Summer can only mean one thing for my gaming group and I. It’s time for our annual board gaming weekend. Once a year, we escape to a sleepy little Swedish town called Hassela for four glorious days dedicated to BBQ, beer, and an unreasonable amount of board games. Over the years, it’s become far more than just another gaming event for us. It’s a tradition, a reunion, and the one weekend of the year where the only schedule that really matters is deciding what game hits the table next, and other critical decisions like whether to drink another beer or two more beers. It’s fucking glorious!

This year, however, carried a little extra significance as we celebrated the 10th consecutive year of this tradition. Reaching that milestone felt worth acknowledging, even if the core formula remained largely unchanged year after year. There was a slight sparkle of nostalgia to the whole weekend.

As always, I’ll be taking you through every game we played, in the exact order they hit the table. We are going to talk about some old favorites that never disappoint, some new exciting discoveries, and a few weak links that even a great gaming weekend couldn’t salvage.

So pour yourself a drink, settle into your favorite chair, and enjoy the list.

We kicked off the weekend with Feast for Odin, a Viking-themed worker placement game that most people would comfortably place in the heavier end of the hobby. Whether game complexity can really be measured on a single scale is another discussion entirely, but let’s just say this isn’t the game you introduce to someone whose previous gaming experience begins and ends with Monopoly.

This is one I’ve had my eye on for years. Ever since its release, I’ve heard people sing its praises, yet somehow I’d never managed to get it to the table. Since we only had four players for our opening game, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to finally discover what all the fuss was about. It would turn out to be a great way to kick off the weekend.

One thing became clear almost immediately: Feast for Odin isn’t your typical worker placement game. In fact, I’d argue that the worker placement mechanism isn’t really the star of the show. Instead, it’s the engine that drives an intricate puzzle made up of resource management, economic planning, and a wonderfully addictive tableau-building system that often feels more like a game of Tetris than a traditional Euro.

There’s certainly no shortage of things to think about. Our rules explanation took the better part of thirty minutes, yet I was surprised by how naturally the game flowed once we got started. Veteran Euro gamers, in particular, should find the core gameplay remarkably intuitive despite the intimidating amount of cardboard spread across the table.

The turn structure itself is refreshingly simple. Place your workers, perform the corresponding action, and continue building your strategy. The brilliance lies in the sheer number of available actions. The board is packed with options, each demanding different numbers of workers and presenting difficult decisions about efficiency, timing, and opportunity cost. That worker allocation quickly becomes a resource puzzle in its own right, and that’s before you even begin wrestling with your ever-growing collection of goods, upgrades, occupations, and that delightfully brain-burning polyomino board.

Feast for Odin really deserves a review of its own, because calling it “A great worker placement game” feels like doing it a disservice. Yes, many of its individual mechanics are familiar, but the way they’re woven together creates something that feels surprisingly fresh. It’s an ambitious design that never feels clever for the sake of being clever, this is just solid, well-organized, and well-tested gameplay.

Despite its intimidating table presence, I found it to be remarkably streamlined. It’s undeniably fiddly, with mountains of components constantly changing hands, but everything serves a purpose. The production is excellent, the artwork fits the theme perfectly, and the strategic depth was almost endless. I’d happily play this one again and can already see why it has remained a modern Euro classic for nearly a decade. It’s certainly not a game I’d recommend to casual gamers, but for anyone who enjoys deep strategic Euros, Feast for Odin absolutely lives up to its reputation. Judging by the smiles, thoughtful nods, and immediate post-game discussion around the table, I wasn’t the only one who walked away impressed.

Fantastic Game, it gets a gold star!

Next up was Fate: Defenders of Grimheim, a cooperative tower defense game from FryxGames that I reviewed earlier this year, where it earned a very respectable 3.95 out of 5 stars. Seeing it languishing somewhere around the 2000 rank on BoardGameGeek genuinely baffles me. Cooperative games are more popular than ever, and this little gem seems to have slipped almost completely under the radar. That’s even more surprising when you remember it’s published by the same people who gave us the amazing Terraforming Mars. Apparently, not every Viking gets invited to Valhalla.

To me, Fate is as much an activity as it is a game. It’s the sort of title you can throw onto the table without anyone sighing as a three-foot-long rulebook appears. Within minutes, you’re rolling dice, defending the village, and wondering how everything has already gone horribly wrong.

What I enjoy most is where it fits in a gaming weekend like this one. After spending several hours calculating twelve turns into the future in a heavy Euro, sometimes your brain simply files for bankruptcy. That’s where Fate shines. It’s engaging without being exhausting, challenging without being punishing, and quick enough that nobody starts checking the clock halfway through.

