Innehållsförteckning för Issue 99 från Tabletop Gaming

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THE CREW: THE QUEST FOR PLANET NINE Cooperative trick taking campaign card game for 2-4 players. Talking isn’t allowed, so it becomes a mind melding style of play. From the moment the tasks are visible, players are trying to get onto the same wavelength to make everyone’s goals possible at the same time. When it goes well, it’s like working as a perfect trick taking hive mind. There’s also a deep sea version when you’ve breezed through outer space. CAT IN A BOX This is a weirdly thematic trick taking game based around the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, where even the rulebook is written as the dossier of a quantum scientist. Nothing is what it seems - or is it? All the cards are black and players declare the suit…

I remember distinctly the arrival of Brindlewood Bay, an RPG I backed on Kickstarter. It’s a standard book size, hardback, with 168 pages that include character sheets, reference sheets, and six mysteries. I devoured the book quickly, rabbiting away to a friend about the different quirky and fun optiond, when they asked me how much I’d spent on it. It was a mere $35 – admittedly $50 with postage – which is roughly £40 all in. To my surprise, the idea of spending this much money on a mere book was baffling to my friend… It reminded me of the Luxury Hobby debate that took place some time ago, leading me to head down the rabbit hole justifying the cost of our games… ARE BOARD GAMES GETTING MORE EXPENSIVE? Yes.…

Although we may be entering the realm of cowboys, outlaws, and sheriffs, the ideas outlined here could be applied to any fantastical setting. The Western genre has gone on to influence so many alternative narratives that don’t initially seem as if they would match the tropes of these wild frontiers. But, somehow, these elements always come together to create something magical. We, therefore, invite you to do the same and shape these suggestions based on the RPG you want to play. THE LOCATION We begin in a saloon, the kind where all adventures could start. It’s seen better days, with the scars of battle painted across its interior. It’s outdated, uninviting, and perfect for those who want to stay away from prying eyes. This is the kind of no-nonsense saloon…

In our pursuit of worldwide tabletop knowledge, island nations pose a unique challenge. On one hand, their relative isolation both fosters originality, whilst also shielding such games from outside influence or study. On the other hand, their typically diminutive size can be particularly susceptible to outside influences - be this in the context of trade, colonialism, or contemporary globalisation therefore raising the likelihood of diluting a distinctly national gaming culture. So, with this in mind, we’re taking this month’s issue to the island nation of Samoa. Perhaps best demonstrating the first half of the above statement is the game Lafoga Tupe, and the almost futile study of it in a 1987 issue of the academic journal, Anthropos. Despite stretching eleven pages, the author fails to determine the game’s age, or…

Designer: Hashimoto Atsushi | Publisher: Oink Games In recent years, many people from Hong Kong have joined my local church. They’ve added new culture, food, language and friendship to our community. An unexpected bonus is that they’ve also introduced me to one of the best games in the world—Go. Unfortunately, my international pals have also exposed me to far too much Mahjong, a game I just can’t get on with. Like Uno, it seems to be almost entirely luck dependent, but there is one aspect I do appreciate: the deliciously click-clacky tiles. When I caught a glimpse of those same tiles re-purposed for Oink Games’ Tiger & Dragon? I knew I had to play it. Loosely based on another traditional East Asian game, Goita, Tiger & Dragon gives each player…

Designer: Tomáš Holek | Publisher: Albi When I started in the hobby some 20 years ago, most of the games I fell in love with were beige and German. While I look upon many of the changes since with a tutting old-timer mentality (here’s looking at you, Kickstarter), I do love how the steady diet of historical city euros has morphed into a smorgasbord of colourful offerings with every theme you could think of. Tea Garden falls nicely into this category, filling the table with bright colours while delivering a classic Feld-like point salady euro game experience. As with many recent mid-weight games, Tea Garden looks to iterate on, rather than reinvent, the wheel. Fans of the genre will find a familiar mix of light deck-building, action selection, and resource…

Designer: Reiner Knizia | Publisher: Bitewing Games Cascadito is unique in that it’s a sister title to the larger Bitewing Games release Cascadero. Both were released in 2024 and feature a similar core system of positioning heralds adjacent to towns in order to trigger cascading combos and score points. The particulars veer off in separate directions, but there is a central spirit that is inherent to both designs. Rather than placing meeples on a shared board as seen in Cascadero, here players are selecting dice from a small pool and using them to mark spaces on their personal sheet. The goal is to form larger groups of marked spaces and connect the various coloured towns, which in turn then pushes you up the various tracks of the associated colour. This…

