Fantastic Factories 2x (led by Reimi/Matt) 2019 race to manufacture the most goods and/or build the most prestigious buildings. Dice are rolled to represent worker placement, engine building, resource management, tableau building, simultaneous play, and some card drafting. Each round is split into two phases, the market phase and the work phase. During the market phase, players choose to either acquire a new blueprint for free or pay to hire a contractor. Blueprints are used to construct new factories during the work phase. Contractors can be used to reinforce your strategy by providing resources or allowing you to roll additional dice. 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216600/fantastic-factories

Furnace (led by Tim) 2020 engine-building Eurogame 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. A welcome return as Tim introduced us to this game in 2021 back at Purple Dragon Games.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/318084/furnace

Robo Rally (led by Chris) 1994 classic Richard Garfield (MtG) designed programmed movement game, where players choose a robot and direct its moves by playing cards. Chaos ensues as all players reveal the cards they’ve chosen. Players face obstacles like industrial lasers, gaping pits, and moving conveyor belts — but those can also be used to their advantage! Each player aims to make it to each of the checkpoints in numerical order. The first player to reach all of the checkpoints wins. This game has a love-hate relationship with most, so YMMV.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally

Scythe (led by Matt) 2016 engine-building game set in an alternate-history 1920s period. It is a time of farming and war, broken hearts and rusted gears, innovation and valor. Each player represents a character from one of five factions of Eastern Europe who are attempting to earn their fortune and claim their faction’s stake in the land around the mysterious Factory. Players conquer territory, enlist new recruits, reap resources, gain villagers, build structures, and activate monstrous mechs. With 3 experienced players needing no rules explanations, it finished in a very efficient 60 minutes.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/169786/scythe

Bot Factory (led by Anna) 2023 streamlined gateway version of Vital Lacerda’s complex Kanban EV, where players are building robots (instead of the original EVs) by drafting plans, parts and influencing values under the watchful eye of factory supervisor, Sandra. The worker placement and turn-order sequence is crucial to success. Adding a co-author also added design elegance, making this very accessible. 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/328124/bot-factory

Forest Shuffle (led by Sean) 2023 drafting, set collection and multi-use card game has players competing to gather the most valuable trees to their forest, then attracting species to those trees. This creates synergies as many cards score points based on other cards in the player’s forest or played to the same tree. On their turn players either draw 2 cards OR play a card from their hand, paying the cost by discarding additional cards. Once the third Winter card is drawn, the game ends and whoever scores the most points from their forest wins.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/391163/forest-shuffle

Seikatsu: A Pet’s Life (led by Rob O) 2017’s tile placement game of birds and flowers that was re-themed in 2019 with pets and colored cushions in a living room. Players have a hand of 2 tiles (among 4 pets and wild unicorns in 4 colors) and each turn place one tile onto the board until it is filled. Interim points are earned for groups of the same animal, but the overwhelming majority of the points are from a triangular progression of pillows of the plurality color, but only from that player’s armchair perspective. 20-30 minute adorable opener/closer.  

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/216428/seikatsu

Agueda: City of Umbrellas (led by K-ban) 2024 drafting and pattern building game inspired by the real life annual festival in Agueda Portugal called the Umbrella Project. Players will take on the role of festival artists decorating the city streets with their own colorful umbrellas to attract the most tourists to their streets. As an artist, players will need to balance the requests of the city, shops, and tourists to create the most stunning arrangement of umbrellas. Players will draft tiles from a central board, placing them in a row on their player street board. After placing their umbrellas, they will select one or two tourists and move them into one of their three rows of umbrellas to score that row. Careful placement of umbrellas will unlock sections of one’s tourist map, which will add more tourists into one’s pool to place on your board. Once a player has filled up their board, scoring of each player’s arrangement of umbrellas will be based on both the standard board scoring placement rules plus communal “Shop” cards with varying scoring objectives. A nice 45 minute gateway game with very tactile umbrella pieces that are colorblind friendly.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/317515/agueda-city-of-umbrellas

Project L (led by Sandy) 2020 charming combination of puzzle solving with engine building. Players start with 2 acrylic puzzle pieces and earn additional shapes by completing puzzles. Players select from among several actions – drafting puzzles, upgrading pieces, placing pieces and the important master building action. The game rewards efficiency in the drafting and in use of their 3 actions per turn. There are two recently released expansions to try, as well as a spin-off similar game in the works called Square One that recently completed a very successful crowdfunding campaign..

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/260180/project-l

Ultimatch (led by Reimi) 2024 limited communication cooperative matching family card game that takes 20 minutes.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/414176/ultimatch

 

Captain Flip (led by Nicole) 2024 family game that is a finalist for this year’s SdJ award. A simple tile placement game where players reach into a bag of character tiles and either place it or FLIP it to its reverse side and then place it to form your crew. There are nine characters, most of which interact with each other and four boards that present different tactics of play. There’s a push your luck aspect. The game is light, but elicits much laughter.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/393325/captain–flip

Steve