Don’t mistake its accessibility for simplicity, though. Fate has a nasty habit of lulling you into a false sense of security before unleashing wave after wave of increasingly unpleasant monsters. Just when you think you’ve stabilized the board, Grimheim politely reminds you that it has absolutely no interest in your plans. It’s the board game equivalent of finally plugging one leak in a boat only to discover three more.

The artwork is gorgeous, the turns fly by at a brisk pace, and the constant pressure keeps everyone involved from beginning to end. If you’re looking for a cooperative game that actually puts up a fight instead of holding your hand to victory, Fate is well worth your time.

A fantastic game, and one I continue to think deserves far more attention than it’s currently getting.

Making its first appearance at one of our Hassela weekends was Sushi Go, a game that has quietly become something of a modern classic in the filler category. If I had to compare it to anything, I’d call it the hobby equivalent of UNO. The difference, of course, is that it doesn’t suck.

At its heart, Sushi Go is an incredibly simple drafting and collection game. You pick a card, pass your hand, repeat, and somehow those few simple decisions become surprisingly engaging. Better yet, it introduces players to one of the hobby’s most fundamental mechanics: drafting. If you’re planning on exploring modern board games, you’ll encounter this mechanism over and over again, and Sushi Go is probably one of the gentlest introductions you could ask for.

I’ll admit that I don’t spend much time reviewing fillers. Most of them do exactly what they’re supposed to do, entertain for fifteen minutes before making way for the next big game. They’re the opening act, not the headliner.

That said, I firmly believe every collection needs games like this. If your goal is to introduce new people to the hobby, you don’t start by dropping Twilight Imperium on the table and casually mentioning that setup is only forty-five minutes. You start with games like Sushi Go, it’s that first taste to get them started. They’re approachable, charming, easy to teach, and most importantly, they leave people wanting to play another game rather than making excuses to go home.

If I ever write a “Ten Games Every Collection Should Own” article, I have a feeling Sushi Go will be somewhere on that list. Not because it’s the deepest or most innovative game ever made, but because it does exactly what it sets out to do with remarkable efficiency. Sometimes that’s all a game needs to be.

Next up was Star Wars: Bounty Hunters, a lightweight card game built around collecting bounty hunters, hunting down targets, and completing contracts for points. Mechanically, it’s all about assembling the right combinations of cards. The elevator pitch, however, is considerably shorter: “It’s Star Wars.” And… well, that’s about all it has going for it.

And to be fair, that does a lot of the heavy lifting. The artwork is excellent, the production is solid, and if seeing Boba Fett, Bossk, Cad Bane, and friends spread across the table makes you smile, the game scores a few easy points before you’ve even shuffled the deck.

Unfortunately, once the game actually begins, things become a little… quiet.

My biggest criticism is the almost complete lack of player interaction. Everyone is essentially sitting at the table solving their own little optimization puzzle, occasionally glancing up just long enough to confirm that yes, it is now their turn. It’s less “bounty hunters competing across the galaxy” and more “four people politely doing paperwork together.”

That’s a real problem for a filler game in my opinion.

To me, fillers have a very specific purpose. They’re there to break the ice, reset everyone’s brain after a heavier game, or introduce new players to the hobby. They’re supposed to generate conversation, laughter, dramatic groans when someone steals your card, and the occasional “Oh, come on!” from across the table. They’re social lubricants disguised as games.

Star Wars: Bounty Hunters doesn’t really do any of that.

Instead, it feels like four people independently playing solitaire while occupying the same table. And if I’m going to play solitaire, I’d at least like the courtesy of not having to wait for everyone else’s turn.

It’s not a bad game. It’s perfectly competent.

It’s just… there.

Epochs: Course of Cultures was another game I reviewed earlier this year, earning a respectable 3.6 out of 5 stars. Despite what I’m about to say, I genuinely think it’s a very good game and one I’m always happy to see hit the table.

My biggest issue with Epochs isn’t really the game itself. It’s the expectations it creates.

At first glance, everything about it screams “civilization builder.” You’ve got technologies, expansion, a map, different cultures, and the familiar journey through history. Naturally, I went in expecting something that would scratch the same itch as Civilization, Through the Ages, or any number of empire-building classics.

It doesn’t.

Not because it’s a bad game, but because beneath the historical artwork and civilization theme lies a very elegant Euro resource management game wearing a Civilization costume. It’s like turning up to what you thought was a Viking reenactment only to discover it’s actually an accounting seminar. A very well-run accounting seminar… but still.

Mechanically, the game is excellent. Resources are tight, every decision matters, and there’s a constant balancing act between short-term efficiency and long-term scoring opportunities. It’s exactly the sort of puzzle Euro fans love to sink their teeth into.