Designer: Elisa Teague | Publisher: Renegade Game Studio There is a certain type of person likely to be reading this review with anticipation. The reader I’m thinking of probably grew up in the eighties, watched an unhealthy amount of Saturday morning TV, and owned at least one chunky plastic toy truck that could—with a fair amount of persistent fiddling—be transmuted into a mighty intergalactic warrior! If you’ve ever dreamed of truly being one with the Autobots, the role playing game set in the Transformers universe seems like a good place to start. This core book is filled with art from the IDW comic book era, although fans of the original Generation 1 series or the modern films will still find plenty here that’s familiar. The book begins with a war…

Designer: Anna Blackwell | Publisher: Blackwell Games A deck of cards and a dice. That’s all you need to jump into this RPG. Well… and a rulebook of course. Set in outer space, players are tasked with becoming the captain of a ship, and are responsible for a crew, the missions they undertake, and the route they will chart across the stars. Throughout, you’ll see influences from Star Wars, Star Trek, Mass Effect and other such pop culture icons, and the book fully encourages those comparisons, while leaning into its own unique universe building. Incredibly, this title works as both a solo adventure and as a cooperative experience. That’s quite a rarity in today’s industry, especially with larger group play, with vast and ever-changing parties, appearing to be on the…

Designer: Camilla Greer & Evlyn Moreau | Publisher: All Rolled Up If you want to get a sense of Where The Wheat Grows Tall, all you need to do is look at Evlyn Moreau’s illustrations throughout the text. They are whimsical, stylised, and utterly unique, yet so simple in their execution. That’s probably a good reflection of the RPG as a whole, with this very streamlined campaign book delivering an entertaining adventure. In every description of this title, it’s proclaimed that this is a low-level fantastical journey, inspired by Slavic mythology, and there’s probably no better way to sum it up. Every time I interacted with this book, imagination seeped from every word, with the contents page alone instantly transporting you into this strange world. You’re first introduced to The…

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Welcome to 2025! As you read this, you’ll be looking to the second month of the year, but as I write this, I’m in the post-Christmas phase, still full of leftovers and a brain stacked with party game rules. There’s so much to look forward to in 2025 – our piece on the Gundam Card Game will offer you a great glimpse of the upcoming game – but a new year is no reason to leave our much loved favourites behind. Don’t miss our deep dive into Hive, nor a look at the phenomenal amount of game in tiny packages with Pack O Game. There’s also a great piece by CJ on the impact changes to tariffs might have on our hobby, plus interviews about Chronicles of Light, and two…

In August 2023 I visited Japan, specifically the port city of Yokohama, for the Pokémon TCG World Championships. While there I discovered, because it was impossible to miss, an 18-metre-tall robot that moved! Luckily, it was not a threat to society as we know it, it was the main attraction of the Gundam Factory, a tourist attraction for fans of the Gundam franchise, a staple in Japan since the TV series Mobile Suit Gundam aired in 1979. Flash forward to 2025 and Gundam is gearing up for the release of a new Trading Card Game that has all the signs of a game that could make it, despite the increasingly crowded TCG landscape in which we find ourselves. THE LANDSCAPE Gundam is no stranger to TCGs of course. The popular…

Preparedness is next to godliness – or something like that – which is why I like to keep a game around most of the time for when the occasion arises. There’s always a game or two stashed in my car, perhaps one in a bag, and occasionally even one in my pocket. There’s only a tiny amount that fit the bill of the latter, of which the tiny Pack O Games are always triumphant. Given they’re no bigger than a pack of chewing gum, span a wide range of game styles, and if feeling extra fancy, come in a little pouch too, they’re an underrated fountain of endless gaming possibilities, having sold over a million units. We caught up with Chris to find out more. PERPLEXING Chris Handy is the…

Need to justify your purchase to yourself? Just for fun, let us help. Tabletop Maths is a twist on the viral Girl Math trend – so let’s use a mixture of the above methods to make purchasing a game from my wishlist a must purchase. Admittedly, the maths is a little (ahem, a lot) dodgy and it won’t hold up anywhere officially – but if you needed the push to buy that game you’ve been after, Tabletop Maths could be it! THE GAME: Slay the Spire: The Board Game, Collectors Edition. THE COST: £138 STEP ONE: THE CONTEXT Slay the Spire is a digital deck building game that always felt reminiscent of an analogue board game. We’d purchased the digital game when it was released, deeming it well worth the £19.99…

