Innehållsförteckning för Issue 74 från Tabletop Gaming

Carcassonne offers much of its initial allure from the fact that your sales pitch to others before playing is simply “you get to build cool looking castles.” And it’s a pitch that usually works. Camelot is very much one of the offshoots of Carcassonne in this way – except it’s one castle, and it can feel a lot more directly competitive. For people who have played the gateway classic, Camelot will feel familiar but with a certain crunchy twist – making it a great game to test out with your usual group of French castle bothering friends. WHAT IS IT? Camelot: The Build is exactly that – you’re building the castle of Camelot, and scoring points along the way. You do this by placing tile pieces on the board that…

Travelling the roads leading 1,300 miles south from last issue’s stop in Lithuania sees us arriving in the landlocked country of North Macedonia. The turbulent borders of this Southeastern European region have seen the rise and fall of several empires over the centuries, before gaining its independence in 1991, and is now home to nearly two million people. A quarter of these people reside in the capital city of Skopje and what is now the heart of Macedonia’s contemporary gaming scene. Of course, even before the era of our current tabletop renaissance, citizens of ancient Macedonia were playing games. Excavations of tombs and other sites have unearthed dice, boards, and counters dating back to 4th century BCE, although even earlier mention of games using counters are referenced in Homer’s The…

Some games just asked to be taken into your life in a serious way. Carrooka is one of them. Many of the most ‘important’ games of the hobby are huge, you can skim down the Board Game Geek rankings and find boxes that weight that of a small car, with game lengths that eventually span into days, and with a table presence that requires binoculars and semaphore to properly plan a turn. Carrooka has a different impressiveness of scale, it’s just a lovely, huge, piece of wood. A little bit Carrom and a little bit Snooker is a dexterity game played on a large wooden, and most importantly circular, board. You flick discs like you do in the ancient Indian game of Carrom (without all the powder, thankfully) but you…

Forget MacGyver. Laugh in the face of the A-Team. Because the real building-stuff-out-of-seemingly-random-items experts turn out to be cheesed off tropical animals escaping a zoo… well, at least if Kuzooka is to be believed. You start by choosing your peeved animal, which each comes with their own unique ability… of varying usefulness. The seal, for example, seems hugely powerful, while the parrot is a little tougher to use. Thankfully, you’re given suggestions of which to use for your first games, so you’re not left floundering, which is great for new players. Then it’s time for the great escape, using trash, things like popcorn boxes and ice cream spoons, thrown into the enclosures each day. The issue is, you’ve got to work out the best plan and find the correct…

The ‘premium roll and write’ sometimes feels like a bit of a risk. Many like the genre for its almost literal ‘scribble on a napkin’ aspects. So, a beautiful, wipe clean, modular version of the genre sometimes feels like a bit too much. And yet – we have to hand it to this most recent outing from Phil Walker-Harding – it’s a nice upgrade. The core of Explorers is to mark off sections of the map to your best advantage, using the prescribed biome of a flipped card. Each card shows two environments (like ‘sand’ or ‘grassland’) and the active player chooses which to use. Mark some crosses and try and make your path to the point-gaining goodies of ‘gem’ or ‘carrot’. More advanced versions of this come from collecting…

Tenpenny Parks sees players competing to construct the best theme park within the apparently humble town of Fairview. The (clearly unhinged) mayor has set a timeframe of five months for players’ teams of builders, bankers, realtors, and contractors to erect a dizzying spread of attractions – from inexplicable mammoth rides to gargantuan unicorn-led rollercoasters – alongside all the hotdog stands and balloon vendors in-between. Whoever has amassed the most visitors (victory points) through rides, advertising, and personal goal cards will be awarded Fairview’s Golden Key and be forever held responsible for prioritising capital over sensible housing. The mechanics guiding this maniacal enterprise are a blend of worker-placement and tile-laying, perhaps akin to a diluted take on Uwe Rosenberg’s A Feast for Odin. In fact, at first glance, Tenpenny Parks seems…

Villains are all the rage. Just look at the popularity of Villainous, which lets you break bad as a whole range of antagonists, from puppy-skinner Cruella De Vil, to planet-exploder Darth Vader, to half-the-universe killer Thanos. Possibly taking its cue from this successful series, SPECTRE now gives you the chance to add a selection of Bond baddies to your tabletop-playable rogue’s gallery, including Rosa Klebb, Emilio Largo and top Mao-suited baldie Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The only problem is, after a few rounds you’d be wishing it actually was a Villainous game. To be fair, SPECTRE is aiming for something arguably more ambitious in its game play, blending area control, worker placement and bidding. On the one hand, you are all self-interested cads vying for supremacy, each with a distinct…

