July Boardgames Day
Jul 6, 2025
This was our first meetup after UK Games Expo in June, and it seems that Oink Games has a little bit of a stranglehold on the group. Mark brought Mr. Face and A Fake Artist Goes to New York with him, but unfortunately they failed to hit the table this time. The first game out of the shelf and onto the table was Scout.
Scout
Scout is a simple ladder climbing game where you’re trying to build the best set of circus performers to work at your circus. Don’t get too hung up on the theme as it actually has very little impact on the game itself.
First player to get rid of all their cards, or if no one can beat a combination that is on the table and the round is over. You play as many rounds as the number of players and you score points based on the cards you’ve collected, the number tokens you’ve built up, and deduct the number of cards left in your hand. Its a quick-fire game once you get a hang on the rules and I can see this replacing Fluxx as our filler game.
Today it was two quick games to get us started, then rolled onto what turned out to be the main event of the day.
Deep Regrets
Deep Regrets is something I initially spotted at UKGE 2024, the creator was there demoing the game for the upcoming Kickstarter and the table was packed out every time we walked on by. I really enjoy Cthulhu-esq media and great art style, so after the event I decided to back it blind. The game arrived just before UKGE this year and I was blown away by the production value for the price I paid. It came nicely decorated in faux-newspaper wrapping and the card and tokens all felt well made and designed. The quirky cartoonish style of the artwork really give it some fun depth.
Jo and I had tried the game at two players after we received the game and the timescales of “30 minutes per player” seemed to fit with what we experienced. With four players the game had a new feeling, everything was active and someone was always changing the landscape in some way. We had it for the vast majority of our game that at least one player was always in port, so it was a constant task of checking what they are doing on land while other battled in the waters for interesting catches.
As it turned out we completed mangled this play-through, to the point where we almost scrubbed the play from the stats. We made a mistake and took the Regret icon on the fish cards were to be activated on cast for the active player, not when they actually sold the fish. It was a case of misreading the rules, and it has to be one of my criticism of the game itself; the rulebook takes a simple game and makes it sound more complicated than it is. Deep Regrets isn’t the only game that has done this, lots of games struggle with confusing rulebooks, and we’ve had our fair share of them. With that said, it wouldn’t dissuade me from playing the game again and while i’ve not questioned the rest of the group on their feelings I think we all are the same.
Edit: It seems the rest of the group shares this point of view, another play-through is on the books.
Railroad Ink
After a break for some food, we returned to the table and decided to keep it a little easier. Another of our table favourites is the Railroad Ink which we seem to play every occasion where we want a quick and simple game. I backed the deluxe box Kickstarter a few years ago and it was worth every penny. The expansions also introduce quite a bit of variance in the gameplay, but we’re guilty of just sticking to the base game.
I think Railroad Ink is a great introductory game to the “roll and write” genre of games, once you know the rules and understand the game you can usually grind through a handful of games in an hour.
Cockroach Poker
Last, but not least, is Cockroach Poker, a game where you have to fool your friends in accepting cards that you’re trying to palm off to them. Its a fun and quick game and works well in social situations. I wouldn’t call this one of my favourite games as it almost falls into that dreaded category of ‘social deduction’, I know it isn’t one of those but still having to understand the other players can be difficult and frustrating for me. Thankfully, this is a close group of friends so it isn’t a problem.
And that was it for the day, I don’t think we’ll be able to squeeze in an August or September games day, but we can hope.