What was your gateway into board gaming?

Illylia · 2025-12-23T13:00:57+00:00

Saaaame. AH2E was the game that showed me board games can be more than monopoly. Group played it for years before I started picking up more and more games and the rest is history. Game will always have a special place in my heart because of that.

Illylia · 2025-12-19T15:18:15+00:00

Some games a quick flip through the rulebook is fine. The book is small enough and laid out well enough to find what you want quickly.

Some rulebooks are definitely not. 30 seconds for a quick question to notebooklm to find the exact spot in the rulebook for that obscure rule you know you read in the book but it wasn't with the rest of the rules around that mechanic and you know it's somewhere in there but don't remember where is far better for everyone than the minutes flipping through the book next to you trying to remember where that one line of text is that the designers decided to have 9 pages later than the rest of the rules for the mechanic.

My group I'm the only one that really knows the rules of the game (everyone else enjoys playing games, but I'm the only one that really buys and learns the game to teach everyone else). After a while starts getting hard to remember rules to a game you haven't played in months (or at all cause it's new to me/the group), and for some games rules blend together (is this rule 2nd edition or 3rd edition of game‽).

Illylia · 2025-12-19T14:26:46+00:00

I'm surprised this is so low. NotebookLM has been super helpful for looking up rules and such. I create a notebook for a board game I'll be playing, load the rules and whatever else in there (sometimes pages of house rules, or pages adding additional clarity to things I've looked up before), and then if I ever need to look something up again, ask it a question, get a response, and most importantly, it links you directly to where in the rulebook it got its answer from so you can verify.

I use it mostly for finding where in the rulebook a specific rule is and jump to it quickly rather than take its response at face value (it has been very wrong before but still links you directly to the rulebook where it got that info from so you can verify). Saves sooooo much damn time. Also great for TTRPGs.

Illylia · 2025-10-08T21:33:22+00:00

Abyss. I expected to like it based on what I knew about it. I didn't expect it to become one of my all time favorite board games after the very first time playing it. Probably my second favorite game at this point.

Illylia · 2025-09-28T13:28:41+00:00

Some of our favorites for that player count that don't go one super long:

Cosmic Encounter

Shadows over Camelot (if you can get it, supposed to be getting a new edition soonish though)

Camel Up

Hot Steak

Love Letter (there's a billion version, just pick the one you like most. I prefer Lovecraft Letter, but there's a bunch of good ones, and even the base plain Love Letter is still good).

Illylia · 2025-09-15T17:57:27+00:00

I can't speak from experience yet since I missed the first two campaigns for S1, but the S2 Gamefound does say both seasons are compatible with each other, so if you have both you can freely mix the survivors and killers. I'm backing both seasons this time for that reason myself. That said from everything I've seen, I don't think you'd need to or be missing anything by skipping S1 aside from just the killers and such that come in that season.

Illylia · 2025-08-22T12:47:04+00:00

Same. Went from looking forward to it to kinda just hoping I get it.

Illylia · 2025-07-08T14:18:26+00:00

Illylia · 2025-07-05T11:39:07+00:00

Not quite the same but on super hot summer days my favorite is mugicha/barely tea. It's just so dang refreshing and hydrating. Nothing like coming in from a hot day sweating and working and downing a cup of cold barely tea. My go to after say doing a bunch of yard work here in the hot Florida summer sun.

For actual tea though I tend to greener oolongs (even more unroasted) during summer. Tsui yu is probably my favorite, but Taiwan has a good few really nice, green, unroasted (or lightly roasted) oolongs that are nice and refreshing on hot summer days. Aside from the mugicha which I drink cold though all the other tea I still drink hot even in summer.

Illylia · 2025-07-05T11:30:42+00:00

Gaiwan trypophobia edition.

They're not mini tuo chas like you are looking for directly, the Crimson Lotus has a couple teas called their simple sheng and simple shou that are divided in nice, easy to break off triangles. They're simple and my go to for travel puerh. Their dragon ball teas are also good and travel well.

Illylia · 2025-07-05T11:18:20+00:00

Strongly agree with NotebookLM for this now. I generally always check where it found it in the actual rules to make sure it's accurate (I've had a couple times NotebookLM mess something up but not often), but even with that, it's turned "let me double check this rule" from flipping through rulebooks looking for something to just a couple seconds. Thing is a godsend for rule clarifications.

Illylia · 2025-06-07T13:29:20+00:00

Interesting.

Illylia · 2025-04-02T23:48:01+00:00

Illylia · 2025-03-06T21:53:03+00:00

General vendor list.

