Innehållsförteckning för Issue 84 från Tabletop Gaming

I know that publishers want to leave the best games of the year until as close to Christmas as they dare, but honestly the sheer amount of quality games releasing recently is STAGGERING. Amongst the 34 reviews in this month’s issue, we have some of the best games played in 2023, along with (as you might be able to tell from the cover) possibly my favourite legacy game experience since Pandemic: Legacy. We’ve barely got time to take stock of these wide array of wonderful titles before Essen Spiel 2023 announced an avalanche of new and upcoming games to keep us busy not only through the rest of this year, but likely far into 2024 as well. It feels cliché to say every time, but there truly does never feel…

Brought to you by Hello! Can you introduce yourself to our readers? My name is George Evans-Gill, I work as an information analysis specialist for the NHS and I play a lot of co-operative games, both digital and tabletop, as well as an avid fan of chess. Whilst I don’t get as much time to game as I’d like, me and my partner always try to spend some time together each week exploring a co-operative game, currently playing through Toy Story: Obstacles and Adventures. What game have you found in your attic? The game is called Championship Snooker, endorsed by Stephen Hendry with the iconic quote “The super fun snooker game for all the family.” Whilst it has been in my attic at points, I’ve now had the game out…

Designer: Frank West | Publisher: The City of Games If you play Race to the Raft a couple of times, you’ll see the DNA inherited from previous designs from The City of Games catalogue. Whether it’s the use of bags for randomness akin to City of Kings, the puzzle elements and tile overlap from Vadoran Gardens, or the obvious theming connection with The Isle of Cats, Race to the Raft seems to be the culmination of several elements that have worked for Frank West over his many years of board game design. In Race to the Raft, you are quite literally herding cats from one side of a beautifully illustrated island to the other, as it’s slowly engulfed in flames, hoping to reach the potential safety of a waiting raft…

Designer: Vangelis Bagiartakis & Konstantinos Karagiannis | Publisher: Wizkids The activity-versus-game debate has always raged in the hobby. Popular definitions centre around whether there is a winner or loser and if there are meaningful choices to get to that conclusion. Outside of this, ‘activity’ seems to be used largely as a disparaging term for games people don’t like or think have no depth. For that reason (and partly due to the meaningful decision idea) I’m going to call Dungeon Scrawlers: Heroes of Waterdeep an activity. Let’s deal with the theme first, as the Dungeons & Dragons name is sure to turn some heads. In short, it is non-existent in terms of gameplay, while being barely visible in the components. There is no flavour text, precious little artwork and no thematic…

Designer: The Op | Publisher: The Op When I first saw this game box, I was convinced I’d be playing a revamped version of Perudo (or Liar’s Dice). But don’t let the box fool you too, because thankfully I was wrong. What the Cup!? is a game for 3-6 players, where you secretly roll your own twelve-sided die inside a little red cup, bet one of your ten chips, then take turns to draw cards and play actions. These actions can dramatically change the game, such as moving all the cups to the left/right, rerolling your die (or someone else’s!), swapping dice with other players or even taking a sneak peek inside someone else’s cup. Alternatively, if you don’t fancy playing the action card you’ve drawn, you can flip the…

Designer: A.J. Porfirio | Publisher: Van Ryder Games You wouldn’t think ‘Guess the Picture’ as a mechanic would have such a large variety of games. You have family titles like Dixit, social deception games like Obscurio and even the spooky co-operative caper Mysterium, all revolving around short clues to describe gorgeous card art. Moments slots itself neatly into this little group, capturing the same charming core mechanic, but at a fraction of the playtime. A spiritual sequel to Keepers (itself a more mature take on Dixit’s ‘trick others to pick your card’ gameplay), Moments is a completely co-operative game of word/picture association. Each round starts with one player being the Head Curator. They must choose a card from their hand face-down and say a one-word, non-noun clue. In games of…

