Hello everyone!\nFebruary was a short month, but I managed to make some room to do what I really love — playing board games!\nLet’s take a look at how it went.\nFebruary 2026 by the Numbers 13 plays (compared to 11 in January 🎉) 7 different games 3 new-to-me games Most played: Proving Grounds and Harmonies (3 plays each) February 2026 plays\nProving Grounds Designed by Kane Klenko, published by Renegade Game Studios.\n
The abstracts category on BGG is a bit of a mess. Or not very well defined if I want to be more generous.
https://boardgamegeek.com/abstracts/browse/boardgame
The top 5 "abstracts" are Cascadia, Harmonies, Azul, YINSH, Patchwork.
I consider only one of these an abstract.
Faiyum. I read it can be a long game and it was (approx two hours) but it didn’t feel like it outstayed its welcome. Plus there was some reading of card references.
I was also worried the board would be loose at two player. It isn’t. First play got the wife’s seal of approval too. So a good first game. #BoardGames #BrettSpiele #j2s https://brettspiel.space/@lordsplodge/116041634182677514
We've been playing a bunch of Port Royal lately. The games has one of my favorite push-your-luck implementations. Busting is painful but not the end of the world because you often get to do stuff on other player's turns and when you bust they lose some opportunity too. I also like that the expansion, Just One More Contract, makes pushing your luck more worthwhile. We always play with the expansion now.
@lordsplodge I unironically love seeing modern Euros that dare to be beige with chunky wood components. It feels like coming home.
I don't have Findorff yet but it's on my list.
@dcoe Great game but I think it falls into a different category. You are not really building an engine to deal with randomness. Except maybe in the short term as you try to make sure that you can do something useful with most dice values that might come up in the next few turns.
What I have in mind is something like how in Space Base I might build up my sectors 9, 10 and 11 to chain from each other and then have some charges to allow me to boost my roll sum to 9 more often.
I am on the lookout for #boardgames where you wrangle the random. Some examples:
- Space Base is a long time favorite of mine. You roll a pair of dice and trigger your sectors based on the values. Sounds like a lot of luck right? And yet the better player wins 90% of the time. It's all about drafting those sector cards.
- A more recent favorite is Miams. It's basically Yahtzee with some innocuous card powers. But once you learn to find and use those crazy combos... so good!
Any others?
Marcus The Board Gamer
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