Kelsey Rhodes writes about board games and books she has actually played and read, plus the occasional dispatch from the rest of her life. No affiliate links, no newsletter popup.https://geekmiscellany.com/en-UShttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/foreigner-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/foreigner-review/C. J. Cherryh's first-contact novel is almost entirely internal monologue and political maneuvering, and somehow that's exactly what makes the atevi feel genuinely alien.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTForeignerKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-ibis-trilogy-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-ibis-trilogy-review/Amitav Ghosh's opium-trade trilogy, Sea of Poppies through Flood of Fire, is dense with real history and languages colliding on one ship. A slow build that pays off.Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Ibis TrilogyKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-ones-who-walk-away-from-omelas-review/Ursula K. Le Guin's few-page utilitarian gut punch. A perfect city, one suffering child in a basement, and a question that doesn't get easier the more times you reread it.Sat, 01 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Ones Who Walk Away from OmelasKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/terraforming-mars-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/terraforming-mars-review/The card-drafting engine builder everyone's played at least once. Rich tech tree, occasionally too solitaire feeling, and one legendary insert complaint I now share personally.Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTTerraforming MarsKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/faraway-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/faraway-review/A twenty minute engine builder about timing when your cards fire, not just what they do. Small box, quick teach, more tactical at two players than the box suggests.Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTFarawayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/i-was-wrong-about-solo-mode/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/i-was-wrong-about-solo-mode/I used to think solo modes were a marketing checkbox. Then Dev had a work trip and Dwellings of Eldervale's solo variant changed my mind entirely.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-secret-of-our-success-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-secret-of-our-success-review/Joseph Henrich's case that culture, not raw brainpower, made humans the weird animal we are. Dry in patches, genuinely mind-changing in the ones that land.Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Secret of Our SuccessKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/why-i-still-buy-the-paperback/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/why-i-still-buy-the-paperback/An unfashionable opinion about ereaders, a paper reading log, and why I'm not interested in being talked out of either.Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/from-bacteria-to-bach-and-back-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/from-bacteria-to-bach-and-back-review/Dennett's attempt to explain consciousness as an evolutionary side effect of culture, built out from bacteria to Bach. Dense in a way I only partly absorbed, and I'm okay with that.Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTFrom Bacteria to Bach and BackKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/teaching-a-twelve-year-old-terraforming-mars/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/teaching-a-twelve-year-old-terraforming-mars/Pri's nephew wanted in on game night. I picked the wrong game to prove a point and paid for it in a three hour meltdown.Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-insert-i-fixed-with-a-bandsaw/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-insert-i-fixed-with-a-bandsaw/Bringing shop tools home to fix a board game box, and what it says that this felt like the most natural thing in the world.Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/clank-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/clank-review/A deckbuilder wearing a dungeon crawl's clothes, or maybe the other way around. The theme sells a genre I'd mostly retired, and the box reuses expansion space smartly.Sun, 26 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTClank!Kelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/tolerance-stacking-and-rules-arguments/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/tolerance-stacking-and-rules-arguments/A shop-floor concept about accumulated small errors turned out to explain exactly what was going wrong in a heated Rising Sun rules dispute.Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/war-and-peace-and-war-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/war-and-peace-and-war-review/Peter Turchin's attempt at an actual science of empire rise and fall, built around a concept he calls asabiya. Ambitious, a little informal, genuinely thought-provoking.Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTWar and Peace and WarKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/dwellings-of-eldervale-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/dwellings-of-eldervale-review/Faction asymmetry, area control, and an engine underneath it all, wrapped in genuinely gorgeous art. Rules reference could be better organized, but the solo mode sold me.Wed, 08 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTDwellings of EldervaleKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-drive-down-from-the-shop/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/the-drive-down-from-the-shop/Twenty two minutes on a mountain road between the cabinetry shop and home, no games, no books, just the one part of my day that belongs to nobody.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/rising-sun-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/rising-sun-review/Visually the best thing on my shelf, and a card engine underneath the area control that ends up mattering more than the armies do.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTRising SunKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/lost-ruins-of-arnak-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/lost-ruins-of-arnak-review/Worker placement meets deckbuilding meets exploration, and the seams between those systems don't show. My default recommendation for a group ready to level up.Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTLost Ruins of ArnakKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/nudge-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/nudge-review/Thaler and Sunstein's case for libertarian paternalism, choice architecture nudging people toward better defaults. Useful vocabulary, thinner than its reputation suggests.Fri, 20 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTNudgeKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/marvel-champions-lcg-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/marvel-champions-lcg-review/A living card game where every hero deck actually feels like that hero. Solo mode is where I've put most of my hours, and the insert is a genuine crime against the box.Fri, 13 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTMarvel Champions: The Card GameKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/gasket-has-opinions-about-game-night/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/gasket-has-opinions-about-game-night/Our dog has a whole ritual around Friday nights, and losing him under the table for a genuinely scary twenty minutes taught me more than I wanted to learn.Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/what-the-fog-does-to-a-friday-game-night/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/what-the-fog-does-to-a-friday-game-night/Asheville gets a specific kind of valley fog most people who don't live here don't believe until they've driven through it. It's changed how I plan Fridays.Tue, 10 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/twilight-imperium-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/twilight-imperium-review/The largest box on anyone's shelf, and a full day committed to it, but the politics at the table end up mattering more than the rulebook does.Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTTwilight Imperium (Fourth Edition)Kelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/a-paradise-built-in-hell-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/a-paradise-built-in-hell-review/Rebecca Solnit argues that disasters bring out cooperation, not chaos, and that the real danger is elite panic. Slow in places, but the San Francisco and Halifax chapters are worth the whole book.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTA Paradise Built in HellKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/im-done-buying-the-deluxe-upgrade-pack/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/im-done-buying-the-deluxe-upgrade-pack/A small, mildly contrarian opinion about metal coins and acrylic meeples, and the one Kickstarter pledge that finally talked me out of it for good.Tue, 20 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/small-gods-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/small-gods-review/Terry Pratchett's standalone Discworld novel about a god trapped in a tortoise, his one true believer, and what belief actually does to the shape of a religion.Fri, 16 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTSmall GodsKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/elder-scrolls-betrayal-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/elder-scrolls-betrayal-review/A dice-building dungeon crawl that actually captures the Elder Scrolls feeling of building an iconoclastic character. Intimidating rulebook, worth pushing through.Wed, 07 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Elder Scrolls: BetrayalKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/red-mars-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/red-mars-review/Kim Stanley Robinson's colonization epic is hard sci-fi in the truest sense, patient to a fault, and one of the few books that made terraforming feel like actual work.Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTRed MarsKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/i-read-the-whole-rulebook-alone-first/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/i-read-the-whole-rulebook-alone-first/A habit that started as embarrassment over a bad first teach has turned into a genuine Sunday afternoon ritual, coffee and a rulebook, cover to cover, alone.Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayKelsey Rhodeshttps://geekmiscellany.com/articles/star-realms-review/https://geekmiscellany.com/articles/star-realms-review/The gateway deckbuilder I hand new players first. Cheap, fast, easy to teach, and missing a bit of hand management depth once you've played it a hundred times.Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTStar RealmsKelsey Rhodes