Designer: Infinite Rabbit Hole | Publisher: Infinite Rabbit Hole Seeing the potential of home escape rooms with awardwinning franchises like EXIT and Unlock, Infinite Rabbit Hole has seen how far they can push interest when backed with a major IP and a box of wonderful toys to play with. Arkham Asylum Files attempts to bring the escape room to you with great majesty, making you feel like Bruce Wayne with its high price tag and production values. Regardless of what I’m going to say below, let it be known that this game is a visual treat with a lot of hard work on display in creating a high-class looking experience. The downfall to this game is such high-quality components are nothing but bric-à-brac without an equally engaging game, which…

Designer: Donald Shults | Publisher: Plaid Hat Games Five titles into their well-received ‘Crossroads’ line of games, Plaid Hat have made the move into fantasy territory. Their previous instalment, the fantastic Forgotten Waters, marked a significant shift in the ‘Crossroads’ formula, introducing expansive app-based storytelling, immersive character building and a firm emphasis on quirky humour. Thankfully, Freelancers has maintained this award-winning ‘RPG in a box’ approach, whilst taking steps to expand upon it too. Freelancers is set in a post-apocalyptic world, albeit not in the vein of the publisher’s flagship Dead of Winter. Think more along the post-modern lines of Adventure Time, but with its own unique flavour of absurdism. Humanity has perished, leaving behind a ruined (but rather colourful) wasteland, populated by abject monstrosities, peculiar species and a multi-storey…

Designer: Romain Caterdjian & Tony Chen | Publisher: EmperorS4 World Splitters is one of those rare games, like Men At Work or Stomp The Plank, that uses its box during the game. The map boards for World Splitters sit inside the box on top of the insert to give it a raised surface, while the score and initiative board sits on top of the box lid next to it. I love it when games do this, so I went into the game wanting to like it, but as luck would have it, I didn’t need to worry; World Splitters is a decent game, not just because of its box gimmick. It’s a pretty unique mix of area majority and blind bidding, which makes for a really interactive game. I say…

LET’S YOU START TELLING STORIES FASTER FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE DESIGNED AS AN RPG FOR BEGINNERS Have you ever wanted to try a roleplaying game, but been intimidated by their rulesets? Maybe a friend has spoken enthusiastically about this new-fangled Dungeons and Dragons that you could play, provided you fill out this four-page form that can take half an hour to complete, at which point you might politely change the conversation or flee. What if I was to tell you that there was an RPG that took maybe ten minutes to create your character, the rules could be taught just as quickly and it wouldn’t cost you a penny to own? Many RPGs out there pitch themselves as ‘perfect for beginners,’ but few work so well as Quest, the lightweight RPG…

Designer: Brian Colin and Ross Brandt | Publisher: Infinite Black The ‘verse is a cold and empty void, scattered with the rotten remnants of planets crunched beneath the gnawsome maws of vast space würms. Vast Grimm welcomes space travellers to this hopeless galactic emptiness with a promise of festering parasites and death. In the three years since Mörk Borg exploded onto the scene, there have been a range of enthusiastic responses to their very permissive third-party licence. From on-the-nose derivatives like ORC BORG and Stockholm Kartell’s own CY__BORG, to weirder additions like Frontier Scum and DUKK BORG, that use the core system to fuel some thematically niche ideas. Vast Grimm lands in the middle, playable almost entirely within the standard Mörk Borg ruleset, but with a setting that is starkly…

Designer: Luke Gearing | Publisher: Melsonian Arts Council Trouble is brewing in Downgate Arches. Hatching, in fact. The great scarf-worm investment that had been all the rage in the estates and mansions of the arches, which hangs suspended at great height above the city, turns out to have been a mistake. Scarf-worms have cracked out of their eggs, not as indescribably beautiful and wearable creatures of profound value, but monstrous pretender worms instead. All that is certain is that this is someone’s fault: Various factions and great houses are out of pocket, many are suspected to have had a hand in this investment gone awry and you, dear investigator, have been hired to work out exactly who is going to pay for all of this. Welcome to The Big Squirm,…

