Summer 2025 review

The nice weather season is rather short in my area; therefore, we play fewer board games in the summer. Rather than my monthly review, I have combined the games I have played in both June and July into a single post. This post is also a few days late as I wanted to avoid the social media eclipse caused by GenCon. For people that went to the convention, I hope you had a wonderful time!

SETI 🔗

We played a second game of SETI, we all scored noticeably better. Not that it matters much in our group, we like solving puzzles, and SETI is a fun one. One of my buddies scored over 300 points, something I am told is very exceptional. I can't wait to see what the upcoming expansion adds to the game.

Firefly: The Game 🔗

I know absolutely nothing about the Firefly universe, so I cannot comment on the theme of this game. As far as a pickup and delivery game, it's a fine proposition. Turns are quick, we played a five-player game without issue, and objectives are varied enough through scenario selection. I liked the store mechanic, where you have access to the full discard pile of each store and can even draw a few more cards to look at. It streamlines the search for upgrades and crews. I would not recommend the game to people who hate dice rolls; there are a lot of them when picking up or delivering jobs.

Vagrantsong 🔗

I've played this game a couple of times now, and I'm still on the fence about it. Sometimes, I feel something is missing for me to really enjoy the game, others I find the game executes its intention just well enough. It could be related to the fact I've only played the first few scenarios, as my friend regularly showcases the game to new players.

Marvel Champions

Card games, my friends, card games. 🙄 I don't think I have ever had a more horrible draw luck than this run of the Goblin Formula scenario. Drawing threat cards when I needed attacks and vice versa, regularly drawing multiple copies of the same card, this was rough. Good thing Miss Marvel has a strong innate ability. I barely held my own, and let's be honest, my friend did most of the heavy work.

We also continued the Sinister Motives campaign by fighting Mysterio. He's more annoying than strong by feeding you encounter cards into your deck, an interesting new mechanic, and slowing you down with multiple negative effects cards. So far, this campaign has been fun, the villains have been interesting and varied, and the reputation track is a fine campaign differentiator.

There was a lot of Marvel it seems! We also fought The Sinister Six which provides an interesting twist on the game. The villains have very low HP, they rotate in and out of the game while your objective is to go through a scheme representing the efforts you spend escaping them. As it is often the case with this game, we were close to losing after a few rounds, then we manages to wrestle control back and never lose it.

Oathsworn 🔗

I don't want to play this game ever again. There, I said it.

My original plan was to write a review after completing the campaign, but I have changed my mind since then. I don't think this much negativity would be good for the blog or fun to read. This game is absolutely broken and unfair. It's like playing DnD with a 12-years-old GM that wants to kill the team in every fight but can't do it without cheating. I could have told you as much after four scenarios; I would have stopped there, but I was a good friend and stomached the whole campaign.

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King 🔗

Playing this made me realize I'm rarely invested in pandemic-style games. This one is no exception. The game is fine; I don't have any complaints about the mechanics or the theme, but I didn't care much about the game.

Witcher: Path of Destiny 🔗

The game is precisely what I thought it would be: an overproduced draft game with a tacked-on Witcher theme. Do you need minis to play the game? Nope. Would any other theme work? Absolutely. Should you care about the story explaining why in this round, you are looking for these two symbols out of four? Maybe the first few times. This being said, I liked the game. There's a nice puzzle to solve, trying to figure out each turn how to best utilize the card available. The character powers look to be varied enough. I played only the first scenario; it teaches the basic rule, and I'm curious to see what twist the others introduce. I haven't yet tried the co-op or one-vs-all modes.

Vicious Gardens 🔗

An okay family game with a lot of take-that. I don't think it does anything exceptionally, but it also doesn't fail on any particular point. It's a nice-looking game, which I think is always a plus in this category. I still feel I would play other games, though. It could be because one of the players took way too long for each of his turns; a game should take 15-20 minutes tops, not 45.

Leviathan Wilds 🔗

Not many people have heard of this game, and it's a shame. It's a great co-op game with plenty of interactions. In fact, if you don't play some cards during your friend's turns to help them, you're not playing optimally. I like how tight it is; we usually end up losing by one or two actions or barely eeking out a victory. I played the gadgeteer for the first time; it's a fun class with an extra layer of management with your gadget token.

Hexplore It 🔗

I introduced a friend to this game. We had time to play three games, which is a bad sign really. It means at least one of them went so bad, it was quickly reset. Oops! While I really like this game, the sense of character progression you feel and need to beat the Dead King, its randomness can lead to terrible games. Unless you seed the decks for progressive difficulty, you might be screwed by drawing quests and monsters that are too difficult to defeat at the beginning of the game. I also like a house rule created by another friend: the Dead King can't enter the board in the first three turns. It gives just enough leeway for the team to fail a few quests. I have now played the first box of this series several times; it feels like I should attempt the others now.

Castles of Burgundy 🔗

It's a classic that should always be fun. Until you invite your friend who takes forever to do each of his turns. I swear, he added 45-60 minutes to the game by himself. 😞 Oh sure, he absolutely demolished everyone, but I was ready to move on 45 minutes before the actual end of the game.

EDITOR'S UPDATE: Turns out this friend also fumbled a rule with a building. He actually uses it in a way that multiplied its power.

The sunny days aren't over yet; in the last 10-12 years, August has been warm and sunny much more than historically in my area, so I'm not sure if more gaming will happen in the coming month. Hopefully everyone had a nice summer and was able to sneak in a few gaming nights!