You can find my whole collection here.

Numbers

A’s – B’s – C’s – D’s – E and F’s

G and H’s

Gloom

This is a fun little story telling card game, and one of the earlier “new” games that I picked up after watching it played on Wil Wheaton’s Table Top show. What drew me to this game was how creative and morbid they were with everything, and how a game could have such a silly objective, such as killing of your family for the fewest points possible to get the win. What keeps this on my shelf, even though I haven’t played it in a few years, is that it’s just such a fun time when you do play it. You get into the morbid absurdity of it and collectively tell such a tragic but absurd story.

Status: Played

Gloomhaven (Forgotten Circles Exp and Jaws of the Lion)

Gloomhaven is my favorite game of all time, so clearly I’ve played it a lot, and I’ve beaten it and the Forgotten Circles expansion, I haven’t beaten Jaws of the Lion yet. What I love about Gloomhaven is just the large, sprawling story that it tells and the very Ameritrash feel, but also the Euro game sensibilities in the combat and combat cards come through, and no dice. Now, I like dice chucking, but I’ve found that I really like that tactical nature of the game play in Gloomhaven where it is much more buttoned down than a pure dice fest. This is a massive game with a massive rule book, but not that difficult when you get into it.

Gloomhaven and expansion Status: Played
Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion: To Be Played

Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension

This is a game that I picked up in San Diego because I had a few hours to burn before seeing family and after I was out of my hotel, so of course I went to a game shop. This is one that I had seen played on Rodney Smith’s channel, Watch It Played, and that looks like it was a lot of fun. I’m glad I made the purchase as I’ve had fun with it, trying to time out things so that I can rocket forward by spending the right fuel as you try and get your spaceship to escape a black hole and get back to your own dimension. What makes this one fun is trying to read what the other players are going to be doing, you know half the cards they have, but what else might they have to power their ships, how fast will it go compared to yours will that move them closer or further from you. And I like how some fuels move you closer to the nearest object while others push you away or pull them all closer to you. It’s a clever idea that works well in a game.

Status: Played

The Grimm Masquerade

I almost missed this one, but you wouldn’t know that had I not said it. This game I like as a deduction/social deduction game. I think what works well is that it really is more deduction than anything else. In this game you are at a masquerade and you’re trying to guess what Grimm’s Fairly Tale characters everyone is. Now that should be obvious, Rumpelstiltskin and The Beast form Beauty and the Beast should be pretty obviously in why they are, but let’s say magic. What I really like about this game is the two cards you give or keep each turn. You draw one and you have the choice of giving it to someone or keeping it for yourself and they have an item on it that you might want, because if you collect enough of one, you can win, if it’s the right one for your character. The second card you do the opposite thing from the first one, so if I give it away, I have to keep the second card. But the downside is that you have a weakness and if you get enough cards of that type, you are out of the round and can’t get the rose which is worth a bunch of points. I like the push and pull of that as you have to consider, do I take something that’s just neutral for me because I know if I get another of a certain item I’ll be out? It’s just a really good and quick deduction game.

Status: Played

Hanabi

This is a weird game, in that you have a hand of cards and they don’t face you, so you can’t see your cards, but you can see everyone else’s cards. This is also a game about hold information in your head, not just for yourself but what clues other people have been given already about the cards in their hands. You’re trying to play down cards from 1 to 5 in different colors, but you are limited in how you can talk, and of course you can’t see your own cards. It’s a nice simple game, but one that has a lot going on when you really get down to it.

Status: Played

Hanamikoji

I was going to say that this probably my favorite game to play with two, but there is one that I like better, but it’s the best two player only game that I have. This game has you trying to win the favor of Geisha so that they will come to your restaurant, you do that by giving them gifts. But what works so well in this game is how you give the gifts, each player, per round, does four actions, put down two cards face down that won’t be used for gaining favor, one face down that will be used for gaining favor, giving your opponent the choice of 3 cards which they get one and you get two for gaining favor, or giving your opponent a choice between two sets of two cards for gaining favor. That’s it, and both of you can do those actions in any order, if you can figure out what your opponent might have, you can make them have some really hard choices as to what to take, but it’s always a bit of a risk. Great two player game.

Status: Played

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

This is Harry Potter in a deck building game, as you face off against the different bad guys from the books with the characters of Harry, Hermoine, Ron, and Neville. What is really interesting about this game is that as you start you’re playing through the first book, then they add more cards and of things from the second book and you get more, and then the third, fourth, and all the way up through the 7th. It’s basically a campaign game that takes you through the whole Harry Potter series Now that does mean that the first game is pretty simple but later ones are longer and more challenging, but you can do cooler and different things than before.

