Innehållsförteckning för Issue 76 från Tabletop Gaming

Welcome to a somewhat computer generated version of Tabletop Gaming. We’re looking at AI art this issue, and whether it has a place in analogue games. For many it’s been a fun toy to create artwork with, for others it’s a disability aid. Aside from it’s utility, there’s ethical concern about how the data for the learning model is acquired, and what it means for human artists. We speak to several game designers, writers and artists about their experiences with this powerful new tool. Beyond that we have the biggest game review of the year: Frosthaven. Is it any good? Does it stand up to scrutiny for every extra kilo on the original? We hope so, but you’ll have to flick to the played section to find out. We’ve also…

Last year I ran a Kickstarter for Zinequest for a stupid little game called The Taming of the Slugiraffe. Me and my partner put it together in an afternoon (she did I art, I did the writing and design) to see if we were able to. It turned out we were, and that it’s quite good fun running a Kickstarter for something small and silly like that. We’re printing the game this month and it should be with our ‘backers’ soon. A key aspect of the game was something I thought was quite novel – the mapping of the world you inhabit. In The Taming of the Slugiraffe players roll dice to explore random new areas, and when they do, they draw a line between their previous location and the…

Artificial Intelligence, as it is now conceived, isn’t anything like what we were promised. AI as a concept has been around for a long time. Science fiction has presented it in multiple ways, sometimes as a benevolent helper, sometimes as a human doppelgänger, and at other times as a murderous god. We’ve got HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, the Androids from Alien and the cruel computer-god of Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth But I Must Scream. In short, we’re used to the depictions of AI being something to be a little more than paranoid about. Today we’re faced with a kind of ‘rebrand’ of AI. Rather than a machine that will be intelligent like a person, we have the trained neural networks of programs like ChatGPT and MidJourney.…

I must admit, at first when AI art became known to me, I was fascinated with the phenomenon and hoped it would become a valuable tool for artists to use when making mood boards, referencing compositions or making color palettes etc. But then I heard about the algorithm, how it learns and mimics, and that whole ethical clusterfuck and now I just feel sad about how saturated the TTRPG space has become with AI pieces. I firmly believe that you’re not the artist if you tell a computer what to draw, just as I’m not the artist if I commission an illustration, no matter how detailed the brief is. The only art you’re making is the prompt itself, that short string of words. Perhaps you can call it poetry if…

STRONGHOLD 200+ XL CONVERTIBLE, GAMEGENIC Gamegenic have been firing out exciting storage solutions for gamers for a while now, and the Stronghold 200+ XL is certainly my favourite so far. Bigger than the original Watchtower and not as ludicrously large as the Lair, this gives gamers multiple transport options for game nights. We’ve used ours for miniatures and token storage and transport, creating what could be considered a ‘minimalist RPG go bag’, except it’s a box, obviously. You could get a lot of deck options into the two main compartments (200ish, sleeved, as you may have guessed from the name) which means you can carry your main decks or even commander decks around with you easily. The magnets that are used to hold the removable flaps are strong and the…

Most of the time in the hobby, when you build a miniature – if you need to at all, most board games simply use resin miniatures – you follow a basic plan. There’s instructions and helpful guides, and you’re usually sticking arms on to the body and a head somewhere too. Even if you’re guessing with where the glue goes, you know how many arms a space marine has. But Kitbashing is the art of chopping up miniature, using old and leftover bits, and improvising. Creating totally new models from leftover bits and bobs and letting your imagination run wild. Most people start with simple modifications like swapping the heads of their squads, or replacing hands and weapons – but soon it can spiral out into its entire own hobby.…

The follow-up to the immensely successful legacy dungeon crawler Gloomhaven, Frosthaven is, perhaps, one of the most anticipated board game releases, so the expectations for the game were, naturally, sky high. It must be just like Gloomhaven, only better, with more things to do, more stories and more decisions with consequences! It must have more monsters, but also bring back some of the old ones, and more cool boss fights, please! But less Oozes because Oozes are the worst! (Spoilers: Oozes make their return; they are just as happy to be endlessly multiplying in Frosthaven’s cold) Also more characters! With different abilities! And powers! And items! And more classes! And playstyles! And more map stickers! And more secret envelopes and boxes to unlock! MORE! Oh, and can it be in…

