Indholdsfortegnelse for Issue 89 i Tabletop Gaming

I will confess immediately, that this month has almost entirely consisted of me getting gleefully excited about being able to talk Star Wars with a multitude of people who know it better than I do. With the release of Star WarsTM : Unlimited, the new trading card game, it seemed a great opportunity to also check in on Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint, releasing its new sets, and Star Wars Villainous, with even more lined up this year, and suddenly we’re joyfully dancing across the whole of the tabletop–board games, card games, skirmish games, plus RPGs, miniatures, and more. If you’ve never played them, we’ve got guides for any level of player. Want to play the new TCG? We’ve a how to. Wondering how board games evolved? Page 24 has a brilliant article…

One of the most iconic parts of Star Wars is the Force. From die-hard fans to dear old nans, there’s a strong chance that “May the Force be with you” is filed in a brain cabinet somewhere. What actually is the Force? Magic power? Convenient narrative device? Source of unlimited online arguments? Every adaptation of Star Wars gets to approach the Force in a new way. From books giving us insight into the mind of the user to video games and the satisfaction of pushing Stormtroopers off things. So where do board games fit in? Let’s take a look at some of the ways players encountered the Force on the tabletop and hear from a few of the designers tasked with adapting this hokey religion. A LONG TIME AGO IN…

It should come as no surprise that the Star Wars galaxy has played host to a huge array of role-playing games across the franchise’s history. Although the initial movie launched in 1977, an expanded universe of storytelling would build for decades afterwards, with each era allowing for a new array of worlds and characters to dive into. Whether it was because of the movies, books, comics or even video games, fans wanted to interact with this universe in a more personal way and therefore there was always a need for an RPG. The licence for Star Wars has moved from brand to brand, with new creatives getting the opportunity to reimagine what an RPG could look like with a space opera overlay. At present, four different studios have been given…

1 SPACE PARK Space Park is the first game on the list, and I’ve started with it as it’s a great way to lift off for an evening, with simple tactics, a tiny sprinkle of luck, and a lot of opportunities to block other players on your way to victory. It’s a pleasingly lightweight game about galaxy jumping and collecting gems that’s about as far from the drudgery of Earth life as you can get. The cards, art and graphics are beautiful and it comes with satisfyingly chunky spaceships that you can rocket off to different spots on the board. See you there, mine’s a bright green Space Burger! 2 ISS VANGUARD Recently I heard about a practice Mars mission where volunteers will need to live in a shelter in…

ACK TO THE BEGINNING On February 23rd Bandai launched their newest trading card game Dragon Ball Super Card Game Fusion World. This doesn’t replace their existing Dragon Ball Super card game (launched in 2017) but works as something of a reimaging. Advertised as a “super aggressive card game” it follows the same basic rules of the original game with decks built around leaders and attacking them to reduce life to 0 to win but promises “a more intuitive battle experience”. Several big changes bode well for its future including the game seeing a release in Japan, like Bandai’s popular One Piece and Digimon TCGs and an official digital client to play online coming in “early 2024”. With the first booster set Awakened Pulse and four starter decks already in shops and…

What Board Games Mean to Me, feels like it should be a coffee table book. Published by Aconyte Books, who are at the forefront of books around the tabletop industry–they do some gorgeous pulp style novels in the worlds of our favourite games, from Arkham Horror to Legend of the Five Rings, Keyforge and beyond–it’s a collection of essays from people within the board game industry that, as the title suggests, discusses what board games mean to them personally. It features a real mix of names, Reiner Knizia (publisher of over 800 board games), Sir Ian Livingstone (co-founder of Games Workshop), Matt Forbeck (Marvel Roleplaying Game), and many more. It covers the whole range of the hobby, almost unpredictably, and means you’ve got a great mixture of voices and experiences…

Designer: Jordan Sorenson | Publisher: WizKids The tabletop escape room genre feels a little played out at this point. Jordan Sorenson is aware of this sentiment, as he takes extra care to offer something novel with Unboxed. Instead of deconstructing puzzles and assembling clues to escape a location, you are asked to piece together errant components with unusual iconography in order to deduce the ruleset for a board game. This is a terrific concept and wonderfully approaches the hobby’s most gruelling task - learning a new game - as an opportunity for exercising intuition and thoughtful speculation. There is a story here, albeit a thin one. Players take on the roles of archaeologists who have unearthed the game pieces from an ancient civilisation. Without a proper ruleset, you’re required to…

