No Booster Packs, No Random Pulls: What You See Before You Buy
Sep 8, 2026 · Note
Card games without booster packs change one thing that sounds small and is not: you know what you are buying before you buy it.
Reid's Notes
Epic Fantasy With Scientific Rigor: A Growing Space Between Genres
Aug 26, 2026 · Note
Some readers want the emotional scale of epic fantasy, gods and civilizations and huge histories, but also want to know where the food comes from and how the ecology actually works.
The Same Five Seconds
Aug 19, 2026 · Note
A rules argument at the table isn't that different from a bay full of patients who all say they're fine. Somebody still has to go first.
Mage Knight Solo, Because That's the Only Way It Fits
Aug 18, 2026 · Game
★★★★☆
A puzzle box disguised as an adventure game, and the only way it fits into a night shift is solo, one card at a time.
Vantage: Reading the Room Before It Ships
Aug 16, 2026 · Game
★★★☆☆
An open-world co-op nobody's actually played yet, mostly preorder buzz and metal coin addons, so this is early impressions, not a verdict.
The Drive Down Route 51
Aug 13, 2026 · Note
Twenty two minutes between the hospital and my apartment, and most nights that's the only twenty two minutes that belong entirely to me.
Race for the Galaxy Needs a Clear Head
Aug 11, 2026 · Game
★★★★☆
Small icons, a real learning curve, and a game that only clicks once you can actually read your own cards without squinting.
The Information
Aug 9, 2026 · Book
★★★★☆
Gleick's history of information theory is not a bedtime book, which I found out the hard way at 3am with a drum-language chapter I had to re-read twice.
Why My Phone Doesn't Get to Read
Aug 5, 2026 · Note
I own a phone capable of holding every book I'll ever read. I still don't read on it, and I've stopped apologizing for why.
The Word for World is Forest, Read Between Two Codes
Aug 2, 2026 · Book
★★★★☆
Short, angry, and built for interrupted reading, though the dream-time stuff took me two passes to actually understand.
How I Pick a Book for a Shift
Jul 29, 2026 · Note
I don't pick books the way most people do. I triage them, sort by what kind of interruption they can survive, and match that against what kind of night it's probably going to be.
The Fifth Season
Jul 25, 2026 · Book
★★★★★
A book that tells you 'you' are the mother whose son is already dead, and makes that grammar the whole engine of the grief.
Echopraxia, or How I Learned to Stop Understanding and Just Keep Reading
Jul 21, 2026 · Book
★★★★☆
Watts writes like he's daring you to keep up, and most nights I couldn't, but the book stayed with me anyway.
Invisible Cities
Jul 18, 2026 · Book
★★★★★
Kublai Khan never leaves his palace and Marco Polo describes fifty-five cities that may all secretly be the same one, and somehow that's the most restful book I've read in years.
Blood Rage
Jul 15, 2026 · Game
★★★★☆
Losing well is half the game here, which is a weird thing to type at four in the morning but it's true. Drafting decides more than the dice ever will.
Fate of the Fellowship, Before It's Even Out
Jul 10, 2026 · Game
★★★★☆
Not a review, not yet, just the announcement chatter for a Pandemic designer's take on Middle Earth, and why I'm already circling it.
The Vending Machine on 3 Doesn't Take Cards, and Other True Facts
Jul 7, 2026 · Note
Nothing medical here. Just the parking garage, a vending machine that only takes exact change, and what the hallway looks like at 4am when nobody's using it.
The Grace of Kings and the General They Wouldn't Give Me Enough Of
Jul 3, 2026 · Book
★★★★☆
Silkpunk epic with airships and a herbalist who talks about dandelions like they're a whole philosophy, plus a general I wanted three times as much of.
The Night Vast Almost Worked
Jun 29, 2026 · Note
Three of us, one cave, one dragon, and a shift that wouldn't stay quiet long enough to finish the game.
Spoilers Aren't the Crime You Think They Are
Jun 25, 2026 · Note
I'll take a spoiled ending over a slow reveal any night of the week. My actual pet peeve is people who treat withholding information as the same thing as good writing.
I Was Wrong About 7 Wonders
Jun 21, 2026 · Note
I called it a spreadsheet with cardboard on top the first time I played it. Took about a year of six minute windows to figure out I'd triaged it wrong.
Blood on the Clocktower
Jun 19, 2026 · Game
★★★★★
Werewolf finally fixed, mostly by making dying not the end of your night. Someone still has to carry the grimoire though, and that someone rarely gets thanked.
Android: Netrunner
Jun 17, 2026 · Game
★★★★★
A dead LCG that a community kept breathing for free out of spite and love, and it's still the sharpest two-player bluffing game I own. You have to memorize half a card pool to really play it though.
7 Wonders Fits in the Gaps
Jun 14, 2026 · Game
★★★★☆
A drafting game that finishes before the next call bell, which on a night shift is most of the argument for it.
Vast: The Crystal Caverns
Jun 9, 2026 · Game
★★★☆☆
Five different rulebooks stapled into one box, and the one time it clicked it was worth every page. Getting five people back at the table for a second try is the hard part.
We, Before Orwell Got There
Jun 7, 2026 · Book
★★★★☆
Zamyatin got to the surveillance-state dystopia before Orwell did, and wrote it as a math obsessive's diary falling apart in real time.
Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs
Jun 4, 2026 · Game
★★★★☆
Full Gloomhaven shrunk into something that fits a break room tray table, rules and all, except the rules aren't actually in the box.
Teaching Priya Vast Went About As Badly As It Could
May 31, 2026 · Note
A new grad's first slow overnight, I handed her the Cave in Vast: The Crystal Caverns thinking it'd be the easy seat. It was not the easy seat.
Six Minutes Is a Real Unit of Time
May 27, 2026 · Note
I used to think of six minutes as nothing, a gap between real things. I don't think that anymore, and I can tell you the exact night that changed.
The Windup Girl and the Crank Flashlight Comparison I Can't Shake
May 25, 2026 · Book
★★★★☆
Bangkok after the oil runs out, powered by hand cranked springs, and a fruit called ngaw I still think about more than I should.
Foreigner
May 21, 2026 · Book
★★★★☆
Cherryh drops you into a language you don't speak yet and refuses to explain it, which is either the smartest thing this book does or the reason half the reviews I read gave up by page sixty.
A Foray into the Worlds of Animals and Humans, Read in Waiting Room Chairs
May 18, 2026 · Book
★★★★☆
A short, strange little essay about the tick's whole world being three signals, and I kept thinking about it on the drive home.