Board game awards are a strange thing. With translations and second editions popping up all over the place, it’s sometimes tricky to nail down exactly when a game should actually win any given award for the year. The Spiel des Jahres, which has been running since 1978 has this problem too – from outside Germany at least – last year’s shortlist included a couple of Osprey titles that had been popular here in the UK for a couple of years. But, as Everybody Wins tells us, the role of the Spiel des Jahres is huge, casting light on important games from the hobby – and often adding half a million sales in exchange for the red pawn that denotes being a winner. This handsome (and heavy) book takes us on…

In Beer and Bread, you and another player control neighbouring villages with a friendly rivalry. Both sides have long competed to prove who has the best bakers and brewers. In an effort to settle the matter, you embark upon a gruelling six-year long contest to decide who is truly the champion of these traditional bucolic arts. The losing village will be razed to the ground, its inhabitants banished, its name erased from the history books. That last sentence isn’t true – unless you house-rule it – but it’s certainly the case that a great deal of pride is at stake in this two-player game of hand management and resource control. The game is split into six rounds or ‘years’, three of which will have bumper harvests, and three of which…

When an evil sorceress threatens the land you can’t just pull heroes from a bag…can you? The Guardians of Haversack insists you can. Multiple times in fact, as is befitting of a bag-building game. The Guardians of Haversack’s tidy game length (thirty minutes is about right) stretches across five rounds of simultaneous play, whereby players will be populating their lands with monsters, pulling guardians from their bags, gaining coins and points, and enlisting new guardians. The game’s six types of guardians are represented by tokens, with each activating their own movement values and unique abilities when drawn from the bag. The warrior, for example, can move two spaces orthogonally before defeating any enemy residing in that space, whilst the thief can move three spaces and unlock treasure chests. By travelling…

Here’s a little taster, a sample of my experience with Sandwich Masters. I’m playing with three friends, one of which is in the lead. My two other friends take umbrage with this, whisper something together and cackle. Just before first place can take another step closer to victory, a bunch of broken glass is shoved into their crowning culinary creation. The other player then slams down a strict health inspector card. First place takes a moment to decide whether they want to lose half of their points, or throw away their entire array of half finished sandwiches. They take the third option, throwing their remaining cards to the table and hanging up their metaphorical apron. Sandwich Masters is that sort of zany, “Take-That” laden game with its tongue firmly lodged…

Nowadays, it’s considered impolite to gallop around Europe on horseback, murdering people for religious purposes. But back in days of yore it was simply how people said hello. Or it was at least, if you were a templar. In Crusaders: Thy Will Be Done, you play a knight committed to a religious order and even more committed to continental travel and war. You earn points by sending knights across Europe like so many 14th Century takeaway drivers, only instead of garlic bread and dirty cajun wedges they bring death to the Slavs and the Prussians, along with the occasional church. Each turn, you’re going to pick one of the six slices on your action wheel, do the action or actions associated with that slice, then pick up the tokens on…

Usually, you can rely on board games about cooking or food to make your mouth water. Go Nuts For Donuts – looks delicious! Chai – I need to brew myself a hot cuppa. Sushi Go! – sushi, now! Cooking Customers, however, goes dramatically the other way. This game sees players competing against each other to earn the most tips by serving meals to customers. The tips don’t depend on the quality of the food but rather the speediness of the service. So, the game’s focus is much more on the running of the business, or rather accident management. Throughout the game players will try to sabotage their opponents by playing cards that will cause their cooks to quit, or prompt an unwelcome visit from health inspector or cause a horrible…

Skullfungus is known mostly for their dungeon designs. These dungeons are cartoony, gross and… er… fungal? So, to get a book full of these isometrically presented spaces, places and an entire hex map is a winner for anyone who is already a fan. For the rest of you looking at this slim clothbound book (it really is lovely) you’ll ask ‘why this one?’ It’s a rules light roleplaying game with everything you need for weeks of gaming on the titular island. There are big stomping dinosaurs, cunning and cautious mutants, mostly human survivor colonies and fish people to meet on your adventures. The game engine is based on Into The Odd with its now classic D20-roll-under-stats system and the ‘auto-hit’ system. Your players will start shipwrecked in one corner of…

