Innehållsförteckning för Issue 85 från Tabletop Gaming

You hold between your hands the greatest of our hobby over the last year. Over 150 games are reviewed amidst these pages, an exciting wander through the breadth of the hobby. Not only did 2023 contain the most Must Play game ratings we’ve ever awarded, but it also seemed determined to go out with a bang, with the stellar Ticket To Ride Legacy: Legends of the West taking the most recent award. With the great behemoths of Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, and Alan R. Moon behind it, each responsible for huge strides in tabletop gaming, it’s perhaps no surprise we’re recommending it for your shelves. Add that to the tremendous Lorcana release, finally getting to play the much anticipated Frosthaven, and some truly incredible games in between, it's fair to…

Designer: J. Alex Kevern | Publisher: Renegade Game Studios 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…

Designer: Asger Harding Granerud & Daniel Skjord Pedersen | Publisher: Sidekick Studio, Days of Wonder Racing games get a bad rep. I blame Snakes and Ladders, dredging up rainy days of rolling dice to simply kill time. There’s so much potential for games that capture the pulse pounding, cascading decisions which make up motorsports, such as triumphs like this achievement. Heat’s premise is simple: get your car over the finish line first. To do this, players drive; first setting their car’s gear then playing that number of cards from their hand to move that far forward, drawing from a personal deck. Whilst there’s a desire to play your biggest cards to speed through sectors, players must be travelling equal or less than a set speed as they pass through each…

Designer: Darrell Cannon | Publisher: Big Potato Games Being right is a powerful skill, and one that my (tediously opinionated) family excels at. The problem being, when you get five know-it-alls in a room, that only one person can be right. Sometimes not even that many. Shoot for the Stars is a party game, aimed at any group that enjoys guessing stuff. It comes with some chunky, absolutely beautiful illustrated meeples and a delightful cardboard spaceship and planet board. Sam Ailey’s artwork on What Next? was wonderful too, and the thick-lined cartoons here remind me of Steven Tu’s high contrast designs in Factory Funner. Each round involves a player turning over a card and reading the question; sample “How old was Stephen Hawking when he died?”. That player makes a…

Designer: Antoine Bauza | Publisher: Funforge Namiji is the next instalment in the Tokaido universe and a standalone game in its own right. Players need not have played Tokaido before – handy, as there’s likely to be a wash of first-time gamers, what with it being a relatively elderly ten years old. If anything, it’s possibly an advantage to come to Namiji fresh – if only to appreciate the game’s impeccable aesthetic. Rather than a journey by land, Namiji sets sail across an archipelago geographically shy of the Tokaido road. Using boat meeples, players travel on a circular path broken up by several docks where they must take a rest, collect special ability cards and determine turn order for the next part of the voyage. Within each section, players decide…

Designer: Rob Burman & Matt Gilbert | Publisher: Mantic Games Before I can really explore this game, it’s probably best to explain a little of the theme of Hellboy. Many of us have seen the comics and the films, but for the uninitiated, in the world of Hellboy, the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is an international agency that sends investigators into unworldly situations to gather clues. When things get too tough, and an operative bites off more than they can chew, the B.P.R.D. can revive them, and send them on another mission. Hellboy: The Dice Game is a competitive push-your-luck dice game built around the theme of these investigative forays. Each player, on their turn, draws a card, then rolls a blue special dice with as many of…

Designer: Romain Caterdjian | Publisher: Bombyx When I first picked up Look at the Stars, a slight flutter of anger arose as Coldplay lyrics materialised inside my head. Thankfully, the gentle puzzle soon to unfold across the game’s lovely monochrome boards provided just the antidote for such a malady. In this stargazing flip and write, one to eight players gather to document the night’s constellations before dawn breaks. Equipped with a dry-erase board and a pen, players will flip a card and draw the depicted lines in any orientation they choose as they attempt to create or expand constellations. Each constellation scores a number of points equal to the number of lines it’s composed of, with any adjacent planets and the odd shooting star scoring too. But there’s a couple…

Designer: Sebastien Dujardin | Publisher: Pearl Games There’s many places I hope to visit one day; be it the 230ft Darvaza gas crater in Turkmenistan, burning hot since the 1980s, or perhaps just a slightly interesting tree alongside the A32. Close to the top of my list though, is the beautiful Lofoten archipelago in Norway. Alas, Lofoten isn’t really about these dramatically jagged mountainous coastlines. Nor is it really about the equally dramatic lives of its historic Norse residents. In truth, what designer Sebastien Dujardin has created here is a vaguely viking themed exercise in carefully loading sheep and fish onto boats; he couldn’t have sapped more theme from it if he tried. But, hey, we gamers are used to this kind of thing. Featuring hand management and a unique…

Designer: Jessica Metheringham & Mill Goble | Publisher: Dissent Games I’m pretty sure there is a generation of children who, like me, saw the film Ghostbusters when it appeared at the cinema and were wonderfully traumatised within the first fifteen minutes thanks to the library ghost. Fast forward to today and I can say that being surrounded by shelves of books still has me checking for floating old ladies. Library Labyrinth swaps ghosts for famous literature-based terrors, as you team up in order to send each terror back to where it belongs and halt the menacing Bookwyrm in its tracks. You start Library Labyrinth in the centre of a five-by-five grid of octagonal tiles. Each turn you’ll flip tiles on your turn in an attempt to map out your surroundings,…