Ah, Train games. Two short words, able to strike fear into the heart of the most seasoned gamer. And the summit of that terror mountain? Games beginning with two small numbers, '1' and '8'. For the uninitiated, '18xx' is the common name for a series of advanced train-adjacent board games, 1880:China being one of them. Sounds harmless enough, right? Be warned; you are entering the deep end of the cardboard swimming pool. 18xx games generally share four key characteristics: The players run Major Companies operating train networks, and buy and sell shares in those Companies. A game will last a minimum of four calculation-filled hours. And, finally, 18xx games are often cursed with rule books that resemble a Dewey Decimal catalogue more than something you’d use to have ‘fun’. 1880:China…

PAINTS & TECHNIQUES » Cadian Fleshtone » Celestra Grey » Corax Black » Dark Reaper » Dawnstone » Dorn Yellow » Fenrisian Grey » Flayed One Flesh » Gal Vorbak Red » Karak Stone » Kislev Flesh » Knight-Questor Flesh » Loren Forest » Mechanicus Standard Grey » Mournfang Brown » Pallid Wych Flesh » Phalanx Yellow » Pink Horror » Rakarth Flesh » Rhinox Hide » Russ Grey » Screamer Pink » Steel Legion Drab » Tau Light Ochre » Thunderhawk Blue » Ulthuan Grey » White Scar » Wild Rider Red » XV-88 » Yriel Yellow Each model is split up into 4 stages, each with a list of colours and the corresponding paint that was used for it. Each stage uses a different technique to achieve a…

Tell us a little bit about how the store got started? We (Russ and Kelly) started The Board Game Hut as an online-only store back in June 2016 with the intention of growing enough to be able to open a bricks and mortar store. After three years of hard work we managed to get our first premises in Westcliff, opening in April 2019. It was a small shop, but it was cosy and we soon built a nice, local community – without whom we wouldn’t have survived the pandemic that came after the shop had been open for just one year. Our latest chapter, sees us in a new, much larger store in a more central location, just off Southend High Street, and was made possible by Duncan & Hazel,…

FOUR NEW SEASONAL MYSTERIES FOR VAESEN Free Leagues Nordic horror role-playing game Vaesen has been expanded with a new adventure book, Seasons of Mystery. You can solving spine-tingling mysteries through budding spring, burning summer and wind-swept autumn. Or, given the bracing cold in the UK right now, perhaps wander through snow-covered forests under glittering winter stars with your friends. Intrigued by the idea of matching play content with the weather? Don’t miss 10 Of The Best Games For Long Winter Nights on page 10. MY LIL’ EVERDELL IS HERE FOR LIL’ FANS Everdell, the harmonious village game of woodland community collaboration, made a big impact when it hit these shores in 2019, and now its smaller sibling is set to do the same in My Lil’ Everdell. In a similar…

1 DEAD OF WINTER What’s the best way to take your mind off the misery of being trapped inside on these dark and doleful nights? Why not try imagining that it could be so, so, so much worse! Dead of Winter’s masterful hidden role survival horror game is the perfect way to lose all trust in your friends, but at least you’ll be more focused on avoiding running out of food than the lack of sunlight outside. Built for 2-5 players, the aim is to make it through the zombie rampage without everyone dying, but the soul-destroying twist is that one of you may be a secret traitor — or you might spend the entire night obsessing about it only to realise that no one was! 2 A GAME OF…

The Last of Us is considered a landmark in video games. It asked the question: what if we approached the idea of a ‘undead’ survival game not with the core focus being on exploding heads and running out of shotgun shells, but instead had characters we cared about? What if someone did some acting for a video game? What if there was real atmosphere? A story people cared about? Usually, this kind of tie-in leads to a big box of miniatures (in fact a CMON published game was announced in 2020, with little news since). But luckily we’ve been blessed with a much more interesting pairing for the flowerin-gundead of The Last of Us, its militarized enclaves and fallen cities and towns. Themeborne, the creators of atmospheric adventure games Escape…