Where it falls short for me is in creating the illusion that I’m actually guiding a civilization through history.

Take technology, for example. In many civilization games, researching a new technology feels like making an important strategic decision. Do you pursue military dominance? Scientific advancement? Economic superiority? Those choices shape your civilization’s identity.

In Epochs, technology is largely another cog in the resource engine. You’ll draw a card, play it, gain some resources or a useful ability, and continue optimizing your point-generating machine. Mechanically, it works beautifully. Thematically, it rarely feels like your civilization has just invented writing, discovered gunpowder, or unlocked electricity. It feels more like you’ve collected another efficient converter.

That’s really my criticism in a nutshell. The game is so heavily abstracted that the historical theme sometimes feels like wallpaper. Attractive wallpaper, certainly, but wallpaper nonetheless.

Ironically, I think that’s also one of the game’s greatest strengths. By stripping away much of the thematic overhead, the designers created a remarkably streamlined strategy game that moves at an impressive pace. There are very few wasted turns, plenty of meaningful decisions, and enough strategic depth to keep experienced Euro gamers thoroughly engaged.

So no, Epochs doesn’t satisfy my craving for an epic civilization experience. When I want to watch an empire rise from mud huts to moon landings, I’ll probably reach for something else.

But when I’m in the mood for a clever, highly competitive resource management game with a civilization theme draped over it like a very convincing Halloween costume?

Epochs is an excellent choice because it’s an excellent game.

Battle for Rokugan has made several appearances at our Hassela weekends over the years, but this time it landed with something of a thud.

Part of that is simply the nature of war games. They’re a very particular breed of board game, and they tend to shine only when everyone at the table is in the mood to bluff, threaten, negotiate, and occasionally stab one another in the back. If half the table is looking for a relaxed evening, a war game can feel like showing up to a pillow fight wearing full plate armor.

That said, I think the bigger issue this time was Battle for Rokugan itself.

The core idea is fantastic. Each player secretly draws six command tokens representing attacks, defenses, raids, diplomacy, and various special actions. Those tokens are placed face down across the map, creating a tense battlefield where nobody quite knows what anyone else is planning.

In theory, that’s brilliant.

In practice, it often feels like everyone is making wildly confident tactical decisions based on almost no useful information whatsoever.

You’re being attacked from three directions. You’re launching attacks of your own. Someone has fortified a province. Someone else has placed a diplomacy token. Somewhere on the map lurks a devastating bluff… or maybe it’s absolutely nothing.

The problem is that you rarely have enough information to make what I’d call genuinely informed decisions. You don’t know how strong an attack is, where the real threats lie, or whether you’re walking straight into disaster. There are a handful of ways to gather intelligence, but for most of the game you’re essentially fighting a war while wearing a blindfold and hoping your instincts are better than everyone else’s.

Now, there’s certainly a place for uncertainty in war games. Hidden information creates tension, and tension creates memorable moments. But Battle for Rokugan sometimes crosses the line where uncertainty starts feeling less like clever bluffing and more like educated guesswork.

It’s impossible not to compare it to Game of Thrones: The Board Game, which clearly served as one of its inspirations. There, the hidden information lies primarily in the orders players assign to their armies. The armies themselves are visible, their strengths are known, alliances can be inferred, and experienced players can often piece together what their opponents are trying to accomplish.

Battle for Rokugan hides almost everything.

As a result, many of your decisions feel reactive rather than tactical. Instead of outsmarting your opponents, you’re often hoping your hidden token happens to be better than theirs.

What’s interesting is that I probably wouldn’t have written this a few years ago. In fact, Battle for Rokugan actually appeared on my Top 10 War Games list back in 2020. Since then I’ve played a lot more war games, and I think my expectations for the genre have changed. If I were rewriting that list today, I’m not convinced Battle for Rokugan would survive the cut.

That’s not to say it’s a bad game.

Quite the opposite, really.

It’s fast, incredibly easy to teach, has virtually no rules overhead, and manages to deliver a condensed war game experience in under an hour without rolling a single die. That’s an impressive achievement, and it’s exactly why I still think it deserves a place in my collection.

If someone asked me to introduce them to area-control games, I’d happily pull Battle for Rokugan off the shelf.

If they asked me to play Risk instead…

…I’d mysteriously remember that I have somewhere else to be.

Battle for Rokugan may no longer be one of my favorite war games, but it’s still a perfectly respectable gateway into the genre, and for that alone, it’s worth keeping around.

This 2015 Kennerspiel des Jahres winner has comfortably earned its place in my collection over the years, and judging by the reactions around the table, it made a pretty good impression on the rest of the crew as well.