Designer: Malachi Ray Rempen | Publisher: Keen Bean Studio Despite it being nominated for several prestigious awards and my own affinity for the theme thanks to a (largely redundant) degree in film, Roll Camera is a game that somehow passed me by. Thankfully, the recent release of the game’s B movie Expansion and its subsequent status as winner of the UK Games Expo’s Best Expansion award, pushed the game onto my radar. Roll Camera is a cooperative diceplacement game tasking players with completing a film before their budget or schedule runs out. Assuming the roles of director, cinematographer, and a plethora of others, players will use crew dice to tackle daily problems, hold production meetings, and arrange sets in accordance with storyboard cards. Players must also aim to have their…

Designer: Sid Sackson | Publisher: Renegade Game Studios Impartiality warning up front: I love this game. I think Acquire is criminally under-represented in both the tabletop gaming scene, and the world at large. Let’s throw out Cluedo and replace this on a million bookshelves. Done. Article finished! For those of you who need, you know, a review, and perhaps some sort of journalistic rigour, Acquire is a game of where players compete to build companies and to collect shares in them. The game itself is remarkably simple, consisting of a board, a pile of numbered tiles, some paper money and seven piles of shares. Unlike many stocks-and-shares games, it is pretty pacey, and with a play-length that doesn’t extend at higher player counts either. On your turn, you place down…

Designer: Matthew Dunstan | Publisher: Funforge Monumental has been a troubled product. Publisher Funforge crowdfunded this civilisation deckbuilding game back in 2018. After finding its way to backers, the company launched a reprint campaign in 2020 to capitalise on positive word of mouth and fresh demand. The new edition would go on to raise nearly £400,000 on Kickstarter. It was a massive success. One that slowly turned into a massive bungle. It’s now years late on delivering the reprint, and the 4,000 supporters have nothing to show for it. That hasn’t stopped the publisher from releasing a retail edition of the game in a bid to raise additional funds and hopefully ship out the crowdfunded copies to backers. While the furor surrounding this title is justified, it’s important to separate…

Designer: Andrew Lowen | Publisher: Lowen Games There tends to be a stigma against Christian-themed board games, as just like Christian music, these titles often present the game and its systems as subservient to religious messaging. This is not the case with Deliverance, a bespoke skirmish/dungeon crawl hybrid that features sleek and thoughtful tactical gameplay. It certainly respectfully embodies its religious subtext, but the experience is mechanically gripping and the two pieces complement each other wonderfully. The setting here is intriguing. Players work together, adopting the roles of known angels such Michael and Gabriel. They combat many different types of demonic foes and ultimately confront menacing bosses. Illustrated beautifully on the many tiles, the battlefield is a modern day fictional town where the souls of the innocent are at stake.…

Designer: Graeme Davis | Publisher: Free League Boldly going where other roleplaying publishers are sometimes reluctant to venture has long been Free League’s guiding mission. The Swedish tabletop powerhouse has a track record in spinning dice-chucking gold from potentially unpromising ideas. Whether it’s Tales From Loop’s bored teenagers having adventures in 1980s Sweden or Into the Odd’s mix of stripped-down mechanics and maximalist world-building, Free League’s speciality is thinking outside the box–or, indeed, taking off and nuking the box from orbit One of its most innovative titles is Vaesen, a game of mystery and sleuthing set in 19th-century Sweden populated by mischievous spirits (the titular Vaesen) and by player characters cursed with a supernatural “sight”. Now, the Vaesen universe has expanded to include Victorian Britain and Ireland in a chunky…

Designer: CM Lowry | Publisher: Beyond Cataclysm Have you ever wondered what it would be like to climb into a giant magic space T-rex and fight smaller T-Rex shaped cells inside it? Me neither, but it’s as silly and fun as it sounds. Tyrannosaur Inside is a zine packed with story and combat encounters as you fight your way from left foot to brain to protect your village from its destruction. It’s both compatible with Mork Borg and D&D 5e so I’ll try to give you a review of both experiences. Spoiler alert: it’s very different in each! My initial play was using Mork Borg, and aside from struggling to learn the system from their cryptic online resources, I didn’t need any prep to run it. I wish they could…

