Dice Tower is running their 12 Games of Christmas 2023 series too. 9 videos so far with 12 games each for various categories.

Here are some of mine:

• The Nova Luna rules seemed so intuitive that I kinda skipped the whole section on how to properly complete tasks. We ended up playing by considering the 8 neighbors including diagonals and no chaining. It kinda worked so we played several games this way before I noticed. The actual rules are a lot cooler of course.
• In the 2p Teotihuacan variant I missed the rule that you are supposed to move the dummy dice after each eclipse.
• In Cubitos for some reason I assumed that the first player die couldn't be re-rolled
• In Evergreen I thought that the first player gets to choose which of the remaining cards they put the leaf token on. This one kinda works too.
• In Tiletum I interpreted the map spot bonus with the "3 heads" as getting 3 Character Actions. The actual rule is a lot cooler since you trigger all Characters in one of the houses.
• In our first couple plays of Orichalcum we refilled the Action Board after each pick. The correct way is to refill only at the end of the round which makes the draft a lot more interesting.

Worth clicking through for his discussion of the picks though, especially if you are not familiar with all the games. The podcast version is a good listen too.

My picks: On the lighter side Phil Walker-Harding. The game might be end up being light but it will be very likely enjoyable. On the mid-weight side it's probably Simone Luciani or Daniele Tascini or possibly someone else from the Italian-style euro designer group (T-series, Grand Austria Hotel etc). I've liked pretty much everything I've tried from them so far.

Wingspan is still worth checking out especially since it's so easy to try on BGA. There is a reason it's so popular, it works well for many people. Everdell is another very popular one with great production. Kinda falls into the same camp in that it often shows up on these "popular games that didn't work for me" lists but it's quite good for what it is.

On the smaller side Wild Space can be a good entry point. Small box, inexpensive, very easy to play, fun combos.

Or if you want to jump straight into the deep water and go for the best that's Lorenzo Il Magnifico for me. Deus is another one I like a lot but that has a map component too.

I don't think that anything currently in alpha will show up since those are often not quite ready yet. But the beta list has a bunch of really nice games that I imagine might pop up: Evergreen, Canvas, Micro Dojo, Hanamikoji and Schnapsen are some of my favorites. Ginkgopolis is supposed to be very good too but I haven't played it yet.

edit, looks like I got Evergreen right!

Since you are on vacation and might not be able to find some of the other suggestions I will mention Liar's Dice, also known as Perudo. If you can't find an official copy all you need is 5 dice per player (so 30 dice for 6 for example) and some cups or other way to hide the dice rolls.

My copy is still in the mail but based on the gameplay videos I've watched I am very much looking forward to playing it.

Thanks for this, didn't know about the site. The Review Database page gives a more compact text table listing of all the reviews.

We've been playing some more Taverns of Tiefenthal. The game has that nice sense of escalation that I like: in the first round it feels like you've barely done anything, maybe you managed to get one or two cheap cards at best. But even these early moves turn out to be impactful and as you approach the end of the game in the final rounds you will be stuffing a bunch of good cards and multiple Nobles (the major scoring cards) on the top of your deck. When I count my points at the end I am always surprised about how much I was able to do.

Great game if you like a unique deckbuilder.

We have also played a few games of Wild Space, also known (to us) as Space Chimp. It's a relatively simple but very pleasant small-box engine builder with fun combo-chaining.

Online I've been playing Challengers, Space Base, Sea Salt & Paper and Next Station: London.

The winner of the “advanced” category is lighter than ticket to ride.

Challengers may have simple rules but it has plenty of strategic depth. That seems to be the sweet spot for Kennerspiel.

I've been playing Challengers a ton on BGA. There is a lot more to it than it may seem at first and it's a very fun game.

Yesterday I was mentioning Azul as an example of a game that's very easy to teach and a lot of fun when played casually but at the same has great depth at high level play. I think Challengers falls into this space too. The award is well deserved IMO.

The Decision Space podcast has just covered the game if you'd like some more in-depth discussion. They rated it very high too.

Edit: I totally missed that Sea Salt & Paper got a recommendation too! It's one of my absolute favorite small deck games, very addictive! And I'd highly recommend Next Station: London too if you enjoy flip & writes. It has quickly become one of our comfort games.