Innehållsförteckning för Issue 98 från Tabletop Gaming

MLEM: SPACE AGENCY On first play, you won’t believe it’s possible to roll with enough luck to reach outer space, and then someone waltzes all the way up the board twice in one game. The scoring is tight, so a sensible play is often to jump off the ship at the first opportunity, even if the odds are still in your favour, and build up a solid score while everyone else squanders their chances chasing the big time. Still, it’s also possible to crash the rocket on the first roll. 13 BEAVERS As an avid Radio 1 fan, I couldn’t resist putting in this game, designed by DJ Matt Edmondson. It’s sickeningly simple: predict whether the next card will be higher or lower to advance your beaver through the waterways.…

It was only when Amazon Japan confirmed my order for both starter decks and two booster boxes of the first expansion of the Ultra Man Card Game that I realised I didn’t like Ultra Man. Well, that’s not fair, I don’t really know Ultra Man. Sure, I understand it’s a popular Japanese character but that’s about it. The thing is, I love trading card games. I mean, really love trading card games. When there’s a new one to be sampled, I am usually at the front of the queue. Honestly, I’m a little annoyed at myself for missing the launch of the Conan TCG. Not the barbarian, the detective from the popular Japanese manga! That’s where we are right now; new TCGs are launching so quickly that even for someone…

The oldest known board game originated in ancient Mesopotamia and the principles of our play haven’t changed all that much. Yet, there’s a disruptor. One that could significantly shift the industry entirely, and it can be found on your phone… A RISE IN DIGITAL GAMING The video game industry has never been seen as a direct competitor to tabletop gaming, as the market and style of play is completely different. There’s been some crossover between the two platforms, with stories and concepts adapted from one to the other. However, the kinds of technologies you might expect to see within the video game landscape are slowly making their way into the tabletop industry. It’s becoming more common for companion apps to be introduced that enhance gameplay, giving players an array of…

If you’ve read Tabletop Gaming for any length of time, you’ll know one of our regular contributors. Tim Clare has been writing for Tabletop Gaming for as long as I have, and it feels like in that same period of time, he’s always been writing a book. Occasionally I’d ask Tim to write a feature and he’d come back with a wealth of knowledge on it having investigated it for said book, and I was ever curious as to what it might turn out to be when it was finally published. Well, it’s here, and it’s The Game Changers: How Playing Games Changed the World and Can Change You Too, which Tim kindly gave me an advanced copy of. Between raising a toddler and an ever-growing pile of games to…

Designer: Chris Fisher & Nick Barker | Publisher: Devilfly Games I’m frankly astonished any game ever gets made, given the immense effort involved – the commissioning and production of art assets, the endless playtesting and refinement, putting it all together into a single box then getting that box onto the shelves and into the hands of appreciative gamers. Thus this debut title from Devilfly Games is a considerable achievement – components-wise, there’s a lot squeezed into a small box, and the card art of frontier kids disguised inside a trenchcoat and haggard canaries is appealing and flavourful. In Undermined! you play as gold rush era prospectors looking to find your fortune by digging into the hills in search of ore and precious gems. You do this each turn by rolling…

Designer: Paolo Mori and Francesco Sirocchi | Publisher: Osprey Games Battalion: War of the Ancients hinges around the idea that coordinating large groups of warriors in the ancient era was quite difficult. Runners, trumpets and flags are all imperfect solutions to conveying precise orders in the chaos of an ancient battlefield. Battalion captures the challenges of commanding an ancient army through a clever resource management puzzle. The designers have pulled a fantastic trick with Battalion’s order system. This single resource is able to abstractly represent several different aspects of battle while still being evocative of the clash unfolding on your table. The more you order a unit, the more they become fatigued. A unit composed of different warrior types is less cohesive than a unit of warriors all used to working together.…

Designer: Fabio Lopiano, Nestore Mangone | Publisher: Sorry We Are French It’s time to go boldly, or however that’s said, to the moon and set down humanity’s roots on the Shackleton crater in Shackleton Base. From basic infrastructure, you and your opponents will spend three rounds acquiring resources, constructing buildings and taking orders from the various corporations that have eyes on settling on the lunar satellite. Shackleton Base is a worker placement game with a lot of things going on. After drafting your starting resources, workers and turn order for the round, players take turns placing a worker onto the board to do one of many, many things. Each worker is one of three colours, either an engineer, a scientist or a technician; any astronaut can do any kind of…

