I'm a 26-year-old male (he/him) looking for a roommate to share a new lease for a fantastic 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom (+ a den!) apartment located just 1 minute away from Jackson Square Station, 1 minute from the SW corridor (a blue bike station as well!) and a 15 minute walk to Jamaica pond!
Lease will begin on November 1st, 2023. Monthly rent - $3450. 12 month lease. Division will likely be 50-50
About Me: Background: Indian. Moved to Boston in November 2022. (yet to watch a Bruins game!) Languages Spoken: English, Hindi, Gujarati, Russian (long story!) Interests: Biking 🚴‍♂️, Chess ♟️, Football (Soccer) ⚽, Hiking, cooking, docuseries, learning about other cultures and exploring museums! Habits: I do not smoke tobacco/marijuana (more about me below).
About the Apartment: Location: Just a stone's throw away from Jackson Square Station - a commuter's dream truly. I work in Chinatown and the commute was ~13 minutes. Around 15 minutes to downtown crossing. Layout: 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms; Layout below; ~1100 sq ft. In unit W/D. Move-in Date: November 1st, 2023 Rent 3450 monthly with a 12 month lease. Amenities: The usual; fitness center, bike storage room, concierge.
What I'm Looking For: I'm hoping to find roommates who are responsible, considerate, and share a similar lifestyle. As the rental building requiring income proof, a working professional is a requirement. Ideally, would love to meet up in person to discuss this further.
If you think we'd be a good match or have any questions about the apartment or me, feel free to shoot me a message.

So I'm working on my Boardwalk remake and instead of the blue canvas modern art thing by one of the spawn locations I built a Greek style Spartan statue. I bring it up is because it's kinda "naked" there aren't any reproductive organs on display obviously, just the layout of muscle. The reason I am asking is because I know a forger was banned for having weed/ Marijuana memorabilia in one of his maps. I'm not trying to get banned for essentially art and the fact that a statue has butt cheeks. Lol, what do y'all think?

https://preview.redd.it/qvc7fwduo36b1.jpg?width=1536&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7d9e490b4f6e030a72d4e27c04e5c3ad93aa3971
Note: This post also exists in podcast form, if you prefer to listen.

Big Top

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2 Plays (3 & 4 Players)
Taiki Shinzawa is a Japanese game designer who puts out very interesting stuff. Frequently, he takes a simple concept like trick taking or ladder climbing and gives it a novel twist. He’s done this with games like Ghosts of Christmas, 9 Lives, and Maskmen; and now he’s applied a similar formula to the auction genre with Allplay’s new release, Big Top.
Big Top is all about using your precious coins to bid on and gain attraction cards. These attractions will earn you points and put you in contention for the victory, but not straight away. After you win an auction for a card, it is then placed in front of you — providing you with a new objective of covering all the spaces with your coins. Once you cover all the spaces, then you can reclaim your coins and set the card aside into your score pile. But the only way you can cover a space is by bidding that exact amount in a future auction. It should be noted here that you don’t have to win that future auction, you merely have to make that exact bid.
It is a rather simple and standard auction game where the economy is closed, bidding goes around the table until everybody but one person passes, and players take turns auctioning off a card from their hand and receiving the winning bid (unless they buy the card themself). But the attraction cards and their incentivized bid amounts do all the heavy lifting to make this a refreshing filler game.
Do you bid 9 bucks just to cover up that last space on your attraction? And what if the card that is up for auction is one you don’t even care about? What if everybody else passes and sticks you with the bill? Money can be hard to come by when you only earn during your auctioneer turns, and doubly so if you want to buy the cards in your hand.
More clever moments can be found in the other subtle rules at play:

• When a player makes a specific bid that matches a space on the card that is up for auction, then a coin from the bank immediately covers that space, thus making the card easier to complete and more valuable to the players.
• You have the flexibility to spend the coins that are currently tied up in your in-progress attractions (if you desperately want to win an auction), but you’ll make it that much harder on yourself to complete those cards if you keep wiping them clean
• Many cards offer more than just points — some have end-game point goals, others have one-time bonuses like covering spaces on your other cards, and some come with ever-important stars. A player needs at least 1 star in order to qualify for victory, and stars can be surprisingly tricky to earn when everybody is competing for bonus points for having the most stars.

As the draw pile diminishes, the pressure piles on for players to finish their attractions. Among the bottom 5 cards of this attraction deck, an immediate game-ending card is buried. If you’re not careful, it’ll catch you long before you’re ready.
For my tastes, Shinzawa and Allplay have conjured another small-box spectacle in Big Top.
Prognosis: Good
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Hallertau

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1 Play (4 Players)
Playing an Uwe Rosenberg game is like wrapping oneself in a warm, soft blanket — it’s familiar and cozy.
Following in the legendary footsteps of Agricola, A Feast for Odin, Le Havre, and more, Hallertau is a medium-heavy Euro game ripe with worker placement, farming, and resource management. Here, players are in nineteenth century, hop-producing Germany competing to increase the wealth and prestige of their humble village, Hallertau.
The main focus of the game is in growing crops and improving your workshops. As you plant and harvest crops, your fields will drop down in their potency making them less productive in future rounds. Yet you can fallow fields (leave them alone for a round) to help them become more fertile; or you can simply lunge for fertilizers actions own the worker placement board.
As you slide your workshops up their tracks, spending your hard-earned resources to do so, a large cottage tile will follow that increases the number of workers you can use in a round. Eventually, these upgraded workshops will get you into point-scoring territory where the bulk of your points will likely come from. But for those who really wish to race up these tracks, you’ll be forced to deal with boulders which require tools to push them out of the way.
But of course, Uwe couldn’t resist the opportunity to cram the game with loads of cards and potential card combos. For being a wide, open game with many possibilities to pursue, the cards offer strong incentives to chase specific strategies.
The bulk of your interaction comes from the worker placement board, where many actions abound yet grow in cost as more players go there. The first person to use the action spends 1 worker. The next person spends two. The next person spends three. You’ll constantly find yourself adapting to the changing board state as you try to get the most out of your workers. It’s a great feature that keeps you on your toes while you try to execute on long-term goals and strategies.
By weaving together this system of crop rotation, workshop sliding, card comboing, and worker placement, Uwe proves once more why he is a master of this genre.
As much as I thoroughly enjoyed Hallertau, far mare than most Eurogames, it still merely scratches the same itch as Uwe’s other classics. I only ever need a blanket when I’m cold, and it’s hard to justify collecting an entire closet of blankets when I always reach for my favorite of the bunch. But I’ll happily embrace this blanket any time the opportunity lands in my lap.
Prognosis: Good
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My City: Roll & Build

