Robin Ray

Top down view of a completed two player game of Everdell Farshore, with two sets of face up construction and critter cards, a pile of seashell tokens next to the set on the left, and a player board designed like a bay with cards and resource tokens on it. There are two player ships around the score tracker on the circumference of the board.

A very enjoyable Sunday afternoon game of Everdell Farshore. I thought I was doing well with my hoard of seashells and my ship being so far in the lead, but I carelessly gave away all my best cards, so I lost by 8 points, oops! #boardgames

A grey squirrel on all fours at the other end of a wooden park bench, facing the camera, with grass, trees and a path in the background.

Did the #BigGardenBirdwatch for the RSPB in my local park this morning and was soon joined by this very helpful squirrel friend. We saw 3 Great Tits, 2 Magpies, 2 Blackbirds, 2 Robins (not inc. myself), 2 Blue Tits, 2 Nuthatches, 1 young Goldfinch, 1 Dave / Wood Pigeon and 1 Rat. Very joyful.

Say hello to our neighbourhood kingfisher, such a beauty!

Ooh good to know, thank you!

Top down view of a finished game of Daybreak with main board and two player areas, one representing China and one the USA. The game ended positively at round 3 of 6, having limited the temperature rise on the thermometer to 1.4 degrees.

First playthrough of Daybreak, a Pandemic-like co-op about saving the world from climate disaster. Slow to start, but once we'd got through the first round it was intuitive and really interesting. Think we'll add the Challenge cards next time as we managed to save the world too easily..! #boardgames

Top down photo of a 4-player game of Everdell Farshore about half way through play

Tried out Everdell Farshore at the Manchester Board Games Festival today. We didn't make it to the end in time, but I really liked the changes in mechanics from the original Everdell, and the artwork is as gorgeous as ever. Definitely putting this on my #boardgames wishlist.

A Grey Heron purched on a branch sticking out of a lake. It's side on, facing to the right, mid-yawn.

Sleepy Sunday morning fishing.

#Birds #Wildlife #Nature #BirdPhotography #UKBirds

Front cover of paperback book. Black background with the author name Chuck Tingle in pink and title Bury Your Gays in purple, pink and orange sunset colours, with an image of a sledgehammer running through the text.

This week I read Bury Your Gays and it was exactly the joyful queer horror with unprecedented awesome asexual representation book I needed in my life. Thank you @chucktingle.bsky.social

A top down view of a finished forest from Forest Shuffle, featuring several different tree cards surrounded by various animal and plant cards.

Sunday games 4 of 4: Forest Shuffle, after being reminded by a few other Bluesky posts how good this game is, both really simple (pick up cards or play cards) and a strategic engine-builder. An exciting victory for me today after getting lucky with amphibians and tree ferns #boardgames

A row of seven coloured cards with the days of the week at the top, with various cards on top featuring different illustrated cats worth different points. Above this are a scattering of other, discarded cat cards along with a cat tree card, catnip card and cardboard box card. From the game Cat Days.

Sunday games 3 of 4: Cat Days, another favourite from @farplace.bsky.social where we get aggressively competitive, sniping each other with laser pointers, catnip and 'grumpy cat'. One of the best quick two-player games I've encountered, I don't even mind losing. #boardgames

Six cards with differently coloured litter trays, a poop collection card with twelve poop tokens, a scoop token and first pooer token, and a card featuring Sebastian the cat who helped me win the game by over-pooping in my opponent's trays. From Litter Tray game.

Sunday games 2 of 4: Litter Tray (from the amazing @farplace.bsky.social ). I successfully scooped the most poops, woohoo! (Yes, we were in the mood for cat-themed games today.) #boardgames

Top down view of player board / boat from finished game of Isle of Cats. Tessellating tiles of different coloured cats and jewels fill the boat.

Sunday games 1 of 4: Isle of Cats with Kittens & Beasts expansion. One of my all time faves, although I lost badly today by missing out on rescuing the kittens in every round (too slow!). The expansion 'event' mechanic doesn't add much tbh, but everything else is purrfect #boardgames

Young coot with fluffy black body coated in water droplets and a fluffy yellow head and red face and beak, standing in shallow water surrounded by leaves

Cute baby coot #birds

Grey heron perched on a railing next to a lake with wings low and open. The tail and wing of a magpie flying out of shot is on the left.

Heron doing a wing thing! Plus a bonus magpie flying out of shot. (Apologies for poor photo quality.)

Top down view of a completed player board in the game Wyrmspan, with dragon and cave cards filling all three habitat rows and assorted tokens and eggs on top.

Decided to go all in on hatchlings in today's game of Wyrmspan (dragon Wingspan). It just about paid off (limited egg space!) in a low scoring game for us both. I really like the mechanics of this game, but the downside compared to Wingspan is not learning cool stuff about birds. #boardgames

Top down view of a completed player board for the game Calico - tessellating coloured and patterned hexagons with some cardboard cat and button tiles on top

Day out in Liverpool and my first time playing Calico on my first visit to Sugar & Dice game cafe (lovely cosy place). Cute tile placement game, easy to pick up but seems to have potential for challenge and strategy. And I won, so it must be a good game #boardgames

Top down view of a Parks player board at the end of the game.

Second play of Parks (2nd edition), pleased with my final haul of visited parks and so many photos, still lost though. 'Ranger Teddy' is a good frustration-inducing mechanic for 2 players. A beautiful, Tokaido-like (but much more) game.

Top down view of a finished player board from the boardgame Wingspan, with ten face-up bird cards and 2 eggs.

Last night we mixed up all our Wingspan cards from the base game and expansions and I still ended up with a pretty basic brown board. Lost to Nate (as always). I was short on eggs but went all in on tucked birds. I really love this game though. #boardgames

Grey heron standing on the canal bank looking at the water

Third time this week I've seen my heron friend on my morning run, what an honour #birds

Top down photo of a finished game of Under Grove, including mushroom tiles and tree components connecting them

Sunday afternoon playing Under Grove, from Kickstarter last year. Nice artwork and some science. Gives me Parting of the Sensory by Modest Mouse as an earworm. According to the score pad I have never lost a game of this, which makes me rate it a bit higher than I otherwise would #boardgames

Image description: two volumes of Call of Cthulhu Horror on the Orient Express, with board games Parks, Lovecraft Letter and Litter Tray.

Got exactly what I wanted at #UKGE yesterday. Can definitely recommend playing (and buying!) a game or two at the @farplace.bsky.social stand.

My #BigGardenBirdwatch haul from the park this afternoon. (Dave is a woodpigeon. All woodpigeons are Dave.)