Status: Played (partially)

Hats

This was one of my most anticipated games from GenCon 2019 after seeing it played by Man vs Meeple. This is an interesting game with an Alice in Wonderland theme, but really it’s a unique card game. in this game your hand of cards are cards you’re playing onto the table in the middle of the game, the cards you take off the table are the ones that you use for scoring. And scoring is fun as well, because there are more suits than there are spots at the table, and the table might have brown in two different spots, not everything will be scored, so you need to push for some colors, sometimes, and then hold one or two back so you can play it down and that color will be scored. But a card on the Mad Hatters table can be replaced if someone plays the same color or a higher number over that card, so it’s a real balancing act and puzzle, great at two very thinky, fun at four, but much more random.

Status: Played

Hearts

Yes, I own a deck of cards. Hearts is a pretty fun trick taking card game. I don’t play it often, but I won’t say no to a game.

Status: Played

Heaven & Ale

This is a game that I talked about recently in a Point of Order post. It’s a euro game which normally isn’t my cup of tea, or pint of beer in this case. However, because of the beer theme, and a reviewer who I like their reviews and generally like their taste said it was one of their top games, and because it was deeply discounted for Black Friday, I grabbed it. This is a game that you can basically call a puzzle as you are putting out tiles, getting resources, trying to get the most victory points, I’m interested to try it when I can play with people in person again.

Status: To Be Played

Heroes of Terrinoth

There are some YouTube channels that you’ll see often on my posts, Rolling Solo is one of them. He highlighted this game a while back, and when I spotted it used at my FLGS, All Systems Go, I decided to grab it. In this game you are playing as heroes trying to defeat scenarios, which might be searching for something, going to different places and fighting monsters, and eventually dealing with a big boss. What I thought was interesting was how you had four abilities and you’d have to reset them at times, so it isn’t just about doing the same thing over and over again. Plus, you can upgrade those abilities, and how that lets you focus your character in a few different ways, just in the scenario itself.

Status: To Be Played

The Hobbit

I like Lord of the Rings a lot, so when The Hobbit game from Fantasy Flight was on sale, I decided to pick it up. This is a really interesting game as it’s almost semi-cooperative in nature. As a group you need to deal with a series of challenge points, and you can raise your stats to do that. But not one player will be able to deal with all of the challenges, so you need everyone to have raised their stats as well. To do this you are playing cards from your hand with numbers on them, the higher the number the further you’ll move in your group of travelers. But going the furthest doesn’t always mean you’ll get the best thing, but you also might not want to always get the best thing, because if someone is lagging behind too much in their stats, it’ll make it more likely that Smaug will move forward and everyone will lose the game. It’s a clever system that I enjoy.

Status: Played

Homebrewers

Have I mentioned that I like beer? Homebrewers is a game all about being a home brewer and in a home brew club where you are trying to brew the best beer to get points at Summerfest and Oktoberfest. You do this by getting ingredients, putting them on your beers, brewing those beers, and then each ingredient has some power of some sort, it might be you get $2, or you could move up another beer on how well you can brew it, it all depends on the ingredients that you have on the beer. So if you’re smart with how you do it, you can brew one beer to influence more or to make things easier. It’s a nice engine building game that gives you a lot of fun options and things you can do, and it also plays well at two players.

Status: Played

Hues and Cues

Final game for the letter H, Hues and Cues is a fun, new, party game from The Op, formerly USOpoloy. What I like about this game is that it’s a different kind of party game. In so many you are trying to make people laugh, or something like that by what you do or write, Hues and Cues challenges you to give good one word and then two word clues to get people as close as possible to the color you want. I like that you want people to guess right, but also for the players, guessing close works as well. But you can’t just say something like Sky Blue, as that tells you that the color is some shade of blue, but your one word clue could be sky, so what do people consider sky, or maybe you give a clue that has people going in the wrong way, you then can give another clue to get people closer again. It also works pretty well via Zoom, just everyone should be looking at a monitor to get the colors as close as possible to each other.

Status: Played

What’s your favorite game from the G’s and H’s? Is there one that stands out as one that you’d want to try or one that I should try that I don’t have in this letter range?

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I’m not going to even start out pretending, this was an instant back for me, and considering it’s almost 24 hours in and at 5 million, it was a back for a lot of people. Now, it’s a fairly expensive back, so let me go through a few pros and cons.

