As 2025 comes to a close, I find myself thinking back on the year just like many others do. I have been running Punchboard for more than five years now, and I can honestly say that 2025 was likely the best year I have had so far.
The absolute best parts of my year are always the gaming conventions. Events like Full Board Gaming, BayCon, UK Games Expo, and GridCon gave me exactly what I needed: time spent with large groups of people who share my interests. If you have never gone to a convention before, I really suggest that you give it a try. Find the nearest gathering in your area, meet some new folks, and play some games together. It is a wonderful experience.
👍 Kudos to…
Whose Turn Is It Anyway, a fantastic gaming podcast created by some really nice people. I always run into them at conventions and always have a great time. You should go give them a listen right now.
I have a tendency to dive deep into things when I get interested in them. Whether it is a brand new hobby or a small part of a hobby I already enjoy. For instance, a few years back I got really into wargames. The whole culture around them seemed confusing but also interesting and very fun. I even wrote an article about the moral side of playing wargames, and that piece got picked up and printed in different places around the world.
This year, two of my biggest interests came together: indie games and Japan. Before I knew what was happening, I was playing games from Saashi & Saashi Games. I had a copy of Eternal Decks on the way, and I made a list of publishers and designers that I wanted to meet at the UK Games Expo this year. I played some truly amazing and unique games this year and met a lot of really cool people.
It also pushed me to try harder to learn the Japanese language. It made me decide to finally go and visit the country, which I plan to do to celebrate my 50th birthday in 2027. If you want to take some small first steps into Japanese games, you should look at my Japanese Game Festival article from this past summer to see what might interest you.
👍 Kudos to…
Travel Games – a small independent online store here in the UK that focuses on bringing in games from other countries. Go buy some games from Ben and tell him that Adam sent you.
Of course, Punchboard is first and foremost a site for reviewing board games. This means that I have spent my time focusing on the two most important things to me in this hobby: actually playing the games and writing about them.
I took a look back through my archives, and including this post, I have published 55 articles here this year. That is more than one article every single week, which honestly surprised me. If you ask anyone who specializes in things like Search Engine Optimization how to make a website successful, they will tell you that keeping a regular schedule for posting is very important. If you have been visiting this site for a while, you know that I do not really have a schedule at all.
I tend to write when I feel inspired, when I am really excited about a specific game or topic, and when I have the time to sit down and do it. This year brought a lot of challenges to my personal life, which meant that there were some weeks where not much was posted here. I would love to tell you that 2026 will be the year I finally stick to a strict schedule, but I know that would just be setting myself up to fail, so I will not make that promise.
What I will do, however, is keep trying to make my reviews and previews as interesting, honest, and easy to read as possible. I do not like sticking to a strict format when I write, so do not be surprised if my writing wanders a bit and follows my thoughts. Hopefully, I will still be able to tell you what makes a game fun—or not—in my opinion, and explain why.
👍 Kudos to…
Gaming Rules! Not only does Paul make the best how-to-play videos in the entire board gaming world, but he also hosts a wonderful and welcoming community for his supporters and runs GridCon every single year.
I feel very lucky to have found this hobby. The people who play board and tabletop games are incredibly diverse. You see this clearly at conventions, which is exactly why they are so important to me.
BayCon has been running for almost 40 years now. There are people attending who were barely older than kids when they first went, and now they bring their own grandchildren with them. GridCon has people flying in from all over the world just to play games with friends they might only see once a year. UKGE has people of every age, background, gender, and ability. It does not matter which group you belong to; you will find yourself right alongside many other people, and I love it for that reason.
I am lucky to have made some good local friends that I get to play games with regularly. I never would have met them if it were not for piles of cardboard sitting on tables.
And now there is you, reading this. For whatever reason, you are here reading my words right now. It means you made it all the way to the bottom of one of my posts, so I must be doing something right, I guess. That is hard for me to write because I deal with a lot of self-doubt. Still, I will keep trying to write interesting things about games, I will keep trying new things, and I will keep trying to give you a good reason to come back.
Thanks to every single one of you for your support this year. If you are not already a supporter and want to help keep the site running, you can click one of the links below.
Adam
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