Designer: Will Shick | Publisher: Atomic Mass Games Before Shatterpoint had come out, if you had said we’d be pitting Padmé and her handmaidens against Mandolorians and General Grevious, we would have suggested that perhaps you’d been drinking too many Bantha Blasters. However, Atomic Mass continues to surprise and delight with its squad pack options and 'We are Brave' is no different. As you might expect, Padmé is a great compliment for other Galactic Republic squads, like Obi Wan and the 212th or Mace Windu and his ARF Troopers. This is, in part, thanks to her 'Servant of the People' ability, which allows Galactic Republic support characters to claim objectives even when wounded. It may not sound a lot on paper, but being able to throw your support units forward…

How many games are in your collection? My wife’s answer to this question would be “Unquestionably too many.” The real answer is nebulous; according to my Board Game Geek database, I own 182 games, but that’s definitely a wild underestimation, since I’m rubbish at updating it. Certainly, the nature of reviewing games means you have lots of new titles that cycle through your collection; the “hmm, will I keep this?” pile is always tall enough to be unstable. It doesn’t help that I keep that pile on top of a tall cupboard, making it extra dangerous. What is your earliest game purchase that’s still in your collection? In terms of age, there’s a battered 1970s version of Monopoly and a replica copy of the Royal Game of Ur, which is…

If I asked you ‘Can you put this piece of paper in the bin for me, please?’ That’s work. If I handed you a scrunched-up ball of paper and said ‘Can you throw this from behind the desk and get it in the bin?’ That’s a game. The philosopher Bernard Suits suggested in his book The Grasshopper that games are, in part, the deliberate ‘selection of inefficient means.’ A game is defined, in part, by being arbitrarily fiddly – by imposing some limitation on how we accomplish a goal. In Snooker, our task is to get as many balls in the pockets as we can, but we’re given a stick which we have to use to hit a white ball and that’s not even the ball we’re trying to get…

Designer: Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock and Alan R. Moon | Publisher: Days of Wonder Did you know that legacy games are now over a decade old? Risk Legacy exploded onto the scene riding a wave of shock and awe. Players were mesmerised by the concept of a board game where you literally left your mark, forever changing the board by adding stickers, personalising continent names and, the biggest point of controversy, tearing up components. These games aren’t designed to be disposable; even the original Risk Legacy is still fully playable after you’ve seen the last of the planned content. They’re instead created to be personal; not just a game you can take off a store shelf, it’s something that’s yours, your playgroup’s memories, actions and consequences, permanently etched into the…

Designer: Andrew Gepp, Carl Millikin and Quirino Brizi | Publisher: Footboard There are allegedly 1056 games on Board Game Geek tagged ‘Football/Soccer.’ I challenge you to name three. Despite the sport’s popularity and many passionate designers, you’d struggle to name anything other than flicking pastime Subbuteo. I believe that Footboard is the best tabletop football game since Subbuteo, but still doesn’t quite hit the back of the net. Footboard is a two-player game that, as the quickplay guide helpfully addresses, “It’s Football. Simply score more goals than your opponent!” Each turn actions alternate starting with whoever has possession of the ball. A turn is split up into three movement sections, following by three action sections. When moving, the controlling player can make up to three moves each section, knowing that…

Designer: Ikhwan Kwon | Publisher: Synapses Games Sometimes, a game just has to find the right changes to a previously award-winning design, to create an all-new (yet equally nostalgic feeling) modern gaming classic. Pyramido is a domino stacking puzzle game for 2-4 players. Pharaoh Mido desires to have the most beautiful pyramid for his final resting place and has tasked you architects with designing his jewel encrusted monument. Each round, players will be selecting domino tiles to build one stage of their pyramid. Each turn, players will have three different dominoes to choose from, with 90 different unique patterns in the set. Dominoes can have six different colours and a varied number of jewel icons arranged in each four-square half. When you place a domino, you must also play one…