Pros

• Massive campaign
• Pedigree of game, Gloomhaven which it’s based on is #1 on Board Game Geek
• RPG Lite/Like game
• Legacy Style game (but can be replayed)

Cons

• Massive campaign game
• Cost or game/all in
• Shipping

Thoughts on the Campaign
So, let me start out by saying that this is a bit different campaign than some others that you’ll see. Yes, a big campaign style game is pretty normal for Kickstarter at this point in time, but Frosthaven is different in that it’s based off of a previous game, so it has some pedigree that a lot of them don’t, but beyond that with how Cephalofair Games runs their campaign is different. It’s not a plethora of minis, it’s not a ton of stretch goals, it’s not extremely vague on it’s shipping, it makes all of that clear. For some people that’s a detriment because you know a whole lot more what the cost is going to be going into it, so you know that you’re going to be putting down an extra $40-50 for shipping for everything and adding that to a $240 price tag is a lot, but it’s also more honest than most. With backing the 2nd printing of Gloomhaven, I can see why it would be a surprise, but shipping was also subsidized by previous sales of the game in that campaign where as this is a first printing of Frosthaven, besides that little thing, this is a very nicely and professionally done page.

Back or Brick
Back. For me it’s as simple as that, even if I wasn’t done with Gloomhaven having beat main quest of the base game and over half way done with Forgotten Circles the expansion, I’d still back this game. I like Gloomhaven that much, it’s #1 on Board Game Geek and my #1 game as well when I did my top 100 last year. I know that even if it’s delayed slightly, it’ll come out and it’s going to be a good project and a good game. I personally think that the insert is going to be worth it so the extra cost to get the extra things like metal coins, the Foreteller app, removeable sticker pack, to get the insert is going to be worth it. But if you’re just jumping in, you can grab Gloomhaven as well in the campaign as just an add-on or you could just just straight into Frosthaven, and you don’t need to get it all, you can just start out with the base game and call it good.

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I’m going to try and do this review with as few spoilers as possible. So I will not be talking about the plot that comes from the scenarios, but the mechanics of the scenarios and the new character show up before you get into any of that, so if you want a complete surprise those will be getting “spoiled” but they aren’t really a “spoiler”. The only thing I’ll say plot wise is that Gloomhaven: Forgotten Circles picks up immediately after the final main quest plot for Gloomhaven.

There are a few notable changes for Gloomhaven: Forgotten Circles. The first, and primary one, is that scenarios have changed. Now, the basic structure from the original game is having an Introductory section, then special rules, and a conclusion, but when you have doors that trigger more text, that is in another part of the book. So you have to flip through and look on a certain page and a certain section to figure out more and additional layout for the scenario, when the time is right. This normally triggers off of some action that you take in the game, commonly opening a door, but also stepping on a pressure plate can at times also trigger the next session. And a lot of the scenarios now have several of them that are tied together, so you are going to be setting up new parts of the scenario throughout.

This is both a lot of fun and annoying. Let me talk about the annoying part quickly first, this causes scenarios to go longer, normally when we’d set up a scenario we’d lay things out and then only put monsters on as we got into new rooms, and we already know what was going to be in those rooms. In the new set-up, you don’t know that, and while you know the main pieces that you’re going to need, the room layout is going to be a complete unknown. This causes these scenarios to go much longer than the ones from the base game. We could generally get through two scenarios in a night from base Gloomhaven, with the Forgotten Circles expansion scenarios, one generally takes the same time as two, because of some of the start and stop of set-up. However, while that is a negative and annoying, especially for people who feel like set-up is too long or solo players, I do like the fact that the story of a scenario can unfold the way that it does. Hidden information also makes the scenarios harder, and while we have a completely new set of characters which is interesting and the scenarios more challenging, if we had come in with characters we were familiar with and knew the map set-up, the scenarios wouldn’t be much more challenging. I do think that the story in this is better written than in the base game, and some of that is definitely having it unfold.

The couple other new things are abilities that are added into the game. The first being that teleporting is a thing now. Everyone can’t teleport, but the abilities from the main game that cause you to teleport are now getting cards to replace some in the character decks to keep some consistent wording. Having a character that can, if chosen to be played that way, move around the board and ignore terrain is interesting. The other ability added in “regenerate” this is the opposite of “wound” where that one causes you to lose one health a turn and can be healed away, this one causes you to gain a health per turn and if you take damage it goes away. This has been key for us in some scenarios as we don’t have a tank or heavy healing character in our party. I like that trickle effect healing as something to kind of counter wound which can take out a party if you aren’t careful, this can keep you around a little bit longer or a lot longer.

Finally, I should talk about the new class that is added, the Diviner. I’m not considering this a spoiler because when you get the expansion and even if you aren’t playing the expansion scenarios, you gain access to the Diviner class. This class has a few new things that we haven’t seen before, besides being where we get teleporting and the cards that cause regenerate to be placed, the Diviner does a couple other new things. First, they can do a build that allows them to manipulate decks. It’s something that’s very odd, but they can sort the top of the monster attack deck or the top of an allies deck. This is not the build that our player of the Diviner went with, but it’s definitely something new. The other way you can build that character is by using rifts. Rifts are interesting because they can either have a negative effect for the monster, such as disarm or immobilize or they can have a positive effect on the allies such as giving them regenerate or strengthen (not sure if these are 100% accurate examples, but the basic idea is there). However, the rifts come into the play and stay in play, but they are only active for an ability for a single round, and we’ve found with our Diviner because of the speed of the other characters in terms of initiative that the negative ones work better since the other two characters are almost always going ahead of the Diviner.