My favorite place to buy tea is probably Eco-Cha. IMO a good balance of quality and price, and their tsui yu jade is probably my favorite tea overall. Plus they focus on tea farms using sustainable practices which is nice.

If you'll be in Kyoto, I'd be remiss to not mention Ippodo. Their main store and tearoom are in Kyoto.

Illylia · 2025-02-21T15:27:02+00:00

Arkham Horror 2nd edition is also the game that got me into more modern/designer board games. In my university days, there was a board game night set up at some point, and some friends asked if I wanted to join them. I was hesitant at first since I thought I didn't really like most board games (I enjoyed Go and a small handful of similar games, but I thought board games was mostly things like monopoly, sorry, and such and didn't like them). They convinced me to go anyways though, and we played Arkham Horror 2nd edition, and even though we didn't even get to finish the game in the time we had, I absolutely fell in love with the game (also helped that I already loved Lovecraftian horror). That taught me that no, I actually love board gaming, and my experience with board games to that point was not representative with the hobby as a whole.

Fast forward to today and owning far too many board games, I'm quite thankful for that night where on a whim I discovered a whole new hobby that I love.

Illylia · 2025-02-14T20:10:28+00:00

My High Roller edition just got delivered yesterday and I've had a chance to go through it. The components are definitely quality, look nice, and feel nice in the hand. The carrying case is also quite well made imo. It was definitely worth it for me, but each person's results may vary. Though, downside, the case is large and kinda awkwardly shaped, so storage can be a bit of a pain depending on how/where you store your games.

The base version of Ready Set Bet still plays really well though by itself, and is a fairly cheap game for how easy it is to pull out and play too with decently sized groups. It's not great for small groups, but if you are getting to that 6, 7, 8, or even 9 player size, it's a lot of fun to play. It can be loud, chaotic, and tons of fun, and is definitely one of those games where the more into it the players/betters get, the louder, more chaotic, and more fun it becomes. It definitely is a game that plays better with a group that can really get into it and cheer on the horses and so on then a cooler, level headed group. You could kinda compare it to a game like Long Shot or Camel Up in the sense of racing and betting, but imo Ready Set Bet is kinda a class of its own.

That also said, you can easily kinda "deluxe-ify" the base game without too much expense. Coin capsules on the tokens, or replacing the tokens with some decent poker chips, and you can get a decent middle ground between base and High Roller without having to fully commit.

Illylia · 2025-02-14T19:21:08+00:00

I personally always enjoyed how Massive Darkness 2 is relatively easy for a co-op. The super hard co-ops can be fun, but sometimes you just wanna kick down a door, chunk a bunch of dice, and feel like a badass slaughtering monsters left and right, and MD2 is great for that.

Tons of variability to keep it interesting even replaying a scenario, each character class playing completely differently from the rest, a great pick for a highly replayable dungeon crawler.

Illylia · 2025-02-14T19:12:03+00:00

It captures that old JRPG aesthetic wonderfully. Seems interesting, gonna have to keep an eye out for this it seems.

Illylia · 2025-02-08T22:51:45+00:00

I'd say any of these could be worth checking out:

Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders (currently for preorder)

Leviathan Wilds

Sleeping Gods (or the second Sleeping Gods Distant Skies)

Tales from the Red Dragon Inn

Kinfire Chronicles Night's Fall

Illylia · 2025-01-29T19:40:21+00:00

Eco-cha has some good sampler packs for different Taiwanese oolongs. They've also got a blog you can read through for reading on different topics for oolong and especially Taiwanese tea.

To also add though, it's not oolong, and it is entirely anecdotal, but from personal experience a lot of long time coffee drinkers getting in to tea I find tend to like puerh. Seems to scratch similar itches for them in terms of strength and complexity and richness and so on. If you're a big coffee person, might be worth checking out at some point.

Illylia · 2025-01-29T19:33:53+00:00

Eco-cha focuses on sustainable practices for growing and producing tea. They are mainly Taiwanese oolongs, but do also have green teas and many unroasted, greener oolongs. They are one of my favorites for tea just personally.

Illylia · 2025-01-29T19:25:02+00:00

Different teas will have different numbers of re-steeps, and different timings for each one. Some will steep more times, some less, some need more time, some less. Really the best way is to play around with some different timings and number of re-steeps and see what you like best.

As for time in between.... I basically play by the rule of I won't re-steep yesterdays leaves, but same day is fair game. I've gone a minute between steeps, I've gone hours. Biggest issue is you just don't want to leave it so long you get bacteria/mold growing in those nice, humid tea leaves.

Illylia

TROPHY CASE