Designer: Joseph A. McCullough | Publisher: Osprey Games Occasionally a core rulebook for a new tabletop war game will simply become too popular to deny further expansions. That’s exactly what happened with Joseph A. McCullough’s The Silver Bayonet, a gothic horror system which immediately captured the imagination of war gamers who were looking for a way to repurpose their Napoleonic miniatures. Those who played the initial game could see the universe had a potential to grow and The Carpathians: Castle Fier, is the first piece of additional material that builds upon that rich world. While newcomers will not be able to play directly from this expansion pack with no room to go back over the rules, veterans to the series will appreciate this much-needed continuation. Castle Fier is designed to…

Designer: Will Shick | Publisher: Atomic Mass Games There have been some big names released for Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint so far. The likes of Darth Maul, Anakin Skywalker and Jango Fett have been duking it out since the game launched last year… but some characters are just on another level entirely. With that in mind, it’s likely the Fearless and Inventive pack, which features Luke Skywalker, has already caught the attention of Star Wars fans. However, is this latest release strong with the Force or is it bantha fodder? Well, the miniatures are definitely some of the nicest we’ve seen in the Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint range. Luke himself is dressed in his Jedi Knight garb and holding his lightsaber in a defensive stance, while Leia (disguised as the bounty hunter…

It feels like we’re in a trading card game (TCG) renaissance. Forget the early heyday of Pokémon, we’ve been almost spoiled for choice in the last year, especially with the likes of Disney Lorcana, and the building success of One Piece. To make it in this market, a TCG has to stand out from the crowd–and that’s exactly what Star WarsTM : Unlimited is doing. Utilising new artwork that nostalgically nods its head at old styles, Star WarsTM : Unlimited brings us gameplay a little differently. You can find more detail on how it plays over the next few pages, but put simply, your base holds your health, you fight on two separate arenas (space units fight space units, ground fights ground, etc), and you get a push and pull of taking…

It never fails to amaze me how genuine the tabletop community is. When I sat down with Will Shick, the Director of Product Development for Atomic Mass Games–which basically means he oversees all creative aspects of creating miniatures for the studio, including Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint–it became immediately clear that Shick is incredibly passionate about the projects he works on. With a slew of new releases, and a topic (Star Wars) we shared, I wanted to find out more about Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint, the Star Wars themed skirmish game that has us all talking. THE PREQUELS “Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint is a tabletop miniature skirmish game, which effectively means that as a player you’re going to collect, assemble, and paint your own Star Wars miniatures that represent the various iconic characters and…

“Villainous is a tabletop game where you take on the roles of a Villain (either Disney, Marvel or now Star Wars!) and you try to achieve their goal that usually is thwarted in their story” Mulvihill explains. In the original Disney animation-based games, that might see Ursula trying to become Queen of the Ocean, or Captain Hook being able to lure Peter Pan to his defeat. “I worked on Disney Villainous since the first set.” Mulvihill says of his creation, which has grown hugely from the first games success, though it was not his first personal success. His game design can be found in the likes of Shadowrun (TTRPG), Heroclix, and Pirates of the Spanish, as well as Horrified. “After that, we pushed for Marvel Villainous, and I helped create…

Star Wars and roleplaying games feel like a natural fit for one another. With a whole galaxy of possibilities, endless worlds to explore and countless iconic characters to interact with, George Lucas’ cinematic creation is the perfect backdrop to set an exciting space opera campaign in. Asmodee, Edge Studio and Fantasy Flight Games are the creatives responsible for the RPG systems which currently welcome players into the Disney-owned franchise. Although there’s a long history of RPGs to explore linked to the Star Wars brand, this variation embraces the canon lore at the time of writing. The confusing Legends timeline, which includes everything prior to Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm aside from the Clone Wars animated series and the movies, is therefore pushed into the background. Despite this, the Star Wars RPG…