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12 Plays (2 Players)
Review copy provided by the Publisher
Alright, this one is going to be less of a first impression and more of a full review. That’s because I didn’t just dip my toes in My City: Roll & Build. I played through all of it — every single episode and chapter of this legacy-esque roll & write. And I did it all in less than 2 weeks. Yes, that is a very good sign for a game.
Those who have been following my blog for a few years, or who simply went back and read through the old ones, know that I’m a huge champion of the original My City board game. I said it then and I’ll say it again: My City is the best polyomino and best legacy game ever made. Its the best polyomino game because of how it prods you to plan out your city with a preset supply of uniquely shaped tiles, and then it torments you each and every turn by forcing you to place these tiles in an inconvenient order dictated by the bingo-style deck of cards. In no other polyomino game have I found the tile arrangement decisions to be more deliciously agonizing. On top of that, each episode riffs on the concept with brilliant little tweaks to the rules or objectives that result in dramatically different incentives and strategies — keeping this low-interaction experience fresh and exciting.
My City is the best legacy game not because it has an immersive branching story or dramatic plot twists, rather it simply gets out of its own way and lets the act of play be the star of the show. No other legacy game that I’ve encountered has been as smooth, approachable, and agile as My City. One of the great weaknesses of this genre is the fact that many legacy games get bogged down under layers of added rules and fiddliness — the core experience starts to feel less like fun and more like work over time. My City never loses its addictive, quick-to-jump-into quality. It never feels like a chore to revisit or a long-term commitment standing in the way of other gaming opportunities. In fact, it was one of the easiest games for this tired parent to get to the table after the kids are in bed.
Needless to say, I was ready to embrace more of that My City goodness when Roll & Build arrived on our doorstep. What new concepts and challenges has the good doctor cooked up in this polyomino universe? The three-year wait for a spin-off or sequel has all led to this… well, this and My Island (a full-fledged sequel coming later this year). But I was certainly eager to see what 12 more episodes with a dice-chucking, pad writing twist would provide.
If I had shared my early impressions of My City: Roll & Build after the first episode, or heck, even the first chapter (episodes 1 through 3), then it would have been a reaction of mild amusement mixed with mild disappointment. Where Reiner set out to make an approachable legacy game in My City, it seems that he intended for My City: Roll & Build to be the training wheels for its big sibling. At least that is how the initial episodes play out.
Episode 1 features a map that is nearly identical to the one you find find in the larger board game, only with even more of the strategy stripped out. In the starting episode, all you are trying to do is cover all the rocks and empty spaces. Connections or adjacency between different types of building doesn’t matter at all. This proves to be a much less interesting version of My City, but it’s over in the blink of an eye and the dice rolling brings its own bit of novelty, so I can’t fault the game for offering a quick tutorial episode. Granted, this is exactly how Episode 1 of My City is played, but Roll & Build makes it feel even more trivial by removing the preset tile shapes and substituting them with randomized dice rolls where probability replaces planning. It also doesn’t help that we are coming in as My City veterans who are then forced back into the tutorial.
Episode 2 immediately feels like a huge improvement simply by making building adjacency matter (scoring points for your largest group of each building type), yet it brings another worry that continues on… all of Chapter 1’s objectives and episodic additions are the exact same between My City and My City: Roll & Build. The same is true for Chapter 2. It is only in the second half of the campaign, especially the 4th chapter, where things really start to diverge from the board game.
So the fun of My City: Roll & Build is initially overshadowed by the feeling of Reiner playing it perhaps too safe, particularly for anyone who already played My City. Admittedly, that’s not as bad as it sounds thanks to several factors:

• It’s been roughly 3 years since we played through the original My City. That’s more than enough time for us to forget the progression of the campaign and enjoy it anew in Roll & Build.
• While the general map layout is the same between both games, there’s something to be said for “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Anybody who has played enough My City would likely agree that the map is perfect… Perfect in how the intentional arrangement of trees, rocks, and obstacles make no two areas of the map feel alike.
• Although the campaign progresses through the same beats in the early episodes, the feel of the game is different enough thanks to the dice rolling and pad drawing. The dice, although far from the most premium dice on my shelf, are surprisingly fun to roll — two of the dice link up to form one single polyomino shape, the other die shows one of three building types. Drawing these building shapes and types onto your map brings its own inherent pleasure — where you get all the satisfaction of drawing out a city with none of the shame of being a poor artist.
• As you play through the early episodes, you gain a feel for the probabilities of each building shape that can possibly be rolled. As you catch on to this trend and cadence, you’ll improve your city planning in later episodes yet still be surprised and delighted (or frustrated) by unlikely dice results, which in turn fosters an emotional investment from the players.
• Where each episode requires an entirely new sheet, this allows Reiner to play with the features on the map — adding rocks here, removing trees there, re-routing rivers, and so on. So although you are not adding permanent changes to your map like in My City, the shifting landscape still keeps you on your toes from one episode to the next as the overall legacy rules and objectives evolve.
• Rather than losing one point for not constructing a building, you fill in a bubble on a negative point track which quickly scales up — jumping by one then two then three point intervals. Skipping your first or second building isn’t nearly as painful as skipping your fourth or sixth. Once you skip six buildings, you’ll max out at a negative 10 point penalty and be unable to skip any more buildings (after that you’ll either have to build it or quit for the episode).
• The late-stage feeling of push-your-luck is heightened because no particular building shape or type is ever depleted. There’s always a chance that the next roll is exactly what you need… So do you keep pushing for perfection, or do you give up and move on?

So although My City: Roll & Build seemingly starts off on too-familiar ground for those who want something entirely new, the only episode that I didn’t thoroughly enjoy was the first one due to its tutorial-like feel. Beyond that, the solid foundation combined with all of the subtle twists to the formula added up to a delightful roll and write campaign. For $20 or less, you absolutely get your money’s worth here. Anybody that is a fan of the original My City will find much to appreciate in this box, especially if it’s been long enough for you to rediscover its clever core.
Those who weren’t able to try My City for various reasons, this spinoff certainly lowers the barrier to entry. The game is cheaper, the box is smaller, the player count ranges from 1-6 (rather than 2-4), the episode rules are even easier to keep track of because it is all right there on your sheet, and the competitive legacy elements are less in-your-face for those players who value the major campaign competition above the minor episode victories.
As a gamer who is generally tired of this crowded genre, any roll and write that gets me to play it a dozen times in under 2 weeks is an absolute triumph. The alluring campaign variety and clever city building challenge kept us hooked on the experience all the way to the epic, high-stakes climax. While those who want something wildly different from My City will have to wait until My Island hits shelves later this year, My City: Roll & Build still lives up to its predecessor’s high standard by becoming my favorite game in this roll and write genre.
Prognosis: Excellent
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Yokohama

