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A Gaming Life
Mama, She’s Craaazy – Final Girl – Madness in the Dark Review
(1,000,000 quatloos to whoever gets the title reference)
The Final Girl franchise has been doing a great job of covering different genres of horror movies, even including some that are more science fiction than horror.
With the advent of Madness in the Dark, however, they have moved to covering a film that’s not exactly horror, but instead more psychological suspense (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest).
The killer in this feature film set is The Ratchet Lady and is clearly inspired by Nurse Ratched from the film, but in the film she’s not a killer, instead being more of an abusive, power-hungry force.
That doesn’t mean she’s not fun as a killer!
Let’s get the credits out of the way first.
Madness in the Dark was designed by A.J. Porfirio with art by Vladyslava Ladkova. It was published by Van Ryder Games in 2023 and is part of the Series 2 slate of feature films.
The Ratchet Lady is a really interesting killer with some cool effects, and Wolfe Asylum is a nice location (well, for playing in, I wouldn’t want to be staying there).
Let’s see what makes this feature film click.
Read MoreBGG Top Games – 3101 – 3200
It’s been over a week since the last Boardgame Geek century post, but last week was pretty full and I didn’t want to oversaturate the market.
I didn’t want my readers to be overwhelmed with awesomness.
But we’re back now, looking at another century of BGG rankings, this one getting further and further into the depths.
We’re below 3100 feet games and counting!
Be careful if you need to come up for air.
This week, we have a bit of a bonanza of played games.
I didn’t say good games, but definitely played games.
And one crime against nature, meaning there’s no way the game should be this low.
My overall stats for this century are six games played and two of those owned (or previously owned).
The list I’m taking these from can be found here, but keep in mind that a lot of things can change if you’re looking at this a year from now.
Or even a week.
Two cases in point!
After doing the last post, I looked ahead to this century and was thrilled that I’d be able to talk about Doomlings (the great evolutionary card game that’s just hilarious) because it was in the 3100s.
Lo and behold, I check back before doing this post, and it’s all the way up to #3008!
Which would have been on the last post.
So just go read the review, because it’s a good one.
The second case in point is also from last time.
9 Lives was at 3100 last time and I predicted that it would fall into this week’s post, but I was going to write about it anyway.
Sure enough, it fell to #3101.
It won’t be on this week’s post. You can read about it on the last one.
I’m still getting good discussions with these posts, so let’s get started!
Read MoreMay 2026 Gaming
May was a busy month!
I mean, not March busy, but definitely better than April busy.
There was a 14-hour boardgame marathon where I ended up playing 8 games a total of 14 times.
Just in one day!
Then a couple of Sundays had multiple short games after playing the main event, which is always fun.
This month, I turned it around by doing the “new to me” post first, but here’s an overview of what actually got played in May.
Overall for May, I played 30 games a total of 44 times.
That’s outrageous!
Of course, Final Girl led the way again, but Sky Team was right behind it.
Here’s the list of games played.
And here it is in grid form.
Many thanks to the incredible Boardgame Stats app for this beautiful summary!
It was a fun month, including a few games that I haven’t played in quite a while.
Let’s get to those highlights.
Read MoreNew to Me – May 2026
There were no conventions attended in May, but there was a 14-hour games marathon where a bunch of games were played.
So I knew this would be a lengthy post!
This month, I actually played more new to me games than I did in March after a 3-day convention, which really surprised me.
Part of that was the marathon (six), but there were also a couple of games days where multiple ones came out.
And even one work lunch!
It is!
Even better for my standing as leader of the Cult of the New to Me, many of them were older.
There were even two which weren’t from this century.
Even the ones from this century, there were games from 2008, 2013, 2017, 2018, and more.
There was a lot of partying going on at cult headquarters.
Don’t worry, I didn’t let them get too out of hand.
So without further ado (all of my ado was destroyed in an airplane crash due to bad dice rolling anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreCombat Commander – After Action Report – Scenario 108 – In My Time of Dying
In many tactical wargames, especially pitting small units like squads and stuff against each other, smoke becomes very important.
