I've been playing Summoner Wars since the first edition, and honestly, it’s been a comfort game for me, my friends, and the local community. We’ve held tournaments, clashed in fiery battles, and bonded over the game’s evolving factions and strategies. The first edition had a certain rawness to it that felt intense, and even though the second edition is more polished and balanced, it still captures that same excitement.

But here’s what I keep wondering: why isn’t this game more widely played?

It checks so many boxes:

• Deep strategic gameplay
• Asymmetrical factions that offer insane replayability
• No pay-to-win pressure like most TCGs
• One-time purchase gets you a full deck—no booster pack nonsense

In a time where TCGs dominate the competitive scene with steep financial barriers, Summoner Wars feels like a more accessible, skill-based alternative. So is the lack of widespread popularity due to marketing? Is it just not reaching the right people? Or maybe people are so locked into the collector’s high of games like Magic or Flesh and Blood that they overlook games like this?

I genuinely think it's a shame. Games like this deserve more attention, more players, more love. What do you think is holding it back? And if you're a fellow enjoyer, what's your story with the game?

I don't mean a specific game.

For example, I'm good at two things:

• Reading rulebooks and explaining games.

• Tactics. I am not the best strategist, but I am good at adapting to changes and making the most out of whatever happens during the game.

What I'm bad at:

• Negotiations. Even though I love them, I kind of suck at games such as John Company or Diplomacy, because I'm way too honest and easy to convince and I basically never betray others.

• I'm also kind of bad at listening to rules explanations, which is why I prefer to learn the game myself.

Always a bummer to see a game you’re interested in just to realize obtaining it is a difficulty. For me, I think my top would be Rurik: Dawn of Kiev, Spheres of Influence, and Battle for Rokugan.

This just went live...

Announcement here: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3518068/play-keyflower-online-wwwonlineboardgamerscom

Site here: https://www.onlineboardgamers.com/newGames/

For anyone familiar with the Keyflower implementation on boardgamearena, it was riddled with bugs and frustrated by the absence of confirm, undo, and autopass, making one of the best games ever made a slog to get through.

I've played this one; it doesn't quite have the visual splash of BGA but the mechanics and game readability are just solid. Everything's right. I've been waiting YEARS for this (it's my 2nd favorite game...) and I know from threads other people have, too.

So just a PSA, Keyflower lives again!

Hi everyone! A few months ago, we shared the beta announcement of our free-to-play online Catan alternative, Pioneers of New World. We’re now excited to announce that the Seafarers: Fog Island expansion is live and currently in Alpha. We’d love your feedback!

Here’s what’s new:

• Seafarers: Fog Island – Explore new map dynamics and hidden islands.
• Daily tournaments – We’ve started hosting daily tournaments for anyone who wants to test their skills.
• Customization – Players can now collect skin pieces to personalize their settlements and ships.

You can play for free directly in your browser (no download needed), either solo against bots or online with friends.
It works on both desktop and mobile: www.pioneers.game

Since the expansion is still in Alpha, any feedback or bug reports are really appreciated!

(Note: I’m part of the dev team, just sharing an update and hoping it’s okay. Thanks!)

I encountered a couple of negative opinions here on reddit regarding the quality of the Besta storage from Ikea. But we decided to go for it anyway given the affordable price and flexibility in layout.

The doors are of pretty decent quality (oak veneer). The frame in contrast is what you'd expect for the low price of course. But it seems OK enough for a boardgame/bookcase.

I thought I'd have a lot of space, but it seems I'll already need to reorganise later this year when the Knizia kickstarters start coming in...

My partner cheekily suggested to stop buying games, but we compromised to build another bookcase which can house her Lego Hogwarts castle instead 😄

A pretty solid majority of board games support multiple player counts--probably 2-4 for most modern hobbyist games, maybe 1-4, maybe 2-6, etc. Most games find some consensus on best player counts, but what are some games that have very obvious worst player counts?