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Welcome to a whole new year of gaming! Well, as we create the magazine in advance to meet strict print deadlines, I’m still struck with a festive mood, but that will certainly pass. Hopefully, I had some fantastic games under the Christmas Tree this year, and fingers crossed you did too. We parrot ‘New Year, New You’ every January, but that’s nonsense. I much prefer ‘New Year, New Games’, and there’s plenty for us to be excited about. From upcoming Kickstarter projects (See: Old Oak Games, our cover feature this month) to new games to get to the table (See: Kavango has landed, and our review is in this issue!), I’ve got a good feeling about this year… And a good feeling about this issue too! I hope you enjoy…

THE WORLD WE LEFT BEHIND The animated series Scavenger’s Reign has had a lot of, very deserved, buzz around it. A cargo ship crash lands on a mysterious world that is beautifully realised. It’s a story of survival, the strangeness of the Universe, and human connection. In a similar vein The World We Left Behind from Blinking Birch Games is a game that sets you as explorers, trying to figure out the history of a strange world. You draw on playing cards, laying out the flora, fauna, and past of an unknown world. How will you be changed by what you discover? SLUGBLASTER Another Forged in the Dark game I came across while reading some interviews with John Harper about Deep Cuts. It’s a game that Harper himself recommends so…

WANT TO TRY… RPGs FOR THE QUEEN If you’ve never played RPGs before, a great starting point is For The Queen. Now, For the Queen doesn’t bill itself as an RPG – instead, it calls itself a storytelling card game – but as the best part of RPGs are the stories that you create along the way, it’s a really good first foray into the genre, letting you explore the idea of assuming a character and making decisions on their behalf without the need for a Game Master. The game is really simple, you have a Queen that you are on a perilous journey with, and you’re going to be asked questions from the cards about your relationship. You’ll do this until you reach the card that tells you the…

IT’S A SELLOUT The entire show sold out for the first time in Essen Spiel’s long and storied history. The exhibitor space sold out a long time before the show, weekend visitor tickets sold out shortly before the event began, and all the daily tickets sold out in advance. This saw 204,000 people visit Essen Spiel over the four days, just a few thousand short of its record (209,000 in 2019). The show also felt more professionally run this year; a trend since COVID. Security seemed tighter, the app was super useful, and more refreshments were on offer. LOOT: THE FIRST OFFICIAL GAME FOR SPIEL ESSEN Another show first was the launch of an official Spiel game. Meeps the kitten became Spiel’s official mascot in 2023 and is all over…

Designer: Ben Lundquist | Publisher: Stone Blade Entertainment In the Venn diagram of board gamers and cat lovers, the middle section does a lot of heavy lifting. It makes sense if you wanted to design a game that was a twist on a classic, you’d add plenty of cute cats and some adorable dogs for good measure. You Gotta Be Kitten Me! takes the basic concept of a bluffing game like Liar Dice and dials up the cute factor to maximum. It’s the perfect opener for that cat themed games night you’ve been looking for an excuse to organise. Players have a hand of cards and take turns bidding higher and higher calls until one player calls out another, “No way,” they say, “You Gotta Be Kitten Me!” Your options…

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: Space Cowboys Petrichor, Hegemony and now Marabunta. Games with names so obscure you have to google what they mean, before adding the word to your permanent vocabulary. Marabunta is another term for an army ant, and that really is the name of the game. A miniature sized world is laid out in glorious technicolour before you in which you are leading an army of ants committed to colonising areas of the board, and scoffing as many cupcakes as is insectly possible. It’s perfectly designed for two players. The gameplay is tight and tense. Each turn one player reveals an action tile and rolls all six coloured dice. The dice allow you to conquer one hex of territory, with a number between 0 and 3. The…

Designer: Grégory Grard | Publisher: Scorpion Masqué A plastic bag is something you’ll definitely not find in this game. Its environmental credentials are second to none, and noticeable from the off. Stickers replace the traditional shrink wrap in a move that makes me wonder why we ever do any different. The game feels special right away and nothing disappoints. From theme to appearance to gameplay, Festival has it all. It’s got so much to offer from the very first play and leaves you plenty of room to improve your tile placement, tile stacking and crowd pleasing skills. It’s quick to learn and doesn’t take long to play either. No sooner has one display ended than you’ll want to start another. All you have to do to make the crowd “ooh”…