Even more so when there’s a lot of open ground to cover.
Welcome to another tale from the Combat Commander ladder, that monthly tournament run by the arresting Patrick Pence, he of Patrick’s Tactics & Tutorials fame, that lets you play one of the greatest games of all time at least once a month.
Hey, I think I just figured out what “monthly” means!
Of course, you can play more than that, since there are always people looking for a game.
May’s scenario is one of the scenarios from the acclaimed C3i magazine, which takes place just after the Normandy landings and has a force of British troops attempting to advance on the city of Caen, and tasked with degrading a German strongpoint.
This month’s opponent was Doug T, a relative newbie to the ladder and somebody who hasn’t played the game for quite a while.
It was kind of nice being a tutor of sorts.
(Don’t forget that you can click on a picture to blow it up)
The Germans (grey – me) have a bunker set up with a heavy machine gun (HMG), which has to set up first, anywhere within ten hexes of the left side.
I set that up in the far forward position surrounded by hedges.
The British (tan – Doug) then set up on the last column on the right side of the board and have some reinforcement engineers with satchel charges coming out at the first Time trigger.
Finally, the Germans set up the rest of their forces within that same ten-hex field.
The only real special rule is that the HMG is stuck in the bunker. If it’s ever forced to leave (like the unit manning it having to retreat or something), it’s eliminated instead.
There’s also a bunch of German wire and mines blocking things, and two trenches for some of the other guys.
As you can see, I left a couple of gaps but with machine guns covering all of the approaches.
That HMG can see everything.
The only open objective is that if anybody owns all five objectives at a Sudden Death, they win!
Otherwise, only the British have a secret one.
Would Doug be able to advance across the open in front of my HMG at all?
Without smoke?
This game became very hot, in more ways than one (as you will see).
Let’s find out.
Read MoreCombat Commander Tips for Beginners
Those of you who have spent any time following this blog (not just reading a post or two here and there) know that Combat Commander (from GMT Games) is one of my favourite games out there.
I’m even part of a monthly ladder tournament where we get to play once a month, and many people are open to pick-up games here and there.
This means that I’ve played Combat Commander: Europe a total of 56 times and Combat Commander: Pacific a total of 15 times.
So I do know a little bit about the game, but nowhere near as much as a lot of my friends.
While I don’t think I can really write an overall strategy guide, I can suggest some helpful tips for beginners to keep in mind as they are getting their feet wet in this marvelous tactical wargame system.
I’m not going to go into all the rules and how everything works.
If you’re not sure of that, there’s a rulebook as well as a number of video playthroughs that will teach the game.
I’m going to assume you know the basics, things like how you “roll dice”, how you play cards, how many cards you can play on your turn, what a Sniper or Event trigger is, how the game ends, that sort of thing.
Instead, once you have those down, here are some tips to take you to the next level.
Tier 2, you might say.
All of my pictures are going to be from the VASSAL module for the game, which I have used literally every month since July 2021.
Also, most pictures are staged just to illustrate my point.
They are mostly not from games I’ve played and thus some of the setup may not be optimum to actually win the game.
Also, if you want to see my good friend Zilla Blitz and I talk about these in a video, why not do that too!
With that, let’s begin.
Read MoreSkipping Through the Moors – Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor Review
It’s always interesting when good games are reimplemented.
Will the new one keep the same quality or charm as the previous game?
Will it make it better?
Is it being designed to correct mistakes from the original?
You get that with games like Dune Imperium and Dune Imperium: Uprising, which I can’t really comment on as I’ve only played Uprising once.
I’m a huge fan of the original Forest Shuffle, though it did have its problems with dominant strategies, such as wolves and deer.
The two expansions helped mitigate that immensely, but then Lookout Games came out with a new version of the base game: Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor.
Dartmoor was designed by Kosch with artwork by Toni Llobet and Judit Piella and was published in 2025.
There’s even an expansion coming out!
And yet another new implementation.