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2 Plays (3 and 4 Players)
I’ve now tried Yokohama twice — once in 2020 and another time more recently. Yet on both occasions, I failed to write about the game before the details quickly faded. It has now been nearly a month since my last play of the game, and I can’t recall any of the specific tile names or resource types without cheating and looking up images online. But what I can recall is a very similar experience between my first and second play.
In both cases, I started out feeling dread. Dread at the massive splay of tiles and icons that reached far and wide, and the obviously many rules that I needed to learn (and later relearn). But as the teach transitioned into the play, my dread quickly melted away as I discovered a satisfying challenge to dig into.
Yokohama has a bit of that Istanbul Eurogame vibe in that you are moving your main pawn across various unique tiles and deciding which ones to land on and activate. Furthermore, you are leaving a trail of smaller pieces to follow or pick up along the way.
With Yokohama, you are only allowed to move along the tiles that contain your cubes, and you can only put out two or three cubes each turn (onto the same tile or different tiles, respectively). The catch is that you want the tile you stop on to have as many of your cubes as possible, as this will make that triggered action all the stronger. Yet this is further complicated by the fact that opponent pawns are getting in your way, and dropping a cube on or passing through their current location will require you to pay them money as a sort of apology for stepping on their toes.
Everything else here is fairly standard Eurogame stuff. Collect a bunch of different types of resources, and use them in various ways to score points while wisely managing your money. The fact that these elements are all a bit fuzzy a few weeks after my play only serves to highlight their generic application. But in the case of Yokohama, the core mechanism of plopping down cubes and planning your route is all that the game needs to stand out and feel worthwhile. It’s refreshing, interactive, tight, and rewarding. While I don’t necessarily feel the urge to add Yokohama to my collection, it’s one of the few Eurogames not in my collection that I’ll happily play any time somebody suggests it. Hopefully I’ll remember enough to skip the 30-minute teach next time.
Prognosis: Good
Image provided by BGG user Wizzy Parker

Earth

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1 Play (3 Players)
Earth. In the hustle and bustle of everyday life, oftentimes it helps to unplug and get away from it all. Slowdown, disconnect from the world, and reconnect with Mother Nature. No other word sounds as natural, refreshing, or rejuvenating as the word Earth. Ironic, then, that the game Earth evokes the opposite feelings.
Much like our modern, screen-infested, notification-intrusive society, Earth is a game that sees you endlessly doom scrolling through an ever-growing tableau of pinging icons and bonuses. Every time a colored prize pops, a drop of dopamine hits the brain with a splash, and in Earth there’s enough drips to form a brainstorm.
The reason for this is all thanks to the core premise of the design — select one of four possible actions on your turn, and trigger the effect for yourself and everyone else at the table. Although you indeed get a stronger benefit from the main action when it’s technically your turn, there’s never really a moment where it isn’t your turn. In addition to triggering the action’s core effect for everyone, the chosen color will also trigger all of the card actions in everyone’s tableaus that match that color.
So while there is a formal action token that gets passed around for the clockwise player to choose which color pops next, the actual experience of playing Earth is more akin to a fleet of caffeinated droids in a tableau assembly line. The light flashes green or blue or orange or yellow, and off you all go — heads tilting, necks swiveling, lenses scanning, brains computing, and arms waving. Some cubes here for points — bleep — some face-up cards there for points — bloop — some tokens here for points — blorp — some face-down cards there for points — blop.
There’s no time to stop and smell the roses under this relentless firehose of activations and triggers. What was I actually planting into my island tableau? I couldn’t tell you. Some mushrooms and trees, I think. What was I feeling while playing the game? I couldn’t tell you. There’s no space for emotions in a game that is packed to the gills with calculations and dopamine rushes. Was I enjoying myself? I believe so. There honestly wasn’t any chance to consider it during play, but in hindsight I recall the feeling of pride that a robot has over its meticulously-arranged work station.
And if robots can feel pride, then surely they can also feel irritation. Particularly, irritation at being interrupted from their all-important work. This happened every time I remembered that the fauna board existed. This public objective board consists of in-game and end-game goals — text-heavy cards with obnoxiously specific yet easily forgettable requirements. Things like: have 6 or more cards with 3 or less sprout spaces, or have 7 or more cards with 2 or less growth potential, and so on. I’m not sure which was more grating… reading the entire card multiple times to understand and remember its objective (only to forget it seconds later), or slamming the brakes on the game’s break-neck pace to tally my cards that meet the criteria. The competitive interaction that this fauna board brings is so imperceptible that I honestly believe the game would have been better off canning this board entirely. Don’t get me wrong, the points to gain on this board are significant, but it merely serves as a fiddly speed bump to the game’s tempo.
And what a tempo it is. While Earth obviously borrows liberally from genre titans like Terraforming Mars, Ark Nova, and particularly Wingspan, it manages to best them all in terms of game length and downtime. The bonuses per second (BPS) is at an all-time high here. If deck-digging, engine-building, bonus-popping point salads are the marijuana of modern board games, then Earth is straight up cocaine.
After all, the points are to be found in every nook and cranny of the design. Points for your sprout cubes, points for your trunk towers, points for your planted cards, points for your composted (tucked) cards, points from your private terrain objectives, points from your public fauna objectives… the totals add up into the hundreds once you start tallying everything. Yet even after raking in all those scrumptious points, part of me is still left wondering what was the point? As a hobbyist who gravitates to a more methodical, old-school, shared board style of gaming, I’m having a hard time finding the point needle in this haystack of 200 points that I managed to score.
Perhaps I’m looking for something that isn’t even there. I’m fruitlessly trying to slow down and soak in the scenery of gaming with friends, when Earth simply wants to flood my senses with as many spinning cogs as possible.
It seems that if one wishes to embrace Earth, they must unleash their inner, mechanized cyber-self.
Prognosis: Fair
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Inside Job

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4 Plays (4 & 5 Players)
Review copy provided by the Publisher
After taking the world by storm with cooperative trick-takers The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine and The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, publisher Kosmos is aiming to reach the same crowd with the newly released Inside Job. Although this game is not from the same designer, it does share much in common. Specifically, you are cooperating together to complete missions within the restrictions of a trick-taking game. But Inside Job takes things in a different direction by throwing a hidden traitor into the mix.
In addition to dealing out a fairly standard deck of cards (4 suits, values ranging from 1-13), you’ll also deal out hidden identity cards. One player will become the traitorous Insider, while everyone else is on team Agents. The agents are trying to cooperate and complete enough missions to collectively win the game, while the Insider is trying to win enough intel tokens to claim an immediate solo victory. If neither of those things happen after a set amount of tricks, then players will cast their votes and try to catch the insider with majority votes.
Inside Job walks an impressively fine balance between all of these hidden roles and competing objectives with the help of trick-taking. Every player starts out with one intel token, and they earn another one each time they win a trick. You can even prove your innocence as an agent by earning enough intel tokens to reach the Insider victory threshold and then revealing your innocent identity. But that is quite hard to accomplish. More often, you’ll have to prove your innocence by the way in which you contribute to each mission’s success. Sabotage one too many missions, and you may start hearing traitorous accusations thrown your way.
Whoever wins a trick not only collects an intel token, but they also start the next trick by drawing two mission cards from the pile and selecting one to be that trick’s mission. The card will display two things: a trump suit and a mission objective. These objectives are things like: “The last card must win the trick” or “The first card must be the lowest number played” or “The first and third cards must be the same suit” or “All cards played must be odd numbers” and so on. Some are easier than others, especially when you all have a full hand of cards.
As classic trick taking goes, you must follow the lead suit if possible. If you don’t have the lead suit, then you can play any card including the trump suit. But the two little wrinkles that really elevate Inside Job are the following:

• The Insider doesn’t have to follow suit, ever. Of course, if they aren’t careful about it then the Agents will catch them in their lies when they break from suit and then play that color later.
• Players can wager an intel token on top of their card (when played) to make it trump suit. This can be a way to bend the rules and succeed in winning a trick or completing a mission, but it’s also risky. It’s possible that multiple cards of the same value are played as trump suit (when intel tokens are wagered) and the last card played breaks the tie and wins the trick. Even worse, the player who wins the trick takes all the intel tokens that were wagered plus a victory token from the supply. If that person just so happens to be the insider, then you’ve just handed them an easy victory.

