Circadians: First Light is a strategic dice-placement and resource-management game where players lead a team of researchers exploring an alien planet. The game is designed by S. J. Macdonald and published by Garphill Games. In Circadians: First Light, each player controls a different faction of researchers who have landed on an unknown planet. You will study its inhabitants, gather resources, and negotiate peaceful relations. You will have to carefully allocate dice and manage your resources with the goal of collecting the most points.

To play Circadians: First Light, each player will have workers represented by dice and a personal player board. In the middle of the table will be a main board. The game takes place over eight rounds. Each round is divided into different phases (planning, execution, resolution, and maintenance). During the planning phase, each player rolls their dice in secret and assigns them to different locations on their personal board. During the execution phase, the player will reveal their dice, taking turn and placing them on the main board. The execution phase will make you harvest resources (water, power, and others), upgrade your research station, or negotiate with the planet’s inhabitants. During the resolution phase, you will resolve actions, collect resources, and deal with conflicts. The phase of maintenance is like a clean up phase where you will retrieve your worker (dice) and adjust your resources. After the 8th round, the game will end, and points will be tallied. You will gain points based on completed objectives (contracts), successful negotiations, and upgrades on your personal board.

What strategy should you use to win Circadians: First Light? My first tip would be to optimize your dice placement and assign your workers efficiently to maximize each action round. The second tip would be to balance resource management. You need to prioritize collecting resources and make sure you have an equal amount of each type. The third tip would be to not forget investing in upgrades. They will unlock research and improvement that will provide you long-term benefits, plus they will help you in end-of-game scoring. My last tip would be to make sure you engage in negotiations. Interaction with the inhabitant’s faction can yield powerful rewards and influence the game outcome.

Circadians: First Light uses innovative dice placement. You will have to think strategically about where to place your dice and anticipate your opponent's move. The theme of the game is engaging and immerses you in the universe of this unknown planet. The multiple paths to victory make it want to play again and again to try them all. You could try to focus on negotiation, research, or even resource collection. In short, Circadians: First Light is a deeply strategic and immersive board game in a sci-fi universe. 

Heroes Welcome is a fantasy-themed board game where you will take on the role of goblin merchants eager to profit from the spoils adventurers bring back from their quests. Heroes Welcome is designed by Eduardo Baraf & Marc LeBlanc and published by Monkey Jump Games and Pencil First Games. In Heroes Welcome, they manage to blend pick-up and delivery, set collection, worker placement, and contract fulfillment in a fun game. In this game you are not playing as the heroes, but as the merchant profiting from their dungeon crawls. You will trade, refine, and reforge items to sell them at an even greater profit. Unfortunately, as you do so, you will slowly awaken an evil, creating a dynamic endgame.

Heroes Welcome is played over several rounds. Each round is divided into different phases. In the loot phase, adventurers return from their dungeon crawl and sell their loot to players (goblins). In the merchant actions, you will choose what to do with your different loot. You can trade it, craft it into powerful items, or manipulate the market to maximize your profit. The selling and upgrading phase will allow you to sell your powerful items to buyers for high value and upgrade your personal shop. The more players make a profit, the more they will unknowingly assist the return of an ancient villain and thus trigger the end of the game. Once this evil is completely awakened, players will tally their final score, and the goblin merchant with the most profit wins the game.

What strategy should you use to win Heroes Welcome? My first tip would be to try and maximize your profit. Buy your loot at a low price and sell when they are high or even try and time your trade with anticipation of when the market will shift in demand. My second tip would be to upgrade your shop strategically; invest in abilities that are aligned with your strategy. My last tip would be to keep an eye on your opponents. Watching them play and trying to prevent their strategies or stop them from monopolizing valuable loot.

Heroes Welcome brings a fresh take on fantasy in board games. Instead of playing heroes, you play as the profiting merchants, which is a refreshing take on that type of universe. The dynamic market system makes the economy in that game fluctuating and keeps the game exciting and unpredictable. The gradual awakening of an ancient evil adds a unique end-of-game trigger. In short, Heroes Welcome is an innovative fantasy board game with a blend of economic strategy, set collection, and much more. If you are looking for a unique game, Heroes Welcome is one you should try.

Honey Buzz, a game beautifully designed by Paul Salomon and published by Elf Creek Games, is all about bees and honey. This game manages to elegantly mix worker placement and tile-laying. You play as a colony of bee workers trying to sell off their production of honey and nectar. Each turn, you will expand your hive by placing honeycomb tiles.

Your main goal in Honey Buzz is to earn the most coin by selling honey and fulfilling orders. Each turn you play; you will use one of your worker bees to select a tile and then place this tile in you hive. Each tile has a different action on them; Produce honey, sell (honey, pollen, and orders), collect more bees (expand the hive), collect coins, or go forage for nectar or pollen. Once placed in your hive these tiles will be activated when a space is created for nectar. The game will go on if orders and/or tiles are available. At the end, points will be scored based on the honey sales, fulfilled orders and leftover resources.

Honey Buzz is such a good game because you may have many different strategies to keep in mind. The first and most important strategy to remember when playing honey buzz is the layout of your hive. It is crucial to keep in mind the mechanism of activating your tile and thus optimizing every tile you play. The second thing to keep in mind is the timing of selling your honey. The values of different types of honey will decrease as the game goes on; sometimes selling your honey will be more fruitful than fulfilling an order. My third tip would be to make sure you diversify your nectar collection. Having different nectar types will make it more flexible for you to fulfill orders. The last strategy to keep in mind is where you will place your worker. Since the number of workers needed for every tile increased and decreased by moment, it is important to keep in mind that sometimes the expensive tile is not necessarily the most logical option.

