A collector's log of board game and book reviews, plus notes on the odd stuff around the hobby, from a guy who can't walk past a thrift store game bin without checking it.https://deansoddities.com/en-UShttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/1984/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/1984/The book everyone assigns you in high school and nobody actually gets until they reread it a decade later out of spite.Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/unmatched-cobble-and-fog/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/unmatched-cobble-and-fog/Sherlock Holmes, Jekyll & Hyde, and Dracula in a duel system that owes an obvious debt to an old Star Wars board game I used to own.Fri, 14 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/booster-packs-sunk-cost/https://deansoddities.com/essays/booster-packs-sunk-cost/I did the actual math on what I'd spent chasing rares a while back and it broke the habit faster than any willpower ever managed to.Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/diaspora/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/diaspora/Greg Egan asks what's left of being human once you're software, and he does not slow down to explain the physics.Sat, 25 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/summoner-wars/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/summoner-wars/All the deckbuilding tactics I liked about CCGs, none of the money sink, and a board that plays like chess with monsters on it.Mon, 29 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/saturday-thrift-loop/https://deansoddities.com/essays/saturday-thrift-loop/A specific route through Louisville, four stops, same order every time, that has nothing to do with games or books until suddenly it has everything to do with them.Fri, 26 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/superintelligence/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/superintelligence/Nick Bostrom's case for taking AI risk seriously is genuinely convincing and genuinely exhausting to actually finish.Fri, 19 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/kemet-blood-and-sand/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/kemet-blood-and-sand/Never played the original, so this rework of a big-reputation area control war game had nothing to live up to for me except its own box.Fri, 12 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/estate-sale-almost-got-away/https://deansoddities.com/essays/estate-sale-almost-got-away/A stranger's whole life laid out on folding tables in a driveway off the Bardstown loop, and a box of games I nearly walked past.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/wrong-about-kemet-first-play/https://deansoddities.com/essays/wrong-about-kemet-first-play/First game ended in forty minutes with me tabled and furious. I nearly listed it that same night. Glad I sat on it instead.Wed, 03 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/teaching-coworker-gloomhaven/https://deansoddities.com/essays/teaching-coworker-gloomhaven/The guy who quoted me the Superintelligence line at lunch wanted to see what all the campaign-box fuss was about, so we ran it in thirty-minute chunks in the break room.Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/wife-better-at-gloomhaven/https://deansoddities.com/essays/wife-better-at-gloomhaven/She reads the enemy AI decks better than I do, plans two rounds ahead while I'm still figuring out round one, and I've stopped pretending otherwise.Wed, 20 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/smell-of-a-new-box/https://deansoddities.com/essays/smell-of-a-new-box/Fresh cardboard and new-card ink, the same small ritual every time, examined closely enough to admit it's a little strange.Thu, 14 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/cyclades/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/cyclades/An auction-and-conquest hybrid with gorgeous monster sculpts and a kingmaker problem that shows up right when a game's about to matter.Wed, 13 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/a-wizard-of-earthsea/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/a-wizard-of-earthsea/Le Guin tells this like an old legend, not from inside Ged's head, and it makes a slim book feel a lot bigger than it is.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/candide/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/candide/Voltaire drags a hopelessly naive optimist through every disaster imaginable and somehow the book stays funny the whole way.Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/half-painted-cyclades-minis/https://deansoddities.com/essays/half-painted-cyclades-minis/They've sat on my desk for months now, half-finished, and I finally figured out why that stopped bothering me.Fri, 03 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/why-i-dont-solo-game/https://deansoddities.com/essays/why-i-dont-solo-game/Half my shelf has a solo mode printed right on the box. I have used exactly none of them, and I finally worked out why.Tue, 31 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/essays/warehouse-shelves-lesson/https://deansoddities.com/essays/warehouse-shelves-lesson/My day job is tracking where things live on a shelf, and it turns out that skill does not stay at the job once you own two hundred board games.Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/a-foray-into-the-worlds-of-animals-and-humans/A tiny 1934 biology essay about ticks and jackdaws that somehow ended up quietly influencing half of twentieth century philosophy.Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/a-wrinkle-in-time/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/a-wrinkle-in-time/A middle grade book that somehow doesn't feel like one, even coming to it for the first time as an adult.Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/at-home-in-the-universe/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/at-home-in-the-universe/Stuart Kauffman's case for order emerging for free out of chaos, explained clearly enough that even I followed the biochemistry parts.Thu, 22 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/frosthaven/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/frosthaven/The outpost-building layer turns an already huge dungeon crawler into a small town I apparently now manage.Sat, 27 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/cloudspire/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/cloudspire/Chip Theory Games' tower defense brawler is a beautiful, fiddly, table-hogging thing that took me four tries to actually enjoy.Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/too-many-bones/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/too-many-bones/Gorgeous custom dice, a genuinely funny steampunk setting, and a storage box that fights you every time you pack it up.Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/a-game-of-thrones/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/a-game-of-thrones/The book is denser and slower than the show and I somehow liked it more for exactly that reason.Wed, 12 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/moon-colony-bloodbath/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/moon-colony-bloodbath/A tiny, campy Donald X. Vaccarino card game about watching your own colonists die a little slower than everyone else's.Fri, 31 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/gloomhaven-jaws-of-the-lion/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/gloomhaven-jaws-of-the-lion/The starter box that actually gets played instead of just admired on the shelf, stickers and all.Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/annihilation/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/annihilation/Four unnamed women scientists walk into Area X and the book never tells you the rules, on purpose.Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksDean Hollishttps://deansoddities.com/reviews/gloomhaven-buttons-and-bugs/https://deansoddities.com/reviews/gloomhaven-buttons-and-bugs/A solo-only pocket Gloomhaven with health dials that fight you almost as hard as the monsters do.Mon, 13 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesDean Hollis