Despite the thousands of offerings in this genre, designer Tanner Simmons successfully proves, like many others before him, that trick-taking has yet more to offer. The trick taking manages to be a perfect fit for hidden roles and social deduction thanks to the ability to claim innocence in a sabotaged mission due to the restrictions of your hidden hand of cards. Where many trick-taking games will see your teammates cursing you for not performing up to their high standards, Inside Job transforms that experience from shame to game by replacing disappointment with suspicion. Inside Job makes the most of its combination of mechanisms, and it takes things even further with optional advanced modules, identities, and missions. I’m excited to see where those lead.
Prognosis: Good
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Pollen

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3 Plays (2, 3, & 4 Players)
If the world needs more of anything, it’s almost certainly Pollen. I’m not referring to the kind of pollen that induces widespread misery via seasonal allergies, rather I am speaking of clean and cutthroat games like Reiner Knizia’s Pollen. Where the wave of new releases in our hobby seems to be drifting toward more mechanical fluff and less meaningful player interaction, Pollen cuts against the blowing current with a card game that is surprisingly sharp.
The beautiful illustrations by Beth Sobel and stunning production by Allplay work wonders to welcome newcomers in while hiding the true essence of this competition. Although it may look the part, this isn’t your stereotypical nature game of gentle drafting or cozy tile arrangement. Rather, Pollen is an area majority cage match that embraces the predatory circle of life.
Turns are as simple a playing a single card from your hand and then drawing back up to 5 from your personal draw pile. Each player has the same deck of cards, but how, where, and when you use them makes all the difference. The objective is to surround pollinator tokens with matching cards in order to win that majority competition. You’re competing to earn bees, beetles, and butterflies, and whoever surrounds that insect with the most matching symbols will claim the bug meeple.
But earning a bee here and a butterfly there doesn’t earn you points on its own. The overarching competition is in holding the majority of each bug type. If you don’t have a majority of bees or beetles or butterflies at the end of the game, then you are simply eliminated from victory. And if you have the majority of 2 or 3 bug types, then you straight up win. Most often, you’ll have 3 players who tie by each having the majority in a different bug type. This is where the rest of your bug tokens matter, as you’ll see who has the most tokens in their 2 non-winning categories.
So with newcomers, it’s important to make these victory conditions crystal clear before diving into the fun. This double-layered contention of majorities is what makes Pollen sing, and it’s a welcome callback to Knizia’s legendary tile-layer — Samurai. In fact, Samurai is the entire reason that Pollen exists, as this game was previously published as Samurai: The Card Game.
While the gameplay is unchanged, Pollen has a massive advantage over Samurai: The Card Game with a gorgeous production that takes up far less table space. The pollinator tokens and the cards that fit around them are a stroke of genius by publisher Allplay in how they cut the table spread of the game in half. It’s also much faster and easier to bring to the table compared to Samurai while still providing much of the juicy tactics and familiar maneuvers.
The painful decisions are plentiful as you must decide where to give up on pollinator battles, when to jump in on budding competitions, and when to lock down areas before an opponent swipes a bug right out from under your nose. Any player who grows attached to a particular pollinator token (by surrounding it with one or two strong cards) might quickly turn grumpy if another player happens to have the perfect hand to steal their hopes and dreams away.
The standout feature of this flavor of Samurai is found in the unbound spread of cards and tokens. Any time I place my card next to an opponent’s card, where we create an empty half circle between our corners, that space will immediately pull in the pollinator token that is “on deck” from the supply. If the pollinator token has a bee on it, then I’m looking to place my bee card next to an opponent’s non-bee card, giving myself and instant advantage over them as the bee pollinator sidles right up to us. It feels even better to trigger the placement of multiple pollinator tokens in one turn — where you get to draw extra tokens out the bag and decide where each token goes. As always, Knizia finds a way to lace his simple rules with brilliant nuances and delightful discoveries.
Many Kniziaphiles might balk and wonder why they would ever play Pollen over the more strategic Samurai. But I find that this card game benefits from its new makeover by reminding us all that it is meant to be taken less seriously than its board game sibling. Those who approach Pollen looking for a quick and casual yet spicy filler game are likely to come away the most satisfied.
Prognosis: Good
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Prognosis: a forecast of how the game will likely fare in my collection, and perhaps yours as well.
Excellent– Among the best in its genre. This game will never leave my collection.
Good– A very solid game and a keeper on the shelf.
Fair– It’s fine. It’s enjoyable. But I’m not likely to seek it out or keep it around.
Poor– Really doesn’t fit my tastes; not one I want to revisit… but hey, that’s just me.
Hopeless– Never again. Run & hide. Demon be gone.
Article written by Nick of Bitewing Games. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the critically acclaimed Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and upcoming Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.
Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.

BioLargo – OTCQB:BLGO

BLGO represents the majority of my portfolio. My first shares were purchased on March 1, 2021 and I have consistently bought shares throughout the last 27 months.
BioLargo is an environmental engineering company. There are 5 divisions of the company. 2 of them (BLEST and BioLargo Water) focus primarily on water treatment. ONM Environmental focuses on odoVOC control in both the industrial sector and as a wholesale distributor for a consumer pet odor control product. BETI is new in 2023 and is developing sodium-sulfur battery technology. Clyra is a medical subsidiary that develops products based on a copper-iodine chemistry that has safe but incredibly powerful oxidation capabilities for infection control in surgical settings.
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Currently pushed up against the \"ceiling\" of the Oct 2022-Present compression. Still have to shake the 2019-Present compression (top red line). 2008-September 2022 \"Ceiling\" was broken out of. Green floor has been firm and rising since 2021.
2023 Q1 10-Q Filing 2023 Q1 Earnings Call Recording
Market Cap: $55M ($0.19/share)
Total Outstanding Shares: 284M Outstanding Options: 30M options outstanding ($0.12-$0.43 exercise price, $0.19 average price) Outstanding Warrants: 52M warrants ($0.13-$1.00 exercise price, $0.26 average price)
2022 Revenue: $5.88M (132% YoY growth) 2023 Q1 Revenue: $3.74M (78% QoQ growth vs. Q4 ’22) 2023 Q1 Losses: ($494k) Cash on Hand: $3.26M Debt: Roughly $500k
CEO: Dennis Calvert
Losses are decreasing. Growth is primarily from ONM Environmental.
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ONM Environmental generating more cash-flow, bringing company close to profitability despite being the only division with positive cash flow.
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Debt is basically gone.
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SG&A has remained consistent as revenue has grown across recent years.
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Net Stockholder’s Equity has steadily risen. $5M net stockholder equity is required for listing on the Nasdaq.
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ONM Environmental – VOC/Odor Control