Hildegard is the unexpected follow-up to Greg Favro’s solitaire game Spire’s End. This is a prequel of sorts, focusing on the backstory of one of the original game’s iconic characters. It’s structured similarly, a fantasy choose-your-own-adventure handled via cards and gorgeous illustrations. The graphic design is exceptional, and this is a game that focuses on crafting an experience as opposed to cultivating strategic insight. The concession is that this title is nearly wafer thin. You flip a card, read some text, and then make a decision. This leads you to a new card and so on. Occasionally you will acquire items that may unlock future story options or perhaps improve your ability to succeed in conflict. Combat is the one quality of the game with a touch of heft. The…

SO, YOU’VE DECIDED TO HAVE A NIGHT OF BOARD GAMING? Board gaming, at its heart, is about having fun with friends. Most of what our magazine covers is focussed very much on the first part of that equation: the games. In this article, we are going to turn our attention to some of the ways we make the latter part — bringing people together — a joy. WHERE TO PLAY LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION Before you can invite people to something, you need to work out where you are inviting them to. There are lots of options that can work for a game night, but the easiest starting point is your home. You don’t need to live in a perfect Ikea showroom — although you might want to hide the underpants…

Q. Dear Ben, Oh, the written word! This assemblage of characters that blossom into meaning! What greater gift have our ancestors bestowed upon us humble travellers through time? I thank the vicissitudes of natural selection that washed us up on the shores of writing. Why? Simple, because my ears are ringing with industrial strength tinnitus and any other form of communication would be completely useless now. World, I give you Arno. A sweeter man you will never meet. He is always perfectly punctual and his arms are always full of the kinds of things that make your arteries clang. He never takes too long on his turns and is gracious in both victory and defeat. So what is wrong? You bellow. He sounds like the perfect member of the game…

The name Carnival Zombie perfectly encapsulates the essence of this board game. You, the players, are in the middle of a Venetian carnival in full costume and painted masks, when zombies attack. Escaping Venice seems like the only sensible thing to do, but first you will need to fight through the zombie horde district by district, until you manage to find one of the ways to leave the city. Luckily, there is a group of six of you with complimentary skills and abilities. One of you is even a plague doctor, convenient, eh? At its heart, Carnival Zombie is a tower-defence game with an assortment of mini games. The main action of the game happens on a segmented board representing a district of Venice, where the heroes, positioned right at…

What happened to trigger a wave of classic titles getting two-play only versions? First Cosmic Encounter, Codenames and now the gem hustling Splendor has its own Duel version. What’s more curious here is how, unlike many duelling variants, Splendor already plays comfortably with just you and a friend. For those who’ve never known the thrills of tabletop jewellery bartering, Splendor Duel sets the two of you as competing artisans living in through a non-specific Renaissance (though from the beautiful illustrations of gorgeous jewellery and well-dressed nobles, it’s likely the Italian one.) Each turn players can either gain more materials or spend what they’ve gathered to complete a jewellery project card, not only putting you a step closer to victory, but also providing a permanent discount for future projects. Cunning players…

While the game’s title refers back to 1893, whilst playing you’re more likely to be reminded of the 1990s than the 1890s; the decade in which German Eurogames began to take the familiar shape we still see today, with the release of classics such as El Grande, Tigris, Tikal, and of course Settlers of Catan. Don’t see that as a criticism; World’s Fair 1893 is an elegant and intelligent design that has a lot going for it. Miraculously by today’s standards, it sticks to the alleged 40-minute play time advertised on the box. The 10-years-plus age range also feels about right, while it’s refreshing to find a game that isn’t scared to be for two-to-four players. This is a classic family-level Eurogame in every sense. On each turn you’ll be…

Flying hot on the tail of Wingspan is Birdwatcher, a set collection game where players take photos of birds-of-paradise and add them to their publications. During the game, the bird cards are placed in three different spots: in player’s individual trees, in the forest and in the clearing. The core of the game is manipulating the location of different birds among these three perching spots to complete a target set of photos. Players can also ‘steal’ birds from each other; although this gives the aggrieved player an opportunity to get more cards, which usually ends up working in their favour. Two other elements add to this card manipulation puzzle. First are the publication cards. These are powerful but rather difficult to achieve objectives, that earn players bonus points. Some can…

There’s something forever pleasing about transparent cards. The insane inflation to production costs means few games can ever justify them, but it always tickles part of my brain when I can layer plastic cards to create seemingly endless possibilities. Well, in the case of 3000 Scoundrels there’s definitely a finite number of options, but you’d be hard pushed to ever see all of them. 3000 Scoundrels is a bluffing & dededuction game set in an anachronistic Wild West, where a time traveller has been over-sharing technological wonders with the locals, such as a ‘Knowledge Box’ or ‘Sunlight Harvester.’ Unfortunately, said traveller has now vanished, leaving a (sometimes literal) power vacuum as the townsfolk scramble to team up and break into safes for the finest tech to rule the frontier’. The…

