Steve will be bringing Flip City, Mille Fiori, Alhambra: The Red Palace, Faraway and Courtisans

Tim will be bringing SkyTeam (2024 SdJ finalist) and likely something published by Devir.

Sean will be bringing Tangram City, Brian Boru (Matt request) and Last Light

Captain Flip (2x) (led by K-ban/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

El Grande (led by Sean) 1995 Kramer-Ulrich SdJ winner that popularized area control and married it to a clever action and turn order selection. We used the King and Intrigant expansion that combines the two, as players select 13 cards from among a deck of 18 (31 with all the expansions). High numbered cards receive few cubes but allow for more cubes to be placed – the reverse is true for low-numbered cards. Players are placing their wooden cubes called Caballeros onto 9 Spanish provinces or into the Castillo (tower). Each region has its own scoreboard that rewards players with VPs for first, second or third place.  We finally played the full 9-turn game as intended by the authors. This game was WAY ahead of its time and is considered a modern classic.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/93/el-grande

Camel Up (led by Tim) 2014 SdJ winner where players bet on five racing camels, trying to figure out which will place first and second in a quick race around a pyramid. The earlier you place your bet, the more you can win — should you guess correctly, of course. Camels don’t run neatly, however, sometimes landing on top of another one and being carried toward the finish line. Who’s going to run when? That all depends on how the dice come out of the pyramid dice shaker, which releases one die at a time when players pause from their bets long enough to see who’s actually moving!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/153938/camel-up

Just One (led by Sandy) a perfect 13* for a quintet on very cooperative ladies. Rumor has it there was too much cooperation, Mulligans and downright bending of the rules, but all had a very good time on this now classic 2018 party game.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/254640/just-one

Ticket to Ride: Northern Lights (led by Tony) 2022 standalone game in Ticket to Ride series, designed for 2–5 players and introduces various end game bonus cards – 4 of 11 are selected every game, so now there are games where, for example, longest route gives extra points, but in other games you will score some extra, if most unused trains are in your supply. Tony & Rachel picked up this exceedingly rare version in a Scandinavian gift shop on their recent cross country skiing trip.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/371140/ticket-to-ride-northern-lights

Hoity Toity/Adel Verplichtet/ By Fair Means or Foul (led by K-ban) 1990 game from the author of Catan where bored English Noblemen collect artifacts and then show it off. Players buy or steal various pieces of junk in the form of cards, trying to form the largest and oldest collection. Built on a ‘rock-paper-scissors’ mechanism, this game gives all players a couple of choices each turn. The trick is in guessing what your opponents are likely to do, and planning your choice accordingly—only after everyone’s decision is revealed do you know for certain whether you made the right one.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/120/hoity-toity

Carcassonne (led by Armando) Classic 2000 tile laying game for two to five players. Players lay tiles by matching various features and build roads, farms, cloisters, and cities and seek to control them by placing their meeples on them. The size and quantities of these systems make them worth a various number of points and the player with the most points when all the tiles are laid down is the winner. Our group has tended to favor the stand-alone Hunters & Gatherers version.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/822/carcassonne

Alhambra (led by Sean) 2003 Dirk Henn (Show Manager, Metro, Wallenstein/Shogun) design where the best master builders in the whole of Europe and Arabia want to demonstrate their skill. Employ the most suitable teams of builders and make sure that you always have enough of the right currency. Because no matter whether they are stonemasons from the north or horticulturalists from the south, they all want a proper wage and insist on their “native” currency. With their help towers can be constructed, gardens laid out, pavilions and arcades erected and seraglios and chambers built. Players with the most buildings in each of the six building types in their Alhambra score in each of the scoring phases, and points are awarded for players’ longest external “wall” section within their complex. There are at least 15 expansions to the base game, a dice version and the recently published Red Palace stand-alone version.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6249/alhambra

King Domino (led by Tony) 2017 tile drafting/laying puzzle game. Players select tiles with two sections, similar to Dominoes, to connect to their existing kingdom, making sure at least one of its sides connects to a matching terrain type already in play. The order of who picks first depends on which tile was previously chosen, with better tiles forcing players to pick later in the next round. The game ends when each player has completed a 5×5 grid (or failed to do so), and points are counted based on the number of connecting tiles multiplied by their valuable crown symbols.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/204583/kingdomino

Azul (led by Rachel) 2017 drafting, set collecting and pattern building game designed by Michael Kiesling. Players take turns drafting colored tiles from suppliers to their player board. Later in the round, players score points based on how they’ve placed their tiles to decorate the palace. Extra points are scored for specific patterns and completing sets; wasted supplies harm the player’s score. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/230802/azul

Dixit (led by Chris W) 2008 party game where each turn one player is the storyteller and chooses one of the six cards in their hand, then makes up a sentence based on that card’s image and says it out loud without showing the card to the other players. Each other player then selects the card in their hand that best matches the sentence and gives the selected card to the storyteller, without showing it to anyone else. The storyteller shuffles their card with all of the received cards, then reveals all of these cards. Each player other than the storyteller then secretly guesses which card belongs to the storyteller. If nobody or everybody guesses the correct card, the storyteller scores 0 points, and each other player scores 2 points. Otherwise, the storyteller and whoever found the correct answer score 3 points. Additionally, the non-storyteller players score 1 point for every vote received by their card. The game ends when the deck is empty or if a player has scored at least 30 points. In either case, the player with the most points wins.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/39856/dixit

Steve