Designer: Tim Sharville, Paul Sharville and Russ Law | Publisher: Gunpowder Studios A little giggle burbles like a stream across the table from me, as slowly, purposefully, I watch carrot after carrot clatter to the table, as my rabbit approaches the dark oblivion that just swallowed them whole. A much louder clatter follows, accompanied with even louder giggling. I can’t help but crack a smile as I lose the game. Rabbito, ‘a game for pushy rabbits,’ pits up to four players in the pursuit of orange root vegetables, which can only be collected by gently shoving them down various rabbit holes on the raised game board. Players start the turn by rolling the red and white dice, which will provide the coordinates to place a randomly drawn tile. Most of…

Designer: Prospero Hall | Publisher: Funko Games From the off, Disney Animated starts with the charm offensive. I defy anyone who plays this not spend time looking at the care and attention that has gone into the quality of components on offer. Everything, from the cel character cards to the power tokens, are designed to push all of those nostalgia buttons and make you want to get the game to the table as fast as possible. You’re all animators trying to finish the film you are working on before deadline. Unfortunately, the main villains of these films are trying to stop you completing their film and therefore prevent their untimely demise. You must work with others to finish the various parts of your film, from the background to the characters,…

Designer: Matt Fantastic and Andrea Pincumbe | Publisher: Lucky Egg Bake It Happen managed to pass the ultimate test for a younger family board game: my niece loves it after originally refusing to play. She was obstinate that nothing was better than her tablet, sternly frowning at videos of toy unboxings, whilst I sat next to her looking at the deck of recipe cards. Her head peeked over the screen at the sight of beautifully illustrated pink donuts. Then she asked if she could look through the deck. Then when I asked her if she wanted to play and brought out the chef’s hat the game came with, the tablet was immediately left on the sofa as she beamed under the brow of her new white floppy headwear. Bake it…

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: Nate Linhart | Publisher: Thunderworks Games 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…

Designer: Andy Kim | Publisher: Smirk & Dagger Games No other cooperative game manages to make removing cubes from the board as satisfying as Pandemic. A newcomer to the scene has to offer something extraordinary to escape Pandemic’s gigantic shadow, and The Spill definitely gives it a good try. The Spill’s most compelling success is the tight interweaving between the game’s theme and the mechanics. Players are a response team coming out to the ocean to a recent accidental oil rig spillage. They will have to contain the spill, while attempting to save the local sea wildlife. In The Spill, ‘the cubes on a map’ take the form of black dice (representing oil) that can populate the circular board of four sectors each divided into six lanes, corresponding to the…

Designer: Hjalmar Hach | Publisher: Horrible Guild 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-you-choose’ 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…

Designer: Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling | Publisher: Game Brewer Whilst you may never have heard of Carrara marble, it’s highly probable you have seen it. Having been mined since Alexander the Great’s domination, it features in world-renowned landmarks including Rome’s Pantheon, Oslo’s Opera House and London’s Marble Arch. Even Michelangelo was a fan of working with it. Now it’s your turn to handle with care in The Palaces of Carrara. Players work by royal decree to zhuzh up Tuscany’s architecture. Each person works as an independent designer, buying different grades of marble from the communal market to transform into ascending grades of building in the cities of their choice. Victory points are earnt throughout the game – the exact time decided by the player – as well as at…

Designer: Scott Almes | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 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…

Designer: Przemyslaw Fornal & Adam Kwapinski | Publisher: Board & Dice Nearly fifty years ago, a farmer was digging a well with his five brothers and a neighbour when his spade struck something hard. Buried in the earth was a terracotta head that they first thought was from a statue of the Buddha. As it turned out, under the fields of persimmon and pomegranates was a vast army of thousands of life-sized clay warriors, including some on horse-drawn chariots, and a mausoleum the size of an ancient city. In Terracotta Army you take the role of Third Century BCE artisans, charged with constructing the huge clay army that will accompany Emperor Qin Shi Huang into the afterlife (perhaps a little earlier than he would have preferred, given that he drank…

Designer: Paul Dennen | Publisher: Dire Wolf At the first glance, Clank!: Catacombs might look like just a new edition of Clank!: The Deck Building Game. The premise is the same: you are a band of adventurers searching for the artefacts in the dungeon, guarded by a scary dragon. The dungeon is deep and full of mysteries and monsters, and your every misstep or loud clank of a sword alert the dragon to your presence. As a simple explorer, you have no chance in a fight against the dragon, but you can try to escape the dungeon before the creature’s scolding fires make a BQQ out of you. The main mechanics are also the same: Clank! is a deckbuilding game. Each player starts with an identical hand of cards, which…

Designer: Thomas Franken | Publisher: Pangaia Games Some board games have a strong table presence, Forests of Pangaia makes a table statement. It’s not necessarily a moralising one but having played this game composed of beautiful sustainably sourced stackable wooden trees, it is hard not to leave the table in awe of the beauty of the forests and thinking of just how much human intervention disrupts the natural dance of growth and decay. The gameplay strongly links into that tree growth cycle and adds a little bit of magic to it. As players, you control the forest spirits, fantastical creatures that travel around the gridded terrain of four biomes, represented by snow, wind, sun and rain, to plant seeds. Through the subsequent rounds of the game, these seeds would come…