At its heart, Broom Service is a wonderfully streamlined game about flying witches around a colorful fantasy landscape, delivering potions for victory points. The strategic objective couldn’t be simpler. You can usually identify exactly where you want to go, what potions you need, and which routes will get you there most efficiently.

Actually getting there, however, is where things get interesting.

Every round, you select just four cards from a deck of ten, each representing a different character with a unique ability. Whenever one of those characters is played, every player holding the same card must also play it and must also decide whether to play it as Brave or Cowardly.

Being Brave gives you the powerful version of the action, unless someone after you in turn order is also feeling brave. In that case, they steal your action, and you get nothing, and your fearless witch suddenly looks considerably less heroic.

Choosing the Cowardly action guarantees you’ll get to do something, but it’s a much weaker and less efficient version of the effect. A Mountain Witch, for example, can both move and deliver a potion when she’s feeling brave, but if she’s cowardly, she’ll merely shuffle up the mountain and call it good enough.

It’s such a brilliantly simple mechanism because every decision becomes a psychological game. Do you risk the stronger action, hoping nobody else has the same card? Or do you play it safe and settle for the weaker effect?

Better yet, every card played forces every other player holding that card to reveal their intentions immediately, so the round develops into this wonderfully tense sequence of deductions, educated guesses, and the occasional spectacular act of overconfidence, while at the same time may completely break the sequence of players intended for their cards.

There’s an amusing tension around turn order. Going first lets you dictate the flow of the round and which cards will be played first, but it also paints a giant target on your back. The earlier you declare a Brave action, the more players there are who can gleefully ruin your day.

It’s one of those mechanics that’s incredibly elegant because it creates constant interaction and tension without adding complexity. Every turn keeps everyone engaged, and there’s always a reason to pay attention to what everyone else is doing.

I’ve loved Broom Service ever since I first played it; its accolades are well deserved. It’s not really a heavy gamer’s game, and it isn’t trying to be. It sits comfortably in that sweet spot between family game and gateway Euro, where the rules are simple enough for almost anyone to learn, yet the decisions are interesting enough that experienced gamers still have a great time.

It’s quick, easy to teach, delightfully interactive, and just plain fun.

If you’ve got a family that enjoys board games, or you’re looking for a game that can bridge the gap between casual players and hobby gamers, Broom Service remains an easy recommendation.

Bang! The Dice Game is more than just another filler in our collection. At this point, it’s practically a Hassela tradition. Every year it finds its way onto the table, and every year it delivers exactly what it’s supposed to.

That’s because Bang! isn’t really about the mechanics.

In fact, if someone asked me to recommend the very best social deduction game on the market, Bang! There would be a long list that didn’t include Bang!. There are games that are deeper, cleverer, and mechanically more refined.

But very few create an atmosphere quite like this one.

Within minutes, accusations are flying across the table, alliances are being forged and immediately broken, and someone is loudly insisting they’re “obviously the Deputy” despite having just emptied a revolver into the Sheriff. It’s complete nonsense… and it’s glorious.

That’s exactly what I want from a filler game.

I don’t necessarily want a brilliant strategic masterpiece between heavier games. I want something that wakes everyone up, gets people talking, generates a few memorable moments, and leaves the table laughing before we move on to the next big event. Bang! nails that job like a pro.

The premise couldn’t be simpler. Everyone is secretly assigned a role. The Sheriff and Deputies are trying to bring law to the Wild West. The Outlaws are trying to gun down the Sheriff. The Renegade is… well… complicated. They ultimately want the Sheriff dead too, but only after everyone else has been dealt with. It’s the sort of life plan that requires impeccable timing.

The Sheriff is the only player whose identity is public. Everyone else spends the early game trying to work out who they can trust, all while desperately trying not to reveal their own allegiance too early.

Gameplay itself is driven by Yahtzee-style dice rolling. You’ll be shooting other players, healing yourself, collecting Indian arrows that inevitably come back to haunt everyone, and occasionally unleashing the infamous Gatling Gun, which has all the subtlety of solving an argument with a flamethrower.

The beauty of the game is that nobody really knows who they’re supposed to be shooting at during those opening rounds.

Was that attack an honest mistake? Is your neighbor secretly an Outlaw?

Did your teammate just accidentally shoot you… or was that “accidentally” doing a lot of heavy lifting?

Eventually, the masks come off, bullets start flying in earnest, and someone inevitably realizes they’ve spent the last three rounds enthusiastically helping the wrong team.

It’s stupid, silly fun.

Cutthroat Caverns holds a special place in Hassela history. It wasn’t just one of the games we played at our very first gaming weekend ten years ago… It was the first game.

