Right now, the situation looks rather grim for the board game industry, and weekly we hear about companies that have either shut down or had to let go of staff. It’s hard to see that this industry is being hit so hard by the actions and opinions of politicians while they are just trying to run a business as best they can. Frank West has written some interesting blog posts about the tariffs and the consequences. We have no control over what’s going on in the USA, so the only thing we can do is wish everybody impacted by this the best of luck, and we really do hope that this impulsive and shortsighted policy will be reversed asap…

Let’s take a look at what we’ve been up to last week. We played our very first game on Thursday at a friend’s birthday party. A good time, cake, combined with a game of Head Hackers! We hadn’t played it in over five years, but he kept mentioning the game multiple times over the past years, so we decided to bring it with us as a surprise. It was just as silly as we could remember but a fine game to play at a chill party.

The following night, we had ‘story game night’! The last time, we started playing “I’m sorry, did you say Street Magic?” but we didn’t reach a conclusion we were satisfied with that night, so we continued expanding our world and its story. After a quick recap, we were right back into our world with weird characters with weird accents and we managed to bring the session to a great end! Puzzle pieces clicked and everybody was satisfied with how we rounded things up.

During the weekend, we spent one day hiking in the beautiful Tecklenburger Land region in Germany. Since we have a car now, these places are way more accessible to us, and it’s the only place “nearby” where you can practice hiking with some height differences. Not compatible with hiking in the mountains, but at least it’s better than what the Netherlands has to offer in that aspect.

On Sunday, we played our very first Vital Lacerda game! Our friend Jeroen invited us to play Escape Plan, and yes, please! We really enjoyed our first play, it was exciting and not that complex. Everything in the game oozes with the theme and because of that, actions feel logical and that takes away part of the complexity. That being said, the game has a complexity score of 3,6 on BGG, so it definitely is a light Lacerda game. It was fun, we all managed to escape and we finished way quicker than we thought, so we could play more games!

First, we almost randomly picked Neoville from the shelves because nobody had heard of this Phil Walker-Harding game (and the playing time of 45 minutes was inviting). In Neoville, you’re building your dream eco-city by placing terrain tiles and carefully adding skyscrapers and biostructures. It’s all about matching the right conditions while building your city – and avoiding penalties for poor planning. It’s a light game with a strategic aspect, I’d say it’s perfect for families. We ended the afternoon with two team games of Crokinole and we understand why people can get hyped for this game, it’s just an excellent dexterity game.