TILE PLACEMENT Definition: A game mechanic where you strategically place tiles, of standard or varying shape, toward a goal. Not only is tile placement standard in so many classic board games like Dominoes and Mahjong, but it’s also a core mechanic in modern games. Most notably, many people’s gateway game Carcassonne. As a mechanic used to group games together, you could say it’s a tenuous connection. Players select tiles, either standard or varied in shape, either at random or by choice, then lay them on the table. If games were a meal, mechanics might be cooking techniques. Carcassonne and Scrabble may have as little in common as Sunday Roast and Victoria Sponge, but that common element is fundamental. The tiles you’re placing are a range of different shapes and sizes,…

This month we’re off to the diminutive Luxembourg, a largely rural country squished between Belgium, France, and Germany. Whilst I’ve not visited before, Luxembourg exists in my mind as being not much larger than an Asmodee warehouse. How much of a tabletop scene could possibly be there? Being only just shy of one thousand years old, Luxembourg’s ludic history doesn’t stretch as far back as its neighbours, nevertheless, there are a number of Luxembourgish card games. Mensch is a bidding and trick-taking game where players bid to win an exact number of tricks either with or without a partner. Whilst still played in Luxembourg, the game’s import to Canada has made it more widespread there. Other card games include Scheppen Damm (Luxembourg’s take on Hearts) and Konter a Matt. The…

Designer: Ken Gruhl and Quentin Weir | Publisher: Gamewright It’s a situation plenty of us will have been in. You’re sitting in a restaurant with a spinning ‘lazy Susan’ in the middle. Everyone’s hungry. Fingers and chopsticks are poised to grab the tastiest treats. The food is delivered but DISASTER…the delicious-looking shrimp dumplings are on the other side of the table. You desperately try to spin the lazy Susan round to grab the dumplings but others are doing the same leaving you with the terrible turnip cake. The horror! This is the premise of the latest in the Sushi Go! series, where you’ve got to ‘spin to win’. You and up to five other players are collecting sets of food to score the most points. Some, like the chive dumpling,…

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: Rebel Studio Roll out the universe on the table in front of you. Line up your eight intrepid cat astronauts. Things are about to get epic. It has a presence, this game. The cosmic mat is a feast for your eyes, full of colours and quirky cat references. Even the points tokens are delightfully designed fish, birds and balls of wool. Just like its feline inspiration, this game looks, feels and sounds irresistible. But just what does the universe have in store for our catstronauts? Players take turns commanding expeditions along the track from Earth to outer space. Your aim is to score the most points by visiting moons, planets and outer space. How far you get depends on the dice, but what you score…

Designer: Shi Chen | Publisher: Play With Us Design Look, I’m easy prey to any game with a cute fabric board, okay? Soulaween is a pocket-sized two player battle that’s as pretty as a pin, and it’s got the softest board I’ve ever held. Designed by Taiwanese designer Shi Chen, Soulaween is fast and intense, an abstract game where the aim is scoring four colours in a row. It feels a little like a hybrid of Othello, Chess and Connect 4; it’s zero luck and quite cerebral, but also passes so quickly that it doesn’t hurt too much when you lose. Players take turns to place double-sided wooden pieces on a 4x4 board. If they place it orthogonally adjacent (vertical or horizontal) to any other piece, the other pieces are…

Designer: German P. Millan | Publisher: Devir Most people’s descent into the tabletop hobby started with something along the lines of “huh. I’ve not really played anything like that before.” Thankfully, within such a broad and creative industry, this is also an occasionally repeated feeling; one which Bamboo is likely to elicit for many who play it. Bamboo is a tile-laying, action-selection game for two to four players, occupying the same ludic-universe (ludiverse?) as Bitoku and Silk, and employing a novel approach to action selection - one that is difficult to compare to anything else. Through the growing and harvesting of bamboo, players must guide their families towards ‘balance’ in their home, whilst gaining favours from the spirits of the forest through offerings of incense. ‘Balance’ is attained through the…

Designer: Morten Monrad Pedersen | Publisher: inPatience If you go down to the woods today, you might just find yourself fighting alongside a very special badger. Skoventyr is a short cooperative card game in which players must save Vogter, the soul of the forest from Gamle Erik, the Adversary, and his minions, ideally without burning it to the ground first. In Skoventyr, players must race to defeat all six minions of Gamle Erik before he reaches Vogter who is hiding in the forest. This is done using a deck containing Vogter’s allies such as the Trold, the Formskifter and the Ellefolk, in order to draw those cards from the trade row however, you must incur some form of penalty, damaging the forest or allowing Gamle Erik to take another step…