ONM Environmental Website - CupriDyne Website
ONM Environmental (“Odor No More) is the original division of the company. The flagship product is CupriDyne Clean which is a copper-iodine complex that oxidizes odor and VOC. It is sold in the industrial sector to landfills, waste transfer stations, US Air Force Bases, wastewater treatment plants, automotive manufacturers, marijuana growing facilities, animal processors etc. Overall, industrial sales of CupriDyne have been underwhelming from my POV, but the underlying technology has found homes elsewhere, making the asset and the division successful for BioLargo.
ONM Environmental has partnered with an advertising firm (Ikigai Holdings) and launched a consumer pet odor control product (POOPH) for household use. Pooph Website/Commercial. One of selling points for CupriDyne/POOPH is its safety. In the commercial, the product is sprayed directly into the host’s mouth to demonstrate its safety. The product uses the same baseline chemistry as CupriDyne Clean.
BioLargo serves as manufacturing and wholesaler for Ikigai who is in control of the marketing and selling of the product. BioLargo receives a 6% royalty on Ikigai’s sales of Pooph and receives revenue from acting as the supplier for Pooph. Overall, BioLargo receives about 25% of Pooph’s total sales.
POOPH is being sold direct-to-consumer, on Amazon, on Chewy.com (largest online pet supply), and is stocked in about 60% of Walmart locations. POOPH is consistently in the top-50 for pet products on Amazon.
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From the LinkedIn page of Jordan Stanley, one of Ikigai’s co-founders:

“Over the following 10 years, I earned the reputation of an undisputed leader in Direct Response TV, producing such well-known campaigns as Billy Mays’ OxiClean, Procter& Gamble’s Tide, Febreze, and Downy brands. Throughout that time I have continued writing and producing winning commercials through Blue Moon Studios and Concepts for Doggie Steps (Telebrands), Finishing Touch (IdeaVillage), and Snuggies (Allstar). Out of 45,000 commercials in the Procter & Gamble database dating back over 60 years, the commercials I have written, directed and produced have achieved "highest-scoring, best-performing commercials" for Downy, Febreze, Dryel, Ivory Snow laundry products and have the distinction of being the "#1 best-performing 2-minute spot". I have the distinction of having 2 spots in the top 10 as measured by ASI/Ipsos. Using my method, about $3 Billion of revenue has been generated to date.”

Ikigai’s goal is to generate $100M+ in annual sales and then seek a brand sale of 3x-7x of annual sales ($300M-$700M). Ikigai has done this before with products like Finishing Touch/Flawless, which is a beauty-care product line that they sold for $900M. That brand sale was valued at 5x annual sales. Flawless/Finishing Touch Brand Sale
The estimated payout to BioLargo if/when the brand sells is $100M. As of Q1 2023, BioLargo is receiving roughly $1M/month from Pooph sales. That means Ikigai is at roughly $50M in annual sales rate after less than 18 months since first sales of the product. Ikigai has stated their expectations for 20% QoQ growth for POOPH. If that holds true, they will be at a $100M annual run-rate by Q1 2024.
ONM Environmental was the only profitable division in 2022, generating $1.13M in operating income from $4.37M total revenue. This was primarily revenue generated from POOPH, with 86% of total BioLargo 2023 Q1 revenue being POOPH revenue.
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BioLargo Engineering, Science, and Technologies Inc. (BLEST)

BLEST is the most diverse and exciting part of the company to me. The core of the group is a half dozen engineers who were brought on in 2017 after CB&I laid off their entire unit during some turmoil for the company. They were working with BLGO at the time, and Dennis pitched to them that they form BLEST and continue working as the unit that they had been for 20-30 years in their previous role, but with more freedom and flexibility working for an emerging company rather than a giant company like CB&I. They agreed and are based out of Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
BLEST is led by Randall Moore. Randall has a 30+ year career in environmental engineering, leading over 1000 employees at times in his career. He has done 1000s of projects. Randall assisted the US Post Office during the Anthrax Crisis. He helped to design and implement the efforts to pump out New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. He helped during the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He worked on the aftermath of the Fukushima Disaster. He designed and built the largest dioxin remediation facility in the world. Randall has worked professionally on a diverse set of projects at the highest caliber. He and the rest of the BLEST team are essential to the ability to execute stated goals, continue product development, and complete project design work.
BLEST serves 3 roles. They are here to invent new technologies. They are here to support the engineering and design work for other divisions. They are here to complete engineering work for clients.
BLEST Technologies and Projects: Aqueous Electrostatic Concentrator (AEC) for PFAS remediation, Minimal Liquid Discharge (MLD) Systems via Garratt Callahan partnership, engineering and design work for what (if goes to full scale) will be the largest waste-to-energy facility in the world, engineering and design work for Ultra Safe Nuclear Company (USNC) for their fuel production system for micro-modular reactors.
The above technologies will be discussed later. AEC, Waste-to-Energy, and USNC projects have all been engaged by clients, with the initial phases completed and the second phases scoped . Each have a proposal in the client’s hands, awaiting approval. Many technologies or projects seem very close to strong adoption or progression to future stages, but none of them have really gotten fully there. If the technologies gain more consistent traction, BLEST’s headcount will have to grow, as will their revenues.
BLEST incurred a loss of $425k in 2022 on total revenue of $1.94M.
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BioLargo Water

BioLargo Water does research and development of the Advanced Oxidation System (AOS) which is a water disinfection and micropollutant destruction technology. The division is headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta and gets quite a bit of their funding and support via the Canadian government.
AOS has been used in pilot projects for stormwater treatment, brewery wastewater treatment, poultry water treatment, pharmaceutical/micropollutant removal in Montreal’s municipal facility. They have submitted a proposal to the Alberta EPA to validate the technology for use in poultry water treatment in the province, however, not much has been said since that was made public in June 2022.
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AOS provides disinfection of E coli and other microorganisms. AOS also destroys tough contaminants like pharmaceuticals and micropollutants like benzene.
AOS is hard to pin down. Technically, it’s unique and very capable It has been in development for almost a decade and is yet to find a reliably commercial home. For now, it’s just been pilots and peer-reviewed journal articles published in scientific journals. My science brain loves AOS. My finance brain hates it. The company isn't churning through resources to try to commercialize, so it's not killing the company, but the combination of duration of development, unique and high level technical function, and lack of commercial success is a confusing one.
AOS Product Brochure - Quebec Pilot - Sunworks Poultry Pilot
BioLargo Water did not generate revenue in 2022 and incurred $714k in losses in 2022, which was primarily R&D budget.
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BioLargo Energy Technologies Inc. (BETI)