Designer: KC Schrimpl | Publisher: Lost Boy Entertainment Just like trains and wars, pirates rank pretty highly on the list of done-to-death themes. Whether it’s doing Queen Elizabeth I’s dirty work in Francis Drake or hiring shipmates in Port Royal, us board gamers are often to be found upon the seven seas. Some of us have even been at it since childhood, innocently stabbing swords into barrels until pirates pop out – straight into the Royal Doulton. All of this is enough to make you wonder if the theme is a little bit… stagnant. Can anything be done to scrub down the decks for a refresh? Plunder has an idea. Why not give players upgradable boats to traverse a randomisable board? And why not send them on a voyage of…

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Designer: Kamil Ciesla, Robert Plesowicz, Lucasz Wlodarczyk | Publisher: Awaken Realms When The Great Wall Kickstarted back in 2019, publisher Awaken Realms promised a “fresh take on Euro/worker-placement board games”. Now that it’s finally on our table – filling up most of the available surface with its prodigious board, serried ranks of finely detailed miniatures and impressive cardboard 3D wall sections – we’re happy to confirm they’ve made good on that promise, bringing something new to a well-worn genre. Each player takes the role of a general in pseudo-medieval China, randomly chosen from a deck, with each character benefitting from its own unique power. The aim is to earn the most honour (a.k.a. Victory Points) by contributing to the repulsion of the ever-attacking Mongol hordes. Mostly, this requires assigning clerks…

Designer: Daryl Andrews & Adrian Adamescu | Publisher: Floodgate Games It’s always tricky to review anything where spoilers are an issue and Sagrada Artisans is no exception. You’ll have to forgive me for being vague as I attempt to keep the mystery, but rest assured that I’ve played the whole campaign and thoroughly enjoyed it. I wasn’t overly enamoured with the original Sagrada dice game when it released. It arrived at an unfortunate time, as Azul was blowing the abstract gaming world away and had totally won me over. Plus, I took an irrational dislike to the tiny dice. It was a solid puzzler that didn’t have quite enough going on to make it onto my shelves. Anyone familiar with the original Sagrada will be on familia ground here. Players…

Designer: Carmen G Jimenez | Publisher: Devir Jerusalem, AD 33. Trouble is brewing. There’s a man down the chip shop who swears he’s the messiah, but the bigwigs say he’s just a very naughty boy. All you and your fellow followers care about is a seat at his next dinner party – preferably next to the man of the hour. Getting there will take ruthless patience in Ierusalem: Anno Domini, an engaging and neatly conceived debut about area control. The first step is moving followers off your individual playing board one at a time and onto the central board locations. The desert, mountain and lake offer resources – stone, bread, fish – that will buy you a seat. Get the most followers in a location and you can join the…

Designer: Shem Phillips | Publisher: Garphill Games I am a solo gamer who, when not dungeon crawling, really likes campaign, legacy and storybook games, even those not designed for solo play. Legacy of Yu did not disappoint. In this game you (or Yu) are digging canals at the behest of Emperor Shun of the Xia Dynasty. There is a local town which supplies workers, provisions and building materials for this enterprise, but it also attracts the attention of barbarians. You win the game if you can build six sections of canal and reduce barbarians to two or fewer at the time of building the final section, but lose if you run out of townsfolk, if the barbarians completely overrun you or if the flood wave overcomes your site. Win or…

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: Leo Colovini | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele 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…

Designer: Alan R. Moon | Publisher: Days of Wonder There is a classic trio of games that has often pulled people inexorably into this hobby; Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne and Ticket To Ride. Relatively easy to pick up, full of interesting player interactions and imbued with the delightful tactility of placing a little wooden house here, a man in a field there and a lovely train… somewhere. However, fantastic as they all are, their accessibility to younger children is still a little limited. Ticket To Ride: Ghost Train aims to correct this omission with a simpler ruleset and playlength, allowing the teeniest members of the family to jump aboard the adventure. Whilst there is a “spooky” theme, parents need not be concerned, nobody is going to have nightmares after running…

Designer: Frank Crittin, Gregoire Largey, Sebastien Pauchon | Publisher: Next Move Games Sometimes you aren’t looking for an intense game. Sometimes it just been a really long day – or a busy week – and you find yourself hankering for something gentle. You like the idea of something to get your brain thinking-but-not-hurting, a challenge somewhere short of an actual puzzle. Perhaps it might have a little player interaction, enough to let you niggle your opponent, to toy with them, but also to let you focus on the pretty stuff in front of you. Does any of the above resonate? If so, Maui may well be the game you don’t have yet. It certainly doesn’t hurt that “the pretty stuff” in this case is arranging colourful towels on the sun-drenched…

Designer: Frederic Guerard | Publisher: Catch Up Games 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…

Designer: Peter Ridgeway | Publisher: Pandasaurus Games In Wildstyle, you are part of a graffiti-spraying crew tagging city streets. The goal is to tag more than your rival crews. Although the exact location is unspecified, the city depicted on the district-based board looks distinctly NYC. Called “the map”, the board is pieced together by sections that match the number of players at the table. On each is a hive of hexagons with various symbols that represent places to tag – railways, parks and so on – each worth a different number of points. Suffice to say that scribbling on the police station carries the greatest reward. Tagging takes place via set collection. Snaffle three of the same icon and you can place one of your tokens on a corresponding hex.…

Designer: Simon Milburn & Caezar Al-Jassar | Publisher: Alley Cat Games Let’s get one thing out of the way before anything else. Catstronauts is cute. Like, weapons grade cute. From the customisable catstronauts themselves, to the tiny kitten meeples, this is the equivalent of a cat giving you those big, loveable eyes while they purr for more treats. However, is there any depth beyond the sweet little kitties? Well, the easy answer is ‘no, not really’ but the more difficult answer is a bit longer… which is a good job because I’ve got a word count to fill. Catstronauts is an incredibly easy to play reaction game that can be taught in seconds. You start by choosing your four catstronauts, which are numbered one to four (more on that in…