Designer: Kevin Wilson | Publisher: Incredible Dream My two-year-old son was given a little magnet-style puzzle for Christmas. It had a road track beneath perspex, with balls of different colours to represent cars, and a little magnet pencil to pull the colours around the board. It’ll probably teach him fine motor skills (or something), but he plonked himself down in my lap and asked me to move some of the colours. Half an hour later, he’d long since begun playing with something else, but I’d separated each section into alphabetical order of colours. Totally satisfying, I'd found it really peaceful and satisfying, and it reminded me that I really like puzzles. I quickly banished the thought though – board games take up enough space in my house without adding anything…

Designer: Alex Crispin, Thomas Pike, James Shelton | Publisher: Themeborne Ltd. If you are unfamiliar with the action adventure video game series The Last of Us or have not watched the HBO’s TV series based on the game, it is a zombie story that is not about zombies. Sure, this is also a cliché. Almost every zombie franchise ever has claimed that violent brain-eating cannibalism is not the story but just a vehicle that drives the narrative forward. In the case of The Last of Us, however, this is unironically true. The journey of two key characters, Joel and Ellie, is full of love, tragedy, heart-wrenching moral decisions and complex, layered human stories, that earned this franchise an iconic status. So, if this series, like many before it, would…

Designer: Friedemann Friese | Publisher: 2F Spiele When it was released in 2004, Power Grid became an instant classic, winning a slew of awards and a Spiel de Jahres nomination. Many expansions followed, alongside several successful spin-off games, so it was no surprise to see a release celebrating the game’s 20th anniversary. This time, respected designer Friedemann Friese has taken the franchise into space, using one of his favourite old games, 1991’s Outpost, as his inspiration. For the uninitiated, both the original game and Power Grid: Outpost see players building a network of houses on a shared board, powering them with power plants accrued through auctions and then buying the resources that go with them. It’s a straight race to power a set number of houses, with the player being…

Designer: Eric Olsen | Publisher: The Op Games It takes some stones to put ‘The greatest card game of all time!’ on your game box. It’s just this kind of bravado that can serve you well in Flip 7 - or just as easily send screams of delight around the table as you bust one more time. Because while Flip 7 certainly isn’t the best card game of all time by any serious metric I can think of, it is a fast-paced and entertaining push-your-luck game. Better still, it should be just as well received by your family after a family dinner as it will around a late-night convention table. In the box, you’ll find a pack of around 100 cards and a rules sheet. Shuffle the cards, and you’re…

Designer: Scott Malthouse | Publisher: Osprey Games The Terror Beneath is a sinister investigative RPG that transports players to an alternative 20th Century Britain. The designer, Scott Malthouse, who is supported by Brainbug Design’s illustrations, is keen to point to the title’s influences early doors. If you’re not familiar with the writings of Arthur Machen, a Welsh author who has left an undeniable mark on fantasy, folk and horror fiction, then The Terror Beneath may strangely be a perfect introduction to his atmospheric style. You’re introduced as part of the Gold Tiberius Society, a crumbling group created to stop the pagan gods from breaking the veil between realities. As a conceptual premise, it’s perfect for driving conflict, as players who are invited into its ranks are constantly carrying out investigations…

Designer: Justin R. Achilli and Karim Muammar | Publisher: Renegade Game Studios Werewolf: the Apocalypse has always been less well known than its big sister Vampire: the Masquerade. Of course, skulking in the shadows is fairly on point for the genre, but with the fifth edition it’s worth taking a look, both for new Kin pups out there, and for any older Garou cautiously sniffing around to see what’s changed. So, first things first, Werewolf: the Apocalypse 5th Edition looks fantastic. The art is vibrant, raw and dark; typography is crisp, clear and occasionally weathered; simple iconography is used to great effect. Yes, there is perhaps a little too much lore before the mechanics, but without that, there’s always a risk players will be expected to know information they haven’t…

