Our June meeting had a good turnout, with a few new faces. The day got started with tables diving into games of Cat Earth, Bombusters, Tzolk'in, and Magic: The Gathering. Meanwhile other table got stuck into games of World Order and Firefly: The Game, both of which ended up lasting most of the day.

Tzolk'in, which is based around the Mayan Calendar is an interesting take on worker placement where each turn players can either place or recall any number of their workers. Players can place their workers on the first empty space of one of several smaller gears and every round the large central gear will rotate moving all the other gears one, or occasionally two, spaces. When players recall a worker they take the action of the space their worker is currently at. The key to the game is carefully managing your limited pool of workers, so that you aren't forced to recall them early before they are able to reach the space with the most beneficial action.

We also had local game designer Benjamin come to demo his game, Detonation, which cleverly packs a strategic wargame into a small box card game.

While the epic games of World Order and Firefly continued, the game of Cat Earth was followed by a game of Priests of Ra, which shakes up the classic bidding game of RA by by adding new scoring tiles.

After lunch the Tzolk'in table moved onto a game of The Old Kings Crown. As a few people had to leave early the other groups joined together for a game of Isle of Cats.

The Old Kings Crown is an impressive piece of work, and is recognised as one of 2025's best games. It has drawn a lot of attention for it's gorgeous artwork and snappy gameplay - an incredible feat when you discover both the art and the design are the work of just one man (and that it's his debut game!) Players take the role of factions vying for control of a fallen land by competing over the various regions on the board. Cards are secretly played for their strength value, with the option to commit some supporters (which are very limited) to further increase their strength - It's an interesting twist on blind bidding. There's a lot to get to grips here, with each faction having their own strengths and weaknesses, I'm very much looking forward to the next play of this one!

The day wrapped up with a casual pairing of For Sale and Spots, proving that a game about buying and selling houses can be surprisingly cut-throat, while Spots delivers adorable dogs and reckless dice rolling, with players inevitably pushing their luck just one roll too far.s

Our next meeting is on 11th July, you can see our upcoming meetings on our calendar and our Aftergame page, look forward to seeing you there!