Designer: Tanner Simmons | Publisher: Kosmos The table is hushed. Two agents are stacked with intel. I look between Agent C and Agent J, unsure which is the insider. Agent C kept a steely silence as the mission is declared. Agent J stared me dead in the eyes. Four words: “I like Peanut Butter.” My mind unravels. This is the espionage trick-taking delight, known as Inside Job. Two to five players are dealt out a hidden role. Most are agents, whose mission is to successfully meet a specific requirement each turn (better known as a ‘trick’) such as “the second and third cards must have matching suits.” Regardless if the mission is successful or not, whoever wins the trick takes an intel token. One player is the Insider, secretly looking…

Designer: Torben Ratzlaff | Publisher: Pandasaurus Cosy, but deadly. Such are the numerous inlets of the Nordic coast and such is Beacon Patrol, a co-operative game for 1-4 players that at first glance looks so gentle and undemanding, that you might be tempted to drift into a tea-addled stupor, half-concentrating as you enjoy the blue skies and softly lapping waves. If you do that, you are going to get murdered. Beacon Patrol has your table working together to map the Nordic coastline, noting the positions of unstaffed lighthouses, buoys, offshore wind turbines and more. You do this by drawing and laying tiles, then moving the little wooden token representing your boat into the new area. At the end of the game, you score points for each tile that is surrounded…

Designer: Evgeny Petrov | Publisher: Alley Cat Games I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the Roman Empire has fallen. Hooray! Too many people focus on the loss of a long-standing culture and collapse of a civilised society into barbarism, when instead they could be divvying up those tasty vineyards and deciding who swiped the coolest stuff. Rome in a Day proves that, whilst it may have taken longer than 24 hours to build, it’ll take you less than 30 minutes to dice and disseminate. Over four rounds, players will create a new land by grafting together Roman remnants into the optimal, point-producing position. Everyone starts with the same stack of 20 lands, which are shuffled and revealed over the game, with five new tiles…

Designer: Cait Russell and Matt Tweed | Publisher: Sea Griffin Games Some games can evoke the simple pleasures in life. There’s a reason why toys of yesteryear like the diabolo have faded from the playrooms of today, but we will forever have our trusty building blocks to foster the next generation of construction workers or demolitionists. Dice Splice may not be the most thought-provoking game out there, but by goodness does it satisfy that part of our brains that likes to see something slowly build up before it comes crashing down. Dice Splice is a quick dexterity game for up to six players. You are pirates trying to stack up your stolen booty aboard ship, but are struggling to avoid causing a ‘Treasurelanche.’ Across the many different game modes, the…

Designer: Banana Chan & Jason Slingerford | Publisher: Skybound Tabletop Not a month goes by where we get party game attempting to be the next Obama Llama and Exploding Kittens. Some of them will attempt to gain a level of notoriety by being the next ‘hilarious adult party game,’ that if you play in front of a group of friends at least half of them will get up and leave part way through, taking their chilli hummus dip with them. No Context thankfully isn’t one of those crass attempts at comedy, but is instead a game that revolves around art created by Mr. Lovenstein, requiring you to use a series of completely unconnected pictures to persuade everyone else to select a particular card. You start by laying out a series…

Designer: Gunter Burkhardt | Publisher: Lookout Spiele When I first picked up Gunter Burkhardt’s Tipperary, my mind, jumped to the famous First World War marching song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” I had always pictured this yearned-for land, so far from the realities of war, as an imagined one, with the name chosen for its musicality perhaps. It was quite the discovery to learn that Tipperary is actually Ireland’s largest inland county, famed for much more than its wartime hit. In this largely cheerful tile-laying game, Tipperary evokes a similar sense of wistful longing, as players construct their square-edged simulacrums of bucolic perfection and lingering mysticism. This is a game set in a specific place at an unspecified time and, within the loose confines of abstract rules, allows players…

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: Wim Goosens | Publisher: Game Brewer 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.…

Designer: Maikel Cheney, Dr. Hans Joachim Hoh, Tobias Immich | Publisher: Funtails 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…

Designer: David Tascini & Simone Luciani | Publisher: Board & Dice Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. It’s Renaissance Europe. You’re playing as a merchant, and there’s quite a bit of beige on the board. There are resources to collect such as wool, stone, and iron. And you can use them to get victory points in a variety of ways. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the latest in dicey, tiley, action selection euro games. But is Tiletum worth your tile-time? A game of Tiletum plays over four rounds during which each player selects and uses three dice, each gaining them both resources and actions. In addition, there are a number of tasks players can do at any time during a turn. Each round ends with a fair, where…

Designer: Alexandar Ortloff & Matt Leacock | Publisher: Z-Man Games 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, flood-fighting, 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…

Designer: Rob Daviau, Stephen Baker | Publisher: Wizards of the Coast 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…