The limited size of one’s vocabulary will be exposed by Topic_, a small-box, word-based party game that takes up little space and time. Play revolves around a deck of double-sided cards. On one side there is a number with a fruity icon, on the reverse lies four illustrations on various themes, each with their own fruity icon. The top card of the deck is revealed on each turn, leaving players with a number on the left (which dictates the number of syllables words need to be) and an illustration on the right. Eagle eyes scan to see if both cards have a matching icon. If they do, everyone races to think of a word with the right number of syllables on the theme. The last person to think of a…

Climbing the career ladder is extra slippery in Squid Inc. Here you play as ambitious aquatic creatures, all fighting to reach the precarious heights (depths?) of an underwater corporation. One suspects the pun-tastic title may have come before the game’s concept, particularly as fish and their friends lack the ruthless reputation of say, canines ("dog-eat-dog", "vying for top dog"). But maybe humankind has never dived deep enough to see the truth. As would be expected in the business world, this is not a fuzzy hug of a game. You are certainly not here to make any friends: chances are, you’ll lose them. Each player starts with two random employee cards on their mailroom board. Any other new employees are then engaged from the communal unemployed line. The mailroom can only…

TRICTRAC Trictrac is the classic French equivalent of Backgammon and played on a virtually identical board with two parallel rows of 12 triangular ‘points’ each, yet it could hardly be more different. In most of the dozens of games played with the same equipment the object of play is for each player to move their 12 pieces from one corner, around the board to the opposite corner, and finally to bear them all off. In Trictrac their object is to score 12 score-points, indicated by moving pegs around holes drilled in the longer sides of the board (à la Cribbage), whether or not all their pieces have been borne. Given that the card game Impérial has been described as Piquet with the scoring of tennis, Trictrac might be described as…

FABULA ULTIMA A beautiful new RPG inspired by classic Japanese console RPGs – think Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest – Fabula Ultima promises a unique tabletop experience. It promises a chance for players to explore fantasy worlds packed with magic and monsters, with heroes drawn directly from some of the most popular videogames out there. Need Games | £15.00 RIVERS OF LONDON RPG As magic slips back into reality, who better to deal with the inevitable problems it causes than the Metropolitan Police? Based on the Rivers of London novels, this new RPG tasks players with reining in magical excess, keeping the streets clear of monsters, and filling in a pile of arcane paperwork. Chaosium | £30.00 THE LORD OF THE RINGS RPG: SHIRE ADVENTURES Who wouldn’t want to be…

MARCHING ORDER This black and white indie production comes with buckets of ‘attitude’ that let us as players relax into just having a good time trying not to die. Sure, you can spend time making sure you’ve got enough torches to see what’s about to kill you, or pack enough lockpicks, but it’s humble feel adds to the sense of just throwing yourself at the puzzle. The game is also pre-written, in the same way as a Fighting Fantasy book is, so you know that someone has already taken the time to plot out your path. Come for the crunchy Darkest Dungeon-esque combat system, but return for fast, cheap thrills. STARGRAVE Like most wargames and skirmish games, you can make this exactly the way you want. Use chips and tokens…

This year is Troika!’s sixth birthday, and in lieu of singing a roleplaying game ‘Happy Birthday’ in an out of tune way, we decided to talk its creator. 2023 looks to be a big year for the game, with five new books coming for this indie roleplaying game of weirdos, occultism and sci-fi. We sat down with Daniel Sell, the game’s designer and founder of Melsonian Arts Council, for what felt like a overdue chat about the game. It was a long and winding conversation that saw me try and pick at what makes the game so special, and particularly lauded in the world of indie roleplaying game design. While I couldn’t attend Dragonmeet this year, it would have been unlikely to find someone who wouldn’t react with a smile…

Yohan Leminnier and Kristoff Valla are here to solve a problem. And that problem is what people think they’re getting into when they pick up a roleplaying game. Their answer is the boxed starter RPG Critical. “The way Critical helps you play means you don’t have to commit hours, and you can play and learn quickly,” says Valla. They’re an interestingly aligned pair. Valla is a novelist, roleplaying game designer and translator. Leminnierisaboardgame designer, best known for Captain Sonar, and also works as part of Asmodee’s events department. As you’d expect then, the first Critical box, Foundation (with a fantasy version, Sanctuary, coming later after a February release in France) is filled with stuff to make it a physical almost board game experience, with a big focus on narrative. Leminnier…