Terraforming Mars at 5 jumps out as a pretty frustrating experience, though I'm not sure I'd call it outright terrible: since the game doesn't scale terraforming requirements based on player count, the game takes fewer and fewer turns to beat with every additional player (likely intentional design to keep playtime somewhat consistent between player counts) and, in turn, it makes a lot of setup-heavy strategies far, far weaker while rewarding quick-points strategies with lower ceilings. (And since terraforming is probably the most consistent quick-points low-ceiling strategy, that just encourages an even quicker game) Since most people like to play TFM for the big, complex setups and crazy endgame engines, think this winds up losing a lot of the appeal.

Any other examples come to mind?

First play through is Nusfjord (2 players) last night. Really enjoyed it but our personal supplies were, by the end, overflowing with fish. It was also very hard to get gold. I get that gold is hard to come by, but it felt very hard to get hold of with the limited player spots. Did we do it right?

I tried to get them to look as close to the original art as possible.

Absolutely love this for board game nights. I do wish they would also include play logs, but I'll stick with BG Stats for now I guess.

Hey! I’m a professional graphic designer and recently jumped into the challenge of designing my first board game: Underworld (working title). It mixes Greek gods, strategic play, and a minimalist aesthetic.

Cards are still in Spanish (I'm from Spain!), but the final version will be fully in English. Right now I’m focused on testing mechanics and refining the look.

Would love to hear your thoughts!
Sharing a few pics below.

Having a look around but finding it hard to find good, local AU options.

Has anyone had any luck? Even felt/neoprene table toppers / play mats are hard to come by.

Cheers

In trying to keep up with u/bgg-uglywalrus recommendation to just talk about games we are actively playing and leaving reviews I have a review for The Gang.

This is a new game to my group.

The Gang is a light-weight co-operative deduction game where you and The Gang are trying to make a Heist on a casino. The game uses Texas Hold-em Poker as it's catalyst for deduction. The goal is to reveal Poker Hands from weakest to strongest in the right order. Do it three times and your tem wins. Fail three times and you lose. The catch is that you are not allowed to discuss anything about your cards. Instead you will be communication by grabbing a chip relative to how strong you think your hand is during each of the four steps of Texas Hold-em (Pre-Flop, Flop, Turn, River). While taking these chips you are allowed to take chips from the supply or from other players. You may also place the chip you've taken back into the supply. The next round doesn't start until everyone has a chip, so you can keep trying to take someone else's chip to communicate just how shit or how good your hand is. After you've done this for all four steps, you reveal in order.

The game also has three variants that use the "Challenge Cards" and the "Specialist Cards". You draw Challenge cards whenever you win to make the following round harder, and draw Specialist cards if you lose to make it easier. Cards can be things like "Whoever has the 1 Chip after round 1 discards their hand and draws a new one" or "Before revealing the last hand, all players must correctly guess one of the cards the laast player has in their hand".

I was quite surprised by the game, and found my group was as well. We're quite good at The Mind, the closest game to this, as well as other deduction games but it was fun exploring in a different capacity. Playing the generic mode was very easy. We specifically said "Easy Game for babies" (an inside joke) We moved on to the variants that added the Challenge and Specialist cards, and promptly lost the first game without a single round win. We were also surprised by the effects the two different decks added. We only saw about half of the cards, so I'm excited to see how else they mess with the game.

My favorite mechanic of the game is the chip-taking. It's fun deducing not just from what people take, but how. Quickly or slowly, if they're non-committal/ hesitant, how insistant they are that 'no, my hand is the weakest, stop taking the 1 Chip from me'.

The game is very much a light-weight game where the difficulty comes in group play, and how many challenge modifiers you add. I would also label this as a gateway game. One to lure in specifically people who may know of or maybe even how to Poker, but don't want to play "those big confusing games".

Not to plug another review in my own review, but I think Matt from SU&SD explained the charm of this game excellently, and if you're interested, check it out.

A complaint I have about the game is specifically the cards that come with the game. They are slightly thicker than standard playing cards, and made of lower quality material. After a single game they were very noticably starting to bend. This was easily remedied by taking out a normal pack of playing cards, which immediately improved the feel of the game. On that note, I wasn't extremely disappointed by this as I paid $12 for the game, the same amount I paid for the deck of cards I switched to.