Designer: Michael Dunsmore & Jordan Nichols | Publisher: Alley Cat Games Despite its ubiquity, representing warfare and combat on the tabletop is tricky, even under the creatively liberating guise of science-fiction or fantasy. Sure, certain formulas have cemented themselves in the hobby over the years – from the drawn out detail of hex and counter games to the slicker, miniature showcasing mayhem of skirmish titles. But whilst each format offers a fun or interesting simulacrum of conflict, few tackle the micro-moments of frantic tension and unpredictable chaos one associates with the throes of battle. In Star Fighters: Rapid Fire, designers Michael Dunsmore and Jordan Nichols seek to rectify this with a surprisingly logical approach: Realtime dice-chucking. Star Fighters: Rapid Fire is a quick-playing, tactical space combat game for one to…

Designer: Ian Cooper, Jan Gonzalez | Publisher: Wizkids It’s been thousands of years since ecological catastrophe forced humanity to shelter underground. Finally, you and several factions of scientists are ready to emerge and restore the planet Gaia. The race is on to engineer a variety of habitats and populate them with appropriate animals. Mechanically, this involves moving your little Shaper figure across the hex-based board, plopping down restored ‘biomes’ which represent different types of terrain like water and forest, plus less familiar ones like ‘mushroom’ and ‘temple’. You can also place animals in biomes by spending resources appropriate to the terrain. This involves taking a token from your playerboard and placing it on the main board because yes, this is a game with playerboards, and yes, it’s one where taking…

Designer: Vladimir Suchy & Ross Arnold | Publisher: Rio Grande Games Deep within the elves’ magical forest, light industry shatters the tranquil sylvan idyll. A series of rival carpentry concerns spring up, competing to transfer centuries of ancient growth into tables, violins and artisanal crates. Over a worryingly small number of rounds, you’re going to grab wood from the lumber yard and open market, pick up orders from prospective customers, chop, glue and bodge your wood to the necessary side and earn some sweet sweet profit, which in this world comes in the form of blueberries. The player who, at the end of it all, has the most victory points (represented, logically enough, by hazelnuts) will be the winner. Woodcraft is a game of picking actions and managing an economy…

Designer: Tory Brown | Publisher: Fort Circle Games Women, a novel concept, but one that has been taken too far? This is one of the positions that you are (sort of) asked to take as one of the factions in this battle for the right to vote for the fairer sex. Votes For Women is a cube-shuffling war game that swaps the usual ‘kill the cubes, control the area’ for a metaphor of influencing each US state house to ratify the 19th amendment. This is a historical game, but not one that demands reading ahead, and one that is pitched for a more mass-market audience. The history pamphlet is slim, but there’s a bushel of historical props – facsimiles of real documents of the time – in the box that…

Designer: Dave Conklin | Publisher: 25th Century With some games, it’s love at first play. Blazon, a design-your-own-crest venture about medieval heraldry, isn’t one of them. It takes several plays for its charms to come forth – a grower rather than a shower, if you will. Once revealed there is much to covet. Deceptively simple, this is a set collection game with the expected requirements of hand management and communal drafting. At set-up, players possess a shield-shaped board with ten empty squares for cards. The aim is to fill the board with a mix of device and tincture cards to create a high-scoring design. Tincture cards? For many, such highfalutin speak will be unfamiliar. Novices will learn a fair bit about heraldry from Blazon – not enough to win Mastermind,…

Designer: Haakon Hoel Gaarder | Publisher: Sinister Fish Games This game feels like it was designed to ensnare me. On my very first day in the office at TTG HQ, I sat down at my work station to this my predecessor’s last unopened present from a publisher. Inside was Moon, a sci-fi drafting and card tableau game for 1-5 players (yes, a solo mode for a drafting game that’s also fun!) where across three eras of play they will build their lunar settlement, adding production sites which fuel future purchases and structure cards which earn points. Points can be earned by building structures worth a fixed number of hearts, gathering or investing specific resources to feed into special structures or by obtaining flag rewards. Structures can have flags from five…

Designer: Brandt Brinkerhoff | Publisher: Lucky Duck Games Oros is a 1-4 player game of sliding tiles and raising islands out of the ocean. You play as demigods who each seek to expand their portfolio of followers, becoming more powerful and ultimately ascending to dominance. The action takes place both on your very inviting player board and the central grid where islands shift, collide and rise ever higher. Your player board has a bunch of actions to pick from, which are upgraded significantly as the game progresses. Using these actions you can construct monoliths, shrines and temples on the central grid, as well as acquiring new followers. Oros combines a light engine-builder with a light spatial puzzle. Whenever sections of island collide, they’ll rise a little farther out of the…

Designer: Keith Matejka | Publisher: Pencil First Games Maul Peak follows on the back of Pencil First’s previous behemoth climbing game Skulk Hollow, bringing with it a new story and an individual identity from its predecessor, while maintaining the main mechanics of the first game. For those not familiar with the series, two players will take either side of a fight for survival, as a team of animals is tasked with protecting their village from the incoming onslaught of a guardian, or the big beastie who is trying to wipe out the Grizzars (badass bear-folk) in order to avenge its lost master. You’ll be playing on two game boards, one representing the Maul Peak Map (which is a three-by-three grid) and the other is a cut out of the guardian…

Designer: Łukasz Woźniak | Publisher: Go On Board, Cd Projekt Red Centuries before Geralt of Rivia stabbed his first nekker, mutagen-enhanced witchers roamed the Continent doing what they did best: hunting monsters, quaffing potions, having testy encounters with the locals, gambling in pubs and occasionally beating the crap out of each other. All this is precisely what you’ll get up to in The Witcher: Old World, which, despite being co-produced by CD Projekt, ignores The White Wolf and his chums entirely, serving up five of its own monster-botherers for you to choose from. Each witcher comes with their own player board and, in a nod to asymmetry, their own specialisation. You might be a School of the Wolf witcher, who excels in swordsmanship; or from the School of the Bear,…