BETI is a new subsidiary in 2023. BioLargo owns 97% of BETI with a small group of investors holding the remaining 3% of shares. The capital was raised at a valuation of $20M for BETI.
Its purpose is to commercialize sodium-sulfur battery technology. One of the original inventors (Mario Caja) of the technology has been brought on to see that through as a member of the BETI team. He has been working on molten salt battery technology for 30 years. Presently, the company is putting the capital that they raised into building small manufacturing capabilities in their Oak Ridge, Tennessee facility.
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May 9, 2023 Interview Transcript
Regarding lithium and sodium ion batteries, Dennis Calvert – CEO:

“Those are exotics, lithium, cobalt, nickel, those are rare earth elements that are really mined in offshore. So foreign supply's a big problem. That's one issue. The other is, of course, they're rare, so the price is going crazy, and then the other is efficiency. Lithium has efficiency issues. It only lasts 6, 7, 8 years. Everybody's working on that. They get 80-20% efficiencies, they can't charge to 100%, it builds up dendrites. So the world's looking for a better battery for certain locations.
So our battery checks the box on a number of those long lasting domestic supply, no rare earth, 100% efficiency. We've even got an energy density that's 2.9 times that of lithium, which means a lot of power in that battery.
It's a little heavier, and it's really not designed to be in a mobile situation. It's more of the fixed site that would go adjacent to solar, like a EV charging station or solar power generation operation or grid balancing. So long-term energy storage is really where we're focused. And that's a void in the market because as, you know, JP Morgan was quoted recently saying that, ‘the battery industry would surpass that of the chip industry in the next decade.’"

On the last quarterly call (May 18), Dennis stated that they expect to be able to sell any and all batteries that they bring to market that meet the claims they have made. He said that within 4-6 months, they expect to have built a small battery facility in Oak Ridge and prototypes. On May 24, 2023 (Sequire Presentation) Dennis stated that revenue can start to be substantial in 6-9 months.
In late 2022, BioLargo added Christina Bray to their board of directors. She is the CEO of an electric vehicle charging company (BlueDot Energies). Christina Bray PR
BETI is very new and the available proven details are relatively sparse compared to some of the other parts of BioLargo's portfolio. Seems like a lot of potential, but more must be shown.
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Clyra Medical

Clyra Medical is a bit surprising on the surface. What is an environmental engineering company doing in the medical field? The original inventor at the company (Kenneth Code) sought to create a chemistry that would help be helpful in infection control, as that was something his father was struggling with at the time. The result was a copper-iodine complex, which is very similar to the baseline chemistry that ONM Environmental uses for CupriDyne Clean in the ONM Environmental division.
Clyra Medical was formed so that the subsidiary could raise its own capital, independently of BioLargo. It is an asset that is 58% owned by BioLargo. Recently, Clyra has been selling shares to fund production of their first product that has 510k clearance from the FDA, BioClynse. BioClynse Product Brochure
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BioClynse produces a very strong oxidation reaction, much like how CupriDyne does for odoVOC control. BioClynse is for use during surgery for infection control and can be used after the fact if a knee or hip replacement gets infected following a procedure. The product is gentle enough to be left in the body when the patient is sewn up and provides lasting infection control, including disruption of biofilm. No rinse is required, which is unique.
Other products that came to market and were successful across the last decade are starting to come into question because of toxicity concerns to tissue. The company believes that not only has the wound irrigation market expanded dramatically and will continue to, but that it is no longer being met by incumbent products.
Regarding BioClynse Efficacy and FDA Point-Of-View:

"The questions they asked us were 'You must be lying, because this has never happened before.' When we finally got through, it took us another $1.8M and about 2 years from that first moment, the reviewer said 'This is the lowest concentration of antimicrobial at this level of performance that the agency has ever seen.' And therein lies the special thing that we've been talking about since we started this company (Clyra), and it's now finally positioned to be in a very significant commercial role."

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BioClynse is expected to begin selling more substantially to orthopedic surgeons in Q2 and Q3. They have entered into a production agreement and are in negotiations with distribution partners (Clyra Production Agreement). Capital is being used to fund production. They have spent 2022 and the first parts of 2023 building out a sales rep network and “showing off” the product at industry events with significant positive response according to the company.
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Clyra Medical’s goal is to build up the company and to be spun off with the sale of Clyra to a larger medical company. Recently, capital has been raised around a $32M valuation (Reported during Q2 2022 Earnings Call, so may have changed a bit since then). As a subsidiary with just the very beginnings of commercial activity, I don’t anticipate that any spin-off would happen anytime soon, but if 2023 is the year they go commercial with a high margin product like BioClynse, that clock should begin and become less of a theory than it has been.
Regarding Future Product Development and Coronavirus Allowance:

"We were given notice of allowance for use of Clyra against coronavirus. Coronavirus is a very broad category, not just Covid, it's Middle-Eastern, SARS, it's everything, probably 300 different variations of upper respritory infections and lung disease. That opens up the pathway for us to pursue drug applications for nebulizer therapy, inhalant therapy, nasal sprays, throat sprays, and have good IP coverage. This is good IP coverage. We were denied 4 times. We kept going back and fighting for this, and finally the patent office said: You know what, you got it. They gave us a very broad allowance, and we're going to continue to expand on that. That has major implications in a drug pathway for these Clyra products, which we've always believed the tough part wasgetting the patent done, but we have that."

Clyra Medical added 2 members to their board in 2022. Clyra Board Additions. Nick Valeriani spent 34 years at Johnson and Johnson, particularly with wound control (Neosporin). Nick serves on the board of $50B-valued Edwards Lifesciences ($EW). Linda Park is the Senior Vice President, Associate General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary for Edwards Lifesciences. She also joined as a member of the BioLargo board. It has been stated that Linda has been brought on partially for her expertise and guidance as BioLargo seeks to uplist in future to a national market like the Nasdaq.
Clyra Medical incurred a loss of $1.38M in 2022, bringing in just $56k what was essentially a few initial users of BioClynse in a professional setting.
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BLEST Technologies and Projects

Garratt-Callahan – Minimal Liquid Discharge (MLD) Devices
In 2021, BioLargo announced that Garratt Callahan (largest private water company in North America) approached them to ask for help finalizing the design of their Minimal Liquid Discharge technology. GC MLD Announcement BioLargo helped them finish the design and will serve as the manufacturer of the product. The product has patent coverage through Garratt Callahan. GC MLD Patent
The MLD systems are water reuse devices that take the mineral content out of water streams for use in things like cooling towers. The devices allow for an industrial water user to stretch their water budget significantly further, bringing value to clients in both reducing their water costs, but also allowing them to continue their planned operations in an environment where water availability may fluctuate based on hydrologic/drought conditions. Potential clients would be data centers, energy generation, and industrial water users.
BioLargo will make money from the manufacturing and sale of the unit (approximately $500k per unit), while Garratt Callahan will make their money from the operation of the machines.
It was expected that these units would begin being sold in 2022, however that did not happen. A factory acceptance test was successfully completed in February of 2022 ("FAT" Acceptance) , however contracts have not been announced BioLargo maintains confidence in the future of these devices and states that they are involved with a dozen or more negotiations and design work for potential projects. If those projects are confirmed, GC MLD devices can be a strong revenue stream through an established water treatment company.
GC maintains that 30-50 units can be moved annually, but that is hard to predict when the first one will be sold and if 30-50 per year is a reasonable expectation given the delayed rollout. If they can accomplish that, however, it would bring in $15M-$25M annually.
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Garratt Callahan has also agreed to sell AEC for PFAS remediation (discussed below). BioLargo has stated that a few of their potential PFAS remediation projects expected to move forward soon are ones that GC brought to the table.
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Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation – Fuel Production Design Work
Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) is designing micro-modular nuclear reactors. Part of that design is a new fuel system (FCM/TRISO-fuel). They have contracted BioLargo Engineering to help design their fuel production facility in Oak Ridge, Tennesse (also where BLEST is headquartered) which opened in August 2022. Fuel Production Facility - USNC/BLEST Collaboration - Pilot Fuel Manufacturing Facility Opens - FCM/TRISO Fuel Information
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Phase 1 of the project was completed. Phase 2 has gotten a verbal “yes”, but a signed contract has not been announced officially yet.
April 24, 2023 Prospectus