Designer: Óscar Bribián | Publisher: Ludic Dragon Games While tabletop gaming has changed a lot in recent years, one element of the hobby has proved refreshingly enduring. Dungeon crawlers are still with us – a hold-over from an era when game night meant chucking dice and slaying orcs in 10 x 10 rooms (with a chest in the corner). If anything, the genre has never been more popular – to the point where it is easy to be overwhelmed by the huge range of options. Enter Dungeon Universalis – a reprinted kickstarted party-crasher that its Spanish publisher, Ludic Dragon, describes as an “infinite dungeon crawler” Can this epic title justify a steep learning curve and the fact that the base game doesn’t include everything needed to play? The short answer…

For those who have graduated from Pictionary, there is Telestrations. Already a solid classic in my eyes, I was surprised to see it has only been around since 2009. Everyone has a pad with a series of pages asking them to draw a picture from a word prompt or write the next word based on the picture they can see. The pads get passed around the table and, like in the telephone game, the meaning of everything gets lost as it’s flipped from word to drawing round the group, misinterpreted at every stage. The reveal allows each player to take you through where they started and the madness that ensued. Or, on rare occasions, how well you communicated. If you enjoy the chaos of trying to communicate through drawings, here…

FROMAGE Designer: Matthew O’Malley, Ben Rosset Publisher: Road To Infamy Games (R2i Games) Artist: Pavel Zhovba Just when you’re wondering whether there are any more themes for games that have yet to be used, Fromage steps up. Every fancied being a cheesemaker in France? Now you can. What sets it apart from other similar weight eurogames, other than the brilliantly twee theme, is the simultaneous play made possible by the rotating board. It’s a clever way to minimise thinking time and every part of the game is designed to make this work. The directional cheese triangles are inspired. It’s already available to play on Board Game Arena and Tabletopia, including a great tutorial on BGA that gives you the basics and to get you playing. You’re essentially managing your resources…

Trick Taking Definition: A mechanism in card games where players lay cards into the middle of the table one by one. The highest card wins that play. Traditionally trick taking is seen as a slightly serious mechanism. I have this image of four Bridge players silently around the table battling to prove their wit and intelligence. It makes your brain whirr in ways other mechanisms can’t, and in its modern applications it can be great fun too! Even though I’m not as proficient as my Player Two, who gets irritated to the core when I miss an obvious play, trick taking is one of my favourite mechanisms in the gaming world. If you’ve not encountered trick taking before, or always found it opaque and confusing, here are the things you…

Zine Quest is back, and it’s one of the most exciting times of the year to be an RPG fan. If you’re new to it, it’s the opportunity for independent RPG designers to crowdfund their smaller projects, all posted during February so to bring the most attention to it. If you fancy a well priced RPG endeavour to support a small creator, there’s plenty to find – just head to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Gamefound, and see what’s on offer! We’ve found just a few that are teasing their project ahead of time, but be sure to check out the full roster for yourself, starting February 1st. GOBLIN HEAD CHOPPERS By ALGOYO Goblin Head Choppers is compatible with both 5E and Mörk Borg, where you’ll become one of the…

At the end of 2024 I visited the TAGS festival in Edinburgh. This one day event featured lots of independent comic and RPG creators. I am using this month’s column to highlight some of the games I saw there. WULFWALD An entire section of the RPG community looks to update the original D&D for a modern audience. Sometimes called OSR, old school rules, it comes in many forms. Loads of publishers produce supplements and games in this vein and Wulfwald was one that caught my eye at TAGS. Wulfwald, from publisher Lost Pages, takes a holistic approach to OSR making its rules compatible with many different OSR systems. Its setting is that of Anglo Saxon tales. Players take on characters called Wolfheads, outcasts of society. They work to find their…

The One Piece Card Game recently celebrated its second anniversary with the release of arguably its best set yet; OP-09: Emperors in the New World but I’m not sure the majority of card gamers realise quite how well the game is doing–not just in the west, but around the world. I’m hoping to change that. In the west it’s extremely difficult to find reliable sales figures, but in Japan we do have proper sales figures published that show One Piece to be the fourth biggest trading card game in Japan right now, behind only Pokemon (obviously), Yu-Gi-Oh and Duel Masters. Duel Masters stands out here as a game with a large following in Japan, not the West, but it’s also important to note that One Piece saw sales 313% of…

Designer: Emiliano Sciarra | Publisher: DV Games Have you got what it takes to become a legend in the Wild West? 2024 finally brought us another expansion to the original in the iconic BANG! series of hidden role games. BANG! Legends is an add-on to the original game, giving you access to upgraded characters and a few more interesting things to do on your turn. Legends introduces ‘Feats’, a series of objectives and actions that are revealed over the course of normal gameplay. During your turn, you have the opportunity to ‘boast’ about the feats and complete them. These include actions you may have incidentally already done, such as damaging a certain player or using a certain card, but also include small tasks such as choosing to discard cards or…