Designer: Alban Viard | Publisher: AVStudioGames, Capstone Games The thing about railways, is that they tend to be quite big, with railway games often trying to emulate this with big boards. Look at something like Ticket to Ride, where you’re creating transcontinental lines across varied continents. Recently we’ve seen two train games that use a handful of cards instead, namely Village Rails and Isle of Trains, with now there’s a third, even smaller train game arriving at the station: Railways. Railways is part of a series of small games called Nano9games, that consist of nine cubes, nine cards and nine dice. Even within those limitations, designer Alban Viard has created a game with a surprising amount of variety packed in. Eight of the nine cards are double-sided, acting as either…

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 postapocalyptic 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: 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…

Designer: Marc Andre & Bruno Cathala | Publisher: Space Cowboys 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…

Designer: Phil Walker-Harding | Publisher: CMON Monolyth is a fairly simple concept to explain: build a square tower out of 3D Tetris-style pieces, aiming to beat your opponent at building certain shapes, completing layers and finishing off the whole cube. Along the way, try to predict the colours on each side of your tower for extra points. If you hadn’t told me anything about the creator of Monolyth, after playing it once I would say they’d had two key influences; the piece selection and tetromino placement from Patchwork, and a varied range of point awards with steadily decreasing value from Bärenpark. Turns out my instincts were at least partially right, since this is the latest project from Phil Walker-Harding, the actual designer of Barënpark, and someone who quotes Patchwork as…

Designer: Eli Thomas Wolf | Publisher: Blue Orange Games “Competitive Secret Mushroom Picking” is one of those themes I didn’t know I wanted in a game until I had it. Wonder Woods is one such game and by goodness if it doesn’t deliver a half-hour of hurriedly hoping your horticultural hoarding heralds happiness. The game is simple: each of the four different mushrooms has a set of four points cards, numbered 1, 3, 5 and 7. At the start of the game, each mushroom’s set is shuffled and one card placed face down near its matching board. The remaining cards are then shuffled together and distributed to the players, so everyone has some idea of how much each mushroom could be worth (for example, if you have the morel cards…

Designer: Andreas Faul | Publisher: Capstone Games Terra Mystica, on which Terra Nova is based, has been around for a decade. It received high praise on release and has continued to garner it ever since, regularly featuring in ‘best strategy games of all time’ lists. Its mechanisms spawned sci-fi spin-off Gaia Project, which now sits even higher on many of those lists. So, with such lofty heritage, what does Terra Nova hope to bring to the party? The simple answer is probably volume sales. The hobby is growing, but the family market is where real sales are found. I’m a fan of both Gaia Project and Terra Mystica, but both are heavy Eurogames. There are lots of moving parts to consider on every move, requiring high levels of strategic and…

Designer: Klaus-Jurgen Wrede | Publisher: Hans im Gluck Carcassonne is a staple of the hobby, an entry point, a way in for many gamers. It’s got the frisson of conflict, being a bit sneaky by working your way into a larger castle having done almost none of the work, and the gentle points-bedamned creation of a weird map. Kids love it, drunk people love it, and most people between. It has a ton of expansions – too many to use all at once we’d say, as we’ve tried it. When you get into the third hour of the expansion-based bloat of your own making (no one said you needed to use towers and dragons, that’s on you) you might ask – what if there was something simpler? A refined Carcassonne…

Designer: Richard Garfield | Publisher: IELLO Oh I see how it is, when we’re trashing beloved capital cities we’re “monsters” and “need to be stopped,” but the moment something threatens to bury the whole world in magma, we’re now “titans” and “actually quite cool?” Well since you asked so nicely, I guess we can put aside our city stomping activities and various past grudges to defeat the King of Monster Island. It’s been a few years since Richard Garfield has explored the delightfully silly King Of… series, with Monster Island taking the original’s battle Yahtzee concept and shifting your attention away from destroying your friends, to instead facing a new cardboard creature from the depths of Earth’s molten core. Each player is a giant monster (with five new B-Movie beast…

Designer: Charlie McCarron | Publisher: Adam’s Apple Games Before the miracles of modern medicine, diagnoses of illness and behavioural traits were guided by theories on humorism. Applying such theories to myself – whereby pains and personality traits can be determined through identification of imbalances in four bodily fluids – would likely turn up an excess of black bile and phlegm (nice), indicating a touch of melancholy and reservedness. Unfortunately, nowadays – unlike the hues of these particular fluids – things aren’t so black-and-white. But for a moment, lets step back to a time when humorism was in its heyday. Four Humours is an area-majority game of deduction and bluffing set in a pastel-painted, anglo-esque medieval kingdom. As doctors of the middle-ages, players will be competing for medical fame, travelling the…

Designer: Johannes Krenner & Markus Slawitscheck | Publisher: Z-Man Games I was totally ready to dislike Challengers. A sort-of capture the flag game with very variable set-ups and a Fortnite ‘wacky but somehow a bit bland’ aesthetic. Then I realised what Challengers actually is: it’s an ‘auto-battler’ in the style of Hearthstone’s ‘Battlegrounds’ mode. It’s a tabletop version of my favourite extremely lazy gaming experience. During the early days of parenthood it was a vital way of staying awake while on ‘shift’. These games offer a kind of ‘hands off’ card game experience where the combat isn’t directed by the player, and is instead random. The fun comes from creating good combinations of cards and general team composition. The strategy is what comes before the luck-based ‘battle’ – the key…

