[Ryan] It had been far too long since Lorenzo il Magnifico, one of my all-time favorites, had hit the table. While I had what was probably my poorest performance ever in the game, I still had a blast. Such beautifully tight worker placement and resource management that has an exciting layer of engine-building and drastic abilities when playing with the Houses of Renaissance expansion and Leaders module. Don’t this dry Eurogame fly under your radar if you like tight, crunchy strategy games—it really is a special one.

[Daniel] There are few better feelings in board gaming than rediscovering why you fell in love with a game in the first place—and that’s exactly what happened when I got Dungeon Fighter: Collector’s Edition back to the table. Few games deliver such a fun, silly, and delightfully chaotic cooperative experience. The new content in the Collector’s Edition takes everything that made the original great and adds a ton of variety that makes every play feel wild and fresh. I could not have been more pleased with how this went over with our group!

[Ryan] Sky Team continues to see play and has been a huge hit with my 5-year-old son. Such a brilliantly simple cooperative game about working together to land a plane, but hidden in that simplicity is a lot of nuance in how you place your dice and use your actions as your only communication with your partner. Really loving all the different variability and modules that keep the game fresh, including the “Intern” module shown here. It gives you some nice flexibility as you can spend any die to grab and use the next value on your side, but with the caveat that all intern tiles must be used by the end of the game, or you lose. Really can’t say enough good things about this one, especially in a sparse category of simple-but-thinky two-player cooperative games that play in ~20 minutes.

[Daniel] 7 Wonders — an absolute classic, and one I still haven’t grown tired of. I recently played a 6-player game, and for whatever reason, this card-drafting gem continues to hold a special place in my heart. As you can see in the photo above, I was swimming in coins—no surprise when you're playing the wonder Ephesos! While it doesn’t hit the table all that often these days, it was the perfect fit for a group looking for a strategic game that plays well at higher player counts.

[Ryan] The latest entry in the category of “party games where you are betting on a race”: Hot Streak! This one really leans into the funny and exciting moments and streamlines the game to play quickly with low rules overhead. All of the strategy is frontloaded in each round as players place bets based on their knowledge of the racing deck and then manipulate it by adding a secret card of their own. But once the race actually starts, all decisions and strategy are put on hold as players simply cheer and laugh as the race unfolds. While I have had many great games of Camel Up, I always felt that it was a little long and a little complex for many situations where I wanted to pull it out. Hot Streak has managed to fit that niche quite well, as the combination of teaching and playing isn’t much more than half an hour. And the great production with the goofy mascot miniatures is definitely a plus.