Designer: Ami Baio | Publisher: Pink Tiger Sometimes, a game’s premise is weird yet possibly wonderful enough to grab our attention. Flatter Me is pitched as ‘A Compliment Battle Card Game’ for two players, where you’re competing with one another to be the kindest to your opponent. What sounds like harmless, maybe even heart-warming fun, turns out to be competitive couple’s therapy. With the rules as written, the deck of 250 cards is split between two players. You each reveal the top card of your pile, then try to determine if your card better describes your opponent, or vice versa. Maybe it’s our cynical Britishness overcasting this game like a storm cloud, but because the winner is whoever has the most cards, the game turns into a petty squabble over…

Designer: Big Potato | Publisher: Big Potato The first time I met this very noisy sand timer was in 20 Second Showdown. In that game, you flip the timer, read a challenge card for your team to perform in some way (go touch the nearest fern, wheelbarrow someone out of the room, sit on a teammate’s lap and say a certain phrase) which, once complete, meant you could flip the timer over for the opposing team to do the same. The loser is the team that’s charging about the room when the timer goes silent. Obey The Clay sees the return of the timer and challenge cards, but swaps running around like a lunatic with the more genteel art of making things out of modelling clay. The included lump in…

Designer: Jamey Stegmaier | Publisher: Stonemaier Games Anticipation for Expeditions was always going to be passionately high. Even though Scythe explored more of its world through various expansions, there is still a huge appetite for more. The choice here was to either go for exactly the same, but make it bigger, or try something along the same Euro track, to give the game its own sense of identity and purpose. The premise is straightforward: a crashing meteorite, a missing doctor, and a quest for glory fuel the reasons for you to go on your journey to Siberia. This time, you’ll take control of huge mechs to traverse the landscape, hoping to overcome any challenges that lie on your path. In front of you is an entire land of unexplored tiles,…

Designer: Alban Viard & Todd Sanders | Publisher: AVStudioGames City Planner is another in the Nano9Games series of games, which use nine cards, nine dice and nine cubes. In City Planner, you apply dice to blocks in a city made of cards in order to generate victory points and money. If you play this solo, you’re up against your own best score and the table in the rulebook which tells you how well you performed. A two-player game pits you against your opponent competing for the best score. Right off the bat, I’m not entirely sure what it is I’m doing in City Planner. I think I’m building a fresh city in each turn, but the game doesn’t actually tell me. You lay out the seven city block cards, roll…

Designer: John D Clair | Publisher: Gamelyn Games Based on the novels by Bernard Cornwell, Netflix’s historical saga The Last Kingdom covered nothing less epic than the formation of the fragile nation of England in the late ninth century, in the face of Danish onslaught and occupation. It’s a ripe setting for a strategy game (the upcoming Bretwalda also covers the same era) and if you’re put off at all by the fact that it’s a licenced product – stills and publicity shots from the show festoon the box and cards – you should really take note of its designer: John D. Clair, the brilliant brain behind Mystic Vale, Dead Reckoning and Cubitos. Clair has rather smartly identified a key element of the source show: at its heart is protagonist…

OKÉMON AND VAN GOGH Surprise news this month as The Pokémon Company announced a collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. This special set sees six famous Van Gogh paintings reimagined to include Pokémon, drawn by well-known Pokémon Trading Card Game Artists Naoyo Kimura, Sowsow and Tomokazu Komiya. The exhibition has started and is due to last until January 7th. Excitingly for Pokémon TCG fans, there is a spectacular ‘Pikachu in Grey Felt Hat’ promotional card (based on Van Gogh’s ‘Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat’) which is being given to people who visit the museum and complete a treasure hunt, answering questions by touring the museum. There was also a range of trading card game accessories made available on the Pokémon Center Online that included the card,…