Designer: Adam E. Daulton | Publisher: Kids Table Board Games I’m not particularly green fingered, if I’m honest. My last attempt to grow anything involved chilli plants and, well, let’s just say that after spending £50 on the project and most of a year’s hard work, there were less than fifty grams of chillies to show for my effort. And they weren’t even very spicy! I’m much more excited about fictitious plant life, especially when it comes bedded in such a beautiful package. The core of the game involves laying brightly coloured patch tiles onto the table. These tiles could easily just have been hexagons, but instead these are just slightly curved and pointed, creating a very appealing visual flourish, one that still tessellates beautifully whilst gaining an organic overtone.…

Designer: Inka and Markus Brand | Publisher: Super Meeple and Tiki Editions “I can’t see the grey block! I can see two yellows. Two yellows. TWO! We’ve only got 10 seconds. Where’s the white? The white! Can you see a white? I can’t see a white. Hide the white. I SAID TWO YELLOWS! Yes. Yes! It goes there. THERE! Done!” And that, folks, is a very typical exchange in Recto Verso - a tactile, block-building game that requires you and a partner to work together to arrange up to 11 chunky wooden blocks in a particular pattern while racing against the clock. The issue is that each of you can only see one side of the completed pattern, so you must communicate and (hopefully) explain where certain blocks have to…

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: Kosmos I’ve said before that designer Dr Reiner Knizia is constitutionally incapable of making a duff game. This is almost certainly an exaggeration – he is legendarily prolific and nobody has a one hundred percent hit rate – but the somewhat less hyperbolic version of this statement is that he maintains an astonishing consistency across his output. If you pick up one of his games, you can be assured of a certain base rigour in the design and you’re probably in for a fun time. What you won’t know is what the game’s about, because with his prolific output has come a willingness to try all sorts of different mechanisms. There isn’t really a signature Knizia style or feel, except that, at their core, the…

Designer: Rodrigo Rego | Publisher: Devir Games There’s a saying which goes “Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail.” If you are one of the adorable critters who inhabit Savernake Forest with autumn disappearing and winter approaching, then you’d better have this above your bed, or at the very least on a t-shirt. Savernake Forest is a game about playing card tiles, building paths through the forest and gathering food to prepare for the end of the year. There’s a decent number of components and cards contained within. The palette here is of muted browns and reds and greens, all designed to put you in the gathering mood as you create a square of sixteen cards, trying to maximise your foraging and the points you gain for each animal that is…

Designer: Michael Palm and Lucas Zach | Publisher: Pegasus Spiele Some games thrive on chaos - players shouting at each other, objects flying across the room and a leader board that changes more often than a baby’s nappy. Others love tension - the creeping pressure of a shared objective, or the threat of a rival taking that special item or space you NEED. Dorfromantik, on the other hand, is a game so chill that it makes a sloth look positively energetic. It’s the board game equivalent of a warm bath with candles and relaxing music, followed by a lovely cuddle. Based on the videogame of the same name, Dorfromantik is a co-operative tile-laying game, in which you try to beat your high score by careful placement of tile groups. The…

Designer: Peter B Hoffgaard | Publisher: Czech Games Edition In Starship Captains, you assume command of a—mostly—functional star ship, jetting around the galaxy solving diplomatic crises, fighting pirates and occasionally indulging in shady deals to further your interests. You do this by assigning ensigns of varying colours to different actions – red for movement, yellow for combat, and blue for research. As the game goes on, you’ll recruit new crew members, promote existing ones and acquire droids for away missions, whilst upgrading your ship and earning those all-important medals. The production of Starship Captains is a rare thing: lavish, without bloat, each component contributing to the game. The cardboard standees for your ships really pop, and the tricolour crew members you use for actions – plus the grey cadets –…

Designer: Corey Konieczka | Publisher: Unexpected Games 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 & deduction 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…

Designer: Shem Phillips & S J Macdonald | Publisher: Renegade Game Studios Kicking off Garphill Games latest series following the North Sea and West Kingdom trilogies is Wayfarers of the South Tigris, a worker and dice placement title of cartographic set-collection. But that sounds somewhat reductive; it turns out mapping the land, seas, and stars surrounding Baghdad is a touch more complex than that. Indeed, across it’s substantial (yet variable) game-length, players will be optimising their own dice-placement spots, navigating an unpredictable market of public workers, and building a personal panoramic tableau from no less than five different decks. So, as you might’ve guessed, Wayfarers leans toward the heavier end of Garphill’s spectrum, but does this weight lead to something that feels fun or new? The short answer is yes.…

Designer: Rola & Costa | Publisher: Pile Up Games 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…

Designer: Rob Lemon | Publisher: Gilded Skull Games Battle of the Ancients is both the second standalone release in the Dark Venture line, and also the second title from designer/publisher Rob Lemon. Just like its predecessor, it has a dark vibe blending science fiction and fantasy to form the backdrop of a stylized alien world. It’s an enthralling setting, carried between both games, and it’s full of sensation and wonder. That’s about as far as the commonalities go between both Dark Venture releases. The previous title was an adventure game, reminiscent of titles like Runebound, Xia: Legends of the Drift, and Western Legends. You controlled a single character, wandered around a map, and made story decisions with branching choose-your-own-adventure elements. Battle of the Ancients is a skirmish game. It’s more…