Let me wrap up by talking about this overall. First, I don’t like this as much as the base game. While that was an easy A+ for me, this is more of an A-/B+ range. I’ll break it down below, simply because Gloomhaven can already be a long game and Forgotten Circles makes each scenario even longer. But I do like some of the other things in it. Regenerate is awesome and the Diviner is a very cool character. Plus the story feels more focused. In Gloomhaven it felt like sometimes the through story thread wasn’t completely there or that it jumped around a little bit, Forgotten Circles definitely has a more fully realized storyline. I don’t know, however, that I would say that it’s a must pick-up. With Frosthaven coming out that’s another big box game that is going to improve upon the linked scenario style to reduce the mid scenario set-up, if you aren’t done with Gloomhaven yet and you think you’ll want Frosthaven, I’d skip Forgotten Circles.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: B+
Casual Grade: C-

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1. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon -This board game I kickstarted in December but should have the first wave being shipped in August, happy birthday to me. The game takes Arthurian legend and puts a dark twist on it as you are the B-team that is trying to stop the fall of Avalon. The game has some really cool mechanics, and the Rolling Solo Youtube channel did an amazing preview for it that explains it and shows some great game play for it.
2. Avengers: Endgame – The list isn’t in any order, but this is one of the things I’m looking forward to most this year. The trailer looked great, and I want to know how they are going to undo what Thanos has done. Or maybe they just filmed a whole Spider-Man movie that they are never going to release to keep us off the track that Spider-Man is going to stay dead. No spoiler tag, the movie has been out for a while now, so if you haven’t seen Infinity War, that’s your own fault.
3. Gloomhaven: Forgotten Circles – Another board game, but this time an expansion for my favorite game of all time. I don’t know that it really needs an expansion because the game is huge, but I’m not going to complain about more content for a game that I love. I am curious to see what locations and what story it will add to the game as well as finishing off the content that we have before we get into that game.
4. Captain Marvel & Spider-Man: Far From Home – Marvel Superhero movies, of course I’m excited for them. I really am excited to see how they’ll set-up Captain Marvel for Avengers: End Game, and while I joked about Spider-Man staying dead, I’m still waiting impatiently on the trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home. I’ll always been looking forward to Marvel movies, and seeing new heroes on the big screen is cool.
5. Godzilla: King of the Monsters – The trailers look amazing. And I really like the most recent Godzilla movie as well. There’s just something about watching a ton of giant monsters on the big screen battle it out that is so amazing. The cast seems interesting for the film, and there appears to be a bit of a plot there, but really I’m in it for Godzilla fighting all the other monsters, and that’s all the plot I really need.
6. Stranger Things Season 3 – The 4th of July, so if you can’t get out and watch the fireworks in the real world, I’m sure there will be plenty of fireworks as our favorite people from Hawkins, Indiana take on whatever new monsters seeks to come through from the Upside Down. I’ll always been waiting for this show to come out, and even though I know it’s going to stay on Netflix, I am still tempted to get the physical copy of the show, because the show boxes look cool.
7. Dark Season 2 – This time travel show is just amazing and I can’t wait to see what happens in season 2. I feel like the show is going to change a lot, so I’m not sure how well it will work because of that, but the first season was a masterpiece. I also want to say Rain Season 2, but I need to finish off season 1 first, but thus far season 1 of that has been great as well. Dark is just more moody and captivating in a lot of ways.
8. Jump Force – Fighter game with all the Jump Magazine characters duking it out. It’s going to be a silly game, but it just looks like a lot of fun. Face off with Goku vs Naruto or Ichigo vs Vegeta. A silly game like that is always good and fighting games are fun because you can sit down and play them for a few minutes without feeling like you get sucked into the story and must play for hours on end.
9. My Hero Academia 4 – This show just keeps on meeting my expectations, though there is a ton of crying in it, and it’s one of a few animes that I’m watching that is still coming out. The characters are good, the story is good, I just want more of it.

I’m sure there a number of things I’ve missed. I’m certainly hoping for something from Brandon Sanderson or Jim Butcher book wise, but nothing is announced. And I know there are some board games that I’ll be likely to pick up as well, but these are they heavy hitters of what I’m looking forward to.

What are some nerdy things, shows, books, movies, etc. that you’re looking forward to in 2019? Is there anything huge that I missed? I’m sure that there is something that I’m going to be kicking myself about, but I can’t come up with it right now.

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