Yesterday, I was invited to an educational competition at a vocational secondary school in the countryside, where high school teams from all over the country gathered.

The theme of the competition was board games, with each team designing one focused on health education.

I reviewed their work and even awarded a special prize—a signed copy of Pilvax. It was great to see how much effort went into each game. I did feel a bit disappointed that most of them didn’t go beyond the roll-and-move mechanic, but they approached the theme creatively, and the execution of the games was original and exciting.

But I didn’t travel four hours there and four hours back just for this.

While the students worked on a 90-minute task, I hosted a board game pedagogy workshop for their teachers and the competition jury.

90 minutes isn’t much time, so I could only offer a brief introduction, but I hope it gave some of them food for thought and perhaps inspired them to explore this path further.

We started with Happy Salmon—because if we can spend 5–10 minutes discussing the developmental benefits of a 90-second frenzy, then we’re already winning.

Next, we moved on to simple, low-equipment logic games like Nim and Lahti, while discussing fundamental principles, the teacher’s role, and game selection.

We also explored the role of luck in games, played a round of Pig, and ended with a team-based game of Liar!.

The feedback was great, and I had a great time—especially because after the quiet winter months, my trainings are finally picking up again this spring, which brings a fantastic rhythm to life.