Designer: Gabrielle de Bourg | Publisher: Free League Publishing Good roleplaying games can often be defined by their atmosphere. If a world is immersive enough, players are sure to get lost in the storytelling. The Vaesen series, which depicts the ‘mythic North,’ a dark and menacing 19th century Northern Europe, is well-established in the RPG community as a bastion of quality storytelling. A Wicked Secret & Other Mysteries, a supplementary book to the original title, continues that tradition and dives into a twisted mythology that is as intriguing to learn about as it is to inhabit in a gaming scenario. Players form part of The Society, monster hunters with the specialist skill to see the Vaesen, the titular nightmarish creatures that have been unleashed on the world. The Vaesen can…

Designer: Andre Novoa | Publisher: Games Omnivorous The Job is a game about assembling a team of criminals and pulling off heists in an approximation of classic high-stakes thievery films like Ocean’s Eleven or The Italian Job. And like any good film of this genre, it feels like timing is everything. Andre Novoa’s Games Omnivorous is known for not only playing the hits, but making them. As far as indie roleplaying games go at least. They’re the publishers of Mausritter, Vaults of Vaarn, and Nate Treme’s Haunted Almanac. So, while Novoa might publish a lot of beautiful games filled with eccentricities, we have to remember that his own work starts with 17th Century Minimalist–a game of swashbuckling on a small budget and an even smaller wordcount. This is his second…

Designer: Stuart Mackanness | Publisher: Warcradle Studios Dystopian Wars is a tabletop miniatures wargame set in an alternative version of the late-Nineteenth Century. In other words, it’s an excuse to play out Victoriana steampunk ship battles on your kitchen table. Now, there are three pillars that any miniatures gaming system needs to nail; story setting, quality of models, and gameplay. Let’s start with the Dystopian Age; a time of old-school steel-clad hulls blending with futuristic technology amidst the roiling dregs of empire. The depth of setting for this game is pretty breath-taking; much of that is thanks for the groundwork laid by original creators Spartan Games, and the quarter of a million words written for the lore of the game. Now, such a vast backlog of information is a bit…

Designer: Will Shick | Publisher: Atomic Mass Games Love them or hate them, it’s hard to deny that Ewoks have become an iconic part of Star Wars lore. The murderous space teddy bears, which just so happen to be able to take down elite Imperial troops with slingshots and swinging logs, have made their appearance in countless Star Wars tabletop games and are now making their way to Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint in two different squad packs. Hey, but at least they’re not Jar Jar Binks, right? Inside this latest squad pack you’ll find a new primary (Logray), two secondaries (Wicket, plus C-3PO and R2-D2) and a supporting unit (Ewok Trappers). What’s interesting right from the start is the inclusion of two secondary units means you’ve got some list building options…

INTRODUCTION There are two key elements to every deck in Star WarsTM : Unlimited and that’s your leader and your base. Your leader will be the focus of your deck with skills that can be used every turn and a once per game Epic Action that allows your leader to actually join the fight as a unit. Your base is what determines the winner of the game, first player to have their base defeated (lowered to 0 hit points) wins. Unlike most TCGs that is the win condition; defeat your opponent’s base before they defeat yours. There’s no deck out (though there are some creative rules for when your deck runs out of cards), no getting rid of all of your opponent’s characters, it’s all about the base (‘bout that bass).…

Sometimes you may read a review of a miniatures game like Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint or Underworlds and think they sound like fun. However, the thought of having to put together all those minis completely puts you off. After all, being confronted with dozens of tiny little plastic pieces can seem a daunting prospect, as is the idea of glueing yourself to the table. But building miniatures can be an easy prospect, if you take your time and use the correct tools. In this beginner’s guide we take you through the absolute basics, as we build Darth Vader from the recently released Fear and Dead Men Squad Pack for Star WarsTM : Shatterpoint. Of course, every miniature is slightly different - and some will be more complex than others - but these…