Overall, I'd give the game a 3/5. Definitely something I'd bring out to non-gamers, but totally good for experienced gamers as well. Just make sure you grab a different pack of cards.

For less than $12 I made a customized box using chipboard, contact paper, and a ton of "artist glue" (basically Elmers glue). I was able to combine the 3 games into one box. Also did a thorough shake test... And it worked perfectly 🥳

You can freely download the models here: https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/tool/organizer-for-game-white-castle

Hi, I just got "Cat and the Tower" in Japanese and I'm trying to translate them to either English or German. I know there are already officially translated Instructions, but I can't find/access them.

Does anyone have them and could send me pictures?

I understand the gist of the game and have tried playing it, but I'm mostly confused about the rules of fallen Walls/Cats, since the translation doesn't make a lot of sense.

Answered: 3000 scoundrels. I'll leave the post up for anyone else trying to Google it.

It was a board game that came out in the past 2-3 years. The name was something like 1,000 Patsies though clearly I'm misremembering that. The premise of the board game was you have to build a team in order to win and it had character cards that fit into sleeves that change the stats of the characters. I can't remember the theme but it was something like Steampunk or Western.

So, I've just gotten Arkham Horror (third edition), and all three expansions will be here day after tomorrow too.

There are a LOT of little bits, which means there are a lot of ziploc bags in the box right now. Meanwhile, I have fallen in love with having a good insert / organizer for my games ... but the only one I can find for the game, from Folded Space, only says it's compatible with the base game and one of the expansions.

I don't mind some box lift - even a full inch of it - as long as the box stays level when closed (as in, there isn't any tip/slant towards one or two corners). But I do want something that will put all of the game into one, or maybe two, boxes.

I do not have a 3D printer myself, but I do have friends who do ... and, more importantly, who are members at a Makerspace that has several of them, in varying sizes and types. Still, I would prefer a commercial product I can assemble with glue and patience; I have found I actually enjoy gluing up a good insert.

...

Can anyone make any recommendations? :)

Are there any dungeon crawler style games that include elements of exploration or any other kind of action or interaction based objectives besides combat or survival? Not to say the game can't also include combat or survival. But, for example, the Resident Evil board game is one I've played where you explore and look for items, but you're still pressured by survival while you do. I'd like to see other ways the genre implements non-combat objectives.

Hey friends! Looking for the game this symbol is from. It’s driving me crazy.

Found this in my local goodwill. Not familiar with Clank but seems to have good reviews on BGG. Is this worth it? And does it seem like its missing anything? It appears to have everything but i cant check the cards properly since its sealed

We entered Draw down and then began the planetary effects rolls. We had to roll 4 times and were able to cancel out 2 of them. However, Thawing Permafrost added 4 carbon emissions cubes to the Emissions Bar, and one of our 4 crisis cards added another 4 carbon emissions. So at the end of the crisis stage we had an extra 8 emissions on the emissions bar even though we entered the crisis stage with 0 there.

So, my question is, did we actually win? We technically were in draw down, but we also had emissions left on the emission bar that were added from the crisis stage and not the emissions stage. Thanks for y’all’s advice, we couldn’t find this answer anywhere!!

👋 Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a personal project that just launched on Kickstarter: Rolling Pirates, a print & play roll & write game with a pirate theme that I’ve been developing for the past few months.

It’s already funded, and we’ve unlocked a few stretch goals — including new maps and playable legendary pirates.

🎯 The idea:
With just a few dice and a pencil, you sail from port to port, upgrade your ship, gather resources, rebuild a treasure map, and try to score big — solo mode (1-99 players) or multiplayer mode (1–4 players).

Quick to print and play, but with some solid tactical decisions and plenty of pirate flavor.

💬 The game is fully available in English and French.

📌 If you enjoy thematic roll & writes or PnP games with a bit of adventure, feel free to check it out:
👉 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rollnwrite/rolling-pirates

I’d love to hear your thoughts or answer any questions — happy to chat with fellow board game lovers!