It’s always a good idea to have some two player games in your collection, but why split shelf-space between games for groups and experiences for two? Get yourself an escapade that will cover both! With an increasing number of games making bold claims about wider player counts, it can be tricky to know which actually have the flexibility to pull this off. Whether you’re after a duel of wits, a team-based tussle or a free for all scramble, these games play just as well at two as they do at higher player counts. WAR CHEST 2 OR 4, 45MIN, £50 From the same designers as the hit Undaunted series, War Chest takes the similar deckbuilding (in this case bag-building) elements but shrugs off the historical theme and asymmetry for a…

Twenty Eleven was a curious year and not just because it’s when the little Mars rover Curiosity began its interplanetary expedition. One of the biggest years for media as 28 sequels took over the box office, the biggest of which was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 which still holds the record for Warner Bros highest grossing film, whilst in video games multi-million selling titles like Skyrim, Portal 2 and Batman: Arkham City were released. Space exploration saw a dramatic change as China launched their first space station just as NASA closed their Space Shuttle program, amidst a world of toppling despots and countless protests that also saw the global population reach 7 Billion. The world of board games saw many new classics that would forever leave their…

There’s a grand oak tree in the back alley behind my house. Well over 200 years old, this gnarled giant calmly kicks up the concrete beneath it, creating a cracked furrow of crisp packets and disposable vapes. In lieu of two garages stands the tree; an inconvenience for the neighbours yet a reminder for everyone else of the oak’s importance and longevity. Oak invites players to recognise this importance, ludilogically recounting a time when oaks acted as our social and spiritual community hubs, all whilst affording players the joy of ruthlessly competing for victory. Taking its themes and aesthetic details from a wealth of Druidic folklore, Oak plants players in a fantastical woodland world where people and the landscapes around them live harmoniously. Players are aiming to rack up points…

This really shouldn’t work, y’know. On first viewing, Feed the Kraken seems cobbled together. Most of it is the core of The Resistance with a huge board and zany rules and tonnes of player elimination added in. Then there’s the rotoscoped art of the designers and their mates. It all, on the face of it, seems quite unedifying but, in spite of all my misgivings, I sat down to play it. To my surprise, it resulted in one of the funniest and most dramatic social deduction experiences I’ve had in ages. Approach Feed the Kraken and it appears to be very much like many other entries in this genre. It has the team aspects of The Resistance and the player roles of Werewolf. There is a team of honest sailors…

For over four decades, there has been one game that springs to mind when the concept of “auto-duelling” is raised: Car Wars. A Mad-Max-esque ode to petroleum, burnt asphalt and DIY mechanical engineering, Car Wars has a reputation for being a crunchy customisation dream, with a fuel can of fun poured on top. After a storied history of different versions, printings and popularities, this is the Sixth Edition, with streamlined The game centres around each player building a car, picking a crew and adding weapons, accessories and upgrades. You have a budget of “build points”, both allowing for advanced customisation and for adjusting game length: more points generally means more play time. You then race against your opponents on any decently sized tabletop or game mat, fighting until one car…

Readers of these pages know how much I like a little war. The Christians are crusading, but this time it’s about reclaiming land, against the Almohad caliphate that extended its regional power from North Africa to southern Spain. 1212 Las Navas de Tolosa is an asymmetric wargame of three Christian Kings against this force. The Muslim forces have much better archers and an interesting counter-attack mechanic, whereas the Christians can only move forward in their columns – but with that comes the benefit of huge bonuses to their cavalry charges. The game is played out on a set board with square tokens in a very old-school wargame style, yet it feels more like chess because of the restricted movements. You’ll have a small hand of cards which shows numbers for…

There are games you love that are such a drain you barely play them. The set up is fiddly, the time it takes to play is dayconsuming and the mental wrangling required is exhausting. Yet it hangs around your cerebrum, poking you every so often. You say things like, ‘we should play this more’. You start to sound like one of those married couples who know that their coitus is great but syncing the desire and the calendar has become too much, and so these wonderful games languish on your kallax gathering dust. War of the Ring is like this for me. It’s so good but the effort in playing it often makes it a peak I’m not willing to bag. This is why you have card game versions.…