Aclockpunk RPG set in Renaissance Italy. The idea is so simple it’s a wonder there aren’t dozens of them. If we boil it down to its most basic ingredients, Gran Meccanisimo is a somewhat open sandbox playable across all of Italy but puts most of its attention to Leonardo Da Vinci’s hometown of Florence which has flourished thanks to his creations. From gliders and tanks to automatons and the mysterious Gran Meccanisimo itself, the world is changing and players are thrust into dangerous new stories that range from somewhat straight-faced historical intrigue to over the top cyberpunk style sticking it to the uomo. Gran Meccanisimo promotes this range well by providing the GM with everything needed to understand the world and setting, even if they’ve never cared much for Renaissance…

Tell us a little bit about how the store got started? Michelle (she/her), Mario (he/him) and I (Page she/they) were already good friends and gamer buddies so starting a board game business together seemed like the natural next step. Michelle always says she was sick of Mario’s games overtaking the living room so she opened a cafe for the storage. The three of us went to visit a couple of the few Board Game Cafes that were around back in 2016 and decided that we wanted to bring this to our towns. I live in Watford so I pushed for it to be here but we finally opened a second cafe in Uxbridge closer to Michelle and Mario, so we’re both happy. Admittedly we had very little experience in hospitality…

TROYES CREATORS PEARL GAMES CLOSED AS INTERNAL STUDIO BY ASMODEE In extremely sad news this morning Pearl Games have announced that they are being closed as an internal Asmodee Studio. In a statement released on their website by Sébastien Dujardin, one of the games’ companies founders, the news of the studios closure was relayed as well as three layoffs – including Dujardin. The company is best known for Troyes, The Bloody Inn and Tournay as well as a host of other titles. Troyes is the title that kickstarted the company in 2010, which was purchased by the French Asmodee group. They’ve published 11 games in 13 years, and the conversion from an independent studio to an internal Asmodee one was originally seen as a sign of long term growth and…

AGE OF SIGMAR: SOULBOUND – CHAMPIONS OF DESTRUCTION We’ve already had Soulbound sourcebooks for all those tedious undead and chaotic sorts, pursuing evil for the same of some nebulous goal or devious ideal. Now, this new tome finally adds options for playing out a campaign where smashing the world is more than just a means to an end. Cubicle 7 | £27 CYBERPUNK RED: BLACK CHROME What’s the most important bit of kit you need to survive on the mean streets of Night City? That’s right – really, really cool clothing. This in-world gear book sets out a whole load of guns, armour, mods and outfits for your ‘punks to pick up and put on. R. Talsorian Games | £30 SPIRE: SIN This new sourcebook for one of the best…

MIRU Miru asks players to roll on random tables to fill in hexes as they travel across a great open plain (to begin with anyway). Each turn you as a player will be looking for resources to build up your ability to survive (with food, for example) and equipment. The world of Miru is one of solarpunk (think friendlier cyberpunk with more lights on) and tragedy. Looking for the god in charge of the robots that killed your brother, you’ll be hoping to unlock enough strange equipment to make ending the life of a god possible. One of the key bit of mapping fun is finding instructions about the location of other parts of the world, a meeting with a fellow hunter might tell you that there’s a radio tower three…

Q. Dear Ben, I like to think of myself as pretty well read. If I crane my neck (against my chiropractor’s advice), I can see a shelf of books and I’ve read a few of them. I even got through the first 100 pages of Infinite Jest and hardly anyone who isn’t lying can say that. Still, much to my own chagrin, I don’t know everything and cannot embark on something completely in the dark. Like playing a new board game for example. I can’t just rip off the shrink, set it up and go. I need to know how to play first. To understand what I do on my turn before I jump in and start fingering the pieces. Not so with Jenny. Ahh, Jenny, a sweet soul who…

I was speaking to game historian and designer David Parlett when he recounted something the late game inventor Alex Rudolph once told him: ‘Chess is the greatest game mankind has invented. Go is the greatest game mankind has discovered.’ The implication is that there is something fundamental, something almost inevitable, about the emergence of ancient area-control game Go – as if it existed before us, and was just waiting to bubble up out of reality. Clearly this is an expression of a poetic truth rather than hard-nosed archaeology – chess itself, like most traditional games, evolved and spread via various transmission vectors before solidifying into the form we recognise today – but it speaks to Go’s simplicity, depth and extraordinary longevity. Given Go’s pedigree, it’s hard not to feel like…