So bringing it back for our tenth anniversary felt strangely appropriate. There was a healthy dose of nostalgia around the table, mixed with the realization that most of us could barely remember how to play it. It had been so long that the opening turns almost felt like discovering the game all over again.

Then the backstabbing started.

The premise is absolutely brilliant and feels tailor-made for a group of old RPG nerds. You play a band of adventurers descending into a dungeon to defeat a series of terrifying monsters. Sounds heroic enough.

Except everyone secretly wants to be the hero.

You earn prestige by landing the killing blow on each monster, so while everyone needs to cooperate to survive, everyone also wants everyone else to do just enough work that they can swoop in at the last second, dramatically stab the beast through the eye, and loudly declare, “You’re welcome.”

It’s wonderfully evil. The game constantly asks one simple question:

“How helpful can I afford to be?”

Help too much and someone else steals all the glory. Sabotage your companions too aggressively and suddenly, nobody is strong enough to kill the monster. Congratulations. Your selfishness has successfully doomed the entire party.

It’s probably the most accurate simulation of a dysfunctional Dungeons & Dragons party I’ve ever played.

That push-and-pull creates some genuinely hilarious moments. Temporary alliances form and collapse within minutes, players quietly count damage around the table trying to engineer the perfect finishing blow, and everyone becomes just a little bit suspicious whenever someone claims they’re “only trying to help.”

Conceptually, I still think it’s fantastic. Unfortunately, there’s two glaring problems that are impossible to ignore.

For one, the game simply goes on for too long.

The first few encounters are excellent. Everyone is learning the monsters, testing the waters, and gleefully sabotaging one another. The tension is high, the jokes are flowing, and every fight feels different.

By the seventh, eighth, and ninth monster, however, the magic starts to wear off. The core joke has already landed…Several times.

What should feel like an epic final showdown instead becomes a finish line everyone is quietly hoping to reach quicker. That’s never where you want a game to end.

It’s a shame because the underlying design is genuinely clever. Trim the experience down to four or five encounters and I honestly think this could have been a cult classic.

The problem is that the balancing is such that the monsters are not really a huge danger; you really need a lot of encounters and several intentional failures to kill the monsters that wear down the party for there to be any real threat of getting knocked out of the game, and that aspect of balancing can and does extend the game even longer.

For example, in our game, I could have continually sabotaged a specific player who was ahead, but it would have added half a dozen rounds to the game for that strategy to be successful enough to take them out, and honestly, I just let them win to avoid having to play that many more rounds. It was already taking forever.

As it stands, I’m really glad we dusted it off for the tenth anniversary. Revisiting old favorites is part of what Hassela is all about.

That said…

…I think I’ve had my nostalgia fix for another decade.

Despite sitting comfortably inside the top 500 on BoardGameGeek, Smartphone Inc. remains, in my opinion, one of the most criminally underrated board games ever made. It’s one of the most elegant, innovative, and brilliantly designed Euros I’ve ever played, and it has never failed to impress every time it’s hit the table.

In fact, I genuinely believe that if more people actually played it, Smartphone Inc. would be a serious contender for the Top 50 on BoardGameGeek. Maybe even the Top 10. I’m completely convinced of it.

So why isn’t it?

My best guess is the theme… and that wonderfully questionable box cover featuring a bearded hipster who looks like he’s about to pitch me his latest cryptocurrency startup. It’s hardly the kind of artwork that screams, “One of the best economic strategy games you’ll ever play.”

Which is a shame. Because underneath that slightly uninspiring cover is an absolute masterpiece.

Smartphone Inc. is an economic game about developing, manufacturing, marketing, and selling mobile phones across competing global markets. On paper, that sounds about as exciting as reading a quarterly shareholder report. Yet, despite that depiction, I think it’s phenomenal.

Every round is packed with agonizing decisions. Every choice matters. Every market feels fiercely contested. The game strips away almost all unnecessary complexity, leaving behind an incredibly clean and focused economic puzzle where every action has meaningful consequences.

Whenever someone asks me for a Euro recommendation, Smartphone Inc. is almost always the first title that comes to mind. It’s become something of my hobby’s best-kept secret, a hidden gem that somehow slipped past far more people than it ever deserved to.

What makes it even more impressive is how approachable it is.

Smartphone delivers the satisfaction and strategic depth of games like Brass: Birmingham or Ark Nova, but without asking you to dedicate an entire afternoon. The rules are surprisingly straightforward, the gameplay flows effortlessly, and the advertised playtime is one of the rare occasions where the box isn’t lying to you. Even with five players, you’re looking at roughly ninety minutes from setup to final scoring.

In today’s world of sprawling three-four and even five hour Euros, that’s almost refreshing.

The game is polished to an almost absurd degree. Every mechanism feels refined, every system feeds naturally into the next, and there’s barely an ounce of wasted design anywhere in the box.

