I am no longer using Instagram. You can find me on Mastodon now. My username is . I mostly post about books in Finnish. However, since I have connected with some board game fans there, I will sometimes write posts in English as well.
Innovation Ultimate
I have been a fan of the game Innovation for about 15 years. Until recently, I had only played the basic version of the game. I never really had much interest in the expansions. I did try Echoes one time when it was in beta, but that was it. When the crowdfunding campaign for Innovation Ultimate was announced, I became very interested. I quickly decided to order seven copies. Four of them were for the people in my game group, and three were for other friends.
The game finally arrived in March. It was time to really look into the expansions. I have been very happy to play a lot of Innovation recently. We have played it more than 20 times already. We have been trying out different expansions by themselves and also mixing them together. We even managed to play a couple of games using all the expansions at once.
Let me start with that experience. Playing Innovation with every expansion included is crazy. We tried it once with the physical cards, and it was a bit exhausting. It is hard work to try and keep track of all the different rules. We have played it twice on the website Yucata since then, and it is much easier to manage there.
Games with just one or two expansions are much easier to handle. My favorite expansions are the ones that change the game the most. I really like Artifacts and Figures. So far, I have not found a combination that I dislike.
The new card design looks very good. I also like the changes they made to the base game. The age 11 cards are a lot of fun. I also like the junking mechanism, which removes cards permanently from the game. I enjoy how this makes it more likely for the game to reach the higher ages, where the most fun cards are. There might be a bit more chaos now, especially at first, but that is what draws me to Innovation, so I am fine with that.
Fellowship of the Ring: The Trick-taking Game
If I count the number of deals, this is my most-played game of 2025 so far. We have played the game three times, but since each deal counts as a play, we have done 41 plays in total. At first, this seemed like a fairly easy version of The Crew. The later scenarios increased the difficulty a little bit, but it still feels a bit softer than other games in the genre. I have now played twelve of the eighteen available scenarios. If you enjoy cooperative trick-taking games, this one is definitely worth a try.
Black Forest
This is a new version of the game Glass Road. It removes the simultaneous action-selection and the double-guessing element of the cards. This change is likely to divide opinions, because that mechanic was something that made Glass Road different from other games by Rosenberg. I was never a big fan of the double-guessing, so I am happy with the new action selection method. It is based on worker placement with just one worker.
Tom from Shut Up & Sit Down likes this game because it is a bit fuzzy. You do not have to optimize every single move perfectly. Instead, you play a bit from gut instinct. That is how I feel about Black Forest too. It is a nice little adventure where you move between villages, collect resources, and try to build something nice. There is room for games like this, and I am glad I bought Black Forest. It felt a little silly to buy it since my friend Nooa has moved to a different city and we do not get to play as often.
Faraway
If you are looking for a nice filler game that works well with two to six players, this is a good option. Players draft and play eight cards. Then, you resolve them in backwards order. Many cards require a certain amount of symbols. Only the symbols in that specific card and the ones played after it count. There are conflicting interests: you want to play cards in ascending order to collect bonus cards, but often it would be better to play them in descending order.
I thought this game was fine. The two-player game plays very fast; maybe too fast? It is over in just a few minutes. The six-player game took about 20 minutes, which is very nice for a game like this. This is an enjoyable game, but I think I will pass my review copy to someone who likes it more, like my son.
