card game played in two distinct phases. In phase one, each player gets a hand of cards that they use to recruit followers. In phase two, they use the followers to compete and win over the five factions of the realms. Each faction has a special power that affects play, and powers can be different in each phase! At the end of the game, the player who has the majority of followers of a faction wins that faction’s vote, and whoever wins the vote of at least three factions wins the game!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233961/claim

Moon (led by Tim) This 2023 release from the author of Villagers and Streets depicts a rush to construct lunar bases that are attractive places to live and work for the people of Earth. The most prestigious base will become the new lunar capital! The game employs the familiar “pick & pass” or “hand drafting” mechanism for players to select cards to add to their base. Each hand of cards represents a convoy of experts and equipment travelling between the players’ outposts, giving the player the choice of one new construction each turn.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/358386/moon
Furnace (led by Zach) 2020 auction and engine-building game in which players take on the roles of 19th-century capitalists building their industrial corporations and aspiring to make as much money as they can by purchasing companies, extracting resources, and processing them in the best combinations possible. 
Gardlings (led by K-ban) 2024 combination bag builder, tile layer and push your luck puzzle game from Norway. Each round, all players simultaneously build their own garden by drawing and placing tiles from their bag. Players may stop drawing tiles at any time because if too many gnomes are drawn a player will bust and the gnomes will steal some of the gems just mined. At the end of the round, use any gems matched in one’s garden to buy a new tile. Each tile features potential ways to match gems, as well as a creature with a special ability. A player’s garden will grow larger and better each round, and the puzzle of placing tiles will become increasingly complex. The first player to reach or exceed 20 gems and be able to purchase the victory tile wins. 
The game has similar aspects to Quacks but with less rules overhead – so it is closer to a family game than a gateway game. Two or more sets can be combined to increase player count from 4.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/416059/gardlings
Fountains (led by Armando) 2025 drafting and tile placing game that utilizes a rondel. Each player starts with a round fountain that features a spout and room for four features. On a turn, move one of the tokens 1-3 spaces clockwise around the central board, skipping occupied spaces, to land on an empty space. A player then takes the top tile next to this token and adds it to their board. One can expand out or up or both, but players want to ensure that they have a spout at their highest level and water flowing through all of their lower levels or else they’ll have dead zones that won’t score. If a player stops next to the tiny oval features instead of a tile stack, they choose one of these features and add it to an empty space in their fountain.

When someone lands on the green, blue, or white space with the matching colored token, everyone scores for the linked item: lily pads, separate pools linked by constant water flow, and fish. (Fish come in three types, and the player who scores fish chooses which color scores.) For each item, you score 1, 2, 3, etc. points if the item is on the first, second, third, etc. level.

When a player hits a point threshold, players then score for all three colors once again, as well as endgame bonuses such as 2 points per coin icon and 4 points for a set of fish in the three colors.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/440509/fountains

Lexio (led by K-ban) 2005 Korean climbing/shedding game, based on the traditional Chinese card game system of “Zheng Shangyou” – and is virtually the same game as Big Two (also known as Chinese Poker). Many other card games are based on the same mechanism (The Great Dalmuti, Gang of Four, Tichu, Scout, etc.), but LEXIO uses tiles similar to those in Mahjong instead of cards, and they are chunky to say the least. In accordance with Chinese tradition, the number “2” is the strongest number. The suits are named after the sun, the moon, the stars, and the clouds – and serve as a secondary hierarchy to break ties.

In the game, a player leads a tile or set of tiles, and the other players must follow by either playing a higher tile or set of tiles as the set that was led or passing. The play continues until all players have passed in succession after the final play, and the player who won the last set leads next. Play continues until one player has played all of their tiles. Each player then pays chips to those players who performed better – that is, the player who went out will get paid by all other players, and the other players pay points to one another based on the difference in the number of tiles each held at the end of the hand. A game lasts five rounds, and the player at the end of the game with the most points wins.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19184/lexio

Aurum (led by Zach) 2023 trick-taking card game for three or four players, with two teams of two competing in the four-player game. After all cards for the round have been dealt, players bid on how many tricks they think they or their team will win. (In a four-player game, the higher of the two bids on a team becomes the team’s bid.)

During the round, players can lead with any non-gold card. On a player’s turn, they must not play a suit that has already been played (unless it is a gold card). The highest number played wins, but gold is the trump suit and always wins. Whoever plays the lowest non-gold card adds a gold card of the same number from the supply to their collection if it is available. All gold cards played in a trick are returned to the supply.

The round ends immediately when a player cannot play a valid base metal card and does not have a gold card to play or chooses not to play a gold card. If a player wins more tricks than they bid, they earn their bid value as points; if a player meets their bid exactly, they earn twice their bid value as points. Additionally, players earn points for the number of gold cards in their collection. The player/team with the most points wins a gold nugget, and the first to collect two nuggets wins!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/383459/aurum

Steve

17 at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams for a request night. 4/29/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Sean, Tim, Armando, Zach, Tony, Chris, Amy & Ethan, Nicole, Julie, Reimi, Danny, Sean K, Cady, Matt ON OUR TABLES: Sky Team (led by Tim) 2023 2-player game in which players are a pilot and…

17 at the UNO Park Community Center in North Adams for a request night. 4/29/2026 @ UNO Park Community Center IN: Steve & Sandy, Sean, Tim, Armando, Zach, Tony, Chris, Amy & Ethan, Nicole, Julie, Reimi, Danny, Sean K, Cady, Matt ON OUR TABLES: Sky Team (led by Tim) 2023 2-player game in which players are a pilot and…

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