Star Wars: Outer Rim often gets suggested online when players are asking for a great Star Wars board game, whether for multiplayer or–umm–solo (pun not intended but unavoidable). Usually these recommendations say “with the expansion.” The base game is very solid, so why exactly is Unfinished Business so essential to many players’ experience? For me, the biggest area that Unfinished Business improves is Bounty Hunting. As an “open world” game, Outer Rim should enable you to play and gain points through any route you choose, whether that’s smuggling goods, ship combat, missions, money, quests or bounties. Bounty Hunting struggled a little in the base game compared to other career paths, because encountering character portraits was mostly random. You knew colour of your bounty token, but these were spread across the…

THE LOCATION Our setting is a lost world, on the far side of the galaxy. In the Star Wars RPG this could be inspired by the Outer Rim, but irrespective of the game, this planet is harsh and desolate. Few live on this barren terrain, but it has a distinct purpose. The planet is an outpost; a last measure of defence to provide a barrier between the known galaxy and the regions and planets beyond the maps. It was created to be the shield that held back the enemies that no one knew about. While once, legions of troops patrolled the outpost, becoming an expected part of a squadron’s touring duties, the planet has now been largely forgotten. It may still be operational, but cut off from its nearby worlds…

Exploding Kittens is a huge success story of our industry. An incredible Kickstarter that took the world by storm has led to its presence on many a gamers shelf, as well as the shelves of supermarkets, book stores, and now app stores too. Elan Lee, the CEO and co-creator of Exploding Kittens, was once a video game developer for Xbox, but “realised how many screens I was helping put in front of kids”. Several games later, and with his daughter Avalon turning four, the time came to design games specifically for them. NO BALL OF WOOL “When my daughter turned four, she was finally old enough to play games and I was so excited.” Lee explained of his daughter Avalon. “We bought a bunch of games, but everything for her…

Designer: Wolfgang Warsch | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele Have you ever stopped to think about the importance to humanity of a lawnmower? What about how it compares to its length. In The Same Game, these are exactly the challenges that you’ll be wrestling with. This is a colourful, cooperative party game in which 3-6 players each have to find items which are similar to one another, but in only one aspect. Each round, players are randomly assigned one of a range of categories such as “weight”, “volume” or “importance to humanity”, then given a card carrying the name of an everyday object. With these two things, players must find a second object which is most similar to theirs, but only in the given category. Once everyone has secretly written their answer…

Designer: Brett J. Gilbert & Matthew Dunstan | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele Of all the nature themed games lining our shelves - and wishlists - in 2024, Prey Another Day is one of the most succinct. It takes the grizzly theme of the circle of life and makes it shine. It helps that the orange they’ve used in printing is relentlessly fluorescent. Small, and wasting no space or time, you could easily overlook or underestimate this fun-filled family card game. I thoroughly recommend you don’t. Each player has an identical hand of five animal cards. The cards are pleasingly oversized and entreatingly illustrated. Gameplay is in essence rock, paper, scissors, except the mouse doesn’t get to eat the bear. What the mouse does have is a higher point value if it…

Designer: Florian Sirieix, Benoit Turpin | Publisher: Lumberjacks Studio I remember being sceptical my first time playing Pandemic. Cooperation? Winning as a group in a tabletop game? I’d played RPGs but this was altogether different. The world had gone mad. But an hour later, as the world lay in tatters, we were all hooked. We, together, were going to beat this thing! The cooperative game is now firmly established in the tabletop hobby, with designs exploring everything from quick trick-takers to epic legacy experiences. The first thing that caught my eye about The A.R.T. Project (as well as the excellent Vincent Dutrait artwork) was it looked like a throwback to simpler times. So, would that prove to be a good thing or a bad one? In a nutshell, players play…

Designer: Connie Vogelmann | Publisher: Stonemaier Games Apiary takes the sting out of the usual ‘multiply and conquer’ colonialism of space exploration games by putting you in charge of superintelligent galactic bees. Your job is to spread across the cosmos, bring life to barren planets, and carve great monuments celebrating your civilisation’s ingenuity before the impending generational die-off, where workers retreat to stasis pods to await the next cycle. As with many Stonemaier games, the theme is lavishly-illustrated, realised with some delightfully-produced components, including a queen bee mothership that moves from planet to planet seeding new colonies, and individual drones with multiple numbered faces to indicate the worker’s increasing strength. Also in common with many Stonemaier games, the connection between the theme and the game’s mechanisms is impressionistic rather than…