The tile placement in Honey Buzz offers a satisfying puzzle-like challenge. The artwork and component are gorgeous. The production of this game is high-quality, and it makes the theme of the game resonate. The fluctuating market create a path to victory that makes this game really engaging and affected by your opponent’s action. In conclusion, in Honey Buzz, you play as a colony of bees trying to make profit out of their production of honey. You need to balance your production of honey while building the most effective hive and competitively fulfill any orders. It may seem like a complicated game to learn, but the theme makes everything easy to learn, and the playthrough is very fluid.

Merchants of the Dark Road is a highly strategic board game designed by Brian Suhre and published by Elf Creek Games. This immersive game combines resource management, pick-up and delivery, set collection, and, of course, contract fulfilment. In Merchants of the Dark Road, each player takes on the role of merchants travelling dangerous roads to deliver goods and transport heroes. You will have the chance to discover the capital city, where you will collect and produce items to carry in your caravan or sell them to local heroes.

To play Merchants of the Dark Road, you will find a main board in the middle of the table, and each player will have their own personal boards. On your turn, you will allocate dice to different parts on your personal board. Those actions will allow you to move on the main board to visit locations that allow you to purchase goods, upgrade your caravan, or even accept hero contracts. When you have filled your caravan and/or accepted to bring heroes along, you will go on the dark road journey. You will embark on the dark road going to “distant” locations. Make sure you gather lanterns before going on the journey; they will ensure you safer travel. Once you reach those distant locations, you will be able to deliver the goods you collect and thus complete the contract. The game will go on for several rounds. At the end of the game, players will tally their wealth and prestige; the lower of these 2 will determine their final score.

What strategy should you use to win Merchants of Dark Road? My first tip would be to make sure you balance wealth and prestige points. Since the lower of the two scores determines your final score, make sure you do not focus only on one of the two. My second tip would be to plan your journeys as efficiently as possible. Try to make “group deliveries.”. What I mean is you should plan to deliver goods in the same distant locations as the heroes you accepted on your caravan. Sometimes you can even deliver 2 contracts of goods at the same location, maximising your journey to the fullest. My last tip would be to use your lanterns wisely; of course, they can make a more dangerous route safer but always keep in mind that taking more risks can lead to greater rewards.

Merchants of the Dark Road use a unique balancing mechanism. The different mechanisms (resource management, pick-up and delivery, set collection, and, of course, contract fulfilment, and many more) interplay with one another beautifully and make this game stand out. Also, I love the management of 2 different points systems (wealth and prestige) when only the lowest one will be considered in end-of-game scoring. It makes this game interesting, and it makes sure that you must visit different distant locations. You do not have only one strategy to win this game; you could decide to trade goods, go on a lot of adventures, or even focus on upgrading your personal board (caravan). Merchants of the Dark Road is richly thematic and a highly strategic board game. If you are looking for a game that challenges your resource management skills while immersing, you in a beautiful world. 

Stonespine Architects is a unique and engaging board game where players take on the role of dungeon architects competing to build the most cunning and treacherous underground lair. Another game in the roll player tale word of ulos universe, Stonespine Architects is designed by Jordy Adan and published by Thunderworks Games. As you are building your dungeon, you will have to manage your income, do some spatial planning, and fulfil contracts. You will create a dungeon filled with labyrinth-like paths, secret passages, traps, treasure, and, of course, monsters.

Stonespine Architects is divided into 4 rounds, each divided into different phases. Each round will start with a drafting phase; you will select a card (each card represents a room in your dungeon) and place it in the current row of your dungeon. After that, you will pass the rest of the hands of cards to your opponent. Once everyone has completed the row, you will go to the market to buy and place dungeon tiles. Dungeons tiles include secret passages, traps, treasure, and monsters. These two phases will go on until every player has completed their dungeon (4 x 4 card grid). End-of-game scoring will happen, and you will score points based on your dungeon layout, traps, treasure, and completed objectives.

What strategy should you use to win Stonespine Architects? The first tip would be to plan your dungeon layout carefully. Optimise your room placement to ensure the biggest path to exit possible and create a higher score. Also make sure you respect your personal objective for the layout of your rooms. My second tip would be to make you balance traps and treasure; while traps make your dungeon more dangerous, treasure provides essential coins to buy more tiles to add to your dungeon. My last tip would be to keep an eye on your opponent’s dungeon. It may happen that nothing is interesting you in the market, so you may buy some items only to block your opponent.

Stonespine Architects is such a creative dungeon-building mechanism. The flexible tile placement from the market phase allows for endless dungeon configurations. The theme and artwork are engaging and fit right in the role player tale world of the Ulos universe. There are multiple paths to victory, and a wide variety of tiles and objectives make this game have a high replayability. Whether you enjoy optimising layout, planning traps, or managing resources, this game offers a rich and fun experience for new and regular gamers. 

References: 

BGG. (n.d.) Circadians: First Light. Board Games Geek. Retrieved February 2025, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/264052/circadians-first-light

BGG. (n.d.) Heroes Welcome. Board Games Geek. Retrieved February 2025, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/212839/heroes-welcome

BGG. (n.d.) Honey Buzz. Board Games Geek. Retrieved February 2025, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/284742/honey-buzz

BGG. (n.d.) Merchants of the dark road. Board Games Geek. Retrieved February 2025, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/300217/merchants-of-the-dark-road

BGG. (n.d.) Stonespine Architects. Board Games Geek. Retrieved February 2025, from: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/387514/stonespine-architects