With 204 cards in the first set alone, Disney Lorcana will be remembered as the most unique illustrations commissioned for any single Disney project. It took a talented pool of illustrators working their magic to bring these cards to life. We were lucky enough to speak with one such illustrator, Matthew Robert Davies, who has been working on Disney Lorcana since its early development, asking about his creative background and the hard work that goes into making the magic. “I’ve been working in animation for a few years, working on TV shows for Disney.” says Davies. “I’ve basically been training for this job since I was three, when I used to make fan images of my favourite Disney characters. One of the first drawings I did that anyone said was…

Designer: Maxime Tardif | Publisher: Inside Up Games Earth is a sharp game. It’s all cards, carefully aligned in large grids representing various environments, trees, mushrooms and shrubbery. As the fauna blossoms, cubes representing sprouts of life litter the field. Trees grow, represented by chunky plastic trunk pieces stretching skyward and capped with colourful bobs. Each player is growing their own slice of an ecosystem as they foster a budding world full of point-scoring potential. This is a clever engine builder that rewards careful placement and synergistic card selection. You’re building a tableau of cards in a 4x4 grid that requires thoughtful spatial planning. This is done through an action selection mechanism that mimics Race for the Galaxy. You will choose to either gather more soil, plant cards in your…

Designer: Shanna Germain | Publisher: Mote Mooke Just like the podcast that inspired it, Old Gods of Appalachia is a haunting example of horror that doesn’t look to shock or disgust, but creep into your bones. When run properly, the game can make your house feel a little darker, a little more isolated, especially after the session’s over and your friends head home. If that doesn’t sound like an endorsement, then it’s probably not the game for you. If you haven’t heard it, the original Old Gods of Appalachia show is a skin-creepingly haunting podcast that explores the myths and monsters of an alternate-world Appalachia - the mountainous stretch of lonely valleys and small towns running down the eastern United States. This deeply regional approach allows the setting to stand…

Designer: Mat Hart (Game Concept) | Publisher: Steamforged Games First impressions matter. I hadn’t the pleasure of the previous two releases, coming into this game fresh to the system but with familiarity of both the IP and Steamforged’s other video game darling, Dark Souls: The Board Game. My first five hours with this weren’t great. Resident Evil is choc-full of content, with an abundance of miniatures, tokens and map tiles to prepare, arrange and utilize. There’s lots of minutiae set-up and rules clarifications, leaving you dizzy with how much you need to disseminate to your playgroup. In play, the game is relatively streamlined. This is co-operative horror campaign, with players taking on the roles of a specialist police taskforce who were sent on a rescue mission, but are now trapped…

Designer: Mike Rayhawk | Publisher: Modiphius BrikWars is a very funny book. From the opening words it takes not taking itself seriously extremely seriously. I’m not really sure where the fourth wall lies here, as it’s crumpled, thrown aside and made a point of fun from the very first page. How silly is BrikWars? Well, the Gameplay section contains a joke about “The Spirit of the Rules sneaking up behind you and hitting you with an axe,” next to a photo of two Lego characters playing a game of the (non-existent) Nano-BrikWars. So pretty silly indeed. Underneath the unhinged narrative voice are the rules of a tabletop miniatures game, as well as the tale of the online community that birthed it. It’s a rather refreshing read: the organic development of…

1 DON’T GET GOT! Probably one of the best party games ever, purely because it can be played at any party. At the start of the night, players are given a little wallet containing five random challenge cards and a ‘Guess What?’ challenge. These can range from ‘Get someone to look out the window’ to ‘Convince a player that an electronic is voice activated (when it isn’t),’ offering a wild variety of tasks with the caveat that, if anyone ever asks if what you’re doing is part of the game, you must reveal the relevant challenge card and mark it as ‘failed.’ Perfect for injecting a little mischief into any meet-up, especially when you can start the night setting this up, then have it play out throughout the evening. Whilst a…

