Book reviews, board game reviews, and personal essays from Tessa Whitaker, cooked up one long post at a time.https://tessasupperroom.com/en-UShttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/scythe/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/scythe/Asymmetric factions, near-zero randomness, and a table presence that still makes new players stop and stare when the mechs come out of the box.Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTScytheTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/blood-rage/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/blood-rage/A drafting and area-control game dressed up as a Ragnarok bloodbath, where the beautiful minis hide a surprisingly clever system about knowing when to lose on purpose.Sun, 16 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBlood RageTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/twilight-imperium/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/twilight-imperium/A ten-to-twelve-hour galactic epic that leaves you exhausted, occasionally hopeless, and already scheduling the next one before you've finished cleaning up the table.Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTTwilight Imperium (Fourth Edition)Tessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/seti/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/seti/A heavy science-driven exploration game with a genuinely moving solar system at its center, and the moment you discover alien life at the table is worth the whole box price.Sat, 18 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTSETI: Search for Extraterrestrial IntelligenceTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-wedding-that-ran-like-a-badly-balanced-game/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-wedding-that-ran-like-a-badly-balanced-game/A hundred-and-forty-person wedding taught me more about turn order and bottlenecks than any rulebook, mostly because everything about the night went wrong in the same order twice.Wed, 08 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-social-conquest-of-earth/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-social-conquest-of-earth/E.O. Wilson tries to explain how humans became the strange, over-cooperative apes we are, and mostly pulls it off despite an extended detour into the private lives of ants.Tue, 07 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Social Conquest of EarthTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-lord-of-the-rings/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-lord-of-the-rings/Reread the whole trilogy this year for the first time since I was a teenager, and the parts that hit hardest now aren't the parts I remembered.Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Lord of the RingsTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-glass-bead-game/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-glass-bead-game/Hesse's final novel is a slow, strange biography of a man who masters an invented discipline nobody outside the book will ever understand, and it rewards the patience it demands.Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Glass Bead GameTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-body-in-pain/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-body-in-pain/Elaine Scarry argues that physical pain resists language almost completely, then spends four hundred dense pages on torture, war, and scripture proving her own point by how hard the book is to summarize.Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Body in PainTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/phi/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/phi/Tononi sends Galileo on a guided tour of consciousness with Crick, Turing, and Darwin as chaperones, and the result is gorgeous in places and a slog in others.Tue, 09 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTPhiTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/teaching-marcus-blood-rage-and-losing-him-for-a-month/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/teaching-marcus-blood-rage-and-losing-him-for-a-month/My longest-running Friday regular sat out a full month after I taught him a game where losing on purpose is sometimes the smart move, and it wasn't really about the rules.Thu, 21 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/forty-minutes-before-i-turn-the-light-off/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/forty-minutes-before-i-turn-the-light-off/A small, unglamorous nightly habit of reading for exactly about forty minutes before bed instead of just collapsing into whatever's on a screen, and why I've protected it so stubbornly for years.Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-insert-i-rebuilt-four-times-this-year/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-insert-i-rebuilt-four-times-this-year/A small, slightly absurd ritual of repacking one specific game box over and over until it finally holds everything the way I need it to, and why I keep doing it instead of just buying an aftermarket organizer.Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/i-will-not-be-doing-a-solo-mode-and-heres-why/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/i-will-not-be-doing-a-solo-mode-and-heres-why/A mildly contrarian case against solo board gaming, written by someone who cooks for other people for a living and has clearly never fully clocked off from that instinct.Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/what-plating-taught-me-about-rulebook-design/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/what-plating-taught-me-about-rulebook-design/The same instinct that tells me a plate has too many components on it is the one that flares up now every time a rulebook tries to explain six systems before I've understood the first one.Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-windup-girl/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-windup-girl/Bacigalupi builds a Bangkok running on calorie companies and gene-hacked plagues after the oil ran out, and it's slow to open and hard to shake once it does.Fri, 01 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTThe Windup GirlTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-tailgate-market-on-wednesdays/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-tailgate-market-on-wednesdays/A small weekly farmers market I've been going to for years now, mostly for one particular tomato grower, and what it's taught me about actually planning a week instead of just surviving it.Thu, 09 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/solaris/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/solaris/Lem sends a psychologist to a space station orbiting a sentient ocean, and the ocean answers back by rebuilding the people you've lost, whether you want that or not.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTSolarisTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/dana-joined-the-table-and-ruined-my-seating-chart/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/dana-joined-the-table-and-ruined-my-seating-chart/My longtime kitchen assistant started showing up on Fridays too, which sounds like a small thing until you realize how carefully a five-person table's chemistry gets balanced without anyone noticing.Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/unmatched/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/unmatched/One box turns into eight before you notice, and I'm not even mad about it, mostly because every set teaches new guests in about ten minutes flat.Sat, 04 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTUnmatchedTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/forbidden-stars/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/forbidden-stars/Hidden order tokens and a genuinely tactical dice-free combat system make this the area control game I reach for when I want the Twilight Imperium feeling in under half the time.Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTForbidden StarsTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/behave/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/behave/Sapolsky explains a single human action across every timescale from one second before it to a million years before it, and the resulting eight hundred pages are dense, funny, and genuinely rearranged how I think about people.Sun, 15 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBehaveTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/this-war-of-mine/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/this-war-of-mine/A survival game about civilians in a siege, where winning barely feels like winning, and the blank character tokens you're supposed to write on are the whole game in miniature.Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTThis War of Mine: The Board GameTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-used-bookstore-on-haywood-i-cant-stay-out-of/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/the-used-bookstore-on-haywood-i-cant-stay-out-of/A cramped used bookstore near downtown that I go into for one specific thing and leave an hour later with three unrelated things, every single time, no exceptions.Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/harmonies/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/harmonies/A quiet habitat-building game where stacking little colored domes into a landscape somehow becomes genuinely tense, and the artwork alone is worth the shelf space.Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTHarmoniesTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/2312/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/2312/Kim Stanley Robinson takes you on a tour of a terraformed solar system three hundred years out, and the tour is the whole point, plot or no plot.Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT2312Tessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/dune-imperium-uprising/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/dune-imperium-uprising/A standalone follow-up to Dune Imperium that adds spies and sandworms, and mostly improves on the original except for one mechanic that's swallowed the whole endgame.Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTDune: Imperium – UprisingTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/i-was-wrong-about-2312-sort-of/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/i-was-wrong-about-2312-sort-of/A book I nearly gave up on the first time through turned out to be one I think about constantly a year later, which has made me distrust my own first read of anything a little more than I used to.Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpersonal_essayTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/andromedas-edge/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/andromedas-edge/A faction-heavy area control game with enough variability that I genuinely can't tell you a dominant strategy yet, and I've played it more than I've played almost anything else this year.Fri, 26 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTAndromeda's EdgeTessa Whitakerhttps://tessasupperroom.com/articles/other-minds/https://tessasupperroom.com/articles/other-minds/Peter Godfrey-Smith goes diving with octopuses to think about the deep origins of consciousness, and mostly succeeds at making you love cephalopods more than you love other people this week.Fri, 19 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTOther MindsTessa Whitaker