"In the second quarter of 2022, BLEST was contracted by Ultra Safe Nuclear to assist in producing the first prototype fuel production systems for their new nuclear reactor called the Micro Modular Reactor (MMR®). Ultra Safe Nuclear is a Seattle-based nuclear energy company that has invented a “fission battery” - a fourth generation modular nuclear reactor – that can deliver safe, zero-carbon, cost-effective energy anywhere. The MMR® uses ceramic-encapsulated nuclear fuel – Fully Ceramic Micro-encapsulated (FCM+++) – an extremely rugged and stable fuel with high temperature stability. BioLargo has been retained to provide engineering design support, fabrication, and integration for the company’s prototype fuel production systems. Because of the success of the early phase of the project, this project is expected to expand over the coming months in scope and significance to BioLargo, making them an important customer for BLEST."

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Waste to Energy – Design Work
BioLargo was contracted to begin design work on a waste to energy conversion project in South America. The facility being designed would be the largest waste-to-energy conversion plant in the world if it goes to its full scale. The project has 10 years of planning and preparation behind it. The project would be 6 phases, and the company has estimated that all 6 phases would be around $50M in design work.
Waste to Energy PR
The first phase was a feasibility study and was completed. BioLargo has given a proposal for Phase 2 and is awaiting the green light from the client. The timeline to begin Phase 2 has been slower than originally expected (as seen in June 2022 image below). On the last call, there was mention of political instability in South America giving some pause to decision-making at this time, but the BioLargo continues to maintain that they are in good standing with the client and the project is in good standing overall. The client has brought 4 more projects to BioLargo in Southeast Asia.
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“This developer has actually brought us 4 more projects. This one has moved from Phase 1 to Phase 2. Phase 2 will push over $1 million. Phase 3 will probably be in the $7.5 million range.”

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“In April 2022, our engineering subsidiary was hired by a Southern California based sustainable energy services company to conduct a comprehensive project plan (i.e., “feasibility study”) for a waste-to-energy (WTE) conversion plant in South America – one of multiple projects in planning stages by the company. Our engineers completed the initial feasibility study and have delivered a proposal for the next phase of the project (front end engineering design, aka FEED). The client has also requested feasibility studies and a FEED proposal for WTE plants in Asia.”

From June 2022 Annual Shareholder's Meeting - note: Stage 1 is complete. Stage 2 has not begun.
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PFAS Remediation:

The Aqueous Electrostatic Concentrator (AEC) is likely the biggest opportunity in the BLEST portfolio. BioLargo has one active project that has been contracted for PFAS remediation. They are awaiting approval from the client to begin the next phase and scale towards a full installation. During a May 24, 2023 (day of making this post) presentation with Sequire, Dennis mentioned that Phase 1 is complete and they are expecting to move to Phase 2 in the near future. Phase 2 would be $500k-$1M and would take 6-9 months. Phase 3 to go to full scale would be a $15M-$20M in expected revenue. It would also provide a full-scale installation to lean on for proof of function and scaling for clients to have confidence in.
AEC is a PFAS collection technology. PFAS “Forever Chemicals” are compounds that are designed to not break down through natural processes. The EPA is in the process of setting drinking water standards for PFAS that would impact 65,000 drinking water systems across the country. Incumbent technologies (Granular Activated Carbon and Ion Exchange Resin) face performance and regulatory challenges moving forward as the EPA’s proposed regulations come closer to taking effect.
In March 2023, they proposed federal drinking water standards of 4ppt for PFOS and PFOA (the two main compounds), and a combined weighted limit for 4 other PFAS compounds based on their health advisories. The regulations are expected to firm up in the coming months after necessary comment periods and EPA process etc. Federal Proposal
PFAS waste is on a trajectory to be designated as HazMat under CERCLA (HazMat Classification). When used for municipal drinking water remediation, incumbent technologies produce several tons of PFAS-laden carbon or PFAS-laden resin. Recently, Cape Fear removed almost 200 tons of PFAS-laden carbon waste from their facility (Cape Fear Waste). Cape Fear is a very large system, but even a mid-size municipal system ends up having to consider the liability of that amount of HazMat waste on a recurring basis. That “changeout period” becomes more frequent when the drinking water standards get lower.
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At 9.6ng/L, the data in the right column has too high PFAS concentration to pass proposed federal limits. 4ng/L and the detection limit are very similar levels of PFAS contamination (1-2ng/L is consistent detection limit usually). 2.7-7.1 Month range for GAC and IX technologies (standard incumbents). Lower regulatory standards will require more frequent changeout of media.
The media used for GAC projects can be regenerated. Ion exchange media cannot be regenerated. GAC waste can only be regenerated for future use in some parts of the United States. The legality of that process has come into question due to concerns about releasing PFAS emissions into the air (DoD Incineration/Regeneration Ban). Some users continue to regenerate the material while the EPA goes through the process to regulate PFAS.
If regeneration is not allowed, the material will end up requiring HazMat landfilling and not be able to be regenerated for future use. That will make remediation with GAC much more complicated and expensive. It will increase the total cost of changing out carbon material by requiring more new material to be used, but also increasing disposal costs of waste. Several tons of waste (200 tons in Cape Fear) now need to be sent to a HazMat landfill.
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How Many Municipal Drinking Water PFAS Remediation Projects Will be Necessary?: West Virginia recently tested 37 water systems. 19 of them would be out of federal compliance if the proposed federal standards were implemented (WV PFAS Testing). 37 systems is not a huge sample size, but this is reasonable when compared to what I have found when looking at other state-level data across the country.
If 50% of systems require remediation, that is around 32k projects just for drinking water. For reference, if there are 32k projects for half of the US population that require remediation, the average number of residents served by a system is just over 5,000, though that number will have quite a large range with some water systems serving hundreds of thousand residents..
PFAS Remediation Project Examples: In Dover, New Hampshire, a 1.1M gallon per day facility was approved for $13.9M. This was for the treatment of half of the water supply for a population of 33,000 residents. (Dover Project Details)
The project for Wausau has a cost estimate of $23M (Wausau Cost Estimate). Wausau Water serves 16000 customers (40,000 residents) and treats just over 4M gallons of water per day (Wausau Customer and Daily Flow).
Cape Fear, NC has $43M up front costs with $5M annual costs to operate (Cape Fear Costs). The facility is 44M gallons per day (Cape Fear - Size).
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Municipal Water PFAS Remediation Cost Estimate: Municipal drinking water projects are generally $5-$50M caliber projects. Small town projects can be $1M-$5M, and the largest projects will end up being over $100M.
Before the federal Orange County Water District (1% of the population of the United States) estimates a total of $1B will be required for the remediation of their water systems (OCWD Estimate). That is a figure from 2020 and is expected to have increased since then.
If you use Orange County’s estimate across the United States, it will cost over $100B for municipal drinking water.
The EPA estimates that PFAS remediation will cost between $769M and $1.2B annually (EPA Estimate). American Water Works Association (AWWA) estimates up to $2.9B annually (AWWA Estimate).
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What About PFAS Remediation Outside of Municipal Drinking Water? I won’t attempt to do the same thing for other water treatment sectors. You'd probably stop reading if you don't already want to. It is important to note that drinking water is only part of what will require PFAS remediation projects.
Industrial water users (landfills, oil/gas, papepulp production, metal processing/finishing, wastewater treatment facilities) will require remediation equipment.
Groundwater remediation takes place when there is a contaminated aquifer due to a spill or through things like spreading biosolids from wastewater treatment plants on farmland. If the biosolids have PFAS in them (which many do), then the groundwater is contaminated because the PFAS has been applied across the soils.
Surface water remediation can be required if high levels of PFAS are found. It isn’t clear what the EPA is planning to do with surface water, but some states have attempted to set concentration limits.
Many of the specifics still need to be firmed up by the EPA, but in general it is safe to assume that the estimated $769M-$2.9B that is estimated for PFAS remediation of municipal drinking water annually will not begin to represent the total cost of PFAS remediation in the United States.
Any company that has leading PFAS remediation technology has the opportunity to tap into a gigantic emerging market that is going to be backed by federally enforceable drinking water standards.