Designer: David Illescas | Publisher: Eclipse Editoria I’ve always been irritated by the old idiom cautioning against ‘too much of a good thing.’ It’s fatuous and misleading. There’s no good to be found in too much of anything – the clue is in the first three letters. But I’m going to use it here regardless; Skull Tales falls victim to having too much of a good thing. To determine what these ‘good things’ are, perhaps we could first ask what makes a good pirate adventure game. Searching for treasure? Exploring exotic islands and cursed caves? Battling monstrosities of pirate folklore? Sailing the open seas? Firing cannons in deadly ship warfare? Wandering around the pirate haven of Tortuga? Opportunities to yell out pirate cliches? Sword-fighting? Hooks? Booty? Skull Tales covers all…

Designer: Hunters Entertainment | Publisher: Jonathan Gilmour & Doug Levandowski There’s an idyllic point in many of our lives when our bicycle is an enabler of great adventure. My son is 8 and just beginning to whizz around the park with minimal supervision. Then, at some point, we get cars, and we get responsibilities, and the moment is lost. Kids on Bikes aims to keep that snapshot alive and kicking. As a second edition, it promised improvements on the first – rules clarifications, expanded gamemaster section, more storytelling sections and more, but did they work? Players begin by building a town together. Much of Kids on Bikes is very collaborative, and so the group generate their town together. Little limitation is suggested, although the recommendation is to go for a…

UNCONSCIOUS MIND Designer: Jonny Pac  Publisher: Fantasia Games  Artists: Andrew Bosley & Vincent Dutrait Perhaps in part fuelled by the recent success of other games featuring the lives and works of scientists as their theme, Unconscious Mind has been one of the year’s most highly anticipated games. It’s a mid-heavy weight eurogame based around the work of trailblazing Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud. The theme takes central stage, it’s a thoughtful game about dreams and the human mind. I enjoy that worker placement has evolved from farmers going out to take actions in fields, to selecting which seat you want at the Meeting Table. It’s a unique, ambitious theme and an intense, sprawling game. It looks amazing and a huge amount of work and care has gone into the appearance and…

Meet new people. If you fancy pitting your wits against new faces or just chatting about games with cool folk in the bar, then where better to find convivial souls.  See old friends. Games conventions are where the streams cross, and you’ll be amazed at the faces from the past you’ll run into. Try new games, some so new they’ve not been released yet. Or try old games. Or bring that dusty box from your shelf of shame, because these are the places that you’ll find the people who’ll play it with you. Meet designers and artists. They’re a friendly bunch, and even friendlier if you buy them a drink.  Buy cool stuff. From the latest releases to collectible rarities, small-press games you’ve never seen before, or esoterica (wooden GM…

Push Your Luck A board game mechanic where players have the option between stopping their turn at a safe place, or taking the chance to advance much further at the risk of losing all progress made. It’s a bit like a psychological assessment, playing push your luck games. A player’s attitude to their own luck says an awful lot about them. We all know someone who just never gets the right draw, whatever game they play. If they need a yellow, three greens will come out without fail. They’re usually playing the game opposite Little Miss Good Luck, who will make a completely subpar play on the off chance they get the very thing that they’re looking for and out it comes. Push your luck is a simple mechanic that…

Question is: Which cards are primed to make the most impact? It would be foolish to try giving a perfect list this early but I absolutely can give you some top contenders, such as… LILO – ESCAPE ARTIST Amber decks are no strangers to playing a little bit aggro. In fact, they’ve been using Lilo in their aggro decks since The First Chapter with Lilo – Making a Wish. A 1-cost card that can quest for 2 Lore is the most early-game pressure possible in the game and this has been an aggro favourite since the beginning. Well now we have a new Lilo and this one might be even better. It might be a 2-cost but it is at least inkable, always a bonus. You get 2 Lore for…

This month we’re off to the African continent, specifically, Ghana, on the West Coast. Between the savannahs and rainforests of this diverse country, communities have been nurturing a gaming scene for generations. The important question is, what were they playing? The mancala style game, Oware, is one of Ghana’s most common traditional pastimes, being the national game of the Bono State, Ashanti City-state, and Ghana in general. Its design revolves around the ‘sowing’ of ‘seeds’ along two opposing rows of six pits, with a large scoring ‘house’ at each end. Sowing involves choosing a pit, and taking its seeds, before sequentially distributing them. ‘Capturing’ only occurs when the final pit’s seeds number two or three exactly - with the same occurring to eligible preceding pits. The first to capture 25…