CAVERNA: THE CAVE FARMERS This reimagining of the all-time classic Agricola takes us out of the farms, but doesn’t stop us being farmers. A classic worker placement game of cultivating the forest in front of your underground home and digging deeper into the mountain. GOLD WEST More closely aligned with the themes of Undermined, Gold West sees players play the role of prospectors building their mining empires while vying over the valuable metals beneath their feet. Build your empire and decide whether to rush your product our quickly, or spend time refining it for bigger points. TINNERS TRAIL Copper mining in 19th century Cornwall – it doesn’t get sexier than that. A game of strategically balancing your investment in the mine, and turning it into profit – rather than a…

As board gaming’s silver age trucks along, games begin to be reminiscent of a malthusian street. We’re so deep in mechanisms piled on mechanisms at this point that all of our trouser cuffs are starting to get soggy so it’s an unalloyed joy to find a designer that values clarity over clutter and depth over complication. Hjalmar Hach is one of these designers and both of his 2022 designs are masterclasses in the art of simplicity. The other – The Great Split, co-designed with Lorenzo Silva – is a beautifully executed demonstration of the delicious torture of ‘I-split-youchoose’ as a mechanic. In Evergreen he has applied drafting to a game of reforestation that is as challenging as it is charming. If you ever wanted to be a deity that is…

Try to think of the best first-player tokens you’ve encountered over the years. Now forget them all and clasp your hands around Puzzle Strike II’s ‘Scepter of Power’. This incredible piece of tabletop engineering features not one, but two pulsing crystals set within its silver specked purple plastic staff, activated by the press of a button and the eldritch power of three LR44 alkaline batteries. I shouldn’t need to say much more really, but I will, as the game responsible for this unashamedly gaudy curio is actually rather good. The original Puzzle Strike appeared in 2010. Its novel (at the time) ‘chip’/bag-building shook up the growing deck-building genre and kicked off Sirlin Games’ Fantasy Strike family of games, whilst the tetris-esque tension of stacking and ‘crashing’ gems captured an audience…

Having an ‘important message’ at the heart of a tabletop game is a great way to capture the attention and raise awareness about the issue. And we can probably all agree, the conservation of the coral reefs is up there with the most ‘important messages’. Unfortunately, although admirable, these attempts to raise awareness for particular issues don’t always create the foundations for a great game. In ECO: Coral Reef you’re thrust into the role of a marine biologist attempting to conserve marine life on a coral reef. Thankfully though, you’re not going to have to get your scuba diving gear on. Instead you use tiles featuring pictures of various marine life to create patterns on a shared game area. Complete a pattern and you score points, which moves your extremely…

Since its launch in 2008, Matt Leacock’s Pandemic has gone from being a ground-breaking co-op game to a genre in a box. Beyond its own expansions and remixes, it’s been re-themed for Lovecraft, floodfighting, the fall of the Roman Empire, World of Warcraft and 19th-century Iberia. In a sense, it’s surprising it’s taken so long for the “Pandemic System” (as it’s now branded) to reach a certain Galaxy Far, Far Away. Anyone familiar with the clunky theme-slapping of, say, Star Wars Monopoly can be forgiven an eyeroll at this point. But don’t dismiss this latest Pandemic out of hand. Smartly drawing from the fan-favoured Clone Wars series rather than the patchy cinematic saga, this is a Star Wars reskin that goes more than reskin deep. Pandemic’s core mechanism of dramatic,…

I’m going to address the elephant in the room and clarify early on that this is a game about making Champagne, not wine, as at first glance Dom Pierre strongly resembles Stonemaier Games’ classic Viticulture, and to a lesser extent, Vital Lacerda’s Vinhos. But when considering these aesthetic, thematic, and even generic similarities, Dom Pierre interestingly opens up musings on how well mechanical innovations can aid such a game in setting itself apart. Thankfully, Dom Pierre flaunts its differences immediately with a turn structure guided by a unique action selection mechanism. Taking the form of a matrix on each players’ winery board, action selection follows a process of moving one of six discs associated with each action up one step before carrying it out. Where this disc is positioned will…