Aqueous Electrostatic Concentrator (AEC):

AEC Product Video - BioLargo's PFAS Website - AEC Product Brochure
AEC functions by running water across (not through) a membrane while applying electric charge. PFAS compounds are fused to the membrane and removed from the water supply. AEC only removes the PFAS compounds, which is unique for collection technologies. Materials like granular activated carbon remove all contaminants, meaning that it is very inefficient for PFAS removal since PFAS is found in such low concentrations. This is important because remediation using GAC will produce much more waste than it will with AEC (up to 1000x depending on specific water chemistry). A user of AEC doesn’t have to worry about managing several dozen tons of waste every changeout period.
Tonya Chandler on AEC Footprint and Waste Production vs. Incumbent Technologies:

How do we measure up size-wise? Well, fairly similar to a GAC system. The difference is that when you see all of our frames, I don’t need to be skidded. I could line the walls with those frames. I can drop those frames – we’ve got one customer that wants to drop them into a pit that’s in their system that they don’t use anymore. I can stack them on top of each other to create space. As long as I have maintenance room around them, I’m pretty flexible on the layout. But you’ll see I produce much less spent (media). Now, also note that that GAC number that I’m giving you there is a single pass. I’m not considering a lead-lag in that number.

GAC vs AEC Waste and Footprint Comparison – note: AEC changeout period is expected to be longer than GAC changeout period. Disposal when spent does not represent the same period of time.
Orange County Water District - AEC can produce \"Non-Detect\" results all 27 tested PFAS compounds.
Tonya Chandler on AEC Origin, Design and Function:

“The AEC stands for the Aqueous Electrostatic Concentrator, and they decided that they wanted to use the polarity of the PFAS against it. The hypothesis was that if they created some chambers that had a series of electrodes and some specialized membranes, they might be able to pull the PFAS out and create a concentrated stream. The goal was to produce a stream that met the standards. They thought, ‘well if we did multiple stages, we could probably create DI-water. They wanted to stay low energy, and they wanted the cost to be affordable.
What they found was not what they expected. When we did the initial testing on this, they found that no concentrated stream existed, although we were removing the PFAS, we weren’t finding it in the anode stream. They were able to remove 99% of the PFAS in a single pass through the system. They got a side benefit of low-energy desalination in all of this, and they got their low cost at about 30 cents per 1000 gallons.
The biggest concern for us was why we didn’t create a concentrated stream. What we found was that we were literally ripping the PFAS out of the water, and when they came in contact with the membrane that we have in there, it fused to the membrane, and once it fused to the membrane, PFAS fuses to itself, so we were able to create a system that all of the PFAS stayed on the membrane but we were able to get very high concentrations of PFAS on the membrane before it was spent.”

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From September 2022 Tonya Chandler Presentation to Wisconsin Engineers
From 2023 10-Q Report:

“We have successfully validated the AEC as an effective system to selectively extract and collect PFAS chemicals from contaminated water including performance testing that shows “non-detect” levels of removal, which meets new EPA standards. We have demonstrated more than nine months of continuous operation showing no materially significant degradation of the AEC system’s components or performance over time. As a modular system, we believe the AEC is scalable to a commercial scale, and we believe that our engineering team has the experience to deliver systems to meet the needs of a commercial installation."

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Dennis on Small Commercial-Scale AEC units:

"These are new – we have three of these. We just got – just built and what will happen with these machines is they go out into the field where we go through early testing program. We identify a spot, where we can work with a client the customer, and we say, let's as an additional step just to make sure, let's bring one of these out, park it into their location for three or four weeks, run some samples, run some tests and show our customer, our prospective customer that says that, the device can be well suited for the custom circumstances that surround that customer's water source.”

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Industrial hemp refers to cannabis with a THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) content of less than 0.3%. Extracts from industrial hemp seeds, flower leaves, bark, stems, roots, etc. can be used in many industries such as medicine, food, cosmetics, and textiles. The ingredient with the highest medical value in industrial hemp is CBD (cannabidiol). CBD not only has no hallucinogenic effect, but can reduce or counteract the activity of THC, another chemical component in marijuana (THC can make people hallucinogenic and addictive) , has great application value in reducing inflammation, pain, anxiety, mental illness, epilepsy, etc.
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At present, the main consumer markets of global industrial hemp are concentrated in North America and Europe. In the next few years, as more countries and regions gradually loosen restrictions on industrial hemp, its market size will continue to rise.
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Under the background of the vigorous development of the industrial hemp industry and the arrival of the wave of the Web3.0 era, Hemp will integrate blockchain traceability technology, Internet of Things, smart contracts, consensus mechanism DPOS and other technologies to create a new Web3.0-style industrial hemp industry The production chain allows users around the world to participate and understand the entire industrial chain of industrial hemp with an interesting metaverse gameplay, and creates huge commercial value and social benefits in the field of industrial hemp with a brand-new industrial development model. Realize the huge benefits of sharing the industrial hemp industry with global users!
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