For Northwood! is an absolutely lovely design, I agree! Trying to do something as inherently social and reactive as a trick-taking game with only one player is a great design challenge, and For Northwood! managed to pull it off. I didn’t include it on this list because I was imagining this as a consumer guide for someone staring at a shelf full of trick-taking options, and I don’t think For Northwood! would generally come up under those circumstances.

I think Golden Age of Boardgames hit somewhere in the 2000’s and continued through sometime in the 2010’s. I got into it in 2013, but I think there was a greater awareness of boardgames and what they could be designed to do in the 2000’s sometime. I like that you differentiate our current times as golden in terms of production and as mentioned, resulted from crowdfunding and the initial boom/golden age of board games. Perhaps we’re in the gilded age of board games instead? Success coming from combinations of tried and true stuff more than unique and new ideas that were like those of yesteryear.

My collection is mostly concentrated in 2014-2019 published years (per BGG), but I have a healthy amount as well from the entire 2009-2023 range, outliers as far as 2002-2024.

I think Golden Age can sometimes seem like it depends on when one personally jumps into the hobby, but I spent quite a bit of funds these last few years going back to stuff that came out before I got into gaming (so games 2013. I like to think the new stuff has a higher bar to hit, but the bar definitely shifts as much laterally as well as vertically.

After searching BGG, I think some of these later years have waned as after the first few pages of any search by year and current BGG rankings, the games I’m interested in looking into drop off a lot. Even if we have thousands of games coming out, only about 200 are even worth being aware of, depending on one’s tastes, and even fewer get bought/tried.

Culling is more of a thing for us than other hobbies since games not only can be costly, but take up finite storage space, play time, and memory load for rules. But I don’t plan on leaving the hobby any time soon and likely will keep informed on the industry on a daily basis.

I missed a great solo trick taker game though: For Northwood!

Thanks for the comment, Thomas. I love to read the thoughts from our readers.

I’ve played Scythe in person about 20 times (if my BGG stats are correct) and at least 3x that number online. I have the Invaders from Afar expansion on Steam and I recommend it. The two new factions play very differently from the base game’s factions and can be challenging to play, especially at first.

My weekly gaming group and I continue to enjoy Expeditions. For me, Expeditions is a solid game that wouldn’t feel lacking in any way if it weren’t for the expectations that come along with some of the Scythe.

What would you add to the Exploration mechanic?

I’d like to see the Encounter/Map tokens be worth money at the end of the game (maybe half a coin each?) rather than just having five of them be a Goal and nothing more.

Exploration is required to find the Meld, Upgrade, and Boast abilities. However, in our last game, we left four or five tiles unexplored. Maybe the game couldn’t end until all tiles were explored? And one or two of the tiles could have a negative impact when explored (costing money or Corruption)?

I’m glad you liked the, “A Game in the World of Scythe” idea. I liked it, too.

— Tom

“Meaningless expansions” about sums them up. I decided several years ago that I was never going to buy expansions again. I have yet to own one that truly adds the game. I don’t mind the expansions that add new cards without changing gameplay — to games that actually make it to my table at least once a year, but that’s about it.