Forming just a tiny portion of the triumvirate of countries constituting the island of Borneo, Brunei is undoubtably the smallest country we’ve examined on this grand tabletop tour. Nonetheless, there’s some valuable traces of tabletop culture worthy of attention. Brunei’s national game is Pasang; a twoplayer abstract game with some aesthetic similarities to Go. Whilst a clear history of Pasang is unclear, it’s nonetheless described as a ‘centuries old game,’ often played at royal weddings and during the Sultan’s birthday celebrations. Unlike Go, Pasang’s eleven-by-eleven grid board starts the game already populated with a mixture of black and white pieces. These are arranged in accordance with one of over thirty traditional ‘patterns,’ themselves inspired by those used on native cloth. The aim of the game is to capture pieces (of…

Designer: Dave Neale | Publisher: Arcane Wonders Dubious is a hidden role/social deduction game with a somewhat tenuously tackedon theme: you are new members of a private detective club, engaging in an initiatory test of deduction by trying to figure out what your fellow would-be detectives do in their everyday lives. This doesn’t help decode any of the game’s mechanics – or even entirely make sense, given what you score points for – so let’s just put the theme off in a corner – well done, you did your best – and consider this for what it is, which is a simple party game. Players are going to get two cards with occupations on – like dragon rider, software developer or journalist – and two cards with secrets – quirks…

Designer: AJ Porfirio | Publisher: Van Ryder Games Look, game publishers, if you want to grab my attention then yes, a massive pile of chunky custom dice is absolutely the way to go: I guarantee I will never tire of the comforting experience of holding and throwing them. There are games like Kings of New York where almost the only thing I enjoy is the huge black and neon green dice, yet that’s still enough to keep me coming back. When Gourmet Popcorn Dice arrived in its plastic facsimile of a cinema popcorn tub, I knew that an upcoming family holiday would be the perfect opportunity to rock out a quick and simple competition about trying not to burn corn. What’s great about this little tub is not only does…

Designer: Identity Games | Publisher: Identity Games I’m hoping that with a title like Nightmare Horror Adventures, it’s clear that this game is much more suited to the ‘Party’ category and not something to bring out for the kids, if that 16+ rating didn’t already tip you off either. This is a wild and weird one-shot horror mystery game for five players (you can play with four, but then one person has to control two characters and there’s enough going on as it is) which takes about two hours to complete. The story goes that a fateful night saw all of you orphaned at this very house, as your parents were killed in a freak ‘accident.’ One of your cousins is convinced that something more sinister was afoot and has…

Designer: Andrew Harman | Publisher: Gibsons There’s something timeless about Snap that ensures designers will constantly find new ways to iterate on it, something this game delivers about as frequently as an underground train has delays. Fast Track is a quick-thinking card game for up to eight players, where everyone is dealt ten cards face up. These cards each feature London Underground lines, as well as various iconic landmarks and sights associated with the capital, such as the Millennium Eye and bright red London bus. Once everyone has had time to look at their cards, one card is revealed from the deck, with everyone rushing to call out matching features and play their cards first. Once every feature on that revealed card has been matched, played cards are discarded, a…

Designer: Alexander Pfister | Publisher: Plan B Games There aren’t many board game trilogies. Usually when a board game is part of a ‘trilogy,’ it’s a colloquial term, a way to group three games by the same designer that share a similar theme, such as the Reiner Knizia Auction trilogy for Modern Art, Medici and Ra. Some designs do get to have two sequels, though these are fewer than the informal ones (in fact Pandemic Legacy is the only game that springs to mind which could be considered a ‘trilogy.’) Which is why I was so fascinated to hear that, not only did Great Western Trail get a second edition, but it was to be followed by two sequels set in other areas around the world, culminating in this year’s…