Designer: Stefan Feld | Publisher: Awaken Realms We often talk about the “weight” of a game, relating to how complicated or difficult it is. With Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition, the real consideration is the physical weight of the box, don’t keep this one on a high shelf! Castles barely needs an introduction, a classic game of 1-4 players drafting hexagonal tiles to expand their duchy and build out their land with point-scoring buildings. Each round, a scattering of hexes are added to the central board, each next to a numbered location, players then roll two six-sided dice and use the results to take action. Player’s boards are also marked up with the faces of a die and the duchy can only be built using the corresponding results. For example,…

Designer: Nils Hintze, Mattias Johnsson Haake, Tomas Härenstam | Publisher: Free League Almost all zombie media is set at the start or end of a zombie apocalypse. Why? Because the middle is boring. That is just one of many mistakes of this starter-set that turn a promising system into a poor experience. But first, let’s talk about the positives. The Walking Dead Starter Set is a complete experience with a story, rulebook, maps, dice, and complete character sheets. The maps are beautiful, including a huge world one you could put on your wall, and the dice are fun to look at. The system is innovative, with some really cool mechanics for fighting that perfectly balance being scared for every shot with the luck and resilience that makes zombie media so…

Designer: Nathan Russell | Publisher: Osprey Games Tomorrow City, a dieselpunk RPG set in a bleak alternative reality, comes from the mind of Nathan Russell, author of the noir RPG Hard City. This gritty title is designed as a starter-book, providing players with the tools and general backdrop to set their campaigns within. Russell presents a well-balanced and detailed world to explore, with minimal rules, but plenty of narrative opportunities that players will get great joy in customising. In its most basic form, Tomorrow City encourages players to control characters known as Revs, a group that live outside the rules of society, perhaps revolting against conformity or existing beyond the law. The book presents the titular Tomorrow City and its many regions, including The Spindle at the heart of the…

Designer: Joseph A. McCullough | Publisher: Osprey Games Joseph A. McCullough is an established voice who has produced a huge variety of well-structured wargames including Frostgrave, Stargrave, Rangers of Shadow Deep and Oathmark. It’s, therefore, not surprising to see that the veteran mastermind has yet another concept up his sleeve. One that reinvents and reinvigorates a potentially tired wargaming subgenre. If you’re like me, you’ll be thrilled to find a game that repurposes those historical miniatures you might already own. The Silver Bayonet’s setting, the Napoleonic Wars, provides an entertaining, albeit unexpected backdrop to this fantasy, horror affair. This period of conflict is no coincidence, with the game’s terrifying antagonists, the Harvestmen, feeding off the pain and fear of the soldiers involved in these bloody battles. Players are thrust into…

GAME SETUP–THE SULTANATE FLEET The Sultans of Istanbul have set out to oppose the dark forces that threaten to destroy our world. Their leader, High Prince Lowry, has been given a mission; “Rumours abound that a book of deep knowledge and power lies here, abandoned in a wrecked ship on this nameless desert coast. We must have it!” The Prince flies for wisdom and truth in a Lyceum Aerial Dreadnaught, with a squadron of two Awsbiri Skylancers in support. THE UNION FLEET The scarred remains of the American Spirit live on in the Union’s industry and military force. They’ll take any advantage that they deem acceptable. As General James Wallace put it, “A book of ancient wisdom? It might be bunkum, it might not—but it’ll certainly sell to the highest…

Designer: Petter Schanke Olsen | Publisher: Trompet Games I’m no history buff, but there’s something fundamentally appealing about war stories of unlikely underdogs. And I think ‘a group of Norweigians digging out an old castle from the snow to use as a defence against the Nazis’ fits this bill nicely. This is a pure solo game and with that comes the demand of a good beat to march through a turn. Nothing kills a solitaire experience like janky game flow. Halls of Hegra approaches this with a cycle of event, preparation and action sections, but with a moving feast of what part of the battle is happening. At first players have time to mobilise and prepare, setting up new supply routes across the snowy fields before the fort, digging out…