They say great minds think alike, and flexing those great minds is what Hive Mind is all about. In this party game, players compete against each other in answering questions, but being a know-it-all isn’t the goal. What players need to do instead, is write answers that other players will think of as well. The more your answers match with other players around the table, the more points you score. If, for example, the question was ‘name five different planets’ and you wrote ‘Pluto’ as one of the answers (which is wrong, sorry, Pluto), but other players wrote it as well, you still score points. Standing out is the last thing you want to do. You may even get the answer wrong on purpose if you think others might write…

It’s often said that puns are the lowest form of humour. If so, it’s a fair prediction that games relying on puns for their humour would be the lowest form of games. Puns of Anarchy does its best to prove that theory correct. It is a party game for three or more players, with a disturbingly long play time of 30 to 90 minutes?! Anyone who submits themselves to an hour and a half of this part-planned word play probably deserves their fate. The core mechanic gives players three wipe-clean cards, with wellknown phrases on them, like ‘Saving Private Ryan’. Armed with a pen, players must attempt to alter the cards into puns that fit a category. Thus ‘Shaving Ryan’s Privates’ might fit a ‘Bathroom’ category, whilst ‘Braving Irate Lion’…

The situation will immediately seem familiar. Wrenching your fast-moving vehicle under control as enemies appear and move around whilst you fire your machine gun or rocket launcher. Wreckland Run presents this type of gaming experience using dice placement. You choose a vehicle and a driver from the four on offer, each with one simple skill. Each vehicle has eight spaces for parts surrounding and protecting a central core. If the central core takes full damage it explodes and that’s game over. And despite your scavenging can-do attitude, it can’t be repaired. Each chapter starts with a Wreckage Phase where you draw parts and roll a dice pool of five white dice and three red dice to pay for their installation. You probably want to purchase several cheap parts rather than…

Swallow that mouthful of tea and make sure you’re sitting down before reading on: it’s time to see who can make the biggest contribution to modernising haulage infrastructure in post-war Germany! If your skull hasn’t been blown wide open by a surge of raw adrenaline, you may just ready to learn about Autobahn. You and up to three friends – or even three enemies, if you’re especially persuasive – are going to be working together to lay great veins of smooth macadam up and down the length of Germany, connecting cities to trading hubs across Europe. As the roads grow into a sleek web, you’re going to send out your fleet of trucks, like busy spiders, carrying goods to your neighbours in Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands. And just like…

Sitting down to run your first campaign game can be an intimidating prospect. One moment you’re safely surrounded by a fortress of rulebooks, maps, and notes, and the next you look up to see a half-dozen people on the other side of the table with expectant faces and unfinished character sheets. If you ever find yourself in this position, you can take comfort in the fact that almost all of the anxiety and stress will melt away once the fireballs are flying and the dice are clattering. However, there are still a few common areas where newer GMs can slip up, run into walls, or just find that things aren’t working quite the way they want them to. There’s no shame in this. GMing can be a tough gig. I…

There’s a tradition in OSR (Old School Revival/Renaissance) games of people codifying their house rules for running D&D-style games, shaving chunks of systems and procedures off blogs and other games and stapling them together into a chimeric new game that represents what the writer wants from a fantasy adventure game. This is how we get Mausritter (Games Omnivorous) taking the heart of Into The Odd and grafting it on to Knave’s inventory-defined characters with magic and the actual inventory system taken from the blogs Goblin Punch and Last Gasp Grimoire. Best Left Buried takes Maze Rats and hacks in zones from Fate alongside a more considered sanity system from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. My own A Dungeon Game taking my favourite bits of both bastards. (Micah Anderson) and The Vanilla Game…

Sandwiched between France and Germany, Belgium seems comparatively dwarfed, geographically speaking. But, as this highly developed country recognises, size isn’t everything. This point is made clearer still when acknowledging Belgium’s hosting of headquarters for organisations including the European Union, NATO, and the WTO. Thankfully though, the country also plays host to a far less austere collection of tabletop focused shops, publishers, designers, and festivals, all contributing to a modern Belgian board game boom. Belgium’s gaming history unfortunately doesn’t stretch back very far, with the hobby seemingly still being in its infancy compared to the country’s sporting history. Nonetheless, an honourable mention must be made on the origin of darts. Vogelpik is an early precursor to Belgian Darts, originating in the late 1700s and utilising primitive pointed missiles in the form…