Designer: Philip DuBarry | Publisher: Grail Games Now don’t get me wrong; I love a good victory point as much as the next gamer. But a look at my favourite games reveals that I much prefer a good race to the finish rather than a set number of turns. Thurn and Taxis, Oracle of Delphi, Race for the Galaxy - even Ticket to Ride to an extent. For me, you just can’t beat that end-game feel that an unclear ending brings to the table. This is what initially turned me on to Snowcrest. As in Race for the Galaxy, you’re playing until a certain number of scrolls (read: victory points) have been claimed between all the players. As in Race, you’re also tableau-building here, creating a 3x3 grid of cards…

Designer: Rita Modl | Publisher: Deep Print Games A coral reef: A delicate ecosystem where sea life and plant life work together in perfect harmony. And, where there are loads of lovely points available for a savvy gamer to pick up! In Lumicora, players take turns using domino-like pieces (or ‘Luminos’) to create a coral reef. Stacking pieces atop and alongside each other to make scoring regions and sets of sea wildlife for bonus points later. Over ten rounds, players will take their turns, placing a lumino into ‘the atoll’, a shared trade row of other pieces, then either grabbing a handful of different-coloured luminos to place onto their own reef, or collecting some limestone pieces, an important resource for reaching the furthest edges of the board. Building obeys a…

Designer: Jun Sasaki, Taiki Shinzawa | Publisher: Oink Games Throwdown! It’s time for a wrestling-themed small card game from purveyors of small box delights, Oink Games. Maskmen is a long-awaited reprint of a decade-old design which I can’t get enough of! Maskmen is a shedding game, a simple card game where the goal is to empty your hand before your opponents, played over several rounds. Each round is a season of wrestling, the cards in your hands represent one of six colourful characters who have to be pitted against one another. The rules are simple, initially the slate is clear and no one wrestler is stronger than another, but by playing out more cards than in the previous hand, a player can define that, for example, the green wrestler is…

Designer: Zachary Cox & Klur | Publisher: Soulmuppet Games I once went to a restaurant that blended traditional Ethiopian food with Cuban cuisine; it turns out that, done well, fusion is fantastic. In Inevitable, the culinary combination is one part magical-sword-of-legend Arthurian myth; the other ingredient is a tobacco-chewin’ gun-totin’ Western. Now, if you’re on board for the King Arthur-ish aspect, you’ll be expecting lots of lore, often with an intentionally vague or mystic edge to it, and you’d be right. Inevitable is one of those rare RPGs that manages to be extremely rules-lite whilst being pretty lore-heavy. You get thrown in slightly at the deep end, with some heavy concepts and lots of heroic names to remember. Inevitable comes as an A4 tome, printed on lovely thick paper with…

Designer: Antoine Guillaud, Emile Zhang, Graeme Davis, Xavier Penin | Publisher: Tactical Adventures/Modiphius Roleplaying games and video games are generally regarded as scratching entirely different itches. One involves pen, paper and a DM pretending they aren’t trying to kill your character (they’re trying to kill your character). The other requires you to sit squinting at a screen, twiddling your thumbs for hours. The latter is fun in small bytes but no substitute for the tactile pleasure of picking up a D20 and chucking with prejudice. No high score in the history of video gaming is as satisfying as a natural 20 rolled with a humble plastic die. That said, there are moments when the two can combine to inspired effect. For instance, the success in 2023 of digitised D&D love…

Designer: Stewart Gibbs, Colin Young | Publisher: Battle Systems For miniature gamers of a certain age, it’s likely their first experience of miniature gaming was receiving a copy of HeroQuest under the Christmas tree in the early 1990s. HeroQuest’s thrilling tale of swords and sorcery, complete with tricksy goblins and the fearsome gargoyle spawned a generation of dungeon explorers. Now, more than 30 years since HeroQuest was first released, dungeon crawlers have come a long way thanks to gorgeous miniatures, detailed character progression and epic storylines that make The Lord of the Rings seem basic. The latest entry into the crowded dungeon crawler market is Maladum: Dungeons of Enveron and - spoiler - if you have the patience, it’s up there with the best. Of course, if you’ve heard of…