That said, I do think there’s one caveat. You really want five players.

I’ve played Smartphone with three and four players plenty of times, and it’s still a very good game. But add that fifth player and something magical happens.

Suddenly, every market becomes fiercely contested. Every pricing decision is absolutely game-defining. Every expansion plan collides with someone else’s ambitions. Instead of executing your own strategy in relative peace, you’re constantly adapting to the decisions of two or three opponents trying to accomplish exactly the same thing.

The competition becomes ruthless.

There are no comfortable engines quietly humming along in the corner. No one gets left alone for very long. Every victory feels earned because every point has been fought over.

To me, Smartphone at five players isn’t just better than Smartphone at three or four. It’s an entirely different experience.

If there’s one game from this entire Hassela weekend that I’d love to see receive the recognition it deserves, it’s this one. Smartphone Inc. isn’t simply underrated.

It’s one of the hobby’s great hidden treasures.

And if you consider yourself a Euro gamer and haven’t played it yet, I’d go as far as saying you’re missing out on one of the best designs of the last decade.

Some games are best thought of as activities rather than games in the traditional sense. Epic Spell Wars of the Battle Wizards firmly belongs in that category.

I’m not even entirely convinced it’s a strategy game. At least not if your definition of strategy involves carefully planning your moves and consistently making better decisions than your opponents. Epic Spell Wars is a spectacular collision of outrageous card combinations, take-that mechanics, and just enough randomness to ensure that even the best-laid plans can explode in your face without warning. It’s less about executing a strategy and more about embracing the chaos.

The premise is wonderfully absurd. Each player is a battle wizard constructing increasingly ridiculous spells by combining different cards in an attempt to obliterate everyone else around the table. The goal is simple: be the last wizard standing. How you get there is another matter entirely, because the game delights in throwing unexpected twists, broken combinations, and moments of glorious misfortune at every player.

Mechanically, it’s perfectly serviceable, but that’s not why anyone remembers Epic Spell Wars. The real star of the show is its presentation. The artwork is absolutely phenomenal, genuinely some of the best gonzo comic-book-inspired illustration you’ll find in any board game. Every card is packed with personality, and the over-the-top spell names are worth reading aloud simply because they’re so wonderfully ridiculous. Half the entertainment comes from watching someone proudly announce the horrifying magical abomination they’ve just assembled.

That’s ultimately what makes the game work. Nobody sits down expecting a finely balanced strategic masterpiece. They sit down expecting complete nonsense, ridiculous moments, and plenty of laughter, and Epic Spell Wars delivers exactly that. It’s loud, juvenile, unapologetically silly, and knows precisely what it wants to be.

It’s the perfect game for a table full of friends, a few drinks, and a weekend where nobody has anywhere else they’d rather be.

When I saw Cascadia sitting at number 60 on BoardGameGeek, I genuinely did a double-take. Not because I think it’s a bad game, quite the opposite. Cascadia is a clever, elegant little design that I thoroughly enjoyed playing.

What surprised me is just how high it sits.

No matter how I look at it, I struggle to see this as one of the sixty greatest board games ever made. Personally, I would have expected it somewhere much further down the rankings. Not because it’s lacking in quality, but because it doesn’t really do anything particularly new or surprising, we are talking about a basic tile-laying game made in 2021.

Then again, BoardGameGeek rankings have always existed in their own strange little universe. We live in a world where Crokinole, a game designed in 1876 that essentially involves flicking wooden discs across a board, is ranked even higher. Clearly, trying to rationalize BGG rankings is a fool’s errand.

Cascadia is, at its heart, a very straightforward tile-laying game. You draft a terrain tile and an animal token, add them to your growing landscape, and score points by arranging everything as efficiently as possible. It’s clean, intuitive, and remarkably easy to teach, but that’s it, there is nothing else.

The thing is, almost every mechanic in the game feels immediately familiar. If you’ve played a reasonable number of modern board games, you can practically guess the rules just by looking at the board. There’s no flashy twist, no surprising hybrid mechanism, and no big “aha!” moment where the design suddenly reveals something you’ve never seen before.

That’s not necessarily a criticism. Sometimes executing familiar ideas exceptionally well is enough.

For me, though, Cascadia feels almost too streamlined. It’s like a worker placement game that consists entirely of placing workers, or a deck-building game where the only thing you ever do is buy better cards. Everything works exactly as intended, but I kept waiting for the game to reveal that extra layer, that little spark that would elevate it from “very good” to “something special.”

It never really arrived.

Ironically, I think the designers probably felt something similar, considering the number of expansions that have appeared since release. They all seem to add the sort of additional wrinkles I found myself looking for during the base game.