Designer: Romain Caterdjian and Smoox Chen | Publisher: EmperorS4 World Exchangers is set after the ‘El Dorado’ incident. Not the soap-opera flop that embarrassed the BBC, which will be a disappointment to TV fans – oh what a rollercoaster of a ride that would have been! – Instead, we find ourselves on the wrong side of a fictional event, where the world was divided between four oligarchs. So far, so dystopian. Except these power-hungry leaders have an unusual, some might say ‘uncharacteristic’ arrangement: every 50 years, they put their cities up for auction. Guess what? It’s time to play Bargain Hunt. Your task is to assume one of their identities and cash in on it. Across 12 months (A.K.A. 12 rounds) you will buy or sell city cards at opportune…

There aren’t many people in the Tabletop space who haven’t heard of Wingspan; it’s an example of a success story that crossed into mainstream interest, even appearing on TV. Elizabeth Hargrave has gone on to design a collection of other nature related games, including Mariposas and The Fox Experiment, as well as becoming a champion in making the hobby a more diverse space. Their latest co-design, Undergrove, is coming to Kickstarter in November in conjunction with AEG. We caught up with them to find out more about trees and mycorrhizal trading networks. Richard Simpson: Your games have always taken inspiration from nature, from butterflies and birds all the way to the attempted domestication of foxes. What was the inspiration for Undergrove? Elizabeth Hargrave: I’ve been a mushroom fan for a long…

Designer: Bruno Cathala and Théo Rivière | Publisher: Bombyx They say that good things come in small packages. In which case, Sea Salt & Paper should be absolutely awesome, because it has a dinky, minimalist box that’s perfect for tucking in your bag for quick gaming on the go. Awesome, review done. Oh, you want more? Guess we can tell you how it plays too. Sea Salt & Paper is a set collection game with some push-your-luck mechanics thrown in for good measure. You start with no cards and each turn must add to your hand by selecting a face-up card from one of two discard piles, or draw two cards from the deck, keeping one and placing the other in either discard pile. There’s an element of tactics for…

Designer: Modiphius | Publisher: Nathan Dowdell Stardate 2209.23, I am reviewing Captain’s Log, a solo roleplaying game that has just emerged from the Modiphius Star Cluster. In this expansive tome, players are given the opportunity to tell their own Star Trek stories as a Captain of a Starfleet ship. While some might feel intimidated by the sheer size of such a book, it proves itself an enjoyable read and a useful partner for our ongoing mission to boldly go where only a few RPGs have gone before. Built upon Modiphius’ Star Trek Adventures 2D20 system, but with the vast majority of the mechanics ripped out in favour of streamlined story, Captain’s Log provides a very narrative focused experience that could almost be described as a writer’s workshop. Much of the…

Designer: Will Hindmarch & Alex Roberts | Publisher: The Darlington Press Till The Last Gasp has a frankly brilliant hook. This is a twoplayer, one-shot, DM-less roleplaying game, where you play two characters meeting for a duel at a climactic moment of their respective stories. They hate or love each other – maybe both – or maybe one is just in the other’s way and it’s nothing personal. Regardless, they’re going to duke it out in some dramatic, super cool set piece battle – maybe on a pirate ship, a space station or in an ancient ruined arena. The promise of this – along with some really neat artwork to bring the locations to life – will have many roleplayers salivating even before you see the coloured d20s and the…

Designer: Will Shick | Publisher: Atomic Mass Games It’s great to see Atomic Mass dipping into the Star Wars canon to pull out some of the more interesting characters and Cad Bane is up there on 'Boba Fett' levels of coolness. Just like Luke Skywalker firing those proton torpedoes into the exhaust port, Atomic Mass has absolutely hit the sweet spot when it comes to model posing: Cad Bane is tipping his hat, in a nod to his iconic pose, while Aurra Sing is striding purposely forward with guns raised. The result is, arguably, the most striking Shatterpoint squad so far. Rules-wise, Cad Bane is one of the more versatile leaders with nine squad points, giving him some interesting options if you want to mix and match his squad with…