Azul is everyone’s favourite design game. This must be one of the most played games at the social events at my local games cafe. It’s simple and works well at all play counts. It gets your brain going, letting you plan as many moves ahead as you dare. Interaction is limited to accidental or intentional hate drafting. A strategic game of colours and patterns, Azul always looks great on the table. It’s a game of logic, forward planning and then adapting to new plans when the draft pool doesn’t include the tiles you were hoping for. If you like playing Azul you have no shortage of variations to try including versions with stained glass, pavilions and chocolate. When you’ve worked your way through those and want to try something different,…

Designer: Duncan Malloy, Pete Ward | Publisher: Rebellion Unplugged In the deluge of deluxe games, expansive Kickstarters, and expanding boxes, we sometimes lose sight of the reason we love games: the play’s the thing. Some games are spiky. They bristle with rules and complexity. Others are bright and smooth, welcoming us in. Joyride pulls up alongside the latter and invites us for a spin around the track in its vibrant vehicles. Joyride is a simple proposition. Get around a track a number of times. This isn’t a regular vehicular race though. This is more like Rally GT meets Mario Kart. Your fuel for your ride comes in the form of dice. Yes, it is effectively a roll & move game, but let’s not rush to judgement too quickly here. Gunning…

Designer: Jack Caesar and Matt Gilbert | Publisher: Mantic Entertainment and Team17 Back in 1995, an elite squad of invertebrates equipped with Uzis, blowtorches and … sheep, burrowed their way into the videogame world. And they have never really left. It has been nearly 30 years since the first armless worms were armed to their teeth and now, after dozens of sequels and spin-offs, there’s a new iteration for fans to enjoy – Worms: The Board Game. As you can imagine, this is more port from video to board than a re-invention. If you are expecting a terrain that you can destroy and cliff edges to prod off then you won’t be disappointed. At its heart, this is a miniature-vs-miniature war game played over a hexagonal map, which scales depending…

Designer: Florian Fay | Publisher: Sorry We Are French Only a year after In The Footsteps of Darwin, comes a new game In The Footsteps of Marie Curie. It feels like only the start of a long, ongoing series. It’s very classy and well made. The theme is evident throughout the game, and only daunting on first inspection. Okay, maybe on the second as well. I can promise you, there’s no prior knowledge needed about radium, or the events of the late 1800s, or science at all. You can even get through the whole game learning nothing more than the word “flask”, if you like. But if science - or learning in general - is your thing, as well as the in-game concepts you can engage with, the box includes…

Designer: Brachya Glueck, Benny Goldstein | Publisher: Self-Published War has broken out in the land of Zaberias for (as quoted on the official website) ‘resones [sic] to be reviealed [sic] in an upcoming book’. Thankfully, whilst we wait for that, we can treat ourselves to some Zaberias branded pants and flip-flops (check website for stock). Silliness aside, this is a competent, light skirmish game where accessibility is the priority. Commanding either humans, orcs, guardians, or undead, players will be spending gold to build castles and enlist units. Units can then be moved around the board (each army contributes its own functionally identical board to create the battleground), attack, and use special abilities. Units have a base strength depicted on them alongside the number of dice to be rolled when attacking…

Designer: John Anthony Mills | Publisher: Peel Tower Games Ulandi Wars is a Sci-fi trading card game. Designed by John Mills, the game is set in his universe of Ulandi. After developing Ulandi through a series of short stories, Mills decided to create a Ulandi Wars to explore his universe further and introduce it to a wider audience. Players battle it out, trying to reduce their opponent’s hero card to zero health. I have dabbled with the Netrunner, A Game of Thrones and Keyforge core sets but I’ve never adopted the collecting and construction side of trading card games (TCGs). For this review I’m just looking at whether I’d recommend the core set for your collection rather than Ulandi as a whole. In the box you’ll find four factions decks,…

Designer: Stephen Claypool | Publisher: Long Dog Games When I first heard about Pericle: Gathering Darkness, I was intrigued. Here at Tabletop Gaming Magazine, we’ve covered the way in which technology is having both a negative and positive impact on the community and industry. This concept seemed like a bold new way to grapple with that period of change, as players transition from one style of play to the next. Perhaps what made Pericle stand out the most, therefore, was the introduction to the Loremaster system. The idea is to abandon the need for a Game Master altogether, with an app replacing that role. As a theory, this is an exciting way to streamline play, and should be great for beginners who might not be able to find a community…