Designer: Lukasz M Pogoda | Publisher: Portal Games Medieval Florence wants a sweet new church. However, in an embarrassing double-booking, both the bishop and the queen have hired different men to design it. Rather than risk telling her madge that her chosen designer sucks, the bishop goes ahead and lets both men build the church together. At various stages, the queen will arrive and judge their work, and whoever makes the best contribution will win. It’s like a thunderdome for architects. In game terms, this means taking tiles from a small tableau and either laying them out to construct the basilica, or playing them for the action on their reverse side. Adjacent tiles of the same colour form areas that score you points if you’ve placed the most builders in…

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: Trick or Treat Studios Human game factory Dr Reiner Knizia has designed a lot of titles over his – in boardgame terms – long career, and many of his older designs have been republished under new names with new themes. It’s possible for fans of his work to have conversations that go something like ‘Have you ever played Loco?’ ‘No, but I loved Botswana.’ ‘Hey you two should play Wildlife Safari.’ Before a fourth person points out they’re all talking about the same game. So, it is with Nightmare Productions, previously known as Hollywood Blockbuster and Dream Factory, but now rethemed from Hollywood’s Golden Age to horror movies. Along with your fellow producers, you’re going to be finding directors, musical scores and monsters for horror…

Designer: Fabio Lopiano & Nestore Mangone | Publisher: Alley Cat Games 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…

Designer: Amabel Holland | Publisher: Hollandspiele In August 1914, Ernest Shackleton led a British expedition to cross Antarctica overland, from sea to freezing sea. It did not go well. In January 1915 his ship, the Endurance, became trapped in pack ice and was eventually crushed to splinters. During the following two years, he and his 27-man crew (along with their sled dogs and a cat named Mrs. Chippy) suffered sub-zero temperatures and malnutrition as they struggled to survive and seek rescue. Astonishingly, by the time Shackleton secured the recovery of his crew, not a single man had died. In the long, painful history of disastrous expeditions, it was nothing less than a miracle. The sheer unlikeliness of the Shackleton expedition’s 100 percent survival rate couldn’t be better rammed home than…

Designer: Adam Kwapiński | Publisher: Glass Cannon Unplugged Re-imagining video games as board games has historically been a rocky endeavour. Some in pursuit of authenticity make the transformation too literal. Others rely only on artwork and setting to play into fan’s nostalgia. Yet, occasionally, a game finds that sweet spot that satisfies the most fervent video game and board game fans and Frostpunk: The Board Game is that occasion. The developers of the video game, the polish studio 11 bit Studios had previous experience in bringing a video game to the tabletop, with the survival game This War Is Mine, which saw players as non-military survivors living in the besieged city. The studio’s interest in darker and morally grey themes continues with Frostpunk as well. Here, players are transported to…

Designer: Friedemann Friese | Publisher: 2F-Spiele Friendmann Friese continues his long-standing tradition of starting his board games names with “F,” with his newest creation, Findorff. Through it, players are teleported to a district of Findorff in Bremen, Germany (Friese’s hometown). Once a humble bog until Jürgen Christian Findorff (after whom the district takes its name) drained it, extracting the peat. This lead to an economic and population boom, with massive construction projects throughout the district, boosted by railroads and canal routes. Players oversee the building of now historic structures, turning the board from pastel muted colours into a vibrant cityscape, filled with such wonders as a train station, peat skipper shelter, chair pipes factory and more. To do that, players will use a wide range of gaming mechanisms like engine…

Designer: Klaus-Jurgen Wrede | Publisher: Funtails Building pyramids is hard work. Having to run around to build these triangular edifices faster than your rivals, doing so whilst also having to prep for an annual sacrifice to the Gods? Exhausting. The core mechanic to Caral is unique and compelling. Players compete as fame-hungry master builders, trying to build pyramids as they work in a spiral path around the board. Each controls an alpaca-powered sled, filling them with stone blocks at quarries and dragging them to building sites. Action spaces around the board allow you to add workers to quarries and building sites, get more alpacas and pick up cards. The mysterious Architect moves in an unpredictable shuffle behind the players, circling down the spiral and preventing any actions further out. This…

Designer: Paolo Mori | Publisher: Space Cowboys Some games struggle to find a way to combine beautiful visuals with an elegant straightforward mechanic, but then not all games are Archeos Society, an archaeology-themed set collection card game for 2-6 budding explorers. Across six continents (sorry Antarctica) are various historical sites, where you can send out expeditions to earn prestige. On your turn, you can either draw a card to find another member for a future expedition, or play a set of cards from your hand. All cards must either be the same colour or role with one card designated as your expedition leader. Each continent is split into multiple steps. To progress on each, you need to play an expedition led by someone with a matching colour and a minimum…

Designer: Vangelis Bagiartakis and Varnavas Timotheou | Publisher: Hegemonic Project Hegemony is a high-concept political game where players take the role of one of four parts of a nation: the Capitalists, the Middle Class, the Working Class and the State. Each has different goals and scoring conditions. By manipulating labour markets, infrastructure and influencing the political conversation, they compete – and occasionally collude – to serve their own interests. The early feedback I heard from folks who got to Hegemony before me was qualified enthusiasm, with the ominous caveat that it was possibly ‘more interesting than fun.’ It’s certainly an ambitious idea and once set up the board is a telecom switchboard of tracks and resources. But does it stick the landing? Hegemony is not as intimidating as it first…

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…