Let’s cut to it, after all, the sand timers are running. Time of Empires is the best game I’ve played this year. It has literally everything you want from a big, hearty, empire-building board game, while killing off the unwanted aspects. There’s drama, there’s chaos, there’s puzzles and strategy, there’s the 20 minutes afterwards where everyone talks about their tactics, and what they’re going to do next time they play. It’s brilliant, and you should go buy yourself a copy right now. It’s a civilisation building game where you, as a player, need to generate resources to pay for powers, build building, raise an army, claim territory, influence leaders and even build wonders. Each time you play a power you need to pay for it with resources, which are generated…

There’s something very satisfying about protecting a castle from monsters. Castle Panic traps players inside an irresponsibly vulnerable citadel whilst a variety of horrible creatures approach. To survive, they must work, co-operatively, to defeat the onslaught. First released in 2009, the designer likely took inspiration from the digital ‘Tower Defence’ genre that exploded around that time. Fans of those addictive mobile games, with their unending waves of unstoppable horrors, will probably enjoy Castle Panic. I’ve been a fan of this game for years. It’s well balanced – our first game this week came down to one monster, one remaining tower, and one card – with easy-to-learn mechanics. It’s also significantly less stressful than standout co-op rival Pandemic, and a points based score for each player can reduce the ‘quarterback’ effect…

One of the most appealing things about finally bringing ’80s campaign setting Dragonlance into the 5E fold is the chance it provides modern D&D players to engage in the epic War of the Lance. This Krynn-shaking event – which involves the return of both the high-fantasy world’s gods and some legendary fire-breathing creatures known as ‘dragons’ – envisions a kind of swords-and-sorcery equivalent of World War II breaking out in Europe. And Wizards of the Coast has provided two different ways for us to experience the drama – which can, intriguingly, be combined. The first is Shadow of the Dragon Queen: a level 1-11 adventure, whose big battles can be experienced by player-character groups in their own focused corner of each conflict. The second is Warriors of Krynn, a midweight…

Acopy of Ansel Adam‘s Sierra Nevada lives in my bathroom. When nature calls, I can sit atop my private porcelain summit, gazing at the landscape rolling before me in all its starkly monochromatic beauty. In this way, I leave this place as a man both emptier yet more fulfilled. Thankfully, the geological drama of America‘s photogenic rocky west can be enjoyed on the tabletop too, most recently with Tim Blank’s Yosemite. Adapted from his earlier design Bumúntú, Yosemite is a tile-based, two-player set collection game with an intriguing movement mechanic. Thematically players are rival photographers hoping to please judges with photos of various animals at famed locations within the national park. Animal tiles will be gathered up by traversing a five by five grid, with the tile taken determining the…

Naasi is a push-your-luck dice game by the designers of the Coyote and Crow roleplaying game. Naasi revolves around the pleasant tactility of rolling and rerolling a big handful of D12s to try and score a set or a run of numbers. Unfortunately, Naasi fails to build a satisfying game around this simple pleasure. You start your turn by rolling three d12s. After each roll you may keep any results you wish before adding four extra dice to the pool and rerolling. The aim is to form either a set of matching numbers of a string of sequential numbers. However, among the new dice added for each reroll is a black ‘Crow’ die’. Crow dice are scored as normal but any white dice matching the numbers on crow dice are…

The year is 1970, and 50-year-old self-professed guru Maha Mallaya is dead – murdered, no less, a year after Woodstock, in the midst of an attempt to recapture the spirit of the iconic festival. Ten dinner guests, from idealistic commune members to motorbike gang initiates, gather to figure out who was responsible – or to hide their own guilt. Killing Woodstock is one of the growing genre of ‘dinner party in a box’ games, where you’re encouraged not just to sit down round a table but to lean in to an entire experience – inviting players in character, having them turn up in costume and then playing out the scenario over the course of an evening. This isn’t mandatory – Pegasus Spiele aren’t going to send armed agents rappelling…