None of this is to say Cascadia isn’t a good game. It absolutely is.

In fact, I completely understand why it’s become such a hit. It’s approachable, relaxing, beautifully produced, and has that rare elegance where almost anyone can sit down and understand it within a few minutes.

Personally, though, if someone asked me to recommend a tile-laying game, Cascadia wouldn’t be my first choice. I’d happily point them toward Harmonies, for example, which I think delivers a more interesting puzzle and a more satisfying gameplay arc.

One thing I will say about Cascadia is that, like Sushi Go, it introduces a very basic principle of board gaming you are going to see in a lot of games (Tile Laying), so in that way, it makes for a pretty good introduction to board games.

Would I play Cascadia again? Absolutely.

Would I rank it among the sixty greatest board games ever made?

…that’s where you lose me.

On the drive home, one of my friends summed up Hansa Teutonica by calling it “clever, but boring.” I couldn’t help but laugh because, honestly, that’s probably how I’d describe most classic Euro games.

Excitement has never really been the selling point of games about medieval trade routes and little wooden cubes. If you’re looking for cinematic moments, dramatic storytelling, or thematic immersion, you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. What classic Euros offer instead is elegant design, fascinating decision spaces, and the satisfaction of solving an intricate strategic puzzle. They’re less about living a story and more about exploring a mechanical system, and that’s exactly what defines the genre. Rarely is a game you play once and discover something wonderful; Euro cube pushers demand repeat plays.

So yes, I actually think “clever but boring” is a perfectly fair description of Hansa Teutonica.

The theme is about as dry as board games get, and the gameplay loop can be summarized almost entirely as “put cubes on the board.”

Yet despite that, Hansa Teutonica still sits at number eleven on my own Top 20 Games list, and I’m more than happy to defend that position.

The reason is simple. It does something that surprisingly few Euro games are willing to do: it forces players into direct conflict.

Not the usual passive-aggressive Euro interaction where someone quietly steals the action space you wanted. Hansa Teutonica demands genuine competition. Every move has consequences, every route is contested, and every decision creates opportunities for someone else. You’re constantly manipulating the board while simultaneously manipulating your opponents.

The strategic depth is remarkable. Beneath the deceptively simple act of placing cubes lies an intricate web of efficiency puzzles, engine building, timing windows, and tactical positioning. Winning isn’t about discovering some hidden strategy. It’s about consistently finding the most efficient move, turn after turn after turn.

What makes repeated plays so rewarding is how dramatically the game changes depending on the experience level of the people around the table.

There simply isn’t enough room for everyone to pursue every strategy. You have to carve out your own niche while constantly reacting to everyone else’s plans. If your opponents ignore you for too long, you’ll quietly build an unstoppable engine. Conversely, if you can force someone to spend turns disrupting your position, you’ve often created opportunities elsewhere that benefit you even more.

That push and pull creates some wonderfully subtle mind games.

At one point during our game, I found myself getting genuinely annoyed by a move one of my friends made because it looked like he’d just handed another player a game-winning opportunity. From where I was sitting, he was king-making.

Only later did I realize what had actually happened. He wasn’t helping our opponent at all. He was baiting me. And it worked.

He knew I couldn’t ignore the move; it would have been insane for me to do so. He knew exactly how I’d respond, and by forcing me to deal with it, he’d quietly opened up the part of the board he really cared about. I walked straight into the trap, exactly as he’d planned.

I hate when people do that. I also absolutely love games that let them.

Those little traps, feints, and counterplays are where Hansa Teutonica really shines. The more experienced everyone at the table becomes, the richer those interactions get.

I’ll freely admit this isn’t a game for everyone. It’s dry, unapologetically abstract, and probably about as exciting to watch as an accounting convention.

But if you’re the sort of player who enjoys elegant systems, razor-sharp interaction, and the satisfaction of outthinking your opponents rather than out-rolling them, Hansa Teutonica remains one of the finest Euro games ever designed.

Ten years after I first played it, I still think it’s one of the best cube pushers the hobby has ever produced.

Another permanent fixture of the Hassela weekend is the magnificent Condottiere, a game that is now thirty years old and has somehow refused to age. It’s one of those rare designs that feels just as fresh today as it did when it was released, and every time it hits the table I’m reminded why it’s remained in my collection for so long.

At first glance, Condottiere looks like a straightforward trick-taking card game with a simple area-control board tacked on. In reality, it’s the marriage of those two mechanics that makes the game so special.

The objective couldn’t be simpler. Win battles to place your cubes on the map, and be the first player to connect three adjacent territories to claim victory.

Easy. Except it isn’t.

