At our last game night, I finally got to bust out my new meeple cookie cutters from Steeped Games! I tried to choose a cookie recipe that would support that shape, to greater or lesser success at times. We had a wide variety of games that night, so let’s dive in!

At a Glance…

Chocolate Pecan Shortbread Cookies

I know I’m not a fan of sugar cookies, which you usually use with cookie cutters, but I do see the logic behind using them. If you’re using cookie cutters rather than just rolling them into a circle or ball, you really need a simple, harder cookie that will withstand the force of the cutter without a lot of other ingredients getting in the way. Since I’m not a sugar cookie fan, I thought these chocolate pecan shortbread cookies from Minimalist Baker might work. They…sorta did lol. I may or may not have realized that I’m also not a huge fan of shortbread, haha. To be fair, I think I left them in a minute or two too long, and should’ve used more sugar. I used half sugar in the raw and half coconut sugar, since that’s what I had. My friends insisted they were delightful and liked not having an overly soft or sweet cookie. Those like me who like sweeter things added some ice cream, and then we were all happy! The chocolate chips and pecans only mildly got in the way. The meeples are adorable and really made a fun addition to game night!

The Games

Saltfjord is a fantastic medium weight euro game from the same designers as Santa Maria and The Magnificent. I previously talked about the Magnificent, but haven’t discussed Santa Maria yet, because Saltfjord basically replaced Santa Maria for us. We love the mechanisms, and Saltfjord is a much less problematic theme.

Saltfjord is all about nordic fishing (thrilling, I know, lol), but the cool part is the mechanisms. In it, you are drafting dice that will trigger actions in the rows or columns they correspond to. You can make those rows and columns better and full of more actions by building more buildings in the grid, by getting resources from the other actions, and so on. You can also upgrade your resources, fulfill contracts, and all sorts of other euro-y goodness. There’s something so satisfying about filling your grid with those polyomino pieces while also trying to maximize your dice actions. This is definitely one to check out!

Sagrada was the second kickstarter we backed, 9 years ago! It’s got a beautiful theme of building the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (recently completed!), by using equally beautiful multi-colored dice. This game is very puzzle-y and Sudoku like, so if you enjoy fitting numbers and colors into specific spots, this is the game for you! In it, you are drafting dice to place in your window. The window may have specific requirements in some spots related to color or number, but additionally, you can never put two of the same number or color adject to each other. There are three goals for each game to give points, such as sets of 1s and 2s, or no repeated colors in a column, or something like that. There is also

Codenames is a modern classic party game, and it well loved by us, our friends, and family. We were recently talking about what makes a great party game that sticks around, and came up with a few things that Codenames has. We love that everyone is involved all the time, and the team element adds some extra drama, trash talk, and the urge for ‘one more game’ to tie it up or break a tie. Being the spymaster can be hard, but definitely not impossible.

For those unfamiliar, you essentially have a grid of words, and each team has a spymaster that tells them which words are their color. The spymaster gives one word clues and how many words they think it applies to, then their team discusses and tries not to pick the other team’s words or the game-ending assassin clue. The team to guess all their clues first wins! It’s always a good time.

Speaking of always a good time, Draftosaurus is one of our favorite party games. We first discovered it on Board Game Arena during COVID. Played it a ton there and thought, do we really need to own the hard copy? Yes, yes we do. The dino meeples are so cute! It’s a short fifteen minute filler drafting game where you are putting the dinos into different parts of your dino park. Each pen scores slightly differently, and there are two sides of the board to mix things up. There are also a couple of expansions, but really the game is great on its own and such a satisfying short game.

Want to buy these games? Check out your friendly local game store (FLGS), Amazon [here], or get a first-order discount at Board Game bliss [here].