But we’re talking about Dartmoor here, and I have to say that they have achieved a solid result with it.
I’m going to try to avoid making this review nothing but comparisons to the original game, but some of that is definitely going to creep in here because for this iteration they apparently looked at the original game (without expansions) and said “yeah, let’s avoid this” regarding a number of different things.
Read MoreI’m Not Talking to You – Games Where You Can’t Communicate
Recently I was watching a boardgame Youtube video about the creator’s top 10 things that they don’t like in games (sorry, I don’t remember who it was or I would link to them).
One of these “things he avoids” was “limited communication in games.”
That got me to thinking about a lot of things. Mostly that I haven’t done a true opinion piece in a while!
But also just what is the limited communication mechanism and whether or not it is good for cooperative games (because it doesn’t come into play in competitive games)?
Cooperative games have a long and storied history of both being games where you can introduce non-gamers to the genre because you can help them out, as well as having the “alpha gamer” who takes control and dictates everybody’s move.
If you’re going to be that type of player, why not just play multi-handed solo?
In recent years, a new mechanism for cooperative games has come out that solves that problem, though that might not have been the intent of it.
What I’m talking about is the idea that you can’t communicate with your fellow players, either in total or about certain things.
In a lot of cooperative games, everything’s out in the open (like Pandemic) and it’s very easy to have one person make all of the suggestions and everybody go along with it.
Nowadays, many cooperative games have secret information, usually a hand of cards that you can’t communicate with your fellow players what you have.
You can’t say “I have a yellow 2, so let me play there.”
This kind of eliminates the “alpha gamer” problem, but it also makes it so that a lot of these games can actually exist.
What do I mean by that?
Let me explain.
Read MoreWyrmspan Coming to Digital – Soon
Wasn’t planning a post today, but saw some digital gaming news that excited me, so I thought I’d send a quick note out.
Monster Couch announced today that the Wingspan adjacent game, Wyrmspan, will be coming to Steam digital soon (and hopefully other platforms soon after).
Here’s the trailer for it, in case you’re interested.
This game has intrigued me, but I haven’t had the chance to play it yet.
(I’m pretty sure one of my friends has it, so soon maybe?)
I’ve heard good things about it, though!
It has some similarities to Wingspan, but enough differences that you’re not playing the same game.
Hopefully Finspan will be in the next year or so, because I love that one.
Anyway, not much information out there so far, but here’s what the Steam page says (which you can access and wishlist).
It will have solo with the Automa, solo against bot opponents, and both local and online multiplayer as well.
Wingspan’s online multiplayer has both synchronous and asynchronous options, so I’m hoping that this one will as well.
Here’s a screenshot from the Steam page.
Keep an eye out, wishlist it, and hopefully this one will arrive soon!
Are you as excited as me?
Or are you meh?
Let me know in the comments, and what you think of the game itself if you’ve played it!
Educate me…
BGG Top Games – 3001 – 3100
It’s Wednesday, the middle of the week, so how about a middle post about Boardgame Geek rankings?
I mentioned last week that I’ll keep doing these until I hit a week where I haven’t played anything.
That ain’t this week!
I should remind folks that, if I’ve played a number of the games in a century, I’m not going to talk about all of them.
That would make these posts way too long.
This came up last week when somebody thought I hadn’t played a game that I had but just hadn’t talked about.
Anyway, these posts are still sparking some good discussions, and maybe my friend Tavendale is still thinking of nicking my idea.
Hopefully!
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
As long as I enjoy doing them, they will get done.
In the meantime, here’s the century we’re looking at today.
Getting down a bit deeper in the BGG rankings, but still finding some interesting stuff!
This century, I’ve played 5 of the games and I own (or have owned) 2 of them.
Not a huge number, but still enough to talk about.
As usual, the rankings may change if you’re reading this a few weeks in the future.
I don’t have any more time travel jokes, so I’ll stop.
I still have a bunch of space left before my 300-word introduction limit, but maybe we’ll use some of that extra space on the back end.
Let’s begin!
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