The Great Lilah Catch-up Post Part 1: Board Games

11 Nov, 2025

2025 sure has been a long year - over 10 months in, it somehow feels like 10 years have passed. But life goes on, including mine. After the collapse of cohost I struggled to get started on another site, and the whole gestures vaguely situation led me to take a "brief" mental health break from social media that ended up lasting most of the year and largely killed my posting habit. But I miss posting and being connected with everyone I met on cohost and I'm making an effort to bring that energy back. Please help keep me accountable!

In that spirit, I'm going to write about some of the stuff I would have been posting about if I'd been present for the last few months. It's time for a SERIES of posts that I call the GREAT LILAH CATCH-UP POST TM SPONSORED BY BEARBLOG: A SERIES. So now it's time for PART 1 OF THE GREAT LILAH CATCH-UP POST TM SPONSORED BY BEARBLOG: A SERIES. That's right it's:

Board Games

I've played board games here and there over the years (especially in my early 20s), and have long been fascinated from afar by certain heavier games. And yet I would never have considered myself a "board game person". It was a hobby I simply didn't have much interest in.

That all changed earlier this year, when my wife took me to a local board game cafe one random weekend to play Flamecraft. The game itself was fine (albeit unbelievably cute), but that experience fired up the hyperfixation and led me down a rabbit hole that has turned 2025 into My Board Game Year. For a while we were going to said board game cafe practically every weekend to use their game library. Meanwhile, I've been expanding our existing modest-but-largely-unplayed collection while also introducing my mom to a few games on trips down to visit. And I've also been diving into the world of solo board games. Board games have become a major hobby for me - well-designed game systems make my brain very happy, and it's one of the few hobbies I have that's truly high-focus, letting me tune out the passage of time and the world around me. Some of the games I've particularly enjoyed this year:

Twilight Inscryption

I've long been interested from afar in mega-maximalist space-strategy board game epic Twilight Imperium. Someday, I hope to find 2-5 other queers to take that journey into cutthroat space politics with me. But until that happens, there's Twilight Inscryption, a roll-and-write set in the same universe that was my first dive into solo gaming. It's a game of drawing lore-dense cards and rolling dice to get resources that you then spend by drawing on four dry-erase sheets that would probably make the average person feel like they're going insane (it's a lot more straightforward than it looks at a glance). There's something meditative about drawing on those sheets, trying to optimize a resource-spending strategy in the face of uncertainty about WHAT exact resources you're going to get this turn, and it captures the feeling of playing a complicated 4X in 1-2 hours.

Everdell

Just the most delightful little folksy woodland city builder, a game that looks so stinking cute and has strong design to back it up. This is our most-played game at the Board Game Cafe and one I bought to play with my mom. This is the kind of game where I can easily end up planning several turns ahead and leveraging combos to try to get the most points and it's so satisfying

Root

This is a perfect venn diagram for me and my wife: it's got an incredible folksy woodland aesthetic, while also being an asymmetrical strategy game with complex systems that model political power in fascinating ways. I love how radically different each faction plays - the RTS coded Marquise de Cat, spread thin throughout the forest and trying to hold onto power; the Eyrie, authoritarian and trying to claw back the power they've lost via risk-reward mechanics that inevitably lead to governmental instability putting them on the back foot; the Woodland Alliance, earning sympathy from the common folk and waging a revolutionary war of insurgency against the other factions; and the Vagabond who is just a little guy on a little quest. We've largely played this digitally because it really requires at least three to be any good, but I someday hope to get a physical copy of my own

Wingspan/Wyrmspan

Wingspan is insanely popular and also the perfect Board Game For Playing With Your Mom. It's a satisfying tableau builder with plenty of opportunity for card combos that's straightforward enough mechanically not to overwhelm someone new to board games. And also it's about birds! Who doesn't like birds! So naturally, I've been playing it a lot with my mom. Meanwhile, I've played spin-off Wyrmspan a few times with my wife and it's probably my favorite of the Span games - Wingspan with dragons and enough alterations mechanically to give it its own flavor. It's the most complex of the Span family and if you play smartly it gives you opportunities to earn extra actions, which I love

7 Wonders Duel

Another city builder, this is built specifically for two players and is simple while still allowing room for plenty of strategy. It’s all about pulling and playing cards off of a central arrangement of overlapping cards. Cards can’t be played if they’re covered by another, so the central strategy involves going for the cards that most benefit your city while trying to manipulate the central arrangement to block the other player from being able to grab the cards they want. Its hugely fun and has also been a great weeknight game for us thanks to how fast and low-overhead games are

Pax Pamir

My most recent acquisition and one I'm hugely excited about. By the designer of Root and based in his academic studies, it's all about the "Great Game" in Afghanistan, specifically casting you as an Afghan leader navigating the colonial struggle for control of the region. You ally with one of three factions (Britain, Russia, or Afghanistan itself), trying to spread your faction's influence on a beautiful cloth map to achieve regional dominance while also competing for influence within your chosen faction. Along the way, there's plenty of opportunity for going turncoat in the name of survival. I love history, and Pax Pamir is rooted in a particularly fascinating period while refusing to glorify colonialism. It has a hugely robust solo mode that's been a wonderful way to get familiar with the mechanics and the deep strategy at play, and I'm looking forward to playing it with my wife soon.

But of course, that's not all. Many of my friends know there's another game I've become obsessed with this year: Arkham Horror: The Card Game. That's a giant rabbit hole that I've already pulled multiple friends into and easily worthy of its own post.

I hope you have enjoyed this FIRST installment in THE GREAT LILAH CATCH-UP POST TM SPONSORED BY BEARBLOG: A SERIES. It certainly feels nice to be sharing and posting again. Stay tuned for (hopefully) more in the coming days/weeks! Help keep me accountable!