Every battle is a miniature game of timing, bluffing, and resource management. Your hand of cards represents your army, but unlike most trick-taking games, winning every battle is often the fastest way to lose the war.

The reason is that your cards are a finite resource. The ten cards you receive may need to carry you through multiple battles, and new cards are only dealt when nobody is willing, or able, to continue fighting. Every powerful card you spend now is one you won’t have available when the battle that might actually matter begins.

That single design decision completely transforms the game.

Suddenly, every battle becomes a negotiation. Is this province worth fighting over? Can I bluff my opponents into spending valuable cards while I quietly pull my troops from the battlefield? Should I sacrifice this battle entirely in order to dominate the next one?

Those questions are where Condottiere truly shines.

Adding even more depth are the various special cards that manipulate combat strength, cancel effects, or completely change the state of the battlefield. It’s rarely enough to simply play your highest-valued card and hope for the best. Success comes from luring opponents into committing their resources before revealing the clever little trick you’ve been holding all along.

Meanwhile, the board itself slowly tightens like a noose.

Once a cube has been placed, it never leaves the map. Safe territories disappear, critical choke points emerge, and every remaining battle becomes increasingly important. By the late game, a single province can determine the winner, and everyone around the table knows it.

I’ve been singing the praises of Condottiere for years, and this latest playthrough did absolutely nothing to change my opinion.

It’s elegant, interactive, wonderfully tense, and proof that great design never goes out of style.

Quite simply, it’s one of the finest card games I’ve ever played, and if you’ve never experienced it, I think you’re missing one of the hobby’s true classics.

Blood Rage occupies a unique place in the history of GamersDungeon. In well over a decade of reviewing board games, it remains the only game I’ve ever awarded a perfect 5 out of 5 stars. Ten years later, having played many games since that review, I wouldn’t change a single word.

It remains, in my opinion, one of the finest board games ever designed.

Everything about Blood Rage feels deliberate. The mechanics, the theme, the artwork, the miniatures, the pacing, the replayability, it all comes together with an elegance that’s incredibly rare. It’s one of those games where every system reinforces every other system, creating an experience that’s greater than the sum of its already impressive parts.

It’s also become something of a Hassela tradition. At this point, I’d be more surprised if Blood Rage didn’t make an appearance.

What I love most about the design is that it’s really three different games seamlessly woven together.

First, there’s the drafting phase, where players build their strategy by selecting cards that shape everything they’ll attempt during the coming Age. Every draft feels meaningful because you’re not only improving your own position, but you’re denying powerful combinations to your opponents.

Then comes the area control game. Clans spread across the map, battles erupt over provinces, monsters stomp into play, and everyone races to pillage the richest territories before Ragnarök inevitably wipes parts of the world from existence.

On paper, that’s already an excellent game. But the real game…

…is watching everyone else.

Blood Rage is one of the few area control games where paying attention to your opponents is more important than executing your own strategy. Every drafted card, every troop placement, every suspicious move tells a story about what someone is trying to accomplish, and there is far more to gain from denial than anything else. Success isn’t simply about building the strongest engine or winning the biggest battles. It’s about identifying everyone else’s plan and finding the perfect moment to dismantle it.

That’s where Blood Rage separates itself from the crowd. For all its brilliance, though, it isn’t a forgiving game.

There are very few safety nets here. No generous catch-up mechanisms. No rubber-banding. If you make poor decisions during the first Age, you’ll often spend the rest of the game trying to recover while stronger players steadily pull away. Blood Rage rewards good play and punishes mistakes with remarkable efficiency.

Personally, I love that. When I lose a game of Blood Rage, I almost always know why.

The good news is that despite offering all the depth of a sprawling area-control game, it remains remarkably quick. That advertised 60 to 90 minute playtime is refreshingly accurate, making it easy to get to the table far more often than many games in the genre.

It also scales beautifully, though I still think five players with the expansion is the definitive way to experience it. More players means more conflict, more competition, more spectacular betrayals, and more opportunities for those unforgettable moments that Blood Rage consistently delivers.

I’ve said it before, and another playthrough only reinforced the point.

Blood Rage isn’t my favorite area-control game, but there is no question it’s one of the finest board games ever made, and more than a decade later, I still haven’t played anything that has convinced me otherwise.

And that’s all, folks!

It was another amazing year, and sitting here writing about it reminds me of the tragedy of having this fantastic event behind me. I have to wait a year to do another one!

That doesn’t mean there won’t be BBQ’s, Beers and Boardgames between now and then, but the Hassela weekend is special, it’s unique, and as nerdy and as immature as it might sound, it’s very important. Traditions are one of the corner stones to a happy life, it gives you something to look forward too and I already can’t wait until next year!

Happy Gaming!